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pynkhues · 3 years

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Why does Dean plead guilty? Is it bc of Phoebe? Is it because he wants to protect Beth? Is it because he wants to take the credit? Does it have to do with his male-ness? Have you already explored this topic? #questions

That’s such a good question, anon! It makes for a really interesting (and I actually think in-character) beat for Dean, and I think you’re right in the sense that it’s partially about protecting Beth and partially having to do with his male-ness, but I think there’s also something more fundamental at play.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how this show explores image, perception and projection, and how frequently those things are at the root of Beth and Dean’s arcs, both together and apart. These themes do of course feed into other character storylines (Annie at Ben’s school charity auction in 4.02 being one of the clearest examples of this – that was entirely about projecting an image to Ben’s peers and trying to change the way she would be perceived), but I don’t think it roots as deeply as it does in Beth and Dean, in no small part because Beth and Dean’s biggest audience is themselves.

So! Let’s break that down and talk about how that feeds into Dean pleading guilty.

Rose Coloured Boy (Rose Coloured Girl): nostalgia as the face of love

One of the things that’s always fascinating to me about Beth and Dean’s relationship is how often the show roots it in the past. One of the very first moments of Dean acting regretful over his cheating way back in 1.02 is through talking about the ‘fun stuff [he and Beth] did in the back seat in highschool’. That sense of the history of their romance is further emphasised in imagery of their past – Beth and Dean’s wedding photo is revisited frequently in season 1 while their anniversary is a key moment of the finale, Dean reminisces over screenshots of the kids as babies in season 2, and they even talk sweetly about anniversary dates, and their first apartment together after signing their divorce papers in 2.13.

This paints a picture of a tender history. One of young love and years of happiness and kindness, only it’s a history that the show has regularly, deliberately undermined.

All those beautiful pictures Dean’s looking at of his young family together and happy? Well, 2.05 confirmed that Beth was pregnant while he was having one of his affairs, so which of those photos are truly happy, and which were taken while Dean was betraying her? Similarly, they talk and joke about Valentine’s Day three years ago at the end of 3.08, but if he wasn’t having an affair with Amber then, he was likely having one with another woman.

The purpose of undermining history like this isn’t about the show forgetting or retconning these plot points – especially when the show ties these moments to other emotions, like Dean’s jealousy over Rio in 3.08 (and I’ll come back to that later), or Dean’s feelings of failure – but rather to establish the way that Beth and Dean both romanticise their past and paint it with a rose-coloured brush.

They tell themselves that they might not be happy today, but they were happy yesterday. And then they say that the next day and the next day and the next day, until every unhappy day, becomes a happy yesterday.

That romanticisation of their history is intrinsically tied to an image that they want to project to themselves. They have put so much time and energy into this thing between them, they have so many children, have so much of their lives entwined, that they need to believe that it’s all been worth it, because if it’s not, the image cracks and I don’t think either of them have the tools to handle that.

Which we kind of saw in 4.03.

It’s not an accident that the Beth and Dean flashbacks were in that episode – an episode that in a lot of ways fractured the image of Beth and Dean’s relationship, particularly for Dean. He’s been under the impression that they’re better, that they’re working again, that neither of them are cheating and Rio’s far away and Beth believes in him like she did before everything went wrong, and to discover that that image was false – was a projection of what Beth wanted him to believe, and perhaps simply what he himself wanted to believe too – is challenging to say the very least.

He was put in a position where he was faced not only with the extreme consequences of his wife’s actions, but a domino effect of lie after lie after lie, and the show choosing to take us back to the start of their relationship at that very moment, I think, shows us that the root of Beth and Dean’s relationship came back to Beth needing to be looked after, and Dean deciding, without knowing Beth very well, that he wanted to be the one to do it.

Macho Macho Man: Dean & Masculinity

Which brings us to Dean and masculinity. I’ve talked about the show’s exploration of masculinity quite a bit now (hell, it even has its own tag now, haha), and wrote a whole series of posts after 2.04 about male ego which I should probably update sometime to include s3 and s4, but it really is one of the core themes of the show. It bubbles to the surface almost constantly and frequently becomes a driving factor of character motivations, particularly characters like Turner, who had his male ego challenged by Beth which resulted in a vendetta, to Boomer��s toxic masculinity driving him through much of the show.

For Dean though, his masculinity is frequently projected only to be destroyed, undermined or used against him in a way that ultimately completely emasculates him. The scene of Dean trying to reassert gender roles on himself and Beth only to have Rio bone his wife, destroy his prized car and insert himself into his business is perhaps the clearest example of that, but it manifests in plenty of other ways too. From hiring hitmen only to be robbed and have his wife’s panties stuck in his mouth, to buying the gun only to have it stolen, to think he’s establishing a new business for himself only to discover his wife’s pulling the strings with her ex-lover. Hell, even the fact of losing the business in the first place is inherently emasculating.

What I’m getting at is that every time Dean asserts himself in ways that are typically considered ‘Masculine’ – providing for his family, dominating his wife / treating her paternalistically, behaving with violent intents, establishing a business – it’s only to have that immediately undermined in the narrative. Dean likes this image for himself, and wants to project it, but the show keeps telling us that the image is a false one.

And then the show outright used that falsehood, and Dean’s insecurity over it, in 4.02 with Dave convincing Dean to give him the books, despite Beth telling him they weren’t ready.

Dean played right into his hand because Dave saw Dean’s masculinity for what it was – a projection covering an insecurity, which in turn, made Dean act thoughtlessly.

(Another pattern of behaviour for Dean! Like hiring the hitmen or cutting the money plate).

Dean’s commitment to the image of masculinity is in a lot of ways too tied to this idea of the rose-coloured image of his and Beth’s romantic history. Beth, from an image standpoint, is a case study in traditional femininity, and for much of their 20-year relationship, they’ve had their roles and they’ve stuck to them. The challenge of that throughout the course of the series is ultimately a challenge to the image that their relationship is based on, which in turn means that Dean’s feelings of failing masculinity end up being tied to his feelings and insecurities around Beth, frequently manifesting into jealousy over Rio.

To have that used against him by Dave (and funnily enough, Rio using those same feelings of Dean’s against Beth in 4.02) is a really interesting character note and I think very much fuels his motivation in the scene with Phoebe.

That Loving Feeling: a brief aside

I feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention here that I actually do think Beth and Dean love each other. I think that it’s a broken love, like Christina said in her BUILD interview while promoting season 3, and I also think it’s a child’s love, which is something that we saw a bit through these flashbacks. Their relationship is so steeped in that history and that origin, that their love has failed to grow with them. It’s a sort of arrested development type of love, which I think makes them cling to the image all the harder, and it’s that old love and that image that’s stopped Dean from ever even contemplating turning Beth in.

Dean Pleads Guilty

Projection and perception are key in this show overall, but especially this season. We’ve seen that with the way Fitzpatrick has projected onto Beth, which I’ll talk about another time, but we also importantly saw Phoebe project onto Beth in this episode. She equates Beth to a girl she was friends with in highschool who used her, and tells Dean as such.

Phoebe’s projection of Beth – her image of her – isn’t one that Dean identifies with, and he tells her as much in return. While Dean is quiet in the scene overall outside of that interaction, the flashbacks deliberately seek to remind us of the nostalgia that has driven Beth and Dean’s relationship for the last twenty years and four seasons of the show. There’s a part of Dean that still sees Beth as the girl he chose to look after when they were just teenagers, and I think having his masculinity threatened the episode before by Dave intermingled with Dean’s nostalgia and his desire to ‘man up’ and take care of her in the way he tried to when her mum was in the hospital. All their murky, messy history and anger and hurt is painted over again, and Dean, at least in the moment, re-commits himself to the image of what he and Beth are.

He’s the man, she’s the woman, and it’s just another unhappy today for all those happy yesterdays.

#beth x dean #beth boland #dean boland #gg 4.03 #masculinity #character backgrounds #staying's worse than leaving #welcome to my ama #Anonymous

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ratplagues · 3 years

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🔥 any dishonored thing of ur choosing -deathoftheoutsider

wah okay!! i will talk a bit about the outsider and void then..i dont really wanna frame it as a Hot Take bc i have no interest in starting shit or whatever like ill interact with whatever i want to in this fandom and ignore the rest and everyone else is free to do the same but.

I do not think The Outsider is a “character” in the conventional sense, much less that it does his character or the allegory he wields any justice to be shipped with anyone in the series (at least without seriously considering the implications and framing it in a way that completes the allegory. more on this later)

the outsider and his void are an allegory for Otherness; i’m namely gonna frame it as queerness and neurodiversity, but really anything could fit as long as it’s about you feeling seen as a marginalized and othered person. he is written to represent this allegory, not to be a person with a satisfying narrative arc or dimensions. this is why some people feel that he lacks depth-- he’s not supposed to have depth compared to others in the series, he’s mostly a vehicle for what he represents, and is supposed to be easy to identify with or recognize.

he was born to a life of hardship, suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful, was ignored, cast out, etc. etc. a familiar story. poor, queer, nd, really whatever you wanna frame it as. he was a nobody outcast. in comes the envisioned, they pick him to serve as their martyr and idol without his permission. he then had his name cut away and forgotten, and was thrust onto a pedestal to spend the rest of eternity being worshipped by other outcasts who had suffered at the same hands he had. he has something greatly in common with those who worship him, including the very people who stripped his mortality from him in the first place, but because of this shared hardship (and nothing else), his own autonomous personhood was disregarded completely in favor of The Community needing someone Just Like Them to idolize. if this sounds familiar, that’s because it should!!

his humanity was taken from him, and in his place, an idol was created. his human body is frozen in stone in the center of the void-- retired. out of commission. no longer needed. he was immortalized, transcended. this is traditionally desired, although dishonored is trying to convince you that it is not actually desirable. in the age of internet content creation, you can be immortalized without even being present, without knowing about it. you become what you can do for other people, and what you cannot. people fall in love with an idea of you, the idea of you being like them, and other people come to hate you deeply without even knowing you. people came to hate the outsider more deeply than he ever had been when he was human-- he wasn’t seen when he was human. a pedestal only helps you to be seen. the outsider had the choice made for him to achieve immortality in exchange for the simple joys of being un-known.

he spends all of doto trying to convey this idea to billie through the hollows:

"There is freedom in being hated. There is license in being cast out. Some learn this lesson a little too well." "These people lay their thoughts, their petty wants, their murderous desires in front of me to witness. I cannot turn away." "We carry what was done to us through the rest of our endless days. No one asked if we wanted it." (i like this one. he speaks for the community-- this is a shared experience, one everyone can recognize. however, as a Queer Figure, he never asked for this. he never asked to be immortalized. i like the double meaning here)

not to mention, the entire extent of the outsider’s Sole ability and influence on the real world is to “choose” people and give them untold power over others. this is a fun ironic twist on what marginalized groups endure from powerful people, (dishonored is largely about power imbalances and socioeconomic hierarchies) but it’s also fun to think about in the context of the role model/fan framing-- so many worshippers give their lives to be “chosen” by him. it’s easily framed as an exaggeration of otherwise very real power imbalances and often the flagrant breaching of boundaries existing between creators and fans.

and on the subject of the VOID...ohht he void.....

the void should be a haven for queer folks. for nd folks. it’s wanted by so many to be a safe space, it should be, it’s the Other World! it’s renounced by the abbey, crusaded against, even. but it isn’t. it’s just this limitless, eons-old horizon that hungers and starves for something to fill it. if the outsider is the lament of queer idolatry, the void is the lament of queer Hunger. it is roaming, and restless. it does not belong to the outsider; the outsider cannot survive without it. it’s the desire to belong, not a place of belonging.

the void craves this idol, this outsider-- i, for one, have often experienced hunger for a truly moral and just role model, someone to make the world Right, and i know this is another shared feeling. those who worship the outsider, who drive themselves mad trying to see him or be chosen by him, are suffering from this idol hunger. you see this in a lot of queer and nd kids and young adults. i grew up just having my life and interests like, punctuated by different fixations on different people that i didn’t know at all, only fell in love with the idea of. it happens a lot.

there’s a couple more doto quotes that really highlight this for me:

"They carve my mark into the old bones bleached by the sun. They carve my mark into their skin. They learn true hunger in the Void." "All these charms, these runes and fetid offerings on shrines made for me, will be nothing more than objects worn of meaning. Bones and dead things, thrown into the dirt."

“They learn true hunger in the Void.” is something that i wanna touch on real quick. people can spend their lives obsessing over the idea of what they think the void will cure for them, will fix in their lives, only to find out that it’s just a hollow manifestation of the emptiness they’ve felt all their lives. it’s not the needs met, but the need itself. you have to make the home, it doesn’t already exist and you can’t fucking run to it. it is heartbreaking, frustrating, one of the bleakest messages i’ve ever encountered in a game, but i’ve never felt more seen. by submitting to these ideas, the idea of a perfect unhuman human and the idea of a perfect otherworldly home, you are surrendering your humanity. you’re not only being transformed by the powers gained (if they are gained), you’re essentially dissolving with hunger after never having these needs met. you see so many people in these games whittling themselves down to nothing but base need. empty apartments occupied only by shrines, sometimes containing their corpses. journals of people dedicating their lives to the worship of the outsider, always ending darkly. "I will find this empty place. Somehow the key to open the Void will fall into my hands. In time, I will learn the secret and he will call to me as he called to her."

not to mention The New Envisioned-- prolonged exposure to the void will always, without fail, turn a human into silver void stone. these creatures can no longer interact with or acknowledge the mortal world. they have surrendered themselves to hunger, and cannot be saved. this is celebrated by the cult, honored by them, even. i honestly like....i pity them, and i hate them, and i recognize that i’ve been those people, lmao. when i was at my worst as a teenager, i wasnt so much a person as i was just a shell full of hunger and heartbreak. my personality was defined by who i was a fan of. i think i definitely was Less Human then. the cult of the outsider is a universal experience!!

dishonored, at its core, is a celebration of humanity. it asks you to celebrate human emotion and weakness despite greed and bigotry. the powers are not to be wanted, they are to be ignored, refused. it is human to hunger, but it is Queer and Divergent to make hunger your life’s meaning, to need to learn the secret, find the key, be chosen and loved and cherished, to be made whole by some perfect thing. to find your humanity in something un-human. dishonored sees all that, mourns it with you, and then asks you to find humanity in each other !! love the spine of your lover, the blood draining down the docks, the pause to stretch languidly in the sun of a work day.

and finally...on the topic of outsider shipping....i dont think that, in his god form, it does him much justice to be shipped with anyone. he’s not much of a person, just a projection of his former self and a vehicle for his allegory as discussed-- im sure he could be shipped like this, but it just isn’t satisfying to me in any way. however, let’s talk a bit about his lethal and nonlethal ending. DOTO asks you to make a choice. is it better to give him an abrupt and merciful ending, after deciding that the fury he’s endured at the hands of others’ famine is too much trauma for any mortal to live with? or will you decide that it’s only fair to give him a chance to live the life he never got to, to return his humanity that was taken without his consent? if you choose to free him from the void, i think you can very very easily make the argument that he can be shipped with corvo, or anyone else that can easily be shipped w/ ppl. he’s finally free to live his life as a queer man, can explore the simple and complex joys of being human with other people, navigate the hills and valleys he never got to before. corvo’s just a nice pick bc 1) experienced human/inexperienced human is good, 2) they know each other, but they don’t. this is a good setup. 3) corvo is an older queer man and uhh you cant convince me otherwise lol! and older queer/younger queer is a self indulgence for me. also corvo is just nice. i think he would enjoy helping the outsider navigate his new humanity.

just some thoughts i have running through my head all hours of the day :) this is really long cuz its a combination of a lot of infodumps from discord lmfao

#m #doto #death of the outsider #dishonored #Anonymous #long post

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lordeasriel · 3 years

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I really care about your opinion, how do you feel about the bbc show and the way it's going?

I feel like before I give my take, I need to say that I understand the show is its own thing, and while I do wish they did a better job adapting certain things, I understand that sometimes there is a need for radical change or cut, especially when your budget is not super high (which HDM does have a lot of money into it, still is not a super big budget production, so they have to worry about these things). And I do enjoy many things about the show, but my overall vibe is mixed, to be honest. I’m stating this now because people often question whether I like the show or not, becaus I do criticise it a lot, and I simply have a critic view of the things I like, which is why I discuss them a lot and it can be overwhelming.

My main issues with the show are these 3 things: (which I’ll put under the cut because this got a bit longer than I wanted to lmao sorry)

Lack of worldbuilding and loose lore: I’ve been talking about this since day one, and this mostly applies to season 1 because I can’t judge season 2 yet because it’s not fully aired yet, but the show suffers from lack of worldbuilding, especially in Lyra’s world, which is the world that sets everything in motion. I still dislike the fact they introduced Will mid-NL, I don’t think he needed all those episodes to establish something that easily could’ve been done in S2 and because they gave TSK a lot of time, other parts of Lyra’s world suffered considerably, mainly the witches and the Magisterium.

