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timeskip · 2 years

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Zero Time Dilemma roles analysis (and other discussion of how ZTD is set up)

So I finished replaying ZTD the other day. And I have a lot of thoughts about it, like “why did it end up so bad when it had so much potential” and “god I wish the characters were written better.”

And you know, I like thinking about ways I could rewrite ZTD to be better. But as much as I think about it, I don’t think I could ever fully rewrite ZTD. I’m not sure any of the rewrites I’ve read (not that I’ve read many) has come close to my “ideal ZTD” but also, I don’t think “ideal ZTD” exists in any form. So instead of thinking about rewrites, I’ve started thinking about what role each character plays in the story.

This is so long and rambling. But I’m posting it anyways.

When it comes to 999 and VLR, every character plays a role which is clearly illustrated. 999 is easy, because every character has SOME connection to what happened 9 years ago, and that’s why they’re there in the first place. VLR is similar, because all of them were brought into the game for a reason, albeit some just being waved away as “well, it increases the resonance of the other espers” which works well enough that it shouldn’t pull you out of the story. But even outside of the in-universe explanations, every character plays an important part in getting across the story; ex: Tenmyouji being Junpei, and his distrust due to Akane’s death affecting how the AB game plays out, etc.

There’s a lot of different ways this manifests, but I think it’s particularly interesting to look at how ZTD doesn’t make the roles clear.

I mean, to some degree, they actually do. D Team’s role in the story is VERY clear, that being them creating Delta, whether you like that twist or hate it. I’m personally in the “hate it” camp, but hey, to each their own. It’s the other teams that mostly don’t quite fit, that feel out of place. You get the sense that it DIDN’T need to be these exact people, the way it was in 999 and VLR. I mean, if 999 had replaced Seven with someone else, the story would shift dramatically, and not in a good way. Even if D Team are essential to ZTD, and maybe C Team are essential to the continuation of Akane and Junpei’s story, but like, all the new characters? Their roles are vague and largely circumstantial. If I, say, switched Junpei with Aoi, would that be different? I don’t think it would change the course of the story that much, other than the specific character moments. Of course, ZTD isn’t all flaws, so each character does have a role to play, but it’s a lot less dramatic than the interconnected pieces that built up 999 and VLR.

First: what is ESSENTIAL to ZTD’s story (as set up by VLR)?

- There’s a mars mission test site in the Nevada desert, where Radical-6 escaped from.

- Diana is the one who let it escape, and she KNEW it would kill 6 billion people.

- Sigma and Phi came from the future. Akane set up this plan, and will come with them.

- Sigma and Diana have some kind of connection. Enough for Sigma to make Luna based on Diana.

- The one who released Radical-6 is Brother from Free the Soul, who believes in cleansing Earth, and will want to stop Sigma/Akane/Phi from stopping his plan in 2029.

- Sigma lost his eye and both his arms, somehow.

- None of them remember anything that happened, or at least they don’t know anything that can help their past selves when they go back in time.

That is a lot of interesting things. I might be missing a few details, but it definitely sets ZTD up in an interesting way, which obviously is why we wanted ZTD in the first place. This doesn’t really tell us much about how ZTD would end up, but it’s an important base on what the stakes are: our heroes (Sigma, Phi, Akane) want to stop Diana (who is a good person but let it out knowingly) and Delta (who is acting maliciously) from releasing Radical-6.

I don’t think ZTD goes against this central goal. That’s a good thing! Overall the structure of the story supports this, because Delta was always going to be Zero for ZTD. There’s no doubt in my mind that however they would’ve played it, Brother being Zero is the only way things could have gone, even if they decided to change Delta as a character completely. Even if Delta went by a different name, had different motives (as complex as they are), and lived a completely different life pre- Decision Game, he’d still end up being Brother. In that way, Delta is kind of a central pillar to ZTD as we know it. It’s HIS complex motives that shape the entire story, even if they’re difficult to understand.

Of course, ZTD shifts the point of view from our previous heroes (Sigma, Phi, Akane) to our new heroes (Carlos, Diana, Sean) which is interesting because a) Diana is previously established to be the one to release the pandemic and b) Sean is literally subordinate to Delta. But more importantly, shifting the choices to those three takes away some of the power of the other character’s decisions, even if they’re supposed to be actively trying to stop Delta’s plan.

Another thing that takes away decision making of every single character is the Decision Game itself, ironically. Because they’re all so isolated from each other, it makes everything feel disjointed. And because it’s all part of Delta’s game, his “life is unfair” shtick just ends up making them unable to interact with the other teams.

Think about why VLR’s AB game is interesting. It’s because of the ways the characters interact with each other, the ways they trust (or don’t trust) each other, and the ways that their choices in the AB game affect the game as a whole. It’s a way of building their individual characters through their relationships, always shifting. But ZTD is comparatively static. Even when we learn their backstories, they have little control of this, and them always forgetting makes it difficult to show everything connecting to each other.

And honestly, I’m going to blame VLR for this, because establishing that Akane and the others don’t remember anything of ZTD kind of made it impossible for the apocalypse timeline to have anything but the memory loss drugs as in ZTD, which is kind of sad, but sure, I understand why they chose to do this for the sake of VLR as a story.

Now for actual role discussion. I’m not going to mention every time a character is important, but just their overall part in the story, as well as their team.

C Team

C Team is interesting, because their main role is SHIFTing. Like, really. Their role is to go through the story, SHIFTing the whole time, and sometimes Carlos makes important decisions, but it’s mostly about Carlos learning how to SHIFT, and then using it to remember plot relevant information to (try to) save Akane and Junpei.

Carlos’s main plot role is as stated above. He’s learning how to SHIFT, and... that’s it. His stuff with Maria is background information that doesn’t affect the plot except for giving him a reason to be at Dcom. He may or may not feel out of place, but at least him being a strong SHIFTer is explained by his ability to sense the danger of being a firefighter. I won’t say it’s the cleanest integration, but it works overall even if he feels very unnecessary to Delta’s plan. Why is Carlos here? Why is he important to Delta, specifically? We don’t have an answer. All we see is Delta telling Carlos to choose the coin toss.

Akane, meanwhile, is important 100% because of VLR. Does Akane actually do anything plot important? Well, yes, but it’s all SHIFT related. She teaches Carlos to SHIFT, and she erases Junpei’s memories and starts her VLR plan, which... is all offscreen between ZTD and VLR. Which disappoints me, because she’s supposed to be a huge mastermind but she’s completely without any control in ZTD except for telling everyone that SHIFTing swaps you and could kill your alternate self. Oh, but she totally doesn’t care about that consequence. She’s used to build up that theme, but in a clumsy way. (I really want to like Akane ZTD but... compared to 999 and VLR I think her characterization is strange. That’s all. Plotwise, she’s good at being an explanatory vehicle.)

Junpei is the only part of the team that I’d argue is basically irrelevant to the overall plot. Since Carlos is the point of view guy, and Akane has things to explain and VLR to get to, Junpei only has his own personal story to attend to. I’m not saying he’s a bad character! Actually I think the opposite, if you’d believe me!! But he doesn’t have a lot to do other than give Akane the ring, which means a lot to me, a Junepei fan, but doesn’t mean a lot to. idk. Delta, maybe. Or any of the themes that ZTD is trying to build towards. The other role Junpei plays is that early on he plays an antagonistic role, as compared to Carlos and Akane, who don’t want to kill anyone. It’s not a useless role, but it feels weak compared to what he was in 999 and VLR.

Q Team

Q Team is the least popular team of the three. I don’t think that’s necessarily saying they’re unimportant to the plot of the game, but with Mira and Eric not being espers it kind of makes them feel a little bit unimportant compared to everything else, especially when you get to the end of the game and SHIFTing is the most important thing for all the characters to do. Also, you might notice I’m leaving Delta out of this, but don’t worry. I’ll get back to him later.

Sean has the most clear role of them all. He was created by Delta in order to facilitate the game, and I think this is a good thing! I legitimately like the reveal that he’s a robot, that he hasn’t been dying when we think he has and everything that comes with it. Is it underexplored? Maybe. But him being able to activate the force quit box, or being able to point out who Delta is, those are SUPER important aspects of the story, and him being there as an assistant to Delta makes sense both in universe and out of universe. His place in the story is completely justified. Nice.

Mira serves one main role: chaos. Delta took her into the game on purpose, and the game never really does anything with that other than a mention, but at least him choosing a serial killer makes sense for that goal. Her chaos comes into play in two key parts. One is that she kills Junpei, causing C Team to suspect each other. The other, and arguably more important role, is to inject Radical-6 into Phi, causing the entire apocalypse timeline. Other than that, Mira is just there to drive specific things that happen within ward Q, the most active participant in the early game. Many of the later Q Team segments have her dead, though, because Eric’s role relies on her being dead.

So speaking of Eric, that’s his entire purpose. He knows someone killed Mira, and he wants to get back at them. That is the only reason he’s here. I don’t think that having someone who’s so suspicious that he kills everyone is a bad thing, since it drives the plot, but it’s unfortunate that the only really important thing he does is that. Other than that, he gets killed by Mira a couple times, which does nothing for the overall plot of the game, and... well, what else does he do? SHIFT at the end, with everyone else? Eric is genuinely, really, very replaceable, as long as whoever takes his place has a reason to suspect everyone.

(Back to Mira: she’s very comparable to Dio. Dio is also an antagonist who causes shit, connected to Delta. I’m surprised ZTD doesn’t have more Free the Soul stuff, especially when we have someone working for Delta/Brother just like Dio did. Free the Soul ended up not being important to ZTD overall, but it’s interesting to see that Delta pulled the same stunt with someone entering a game in order to kill as many people as possible twice.

Also, because Delta is manipulating the Decision Game, we can assume that he chooses to kill Mira just because she’s not useful to him, or something similar. Her role being the one needed to inject Phi at least seems useful to Delta, but I’d argue that him being able to kill her whenever he wants is also kind of taking Mira’s choices away from her, even if her choices 9/10 times will be “let’s kill someone just for fun <3″ if that makes any sense. Delta controls the Decision Game entirely, and Q Team is the biggest part of that because 2/3 of them are directly following him.)

D Team

I’d argue that D Team is the central plot. Not only was Sigma the main character of VLR, but Phi and Diana were both important to the things that make up ZTD as established in VLR!!! And then we get to ZTD, and they CREATED DELTA and my god, the two big plots of ZTD are that Delta wants to release Radical-6 and that Delta wants to be born. And I GUESS that he wants to lead them to another timeline where they fight the fanatic, but for D Team, the main thing that matters is them creating everything Delta wants to come to pass. These three have huge roles to play when compared to the other teams (excluding Delta) because while Carlos shifts information around and Akane is somewhat related to VLR timeline, and Sean and Mira are connected to Delta, well. Those are just side things to the real story here.

Diana is the vehicle for the whole story, unless you count Delta. Diana is the mother who made it all happen, by breaking down in the twins ending and causing everything to happen. But also, she’s the one who decides that Phi’s life is more important than the lives of 6 billion people on Earth, condemning humanity to Radical-6 for Phi’s sake. Diana, I’d argue, feels like she has the most personal choice, not as heavily manipulated by Delta even if she does the things that Delta wants her to do. Her choices are what builds the story itself, and her love for Sigma and Phi is what drives the story. I’m not even saying that it’s a good thing for her to have so much control of the plot (I don’t really think it is, but that’s personal preference) but when you look at her letting Radical-6 out, it really is Diana’s choice and Diana’s choice alone.

Is her being left behind with Sigma in the twins ending also, at the same time, a way of taking away her agency? Maybe. But when it comes to Radical-6, that’s all Diana. Whereas Sigma and Phi are unable to do anything to even attempt to stop Delta’s plan (which, remember, is what their goal is supposed to be) Diana is the decision maker for D Team, and she chooses to let it happen.

But of course, Diana didn’t choose to be Delta’s mother. That’s not really something she could have known, this isn’t a path she chose. She’s also a victim of Delta’s “life is simply unfair” mentality, being put into a situation where she and Sigma are trapped, with Akane not coming back for them. It’s a game about decisions, and Diana’s decisions ARE important, but there’s still aspects that make it difficult to believe that choices are what led to this, especially when Delta and Delta’s choices in particular is so unexplored as compared to Diana’s choices and attempts to save people.

Sigma is also a major part of the story. I don’t think that’s up for debate, as Delta’s father. Even though he’s not making that choice, and his role is often relegated to reacting to what other characters do (Diana’s breakdown, Phi’s death, Delta killing Q Team with D Team’s bomb...) that’s not the worst thing the story could do to him. Overall, Sigma is just there to explain timelines and SHIFTing to Diana as well as, um. be a father I guess. But also he’s the one who chooses to use the transporter, so he’s got that going for him. Overall, he feels like a very different character than VLR Sigma, though I think this is understandable as it’s been 45 years since he was the Sigma we saw in VLR. Still, Sigma’s role is less about stopping Radical-6 and more about being there with Diana while the story happens.

And then we have Phi. Phi’s role, to put it bluntly, is to die and be tormented. The most important thing she ever does is to tell Diana to kill her and not shoot Sigma, even if it’s illogical! The second most important thing she does is get injected with Radical-6, becoming patient zero for a disease that she doesn’t want Diana to release! That’s not counting her being born, because her birth is arguably the most important event to the game’s plot, and yet because it wasn’t her choice, that’s more Diana and Sigma’s thing. I love the scene where Phi is trapped in the incinerator, but really, her role is just to be loved so that the story can start in the first place. We don’t even get her emotions on it.

And that’s the tragedy of ZTD. Phi is one of the most important characters, but her kicking Delta doesn’t even change anything. Even if we love the contributions she and all the other characters with only minor roles in the plot make, those choices don’t matter.

Life is, after all, simply unfair. Phi spends a lot of the game dead, and Akane spends a lot of the game passed out, and Carlos spends a lot of the game jumping timelines trying to find ways to save people who will never be saved. In a way, it perfectly fits ZTD’s themes, that Delta wants bad things to happen to people as long as it’s for the greater good (ie: his own birth, and the eventual death of a terrorist who would kill humans.) But he didn’t choose any of these characters in particular, except for D Team, and maybe Mira and Sean since they’re helping him.

Delta’s role is just to make the game happen. His motives don’t connect to the other characters, and no matter the Decision Game’s whole deal being about their decisions, their decisions never matter when Delta has mind hacking and ends up blaming it all on a single solitary snail, anyways. We don’t even learn anything about him as Brother, or why he knows about anything. We needed ZTD to have a complete story, but the story they give us leaves us with both a conclusive ending, and absolutely nothing that satisfies why all these characters are here. Even if it followed through on the things VLR set up, it only feels like an ending, not a full story.

And I’ll admit, I’m being a bit harsh. There’s a lot of interesting things in ZTD that I think are more important than the plot itself. But ZTD doesn’t tie itself together the way 999 and VLR do, and while I’m more than happy to explain that away as the writers not having enough time to develop the story in a good enough way, I also think it’s tragic that the story revolves around an event like Delta and Phi’s birth, something that has nothing to do with Phi as a character and very little to do with Delta, even if he set it up. There’s the bones of something good! Zero Escape as a series IS GOOD! But even if I’m always glad that it was created, even if I love some of the things it gave us, there’s still not enough here for me.

So. How is ZTD set up? Clumsily, for sure. I think it’s interesting to look at how the story has such an uneven focus, if nothing else. I think if they’d been able to work away at the story for longer, maybe the final product would be less clumsy. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking...

I still think there’s good things, though. C Team has a goal of including SHIFTing and multiple timelines in the story, continuing Akane and Junpei as characters and leading into VLR. Q Team has a goal of being part of Delta’s plan, making things go the way he wants. D Team has the burden of the story placed on them, but if it got spread out among the characters more I’m sure that the secret child twist wouldn’t sting so badly (even if a lot of people still wouldn’t like it, lmao). And even before we get to that, D Team has interesting character moments, and a lot going for them as characters.

Maybe what I’m saying is that I think that ZTD suffers from focusing on the plot and not the characters. I think it’s important in games like this to tie them together, and 999 and VLR did that AMAZINGLY well. Even connections that we didn’t know about at first and all the wild twists make sense in the end and are beloved by fans. ZTD could have had that too, maybe. Even if I don’t have a rewrite for you, and even though the “ideal ZTD” is nonexistant, I think picking apart the way ZTD works makes it easier for me to conceptualize what I like and don’t like about these games.

Thank you for reading something so long that I wrote for my personal enjoyment!

#ztd #zero escape #zero escape spoilers #long post #this might be one of the longest posts i've EVER written. uchikoshi what did you do to my brain #also no i didn't reread what i wrote. if it's incomprehensible i'm sorry

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mazes-and-the-madness · 2 years

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FAMILIA: A Camren Analysis

Hey everyone, I’m back with another Camren lyrical analysis. I didn’t expect my PRELUDE post to take off the way that it did, so why not also write one for Familia? First off, I just want to say a few things about the album.

I LOVE Familia. It has zero skips- not a single one. It’s by far the most listenable of Camila’s albums in the sense that I can put it on and just vibe to the music. The majority of Camila is sad breakup songs, and Romance is such an emotional roller coaster of “I hate you, I love you, I hate you again, also let’s get married.” For this reason, I’ve only listened to it twice all the way through from start to finish in the 2+ years it’s been out. Don’t get me wrong, I love songs that get me in my feelings, but can’t listen to a whole album of them on repeat. Overall, my ranking of Camila’s albums is 1. Romance 2. Camila 3. Familia, though I really do love them all.

Compared to Camila’s other albums, Familia possesses certain standout qualities. As always, Camila impresses with her vocal talent, and in my opinion, Familia has the best production of all her albums. But I feel like lyrically, this was her weakest album. That’s not to say the lyrics were bad by any means, just that there were no songs on Familia that could compare to Living Proof, Used to This, and of course, Consequences.

