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eleutheramina · 3 years

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Is Scoopshipping Good Writing? An Extremely Long Text Post

This is partially a response post to criticism of the ship and Jack’s development in the Dark Signers arc, and partially my own analysis of Jack and Carly’s relationship--specifically whether it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization and whether it says anything meaningful besides just invoking the Power of Love.

Introduction

It’s been over 10 years since 5D’s first aired, which is surreal. I still remember thinking the whole concept was ludicrous at first, but it eventually became my favorite Yugioh series (though I usually ignore the series post-episode 64 and consider the first 64 episodes by themselves). It was really primarily because of these two fools that I started watching in earnest:

I shipped them big time. Even now, I still really adore their relationship. Most of my ships I end up becoming less obsessed with over time, but Jack/Carly continues even to this day to captivate my heart and imagination.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about the question, is their relationship good writing? Especially in how consistent it is with Jack’s characterization in the Fortune Cup arc, and whether or not it works to develop him as a character afterward.

(Of course, my personal stakes in the question is, should I be shipping them? While ships obviously don’t have to be well-written in canon or anything like that for someone to ship them, it’s significant to me because so much of the reason I liked Jack/Carly in the past is because it did feel decent character development, especially in contrast to what came after the Dark Signers arc.)

Why I’m Writing This

This sense of doubt about the writing of their relationship is especially spurred on by this character analysis of Jack:

“A lot of people seem to think that the introduction of Carly and the whole romancey subplot developed Jack as a character and for the better. I could not disagree more. If there's one word I'd associate with Jack prior to his entire development and dignity as a character going down the crapper, I'd have to say it's 'ego'. How did Rex/Jaeger get him to sell out his friends, steal Yusei's stuff and join him? He appealed to Jack's ego. How did he persuade him to stay after his first loss to Yusei? By telling him about the signer and reassuring him, again, that he was special. Overall, Jack just struck me as a very focused and driven character, intent on achieving his own goals on his own. He actively pushed away everyone who tried to get close to him, most obviously Mikage, who is consistently worrying over him but whom he never spares as much as a thought or a kind word for in return. Ever. This egocentric attitude is also, at the risk of over-analyzing, consistent with Red Dragon Archfiend, both in its moving away every defensive obstacle in its way and in its actively destroying any monsters that didn't join it in attacking. I generally don't like going onto this level of symbolism because it so easily devolves into semantic nonsense, but given the parallels here and the similarly fitting effects of Yusei's Stardust, I thought it worth mentioning. This would also lend a bit of further significance to him handing the card over to Yusei before the tournament, not only affirming his egocentric wish to beat Yusei at his strongest (and thus redeem himself for their last duel) but also his rejection of the self-sacrificing/others first mentality that the card represents. His obsession with Red Dragon Archfiend after that duel is also consistent with this interpretation, with Jack pushing himself even harder to prove to himself that his way is correct.

“Overall, I don't object to the notion of Jack learning to be less ego-centric as development, but the way the dark signer arc handled it was beyond contrived and ham-fisted, pushing him into an impromptu romance that was completely inconsistent with egocentric personality thus far and completely glossing over the far more interesting questions of how he'd rebuild his ego after essentially losing his entire self-image as the king in front of everyone. Instead, apparently all he needed was for a crazy lady to abduct him from hospital, blackmail him for the sake of her own career, then give a few lines of generic encouragement and invoke the power of love. From where I'm standing, it was obvious that he was intended to be Yusei's main foil, representing a pragmatic, egocentric worldview to contrast with his idealistic views on bonds and friendship, but equally clear that that idea was quickly scrapped in favor of shipping bait and deifying Yusei.

“Jack Atlus, he deserved a far better closure to his development than Stockholm syndrome.” --Aea (http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=26&pid=735)

Before I get to what I think is actually pretty solid about this analysis, I want to address some points. The idea of Carly being “crazy” is pretty hyperbolic. Calling what she did “abduct[ion]” is just inaccurate--after all, Jack asks her to take him out of the hospital, and he also refuses to return when Mikage and Ushio go to get him. Of course, he tries to leave her place in episode 31, but he also seems to willingly return there at the end of the episode. Because she wasn’t really kidnapping him or holding him at her home against his will, their relationship isn’t Stockholm syndrome.

I do think there’s some validity to the idea of her blackmailing him for her career. She does try to draw attention to him when they’re out in public in episode 31 in order to get him to stick around so that she can get a scoop from him. As comically as it is presented in the episode, that’s nonetheless what she does (and she also tries to leverage his lack of gratitude, too!). But she does ultimately feels remorse for that and resolves to not write any article that would hurt a duelist (even despite the fact that Jack lets her write what she wants about him), which is glossed over in this analysis of Jack.

I also don’t think that the encouragement she gave Jack was super original. Here’s the exact quote (which she says in response to Jack divulging his past to her):

“If you get the picture that much, why don’t you just start your life over again? The old Jack died in that battle with Yusei. Now it’s time for the real Jack Atlas to live. Plus, it’d help you in becoming a real King, right?”

Essentially, she tells him that he can get back up again after his loss and be even better than he was before. Yeah, at face value, it is pretty generic. But I do think that it does speak into a lot of what he was struggling with, at least as it is depicted after his defeat. Now, whether these are things that make sense for him to struggle with is a different issue that I’ll discuss in a later section.

And finally, I do think that Jack/Carly invokes the power of love trope. At least, Jack invokes it himself when he is talking back to Godwin in episode 63: “No matter how much I deny it, I cannot escape from what’s known as ‘bonds.’ And what helped me understand that was one woman’s love!” I don’t think the power of love is necessarily a bad thing, and I think it makes sense for someone who gave up their bonds from the past to pursue his own goal to be able to be moved and changed by someone genuinely caring for them.

Now, whether or not it was a good decision to have love be the driving force in Jack’s character development during the Dark Signers arc is a different question, which brings me to the points of Aea’s analysis that I find really compelling and want to grapple with.

What I read Aea as primarily saying is that Jack in the Fortune Cup arc is depicted as a highly egocentric person, and that his plotline with Carly in the Dark Signers arc is a) inconsistent with that previous characterization and b) not as interesting as a plotline in which his egocentrism could continue to serve as foil to Yusei’s worldview.

I think a lot of that makes sense. I do think Jack was driven by his ego, and I do think that it might’ve been more interesting if his self-driven worldview were able to be given as much validity as Yusei’s idealistic, others-driven worldview, which is ultimately what is privileged. I can also see how Jack being primarily motivated by saving Carly during the latter half of the DS arc may be incongruous with his egocentrism just 20 or so episodes before.

At the same time, though, I think there are a lot of directions 5D’s could have gone which have the potential to be more interesting than the one it actually went, so rather than wondering about what could have been, it would be more worthwhile to examine Jack/Carly’s plotline and see whether or not it is inconsistent with Jack’s previous characterization, and also to see if it has any merit of its own as far as it develops Jack’s character.

Particularly, I am going to argue that a) although perhaps not as well executed as it could be, it made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

Also, b) Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

Point A: It made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

So throughout the course of one arc, Jack goes from being a man who is motivated primarily by himself and his desires (to the point of being willing to put down others for them), to a man whose main reason for action is someone else’s well being. It does seem like a stark change. Rewatching the Jack/Carly duel, the sheer amount of concern for Carly that Jack shows is pretty astounding.

But I think that it’s understandable for there to need to be a change. For one, the particular reason why Jack lost to Yusei in episode 26 in the first place is because he tried to win using the same strategy as before--he wanted to redeem himself for his first near loss. Clearly there is a need for a change: Jack loses not once but twice to Yusei in the same season, and Yusei also cites Jack’s pride as a King as his reason for his loss.

The drama between Yusei and Jack during the Fortune Cup arc is driven by Jack losing to Yusei and needing to duel and beat him again to redeem himself and prove he’s the better duelist--that he truly deserves the title of King. In episode 6, when Jack realizes he would have lost to Yusei, it’s clear that he’s not driven by how his fans perceive him. While his fans have no idea that he lost, he’s nonetheless still bothered because he, the King, knows. In episode 8, Jack feels like he’s not the King anymore, even though Mikage says he still seems like one. The cheers of his fans sound hollow because he knows he doesn’t deserve them.

Something I find interesting is Jack’s awareness of his counterfeit Kingship revealed through his calling himself a clown. After his initial defeat, Jack asks Mikage if he’s a clown in episode 8, in episode 25 he asks Godwin to release Rally and co as “reward for a clown,” and in episode 31, he also uses the language of a clown when he talks to Carly: “Back then, I gave up everything, and what I gained from it was the path to being a King who continually acts like a clown as he lies about his true identity.”

Because of this, the way I see Jack’s character is that his identity as the King was made counterfeit at almost the very beginning of the series (episode 5). He then spends the entire rest of the Fortune Cup arc trying to regain his original conception of his King identity, only to ultimately fail. From Jack’s own language, I think we’re meant to see this as Jack’s foolishness. While it may have seemed fine for two years, the King identity that he had held onto no longer worked for him. When confronted by someone from his past, his King identity starts to crumble--first he’s defeated not once but twice, then it’s revealed he’s actually from Satellite, etc. In episode 25, he even shows awareness that Godwin baited him with the idea of being a duel king; when Godwin asks if that isn’t what he wanted, Jack says that he wanted to rule as “the King [he] truly desired to be.” Indeed, it’s revealed that he wasn’t even valued by Godwin for himself, but rather as a means of getting to Yusei. It makes sense, then, that his development after his defeat should center around letting go of his original conception of his King identity and discovering something more true.

All of these realizations are those that Jack comes to more or less on his own; Carly even says that Jack already “get[s] the picture.” So I do think it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization for him to need to find a new way of being King in the Dark Signers arc. Hence the need to start over, as Carly suggests. (And which is revisited in episode 37 when Jack talks to Mikage again, episode 59 when Carly does her fortune telling stuff, etc.)

I think it’s because Carly gives him hope after he loses his King identity that she makes such a mark on him and effectively becomes his main motivation in the DS arc. And I mean, Jack in the DS arc is still pretty aloof and pushes others away—he makes it clear to Yusei that he “hasn’t become anyone’s friend” in episode 45, and he really doesn’t rely on anyone else even as he angsts over Carly. No one even knows the identity of the Dark Signer he’s fighting. While Yusei still draws on his friends for strength, we see Jack continue his independent streak. Heck, he even pushes Carly away! (And she honestly probably would have been better off and not have gotten killed if she had just stuck with him, but that’s for another AU...)

An aside - I sometimes read people saying that they think Mikage could have filled the same role Carly did. Maybe, if written differently, she could have. But I think it’s notable that when Jack is angsting about having lost his sense of being a King in episode 8, Mikage is not really able to understand or speak to him in a way that actually meets him where he is. She clearly cares about him, but I think she’s not able to get past the image of the King that she and his fans project on him. I think Carly is able to empathize with his pain more. When Jack calls himself foolish and a clown, Carly doesn’t try to convince him he’s wrong--instead, she says something more like, “Sure, that’s true--but that doesn’t have to still be who you are.”

