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centrally-unplanned · 5 months

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The thing about morality is that it only matters when it's real. Discussions of rules or norms for what is right or wrong are almost always, at some level, illusions, approximating reality and guiding decisions in an uncertain world - which does not make them useless, just contextual. Profaning god in your bedroom can never be “wrong” - there is no one to hear you, no one to be hurt by it. You can only show something is really wrong from the intentions of the actions and their results.

So with that out of the way, lets talk about Knives Chau - and specifically, how the comic vs the anime handled that part of the story.

Scott Pilgrim vs The Reification of Dating a High Schooler

There is an extremely pervasive meme in Scott Pilgrim discourse that our titular Scott is a scumbag. Our returning whipping boy the Kotaku article loves this idea, describing Scott’s “detestable behavior” and wondering “was it too subtle the first time about Scott being an absolute shitbag?”. There is this viral headline screenshot from an interview floating around right now riding that same line:

Which is, of course, pretty much false. Its up to you in the end, “shitbag” is a subjective description, but the story just isn’t about events that would be described that way. Its the story of a guy getting over an awful ex, hurting some people, then meeting a new person, and realizing step-by-step what it takes to be their partner and levelling up as a person each time he does. He starts off broken, and Ramona of course is just as broken - getting better is their mutual arc. And its fundamentally about relationship drama - those stakes don’t make you a scumbag lol, just clueless, unless you are terminally online and don’t know what real stakes are.

I will let O’Malley get the last word in with his quote the writer of that interview is hilariously trying to torture into his headline:

There's a bit of, like, young people see Scott Pilgrim a certain way, and, you know, there's a lot of, like, 18-19-year-old fans that are really judgmental of the character. They're like, "Oh, he's a bad person. I would never do that." But I always tell them, like, get back to me when you're 25 or 30, tell me how your 20s went. Were you a bad person? Everyone has to make choices and do things in life that maybe they're not going to be proud of later.

Scott is a scumbag the way everyone is - you yourself will likely commit similar sins; that at least seems to be the authorial intent, and I agree with it.

So how does dating Knives Chau slot into this?

Despite the memes, age, in fact, is just a number - two consenting people dating does not a sin make. The reason dating underage people is bad is because of its consequences, not the categorical imperative. So what are the consequences of dating Knives Chau in the comic?

Knives is, as a consequence of dating a guy who is simply via his age able to appear so much cooler than her peers to her, absolutely obsessed with Scott. She worships his band:

She starts aping his taste in music and interests; she slots herself into his circle of friends, who don’t relate to her, even after their breakup (often drinking her way through it):

She totally spirals after he cheats on her and leaves her, blaming everyone but him; she is wounded and hurt for months, a year, over a relationship that lasted weeks:

Knives Chau is a literal poster child for why you should not date a high schooler. She is, at every turn, emotionally not ready to date someone who is not at her own level of social development, and is deeply affected by it. It is, sometimes, played for laughs - that is the nature of the comic, everything is played for laughs, but I would have given it a bit more dramatic space myself - but over the course of the story Scott himself realizes how much of an ass he was to her, and how he didn’t take what happened seriously.

The reason I view this with charity is what Scott did to lead to this - he met a cute girl on the bus! He was deeply hurt and kind of numb in life, and found someone who was safe and easy to talk to. He never attempts to kiss her (she starts trying to kiss him which he repeatedly rejects) they don’t even hold hands, and it lasted a few weeks. He knew deep down, pretty much immediately, it was fake:

Then he met an actual person he liked, and with some browbeating from Wallace agreed to break up with her, but chickened out for a day. Then the next day he decides to break up with her, and she drops the L bomb before he can, so he instantly ends it. It is really awkward for everyone involved.

Pushing off an awkward and uncomfortable conversation resulting from a dumb decision you made on a whim for a week - god I relate to that, that’s everyone! If you think it isn’t you I think you're lying. Its why this relationship is so interesting in the comic - Scott is always one step removed from it, putting it at abeyance, and the fact that something so minor to him is so destructive to her is a really good portrait of how these kinds of things happen. Its so easy to hurt someone when you don’t even know what the stakes are, and when its coming not from malice, but from weakness. Its a very good portrayal of a bad relationship because its bad in a relatable way, even if as a story is a bit more dramatic than is typical. And its a great portrayal of how fraught age gaps can be - this bad relationship is part of what makes the comic a good story.

But its 2023, we don’t give a shit about any of that anymore!

O’Malley in the same interview discusses the cultural shift around these kind of relationships:

I felt like in this day and age, I had to provide clarity on that [relationship]. Because when I wrote the first books, I took it for granted that people would understand that dating a high schooler was a bad thing. But on the internet, in this day and age, people are like, "He's dating a high schooler. That's terrible!" Like, that's pretty much what I say on page 1 of the book. But I try to spell it out a little bit more this time.

He isn’t telling the full story though - it was bad in 2004, but not bad the way it is today. Its dubiousness was mitigated by its frequency; people were doing this kind of shit all the time. Scott Pilgrim is a bass guitarist in an indie band; fucking groupies is like built into the cover charge. Half the problem Scott has in dating Knives is that she is the wrong kind of 17-year-old - had Scott met her at 1 am in the aftermath of a Born Ruffian’s concert at the Whippet Lounge knocking down shots off the back of her fake ID, no one would have even noticed. Hell, no one does notice; there is someone who actually makes out with a drunk 17-year-old Knives Chau in the comic Scott Pilgrim, and isn’t Scott Pilgrim:

No one cares about Kim’s inebriated petting session here; that is 10% because she is a Girl and Girls Can’t Be Predators, 40% because she isn’t the main character, and 50% because Kim Pine’s dating history is not a useful proxy battleground for GamerGate-adjacent nerd culture wars in ~2014; but that is road that goes directly to hell, so let's veer back.

The point, of course, is that in 2004 this is a crime flecked with normality, something your friend would do and you would maybe just cock an eyebrow at:

Its not that in discourse today - it is radically more condemned. It is not a contextual sin, but an original sin. It underwent a process I am calling reification - where it goes from being just a shifting descriptor of reality, to a thing in itself, with a defined (reified) meaning. And to be clear, that is in a lot ways on net a good thing? The reality is that, despite everyone’s protestations, there are today thousands of 17-year-olds taking the L line out to a gig at the Brooklyn Steel and going down on a 25-year-old guy they just met in a back alley off Frost St who swears he’s a “drummer in a sick new band” that played here “just last week”, he promises, and she is having a great time, bragging to her friends about how hot his tattoo was, and then shipping herself off to Cornell next year to start on her pre-med track with barely a memory. But for every dozen of those, there is at least one person who is deeply, deeply hurt, a Knives Chau who never deserved this. The rest can have a slightly worse time, its probably worth it.

That does not make it a categorical imperative, though - the reification has masked that truth. The crime comes from the context - those other girls aren’t victims, they would laugh at you for suggesting they were. But in 2023, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is no longer concerned with context. It is telling you, right to your face, that Scott is a bad dude. Over and over and over - jokes from the Evil League about “wow, I thought we were evil”, its not subtle.

Yet meanwhile, Knives Chau is, like, fine? She dates Scott, is totally into him, and then literally in the middle of his funeral forgets about him for Envy crashing it:

Picks up the bass and has yuri-inflected playtime with Kim the literal next day:

And less than a week later is pitching an off-broadway musical adaption of Scott’s life to a billionaire Matthew Patel - I can’t explain that okay, I’m as confused as you are.

She is mad at Scott, sure, but she is over it in a matter of days. Hell, notice how she was already a fan of the Clash at Demonhead now? There is no scene of Scott introducing her to his kind of music. He didn’t change her. By the end she is a member of his band and they are totally chill:

This is, again, about a week or two later.

