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leverage-commentary · 3 years

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Leverage Season 2, Episode 14, The Three Strikes Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer, Writer of this episode.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this is the Three Strikes Job.

John: This is the first half of the big season finale which we like to do. And we are meeting our favorite recurring character Detective Bonanno, played by our friend Mr. Blanche, right?

Dean: Yes, Robert Blanche.

Chris: Robert Blanche.

John: Fantastic find; local actor. And it was interesting because really as we had come to- first time dealing with split season, first time Sophies not around, we had to- you know, we really hunted around for the character we would be emotionally anchored to for the season finale; you don't want it to be a random vic. And- cause last year was the whole Nate arc-

Chris: Right.

John: And having- Robert having established his character made him really beloved, made it easier.

Dean: And we've never really done a pre-opening like this that's quite this violent.

John: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: So it was a little bit out of our tool box, but yet we tried to do it in a way that it didn't seem like a completely different show.

John: This is the edited version. In the original version, a toddler wanders through the field of fire and is brutally mowed down.

[Laughter]

John: I'm glad we cut that out, that was weird.

Dean: That wasn't good.

John: Just seemed odd.

Dean: Especially when the toddler pulled out a gun and-

John: And was doing the [unintelligible] the dubs were cool though. I liked those.

[Laughter]

John: So this is Sonny at the toll booth; there's no two ways around this.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: How tough was this to shoot?

Dean: You know, it was actually pretty easy. We had about six cameras shooting simultaneously; we did it 3 different times and moved the camera each time. And this van you may recognize from Beantown Bailout-

John: Yes

Dean: Which also got shot up. So whenever we need to shoot up a car, that’s the car.

Chris: And did we add-? Or did we-

Dean: Now here’s the interesting thing-

John: We putty it in.

Chris: We putty it in? Oh.

Dean: The actor was not available this day to shoot. So that’s a different actor made up to look like Robert Blanche.

Chris: Oh wow, that’s great.

John: That's great. So our local Portland actor has a double? A stand in?

Dean: Has a double. [Laughs]

John: Wow, that's great. Oh, she's fantastic. And now this is- again, one of these sorts of things where we’re trying to anchor all of Nate Ford’s emotional cues. And you actually tried to shoot this identically, if I remember correctly.

Dean: That's right. We wanted to try and match the look and feel of the hospital scene from the pilot, but just skewed enough so that we know we’re someplace else.

John: Paul Blackthorne's name. And this was a lot of fun. This was a big giant episode concept.

Dean: One of the things you have to understand is- you gotta know when we do these two-part season finales, they're really shot like a movie, cause you shoot them all at the same time. And this one is, as you will see - far more ambitious than what we did in season one. Yet because it’s at the end of a very tough season where the writers actually ended earlier than normal; we only have four days to prepare to shoot this two-part season finale.

John: Yeah. We actually started prepping off outlines.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And then I think I turned in the first half? First half first? Second half-

Dean: Yeah.

John: I think I kept in order at least. And then, you know, turn them each in. And by that point, nicely enough, the Portland crew was such a well oiled machine that they knew what they wanted. Also, we had learned by this point to really try to find anchor locations.

Chris: Yeah.

John: To build and tie our acts around. So knowing that we were gonna do the baseball scam, they knew they could start processing all that was needed.

Dean: This is also the first time in season two that we brought back this recurring nightmare of him reliving the death of his son. The idea was that he had to some degree resolved it at the end of season one, but yet it’s still there just below the surface, and then suddenly kicking in to the end of season two it comes back up again.

John: And it was really the last trigger. If you’ve been watching the arc all the way through, we’ve been playing with his control issues and the fact that he's drinking again, and that feeling of helplessness has triggered him back into his addictive behavior. I mean, he’s already kind of bathing in his addictive behavior at this point in the previous episodes, but this is what really pushes him over the edge.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Also normally we like to have fun kick in pretty early after the opening scene, but yet this- because we're trying to set up a larger emotional arc in this two-part season finale. We have an emotional opening with Bonanno getting shot, then we have another emotional beat where he’s reminded of his son, and here another emotional beat where he’s trying to connect with Sophie and his frustration of not being able to reunite with her is bubbling. So we really actually took a long time on this before we let the fun kick in, which is not usual.

John: Because we were really gonna screw with Nate Ford in these two episodes, and you really feel like you just can't, ‘Oh, remember that stuff you should have noticed in previous episodes? That’s why he's doing this.’ We really needed to reset it.

Chris: One of the reasons that I think this plays so well is that if you watch them back to back, which I'm so glad they were broadcast that way on TNT, is that this scene here really pays off in part two.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And it’s- you know, it's a little ways to go if you have to wait a week between them.

John: Yeah.

Chris: But now it really plays like a movie.

Dean: And big kudos to Jeri Ryan because she had- she only had a few episodes to create an arc, and really everything she did in the previous episodes come together in these last two.

John: Yeah.

Dean: She’s really part of the team by now.

John: Yeah. And that bit where she drinks his booze in order to get it away from him was actually the first physical bit we ever pitched talking about the character. We were trying to figure out a way to differentiate between Sophie and Tara, and the idea where Sophie is a little more sensitive, a little more coddling...

Chris: More empathetic.

John: More empathetic, yeah. Tara will just basically drink you out of your own problems.

Chris: Right.

John: This was a tough day. Mainly because Tim really dug in on this.

Dean: Yeah.

John: This rage- this was a tough day. You know, he’s angry. And you can hear him-

Chris: Yeah.

John: And you can- he really- this was a small set for them to be screaming at each other on. It was really nice.

Dean: Yeah. And it really helped the other actors as you’ll see just in the way they are reacting. I mean, you see Christian is really messed up by this.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And it was a great way to-

John: Yeah cause one of his best friends in the world is sitting eight feet from him screaming at his face.

Dean: Yeah.

John: I mean, you know. And yeah, they're all really digging in on the idea that Nate Ford has gone off the rails.

Dean: But once they jump in, then the fun begins again.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: And now we start to get into that rhythm of, ‘Ok.’

Chris: You can see his little look on his face right here is the cue for the fun on Hardison.

John: Yeah. As soon as- yeah, as soon as the sarcastic ‘these guys are goons’ face comes up.

[Laughter]

Dean: Now by the way, those goons faces on the board are actually people who work here at post production at Electric.

[Laughter]

John: So don't be alarmed if you see them at your local bank or supermarket.

Chris: And I'll call out another couple of people whose faces are on this, too, you two guys a little later.

John: Oh yeah, we’re a little later. Exactly. This was also fun because this was something we kind of picked up on if you watch the second season episodes. A little bit more of detective Nate Ford.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, he was a guy who hunted bad guys.

Dean: Right.

John: And we put him back in the context a couple times this season of hunting bad guys. You know, and this one in particular he figures out exactly the situation in which case they should pursue.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Good crime scene photos. Big shout out to Derek.

Chris: Gruesome, yeah.

John: Gruesome, yeah. Nice.

Dean: But because we shot this scene before we had shot the scene with Bonanno getting shot-

John: We had no footage, that’s right.

Dean: We had no footage, so we had to make up fake crime scene photos and hoped that they would somehow-

Chris: Derek had those crime scene photos pretty easily, don’t you think?

John: That was a little disturbing.

[Laughter]

John: ‘I just went out and did it in a back alley in Chicago.’ This is also fun because this is one of the few times we’ve had Hardison of all people go, ‘I don't want to do this one. This one seems like a bad idea.’

Chris: Yeah. Now look at this shot.

Dean: Now this actor here- those of you who may have seen my film Flyboys, he was one of the pilots in Flyboys. And he did me a solid and came and did this little guest spot. And this is Richard Kind, who I had not worked with since Stargate-

John: Wow.

Dean: -and has been a family friend forever, and I think one of our most underrated actors in this country.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of part you typically don't see him in. I mean he plays kind of a nebbish-y guy.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And boy, did he just bring a gravitas and a menace and really built a whole backstory to his character.

John: Well let's talk about it- that’s where this story comes from. We really wanted to do our city of industry, corrupt east coast port town. I grew up near Boston, you grew up in New York-

Chris: Yeah.

John: -and, you know, this is very much based around that, sort of, north of Boston, Route 1 type of town.

Dean: Right.

John: And so getting an east coast actor, just a guy who could bring you that kind of New York power family vibe made a difference. And he showed up- he loved the script, showed up with three ideas. Three lines of dialogue, in three scenes that gave this character backstory, depth, and pathos. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a very good actor.’

Chris: And what the fact to do is Brad Culpepper the Third. I mean that he was from a long line-

John: Yes. And he dug in on that and he found something that just made you, you know-

Dean: He also came up with this concept that he wasn’t in it for the money, he was in it for the power and the legacy.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Which is an interesting distinction.

John: Yeah, exactly. There is- he really dug in on the evil speech of evil. The idea that he is not a bad guy in his own head in any way shape or form. This was- what hotel was this? Was this the Governor?

Dean: This was the Governor Hotel.

John: They really did us a solid this episode, they did a fantastic job.

Dean: We ended up shooting three different episodes at the Governor, and then they were our host for the Leverage convention.

John: Oh, also the wrap party.

Chris: Which was fantastic.

John: I don't remember that much.

Chris: The Leverage convention, which was awesome.

John: I can't believe you people missed it.

[Laughter]

John: We’re gonna assume nothing horrible happens. The horrible irony of when we try to recall these DVDs.

Chris: Oh, no, please.

[Laughter]

John: Lovely little- this was a great neighborhood; they put up with us. And this was a lot of fun, whenever you can play the annoyed brother vibe between the two of them.

Dean: Oh, I could watch it all day long.

John: Yeah. This was also the night we found out we got picked up for a third season.

Dean: That’s right.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’s right.

John: This is fun, that’s Beth in the rig on the ledge. If you go to my blog, you’ll see the pictures of her doing this. It’s insane. There's just no way we should be allowing her to be on the edge.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: That’s city hall, by the way, in Portland. That’s city hall.

Dean: That is, that is.

Chris: They let you just jump off the roof in city hall?

John: You know what- if you're in Portland, show up, ask, and they'll let you. I'm sure there will be no repercussions to me saying that. And this is kind of fun, Paul Blackthorne as the shadowy character that you kind of touch on. And this is all based on- his character’s actually based on a guy down in Florida-

Dean: Yes.

John: -who got an arms deal with the US government, who was like a bar guy.

Chris: Yeah, he was kinda like a party kid.

John: Yeah, who somehow got a 300 million dollar contract with the US government selling recycled arms from Eastern-

Chris: Recycled arms from Eastern Europe, yeah.

John: That’s Beth on the rappelling line. Remember that? We shot that.

Dean: And I’ll tell you, this is an example of how Beth, even alone, just completely captures your imagination. She has no one else to act with here except for our AD off camera reading dialogue, and yet she's completely engaged in the story, in the character.

John: Yeah, this was a lot- this was- actually you wrote this whole chunk.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, here's another great local guest star.

John: Yeah. And that was another thing that Portland gave us. There's a lot of great local theater guys, a lot of local great actors who can really land a joke.

Dean: Yeah, it was so surprising.

Chris: I love that he has the ice tea, it's such a great-

[Laughter]

Chris: Such a great touch.

John: I like- and also the sort of- I don't know if it’s the weird veiled hostility between Hardison and Eliot gets turned outward whenever they run one of these cons-

Dean: Right.

John: -but that guy is going to be the subject of their rage at each other. This guy was really great.

[Laughter]

Chris: And this is a crime lab bit. I mean, let’s be honest, there are eight different CSIs on; we wanted to have a little fun.

John: Yes. We were kind of making fun of the CSI- the whole idea that CSI shows up at your house. I had my house broken into, they didn’t show up.

[Laughter]

Chris: The fact that the beat cop could be-

John: Bossed around by-

Chris: Bossed around by CSI guys was born out of those shows

John: And this, by the way, the bit with the balloons, was Richard.

Dean: Great.

John: Just awkward, just trying to shift it, trying to ground it. And again, this- what amazes me when we got into the research of it, was how cheap it was to buy these guys.

Chris: Yeah.

John: I mean really- like $10,000 gets you somebody's kid in city politics.

Dean: That's true.

Chris: The promise of a job when you're out of the office. You know, I mean, that's what brought down the Illinois governor.

John: Yeah, that's right. That’s right. And that's what is kinda fun is we do- oh, I love this bit.

Dean: Comedy frame.

John: Comedy frame! What is this? A locked off comedy frame.

Dean: Exactly.

John: Locked off frame, two people come in facing each other-

Dean: And I love this little smile right there on Christian’s face .

[Laughter]

Dean: He was just enjoying the bit until he realized, ‘Oh wait, I have to perform in the bit.’

John: Is that on the X? Is that- how did you get the RED so low?

Dean: Oh we just put it right on the floor on a sandbag.

John: Oh that's good.

[Laughter]

John: Thanks to these nice folks for letting us trash their home, by the way.

Dean: Yes. And for those of you who may have noticed in the wide angles, just the little numbers on the evidence things on the floors.

John: Yes, that they’ve scattered all over the ground. Yeah no set-dec did a great job.

Dean: You can see the numbers in the background.

Chris: Oh those are great!

John: And- and earning his pay-

[Laughter]

John: Nicely done.

Chris: That’s a nice little transition there.

John: It is a nice- almost like you put some thought into this.

Dean: And I swear I didn't. And this is our line producer’s wife .

John: Yeah.

Dean: Who also did a guest star in last year’s two-part season finale.

John: Last year’s finale!

Chris: Oh, that’s right!

John: I like the idea she was on vacation in LA last year.

Dean: Exactly.

John: And now she’s back and involved in another Leverage scam. In my head it's the same person.

Dean: And this is an interesting scene for their arc, because, you know, Beth - Parker - really didn't trust Tara coming in.

John: Well she's not part of the family.

Dean: And only in this scene does she actually start to earn her trust, and they start to bond.

John: And we also wanted to reset the fact that, again, Parker is good in the short con. If you throw a surprise at her she doesn't handle it well, because talking to people doesn't even go well. Interestingly enough, she relates to people better in character than as Parker.

Chris: Yes.

John: Yeah. And so until Tara gives her- so yes, the awkward- we really pulled up every political trope we could find.

Chris: Oh, sure.

John: I think we sat down - adultery, pregnancy, corruption. Then we just went through the Times one day, just pulled up every scandal from that summer.

[Laughter]

John: And the 4-18 months. And there's actually a mayor’s conference, too.

Dean: That’s right.

John: We found out where the mayor’s conference was.

Chris: It's in Vegas. Sure that's where you would have the mayors conference, and that’s where he would meet her.