Still, Familia is Camila’s most mature album yet. Just like several other artists, she predominantly writes about love and romance, but now dares to explore edgier topics on Familia, such as politics and gender equality (Lola) and her mental health and anxiety (psychofreak). Camila’s music has previously incorporated Latin influences, but in Familia she fully embraces the Spanish language and Latin pop, a genre which suits her quite well. Take notes, Yogurt King: this is how to evolve as an artist instead of just doing the same thing over and over.

Speaking of the circus, I knew it would feature throughout this album. I feel like for Romance, Camila wrote her truth and her team tried to make the songs about “Shawn,” but due to narrative and timeline inconsistencies, this explanation was like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Unfortunately, this time around it looks like Camila had to write some songs specifically FOR the PR. On Familia, we get some stunt lyrics on songs like Boys Don’t Cry and everyone at this party, and full-on stunt songs like Bam Bam and (maybe) Celia. I didn’t love the PR aspect of the album, but you can’t deny they’re good songs.

I also think that Familia is her straightest album yet. Even if you had no idea who the hell Lauren Jauregui was, you could tell that a lot of songs on Camila and Romance were extremely queer-coded (Shameless, Liar, Señorita). Since there’s none of that on Familia, we have to rely on our own knowledge as Camila’s fans to do a queer analysis of this album because sadly, not everything can be as obvious as “mmm green eyes,” “black leather jacket,” or “La Cienega, where I remember you.” I’m not saying that these songs are definitely 100% ~no doubt~ about Lauren- just that if they are, here’s how I see them fitting into the Camren saga.

1. La Buena Vida/Don’t Go Yet

The weird thing about Camila’s explanation for Don’t Go Yet is that in a Genius interview, she said that the song was mostly from SHAWN’S perspective. This doesn’t make sense for a couple of reasons. One, he had a different girlfriend at the time. Two, Camila and Shawn were never in a real relationship. Even if we assume that they were, would she have us believe that Shawn was the one who “wore this dress for a lil’ drama?” I mean, maybe if it was giving Cher… Anyway, just hear me out. *puts on clown costume* *applies clown makeup* *laces up clown shoes* What if… she wrote the song from Lauren’s perspective?

Think about it. Lauren said Expectations was about a partner having zero time for her because of work. In La Buena Vida and Don’t Go Yet, Camila sings from the perspective of someone who’s facing this exact same problem. Between Cinderella, Familia, and carrying Yogurt King’s career, Camila’s schedule has been booked and busy for the past 2+ years, and it’s only natural for Lauren to feel neglected. If this theory is right, Camila writing Don’t Go Yet and La Buena Vida shows us that Camren has grown up and can now have a mature conversation about their problems. Camila going from struggling with serious communication issues to writing a song from Lauren’s perspective to truly show that she understands her emotions? Now that’s what I call character development.

Lyrical Parallels:

“I’m alone on my sofa bed” (LBV, Camila) // “up in bed, all alone, wondering where you’ve been” (Expectations, Lauren)

“why am I home alone with your glass of wine?” (LBV, Camila) // “I’ve been waiting here all night for you to warm me up and you haven’t once thought of me” (Expectations, Lauren)

“finally we’re here, so why sayin’ you got a flight, need an early night? no, don’t go yet” // (DGY, Camila) // “you should be here, should be with me tonight, ‘stead you’re working, you’re working all the time” (LBV, Camila) // “knowing very well that you told me you’d come home, and it happens every time” (Expectations, Lauren)

“I don’t wanna be the one making plans all the time, asking you what’s on your mind” (LBV, Camila) // “all I need from your side is for you to communicate” (Expectations, Lauren) // “you got a lot on your mind that you wanna say, but you haven’t made the time to communicate” (Let Me Know, Lauren)

Come on, such blatant parallels are essentially plagiarism on Camila’s part.

2. Quiet

Because of the production and the lyrics, I view this song as a more upbeat version of Dream of You and All These Years combined. While waiting for Lauren to come over, Camila’s mind is racing with nerves, anxiety, and insecurity, but all these negative thoughts and feelings disappear once they’re finally together. Sure, she said “boy,” but that doesn’t bother me at all. Camila has used male pronouns in the past, but the lyrics somehow always fit Lauren better than any of Camila’s public boyfriends. Quiet closely parallels All These Years, a song which is impossible to connect to Shawn (again, for narrative and timeline reasons). And I know I’m not the only one who instantly connected “back of the car” to the London car kiss. Finally, let’s be real: no straight woman is this obsessed with their partner’s hands, and the word “gorgeous” suits a woman much more than a man.

Lyrical Parallels:

“did you get taller? your hair is longer, couple tattoos since I saw ya” (Quiet, Camila) // “your hair’s grown a little longer, your arms look a little stronger” (All These Years, Camila)

“my mind’s made so much noise for so long and it’s gone ‘cause when you kiss me, it’s quiet” (Quiet, Camila) // “you take the psycho out of my brain” (No Doubt, Camila) // “feeling like a psychofreak sometimes” (psychofreak, Camila)

3. Boys Don’t Cry

As @emisonme so wisely said, just remove the male pronouns and the overall song is about desperately wanting your partner to open up to you. Like I said in my PRELUDE analysis, Camila has written multiple songs begging Lauren to open up (Inside Out, In the Dark, Shameless), and BDC is no different. When Lauren is struggling, she has a tendency to shut Camila out, but all Camila wants is for Lauren to just tell her what’s wrong so she can help, just as Lauren has done so many times for her. For fuck’s sake, Lauren’s the firstborn daughter in an immigrant family. If I had to guess, she was most likely conditioned for years to shove aside or deny her own feelings altogether so as not to be a “burden” to anyone. Although Familia is largely about Lauren helping Camila heal from her own trauma, Camila finally has the chance to return the favor in BDC. Regardless of who the song is about, the message of BDC is highly important, and I’m glad Camila included it on the album.

Lyrical Parallels:

“I know you got demons from the past slowin’ you down-down-down” (BDC, Camila) // “show me your demons, and I’ll show you mine” (Living Proof, Camila) // “tear-stained face, I can’t face these demons all alone, they don’t like me” (Scattered, Lauren)

“when I’m afraid of the world, when every part of me hurts, you don’t know how many times you’ve saved me” (BDC, Camila) // “where did you come from, baby? and were you sent to save me?” (Living Proof, Camila)

“you’re just human right now” (BDC, Camila) // “ ‘cause I’m only human” (Falling, Lauren)

“so why you hidin’ from me, it’s only makin’ it worse” (BDC, Camila) // “and I don’t know why I always try to hide it, oh I can’t fight it any more than you can” (Falling, Lauren)

“When I’m afraid of the world, when every part of me hurts, you don’t know how many times you’ve saved me” is exactly how I feel about the Camren girls, and I’m sure many of you can say the same.

4. Hasta Los Dientes/No Doubt

These two songs could be about the Laucy situation in 2015-2016. In Hasta Los Dientes, Camila is crazy about Lauren, but can’t stop thinking about her with Lucy even though she knows the PR stunt is fake. We all know that both Camren girls are the jealous type, and Camila has zero desire to share Lauren. Not with any of her PR boyfriends, and definitely not with Lucy, who because of this song I now believe had some sort of romantic history with Lauren. Although Camila understands that Laucy is the best way to bring Lauren out of the closet without exposing Camren and tanking Camila’s soon-to-be solo career, it hurts her to know that Lauren is hanging out with her ex. At the end of the day, Camila knows that Lauren is still hers, and has every intention of ensuring that Lucy knows the same.

No Doubt has Camila obsessing over the possibility of Lauren genuinely falling for Lucy, especially given their history and how Lucy probably had a crush on Lauren at the time of the song (I mean, who wouldn’t?). But just as in Quiet, all these doubts, fears, and insecurities disappear the second Lauren touches Camila, with Lauren making sure Camila knows just how loved she is. Compared to how Camila has sung about Lauren’s commitment issues in the past (Should’ve Said It, Feel It Twice, This Love, Señorita), No Doubt marks a clear turning point in their relationship with Lauren proving that she is fully committed to Camila and only Camila.

Lyrical Parallels:

“hasta dormida te imagino con ella” / “even when I’m asleep, I imagine you with her” (HLD, Camila) // “seeing visions on the ceiling, drunken kisses, heavy breathing, you’re up against the wall, she’s unbuttoning your jeans and you tell her that you want it all” (No Doubt, Camila)

“no es tu culpa lo que me hace sentir” / “it’s not your fault what you make me feel” (HLD, Camila) // “you’re not guilty, I’m hyper vigilant” (No Doubt, Camila)

“you take the psycho out of my brain” (No Doubt, Camila) // “feeling like a psychofreak sometimes” (psychofreak, Camila) // “my mind’s made so much noise for so long and it’s gone ‘cause when you kiss me, it’s quiet” (Quiet, Camila)

“and I can see it in your eyes when you slow down” (No Doubt, Camila) // “dale lento, tócamela más lento” / “go slow, touch me more slowly” (Lento, Lauren)

“I’m getting bad again, ‘cause when shit is getting good I just spiral into bad again” (No Doubt, Camila) // “you tell me that I overthink ‘til I ruin a good thing” (Easy, Camila)

5. Lola

I believe Camila’s explanation that this song is about a woman unable to follow her dreams due to the oppressive country she’s from, but that won’t stop me from drawing all the parallels to Lauren. First off, Lauren’s family and close friends sometimes refer to her as “Lolo.” Camila, you really think you’re slick by changing just one letter? Now let’s get into the actual lyrics.

1. “Lola was the smartest in the school, she was a supernova”

Lauren not only attended the elite private high school Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart on an academic scholarship, but she also maintained a 5.2 GPA, played on the varsity softball team, and wowed everyone with her musical talent. Damn, some people really are God’s favorite.

2. “she had a mind beyond her time, it was a thrill to know her”

How many times has Camila said the thing she loves most about Lauren is her mind (and vice versa)?

3. “she coulda walked on the moon, yeah, she coulda found us a cure // but family didn’t have no food and she had to leave school to work”

While Lauren’s family was by no means destitute, she and the other 5H girls largely came from working-class backgrounds. Lauren and Camila have even said that for them, college was out of the question without a scholarship. This is a big reason why Simon Cowell was able to exploit the girls so easily and get them to sign those unjust, restrictive, inhumane recording contracts, since he knew it was practically their only chance at a better life.

4. “Lola, she believed the world they promised her, now she’s older… nothing changes, this ain’t the dream they sold us”

Here’s a Lauren quote from Billboard’s interview of 5H in May 2016:

“They sell you this present of rainbows and butterflies, and as a 16-year-old that’s what I bought. It’s why I did X Factor and why I ended up in a group. But then you’re working so hard, so young. [Meanwhile] my friends are in college, telling me about their days and what they’re studying. You’re having to put on a smile on a red carpet. It’s like, ‘Who am I? Am I for myself or for this?’ ”

Naive, optimistic sixteen-year-old Lauren happily signed that X Factor contract dreaming of fame, success, and superstardom, but had no idea about the long hours, insane schedules, nonstop recording/promo/touring, anxiety, depression, online hate, drug abuse, PR nonsense, forced closeting, and so much more that she was in for.

5. “nobody’s listening, so she won’t speak, won’t speak // all of those dreams are fading slowly, slowly… it’s just the way it is, so don’t speak, don’t speak”

Remember that leaked audio from December 2016 where Lauren says, "They're making decisions on a regular basis to fuck us over! To make us literal slaves! Literally slaves, Ally. We're doing fucking labor every day and we see nothing!" Because the industry doesn’t see Lauren as anything other than a money-making machine, she has no one to turn to when she’s struggling. Even if she tries to call out the ruthless industry executives, what can she do? They have all the power and she’s just some kid. So Lauren begins to doubt her talent as an artist and her self-worth as a person, questioning why she ever wanted this life in the first place.

The beauty of art is that it can be about multiple things at once. I wouldn’t be surprised if Camila’s explanation for the song was true, but she also drew inspiration from Lauren and her experiences.

6. everyone at this party

This song could have taken place after the Camren breakup in late 2016 or early 2017, shortly after Camila left 5H. I believe Camila initiated this breakup herself, partly because of the whole “I love you, but I love me more” scene in the Havana music video. Still, she can’t help but worry that Lauren has already moved on and no longer needs Camila in her life. “Did we waste two years?” could be referring to 2015-2016, Camren’s first attempt at an actual relationship after Lauren had finally accepted her sexuality and was willing to be with Camila for real. By all indications, this was still a dark time for them, inspiring songs like Expectations, Sorry, Consequences, and Something’s Gotta Give. In eatp, Camila searches for Lauren at every party, but ultimately knows that no one else will ever compare.

Lyrical Parallels:

“and I just had this vision of you looking at me different when you saw this dress” (eatp, Camila) // “baby, don’t go yet, ‘cause I wore this dress for a lil’ drama” (Don’t Go Yet, Camila)

“and I’m having these thoughts, did we fuck it up or not, did we waste two years?” (eatp, Camila) // “it's already been two years, and I don't feel that you trust me like you should” (Sorry, Lauren)

“and did you get the space you needed?” (eatp, Camila) // “respect for my time, respect for my space, respect for my energy” (Expectations, Lauren)

Final Rating: 7.5/10

Final Ranking*

11. Don’t Go Yet

10. Bam Bam

9. La Buena Vida

8. Hasta Los Dientes

7. Lola

6. Celia

5. everyone at this party

4. Boys Don’t Cry

3. Quiet

2. No Doubt

1. psychofreak

*I excluded the intro, Familia, since that was just an instrumental track.

#camila cabello #familia #lauren jauregui #camren #song analysis #lyrical analysis #fifth harmony #pr #the industry #showmila the pr stunt

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seshiiru · 3 years

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A brief analysis of Drakengard/NieR Repetition mechanic and its role in the neverending cycle of death of the Taroverse.

(This is a personal analysis so it doesn't mean that anything I say in here is true and that it is Yoko Taro's intentions )

After replaying NieR Replicant and a rewatching a Drakengard LP, something actually striked me in the "Play the game again" mechanic so unique to Yoko Taro's games. Where Drakengard is more of Hack&Slah Ace Combat hybrid devided in chapters, NieR games are a bit closer to Action RPGs. Yet, the games follow a similar narrative construction and a way of doing endings, with multiple endings you can unlock by tedious grinds or hidden secrets, with each offering a new reality.

The mechanic is clearly more accentuated in NieR Replicant's/ Gestalt because this repetition serves as a way to make you question your decisions and right to kill the shades, with run B obliterating all of your expectations and beliefs. Where few games do question the meaning behind the killing, the delusional vision of a right or wrong world, none does it as strongly as NieR. By the repetitiveness of the game, reenacting the killing, you, the players are confronted once again to every life you took throughout the game. Which end up much more impactful than knowing you've killed for wrong reasons but aren't facing truly the consequences. And NieR Automata is reusing that mechanic, in an even smarter way than its predecessor.

Then, why, even confronted to our horrendous actions do we keep going? Do we keep on doing that long and tedious farming? Simply because we want more, we want a better ending, we wish that somehow, someway, the game gives us back some companions lost on the way, we wish to see our hero finally end the cycle. And that's the powerful thing about Yoko Taro's game. The player is the one that keeps the cycle of killing ongoing. And it is a cycle that actually started at the very beginning of Yoko Taro's universe and never stopped.

It starts way back at the very beginning, Drakengard 3. Through the character of Zero, we kill countless enemies, without much an explanation than just that she wants to kill her sisters. And then we learn the truth, we understand Zero's character but Mikhail dies. Then we keep going and more people die at each endings. More people die at every grind. We are never satisfied. We hope that the game finally gives everyone a happy ending but it never does. Finally, the event of Drakengard's 3 final ending put you the player, Zero and Mikhail at rest, yet doom another world: Drakengard's.

In the same way as Zero from Drakengard 3, we kill countless enemies through the bloodlusty Caim. Despite the chaotic nature of Caim, the player understands that there's bigger threats to the world so we fight. At the end of this massacre, our sister and dragon dies. We want a better ending. We want more understanding of the world . So we keep killing, replaying to get all the weapons, upgrading them, replaying missions countless times, achieving endings after endings, until finally, this world is free of the cycle. But it's to another world that we brought the cycle : NieR's.

Unlike Zero and Caim, the protagonist of this world seems definitely more righteous. We willingly kill shades because it's necessary, it's for a good cause. But after all this adventure, we understand that he's just as ruthless and selfish as Caim or Zero. Despite saving your sister, the only reason why you slaughtered all the shades, the player keeps on going. Keeps killing shades for a new ending, for Kainé, for Emil. But then you lose Kainé and then the protagonist itself. But then the game gives you a final hope. You replay the first part of the game, back as the innocent boy, hoping that everything you've gone through could be changed. And the game rewards you, it gives you the so hoped-happy ending; not knowing that this happy ending is gained at the loss of the entire humanity.

And the cycles continues to Automata. You could have stopped at Ending A, with that lovely ending but you want more. You keep going and you keep losing. First 2B and then 9S sanity. Pascal and the twins. Adam and Eve. But you keep hoping that they'll finally have the ending desired, just like the ones you've got in every games before. And it happens, but this time, the cycle is no more. Because you, the player, who kept going, decided to sacrifice yourself so the characters you cared so much about finally got free of the cycle you've been perpetuating for so long.

You are most likely the god who was in charge of that cycle all along. You can find evidence across all of Yoko Taro's games. "Is this the land of the Gods?" from ending E of Drakengard is the first hint towards that. "You and I are the same, tools in the hands of a master" from Devola to Nier in NieR Replicant/Gestalt. Then comes the Automata introduction quote "We are perpetually trapped in an never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment ? I often think about the God who blessed us this cryptic puzzle and wonder if we'll ever have a chance to kill him". And recently, I ended up with another hint when I pulled for the Replicant characters in Nier Reincarnation :

Yes it echoes to their games but I can't stop but seeing the 4th wall broken in each of these statements and knowing the man, there's a high possibility.

And that's through that last bit of Automata that you see how Yoko Taro's philosophy evolved throughout the games. With each game giving a more hopeful message each time. And Automata ending on your sacrifice for a good ending. You ended that cycle. Because the god of their world made the sacrifice so that they could all be free of the cycle. You lose your data, the meaning through which you kept the cycle ongoing.