Knives is not an important character in this show, way less than in the original, this is no grand sin. But I still find it very interesting: O’Malley is wrong. He “spells it out” way less in this version when it comes to the actual consequences of Scott’s actions. Everyone’s verbal condemnations are substitutes to replace the real damage his actions dealt in the comic. Scott is a better person this time, in a world that has universally agreed he is worse (still not a good move ofc). Even Scott’s moment of apology to Knives about their dating is so tepid its almost Straussian:

Its ‘frowned upon’…which is not the same thing as saying it was wrong! I don’t think this is intentional, its just funny, but its a nice capstone nevertheless.

And it had to be this way, not just for media in general, but for Scott Pilgrim in particular. Not only are sexual crimes far more reified today, but Scott Pilgrim’s sin of dating a high schooler is reified as well - its the first piece of discourse everyone encounters about it. Its the ur-debate of the franchise. The idea of actively engaging on this point, and digging deeper into it…its too hot, too controversial. Way better to shy away from it, disown it. The discourse wrote this part of the script over the course of a decade; its not something the creatives had any say in.

Honestly they should have just gone all the way - just make Knives 19. Then how tepid it is wouldn’t be a distraction anymore. Scott can just be an asshole for cheating on her, that would work fine. If you aren’t going to commit to the reality of these things, you shouldn’t bother with it at all.

#scott pilgrim #essay

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wilwheaton · 2 months

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youtube

I have a small part in the 1987 television movie (failed pilot) version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Lewis Smith played the titular character. Beverly D'Angelo played my mom, his love interest. (Fun Star Trek connection: Bob Picardo is also in it).

My character was a Troubled Youth, which I gotta tell you was not a stretch for me at all. I was deeply, deeply hurting at the time we made it. I was struggling not to suffocate on all the emotional and financial burdens my mom put on my shoulders, and fully aware of just how much my dad hated and resented me. You need a kid who doesn't want to be an actor, whose eyes can't hide the pain? I'm your guy.

Anyway, one of the scenes I was in took place in a record store, where Troubled Youth steals some albums, before he is chased by the cops and saved by the Man Who Fell To Earth, who uses a glowing crystal to save his life from ... some scratches on his face.

We filmed the interior of the record store at Sunset and La Brea, in what I think was a Warehouse, and at the end of the day, I was allowed to buy some records at a modest discount.

I was deep into my metal years, on my way from my punk years to my New Wave years, so I only bought metal albums. I know I bought more than I needed or could carry (I was making a point that I was allowed to spend my own money, mom), but the only ones I can clearly remember are:

Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind

Judas Priest - Turbo and Defenders of the Faith

W.A.S.P - The Last Command

(I know this was in March of 1987, because Turbo had just come out.)

Of those, Piece of Mind is the only one I never really stopped listening to, even through all the different it's-not-a-phase phases. I still listen to it, today.

Ever since I became an Adult with a Fancy Adult Record Player And All That Bullshit, I have kept my records in two places: stuff I want right now, and stuff I keep in the library because of Reasons.

Generally, records move in one direction toward the library, even if it takes years to happen. I just don't accumulate albums like I once did, because I'm Old and set in my ways.

Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to listen to an album while I cleaned up the kitchen, and because I wanted to make my life more interesting, I opened the library cabinet for the first time in at least five years.

There was the very same W.A.S.P album from that day in March, 1987. I don't have any of the others -- I looked -- but The Last Command was right there.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I put it on the Fancy Adult Record Player and dropped the needle.

I watched four decades of dust build up with a satisfying crackle, and there was something magical and beautiful about hearing all the skips and the scratches, realizing I remembered them from before.

The title track was just as great as I remembered it. It struck all the same chords in me that it did in the late nineteen hundreds. The rest of the first side was ... um. It just didn't connect with me, and for the few moments I spent trying to find a connection, I don't think it ever really did. I would remember.

But I did remember how much I loved making those mix tapes, and what a big part of them that song was. I did remember how empowering it felt to not just spend my own money that I earned doing work I didn't want to do, but to spend it on music my parents hated, right under their noses. I did remember how impressed Robby Lee was, when I showed him my extensive heavy metal album collection.

Remembering all of that, in one of those cinematic flashes of rapid cut visuals and sped up sounds, told me why I kept this record, while I gradually sold or replaced the other records I bought that day with CDs, then mp3s, then lossless digital files, before finally coming all the way back to records, where I started.

I didn't listen to the second side. I didn't need to. I took it off the Fancy Adult Record Player, and put it back into the library, next to the George Carlin records.

#music #memories #records #Youtube

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youryurigoddess · 6 days

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The Small Back Room — Hour of Glory (1949)

Good Omens 2 begins with the visit to The Small Back Room not because it was meant to serve as an exposition scene for Maggie and her record shop. It’s a substantial foreshadowing of the main plot and the relationship changes between Aziraphale and Crowley.

As all the other classics referenced throughout the show, this 1949 Powell and Pressburger production is easily available online — whenever you have 100 minutes to spare, I highly encourage you to watch it.

Our story begins with the arrival of Stuart, a British military captain, who makes his way through a labyrinth of offices towards a small building — the research section led by an eccentric, queer-coded, bow tie wearing professor Mair — to ask for help with a secret Nazi weapon.

That’s when the professor calls our hero, Sammy Rice — an engineer and bomb disposal expert in the service of Her Majesty’s government and, not accidentally, the most brooding, wounded man in Powell and Pressburger’s impressive canon of dysfunctional and alienated characters.

Due to a prosthetic foot keeping him from active service and confining to work in the titular back room instead, Rice is dramatically slipping into alcoholism. Haunted by self-loathing and disappointment with the internal politics, he can’t see the point of his research anymore.

Sammy is also conducting a clandestine affair with the secretary of his research unit, Susan. They live in the same building and meet regularly, but can’t openly enjoy their company or even dance due to his injury, which makes him even more bitter and pathologically determined to wear her angelic patience down.

Susan puts up with it until the minister is forced to resign. She knows that if non-scientists take over, their section will become useless, Rice even more difficult, and the war possibly lost. She urges him to take action and when he dramatically refuses to make a difference, she leaves him.

Seemingly at his lowest now, Rice becomes a sudden chance to redeem himself. Captain Stuart calls him about two unexploded booby traps found in Wales, but left to himself, he dies during a heroic attempt to dismantle one of the thermos-like devices before our engineer arrives at the scene.

In a nerve-jangling finale, Stuart’s notes help Rice dismantle the second device. He becomes a hero, gets an officer commission as head of the new scientific unit, and discovers that Susan not only came back in the meantime, but repaired everything he drunkenly destroyed in the apartment after their breakup.

The parallels seem straightforward enough for me to add that in this context the role of Maggie through most of S2 may particularly reflect Crowley’s stagnancy in both work and love life. And if you’re unsure why the demon identifies with the heroic roles and characters, you might want to read this post on the subject.

Now, The Small Back Room was distributed in the US under another title — Hour of Glory. Which happens to be a specific Bible term referring to Christ’s “hour”, the period supposed to consummate all of his work on Earth and reveal God’s ultimate plan of salvation: the Son’s death.

John 12:20-36 Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him. Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Christ’s hour began in the garden — this time the garden of Gethsemane — as he prayed passionately for the cup to be passed from him, similarly to Aziraphale declining Metatron’s offers on screen, both regarding the hot drink and his reinstatement as part of the Heavenly Host:

Luke 22:42 “Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

All throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s wrath being described as a cup poured out on sin and those guilty of it. By accepting it, Jesus took the toll of all the sins — from Eden up until the last one to be committed right before his Second Coming — on himself, for the sake of his beloved humanity.

The passion of Christ continued as Judas betrayed him with a kiss, his disciples abandoned him, and the high priest accused him of crimes he was not guilty of. Even Pilate, the prefect of Rome, pretended to uphold the law; and remember we already expect a S3 trial based on another Archers movie.

All in all, it’s an hour of great injustice and pain, but also glory of God. We’re led to believe that the Ineffable Plan will similarly triumph over the great one (or whatever Metatron tries to implement at the moment), as it did in S1. And its ending will be a good one, back in a garden.

