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kris10tisme · 5 years

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The Blazers: Mean Girls AU

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867279

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13213575/1/The-Blazers

"I hate LA"

It's the first thing she blurts out to her brother upon entering the kitchen in the morning.

"And a good morning to you too sis, protein shake? He says while extending out his arm out to her while holding out a glass.

Katara gives him what some would call the stank eye.

"Great, you've already adapted one of Los Angeles' prime LA'isms, proud of yourself? We've literally have only been here two weeks!"

"Hey it's very warm here. Warm weather means more sleeveless shirts. More sleeveless shirts means more arm exposure. I can't walk around with flabby arms, so I need to quickly adapt to the LA ways."

"I think bony is a better adjective to use when describing your arms."

But Sokka carries on like he hasn't heard her, slurping away at his liquidated soy. Katara lets out a huff and moves to walk to their cupboard to get out some breakfast cereal.

She hasn't taken kindly to LA since moving here two weeks ago. The culture shock has hit her by storm.

She's moved from a city that was primarily rainy, snowy, and cold with a population of 800; to a city that's dry, literally fiery, and warm. and has a population of a whopping four million.

Growing up and spending the first sixteen years of her life in Yakutat, Alaska hasn't readied for well… all of this.

Within two weeks she’s had to buy a completely new wardrobe, a wardrobe that is better suited for the warm weather, rather than the frosty weather she grew up accustomed to.

She's used to knitting her own sweaters, mittens, and scarves, and now she figures she’ll probably have to resort to knitting skimpy crop tops if she takes in consideration the weather and culture.

All in all, she hasn’t settled in to her new life well. She envies Sokka, he’s loving it here. Her brother is the type of person who turns lemons into lemonade. He makes the complete best of any situation he’s put in to. He’s quick to adapt in any situation he’s thrown in to.

Katara is the polar opposite. She’s always loved and valued where she’s come from. Growing up in a small town, completely isolated from the world has never made her upset. Quite the opposite actually. She loved being from a small tight knit community, a community where families and neighbors grew up together in harmony, bonds that spread between families through generations.

Yakutat was a town where you earned your keep, whether it be by hunting, knitting, fishing, everyone made a team effort to ensure everyone lived comfortably.

This type of comradery completely nonexistent in LA from what she’s observed in her two weeks of living here and in film and pop culture. Here, everything is a game, everyone here is in it for themselves, looking to climb the social hierarchy. She finds it reprehensible.

Granted, she hasn’t properly met anyone here yet, but she can only imagine what her first day of high school has in store for her. Which is why she is in such a crabby mood.

She takes a look back at Sokka and sees him slurping up each last droplet of his protein shake, and the sight makes her slowly lose hope in humanity.

**********************************************************************

Sokka pulls the pick up truck into the school parking lot, a parking lot that’s filled with ferraris and convertibles.

Katara refuses to feel shameful about it though. She reminds herself again that she’s proud of her humble beginnings.

She steps out of the truck, processing her surroundings. She notices how many students there are, which reminds her how insignificant her presence must be here. In Yakutat everyone mattered, it was weird to not make eye contact with someone a give them a greeting.

She approaches the entrance of her school with Sokka, keeping her head up high and proud. She won’t conform to the social norms, she will not walk around with her phone in her hand all the while not taking note of her surroundings.

She’s gotta admit to herself that she’s scared shitless, but at least she’s not in this completely alone. She has her brother.

She turns her head to look at her brother for support and finds him missing. She panics. Did he get lost already? Is he in trouble. She’s always been overprotective of her brother. She always feels like she has to compensate for the lack of maternal figure in the household.

She moves her head swiftly from left to right scanning the hall for her brother. She spots him and he's… flirting?

He’s standing in front of some bulletin board, his arm raised and he’s leaning against the board, standing before some girl with short light brown hair. She’s giving him a smug smile in response to his flirting.

Katara lets out the biggest eyerolls of eyerolls. She is irate.

Just who is he to completely abandon me on our first day, for the first pretty girl he could get ahold of! I was so worried about him!

She inwardly muses.

Forget him, she thinks. She can take care of herself. Just a sixteen year old girl who’s never been to a school that didn’t include grades K-12. It's not like just because she’s only ever encountered about a dozen other people in her age group doesn’t mean she’s gonna find it difficult making friends here. She’s got this!

She holds her head high and saunters off into homeroom. She refuses to be intimidated by this city and its inhabitants.

I won’t let them win.

**********************************************************************

The day is toppled off with her being completely mortified in front of her entire homeroom classroom.

The school's principal found it necessary to make a little visit to her homeroom and have her introduce herself to everybody.

He mentioned that Katara came from a very small town in Alaska, and she was of inuit descent. She’s pretty sure three quarters of the class had no idea what that meant.

He also thought it would be a good icebreaker for Katara to share with the class about her culture, he broached the subject by saying “Tell us about your “people.”

She tried to explain a bit about what it’s like back home while also trying to get the point across that she wasn’t some foreign oddity.

Katara made it known to the class and that stinkin principal that Alaska was in fact IN AMERICA, and yes; English is her first language.

She explained how she would go fishing back home and hike, as she spoke with the dullest tone, knowing that these teens couldn’t give a flying hoot about her or where she’s from, but also to spite this ignorant man they call principal!

He seemed unimpressed by the activities she listed, given that they’re pretty much the same things people do here.

He dismissed himself, and implored the homeroom to make Katara feel welcome and help her adjust. He was met with silence.

And to top it all off, her homeroom teacher HAD to mention that she heard from her ancestry DNA test that she was 14.9% Native American, and asked the class if they too had some inuit ancestry.

The whole thing got derailed within minutes when some students found it necessary to strike up a debate about their confusion about why Native Americans can’t be called Indians.

The rest of the day followed with Katara being as lonely as can be. There’s not much socialization going on while in class. Katara was only approached once the whole day and that was because somebody asked her to borrow a pencil. They never gave the pencil back.

Gym class was hell, the girls locker room was beyond anything Hollywood movies could ever prepare her for. The fumes from all the different types of perfumes of lotions rang through the air, mixed with a bit of what she could assume was weed, and Katara couldn’t go two seconds without choking on her breath. Bras and panties were thrown all over the place. Lewd conversations were rang through her ears, conversations about breast sizes and sexual organ sizes seemed to be the focal point of conversation amongst the girls in the locker room.

Katara couldn’t believe her ears. Did these girls have no shame? To talk about this stuff so brazenly and openly boggled her mind.

It was safe to say that she didn’t make any small talk with anyone in that locker room. She’s never felt more alone.

Fortunately, she and Sokka shared the same lunch period. She was still immensely pissed at Sokka for ditching her first thing in the morning, but due to how lonely the day has been for her, she decided to let it slide just this once.

She ate lunch with Sokka and the girl he was flirting with this morning, whose name she learned is Suki.

Meeting Suki was the only highlight of her day, she was warm, welcoming, and seemed to see through her brothers B.S, but at the same time didn’t mind it.