Dean: I like the little turn Parker makes here, after she’s been coached part way through it, now she gets it. So now she’s feeling comfortable doing it.

John: Now she understands, yeah.

Dean: And you can see her-

Chris: ‘Yeah, I'll just wait out there.’

John: And that is an actual office- that's a conference room at the city hall?

Dean: That sure is.

John: That we rappelled down into.

Dean: We had to use it as the mayor's office, cause the actual mayor's office was too small.

[Laughter]

John: That's right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: Infamously the mayor took the smaller office in the city of Portland cause he just felt like he only needed that much work space.

Dean: That's right. Mayor Sam Adams who’s been incredibly helpful to this show, and we’re very grateful.

John: Yes. Very cool guy. I don't regret that duffle bag full of cash at all.

Chris: That is a great shot there.

John: That is a great shot. That really establishes that space.

Chris: She’s- jeez.

John: She's beautiful, yes. I was referring to the setting, but-

Chris: Sorry, I was just-

John: Yes, Jeri Ryan was very beautiful, too.

Chris: I was just lost in Jeri Ryan.

John: It happens. And this is the great speech. And again, we listened to transcripts and looked at testimony. I mean if you look at Blagojevich-

Chris: Blagojevich, sure.

John: The remarkable bluntness with which they announce their terms and prices always amazes me.

Chris: Yeah. And it almost sounds like movie dialogue, but it’s not! It’s just the way they talk!

John: Yeah.

Dean: The evil speech of evil.

John: And we come up with evil speeches of evil, and then when you go find the real ones it's like, really? You said that? With a straight face? Alright.

Chris: Yeah.

John: No, research is your friend. We really- you know, this is a remarkable static act with an awful lot going on. I never noticed that before.

Dean: Well I think- again, this is- when we separate our team into different locations, but yet having them communicate, it really gives a sense of energy to it.

John: But we only have, like, three agendas.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, running it at any one time. This was a tight little shot. I remember this. This was- we were in that back bedroom, and trying to shoot. And then you had to- you had a totally different blocking, if I remember correctly.

Dean: Yeah, instead of being in the room with him, we decided we’d squeeze him through the doorway and make him feel like he’s in an even tighter space than he was by framing it that way. But it also gives a chance to use this hallway and bring in our guest performer.

John: Yeah. And the clue that travels over two different episodes. Hopefully, again, I'm glad that they aired these back to back because it would be tricky to-

Chris: Yes it’s- to track- there's a lot of stuff that this really did play like a movie.

Dean: And once again, we got to the-

John: Oh, the big smile.

Dean: -comedy frame.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: That’s for all you young filmmakers out there, that is the comedy frame. And then the look- just the look of pity on his face. Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And the badge on the- there's no reason the CSI guys should have a badge on a shield. Chris just loves the badge on the shield- the badge on a chain.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: He likes that.

John: He really likes that look. If he can be doing like a 1970s- if he could be doing the British version of Life on Mars, he’d be the happiest man alive.

Dean: Oh yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: Now I got a question for you. So was- now we had a Maltese Falcon joke, just one line in-

Dean: The previous episode.

Chris: -the previous episode. Did that give you the idea for the Maltese Falcon? Who came up with the Maltese Falcon bit?

John: No, you know it was- it was literally, I was trying to figure out, ‘What's the MacGuffin? What’s the maltese falcon? You know what, it'd be actually kind of fun to just call it that.’

Chris: Just the Maltese Falcon, OK.

John: Cause it’s so famous now, it's a little meta. And, you know, the fact that it would be called something rather than a shorthand for something-

Chris: Right.

John: Cause we use that in the writers room all the time.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

John: The maltese falcon, what's the thing? Macguffin, Hitchcock famously defined it as. And this is Nate deciding to bail on the pitch and making- and this is tough. He’s basically processing offscreen dialogue and acting like he’s coming to a decision.

Dean: I love Richard’s reaction to it, it's like ‘What?’

John: We just went for the whole-

Chris: ‘You just paid all this money, you don't want to engage in graft with me?’

John: Behind though-

Dean: Even out of focus he's stealing the scene.

John: I know. He's really upstaging the hell out of- out of focus. Look how far back he is. Aaand you're back.

[Laughter]

John: And we've announced our agenda.

Chris: We've announced our agenda, we know our- and here we go.

Dean: Now this place was great, this ballpark. We wanted to shoot here all year and hadn’t really found a way to do it.

John: And that's why I give full props to Chris, is cuz I had the crime story back half of this done, and I could not figure out what the con on the mayor was. And you had fallen in love with this location you had seen- you were like-

Chris: This was great, I had gone to a game here.

John: We can finally pay off this location. And that’s- again, that's an advantage of being a city where you get to know- cause the baseball con was always a half an episode.

Chris: Right.

John: And we could never quite get it to be a whole. And then it was like, ‘Oh, we need half an episode. Boom.’

Chris: Well also there's a lot of public corruption around building ballparks, and we did a little research that minor league ballparks bring 30 million dollars into the local economy.

John: That was great. The day we did research and found out it was just a flat 30 million for almost every ballpark, it’s like, that’s just a great number.

Chris: Yup.

Dean: And by the way, I think some of the best special effects we’ve ever done are in this two-part season finale, but I don't think you'd even notice it. For instance all these shots in the ballpark, we had to erase and change all the signage-

John: Oh, that’s right.

Dean: -because we didn't have permission. And then later, we had to put in the crowds that were reacting. So there are amazing special effects in this, but they are so real you didn’t even know.

John: That’s right. Utterly seamless. If you see them, we screwed up. Yeah, and this particularly since those aren’t lockoff, the camera is moving, you know, the character is wiping in front of it, yeah.

Dean: And again, I love what David is doing in this scene, he is just channeling Smithers.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: And there’s Paul Blackthorne, he’s really doing the job for us as evil European dude. He has a large black car-

Chris: Yeah.

John: He's got a halfway rolled down window. We know what his job is in the story, we know what his job is in the narrative.

[Laughter]

John: But what I love here is the fact that Richard there's just so dismissive. I mean the body language here besides- Why is this a good shot? Because you don’t have to turn around to get both of them.

Dean: Exactly.

John: He’s very casually powerful.

Dean: Right.

John: This is a man who’s used to the world running the way he wants it to run.

Chris: Right, in this little burg of Bellbridge.

John: Yes.

Dean: And this is such a terrific location, and we were there early in the morning, got this great light. I was so excited to shoot this.

Chris: And they have a nice-

John: Story shcmory. Pictures.

Chris: They have a nice rapport here, too. They have this kind of easy going, you know, banter.

Dean: You know, so much of this episode- these episodes, was wish fulfillment. We wanted to be in that ballpark all year, we wanted to get near the water under the bridges...

Chris: Yes.

John: You also- in case you're skipping through the commentaries, you’ll notice this happens in Bellbridge, Massachusetts. Bellbridge is the corrupt town in Chris’s episode, Order 23.

Chris: Yes, yeah.

John: We decided to create just one imaginary Massachusetts city we could crap on for an entire season.

Chris: Yes.

John: Just to make sure we had clearances, and we always knew-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So please, if you're from a real Bellbridge, don’t be angry.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, their rhythm here is lovely. They are partners by this point, in a very different way. And the fact that Jeri has established that over six episodes is pretty cool. How tough is it to shoot in a ballpark, my friend?

Dean: Well some of this we actually stole footage at a real- during a real game, but the rest was very easy because they were so cooperative. I mean, this is the actual locker room and they let us have it for the day, and gave us equipment and were-

Chris: And those are the- are those the uniforms?

Dean: Just terrific. Those are the actual uniforms. The ‘P’ is actually for Portland.

[Laughter]

Dean: But in our show it’s-

Chris: Palmerstown.

John: And I love the fact it's actually the Portland Beavers, because if we come up with a comedy mascot we couldn't have beat beavers.

Dean: No.

John: And by the way the Portland Beaver? Good guy.

Dean: Very good guy.

John: Very good guy. Really cool. We hung out, everything.

Chris: Oh apologies to Crash Davis here, but boy does he do- he does-

John: Oh he's so digging in.

Chris: Does a great Bull Durham.

John: Really digging up. This is- we went back and forth- are we doing Major League or Bull Durham here?

Chris: It's pretty Bull Durham here.

John: It’s pretty Bull Durham.

Chris: The journeyman catcher who shows up unannounced, it’s-

John: Yeah, and also the idea that these- you know, talking to a lot of these guys who play this level ball, the precarious nature of their lives- I mean the guys who are kind of on rota from a major league team make a lot of money.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The guys who are journeymanning this out, a lot of them have day jobs, man.

Dean: What I love about this is that Eliot himself doesn’t like baseball. Because we’ve already established what a big, giant sports fan he is.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: About how excited he was about all the sports channels in- both season one and season two.

John: But it's hockey- and it’s always hockey and football. And interestingly, we gave him your problem with baseball.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: Yes we did, it really worked great.

John: I love baseball and I'm like, ‘I have no idea what he wouldn't like.’ And you said, I don’t like-’ Oh.

Chris: Oh, and John did a beautiful job directing this.

John: This is my directing debut right here

[Laughter]

Chris: Mark it down folks.

John: Japanese power drink commercial. Because it really was one of those things I had in mind and it's like, ‘Alright describe it. You know what? I can't describe it, I'll just shoot this.’

Chris: I think I originally wrote it as it’s like a car- like a local car ad.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh my god, how great is this Japanese sports drink commercial?

John: Also, again, you're lucky to have Chris Kane because a lot of actors wouldn't do the comedy beat in the commercial.

[Laughter]

Dean: Nails it.

John: He nails it. Look at the big smile!

Dean: And he enjoys it!

John: Look at that, having a good time.

[Laughter]

Dean: But he hates baseball, and then he comes in here and the minute he cracks that bat you just see- you know, heroin to the junkie.

Chris: He really did- he gave it a real arc, you know.

John: And also, I like the fact that this is the first time he uses a baseball bat for what it's actually meant for.

Dean: Right.

[Laughter]

John: He's been beating people up with baseball bats for like 20 years, and never really hit a ball with one before. Also, by the way, cool digital ball.

Chris: Oh watch this.

Dean: Exactly.

John: There you go.

Chris: Oh that is great.

Dean: I'm telling you some of our best digital effects-

Chris: That’s fantastic.

John: Oh look at that look.

Dean: And the second one- watch the indentation on the pad on the wall when the ball hits it. Small thing for effects artists, but really lovely, just oh that little indentation.

John: Oh that’s nice, the shadow. And there we are.

Chris: Oh there you go folks, there's Dean and John.

Dean: Oh dear, oh dear.

John: We’re also doing the voices here on the radio shows. On the DVD there should be about nine takes of this scene. Because the two of them, at one point it got very weird and sexual with her speaking Spanish, and Hardison getting all ramped up.

[Laughter]

John: It- this was definitely one of the ones where you just, like, park the camera and let the two of them go.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Interesting, one of the challenges of shooting the greenscreens is color temperature.

Dean: Yes.

John: We actually had a little bit of trouble with this shot because- most people don’t understand, there’s a lot of different greens that go on green screens. It was not dead right, doing the special effects goes from easy to unspeakable.

Dean: Exactly, and so this one had- a lot of work had to go into being able to see what was on the screen.

John: Ironically, a lot of this was harder to see than the incredibly complex crowds and baseball stuff.

Dean: The stands, exactly.

John: This was a lot of fun. Outside real city hall, outside Portland city hall, at a coffee shop across the street at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Dean: Yeah, this was the first thing we shot that day.

John: And again, this is- it was interesting how originally there was an entire subplot where, how they’d been lured there, how the mayor- and you don’t need it.

Chris: Yeah. This is much better.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just sees them, he walks across the street.

Chris: Yes.

John: We even took that bit out. We originally had him see them.

Dean: I love the really, really bad heist.

[Laughter]

John: The bad lift.

Dean: Smithers stumbles into the table.

John: And Kind just drops the look there a little bit.

Chris: A little disgust right there.

Dean: Just a little squint.

[Laughter]

John: And the turnaway when it’s like, ‘Oh horrible lift.’ They don’t even have to- they both know what happened, they both know it was unspeakable.

Dean: Well, you know, amateurs to pros, you know?

John: And this was fun, these are based on real blueprints.

Chris: Yeah, real blueprints for-

Dean: This was that other shot was the beginning of the day. This was the last shot of the day, and we’d run out of time. So I had to shoot this all in one shot.

John: Oh this is a one-er!

Chris: This is a one-er, take a look at that.

Dean: This is a very hard steadicam shot. While it’s not that impressive of a shot, it's a very difficult shot.

John: And also-

Dean: Cause you’re doing all the coverage with one camera.

John: And you're banging focus like crazy.

Chris: You’re getting a lot of information, right.

John: And also the actors can’t mess up.

Dean: That’s right.

John: At no point can they stop, can they drop a line, can they, you know.

Dean: The only thing we did is one little reverse at the very end on David’s character. But as you can see all of this-

John: To give you a cut, or?

Dean: Just to give us a cut in case we needed to combine.

Chris: It’s interesting how great these end of day one-ers come out.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And they're born of necessity.

Dean: That’s what so interesting about television is, you know, it really forces you to be creative.

John: Yeah. Oh there you go, I see what you did.

Chris: Oh here's the ballpark.

Dean: Now this is a mixture of stuff that we staged and stuff that we stole during an actual ballgame. But all the-

Chris: The actual ballgame you shot before, I think, the script was written.

John: I think I sent the outline saying we would be at the ballpark. And so Dean had to come up with a shot list based on basically our friendship-

Chris: This is great.

John: -figuring out what I would probably put in the script.

Dean: These are all real things there.

John: Yeah.

Dean: That we shot. Now all the crowds, though, we added digitally.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

Dean: So in all these wide shots when you see these full crowds, they had about- there was a scattered amount of people. In all the shots where it’s full, that’s us.

John: Yeah.

Chris: That’s great.

Dean: For all these shots here. And of course all the signage is changed digitally.

John: And Kane went down, caught a couple pitches, and actually on the shot we have him hit, he actually connected, put it on the warning track. It was a good day for Chris Kane.

Chris: That’s a beautiful shot, too, there; love that.

John: That's a beautiful one, yeah.

Dean: And this actor is actually a state senator.

[Laughter]

Dean: Who had helped pass the legislation for us to-

John: I actually think we’re the bad guys at this point. Seriously, we’re doing an episode about graft and corruption and-

Dean: Well the hilarious thing is, he wanted to play the corrupt mayor.

John: I know. And we were like ‘You know dude, that's probably not the best idea for you to play the corrupt mayor.’

Chris: I can see the campaign commercials.

Dean: All those crowds, digital.

Chris: Wow, that’s great.

Dean: I mean that's really something.

