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steve0discusses · 3 years

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S5 Ep10: Kaiba Embarrasses Himself on International Television Again

We start off this duel by teasing us into believing that this is a part of a theme park:

The Kaiba theme park is a weird mix of actual horrorscapes and animal crossing cutesy stuff...you can really tell what parts were Mokuba and what parts were Seto in this park.

But Leon takes it well, just kinda standing there as he’s done this entire arc--being a general forgettable nice boy who just...doesn’t do anything. Like he gets up, he plays cards, he sits down. Having him on top of a rock with melodramatic Little Mermaid waves crashing at his feet is laughably the opposite of Leon’s whole vibe.

Leon just seems like the type that listens to coffee shop ambient Youtube videos when he wants to amp himself up. This kid appears to attend a private school...somewhere...I think, and just went to a dueling competition in his school outfit because he literally doesn’t have a style of his own hanging in his closet.

Like Yugi wears his school outfit, but he does that ironically, to off-set the amount of makeup and hair spray he has in his hair. Leon wears the school outfit maybe because he admires Yugi so much, but is like “time for my rogue bow I wear in my hair. That’ll scare my competition.” He completely missed the point of the 00′s alt school outfit scene.

I do way too much art to not see the imagery. I feel like this is half my job, and playing “where’s the hidden Freudian meaning?” is half the fun of going to any art museum.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, Seto got tired of no one paying any attention to him, so he stepped out of his 14-monitor mancave, he very quickly pulled his Dragon outfit out of the (dirty) laundry, flicked a couple sea crabs out of his pockets, spritzed it with Febreeze and called it “good enough.”

Like, is it just me, or has dragon jacket greyed out a tad from last season? Like it’s starting to get a little...worn? Like what funk is coming off of Seto Kaiba right now?

Also notice that he brought his giant stash of cards to the duel. He’s going to put on this show as if he’s not going to pull out the giant stash of cards. But like...he’s going to pull out the giant stash of cards. Like Hell boring ass Leon is going to play his deck of Candyland characters again.

Leon is declared a winner on Technicality and it’s like.

Damn Seto, for reals?

So congrats, Leon, you did literally nothing, again, and yet you mystifyingly persist on this show. Clearly you aren‘t going to grow a second head out of that ponytail like professor Quirrel in the last act of this arc.

That’s when Yugi’s hazy memory recalls something from the Before Times of “that time period before I was possessed by a needy ghost that eats up 3/4 of my memories and time.”

So Schroeder is Atari. Neat.

Also, this makes Zigfrieds outfits a hell ton more endearing when you realize he’s this Willy Wonka game company owner making toys for children. Kinda makes you wonder why Seto’s such a stick up the ass in comparison when it’s like--dude Kaiba, maybe you could learn a thing or two about whimsy. It could really help out your inconsistent park.

Anyway, Kaiba quickly realized who hacked the park and so, understandably, he asked Zigried to leave, which...backfired?

Y’all card culture is a lot. Everyone in the audience covered their faces in shame because they were so embarrassed by Seto Kaiba and I’m like...not sure why? Because he didn’t do a duel? Against this guy who snuck into his tourney not unlike Rex and Weevil? This asshole?

Recall that the last time Seto played a guy who had a fake name it was Marik freakin Ishtar and he killed a LOT of people (actually, it was Alister, pretending to be Pegasus, but he also killed a lot of people so that still tracks). Card culture can’t seem to learn from their mistakes, although Seto clearly sees the problem with dueling a professional hacker in a digital card game on a hologram that may or may not be able to murder you. At least its not a magic.

And so, tired of being humiliated on television, Seto decides to bust out the dueling gloves (well, not those gloves. You know what I meant) and use the equipment he BROUGHT WITH HIM and clearly never intended not to use in the first place.

(I hope you enjoy this dutch angle that wasn’t quite dutch enough, so it just looks like they’re lounging)

Roland patiently walks over from...somewhere? I don’t know where Roland comes from whenever he pops up, but he waltzed over to hold onto this suitcase as if that’s a formal part of his job.

I say this so often but like...I don’t know what Roland’s job is. He’s like a valet/butler/duel referee/duel cheerleader/CEO/and I will spend the rest of this series trying to understand it. Part of me is like...could Roland be a temp worker at an agency who just gets rehired for a different Kaiba Corp job every couple of weeks?

That weird ass fourthKaiba, I will never understand Roland.