The show doesn’t really expand on those two groups, especially, and I think that’s not good, especially the Magisterium (which they have over simplified by making it one big baddie, or so it seems at least, not to mention that implying a single leader for them practically ruins Marcel Delamare’s arc in TBOD and I’m very mad about that lmao). A lot of the Magisterium plot has that infighting aspect, which creates tension on their side as well as against their enemies, but the show doesn’t really explore that or the nuances of the Church, and they also don’t explore how varied the witches are, and I feel like this is a serious mistake. (The portrayal of the witches is by far my least favourite thing in the show, if I’m being honest).

Dull parallel world (and lack of daemons): this ties a bit with the worldbuilding aspect, but this is mainly about design choices. I think the show doesn’t make Lyra’s world as unique as it should be. On its own the world looks pretty and the outfits of most of the cast are great, but when you realise that Will’s world is intertwined with that, you don’t really feel like these two worlds are vastly different.

There is an odd situation in which Marisa’s fashion feels 30s/40s, but most of the men from her social circle (not fair to compare with the gyptians) just wear plain suits and they look much more modern. And while I get that they went for a timeless vibes, with different eras and styles, Lyra’s world feels like a caricature and it doesn’t feel believable. The colour palette is mostly the same for both worlds (even in s2, it’s hard to tell much of the difference because either the scenes are indoors or at night.) This, paired with the lack of daemons (which has been discussed many times in the fandom) kinda bums me out.

Marisa’s oversimplification: I’m mentioning Marisa, specifically, because she is the one that suffers the most due to this writing issues, but other characters like Lord Asriel, MacPhail, the general collective of the Witches, they all suffer from the writing trying to take away the nuances of them and make them flatter than in the book. Marisa is the worst because without her complexity and her flaws, she simply gets dull and boring and flavourless, and it’s kinda what has been happening in the show in my opinion. All she does is weep and she has no strength that doesn’t rely on a random fit of rage that dies out and she gets upset. There’s some great moments, like when she mimics the Monkey, but most of the time she’s just a shadow of who she is supposed to be.

The show tries really hard to make her a Scorned Mother - right from the get go, they try to makes us see how she wants Lyra, how she struggles with her “bad nature” and how that affects their relationship. There is this lingering implication that Lyra was taken from her against her wishes; they make it seem like being a mother to Lyra is her driving force, the only reason why she seeks power and influence. And that is the opposite of Book! Marisa, who is a force of nature, ruthless and ambitious, with not an ounce of maternal instinct.

She does eventually decide to help Lyra, instead of harming her, but even that action comes from a narcisistic place: Lyra is to her a possession, something that belongs to her, and that she wants to preserve. The show just handles her badly, falling into overused, boring tropes that struck far from the book version.

These are usually my main complaints about the show, and they upset me every episode to the point I’m practically ignoring them now lmao The show does a lot of good things too, making Will less of a prick, restoring Lyra’s personality from the first book into S2 Lyra (so far, please keep it that way), Mary is looking great too. They have mostly a great cast, and they did improve the daemons this season (except uh, there are far less daemons to show because of the other worlds - and the Ruta Skadi daemon change pisses me off tbh).

They do have a lot of interest in the show, but the writing (the main issue to me) feels clunky and childish, with the show toning down most of the themes that make His Dark Materials so special, especially to me (which frankly I expected them to do, but it still stings a bit). They make the Magisterium a single bad entity that feels more Authoritarian-Fascist, than a theocracy (even if they sneak in the religious symbols and rituals and garments, it’s just not a good portrayal, it’s very tame and shy); and they try to justify Marisa’s actions (especially in current interviews, there’s lots of talk about how her background will play in the show to “explain why she is the way she is”). The fact the Magisterium is portrayed as pure evil makes it looks less familiar than it should be, and therefore they don’t look scary, they seem like a caricature, a joke.

A lot of the essence of the characters get lost, and the core message of the story too, like when Iorek and the Gyptians tell Lyra she can be one of them, to support her lack of “proper family”, when that is the opposite of the books message. It doesn’t make sense for them to change that, other than maybe Jack Thorne wanted to because it makes the story feels less hopeless, but it’s why he fails to adapt these character - he doesn’t capture the essence, he tries to write these character with gaps in them.

However, the thing that annoys me the most is how they portray Asriel. It’s just... it’s bad. Really bad, which is a shame cause James is talented as fuck, but he had little time to film for season 1, and then they portrayed him very poorly. That scene when he addresses Roger in episode 7 is ridiculous, Asriel would never behave that way; there was relief in him finding Roger was there too, yes, but not to that extent and not in such a cringe way. Asriel is not deranged or irrational, he is a man on a mission, and Roger was a tool (there is no pleasure in Asriel taking his life and no excuses - it needed to be done and he did it); they just needed him to sound creepy in the show for whatever reason.

I hated how they handled the bridge scene for Asriel, Lyra and Marisa, but that’s long and complicated for me to explain here. In S2, there has been some mentions of him so far, including the implication he might have ruined Cittàgazze himself and I frankly don’t understand where did they get that idea. But the cherry on the top was Thorold telling Marisa that Asriel was gonna kill Lyra and that’s just-- that’s so dumb. That’s genuinely dumb writing, because Thorold knows Lyra followed Asriel to the mountain, and while I do believe Asriel would have killed Lyra if Roger wasn’t there, there is no way Thorold should know or consider that Asriel was gonna hurt Lyra, because Roger was there. In fact, Thorold’s interactions with Asriel in episode 8 already disprove this, so either Thorold was lying in S2 for the sake of, I don’t know, chaos or whatever, or the person who wrote this was a five-star, solid gold, fucking moron.

I’m not gonna mention the lost episode because that was no one’s fault, but the fact that they discarded an episode that all information we have on imply that it was important to set up the backstory of the angels and the city, it’s... concerning. It means they wrote something parallel that should’ve been woven into the season.

The truth is, I still watch the show on Sundays, and I still like some stuff they do (especially Mary’s stuff, so far), and despite me slandering the show per your request anon lol (cause unfortunately my honest opinion is mixed, I just don’t try to overfocus on the negative on Tumblr, I mostly talk about it on discord or private), I do think anyone who has read the books should watch the show.

For me, personally, everything I love about HDM is barely on the show - complex characters, the philosophy, the oppression by religion, the interesting world - and the vibe I get is that they’re adapting a coming-of-age love story, which is the last and - being fully honest - the least important message these books give us, but unfortunately they were set to making a family show from the start, and my expectations were high and unmatched, and a family is what we’re getting: toned down, cute, pretty visuals and soulless (heh, pun intended), philosophically speaking. I expect a certain pattern going into S3, but I always like to hold out hope that they will hire better writers (apparently Jack Thorne already wrote 4 scripts, so there you go lmao), and try to give HDM the adaptation it deserves. The truth is, if you’re a picky, canon reliant person like I am, the show might be a struggle, but if you just like the story for the teen romance, or if you don’t care about overthinking a show/book, then most people can have a good time with it.

#asks #effie watches hdm #sorry it took me a while and sorry for the gigantic critique #but i wanted to be honest about my take on the show so far #Anonymous

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tacitcantos · 4 years

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After the cinematic atrocities that have been the new Star Wars movies it’s no surprise that The Mandalorian has been hailed as the first successful new Star Wars property in the Disney era. And it’s not hard to see why: its production values are stellar, its story simple but archetypal, and it fully embraces the grunge of the original trilogy. And while it is without a doubt better than the new movies… that doesn’t make it good.

A lot of you are no doubt going to disagree with me. And that’s understandable, because The Mandalorian isn’t bad exactly. It’s more that it’s not good, or as good as it could or should be. It’s a plodding and unimaginative series that meanders around flashing fanservice at the audience because it knows most of the audience will be pleased by any invocation of Star Wars iconography no matter how lacking in substance, a passable pastiche of Star Wars and various westerns, but not a particularly smart or good example of the genre, with little depth under the surface.

And it is a pastiche of westerns. From the twang of its music to the barren landscapes that fill it, The Mandalorian is firmly entrenched in the traditions and tropes of the western. Like all westerns its stakes are personal and its character iconic, lone gunslingers and dusty outlaws and unscrupulous criminals, and the plots of its various episodes vary from reminiscent to outright copying: the relationship between Mando and the young bounty hunter in episode 5 is extremely reminiscent of the one in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, and episode 4 is a beat for beat remake of the Magnificent Seven.

It’s in comparison to the westerns it so clearly wants to ape that the problems with The Mandalorian become most visible. It draws on the atmosphere and tropes of the genre, but isn’t willing to put in the effort to make either successful on anything but the most superficial level.

The western and its tropes are relatively rigid because it’s been so extensively and exhaustively explored that to be successful any modern day western like The Mandalorian either needs to nail its beats and themes, deconstruct it, or bring something new to the conversation. And The Mandalorian does none of those things.

All the places The Mandalorian has problems or is unsuccessful are due to not not understanding its genre and its genre conventions. There’s four core, interconnected ones that permeate The Mandalorian:

The series has no clear thematic message. It’s not really trying to say anything; not about the warrior culture of the Mandalorians, not about bounty hunting, and not about the postwar status of the Star Wars galaxy. Worse, it has nothing to say about the themes of the western, the genre it’s firmly entrenched in.

Mando is a shallow and static character. There aren’t any real layers or complexities to explore. What you see on the surface is very much what you get, with no hidden depths or surprises. Static characters can be a powerful tool in the right hands: Clint Eastwood’s laconic gunslinger in A Fistful of Dollars and The Good The Bad and The Ugly is proof of that, but Mando is too jokey and fallible to have the gravitas of that kind of silent killer.

Its plot is impersonal and predictable. The plot of most of the episodes are a series of events with little to no character growth or thematic exploration. They’re simple and tend towards sloppiness, with predictable turns and twists which makes watching them cognitively unengaging.

There’s a far more interesting story to be told in this time period that The Mandalorian almost completely ignores. Post Imperial fall but before New Republic ascendancy is a setting that’s perfectly in keeping with the western and could lead to all kinds of interesting story possibilities. Story possibilities that The Mandalorian completely ignores, and ones that makes its own absence of message and character all the more glaring and conspicuous.

As I said before, each of these problems are sort of circular and feed into and make the others worse, but let’s try and tackle them one at a time anyway. Starting with...

1. The Series Has No Clear Thematic Message

Theme and message are key to any successful story. They’re the soul of a work, the underlying pattern that gives the events of a story meaning. A work needs a viewpoint, needs an idea it finds interesting to explore through its characters and plot, or the work has no deeper resonance and feels shallow and forgettable.

For example, Unforgiven is a movie with such a pointed message and theme that it single handedly revolutionized the entire western genre. It’s a movie that wants to show the difference in the appeal of bounty hunting vs the ugly reality, to deconstruct the glamour and tropes of the western, and how killing takes a toll on those that do it. It was such a thorough and brutal deconstruction of the genre that everyone western or neo western after Unforgiven is in conversation with it whether it wants to be or not.

The Mandalorian… it’s not that it needed to deconstruct the western genre in the way Unforgiven did exactly, but it did need to have something to say, some theme or viewpoint to express. And it really doesn’t.

Take Mando’s dislike of droids for example, and his perfunctory arc to overcome that dislike. What’s the narrative purpose? Obviously it’s initially meant to show that he was traumatized as a child by the death of his parents, but what does it say thematically? What does his learning to trust the IG droid say? If, for example, the show had an anti-warrior culture viewpoint, it could use the concept of a droid having choice instead of just doing what it’s programed to make Mando question his own Mandalorian training: did he truly have another option after his parents’ death? Was he indoctrinated? Taken advantage of? I’m not saying that the show specifically needed to have a pro or anti-warrior culture viewpoint, but it did need to have a viewpoint on something.

Not only because not having a message makes the show forgettable, but also because it has serious negative ramifications on the plot and pacing. It’s why The Mandalorian feels so listless much of the time. Because it has nowhere to go, it doesn’t care about getting there fast. There’s no burning message that the show’s creators want to impart to the audience, no topic it’s fascinated by, and so it tends to meander around pointlessly, its plots and characters empty vessels. None of them can mean anything, because The Mandalorian has no meaning. It’s just kind of… there, transposing fanservice for depth.

2. Mando is a Shallow Character

The problems with Mando as a character start in the first episode. The first episode of a series should introduce the main character, give the audience an idea of who he is and what he wants. A first episode doesn’t need to completely expose all of a main character’s layers, but it does need to define him clearly and make him a character the audience can identify with. Who is Mando? What does he want? To collect bounties, obviously, but why? Is it a drive for justice? Does he take pleasure in the hunt? Does it disgust him to have to deal with criminals?

The first episode of The Mandalorian completely punts on answering any of those basic questions. It’s 45 minutes long, but somehow doesn’t tell us anything about Mando besides the immediately obvious premise that he’s a bounty hunter and a Mandalorian.

A better structure would’ve, just as an example, followed Mando through a whole hunt. Maybe when he tries to leave the original planet with the blueface alien his ship is blown up or they’re stopped by a crime syndicate who wants the blueface alien for their own reason, and the rest of the episode is him trying to get off the planet with his bounty. You could punch up the character of blueface alien, start a dialogue between him and Mando that actually gives us an insight into his character. Maybe he lets the blueface alien go at the end because of the bond they’ve formed, maybe despite the bond he still hands him in because at his core he’s a bounty hunter through and through. Either option tells us something about him.

The only real emotional layer the episode reveals about Mando is in a scene where he visits his Mandalorian clan and it’s shown though flashback that his family was murdered when he was a child, and we can infer that he was taken in by the Mandalorians afterward, but again, we get no indication of how he feels about it.

What’s strange is that there’s a more interesting version of this scene in episode 3, where it’s revealed that only one Mandalorian can go above ground at a time. This is a potentially interesting idea: why was Mando chosen instead of the other Mandalorians? Does he feel a burden to represent his people? Is this his driving motivation? Does he feel like he’s not equal to the task? But there’s no followup to this scene to give us a hint to what Mando is thinking about it wasting a perfectly good opportunity to ground him as a character with a concrete motivation.

This whole scene could actually have created a potentially interesting conflict for Mando where he’s torn between saving baby Yoda from the imperials and not tarnishing Mandalorian reputation by betraying a client. Sadly absolutely nothing is done with this idea, as the rest of the Mandalorians seem entirely happy to cover for him when he tries to escape with baby Yoda.

And choosing to save baby Yoda is pretty much the last character growth Mando goes through for the season, besides some perfunctory getting over his dislike of droids in the finale. He’s a largely static character, unchanging and flat. As the series goes on he’s fleshed out a little, but only a little: who he is as a person is still shockingly vague and vacuous by the end of the season.

It’s one of the reasons the series a whole is really emotionally flat, without any ups or downs, triumphs or failures, joy or despair. For example, in the last episode when Mando sees the piled armor of the dead Mandalorians, did anyone feel that as a punch to the gut? Of course not, because we don’t really know who Mando is, don’t have any way into his head, don’t identify with him in the way that we do with the best fictional characters.

Static Characters and How to Write Them

Part of the reason Mando is a shallow character is because he’s a static character that doesn’t undergo any real change. Now, static characters aren’t inherently shallow ones: there are countless examples of iconic static characters in fiction, and especially westerns, but the rules for making a static main character effective are different than those for dynamic ones, and is in many ways harder: not changing or growing through the story can make them feel stale and lifeless, and makes for a passive and unengaging viewing experience on the part of the audience.

There are a few ways to make a static character compelling, but all require careful deployment of the character in coordination with the rest of the story. Here are a few, but notice how none of them really apply well to The Mandalorian:

One approach is to reveal different layers to the character throughout the story. Instead of changing they remain the same, but our understanding of them changes. This doesn’t really work with Mando though, because as we talked about, he’s not a complicated or complex character. What you see is very much what you get and there are no hidden layers beneath the surface one.

Another approach is to have the character growth heavy lifting taken on by another main character. It’s why the lone badass archetype is almost always accompanied by a more relatable secondary character. It’s an approach that’s effective because it lets the badass keep his mystique, while also letting the story reap the narrative benefits of having a character grow. The Mandalorian actually kind of does this by giving Mando baby Yoda at the end of the first episode, but the problem is that baby Yoda is just as static a character as Mando, even if he’s a much cuter one.

