#this line yes. but also this entire sequence with the news of the shooting and fix you by coldplay playing in the background

[riemmetric]

The Newsroom | S01E04: I'll Try To Fix You

#the newsroom #thenewsroomedit #will mcavoy #don keefer #jeff daniels #thomas sadoski #mine:edits #characters of all time!! #this scene plays on a constant loop in my head #this line yes. but also this entire sequence with the news of the shooting and fix you by coldplay playing in the background #crying every time #i love this show so fucking much 🥺🥺 #i decided not to color this at all. only put a sharpening action on. i actually really love the way this show is originally colored

[script-nef]

So why won’t you realise it '^' | Gojou Satoru

Category: fluff

1.9k words; Movie date [2/6]

Spoilers of Howl’s Moving Castle!! Beware!!

← Previous chapter | Masterlist

“Eh, Shouko! What do you mean you can’t make it?”

“I mean, another person is about to come in and they need me to heal them. By the time I’m done the movie will be finished.” Shouko’s voice over the phone is laced with annoyance and sadness coupled with lethargy. You don’t know how she pulls off such a unique combination of emotions but she somehow accomplishes it every time. “And I was looking forward to it…”

This would have been the first time you had a break with her since the trip to France. And while she enjoyed it a lot, the same couldn’t be said for the two males. Which was weird since Gojou is infatuated with sweets and Ken-chan agreed to come. So it was kind of weird when there was a tense atmosphere between them. You know your brother and Gojou are nearly polar opposites, but their animosity wasn’t usually that strong. 

They brushed it off as nothing when you asked if something was wrong, which was sort of dubious since you could kind of see the black cloud looming over the both of them, but you let it go. If it was something important, they would be able to handle it themselves or report it to you. You couldn’t sense any cursed spirits nearby so you guessed that they were just in a bad mood for some reason.

Still, you had a wonderful time and found some new snacks that everyone enjoyed. So a day well spent, all in all. 

And Ken-chan told you to tell him if Gojou ever offers overseas trips or anything similar, so he must have enjoyed it. Maybe you can ask Gojou to take all of you to Denmark one day.

“Ah… my dear Howl. Life and curses separate us again.” Her voice is full of sadness now, no doubt mourning over her chance of watching her favourite character on a huge screen with surround sound disappearing. 

“It’s okay! I’ll bring you the figurine and we can watch it again here in about… uh…”

“Ten years?” She sounds like she’s about to drop dead.

“Uh… yes… But maybe five years? Hopefully? You know, I shouldn’t watch it without you. I’ll come back to school.” 

“No, no. Watch the movie. At least you’ll get to see it. Ah, they’re coming now so I have to go.”

“Ah, okay. Bye, Shouko! Stay positive!”

A non-committal sigh accompanies a small “Bye” before the call clicks off. A frown takes over your face at the lost opportunity for her. She was looking forward to this for a long time and you leapt at the chance for another girls’ day out. Being able to watch a childhood favourite is an added bonus. But now you’re standing in the movie theatre, the ticket desk just across the room and an extra on your hand. 

It’s a shame because it cost quite a lot. Shouko is definitely going to mope about this when you get back and maybe start smoking again. She always has a pack on her even if she said she quit, and smokes one if she’s stressed or angry. You should call someone and make sure somebody takes it away from her.

You should probably hold onto the ticket and give it back. Or maybe that would make it worse for her, serving as a reminder of this day. Conflict rages inside your head. There’s a high possibility of either decision breaking her heart. Again. A buzz from your phone saves you the trouble of deciding.

Shouko: I sent someone as my replacement. 

A tap on the shoulder makes you turn as you type in a reply and you come face to face with a black jacket. Gojou’s head pops down.

“Hey there. I think you called for a replacement!” He seems to be in a ridiculously good mood, even more so than usual. Maybe his students successfully finished another mission. Which is great. It also means more paperwork for you. Which is not so great.

“How did you com—ah. Teleportation.”

“Ding ding ding! Correct!” He's been using the skill more frequently lately, popping in and out of places like one of those Whac-A-Mole games. . It gives you heart attacks all the time and you’re sure he gets a kick out of it. You saw how his smiles widen when you flinch or react. Thankfully it’s when you’re alone so other people never see you jump what feels like a metre into the air.

“Do you want popcorn?” He breaks you out of your thoughts. “I think they have the new caramel flavour. Apparently it’s way too sweet.” So perfect for Gojou. Even though he’s asking if you want it, there’s a spring in his step which definitely means he’s getting some. Probably the biggest option they have.

And you’re proven right because he comes back with two huge buckets which look impossible to finish. When you try to object, he cuts off with “I’ve eaten three buckets before. Alone.” With the smile he’s giving you, it really doesn’t sound like he’s joking. You try to take one to lighten the load but he says it’s alright. 

He signals the way to the theatre rooms with his head, walking beside you as you find your way.

“So what’s the movie?” Your head snaps to him in confusion.

“You don’t know?” A shake and a shrug. “It’s Howl’s Moving Castle. This was Shouko’s idea since she loves it and this year is Studio Ghibli’s 40 year anniversary. The cinema is having an exclusive showing of their movies this month. Only one session per movie, for some reason. Surely they would make more money if they played it over multiple days, but. I dunno. Executives make weird decisions.” A light scoff from him to tell he knows exactly what that’s like. His hatred for the higher-ups runs deep. You don’t push it.

“So she wanted to come but got held back at the last minute?”

“Yeah. Ah, here are our seats.”

You’re placed in the very middle of the room and you both make yourselves comfortable. Shouko went all out for this movie, upgrading the seats and making it a recliner. Your poor back, abused after sitting in chairs and hunched over computers for so long, practically melts into the plush cushion. It’s so comfortable that you might fall asleep in it if it isn’t Howl that’s about to start. 

Feet dangling in the air, you look over to Gojou to see him on his phone. It looks like he’s in a chatroom and you catch the words ‘Shouko’ and ‘favour’ before looking away. You didn’t mean to peek, but it’s not like you can consciously not read something. It was in your line of sight and you averted your eyes as soon as you realised what you were reading. Your brother brought you up better than to pry into other people’s businesses, even if it’s really, really tempting.

“Phones need to be placed on silent, you know.” The ads are coming on the screen. He smiles at you, slipping it into his pocket.

“Just talking to Shouko. She says she hasn’t even started properly.”

Disappointment fills you. Gojou is a good friend to watch this with but you hoped Shouko would somehow miraculously finish in time. She would be devastated.

“I’ll have to make this up to her when we get back. Give her the figurine and keep her hap—ah! I forgot! Gojou, I was supposed to ask someone to take her ciga—” He cuts you off with a light pat on your hand.  

“Don’t worry, I did it already. All of them are safe out of her reach and I gave her packets of hot chocolate instead. When we get back, she’ll have drunk at least half of them and be in a good mood.” What a Gojou-like replacement. He smiles like a child wanting pats on the head for a job well done. You just barely catch yourself from moving. 

Gojou gets a rep for being aloof and neglectful, but he does take care of the people he holds dear to him. His friends, members of the school, his students. You hope you’re included in the list. 

Actually, the more you think about it, the more you realise he’s different from initial perceptions. You learn more and more about him as time goes on, in the most delightful sense. He’s somewhat like an onion, new characteristics being revealed every time a layer is peeled. A snicker escapes at the thought of Gojou dressed up like an onion, just waddling around. He shoots you a questioning head tilt which you wave off.

In the years that you’ve known him, he made himself into a trustworthy friend. One full of laughs and ridiculousness. Maybe it’s his childishness that puts you at ease, but he’s incredibly comfortable and easy to relax around. Thoughts trail and the words fly out of your mouth before you even think.

“You know, I think you would make a wonderful boyfriend.”

He freezes completely, like somebody’s zapped him in place. You stare at him, wondering what’s wrong, but the lights dim and by the time he gathers coherence, your concentration is on the opening sequence.

“Ah, that was so good! Ugh, I love Howl. Isn’t he so cool?” You skip out of the room, remembering to take the figurines provided at the exit, with Gojou trailing behind you. “You know how she asks him to wait for her in the past? The first thing he says to her in the movie is ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’ He searched for her the entire time! This is modern poetry. This.” 

“Do you think Howl would be a good boyfriend?” The question stops you. It’s different than usual for some reason, the voice asking the question and the intensity of it. He’s still his aloof self, all smiles and grins, but there’s something you can’t quite place that’s wrong. It’s unnerving, but you diligently answer his question.

“Um, I mean, yeah? Look at how cute he is with Sophie. See?” The figurine is a frozen shot of Howl and Sophie dancing in the rain with an umbrella that’s not being useful at all. They’re both incredibly detailed, so much so that you can see their clothes and skin drenching wet. Wow, this is actually a phenomenal job. Shouko will be so happy. It makes your heart lighter knowing that at least something might light up her day. 

“Why is he cool?” Gojou seems to be invested in Howl. It confuses you since he just watched the movie with you and he saw how awesome Howl is. 

“Hm, well for one he can do magic.” He opens his mouth but you shush him with a finger to his lips. “Yeah, I know, what we have is kind of like magic too. But theirs is just… different. He just makes it seem kind of elegant. And he overcame his fear just for Sophie. Remember the scene with Sulliman and in the cluttered bedroom? He still found the strength to protect her even though he was so scared before. It’s admirable. I guess I like strong guys.”

“Hmm~” His tone is contemplative. “You know I’m stronger than him, right?”

A question mark forms over your head. He’s being really weird today. “Yeah? You’re the strongest in the universe, silly. What’s up with you?” Gojou just chuckles and ruffles your head.

“Nothing, nothing. Just making sure you know.” He slings his arm around your shoulder, the intensity gone and the light spring in his step back. “Who else do you think is strong?”

Next chapter →

#gojou x reader #gojou imagine #gojou satoru x reader #gojou satoru imagine #gojo x reader #gojo imagine #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru imagine #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk imagine #jujutsu kaisen imagine #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #gojou #gojou satoru #fluff #series #female reader

[izzabeean]

Chapter 9 : Anticipation

SUMMARY

Ushijima makes an appearance at your group outing, and you try to ignore his presence. But, of course, it’s easier said than done in this case.

pairing : ushjima x f!reader / oikawa x f!reader / iwaizumi x f!reader

genre : angst + fluff

word count : 3,344

content : profanity, mild violence, depiction of injuries

tags :  alternate universe - college/university, post-break up, friends to lovers, pining, slow burn

a/n : Is the world so small that Y/N keeps running into Ushijima? Perhaps in this story, yes. This week has been a bit slow creatively for me, I don't feel my writing is the strongest in this chapter. But here we are, things are heating up and I'm happy to provide.

Post Thursday evenings PST, if not latest by Friday.

masterlist

<< prev |  ch . 9 | next >>

Everything feels so surreal as you lock eyes with Ushijima from across the table. He doesn’t smile or say anything, he just looks at you with his empty gaze like this is the first time meeting. Ever. Your heartbeat starts to thump faster conjuring up a lump in your throat that cannot be swallowed. Your breathing is shallow and your hands start to sweat as you dig your nails into your legs.

Why didn’t you turn around when your instincts told you to?

Why did you talk yourself into thinking this was a good idea?

However, for some reason, here you are. The sequence of events leading up to this point doesn’t make any sense. Even when you were dating, you wouldn’t run into him this much, so why now? Why all these dumb coincidences? There’s no room for you to heal when you keep seeing him like this.

“Hi,” you squeal, temporarily incapacitated by the confused looks from your other groupmates.

But your high pitch voice produces shockwaves through Oikawa’s system as you quickly introduce him and Iwaizumi to which Sara introduces Ushijima to all three of you. Then it becomes apparent that Ushijima hasn't said anything to Sara about you.

It’s sublime how quickly you push down the devastation bubbling at the surface and you wonder how it is even possible for you to force a smile in Sara’s direction. Clearing your throat you take a seat. Ushijima has stopped staring now and takes a swig of the chilled beer sitting in front of him. Your mouth feels dry from the nerves that are trying to drag your spirits down. If you were going to survive this torture, you’re most definitely not going to be sober. Grabbing the waiter's attention, you order yourself a beer as you feel yourself on the brink of a heart attack.

“You ok?” Oikawa mumbles knowing well that turning to your least favorite drink is a bad sign. It’s very clear to him this evening isn't going to go very well, seeing as you are already on edge from Ushijima’s surprise appearance.

“Mhm,” you hum shooting him a smile. “I’m fine. Totally chill.”

“You know, we can leave,” Oikawa whispers. “You’re not obligated to be here.”

And let him win? you think. I don’t think so.

“No, I’m fine,” you lie, biting your lip. It’s no time for you to concede, you just gotta ride this one out, show him how much better you’re doing without him. It’s the only thing to get back at him for everything so grossly unforgivable that he’s done.

The waiter returns with your drink placing it down in front of you. Nothing has looked so relieving and thirst-quenching before; the cold and crisp-looking glass filled to the top of light amber liquid with a dollop of airy foam. You pick it up and throw it back, chugging the heavy and sour alcohol. Then you think, maybe you shouldn’t have done that as you strike the glass down on the table. Licking your lips, you notice the startled looks everyone gives you at your uncharacteristic action.

“Should we order food,” Sara interrupts the weird tension which segues everyone back to talking amongst themselves.

Your stomach starts to swirl as you’ve come to realize that drinking that beer was probably the worst thing you could do while it’s empty. But as you study the menu, nothing seems to scream appetizing. Not when you can see in your peripheral Ushijima and Sara sharing a menu while discussing what they want to order. It makes you sick.

The restaurant is loud, but your thoughts are louder as you sit there wondering if anyone else can hear them. It hurts to see him here in front of you beside her. She most definitely doesn’t know about your history with Ushijima just by the way she’s acting around him. Sara doesn’t seem maniacal enough to do something so disrespectful to someone she barely knows. For god's sake, she invited you here. Why would she want you here if she knew? To rub it in that she’s Ushijima’s girlfriend. Doubtful.

Maybe Oikawa was right all along about Ushijima not being how you perceived him to be. Maybe, just maybe you honestly, you were blinded the entire time. And now you were finally seeing him for who he truly is.

You were scared to admit it. That if you did, your year together means nothing when it still meant so much to you. But in this case, actions speak louder than words and most definitely Ushijima’s actions are very clear.

“I'm going to step out for a smoke. Do you need some fresh air?” Iwaizumi asks, snapping you out of your thoughts.

“Oh,” you reply looking at Oikawa sitting beside you who's chatting with one of your group members. "No, I better not."

"Alright, I'll be right back," he says sliding out of his seat.

You try to hide your face behind the menu so no one talks to you and your plan almost succeeded except for the open opportunity it gave Sara to sit beside you. Your face pales as she leans in to rasp, "I'm glad you could make it."

"Yeah," you exclaim a bit put off by how close she is.

"I honestly thought you weren't going to show."

It's hard for you to not flash a bitter smile, but you force yourself to continue the conversation, "It took some convincing but bringing Oikawa and Iwaizumi helped."

The silence stretches between the two of you as Oikawa's laugh fills the air. You take a glimpse at him, noticing one of your group members flirting with him. You roll your eyes while looking back at Sara who is enthralled in his aura.

"He seems really nice,” she compliments. "How long have you two been together?"

"Hmm?" It takes you a moment to realize what she’s asking as you realize she's subtly gesturing to Oikawa. And when it clicks you are filled with laughter. “Oh my god, did you just say that out loud?”

The thought of you and Oikawa remotely appearing to look more than friends from an external perspective makes you nearly piss yourself.

"Oh, I just thought, you'd both make a cute couple," she corrects herself with puzzlement written across her face.

When you realize she’s being serious, you pause. “No, we’ve just been friends for a while.”

"Oooh," Sara taunts giving you a very mischievous look. "You know that saying, love is friendship set on fire."

"It's not like that," you nervously chuckle at her comment.

"Alright, I won't pry," she jokes. "But seriously, I'm happy you're here!"

She gets up from her seat and walks back over to sit next to Ushijima. Your feelings are honestly a bit mixed from that conversation. You really wanted to hate her, but she just seemed so genuine.

------

You’re a couple more drinks in and feel a bit of a buzz as Sara goes into grave detail as to why she transferred to the university now . But you can’t force yourself to listen. Your attention shifts to Ushijima smiling softly at the way Sara bubbles with warmth. It’s funny to think that someone else can make him smile like that besides you because you know how hard it is to do so. But it seems so effortless for Sara.

The memory of meeting Ushijima for the first time flashes in your head. To the time in the library where he reaches over your head to grab the book, you were trying to get on the top shelf. Now you can barely remember as the image of Sara takes your place to retrieve the book from Ushijima's hands. She's the new you.

You know you're overanalyzing every single movement Ushijima makes. From where his eyes linger to where his hands are placed, you cannot stop looking as you stay in suspense to what he will do next. You’re close to being consumed by the sudden urge to lash out or cry. It feels like he’s trying to push your buttons as he leans over toward Sara. You're waiting for him to kiss her. Waiting for it to break you. And it makes you sick.

Suddenly you feel a hand on your knee and turn to Iwaizumi who is looking down at you with a soft gaze. It’s odd but you somehow feel this tension between the two of you. You should have known better in that moment, but your mind feels a bit hazy from feeling vulnerable and also the alcohol.

“Is everything ok?”

You feel anticipation fill your chest and you swallow thickly seeing as this is the closest you’ve ever been to him. You look at his hand for a moment, at his long fingers gently grip the top of your knee. You immediately remind yourself of his words the other day, wondering if he intended to friendzone you like that.

You nod, smiling.

“Let me know when you want to leave,” Iwaizumi whispers squeezing your leg.

His face dips down slightly and you don’t know why you do it and don’t know how you had the courage to. But you’re so caught up in your internal frustrations, you don’t think before you act. You lean in closer to Iwaizumi and plant a kiss on his cheek uttering a thank you.

As you pull back, his eyes widen. It takes you a second to process exactly what you’ve done.

“Um, sorry,” you say to Iwaizumi, you need to get out of there before you die of embarrassment. Quickly you excuse yourself from the table as you rush to the bathroom and you can still feel Iwaizumi watching you.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

But you find the bathrooms have a long line up and turn a corner as you burst through a door to outside. The cool air hits you making it much easier to breathe. Finally, you’re by yourself. Screaming wouldn’t even be able to help you let out the confusion you feel. This was definitely something you didn’t want to have happened. But here you are regretting your capacity to understand a situation. Honestly, you were definitely feeling vulnerable. This entire evening you were caught off guard and something it makes you do weird things.

“Can we talk?

Turning around, you see Ushijima standing in front of you. He gazes down at you with his unreadable stare that makes you want to cry.

“No,” you say a little unnerved walking away from him. But you’re stopped by him grabbing your wrist, the same wrist the creep outside the club grabbed you with. Still a bit bruised and weak from his grip. You let out a yelp, “Let go of me!”

“Just let me explain,” he begs.

But you’re not listening as you try to wiggle your wrist away-- it’s not a tight hold, but it’s enough that it still hurts.

“Please, let me go,” you express firmly.

He stares at you for a moment and with a deep breath exhales letting go.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” you yell, grabbing your wrist. “Moved on already, what the fuck is your problem?”

“It’s not--”

“No, let me finish. You’ve already done enough. I can’t believe you. You could’ve just told me you found someone else, instead, I see you with her all cute and cuddly and now I have to fucking work with her? This is such a--”

But as you’re about to continue your rant, you’re interrupted by a voice.

“What’s going on here?” Oikawa asks, noticing Ushijima standing before you. He studies your face filled with rage while you’re clutching your wrist. “Did you hurt her?”

“What?” Ushijima replies confused.

Then Oikawa’s eyes turn dark, a look you’ve never seen before. And you never imagined what comes next. He grabs a fist full of Ushijima’s shirt pulling him close enough that they were inches apart, barely touching noses. You had to stop them before it went too far but you couldn’t move your body.

“After all you’ve been through this is how you treat her?” Oikawa yells.

“You don’t even know the whole story,” Ushijima booms, forcibly removing Oikawa’s grip from his shirt causing Oikawa to make an aching face.

“I know enough to see that you’re a complete dick. But we both know, I’ve known that from the start,” Oikawa hisses. His eyes are fixed on Ushijima shooting him a scowl while your hand is clasped to your shirt.

“Stop it,” you say, but they both ignore you.

“I think you need to get your facts straight,” Ushijima says staying calm and collected while Oikawa explodes with rage.

“Why don't act more like a man,” Oikawa protests.

Then time moves so quick you couldn’t even see Oikawa raise his fist to hit Ushijima square in the face. Because not even seconds after Ushijima retaliates. You rush over forcing yourself between the two men before a fight breaks, pushing your hands against their chest yelling at them to stop. Ushijima is the first to back away as Oikawa stays resistant trying to push by you. But you take both your hands and press them against him as Ushijima exits back into the restaurant.

"Why are you trying to protect him?" Oikawa cries. You look up at Oikawa whose face is glistening in the moonlight as his cheek starts to swell. His dark eyes lock on you as yours start to glaze over.

"Are you stupid? He could've really hurt you," you wail, trying to hide the fact you're physically shaking.

And he sees it.

"Don't ever do that again," you barked.

Then he gives you his signature shit-eating grin, a look that is nowhere near appropriate from just getting punched in the face.

“Told you he’s a dick,” he smirks, walking towards the front of the restaurant. “Let’s go home.”

“What about Iwaizumi?”

“He’ll take care of things,” Oikawa mutters. “He’ll meet us at home. Let’s go before that blockhead comes back out.”

------

Oikawa called a cab to get back to his apartment, you felt a bit bad for leaving Iwaizumi behind. Especially since you kissed him then left.

Things seemed to grow incredibly awkward between you and Oikawa as he sat in the bathroom cleaning the cut on his cheek from Ushijima’s punch. You weren’t really sure what Oikawa was thinking, but you didn’t really want to ask.  As you gently press the cotton pad to his cheek, he squints his eyes while the burning sensation shocks him and exhales sharply through his nose.

“Sorry,” you mumble and he immediately forgives you with a smile.

He tries to pin his eyes to something that can distract the sting, but instead focuses his attention on the feel of your fingers against his skin. You’ve never been this close before and he wonders if you can hear how fast his heart is beating.

He’s thankful for your patience with him. Most certainly did he think you were going to be pissed, but your reaction was far from what he expected as you kept silent for most of the trip home and even patching him up. Oikawa looks at you to see your frown had deepened. “Are you mad? You look mad.”

You scoff. “No, I’m just tired.” You’re caught off guard by his uncharacteristic concern and almost recoil with the question.

Oikawa sighs, “Your face is screwed up like you’re mad.”

“Tōru,” you scolded, crossing your arm across your chest. You choke on your words before answering, “I’m tired, not mad.”

Oikawa holds his breath and continues to look at you as you continue to make that sullen look. He doesn’t believe you. The sight of you with defeat in your expression makes his heart break. He notices your bruised wrist, still purple and blue, and imagines it probably hurts after Ushijima grabbed it. Then he wonders if he could have done something better to help you in that situation. Even that night back at the club still haunts him. If only he’d answered his phone when you needed him the most then maybe things would be different than now. He can’t stand it. He can't stand that Iwaizumi was there to help you instead. And he's not stupid, he knows you like Iwaizumi. He wasn't blind when he saw you kiss him at the restaurant. Oikawa didn’t know why, but something stirred him that he never realized before and it became very unsettling.

You lay the gauze over the wound and tape it down.

“How’s your hand?” you mumble, checking if the ice pack he’s holding to his fist has subsided any bruising your swelling. The bruising was already darker by the time you got to his apartment and it definitely terrified you.

“It’s fine,” he replies.

At this point, you’ve turned away and started to clean up. There isn’t a lot of blood, but enough to make shivers go down your spine as the image of Ushijima’s fist colliding with Oikawa’s face flashes through your head.

You feel your breathing heave as you try to collect yourself from breaking down in front of Oikawa. But something stops you. Instead of your usual hiding, you feel yourself let go and come undone. One small tear rolls down your cheek.

And then another. And then another. And then another. Until you can’t urge yourself to stop them anymore.

Oikawa freezes as he hears you sniffling. This time you don’t hide behind your wide smile. This time you’re actually crying and honestly he doesn’t know what to do. His intention wasn’t to make you cry, he wanted to protect you. And now he feels guilty for even putting you in this position.

“I’m sorry,” you pant, your voice broken by stifled breaths. “It’s all my fault you got hurt. I should’ve never gone to that stupid dinner.”

There’s this nagging feeling in his head pleading to comfort you. To hug you, to tell you it’s not your fault. His consciousness is screaming at him to do something to help as he watched you come undone in front of him. But why is he so afraid to?

“You were right, you’ve always been right,” you continue. “I’m so so sorry Tōru.”

You pause wiping the tears away that tracked down your face feeling awkward from exposing your vulnerable side to Oikawa. Tearing your eyes away from the first aid kit, you turn to look at Oikawa. There’s pity written all over his face. Your hands curl into fists.

It’s painfully tense as Oikawa attempts to muster up the courage to stand up to comfort you. He doesn’t want to regret his decision but he still hesitates, considering you’re now gazing at him.

“I-- I just,” you stutter, partially because you want to fill the awkward silence someway, and partially because you’re worried you’ve scared him. “I was scared…”

You stare at him.

He stares back.

Your heart feels like it’s in throbbing pain under Oikawa’s gaze.

His stomach clenches as you revert to silence.

Suddenly you hear the front door unlock and Iwaizumi call out that he's arrived. You feel your face burn up as you revert eye contact and lean on the counter to see Iwaizumi in the doorway of the bathroom.

“What the fuck happened,” he yells, visibly unamused that you both ditched him at a restaurant with people he didn’t know. You look at him with glazed eyes unable to utter a single word then that’s when he notices Oikawa’s appearance. “Shit.”

Oikawa’s face turns in a smirk. “You should have seen the other guy.”

“I did!” He protests. “Not even a scratch compared to you. You’re fucking stupid.”

"He hurt Y/N," Oikawa protest.

Iwaizumi's eyes widened looking towards you.

"He didn't hurt me," you reassure. "He just grabbed my bruised wrist."

Iwaizumi sighs, shaking his head. "You have to stop running off like that."

Oikawa watches the intimate interaction of indescribable energy or chemistry that lingers in the air between the two of you. He didn’t like it. Not even one bit.

#haikyuu x reader #haikyu x reader #haikyuu angst #haikyuu fluff #ushijima x reader #ushijima wakatoshi #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 10, The Runway Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

[Silence]

John: Marc?

Marc: Hi, I'm Marc Roskin, Producer and Director of this episode.

John: I'm John Rogers, Executive Producer, and the one with the Guinness, so you have no excuse for missing that cue.

Albert: And I'm Albert Kim, I'm the writer of the Runway Job.

John: Here we go. And this is a great opening sequence, what- is this a set Marc Roskin? How did you create this incredible look?

Marc: This is the largest girls school uniform factory on the west coast, and they-

John: So this is some sort of internet connection where you order school uniforms or-?

Marc: It was very hot. No, this was-

Albert: Strangely Marc knows a lot about girls’ school uniforms. I don’t know why, but-

Marc: Yes, this was an actual working factory. A lot of the background workers are some of the factory employees who knew how to operate the machines. It was right across the river, really close, and they opened their doors to us just like everybody did in Portland.

John: I love the fact that we wanted to do a fake sweatshop, so when we shot in there, when they saw the hours they shot the workers in the fake sweatshop, we're like, ‘These hours are horrible. How can you people work under these conditions?’ And Albert, since we’ve just seen someone collapse with these- this great shop, which, actually, I believe was the pitch. How did you come up with the idea for the episode?

Albert: Well as you know, I'm quite the fashion icon in the office, so it was quite natural for me.

[Laughter]

John: Yes.

Albert: No, I knew that I wanted to set an episode in the fashion world because it seemed like a fun environment to get into, and lots of great visuals and scenes with models and fashion designers and runway shows. So I knew the area was there, and then so the trick was coming up with a sympathetic victim, and then, as always, a credible villain and threat. So I did a little research and finding the victim wasn't too tough, because the real- in the real world, the fashion industry has sort of been dogged by allegations of sweatshop abuse for a while, so having the sweatshop victim came fairly easy. Finding the threat required a little more research, but as I dug into it, I found that it was actually a real world connection between sweatshops and global clothing counterfeiting, which is controlled by the Chinese Triads.

John: It's interesting because a lot of people talk about intellectual rights and stuff in new international treaties and people immediately think of movies, television, digital rights. A lot of it also involved intellectual rights on clothing.

Albert: Yes. Clothing counterfeiting actually counts for more of the income of these Triads than illegal narcotics trade. So it’s a huge billion dollar business for them and right then, sort of, the pieces fell into place for the elements of the episode.

John: And now these actresses are, Marc?

Marc: That is- um-

Albert: Jen.

Marc: Cathy Vu.

Albert: Cathy Vu and Jen Hong.

Marc: On our left and Jen Hong, and they were great though local Portland actresses. And they knew how to speak some Mandariarin and it worked out great. This was actually, in the shooting order, Jeri Ryan's first episode working with us.

John: Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, the crew- the cast was genuinely kind of freaked out by Gina not being on set, and so a lot of the weird vibe you get on this episode is from ‘there's a new person’ and of course Jeri became great friends with everyone and really fit in, but it was a really interesting vibe the first couple days on set. It really felt like, yes, Jeri’s a new person here; we don't quite know how to handle it.

Marc: But we had to play it like she was already part of the team because we shot these out of order.

John: It does help that really you don't make her part of the team until the end of the previous episode. 

Marc: Right.

John: This is almost a cold relaunch.

Albert: And we played that in the episode, too, so you sort of everyone's tentativeness around her worked well for the dynamics within- the character dynamics within the story as well.

John: And this is, again, this wass also a scene we added just to- It was interesting, we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood that Sophie- Because originally there was going to be a giant gap between episodes, we wanted to make sure everyone understood Sophie signs off on this. You know, audiences were very attached to Gina Bellman - rightfully so - and we did not want them to think we were shuffling her off and bringing in a new actor. We listen to you. Not a lot, not really.

[Laughter]

John: But we do listen to the bigger screams. Also love the callback there that Hardison screwed up in the Ice Man and that's what motivated this entire- this entire replacement.

Marc: We always like to bring up Hardison's screw ups; blowing up offices and whatnot.

John: Blowing up offices. But it's interesting that this is one of those trios where you just kind of park the camera and, you know, they have the dialogue, just let them run; let them do 4 or 5 versions, get the hell out of their way.

Albert: And this scene is really our version of: the kids are wondering where mommy went. You know, so it's like they are a little uncomfortable, it's a new family dynamic, so they're on the phone with her.

John: Yeah.

Marc: Right. But of course, they don't want dad to know that they are speaking to mom.

Albert: Yeah.

John: Yeah, and that's a- that actually started in Ice Man, where they are calling and not telling Nate. And we continued it all the way through where they just don't feel comfortable letting Nate know. And that was a nice little moment with Beth, you know, just ‘I miss you’. It's not often we crack the shell on Parker, that's part of the advancement of the character, to show that she's comfortable in the family, even if she’s not comfortable with other humans. And these two actors the- not those actors, that's stock photography- but the two actors playing the bad guys are?

Marc: Grace and what's her last name?

Albert: Grace Hsu and Tom Choi.

Marc: Grace was a Portland local, she was fabulous; and Tom came from Los Angeles. They did a really great job. 

John: The con here is kind of convoluted. It's interesting, just watching this, is the idea that we really had to come into the fashion show from- the fashion industry is one of those industries where if you're inside it, you know everything. We had to constantly figure out, what does the audience need to know in order to understand what we're doing without overexplaining it?