She was curious and asked them questions about their background without being woefully ignorant and offensive about it. She shared with them some tips about how to survive the modern high school experience, tips Katara took into consideration, while Sokka just gawked at her.

She beckoned Suki goodbye when the period rang, and Suki invited them to have lunch with her again tomorrow. She just hopes Sokka’s shameless ogling doesn’t get in the way of this potential friendship.

She ends the day on a positive note, with Marine Biology being her last class. She loves Marine Biology, she loves marine life, the water, everything about the ocean she’s completely in love with. It’s the closest she’s felt to home the entire day.

The bell rings for dismissal and she’s the first one out the door in her class. She can’t stand to be in this school for another minute. She figures its too much exposure therapy for one day.

She scrummages through the halls making her way towards the exit, she’s almost there…

All of a suddenly she is picked up off her feet, someone grabs her from her lapel and places her down gently in front of the lockers on the side of the hallway.

Initially she is too stunned to speak, but when the shock wears down she moves to open her mouth and lambast whoever did that when she’s met with an index finger to her lips.

The rude finger to her lip isn’t what stops her from sticking up for herself, it's the sheer empty silence she’s met with. She also notices how the hallway is split apart, like everyone's making way for the grand entrance of some important person.

She’s so thrown by the way everyone is reacting right now that her anger dissipates, and she finds herself tiptoeing to see over people's heads so she can get a clearer opening at the scene in the hall. She wonders if some type of moviestar is making their way through the hall. She’s ashamed to admit that she can’t withhold her own curiosity.

She’s able to catch a glimpse of what's going on in the hall. She sees three girls strutting confidently down the hall. The one in the middle obviously leading the charge.

She has jet black hair tied up in a single topknot, with the two single tresses shaping the side of her face. Her eyes honeycoon gold, shiny, looking like they could pierce you and turn you to stone if you looked into them for too long. Her lips are full and glossed to perfection. She’s smirking, her face is all knowing. She knows she’s got this whole school groveling at her, with minimal effort on her part.

Katara takes note of the people staring at the sight before them. They seem to look more petrified than enamored by the sight of whoever this is. And weirdly, Katara can’t blame them. This girl seems… untouchable.

Her other two cronies follow suit. One of them also has jet black hair, but her hair is neatly pinned into two buns at the sides of her head. Her face is anything but smug, quite the opposite, she looks placid. Like the attention everyone's giving her holds no significance. The other one is practically skipping down the hall. She's’ the only one wearing a full smile, she has the longest braid Katara’s ever seen. The braid bounces from side to side due to the jovial skipping.

What a weird mix of girls. Katara thinks to herself.

They’ve now made their way out the doors of the schools exit. It felt as though to Katara that they were sauntering down the hall in slow motion based off how many observations she was able to make about the three girls in a five second interval.

Everything has seemed to gone back to normal, the middle of the hallway is not cleared out anymore, and everyone seemed to snap out of whatever trance they fell under.

That was the weirdest, trippiest thing Katara has ever experienced in her sixteen years on this earth. She’s never seen human beings grovel so openly about other human beings.

Katara overhears a few conversations when she makes her way out of the schools exit.

Did you hear that Azula is rumored to be cast in the new Steven Spielberg movie as a vampire? Gosh, that’d be the perfect role for her!

Did you hear Mai’s father is going to run for mayor?

I heard Ty Lee slept with over a dozen guys this summer!

Apparently Zuko and Mai are off again!

That's the last sentence Katara listens to before snaps out of the weird fascination she all of the sudden got for the people in her school.

She considers it lapse of judgement and moves on to the exit and out to the parking lot to wait for Sokka to take her home before this place can further poison her mind.

#zutara #Zuko #katara #azula #avatar: the last airbender

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talestoenrage · 7 years

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Persona 5

Last night, I finally finished Persona 5, and...it wasn’t as good as Persona 4. Now that I have all the available facts, I finally think I can fairly unpack my reasons why. Behind the cut, for anyone else who’s still working on it and doesn’t want spoilers.

The first thing to note is that I am a huge Persona 4 fan. It’s not a perfect game (but then, nothing is); it starts off very slowly, its once-lauded LGBT content is actually not good in the cold light of day when LGBT content is (however slowly) becoming more common in video games, and it has a long, LONG day that is just...awful. Misogynist and transphobic as hell. But overall, it’s a hell of a game that I recommend to almost anyone, even with those caveats. It’s also a game that’s almost 9 years old, so why do I think it’s better than the sequel that came out this year?

Certainly, Persona 5 has a lot of gameplay improvements. There’s more variety in combat, with new types of attacks and status effects you can inflict and have inflicted on you. Adding guns as another piece of equipment gives everyone in your party additional options. Most importantly, the social links the current Persona games rely on for their flavor have added gameplay benefits, as different ranks will grant you useful skills in and out of combat, at a pace that lets you naturally integrate the new options rather than being overwhelmed by them. And the negotiation system with the enemies (imported back from the base SMT series) means that what you fight can matter beyond “this is their weakness/XP gain/possible item drops.” In every measurable way, combat in 5 is better than 4. Even the dungeons are improved, because the set designs stand out better than 4′s randomized crawling. Plus if you do want random dungeon crawls, there’s a whole huge area that calls back to Persona 3′s Tartarus. The best of both worlds, right? The problem is that while combat in 5 is a great improvement, combat is not what I loved in Persona 4 anyway. It was the writing and the story.

If you haven’t played Persona 4, the main plot revolves around a series of murders in a rural Japanese town. After the first two, the main character and his recent friends discover another world, and that it’s connected to the murders so far. When a third person goes missing, they save them, and then decide to work on stopping any further murders and figure out who’s behind them. On its own, this is a workable plot that stands out among JRPGs for being decidedly small scale. You aren’t setting out to stop an evil empire or find your missing father, but it’s a worthy goal, and the fantastical elements explain why you can’t just go to the police about it.

What makes the game sing is the writing for the other members of your group, and for the social links you make to gain power. Your party is a bunch of teenagers, and sometimes they’re, well, shitty in the way teens so often are. They care for each other and stick their necks out, but they’ll also crack inappropriate jokes or be insensitive because they’re still learning how to act like adults. It occasionally goes too far (see Teddy), but mostly it felt believable, as did any of the romance scenes if you choose to date any of your classmates. On top of that, with the exception of the main character, you gain team members by saving them from their own Shadow, which stands for the parts of themselves they don’t want to admit are real. Sure, you beat them when they become the boss, but then the character in question has to accept the parts of themselves they don’t like to admit are there, something that all of us have.

Meanwhile, the social links do the heavy lifting of making the town feel like a real place. Sometimes you’re doing real work to improve someone’s life, sometimes you’re just there for them when they hit a snag and need to process it. But it’s a reminder that outside of the fantasy elements of going into the TV world and fighting weird creatures, you live in a town with “real” people that have real problems. That’s not quite what your team member’s social links are about, but instead it’s about someone who has admitted they have issues...and then you have to help them work through that. Admitting they have a problem is just the first step, not the solution.