Yet another approach is to use the static character as a focal point for other more dynamic characters. They can become a mirror and contrast for those secondary characters and their growth. This requires a deep bench of characters though, and the only really recurring characters of note in The Mandalorian are ex rebel dropshock lady and discount Lando, neither of whose actor can portray anything resembling a human being, and both characters who are even shallower than Mando.

A final approach is for the static character to simply have overwhelming charisma or gravitas. Clint Eastwood’s unnamed gunslinger in the Dollars Trilogy is a perfect example of this kind of character; a figure of dread, more force of nature than person. Mando fails at that though, because he’s far too fallible and his badassness swings wildly from one episode to the other: sometimes he’s able to wipe the floor with dozens of battle droids, and other times he meets an ignoble defeat at the hands of Jawa’s, after which he throws a flamethrower temper tantrum at them.

Helmet Woes

Part of the shallowness and lack of gravitas of Mando’s character stems from the decision for him to never take his helmet off. Facial expressions are an undeniably massive part of human interaction and communication, and the primary way that most actors express their characters thoughts and emotions, which in turn is key to getting viewers to identify with and care about that character.

There are ways to make a faceless character work, but it requires skill on both the writing and acting side, skill The Mandalorian clearly doesn’t have. The dialogue often feels try hard, as though the writers feel the need to bludgeon the viewer to make up for Mando’s lack of facial expression, and often veers wildly from sullen to uncomfortably jokey and pedestrian.

There are a fair few movies and tv shows that have been able to make a faceless character work. V For Vendetta, for example, used strategic head tilting and theatrical body language to characterize V. An even more effective example is Boardwalk Empire’s Richard Harrow, who’s actor is able to use the half mask of the character’s face as a tool to make him by turns compelling, sympathetic, and chilling.

Both cases though require an actor who understands how to communicate solely through voice and physicality. And as likable and talented as he is, Pedro Pascal, who plays Mando, is not that actor. His vocal inflection is limited, his body language nearly nonexistent, and you can always tell he’s not entirely comfortable in the armor, that it’s not the second skin it really should be for a Mandalorian.

Just look at Mando’s default stance. Because of the bulkiness of the armors gauntlets, Pedro Pascal often walks or stands with his forearms rotated outward, giving him a strangely ballerina esque stance not at all evocative of a hardened and ruthless bounty hunter.

Even with an actor better suited to the physicality of the role though, the idea of a faceless main character will always be fundamentally mismatched in tone with the show as a whole. Face is personhood, and a faceless character should be an enigma: a lone bounty hunter who’s story is told through action and not words. The movies The Mandalorian should be emulating are of the kind Clint Eastwood’s Dollar trilogy exemplifies: archetypal stories imparted through visuals and largely bereft of dialogue.

You can see a more modern example of this approach to storytelling in 2015’s Fury Road which has minimal dialogue for the first third but still manages to tell its story effectively and compellingly. Or for an even more extreme example of this laconic approach, see Genndy Tartakovsky’s excellent series Primal, whose tale of a man and his dinosaur has no dialogue whatsoever.

But The Mandalorian isn’t willing to commit to that mode of storytelling. And that’s depressingly predictable: it’s a Disney property after all, and that means it needs to appeal to a broad audience, that it’s a cog in the endless intellectual property money machine. In that machine that kind of audience narrowing approach isn’t something they’re interested in.

So instead The Mandalorian as a whole tends to be pedestrian and safe, a show the whole family can watch together. Which would be fine, but that show is fundamentally at odds with the faceless main character The Mandalorian insists on. It’s another example of the show wanting to invoke the atmosphere of the western without willing to put in the effort to make it work.

3. Its Plot is Impersonal and Predictable.

Another place the show isn’t willing to put in the effort, or maybe simply isn’t talented enough to, is with its plot: both in the broader arc of the season and each episode. Just as with Mando’s shallowness as a character, right from its first episode the problems with the plot of The Mandalorian are glaring. The structure of the episode is innately flawed, disconnected and episodic without a clear through line.

An action sequence unrelated to the main plot at the beginning of a story to prove the main character is a badass is a perfectly serviceable trope, but The Mandolorian burns through ten of its 36 minutes on a hunt that has nothing to do with the main plot of the episode and the only information it imparts to us about Mando as a character is that he's a bounty hunter and a badass. The episode needed to be leaner, bereft of anything that didn’t move the plot forward or give us a reason to care about Mando.

The series is full of little slips and missed opportunities like that. The structure of the last two episodes, where Mando gathers a team to face the forces he’s been running from all season is far more boring than it needed to be. For a show about criminals and low-lifes and bounty hunters in the best tradition of the western, having Mando’s allies be completely trustworthy is a real lost opportunity.

A better structure would’ve had each member of the team have differing motivations and goals so that there’s an underlying tension to the episode. Will Cara go rogue at the chance to take out a high level former Imperial officer? How well reprogrammed is the IG droid? How trustworthy is Discount Lando? These are questions that are hinted at, but the show never makes credible enough to create any real tension. Cara doesn’t care about the Imperial aspect of the forces pretty much at all. And any hint the IG droid is even mildly untrustworthy is defanged by the montage that makes it clear he’s now his own person. Discount Lando decides not to double cross them as soon as it’s revealed he was going to, pricking any tension from that balloon before it has a chance to be inflated.

The episode that’s most illustrative of how weak the plots in The Mandalorian are though is episode 5, in which to pay for repairs to his ship Mando teams up with a younger bounty hunter to go after a high profile criminal.

This is a promising start. Pairing the older and more experience Mando with a cocky young gunslinger is a great way of exploring Mando’s character through contrast, since after all he must have once been something like the younger bounty hunter. How has he grown? How has bounty hunting changed him? How does bounty hunting change everyone who does it? What does it take to be a bounty hunter?

Your guess is as good as mine, because the episode goes on to explore exactly none of those questions. Mando and kid capture the bounty, the kid double crosses Mando, Mando kills him, and then him and baby Yoda jet off to the next planet. That may sound like an overly glib description of the plot, but that’s all there actually is in the episode. The plot of the episode is entirely impersonal. Things happen, but it means nothing from a character or thematic perspective.

Narrative Economy

Every beat in a story shouldn’t just push the plot forward, but also build character and theme. While not westerns, some of the best examples to illustrate this concept come from James Cameron’s early filmography before it started to become self indulgent and… blue. Aliens and Terminator 2 are both masterpieces of sparse and effective storytelling.

Take the yellow power loader from Aliens. Not only does it serve the plot purpose of allowing Rippley to battle the xenomorph queen at the end of the movie, but earlier in the movie it also serves as a character beat:

“I feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here, is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. Is there anything you can do?”

“Well I can drive that loader.”

This beat tells us something about Rippley; she doesn’t like feeling useless, and it’s also the first step in her arc of proving herself to the marines.

The Mandalorian is nowhere near as tight in its storytelling or plotting. The incident with the sand people halfway through episode 5 is bizarrely representative of so much about The Mandalorian.

This incident serves no plot purpose, the sand people don’t ever come back, and it tells us nothing about Mando. It’s a pointless aside that’s only there to provide fan service.

A better version of episode 5 would’ve seen some kind of bond be formed between Mando and the kid so that the kid’s betrayal and Mando having to kill him would’ve had some weight and meant something. Considering how extensively and blatantly the show cribs from westerns it’s bizarre they didn’t go this direction. The pairing of the old veteran gunslinger and the young brash one is a really common one in the genre, and best exemplified by the previously mentioned relationship in Unforgiven.

As we talked about, in Unforgiven the pairing of Clint Eastwood’s retired gunslinger and a fresh young bounty hunter is used to show the difference in the appeal of bounty hunting vs the ugly reality.

And the movie weaves that theme through its plot. For example, when Clint Eastwood and the young bounty hunter eventually catch up to the criminals they’re hunting the ensuing gunfight is anything but heroic. Morgan Freeman’s character shoots one of their targets through the gut, and both sides are left listening to him call out and beg for water as he slowly dies.

The experience so perturbs Morgan Freeman’s character that he abandons the chase. The shoot out thus both moves the plot forward, and reinforces its theme that killing is hard and unglamorous and takes a toll on those that do it.

4. The Post War Story the Mandalorian Could’ve Told

What’s frustrating about The Mandalorian is that there’s a far more interesting story to be told than the one we got onscreen, a way to recontextualize Star Wars iconography in a way that’s visceral and immediate and thought provoking and more in common with the westerns it wants to evoke. Werner Herzog’s speech in episode 7 really makes it clear what a missed opportunity the series is as a whole, and hints at what could’ve been:

“The empire improves every system it touches judged by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade opportunity, peace. Compare imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.”

Placing The Mandalorian in the post Return of the Jedi timeline opens a lot of fascinating story possibilities and perfectly sets the stage for it’s western setting of a lawless frontier where there’s no strong central authority. While the fall of the empire in Return of the Jedi is without a doubt a good thing for the universe on the whole, all revolutions are messy and any time a regime falls, good or bad, it creates a power vacuum.

A power vacuum that should be filled with crime syndicates armed with abandoned imperial equipment, planetary governments who are newly independent now they’re out from under imperial yoke and are looking to flex their muscle against their neighbors, new republic expeditionary forces looking to woo those same planetary governments into the new republic itself, and most importantly Imperial remnants. It’s simply a universal truth that large groups of heavily armed soldiers don’t simply pack up their things and go home when they’re newly disenfranchised.

And not just one Imperial remnant or two, but dozens, each with their own motivations. Much in the same way real world terrorists and revolutionary groups often hate each other as much as their designated enemy, all these imperial splinter groups should be infighting and scrabbling amongst themselves for resources and power.

Imagine how much story juice there is to be squeezed in exploring those splinter groups: one could’ve been led by a petty warlord who’s little more than a heavily armed bully interested in money and power, another a strict believer in the Imperial doctrine of stability before human rights and actively fighting against the New Republic, another still a decent person who now out from the militaristic drive of the empire is just trying to keep the planets under their protection safe from crime syndicates and upheaval.

And a bounty hunter is the perfect character to explore this story. With crime syndicates at such a high tide there’s plenty of bounty hunting to be had, and a fledgling new republic would no doubt be putting out hundreds of bounties on imperial war criminals and fleeing high level officers. And a Mandalorian specifically works perfectly: someone who’s largely impartial and uninterested in the greater politics of the galaxy, of the struggle between New Republic and Imperial remnants.

There Except Not

The Mandalorian vaguely gestures at some of these ideas, but it’s always in an undercooked way: the messiness of revolution exists only within a single line from Cara about leaving the New Republic and in Werner Herzog’s speech in episode 7. The concept of newly empowered crime syndicates is sort of there in episode 4 with the raiders preying on the local village with an AT-ST. But the raiders are a tiny outfit that apparently messes with a single isolated village and there’s no indication that the galaxy or even this part of space is suffering from them as a whole (or even that they’re a consequence of the post war status quo. For all we know it’s always been like this).

Infighting between Imperial splinter groups exists for all of the thirty seconds it takes Werner Herzog to die at the end of episode 7 so that the series can get a new big bad. It’s never explained and exits as swiftly as it’s introduced.

And all of this, all of the above, all the missed opportunity in The Mandalorian, hurt its story as a whole. Even just the concept of different Imperial splinter groups with differing motives could’ve been fodder for an episode or two of Mando using his cunning to pit them against each or double cross both, perfect for plot twists and reversals. Or for another example, take Cara’s reason for leaving the New Republic:

“And then when the imps were gone the politics started. We were peacekeepers. Protecting delegates, suppressing riots. Not what I signed up for.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“Let’s just call it an early retirement.”

This is a really interesting idea: the conflict and challenge in transitioning from fighting a pure evil like the empire to the much harder and less straightforward job of governance is a great arc Cara’s character could’ve explored and grown through throughout the series. But this snippet of dialogue is all there is of it in The Mandalorian, and she has essentially no other character growth or development.

There’s a really fascinating post war story to be told in The Mandalorian, in the power vacuum in an empire’s fall and the complexity of transitioning from rebellion to governance, a story that fit it’s western atmosphere and ambitions so much better than what’s there right now: but the show is completely uninterested in telling any of it.

Weaving those elements into its plot and characters and messages would have helped fill some of the emptiness at the core of the show. And that’s really one of the best ways to describe The Mandalorian. Yes, it’s pedestrian and badly paced, but more than anything it’s empty, a space western without anything to say.

#the mandalorian #star wars #mando #disney cannot star wars to save it's life

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allimariexf · 5 years

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Friends. I am so unable to have coherent thoughts about Arrow at this point. I wanted to do a little 7x19 review (not much to say, tbh fuck I lied), but then again I also wanted to do a 7x18 review, and a 7x17 review, and...also talk about Arrow ending and EBR leaving. Yeah, ‘cause I still haven’t managed to do those things.

I keep thinking I have to have all my thoughts in order and arranged before I can say anything valuable, but the problem is my thoughts won’t comply. They refuse to be orderly and arrangeable. (Also I’ve tried just typing whatever is in my brain, too, but all I have to show for it is about 10,000 words of semi-coherent babbling hanging out in my Drafts. Probably never to see the light of day.)

So anyway 7x19 (🤞 that I stay on track here - update: I fucking failed! 😱😱😱): it was okay I guess.

As we draw to the end of the season - of the show, really - a few things keep bothering me, and unfortunately they’re coloring any and all enjoyment I may be able to squeeze out of the episodes so I have to just get them off my chest:

1. I keep getting stuck on the terrible production value. I can’t help it! It’s gotten to the point where I cannot help but see the production as much as I see the story, and it’s so jarring. I see the sets, the stage, where I only used to see the setting. It’s the (lack of) camera angles, the lighting, and the very obvious reliance on sets, rather than location shoots.

And I can’t help but think: it didn’t used to be like this. Seasons 1-3 were so immersive, so atmospheric. Stylized? Yes, but in a way that was purposeful and enhanced the story.

The most recent seasons make production feel only like a means to an end.

I think the production budget got cut a little after season 3, but seasons 4 and 5 still felt epic and captivating enough. But season 6′s production values were abysmal. And I thought it would finally improve in season 7 with the new showrunner, but instead it has only gotten worse and I realize now that it must have everything to do with budget. (And maybe this is my bitterness talking, but I can’t help but suspect that part of it is that increasingly, more and more of each year’s budget is being used to fund the crossovers. 😠)

The EPs seem to have forgotten something critical about filmmaking - production is always going to be a crucial aspect of story-telling, whether it’s intentional or not. There’s no such thing as an “objective” camera angle or edit. Every non-decision has as much an impact on the story as a decision would have, and by forgetting that, they have vastly reduced the overall quality of the show.

Anyway, I feel like I have to make one thing clear, since after all, I WAS ON THE SET and I MET THE CREW - literally shook hands with and spoke to camera operators, lighting people, and all other sorts of production people: they work hard and take their jobs seriously and in no way am I trying to suggest that any of them are bad at their jobs. They were truly lovely and professional and I was so impressed by them. I truly think the lapse in production values is entirely due to decisions made at the very top about money. It just has a very unfortunate, very obvious impact on the quality of the show they’re making.

2. I can’t help but see and lament the effect of OVERPLOTTING and a lack of emotional foregrounding.

I comment all the time about how tight the story was in seasons 1-3:

Big Bads who had a personal connection to Oliver

seamless interweaving of the Flashbacks and the present

a clear, consistent, well-paced evolution of Oliver’s character that paralleled the action/plot

excellently-plotted storylines where all the characters were relevant to the plot - so that we had a reason to care, and focus on character actually forwarded the plot.

a good mixture of villains of the week that were both interesting unto themselves, and provided much-needed wins/breaks in the overarching plot, and allowed for plenty of character moments

generally, because of all of the above, a perfect sense of pacing and an excellent balance between plot and character, where plenty of time was given to dialogue and quiet character moments - which only served to enhance the plot

But then season 4 came along and things went south quickly, mainly due (in my opinion) to writing decisions that put plot over character, resulting in some seriously out-of-character stories that unfortunately had a huge impact on the show going forward. But even aside from Oliver’s uncharacteristic lying and Felicity’s unlikely decision to call the whole thing off, season 4 was already suffering from a clear lack of the things (above) that made seasons 1-3 so good.

It was the first time the BB had no real connection to Oliver’s past, which meant that suddenly the villain arc had to pull double-duty - drive the present-day plot and also somehow establish an emotional reason for us to care. Unfortunately, rather than pulling those two threads together into a tight, single focus, the writers created a sprawling story - a messy, confusing present-day arc and the absolute worst flashbacks of the entire show.

And it also saw the deliberate introduction of more comic-book elements to the show, with Damien Darhk’s (and Constantine’s) magic, which was a wrenching change in tone from the first three season’s grittiness. (I know a lot of the haters like to blame this shift in tone on Olicity - and even I will admit that the suddenly happy-go-lucky Oliver was a little too heavy-handed - but I fully believe the tonal shift has everything to do with the introduction of magic. And, of course, the horrible, clunky, meta-heavy crossover, which for the first time was used as a vehicle, rather than a chance for us to enjoy interactions between characters we loved.)

