#its basically the same thing they had for international viewers last year

[trustherkindheart]

FREE NWSL STREAMING

#nwsl #its basically the same thing they had for international viewers last year #(+ vpn users 😊) #but sounds like theyll have a good chunk of the season up for domestic viewers this year as well #and theyll be getting an app for devices and smart tvs!

[cheriladycl01]

Fast Cars on the Island - Oscar Piastri x LoveIslandContestant! Reader Part 1

Plot: Your an engineer for Mclaren and you were asked as a PR stunt to go onto Love Island. You would keep your job of course but Mclaren wanted some more media traction.

A/N: I know they would never do this, and that's why its fiction!

Credit to brawn-gp for the GIF

You'd basically been an intern during your placement year at McLaren as an engineering university student. They then kept you on as an employee to work with them while you completed your final year of university.

That was in 2023, it was now 2025 and you were 23 years old and had worked for McLaren for the last few years.

In recent years PR for the teams was all getting the same. They made the funny and treading tiktoks, they did the 0.5 pics, and they made the memes which never got old. But all the teams were looking for something new... something refreshing. So when the team came forward with the idea for someone to go on Love Island, Zac Brown hated the idea.

He thought it was ridiculous.

It was ridiculous.

But after some thought of how Lando and Oscar, the stellar boys of his team... young and energetic brought like likeability and youth too McLaren that everyone loved. He then realized that this would give someone in McLaren a larger platform to open up too and show the ins and outs of McLaren and it would gain way more viewers from a different group of people.

So once the car for 2025 had been created he went through a long list of all the potential candidates he'd ask to apply. Maybe he could even see if he could sway ITV in anyway.

Obviously he looked at the social media girls and then any of the mechanics that they could let loose for the potential of 10 weeks. But the one that struck him the most was you. Y/N Y/L/N.

You were the perfect candidate, you were an engineer and travelled with McLaren from race to race working on the car's performance and helping the strategists when it came to optimizing car performance with driver ability.

So that's why you were currently sat in the ITV studio doing your little interview for your introduction.

You were a little gutted they told you they wanted you in on this project as you had a massive crush on driver number 81 Oscar Piastri and you knew both him and Lando would be watching you.

The Love Island Intro:

"My love life is non-apparent I think I've had a closer relationship with my car than a man!" you joked halfway through the interview when they'd asked you about your love-life.

"My name is Y/N Y/L/N, I'm 23 years old from London! I work for a Formula 1 Team, McLaren Racing as an Engineer" you smile looking at the camera shuffling on your seat a little bit adjusting you dress.

"The lights a really bright in this studio I think my makeup's running!" you say as a makeup technician comes out fixing your under eye a little.

"I think my last relationship was my first year of University and it lasted for about a year" you answer with a thoughtful look up.

"I think he got fed up with me! At that point i was very career focused and I still am." you answer the prompted 'and why was that' question asked to you.

"I'm not fussy when it comes to looks, but I tend to go for sporty guys that are taller than me and treat me well! My dad always told me, find yourself a man that will treat you how they treat their Vintage Pontaic and I've lived by that ever since!" you admit with a little laugh.

"Where I work in such a fast paced and big industry I'm very much a socialite and people person so i can imagine I'll make friends quickly in the villa" you answer again the question they asked you.

Walking into the Villa:

You step into the Villa, you of course were wearing a Papaya Bikini with a matching coverup in the form of a cardigan but sheer.

You walk through thanking the driver before walking into the villa looking around in awe.

Maybe it wasn't the worst thing spending your entire summer here. The only thing was you were gutted you wouldn't be updated on how your team was doing at any point! This year the villa was in Greece, it had been completely reformed with the pool being more like the one from season 1 where it had the beach sort of style to it.

You round the corner seeing two gorgeous girls sipping on champagne.

"Oh, look its another girl!!! OMG HEY!!!!" the first girl shouts beckoning you over.

"Hey!" you exclaim walking over as quickly as you could in the heels you were wearing.

The first girl pulls you into a hug kissing either one of your cheeks while gripping both your arms, she was pretty tall as well around 5'11, whereas you were around 5'7 in the heels you were sporting.

The next girl hands you a drink before kissing your cheek.

"So girl! What's your name, how old are you?" the first girl asks.

"Y/N! And I'm 23! What's your names?" you ask politely before taking a sip of your champagne.

"I'm Millie, and this is Auriela!" she smiles pointing to the other girl.

Seconds later another female enters the Villa with a shrilly sort of shriek, looking around at the place.

"Omggggggg! Heyy girls whats going on!" she says in a strong Scottish Accent.

Your then introduced to Zavi before you all get chatting about what you like in boys.

Oscar and Lando's Reaction:

"Damn, who knew she looked like that under team gear!" Lando compliments shamelessly checking her out as they slow-mowed her walk out on screen before showing her intro video.

"Yeah, she's pretty" Oscar says quietly while respectfully looking her over.

Oscar had a crush on you from when he was a reserve driver for Alpine and he saw you on work experience in McLaren from the end of the 2022 season and before he joined all the way through till the September of 2023. You then were in the MTC a lot between Uni, so he saw you a lot during the winter break before you were off for your finals.

You rejoined McLaren in May of 2024 for the Monaco GP where you cam with revolutionary upgrades for Zac Brown to oversee.

And you'd been with them ever since, always in Oscar's mind as the pretty engineer who not only made his cars race fast but made his heart race just as fast too.

He watched as she said she liked sporty guys, maybe he had a chance if she didn't fall in love while in there.

"That other girls pretty fit! Mille is that her name?" Lando comments but it goes straight over Oscar's head where he's so honed in on you.

Meeting the Boys:

The presenter had you all stood in the pool, and she explained how she was about to bring the boys out one by one.

"Okay first boy. Please come out and introduce yourself!"

"Hey ladies, all looking beautiful today, my name is Jai I'm 25 and I'm a training Surgeon!" he smiles holding both hands together as he looks at all of you.

"Okay ladies, step forward if you like the look of Jai!" she says and both Millie and Zavi step forward. You don't step forward as you can imagine he's pretty busy as a doctor and your schedules would clash too much.

"Oh woah, you've got too girls that have stepped forward for you Jai, what are your first thought, we feeling good?" she asks and he nods.

"Yeah, I mean they are both gorgeous ladies!"

"Okay lets find out more. Zavi, why did you step forward?" the presenter asks and she smiles.

"We're both doctors, so i think we'd make a pretty good match, we'd have lots to talk about. Yeah and your very handsome!" she says shyly and the presenter nods.

"Awesome and Y/N you didn't step forward, just keeping you options open?" she asks and you shake your head.

"You of course are very attractive and seem like a really funny and kind guy, but I travel a lot for work and I think with you being a doctor our schedules would result in a major clash unfortunately!" you explain, with a guilty look.

He nods in understanding before he goes and stands next to Zavi in her white bathing suit.

"Our first couple, Jai and Zavi!" she says and you all clap as Jai walks next to her placing a quick kiss on her cheek.

"Okay, our second boy everyone say hello to Chris!" she introduces and another man comes walking through the double glass doors.

"Hey, I'm Chris I'm 22 and I'm a Celebrity Hairdresser" he smiles waving shyly before tucking his arms behind his back.

"Okay girls you know what to do!"

This time only Auriela steps forward. You stay in your position along with Millie.

"Okay, so Auriela has stepped forward for you Chris! Aurelia why did you step forward!" she asks and Auriela laughs.

"Holy hell have you seen him? Hi I'm Aurelia" she smiles playfully at him, he looks down a small blush on his cheeks.

"Millie, you didn't step forward this time. Any reason?" she asks.

"Little disheartened after Jai, but I'm sure my times coming. Just not with Chris, sorry my ex is a hairdresser!" she laughs off her reasoning before he ends up choosing Aurelia.

"Our second couple Chris and Aurelia!"

"Okay, Boy 3 please make yourself known!" she exclaims and another very handsome man comes strolling out. He immediately sends a wink your guys' way and pulls the presenter in to kiss her cheek in a friendly manner.

"Hi, my names Daniel, I'm 25 and I'm a footballer" he smiles crossing his arms over his broad chest.

"Okay, ladies please step forward if you like the look of Daniel" the presenter smiles. You, Millie and Aurelia all step forward.

"Sorry" Aureila says turning round to look at Chris.

"Woah, that's the most we've had step forward! And this is in fact that first time we've had Y/N step forward" the presenter says and he looks between you and Millie trying to determine who it was.