If this sounds more like a review of Persona 4 than 5, I can understand that. But I needed to unpack what I love about 4 first, because if I’m going to say 5 isn’t as good, I think it’s only fair to explain what I love about 4 and why. And the main stumbling block for 5 is a combination of writing and, to a lesser degree, a mixed translation job.

The translation isn’t terrible-I don’t think it will spawn any memes online due to particular lines. But some subtlety is lost, and lines that should hit harder lose impact because the sentence structure doesn’t work as it should in English. It’s hard to say if it’s just a case of being too literal or being rushed for time, or some combination.

But even with better translation, the writing just falls flat. 5 raises a lot of questions with its central premise, where your group “steals” the hearts of bad people to make them change and be good, but it’s resolutely uninterested in answering half of them. It will tell you all about the mechanics of how you do it and what happens to the person, but it doesn’t want to deal with the ethics at all for half of the game, and then when it comes up, it’s a half hearted ‘were we doing the right thing?” when people start saying bad stuff about the Phantom Thieves. Are all the villains you take down engaging in truly reprehensible behavior? Yes. Are they largely insulated from official control? Yes, and for reasons beyond general “looking the other way,” since the final human villain is revealed to be covering for everyone you fought before. But there’s never a conversation where your group, the people actually altering people’s personalities, ever ask themselves if it’s okay to be making such radical changes, or asking if you are returning them to normal versus changing a “normal” person into a different version that didn’t exist before. And even the half hearted attempts to question it get shot down by your character’s mouth piece, the fame whore, whose very questionable motivations for wanting to continue are ALSO never questioned, except very briefly near the end. I didn’t need the game to tell me I was wrong for what I was doing, but I at least wanted a discussion, even if it ended with “this may be a bad thing, but we need to do it because no one else can touch them.”

Perhaps the social links would have saved it, but almost all of them outside of the main party ones end the same way. You get up to rank 7 or 8, find out there’s a road block of someone being bad, and then you get a request to change their hearts. Rinse and repeat. This throws the question of how ethical your behavior is into even sharper relief, and adds in the issue of making every resolution to the social links be “I did magic, and then they figured out I was a Phantom Thief, but it’s okay because they said they would keep my secret.” The first few times, I found it charming. The 10nth time, I felt like I might as well stop pretending and just tell anyone who asked “Yeah, I’m one of them. Want me to change some guy’s head? I got my magic gun I can use.”

Most of the party member social links don’t involve that, but most of them also fall flat. Ryuji’s is just there, Ann involves helping her realize other models can be mean and she’ll lose out if she doesn’t put more effort in, Yusuke is having art block, and Haru needs to learn how to manage a corporation she unexpectedly inherited. None of them are offensive, but they’re mostly boring. Only Futaba (trying to reacclimate to society after being a recluse for years) and Makoto (mostly forgettable but she slaps another girl and then challenges a would be pimp to a street fight, which was great) stand out, or seem like you actually do anything to help other than be there as they talk it out on their own.

Then there’s the framing device, where you’ve already been captured and are telling a prosecutor the story of how you came to be the Phantom Thieves. It intrudes every time you hit a certain point in the plot, and whenever you start a new social link. It didn’t take long at all for me to roll my eyes every time it intruded to remind me I wasn’t ACTUALLY in May, I was just RECOUNTING what I did in May. Plus its plot hook of “someone betrayed you to us” was blunted when the person who did it joined my group last and was literally blackmailing us to quit after pulling “one last job.” Gee, wonder who could have sold us out to the cops? The shitty teen detective who talks about people as vermin? I’M SHOCKED.

Now, I will give 5 credit, it has two solid plot twists. The first is when the framing device resolves (assuming you don’t get the bad ending), and Akechi shoots you...only to be revealed that your team was actually paying attention, realized he was lying, and used what they knew about the Metaverse to trick him into shooting a dupe. It wasn’t worth the hassle, but it was nice to see the group not be idiots. The second, that Igor was actually a fake as well and behind all the trouble, was more genuinely surprising, but it did make the voice change that we’d assumed was a weird miscast into a clue that we’d missed.

The final boss fight being about pulling out a giant spirit gun and shooting a god in the head was goofy as hell, but unintentionally so, which is unfortunate.

Would I recommend Persona 5? With reservations. Along with all the issues I’ve noted, the game feels too long for the plot it has; I was close to 150 hours when I finished, and even taking out the grinding I did at different points, I felt like I went through a lot of filler dialogue to get there. Plus the opening to 5 is, if anything, even LONGER than 4. You show up in town on the 9nth, and it’s not until the 18nth that you have full control over your actions, with multiple mandatory tutorial sections.

At least the music is still great.

#persona 5 #persona 4 #persona #review

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mittensmorgul · 7 years

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For the first time in weeks, I had exactly zero messages, anon or otherwise, asking me about the new episode. Let me say, I feel y’all’s apathy. There were a few things that are worth mentioning, though.

First of all I AM THRILLED THAT GAVIN WAS RESTORED TO HIS PROPER TIMELINE. As to HOW and WHY and all the rest of the details surrounding Gavin’s return... I’m just gonna...

BUT IT IS DONE. I am more than willing to just close my eyes to the timey-wimey bullshit fixing their original problem dredged up. It’s just gonna give me a migraine trying to sort through this problem. I just... can’t be fussed to care.

For ~plot reasons~ I’m just gonna... handwave the whole mess and pretend it’s just... not a problem anymore and just move on with my life. Especially since it didn’t really seem like Bucklemming themselves could be fussed to do it much justice. The whole plotline played out with the feeling that they’d been ordered to clean up their mess by Dabb and they went about it in the most perfunctory and grudging manner possible.

Okay. :)

On to the other important plot-related stuff, in order from least disappointing to most disappointing:

Mary’s descent arc is moving along apace. Those BMoL weapons that we find absolutely morally reprehensible (that mutate vampire blood to poison them en masse like some sort of radiation sickness, and now a ray gun that boils rugaru brains at twenty paces), Mary thinks they’re neat and effective tools. Her “training” session with Ketch was a more voluntary and only slightly less horrifying callback to Castiel’s “training” under Naomi to kill a warehouse full of Deans. To an extent, I think when Dean learns the entire truth about Mary’s involvement with the BMoL, it’ll have the same metaphorical impact. Basically a room full of “you’re dead to me” Deans... a la “the face.”

(aside to note that all I could think of when Mary complained about “the face” was Phil Dunphy on Modern Family talking about how “in the know” he is about the kids’ lingo... before listing off the acronyms he knew... including WTF, which he sincerely believed stood for “why the face.” WHY THE FACE. And yes. This was a serious WTF for me... in the correct meaning of wtf...)

