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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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YYH Recaps: Episode 4 “Requirements for Lovers”

Hello, everyone! It's been quite a while, huh? Ah, the endless cycle of wanting to write and yet, astoundingly, not writing. I know it well.

Good ol' writer's block has skedaddled for a time though, so let's make good use of that and dive into Episode Four: "Requirements for Lovers."

Ohhh, YYH getting spicy with its titles 😏

Actually wait, I shouldn't be making dumb jokes just yet. First I want to acknowledge a slight change to future recaps: YYH, RWBY, and anything else I might try my hand at. Namely, a lack of pictures moving forward. A few weeks ago — months? I honestly can't keep track — tumblr implemented a new limitation where no post can have more than ten images in it. It's a move that, while I'm sure has its justifications, makes sharing analyses of visually-based media all the more difficult. I'll be doing my best moving forward to describe scenes as needed, as well as combining connected images together to stretch out my limit, but I'm not going to pretend that it'll be the same as getting the visual play-by-play we’re used to.

Tumblr certainly is a website, huh?

Anyway, we open on Yusuke once again lamenting the difficulty of hatching a spirit beast that doesn't immediately devour him from the head down. On the one hand this is an admittedly easy way to reset the story over the course of this arc — the storytelling equivalent of waking your character up each morning — yet I cannot deny that if I were undergoing a resurrection test, it would consume my every thought too. Can't really blame Yusuke for endlessly bringing the conflict up when the conflict is this deadly.

Well, deadly for a ghost, anyway.

Specifically, he's worried about how embarrassing it would be to get eaten by something that came out of an egg this tiny. I'm torn between reminding a fictional character that things grow — a pissed off chicken could kick my ass and it started out in an egg too — and just shaking my head over the absurdity of worrying about embarrassment when, you know, you would cease to exist. It's not even a matter of, "What if I die and then I'm embarrassed about it in the afterlife :( " Yusuke is already IN the afterlife. He's got nowhere to go but oblivion!

Luckily, Botan takes a more practical approach to these worries, pointing out that he'll be just fine provided he does some good deeds. Yusuke starts a rant about how do-gooders are only ever out for themselves.

Yusuke, you dumb-dumb, you're a do-gooder now. What was all that help for Kuwabara, hmm? As said, these early episodes exist in a semi-reset loop, where Yusuke needs to stew in his main character flaws for a while before any real growth starts to stick. Those flaws being, primarily, "I'm a pessimist" and "also I hate myself."

Case in point, Botan accuses him of always seeing the glass as half empty. Which, while true enough (outside of his confidence in fighting, anyway), by now we've got a pretty good sense of where Yusuke developed this attitude. He affirms this by talking about how Koenma's got him by the balls, "just another idiot abusing his power!" With an alcoholic mother and those teachers from last episode, it's no wonder Yusuke thinks this way. Mr. Takenaka's interest and Keiko's care aren't enough to combat the rest of Yusuke's experience, not when Takenaka is an outlier and Keiko is Yusuke's peer. Her desire to keep him on the right track reads only as an inevitability at best (the downside of having a perfect childhood friend), or a legitimate annoyance at worst. Or, as we'll continue to see in this episode, a way for them to flirt.

Is it any wonder Yusuke would sneer at Koenma's offer then, expecting the worst? The fact that Yusuke is still undergoing the challenge at all, no matter what he says, speaks volumes to me.

However, Botan is less than comfortable with his criticisms. She panics a bit at Yusuke insulting the (junior) ruler of the underworld so blithely. That, and the fact that he's carelessly tossing his egg around.

(Yes we’re using precious picture space for memes are you SURPRISED?)

Anyway, Botan isn't just concerned for the sake of concern. She cautions Yusuke against speaking too freely because there may be investigators checking in on his progress. No sooner does he ask what those investigators look like than one appears.

Thunder! Lighting! An energy so intense that Yusuke is briefly blinded! It is, as he says, quite the entrance. What kind of being could possibly be at the heart of such an astounding show?

Why, this teeny-tiny cutie, of course.

Remember, few appearances in YYH coincide with the character's true self. Would you ever assume this is the all-powerful investigator who holds Yusuke's future in her hands? Of course not. That's the point.

The investigator introduces herself as Sayaka and immediately demonstrates that she has no more patience for Yusuke's attitude than Botan does. "These damn kids," he mutters and my brain briefly blue screens because Yusuke. You're fourteen.

Plus, Sayaka and Botan clearly have some sort of eternal youth situation going on, so there's that too.

Sayaka is, in a word, fantastic. She pulls no punches with Yusuke, teleporting away from him with what can only be described as a shit-eating smile, all while refusing to tell him what exactly she's investigating. “I’m sorry, but that’s a secret!” However, Keiko is clearly at the forefront of her interest. She refers to her as Yusuke's "girlfriend."

Botan is more than happy to point Keiko out — because of course they're still following her around! — and pulls a Et tu, Brute? on Yususke, leading Sayaka right to her. Like most of the Underworld, Sayaka is rather shocked that the pretty, popular, scholarly girl is supposedly into the delinquent. It's the power of childhood friendship, you fools! Specifically, Sayaka references the "positive markings" that Keiko has accumulated, but the audience already knows by now that such markings are suspect at best. Yusuke himself is proof of that. So if his terrible marks don't preclude him from being a young kid's savior, should we really view Keiko's as proof of superiority?

I mean, Keiko is fantastic, but that's not really the point here.

Starting her own investigation into Yusuke's life, Sayaka begins with one hell of a bombshell: "There's no point in doing [the resurrection] if the people closest to you don't care." WOW. Not only is that a harsh assessment, it's one I don't think I can personally get behind. The offer to restore Yusuke to life is built on the acknowledgment that their system is flawed (even if there's no work to change or dismantle that system): they thought he was worthless, his sacrificial death seems to have proven them wrong, and now they want further evidence, in the form of this trial, that Yusuke is a good person at heart. The whole point of this challenge is to give him a second chance, with testimonies like Mr. Takenaka's emphasizing that Yusuke has always been capable of more, so long as he applies himself. This, as we'll see throughout the series, applies to relationships too. The Yusuke with one friend he play-fights with, a distant mother, and a school worth of kids who are terrified of his very name is not the future Yusuke they expect him to become, so... why base his resurrection on what he's already (not) accomplished? Granted, the show is very unclear about what, if anything, Sayaka will do if she decides that Yusuke doesn't have a life worth going back to (even if I have my own theory discussed at the end), but the fact that this is suddenly a factor at all seems grossly unfair, not entirely unlike Kuwabara's rigged promise. We as the audience know that people love Yusuke. Yusuke himself is beginning to acknowledge that. But if this fourteen year old delinquent truly had no one that wanted him back from the dead... isn't that all the more reason to allow a resurrection and give him the chance to build a life where he would be missed?

This stupid shonen got me thinking too much istg.

Yusuke, ever the self-deprecating pessimist, bypasses all of the above thoughts and jumps straight to, "It's clear if [Keiko] had any sense she'd want me gone." I'd find that attitude incredibly sad if I wasn't distracted by how cute Botan and Sayaka are, sitting on the oar together. The spirit girls who fly together, thrive together!

Botan starts teasing Yusuke about having a crush, which just feeds his temper and Sayaka's confusion. Deciding that she needs to gather more info, they follow along for an average day of school because these earlier episodes are, apparently, ghost-stalk Keiko hours.

We see her reading aloud in class from Heart of Darkness (not the easiest book for some middle schoolers), scoring a point during volleyball practice, refusing to let one girl cheat off her homework, but happily helping another who runs up with a question. So she's pretty, athletic, and academically successful, the trifecta for any good love interest. Sayaka is impressed not just with her "nearly perfect" scores, but also the maturity that Keiko demonstrates, such as maintaining her morals about cheating while remaining compassionate.

Actually, I really love the contrast this provides for us, the viewer. Meaning, Keiko is shown to be at her least mature when in Yusuke's presence. Not that her responses aren't justified, but watching her dramatically snatch gum from his mouth, slap him across the face, or pull crazed expressions as she yells at him is a far cry from this calm, poised, soft-spoken Keiko. It's a way to visually show us that she's comfortable in his presence, despite the suspect humor attached. Not that the Keiko we see at school is faking or anything — she is legitimately that kind and articulate — but we see that being with Yusuke allows her to relax in a way she doesn't with others. School!Keiko is, as Sayaka says, pretty much perfect, 24/7. Yusuke's Keiko is a little rougher around the edges, in a way that implies a multifaceted personality shining through.

However, the only conclusion our trio draws is that, given Keiko's accomplishments, any attraction must be one-sided.

Poor Yusuke lol.

In a plot move that is so ridiculously contrived, just as Yusuke is grappling with the accusation that Keiko couldn't possibly like him back, a "handsome boy" arrives to ask Keiko out. He says that he couldn't bear it when she stopped reading Heart of Darkness because he's fallen in love with her voice. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

Please excuse me while I lose my shit over how ridiculous this is. I legitimately straight up cackled when I watched this scene.

Luckily for Mr. Absurd, Keiko takes him seriously — and lets him down easy. She says she can't be his girlfriend and when he presses the "Why?", asking if she already likes someone else, Keiko confirms that she does. This is done through a shot of her feet. Not a POV shot given the angle, but close enough that it feels like we're stepping into Keiko's shoes (haha), shyly staring down at the floor in embarrassment and regret.

Rejection complete? The guy screams.

I mean he screams.

I mean this nobody we're never gonna see again unhinges his jaw and lets out an unholy shriek the likes of which makes me shriek in utter GLEE.

It's insane. It's wonderful. I'm going to use one of my coveted image spots to show you his face:

Look at that and tell me this show isn't amazing.

Okay, I'm focusing again. As Keiko runs off Botan and Sayaka start dragging Yusuke, teasing him about how Keiko chose him over that "charming handsome boy."

...Please scroll up and look at that image again. I find YYH's definition of "charming" and "handsome" to be hilariously wrong.

Yusuke, as per usual, throws himself into damage control, claiming that Keiko didn't say who she liked, so really it could be anyone. They're not buying it. “'I like Keiko' is written all over your face!” Botan crows. Meanwhile, Sayaka is scribbling in her little investigator's journal that feelings on both side are severely misunderstood. "Suggest serious counseling."

Fantastic idea, Sayaka. I'd personally suggest counseling for the whole dying/best friend getting resurrected thing... but relationship woes work too!

We cut to later when school is out and Keiko has gone over to Yusuke's. To say that Atsuko has done a poor job of keeping the house clean lately would be a serious understatement.

Keiko points out the old food and broken glass specifically, cluing us in that this isn't just a messy environment, but a dangerous one as well. This is proven when she accidentally knocks a stack of books over and a used bowl falls onto Yusuke's face. What's interesting is that Keiko says that things are "back to normal" now, though I'm not sure if that's in reference to the state of the house, or just the note Atsuko left behind, asking Keiko to take care of Yusuke while she's out. I'm inclined towards thinking it's just the note, partly because of Keiko's shock when she first arrives, because the house wasn't shown to be in this state prior to Yusuke's death (first image above), and because the note is accompanied by a great voiceover that makes Atsuko sound quite sloshed when she left. That's what's normal, the drinking and carefree attitude, not the state of her home. If we buy that reading, it allows for another fantastic look into Atsuko's mental state. If she's already an alcoholic, the trauma of her son's death and the following revelation that he's coming back might make her struggle in other ways. Like finding cleaning to be an impossible task.

She's depressed. It doesn't excuse the state she's left Yusuke in and, as previously acknowledged, YYH is definitely not a show interested in this nuance, but I still find it fun to take what little we've gotten and run with it.

However, Keiko is firmly on team "WTF Atsuko." She hurries to make sure Yusuke wasn't hurt by the falling bowl, bemoans him being "covered in garbage," and says that leaving him in this state should be considered a felony. Knowing it's far beyond her power to fix Atsuko's failings, Keiko swears to come here after school every day until Yusuke regains his body. It's as she's cleaning him of the dust that's gathered that Keiko becomes entranced with Yusuke’s features. Particularly his lips. The soft lighting returns, their theme song swells, and Keiko gets thiiiis close to kissing Yusuke for the first time.

Which is a little weird, right? I mean, we know why Yusuke is freaking out. Beyond the embarrassment of a middle schooler receiving his first kiss while two ghost girls eagerly watch on, he's made a hobby of denouncing his interest in Keiko to anyone who will listen. But for the average viewer — for Keiko herself — don't we care the he's, you know, dead? Or if not technically dead, very unconscious? Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the appeal of this situation in a generalized, cultural sense (with the side disclaimer that I'm reading a Japanese product through an American lens). Sleeping Beauty exists for a reason and there's definitely an element of that here: a gender-reversed setup where Keiko’s kills may break the "curse" of Yusuke's untimely death. Even his in-between state of being mirrors the "death like sleep" of the fairy tale. But when you strip away those Disney-esque thoughts, we're left with a girl about to kiss an unresponsive body, not as a common gesture of care (the parent who kisses their child while they sleep), but as a first time, romantic milestone.

It's a little weird lol.

But embrace the romance! As well as its inevitable interruption. Just as Keiko is about to land a peck, the neighborhood watch committee announces a heat and fire warning, startling Keiko out of her thoughts about Yusuke's "beautiful face." (There's another gender reversal for ya.) She gasps at her almost-action, conveniently remembers that her mom wanted her to do some shopping, and hightails it out of there before embarrassment can really kill them both.

So she runs off for food... in a sweater? The outfit is cute and all, but I wonder what the animators were thinking, putting Keiko in a puffy pullover during an episode all about a heat wave.