"The one in Orange!" she exclaims and he looks at you, small smirk on his face.

"Hello beautiful" he compliments and you smile at him.

Eventually after she asks Millie who pleads her case heavily, he goes with her. You step back a little sadly and he looks over to you in apology but you just nod with a smile understanding his choice.

"Okay our next couple Millie and Daniel!" she says and you all clap happily.

"Okay boy number 4 please step out and make yourself known" the presenter asks again.

"Hiya, all looking really beautiful ladies. I'm Aaron I'm 26 and I'm a freelance photographer" he introduces before making a little side joke.

You, and Zavi step forward.

"So you've got Y/N who only stepped forward for one other boy stepping forward for you in Orange and isn't currently coupled up. Then you've got Zavi's who currently with Jai" she explains and he nods.

"But of course you can choose any girl even if she's not coupled up! Y/N why did you step forward?" she asks looking at you.

"You are very handsome obviously, has that sky book guy vibe about him. But I think your photography career would go wild if you came travelling with me for my job!" you smile looking at him.

She asks Zavi why she changed her mind from Jai giving a generic answer about keeping her options open before she questions Millie and why she didn't step forward.

"Aaron, please go stand next to the girl you'd like to couple up with" the presenter says and he walks standing next to you. He places a kiss on your cheek.

"You look stunning by the way" he smiles looking down at you making you blush and elbow him to shut up. So you could see what the presenter was about to say.

"Now, all of you are happily coupled up, we have Y/N and Aaron, we have Millie and Daniel, Aureila and Chris and Zavi and Jai. However, please say hello to our final male contestant Charlie" she says and a blonde guy walks out full of confidence.

"£10 that he's out by week 2" you whisper to Aaron making him snicker a little before covering it up with a cough.

"Hi ladies, I'm Charlie I'm 28 and I'm a Physician" he smiles.

"Okay, so obviously all these ladies are currently coupled up, however you are able to choose any of them and break the couple they are currently in!" the presenter exclaims.

"Oooooof the whole lot!" he says flicking his hand looking over all of you.

"I'm going to make it easier for you and ask if the girls like the look of you for them to step forward. Please do so ladies on the count of three" she says and counts to 3.

When no-one steps forward he awkwardly shuffles.

"Come on ladies lets not be shy" he laughs, until the presenter deems no-one to step forward.

"Okay, I'll go with her in the Orange Bikini" he says pointing at you. You look away from Aaron in shock.

"Okay, Aaron please come stand here with me and Charlie please go stand next to Y/N" she says and you keep your eyes on Aaron as he walks away. He gives a nod to you and you nod back.

An understanding.

"Okay, these are our current couples, no more couplings will happen today!" she exclaims before she explains that you have time to explore the villa and get to know each other.

Oscar and Lando Reaction:

"Okay, no I understand that, good for her" Lando says shoving some plain popcorn into his mouth as he watched Y/N not step forward for Jai.

"I bet Y/N would step forward for me" Lando says as she rejects the second guy to come out Chris.

"Do you recon she'd step out for me?" Oscar asks looking over to his friend.

"Yeah mate. Your a catch. I even heard her say to Emma, the girl in marketing once that her fav accent is aussie!" Lando admits eyes glued to the screen as she steps forward for Daniel.

"She does!" Oscar exclaims looking at Lando making his pause the TV.

"Yeah, mate. Now lets watch coz this may be the future Mr Y/N in the paddock!" Lando says gesturing to the TV.

"Nah, that's foul. How you out there rejecting my girl Y/N Y/LN!" Lando screams at the TV in horror that Daniel had just gone with Millie.

They watch as the next guy walks out and Lando and Oscar raise eyebrows. It was a brown haired, brown eyed guy that did the beluga smile as he came out.

"She's so stepping forward for him!" Lando says pointing at Aaron.

"I'm already putting my money on them as winners" he comments again. And she does in fact step forward. He of course chooses her, no seconds thoughts needed. They watch as he compliments her and kisses her cheek.

"Dude, she defo had school girl crushes on us!" Lando admits seeing the similar attributes and mannerisms the mail had to the McLaren driver duo.

They wait until they see Charlie walking in.

“Nah man, he keeps eyeing her up! He’s gonna take her away from Aaron!” Lando explains, but Oscar is just unhappy that she’s coupled up with anyone in general.

He should have admitted to her ages ago that he was madly in love with her.

They then watched on as the girls all parted ways walking into the bedroom and makeup area where all their clothes were in the wardrobes with their names on!

The boys all sat around the campfire talking to each other. Not fully getting to know each other wanting to save that for dinner later on.

But Oscar didn’t know how much longer he could watch this if you were going to be flirting with people the whole time.

Taglist:

@littlesatanicassholebitch @hockey-racing-fubol @laura-naruto-fan1998 @22yuki @simxican @sinofwriting @lewisroscoelove @cmleitora @stupidandunnecessary @clayra-g @daemyratwst @honey-belden @moonypixel @lauralarsen @vader-is-hot @ironcowboycopnickel @itsjustkhaos @the-untamed-soul @beebo86 @happylittlereader @ziejustme @lou-larcher5 @thewulf @purplephantomwolf @chasing-liberosis @chillyleclerc @chanthereader @annoyingmoonballoon @summissss @evieepepi08 @havaneseoger08 @celesteblack08 @gulphulp @fandom1ruined2me @celebstories @starfusionsworld @jspitwall @sierruhh @georgeparisole @dakotatankbig @youcannotcancelquidditch @zzonsbeek @tallbrownhairsarcastic @mellowarcadefun @ourteenagetragedy @otako5811 @countingstacksandpanicattacks @peachiicherries @formulas-bitch @cherry-piee @hopexcroc @mirrorball-6 @spilled-coffee-cup @mehrmonga @bigsimperika @blueberry64857959 @eiraethh @lilypadlover @curseofhecate @alliwantisadonut @the-fem1n1ne-urge @21stcenturytaegi @dark-night-sky-99 @spideybv28 @i-wish-this-was-me @tallrock35 @butterfly-lover @barnestatic @landossainz @darleneslane @barcelonaloverf1life @r0nnsblog @ilove-tswizzle @kapsylia @laneyspaulding19 @lazybot @malynn @cassielikereading @viennakarma @teamnovalak @landosgirlxoxo @marie0v @jlb20416 @yourbane @teamnovalak @nikfigueiredo @fionaschicken @0picels0 @seomako @urdad-hot @formula1mount @tinydeskwriter @butterfly-lover @ironmaiden1313

#f1 imagine #f1 x reader #formula 1 x you #formula 1 #formula one #formula one fanfiction #oscar piastri series #oscar piastri angst #oscar piastri fanfic #oscar piastri x you #oscar piastri f1 #oscar piastri one shot #oscar piastri imagine #oscar piastri #op81 #op81 fluff #op81 imagine #op81 x reader #op81 fic #op81 x you #op81 angst

[itsclydebitches]

TBH I think the whole "You didn't have an issue with this in 'insert x show here' but you have an issue with it in RWBY? What are you, sexist?" thing can easily be defused with a simple, "How did RWBY present this plot-point compared to the show I like?"

Sure, technically Cinder Fall and Darth Maul are the 'same' character, but how are the two presented in their respective shows? Cinder eats up screentime and none of it goes anywhere and gets frustrating. Maul is a relatively minor villain that had one season's worth of attention in CW and then was the villain of a few episodes throughout Rebels before getting killed off.

The only reason someone would be confused as to why people like Maul but hate Cinder is if they just read the two's respective wiki pages.

Really the whole "Your issues with RWBY are just subconscious misogyny" is just some people wanting to slap labels onto others so they can feel validated on not agreeing with their opinions.

Generally speaking, I'm wary of any take that boils down to a single sentence, "You're just [insert accusation here]." Not because such accusations are always 100% without merit—with a canon dealing with as many sensitive subjects as RWBY, combined with a fandom as large and diverse as it has become, you're bound to come across some people whose "criticism" stems primarily from bigotry—but because such dismissive summaries never tackle the problem a fan has pointed out. If one fan goes, "Ruby's plan was foolish because [reasons]" and the response to that is "You just can't handle a woman leader," then that response has failed to disprove the argument presented. The thing about "criticism" based in bigotry is that there isn't actually a sound argument attached because, you know, the only "argument" here is "I don't like people who aren't me getting screen time." So you can spot that really easily. The person who is actually misogynistic is going to be spouting a lot of rants about how awful things are... but very little evidence as to why it's awful, leaving only the fact that our characters are women as the (stupid) answer.