So yeah, Mary’s come ~partially~ clean to Sam and Dean. She’s been willing to accept Ketch’s statements about Toni having been a “rogue operative” who wasn’t working within the authority of the MoL, but Sam and Dean have seen just a little bit too far behind their curtain. They’ve also had experience with these sort of shady deals, and unlike Mary, they’ve grown FAR past the “shoot first, ask questions later, just kill ALL THE MONSTERS” mentality. Mary still believes in that definition of hunting. On top of all the guilt she feels personally-- rightly or wrongly-- for the lives her boys ended up leading.

That fundamental core belief is in need of some serious shaking, and I think (I hope!) that 12.14 begins to address that for her. She’s still keeping some secrets (like her role in having been ordered to steal THE COLT in 12.12...) so Sam and Dean are still partially in the dark as to the extent of her shady dealings. There’s definitely more revelations to come to light before they have all the information they need to begin putting the RIGHT questions to Mary...

Dagon’s an interesting character. Kinda relieved she was used so lightly in this episode, so they didn’t have a chance to do anything regrettable with her... but still... both she and the two angels had no trouble finding Kelly, when Cas and Sam and Dean have been looking for her for weeks now with no success. I’m now rolling my eyes at the logic gap with that one, but then I remember Bucklemming and again it’s just easier to handwave it and accept they lack a grasp of narrative continuity and logic. *HEAVY SIGHING*

I’m slightly confused as to how she was able to just annihilate two angels so easily when Ramiel needed to use Michael’s lance on Cas... but then again maybe he could’ve just poofed Cas to death and he just wanted to watch him suffer with the wound from the lance instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I should probably just title this essay *shrug emoji*)

(anyway, moving on)

Rowena was a delight, as usual. I love that she’s developed her own interesting relationship with Sam and Dean, independent of Crowley. And despite the fact that Rowena has worked with Crowley when their motivations were to defeat a common enemy, it’s interesting to see the sort of situation that has the power to drive a wedge between them.

I’m glad that Rowena’s grudge over being forced to kill Oskar has finally gotten a little payback. I also find it interesting that her revenge also including a “child” who had been “displaced in time.” Rowena had given Oskar immortality, which in its own way is just as problematic as Crowley’s desire to give Gavin a shot at a normal life in the wrong time.

Crowley’s weirdly powerful feelings toward Gavin, I believe, stem from just how human and vulnerable he’d been through most of s9 when he was at the peak of his human blood addiction. Granted by 9.21 he’d “recovered” a lot from that, but he was also biding his time waiting for Dean to completely succumb to the Mark. Crowley had some weirdly familial feelings for Gavin, after having largely ignored the boy for most of his life. Getting a chance to give Gavin a taste of normal modern life was probably the least he could do to repent for that... but the fact he STILL seemed to care so much now is just... weird. IDK.

I saw another post complaining that Sam and Dean didn’t “let” Crowley have a proper goodbye, and Rowena had frozen him when he’d reached out to Gavin. BUT CROWLEY WAS NOT ABOUT TO SHARE A TEARFUL GOODBYE. HE WAS ABOUT TO BOOP OUT WITH GAVIN AND TAKE HIM TO PLACES UNKNOWN TO PREVENT HIM FROM RETURNING TO HIS PROPER TIMELINE. So, no. I don’t think their actions there were hypocritical.

Dean’s shirt during the “Send Gavin Back To The Bottom of the Ocean” scene was eerily similar to the ugly plaid couch on which Cas nearly died in 12.12. So, watching Gavin reunited for all time with the “love of his life” while wearing the goofiest look on his face as these people who were brought back together by the power of their love in order to repair a broken timeline and restore a bunch of innocent people to life... *it’s all about the love... and love* and I mean thanks costume and props folks for dressing Dean in Castiel’s 12.12 couch basically. I see what you did there. I only put this so far down the list because it’s interesting, but that’s all it is.

Cas and Dean are still having private phone calls. But after the intensity of 12.12, and the revelations about Cas and his feelings, what we were given as a reminder here was just... underwhelming. There was just no weight to it, as if 12.12 hadn’t even happened. As if Cas hadn’t nearly DIED, and confessed his LOVE and feeling of FAMILY and BELONGING. It’s just... opportunity wasted to have given some sort of (or ANY sort of) emotional punch to the fact that Cas has just ~randomly left the bunker to fruitlessly continue the random Kelly search~ all alone. I mean... ???

Crowley. Oh dear. Can you say, Character Assassination??? I mean, wtf, bucklemming. After one of Crowley’s strongest episodes in YEARS, where we got a plethora of incredible insight into his motivations, his history, his intelligence, and his FEELINGS for the Winchesters-- including Cas-- all of a sudden we get this ridiculous disaster of characterization?

Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK.

What was both ridiculous and terrible here:

Crowley really had no idea that the Winchesters had failed to kill the nephilim?

THEY HAD BEEN IN PRISON BUCKLEMMING! REMEMBER? WHERE YOU’D PUT THEM WITHIN MINUTES OF THEM BANISHING LUCIFER IN THE FIRST PLACE?! AND IT WAS YOUR STUPID FUCKING PLOT HOLE THAT ALLOWED THAT TO HAPPEN IN THE SAME MOMENTS THAT KELLY WAS ALLOWED TO “ESCAPE.”

I mean, you could’ve just left her in the White House with the President and had Cas escape safely with Sam and Dean, BECAUSE YOU, CROWLEY, HAD THE ABILITY TO JUST BOOP IN AND PICK KELLY UP TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANTED WITH HER DOWN THE LINE. BUT NOOOOOOOO IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN IDIOTIC CANON ACROBATICS THAT HAVE LED US TO THIS INANE PLOT SITUATION FROM WHICH THERE IS APPARENTLY NO REPRIEVE. YOU STUPID FUCKERS.

So in order to make this entirely idiotic and contrived plot line work, you have to warp a character so far beyond logic that they barely even seem to be the same character we saw the week before... and no. After the brilliant writing, the loving recollection of past canon and the incredibly nuanced characterizations we’ve had over the prior three episodes, this just felt THAT MUCH MORE FUCKING CONTRIVED AND WRONG FOOTED.

I’m not really gonna forgive this bit.

Crowley, Mr. “i’m the only one on the board who doesn’t underestimate those denim wrapped nightmares,” Mr. King of Protecting his own Self Interest, Mr. You’re Good But I’m Crowley... you... bucklemming... want us to believe that in ANY ITERATION OF REALITY that Crowley is not only petty and vengeful enough to have his demons pull the same “resurrect the meatsuit” bullshit they pulled to fix your meatsuit with in 11.01 TO DIG UP AND REPAIR LUCIFER’S FORMER VESSEL NICK, as well as “studying the molecular makeup of the cage” in order to forge some weird dog collar thing strong enough to hold Lucifer, and that you would risk unleashing Lucifer on the world again ENTIRELY OUT OF PETTY VENGEANCE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO FORCE HIM TO CLEAN YOUR FLOOR WITH HIS TONGUE?!

I’m sorry. That’s just... no. That’s too much no.