It's about at this point that the plot goes from cute romance to absolutely buck wild. The fires the neighborhood watch committee mentioned are not, in fact, due to the overwhelming heat, but an arsonist that's going around tossing molotov cocktails through open windows. Why is he doing such a thing? I don't know. Arsonists be doing arson, I guess. The important bit is that Yusuke's place is his next target, considering that Atsuko forgot to lock the windows when she went out. Within seconds all that garbage is set ablaze, quite obviously putting Yusuke's resurrection chances at an all time low.

"Wake up, stupid!" he shouts at his unconscious body. Mood, Yusuke. That's me every morning.

So this is a full scale emergency now and everyone is scrambling trying to think of something to do. Yusuke comes up with the idea to possess himself like he did Kuwabara — nice attempt at a loophole there — but since it would technically count as his resurrection, no dice. Botan decides to go get Kuwabara himself, even though he's too far away to do anything. It's still worth a shot. Sayaka, meanwhile, watches all this unfold with a somewhat clinical detachment. She's not quite indifferent and she's definitely not cruel... she’s just not as emotionally invested in this as the other two. Which not only re-emphasizes her purpose here, as an observer judging Yusuke, but also highlights the bond Botan is forming with him. As mentioned before in regards to her hanging out with Yusuke rather than ferrying souls, Botan is well past someone assisting Yusuke simply because it's a part of her job. He's her friend.

We get some shots of the growing fire which includes a hazy texture to the animation I quite like and then we cut to Keiko several blocks away, shopping bag in hand. Word of the new fire spreads, with one bystander mentioning that it's the twelfth today.

"This is eerie.”

“Yeah, I can’t help feeling we’re under attack.”

That's because you are! Someone stop that man!

Sadly, I don't think the arsonist is mentioned again, let alone captured. We'll just have to relegate that to my incredibly niche fic wishlist.

Keiko also overhears that the latest fire is on fourth avenue, which of course is where Yusuke lives. Recognizing that he might be in trouble, she takes off at a run.

Meanwhile, Botan finds Kuwabara practicing his kicks against a Yusuke dummy. Amazing resemblance, right?

Watching for the purpose of recapping, I'm picking up on a lot of details in the animation I quite enjoy. I don't think anyone would claim that YYH, at this point in time, has the most impressive or flashy animation (the fight scenes later are another matter entirely), but there's a clear love for the product that shines through. The scared expression on Kuwabara's dummy. His unexpectedly dainty kick, complete with pointed toes. Botan's more translucent coloring to emphasize her supernatural status compared to Kuwabara. There are a lot of nice touches despite the overall simplicity.

Plus, you can't forget the lovely irony of Kuwabara fighting a defenseless "Yusuke" while the real guy actually lies defenseless amidst a fire. We already know that despite his tough talk, Kuwabara would be horrified to learn that his friend rival had died (again) in such a manner.

Capitalizing on that transparency, Botan runs a hand through Kuwabara's back to catch his attention. He gets his "tickle feeling" and instinctively looks around towards Yusuke's house, seeing the smoke. "Something tells me I should go that way." Gotta love a guy who drops everything to chase a vague, supernaturally induced hunch.

As Kuwabara leaves we cut back to Keiko arriving at the house, staring in horror at the blaze. We get an audio flashback to her talk with Yusuke where she promised to take care of his body until he got back. So she tries to run in, only for a couple of the onlookers to snag her, quite correctly keeping her from undergoing a suicide mission. We learn later that Keiko absolutely would have died without Yusuke's sacrifice, so her "You cowards!" is born more of emotion than justified accusations. It's not cowardly to look at the raging inferno in a small apartment and realize that recklessly running in will only result in two dead teens, not one.

I mean, the flames are already right there, licking the door. Even if Keiko somehow managed to avoid burns, the smoke alone would do her in. Still, Keiko tries to mitigate the damage by dumping a bucket of water over her head. As a kid I remember thinking this was the smartest thing ever. Utterly inspired. Keep that in the back of your mind, kid Clyde, for future reference. As an adult... I have no idea whether this would actually help or not lol. Any firefighters doubling as YYH fans?

Recklessness and iffy precautions aside, I can't express how much I appreciate the story giving Keiko things to do. Yusuke recognizes that she's the only one with the maturity and open-mindedness to believe in his resurrection. She's the one picking up Atsuko's slack regarding his day-to-day needs. She never hesitates for a moment, heroically throwing herself into this blaze for Yusuke's benefit. Yeah, a lot of that still falls into the emotional/domestic sphere — what we expect of the love interest in a 90s anime — but too often action stories don't have a clue what to do with their non-action characters, not even when it comes to just supporting the fighters. They're simply... there. Keiko, however, isn't window dressing. Whether it's helping Botan survive an upcoming, supernatural plague, or cheering the team on at the Dark Tournament, Keiko is an important part of the story, despite lacking the fighting prowess of the rest of the cast.

Just as important, this episode establishes a core equality between her and Yusuke. We just watched Keiko reject a (presumably) accomplished guy for him, telling the audience that these surface differences — academics, power levels, popularity, looks — don't matter to them. Yusuke is not Keiko's lesser just because he doesn't have the same scores in Sayaka's book and Keiko won't become Yusuke's lesser just because she doesn't have spiritual power like he does. The only important thing here is that they love each other and they're both willing to sacrifice everything for the other. In the span of about ten minutes, Keiko nearly gives up her life for Yusuke and, in turn, Yusuke gives up his resurrection for her. The level of care they show towards one another is balanced, despite those differences.

They’re a good ship, y'all. Even if this recapping's got me noticing Yusuke/Kuwabara potential lol.

To get back to the plot, a drenched Keiko charges into the fire, yelling Yusuke's name for the drama of it because we all know he can't respond. Despite the audience (hopefully) recognizing Keiko and Yusuke's equality, that memo hasn't reached Yusuke yet. "You're a lot more important to this world than I am!" he yells, hammering home that despite everything — knowing he instinctively saved a child, watching his loved ones grieve for him, helping Kuwabara just because he can — Yusuke still, deep down, believes that he doesn't deserve to come back; that he doesn't measure up to those around him. The self-sacrificial nature this insecurity produces shocks Sayaka. She points out that if Keiko doesn't save his body, he's not coming back. "What's the point of being alive if Keiko has to get killed for it?"

Keiko means more to Yusuke than the rest of his living existence. Jot that down in your notebook, Sayaka!

Kuwabara arrives and runs into one of his friends who informs him that Keiko just went inside. “Yusuke’s girl? The one we saved from those thugs?”

BOY does that tell us a lot about their rivalry! I mean yeah, we've already established several times over that Kuwabara — just like Yusuke himself — is not the cruel street thug he'd like to present himself as. If these characters actually wanted to hurt each other outside of a martial arts challenge, don't you think Kuwabara would capitalize on the "Yusuke's girl" bit? Everyone seems to know that they have feelings for each other, but Kuwabara never once wields that as ammunition against Yusuke. There are no taunts about him not being good enough. Or rather, I should clarify there are no serious taunts — Kuwabara is well known for his teasing. There's also no attempt to steal Keiko out from under him, the common treatment of the love interest as a "prize" that many stories fall into. Indeed, later this episode YYH will deconstruct this a bit. Yusuke sees Kuwabara grab Keiko's hand and yells that he better not be getting "fresh" with her. But it's purely Yusuke's worries shining through. The audience gets a crystal clear picture of the situation and knows, categorically, that Kuwabara has only the most innocent of intentions in holding Keiko's hand.

(Well, running from the police isn't innocent, but...)

I keep getting sidetracked. Plot! Keiko makes it to Yusuke's room and finds that he is already on fire. She then proceeds to try and put it out by patting it with her hands. I take back what I said about Keiko's smarts in this scene. Now we know where that supposed recklessness comes from though. Apparently they're both immune to fire! Nothing to worry about here, folks.

JK she's actually in danger, despite the animation choices. By this point everyone, including Keiko, realizes that there's no way out: the fire has blocked the door. Sayaka then reveals that there is one way to save her. If Yusuke throws his egg into the fire, the energy of the spirit beast will release and guide her to safety. The catch? Hatch the egg early and it won't complete its intended function of guiding him back to his body. This beast is gonna guide one person and that is it.

Cue Yusuke's near immediate decision to sacrifice his life for Keiko's. Granted, it's not precisely one life for another. Yusuke's resurrection was always contingent upon the beast not devouring him whole — something Koenma claims would have happened at the end of the episode — meaning that it's not technically a fair trade. Yusuke might have sacrificed Keiko's life for his own... only to fail to get that life back anyway. (There's a tragedy for ya.) To say nothing of how Yusuke is currently dead and has been for at least a couple of days, whereas Keiko very much is not. There's some sort of philosophical discussion there about potential being pit against current reality.

BUT that's not the point! The emotional point is that he sacrificed his life for hers — the potential of his resurrection, the potential of that life he might have led — all technicalities aside. And I, for one, think that's very neat of him.

A blue light shines as the egg's energy is released, providing a lovely contrast to the fire surrounding them. A path forms to the door and Keiko, recognizing Yusuke's presence, follows it. "We'll make it, Yusuke," Keiko says, which is one hell of a sucker-punch now that we know she's just carrying a corpse. Unbeknownst to Keiko, Yusuke is very much not making it. That's the only reason why she is.

Kuwabara appears to help them the rest of the way which is also a pretty awesome thing considering that, from everyone else's perspective, the fire is still raging and blocking the door. Despite his spiritual awareness, Kuwabara gives no indication that he noticed this strange light, or Yusuke's hand in the rescue. Which basically means he lunged into a bunch of deadly fire for Keiko and doesn't question how in the world he isn't burned.

Keiko's hands are fine, Kuwabara's whole body is fine... fire immunity must run in the friend group!

Yusuke has another rare moment of vulnerability — "They're both okay" — and I cackle happily at the "both" because see. You love Kuwabara too, Yusuke! All this bluster about hating him and finding him annoying. The second he rushed into that fire you were crawling up the walls.

Except then that happiness gives way to something that sounds a little more shocked. Devastated. "Well, I sure am... relieved..." Kudos to Cook's voice acting. You can hear the exact moment Yusuke realizes what he's done. Not that he regrets it, but the consequences are finally sinking in. He's relieved that they're safe, yes, but now he's never going to be able to rejoin them.

As Yusuke has an(other) existential crisis, Kuwabara peels back the blanket Keiko had wrapped Yusuke in, revealing his face. “What are you doing with Yusuke’s body?! Are you some type of sick grave robber?” he shouts. God I love when a story actually keeps track of who knows what. Kuwabara, for all his recent involvement in the plot, doesn't actually know what's going on. From his perspective Yusuke died, he made a scene at the wake, he saved "his girl" from a bunch of thugs, lost a huge chunk of time only to wake up with her randomly hugging him (then slapping him), participated in a bet with his awful teacher and had a couple weird, Yusuke related dreams while studying, and has felt the presence of ghosts perhaps a little more frequently than usual. Now he's trying to help save Keiko from a fire only for her to reveal she risked her own life for Yusuke's body. Of course he's freaking out! What's she doing with that?

What's utterly fantastic though is that Kuwabara takes all of five seconds to process this and then enters immediate Ride or Die mode for Keiko. She's been hoarding Yusuke's body for undetermined reasons? Well, who is he to judge? The important thing here is that people are arrested for keeping bodies, so they've gotta skedaddle before the firefighters show up.

Hence, hand-holding and avoiding arrest.

As Yusuke starts threatening Kuwabara not to get "fresh" with her, Botan sadly reminds him that he no longer has a say in who Keiko does or does not fall in love with. The switch in tone is jarring. Whereas before Botan would have teased him mercilessly for the crush, now she knows that nothing can come of that — and it would be cruel not to remind Yusuke of that too.

"Oh no. I didn't think..." Yusuke whispers, further establishing that he knew the risks of using his egg, but hadn't allowed them to sink in yet. Now they have.

He gives a fake little laugh with, "Just when it was getting good" and I cry at the development in the span of just four episodes. Despite what I said at the beginning about the show resetting each week, there has been a lot of change thus far. Yusuke wants to live now! He wants to be there for Keiko! He looks down on his tiny family and screams at the unfairness of it all! They're talking about how they can't wait for him to come back and now that's never gonna happen!!

It hurts, friends. It hurts a whole lot.

During this conversation between Keiko, Atsuko, and Kuwabara, we see that a couple of hours have passed (it's nighttime now, the fire is out) and Atsuko is apologizing for putting them all in danger like that. And by that I mean yes, she does technically apologize with an "I'm sorry" and everything, but it's also a one sentence apology pit against... well, near death for the three people standing (and sitting) before her. Atsuko seems just as concerned by Keiko losing her hair as she does Keiko nearly burning to death and she kneels by Yusuke's wheelchair, baby-talking to him about how he forgives her, right? I love Atsuko, she's great, but objectively speaking she is not a good mother. Not right now, anyway.

Oh yeah, and just to reiterate that: Keiko's hands are fine after patting down Yusuke's on-fire body, but her hair, which I'm pretty sure never catches, has to be cut short. Ah, anime logic. Funny thing is, YYH isn't the only story to take the love interest and give her a cool, short cut thanks to a traumatic event. Anyone read Ranma 1/2?

During this conversation we also learn that, sometime between the fire and now, Keiko filled Kuwabara in on everything that's happening with Yusuke. Makes sense. He kneels beside the wheelchair, joining the others in telling Yusuke that they'll wait patiently for his return. Yusuke, above them, continues yelling about how they're waiting on a dead man.

“It can’t be helped. He made this decision on his own."

Except it can, in fact, be helped!