And yes, there is something to be said for whether, culturally, we're harder on women characters than we are men. Are we subconsciously more critical of what women do in media simply because we have such high expectations for that representation and, conversely, have become so used to such a variety of rep for men—including endlessly subpar/outright bad stories—that we're more inclined to shrug those mistakes off? That's absolutely worth discussing, yet at the same time, acknowledging that doesn't mean those criticisms no longer exist. That's where I've been with the Blake/Yang writing for a while now. I think fans are right to point out that we may be holding them to a higher standard than we demand of straight couples, but that doesn't mean the criticisms other fans have of how the ship has been written so far are without merit. Those writing mistakes still exist even if we do agree that they would have been overlooked in a straight couple—the point is they shouldn't exist in either. Both are still bad writing, no matter whether we're more receptive to one over the other. Basically, you can be critical of a queer ship without being homophobic. Indeed, in an age where we're getting more queer rep than ever before, it's usually the queer fans who are the most critical. Because we're the ones emotionally invested in it. The true homophobes of the fandom either dropped RWBY when the coding picked up, or spend their time ranting senselessly about how the ship is horrible simply because it exists, not because of how it's been depicted. Same for these supposed misogynists. As a woman, I want to see Ruby and the others written as complex human beings, which includes having them face up to the mistakes they've made. The frustration doesn't stem from me hating women protagonists, but rather the fact that they're written with so little depth lately and continually fall prey to frustrating writing decisions.

And then yeah, you take all those feelings, frustrations, expectations, and ask yourself, "Have I seen other shows that manage this better?" Considering that RWBY is a heavily anime-inspired show where all the characters are based off of known fairy tales and figures... the answer is usually a resounding, "Yes." As you say, I keep coming across accusations along the lines of, "People were fine with [insert choice here] when [other show] did it," as if that's some sort of "Gotcha!" moment proving a fan was bigoted all along, when in fact the answer is right there: Yes, we were okay with it then because that show did it better. That show had the setup, development, internal consistency, and follow through that RWBY failed to produce, which is precisely what we were criticizing in the first place.

What I also think is worth emphasizing here is how many problems RWBY has developed over the last couple of years (combining with the problems it had at the start). Because, frankly, audiences are more forgiving of certain pitfalls when the rest of the show is succeeding. I think giving a Star Wars example exemplifies that rather well. No one is going to claim that Star Wars is without its problems (omg does it have problems lol), but there's enough good there in most individual stories to (usually) keep the fans engaged. That doesn't mean that they're not going to point out those criticisms when given the chance, just that disappointment isn't the primary feeling we come away with. Obviously in a franchise this size there are always exceptions (like the latest trilogy...), but for most it's a matter my recent response to The Bad Batch, "I have one major criticism surrounding a character's arc and its impact on the rest of the cast, and we definitely need to unpack the whitewashing... but on the whole yes, it was a very enjoyable, well written show that I would recommend to others." However, for many fans now, we can't say the same of RWBY. Yang getting KO'ed by Neo in a single hit leads into only Blake reacting to her "death" which reminds viewers of the lack of sisterly development between Yang and Ruby which segues into a subpar fight which messes with Cinder's already messy characterization which leads to Ruby randomly not using her silver eye to save herself which leaves Jaune to mercy kill Penny who already died once which gives Winter the powers when she could have just gotten it from the start which results in a favorite character dying after his badly written downfall and all of it ends with Jaune following our four woman team onto the magical island... and that's just two episodes. The mistakes snowball. RWBY's writing is broken in numerous ways and that's what fans keep pointing to. Any one of these examples isn't an unforgivable sin on its own, but the combination of all of them, continuously, representing years worth of ongoing issues results in that primary feeling of, "That was disappointing."

Looking at some of the more recent posts around here, fans aren't upset that Ruby is no longer interested in weaponry because that character trait is Oh So Important and its lack ruins the whole show, they're upset because Ruby, across the series, lacks character, so the removal of one trait is more of a problem than it would be in a better written character. What are her motivations? Why doesn't she seek answers to these important questions? Why is her special ability so inconsistent? Where's her development recently? What makes Ruby Ruby outside of wielding a scythe and wanting to help everyone, a very generic character trait for a young, innocent protagonist? We used to be able to say that part of her character was that obsession and we used to hope that this would lead to more interesting developments: Will Ruby fix/update their weapons? Is her scythe dependency the reason why others need to point out how her semblance can develop? What happens if she is weaponless? Surely that will lead to more than just a headbutt... but now we've lost hope that this trait will go anywhere, considering it has all but disappeared. Complaints like these are short-hand criticism for "Ruby's character as a whole needs an overhaul," which in turn is a larger criticism of the entire cast's iffy characterization (Who is Oscar outside Ozpin? Why was Weiss' arc with her father turned into a joke and concluded without her? etc.) and that investment speaks to wanting her to be better. We want Ruby to be a better character than she currently is, like all those other shows we've seen where the women shine. Reducing that to misogyny isn't just inaccurate, but the exact opposite of what most fans are going for in their criticisms.

#rwby #rwde #mymetas

[elliotapricot]

My Anime 9/10′s

With probably no spoilers cuz I don’t wanna talk too long about them zzz.

1. Fullmetal Alchemist

YALL ALREADY KNOW THIS A 9/10. The only real reason this show is not a 10/10 is because it’s just a story that I’d never rewatch. There’s like 70 episodes, which is way too long for my short attention span, especially since I’ve seen it already. But yeah, by all accounts, this story is a masterpiece and is one of the only “shounen” anime’s that I genuinely enjoyed. No random sexualization. No dumb filler. All the characters have an actual purpose and role in the plot and everyone has their own morals and ideals that interact to make the story interesting. I couldn’t bring myself to really hate anyone, even the villains, because everyone was pretty well written. Also super satisfying ending that ties up everything properly without leaving me confused or upset. If you only watch a few anime in your life, Fullmetal Alchemist is pretty much a MUST WATCH to see a beautiful example of a modern classic anime as an artform. Also I should say that I really don’t like Hunter x Hunter (AN EXTREMELY CONTROVERSIAL OPINION BTW) but I love Fullmetal Alchemist so take from that what you will.

2. Parasyte: The Maxim

Same kinda shit where you already know this a 9/10 for me. It’s just a very satisfying anime that doesn’t have random sexualization or random filler or anything like that. Ending is also very good and ties up the story in a way that doesn’t leave more questions but also allows the characters to have a “life” outside of the scope of the story. I think Parasyte, because of its more horror and psychological-esque vibes, counts as a seinen and not a shounen, so for more mature audiences. I also really liked how the story was successfully adapted to modern times since the manga is from the 80′s. I have actually rewatched this anime, but what stops me from giving it a 10/10 is a few things that I found kinda “stereotypical” that I don’t wanna discuss further too much cuz it’s spoilers. I still obviously really like this anime and highly recommend it.

3. Zankyou no Terror

TBH, this anime is pretty hard for me to properly describe in a lot of words as to why I like it. The art was really pretty as well as the music, which was just straight up amazing. The cinematography of this anime is excellent as well, and a lot of scenes have that sense of being acted out by real people, as opposed to feeling completely drawn/animated. I was a teenager when this anime came out and I think a lot of the themes presented in the show really related to me. The show does kinda have some leftover questions when it ends that prevents me from rating it a 10/10, but I have such a soft spot for this anime. It’s from the same creator as Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop, and although those two animes are also very good, they did not impact me as much as this anime did. Recommended for people looking for idk something that gives off Inception vibes?? In the sense that it’s much more about its themes and its message more so than the believability of the events that occur.

4. Magic Kaito 1412

THIS IS JUST A PERSONAL PREFERENCE BTW LOLOL I DON’T KNOW ANYBODY WHO’D PUT THIS AS A 9/10 ANIME. I JUST REALLY LIKED IT OKAY. It’s made by the same person who does Detective Conan but I like this a lot more because it’s a much shorter series and slightly more mature (more for teens than just straight up kids). I really liked the main guy, I think he’s funny and charismatic. He’s a pervert at times but Imma forgive that cuz of the 90′s. Idk it’s just a really fun anime that I don’t have to take seriously and can just watch and enjoy.