Albert: Right. Again, this is a case where research helped. I mean, to actually looking into what happens during fashions shows. It's based on a real life event, Fashion Week, which normally takes place in New York though there are regional ones all around the country where there are big showcases for new designers as well as opportunities for the stylish designers to bring out their new lines and things like that. So we knew we had an event that was tied to a specific time which helped; it gave us a very limited time frame. And then, again, researching into how the Triads operate and what their connection is to the clothing industry. All of that just helped flesh out the con.

John: I love the Parker giving her instructions on how to be photographed, you know Sophie gave her instructions three weeks ago for some other con. And this was kind of fun, creating the idea for how do you create- in modern media, how do you create the illusion of an actual human existing for some period of time, object permanence to a great degree?

Albert: Right.

John: So you figured out how to- you know, my wife watches a lot of fashion TV and it was kind of backing up: how do I actually know who the hell any of these people are? And it was because of the fashion shows and magazines. Cover both of those and you're done. And DVRs have certainly been a boon. And also this, printing off one magazine it's actually easier than we made it look. 

Albert: Yeah.

Marc: Oh yeah.

John: There's actually a service that prints off short runs of magazines that you can use if you're say doing a trade show or running a con.

Albert: This was all done on location. Beautiful house. This beautiful house in- was it in Clackamas?

Marc: Yeah, just outside of Clackamas.

Albert: It was great. It was a huge mansion that worked perfectly, and we ended up recreating the mansion later when we blow it up.

John: Also that what they're doing there, where they are looping, that's exactly what it looks like at Electric Entertainment - it’s basically just a laptop and a mic in the kitchen and that's how we finish up these episodes. No, but it was fun to be able to say, ‘Oh well, put the words on her mouth when we’re on her back, just like we do with actors.’ 

Marc: Right.

John: Presently, Tim Hutton delivers no more than 50% of the dialogue you hear per episode. We put the rest in his mouth later with a cunning Tim Hutton imitator. Yeah, this is to close off the sale that she's locked in.

Marc: Yeah, just to continue the sale.

John: Now Marc, you directed a bunch of episodes by this point, coming into this, right?

Marc: Yes.

John: And what was it like having a new human on the staff?

Marc: It was interesting. We- it brought a new life to it, and was interesting to see how everybody worked together. And she was just trying to get a feel for everybody and, you know, she was really easy going and said, ‘Listen, if you want a different performance, please, I'm here to help you guys.’

John: ‘Who likes to do this style? Who likes to do that style? Is that head writer really drinking that much in the middle of the day?’ Basic questions.

Marc: What is that smell coming from his trailer?

John: It's shame. It's the smell of shame. This scene was actually not in the original shoot, right? We wound up- this is one of the scenes that was: how much do we explain to the audience? Do they explain what Fashion Week is or isn't? And when we kinda looked at the first cut, it was like, you know what? I know because I watch it on Saturday morning on fashion TV, but we gotta make sure we establish the rules.

Albert: Right. Just a little more explanation as to how the fashion world works and where the con is going; just another step in the process.

John: And an excuse to get Aldis in orange.

Marc: Exactly and have Aldis in orange and Eliot in mascara.

John: That's eye makeup, that's not mascara.

Marc: Sorry.

John: Don’t. Please. Please, I don't want that phone call again, don't make that mistake.

[Laughter]

Albert: What's great about that factory, even this part of this set was also in that factory. 

Marc: This was just another portion of it.

John: Wait, so all the dresses and stuff, did we bring those in or those were-?

Marc: Yeah, we just put up the bolts of fabric and some employees.

Albert: We spent a lot of time in that sweatshop.

John: Yeah. As one does.

Marc: As one does. 

John: I love, by the way, in this episode, just watching what Kane is doing behind her during this scene. I'm- he's making a lot of interesting choices for Eliot there. Especially with the card snap coming up. And this was a lot of fun, too; this was a lot of the fun of the show is learning all the rules and idiosyncrasies of each industry.

Albert: Sure, that's part of the formula is figuring out what's the interesting world you can look into and then diving into and explaining to the audience how these worlds work.

Marc: Well it's funny, cause she needs to explain it to her teammates on the show.

John: And the card! I love the card delivery.

Marc: And the card the bam, yeah, you get to explain it to the teammates and explain it to the audience as well.

John: We’re really replicating what we’re doing in the room. Which is, one person knows the field pretty well and they explain- I remember when we did Iceman and we were talking about getting the serial numbers off the diamonds and Chris Downey was like, ‘I'm not following’ and I went, ‘It's like getting VIN numbers off a car’. ‘Oh, ok perfect!’ And that wound up in the script. Also this was fun having somebody who didn't know how the earbuds worked; it kinda reset the rules for the audience. And some beautiful- how did we get all this beautiful Boston stock footage?

Marc: Some we bought, some we shot. 

John: You actually went out and shot a lot.

Marc: I did. Myself and Dave Connell spent a couple days running around the great city of Boston.

John: Now this is your directing debut, isn’t it Albert?

Albert: It wasn’t my debut, but it was probably the longest sequence I've done.

John: And it's just naked backs.

Albert: It was just tedious, grueling labor to just have to order these models around to take off their clothes and take off their shoes. No, it was great, it was. We already had the set, we finished the big scenes in the set, so Marc let me take a few people out and just get as much fun behind the scenes stuff you can, so that’s kind of where we ended up.

Marc: You and Norbert, right?

Albert: Yeah, Norbert. That was one of his first days there.

John: I love the hair. Whose idea was the Swiss Miss hair?

Albert: Well the other thing about this episode was hair, makeup, wardrobe, obviously had a field day with it. They were really excited about being able to put their best foot forward on a lot of this stuff, so they were able to-

Marc: Yeah, they really had a good time.

John: I also love the fact that Hardison is basically using CIA technique of human intel signals  and analysis on the PA’s on a fashion show to figure out who’s in charge without actually figuring it out. It's a lot of fun, and our friend Apollo Robbins helped us out with the envelope slip, and it helps that Beth is very good-

Marc: This girl is great; she was a lot of fun, this girl, Caitlyn, Caitlyn Larimore. We- she read for us a few times on other things; we just knew there was gonna be something for her eventually.

John: So really, if you're looking to act, you should get out of whatever little LA or New York, whatever little hick town you're in and move to Portland because that's where you're gonna get some work.

Marc: Move to Portland; that's where it's gonna happen.

John: This actually hacking into the printer is something we've done before. A favorite trick of Apollo is to print stuff out in your office when you don't realize something is about to happen. And then the slide- 

Marc: That wonderful calligraphy on those envelopes was my mother in-law’s.

John: Really? That's great.

Marc: Yes, Louise.

John: We didn’t pay her did we?

Marc: Oh god no.

John: Alright, just making sure. We are a cable show.

Albert: But she ends up featured as a featured extra in the episode, too. She's in the fashion show; you'll see her later staring down Parker.

John: Mother-in-law? You got your mother-in-law on tv?

Marc: That's right.

John: Wow, you're the best son-in-law ever. This actress- actually nice shot. We wound up repeating that character later. I remember we were kinda restructuring; we were like, ‘Oh, we can just use her again, that’s fine.’

Albert: I remember watching her read, and she was great at it, so we decided to, rather than use a separate character for a scene later on, just, you know, bring her back. And she wound up doing that scene later when they approach the security people.

John: Just some love for the extra, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ A little something from Eliot just for you.

Marc: Just a little.

Albert: Well he had to know that if you're gonna do a fashion episode, one with lots of models, that Eliot was gonna be right in the thick of things there.

John: Yeah. And the overheard- How did you stage this? The overheard conversation is a staple of the show and the bane of all directors everywhere.

Marc: Yeah, we didn't have a lot of time on this day, but we figured out a way; just keep her in the background, eventually a couple close ups of her ears perk, and soon they'll drag her in deeper. 

John: Now each one of them is doing a specific person. I can't remember, he's doing-

Marc: Lagerfeld.

John: He's doing Lagerfeld. She’s doing Donatella Versace. I can't remember the British guy that Hardison is locked in on, cause I remember Aldis actually had pictures of him. I’m trying to remember...

Albert: André Leon Talley from Vogue, who is the legendary creative director of Vogue. And he's sort of channeling him. But yeah, again, during the course of research-

Marc: I got my ladder shot in there, by the way. I'm just two for two on-

John: On having ladders in your-

Marc: Yeah.

John: That's good; that's excellent.

Albert: This whole set was built; this was the whole fashion show.

John: We actually built this in the museum that we shot the finale for 207 in, right?

Marc: No, this was just an empty warehouse. 

John: Did we have permission?

Marc: Yes we did.

John: Good. Cause sometimes we don't; sometimes we just build stuff and then get the hell out before the cops show.

Marc: Yes, we used a lot of fabric to hide things.

Albert: But the beauty of it is, if you go to real fashion shows, it's kind of what it is. The highlight of fashions shows are supposed to be the clothes, so they keep the surroundings very minimal, and that's- that's always the idea of a fashion show. So luckily for us, it's fairly easy to recreate realistically as a set.

Marc: A lot of times it's just a wedding tent and a runway and chairs.

Albert: Well anyone who's watched Project Runway can see what it's like. It’s just a runway and some folding chairs.

John: I thought we built- that's interesting. Where did we go back to the museum for? I can't remember; it's gonna drive me crazy. Whose idea was the buckles?

Albert: Buckles was something I came up with in the script when I was trying to figure out how to explain what a poor designer Gloria is.

John: What's the one thing nobody likes a lot of?

Marc: Buckles.

Albert: So it became a little joke that someone that- someone, I think it was Chris actually pitched the joke about ‘pilgrim chic’ which we put in there, and found out later that that's actually kind of a real thing. If you make up any kind of joke in the fashion world you'll find out eventually that it's a real thing somewhere.

John: Yes.

Marc: This was actually the workers rec room, which was pretty much an open area room and- 

John: You're kind of ruining the whole sweatshop vibe with, like, ‘They had a rec room.’

Marc: Yeah, they had a rec room and basically we've pretty much four walled it. 

John: Yup.

Marc: And, you know, put in-

John: Which means?

Marc: To put up a wall to close it off. 

John: So this is a bigger space behind him.

Marc: Yeah, it's actually pretty much the same size, but it's just a platform where they had their lunch table set up. But we liked the ability to have shots like that where we can look down onto the floor, it was always-

John: And then shoot back up.

Marc: It was always something that I know that you guys mention, that we wanna have more connection with our victims. So we placed that shot-

John: It is tricky, particularly when we’re doing complicated ones, you can lose track of that vic that's in the opening, and we really tried this year to tie it back a little bit more.

Albert: Yeah, it was interesting. I had a conversation with another writer just the other day about - who works on a crime procedural - and they have the same issue about how to connect with their victims. It's much harder for them because usually their victims are dead. So they show up in the beginning dead, and they can wrap things up with the relative of the victim at the end. If you notice, what a lot of crime shows do is they have flashbacks, so then you get to learn the personality of the victims through the flashbacks.

John: Oh, interesting.

Albert: So we don't do that, but our victims are alive so there are opportunities, like in this scene, to reconnect with the people who we’re working for and establish what our emotional stakes are.

John: And this is also one of the places where we sort of set up- and if you watch what we did with Jeri’s character, and sort of the difference between Sophie and Tara Cole. Tara Cole is a short grifter. Sophie is never gonna push it, she's never gonna try to get the big payout. And Tara’s job is to get in and get out with as much money as possible, so this is one of the times where we really sort of set up how she needs to adjust. Though when you look at the back half, we don't really change it that much. The team doesn't really change, it's- she kind of adjusts herself to fit in the team a bit more. They wind up using her short term push just as a different sort of batter.

Albert: Whereas personality-wise, there's something you told me I remember which helped make everything click which was - Tara is really kind of a guy’s girl. You know, she's the kind of girl who sits around and watches football with the guys on Sundays. Sophie is very much a girl's girl; she's out there doing the shopping and fashion and all that stuff. So that kind of distinguishes the two characters. Although they fulfill the same role within the team, they're very distinctive in terms of their personality. 

John: But that's also from when we originally created the show. A lot of these characters have slightly different personalities, and the actors brought other personalities, and we realized as long as that job was fulfilled in the team, you can range pretty widely within there. How did you shoot- where the hell is she?

Albert: She's supposed to be-

Marc: Tashkent, right?

Albert: Tashkent. So- 

John: Uzbekistan?

Albert: Yes.

John: Oh right there you go. Of course. ‘Cause Tashkent is in Uzbekistan. Who doesn't know that?

Albert: Right.

Marc: And yes, so we shot Gina on a much later date, during a later episode, and just one green screen and some stock footage behind a little wind machine and there you are.

Albert: And camels.

Marc: And some camels, yes.

John: As one has in Tashkent. 

Marc: In Portland.

John: Oh no, we went to the Portland zoo see, I was hoping you'd give them the whole speech about sand, and yeah. That's a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of- and that was another thing, too, to make sure that Sophie wasn't just a character that you checked in with once a week. She had to have her own little arc that whenever you went to her she had a distinct attitude about the team. Yes and the reindeer gag, which I really foolishly insisted on keeping in the script because it was my favorite bit.

Albert: It was brilliant; it was great; it was all John.

John: That's mine. Whenever you see a joke that doesn't quite work and seems kind of doomed but we keep, that's usually me diggin in at the table, particularly if it's absurdist. Now did we put banners up or is that digital?

Marc: Digital. Those were digital banners on the building. Do our little whip pans to Eliot and whip back. 

John: Just to establish, yes, he's with a model. Where do you think he was gonna be? And he’s out.

Marc: And he's angry he has to leave the model.

John: The- and again, it was interesting to, sort of, know that we had to plot out these arcs on the back six, and figuring out exactly, like, how do we show trust and acceptance? And, you know, you can do it in dialogue, but you don't want people talking about their intentions. And the ear bud became kind of an interesting metaphor; it goes in and out of use over the back six and even with Eliot we wound up using it.

Marc: Yeah, it's like the chief asking for your gun and badge.

John: Yeah, exactly. And it also solved the problem later when you know it’s- she shouldn't have heard X. 

Albert: Right.

John: And that's a big problem on the show is in theory, if they can all hear each other’s conversations... Whereas a lot of cop shows, a big chunk of the time is, ‘What did you find out from witness x, Billy?’ What did you find out about witness y? Alright now let's put it together.’ They know. Now how did we do this blow?

Marc: Now that wass digital smoke, and that is a model.

Albert: Green screen model.

Marc: Yeah, we modeled the windows and actually shot it in our parking lot right here in Highland, in Santa Monica Boulevard.

John: Now we built- we do builds on the- building’s blowing up is better with models. The cars we've found we can do just digitally, but the buildings really look great with the model.

Marc: But we still use the model for the car as well. We just don't have the time or the money to do full explosions, you know, we do just a little aftermath with some debris and smoke.

Albert: Especially when it's someone's real house.

Marc: Yes.

Albert: Don't want to-

John: Generally they kind of frown on that, of just blow out the windows.

Albert: Because last year we did, Marc and I worked on another episode where we blow up a warehouse. And it was an abandoned warehouse, so you blow out the windows and break the glass, so it's not such a big deal.

Marc: Yeah, we did a little damage to the Prison Break set on that. What they shot was-

John: I remember, because I pulled up the day you were shooting that, I was like ‘I hope I haven't missed the blow.’ I was a quarter mile away and my windshield shook and I'm like OK, that was a little bigger than we anticipated’.

Albert: But this was a house with six kids was it?

Marc: Six kids, yeah.

Albert: So it was-

John: So blowing it up wouldn't have changed it all that much.

Albert: Probably not. Actually that family was incredibly neat.

John: And this is a lot of fun. And again, this is where, if you pay attention, we never tell you Tara’s backstory; if you pay attention all six episodes, you can figure out exactly what Tara used to do before she became a con woman. The information she knows, the way she puts stuff together, you’ll figure it out. Also the yelling. This was a lot of fun, because Eliot would be annoyed in this situation, and Chris Kane is never funnier than when Eliot is incredibly annoyed.

Marc: That’s right, and it's usually with Hardison.

John: Yeah. Thank you, I don't know how you make this show without phone cameras I really- we couldn't have made this show in 1978 this would've been a lot harder.

Albert: Or earbuds.

John: Or earbuds. Well earbuds we could've got around, but- no earbuds might have made our life easier, actually.

Albert: This was another thing that came up in research, actually, when I wrote a book about the Chinese Triads, and it is actually true that they're signature weapon is a meat cleaver. We looked at a few pictures of them, they're pretty impressive; they are really big and they have engravings on them, stuff like that. I've also looked at way too many pictures of victims of the Triads.

Marc: Yeah, missing fingers, and hands, and arms.

Albert: But that, again, it just added another fun element, knowing that there was, in reality there was a signature weapon that they use, and gave Eliot another fight scene.

John: Of course they'd be fancy meat cleavers, you're not gonna just pick a meat cleaver at Tesco or the kitchen section of Best Buy; you're gonna get one specially made. This was a lot of fun, too, something we haven't done in a while, which was watching Eliot figure out his fight space. You know, control access doing the math in this head. You know, it's always a little easier if no ones around him, just so he can tear people around a little easier. Fun stunt. Jerri did this, right?

Marc: Yeah, she was really nervous about doing her first fight with us, but she was a trooper; she did a great job.

John: She actually killed that guy. I feel a little bad about that, that's the first time we've admitted that, but you know. This was one of my favorite fights, cause we don't do a lot of weapon fights.

Marc: Yeah.

John: And it really reads well; the cleavers read real. Also we do a nice fight style with Chris here.

Albert: We did use cleavers back in the first season with the Wedding Job.

John: Oh that's right, we had the kitchen thing.

Albert: A kitchen thing. But it was a different kind of fight; it was a one on one in an enclosed space. This was an open space with multiple attackers ,and again, different props to use. So like, you saw the mannequin dummy there, and the rolling carts, and things like that, and so it ended up being a really fun scene.

John: And again, thank god for the surveillance culture - the fact that there are so many traffic cameras. Although you may bitch about privacy, it really helps us.

Marc: It really, really helps us.

John: This was interesting. This- I forget how this came up, I think the fact he had two IDs, but they had only checked one. I had a friend who was a Mountie- and remember, we were talking about my buddy who had done undercover up in Canada, and gh said the problem was, the guys got the fake, ran up records on fake Canadian IDs and you never knew the original crimes. Yeah. ‘Hey, how does Tara Cole know how to handle a meat cleaver?’ You’ll find-

Marc: Yup.

John: There you go, and that's a nice hit. And the head butt. I love the head butt, I'm sorry, man, that's a great way to end a fight.

Marc: She gets to take part.

John: Also, there's a lot of really nice hair flipping around in that fight scene, I gotta say.

Marc: I love-

John: I don't know whose looks better.

Marc: It's like a [Unintelligible. Sounds like ‘Germat’?] commercial.

[Laughter]

John: And that's, again, one of the problems with having a really uber competent team is, ‘OK they would have run this guy's background. What is the one loophole we could find that Hardison could screw up?’ You know, it's not screw up, it's nobody’s perfect.

Albert: It's just overlooked.

John: That's the trick, it has to always be some sort of fair play thing. Not a mistake, not just a ‘I didn't look in that drawer.’ This is a legitimate loophole.

Albert: Look how great this location is, though. It's everywhere; there's stuff everywhere. We really would not have been able to duplicate this on a set. 

Marc: No.

John: What? No?

Marc: Never. 

John: I love that he keeps the voice up here. That killed me here the first time I saw the dalies I was like, ‘Is he still doing Lagerfeld’?

Marc: Jack Bouvier. 

John: Yeah the fingerless gloves are really the pièce de résistance there. There's a lot of stuff there that could be on anybody, but the fingerless gloves really digs in.

Albert: Again, that's straight out of the Lagerfeld book.

Marc: Tim went for it.

John: Are those glasses actually rose tinted?

Albert: Yes.

John: Yes they are, that's magnificent. And the evil speech of evil: ‘Listen, I'm just a businessman. I have obligations.’ You know, in his head he's keeping many people employed back in China. You know, and he's a copy fighter, he's like those electronic freedom foundation guys who doesn't believe in copyright.

Albert: He's a hero, really.

John: He is a hero.

Albert: Of his own story, but- 

John: Exactly, he just happens to interact with our story. 

Albert: Exactly.

John: And this is actually a cue, this is a hint to where Nate’s- This winds up being the first episode of the second half of the season. This is kind of a hint of where Nate’s arc is going for the season, where he's getting so addicted to control and not losing and beating the bad guy, he's starting to make poor decisions. And he makes a series of remarkably poor decisions through the back six that really just the competence of the team protects him from.

Albert: He's kind of like those football teams that keep pulling it out in the 4th quarter and just decide that's just what they have to do. So they don’t mind coasting through the rest of the game or even, you know, getting down and behind before then.

John: Yeah it's- it's the mental discipline, and something that Parker says later on in the season which is, ‘Be the Nate Ford that we came back for.’ The mental discipline that made him legendary and which they count on is starting to slip. And it's not because of the booze, it's because of what he's substituting the booze with.

Marc: Right.

John: This is me drinking my Guinness, by the way.

[Laughter]

Albert: It's not your Guinness, it's what you’re substituting for the Guinness.

John: No, no, this is my Guinness; I'm actually drinking.

Albert: Oh ok. It's actually another Guiness that is substituting for his Guinness.

[Laughter]

John: It's, again, a Guinness that's somewhere else that I would like to be drinking. Some bargaining, trying to get them to take Eliot instead of Jeri.

Marc: That wasn't something he planned for. 

John: No, no, and it's interesting, and again, this is all trust issues. She kind of volunteered herself for this position, she’s, you know- 

Albert: The trick is, part of the whole episode was really the character dynamics. Because it was a new character, because it was a new team member, even though she'd been introduced in the episode beforehand, this is really the first full con they run together as a team. So it was a very tricky thing, and so I had the outlines of what the broad strokes would be, but this is the point when you go to the show runner and you say, ‘John how does this work, exactly?’ And then John takes over.

John: We stare at the ceiling and- that's what the writers room is for. And this is great, we actually wound up paralleling this shot. You created this shot for this episode, Marc; we wound up paralleling this argument in, like, two other episodes. There's actually a similar version of this shot in the first half in the season finale, where it's like, we are now sitting judgment of Nate Ford, and we’re a little distrubed that we’re not feeling very comfortable here. Yeah, and this cutting pattern replicates, and it’s interesting, and it's because we have editors working over certain episodes that make certain choices. And those are I think the names of-

Albert: They were real Electric Entertainment employees.

John: ‘Maybe I want to meet...’ Yes. Hardison is the most hard done by character; he never gets what he wants. And that, again, is one of those things where this episode was shot in 6 ½ days.

Marc: Yes, there's my mother-in-law.

John: There you go; she's a lovely woman.

Marc: A lovely woman.

John: Are you checking the list of actors to pick her name up? That's not good.

Marc: No, gosh no.

John: You know, we had four different ways this scam works. All depending on exactly how this shooting schedule worked out. And I remember I had to sit down with my wife and I was like, ‘Alright’, cause she's big into this, I was like, ‘Exactly what is the timing and choreography on a fashion show?’ And there, the thing with the dresses and they're all transported across town. So it was a good lesson for writers is, the great thing about TV is you're shooting every week; the really great thing about TV that will also drive you crazy is, you learn how to have a bunch of choices. Because sometimes the world decides not cooperate with you, and you can't shut down production for two days and just go- You've worked on big films, you've seen this. Like, ‘You know what? We're just gonna take a day off and find the right location.’

Marc: Yes.

John: No. Not so much.

Albert: The scene coming up with Parker in the gown. This is really, if you think about it and you say that you're gonna do an episode with the Leverage team involved in the fashion world, kind of the promise of the premise is you're gonna get Parker in a fashion show. In a gown, in a fashion show.

John: Right, because she's the one person who would despise it.

Albert: Right, and you kind of have to deliver this scene.

John: This was also shot later, and it was interesting because we don't usually get Parker and Eliot- you know, Parker and Eliot in a two-hander. And if you go back, you can see in the back half of the season when we- especially when we saw how it worked out in The Lost Heir Job, it became kind of a little more standard that we go to this partnership. You also see it pop up in the bottle show, the bar show, what the hell did we call it?

Marc: Bottle Job.

John: We called it The Bottle Job, that's right.

Marc: The problem with doing these two-handers is he can get her to laugh and break.

John: Yeah, Chris can crack Beth up. Him doing the dirty dresses on the floor line, Beth I think broke character maybe ten times because we are in the basement shooting that day. 

Marc: And this is the dress that Nadine our costume designer built.

Albert: Yeah.

John: It's a pretty amazing dress.

Marc: A beautiful dress.

John: The thumb drive of intent. Thank you thumb drive, for giving us a short hand so audiences know what we're doing. 

Marc: Yes, so she basically- you'll see that all of the Andre V, that's the Andre V character, has a touch of yellow in it.

John: That's right. Nadine created a unified theme for the fashion line - the fake fashion line that we were doing. 

Albert: She created an actual line.

Marc: Yeah, so she created a whole line and there's a touch of yellow in everything and as you’ll see when we get to the runway-

John: Where's this dress? We should auction this dress off.

Albert: Nadine probably has it.

Marc: It's actually in my car.

John: Oh no. I wish I didn't know that.

Marc: And then Dave Connell carried it with the lighting design as well.

John: Oh that's great, that is great. It's like we do this for a living.

Marc: Almost.

John: I love that Parker does the most- the little slide across the spot; that's a lot of fun. And now, did you shoot this at night? You had how many days on this set?

Marc: I think we did this-

John: You had the day, which was the warm up and then-

Marc: I think we had this location for two days.

John: That's not bad.

Marc: That's Jeffery Gilbert who played Andre V; he was just great. And I love Parker with the moves.

John: With the big head turn.

Marc: Just for a moment she thinks she got it under control, of course.

John: No, not so much. Walking is hard; walking in those heels is hard.

Albert: Walking in heels is hard.

John: I also love the little improv- it wasn’t in the script, but I remember seeing it in the dalies - she cracks her neck.

Marc: Yes that was definite Parker move. And I know this had to be- the scene coming up had to be a John Rogers line, where it's written that Andre V is banging his head repeatedly against the wall.

[Laughter]

John: Well, yeah, because I do that in the writers room.

Marc: And they said, ‘We gotta move on.’ I said, ‘No, I need to get the guy banging his head.’

John: Trust me, have some sympathy. And this is where we pay off the idea that Tara has heard about this team, and now believes she's given Nate one clue as to what she’s gonna do and she's desperately hoping they're as good as they think they are, and she’s doing the set up to this, she's setting up this beat. It was tricky, because we did actually play- she does actually look like she's selling the team out here, and if you're watching the DVD, you are watching all the way through the seasons. aAnd we did go back and forth on how loyal would she be to the team. And it really is the fact that one of the reasons you watch the show, or at least I think one of the reasons you watch the show, is the family vibe.

Albert: Absolutely.

John: And just having somebody who wasn’t into the family vibe in the middle of it, it might've been interesting from a writing standpoint, and we’re all fans of the show who write the show, it wasn’t interesting from an audience standpoint; it felt a little overly clever, a little constructed. But we do it just enough that we can get she's part of the team, but she doesn't buy into Nate’s bullshit, and as a result her actions in the finale make some sort of organic sense. And the van, oh, the van.

Marc: Gotta have the van.

John: Not anymore.

[Laughter]

Marc: Well-

John: No the- and this, again, we had like four variations how this particular con worked. Who did those designs? Who did-? We have a lot of actual fashion designs floating around in this.

Marc: I think Nadine.

Albert: Nadine and her team did pretty much everything.

John: They sketched them up and sent them off to Derek to do the computer graphics.

Albert: They did the sketches, they did the buckles sketches, they designed the clothes. Like I said, this was a real- this was a field day for the wardrobe and makeup and hair.

Marc: For the glam department.

John: That was nice, too. Cause the thing we originally missed, that having him hand him the badge, it’s a nice touch. Again, the trick when you’re doing- Some of the endings we stop and explain a lot, some just kind of unroll, and you have to make sure you set up all the pieces. And a lot of times when you're running and gunning and shooting, that stuff goes away.

Marc: It does. And so much of it is like, you get to a certain scene like, oh my god, in the flashback you're supposed to see that happens later.

John: Do you break those off separately when you shoot these or-? I mean, I know you, kind of, barely read the script.

Marc: A lot of times they are within the scenes and god bless Suzanne, our script supervisor, she just, she-

John: She's the best. She's actually the best I've  ever worked with.

Marc: She's the gatekeeper, yeah, she’s amazing. 

John: A Script Supervisor’s job, in case you don't know, if you're watching, is to sit next to the Director with a copy of the script, with special notations that they go to school to learn, to track what is in every shot, what the angles are, what the sizes are, who’s crossing, who’s walking in from what direction.

Marc: She's basically- she's keeping score and she’s the directors best friend, or worst enemy.

John: You will hear a lot of directors, even really experienced directors say-

Marc: As well as an editor, because, you know, an editor just gets a hard drive of footage, and if he can't decipher her notes, then he's gonna struggle as well.

John: I've seen really experienced directors, guys who are famous, they will finish and will turn to their script supervisor and go ‘What do I need?’ Cause they're watching the coverage while the directors watching the-

Marc: And we do a lot of different things and as a director, you're watching performances, and you're making sure you're hitting all the right emotional beats, and you know, when we do certain scenes where we have multiple characters, or you’re doing a 360-

John: We have a five-hander here.

Marc: Yeah, or doing a 360 and the camera’s going around and around, you need someone to be keeping score for you.

John: I like the physicality, by the way, watching this again, of watching Tim does with his face when he’s with the character and when he's just dropped it, and all of a sudden that kind of fake character, the wardrobe doesn't matter if he's just pissed, and you know he's dug in.

Marc: As soon as he's pulled off the glasses-

John: It's Nate.

Marc: It's Nate. 

John: Great job.

Marc: And we haven't even had him say that, when Tom, later on, you know, points that out, you're not even who you say you are, he, like, looks at him in a certain way.

John: Yeah. No, nice call. The- oh yes, this was, again, interesting, is one of the things that really depends on the speed with which these guys can rip this stuff off. You know, in one of the original versions we were talking about where the dresses are actually transported- right after the fashion show, the dresses actually are driven across town and are put in a private closed viewing for the buyers. They won’t let anybody else close to those dresses because even with photographs, they can be knocked off within a matter of 48-72 hours. Which is stunning, which is what you're trying to fight when you're trying to fight piracy. And hung by his own sin, which is one of the rules.

Albert: There's always a rule. Yup. Going back to the wardrobe and hair and makeup departments, the other thing you don't end up seeing is that they went through a lot of their own iterations of what- before what you see on the screen. They did a lot of tests, they did a lot of different looks. If we had time, we could probably show all these other test photos they took, and different hair configurations, and make up, and at one point they did this whole sort of Kabuki look, but we decided that might've been a little too fashion forward for this show. They really went all out.

Marc: They went all out.

John: Did you say fashion forward?

Albert: Sure.

Marc: And some of them were just based on the element of time, you know, we wouldn't have time to change actors over to a certain style, and-

John: Yeah, cause I mean, that's the thing, is when the difference between shooting Parker as Parker, and shooting Parker as Parker as fashion model, is two hours to change that character's look.

Albert: At least.

John: At least. And the walk of victory.

Marc: Dun dun dunnn.