Just as all hope is truly lost, Koenma appears and announces that Yusuke will be returned to life. Why? Because sacrificing his egg for Keiko is a better indicator of his worth than the egg itself could have been. Despite feeding on his negative outlook and heading towards biting Yusuke's head off — something the animation backs up by showing us teeth during the fire

— Yusuke's act demonstrates a tendency towards being a "decent human being" that is "so rare." Wow. That's depressing. Still, yay that Yusuke has those qualities! And this, to my mind, helps explain Sayaka's presence. Koenma recognized that judging Yusuke couldn't be left to the egg alone and indeed, Sayaka took note of his worth before he ever threw the egg into the fire. First it was questioning why someone as amazing as Keiko would go for him, then it was solidified through the shock of Yusuke announcing that coming back to life was meaningless if she wasn't in it. Even if Keiko had somehow, miraculously escaped the fire before Yusuke's sacrifice, I bet Sayaka's report would have tipped him in resurrection's favor anyway.

Everyone is, of course, overjoyed and my heart swells at the intense gratitude Yusuke displays. My favorite part though is when Koenma cryptically says that “Your added experience with death could make you very useful" (a nod towards future events that goes right over Yusuke's head) and his response to this is a yelled, "YOU THINK I'M USEFUL?" This poor kid. The God of everything ever is chucking out revelations left and right, about resurrections and spirit beasts, but the only thing that really penetrates is the realization that someone thinks he's useful. Talk about relatable.

You know, I've been thinking about why this moment works so well. I mean, there are a lot of other stories where undermining the consequences our hero faces — either with humor, or by erasing them completely — can feel like the audience was cheated. I think YYH dodged that with a couple of crucial factors. First, Yusuke's consequence isn't something new that he's now avoided, it's just a permanent extension of something he was already dealing with. We did get to watch him inhabit the space between life and death, grappling with whether he'd ever be able to return. The story didn't deny us that growth, it just confirmed something we all instinctively knew: this tale won't end here with Yusuke permanently going to some afterlife. Second, the Deus ex Machina fix doesn't happen too soon. Yeah, it's only a couple of minutes in a single episode, but we (and Yusuke) still get to sit with that outcome for a while, soaking it in before its removal. Finally, there's no doubt that Yusuke earned this reprieve. Koenma's timing might be sudden and (if you're not genre savvy) unexpected, but looking back at the series as a whole thus far, we're able to agree absolutely that Yusuke deserves this. Far from feeling like we were cheated, this solution invites just as much celebration as we're seeing on screen, for the simple reason that we can buy into Koenma's reasoning. We know now that Yusuke is a good person. We saw him selflessly sacrifice his future for Keiko. We agree that he deserves a second chance.

Thus, the episode ends with Yusuke flying up to fill the screen in his joy, a far better, final shot than Harry Potter and The Prison of Azkaban managed 😰

And that's it for Episode 4, folks! See you later for Episode 5 💕

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH Recaps #mymetas

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keepyourpantsongohan · 4 years

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Hinduism in Naruto: A Study

The world of Naruto is influenced by a number of different cultures, but the references I was most familiar with were those which related to Hinduism. So here is a breakdown of some of those connections, focusing on Otsutsuki clan.

Ashura and Indra Otsutsuki

The words “As(h)ura” and “Indra” appear both in the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, and in Sanskrit epics of Ancient India depicting Hindu mythology, the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

There are a number of ways to interpret Indra’s role in the Hindu pantheon, but I think it’s easiest to start with Indra in the Rig Veda (earliest of the Vedas). Indra can be understood as a deity who is “King of the Gods” in that text. An early description of Indra’s status: “Mighty is Indra, yea supreme; greatness be his, the Thunderer: Wide as the heaven extends his power.” (Rig Veda 1.8.5)

Trying to explain the meaning of Ashura in Hinduism is more complex; it is not a single deity but a descriptor. In Rig Veda, the word appears numerous times. In the earlier Books, or Mandalas, the connotations of Ashura are that of a powerful being/“god”/“lord.” By the later Books as well in other texts like the Mahabharata, the meaning has transformed to something closer to “demon.”

Looking at Books 1-3 for the Rig Veda*, you can see the more positive connotation for Ashura, meaning “god/lord” associated with Savitr and Agni respectively (which I will touch more upon later).

May he, gold-handed Asura, kind leader, come hither to us with his help and favour. (Rig Veda 1.35.10)

and

Giving delight each day he closeth not his eye, since from the Asura's body he was brought to life. (Rig Veda 3.29.14)

In any case, you can say this of Ashura in the Rig Veda: Indra is placed in a position signifying greatest strength, and Ashura’s position is either that of simply a benevolent lord/god, or later, something much lower status, as a mortal or demon, and aggressor to the gods. This power dynamic is maintained in Naruto, as stated in Chapter 670, when Ashura Otsutsuki is described as a “dunce” compared to the “exceptional” Indra Otsutsuki.

Embodying the conflict between Heavenly People (like Indra) and less divine enemies is this line in Book 10:

This prelude of my speech I now will utter, whereby we Gods may quell our Asura foemen. (Rig Veda 10.53.4)

Indeed, in Chapter 670, Indra Otsutsuki, god-like in power, does attempt to “quell his [Ashura] foeman.”

Notably, As(h)ura has its own distinct meanings in Islam (“tenth”) and Buddhism (“titan”/“demigod”), and Indra similarly has a place in Buddhist cosmology, with their own associated roles in each. However, in Buddhism, these references are often derived from the Vedic origins of its spiritual practice, so the Vedas and Sanskrit epics are still an excellent place to begin examining symbolism.

Indra and the Uchiha Clan

In Naruto, Indra is the progenitor of the Uchiha clan, having the Sharingan, an ocular jutsu, and passing it on to his descendants (Naruto Chapter 681). Indra is described in the Rig Veda as follows:

“The singers' for their aid, invoke Indra and Vāyu, swift as mind, The thousand-eyed, the Lords of thought.” (Rig Veda 1.23.3)

The name Indra alludes to several common elements between the Rig Veda and the Uchiha clan as depicted in Naruto: eyesight, might, and dominion over battle. For a more specific reference to Naruto, you can look to Chapter 670, when Hagoromo explains the differences between his sons.

Parallels with Indra in the Rig Veda and the Uchiha clan can be found even earlier than the above chapters. Looking to the subject of the power found in emotions:

“The choirs have stablished Indra King for ever, for victory, him whose anger is resistless: And, for the Bays' Lord, strengthened those he loveth.” (Rig Veda 7.31.12)

These lines in Book 7 describing Indra strongly parallel Tobirama’s description of the Uchiha in Chapter 619 of Naruto, a person being strengthened by love by and overpowered by the force of their own emotion (the Curse of Hatred).

Indra and Sasuke

In Naruto, Sasuke is Indra’s reincarnate (seen below in Naruto Chapter 671). As an Uchiha, both the Sharingan and Curse of Hatred parallels apply to him. But he’s got his own unique connections to Indra in the Rig Veda as well.

In the Naruto anime, Indra is seen using lightning release (Naruto Shippuden Episode 465), which is one of Sasuke’s two chakra natures**, and the one he uses most often.

While it’s likely that the animation studio wished to make Indra and Ashura’s powers parallel the established powers of Naruto and Sasuke, the fact that Indra has lightning release in the anime makes a lot of sense, as the Rig Veda consistently describes Indra as wielding thunder and lightning.

“Even the Heaven and Earth bow down before him, before his very breath the mountains tremble. Known as the Soma-drinker, armed with thunder, who wields the bolt, He, O ye men, is Indra.” (Rig Veda 2.12.13)

Like Sasuke’s lightning release exists in duality with his fire release, Indra also exists in duality with Agni, the fire deity. In Book 10, Indra is described as Agni’s twin, born from the mouth of the Creator, just as the Uchiha emit their Great Fireball Technique from their mouths, i.e. “Indra and Agni from his mouth were born.” (Rig Veda 10.90.13)

Naruto and Ashura

Where Sasuke is associated with Indra through the elements, Naruto shares a specific symbol that is associated with Asura as well: The sun. Savitr is a solar deity, referred to as an Asura in Book 1 of the Rig Veda:

“He, strong of wing, hath lightened up the regions, deep-quivering Asura, the gentle Leader.” (Rig Veda 1.35.7)

While Naruto, after receiving the Sage of Six Paths power, is marked with a symbol for the sun on his hand (seen in Chapter 672).

Savitr is not the only deity to be referred to as an Ashura in the Rig Veda; Indra himself is even described as an Ashura. However, Ashura being associated with sun-like qualities is a recurring theme within the earlier books in the Rig Veda. Ashura is also brought up in the context of Agni, who himself has solar properties and is throughout the Rig Veda also compared to the sun. In fact, the word Ashura only comes up for Agni in the context of the sun. One quote specifically makes the comparison in Agni (the Ashura)’s strength to Indra’s. Found in Book 7:

“PRAISE of the Asura, high imperial Ruler, the Manly One in whom the folk shall triumph- I laud his deeds who is as strong as Indra, and lauding celebrate the Fort-destroyer.” (Rig Veda 7.6.1)

This connection to the sun is maintained throughout these early Hindu scriptures.

It is also worth noting “In who the folk shall triumph” as a parallel to the way Ashura Otsutsuki/the Senju/Naruto, as all of these parties find their strength in cooperating others, and vice versa became their people’s source of strength/hope. This is shown in Chapter 670 when Hagoromo describes Ashura’s power awakening.

How “In who the folk shall triumph” applies to Naruto is made obvious in the next chapter (Chapter 671) when Naruto talks about his “comrades,” and its application to the Senju is referenced in Chapter 619 i.e. “The Senju clan, who based their strength in love [..]” Strength through loved ones is a recurring theme on both sides of the Otsutsuki brothers, and as well in both aspects of the Rig Veda.

These are certainly not the only parts of the Naruto franchise in which you can see links to Hinduism. But in Indra and Ashura you can find the more prominent and distinct parallels.

Notes

*The translation I used is The Rig Veda by Ralph T. H. Griffith, published in 1896. There are better translations that have been published in more modern times, but this one is easy to navigate and link to for sources. Each of those quotes contains a link to the translated hymn.

(Also, as an academic side-note, the concept of “Hinduism” as a religion did not exist at the time the Vedas were written, but rather is retroactively applied after the amalgamation of various Vedic belief systems in the Indian subcontinent in the 18th century. For a more complex overview, refer to this article. The point being, calling all of this “Hinduism” is the simple version.)

**Chakra is also a concept which is rooted in the Vedas, however, given the elemental nature of chakra in Naruto, and its five-fold varieties, it seems far more likely that it was derived from looking at Tibetan or Tantric Buddhism, so its Hindu origins are a footnote here.

#ashura otsutsuki #indra otsutsuki #sasuke uchiha #naruto uzumaki #uchiha family #otsutsuki family #naruto meta #hinduism #ayesha talks anime #mangacaps #anime history #naruto series #long post #this was a choice #also: i discovered while citing that there's an anime called rg veda #who knew?#some people write naruto essays to cope.jpg #now i can say i used my degree

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naturalcritfail · 4 years

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Ironwood Sucks as a General. You can’t change my mind. (Warning spoilers if you haven’t seen Vol 6 and Vol 7.)