5. Mob Psycho 100 (season 1 AND 2)

Imma put season two as slightly better than season one. So season one would be like a 9 and season two is like a 9.25 for me. Super super funny anime and I like it SO much more than One Punch Man. I liked that there was a good balance of serious moments, but you can definitely still count this anime as a comedy. I’m typically not the type to watch “comedy” but this anime genuinely had me laughing out loud, while also crying and freaking out right alongside the main character. The main guy is super great because he’s just this shy and sweet middle schooler, and it’s really interesting watching him balance trynna have a normal life while also using his powers for good and such. Apparently the anime was decently faithful to the manga and there’s apparently enough material for a third season so I’d be pretty stoked for a season 3, but season 2 ended on a pretty good spot and was satisfying. TBH, if I had the time, I’d probably rewatch both seasons and bump it up to a 10/10.

6. Vinland Saga

This anime is just the first season of what I hopes to be a whole series that will be stay beautifully and faithfully adapted from the manga. As someone who read very far into the manga (but quit like years ago simply because I hate slow updates lol), I actually didn’t enjoy watching the anime at first. I was impatient and kept waiting for when like the “major” events would happen. So I watched like three episodes and quit. But when I had some free time, I decided to get stuck in and commit to watching the whole series and I was so pleasantly surprised with just how good it was. I was impatient but I needed to realize that there is no “filler” or like “wasted time” in the entire anime. I hadn’t read the manga in years, so so many things were only vaguely familiar but I think this helped me stay surprised and excited throughout the anime. I’m looking forward to the rest of the manga being adapted because it’s just a good Viking saga lolol. Major themes of stuff like growing up, violence vs. peace, what it means to be a good person, etc. Lots of blood and LOTS of violence like a LOT they are VIKINGS CMON but tbh not really any gore which I liked cuz gore makes me ughhhh. A very good watch and only a taste of an excellent story.

7. Demon Slayer

It’s just Demon Slayer duhhh. Of course this a 9/10 for me. I don’t wanna write much just cuz the show is so popular. Just read a REAL review of this anime somewhere else lmaoooo. Also yes I did watch the movie in theaters and yes I liked it a lot as well mmkay. I’m mad hype for season two. My S/O doesn’t like Demon Slayer as much as me, but also has Hunter x Hunter as their all time favorite anime. Do with that information what you will lolol.

8. Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 2

Same shit as Demon Slayer. Just go read someone else’s review about why it’s so good lol. Also, unlike Mob Psycho 100, I can’t include all of the seasons in this, because I have very various opinions about how good/bad the other seasons were. But this season 3 part 2, was just plain and simply amazing. While I might not like each season equally, as a whole Attack on Titan is also a modern masterpiece of storytelling. Read the manga if you can.

9. Great Pretender

I love this anime so much. Such a good and fun wild ride. The whole show is ridiculous but in a fun way. I’m a HUGE fan of heist films, so of course I absolutely enjoyed a heist anime. I’ve watched this show in sub AND dub, due to the fact that everyone is “technically” speaking English the entire time. If you’re a purist, just watch in sub OR dub cuz I did get confused here and there, especially when I would go back to compare language discrepancies.  Because basically I did this super high maintenance thing where I switched back to Japanese whenever the main character had flashbacks, since he’s ya know, Japanese. The dub also has this confusing thing where the first five minutes or so are still in Japanese, but switches to English when a little cue card on the screen goes “For the Viewers sake, everything from now on will be translated to Japanese.” It’s cuz in the sub, the inverse obviously happens where the characters are initially speaking broken English to each other, but for convenience sake, everything from that point on will be in Japanese. It’s confusing at first but I liked it cuz it just proved the whole international vibe of the show. It’s funny either sub or dub when they joke about how bad the main guy speaks English, cuz in the dub he’s speaking perfect English, while the sub has him not speaking English at all. But anyway, great anime that WOULD have gotten a 10/10 if not for the last episode. Like without spoiling ... WTF WAS THAT LMAOOOO. The anime as a whole is super wacky and zany but at least I could try to think it’s real life, but that last episode was just so unbelievable and bizarre and pulled my suspension of disbelief into the STRATOSPHERE that I just had to convince myself that this show takes place in some improbable alternate reality where something like what happened in the last episode is at least 5 percent possible CUZ HOW DID ANY OF THAT WORK LMAOOO??? Once again, great show, one of my absolute favorites, BUT THAT ENDING THOUGH WTF.

10. BNA

Good super underrated anime that I don’t hear people talk about at all. If Beastars is anime Zootopia, then BNA is Disney Beastars lmaooo does that make sense? It’s a lot more fun and zany than Beastars and I liked it way more. Made by the same people who made Kill la Kill. I really like that more classic, animated “cheap” art style that the anime has, and I also really liked the plot of the story. Not a 10/10 cuz the show does leave a few unanswered questions at the end of it, but this show was such a fun and interesting ride. When I finished the last episode, I was left with a big smile on my face because I just genuinely enjoyed this anime. Recommended if you wanna watch something a little unique and more on the silly and wack side. Talks about some serious stuff, but luckily the show never takes itself TOO seriously, and remains overall lighthearted for a fun action/sci-fi show.

#bna #attack on titan #parasyte #anime review #myanimelist #great pretender #demon slayer #vinland saga #mob psycho 100 #anime #fullmetal alchemist #terror in resonance #magic kaito

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Honestly the Supernatural ending was fucked all along, because to have a strong ending, a work has to resolve whatever tensions and questions it set up in the opening – not necessarily in an uncomplicated way, but it has to offer a kind of answer to the fundamental story questions.

The premise set up in The Woman in White is: Sam has a good life, Sam is an up-and-coming guy on his way to happiness and success, but Sam's father is not doing well; Sam is angry at his father, who he remembers as, at best, a habitual drunkard who kept Sam's life in chaos and then disowned him.  So question number one is, given that Sam is better and happier now that he's no longer entangled with his father, should he revisit any of that?  Does he continue to owe his father anything, should he help look for him, should he even care at all that his father might be in trouble?  That feels like a clear no, not really, let John solve his own problems – until Jessica dies in the same way Mary did, and that introduces a twist.  Has Sam actually misunderstood who his father was?  Does John know, has John all along known something that Sam needs to know about his own past, that he can't live his happy life until he understands?  The search for John is now about not just “does Sam owe his family anything?” – it's about “does Sam need his family?”  And there's a plot resonance, but also a thematic resonance there: do you need your family?  Even if your family's pretty fucked up?  Does going back to your unhappy childhood serve some necessary function on your road to a successful adulthood?  Can you pretend forever that you don't come from the fucked-up place you come from, or do you actually have to go back and understand the truth about who your parents were because the past is never just the past?  

So the early seasons are largely about answering that question, through the vehicles of Sam, who would prefer not to admit that his fucked-up past can't really be run away from, and Dean, who would prefer not to admit that there was anything fucked-up about his past at all.  Both of them learn and change: Sam begins to understand where he really comes from and why he can't separate himself from the forces that made him, and Dean begins to understand that yeah, actually, he should separate himself a lot more from the forces that made him, that it's foolish to hold up his father as some kind of infallible god, because even God isn't that. All the stories that spin out in the early seasons about Earth as the cosmic battleground for the family strife between Michael and Lucifer are linked to the pilot by that question: is there any escaping the reach of your family and its history?  And the show decides, yeah, we have free will, we shouldn't just lie down and die because that's our inheritance.  We should change the script.  We can be better than our parents were.  Better than we were ordered or prophesied to be.  And the clear mechanism for all of this is love: Sam falls to Lucifer's influence when he's rejected again (Dean following in John's footsteps), but Sam is able to shake off that demonic control long enough to thwart Lucifer because Dean loves him and accepts him and remains with him when it looks like it's too late to save him (the thing John never did, couldn't do).  Dean changes the script by being more able to love Sam unconditionally than John could, and the basic question of the premise is answered: you do have to go back to your family – not to accept or replicate their mistakes, but to do better, to love them better this time.  You have to heal from the root.  As a viewer, you can accept or reject this resolution; I personally like it, but I'm from that same cultural background, I have a family history that vibes with the things the show is discussing, I'm primed to like and agree with the conclusion.  Maybe you're not, and that's okay!  The point is, it is a conclusion to something.  The show asked questions and then provided answers.

