#I do think it is important that the audience is given enough time to adapt to and accept Daniel's viewpoint

[terrence-silver]

Do you think that Terry has kept anything from his military days? A uniform, weapon, any kind of trinket? Or would he want to get rid of it all? Does it change over time across the KK3/CK Terry eras?

---

Think he kept it all.

I mean, look at this guy. Really look at him.☝️

Does this seem like a guy who wouldn't? C'mon, now.

Uniform, the weapon he used in his service, whatever medals he won, if he won any; the very combat boots he wore, if at all possible. Photographs, trinkets, dogtags, newspaper clippings, souvenirs, memories of exclusively sentimental value. He preserved it all. Because, contrary to popular belief, I don't think Terry Silver ever felt ashamed of his military service, in fact, in the 80's, man seems downright proud of it, saluting in public and he doing it with all the gusto in the whole wide world: man's as patriotic as they come (possibly to worrying and maybe even toxic degrees, because I doubt there's anything Terry can do mildly). I simply think that in his older age he was wise enough to know not everyone would react favorably to him saying he served, least of all, in Vietnam of all places, one of the more controversial wars the US ever fought to date. No pats on the back would be given for that and Terry is clever enough to be able to read the figurative room and the sensibilities of the era, as he goes ahead and adapts to them, flying under the radar, keeping the nitty-gritty aspects of himself neatly tucked away because I feel he understands only a fool goes around being wholly transparent. He is a shrewd businessman, after all. He knows what to reveal and what not to reveal, or at least, what not to highlight and what not to. It was a subject so personal and hidden in plain sight one almost gets the impression it's publicly known he served, but outside of John Kreese and ironically, while manipulating Mr. Miyagi, another veteran, it is never really mentioned, discussed, brought up or talked of by Terry to anyone else in too many details because he possibly didn't want the most important, formative, meaningful and traumatizing years of his life even talked of by unworthy mouths who wouldn't understand what the heck he's talking about and it's inherent gravitas, and if they did, doubt he could guarantee containing himself.

After all, who would?

Would anyone talk about such a meaningful event casually?

Can it be talked about casually?

Like, do we really think Terry Silver would be here talking about his years in the war in front of, oh, I don't know, Emile and Cheyenne over brunch at a garden party, for example? His time as POW and everything that went down out there in the jungle? Lets be real for a moment. Of course Terry would be deliberately vague and brush it off like 'there's not much to say' because these aren't the type of people you can talk about anything more serious and impactful than the next round of Mimosas. Know your audience. Know the audience's limits. Naturally, whatever keepsakes he brought back from the war were and remained hidden too --- his and exclusively for him. All throughout the many decades. His own personal museum.

But, I do believe he's brought back a ton of things; and not just his own.

I'm prone to imagine Terry Silver owns a whole shrine, in fact.

If it was at all conceivable for him to retrieve anything of Ponytail's, trust and believe he's in possession of that too, because if he could take the man's hair and the man's mannerisms, usurping them like a virtual facestealer, he could collect his posthumous belongings as well --- uniform, personal items, letters from home, journals, records, magazines and whatever else his friend had with him seeing as how he fashioned himself into his friend's mirror image, a walking doppelganger, a walking, talking grave, so why not have his things too? His stuff? It's only right he should have them. Be their keeper, guardian and owner. Halfway usurping him and his very personhood, halfway paying homage to him.

Stolen valor galore.

A stolen life too.

What if he owns something of Captain Turner's too? Now, there's a freaky thought.

Or enemy personnel he's encountered and terminated out on the field or in combat, because, regardless how boyish, skinny and doe eyed he was while he was Twig, I have no doubt in mind he killed, at least someone. Is it even possible to survive the Vietnam war as a soldier without taking lives? Don't doubt he collected trophies too. Someone's molar, for all we know, because the rabbit hole, oh, it can go very deep and it can go very dark indeed. I like to think that's exactly why Terry was giving such a gleeful, near enviously hateful glare when faced with Mr. Miyagi's medal, almost as if he was thinking 'Why not me?' right before he pocketed that too and added it to his excessive collection of army memorabilia.

Perhaps, indulging in some hero worship and giving it to John instead.

Feeling John deserves it more. That John deserves all the accolades in the world.

Regardless, I am convinced Terry Silver owns a virtual treasure trove of army stuff and has for decades --- both his own and those pertaining to other people, because it simply makes sense for his character to be in possession of such a thing. This is a hill I'll die on; this is a stash so private and concealed it might as well not exist, shrouded like the ultimate vulnerability, perhaps even from himself at times. For all anyone could be concerned, he did dispose of everything a long time ago, but I don't think he's a man who ever disposes of anything meaningful to him in any way --- a man who can't let go of grudges, creeds, rivalries, promises, oaths and friendships for half a century isn't likely to let go of a uniform he fought in either.

#he still undoubtedly has his bucket hat somewhere #terry silver #kk3 #cobra kai #character analysis #vietnam war #army #military #military memorabilia #trophies #john kreese

[mykatsudon]

My thoughts on Yuri On Ice and where it went

So I’ve been wanting to properly articulate what I feel is off about the Iceado production and how abnormal it is, what I think could be happening and my reasoning. So far I’ve only posted about these feelings on asks, replies and discord but I want to expand on them in writing. This is kinda long so I apologize in advance. Feel free to send me asks or reply to this post with your opinion.

First of all. Anime is a product and a property, and as such, it is usually milked until it no longer produces enough money to be profitable for the studio.

Yuri on ice was a total best seller, It trended #1 every Wednesday on both Tumblr and twitter. Episode 7 crashed Tumblr. They have a huge international audience, which is something that is so valuable. 

The first 2 years after YOI ended we had had all sorts of events. Collaborations, pop ups, the live stage, all sorts of merchandise etc..

Please. just read this bit on the popularity and success of YOI  ( X ) 

with that in mind, 

what in the hell happened?

Here’s the two train of thoughts I see a lot in asks/replies:

It’s a “focusing on other bigger projects” kind of issue

It’s an LGBTQ censoring issue 

Here’s why I think it’s neither of those two:

focusing on other bigger projects is the most popular theory and the one that honestly makes more sense. yoi being put on pause to produce the money cows JJK, AOT, CSM, and Vinland saga. It makes sense except for the fact that they still found the time to animate 12 episodes of a relatively obscure Ballet manga, Dance Dance Danseur. which already finished airing and despite being a MAPPA property, it wasn’t very popular online. Why take the chance to order 12 episodes from DDD and not Yuri on ice? which if you read the link I placed earlier had impressive statistics. This exact fact leads me to believe it's not a time or focus issue. 

If LGBTQ censoring was the issue, we wouldn't have BL animes coming out every year, and since Yuri on ice came out we’ve had quite a bit of BL animes and movies, for example: Given, the clouds gather, Given the movie, Sasaki to miyano, Umibe no étranger, Yes Ka No Hanbun Ka, sankaku mado, and a bunch more including live actions. 

and you might say “but yoi is not tagged BL so it could be censored” well, just a year after Yuri on ice aired Banana fish, a Mappa property, had a full on screen kiss between the main two characters. and that wasn’t tagged BL either. Y*richin B*tch cl*b got an anime adaptation and it doesn’t get more explicit than that so no. While I’m not claiming censoring doesn’t exist in anime, the laws aren’t a strict regime as some people make it seem. Implying the whole project got scrapped because of the main gay relationship is beyond unlikely. I don't think anyone could possibly deny that Yuri and Victor’s relationship was by far the biggest selling point of yuri on ice; the audience  knows it, the creators know it, the producers know it. 