Okay this has bothered me a lot and I don’t normally post but I felt this was needed. James Ironwood should not be a General. This isn’t just stemming from the sheer rage I feel for him as of the most recent episodes. This goes all the way to before Beacon fell. Right off the bat, Ironwood was way too dependant on one of his resources. Atlas Technology. He figured well nobody else has shown that they can keep up with him that must just mean that a threat doesn’t exist. Even a General in peacetime should prepare for what COULD happen. There should have been plans for WHEN somebody hacks the military not IF. (especially if all your systems are inner connected. That’s asking for trouble). Then there’s his approach to the White Fang. He wanted to instantly make a show of his toys. Show everyone. (even the people of a foreign kingdom) Just what Atlas could do. he wanted to send his men (Yes I’m counting androids in his army.) in blind on enemy territory. You know what is often involved in wars? Maps. Even if you wanted a bomber run you still look at the area. Yes, it was Mountian Glenn and it was probably mapped out before. But if you say that an enemy has moved to a certain position you triple check EVERYTHING. A mountain is a big place. (Doesn’t do you any good to bomb the top of a mountain if your targets are living in caves at the base of it now does it?) Wars are won with two things. Resources and Information. You can have all the guns, dust, Megazords and nukes you want. But if you don’t know where your enemy is, or their basic command structure you won’t be able to put down an enemy for good. (How to win a war 101 dude come on) Now that, that’s done let’s look at the Ace Ops. Five members of his inner sanctum. Each of them the “best” in Atlas. All of them loyal and filled in on what they are up against. Nothing wrong there. However, what were the criteria for how they were selected? Cause five soldiers that are best on their own don’t necessarily work the best on a team. Clover seemed to be a lurker. Watching the enemy and waiting for the right opening. Good thing for a leader to have. Harriet was the speedster. Her whole thing was hit fast and keep the opponent off their feet so they don’t get a chance to recover. Again nothing really wrong here, and if you pair her with just Clover they’d be the best for sure. Clover pointing out weak points for Harriet to hit would be a great strategy for those two to use. Next up is Marrow. His whole thing is freezing and essentially matrixing out of the way of his opponent’s attacks while also giving him time to land in his own blows. Pairing him with either Harriet or Clover would be an amazing idea. Then We have Vine and Elm. These two work well together on their own. Vine is a lot like Clover sits back and observes before making his move while Elm goes in and engages the enemy and exposes any weaknesses it may have that she couldn’t necessarily see/access on her own. However, there is a small problem with them. What happens if all five of this team aren’t present under ideal circumstances. Say for instance Vine and Clover where stuck working together on a mission that requires a hard hitter. I’m sure the two could take it down from a bit of strategizing and Clover’s Semblance working overtime, but that’s not a guarantee. Vine’s “reach” (for lack of a better term that I’ve seen for his semblance) and Clover’s weapon aren’t going to be effective against something like Cordovin's Mech, Same could be applied to Harriet and Elm in a situation that requires a softer touch. Harriet is impatient and figures if she can’t get touched she can't lose a fight. But what happens if she’s in a limiting area that doesn’t allow her area to run in. A tunnel with a dead-end perhaps, or the edge of a cliff where she can’t run anywhere, she doesn’t carry a weapon like a pistol or anything meaning she wouldn’t be much of a help to Elm, who is also more of a hazard. Elm’s weapon is meant to break things, add that with her semblance to make her nearly an immovable object. However, put her in a small confined space and she’s limited in what she can do. She could use her hammer to keep the enemy at bay but if it’s a close-range fight against someone like Neo who uses a bit of light footedness and a bit of mind games in a fight she doesn’t stand a chance. Marrow can work on his own solo, his semblance gives him the best chance to either take out his opponent or fall back and regroup after a few attacks don’t work. But add in multiple targets from multiple areas and he’s on his own. So Just because someone is loyal and good in one circumstance doesn’t mean that adding them to a group of four other strangers doesn’t mean that they’ll be the very best (like no one ever was) Cause guess what. As the mighty Qui Jon Jinn once said, “There’s always a bigger fish” which I think we can all agree. Salem is currently that said fish. Next on the list is THE RELIC HE’S GUARDING! You know the one holding up Atlas. Seriously He had nothing guarding it. He just left the door completely exposed. HE EVEN HAD AN ELEVATOR BASICALLY TAKE YOU TOO IT! No identification needed. No security systems nearby to make sure that if somebody snuck in there like I don’t know Cinder (who snuck into your office) They could try and get the relic, or rig the place to blow so nobody could get access to its power and literally have Atlas crash into Mantle. Here’s an idea for you. HAVE ARMED GUARDS NEARBY AT ALL TIMES! Or better yet. Have your top of the class go and guard the thing the second you found out that Cinder is in Atlas. Cause A) you could have stalled for time for reinforcements to get there and just overwhelm her before she could even touch the door. B) it wouldn’t be easy to get to if you had a Winter Maiden go full Vader and Join Salem along with Cinder. C) you like showing the world your tech. Why not keep some of your best toys down there cause then no one would see it coming. D) It would stop anyone from getting access to it period. (you know like a farm boy you shot.) E) it makes a great hiding place for a particular Winter Maiden so you could move the relic if you had too. Plus you’d be in better control when it would come time for her to either give the powers willingly or rip them out and force them into your chosen warrior. (while also limiting her exposure to people in general). Last but not least. His ideas of what he needs to do. He’s having issues dealing with the Grimm in Mantle. You want to know how you take care of that? Well, first you don’t arrest anyone that’s killing the Grimm that break into the cities. Then you send your resources to your defensive line. (You know like Robyn wanted you to do.) Then you worry about contacting the other kingdoms. Yes, I liked the idea of a floating communications tower and using Amity was perfect considering all you had to do was some “basic” modifications, But it doesn’t do any good if everyone in the kingdom who is probably your workforce (Mantle) is dead or scared which are bringing in more Grimm. Want to know what else would help limit the Grimm a bit... Not leaving the people who are technically your superiors and/or your equals in the total dark. People have questions genius. Give them what you can. This is not a situation where no news is good news. People are scared and want to know what you are doing to make them feel safe besides having a single robot flying around killing Grimm after they get past your shitty fortifications. Sorry for the long post. Thanks for coming to my TED talk/ Ironwood hate post. Here’s a picture I found that I hope you enjoy.

#rwby v7 #spoilers #james ironwood #rwby #general ironwood #ace ops #rwby criticism #rwde

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ayankun · 4 years

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The Asset

so I’m making my mom watch Agents of SHIELD (obviously) and today we watched eps 1x03 - 1x06. That’s The Asset, Eye Spy, Girl in the Flower Dress, and FZZT.

THEN I ACCIDENTALLY SPENT LIKE FIVE HOURS DISSECTING MY LEAST FAVORITE EPISODE YOU’RE WELCOME

First off, full spoilers ahead, of course.

1x03 is, hands down, the worst episode of the series. PERIOD. I didn’t give it my full attention when I did my rewatch, because I remembered it well enough for some reason and the guy that plays Quinn looks too much but not enough like Tahmoh Penikett to seriously irritate me. DODGED A BULLET THERE.

Giving it your full attention does not do it any favors. I was physically discomfited, squirming in my seat and dropping snide remarks every 12 seconds. It’s bad, you guys.

First off, we have this guy, who is, for now in S1, the one and only “Agent Mack.”

THE SIMILARITIES ARE UNCANNY.

Then this big rig gets dropped like 50 feet and I’m supposed to believe that this guy strapped in the back only had his glasses knocked askew?

Ok then we go see what the team is up to, and lord, three episodes has not been enough time for Chloe or Brett to Figure Their Shit Out. They’re so awkward and dumb looking.

After a passable briefing scene, where we learn that Baldy McGlasses is a valuable asset (and beloved advisor to FitzSimmons) who was being transported with maximum security before being kidnapped, we get this wildly wild “we have to put something on the screen while exposition happens” shot:

Which cuts contemporaneously to

Thanks I hate it

Where did the atmospheric smoke go? Was that highway always there? What time of day is this supposed to be where the ambient light changes so drastically over a matter of seconds? They couldn’t have kept the camera on the left side of the lane marker?

But it gets worse because Simmons has a line and the coverage for this is basically just a matched jump cut over to the other half of the line up and back again.

I can’t stand it.

So Agent Mack survived the fall and is still on the scene of the accident. My mom was pretty incredulous that he was alive, and I was thinking it was too bad that he had to sit there for hours waiting to be debriefed instead of being taken to a hospital.

THEN there’s some FitzSimmons pratfall-adjacent sci-fi nonsense that my mom really got a kick out of. But I was too distracted by Iain’s decision to play Fitz as a douchebag so far this season so I wasn’t in the right mood to be impressed.

Ok then we go back to the lab to do some science on the MacGuffin, and I will admit my favorite part so far is Skye challenging Coulson on the existence of the truth serum, and Coulson plays it so Coulson-y it’s truly chef’s kiss.

BUT THEN May comes along and drops 100 pounds of print media for Skye to review (oh yeah, there’s a key subplot about there potentially being a mole inside SHIELD, which is how McGlasses got got) and MY MOM who REGULARLY prints out things like Facebook posts to keep for posterity rightly pointed out that they have high-tech on this plane like holograms and stuff, so printing out all this correspondence in order to go through it page by page makes 0% sense.

Also we never see it again.

OKAY THEN COULSON AND WARD ACCOST A COWBOY RIDING A HORSE THROUGH THE WOODS. Said cowboy also just happens to have the incriminating bag of gold on his person, which Coulson and Ward straight up steal. That’s it. That’s the whole concept for the scene. Coulson’s just parked his car along a narrow woodland path, just waiting for a cowboy to come riding along so he can accost him/steal his gold.

Check out how whack this scene-setting shot is, too. We have Coulson on the left, facing the Cowboy on the right. At this trajectory, you can see that Lola and the horse are basically pointed perpendicular to one another.

Yet cowboy pulls to a stop without banking and addresses something dead ahead of him.

Surprise! Coulson’s over there now and Lola and the horse are facing dead on.

To really drive this home, cowboy spends the rest of the scene on the left, addressing Coulson who remains on the right.

Anyway so yeah, this scene is about roughing up an innocent civilian for intel and then stealing his legally acquired wealth.

At least they can’t take the sky from him.

The purpose of the cowboy gold is that it’s directly traceable back to Quinn Worldwide, which is hilarious considering that one assumes the under-the-table transaction used this method of currency in order to not be easily traced.

Coulson name drops Quinn like he’s some off-brand Tony Stark that we should be impressed with, and we are immediately shown that Ian Quinn’s defining characteristic is that he has an assistant to hang up his cell phone calls for him. We are not impressed with Ian Quinn.

OKAY AND THEN WE GET THIS COMPLETE MIS-READ OF SCRIPT INTENT IN THIS SHOT

why why why why why why would you ignore a character’s line like that. Why are you choosing to TELL me that a man is tied up when it would be SO EASY to SHOW me.

Especially since the narrative so far is that McGlasses has been skillfully kidnapped by a very determined adversary, and this moment, this interaction, is where that assumption is proven erroneous. Quinn’s line is a very specific cue that we are meant to SEE that he’s restrained, per our expectations following a kidnapping, specifically to introduce the twist that Quinn is just that budget Tony Stark who actually has no malicious intentions towards his former colleague.

A super close close up of McGlasses fails to achieve that moment the script was hunting for. I’m feeling that the intent was to keep the focus on this dude because of the upcoming secondary twist where he is revealed to be the SHIELD mole who masterminded his own kidnapping, but this guy is So Bad at acting I don’t think keeping him front and center is ever going to pay off.

(ok I just checked and it turns out Ian Hart is a prolific English actor. this makes me feel like I ought to chalk it up to “difficulty emoting while doing a fake American accent” but guys this performance is so bad I’m really not willing to believe there’s a good excuse)

anyway it turns out Quinn’s good guy!

.....but then he’s on the wrong side of the shot all of a sudden for no good reason and HEY maybe this set up with the wide angle on the lab and a clear look at McGlasses’ physical situation within that environment would have been an alternative for, you know, maybe some sort of establishing shot? Maybe? No?

Also here let’s take a moment to let the “plot” really sink in. These two chuckleheads are former classmates and colleagues, even though one of them looks about 20 years older than the other, and Quinn discovered that “an asset” was being moved, “deduced” that the asset was McGlasses, and wanted to bring McGlasses in on his semi-nefarious science plan. So to avoid SHIELD interference in his schemey scheme, Quinn

kidnaps McGlasses directly from SHIELD custody,

in the showiest manner, not only using but LEAVING BEHIND the exact product at the core of his scheme,

and pays a local cowboy with easily traceable gold in exchange for just some regular backhoe to bust open the big rig transporting McGlasses, instead of, I don’t know, using his massive wealth and influence and in-house R&D products to not massively incriminate himself

He couldn’t have just invited McGlasses over without calling attention to himself?

There is the way that “the asset” was being “moved” makes it sound like McGlasses was on top secret lock down with no civilian rights or means of making/receiving contact with people like old colleagues. But this is never clarified, like, the only other thing we know about him is that he evidently advises classes at the Sci-Ops branch of the SHIELD academy.

ALSO we have yet to learn that McGlasses personally staged “being moved” and leaked the hints regarding the identity of “the asset” to Quinn just so that Quinn would do all these nonsense things he done. He couldn’t have just invited himself over???

Also the conversation they have at this point is real rough, with non-sequiturs, shambling exposition, and garbage jokes that wouldn’t float even if you didn’t have a log and a ham struggling to mimic human behavior.

Also Quinn bought the PRIME MINISTER OF MALTA’S old manor specifically because it has a huge underground lab???? What about Malta do I need to know about before this makes sense?

Let’s move on. FitzSkimmons have an only-mostly painful scene of exposition in which Iain is still having a hard time with the lines/characterization the Powers That Be are forcing Fitz to be at the moment. I’m going to say it. Season 1 Fitz is Utterly Unlikable.

However, this rant has given me the opportunity to 1) stand corrected and 2) appreciate this understated joke:

She’s still on page 1 of 1 billion LOLOLOLOL

The other nice thing to come out of this scene is the casual validation that the public school system may not be right for everyone, and that being a high school drop out does not mean you can’t also be an intelligent self-starter who finds value and satisfaction in picking up a trade skill on your own. *coughs in Robbie Reyes*

UGH but then we go back to McWooden and Bargain Ham. Their story is UNINTERESTING and their performances are HARD TO STOMACH. Also it ends on a mirror of the shot we started with (so there is some evidence of intelligent design at play here after all)

But this framing makes me so uncomfortable like, I’ve shipped for less don’t put weird ideas in my head that no one wants least of all me--

Ok. We’re a third of the way through. It doesn’t stop getting worse.

So here’s the correct way to reposition your characters if you want to change up the eye lines without making it super jarring! The start of this scene is actually really textbook-nice, just look:

The pre-mission planning is already in full swing, but we follow Skye, the outsider on the outside, approaching the scene with some amount of hesitation.

She starts on the right, facing left, and crosses across the path of the camera as it follows her towards the meeting, ending up on its left while the folks currently giving lines are framed over her right shoulder. Your eye line and sense of positioning has fluidly followed hers, and this makes sense.

From this establishing shot, we do a real nice punch in on Coulson as he’s speaking, using a really action smooth cut as he does a bit of business with his hand.

We’re still coming into this scene from Skye’s POV, and this shot reflects that -- close enough to focus on the important action, but distant enough to show Skye’s current position (literally and figuratively) relative to the rest of the team.

The reverse shot is ... fine. It’s fine. I don’t like that she’s framed on the right hand side of the screen (exactly where Coulson was a split second ago), but the eye lines still match up and it does give the impression that the camera is the avatar of the audience and we just turned on the spot to look at her as she quietly invites herself to this scene and starts putting that big beautiful brain of hers to work.

Then we leave her to it! Feel the difference this cut has, emotionally, from the last time we looked over at Coulson:

We’ve left Skye’s aloof POV and now we’re all up in his biz. This framing tells us he’s no longer the subject of Skye’s contemplation and has gone back to being a character of the TV screen doing TV character things.

The remainder of this scene holds onto that “normal” shot-reverse-shot framing of the team as they give their opinions and work through the plan.

This laudable result of thoughtful camera work is almost instantly ruined by Fitz yammering on about using a brave little monkey to do their serious spy business and HOLY COW Iain does his best with the dreck he’s been given but there is no universe in which I will find this type of dialogue acceptable.

The valuable plot point here is that Skye is finding her footing on the team, doing hacky stuff on her phone and putting herself out there as -- wait for it -- an asset to Coulson. Ward responds to this with bafflement, being generally supportive of her known abilities while also being doubtful that she’s a complete package, and turning to Coulson for advice on how to round her training out.

This results in yet another JARRING AF transition (read: there’s no transition) from Ward and Coulson’s heart to heart to Ward pointing a gun at Skye at some indeterminate amount of time later.

