#storytelling entropy

[cacodaemonia]

Still watching this video about the Marvelization of cinema and 'storytelling entropy,' but I'm definitely nodding along so far.

Incidentally, as someone whose main exposure to Marvel has been through transformative fandom osmosis, I was surprised that the narrator said End Game was 'generally well-received,' but I imagine that opinion is coming from the larger, more mainstream 'fandom' (Which I feel like I need to put in quotes because I just don't think that liking something and buying merch for it counts as fandom. That's called being a fan, but it fandom is so much more than that).

#video #media analysis #cinema #marvelization of cinema #star wars #marvel #cinematic universes #movie franchises #storytelling #storytelling entropy #game of thrones #lotr #the hobbit #top gun maverick

[lushnightjelly]

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#ts4 #the sims 4 #sims 4 #ts4 simblr #sims 4 simblr #degrees of entropy #ts4 storytelling #sims 4 story

[neomachine]

"God is beyond measure and wanton malice. And matchless in his irony."

Hannibal S02E11, "Koi no Mono"

Succession S03E08, "Chiantishire"

#succession #logan roy #caroline collingwood #[insert meta here about logan; entropy; control and distrust] #like how does this balance with logan's idea of the past being made up- i know it affects more so his idea of the media #but anything in his present he does kick to see if it comes running back that suggests A belief in cause and effect #something that can rail against his control of the lens of the past on some deep level #or maybe it's just another dimension of him exercising his storytelling control #but a part of me does see it as really similar to hannibal's desire to reverse entropy

[dykeydean]

fic recs

aka, i read too much fic and need to share my favorites

gorging myself on you, still can't get enough (insatiable) - sobsicles

i love this so much. casual confessions from dean. insanely horny and conflicted cas. grocery store confessions <3

rating: M

how we're stuck in entropy - shineforthee

unfinished as of now, but worth it imo. sam makes a deal for cas' life and dean has to grapple with grief and mourning. amazing commentary on grief and dean's mindset, and great destiel

rating: E

don't stop, don't slow - hedderstheowl

trans cas and cas being so surprised by how good sex is with someone he loves

rating: E

love's such an old fashioned word. - hedderstheowl

same author as above bc i cant get enough of their fics. i LOVED this concept and characterization of cas. cas gets revived but doesnt believe hes out of the empty, and treats the world around him accordingly.

rating: E

ignite your bones - ilovehowyouletmefall

such powerful storytelling and writing. loved this front to cover. dean kills sam to get the world back- the remaining of tfw 2.0 grapple with the after effects. dean deals with grief, homophobia, and cas' confession.

rating: E

this whole trilogy but namely sam winchester, ally at law - alittleduck, amidsizedfrog

sam wants to be an ally soooo bad but dean refuses to be an acceptable queer. love this characterization so much

rating: T

the cheapest room in the house - biggaybenny

dean downloads grindr for cas to meet guys and gets jealous when cas talks to guys. angst with a happy ending

rating: E

psalm 40:2 - unicornpoe

cas time travels to meet dean pre-hell. pre and early seasons dean my beloved <3

rating: E

benedictions - kalmialatifolia

priest cas and writer dean. unfinished but i think about this fic at least 3x a week. if you enjoy fleabag, youll enjoy this fic. if you enjoy priest porn, youll enjoy this fic. cannot recommend this enough

rating: E

everyone knows the year doesnt stop until april- fleeceframe

first of all, go check out this author right now i love ALL their fics, but this one stuck with me. early seasons destiel. cas has so much love he doesnt know what to do with it. case fic

rating: M

gold in the edges of our vision - sewingnatural

i fucking love this so much. absolutely amazing religious imagery and symbolism. dean and cas share peaches on a roadtrip and are in love about it. fic that convinced me to go on a roadtrip this summer

rating: T

juxtaposition - rhinestoneangels

this fic is short and amazing. interesting prose, dean in hell, religious imagery. mwah love it

rating: G

where the heart is - goldenraeofsun

claire fic of all time if i do say so myself. claire time travels to s7 and hunts with dean before making her way home. i adore this one so much

rating: M

here, bullet, here - a_good_soldier

dean and his relationship with violence. contains pre series dean and post-canon destiel. named from a poem, this one hits you right in the heart

rating: T

use cinderblocks to build a stairway - pollutedstar

dean, sex work, ptsd, and self worth. heed the tags!! heavy fic but thoroughly enjoyable

rating: M

the soul burns brighter than the sun - wow_thisiswheremylifeis

post-canon fix it. cas escapes the empty and effectively breaks it, while telling everyone but dean that hes alive. they grapple with their relationship and fixing the empty. love it!!!

rating: E

let's take a drive - sobsicles

another sobsicles fic because theyre all 10s. jack reverts to baby age, cas is protective, dean and cas have a complicated relationship. amazing fic with amazing feels. best tag ever: maybe we're all a little scared and that's okay

rating: E

the eye is a mouth. - zeke21

dean, sex work, god, a study on the relationship between all three. fucking amazing fic, really nailed chuck's presence in this. go check out this authors other works too, they're all mind blowing

rating: E

asterism of an f-series ford pick up - disabled_dean

altered my brain chemistry a little bit i think. cas and dean go on a roadtrip and dean is exceptionally horny about it. dean is not normal about love and thats okay

rating: M

maybe i like pleasure pain - tothewillofthepeople

another one that wrecked me entirely. one of the best cas centric fics out there, this fic focuses on cas' recovery post-empty. lovely dialogue and imagery, just amazing all around

rating: M

wyoming, january 1996 - luulapants

THEE dean 17th birthday case. fucking amazing storytelling, takes johns journal entry and runs with it.

rating: T

between sex and death and trying to keep the kitchen clean - ftmsteverogers

jupernatural, kid jack, post-canon fix it with empty confession misunderstanding <3 love it so much, this author is so talented :)

rating: E

#fic rec #masterlist #ezra posts

[hero-adjacent]

later seasons Spike righting his s2 wrongs:

* In School Hard Spike goes to Sunnydale High on Parent-teacher night and kills people. In Storyteller Spike & Buffy go to Sunnydale High to save people, she reminds him not to kill anyone.

* In Halloween, Spike tried to kill amnesiac Buffy and sent a minion to spy on her via camcorder. In Tabula Rasa Spike & Buffy have amnesia, they fight together. "no thoughts of me killing you" In Entropy Buffy asked Spike if he's been spying on her via cameras. "Do you think that I could do that?"

* In What's My Line Spike sent the Order of Taraka to kill Buffy. She stops him killing her boyfriend during a blood ritual. In Family, Spike heard Glory sent demons to kill Buffy and ends up helping her. In The Gift she has him swear to protect her sister during a blood ritual. "I made a promise"

* In Surprise Spike let The Judge (burns the good out of people) try to incinerate Buffy. In Once More With Feeling Spike saved Buffy from incineration. In Chosen Spike let's himself be incinerated, through him evil gets burnt out of the town.

* In Becoming #2 Spike abandoned Buffy when he saw Angelus about to run her head through with a sword, she caught the blade. In Spiral Spike saved Buffy when a knight was about to run her head through with a sword, he caught the blade.

#spuffy #btvs parallels #spike

[thebarontheabyss]

I absolutely adore your IF! the aesthetics, the storytelling, the mystery, the fantasy elements.. everything. I've never read an IF where I've had such a hard time choosing someone to romance. usually I only gravitate toward 1-2 ROs but with yours, I want to romance all of them!!! excuse me while I ramble... [spoilers ahead]

Death: everything they do is just so cute. the way they kept glancing at us from afar at the bar, and that scene where they're lying in our bed and tells us how pretty we are... I was kicking my legs and screaming internally

Lilith/Damien: hottie alert!! can't help but be drawn to them even knowing how dangerous and scheming devils can be... my MC be shamelessly flirting with them in front of yaga and peisinoe

Morgan(a): so charming and swoon-worthy. that dinner date was so romantic! it doesn't help my heart that the Morgan character art reminds me of howl from howl's moving castle... and the angst potential with them being a mortal... I can't wait to see where this goes

Peisinoe: the scenes of their past were heart-wrenching, I just want them to be happy :'( I also love how you've written out the lyrics to their performances, I really feel the melancholic vibes

Hastur: I'm a sucker for the stoic duty-bound types! I can't wait to break down his walls... hehehehe

He Without Name: I can't wait to find out more about him and unravel his mysterious past! really curious as to whether he will take on a more solid form and be able to interact better at the end..? having read up to the memoriam update, I do have a theory about him being related to adamot somehow - I could be totally off, but he said his purpose was to keep balance? whereas tehomot is for entropy/chaos. and maybe he is "the child" that tehomot was referring to in that council of nine scene. also I can't get out of my head how for Valentine's Day, he would just leave a flower under our pillow <3 simple, but cute and impactful

thank you for sharing such a wonderful story. I'm so excited for more updates!