John: And look at that, through a moving shot.

Dean: And then all the signage behind them is changed as well.

John: And that’s our-

Dean: And if you notice, that’s Hardison’s orange drink on the sign.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: Oh my god, that's right.

Chris: And to do with- with a moving camera is very difficult.

Dean: Very difficult.

John: And this is a conference on the mound from both Major League and Bull Durham.

Dean: And the pitcher is actually our second AD.

John: Kyle, yeah.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That's right, you give him a nice hero shot here, too.

Chris: Oh, that's a great shot of Kyle.

John: I also love- This helps lock in the arc where he’s like, ‘I'm now fully committed to winning baseball as much as I am to winning fights.’

Dean: Exactly.

John: No this was a lot of- and this is a lot of fun. This was- it's amazing what you can do with implication.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, just put two people in the same geography and let the characters draw their own conclusions.

Chris: Yeah, let them do the math.

John: A lot of time you'll try to oversell the con, and what you have to remember is people create narrative about the world around them, you know?

Dean: Oh and I love this bit.

John: Yeah this is a lot of fun, the stuntie really took a hit. And down!

Chris: Oh, oh, oh!

[Laughter]

John: I love he does kind of the -

Dean: Notice that the ref is cross eyed; he's a real ref!

[Laughter]

Dean: That is not something that- I didn't ask him to act cross eyed.

John: I love this- that dude is dead. That dude is dead. He’s plainly just- he's not getting up. Right now they're asking people to leave the park quietly.

Chris: I think he did that in one or two takes, I mean, he just got it.

Dean: Yeah.

John: He just- it was a beautiful fall.

Dean: By the way, this is another one-er and this is a very difficult scene to light for television where you don't have that much time. And our DP was really creative in the way he made the sun blazing through the back to light up pretty much the entire set.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Now was it easier because you're working with the RED camera for something like this? Available light...

Dean: The RED helps, but at the end of the day it’s about your DP and your gaffer, and we really have, really, two of the best guys in the business.

John: And again, this is also- so much help to be able to do the research on this. Where it’s like, ‘Well, how could he possibly communicate in code how much money-?’ No, he would write it down and give it to him.

Dean: Right.

John: That's what they do, apparently, I had no idea.

[Laughter]

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Or they'll just say it, unaware. And this yeah, this was a lot of fun, because also- Richard really found the idea that he was supposed to help Nate feel overconfident.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, he's supposed to play into it a little easy. And he's- now he's totally into it.

Dean: I love how cross eyed the ref is, that's so great. I mean, the umpire, that's just so great.

John: Boom! That was a good solid hit. That's- Chris Kane put it on the warning track ladies and gentlemen.

Dean: And if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the crowd chanting ‘Roy, Roy.’

[Laughter]

John: Oh he's become a hometown hero in roughly two weeks. What's the next shot up? Oh there we go, back at McRorys.

Chris: Now- now we're back.

John: Now this is one of our lovely roundy- and oh, this is great. One of our roundy-rounds where we just basically- script kids, when you want to communicate pipe and reset, the way to do it is have somebody not give a crap about the pipe that you're talking about.

[Laughter]

John: He has his own agenda, it makes it instantly amusing.

Chris: Somebody comes in irritated.

Dean: And boy did he knock this out of the park.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Kane, who didn’t care- I mean Eliot, who didn't care about baseball at all, is so proud of himself and he's so mad they didn't share his moment of glory.

John: His joy. They named a sandwich after him. Also, that’s a nice beat that they all chose. It’s like, you know, alright, you gotta give it up. That's a nice moment; boom, boom, and the fistbump.

Chris: You got a sandwich named after him.

Dean: Eliot has a hoage? No a reuben.

[Laughter]

John: I also like- I had not noticed before because I was kind of- Nate’s taking a phone call and I was watching it for that beat, the, sort of, fun that Jeri Ryan’s playing there, it's like, ‘OK, I'm part of the family now, this is genuinely amusing.’

Dean: Now this is a fun reveal shot.

John: One of the cross cuts that I gave you again as your birthday gift. Moving in opposite directions?

Dean: Moving in opposite directions so that they are always looking at each other screen direction wise.

Chris: Right, right.

John: Cause we know awful things happen when you cross the lines.

Dean: If you cross the line, cities fall.

[Laughter]

Chris: No, but I mean, when you do phone calls that's an important thing to do.

Dean: For me I think so. I’m old school.

John: What I love is the fact that he starts the incredibly confident powerful guy that we know. And by the end of this swing around, Richard lets himself just kind of look- just

Dean: Now he's-

Chris: Nice reveal there.

John: Yeah, and nice reveal on that blown out window. And now he's just a pawn, he's just a broken little man, you know. And that's very- the last shot is plainly Nixon.

[Laughter]

John: It’s plainly like- what's that famous shot of Nixon at 2am in the oval office?

Dean: Right.

John: It’s that look at him. And he did all that in one take, conveying pipe to Nate.

Dean: And now we switch to our handheld, because our guys are in trouble. And I love how much Nate is overcompensating. Whenever Nate’s overcompensating, you know something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

John: And his addiction is taking over. Be it booze or control.

Dean: And in this case, both.

John: Yes. He's not really got his head on in this particular case. Yeah, everyone's arguing with him, everyone- and this is another great thing, when Nate spins out you don’t ever have a problem with the plot, because the problem with the plot is the point of the plot.

Chris: Right.

John: Like with, ‘That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense.’ Exactly! Tell that to Nate!

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's important for him to know.

Dean: Our editor did- Brian Gonosey, did a very interesting choice here from cutting from Nate to Nate. Which we almost never do, and it gives it, kind of, strange, nervous energy.

Chris: Well you're kinda-

John: It's claustrophobic.

Chris: You get the sense of people's eyes on him.

Jon: Right.

Chris: A lot of people looking at him.

Dean: But it’s not- again, that kind of cut we don't normally do on the show, and it really makes this a nervous scene.

John: Yeah, you’re going-

Dean: Nate to Nate to Nate to Nate.

John: Yeah, cause you're hopping- Jeri to Parker, you're seeing him plead his case. Jeri to Beth, Jeri to Beth, you know, you're seeing him through their eyes. And then back to the reactions where they know, yeah.

Dean: Something’s wrong.

John: And each one of them is making a very specific decision at that point.

Dean: Again, this port- these guys were so great to let us shoot there.

John: Oh man.

Dean: Gave us such wonderful access.

John: That’s the real port, that's not stock, baby, that’s-

Dean: That’s right, that’s the real deal.

John: And- and a lot of fun doing the TSA stuff, doing the Homeland Security stuff. The research on this was as horrifying as you'd imagine. Most of this is security theater, your ports are not secure, sleep tight America.

Dean: And this actor was also discovered in that same improv group that we found the actor from the doctor episode.

Chris: Oh that’s interesting.

Dean: The Order 23.

Chris: John, you made a good point about how Order 23 pays off. A question about Order 23, about security at the courthouse.

John: Yes, in Order 23 there's a beat like ‘How do they get the gun in there?’ And it’s because the courthouse has not been refurbished, because the budget on the town-

Dean: Right.

John: The city is so poor. And that's also why he felt confident hiding the money there.

Chris: Right, right.

John: That pays off here in the- you find out the reason there's no money for the city is the mayor has grifted it all.

Dean: Right.

Chris: All the security money that he got, federal anti-terrorism money went into his own pocket.

Dean: And I love how Eliot is now playing a celebrity.

[Laughter]

Dean: And he's so proud that he's a celebrity.

John: And we also flipped roles for once, cause Hardison is usually not the one who’s annoyed, it’s-

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, no it's true, he is.

John: It's really he’s- and it’s really both, ‘Get back on the job,’ and, ‘I'm not the center of attention.’

Chris: Yes.

Dean: These two are magical together.

John: Yeah, that's a great- this is a great noir set up.

Dean: Yeah, even with the black car in the distance, which is a bit of red herring.

Chris: Look at this shot, I mean this is a movie shot.

John: Beautiful. Now how do we- was this at night? Or were we during the day here on this?

Dean: This was at the end of the day, so we actually spilled into night and had to light it to keep it looking like this. And that's an actual oil tanker that they allowed us to shoot at.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: And then that- this walkway is actually exactly where we just located it. It's directly below the docks. And it really was- a lot of the fun was walking around the location going, ‘OK, this scene can happen here, this scene can happen here.’ And we didn't get too poisoned shooting in this warehouse. We all had funny coughs for about a week, but we were OK.

Dean: They warned us about spiders and raccoons under this-

John: Yeah.

Dean: So we were looking for eight-legged raccoons at some point.

John: At some point we were very worried there would be a horrible combination.

Chris: Oh really? Wow, I missed this part.

John: Well you weren't up here for shooting at the oil tanker, getting poisoned by fumes.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I looked at the schedule and went, ‘What’s the day you hang out in the baseball park?’

John: I noticed that. You came for the baseball park-

Chris: ‘Oh, I’ll come for that.’

John: You really didn't hang out with us in the oil tanker hold. Yeah, black lung kicking in.

[Laughter]

John: This is a great cross cutting by Brian, this kind of- what he's doing is he's finding some- finding an odd rhythm here. It's not danger, it's unease.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, every shot is a little too short, it's a little too- yeah. And again, sort of end of day shooting, everything in the warehouse from the moment they walk in- like they get to the oil barrel, through the end of the episode pretty much, you did in a one-er.

Dean: Yup.

John: One direction one way, one direction the other.

Dean: Your easy bake oven reference is awesome. I don't know how many people under the age of 40 are gonna get it, but god I love that reference.

John: Who under 40 watches television anyway?

Chris: I appreciate it so much. Made me laugh so hard.

John: They've still got those. I got one for my niece.

Chris: With the one little bulb that actually makes the cake.

John: Who knew? I love, Parker is constantly finding crates full of guns.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure she could open a gift with purchase from Neiman Marcus and it would have guns in it.

Chris: And by the way, kudos to you to find- when we put this thing together, to find the transition between corrupt mayor and arms deal in the docks. I mean, the thing was built around certain setpieces.

John: Yeah. And also it sort of made sense these- when you research, the amount of legal arms dealing that goes on in the states is magnificent.

Chris: Right, right.

John: And when you find out these guys run these things out of Boston, New York, Miami, you know.

Chris: Right.

John: It's got to be somewhere.

Dean: And this is one of the rare times where our team is really losing at the end of an episode.

John: Oh yeah, they’ve got to lose. They really- they have- and this was interesting, because it really was one of those times where we sat back and said, ‘In what version of this show are our guys the bad guys that get caught?’

Dean: Right.

John: Just write this section of this show like that show. Like we're writing NCIS or we’re writing CSI or something. And really put our guys in the dead seat. And man he just radiates rage.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And it's not just because Richard Kind is a bad guy, it's because he's lost control.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, that is Nate Ford in a world he doesn't want to live in.

Dean: Now we got them in this impossible situation, and- but we can’t end the show without a little bit of fun.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the win within the loss here is, I think, is truly inspired.

John: Oh yeah, managing to get them out of there.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun. I can't remember where the idea from- the idea of the multiple exits came from. We were playing around in another episode with ambiguity, somebody- signal of, like, time and ambiguity, and that held over, because you use all the parts of the animal, and that hung out and that's of course-

Chris: That's Katie O’Grady.

John: Katie O’Grady.

Chris: She’s a terrific Portland actress. She runs an acting school up there.

John: Yup, yup. And she really came in as kind of one off, and it’s- after two episodes it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could see this character coming back. I could see this fed,’ you know. A lot of Portland actors did that. A lot of Portland actors turned one day into a recurring role.

Dean: Yeah.

John: The- and just barely buying him enough time. And that's the important thing here, is that each character is finding a little piece of the solution. That was the fun of this episode is, there's a famous fighter pilot saying which is, ‘Stay alive for the next 10 seconds.’ That's all you have to do. In the next 10 seconds, your wingman will get the guy, or the guy will get out of position, and that's all they are trying to do for this section of this script.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Thers a great turn here where he reveals that he was somehow part of this attempted assassination of one of the family- the extended family.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the rage that comes out of Nate is everything that’s built up over the entire year.

John: And what's really interesting is, because you shot this all in one piece- this is not split up into takes, this built in real time.

Dean: That's right.

John: You know, this really builds from that confession- and I was out of position the first time he did the wrench, and I was like ‘What the hell just happened? Did Tim just crush Richard Kind’s head?’

Chris: It's his friend! They're friends!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, they're friends, but the wrench wasn't in the script. Tim just picked up the wrench!

Dean: Right.

Chris: He just picked up a wrench. And we were like, ‘Is that a rubber prop wrench?’

Dean: I love her character is like, ‘Then just kill him.’ I mean, she has no moral position on this, she just wants to get out alive.

John: Yeah, this- like we were talking the other day, where Sophie still exchanges Christmas cards with people she's ripped off, Tara Cole has walked out of a lot of burning buildings with metal suitcases full of bloodstained cash.

Dean: And never looked back.

John: And never looked back. And in that moment she is absolutely serious. If you're gonna kill this guy, get it done. You know, but she’s not gonna coddle him.

Dean: Now this may be one of my favorite bits that you guys have ever come up with, and it starts with a great turn.

John: It’s like- you know why? Cause it’s a locked off comedy frame, my friend.

Chris: That is.

Dean: Locked off comedy frame. But it's one of the oldest gags in television.

John: It is.

Dean: Is that slow turn look.

Chris: The turn look.

John: And then the turn reveal, and this-

Chris: ‘Oh no. Oh no, you're not gonna do it. Oh no, no way, Jose.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And once again, Aldis Hodge showing why he is a truly, truly special talent. This part is not written.

John: No.

Dean: This part is just him going-

John: The printed page ends with, ‘They turn and look at the van.’

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Yes and-

Dean: All of this is him being brilliant.

John: And that means also that Beth and Chris had to find the timing to when they were both gonna turn.

Dean: Right.

John: And that's the thing is, they work together a lot, now they've got a lot of, sort of, physical cues from each other. But yeah, this is all him, this is all him going off. And this is born of 207 when we shot him and Will Wheaton versus each other; they spent the whole day in the van alternating. And so Aldis was making a joke about the fact he has a very weird relationship with that van, cause he's in it and nobody else is.

Dean: And he even brought back in the fact that everyone teases him that the van smells.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: That the van smells, we made that a recurring thing.

John: So that's become a recurring thing and it was really- it was really the actors discussion of his character that led to the bit.

Dean: Now a lot of people may miss this-

John: Oh this is my favorite bit-

Dean: -but just watch Parker when the doors shut.

John: Yup.

Dean: Because Parker is so close to Aldis she gives a kiss goodbye and leaves the little lip print.