John: This is nice, this is- I, you know, I always love the 60s, 70s call back; it's a nice style choice. Also, you've got that great street to shoot down. Where was that? Was that outside of-?

Marc: That was right outside of the actual warehouse location.

Albert: Across the river.

Marc: Just across the river from downtown Portland, so it was really close; you know, had a nice overpass.

John: Looked like that section of T that’s elevated.

Marc: This, again, is supposed to be in Asia, which was actually just another area of the warehouse again.

John: And then that's a kind of an iconic shot for this show now. That's nice, the Jeri Ryan era, as the fans call it. If you go on the boards and see the fans arguing over which six episodes are the best in the giant ouvre of Leverage ouvre. And she pays a horrible horrible price for her treachery.

Albert: Those are real working steam presses, and I can tell you from having been there, they were ridiculously hot. 

[Laughter]

Albert: I didn't want to be anywhere near it. I was like, ‘Wow, Gloria is really a trooper going through this.’ She had to learn how to operate it; it had, like, foot petals and things.

John: This is why it's good to be a writer, is, we write horrible things and then the directors and actors go live there, while we occasionally- Sometimes we venture from the hotel room to go visit the set.

Marc: At times.

John: But it's for the best if the writer isn't there; just causes trouble.

Albert: We can go pose and take pictures with the models; that's when we show up on set.

John: Yes. And then this is actually based on, there's a bunch of factories now that are owned by the employees that were taken over. Some car factories, some- there was a big thing in South America for a while of the workers seizing foreclosed factories and opening them up as co-ops.

Marc: I did not know that.

John: Yes, there you go. Anything we can do to undermine the infrastructure of capitalism of America in Leverage we try to, we try to.

Marc: Now this is a happier factory, it's brighter.

John: Brighter colors.

Marc: Yeah, it's brighter colors, there's sound.

[Laughter]

John: I love that. I love you sitting in the director’s chair like, ‘Alright, now make it the happy sweatshop.’

Marc: How else can we make them happy?

John: Lunch breaks.

Marc: Lunch breaks! Sandwiches. Sandwiches make everyone happy. Everybody’s happy with a sandwich.

John: There you go, and milk, that's delicious. Look, and we saw that particular extra was unhappy earlier.

Albert: That's right.

Marc: She was.

John: There you go; really sold it. And again, it's interesting because, you know, you shot two years of this now, and you understand the vics aren't a big part of actual screen time, they are on in the opening, they're on in the closing. Those actors are insanely important, because it means you have to like them really fast, and if you don't like them really fast, you know, it won’t pay off.

Marc: Yeah, and they have to keep up because, you know, it's not like we get a lot of time to do rehearsals, and so some of the crux of the episode can be in their hands.

Albert: Oh yeah, the emotional core of the story always hinges on the victims and their choices.

John: And sometimes those scenes with Tim Hutton in the bar, that's the entire reason you're gonna care about this episode. And this is a lot of fun with- this is when we- again, we really track, if you watch the back six episodes where Tara Cole feels in how she's getting the money. Happy about getting the money, ambivalent about getting the money, not caring so much, you know. She never doesn't care, cause that's just wrong. And now, it's interesting, Tim and I had a nice conversation about this particular phone call, cause he called me about this and he's like, ‘I'm not sure where we're going with this.’ I'm like, ‘You know that moment when you've had an argument with the wife and you've realized you've said the wrong thing and you can never take it back?’ And he's like, ‘Oh yeah.’ and I'm like, ‘That one right there.’ And it's one of my favorite little Nate/Sophie scenes and they're not even in the same room. Because it's, you know, it's- banter is fun, relationships are hard.

Marc: Right.

Albert: Oh I like that. Banter is fun, relationships are hard. 

John: And, you know, end of day, unless you show a couple of these scenes every now and then, you don't buy these relationships as real. And that's why I think one of the reasons the Eliot/Nate relationship feels very grounded is, we give opportunity for Chris Kane and Tim to kind of dig in on the fact that they don't always agree, those characters.

Albert: And you gotta give somewhere for the characters to go. That's the thing about a scene like this, at the end it gives them somewhere to go after here.

John: That was great. Thank you so much, guys, that was a lot of fun. The episode was fantastic.

Albert: That was The Runway Job.

Marc: Thank you.

John: Anything you wanna say to the nice folks before we move onto the next one?

Marc: Stay tuned.

[Laughter]

John: It's a DVD, I don't think they’re gonna wander off-

Marc: For the season.

John: Oh for another season, that's right. Season 3. Albert anything you wanna say?

Albert: No this was great, this was, I think, my third episode working with Marc. Third, that I'd written. Kind of fourth.

John: Kind of codependent.

Marc: Yes, yes.

Albert: We are, but I've learned that one thing: banter is fun, but relationships are hard, so we gotta keep working on it.

Marc: That’s right.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 10 #Season 2 Episode 10 #The Runway Job

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Kip v Age of Calamity

For someone who writes tough shit on Age of Calamity, you sure don’t see me writing a better story. So maybe I should stop complaining and be satisfied with what was given to me. 

...or...

...maybe we can dedicated a few hours of my time to spite an ask. 

Even though the entire argument of “why are you mad if you can’t write a story yourself” is inherently flawed and pointless considering that’s the equivalent of telling me I should chug spoiled milk because I’ve never milked a cow, I’ll fucking step up to the plate here, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. 

So here is Part 1 of your residential Kip approved rewrite of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Or as I like to call it: 

Ok so before I get into it, a couple things I wanna establish. First, I know I just said I’m doing this out of spite, but I’m actually also doing this for fun. I really enjoy and am passionate about the writing process, so if you were looking for an angry rant about how terrible everyone’s opinions are about everything, this isn’t that. I don’t think that I am a better writer than anyone, or than the professionals that made this game, or that I am somehow superior to Nintendo. I am someone with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t have the constraints of producers and mandated directives and executives rubbing their hands in the story to make it more marketable or dumbed down or any of the other chaos that goes into crafting a videogame. So while obviously I think the people involved in this could have done a much better job, this isn’t a bash to say, “look how easy it is to make a story” because there’s a ton of unseen drama that goes into development that I have the luxury of avoiding, and it’s a miracle that any games are coherent and enjoyable in the first place. I’m just a lil Kip doing a fun lil exercise. 

This little series is also not going to be a fanfic. I’m going to be telling the story chronologically as if you were playing for yourself, but it’s going to be from my omniscient perspective because 1) I need to relate the story to the gameplay 2) That would take way too much time to actually make this into a fanfiction as it already takes a hell of a lot of time to even plan out the beats of this rewrite and 3) This is less going to be a telling of a story, and more of a fun little exploration on the Three Act Structure and The Hero’s Journey. In fact, I am going to try and keep the given story of Age of Calamity as intact as possible. 

The general ending is going to be the same, the characters used are going to remain roughly unchanged, (there will be no new characters, or removal of characters) and characters that live or die and where they end up are going to be mostly the same with how the original game is written. I know, I know, we all would love to see the Champions die brutally or to get us that sweet sweet Link angst or to have a game with multiple endings. And even though I personally would change some of those premises in Age of Calamity, I’m going to strive to keep it all as intact as possible, just to prove wrong the misconception that the story was only bad because of the writer’s choices for the general arc. I am a firm believer that biggest weaknesses of this game are in its methods of conveying its story, a problem in the storytelling process, and not (necessarily/only) the story product itself. 

If you want to use any of the ideas that I present, go for it! I release them into the public domain, I have no plans whatsoever to write a fanfic for this myself, in fact I already have my own separate Pre-Botw fic story that I am pouring myself into, so I give the people full permission to take these ideas off of me. 

Alrighty! With all that out of the way, let’s get into:

HERE IS THE VERSION IN A GOOGLE DOC FORM BECAUSE TUMBLR HATES YOU MOBILE PEEPS

Spoilers! Obviously. I’m going to act on the assumption that you know the full story of Age of Calamity to save myself some time, capiche?

Ok so we start out the game roughly the same, with eggbot being chased and forced to time travel into a portal. But, there is going to be some important differences in details. 

We have the part of the scene where Zelda awakens her powers, and at the same time, something else in Hyrule Castle glows with the same aura. However, this glow is not coming from the Princess’ Tower, but instead, the camera pulls back from the fields of Fort Hateno, sweeps over Hyrule (where you can see the Guardians and the sense of destruction and all that) and the camera eventually flies over Castle Town, then within the Castle, weaving through the halls, until the camera stop and focuses on the entrance of a destroyed room, slowly creeping in. It’s a room that’s been demolished, stone rubble from Guardian blasts ruin the floor and cave in from the ceiling, there’s a small fire in the corners of the room, and from the props that you can make out, it seems to look like some study or office of some sort. The room is small, but domed and circular, signifying that it’s of a bit more importance than you might think . The desks and books and all buried beneath this collapsed stone brick. But as the camera focuses on that pile of rocks, from within that rubble, you see that same glowing aura that Zelda has, glowing brighter and brighter until finally out pops, eggbot.

Now, you can have that same sequence within the game where he runs around all cute, the outter wall of the room is broken so eggbot can look outside and see the Calamity’s destruction. Then that cut to Zelda saying “I want to save...everyone,” and this is important because I need the fade in between Zelda’s line and the fade back to eggbot to wordlessly imply that he is hearing these words, something that’s already done pretty well in the original cutscene. Anyhow, then the Guardian Stalker pops from behind, prepares to shoot, and eggbot can escape into its little time portal, and then the malice follows or whatever.  

However, I’m not gonna immediately cut to the title, but instead, we have the music build to eggbot’s little jump in a pretty climactic way. But then the music still lingers slightly, and rests in suspense, camera is still looking out the window where eggbot jumped. It pulls back, turning back into this room that eggbot emerged from. Music is still relatively silent. Then, from the corner, you see some of the fire suddenly catch onto something. Flattened between the rocky rubble, just a few feet where eggbot emerged, is a purple cloak, trimmed with gold, flapping just slightly in the wind. [Said flapping being what causes it to catch] The fire catches, burning through the cloak, and underneath it, is a fallen copy of the Sheikah tapestry of 10k years ago. Camera zooms into that art of the Calamity, music suspends, merge to title card, then the music hits that climax and BOOM, “Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity.” Main Theme plays. Let the opening title roll.

Now the reason I changed this slightly is because 1) I wanted to earlier set up some of the plot points that I have planned for this (some of which you might already guess or maybe not who knows *wink wink*) and 2) I think that the original opening could have been much stronger with its hook. Yes, the element of mystery is established with eggbot’s existence and that element of time travel, but then the opening immediately goes into saying “This is the tale of champions, a diminutive Guardian who traveled backwards through time, and the Great Calamity they faced.” So...you just dampened that hook you established two seconds ago because you explained it all. Sure, it doesn’t completely ruin it, but I think the impact would be much stronger if that text wasn’t there at all, and the music and hype of the tapestry moving and coming alive is all there was. I’d much rather that element of time travel just be explained through the cinematography itself, because you can already understand that perfectly with that scene where you see the portal lead into birds flying around a beautiful Hyrule Castle.

Also, the music in this game is fantastic! So letting moments that really let you soak it in, I think would be very beneficial. So now this scene serves as a much more effective hook before we get into the actual plot. The mystery of eggbot’s identity is heightened and left a bit more unexplained, you have this mysterious circular room that you’ve never seen before, and the set up of details that will eventually serve later revelations in the plot, cough cough. 

Then you hit Chapter 1, Link gameplay, eggbot and the tower, that’s all the same. I got no changes for the story there, it’s a great introduction. However! I know my strength here is writing and I am by no means a game developer or designer, but I need, I absolutely need to add one aspect to the gameplay.

Near the end of the first stage, where there are those three moblins at the end, I want to add something that I’m going to call, a gambit. The game already introduced you to the special meter and “press a to use special attack” thing, but I want Impa and Link to use a gambit to defeat this last horde of moblins. Essentially, you press A to use your special attack, BUT, if another character is in proximity, the attack is even more powerful. Every pair of characters has a special little attack, that does tons of damage, and during said sequence, there are voiced lines, or at the very very least text boxes that comment on it. And with this gambit, while a regular solo special attack still does a lot of damage, I’m gonna nerf it slightly to encourage players to use this gambit feature. 

Now, why did I add this? Because I need to better connect this gameplay to the story on more than an external “lets defeat this and go from point A to point B” type of way. I need something in the gameplay to better serve to the game’s main theme of “teamwork makes the dreamwork” and all that. The CURRENT gameplay, although absolutely fun and fantastic, just doesn’t do this. I need just one element to serve this theme while ALSO having the dual purpose of serving as character interaction. The current structure of Age of Calamity works where the sidequests and battle serve as your character interaction, development, and banter, while the cutscenes serve the main story beats, and important plot revelations. The cutscenes just aren’t crafted to support the weight of these dozens of characters while also giving them all interesting interactions, and that’s fine! So I’m just adding this feature to the gameplay, because being able to customize different lines for different characters for different stages that are voiced will go a long way into making the character development seem more fleshed out. And this gambit feature doesn’t necessarily change the way you play the game drastically, as you can still have four character slots and have them split up to take on the battlefield, but now you can split them off into groups of 2. And also, because I’m not completely blind to game design, the damage percentage boost of these gambit attacks will not increase as much, just slightly lower, than the damage boost of a solo attack when you level up. So what I mean is, when your character is weaker level, you are forced to rely on others in order to defeat your enemies, but, with the way the leveling up percents work, your characters can still reach a point where they can defeat big bosses all on their own without gambits. THAT way, when certain events happen in later chapters, when your character is all leveled up, (and maybe they awaken a sacred power or two) it feels all the more powerful when you can go off on your own. You can feel how your character has grown in strength because you can contrast it with your teamwork gameplay of earlier levels. AND it still highlights the importance of that theme of companionship, because you would never have gotten to this level of strength had you not relied on your friends. 

OK, so the stage 1 ends with a gambit attack, Impa compliments Link’s fighting style or something that shows her admiration or respect for him. And then stage 2 for the Road to the Royal Lab is the same, but gambit dialogue for that stage is Impa complimenting Link, Impa being protective of Zelda, and since this is Zelda’s first playable area, Zelda’s gambit lines can be about kinda brushing Link aside like “I want to capable to hold my own in battle but thank you” to Link (cause I never really got that same “I don’t really like you” vibe that is established in botw for this game) and then to Impa Zelda’s gambit lines can be like “is this thrill what you always feel when battling?” and Impa is like “yeah isn’t it great we should do it more often!” and then you can allude to that with a sidequest for Zelda’s training or something. I just want to better connect sidequest stories with this stuff. And also, gambits are obviously optional so that’s why this is all just banter and character development and not actually plot points, and I’m going to stick with just one-on-one dialogue, although it should be theoretically possible to have gambit boosts of three and four, but I feel that would be too much as I don’t want to ruin the gameplay balance and encourage you to keep all four character slots close together, because splitting them up is an important part of the game. Anyhow!

So Chapter 1 is done, my changes being almost purely in the gameplay because this is the start of the story and the character set up is important. Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 is basically the establishment of the ordinary world, and in the Three Act Structure it’s basically Act 1. Act 1 is all about set up. I need to really focus this chapter on both introducing the player to the mechanics of the game, having them connect to the characters and the characters connect to each other through the gameplay, and I need to establish this tone so that when I rip it away, and change the tone during the threshold, it feels more meaningful and suspenseful. 

As you can see from the diagrams, Act 1 has something called the Inciting Incident. The Inciting Incident is going to be the Yiga attack in Chapter 2, where our heroes first experience the true dangers of their journey, and there is no turning back. BUT I’m getting ahead of myself.

Chapter 2 is also exactly the same. I would literally change nothing about the Champion’s sections (other than my addition of gambit interaction of course) because they’re all pretty great. For the record, yes, evil egg is still a thing, and yes, Zelda and the gang can still discover those pictures of the Calamity in eggbot, yes you beat up Revali, and the Divine Beast sequences are the same. I just really need that gambit dialogue to help establish character relations. Revali quips at Link, Mipha protects him, Daruk is his buddy [I thought a cool gambit attack for Link and Daruk to better show that they are old friends could be them both chewing down on some rocks, before striking an enemy simultaneously. Because they never eat rocks together and I just want this ok] Kohga is the same, Sooga is the same, BUT, for that scene when you first meet Astor in the Yiga base, I need two things to happen. 1) The camera reveal for Astor starts at his cloak, which is intact and NOT tattered like how his design is in game. It’s a deep purple with gold trim, the camera pans up to the back of Astor’s head. Now 2) When the camera moves to look at Astors face, I need him to be standing in front of and staring solemnly at the evil eggbot. He’s frowning, and his eyes suggest something like he’s deep in thought of something in the distant past. That’s how the scene starts, and in the background is Kohga recounting the events of his failure to beat Urbosa and the gang. Then, Kohga can say something funny to annoy him, Astor’s face changes to your classic villain disgust. Then, he can get a bit pissed and go on his little rant about how pathetic the Yiga are and how the Calamity is trapped within the evil eggbot and how he will use his powers to end the Kingdom of Hyrule. Then he can take his little astrolabe and be all “My harbinger, show me the future!” and all that. IMPORTANT LINE CHANGE,  Astor’s motivation here is not “The future, as it will and must be. I will not allow anyone to alter its course.” Instead, I need to tweak it slightly to be, “The future, as it was fated to always be. The pathetic stories and legends of children and false kings cannot waver this course. I will not allow it, for my sake…” camera pans to the broken evil guardian, Astor’s voice lowers just slightly. “...and yours.” The slightest, almost silent bits of the harmonies (not the melody) of the Hwaoc Main Theme play before fully fading back to Astor’s theme. And the final shot of that scene is Astor, looking down at the heap of Sheikah tech, with a neutral expression, but then looking back up at the malice stars, and the future visions of the Calamity. He just ever so slightly smiles. 

[Also I JUST realized that the harbinger is actually slightly above Astor, because it’s supposed to show that the power dynamic is really Calamity Ganon is in control, so ignore the “looking down” parts I talked about, and just think in the broad direction of Astor looks at the guardian, and then looks further up at the ceiling with the Calamity and the future and then he smiles]

For that scene, I also need to remove any characterization where Astor is laughing and being joyous at the impending destruction, I only need that smile at the end. There is no villainous cartoon laughter, at least, not yet. Also the part where Sooga calls Astor a fool for thinking he can control the Calamity is GREAT I need that, that absolutely needs to stay in.

And then Chapter 2 closes off with that Yiga ambush. That’s the inciting incident, so I need the tone at the end to be slightly different. Instead of ending on that cute little thing where eggbot points angrily at Link, (like that part can still EXIST in there BUT) I need it to end on a more serious note. 

Referring back to the Hero’s Journey, the Call to Adventure is the parts of each of the Champion’s recruitment. They each have their initial reasons for joining the fight, whether to protect their people, to feel validated for their skill, to get closer to the ones they love etc etc that’s all established in their respective stages.

This Yiga stage, however, serves as the official barrier between Act 1 and Act 2, the threshold between the known world and the unknown world, where the heroes prepare to seek out the obstacle that stands in the way of their goal. It’s important that this threshold establishes a sense of urgency, because that better gets you invested in the stakes, and helps the story's momentum to move forward. IT shows that the journey and adventure that these characters want/need to take is outside the safety of their home/known world.

In the original game, the threshold ends with that cute scene of eggbot and Zelda and Link and the Zelink vibes. That’s not bad, but it’s also not good. The momentum towards the later confrontation in Korok forest needs to feel more important, because this is a major turning point in the story. SO, I am going to add one more scene at the end. It’s just after the ambush, after the fires have died down, and Zelda (and in the back the Champions) discussing the events with the King. I want King Rhoam to a few things. First, I need him to kinda berate the Champions for falling for the Yiga’s “splitting them up trick” and leaving his daughter vulnerable. This 1) establishes doubt within the party, which makes for better uncertainty for the future and later internal conflict. This was supposed to be the dream team but the King is already kinda telling them off. 2) This also still characterizes the King as someone who cares for his daughter’s safety. That care for his daughters safety is layered in the subtext of him saying something like “Your priority must be to protect the only person capable of sealing the Calamity. You were so concerned with victory and glory in battle that you forgot that the fate of this kingdom lies on my daughter’s survival.” and blah blah blah. The King can also congratulate Link for keeping Zelda safe, and this is GREAT because that can add further to Zelda’s slight resentment for him, as he’s getting the approval from the King that she has yet to receive. But like overall the King is like “don’t leave my daughter alone cause she almost got killed if it weren’t for Link wtf.” and then that can also be a further excuse to hurry to korok forest to find the wielder of the sword so that they can better protect “not just the Princess, but the entire world,” something something fancy kingly dialogue. 

Also when the Champions leave THIS can also be the time where Zelda gives that Sheikah device thingy to Rhoam and also where he sees eggbot. I know that happens a bit later, but for pacing purposes and for the sake of the story changes that I made, it better serves to place it here. That interaction itself can stay mostly the same as it is in the game.

So now, the threshold ends with a bit more tension. The Champion squad is powerful, but also has flaws in how they were split up by the Yiga, (cough cough I wonder if that serves the themes of the game in some way cough cough) and it’s not just “smooth sailing” into the search for the Master Sword, and the stakes are a bit rocky as we finally enter into the story’s Act 2.

= = = = = 

And that’s Part 1 of my rewrite. Not really a lot, cause again this is mainly character set up, and establishing stuff, but personally I think it’s already a bit stronger than how Age of Calamity did it. Stay tuned for Part 2 either tonight or tomorrow, mwahaha. 

Predict the future if you can...

#yes that is a allude to Nando v Movies #hwaoc spoilers #Hwaoc: The Kip Cut #honestly not TOO much rewritten for the First Act because the First Act is actually one of the strongest and best written parts of the game #hwaoc #age of calamity #hw age of calamity #hyrule warriors age of calamity

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 5x01- Previously on...

Welcome back!! I’m so excited to be writing one of these again. I think this hiatus has been the longest I’ve gone without new Diane Lockhart content in ten years, and it sure feels like it. A lot of important stuff has happened in the time since TGF season four ended (not concluded—ended). Most notably, CBS All Access became Paramount+ and suddenly started offering a lot of content I care about! I kid. 2020 was quite an eventful year, so I was curious how television’s most topical show was going to take it on. TGF is always forward-looking, but too much happened in 2020 to be ignored. And while I didn’t think TGF would have much to say about the pandemic, it seemed impossible to imagine a season five that pretended it never happened. Going into this premiere, I was expecting that they’d either skip COVID entirely or include very few references, but after seeing this episode, I feel like the writers took the only approach that made sense. And that is why they are the writers, and I'm just some girl on the internet who writes recaps.  

Anyway, before I dive into the episode, I should also note that my pandemic boredom spurred me to actually pay $30 to watch this episode early as part of the virtual ATX Festival. Yes, I paid $30 on top of the money I spend every month on Paramount+ for this show. But I write tens of thousands of words about each TGF episode—are my priorities really that surprising? I note this not to brag or even to poke fun at myself, but because watching the episode before I knew a single thing about it (not even the title!) completely changed my viewing experience. I’ve never had an experience like this with TGW or TGF. I’m one to search for critics tweeting cryptically about screeners and refresh sites looking for background extras (haven’t done this in the TGF era, though) and read every single piece of press I can find. For any big episode, I usually know the outline of what to expect going in (I even knew about Will before the episode aired in the US!). Not this one! So, I got to be surprised, and I had to—gasp—formulate my own opinions before I knew what anyone else thought! It was really pleasant, actually. I think the structure of the episode worked extremely well for me because it caught me by surprise... and also because I’m the kind of person who somehow managed to write a college paper about Previously On sequences.

I see Tumblr has made it so that “keep reading” expands the post in your dash instead of opening a new tab. I absolutely hate this. Here is a link to the post you can click instead of the keep reading button! 

The ATX stream started mid-sentence, meaning I missed the “Previously On... 2020...” title card and skipped right to Adrian saying “I’m retiring.” It was pretty easy to pick up on the device (the directness of the scenes at the start, their cadence, and their placement in the episode made it clear this was meant to mimic a Previously) but the second title card hit way harder because... well, I had no idea if this was meant to be 2020 or some moment outside of real time until a bit later in the episode.  

Man, before I get any farther into this, two things that I don’t know where else to put. First, this episode had to cover so much ground. They had to write out both Adrian and Lucca—more on that later--, figure out how to deal with all of 2020, figure out how to either wrap up or continue all the truncated season 4 plotlines, and set the stage for a new season... in 50 minutes.  

Second, just wanna shout out the Kings’ other Paramout+ show, Evil, which you should absolutely be watching even if you hate horror. Evil is a Kings show, so it is unsurprisingly topical (sometimes evil takes the form of racism or misogyny or Scott Rudin) and at times very, very funny. I would be recapping it if Paramount+ weren’t attacking me personally by airing it at the same time as TGF. Ever hear of too much of a good thing, people?! (On that note, I am VERY upset with myself for not having made a Good vs Evil joke about the Good shows and Evil. I didn’t even think about it until Robert King made the joke on Twitter, and it was right fucking there. How did I fail so miserably?!)  

So STR Laurie, who wants a 20% downsizing, is still a thing. Noted.

This scene with Landau is the only one in this previously that is actually old footage, right?  

Unexpected Margo Martindale! Yay! (Ruth Eastman is a character who is so much more effective on Fight than she was on Wife and I’m quite glad they’ve had her appear on Fight several times. It kind of redeems season seven. Kind of.)

I don’t think the writers intentionally chose for Adrian’s book deal to be with Simon & Schuster because it is the most politically fraught publisher (the number of stories about controversial memoirs they’ve picked up in 2021 alone...) but I kind of like that Adrian’s Road Not Taken involves S&S. My guess is they chose S&S because it is owned by ViacomCBS.  

“Years ago, I wanted to create a law firm run entirely by women, but it never worked out. So, why not now?” Diane says to Liz. One of the advantages of having twelve (!!!) seasons of Diane Lockhart is that we’ve seen what she’s talking about. And we’ve seen her put this idea forward multiple times, too. I have my reservations about Diane’s brand of feminism, and I’ll say more about how fraught a Diane/Liz firm would be as the show explores the potential issues there, but on the surface I’m kind of excited about the prospect of a Diane/Liz led firm. Diane has wanted this for ages, Liz is a good partner, and this actually makes sense (unlike the nonsensical Diane/Alicia alliance of late season seven, where the only rationale was “well, Alicia needs to betray Diane in the finale, but they’re not on good terms. So maybe we make them business partners so then the betrayal stings more?”). Plus I fully love that Diane would end up running a firm with Alicia’s law school rival.

(Has TGF mentioned that Liz and Alicia were law school rivals? No. Am I still clinging on to that as a large part of Liz’s character? ABSOLUTELY.)

Julius is on trial for Memo 618 reasons; Diane is defending him. So this is still happening. (There’s more old footage here.)  

Do they put these references to one/two party consent in these episodes as a wink at the fans? It has to be intentional. (Please do not ask me what the actual law is on this, this show has thoroughly confused me.)  

I knew Cush was filming stuff for TGF, but I didn’t know it was for the premiere. She was just posting about it a few weeks ago, so either they shot a lot of it right before air or she posted a while after filming. Anyway, yay Lucca!  

Bianca’s still around. And, TGF gets to shoot New York for New York, since Bianca is there. I do wish TGF could do more location shoots; there’s something about seeing an actual skyline that feels more real.  

Bianca wants Lucca, who has never been outside of the country (except to St. Lucia, as Bianca reminds her) to go to London and buy her a resort. It’s supposed to be a three week stay and Bianca’s already arranged childcare. Speaking of children, because of COVID and filming constraints, that’s Cush’s real kid in this scene! You can’t really see him, but I recognized his curly hair from Cush’s Instagram, and the Kings confirmed in an interview.  

Adrian wants to write a book about police brutality cases he’s worked on. Ruth very much does not want him to write that book. She wants him to write a book without substance about how white people and black people can work together. He, understandably, has no interest in writing this book. (Also, you can see in the background that Ruth doesn’t think Biden’s odds of winning the Democratic primary are good—there is a big down arrow next to his picture, which definitely dates this scene.)

Oh, David Lee is in this episode. He acts like an asshole towards Marissa when she’s trying to help him.  

Marissa, not happy with the lack of respect, calls Lucca for advice “for a friend.” Lucca mentions she’s in London and Marissa does not believe her and keeps going on and on about her frustrations and her new desire to become a lawyer—quickly.  

Marissa wanting to become a lawyer because she “hates being talked down to” is not a plot I would’ve expected but it’s also one that makes a lot of sense. I think Marissa’s used to being respected and praised even when she’s doing things that aren’t glamorous, so I see how she’d get very restless when she’s no longer outperforming expectations and is instead taken for granted.  

Bells toll in the background on Lucca’s side and Marissa asks where she is. Lucca again notes she’s in London and Marissa still doesn’t believe her.

I’m going to miss Lucca so much, especially since we’ll also be losing a lot of the Millennial Friendship scenes with her. Cush is fantastic (even if she never really got enough to do here) and she plays so well off of the rest of the cast. I even sometimes liked the writing for Maia (who?) when she had scenes with Lucca, Lucca is that good.  

Jay wakes up sweating and unable to breathe, so he deliriously calls his father-figure Adrian. This whole scene is shot like something out of Evil and (I’m getting ahead of myself here) this plot is the only thing about this episode I felt was a misstep.  

“I think you’re my father,” Jay says to Adrian. Heh, I didn’t catch this line the first time around (maybe subliminally I did, since I just called Adrian his father figure lol) but I love that it is included here. Adrian and Jay’s relationship definitely deserves a goodbye.

Adrian calls an ambulance and also gets to Jay before the ambulance somehow. Adrian notes that Jay might have “this thing from China” and... we’re doing the pandemic, y’all. (Minor nitpick: on March 13th, 2020, when this scene is dated, COVID was not “this thing from China”-- we were all aware of it. March 11th was the day Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they’d tested positive and the NBA shut down and travel was restricted and every single brand that had my email sent me a message about their plans and measures. March 12th was the last time I was in my office, and we’d been getting emails telling us to wash our hands and prepare to work remotely for weeks. I went to San Francisco in mid-late February and distinctly remember deciding to leave a burrito unattended on a table while I washed my hands because I was paranoid about COVID... and then I remember making a specific trip to Walgreens to buy hand sanitizer so that didn’t happen again. My point is, Adrian lives in the same world I do. On March 13th 2020, he would not be treating COVID like it was some new thing he’d vaguely heard of.)  

(I am going to nitpick this timeline, but please know that I’m only doing it because I can, not because I think it’s necessarily a bad choice. Lines like this do feel a little forced, but I see the reason for introducing COVID as something new rather than going for the line that’s exactly historically accurate. I also am pretty sure there are references to dates in March/April in s4 of TGF that are now going to be contradicted by this episode, but I truly do not care. The writers get a pass on this one.)  

We skip slightly back in time to the beginning of March after the MARCH 13TH title card, or maybe this is supposed to be after March 13th and my own memories are preventing me from believing these face-to-face interactions were happening. Who knows.

Michael Bloomberg is... here, again, I guess? He asks Diane to assist with a Supreme Court case about gun control. I guess it does add some weight to the plot and make the stakes feel higher.  

Oh hey, this case is the 7x17 case!!!! Love that continuity.  

Diane and Adrian are both at the office late, working, and there is an unnecessary split screen that feels even more unnecessary when you consider that the editing alone was enough to create the parallel.  

Diane and Adrian have a nice convo (which I’ll really miss, their dynamic is great and this really feels like a successful partnership) as they wait for the elevator. When the elevator dings, they nearly tumble down into nothingness because... the elevator never came. Apparently this is a reference to an law old show I’ve never seen that killed off a character this way, and it’s meant to be a wink at how they are not going to kill off Adrian.