Thank you for the positive review! It warmed my heart ❤️ Still recovering from the flu here so I hope it doesn't raise my temperature again jkjk

And here are my notes about your notes lol:

Drunk Death is the best Death!!! I can’t wait to write the date scenes for them actually

For Lilith/Damian, scheming will play an integral (and infernal part) of their story. They will be a focus for the update following this one along with Yaga, and I'm excited to start defining their characters!

Howl was a reference I sent for the artwork for Morgan/a! That wonderful wizard totally inspired their character, although I want to make them into more of a reconstruction of the character type later on 👀

Every time I hear a jazz song lately, I just Imagine Peisinoe singing it. I can’t help but stan them.

There won't be a long wait for Hastur! The walls will crumble in the upcoming update. That's all for now. 👀

Damn, I love your theories about He Without Name! My boyfriend always says I'm addicted to spoilers, so for my own personal growth, I'm just going to quietly enjoy the speculations for now hehe

Again, thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! ❤️ These are literally the fuel that helps me get back and write!

#choice of games #interactive fiction #cog #choicescript #hosted games #wip #hosted game #interactive novel #fiction #thebarontheabyss #he without name tbota #the witch tbota #hastur tbota #the devil tbota #tbota #death tbota #the bar on the abyss #anon ask #answered asks #answered #asks tbota

[yaelokre]

Genuinely been super interested and curious about this ever since I found it, but what's the story behind Harpy Hare and And The Hound (I'm assuming they're tied together) ? I remember it being mentioned on TikTok it was based on a folktale in the story and I'm extremely curious as to what that tale is. The music has genuinely been super interesting to listen too and I'm extremely intrigued and excited to see anything that's coming next !

It holds a very huge narrative in Meadowlark and thats saying a bunch considering Meadowlark is practically a book of stories! I find it difficult to explain... But the tale revolves around a foolish Majesty, who refuses to listen.

The Storyteller reminds you of the past, The Bell Ringer the future, and the Enkindled with what is true... They came to the foolish Majesty to warn him of a tempest, a storm, a madness that is the Croon, entropy.

And yet he did not listen.

Tragedy occurs, which leads us to another story, one that mentions "the Hills" Cole sang about in their song of origin

Everything is connected!

But yes, its a folktale made and retold through various versions and portrayals, like most of the stories we have now. Often times simplified, re-depicted, or even misinterpreted...

Thank you for the question my friend! 🤗🌾

#🐿️

[strongestrat]

HIIIII HI HELLO ENTROPY ZERO PEOPLE IT IS I AND I HAVE COME TO DEFEND AIDEN WALKER/BAD COP AND IF U THINK HES ANNOYING UR WRONG AND SHOULD FEEL BAD /j

Bad cop in entropy zero 1 wasn't exactly the blank slate people expect from half life games/mods, but he didn't have much depth-- all we really knew back then was that he was quippy and very good at his job. He doesn't like people at all and is loyal to the combine to a fault, but we don't know his past, what his motivations are, and we kind of don't need to. EZ1 is about survival in a harsh environment where everything and anything is trying to kill u and u just sort of stop a gigantic rebel plot by accident and u get a shiny (mandatory) promotion out of all of it.

Entropy zero 2's writing is really fucking underappreciated because it takes that basic framework and elaborates on it ingeniously. When he insults people he kills or says "people suck" its not because he's quirky or some kind of generic marvel character it's because people do genuinely fucking SUCK. They used a mentally ill man as a scapegoat for a crime he was a victim of that cost him his family, locked him in a prison/care facility and tried to "change" him. Because he wasn't "normal" to their standards. They stripped him of every single comfort and right he had, every reason he ever had to care about a human being, not just the justice system and prosecutors who failed him and the caretakers who likely neglected or mistreated him but the people who hurt his family and took his daughter and the people who likely discriminated against him simply for existing in a neurotypical society.

This also gives Aiden a degree of separation from loyalty to the combine. He's not just evil for the sake of it he wants to find his daughter Ava and the combine's family cohesion perks are the only chance he has. He's loyal but only because he has an incentive to, and he won't hesitate to kill anyone, and I do mean *anyone*, including his coworkers and a fucking COMBINE ADVISOR if he thinks they can't help him or are trying to stop him from finding Ava. He's good at his job but gets in trouble for killing other cops in a rage induced stupor (not unlike victor-sixty) and of course because these are cops and his boss likes him the chief lets him go with a slap on the wrist and "outland duty" because he is "worth 10 of those guys", and he fucking IS. And Aiden takes it like a champ bc he will do fucking anything to find Ava. His Humor doesn't resonate with everyone and that is understandable (some ppl find him annoying and hes not for everyone), but he's not trying to be funny for funny's sake! He's using it as a coping mechanism for the fact that he has nothing else left and he's being lead along in the hope that he can regain atleast SOMETHING from his old life.

And of course, there is the master template (clone cop) and wilson. I love u wilson and u are definitely the canon ending but i wish i didnt have to babysit u without feeling bad I am getting sidetracked

A clone plot is hard to pull off and in most cases fails spectacularly but in Entropy Zero 2 it just fucking works. Clone cop/master is just the older clone of Aiden but fucking UNHINGED. His loyalty to the combine is gone because he realized they're just using him as an effective tool, and the moment he gets Ava he has no reason to fight for them anymore. So naturally he RIPS OUT A PART OF HIS FUCKING SKULL AND SUSTAINS HIMSELF WITH BOOTLEG CYBERNETICS (I am not joking EZ2 is good at environmental storytelling u can find his fucking skullcap in his little laboratory just before plan B) there are so many little details I noticed on clone cop just before escorting judith on how he butchered himself just to stay independent and have a better chance at finding Ava. His will is fuckign unbreakable which feeds directly into his relationship with the player character Aiden. Clone cop is less of a clone then the Aiden u play as is!!! He even has the prototype AR2! In contrast, the Aiden u play as is clearly modified-- He's much more loyal to the combine but his will isn't unbreakable, and while Wilson doesn't directly factor into whether or not he chooses to fight the Advisor Wilson is CRUCIAL. Clone cop is methodical, using the survival skills from the events of the first game to subvert the rebels, the wildlife, even the combine-- The player character Aiden in turn is (arguably) less badass then Clone cop precisely because they modified him to be more loyal, taking away some of that incredible will and tenacity to try and keep him under wraps. This is proven in the there will be darkness ending where Aiden is mowed down like a standard grunt as soon as his memories/what makes him himself are taken from him.

THE WILSON ENDING IS THE CANON ENDING. THIS IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE.

Wilson is such a fucking important support friend for Aiden because he actually gets the chance to talk with something that isn't a human and is very sympathetic. Aiden goes from being fed up with him and using him as a survival tool to being genuinely concerned for him over the course of the game, Wilson is at first just a way for Bad cop to escape the lab beneath arbiet and maybe pick up supply caches scattered across the other arbiet facilities and sure MAYBE that's the only reason that Aiden brings him along at first but Wilson is very nice and sympathetic and he doesn't judge Aiden and it just. Gives Aiden a chance to rant about his feelings and open up and remember things instead of taking medication and bottling all of his emotions up. Wilson in turn is just thankful to escape the labs beneath arbiet and maybe have a chance at becoming an administrator AI one day if Aiden uploads him into the arbiet AI mainframe!!!! And the coolest part out of all of this is that clone cop only used Wilson as a tool and didn't really care about him but someone like Wilson is exactly what he needed to start healing!!! And the fact that Wilson is able to infiltrate the combine network undetected and free Aiden from the Combine when he's captured out of unconditional love and the fact that "hes da boss" is fucking GREATI am just fucking! Going insane!!! Its so well written!