The repetitiveness of Yoko Taro's games can be seen as annoying, and tedious (oh lord the grind ). But I can't stop but think it's what makes his games all the more incredible and rich in lessons and meanings.

#Drakenier #Taroverse #nier replicant ver.1.22474487139 #NieR : Automata #Drakengard #Drakengard 3 #nier reincarnation #Yoko Taro

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ot3 · 3 years

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i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey.

anyway. here you have it.

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith. I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it.

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene.

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land.

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass.

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area. In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.

#long post #really long post guys. look out !#rvb

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swordlesbean · 4 years

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rewatching the first 3 eps is kinda frustrating at how much Adora does NOT think about Catra covering for her not even once while she's playing around in beds, plays pinata, eats good food etc, she's gone for days and like Catra says later didn't even think she was taking the fall for her damn. and didn't even spare a glance at Catra while celebrating with her new driends at selinas

This is actually something I've wanted to talk about for a long time, so thanks for giving me an excuse to finally do it! I think when people are annoyed with Adora for supposedly not thinking about Catra in early s1, they aren't giving full consideration to Adora's perspective during that time period. She's, uh... dealing with a lot, to say the least. There's been a fair amount of analysis about Catra's perspective during this time, but not nearly as much about Adora's. I will try to remedy that here, in my typically long-winded way.

Let's take it from the beginning. Adora touches a mysterious sword in the woods that gives her visions and makes her black out. She’s still having these visions and hearing voices when she’s back home, so she sneaks out at night to find the sword again because she wants answers. Reasonable. She plans to be back by morning, but she asks Catra to stay behind because she doesn't want Catra getting in trouble on her behalf in case something goes wrong. Also reasonable. Boom, nothing goes according to her plan, and everything goes wrong.

Adora finds the sword, but runs into Rebellion soldiers. She tries to fight them for the sword, but when she touches it, she has another vision and blacks out again. She wakes up with her hands tied, a prisoner. She bides her time instead of trying to escape because she still wants the sword. During this time, she's told information that conflicts with what she knows about the Horde, and oh yeah, she somehow randomly transforms into an 8-foot-tall legendary warrior princess. Then she and her captors get chased by a giant spider to an abandoned temple, which she’s able to open because she can apparently read a long-dead language, but then they’re trapped in the ruins.

Once they get out, she’s no longer being held captive, so she can now go back to the Horde. But she needs answers and decides to go to Bright Moon so someone can give her an explanation for all this crazy shit happening to her. At this point, is she thinking about Catra and what might be happening back home? No. But frankly, there is a lot on her plate! Like, life changing stuff. She can turn into a princess! But princesses are evil and the enemy! But this angry sparkly princess and nice archer guy are saying the Horde are actually the bad guys? What is going on? What is she?

Adora still intends to go back to the Horde, but she feels she can't do that until she gets more intel about what happening to her and what it means. She’s always wanted to know more about where she came from. This may be her only chance. And even though her overprotective streak sometimes makes Catra think she feels otherwise, Adora absolutely believes in Catra and knows she's smart and resourceful and can handle herself, so it doesn't occur to Adora that there's reason to worry.

Then Thaymor happens. They stop there for transportation, but Bow insists they stay for the party because he realizes Adora's life has been utterly depressing, and he wants her to experience something nice. I think it's pretty harsh to hold it against Adora that she gets excited and awed and distracted by encountering a party and eating good food for the very first time in her life ever. Can the girl please be allowed to live a little? Like, she's an anxious, guilt-ridden, duty-burdened mess 90% of the time, so let's maybe not blame her for having a good time for once.

That good time is pretty quickly ruined anyway. Reality ensues. The Horde ensues. Catra ensues. But even as Thaymor is attacked, Adora thinks it's a mistake. It's bad intel; she just has to explain, and the Horde will stop. It's only when she comes face to face with Catra that she understands the truth about the Horde and makes her decision to leave. Let’s be clear on this: Adora doesn't just leave the Horde without any consideration for Catra. Catra isn’t an afterthought here, she is literally standing right in front of Adora when Adora makes her decision.

Thaymor from Adora's perspective is finding out that her whole life has been a lie and that she doesn't know her best friend as well as she thought. What Adora sees is Catra being part of an attack on defenseless people and seeming to have zero concern or regret about it. What she perceives is Catra refusing to join the good guys and choosing to remain part of a lying, destructive army despite the truth of a burning village in front of them. What she feels is Catra disregarding her decision to leave and tasing her in the back as she tries to walk away.

It's important to remember that in this moment, Adora feels betrayed by Catra as much as Catra feels betrayed by Adora. People always talk about Adora breaking their promise by choosing to leave, but Catra breaks it too by choosing to stay. They both make decisions that hurt the other, and they both feel abandoned.

So that's what Adora is carrying with her in regards to Catra in early s1. She's internalized this betrayal, these hurt feelings, but she's also really trying not to let herself feel any of it. Not just because it hurts, but because it’s what she’s been taught to do. She’s well-practiced in denying herself, denying her pain and her wants and needs. This trait of hers is given specific attention in s5, but it's a necessary lens to view Adora through in every season. She won't ever put herself and her feelings first. She doesn't think she's allowed to be weak, to feel hurt and express that hurt, not when more important things are at stake. Shadow Weaver always said her feelings for Catra were a problem, and for the first time, Adora agrees, so she tries not to feel them.

She can also avoid thinking about Catra because she has so much to distract her. Catra is still in the Horde, surrounded by reminders of Adora, so it's impossible for her not to think of Adora. But Adora's situation is different. She's in a new environment, suddenly overwhelmed by a huge destiny and all these new experiences and stimuli and social dynamics she has never experienced in her life. So she puts all of her attention into learning the rules and expectations of this new life. She hyperfocuses on her duty as She-Ra.

That doesn't mean there aren't reminders of the past. Adora doesn't feel comfortable sleeping alone, and the clear implication is that she can't sleep without Catra. She isn't "playing around in beds," she just has no idea what to make of a soft bed because she's used to austere conditions. And she's certainly not able to forget what the Horde represents to the people she's now living with. She gets run out of Bright Moon because of the Horde symbol on her back, and she receives a thinly veiled threat from Angella in front of Micah's portrait. She doesn't feel secure in her place in the Rebellion, so she's definitely not going to talk about missing anything or anyone from the Horde, however much of it she actually lets herself feel.

Salineas is the first time Adora encounters Catra after Thaymor, and the wounds from that confrontation are still fresh. She asked Catra to come with her then, but all it got her was a taser to the back, so she's not feeling too charitable towards Catra and isn't keen on reaching out again. She's completely in She-Ra duty mode, trying to restore the Sea Gate to protect the kingdom from the Horde. But then, Catra isn't making real efforts to try and bridge the gap between them either. In fact, from Adora’s perspective, she appears to be perfectly happy widening it.

While Adora is fixing the gate, she’s getting hit with electric feedback and also can't risk moving or fighting back, but that doesn’t stop Catra from lashing out at her. Catra mocks, scratches, punches. Even when she softens up a bit, she talks like Adora is just going through a phase. She's trying to convince Adora to come back to the Horde, but in the same way Adora wasn’t thinking about what Catra might face by covering for her while she was away, Catra’s not thinking about what it would actually mean for Adora to come back, the terrible consequences she would face as a defector.

Adora knows she can’t go back to the Horde, not just because of her morals, but also because it’s too late to do so without something bad happening to her. So she wonders, if Catra cares about her, why would she want to bring her back to that? If Catra cares about her, why won’t she just leave the Horde and come with Adora? Adora can't see into Catra's mind, so she doesn't know the underlying motivations and feelings driving her behavior. And Adora’s never really had the "you hurt me, so I'll hurt you back" impulse, so she’s more inclined to read Catra's aggressive actions towards her as a sign that Catra maybe doesn’t care about her as much as she once thought.

After Salineas, things continue to heat up between them during Princess Prom. This time Adora is highly confrontational towards Catra. She fully believes Catra is planning something bad, and she's absolutely right, though she still tries to save Catra's life when they fall off the cliff. That act doesn't seem to matter to Catra, and she ups the ante and hurts Adora worse then ever by taking Glimmer and Bow as hostages.

Adora finally softens towards Catra when Catra returns the sword and let's her and Glimmer escape the Fight Zone. Up until that moment, Adora isn't sure that Catra still cares, but this is confirmation for her. The next time they meet, Adora makes a real effort to reach out, and she again asks Catra to leave the Horde. And they actually do start reconnecting a little, until Light Hope plays on Catra's insecurities with those memory simulations, in an attempt to drive them apart and get Adora to let go of Catra in the same way Shadow Weaver always wanted her to.

And it does successfully drive them further apart and is the true beginning of Catra’s descent into villainous self-destruction and reality-destroying levels of resentment towards Adora. But what it doesn’t do is get Adora to let go of Catra. Because it doesn't matter what Light Hope and Shadow Weaver and even Catra say or do, Adora never can let go. She does eventually let go of the idea that she's the one responsible for Catra's actions, and she puts up boundaries and becomes harder towards Catra. But she never truly gives up on her or stops caring about her, even when Catra is at her most destructive and spiteful and personally hurtful towards Adora.

But then, Adora letting go of her feelings for Catra wasn't ever the solution anyway. Because She-Ra's power comes from love, and Catra is the first person Adora loved, and the person she loves the most deeply. So Adora as She-Ra is at her most powerful when she's loving Catra and doing it without conflict, either between the two of them or within Adora herself.

#adora #catradora #spop #she ra #meta #anonymous #congratulations to those of you that make it through this long ass read #there were just a lot of points i wanted to hit to really cover adora's perspective #and i felt it was necessary to describe the events of the first two eps in detail to drive home exactly what adora was facing

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marshvlovestv · 3 years

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Eric in the Pod Room - An impassioned defense of a man at his worst

Big tw for discussions of suicide, suicidal ideation, and mental illness, and lots of me projecting my own issues onto a terrible fictional character

I’m in a really bad place mentally right now and I’m immersing myself in a Zero Escape Let’s Play series to distract myself from it. It definitely isn’t the healthiest thing for me to be hyperfixated on right now - the series has a chummy relationship with the concept of suicide, after all, and suicidal thoughts are my worst symptom at the moment. But you know what, it’s twisted, but I’m so dangerously comfortable with my own suicidality at this point that the themes of suicide in Zero Escape almost feel warm and welcoming, to the point where I’d even consider them a factor in why I am so obsessed with the series.

I was working on a larger meta, which most of this post is an excerpt from, about the many suicides from Zero Time Dilemma specifically - none of them influenced by Radical-6, all of them with some interesting psychological analysis to be done concerning them. But the Let’s Players have reached the Pod Room, the puzzle that seems to singlehandedly give players the most reason to hate my favorite character. They turned out to be no exception, and they spent the length of the puzzle going on and on about how they despise Eric. I got really tense and upset and thought, “You know what? Forget about Diana, Carlos, and Delta. I can talk about them later. All I want to do right now is come to Eric’s defense. I want to talk about my boy.”

Like, I get it, you know? The first time I saw the Pod Room, I wasn’t the biggest fan of Eric, either. He bullies Sean, he actively refuses to be of any help in solving the puzzle, he makes lewd comments about Mira (and for the record, the problem I have with this is the fact that he says these things around a child, not the comments themselves; people should be allowed to experience and express sexual attraction and that is a hill I will die on). After the puzzle itself, we learn about Eric’s deepest trauma and after that I see people either feel bad for hating him and begin to sympathize with him fully, or go, “Yeah, that sucks for him, but it still doesn’t forgive a damn thing. He’s the worst and I hate him and I hate this game for making him exist.” I am firmly in the first camp, if you couldn’t tell.

Lest we forget: This is the route at the end of which Eric commits suicide. A murder-suicide, granted, but still. He takes his own life. The Pod Room is the start of Eric’s descent into rock bottom and I just... can’t hate him for that, especially not when I recognize some of myself in him. I have never killed another person (I promise); I don’t have homicidal thoughts. I don’t know personally what would compel someone to commit a murder-suicide and I don’t even want to speculate. But his homicidal tendencies aside, Eric and his suicidality have always spoken to me personally.

I’ve done plenty of analysis of Eric in the past under the lens of personality disorders, and my most general conclusions are that he suffers from PTSD, dependent personality disorder, and possibly borderline personality disorder as well. Suicidality is highly correlated with all three of those disorders, and as such I find it highly unlikely that his decision to kill himself in this route is a spontaneous one. If he is anything like me, when he isn’t actively, imminently suicidal, he probably still spends a lot of time imagining worst-case scenarios in which suicide would be a no-brainer. For me, my worst-case scenarios often involve the loss of my parents; they are my Safe People, people around whom my AvPD symptoms are less extreme and my behavior is less inhibited, and I seriously fear for my ability to function without them in my life. Sufferers of many different personality disorders have “special people” like this in some way or another. DPD and BPD have, respectively, Depended People and Favorite People, the objects of the sufferer’s attachment. Mira clearly fulfills both of these roles in Eric’s life, and lots of his worst-case scenarios must involve the loss of her.

Before her death is even confirmed, we can see how much he struggles to function without her there in the puzzle room. I read Eric’s behavior in the Pod Room as him flailing in the absence of his special person. The Let’s Players I’m watching have even made derisive comments about how he doesn’t even know how to be a person, and I’m sitting here like, yeah. You’re right. He doesn’t know how to be a person, not right now. His identity and self-worth are tied to a person who has disappeared under mysterious and stressful circumstances; without her, he feels useless and helpless, which is why he’s overwhelmed by something as simple as a sliding block puzzle. Without her, he loses his grip on his self-control, which is why he has no filter to stop him from saying inappropriate things and why can’t stop his worse impulses to mistreat people. I’m not trying to say that anything he does in the Pod Room is right, but there is a reasonable explanation for why he acts the way he does.

And then, they find Mira’s body. One of Eric’s worst-case scenarios has come true, and in the process he has lost not only the person most important to him but the very sense of self that said person helped him feel. It’s just as bad as he always imagined, and even worse, she was killed in exactly the same way his brother was, triggering a PTSD flashback. His trauma is further compounded by being shown graphic video of Junpei and Akane’s deaths (and later just being shown their dismembered bodies in person).The devastation he must be feeling in this moment is beyond what I can even comprehend and I fully understand why he snaps.

Again, I don’t want to speculate as to why his mind goes “revenge first, suicide second” and why he kills people he could be reasonably sure are innocent. All I can say for sure is that, when he does ultimately kill himself, it’s not out of guilt and it’s not out of fear of consequences. His last words are promising Mira that he’ll be with her soon. The suicide is about her. It was always about her. It’s not just that he’ll miss her; he genuinely cannot picture a life for himself where she is not a part of it, at least not a good one.

(Quick sidenote here to talk about one other thing that Eric does in this route: shooting out the X-Pass authenticator. Once Mira’s body is found, six people have died, meaning that Eric, Sean, and Q are free to leave. But Eric shoots out the authentication device before this is possible. When this happened in the Let’s Play, the players called him an idiot for destroying his own means of escape, which really annoyed me. Here’s the thing: Eric is already actively suicidal at this point. He destroys his key to the outside world because he can no longer imagine a life for himself in the outside world. Shooting the authenticator was in itself an act of suicide, even though he wasn’t pulling the trigger on himself.)

All of this is not to say that Eric is okay in the true end and should be left to his own devices. He’s a man in pain, a man in constant crisis, and he’s in desperate need of intervention to prevent him from harming himself or others. I like him and Mira together and she will likely always be a special (Depended, Favorite) person to him, but he can’t and shouldn’t rely on his relationship with her to keep his head above water and keep him from acting the way he did in the Pod Room. Eric needs professional help; but call me optimistic, I think that learning from Sean about how he acted on the other routes, what it looks like when he is truly at rock bottom, might inspire him to seek that help.

Anyway. Sorry for the rant, I hope it was interesting at least. I’m going to go refill my medications and schedule an appointment with my therapist because, as fun and cathartic as this was to write, it’s definitely not healthy to get this riled up over fictional characters; plus, I can’t rightly advocate for a fictional character to get help when I’m not taking care of myself, can I?

#zero escape #zero time dilemma #eric ztd #suicide #suicide tw #don't worry about me btw i'll be fine #i know this gets really personal but feel free to like rb interact whatever #i'm not shy about this stuff

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requiem626k · 3 years

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Here I am with another little quote-analysis post about The Gambler from Dostoevsky.

I finished the book, and even though it wasn’t as intriguing as Notes from Underground to me, it had many interesting bits.

“I find myself taking no thought for the future, but living under the influence of passing moods, and of my recollections of the tempest which recently drew me into its vortex, and then cast me out again. At times I seem still to be caught within that vortex. At times, the tempest seems once more to be gathering, and, as it passes overhead, to be wrapping me in its folds, until I have lost my sense of order and reality, and continue whirling and whirling and whirling around.”

My explanation for including this one won’t have a literary value maybe but this part was especially interesting to me because of what it reminded me of.

⚠️ spoiler warning: Dead Apple ⚠️

When I read this part, I immediately thought of the “tempest” that appeared after the three-way treason, the tornado that appeared after Shibusawa stabbed Dazai and Fyodor slit Shibusawa’s throat. For some reason, it felt like this paragraph portrayed BSD Fyodor’s mental state at that moment so well. I’m sure it’s even better in Russian, but even the English version gives so well that dizzy, lost, almost gone-crazy vibe of the vortex that his past memories and recollections caused… maybe it’s the same for BSD Fyodor and his past? Of course this is just a theory given that we don’t know anything about him yet (anime-exclusively speaking) but it surely interested me very much.

⚠️ spoiler warning ends ⚠️

“What am I? I am zero--nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from the dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man in myself, if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered.”