Point B: Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

I would argue that this is because Carly’s own character, as well as their relationship in general, deals a lot with themes of selfishness. While not presented as starkly as Jack’s self-drive is, it is obvious that Carly is someone who is self-driven and desires to achieve her goals, not completely unlike Jack. Her first appearance has her going past a swath of reporters to talk to Godwin, and her subsequent interaction with her boss shows that her job is precarious and that the scoops she seeks after are at least in part to keep her job. Like Jack, she came from a lower class background (although “the streets” rather than Satellite), and she doesn’t seem to have any close ties (Angela the reporter might count, but that’s a stretch). And when she goes to talk with Yusei and Dick Pitt after their duel, her concern is not with their wellbeing but about getting information from them for a scoop. “Straight ahead is the only way for me,” is something she repeats, showing that she knows where she wants to go and is determined to get there.

Indeed, Carly would not have met Jack at all if she had not snuck into the hospital trying to learn if he was truly from Satellite. She is someone who is driven primarily by herself, albeit more innocuously than Jack is. This also underlies why she was willing to “blackmail” Jack into going to the amusement park with her. She needs a scoop and is ready to do what it takes to get it.

But, we see how in the same episode, she starts thinking less of herself and more about another--Jack. She thinks, “He’s really hurting inside. And here am I trying to write an article about it. Am I a bad person for that?” She considers what he is going through, rather than just her own needs. When she defends Jack to Angela, she is driven not by her desire to keep Angela from getting her scoop, but a genuine care for Jack. And when she figures out he’s going to the tower to look at Satellite, it’s only by inhabiting his point of view and thinking about what he may want. Yet the question she asks herself--whether or not it’s bad to be writing a scoop about him (after all, it is her job, as Angela points out)--is an important one for her.

As self-driven as Carly is, she realizes she has limits--that is, she would not go as far as to hurt another person to achieve her own goals. Jack, on the other hand, has already done that, putting Rally in peril and taking Yusei’s card in order to get to Neo Domino City and become King.

We see again how Carly can be self-driven when she tries to get closer to Jack after he leaves, and when it is ultimately an illusion of happiness with Jack that causes her to fall back into her Dark Signer persona. Yet even then, it is clear that she does not want to hurt anyone, and Jack repeatedly reiterates this.

This culminates in the conversation she has with Jack before she dies: Carly: I loved cheering people on who tried their hardest like you, Jack. Despite that, because I tried to wish for such selfish happiness, I must’ve been wrong for doing so, huh? Jack: That’s nonsense! Everyone has the right to wish for happiness. If you’re saying that’s a crime, then I’m just as guilty!

Carly says herself that she was motivated by her own desires. Jack, in affirming her desire to obtain happiness, also affirms the ambition that drove him to abandon his friends. However, we see in how Carly is reluctant to hurt others that while it is not bad to want to pursue one’s goals and happiness, it is important to consider the impact on other people. It wasn’t bad for Carly to want to be with Jack, but it would obviously be bad for that to necessitate the deaths of many; it’s not bad for her to want to write a successful story, but it’s bad for her to take advantage of duelists’ like Jack’s pain to tell that story. This allows us to view the Jack in the FC arc in a new light: his desire to escape Satellite and become a King wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right of him to harm others in order to get there.

Ultimately, Jack and Carly’s relationship is about two people learning how to pursue their happiness and also learning to put each other’s happiness first.

#jack atlas #carly nagisa #scoopshipping #meta #yugioh 5d's #i have way too many thoughts about this card game anime #retributionshipping #carly carmine #yugioh #otp: you can't even ride the monorail

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urdearestmom · 3 years

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I'll Walk With You

hello everyone shocked to see me posting yet again???????

i said after i posted that oneshot rehashing 3x06 that i was going to one day write something where mike and max have an actual conversation.... and here it is!! for your reading pleasure :)

i think i did them and their dynamic justice with this and i'm super proud of how it turned out. we're unlikely to ever get something like this in the show but i'm hoping s4 at least gives us them being actual friends so that i can infer that something like this happened between seasons lol

Max’s house is silent as the grave. She isn’t surprised, it’s been like this nearly all the time since the summer. Her stepfather will drink himself back to sleep on the couch, and her mother will say nothing. Max won’t say anything either. The day has barely begun and it’s already shit.

Most of the time she escapes the horrible atmosphere inside her house by going to school, but it’s Spring Break now and she has nowhere to be. She’ll be stuck with her thoughts all day if she doesn’t find something else to do, so after nearly two hours of trying in vain to entertain herself, she decides to head out and see if Lucas is free. She knows Dustin already left town with his mom the night before, and she’s not willing to have Mike third wheel her and Lucas, so she hopes he’s down to go do something with her. He’s good at distracting her from the inescapable cycle of guilt and anger she feels constantly nowadays.

Except when she gets to his house, his parents are in the garage putting things into the trunk of the family car. She stops at the sight. Erica is nowhere to be seen but Lucas is standing in the front doorway and sees Max coming right away. He meets her in the street.

“Max, hey,” he says. “What’s up?”

Max gestures to his house. “I came to see if you wanted to hang out, but it looks like you guys are going somewhere.”

Lucas frowns. “I thought I told you, we’re going to visit my cousins in Chicago for a few days.”

Lord, a few days? Lucas must see it on her face because he scrambles to assure her it’s not for the whole week.

“I’ll be back Wednesday,” he promises.

“Today’s Sunday,” she protests. She knows there’s literally nothing to be done about it, but it still sucks. What’s she going to do all week?

“I swear I told you,” Lucas repeats.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Max answers. “You probably did. I’m sorry, just… forgot.”

He frowns again. Max has been forgetting a lot of things lately. She’s not sure why, it just feels like everything in her life is too much and her brain can’t handle it the way it should. Freshman year has not been the greatest so far.

“You okay?” He asks her, reaching for her hands, and his concern makes her heart squeeze painfully in her chest. He’s probably the only person who actually cares about her well-being, seeing as her mom clearly doesn’t.

Max nods. “Yeah. I just didn’t want to be at home, but I guess I’ll find something else to do. Bye, Lucas,” she says, squeezing his fingers gratefully before turning away to bike off back down the street.

“Hey!” He calls. She turns back. He motions to the big house next door, equally familiar to her. “Mike’s still home, maybe you can ask him?”

Max crosses her arms. “Like he would want to hang out with me,” she scoffs.

Lucas sighs. “Look, I know he can be a bit of an ass sometimes-”

“That’s putting it lightly.”

“-But he’s not a bad person, Max, you know that. He’s dealing with a lot right now,” Lucas finishes.

Max rolls her eyes. “Yeah, well, he’s not the only one,” she says bitingly. She has never gotten along with the third boy in their group and at this point she isn’t sure she ever will. She’s also not really in the mood to look at his stupid face today, considering it’ll more than likely start an argument and she doesn’t have the energy for that.

“I know,” Lucas says. “I know. But you’re both my best friends and I think you guys are more alike than you think. If you just gave each other another chance, you’d get along.”

Max doesn’t reply. She doesn’t really know what to say because she knows Lucas is only trying to help her with what he thinks is the current best solution, but she doesn’t want to agree with him either.

“Just think about it,” he continues. “He’s the only one not going anywhere so if you really need to see someone…”

She gets what Lucas is implying, but really? “He’d probably laugh in my face if I showed up at the door. I’d rather stay home.”

At that, Lucas raises his arms in surrender. “I’m just saying he wouldn’t turn you away. We don’t lie to each other, alright?”

Max shrugs in response. “Whatever. I’ll figure something out.”

Lucas steps forward quickly to hug her. Pulling back, he keeps his hands on her arms. “I wrote my cousins’ phone number on the back of your math worksheet yesterday if you need it.”

She gives him a tiny nod and he returns it with a small smile, dropping his arms back to his sides.

“I’ll see you first thing Thursday morning,” he adds.

“Thursday,” she repeats, putting one foot back on her bike pedal. “Got it.” What’s she supposed to do until Thursday?

The answer, as it happens, is absolutely nothing. For the rest of Sunday afternoon, Max rides around town with no destination. She stops in a park for a while, sitting down and pulling up blades of grass and sprinkling them around her. A man walking his dog gives her a weird look and she flips the bird at his back. That action feels oddly satisfying, even if he didn’t see it. In the evening she makes her way back to her house, and everyone pretends like she didn’t just spend the entire day gone.

Monday dawns looking and feeling exactly the same, except Max decides to get a start on some homework. This way when Lucas comes back she’ll be free to hang out with him without the thought of her assignments hanging over her head. Her mom leaves to go to work and all it does is make Max hyper aware of Neil’s movements across the house. He’s supposed to go to work too, but Max isn’t sure he will. In fact, she sort of suspects he’s either quit or been fired. He’s missed too many days.

When she’s tired of writing and the lines of her character analysis of Mercutio are starting to blur into the equations on her algebra worksheet, she goes into the kitchen to find something to eat. Neil’s gone, so she makes herself a ham and cheese sandwich and stands by the sink to eat it. She feels exhausted, and it’s barely afternoon.

Hours later, she wakes up from a nap to the sun near setting and the noises of her mom puttering around the kitchen making dinner. The first thing her gaze lands on is the clunky walkie-talkie sitting on her desk, and her thoughts spring to the boys. Specifically, what Lucas said to her the day before.

Maybe it has more merit than she first gave it. It’s true that she doesn’t get along with Mike at all, but she might be willing to try again at some point, if only to appease Lucas. She had wanted to when they all first met. She liked the other boys just fine, but she could tell from the get-go that Mike was their ringleader and his opinion could sway the others. If she wanted to truly feel like a part of the group, they all had to be on board. Even after that, things weren’t so terrible between them; at least until summer and all the drama with El and then everything else that happened. Now, Max’s headspace is too occupied by other problems to care much about trying to repair her somewhat-friendship with him, and Mike has become more and more reclusive by the day. She even thinks she saw him smoking once, down at the far end of the field, which, although she isn’t an expert, she feels is extremely uncharacteristic.

Everything’s just weird now. There’s too many empty holes in all their lives.

Dinner is mostly quiet; nobody in this house ever says anything that has any true meaning anyway. Maybe it’s better this way. Neil ends up on the couch joined by his bottle of whiskey and Max’s mom shoos her away after she’s cleared the table, so Max retreats back to her room. The silence is almost deafening, and she wishes that dumb walkie-talkie on her desk would crackle. What she wouldn’t give for someone to say real words to her.

She considers calling Lucas, but she doesn’t want to bother him with her problems when he’s supposed to be having fun with his cousins. She also doesn’t want Neil to ask who she’s calling. In the end, she ends up tidying her room, gathering up all her comic books and folding the clothes she has on the floor before placing them on her chair. The walkie seems like it’s calling out to her as she glances at it every five seconds, and then finally lets her frustration out on it by snatching it up and launching it at her bed. She doesn’t want to break it, but she did want to throw it. Why does she keep looking at it? It’s not like anyone’s going to call her on it. The only people who might are both out of town.

Her emotions war inside of her. On the one hand, she knows what she wants, what she needs. She needs to talk to someone freely so it has to be someone who relates to what she’s seen, because being stuck virtually alone inside her house for the next few days until Lucas gets back is going to drive her insane. Unfortunately the only person she can think of is someone she isn’t on good terms with, which makes her angry for even having the thought. Is she really desperate enough to potentially embarrass herself?

Damn Lucas for putting the idea in her head. She’s sure she never would’ve considered it on her own. Damn Lucas and his stupid advice, damn Dustin for ever speaking to her that day and getting her involved in all their mess, and damn Mike for hating her from day one.