AND IT GETS WORSE!

Not only is Crowley suddenly behaving idiotically out of character here, HE IS ALSO SUDDENLY MORONIC ENOUGH TO LET INFORMATION SLIP IN LUCIFER’S HEARING? Like the fact that he even had a son at all, let alone was having some sort of ~personal issues~ surrounding this weird parental family dynamic?

AND CROWLEY IS REPEATEDLY PUTTING HIMSELF IN A SITUATION WHERE HE’S LET HIMSELF BECOME COMPROMISED THIS WAY?!

I mean... this is NOT the Crowley we’ve seen lately. The Crowley who would sacrifice the only weapon that could potentially put Lucifer out permanently. One of the FEW weapons that could even protect him from what he should likely expect will be the revenge of Dagon and Asmodeus after Crowley essentially broke his deal with Ramiel... yet he’s too busy being a petty little tyrant toward Lucifer to be concerned about them?

I guess I’m particularly outraged about this 180 degree about face in Crowley’s characterization because after three OUTSTANDINGLY character driven episodes in a row, what we got here was a TERRIBLE FUCKING MESS.

Most of s12 so far has felt so deeply personal, like all of the major plot arcs have been deeply rooted in the characters own feelings and history, and have revolved around the questions of what is family and what is love and who am I and where do I fit in this world.

And in 12.13, it seems like ALL of that was just tossed out the window in favor of a couple of utterly contrived and flimsy plot points.

With a few obvious exceptions as stated above, it just felt entirely out of step with the rest of s12. In the hands of a capable writer, that could’ve been an entertaining and believable episode. But what we were served lacked any of the finesse and character development we’ve grown accustomed to.

Pro tip for writers: You have to make the plot actually fit the characters you’re writing for. This episode is an excellent example of how NOT to do that... >.>

#spn s12 spoilers #spn 12.13 #bucklemming canon acrobatics #in which they largely trip over their own damn feet and cause characters to fall flat on their faces in horrifying fashion

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years

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It’s 2018, and CEOs Are Still Saying Very Dumb Things - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/its-2018-and-ceos-are-still-saying-very-dumb-things/

It’s 2018, and CEOs Are Still Saying Very Dumb Things

For the love of God, Mark Zuckerberg, don’t try to defend the intent of Holocaust deniers. (Photo Credit: JD Lasica/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)

In an era in which companies and their executives are under more scrutiny than ever, and when a climate of political correctness beckons accountability for every faux pas uttered—deservedly so, I might add—it is yet astonishing that corporate leaders continue to make very public statements that espouse very dumb viewpoints. As tends to be the case, these officers are public faces for their organizations, if not namesakes. In the name of protecting their brand and avoiding bad optics, one would think these influential figures would make it a priority not to do or say anything that could generate negative publicity.

Of course, it may simply be that these individuals can’t help themselves. While not a chief executive, Roseanne Barr ran into this situation recently when, not long after a successful reboot of her eponymous ABC show got underway, she went and blew up her opportunity by tweeting disparaging comments of a racist and Islamophobic nature about Valerie Jarrett, businesswoman and former Obama White House official. Essentially, all Barr had to do was not make disgusting remarks like the one that got her show canned. And yet, she felt compelled. The real downside of this, as some might argue, is that a show with working-class appeal that could have helped further a discussion about race and politics in this era was cut short. For Roseanne’s sake, few but her staunchest defenders were sympathetic.

To be fair, and while not to in any way excuse likening a black person to an ape, it’s often in a comedian’s job description to say things that are off-color or to behave in somewhat of a subversive way. With CEOs, however, it is not, and this what makes their lapses particularly alarming. Granted, they might not be particularly well-versed in the intricacies of HR guidelines and PR campaigns. Still, given their prominence within their organizations—frequently accompanied by a salary and benefits that more than compensates them for their time, effort, and expertise—one would think they would use the resources at their disposal to better guard themselves against negative outcomes. Or better yet, rely on their business savvy and common sense.

Instead, we get John Schnatter, the founder of Papa John’s Pizza, dropping an N-bomb during a company conference call. Schnatter did own up to using the epithet following reports of this incident, if we are to give him any semblance of credit, and there was a context to his utterance of the slur—though even with this in mind, he probably could’ve done without it.

The problem with this context is that it doesn’t make Schnatter seem any less reprehensible. His employ of the term occurred when trying to make an analogy about his criticism of the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell in failing to adequately address player protests of the National Anthem (specifically, as a problem to be “nipped in the bud”) and hurting the company’s bottom line versus Col. Sanders, iconic founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, using the epithet in his own right. As Schnatter seemed to suggest, there was a measure of unfairness about him being singled out for his criticisms of the NFL while Sanders didn’t catch the same flak.

This comparison is a problematic one for multiple reasons. For one, while any deep-seated prejudices held by Harland Sanders’s can only be guessed, and while he may have been slow to adopt less offensive terminology for African-Americans or even contributed to the likes of pro-segregation presidential candidate George Wallace, his use of that word appears largely based on conjecture. Besides, trying to exonerate yourself by contrasting your actions with those of a man who dressed like a plantation owner through the Jim Crow era isn’t exactly a terribly high bar to clear. More than a quarter-century after Sanders’s death and in an age in which corporations are more cognizant than ever about their public image, this much should be more or less an afterthought.

It should be stressed that John Schnatter stepped down as CEO back in December after the backlash he and Papa John’s received following his comments about the NFL and player protests, so technically he is no longer serving in that function. In the wake of his more recent admission of using the N-word, Schnatter has also resigned as chairman. Although now he considers resigning a mistake. And the remaining board members have adopted a “poison pill” provision to try to avoid attempts by Schnatter to make a power play and reclaim his position atop the board. Simply put, it’s a mess, one that may have predated these controversies, but one which was magnified by them.

You may or may not have high regard for the Papa John’s product. I live in an area in which there is no shortage of local pizzerias, let alone Domino’s and Pizza Hut, so I personally could take or leave it. Regardless of one’s judgment of Papa John’s taste and overall quality, with over 4,500 locations worldwide, it’s not as if one can easily dismiss the restaurant chain. With other companies related to technological advances, there is perhaps a greater sense of demand or interest based on the novelty of their goods or services. This not withstanding, they too are subject to their founder/CEO going rogue in an era and in industries where public perception arguably should dictate more responsible behavior.

Mark Zuckerberg, fresh off a very public scandal involving the possible exposure of up to 87 million Facebook users and their data to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, recently was interviewed by Kara Swisher of Recode fame, and while the interview touched on a number of different topics, on the subject of whether or not conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones should have a platform, Zuckerberg said something rather befuddling about Holocaust deniers and whether they deserve to be banned. The relevant segment of the interview, as copied from the transcript:

Okay. “Sandy Hook didn’t happen” is not a debate. It is false. You can’t just take that down?

I agree that it is false.