I think this was the most interesting quote for me through the whole book and I just had to put it here. It just made me shiver because it gave me major No Longer Human vibes for some reason, these are the words of a man who’s aware that today, he’s ‘nothing’, he still has hope for tomorrow yet cannot be sure if he has any ‘manhood’, ‘humanity’ left inside. It just struck me so much. The Gambler is also a semi-autobiographical work as far as I know, at least it most definitely contains things from Dostoevsky’s own life and especially thoughts, and I’m amazed at how parallel his sentences were to Dazai-sensei’s. I’m sure if I had more braincells in this early morning I could’ve made some connections between BSD Dazai and Dazai-sensei and IRL Fyodor but I’ll leave that to more experienced hands for now haha.

Tagging @jadegreenimmortality since you wanted me to tag you in irl Fyodor stuff🤭

#req’s russian literature brainrot #fyodor dostoevsky #bsd literature quotes

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awkwardemons · 3 years

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(this is all based on rp!) Okay, before I get into this I want to say I love Phil, both the character and the content creator! And in this, I am talking not about the meta reasoning for things, but the in-world reasoning for things. That being said the whole “Wilbur was lying in the letters and so Phil did not know that anything was wrong until the letters stopped” just does not make sense based on what has been previously shown.

Now I didn’t see the full stream where Phil talked about the letters, but from what I gathered here are the main points

- Tubbo became the president during the elections, being given the presidency after Wilbur won

- Wilbur left L’Manberg of his own choice

- Phil does not know Schlatt other than him being dead

- Was not aware of Wlbur’s mental state

- Was not aware of the button room

- Was not aware of Willbur’s plan to blow up L’Manberg

So that’s all well and good. However, here is a line by line analysis of the Button Room scene that now makes absolutely zero sense with this hot new spin on it. Now, you could argue that anything Phil said before he logs onto the server is not canon. I disagree, but I understand. I would argue that because he joins the server because of what happens right before, and what he hears, that it is canon. I will be starting slightly before he physically joins, so bear with me

Tubbo: I’m gonna be honest, I really don’t know what a president does! [everyone, including Phil, laughs]

Wilbur: I’ll be back, I’ll be back.

Phil: Wait, where’s Will going?

Wilbur, who cannot hear Phil: Chekhov's Gun. Chekhov's Gun.

Phil: Is he done? Is he done streaming?

Wilbur: I’ll be honest with you, chat. I’ve been wondering this whole time if it still works.

Now, this is important. Wilbur does not say any specifics. He says “it’. This sentence is extremely vague. Anyone who did not know exactly what he was talking about would have no clue.

Phil: [music cuts out] Oh no....

This reaction doesn’t make any sense unless Phil knows what Wilbur is planning. Theoretically, he should not be concerned by this.

Wilbur: I’ve been thinking to myself would- would it- does it still- Because I fixed it up for today, but [Phil: Mate...] as you know before someone- someone- Last time i pressed it someone had removed the redstone.

Alright, so, now all Phil should know is there is some button that is/was connected to redstone. That could mean so many different things.

Wilbur: There's um... I always- Whenever I’m here I’m reminded of the song that I’ve scribbled on the walls. Then, you know.. That there was a special place, there was. Was a special place where men could go and emancipate, you know? And there was definitely that special did exist once, it did, it did. But even with- I- Even with Tubbo in charge, I don’t think it can exist again.

Once again a reference to Tubbo just now becoming the president.

Phil: [Phil has deafened] Oh this motherfucker. This motherfucker. He’s gonna do it... Is he gonna fuckin do it? [Phil goes to join the server]

Is he gonna do what, Phil? How are you aware of what WIlbur was planning, but promised not to do? Because there should be no way he knows what’s happening based on what he heard.

Alright and this also marks the spot where it can’t be argued that the things said aren’t technically canon.

Wilbur: [we hear the end of his sentence after Phil undeafens] It’s over.

Phil: What are you doing.

Wilbur: Phil?

Phil: What are you doing.

Wilbur: Phil, where are you?

Phil: I’m joining the server right now.

WIlbur: Wait, you’re- How?? You- This is-

Phil: I’m hacking in.

Wilbur: [while laughing] What do you mean you’re hacking in? What??

Phil: I’m getting in, dude.

Wilbur: Do you want- Do i need to go get you from spawn? What? Is it...

Phil: It’s taking a while to load...

Wilbur: [seemingly remembering Phil’s original question and stuttering through his answer] I’m not- I wasn’t doing anything. We just- We just made Tubbo president. We- We um- We (led to?) Tubbo president and we won! We won the war. Schaltt’s gone. Schlatt’s gone, Phil, so it’s uh

Now there’s a lot to unpack here. The highlights are “We just made Tubbo president” which should not line up with what Phil believes is true, “We won the war” and “Schlatt’s gone”. Both of the last quotes, Wilbur is addressing Phil as if he knows the situation. As if he knew they were going to have a war with Schlatt. Phil, apparently, does not know who Schlatt is, nor would he have any reason to think there would be another war. But Wilbur certainly seems to be under the impression that Phil knows what’s going on. And, Phil himself appears to be completely in the loop.

Phil: [disbelieving, and overlapping Wilbur still stuttering] Uh huh. Uh huh. So [Wilbur: It’s good.] You are where exactly now?

Bit of an odd question with an odd tone of voice for someone who does not know what’s happening.

Wilbur: [unconvincingly] In... L’Manberg.... There’s so- The area- You wouldn’t know, I don’t think you’ve been here, but it’s the area around L’Manberg. It’s complicated. It’s geo- geography and that, you know it’s- it’s- it’s geography and stuff and- [Phil joins the server in the hallway leading up to the button room]

Okay, but WIlbur isn’t wrong. Philza should have absolutely no idea where to find Wilbur. The entrance was just on the side of a mountain, if I remember correctly. Phil should have no idea where he is. And yet he’s able to find him very quickly. Now, I know this was for dramatic effect. I know that. However, again I am looking at the in-canon consequences and explanation for things. Most of the server members didn’t even know where the button room was. So, How does Phil know?

WIlbur: Phil?

Phil: Mmhm.

Wilbur: Uh....

Phil: Yeah... “In L’Manberg” you said.

Wilbur: The- This is L’Man- The-... Okay. I will admit... Do you know what this button is?

Phil: [without hesitation:] Uh huh. I do.

There. Without a shadow of a doubt. Phil knows what the button is. How would he know that? This absolutely does not line up with what he’s saying now. And it’s a logical next step to assume that if he knows what the button is, he knows that WIlbur made it. And if he knew that WIlbur made it, he is at least decently aware of WIlbur’s mental state.

Wilbur: Have you heard the- the song on the walls? Before? Have you heard the song? I was just saying- I made this big point, and it was poignant, and it was that there was a special place where men can go- But it’s not there anymore, it’s not.

Phil: It is there. You’ve j- just won it back, Will.

Once again showing that he was aware of the Schlatt situation. That Wilbur had to win L’Manberg back, that he didn’t just leave to start over.

WIlbur: Phil, I’m always so close to pressing this button, Phil. I have been- have been here like seven or eight times I have been here. Seven or eight times. [Phil sighs] Oh they’re gonna come and- I need to block this off. I don’t want them in here. [Phil laughs. We begin to hear fireworks.] I don’t want them in here. Phil, I- I have been here so many times... They’re fighting. They’re fighting!

Phil: And you want to just blow it all up?

Make note this is the first anyone has said about blowing anything up. I know I’m repeating myself, but this just further shows that Phil knows exactly what the button does and what Wilbur’s intentions are.

Wilbur: [sighing] I do... I think- I-

Phil: You fought so hard to get this- this land back. So hard.

Once again referencing conflict he should not know about.

Wilbur: I don’t even- I don’t even know if it works anymore, Phil. I don’t even know if the button works. I could- I could press it, and it might...

Phil: Do you really want to take that risk? [he laughs] There is a lot of TNT potentially connected to that button.

How does he know that? (Also this is technically the first mention of specifically TNT)

Wilbur: Phil. There was a saying, Phil- I’m gonna turn down these bloody fireworks- Phil... [Phil laughs] There- There was a saying, Phil, by a traitor. Uh once part of L’Manberg. A traitor, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eret?

Phil: Yeah.

Wilbur: He had a saying, Phil. “It was never meant to be.” [Wilbur presses the button]

Phil: Oh my god... You didn’t. [L’Manberg blows up.] Ohhhh my god... [Phil looks at the destruction] Will! It’s all gone! [Phil laughs]

Wilbur: My L’manberg, Phil! My unfinished symphony, forever unfinished! If I can’t have this, no one can, Phil!

Phil: Oh my god.

I could go on to explain how the next moments show inconsistency with Phil’s character and Doomsday, but hey. So yeah in conclusion, the story just does not line up, it doesn’t make sense with what we’ve seen. This entire scene does not make sense with this new angle. Everything from the tone, the characters actions and reactions, and just fully the scene itself would need to be completely different. Also, Just throwing it out there: If all Philza knew about the situation was:

- Wibur stopped writing

- Tubbo is president

- Wilbur just blew up his nation that isn’t even his anymore

- Wilbur wants me to kill him for what he’s done, but I don’t have very crucial information

to understand the situation

Then him murdering Wilbur is so much worse. Then, it only takes 30 seconds of convincing for Phil to blindly kill his son. It just doesn’t make any sense

If you want the letters to make sense, I think it would fit that Wilbur stopped writing the day of the Manberg festival. Then, Phil could have gotten letters from Wilbur, already spiraling further, detailing the button, the button room, where it is, his intentions, and his mental state. But, hey!

#dream smp #/roleplay #philza critcal #i guess??#wilbur soot #dsmp #philza minecraft #ph1lza #i dunno team #i never post on here #but i had some thoughts #thank you for reading #xoxo

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - The Alchemist Returns

Strap in folks, cause this is going to be a long one. In truth, there are very few flaws in this episode, but in order to explain them I have to really get into some character analysis first.

Summary: Varian comes to Rapunzel for help in finding the remnants of the mystical golden flower, which may hold the key to stopping the Black Rocks. Working together, they venture through the old tunnels beneath Corona. Meanwhile Cass and Eugene work together to figure out who drugged the castle’s populace with a truth serum.

Behold! The One and Only Time Frederic is Called Out on His BS; and Nothing Comes of It.

Rapunzel finally, finally stands up to her dad and points out both his abusiveness and his poor leadership. It doesn’t affect the narrative in anyway. Neither character learns anything from this nor changes their points of view. This conversation might as well not have happened given how the characters behave in later episodes/seasons.

The only reason this scene exists is to give Rapunzel motivation for stealing the flower within the episode. A goal that she changes her mind about towards the end. Thereby walking back on such motivation and putting us back at square one with her development.

Rapunzel Isn’t Being Truthful With Herself Nor the Audience

So people aren't always one hundred percent truthful about what they want and their goals. Especially if it involves admitting something about yourself or a loved one that you don’t want to acknowledge. Fictional characters are meant to give the illusion of being real so they can sometimes mimic this behavior.

Throughout the episode Rapunzel keeps on assisting that she’s doing this ‘for Corona’, but we’re given context clues along side that to tell us that her real reasons are about her relationship with her father.

Unfortunately, the show has a bad habit of not communicating information clearly and also has a history of expecting the audience to take what the characters say at face value. Ergo, it’s easy to miss Rapunzel’s true motivations and thereby fail to fully understand her actions and decisions throughout.

Once Again, These Prophetic Dreams Go Nowhere

Dream Varian mentions Rapunzel has a ‘destiny’ but the show never spells out what that destiny actually is nor why she needs to fulfill it. Sure there’s a big quest for the moonstone in season two, but the rocks stop being a threat by then so really, she doesn’t actually need to go on that quest. In fact, she would save a lot of people at lot of trouble if she did nothing at all. That’s poor storytelling. You need something driving the action; a reason to motivate the hero.

Secondly, we never get an explanation for why she randomly has these dreams in the first season but for none of the others. Nor why Varian is at the center of the them when it’s other villains she needs to actually be warned about, like say Zhan Tiri.

No, the real reason why this dream sequence exists is just to reiterate Rapunzel’s internal conflict. She wants a relationship with her Dad, but he’s a male Gothel, and she’s now caught in the middle of his and Varian’s conflict because she failed to take responsibility when she needed to. And is still failing because she doesn’t want to shatter her illusions about Frederic.

Shoving the main protagonist’s driving conflit into a subtextual dream sequence is lazy. Especially since we get no official resolution to said conflict. Rapunzel never acknowledges the problem here, never follows up on any type of action, and she never faces any true consequences for ignoring the issue.

She carries on believing in her fantasy version of Frederic, even as he continues to do harmful things, and the narrative just rewards both her and him for it.

There Should Have Been an Episode Showing the Audience Varian’s Side of the Story

What happened to Varian in between Queen for a Day and this episode is told only through context clues. Nothing is stated outright, meaning the audience has to rely too heavily on inference and are left to piece together what happened on their own like a puzzle. That’s poor writing.

Even something as simple as ‘how much time has past’ (its three months btw, S1 is six months long and QfaD is the meant to be the midpoint) is left up to the viewer to keep up with rather then being clearly stated. This is made even harder to do by the marketing team showing most of the episodes out of order.

You need to clearly relay information to your audience. That means repeating said information in a variety of ways over the course of the story. Have those context clues, but also have more overt hints, and direct reveals interspersed along with that. Especially when dealing with the motivations and goals of the character driving the main plot.

Even if you attribute the lack of a Varain episode to the ‘twist’ in this one, (a twist that was revealed in QfaD anyways) there’s still no excuse for why we didn’t get a flashback episode afterwards to fill this hole in narrative out.

Don’t Pretend Ignorance Rapunzel

Nigel literally repeated the rumor to her face last episode. She knows her father is lying about the rocks and attacked her for the scroll. She knows from the letter that those same guards were chasing down Varian for said scroll. She knows about Corona’s laws and what would happen to Varian if the guards caught him.

There is zero reason for her to be acting like this is new information. Let alone have any right to feign concern after three months of ignoring his plea for help.

That’s what I mean about the series not communicating clearly and wanting the audience to take things at face value. The show deliberately has the characters say things that contradict established events to try and get the audience on their side.

The episode is trying to telling us, ‘See! Rapunzel is innocent in all this cause she didn’t know, but she’s trying to make up for it now’. Yet, if you’ve been watching and paying attention to the details, you know that’s not the truth here.

Good writing is about communicating ideas to your audience. But this show can’t decide on which idea to communicate. Is Rapunzel at fault or no? You can’t have it both ways. Either she screwed up and thereby caused the conflict in question now or she didn’t. If she didn’t, then events shouldn’t progress like they do. If she did, then it needs to be acknowledged and she needs to held accountable by the narrative.

More Hints into Rapunzel's True Motivation

I can’t stress this enough. Rapunzel’s reasons for stealing the flower has nothing to do with Corona. That is an excuse. It’s about trying to find out what her Dad is hiding from her and why he’s lying to her. This comment right here is what compels Raps to go along with his plan.

Also...

Varian Isn’t Lying Here

I also want to make it perfectly clear that Varian is being upfront with Raps. He tells her his plan is to steal the flower and why. She’s the one that makes the assumption that this entails them only taking one petal and the assumption that ‘all our problems’ only means saving Corona. Even though saving Corona and saving Quirin are the same problem. (more on this later)

It’s important to understand Rapunzel’s thought process and her true motivations in order to make sense of her actions later in the story.

Rapunzel’s internal conflict is her need for autonomy versus her fear of rejection. The ‘for Corona’ and ‘one petal’ excuses are used because she thinks they’ll play well with her Dad. In order words, they’re reassurances to her that should she get caught and have to face her father’s disapproval then she could counteract his arguments with his own belief system about ‘putting the kingdom’s needs first’ and ‘following your own inner voice.’

And yes, both Rapunzel and Frederic are big fat hypocrites for this, but Rapunzel hasn’t acknowledged that fact to herself and is trying to convince herself throughout the episode to believe in her own excuses.

Why Do You Care About Treason Rapunzel?

For context, treason is the highest crime in any country. It’s punishable by death, even in the real world. Now each country has its own legal definition of what constitutes as treason. Here in a America, in Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, treason is specifically limited to levying war against the US, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. And only during a time of war. Legally, a time of war has to be approved by the US congress. Technically, congress hasn’t declared war since World War II. This is why certain people haven’t been convicted of treason like acts both in, and out of, later US conflicts because the definition is arguably too narrow and specific. But it’s intentionally that way to help prevent false accusations and to keep people in power from murdering their political opposition.

Before the US, treason just meant opposing the ruler of the land in any way. The founding fathers committed treason just by signing the Declaration of Independence. They all would have been executed had the US lost the revolution. Here in Corona, that old definition still stands. Simple theft of royal property, a non violent act, is considered treason and we already know it’s punishment. Eugene stole royal property and was almost hanged for it in the movie.

Now Rapunzel though, she is royalty. This stuff she’s stealing is technically her own property. She’ll inherit all of these things once Queen. Moreover, we all know that Frederic wouldn’t harm Rapunzel let alone kill her. She’s not in any real danger here. So why does she care?

Remember that Rapunzel’s internal conflict is personal autonomy versus her fear of rejection. She only hesitates in her pursuit of answers when reminded of Frederic’s possible disapproval. That’s why she stops under his frowning picture to say this. “Treason” only means possible rejection or disapproval from her father. The worst thing she faces is another argument with him.

Meanwhile, Varian’s life is very much at stake here. He is risking everything, quite literally, to save his father. But his life was arguably forfeit as soon as Frederic decided he wanted the scroll. What’s to prevent the king from claiming that as his own property even when it’s really not? If he’s already sent guards after Varian and the scroll then that’s precisely what he’s already done.

The series is acting like Rapunzel is the reasonable one here because she questions stealing, but the reality is she’s being selfish and willfully obtuse. Multiple lives are at stake here, including the one of the person she is talking to right now. Breaking the law, defying her father, in order to save those lives shouldn’t even be in question at all.

Corona and Quirin Aren’t Conflicting Interests.

Quirin and Corona are both facing the same problem. Solving one will inevitably mean solving the other. Any distinction between the two is solely created within Rapunzel’s own mind.

She does this to to hide her true motivations and conflict from herself. The show does this to try and villainize Varian over Frederic.