[Laughter]

John: I never noticed that before.

Chris: Oh she did, she leaves the lip print, that’s great.

John: Not in the script.

Dean: One of my favorite camera moves right here. ‘Aaaaand, let’s begin.’

[Laughter]

John: There is- definitely been working together long enough now that we know- and now that jazz music is in the background, we’re up and running.

Chris: There you go.

Dean: It all kicks in. And again, how Richard was able to now change from that dark to humorous. Literally turning on a dime.

John: And this is him-

Chris: Oh there's so many speeches he made saying goodbye.

John: This is him doing the- that is Kirk saying goodbye to Spock.

[Laughter]

John: By the way, from the Wrath of Kahn, that is the speech he's doing right there.

Dean: And we- my favorite digital effect.

John: No van, no van there.

Dean: All painted.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: ‘I’ll miss you.’ No and that was- but of course, again, you were blowing stuff up at a dock.

[Laughter]

John: Without any real permission or notifying the authorities. It’s really I think I'd be disappointed now if you called ahead.

Dean: That’s right.

John: And this is the reveal, and this was really tricky, trying to figure out the timeframe, how they could get around, how quickly they get around.

Dean: So we had to use the bomb as the time signature.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

John: Because the- when we got there originally, this was structured slightly differently, but the exits in the physical locations didn't match. But that’s why TV is great, you have a writer on set-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So you can actually have the director walk around with you and go, ‘This isn't gonna work.’ ‘Sure it will.’ ‘No it won't, fix it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: Well I think originally the thing went inside the-

John: Yes, yeah. And we couldn't do that, and you couldn't see the blow, and then you had to blow all three doors simultaneously if you did it, and it would've been madness. And Katie's look of rage there is magnificent.

Chris: That’s great, as the car goes by.

John: It really- ‘I am an angry, angry fed.’ And this is also one of the times when we don’t let Nate off the hook.

Dean: Right.

John: You know and Aldis is genuinely- yeah.

Chris: Yeah, he managed to transition from the fun of saying goodbye to the van, to actual rage.

Dean: Genuinely pissed off. And now another bit of John Rogers directing on this episode is the car getting away.

Chris: Nice!

John: The car- yeah, this is-

Dean: Right here, here we go and then look at this nice power slide.

Chris: Oh, good job.

John: I caught the reflection in the side of the car that was suction cup bounce and they actually hold on. You didn't give me the wet down one.

Dean: And this is my favorite reveal of a character ever.

John: I have no idea how you did this! Did you lower him by rope? How does he get in the shot?

[Laughter]

Chris: Well he comes in-

John: And we’re coming around, this is all a one-er and… he… is… there.

[Laughter]

John: He just- it is one of those things where, much like-

Chris: How would he fit inside?

Dean: [Mimicking Mark Sheppard] There's no one else that can make an entrance-

John: Quite like Mark Sheppard.

Dean: -like Mark Sheppard.

[Laughter]

John: And by the way, we decided to make him- because we were cooking up a threat, and- we’ll actually continue talking about this in the next episode...

Chris: In the next episode.

Dean: Please stay tuned for the second part of this.

Chris: Stay tuned.

Dean: But this was a lot of fun, and thank you for listening to the first half. Stay tuned for part two.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 14 #Season 2 Episode 14 #The Three Strikes Job

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chidoroki · 4 years

Text

TPN ch180

(spoilers! i'm so broken)

I didn't want to be right. I didn't want to actually believe that Emma was lying. If anything, I thought she was just lying about staying with her family when they crossed over to the human world, knowing she would be separated, but this.. oh my god. This girl knew ever since ch143 that she was going to lose her memories of her family and straight up lied to them about it. Granted, only a few days passed from when she returned from The 7 Walls up until they all crossed over to the human world, but still, I.. don't know how to feel. I knew since the prison break she had great acting skills so I'm impressed that she managed to pull off yet another wonderful performance, but wow.. I really hoped she wouldn't! To keep such an important and life changing secret from her family, who are all so important to her, I can't imagine how hard it must have been for her knowing this while dealing with the entire capital attack and GF plantation raid. Fighting so hard and succeeding in achieving a bright, happier future for everyone but herself.. ow, my heart.

Some people are fine with the memory loss, others aren't. If anything, at least she's the only one who forgot? I think it would've been worse if everyone else forgot about Emma instead, so having the promise only hurt her is fine.. well, it's not, clearly, but you get what I mean.

And if demon god wasn't on my nerves enough already, the little prat decides to basically photoshop every family member out of the photos Emma kept this entire time. I'm touched she still had the photos in her possession, but now this upsets me so much. Upon seeing the first set of raws and learning Emma lost her memories, I hoped that she could possibly remember them by looking back at these photos if she still had them. But no. Demon god doesn't want me to be happy or get my hopes up. It would've been such a cool idea though. We know Ray originally requested the camera because he needed to strobe for the taser, but he continued to take pictures, not only to keep up the act to prevent Isabella from getting suspicious, but to give said photos to Emma because he knew how important their family is to her. I would've loved it if something so important from the first couple arcs came back at the very end to help Emma regain her memories.

Not only that, but demon god also got rid of her id number? Like.. really? I don't know why that bothers me so much but it does. I know the id brands just proved that the kids were meant to be nothing but food. Of course I know that they're all so much more than that and I should be happy Emma lost hers, because it truly means she's free, but the number was a part of her you know? It would've been fine if every cattle child lost their identifier, but since it was only her it makes me think demon god wanted it to be that much harder for Emma to remember her past and family. That's what bothers me. That even now, after they all crossed over and don't have to deal with demons anymore, demon god still has the audacity ability to make Emma suffer. If she still had her number, I'm sure she would've questioned it, much like Ray did when he was younger (my mind thinks back to ch28, that one memory of him looking at his neck in a mirror). Maybe she would've realized that the people in her dreams also have the same neck numbers, if only faintly. (it must be so weird for Demizu to draw Emma now and not include her number after all this time)

That leads me to wonder if Emma has questioned the rest of her appearance yet. I would assume she's still missing her left ear, since her hair is still covering that side, so does she ever wonder about why it's missing? What about the scars on her body? We personally haven't seen them, but you can't tell me her back and abdomen looks perfect and clean after getting stabbed by Lewis. Yes I know, scars heal with time, but the scar on Lucas' face was still recognizable after 13 years. Same with Zack and his many unfading scars. So does Emma question where hers came from?

Moving on, a month passes and still no memories, however Musica's necklace seems to be the cause of Emma's vivid dreams, like it somehow brings life to her feelings. We see the necklace constantly, not only because Emma wears it, but on volume covers and other color pages as well. It's always been shown off as this important item and yet it hasn't really served a purpose yet. Emma recieved the necklace back in ch51 and the only thing its done so far was show her that one old vision at Cuvitidala in ch101. It'll be a real easy way to solve everything by having the necklace just conveniently bring back her memories, so I get why some people might not like the idea, but at this point I'd be fine with it.

Figures she would end up in the human world with someone who can sympathize with her pain. Old dude lost his family due to war but at least he can remember them. He asks if Emma would want to see her family, if they're alive, and she remains unsure and lost. She doesn't know who these dream people are to her, why they call out "Emma" or why it makes her feel better.

This panel.. this one right here is what breaks me. Our girl is so upset and she can't even understand why. We know why you're crying hun, it's because you miss your family. Your memories may have faded but your feelings for them still live on with you! I have no doubt that love you just as much too! My poor girl, someone send me her location so I can go and hug her!

Emma might have given up trying to remember who she was and live a new life, but if she did encounter her family again, I hope she would be excited to meet them as new people. Maybe they could all start over. Over time they could gently remind her of her past, and if Emma truly can't remember, I hope they'll accept her regardless.

And a name change? I'm.. mmm frustrated. Yeah it makes sense since she couldn't remember hers and would need a new one anyway, but aahh, really? No id identifier, no memories, no name; it's like she's a new character. I was never a fan of the amnesia trope, like she's such a great character and gets built up wonderfully, and now it's like you reset her to zero. Yeah I know, deep down she's still the happy go lucky girl we all know and love, who's strong and capable to still smile even now, but.. man, idk anymore. This whole chapter hurts me.

There's a dim light at the end of the tunnel because we get a glimpse of Ray, Gilda and.. at first I thought it was Don but that person is way too short, so Phil? Regardless, I gotta give them some credit. It may have been a couple months, (remember, old dude said he could't call for help until spring and there's flowers in the ground now) but they've already managed to find where she might be in this new, large world. Please, turn around though! She's so close to you guys, she's right there! Notice her antenna or something, I beg you!

Demon god said that even if Emma met her family, she wouldn't remember them, but I still have small hopes. Emma claim's she stopped having the dreams and given up trying to remember her past, but maybe that short amount of time believing in them was enough. Aside from the necklace which connected her feelings to her unconscious mind, the five sense can also recall memories. Perhaps if she heard her name now, outside of a dream, something in her mind will click. Maybe she would get that warm feeling again she once longed for. Sense of smell and taste are usually most effective in bringing back memories so maybe just being near them or having them cook for her could also help. I know the sense of touch usually works for when you personally touch something, but if it's possible to also recall memories by being touched, then please, for the love of god, let Ray pat Emma's head again! He's done it countless time over the years.. can you imagine if upon meeting and learning that she has no memories, Ray is just like "no worries, you're still the same Emma to us," and while he pats her head, she's like wait hold up, major deja vu, I feel like I felt something like that happened before. I'm probably only getting my hopes up real high with that idea (since old dude just patted her head and nothing) but bro.. I would honestly cry if something so simple and nostalgic as a head pat helps Emma remember her family even the tiniest bit.

And yes, I'm worried Norman isn't around. Please don't let me be right again by having him stay behind due to his health issues. Just let him be in another search group somewhere else okay? I'll accept that. It's odd he wouldn't be working alongside Ray but whatever, split your best minds up to create equally powerful teams, that's fine. It only worries me because now we might not get one last full-score trio hug like I originally hoped! I swear having a hug like that as the very last panel of the series would've been perfectly fine with me after everything that just happened. But now.. aahhh, we'll see.

I can't believe the series ends next week. There's still so much I want to see and know. I pray there's a happy ending for everyone. I want Emma with her family. I want her to remember them. I want one last full-score trio hug. Shirai, don't let us down! You played with my feelings so much within the past year, so please make all the stress and tears worth it! Give me an ending that will satisfy me so much that TPN replaces Black Lagoon as my favorite series! Go ahead, I dare you! Ya see that beautiful panel? Give that to us and not have it be a fantasy! (pretty please??)

#the promised neverland #tpn emma #tpn manga #emma #chidoroki used chatter

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Lemme get the timeline right, so Dick was about 15-16 when first Teen Titans happened, then he came back to Batgirl's debut, some time later he left for college & that was the issue where Bruce is kinda teary, looking at Dick's prizes, Dick teases him a lil? Or was that golden age? Then he's recruited by Raven, NTT happens, but the firing... I'm confusing these parts. He got fired after getting shot by Joker? He was Robin then so before Jason, but was he with NTT or in Gotham?

LOL don’t worry about being confused, because it very much IS confusing thanks to so many continuities and retcons.

Personally, I tend to go with pre-New 52 timeline and then just later stories like that timeline never ended and just kept going with New 52 and Rebirth stories....with any discrepancies being like....’flashback stories’ retroactively inserted at the appropriate point in the characters’ histories. That’s just my approach though, doesn’t necessarily work for everyone.

But pre-New 52, the ages up until Dick is around 16 or 17 are pretty flexible.....you can kinda pick and choose when you view the first Teen Titans having formed because there aren’t any hard age milestones to use as a marker. So regardless of what you go with, up until Dick was about sixteen, maybe seventeen, he lived full time in Gotham with Bruce, was Robin, and ‘moonlighted’ with the Teen Titans, who in their early years were kinda more an excuse to hang out with their superhero friends rather than like....a specifically focused team.

THEN is when it gets confusing, because enter the Age of Retcons:

ORIGINALLY, pre-Crisis of Infinite Earths, aka Retcon-Palooza, Dick went on to become Nightwing while he was still on good terms with Bruce. Bruce took Jason in and adopted him, but there was zero conflict with Dick over this....in fact, at this point in the comics, Jason was ALSO an orphaned circus acrobat whose family had been friends with Dick’s family, and DICK was the one who helped him after his parents were murdered, and took him to Bruce, which led to Bruce adopting him.

(Fun fact, and part of why I side-eye people who dismiss retcons as ‘not counting’......Jason’s extremely iconic and well-known history as a street kid who Bruce found stealing his tires......only spanned about TWELVE ISSUES. Before his death, he literally only existed with that origin for about a year’s worth of comics....as opposed to pre-Crisis, when he existed for SEVERAL years worth of comics as the plucky acrobat who adored Dick and was always doing his homework and saying “Robin gives me magic” and stuff. Fandom lives mashing these two versions of Jason together, which is fine, but they have zero problem plying his twelve issues of having grown up as a street kid for angst, while being dismissive of other characters’ retcons, and that’s right up there when talking about Things That Make Me Go HMMMM).

Anyway, so originally, pre-Crisis, Dick moved on to become Nightwing when HE was good and ready, of his own volition, because he felt he was entering a new stage of his life and wanted to reflect that. And then HE gave Robin to Jason HIMSELF, like, literally bequeathed it to him, brother to brother, with Jason being appropriately grateful to HIM for that rather than crediting Bruce with it, who had absolutely nothing to do with it other than looking on fondly and proceeding from there with Jason as his partner. Dick then transitioned to living and working with the New Teen Titans full time in New York.

He also briefly went to college at this time, but dropped out after just one semester or one year or so......which other people often skew to make it sound like he’s lazy or spoiled or just wanted to live off Bruce’s money all of which makes me gnash my teeth, lol.....nah, he already had the equivalent of several college degrees just from growing up being trained by Bruce. Dick dropped out for one reason only: nothing he wanted to do with his life benefited from a college diploma specifically, and none of the jobs he went on to work later required one. He’s a kid who comes from a family who never went to college either because they didn’t NEED to in order to do what they loved....and Dick was no different. People love to cite that Dick was already fairly old when his parents died and that’s why ‘he didn’t need Bruce to be his parent as much specifically’ or whatthefuckever....but then they turn right around and act like he should live his life more according to the expectations and standards of Bruce as opposed to.....in keeping with his first family and their priorities and whatnot. BUT I DIGRESS.

But anyway, at this point, he mostly lived in New York and came back to Gotham every now and then to visit or to help with cases. Babs had at this point been Batgirl for some time, before he became Nightwing, but again, the timelines are messy, so the only real marker that’s important IMO is that her history with Bruce and Dick as Batgirl predates Jason joining the family, AND post-Crisis, when Jason had his street kid origin.....I think she interacted with that version of Jason maybe once?

