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goldenkamuyhunting · 3 years

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 269 “Wilk’s way of doing things”

So we’re finally dealing with a new chapter in which we can say...

...yeah, poor Wilk... as while yes, he was also responsible for his own downfall, what happened to him was surely terrible.

The first page is a quick summary of how the Ainu killed each over conveniently letting Wilk alive and not having him kill a single soul.

For start we can see Wilk is the only one who’s apparently without a rifle (his right hand looks empty at least). We can also see that the group split basically in two, a part is pro-Wilk (or, at least, let’s-not-kill-Wilk) and the other is let’s-murder-him-right-now.

So, Irenka (pro-Wilk) places himself in front of Wilk. He has a rifle but doesn’t seem to aim to shoot anyone, just to defend Wilk and calm things down.

Oskeporo (kill-Wilk) aims at them with his rifle and is knocked out by Mesira (pro-Wilk).

Ratci (kill-Wilk), who’s a friend of Oskeporo, aims his rifle at them.

Irenka gets shoot and, same as Tamai did, as he dies accidentally shoot and seems to hit Oskeporo who, fires as well.

At this point things are a bit hazy.

Siromakur, who seemed to be in the let’s- not-kill-Wilk team before (he was shown at Wilk’s side), is shown bleeding from a hole in his chest. Was he the one hit by Oskeporo. The guy is supported or used as a human shield by Sukuta. We see a knife in the image but that one is actually Siromaku’s if the draws on the handle has to be believed. It’s clear Siromakur isn’t the one holding it as we can see both his arms so they probably took it from him.

The next image shows us Ratci firing, the knife in his belly.

The very last image shows Oskeporo and Sukuta on the ground, likely dead.

Yeah, there’s plenty of holes in this page who’s just meant to drive home Wilk didn’t kill anyone, the other Ainu just started shooting, some by purpose, some by accident, some in self defence.

Possibly Siromakur didn’t kill anyone either, I’m not sure.

The image is not really clear on what exactly happened because Noda wants to keep it secret some details for a little longer.

Anyway we see Ratci crawling away and, interesting enough, two more bullets being shoot behind him. He also hears something being said but we don’t get what it was.

The only Ainu of the rebels group that weren’t shown dying or being wounded to death was Mesira… but it’s hard to tell if he didn’t go shoot earlier since the images showed us so little.

We flash forward a little to Kikuta questioning a dying Ratci, asking him if Wilk was killed too and if others survived. Ratci dies before answering and the group then collects his body along with the heads of the other 6 Ainu, which were cut from their bodies. The total dead count is 7.

Usami wonders about who chopped their bodies since there should have been 7 Ainu and now their heads are all accounted for.

He tries to pick up Irenka’s head to see the head slip out of the skin which is something I expected. Usami figures out all the heads were skinned and the skins swapped around. He also notices the heads are missing eyes.

All this doesn’t faze Tsurumi in the slightest. He correctly figures one of those skinned head should have belonged to Kimuspu, which would mean that there were 8 Ainu.

We’ve a flashback in which Kimuspu is shown wounded and holding a rifle which means the group had keep him alive and he had taken part to the battle. That’s probably why we weren’t shown the full battle in the intro page, to hid he was involved as well.

Tsurumi, holding the head covered with Wilk’s skin in a Hamlet’s fashion, then easily sums up Wilk’s plan.

The Ainu were 8 and Wilk used Kimuspu (which nobody knew was among them) to fake his own death.

The eyes were then removed because Wilk’s eyes were distinctive.

He then seems to kiss Wilk’s skin… and I’m starting to think this might be where his affinity with Edogai was born.

We’re then shown the cover...

...and it’s an image we should be very familiar with as we saw it in chap 1 and used again when Inkarmat wanted to push fowward her Kiro culprit theory in chap 116.

The Ainu are on the ground and a man, Nopperabou, stand above them. Only this time we can see that the man standing above them is Wilk, not Kiro as Tsurumi told Inkarmat and, of course, despite surviving Wilk isn’t the one who did the killing.

Usami notices that people is coming, they’re the gold panners and the hunters who should have head the shoots during the night and are coming to check what happened.

Tsurumi split his forces, Usami is to go at the health resort facility at Noboribetsu (remember? The one in which Kikuta was) and call reinforcements while Kikuta remains there and secure the area. Tsurumi will instead pursue Wilk.

As Tsurumi leaves Usami notices Kikuta pensitive gaze. Kikuta is worried about Ariko. He wonders who will tell him the truth as he thinks Ariko will be upset to discover they were involved in his father’s death.

Usami says there’s no need to tell him as they merely told Ariko’s father about Wilk’s identity and it was the group of Ainu which tore itself apart.

Kikuta points out how their plan relied on sewing discord in the group...

...which yes, it’s true, although Tsurumi clearly didn’t want them to murder each other BEFORE confessing where the gold was. He was hoping to reach them before they all would die, this was a miscalculation on his part.

But this little scene traces a difference between Usami and Kikuta.

While Usami doesn’t really care about how this will affect others (namely Ariko) and doesn’t feel responsible for the consequences of their actions, Kikuta does.

Usami lives in denial of his own sins, where Kikuta looks straight at them, which matches with how he’s a man who told Sugimoto in hell they’ll be rolling the red carpet for him. Kikuta knows what he’s doing is wrong, Usami doesn’t even stop to think if it is, or if it can have consequences on the others.

The following scene shows Sugimoto and Shiraishi meeting up with Ariko (evidently they managed not to get discover despite their car crash… no idea how since they should have made noise worth checking… unless Nikaidou also has left his guard post?).

We also gets a panel of Kikuta looking down under the rain. No idea what he’s watching but he’s sure sad and, I bet, he’s thinking at Ariko.

The fact that he and Ariko are on the same page yet divided by the panel with Sugimoto and Shiraishi is meaningful.