Damn her for going to talk to him anyway. She sneaks out her window, just as she has done to meet Lucas so many times, except it’s after nine and it’s dark out. She brings the walkie with her.

On the way, she wonders why she’s even doing this. She supposes it would make it easier for Lucas and Dustin when they all hang out together (which is getting rarer every week) if she and Mike aren’t constantly at each other’s throats about something or other. She also remembers something El said to her on the phone a while ago that she had forgotten about until this very moment. El had heard enough complaints from both of them about each other and was just wishing they would stop fighting. Max had scoffed at it and been about to launch into another rant about just how much of a jerk Mike was when El had said she didn’t care if they weren’t friends, she just wanted them to stop being so mad all the time.

Max kind of agrees with her. Being angry all the time is exhausting, and there are way worse things in her life to be angry about than Mike Wheeler and his dumb attitude. If she can make peace with him, maybe she won’t feel so out of place around her own friends. And maybe, if they can get over everything that’s happened between them, it’ll give her hope that the rest of her life might look up one day, too.

It’s only when she gets to his house that she realizes she doesn’t know what she wants to say. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a whole conversation, maybe just seeing each other for five minutes will give her enough stability to stay in her house until Lucas returns and she can talk to him instead. She just needs to be around someone who knows the things she’s been through since she moved here, someone who looks at her and knows why she is the way she is. Her mom can never know and will never understand, and Neil is too scary to ever think about approaching him with anything at all.

She drops her bike in the grass by the back of the house, making her way to the basement door where she knows the boys like to be. He’s probably in there still. Her stomach is roiling with nerves, scared that he’ll open the door and glare at her like he usually does, but she remembers there’s another way he looks at her sometimes. There are moments at school, when she passes the gym or sees the basketball team, where Max gets overwhelmed at the memories of her dead stepbrother. It’s almost like she can smell him, the way he used to get up in her face when he yelled at her and the way he looked when he died apologizing to her. It’s moments like that when Dustin and Lucas will be distracted with some petty disagreement that she looks to Mike and his gaze contains solidarity instead of hostility; reassurement that he knows what it feels like to be reminded at every turn of someone you cared about who is gone. He was there, too, and saw Billy sacrifice himself at the last moment just as she did. It’s not an image either of them can forget.

It’s this that gives her the courage to rap her knuckles on the glass pane of the basement door and wait for an answer. When she waits ten seconds and nothing happens, she frowns and knocks again. He wouldn’t know it’s her, why would he ignore it?

She pushes her face up to the door again and tries to see inside, her breath fogging against the glass, and then realizes all the lights in the basement are off.

“Shit,” she says quietly. She doesn’t want to show up at the front door at this time of night. His mom will probably answer and Max doesn’t want to explain herself. She wanders around to the front of the house anyway, looking at which lights are on. There’s one on the ground floor that flickers and seems like it might be a TV, and there’s one on in a room on the second floor. That room has pink wallpaper, though, so Max decides to assume it’s not the one she’s looking for. The middle upstairs window is dark, and the one on the left has the blinds pulled halfway down, but she spots a familiar figure walking past it in the half second her eyes jump to it. Bingo.

She takes a breath to steel herself before bringing the walkie-talkie out of her jacket pocket and pressing down on the button. “Mike, do you copy? It’s Max. Over.”

The walkie crackles with static for a few seconds, and then clears up as an answer comes through. “Yeah, I copy. What do you want? Over.”

“Can you come outside?”

It crackles again in the silence, and Max thinks that maybe this was insane and she should just go home. Then, “You’re outside?”

The blinds lift all the way up and Max sees Mike’s expression change from confused to surprised, like he didn’t actually believe she was there. In a second, he has the window pulled up too and his head sticking out of it.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, his tone of voice anxious, and Max realizes he probably thinks something horrible has happened. In his head, there’s likely no other reason she of all people would show up at his house at close to ten at night.

“Nothing happened, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says, glancing away from him above her and noticing she’s standing in front of the front door. This is not a good place to be. “I just- didn’t want to be alone.”

She looks back up to find him staring at her like she’s grown another head. “So you came to me?”

Max huffs and crosses her arms. “Well, there’s no one else to go to!”

“Keep your voice down!” He hisses. “Do you want my mom to hear you?”

She glares. She’s starting to think that this was a bad idea after all.

After a few seconds of mutinous eye contact, Mike puts a hand to his forehead exasperatedly. “Give me a minute, I’ll meet you at the basement door.” He shuts the window and pulls the blinds down without another word, so Max heeds the order and circles back around to where she left her bike. A few moments later, he comes out the door shrugging on a jacket over what looks like-

“Are those Star Wars pyjamas?” She asks, her mouth twisting into a teasing little smile. What does El see in this guy? As far as she knows, Lucas isn’t this completely nerdy.

He gives her a flat look. “Why do you have to have a problem with everything that I do?”

She frowns. “It was just a question. Relax, jeez.”

In response, Mike puts his hands in his pockets and looks at her. “So what do you want to do?”

Max balks for a second, awkwardness taking over her. This is so weird. She’s never willingly chosen to spend any of her time alone with Mike, and now she doesn’t know what to do.

“Um… just- walk around, maybe?”

He shrugs at her answer and starts walking toward the line of trees behind the house, where there’s a little path that leads off to the next street. Max follows quietly, a little moonlight shining down on them, and she thinks that the silence between them doesn’t feel as explosive as it usually does.

Somewhere along the way, after they’ve crossed another street and gone down a path between two houses, Mike takes something shiny out of his pocket and starts playing with it, and Max sees that it’s a lighter.

“What’s that for?” She asks.

“Lighting things up,” he says.

“You smoke?”

“Only sometimes.”

“So what’s it for the other times?”

He looks at her and his eyebrows furrow for a quick second, seemingly surprised that she inferred something about him correctly.

Mike shrugs again. “Sometimes I go out to the woods and set dead leaves on fire one at a time just to watch them burn. It’s weird how something that was alive once can just disintegrate right in front of you.”

Max isn’t sure what to say to that, but she offers something anyway. “Sometimes I steal my stepdad’s Bowie knife. Use it to stab trees,” she says casually. “Sometimes I even carve that I hate him into them.”

She’s never told Lucas that. Something in her knows that he wouldn’t relate, that his way of dealing with his anger is much calmer and reserved, but Mike’s admission of low-level violence makes her feel less crazy for her own. Maybe Lucas was right in saying they’re more alike than they think they are.

They come out of the trees behind the houses, and the path continues down a hill to a small playground area. There's a swing set that Max sits down on, the cold rubber biting through the fabric of her jeans and making her shiver. The chains creak when Mike sits in the one next to her. He’s digging through his pockets for something.

Max is almost surprised when he pulls out a box of cigarettes and plucks one from the pack, lighting it, but given what he’d just told her two minutes ago it’s not that shocking. He takes a pull from it and then blows the smoke out into the air slowly.

“You want some?” He asks, turning to her.

She remembers the choking sensation she’d felt that time Billy had offered her a drag from his cigarette, and then her mom’s reaction to it.

“Yeah, why not.” Maybe if she still smells like smoke tomorrow, her mom will care enough to ask where she’s been.

Mike hands it to her and the tips of his fingers are warm. “You’ve smoked before?”

“Once,” Max says.

He nods and watches her, and she tries not to let the hot, ashy air she breathes in make her choke. She holds it for a few seconds and then blows it out, and it makes her feel less nervous than she was before about this whole situation.

The pair of them sit there in the darkness for a few minutes, sharing the cigarette in silence, before Max thinks to ask a question she never got a real answer for.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

Mike doesn’t look at her, sucking in another breath of smoke. “I don’t hate you.”

“You sure act like you do.”

“Oh, and you don’t?” He says sarcastically, still not looking at her. “If I hated you why would I be here right now?”

“Well, if I hated you, why would I have come talk to you?” She retorts, trying to restrain the irritation she knows is probably written all over her. If she doesn’t rein herself in, she knows this is going to go south quicker than she wants it to.

He laughs dryly. “You said it yourself. You only came because there’s no one else.”

Max bites back the anger that’s trying to rise. He does have a point there, but she’s not going to tell him that. He’s also not answering her question.

“Fine. Maybe you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t.”

“What’s your problem with me then?”

He hands her the end of the cigarette to finish and grabs onto the chains of the swing, dragging the toes of his Converse through the grass.

“You’re always starting shit with me for no reason and it makes me so tired,” he says. “Like, we’d be friends just fine if we didn’t argue every other day.”

“And whose fault is that…” Max murmurs under her breath, dropping the cigarette stub to the ground and putting it out with her foot.

Mike turns to her sharply. “Uh, yours? You made El break up with me! How am I supposed to forget that?”

“I already told you I didn’t make her!” Max says loudly. Why is he still on this? As far as Max is aware, they’re basically back together anyway so it’s not like it made a difference. “And how am I supposed to forget how shit you made me feel the first week I was here?”

He looks away again. “I was pretty rude, I’ll give you that.”

She scoffs. “That’s underrating it. You were a total asshole.”

He pushes himself forward a little bit and then lets himself swing back. “I guess I never really apologized for that. I do regret it.”

Max stays silent and waits for him to continue. He’s slumped over in the swing, looking smaller and sadder than she’s ever seen him look, and her heart twinges. She recognizes the defeat present in the way his shoulders are hunched, the complete and utter exhaustion at the state of their lives painted on his face. It’s what she sees every day when she looks in the mirror.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t like you, or something,” he tells her. “I was jealous that Lucas and Dustin seemed like they were moving on when I was so…”

“Messed up?” She offers.

Mike shrugs. “Yeah. And part of it was out of concern for you, too.”

Max furrows her brows in confusion. That’s new. “Concern?” She asks, shaking her head slowly. Her hair swings around her face like a curtain, blocking her vision, but she wants to look at Mike and see how he explains this. She tucks it away behind her ear.

“Yeah,” he says again. “I could see how fucked up Will was, and I knew how fucked up I was. And Dustin and Lucas are good at pretending stuff doesn’t affect them but I know it did. It does.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t want someone new getting mixed up in our shit, okay?” He bursts out, meeting her curious gaze once again. “I didn’t want someone else to have to experience the stuff we did. I thought if I made it obvious that I didn’t want you there, you would leave. You know now, but when Lucas told you we couldn’t tell you stuff for your own safety it was the truth.”

Max thinks about that. She supposes it makes sense. She has noticed that Mike tends to be the guy that worries about everyone else’s safety, and always wants to get to the bottom of the problem before anyone gets hurt. Lucas is the same and it’s something she admires about him, but it’s overtly obvious in Mike when he’s always the one stressing about coming up with plans. Lucas is a little more go-with-what-the-adults-say.

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” Mike finally says, and his expression is earnest. He’s a bad liar anyway, so Max knows that he means it. Speaking of his lies… she has something to apologize for too.

“I’m sorry too,” she says. “For judging your relationship too fast.”

He makes a weird noise when he registers what she said, almost like a laugh but kind of mad, too. “Yeah, and for making my girlfriend dump me.”

Max reaches out towards him and smacks his arm, a spike of irritation fuelling her. “Mike, how many goddamn times do I have to tell you I didn’t make her?”

“Well, what the hell did you say to her to make her do that?!” He exclaims.