My point there is there’s a lot of piling on the angst and pointing back to Dick as the ultimate culprit, with people making a big deal about how Barbara and others were constantly comparing Jason to Dick and resenting him for not being Dick and this made Jason’s childhood even with Bruce especially difficult....but again, nah. The vast majority of the time Babs/Batgirl co-existed with Jason/Robin, it was pre-Crisis Jason, which meant that he was on great terms with Bruce AND Dick and Dick was on great terms with Bruce, all of which means....NOBODY WAS RESENTING ANYBODY OR COMPARING ANYONE TO ANYONE ELSE, THEY ALL COEXISTED JUST FINE.

NOW.

ENTER THE RETCONS.

This is where it gets messier and more complicated, because JUST LIKE the comics retconned Jason’s origin to make him a street kid - and which NOBODY has trouble acknowledging or balancing......the comics ALSO retconned Dick’s departure from Gotham. Now it was because there was a story in which Dick was shot by the Joker, Bruce freaked out about his safety, and decided the best way to express this was by firing Dick as Robin and alienating him. Dick lingered for a few weeks, its said, in the hopes that Bruce would change his mind, but when Bruce didn’t, Dick finally packed his bags and left to go live with the Titans full time, where he became Nightwing. Its further said that this was the last contact they had for about a YEAR AND A HALF.....with Dick being the one to make the first move to resume contact.....when he found out from the papers both that Bruce had taken in a new kid (Jason) and adopted him already, AND made him Robin.

(A name which no matter WHAT origin you go for in terms of what it means to Dick, is regardless HIS CREATION, the mantle HE made for HIMSELF, and was never Bruce’s to give away, whether or not you go with the take that it was Dick’s mother’s nickname for him, or it being a reference to Robin Hood, Dick’s favorite childhood hero).

Anyway, Dick confronted Bruce about this, and Bruce basically just....acknowledged this without actually ever putting the words “I’m sorry” or “I messed up” in there, and that was Dick’s one and only ON THE PAGE interaction with Jason post-street kid origin before A Death In The Family....which occurred like two story arcs later.

(However, something I like to point out is the issue where Dick and Jason meet after both their respective retcons, was a FLASHBACK issue. It literally starts the issue off with the caption “One year ago”.....meaning that even though Jason died only two story arcs later and we never saw Dick and he interact on the page again, that issue was deliberately scripted in such a way as to allow for a good couple years to pass IN UNIVERSE....which, IMO, is where Dick and Jason’s sibling bond and dynamic had more than enough time to form. Just because Dick was on bad terms with Bruce doesn’t mean he ever took this out on Jason, and we know from later stories that they at least interacted a few times we never saw, like when the two of them went skiing together - so while people act like they barely knew each other because Dick was never around, IMO there’s literally no reason to assume that Dick wasn’t just as good about reaching out to Jason and forming a sibling bond with him after that first initial meeting, as he later was with Tim and Cass and Damian. In fact, given how familiar Dick and Jason seem to be with each other after his return to Gotham years later, IMO the thing that ACTUALLY strains credulity is the idea that before Jason died, he and Dick only interacted a bare handful of times. Nah. That doesn’t track.)

ANYWAY. That’s how all that played out those two different times, and why there’s so much confusion, BUT I maintain a huge part of that confusion is artificially produced.....by people deliberately trying to mix and match continuities in a way that just flat out doesn’t work. Sooooooo many times over the years, we’ve heard takes on how Dick ‘quit’ being Robin and then Bruce made Jason Robin and Dick resented both of them for this, but uh.....that’s the one version of things that DIDN’T ever happen. There were two distinct ways it played out. In the first, Dick quit voluntarily, and then made Jason Robin himself, and he and Bruce and Jason were all on great terms. In the later version, (the definitive version, because just like Jason’s street kid origin, it was the retcon, yes, but it was also never refuted or contradicted, the way it would have to be to ‘reset’ canon to that earlier sequence of events/state of affairs) - but yeah, in the later version, Dick was fired, Bruce made Jason Robin, and Dick resented BRUCE for this.

But people keep trying to play mix and match so Dick both quit - thus ‘giving up his claim to Robin/theoretically having no basis to object to someone else being Robin’....AND Bruce made Jason Robin - thus getting ‘credit’ in Jason’s eyes for giving him this mantle, responsibility and trust - with Dick then resenting Bruce for giving away the thing he ‘gave up.’

And that’s so disingenuous and obnoxious, when people try and play that game. They don’t want Dick to have ‘the right’ to the same complaints they have about Jason and Tim being ‘replaced’ but they also don’t want him to get credit for giving Robin to Jason because that would imply a strong brotherly bond and connection between them, one in which Dick clearly loves his little brother, and its just....uggggggh. So annoying.

BUT I DIGRESS.

Anyway, that’s the scoop, the buzz, the happening.

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svynakee · 4 years

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castlevania s3 thoughts

Well more like complaints. Although I do find it worth watching; maybe after S4 comes out, though. Because S3 is really just a fancy teaser for S4.

I really don’t like how Castlevania S3 felt like a waste of time (except for 30% which was very good). I mean yeah I watch shows to waste time in general but hear me out.

By the end of S3, it feels like nothing happened. The status quo is kept. There’s a lot of setup with a tenuous promise of S4 payoff. There might be growth, but really, everything feels more like the catalyst for growth to happen later. It’s like following your GPS and it says “You’ve arrived at your destination :)” but you find yourself at some dusty crossroads and there isn’t even a petrol station in sight.

That’s basically all I can say without spoilers. I have a lot more to say with spoilers. So-

If Castlevania S3 was divided into 4 basically unrelated stories (Styria, Lindenfeld, Isaac’s travels, Alucard’s castle), at least half of them ended up saying/contributing nothing to the overarching plot, setting and characterisation. It felt like an extended trailer. Action, twists, your favs making an appearance…then goodbye, screen fades to black, see you next season.

TLDR version: get rid of Isaac’s entire arc, develop Sumi and Taka or get rid of them, Lindenfeld sorely needed more focus, no need to change Styria but more Styria would be nice.

Compare to S1, which was also mostly setup for the plot resolution in S2. It didn’t feel like a waste of time. Why? Because of the threat of Dracula? I don’t think so. It’s because when we first meet Trevor, we’re presented with a very solid image of who he is. He’s alone, he’s purposeless, he doesn’t want to take up his family legacy. 3 episodes later and he’s got two “friends” and a clear goal to pursue. And he’s no longer a nameless drifter – he’s the last living Belmont, vampire hunter, returning to his ancestral home so he may arm himself to face Dracula.

Alucard

Alucard’s story was the worst offender in my opinion. We start with Alucard being alone and sad in his empty castle. We end with Alucard being alone and sad in his empty castle. While this could be an interesting start of darkness for the dhampir, the fact that we don’t really see the results make it an overall unsatisfying season. Suki and Taka contributed nothing. We learned almost nothing about them. Their motivations were frankly generic – they want to fight vampires? Well we already know people who do that. Their obsession with the castle’s engine? Goes nowhere. Their friendship with Alucard? Shallow, not really built on mutual points of interest. Then they die.

The truth is, Sumi and Taka were dealt a bad card to begin with – Alucard, to be exact. Because a ranged and close quarters fighter duo of vampire hunters has direct competition with the previous season’s S&T, Sypha and Trevor. Instead of giving them the time and development needed to grow apart, they seemed more like plot devices to get Alucard to where he needs to be in S4. Or just to prove he’s lonely and gullible. And a bottom.

I feel like there’s a lot of potential in this storyline. Perhaps Taka and Suki’s interest in the castle is more nefarious; maybe they were part of a bigger group. Their betrayal of Alucard could cause him to reconsider his father’s stance on humanity. As a stepping stone, I have no complaints about this storyline. But that’s because there’s nothing to say. Its impact all depends on S4 and S4 isn’t out yet. So, the entire thing just feels frustrating, a pointless distraction from the other storylines.

Isaac

Isaac should not have gotten as much screen time as he did, unless they actually did something useful with him. As much as I love his character (Casually putting Godbrand down? Instant fav.) his presence in S3 feels like pointless pandering. Because he spent all that time doing nothing.

We know who Isaac is, because of S2. We know what his motivations are: return to/avenge Dracula. We know his general worldview, the thing that makes him what he is – he has a low opinion of humanity, is highly disciplined and loyal to Dracula. And the thing is, NONE of these things change in S3. Instead we’re treated to Isaac repeatedly almost thinking humans are okay, then getting proven wrong when he tries to give them a chance, then killing everyone.

This is would serve a purpose if: Isaac was seen as ambivalent towards humanity or conflicted about condemning them in S1 (more like Hector, perhaps). Isaac was more like original Isaac, an unhinged sadist and being saved by Dracula starts him on a path to redemption which is repeatedly denied.

But no. Isaac is always shown to be calm, disciplined and set in his views. Having him go through this completely unchanged makes his character ‘arc’ a waste of time.

The problem is Isaac’s storyline also feels unnecessary plot-wise. Isaac finds humans disgusting and his power is to be a monster spawn point. The fact is, if Isaac shows up one day with a monster army and wants to kill humans, we don’t need an explanation for it. Isaac himself is the explanation. The only thing that needs resolving is ‘how did he get from the desert to bother the heroes’ and that can be solved by “I took a boat” or “I found a transportation mirror” or even “I used a night creature to carry me”. He can just tell us. It can be a shot of him travelling. Or a cheesy montage set to rock music I don’t care.

So the fact that character-wise Isaac is just going through a series of resets is made even more tedious when you realise that plot-wise he’s also been completely useless.

His big fight was fun, but it lacked emotional impact. The wizard wasn’t opposed to Isaac, either in terms of good/evil or ideologically. There was no catharsis to the wizard dying because we never knew those townspeople. Who got turned into night creatures anyway. By Isaac.

Belnades and Belmont (the dancing bear)

The Lindenfeld plot I would say has all the elements of an excellent story but needed more time. More focus. I hated S3’s style of constantly jumping between the four storylines, especially when one of them involved Isaac going through a banal cycle on another continent and the other had the Discount Belmont and Belnades.

In my opinion, Lindenfeld only suffered because there wasn’t enough focus to really build up the almost Lovecraft-esque mystery for Trevor and Sypha to investigate. Germain barely interacted with them, we only got his story via infodumping and a bad dream. Their relationship with the Judge didn’t feel deep enough that his ‘betrayal’ had impact (besides, it was bundled up with Alucard and Hector’s betrayals so there’s a bit of overexposure apathy). And it’s hard to be sympathetic towards townspeople when, for most of the series, townspeople are shit. Townspeople blamed Belmont for Dracula’s horde. Townspeople tattled on Lisa. Townspeople antagonise Isaac. Showing us 1 family eating dinner isn’t going to change that.

There was something of a start to an emotional arc where Trevor questions Sypha’s naiveté, his future with her, etc. which would have been stronger if it wasn’t just the start of an arc. Leaving them horrified at the truth of the Judge, the destruction of the town and their inability to prevent disaster is absolutely fine. But when it’s also paired with Isaac’s Are Humans Bad Merry-go-Round and Forever Alone Alucard, yet another “to be continued” ending instead of closure was frustrating.

Hector but not really

Hector, similar to Isaac and Alucard, starts and ends in the same place. I have no complaints about the Styria storyline though because Hector isn’t the character carrying this subplot. Lenore is.

Lenore starts out with a clear goal and obstacle to that goal. The other vampire sisters seem unconvinced that she can solve it, or that any of them can. Lenore succeeds despite these odds, proving her own strength, cunning and patience. She also shows how her way, the diplomat’s way, has the same value as Carmilla’s schemes, Striga’s military knowledge and Morana’s talent for governance. She has an arc. Sure, it’s a villain arc, but villains need them. S2 had Carmilla working against Dracula, putting her forces into place, manipulating the war council, stealing Hector to her side. S3 has Lenore.

Meanwhile, the Styria subplot also sets up the new villains for the heroes to face – cunning Carmilla, strong Striga, strategic Morana and manipulative Lenore. Along with Hector the army spawn point. We have the new location, Styria. We see the dynamic and power hierarchies of the new villains. We learn about their overarching goal and how they mean to achieve it. Lots of setup, even more than the other storylines, but it has a satisfying arc within it that means it gives closure.

If S3 was freed from Static Isaac and Sumi/Taka (who have expiry dates and arrived half stale), the Styria storyline could benefit from the extra time. Better establish the dynamic between the four sisters (as opposed to Striga-Morana, Lenore-Hector and then a little bit of Carmilla). Give Hector more time to show his emotions; his despair, his loneliness, his genuine desire to have a friend despite his better judgement.

Final thoughts and Season Finales

Overall, the strongest parts of S3 are bogged down by subplots that really didn’t deserve so much screen time. I question the editing style of constantly jumping between the storylines; it comes at the cost of emotional investment into each one. The finale is especially strange to me. Two fights and two sex scenes that clashed, broke tension and made it tough to respond emotionally. Isaac’s fight should’ve happened earlier, a mid-season spectacle that really doesn’t have emotional impact. Lenore’s manipulation and betrayal could have been a second-to-last episode thing. The heroes naturally deserve the prime spot of season finale; the disastrous end of that fight also sets up the gloomy tone of the ending.

Sumi and Taka can die whenever, however. I literally could not care less whether they tried to kill Alucard after sex or over dinner. I barely care about their reason for attempted murder. I don’t know what part they play in the grand scheme of things and I am not invested in them as individuals.

If the entire point of the arc was to prove that Alucard was a bottom, just have him absent the entire season and add a post-credits scene of him using a dildo. Then he accidentally smashes it with his vampire strength and cries on the floor.

#castlevania #netflix castlevania #castlevania s3

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angrylizardjacket · 5 years

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when i said it i thought it was true [1] {Ben Hardy}

Anon asked: could you do an imagine where ben is the reader’s ex and they are somehow working together on the set of bo rhap and they fall in love all over again ☺️ could you make it angst-y and then end with fluff? i love your writing so much!!

Anon asked: could you do an imagine where the reader is in bo rhap, maybe playing as one of roger’s gfs or something and she kind of falls in love with ben while filming the scenes with him as roger 💖 very fluffy pls :D

A/N: 3124 words. Super AU version of BoRhap being filmed in the fic. There’s gonna be another part, that will fill the prompts better. This might end up being a series. I hope you enjoy. Feedback would be nice.

When your manager rings you, telling you that you’d landed a part in the Queen Biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, you were elated. Freddie Mercury was a bit of a personal hero of yours, and to be a part of his story on the big screen, it was sort of a dream come true.