There’s a tie between this two men… but there’s also something between them.

Meanwhile Tsurumi goes on in his narration.

He’s impressed by Wilk’s resolve to cut away his face. He figured Wilk, given the situation, expected to be labelled as the murderer and was worried of how this would affect Asirpa.

Thanks Tsurumi, after such a gruesome story, Asirpa really needed you to push on her the blame of her father’s actions. I get you want to manipulate her but this can also backfire because it proves Wilk’s actions were done out of love for her.

Anyway Tsurumi is just impressed by how Wilk not only came up with such plan but could also manage to carry it to execution quickly as cutting his own face off isn’t something a person would be able to do.

I agree and I would say it’s not just for the unbearable pain and the psychological trauma but also because it doesn’t seem that easy to do. I would expect a person to end up cutting a muscle or a blood vessel. But whatever, it’s a manga, and I’m not really an expert in skinned faces… and I like to remain as such, so let’s go on.

Tsurumi anyway thinks the plan was perfect if not for a detail, HE was the one chasing Wilk.

This isn’t said for a lack of modesty. Tsurumi just knew Wilk, he recognized his skinned face, he figured out his plan and, when he sees an Ainu with his face bandaged, he immediately recognizes him as Wilk due to the colour of his eyes. Another person, who had never met Wilk, might not have managed to do so.

Add to this that Wilk makes a mistake because he too recognizes Tsurumi (who back then looked a lot more like his younger self as he wasn’t disfigured yet), calling him ‘Hasegawa-san’ and giving away his identity.

Tsurumi doesn’t tell us what happened after.

There’s clearly a timeskip and then we’re shown Wilk escaping on the lake, Tsurumi shooting at him and causing Wilk to end in the water and the boat to sink.

Among the things that sank there was Kimuspu’s face, which Wilk has taken away. Tsurumi runs, trying to reach Wilk but Wilk, after discharging his Ainu clothes, is faster at reaching a prison lodge where convicts were kept illegally.

Wilk asks who’s the boss of the guards, who’s of course nothing else but ‘slave-convict-trader’ Inudou, who was of course abusing of his power to illegally use prisoners in that area as well.

Wilk tell them about the 7 dead Ainu and claims to be the one who know the location where those Ainu hid the gold.

As the 7th division couldn’t get around with the people ruling the prison the result is that the guards carry Wilk to the prison in secret and Wilk becomes Nopperabout.

Asirpa asks Sofia about Kiroranke and Sofia explains once he freed himself Kiro began to search for Kimuspu as well and, while doing so, he heard the commotion and ended up on the crime scene while the 7th division was carrying away the bodies of the Ainu. He saw Wilk’s head being carried away as well and crumbled on his knees, crying and mourning Wilk.

No matter how mad he was at Wilk for his own decision, back then Kiro was still his friend and cared for him. He even wondered if he would be able to understand him by starting his own family in Hokkaido.

However, once he was back from the Russo-Japanese war he hears the rumour that Kimuspu was among the Ainu corpses. An Ainu testified that due to him recognizing the tattoos on Kimuspu’s hands.

Due to this Kiro too starts piecing together things.

He believed the Ainu had let Kimuspu go once they gotten the location of the gold… but now that he knew they were 8 and only 7 bodies were found he believed one of them killed the other 7.

Hijikata coming to ask about Asirpa, the rumours about Nopperabou and the tattoo code… all lead Kiro to think that Wilk is Nopperabou… and, likely, that Wilk was the killer.

Kiro goes on saying despite having a family in Hokkaido he couldn’t arrive to the same conclusion as Wilk, he still believes that if the gold was used for the Far Eastern Federation this would protect the Hokkaido Ainu too.

Kiro thinks barricading themselves away was a pathetic way of thinking that would never allow them to win against Russia or Japan.

Tsurumi nods in agreement.

I’ll discuss my two cents in a while.

We’ve then a flashback in which Kiro gives the sign and Wilk is shoot and then we see Kiro’s expression.

His eyes… are void of light but not black, grey as he thinks that Wilk was a wolf within the pack who has grown weak and that therefore Kiro followed the “way of the wolves” Wilk admired and did Wilk the kindness of killing him. As he says so we see a flashback of Kiro, Wilk and Sofia drinking together and being happy, Kiro with his arm around Wilk and trying to get him to drink something and Wilk holding Kiro’s wrist.

Although Sofia is included so that they look a single unit, a single ‘body’, it’s clear the picture focuses more on Kiro and Wilk, in how they touch each other, in how their heads are close.

It’s not meant to be romantic, it’s meant to deliver how those two men were close, as close as two best friends could be in the past.

So okay, let’s go back.

I think I lost count of how many times I criticized Wilk’s plan, both the early one the ‘Far Eastern Federation’ and the new one the ‘Free Hokkaido only’ plan not because they’re wrong per se but because they’re horribly planned so this time I’ll spare you of them.

I’ll discuss a bit of the why Kiro, despite making a family in Hokkaido doesn’t just switches like Wilk.

The key is likely that Kiro, differently from Wilk, had no reason to switch.

Let’s go back a little. In the flashbacks located in Russia Wilk was presented like an idealist, his plan a beautiful utopia for which he was willing to bet his own life and the one of his teammates.

He has lost his village, likely his parents were already dead and he was on his own. Sure, he was friend with Kiro and later with Sofia but their attachment for them was, compared to his own goal, his own ideal, minor. He has devoted his life to that goal and that’s it.

And because no one is special in his eyes “All are equal” among the minorities.

That’s also what allows him to keep a cold, practical mind setting, that he doesn’t get deeply attached.

When he moved to Hokkaido he did a mistake.

Well, no, it’s not a real mistake, it’s just something that caused him to shift priorities.

He grew more attached to his wife and child than he was to his goal.