The peace of the previous moment is gone and Max crosses her arms over her chest defensively. “From what she told me, it sounded like you were just lying straight to her face so you didn’t have to see her. All I did was tell her that if you did it again, she should dump your ass. You did it to yourself.”

Mike throws his arms up. “Hopper made me lie! He told me if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let me see her anymore. You seriously think I wouldn’t want to spend time with her? After everything we went through?”

She thinks for a second about the way he’d looked when El had walked back into their lives; the way he had seemed to drop all the negativity he’d been carrying around the second she came through that door. Max remembers thinking she’d never been so sure about someone’s presence in her life.

He’s still on a roll. “What, is that why you’ve dumped Lucas, like, seven times? You just break up with him the second he does something you don’t like without even letting him explain himself?”

Bringing that up is a sore point. Max feels incredibly guilty for the way she’s treated Lucas in the past, and she’s trying to be better. She’d told him once that she knew she could be a jerk like her stepbrother sometimes, that she was angry just like he was, but that she didn’t want to be like him. And then she turned around and behaved exactly like him, manipulating Lucas’ reactions and dumping him over and over because she knew he would come back. It made her feel like she was in control, the dominant one, the complete opposite of what she saw in her mother and what she felt in her house every day.

But she had come to a point where she realized that one day, Lucas would get fed up with her. There would come a day when he wouldn’t stand for it anymore and he’d leave her permanently, and Max didn’t think she could live with that. From then on, she had decided to try harder with him and make things better, to talk about her feelings more. It’s always going to be difficult for her, but Lucas is worth it.

“Don’t say that like you know anything about why I did that,” she says sharply, gripping so tightly onto the chain of the swing that the cold metal feels like ice in her hand.

Mike glares back at her, indignant. “Oh, that’s rich! Like you knew anything about me when you said that shit to El!”

Max stands up suddenly. “I’m tired of the lies, Mike! Do you know what it’s like to live in a house where your mom will watch your brother get beat up and leave the room so she can pretend it didn’t happen? Where she doesn’t care where you go or how you feel or what’s going on with you because if she doesn’t ask, she doesn’t have to lie to herself that it’s okay? Where we all just don’t talk about anything and pretend it’s all fine when it isn’t?”

She’s breathing hard and he’s staring up at her with wide eyes, accustomed to her outbursts by now but not like this. Max sits back down on the swing, hard.

“I broke up with Lucas a lot because it made me feel like I had control,” she admits. “I needed to feel like I was in charge of the situation. I get enough of being treated second-class at home, and I don’t want to be like my mom, ever.”

She looks back at Mike on the other swing and he doesn’t look mad at her anymore, only like he’s processing what he’s just heard. It lets her own anger drain out of her.

“When El told me what you said, it reminded me of my mom,” Max continues. “She seemed so confused on why you would do that and to me it looked like you were just using her when you wanted her and dropping her when you didn’t. My mom kind of… disappears into whoever she’s dating and just goes along with whatever they do, and it looked like that for me,” she finishes.

“I get it,” he says, and Max raises her eyebrows. “I mean, I don’t get it personally, my parents aren’t like that. I just meant I get where you’re coming from. It makes sense why you would think that way.”

“I didn’t want the same thing that happens to my mom to happen to El,” Max adds. “She is her own person, and she of all people deserves the chance to be that.”

At last, they find common ground. “I agree,” Mike replies. “She’s been through enough in her life. And I’m happy you and her are friends now,” he adds. “Seriously. It was kind of weird to imagine her having girl problems or something and talking to my sister about it. I’m glad she has you.”

“I’m glad she has you,” Max says, and Mike looks shocked to hear her say it. “I might not get why, but I know you make her happy somehow. Even if you do wear Star Wars pyjamas.”

“Hey!” He says, offended. “You recognizing it means you’ve seen it too. And I know for a fact you read comics, so you’re just as much of a nerd as me.”

Max shrugs, giving him the point. “At least I can beat you at arcade games.”

“Is that a challenge?” He asks, swinging closer as if to intimidate her.

Max laughs, and it’s a real laugh for the first time in what feels like forever. “You’re on.”

“Tomorrow,” Mike suggests. “Twelve o’clock. I’ll meet you there.”

“Bring painkillers,” she warns him. “You’re gonna need them after I’m done kicking your ass at every. Single. Game.”

“You won’t beat me at Galaga,” he says proudly.

“Wanna bet?”

They stand up and shake hands, and his feels pleasantly warm. It’s a nice change from the frozen chain she was holding onto.

“Loser gets us fries,” Mike adds, and Max agrees to it. As if of one mind, they both turn back up the path they came from.

They’re back across the two streets they crossed and almost all the way back to Mike’s house when Max speaks again.

“So are we good?” She asks. She feels good about having aired out all the conflict she had with him, and he’s had this dumb smile on his face the whole time they’ve been walking back, which she’s choosing to take as a good sign.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at his feet. “We’re good.” He smiles wider.

It brings a small smile to Max’s own face. Having friends feels nice. “Why are you smiling like that?”

He coughs a little, scratching his head. “Just thinking about how happy El will be when she finds out we’re not enemies anymore.”

Max rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “You are so whipped.”

He shrugs as if to say, what can you do?

“I think Lucas and Dustin will benefit from having us not trying to kill each other every five seconds, too,” she says.

“Definitely.”

“Although I’ll probably still be annoyed by half the things you say.”

Mike makes a face like he’s not surprised to hear that. “Don’t worry about it. You’re still annoying, I just like you now. No more actual fighting.”

“Good,” she replies, feeling happier than she has in days as they arrive back in his backyard. She can faintly see her bike lying in the grass.

Mike has the door to the basement halfway open by the time she’s sitting on her bike ready to ride away, and at the last second lays a hand on her arm.

“Hey, anytime you need somewhere to go… I’m usually home,” he says, looking at her directly. It’s a simple thing to say, but she knows what he means by it. He’s telling her that he understands that sometimes her house is not a home, and that she’s always welcome in his if she needs it.

“Thanks,” she responds, and for once she is truly thankful for Mike Wheeler’s existence.

“Well, good night,” he answers, and awkwardly salutes her out of nowhere.

Max squints at him confusedly for a second. “I’ll... see you tomorrow,” she says haltingly.

He looks kind of embarrassed and shuts the door quickly, and Max rides off back to her house. That was random.

However, she is looking forward to tomorrow. She has a feeling Mike’s going to be the type of friend she’s constantly competing with, ribbing back and forth to see who can be worse just like they usually do, but this time knowing they’re both forgiven for their mistakes. It’s different from her other friendships for sure, but she thinks it’ll be good. Lucas is going to be pleased.

Maybe the wait until Thursday won’t be so bad after all.

#YALL please let me know what you think of this #i have so many thoughts on this pairing #SO MANY #also if you liked it please rb to share so more people can read it!! <3 #stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things 3 #stranger things fanfiction #urdearestmom

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the-desolated-quill · 4 years

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If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own - Watchmen (TV Series) blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. if you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

If You Don’t Like My Story, Write Your Own feels like a tale of two episodes. One has well written characters, emotive storytelling and exciting possibilities, whereas the other contains ham-fisted, painfully obvious subtext and annoyingly long infodumps told to the audience with all the grace and subtlety of a brick to the face.

Let’s start with the positives. At the beginning of the episode, we’re introduced to the character of Lady Trieu, played by Hong Chau, who buys a farmhouse from an Oklahoma couple by offering them a genetically engineered baby. I love this scene so much. It’s by far the most tightly written and engaging scene so far this series, and serves as a perfect introduction to a genuinely interesting character.

Lady Trieu is a Vietnamese born trillionaire industrialist who absorbed Adrian Veidt’s company after his disappearance and seems to take heavy inspiration from him, even going so far as to have a gold statue of him in her complex. It’s unclear whether she knows about his involvement with the squid (how could she possibly know?), but she clearly shares his vision of making the world better.

Or... does she?

That’s precisely what I love about this character. Trieu is clearly the secret mastermind behind whatever is going on here (more on that later) and it would have been easy to just simply have her be a carbon copy of Veidt, but she isn’t. There’s a subtle, but clear distinction between the two. In my review of Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, I talked about the paradox of a liberal capitalist and how it’s often not enough for Ozymandias to simply save the world. He needs to be seen to be saving the world. He wants something with spectacle in order to appeal to his own vanity. This is true of Trieu as well, except, despite all his flaws, Ozymandias clearly at least wanted to help people, albeit in an incredibly flashy way for his own aggrandisement. Trieu doesn’t even want that. She just wants the attention and the good will.

The opening scene is a perfect illustration of this. Giving that married couple their own DIY baby was one thing, but all the crap with the hourglass and the silly monologue and everything, there was no need for any of that. And lets not forget, she didn’t give this couple a baby out of the goodness of her heart. She did it solely because she wanted their land so she could claim a fallen object from space. The same is true of this Millennium Clock she’s building. I’m pretty sure its purpose isn’t just to tell the time, but that’s not the point. It’s described by her daughter as not the Eighth Wonder of the World, but rather as the First Wonder of the New World. Plus, of course, she is a trillionaire. If she just handed out even a small portion of her vast wealth, it would make a huge difference, but then there would be nothing in it for her. Nothing to gain. Unlike Veidt, Trieu is a character driven by pure cynicism. She has no interest in saving the world, but rather the attention and adoration of the world around her. She wants the world and the people around her to rely on her to save them. Basically if Ozymandias is an altruist tempered with narcissism, then Lady Trieu is a narcissist tempered with altruism. It’s a beautifully realised character and one I’m most excited to see more of in the episodes to come.

I also like the connection she has with Angela. Both were born and raised in Vietnam, except Trieu’s mother was a native to Vietnam before the US invaded and absorbed the country, turning it into the fifty first state. This puts Angela in an interesting position. Being an African American, her family obviously has history of being the victims of colonial oppression, but in this alternate history where Vietnam is part of America, Angela is also now in the role as one of the colonial oppressors. A settler in a country stolen and plundered from the natives. It’s an interesting position for her character to be in and I’m very curious to see where the show takes this.

After taking a backseat in the previous episode, Angela mercifully gets to take the lead again this time around and she’s great. With the FBI breathing down her neck, Angela continues to get to the bottom of the mystery involving her grandfather, the murder of Judd Crawford, and the Seventh Kavalry, and I really like where this is taking her character. She privately confides in Wade about what she has learned, even asking him to hide Judd’s Klan robe. This is the kind of character stuff I wanted to see in the previous episode during the funeral. How do you react to the knowledge that one of your closest friends was a hateful bigot? And from the looks of things, it seems as though Angela is doing her level best to protect Judd’s memory, at least until she gets to the bottom of what the fuck is going on here. I love this because it feels totally believable.There’s still a part of her that doesn’t want to accept Judd’s racist ties to white supremacy and clinging onto the idea that he might be misunderstood or that there’s something else going on underneath. This is an excellent internal conflict that has so far been handled exceptionally well. You don’t think less of Angela for not wanting to accept the truth because it’s totally understandable and believable.

Also I just want to briefly talk about what we learn about Wade, aka Looking Glass, in this episode. The man’s a doomsday prepper, living in a bunker in his back garden, preparing for another squid attack. I LOVE this so much. It makes total sense in the context of Watchmen and, like with Lady Trieu, it serves as a really nice inversion of an existing character. Like Rorschach, Looking Glass is a paranoid conspiracy nut, but unlike Rorschach, there’s actually some truth and logic behind his paranoia. Again, it’s a subtle distinction, but it’s enough to allow the character to go off in his own direction.