The problem is...the show answered its own questions in 5 seasons, and in such a way that the naturally satisfying conclusion was – literally anything else except more hunting.  You can't say the Big Answer is loving and forgiving your family in spite of their flaws, and then also say that what you want to do with your life is The Family Business just as your father practiced it.  Once you say that the prescription is to heal at the root, something should change.  And it doesn't, really, because the show can't change.  It has a formula.  It's about hunting.  Dean can't give up violence and become a family man, even though that's been clearly established as something he'd be better and happier doing.  Sam can't pursue any dreams that weren't the dreams his father had for him, even though that's been clearly established as the thing he's been willing to fight for all along.  So if the show isn't going to be over, they both have to actively choose to go against their own self-interest. And season 6 is pretty clever, actually – soulless!Sam is a device that does get them back on the road in a way that makes sense; we know why Sam isn't doing what's right for Sam, and we know that Dean can be convinced to do what's wrong for him in order to save Sam.  It tracks.  But it can't last, and what takes over pretty soon from there is...inertia, basically. They keep doing this because this is what they do.  It doesn't really make them happy.  It just feels necessary, because Hunters is what they are; no Hunters retire, in the whole show.  They are never allowed.  It is not done.  They may lapse into more of a part-time gig, but nobody actually leaves the business, because it would be – bad.  People would die, we guess?  A hero never would, we guess? It's not terribly clear, but the general sense is that it just has to happen this way because this is their story now.  This is who they are.

And that's the opposite of what the initial story was about.  Now the story about using your free will to transform and redeem the dysfunctions you inherited is a story about two guys just working in the family business while they die inside of loneliness and PTSD.  There's no story question in the later seasons; there's just stimulus and response.  Oops, Leviathans.  Oops, Mark of Cain.  Oops, Amara.  Oops, Lucifer and Lucifer and more Lucifer. Oops, Michael again.  We better deal with that, I guess.  Some of the storylines are okay in later seasons; some individual episodes are fantastic.  But the whole thing is mired in the fact that there can't be forward momentum in the story because there are opponents and antagonists galore, but there's no internal engine to the story, no fundamental problem to conquer or question to resolve.  From outside the story, we can sit here and say, Hey, it's a problem for me that these dudes are fucking miserable, I'd like them to work on resolving that!  But within the story, they're never allowed to admit that is a problem.  Because it's an adventure show about brave guys doing good deeds, and it's undermined at the most basic level if we come out and admit that what would make these dudes less miserable is no more fucking adventures, no more martyring themselves to do good deeds, no more hunting at all.

When the show came to an end, it was epically fucked, because it had nothing to resolve.  And to give the show credit, it did try to do something interesting that would refer back to and provide a commentary on the whole show – this meta business about “have we all been God's favorite tv show all along?” There's something there; it reminds me of the CS Lewis quote about how he never worried that God didn't exist, but he did often fear that God was actually a vivisectionist.  What if the reason this show has been churning along in place forever in spite of the characters' vivid and unchanging dissatisfaction with their life is that some other force wanted them to keep going on adventures?  Maybe it's God, who's a writer (that's ground we've gone over before), but not just a writer – he's his only fan, his only audience.  He's the Fandom. He's the Audience.  He's us.  Sam and Dean have been on this hamster wheel of labor and loss with no endpoint in sight because that's what we tune in to see; if they both quit, we change the channel.  We're the ones who demand they Always Keep Fighting, who call them heroes for suffering through this endless parade of baddies and funerals.  I mean, that's pretty good, as a way to retcon the complete pointlessness of the last ten years!  The point is: it was fun to watch.  We liked the characters and the episodes and we wanted them to keep doing that for our entertainment, even though we knew it wasn't any fun for them.  It's basically the network tv version of Cabin In the Woods, and there's a – I would say mildly interesting question to raise there about what's drama, what's catharsis, what do we get out of stories about other people's suffering and other people's heroism?  In my opinion it's a mildly interesting route to open up, although I don't know that there's enough meat on the bone to really make it pay off.  An effort was clearly made, though!

But to follow that through to its conclusion, you'd have to answer it, and the way it's set up, there is no satisfying answer possible from inside the universe.  We can answer what we get out of stories, perhaps.  But why would that be of any interest or comfort to the people in the stories?  Their story can't resolve for Sam and Dean if we learn it was actually a story about us the whole time.

So what do you do to end that story? Well, you're a little bit stuck.  You can have them resign or get free somehow, sure, and the show does that.  But what then?  You have two choices, really: either we loop back to s6 and they keep being hunters because It's a Show About Two Hunters – only this time they have True Free Will so you have to assert that they're really freely choosing it, and you have to somehow justify that they would really freely choose to keep doing this thing that's never made them happy, which is depressing as shit – or you have them quit and go pursue their own lives and their own desires – which pretty much goes ahead and admits that the last ten seasons have been us the audience benefitting from the Winchesters' unwilling participation in this Saw-like theme park that was set up for our entertainment (via our stand-in, Chuck).  That's clearly the bolder option, but it's also like – super fucked up!  And it denies both the audience and, more critically, the people who make the show from having any real victory lap,  any way to present the show as a completed entity and say “here's a great story that we're proud of and excited about.” It's such a bleak corner that the show has painted itself into at that point – all of this only happened against our heroes' will, but enjoy it anyway!  Of course that got pushback.  Of course people wanted to end with something that portrayed the characters as the drivers of the show, protagonists whose choices mattered, whose lives mattered.  But they weren't, and they didn't.  That was the premise the writers went with in season 15, because they needed to do something about the fact that nowhere in the past ten seasons had the Winchesters done anything on their own behalf, because they'd never been given story goals.  All they'd been allowed to do is play whack-a-mole with monsters.

It's a mess all the way around, and it's almost impossible to resolve this late in the game.  Season 15 couldn't be about the Winchesters resolving any real Stuff, because the show had long since realized that its prime directive was making sure that the fundamental pattern of the show remained intact: the boys go on adventures, bad things happen somewhere and the boys show up to stop it.  And if that fundamental pattern is not a problem – if we're supposed to be glad it's there – then you can't allow any storylines that would end in changing it.  Everything that's introduced has to be resolvable by a reversion to that vision of What We Do Around Here, so we can keep doing it.  The legitimacy of What We Do Around Here is never allowed to be in question, and an attempt to question it at the very end of the series winds up inherently muddled and out-of-place.  Third-act problems are always first-act problems, and the problem with the finale is that the show had spent so long actively reifying the value of an endless, unchanging sequence of events and actively working to quash anything that started looking like a linear story that would end in a place other than where it began.

I like a lot of the plotlines and episodes and characters in the later season.  Honestly, 12 is probably my favorite season, just on the weight of good episodes I enjoy watching.  But the only part of Supernatural that ever had a coherent story at the heart of it was the original five seasons, where things were set up, explored, and resolved in Swan Song with admirable narrative focus and direction.  Everything after that was just stuff that happened, which is not what a story is, and you can't come back from that in the series finale and somehow make it work.

#spn finale #apparently i give writing advice now?

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Everything you need to know about day one of Brexit

By Ian Dunt

Oh sweet Christ not Brexit again.

Yes, you will never escape. It will never be over. Decades from now, as your wrinkled fingers grasp the remote for your 3D holo-viewer, the main news item will still be about Brexit.

At least we got a break during the coronavirus emergency.

Yep, say what you like about pandemics, but at least they take trade talks off the front pages. Still, it's back now. We leave at the end of the year. And deal or no-deal, things at the border are going to be very different.

OK lay it out for me.

For decades we have had frictionless trade with Europe in the customs union and single market. The customs union got rid of tariffs, which are taxes on goods entering a territory, and the single market harmonised regulations, which means goods are made to the same standards. Once you're outside of them, you need checks at the border to make sure people are paying the right tax and complying with the regulations.

And that's what's about to happen?

Exactly. And this will apply regardless of whether there is a deal or not. I want to issue a word of warning before we go any further: It's a horror show. The level of tediousness here is off the scale. This is like someone came up with a super-powered serum for the concept of bureaucracy and then injected it directly into your bloodstream. But you didn't turn into Chris Evans in Captain America, you turned into Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. The worst things are the acronyms. Everything has an acronym. But you need to get your head around it in order to understand what's going to happen to us next month.

I don't care. I hate this. I want this conversation to stop.

You can't, it's too late. You are trapped here with me and the acronyms. OK so here's the basic problem, the one from which all others follow. Our customs system currently processes around 55 million declarations a year. In 2021, it will process around 270 million. It needs to massively ramp up capacity.

It's just as well the government has such a good track record of implementing complex IT projects at speed then.

Quite. To be fair, the government has put a lot of effort into this, albeit belatedly. More than 35 government departments and public bodies are involved, including HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Transport (DfT), the Border and Protocol Delivery Group (BPDG) and the Transition Task Force (TTF).