His priorities shifted and so he could sacrifice part of his goal for the benefit of his Hokkaido family, which he prioritized and, in sacrificing his goal, he accepted he could sacrifice all his Russian allies who had fought with him.

He wasn’t anymore ready to do everything he could to give ALL the minorities freedom.

He wanted to give freedom to his daughter’s minority, if the other minorities wanted to benefit of the freedom he planned to gain for the Hokkaido Ainu, they would have to come to compromise, give up their land, their customs. He would be still willing to help them but at his own conditions as they weren’t anymore part of his priorities.

It’s absolutely human… but it’s also a betrayal of the cause, of his ideal who used to held all the minorities as all EQUAL.

Now, “All are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

For Kiro instead the problem is different.

Kiro has built attachment for the Russian side, attachment that lies especially in Sofia but possibly he also had other companions he cared about. He couldn’t be as cold as Wilk, which means he was more emotionally involved in them.

In fact Kiro’s point as they argued was that “HOKKAIDO never had anything to do with them in the first place”, meaning deep down he prioritized the Russian minorities among whom he lived from childhood and fought together than Hokkaido in which he transferred only recently. He views Russia as his homeland, he views his people as the ones who live in Karafuto and in the Russian far east.

In a desperate attempt to understand Wilk he tries to build himself a home in Hokkaido… but it never worked. Contrary to what some part of the fandom thinks, Kiro NEVER sees himself as an Hokkaido Ainu, he sees his children as Hokkaido Ainu, he’s a Tartar with Karafuto blood from his grandmother side.

In short, marrying with an Ainu whom he loves and having children whom he loves helped him to INCLUDE Hokkaido in his priorities, not in demoting Russia from them.

Therefore, where Wilk started from an “All (minorities) are equal” and then moved to an “All (minorities) are equal, but some are more equal than others” Kiro did the opposite.

That’s why having an Hokkaido family doesn’t help him to embrace Wilk’s idea they should have prioritized Hokkaido but, if anything, pushes him to place Hokkaido and Russia on the same place.

He wants Sofia and Asirpa to join forces also because in this way they will become guarantors for both Russia and Hokkaido, they’ll protect the interests of both parties, of the countries he now both loves. And this too is a human view, same as Wilk’s was, even if it sits at the opposite extreme.

On a sidenote I wonder if the experience in which the Hokkaido Ainu slaughtered each other opened Wilk’s eyes and pushed him to realize that he’s an outsider, that he can’t hope he could just unite and lead them. But whatever, that’s just food for thoughts, it can be he escaped in that direction merely because it was the most convenient direction in which to escape for him and the speculations he was running in that way to bring the gold back to his Russian companions done by various cast members were just that, speculations.

Last but not least, Kiro’s reasoning as he killed Wilk.

We know that Kiro isn’t really that good at murdering people.

He can do it just fine in the heat of the battle or when he sees them as enemies (the Russian guards, the Russian soldiers) but not when he’s up close to them. He lacks Wilk’s coldness, which is what pushed him to hesitate when tossing the bomb to the emperor.

After all his weapon of choice, explosive, is a weapon that allows people to keep distance with their victims and it’s perfect for avoiding to get an empathic connection with them. Murdering people up close is a lot harder.

Although Inkarmat got in the way he didn’t mean to kill her and when she got stabbed by accident his first reaction was to try to help her, when Tanigaki let him know he was there to avenge Inkarmat he didn’t feel like finishing him off and he didn’t want Ogata to shoot Sugi.

Wilk though had betrayed them when he made clear he didn’t plan anymore to pursue their partisan group’s goal, circumstances paint him as the Ainu murderer and the fact he’s entrusting the gold to Hijikata, a Wajin, and Asirpa, Asirpa who has no idea about the other minorities, only worsen the picture.

Wilk, the NEW WILK who killed the OLD WILK and betrayed them, had to die.

It’s something Kiro likely knew Wilk had to die even before the Ainu incident, because partisans killed who betrayed them, yet he wasn’t ready to face, in fact, as soon as he believed Wilk died, he broke down and cried.

When it turned out Wilk instead survived, he could have been the one behind the Ainu murder and acted none the wiser by basically entrusting the gold to Hijikata, killing him for betrayal at that point was mandatory.

Yet the mental gimmick Kiro does to manage to condemn Wilk is interesting. Not only he has Ogata do the job but manages to persuade himself he’s doing Wilk a favour. The NEW WILK is a WEAK WILK and, according to Wilk’s ideas about ‘the way of the wolves’, the weak has to be killed.

Basically Kiro persuades himself he’s not hurting Wilk, he’s doing it an act of kindness according Wilk’s own mind setting (Kiro had no idea why Wilk was called as such but the volume version added a scene in which Wilk saw a lone wolf and talked with him and Hasegawa about ‘the way of the wolves’ so Kiro knew about it).

That’s probably why the image shows us a Kiro with no light in his eyes, a Kiro who’s blinding himself to the truth with a lie to cope with the guilt of killing his best friend otherwise he’ll probably break.

And this probably ties in with how, when their group was threatened by the Russian border guards, Kiro exposed himself to save the Orok and then called it ‘Kamuy Renkayne’, “thanks to the Gods”. What Kiro did is similar to what Sekiya was doing.

Before acting Kiro thought at how they murdered the Emperor, which is likely why they are held under fire but was also the moment in which Wilk, with an amazing coldness, grabbed the bomb and took care to correct Kiro’s mistake by placing the bomb in the royal coach. He likely gained Kiro’s loyalty with that act.

And by taking an amazing personal risk Kiro basically tested the will of the Gods to prove himself if he was right or wrong. If the Gods hadn’t spared him then his actions toward Wilk were wrong.

On a sidenote… it’s not a common occurrence for wolves to kill a weak wolf.

Normally they actually protect the weak in their pack by bringing them food and by defending them from larger predators because they’re like a big family, although they won’t hesitate to kill wolves that don’t belong to their pack, weak or not.