#bible fanfiction #actually quoting bible #cup of suffering #give me coffee or give me death #the small back room #hour of glory #good omens #good omens meta #good omens analysis #final fifteen #crowley #crowley is a superhero #aziraphale #supreme archangel aziraphale #ineffable husbands #yuri is doing her thing #drinking coffee #an oat milk latte with a dash of almond syrup

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writerthreads · 2 years

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How to write a gripping beginning

by Writerthreads on Instagram

Personally, I find beginnings to be one of the hardest parts of the whole book because it's so important. The beginning is what makes or breaks your book. It's what keeps readers interested after they pick it up at a store, or when they first download it on their Kindle. Below are some tips, as well as some analyses, on how to perfect a story's beginning.

Introduce your main character and the setting: Mrs. Dalloway

By "introduce", I don't mean a giant 10-page info dump on royal family tree or the ten kingdoms the world is made up of. Rather, I'm thinking of a character in a place, or doing something. The best, and one of the most famous examples would be how Virginia Woolf started Mrs. Dalloway:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

Already, you have the titular character, Mrs Dalloway, introduced. She's doing something, too. She's saying that she's going to buy flowers herself, setting up a scene later where she's probably going to, or back out of, buying flowers. The pronoun "herself" suggests to the reader in Woolf's era that she's of a middle-class background and that somebody (eg. a servant) would normally be running errands for Mrs. Dalloway, but the character wanted to do this simple task herself.

I could go on forever about how each word in this simple sentence has implicit meanings and my ex-A Level Eng Lit teacher will probably be very proud of me, but that's not the point. The main idea is that in just a single sentence, a lot is being revealed to the reader without the writer having to info dump anything.

Allow me to continue to the second paragraph of the book:

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning-fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

More characters are introduced now: we have Lucy, Rumpelmayer and his men. Mrs. Dalloway's full name is revealed, and so is her personality through her thought. It's childlike, whimsical and light, and that's why her name "Clarissa Dalloway" is used here instead of the stiff "Mrs. Dalloway".

In just two paragraphs, we are introduced to the titular character and some minor characters are mentioned. We also know bits and pieces of what's going to happen. Woolf artistically starts off the book with simple prose. Everything is well thought out, yes, Virginia Woolf is a literary genius, yes, but this is something that we can all do: write a simple introduction without weighting readers down with lots of detail we don't need, and get straight into the story.

Start in media res

Fun fact: "in media res" is also the name of our Discord Server!

When you start in the middle of an action, readers are transported straight to the story, hooking them in. For example, if you were writing a rom com, you could start with the main character bumping into a long-lost friend:

Emma saw a familiar cowboy hat bobbing in and out of the crowd in front of her. Emma found herself pushing through sweaty limbs into the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who wore the hat, trying to see whether it was really her friend who had ghosted her five years ago.

Obviously this isn't the best beginning in the world, but you get the point.

Try something interesting

A strong story opening makes you want to know more. Donna Tartt does this perfectly in A Secret History:

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

What is up? Who is Bunny? What's so serious about their predicament? Tell us more!!! Bunny's death makes us want to know what has happened, while mentioning the characters' situation wants us to know what's going to happen. Tartt forces us to continue on to find out the full story.

Lead with a strong statement

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Tolstoy’s first line introduces the domestic strife that drives the story’s tragic events, using a bold, sweeping statement, while Dicken's catchy first sentence introduces us to the book's main themes.

There are way more examples of good beginnings that you can only learn from by reading. If you're a beginner, literally comb through a library shelf of the genre you're writing in and see how published authors have written their beginnings. Alternatively, you could go check out our post on the best story beginnings for more ideas!

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televised-uhhh-nerdistry · 2 days

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Cartoon rec of the week:

Craig of the Creek

I haven't seen enough people talking about the show, so I'm mentioning it here. Absolute 10/10 cartoon. Just three kids, running 'round, making friends, running their own semi-sustainable community in the forest (there are some concerns about how much trash they leave there but ultimately they're better than most adults). Literally such a dream. they encourage each other to be emotionally healthy and they protect each other from "danger". Like they'll help each other achieve their dreams as they come (and new dreams show up pretty often because they're young kids).

And they're so funny! Like genuinely these kids are so earnest and intelligent and incredibly humorous and full of heart! They have full lives and they live them to the fullest out in nature after school, on the weekends, and in the summer. It's one of the best representations of found family I have ever seen in a cartoon, and I absolutely love it.

Also several of the writers behind the show are POC and queer (I think the head writers are all Black but I could be wrong), so you know that it was written well and the representation is awesome like I know that it should absolutely go without saying, but representation is much more than just showing BIPOC people on screen, and in terms of cartoons I haven't seen that many shows understanding that fact except maybe the Proud Family, Fat Albert, and a few others whose names will return to me once I've taken my ADHD meds. But the point is that Craig of the Creek gets it right. Most of the characters throughout the show (from what I've seen) are BIPOC, and you can tell that there are caring nods to BIPOC communities (primarily Black American communities), and more than that, that the writers know what they're talking about and are deeply familiar with and are a part of those communities. Craig, the titular character, is a young Black boy, and his family are middle class and ultimately very successful Black people. Kelsey (one of the main characters) is Jewish and Polish, and written with more complexity than having a one and done Hanukah celebration. The Creek's main business, a trading post, is run by Kit, a young Black girl with a love for economy and business. And many other characters are racial or ethnic minorities as well, and it warms my heart to see these characters done justice time and time again.

There's great subtle queer rep too, and you can tell it wasn't written just for the sake of representation, like it was thought out and intentional, and it worked beautifully. There are queer witches, and there are no labels applied to them, they're just allowed to exist with no explanations, happily in love with one another. There's a non-binary character later in the series (I'm only like 10 episodes in so I haven't met them yet but I've read amazing things about them). Kelsey also apparently identifies as a lesbian later in the series (I say "apparently" because I haven't done much reading so as to avoid spoilers, not because I am discounting her identity). On top of that, JP (one of the main characters) has a sister who is dating another girl.

There's also a significant amount of body positivity in the show, at least far than I've seen elsewhere. Not only do they openly say "all bodies are beautiful" and follow up on that by defending one another, there's also very little need to defend one another, because there's a very unspoken and deep respect in the Creek for things like body type, skin colour, disabilities, and so on. The kids of the creek, and their grown ups, are all different body types, and given their penchant for community and uplifting one another, it's no wonder they all seem confident in their bodies.

Not to mention the disability representation. There is a character later on in the series who is Black and deaf, and he not only speaks in Sign Language, but in Black American Sign Language. In addition, though unconfirmed, many of the kids in the creek embody aspects of various neurotypes. For example, the three main characters, Craig, Kelsey, and JP all come across as neurodivergent, with special interests, neurodivergent ways of thinking, and so on. Some have speculated that JP has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which is a disability often comorbid with ADHD. Not to mention that all the kids in the creek embody different special interests, most of which would be considered weird or frowned upon in everyday society, but that are given the opportunity to shine and flourish in the Creek's accepting culture.

Take the Horse Girls for example, a small clique of girls who roleplay as horses in a pasture near the Creek, and of course many of their behaviours are played as jokes, but ultimately they are accepted and involved in many adventures because of their unique interests and abilities which are ultimately how they aid the rest of the Creek. Every kid is a useful and accepted part of the Creek, with the exception of the ranger scout kids, who are essentially the same as cops, who are often exploitative, rude, and disruptive to the community as a whole.

Ultimately, the show is one of love, friendship, community, and acknowledging differences as a natural and helpful part of life. On top of that, it's not copaganda! What more could you want?