So what is it? 

I present my leading theory... simple yet I find it quite likely...

Creative differences and doubts about where to take the story. 

what do Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on titan, Chainsaw man, Dance Dance Danseur,  Vinland saga, and hell’s paradise have in common? 

they’re all manga adaptations. 

Yuri on ice is an original story through and through. Thought up by the wonderful minds of Kubo Mitsuro and Sayo Yamamoto. Yuri on ice has been both the last anime they’ve worked on so far since 2016. 

The thing about Yuri on ice is that the story, by virtue of being so original in it’s plot and setting, deviated heavily from the usual money-making structure of your average sports anime. 

The characters were not teenagers in high school 

A major plot point is that both of the main characters are nearing the end of their careers. 

the story wraps and by the 12 episode mark you’ve already been to a bunch of competitions that in other sports anime would’ve taken seasons. EX: Kuroko no basket, haikyuu, slam dunk

Most important character arcs are resolved. 

Main conflict in the series is resolved. Victor and Yuri get together. 

The truth is, Yuri on ice is a series that really wraps up neatly. where can you go from there? go through competitions all over again until Yuri wins gold? when we’ve already stablished that Victor loves Yuri for who he is and will stay no matter what? what would be the point of that? Have Viktor keep being a playboy celebrity when already his search for live & love was resolved? 

There is a danger of falling into the same story beats and a season 2 would have to be carefully constructed. Where do you take this franchise?

I used to not understand why they opted for a prequel movie instead of a season 2. Now that I look at this decision from a different perspective and while I do not personally agree with it, I can totally understand it. 

Going forward with this original series is difficult, and I can tell the writers Sayo & Kubo care a great deal for their creation. The way YOI is so carefully structured shows that so much thought and care went into it. seriously, have you ever thought about how much detail, narrative, interaction, and character arcs YOI manages to have in just 12 episodes? it’s quite impressive. this is a project that they had no idea would get green lit for a second season and they knew the studio was taking a chance on them with this original series so they were incredibly concise as to have it end as neatly as possible.

but that “see you next level” was a promise to an eager fandom. 

Back to why I think creative differences and testing the waters as to where to take the story is what’s happening: 

In January 2019 an Ice Adolescence teaser was shown in Japan only, in complete exclusiveness. the people who saw it weren’t allowed to record it so they talked about it in great detail on twitter. For more than a year, this very same teaser was kept from the international audience until it dropped on YouTube on November 2020. According to the people who saw it in the exclusive screening nothing had been changed or added, it was the very same.  So why the long wait? It’s like there is an uncertainty as to where to take the project and if it should continue in the same direction. “Let’s give it a year and see if we’re still on track with the current story”

To be honest, there have been many times where I’ve genuinely believed the project has been dropped. I know there are franchises that take longer to produce, look at Evangelion’s last movie, it took like 9 years to be made. As I was reading on the story of EVA 3.0 + 1.0 and why it took so long to be made when Eva is a well stablished money making franchise, I learned that Hideaki Anno, the creator, developed severe burnout and had to take a break, he was undecided on where to take the story and other people who worked with him in the project left the studio. 

Since I am a yoi blog, and I’m always scanning the tag, replies, twitter, reddit, I see that a lot of discussion surrounding Iceado always seems to point to the fact that people believe this is studio meddling. What happened to Hideki and EVA could’ve happened to yoi. That even a huge property like EVA took 10 years because the creator was not comfortable, and did not want to continue just yet points to the weight the creator holds. I believe that if it were up to mappa, given how much money yoi made them, we would've had yuri on ice season 3 by now. But no, this is ultimately Sayo and Kubo’s child and I strongly believe that if we do not have something by now, it’s because something is taking place between these two, perhaps burn out, perhaps creative differences, or perhaps they seriously just need lots of time to think this one through. Even though it’s hard sometimes because I love this franchise, I want to trust Kubo and Sayo as I did before. I want to trust they’ll deliver a product that is good, and campy, and fun, and deep and sometimes heartbreaking. I will wait until I can see this through 

#sorry for the wait! #I actually cut a big chunk of this post and might have to put it in a part two... whoops #I get carried away when I write :( #Yuri on ice #yoi #iceado #ice adolescence

[musical-chick-13]

Hey, can you re-imagine a wholy genderbent Deathnote, is too cursed?

Okay, it is SO funny that you mention this because I was talking to my Long-Distance Best Friend the other day about the fact that there is, apparently, (or at least was, at some point before the strike?) a plan to make a live-action TV series adaptation of this for Netflix. Which is...a whole other thing I don't want to get into, but ANYWAY.

The POINT is that we were talking about what would have to happen to make me have some modicum of hope that this might not be the worst idea ever (remember what happened the LAST time we did live-action Netflix DN, we got the 2017 movie no one needs to live through that again). And what I ultimately came up with was:

Every single character, except for Light and Raye, is now a woman. (Obviously this isn't wholly genderbent, but. It's close enough to this ask that I found it to still be a humorous coincidence.) I think in the hands of the right writer, it could be an interesting examination of misogyny and how baked-in that concept is to the justice system. (And I think it would lend extra context to the fact that Light was able to keep operating for so long. If the people opposing him are all women in a historically male-dominated field, they'd all have to contend with a type of professional and societal discrimination that he'll never have to, thus giving him an advantage. Also L would be a Weird Girl™, which would absolutely raise some interesting questions in terms of the scope of this character's influence and their societal perception. Also femslash Near/Mello would be canonically possible which is OBVIOUSLY the most important factor to take into consideration.)

Soichiro's difficulty in believing Light's guilt would gain an extra dimension if this character were also grappling with the societal expectations of motherhood (especially while being in a position of authority in a """masculine""" career). And Matsuda...I just think some woman, any woman, should get to shoot Light repeatedly in a fit of rage. (Also something-something calling women in the workplace idiots/making them the butt of the joke/consistently overlooking them, I think you could do something there.) I think this theoretical concept I spent way too much time thinking about really only works if, even though the major and supporting characters are women, it's still made clear that they work in an environment overwhelmingly occupied by men.

As for a FULLY genderbent story...Light as a female character is, to me, indeed an idea too cursed. I will not elaborate.

And I don't think the Shinigami experience the concept of gender in the way that we do, so tbh I'm not really sure a whole lot would change in that regard. But I do think a female Ryuk would be very funny.

Naomi being a man I think would be...not cursed, I just don't particularly enjoy it. But mainly that's because I am A Gay™, and I love thinking about women who are tough enough to have the word "massacre" as part of their nickname. :)

Misa being reimagined as a guy could be really interesting, though, given how a) the entertainment industry treats women differently from how it treats men, and b) the world at large generally expects men to react differently to trauma than women do. (Although I still very much prefer the version of Misa that serves as a deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl). And I'd be curious to see what the viewer/reader response would be if this character were a man. (Mainly because, historically, audiences are a lot more positively receptive to extreme, unhealthy displays of devotion when they come from a male character than when they come from a female character, but this answer is already probably too long, so we don't have to talk about that.)