I also think that going to someone who is a victim of Sandy Hook and telling them, “Hey, no, you’re a liar” — that is harassment, and we actually will take that down. But overall, let’s take this whole closer to home…

I’m Jewish, and there’s a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened.

I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong. I don’t think that they’re intentionally getting it wrong, but I think-

In the case of the Holocaust deniers, they might be, but go ahead.

It’s hard to impugn intent and to understand the intent. I just think, as abhorrent as some of those examples are, I think the reality is also that I get things wrong when I speak publicly. I’m sure you do. I’m sure a lot of leaders and public figures we respect do too, and I just don’t think that it is the right thing to say, “We’re going to take someone off the platform if they get things wrong, even multiple times.” What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.” But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed.

Swisher makes an all-too-valid point, as the majority of us would agree. Sandy Hook was not a hoax. There is no debating the merits of whether it happened or not. The same goes for the Holocaust. There simply is no place in regular discourse for litigating its legitimacy. Unless you are, say, a child who is just becoming able to comprehend what the Holocaust was and the devastation it wrought, any meditations on the intent of deniers is ridiculous. They intend to deny these events as a function of their anti-Semitism. There’s no leeway here.

Zuckerberg would soon after E-mail a clarification to Swisher about how “deeply” offensive he finds Holocaust denial and that he “absolutely didn’t intend to defend the intent of people who deny that.” But, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mark, if I may—you pretty much just defended it by saying it’s hard to “impugn intent.” It’s like President Donald Trump saying there was room for blame “on both sides” related to the unrest and violence in Charlottesville after a group of white nationalists rallied. When there are Nazis holding freaking torches, you disavow them. This is basic stuff.

In Zuckerberg’s case, he made comments that, at best, signify he is out of touch with the impact Facebook has and how it can be used to influence people to join in destructive causes. At worst, they signify that he understands this impact full well, but he and his company are actively choosing not to censor dangerous content because it affects the company’s bottom line.

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only high-profile tech-oriented CEO to meet with criticism, only to take his foot and jam it squarely into his mouth. For the longest time, Elon Musk and Tesla Motors have seemingly gotten a free pass from news media because their product is not only sleek and sexy (and hella expensive), but lends itself to optimism about a future in which electric cars have greatly reduced our consumption of fossil fuels and autonomous driving can reduce costs and fatalities in vehicle crashes.

More recently, however, as Tesla has tried to produce its vehicles on a larger scale, it has met with production delays and quality issues, not to mention a well-publicized death involving the use of autonomous vehicle technology and concerns about injuries at company facilities being underreported. Understandably, the organization has received a fair amount of negative press in this regard, and Musk has taken it upon himself to criticize the media and even suggest creating a service by which users can assess the “core truth” and “credibility” of editors, journalists, and publications.

Musk isn’t entirely out of bounds with his defensiveness in the face of criticism at the hands of major media outlets. This is to say that, when the demand to generate clicks or potentially to satisfy corporate donors within the fossil fuels industry is ever-present, coverage of Tesla Motors’s doings can easily be skewed. Going after Reveal, a publication by the non-profit Center for Investigative Reporting, meanwhile, for a story about the aforementioned workplace safety concerns at Tesla and labelling them an “extremist organization” carries less weight, and connotes a sort of thin-skinned petulance, if not signaling a rising desire among corporate and political leaders to intimidate or invite violence against journalists who don’t play nice for the sake of playing nice.

Musk caught flak again when he volunteered a child-sized submersible in the midst of the rescue of the Thai soccer team cave rescue that drew a worldwide audience. Right then and there, the Tesla CEO merited criticism for offering a solution based on an incomplete understanding of the logistics of the rescue, an act many saw as a PR maneuver designed to distract from his company’s failings of late. When Vern Unsworth, a British diver involved in the rescue, was asked about Musk’s “contribution,” he panned it, saying that it had “no chance” of working and that Musk could kindly “stick it where it hurts.”

Musk, because he is a CEO of a major corporation and highly attuned to the workings of social media, took this comment in stride. Kidding! He promptly tweeted and called Unsworth a pedophile, and then apologized for calling him a pedophile—while at the same time justifying his defensive snipe based on Unsworth’s “several untruths” and because the diver told him his idea was terrible.

That’s the kind of thing you shouldn’t say even if you’re not the face of Tesla Motors—and if you are, all the worse. Musk should know better than to throw a hissy-fit over Twitter. And yet, he doesn’t, or at least didn’t. If his apology is any indication, he’s sorry only because it brought him and Tesla more bad press, not because he’s genuinely contrite about making callous, unjustifiable accusations about a man trying to rescue young children.

What’s so unsettling about the awful words of Elon Musk and the above-named individuals is that they are accompanied by a lack of true remorse and/or excuses for their questionable choices. Roseanne Barr claims she didn’t even know Valerie Jarrett was black when she made her infamous comment, and that it was her vote for Donald Trump which doomed her show. John Schnatter, already in the habit of making excuses by blaming the NFL for lower earnings, has tried to justify his use of the N-word on the basis that he didn’t use it as a slur. Mark Zuckerberg professes he never meant to defend the intent of Holocaust deniers—except he totally did. These explanations ring hollow and arguably exacerbate the controversy in each case. Don’t try to hedge. Just admit you messed up, say you’re sorry and hope that people will forgive you.

Likewise disconcerting is the idea that these antics either have or continue to run the risk of overshadowing a great product. What’s more, if there is a lesson to be gleaned from the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, it’s that no one should be considered impervious to consequences for their actions. Whether the damage people like Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K. have done to their careers is truly long-term remains to be seen, but either way, theirs is not the kind of potential damage to one’s brand and career that one wishes to invite. In a day and age when corporate social responsibility is more than a passing concern, and when privacy seems to be on a continuous decline, the same can be said for the likes of Musk, Schnatter, and Zuckerberg.

On the Decline of U.S. Manufacturing (and No, It’s Not All About Automation)

#corporate social responsibility #Elon Musk #Facebook #John Schnatter #Mark Zuckerberg #Papa Johns #Roseanne Barr #Tesla Motors #Valerie Jarrett

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lifeonashelf · 6 years

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CARS, THE

I don’t mean to be crass… (granted, I know an introductory repudiation like that will immediately lead you to assume that the ensuing statement is, indeed, going to be crass, and will probably cause you to brace yourself for a statement far more crass than the one I’m actually going to make—especially given this lengthy parenthetical, which is likely only serving to compound your trepidation about the prospective crassness of my forthcoming statement, because surely when you see such an interminable block of text following a declaration like “I don’t mean to be crass” you’re bound to suppose that the statement I’m cautioning must not only be crass, but so reprehensibly crass that it warrants a sprawling disclaimer before it can even be tendered—although your concerns will be mostly unfounded because the statement I’m eventually going to make, after I finish fucking with you via this gratuitous insert, isn’t really as crass as you’re undoubtedly expecting it to be; I didn’t write an additional 200-plus words after announcing “I don’t mean to be crass” because I have any earnest intention of being crass, I did it because: a) I’m an ass, and b) I’m misguided enough to suppose this might be amusing in some way, when in fact the negligible comedic value of this passage is roughly equivalent to the relative crassness of the statement that will follow it, as you’ll find out right now…)

Actually, at this point, it would probably be prudent for me to start my sentence over again so that it bears some resemblance to a coherent thought.