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fipindustries · 9 months

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oppen heimer style

let me just start this by saying that this is not necesarily nolan being back to form, necesarily. i would place it just above the rest of nolan's dark period known as intersrellar, dunkirk and tenet. but that is not an exceedingly high bar to pass.

he has sadly become a director that i still respect appreciate and whose movies i enjoy but whom i can no longer say is an unmatched genius.

lets start with the bad.

its too long, and its pacing its a little awkward, no need to worry for spoilers here since we all know the history. the big money shot that we were all expecting, the trinity test, it happens roughly at the middle of the movie and after that the movie struggles to reach any other point of heightened emotion as high as that one.

its a solid three hour experience and more than once it had me wondering "ok, how much left, are we done yet?" but i will say this: once i reached the final scene and the credits start i did not feel a tired relief that it was finaly over, thank god. i feel dread, i felt doom and dread. i was fucking terrified. this movie has a good strong final scene that makes you forget of previous tests of patience you might have gone through watching it.

it tries to do this weird parallel story telling between lewis strauss and oppenheimer that it feels like they tried to film two different movies and then awkwardly splie them together. it jumps back and forth between the past and the present told form different points of view and a lot of it feels like it could have been cut out and the movie would have worked just as well. im not sure how necessary was the whole lewis strauss subplot to be honest.

the characters and dialog work a little better than in previous movies although we still get a lot of scenes of people talking in a clinical manner with expository dialog and deep philosophical musings. but once again i will say nolan seems to be learning some lessons, we do get a lot of scenes where actors are allowed to flex their emotional muscles.

in a lot of ways this is nolan's most lurid film. i think this is the first time we get to see breasts and naked people having sex in a nolan movie and it hits hard, both because of how unexpected it is in a nolan film and because of how out of context it shows up in-universe. i dont actually want to spoil this one because the effect it achieves actually worked really well.

and now moving on to the good, if i mentioned this might be nolan at his most lurid, it is certainly also at his most poetic. sure there is inception, but in here we get to see a lot of surrealist or downright metaphorical scenes without the excuse of being inside a dream. we get to see things that are not happening literally in universe but that are an artistic representation of what the characters are feeling. it felt really effective.

the man himself

this is a movie that is very much about the titular guy and trying to understand his inner world, trying to understand who the hell was this person, and honestly, where did he get off.

it seems oppenheimer was a complicated man, whose actions and desitions were sometimes confusing, sometimes downright contradictory (there is a nice wink to this when talking about the paticle/wave duality at the beggining of the film). he was a communist, he was a proud american, he was a genius, he was painfully naive,he was merely following orders but he had absolute control over his little town in los alamos, he worked hard for peace, he created nuclear war, he built a bomb that he didnt want people to use.

i heard criticisms that this movie romanticizes his work, that it may excuse or justify the use of the bomb, that it may be too kind with the guy. rest assured it doesnt. the movie brings up multiple times how the japanese were basically already surrendering, how senseless and callous and cruel the use on japanese cities was, how attrocious and horrifying the effects of the bomb were. and how oppenheimer definely contributed to it. if it shows the guy hand wringing or feeling gulty or trying to be a martyr of sorts, the movie definetly calls him out on that too by saying that its very rich of him to have done the deed and then regret it as if he didnt knew what he was doing or as if he had no control over it. a lot of times the movie shows the man as spineless, as a moral coward, as someone who was too weak to take on a position. "you dont get to commit a sin and then make everyone else feel pity for you because there are consequences!" is yelled at his face.

yet all the same, either because he is portrayed by cyllian murphy and his puppy dog eyes or because nolan deep down still admires who he was and what he did, you cant help but feel bad for the guy and like him still. he was a person, a complicated person with ugly sides that this movie in no way ignores, but still a brilliant man who at the very least had the basic decency to feel bad for the atrocities he contributed to.

going back to the movie itself

its has a weirdly star studded cast. if you were surprised by the sudden appearance of matt damon in interstellar, get ready to have that feeling multiple times during this film, every other scene suddenly shows up a hollywood megastar and it will take a few seconds before you accept ok, i guess gary oldman is in this film, and is that rami malek? and oh right, robert downy junior and oh my god is that fucking kenneth brannagh. in fact the one hollywood actor who is NOT in this movie, is surprisingly, inexplicably enough michael caine.

truly, breaking new ground.

and the cameos dont stop at the stars, the characters themselves are a constant delightful surprise if you are into the history of quantum mechanics and science in the first half of the 20th century. you have einstein of course (presented as this old exiled king, his time of glory long past but still sough after for his wisdom) but you have also bohrs, heisenberg, feynman, fermi, and fucking gödel somehow (they managed to shoe in a comment about his paranoia and hipocondry)

the actual explosion

time to talk about the thing we all went to see this movie for. is the atomic explosion cool? is it big? is it loud? does it go boom? does it look cool?.

suffice to say. yes. one of the coolest experiences i had in watching film ever in my life. it has a build up of a solid 30 minutes or so (arguably its been building up the entire movie) the tensin keeps on rising all through out. the countdown slowly advances, the expectations are at the highest theyve ever been and by the time the bomb was actually about to go off in the middle of the american desert, the first atom bomb ever exploted, my heart was hammering out of my chest.

its fully worth the price of admission and the three hours.

final comments

i want to double back to the poetic filmmaking i mentioned early to comment about the main thing its used for. nolan makes it clear in no uncertain terms the horror that atomic weapons unleashed on the world. the man goes out of his way to make it clear, these things can destroy the planet. we've all become perhaps a bit desensitized to atomic explosion in film, made more and more espectacular with the advancement of cgi. but this movie brings it back home and leaves you with a last message about the danger of nuclear proliferation.

i walked out of the theatre with my legs shaking and my eyes falling out of my skull. i had a hard time talking a bit afterwards, i was a little shell shocked.

so, i guess in the end, my thoughts on this movie are just as complicated as the man himself, the man who oppenheimed the world.

8/10

#oppenheimer

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haveyouseenthishorrormovie · 3 months

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before this goes any further, I want it on the record that you all asked for this.

my first and most petty point: Midnight Mass gets basic details about Catholicism wrong, such that even I (not a Catholic) twigged them. The big one is that Catholics DON'T HAVE MIDNIGHT MASS FOR EASTER - it's a Christmas thing - but since the priest holding the mass is also a vampire, I can accept that he's going off-book. I have a harder time with them holding a PICNIC for ASH WEDNESDAY, aka THE DAY LENT STARTS, aka the day everyone starts fasting and are therefore not snacking on a potluck. It's a minor thing, and normally I wouldn't pick at it, but since this show ostensibly revolves around Catholic doctrine, it bears mentioning.

on a writing level, not one single character in this show talks like a human being. or acts like one. I couldn't give you any information about who these characters are as people, because they're not people, they're mouthpieces for Flanagan to impart his ideas to the audience. He is both deeply in love with his own writing and entirely unconvinced that his audience is smart enough to Get It, so he has his actors turn to the audience and lay it all out. Not only is this bad writing on a character level, it brings all plot and tension to a screeching halt whenever it happens. The most unintentionally hilarious instance of this has to be when Annabeth Gish comes to the sheriff to tell him that the church is being run by a vampire and her mother is aging in reverse, and his response is to start rambling about where he was on 9/11. Like. Nothing about this makes sense, and also why should we care when it has fuckall to do with the story?