Wolves kill or drive out of the pack a silk or a weak or an old wolf only if they’re in conditions of great stress, for example if food is scarce.

Long story short, I��m more tempted to think the wolf Wilk saw as a child was killed not merely because he was weak but because he didn’t belong to the pack of wolves which found him.

Probably that wolf was kicked out by his own pack, trespassed into the area of another pack and was killed.

Anyway the irony is great and tragic.

We saw Wilk killing a member of his group due to ‘the way of the wolves’ mind setting and probably part of this mind setting is what made him cold when Hasegawa daughter and child were killed or when he left behind Sofia or now, that he decided only Hokkaido had to be saved… and yet this mind setting came back to bite him when his friend judged him through the same lens Wilk used to judge others.

His pack came back to him, only to get rid of him because he has grown weak in a perfect application of the contrappasso law.

Still, I’m sad for Asirpa. She didn’t deserve to see it.

But well, with this we likely have finished with the flashback for now… unless they’re going to include how the cat alliance formed, which I doubt as I expect Noda to save it for another time.

So, with the murder of the Ainu out of the way and all the tattooed convicts tracked down all that remains for the plot is to solve the code.

Oh well, we’ll see where this will lead us.

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princess-of-france · 5 years

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Alright, you gotta tell me all the things about "Uproot" because I'm already in love xx (when you've got the time, of course). Love you!

Love you too, angel! Tagging @suits-of-woe because it’s Hamlet, bitch!

Uproot is a two-part miniseries I’ve been developing for about four years, which could probably best be summarized as “Hamlet for the YA Generation.” It began as a novella, which I then chose to expand into the medium I actually know and love: script-writing. :)

Set in a dystopian future, roughly 200 years after the collapse of the United States of America, Uproot imagines North America as a toxic wasteland divided into large, warring city-states...kind of an industrial, futuristic version of Hellenistic Greece. Each city-state is named for the foreign power that either purchased or pillaged military resources and reinforcements during the Trans-Asiatic Wars. Hence, the sprawling metropolis that was once Washington D.C. is now the city of New Denmark.

With the Wars long over, and Eastern Asia victorious, the city-states of ruined America have crumbled into anarchy. New Denmark alone remains a powerful military state. Ruled by a dynastic monarchy that dates back to the 2050s, the city maintains its vice grip on “stability” through a two-pronged system of Force and Separation. A ruthless and corrupt Royal Police controls the city streets, while the royal family and their elite, privileged Court wall themselves up inside the luxury high-rise known as Elsinore Incorporated.

Elsinore is a fortress: impregnable, bullet-proof, and guarded by the best-maintained army left on the continent of North America. To be behind its gates is to want for nothing. To be outside it is to live in a hell-scape of poverty, disease, corruption, and unconscionable disparity.

Unsurprisingly, this century-long injustice yielded many inner-city rebellions over the years, to no avail. It wasn’t until a young man and his wife arrived from the neighboring city-state of Norway that things really began to change.

The man, Fortinbras Cartwright, had inherited his position as a Chancellor of Norway, but then grown disillusioned with privilege-based politics when he fell in love with Jessalyn, a radical leftist protester. After being exiled from Norway for attempting to overhaul the city’s oligarchy, Fortinbras and Jess found their way to New Denmark, where they pooled their resources (his money; her field experience) and founded a secret organization known as Uproot.

The mission of Uproot was to do the impossible:

Neutralize the Royal Police

Starve out the inhabitants of Elsinore

Storm the tower

Depose the sitting king

Execute the royal family

And --- most importantly --- implement a new representational government of, for, and by the people of New Denmark.

It gained enormous traction and legitimacy thanks to the combination of Fortinbras’ political rhetoric and Jess’ derring-do. Everyone clamored to be a part of the grassroots movement. “Up through the soil, we will rise: fresh, green, and throttling.”

Fortinbras and Jess knew that “the only way to win was to refuse to lose,” so they bided their time, growing their numbers, and waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. In those interim years, they had a daughter: Fortinbras Jr.

Raised to fight, spy, and --- most importantly --- lead, Fort spent her entire childhood in the shadow of her family’s divine purpose. No one ever asked her if she wanted to be a military commander-in-training, just like no one ever asked her if she wanted to lose her mother at the age of 10 to a rebel sting gone wrong.

My play begins the night after a colossal battle between the Uproot army and the Police. At the eleventh hour, King Hamlet decided personally to join the fight with his own private militia, which won the day for the nobility. In the chaos, Fort’s father was killed. His final act before dying was to give her his badge, signifying Fort’s new status as Commander-in-Chief of the rebel forces.

Fort is 24 years old. She is grief-stricken. She has no intention of leading the army that cost her BOTH of her parents. Obviously, the rebels have other ideas. They rallied under the name Fortinbras. They will follow the leader who bears that name, regardless of how unprepared --- or unwilling --- she might be.

Uproot, Part 1 follows Fort through the days and weeks following her father’s death, as she tries (and fails) to find a suitable replacement to lead the Uproot cause. The sudden death of King Hamlet and the unexpected marriage and coronation of his brother, a bloodthirsty ex-Police Chief named Claudius, throws a mad wrench into Fort’s plan to abandon New Denmark and fade into the smoke of history. It’s hard to walk away from injustice, once you see up close how insidious it is. When Prince Hamlet, the hyper-privileged young heir to the throne, returns to Elsinore from his studies abroad to confront his uncle, the entire Court begins to unravel and Fort sees a rare opportunity to bring them down once and for all. But is she ready to be the “People’s Princess”? And is she willing to pay the price of freedom?