Then there was season 5. Lots of people love season 5, and I agree there were good elements, but for me it still suffers from a lack of those things that made seasons 1-3 so great:

most of all, with NTA there were suddenly too many characters - and they didn’t have a legitimate reason to be there. Their stories were arbitrary, inconsistently explored (or, more accurately, not explored), and had nothing to do with Oliver. And (maybe worst of all), their backstories/stories had nothing to do with the overarching plot of the season. So, again, the show’s focus was pulled in a million different directions, rather than the earlier brilliance of plot and character working together to drive the narrative.

the introduction of metas as major characters in Arrow (rather than only being used in the crossovers) continued the cartoonish atmosphere which, in my opinion, made the consequences of all actions feel slightly less real, less impactful. To me it felt like a betrayal of Arrow, at its core. Because Arrow was solidly gritty for the first 3 years - even the League of Assassins storylines of season 3 felt grounded and real. Even The Count, Cupid, the Clock King - comic book villains to the core - still felt gritty and real within the universe. But (for me at least) the casual reliance on metahuman abilities let the writers be sloppy and careless with their plots, their resolutions, and their consequences.

and I know most people love Prometheus, but I never loved him for two main reasons. First, while I appreciate the fact that they tied Prometheus’s origin to Oliver, the personal connection just felt forced to me. Prometheus, Talia, all of it felt untethered and hasty. I think they could have done a much better job grounding the story, planting the seeds earlier, but they didn’t. Second, Prometheus just won too much. The show had spent 5 years making us believe in Oliver’s abilities - as a fighter, an archer, and a strategist - and it was suddenly as if he were a bumbling idiot. The show made him seem incompetent in order to make Prometheus be always 10 steps ahead, and it was not only disheartening, it was unbelievable. Because not only did Oliver have 5 years more training than Prometheus did, he also had a team behind him.

Season 6 failed spectacularly in all ways, in my opinion. It was the ultimate example of overplotting, where the writers basically took everything that was so great about seasons 1-3 and did the opposite. Too many characters, uneven pacing, a sprawling, unfocused villain arc, and a lack of any given reason to care about any of it. And of course, everyone acting counter to their long-established characteristics.

I was really, really hoping that Beth and the new writers would use season 6 as a counterexample: what not to do in season 7. But (and again, I am not trying to place blame - I have no idea who is really in charge of these decisions, plus at this point there are already so many balls in the air that a lot of it is probably out of the writers’ hands anyway) as season 7 winds to a close, it’s clear to me that they’ve basically repeated a lot of the same plotting problems of season 6.

Which brings me to 7x19. (And all of 7b actually, if I’m honest.)

Because this was supposedly a JOHN DIGGLE-centric episode, but it was way too little, way too late. (Setting aside the absolute tragedy that it’s been 7 years and this is the first chance we’ve gotten to look in-depth into John’s backstory beyond Andy.) Like others have mentioned, the focus on John felt superficial at best. We have a character with 7 years of characterization to explore, but the episode hardly touched on John’s character, his emotions, at all. And the little we got felt superficial.

Instead, the episode was plot-heavy, convoluted, and tried to accomplish too many things. Things that, for the most part, had not been adequately emotionally foregrounded. By that I mean:

John’s story with his stepfather could have been awesome, except we’ve never fucking heard John even mention his parents before this episode. They planted and harvested those seeds all within a single episode.

Felicity’s struggle with her legacy...WOW. That was the first time we’ve ever heard her specifically say that she wanted her own legacy more than as Overwatch. Yeah, we have the “beacon of hope” stuff from 4x17, and some references here and there this season - and I don’t mean to be ungrateful - but I feel like there were ample opportunities to do a better job foregrounding Felicity’s struggle, yet they just haven’t.

Emiko and Dante. Yawn. Too little, too late - both in the season and in the series.

Emiko and Oliver. Same.

I have strong feelings about why it’s all going wrong, and for the most part I think it’s this: the writers aren’t trying to tell a complete, emotionally fulfilling story in season 7. Rather, season 7 seems to be divided into two discrete storylines:

7a, the prison arc, was pretty much its own thing. Sure, the writers attempted to establish a connection to 7b through the flash forwards, but it’s a very weak connection that relies on illusions and attempts to obscure the audience’s perception of events (mainly to do with the attempt to make us believe that Oliver’s prison stint caused a fundamental change in Felicity, making her become a villain in the future). But in reality, the 7a arc was pretty much self-contained - and, in hindsight, all the better for it.

7b, on the other hand, has lacked focus and direction, and as the season has worn on it’s become increasingly clear that rather than having purpose and emotional fulfillment of its own, it’s being used as a vehicle:

to drive the flash forward story, and/or

to drive next year’s crossover storyline, and/or

to drive season 8′s storyline.

(I’m using and/or there because I pretty much suspect all of those things are one in the same.)

Seasons 1-3 (and even 4 and 5, to some extent) built upon each other. The writers planted seeds in seasons 1 and 2 that didn’t pay off until much, much later, meaning that we were invested in that payoff. We were adequately prepared, through plot and character, for those stories. But rather than continue to reinvest and build on elements of the earlier seasons, the latter seasons - especially 6 and 7 - have gone off in completely unprecedented directions. And for season 7, this means they’re trying to do accomplish too much at the very end. Too much plot, too late in the game, with too little emotional foregrounding.

We have THREE EPISODES LEFT after this - only THREE EPISODES left with Felicity - and there are still so many unanswered questions. Not only for the season, but for the show. And somehow each episode still manages to feel stagnant, refusing to answer our pressing questions, or worse - introducing new ones.

And I guess that’s what’s really getting to me now. Because did I hate 7x19? No, not really. Aside from the general decline in quality discussed above, it was fine. I like the Team Arrow moments, I liked Olicity in the bunker, the team within the team. This is the sort of action and stories I wanted more of last season, and all this season too. It’s nice to finally have it again.

But it’s time for resolutions now, and we’re not getting them. It’s time they start answering our questions about the flash forwards, time they start resolving the Emiko storyline - or at least building up to that resolution. (Remember how tight 1x19 through 1x23 are? The threads unraveling, the ever-heightening intensity?? Nothing like the plodding, disconnected feel of these late-season 7 episodes.)

All of which makes me think they’re not really intending to resolve these questions this season at all. Rather than giving us a satisfying, complete story, they’re just rushing to the next thing - the next crossover, the next season.

And it just bothers me, because this is the end for Felicity. We deserve character moments, goddammit.

The showrunners seem to have forgotten that it was always character that made this show great. And it just makes me sad that it seems they won’t remember it in time to give us the proper ending that Felicity (and Oliver, and John) deserve.

#arrow meta #my meta #arrow 7x19 #arrow 7x19 meta #holy shit what have i done #top posts #selected favorite posts #on television #on production #on tv production #on television production

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whitewolfofwinterfell · 5 years

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Since I'm in a Buffyverse mood: what are your rankings of the AtS and BtVS seasons from favourite to least favourite? :) Also, could you talk a little bit more about why you like AtS more than BtVS? I have an idea that the people who prefer AtS is because they like the character Angel more than Buffy, but I could be wrong though.

Yay! Thanks for sending this in, lovely, I always love discussing these topics with you :)

Wow, this is a tricky one to answer since I like all the seasons for different reasons, but from most to least favourite seasons it goes as follows (although they are subject to change):

1. ATS season 3

2. ATS season 2

3. BTVS season 2

4. ATS season 1

5. BTVS season 3

6. ATS season 5

7. BTVS season 5

8. ATS season 4

9. BTVS season 1

10. BTVS season 4

11. BTVS season 6

12. BTVS season 7

Damn, that was even harder than I thought it would be haha. I wasn’t sure if you wanted a little explanation for my ranking, but for now I’ll leave it as it is and you can let me know if you want to know why I’ve chosen this order :)

As for the reason I like ATS more than BTVS, it’s for a lot of reasons that go way beyond simply preferring Angel over Buffy (although that is a tiny part of the reason for me). @sulietsexual has actually already written a bloomin’ amazing meta explaining why she prefers ATS over BTVS, which you can read here. In that she really explains all my thoughts about this topic, so my own explanation might parrot some of what she says a little, but here we go.

On a basic level, I prefer ATS because I enjoy watching it more than BTVS. When I first watched BTVS I stopped watching after a few episodes because I really didn’t like it. A few months later I decided to give it another try, but I still didn’t enjoy it and didn’t really get into it until part way through season 2. With ATS, I fell in love with it from the very first episode (which could be because by the time I watched ATS I was already familiar with the Buffyverse whereas when I first watched BTVS, I was trying to adapt to an entirely new show, which I’m not very good at. Hence why I watch the same shows over and over again haha). I love the style of ATS visually, the opening theme is kick ass (I prefer it to BTVS, although both have kick ass opening themes which get you so pumped for the episode), the characters are great, the premise is interesting and the dynamics/relationships are fantastic. I do think that the age I watched the shows has also influenced my opinions. I didn’t grow up watching either show (unlike most BTVS fans who have watched it as a child), so I don’t have any nostalgic attachments which lead me to favour one over the other and I’ve experienced both shows as an adult. I watched BTVS when I was 19 and ATS at 24, so I think that definitely plays a part in why I prefer ATS. ATS just speaks to me in terms of the place where I am in my life right now and is very relatable to me in a lot of ways, which I’ll come back to again later.

The characters are most definitely a significant part of the reason I prefer ATS. Liking Angel more as a lead than Buffy is only a small part of that, because I love both characters. As you may know from reading my other metas, I’m a very character-orientated person and well-written, complex and lovable characters are what makes or breaks a show for me. ATS appeals to me so much because its characters are so damn good and the character arcs are compelling. Every character on ATS has amazing development, including the minor characters. This means, that even for characters that I don’t particularly like, I’m still able to enjoy them because of how well written they are. Faith, who is a fan favourite, has incredible episodes on ATS (some might argue even better than the ones she has on BTVS), which really take her character to new places and beautifully develop her redemption arc. Similarly, Spike has an incredible season on ATS which provides him with wonderful development. And Faith and Spike are two of many Buffyverse characters who have fantastic arcs on ATS (and in most cases better than what they had on ATS, particularly in the case of Cordelia and Wesley). Although I appreciate all of the characters on BTVS I don’t actively like them or enjoy their arcs as much as I do with the characters on ATS. I think that’s mostly because ATS does a better job at giving all of its characters focus and being consistent in their characterisation. Like, there’s honestly not a single character on ATS who isn’t fully developed. In comparison, BTVS is very, very Buffy-centric often at the detriment of the other characters. For example, Willow’s characterisation is very inconsistent, and characters like Tara and Oz have very flat characterisation, although they’re both very sweet and likeable.

I also find ATS a lot more emotionally effective than BTVS, in terms of the positive and negative emotions I experience whilst watching. Both shows explore very complex and emotional themes and issues, whilst injecting a decent amount of comedy in there too, but ATS hits the nail on the head a lot more for me in all these areas (likely because I’m more emotionally invested in the characters). Arcs like Darla’s in seasons 2 and 3, Wesley’s betrayal of Angel, Connor’s kidnapping (Connor’s entire arc, for that matter) and Fred’s death are so hard-hitting and heartbreaking. The emotion involved in the relationships between the characters also speaks to my heart much more than the relationships on BTVS. Both shows have great relationships, but the complexities of relationships like Angel and Darla, Angel and Connor, Wesley and Cordelia, Wesley, Cordy and Gunn (one of my favourite threesomes) etc. are all so beautifully developed and authentic.On the flip side, ATS is also funnier to me than BTVS. Once again, both shows have their witty one-liners and comedy gold moments, but ATS has funny moments in every single episode and actually makes me laugh out loud multiple times. The delivery and timing of the comedic moments perfectly weaves into the episodes, and the combination of personalities on ATS creates a very humorous atmosphere which perfectly off-sets the more serious tones of the show.

The final main reason I prefer ATS is because I enjoy the tone and themes of the show more. There’s the general assumption that ATS is more of an adult show than BTVS, and I don’t necessarily agree with that because although BTVS is set in a high school during the first three seasons, it explores very complex issues relating to adulthood, particularly in the later seasons. However, there is something about ATS that feels more mature than BTVS, if that’s even the right word? BTVS feels like it’s primarily about good overcoming evil, which although is a good theme, is very common and overdone in television. ATS, on the other hand, is about fighting for what you believe in no matter what and choosing to fight despite knowing the odds are stacked against you and that you might not win in the end. When you watch the finales of both shows you see these two core themes shining through brighter than ever, and they sit in contrast to one another. But that core theme of ATS appeals more to me because it’s more complex and it feels more human. In reality, there is no happily ever after, there’s never an end to the fight and it’s futile to go through life with a specific end goal in sight because when does it end? Where do we set that end goal? We shouldn’t live our lives seeking a particular reward for our hard work or efforts, because that’s hollow and not really what life is about. It’s easy for me to sit here now and think, “If I work really hard one day I can buy a house” and it’ll be a good motivator for me for a number of years, it’ll encourage me to keep working when I’m at my lowest ebb. But when I have that house what next? It might feel damn good for that first day when I have the keys in my hand and all the furniture is moved in, but life won’t have changed, I’m going to be the exact same person I was before I had that house and if my only goal and drive has been to get that house, what do I do now? What’s my purpose and drive now? Life means something different for everyone, but for me, it’s not about achieving a particular vision or end goal 5 or 10 or 20 years down the line, life is an ongoing experience and journey, where I need to fight in the face of adversity, always do my best, be humble and kind and understand that there is no reward at the ‘end’. There’s ongoing rewards and moments of joys dotted in between the bad days and low moods, and it’s about not letting those bad days/low moods define your entire life and getting stuck in them. I guess this comes back around to what I mentioned near the start, about how I personally relate to ATS on a deep level, because I find that core message inspirational and it’s given me an entirely new perspective on life, that I feel has benefited me a lot.

Phew! That got really deep for a minute there, sorry! But yeah, in a nutshell (a rather nutshell lmao) that’s why I prefer ATS over BTVS. Thanks for sending this in again, I love any excuse to discuss this stuff :)

#answered #my meta #ats meta #btvs meta #slayers-every-one-of-us

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rorykillmore · 5 years

Note

oh and another one i stole, what were some favorite rp moments from 2018

okay cue constant fear that i’m forgetting something important but

i think for the first half of 2018, sara’s stuff really defined a lot of my most important rps! probably my favorite memories with her were like... anything involving murderplot, fakeoutplot, or sawplot. murderplot really had a lot of people pulling together to make it a big, involving event, and that was so much fun and it really made maive one of the most definitive denny characters imo, and it’s also really important to me because it still stands out as the thing that. cemented the denny legends’ bonds so completely. sara came out of that really considering maive, naruto, and ratchet family.

and then fakeoutplot focused more on her relationship with e-2 laurel which was so... interesting and yet not explored in canon and we really got to do a lot of cool, heartwrenching stuff with it! and sawplot was such a great followup and means of digging down to the core of sara and laurel really caring about each other despite everything. and i’m also proud of the execution of that because i think we planned it really well and it ended up flowing really nicely when it easily could have... not,

i’m more burnt out on dc stuff now but i really enjoyed those plots. oh and while i’m at it i should mention kara’s last few rps, really her most important stuff happened in 2016-2017 and in 2018 i was mostly losing steam with her unfortunately but i still got a few last really good rps with her. kara and ratchet’s last rp is... a definite standout... it was such an emotional tribute to everything fate and i built with them

also earlier in 2018, some of trish’s stuff! i loved getting to do her whole disastrous relationship with laurel, the rps fate and i did while she had jessica claimed, and just... getting to write trish trying to cope with some post-canon stuff, in general. she’s just a really fun disaster to write and even though i don’t have much muse for her now, she kept coming up when i was trying to think of stuff to put on this list so i had to include her. i’m hoping maybe jessica jones season 3 might give me some fun ideas to bring her back someday...

okay and then like, a ton of the rps and arcs i did with dolores, who really became such a driving force on my roster for awhile. it’s like... hard for me to narrow down favorite rps or plots from all her stuff but of course i loved all of her stuff with laurel!! some of their favorite rps are maybe... the thing where they reunited after the blair witch plot and dolores gave laurel that scarf, their heartbreaking wyattplot rps, the fake dating cruise, their disaster rp where laurel tried to confront their feelings and dolores kissed her... and them finally getting together of course! and then dolores’ stuff with cloud was really important too; i think for them some of my favorite stuff has definitely pertained to the geostigma arc and cloud struggling to hide that from her for so long and slowly allowing himself to lean on her a little more. and their reunion after wyattplot was REALLY poignant. cloud just being so instantly forgiving and comforting was so fucking good. i loved wyattplot in general, obviously, apart from all the emotional fallout it gave me the chance to rp something really different and also get some really interesting rps with handsome jack in a kind of twisted ally situation that was really fun...

and honestly one of my favorite rps of 2018 has to be... the siobhan and rocket icc fate and i did a few weeks ago. i have always loved their relationship and it has always produced some really emotional, volatile reactions, but that honestly i think was one of their best interactions. it was like... the most vulnerable they’ve ever been with each other? really well earned tbh. fate made me cry.