(Best Friend ALSO mentioned the idea of Rina Sawayama playing L, and I am now gay on a level I previously didn't ever think was possible, but we don't have to talk about that either.)

Uhhhh....TLDR, full-genderbent DN kind of cursed, but there are some really interesting ideas you could examine. (The one veto I'm gonna make is that I do not think this story works if Light is a girl, but-you guessed it-we really don't have to talk about that.)

Also, stan the stage musical for serotonin and clear skin!

#THANK YOU FOR THE ENRICHMENT #MY GOD I MISSED ASKS I'M SO GLAD I TURNED THE ANONYMOUS FUNCTION BACK ON #I...don't think I'm gonna put this in the tag #I'm not sure it belongs there mainly because I do not know if this makes ANY sense #you're telling me a god of death made this note? #(I guess that's the tag I'll use for when I talk about this property but don't want it to show up in the tag?) #enjoy this peek into what goes on in my brain when I am not on this website #multi t(ASK)ing

[iheartbookbran]

Honestly seeing all the new HOTD pictures is kinda surreal bc they actually make the show look cool? Like for starters just based on the pictures and few minutes of footage we have so far the costumes look ten times better than anything Clapton ever did in GOT, like… those costumes look like something rich medieval people would actually wear, and we even got variety and color??? And those trademarked silly GRRM’s helmets???? I can’t believe it.

I’ve also been reading the new article and some of the things they’ve added are also pretty neat, an tbh the source material is I think perfect for this kind of adaptation because it’s so flimsy and vague to start with the writers have a lot of leeway to tweak things and give more depth to the characters if they prove themselves to be talented enough to pull it off, which I think the audience will be able to make a judgement on that pretty quickly since the new writers won’t really have GRRM’s scenes and dialogue to fall back on the way D&D did, only the broad strokes of what happens in the story, but still a clear ending in sight (and given what happened with the original series, that’s a huge relief already).

And all of that leaves a sour taste in my mouth in what otherwise would be a show I would be excitedly looking forward to… mostly because of Dany, of course. And I don’t mean it in the sense of like, Rhaenyra “losing” at the end is equally as bad as what GOT did to Dany which is a take I’ve seen floating around an I don’t necessarily agree with. The Dance, the way I see it, is a conflict streaming out of sheer misogyny and what society would do in order to keep women out of power, and Rhaenyra is both a victim and a perpetrator of that, but the story is still very centered around the nobility and a commentary of what they would do to keep their status quo and power, no matter how they hurt the people who depend on them in the process. That’s like, the complete opposite of Daenerys “Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?” Targaryen.

That’s the whole point of Dany imo, how much she cares and how she’s so willing to act in order to implement change and help those who need it, in spite of the repercussions that come with it. That doesn’t scream Rhaenyra to me (though I don’t know how the show is gonna flesh her out, and I’m curious to see Emma D'Arcy and how they work around to make the character more nuanced), but maybe that’s a topic for another post.

My point is that at the of the day, Dany is the original Targ, she is the most important Targ, the fact that there’s like 3 different Targ centered shows in development is only because of her, that’s her legacy, but still HBO didn’t care enough to prevent her character from being so utterly butchered. That’s the problem.

#do i have a point in writting all of this?? eh just that i’m still bitter about g*m* *f thr*n*s and will in fact die mad about it #i wanna make it clear that though i’ve got some criticism of rhaenrya as a person #SHE WAS STILL IN THE RIGHT #aegon the usurper and alicent were huge backstabbing assholes and she was the rightful heir. fight me #still i wouldn’t say she’s like dany #literally nobody is like dany she set the bar too high #and honestly as curious as i am about all these ‘successor shows’ as grrm calls them #ultimately dany’s still a presence hanging over all of them and specifically the targ-related ones #which lbr is gonna be the majority of them precisely *because* of dany #it’s like a never ending cycle #daenerys targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #house targaryen #asoiaf #twoiaf #fire and blood #a song of ice and fire #house of the dragon #hotd #got #dracarys to d&d

[writing-for-life]

The Facet Is Not the Jewel...

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I am a child of the 80s. I basically grew up reading DC and Vertigo comics. Especially Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman have stayed with me beyond my (goth) teenage years: Some of it might be pure nostalgia, but a good story with depth is a good story with depth.

While I always was, and always will be, a writer at heart and have managed to supplement my main income with writing to a decent degree, I also chose to have a “day job” pretty early on: There was that whole thing about confidence and the starving artist trope, enough said. Today, I might tell my teenage self to have more faith, but I don’t regret getting a degree in something else: I care about people, and I believe in the healing power of storytelling, so I feel I can combine both, and that’s what I do.

I always have a keen interest when a new TV or film adaptation lands, and of course it is totally impossible to escape the current hype around “The Sandman” (which, as you will know by now, I feel very attached to myself). Without wanting to go into the depths of the series, I think it was brought to the screen beautifully. Like the next person, I hope for season 2 (Netflix, can you make up your mind already?). It felt true to the comics while at the same time being adapted perfectly to the screen and today’s world.

However, one aspect of the fandom has me completely flummoxed (well, not really, I’ll get to that later): The Morpheus/Hob ship. And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist: I am queer myself and have experienced enough bi-erasure from both straight and gay people to last me a lifetime, so I definitely don’t have a problem with queer relationships.

Even if Tom and Ferdinand have chemistry (to be honest, I think Tom has chemistry with everyone, but I don’t always read it as sexual. Maybe I’m too old), and a potential romantic undertone has been confirmed by some of the show’s writers: It just means it’s been left purposefully vague or ambiguous to make all audiences happy.

As an example: To me, as a bi person, their relationship in the series didn’t vibe as anything other than deep but platonic. Does that mean it was only platonic? No, it just tells us that we see what we potentially want to see. And naturally, that’s the beauty of storytelling—it holds space for all sorts of things.

I’m totally fine with them having sexual and/or romantic chemistry, or if people perceive it as such, and I welcome it.

But here’s the rub: It is the vastness of the ship, but the complete insignificance of this aspect to the storyline, that has me scratching my head. In a way, the narrow fandom-focus on it makes me a bit sad because so much of the beauty of “The Sandman” gets lost in it.

Do I believe that Morpheus’ capability to feel sexual and romantic attraction is fluid?

Absolutely, I think that is a given due to what he is and how others perceive him. Canonically, we obviously see a strong preference for CIS women (or ethereal beings that would pass as such), but other things have been changed for the TV adaptation. So it wouldn’t really matter if it were in any way important to the plot.

Do I think that the relationship to Hob is purely platonic, and that it has a purpose in the story arc that goes far beyond mere sexual or romantic attraction?

Also yes. A platonic relationship/friendship isn’t less deep, people! Maybe actually the opposite: Morpheus’ relationships to romantic partners never last (and in this case, it actually doesn’t matter if they were heteronormative or queer). The relationship to Hob does last—probably because it isn’t romantic/sexual.

I already hear the legions of Dreamlings protesting:”That’s just because he never found the One, but Hob is!” I mean, seeing it like that is totally okay for (smutty) fanfics and whatever people are daydreaming about (not judging, totally on board myself ;)). Beyond that though, it just seems so far removed from the deeper significance of their relationship.