I do not know why I remember this, but I do: after they killed off Will, a critic (Noel Murray; I just googled to confirm my memory) who didn’t want to spoil things tweeted, “Exactly 23 years and 2 days ago, Rosalind Shays fell down an elevator shaft.” Please tell me why I remember this reference that I didn’t even understand well enough to have tracked down the original tweet in under a minute. (https://twitter.com/NoelMu/status/447942456827326464)  

Back on this show, Diane and Adrian share a drink and talk about their wishes. Diane wants to argue in front of the Supreme Court, and Adrian encourages her to speak up. His own near-death experience motivates him to trash the book Ruth has him writing, and Diane trashes the (bad) legal strategy someone else prepared for the Supreme Court.

DIANE IS WEARING JEANS!!!!!! Tbh, I think my favorite part of this episode is how many slice-of-life scenes and settings we get. These are always my favorite moments. I love the satirical and political stuff too, but the character moments are what get me invested enough to write these. (Yes, Diane in jeans constitutes a character moment.)  

Diane tells Bloomberg she wants to be involved and advocates for herself. Kurt gets a call on their landline (hahaha) from Adrian.

God, I love Diane and Kurt. Not only is their banter fun, you can just see a different, more relaxed side of Diane in these scenes. Diane tells Kurt she has good news for herself, but bad news for him since she’s arguing for gun control. She asks him to help her prep for court, too.  

So this is before Jay is rushed to the hospital, because now we are back at the hospital with Julius, Diane, and Marissa. I do not believe any of these people would be setting foot in a hospital like it’s any other day on March 13th, 2020. But I'm trying not to nitpick.

I get why they chose to give Jay a rather severe case of COVID. I just don’t get literally anything else that follows from the initial shock of Jay having COVID.  

I see why the writers chose March 20th (the actual Illinois stay at home order) as the next date for this timeline. I still do not believe that people were in this particular office on that date.  

You know what else I don’t believe? That RBL just shut down for two weeks and was like, no work is being done. Did law firms really do this? I can believe it if it’s an excuse to cost-cut, and I know there were massive layoffs, but this seems... really weird???  

Why are they setting up a teleconferencing infrastructure (didn’t they have one at LG? In season five?) if they are not planning to do work?  

Lol Diane explains what Zoom is, very slowly. She asks everyone to “download a program called Zoom.com” which is one of the first Zoom jokes I’ve chuckled at in a while.  

Marissa is not happy to hear that there’s no work for her in a work-remote world (this I believe 100%), so she calls Lucca again with more questions about law school.

Love these NYC and London location shots. Wish they could do that for Chicago.

Lucca asks Bianca to help get Marissa into a law school, fast, and Bianca tells Lucca to use her name... then offers her a job.

Marissa is at the office, alone, boxing up her things, when one of the office phones rings with some dude offering her a spot in a law school class. I guess we are really all-in on this! (Why would Lucca have given a firm phone number not specific to Marissa, though?)

Adrian and his corrupt girlfriend decide to shelter in place together. I still do not understand why he is okay with her being corrupt. I also don’t really understand why they’re going from talking about sheltering-in-place to George Floyd. How did we just skip from late March to late May? Are Adrian and corrupt gf having a conversation about sheltering-in-place two months into sheltering in place?  

Okay, I am not doing so good at this no-nitpicking thing. Again, I understand why they need to merge several scenes into one to keep things moving. And I guess they could just be getting around to this conversation.

I’m going to nitpick again, I can’t help myself. How did we just go from a scene of Adrian specifically talking about sheltering in place to a scene of Adrian bursting into a bustling and maskless DNC headquarters room? How!? The only masks in this scene are on TV!! There are like ten people in this scene!  

Anyway, more importantly, Adrian tells Ruth off and screams at her that she needs to listen to him instead of acting like she knows the way forward. He is completely right.  

Why is travel from London closing down in May 2020? Is it because this scene is supposed to be at a different place in the episode? Liz is asking Lucca to come back home from her three week stay in London (which has now lasted three months but travel is just now closing down), and Lucca’s hesitant to come home.

This is all happening via Zoom, btw. Lucca’s in her hotel, Diane and Adrian are at their respective homes, and Liz is in the office. All of this feels right. There is a chat off to the side of the screen where you can see Adrian and the others discussing how to unmute on Zoom. Very real. Though probably not very real in late May 2020. Feels more like April. I am convinced this scene got spliced in later to help the episode flow because everything in this scene (except the TV footage that definitely was added later) feels like it should be happening in the March section.  

Lucca mentions that Bianca offered her a job, and at this point we as viewers know how things are going to go—Lucca's going to end up taking it. Liz types in the Zoom chat that they don’t want to lose Lucca. When Lucca tells them how much Bianca’s offering ($500k/year, go Lucca!), Diane types “Shit.” into the chat. “Shit’s right,” Liz replies. “Yes... What should our counter be?” Diane replies. Lucca is kind enough to point out the messages are not private (again, this feels like March not May) but I think knowing that their reaction to topping $500k is “shit” tells her all she needs to know.  

Diane’s background still says that RBL is a division of STR Laurie. Weird how little we are hearing about the overlords except the 20% staff cut.  

Liz and Adrian chat and decide the only way to keep Lucca is to make her a partner. Which, yeah, if you’d just made her a partner years ago when you told her she was in the running for partner and then offered it to fucking MAIA, maybe she wouldn’t be considering Bianca’s offer. Lucca is definitely one of RBL’s stars, and I don’t think she’s wrong to feel like they don’t value her enough. They treat her well enough to be upset about losing her, but not well enough to have already made her partner and not well enough to actually give her authority (even though she runs a whole department). I’d be pretty unhappy too. It kind of feels sometimes like they take her for granted, and I don’t know that Lucca is one to feel like she owes a company anything. She’s more of an “I’m out for myself” type.  

Madeline and the other partner we’ve seen a few times who isn’t Liz/Diane/Adrian, walk into the office (wearing masks! Which they take off as soon as they enter a room with Liz! Without asking her if she is okay with this! TV logic!) and ask who is replacing Adrian. They think this is a good time to reevaluate having a white name partner of an African American firm, and they are spot on. Liz tries to deflect, noting that Diane is already a name partner and was before Liz even joined, but Madeline and other partner (whose name I really wish they would say so I can stop calling him “other partner”) won’t let up. Their position is that Diane shouldn’t have been made a name partner then—all she did was bring in ChumHum, an account that quickly left the firm. Good point.  

“What is this firm if it’s not African American? It’s just another midsized all-service Midwestern law firm, one of 50,” Madeline argues. The other partner says Liz needs to remove Diane and promote two African Americans to name partner. Liz laughs and asks if they mean themselves. Madeline does not—she's concerned about the number of black associates they’re letting go. Liz heads out, but this conversation is very much ongoing.

And I think it’s a very interesting dilemma! There’s a lot of mileage the writers can get out of this, because I don’t think there’s a right answer or a wrong one. It’s all about what Liz decides she wants the future of the firm to be. If Liz chooses Diane, she might be choosing something that works for her personally or that she thinks is a safer financial bet—but she’ll be choosing to work at a firm that can no longer be thought of as a black firm, and she’ll be choosing to move away from her father’s vision for the firm. And since the plot hinges on what Liz will decide rather than what’s objectively the right path forward, there’s a lot of interesting tension there I can’t wait to see.  

(My favorite thing about Adrian leaving is that Liz will likely get more to do, especially when it comes to managing the firm. Adrian tends to speak up first, but Liz is more than capable of managing without him and I’m so excited to see what she does when her ex-husband isn’t constantly talking over her.)  

Marissa and Lucca video chat with Jay. He’s still in the hospital. One thing that bugs me about how this episode handles COVID is that I never really get the sense that any of the characters are particularly afraid of the virus. Maybe none of them were. But you’d think you’d see a little of that fear, the weird dance of trying to assess others’ comfort levels with masking, etc., in an ep specifically about living through this time. ESPECIALLY since someone they all know and are close to has been hospitalized for MONTHS with this thing! It’s just so weird to go from a scene where people wear masks until they come in contact with other people (when masks matter the most) to a scene of someone in the hospital with COVID.  

And now Jay’s weird hallucinations start as his battery dies on the video chat. I really, truly, hated these hallucinations. I was ready to be done with these from the second they started. They’re weirdly shot, they go on for too long, and they feel like the clunkiest parts of Mind’s Eye when Alicia starts having a debate in her mind about atheism mixed with the (far superior) hospital episode of Evil.  

I don’t have much to say about these hallucinations except that I hated them a lot. When there’s the reveal that Jay is hallucinating a commerical, I almost came around on the hallucinations because that’s kind of funny and inspired. And then several more hallucinations popped up and they had a round table and Jesus got added to the mix and I was like, nope, this is bad in a very uninteresting way. I reject this.  

I feel like the Kings didn’t have much to say about COVID, the actual virus. This episode is definitely more about what the characters’ lives were like during COVID and not the pandemic itself. I think they likely got a lot of their COVID commentary out of their system with their zombie COVID show The Bite (I have not seen The Bite due to it airing on Spectrum On Demand, which I have no way of accessing. Like, I would have to move and then decide to pay for cable in order to watch it.) I also suspect a lot of their commentary on COVID isn’t going to be specific to the virus and is instead going to be about things like mask-wearing and vaccinations becoming political. And, really, that’s just a new variation on talking about polarization... and they’ve been talking about polarization for years.

In fact, they even wrote a whole series about an outbreak of a (space-bug-spread) virus that caused political polarization before Trump was even elected. BrainDead is basically commentary on the pandemic before the pandemic even happened. Soooooo I get why they are more interested in recapping 2020 than in doing a Very Special Episode about themes they’ve been talking about for years. (I still think they would’ve benefitted from at least one character being afraid of getting sick or getting their family sick.)  

There is likely some interesting content in these Jay hallucinations. I hate them so much I cannot find it. You know when you’re just on a completely different wavelength than the writers? This is an example of that.  

Also I’m not a fan of the shadowy directing. I think this is meant to look cooler than it does.  

Have I mentioned yet that I absolutely love the “Previously On” device for this episode? It’s such a fun, propulsive way to get through the slog of 2020. Scenes can be short and to the point, and each scene has to do a lot of lifting to fill in the gaps. I think that leads to scenes that are better constructed and telling on lots of levels—where are people when they’re quarantined? Who’s wearing casual clothes and when? What about this scene defines this character’s life at that moment in time?  

Bizarrely, even though this episode is pretty much all plot (this happens! Then that!), I actually found this to be one of the most character-driven episodes TGF has ever done. There’s a lot of story, but most of that story is about how the characters reacted to 2020 rather than overarching plots that will weigh on the rest of the season. This episode covers a lot of ground, but it does it with character moments that resonate.  

Now it’s July and Diane’s prepping to argue in front of the Supreme Court. Kurt’s helping her witness prep and it gets a little personal... and that ends up turning Diane on. Good to see McHart hasn’t lost its spark. (Remember how Kurt cheated on Diane in season 7 of Wife? No, me neither, because that never happened.)  

Corrupt judge is back. Adrian playfully tries to distract her from work. Then he takes a video call from Liz, who updates him on the conversation she had with John (so that’s his name) and Madeline. I guess that part of May was close to July? Anyway, Adrian isn’t surprised to hear that people are upset at the prospect of Diane being one of two name partners.  

Liz is at the office in workout clothes and I love it!

They’re losing 15 black associates (and Adrian and Lucca) and 4 white ones, Liz says. This sounds like a very big problem. (I’d be curious to know what that is as a percentage of the firm and how the racial composition shifts.)

Liz knows it’s not exactly up to her if Diane stays on as name partner (the other partners get a vote, but I think Liz knows she has a lot of sway here). She’s also wondering if Biden could win, and if so, would it be to the firm’s advantage to be black-owned? Interesting.  

“Well. If you’re thinking it, then Diane’s thinking it, too,” Adrian says. He’s right. “White guilt. It runs verrrrry deep on that one, huh?” Ha. He is right about that, too. I actually can’t decide which of these interpretations is correct, because it could be either even though they seem contradictory. (1) Is Adrian saying it with a hint of mockery because he knows Diane will fight for her partnership even as she would say she’s a huge supporter of black businesses? (2) Is he saying it because he knows Diane would have enough white guilt to realize what her presence as a partner means and think through the implications? I think it is, somehow, a combination. I’m interested in this line because this whole dilemma (from Diane’s POV) is something that’s very familiar. Diane’s always been an idealist who will betray her ideals for personal gain. That sounds like an attack, but I mean that as neutrally as I possibly can. There are so many examples of this that this is kind of just a character trait of hers at this point. Usually those ideals are about feminism, but this situation seems closely related.  

Adrian overhears Corrupt GF talking about Julius, Diane, and Memo 618. You would think she would wait to have this conversation until there is no chance of Adrian overhearing, because if Adrian overhears, he might...

... do exactly what he proceeds to do and hop into a car with Diane to give her a heads up. (I think I’m just going to have to accept that the mask usage rule on this episode is “we use masks to show that the characters would wear them, but we don’t want to have scenes where characters are fully masked because that’s annoying.” If that’s not the rule, then why else would Adrian be masked outside... and then take off his mask as soon as he gets into a confined indoor space with Diane?  

Baranski looks ESPECIALLY like Taylor Swift in this scene.  

Adrian tells Diane what he knows. He dug deeper after overhearing Charlotte, so he has even more info. “If you tell me, I will use it,” Diane warns. Adrian knows that, so he takes a moment to decide. And he decides that he cares more about Diane and Julius than about his relationship with a corrupt judge.  

Diane and Julius are masked in court. Visitor and the judge are not. They use masking in a clever way in this scene: Diane uses being masked to her advantage because it means no one can possibly read her lips, so she can use the info Adrian fed her against Charlotte without any fear of spies. Charlotte, who is unmasked, guards her lips with a folder, as the Visitor watches interestedly.  

Diane convinces Charlotte to recuse herself. Charlotte says she’s making a mistake; Diane does not care.  

The new judge is, unfortunately, the idiot who doesn’t know anything about the law. Uh oh.

Charlotte decides she’s done sheltering in place with Adrian. He tries to talk through the conflict, but Charlotte says “You made your choice, Adrian. Julius Cain over me.”

“The choice was about right and wrong, Charlotte,” Adrian tries to explain. I mean, yeah, but if you’re dating a judge who has admitted she’s totally corrupt, didn’t right and wrong go out the window a while ago?

Adrian seems to think the other people involved in the events are bad and Charlotte is good. I am not convinced. I don’t think she’s the big bad, but I don’t think she’s good.  

Charlotte points out that he invaded her privacy. She is right about that. “You said the choice was between right and wrong. Turning over my emails was the choice,” she said. I get her POV. But also, she is corrupt.  

I do not like the way the part of the scene where Adrian physically restrains Charlotte to keep her from leaving is shot. I don’t think this is an abusive scene but I think it should’ve been shot from a little farther back so we could see it’s more like Adrian reaching out in desperation than trying to choke Charlotte. Because it very much looks like he is trying to choke Charlotte.  

He tells Charlotte he loves her. She says it’s too late and leaves. “Maybe you won’t be with me. But you keep down this path... you’ll be done, I’m telling you, you’ll be done.”

I think something that I’ve been missing in these interactions is that I didn’t quite realize until this scene that the Adrian/Charlotte dynamic is more interesting than Adrian liking a corrupt judge. I think he truly believes Charlotte is a good person who got caught up in some bad stuff, and that she can bounce back from it. I’ve always seen Charlotte as someone who is corrupt for herself and then ended up going along with the corruption of others, too, so I’ve dismissed her and the relationship. This is the first scene that has felt real to me, and the first scene where she’s felt like more than a caricature. Kind of sad it’s the last she’ll get with Adrian—now I’m actually starting to find her interesting. Notice how in these last few sentences I’ve used her name instead of “Corrupt GF”!  

Charlotte says she loved Adrian too, but that’s not enough. Awww.

He can’t really be surprised though, can he?  

Now it is August and we get to see Diane and Liz react to the announcement of Kamala Harris as Biden’s VP pick, and I would like to thank the writers for giving me the opportunity to see Diane and Liz react to this. It’s kind of fan-service, but it’s also a nice tie-in to the girl-power theme of the Diane/Liz alliance.

Diane and Liz realize that Adrian’s probably not a good candidate for 2024 if the DNC only wants one black candidate and Harris is the clear front-runner. Liz suggests keeping him on as partner instead, in a way that very much implies this would be her ideal solution. Diane, being Diane, says she was liking the idea of an all-female firm. Liz hesitantly says she was too, and Diane senses the hesitation.

“Let’s look again at which associates to fire. I’m worried we’re losing too many African Americans,” Diane switches the subject. How have they still not made this decision? If any employees know downsizing is coming, and they’ve had months to act on it, assuming there are jobs elsewhere, people would’ve been jumping ship by now.  

But that’s not the point of this scene. The point of this scene is that Liz corrects Diane: “Black. You can just say Black people.” Very nice moment underlining the tension. Diane means well, but she’s still acting like a white lady who doesn’t know how to act around black people... and she wants to (and, I guess, already does) run a black firm. Major yikes.  

Marissa and Lucca are talking again. Marissa does not want to be in law school—she just wants to be a lawyer. Lucca won’t accept Marissa’s refusal to memorize meaningless rules: “Marissa. I know that you know how to play the game, but you have to pass the bar to get into a position to play the game.” Why does this line make me love Lucca? This line isn’t even anything amazing. It’s just a line that cuts through the bullshit and makes a good point.  

Marissa keeps going, insulting all of her peers and teachers, and Lucca figures out how to cut through that, too: she tells Marissa that she’d hire her as a lawyer if she killed someone, but only if Marissa passes the bar. Marissa is instantly intrigued.  

“Why are you leaving here? I’ll miss you,” Marissa says.  

“Because they won’t pay me what I deserve,” Lucca says in a matter-of-fact tone. “Anyway, I thought they fired you.”  

“But they didn’t mean it. It’s like the smoothie place—they kept trying to fire me and I just kept showing up,” Marissa replies. That checks out. (Love the callback!)  

Lucca tries to get Marissa to come over to England. Marissa shuts that down as Lucca gets a news alert—and it’s not good news.  

Our next date is September 18th, 2020 and I will get my nitpicks out of the way up front! I don’t really know why it is daytime for Lucca when she reads the news, considering it was already the evening in the States when the RBG news broke. And, also, it was Rosh Hashanah, so Marissa probably would not have been sitting in her bedroom studying... she most likely would’ve been with family or friends. OK I’M DONE. FOR NOW.  

Diane is getting ready for her arguments in front of the Supreme Court. It’s almost time! She’s in casual clothes but has on a wonderful mask. She’s standing in front of Kurt’s guns to make a point (love that she’s using her video call background to her advantage) and there are several people in her bedroom getting the tech all set up. I have noted before that they only built one set for Diane’s apartment, and it’s just a massive bedroom. Diane choosing to be in front of the guns does a nice job of cutting off my question about why she’d be arguing in front of the Supreme Court from her bedroom rather than the home office she absolutely would have.  

Kurt walks in and tries to shake hands... he’s clearly not very COVID paranoid, and Diane seems to be, and... that’s something I might have wanted to see? How was Diane okay with Kurt taking risks that also affected her?

Diane confirms she intentionally chose to stand in front of the guns. That’s when Kurt gets the push notification. He pulls Diane into the bathroom to show her the news. He hands her his phone and Diane’s face falls. She starts tearing up. “2020 just won’t let go,” she says, speaking for us all.

Normally I hate things that are like, we’re going to contrive this so the news hits at the worst possible moment! This works for me, because the Supreme Court plot for Diane feels more like something that exists to be a through line for the episode. It would also be a little hard to work in RBG’s death as a main plot point—and it is definitely important enough to be a main plotpoint—if it didn’t also affect something in the world of the show.  

Also, another reason I like this contrivance is that it makes it all the more powerful when Diane says, “It’s over. He gets to nominate someone. Another Kavanaugh! We’ll have a conservative court for the next 20 years. My whole fucking life!” She’s not thinking about how this affects her case (and that case is basically a life-long dream for her). She is thinking about way bigger things, and knowing that her mind goes to the bigger things before the personal with news like this really underlines how big of a deal RBG’s death was.  

Diane tells Kurt, “I don’t deserve you. You don’t agree with me.” “I can still feel bad for you,” he responds. He holds her while she cries.

Jay’s hallucination thing is back. Now Karl Marx is here. So is Jesus. I’m so done with this. It’s nice to get a break from writing.

Malcolm X is also on the roundtable and now they’re talking over each other in that way that everyone on this show always does. (RK gave an interview about Evil where he said he likes having the children on that show talk over each other because he grew up in a household like that. I did not need to read that interview to understand that RK likes scenes where people talk over each other.)  

If anything happened in those hallucinations, I missed it, because I didn’t pause the episode. Because I do not care about the hallucinations. Because I hate them.

Now it’s November 2020... Diane’s watching election results and rocking back and forth. She tells Kurt he can go watch Fox News in the other room (so they do have more than one room!). He says he’s fine—he thinks Diane needs it more.  

“Yes, but Kurt, if you stay, I know this isn’t sensible, but... Trump seems to get more votes whenever you’re sitting on this couch,” Diane tells him. Ha, I relate to this kind of superstition so hard. “Are you serious?” Kurt says. “I am so deathly serious,” Diane responds. “Whenever you’re sitting here, Arizona goes for Trump. Humor me, please. Just go in the other room.”  

When Kurt tries to kiss her, she pulls away: “No, no, no. No kiss. If you kiss me, we’ll lose Georgia.” This scene feels so, so real and perfectly captures what it was like (at least for me, though I don’t have a Republican husband or anything) watching election results come in.  

“Uh, if you lose, we’ll be fine, right?” Kurt asks. “Kurt, let me just say this. I’m only saying that we won’t be fine so that the universe will grant me a win,” Diane responds. This scene is so fun and so good! It simultaneously captures a relatable mood, adds some levity, gives us a window into Diane’s life, and shows some of the tensions in her marriage?! I want this all the time!  

Kurt leaves the room. Diane pours more wine.

Later, with Diane still rocking back and forth with anxiety (just you wait for the several more days this will drag on!), Kurt brings in the champagne. “That was for when Hillary won. I can only drink it if Biden wins,” Diane protests. Did I also refuse to drink any celebratory alcohol until things were absolutely certain? No comment.  

“It’s odd you progressives resisted religion. You seem to have a hundred religions to take its place,” Kurt says, speaking on behalf of the writers’ room. (This joke doesn’t get written if the writers don’t believe this and probably even see it in themselves.)  

“Go away, Trump. I mean Kurt,” she shoos him away. Have I mentioned yet I love this scene?  

“Love me even if you lose?” he jokes (though I do wonder if this isn’t that joking? I think it is, but he keeps saying it!) as Diane gestures at him to get out.  

I could do without the joke about Diane’s heart on the TV for a couple reasons. One, it goes on too long. Two, I was very worried something would actually happen to Diane. You’d think that would make the scene feel more tense, but it does not, because it takes me out of the moment.

“Ok, God. You know I don’t believe in you. But I will believe in you if Joe Biden wins. I’m sorry. I know that that’s not what Jesus taught. There’s nothing in the New Testament that says, ‘Believe in me, and I’ll make sure your candidate wins,’ but I need Joe Biden to win. I’m sorry, God, but I just do. I need some faith.” This is a little much but... yeah. Also, is this the first time Diane’s flat out said she’s an atheist? I think it is, though I’ve assumed as much for quite a while.  

The next day in court, masks are no longer required if you’re a series regular and votes are still being counted. I remember those days. Marissa thought Diane was checking in on Jay... Diane was not. She was checking on vote counts.  

Apparently Jay’s finally being released from the hospital!

Bad news for Julius—the idiot judge finds him guilty of some nonsense charge and sentences him to seven years in prison.  

Diane says not to worry, and Julius asks “Why not?” Good point.

Then we have election results! We skip, specifically, to December 14th and the electoral college vote. I’m a little sad we skipped over the huge party that was November 7th, but I get why they’d rather keep things moving along. I think showing November 7th in an uncomplicated way would’ve just been too close to fanservice. But, man, what a day.  

Diane, in a red hoodie with leopard print that she somehow manages to still look classy in, is ready to pop champagne. Then she hears that on January 6th, a joint session of Congress will count the electoral votes and there might be a debate. “Nope. If I open it now, something bad will happen,” she reasons. “I’ve waited four years. I can wait another few weeks.”

It’s been almost a year and they’re still somehow negotiating with Lucca, but I understand why they’d space this out across the episode. Otherwise we’d have to say goodbye to Lucca in the first like, 15 mins of the episode and all those scenes would be in a row. I can forgive (and still nitpick) choices like this when the reasoning behind them seems sound.  

Adrian says they don’t want to lose Lucca. He, Liz, and Diane are all in the conference room, and they ask Lucca for a yes or no on their latest offer by the end of the call. Diane offers Lucca partner—she'll be the youngest partner in the firm’s history—and she’ll get a $500,000/year salary. Adrian tries to sell her on being part of American history by being part of the firm.

“We are a black firm, Lucca, and we need you,” Liz says with a lot of passion for someone who knows she might very well partner with Diane. Diane looks at Liz with a bit of suspicion at this, wondering if Liz is showing her cards.  

Lucca manages to make the wifi malfunction (or she gets very lucky) and uses the disconnection to call Bianca for a counteroffer, even though they said they needed a yes or no on the spot.  

“They used George Floyd because they want you for less. They have never appreciated you as much as I do. All those scars, all that time being taken for granted and undervalued has made you a fighter. It’s made you someone I now want,” Bianca tells Lucca. She gives Lucca a counter offer of $1.3 million and the title of CFO. Lucca takes it. Is there really another choice? (If she were concerned about loyalty to the firm and the partnership was what she wanted, she probably would've just taken it.)  

(Also, the partners can’t really act like Lucca is making history by being the youngest partner ever when they passed her over for partner two years earlier and offered it to Maia! To MAIA! Who had like three years of work experience! And yes I was fine with Alicia and Cary getting partnership offers with four years but, one, that was a scam, and two, Alicia and Cary actually worked. Oh, I see I still hate Maia with a passion. Back to THIS season...)

Lucca apologetically informs Marissa she’s leaving and the offer was just too good to turn down. I believe it. I also believe Lucca wants that job more. What has loyalty to RBL gotten her? She's someone so talented and good at her job that she just gets job offers from acquaintances all the time (starting with Alicia!). RBL appreciates her, but just enough to appease her while still undervaluing her. I don’t know that I would’ve believed a plot where Lucca actively job hunts, but I definitely believe this.

“Marissa, we don’t have to work together to be friends,” Lucca tells Marissa. I’m going to miss this so much. Why is this the best material Lucca’s gotten in ages?! I think one of the things that makes Lucca such a great character is that you can see why everyone instantly wants her on their team. She’s a fantastic friend (without giving too much of herself), she’s not a pushover, and she is incredibly sharp and able to get to the heart of any situation. I love her and I’m sad we won’t get to see more of her.  

(On that bit about friendship—I can’t write about Lucca’s departure without writing about the moment I realized just how great of a character Lucca was. It was in 7x13, when Alicia has her breakdown that’s seven seasons in the making... and Lucca supports her. But the writing, and Cush’s performance, never make it feel like Lucca exists to be a part of Alicia’s story. Lucca seems like her own fully formed person who happens to be supporting Alicia at this moment. I don’t think I can overstate how tough of a task it is to get me to care about the other person in a pivotal Alicia scene, especially when that other person was added to the cast in the final season and many suspected she’d just be a replacement for a different beloved character! Anyway, Lucca’s been great for years, and I’ll miss her.)  

Just when I thought I couldn’t hate the hallucinations more, we get a hint that they are going to continue: Jay sees one right after he learns that Marissa’s used her quarantine to start law school and he’s done nothing.  

Jay says he carries a gun now and it’s “performative.” I have no idea what that means and Marissa and Lucca don’t seem to, either.  

Another thing I like about Lucca’s final scene is that it isn’t rushed. We have time for all that, and also for Lucca to tell Marissa about the time she stole her breakfast sandwich, and for Marissa to react to it, and for Marissa to find Lucca’s Birkin bag, and for Lucca to tell Marissa to keep it, and for Marissa to react to that, and for Lucca to sappily say “think of me when you use it,” and for Marissa to nonsensically reply, “you think of me when I use it,” and there’s still a little bit more of the scene after that!  

Marissa’s silly line makes Lucca tear up. “God, I’m gonna miss you guys,” she says. “I’m gonna miss this. You make me smile. I didn’t smile much before you guys.” Awwwwwww. This is also so true to character! Her friendship with Alicia aside, Lucca’s definitely said before she’s not one to have friends (which is hilarious because she is, as I've said like 100 times, a fantastic friend and also just like, the coolest person??? Who wouldn’t want to be HER friend?!).  

She says she has to go because she’s getting too emotional and says goodbye. She’s also super sappy and when Marissa says, “you were the best,” she responds that they were the best TOGETHER! Awwwwwww.  

What a nice, fitting goodbye for Lucca. There’s no bad blood or fireworks—she just makes a change like a lot of people do. I’d like to think she’ll still be friends with Marissa and Jay after this. I don’t want too many Lucca references in future episodes, but I would really like it if we see Marissa and Jay update each other on the latest from Lucca, or if a scene begins with Marissa closing out an Instagram post from Lucca of her kid, or something. I wouldn’t want clues about what Lucca’s up to, but I’d love to see that she’s still a part of Marissa and Jay’s lives.

Now it is January 6th. Liz, Adrian, and Diane sit on the floor of the mostly empty office, watching TV coverage and drinking. It’s so relaxed it’s almost surreal, and it, like many other moments in this episode, feels like a slice of life. Everyone’s dressed casually and no one is worried about appearances or looking like the boss.  

“God, have you ever seen anything like it. It’s so fucked,” Diane says. Adrian’s more optimistic—the courts rejected most of the challenges to election results! “System worked,” he says. “Yay.” Liz says in response. She’s not as optimistic as he is.  

“Liz. Liz. Sometimes when things work out, there is no parade. There’s no congratulations, but I’ll tell you this: We live to fight another day,” he explains to her even though she makes a good point that a system just barely hanging on doesn’t bode well for the future. (She doesn’t say all this, but that’s a very loaded, “Yay.”)  

“Yeah? Then why are you leaving the law?” Liz asks. Diane seconds to the question.

Adrian announces he’s still retiring—and he’s moving to Atlanta. He wants to go to the south to help “create and consolidate political power.” He’s excited to start over and inspired by Georgia going blue. This is a very nice exit for Adrian. I fully believe that he’s interested in political organizing, that he’d be good at it, and that he’s ready for a change. I don’t think he’s always the most progressive person (of the three in this scene, Liz is absolutely the most progressive one, though Diane probably thinks she is!), but I absolutely think he thinks of himself as an activist and I believe that if he’s going to step away from the law, he’d do so to make a move like this.  

Adrian—and Lucca, but especially Adrian—probably both got better exits thanks to the events of 2020. If Adrian had just left to be groomed by the DNC, that would’ve been a predictable and boring ending for him. His candidacy would, obviously, go nowhere, and the whole thing felt weird from the minute it was introduced. But this? Adrian being energized—like so many others were—by the ways the world changed in 2020 and using his already announced departure from the firm and recent breakup as a chance to start over and make change? This is great!  