Sweet Jesus the acronyms.

Actually, most of those are abbreviations, but let's not get caught up on details. We've barely scratched the surface. There are three key areas where the government needs to build capacity: IT systems to process the customs declarations, physical infrastructure at or near ports, and staff in government and the private sector to keep the customs system going.

That's a lot to do.

It is. But the government made things easier in one crucial respect: it delayed its own import declarations system until July next year.

What does that mean?

It means that stuff coming into Britain from Europe basically gets waved through. There are still technically customs requirements, but they've been pushed back six months. This allowed them to make sure goods would still enter the country and let them focus on trying to get the exports right.

It's hardly taking back control, is it?

No it isn't, but they're undertaking a systems-level change at an eye-watering timetable, so it was a necessary sacrifice.

Couldn't they have extended transition to prepare for this?

Yes they could, but chose not to. That's cost them. Covid seriously delayed preparations, dominated attention in business and government, paused ministerial decision-making and put communication with traders into deep-freeze over the summer.

So what are the biggest risks now?

The IT systems. There are 10 critical IT systems which are needed at the GB–EU border. Then there are the European systems which UK exporters will need to use to get access to the continent. We're not going to go into all of them here - we're going to massively simplify.

Thank heavens.

Don't worry, it'll still make your brain dribble out of your ears. We're also going to simplify by taking goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland off the table. That's its own separate hellscape. And we're going to focus on the Dover-Calais crossing. There are many others going from England to France, but this is the main route. It serves 'accompanied goods' - when a driver in a lorry takes the goods onto a ferry and then drives it off on the other side of the Channel. This is called RoRo, for roll-on-roll-off.

Acronym. Drink.

If you keep that up you'll be smashed by the end of the article and won't have any idea what I'm talking about.

I already have no idea what you're talking about.

Fair enough, drink away. The trouble with customs IT systems is this: Everyone needs to be filling in the right thing, in the right place, at the right time. If they don't, things break down. That doesn't just apply to the UK and French governments. It applies to exporters and importers, ports, hauliers and others. Customs is all or nothing. If one section is wrong, it's all wrong. Lorries are often full of lots of different consignments of goods from different exporters. Plenty of them travel with 100 individual separate consignments on them. This is called 'groupage'. So if one input of one customs form in one of those consignments is wrong, the whole lorry is delayed. And if that lorry is delayed, all the lorries behind it are delayed. The potential for breakdown is therefore very significant.

This is already making me anxious. It's like Jenga but it reaches all the way into the sky and is composed entirely of knives.

You also need to make sure that third party software used by places like the ports integrates with the government systems. And that assumes that the government IT systems actually work and have staff with the proper experience and training to operate them. And this too is interrelated. If one of the systems breaks down, it has a knock-on effect on the other systems. You keep seeing this same problem crop up. It's not one of error, exactly. It's about the consequence of the error, the knock-on effects of it.

How robust are those IT systems looking right now?

Not great. Some have been delayed indefinitely, some for a set period, some are in trials and some are online. But even when they're finished, you really want to give all the people using them time to understand them, to get used to them, so that when we leave transition there are as few mistakes as possible. All four industry representative bodies, including the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and the British International Freight Association (Bifa), have raised concerns about the government's level of preparedness, saying that they don't believe the border will be fully functioning by next month.

That's two more acronyms by my count.

I'm glad to see you sticking to the important information here. The trouble is that lack of government preparedness doesn't just affect it - it affects trader preparedness as well. If they're not getting clear communication from the government about what is happening and how it is happening, they don't know what to do. And the government has a bad record here. It has marched traders up the hill on no-deal several times over recent years, only to march them down again. Now many simply ignore it. Government communications have, until recently, centred on the "opportunities" of Brexit, which does nothing to indicate the urgency with which people need to make expensive and time-consuming changes. Even in October, just 45% of high-value traders who trade exclusively with the EU had started to invest in readiness.

Oh dear.

There are some reasons to be more optimistic. The first is that government communication has belatedly started to improve.  A new campaign in October was much better, telling traders that "time is running out". There's also one really important thing to remember about all this: it's not a long term problem. Brexit has plenty of those and they are severe, but this is not one of them. This is a short, sharp, embarrassing shock. Eventually, the market will adjust. People will see what happens in January and find ways around it so they can get their goods to market. Some people think that will happen very quickly indeed - no more than a month. Some think it'll take the first quarter of next year or longer. But very few people think it will last the whole year. What we're looking at here is the most dramatic, but also ultimately the most superficial, of Brexit impacts.

Starting to feel a bit tipsy now.

Cool, then it might be a good time to start talking about the IT systems.

No. Stop.

What?

I don't want to hear it. I want to get out.

It's too late. You're trapped here in an imaginary world in which I am talking to myself and explaining customs procedures. And in fact your resistance to this conversation probably points to some kind of deep-seated psychological trauma which I'm working my way through.

Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tyre tread on burst stomach.

Very good, Rorschach. So look, there are really four forms you need to remember. First, the import/export declaration. Second, the safety and security documentation. Third, the sanitary and phytosanitary measures for agricultural goods. And fourth, the system that collects these data sets and connects them to the lorry which is transporting the good.

What's in the import/export declaration?

They basically state what the good is, its value and how much duty you have to pay on it. It's the tax bit. It's all very complex, laborious and crammed full of technical minutiae but that's the executive summary. It needs to be lodged before the good gets to the French border.

How do you lodge it?

You do it through a UK system called the Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, or Chief.

Drink.

This is a really old system and before Brexit was even a twinkle in Boris Johnson's eye, the UK planned to turn it off and migrate all traders to a new system called the Customs Declarations Service, or CDS.

Drink.

CDS was meant to replace Chief from January 2019 and then switch off altogether by March 2021, but there were repeated delays. So instead they're keeping Chief for trade between Britain and the EU and using CDS for trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, because it has the capacity for dual tariff fields. CDS is then going to be scaled up until it can deal with all the declarations.

No acronyms there.

Actually trade between Britain and Europe is called GB-EU and trade between Britain and Northern Ireland is called GB-NI, but let's not worry about that. The government insists that Chief now has an increased capacity that can handle 400 million annual declarations - way higher than the 265 million which are expected. HMRC has paid Fujitsu £85 million to provide technical support. But others aren't convinced. They're not sure it can handle the load and nervous that there isn't enough support if something goes wrong.

Very reassuring.

Isn't it. Remember that the importer on the EU side also has to be doing all of this - at the right time, in the right place - on the European customs system.

OK so what about the safety and security thing?

It's a document outlining what the good is, so it can be assessed for potential risks. Again, it's a long complex thing with multiple data fields. Like import/export, it has to be done in advance of the goods reaching Calais. It's submitted to the UK government via a new system called S&S GB.

Drink.

It must also be submitted to the EU member state's Import Control System, which is called ICS.

Drink. OK tell me about the sanitary pad things.

Sanitary and phytosanitary measures, or SPS.

Drink.

These are there to protect people, animals and plants from disease or pests. They cover products of an animal origin, like cheese, or meat, or fish, as well as live animal exports, plants and plant products, and even the wooden crates used to transport other types of goods. It's painstaking stuff, but I think, given the pandemic we're all going through, we all understand why it's important.

Yeah, fair enough. You've sold me. I'm totally on board with this stuff.

These kinds of goods have to enter Europe through specific Border Control Posts, or BCPs.

Drink.

And there they undergo some, or all, of a variety of checks. There's a documentary check for the official certification which travels with the good. There are identity checks, which provide a visual confirmation that the consignment corresponds to the documentation. And there's a physical check to verify the goods are compliant with the rules, for instance temperature sampling, or laboratory testing. You know that whole chlorine-washed chicken thing?

Sure.

Well this is where they check whether it has been and stop it getting into Europe if it has. But it's actually the documentary check which is the hardest part in terms of UK preparedness. It includes something called an Export Health Certificate, or EHC.

Drink. Jesus Christ.

These are documents which confirm that the product meets the health requirements of the EU. So they might say that the animal was vaccinated, for instance. Some products, like a cut of lamb, will just have one EHC. But others, like a chicken pizza, will have more than one.

We've talked about this before. People shouldn't put chicken on pizza.

You are wrong, it's a perfectly legitimate pizza topping, and in fact you are so wrong that I have started using chicken pizza as my trade-good shorthand. Chicken pizza is the new widgets.

What even are widgets?