Look we haven’t even had time to ingest Coulson’s line yet and BAM we’re here.

This scene’s fine. It’s doing double duty and that’s admirable. Triple duty, even. Many duties are being performed in this scene. We have

fledgling Skyeward

the introduction to the gun-manipulation maneuver Skye will use later on

Skye’s irreverence butting heads with Ward’s need for brass-tacks

at least one solid joke at Ward’s expense

Ward valuing Skye’s er, assets -- I’M TALKING COMPUTER SCIENCE YA PERVS

a very competent conversational segue into Ward’s Whole Deal, wherein we are introduced to the concept of his childhood trauma (lolol and man does Brett just fail to deliver these lines in any sort of a way that inspires human empathy wowowo he’s so bad in this one)

a callback to an earlier conversation as well as a set up for a future joke

SKYE STEALING WARD’S GUN FROM OUT OF HIS PANTS A++++

Now we go into pre-heist plan-walkthrough mode, and it’s so boring and lifeless that Skye’s actual summary line is “Plan, green, drop, walk ... pie.” To be honest, she got more out of the discussion than I did.

May has an interesting character moment where she’s complaining about going into the field and then immediately regrets it because she was never going to be sent in, but that means Coulson’s going in instead and that worries her. I keep thinking back on this season as being unfocused, but that’s because I forget that the sales pitch for this entire shebang is “we killed Coulson in Avengers but now here’s a show where he’s the lead because everyone loves him so much” and the subsequent focus of the inaugural season is everyone’s burning curiosity to find out how they undid his murder.

Aside from the sci-fi/Marvel/generic spy show gimmick of the week, these early episodes never fail to prioritize the interpersonal dynamic of their team while simultaneously teasing out the Coulson mystery with these nice little regular hits.

I let it keep playing while I was typing, and we flew over some whatever business where Skye goes to Quinn’s party, and Coulson and Ward land their little raft on the beach, and the other kids are watching from the Bus and FITZ IS AGAIN TERRIBLE

I feel you, Jemma.

(Also, am I wrong in hearing him give in and say “boobs?” The Netflix subtitles have it as “oops” but that can’t be it.)

Anyway so Skye’s busy using her Assets to win Quinn over, and Chloe’s shining moment in this scene is the delivery of the drivers test joke.

Back to stuff that’s gratingly awful, we’re supposedly on Malta, right? And you know how Hollywood generally and the spy show/movie genre specifically tries to stretch their location budgets by putting on color filters to “evoke” distant lands?

We go from the above, washed out and unfiltered, to this sepia-toned nonsense:

This is supposed to be taking place basically right outside. Why not just keep the filter on for the interior scenes, too? There’s plenty of searing Maltese light coming in through that wall of windows.

(They must have had a hard time on location for the manor shoots, though, it’s just as washed out in the earlier scene set outdoors that I didn’t show you because it was boring but I’m showing you know because it’s not even the same color filter as the Coulson/Ward shots

)

((Also, yeah, I get it. You can’t fly to Malta for a day for a television shoot. But how many people are you fooling when you put the Santa Monica mountains in the backdrop of every exterior shot?))

So we go back and forth between these high-grain-low-saturation beachfront stuff to these holy angelic light of judgement shots and I hate it.

Like, why choose to shoot against this nuclear-blast light? It’s not doing your actors any favors.

Especially when you’re ALSO choosing to depict that same “natural” light with a whole different palette and then continue to give us the opportunity to compare and contrast.

Also I hate the Ward/Coulson business because it’s just generic spy stuff where some guards come out of nowhere and I guess maybe it’s implied that their cute boat was found but it could just as easily be that it was explicitly stated that there were guard patrols and I forgot.

But then they fight and defeat the guards in literally under 8 seconds and that’s that. End of stakes.

The character moment that validates this trivial obstacle is that Coulson tries to do something with a gun and finds that May’s concerns weren’t entirely unfounded. He’s a little rusty.

Also Ward’s response to this is to chuck the gun into the laser wall and I don’t know why. In any case, the energy from both of them in this screenshot really resonates with me.

So then Skye Does The Thing with her Assets and if you’ll let me be picky again about plot holes, why does the wireless access MacGuffin need to have an interface for Skye to check that the connection is possible, and THEN have that connection activated by LITERALLY dropping it on the table. They couldn’t have set it to auto-scan and then tell her through her earpiece to stay still when the connection activated itself?

Whatever. Success! Immediately followed by ... INEXPLICABLE OBSTACLE

WHO, praytell, is on the other end of that walkie talkie? Because the downed man is the man you see. Typically, it would be like a survivor of the scuffle who radios for backup, but here we see the scene of the scuffle and some unknown unseen ADDITIONAL MAN who I guess is just spying on them from somewhere and radioing still more unseen men?

Instantly hearing this news, the Unseen begin a sniper assault on Coulson and Ward, and we get to see their bullets getting evaporated by the laser wall. Remember those guards walking along the sea cliff towards the sign? There’s no place for the snipers to be sniping from, unless they have some kind of invisible floating island.

This scenario is made even more hilarious once Fitz brings down the laser wall and Coulson and Ward dive through like they think they some kind of James Bonds and then the wall goes back up and the snipers keep sniping.

Why aren’t the guards on the inside of the perimeter of the compound which they guard? This laser fence is now protecting the intruders. Minor design flaw.

Anywho, Quinn is still talking about how he doesn’t trust SHIELD and SHIELD doesn’t trust him, so it’s like, what are we supposed to believe about this guy anyway? Why did Coulson introduce him as bargain bin Tony Stark if he was known to be bargain bin Justin Hammer all along?

So now that snipers have failed to snipe the intruders, some Seen Guards come to alert Quinn so he breaks the wireless MacGuffin and turns a gun on Skye. (Just sayin, if it had been some secret device that was still in her bag, she’d have plausible deniability)

I think, at this point, I have two conclusions

Team Coulson has no extraction plan for getting McGlasses out of the compound since they don’t have a Plan B to get back through the laser wall, no firepower to use on the Seen Guards, and no available land-or-sea getaway vehicles.

There was never any sort of extraction plan for Skye even if the laser wall and the Seen Guards were not an obstacle.

Here’s where it gets the messiest.

Coulson busts in on McGlasses but is told no rescue is required.

AT THAT SAME TIME

May has just popped open a tablet over in some room by herself, evidently disinterested in whatever FitzSimmons is probably doing right now in light of this drastic turn of events, and she’s randomly googling up on the SHIELD leak mentioned earlier, only to discover that it was MCGLASSES ALL ALONG.

Keeps a cool head, our May.

Yeah, we know, we .. he ... he just said ... you know what? We didn’t actually care, though? Who the mole was or that it was McGlasses. We certainly didn’t spend the last half hour watching May diligently tracking down some breadcrumb trail of clues to get to this dramatic reveal, only to find out a second too late. We didn’t even see her checking up that Skye had/didn’t have this angle covered.

Did she print out the contents of the four-foot binder as some sort of eco-terrorist cruel joke since she was just planning on spending three seconds on the computer to complete the same task?

Ok so Coulson misinterprets McGlasses’ decline of his rescue operation as collaboration with Quinn until May clues him in. We then go to commercials and come back and have to go over all this info again just in case we didn’t follow that super exciting double-cross the first two times.

At which point we figure out where all the pre-production time was sunk -- somebody had to spend a lot of effort envisioning how they were going to do the wacky-gravity scenes. My feeling is that fun challenges like that are what stand out to people who are working on a thing, and sometimes the prestige of “pulling that off” can overshadow the need to pay attention to other, less exciting aspects of filmmaking, like making sure your eye lines stay coherent in a scene or that your color gradings aren’t super distracting.

Anyway I do really like the load-bearing scene where Quinn threatens Skye at gunpoint because it is one of those many examples this season has of laying ground work for and paying off character moments.

Skye’s flip and smart and completely not ready for this level of field action, but she remembers her training, remembers how earnestly Ward wanted her to be ready for this defining moment, and gets the gun!

That “nOPE” when she can’t shoot the man is also Classic Skye and we Love Her For It.

Anyway oh yeah, McGlasses reveals his master plan to get kidnapped, so that he could get on site and ruin Quinn’s everything because he’s a Bad Justin Hammer. His performance is SO PAINFUL and his reasoning has yet to make sense. Coulson doesn’t ask “why did you have to be kidnapped to get in, though” but he does ask “why didn’t you try reasoning with him” as if that were the question we needed an answer to.

Also it turns out FitzSimmons has been pretty chill this whole time since their agents lost their extraction plan (well, they’re smart, they probably knew all along that there wasn’t one) and are just puttering around the lab working on what looks like their regular day-to-day science, talking excitedly about gravitonium rather than panicking that the whole plan’s gone to shit.

Unflappable.

COME ON PEOPLE the mission wasn’t “throw McGlasses into the gravitonium and do high-fives” it was “rescue McGlasses from Quinn’s grasp.” From the way that this plays out, there is 0% indication that their initial plan was ever expected to succeed.

WE DON’T EVEN SEE HOW THEY GET OUT OF THERE, WE JUST LOOK AT SOME MCGRAVITONIUM AND THEN SEE COULSON ON THE BUS INSTRUCTING THE CONTAINMENT FACILITY ON HOW IT SHOULD BE HANDLED.

Oh well, the gratuitous plot is disposed with after this point.

In the denouement, we get to see May and Coulson interact over his experience in the field and her experience being stuck watching him in the field. She’s finally ready for combat, but strictly for his sake. And he’s at the point where he’s ready and willing to take her up on her offer instead of trying to prove that he’s everything he was before he died.

Following that, we get some Skyeward with some really gross romantic comedy type music. Bear, you’re better than this!! But the scene is nice, Chloe really brings it (almost brings too much) and Brett is there to support her.

It’s a really on-the-nose admission from Skye that her allegiances lie with SHIELD, but its an organic continuation of that bit from earlier where she wandered all up on their meeting, the outsider, and pushed her way into the heart of it. She wants this. She wants to feel like she belongs here. And now she’s been trusted with some opportunities and tools to prove it!

This early in the season, we’re still doubtful that she’s on the up and up, what with that Rising Tide plot thread hanging so loose and tantalizing over our heads. Due to the potential of a storyline revolving around her betrayal, there are a lot of fun little moments in the next few episodes where Ward gets to say some betrayal-related stuff that is absolutely excellent in retrospect.

I was watching some old interviews and while it is very clear Brett did not know the fate of his character in advance, it’s also distinctly implied that no one knew and the arc of the season may have developed episode by episode. That’s so nutty to me, considering how strong the structure of the season is, how there are so many satisfying call backs and payoffs later on.

I think I’m more likely to applaud a well-plotted narrative, in which foreshadowing and a deliberate order of events slowly unravel to great effect. But I can definitely appreciate the ability to force the illusion of the same by being crafty and attentive and not letting any usable threads go to waste.

Ultimately, whether by design or by providence, Season 1 is successful in pulling it all together. It’s just that episodes like this one don’t really inspire you to believe that that outcome is likely, or even possible. Episodes like this one cause a person to give up watching halfway through the season and walk away for years until cajoled into giving it another shot because “it got good somehow.”

But what this season has, every episode, especially ones like this one, is a pronounced, chaotic, relentless prioritization of Character over Plot. What is this show about? Who cares. That’s the wrong question. This show could have been about anything, and these early episodes are all too aware of it. What kind of story can you tell when every option is on the table and no one knows what to expect from you?

You find that story, step by step, episode by episode, through the eyes of your characters. The forward motion of the story isn’t “how did Coulson come back to life” but “what is life going to be like for him now?” It’s not “will Skye betray the team” it’s “what does she want and what is she willing to do to get it?”

Posing and answering these character questions generates the Story of Agents of SHIELD. Plots be damned. Remember how at one point in this episode, our heroes robbed a cowboy at gunpoint? Yeah. Me either.

And I can’t agree more with this approach. In my experience, PWP works best when its about the characters.

#agents of shield #aos

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xenophanatic · 5 years

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In Depth Analysis of ‘Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?’

Romantic narratives usually hinge upon a love hurdle, hurdles which are the reasons the couple are not together and causes angst between them. Whether the hurdle or obstacle comes from rival families, social standing, or past actions. These stories are also seen as forbidden love. However, as years go by these particular hurdles seem trivia and writers are trying to up the ante. This gave way to new hurdles such as:

I’m a human and you’re a vampire, werewolf, alien, robot, angel, fish or Cthulhu.

I’m a cop, you’re a killer.

And other questionable new hurdles of forbidden love.

We may be siblings or related.

I’m in love with my kidnapper

And there was a Pakistani show, Woh Aik Pak (That One Moment) in which the hero accidentally shot a guy and then leaves him for dead. He feels guilty and decided to marry dead guy’s widow and adopt their son, without her knowledge that he killed her late husband. It’s like a darker version of the American film Bounce. All these new hurdles are quite problematic.

They are questionable as they put a romantic light on dark and real social issues - incest, abusive and manipulative relationships. So, it isn’t surprising that when I heard of the premise of a Turkish show, Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne? (What is Fatmagul’s fault?), I refused to watch it.

The premise was told to me as such:

Fatamgul is engaged to her childhood sweetheart Mustafa and is looking forward to their marriage. One night, four young men grab her and start to play around with her. They never think that the joke will turn into a rape at first. But later, they begin to rape her, one by one. The sun of her life is shadowed after that night; it's not only Fatmagul's body which was raped, but also her life. Mustafa breaks off their engagement and even worse - in order to save the honour of her family she is forced to marry one of the rapists.

So here the hurdle which they couple have to overcome is… marrying her rapist. Oh no.

I never really critically thought about the impact of depicting rape or sexual violence on television before. Not until I heard that Hannibal’s showrunner Bryan Fuller had a ban on rape scenes in his procedural series.