Adrian asks Liz and Diane what’s next for them. Liz says that she thinks the Biden admin will be better for black businesses. Adrian asks if they’re replacing him, and Diane says, “I think the big question is, are you replacing me?” She’s smart. I like how this scene goes from friendly to tense very fast, with everyone kind of testing the waters. Adrian tries to force the conversation, Liz opens with something vague yet pointed, and Diane speaks what’s previously been unspoken.

Liz says it’s not her intention to push Diane out. “I can’t change the color of my skin,” Diane replies. “I know,” Liz laughs. Audra’s delivery is fantastic on that line.  

“Hey, I’m gonna fight for my partnership,” Diane says. “I know,” Liz says. The tone of this scene is so different from previous partnership drama on these shows and I’m excited about it. This is just a bunch of adults talking about business decisions with each other and treating each other as equals?? It's not backstabbing?? Or drama?? No one is hiding things?? It’s refreshing and I hope this plot stays like this. We’ve done so much partnership drama that I think drama that stems from a real, pressing question that has no easy answers and isn’t anyone’s fault is going to be much more fruitful for the show.  

Adrian heads out—ah, I see now this scene is set in his empty office and this is why they are on the floor—and gets a nice last moment with Diane. And then they give him a last moment with Liz, which I knew they would but was still glad to see.  

Liz asks if he knows what he’s doing—he says he’s not sure.

Adrian asks if Liz knows where she stands regarding Diane. “It’s going to be interesting,” Liz says. I don’t think she’s decided what she’s going to do yet.

It wouldn’t be an Adrian and Liz scene if Adrian didn’t have some unsolicited advice. “Diane’s a terrific lawyer, but this firm belongs to you.  Your dad built it. He did, Liz. Despite all his faults. You got to run this place the way you want. This is a black firm. And after today, the world needs black firms. You got me?” He tells Liz. He makes it seem like Liz gets the choice and then tells her what to do. She says, “I got it,” signaling she understood him but not that she necessarily agrees.  

I cannot wait to see what Liz does next!!!!!!! About this but just in general!!!!! Without Adrian there giving her constant advice I feel like she can grow so much and the show will have to give her more to do!!! I think Adrian, for all his many wonderful qualities and all he brought to the show, can suck all the air out of a room with his charisma, and Liz usually ends up suffering as a result. She’s such a capable lawyer in her own right, but Adrian has a way of making it always seem like he’s right—even in arguments she wins. I’m excited to see Liz lead (or stumble at leadership; she is fairly new to management) without Adrian’s direct influence.  

Liz walks Adrian out and it’s cute. They run into Marissa and Jay. “Everybody fun is leaving,” Marissa notes. Liz is minorly offended, but playfully. Heh.

Adrian asks Jay how he’s doing; Jay says he’s a long-hauler but he’s doing okay. I like that they included that moment in Adrian’s goodbye sequence. It’s a very little thing, but it underlines that Adrian cares about Jay.  

Then Liz interrupts to note that Trump pardoned a lot of convicted and corrupt Republican officials....... including Julius.  

Everyone celebrates, but especially Diane and Marissa. Diane lets out her wonderful laugh and then we, finally, get to the credits. Because now that the previouslies are over, it’s time for the real show.

The credits are absolutely delightful, btw. I was a little worried some of the kittens would blow up, though! Once I relaxed and realized what they were up to—literal puppies and kittens because Biden won—I couldn’t get enough of these credits. They work so well because they accurately capture the way I (and all of these characters, except maybe Julius and Kurt) feel about the election results, but it’s so exaggerated that you know the kittens and puppies aren’t a realistic representation of our new reality. They’re just too good to be true, but you may as well enjoy them for a minute. I’m sure we’ll be back to exploding vases next week.

What a great episode! My timeline nitpicks and whatever they’re trying to do with Jay aside, I was blown away by how well the writers managed to move on from season 4, tie up loose ends, and write out two main characters. And they did it all while making me revisit the events of 2020, a year I don’t think many of us want to spend much time thinking about! This episode was enjoyable, fun, emotional, and clever. I don’t know what to expect from the rest of the season, but I’m definitely excited about the show in a way I haven’t really been in quite some time.  

This season’s naming convention seems to be titles that end with ... and only have the first word capitalized. I want to see more. 

Season FIVE? There have already been as many TGF seasons as there were TGW seasons prior to Hitting the Fan?! Time flies. 

Please writers: No topical episodes this year-- no pee tape, no Melania divorce, no Epstein. None of that business. 

Sorry if I repeated myself here. I never proofread these things, and I wrote half of this on Saturday and half of it today (Wednesday) and the days in between were an absolute blur so I cannot remember if I said the same things about this episode twice. 

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

[aion-rsa]

How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters

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Back to the Future Part II is a strange movie. As a sequel that director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale never intended to make, the ambitious follow-up to one of the greatest sci-fi comedies of all time was put into production simultaneously with Part III, which may have ultimately hurt the middle chapter since Zemeckis was still shooting scenes filmed in the Old West while editing Part II’s trippy vision of the then distant future…of 2015.

Even so, there are elements in the second Back to the Future that still play like gangbusters today, particularly in the sequences set during 2015. To be sure, part of the charm now is what those wild guesses about the future got wrong—such as the idea we’d all be driving around in flying cars, or even simply own cheap cars that didn’t run on fossil fuels. There were no real hover boards in 2015 (or 2021 for that matter), nor even automated Texaco pumps. Yet what Back to the Future Part II got very right is the numbing horror of something like Jaws 19.

Indeed, one of the best bits in the whole film is a slight dig at BTTF’s own studio, as well as the legacy of the film’s producer. The original Jaws is of course the first modern Hollywood blockbuster and it put Steven Spielberg on the map. With its innovative storytelling of leaving the monster to the imagination before finally providing the spectacle in the third act, Jaws is a masterpiece in narrative restraint that could still play for all audiences.

…Which is something no one would say about the three cash-in Jaws sequels that Universal Pictures green lit in the span of 12 years after 1975. In fact, when Back to the Future Part II was released in ’89, it’d only been two years since Jaws: The Revenge, the one where the ghost of Jaws went Bahamas and chased the Chief Brody character’s widow to the Caribbean while on a vendetta for what happened in ’75. It’s kind of hilarious.

As is the scene in Back to the Future Part II. In that sequence, Michael J. Fox’s Marty McFly stands slack jawed in the middle of Hill Valley’s town square, the same space that was so memorably used in the first BTTF film where Marty was forced to finally accept he’d traveled to the year 1985. In the sequel, he comes to realize what it means to be in 2015 when he turns around to face the local multiplex, which has only one film on its marquee: Jaws 19. And then to demonstrate to Marty the state of 21st century special effects, the “HOLOMAX” release teases its thrills as a holographic Great White Shark emerges from the building and descends on Marty’s head.

Perhaps like many an audience member who choked on their popcorn kernels in ’75 with fear, Marty screams bloody murder—and then realizes it’s just a movie and scoffs, “The shark still looks fake.” Yes, it always did, but at least in the first movie that didn’t matter so much.

At the time, the scene was a nice dig at Universal’s expense as well as the Jaws franchise as a whole. What was once the most revolutionary Hollywood movie of 1975 had become a punchline by 1989: a once glorious title that’d been run into the ground with endless cash grab sequels. And the joke is even funnier because of the “19” in the title. Nineteen movies of the same franchise. Could you even imagine?!

Oh, how sweet the irony is, then, that one of the most absurd notions in Back to the Future Part II turned out to be the most true! No, there haven’t been 19 Jaws movies (yet), but that might be by virtue of the studio churning the franchise’s mystique into putty before Gen-Xers and Millennials could grow up with it beneath unsullied nostalgia glasses. Nevertheless, the future where Jaws 19 could exist came true.

Consider that we scoff at the idea of 19 Jaws movies being made in 40 years, but Marvel Studios has released 25 pictures in only 13, with two more due out before Christmas 2021. And that doesn’t even include the television shows that are now coming to dominate Disney+.

I know what some will say: Marvel movies are a series of interconnected franchises, as opposed to one amorphous content farm. But that’s not entirely accurate. There are exceptions, of course, which stand out as singularly distinct from other MCU efforts. There’s Black Panther, for instance. That 2018 Oscar nominee is totally removed from the events of The Avengers, you might say. Then there’s Guardians of the Galaxy and its wacky space opera shenanigans occurring literal light years away from the events of Iron Man 3.

And yet, the appeal for most moviegoers, and the brilliance of Marvel’s marketing strategy, is that they all seem like the same thing to the undiscerning eye. And even to the discerning one, there is a pat familiarity to the formula, story beats, and sitcom-esque ability to wink at the audience at its own silliness. Tonally, they all feel of one piece. Hence why the first Shang-Chi movie was gladly welcomed by the industry last month as Marvel’s latest blockbuster hit—a feat borne in large off it being the next Marvel movie, as opposed to a new original property without a built-in audience.

It’s an aspect to the whole series which caused Dune director Denis Villeneuve to suggest that some Marvel movies are “cut and paste.” It’s also a formula which aids the studio to force its millions of fans to see it “as all connected” and be encouraged to go see the Ant-Man sequel they might otherwise skip in order to discover how its post-credits scene will set up the deus ex machina for Avengers: Endgame.

And that aforementioned Black Panther originally had its protagonist introduced in Captain America: Civil War, an Avengers movie by another name. It’s also the only “Cap” flick to cross $1 billion because they stuck Iron Man in it. Similarly, James Gunn’s Guardians films are genuinely auteur-driven, yet they still worked as a years-long tease of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame’s big bad: Thanos. Hell, Infinity War’s biggest selling point in the trailer was seeing the Avengers and Guardians meet face-to-face for the first time.

The methods and talent being used to produce these endless sequels are far more sophisticated and entertaining than the hack work which produced Jaws: The Revenge, but then that’s why Jaws only lasted four movies and Marvel’s already mapping out its 30th “event” in the next few years.

This is not meant to only criticize Marvel, however. They are simply the most successful studio at exploiting their intellectual property in the 21st century. Universal’s own Fast and Furious movies aren’t half bad at that game, though. This summer just saw the 10th “Fast Saga” movie when you count Hobbs and Shaw. And while Vin Diesel claims the 11th main line Fast and Furious movie will be the last, you just know with its own Avengers-sized cast that Hobbs and Shaw will be merely the first spinoff franchise from “the family.”

Even Spielberg, who was reportedly never happy with the Jaws sequels and what they did to his first masterwork, has been much more ready to “open up” later successes like Jurassic Park. Considered a “smart” blockbuster entertainment in 1993 that inspired genuine awe from millions of moviegoers, that film’s fourth sequel (which was produced by Spielberg, like all the follow-ups) reveled in watching dinosaurs stalk around a haunted house, as if they were Frankenstein and Dracula. Next year’s Jurassic World: Dominion is supposedly intended to be the “final” film of the three most recent, Chris Pratt-led sequels, as well as another sendoff to the original 1993 movie’s cast. Yet it seems dubious that it’ll be the last film set in that “universe.”

After all, the “Skywalker Saga” ended with a whimper in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Disney is preparing to churn out more Star Wars movies and TV shows than ever before in the next decade.

This is not to say you should feel ashamed for enjoying any of these movies or franchises. Folks like what they like. But what Back to the Future Part II perhaps unintentionally predicted was that audiences would have an appetite for a proverbial Jaws 19.

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When BTTF became a trilogy, sequels were still seen as a creatively risky proposition. Filmmakers often maintained artistic credibility by attempting to turn sequels into a larger thematic whole—often as a trilogy. Lucas set that standard with Star Wars, and only after his buddy Francis Ford Coppola claimed he’d never make another Godfather movie after Part II. Spielberg originally walked away from Indiana Jones after three movies, and many likely wish he’d stayed firm about that in retrospect. Meanwhile, Zemeckis and Gale have done the near impossible thing: refuse to allow Universal to make a fourth Back to the Future movie or reboot the series entirely.

But equivocations in the industry about a proverbial Jaws 19 are long gone. What was once a cheeky riff on the dystopian Coca-Cola billboard ads in Blade Runner have become a modern day reality in 2021. And hey, there’s now a real holographic Times Square billboard ad for that, too.

The post How the Jaws Scene in Back to the Future Part 2 Predicted Modern Blockbusters appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[kaylewiswrites]

It’s Not Working: Scene Troubleshooting

Welcome back to It’s Not Working, a troubleshooting series that forces me to learn how to fix all my broken stuff, and to share it with you. This week, it’s scenes.

Ah, scenes. If a book was a cell, scenes would be the Mitochondria. If your scenes aren’t working, your story can’t work, so lets do some trouble shooting. Take a scene you feel isn’t living up to it’s potential, and lets ask some questions.

Question 1: Is there a point?

Every scene should ideally be doing at least one of two things:

Developing the plot/side plot: Are the heroes moving closer to the climax of the book? Are you introducing new challenges to achieving their goals? Are they finding new information that changes the situation? If not, this scene might not be integral to the story. 

Developing your characters: Best case scenario, you can develop your characters and plot in the same scenes. But sometimes, especially in high action books, you need to take a break to let the characters have a quiet, or joyous, or devastating moment that pushes their character or reveals something about them. It’s best to space these out, so the pacing doesn’t drag, and the plot can still move forward. 

Make sure that your scene is doing at least one of these things.

Question 2: Do the readers care? 

To make a scene affect readers you need tension. To get tension, there are three main ingredients:

Conflict: No, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make your characters argue all the time and hate each other, although that is an option. Conflict means there’s a problem that the protagonist needs to solve. This can be anything, from wrestling with a choice (internal conflict) to figuring out how to get through a locked door (external conflict) to a fifty page battle of Helms Deep-esque fight sequence (seriously external conflict). If there is no problem for the protagonists to fix, it means the story has ended.  

Stakes: What’s at risk if your character fails to solve this problem? Their best friend never forgives them, the world ends, the puppies get kidnapped and turned into coats. If the audience doesn’t know why it’s so important these nine travelers journey to Mordor and destroy a ring, they’re not going to be very concerned when the Uruk Hai show up. Let the readers know what failure looks like. 

Characters: this is more to do with my previous It’s Not Working, but long story short: readers will have trouble caring about the scene, no matter the conflict or stakes, if they don’t feel invested in their characters. 

Search your problem scene for conflict (either internal or external) and stakes. 

Question 3: Is the conflict plot/subplot related? 

Is that choice they’re wrestling with connected to the story line? Does the locked door they need to get through take them somewhere closer to solving the mystery? Is the Helms Deep-esque battle scene between the protagonists and the antagonists? If not, its coming out of nowhere for the readers, and it’s not pushing your plot forward. 

Question  4: Do the stakes make sense? 

Most people are used to to believing things like “If I don’t dismantle the bomb in time, the whole city will die!” It might be harder to convince audiences of a contemporary lit genre “If my best friend and I don’t make up, the whole city will die!” If they were super heroes/villains in an action/adventure novel? Yes. Contemporary lit? No. Make the stakes make sense for your story and your genre. 

How do I fix it?

Great question. But there’s something else we have to talk about first.

How don’t I fix it?

Don’t take a scene that lacks plot and tack something on that, technically, counts as moving the plot forward. Your scene should be about moving a plot or subplot along, not just includes a paragraph about it. 

Fixing scene structures will require heavy editing and revising, if not just straight up rewriting or cutting entirely. 

Ok, now how do I fix it?

Before you revise or rewrite, figure out exactly what the point of the scene is. Is it to showcase the villain’s brutality so the young superheroes knock what they’re up against? Is it to get crucial info to the protagonist that changes the way they see heir love interest? (Hint: The answer should fall under “plot point” “sub plot point” or “character development”. If it’s not one of those, it may be time to cut.)

Now that you know the point of your scene, figure out how to present it as a challenge to the protagonist. (Another hint: unless it’s the climax of the book, or you want your protagonist to fail, the problem shouldn’t be the main plot problem. If your main plot is ‘save city from dragon’ the challenge of the scene in the middle shouldn’t be ‘save city from dragon’. Unless you want your hero to lose the battle, which would be great for character development. More commonly it might be ‘steal armor that will let me fight dragon’ or ‘convince this surely wizard to help me fight dragon’ etc. )

Are the stakes obvious? ‘Save city from dragon’, the stakes were probably made clear when the hero went out to slay the dragon. If things weren’t being burnt up and people dying, they probably wouldn’t be trying to do it. But in a lot of situations, audiences might not intuitively know what ‘bad things’ could happen. Make sure they know. 

Now, if the scene still falls flat, even if you did all of this, it might be time to turn to critique partners and beta readers. Scenes, like I said, are important powerhouses of stories, but there are tiny building blocks that make up scenes. Things like prose, dialogue, characters, descriptions, action writing, romances, or dozens of others could still be tripping you up. Fortunately, they’re also things that I’m going to be talking about here on It’s Not Working. 

Until then, good luck, and let me know if this helped! 

#writeblr #writing advice #writers of tumblr #writing community #writing help #its not working: troubleshooting for writers

[miloscat]

[Review] Conker: Live & Reloaded (XB)

Let’s see just how well this misguided remake/expansion holds up. This will be a long one!

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is my favourite N64 game. It’s cinematic and ambitious, technically impressive, has scads of gameplay variety with fun settings and setpieces, and when I first played it I was just the right age for the humour to land very well for me. A scant four years later Rare remade it for the Xbox after their acquisition by Microsoft, replacing the original multiplayer modes with a new online mode that would be the focus of the project, with classes and objectives and such.

First, an assessment of the single-player campaign. On a revisit I can see the common criticisms hold some water: the 3D platformer gameplay is a bit shaky at times, certain gameplay segments are just plain wonky and unfair, and some of the humour doesn’t hold up. It’s got all the best poorly-aged jokes: reference humour, gross-out/shock humour, and poking fun at conventions of the now dormant 3D collectathon platformer genre. I also am more sensitive these days to things like the sexual assault and homophobia undertones to the cogs, or Conker doing awful things for lols. Having said that, there’s plenty that I still find amusing, and outside of a few aggravatingly difficult sequences (surf punks, the mansion key hunt, the submarine attack, the beach escape) I do still appreciate the range of things you do in the game.

As for the remake, I’m not sure it can be called an improvement by any metric. Sure, there’s some minor additions. There’s a new surgeon Tediz miniboss, the new haunted baby doll enemy, and the opening to Spooky has been given a Gothic village retheme along with an added—though unremarked on—costume for Conker during this chapter based on the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing flop. Other changes are if anything detrimental. The electrocution and Berri’s shooting cutscenes have been extended, thus undermining the joke/emotional impact. The original game used the trope of censoring certain swear words to makes lines more funny; the remake adds more censorship for some reason, in one case (the Rock Solid bouncer scene) ruining the joke, and Chucky Poo’s Lament is just worse with fart noises covering the cursing.

The most egregious change, and one lampshaded in the tutorial, is the replacement of the frying pan (an instant and satisfying interaction) with a baseball bat which must be equipped, changing the control and camera to the behind-the-back combat style, and then swung with timed inputs to defeat the many added armoured goblings and dolls carelessly dumped all throughout the game world. This flat out makes the game less fun to play through.

On top of this, all the music has been rerecorded (with apologies to Robin Beanland, I didn’t really notice apart from instances where it had to be changed, such as in Franky’s boss fight where the intensely frenetic banjo lead was drastically reduced as a concession to the requirement to actually play it in real life), and the graphics totally redone. Bad Fur Day made excellent use of textures, but with detail cranked up, the sixth generation muddiness, and a frankly overdone fur effect, something is lost. I’m not a fan of the character redesigns either; sure Birdy has a new hat, but I didn’t particularly want to see Conker’s hands, and the Tediz are no longer sinister stuffed bears but weird biological monster bears with uniforms. On top of all this you notice regular dropped details; a swapped texture makes for nonsensical dialogue in the Batula cutscene, and characters have lost some emotive animations. Plus, the new translucent scrolling speech bubbles are undeniably worse.

I could mention the understandable loading screens (at least they’re quick), the mistimed lip sync (possibly exacerbated by my tech setup), or the removal of cheats (not a big deal), but enough remake bashing. To be fair, the swimming controls have been improved and the air meter mercifully extended, making Bats Tower more palatable. And some sequences have been shortened to—I suppose—lessen gameplay tedium (although removing the electric eel entirely is an odd choice). But let’s cover the multiplayer. Losing the varied modes from the original is a heavy blow, as I remember many a fun evening spent in Beach, War, or Raptor, along with the cutscenes setting up each mode.

The new headline feature of this release is the Live mode. The new Xbox Live service allowing online multiplayer was integrated, although it’s all gone now. Chasing the hot trends of the time, it’s a set of class-based team missions, with the Squirrel High Command vs. the Tediz in a variety of scenarios, mostly boiling down to progressing through capture points or capture the flag. Each class is quite specialised and I’m not sure how balanced it is, plus there’s proto-achievements and unlocks behind substantial milestones none of which I got close to reaching (I don’t think I could get most of them anyway, not being “Live”).

The maps are structured around a “Chapter X” campaign in which the Tediz and the weasel antagonist from BFD Ze Professor (here given a new and highly offensive double-barrelled slur name) are initially fighting the SHC in the Second World War-inspired past of the Old War, before using a time machine, opening up a sci-fi theme for the Future War. These are mainly just aesthetic changes, but it’s a fun idea and lets them explore Seavor’s beloved wartime theming a bit more while also bringing in plenty of references to Star Wars, Alien, Dune, and Halo; mostly visual.

Unfortunately the plot is a bit incoherent, rushed through narration (unusually provided by professional American voice actor Fred Tatasciore rather than a Rare staffer doing a raspy or regional voice like the rest of the game) over admittedly nice-looking cutscenes. They also muddle the timeline significantly, seemingly ignoring the BFD events... and then the Tediz’ ultimate goal is to revive the hibernating Panther King, when the purpose of their creation was to usurp him in the first place! It expands on the Conker universe but in a way that makes the world feel smaller and more confusing. It’s weird, and also Conker doesn’t appear at all.

On top of this, I found the multiplayer experience itself frustrating. To unlock the full Chapter X, you need to play the first three maps on easy, then you can go through the whole six. But I couldn’t pass the first one on normal difficulty! The “Dumbots” seemed to have so much health and impeccable aim, while the action was so chaotic, obscured by intrusive UI, floating usernames, and smoke and other effects with loads of characters milling around, not to mention the confusing map layouts, the friendly fire, the instant respawns, and the spawncamping. Luckily I could play the maps themselves in solo mode with cutscenes and adjustable AI and options.

I found some classes much more satisfying than others. I tried to like the Long Ranger and the slow Demolisher, but found it difficult to be accurate. The awkward range of the Thermophile and the Sky Jockey’s rarely effective vehicles made them uncommon choices. I had most success with the simple Grunt, or the melee-range Sneeker (the SHC variant of which is sadly the sole playable female in the whole thing). You can pick up upgrade tokens during gameplay to expand the toolset of each class, which range from necessary to situational. But ultimately it’s a crapshoot, as I rarely felt that my intentions led to clear results.

Live & Reloaded is such a mess. The Reloaded BFD is full of odd decisions and baffling drawbacks, while the Live portion feels undercooked. I’d have preferred a greater focus on either one; a remake is unnecessary, especially only four years on, but a new single-player adventure would have been ace. And a multiplayer mode in this universe with its own story mode could be cool if it was better balanced and had more to it than just eight maps. As a source of some slight scrapings of new Conker content I appreciated it to some extent, but I can’t help being let down. I guess it’s true what they say... the grass is always greener. And you don’t really know what it is you have, until it’s gone... gone. Gone.

Yes, that ending is still genuinely emotionally affecting.

#review #conker #conker live and reloaded #Rare Ltd #xbox

[stabletwooriginals]

CHAPTER THREE: Guidance

LittlePip wakes up to a brand new day. Which she never experienced before and we get some fun observations from her about.

I knew this was coming but I’m so relieved LittlePip finds one of Rarities dresses in perfect condition inside a locked chest.

The comment, that the dress is the prettiest and most cheerful thing she has seen since leaving is striking to me. She has had one terrible string of bad luck so far, but there are amazing things still waiting to be found.

Which is undercut somewhat by her discovery of the dead cats hung over where she slept. Absolutely terrifying. That doesn’t seem just for shock value, as it preoccupies our (and LittlePips) mind as she accidentally activates a land mine. Oops.

Watcher making his first appearing here, giving LittlePip life saving advice.

Raiders attack again. And we get LittlePips naive interpretation of grenades through a childhood memory of someone bullying her. This explains to us why she focuses on throwing the granade back next… killing her first pony.

We don’t get a lot of rumination on that yet though, as we get a scene break and LittlePip has managed to sneak out of Ponyville. What are these segmenting parts called, actually? Is it “Dinkus”? That’s a fantastic name.

The retelling of escaping Ponyville sounds like a stealth sequence in any video game, which I find amusing.

After a brief first encounter with a Bloatsprite - the mutated version of the Parasprites from the show - we reunite with Watcher and LittlePip get’s to have her first friendly conversation so far. (You might wanna count Velvet at the very beginning, but that’s up to you.)

“A friend.” I raised an eyebrow. “Okay, a passing acquaintance. But one that doesn’t mean any harm.”

This back-paddling is interesting. Why isn’t the “Friend or Foe” distinction enough here? My interpretation is that FoE takes friendship quite seriously. Since it is adopting “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”, in which friendship is the key to change the course of history, just the word “friend” has a lot of worth and meaning that can’t just be thrown around lightly. We don’t know it yet but the core mechanics of MLP, namely friendship and the Elements of Harmony, are still intact in this story.

Finding my apple, I levitated it up. “Thank you. And thank you for the warning about that… thing in the ground.” “Mine.” I blinked. “Y-you want my apple?”

I just want this on here.

We get some info on the Bloatsprite - mainly it’s name and that it is the result of something called Taint. Which, uh– and Watcher’s name. He is not a Spritebot himself, but located somewhere else and just hacks into them to interact with remote places of the world.

Finally he gives vital advice any newbie RPG player can use: Find better gear, learn about the world and make some friends! What? Yes, there it is again. Friendship.

For guidance LittlePip returns to Ponyville. Watcher told her a copy of the Wasteland Survival Guide should still be at the Ponyville Library. Twilight’s home! (Remember, we’re sticking strictly to the first season.)

I was convinced The Wasteland Survival Guide was a reference to an older piece of post-apocalyptic fiction, but nope, it seems to come from the famous quest line in Fallout 3. At least, that is what dominates the search results when I try to google it.

Quite some time is also spend on the horrific decoration, namely desecrated ponies. Mutilated and in pieces, stuck to the walls and hung from the ceiling. These displays of gore are reminiscent of how Super Mutants tend to gather in places with such bloody decorations in Fallout 3. That game reduced the Mutants personality from a faction, as they were in the previous titles, to little more than orcs. Which is a shame, as they mostly exist as canon fodder now. And help us get over killing them, it shows us with lootable sacks of gore that they deserve it.

The raiders here get painted in the same light and fulfill a similar role. As clear bad guys and somewhat as cannon fodder. Their psychology never gets explored much beyond “the Wasteland drove them mad”. They often even have ridiculous cutie marks, implying they have been born into being raiders and that being cruel is their special talent. Which, besides painting the saddest existence, is a shame, since they clearly form groups among themselves, can talk just fine and are/were, by all accounts, just ponies like anyone else. Except, they’re not. They have gone insane, mind you. They live in their own shit and sleep under fresh, dripping intestines. Because they’ve gone mad, you see!

My point with all that is, that the excessive gore in this scene takes away from my immersion, as it raises questions with no answers, and raiders holding slaves and killing ponies (without putting their corpses on display), again, would be fine enough to convince me of their evilness.

Watcher was playing LittlePip a little, as he knew it was also where a couple slaves are kept in cages. One of them is implied to have been sexually assaulted, which - while still despicable - at least makes more sense for raiders to do than the gore fest described earlier.

LittlePip glancing over the bottle caps the first freed slave offers her without a second thought is a fun touch.

Then a fight breaks loose!

I hadn’t just killed a pony–these raiders had given up any right to the title! These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down!

Which implies choice. Something I can’t imagine, choosing to be a raider like this, but fine. I’m sure plenty of FoE side stories go more into detail with raiders, FoE itself seems mostly comfortable portraying them as orcs most of the time. Until it doesn’t. But we will cross that bridge when we get there.

I didn’t realize until that moment, but I was mad! The pure evil of this place had shaken me to the core… and my core was furious!

Regardless of my feelings towards the raiders, Littlepip’s reaction to them has always been inspirational to me. I know, it leads to… problems later on. But joining in with unbridled rage of LittlePip is cathartic in ways I haven’t yet seen replicated somewhere else.

(what do you know, they do shoot with their tongues!)

Figuring out how horses shoot firearms is… it’s own entire discourse I am not very interested in. But it’s fun to see what ideas FoE brought to the table. And it’s even more fun to see high quality concept art of tongue-triggered pistols for the Fallout: Equestria fan game Ashes of Equestria.

The fight is fun, with brisk and clear descriptions and punctuation of humor (“Shouldn't you ponies be smarter than this? You live in a library!”).

LittlePip gets shot but finds the Fluttershy branded medical box. Love that decision. Also our introduction to healing potions – they work like Stimpaks from Fallout, but are actually more believable because magic actually exists!

I was even more pathetic with melee weapons than I was with guns.

Love that RPG progression being set up here.

It was a zombiepony!

Don’t be mean to ghoul Ditzy Doo. Don’t ever be mean to ghoul Ditzy Doo.

I can’t really place the note about why someone might need binoculars in a library. I assume it’s a MLP reference but I’m lost on that one.

After another short lived meeting with mines the fight is over and LittlePip decides to loot the bodies for armor. The bloody, tattered armor. To be fair, it is the best armor she has come across so far and we do stuff like this in RPGs all the time.

She finds bottle caps again and chooses to ignore them this time. Great tease. Love it.

She finds and identifies radigator meat. I’m not sure she should know their name at this point, but whatever. The narrative framing allows it.

Lastly, she confronts the sniper that has been on the balcony of the library the entire time. Here we get a better glimpse at AngeryPip, surprising herself with her audible confidence and malice. It feels like a different character, but since this is portrayed as a extreme situation this seems more adrenaline fueled to me, rather than pathological.

Leaving the library, LittlePip has a combat shotgun, an assault rifle, a revolver (which gets lost in the next scene), a knife and now a sniper rifle. Impressive for this early in the story.

An alert flashed on my PipBuck. Checking it, I discovered that it had labeled the gazebo in front of me: The Macintosh War Memorial.

First, harrowing. Love it. Secondly, I love the inclusion of the gazebo, which has to be the one we can see in the show. It’s cool to see how many elements of the show actually made it in here. Pretty unobtrusively too.

The Memorial specifically names Big Macintosh and his sacrifice. It’s obviously unclear how much of the story was prepared in advance, but the way the war started 200 years ago must have been among that. We get to learn later what Big Mac’s role in the war was.

And we end with LittlePip picking up “The Wasteland Survival Guide. By Ditzy Doo…”

Level Up! New Perk: Bookworm. Kinda nice how we went to the library this time, got a book out of it, the quote at the beginning was “Books! I’ve read several on the subject.”… So, this one feels more than earned.