Here’s the thing. The bits I like about this episode, I really like. Unfortunately the bits I don’t like, I really don’t like.

Let’s begin with Laurie. What is she even doing here? Not only is she so utterly divorced from the character in the graphic novel, she doesn’t even contribute anything meaningful to the plot, other than to bicker constantly with Angela (which, considering this is the first time in Watchmen that we’ve had two female characters together interacting with each other, it feels immensely disappointing that this is the best the writers can come up with) or to spout gratuitous fanwank and pop psychology. The pop psychology in particular irritates me because it simply doesn’t gel with the tone and themes of Watchmen. I’m really hoping all that stuff about trauma and wearing a mask to hide the pain doesn’t in fact apply to Sister Night, otherwise I’m going to be extremely annoyed. Not only is that cliched beyond belief, it also stands directly against the whole point of Watchmen as a concept. Alan Moore’s intent was to scrutinise the reasons behind why someone would put a costume on and fight crime. Some just want the attention, others want to compensate for their own inadequacies, and some just want to live out their own violent, hedonistic fantasies. Only Rorschach fits the trauma model proposed by Laurie, and even then it’s not really accurate. Rorschach uses his trauma more as an excuse than a motivation. Watchmen serves as a deconstruction and criticism of superhero archetypes, so to potentially give Sister Night an obligatory tragic backstory would feel like a grave disservice to the source material.

The pop psychology also represents another problem this episode has. It seems to spend an awful lot of time telling its audience about its themes and commentaries rather than just showing them. One of the things I loved so much about the second episode was that it respected the audience’s intelligence. The connections it was making between the police and mob psychology, the superhero genre and its roots in US propaganda, and the KKK and the moral absolutism of most comic book heroes were apparent in the episode’s visual language and symbolism. It didn’t try to highlight them in fifty foot high neon lettering, instead trusting the audience to make the connections themselves. Here, however, completely the opposite. At numerous points, it feels as though the episode is sitting me down like a naughty school child and straight up telling me the plot, rather than trust that I’m a grown man who is perfectly capable of following this by himself, I pinky promise.

Take the whole subplot with Adrian Veidt for example. By watching the previous episodes, you can deduce that he’s trapped in a prison of his own making and is trying to escape (although admittedly it turns out that the clones aren’t in fact his creations, which is a pity because I think that’s less interesting, but still). Awesome idea. Love it. But showrunner Damon Lindelof is clearly worried that the idiots sitting at the back of the class didn’t get this, so Adrian spends his limited screen time here just explaining his subplot to the audience. It’s really annoying.

Or what about the Millennium Clock? The Seventh Cavalry are clearly in league with Trieu for some unknown reason, and in their video message to the police in the first episode, they say ‘tick, tock’ a lot, which is clearly a reference to the Clock. All a bit goofy, granted, but do you know what’s even goofier? Will getting up out of his wheelchair, staring dramatically into camera and saying ‘tick, tock’ for no fucking reason whatsoever other than to spell out the connection for the slow people in the audience who didn’t make the link. Dude, I promise you, we are following this. It was just pointless. But not nearly as pointless as...

Good God, do I hate Lube Man!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against there being humour in Watchmen. The original graphic novel had moments of dark humour, but there’s a time and a place. It just feels weird and kooky just for the sake of being weird and kooky. And again, it serves as a less than subtle reminder to the audience of the themes of the show. The police are abusing their powers and letting smaller crimes fall by the wayside, but rather than let that come up naturally in the story, we get a random excerpt from the Silver Slider here. All I can say is Lube Man had better play a vital role in the episodes to come, otherwise I’ll be pissed.

See, when Good Lindelof is writing the scripts, I’m enjoying this show immensely. When Bad Lindelof takes a turn at the keyboard, however, that’s when I start to get worried.

#if you don't like my story write your own #watchmen #watchmen hbo #damon lindelof #dc #hbo #review #spoilers

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Roman Sionis

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Birds of Prey is a fun, silly movie. So you’d expect a fun, silly villain for such a film, right? Well, we sort of get that… but this is an R-rated fun, silly movie, so the villain is going to cuss a lot and peel people’s faces off and be a raging psychopathic manchild. Roman Sionis, everybody!

Good old Roman Sionis, known to comic fans as Black Mask (he isn’t ever called that by anyone except Harley during his introduction, and he doesn’t even wear his mask until the end), is just an absolute raging lunatic. He gets mad at the drop of a hat, is creepily posessive of Dinah Lance, has a very close relationship with his murderous second-in-command Zsasz, and is just generally unpleasant to every single person who crosses his path.

But that’s par for the course for Roman Sionis, who is never really EVER portrayed as a charming, likable guy. The real question here is, is he an entertaining villain? Well he’s played by Ewan McGregor, what do YOU think?

Motivation/Goals: Roman is a relatively simple villain, but I think this works in his favor. You see, a big issue with Harley’s previous outing, Suicide Squad, is that the mission was way too high stakes despite the cast featuring a group of people who didn’t really have any powers beyond “fighting really good.” or “has weapon skills.” You’re telling me you’re gonna put Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang up against Enchantress and her army of ancient Aztec super-zombies? WHAT? Here, we have a street-level threat much more suited to Harley’s capabilities: Roman is just a very powerful gangster, and his goal in this movie is the simple “get this diamond that was stolen back to me so I can make fat stacks of cash.” That’s really all their needs to be here, a simple MacGuffin to drive along the plot to its various setpieces.

Performance: I love Ewan McGregor, so, really, he didn’t have to do much with the role of Roman Sionis to make him great. Still, this man went above and beyond despite having comparatively little screentime to Harley. Roman seems incapable of going a single sentence without cursing up a storm and is the epitome of a psychopathic manchild, tormenting people for the slightest of reasons. He forces a woman to strip and dance on one of his tables because she was laughing too loud when he was upset, and decides not to spare a girl’s life because she had a gross snot bubble on her face from sobbing while he had his crony Zsasz peel off her parents’ faces. As funny and hammy as he gets, the dude is a stone-cold ruthless bastard who has no line he won’t cross to get what he wants.

Final Fate: Cass hides a grenade on him and steals the ring, and then Harley kicks him off the pier while he panics. Before he even hits the water, BOOM! Never would I have expected to laugh out loud at the sight of Ewan McGregor being blown into bits, but this movie was just full of surprises.

Best Scene: I think that the honor has to go to his establishing character moment with Zsasz, as they cut off the faces of a family who crossed Roman, and then when Roman decides to spare the daughter, he notices snot on her face, says “Ew” like a petulant child, and has Zsasz cut her face off anyway. It’s a great way to establish that Roman is an awful human being no matter how you slice it, and firmly establishes that while, yes, he is a misogynist villain in a female-led blockbuster, his misogyny is just a tiny facet of how unabashedly terrible Roman is.

Final Thoughts & Score: So, this is gonna sound weird, but… Roman kinda reminded me of Justin Hammer. Hammer is a villain who I have greatly warmed to over time (mostly thanks to Nando V Movies on YouTube), to the point where I think he’s actually pretty funny but is held back from true greatness by the sloppy nature of Iron Man 2. The film was big, bloated, and didn’t know what to do with itself. And this film is KIND OF like that… but it knows what to do with Roman.

The movie has an undercurrent of female empowerment, so why not make the villain emblematic of things women have to overcome? Roman is creepy, misogynistic, and even a bit racist especially with his condescending actions towards Dinah. And he even throws a fit when she “betrays” him and decides to murder her. But the movie is smart so as to not make this hamfisted; the movie makes it entirely clear that even if you take away his misogynistic elements, Roman Sionis is just an utterly disgusting human being. Everything about him is just so hilariously vulgar and repulsive, but the way he’s performed helps lighten it and help keep him within the tone of the movie. He’s just dark enough and just hammy enough to work.

My big issues with Roman are mostly due to his utilization and the wasted potential, which is a problem that really hits a lot of stuff in Birds of Prey. He is great every time he’s onscreen, but his screentime is fairly limited, and then he dies at the end which robs him of any chance of coming back in the future as an antagonist. He actually functions great as a more grounded threat rather than some larger-than-life end of the world threat, but the fact he dies horribly – before even having his mask burned onto his face, even! - just kind of feels like a waste of a character. To be fair, Black Mask is not the best or most interesting Batman villain crime lord; we have the Penguin for that. But when you cast someone like Ewan McGregor and he’s clearly having a blast, it’s hard not to feel at least slightly bitter when he gets hilariously gibbed at the end.

Still, I can’t let Justin Hammer’s sacrifice go in vain; he walked so Roman could run, and Roman ran so that perhaps someday Hammer could sprint. Roman gets a nice, fat 8/10, which he definitely earns with the heaping helpings of ham he brings to the table, though he is held back at least a little by the wasted potential of his character.

But hey, if you want to talk about wasted potential…

Psycho Analysis: Victor Zsasz

I really like Victor Zsasz in this film. I really do. The angle they went with, the implied homosexuality, the actor… it’s all good stuff that helps make a disturbing character like Zsasz easier to swallow. But he gets hit with wasted potential harder than even Roman does.

Motivation/Goals: He’s Roman’s right-hand man, so basically his motivation is to do whatever Roman wants him to do. However, there is a bit of an implied thing between his boss and him; Zsasz seems undeniably irritated with the attention he lavishes on Dinah, and is very hands-on and affectionate with his boss. A lot of his later actions in the film and his cruelty towards Dinah does seem to stem from some place of anger towards her for taking Roman’s attention away from him.

Performance: I have to say, Chris Messina does a stellar job at portraying Zsasz as creepy and obsessive, and certainly showcases the fanatical loyalty he has towards Roman, making him something of a dark mirror to Harley’s former relationship with the Joker. I also appreciate that, despite not going with Zsasz’s original psychotic serial killer angle, they still made him a bloodthirsty psycho with a sort of nihilistic edge to him. Frankly, this might be the best possible take on a live-action Zsasz without things getting intensely uncomfortable.

Final Fate: This is probably the worst element of Zsasz: his death. Right before the climax he gets shot out of the blue by Huntress and then Harley just repeatedly stabs him with the arrow. And I have to make it clear here – Zsasz barely got to do anything. He never really poses any sort of physical threats to the heroines, never gets into a fight, and is never mentioned again after his death despite being very close to Roman (to the point where the two may have been lovers).

Final Thoughts & Score: As far as henchmen go, Zsasz is pretty solid conceptually. He’s established early on as a psychopathic enforcer of Roman’s gang, he has an eerie air to him, and he has a lot of elements from the comics you rarely see on Zsasz in other media, such as being blonde. Messina does a fantastic job at making the character seem like a competent killer in the employ of Roman.

But the key word is “seem,” because Zsasz frankly never lives up to his hype. Despite being introduced peeling the faces off of a family, he is just never utilized to his fullest extent. He’s kind of just there in a lot of scenes, and while he isn’t unmemorable or anything he never really does anything that makes him into a worthwhile addition to the franchise. He’s honestly just a glorified mook with a few interesting gimmicks to help set him apart.