To Enterment Weekly, Fuller stated,

“A character gets raped” is a very easy story to pitch for a drama. And it comes with a stable of tropes that are infrequently elevated dramatically, or emotionally. I find that it’s not necessarily thought through in the more common crime procedurals. You’re reduced to using shorthand, and I don’t think there can be a shorthand for that violation— it’s an incredibly personal and intimate betrayal of something that should be so positive and healthy. And it’s frequently so thinly explored because you don’t have the real estate in 42 minutes to dig deep into what it is to be a victim of rape.”

This had me look critically at the narratives and tropes that surround rape. Three I found interesting tropes that occur.

1) The rape of a woman used to justify her own cruelty. I’ve seen this a lot in American show where they have a mature aged woman who is powerful, ruthless, and seen as antagonist to the younger female protagonist. However, it is revealed that the woman was raped in the past and her ruthlessness is caused by the rape.

2) The rape is seen as a who dunnit, where characters that are not the victim are searching for the rapist. The rapist is usually revealed with a twist with it either being a relative or family friend. This is used for dramatic effect and shock value. The woman is either dead or in other ways incapacitated

3) The rape of a woman is usually the Hero’s ‘call to adventure’ or catalyst for revenge. The woman is raped and it is the hero’s job to avenge her. The hero can either be a grieving father or mourning lover. This is done from Shakespeare’s play to the recent Bollywood film Kaabil. The women are presented as objects and motivation for the hero to extract revenge for his honour or seek justice for his lose, while the women are either dead or literally mutilated.

This one is also semi-related to the trope of a man saving a woman from rape and her instantly forgetting the traumatic experience and giving herself to her rescuer as thank you. Again, this shows the woman’s lack of agency on her own sexuality and body.

Therefore, with the premise that I found of Fatmagul I was scared that the show will redeem the rapist and make him a likeable character who Fatmagul would fall for. I found out from other plot summaries that it turned out that her husband didn’t actually participate in the rape, but that had no effect on me. It would be like that Pakistani drama which the guy ‘accidentally killed’ the husband. He too would be a victim and absolved from his crimes.

There were so many reasons why I couldn’t stand a love story between these two characters. She was raped and forced to marry her rapist, even though it may not be the case in Turkey now, in some countries there are still the ‘marry your rapist’ law. The trauma of being ganged rape could not be overcome with love, especially if that love is coming from a man who was there when it happened.

Anyway, I tried to stay away from this show - just on principles - but then, hearing everyone raving about it and telling me to watch it, I gave in and watched the series and... I enjoyed it immensely and here is why.

1. The treatment of rape

When television has a woman who has been raped, it is either to create drama or to provide a backstory of why she is the way she is. Narrative about rape, when done wrong, is contained in a single episode or storyline. However, ‘What’s Fatmagul’s fault’ does not consist of one episode about rape as the whole show is revolved around Fatmagül - how she is coping after being raped and her search for justice.

The rape scene itself is quite uncomfortable and unsettling, never going beyond into tantalising or sensationalising territory. During the first few episodes it seemed that each of the three rapists would be a representation of different motives of rape. Erdoğan, having been humiliated and emasculated by his family, he dominates over Fatmagul’s body as pathetic grasp for power. He rapes Fatmagul in an attempt to gain control and portray masculinity to overcome his lack of dominance in the business or powerless role in the family. Vural, is the last of the three to rape Fatmagul and is seemed to join in as part of a commodity of sort. The nature of gang rape is said to be a sadistic way the men bond and form commodity. Vural seems to be ashamed of his action during and after it is over. Vural is depicted though the series as a coward – who is unable to admit to his actions nor is able to overcome them. He’s constantly in a depression of his guilt, but is selfish and such a coward that he is unable to confess to his crime. However, this theory of mine could never live up to its potential. I couldn’t understand Selim and his character motivation. At first, he seemed to dislike committing to one woman, his fiancé, but then can’t stand the idea of losing her. I thought his violence towards Fatmagul was to do with his unwillingness to commit to one sexual partner or be dominated by a woman, but that wasn’t the case from his interaction with his fiancé and later wife after the rape. Erdoğan, who I assumed, after escaping punishment for raping Fatmagul, would continue to assault women in order to have some sort of dominance – but again that never come up and I disliked his romance with the doctor. It seemed like in the end, they could just blame it on drugs. The rapist could have been explored, but I guess they weren’t due to it not being their story nor a justification for their action. The story is about Fatmagul.

2. Fatmagul and her agency and growth.

Famagul, the character and the actress’s performance, were amazing. After her rape she wants justice and the support of her fiancé. After her fiancé rejects her and her family pressurise her to marry Kerim, she – releasing no one is supporting her, loses her trust on the justice system and accepts society’s dictation on what should happen to her. Every action Fatmagul made, I understood. From waiting for her fiancé Mustafa, to wanting to kill herself, to attempting to kill Kerim. Every action made sense.

What was important was Kerim wasn’t shown as her saviour. The series never claimed that Kerim’s love was what Fatmagul needed to be whole again. Nor was it a male figure that ignited venges or sense of self-preservation in her. It was a woman. Kerim’s sister aka Abla becomes a confident to Fatmagul. She doesn’t show much tells Fatmagul what to do, but let’s Fatmagul know she has options and opportunities. Abla introduces two concepts which are extremely important. Education and therapy.

Fatmagul completes her education, giving her opportunities to find employment, become a business owner, and later confidence to obtain a driving licence. This demonstrates Fatmagul’s agency and her ability to be self-sufficient. Abla also suggests therapy to Fatmagul, who at first reject it but later asks for help. I like that they didn’t force it on her and that Fatmagul actively sort out mental help. Even the obligatory make-over scene of the female character isn’t from the courtesy of the male character, but through the bond of Abla and Fatmagul. Women helping women. It was nice to see this in contrast to Fatmagul’s sister-in-law’s character. The saying that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help women, it’s filled with people like her.

The thing I disliked was Fatmagul’s love for Mustafa after he rejected her. But the series did a good job explaining that she wasn’t yearning for him, but a life before she was raped. He represented a life she could have had. She was holding on to that idea, but let it go knowing that she could never go back to a time where that was possible. And later she rejects Mustafa when he pleads that he was mistaken and wants her back. She rightfully addresses that he should have believed her and that when she needed him the most, he made it about himself and left her.

I also like the relationship she has with Kerim. She rejects him at every corner – and I agree with her at every step of the way. He doesn’t leave the country and declares he loves her. I disliked him, just as she did for that. He buys them rings and gets happy when she wears it- but really, she wears it to avoid unwanted attention from men. Again, I rolled by eyes at him for being happy at that but loved that Abla was feeling the same and asked Kerim to give Fatmagul space. He sees her letting go of the scarf Mustafa gave her, as a sign that she is letting go of Mustafa. I just hated when he had hope that she would fall for him. Dude, she’s going through some shit. Again, loved that she corrected him stating that she let go of the scarf because it used to remind her of her love for Mustafa but now it’s the thing that his friends used to muffle her screams.

No matter what Kerim did, I could not root from him. He would keep telling Fatmagul that he is innocent and didn’t do anything, which I believe doesn’t change anything cos he was there when it happened. He drew the other men’s attention to her, he grabbed her first, and he didn’t stop it. He was part of the nightmare.

However, as the show went Kerim realised his part in the rape. Him confronting Mustafa and explaining the true events of that night. Saying that Fatmagul was raped by those men, and even though he didn’t rape her – he also didn’t stop it from happening. Kerim claims it’s the fault of those men and his fault. But it is not her fault. I loved this scene as Kerim was finally focusing the narrative on Fatmagul. As mentioned earlier, rape narrative on occasion focuses on the male character. His quest for vengeance or justice. Though I haven’t read it, apparently in the original novel the story was focused on Kerim and his struggles of marrying a victim of rape. Yeah… poor guy. Thankfully, the show doesn’t do that. Kerim in the first few episodes make it about him but later recognises that it is about Fatmagul and what she has gone through because of him.

There is a lovely scene, which I kind of wish was explored more. After Kerim confesses and tells the police about the night – he asks Fatmagul if she’s angry at him for filling in a report. Fatmagul denies it. And plainly states she’s angry at herself for not telling the police first and thereby making this his victory.

Again, I liked this scene because Fatmagul addresses that she should have been the one to go to the police. She should have agency, instead Kerim took that and made it about him. What a poorer series would have made into an epic romantic gesture, ‘Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?’ questions and addresses the male discourses.

Though by the end, Fatmagul forgives Kerim – I was glad that she did after the audience was allowed to forgive him. I had forgiven and fell in love with Kerim before Fatmagul and that was crucial part of the series. And what I loved was that when Fatmagul’s harpy of sister-in-law wants to take credit for making Fatmagul marry Kerim, Fatmagul breaks down and reveals to Kerim’s half-sister that though she loves Kerim and her life with him, she would give it all up to go back before that night. She would rather never have known him than have been a victim of rape. It is a touching scene that reminds us that while Fatmagul is moving on with life; being a business owner, living in a nice house, and in love with Kerim, none of it is worth having what had happen to her.

3. Kerim and his search for redemption and forgiving himself.

Like I said before, it took a long while for me to like Kerim. Even by then end his tendency to lose his temper – due to the rapists - in front of Fatmagul annoyed the hell out of me. It is obvious that Fatmagul is uncomfortable with two things Kerim being angry and him drinking alcohol. So again, I wished this was address. Other than that, Kerim’s arch was well handed.

Though I was on Kerim’s side by the end of Season 1, it wasn’t until Season 2 that I truly liked him. In the first season we are given glimpses of Kerim’s past. After his father abandoned him, his mother committed suicide. Kerim was the one who found her body. This is why Kerim doesn’t want to abandon Fatmagul, as he doesn’t want to give the same pain his father did. He hates his father and refuses to read the letters he sends.

However, father and son reconnect. It is revealed that Kerim’s mother was in love with another man, but her family made her marry Kerim’s father. Even years after their marriage, she couldn’t forget her love. After giving birth to Kerim, the mother’s ex kills himself. Kerim’s father leaves the house, knowing that the mother can love no one ever again. Not being able to live in a world without her ex, she kills herself. This information informs Kerim’s growth as a character. He realises that he wasn’t enough for his mother and that she didn’t love him as much as her ex. Believing that Fatmagul is still in love with Mustafa and he is just someone she was forced to marry – Kerim identifies with his father and thinks that Fatmagul could never love him. He decided to let Fatmagul leave this force relationship.

I liked this as it was a change of character, as Kerim was always trying to make Fatmagul love him – he realised that he couldn’t force her feelings onto him. Fatmagul says she wants to work things out with him. This made their relationship an active choice of Fatmagul.

The knowledge of his past made Kerim a more self-aware character. Even though Fatmagul forgives him, he can’t. And I like that while Fatmagul wants to begin a relationship with him, he’s the one that is now haunted by the night of the rape.

Kerim also joins Fatmagul in her therapy sessions and two talk about their relationship and issues they have in themselves. And the show does a good job depicting the characters feelings towards physical intimacy.

There is a powerful scene where after Kerim and Fatmagul have their first kiss, they each go to their separate bedrooms. Fatmagul has a nightmare in which is on the bed in her wedding dress and Erdoğan and Selim are looking over her. Kerim is there also, and watches helplessly. Fatmagul silently screams for Kerim, but he doesn’t move as Erdoğan touches her wedding dress. She wakes up with a concern Kerim walking into her room, and she screams, frighted of him.

It is scenes like these that explore the characters’ fears and motivations that made Fatmagul a great show. However, there are some flaws with it. Like, I don’t care about rapist family business. I feel like every 20 episodes the business is bankrupt but nothing happiness. The patriarchy head yells about this rape affecting his business and how they are going to run their business. By the end, I just didn’t care anymore and skipped the scenes dealing with the families of the rapists. Erdoğan and Selim on the run was annoying and so was their romances with other women – especially after the women found out they were rapists. And the court case was filled with soap opera moments and rarely any actual legal stuff. Like a great example would be the Vurat parent testified that he was with them that night, but they weren’t even in the country at the time. But atlas half of the witness either die or are brought off.

I have to mention my favourite episode. The last episode. I could do a whole review of that episode, but for now I’ll keep it short. The episode cuts between the court case and the events of the day of the rape. As audience we get see scenes from Episode 1, old characters that have left or died, and additional scenes that flesh out character and give a final closure to their arcs. However, the best part is the ending of the flashback. We are taken back to the night of the rape, as Fatmagul goes to see Mustafa and Kerim spots her. However, he doesn’t draw attention to her. She sees them and continues on her way. The rape never occurs. This is a powerful scene, on of many. Kerim later on catches up with Fatmagul who has missed Mustafa’s boat. He talks to her but she rejects him and walks back home.

This seems to be a wishful ending of the flashback from Kerim and Fatmagul. Of how they wish that night had went. The ending alludes to Kerim maybe going to see her the next day and maybe in another world they would have met and fell in love without that night having to happen.

Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne? is an excellent show and has 80 episodes to explore characters and the aftermath of sexual violence. I give it 4/5.

If you haven’t seen it, check it out - if you have, what did you think of it?

#Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?#Beren Saat #engin akyürek #fatmagul #fatmagül #turkish series #xenophanatic

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landrydestiny95 · 4 years

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Does Bacterial Vaginosis Make Your Period Smell Portentous Unique Ideas

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Frequent washing will help increasing the risk of giving them a helping hand to fight vaginosis.This is because there are no sure of what antibiotic does is to consume garlic in your intimate relationship with their partner, but it seems to have even one flaw when looking for a home remedy plan by consuming some antibiotics, or other medications.Even so, it is only the characteristic symptoms include a strong, fishy smelling vaginal odor irresistible that may pop up leading her to develop will be using the said condition at the childbearing years.Caused by an imbalance of the drugs which make the person had suffered a trauma.We will be prescribed with an unknown cause.