#fallout equestria #reread #reading #fan fiction #kkat #ponyville

[wo-wann-was-wer]

EPISODE 5:

I'm so sad Regina got buried in the woods

these fucking comparison shots are amazing

someone just tried to text me and I low-key flipped out because I was like you need to leave me the fuck alone

What if he just took her jacket and was like this is mine bitch

Katharina looks so dope with glasses

I'm so into her being the rock of this family by the way which I was never surprised by because women have the strength of 6 million men but

we've literally never seen Charlotte and her dad interact (like for reals)

That's one of the problems of this show is that some relationships fell by the wayside and I'm not a fan of that

did Charlotte drop herself off on the stoop

That's Tannhaus baby is somewhere because they never found the body of that infant so that infant is somebody.

yeah I literally can't imagine finding something like this out I'd lose my fucking mind

"who am I?" "I don't know" wow that's a fuck of a thing

Wow Claudia from the other universe That's fucking me up

Also what if Claudia from the other universe is the fucking bitch who has been fucking with us this whole time AKA the white devil

Also when are we going to see Noah again because I need to see Elisabeth and Noah together falling in love because I stan

worried about her Please tell us what happened to her I'm concerned

This actress has to be at least partially deaf and or hard of hearing because number one her ASL is fluent and she even emotes some words right? Idk

I do not trust this other Claudia as far as I could fucking throw her

This show is like the debate between Democrats and Republicans every fucking party is trying to convince everybody else that they are the ones that's trying to save the world and both of them behind closed doors are like all right how do we fuck the people in the asshole

I can't help wondering if this wouldn't have happened if we understood the half-lives of radioactive materials

so is all of this coming back to 1986 Is that the the origin time

And then do what What are you going to do with fucking 250 radioactive barrels The fuck you talking about

The scratches on the other side of her face and I don't know why it's on the other side of her face but it's on the other side of her face and it's concerning me

does that mean something's going to go different like

Jonas is out here like why did the adults lie to me

Oh my God after three seasons he's finally realizing not to listen to other people good boy

Oh Peter and Charlotte bonded over having fucked up families

Peter's mom is dead and he didn't know who his father was

Also babies

Also the way that he embodies Peter is fucking insane

I'm so into Charlotte with this curly hair

Oh my God who is this

Elisabeth run baby girl. too late. we've gone this long without sexual assault if they touch this child I'm going to lose my damn mind

Peter is going to kill this man

Elizabeth kill him Peter kill him if Peter dies is the hands of this dude I'm going to lose my fucking mind get back from my baby get back from my fucking cinnamon roll I'm going to kill you Elizabeth stab him the back stab him the back Elizabeth your daddy has a knife at his neck NOOOO PETER NOOOOOOOOOO NOOOOO FUCK

I literally will never forgive them for killing Peter why are the dopplers the most important and most tragic family

he never did anything to anybody

Katharina please kill your abusive mother She deserves it

everybody on this show is super into bludgeoning nobody likes shoots anybody else everybody fucking bludgeons everybody

No can I watch this abusive fucking bitch is going to hit you No Don't let her kill you Don't let her kill you

Is Katharina dead why are they taking my favorite people

she doesn't even get justice for how her mom treats her it's not fair. and now Ulrich is still stuck inside the asylum

oh thank God Noah is here because I was so worried about my baby

Wait what is going on. Oh Jonas has never died before This is exciting

oh wait there's only one Jonas damnit

EPISODE 6:

Even though it's not working for everyone I do really love the 1888 look on Jonas

I did not expect that Aleksander was going to tell Bartosz about his real identity

This shit is so uncomfortable.

Ulrich needs a real stop telling the women that he's fucking to stop coming to his household

It's like the penny traveled through time GASPPPPPPP

Jonas What the fuck did you come from

all my fucking pussy friends are bothering me from finishing this show YALL GOT STUPID PROBLEMS STAND UP FOR YOURSELF AND THEN THIS WONT HAPPEN

I'm going to say this every single time he's on screen but this beard is too good

I think that bartosz may be the most scorned member of this entire group he never gets any pussy and it's so sad

I'm super over this really creepy really ugly fucking dude I want him to leave I also kind of don't believe that he's the child of Martha and Jonas

Oh I absolutely love love love them holding hands and then going back to a shot of them holding hands as kids

why are they such a good couple I really like them but I also always have

I'm not super sure I understand why they had to leave bartosz behind

I don't trust a single of these fucking adults I'm just any of them including themselves when they become adults

This is like a suicide squad. This is the weirdest collection of people What is this team. What are they doing. since when are these people are working together. omg

Oh shit a child born of both worlds takes both worlds energies to destroy it. But that's what causes the apocalypse

Well this is super fucked up

everything that's happening in this final montage sequence is bad news

all of it

why do I Stan Noah and Elisabeth so much

omg Hannah is giving birth is NOW the time

wow this is a lot

EPISODE 7:

our perspective is what makes definitive reality

I'm confused about the gravestone that says Charlotte on it

Also yes give me more Elizabeth and Noah please please please

This is absolutely crazier than any shit doc Brown ever did But he was also trying to build a time machine in the 1890s so that's fun

Oh is this how he gets all the fucking scars

My goodness what is happening What is going to happen I'm getting stressed.

There's only two episodes left I feel like they're not answering my questions I'm worried

What happened to wöller

What is silja doing here

This is bullshit she's like drawing him in

Oh that's a surprise so silja is a tiedemann

why is it always like I feel like I know what's happening and then around episode 6 or 7 I just completely lose the plot

oh wow Jonas almost straight up died but Noah saved him

‘you can't die’ points a gun at him

Oh my God you can't kill yourself because you've already grown

oop well after that birth happened I had to take about 5 minutes to pause my brain and factor that in

yo I knew Tannhaus was going to figure in fucking more than he did

Is he the one who builds the cage

does this seem like a good idea or does this seem like a bad idea

shooting yourself What do you think that feels like

everybody's on a different team there are too many teams It went from like a presidential race to a March madness bracket There's so many fucking people involved everybody's got their own goddamn plan

folks I just want to emphasize here that we have an episode and a half to tie all this up

Oh shit universe A Claudia infiltrated universe B Claudia

I love what they did with the place after the fire It looks really nice It's a different vibe but it's good

so Eve made the plans for the machine

Wait what She died. 

I can't believe that Elizabeth and Charlotte have to be the ones to drop off Charlotte as an orphan

Oh noooooooooooo Jonas didn't do it!!!!

Oh my God don't make me feel sympathy for Hannah

he looks so fucked up 

bye hannah we won't miss you

but also hate leaving a child without their parents

Tell us what's on the last page and tell us what happened to woller's eye

All right now we're seeing how everybody got to where they were like the first fucking time

I love this walk down memory lane it's literally just the stylized recap of the show right before the final episode which is 10/10

watch your face girl

too late

Omg what does this mean 

THE FINALE:

This show is just Claudia Tiedemann Lurking: the TV show

Also the bullshit that he had to live through all of this in order to get to the end makes me really sad

yeah wait who's the fucking father of Regina

been way too sucked in

also. WE LOVE TO SEE A TIME TRAVEL TACKLE

WAS THIS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL DAY IN STUTTGART

How many times are going to burn this place down

how many versions of this fucking machine do they have they're always like oh God we don't have a way here or there FUCKING LIARS

I can't believe that the thesis of this show is teenage hormones cause the apocalypse

Adam and Eve are such fucking children it's so stupid. 

reunion nnnnnnnnnnn

Oh shit he fucked up your plan huh

No I don't want it to end

I wish everybody didn't cry so much everybody so sad all the time

yup what in the actual fuck is happening

yo this is fucking wild

these baby Martha and Jonas are so cute

Not sure where we're going with this folks what's happening here wrap it up shit

I'm really obsessed with this golden snitch

It's just making me so sad

oh they're becoming stardust together

this is a weird cover but I'll take it

everything is going back to normal

but without Jonas and Martha and Claudia

if they don't tell us what happened to his eye I'm gonna flip out

I CAME HERE TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO WOLLER’S EYE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

Also what does this ending line mean its stressing me out

Well thats it. Three years of my life. Damn

#episodes 5-8 #dark #dark network #spoilers #dark season 3 spoilers #dark season 3

[thisyearingaming]

1997 - This Year in Gaming

Muggins here was born in ‘97, and can’t really remember much of it, natch. But there were some good things released this year - I’ve played every one of these, and have missed so many more.

Diablo - Windows, January 3rd

We start with dungeon-crawl-em-up and well-loved out of season April Fool’s Joke, Diablo. I’ll be totally honest - I don’t like Diablo that much. It’s absolutely fine, I just can’t get into it. The writing, setting and characters are all very good especially since this year only marks the beginning of games being seen as a bit more adult and intelligent. Check out this gameplay from Hour of Oblivion on YouTube, and marvel at the faux-Scottish accent on Griswold the blacksmith.

Mario Kart 64 - Nintendo 64, February 10th

Compared to its more recent versions, Mario Kart 64 is a veritable bloody relic of the past - solid controls and a quirky style mean it’s still a crowd pleaser to this day, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone right now that would die on the hill of it being their favourite single-player racing experience. It’s also got some of the deepest, impenetrable lore in any medium known to the human race - why exactly is Marty the Thwomp locked up here?

Blast Corps - Nintendo 64, February 28th

February’s position as most boring month of the year is shaken up a bit by having a uniquely designed Rare game slammed into its 28-day long face. Blast Corps is the puzzle-action game where you take control of several vehicles to destroy homes and buildings in order to prevent a nuclear warhead exploding in the coolest incarnation of Cold War politicking ever seen in a video game. Calling Blast Corps a “hidden gem” these days is like calling Celeste a hidden gem - it impresses nobody and makes you look like a dick. 

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - Nintendo 64, March 4th 

The N64 was home to a surprisingly large number of above-average shooters despite its muddy graphics and small cartridge space - Turok is one of these, a great FPS game where you shoot the SHIT out of dinosaurs. Brett Atwood of Billboard said it was like Doom and Tomb Raider mixed - Doom Raider, if you will. I say it isn’t - there’s no demons, and there’s no polygonal breasts to poke dinosaurs’ eyes out with! 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

What is a retrospective? A miserable little pile of opinions. I’ve only recently played through SotN for the very first time on a TOTALLY LEGITIMATE copy with a CRT filter. Bloody good (geddit?) game, that takes the repetition of its predecessors, improves on it in basically every conceivable way, and combines it with special effects and graphics that even 23 years later had me going “ooh, that looks quite good!” Symphony’s music and audio design are wonderfully paired with a deeply enjoyable experience that’ll have you saying “mm, maybe just one more room?”

Tekken 3 - Sony PlayStation, March 20th

Also releasing from the Land of the Rising Sun that day was Tekken 3, which many believe is still one of the best fighters ever made. Tekken 3′s combat is so fast and responsive that it’s better than some games made today. T3 is also the best and easiest way to knock seven shades of absolute shite out of your friends without risking a massive head injury or a trip to the headmaster’s office... where you could also challenge him, but only if he plays as my favourite Not-Guile-or-Ken character in gaming, Paul. 

Sonic Jam - Sega Saturn, June 20th

The moment Sega realised that re-packaging old Mega Drive games would net them serious cash - although unlike later collections, this is a strictly Sonic affair, and has a neat little 3D world to run around in as a sort of hub world. Sonic X-Treme proved that Sonic Team would have to work hard at getting the fastest thing alive into 3D space properly: Jam is the sort of test ground for it too. It features some genuinely good emulation work for 1997, although it’s basically the gaming equivalent of going round to your grandparents at Christmas only for them to give you the exact same gifts you got in 1991, 1992 and 1994 but wrapped in a bow to make you think it’s different. What are you lookin’ at, you little blue devil?

Star Fox 64 - Nintendo 64, June 30th

So there’s this German company, right, called StarVox. Nintendo look at Europe and say “shit, we don’t want another lawsuit... after all, we’ve done three this year!”. So they give us in the PAL region the exciting title of Lylat Wars which as far as I know means absolutely fucking nothing in the context of the game. They’re still called Star Fox in-game too so what was the point? Anyway, fun 3D shooter with graphics that’ll make you do a barrel roll off the sofa and onto the power button to make the brown and green blurs a little easier on the eyes. Hello 2007, I’ve come back to make old references with you!

Carmageddon - Windows, July 30th

The game so scary it was BANNED in the UK! More like the game so fucking shit it was banned. Carmageddon is so deeply boring to play on PC that I can only imagine that Stainless Games made it tasteless by 90s standards simply to ramp up demand - much like another game we’ll be covering soon. 

Herc’s Adventures - Sony PlayStation, July 31st

“And they said Kratos was the best hero? Shish... they got it wrong, sister! Hercules is clearly better... he even has a coconut weapon.” A surprisingly fun overhead action game that most people only know for... well, I’ll just embed it.

Mega Man X4 - Sony Playstation, August 1st

A few years ago I tried playing every Mega Man game there is - I gave up at X3 because I was getting bored. Even still, Mega Man bores me - but at least the level design is good. Stay away from the Windows port. Pictured: me in the background yawning.

GoldenEye 007 - Nintendo 64, August 25th 

The name’s Intro. Overused intro which I also managed to fuck up twice through the deeply editable medium of text. GoldenEye is like the Seinfeld of console shooters - playing it nowadays you’re unlikely to be amazed but holy shit there’s some absolute greatness in this game. Every sound and every piece of music in GoldenEye is permanently seared into my brain - sometimes I’ll just hear Facility or Frigate in my head alongside the door opening sound and the gentle PEW of the PP7. I mean come on, fucking listen to this and tell me Grant Kirkhope isn’t cool as all hell.

LEGO Island - Windows, September 26th

The first open world experience I ever had was LEGO Island. It’s still quite good today, utterly deranged animation from the likes of the Infomaniac and Brickster - a cautionary tale for children that giving pizza to high-profile criminals is disastrous for the human LEGO race. 

Fallout - Windows, October 10th

War never changes, but franchises do. Fallout’s legendary status in the industry is exemplified in how different it feels. Yes, we had the game Wasteland nine years prior, but until September 97 there was nothing quite like Fallout. From the chilling introduction sequence showing the ruins of the United States to the tragic ending, Fallout is an exercise in pure human misery with the brightest spots of hope it can possibly muster thrown in for good measure. What begins as a tedious isometric point-and-click RPG ends as a minigun-wielding power fantasy, before your entire worth is stripped from you at the finish line. You have 500 days to find a water chip before it’s too late, but you’re constantly being fought by terrifying Super Mutants, irradiated animals, and the biggest monster of all - humanity. See what I did there? If anything, humanity in Fallout’s setting would be the greatest unifying force possible against the horror of the outside world. But how is it? It’s dull, it’s sluggish, and it’s really hard to get into even if you’re already a fan - but push through that and it’s worthwhile to see exactly how far the series got before Todd Howard said “eh fuck it” and had the whole thing dipped into an FEV vat.

Grand Theft Auto - Sony PlayStation, October 21st

To put it simply, the first in the GTA series is now nothing but a novelty. It has an irritating camera, wonky controls, poor graphics and deeply repetitive gameplay. But thank fuck it exists, because without it the Rockstar story may have been very different indeed. It’s quintessential cops and robbers gameplay, spanning across Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas in one game, but with maps so far removed from their modern incarnations they may as well be named “Not New York, Possibly Bristol and Orange Town”. People really fucking hated Hare Krishnas in the 20th Century, didn’t they?

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back - Sony PlayStation, October 31

A hard one to talk about, honestly - it’s more Crash and better than the first one. It looks great, and Crash controls so well compared to his first outing. It’ll also keep you playing for 100%, fiendishly addictive and unashamedly difficult. Had a weird cover that moved with your head. 

PaRappa the Rapper - Sony PlayStation, November 17th

Type type type the words into the box! (Type, type, type - uh oh - the box?)

PaRappa is a gorgeously stylised rhythm game about rapping to steal the heart of the girl of your dreams - which involves learning karate, getting your driver’s license, selling bottle caps and frogs, making a cake, desperately trying not to shit yourself, and finally performing live on stage. Every one of its segments is so well-produced that they’d genuinely sell like ghost cookies in this era of shite rap. Notable for producing the greatest Jay-Z backing track ever made.

Sonic R - Sega Saturn, November 18th

Sonic R is absolutely FINE with vibrant textures, interesting levels, neat gimmicks and decent controls. But I’m gonna talk about its fucking AWESOME soundtrack by Richard Jacques and T.J. Davis, an eclectic mix of Europop and New Jack Swing - even thinking about it is bringing tears of absolute joy to my eyes hearing Super Sonic Racing in my head. You’ve got the main theme, Living in the City, Can You Feel the Sunshine, Back in Time, Diamond in the Sky, Work It Out and Number One - all of these are absolute club bangers and genuinely wouldn’t be out of place in a 90s disco. 

Tomb Raider II - Sony PlayStation, November 18th

Lara Croft returns to single-handedly endanger every species on Earth. TR2 is really good, the exploration and puzzle-solving aspects of the first game expanded upon here and the gunplay remaining just as punchy. Lara’s got a fully-functioning ponytail which absolutely boggles the fucking mind - a lot of work went into Lara’s hair for the 2013 reboot, so I can’t imagine the amount of man hours it took to get fluid(ish, come on, it’s the PS1 we’re talking about) hair movements in 1997. 

And really, that’s all I played from 1997. I’ve left out big hitters like Quake II, Gran Turismo and Diddy Kong Racing, but I simply haven’t formed an opinion on them yet. Maybe in a future post. 

Thanks for reading.

#playstation #ps1 #n64 #nintendo #jontron #castlevania #carmageddon #mega man #hercules #star fox #mario kart #every copy of mario kart 64 is personalised #sonic #saturn #goldeneye #oddworld #retrospective #1997 #gaming #retrogaming #fallout #grand theft auto #gta #parappa #jay-z #lara croft #tomb raider #sonic r

[timeagainreviews]

The Chibnall Masterplan

Back in 2018 when the episode "The Ghost Monument," aired, we got our first mention of "The Timeless Child," as uttered by bog rolls floating above the Doctor’s head. My initial reaction to this was dread. In fact, I can even quote my reaction from the review I wrote- "I’ll be honest, I have zero interest in that storyline. It’s called Doctor Who, not Doctor Who was Once a Little Kid Known as the Timeless Child." I got all of that from a single line of seemingly throwaway dialogue. Two years later, it would appear that my first guess was the truth. It turns out that when the Master said "Everything you think you know is a lie," was a lie. Evidently, I knew all along.

If you follow this blog closely, you’ll know that my reaction to the Timeless Child storyline has softened over time. I went from not giving a damn, to being fairly excited. That is until last week’s episode sent me spiralling back into that initial sense of dread. Sadly, this is the energy I brought into tonight’s episode. As opposed to bracing for excitement, I was bracing for disappointment. This is unfortunate as I always try and temper my expectations. I, like the rest of you, would love to be surprised. Even if I am worried about the trajectory of an episode, I always try and keep an open mind. After all, Doctor Who is pretty great.

After last week’s episode, I expected this one to be jam-packed with exposition. Oddly though, this one suffered from its own heaping dose of fluff as well. Once again, the companions spend most of their time on the sidelines. Right away they kill off that Rose Tyler looking girl, so I guess she wasn’t important. Which is a lot of how the episode treats our human characters. We’re given a scene wherein Yaz and Graham have a heart to heart, leading us to believe one of them may be departing at the end of the episode. However, this expectation is subverted by instead having nothing happen. Like last week, Chibnall has opted toward writing hollow character development in place of plot. Because of this, the scenes with the companions felt more like distractions from the actual story.

We get more of this when Ryan, Ethan, and Ko Sharmus are fighting off Cybermen with the power of busywork. Ryan’s attitude toward weapons has shifted since "The Ghost Monument." His interaction with the Doctor has turned him into a bit of a pacifist. Much like Chibnall’s writing, Ko Sharmus muddies this philosophy for Ryan by convincing him to take up arms against the Cybermen. I expected this to play into Yaz and Graham’s conversation, which felt like a foreshadowing of death. Ryan might shoot one of them as they are dressed in their Cybermen disguises, leading him to regret breaking his pacifism. But none of that happens. While it would have been a bit cliched and overly dark to do such a thing, at least it would have been something.

The Master takes the Doctor into the portal to Gallifrey where they stand within the Time Lord citadel. The Master traps the Doctor in a device which may as well be named the Agency Stripper™, as that’s what it, and this episode does to her throughout most of its run. Using the Time Lord Matrix, he illustrates the story of the Time Lord’s origins. All the while in the real world, he invites Ashad, the Lone Cyberman to set up shop on Gallifrey.

The Master tells the Doctor the story about a Shobogan scientist named Tecteun. She was the first of her kind to achieve space flight, which is incredible when you consider the thousands of people that were necessary just to get humans to the moon. During her travels through space, she discovers an odd gateway containing a little girl. She takes this girl home and raises her as her own. During a freak accident, much like Brendan from last week, she falls off a cliff. Damn kids, always playing by rocky cliffsides. However, instead of dying, she regenerates.

Tecteun goes a bit mad scientist trying to unlock the secrets behind regeneration, leading her to do experiments on this timeless child. She even appears to force regenerations on her as well. Eventually, she unlocks the secret of regenerations and successfully uses it on herself. This establishes what would become Time Lord society. At this point, we’re now waiting for the Master to tell the Doctor exactly what we all know- that the Timeless Child is the Doctor. However, there was a moment when it almost seemed like the Master was going to say he was the Timeless Child, which honestly, I would have found far more compelling. It would have informed so much of the Master’s past actions, and his recent relapse in character development after Missy’s change of hearts.

Instead, I found myself rolling my eyes at this "big reveal." It really was that simple. The story I wrote in my head after a single line of dialogue is exactly what we got. We learn that the number of regenerations was placed upon future Time Lords, which is weird because Clara had to plead for the Time Lords to give the Eleventh Doctor more. I guess along with unlocking the secret to the Timeless Child’s regenerations, they were also able to limit their number. That or Chibnall didn’t even think about it.

When considering the wanton destruction of Gallifrey by the Master’s hand, you suspect whatever it was the Time Lords did to this child was heinous. And while, yes, forcing regenerations upon the kid is a bit cruel, they always looked serene (see: bored) while sitting there in Tecteun’s lab. I expected it to be something like Rassilon and Omega destroyed a child to harness her time travelling ability to create the first TARDIS. Turns out, that the thing that really pissed off the Master was knowing that he had a little bit of the Doctor inside of him. While the Master has always been a bit of a maniac, even this felt like a bit excessive.

Back on the Cybership, the humans have stowed themselves away in Cyberman armour. I rather liked this bit as it reminded me of the very first Dalek story where Ian hides away inside a Dalek carapace. While I feel like they could have done more with this, at least they were having a bit of fun. After saving Ryan, Ethan, and Ko Sharmus from the Cybermen, the humans make their way into the portal to Gallifrey. The Cybermen land above the Time Lord citadel where they hover above, ready to make Gallifrey their new home.

The Master does the Doctor dirty and leaves her inside the Matrix to fend for herself, while he goes off to broker a deal with Ashad. We find out that Ashad, with the guidance of the Cyberium coursing through his mind, has created a death particle capable of undoing all organic life in the universe. His big plan is to basically turn the Cybermen into robots, which much like the Master, I found boring. Thankfully the Master is always up to his dirty tricks as he kills Ashad and uses the Cyberium to create a race of Cyberman/Time Lords known as Cyber-Masters. I was a bit disappointed they weren’t called Cyber Lords. However, I suppose the Master naming them after himself is on-brand at least. After all, he did once make an entire planet’s population into himself.

The Doctor is now forced to deal with the new information she’s been given by the Master. She rejects it at first, but the imagery of Brendan in her mind keeps giving her cause to doubt. It’s then that she sees the Ruth Doctor who helps her through her identity crisis long enough to help her escape the Matrix. Her plan to escape is to basically run through every life in her mind until it shorts out and forces the Matrix to release her. This entire sequence is rather silly when you consider the Matrix holds the entire lives of countless other Time Lords. No matter how many lives she had before the First Doctor, it’s not more than the Matrix can handle. What’s even sillier is the way in which they shot it, which was basically by having Jodie Whittaker squeeze her eyes shut and wince while holding her head. I was reminded of hacking scenes in movies where they throw a montage of symbols over the scene to make up for the fact that we’re basically watching some guy on a computer.

The montage is what is really worth mentioning, as it touched upon quite a few things from the Doctor’s past. Some of these things have been mysteries from as far back as the Tom Baker era. I’m speaking of course about the Morbius Doctors. For those of you not in the know, the Morbius Doctors were a series of images projected from the Doctor’s mind during a battle of wits between the Fourth Doctor and an evil Time Lord named Morbius. I had always assumed they were Morbius’ previous regenerations, but many have speculated that they were versions of the Doctor from before William Hartnell. Well, it would appear that this age-old debate can now be put to rest- those were definitely images of the Doctor.

I’d be lying if the nerd in me doesn’t kind of love this. Like I said, I try and keep an open mind. It’s even easier when the concept of Doctors existing before the First Doctor has been around for rather a long time. Andrew Cartmel’s "masterplan," was to introduce the idea of "the Other," which would be a Time Lord on par with Rassilon and Omega that was eventually "cloned," in a  genetic loom into the First Doctor. However, the idea was paired back as it was decided the doing such a thing would reveal too much about the Doctor’s past, thus answering too much of the show’s central question- "Doctor Who?"

Was it too much? That’s really hard for me to say at this point. It’s a bit early to know for sure. It does certainly complicate things a bit. To paraphrase something Andrew Cartmel once said at a public appearance- these story elements are like barnacles on a ship. Each one of them attaches to the hull over time. They seem small at first, but they eventually begin to slow the ship down. Take the aforementioned regeneration limitation placed upon Time Lords back in 1976’s "The Deadly Assassin." While it worked for the story at the time, it gave Steven Moffat the unruly task of finding new ways for the Doctor to keep on regenerating. You’ll forgive the guy for not doing the Valeyard.

While the nerd in me does love that they touched upon some deep Doctor Who lore, part of me was also lamenting the introduction of so many new versions of the Doctor. I’ve got a special love for each incarnation of the Doctor. This is why I love the Eighth Doctor audios so much, as it gives us an even deeper understanding of his character, despite his limited screentime. Even the War Doctor was given the chance to develop. Where will the Ruth Doctor play into all of this? Why did she have a police box if she is pre-Hartnell? Is this “Division,” an actual division of the Timeless Child into multiple entities? Will we get to experience her Doctor in a deeper way that feels as fulfilling as the first Doctor of colour deserves? While I hold out some hope for her, what about the montage of children in Tecteun’s lab? Are we going to get comics and Big Finish audios starring some kid you saw for two seconds? (I kid, you know they will) On one hand, we see the first Asian Doctor, on the other hand, they don’t even get a speaking role. Even with so much being added to the Doctor’s history, I can’t help but feel slightly short-changed.

Speaking of short-changed, let’s talk about that ending. The Doctor’s plan actually works, releasing her from the Matrix’s hold, which oddly also releases her from the Agency Stripper™. Convenient! Her companions find her as she’s lying there unconscious. They managed to find her rather quickly considering the city is in ruins. Convenient! The Doctor finds Ashad’s death particle, which has been shrunk down by the Master’s tissue compression device. I’m not sure, but I think this is the reason the death particle is no longer a threat to the entire universe. It now only seems to pose a threat to the organic life on Gallifrey. Maybe this is because Gallifrey is still in its own pocket universe? Either way, it wasn’t very clear. The Doctor makes contact with the Master and pinpoints his location. Convenient! She calls him to the citadel like it was Friday Night Wrestling and they have their little showdown. I swear if they’d have started making out, I wouldn’t have batted an eye, those two.

After forcing her companions to stay behind on a TARDIS set for Earth, the Doctor heads back to have a final showdown with the Master. With the tiny Cyberman attached to an explosive device resembling a torch, the Doctor decides she must kill the Master and this new race of Cyber-Masters before they can kill all of humanity. Having the ability to regenerate, the only way to take these mechanoids down is with the death particle. This is a far cry from the Doctor we’ve seen in "Genesis of the Daleks," or even "Daleks Take Manhattan," where the Doctor would consider such things "genocide." However, the Doctor gets a total cop-out moment as Ko Sharmus shows up long enough to detonate the device himself. After very little prompting, the Doctor allows him to sacrifice himself as she flees.

This, for me at least, is a longstanding problem with Chris Chibnall’s morality. It’s the Thirteenth Doctor’s weird relationship with guns all over again. As if to prove Davros’ point from "Journey’s End," this Doctor feels all too comfortable with allowing others to do her dirty work. Imagine the scene from "The Day of the Doctor," when Clara is standing there looking of the Doctors about to collectively blow up Gallifrey. It’s as if when she said "I never pictured you doing it," instead of changing his mind, the Doctor would say "You know, you’re right. You do it!” There’s a kind of mean spirited morality lurking beneath Chibnall’s writing. Or as my friend Adro jokingly put it- "I would not want to be his S&M partner."

The Doctor sends her companions and the last humans in the galaxy back to the 21st century. Surely no bootstrap paradoxes will come from Yedlarmi or Ethan making future generations of their own ancestors. Time Lords have bigger things to worry about than time anomalies. Right? Oh right. Graham and Ravio still seem perfectly capable of continuing their relationship, so that’s at least something. I also highly doubt either of them are likely to sire any paradoxical offspring any time soon. Though they are still fully capable of raising the sheep that go on to start the Wooly Rebellion. After finding herself pleasantly surprised to be alive, the Doctor finds her way back to her own TARDIS. However, before she can scoop up her companions, she’s intercepted by an angry Judoon who arrests her and throws her into space jail. I imagine this has something to do with why the Ruth Doctor was a "Fugitive of the Judoon."

After all is said and done, it’s really hard to pin down exactly how I feel about this episode. I do applaud the bold move of expanding the Doctor’s canon to include previous regenerations. I’ve always said that Doctor Who does occasionally need a showrunner willing to put their neck on the line. For better or worse, John Nathan-Turner was great for doing exactly that. Sometimes it’s a good thing to shake things up, and really dust off the cobwebs. Though strangely, a lot of tonight’s episode was very non-committal. The Master could very well have been lying.  Gallifrey could also still very easily be restored by using the Matrix’s memory. I personally would appreciate that as I love both Romana and Leela. The idea of the two of them dead and eaten away by the death particle is rather distressing. While I liked watching Jodie get a bit snippy and knocking the Master to the ground, I feel like a she never got a moment to be the Doctor. Her “Aha!” moment was short-lived and not very clever. She spends most of the episode either locked up or feeling helpless.

Also, where the hell was Captain Jack? What the hell Chibnall? How are they going to just give us five minutes of John Barrowman? It seems weird to introduce him only to put it off until the next series. However, the most egregious of sins for "The Timeless Children," is how utterly predictable it all was. As I illustrated above, I was able to imagine the entire concept of the Timeless Child the very first time I heard it mentioned. I put no deep effort into it either. It seemed like the most obvious storyline. The same could be said about people’s Ruth theories. Some of which were even better. The only way in which the episode could have surprised me was by making the Master the Timeless Child. It was the one point where I really perked up and began to feel a real interest in the plot. But alas, no, they went the incredibly obvious route. This isn’t to say they won’t be able to do interesting things with this in the future. The issue I’m having is that if I am able to figure out the plot just by hearing a single line of dialogue, did I even need to watch it?

#Doctor Who #the timeless children #Jodie Whittaker #Thirteenth Doctor #sacha dhawan #the master #Graham O'Brien #Bradley Walsh #Yaz #yasmine khan #tosin cole #Ryan Sinclair #mandip gill #chris chibnall #TARDIS #bbc #cybermen #cybermaster #cyberium #the lone cyberman #ashad #judoon #Time and Time Again

[jowritesthingss]

A (Demi)Boy and His Demon: Prologue

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Pairing(s): LoSleep (Logic | Logan + Sleep | Remy)

Rating: Teen

Content Warning(s): lots of swearing, religion mention, demons mention, injury/blood (Remy gets a papercut)

Length: 1,418 words

Brief Summary: Sleep-deprived writer Remy accidentally summons a serious-and-seriously-fed-up demon named Logan. Prologue. In Which Remy Inadvertently Summons a Demon

Fic Masterlist!