In your first meeting, you sign a nondisclosure agreement, and you’re given the latest draft of the script to start learning, as well as a character brief. The script calls your character ‘Amanda’, the girlfriend of Roger Taylor who he eventually realises he wants to settle down with. You’d seen pictures of young Roger Taylor, you wouldn’t lie, you were excited for the role. Honestly, even today he was still quite a fox.

The point is, you were excited to have a fun time on set with a pretty blonde, make some new connections, and earn some good money. Some really good money.

The other shoe drops when you’re flicking through Instagram, and one of the stan accounts you follow has posted a leaked screenshot of the proposed cast list, and there’s your name, right beside the name of the last person you wanted to pretend to be in love with. Ben Hardy; pretty blonde extraordinaire, and your ex-boyfriend.

The table read is... awkward.

The two of you are sat next to each other, and barely spoke two words to each other. You feel unprofessional the whole time, but you’d rather be anywhere else in the world, and the delivery of some of your lines falls a little flat. The director casts a concerned look between yourself and Ben as you rattle of what’s meant to be banter like you’re reading the news paper.

“They’ve got no damn chemistry; it’s like watching a celebrity divorce hearing.” When the Director vents to one of the producers in the hall outside after the reading, you manage to catch it where you’re just about to come out of the bathroom.

“They’ll be better on set, I promise, it’s just jitters.” She tries to soothe his nerves, and they’re off soon after, and you’re left with a cold, sinking sensation in your stomach.

“You’re Y/N, aren’t you? How are you finding the set?” The guy who greets you on your first day on the Eastenders set smiles with such casual ease it feels like you’ve known him for a while, instead of having just met him.

“Yeah, that’s me.” You agree with a quick nod, rocking back on your heels as you gaze around the space, trying not to look at him for too long. “It’s a bit overwhelming.” Actually, what’s overwhelming is that he’s talking to you. He’s Ben fucking Hardy, pretty-boy on the soap-opera scene, and he’s talking to you on your first day.

“Yeah, you’ll be right though; if you need any help or anything, just give us a yell, yeah?” And you realise he probably doesn’t know who you’re playing, or how you’re involved in that Season’s arc, but you certainly did.

“I didn’t know you could play drums.” You’re trying to be casual when you say it, but you see Ben tense where he’s sitting on a sofa in the rehearsal room, script and pencil in hand.

“I can now, that’s all that really matters.” He’s giving off such strong ‘please leave me alone’ vibes that it almost hurts, and you have to push through the knot in your stomach and sit down next to him.

“Ben, we need to at least be civil.” You say quietly, and he looks at you, expression a little forlorn.

“Y/N, we are civil, and we’ve done this before. Let’s just keep it professional, okay?” His tone leaves little room for argument, and you nod in agreement with a small smile, and pull out your phone, waiting for the rehearsal director.

“Hey there, baby, I don’t think I’ve seen you around here; I know I’d recognise your face.” You purr, running your hand delicately over the collar of Ben’s shirt, as his eyes widened and he spluttered to form a sentence, just as the script had told him to.

Your character was more a plot device than anything, when Ben’s character is at a low point, his main romance is on a break, and he meets you, a temptress in all black. Your job is to give his character a realisation, he starts as your cocaine dealer when his supplier can’t make the drop, and he falls for you. Depending on the audience reaction, you knew the producers were waiting to see if they kill you off or have you recover from your addiction. The point is, your fate’s uncertain at the end of the Season, and Ben’s character realises he has to get out of the drug trade.

“I’ve got something for you, from Oskar. Can we go somewhere more private?” When he speaks, it’s with surprising confidence, and he steps up from the bar stool and into your space, smiling as your face lights up. The director calls cut after a moment, and you step back, smile sliding to something genuine as an assistant comes in and straightens your loose, black silk shirt, and they reset the shot for a new take.

“Ben, could you try less flustered? You’re here to deliver drugs, you’re not a schoolboy.” The director’s voice was kind as she came up to the two of you, and Ben agreed easily before she turned to you. “Great job, Y/N, don’t be afraid to be more even more forward, if you feel it.” As soon as you nod in understanding, she absconds, and you half laugh.

“If I was any more forward I’d be in your lap.” You snickered, voice quiet as you dipped your head to hide how you were faintly flustered. Ben was quiet, just watching you for a moment, but before you noticed, the director called for everyone to standby.

“I’m after Maggie, do you know where I could find her?” Ben starts as soon as the cameras start rolling, brow furrowed as he leans across the bar to speak to the bartender, and that’s your cue to enter the scene.

“Hey there, baby, I don’t think I’ve seen you around here; I know I’d recognise your face.” And when you say it this time, he smirks back at you, a little cocky, and you can feel the way it makes your heart flutter and you know it’s not as fake as it should be.

Before filming even starts, the producers have essentially forced you and Ben into bonding sessions which, if this were several years ago, would have just been dates. Now they’re awkward and tense, and you tend to bring heavily highlighted scripts.

“I saw you in that Wes Anderson movie last year. It was a really good performance, one of your best.” He offers over coffee. The idea that he’d kept up with enough of your work to label one ‘your best’ has you a little shocked, and something in your heart warms as you thank him softly.

It’s gotten easier to hang around with him, and it’s even easier to pretend to be in love with him in rehearsals. It’s like riding a bike, how easy it is to let yourself smile and lean into him, to let the banter flow easily between the two of you, fond jabs that edge on insulting coming as easily as breathing.

Joe mentions that he thought the two of you worked together before, and when you reply that you’d dated for almost a year, he goes very quiet, eyes going wide. After a beat, he admits it explains a lot.

“X-Men did you real dirty.” You’re half paying attention to an interview with Roger Taylor that the two of you had been instructed to watch together. You’re both in his trailer, sitting on opposite ends of the sofa as you watch in almost complete silence.

“What?” He asks, after a beat, your words having taken a moment to process.

“Killing you off like that; they could have gotten so much mileage out of your character.” The way you say it is far too well thought out to be an idle thought. Ben smirked.

“You just liked the leather pants.” He muttered, but you’re silence is answer enough. You know he sees your embarrassed smile, but you can’t bring yourself to deny it.

“Hey, do you wanna grab a drink after and go through notes and blocking and stuff?” You’re shooting your third episode, and you’re far more comfortable on set by now. Agreeing easily, you let Ben drive the two of you to what he claims is the best pub in town, and you sit in one of the more secluded booths to talk.

It turns out he’s just as much a fan of you as you are of him; you’re known more for your bit-parts in long-running series, it seems like the only show you hadn’t been a part of so far had been Eastenders, it was only a matter of time. It’s an innocent night, true to his word, all you do is talk, and discuss the script. There is one part of the upcoming script that has you a bit nervous.

“Listen, honestly just go for it; it’s not meant to be sweet or anything, I’m literally taking coke from you.” You tell him, fidgeting, and he’s hums thoughtfully.

“You sure? We can talk to the director, I’m sure-” He offers, but you laugh to hide your nervousness.

“Nah, let’s knock it out of the park, the script says go for it so just go for it.” You assured him, heart rate already quickening at the mere thought of it.

The next day, before the scene, the director comes over to talk you through it, making sure that if anything becomes uncomfortable, that you can talk to her. Both you and Ben assure her that it’s fine.

“You’re far too cute for this line of work.” You say as you hold a baggie of “cocaine” up to the light, smile playing on your lips.

“Cute? Ouch, you really know how to wound a man, you know.” He says, leaning back against the sofa in the hallway of the grubby hotel your character was staying in. He’s watching you with interest, small smile playing on his lips.

“Cute’s not a bad thing, baby, but you look like you should be making coffees or playing football in the sun, not here, not with me.” And you tap out a little of the powder onto your hand, pretending to snort it before you turn to him, his expression dark and hungry, and he kisses you, aggressive, almost desperate, and you lean into it, almost forget you’re playing a role with his hand on the back of your neck. When he lets go, when he pulls away, your eyes are still closed and you chase his lips for a moment. Eyes flickering open, you see him smirking down at you where he’s standing, and you both know it wasn’t entirely acting.

“You don’t know anything about me.” He growls, and you know you have to smile like you’re into it, like it’s a challenge, but instead, you duck your gaze, giving a small laugh and wiping at the nostril you’d just “snorted cocaine” through, before looking up at him through your eyelashes.

They call cut, and the director announces, almost a little awed, that she’s pretty sure they got the the take, actually says she’s not sure if she could getting a better take if they tried again. Ben seems far too pleased with himself.

“They want us to tell the public we’re together.” You’re resting your head on Ben’s chest laying at the back of the tour-bus set, and his hand is resting on your waist, which is bare for the crop top and booty shorts they’ve put you in.

“Yeah, I heard.” He replies, voice equally quiet. “I think we’ve got a meeting about it tomorrow morning.” Gwil and Rami are actually playing scrabble at the front of the bus, and Joe is talking to Singer, the director.

“It’s a bad idea.” You’re so frank that you feel Ben freeze, and you heave a sigh. “It’s good for the movie, but Ben...” You trail off, and you feel it when he forces himself to relax. “It wouldn’t be real, it would just be weird.”

“Y/N, we’re actors.” He says very pointedly, and when you turn, resting your chin on his chest, he looks tired, a little exasperated. “It’s just a business deal.” He assured, and you let out a low, thoughtful grumble.

“We’ll discuss it tomorrow.” You allow, and he nods once, shifting to a more comfortable position, and you go back to resting your head on his chest, eyes fluttering closed as Singer called for the shot to be reset and a bunch of people came and straightened your clothes, and touched up your makeup, all without you having to move much.

You agree to the terms set forth in the meeting easily, the story being that your relationship rekindled on set, and that you were now madly in love, mirroring the relationship you were portraying on screen.

“Wait, does that mean-?” Ben leans forward in his chair, with his heart in his throat as he followed their logic, thinking through the plot of the movie. “Like engaged?” He asked.

“Seems a bit fast.” You agreed, voice level enough that someone might mistake you for calm rather than internally freaking out, and your managers shared a look.

“There will be a public proposal during or after the world premiere, that’s up to you both, and after the movie is out on DVD, you can go your separate ways.” They assured, but your mouth fell open.

“You know he left me for X-Men, right?” You splutter, and Ben’s eyes widen as he turns to you with a scoff.

“You’re the one who said the distance was too much for us while I was in Cairo.” He snapped, and you threw your hands in the air.

“I was offering to come and stay with you instead, but you said you were too busy!” That was enough to shut him up, his mouth snapping closed as he turned away sharply, huffing out a resigned sigh.

“We have a few brands and restaurants who are interested in sponsoring, and the producers are willing to increase both your salaries if you go through with it for the full duration.” Your manager informed you both carefully, and you and Ben shared a resigned look.

“Fake intend to marry me for like three months?” He asked, voice low and bitter, and after heaving a long sigh, you look to your managers,

“Fine.”

“I think I love you.” Ben’s character shows up at your character’s door, and you open it in a silk robe.

“Hello to you too.” You laughed, but he’s so serious, so sincere, and when he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t offer anything else, you step up to him, pressing your lips to his, and he wraps his arms around you, hands sliding against the silk over your hips, and you pull back.

“You’re too sweet for me, baby,” voice so low it’s barely a whisper, he’s the one who chases your lips this time, but your catch his chin, and his eyes open.

“You’re high.” He says softly, voice raw and a little desperate.

“And you’re my dealer.” You push him back gently, going to close the door and his expression turns angry.

“That doesn’t mean anything; I love you, Maggie.” His words hang heavily in the air, but before you can respond, they call for cut. You’re told to play it more like it hurts to try and turn him down, and you agree, smiling and nodding all the while. Everyone sets up for another take and you close the door.

When you kiss him this time, his hands are holding your face, and you’ve got your arms around his neck, and it’s like the world falls away from around you. It’s not acting now, hasn’t been for weeks, almost months now, not since he’d asked you out officially. Every time you kiss him you’re desperate to drown in his embrace, and he kisses you like it’s just the two of you, no cameras, no scripts.

“You’re-” and he cuts you off with another quick kiss, which has you laughing a little sadly, “Peter you’re too sweet for me.” He rests his forehead against yours, heaving a sigh.

“I know you’re high.” He says gently, and you don’t push him away this time, just lean back, your finger lifting his chin.

“And you’re my dealer.” You tell him, expression falling.

“That doesn’t mean anything, that doesn’t matter; I love you.” And you know that in that moment, the words mean so much more than the script, than these characters, than the show; he loves you. Ben loves you.

You avoid him, outside of filming, until you actually get a call from your manager telling you you’re contractually obligated to be seen in public together at least once a week. Even while filming you’re short with him, and he’s quick to get away from you the moment he doesn’t need to be around you, which was getting to be pretty bad, seeing as how you had been blocking a sex scene.

After the call, you and Ben get a drink. It’s awkward at first, though that’s unsurprising. After a long sip of his beer, he pats his thighs where he’s sitting in the armchair across from you. You make a face at him, shaking your head.

“It’ll look less suspicious than if we’re shouting at each other across the table.” He hissed, and you groaned, obliging and crossing to sit yourself in his lap. He’s warm and secure, and he wraps his arm around you like it’s second nature. “Let’s not make this weird.” He said gently, and you nod.

“As for tomorrow’s shoot,” you said softly, leaning in to make sure no-one else heard, and he nodded, humming softly, “we’re professionals, and,” after a beat you cleared your throat pointedly, “it’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

“Not in front of a camera crew we haven’t.” Ben says with a smirk, and you snicker in agreement. “It’s gonna go fine; this is all gonna go fine, I promise.” And when you raise your eyebrows at him in surprised question, he just laughs softly, and brings you in for a chaste kiss. “It’s only until the DVD’s released.” He assures you, and you let your expression fall, already weary.

“Ben, that’s over a year away.”

#ben hardy #ben hardy imagine #ben hardy x reader #bohemian rhapsody #borhap #bo rhap #queen #queen imagines #eastenders #eastenders imagines #the angry lizard writes

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magicalgirlartist · 6 years

Photo

Finally drew my Sentinel Comics OC, Diamond Heart! I originally came up with her as a concept for a fan deck a couple years back, and am planning on transferring her to the RPG once it comes out.

Character notes, lies about publishing history and story arc, and game mechanics below the readmore. (With deepest apologies to mobile users.)

Character Notes

Diamond Heart is an archetypal magical girl. Her civilian name is Yukiko Chevalier. She grew up in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She’s of mixed heritage, being both Japanese-Canadian (mother) and French-Canadian (father), but she doesn’t speak much Japanese--mostly English and Quebec French. Her outfit, though difficult to see, is made up of a silver dress, white jacket, gloves, and boots, and metallic blue accents, plus an actual diamond heart as an embellishment to the jacket. Her powers mostly involve bursts of magical energy and transformation.