Uproot, Part 2 begins after the Prince has been sent abroad once more by his uncle, presumably to his death. While the rebels struggle to combat King Claudius’ vicious new political regime, they capture a traveling courtier who offers to get them inside Elsinore’s walls: a young man named Laertes. Their shaky alliance with Laertes proves disastrous, however, and Fort begins to prepare her army for a definitive attack on the castle. As she rises to meet the challenge of leading a sprawling, scattered, hopeless, ragtag army to victory, Fort is forced to confront her past and wrestle with her future. Maybe the woman who fights for freedom shouldn’t be the same woman who defines it. Maybe she’s in this war for all the wrong reasons. But is there a right reason?

While Fort’s story is the primary focus of Uproot, her narrative is intercut with glimpses inside Elsinore Inc. (where the characters we know from Hamlet live and breath) AND flashbacks of the origin story between Fortinbras Sr. and Jess.

The main cast of Uproot is as follows:

Women:

FORTINBRAS (“Fort”) CARTWRIGHT (24 y/o) --- The People’s Princess, Commander of the Uproot Army, daughter of the Rebel King & Queen

THEA (40s) --- Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Uproot’s primary diplomat. Fort’s godmother and chief advisor. BAMF.

LEX (25 y/o) --- Spy/intelligence officer for Uproot. Chief military strategist. Fort’s best friend. Literally the smartest person in the play.

URI (18 y/o) --- Hacker. Tech whiz. Child prodigy. Approach at own risk.

GREER (21 y/o) --- Rescued from the Elsinore prison after 10 years in isolation. Bomb-maker. Law-breaker. General anarchist. Falls head over heels for Uri.

GIGI (14 y/o) --- A mute girl who graffitis coded messages to the army all across New Denmark. Joziah’s niece. The Ultimate Hufflepuff.

OPHELIA (21 y/o) --- Member of the Court. Laertes’ sister. A lot angrier than the Court seems to realize.

GERTRUDE (50s) --- Queen of New Denmark. Claudius’ wife and sister-in-law. Hamlet’s mother. Manic depressive and addicted to pain pills.

JESSALYN (“Jess”) --- Fort’s mother. “Rebel Queen.” A lifelong protestor and activist for social justice. Co-Founder of the Uproot Movement. Daredevil.

Men:

JOZIAH (50s) --- Captain of the Green Elite, a black ops team of left-wing extremists that is only marginally loyal to the Uproot cause. Fort’s advisor. Gruff old codger with a heart of gold.

NALEN (24 y/o) --- Medic and surgeon for the army. Fort’s other best friend. Lex’s fiancé. Allergic to violence. Kindness epitomized.

MERYK (26 y/o) --- Member of the Green Elite. Professional assassin. Uri’s highly protective older brother. Drives Fort crazy until he doesn’t.

CLAUDIUS (50s) --- King of New Denmark. Gertrude’s brother-in-law and husband. Hamlet’s uncle. The Bad Guy.

HAMLET (20s) --- Prince of New Denmark. Gertrude’s son. Maybe a pushover or maybe just depressed?

LAERTES (20s) --- Member of the Court. Ophelia’s older brother. Diplomat for New Denmark. Feisty lil honey badger.

HORATIO (20s) --- Member of the Court. Originally from the Republic of Germany. Met Prince Hamlet at university. Didn’t ask for any of this.

FORTINBRAS CARTWRIGHT Sr. --- Fort’s father. “King of the Weeds.” Founder of the Uproot Movement and its first Commander-in-Chief. Revolutionist.

Aaaaaand I think that’s it! Hope this is interesting, or at least mildly amusing. :) Love you, ladies. xx Claire

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tyrantisterror · 6 years

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Well Made Futility: Infinity War Thoughts

I saw Infinity War for a second time and have some thoughts. SPOILERish thoughts, so, y’know, a cut here for the sake of those who care about such things.

I mean, I actually think this movie is better if you know what you’re in for going in, but I’m weird so what do I know.

So like... Infinity War is fucking difficult to evaluate. It’s a movie that does something completely unprecedented in film - while we all enjoyed joking about it, no single movie crossover has attempted to weave this many VERY different stories, characters, and (especially) tones into one coherent narrative before. It is a crossover unlike any other in film. And it’s mostly successful!

but

I know we all like to dunk on Marvel’s films because they’re popular and make a lot of money, and all of us have an inner hipster who hates things that are successful regardless of their actual quality or content, because fuck that man we’re not normies we only like things BEFORE they’re cool. But as a person who loves “genre” fiction - i.e. Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, anything that isn’t set in standard reality - the Marvel movies have been kind of revolutionary. Genre films had gotten so LIMITED before Iron Man, and it was stupidly limited at that. We could accept that a billionaire fury who punches criminals could walk into a police department without making everyone burst into laughter, but we couldn’t accept that a strange chemical bath would permanently bleach a clown-turned-criminal’s skin. We could accept a guy getting powers from a spider OR a guy being really good at science but not both. We could accept a guy growing claws out of his hands, but god help you if that man also wears something other than black skintight leather. Everything had to be “grounded” and “real”, and I put quotations marks around those words because what they REALLY meant in the context of Hollywood was “boring.”

but

And then Marvel slowly chipped away at that. Not at first - Iron Man and The Hulk were about as restrained as the superhero movies that preceded them, but slowly the movies conditioned us to accept weird shit. Thor brought in Norse mythology and a certain kind of magic, although they dressed it up as “advanced science”, because we were in a transition and that was a concession they could make. Captain America took us out of modern day - a risky idea, period piece action movies are never a sure thing - and also introduced the idea of a serum that can turn you into either the ULTIMATE BEEFCAKE or a red skinned skeleton man depending on your moral compass, which is PRETTY FUCKING WEIRD when you think about it.

but

Then The Avengers happened. Before that movie came out, every conventional Hollywood line of thinking told us it would fail. Movies with multiple heroes don’t succeed. That’s why Batman and Robin sucked, right - too many heroes? And Batman and Robin, why, that’s the worst film ever! Spiderman 3 had too many villains! You can’t have more than two super powered guys in a movie - that’s just movie law! Having more than two super power guys is box office poison.