Just one letter away from being a Zigfriend, Kaiba. Just one letter away. I know this because I misspell friend a LOT.

Zigfreind? Zigfriend? Damn it, both of them look the freakin same to me, this sucks! Why can’t I spell friend without autocorrect!?

Just the amount these two fight when Seto clearly barely even remembers who this guy even is.

Leon shows up in the seats, pretending that he’s totally cool about winning on a technicality right after Zigfried went on a rant about how shameful, irredeemable, and mortally embarrassing winning on technicalities are.

He seems to take it pretty well, smiling, sitting next to Rebecca, and then dissolving right into the background because this kid’s whole deal is being way too nice to exist on this show.

Y’all we just had that art meme where people were redrawing that “How to draw manga face” and guys...that’s what our anime used to look like.

I mean look at that uncomfortable chin there, that tapers in for some reason. Those eyes melting off of her face. The lack of any 3d sense. This was an anime ideal for a very, very long time.

Anyway, the “how to draw manga face” is a perfect masterpiece and never needs to change. (But it is fun to make fun of it although I guess the person that drew it was actually a kid, which makes sense from a publishing perspective to have a kid make a book about how to draw stuff for kids.)

We see a little flashback of Schroeder and why he hates Seto Kaiba, and can I just say, I kind of love this little outfit. Kind of a shame that it’s stuffed into a flashback.

Which is when we found out that Zigfried thinks Seto Kaiba did a plagiarism.

Which is hilarious because it was Gozaburo Kaiba who was plagiarizing Seto, so like...who did it first?

OK guys. Lets talk about this.

APPARENTLY, there was some sort of contest to work with Pegasus...kind of like an architecture contest (which is a thing, when a city is doing a big project, they send out a call, and big firms will compete to see who builds it) and I GOTTA know what Pegasus’ theme was.

Like did he say to all the little rich kid geniuses “I would like something that makes my cards ALIVE, can you do that?” Then when Pegasus got a hell ton of holograms and was he like “But ALIVE--it makes it alive, right boy?” And when he was shaking the hands of each stupid kid was he like “So if I hypothetically put my dead wife on a card and slapped it into the machine--could she EXIST. Like...enough? I just need her to legally exist is all, and not like..literally of course...but enough literally to be a sin against God, can you do that?”

I just want to know if Willy Wonka Wonderkid Von Schroeder had any idea he was creating a resurrection chamber for a dark wizard. Like he has no idea that he dodged getting his business bought straight from under him and his soul shoved into a card. And it’s not like Schroeder was going to abduct Yugi’s Grandpa and ensure that Yugi would be there to save him down the road. Like I’m pretty sure Schroeder would have been sacrificed waaay before that whole island contest even went down.

Zigfried got so freakin lucky. I can’t believe he’s mad. But then again...

...the man swims in milk pools so like...maybe his logic center is busted? Maybe he wanted to die in a horrific murder island? I don't know what Zigfried is into, but I do know that because Zigfried doesn’t have millennium rod powers linking him to the millennium eye--so would it have mattered? There’s destiny reasons that Pegasus chose Kaiba.

Course...we never found out where the scales ended up, have we? We think it’s Shadi, but have we seen Shadi bust those out since Season Zero?

Man that would be a good plot twist that will absolutely not happen.

Yo, make horse guy into a dark wizard, show, I dare you!

Anyway, that’s all for now, but if you want to read from the beginning, here’s the link:

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#ygo #yugioh #yu gi oh #S5 #Ep10 #Seto Kaiba #Yugi muto #Duke Devlin #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #Mokuba Kaiba #zigfried von schroeder #leon

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apricops · 4 years

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@discoursedrome said: you gotta liveblog about this, it's from before the bingewatching era so I'm very curious to hear you speedrun the entire narrative arc of the series

Unfortunately I have already made it to season 4, specifically we just watched the episode Something Blue. I’ll do a mental dump of things thus far, spoiler warnings for basically the first half of the show. Feel free to ask me my thoughts on anything not covered below.

Season 4 specifically:

There’s something very Bugs Bunny-ish about Spike. It’s like, y’know how some demons are like “I exude an aura that saps the energy from people around me or makes everyone near me run in terror”? It’s like Spike has an aura where if you’re near him you now have to play along with the joke, whatever that joke may be. I hated him when he was introduced but I also see in retrospect how his initial success was key to making him the bumbling comic villain, by having him actually fall from power.