(as regards the sheriff character: I, a white Quaker, am not the person to critique this show's handling of Islam. But I will say that Flanagan doesn't seem to have a clear idea what he wants to communicate: the overarching plot is antitheistic, in a very r/atheism sort of way ("WHAT IF THE SACRAMENT WAS VAMPIRE BLOOD" ooh wow didja cut yourself on that edge there, buddy) but Flanagan has no idea how to balance that with the precepts of any religion that isn't Christianity while also maintaining his broadly liberal bona fides, so it all sits very uneasily next to the church plot. I'm not advocating for the show to go full Christopher Hitchens, but I am saying that if Flanagan wants to posit that faith is a mass delusion and a net detriment to any community formed around it . . . he needs to either focus only on Christian characters or be willing to engage with how other religions function in society, because as is, the storyline with the sheriff and his son just peters out into nothing.)

but the thing that made me angriest - that took me from "this is so boring and pretentious and badly written" to "oh FUCK this guy and the horse he rode in on -" was the titular midnight mass. It is very overtly inspired by the Jonestown massacre, which a lot of horror media does, but what it fails to account for is that the members of the People's Temple did not voluntarily kill themselves. I know "drink the kool-aid" has entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for "blindly following a leader," but extensive testimony from Jonestown survivors - not to mention the death tape, which is available online if you really want to ruin your day - all confirms that the people who died that day were forced to drink poison at gunpoint, after years of brutal abuse from Jones and his inner circle. And even after all of that, people fought back. And not outsiders - people who had been in the Temple for years and wholeheartedly believed in the mission that had lead them to Guyana in the first place. (Christine Miller was a fucking hero and she deserves to be remembered for it.) Jonestown was not lemmings going off a cliff, and any serious take on the story would involve reckoning with that - that these people believed in a higher power and also believed that they had a right to live despite what Jones told them. But that would contradict Flanagan's point of "religion is dumb, WAKE UP SHEEPLE," so instead he borrows the iconography of a truly horrific tragedy and disrespects the victims by implicitly representing them as dumb, brainwashed cult members who eagerly toss back poison because they think sky daddy wants them to. He has so little respect for the subjects he's portraying, and the real people whose deaths he is copying for shock value, that he doesn't care about the inner lives of anyone whose beliefs might demonstrate that faith is more nuanced than his screed would have you believe.

There are good horror properties out there that are critical of religion and society - The Medium, which we posted about a few days ago, is one. The Witch is another. So is The Sudbury Devil. Hell, you could go back to the sixties with Witchfinder General. Religion - especially socially dominant religions like Christianity in the west - can and should be critiqued. But Midnight Mass is too sloppily written to be a critique of anything besides, accidentally, how far Mike Flanagan's head is shoved up his ass.

Anyway, that's why mod L doesn't like Midnight Mass. I did warn you.

#not a poll #mod L #ask the mods

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presiding · 5 months

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a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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ddarker-dreams · 3 months

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Lock, what DO you love and like so much about Dostoevsky's work? I don't think you've ever talked about that. Please, I want to know !!!

^o^

(christianity mention jump scare below proceed with caution)

i thought this would be an easy to answer but figuring out how to put my feelings into words proved difficult .

the beginning is always a good place to start, so let's go with that. by chance, i happened upon this video on youtube and gave it a watch. about halfway in i decided i had to read notes from underground for myself. i struggled to understand what the narrator was trying to get across. the unique writing style, where the reader is addressed directly, as if in challenge, helped me preserve.

i think part of what makes his work special to me is his depiction of people. and they really do feel like people more than characters, even if some of their characteristics are unique to the era dostoevsky wrote in. everything else about them transcends time. i can see myself in some of them. whether it be the titular idiot, prince myshkin in his naivety; alyosha, who goes from devout to doubting; and ivan, whose bitterness toward religion masks his disappointment at the state of the world.

that's why the brothers karamazov touched me in particular. for some context, i grew up in a christian household and was heavily involved in the church (american northeast white baptist strand of church). around when i was 11 or so, the introduction of left-wing politics through social media had me undergo a looooong identity crisis. these new ideas felt at odds with what i'd spent my entire life believing. what i grappled with the most relates to ivan's anecdote, the grand inquisitor, where the goodness of god is called into question. the bitterness, the disappointment from crushed expectations, all those sensations resonated strongly with me. reading it as an adult who (supposedly) 'healed' from that time period in my life was like opening pandora's box. i'd never seen my thoughts and struggles so accurately described, or treated with more than a 'his ways are higher than our ways' type platitude. i stuffed these concerns of mine away because they only ever served to make me feel worse.

i won't delve deep into the Depressing Lore. the only reason i mention it is to stress how profound an impact the work had on me. throughout the remainder of TBK (and in most of dostoevsky's discography), the best and worst of humanity is shown. our hypocritical nature, capacity for evil; nothing is shied away from or made more palatable. and yet, throughout it all, our potential for good is shown too. whether it be in the little acts or monumental self-sacrifice. sometimes those acts are honored, or ‘worth it,’ sometimes they aren’t. it’s cheesy but whatever i’ll say it — choosing to love and serve others is my greatest joy. i don’t really need a definitive answer to those problems i struggled with. that’s the takeaway i’ve had from his work. it might not seem like a big deal, but not feeling guilty for having certain doubts or anxious over those doubts never fully being resolved was. very significant for me. and healing (for real this time).

so that’s the sentimental perspective GJSDLKFJS from my writer’s perspective, i can only describe him as brilliant. his grasp on the human psyche is incredible. he can accurately describe so many emotions, worldviews, and give the context necessary for each one to feel organic and real. it’s vivid, too, in a way i can’t properly get across. everyone’s unfiltered and messy. characters contradict themselves in the same sentence. they’ll murmur, go off on tangents, tell stories, misquote the bible (or many other significant works), and just be overall disasters. aka how people actually are.

the man’s also funny as hell. the protagonist from crime and punishment has a mental breakdown spanning multiple pages over a sock. yes, there’s context, but that’s still the gist of things. then there’s the issue of the hedgehog in the idiot. hedgehog drama.

ultimately, his work is so very human. there’s commentary on issues that are prevalent to this day, multiple centuries later. the topics he touches on tend to align with what i care about most. whether i agree or disagree with what i’m reading, there’s always something i glean from it. something meaningful that sits with me long after i close the book. i’ll mull over it and bother people in my vicinity until they mull over it too. no one is safe. whether it be a co-worker or my dad who drives noticeably faster to reach our destination and be free of my many questions.

i could keep going but this ended up being long enough GJSKDF i hope at least something here makes sense?>?? i apologize for the incoherent ramblings. it's what the dude does to me.

#dostoevsky fanclub #answered #Anonymous

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third-generation-female-warrior · 19 hours

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As we get closer to the finale of the Bad Batch, I'd like to post something that's been in my head for a while.

I want to take an in-dept look at the theme of the show and how I think that shapes the ending.

Firstly, we'll need to look at the theme of the show.

The Bad Batch is a story about a group of rogue clones who must survive the rise of the Empire. Okay, that's what happens, but that's not the theme.

The theme is what the story is about. The lesson you want your audience to walk away with. It is the singular thing that shapes the character arcs and choices, from the protagonists to the antagonists.

I would argue that the theme of the Bad Batch is, "Our strength comes from our individuality and differences" and "We need to make our own choices and let people make their own choices; blind allegiance is the downfall of us all." There's also an ongoing argument about loyalty, but that's a different rant.

From the beginning, it's all been about individuality, and how stripping that away is wrong. The inhibitor chips was the first overarching plot device to further this argument.

The chips take away the individuality of the clones by making them a part of a monolithic hivemind. Gone are the individuals who fought with the Jedi, and in came the Empire. The sterile, uniform Empire where individuality and free thought is treated as dangerous and treacherous.

Our heroes, the titular Bad Batch, retain their individuality and differences and disobedient streak and are celebrated as a virtue, and, for the most part, do not fall into the trappings of becoming the monolith.

Now let's talk about Crosshair, specifically.

Crosshair, however different, fell into the Empire, thinking he was going to be heralded as better and superior than the other clones. His choice to stay with the Empire was a choice at first, but even when it was, this was treated as bad in the narration. Even if it was his choice, he came to ultimate realization that... no, he's not different than the other clones in the eyes of the Empire. He's not treated different or better. He's a number. He's cannon fodder. His blind allegiance almost led to his death (not for the first time (Bracca, anyone?)). It led to Mayday's death as they both realized too late: "We were good soldiers. We followed orders. And for what?"

So the first choice Crosshair makes for himself? The first free choice that he makes that contradicts the blind allegiance?

He shoots the Lieutenant.

And it was great! Narratively, it was treated as the right move because it was!

Okay, it lands him in Tantiss, but through that series of events, it eventually brought him back to his family. He was redeemed.

Moving on, let's look at another interesting character.

Emerie (beloved)

Dr. Emerie Karr, I would argue, is a woman who never had a choice.

I mean, how could she? Shipped off of Kamino, into the clutches of Hemlock?