but

But The Avengers wasn’t. Maybe most of you don’t remember it because we’ve had 10 years of these Marvel movies and their success seems like an inescapable fact now, but The Avengers defied expectations by being both good AND a box office success - a ridiculously lucrative one at that! The Avengers took a huge fucking risk and it paid off.

but

Then it happened again. People assumed The Avengers was as weird as you could go. Critics were CERTAIN these movies would peter out eventually, that they couldn’t keep doing the impossible. One of these risks had to doom them. And a lot of critics looked at one movie on the post The Avengers slate - Guardians of the Galaxy - and said, “That’s the one - that’s gonna be the turd. A movie about a talking raccoon and a tree monster - two RIDICULOUS character concepts that sound more like jokes than something a studio would actually put in their action movie - along with some d-listers no one but hardcore nerds care about, all directed by a guy best known for gore-filled low budget b movies? That’s going to kill Marvel. There is no way that film can be good, much less a financial success.”

but

Guardians of the Galaxy was not just good, but it’s the best series within the franchise. Yeah, fuckin’ fight me on it nerds. (no actually don’t I’m voicing a subjective opinion in this paragraph I don’t actually give a shit about ranking movies like this)

but

Even when their movies weren’t game changers, they were still solid and fun. Whether or not they’re your cup of tea, Marvel’s superhero movies are never worse than “good.” Some of them are “great.” Some, like The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther, are arguably transformatively great. At the very least, these films taken as a collective whole have changed the way we approach Genre Films. They have redefined what is possible - they reminded Hollywood that suspension of disbelief is a malleable thing, even if some studios haven’t quite grasped the concept yet.

but

Which brings me back to Infinity War. Like The Avengers before it, Infinity War brings different characters from many different stories with many different tones and styles and, to an extent, genres/subgenres, and blends them into a coherent and emotionally resonate whole. It requires you to have seen at least the majority of the previous DECADES worth of movies to work, but that’s not a flaw - no more than, say, the twentieth chapter of a novel requiring you to read the previous 19 at any rate. Infinity War needs those previous films to function, and to its credit, it not only uses what they built, but does so in genuinely surprising ways. You didn’t think you needed a Rocket Raccoon/Thor team up in your life, but this movie proves you did. You also didn’t think you’d see Rocket Raccoon genuinely reach out to Thor (who, to him, is a relative stranger) and try to help him through his grief, but it happens, and it’s a legitimately interesting moment that movies both characters forward in their respective arcs. This movie is more than just taking a bunch of toys out of a toybox and smashing them together (though yes, there are parts of it that are very much that - these are action adventure movies, after all). Characters develop and bounce off each other in glorious and meaningful ways. There is a weight to everything beyond the obvious, mercenary Hollywood mandate to make as much money as possible by getting fans of all these different franchises into one theater.

but

The movie even tries to rectifies some of the franchise’s most notable flaws, in particular their lack of decent villains. You could count the number of actually compelling and interesting villains from the previous 18 films on one hand. Thanos, the big bad of this film, finally gets us to the other palm. His motives are understandable but NOT justified - that is to say, you can understand why a person may believe what he believes, but at the end of the film you know for a fact he’s wrong. Thanos is a bad guy whose evil plan will destroy countless lives, but he manages not to be the cartoonish caricature of a villain whose over the top “destroy the world” motivation makes no sense. It’s nuanced, is my point. I don’t think he’s the best Marvel has offered us - he wouldn’t crack my top three just yet - but he’s miles above most of the competition.

BUT

So here’s the crux of my review. When I got to the ending of the movie - an ending that, admittedly, I spoiled for myself ahead of time, because I do that for most movies ever since I got majorly burned by Jurassic Park III when I was a teen - I couldn’t stop thinking about it, because it’s... it’s a paradox. Not just the ending, either, but the whole movie. This is a film that both does and doesn’t work. It is both an amazing feat and... and fundamentally broken.

And it all has to do with those 18 films before it.

Ok, so: if taken as its own story, that is to say, as just it’s own thing, not the part of a greater whole... then the ending of Infinity War is exactly the ending this story needed. This is Thanos’s story more than anyone else’s, when you get right down to it, and from the perspective that this movie is meant to tell his story and his story alone, the ending is the only one that would fit. Thanos gets everything he wants, at the cost of everything that mattered to him. His crazed vision finally comes true, and the audience feels the full weight of how horrible that is. That ending - that maddening, confounding ending, where almost every hero we’ve come to love over 18 goddamn films is killed with the snap of his fingers - shows us exactly why we can’t let monsters like Thanos come to power, and how even the monsters like Thanos himself are destroyed by following those mad dreams through (a point reinforced by the cameo of a long forgotten past villain, Red Skull).

However, as I said before, you really CAN’T take this movie on its own. Structurally it DEPENDS on you seeing those previous films. You have to have seen them just for this movie to make sense, and to be emotionally affected by it you must also have cared about those movies and their characters. This movie is a sum of those parts.

And as a followup to those 18 films - as a part of their greater whole - it fails. So many characters we followed and love - Black Panther, Spider-Man, every fucking guardian of the galaxy except Rocket and maybe Nebula if we count her, just to name a few - is killed off in a literal instant. With the exception of Loki, each of these deaths kind of renders their preceding journey pointless. Peter Parker was just starting his journey in his preceding film - so was Black Panther, so was Dr. Strange, so were many of the others. Imagine if Hamlet was killed in act 1 of his play - everything about him would be unresolved, and all of his supporting cast would have no anchor to the plot since the conflict they’re involved in is removed with Hamlet’s death. You’d have to start over. Other characters are farther along, but with rare exception, none of them had what could be called a satisfactory end. If the deaths in this movie actually hold true, then most of the preceding 18 movies have been broken. They are wastes of time.