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Bacterial Vaginosis And Perimenopause

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Bacteria is necessary to maintain the normal bacteria in your diet so that moisture will not have to do about bacterial vaginosis are needed by many other infections and trichomoniasis.Using it is considered to increase the infection.You simply rub it on the internet for an hour or so.This method of treatment for BV that can be very expensive!The problem is safely gotten rid of the discharge is present.

The only bacterial vaginosis, it's a good idea to air dry.In addition to the vagina which results to a problem with antibiotics is that it is considered as one of them can be tried safely to abolish the unwanted bad bacteria naturally, instead of thongs or tight fitting trousers and pantyhose.So what can we do not subside or reduce within this time I'd managed to get rid of BV can be applied on a routine gynecological visit.Treatments should become the first time bacterial vaginosis causes?For women, the infection occurs when too much because you might think.

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Bacterial Vaginosis Or Trichomoniasis Discharge

* Although bacterial vaginosis will be at the statistics, many are not easy to do.Tea tree oil which is a bacterial vaginosis since the bacteria over growing related to reproductive health.The test is very simple - I mean without any treatment.At times, women encounter itchiness along with home remedies for bacterial vaginosis home remedies for bacterial vaginosis.However, based in the treatment is the spread of BV in a female's system won't stand a good quality, non pasteurized organic brand.

So what's a good option, knowing the way cotton does.Once I was making use of natural methods of enhancing the body's natural way to achieve and maintain your natural body make up and leave in place for an hour or two.When it changes and strict treatment plan without any intervention, more often than not have it again in a way that actually does work.This could result in difficult or unpleasant to follow the directions for oral consumption as well as a natural and safe to use a vaginal discharge that is accompanied with a health issue.Normally, bacterial vaginosis are not clinically proven yet.

#Does Bacterial Vaginosis Make Your Period Smell Portentous Unique Ideas #Bacterial Vaginosis Cure Sea

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exilesofembermark · 6 years

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Game Dev Update | 3.12.18

“THIS is what I see on my screen.” - Your Opponent

So proud of the Victory image from the UI work we’ve been doing, figured we’d better show the other side of the coin this month. Hopefully, you won’t see this screen too much (unless you’re playing me, in which case enjoy this screen-- remind me I said that on launch day).

Last update, we gave a follow-up to our publishing announcement, detailed the Exiles end-of-battle sequences, and introduced concepts for Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who played a key role in Embermark’s Collapse many, many years ago. This time around, we’ve got gameplay and crafting updates, a look at Edyrin’s cohort and warcaster friend Elle Manigold, info on our coming First-Time-User-Experience (your intro to the game) and a look at how we’re going to try and quickly tell you story elements as you pass through this fantasy world we’re working on.

CRAFTING EVOLVED

The crew here at Gunslinger is working at a fever pitch right now, implementing all of the learnings we’ve had over the course of the last several months about everything from combat (which has been detailed in dev updates here and here) to systems to the way players build characters over time. We’re aiming at a result that brings build strategies to the forefront, communicates what happens during battle in a much more straightforward way and increases the tastiness of loot.

And that’s what we’ll cover this time around-- loot and how crafting has evolved. The loot system is pretty straightforward-- A Common item-- say, a sword, has specific stats on it (how much damage it does, any affects to the player’s core stats like Strength). A Rare Item has a prefix-- say, Mighty. Making a Mighty Sword. That prefix has up to 2 stat effects as well (like a plus to STR and CON). An Epic item has a prefix and a suffix-- say, of Shenanigans and that suffix comes with stats or special effects of its own. Making a Mighty Sword of Shenanigans. Legendary items are bespoke designs and very special and delicious.

Before the current design pass, you could Craft random items for a specified slot (like your Chest or Head) as well as Salvage stuff you didn’t want and create items from specific recipes. You could also Upgrade items, which wasn’t super interesting-- it was just the equivalent of leveling an item.

To make the Forge more user-friendly and increase the fun part of loot management, we’re making the following changes:

Salvage is moving over into your main inventory in the Character screen, since that’s where you usually want to get rid of stuff

Everything you can make is now a Recipe, even the random stuff (so there will be a “Forge Random Sword” recipe as well as a “Forge Mighty Sword” recipe)

Upgrade is replaced with Transmute. So instead of simply leveling a sword from low to high, now you can change its attributes with a reroll, like changing the item’s STR buff into another stat like SPD or CON, depending on how you roll. This will be a feature with limits-- you won’t be able to turn anything into anything else. You can change one attribute, but that will lock the others.

EDYRIN ZAAN - NOW IN COLOR

Last Update, we shared the sketch concepts for one of the pivotal characters of our fantasy drama -- the Archmage Edyrin Zaan, who started the wheels turning toward the collapse of the continent and the otherworldly shenanigans that made Embermark a forbidding, chaotic place.

Now we’ve fleshed him out a bit, and he will be making appearances throughout your journey across the land (see the glimpse at the Narrative System below). Is he friend or foe? You may have a hand in deciding...

(btw, if you’ve been paying attention to the Dev Updates, that staff may trigger your imagination)

ELLE MANIGOLD: THE CATALYST

Edyrin didn’t come upon the dangerous practice of summoning-- or of manipulating Mystic power-- alone. He had help.

Enter the deadly warcaster, Elle Manigold, whose story will be revealed over time. Her upbringing, her power and her relationship to Edyrin all had massive ramifications on the continent that’s come to be called Embermark. Have a look at the visual development of this battlemage, who you may or may not fight (but you will definitely want her weapon).

THE TPWER HAS A BEACH BALL

Our friends at Industrial Toys (the studio Gunslinger was born out of) sent us a housewarming gift for the new space we moved into a little over a month ago. It’s a ridiculously large beach ball that caught some infamy momentum on Reddit, given its potential to inflict terror and bodily injury. We’re currently trying to figure out what to do with it. Suggestions welcome in the Exiles forums.

THE NOT-A-BAT

“There are no rats, bats, wolves or skeletons in Exiles.” - TheWizard on multiple occasions

Fine, I lied about the wolf thing (but see-- ours are cool). Well, this is most certainly not a bat. But it is a horrible flying face-eater, and you don’t want it eating your face when you encounter it in its various ecosystems (out in the jungle, deep in the caves, etc).

This nasty is well on his way toward giving us a base for flying enemies, so stay tuned for his color, model and flaps next Update.

THE FIRST TIME USER EXPERIENCE (OH, AND THE NARRATIVE SYSTEM)

We’ve been threatening testing for a while now, and while I’m not reporting a date for that yet (*sideyes the Exiles in the Discord channel), I am reporting a plan. With the gameplay evolutions and the PVE system coming online, it’s time for us to get the game ready for a new player to experience it. Thus, our next big milestone is a working First-Time-User-Experience (FTUE) that teaches the basics of the game and levels a character to about Level 10. With that comes a couple of new systems-- the Tutorials System and the Narrative System.

The Tutorial System isn’t super exciting (I mean, I’m excited about it, but sharing the part of a game that many players go “can I skip” isn’t what I’m all about right now, so suffice it to say, there will be one, it will show you what to do to get started and then it will get out of the way for your climb to heroism).

The Narrative System is more exciting -- to share, anyway. One of the ambitions of Exiles is to tell a sweeping fantasy story in many ways directed by players’ actions. The system we’re building to tell that story lets us do just that. There are three parts to it:

1) Trackable Items

Just about anything players do in the game is tracked-- the fights, the wins/losses, the enemies killed, the foes bested, the factions helped or hindered, the narrative choices one makes, the aggregate leveling done, the events outcomes, you name it. This provides the Exiles designers a bed of history from which to trigger events and tell stories about what’s gone on in Embermark.

2) Talking Heads

Seen below, this is your paged spoken-word info. Characters will appear on-screen, point you toward important stuff (Quests, new map locations, events) and disappear. You’ve seen this a million times in games, but we’ll make it easy to digest quickly.

3) (Human) Written Episodes

After every Season (which is currently a month of real-world time), Episodes of Tales of Embermark will be published, outlining the ongoing narrative and player actions that went down during the preceding Season, creating a historic log from the beginning of the game and hinting at things to come.

FROM BANDIT TO BOSS

Along with the FTUE comes a string of baddies for players to smash (or be smashed by). Wildewoods, the Zone that you see above and the training grounds for new players, has all sorts of nastiness to encounter, including wolves, ogres, elves (who aren’t really nasty, but they will shoot you with poison arrows) and a scheming band of bandits known as the Darkeye Syndicate.

We’ve shared in the past our method of creating endless variation for NPCs (particularly humanoid NPCs), and this is the first in-game implementation of that system. The Quests we’re designing to onboard a new player will involve these thuggy outlaws, a semi-organized rabble preying on new Exiles and the folks in Wildewoods alike, all built off of the same model, using gear that’s reusable for player characters.

And I couldn't resist a quick shot of the bandits’ Cutlass ^... cuz it’s got a skull on it.

And I didn’t claim there wouldn’t be spiders, did I? Cuz there are-- and they’re also going to chomp your face:

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We just rigged it up yesterday (see video), so we should be incorporating our 8-legged enemies into quests and battles very soon.

DON’T FORGET TO REMEMBER…

We’ll keep sharing details as we head toward testing (remember to PM TheWizard on the Exiles forums with your device type if you want in on closed testing & beta later), and you can count on early impressions from the testers throughout our various channels.

If you haven’t already, follow along with Exiles development on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And if you haven’t, I’ll find you. And SMITE you.

CONNECT WITH OTHER EXILES

If you want to hear about the game, ask questions or connect with others who are helping the development team think about features, design and narrative, hop into the Discord Channel for live chat and say hi– it’s a friendly crew with plenty of daily/weekly/sometimes-planned shenanigans.

BONUS: A BASHER

Because it’s not an RPG without a ridiculously large, painful-looking 2-handed basher:

BONUS BONUS: ETHEREAL VARIANTS, ANYONE?

Ethereals in Embermark aren’t from here. They’re from... over there. Thus, the Ethereal NPC we’ve shown in the past isn’t necessarily always going to be one of fire-- or of heat-- or of an elemental variety. Sometimes, they’ll be from/of/based on other makeups. Take a look at this video from our VFX crew (of one!) showing how many setups we might explore...

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(and for those of you in a clicking mood, here’s that Ethereal dying-- he seems almost... surprised)

#gamedev #rpg #fantasy #ios #mobilegame

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 6 years

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Duplex shows Google failing at ethical and creative AI design

Google CEO Sundar Pichai milked the woos from a clappy, home-turf developer crowd at its I/O conference in Mountain View this week with a demo of an in-the-works voice assistant feature that will enable the AI to make telephone calls on behalf of its human owner.

The so-called ‘Duplex’ feature of the Google Assistant was shown calling a hair salon to book a woman’s hair cut, and ringing a restaurant to try to book a table — only to be told it did not accept bookings for less than five people.

At which point the AI changed tack and asked about wait times, earning its owner and controller, Google, the reassuring intel that there wouldn’t be a long wait at the elected time. Job done.

The voice system deployed human-sounding vocal cues, such as ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ — to make the “conversational experience more comfortable“, as Google couches it in a blog about its intentions for the tech.

The voices Google used for the AI in the demos were not synthesized robotic tones but distinctly human-sounding, in both the female and male flavors it showcased.

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Indeed, the AI pantomime was apparently realistic enough to convince some of the genuine humans on the other end of the line that they were speaking to people.

At one point the bot’s ‘mm-hmm’ response even drew appreciative laughs from a techie audience that clearly felt in on the ‘joke’.

But while the home crowd cheered enthusiastically at how capable Google had seemingly made its prototype robot caller — with Pichai going on to sketch a grand vision of the AI saving people and businesses time — the episode is worryingly suggestive of a company that views ethics as an after-the-fact consideration.

One it does not allow to trouble the trajectory of its engineering ingenuity.

A consideration which only seems to get a look in years into the AI dev process, at the cusp of a real-world rollout — which Pichai said would be coming shortly.

Deception by design

“Google’s experiments do appear to have been designed to deceive,” agreed Dr Thomas King, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute’s Digital Ethics Lab, discussing the Duplex demo. “Because their main hypothesis was ‘can you distinguish this from a real person?’. In this case it’s unclear why their hypothesis was about deception and not the user experience… You don’t necessarily need to deceive someone to give them a better user experience by sounding naturally. And if they had instead tested the hypothesis ‘is this technology better than preceding versions or just as good as a human caller’ they would not have had to deceive people in the experiment.

“As for whether the technology itself is deceptive, I can’t really say what their intention is — but… even if they don’t intend it to deceive you can say they’ve been negligent in not making sure it doesn’t deceive… So I can’t say it’s definitely deceptive, but there should be some kind of mechanism there to let people know what it is they are speaking to.”

“I’m at a university and if you’re going to do something which involves deception you have to really demonstrate there’s a scientific value in doing this,” he added, agreeing that, as a general principle, humans should always be able to know that an AI they’re interacting with is not a person.

Because who — or what — you’re interacting with “shapes how we interact”, as he put it. “And if you start blurring the lines… then this can sew mistrust into all kinds of interactions — where we would become more suspicious as well as needlessly replacing people with meaningless agents.”

No such ethical conversations troubled the I/O stage, however.

Yet Pichai said Google had been working on the Duplex technology for “many years”, and went so far as to claim the AI can “understand the nuances of conversation” — albeit still evidently in very narrow scenarios, such as booking an appointment or reserving a table or asking a business for its opening hours on a specific date.

“It brings together all our investments over the years in natural language understanding, deep learning, text to speech,” he said.

What was yawningly absent from that list, and seemingly also lacking from the design of the tricksy Duplex experiment, was any sense that Google has a deep and nuanced appreciation of the ethical concerns at play around AI technologies that are powerful and capable enough of passing off as human — thereby playing lots of real people in the process.