In entropy zero 3 wilson and aiden will destroy the combine forever and victor sixty will also be there and he and Aiden will get married (real)

#Aiden Walker #entropy zero 2 #entropy zero uprising #entropy zero #Wilson #Clone Cop #ITS SO FUCKING WELL WRITTEN AM I THE ONLY ONE TO NOTICE ALL OF THESE THINGS I HOPE NOT ITS SO COOL ITS SO AWESOME ITS SO #rambling again #I dont care I just want to talk abt my special interest

[spikedru]

add why in the tags if you wish

episode guide per writer below:

joss - welcome to the hellmouth, the harvest, nightmares, out of mind out of sight, prophecy girl, when she was bad, school hard, lie to me, ted, innocence becoming 1 & 2, anne, amends, doppelgangland, graduation day 1 & 2, the freshman, hush, who are you, restless, family, the body, the gift, once more with feeling, lessons, chosen

jane - band candy, gingerbread, earshot, the harsh light of day, pangs, doomed, a new man, superstar, the replacement, triangle, checkpoint, i was made to love you, intervention, after life, flooded, life serial, doublemeat palace, same time same place, conversations with dead people, sleeper, first date, storyteller, end of days

david fury - go fish, helpless, choices, fear itself, doomed, the i in team, primeval, real me, shadow, crush, bargaining part 2, life serial, gone, grave, sleeper, showtime, lies my parents told me

steven s deknight - blood ties, spiral, all the way, dead things, seeing red

drew greenberg - smashed, older and far away, entropy, him, the killer in me, empty places

drew goddard - selfless, conversations with dead people, never leave me, liews my parents told me, dirty girls

david greenwalt - teachers pet, angel, nightmares, school hard, reptile boy, ted, faith hope and trick, homecoming

rebecca rand kirshner - out of my mind, listening to fear, tough love, tabula rasa, hells bells, help, potential, touched

marti noxon - whats my line 1 & 2, bad eggs, surprise, bewitched bothered and bewildered, i only have eyes for you, dead mans party, beauty and the beasts, the wish, consequences, the prom, living conditions, wild at heart, doomed, goodbye iowa, new moon rising, buffy vs dracula, into the woods, forever, bargaining part 1, wrecked, villains, bring on the night

doug petrie - revelations, bad girls, enemies, the initiative, this years girl, the yoko factor, no place like home, fool for love, checkpoint, the weight of the world, flooded, as you were, two to go, beneath you, bring on the night, get it done, end of days

[generation1point5]

No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.

Arches is the companion, the foil, the refutation, the answer to Echo. As such it is Echo's compliment, but it is also a standalone story complete with its own themes and sentiments. If Echo was about the establishment of a perpetual, vicious cycle, then Arches is what bisects that circle to create its own thesis. Its ending is, appropriately, a momentous occasion of great violence, followed in an epilogue by residual trauma where the protagonists learn to move on from what has been permanently lost, and learn to live with what is no longer there. This is a running theme that defines much of Howly's writing; where Arches becomes distinguished from his prior work is in the final word (the fact that there even IS a final word), a definite ending and a nail in the coffin. Entropy brings the cycles of Echo to an end. Spoilers for the game's events below.

The thing that immediately struck me about Arches' tone was its use of third person, a unique choice for visual novels that usually rely on first person to immerse the reader in the player character. Even when Echo Project's games have shifted perspective and have demonstrably illustrated even the player characters to have a distinct voice and identity independent of the player making their choices, it continues to utilize the first person. It enables the reader to understand the world as the characters themselves perceive it, in all of their insight and blind spots, and implicitly adopt the character's view as their own. The use of third person, by contrast, establishes a stark objective reality; you see just what the author wants you to see, unfiltered by the biases of the author's character(s). When events happen, they occur and unfold just as what's being described, with extremely little room for interpretation. From the beginning, the finality of Arches' tone carries its series of events to a solid conclusion. It also creates a barrier that establishes a clear distinction between the player's own perspective and that of the characters.

Narratively, Arches' tone is closely aligned with the traditional western mode of storytelling; there is a beginning, a rising action, a climax, a falling action and conclusion. There are clear delineations within the storyline from which there are points of no return, moments where definitive changes that do not resemble past patterns are established. The fractures created by the trauma are neither recursive nor fractal in nature. Instead, they are clear differentiations from what has come before that establishes something new, and not simply because it occurs last at the end of a sequence. It is newness in a truly semantic sense; it is the emergence of something alien, unknown, and unlike anything that has happened before.

Devon's initial impulse to bring Cameron along to Echo is in pursuit of this unknown, his questions about the afterlife as a result of familial tragedies driving him to know what cannot be understood. To this end, he thinks his boyfriend Cameron might be able to use his latent psychic ability as a means of connecting with and grasping this reality. Cameron agrees to this proposition out of a desire to help provide some sense of closure with his counterpart, despite his own traumas surrounding his latent talent.

The tables soon flip, however, when things go sideways shortly after Cameron and Devon enter Echo. Demons from both Cameron's past and Echo's interact in strange and terrifying ways that immediately spell greater trouble looming on the horizon. Devon immediately regrets his decision to go to Echo, but Cameron by contrast is drawn into the dark amplificative powers of Echo to harness his unique ability. He experiences terror, but also curiosity as his powers manifest more powerfully; Cameron glimpses the lives of many who have died in Echo, and when their attempt to escape Echo runs into hardship, he becomes prone to wandering off in pursuit of being able to master his newfound ability.

Part of Cameron's drive to master this ability is tied to his sense of identity, purpose and value. Having come from impoverished conditions in the pacific northwest, suffering from drug addiction that took his life of his mother (the sole parent in his life), and having failed in his attempts at a music career, Cameron finds himself working at a call-center and tries to make ends meet with his boyfriend. Devon, by contrast, excelled academically at Pueblo, and pursues a much more promising career in the sciences. Cameron's gnawing sense of inferiority and inability to succeed in his field of passion drives him to pursue meaning and self-worth in his only remaining distinguishing characteristic, his psychic powers. By the end of the visual novel, Cameron accomplishes his goal. It is not for the better.

Caught in the crossfire of these game's events is a mutual friend of Cameron and Devon, Arturo. His initial role as a happy-go-lucky sort ready to help the couple out of their bind initially sees him bonding closely with Cameron's desire to explore the unknown, but being caught in the consequences of this decision forever shatters the amicable dynamic they once had. His character arc is framed more in the context of casualties, helpless to affect the greater consequences of the decisions made by the pair of protagonists.

In many ways, Cameron and Devon's one-time "success" story (a term I'm admittedly using VERY loosely) is in stark contrast to the inevitable cycles of failure in Echo. It begins with a loving couple entering into a horrific unknown, and emerges from that time with their relationship and their lives changed but intact. It is the exact opposite of Echo, where Chase comes back to reunite an old friend group that has largely gone their own way after having already begun to fray, and having it more or less fall apart by the end.

Part of me had wished to see the Arches cast interact with the Echo gang beyond the cameos featured in TJ and Flynn's endings, but I understand why the meetup isn't suitable for both narrative and thematic reasons. Cameron and Devon, being external to Echo, represent an outside party who barrel headfirst into Echo's cycle and come out of it changed. They are fundamentally different people than those born in Echo, who are trapped in Echo, who die in Echo. The two visual novels, despite being closely tied to each other, are like oil and water. Those who are in Echo's cycle are bound to it; those who are witness to it are affected but not trapped by it. To involve the main Echo cast in this arrangement would create a thematic dissonance, whereupon the characters of one story are used to tell another, fundamentally different from the one they had illustrated before. It is, in fact, for the best that none of the main characters of Echo make an appearance save for whatever remains of a particular manifestation of Flynn. If any of them had remained in Echo by the time of Devon and Cameron's arrival, it would only portend a grim and tragic fate.

The characters that DO recur from Echo exist to tell a very specific story. They are the last, dying breaths of the cycle, the last embers, the cinders that burn themselves out and expire. The inevitability of Echo's slow death was already something known even by the start of the events in its own game, but at that time the cycle was still quite alive and well. The last surviving residents of Echo shown in Arches choose to remain there of their own volition, fully accepting the pain and suffering that comes from doing so.