Of course, a savvy person would note that literally every character killed in this movie has been cast in the next Avengers film, due out next year. Spider-Man and the Guardians have announced movies with release dates after that one, too. Black Panther’s sequel has been announced although the release date has not. These deaths are highly unlikely to stick.

BUT if that’s the case, well... then this movie’s broken again, because now that ending has no weight. Now that ending is pointless - in fact, this whole movie is, because it’s all just going to be undone by the next. Either this film was a narrative waste of time, or the preceding 18 were. There’s no other option.

...but...

There is, I suppose, a possibility. A faint one, admittedly - I have no idea if they can achieve it. There’s a possibility the fourth Avengers film could find a way to make this movie’s weight hold while still putting all those dead characters’ stories back on track. Infinity War was conceived as a two part film story, after all, even if they dropped the “Part 1″ label come release. No matter how much this film wants you to think otherwise, it is just part of whole - and maybe, just maybe, the second one will make the first work WITHIN that whole.

I don’t see how it can, but then, I didn’t see how they could make me care about fuckin’ Rocket Raccoon. And Guardians of the Galaxy is, as I said, the best one.

If I were a betting man, I’d bet on this movie ultimately being a narrative cul de sac - a very well made, but ultimately pointless entry that is invalidated by what comes after it. If that ends up being the case, then that’s kind of sad - but there’s a chance they may make it work after all, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s not to bet against Marvel.

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theotherpages · 5 years

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Alzheimer's as a Villanelle

I visit the theme of memory often in my writing, and since medical events are written into the plotlines from time to time, I have sometimes had the unsettling experience of reliving a scene I’ve written. Perspective can also shift with time, our stage in life, or our position in a relationship.

In Ion, book six of The Republic of Dreams (not yet released), during a scene intended to evoke memories and the emotions they carry, Sparrow observes to Meredith that, “. . . much of life is spent revisiting the same events, over and over, from different viewpoints.”

I recently travelled north to Ohio and Michigan, and had an opportunity to visit with Ms. Elizabeth Papps, my AP English Literature teacher from high school. It has been four decades, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that she is still around. In recent years she suffered a stroke, and her body is a pencil-thin version of the person she used to be. Her memory, and her attention span, likewise, are thin slivers of what they used to be, making conversation challenging. Challenging, but not impossible.

I explored things she might remember from teaching, from childhood, from travel, and especially on the topic of food. Food memories are rich from a sensory standpoint, and I guessed correctly that childhood memories of her favorite foods would be a good topic. She grew up in a Greek household, and the savory and sweet dishes are the kinds of things that have unique tastes and textures and fill a home with inviting aromas: avgolemono (lemon-chicken soup), pastitsio (a lasagna-like dish with a bechamel sauce and cinnamon), kourabiethes (walnut-sugar cookies that melt in your mouth), baklava (flaky pastry with honey and cinnamon). Food led to places she had been, people she had been with, things she had done.

The doorway to memory opened and closed repeatedly. She remembered travel to Greece, Israel, and Egypt in detail, but could not remember them twenty minutes later. She would correct me on the pronunciation of a Greek word, and forget the word ten minutes later. She remembered fondly Patricia Osborne, who taught English in an adjacent classroom for many years. She remembered only two students: Beth Perkins and Jim Calhoun. She didn’t remember me (even without the stroke, it’s been forty years).

Her favorite book to teach was A Tale of Two Cities, because she liked how the storylines paralleled and contrasted with each other. Her favorite play to teach was Hamlet, because, similarly, he stood in two worlds: his outward public life, and his tortured inner life.

Her own questions and observations were simple, and recurring. Sometimes they repeated exactly, and sometimes with variations. More than anything, it reminded me of the structure of a villanelle. A villanelle is a poem with a very simple rhyme scheme in which two of the lines become an alternating refrain, as in a pair of comments or questions repeated multiple times, sometimes with slight changes to evolve their meaning.

A conversation with someone who has suffered memory loss can be that way. The same is true with some individuals on the autism spectrum. Maybe there is a certain reinforcement, or reassurance in the repeated refrain. The variations along the way can add depth to the conversation, as can approaching things from different directions. I am not an expert on these disorders in any way, but in a very human sense, she was happy to have company and was very engaged in the conversation. Did she remember my visit the next day? I don’t know.

I think the concept of a villanelle prepares us for the fact that the same ideas, subjects, and specific questions will repeat themselves, and that with patience, we can still communicate on some level. It may be a recursive conversation, and the content may be more in emotions, than in words, but in truth, in most one-to-one personal conversations, isn’t that the important part?

If you have not experienced this scene, odds are that you will, some day. If you write it or imagine it beforehand, don’t be surprised to find that it turns out differently. Be relieved, in fact. There is a certain eeriness when fiction is too close to reality. In the field of artificial intelligence (another recurring theme in The Republic of Dreams) there is a similar concept referred to as the Uncanny Valley. For the Alzheimer’s patient, I wonder which is the greater frustration - the thing that seems unknown (“Do I know you?”), or the thing that seems familiar, but just not quite right? (“Why do you look so old?”)