Starting with season 4, you can tell the costume designers were happy that they didn’t have to pretend like Alyson Hannigan was frumpy and unattractive. I honestly didn’t recognize her for a second because she was just dressed like a normal person instead of bright pink overalls or whatever.

Before we watched Pangs, Aria said “this episode might be a little uncomfortable” and I was assuming it was because there was going to be graphic footage of eyeballs getting split open or something, but no, it was just a very bungling and ham-handed attempt to go “so, Native Americans, right?” where the only onscreen Native Americans are bloodthirsty spirits.

Very glad that Angel is gone-ish. Even knowing nothing about Buffy beforehand, the first time he came back felt so obviously “whoops, fans love him so let’s bring him back” and he generally didn’t do much after that besides breathe heavily and tell people they don’t understand.

Funny thing about TV depictions of college #1: the professors teaching entry-level classes are always hard-asses when from my experience and the experiences of everyone I’d talk to, you’d have to literally walk into class snorting meth before the professor would gently ask you to put the pipe away.

Funny thing about TV depictions of college #2: the writers clearly only having an entry-level understanding of any given topic. The show will be like “omg she’s revolutionizing the field of psychology, she’s the best psychology-knower on the planet” and then they’ll show her class and she’s like “so, fucken... basic Freudian bullshit, am I right?”

Riley when geared up looks so much like a live-action version of Leon Kennedy.

The very obvious gap in the opening credits where Cordelia was supposed to be. Where it’s like “Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar! Alyson Hannigan! ................ Nicholas Brendon!”

More general thoughts:

This is gonna sound very @kontextmaschine esque but wow does this show reflect that sort of... repressed nerdboy sexuality where it’s all like “ha ha what if this demon lady had contrived plot-related reasons to tempt you with her demon boobs” and “what if there were strong/threatening female villains who sexually assaulted you (but joke’s on them, we’re just indulging our submissive fantasies).” There’s something... a bit tacky about it.

Unfortunately it also works on me sometimes because evil Willow did things to me.

I can definitely tell how it would be so different waiting week after week to see the various twists and turns, and how Buffy changed the game.

Very variable quality of fight scenes. In season 4 specifically it seems like they discovered wires and there’s a lot of times where the character vaults up really high and spins around and then delivers a very flaccid kick. With seasons 1 and 2 it felt like Buffy just did the same three kicks from different angles. The fight in the mayor’s office was my favorite thus far because it had the whole usage of props and the environment and wasn’t just two people throwing each other into the wall.

Speaking of which, and I know it’s one of those “it has to be that way for TV” things but it’s just funny how everyone’s skill and ability varies wildly depending on the demands of the plot. When Buffy’s fighting some unimportant villain of the week she can hit a fly from 30 paces but when she’s fighting a recurring villain she’s all “ohh no I am unable to defeat this person who is right in front of me, just talking,” like fuckin just throw a stake at him!

Late 90s CGI, oof.

Late 90s slang, oof.

Speaking of the mayor, he’s been the best villain thus far, though from what I’ve heard that’s not exactly a hot take.

The unfortunate implications of how every character who’s not straight and white is either clearly evil or dead by the end of the season.

Having autism makes watching TV weird. I mention this because of a conversation I had with my gf that went roughly like this:

gf: “Wait, do you not get how Anya’s supposed to be like, violating social norms all the time and that’s why people don’t like her?”

me: “What do you mean?”

gf: “Like right there, she didn’t knock before entering. That’s why Giles was all “vOv?” with her.”

me: “But it”s a TV show. It’s a Joss Whedon show. It’s like how nobody ever says “goodbye” during a phone call, you’re not expected to, you just enter the frame and say your one-liner. Half the time they’re being quippy while classmates around them are actively dying.”

So I guess I don’t recognize the line between “this social norm is violated because it’s more convenient for TV” and “this social norm is violated because the character violates social norms.”

Anyway, it’s a good fun show, which feels like a thing you aren’t supposed to admit to on social media.

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defeatedbyamerechild · 4 years

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I’ve started watching a swsh gameplay today. (Spoiler alert)

So, as most of you must know, I haven’t got money for a switch and, therefore, won’t be able to play swsh anytime soon. So instead, me and my siblings are watching a full game walkthrough! I’m gonna talk a bit about my first impressions! ^^

OK, so. First thing. I LOVE the looks of the game. I’ve been told by many people that the game looked weird and ugly and that the graphics were bad, but really... To me, that’s nonsense. I think so far everything looks very pretty and the ambiance is just lovely! I love the Pokémon walking around in overworld and I love the scenaries, the houses (inside and outside), everything looks so cute and pretty! I also loved the lakes and rivers! It’s really very pretty!