Of the two Echo characters that comprise the cycle, one is primarily witness to it (Duke) and the other actively perpetuates it (Brian). Much in contrast to his assertions to some sort of alternate leadership in Echo, Duke by this time is largely isolated and worn down by the forces of the town, having experienced the mass hysteria of Echo and yet being one of two that decided to remain in spite of the horrors of that week. Highly reactionary and prone to violence, Duke uses threats and acts of force to try and keep people away from Echo while trying to contain the evil within. Despite his unilateral and brutal approach to the problem, Duke's heart is shown to have at least some semblance of compassion, after turning around to save Arturo's life after he sustained a life-threatening shot to the head by Brian. His self-destructive tendencies are kept at a strictly personal level, and his last observed act was to save Arturo's life even if it seems to come at the cost of his own.

Brian, meanwhile, continues his predatory, psychotic behavior that extends his own self-destructive habits to the livelihoods of everyone around him. Where Duke had begun to avoid Brian, Cameron, Devon and Arturo all stumbled into the picture, inadvertently threatening to renew the cycle of tragedy in Echo. After Arturo's brush with death, Devon is imprisoned and Cameron is forced into a very bad drug trip as Brian attempts to use Cameron's abilities for his own ends. When this fails, he finally settles on a few last acts of sadomasochistic violence culminating in double-murder. No one in the cast of characters at this moment is able to stop Brian, despite Devon's heroic acts to try and defy the fate they're seemingly destined for.

At this moment, one of the key features of the Echo Project's flagship trilogy manifests; Cameron glimpses a future where he is shot to death before Devon kills Brian, and in witnessing this future, alters it by pushing Brian's gun just before the trigger is pulled. A single act of defiance, in combination with a eucatastrophe, splits the timeline.

It is important to note the second part to the dynamic, the eucatastrophe. The term, first coined by Tolkien, is more than just a moment of deus ex machina that results in a favorable outcome: in his words, "we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater–it may be a far-off gleam of echo of evangelium in the real world." For it was by a confluence of tragedy, indeed the accumulation thereof, that finally caused the cycle to collapse on itself. The cycle of entropy, the snake that devoured its own tail, died as a result. Put in literal terms, Brian's drug abuse and wanton violence had caught up to him in a moment of karma, and he dies not with a bang, but with the whimper of a heart attack. Cameron and Devon did not prompt this series of events, they were merely witness to it, and that becomes the mercy by which they survive: bruised and bloodied, but alive. Whether by stroke of sheer dumb luck or providence, Devon and Cameron are spared the consequences of the cycles of Echo.

The arches that Cam uses to guide Devon, who carries him out of the mine, lead not to heaven (as Cameron's mother believed) but to something more akin to Elysium, at least if you were use ZA/UM's depiction of the word. The salvation that comes to the pair is not a deliverance into a better reality; it is a return to what they had once known and lived in all their lives. In an odd twist, it was not the world that had changed for Cameron and Devon when they had experienced the horrors of Echo, but themselves. The two must learn to adapt to the world all over again.

Cameron and Devon struggle to hold onto whatever remains of their lives. Cameron, though now in much greater command of his psychic powers, is put on a literal mind-numbing number of medications for a plethora of mental disorders that arose as a result of his ordeal. His physical injuries sustained from that time also have forever robbed him of his ability to pursue his passion even as a hobby; he completely loses his ability to play the guitar. Cameron struggles to make things work at his call center, unable to deal with the high stress environment and interpersonal obligations inherent with the role. The price for Cameron's actualization of his one unique trait came at the cost of almost everything else; the passions that offered some shred of happiness, and even his ability to function as an adult in a capitalist economy.

Devon was also not spared his share of scars, both physical and mental, but the greatest change in his life comes in the form of having to accommodate Cameron's exacerbated mental health struggles, though in some key tragic points Devon is also able to empathize with Cameron's struggles, having begun to encounter a number of them himself. Their support for each other is much more closely tied together as a result. It is mutual by both necessity and desire to see the other well, and this steels their resolve through the new troubles they encounter throughout their relationship.

Cameron's relationship with Arturo, however, never recovers. Following his brush with death in Echo, Arturo suffers several motor and speech issues that he, with the support of his girlfriend, slowly begins to adjust to, but with the knowledge of Cameron's psychic powers he is never able to look at his former friend the same way again.

The visual novel ends, as with many of Howly's works, on a bittersweet note. But Arches' bittersweet ending is a resolute one; in it, we see Devon accept the world and the consequences of the choices Cameron and he had made for themselves for what they are: a past set in stone that has irrevocably affected their future. But that future is as of yet uncertain, neither bright nor bleak. For all of the ending's ambiguity regarding the afterlife, the certainty of the ending comes from the lesson's learned and the response of the characters to this uncertainty. They resolve to walk into that uncertain future together as it unfolds for them, to live presently, and to persist through what they have witnessed and suffered through.

The positivity of this ending, as gut-wrenching as it is, becomes even more reinforced as a result of what Cameron glimpses; the alternate timelines he sees with his psychic powers imply a great deal of the possibility of Devon being the carrier for Echo's cycles beyond its former borders of the town. With Cameron dead, Devon's life changes dramatically, becoming defined by his loss and an eerily similar echo of his former boyfriend urging him to seek out other Echos found throughout the world in an effort to prevent their awakening. If there is anything that Echo has taught me, it's that this very act would result in the tragedy it sets out to avoid. It would be a resumption of the cycle, a new circle, perhaps on an even greater scale than before.

Cameron's act of defiance to delay the inevitable, while not the sole act that saved his or Devon's life, yet resulted in an ideal outcome given the alternatives glimpsed at in the epilogue. Again, we see a highly existential sentiment conveyed in the Echo Project's works, but the argument on this theme is the opposite side of the coin from Echo. Persistence in the face of futility is not seen as a horror in Arches, but as markedly human. To be human in Arches is not a horror.

Like a coin, I find it difficult at times to balance, or otherwise reconcile these somewhat contradictory theses that Arches and Echo set out to establish; both make valid points as to the flawed nature of human beings, but the conclusion of that instability falls one way for Echo and another for Arches. There is nothing inherent to Cameron or Devon that would make them any more deserving or equipped to survive through the horrors of Echo intact, save for sheer moments of luck, and successfully managing to climb the rickety ladder of socioeconomic and material conditions that allowed them to retain their grasp on a life spent together. Romance is not the point of either Arches or Echo, but being integral to the human experience it carries significance that has to be factored into any analysis. Again, the line about true love from Disco Elysium surfaces in my mind.

Ultimately, this is what I appreciate most about Howly's writing. It captures the human experience through inhuman characters, through inhuman means. Chronologically, Arches falls at the opposite end of the Echo trilogy, but as final words go it offers a foundation for encouragement and hope, even as it recognizes that foundation to be socioeconomic in nature, and not simply from the will to persist in the face of overwhelming odds. It is a measured hope. It is dialectical materialism made into gutwrenching poetry.

#arches vn #echo project

[whoreviewswho]

A Finely Tuned Response - Frontios, 1984

An analysis of Doctor Who of the early to mid 1980s is, somewhat inevitably, an examination of wasted potential and this is a particularly pertinent point to consider when embarking on a critical look at Frontios. To some extent, Frontios is business as usual for the Peter Davison era. Along with The Awakening, it stands-out for being one of only two stories in the season that is not carrying the weight of an enormous event. It is four episodes long, features a typical Doctor Who monster, slots itself effortlessly into the action-packed militaristic flavour of the Davison era and repurposes the trappings of past base-under-siege serials for good measure. This is probably why it gets such little attention from the fandom on the whole; Frontios is a story conceived to slip under the radar.

But I think that Frontios does anything but be unnoticeable. It is screaming to be noticed because I think that this story, more than any other of the Davison era, is the story of untapped potential. Frontios takes everything that we know about the Davison era, every aspect of it that was working, and offers us a glimpse into an alternate reality where everything else also works just a little bit better still. This is thanks to former script editor Christopher H. Bidmead, one of a handful of writers who could comfortably stake the claim of one of the most underrated in the series' history. Bidmead script edited the show from 1980-1981, the entirety of season eighteen, and is notable for following through with John Nathan-Turner's intention to shift the style of storytelling in Doctor Who away from the high-concept, camp adventure series of the previous regime toward more serious-minded stories that had a basis in real-world science. In Bidmead's own words, "[Doctor Who] exemplified for young viewers the power of scientific thinking to solve problems. Science stretched into fantastic future shapes, yes, but the show had a serious social purpose. It must never be silly, never be mere magic....we tried to build our stories on solid, if fancifully extended, scientific ideas." 