I’ve gotta give him a 6/10. While he’s definitely a step above average, he’s really not anything amazing, mostly because the movie refuses to allow him to reach his full potential. He doesn’t have any great quotes, his most memorable scene really serves more to establish Roman than anything, and he is dumped and quickly forgotten right before the climax. He would easily be a 7 or 8 if the story treated him with a little more weight or respect, but he just ends up underwhelming despite having so much going for him, and it’s frankly a bit depressing. It’s just a very sad state of affairs for the character, especially when he managed to be more intimidating in the Arkham games despite the fact that he posed even less of a physical threat than he does here.

Well, while we’re here, let’s go over THAT Zsasz briefly.

Portrayed in the games by Danny Jacobs (who you may know as Sacha Baron Cohen's stand in on The Penguins of Madagascar. Yes, Zsasz and King Julien had the same voice actor.), Zsasz is never really a major antagonist and is, in all honesty, a pretty weak fighter; you can always take him down in one punch. The thing with Zsasz in the games, though, is that it’s always tricky to get to him, because he usually has hostages of some kind. In Arkham Asylum, he appears twice, and you need to use stealth to take him out before he kills his hostages. In City, he gets a much longer sidequest where he requires you to pick up ringing telephones and then glide to another one across the city within a time limit. Once you’ve listened to all of his messages, Batman finds out where his lair is, sneaks through it, and whoops his ass.

I certainly can’t say he’s the best villain in either game he appears in, but he’s definitely scary. His messages and game over screens are really freaky and unnerving, and the Riddler even requires you to find some of Zsasz’s work as parts of riddles… and by “work” I am of course referring to corpses posed in life-like positions. There’s also the horrifying little tidbit that in City, Zsasz actually does kill one of his hostages and there’s nothing that can be done about it; if you switch to detective mode in his lair, you can see a corpse at the bottom of the water in the room.

I think how creepy and intense he is really helps make him stand out among the more colorful characters in those games like Joker, Clayface, and Riddler, so I think giving him a nice 8/10 for his appearances is well-earned. I feel like Birds of Prey could have learned a few lessons from this portrayal; if they wanted to make him more creepy than physically intimidating, that could have worked well and it would have made his anti-climactic defeat a bit more plausible. Instead, they kind of tried this middle ground where he’s creepy enough and intimidating enough physically that it just feels like a letdown when he’s offed.

Oh yeah, did you know he appeared in Batman Begins? He had a brief cameo and didn’t do anything significant and looked like this:

Pretty sure he’d get a low score if he wasn’t just a quick little reference.

#Psycho Analysis #Roman Sionis #Birds of Prey #birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn)#Ewan McGregor #victor zsasz #Chris Messina #Danny Jacobs #Arkham series #Batman

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peppersandcats · 4 years

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Flash stuff, comics and TV

So, I am finally up-to-date on The Flash in both comics and TV format, and I have some thoughts. The comics ones are mostly in the “oh come on are we expected to buy this, clearly you are aiming for that” vein, and the TV show ones are very mild and possible super-obvious, but since both deal with what both what is happening and what I think is going to happen, both might be spoilers so I’m putting them under a cut.

To be clear: please do not tell me anything about these assumptions that does not come from existing text. So for example:

“but in issue 76 we saw X” or “in episode 6 of this season Y happened, so we might get Z fallout” is totally fine. Yay analysis! Would love to hear from you!

“in the comics X happens, so that might mean Y for the TV show” is also cool.

“the comics writer said he’s aiming for X” or “a casting decision has been made so we know Y is still showing up/is not on the show anymore after this point” is really not fine please do not tell me that. I do not want to hear it. Thank you.

Also: discusses possible upcoming character death. I know some people would rather not see that, so mentioning it now.

With that in mind, here are my “I am okay with being wrong about this, but I bet this’ll happen” thoughts:

Comics

Oh, comics. Len has apparently turned into a vicious blowhard, Lisa is picking a fight with him, evil King Cold rules over Central, all is lost, no-one is paying me enough to pick up extra titles from DC to find out what all space and time being broken means, dour, dour, grim.

With that in mind, I have a possibly-more-cheerful read on current Snart events than the one initially presented. I’m going to keep in mind Len’s mention of the Rogues going with Lisa’s plan (issue 78 “Without my sister, the whole plan is on hold.”; issue 79 “This isn’t Lex’s plan. It’s not even my plan. It’s your plan.”), and assume that that was true.

This means that I think (hope) that what they’re going for is a long con. That the Snarts are running with a plan where Len plays bad guy to Central City, Lisa tries to convince Barry to use mega-uncontrollable Speed Force power against Luthor by pitching it as "save my brother he's gone bad", and the end goal is that the world-breaking nonsense and Luthor both get taken down while the Rogues get to keep all the shiny new tech in a world that isn’t weirdly broken by evil.

The big thing that kept throwing me about the narrative presented to Barry is why is Len keeping Barry alive?

Because, look. Right now everyone thinks the Flash is dead (seriously, those guards in the throne room were absolutely thinking “jeez, boss, we’ve heard how the Flash died in your arms three times already this week”), and yeah, that’s good to keep Central hopeless. And Len is coming across as mean as hell. But then why hasn’t he really killed Barry? He’s not angling for the “I will build my reputation with a grand execution!”, because then he wouldn’t be talking up how he’d already killed the Flash. He might be keeping Barry alive just to torment him, but then there’d be no benefit to lying about how he’d killed him. Dude’s stuck in Ice Heights, not even the Trickster* can make a dent in that, it’s not like someone is going to mount a successful rescue.

*Please insert usual where-the-hell-does-he-get-those-wonderful-toys rant here, I’m sure you’ve heard it from me by now.

And if Len was building part of his power on the “I will crush Central City’s spirit by letting them know I have taken down the Flash!” foundation, then Lisa’s “oh no, we can’t let people know you’re alive” seems a bit odd.

So if I take a step back, what I see isn’t “Lisa has a heart of gold and is begging for the Flash’s help.” It’s not even “Lisa is vamping Barry and feeding him a sob story about how her brother has gone bad.”

What I see is “the Snarts have a secret plan that involves no-one knowing that the Flash is still alive, so it doesn’t get back to Lex Luthor. Right now the genius supervillain has a massive blind spot about the existence of a terrifying Speed Force bomb, and Lisa is collecting pieces of Mirror Master’s tech. Those are totally the kind of things you could combine to break Luthor’s secret reality-busting stronghold, which would enable you to get rid of him but still keep your super-cool empowering tech.”

And if Len and Lisa are in cahoots on this, the bombast makes a lot more sense. “My sister has been in hiding ever since I took over Central City... and she reveals herself by stealing from me?" is a performance for the benefit of the two-high level mooks who were following Len and could probably hear him through the open doorway. Giant ice-wolves aren’t anything to do with Lisa being scared of dogs when she was a kid (which didn’t really come across in her reaction to them anyway), they’re just really cool and the speech is Len hamming it up for whoever in his citadel is spying for Luthor.

(I mean. It’s Luthor. You’re working with Lex Luthor, you gotta assume.)

So, yeah. I’m still hoping we’ve got the Snarts running a very sensible long con, which combines the best aspects of “we are crooks who want cool stuff” and “we’re not evil, evil is dumb.” Fingers crossed.

Okay, minor stuff, but I think I’ve finally decoded the symbols on the Monitor’s door!

I was assuming, pretty much, that these referenced the Justice League. The Flash in particular has been throwing in asides to the Justice League since its inception (everyone’s seen the mural at CCPD headquarters, right?), the last crossover involved a building that has people who don’t watch the show assuring me that it’s meant to evoke the Hall of Justice, one of the trailers mentioned seven heroes, here we have seven symbols, etc.

Left to right, I think these represent

Black Lightning - it’s not a logo, but the shape evokes the lightning streaks on the torso of his costume. This one was one I kept getting stuck on - I kept thinking “Trident! ...but it makes no sense for them to bring in Aquaman.” Then I went to catch up on Black Lightning a little and it clicked.

Canary - I honestly was thinking White Canary because I really want to see LOT involved, but Sara doesn’t wear a face mask. Therefore, probably need to go with Black Canary (who is a founding member in at least one version of continuity, lord knows which one, I have trouble keeping track)

Flash - that is, to me, obviously his cowl. Little bit coming down in the middle, little chin covering pointing up, wing-y bits on the ears, we’re good.

Martian Manhunter - this one I’m the least sure of, but given the options available, I think it has to be him. He’s totally a Justice League guy, and the hex with straps pointing up and down to the sides, echoes his costume torso.

Supergirl - again, I was staring at this for a while, completely lost, but now it looks to me like a really stylized ‘S’. If it was narrower on the bottom than on the top, it would look a lot like the family logo.

Batwoman - this is both a scarier-looking mask than the second image, and can be read as a figure spreading their wings to either side. (Huh, I suppose it might be Hawkgirl? But I’m betting on Batwoman. If I’m wrong, that’s okay! I have been wrong before)

Arrow. I mean, really, just Arrow. It’s an arrow-head. Arrow.

And I mean, I don’t necessarily think everyone’s going to survive through this. Oliver Queen in particular I think is going to die. Whether that means Roy or Mia steps up to try and become the Arrow, or whether they leave a seat empty at the table to honour Ollie’s sacrifice, I don’t know. But: Arrow in the JLA of the CW.

But.

Arrow is TV, but in a lot of ways it’s still comics. You know how it happens when people die in comics.

I think we might get to see Ollie as the Spectre.

It fits with the well-meaning darkness and the grim drive. It fits with the judgement of "you have failed this city". It fits with the green hood. The recent “hey, vigilantes working with the police” feel like it gives Ollie a sort of cop-if-you-look-at-him-sideways aura that makes him line up better with Jim Corrigan and Crispus Allen--hell, even Hal Jordan functionally comes across as a space-cop. Even Corrigan’s death thematically echoes Ollie’s first (presumed) death by drowning on the Queen’s Gambit.

I would like that. I have long loved the Spectre, and I would not be where I am as a DC TV fan--hell, as a DC fan--if Arrow hadn’t clicked with me.

I would like it if Oliver Queen, that grumpy control-freak secret-keeping self-righteous ass, could still be there on some level. He means a lot to me.

#commentary #the flash spoilers #dc tv #dc comics #crisis on infinite earths #my commentary #theories #leonard snart #lisa snart #the flash iss. 83 #the monitor #justice league #justice league dc tv #oliver queen #the spectre #arrow #here for a positive fandom experience

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toaarcan · 5 years

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Let’s break down this Brainstorm controversy

I’m going to analyse this shit because I’m pissed off. Spoilers for Transformers (2019) under the cut.

So this wasn’t a good start.

Before I go on, I want to stress that I’m a massive fan of Brainstorm as a character, pretty much entirely because of MTMTE. He’s one of my favourite characters, if not my most favourite (A position that he routinely trades with Rodimus, Starscream, and Shockwave), and I’ve spent somewhere in the region of £190 on toys of his, while still hankering for MMC and Iron Factory to do their own takes on him because I want more Brainstorm.

As you can imagine, this gives me a rather personal stake in this bit of shite writing, so I thought I’d clear those biases up first. And since I’m also an asexual person, I have a vested interest in at least keeping to IDW1′s standards of representation and pushing them even higher.

With personal opinions disclaimed, let’s dig into what went wrong with this twist.

I’ll start with the lighter topic, my feelings as a fan of this character, a fan of MTMTE, and a person who spends way too much time on narrative analysis, before I get into the heavy stuff.