There’s a clear bias in who the series wants you to root for and so it skews the perception of what’s actually at stake by creating a non-existent competition between Quirin’s life and the country’s safety. Even though Quirin, Varian, and Old Corona are all apart of the kingdom. They’re all Rapunzel’s and Federic’s responsibly too. Saving Quirin’s life should be more than reason enough to steal the flower on it’s own.

But this is ‘Rapunzel’s show’ and according to the creators, that means that her personal feelings are more important than actual human lives. Not really, but that’s their mindset and approach to conflicts in the show.

Rapunzel’s True Motivation is Revealed

So we’ve followed the hints, but here it is stated outright. This was never about Corona, the rocks,Varian’s safety, nor Quirin’s life. This is about her need for autonomy. Her own personal quest for assertiveness. She’s been bullied and abused by two steprate parental figures now and she’s growing tired of it. Which is understandable and valid, but it shouldn’t be made more important than everyone else’s problems. Everytime Rapunzel says ‘for Corona’, she really means ‘for herself.’

Rapunzel Shouldn’t be the Only Person Solving the Obstacles Here

Varian is just as smart as Rapunzel, if not smarter. This has been established throughout the show both before and after this episode. Meanwhile, Rapunzel is more physically adept than Varian. This whole sequence in the tunnels should have been both Rapunzel and Varian teaming up and complementing the other’s skill sets. They need to be on equal footing in order to sell their conflict later on. But the show deliberately down plays Varian’s competence in this episode in an effort to make Rapunzel look good.

‘Girl power’ shouldn’t mean making the character perfect. It especially shouldn’t mean making other characters weaker in comparison. Women want equality. That means we want to see female characters treated as people. That means we want female characters to be flawed while still contributing to the plot same as the male characters. That doesn’t mean we want to be paraded around as the only competent person in the room. We want to be on the same level as the boys not above them.

Over idealization and glorification of ‘strong’ female characters is just as problematic as damsels in distresses.

Writers like Chris Sonnenburg grew up during the heyday of Third-wave Feminism. Right on the cusp between second-wave and third-wave points of view as women really started to challenge Hollywood’s portrayal of themselves as homemakers and love interests. They wanted to be the heroes for once. Starting in the 60s and reaching pick popularity in the 70s and early 80s, film makers responded by making female characters who could physically fight but either failed to give them any sort of depth and/or made them the only archetype available.

Chris, and several other male writers who lived during this era, have internalized this approach by default without actually examining how it came into existence nor why women would no longer be satisfied by this portrayal of them, if they ever were. All we’ve done is trade one stereotype for another, as male creators fetishize what was once meant to be an attempt to empower ourselves.

Had Chis actually brought more female writers onto the show and listened to the criticisms from his female crew, he could have better avoided problems like the one above. But instead he dug in his heels and insisted that he already knew what we wanted. He doesn’t.

Why Would You Assume This Eugene?

Varian hasn’t actually done anything wrong yet. His worst crimes are drugging people with a magic potion, which is what Xavier did without consequence only two episodes ago, and attempting to steal a magical healing flower that the king has been hoarding from his subjects anyways. A king who has been persecuting Varian unfairly and they know this because of Quest for Varian.

Eugene of all people should be sympathetic towards Varian’s plight. He’s been there himself. He should also know that the rumors about Varian attacking Rapunzel are untrue because Raps told him about the events of Queen for a Day herself.

Meanwhile Cassandra was actually there. She knows Varian’s problems and is supposedly his ‘friend.’ She has even less reason to be hostile towards him.

But once again, the series has the characters respond to things that contradict established events in order to create a bias in the audience. “See, Eugene and Cass doesn’t trust Varian and neither should Rapunzel. See, how evil he really is?” It tries to tell us. In order to convince us to excuse Frederic’s behavior so that when the series does just that through Rapunzel choosing his side we’ll be on board with it. You know, unless you have been paying attention, already have a developed moral code, and the reasoning facilities of an adult.

Rapunzel Lacks Empathy

Keep in mind, ‘for Corona’ really means ‘for herself’. The only competition between Quirin and the kingdom is one that she’s fabricated in her own mind. Varian not caring about the island punctures holes into her excuses. Even though Varian is a fourteen/fifteen year old who holds no responsibility for the safety of a whole country. Especially one that’s mistreated him. Of course his father’s life is going to be more important to him.

What Rapunzel is really asking here is, “Why don't you care about what I care about?” “Why aren’t you concerned about my feelings over your own?”

Which makes sense for her character. She’s a woman who has been trapped in a tower her whole life. She lacks the experience needed to be an empathetic person. She’s never had to grieve before. The only permanent death she’s known is that of her abuser. Her trauma over nearly losing Eugene and Pascal was the fear of loss, not the actual process of living without someone. Rapunzel has no framework of reference in order to truly understand what Varian is going through.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone. Empathy is understanding how a person feels. Rapunzel may be a sympathetic person but she’s not an empathetic one and there’s a difference between being ‘nice’ and being kind. The show presents to us a woman who needs to learn that difference. The problem is that she never does.

This is actually a brilliant conflict and point of characterization. It’s taking what we already know about a character and expanding upon it to give us believable flaws that impact the story. I actually like this conflict. I like this portrayal. I initially preferred the series over the movie because of this.

I want Rapunzel to be flawed. I want her flaws to to inform the plot. I want to like her as a character. But I can’t. Because the show never acknowledges these flaws, never has her grow as a person. She remains unempathetic and selfish till the end even as she gains more experience, and the show acts like she is justified in hurting others.

This exchange is the quillivant of a rich person who donates money to environmentalist causes trying to shame a poor child for daring to ‘waste water’ in order to take a bath, even while ignoring their own factories spewing pollutants into the local river. The show tries to claim that classism is okay so long as it’s perpetuated by the creator’s favs.

Varian is in the Right

First off he never claimed that he was only going to take one petal. Rapunzel just assumed that. Also, he’s right there is no difference. Once again Rapunzel has fabricated a distinction in her mind in order to have an excuse to sell her dad. She only hesitates now because taking the whole thing means there’s more risk of getting caught and less possibility of weaseling out of punishment through deniability.

Never mind that Frederic doesn’t own the flower anyways. He stole it from Gothel first, outside of his land’s borders. Never mind that him taking the flower actually causes harm to others while stealing it back does not. Never mind that breaking a law to save a human life is not only justifiable but preferable. Never mind that the king is essentially hoarding medicine from the populace, thereby breaking the social contract of a leader towards his people and becoming a despot instead.

No, Varian hurt Rapunzel’s feelings so he’s evil don’t you see? He placed his needs above the main character’s wants and desires, ergo the series treats him as a villain.

Look, I’m not saying that Varian is without fault nor that everything he does is justifiable. But the show (and certain fans) goes out of its way to demonize the character even when he’s doing what’s actually morally right. This isn’t the point when Varian falls to the darkside, that’s yet to come, but it is the point where the series starts to play favorites with its characters at the expense of teaching coherent lessons.

Inconsistent Messages

Yes, how dare he do the exact same thing as Pascal and Max did two episodes later. Don’t you know, he’s the villain; even though he actually has more reason to use the truth serum than they did the mood potion.

The problem of centering so much of the conflict on Rapunzel’s personal feelings means that Rapunzel and the show has double standards for how characters are treated. Friends of Rapunzel gets free passes. Lack of friendship means you’re now the enemy and can’t be excused. Even though in real life that is what we call nepotism and an abuse of power.

Authoritarianism Vs Consequentialism

When you mention the word authoritarianism to someone they automatically picture in their head armed men in uniforms marching in the streets attacking innocent people on behalf of a dictator’s orders. Yet, that’s not what authoritarianism is. That’s fascism, which can spring forth from authoritarians gaining political power but it’s not the only manifestation of this philosophy.

Authoritarianism is the belief system that the ‘authority’ is always right, even when wrong. An authoritarian will find any excuse to follow and believe in their chosen authority even when that authority has failed them or others.

The opposing philosophy here is consequentialism. That’s the belief that right and wrong are directly linked to consequence. To their minds something is morally wrong if the action has a bad outcome for others.

To illustrate the difference let's look at a near universal rule.

“Murder is wrong.”

Now both the authoritarian and the consequentialist will normally agree with this. But the ‘why’ to them couldn’t be any more different.

To an authoritarian ‘murder is wrong’ because the authority has deemed it so. That authority can be anything that the anthoritian has personally chosen; God, the government, their parents ect. It’s completely arbitrary and subject to change on a whim. The authoritarian lacks consistency and conviction and will often have multiple chosen authorities that will contradict one another. If one of those authorities came out in favor of murder then there’s a strong chance that the authoritarian will change their position or belief as oppose to denouncing their chosen leader.

Meanwhile, ‘murder is wrong’ to the consequentialist because there are clear irreversibly bad consequences for doing it. It removes a life from the world. All possibilities for that person are now forever snuffed out. It hurts those left behind. ect. The consequentialist is consistent in their beliefs so long as the consequence remains the same. They can’t be swayed by mere orders. That’s not to say that consequentialism is incorruptible. A consequentialist can easily become a knight templar if they are forced to weigh consequences against each other. Then it becomes ‘murder is still wrong unless it achieves this arbitrary goal’.

In truth, morality is a sliding scale for most people and you normally hold more than one ethical belief system. However history has proven that authoritarianism is the more often dangerous and corruptible philosophy as it relies heavily on peer pressure, groupthink, and yes, abuse. Most authortians don't come from healthy loving homes. Either they were abused or are abusers themselves. When conducting studies on authoritarianism psychologists and sociologists use questions about parenting in order to pinpoint who is and isn’t an authoritarian as most people aren’t going to just come right out and claim we should go back to feudalism and the divine right of kings.

An out of control authoritarian is a bully with power. An out of control consequentialist is just a vigilante.

Frederic and Varian are the representatives of the two sides of these opposing belief systems and the representatives of what happens when people with those belief systems become corrupt. By having the main character choose between the two of them and siding with the her father, the authoritarian, the show is now validating this philosophy.

Breaking an unjust law shouldn’t be presented as a bad thing here. Blindly accepting Frederic’s rule shouldn’t be the end result of all this. Excusing his abusive behavior shouldn’t be the finale outcome of the story. There’s not a single thing that Frederic, and by extension Rapunzel, does that hasn’t been done by corrupt governments in the real world. Their reasons for doing so be damned.

Given the current political landscape and the increasing push to give real life anthortirans more power, this was absolutely the wrong message to put into a children’s show. It’s not that children will grow up to become authoritarians themselves by just watching the show, but it can condition them to go along with authoritarian abuse if they are now familiar the excuses abusers use to validate their actions. Especially, if they are already trapped in an abusive environment and are being fed these excuses by their current abusers.

I've already seen this toxic thought process played out by younger members of the fandom who are only just now forming their moral codes. “Accept what’ve you’ve been given.” “It’s okay, your parent (the authority) loves you and knows what’s best” “Hurting people is alright because they’ve been hurt you need to ofter up understanding”

NO!

Theses aren’t good lessons. These are the lies fed to you by abusive people. And the show repeatedly validates, justifies, and excuses both abuse and political corruption. Whether the creators believe this philosophy or not, they just approved of it anyways through their own incompetence.

Varian has Every Reason to Not Trust Rapunzel

This the third time in three months that Rapunzel has backed out of helping him. All for increasingly flimsy reasons. She’s making a lot of promises here but not offering up any concrete solutions. Remember she’s not ready to confront her father yet, and neither of them know that she’s the sundrop herself. So what is her plan here? How is she suppose to recuse Quirin and prevent Varian from being unjustly punished if she can’t stand up to the one person who is responsible for causing these problems in the first place.

Can you really blame Varian for going through with what he does here given how she has treated him thus far and would most likely continue to treat him? Yet that’s precisely what the show wants you to do because ‘stealing is wrong’ even though in this case it actually isn’t.

This is Out of Character

Once again, both Cass and Eugene have no reason within the current narrative to be so hostile towards Varian, yet. They’re only doing so now to create bias in the viewer. For Eugene this is especially out of character. I mean we’ve already seen Cass place her ambitions of above others people’s needs both before and after this, but Eugene is constantly written as the heart of the show. He’s suppose to be the most empathetic and caring person in the group, and yet here he is trying to arrest an orphan who’s only stealing to survive. Sound familiar? He of all people should be the first to defend Varian not attack him.

Excuse You, Raps!

You know very well what he is. He’s a child. A lost, lonely, grieving, and desperate child who’s been let down by everyone who is responsible for him including yourself. But far be it for the show to actually point this out by stating it plainly and show you for the self centered ass you really are.

Scenes Like This are Why Varian Should Have Been the Deuteragonist

His story maybe connected to Rapunzel’s but it doesn’t revolve around her. He has his own stakes and conflicts that happen to intersect or oppose with Raps given whatever point in the narrative we’re at. As such we gets scenes like this one in his lab where he is the sole focus and is pushing the story forward. No other character actually gets this.

Eugene’s arc has little to no bearing on the overall plot and Cassandra’s solo scenes in season three do nothing to further push the story nor give new insights into her character, as her given goal and motivation is too dependent upon Rapunzel herself to be shown separately.

Out of all the main characters, Varian’s conflict is the only one that holds enough tension to maintain a separate story line. He needs this focus in order to make sense of what's going on with the larger picture and to resolve his conflict in a satisfying manner. Had the the creators been smart enough to follow through with Varian’s story till the end instead of dumping it at the last minute in season two and hastily rewriting a half-arsed resolution it in season three, then we’ve could have gotten the Disney equivalent of a Zuko vs. Aang, Loki vs Thor, or even Duck vs Rue/Fakir arc. As is, we’re only left with the table scraps of several loosely connected stories none of which are very satisfying to watch.

Conclusion

I still like this episode and Varian’s arc overall but I can't in good conscience call it well written knowing now where it all leads to. Nor can I in could good conscience recommend the show knowing the awful morals it touts. And that makes me angry. Angry that I was fooled into thinking that this show had depth and maturity. Angry that I ever once held this show up as being good. Angry that I invested myself into believing that this show would finally give me a decent Disney anti-villain that I could like. Angry that trusted the creators not to be raging arseholes who made poor creative decisions based off of ego and questionable ethics...

I started this marathon so that I could vent my feelings and gain some closure, while also opening up a frank discussion about how bad creative decisions can lead to bad lessons in children's media. This show has many of the same problems as a lot of current tv series do but all condensed down into one place and there are things to be learn from that.However after this series of reviews are over I doubt I’ll ever watch the show again. It’s honestly not worth the time.

#varian #rapunzel #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #review #character analysis

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jamestaylorswift · 4 years

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Love’s a game, wanna play? A meta-analysis of the game of love and Taylor’s love of games

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Before actually getting into this, I’m obligated to make the disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of some songs. I’m not claiming to be “right” about anything. I have no way of knowing whether my observations will hold true if/when Taylor releases more music. It doesn’t really matter. There are many ways to interpret music.

Games are not the only extended metaphor in her discography; if you understand one, you don’t necessarily understand them all. This essay is an exploration of how one particular metaphor could be so effective.

In addition, I am often the first person to say that “not everything is that deep.” Yet here I am, making something deep. I was only mildly curious about this metaphor at first. In the process of documenting my understanding, I surprised even myself as I realized how rich this metaphor is.

A warning…this essay is very long. (It’s either mildly interesting or completely ridiculous and nothing in between. Likely the second.)

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The notion of a ‘game’ is often conflated with the notion of adversarial conflict. This misunderstanding is largely due to Western structural/cultural forces. Mathematicians and economists have a passion for framing most predicaments as zero-sum, or strictly competitive, where one player’s advantageous move by definition disadvantages their opponent. But collaborative and otherwise not strictly competitive games exist too.

Taylor’s fascination with games spans her entire discography. Artistic preoccupation is reason alone to analyze her work from such an acute angle. But pleasantly, Taylor also does not share the academics’ favorite pastime. She strays away from the zero-sum bias in very unpredictable ways. In fact, she has no bias. She prefers to mix and match her language to each situation as she sees fit. Her convolution of love and games is expressive, divorced from the logical framework by which games are defined. I think examining this facet of her work with a fine-toothed comb may be especially illuminating.

It seems counterintuitive to argue that games could (or should) be anything more than Taylor’s favorite metaphorical manifestation of logos. Yet revisiting a metaphor is itself communication, conscious or not. Advancing an understanding of this extended metaphor, in my opinion, substantiates what is usually intangible about Taylor’s songwriting brilliance.

On Games

Precocious and perceptive, Taylor has, for as long as she’s been writing, placed competition, strategy, and collaboration alongside conflict. Therefore, for the sake of coherence and relative brevity, analysis is scoped only to songs with significant mentions of games, puzzles, or game-related imagery. ‘Games’ are not conflated with general fighting, trickery, toying, revenge, mention of rules/strategizing, or winning/losing. ‘Puzzles’ are not conflated with disorder; puzzle pieces must be pieces of a larger, vivid picture.

Consider football. Imagery of high school football makes “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” fair territory. Someone shouting over a football game in a bar does not qualify “Mean.” The football helmet worn in “Stay Stay Stay” is an absurd and compelling detail in context, as likely to be fictitious as it is true, and hence more significant than a televised sporting event; “Stay Stay Stay” qualifies. In essence, games are interesting as a device rather than a simple detail.

Below is a list of the songs with significant game reference(s), categorized by implied type. Note that a song can belong to multiple categories if it contains multiple references.

Generic/unspecified games: “Come in With the Rain”, “Dear John”, “State of Grace”, “Blank Space”, “Wonderland”, “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Board games: “Dear John”

Sports/contests: “The Story Of Us”, “Long Live”, “Stay Stay Stay”, “End Game”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “Red”, “All Too Well”, “So It Goes…”

Other: “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Like many people, Taylor habitually seeks structure to manage unpredictability. (Games provide structure for situational volatility, hence her artistic love affair with this metaphor.) The stylistic choices she makes to entertain this habit, however, are anything but consistent.