It is worth stating the obvious here; this philosophy returns the show to its 1963 roots of being educational as well as entertaining. The result of Bidmead and JNT's collaboration was a run of seven stories that had an entirely unique flavour for the franchise. Stories that were rich in theme and subtext, revelling in the unknown possibilities of bleeding edge theories. Take Warrior's Gate, for example. Taking place in the theoretical zero point between positive and negative space, that serial watches like a surreal, poetic and atmospheric novel that meditates on I-Ching philosophy, exploring notions of action, free-will and entropy. Warrior's Gate is a dense and thoughtful production whose characters and setting all interlink to form a greater thematic whole. A bit over twelve months later, Doctor Who was broadcasting stories like Earthshock. 

That sounds a little bit more disingenuous than perhaps it should because Earthshock is not a bad story in and of itself but it is a very different story. The tumultuous production of Warrior's Gate and the overall difficulties of Bidmead's position lead to his resignation at the end of season eighteen. The post would eventually be filled by Eric Saward whose conception of what made for a good Doctor Who story wildly contrasted with Bidmead's. Earthshock proved to be the template, the definitive statement for what his ambitions were with Doctor Who; a thrilling, action-packed adventure with a confident blend of character drama and sci-fi serial antics. To use a low-hanging and easy shorthand example, if Bidmead's Doctor Who could be compared to say a Christopher Nolan film then Saward is somewhat of a Zack Snyder.

But this brings us back to the accusation of wasted potential because I would argue that the Fifth Doctor's era is marked by inconsistency more than it is by abject failure. I find it rather interesting that both JNT/Bidmead Who and JNT/Saward Who make a concerted effort to return the programme to something resembling the original conception of the show but in polar opposite ways. In the latter case, it was a more superficial attempt with the turn back toward an ensemble cast and the attempt at tighter stitching from one serial to the next. Most episodes of the Davison era connect in some direct way to the previous one, even if that connection usually little more than a couple of lines at the top of the episode addressing something from the previous one. 

The approach that JNT and Saward were aiming for in these three years together, that of an explosive science-fiction soap-opera, is a perfectly valid take on the programme. It was even an effective one on occasion. The problems with Saward's tenure as script-editor are myriad and deserving of dissecting in a piece more dedicated to him but suffice it to say that what Frontios accomplishes is a case of a serial coming together in spite of its circumstances instead of coming out of them. When Bidmead was invited back as a freelancer for Davison’s third, and final, season, he incidentally offered a tantalising glimpse into the era that might have been if he had stuck around with the show. If nothing else, he reaffirms one thing; wildly creative and conceptual science-fiction stories can work hand-in-hand with serialised, evolving character drama.

In contrast to what one might expect, Frontios can perhaps best be described as Bidmead’s most traditional Doctor Who story. Saward invited him to contribute a pitch for a serial in season twenty-one but on the condition that he was to craft something in the mould of a traditional Doctor-Who-monster-plot. As Bidmead recalled in a 1988 interview for Doctor Who Magazine; "Eric Saward phoned me up and asked me to do ‘Frontios’. They wanted the monster element, which was a struggle because I always hated ‘Doctor Who’ monsters – partly because they tend to look cheap and mainly because they are so limited on dialogue. Dialogue is so important in a low budget show – it creates the whole effect". In so far as being a typical monster story for Doctor Who, the broad strokes of Frontios appear to offer little in the way of innovation. Our trio unexpectedly find themselves among colony of humans in the far future only to quickly discover that an unknown, alien threat is causing colonists to disappear into the planet itself. On one level, perhaps this is disappointing for the staunch season eighteen fans (god forbid those nerds ever out themselves) that Bidmead’s final effort on-screen is such traditional fare but, make no mistake, this is Bidmead all over. Where else would one find a story that revels so much in making the setting a character unto itself, or an active threat in this case. There is an almost primal irrational fear underpinning the horror of Frontios which is that of the Earth dropping from beneath you, consuming you without a trace. It is a great idea and legitimately terrifying at a conceptual level. Frontios is the last hope for humanity, the final place that they can run to and this here is the horror at the end of human existence; what comes for us all when there is nowhere left to run?

Frontios is a story about people being where they shouldn’t which is about as clued-in to the central premise of Doctor Who as one could possibly be; the entire franchise is a story of things being where they shouldn't. I love the Doctor’s initial flat refusal to explore Frontios in any way because “knowledge has its limits”. It is an interesting slice of lore, that never really gets picked up on again, that the Time Lords have a limited scope of the arc of history. Perhaps because pulling on this thread could lend too much credence to the theory that Time Lords are future human beings. After all, is there any particular reason why the Time Lords knowledge has a cut off point that coincides with the near end of humanity? It is an effective shorthand to illustrate the stakes at play here and set the scene for the audience but remains an oddly intriguing nugget of lore too. I would not be surprised if this story directly influenced Russell T Davies when he came to writing Utopia since that story also presents the Doctor as going further than ever before and having the immediate reaction of wanting to leave. In this case, I adore that as soon as the Doctor does land, he immediately launches into helping the humans despite what his rational mind has concluded. It is also a little bit weird that the Doctor’s behaviour ultimately leads to no consequences from the Time Lords. We are told repeatedly that he is forbidden to interfere here and that the time laws do not permit his actions. If Saward were a bit more on his ball, perhaps this could have been the inciting incident that puts the Doctor back on trial two seasons from now as opposed to just…well, nothing really. 

Bidmead does not write small scale stories. Even this one, which is relatively small fry in the narrative of this season, is as high stakes as actually destroying the TARDIS. Bidmead claims to have done this to give the Doctor no form of security, have him just as desperate and endangered as the humans. Everything is against the Doctor here which makes for a nice unintentional parallel to The Caves of Androzani (also penned by a former script editor) where the same can be said but he’s just a lot less lucky. What is frustrating is that the script makes really no attempt to explain exactly why or how the TARDIS is destroyed. The Gravis does not even know it is there. The Doctor does have one line about it toward the climax; "It's, er it's been spatially distributed to optimise the, er, the packing efficiency of, er, the real time envelope" which sounds dreadfully like he is making it up. Is he suggesting that the TARDIS folded in on itself in an effort to protect itself from the meteor strike? Or was the meteor strike actually supposed to have splintered it? Surely not that second thing since Tegan and Turlough found it to be largely closed off just moments after landing, I have no idea what is really going on here and have yet to find a clear answer in the text but it is a lovely way to visually illustrate the consequences of the Doctor going behind where he even feels he is permitted to travel.

If there is anything that significantly hurts Frontios then it is the production. While not necessarily cheap, the horrific cliffhanger to part three is realised about as well as it could be, this story is hampered by shoddy direction from Ron Jones and some generally poor design. A lot of the horror that ought to be here is nearly squandered by the way the thing is assembled and that is truly frustrating. There is some god awful acting attempting to ‘lift’ some rubble in episode one. How that made it to screen I will never know. In concept, the Tractators are a deeply disturbing villainous creature with their inhuman features and mental powers to ensnare any victim they choose no matter how hard they run. Their plot to chop up human beings to ensure their machinery works was so freaky that Steven Moffat likely stole it to be much scarier in 2006. Bidmead based the monsters on woodlice and, while that intention extended into the design, the Tractators are the textbook definition of a lumbering “Doctor Who monster”. Practically every moment of action they have in the entire story falls completely flat and the monsters are not even remotely scary. They just look like crap. Apparently Jones hired dancers as he imagined the Tractators to curl up like woodlice, something that Bidmead intended in the script. Visual effects designer Dave Harvard did not get this memo it seems. There is a distinct lack of menace and thrill displayed onscreen here despite what are, really, a perfectly strong set of scripts to work from. It is a real shame.