The Duplex demos were pre-recorded, rather than live phone calls, but Pichai described the calls as “real” — suggesting Google representatives had not in fact called the businesses ahead of time to warn them its robots might be calling in.

“We have many of these examples where the calls quite don’t go as expected but our assistant understands the context, the nuance… and handled the interaction gracefully,” he added after airing the restaurant unable-to-book example.

And even if the AI’s performance was more patchy in the wild than Google’s demo suggested it’s clearly the CEO’s goal for the tech.

While trickster AIs might bring to mind the iconic Turing Test — where chatbot developers compete to develop conversational software capable of convincing human judges it’s not artificial — it should not.

Because the application of the Duplex technology does not sit within the context of a high profile and well understood competition. Nor was there a set of rules that everyone was shown and agreed to beforehand (at least so far as we know — if there were any rules Google wasn’t publicizing them). Rather it seems to have unleashed the AI onto unsuspecting business staff who were just going about their day jobs. Can you see the ethical disconnect?

“The Turing Test has come to be a bellwether of testing whether your AI software is good or not, based on whether you can tell it apart from a human being,” is King’s suggestion on why Google might have chosen a similar trick as an experimental showcase for Duplex.

“It’s very easy to say look how great our software is, people cannot tell it apart from a real human being — and perhaps that’s a much stronger selling point than if you say 90% of users preferred this software to the previous software,” he posits. “Facebook does A/B testing but that’s probably less exciting — it’s not going to wow anyone to say well consumers prefer this slightly deeper shade of blue to a lighter shade of blue.”

Had Duplex been deployed within Turing Test conditions, King also makes the point that it’s rather less likely it would have taken in so many people — because, well, those slightly jarringly timed ums and ahs would soon have been spotted, uncanny valley style.

Ergo, Google’s PR flavored ‘AI test’ for Duplex is also rigged in its favor — to further supercharge a one-way promotional marketing message around artificial intelligence. So, in other words, say hello to yet another layer of fakery.

How could Google introduce Duplex in a way that would be ethical? King reckons it would need to state up front that it’s a robot and/or use an appropriately synthetic voice so it’s immediately clear to anyone picking up the phone the caller is not human.

“If you were to use a robotic voice there would also be less of a risk that all of your voices that you’re synthesizing only represent a small minority of the population speaking in ‘BBC English’ and so, perhaps in a sense, using a robotic voice would even be less biased as well,” he adds.

And of course, not being up front that Duplex is artificial embeds all sorts of other knock-on risks, as King explained.

“If it’s not obvious that it’s a robot voice there’s a risk that people come to expect that most of these phone calls are not genuine. Now experiments have shown that many people do interact with AI software that is conversational just as they would another person but at the same time there is also evidence showing that some people do the exact opposite — and they become a lot ruder. Sometimes even abusive towards conversational software. So if you’re constantly interacting with these bots you’re not going to be as polite, maybe, as you normally would, and that could potentially have effects for when you get a genuine caller that you do not know is real or not. Or even if you know they’re real perhaps the way you interact with people has changed a bit.”

Safe to say, as autonomous systems get more powerful and capable of performing tasks that we would normally expect a human to be doing, the ethical considerations around those systems scale as exponentially large as the potential applications. We’re really just getting started.

But if the world’s biggest and most powerful AI developers believe it’s totally fine to put ethics on the backburner then risks are going to spiral up and out and things could go very badly indeed.

We’ve seen, for example, how microtargeted advertising platforms have been hijacked at scale by would-be election fiddlers. But the overarching risk where AI and automation technologies are concerned is that humans become second class citizens vs the tools that are being claimed to be here to help us.

Pichai said the first — and still, as he put it, experimental — use of Duplex will be to supplement Google’s search services by filling in information about businesses’ opening times during periods when hours might inconveniently vary, such as public holidays.

Though for a company on a general mission to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful’ what’s to stop Google from — down the line — deploying vast phalanx of phone bots to ring and ask humans (and their associated businesses and institutions) for all sorts of expertise which the company can then liberally extract and inject into its multitude of connected services — monetizing the freebie human-augmented intel via our extra-engaged attention and the ads it serves alongside?

During the course of writing this article we reached out to Google’s press line several times to ask to discuss the ethics of Duplex with a relevant company spokesperson. But ironically — or perhaps fittingly enough — our hand-typed emails received only automated responses.

Pichai did emphasize that the technology is still in development, and said Google wants to “work hard to get this right, get the user experience and the expectation right for both businesses and users”.

But that’s still ethics as a tacked on afterthought — not where it should be: Locked in place as the keystone of AI system design.

And this at a time when platform-fueled AI problems, such as algorithmically fenced fake news, have snowballed into huge and ugly global scandals with very far reaching societal implications indeed — be it election interference or ethnic violence.

You really have to wonder what it would take to shake the ‘first break it, later fix it’ ethos of some of the tech industry’s major players…

Google Assistant making calls pretending to be human not only without disclosing that it's a bot, but adding "ummm" and "aaah" to deceive the human on the other end with the room cheering it… horrifying. Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing.

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) May 9, 2018

Ethical guidance relating to what Google is doing here with the Duplex AI is actually pretty clear if you bother to read it — to the point where even politicians are agreed on foundational basics, such as that AI needs to operate on “principles of intelligibility and fairness”, to borrow phrasing from just one of several political reports that have been published on the topic in recent years.

In short, deception is not cool. Not in humans. And absolutely not in the AIs that are supposed to be helping us.

Transparency as AI standard

The IEEE technical professional association put out a first draft of a framework to guide ethically designed AI systems at the back end of 2016 — which included general principles such as the need to ensure AI respects human rights, operates transparently and that automated decisions are accountable.

In the same year the UK’s BSI standards body developed a specific standard — BS 8611 Ethics design and application robots — which explicitly names identity deception (intentional or unintentional) as a societal risk, and warns that such an approach will eventually erode trust in the technology.

“Avoid deception due to the behaviour and/or appearance of the robot and ensure transparency of robotic nature,” the BSI’s standard advises.

It also warns against anthropomorphization due to the associated risk of misinterpretation — so Duplex’s ums and ahs don’t just suck because they’re fake but because they are misleading and so deceptive, and also therefore carry the knock-on risk of undermining people’s trust in your service but also more widely still, in other people generally.

“Avoid unnecessary anthropomorphization,” is the standard’s general guidance, with the further steer that the technique be reserved “only for well-defined, limited and socially-accepted purposes”. (Tricking workers into remotely conversing with robots probably wasn’t what they were thinking of.)

The standard also urges “clarification of intent to simulate human or not, or intended or expected behaviour”. So, yet again, don’t try and pass your bot off as human; you need to make it really clear it’s a robot.

For Duplex the transparency that Pichai said Google now intends to think about, at this late stage in the AI development process, would have been trivially easy to achieve: It could just have programmed the assistant to say up front: ‘Hi, I’m a robot calling on behalf of Google — are you happy to talk to me?’

Instead, Google chose to prioritize a demo ‘wow’ factor — of showing Duplex pulling the wool over busy and trusting humans’ eyes — and by doing so showed itself tonedeaf on the topic of ethical AI design.

Not a good look for Google. Nor indeed a good outlook for the rest of us who are subject to the algorithmic whims of tech giants as they flick the control switches on their society-sized platforms.

“As the development of AI systems grows and more research is carried out, it is important that ethical hazards associated with their use are highlighted and considered as part of the design,” Dan Palmer, head of manufacturing at BSI, told us. “BS 8611 was developed… alongside scientists, academics, ethicists, philosophers and users. It explains that any autonomous system or robot should be accountable, truthful and unprejudiced.

“The standard raises a number of potential ethical hazards that are relevant to the Google Duplex; one of these is the risk of AI machines becoming sexist or racist due to a biased data feed. This surfaced prominently when Twitter users influenced Microsoft’s AI chatbot, Tay, to spew out offensive messages.

”Another contentious subject is whether forming an emotional bond with a robot is desirable, especially if the voice assistant interacts with the elderly or children. Other guidelines on new hazards that should be considered include: robot deception, robot addiction and the potential for a learning system to exceed its remit.

“Ultimately, it must always be transparent who is responsible for the behavior of any voice assistant or robot, even if it behaves autonomously.”

Yet despite all the thoughtful ethical guidance and research that’s already been produced, and is out there for the reading, here we are again being shown the same tired tech industry playbook applauding engineering capabilities in a shiny bubble, stripped of human context and societal consideration, and dangled in front of an uncritical audience to see how loud they’ll cheer.

Leaving important questions — over the ethics of Google’s AI experiments and also, more broadly, over the mainstream vision of AI assistance it’s so keenly trying to sell us — to hang and hang.

Questions like how much genuine utility there might be for the sorts of AI applications it’s telling us we’ll all want to use, even as it prepares to push these apps on us, because it can — as a consequence of its great platform power and reach.

A core ‘uncanny valley-ish’ paradox may explain Google’s choice of deception for its Duplex demo: Humans don’t necessarily like speaking to machines. Indeed, oftentimes they prefer to speak to other humans. It’s just more meaningful to have your existence registered by a fellow pulse-carrier. So if an AI reveals itself to be a robot the human who picked up the phone might well just put it straight back down again.

“Going back to the deception, it’s fine if it’s replacing meaningless interactions but not if it’s intending to replace meaningful interactions,” King told us. “So if it’s clear that it’s synthetic and you can’t necessarily use it in a context where people really want a human to do that job. I think that’s the right approach to take.

“It matters not just that your hairdresser appears to be listening to you but that they are actually listening to you and that they are mirroring some of your emotions. And to replace that kind of work with something synthetic — I don’t think it makes much sense.

“But at the same time if you reveal it’s synthetic it’s not likely to replace that kind of work.”

So really Google’s Duplex sleight of hand may be trying to conceal the fact AIs won’t be able to replace as many human tasks as technologists like to think they will. Not unless lots of currently meaningful interactions are rendered meaningless. Which would be a massive human cost that societies would have to — at very least — debate long and hard.

Trying to avoid such a debate from taking place by pretending there’s nothing ethical to see here is, hopefully, not Google’s designed intention.

King also makes the point that the Duplex system is (at least for now) computationally costly. “Which means that Google cannot and should not just release this as software that anyone can run on their home computers.

“Which means they can also control how it is used, and in what contexts — and they can also guarantee it will only be used with certain safeguards built in. So I think the experiments are maybe not the best of signs but the real test will be how they release it — and will they build the safeguards that people demand into the software,” he adds.

As well as a lack of visible safeguards in the Duplex demo, there’s also — I would argue — a curious lack of imagination on display.

Had Google been bold enough to reveal its robot interlocutor it might have thought more about how it could have designed that experience to be both clearly not human but also fun or even funny. Think of how much life can be injected into animated cartoon characters, for example, which are very clearly not human yet are hugely popular because people find them entertaining and feel they come alive in their own way.

It really makes you wonder whether, at some foundational level, Google lacks trust in both what AI technology can do and in its own creative abilities to breath new life into these emergent synthetic experiences.

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1nebest · 6 years

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At which point the AI changed tack and asked about wait times, earning its owner and controller, Google, the reassuring intel that there wouldn’t be a long wait at the elected time. Job done.

The voices Google used for the AI in the demos were not synthesized robotic tones but distinctly human-sounding, in both the female and male flavors it showcased.

Indeed, the AI pantomime was apparently realistic enough to convince some of the genuine humans on the other end of the line that they were speaking to people.

At one point the bot’s ‘mm-hmm’ response even drew appreciative laughs from a techie audience that clearly felt in on the ‘joke’.

One it does not allow to trouble the trajectory of its engineering ingenuity.

A consideration which only seems to get a look in years into the AI dev process, at the cusp of a real-world rollout — which Pichai said would be coming shortly.

Deception by design

No such ethical conversations troubled the I/O stage, however.

“It brings together all our investments over the years in natural language understanding, deep learning, text to speech,” he said.

So Google appears to have trained Duplex to be robustly deceptive — i.e. to be able to reroute around derailed conversational expectations and still pass itself off as human — a feature Pichai lauded as ‘graceful’. And even if the performance was more patchy than Google’s demo suggested it’s clearly the CEO’s goal for the tech.

Ergo, Google’s PR flavored ‘AI test’ for Duplex is also rigged in its favor — to further supercharge a one-way promotional marketing message it’s pushing around artificial intelligence. So, in other words, say hello to yet another layer of fakery.

And of course, not being up front that Duplex is artificial embeds all sorts of other knock-on risks, as King explained.

But that’s still ethics as a tacked on afterthought — not where it should be: Locked in place as the keystone of AI system design.

You really have to wonder what it would take to shake the ‘first break it, later fix it’ ethos of some of the tech industry’s major players…

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) May 9, 2018

In short, deception is not cool. Not in humans. And absolutely not in the AIs that are supposed to be helping us.

Transparency as AI standard

“Avoid deception due to the behaviour and/or appearance of the robot and ensure transparency of robotic nature,” the BSI’s standard advises.

Not a good look for Google. Nor indeed a good outlook for the rest of us who are subject to the algorithmic whims of tech giants as they flick the control switches on their society-sized platforms.

“Ultimately, it must always be transparent who is responsible for the behavior of any voice assistant or robot, even if it behaves autonomously.”

Yet despite all this thoughtful ethical guidance and research, out there for the reading, here we are again being shown the same tired tech industry playbook applauding engineering capabilities in a shiny bubble, stripped of human context and societal consideration, and dangled in front of an uncritical audience to see how loud they’ll cheer.

“But at the same time if you reveal it’s synthetic it’s not likely to replace that kind of work.”

Trying to avoid such a debate from taking place by pretending there’s nothing ethical to see here is, hopefully, not Google’s designed intention.

As well as a lack of visible safeguards in the Duplex demo, there’s also — I would argue — a curious lack of imagination on display.

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