Secondly, I’m absolutely amazed at how much easier most things were made in this game in terms of practicality. Everything you need is handed to you very early in game, you can find several items on the floor and you start off with plenty of money, being able to buy more advanced items such as revives right from the start! I love this!

The box link mechanic, OH. MY. ARCEUS. What an amazing thing, to be able to access your box anytime like that! This is something I’ve been asking from Pokémon since forever and I’m very glad it’s a thing now. Also, I love that you can choose whether you want to switch your newly caught Pokémon for one in your party instead of sending it to your box (although my sister said it had already been done like this in Sun and Moon).

I LOVE that you can just select your Pokéballs quickly with one button in the middle of a battle instead of having to open your bag and look for it and everything, it’s a small difference, but it’s cool. I also like how you can interact with every Pokémon in the grass and even go for the one you want. I think maybe this had already been introduced in Let’s Go, but I don’t know because I haven’t played it or watched any game play of it.

Rotoms. Rotoms everywhere!!! How lovely! If there’s one thing I can’t get over, it’s Rotom’s cry. I love its little voice and I love its littel face!!! So seeing all those Rotom Phones and the Rotomi, and your Rotom Phone showing up every time you complete a Pokédex entry... YES! Lovely! A+++!!! Cyrus approves! I love it! ^^

About the characters:

I’m very surprised about Hop! I didn’t expect him to be that energetic. He is very similar to Barry, which is nice, since Barry is one of my favorite kids from Pokémon!

About Leon. OH. MY. ARCEUS. I LOVE HIM. He is so dumb! He is so stupid! I love that guy! He is so nice and pure too, and he is so ridiculous with that embarrassing pose he does with his Charizard... But it’s in such a pure and lovely way, I really like him. I like that he’s dumb and has no sense of direction and has such a pure and lovely heart. I mean, the guy doesn’t even know you but gives you a Pokémon anyway because you’re friends with his bro, how sweet is that? I love him, really.

About Magnolia. What a lovely lady! She’s so sweet! I just think they could have used her a bit more in the beginning of the game. Still, I haven’t seen much yet, so I don’t know what they’ll do with her in the future. So far, I really like her. I thought she’d be more grumpy, but she seems very lovely.

About Sonia. She’s so cute! I haven’t got much of her personality so far, though. She seems really nice and I like how her relationship with her grandma has been portrayed so far. Then again, I have seen just the very beginning of the game, so I can’t judge it yet.

About Chairman Rose: All I’ve seen from him so far was his introduction to the Pokémon World, in which he was acting just like a host in a big event, so I can’t say anything about him yet. I’d say he wasn’t being exactly himself in that situation, so I’ll have to wait for the next time I see him.

Random characters: Old man I’m presumin is Leon and Hop’s grandad sitting in his house - A++. Seriously, I love that there’s just that old guy sitting casually in there, just because he’s part of the family and old people exist. So nice. I loved it! Sceince Fat Man: Rally happy to know the Science Fat Man is still a tradition! Loved him! Random trainers: The lass is basically Serena haha but that’s fine, and the youngster look very cute too.

About the story so far, I didn’t like much how the wishing stars were introduced. They LITERALLY fell from the sky, so conveniently... It’s way too much of a Deus Ex Machina to me and I didn’t like it. But that was just a small detail. I love how you are neighbor with the Champion and how close to you he is from the beginning, it makes all the League thing less intimidating, but they still manage to make it look like something very serious in the context of the game. I haven’t seen anything from the plot yet, there hasn’t been any conflicts or anything, so I can’t judge it yet. But I really liked the Legendary Pokémon encounter in the woods and how the game lets you just try to straight up kick Zacian in the face as if it wasn’t a god or anything. I like it. You fail miserably, of course, but it’s cool.