I just have this feeling that if we get a season 2, people will go absolutely nuts if Hob doesn’t get decent screen time, and I am thinking to myself: “Why would he, apart from very particular parts of the story (especially towards the very end) that we might not even get to see?” Yeah, you can probably tell I’m fun at parties…

What I also find bewildering is the general zoning in on the aspect of sexuality in this context. It doesn’t even matter if it is homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, asexuality… All of it is, in my opinion, already so normalised in the comics (if you think of when they were written), and especially in the series, so the complete and utter focus on it is certainly... interesting.

By letting the sexuality of the characters and their (imagined or real) romantic afflictions (which, 9/10, seems to originate in our own desire to bed them—it had to be said ;)) take centre-stage, the beauty and depth of the story get totally buried under something that feels so shallow to me it makes my heart ache a little (my problem obviously).

Spoilers ahead… Don’t read on if you have never read the comics and still plan to do so. Also: Trigger warning for certain mental health references

Morpheus’ arc is a hero’s journey without a happy-ending (although I guess that depends on your definition of “happy ending”). It is essentially a long planned, carefully orchestrated suicide:

He knows that he, like so many people and entities around him, cannot change (despite some semi-successful attempts at becoming a bit warmer and gentler: In the comics, he is pretty much an arsehole for a very long time). He feels deeply but represses those emotions frequently so they don’t overwhelm him. Not least because of this, he has acted incredibly (maybe not always intentionally) cruelly towards the ones he loves (and others) throughout his existence. Pride is one of his weaknesses. These aspects of his personality also have been brought to the screen: If you didn’t get the hint in episode 4 (his refusal to forgive Nada), or when he, later on, kills Hector right in front of Lyta (he clearly could have done this differently to make it less emotionally painful and traumatic), I rest my case.

His inherent rigidity, and what it brings on from this point onwards, is ultimately part of his demise, and I believe he is fully aware of it (too many cues to mention). Much like someone who plans to commit suicide and doesn’t act in the spur of the moment, he gets his affairs in order, and he makes up for some of his past mistakes. That’s not the same as laying down a rigid sense of duty: Tragically, it is the very essence of it.

If you wonder about Hob’s function beyond being a potential love-interest or friend: He, like Destruction (and Delirium), continuously does what Morpheus ultimately cannot: Change. He is holding up the mirror to Morpheus, who, unlike him, is forever caught in his sense of duty and responsibility.

Morpheus could have made entirely different choices several times, especially in “The Kindly Ones”. He purposefully painted himself into a corner on at least three occasions that would have been easy for him to act upon differently. He chose not to, again for reasons of being committed, but also for reasons of being done. He decided that the only way Dream could keep on existing was letting the aspect of Morpheus die.

There’s a beautiful scene involving the facets of the dreamstones, of which the ruby held most of Morpheus’ essence and the emerald will be passed on (it’s more complicated than that, but this is already longer than planned). I’ll just leave this sitting here, and you can make of it what you wish:

So, to all the Dreamling shippers out there: I love what you’re doing, I believe in ship and let sail. But a deep part of me also thinks I don’t want to see it on the screen. The good thing about stories is that they can hold such ambiguity. I hope that if we get more seasons, many won’t be totally crushed that this might not be a story with the ending they hoped for. Not for Hob x Morpheus anyway, but then again: Who knows...

#sandman #the sandman #morpheus #dream #hob gadling #dream of the endless #stupid stuff i think about #sandman meta #sandman spoilers #the sandman meta

[thevindicativevordan]

thoughts on John Stewart? he’s typically called boring

You know how Hal is the one who gets accused of being the "Nostalgia Lantern"? Only sticks around because of a bunch of old timers who can't let go of the past? Hot take time: that's actually John.

He's my second favorite Lantern, and the first Lantern I was introduced to because of the DCAU. John is a cool character, an ex-Marine turned socially conscious architect whose analytical mind allows him to put together a plan as complex as a skyscraper, and his power ring finally allows him the opportunity to create on a scale he could only dream of before. Yes he lacks the swagger of Hal, the bravado of Guy, or the sensitivity of Kyle, but John is cool for the same reason as Batman: give him a little preptime and he can beat God. Unfortunately, John's popularity relies entirely on a cartoon that ended over a decade ago. Stewart fans continue to claim that he's the one true Lantern because of the DCAU, same as how Tim Drake fans claim he is the one true Robin, and both of them need to face reality. Whatever boost John got from the DCAU - to the point that yes at the time he could have laid claim to being the top GL like Jaime Reyes can for Blue Beetle - has long since worn off.

Some of the blame for that does fall on whoever at DC failed to capitalize on his popularity, whether that was Johns or Didio or whoever. John should have gotten his own solo book alongside Hal, they should have built the two of them up as equals. Instead John basically languished on the sidelines and never did more than play support during the Johns era, which was the era that redefined GL in the minds of hardcore comics readers. The best stories for John, the ones that flesh him out and define him as a character, are books from the 1980s and 90s. Mosaic is still regarded as the greatest John Stewart story with no real competition, and that is irrevocably tainted by the writer being a convicted pedophile. It's utter insanity that DC has made no real attempt to rectify that until recently.

Another hot take: I think John has been hurt more than helped by keeping all of his continuity intact. Take Katma Tui, his dead wife for example. His entire relationship with her is based on old comics from decades ago, comics nobody from the younger generations is going to read. Katma was one of the most important characters in John's life, but she's no Gwen Stacy. Average person has no clue who she is, and no reason to care, hence why most writers nowadays avoid bringing her up at all. Furthermore, Stewart lacks a clean origin retelling the way Hal got under Johns. During the New 52 they should have given Stewart a hard reboot, given he was mostly inconsequential to the Johns run with Hal, that wouldn't have upset things anymore than rebooting Superman and Wonder Woman did. They could have retold his origin, brought Katma back to life and done their romance in the modern day for a modern audience. Or tossed that relationship and put John with someone else, but it would have freed him from all the useless baggage the same way Aquaman and Mera were freed.

Since that didn't happen, I'm hoping that PKJ can be the world-builder John needs by giving him a soft reboot. Retell his origin, give John new friends outside his fellow human Lanterns, new love interests, stop calling back to Xanshi, and give him new foes that he can have to himself. DC Cosmic is big enough for John to carve out his own storytelling territory, but it requires someone who is more interested in the new than the old. Continuity only weighs John down at this point, and there's another big opportunity coming up for him that it would be a shame to waste.

With the announcement that Gunn is doing a Lanterns HBO MAX show starring John and Hal, this is another huge opportunity for Stewart. He's about to get another high profile adaption, one that could see John being a major player in the shared cinematic universe if all goes well. Right now is the time to start creating comics material for Stewart, whether for the purposes of adaption or simply because they need comics they can give to people which aren't decades old or irrevocably tainted by association with their creators. Last big break for Stewart went nowhere, I'm counting on the new management at DC not to repeat the previous regime's mistakes this time around.

#green lantern #john stewart

[maedivae]

Could you talk about Everlark? Katniss and Peeta as a couple.

Why do you think they are compatible?

Thank you ❤

@everlarkshipper

Been kinda busy lately but here goes. They probably wouldn't have gotten together over pretty much every other circumstance given the conditions they live under, but they did anyway. It's the devotion and dedication which interests me the most. People may claim that they were only together because there were no other options available but I don't think either of them are so blase with their lives. (And they're teenagers they could've just drifted apart in adulthood if they really weren't working out).