1) Problems with this, as a fan of Brainstorm

As a fan of Brainstorm this obviously hurts a lot. Seeing one of my favourite characters killed off in the first issue, with no actual role in the story other than a “sacrificial lamb” for the war can kinda kill the enthusiasm, y’know? And what makes it worse is that IDW is basically the only source of Brainstorm we get. My other favourites are all series mainstays, so if one of them bites it in a show or a comic or a film, I can mostly get past it easily because I’ll see them in something else pretty quickly, which can’t be done with Brainstorm.

He’s only in Marvel G1, where he dies (Albeit in a hardcore way in the final arc, but still, it has the other problems of being Marvel G1), Regeneration One, where he got brought back, brainwashed, and dies again, Sunbow G1, which was trash, and Headmasters, which is only enjoyable as a comically bad dub.

One potential source of Brainstorm and he’s dead in Issue 1.

Making it worse is that, in a comic where pretty much everyone is drawn so similar to their toy that they might as well have been traced over photos of the actual figures, Brainstorm blatantly has his MTMTE design, right down to having his shoulder-cannons pre-war.

For reference, here is Brainstorm’s G1 art:

Here is his G1 toy:

Here is his most recent toy:

Here’s Brainstorm’s design in IDW2 Issue 1.

Look familiar?

It’s not his most recent look from Titans Return, it’s not his classic G1 design, it’s not even his slightly off-model Thrilling 30 figure, it’s straight-up the Roche/Milne design for him from the classic comics. As someone in the UK Toy thread on TFW2005, this feels like a ham-fisted attempt to separate the comic from what came before, a sort of “This ain’t your daddy’s IDW!” by killing off a fan-favourite and pivotal character from IDW1.

2) Problems with this, as a person who likes analysis

Now, narratively this doesn’t even make a lick of sense. Separating all the other problems I have as a fan of the character and an LGBTQIA fan in general, it doesn’t work as a story element.

Like, I get what they’re trying to do here. They want to kickstart the downfall of Cybertronian society with the first murder, but they want that to make a huge impact on the fans without beating about the bush too much, so therefore the best way to do that is to take a character that people know and love and make them the victim.

Thing is, this only works for fans of IDW1. It doesn’t work for general fans, because of the lack of role that Brainstorm normally plays that I brought up earlier.

A minor character from the G1 cartoon would probably have the same, if not a greater effect for those fans, without pissing off the one audience they were all but guaranteed to keep. In a franchise that has so many actual redshirts, killing off one of the series’ actual characters is a tremendous waste.

3) Problems with this, as an LGBTQIA fan

Anyone else feel like we just got Voltron’d or Dragon Prince’d, because I feel like we just got Voltron’d or Dragon Prince’d.

Brainstorm, as we knew him, is an LGBT character. Depending on your reading of the final two issues of Lost Light, he’s either bi or gay (Roberts stated that which was up to the reader at the time, much like the general theme of LL25′s happy ending, though also shared that his reading was that Brainstorm and Perceptor were a couple). Now, if that open interpretation has changed since, I dunno, I haven’t seen his twitter since the comic ended, I don’t get involved with Twitter. So, if I’m wrong, show me and I’ll re-edit this.

But regardless of all that, Brainstorm’s first love was Quark, who was another dude. It is undeniable that he has attraction to other men.

I was heading into NewDW with the resignation that the representation was probably going to take hit. It’s what I’m used to at this point, unfortunately. At the very least, I wasn’t expecting to see the same pairings as the original comic with the possible exception of Chromedome and Rewind, because the latter of the two didn’t really get any characterisation beyond a toy bio until MTMTE anyway, so for all intents and purposes, his MTMTE persona is his original character.

But the announcement that they’d be trying to maintain the representation that defined the comic’s original run so well gave me a margin of hope.

Suffice to say, starting the comic by killing one of the original run’s confirmed LGBT characters right after that smacks of the shoddy and often offensive attempts made by those Netflix animated series mentioned above.

It’s not a good look.

4) Light at the end of the tunnel?

In that same TFW2005 thread I mentioned earlier, another user pointed out that perhaps Brainstorm would be brought back via becoming a Headmaster, an aspect of his character that went unexplored in the previous run.

After all, his body doesn’t even appear badly damaged. I’m pretty sure he walked off worse in the pages of MTMTE/LL, and his head is intact. It could be that he gets saved by being downsized into a smaller form and situated atop a new body (Based on his TR figure, perhaps?).

But I won’t be getting my hopes up. There’s a way to bring him back for the fanfic writers, but I’m not going to hold my breath that it actually happens in canon.

#Transformers #Transformers 2019 #IDW Transformers #IDW2 #IDW2.0 #Maccadam #Brainstorm #Genitus of Operation: Solar Storm

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zak-animation · 5 years

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Miles Morales: The Hero’s Journey of ‘Into the Spider-Verse’

In this post, I’m exploring the plot of my chosen film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as an example of the Hero’s Journey as described by Christopher Vogler. The film examines what it means to be a hero, and I felt like breaking down the plot in this format would be a good start to my research into the movie and it’s narrative. For this post, I’m primarily responding to the first essay question:

Analyse your chosen narrative with close reference to the Hero’s Journey or another appropriate story template. You may write about the film’s failure to fit a conventional structure too. Understanding how a film may subvert and challenge narrative conventions is a good aspect of structural analysis.

Act 1: Separation

1. Ordinary World - introduce the character’s everyday life After a fun opening shot featuring Peter Parker, the film quickly introduces us to the film’s main protagonist Miles Morales. Miles is a teenager from Brooklyn who admires Spider-Man, and we’re shown that he’s struggling to live up to the expectations and standards of his parents and teachers. The film establishes the strong family dynamic of the film, in which we learn that Miles’ father, police officer Jefferson sees Spider-Man as a menace. We learn that Miles has a passion for street art, and pop music that allows him a sense of comfort and ease. After school, Miles sneaks out to visit his Uncle Aaron.

2. Call To Adventure - the hero receives a call to adventure Aaron takes Miles down to an abandoned subway station, presenting him with a blank canvas. Miles sets to work creating a graffiti ‘masterwork’, and is bitten by a radioactive spider in the process. He’s been bitten, and there’s no going back now.

3. Refusal of the Call - the hero (initially) refuses the call Though just a brief moment, Miles does initially refuse the call in a sense of disbelief. After finding out he has spider-like abilities, Miles reads an Amazing Fantasy comic book detailing the superhero origins of Spider-Man, and he draws similarities to what he’s experiencing. He refuses to believe there ‘can be two Spider-men’. He runs away, saying ‘it’s just puberty’ as the thought bubble ‘no’ flies off around him.

4. Meeting the Mentor - the hero meets the mentor Miles returns to the subway station, searching for the radioactive spider. He unintentionally finds a particle accelerator built by big bad Wilson Fisk, who wishes to open parallel universes in a tragic attempt to find alternative, alive versions of his wife and son. Miles watches as Spider-Man swings in to save the day against Fisk’s villainous cronies Green Goblin and the Prowler.

Spider-Man ends up saving Miles from falling to his death, and they share a bonding moment in which they realise they both have similar spider-like abilities. Miles meets his superhero inspiration and mentor, who says he’ll show him ‘the ropes’. Unfortunately, the mentor is gravely wounded by an explosion during the battle, which also kills Green Goblin.

5. Crossing the Threshold - the hero crosses a boundary, and enters a new world Spider-Man gives Miles a USB drive to disable the accelerator and warns him that if the machine is turned on again, the city will be destroyed. Miles makes an escape after watching Fisk pummel Spider-Man to death. Miles has been given a task, and now the city enters a new world: one without Spider-Man.

Act 2: Descent and Initiation

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies - the hero is tested In a comical sequence, Miles attempts to master his new abilities and become the new Spider-Man - but manages to inadvertently damage the USB drive in the process. He visits Spider-Man’s grave, and meets Peter B. Parker, and older and more tired version of Spider-Man from another dimension. We find out that Peter has been dragged into Miles’ dimension by Fisk’s accelerator, and needs to return home - and so begrudgingly agrees to train the Brooklyn teenager in exchange for help in creating a new USB drive, using stolen data.

Here, Miles faces new challenges and tests as he teams up with older Spider-Man to break into Fisk’s research facility, and fight off against chief scientist Olivia Octavious. She reveals that Peter will eventually deteriorate and grows closer to death the longer he stays in their dimension, while Miles manages to take the desired data. The dynamic duo make a hasty retreat, pausing to grab a bagel before Peter teaches Miles to web-swing. They are saved by Gwen Stacy, another dimension-displaced spider heroine. Gwen takes Peter and Miles to May Parker, who is shown to be sheltering the other Spider-People: Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Ham, and Peni Parker and SP//dr, who are also deteriorating before Miles’ eyes. He steps up the plate, and given the fact that this is his dimension, offers to disable the accelerator to send the other Spider-People home. Miles, and the audience, begin to learn the rules of this new special world.

In this step, we are introduced to Mile’s allies and enemies, as we learn more about Peter, Gwen and the gang. Something mentioned in the research lecture when we first explored the idea of the Hero’s Journey was how this step was also known as ‘trailer material’. This was especially true with Into the Spider-Verse, as the majority of shots came from the visual gags and quick-paced action of the ‘break in’ scene and as Miles learns to web swing with Peter.

7. Approach To the Inmost Cave - the hero approaches an external / internal threat The heroes attempt to teach Miles how to use his powers, but their lecturing becomes overwhelming and he runs back to Aaron’s home for advice. When he gets back, however, he discovers that Aaron is actually The Prowler, one of Fisk’s hired guns. Terrified, he flees to May’s house, to find out that Peni has completed building the drive. Unfortunately, Miles was followed by Fisk and his enforcers Octavius, Scorpion and Aaron himself. A fight breaks out, and Miles tries to make an escape with the drive.

Prowler seizes Miles, who prepares to kill him on Fisk’s order. Miles unmasks himself, leading Aaron to realise he has been hunting down his own nephew. Prowler decides not to kill Miles, leading Fisk to shoot him in the back - killing his uncle before his eyes. Devastated and afraid, Miles makes a run for it.

The Spider-gang prepare to face Fisk by attending his dinner party in a convenient disguise, while Peter restrains Miles in his dorm and leaves him behind for his own safety. Peter decides to sacrifice himself by taking Miles’ place in deactivating the accelerator, and swings away to help the others. With his mouth webbed up and stuck to his desk chair, Miles’ father Jefferson knocks on his son’s door to tell him about Uncle Aaron. With just silence as his response, Jefferson assumes Miles doesn’t want to speak to him, and proceeds to apologise for his mistakes as a dad.

Here, our hero faces his inner demons and reaches his lowest point. Jefferson leaves, and Miles is forced to combat his own demons. He realises he’s ready for the challenge, and using an on-request surge of energy, breaks out of the web. This isn’t the Ordeal, this is just the build up to it. Miles returns to Aunt May’s house and the original Peter’s Spider-Cave, and designs his own costume using his own spray cans. We next see Miles clinging to the side of a skyscraper. He’s more confident, but he’s still scared. He’s not Spider-Man yet. Miles adjusts his position, in preparation for the ordeal, moving closer and closer to the edge.