Publishing History (all lies)

Diamond Heart is a relatively new character in the Sentinel Comics lineup. Back during the manga boom of the late 90s/early 00s, Sentinel Comics acquired the translation rights to a few different manga series, mostly short shonen series and some superheroes. One of these series was a magical girl series called Heart of Diamond (Daiyamondo no kokoro, although honestly only weeaboos called it that), which had seen limited success in Japan due to everyone comparing it to another, more popular magical girl series, saying it was a direct ripoff. However, the Sentinel Comics translation was very popular in North America and it brought in a new reader base for them. One of the things readers liked was that they stuck very close to the original script, or at least as close as possible, rather than going the 3Kids route and making it take place in America or changing the characters’ names for no reason.

Unfortunately, Heart of Diamond was the only series that took off for Sentinel Comics. The other series didn’t sell well, and the translation rights were eventually sold to other companies. Heart of Diamond was one of the few series that was completely translated by Sentinel Comics. This left Sentinel Comics with a bit of a dilemma: Heart of Diamond sold well and brought in a previously untapped market of teenage girls. How could they hold on to that when Heart of Diamond ended? It was only about 30 chapters long, after all.

So they did what comic companies do best: reboot. (okay that’s not fair but still) Once Heart of Diamond ended, they announced a new book called Diamond Heart that would be coming out soon. Said book featured a new protagonist with the same powers and costume as the old one, but with a new supporting cast. Two new girls (Emerald Heart and Topaz Heart) were added to the roster, bringing it to a team of five (up from three in the original manga). Her mascot also got a makeover, going from a floating jelly-like ball (affectionately nicknamed Slime-chan by fans) to a small stone creature, a sort of cross between a less-ugly gargoyle and a less-gigantic inuksuk. Her basic story stayed the same--fighting evil aliens (called Titons) that live on Saturn’s moon Titan, but she was now officially part of the Sentinel Comics universe, and the team had full control over her story.

Reactions were...mixed. Some Heart of Diamond fans felt like Yukiko and Diamond Heart were just “fake ripoffs” of their favourite thing (which was already 100% a ripoff but y’know). Most fans took to the new book, though, and Diamond Heart ran right up to the Oblivaeon event.

Most issues of Diamond Heart followed the original “monster of the week” formula that Heart of Diamond had used, though with more focus on the overarching story about the Titons. There was also some focus on how the team fit into the Sentinel Comics multiverse as a whole, but as the Canadian setting was relatively separate from the rest of the major goings-on in the other comics they tended to remain fairly isolated. They knew of other heroes and other heroes knew about them, but there wasn’t a lot of cross pollination happening. The weird part of Diamond Heart was that it was trying to follow a very Japanese plot, but doing so from a very western perspective. Comparisons to Sentai Rangers were drawn constantly among western fans. Occasionally the book would have crossovers with other heroes (notably Nightmist, the Argent Adept, and Guise) in an attempt to boost sales, bring new readers in, and reestablish Diamond Heart’s place in the multiverse. These crossovers usually only lasted about an issue or two before going back to regular production.

Story (also lies)

At the start of her grade 11 year, Yukiko found a necklace with a sliver-white heart-shaped pendant in her new locker. She figured it had belonged to the last person who used it and tried to figure out who that was to return it to them, but no one she asked about it had ever seen it before. She kept it as a good luck charm and started wearing it everywhere.

It wasn’t long after this that an alien attacked her school, screaming something about a silver-white necklace. Figuring they were looking for her, Yukiko tried to escape, but ran into a short, round creature made of rocks just before she could escape the school. It introduced itself as Rochmananov, Guardian of the Heart Stones, and told her she’d been chosen to lead a team of magical warriors against the evil Titons. Naturally Yukiko didn’t believe it at first, assuming she’d bumped her head and everything happening was some kind of hallucination, but Rochmananov managed to change her mind by getting her to say her transformation incantation, “Heart of Diamond! Release!” She transformed into Diamond Heart, and though still a bit in shock was able to defeat the alien attacking her school with Rochmananov’s help.

Afterwards, Rochmananov (later nicknamed Rocky) explained that it had hidden the Diamond Heart in her locker so she’d be able to find it, as it was her destiny to lead the Gem Hearts. Yukiko wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, thinking that anyone else would do a better job, but Rocky insisted she was the right person. The two of them set about assembling the rest of the team, which was fairly easy thanks to Rocky’s ability to see people with magical potential. After a few issues they had the whole team--Sapphire Heart (Michelle), Ruby Heart (Neha), Emerald Heart (Charlee), and Topaz Heart (Jackie).

As a team, the five of them protected Ottawa and searched for a way to bring an end to the Titon threat. They fought other enemies as well, mostly in crossovers, but generally all their foes were Titon-related. They stayed in Ottawa up until the OblivAeon event.

Signs of OblivAeon started showing up in Diamond Heart around the same time as they did everywhere else, though since there wasn’t a lot of activity in the Ottawa area before the event itself, there wasn’t much. Teams had been told to wrap up story threads and loose ends before OblivAeon showed up to reset everything, so shortly before the event itself was published the Gem Hearts found a way to magically transport themselves to Titan, and in a several-issue climactic battle finally defeated the Titon King. They used a Titon spaceship to get back to Earth, having exhausted most of their powers in the fight, and by the time they returned the OblivAeon attack was in full swing.

The team mostly fought Aeon men and kept to the ground protecting civilians, unable to do much else with their depleted powers. Finally, Rocky revealed that he had a way to give them a power boost, giving them his own energy to restore them at the cost of his life.

Michelle, Neha, Charlee, and Jackie all tried to find help through the various multiverse portals, and were still in those other worlds when OblivAeon was defeated and the doors between worlds slammed shut. Yukiko, devastated by the loss of her friends, searched desperately for a way to bring them back, but couldn’t find anything. After the Sentinels of Freedom were formed, she went to them looking for help, and that’s about where things stand now.

Character Arc (still more lies)

Yukiko starts the series as a cheerful teenager, friendly and always willing to help. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of herself, though, and has to be convinced of her own self-worth constantly through the series. As the series goes on, she matures more and even manages to ask her long-time crush Parker Matthews on a date. Parker eventually becomes aware of his girlfriend’s secret, and spends a lot of time worrying about her as a result. He tries to go with her to meet the Sentinels of Freedom, worried about her safety, but she tells him she can take care of herself and goes alone.

Part of Yukiko’s character arc (in the Sentinel Comics universe, she gives up the mantle of Diamond Heart in the Mist Storm universe) was to deconstruct the “power of friendship” trope. Part of her power set as Diamond Heart is to amplify others’ powers or take their power and add it to her own. Because of this, she feels more like a supporter than a leader. Her friends make her strong, but as far as she’s concerned she’s useless without them.

Card Game Mechanics (yet more lies)

The Diamond Heart deck is made mostly of oneshots with four “ally” cards (the other Gem Hearts), one“mascot” card (Rocky), and one equipment card (her Diamond Pendant). She has 28HP. Her base power is called “Glittering Diamond Burst!” and its text reads: “Diamond Heart deals one non-hero target 2 energy damage.”

“Ally” cards have 7HP each. Their power names are in the flavour text at the bottom of each card. Each “ally” card gives the player an added ongoing passive effect:

Sapphire Heart: Reduce all damage dealt to Diamond Heart, allies, and mascots by 1. (“Dazzling Sapphire Shield!”)

Ruby Heart: Increase all damage dealt by Diamond Heart, allies, and mascots by 1. (“Searing Ruby Blast!”)

Emerald Heart: At the start of your turn, each Hero target regains 1HP. (“Healing Emerald Wave!”)

Topaz Heart: At the start of your turn, choose one of your Hero targets. They deal each Villain target 1 Energy damage each. (“Roaring Topaz Storm!”)

The “Mascot” card has 5HP. Its card name is just “Rochmananov.” It grants the player access to the following power: “Reveal the top card of your deck. If it’s an Ally, put it into play. Otherwise, discard it.”

The Diamond Pendant is an equipment card and therefore has no HP. It grants the player the following passive effect when in play: “You may draw or play one card at the end of your turn.”

The rest of the cards in Diamond Heart’s deck are oneshots. Some include:

The Power of Friendship: Diamond Heart deals one Villain target X energy damage, where X is the number of hero targets in your play area.

Secret Identity: Diamond Heart deals herself 1 Psychic damage. If she takes damage this way, you may draw two cards now.

Rainbow Gem Love Barrage!: Diamond Heart deals one non-hero target X energy damage, where X is the number of oneshot cards in your trash.

Here to Help: Search your deck or trash for an Ally card and put it into your hand. If you searched your deck, shuffle your deck.

(non-comprehensive list, also has never been playtested because it doesn’t exist let me live)

RPG Mechanics:

The Sentinel Comics RPG isn’t out yet, but when it is I’ll make Diamond Heart for real and put her mechanics here.

#sentinels of the multiverse #sentinel comics oc #DEEPEST APOLOGIES TO MOBILE USERS #art #fanart #traditional mediums

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murasaki-murasame · 6 years

Text

Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 13 [Chapter 4 - Deadly Life]

I think it took me nearly half of this entire post to actually start talking about the investigation and the murder case as a whole because I got deep into Retrospective Mode [tm], lol. The latter part of this might seem disjointed and confusing because I kept rewriting parts of it, and in general I’ve been writing this post on and off for hours now while doing other stuff so I wasn’t perfectly keeping track of the flow of it.

Thoughts under the cut.

Before I talk about this part, I kinda forgot to actually talk about the plot-related hints we got in the last part. There was so much other stuff to talk about that I kinda forgot to get around to that part.

So now we have a whole collection of assorted vague hints about what happened before the killing game and what the state of the outside world is, and the question is how they interconnect. I might be forgetting some stuff, but to list it out a bit, we have the hints about Rantarou being a survivor from a previous killing game who actively wanted to participate in this one. We have the references to the Ultimate Hunt that was seemingly about hunting down and possibly killing Ultimates, which seemed to lead to everyone voluntarily undergoing amnesia in order to forget their talents and become ‘normal people’ who won’t be hunted anymore. We have the weird flashback to what seemed to be a joint funeral for the main cast, which is strange for a variety of reasons, including the question of why they’d be grouped together if they were all from different schools. We have the memories of meteorites falling to Earth and threatening some sort of apocalyptic scenario. We have the memories of a cult or some such that popped up at the time, preaching that mankind deserved damnation. We have references to a plan called the Gofer Project that was apparently designed to stop the meteorties but somehow failed. And now we have the whole scenario of everyone stuck in this walled-in academy playing a killing game. Which is obviously normal enough for this franchise, but the really weird thing is that Monokuma’s been very consistent in saying that ‘nothing exists outside of the End Wall’, and that because of that point, he’s not doing this out of a desire to broadcast the killing game to the outside world. Which throws a lot of things into question, since the goal of the killing games has basically always been to instill despair in the population by having it be publicly broadcasted.

It’s also worth remembering that the game started with what seemed to be some kind of time loop where, originally, everyone woke up in regular uniforms and no memories of even their talents, but then when they met Monokuma and the Monokubs, things got ‘reset’ somehow, and things started over in the exact same way, but with everyone wearing their more unique and personalized uniforms, and with memories of their talents. Kaede and Shuichi also woke up in classroom closets that were placed right next to each other, which still feels a bit fishy to me. Oh, and I imagine that sometime after this, Rantarou probably found and watched the video that his past self seemingly left for him, and that was probably how he knew about the Ultimate Hunt at the start of the game. I forget if he knew that in the ‘original loop’, though. And on the note of him, we still don’t know what his talent is.

There’s also been all sorts of fairly wild theories thrown about in-story about what might be going on, mostly involving the idea that maybe everyone really did die, and they’re currently in some kind of afterlife, which would at least explain certain fantastical things that have happened.

We also have a mysterious tile in the courtyard with writing on it that fills in more and more each chapter. Not sure what to make of that yet, but it seems to be saying something about the state of the world.

And in terms of various references made to the state of the outside world, it might be important to remember that Kirumi’s whole motive in chapter two involved her remembering that the prime minister of Japan had decided to make her the de facto prime minister in order to have her assist in saving the country. Which, in hindsight, sounds like it might have related to her being called into the Gofer Project, somehow. The question then is what happened to her after that, and how things lead to her being involved in the joint funeral everyone remembers, and her being part of this killing game just like everyone else.

I think that’s a good enough run-down of all the clues we have. There’s certain other mysteries and plots twists in the making that I can already guess about, like Kokichi probably actually being the Ultimate Prisoner, but I don’t know how much that sort of thing relates to the ‘overall story’.

Obviously it’s pretty difficult to piece these clues and hints together coherently, but the thing that keeps sticking out to me the most is that this is apparently intended to be a proper continuation/conclusion to the Hope’s Peak Saga, and not a reboot of some kind. So the question then is, how exactly did the events of the Hope’s Peak Saga set up this game’s story? It’s really hard to tell, especially since things seemed to be on a more or less good path after the DR3 anime, with Naegi becoming the new headmaster of Hope’s Peak, the whole DR2 crew being alive, Junko presumably being entirely destroyed, etc. I’m not entirely sure how that situation could have devolved enough to get us to what sounds like a literally apocalyptic scenario that also involved some kind of mass murdering/capturing of Ultimates. I mean the meteorites could have just been a really unfortunate natural disaster, but the Ultimate Hunt is what really sticks out to me. It kinda sounds like what happened around the time period of DR0 and Despair Arc, with the untalented people lashing out against Hope’s Peak academy.

I can’t really figure out where this is going. There’s way too many seemingly unconnected and wildly different sorts of plot threads to consider. Like, on the one hand you have some kind of literal apocalypse going on, and then you have some kind of revolt against the Ultimates, and then you have the implication that the V3 cast died and are in the afterlife, and then you have the references to some kind of prior killing game we haven’t heard about before, and it’s just really difficult to tell how the heck these things relate to each other. It’s also, as said, difficult to guess what Monokuma’s motive is intended to be this time. I also can’t help but wonder who’s going to be the Mastermind this time. In the last two games it was Junko, but I highly doubt it’s gonna be her. I guess it could technically be Monaca [or however you spell her name], since she’s still kinda a hanging thread, but I prefer the idea of her sticking to being a space NEET.

I should say that even if there’s still one or two spoilers I have relating to character deaths, I genuinely have no idea where the actual story is going to go, beyond the fact that it’s apparently really controversial and polarizing. That’s what everyone seems to be saying, at least. Which still feels weird to me, especially since I’ve seen people say that it’s even more divisive than DR2′s ending, which I thought was already incredibly love or hate because of how it involved plot points like virtual reality simulations and Junko being the villain for a second time. I wonder how this game could top that one. Thankfully it sounds like most people still like the ending even if they acknowledge that it’s somehow divisive, but it all sounds so make-or-break that I can’t help but be afraid that it might retroactively ruin my opinion on the game as a whole.