2018 was an important year for siobhan also because it saw a lot of her bonding with raptor red, who became the third denny guardian. that relationship has always been so interesting to me because it’s so unconventional and unexpected and i honestly love how close they’ve gotten?

oh and also twitterplot!! was the first bigger plot thing i’d done with siobhan with awhile and i loved the dynamic of her actually like, trying to do something Heroic for once and fumbling with it and then picking herself back up again. and she had a fucking hilarious dynamic with jack and tomy for awhile too

mmm i picked up camille in 2018 and while she’s not a character i play the most frequently she has become like. really important to me personally. one of my favorite things i’ve gotten to do this year is probably bounce her off jay’s amma, as well as develop this longer, slower dynamic with her and felix. and her and laurel’s stuff has been really interesting too because i feel like it’s such a unique approach to a dynamic? it gave me the chance to do a bigger reporting project with her and also like... bond with someone she has some stuff in common with more slowly

also i loved picking up cordelia and getting hype for ahs and just. some of the interactions she’s had with her castmates have been really really rewarding. i’m also enjoying getting to throw delia at completely new characters - her stuff with harry has been particularly poignant, i’ve like, never imagined up until now what a combination like that might be like but it’s been SO good - but i really am a sucker for that canonmate hype y’know

and speaking of! i’ve already really been enjoying hannibal cast stuff, although that’s just started up like this last month so most of its defining stuff will probably happen in 2019,

#thanks spear!!#its been... quite a ride #cuts dennys lvad wire #larkspear

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wellamarke · 6 years

Text

@synth-recharge-challenge: Week 2 Meta Challenge

Overall, which series (1-3) has been your favourite?

Hmm…. I’m going into this essay without much idea what my conclusion will be, so let’s see where this goes, shall we?

Series 1 is obviously the OG - it has all the intrigue and character driven storylines, it’s very inward-looking and contained, which I definitely don’t mean as a negative - it made the storytelling very rich. The screentime was more fairly apportioned, too, I thought. I’d have liked more Fred, but other than that I feel like we got a fair amount from each character. The various storylines (of which there weren’t TOO many) fed into each other beautifully.

Series 2 expanded the world, put our faves in new situations, explored new dynamics and gave us the flagship Nistrid. It developed characters we already loved as well as giving Hester (a new character) a meaningful arc. It was gripping and exciting. However… some aspects were a bit disjointed. Not all threads contributed to the main story, but instead took time away from characters whose (more interesting) arcs were left a little depleted.

Series 3, in my view, combined something of the magic of series 1 with that of series 2. It was full of parallels of now-iconic series 1 scenes and motifs, had some brilliant character scenes, and fewer random plotlines (only Niska’s diverged from the rest, really, everyone else had lots of intersection with each other). It also brought in plenty of new characters and built on series 2’s world expansion and thriller-y elements. However, it killed a bunch of characters, and while I actually accept each one in isolation as being well handled… as a pattern, it doesn’t sit well. Once every two episodes, a female character died for the cause she was fighting for. These are all tragic, beautiful stories in themselves, with each character giving her life in a different way (and with varying levels of agency) that, individually, might be seen as something that makes sense for her personal story… but in terms of the “overall”, I can’t bring myself to love this trend.

Okay, so those are some general thoughts. Based on this I would rank them in the following order: 1 - 3 - 2.

Now let’s rank them more scientifically, using some categories.

Opener (3 - 2 - 1)

This one isn’t very fair because Series 1’s opener has a very different job, and I didn’t watch it for the first time after months of anticipation (pretty sure I only knew about it 6 days in advance lol and I had no pre-existing interest in any character). So the only victory here is (narrowly) 3 over 2. I was just SO VERY PUMPED after 3.1.

Characterisation (1 - 2 - 3)

I can’t speak highly enough of Series 1 when it comes to characterisation. The other two… I originally had them the other way round, but then I was comparing what I see as the major failures of each, and I’ve decided that 3’s crimes (Toby and Leo) are worse than 2’s (Mattie and Sophie). Toby might as well not have been in series 3, and Leo felt like a different person for most of it. In Leo’s case that might have been intentional because of his change of, well, species, but I don’t have to like it! In contrast, Mattie and Sophie bounced back entirely from the whacky things series 2 had them do (Mattie not giving half a damn about Odi and Sophie forgetting that she’s the only kid in the country who knows that synths CAN have feelings). Possibly S3’s good characterisation outweighs S2’s, but I decided to judge this one on the cons rather than the pros. They’re easier to quantify.

Themes (3 - 1 - 2)

In a sense 2 was an interim year, between the story at its core and the story of the world: it had more to do in terms of transitive plot, driving forward to point we’re at in series 3, where we can tell these huge, thematic stories on a global level. Series 1 did beautiful things with themes like humanity, family, technology, trust. Series 3 was at times a horrifying mirror to our own failures as a species. I’ve seen the creators characterise s1 as being about family, s2 as being about relationships/couples, and s3 as being about societies. Maybe from this point of view it’s not much of a wonder that I list s1 first and s2 last, hehehehe.

Plot (3 - 2 - 1)

This is kind of a hard category to call so I don’t really know why I put it down. I think I agree with this ranking. But let’s also say:

Integration of Plots (1 - 3 - 2)

Nothing will ever beat the beautiful tapestry that is series 1, where everything weaves together so well. S3 did a better job of joining things up than S2, but then as mentioned, S2 kind of had to be about fragmentation in order to expand the world.

Shipping (2 - 1 - 3)

Hello, I’m still bitter about S3 Nistrid so here S2 has to win. It also gave us several Karpet gems, and Flax and Trenie. Series 1 has so much beautiful Miaura, and the beginnings of Leotilda. S3 Leotilda felt a LITTLE rushed (working backwards from the finale it’s like: oh, we need her to be pregnant with Miracle Hybrid Baby by episode 8 so they’ll have to be making out ASAP!). Oh, but s3 did have the Nistrid ILYs… they were obviously quality content. Just not enough of it. Plus, my OTP got sunk in the FIRST EPISODE. Boo.

Finale (2 - 3 - 1)

I think series 1’s finale is pretty weak, compared to the rest of it: things are worked out a little too easily, and I love it as a character episode more than a culmination-of-the-plot-I’ve-been-invested-in episode. Series 3’s finale was sooo impactful and beautiful in many ways, but I can’t quite forgive it for Mia, yet, or the STUPID HYBRID STUFF. Whereas the Series 2 finale is, quite honestly, one of the best 45 minutes of TV that I’ve ever seen. It’s so satisfying, on both plot and character levels. I was literally watching curled up in a little ball, for some of it. It had the most gorgeously-shot closing scene, with all the synths waking up. I’ll admit that Mia’s memorial scene is also visually stunning, but I’m usually crying too much to really appreciate it.

Scoring time: let’s say it’s add a point for ranking first, and deduct a point for ranking last.

Series 1 ends up with a score of -1!

Series 2 ends up with a score of 0!

Series 3 ends up with a score of 1!

Itemised ranking: 3 - 2 - 1

This is hilarious! How has Series 1 lost?

Averaging my initial ranking with my itemised ranking, then:

1 - 3 - 2 versus 3 - 2 - 1 gives us 3 - 1 - 2.

So it would appear that Series 3 might be my favourite overall… which was NOT the outcome I was expecting. I think it’s probably fair, though. There has been a lot of gorgeous stuff this year.

What this system I’ve improvised doesn’t do is measure how MUCH the things that were better were better, and how MUCH the things that were worse were worse. I feel that s3’s crimes are worse than s2’s, but s3’s high points are higher than s2 ever really reached. S1 is at the perhaps unfair disadvantage of not being in the position to have taken many risks, because it was only building, not expanding, so I suppose it makes sense that it’s ended up in the middle.

Maybe one day I’ll do this on a proper 1-10 system that measures amount of individual merit, rather than just pitting them against each other directly. But for now… this will do.

If you’re wondering why you read this far, well, so am I, pal.

#c4 humans #long post #synth recharge challenge

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rappaccini · 2 years

Text

.... okay orphan black the next chapter season 2 hot takes:

spoilers below

i really don't love it.

what i liked

okay... i like that more of the og cast is back to voice their roles. good to hear them again.

diving further into the implications of clones being exposed. while i think some of the bigotry feels very.... ya-novel on-the-nose, i like that this has a lasting effect on the womens' everyday lives. status quo change is fun!

the antivaxxer panic. yup. sounds about right. and brings up good questions re the ethics of keeping the secret from the women for eight years.

the entire interview where cosima and rachel team up.

rachel. the one character the sequel does justice by. its great seeing her seize the opportunity to gain power for herself, and revealing that her hard line in the sand is protecting the clones, even if its coming from an icky point of view; she would, she's a dyad loyalist to her core, and she does believe clones are the future. of course she'd protect their existence now that the secret's out. and watching her become the wine aunt to charlotte the others begrudgingly tolerate is great.

the concept of blythe. as much as the Social Media Girlboss villain is a tired trope at this point, a clone starting a cult centered around herself is fantastic. wish it were executed better.

Gripes.

first of all the formatting just doesn't vibe with me. it feels more like an audiobook than a proper podcast audio drama. just a big missed opportunity.

forgetting their own canon. 'there's no way to tell clones apart' .... except the genetic patent that gives each woman a unique bar code, right? the oh shit moment we end the whole first season on? where the fuck did that go? why don't cosima and rachel mention it?

for that matter, forgetting that art already has a daughter (and a son). adopting charlotte is great, but... what about his other kids????

the preachiness of the main themes. ob has never been subtle, but it's never soapboxed either. i keep rolling my eyes and thinking 'thanks i get it' when the characters start monologuing.

the main cast feels more like a liability at this point. most of the characters just seem to Be There for no real reason, or just for fanservice. it'd have been a much better use of time to just make new characters to drive the plot. it also makes the massive misunderstanding of the characters themselves more painful--

next.... the characterization.

while i like the idea of allison and donnie getting a reality show, the drama doesn't take advantage of it to develop their characters at all. they're just the late-ob flanderized versions of themselves. you could cut them from the show and miss nothing. and once again, oscar and gemma are non-characters.

arun is a noncharacter, so i honestly couldnt care less about his relationship with vivi.

sarah is pointless. she's just there in the background doing nothing. at least helena got to take her kids camping in the arctic for season 1.

for that matter helena's sons are Just There. so are charlotte and kira.

unlike art and jayasuriya, who vanish completely.

for the life of me i can never see felix getting married or owning a house.

i can see cosima and delphine getting married, but never having kids, so hinging the second season on them having a baby just makes it fall flat. feels like a wasted opportunity to introduce a new clone through which you could explore this idea.

what i wish they did instead.

focus on a new cluster of clones exclusively.

first of all, it'd be more interesting for other clone clusters to get the spotlight. that was what made the helsinki comic arc so special; if they're truly a global community, why does everything important only happen to and because of the toronto clones?

i mean, vivi is The New Sarah (as both a clone who excels in disguise, is our entry point into the conspiracy, and is representative of the state due to her cia affiliations... which makes her an interesting tie to helena and rachel), and blythe is now The New Rachel with hints of allison (what with the evolution of the neoliberal lady ceo into the social media domestic goddess girlboss). let's focus more on the new clones introduced around them.

including, again, the New Cosima through which we can explore the bone marrow treatment that lets clones have children. give us a new cophine that can actually plausibly have the pregnancy plot. since we're combining the archetypes, lets make the New Allison a lesbian in a same-sex marriage trying to start a family of her own.

New Helena is the battered wife whose name i cant even recall. maybe expand on that friendship between her and blythe.

so on and so forth. give us a whole season of vivi tracking down local clones, making contact with them, and end s1 on pulling the trigger on the clone reveal. then season two dealing with the fallout.

include cameos of the og cast, but don't bring them in more than that. since most of the clone club don't have anything to do, just let them live their lives.

overall i.... don't regret listening to s1-2, but i also don't think i want a third season either. am not mad that the sequel series exists. i just wish it'd been written better and from a different angle.

#ob

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muthur9000 · 6 years

Text

My next instalment of the creatives series features the amazingly talented concept artist Ev Shipard who worked on art concepts for the Engineer city, David’s Lab and the Egg chamber.

Clara Fei-Fei: Thanks so much for taking time to answer my questions, could you start by telling me what was your favourite Alien/sci-fi movie?

Ev Shipard: That’s a tough one- if we are talking about creature films then it’s a very close tie between Alien and The Thing- both get a lot of screen time in the studio. The level of tension in both of these has you on the edge of the seat looking into the shadows. Obviously Alien has stunning production design and cinematography which I find myself constantly coming back to for inspiration- a defining moment for Science Fiction. But let’s not forget the original trilogy of Star Wars. I was a kid of the late 70’s/80’s so it was my foray into the world of sci-fi film… and of course the toys!

CF: Who’s your favourite character in any alien/sci-fi movie?

ES: I think David’s character arc has been great. Getting my head around his approach with his Lab and Room during the design phase was a unique opportunity. Of course, I do have a soft spot for Private Hudson.

CF: Which variation of the xenomorph is your favourite?

ES: I always thought Fincher’s Alien 3 creature was great- it felt more animalistic and I remember moved a little better than the suits in Aliens. The browns and ochres were an interesting departure and Giger created a very cool looking variant initially for that film. I love the look of Fincher’s film and absolutely love the production design. Norman Reynolds interestingly enough also worked on Raiders and the original Star Wars Trilogy. Prior to Fincher, Vincent Ward has a very interesting approach to this film- the story is pretty much unchanged but it’s worth perusing his site for some of the visuals. On our ‘Covenant’ the creature department did an amazing job revisiting the Xenomorph- walking around the studio looking at the sculpts in progress was great inspiration for some of my work on David’s Lab.

CF: If you could enhance any part of your body using robotics, which would it be and what abilities would you choose to give it?

ES: I am a traditionalist at heart so I’d steer clear of any mods.

CF: What got you interested in being a concept artist? Which concept artists do you admire? What sort of advice do you have for others considering this line of work?

ES: I think I’d have to owe that to Star Wars and Bladerunner- seeing McQuarrie and Mead’s work in books as well as a drive to tell my own stories visually from a young age. I was the kid drawing in all my class books- massive battles starting on the back page. These days as an artist I am always looking for a creative outlet for personal expression which is usually drawing or oil painting.

Being an artist in the entertainment industry in a global market is very competitive and requires a real commitment to study. I think the best advice is to focus on fundamentals and be prepared to be the perpetual student- always willing to learn and grow. Not just with skill and aesthetic but also with the myriad of software packages that allow us to do what we do. An artist perceives the world in a unique way and I believe it isn’t a vocation but a way of life. It’s the curiosity about even the most mundane aspects of what most people take for granted and how to represent this visually often within a story.

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CF: What sort of things did you have to consider when creating concept art for David’s lab?

ES: Initially, the space for the lab was supposed to resemble the egg chamber- we had this favourite reference of a bunker and the ceiling would have a stone spine with arches that we could utilise across the two sets. This changed as many things invariably do within the context of the story and the idea. Often Ridley would sketch out in pen a rough idea, we called these Ridleygrams, and this would become the basic idea of our direction. Sometimes they would be very simple but all the information was there for a visual starting place. Ridley had an affinity for a photo reference of a catacomb in Malta and It was my job to take this aesthetic and shape language and bring it into David’s Lab and also his room. David was repurposing the space for his own work so the Lab would have aspects of its previous history plus all his experimentation and failed attempts at biology. We see again the ampules and canisters which were recreated for this film. One of the striking features were the drawings that Dane Hallett and Matt Hatton produced hanging from the walls and ceiling. These were originally supposed to be drawn on stretched flesh and mounted on frames above. I scattered these around as compositional elements in my paintings and used them to refract light and create interest- when the camera moves you would have nice overlapping elements and parallax. I built this set in 3d after the initial sketches and handed this over to the set designers to refine, create plans and accurate dimensions to build. The table was also a 3d model which started out life in ZBrush. My take on it was a large obsidian slab but with a fine blood channel through the centre and on the ground small drains. The idea was that it could have been a sacrificial chamber below the cathedral- David had repurposed this as his workbench. All this is my hypothesis rather than direction from above but these little things all become part of the bigger picture and it’s great to put your stamp on aspects that you consider have merit within the overarching narrative.