The racial/class divide between merchants and seam, Katniss not wanting to get close to anyone romantically at the start, their stark differences in personality, etc. would make any relationship between them potentially difficult, even if they were never reaped. Add in the trauma and baggage of the Games and the pressures of being in a fake relationship in which both of them fear that if they aren't convincing enough they'll only harm the people around them. There's a lot of stress and deterrents to their relationship that they can't help because it's more to do with conditions outside of their control.

But in the end, nothing can really keep them apart, you know. They at least attempt to have a normal friendship regardless of how abnormal their lives have been. Really, it's the effort and work they put in that makes them compatible, because it'd probably be easier not to try at all, especially for someone like Katniss who doesn't open up emotionally. It's not a passionate love at first sight type of love for either, it's more comfortable, peaceful, domestic (my favorite), and durable with time.

Obviously real life couples become fractured over much smaller problems. Very avoidable ones if they only communicated better or set their egos aside. But through fiction I just like seeing the lengths to which a couple will get through something insurmountable, their journey there. Because it's never going to be all sunshine and rainbows and it's important to show how people adapt and work through it, which is very important to show in these books aimed at a younger audience.

#thg #the hunger games #peeta mellark #katniss everdeen #everlark #thg meta #answered #long post #text post

[seaweedbraens]

This is in part a response to the 3/10 reviewer.

Adaptations obviously cannot have every single thing perfect to the book, just time wise it's impossible. But I think this series was made with a lot of love by everyone involved and it shows. Every interview I've seen and the show itself make it clear it's also important to them, and they want to make a good version.

A lot of issues that I read I think can be solved with having more of the story. Like, his mom has given him blue candy, explanation might come later, like in the talks the trio has during the quest. Or the council of the cloven elders doesn't even appear in the books until the Battle of the Labryinth. We don't need an explanation yet. Without knowledge of the books I would assume oh the visually important nature ppl are the ppl in charge of the satyrs. Which like.. yeah good enough for now. And it gives Grover more depth from the start. And there are hints of Luke's bitterness, such as "They like the smell of begging" when they go for offerings. We also haven't even left camp yet, there's time to develop that.

Luke's emphasis on glory was more about from other campers, I took it as a hint of Luke's desire to feel powerful. Luke also clearly values glory in the books as well - he failed to attain glory by completing his quest and it eats at him. Two, the addition makes sense if you're familiar with the Iliad, glory is heavily emphasized and a complex theme throughout, but I will not be digging out any college essays lol. I think it's definitely something that is going to be developed as a theme throughout.

Luke is a supportive counselor in the book. He's literally the head counselor in charge of shepherding the kids once they get there and likely spend their first night in the Hermes cabin. Plus in Ch. 7, he talks to Percy about being new and warns Percy not to take the offerings lightly, in Ch. 8 trains him on the sword, saying "No laughing at Percy" during the demo, and is thrilled when Percy disarms him.

A word about Gabe, we see Gabe for 9 pages in the beginning of the book. He harasses Percy, demands food from Sally, and is grumpy about them using the car. I was at first bothered by Gabe looking just kinda like a couch potato, but it was pointed out to me that abusers don't just all wear wife beaters and are streaked with grime. In the show he answers, Sally's phone, a controlling behavior. He harasses Percy when he gets in the door, and is almost pleased that Percy got kicked out for assault, a violent behavior. I'm still interested with how they are going to bring in the "Smelly Gabe" covering Percy's scent (which I always was a bit confused how that worked really well if Percy was at boarding school 90% of the time.) And I'm wondering how they are going to make him be deemed worthy of being murdered with Medusa's head by the audience. He appears on the news telling lies about Percy throughout the book and Percy doesn't realize that Sally has been hit before by Gabe until the end of the book. So, those are more ways to bring that in.

While I watched it, it didn't feel very rushed, but that might be because I had context from the books. Looking back it's a fast, but I'd rather have a longer time questing, and that's a trade-off. It's just unfortunate that even an established property can't get a longer run time.

One of my biggest worries was that the fighting would be cringe but I think they pulled it off Really well. It's visually great, and while I have my personal vision of CHB that didn't stop me from loving the show's version. It's also funny! I laughed out loud multiple times. There's tons of little details you get to hunt for from the book. The actors make you believe they are the characters. I've been living with versions in my head for over 15 years and I fully accept these guys as the trio. An open mind and ability to allow multiple versions to live in your head are definitely key to enjoying it as a long time fan.

I'm doing my best to avoid ppls garbage opinions, especially people new to the fandom, but I've seen enough lousy opinions from people who have been in the fandom forever to think it's a problem only in new ppl. Twitter has just been a lot of great edits and memes which is super fun.

Sorry for the length, that I got the book out, and that this was way too in depth for what you originally asked.

sorry for getting to this a little late! personally, i feel like i can't comment on the show yet, since i haven't watched it, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion as long as we're all being respectful here, as you're being. i hope 3/10 anon sees your version of things, and i'm glad you enjoyed the show!

[thejitterbug]

so I finally watched all of the 8 episodes so far for sonic prime and it’s a really cute show. very much marketed towards kids but also has enough to keep older audiences engaged along with some references that fans can pin point. It’s not perfect but it gets better with every episode imo.

Prime is like a sonic meets a multiverse of madness/everything everywhere all at once. the writing isn’t perfect as the pacing gets a little crazy when sonic goes from one dimension into the next all within the span of few episodes but the universe within new yolk city (so corny lol) seems to be the focus for now while the others such as the jungle and pirate universes are on the side. makes me curious to see what other universes they will explore in the future.

It’s a stark contrast with sonic’s characterization from frontiers. This sonic is more juvenile in this adaptation which isn’t bad considering he’s a teenager and acts on impulse rather than thinks before he acts which is classic sonic nature. what I do admire is the fact that Sonic recognizes his faults and mistakes throughout the episodes. we see how he goes from being careless to realizing his actions have affected everyone he knows and loves. he realizes that all of this chaos has happened because he didn’t listen to tails and should’ve. and now he has to fix this and also help those in the other universes. I can see more development in his character when they plan on releasing future episodes and also his appreciation for his friends will grow even more.

humor wise it kinda reminds me of sonic lost world but it has its moments where the jokes land whereas lost world didn’t really land jokes correctly. there were a bunch of funny moments with the characters but the puns could be dialed down a bit haha

I also really dig Sonic’s new voice actor. His voice is super animated and colorful and deven mack really seals the deal. the other voice actors in the cast also sell good performances especially Nine Tails who uses a more darker toned voice. Also Ik I’m a rouge stan but she really kicks ASS in this show. she’s a leader (and a baddie) and I’m glad she’s given time in the spotlight whereas she’s been more on the sidelines in previous adaptations. I’m glad she’s recognized as an important character and we see her shine as Rebel and Prim.