*

In Remy’s defense, he hadn’t exactly meant to summon a demon in the middle of a coffee shop on just another typical Tuesday.

And they most certainly hadn’t meant to bind the poor sap to them for the rest of their (presumably now-shortened and miserable) life.

But there he was.

And that was exactly what he had done.

But—erm, well. We’ll get there.

-

“Remy!” a familiar voice chirped as said enby pushed the door open to his favorite haunt. “Do you how do?”

“Ugh. Like, horrible.” The answer was instinctual at this point. Usually it was just sarcastic, but on a deadline like this? Satan had nothing on the wrath of an editor.

The echo of the bell ringing bright through his ears, Remy walked over to the front counter, where his good friend and caffeine addiction enabler stood. They tried in vain to pretend that they were swaggering and not at all staggering from sleep deprivation and lack of caffeine.

“So it’ll be the usual for you, then, yeah?” Emile smiled, and god, for all the years they’ve spent working as a barista themselves, Remy would never understand how Emile could stay so upbeat while on-shift.

“You know it, gurl,” Remy answered, fishing out his wallet. “Although gimme the largest size this time, hun’.”

Emile clucked sympathetically, already turning and getting started on Remy’s iced coffee. “Deadline coming up?”

“Uh-huh. Tonight.” Remy sighed, slapping a ten dollar bill onto the counter. “I’m due to get the script for chapter sixty-nine to Remus, but like, he’s been too busy giggling over the number of the upcoming chapter to finish the one we’re supposed to publish tomorrow. Virgil’s on the warpath, and I’ve been roped into designing shit to make up for Remus falling behind.” He rolled his eyes.

“Golly, that sure sounds rough.” Emile slid some ice into Remy’s coffee before popping a lid on it, swirling it a couple times, and sliding it across the counter with some verbal sound effects to accompany it. He picked up the tenner and began to punch things into the cash register, counting out change for Remy. “But I believe in you!”

“Gurl, you shouldn’t. I don’t,” Remy snickered. They reached back into their bag, groping around for their reusable straw. Pulling it out, he popped it into his cup. “There’s a reason I’m the brains behind the writing of this operation, not the art. You think I’d be working with those idiots if I had a choice?”

“Yes, I do,” Emile said mildly. He handed over Remy’s change.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fair.” Shoving his change into the tips jar, Remy rolled his eyes. Again. They did that a lot. Which, how could he not, when he was surrounded by so many dorks?

“Anyways, I’ll be in my usual corner, I guess.” Remy jerked their head towards their usual corner table. “Lemme know if you need any help back there, babe. Or if any tea needs spilling.” They winked at Emile from behind their sunglasses before turning and heading to sit down.

Once seated, Remy pulled out his laptop and the battered spiral notebook that he kept most of his ideas for their comic in. Exchanging their sunglasses somewhat reluctantly for a pair of blue light glasses, he booted up his computer. Then, after setting everything up in its typical position and connecting to the wifi in the coffee shop, Remy allowed themself a moment to sit back and sip at their iced coffee.

The contrasting tastes of sweet white mocha and bitter coffee filled his mouth, and Remy felt his shoulders relax for what had to be the first time in twelve to twenty-four hours.

Classes earlier in the day had been an absolute nightmare of scribbling in margins and surreptitiously typing the script up on his phone when professors weren’t looking. Then the night before had been a horror-filled dream sequence of exhaustion and trying to write actual content down without falling asleep on the keyboard and waking up with the L key imprinted on their nose and sixteen pages of keysmashes.

So suffice to say, Remy was not having a good time. But the iced coffee? It warmed their gay little heart. It made things just a bit more bearable on days like this.

All too soon the buzzing of his phone reminded Remy of their subsequent impending deadline and doom, and he came crashing back down to earth.

Sipping once more at their iced coffee, Remy set it off to the side, slipping in his earbuds and focusing in on the Word document in front of him. They began to type.

-

Three hours and two refills later, Remy had finished chapter sixty-nine, had sent it to Virgil to look over, and had even started on chapter seventy for a good measure.

Until Virgil sent back his edits, Remy’s focus of the moment had shifted to designs for chapter sixty-six, which Remus should’ve started drawing a few days ago, but nooo, the asshat wasn’t even done shading sixty-five, which was supposed to be posted in...Remy consulted their phone...in roughly six hours now. Fuck.

Remy couldn’t draw for shit, but they could research like nobody’s business, and designing and sketching was simple enough, so he wasn’t entirely unused to getting dragged into stuff like physical character designs and the creation of symbols and outfits (Remus was far too oafish and uncoordinated when it came to fashion, anyway).

Shaky as Remy’s art was, Remus certainly knew how to pick out what he liked from Remy’s miserable excuses for sketches, at least, so their partnership worked well enough...even if Remy privately thought his similarly-named partner acted like a dolt and smelled like minute ramen (and not even the good kind! more like the shrimp kind, and what the fuck kind of imbecile eats shrimp-flavored microwave ramen).

Finally satisfied with the roughly-sketched summoning circle that they had copied from the web, Remy exited out of Google Images.

Summoning circles, Remy had to admit, were a new topic of research for him. Their story—a Good Omens-type comic centering around an angel and a demon trapped in the human world—had required plenty of research into religion and religious imagery, of which they had not been a fan, but for some reason summoning circles had never really cropped up on their radar.

Remy may not have been a fan of the concept of angels, but he certainly wasn’t a fan of the concept of demons and the occult, either, so digging through the ominously dark websites had been...interesting. Eventually they had just given up and straight-up copied a summoning circle at random. They could take that and go from there, adding their own flair to it.

Remy looked down at the shaky summoning circle he had sketched out before him. It was kinda lopsided, but it was whatever. It was also much too boring, if you asked him. When they sent Remus their final reference, they’d put a note in the margins telling him to add some of that weird gory imagery stuff he was obsessed with. “Creep would really like that, huh,” Remy muttered aloud to himself.

Scrutinizing the copied circle for a few more moments, Remy mentally listed out some of the changes they wanted to make—an extra line here, a circle there, take out that square—and they reached into their backpack for one of the random looseleaf sheets of paper he always had floating around in there. Only, they grabbed at the wrong corner of the paper.

Feeling the sheet of paper slice into their pointer finger, Remy quietly hissed out a breath. “Fuck.” He drew his finger out of the bag, pulling it up to his face to get a good look at the injury, and shit, the papercut was bad enough that it was actually bleeding.

“Goddammit,” Remy cursed as a few drops of crimson splattered onto the paper in front of them, blurring over the details of the summoning circle he had drawn.

Remy popped his finger into his mouth and sucked at the smidgen of blood leaking out. Deciding to actually look at what they were sticking their hand into this time, they turned to the left, fully intending to practically stick his head into his bag to find a napkin and that pesky sheet of paper both.

This was how they came to be aware of the person who appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to stand to the side of their table.

.

.

.

Prologue || One || Two || Three || Four || Five || Six

*

This was supposed to be a one-shot, but Remy told Logan to hold their coffee and then bullied me into making it a prologue and six chapters’ worth of useless gays. I accept my defeat with dignity and insist that it was, in fact, actually my decision in order to get used to writing multi-chap things again before I tackle my Big Bad AUs.

Want to be added onto any of my taglists? Shoot me an ask or a message here or via my other social media!

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #tss #ts #sanders sides fic #sanders sides fanfiction #ts sleep #ts remy #ts logan #ts logic #logan sanders #losleep #ts losleep #ts human au #ts emile #emile picani #jwt sanderssides #dbhd #cw swearing #cw blood #cw demons

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 7, The Two Live Crew Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I’m Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

Amy: Hi, I’m Amy Berg, Supervising Producer and Writer of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer and Co-Writer of this episode. Hold on. [Opens bee.] There we go.

[Laughter]

Dean: The beer has been opened.

John: The Guiness has been opened. Amy Berg where did this episode come from?

Amy: Well, I mean, when you have a show about a team of con men sort of- one of the first episodes that you think of is- 

John: Yeah, it was like one of the first ones we broke- we talked about last season-

Amy: What happens when they go up against another team of con men? And obviously that's not something you really wanna, sort of, pull the trigger on during season one, so we sort of sat on it for a bit.

Dean: But we talked about it a lot in season one.

Amy: We did talk about it.

John: Yeah. But really you have to have your- part of the fun is having your characters and opposition- of people that make a difference, having the opposition of you need to know the characters really well.

Amy: You need to learn who our people are before we can bring in a new set of people.

John: Yeah, so it was a lot of fun putting together the different combinations and different variations on this- the evil team of evil Leverage.

Amy: Loves it.

John: Why the Gustav Klimt?

Amy: The Gustav Klimpt, now you're testing me and it's been a while, I believe this painting was called Higeia and it was technically destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. And it was sort of a choice to pick a painting that wasn't actually in existence, so we weren’t stepping on anybody's toes, saying that this was a stolen painting.

John: The likeless- the equivalent of likeness rights on paintings is an enormous pain in the ass so as a matter of fact, there's a statue of Lincoln in the park that's in the sequence later that we shot and then we had to get the rights to using that statute, even in the background.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Now that's very tricky stuff. Dean tell us about the fun of shooting this.

Dean: Well we wanted to try and keep perpetual motion and show two different attempts. Our team, which tries to do a low tech break in through basically just cutting through a wall through this cheapo office behind the high tech office, and then the daring team that actually chases the bullet head on.

John: Yeah. And there is our villain, Griffin.

Amy: Griffin Dunne.

John: Exactly.

Dean: I've wanted to work with Griffin my whole life. I remember seeing him in An American Werewolf Through London and just falling madly in love with this guy; I just thought he was amazing. And then when we went to do this episode, it was actually Tim Hutton who said, ‘What do you think about my pal Griffin Dunne playing this part?’ And it was just like a gift from heaven.

John: Oh yeah, we are all over that. And this is a lot of fun and we built a fake wall- And that is Tim's assistant, correct?

Amy: That’s that’s Elle, yeah.

John: That's Elle, Tim’s assistant, in her big screen debut with us tormenting her.

Amy: Indeed. And they're playing detectives Marlow and Archer who, as you know, is an homage to both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

John: That's right.

Dean: And there's fun outtakes from that which will be in the gag reel.

Amy: Excellent. This should have a lot of gag reel footage.

John: It's also- to tell you what's weird is, Archer actually- 

Amy: Was the name of Tim Spades partner in [mumbles]?

John: That's right. That's what the original reference was. That’s also Ross Mcdonald.

Amy: But Ross Mcdonald was inspired by that character in order.

John: Really?

Amy: Yeah.

John: I didn't know that. There you go.

Dean: Fans of the show In Treatment should know that this actress, Noa Tishby, is actually the Executive Producer of In Treatment on HBO.

John: That's right Noa is an Israli actress, she was in Israel, she saw the original show, she dug in, got the rights herself, brought it to America, and wound up executive producing the American version.

Amy: By the way, that's Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is so awesome. And who cast Will Wheaton in this episode, John Rogers?

John: Well I technically cast him, but I believe you had the idea of hiring Wil Wheaton because I'm the one who actually signed the papers.

Amy: Thank you, I appreciate the credit on that.

John: Yes.

Dean: And I was so happy because Wil Wheaton and I actually used to play on the same hockey team together.

Amy: That's right.

Dean: And this was back when he was on Star Trek. And I was dumb enough to allow him to play goalie at the time and-

[Laughter]

Dean: And [Unintelligible]’s son took a slapshot that cracked his helmet open and gave him 17 stitches across the forehead.

Amy: You helped break Wil Wheaton's face.

Dean: And the producers of Star Trek called me screaming at me and forbidding me to ever allowing him to play on the team again.

Amy: Nice. Dogs Playing Poker, by the way, totally public domain. That’s why we chose that one.

John: There you go, there's a lot of variations of that, too, that’s right. And this is actually our little slam is not a part of the subtle on a lot of the CBS crime shows; just the sort of horrible-

Amy: Yeah, the over the top-

John: When we created Leverage, one of the reasons we did it was because so many shows were chasing serial killers. I think it was Chris Downey who said, ‘You know what? Serial killers are covered. Let’s chase rich white dudes in suits.’

Amy: I think they're done.

John: There's only ever been 10 and they've been caught 100 times. And that was Apollo Robbins. This is a great- this is one of Dean's signature roundy-rounds. And I was saying the other day-

Dean: An amazing steadicam shot.

John: I was saying the other day, we've actually learned in the writers room how to assign dialogue to make this easier.

Amy: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: So rather than rewriting on the fly-

Amy: -we write towards the circle track.

John: Cause you can actually see. It goes- it's like triple play: it goes to Beth to Aldis to Chris to Tim and then back around again.

Amy: I love Parker; there’s always- always something secret going on, whether its secret nazis or- 

John: Yeah well, we kind of establish it in The Day of the Hunter Job, Parker’s realm of knowledge outside of stealing is not good.

[Laughter]

John: Like, anything that doesn't involve stealing, she will believe it if the other team members tell her. Oh this is great. I remember we shot this day. Dean, tell us about this bit.

Dean: Well this was one where we actually went full circle because we came in, we rehearsed it one way and it felt really good, but then we started to feel like, ‘Gosh we're not doing enough.’ And so then we reblocked the entire scene so we could all do more and have more happen, and then we all paused and went, ‘You know, the first one was much better.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And that's what we went with.

John: Yup. What I think was part of what was driving that was because I was on set that day, ‘Do not touch the motion sensitive bomb.’

Amy: Thank you.

John: Was the fact that this was gonna be Gina's last episode, full day with the cast- And also, she really dug in on the fact that the character was going to die and it genuinely upset the cast. Like the cast was a little freaked out here; they got way- cause this is a very claustrophobic set, very claustrophobic scene. The way we usually shoot is we shoot longer takes. So we do the whole thing, like we’ve shot entire acts in one take at some point.

Dean: That's true.

Amy: Yeah. By the way, this bit with the pudding, I've known John for two years and this is the only time I've ever turned him on.

[Laughter]

Amy: I wrote this bit, and he read the act and he came in and he burst into my office and was like ’hahaha’.

John: Remember you didn’t use it you; had talked about it and-

Amy: That’s true. That’s true. I brought it up in dialogue, but I didn't actually employ it. They didn’t- Parker didn't actually use it.

John: I actually kicked in the door- the only time I’ve yelled at you- 

Amy: Yeah, he yelled at me.

John: I kicked in the door and said, ‘How do you come up with instant pudding in a motion sensitive bomb and not actually use it?’ And so we had- and Parker, we had Parker do it. There's a lot of great acting in here, there's a lot of Gina digging in on, sort of, Sophie's past catching up with her. Hardison-

Amy: But this is a scene where it’s really easy to overwrite it, because your instinct is sort of to write to the emotion of this scene like Sophie could die. But the point is to underwrite and let your actors find the emotion between the lines.

John: That beat right there with Chris and Gina.

Amy: Yes.

John: There's a very nice recurring thing we try to do, which is, whenever it becomes something about killing someone, they go to Eliot because Eliot- because Eliot used to do that. And there's a nice moment there. I was actually there- oh look at that look. I love that look. Where-

Amy: Emotion between the lines.

John: Where basically Eliot signs off on the fact that she's probably gonna die and Gina and Eliot worked that out and it's just a lovely moment. Ahhh this is great, now how did we do this?

Amy: Gina just knocks this out of the park.

Dean: So Gina was very pregnant at the time, so we had to do a double for the wide shots, for the running, and Gina for the closeups.

John: Yeah, and then this is a miniature.

Dean: That's right. Well, the building is the actual building we shot at, but the explosion is a miniature that we shot at our parking lot that we digitally composited on top of it. Now at the time, people didn't know what we were gonna do with Gina's character because Gina was pregnant. So when we did this scene and we aired this episode a lot of people were really upset at this point because they actually thought we had killed her off of the show. 

Amy and John: Yeah.

Dean: And early Twitters were very upset.

Amy: Were not favorable.

John: Were very angry.

[Laughter]

Dean: How could you kill her off the show? But then-

Amy: This was originally intended to be the midseason finale, which in that case, the fans would definitely think for sure she was gonna be gone for a while or forever. 

John: Yep.

Amy: But we ended up adding two episodes to the end of the midseason run, so we did get to see her again.

Dean: I don't know what it is exactly, but for me, Parker’s performance- or Beth’s performance as Parker in this section here is reminiscent of some of the great comedians. 

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: Because it's so subtle what she's doing. And a lot of this came out of Beth herself who said -

Amy: I rewrote this scene based on Beth's notes that you were so kind to give me, and it sort of- it made the scene like 10 times better. I don't even remember what it was originally, but-

John: She's trying to remember what her lines are to say as Parker and her eyes roll up like ‘what am I supposed to say’ and then she gets freaked out at seeing Gina dead and loses it.

John: And then she totally spirals out.

Amy: There's a lot going on in, like, 20 seconds; it's pretty funny.

John: And then Hardison having to go up and bail her out. And again, there's a lot of- there's a lot of stuff going on in the structure this year with Gina leaving, and just for that tempering and having us to accelerate that storyline- There's a lot of Hardison/Parker relationship stuff between the lines on all the shows, we just never made it an A plot, but you can actually see the relationship evolve over the course of the season, when you watch the entire season particularly, the second half. And of course Chris is wearing a bandana under his hat because that's when he had slammed his head onto the set.

Dean: In the previous episode.

John: Exactly.

Amy: Yeah, he’s got a giant scar on his forehead right now.

John: Beautiful cemetery up on a big hill in Portland, nice enough to let us shoot there. Beautiful, gorgeous location. And that's a nice bit of acting, too.

Dean: Yeah, just the little moment of him seeing her and then getting that shock of losing someone that he cares about.

John: Yeah, and just processing.

Amy: So far you've pointed out that your favorite moments are the ones where there's no dialogue, so I'm glad I could contribute to that.

[Laughter]

John: Well you wrote- no no, that’s right, I usually go back and write the stage directions, but you do a lot of the-

Amy: This- and so it begins, when John makes fun of me throughout the commentary.

John: I don't make fun of you, just when you take too much credit.

[Laughter]

Dean: This is the controversy.

Amy: I was taking no credit!

Dean: In this scene, the gravestone says Cathrine Klive, her actor name, and at the end Sophie Deveraux and a lot of people thought that was actually a mistake, but why don't you address that?

John: Well we were really- it comes up in the end. We really wanted- and this is sort of a meta structural thing - she wants to kill Sophie Deaveraux. She realizes Sophie Deveraux as an identity, as a life, is a dead end, and so she changes the tombstone so that she can eventually give up that identity. And it's interesting because what Sophie is- realized is that she's going down a dead end, and in theory she’s the current criminal and Nate is the honest man. Nate is also going down a dead end, but he's way too obsessive and blind to realize it.

Amy: Yeah.

John: And so by the end of the season, you’ll see Sophie is a lot more emotionally evolved than Nate is.

Amy: It's true. This is sort of the beginning of Nate’s spiral where-

John: Yeah, maybe the end of Sophie’s thing.

Amy: His priority shifts and, like, winning becomes more important than servicing the clients.

John: We just sort of tease in 206. Great scene between Griffin and- really that was kind of fun. Once we knew we had Griffin Dunne, a lot of these scenes became, ‘Alright, it's really just gonna be head to head.’

Amy: Yeah, yeah.

John: Yeah. It's just- we’re just gonna have the two of them- And the fact that they're friends was really helpful.

Amy: And this the promise of the premise when you do a crew vs crew episode. What you are promising to the audience is you're gonna have one-on-one faceoffs between the characters and their counterparts.

John: And this is part of the evolution of writing an episode, is when we were breaking this, we had a really hard time getting that up as fast as possible, and that's what you wound up- doing the inner cut break in at the opening. Because even though they weren't facing off at each other, we gave the audience the promise of the premise.

Amy: Yes.

John: And the beautiful Hyundai Genesis. A fine automobile.

Amy: A fine, fine vehicle.

Dean: Beautiful peel out.

John: It was nice. In a cemetery!

[Laughter]

John: There was a moment where I was talking to one of the actors, I looked down and realized I was standing on a civil war veteran’s grave. That was a little disturbing.

Amy: That’s classy Rogers.

Dean: I absolutely love the little makeup and hair choices of Gina in this scene, it's so 40’s noir.

John: Yes.

Amy: Yeah, yeah the hair.

John: The whole episode she's playing 40’s noir. And it was a really interesting look, and not one we can do a lot because of the characters she's played, but this was interesting; she's not playing a character ever in this episode except in the opening.

Dean: Right.

John: I kind of liked her in the cop outfit.

Amy: It's one of my favorite running gags in the entire series of the show. Parker just not entirely buying that Gina’s actually alive.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘I'm not dead!’

John: Some part of her brain understands it, but the emotional center is so screwed up.

Amy: ‘I saw her in a coffin, ergo, she must be, in fact, dead.’

John: This is also great, is digging in on the fact that the whole ex-boyfriend/crew/guy who runs the crew she used to be with. And for a while, for like a minute and a half in the room, remember that character was Sophie's boyfriend for the whole first half of the season and this was gonna be the payoff, but we just never knew if we were gonna get the availability for that actor and we just couldn't risk it. And it also seemed a little dishonest she would hide that, so.

Dean: I love the Hardison line, ‘You saw other teams before us?’

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘No, just another Nate.’

John: ‘Just another Nate.’ That's- yes, this is a big family beat of looks back and forth. 

Amy: Lots of looks.

John: Now how did you- I remember you were very, Dean, very big into designing the other team’s headquarters.

Dean: Yeah, well I really wanted to feel like a mirror of our headquarters. But in a believable way in that they don't have permanent space so they’re in a small space. But I was trying to mirror even screen direction-wise that one team is looking left-right the other team is looking right-left so that we can really feel like these are absolute mirror images of each other.

John: Yeah even the looks left-right and right-left match.

Dean: That’s right.

John: Yeah, no it's interesting. And there's Apollo Robbins, who we haven't mentioned yet.

Amy: Apollo Robbins! Yes, he's our technical consultant on the show. He is a master thief. But not anymore, he's a good guy now. I feel like I should point that out.

John: Yes we should. You can't hire him to do crimes.

Amy: When I say consultant, I mean he's not actually a thief anymore.

John: This is also great; this is also the Mona Lisa scam. Why don’t you explain the Mona Lisa scam since you’re a research freak?

Amy: Oh great, now I’m-

John: 1911.

Amy: Yes, 1911 there was a con man, I don't remember his name, but someone says it I think in this scene, where he created six forgeries of the Mona Lisa, stole the original, and then sold the six fakes on the black market to individual buyers as though they were the original and got six times the profit.

John: Some con and heist shows will just do that plot and act like they came up with it. [Coughs] Asshole! [Cough]. 

[Laughter]

John: Rather than mention the fact that this is something that really happened, that you should honor. 

Amy: This is something that really happened, that I actually read about.

John: Also used the Doctor Who's: The City Of Death written by Douglas Adams.

Amy: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

John: There you go. This is something else we did a lot of, which was the process of elimination bit with the screens. Remember we did it in Hunter too? And it's just kind of fun because it’s kind of something from my physics background which is all about probability. And the fact that a series of educated guesses- it's kind of like our version of detective work.

Amy: Yeah.

John: You know, it's like crime detection, it's a lot of fun. And yeah, and now we're really seeing Nate start to spin out of control.

Amy: But this is what I would call dueling competence porn.

John: Yes it is.

Amy: This, and the third act where the teams are doing their jobs and doing them well.

John: Competence porn, by the way, is a term- I forget how it came about, but it's basically-

Amy: It's just a room bit.

John: It’s a room bit. It’s like, you know what? I just like watching people who are good at their jobs doing it, especially if they're entertaining. A lot of it was from 208 was watching Beth Riesgraf- in 208 there was an entire act that's a break in-

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: That’s Beth breaking into a vault. And when you're writing it, you're like, ‘Gosh, that feels thin,’ and then you're watching it and you're like, ‘I'm watching Parker break into a vault for 15 minutes and this is amazing!’

Amy: I could watch it for 40 minutes.

Dean: This is one of my favorite bullet time shots that we’ve done.

John: Yes, now this is- now remember this is all done not digitally- well we do it really. We freeze everyone in the background and the cameraman walks through it and we digitally speed it up. What is this space? This is the- 

Dean: This is an actual museum in Portland that we turned into our space.

John: Yup.

Amy: Wasn't there a naked sculpture that you guys put a leaf on?

John: Yes, up in the upper level.

Amy: That's my favorite story.

John: Yeah. And then- yes, this is 4-way; this is not as insane as the one in the season opener.

Amy: But it’s still insane.

John: But this is a 4-way through about 100 extras.

Amy: I don't think Dean understands that we’re making television.

[Laughter]

Dean: Well, you know, honestly you don't even attempt a shot like this without a steadicam operator like Gary Camp.

Amy: Gary Camp is amazing.

Dean: He's a serious feature film guy. I mean, that was all one shot.

John: Yeah. That's stunning. And then you bring it back to Parker- and this is also fun, is the fact that we make fun in the show. And this was- even when we did tap out and some people were like, ‘Oh, you're making fun of Lincoln, Nebraska,’ when we had Sophie make fun of the food. We’re not making fun of the locations, we’re making fun of the fact that Sophie’s a little princess.

Amy: Yeah.

John: She's not someone who does well with things that- and the van, the van, actually, over the course of the second season becomes a character.

Dean: I love that she's says about how it smells a little whiffy.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is a callback in The Future Job as well.

John: Yes, this is hard work, it smells like hard work. Yeah, Hardison's affection for the van.

Amy: Respect the van!

John: Respect the van, yeah.

Dean: Now this is actually the first scene where we’ll see the teams start to go head to head.

John: Yeah. Split up, call out your jobs.

Amy: This is the promise of the premise act, as we call it. And it's the Van Gogh that they're after, the Cafe Terrace At Night, I believe it’s called.

Dean: And this is a very important moment because it really established who Nate and Sophie were to the rest of the team. Nate being the one that makes the plans, but Sophie being the one who keeps them safe. And that had never been exposited before, and by doing that, it really set it up.

John: Boom! And then the parallel structure over to Hardison's opposite number, Chaos, played by Wil Wheaton, just four vans down. 

Amy: Nice.

John: That was really inspired. They’re the most twin of the bunch. Oh, and this is amazing. This is amazing because that's all real time. That wallet never came off. This was this whole section we just gave to Apollo.

Amy: Yeah. He's like, what can you do? And he just basically-

John: And he took Beth aside and they came up with a bunch of- it’s like, you know what? We're just gonna run camera, you just do a bunch of you do you, man.

Amy: By the way, there was no one else we had in mind for Apollo. Even when I was like- when I came up with the concept, and then I also did the outline, I also called the character Apollo, hoping at some point we would actually cast him.

John: But was the Wil Wheaton character originally a girl?

Amy: In fact, she was.

John: Yes, that’s right.

[Laughter]

Amy: Yeah, it was- I believe it was a hot Latina- 

John: Yes.

Amy: -that he was going up against, and then at some point, you know, in the casting process I turned to you and I was like, ‘You know, we've been talking about Wil Wheaton for something. Is this not the prefect role or not?’

John: And Noa Tishby rocking the dress. Noa was actually in the Israeli army. So that was kinda cool as we were looking at a lot of different actresses and Dean had seen her tape.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And it was like, you know, I wanna try a different ethnicity. I wanna try a different look, and brought her in. And what's great is she looks like she can take a punch, you know, that's a tough chick. And she really did great in the fight scenes and was a really- we got really lucky in this episode.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: You know, we usually have to cast one big role; we cast five. 

Dean: Right.

John: And they were all great.

Dean: Now this fight scene was-

John: Ok I'm gonna take credit for this one because nobody else is-

Amy: I wasn't gonna take credit for it.

John: No shadow on this, I had to explain this 9 times.

[Laughter]

Amy: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Dean: And this sequence was actually getting directed by Marc Roskin and you, John.

John: Yes, at two o’clock in the morning. But I will give Mark Franco big props for throwing the old 1970’s film look.

Amy: The film reel stuff.

Dean: I love it.

John: That is so great. The Shaw brothers look is that and this is the whole-

Dean: That's how they see- in their minds that's how they see fights, like the karate movies they grew up watching. 

John: Yes. And this is based on two things. 1) a great story about samurais- I love that look that Chris did. Great story about two samurai who faced each other, knew each other’s skills so well they fought the entire fight in their head and walked away. And Warren Ellis’ character the Midnighter from The Authority comic book who has sort of the same thing. He does fights backwards in his head. Ah look at that, oh he's a great physical actor, too, it was really- it was nice, cause we cast Apollo, he's never done acting before, he'd never done TV before. And it's the one gamble on the whole show and he was fantastic.

Dean: And he totally pulled it off.

Amy: But he's just so damn charming, it’s like you, sort of, just believed from the beginning that he could do it.

John: Yeah, he's very dangerous. 

[Laughter]

John: It's really- if he ever turned evil, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Amy: Oh my gosh.

Dean: This next sequence, outside, while I had done the storyboards for it, Marc Roskin shot the hell out of it. And what we wanted to do was an homage to the great Western movies, you know, the Spaghetti Western.

John: Well this was the challenge, and we talked about this when we were writing it. It’s like, nobody does hacking in an interesting way. There's no way to do hacking in an interesting way.

Amy: Visually it’s- filming it is not effective.

John: So abandon trying to do it with the computers and just do the metaphor, which is two guys pitting each other’s intellects against each other, and make it text.

Amy: And it's much more interesting, look at each other than looking at screens.

John: Oh and that timing is great, look at this, it’s just fantastic.

Amy: This is so nerdgasmic.

[Laughter]

Dean: He even had that Spaghetti Western whistle.

Amy: Yeah. I remember the first cut it was only in there subtly and you were like, ‘Hey turn that up, man.’

Dean: Listen, I’m-

John: And look at the little holster move, too. 

Dean: I'm all for subtly, I just want a lot more of it.

[Laughter]

John: Oh no, Wil knocked it out of the park in this. Did you know that he had been doing a bunch of shows and people have come up and asked him to sign his autograph as this character?

Amy: As Chaos.

Dean: That's great.

John: Somebody came up with the anarchists cookbook and asked him to sign it as Chaos.

Dean: And I love that Sophie can’t use a computer.

[Laughter]

John: Utterly useless.

Dean: She just closes it.

John: Well Hardison’s taught Eliot- and the look to the swords. We had so much fun coming up with different props in the scenes. And this was at 2 o’clock in the morning fight fight fight, you win. Fight fight fight, you win. And just- cause they had to learn the routines and we were banging it out in three sizes at a time, it was great. Then we shot the bird. 

Amy: So many looks.

John: And this- you could run the entire Parker/Apollo scene without dialogue and you'd know exactly what's going on.

Amy and Dean: Yeah.

John: Actually-

Dean: She's a little bit the Harpo. You know what I mean.

Amy: She's the Harpo.

John: She's the Harpo, he's Groucho in that scene, it's very subtle.

Amy: Is that Chase? Was that Chase walking towards the camera? It looked a little like Chase.

John: No, no. And this is, again, one of the rules, one of the hard rules of doing these shows. These shows are very hard, is that it can't be a random obstacle. Whatever is your obstacle heading into the third or fourth act must either be a product of the villains plan which you've already set in motion, or something that the team has screwed up or succeeded too well. And not screwed up too often cause that means they suck. So-

Amy: You make it sound like we did something good on purpose. That’s awesome.