No-one knows, that's why economists love them. A chicken pizza, however, is a composite good for the purposes of SPS. The chicken and the cheese are different animal products, so they would need separate export health certificates. And all these certificates have to be verified by an official veterinarian, or OV.

You're just messing me about now.

No seriously, they use that acronym. This whole area of public life has been radicalised into extreme acronym use. Anyway, the OV goes through the details, queries the documents and signs them off. But there's assistance from a person pulling together all the paperwork. They're called a Certification Support Officer, or…

I can't believe this.

...CSO. These guys are mostly in private practices, usually farming practices. It's not a big part of their workload - maybe 20% of what they do. But if you don't have those vets, you can't send the export. That would be catastrophic for the farming, food and hospitality sectors. And that's where we have an issue. There are restrictions on getting that many OVs up and running. There's a tight labour market for vets and the UK is highly reliant on Europeans coming over to do the job, but the end of free movement makes that much more difficult and expensive, as does the covid pandemic.

So what has the government done?

It pumped £300,000 into providing free training for the role. Many vets took it up. The number of qualified vets has jumped from 600 in February 2019 to 1,200 today. But that still leaves a capacity gap of 200.

Well that doesn't sound so bad.

No it doesn't, but when you start to scratch away at the figures, they fall apart. The 200 figure is the number of 'full time equivalent' qualified vets required. And if vets only spend about 20% of their time doing this, it means we'll actually need an extra 1,000 vets training in the additional qualification.

Oh dear.

Yep. Groups representing the sector are seriously worried about this. And as with customs, the smooth functioning of the border will rely on the importer on the EU side doing all the bits they're required to do too, by creating a record in the Trade Control and Expert System, or Traces NT.

Drink. OK, what's the fourth bit of IT?

Transport. This involves wrapping all the other forms together and attaching them to a vehicle. In the UK, we'll be doing this through something called the Goods Vehicle Movement Service, or GVMS.

Drink.

It links export declaration references together into one single Goods Movement Reference, or GMR.

Drink. Bloody hell man these people are out of control.

The GMR should come out like a barcode, a one-stop shop for all the tied-together information we've been discussing. GVMS will be needed for certain movements in January, particularly for trade with Northern Ireland, but it won't be a requirement of all imports until July. It's currently being tested and there are dark murmurs about its functionality from those who have come into contact with it. Mercifully, exporters into Europe on January 1st will be using the French system, SI Brexit. This was operational a year ago and has been fully tested several times.

Those lazy French with their useless romantic dispositions.

It's almost like they're a nation that cares about shopkeepers.

Speaking of which, how're British businesses going to deal with all this additional paperwork?

Many companies will be OK. Very big corporations are well ahead and in many cases have set up a European entity so that they can sell directly from their UK entity to the EU one. Then they'll probably just reflect the customs costs in a subtly increased retail price. Smaller companies who are used to exporting to the rest of the world outside of Europe also have an advantage. They're used to these kinds of things. The people who are most at risk are the small-to-medium-sized enterprises who have traded exclusively with Europe.

Small-to-medium-sized… Oh no.

Yeah, that's right. SMEs. Which, by the way, comprise the vast majority of companies in the UK. If you send just two or three loads of your product a month to Europe, it probably won't be worth the cost in manpower and money preparing for all this stuff. They'll likely just accept a shrinkage in their business. For many of them, the whole thing is a bafflement. Honestly, you read the guidance on all these systems and it's like it's in an alien code - a garbled assault of acronyms and complex systems. Many small firms, already suffering from covid, just throw up their hands in despair.

Bleak. It's always the little guys that get it.

Yes, although paradoxically, that actually presents one of the few reasons for optimism. Well, not optimism exactly, but a hope for least-badism. Now that so many people feel January will be chaotic, they might just decide not to bother trying to send anything. Goods will get stuck at a warehouse instead of on a truck.

Seriously? That's your good news? Aren't you just displacing disruption from the ports to other parts of the supply network?

Yes precisely. But there really are no good outcomes here.

Because if that doesn't happen, the system seizes up?

Yeah exactly. Lorries head to Dover then get held up because they don't have the correct paperwork. Then lorries behind those lorries get caught up, pushing the queue out, dominating Kent, creating a huge singular blockage. The government's own Reasonable Worst Case Scenario, or RWCS…

Drink.

... estimates that between 40% and 70% of lorries may not be ready for border controls, leading to queues of up to 7,000 trucks.

But that would only be going out right? The stuff we bring in to the country would be unaffected because we're not putting in place controls.

Kind of. It's certainly true that most imports should have a clear run into the UK. You can keep those two lanes separate. But most hauliers are from Romania, Lithuania, Hungary and Poland. They pay a lease on their trucks, which means they have to keep them going if they're to make money. They can't afford to get stuck in a queue at the border. So there's a good chance they'll look at the log-jam in the UK and think: 'I'm not touching that with a barge pole'. This would mean Britain struggled to get its imports, including potentially fresh food and medicines.

Wow.

Yeah, it could be bad. But there are plans for that eventuality. The government has set up some emergency routes, for instance on the Newhaven-Dieppe crossing. There's additional ferry capacity at eight ports, with the Department for Transport acting as the referee on which vehicles get onto their crossing. But it's not a like-for-like replacement. Many of these crossings take much longer than the short gap between Dover and Calais, and they often operate for unaccompanied goods overnight. If the import is urgent, or fresh, or, like some covid vaccines, needs to be kept at a certain temperature, then you may have a problem.

What is the government doing to make sure this doesn't happen? How will they control the blockage?

There's three parts to that really. The first is controlling access to Kent, which the trucks head into to get to Dover. This project has no acronym, but instead adopted one of the least elegant names in the history of British policy-making: The Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border Service.

Wait but...

Yeah. HGV: Heavy Goods Vehicle.

I fully accept now that it was a mistake to adopt this drinking idea.

Before the lorry gets to Kent, the driver will fill out an online form with a bunch of information - the registration number, the destination, details of the consignments, confirmations that the import/export documents have been filled in, export health certificates, the whole lot basically. Those that are judged to have all the documentation are given a Kent Access Pass, or KAP.

Drink.

And that allows them to go into Kent. Police can hand out £300 fines to lorries found on the Kent roads without the permit.

But this is all done on trust right? It's a self-assessment form.

Yep. It'll rely on people filling it out right. It's not linked to EU customs systems. So there's no guarantee that documents they claim to have completed will be accepted by EU customs authorities. But on the plus side, the software was launched recently and most people think it'll work OK. It's better than nothing, basically.

Alright so what's next? Traffic management?

Exactly. It's uncanny how naturally your questions lead me onto the next thing I want to discuss.

That's because I am you.

Don't talk about that, it makes it weird. Alright so first up we have the traffic flow plans. The Department for Transport is taking an existing temporary system to create contraflow on the M20 and putting it on a permanent footing, allowing 2,000 lorries to be held on the motorway while traffic still flows in both directions on the London-bound side.

OK, what's next?

Well then there's the issue of actual sites. HMRC has identified seven locations outside the ports. There's prep work being done at a site in Sevington, Ashford, at a cost of £110 million, to act as a clearing house for another 2,000 lorries. Some 600 lorries can be held on the approach to Manston airport, with more at the airport itself. These two sites, along with the M20 contraflow, are for holding traffic. There are also plans for Ebbsfleet International Station, North Weald Airfield and Warrington to be used for bureaucratic checks away from the border. Other sites, potentially in the Thames Gateway and Birmingham areas, are also being considered. They insist that this should give them capacity for 9,700 lorries, which is above the 7,000 in their worst case scenario.

Assuming that scenario is correct.

Right. Covid and other unrelated events, like a fire breaking out for instance, could mean that even the worst case scenario is an underestimate. We just don't know. Plus that relies on all of this being up in time. The government has passed legislation to streamline planning processes, but the timetable is unbelievably tight. The same thing goes for staff.

These are the customs officials who check all the paperwork, right?

That's certainly part of it. They're split into two departments: HMRC and Border Force. HMRC needs 8,600 full-time equivalent staff in place for January 1st. They still need another 1,500 but seem confident they'll have them. Border Force recruited an additional 900 staff ahead of a possible no-deal last year and is trying to bring in 1,000 more. Ministers are confident they'll have enough people in place by January 1st, but trade experts are less convinced.

Recurring theme.