Overall it’s a really cute series and I enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. I’m curious to see what else they do for the future episodes and what else they can explore since the multiverse concept is a very broad concept. and who knows if other fan fave characters could show up. we have shadow and I hope they utilize him more in the story too cuz that cliffhanger ending really made me wanting a lot more. I can say that we ended 2022 on a nice note for sonic and I’m hoping 2023 is gonna be another good year for him :)

#sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic prime #sonic prime spoilers #netflix

[versegm]

Hi ! It’s been a while seeing your fate posts wanting to get into it - but with that last post about fate series levels…! Do you like… recommend getting into it ? And with a particular series ? Or is it the kind of media where you’re like i adore it but i wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy

I wholeheartedly recommend the Fate serie. It is, and I mean this completely unironically, one of the best series I have been given to eat in years.

Usually when I make headcanon or meta posts about a given serie, there is a large amount of wishful thinking and self indulgence involved. I don't think Ariosto intended to write Orlando Furioso as a story about Angelica desperately trying to escape the narrative, but it is a lot more entertaining for me to read it this way. I am well aware that digimon is a children's cartoon and a lovecraftian horror story about the inherent corrupting power of light, it's just more suited to my tastes too imagine stories that involve that.

That's not the case with Fate. I am still very often self-indulgent and horny on main, but generally speaking when I say shit like "the protagonist of Fate/Grand Order is a normal person gradually becoming insane the further the plot goes" or "people die when they are killed means that if you refuse to let someone die when their time comes you are denying them the simple right to be a person" that is. Very textually what happens. The Fate serie allows itself to go all out on bonkers and/or horrifying concepts and themes, which is doubly refreshing in a world where media are slowly being made blander by corporations who don't want to alienate their audience and lose money.

That being said, it is a serie that has been going on for a very long time, so the writers like to reference their old works, make use of concepts they've foreshadowed 16 years ago in an obscure visual novel that never got translated, make full aus of their own stories, ect ect. So the joke of this post is that there are some Fate works you can jump in with 0 knowledge of Fate and you'll be mostly fine save for maybe a couple cameos you won't recognize, while some others will be fucking incomprehensible if you haven't eaten the full wikipedia page beforehand.

If you follow Lance's post, you can probably pick any work from level 0 to 5 and try to work you way out from here.

If you want my personal input, my entry point was Fate/Grand Order, and while I could make a whole post on its strenghts and weaknesses if you need one the important part is that it did a well enough job having a compelling story on its own while explaining the worldbuilding basics to me.

Fate/Stay Night (the visual novel) is the first title of the Fate serie, so it's a good entry point as well, but it is fucking long and frankly the first route has aged a bit so that's up to you. If you want something easier to digest to see what's Fate about and if it'll be up your alley, you can always check out the Unlimited Blades Work anime (which is an anime adaptation of one of the routes of the vn) or the Fate/Zero anime (which is a prequel.) I also know a guy who got in through the Fate/Apocrypha anime, so if you like Mordred specifically it might be your thing idk.

Honestly don't sweat it too much, Fate is very much a serie where you will revisit works you've already eaten and go "oh THAT'S who that bitch from episode 5 came from and that's why they made it into a big deal at the time" once you've got a bit more context. It's worth asking your friends if any of them are already into Fate so they might be able to give you insight on how blorbo #34 actually has SUCH a compelling backstory in an earlier work, but if you don't that's fine just go with the flow.

Oh yeah fair warning tho that Fate sometimes features some Anime Bullshit (that's a polite way to say "lolis") so if that's a dealbreaker for you be aware of it.

#ask #anonymous #i have couple posts somewhere on the tl;dr of fate as a serie i'll see if i can hunt it down later

[pokckygamewithbatman]

Live Action ATLA.... was not a show

I didn't get past the first episode, I stopped watching after Zuko somehow knew to go to the Water Tribe to get the Avatar. How would he magically know that if he was following the ice ball light and they cut the scene where Aang and Katara go to the battleship and accidently set off the flare? Like sure, maybe he just wants to fuck with the Water Tribe, but then he would've come from the ice ball, probably on land right? If he was following the ice ball light, and had no indicator that he should change course and go straight to the Water Tribe then why does he just show up, no change in angle of approach or anything, almost like the writer's didn't think it was an important scene to include because they assumed the audience had already watched the show and knew that the battleship shenanigans were supposed to happen.

Seems like that happened a lot. The dynamic between Aang and Gyatso was so bland, almost like they didn't think they had to show them being close friends as much because the audience already knew about the character chemistry because they had watched the original show.

Kids can't act, we as a people know this. This extends to teenagers (that's why adults play teens in teen movies), so I shouldn't be surprised that the teen acting in the show was trash, but it was so held back, it was insulting. If I hadn't watched the original show I honestly don't think I would've known Sokka and Katara were siblings. I'd have assumed they were at most acquaintances. Maybe awkward friends?

Having older kids in Sokka's soldier unit in the Water Tribe kinda defeats the point of him? He has a lot of pride as the sole protector of the Tribe, and in the original show this is highlighted by him literally being the only one old enough to protect because the others are *tiny* children. In the live action there's like, another 14-yr-old who's taking orders, but they don't seem to be friends despite being close in age and with the same responsibilities. If they wanted to have some older kids they should've given more time to engrave Katara and Sokka more into their community. They did not do this. Gran Gran gives some horrible exposition (aka says the opening theme (which by the way sounds awful in the context she's saying it in (I know it's supposed to sound more like a legend but it's too casual to be a legend, or even paraphrasing a legend, she's literally just doing exposition))) and there were no hugs, or sly words between a grandmother and her grandchildren. IN THE ORIGINAL SHOW THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN YES but that's because we're actively focusing on Aang and Zuko, and are, for the most part out of the village doing penguin sledding and stuff.

Quick PSA to greedy corporate bastards. If your CGI tech can't do the penguin sledding, rethink making a 1:1 adaptation to ATLA. Appa looks scary, not cute. Momo is never not a blur (to mask how bad his CGI looks), and the kids don't know how to act with CGI. Tell me, how many times does Appa lick someone in the live action? Y'know, the thing he does to show affection? I count zero times so far. If your lazy tech can't cut it, don't just change a beloved character, either make it work or don't make the show.

Don't call it a 1:1 adaptation if you're going to change all the characters and their motivations? Why ever would you even want to do that? To make up for the crappy CGI that warrants darker scenes to cover up the mistakes so now the whole tone of the show has to be changed? That's a common thing nowadays. Do kids not deserve colour?

People keep comparing it to the movie, as if that's supposed to make it good. Now, I haven't seen the movie, but I don't have to to know that it's bad. That doesn't make the live action show good though. Comparing an adaptation to another adaptation is bullshit? Compare it to the source material cowards, and see how crud it actually is. Rewatch the show, use both of your eyes this time, and purposefully be as critical as possible. Honestly. "Why are they giving us the Air Nomad Fire Nation fight? It's a "noodle incident" there's no need" "why isn't Gyatso any fun in this version? He's supposed to be a goof" "why do Aang and Gyatso have such a stale dynamic?" "Why is Gyatso serious when shit goes down? Wouldn't it be truer to his character if he was trying to lighten the mood so the kids don't get scared?" "Wouldn't it have been more impactful if he was goofy then turned serious instead of being serious the whole time?" "Why does he call Aang's name so loudly when it's obvious he's trying to be stealthy and quiet to get the kids to safety?" "Why did they change the opening monologue?", etc. etc.

Watching this show was not fun, it made me appreciate the original show yes but less as a nice memory to occasionally reference, and more as a safe haven to go back to and cleanse myself.