Look me in the eyes and tell me that you think Hemlock (derogatory) was an affectionate father-figure to Emerie. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Emerie never had a choice. She was not in the battlefield or even with other clones to learn what her free thoughts were. I would argue she was raised to be afraid of the consequences of what Hemlock would do to her if she stepped "out of line" wherever that was when growing up.

She's constantly warning other clones what happens if they don't cooperate with Hemlock. She's constantly held back by her inability to think for herself.

Until Omega.

Time and time again, Emerie regards Omega as her sister in what way she can, in what little vocabulary she has for such a meaning.

Because Omega, Emerie breaks protocol, just in the little way she can, and returns the straw Lula to her. We see the beginnings of the Imperial bonds start to loosen. It's the first crack in the mirror, so to say, when Omega shows her what it could really be like, to have siblings to love, instead of whatever validation she fights to earn from Hemlock. (There's more on that, but again, another rant, another time.)

It keeps going for Emerie, when she's let into the Vault, all coming to a head when she meets Echo.

"I didn't have a choice," she says. "I've heard that before," he retorts, disbelieving.

She has a choice now, is what's not being said. Do the right thing, make a choice, for once in your life. Don't go along with what the doctor wants.

So, what's all this to say?

The ending of the Bad Batch will be dictated by the themes of individuality and free will.

It will all come down to a choice.

Omega, the protagonist, will have to make a choice.

Over this season, in Point of No Return especially, Omega sees how relentlessly the Empire hunts for her. Willing to do anything to get there hands on her.

It's this injustice that makes her angry. She can not let people suffer for her sake.

She won't let her brothers get hurt for her sake.

This drives home the foreshadowing of The Harbinger.

How Ventress warns Crosshair and Hunter, that if Omega was Force-Sensitive, she'd need to leave them to be properly trained.

When Ventress tamed a giant beast with the Force.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I think this will work with Omega's recent discovery of the Zillo Beast, in foreshadowing her and the other kids in the Vault using the Force to "reach out" (which Omega couldn't do with the distraction of her brothers) and tame the beast into wrecking the base and eating Hemlock.

With this discovery of abilities, and newfound charge over these young kids, Omega will be faced with a choice.

Stay with the Batch, or leave for them?

#the bad batch #tbb #tbb s3 #tbb s3 predictions #tbb meta #tbb omega #omega bad batch #tbb crosshair #bad batch crosshair #emerie karr #tbb emerie

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wilwheaton · 2 months

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wild child

I have a small part in the 1987 television movie (failed pilot) version of The Man Who Fell To Earth. Lewis Smith played the titular character. Beverly D’Angelo played my mom, his love interest. (Fun Star Trek connection: Bob Picardo is also in it). My character was a Troubled Youth, which I gotta tell you was not a stretch for me at all. I was deeply, deeply hurting at the time we made it. I…

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thelureking · 1 year

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I had this idea to make a list of all the games I played in 2022, half as a recommendation list, and half because I struggle to remember when I played what. I have a really bad time ranking stuff, so I'll just list them chronologically (or, as chronologically as I can remember).

Note: Sometimes I dont have a lot to say about a game, but that doesnt mean I didn't like it or that it isn't good.

So, with that being said:

1) Our Life: Beginnings and Always

This game has put visual novels on another level entirely. How must I go on knowing that I will never be treated like royalty by any other game like this did. Our Life tells the story of your friendship and/or romance with Cove Holden, your new neighbor. This Visual Novel remembers an insane amount of stuff you choose, and it can put you in the state of mentioning something you did as a kid that you completely forgot about. I actually really liked how you can go the entire game as just friends, or choose when your character develops romantic feelings. I cannot overstate how well made this entire thing is. Can't wait to play the DLCs and for the sequel to be released.

Absolute recommend.

2) Iron Lung

If you have a computer, you can play it. It is not an option.

Claustrophobic above all, this game captures the pure dread of the unknown, building tension and atmosphere as you travel through this unknown planet's red sea. Highly recommended.

3) An Outcry

Amazing game that I don't see enough people talking about. The first game that made me actually physically ill while playing an alternative route. I don't know what hit me the most, the subject matter or the type of person I played in that route, a person I know exists and maybe I've met, a person I hope I never become. I knew what the game was specifically referencing, but I found it good that it was able to trigger that response on someone who lives in an entirely different place, with different historical events, but with enough similarities that made the feeling of dread and disgust that much real. Its message is clear and loud as it should be, and one that I think maybe now more than ever needs to be heard. I cannot recommend this game enough.

4) Stillwater

Now this is a Visual Novel that I really liked and would have loved for it to be longer, but I love it as it is. It left me wanting more about the world and its characters, and I think that's a good thing. It feels unfair that this is the one I typed the least about, knowing how much I liked it. It's really worth the read/play.

5) The Caribbean Sail

Have you ever wanted to be a sailor or a pirate? Have you ever wanted to grab a ship, sail into unknown destinations, encounter supernatural phenomenons and watch as your fellow crew members die of disentry five seconds after leaving your first port? Because if so, I have the perfect game for you. It's inspired by the Oregon Trail game, and that's literally what the gameplay is like, except on the sea. Which was enough of a selling point for me.

6) Carrion

My child, it has every disease. Loved the concept when I saw the trailer, forgot I can actually buy games now, and then proceeded to do that. Being able to live my fantasies of being a flesh creature that destroys and eats everything in its path was a delight. The creature is my child and I love it very much.

We need more games that let you play as the monster, I'm serious.

7) The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante

This game is both my beloved and the thorn on my side. Who would have thought that in a game like this you would proceed to suffer through life? I said to myself as if I hadn't known what I was getting into. You'll experience loss, you'll struggle to make a name for yourself, your family will fall apart, and you may never kiss your best friend Tommas who gave you a totally platonic ring to commemorate your friendship because the game doesn't want you to.

Or you'll have a different experience than me on my first playthrough.

You follow the titular Sir Brante from the moment of his birth to his last breath, exploring the world he lives in, full of injustices that at times made me go "I do not care about the lots, give me a fucking gun so I can take you to the fucking Twins". There are many branches regarding life paths, the fate of your family and that of the entire city you live in. But don't worry about it now, keep looking at those toy soldiers at the store as a little kid, I'm sure nothing will happen in the future.

8) Princess Maker 2 Refine

And apparently I didn't get enough of walking a kid through life.

Who looks at a game about raising a little girl by managing her monthly schedule and balancing her stats, health and money and says "yes, this is the game I'll play to destress"?

I do that. Don't ask why.

I have only reached two endings, in one my beautiful daughter became the royal painter, her art held as the most beautiful and inspiring in the entire world. In another, my girl made a name for herself by exploring the lands surrounding the kingdom, so fast on her feet nobody could even scratch her; she married a dragon prince and became the teacher of her own fighting school.

And even with all of that, her goddess mother was not happy.

So yes, this is the "divorced dad who got custody" experience.

9) Planescape: Torment

What can change the nature of a man? That is a question posed by one Ravel Puzzlewell, night hag of the Gray Wastes. It is one of the many questions that this game asks, intertwined by the many philosophies it presents. Planescape Torment does not stick to one question, it asks many, and it lets you answer.

It is a beautifully written game, one of the best I have ever read. There is one moment that I do not wish to spoil, but it still sticks to my head months after I experienced it. As a writer, I found myself fascinated by how a certain event was told, all because of the way it was presented.

It feels like an injustice to not talk in length about Planescape: Torment, but I seriously don't want to spoil anyone who hasn't played it yet. A blind experience is fully worth it. All you need to know is that this is the game that made me post for the first time here, two dumb memes for myself and one short analysis that sometimes reminds me that yes, people can interact with it. Shameless link to it here

10) Growing my Grandpa!

If I had to describe this game without saying too much, I would say it's "heartwarming horror". Two words that don't usually go together, but that they perfectly fit here. The story is, like the title says, about growing your grandpa, more like helping a girl grow her grandpa, but still. Strangely sweet and unnerving, I was tense the entire time, and even when I had to replay it to get the second ending (this was entirely my fault, since I could have gotten it way easier) that tension never left.