So, to reiterate, I don’t mean to be crass… (although, it now dawns on me that perhaps devoting this exorbitant amount of text to introducing my statement may actually enhance its crassness, since the statement in question is one that potentially could be considered marginally crass by certain audiences, and the flippant manner in which I’m addressing its potential crassness perhaps could be viewed as offensive by those audiences if they presume that my insouciant tangents here are demonstrative of an insensitivity to the possibility that some people might find the statement crass—which, consequently, might lead folks who wouldn’t customarily deem the statement in and of itself as crass to instead deem my exposition of the statement crass—and this means: a) I may be inadvertently rendering the statement crass when it was actually reasonably benign to begin with, and b) at this point, I’ve probably pissed off just about everyone reading this, and I haven’t even made the statement yet—although I suspect that most of the people I’ve displeased thus far are more upset that I’ve wasted several minutes of their time on these ridiculous asides than they are about either the potential crassness of the statement I have not yet made or my perceived arrogant indifference to the potential crassness of that statement).

Anyway, I don’t mean to be crass… but the first thing I think of when I listen to The Cars is Phoebe Cates’s breasts.

I’m not necessarily ashamed to admit this, though I am acutely aware that revealing this tinge of alpha-“BOOBIES!”-maleness in myself doesn’t bask me in the most flattering light. In my defense, I’m reasonably certain that most heterosexual males who have seen Fast Times At Ridgemont High have spent a lot more time thinking about Phoebe Cates’s breasts than I do (I don’t listen to The Cars very often). I am simultaneously aware that reducing a band’s entire existence to a singular film sequence in which a mere snippet of one of their songs appears is awfully reductive of their legacy, particularly when the band in question certainly merits a far more substantial appreciation. However, since I have been mercilessly honest throughout this exercise, I would be remiss in my methodology if I wasn’t forthcoming about my inescapable mental link between The Cars and the mammary magnificence of the lovely Phoebe Cates.

Rest assured, I have no desire to herein objectify Mrs. Cates-Kline (she married Kevin Kline in 1989, which rhymes). For the record, I would like to clarify that I find her far more appealing in Gremlins, a film in which she eschews demonstrating advanced oral sex techniques on carrots to instead deliver a super-gnarly monologue about discovering her father’s decomposing corpse in the family chimney after he breaks his neck while trying to impersonate Santa Claus. Based on the five or so additional movies of hers I’ve seen, I think she was a perfectly excellent actress and I’m duly curious why she opted not to sustain that burgeoning career. Sincerely, I have the utmost respect for Phoebe Cates-Kline, and if she’s reading this I hope that message will come through loud and clear. Still, as I sit here listening the The Cars’ self-titled debut, I can’t help but evoke her iconic pool-side disrobing in Fast Times; “Living in Stereo” is so firmly intertwined with that specific sequence in the pop-cultural consciousness that there’s simply no escaping the association—much like it’s impossible to listen to “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” without clips from The Breakfast Club running through your head, or to hear “Goodbye Horses” without recalling Ted Levine’s tucked-penis shimmy in Silence of the Lambs. And this interference is proving to be detrimental to my process, since I’d rather not make my ability to readily visualize Cates’s areolas every time I hear the opening riff of “Living in Stereo” the ultimate focus of this essay. I’m only mentioning this telekinetic linkage up front in the spirit of getting it out of the way so I can write something more thoughtful about The Cars—which I’m sure Phoebe Cates, Ric Ocasek, Kevin Kline, and the seven other people reading this would greatly prefer.

Actually, come to think of it, I suppose I could have skipped that entire introduction. I’m just now realizing I have a personal connection with The Cars which handily surpasses my limited fandom for an ‘80s teen comedy that I recently watched for the first time since I was an actual teenager and didn’t find all that extraordinary upon revisiting (the scene where “Living In Stereo” plays was still pretty amazing, though). My band Happyending used to cover a Cars number—“Just What I Needed”—so I’ve actually played that tune on my guitar more times than I’ve played it in my CD player; since this is a designation I can only apply to a small handful of songs, that correlation is surely more exclusive and well-suited for our purposes here. I’m fairly positive Phoebe Cates never attended any of our gigs, so her presence in this essay is arguably extraneous (also, it seems downright bizarre to me that I’ve referenced Gremlins, of all films, two entries in a row; I honestly have no fucking idea what’s going on with this piece right now). I probably should have just led with the Happyending thing and spared us all from the previous six paragraphs entirely, so do me a favor and don’t read any of the stuff you just read.

Anyway, welcome to this installment of Life on a Shelf. It’s about The Cars.

“Just What I Needed” was an incredibly fun song to jam. Since we didn’t have a keyboard player to tackle the melody, Happyending’s version emphasized the tune’s power-chord bedrock and our arrangement sprawled out in the middle before eventually culminating in a cacophonous blast-beat meltdown which bore no resemblance to anything in Ric Ocasek’s original composition—essentially, we sullied the track’s pure pop perfection to suit our own purposes. Nevertheless, our rendition rawked and we always got an enthusiastic response whenever we slotted it into our setlists, so we sullied it often and with gleeful abandon.

Ultimately, we could have probably tackled any cut off the band’s self-titled LP and made a decent go of it, simply because the source material is so dynamite. The Cars’ eponymous introduction is one of the most exceptional and self-assured debut albums in the rock canon, a cohesive and nearly flawless set of songs that establishes a fertile and wholly original musical language in less than forty minutes. I would place the circa-1978 Cars in that rarified class of bands who sounded like no one but themselves, and though they would promptly inspire countless lesser New Wave outfits, none of their imitators fully cracked Ric Ocasek’s code and very few managed to scrape together anything even remotely as hooky or indelible as the choicest morsels on The Cars.

Perhaps the most exceptional heritage of the band’s inaugural opus is that it still sounds futuristic three-and-a-half decades after it was released (“I’m In Touch With Your World”, in particular, is so spacey and bizarre that it seems totally plausible Ocasek recorded the track on another planet), no lean feat considering how manifestly dated the bulk of the synth-rock which arrived in its wake sounds today. “Just What I Needed” is arguably the album’s centerpiece—and it’s certainly catchy as a motherfucker—yet it isn’t even one of my personal top-three tracks on the disc (we ended up covering it mostly because I figured out the chords by accident). My favorite song remains “Moving in Stereo”, for reasons that have nothing to do with Phoebe Cates (okay, maybe a little) and everything to do with the indisputable fact that “Moving in Stereo” just plain fucking rules.