1/10 it reminded me once again that Netflix is a blackhole of greed and terrible actors LEAVE THE CHILDHOOD SHOWS ALONE IF YOU TRULY WANT TO REVAMP THEM OR REINTRODUCE THEM TO KIDS DO A SIMPLE RERUN OF THE SHOW ON WHATEVER CHANNEL OR APP YOU USE, OR A CUTE ANIMATION THAT INTICES KIDS TO WATCH THE ORIGINAL SHOW but that was never the goal, you wanted the adults to cream their pants because their "childhood is back". Honestly, Disney could teach a class on soulless live action adaptations of beloved classics (except Cinderella 2015 that movie is a gem).

[vkryshchuk]

Why should a serious organization be "on the Internet"?

by Vitalii Kryshchuk

In today's world, developing high-quality communication with clients without setting up social networks is impossible. And it is even more important for non-profit organizations, where communication with people willing to fund it is vital. It is very important to show people outside the organization so-called "reports" in photos, videos, and slides using social media so that they understand the importance of the organization and its need for development and funding.

Given my little experience in the United States, I have only come across a few non-profit organizations. But most of all I had contact with Dorcas International. They help refugees from many countries to start a new life in the United States. So, given that they not only receive funding from donors but also work directly with people, their social networks must be well developed to reach new people who have arrived in the country and have not yet adapted to life here. Moreover, this does not require paying a large amount of money, as social networks are free.

I will start analyzing social networks in the order in which they are covered on the Dorcas website. The first is Facebook. Here they have 6.2k followers. It is also immediately apparent that they are actively maintaining the page, because at the time of writing this blog (on Saturday), the last news was on Friday, and in general, the frequency of posts is 1 in 1-2 days. This is very good because subscribers mustn’t forget about the organization and always see that it is "alive". But for such many subscribers, the latest posts get only 14-15 likes each. This means that few people respond to the information provided by Dorcas. Or the information is not very interesting for readers. And this is not surprising, because all their posts are just photos of the work they have done. I didn't even find a link for donations or quick information for clients right away.

I would recommend working a little more on strategizing and planning your social media activity. There is a good article on Hootsuite about "What should I post on social media for nonprofits". I'm not going to rewrite everything, but I would add some posts that should give feedback to the followers. It can be a poll or a question about some statistics, and in the end, you can write a response with statistics that are impressive or have unusual numbers. I know that from time-to-time Dorcas conducts surveys about the life of refugees in the United States and their adaptation, but I don't see anything like that on their social media. If they want to collect some statistics, social media is the first and easiest way to do it. They should also use video in their posts more often because video generates 1200% more shares than a static image. Just imagine the reach of the video. It is also important to monitor their conversion reach, (advanced metric), their percentage of visits, (behavioral metric), and their action button (channel metric). Because I don't see any response on their posts. Most likely, their strategy for maintaining a Facebook page is to publish reports on their work and events, which is not enough for this level of organization and this number of followers.

As for Instagram, it has 2041 followers. And 1232 posts. A quick look at the page shows that they don't separate each social network, but only publish the same thing without considering the audience or the capabilities of the social network. I agree that social networks are currently losing their identity and it is possible to prepare information of the same size and style for all social networks at once, but then what is the need to keep them all? I think that you could make some unique information for each social network and thus keep the audience interested in subscribing to several different social networks.

It's the same story with X (Twitter) and LinkedIn. It's good that they run these pages, but there's no point in describing them here because they are identical.

In general, each social network still has its specific functionality and features that can be used to warm up the audience. And if you want more, you can even follow the trends of TikTok and Instagram Reels and shoot unusual content for this kind of organization, as Lotus Cars on TikTok does. They use trends to become popular and the kind of videos people expect. When content became more desirable than a product.

So, there are many strategies and options for developing a page on a social network. It's important to see the importance of developing your brand and take your social media development seriously. This will give an appropriate response and result.

#socialmediastrategy #digitalengagement #brandbui #nonprofit #dorcasinternational #strategies

[byneddiedingo]

Christian Patey in L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)

Cast: Christian Patey, Vincent Risterucci, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Michel Briquet, Béatrice Tabourin, Didier Baussy, Marc Ernest Fourneau, Bruno Lapeyre. Screenplay: Robert Bresson, based on a story by Leo Tolstoy. Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis, Emmanuel Machuel. Production design: Pierre Guffroy. Film editing: Jean-François Naudon.

When does style become mannerism? And why is it that style is generally thought of as a good thing, and mannerism is often a pejorative? I found myself pondering these questions while watching Robert Bresson's last film, L'Argent. Bresson is one of the directors I most admire, so my first impulse is to admire L'Argent as a superb example of Bresson's austere style: his willingness to let the audience decide what's going on within the characters by restraining his actors' displays of emotion, the simplicity of his mise-en-scène, his use of ambient sound to do the job that other directors rely on musical scores to accomplish. He has a fascinating premise to explore in L'Argent, which he adapted from a story by Tolstoy: the horrible repercussions of the passing of a counterfeit bill by some schoolboys. They spend the bill in a photography shop, buying a picture frame mainly to get some real money in change. When the fake bill is discovered, the shop owner passes it off in payment to Yvon (Christian Patey), the young driver of a heating-oil delivery truck. When Yvon is arrested for passing counterfeit money, he identifies the clerk at the photography shop, Lucien (Vincent Risterucci), who gave him the money. But Lucien perjures himself, saying he had never seen Yvon before, so Yvon is convicted. Though he's given a suspended sentence, he loses the job that he needs to support his wife and small daughter. Unable to find work, he agrees to act as the getaway driver for an acquaintance who's robbing a bank, but is caught and thrown into prison. Life in prison does him no good, especially after he learns that his daughter has died of diphtheria and his wife has decided to start a new life. When he lashes out at a fellow inmate he is thrown into solitary. He attempts suicide, but survives and returns to prison where he finds that Lucien is also an inmate, having robbed the photography store and become rich through various forms of larceny. Embittered, Yvon serves out his term and is released, but he continues his descent into criminality, murdering the keepers of a small hotel and robbing them, and finally finding shelter with an elderly woman (Sylvie Van den Elsen), whom he also murders, along with her entire household. At the end, he confesses and is returned to prison. Bresson's dry, understated telling of this story gives it a kind of dreamlike matter-of-factness that a more florid and violent version couldn't achieve. But there are also moments when you become aware of the way Bresson is telling the story, moments in which, I think, style becomes mannerism, especially if you've seen enough Bresson films to recognize his particular way of dramatizing events. For example, there is one scene in which the camera focuses on a passageway in the Paris Métro: What we see for a long time (perhaps only seconds, but it feels longer given our natural impatience to want things to happen in a movie) are the foot of a stairway, the concrete floor and tiled walls, and the beginning of a passageway to the trains. Bresson holds on this empty space as we hear the train arrive and the doors open and people make their way toward the space, through it, and up the stairs past us. He stays on the space until people -- they are Lucien and two of his friends -- come down the stairs past us and enter the passage. We hear the train doors close and the train depart, and only then does Bresson cut to the platform and the train entering the tunnel. It's a moment of no real narrative importance, but Bresson's holding us there as it happens crafts a kind of suspense, a kind of anxiety of the quotidian that informs the entire film. The only problem I have with the scene is the way it sticks in my memory as an inflection of style. And remembering this moment at the expense of others more important to the theme and narrative of L'Argent makes me think of it as mannered. While it's still a fascinating and challenging film, Bresson's deadpan actors and his focus on emptiness lend themselves easily to caricature and parody, and I think he carries them too far in L'Argent, never finding the balance that make his masterworks -- Diary of a Country Priest (1951), A Man Escaped (1956), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) -- such essential films.