CF: What is your favourite piece you ever created?

This is a hard one- most commercial work and even my personal work is only really a favourite till the next one. It’s always a challenge and rarely comes easy but this is all part of the process.

CF: What sort of concept art projects have you worked on in the past? What was the major difference between those projects? e.g: Large-scale vs small scale

ES: I’ve worked on a broad range of projects with the majority being period films from 300 to Unbroken. Every project has a unique with vision spearheaded by the Director and Production Designer. I’ve worked with the same crew many times however on both large and smaller budget projects. Sometimes there is more of a focus on design with pure concept art and sometimes it’s more about rendering sets already designed in the context of the story.

CF: What’s it like to work on concept art for a movie vs games?

ES: With games projects, I have only really worked with cinematics or live action marketing campaigns, like the Halo and Battlefield spots, so that is very similar to preproduction and postproduction on films.

CF: How long does it take to work on a piece? How many hours?

ES: Some artwork is executed in hours, some days, it really depends on the context and requirements of the work. I produced a lot of b/w studies or story beats from the script on Covenant which was used by Ridley Scott and Chris Seagers to work out the expedition from the Lander to the City and what we would see. some of these were done very quickly but for the most part, a rendered frame takes me around 2-3 days. This isn’t including the many iterations based on feedback/comments or script changes that occur throughout the process.

CF: I became familiar with your work through Alien: Covenant, what sort of concept art did you do for the movie?

ES: My work encompassed many sets and potential locations but my main focus was the Engineers World. I spent the most time working on the Hall of Heads which included digitally painted art, sculpted clay maquettes, digitally sculpted pieces to mill for the set and worked with story points and dressing throughout it. I worked on an early rendition of the plaza and digital sculpts of statues that were also milled from foam full scale for the sets. David’s lab, his room and the egg chamber also took up a major part of my time. A lot of my work focuses on mood and lighting within these environments. I also worked on the Lander in the air and on the ground with Steve Burg’s amazing design. There were lots of location-based pieces of art using photos from various places in Australia and New Zealand- these are contextual paintings with script elements and used to help the production settle in a specific location. This is a big part of what we do on a lot of features.

CF: What details could you share about your pieces featured in the art book? ES: The art book… a point of contention. I am grateful that I had many pieces featured but the lack of image credits for a lot of the art just really gets my blood boiling. Of course by the time the book is produced most of the art department is no longer involved in any of the process, it’s another publisher and marketing team working on it and rights and deals mean there is no requirement for any credit but still some of the best ‘making of’ books out there credit the artists. I’ve been involved in many projects where this is the case and it’s a frustrating aspect of the experience.

CF: As for the Engineer city and scenes, did you get much of a say in aesthetics? What sort of design brief were you given to adhere to?

ES: Ridley and Chris have accumulated tons of references- beautiful photographs from classical art, architecture, and design to really get the feel across. These were collated on large black foam core boards and posted in the ‘War Room’ which became our go-to place for inspiration. All this was replicated across the servers but it was nice to peruse all this together in the room. Stephane Levallois who is an amazing storyboard artist explored the city early on with some architectural designs in pencil. We also referenced Steve Messing’s earlier work. I was tasked with following this aesthetic and the look and feel of what we designed with the Plaza and interiors bringing it all together. I spent a lot of time designing profiles of buildings and structures to make sure the aesthetic flowed through into post-production. Our pre-production nestled nicely into the post with a lot of communication with the VFX supervisor. Chris Seagers (Production Designer) was very savvy and aware of this- he wanted it to flow smoothly.

CF: For the hall of heads did you use the elder Engineers from the initial Sacrificial Engineer scene cut from Prometheus as a reference?

ES: They were part of the reference library but more specifically we tried to create an original look and feel for this culture that tied back to what we had seen in the previous film. Ridley had these great photos of elder indigenous people from all over the world and aspects of these were sculpted into all the 7 heads. The heads started life as ZBrush sculpts, clay maquettes and later milled foam sections from the digital file. These were reproduced in detail for the epic heads we see on the set. Each one is individual, however with the final lighting and framing that is a little hard to register. We built a bit of a hypothetical back story here with the heads being effigies of the elders of the society- this place was a meeting room where decisions were made. Initially there were specific seats, a fire pit in the middle and of course the large table which was a variation of the table in David’s Lab. 7 heads with 7 a prime number and perhaps they used a base 7 system- so a kind of history and culture was sketched out to give it all a foundation. I guess with many early Earth cultures tied into this we can hypothesise about the Engineers and our planet, seeding life etc- I’m making presumptions here as Ridley and Chris didn’t specifically explain this. The concept art room was a fun melting pot of ancient alien ramblings and conspiracy theories, to much of the Art Department’s entertainment. I’m not sure how serious we were considering this though, with this project I guess it comes with the territory.

CF: What sort of things did you have to consider when creating concept art for David’s lab?

ES: Initially the space for the lab was supposed to resemble the egg chamber- we had this favourite reference of a bunker and the ceiling would have a stone spine with arches that we could utilise across the two sets. This changed as many things invariably do within the context of the story and the idea. Often Ridley would sketch out in pen a rough idea, we called these Ridleygrams, and this would become the basic idea of our direction. Sometimes they would be very simple but all the information was there for a visual starting place. Ridley had an affinity for a photo reference of a catacomb in Malta and It was my job to take this aesthetic and shape language and bring it into David’s Lab and also his room. David was repurposing the space for his own work so the Lab would have aspects of its previous history plus all his experimentation and failed attempts at biology. We see again the ampules and canisters which were recreated for this film. One of the striking features were the drawings that Dane Hallett and Matt Hatton produced hanging from the walls and ceiling. These were originally supposed to be drawn on stretched flesh and mounted on frames above. I scattered these around as compositional elements in my paintings and used them to refract light and create interest- when the camera moves you would have nice overlapping elements and parallax. I built this set in 3d after the initial sketches and handed this over to the set designers to refine, create plans and accurate dimensions to build. The table was also a 3d model which started out life in ZBrush. My take on it was a large obsidian slab but with a fine blood channel through the centre and on the ground small drains. The idea was that it could have been a sacrificial chamber below the cathedral- David had repurposed this as his workbench. All this is my hypothesis rather than direction from above but these little things all become part of the bigger picture and it’s great to put your stamp on aspects that you consider have merit within the overarching narrative.

CF: What was it like creating your version of Giger’s Li?

ES: For me, this was a fun diversion. It plugged into David’s lab but the script was constantly moving with this and I wanted to create something early on- a tribute to Giger. It became a bit of a talking point then we moved on still not knowing what was happening with Shaw even up to the shoot (from the perspective of the Art Department). Then I started to see some of the work Creatures were doing and I ended up producing a painting later with Shaw on the Slab and David and Oram looking over her. The interesting thing I found with the Li painting was how much Noomi started to resemble Sigourney as I worked the face in. There were a number of variations done of this with more or less biomechanoid features and elements.

CF: What did you think about Alien: Covenant? if there was something you could change, what would it be?

I think our work in the Art Department was showcased well. I’m proud of how the Engineer’s world was resolved ultimately. Personally, I would like to have seen more of our city and spent the time to delve into the culture and most people I have spoken to loved this aspect of the film and wanted to know more. Perhaps this will be dealt with in other avenues- audio books, comics, novels etc but I guess the test screenings wanted more aliens in space and we ended up with what we got. There was a lot more of the culture designed(loosely)- gardens, the graves, a tree of life etc that was ultimately cut. Ridley always produces a stunning looking well-designed piece of entertainment and it was a pleasure to work as part of his team.

Thank you for reaching out and the opportunity to talk about this project that I consider a career highlight. I can be found at http://evshipardentertainmentart.com/ and for those that are interested in behind-the-scenes and my sketches… https://www.instagram.com/evshipard/

Creatives: Ev Shipard My next instalment of the creatives series features the amazingly talented concept artist Ev Shipard who worked on art concepts for the Engineer city, David's Lab and the Egg chamber.

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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20 Years Later, the World That Launched the ISS Is Gone

On Monday, the International Space Station enters its 20th year of continuous human habitation, a milestone that will be celebrated by the station’s partners around the world—and of course, the handful of astronauts living in the orbiting laboratory.

It is an “incredible honor” to be up here, said NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, a member of the current ISS crew, during a teleconference from the station on Friday. “We happened to have picked a really good expedition to be up here and I think we all feel very lucky.”

“I think the most fitting tribute is for the three of us to just go take a nice long view out the cupola, look at the beautiful Earth and appreciate this amazing space station,” she continued, when asked about the crew’s plans for the anniversary.

“The celebration day will be a Monday, so probably we’ll be celebrating this day by hard work,” added cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, “and of course, remembering those who flew here, and who have been flying here, for 20 years. We will remember all the participants of this huge program. Thank you so much, to all.”

When the Expedition 1 crew arrived at the ISS on November 2, 2000, the station had just three core modules; it has since sprouted over a dozen more, to a total of 16. During its lifespan, the ISS has been home to over 240 people from 19 countries, the platform for more than 220 space walks, and a nonstop source of incredible Earth imagery and public engagement with space.

The station’s past is impressive, and there are ambitious plans for its future. But the world that launched this incredible technological project is not the same place that it orbits every 90 minutes today. New geopolitical alignments on Earth have had consequences that reach into space, and the emergence of the commercial space sector has offered a glimpse of markets that could reshape low-Earth orbit, where the ISS resides.

The ISS is an ever-evolving reflection of technological and diplomatic shifts, but it is also an expression of the bygone era that launched it. Now, as the station approaches its twilight years, its operations will tell us a lot about where humans are headed, both on and off Earth.

The ISS is likely to host human beings until at least 2030; its member nations have already agreed to fund it until 2024 and its operational lifespan is projected to extend many years beyond that.

Here are the three major trends that will influence the next 10 years on the station—commercialization, internationalism, and the emergence of a post-ISS vision—and what they might mean for human space exploration writ large.

A crowd watches as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches to the ISS in May of 2020. Image: Red Huber via Getty Images

Open for Business

Space commerce is an ingrained trope of science fiction, from the ore-hauling commercial spaceship Nostromo of Alien fame to the hired delivery services of Planet Express in Futurama. But despite the prevalence of private markets in our imagined idea of our space future, it has proved difficult to establish a self-sustaining economy off-Earth in real life.

“If there was a straightforward way to make money in low Earth orbit with humans, we would be doing it right now,” said Casey Dreier, chief advocate and senior space policy adviser at the Planetary Society, in a call. “The very fact that it seems to take large government expenditures up front to create the conditions where private industry might find a way to make money in low Earth orbit tells us something.”

Within the lifetime of the ISS, the commercial space sector has experienced an unprecedented growth spurt, a change that is reflected by the historic arrival of the first astronauts in a commercial space vehicle, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, at the station earlier this year.

NASA plans to open the ISS up to more commercial activity in the coming years to channel this latent momentum. In 2019, the agency announced that it would allocate five percent of its “crew resources and cargo capability, including 90 hours of crew time and 175 kilograms of cargo launch capability” though it would place limits on amounts available to any one company, according to a statement.

The private sector has played a crucial role in spaceflight since its earliest days, especially as satellite operators and contractors on federal space projects. But the immense costs of reaching space, and the dangerous environment that awaits companies there, has kept a range of potential space markets out of reach.

If all goes to plan, though, the station will receive its first fully commercial module, developed by Texas-based company Axiom Space, by the mid-2020s. Axiom and SpaceX are also laying the groundwork to sell tickets to the station for about $52 million. NASA has reached agreements with companies such as Estee Lauder to potentially film commercial footage on the station, and has discussed options for filming a movie aboard the ISS with Tom Cruise.

Of all of these emerging markets, space tourism is the one that’s most likely to take off, according to Phil McAlister, the director of the commercial spaceflight division at NASA Headquarters.

“The more people who have that experience, the more they’ll identify new ways to use space, and the more they will inspire others to also want to go,” McAlister said in an email. “That’s why I have worked so hard to enable commercial crew because I feel so passionately it will change the paradigm; change the arc of human spaceflight. That’s the big one.”

While space tourists have already flown to the ISS, these private flights may become much more common in the coming years. In addition to changing the activities and dynamics of the ISS, these flights will require a new legal and ethical infrastructure that may influence human spaceflight for many decades to come.

A Soyuz 2.1-a rocket launches to the ISS in 2019. Image: TASS via Getty Images

“As a private company or as a private individual wanting to pay for a ticket to go to space, there’s no guarantees,” said Sara Langston, assistant professor of spaceflight operations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in a call. “This is one reason we call them spaceflight ‘participants’ and not ‘passengers’.”

“If you say passenger there actually are rights, duties, and obligations between the transportation provider and the customer who has to pay for a ride,” she continued. “We call this the laws of common carriage and this goes all the way back to Medieval times, so there’s lots of precedents for that. But Congress said in 2004 that spaceflight is not common carriage.”

In other words, human spaceflight is considered inherently dangerous, so space lawyers are currently busy establishing legal frameworks for issues such as liabilities and informed consent, as it pertains to space tourism.

In addition to customers looking to buy a trip to the ISS, companies are also interested in using the station’s unique microgravity environment from companies looking to develop technologies.

For instance, Connecticut-based company Lambda Vision recently flew some of its artificial retinas to the station, and several biomedical and pharmaceutical companies have tested out “exomedicine” projects on the ISS.

Meanwhile, Florida-based company Made in Space has helped pioneer commercial 3D-printing and manufacturing techniques on the ISS, and startups such as AstroGrams hope to build a market for affordable collectibles and memorabilia that have been to the ISS.

NASA does not expect these ventures to help bankroll the station’s costly operations in the near term—just the opposite.

“NASA is subsidizing the cost to enable new markets to emerge and with the goal that NASA will ultimately be one of many customers,” said McAlister. “We do expect we will eventually move to full cost recovery, but the goal of these activities is more about enabling commercial demand than it is to subsidize the station.

“A competitive market will drive down costs for NASA, that will free additional resources for NASA to use for deep space exploration,” he added.

Likewise, NASA’s role as a public agency means that it walks a “fine line,” Langston said, when arbitrating what commercial activities to support on the ISS, and how the station’s resources will be used by companies.

“It goes against public policy for private companies to gain profit or financial benefit from public funds, so NASA does have to be very careful of what they allow commercial companies to do or what they allow their astronauts to do for private gain,” she noted.

NASA Astronaut Christina Koch returns to Earth from the ISS in 2020. Image: SERGEI ILNITSKY via Getty Images

The Geopolitics of Human Spaceflight

You can trace the origin of the ISS back to many different moments in history, but the 1975 orbital handshake shared between NASA astronaut Thomas Stafford and Russian cosmonaut Alex Leonov during the American-Russian Apollo-Soyuz mission stands out. The symbolic gesture set the stage for an astonishingly resilient partnership in space between two long-time rivals that frequently butt heads on Earth.

“The U.S. and Russia have a long, productive history of cooperation in human and robotic space exploration,” said Robyn Gatens, acting director of the International Space Station at NASA Headquarters, in an email. “In addition to nearly 20 years of crews on the International Space Station that of course includes Russians, there are Russian instruments on operational NASA science missions on the Moon and Mars.”

While there are disagreements on broader space policies between the nations, it’s likely that the American-Russian partnership on the ISS will survive as long as the station itself.

“It’s very hard to pick up your space station and go home when you are joined together so tightly”

“This type of geopolitical shared goal is, I think, the best spinoff from space,” Dreier said. “It forces people to continue working together because they do have a shared goal to protect the lives of the astronauts and cosmonauts that share the station.”

“It’s rare, these days, to have that forced cooperation,” he added. “It’s honestly one of the best consequences of why we spend money in space” because “it’s very hard to pick up your space station and go home when you are joined together so tightly.”

That said, Russia and the U.S. are no longer the only powers on the crewed spaceflight scene. China has made huge strides in its human space program over the past 20 years: the nation launched its first astronaut, Yang Liwei, in 2003, and is on track to establish a permanent space station in 2022.

While China has expressed interest in joining the ISS coalition in the past, the United States has barred it from sending astronauts to the station, or participating in ISS research, due to national security concerns. (The two nations collaborate on a range of other space-related issues beyond the ISS, including Earth science, lunar science, and space debris).

“I think it would be a good thing to engage them on the ISS, but that ship has sailed a little bit,” Dreier said.

“They don’t need the United States,” he noted. “They are building their own space station, and they have independent access for humans to space. They are only the third country to do that.”