Thankfully, the production can deliver on Bidmead's well-developed supporting cast and he provides a compelling far-future colony for the TARDIS team to get entangled up with. Range is a much an endearing scientist figure to pair the Doctor up with as Plantagenet and Brazen make an irritating opposing force. It is a decidedly bleak vision of the future; a fascist, totalitarian state. In her analysis of the serial, Elizabeth Sandifer makes the suggestion that Bidmead’s more cerebral, world-building story is constantly under jeopardy by Eric Saward’s stock-standard military story, invading the scenes as an opposing force that tries to stop the story from happening. Whether Bidmead was deliberately poking at Saward's tendencies as a writer remains to be seen but it is a very fun read regardless. Bidmead has cited the 1982 Lebanon War as an influence on his scripts which, as of time of writing this article in March 2024, is an interesting situation to cite. The Lebanon War took place between June 6 1982 and June 5 1985 between the Israel Defence Forces and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The inspiration from the war can certainly be identified in what Frontios would become though it would be absurd too suggest that the story is analogous for the conflict itself. Certainly, the broad strokes of the situation informed the plot but the most significant contribution was an aesthetic one with the serial's war-torn landscape that is clearly suffering from a near constant bombardment that has slowly increased in frequency and intensity over several decades. Indeed, as Range and the Doctor state;

RANGE: Captain Revere assumed that the barrage was some sort of softening up process. Heralding an invasion, he said. DOCTOR: Hmm, someone else thinks this is their territory.

Revere is half-right. Frontios is an invasion story; the humans are the invaders. This flavour of anti-colonial storytelling is not particularly new ground for Doctor Who to tread and would certainly continue to be well-walked although the allegory becomes a little bit murky in this case with the suggestion that the Tractators are not indigenous to Frontios either. Perhaps the situation of two invading forces staking claim to a land that rightfully belongs to neither was ripped straight from the headlines but the absence of a third party makes it a rather more simplistic and less challenging situation to depict. Again, the influence is purely aesthetic. Cutting edge political satire doesn’t seem to be something Bidmead is particularly interested in anyway, regardless of his effectiveness in writing it.

So, we can conclude that the Tractators are likely not indigenous from pretty early on in the story thanks to Turlough who is awarded one of his strongest roles in any story pos-Enlightenment. Following his failed plot to murder the Doctor, the shifty and morally ambiguous nature of Turlough became an aspect of his character that was largely cast aside. Turlough was introduced as an untrustworthy and selfish survivalist whose past life before exile on Earth were primed to make him a greatly compelling member of the TARDIS team moving forward. However, instead of gradually unravelling this mystery and pushing Turlough’s relationship with his “friends” to their furthest extent, the character spent most of his stories was just separated from the Doctor for about half of the runtime to simply complain and look a bit suss from time to time. A lot of potential character work seemed to be abandoned and relegated to these four scripts and his final story, Planet of Fire. This is yet another example of Saward's limits as a script editor and really the most damning one considering part of this period's mission statement was to be a quasi soap-opera.

After laying eyes on the Tractators, we see a new side to Turlough; pure, genuine fear. Our first glimpses at his origins are finally awarded to us when a race memory is unlocked within him that sees him recoil from the action in a catatonic state. He has a primal reaction to the creatures below the surface. Being the only person with knowledge of the monsters, he gradually pulls himself together and returns to help the Doctor. While not especially interesting an arc in itself, this is a rewarding series of events to put Turlough through if you have been following his story since Mawdryn Undead since it seems that only now he has truly embraced being a force for good with the Doctor and not just a traveller in it only for himself. This is all really solid stuff and Mark Strickson does a decent enough job with it. Turlough lamenting that nobody expects anything heroic of him is a really lovely character moment and this story marks a significant turning point for the character that comes too late. This is the kind of on-going melodrama that should have been present in this era the entire time and this particular development for Turlough needed to happen at, at the latest, the end of the last season. Not two stories before his departure. For his active role as a companion to be claimed eight stories into his run (effectively after twenty-eight episodes on the show) is ludicrous. Even more frustratingly, Turlough takes a backseat again in the next story leaving Planet of Fire to race his character to the finish line and it proves once more that the potential for greatness is all there but this was too little too late.

Tegan is the most sidelined of the three which is irritating not only because this would prove to be her penultimate appearance on the show but also because it officially becomes a pattern of the third story now to give her no kind of active role in narrative. The next serial would do that too though it could be argued by design which is a weak defence in the face of a whole season awarding her next to no material. Given where her character was set to go in Resurrection of the Daleks this and the nature of her departing the TARDIS, this would have been a great time to highlight the brutality of the Doctor’s travels and drop her in the midst of some truly awful acts. Long-form story was really not Eric Saward’s strongest skill. 

And then we have the Doctor. Three stories away from his own dramatic exit and finally he feels like he has fully come into his own. This is perhaps the most frustrating realisation to grapple with in regards to Bidmead’s leaving the show; the man knows how to write the Doctor. His take on the character sees the frustratingly underdeveloped Fifth Doctor in a fully authoritative role; barking out orders and opinions to whoever he pleases and commanding presence as much as he needs to. This is a character I would have loved to see for three seasons and it pains me that he is only really found here and in Androzani. At the heart of Frontios is a very simple story that about leadership in a decidedly anti-militaristic sort of way. The humans are being driven by the military but lacking in unity as their leadership in Brazen and Plantagenet is a self, arrogant and narrow-minded leadership that dismisses their scientists and the Doctor when he arrives. As we learn about the Tractators, their leadership is flawed too as the creatures are revealed to be naturally passive without the command, being enslaved, by the Gravis. So, we have the Doctor who is driven but understanding. He listens to the facts, he makes measured judgements and he considers the breadth of his actions. The Doctor is the shining example of good leadership in this colony. It is a very simple moral but who ever said that simplicity was a bad thing?

Sandifer made the acute observation in her Warrior's Gate article that "The Doctor that Bidmead wants are the Doctors that [David] Whitaker wrote for – the small and seemingly harmless men who skulked and observed and learned to understand the system before making a single decisive move within it. Not the Doctors of the 70s – big, starring leading men who were the centre of attention and whose charisma and likability drove the entire story". Here we have found ourselves with, frankly, the biggest victim of wasted potential in Peter Davison's run which, obviously is Peter Davison. It is well-documented that part of JNT's strategy in casting Davison was to provide a stark contrast to the scene-stealing Tom Baker. The Fifth Doctor was a less commanding and intrusive presence by design which is all well and good if your target is a more Whitaker-style take on the character. The problem is simply that they missed.

To this day, the Fifth Doctor comes under fire for being a bland incarnation but that is only half of the truth. What fans criticise as blandness is what I would sooner articulate as a lack of definition. The Fifth Doctor as a character was primarily defined by the things that he was not in comparison to the previous four actors instead of the things that he actually was. This Doctor was not old, he was not commanding, he was not infallible, he was not funny, he was not flippant, he was not cruel, he was not Tom Baker – he was not a lot of things and the things that he was varied greatly from one story to the next. Perhaps this is a little unfair since there was at least an intention of who the Fifth Doctor was supposed to be, even if it was not fully realised onscreen. It is at this point that I feel compelled to clarify also that Davison was not at all the problem here. He is an excellent actor who had very strong and compelling instincts of how to play the part, some of which he and JNT agreed on. In 1981, Davison conducted an interview with Radio Times where he made an attempt to outline his vision for the role;

"I’ll be a much younger Dr. Who, and I’ll be wearing a kind of Victorian cricketing outfit to accentuate my youth. I’d like my Doctor to be heroic and resourceful. I feel that, over the years, ‘Doctor Who’ has become less vital, no longer struggling for survival, depending on instant, miraculous solutions to problems. The suspense of ‘Now how’s he going to get out of this tight  corner?’ has been missing. I want to restore that. My Doctor will be flawed. He’ll have the best intentions and he will in the end win through, but he will not always act for the best. Sometimes, he’ll even endanger his companions. But I want him to have a sort of reckless innocence."

This is not quite a description of who the Fifth Doctor is not but in terms of being a definitive statement on what he is it is still somewhat lacking. “Heroic and resourceful" are satisfactory descriptors and the suggestion that he has a “reckless innocence” seems to indicate that he is perhaps simply naive. To say that he is flawed is not particularly revealing without actually delving into what the flaws are but this is certainly a start. There is a blueprint here with which to construct a fully-realised character but the one that made it to screen oscillated wildly from seeming compelling to inoffensive to, yes, bland.