The games have a variety of different players, such as in “Dear John” and “Look What You Made Me Do.”

She does not establish strict parity between characters’ emotional affiliation and the competitiveness of a game. “Dear John” features an adversarial game. Conversely, her partner in “Blank Space” is a co-conspirator/collaborator. “All Too Well” analogizes autumn leaves as puzzle pieces; puzzles are collaborative games.

Taylor famously claims that love is a game in “Blank Space.” This song is colloquially understood to be about the love story we see play out in the media. Games can thus include all parts of her ‘love life.’ Arguably, she foreshadows this in “Long Live” by intertwining parts of her ‘America’s sweetheart’ image with professional success, which is derived from writing about love.

Taylor is not always a player in a game, such as in “Cruel Summer.” Her partner may not be either; see the crossword in “Red.”

In short, humans are unpredictable, as is love. It is clear that Taylor uses games as an incredibly powerful metaphorical device. They are a genuine reflection of her feelings about love.

Musical analysis usually begins with careful consideration of each track. Given a disparate and lengthy list of songs, it is probably more fruitful to go up a layer of abstraction. Of particular intrigue for this set of songs is the relationship between time and Taylor’s willingness to divulge more information about a metaphorical game.

We revisit the set of songs to list them in chronological order. The purely ‘generic’ songs are now bolded: “Come in With the Rain”, “Dear John”, “The Story Of Us”, “Long Live”, “State of Grace”, “Red”, “All Too Well”, “Stay Stay Stay”, “Blank Space”, “Wonderland”, “New Romantics”, ”…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”, “So It Goes…”, “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Specificity about a game seems to decrease with proximity to the 1989 era.

Lyrical imprecision in “Come in With the Rain,” a true outlier, probably boils down to youth.

“State of Grace” is a preamble about the themes of Red. “Begin Again,” though much later on that album, shares the same inspiration as “State of Grace.” Red is constructed as a sandwich between these two songs which present the album’s thesis. The album considered as a whole is thus a buffer for 1989.

reputation is a buffer for 1989 because the ‘generic’ game songs are heavily and intentionally front-loaded.

“New Romantics” is a coda for 1989, and its poker game reference is slightly ambiguous. What, exactly, is poker; what is all in the timing? The thematic material of “New Romantics” is most similar to that of “Blank Space.” ‘It’ is the same crude game played in the earlier track, the affair of collecting men. Perhaps this close relation subsumes “New Romantics” under the ‘generic’ game category. (Though this is a loose explanation.)

There exists an undeniable chronological pattern to game characterization. If you graphed the amount of game-related lyrical obscurity versus time, it would look like a shallow sand dune with the tip at the 1989 era. (Or a hill. Or a big pile of leaves. You get the picture.)

Armed with a basic understanding of Taylor’s career, one might say that her desire for personal privacy manifests as reticence to define metaphorical games. The 1989 era was the height of media attention on her. This caused more than a few issues. The art created around this time would have naturally reflected how she felt about the public eye. (See: the entire reputation era.)

But isn’t Taylor almost as famous as ever today? Sure, her name is not as saturated in the zeitgeist as it was in 2014. She’s still one of the world’s mega-stars. And does she not have a very private relationship today? Taylor’s work reflects her hardened personal boundaries, but boundaries alone do not explain the pattern of how she writes about games. Otherwise Lover would be filled to the brim with songs about ‘generic’ games.

To summarize, Taylor uses games as a perennial favorite metaphor to frame her experiences of love. Increased public scrutiny undoubtedly changed the way that Taylor approached songwriting; even so, fame was not a factor that changed how she wrote about games. The connection between time and types of games suggests that we cannot consider game metaphors in isolation.

On Love

The next piece of the puzzle (no pun intended) is what she shares about love. Which 1989 songs are most revealing? Technically…most of them, if you think hard enough. I’d like to draw special attention to “Wonderland” and “You Are in Love.”

Ah, “You Are in Love.” The musical gift that keeps on giving! Fitting, because true love should be too.

In “Wonderland,” Taylor says:

It’s all fun and games ’til somebody loses their mind

Shortly thereafter in the “You Are in Love” bridge, she proclaims:

You understand now why they lost their mind and fought the wars

And why I’ve spent my whole life trying to put it into words

Taylor reverses her opinion about the prospect of losing her mind for love. (The abruptness here is a consequence of a real-life relationship change, plus the fact that both of these songs are bonus tracks.) Of course, she also tells us an important connection between love and games.

I’ll pause here to say that I’m not going to turn this into a (frankly uninteresting) relationship timeline/proof post. But may the profound significance of “You Are in Love” and its subject never escape us.

“You Are in Love” is written in the second person. Taylor is the intensely guarded ‘you.’ We witness her emotional walls get broken down by her lover, the ‘he.’ Fascinatingly, Taylor departs from the second person point of view in the bridge. Suddenly, she alerts us to the presence of an ‘I.’ The bridge says that ‘you’ Taylor, whole and normal-person-in-a-relationship Taylor, finally understands true love. In the same breath, ‘I,’ writer Taylor, admits that she’s had it all wrong for years. (This is not to say that her writing pursuits before this moment were pointless.) Therefore, breaking the second person point of view to include the ‘I’ line shows that Taylor distills the nature of true love in that ‘eureka’ moment.

Yet she exposes the schism of writer Taylor and whole, normal person Taylor in a moment where, in theory, those two roles could not overlap more. Taylor has every reason to faithfully represent her feelings. Her sentiment is always sincere even though she may falsify details of a story. “You Are in Love” is (as far as I’m aware) the only song in which Taylor ever blatantly admits to writer-person misalignment. The schism must run extremely deep.

Taylor was—and surely still is—drawn to songwriting as a means to explore love. She tries to to capture its enigmatic essence with the written word. How fascinating it is that, at the very moment she communicates her deepest understanding of love, she says that the part of her that puts it into words is inherently disconnected from her spirit which feels it.

On Games And Love

We must briefly table the meta-implications of “You Are in Love” to return to the topic of games.

Love probably would have stopped feeling like a game after finding a real gem of a person who doesn’t mess with your head. (Love also probably would have stopped feeling like a game after dialing down on brazen PR tomfoolery.) Taylor has written several albums about her true love. It’s easier now to trace the arc of her feelings: it is a positive path, as anyone would predict.

Why would she continue to write about games after 1989? The obvious answer is that she likes doing it. It remains a useful metaphor.

But recall that chronology discourages us from considering metaphorical games in isolation. To clarify the principal function of the game metaphor in her discography, we must consider the writer-person dichotomy.

First, note that Taylor exposes the writer-person dichotomy in an honest, vulnerable moment. She confirms it as a human phenomenon. The phenomenon thus must extend beyond a singular moment during 1989. Distance between writer Taylor and whole, normal person Taylor—a measure henceforth called writer-person distance—is necessarily a function of time. Coincidentally, so is the measure of game-related lyrical obscurity.

Writer-person distance can grow or shrink. It was small in her youth; this is what pushed her into songwriting. It is small now, as she has told us in the albums since 1989 that true love has stitched her back together. Again, because writer-person distance is a human phenomenon, it changes slowly, smoothly. (“You Are in Love” simply marks the biggest distance.) Does this sound familiar? If you graphed writer-person distance versus time, the graph would look like a shallow sand dune with the tip at the 1989 era. (Or a hill. Or a big pile of leaves. Once again, you get the picture.)

To summarize, game-related lyrical obscurity and writer-person distance are smooth functions. “You Are in Love” is the inflection point of both measures.

With “Wonderland” and “You Are in Love,” Taylor tells us that games are linked to how she conceptualizes love. But not just any love. 🎶 True love. 🎶

At the same time, Taylor presents “You Are in Love” as a dividing line between ‘that which is a best attempt to understand something that inherently cannot be captured’ and ‘that which refines the thing that, against all odds, was captured.’ Our interpretation of games must synthesize an abrupt ‘eureka’ moment with both the measures’ gradual changes.

If we are to talk about metaphorical games, we also must talk about true love. But we know that if we are to talk about games, we also must talk about time. Vital to uniting these ideas is the revelation that Taylor conceptualizes the nature of true love as the nature of time. For doesn’t time define what is gradual and abrupt?

The most important line in “You Are in Love” is when Taylor finds it—‘it’ being love. A literal ‘eureka’ moment. This isn’t just a one-time coincidence.

Writer-person bifurcation clarifies why the game metaphor is surprisingly effective. As Taylor revisits the convolution of love and games, the metaphor morphs in tandem with her innate understanding of love.

Some Good Old-fashioned Song Analysis

Observing how games, love, and time are intertwined requires that we reject purely literal interpretations of game-related lyrics after “You Are in Love.” Of course, literal interpretations are still generally useful, even correct. Games are literal, so references to them should be interpreted as such. Also, lyrics about games are probably Not This Deep in reality. We didn’t have to do all this work to realize what songs might belong in conversation with each other; identifying lyrical callbacks would have been sufficient. Treating game lyrics as purely literal limits how we might decipher a recurring metaphor. Without the notions of game specificity or writer-person distance, we would lack a framework with which to fully interrogate how these songs are are connected (i.e. through time). And, after all, the ultimate goal is to understand why the game metaphor is so successful. But, I digress.

(We’ve also made it this far and we might as well keep going. Another couple thousand words…don’t threaten me with a good time, amirite?)

To observe how games, love, and time are intertwined, I propose the following rule of thumb: A game reference before “You Are in Love” is Taylor’s description of love, whereas a game reference afterwards is a pointer to past instances of that game. Such a reference is metaphysical, or more appropriately, meta-lyrical. If she’s referenced a game already, she knows how to use that reference again. If she introduces a new reference, she’s planting it for future use.

We can group the songs after “You Are in Love” by game type:

Generic/unspecified games: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Sports/contests: “End Game”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “So It Goes…”

Other: “It’s Nice To Have A Friend"

Analysis requires precision. We should pare down the duplicates, if possible.

“It’s Nice To Have A Friend” is tricky because it’s naturally sparse. “Video games,” for example, are more than a simple detail: they are an essential part of creating a childhood vignette. “Twenty questions” and the card game “bluff” function analogously in the later verses. The brilliance of this song lies in how Taylor illustrates the development of companionship and intimacy. The verse about marriage is the most significant verse because it reveals the meaning of the whole song. Thus, we may take the bluff to be more important than twenty questions, which is more important than video games. “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” ultimately belongs in the card game category.

Central to the pathos of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” is the “stupid” dice game lyric. Of equal importance is the portrait of Americana, painted with lyrics about Friday night lights. This song truly belongs in two categories.

At the end of “…Ready For It?” Taylor fires a starting pistol, letting ‘generic’ games begin. “End Game” follows and we assume it must pertain to the same game. So Taylor intentionally places this song in the first category. The hook has lyrics about a varsity “A-team,” though this is probably just a nod to Ed Sheeran. The other truly interesting game-related lyric is the one about bluffing. Thus, “End Game” also belongs in the card game category.

Here’s the new list:

Generic/unspecified games: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Dice games: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Card games: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Sports/contests: “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Puzzles: “So It Goes…”

Each of the four obvious groups of songs illustrate a different way Taylor weaves the natures of true love and time together:

Déjà vu: “So It Goes…”

Hindsight/wisdom: “…Ready For It?”, “End Game”, “Look What You Made Me Do”

Fate: “Cruel Summer”, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince”

Progress: “New Romantics”, “End Game”, “Cornelia Street”, “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”

Déjà vu

The puzzles category only contains one song, making it easiest to analyze. The namesake of “So It Goes…” is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, famously constructed like a mosaic. Puzzles are central to the meaning of this song.

“All Too Well” contains the first instance of a puzzle metaphor in her discography:

Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

Taylor calls back to “All Too Well” in the chorus of “So It Goes…”

And our pieces fall

Right into place

Get caught up in the moment

Lipstick on your face

By referencing a previous song using identical phrasing, Taylor creates the illusion of a sudden ‘déjà vu’ moment. The effect is similar to “You Are in Love,” where she reaches sudden enlightenment.

Sonically and lyrically, the “moment” she gets caught up in is implied to be the one in which she gets lost in passionate sex. The déjà vu moment could be this moment, but it doesn’t have to be. Déjà vu is agnostic to the present in the sense that the feeling can be triggered in the strangest of times. The déjà vu moment is whatever prompted her to write this song.

This game lyric connection clearly shows how a moment of love is defined by a moment of time.

Hindsight/Wisdom

The bombastic group of singles, “…Ready For It?”, “End Game,” and “Look What You Made Me Do,” sets the tone for all of reputation. The ‘generic’ games in these songs are the same as those in 1989, particularly the crude (and, in Taylor’s case, often interchangeable) games of celebrity and dating. In “Blank Space,” Taylor spells out in gory detail what she does as an agent in the celebrity dating game. She does not explicitly define the rules of that game, though. It remains sufficient for her to prove that she knows how to play by them. (Musically, this is far more interesting.)

We know that the reputation singles’ literal proximity to 1989 indicates Taylor’s direct emotional response the previous era. The consequences of a ‘fall from grace’ underpin the entire reputation era. Therefore, Taylor uses lyrical connections from reputation back to 1989 to illustrate hindsight. She tells us what she learned from her mistakes and what she wished she would have done differently.

But first, she gets to be salty about it. In “Look What You Made Me Do,” Taylor laments the fact that she participates in public games to appease others. (Because, really, withdrawing from the celebrity circus would immediately solve a lot of her problems. Alas, megastardom is a Venus flytrap.)

I don't like your little games

Don't like your tilted stage

The role you made me play

Of the fool, no, I don't like you

Let’s return to “Blank Space” for a moment. Taylor’s boyfriend in “Blank Space” is considered a co-conspirator/collaborator with her in the celebrity dating game. Central to our understanding of that song, however, is the unequal power dynamic. Taylor is the strategic mastermind, whereas her boyfriend is just along for the ride. The two are on the same team, but they are not equals.

Taylor actually leans further into the games of the 1989 era in “…Ready For It?”

Baby, let the games begin

Unlike in 1989, her partner is an equal on her team:

Me, I was a robber first time that he saw me

Stealing hearts and running off and never saying sorry

But if I'm a thief, then he can join the heist

And we'll move to an island

She then connects “…Ready For It?” to “End Game”

Baby, let the games begin

Are you ready for it?

I wanna be your end game

Both Taylor and her partner are forced to play the same game and they share share the same goal. Her partner’s “end game” is Taylor; thus, Taylor keeps her true love by beating the celebrity dating game. They have to work together to achieve this difficult task.

Though the celebrity dating game is not true love, it impacts Taylor’s relationship with anyone who could be her true love. In hindsight, Taylor realizes how media games blew up in her face. It is wisdom—to keep her relationship private, to dial down on PR tomfoolery, to prioritize her happiness—that helps her pre-empt these problems for the reputation era. And indeed we understand the love story of reputation as the lovers’ prolonged attempt to hide from the public eye.

Hindsight comes with the natural passage of time. One only accrues wisdom, however, when they apply the lessons of hindsight to make better judgements about the future. Games again unite the ideas of love and time; they elucidate how Taylor uses wisdom to protect someone she loves.

Fate

“Cruel Summer” and “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” highlight the elegance of the meta-rule of thumb.

The dice game in “Cruel Summer” is a unique incarnation of the game metaphor because Taylor doesn’t confirm whether she is directly involved in this game:

Devils roll the dice

Angels roll their eyes

What doesn’t kill me makes me want you more // And if I bleed you’ll be the last to know

The song doesn’t reveal much about the nature of the dice game other than the fact that it is competitive. It could be a fitting description of what is going on in Taylor’s personal life. It may not be. What is more important is that Taylor positions herself as collateral damage of the outcome of the game.

This is also the dice game’s first appearance. By our rule of thumb, this lyric exists only to be a link to “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.”

“Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” belongs to two different game categories, sports/contests and dice games.

First, dice games. We get a few more answers about the nature of the “Cruel Summer” competition:

It's you and me

That's my whole world

They whisper in the hallway, "she's a bad, bad girl"

The whole school is rolling fake dice

You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes

It's you and me

There's nothing like this

Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince

We're so sad, we paint the town blue

Voted most likely to run away with you

Both Taylor and her partner are forced to play the dice game by virtue of being metaphorical students. As a disgraced and about-to-be-vagrant prom queen, Taylor has finally realized that winning the school’s dice game is not worth the price of a ‘fall from grace.’

Next, sports/contests. With the understanding of these lyrics as pointers to her previous songs, sports/contests harkens back to “The Story of Us,” “Long Live,” and “Stay Stay Stay.”

“The Story Of Us” suggests that a shared quality of sports/contest metaphors is that conflict is nuanced, even hidden to outsiders:

This is looking like a contest

Of who can act like they care less

In “Stay Stay Stay,” football is connected to (for lack of a better word) violence, conflict that could result in emotional and physical harm:

I'm pretty sure we almost broke up last night

I threw my phone across the room at you

I was expecting some dramatic turn away

But you stayed

This morning I said we should talk about it

'Cause I read you should never leave a fight unresolved

That's when you came in wearing a football helmet

And said, "Okay, let's talk"

Finally, “Long Live” blends the ideas of small town Americana with Taylor’s personal and professional life:

I said remember this moment

In the back of my mind

The time we stood with our shaking hands

The crowds in stands went wild

I said remember this feeling

I passed the pictures around

Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines

Wishing for right now

We are the kings and the queens

You traded your baseball cap for a crown

When they gave us our trophies

And we held them up for our town

And the cynics were outraged

Screaming, "this is absurd"

'Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans

Got to rule the world

The backdrop of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” is not just any part of America. The juxtaposition of idyllic parts of American life with frictional, violent, yet sometimes subtle forces tells us that the song’s backdrop is an American culture war. It is conflict which unsettles everyone, but by nature hurts only some.

In totality, the function of the dice game metaphor is to position Taylor as collateral damage of an American culture war. (Chew on that one for a bit.)

Again, we probably could have surmised this by examining the lyrics closely. The song lends itself to being a signpost in the Lover chronology. It seems too autobiographical to be anything different. We all remember 2016.