About Dynamax mechanic: As I expected would happen, I hated it. It’s literally the only thing so far that I really disliked. I think the whole mechanic is pretty much pointless and it looks just very weird and out of place in the game... I mean, the sixe of the dynamax Pokémon is absolutely unnecessary and the way the whole environment around the battle changes is just terrifying and depressing to me. At one moment you’re in a nice and beautiful park and then, suddely, everything is dark magenta and black, with a KingKong-sized Minchino crushing the bones of three tiny Pokémon, while your Starter grows to the size of Godzilla and growls loudly with a weirdly low voice before trying to beat the heck out of that giant monster, most probably causing massive destruction to everything around them... I don’t know. It’s just plain weird. It looks weird, it feels weird, and it’s not necessary. I didn’t like it at all. And everything is so over. The attack animations are so explosive and bright and long, there’s really no need to all that in my opinion... So to me, yeah.... Dynamax is a big nope.

My last comment is about the camera and the rendering. It’s a little bit weird how some things just pop into and out of existance depending on how close you are to them, but I wouldn’t call it a downside. It just looks a bit sudden sometimes. I guess it might have been done in a less weird way, maybe if there was a kind of fade in or something... But I’m not sure, it might look even worse. So yeah, it looks a bit odd, but I totally get that they can’t just render all the objects in the distance, it would be unnecessary. The camera sometimes goes to some weird angles and the character sometimes disappears if the camera gets to close to them. (Happened once in the gameplay so far). I would have rathered if they would change the cam position instead of making it enter the playable character’s head making the whole character pop out of existance. But this is just a very subtle and unnimportant detail. I’d say the camera is still better than Pokémon X/Y’s cam, so yeah, that’s great. I love that we can see everything a bit closer, because in Oras the camera is always very far from your character (like in most Pokémon games).

To wrap it up, I’m enjoying this game a lot and I really wish I could actually play it! I’m quickly falling in love with Galar, and I love the map, it looks so cute! I’d give this game... 7.8 out of 10, too much water. (lol so funny right? fresh memes guys). But seriously, so far this is 9/10 to me. I’m excited about watching the rest of the gameplay! ♥

Oh, one last thing. I can’t stand Scorbunny’s idle animation. That guy just doesn’t stop jumping!!!! AAAAGH. (joking, it’s fine, but it’s a bit annoying sometimes).

#pokémon swsh #swsh spoilers #pokémon spoilers #pkmn #pkmn swsh #pkmn spoilers #spoilers #sword and shield spoilers #pokemon sword and shield #my opinion

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bananonymity · 5 years

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Based on this au

“So,” said Ludwig, “you’d like to drop Music Theory.”

Student Advisor Ludwig Beilschmidt’s office was orderly, clean, and devoid of distraction. It was a wonder how it hadn’t driven anyone mad yet. Emil found it calming to a point; it made him somewhat nostalgic for his comfort zone of Icelandic minimalism, except for the lack of spacious windows.

Emil nodded.

“Not your liking?” said Ludwig.

“It wasn’t bad,” Emil said. He had no real complaint against the course. The first day of class, Professor Edelstein spent the entire hour and fifteen minutes teaching the students how to find the cheapest textbooks on Amazon. “But I already know music theory.”

“So you’d like to challenge yourself,” Ludwig said.

“I guess,” Emil said.

Ludwig nodded with approval, missing or ignoring the glum note to Emil’s tone. The real reason that he wanted to drop out was in fact the very opposite; the moment he stepped into the music building, he felt such oppressive intimidation that he actually texted his older brother for comfort, which went something like this:

LUKAS: How are you liking your classes?

EMIL: [thumbs down emoji]

It was a risky move, because goodness knew if this amount of unprecedented emotional vulnerability would worry Lukas. Emil regretted the raw honesty immediately afterward, but by then it was too late.

“That’s one of the great things about university,” said Ludwig. “It gives you avenues to study subjects you wouldn’t have thought of before. Now, dropping this course would mean you need to take up another course to fulfill the minimum amount of credits to be a full time student in this semester. Have you thought of what you would like to add?”

“Not exactly,” Emil said, staring at the corner of Ludwig’s screen where about seven new email notifications from frantic students at the edge of add-drop period scrambled to change their majors.

“Well, I can tell you that you still have some gen eds that you would have to fulfill,” said Ludwig. “One social studies and one art course. That would be good to take care of while you are still a first year.”

“Mm,” Emil said.

“And if you’re up for a challenge, or have interest in specific topics, there are certainly some classes in the one thousand level that have extra space.”

“Mm.”

“Or since you’re already quite ahead in your credits, you can explore a topic for your own enrichment.”

“Mm.”

Ludwig gave Emil a look of pleading exasperation. Emil fixed his gaze stubbornly on the window.