Given the revolving door of script-editors during season nineteen's production, it is perhaps not surprising that, despite having some strong stories on the whole, it was not a definitive opening statement for the Fifth Doctor. Castrovalva took the Doctor out of action for most of its runtime and then had him in the post-regenerative non-character state that left him open to hopefully be defined later on down the track. The larger part of season nineteen fails to define him particularly well with Four to Doomsday, Kinda and Black Orchid each shooting for the unassuming observer type but fail to give him any truly distinct character traits nor a particularly engaging role in the narrative. It shows a near complete misunderstanding of the Whitaker-style Doctor depicting him not as a mercurial learner but a passive observer. The Visitation and Time-Flight shift gears from this to am extent presenting something in the mould of Jon Pertwee's Doctor on paper. The former, however, leaves him still largely sidelined by its comedy supporting character and the latter makes the unfortunate misstep of being Time-Flight. 

The Fifth Doctor in season nineteen is a character whose role in the story is dictated by the narrative conventions of Doctor Who. His name is in the title, he is a heroic character therefore he will heroically save the day even if the plot could have happily rolled on much the same without his involvement at all. Black Orchid even takes this to the extreme when it, upon stumbling upon an opportunity for some drama when the Doctor comes under suspicion for murder, he gets away with it by taking the supporting cast into the TARDIS and going "See? I'm Doctor Who so I must be innocent". The only story to offer any glimmer of the characterisation and subversion that was promised is Earthshock but even that immature, emotionally unregulated character would never really come back onscreen.

Season twenty seems to bring little else to the table besides his being generally nice but a bit exasperated at times (and it is worth noting that the subpar quality of the scriptwriting in season twenty is what ensured Davison would not sign on beyond his three year contract). The Fifth Doctor's lack of authority too often came as a failing in the storytelling instead of a failing in the character. Take how he fails to command a scene with the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead or the lack of interest anybody has in him during Warriors of the Deep. Snakedance is really the only serial that took this idea and ran when Christopher Bailey had to the good sense to present a realistic reaction to the Doctor showing up prophesying doom for all and made that escalation most of his role in the story. The problem hit its peak by the time The Five Doctors made it to screen which, of course, made an embarrassing show of what little characterisation the Fifth Doctor was awarded. Standing next to Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee would be difficult for anyone but the Fifth Doctor managed to make it seem impossible.

Part of the problem with the Doctor's lack of definition, of course, stemmed from the approach, or rather the production team's inability to scale the mountain that they had raised for themselves. Having a leading cast as big as four and small as three for all but one of his stories often left the Doctor struggling to command the narrative in any way. It became easy to lean on an archetypical idea of who 'the Doctor' is to make the stories work. This is symptomatic of the broader issue that this production team was not up to the task that they set themselves of introducing a larger cast for a soap-opera style. Darren Mooney, for the m0vie blog, articulated the issue well in his article “Doctor Who?” The Deconstructed Davison Doctor;

"[T]he Fifth Doctor’s era offered a weird funhouse mirror of the [soap-opera] genre. The companions were all given strong archetypal personalities that were designed to play off one another, but without any detail or humanity to round out those archetypes into characterisation. More than that, there was no real sense of progression or character development. None of the companions grew or evolved."

Consequently, this left the most valuable asset for character definition, his relationships to everybody else, severely under-utilised. Again, this was not Eric Saward's strength but, further to that, it was not even his interest. Saward often claimed that the aspect of Doctor Who that compelled him the most were the worlds and characters explored rather than our main ensemble. A perfectly fine stance but not a particularly good focus to take in the most serialised version of the show since it first began.

Something always worth considering when engaging in any form of art criticism is the relationship between artistic intention and audience interpretation. Obviously, the former informs the latter; an artistic work presents evidence and information that is collected and interpreted by the audience. There are a number of ways with which to use this relationship as the basis of a critique. One option is the focus primarily on intention; the artist means for the piece to accomplish X thing and I have assessed the evidence provided to form a conclusion as to why I think it is or is not successful in that endeavour. This option is only viable if that intention has been made clear in some context outside of the actual work itself. Another way to engage is to ignore intention entirely, the death of the author approach; I gathered evidence from the text and interpreted it in this way which I did or did not enjoy for X reasons. Generally speaking, I find that the most insightful and compelling criticism comes from a mixture of both approaches. I find it equally as valuable to glean the context of which the work is made and what the artist is intending to do as I do being able to allow the work to speak to me and take on a life of its own.

In the case of the character of the Doctor between 1982 and 1984, there is a lot to engage with here. As established above, the artistic intention of the Fifth Doctor was deeply confused and underdeveloped. So let us turn to an interpretive reading, the most popular one that has developed among fans over time which is that the story of the Fifth Doctor is tragedy. This reading suggests that this Doctor is a victim of a circumstance, a moral crusader and conventional hero who becomes worn down and killed by the cruel and ruthless universe around him. It is a really compelling take and there is a good amount of evidence to substantiate it. Earthshock is the earliest example where the Doctor’s role in the climax consists primarily of him failing to negotiate with the Cyber-Leader with no option left but to just murder him as he watches his young friend die in an act of heroism he inspired. Then we have Snakedance where his walking into the story doing his typical Doctor thing sees him vilified and antagonised for the larger part of the runtime. Season twenty-one is where the evidence really ramps up. Warriors of the Deep attempts a similar outcome to Earthshock with the Doctor’s lack of authority leading to him enabling a massacre. Frontios sees him literally drawn into a place he shouldn’t be despite his best intentions. Resurrection of the Daleks is such a clusterfuck that it causes Tegan to leave the Doctor altogether and then his simply being on Androzani places him squarely in the middle of events so devastating that everybody there except for Peri winds up dead.

As a reading on his era, this interpretation holds up very well. It is exactly the kind of character development that should have been the crux of Davison's time on the show and is the kind of thing suggested by the publicity and discussions of his character back in 1981. What makes it so frustrating is how much this was not really present in the artistic intent. Yes, the Fifth Doctor was fallible and one of his companions died but this was little more than an aesthetic choice for the larger part of the era. As Sandifer articulated perfectly in her Earthshock analysis;

"What we get [with Adric's death] isn’t drama. It’s the hollow shell of drama – a major character death, a silent credit sequence, a few minutes of horrified and morose main characters at the tail end of this and the start of Time-Flight, and then everybody – the audience included – moves on. It’s not one of the most dramatic sequences of the 1980s. It’s a cheap sham designed to look like drama. It’s a sequence designed to rile up controversy – the exact sort of death scene that would be created by an executive who believes that art should 'soothe, not distract'".

Earthshock was the most important story of the JNT/Saward administration and it makes it also emblematic of a number of things it fails to get right. Adric's death was wasted potential. If the overall arc of the Fifth Doctor's story is a man who has the best intentions but gets beaten down by everything around him, that needs to be in any way at the forefront of his character and his actions in the stories. Eric Saward thought it important to depict violence in a visceral and impactful way which serves the interpretation but was not a calculated move to develop an actual arc.

By the time season twenty-one came around, Davison had hit breaking point with the bland material and an actual character began to emerge. Beginning with this serial, his Doctor finally showed signs of some consistent characterisation. His Doctor had become snarkier and wittier, his occasional emotional outbursts in season nineteen filtering through as a genuine resentment for authority and pig-headedness. As Davison himself stated;

"Frontios was excellent, an extremely well-rounded script that got hold of the way I saw the part of the Doctor, and made his dialogue and actions fit in with this. I enjoyed it because there was really something there to latch onto in rehearsal and make your own. If you like, it had enough there without the actors having to try to embellish a weak storyline." 

Thus, this is why Frontios shines so brightly. With some stronger material to play as well in this story through to his final appearance, Davison gets the best chance of his era to actually act. The Doctor is no longer a passive afterthought in the narrative and the season gains a genuine momentum with escalation from one story to the next until the entire narrative structure of Doctor Who breaks down in The Caves of Androzani. Frontios marks the beginning of the Davison era finally starting to land on what really works. We have a Doctor that is genuinely compelling, a very compelling and unique companion in Turlough and a genuinely interesting story that nails the Eric Saward approach to thrilling, action-packed Doctor Who (if only really in the script than actually on-screen). Frontios is really spearheading this last leg of the Davison era and not by mistake.This is a highpoint of season twenty-one and, indeed, of all ‘80s Who. While this is probably Bidmead's weakest script technically (I'd probably watch this over Castrovalva), it demonstrates that old ideas done well still undeniably make for a story that is done really well but it is no surprise that this solid story is consistently overshadowed by the more obviously ambitious milestones of the Davison era. This is the story the Davison era needed but it is a story that just came too late to save it altogether.