However, “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” sticks out like a sore thumb from the album’s theme of “a love letter to love itself.” Revisiting games as a glue between love and time expands on the purpose of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” in Lover.

The “Cruel Summer” bridge contains this lyric understood to be about her true love:

And I snuck in through the garden gate

Every night that summer just to seal my fate

Taylor identifies “that summer” in the 1989 era as the moment which she sealed her fate. Implicit in this confirmation is her perspective from the future. She is looking back on 1989 from the time when her terrible fate has just been realized.

The moment of realization is—you guessed it—the chorus of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince.” The chorus depicts post-prom queen defamation. Taylor is aware of every single action (many, probably deliberate) that helped her achieve royalty. She never divulges them. The song is scoped only to the time when she lives her fate.

We usually take observations about fate and love to describe how two souls are bound to each other. Taylor does not tell us much about her lover in “Cruel Summer” sans the fact that the shape of their body is new. Paying special attention to games reframes “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” within the Lover theme as a commentary on fate. However, the emphasis of fate should not be on her lover. The dice game connection tells us that Taylor views “that summer” in the 1989 era as the time when she sealed her fate as collateral damage in the American culture war. From the “love letter to love itself” perspective, the moral is that passion and excitement can make lovers forget the immutability of individual destiny. If you are fated to be with someone, both of you are at the mercy of whatever the world has in store for the partnership and you as individuals.

Progress

An eclectic group of songs shares a reference to bluffing in a card game. The game metaphor beautifully stitches these songs together into parts of the same story.

The first and most detailed description of the card game is in “New Romantics”

We're all here

the lights and boys are blinding

We hang back

It's all in the timing

It's poker

He can't see it in my face

But I'm about to play my ace

A bluff in poker is an attempt to trick one’s opponent into thinking one has a better hand than they do in reality. The opponent may call their bluff and challenge them to prove their hand is as good as they advertise.

Bluffing requires deception, often telegraphed by facial expressions. Here, Taylor says that she is good at bluffing because she doesn’t let her façade crack. She is not truly bluffing, though, because she possesses an ace, presumably part of her even better hand. Her opponent has called her perceived bluff to prompt to her to reveal the ace.

The opponent, “he,” behaves as though Taylor is bluffing. Taylor, strategic as ever, is prepared to counter by revealing the most powerful card. We should thus interpret this metaphor as the ‘bluffer’ exceeding expectations. (Remember that the first instance of a metaphor is a base case, so we must take its meaning more literally.)

Likewise, in “End Game” and “It’s Nice To Have A Friend”, Taylor is the bluffer:

You've been calling my bluff on all my usual tricks

Call my bluff, call you "babe"

However, “Cornelia Street” allows room for the interpretation that both Taylor and her lover are bluffers:

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

Taylor may have also been a trickster: “then you called” could refer to the lover calling Taylor’s bluff.

The recurring bluff metaphor coincides with progress or forward momentum in a relationship.

Recall a previous discussion of “New Romantics.” We defined the “it” which is “all in the timing” as a reference to finding romance. “New Romantics” is set in a club with a dance floor, boys, and blinding lights. It’s the kind of setting conducive only to landing one-night stands. Taylor plays games with someone in the club, but exceeds expectations for the outcome of that game. What was flirting or courting becomes something more serious than a one night stand (i.e. an actual relationship). The act of calling a bluff in a card game engenders (relationship) progress. Yet again, what is intrinsic to time is intrinsic to love.

This observation fits with each song.

reputation charts the development of Taylor’s relationship, but the card game bluff in “End Game” is at the beginning of the album. That’s exactly why this lyric works so well. Her relationship is still new, nonetheless significant, after 1989. Her verse mixes these ideas:

I hit you like bang

We tried to forget it, but we just couldn't

And I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put 'em

And I can't let you go, your hand print's on my soul

The “End Game” bluff represents how Taylor goes from wanting a steady relationship to wanting everything.

You might be able to see where this is going. “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” is the ‘discographical endpoint’ of the bluff metaphor. The verse about marriage delivers the song’s emotional punch:

Church bells ring, carry me home

Rice on the ground looks like snow

Call my bluff, call you "babe"

Have my back, yeah, everyday

Feels like home, stay in bed

The whole weekend

Notice, however, that the bluff metaphor occurs after the implied wedding. This is actually a beautiful sentiment. Intimacy, trust, and commitment are ongoing; growth doesn’t stop with a ring on a finger. The bluff, which represents delivering on promises and exceeding expectations for love, powers the relationship forward.

All signs point to the “Cornelia Street” bluff as the one that may have led to marriage.

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

So emotionally charged is this scene that we have to wonder what, exactly, Taylor’s steady partner could do to make her (1) walk out if she were being led on and (2) come back so quickly.

The most intriguing detail about this card game is that both parties may have been bluffing. The lover is leading Taylor on, but Taylor does not stay to call the bluff. She leaves. Usually in poker, one would not want their opponent to be able to prove the bluff with a good hand. (Think back to the ace in “New Romantics”.) But what if both players are on the same team at the end of the day? Calling a bluff is now setting oneself up for potential disappointment. Taylor walks out because she is frightened by the mere possibility of being let down.

Taylor is also bluffing, but her lover doesn’t let her walk away so easily. They pull out all the stops and concede their hand in a desperate attempt to get Taylor to turn around from the tunnel. It works. By our understanding of the bluff metaphor, the lover exceeds all of Taylor’s expectations. The events that transpire on the roof presumably are when Taylor reveals her own cards.

The topic of marriage fits with this emotionally charged scene. Of course both lovers would tiptoe around the topic and be scared to reveal their true feelings.

So following the bluff metaphor helps us follow the course of true love. Calling and revealing a bluff is the catalyst for Taylor’s relationship. However, it also is the nature of time which underpins progress.

I concede that interpreting the bluff metaphor as the catalyst of a story makes it vulnerable to any truth-fuzzing. Perhaps Taylor hasn’t ever written about a real-life engagement or marriage. We have no way of knowing. We instead should take comfort in the fact that her lyrics are beautiful and music is open to interpretation.

On Writing

Our beliefs about love are bound to change over time. As a writer, Taylor is in a unique position to capture this change by revisiting a metaphor.

Take “It’s Nice To Have A Friend.” The song is written as a series of vignettes to define the qualities of love that remain consistent while relationships change over time. The middle vignette, with its reference to “twenty questions,” could very well point back to the same day as the “Cornelia Street” card game. Feelings reoccur in certain moments—déjà vu. The first vignette is a picture of childhood. The last vignette is a picture of adulthood. Therefore, it seems just as natural to interpret the middle vignette as a picture of adolescence or young adulthood. Light pink skies, back-and-forth conversations, and brave, soft moments of intimacy illustrate a coming-of-age experience. The same moment that pulls Taylor forward in her relationship is the one that also pulls her back to a different time.

Then the coming-of-age experience is reminiscent of the portrait of Americana, the Friday night lights, marching band, and high school prom. During adolescence, we only have an inkling of our futures. We are less aware of all the ways we are connected to others and our world. Young and impressionable, our only job is to live, to change, to make memories and mistakes. Memories and mistakes define what was, and experience creates wisdom that shapes what will be. So Taylor captures this duality in fate. The moment a fate is realized is a moment that is equally a fossil of the past and a forecast for the future. The moment it all makes sense…eureka!

As an artist, Taylor’s job is to communicate her human experience. Listeners decide whether or not she successfully telegraphs what is universal about it. However, Taylor is no more of a spokesperson for the universal human experience than anyone else. She simply possesses the talent, work ethic, and privilege to make a career of it.

Consider Taylor’s own summary of the past decade:

I once believed love would be burnin' red

But it's golden

She consciously and elegantly edits her previous beliefs about love. (Obviously, she may plant callbacks to previous songs purely for fun. This one is certainly sincere.) These lines illustrate the craft she has worked hard to develop.

Manifested in her craft is the need to revisit her ideas. It seems as though certain recurring metaphors have become the only way for her to accurately capture some parts of love. They become self-perpetuating. Unforced yet expressive subconscious consistency constitutes artistry. It is artistry which compels us to believe in the universality of music.

The self-perpetuating love/games metaphor is especially fascinating. It is one of the purest examples, though perhaps also one of the strangest, of how writing about love engenders new experiences of it. Taylor translates love into game language. Games illustrate duality. Duality is love.

Perhaps this conclusion is something others already know about Taylor’s talent. I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on it until now.

To me, it seems like the songs are writing themselves.

#taylor swift #kaylor #gaylor swift #music analysis #my post

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fencesandfrogs · 3 years

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“i love you”: ambiguity in media

spoilers for she-ra. the entire show. especially the last season. but if you don’t care i’ve also added context. so it’s not mandatory watching.

spacer gif for spoilers. also cause its cute.

okay so i’m still thinking about the scene where glimmer says, “i love you,” and bow kisses her on the temple, and it’s just the cutest thing and my heart says “squee”.

i wrote something about gay media & the necessary differences in gay tales and ATM it has not been posted bc i routinely shuffle my queue but the basic thesis of it is: gay romance stories are inherently different from straight ones, because it is impossible to separate them from homophobia. and i kind of ran into a wall writing it because homophobia is really hard to ignore on earth because its omnipresent and it dramatically affects gay youth growing up.

and then i watched she-ra, which has lesbians*, in case you didn’t know, and also basically zero homophobia.

*also gays, but the titular character is a lesbian, so.

which damn, was very refreshing. like. yeah. sign me up for that.

so. adora and catra are adorable lesbians w/ shared traumatic experiences and their character arcs are interesting and wonderful and there’s a lot of great analysis of that already and here’s one that sums it up better than i ever could:

youtube

love that. they’re adorable. i love them.

bow & glimmer are also best friends who get together at the end of the show & have a lot of parallels to catra and adora minus the trauma and also including crushing weights of responsibility.

uhh so catra & glimmer both make a mistake at one point during the show that basically irreparably wrecks the world and requires sacrifice of life to solve. adora is the intended sacrifice each time but this isn’t about adora, i just want to give context for this.

so catra has the explanation of trauma and the scared behaviors of a traumatized teen. like. she makes mistakes for an understandable reason. again. not about her. just giving context.

glimmer on the other hand basically throws a fit that her friends have other friends. i mean. glimmer has problems but her mistakes are not like, “you know if you were raised in a loving home this prob wouldn’t have happened” because she was raised in a loving home. it’s more like “you know if you didn’t become queen at age, like, 17, this probably wouldn’t have happened.”

(side note, i don’t know how old the characters in she-ra are. i read them as 15-17 in the beginning of the series and 18-20 by the end, and i’m just not really sure. because you know, cartoons & child soldiers do not accurate age placing make. catra and adora’s arc speaks to me ages 15-18ish because that is when i had a similar arc.

according to the wiki adora starts around 17 and ends around 20. which is w/in my own estimations i’m just commenting.)

right so glimmer apologizes to bow and is all “look you don’t have to forgive me, i don’t have a right to that, but i’m not going to stop trying to earn your forgiveness,” and bow, well, he says “okay”

and. you know. i feel that.

(more side notes: i, age 17ish, broke up w my boyfriend. for reasons. we got back together. for other reasons. repairing the bond of trust is hard. because i was not secure that he loved me, and he was not secure that i wouldn’t leave if something went wrong. so you know. i feel glimmer, here.

yes, she made a mistake and no, she does not have a right to forgiveness. but she’s also a kid, who has had one friend for her entire life, and is only just beginning to learn how to share friends, and she thinks she lost him, and that desperation and rejection is painful. she was lashing out, and she never intended this to happen.)

so glimmer & bow throughout the show have romantic tension, but in a soft way. in a, bow goes to a ball with someone else and glimmer gets jealous but it’s also directly stated she’s jealous because she’s sharing her friend way.

plus there’s a scene that definitely has some strong glimmer x adora vibes is what i’m saying

it’s not this specific scene but idk what to search for to find it & i’m not fighting w tumblr to include external images again i’ve been hurt before.

anyway.

so when glimmer says, “i love you,” my heart pounds in a new way, because what does she mean by that? does she love him?

and at some point in this adora has a fantasy future where bow and glimmer are together & it’s adorable but i’m mentioning to explicitly say that it’s not relevant because bow and glimmer r def not together before this moment.

anyway bow kisses glimmer on the forehead and my heart go “thumpthumpthumpthumpthump” real real fast and it’s cute and i text my boyfriend a bunch of hearts because that’s what i do when i see cute couples i’m a soft gay nerd.

and the thing is? i’m also thinking, “wow there is so much ambiguity” there.

and then. i realized. this is why gay romance is fundamentally different. because american culture is not very touch-y, especially across gendered lines.

& i have a very physically affectionate family. i will cuddle the homies. i will kiss them on the temple. (ok i won’t do that bc my boyfriend would not like that n i respect that it’s legit i kiss him on the temple instead. mb i’ll write about boundaries in relationships where people have different understandings of physical affection.) so like? did not occur to me before to discuss this.

but there’s a huge ambiguity in gay romance. it’s hard to write gay romance that’s explicitly gay (especially wlw since men r less affectionate & more stereotyped in media imo and that’s another discussion but there’s a reason i’m focusing on catra and adora in she-ra’s gay relationships) without slapping a huge “THEY’RE LESBIANS, HAROLD” on it, so like.

yeah. it does get a label.

& i mean. she-ra is the big gay. it could have gone hard queer baiting, but even if that was a possibility, adora and catra are too hard-coded to Love Love each other. they have a best friends to rivals (to enemies) to lovers thing going on, it’s hard to miss. there is no doubt in my mind what catra means when she tells adora she loves her.

this is from before the confession and just. look at them. they are gay.

& meanwhile glimmer and bow have the soft affection, the feelings which could be read either way.

objectively the same hold, but he’s saving her life. catra leaps into adora’s arms, bow catches her. (after he just caught her before:

& it does not escape my attention that bow was the one who caught her from the void of space, not the stronger & arguably better adora/she-ra.

okay so bow & glimmer = adorable, and i’m v happy they got together. but it was an interesting application of tropes in that i don’t think you could tell this romance in a very different context. it just. it doesn’t work right.

i think glimmer & bow end up a will they/won’t they couple in a different context. and that works, yeah, but that’s the point. gay tropes r just...different.

and it’s really hard to switch them because you kind of need a fantasy world where physical affection is much more common and we don’t have the baggage of gender in friendships.

just for fun, here’s one last couple. mermista and seahawk. i’m not gonna spend a long time on them i just wanted to say maybe i’m gay but it took me until season five to realize they’re together and i think they’ve been together the whole show.

& i think that’s because she-ra does a really good job at depicting the post-homophobia, post-sexism universe. (sexism plays a big part in all this ik i didn’t talk about it but some other time)

so you get the opportunity to have these fantastic stories of relationships through new lenses. & i appreciate that. i appreciate getting to have a “he’s my friend” (i love him) “he’s mine” character moment with a new kind of angst. (glimmer: the gay, who loves her best friend but also loves her best friend, vs glimmer: the hypothetical straight, who loves her best friend, and her best friend loves her. the difference is subtle but it’s there.)

anyway yeah a lot of words. forehead kisses kill me because i have a weak, gay, heart. uhhhh media & tropes & telling explicitly gay romances requires us to be able to shake around what role friendship plays in the relationship arc, and something we’re not entirely up for yet, as a culture.

i leave u with this bc no one has made a gif of their actual kiss

#glimbow #she ra #she-ra #media analysis #romance #q #mine #txt #13th #December #2020 #December 13th 2020 #rant #essay

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aspiestvmusings · 3 years

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ZEP: S1 - MAX & ZOEY TIMELINE

This is part of my ZEP: S1 Thoughts Master Post

Here’s the new & updated long analysis post for ZEP S1. This one features the whole season, all 12 episodes.

Just me...dissecting & analyzing the storyline...with focus on Zoey & Team Max. But since the stories are so intertwined, there’s Zoey/dad & Zoey/Simon talk, too. Among other things...relevant to it all...

ZEP: MAX & ZOEY - THOUGHTS 1 [LINK HERE]

Zoey/Max Timeline

Yes, unless Max knows something we don’t know about Zoey (that she, just like her dad, actually, secretly loves big gestures and moments) his choice for how he professed his love seems to be wrong way to declare his love for this specific lady. Because according to what we know Zoey is not into music (but then again…the use of a flash mob was a plot twist device by the writers… who just decided to use that surprise for Max/Zoey, when it could’ve been any other character… but this was simply done so that the show could mess with Zoey’s powers and give her character “oh, this isn’t in my head, this is real” moment.) But… that’s just a possible bad choice by the character, not anything horrible. And that’s the way he knows how to say it, even if a small, personal, reveal seems more Zoeys style.

But… are we actually correct in assuming this? After the flashmob she never once mentioned anything about it being “too much of a public declaration for her taste”. She even called it “an amazing gesture”, which tells us that while she might be uncomfortable with “big moments” in general (public speaking…), she is comfortable with them with people she’s closed to (her dad, her best friend…) And we saw her talk about it with Max & with Mo. Her only worry was related to him telling her, in reality (not just in her mind…via heart song) that he has feelings for her. She has not shown any worry regarding it being done via “grand gesture”. So… is it possible that it actually isn’t so “not her” as we assume?

Just as perhaps Max from 1x09 is not as “passive” and “not interested in promotion” as Max from 1x01? Perhaps time & peer reviews, and everything else…has changed him? And he’s actually interested in climbing the career ladder.,.. as opposed to the Max in the Pilot, who told Zoey that he does not want any of that…

Maybe Zoey is her fathers daughter, and actually (secretly) loves big moments & grand gestures? Because her dad is all about “big moments”. And maybe it’s actually really appropriate for Max to tell Zoey about his feelings this way, in “big moments/grand gesture” style flash mob? To honor her dad…in a way. Cause Mitch loves these kind of moments & Mitch is No 1 in Zoey’s life, so… maybe we’re all wrong in assuming it was “not Zoey’s style”? Everything on the show so far points to this - there’s no indication that she didn’t like the “big gesture”. The only reason why it “freaked her out” is because of her superpower...which he had no knowledge of at that time/moment.