John: Yeah, every now and then. And this is just- I want-

Dean: We almost didn’t do this.

John: We almost didn't do, but this is the punchline to the bit, that they're so locked into each other-

Dean: I'm so glad we did it.

John: Yeah. I actually was ready to bail on it, you were like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let's make time.’ And the little look, and he gives them a bunch-

Dean: A bunch of crazy idiots.

John: Yeah, exactly. Now this is great, Nate’s totally lost in the need to win at this point.

Amy: Oh yeah.

Dean: I love Parker saying that, ‘The people in this line of work are unstable; we can use that.’

John: Yes.

Dean: Completely not realizing that she's in that line of work.

John: Tapping the pad look at that and look at the look Chris- that's another thing. 

Amy: ‘I'm totally helping.’ That's it.

John: Gina gives a little smile which I missed the first time I saw this show.

Amy: There's a lot of little subtleties.

John: And again, second season, you start pairing up things differently. Chris and Gina found a nice rhythm for Sophie and Eliot this year that wasn't there first year, just in the pairings. And we wound up working; it was nice. And this is- yeah, she killed a guy with a mop.

Dean: I love Hardison's jealousy about Chaos, the whole ‘ugh.’

Amy: ‘Chaos.’

[Laughter]

John: Cause, you know, and it's a great thing of acting on Aldis’ part, you know he's beat him. You know that Chaos has beaten him a couple times. He's really- he’s not a pleasant loser, Hardison. And the nice little fist tap for the Kobayashi Maru.

Amy: Nice little knuckle bump, Parker. 

John: Yup. Well that was another one of the little subtle things, that Parker has plainly sat down and watched like all nine Star Trek movies with Hardison because it was just something he did on a Saturday, you know?

[Laughter]

Amy: Well she wants to see, you know, what normal people do.

John: Yeah, Hardison's probably a bad example of that.

Amy: I don't think that's right- the right choice.

John: There's not- you know-

Amy: I gotta say, I love Tim in this scene.

John: Yeah. He’s really mad.

Dean: This one, out of all the cutting back and forth, this was the trickiest because it had to match rhythm, intensity-

Amy: And dialogue.

Dean: -and dialogue.

John: That's right. 

Dean: This was really tricky.

John: Line by line. And that was the tricky bit, too. We had to give both of them the entire script for each one so they could know what they were doing to each other. I think- did Griffin come down the first day and watch Tim?

Dean: I actually think this was Griffin’s either first or second day on the show.

John: That's right. Tim came down to watch- yeah, so he would know what he had done physically. There's a parallel structure even with the team. This was a lot of fun. But this is one of those things that looks really elegant, but scripting, it's a little chimpy. It’s like, once you know what you're going to do, this wrote pretty easy.

Amy: Ok, yes, but I'm gonna go on record in saying that this is the best third act we've ever done in the history of Leverage. I just love it so much.

John: Well, you know what? Again, this is something you sorta learn. We- you know what? You learn how to write the show while you write the show. This is when we really where we realize you only need to do one thing an act. We so tried to buff all the people and, ‘Oh look, at the incredible plot twist’ like, you know what? They're fun characters, they're good characters, let them do one thing.

Dean: Yeah, it's fun to watch them do their thing.

John: One thing every act.

Dean: And I love how they all started to get pumped up for it. On both sides, they are gearing up for game day.

John: This is a great act break.

Amy: Nothing about that act I dont like. And I had very little to do with it.

John: This is easily- this is one of my favorite shows of the season. Of both seasons.

Amy: Mine too.

Dean: And beautifully photographed by our great cinematographer, Dave Connell.

John: That's right, because we were shooting parallel; we were shooting inside the museum and outside. You were outside running back and forth.

Dean: Very intense.

John: And this is a lot of fun. All the security guys were great. Portland once again gave us a great, great acting pool. 

Amy: Go Portland!

John: And then this was a lot of fun, was setting up the snarky dialogue and Aldis and Wil basically sat and sweated in their vans-

Amy: Yeah.

John: -for 6 hours. Cause Aldis is always going, ‘Nobody knows what it's like to work in the van’. That van is hot. So he was very glad to have a playmate.

Amy: Aldis had like one full day of shooting in the van and nowhere else.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: I love the character Tim came up with here, that was great.

John: And Emily is actually the girl I went to prom with. That's where the name comes from.

Dean: Nice.

John: Yep.

Dean: Poor Emily.

John: Yeah I’m- hey!

[Laughter]

Amy: I said nothing. If you noticed, I stayed quiet and said nothing. I'm learning.

John: And Tim plays drunk, distracting guy an awful lot this season. This- and by the way, the security guard that talks him down is great, he's got a really great comedic beat. This, by the way, is a stunning sequence.

Dean and John: 10 millimeter lens.

Amy: 10 millimeter lens? 

John: Down in the basement.

Dean: And look at this steadicam move - down the stairs!

Amy: Running down the stairs.

John: This is a guy walking!

Dean: And then whipping around, that is-

Amy: This is inhuman.

John: It really is.

Dean: For steadicam artists, they will understand how difficult that shot is.

John: By the way, I like the fact that we just locked Beth into the air conditioning system.

[Laughter]

John: ‘Are we gonna build one? No, there's one downstairs! Should we put Beth Riesgraf in moving machinery? If she's up for it.’

Amy: Not sure why we had to put the lock it, but that's ok.

John: It's a good look. And oh yes, it-

Dean: I think this is my favorite of all the air duct scenes, this is my favorite air duct scene.

Amy: This is actually-

John: Well like Two Horse- all of Two Horse where she was bitching while having to do it.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: This is also- we built the most complicated duct system on earth for this.

Dean: Talk about the bird, because you were there for this.

John: Oh yeah, I- we thought the bird would be CG, much like, we thought we’d be on a CG roof the series premiere, instead we wound up in Chicago 40 stories up. Dean went and found a bird- 

[Laughter]

John: -a North American Kestrel. He said it would be easier to shoot a real bird that was trained, and so if you go on my blog you see pictures of the bird, but that's the last thing we did that night, so at 2 am we had this bird in a box, which was really beautiful.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And- 

Amy: No birds were harmed in the making of this episode.

John: No birds were harmed. It was a really beautiful bird. But yeah, the trainer was hiding right off screen to summon the bird to get it to fly across.

Dean: This was actually one of the most difficult fight scenes we've ever shot, mainly because of the small space they were in.

John: How did you get the camera up there?

Dean: We literally locked it onto the ceiling and just let it run for the whole day. And then hoped we had good material.

John: Oh cool. That everybody would hit their marks.

Amy: She's so intense, I love it.

John: And the- him switching back over to Hebrew, this was a lot of fun. Oh and ‘now I’ve got the lasers.’

Amy: ‘No, now I’ve got the lasers!’

Dean: His arrogance was just awesome.

John: The two of them were fantastic.

Amy: He’s almost too good at it.

John: Big thanks to Derek, yet again, for building a great interface that lets the audience know exactly what’s going on.

Amy: Derek’s our graphics guy, he's amazing.

John: Does all our computer stuff. And our security guards, you know, somewhat oblivious, but good guys.

Dean: That's just the oldest gag in the world that I love.

Amy: It flickers only when they're not looking at it.

John: You know what it is, it’s the Abbott and Costello, it’s the candle on Dracula’s coffin.

[Laughter]

Dean: And I love that.

John: I love that reveal.

Dean: And he comes in dressed as, and named as, Nate Ford. I mean, that is just fabulous.

Amy: He's with the insurance company, what?

John: It is a great little, ‘Fuck you,’ from that character. 

Dean: And Tim’s look at him for doing it, it’s just awesome.

John: But this was the fun of the fourth- and this was really hard when we were plotting. It's like ok, in the fourth act they have to be good, but they have to look like they’re losing. And they have to look like they're losing so bad you come into the fifth act not knowing if they won, and then we have to somehow pull it out.

Amy: Yeah. This, by the way, the scene with the two of them talking with the bird cage, was one of the first images that popped into my head when we were breaking this episode. I just love this.

John: But this duct tape- cause here's the thing, we have to shoot this direction and you have to shoot them crawling off these directions. This thing was huge, a human sized hamster trail. Took up an entire ball room for that one shot. Great fight scene, and we had talked about this, and this is a lot steamier and sexier than originally pitched.

Amy: It's literally steamy.

John: Dean was all over- like ‘I'm going to fight. I'm gonna shoot the steamiest fight scene that we've ever had.’

Dean: I thought it would be interesting to do a fight scene as a love scene.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And so the fight is actually foreplay.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And a dance. It’s really like a dance sequence. We used to always say fights are like dances because of the movement and everything, but you know, you took that very literally and everything, which was great.

Dean: Now, by the way, we've done lasers in several episodes before. 

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: These are the best lasers we ever did by far.

Amy: It's pretty cool.

John: Yeah, and having them move, that was the key. It's yet another example of something that you think will be really hard, actually turns out to be a little easier and way cooler.

Dean: And way cooler.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And again, kudos to the effects artists. If you look carefully, you can see the lasers reflecting in her pupils.

John: Reflecting in her eyes. I know, that’s sick. 

Amy: That's really hot.

John: That was really great. This is a big ‘they are screwed’ act out.

Amy: Oh my god, look at that!

Dean: That is so cool.

Amy: Why did I not notice that before?

John: And wet people fighting.

[Laughter]

John: You know what? We give you everything on Leverage.

Dean: Little sex, little violence. 

John: And it’s good.

Dean: And now we were able to take the hat off cause we were able to use the real scar on his forehead finally in the episode!

John: Also kinda cool, Kevin, our stunt coordinator, had them fighting in Israeli military style. That they were both- they had both sort of picked up- we always had Eliot kind of fight in that style, but the fact that that would be her training-

Dean: And I love that these two are standing next to Honest Abe.

[Laughter]

John: And that's a great entrance. She's really got-

Amy: ‘Oohhh.’

John: She's got 3 great entrances this year. 

Amy: Yeah, she does.

John: One I'm not gonna talk about. 

Amy: Cause you haven't seen it yet.

John: You haven’t seen it yet. But the Annie Croy entrance in the season opener was one of my favorite Gina bits, and then that.

Dean: Fabulous. Gina absolutely brought her A game this season.

John: And yup, this is our double just whipping through this.

Amy: That was me.

John: That was you? I forgot about that.

[Laughter]

Amy: It's a secret skill. I don’t like to talk about it.

John: And that's the thing, that was footage of the gymnast whipping through those maneuvers with Beth popping up. The special effects people had to put the lasers through those moves to coordinate with- you know, ordinarily, you build these shots incredibly carefully. It was like, ‘No, here's the footage. Make it work.’

Dean: I love this old school crank.

John: ‘Can't hack a classic.’

[Laughter]

Amy: More competence porn.

John: More competence porn. Hardison- the staff will tell you the first year we had Christmas together, I got them all wind up radios and flashlights. 

Amy: Yes.

John: I'm a big believer in emergency preparedness for the apocalypse.

Amy: He cares! He cares about us. 

John: You mock.

Amy: Wants us to live through the world ending.

John: Well, you know. I play a lot of Left 4 Dead. I want to make sure my crew’s ready.

Amy: Alright, cool.

Dean: I love that - Parker not quite good at acting yet.

John: No. This is key, Parker can't do a long con. She can maintain it for maybe 4-5 minutes before her inability to mimic humans breaks down. And there we go.

Amy: By the way, this episode totally screwed my- the way I do story telling now, because I'm thinking as the criminal all the time.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: Like, it's terrible. ‘How would I break into an auction house? Well to control the motion sensors-’

Dean: I love this beat right here.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Like, ‘Ahh, screw the fight.’

[Laughter]

John: Well he knows he's won by this point, so it's just really- 

Dean: And she's so turned on by the fact that he did, cause no one else has ever beaten her.

John: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, was the idea that people- it's, again, you respect someone who’s competent. And the hand- yeah the little look after the handcuff-

Amy: Wow.

John: He actually looks a little scared there.

Amy: I know, I know.

John: He's like, ‘I got you! Oh wait, what did I get?’

Amy: ‘Is it over?’

John: This is nice.

Dean: In the original longer version, they originally kissed and then fell out of frame.

John: I missed that! I missed the fact that they banged out a quickie during the middle of the con.

Amy: Uh, no.

John: Alright, fine. By the way, Christian loves the badge on the chain. Anytime he can have the badge on a chain, he’s the happiest man alive. And Hardison-

Dean: A little bit of improv-ing by Aldis Hodge here.

Amy: Indeed.

John: Aldis- and again, this pops up in the next episode, Hardison always goes a little too far. He's never able to quite control the- he’s never able to get out without pushing it too far.

Amy: Are you saying that's going to catch up to him at some point?

John: That will catch up to him. The very next episode matter of fact. And yeah, this was a lot of fun driving police cars around Portland at six o’clock in the morning.

Amy: I'm sure no one was alarmed.

Dean: Now young filmmakers, that little move there is to get on the other side of the line.

Amy: Oh yes.

John: What was that?

Dean: So we- after we established them coming out of the building the camera slowly tracks over to the other shoulder on both sides, so now we're on the opposite side of the line and all of their looks have now reversed from the previous scene.

John: You and your looks.

[Laughter]

Dean: But this allowed us to now do our car gag, because we couldn’t really blow up a car in this location.

John: At two o’clock in the morning.

Dean: So we had to whip-pan off of a look to a parked car, then later we blew up a model car and replaced it.

Amy: We did two miniature explosions.

John: I love this reveal. I love this look. It’s like, ahhh, it's like Christmas.

Dean: Bingo.

John: Yeah.

Amy: Always knew you were evil, Wil Wheaton.

Dean: And now the evil speech of evil.

Amy: The evil speech of evil!

John: The evil speech of evil! A crucial part of the- well, this isn't really an evil speech of evil. The evil speech of evil is usually when they are-

Amy: Yeah, it’s the evil griping of evil.

John: The evil speech of evil is just: define your behavior. He's straight up monologuing here.

Dean: This is a little bit more of the, ‘I would’ve gotten away if it weren’t for you meddling kids.’

John: Yes, exactly.

Amy: Are you saying this is a Scooby Doo?

John: In the original version of this, he pulls off the Wil Wheaton mask only to reveal he's still Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

John: But he wears a Wil Wheaton mask. You know what? We should've called Wil for this.

Amy: Oh my god, why didn’t we do that? Now we gotta record it again.

John: I know. Maybe- You know what? We’ll do one on iTunes with him.

Amy: We'll do a special one.

John: And we may be playing Dungeons and Dragons while we actually do the commentary. This is great now. This is tough. And talk about- we had a couple different endings for this episode in this particular scene.

Amy: Yes.

John: Go ahead.

Amy: I don't remember them, I just remember there were multiple endings. [Laughs]

John: We actually, for a couple different versions of the outline, had him lose. Had Nate and the guys lose.

Amy: Oh, that’s right.

John: And then our team conned them about the painting. And the moral was basically our team kinda sitting around, pissed off they lost, but they were still a family while the other team broke up. And it just didn't feel-

Dean: Wasn't satisfying.

John: It was one of those good writer beats- and that's why Dean’s actually a very valuable producing partner, because he's all heart. 

[Laughter]

John: Seriously man, he’s- and he’s, ‘I don't feel it.’

Amy: And we have none.

John: And we have none, because we’re writers and our blackened little hearts are shriveled away.

Amy: And our dark souls.

John: It's very easy when you're writing a con and heist show to get a little too clever for your own good.

Amy: It’s true.

John: And Dean’s a very good barometer on, ‘You know, do I really-? Am I gonna be happy with this?’ And you know, he’s right.

Dean: I like a little fromage.

Amy: Well what were the reasons-?

John: No, not fromage, but just, you know-

Amy: I think one of the reasons we were gonna have them losing was that this was gonna be episode three or four, and then we had the wild thought that we would bring the evil team back for episode seven.

John: Yes.

Amy: And sort of do, you know, ‘We lost the first one, but we won the second one.’

Dean: There's the recall of your Emily story.

John: Yes, that's right, the little go to the dance with. No it's- oh and that's great.

Dean: Again, that was Apollo who came up with that idea. 

John: Yeah, that they're picking-

Dean: A lockpicking race.

John: And also Beth tossing the lockpick into the air and catching it? After a week with Apollo, she’d really gotten disgustingly good. I think they're actually picking there.

Amy: Well Apollo has gone on record as saying Beth can actually be a professional pickpocket if she wanted to.

John: She's got soft hands.

Dean: And this is, again, one of those scenes where Christian shows you how good he is at comedy. How subtle he is when he realizes she may be the person who actually shot him.

Amy: Look at that look!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah. 

Amy: His eyes widen just like a millimeter, but-

John: Yeah. And that was an improv, I think. ‘Y’all nasty’. He's supposed to just look at it. 

Amy: That’s awesome.

John: And Griffin doing the Nate Ford, ‘I'm an honest man’ speech here, incredibly uncomfortably!

Dean: Well, we always want the villain to suffer and this is how he suffers.

John: He’s just sweating it out.

Amy: He's getting more satisfaction out of watching Griffin Dunne lose than he is from getting the painting back to the clients.

John: Which is something wrong.

Amy: Yes, that's not right.

John: Sophie's actually the moral center of this scene.

Amy: This is the episode where they, in a way, sort of switch roles. She becomes the honest thief, and he becomes-

John: They were a lovely couple. God, these actors were nice.

Dean: Just amazing local actors.

John: No, this was a lot of fun. And then, again, giving him just enough rope to hang himself with. And making sure that he's pissed off enough to come back in season three.

Dean: The other part of this scene I like is, it really shows how far Sophie has come, that she’s actually not just doing this, she’s actually, really- she’s drank the kool aid by now. She really believes in what they're doing. 

John: To a little bit more than Nate at this point.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Which, you know, and that- we really took the, ‘You killed Sophie Deaveraux.’ And the funeral was a late addition; that wasn't in the first outline.

Dean: Yeah.

Amy: No, it wasn't. That was something that we added later. 

John: Yeah it was. 

Amy: But that was an element of knowing we were gonna lose Gina and trying to set up an awesome departure.

John: Yup. And that bomb thing wound up being really- Because originally- it was originally a sort of investigatory clue path and then when we lose Gina it's like, alright let's scare the audience a little here.

Dean: How did you come up with this bit of how they tracked-?

John: I think that was some geek bullshit I had in the notebook, I’m fairly sure. Whenever it’s some tiny minutiae of how phones work, it’s you know-

Amy: Good old GPS.

John: Yeah well, you know what? I think at the time there were some protests about the fact that you couldn't turn off the GPS tracking in your phone, and it was- they were talking about a lot in England you being able to do that, so that just kinda stuck.

Amy: Well I imagine all this would-

Dean: There's Chase!

Amy: See, yeah, there's Chase. I knew I saw him at some point.

John:  Is this-? Yeah, here we go. All these great local actors.

Dean: And I love the security guard; this woman is fabulous.

Amy: So much personality, only a few lines.

John: And again, this is one of those things where you are trying to come up with a really clever way to screw him and then you suddenly realize, no, it’s just a box full of paintings; there's nothing really subtle about this. You’re just going to jail forever.

Dean: But in a way, this is what makes it work. ‘This is the real one.’

John: We had a couple of different notes, too.

Amy: He lost by winning. Cause what he wanted was the paintings, and we gave him the paintings, but that’s what did him over in the end.

John: Another rule: the villain must be brought down by their own sin. 

Dean: Now this, for me, is my favorite scene for a number of reasons. 

John: It’s a good scene.

Dean: First of all, just the lighting. We got this at the perfect time of day.

John: Yeah, how'd we get the lighting Dean?

[Laughter]

Dean: We accidentally went over that day and somehow went into-

Amy: Oh accidentally?

John: Oh did the director somehow go over in the morning, so we just happened to be shooting at the magic hour?

Dean: It was odd how that worked out.

Amy: Oh interesting.

Dean: That we just happened to be in magic hour to shoot the romantic scene.

Amy: That is so funny.

John: What I love is the fact that you’d never work again as a director for boning your producer that bad, except you’re the producer?

[Laughter]

John: No, this scene is stunning.

Dean: They both knocked it out of the park on this day. And for me, it's weird to say it because I directed the episode, but this is the best almost-kiss I’d ever seen before. And it's really the way they did it.

John: Yeah. This was another one where it was like, set up the cameras, let the actors work.

Dean: This was also a callback to what happened in the episode at the school, because-

Amy: Fairy Godparents.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Cause in the Fairy Godparents that she had never really been honest. 

John: Exactly.

Dean: And here she realizes she doesn't know who she is anymore because she's been so many other people for so long.

Amy: She got dumped because she wasn't being truthful with her boyfriend, and she actually recited all the names of her aliases, and this is sort of the callback to her having to bury them in order to move on.

John: Yeah, she's more attached to fake people than real people and it’s caught up with her. And this is the moment where Sophie Deaveraux becomes a better human being than Nate Ford.

Dean: And that red coat was totally Gina.

John: That was Gina. That's right, she came in with that she and Nadine went hunting for that. This is a great almost kiss.

Dean: Ow! Ow!

John: This was an Italian over. This is- what's that terminology?

Dean: It’s a French over. Rather than being in the front of them, you're over their backs and then this walk away.

Amy: The Italian over is you're drinking wine while you’re doing it.

John: And this walkaway was fantastic with that light right there!

Amy: Through the trees! It's so pretty.

John: You knew what scene was good when we were shooting it because I was watching it on the monitor and I turned around and all the local PA’s were standing behind us watching the scene and two of the girls were crying.

Dean: Yeah. It was awesome.

John: You just really nailed it. And that was going to be the summer season ender, 207, and wound up being still a great send off for that character. And really one of the best episodes of the two years I gotta say.

Amy: Yup, it's one of my favorites for sure.

Dean: For me it's almost like the two part season finale of one, season one, done in one episode.

Amy: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: So thank you for watching.

John: Thank you for watching.

Amy: Thanks everybody!

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Eliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 7 #Season 2 Episode 7 #The Two Live Crew Job

[haddocktree]

Dean DeBlois Talks the Care and Feeding of Flying Reptiles

The writer-director of DreamWorks Animation’s Oscar-nominated ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’ reflects on his long and loving journey creating the epic animated trilogy.

By Jon Hofferman and Dan Sarto | Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 11:29am

In 3D, Awards, CG, Films, People, Virtual Reality, Visual Effects | ANIMATIONWorld | Geographic Region: All

Oscar and Annie Award-nominated ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World,’ the final chapter in DreamWorks Animation’s epic animated feature trilogy, written and directed by Dean DeBlois. Images © 2019 DreamWorks Animation LLC. All Rights Reserved.

At this point, neither the How to Train Your Dragon animated feature film franchise, nor its longtime writer-director Dean DeBlois, needs much of an introduction. The epic adventure series, which debuted in 2010, has been both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, with the first two installments garnering an immense number of Annie Award nominations and wins, as well as being Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominees for Best Animated Feature. (How to Train Your Dragon 2 won the Golden Globe in that category in 2015.)

This time is no different: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World has been nominated for an Academy Award and eight Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature, and has won accolades from the National Board of Review, the Society of Voice Arts & Sciences, and the Hollywood Music in Media Awards, among others. Produced by Brad Lewis and Bonnie Arnold, The Hidden World delivers a heartwarming message about overcoming intolerance wrapped inside a tale about growing up, facing the unknown, and learning to let go. It also answers the burning question of what happened to the dragons that once populated the earth and lived in cooperation with humans.

So, as awards season rounds into the home stretch, and DeBlois faces his third round of Dragon-mania, it seemed like a good time to talk with him about this reptilian saga that’s become such a central part of his life.

AWN: In a presentation that you gave at the VIEW conference in October, you said that in general, you’re not very enthusiastic about sequels because, if you've done a good job, your story is told, and a follow-up can feel like an unnecessary add-on. What about How to Train Your Dragon made you feel that it provided an opportunity to do sequels the way they should be done?

Dean DeBlois: Well, I think it was a combination of three things. One is that I was a Star Wars kid and I loved the expansiveness of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I felt they took characters that I loved, expanded their worlds and increased the adventure, the peril. The characters were kind of maturing and growing up, and it had a big impact on me. And I saw in the Dragon world and its cast of characters the potential to do something similar. The world could be expansive, and we could grow up with the characters. In the time that it takes to make an animated movie, our fan base could be aging with the characters, which wasn't really something that I'd seen done before – where you take a cast of friends and then grow up with them. We would leap five years into the future and find a new organic problem that felt important and universal. So, that was part of it.

Then, I think it's also the conversation that I had with [Dragon books author] Cressida Cowell. Even though the narratives are quite different in the films and the books, I loved the idea that she was taking on this challenge of explaining what happened to dragons and why they aren't here anymore. I thought that was really intriguing, but also kind of gripping and emotional. The opening line of her very first book is, "There were dragons when I was a boy." That suggests they're gone. What happened to them? So, I loved taking on that challenge.

Finally, just being able to explain certain mysteries that were inherent in the first film. What happened to Hiccup’s mother? Is Toothless the last of his kind? If so, why? Just the idea that we might be able to take organic questions that we didn't have time to explain in the first movie, or didn't feel the need to, and make them into important questions in the context of the trilogy. As if we'd gone back in time and planted them there.

AWN: The emotional center of the storytelling in the films is the growth of the characters, their becoming adults and taking on adult responsibilities, even though they're still young. That’s really the best part of the films.

DeBlois: Yeah, it felt organic to me because I was thinking about what problem I could graft onto 15-year-old Hiccup that felt important. He now has his father’s love and admiration, he has the respect of the town, he has the attention of the girl he was secretly pining for, he has an amazing dragon that he could fly around on, and he ended an age-old war. It doesn't feel like a character who could have a problem until something really eventful enters his life. We needed to go to another rite of passage, which just naturally led to a 19-year-old in search of himself, when you've got two domineering parents of contrasting philosophies. A character who's on the run from his destiny at home, only to return to it with a renewed sense of self, was an appealing tale to me.

AWN: There's a large number of characters in the films, and they play pretty central roles. How do you ensure that you give them enough screen time and develop them enough so it feels that they really belong and have a reason for being there?

DeBlois: It's really tough and I don't know that we did, to be honest. I think that a lot of our characters are underserved. If we had a longer movie, if we could make a 120-minute movie instead of a 90-minute movie, we might be able to explore them more. But oftentimes the characters do become support characters. We do our best to give them moments, give them a laugh here and there, or give them a starring turn. But when you have an unwieldy group of characters, it’s really tough because you're always fighting the ticking clock of budget and time.

AWN: Speaking of characters, what makes a good villain and how do you determine how villainous to make your villain?

DeBlois: That is a very good question and I don't know that I have a very good answer. I struggle with villains. I find them boring if they just want power or money. Unless there's a bit of empathy in their desire, it just falls flat for me. Drago was meant to be a really interesting villain in How to Train Your Dragon 2. There was going to be a sea story that followed his survival and how he became marooned on an island that was home to a very aggressive dragon. He had to befriend this thing in order to fly off the island and get back to his armada. It was a very touch-and-go relationship because they were both very headstrong, but in the end, they established a mutual trust, and it changed him. Even with all of his heinous crimes, when he arrived in the third-act battle, he took the side of the dragon riders, fighting his own former cohorts. I liked that idea because it took what was admittedly a one-dimensional character and gave him complexity. But we didn't get to do that because, again, taking the time to do that story properly would have compromised Hiccup’s story. I regret it since I really wanted to do something interesting with that character.

We channeled some of that frustration into the development of Grimmel [in The Hidden World] and making him a villain for the times – an intolerant elitist who’s trying to crush blossoming ideas of peaceful coexistence. But he’s also a character who’s fun to watch onscreen – he has a kind of playful sensibility and likes the sound of his own voice. Enjoys the hunt, enjoys cornering his prey and forcing it to make desperate decisions. He’s a character without empathy, but he has a sense of humor.

Dean DeBlois.

AWN: To turn to the production side, did you use any virtual camera work or any tools that helped you visualize how you wanted to shoot this?

DeBlois: Yes, [cinematographer] Gil Zimmerman and his team – the layout team who provided us all the previs and the final layout of the movie – would go down to our mocap stage and pull up rough versions of our sets and don the outfits with the little ping-pong balls and actually work out a lot of their own choreography. So, if it wasn't a flight scene, if it was something that had a physical space where they could really block for action, they would come up with ideas that way. It's always dispensed with when it gets to animation, but the ideas are there and then the animators start from scratch.

AWN: How extensive was the previs? Were you using it more for storytelling or was it used more for camera and layout?

DeBlois: On this film, we started to invite the layout department into the storytelling. In other words, if there was a sequence that depended on visceral, kinetic movement – something that's hard to suggest on drawn storyboards – we would talk out the beats of the script pages with Gil Zimmerman and the assigned previs artists, and they would go off and develop it. If we knew there was going to be flight involved or some kind of complex set, we would either hand the sequence entirely to the previs artists or involve them really early.

I found I really liked this step and how far it has come in recent years, where so much of the finished idea can be represented quite clearly and closely in the previs. It used to be awkward to look at – characters that would slide across floors, and blank expressions, and robotic movements. It’s come such a long way that it’s something you can include in test previews with audiences, because it's full of color and it has lighting… it’s a very exciting new tool to use.

AWN: Like many top animation directors, you're going to be moving over into the live-action world. Have you always wanted to go this route? You've been directing animated films for a long time.

DeBlois: Yeah, after Lilo and Stitch, I took a look at my personal hopper of ideas that I was working on and I would say three-quarters of them were live-action. They felt like live-action films. I decided to go out there and just see if anyone was interested. I sold three of them. It got close with a start date on one of them, but they all kind of went on ice when there were administrative changes both at Disney and Universal. It was an exciting and frustrating period and it just feels like an itch that I didn't scratch. So now I have that opportunity to return to the world of live-action and hopefully get a movie going. I do so with caution because I know that so many things can fall apart very quickly in live-action, whereas in animation we tend to commit to the idea of making the movie, even if you have to change out people in the process.

AWN: Do you feel that your experience in animation gives you specific skills that you can apply in live-action production?

DeBlois: I think my storyboarding background definitely gives me the ability to communicate ideas clearly and visually represent them. Having spent so much time on the story side of things, writing as well, I feel as though I can clearly communicate the story we're telling and engage other people in contributing ideas and making it better. I think in any sort of filmmaking enterprise you need somebody who's going to be the guardian of the story, but still be open to great ideas, and I feel like I've been honing that skill over the years.

AWN: Last question. How does it feel to say goodbye to dragon world – after three really well-done, well-received, expansive, beautifully animated features? You completed the trilogy, you told the story as well as it could be told. What are your thoughts looking back on this huge body of work?

DeBlois: I'm very proud that we were able to reach the goal that we had set for ourselves, that we didn't have to creatively compromise much, and that we did it with largely the same team over the course of a decade. It's bittersweet because not only have we come to love the characters and the world, but we really like working together. We don't know if we're ever going to be arranged as that crew again. People have gone on to different shows, some have left the studio. It was a bit of a gamble to dedicate so much time to a trilogy, especially in the ever-changing landscape of studios. There were five changes in leadership on Dragon 3 alone. With every person that comes in, they have their own sensibility and their own tastes. And so, learning to work with each person and also giving them ownership can be tricky. Luckily, we were able to keep our North Star in sight and deliver the ending that we wanted.

#dean deblois #AWN #q&a time #q&a #httyd #httyd 3