A final word: I had no other place to mention this but the Doctor’s line about being a hat person is a little amusing at this point in his life since he hasn’t been seen wearing one for three stories now – he last donned it in The King’s Demons and won’t again until the story after this

#doctor who #analysis #tv #culture #actors #history #peter davison #vislor turlough #mark strickson #janet fielding #tegan jovanka #1980s #1984 #sci fi and fantasy #scifi #science fiction #fifth doctor #classic doctor who #classic who #dr who #the doctor #turlough

[bimboficationblues]

I think Dungeon Meshi gets kinda wobbly around the last fifth but I'm not sure. Something to chew on (har har)

I dunno, I think the introduction and resolution of the Marcille conflict is a bit too neat - it converges the themes of entropy and desire and the relationship between the two in an interesting way, but ends up resolving it rather limply. plus, the sort of quasi-existentialist "well entropy is what it is!" takeaway, conflicts with the decision to end with every single cast member alive and basically on good terms with each other. relatedly I think the conflictual politics between races gets dangled as a big deal with the introduction of the Canaries, but then kinda gets thrown out as like eh, whatever. the elves aren't really *that* paternalistic. they're just lovable goofballs. odd stuff!

it also just gets a little overgrown with characters, I like Namari but her and Shuro and Kabru and their respective parties don't really have much to do in that last leg, but they take up enough space that feels like it would have been better spent on giving firmer conclusions to the core cast's arcs (Izutsumi and Chilchuck in particular kinda get left out in the cold as far as resolution, not to mention Falin who gets basically a third of the final chapter to really get some closure even though she's the driving force of the whole narrative!)

Kui is clearly tremendously talented not just as an artist and character writer but as a storyteller, the series rightly deserves its praise, but I think the manga is just overbubbling with material and ideas in a way that can be kind of disorienting. I think it's a shame that additional details which flesh out the world and the characters in useful ways ended up exclusively in omake or supplemental materials, too, but that just points to how much thought and effort was put into this story I suppose

#dungeon meshi spoilers

[lushnightjelly]

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#ts4 #sims 4 #the sims 4 #ts4 simblr #sims 4 simblr #degrees of entropy #sims 4 story #ts4 storytelling

[sapphic-lottienat]

what r ur fav buffy eps just curious and full of whimsy...

OKAY IM GONNA GO THROUGH DISNEY+ AND JUST WRITE EVERYTHING THAT CONNECTS WITH ME:

season one: unfortunately none of them contend as my favourite but i still love their nostalgia <3

season 2: halloween (i just find it silly)

season 3: band candy (i love seeing giles in his element), the wish (VAMPIRE WILLOW), doppelgangland (see previous <3)

season 4: fear itself (bc in your words, "thats how u do a halloween ep"), something blue (spuffy's origins !!), hush (tara!!!!!), who are you? (faith in buffy's body does something to me istg), new moon rising (tillow aaahhhh), restless (ITS SO SILLY <33)

season 5: family (tara backstory!!), the body ( :( )

season 6 (controversially my fav season): once more with feeling (one of my top albums on spotify), tabula rasa (it has my whole heart especially the end..), older and far away (i find it silly as well), hell's bells (bc it makes me cry), entropy (soleley for the ending which i wrote a fanfic on hehe), seeing red (bc it makes me cry again :( )

season 7: selfless (for the anya content <3), him (silly), conversations with dead people (very well written esp willow's storyline), storyteller (bc we love andrew), chosen (bc its a very good finale imo)

yayay there u go <33 ill send an ask for u in a minute :)

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer

[bestepisode]

Round 2 has started!

Since this is by far the longest show we've done, this round will be posted over the next 4 days. There are 64 polls total, and I'll be posting 16 polls per day, 2 at a time. Links to each one will be added to this post as they're published. As always, propaganda for your favorite episode is encouraged!

All polls will be tagged "btvs best episode".

Saturday:

The Weight of the World vs. All the Way

Forever vs. After Life

Choices vs. Get It Done

Real Me vs. Dead Things

Band Candy vs. Wild at Heart

Out of Mind, Out of Sight vs. Becoming (Part 2)

Enemies vs. First Date

I Only Have Eyes for You vs. The Harsh Light of Day

Lie to Me vs. Restless

Homecoming vs. Help

Halloween vs. The Yoko Factor

Surprise vs. Two to Go

The Gift vs. Never Leave Me

Faith, Hope & Trick vs. The Prom

Killed by Death vs. The Wish

Revelations vs. Doomed

Sunday:

Innocence vs. A New Man

Never Kill a Boy on the First Date vs. Something Blue

Beauty and the Beasts vs. Lovers Walk

I Was Made to Love You vs. Lessons

Passion vs. Helpless

Consequences vs. Bring on the Night

The Dark Age vs. Hush

Crush vs. Entropy

Prophecy Girl vs. Dirty Girls

The Freshman vs. Fool for Love

The Harvest vs. The Zeppo

Graduation Day (Part 2) vs. Normal Again

Who Are You? vs. Sleeper

Witch vs. Same Time, Same Place

Doppelgangland vs. The Replacement

Anne vs. Amends

Monday:

Becoming (Part 1) vs. Family

Buffy vs. Dracula vs. Selfless

Earshot vs. This Year's Girl

Pangs vs. Into the Woods

Bargaining (Part 2) vs. Older and Far Away

Flooded vs. Lies My Parents Told Me

Hell's Bells vs. Conversations With Dead People

Dead Man's Party vs. Out of My Mind

Bargaining (Part 1) vs. Touched

Welcome to the Hellmouth vs. Smashed

Fear Itself vs. Triangle

Listening to Fear vs. Once More, With Feeling

When She Was Bad vs. Blood Ties

Nightmares vs. Chosen

No Place Like Home vs. Grave

School Hard vs. Potential

Tuesday:

The I in Team vs. The Body

What's My Line (Part 1) vs. Graduation Day (Part 1)

Phases vs. Showtime

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered vs. Beneath You

Intervention vs. Spiral

Primeval vs. Storyteller

The Puppet Show vs. Checkpoint

Gingerbread vs. Living Conditions

Bad Girls vs. Wrecked

Superstar vs. New Moon Rising

Shadow vs. Tough Love

Tabula Rasa vs. Empty Places

What's My Line (Part 2) vs. Villains

The Initiative vs. As You Were

Angel vs. End of Days

Life Serial vs. Gone

#buffy the vampire slayer #btvs #btvs best episode #btvsr2

[corpsepng]

oooh, please tell me about your projects! I'd love to hear about them!

First, I have some novel ideas kicking around still ofc (I am, before anything else, a storyteller) but writing (books at least) is taking a little bit of a backseat bc (for the first time since college!!!) I’m making art again. Like, Art art haha. Goal oriented art lol.

I’m filling a sketchbook with repetition studies, reducing words and symbols to meaninglessness through repetition. The goal is to treat language (written, symbolic and artistic, chromatic, sensory, religious, etc) like clay and create new meanings. In school I was taught that in art, accidents will have meaning because the act of perception generates unique significances, and even what you’re purposeful about can be misunderstood.

The ultimate goal is to explore dualisms like order/entropy and organic growth/decay, memory/absence of memory, inside(r)/outside(r) etc. with ritualizations of unrelated symbols, basically manipulating language(s) to serve the poetry. Trash and viscera and disease and broken things and mold and phenomena of forgetting all feel of the same essence to me and I want to capture that significance of endings and rebirths I see there.

I think I’m finally getting the glue to connect everything that was once disjointed bc I’ve been reading so much. I’m like, gobbling up non fiction books lol. That bucket-filling coupled with my already nonsensical understand of language is making this so fun tbh.

It looks kind of dumb at first bc I’m just drawing/writing the same thing over and over but!!! Anything we make with our hands is ultimately meaningless until we give it meaning. WE are significance machines, WE apply pattern recognition to the indifferent universe and make gods there. The only thing with a known and total, universally encompassing and understood meaning is death (endings, recycling, what must come before beginning, etc).

I’m ITCHING to start on larger pieces but simply do not have the space yet so I’m confined to studies <<33 here are some studies <<33

#mail.txt #<<33 #I feel insane yet inspired lol #I can only hope other people see and understand what I do #and even if they think it’s stupid!!!! I don’t care!!!! it has meaning to me <<33