We saw the events through Zoey’s eyes & her POV on what’s going on with/between her & her bff.

From Max’s POV this is what’s going on with Zoey/his relationship with Zoey:

She ends their regular movie nights…with no explanation. Something that they’ve done…forever…since they are best friends. (He probably thinks it’s because of her dad’s health and that she’s focused on..that… after her promotion he even asks if her “weidness” is because of “her dad” and/or her now being his boss)

She starts acting strangely…around him, and general…and she doesn’t talk to him anymore (it’s been implied that they’re BFF and talk about everything… but she hasn’t told him what’s up with her). He wonders if it’s because of her dad’s health and everything related to it (but he doesn’t know if its only because of that, or if there’s something more/else, too)

He has feelings for her, but he doesn’t tell her (she only finds out cause she can hear his heart songs). Finding out that her BF has deeper feelings for her freaks her out, even though he himself does not pressure her or anything like that..yet. She is the one who assumes their “discussion” at work is presumed as “lovers quarrel” & she is the one who presumes that “is it a date” means he considers a meal together as date…when all he means is “are you free to go” (to the new place which they both wanted to go to..as friends) Up until the flash mob there is zero “pushing” from him.

He only sings love songs to her when he’s single - during the time he’s dating someone else (Autumn) he stops singing to her, because he’s not a cheater. When he’s with someone, he’s with that someone, and devoted to that person..only. So he stops for a while.

He sees & hears her say that the thing she had for/with Simon is over (1x06) & that she’s not doing any of that anymore. Since she doesn’t talk about any of it with him, this is all he knows so he assumes she meant it, and she’s done chasing the engaged man. This is also probably the only inside info she has on the whole Z/S situation - what he sees/hears during the “burnt roses” moment. (So… it is not a nice surprise when he learns in 1x08 that after everything her words were not true, cause it’s not all over/done with S…)

Why he doesnt believe her right away when she tells him of her powers: As a rational person he has a hard time believing her claims about superpowers at first. Also… it seems like such a “lie” to change the subject, and simply avoid giving him an honest answer (yes OR no) But after hearing some more facts he starts believing. And by the time she “glitches” he has no doubt that she’s going through all this…

Both Zoey and Max are emotionally challenged. (tbh, just like Max I believed Autumn when she said that all is cool when they broke up during their morning jog. I’m emotionally challenged, too. I honestly did not know that what she said and what she thought/felt were different, so I get why it came as a surprise to him to learn she wasn’t cool about it) The whole Autumn/Max break-up tells us that Max doesn’t get the subtle clues, and needs to hear the words to know the truth. Hence he believes what Zoey tells him… at first.

He misreads her signals in 1x05 - 1x06 - 1x07 (”I need more Max”, reinstating their movie nights, touching his bicep, commenting she needs more Max in her life, checking him out when he’s shirtless, etc), and based on that confesses his love for her via flashmob. What surprises him is not so much that she doesn’t respond with the same, but that she doesn’t give him an answer…at all. (Mo explained it best to Zoey…later; the boy deserved an answer… even if it’s “I don’t know…yet”. Also… we’ve never heard her say that she didn’t appreciate it because it was a big gesture…so she might not be as uncomfortable with the gesture as we think) Instead she runs, and then she avoids giving him an answer, kinda changing the subject, and telling him about her powers. Instead of telling him the truth right away, cause truth might hurt, but it’s better than avoidance/ignoring.

This is shown later in the episode, when after Zoey finally gives him her…messy & selfish answer… he’s hurt, but content. She tells him that the reasons why she isn’t ready to go from friends to more is because her focus has to be on her dad for now & because she’s afraid that “they” won’t work out & she’ll lose her best ftiend…for good… and she can’t risk that… at this time. This is not the answer he hoped for, but as Mo predicted…this is the answer he accepts. That can be seen in the elevator scene with Simon. He’s OK with waiting & this not being the right time (cause she needs to focus on her dad at the moment). He also doesn’t say they’re done, he asks what she asked - pressing pause on their traditional friends activities like movie nights.

During the 1x07 end elevator convo he also learns that the totally engaged man has been “keeping tabs” on Zoey & Z/M. Which concerns him. Cause why is an engaged man looking at other women & paying attention to whom they socialize with (when his focus should only be on his fiancee)? Like Mo, he probably thinks “the guy is a player” after this convo. And again… he, as Zoey’s friend, is not in the wrong, when he thinks he should “protect” her from the morally questionable guy.

Then in the “very next day basically” he learns that she wasn’t completely honest with him. And since she promised 100% honesty to him, he’s hurt that she as his friend isn’t being honest. She sings him a love song (it is possible that she wasn’t aware of her deep feelings for him…but after this she definitely is…100%)…but then tries to take back the honesty and claim that the truth she spoke is not the truth. But what really hurts him is how her “honesty” from their last convo turns out to be a lie (and we know it is, because we’ve seen Zoey tell her mom & Mo about her real feelings, not the cleaned up version she told Max at the end of 1x07) - and he voices why he’s upset. It’s not because she doesn’t return his feelings, it’s because she wasn’t honest with her best friend. Because through her heart songs he knows for a fact that she has feelings for him - that she loves him, too. So he’s not upset that she doesn’t love him back. He even says it during their bathroom convo - the best reason to be “mad” at her is that she told him she loves him/she’s his, when she didnt mean to tell him this (the truth). Meaning: she thinks it’s “unfair” he’s upset that “she sang him a heart song, when she didn’t mean to”… or in other words: she thinks it’s fair to keep the truth a secret from him…and this rigth after she promised 100% honesty to him… and he doesn’t agree with the secret-keeping.

We saw Max’s feelings progression since Pilot: in 1x01 he THINKS he’s in love with her, in 1x02 he’s a SUCKER for her & by 1x07 he fully admits he LOVES her. With Zoey the timeline is..kinda… starting in 1x06… The “500 miles” moment is her “I think I love you” moment & her heart song to him in 1x08 is basically her “I love you” moment.

She claims she isn’t ready for a relationship because she needs to focus on her dad right now, when in reality she really is torn between two men - and she wants Max to be her emotional support and shoulder to lean on (knowing he loves her, and knowing that he knows that she knows he loves her), while she herself is pursuing another man, Simon. An engaged man she’s obsessed with cause she “finds his body hot & has a grief bond with”. (in reality: her role has mostly been being his grief therapist - and she’s not really told him about her dad that much…so it’s pretty much one-sided anyway) But just as she didn’t want to be the other woman, he doesn’t want to be the other man/third wheel… and that’s understandable.

Then when Max gets the job offer he goes to his best friend for support. And while I personally read the scene as him saying “no, that was not the right answer, but it gave me mine (I’m taking the job)” being a response to her asking “was this the right answer?” because this meant she wasn’t still being honest with him, and instead of giving her her true answer she gave him the answer she thought he wanted to hear… I am willing to accept that what the writers meant was that he wanted her to give a more personal answer and/or ask him to stay because he is a valuable member of the team.

Her reply was as his boss, and co-worker/friend. She only focused on their work relationship, not their personal friendship. She’ll miss sitting across from him… not that she’ll miss him outside work (and yes…it’s only two floors up, and working in different departments does not mean they can’t hang out oustide work…) but still her answer did not include her role as best friend/possible future romantic partner….even when he asked her to specify the “I’m Your’s Zoey’s” answer - she only focused on the work related part when replying…to that. This gave him the clarity needed - she’s not into him, so he did the right thing & put space between them. Since she didn’t include the “I’m Yours Zoey” that meant to him that she’d choosen Simon…and just as it’s very human to grieve and cheat…it’s also very human to feel hurt/heartbroken. And he should not have to subject himself to seeing her with someone else (when he knows she has feelings for both) - making the same mistakes over again she’s made before with her relationships. So his choice was the right one…for both. They need time apart, time to grow as individuals, time to reflect…

Yes his speech in 1x10 was directed mostly to her, but he was adressing the whole 4th floor/Team, really. Cause no-one stood up to give him a “good luck” hug when he came to collect his things. And his best friend didn’t even have any encouraging words to him…on the day he moved to the 6th floor…. and even admitted she didn’t get to get him a “good luck gift” (which he could just assume is because she’s busy with her dad, but we know that while she had 4 days to buy that pen/mouse…and didn’t, she managed to get a plant as housewarming gift for the other man in like 4 hours. And we also know that she voiced no concerns about losing her best friend and a good team member at work…while talking to Mo… yet she had lots of things to say about “the man who just broke up, and whom I said I would not chase anymore, but now that he’s been single for 4 seconds, we can make out and it’s not cheating this time anymore”… so she’s showing no signs of caring about his best friends life changes, while caring a lot about the other mans life changes)

So of course he feels underappreciated on the 4th floor. The peer reviews, the boss, the team manager, the job offer… it all plays a part in his decision. And the D*rk Point boss knows exactly what to say…to make him feel appreciated…something he didn’t feel he got on the 6th floor… but he didn’t realize until he heard Ava point out his good work..with the maze, with the chirp pitch…and though he may not realize that Ava, too, has her own agenda, hearing that he is appreciated…as a worker & as a human…made him feel good (we saw how important positive feedback is for everyone during the peer reviews plot), and he realized he didn’t get any of that, really, on the 4th floor. And once again… while he may have secretly wanted to hear her say “stay”, what he actually really wanted/needed was for her to encourage him, and show genuine happiness for him, and for her to be completely honest with him. And he didn’t feel like that’s something she could be right now. To put it in her own terms: “everyone is so nice & polite, and no one is giving me the raw & honest feedback”…cause her reply to him when asked about the job offer was “polished” & “nice”, not “honest & raw”. (and I think we all agree that her telling him to take it & him taking it was the right move…for all… cause they both need space & to grow individually)

In the Pilot we learn that Max thinks he’s not management material & he’s not looking for career opportunity. So to Zoey’s knowledge this is not in character for him? So whether or not he’s changed during the time between then & now, to Max’s knowledge she knows that he likes being just a coder. So for her to not know him…and not remember that he’s told her this, could be disappointing. So her reply: That’s a great career opportunity MIGHT tell him that she doesn’t know him and what he wants. (this is the flashmob argument: we, fans, think that a flashmob is “not Zoeys style” & we, fans, think that promotion is “not Max’s style”. We might be wrong, cause we don’t know everything about the characters + they can change…over time…)

Another thing she says to him when he asks advice regarding the job offer is “I would never stop you from going after what you want”. When they both know that what he really wants is her - he’s made it clear. And yet… here she is saying she’d not stop him, when she is “stopping him” from doing just that. And at the same time…as pointed out in the last part… is a promotion what Max really wants? Cause it is not the case for “1x01 Max”…and we & Zoey haven’t been made aware that he’s changed his mind. So… does his best friend not know him? (or does she known him better…and know he’s changed his POV on promotions)

Max & Zoey have been best friends & colleagues…for 5 years…since the first day on the job. From Max’s POV…something changed..suddenly…a few months ago. For a while he didn’t know why and what, but now he knows why. And just like it took time for Zoey to adjust to her “power”, same applies to Max (adjusting to her powers).

From Max’s POV…his best friend is dishonest with him, she avoids him, she has changed, she comes to him when she needs him… but she herself doesn’t offer anything back (yes, he is aware she’s grieving, and he understands it, but his best friend is not letting her friends help her during the time she needs to lean on family/friends). We have rarely seen her talk to him about anything else than office gossip…or her powers related stuff…recently. And it’s heavily implied they used to talk…all the time… about everything. His best friend also set him up with another woman…just to avoid him after she learned that he has feelings for her. His best friend claims her focus has to be her dad, and she can’t do more than friendship at this time, but at the same time she continues pursing another man. And this after she promised to be 100% honest with him. And she betrayes that trust the “very next day”. So he has every right to be upset, and hurt.

Zoey has every right to be upset about the fact that she thinks Max is “pushing her to have feelings for him” (when they both know… for a fact..after her heart song that she does have feelings for him), but in this case Max has every right to be upset about the fact that he thinks “she is avoiding him”. She has the right to grieve, so does he. If she has the right to be upset that Simon doesn’t return her feelings… then Max has the right to be upset that she doesn’t return his feelings. The same rules have to apply to all, not just main character. And if you look at the storylines closely, you’ll see the parallels… the things that Zoey is upset about (fans are upset about) regarding Simon’s behaviour (when pursuing him) are the same exact things that Max is upset about regarding Zoey (his pursuit of her). The same way that some fans point out Max is “obsessed with Zoey” there’s a parallel story with Zoey is “obsessed with Simon”. All Max wanted from Zoey was what Zoey wanted from Simon - clarity. For her/him to have clarity. And just as she felt the other man didn’t have it, he felt that she didn’t have it.

Because we, the audience, know that Zoey (thinks she has) has feelings for both men - her behaviour in past episodes (especially 1x06 - 1x07) and her heart song confirm that she has feelings for Max, and because he knows her secret, he knows that that’s a fact. So he has every right to be upset that she “doesn’t like him back/doesn’t want to be with him”, when he knows that she does love him back, while claiming the opposite. And she won’t talk to him about it…

From his POV it is as follows: they both have admitted they love each other. She claims she needs time to deal with her grief and can’t risk their friendship. She tells him she loves him…and the very next minute goes to another mans arms - that’s the part that upsets him. He’s not upset that she’s not returning his feelings/not wanting to date him, nope. He’s “upset” because he, as her best friend who knows her & her past relationships, knows that her thing with the engaged man will not end well for her. And yes, he is not wrong in saying that in a case when she has feelings for two men it’s a better option to choose the best friend, who has always been there for her (she’s said this herself) than the totally engaged (until just recently) & morally questionable, emotionally unavailable grieving hot guy.

While Max choices have been just “mistakes” (perhaps not the best idea to confess your feelings via flash mob to a girl who only listens to podcasts?), then Simon’s choices have been actual “bad decisions” - cheating. And though both Simons & Zoey’s bad choices have been rooted in their grief/depression, they cannot “excuse” it with being a mess due to grief. Instead of continuing the downward spiral they should own their mistakes, acknowledge them as not good choices. It’s one thing to use the wrong gesture to confess your love to somone, and completely another thing to cheat on your fiancee (and blame it on being a mess cause of grief). Those two things should not be comparable.

I can’t believe how some people see Max response to her “no one understand why you got the promotion” (translation: you didn’t deserve it) as harsh. Like her cruel words were “justified” because she’s grieving...or just because…even though she was not right to say them, but his behaviour has been “unacceptable”. Yes, his comments to Zoey are not the friendliest (when he’s telling why he chooses 6th floor over 4th… after the “The Boy is Mine” sing-off, but they are nothing compared to Zoey’s “you don’t deserve this promotion & you are selfish for not being there for me whenever I need something from you”.

We can all see & understand that each character has flaws & makes mistakes & says some things they shouldn’t. But some of these things are “worse” than the others. And his reply to her rude-fuled-by-her-anger-phase-of-grieving comment to him was tame. He was actually quite calm & cool during his response to her (you’re calling me selfish?). And he directed the coded message at Zoey on the 6th floor directly at her because he knows she’s emotionally challenged, so she needed to undrerstand that it was directed at her, too…so she’d start understanding that she hurt him with her words/behaviour too. He wanted her to get that message, cause he had seen that until now she had no idea how her actions/inactions affect him.

He may seem like being “upset” with her… but it’s also understandable, because she kinda broke his heart, and just as she’s allowed to not return his feelings, he’s allowed to feel sad that she doesn’t. To put it in “fairytale terms”. But he’s in no way pressuring her to return his feelings & start a relationship now. All he wants/needs from her is honesty & clarity.

And mostly… when will Zoey finally give Simon the advice he needs - go see a professional therapist! What the man needs is professional help not a mind-reader, who is a mess herself. And is Zoey doesn’t stop keeping it all in and won’t talk to her family/friends about her grief, then she, too, will soon need professional help… (therapist).

Through all of this Max’s there for her: he supports her when she’s interested in the new guy..(until he finds out the man is taken); he supports her to go after the promotion; he brings her dad… his “closest thing to a dad he’s had” soft food…that he can eat, he goes to support her when she gets a call about her dad’s health & he finds a way to get her to her dad..fast; he saves her “glitch song” and turns it into a pitch for the CEO; he goes to check on her, & gives her her mom’s message..even when he’s hurt by her (and on top of that he gives her good friend advice about her dad). And she does acknowledge this..on several occasions. So…this “social distancing” (physical distance between them during work & off work) is needed to make her/them start to see things from different perspective, and realize some truths… that only distance/change could give them.

There is a real inconsistancy between what she really feels & thinks…and what she says/acknowledges she feels & thinks.

And it all won’t start moving forward & she won’t start character development until she’ll truly embrace her powers. Cause she still seems to view them as “burden” instead of “helpful tool”. Sure… she has started to realize the good she can do with having this ability (in general Howie/Abigail situation was the first time she really used her ability to really improve the situation & first time she really emphatized...though we could say that in a way the first case was her downstairs neighbour, Bonnie), but until she fully embraces it all, she’ll remain “lost”. The turning point will be actually losing her dad…for real.

There is a lot that I don’t understand 100% about what the show is trying to do… with Max “pushing* Zoey for answers to his confession of love” & his reaction to her answer about whether he should take the job offer…or even why they keep saying there’s a deep bond between Z & S, when all they’ve established is that they talked to each other about losing their dads & are physically attracted to each other. Or even why Zoey says that they kissed, when in reality he kissed her. Or Simon’s behaviour…which I don’t think is ONLY just about not dealing with his grief…and all that.

* I don’t see it as him pushing her or demanding answers or anything like that. But this is the sense many get, hence I used this word

#ZEP #ZOEY'S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST #CLARKEMAN #LONG POST #ZOEYS' EP #TEXT POST #ONG POST #LIST POST #ZOEYS EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST #Zoey's EP #Zoey Clarke #Max Richman #Zomax #Zax #ZEP S1 #ZEP SEASON 1 #SEASON 1

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