While China and the U.S. are not likely to cooperate on crewed space missions in the near term, many other nations have honed their own space programs in the 20 years since the ISS has been operating. India, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, may send more of their astronauts the ISS in the next decade, which could expand the diversity of the station crew and lead to a more multifaceted space environment in the future.

”By partnering with other nations, NASA is able to engage the best scientific minds, as well as share the cost and risks of investments in ambitious missions,” said Gatens. “NASA’s international partnerships are also an important part of global diplomacy, leveraging activities in space to bring nations closer together here on Earth. We recently made an agreement with the United Arab Emirates to train their astronauts, one of whom already has flown to space.”

SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule splashes down in August of 2020. Image: Handout via Getty Images

What Comes After the ISS?

The ISS has been flying for decades, and may remain a home to humans until the 2030s. But like any lived-in and well-loved home, it will eventually reach the end of its lifespan and need to be torn down—or deorbited, in this case. One day, a crew of astronauts will undock from the ISS for the last time, abandoning its modules to burn up in the same skies that it used to glide above, catching sunlight that made it shine on dark, clear nights.

By the time the ISS is destroyed in a (hopefully) controlled reentry into the atmosphere, NASA thinks that other crewed stations will have deployed in space to take up its mantle.

“Our goal is to have an uninterrupted presence in low-Earth orbit, to be able to transition from the station to other platform(s) where we can continue working in low-Earth orbit,” McAlister said.

In addition to keeping humans in low-Earth orbit, NASA is already working towards the deployment of a human habitat called Lunar Gateway, a smaller space station that would orbit the Moon and provide a platform for human exploration of the lunar surface.

“NASA right now is beginning the process of returning humans to deep space in the vicinity of and on the Moon with the Artemis program,” Dreier said. “There’s a serious effort and I think this has been a little bit underappreciated how much work NASA and others have been putting into these broad international agreements.”

There are still many contentious debates to be had about the exploration of the Moon, especially regarding resource utilization on the lunar surface, but NASA is working toward a vision of international cooperation on the Lunar Gateway that is modeled on the ISS coalition. NASA hopes to establish the Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon by 2028, and use the orbiting habitat as a platform to expand human exploration of the lunar surface.

“The goal for the future is that we’ll have commercial stations in low-Earth orbit that are tailored to specific market needs, including NASA’s needs, and that we’ll carry our international partnerships forward to the Gateway in orbit around the Moon and continued deep space exploration as we go together with commercial and international partners,” said Gatens.

In this way, the central legacy of the ISS—an orbital embodiment of what is possible when nations work together—hinges on whether this multilateral spirit in space can outlive the station itself.

“Space is an equalizer in many ways,” Langston said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, what language you speak, what culture you come from—math and sciences brings people together. Everybody is interested in the beneficial outcomes of conducting science and exploration activities.”

A generation of young adults have never experienced an unpeopled spacescape, thanks to the orbital relay race that continues aboard this most storied off-Earth outpost. The next decade will determine whether humans can maintain and expand our presence beyond our planet, because our current life raft cannot float forever.

20 Years Later, the World That Launched the ISS Is Gone syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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jam2289 · 5 years

Text

Story, Drama, Conflict, and Suspense

Let's stress test my unique ideas of story and drama. Then we'll look at coming up with more useful thoughts about suspense and conflict.

In my article "What Is a Story?" I came to new definitions about story and drama that I think get to the very root of the issue.

A story is the representation of a change, or set of changes, resulting in a steady state.

Drama is the potential or actual change to a thing of value, in its value.

My friend Jon liked the article and sent me a message about story. His favorite author George Saunders gave this example of what a story is at a seminar he attended.

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a. Not a story: "the cat sat on the mat."

b. A story: "the cat sat on the dog's mat."

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This was my off the cuff response.

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That's interesting. See, I would say that's an idea for a story. I've seen several writers do this. They're examples of the difference between a fact and a story, as Aaron Sorkin put it, don't really include stories. They give the start of stories, like teasers, or good story ideas. I think this example is revealing conflict rather than story, that is the key piece that he probably focuses on when coming up with story ideas. It works great, I use it too, but it's not truly what the kernel of a story is. It's just the part that makes a story good. "The cat sat on the mat." isn't a story because there isn't a change followed by a steady state. At least, that's what I found while trying to puzzle it out in that article. So, from this steady state we need to have a change and then a steady state again. Like, "The cat sat on the mat. He heard a sound. Looked left. And... nothing. He waited the rest of the night, but there was no other sound to be heard." There's a little suspense, but no real drama because there was no change in the value of a thing of value. Stories can be done without conflict, they just usually aren't because it's not too exciting. B actually isn't a story either. It's just the beginning. We need to know what changes, and then what steady state eventually comes about again. That would be a story, and probably a dramatic one with the conflict of the dog already foreshadowed.

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This reminded me an example that the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin gave.

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The queen died is a fact. The queen died and left a king with a broken heart is a story. The queen died, and she was the brains behind the king who is now struggling to keep his throne is drama.

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His example of drama works for me. It's a potential change for the worse in the value of his power, which I assume he values over all other things. Good.

The issue I have is with the story example. That doesn't seem like a story to me. It's just the situation. Nothing happens. Dead queen, sad king. Where's the story in that? We can make a story from that situation, but there isn't a story actually in there yet. When Stephen King writes he often starts with a situation and then just discovers the story as he writes it. That's what you could do in this situation. But that means the story still needs to be made, the idea doesn't exist yet.

When Sorkin is breaking down how to do a story arc over three acts he gives this example.

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Act 1: You chase your hero up a tree.

Act 2: You throw rocks at them.

Act 3: You get them down (or not).

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This is good. Actually, I think this is great. Notice that it isn't really built around the intention and obstacle of the hero. Intention and obstacle are the drive shaft of the story, according to Sorkin. But, it would seem that the intention of the unseen adversary is what drives this story. I find that common. "Harry Potter" is a great story with or without Harry Potter, what "Harry Potter" has to have is Voldemort. He's the most important character and drives the whole plot.

This little three act example has conflict. It definitely has conflict. That seems to be one of the main things that drives story ideas for writers. It may be the main thing that successful writers think about.

Notice also that this fits perfectly with our definitions of story and drama. There is change happening and ending with a steady state. And, there is a change in value of something that is valued, namely life and health in this example.

I think that clears up those ideas and examples. We see that the writers are focused on what would be useful in making a story rather than technical definitions, which makes sense. Let's take a look at some examples from a literary theorist, the psychologist Jerome Bruner.

This is from Bruner's article "Life as Narrative".

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There is widespread agreement that stories are about the vicissitudes of human intention...

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The first thing we have to do is look up what vicissitude means. Google gives two definitions.

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a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant.

alternation between opposite or contrasting things.

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So, stories are about the changes in human intentions. It has the ring of truth to it, but it's not really satisfying. I think that can be an important piece to stories, but not exactly a good definition because it doesn't get to the core of the issue.

In Bruner's article "The Narrative Construction of Reality" he says this.

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A narrative is an account of events occurring over time.

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Still not good enough. It's close, because over time there will probably be some change. But, without the idea of achieving a new state of affairs that has some consistency we can't distinguish where a story ends. Bruner is a genius across multiple fields. But, his definitions of story and narrative are falling short. These are close, but they're not right. I explored similar possibilities myself in my article "What Is a Story?", and I had to discard them before coming up with my final formulation that a story is the representation of a change, or set of changes, resulting in a steady state. It's just a better description of what a story truly is.

I think my definitions of story and drama have passed the stress tests well. I've looked more at story than at drama. That's because I thought someone else's idea might replace my idea of story. I feel pretty solid about my idea of drama. Now, I think both are the best definitions I've ever encountered.

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A story is the representation of a change, or set of changes, resulting in a steady state.

Drama is the potential or actual change to a thing of value, in its value.

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We still need to try to figure out something new with conflict and suspense.

Neil Gaiman talks about writing a story by starting with a conflict. He's not really giving a definition of story here. He's talking about what a good story is, and how to generate story ideas.

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Everything is driven by characters wanting different things, and by those different things colliding. Every moment that one character wants something, and another character wants something mutually exclusive, and they collide—every time that happens, you have a story.

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I think that is pretty darn good. It seems to me that conflict requires a conflict of values, and values can only occur if you have a living thing. Living is the process of valuing. (I made up that definition too. I like finding my own definitions.)

Let's look at a dictionary definition of conflict.

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a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.

a prolonged armed struggle.

a condition in which a person experiences a clash of opposing wishes or needs.

an incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests.

be incompatible or at variance; clash.

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I think that's pretty good. I might formulate it more around values. Such as: conflict is when two conscious beings have mutually exclusive values. Something like that.

What about suspense? Here's the dictionary definition.

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a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen.

a quality in a work of fiction that arouses excited expectation or uncertainty about what may happen.

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I think that's pretty good too. Values control emotions. Potentially having a major change of value is dramatic, it's emotional. It also causes suspense. So, maybe what we have here is that suspense is a limited condition of drama. Where drama is a potential or actual change of value. Both cause strong emotion. Suspense is just the potential change. A death that happened yesterday can still be dramatic, but not suspenseful.

Dan Brown says that suspense gets you to ask, "What is going to happen?" That makes sense. Here are a couple of quotes from him about suspense. He is a master.

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Suspense is all about making promises. It’s about telling a reader, ‘I know something you don’t know. And I promise, if you turn the page, I’m going to tell you.’

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And...

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In the broadest sense, there are two types of suspense: telling the reader what’s happening and withholding information. In the first case, you generate interest by allowing the reader to know more than the hero. This is called “dramatic irony.” For example, your hero is waiting for his spouse to arrive, but she was murdered in a previous chapter. The reader is now filled with dread and expectation for what they know is coming: the hero’s shock at the news of his wife’s death. Generally speaking, thrillers let the reader know more than the hero. In the second case, the reader knows the same or less as the hero. Interest comes from needing more information, and the reader is engaged by the hero’s quest because it slowly reveals explanations for things, such as why a hero’s wife was murdered. Curiosity drives the reader through the novel. Most mystery novels function this way, but bear in mind that on a page-by-page basis you may be using both types of suspense in any novel.

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A promise is about a future value, so that works.

It's interesting that Neil Gaiman mentions that when building a story it's useful to work the other direction in time, to ask, "How did we get here?" Notice that that seems to imply that we're asking the question from a steady state and the story is contained in the changes that have lead to that state. I think it works perfectly with my definition of story.

It seems to me that I've made definite contributions to the ideas of story and drama, and have found unique and better definitions for those terms. But, for suspense and conflict I don't have much that is unique to offer, only slight reformulations of what has already been understood and articulated.

I feel much better with these ideas worked out so thoroughly and completely. I feel like I have more solid ground to stand on when examining or creating stories. Hopefully, you do too.

________________________________________________

You can find more of what I'm doing at http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com

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qrhymes · 7 years

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Tales of Berseria Analysis - The Elements of a Wonderful Game

There is a lot to talk here, and because of that, I won’t be touching the gameplay part of the game, and don’t get me wrong, I think the gameplay is important (and if you fuck it here you could end like Nier, in where you love the game but you get so over frustrated with the gameplay, because you sucked at it, that you need to watch a playthrough to enjoy the whole experience…Now that they apparently fix that, I’m really looking forward to Nier: Automata, it looks great) but the reason of my attachment to the series is the narrative and that is the point of view I gonna share here…So let’s begins.

Eeny, teeny, spiny, crow, why this game is so fucking good?

Well, we are talking about an epic story, of a badass female anti-hero (or an actual villain protagonist, more of that later) seeking vengeance for the death of her little brother, a quest that would make us question the nature of chaos and order, a conflict about what is rational and what is right, It is correct create a world of peace at the cost of the people’s emotions and their free will? Such state of existence can be considered life?…

The game doesn’t wait to through the biggest questions early on and I thanks for it. The whole genre has this stigma of been slow games, overly long, too convoluted and with too many bifurcations, so it is great that we can start almost immediately with the whole point. Main driving force of the plot: Revenge seeking quest. Main theme: Emotion vs Reason. You and your party are in the emotions side, the Abbey and the Exorcist, reason side, and from here is just explore every corner of this conflict, through the story, the character…and WHOA.

First of all, the game is surprisingly gray, and that’s because the story is not so much about of decide what side is the best, if not more about develop these two ideas in conflict, the good in both ideologies, the toxicity of their extremes, the many forms that they can take and how they coexist with each other, and for that purpose the game will go to any place possible to carry the message, if it need to be harsh, it will go harsh, if it need to be ambiguous, it will go ambiguous and if it need to be dark, it will go dark…and in that matter, the game is also really dark (And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think dark equals good, you can be bright and colorful as fuck and still be deep and complex…but sometimes you need to go to some dark places to really make a point and Berseria definitely needed that, but to be clear, Berseria is not good because is dark, Berseria is good because it USE his dark tone to reinforce its narrative…sorry for make so much noise for this but this is an argument that I listen to much in, well…actually everything, and been honest it piss me off when people uses without fucking context) with it’s not an actual surprise considering that this game brings back the concept of Malevolence from Zestiria, but what that really give it this edge, because the series has gone dark before most notably in Xillia 2 and ,again, the Malevolence in Zestiria, it’s the ambiguity of the main cast (This directly connect with the morally gray tone of the game), because even treat them as anti-heroes maybe stretch the reality a little lo much.

The party is not heroic (and this is not necessarily bad, in fact that is the actual definition of what an anti-hero is. The brooding and dark Batman type character is just one type of anti-hero. Any character in the position of the protagonist/Hero/Heroine of the story who doesn’t embrace the attributes of the classic hero archetype, courage, strength, selfishness, etc. is an anti-hero.) and most of the time they aren’t even good, leaving aside the adorable Malak child Laphicet and the exorcist gone rogue Eleanor (The only two who actually fits the role of anti-heroes), all the other members of the party are pretty much selfish villains. They have questionable motivations, a lot of their actions are most than questionable and the question here is why would we care about these people that just seem like a bunch of dicks? (Again leaving aside Phi and Eleanor)

Because the game actually makes an effort to make us care about them…through the skit mechanic.

…And the story does his work, don’t get me wrong, even without the Skits all the characters are interesting individuals, they all embrace different ideas that are develop through the course of the game, they have well-constructed and meaningful arcs, some of them have sympathetic backstories, memorable scenes, hearts to hearts, high and lows, everything that you need to have to make interesting and likable characters…what does the skit mechanic is took this more than great bases and raise them to new levels.

The skits are one of the core pillars of the franchise (And because of that this also applies to every game in the series) and give us a new whole dimension to know these characters outside the main plot.

Through the skits we can have a chat between two or more characters between story points, we can see them discuss the recent events of the plot and how affect them in a more personal and introspective level or just a moment for them to dick around and have a moment to enjoy themselves.

There are just little conversations and are optional but they make marvels in favor of their characters; it makes them more relatable and memorable because we can have more time with them, it makes them more complex because we can flesh out more of their personalities, and helps to maintain every character relevant even if the current story arc is not about them (And this is particular issue that I have in the genre, when a character is demoted after finish their particularly arc and just get a few lines here and there for the rest of the game), is a genius mechanic that enriches the characters and, if use it correctly, the narrative and the themes of the game.

Rokuro is an amoral Daemon murderer but then we see through the skits (and the story, again, team work) that he is a nice and funny guy who also have passionate discussions with ruthless 1000 year old Malak Pirate Eizen, about what kind of beetle is the best, the Stag Beetle or the Rhinoceros Beetle (Live hard and die young, am I right Eizen?), then you have this skit with the apathetic troll witch Magilou and Phi, in which the first tries to cheer him up (and also tease him) and we end with the two shouting “MAGIKAZAM” during an infiltration quest to one of the bad guys bases, funny yes, but also one of the first and strongest insiders in Magilou’s true character.

Comedy, drama, insiders, development, the skits are this window to endless possibilities and in the case of Berseria, it took an already strongest cast and brings them to God-Tiers.

I said it in the begging Tales of Berseria is an amazing game, the story is great, explores a lot of interesting and ideas, it has a fantastic sense humor, good pace, a lot of intrigues and questions, powerful moments and a fantastic cast with meaningful and memorable arcs.

It looks like we have finished here, right? Well I still have not answer the main question, If you believe me, you already know that the game’s bones are the perfect base to build a wonderful experience…but we still have the meat of the question, Why Tales of Berseria works so well?

The individual character arcs.

The characters are the voice of the game and are all member of the cast working to bring us this mind blowing experience…so let’s go deeper here, to darkest place in the darkest prison of Berseria and let’s find out the reason of…Why Magilou’s Menagerie and the cast Works so well?

MAGIKAZAM!!!

Part 1: Tales Series Retrospective

Part 3: Velvet’s character arc - Blindness and toxicity

Part 4: Rokuro’s and Eleanor’s character arc - Obsession and Conflict.