11) FAITH: The Unholy Trinity

I don't remember how I found out about this game, but I remember waiting patiently for it to get a steam release so I could buy it and play its three chapters all together. The day finally came, and all that waiting was worth it.

The gameplay is simple, yet the developers found a way to have me both crying in fear and frothing by the mouth out of anger every time I saw the game over screen (affectionately). In terms of difficulty, I would say the game is easy until it isn't, looking at you Chapter 2 and 3 Final Bosses, you bastards. Then again, I saw people say they struggled in places I didn't, so I would say it depends on the player.

The story is so interesting and it's still marinating in my brain please I need people to talk about how the prologue of chapter 2 and the one note in chapter 3 relate please. The cutscenes are also so well done, and I had to restrain myself from using one as a second picture because I didn't want to spoil any of them.

All in all, a must play, fully recommend it.

And remember:

GARY LOVES YOU

12) Inmortal Mantis

This is a tricky one. On one hand, the game starts off by basically spelling out every action you have to do, and suddenly it goes full on "fuck around and find out" mode. On the other, the game implements some interesting mechanics that I would love to see developed on a longer game, but I am not going to put the length against it while knowing how hard it is to make a game. And maybe being short plays in its favor.

13) Who's Lila?

This game is my King in Yellow. I cannot stop thinking about it. I finished it with all endings and achievements in a day, and it wont leave me alone. It is always there, forever crawling at the back of my head, stretching itself over my brain and weaving my thoughts into a spiral as easily as a spider weaves its thread. It made itself a home in my mind and I won't kick it out any time soon. I played it because the concept of controlling a character's face in place of a dialogue wheel was interesting, and the story and the way it's presented (hand in hand with the gameplay) lured me deeper and deeper. I cannot even describe it without giving it the praise it deserves. It takes full advantage of its medium. Playing this game is an experience that I can't recommend enough, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves.

14) Someone stole MY LUNCH!

This visual novel is pure fun. The humor is so good I found myself reading the entire thing out loud while wheezing. I actually found out recently that it's made by the same people that made Stillwater, which, looking at it now I should have known. It's good and I'm not still over not seeing that one joke coming; well played.

15) MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF MILK INSIDE OF A BAG OF-

... INSIDE A BAG OF MILK is a short visual novel about a girl going to the grocery to buy milk, and the challenge this seemingly small action can be. It is your responsibility to help her through this.

The steam page description perfectly summarizes it: "This is an artistic manipulation with word and form, only then - a game."

#already reblogged with three more games!#game recommendations #our life beginnings & always #iron lung #an outcry #stillwater visual novel #the caribbean sail game #carrion game #the life and suffering of sir brante #princess maker 2 #planescape torment #growing my grandpa #faith the unholy trinity #inmortal mantis #who's lila #whos lila #someone stole my lunch visual novel #milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk #lilium post

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vintagetvstars · 15 days

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Betty White Vs. Gracie Allen

Propaganda

Betty White - (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls, Life With Elizabeth) - I mean - does she really need an introduction? It's Betty White, people! The First Lady Of Television! What *hasn't* she done? She had an incredible career (in fact, she earned the Guinness World Record for the longest TV career by a female entertainer *twice*!) with an infinite list of successes - she won seven Emmys, three SAG awards, and even a Grammy. I personally know her best for her spectacular portrayal of Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls, but she's played so many great characters in her long career. A lesser known but marvelously charming role is that of the titular character in Life With Elizabeth, a 1950s sitcom which she also co-produced at the age of *28*! She was also a great advocate for a number of causes - animal welfare, gay rights (she used to accompany her friend Liberace to events to help him avoid being outed as gay), and racial equality: she famously hired Arthur Duncan, a Black tap dancer, on one of her shows, and when threatened with going off-air if he wasn't fired, she just declared "He stays, live with it." She's the whole package - amazing actress (and comedienne and producer!), kind and hilarious, and of course - beautiful! Just look at her - that smile! Those eyes! That charm!! Watch her in action if you can (they're too long to link here, but entire episodes of Life With Elizabeth are on youtube!), but honestly - her pictures alone are enough to make me swoon!

Gracie Allen - (The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show) - she's SO funny

Master Poll List of the Hot Vintage TV Ladies Bracket

Additional propaganda below the cut

Betty White:

Have you seen her?? Look me in the eyes and tell me that Betty White's smile doesn't have the power to turn anyone's heart to mush. She looks adorable one moment, and can come up with the most out of pocket lines the next (all while still looking innocent about it). People know her best as Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls, of course, where she played the show's most naive character. But reportedly, Betty was actually the cleverest person on set. She didn't even have to learn her lines; reading the script once was enough for her, and she'd be able to remember any additional changes throughout the week without a problem. Which is pretty amazing if you ask me! Anyway, Betty is an icon. Her television career spanned seven (7!!!) decades, covering basically the entire tournament's time period (and then some!). She *almost* turned 100 and her outliving other celebrities was a Tumblr meme for ages. She had her own talkshow in the 1950s, for which she hired a female director, and had an African-American tap dancer (Arthur Duncan) as a regular cast member. When faced with criticism for the latter and the threat of being boycotted, Betty responded with "I'm sorry. Live with it" and gave Duncan *more* airtime. She was also the first woman to ever produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth) in which she played the lead, and looked absolutely stunning doing it. All in all: Betty was a badass, had a heart of gold, and she's absolutely stunning!

I think I might cry at how pretty she is honestly

that SMILE!!!

some soft butch realness

she's even pretty when she's not smiling... ahh...

she is marvelously bitchy as Sue Ann Nivens. please for the love of god watch these videos

Betty White / Sue Ann Moment #1: Coffee Experts Agree

youtube

Betty White / Sue Ann Moment #3: Massive Mudslides Wreak Havoc

youtube

Betty White / Sue Ann Moment #5: Have a Sexy Birthday

youtube

Gracie Allen:

Gracie Allen--Best Lines Compilation 1

youtube

#vintage tv stars poll #tv ladies 1 #betty white #gracie allen #Youtube

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dangermousie · 7 months

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Pre-Joseon Sageuks: a Biased and Incomplete List

So, as promised way earlier, a post on pre-Joseon sageuks that I’ve either watched or plan to watch so am aware of them. I am sure there are others but here is what I got. Obviously my takes on them are subjective blah blah blah.

Jumong - arguably the Daddy of all Traditional Sageuks, this one ran for over 80 episodes and had insane ratings. It follows the rise of the mythical founder of Gogureyo tho it takes fantastical elements of his story and changes them for historically plausible ones. It’s very long and very meaty and politics/battle heavy and has a large cast of complex characters (including pretty nifty women and a LGBTQ supporting OTP) but it is anchored by the incredible performance of Song Il Gook as the titular character as he slowly but believably grows from nothing to a hero if at the cost of losing his marriage.

The King of Tears Lee Bang Won - this is basically a half and half beast as (you can tell by the title), it’s set in the last days of Goryeo and early days of Joseon. The time period covered is the same as in My Country and Six Flying Dragons, but this is the most traditional take of them all, even more so than 6FD. Not a single pretty face in the cast (tho Joo Sang Wook is a mighty fine man, emphasis on “man”), this is for the real fans of traditional sageuks. I enjoyed it a lot but if you want to check out pre-Joseon sageuks but have mainly watched youth sageuk stuff before, you should probably start with another drama on this list.

The Great Seer - set in the reign of King Gongmin, the last proper king of Goryeo (his son King U is technically the very last but there are questions as to his status), this is for those of you who want to watch Ji Sang in a sageuk. It’s centered around seers but don’t expect mysticism, this knuckles down to politics.

Shin Don - hi there, another story set in the reign of King Gongmin! From the title, you can tel it centers heavily on the powerful monk who ruled for the King at one point. This has been on my to-watch list forever because this appears to devote a decent chunk of its time to Gongmin X Noguk and I am dying for a proper drama for those two. This is from 2005 so if you do watch, keep that in mind in terms of visuals etc. That cast is lit!