“What is your preference?” Ludwig said.

Emil pursed his lips. He knew that it was harder on Ludwig than on him to deal with his unhelpful indecision, but it did not give him any clearer opinion on what he ought to do. Maybe he should have bitten the bullet and stayed in Professor Roderich’s class. Maybe he should have thought of this before the semester started. Maybe he should have never applied to a university so far from home. Maybe he should have never graduated high school, in general.

“I guess finish my gen ed courses,” Emil said.

Ludwig nodded with enthusiasm for the both of them.

“So, an art course and a social studies course,” said Ludwig. “We have several art courses that are available for you here. Let’s see…”

Ludwig pulled up all the available courses for the semester that would fulfill an art credit. The array of choices made Emil’s eyes blur.

“How about Intro to Film?” said Ludwig. “That would cover your art credit, and also give you an extra English credit if you’re looking into pursuing a certificate.”

“A certificate?” Emil said. “What for?”

“Certification for Digital Media, if that interests you,” Ludwig said.

Emil sputtered.

“I don’t even know what my major is!” he said. “What’s a certificate going to do for me?”

“You don’t have to take it for a certificate,” Ludwig said quickly as Emil buried his face in his hands. “I just meant that it was a nice way to kill two birds with one stone if--”

“But I don’t want to kill birds,” Emil said. “I don’t even know what birds to kill. What kind of person am I if I went around killing random birds just because society tells me that’s how to get a job?”

He slumped back into his seat, letting out a huff of distress. He supposed that he needn’t yell about it, but he had to affirm himself that he made a solid point. Ludwig, in the meantime, only rubbed his brow wearily.

“No certification then,” said Ludwig. “But if we just look at art credits, would that interest you?”

“What is the class like?” Emil said.

“Well...”

“Class, I want you to write this down. Soviet cinema banks on violently killing off every character that has a face on screen. You can quote me on that, I have a doctorate.”

Leon Wang, Emil’s roommate, scribbled this down on his notebook, if only because he knew it would make a solid tweet later on. Professor Alfred F. Jones paced about the front of the room, whizzing through his PowerPoint presentation faster than any of the students could actually take notes.

“Battleship Potemkin? Dead,” said Alfred. “Strike? Dead. A five-second example of the Kuleshov effect? Dead baby. Basically, if you want to make a Soviet montage, kill a bunch of farmers from different camera angles.”

“Professor Jones?” One student raised their hand in the back.

“Call me Alfred,” Alfred said, flashing a dazzling grin. “What’s up?”

“Can you go back to the last slide with all the notes?” they said.

“Fine, but you all gotta catch up faster than that,” Alfred said.

He backspaced on the PowerPoint, skipping through the past fifteen or so slides that he had flew through in half a minute until he reached the slide of haphazard bullet points.

“So, to recap,” said Alfred. “Soviet montage wasn’t necessarily trying to break the rules of cinema. Leave that to the French in the sixties, God help them. But Eisenstein and Kuleshov in particular wanted to use editing differently, to create a synergetic meaning through editing shots together that, by itself, wouldn’t communicate that. Sort of like how on Instagram, you can either build a collage or just have multiple photos in a post, and the effect of it is different depending on how you arrange it, right?”

“What?” said Leon.

“So there you go,” Alfred said. Leon sighed and wrote Instagram = Soviet montage (?) in his notebooks, and hoped that Alfred upload the slides onto Blackboard later today.

“But here’s the wild thing,” said Alfred. “Soviet montage outlived the USSR. Stalin is dead! But even in the play-it-safe boon of Hollywood, we still use those seemingly weird and non-linear montage editing for our movies. Take Arrival. Has anyone here not seen Arrival?”

Several hands went up in the air. Alfred threw a dry erase board marker on the floor.

“Too bad! Spoilers alert,” he said. “The reason why you go into the movie thinking that it is being told in a linear manner, and that Amy Adams’ daughter dies in the beginning of the story, is through the Kuleshov effect. You see her in the beginning of the movie watching her daughter die, and then the scene cuts to her going to work. And you--the audience, you think she looks so sad and distant and uninterested in the news about these octopus aliens because of the recent death of her daughter. But actually you only think that because the two scenes are put back to back. Her face was really just neutral, but because of editing you think they are related, when it is actually a flash forward--or flashback. Dead baby!”