On a collection loaded with shindig-ready anthems—a motif announced by the disc’s opening statement, “Good Times Roll”—“Moving in Stereo” stands out like an alluring black-clad femme fatale brooding in the corner smoking clove cigarettes and quoting Nietzsche while she dispassionately surveys the revelers on the dance floor. If I was at a party and the host put on The Cars, I would immediately like this host at least 70% more than I did when I arrived—and if I spotted a girl across the room singing along with “Moving in Stereo” I would immediately march over there and propose to her on the spot (okay… I know this is a completely ridiculous notion; I don’t go to parties). “Moving” is the song on the album The Cars which sounds the least like the band The Cars, yet conversely demonstrates the breadth of their creativity, offering a grim counterpoint to bouncy numbers like “Don’t Cha Stop” and augmenting the somber undercurrent which runs through several cuts whose buoyant instrumental backdrops cunningly mask their lyrical proclamations that the good times don’t always roll.

Witness my second-favorite song on the disc, “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight”, in which Ric Ocasek bluntly tells his gal that she can “hurt,” “use,” “mock,” and “abuse” him, but “[he] don’t care” because he’d be far more distraught if she left him. All things considered, that’s a pretty fucked up scenario. Though probably not quite as fucked up as the one outlined in “My Best Friend’s Girl”—a chronicle of the bro-code’s most grievous violation: “my best friend’s girlfriend / she used to be mine.” “Bye Bye Love” (probably my third-favorite song, if you’re keeping score at home) sort of speaks for itself, and even the otherwise jaunty “Just What I Needed” takes a disquieting turn when Ocasek eventually confesses that “I needed someone to bleed.” And then the album’s moody closer “All Mixed Up” comes along to decisively end the party with the knife-in-the-guts couplet: “I wait for her forever / she never does arrive.”

Perhaps the only failing of The Cars is that it serves up such an impeccable distillation of everything I enjoy about the band it shares its title with that until I reached this point in our tome, it was the sole offering of theirs I felt compelled to own. Although, I finally opted to bolster my discography with 1979’s Candy-O and their 1984 set Heartbeat City a few days ago to foster a more comprehensive representation in these pages (though I willfully neglected Shake it Up because the title track kind of annoys me). The results of my supplementary reconnaissance are as follows:

Candy-O has plenty of inspired moments, but much of the material the band cooked up for their sequel audibly labors under the onus of the dreaded sophomore slump. A few of the tracks sound like throwaways from the first album, others come across as vague sketches of songs that weren’t quite ready to be recorded, and a couple are so blatantly derivative of the highpoints of The Cars that they become essentially pointless. Granted, opener “Let’s Go” is easily on par with the group’s best work, and the following number (“Since I Held You”) is cagily excellent as well. But the discerning listener can plainly hear The Cars running out of gas as the record motors on (trust me, I know how obvious and dad-jokey the employment of automobile puns is in this case… but I haven’t used a single one until now, so please park your criticisms). By the next track—“It’s All I Can Do”—the band is clearly spinning its wheels (shit, car pun; that one was an accident; shit, “accident” could be considered a car pun too) and that tire-d (okay, I did that one on purpose) cookie-cutter composition finds the band idling (yeah, that one was on purpose too), marking the first point in their catalog where The Cars stall (I should probably put the brakes on this lame device now, huh?).

Though the funky title track perks up the affair a bit and “Night Spots” is likewise wholly decent, the second half of Candy-O is bogged down by a succession of tepid retreads (I swear I didn’t mean to include another reference to tires there) and the album fails to really take off again (okay, that was a plane pun, which is just confusing). The disc’s nadir “Lust for Kicks” is banal enough to qualify as certifiably crappy, shackled as it is by a dopey melody that would sound more at home pealing from the loudspeaker of a trolling ice cream truck. Like most Part-Twos, the fundamental fault with Candy-O is that it’s simply nowhere near as strong as its predecessor (overall, it’s only slightly better than Gremlins 2: The New Batch), even if its sturdiest moments demonstrate that The Cars still had enough of a pulse to be interesting.

Speaking of pulses, I’m listening to Heartbeat City right now… and I’m regretting that pun already. I’m also regrettably ascertaining that the spark of timelessness which characterized the band’s early work faded rather quickly for them—despite being released only six years after their debut, City contains very few of the former’s charms and resonates as an album which could have ONLY been made in 1984. This is mostly due to the flaccid production of “Mutt” Lange, whose abiding steadfastness to characterless grandiloquence later transformed Def Leppard from marginally-ballsy hard rockers into scrubbed-shiny arena darlings whose songs all sounded like jingles for shampoo commercials. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that the a cappella refrain which introduces the opening track “Hello Again” evokes Joe Elliot more than it evokes Ric Ocasek—actually, several of the tunes on City could have easily appeared on Hysteria with minimal tweaking, which perhaps says volumes more about the uniform soullessness of Lange’s twiddling than it does about either The Cars or Def Leppard.

Though Heartbeat City spawned two of Ocasek’s biggest singles—“You Might Think” and “Drive”—it’s a fairly pedestrian offering on the whole, and a far cry from the not-then distant age when The Cars managed to build full suites of great cuts around their radio anthems. “Magic” resonates like it was specifically written to accompany the pivotal montage scene in a direct-to-VHS Jon Cryer romantic comedy, “I Refuse” is so anodyne that it could have been a Kajagoogoo b-side, and even the solid mega-hit “You Might Think” is essentially a reductive re-write of “Just What I Needed”. “Stranger Eyes” boasts some of the dark promise of “Living in Stereo” and makes good use of its sturdy Tom Petty-esque guitar lick, but the track’s momentum is woefully hamstrung by Lange’s saccharine sheen, which neuters David Robinson’s propulsive stick-work to such a degree that the drum tracks sound like the percussion presets on a $7.99 Radio Shack keyboard. “Drive” is assuredly the best tune in the bunch, yet even that apex ends up being more perplexing than effective since the lone resemblance it bears to the band’s other work is that it appears on a record by the band The Cars.

Sadly, while my ardor for the group’s first LP remains stalwart, my investigation of their subsequent offerings is only serving to reveal that I don’t love The Cars nearly as much as I love The Cars. I might have been better off sticking with that solitary disc in my library (though you would have missed out on all those genius vehicular bon mots I threw at you a few paragraphs back)—as things stand, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be cueing up Candy-O or Heartbeat City in its place next time I’m in the mood to immerse myself in Ric Ocasek’s stellar song-craft or envision the nipples of retired ‘80s actresses.

We won’t get a Hollywood Ending to this piece, I’m afraid. As we roll the credits here, our protagonist (or maybe I’m the antagonist of this opus—I’m never quite sure) still hasn’t met his Nietzsche-citing clove smoker, and now he’s dispirited to discover that he doesn’t adore the band he’s writing about as completely as he thought he did.

Plus, Kevin Kline probably wants to punch me in the face now. Just what I needed.

I know what you’re thinking… A song-title gag is about the laziest way I could wrap this thing up, even more unimaginative than settling for another witless car pun, right?

Whatever. Boobies.

August 1, 2015

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