And on that note, I do really like the game thus far. It’s not perfect, but for the most part it’s really good. It’s really refreshing to finally be playing one of these games for myself instead of just watching LPs of them.

There’s a whole lot of things already that are pretty divisive, especially Kaede’s death, and I can’t blame anyone for being put off by points like that. But I just can’t help but like the game a lot. I think a big part of it is that I really love this game’s cast, especially the main trio [if you want to call them that] of Shuichi, Kaito, and Maki. I’ve talked about them before, but I really truly love them as characters. I get why a lot of people are probably bored by Shuichi as a protagonist, especially after the Kaede bait-and-switch, but I love him. I find his development and his emotional struggles to be really compelling. I’ve liked him as a character from the start, but I also can’t deny that him clearly being gay as fuck also makes me love him even more. It’s just a really nice feeling to be able to play a game with a protagonist who I actually feel like I can identify with on this specific level. But I promised myself I wouldn’t go on another big discussion rant thing so I’ll just cut myself off right here, lol.

I’m not entirely sure how I’d compare this game’s cast to DR2′s, but I think I definitely prefer them to DR1′s cast. I don’t really have any interest in pitting them against each other, but it’s hard not to make the comparison when your feelings toward each game’s casts hugely dictates how you feel about each game as a whole. DR2 definitely had more of a focus on being more fun and light-hearted and friendly than DR1, which I think helped make that game’s cast feel more likeable, but V3 is going for something in the middle. At least by this point I like most of the cast members in V3. I think the only characters who I actively dislike are Kiyo and Kokichi. I wouldn’t really like Miu or Angie as people in real life, but they’re at least fun and interesting enough for me to like them as characters. Kiyo was basically just outright unpleasant from start to finish, though, and his whole presence in the story was capped off with a bizarre and disturbing backstory about incest and ritualistic serial killings. And I just kinda . . . hate Kokichi. A lot. He’s slightly endearing sometimes but oh man especially with how this chapter’s going I just kinda despise him. Thankfully I’m clearly meant to hate him.

Other than that, I think the only characters I feel ambivalent about are Tsumugi, Keebo, and to a lesser extent Gonta and Himiko. But Himiko’s definitely getting up there with her recent development, and I have a soft spot for Gonta even though he really is kinda pointless as a character. So it’s mostly Tsumugi and Keebo who I just don’t feel much of anything for.

I actively like everyone else to anyone degree or another.

Anyway I should finally start talking about the actual specific part I just played, lol.

But before I do that, I wanna say that I decided to get the skill that lets me focus on one conversation at a time in mass panic debates. I still feel a bit hesitant about it, since I haven’t really had trouble with any of those parts yet, and I’m a bit worried that with this skill I might just get hyper-focused on one conversation at a time, and it might take longer to figure out the answer. We’ll see. I might take it off after this trial if I dislike it. I was debating between it and the one about revealing the first keyword in each scrum debate. That would have been really helpful earlier in the game, but as the game goes on those parts get a lot easier since the number of participants decreases. So unless they add in multiple rounds of it, I feel like that skill is just getting progressively less useful.

Either way, let’s just get to actually talking about this investigation segment.

I figured that this case was going to get a lot more complicated in this segment, and that it’d involve the implication that Miu died inside the virtual world and not outside of it, and lo and behold, that’s what happened.

There’s a lot to unpack here about how this case is set up, so I’ll just cut right to the main point and say that I think a major plot twist is going to be that the virtual world is actually arranged so that the big wall is in the middle of it, and the ‘world loading screen’ is actually more of a set-up to do with the edges of the map being connected like a portal. Basically if you just take Miu’s map and swap the two sections then you get what’s clearly meant to be the actual layout. So we actually have a scenario where the chapel and the mansion are relatively close to each other, with a wall between them. This explains why Shuichi and Tsumugi heard Keebo’s voice, because it wasn’t actually being interrupted by the world loading screen since they were well away from it. I guess we just have to assume that sound can somehow pass easily through the wall.

This also explains what happened with the signboard. I think I commented on it seeming a bit odd, but I didn’t think about it too much. But I probably should have guessed what was happening based on the flow of the river, and the fact that the signboard was stuck on the left side of the rock in the river, and not the right side. So instead of the signboard going down the river and then traveling left, it actually traveled right, looped around via the world loading screen at the edge of the map, and continued traveling right along the river until it hit the left side of the rock. I think they also established that objects, though not humans, can travel through the wall, so the signboard wouldn’t have been obstructed by that.

And obviously it also explains how Miu could have been seen near the mansion. With what we learned about the modifications she made to herself, she clearly just moved through the wall and thus immediately ended up near the mansion, where she got seen. Then everyone heard the crash of something hitting the chapel, and her presumably being killed.

One of the major points I noticed with all the evidence we got in this part is that it’s incredibly obvious Miu set this up as an opportunity for her to murder somebody, and that somebody was probably Kokichi. She obviously rewrote and lied about the game’s set-up in order to make it easy for her to navigate the map without anyone else being able to, and the rule about Kokichi freezing if she touches him was probably so that she could stop him from running away or resisting her. It’s also why she knocked away the signboard, to make sure everyone was as isolated as possible.

So I guess the big question is what exactly went wrong with her plan. And that answer probably also lies in Kokichi, who obviously knew what she was planning, and probably used his key card thing, and/or whatever he got from it, to mess with her plans and get her killed instead. I’m not entirely sure how, though. I’m also not even entirely sure if Kokichi is the one that killed her. He just seems too obvious, and as I’ve said before, I doubt he’ll die this [relatively] early. He seems too pivotal to the group dynamic to not stick around longer.

The way Miu’s body ended up makes me feel like she basically slid down the mansion roof on the lattice thing, and she flew through the wall and smashed into the chapel wall. I might be under-estimating the distance between the two buildings, but signs point to her having been up on the roof, and the layout of where her body ended up makes it seem like she crashed into the chapel wall at high speeds while holding the cell-phone and hammer and riding the lattice, and everything ended up flung about at the base of the chapel wall. Which I guess raises the question of how that happened. I feel like either she did it in an attempt to escape that back-fired and lead to her dying upon hitting the chapel, or she was somehow pushed off the roof by the killer. In which case she could have either been alive or dead by that time. It’d seem more difficult to set up that scenario if she was alive, so maybe she got killed on the roof, and then the killer pushed her off the roof using the lattice to make it look like she’d been killed near the chapel.

I guess the obvious conclusion to draw then is that she went up to the roof, met Kokichi, and then got killed by him, and since he probably knew about all the tricks with the virtual world, he set up her body to make it look like she’d been killed by the chapel, which would have seemingly removed him from suspicion.

I at least think that he’s going out of his way to implicate Kaito, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he remotely logged Kaito out in order to make him suspicious. It’s at least obvious that someone used the phone to log Kaito out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kokichi did it, and then planted the phone on Miu to make it seem like another thing that he couldn’t have possibly done. He might have needed to steal the phone off her, but that wouldn’t be too hard I guess. Though the whole ‘he freezes if she touches her’ rule might make that pretty difficult. I’m not sure.

It definitely seems like a big part of this case will boil down to whether we believe Kokichi’s or Kaito’s testimonies, but I can’t help but trust Kaito more. Especially since, if we take the log-in/log-out report and the stated time of death at face value, then he logged out over an hour before Miu died. And anyway, she clearly died IN the game, and not long before everyone found her body, so if Kaito really had logged out way before then and hadn’t logged in, I don’t really think he could have killed her. But part of me can’t help but worry that maybe Kokichi set up some sort of plan so that Kaito would somehow end up killing Miu without intending to. Possibly something to do with the ‘avatar error’. Maybe Kokichi tampered with Kaito’s avatar before the program started, or something.

I’m not sure what to make of the detail with the roof door lock, but clearly Miu got up there somehow, and Kaito got logged off early enough that he might have just not seen anyone come up after he left.

The worrying thing here is that, even if Kaito doesn’t seem like he actually did it, I also find it hard to suspect Kokichi, but I can’t really imagine anyone else having done it. Knowing the gist of the trick, I think that Maki, Keebo, and Himiko are free of suspicion since 1: they all seemed genuinely unaware of the trick, and 2: even if they were aware of it, as far as we know at the moment none of them could have moved through the wall of crossed the river, so if Miu really did die on the mansion roof, or get pushed off the mansion roof and die upon hitting the chapel wall, then the killer must have one way or another been stationed in the mansion part of the map. So, ignoring the possibility of someone in the chapel group knowing more than they’re letting on, we can probably write those three off the list, and focus on the five people stationed in the mansion.

We can presumably immediately cross Shuichi off the list, and I feel really hesitant to suspect Tsumugi or Gonta when they seem so innocent and motive-less, which just . . . gets us right back to Kokichi and Kaito. And honestly I’d be willing to expect that the game would prefer to keep Kokichi around so that he can continue being an antagonist, while killing Kaito off in this chapter just to make us all feel miserable. So even if I doubt that Kaito willingly murdered Miu, I wouldn’t be surprised if even via some sort of manipulation or technicality he ends up being the killer. It’d be lame if it was the character who immediately got suspected, though, even if it might play out differently than what we might expect. It’d also feel more than a bit lame for the game to kill off yet another person who Shuichi believes in. It’d just feel a bit too much like a repeat of the Kaede thing, but far less clever and unexpected. And considering how Kaede’s death was emotionally difficult to deal with when she just had like one and a half chapter’s worth of screen-time and interaction with Shuichi, Kaito’s been by his side for the entire game since her death, so it’d hurt a lot more, but in a way that’d feel sorta . . . unnecessarily tragic. Especially if it really is to do with Kokichi manipulating things to basically force Kaito to be a culprit without his knowledge. That’d feel a whole lot more shallow than Kaede intentionally murdering Rantarou in a sincere attempt to save everyone. It’d just seem like a kinda lame repeat of that whole thing with much less of the substance.

I mean, as I said, it’d definitely hurt more because there’s been more set-up and development between them, but it’d just make me more annoyed at the game if that’s where this is going, rather than sad but on board with what the game was doing, like how I felt with Kaede’s death. It’s kinda difficult to explain, but I guess it’s just the difference between something feeling natural and something feeling forced.

I know that in my last post I had my whole discussion-rant-ramble-thing about the prospect of Shuichi being gay, and that I said I didn’t really wanna talk about that sort of thing much since it’s the type of thing I’ve talked about a lot over the last year or so in relation to other fandoms, but on a sort of related note to all that, this whole chapter really feels like it’s heading in the direction of being one big complicated gay love triangle. In the sense of Shuichi being into Kaito, and Kokichi being violently jealous of Kaito because he wants Shuichi for himself. The moment at the end of the daily life part that I mentioned in my last post seems to be pretty bluntly pointing at him more or less being a yandere who’s obsessed with Shuichi, and in this section he got even more aggressive about pinning all the suspicion on Kaito and getting him away from Shuichi so he could replace him as Shuichi’s investigation partner. It’s at least pretty clear that he has an issue with Kaito specifically, which is why he decided to pin all this on him and not someone else.

[Fake edit: I ended up talking about Gay Stuff [tm] again for like three or four paragraphs so if I wind up being completely wrong and all of this is completely pointless to even discuss or speculate about, you can skip past it.]

If that’s basically Kokichi’s motive in setting all this up, then it makes me wonder if/how it might come up during the trial. And, as an extension of that, it’d make me wonder if the game might explicitly acknowledge Shuichi’s crush on Kaito for what it is. It’d be hard not to, if it’s a major part of what made Kokichi want to take Kaito out like this, if that’s what he’s doing. Mostly I just hope that it doesn’t get handled in a way like ‘Shuichi’s feelings for Kaito are ~pure and platonic~, but Kokichi? The crazy evil antagonist who has misogyny issues and probably has a criminal record? Yeah he’s gay’. That’d just be incredibly groan-worthy. It’d at least work better if the game acknowledged that both of them are gay, so the framing of it is less ‘Kokichi is gay and evil while Shuichi is straight and good’ and more ‘Kokichi is just, as an individual, a bad person’. That’d work better. It’d still be all sorts of painful if this chapter really does end with us finding out that Kokichi really was able to set Kaito up for being executed simply because he saw him as a romantic rival, but still. Not that I’m sitting here holding my breath in the hopes that maybe this will finally be the video game that has a gay male protagonist, or anything. I don’t even expect the game to acknowledge him as potentially being bi. In general I’m bracing myself for the worst, if only because it feels like this’ll end with Kaito dying, and that would be fundamentally horrible to sit through.

Even though I can’t help but worry about potential issues with framing and presentation and blahblahblah if Kokichi does end up basically being a gay yandere, it’d be interesting if it ends up showing off a more . . . petty and selfish and child-like side to himself, to crack that facade of him being some sort of cool and calculated manipulator who’s always above everyone else. It’d be messy, but I kinda like the idea of us seeing a more messy and unstable side to his personality, especially in a trial setting.

I didn’t really want to go on another whole spiel about this sorta thing immediately after what I said in my last post, but I guess this is technically about a different character so whatever. And for the most part, if I end up somehow being right about this, even though I almost don’t want to be, then it’s probably for the best that I get my thoughts down before the trial happens so that I can say that I called it in advance. And if I’m wrong then it just preserves my wrongness for posterity, like my glorious fuck-up in Chapter 2 which I still feel embarrassed about.

ANYWAY, that whole topic aside, I may as well wrap this up because this post has been going on for far too long. I’m not really sure I have a solid grasp on HOW the murder happened, exactly, beyond the idea of Miu maybe getting killed on the roof and then getting pushed off the roof and into the chapel wall, but I’m still sticking to the idea that the only real suspects I can think of are Kokichi and Kaito, and specifically I can’t help but imagine that Kokichi somehow things up so that Kaito would kill Miu without even intending to. Somehow. Maybe I’m just being paranoid and bracing myself for the most depressing option. Though I guess the most depressing option would be if Kaito turns out to be, like, genuinely evil or something and is lying about everything. I guess that’d technically be a lot more depressing. But considering how I’m completely clueless about certain pieces of evidence like the toilet paper, the roof door lock, the unique attribute of Kokichi’s avatar, and the set-up with the visors, I’m probably going to wind up confused and overwhelmed by a majority of this trial and it’s explanation of how this murder happened. Oh well.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #I continue to surprise myself with how these posts just keep being unnecessarily long #then again it's not like these are professional reviews or anything so it's fine

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