Part 5: Laphicet (Phi)’s and Eizen’s character arcs - Coexistence and Romanticism.

Part 6: Magilou’s character arc - Contradictions.

#tales of berseria #velvet crowe #magilou #rokurou rangetsu #eizen #eleanor hume #laphicet #tales of #tales of series #tales series

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simplypsd1 · 5 years

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10 Tips for Designing Logos That Don’t Suck

So you’re designing a logo. It sounds like an easy enough task, right? Draw a circle, type in the company name and you’re done (I’ve literally heard a designer suggest that very process). Unfortunately, if you’re really worth the money the client is paying you, there’s a lot more to it than that.

There are a million people in the logo design industry today dishing out crappy logos in bulk for crowdsourcing sites. How do you as a serious professional stand out from the crowd and produce quality logos that don’t suck? Read on to find out.

Are you in the middle of a logo design project? Don’t forget to check out our in-depth guide on how to design a logo!

Pro Tip: Use a Logo Template

If you’re looking for a quick start with a logo design, experimenting with a logo template can be a great initial step. It can help give you a starting point for your logo design, on which you can build and adapt.

Envato Elements has a collection of over 6,000 logo templates that you can access for a low monthly price of $17 (as well as icons, photos, graphic templates, and more). Here are a few of our favorites!

1. Use a Visual Double Entendre

Some of my favorite logos in the world utilize a technique that I like to call a visual double entendre, which is an overly fancy way to say that it has two pictures wrapped into one through clever interpretation of a concept or idea.

The WinePlace logo below is a perfect example.

This logo takes on the shape of a thumbtack, which suggests “location” or “place,” but it also clearly looks like an upside down wine glass. Logo designs that use this technique come off as clever and memorable. Viewers love the little mind game that you’re playing and are more prone to appreciate a design because of it.

In the past, we’ve put together a post of clever negative space logos like the one below. Check it out if you love this type of logo design as much as I do!

2. Color is Vitally Important

One of the most important considerations for logo design is the color palette. This is not a superficial decision, color carries meanings and communicates ideas.

Sometimes you’re pegged to the colors of a brand, but other times you’ll have the freedom to explore. I love the rich palette used in the Zion logo below.

The colors here grab you and pull you in, they bring life to the illustration and give further context to the shape of the landscape. That being said, remember that a good logo is versatile and will still function well in grayscale:

Beyond a grayscale version, I like to also provide clients with a true single color version, using only black and negative space. This would be a little tricky with the logo above, but definitely possible.

Always consider what it is that the logo will be used for and whether or not the various use cases require different versions.

3. Avoid the Cliché

Every few years or so, some new fads come along in logo design. I personally love to study design trends and you might even find me suggesting jumping onto a few bandwagons to keep up with the times, but with logos, I just hate it when a bunch of designers use the same idea over and over.

The basic archetype above is being used again and again in logo design right now and it’s getting old fast. Why not use a design that you actually thought up yourself rather than ripping off what everyone else is doing?

We have an entire article dedicated to showcasing logo design clichés, be sure to check it out to make sure you’re not guilty of uninspired logo design.

4. Make it Ownable

I don’t believe that “ownable” is a real word, but you nevertheless hear it quite a bit in marketing (marketers love to make up words). The concept is definitely an important one that ties closely to the previous tip.

Rather than following the herd and using a cliché design, you should instead strive for something that is uniquely recognizable. I’ve always appreciated the Evernote logo in this regard:

It’s really just an elephant head, which doesn’t sound like a very unique concept. However, the way it’s drawn with the curled trunk and page fold in the ear makes it instantly recognizable.

As you’re designing logos, consider whether or not your design is generic or unique. Is it likely that others will produce something similar? Remember, your first idea is typically your most generic (it’s also everyone else’s first idea). Try filling a notebook page or two with some rough sketches before choosing which ideas to pursue further.

5. Everybody Loves Custom Type

While we’re on the subject of being unique, there’s almost nothing that can give your logo a unique feel quite like some awesome custom lettering.

Too often we see logo design as simply a trip to the font menu to see which typeface makes the company name look best. If someone is paying you to “design” their logo, they probably expect you to put a little more effort into it.

Too often we see logo design as simply a trip to the font menu.

Custom type helps to ensure that your unique logo will stay that way. Lowlife designers will rip off your work in a heartbeat if they discover which typeface you’re using, but it takes some real skill to mimic custom hand-drawn type!

Keep in mind though that if your logo is famous enough, people will always try to rip it off. This certainly holds true for my favorite script logo:

The awesome Coca-Cola script has been stolen countless times in awkward parodies throughout the last few decades.

6. Keep it Simple Stupid

Let’s face it, not everyone can bust out a beautiful, hand-drawn script on a whim. Just because you’re a designer doesn’t mean you’re an awesome illustrator or typographer (though it helps). If you fit this description, fear not, there’s nothing preventing you from making awesome logos.

In this situation, remember these four powerful words: keep it simple stupid! Simple but powerful logos permeate the business world and always prove to be the best icons for standing the test of time.

In considering how to construct one of these types of logos, let’s discuss the Apple logo. The silhouette of an apple is nothing special or memorable:

It’s that missing bite that takes it to the next level. It gives the logo character, makes it unique, and drives the meaning deeper (computers and bytes, get it?). Without the bite, the apple is boring, with it, the apple is suddenly iconic.

Always think about how you can go that extra mile and turn your boring logos into unmistakable brand marks.

7. Consider Proportion & Symmetry

Some people can get carried away with discussions of proportion and symmetry (see the new Pepsi logo pitch), but if we strip out the crazy, there’s still some important lessons here. Consider the new Twitter logo as an example:

Here circles aren’t used to convince you of some strange cosmic tale that makes no sense, they’re simply used as a guide to create a well balanced logo with consistent curves and arcs.

Despite the fact that the bite seems to violate the symmetry of the Apple logo above, if we dig deeper we can see that there was still a lot of through put into proportion and symmetry here (image source):

8. Think About Negative Space

Along the same vein as a double entendre is the age-old trick of utilizing the negative space in a logo in some clever way. The industry standard example of this technique is the FedEx logo and its hidden arrow.

Don’t see it yet? Keep looking, it’s there. That’s what I love about this logo, the use of negative space is so subtle. Most people in the U.S. see the FedEx logo daily or weekly for years as it drives by on the side of countless trucks and they never even notice the arrow.

Logopond is chock full of great logo designs that utilize negative space in a cool way. Check out the example below, which blends together the idea of bull horns and a wine glass.

9. Passive vs. Active

One interesting facet of logo design that I’ve been considering a lot lately is the concept of instilling motion or a sense of activity into a logo. This isn’t always appropriate (such as with the Apple logo), but sometimes it can really give a logo the boost it needs, both from a visual and conceptual standpoint.

As an example, let’s look again to the Twitter logo. Way back in the early days, the bird went from sitting perched and passive to becoming active and taking flight.

In the most recent iteration, they took this concept even further by pointing the bird in an upward direction to indicate that it’s climbing into the air rather than floating along the same old trajectory.

A sense of motion is especially important when it comes to logos with mascots. The image of the marlin below doesn’t depict the fish merely lying still, instead, it’s leaping into the air in a victorious pose.

This concept even extends to typically inanimate objects. Consider how much better the logo below portrays the concept of “rough house” by instilling a sense of motion.

10. Know What it Means

It’s great when you as a designer can show a client how much thought and reasoning went into the logo that you produced for them.

Every good logo has a story. Far beyond simply a pretty sketch, strong logos are filled with meaning, both obvious and hidden. We discussed this in several cases above. The FedEx logo’s arrow indicates moving forward and making deliveries, the Apple logo has a “byte” missing, and the Twitter bird is flying in an upward trajectory.

Half the time I wonder if logo designers don’t come up with the meaning after the logo is already produced, but regardless, it’s great when you as a designer can show a client how much thought and reasoning went into the logo that you produced for them.

Clients might think that all they want is something fresh and cool, but if you instead provide a logo that ties into the company’s core values and mission, you’ll blow their minds and they’ll love you for it.

If you’re into hidden logo meanings, check out our post titled “Five Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Famous Car Logos.”

Do Your Logos Suck?

Now that you’ve read our tips for designing logos that don’t suck, leave a comment below and let us know what you think of your own work in this area.

Are you an awesome logo designer or is it something that you struggle with? Which of the tips above are useful to you and what tips can you offer to other designers?

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kayawagner · 6 years

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Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder

Welcome to the next installment of our Gnome Spotlight: Notables series. The notables series is a look at game developers in the gaming industry doing good work. The series will focus on female game creators and game creators of color primarily, and each entry will be a short bio and interview. We’ve currently got a group of authors and guest authors interviewing game creators and hope to bring you many more entries in the series as it continues on. If you’ve got a suggestion for someone we should be doing a notables article on, send us a note at [email protected]. – Head Gnome John

Meet Avery

Avery is an experienced game designer interested in bringing meaningful and easy-to-learn games to a wider audience. Emphasizing collaboration and games where players decide ‘what is possible’, Avery’s games work to realize the potential for roleplaying games to challenge our politics, transform our lives, and bring about social change. Her works include: Monsterhearts, The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive.

Check out Avery’s Kickstarter for Dream Askew//Dream Apart

@dreamaskew on twitter

Talking with Avery

1.) You have a new game out! Tell us about your latest game on Kickstarter. It’s called Dream Askew?

Yes! My latest project is on Kickstarter now! It is actually a split book with two games that are sort of companion games. I wrote Dream Askew, which is about a queer community amid the collapse of civilization, where the characters are influential people and explore what they would do with all the potential and scarcity that they now have. It is explicitly about a marginalized community banding together, and acknowledges that the apocalypse won’t reach everyone at the same time. I like that all of that possibility could be really hopeful… Benjamin Rosenbaum’s game Dream Apart is about being members of a Jewish shtetl in 19th century Eastern Europe. Both are designed as diceless and gm-less games that are good for seasoned players but are also beginner-friendly.

softcover, full colour, half-letter (5.5 x 8.5), approx. 100-180 pages

2.) Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.

I have been designing games since high school and have explored a lot of different themes and approaches, but I keep coming back to themes of self-doubt, troubled communities—with conflicts like ideological differences—and relationships, queer community, and the post-apocalypse or exploring what would happen after the collapse of civilization. My games don’t focus on despair and suffering though. They focus on finding out where hope survives in that process.

I am really proud of my game Ribbon Drive, which was a freeform game that used songs from music playlists brought by the players to inspire the scenes and framing that players responded to in the game. For me, this game was about players coming in with a vision of the future—the places the game would go—and learning how to re-examine, and eventually let go of, that vision.

In 2012 I released probably my most popular game, Monsterhearts, where players are teenage monsters—both literally and metaphorically. They are teens making sense of their changing bodies and social worlds, while being monsterous creatures with their associated behavioral traits. This game had a lot of queer themes, with monstrosity standing in as a metaphor for a lot of things, but especially queerness. Sexuality and its confusing abiguities are core mechanic for the game.

I also designed The Quiet Year, which is a map drawing game about a community that has survived the collapse of civilization and is trying to rebuild. It is sort of a combination of board game, world building, and and abstract poetry exercise!

3.) Can you tell me a little bit more about how you make those thematic choices? Are these intentional and goal oriented? More personal?

I think it’s a mixture of personal interest and goal. I have lots of ideas and start working on lots of games and then abandon most of them…so the ones that have a burning need to be created are the ones that make it through. They are the games with themes I find really compelling, and that do mechanical things that push back against prevailing design trends…or build on those trends. There was a period in the indie design community when every design revolved around scene-level conflict resolution mechanics, and play pushed toward these conflicts in every scene. Ribbon Drive was designed as a game where you didn’t have conflict, and even when there were obstacles you could take a detour. You couldn’t use traits in the same scene that you introduced them. I think it’s important to have games about learning humility and self-reflection, not just conflict. One factor in choosing these elements is that they feel like a timely contribution to the community at a meta- level. Play can serve to promote belonging to a world working towards revolution and looking really critically at our own goals and actions. The games I design that make it to production really further that…it’s not coincidental.

4.) How did you get into games? Was there a memorable or meaningful gaming (or design) experience that encouraged you to get involved?

I have always been excited about games. D&D 3.5 was my first RPG experience. I was in a logging town where there weren’t a lot of opportunities, but with D&D I was able to imagine a world bigger than my small town. I was playing with a group of boys who were all smarmy know-it-alls, and would argue that the one GM-ing was wrong or could have done better. The games would always fizzle. From the get go I could see the potential in the medium and see us all having trouble accessing that potential, and with all our play styles wanting really different things. So I started designing my own games pretty quickly to try to see how to make the play experience better. I released my first game a month after I graduated high school.

5.) Who did you look up to when you got started in the industry? Or who do you look up to now?

Paul Czege wrote My Life With Master, the first indie role playing game I ever ordered, and it was the game that introduced me to tight minimal design. In that game, you play as a minion to an intimidating master—a figure like Dracula or Frankenstein. There was the tension of wanting to do something for your master while also knowing you can’t escape them, but slowly developing curiosity about the townsfolk and the bravery and competence to overthrow the master. Your character was represented by only a few stats: Self-Loathing, Weariness, and Love for the townsfolk was all the definition that you needed. Czege’s focused, minimal, tight, thematic mechanics really informed the kind of designer I became.

6.) Are there any important changes you see (or would like to see) occurring in the industry?

I have seen more games by and about women, which is really exciting. I see women designers getting a spotlight more often and also more queer themes being included in stories—both by queer designers and by designers working to exclude fewer people from their stories. I also see a push for diversity generally, and more conventions thinking about diversity of guests they bring out…But I see most of that push for diversity in ways that focus on gender and sexuality and not on race. I’ve seen panels on bringing diversity to the games industry that are all white, so I’d want more designers of color to be given guest spots at conventions and to get their work spotlighted more often. And maybe more attention on decolonization led by indigenous people in the community. From a design perspective, the thing I’d really want to see are games accessible to new players and that play in a few hours (ex. Jason Morningstar’s games point a way forward). I work to design games that are mechanically simple, but they still typically require a lot of high concept thinking and take 3-4 hours. There aren’t many games that play in just one or two hours.

7.) I’m glad you mentioned the time commitment that many RPGs take. Are there other ways these games could be more beginner-friendly?

In terms of a way that a book presents its concepts, not using acronyms is huge! Acronyms make it really imposing. In terms of design, games that require less math and that explain the concepts in the same place that you find them on the character sheet make them more accessible, so new players aren’t just looking down and seeing all these numbers. For play, thinking about making spaces accessible to new parents since many people have young children. In terms of themes, I think that as designers and storytellers we need to be really mindful about what themes will make sense to a general audience, and which are recursive tropes and memes that gamers have developed that are inscrutable to the outside world…like the progression of rat killing in sewers to becoming a demi-god doesn’t make sense to people who don’t already know it. If you are going to tell those stories and want them to be welcoming to new players, you really have to spell it out for new players…and what else might they know that looks similar. We like to think that these stories are like Lord of the Rings, but they really aren’t. The model for a D&D character arc is outside the usual.

I think a thing that comes up with my work is that people who are long time gamers have more trouble connecting thematically with what I’m writing than people who haven’t played RPGs before. For example, with Ribbon Drive, if you are coming in from D&D and Pathfinder as a point of reference to this game you are going to stumble more because really obvious cultural touchstones for some aren’t necessarily gamer touchstones, so people stumble over them.

8.) I am very excited for your new project. Can you tell me a little more about it before I let you go?

One of the really cool things about this Kickstarter project is the way Dream Askew & Dream Apart are in dialogue. They both are about marginalized communities that have created this place of belonging and possibility, while at the fringes of society. They build off the same themes but take them to really different places; in one case taking those themes in the context of a group that really existed, while the other is about a more fantastic range of possibilities. One asks you to build upon and explore your relationship to history, and the other asks you to imagine and build a world together. I’m interested in ways these games are both very similar and very divergent, and compliment each other and tease out the themes and possibilities of each. With Benjamin, thinking that if this project is about them both being a type of game, we’ve included a chapter on designing this type of game—encouraging people to continue exploring community, development, and juggling tensions and choices though game design. The book is not just a manual for how to play a game but is a manual for how to play a particular kind of game, as well as a piece that encourages you to design and explore further on your own.

I think it is really important to say that, in addition to Dream Askew & Dream Apart being rich games with powerful themes, I think they are really fun. Fun games that are for anyone. The first time I played Dream Apart we were high-fiving and laughing…it was just so fun to play!

Thanks for joining us for this entry in the notables series. You can find more in the series here: and please feel free to drop us any suggestions for people we should interview at [email protected].

Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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