Bicheonmu - this is sort of cheating because it’s pretty much set in China but it involves Koreans so. It’s a drama take on the same story told in a pretty awesome movie. Tragic love, battles, young Joo Jin Moo etc. i am very fond of it. This said, find and watch the Chinese version, Korean one was shredded.

The Iron Empress/Empress Cheon Chu - set in Goryeo, this was another of women ruler centric dramas that had a mini popularity peak in late 00s/early 10s (a trend I wish continued.) it got overshadowed by Queen Seonduk but by all accounts is a solid drama. It’s on my list but I haven’t watched it yet.

The King’s Daughter, Soo Baek Hyang - by the writer of The Rebel and My Dearest. Have I got your attention? Another woman centric ruler tale set in Baekje. Yes, there is a love story. That cast is great, to boot. I have started and liked what I’ve seen but got sidetracked. Need to get back to it. Before you look at the ep number and faint seeing the number 108, keep in mind that the eps are half an hour long so it’s an equivalent of a normal 54 ep sageuk so if you can watch eg Empress Ki, you are good with this.

My Country: The New Age - Lee Bang Won but make it gay. OK, I kid, sort of (not really) but this is smart and passionate and heartbreaking. If you want a wide scope or lots of politics, probably not a take for you (Six Flying Dragons is RIGHT there), but if you want an intense, emotional tale, come right in!

Six Flying Dragons - to me, this is THE drama about Lee Bang Won. It’s smart and emotional, deals with politics and has heart. It has a large cast of characters I got invested in, OTPs that will blow your mind etc etc.

Faith/The Great Doctor - if you are a fan of old school shoujo like Red River, Basara or Fushigi Yuugi, this or Moon Lovers are your best bet on this list. A time traveling tale with other fantasy elements about a modern day plastic surgeon who ends up being kidnapped into Goryeo during the early days of King Gongmin’s (hi!) reign by a tormented, oath bound warrior played by Lee Min Ho at his hottest (and playing historical General Choi Young. Do RPS at your pleasure), this one is one of my all time favorites.

Seodonyo/Ballad of Seo Dong - I am actually currently watching this one tho I haven’t been posting about it. Set in both Baekje and Silla, this is an angsty love story with a side of politics. It’s filmed in 2005 and looks accordingly but if you don’t mind dated visuals, this is pretty great!

Emperor of the Sea - set in Silla and Tang, this was a huge hit and deservedly so. Our protag is a slave and gladiator and a great naval hero. This is grim and smart and epic. It’s from 2004 so once again, if dated visuals are no-go, skip, but if you want a great story and performances, this has your name on it.

The Kingdom of the Winds - an epic cursed prince narrative, our ML (Song Il Gook at his sexiest) rises from abandoned prince and slave and abused assassin to general, royal and king, sparing time for an angsty delicious love story with an enemy princess. This has serious sageuk bits AND the best shoujo tropes in the business, plus enough whump to keep anyone happy.

Gye Baek - Lee Seo Jin, another sageuk stalwart, stars as the title character in this tale of a Baekje commoner, war slave and general. This is grim but glorious.

Soldier/God of War - this is a traditional war-centric sageuk and grim as hell. Another slave to general tale.

King Geun Chu Go - this is on my watch list; it’s about a warrior king of Baekje. Haven’t seen it but heard good things.

Ja Myung Go - smart and unrelentingly tragic, featuring Jang Ryeo Won and Jung Kyung Ho as doomed lovers and Park Min Young in an evil role, this is great and has deeply flawed characters in the very definition of doomed by the narrative tale.

Arthdal Chronicles - this is obviously a fantasy but the tale of prophesied twins, magical priestess, wars and mysticism is clearly set in a pre-Joseon in terms of aesthetics world.

Alchemy of Souls - like Arthdal this is pure fantasy but also like Arthdal, a lot of its styling is pre-Joseon so on this list it goes.

Moon Lovers/Scarlet Heart Ryeo - ok I think if people have heard of only one drama on this very long list, it’s probably this one. Modern time traveling heroine ending up during the reign of Goryeo’s King Taejo, in the middle of his sons’ fight for the throne, having an epic but doomed romance with shoujo catnip tortured bad boy Lee Jun Ki.

Shine or Go Crazy - if you want a more historical take on Moon Lovers succession fight but still with plenty of hotness, angst and doomed romance, come right in. This baby stars Jang Hyuk, so you know it’s bound to be good. I actually started it and enjoyed it but got sidetracked. Need to get back to it. Fun fact: while Moon Lovers was hugely popular internationally, domestically Shine or Go Crazy (they aired around the same time), did much better.

The Legend/The First King’s Four Gods - for a long time this was my favorite kdrama of all time and is still probably in my top 10. Ignore the odd first episode, the rest is perfection. Expensive and wonderfully written, this was Bae Yong Joon’s last drama before he retired to rest on his pile of money (if you are young, you probably don’t remember what a big deal he was, bigger than all the Hallyu stars nowadays put together. He basically was singlehandedly supporting the kdrama industry at one point), but what a worthy way to go out. It’s an epic Goguryeo fantasy tale of a prophesied prince coming into his own, with such amazing characters and relationships and OTPs and battles and points about destiny versus free will. It is everything and I kinda want to rewatch now.

The Blade and The Petal/Sword and Flower - ostensibly a star-crossed Gogureyo love story, this really is more about politics. It’s a mixed bag. The visuals are insane but Uhm Tae Woong, while always solid in modern dramas, is out of place in a sageuk (in QSD Kim Nam Gil stole his thunder; there is nobody to do so here but that doesn’t help him.)

Queen Seon Duk - probably the most famous entrant into female power sageuks, this was a mad hit and centered on the titular character’s rise to power and fight for the same with her female nemesis Mishil. If you want love stories, angsty fighter Bidam propelled Kim Nam Gil to stardom as he stole the leading man mantle from Uhm Tae Woong.

Empress Ki - currently rewatching this. It’s set in the waning days of Goryeo but takes place mainly in Yuan. Still, the FL is Korean and a lot of the story revolves around one of her suitors’, a deposed Korean king, attempts to get his land back. As you can tell by my rabid posts, this is a great drama - politics, romance (I ship FL and the Yuan emperor like mad), murder, dysfunction and everything good.

Hwarang - it’s so brain dead it might as well be a brain-eating amoeba in drama form but it did give us both Park Hyung Sik and Park Seo Joon before they made it big in drama world. It’s terrible tho, stay away.

River where the Moon Rises - I have such a love/hate relationship with this drama - I loved the beginning, with our tormented assassin heroine slowly being warmed by the loyal rustic ML with his own trauma. And then Ji Soo’s bullying scandal happened and he was replaced by Na In Woo, aka the actor I like least from any country in all my close to two decades of watching dramas. I tried but I simply couldn’t and I am still mad. This said, if you don’t share my NIW allergy, it’s probably worth a watch.

The Great King’s Dream - if you liked QSD and can’t get enough of the period but want an even more traditional tale, you can do worse than this drama. I liked what I saw but this baby is 70 eps and lacks Bidam so I peaced out. Maybe I will get back to it sometime, but probably not.

Jeong Do Jeon - as you can tell by the title, centers on JDJ and the last days of Goryeo. Not really my bag (time period been done plenty in other dramas and I don’t have that much interest in JDJ) but supposed to be solid.

My Only Love Song - a short silly mess but still probably better than River (which tells the same story) because it doesn’t have NIW.

King Gwanggaeto the Great - 92 eps. I can’t!

The King Loves - delicious love triangle (that goes ALL ways), angst, prettiness, a side of bodyguard romance. What’s not to love in this Goryeo tale?

ETA: this post was so long that when I tried to tag every drama I mentioned, tumblr told me you hit the tag limit of 30 tags no more tags for you. Oh well, sorry dramas that ended up I tagged!

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