Leon nodded fervently, writing with a little more vigor in his notebook. Maybe Alfred actually did know what he was talking about. He made sense, which was more than he could ask for in a college course. This course made him feel excitable, to relish the honor and merit of his favorite medium, handing back to it the dignity it deserved.

“Or like in this one episode of Lizzie McGuire,” said Alfred.

Leon blanked immediately.

“There is this one scene I remember,” Alfred said, his eyes widening with nostalgia. “I don’t remember the characters’ names at all, or the plot, or if this was even an episode of Lizzie McGuire, but I’m kind of certain that it was on the TV when I was about ten years old. Anyway, there was a scene where this boy, no idea who he was, maybe he was like, Hilary Duff’s little brother or something? Anyway, he had a dirty nose and his mom was like, you got a dirty nose and when and licked a napkin or something to clean it off, and then it would suddenly cut to an unrelated, non-narrative shot of a lion licking her cub’s face, and then cut back to the mom wiping the dirt off her kid’s face. The lion has nothing to do with the story, but it was edited in there to make a more symbolic comparison, to emphasize the overbearing nature of the mother. Disney Channel was flexing its Soviet montage, baby!”

Alfred sped through several tens other PowerPoint slides that looked like they held vital information. Leon leaned over to the student sitting next to him.

“What the hell is Lizzie McGuire?” he whispered.

“All right, fifteen minute break commences now,” Alfred said, closing his laptop while students desperately scribbled the last of the bullet points with their aching hands. “Second half of class, we’ll get right into the film. Unfortunately, if you graduate from this school with a film degree and not know what the Odessa steps are, you aren’t going to make it out alive in Hollywood or wherever the hell you guys want to go. So we’re going to have to watch some Eisenstein. I’m so sorry, everyone.”

While other students went to use the restroom, or checked their text messages on their phones, Leon flipped through the syllabus for this course once more. He was hopeful that they would watch a John Woo film in this course, which did not seem like a far cry from what Alfred would assign. Apparently, one of their midterms would include writing a paper applying an advanced film theory to Die Hard.

“Come on, kids!” Alfred said. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to stretch your legs. This is a four-hour course, you’ve got all the time to sit around. Don’t you know that sitting is the new smoking?”

He promptly took a bite from a box of Chick-Fil-A strips waiting for him on the podium.

(tbc?)

#hetalia #hetalia au #university au #aph america #aph germany #aph iceland #aph hong kong

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nightingveilxo · 7 years

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The Film “Stay” and How it Brings Things in Sherlock Together

Right after TFP aired, I did this short meta about how the deaths and accidents in Sherrinford looked staged, and by that I mean they had too little blood, angles were wrong, etc. I was annoyed, because I started off the episode aware that Eurus’s eyes were the wrong color; not the contact lens issue, I mean the little actress playing Eurus had brown eyes while adult Eurus was revealed to have blue, which didn’t make sense. Unless something else was wrong, like little Eurus suddenly appearing in 221B, and the trio suddenly appearing on the beach (as mentioned in TLD), outside the old Holmes residence.

In March, I was working on meta about repeating events, and how to work through things or stage them to look a certain way. It narrowed down to the editing, lighting, and directing choices--throwing in many film, tv, and lit references, in order to create possibly two seasons of content. I say possibly, because I watched S4, hoping it would explain things that still made no sense in S3 (wrong dates, Sherlock taking over the blog, and repeating things off the blog). It just got stranger in S4, and I still don’t know if we’re going to end up back in the aftermath of TRF or HLV. I will say though, that if you follow the plot, flickering lights, disappearing people and objects, staging, camera, and directing choices in Stay, S4 of Sherlock will make a lot more sense. I didn’t know that many people when I did my original meta, and wasn’t aware people hadn’t seen Stay. I was glad it seemed to help a few people.

The image at the top if from the film Stay. It says Forgive Me over and over again, because Henry (Sherlock) not THoB Henry Knight, but that works too, because he also lost his parents in a traumatic event, writes it about his guilt over those deaths. Henry Knight was also a Sherlock mirror, and it’s possible that it was his parents that died in a traumatic way (based on evidence in TEH that I’ve already covered), causing the rift between Sherlock and Mycroft (or possibly their father having an affair). Henry’s been suicidal for quite some time, and the whole of Stay revolves around his traumatized brain trying to make sense of things in his last minutes alive. Compare that with the note John receives, because some of us contemplated that it was actually meant to represent the note Sherlock didn’t leave in TRF. “Ordinary” is also what John says about Sherlock’s parents in TEH, and it’s the word Mary uses about having a life with John.