8. Ordeal - the hero faces his threat, midpoint, death and rebirth ‘That’s all it is, Miles - a leap of faith’. Our hero lets go of the building, as the window shatters around his hand, and leaps down into the city skyline. He’s out of control, plummeting towards the ground below. We’re left in suspense as Miles takes a literal leap of faith.

9. Reward - the hero gains something (Seize the Sword) At the last second, miles shoots a web upwards….and it sticks to a building! Miles begins to swing, moving through New York with a visually pleasing fluidity that oozes confidence. After running between taxis and across windows, Miles swings on top of the Brooklyn Bridge and catches his breath. He looks at Fisk Tower, and as an audience, know he’s ready - he is Spider-Man.

Act 3: Resurrection and Rebirth

10. The Road Back - the protagonist, now a hero, embarks on a quest back Miles swings back to meet the gang, and battles Fisk’s enforcers for a final time. It’s a quick fight, but we see how Miles has become his own hero and plays off of his team members easily. Miles manages to activate the USB drive and sends all the Spider-People back to their home dimension. The other heroes have returned home, but the fight isn’t over: Miles isn’t out of the woods just yet.

11. Resurrection - the protagonist is reborn as a hero Fisk and Miles fight it out throughout the accelerator, which attracts his father’s attention. Jefferson watches as this new Spider-Man risks his life to protect the city and the ones he loves, and realises he’s not the enemy. Spider-Man is reborn as a hero in his father’s eyes, which inspires Miles to defeat Fisk and destroy the accelerator in the process. Jefferson and the authorities arrest Fisk and his enforcers, as the officer and the city recognise Spider-Man as a hero.

12. Return With The Elixir - the hero returns, changed Miles swings around the city, ecstatic to be Spider-Man and have his father’s approval. We literally see him return to his ordinary world - in this case, his bed, at the end of the film. Miles lays back, transformed by the experience. He embraces who he is, and the responsibilities of his new life.

Response In this post, I’ve begun my research into my chosen film of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. To kickstart the process, I’ve analysed the film’s plot in relation to the Hero’s Journey, a narrative structure described by writer Christopher Vogler. It’s clear to me that Chris Lord presents a refreshing take on the Hero’s Journey, following all the beats outlined by Vogler, but in an exciting way that’s new and distinctly…Spider-Man.

As an update on the classic Spider-Man origin story, Mile’s superheroic beginnings manage to feel unique and fresh, whilst also echoing those of Peter Parker’s. However, it should be worth noting that the film’s actual narrative - of becoming a hero - is nothing ground-breaking or particularly new. Instead, that honour goes to the the film’s animation and visual style. It’s a brand-new approach to animated filmmaking, and it’s going to make waves in the industry.

To continue my research exploring Into the Spider-Verse and it’s narrative, I’m going to be looking at its ground-breaking comic-inspired visual aesthetic: how it was made, and how this allows the filmmakers to tap into an entirely new approach to visual storytelling in film.

#ba1b:narrativetheory

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: The Grinch

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

What can be said about the Grinch that hasn’t already been said a million times by a million different people? The Grinch is easily one of the most iconic Christmas characters of all time, up there with the likes of Scrooge, and he even has a similar character arc in which he learns the true meaning of Christmas and becomes a better person. The original Chuck Jones animated short has gone down as one of the most beloved Christmas specials of all time as well as one of the best Dr. Seuss adaptations ever (if not THE best), and it gave the Grinch his iconic theme song which every other adaptation has seen fit to use.

The Jim Carrey live action take and the Illumination version which featured Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role both tried to bring a fresh take to the world’s most beloved classic Christmas curmudgeon, but did they succeed in making him entertaining and engaging as a villain is the real question?

Actor: In the original Chuck Jones short, none other than Frankenstein’s monster himself, Boris Karloff, portrayed the Grinch, but this is mostly due to the fact he was the narrator of the story and the Grinch is the only character who really speaks due to the tale being mostly shown from his POV. Still, let’s not pretend like Karloff isn’t the definitive voice here, especially considering his competition.

Carrey and Cumberbatch are both good actors, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think they really do the Grinch all too much justice. Carrey, bless his heart, at least comes fairly close, with his Grinch being in line with the original, but at the same time this is a comedic Carrey character coming off of his 90s run as a wacky comic actor. Carrey injects that manic Carrey energy into the performance, and while I think it’s a good performance, I don’t necessarily find it to be a good Grinch,

Cumberbatch faces a similar issue, not helped by his decision to use a weird American accent as opposed to his natural British one, leaving his Grinch sounding like a nasally dork. Again, he doesn’t do a terrible job by any means, but his performance certainly does nothing to convince you the Grinch is a mean, rotten soul.

Motivation/Goals: The Chuck Jones Grinch sticks to the original book to a fault; the Grinch is just a cranky jerk who hates Christmas for some inexplicable reason, and so decides to ruin it for everyone out of petty spite. Yes, it lacks any sort of depth, but the Grinch is a character from a children’s book and he just puts so much darn effort into his plan that it’s really easy to forget he’s just doing this because he is just a miserable bastard.

The two other attempts at the Grinch have gone a long way to giving him some sort of tragic backstory explaining his hatred for Christmas. And… I actually really like that. Yes, yes, villains can just do villainous things because they’re jerks, but I do appreciate the other adaptations attempting to do something interesting with the character and make him a bit more engaging in a feature-length product. In the Jim Carrey film, the Grinch becomes bitter and evil due to a childhood of constant bullying, while the Benedict Cumberbatch Grinch was a lonely orphan who never got to celebrate Christmas. While obviously it’s up to the viewer to decide whether or not these backstories add any sort of interesting element to the Grinch’s hatred of Chrtistmas, it’s hard to deny that it makes a bit more sense than the Grinch suddenly and randomly deciding after half a century that this Christmas was going to be the last ever.

Personality: While this section of Psycho Analysis is going to be semi-retired, the three Grinches are actually a perfect example of where examining the personalities of the characters can actually show a lot about the overall quality. Obviously, the original Grinch is exactly what a Grinch should be, at least in my eyes: a bitter, miserable curmudgeon who takes great joy in bringing misery to others with his selfish, senseless acts of holiday thievery. He’s a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

The Carrey Grinch does still have these elements, but it’s a bit outshone by Carrey’s hammy performance. His Grinch is about as wild as Ace Ventura or the Riddler, and while hammy villains are always fun – and there’s no denying the Grinch is – it makes it a lot easier to see him eventually turning to the light side, especially since he’s actually shown to have some redeeming qualities.

These issues are continued into Cumberbatch’s Grinch, and in fact here the problems peak. Cumberbatch’s Grinch from the start comes off as more as mildly irritated jerk, yet one who really doesn’t seem evil at all, and as the story continues he seems far more like a depressed, unhappy man with undiagnosed mental illness who is suffering due to childhood trauma. You don’t want to say this guy has termites in his smile or that he’s slippery as an eel or that you wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole; you just want to give him a hug and tell him that things are going to get better. He just seems like he needs a friend, not a total life-changing epiphany.

Final Fate: We all know how it goes; his heart grows three sizes and he learns the true meaning of Christmas. Each of the adaptations keeps this in, though obviously to diminishing returns as each successive adaptation has made the Grinch nicer from the get-go in some regard due to the tragic backstories and whatnot.

Best Scene: At least for the original, his best moment is, of course, the montage during “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch,” in which we get to see all of the slippery ways this green meanie is ruining the holidays. Of course, this is matched by the epic moment at the end where the Grinch gains super strength from his heart growing three sizes and lifts the sleigh of stolen goods, which is equally awesome whether it’s te animated one or Jim Carrey doing it.

Cumberbatch’s Grinch manages to have a different moment to call his best: after he has redeemed himself, he gets invited to dinner in Whoville, and the scene where he nervously goes to the house and makes small talk is just very sweet and endearing. It’s easily the best scene in the movie and shows that even watered down there’s still plenty of heart to be mined from this timeless tale.

Final Thoughts & Score: I think that the fact that the Grinch is constantly being reimagined is a sign at how impressive and enduring he is as a character, and he’s easily the greatest Christmas villain of all time (with apologies to Hans Gruber, Mr. Potter, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and Kirk Cameron). The original special is obviously the definitive portrayal of the character, to the point where the Grinch became a household name and got himself two more specials, one in which he once again terrorized Whoville (this time with a wagon filled with nightmarish hallucinations) and one where he faced off against the Cat in the Hat, the latter being especially notable for beating Zack Snyder to the punch at making “Crossover Versus Movie in Which One of the Title Characters Is Redeemed By Mentioning His Mother” by 34 years.

The original Grinch even effected himself; his iconic green, almost goblin-like appearance was a departure from the book, where he sort of resembled a more mischievous Who, and it has ended up sticking for the character ever since. Throw in that iconic villain song about how foul he is sang by Thurl Ravenscroft AKA Tony the Tiger, as well as the fact that “Grinch” is up there with “Scrooge” as shorthand for someone who hates Christmas, and it’s easy to justify letting the Chuck Jones take on the Grinch steal not only Christmas, but an 11/10.

Carrey’s take on the character is different, but not bad. I’m not going to say it’s good either, though; I still think Carrey hammed it up too much and just let loose his manic energy. And it’s really weird, because I have a soft spot for the film and I love the performance, and I think the insane energy of Carrey’s performance is what elevates the film and has helped it become a sort of holiday cult classic, but I think that it kind of misses the point of how the Grinch should be. It really boils down to the usual thing with these adaptations that try and add complexities to characters that just work better when they are simple: Jim Carrey’s Grinch is a great, fun character, but he just isn’t a great Grinch. Still, the makeup and costuming is so amazing that I’d feel like a Grinch myself if I stole too many points, so I think a 6/10 is a solid score for a performance that manages to be a bit above your average villain.

And then we get to Cumberbatch. I’m just going to say it: I barely consider his Grinch a villain. He’s just too nice and sad and cranky to really be evil. Sure he has wacky inventions, sure he is a bit passive aggressive to the Whos, but god this guy is just not mean enough. The fact he can just walk into town and interact with the townsfolk and they don’t even bat an eye says a lot about how watered down and toothless this take on the character is. Not helping is the safe, soft design Illumination gave him, as well as Cumberbatch’s weird American accent. Still, I don’t think this Grinch deserves worse than a 4/10 when it comes right down to it. In this case, it’s more that what’s interesting about him as a character saves him from sinking any lower than just being subpar as opposed to the problem with Carrey being that what made him interesting as a character made him less appealing as a Grinch. This guy does still try and steal Christmas, after all… It’s just that he’s so nice to begin with that you really aren’t too shocked when he does end up turning over a new leaf.

While it’s obvious the Grinch has had his ups and downs over the years, the fact he is such a legendary figure and an enduring cultural icon really says a lot for his staying power, as well as that sometimes a simple villain that lacks any complex motivation beyond “he’s a jerk” can really resonate with people. Maybe all of these other adaptations don’t quite measure up to the original animated special, but they don’t need to; it’s just interesting to see what different visions for the Grinch look like from different creators. Whether it’s good or bad, one thing is for sure: he’s a mean one, that Mr. Grinch, and we all love him for it.

You know what we don’t love him for, though? His dental hygiene.

Merry Christmas!

#Psycho Analysis #The Grinch #how the grinch stole christmas #Dr. Seuss #Chuck Jones #Boris Karloff #Jim Carrey #Benedict Cumberbatch

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