#L'Argent #Robert Bresson #Christian Patey

[deoffal-mp-adm7000-n-s1-2022]

Current Collaboration Evidence and Plans for the Future:

This post is simply about covering what I am hoping to do more of with Instagram profile as my reputation and presence grows, basing these notes so far on the last collaboration I did back in March, cited here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Caz2mJdNvCY/

The relationship between me and Ghost Sick was originally based on me and him sharing a mutual love of supernatural horror illustration and lore, somewhat dipping into the neo occult and paganistic imagery, after I had been following him for a while and he too with me, he struck up a conversation about what to collaborate back when I only had about 300 in my first two months of being on the site and I jumped at the chance to work with someone who was also still very early in making their way and gaining followers. With Ghost Sick having more of an attention for theological and heretical horror against dogma at the time of us collaborating, I shared with him a work I did of a Seraphim (from the 57) as cited here:

He having loved the piece, wanted to make his own version, a typical trait of Instagram collabs, both artists typically work on one piece together if they share an exact media, or, they make individual resolution around one image and share the resolutions as a pair, Ghost then made this in honour of my piece, with the context that his piece was more faithful to the story of Ezekiel and his vision of angels from the Bible, as cited here:

Having completed this collaboration and somewhat bounded over the work, me and Ghost are now working on finishing an illustrative set in tribute to the visions of Ezekiel, yet is still yet to be done as of writing this. Ghost from march (bare in mind he started his page in November of last year) has now completely blown up as a small creator, to now being someone with over 10,000 followers, and I couldn’t be prouder to see a fellow horror creator do well, so hopefully some of his success will rub off on me but the collaboration coming is the most important part in of itself. 

The piece’s themselves for this upcoming collab are as follows (given mine are again the point of inspiration for Ghost’s own works):

(All these current pieces are not apart of this project and are for my next project after my MA studies, so take their imagery and religious connotations with a pinch of salt as these images are purely adaptations of a biblical story with a cosmically pessimistic twist, something I may explore in my next project, who knows)

This is typically the best way to grow your presence online, speaking and working with those who already have persistent and strong audience so that you can be featured and promoted by those already doing well in your niche in the mass market of social media art, such is the proof that a small creator like Ghost sick as he blow up from 1000 to 10,000 within such a short space of time, not through collaboration though but through a good use of hashtags, sharing his work where he could and being very persistent with his content and the diversity of it, something I am most certainly wanting to learn from for sure as I want to grow my presence so that I can be featured in more materials to expand the reach of my work, so as to maybe merchandise my work one day, but the juries still out on how I would start to think about things like that at this very early stage. 

I’m sure that I will eventually be looking for mentorship amongst the horror illustrators that I am already aware of and follow soon enough, it’s just about plucking up the courage to ask as I’m sure I will eventually, and once more of this project is completed and out of my hands so that I can take the time to bolster my social media presence more while looking for professional opportunities as I currently am. 

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

#the green knight #the green knight meta #sir gawain and the green knight #medieval literature #medieval history #this meta is goddamn 5.2k words #and has its own reading list #i uh #said i had a lot of thoughts?

[ganymede-apathy]

Listen, Heartstopper has been my primary focus for the past few days (literally rewatched it so many times I've lost count) and it has given me a LOT to think about, and I desperately want all of my thoughts out there because this show is an absolute MASTERPIECE. So I'm just going to make a list of things I find make the show deserving of highest praise, but also generally try to avoid topics that I find have been talked about in abundance, unless it's a topic that absolutely needs repeating.

∙ Heartstopper season 1 has introduced a new age of purely romantic queer representation, with a lack of over-the-top tragedy (season 2 would be a different story, however). Due to a lot of queer representation in the past often being overly sexualized and/or fetishized, much of queer youth was influenced in some way that the community has had a large issue with hook-up culture. A lot of queer people grew up without proper representation but hopefully now that Heartstopper has begun to set a standard for LGBTQ+ representation, younger generations will have what many of us got too late.

∙ The cast is genuinely some of the most dedicated actors I have ever seen. They are all attached to the story and know and understand their characters so well. They are so aware of the impact they have made with this show and they all want to continue doing so. The world has many amazing and talented actors but the Heartstopper cast takes the cake. They have all done such amazing jobs, and there are no other actors that could truly play these characters as well as they have. Additionally, almost all of the actors came straight from the pages of the graphic novels. That's actually so cool to me that each character had their perfect actors.

∙ This show proves how absolutely important it is to have the creator of the original story involved. Many adaptations fail in this regard, but Alice Oseman's direct hand in the creation of this show has created a flawless transition from paper to live action. She created these characters through her own mind, and her experiences. Nobody could have done it better. And Alice also has always been so in touch/in sync with her audience, as well. We just need to take a moment to applaud Alice.

∙ Something that's been brought up a few times, but genuinely is such an important factor. Not only is the cast actually young enough to properly portray teenagers (Kit Connor and Joe Locke were both still in school while filming this show), but (I might get heat for this but it's true, in my perspective) most of the cast do not fit with the mainstream beauty standards/expectations, and yet they are all such beautiful people. Beauty standards have always been so heavily enforced in media, and I think this show breaks this cycle. Everyone is a different kind of beautiful and this is going to go a LONG way, I hope.

∙ Let's talk about generally how much effort was put into making this diverse cast of characters all have their own stories and obstacles, and yet still make the representation flawless. Viewer interpretation is also so incredibly welcomed. We all can find ourselves relating to one character or another. Some of us have no idea how hard it can be to achieve something like this and make it flawless. Many, many writers/artists struggle with this. Yet, they did it. There's so much character development for each character. And more to come in the future.

∙ Perhaps not the best praise to this show, but still very important in my eyes. The series is such a double-edged sword. It fulfills everything many of us didn't get when we were younger, but we also grieve the lack. In the show, when Nick says "I wish I'd met you when I was younger," to Charlie, that's how many of us feel about this show. So much of my life there was a lack and it's fulfilled now, and that's great, but now there's this void. The show made me think about how much of my life I spent lost. It portrays confidence in who you are but I didn't have that growing up. I always felt like I wasn't seen. I wasn't alone, sure. I had surrounded myself with many people who made the journey bearable, but to the world I was on the sidelines. The show came too late, but I am so glad I endured so I could experience it.

Honorable mentions/short praises:

∙ Guys, Disney is aware that Pirates of the Caribbean has been many people's bi awakening. And they let Heartstopper use the scene with Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom to PORTRAY THAT. I just think that's so funny and interesting.

∙ The amount of talent these actors had to actually make you feel everything they felt. Every single emotional moment in this show has grabbed me by my throat and made me feel everything. This show has made me feel more emotion than I have in YEARS. That is absolutely phenomenal.

#heartstopper #alice oseman #netflix #nobody is going to read all of this #but i needed to put my thoughts out there #girl help i am sleep deprived and emotionally all over the place