Note the line from Stay about suicide. Naomi Watts’ character is speaking to Sam (John), a plaid-and jumper wearing, bicycle-riding therapist who was standing in for Henry’s regular therapist or so it appears. She’s tried suicide before, and she’s quoting Henry’s favorite artist, who also took his own life. It’s important to note that Lila tells Sam (John) he can’t understand being in the kind of pain that she knew, and that Henry seems to be experiencing. It’s the same sort of idea that many of us have had about how John treats Sherlock in S3 and 4, without having been in his shoes. Lila does mention how there is too much beauty in the world to end things, though...

Compare this with Sherlock in TLD, speaking from his own experience with taking his life in TRF.

(Part of this is a direct quote from ACD canon The Veiled Lodger--)

Sherlock: Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it, do you hear me?

Sherlock: “Taking your own life.” Interesting expression. Taking it from who? Oh, once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. (Resting one hand on the railing, he looks westwards along the river towards the London Aquarium. In a brief cut-away, a pistol fires towards the camera, then there’s a brief shot of the exterior of the Aquarium as the gunshot echoes and then smoke rises from the end of the pistol. Sherlock now has both hands on the railing as he continues to gaze along the river.) Sherlock: Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. (Faith has looked in the direction he’s looking but now turns to face him again. He lowers his head, his back to her.) Sherlock: Your life is not your own. (His voice becomes strained.) Keep your hands off it. (As he looks down, it’s as if he and the railing are suspended in mid-air with no ground or river below them. His feet are not touching anything.) ( x )

This is important, because all the events that actually happened in Stay, take place on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Henry is in hell. Sherlock: I’m burning up. (See more below). Mary: Sherlock, go to hell. Mycroft: I can give you a map reference for hell. ER number 999 becomes 666.

We also have The Burning Child (a story told by Freud, who was brought up in TAB and all of S4), which is told by Henry’s father. It’s repeated, just like The Merchant story is in S4 of Sherlock. In Henry’s case, the father is manifesting as blind, because he possibly never took notice of his son or his art. Remember the idea that was going around for awhile that John had been shot in the eye, and was blind? It’s also why I sometimes refer to people (esp Mary in S4) as manifestations, thoughtforms or compilations of various people.

It goes with this, where characters Athena and Lila are morphing, because Henry’s mind is becoming more and more unstable.

This is what Athena actually looks like, and she’s practicing Hamlet (Henry Letham anagram--we know Mycroft loves those), a play about contemplating death.

Here’s our Athena/Anthea, who is associated with marriage.

This is in Magnussen’s MP (which also looks like Mycroft’s theatre).

The number 21 comes up four times in this film, because that’s how old Henry was going to be when he committed suicide, but he fell in love with Athena. In one instance, it looks like 2121. 221B anyone?

The original meta I did associated with Stay. The rest of these images will make more sense if you view it, but I didn’t want to make this meta too long.

Henry in Sam’s office. Yes, the couch and bookshelf look like Sherlock’s chair.

The glass sphere theme, like the one Arwel bought for S4.

Twins and triplets everywhere.

Leon, Henry’s dad, and Sam playing chess. Sam also has giant chess pieces on his office desk.

Henry’s mother and Mary in T6T. Henry’s mom and Henry both have this bleeding head issue, because Henry hit his head during the car wreck. The injury is very much like the one when Sherlock goes off the roof in TRF, which is another reason why I can’t definitively say that things started getting weird in HLV.

The aquarium (although that is also from The Lady of Shanghai, as are the multiple mirror reflections in HLV)

Stairs like in Magnussen’s place.

Olive, Henry’s dog who was put down years ago, just like Redbeard was.

Empty fridge, like Mycroft’s.

MRI scans in a not-quite medical facility, similar to in Sherrinford.

When Henry visits a strip club, these scenes begin to show up on the screen behind the dancer, although the burning effect that happens when Mycroft watches his film is also referencing the film “Sinister”.

I’m going to end this here, because you really should watch Stay for yourselves. This link will bring you to it on YouTube. I’m working on two other meta for Naomi Watts films that factor into Sherlock, but you should also read

@may-shepard The Ring meta, because it’s amazing, and a second one by

@swimmingfeelsinajohnlockianpool that filled in some more information. I’ll be interested to see if we end up with a seven days scenario, since weeks = years.