If you are not familiar with a villanelle, here are a few examples:

Robinson: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/…/44…/the-house-on-the-hill Bishop: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art Thomas: https://wikilivres.org/…/Do_Not_Go_Gentle_into_that_Good_Ni… Plath: https://hellopoetry.com/poem/664/mad-girls-love-song/

-- Steve

#alzheimer's #memory #memory loss #autism #communications #poetry #villanelle #the other pages #theotherpages.org

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sheridanh0pe · 7 years

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The Skin I Live In, and Almodovar’s Secrets

With few empowering, complex roles for women in Hollywood movies, Pedro Almodovar’s female-centric films provide a cathartic meditation on womanhood through his stories of gender performance and transformation. The depth of his female protagonists extend further than what critics have said are gay and transgendered men masquerading as women (a textbook example being Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s). Such suspicions are valid given Almodovar’s drag queen inspired flamboyant and troubled divas that physically resemble famous leading ladies, and the needs of these women to exorcise a past trauma that haunts them and unsettles their identity. The mother in this story Marilia is a subtle nod to Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. In The Skin I Live In, the film title and tragedy that befalls the unassuming Vincente (who has been transfigured into a woman, Vera) centers on the trauma of gender not being a choice and the resulting entrapment, struggle, and later on healing. The designing principle behind Almodovar’s stories is based on a character who encounters loss and betrayal in a malevolent world and who must also overcome the estrangement of her mother and the mother’s failed attempts to protect her children. Fathers are largely absent and unnecessarily in the family unit but the mother’s return and acceptance is crucial to the main character’s ability to move on.

The Skin I Live In is a Pygmalion story of chauvinistic Vincente, whose assault on the mad doctor’s daughter Norma leads to his kidnapping and sexual reassignment surgery (becoming Vera). Almodovar treats the skin as a parallel motif for clothing, both being sculptural elements that define gender and sex. Vincente previously worked in a dress shop with his mother. The mad doctor, Robert, is a gifted plastic surgeon. In her claustrophobic madness, Robert’s daughter could not stand fitted clothing and it was her wayward removal of her clothes in the gardens after a party that provoked Vincente’s assault. In addition to the body stocking that protects Vera’s skin, Vera works with sculptures that pay homage to Louise Bourgeois’s fabric portrait-heads and body sculptures. Still mourning, unhealed after his wife’s disfigurement from a fiery car crash and subsequent suicide, the mad doctor atones by creating an artificial layer of skin on Vera that is burn proof and also recreates his dead wife’s face on Vera.

Together by Louise Bourgeois

The Toilet of Venus by Diego Velazquez

Melodramas are moral tales of good and bad but The Skin I Live In is certainly not so simple. Almodovar takes his main characters through a Kafkaesque labyrinth deviating from gender and sexual norms (e.g. nuns, prostitutes, transvestites, Chinatown mother-daughter familial ties, etc). His characters suffer psychological brutality, physical deformation, power struggles, and isolation, ultimately returning full circle to a state of equilibrium with the family (often all women) after a life-changing experience of transgressive and destructive love. Borrowing tropes from Hitchcock, as his films often do, The Skin I Live in plays on mothers and their strained relationships (i.e., Marilia as the servant mother reunited with the criminally-insane brothers Robert and Zeca); disorders of paranoia, claustrophobia and voyeurism that heighten the suspense through restricting actions to a single setting (i.e., Robert’s home clinic in which Vera is held hostage in a room equipped with video surveillance cameras); and a possessive love of beautiful women and their sexuality (i.e., Robert’s obsession with his unfaithful, dead wife through Vera’s body).

Like Shakespeare’s use of the father’s ghost in Hamlet, ghosts and mysterious deaths drive the character actions. The surreal quality of Volver, Talk to Her, and The Skin I Live In comes from these women having close ties to death like Salvador Dali paintings, which often depict sexuality, death, disembodiment, metamorphosis, and nightmares overlapping reality. Almodovar weaves in masterpieces of art, providing a backdrop of sophisticated and beautiful artwork that reflects the chaotic emotional realities of his characters, where story meets style. Zeca’s tiger suit and body modifications and his assault on Vera pay homage to a Dali painting. Zeca’s assault provides the rising action that leads to Robert’s killing of his own brother in revenge and Vera later bedding Robert.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening by Salvador Dali

In the tragic aftermath, Marilia cleans up the blood-stained sheets from her dead son Zeca. Almodovar’s signature use of bold red colors in bloodied fabrics, fruits, costumes, décor, and other props throughout his oeuvre is a tribute to the powerful relationship mothers have with life and death, which is why the mothers reveal the big family secrets affecting all of the characters. After Zeca’s death, Marilia breaks the history of Robert’s madness to Vera and the woman Vera has been made to resemble.

Almodovar’s meditations on love as a destructive and healing force are built off of the inciting incident (found in the family secret kept by the mother) that led to the current state of disequilibrium, paralysis, and chaos. The secret is a transgressive love affair that scatters the family unit, which the characters must resolve and overcome to reunite and reaffirmed the bonds of family that come with feeding all of their stories into the narrative thread. Almodovar’s movies are exciting because they don’t start off with the inciting incident in linear chronological order but instead the characters work backwards towards a single event or memory that is explored at progressively deeper levels as they come back together.

https://vimeo.com/167873646

Short Visual Essay on Almodovar’s Obsession with Red

The prevalence of red objects as an expression of passion and pain reinforces the catharsis of the characters’ self-revelations. As a film structured around the woman’s worldview and natural reactions to crisis, feelings of need and desire are powerful drivers in the hero’s journey and the telling of stories and secrets inspire dramatic actions of escape, murder, bravery, love, and reunion.

Vera’s weakness and obstacle is her captivity by a love-possessed man (like Lena in Broken Embraces and Marina in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) and Vera’s body taken out of her control (such as Alicia in Talk to Her). Almodovar toys with the idea of Stockholm Syndrome in some of his films, which has the audience guessing if Vera will love Robert back. Finding solace and inner strength in yoga during her 6 years in captivity, Vera exploits her newfound sexuality to seduce, kill and escape from her captor and his servant mother. Almodovar often stages women in deep contemplation under the warmth of a sunlit window, as inspired by Edward Hopper’s Morning Sun painting, symbolizing a woman’s need for warmth in isolation and freedom outside of the home. The film ends with Vera reunited with her mother and a lesbian friend she previously slighted, ready to tell her story.

Morning Sun by Edward Hopper

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