Indeed. It's easy to get fixated on numbers but it really matters how well you've trained people too. You can have someone helping with customs work after a day or two, but for them to have any real sense of what they're doing, you're going to want a year's training. And then there's the question of personality type. Customs is a very specific kind of work, full of extremely complex documentation which must be got right. For some people, that is unimaginably boring. For others, it's very satisfying. But you need the right ones. And that's not what typically happens when people get desperate on a recruitment drive.

What's the other part of the staffing problem?

The private sector. It's a job called 'customs broker'. They're basically people who come in and help companies with their customs forms. Like I said, this stuff is mind-meltingly complex. You really do need someone to come and help you do it. And that's what the government wants too of course, because the more people getting it right, the fewer delays at the border. But as of last September, just 53% of traders said they planned to use a customs broker, with 30% unsure and 18% saying they were going to do the work themselves. Those aren't good numbers.

Are there enough of them to meet demand?

No. This has been a long-running problem. Almost two-thirds of customs brokers do not have enough staff to handle the increased paperwork from leaving the EU. And actually capacity seems to have reduced over the year due to the covid pandemic. The UK needs thousands more.

What's the government doing about it?

It's invested £84 million since 2018 into training, recruitment and IT system development. But many customs brokers are still hesitant about taking on new salary costs to build a capacity that won't be fully required until next July and they're nervous about taking on unprepared customers.  Of the £84 million on offer, just £52 million had been taken up in mid-October.

Is that… is that it? Please say that's it. I'm wasted.

It is.

OK so give me the executive summary.

We're about to experience the sudden implementation of complex customs processes in a nation which forgot they existed. This involves the introduction of numerous interrelated IT systems which have been under-tested. It's not clear that either government or traders are fully prepared for what's about to happen. In order to minimise the disruption the government is introducing various traffic management projects and trying to bulk up staff capacity. But there's just too many variables to know how it'll pan out. Maybe the systems will hold out and many traders will anyway sit out January because of concerns about queues. Or maybe the systems will fail, traders won't fill in forms right and the whole thing will blow up in our face. The most likely outcome right now is somewhere between shambles and catastrophe. We have to hope it's a shambles.

Can you do it in acronym-speak?

Amid RHA and Bifa concerns about the lack of progress, HMRC, Defra, the HO, the Dft, the BPDG and the TTF are building up IT systems for post-Brexit GB-EU trade and particularly for RoRo at Dover-Calais which will involve exporters submitting import/export declarations to Chief and the CDS, S&S information to S&S GB and ICS, and collating their SPS documentation - including an EHC filled out by an CSO under the supervision of an OV sent via a BCP - with the importer logging it on Traces NT, while generating a GMR via GVMS and SI Brexit, and then HGVs getting a KAP, all to avoid the RWCS.

D… Drink?

Yes I think so. That seems very sensible.

#Brexit #customs

[prairiedust]

Curious is a Color

“It went zip when it moved, and pop when it stopped, and whir when it stood still! I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will!” -- The Marvelous Toy Tom Paxton

Well, one mystery was definitively solved in Last Holiday.

Spoilers for 15x15 Last Holiday ahead so I’m actually putting this behind a cut...

DEAN Who needs a monster radar anyway? Or whatever that telescope thing is.

MRS BUTTERS It’s an… interdimensional geoscope?

SAM It-- it’s a... what?

DEAN (interrupting Mrs Butters) Yeah, I looked through it, but didn’t see anything.

MRS BUTTERS Oh, oh that’s not good.

After Mrs. Butters powered up the bunker, the telescope alcove was bathed in a green light that immediately begged investigation. However. That took a while to get to. It took until the end of the episode to get to.

And we now know that this is no longer a telescope pointed to nowhere. It’s a fancy spyglass, but it no longer has anything to show anyone.... It is, unfortunately, too late to see anything. The other worlds have been “deleted,” as Sam put it. Chuck’s drafts folder has only one file left. 

See, what’s interesting to me is that the telescope is a metaphor for curiosity. I’m sure when the bunker was only operating in standby, Sam and or Dean looked in it, at least once? But maybe not-- maybe they didn’t bother because it was inside, and if one assumes that it’s merely a telescope, then you’d also surmise that all you would see is the blurry brick wall. The fact that it didn’t work because the bunker was on standby is neither here nor there-- what matters is that it’s been a much specced fixture of the bunker for years. 

And once the bunker was powered up with Mrs. Butter’s magic, it worked… but it was too late. Dean did, in fact, go look into the eyepiece, but just as he expected, he saw nothing. Not because it doesn’t work, but because anything he could have seen no longer exists. The extreme lack of knowledge about the bunker has always bothered me, and was lampshaded in Last Call when Sergei told Castiel that the key to Death’s library was there somewhere. BUT, but but but, Dean went and looked in the telescope thing in Last Holiday.

That’s how meta works. When something pings the mental radar, so to speak, there is value in looking into it, just in case there’s something to be seen.

For instance, I’m a geek for allusions, no surprise. So when Mrs. Butters said that the smoothie she made for Jack was “a little yarrow root and some ground jawbone for texture,” I flipped. I tell you, I went full folk medicine nerd. 

Yarrow is good for stemming blood loss, and midwives used to use it in childbirth to prevent hemorrhaging. Good connection to Jack, whose mother died giving birth to him, right? But I wanted to know more, so did a quick webdive. The root of the yarrow plant is known as a remedy for a toothache-- likely the mechanism is astringent, and would keep blood away from the nerves, but also, teeth have roots so in a holistic way, teeth get the roots. It gets better, though-- the yarrow plants are part of genus Achillea, yes as in that Achilles, he of the Achilles’ heel cliche that Dean “didn’t get” earlier in the season-- but so named not because of a connection with Achilles himself, but because Achilles was taught by Chiron-- his centaur mentor-- that yarrow was useful for bleeding, and he then taught his soldiers to use it thusly. 

Speaking Biblically-- although, when do we ever actually do that with Spn?-- the reason that the powdered jawbone sent me is because Samson, gifted mighty powers by the lord, took up a jawbone of a donkey and killed a thousand Philistines with it. Samson lived during a time when God was actually delivering victories to the Philistines as punishment to the Israelites, and Samson was born after an angel appeared to Samson’s parents (interestingly, we don’t know which angel, because it said to Samson’s father “Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding”) and said that Samson was to hold a special covenant with God from the moment he was born. Samson had superhuman strength, and was going to be The One who would lead the Israelites to victory over the Philistines. However, Samson had, if you will, an Achilles heel-- he would lose his preternatural strength if his hair was cut, which indeed came to pass when he was betrayed by Delilah, who had his head shaved while he was sleeping, and gave him over to his enemies. There is so much more I could write about Samson and his story’s applicability to where Jack is headed. But there’s the entire internet out there for anyone who doesn’t know how his story ends.

Thirdly, remember Supernatural’s internal mythos (based on Christian apocrypha iirc) and you’ll recall that the First Blade-- the blade that Cain used to kill Abel, and that could, in tandem with the Mark of Cain, in theory kill any being -- was made from a donkey’s jawbone, and as is pointed out here. The first murder. A brother by his own brother. For reals, that is probably where, like @mittensmorgul, most viewers went as per the replies on this post, which is awesome-- that’s where we’re supposed to look, at Brother Trouble being the thing that could undo everything everyone is working for. 

And as @drsilverfish points out in that same thread, we get an echo of a Jack story-- the man-eating giant at the top of the beanstalk would “grind [Jack’s] bones to make bread,” which in a subversion of that tale is another aspect of this concoction that brings Jack low. 

Something can be said about a spell being more than the sum of its parts. But taken literally-- Mrs. Butters put those two ingredients together and Jack turned into a metaphor-- he was “weak as a puppy.” He’s defenseless because of the double-reference to “superheroes with hidden weaknesses.” He’s basically powered down by the power of allusions. Toothache, jawbone, mythical references-- he was powerless against literature and also at a purely symbolic level, language.

And what do we know about language so far in this show?

That writers lie, and their lies are powerful.

Is that stupid herb-and-bonemeal smoothie not the most densely stacked reference in the entirety of this show’s run??????? That’s so cool it gets the rest of my question mark quota for the week.

So we’re at the point, I believe, where the writers are showing us that they’ve shone a bright green light on things we’re supposed to be curious about, things that maybe we’re supposed to be discussing. On the one hand, Mrs. Butters is literally me. Correct nomenclature is important, lol. On the other, you can take the interdimensional geoscope to mean whatever you want, now that it’s original purpose is gone. It’s now pure symbol. 

We should be very, very curious about everything that’s on the page-- and even in chapters past-- from this point on, and questioning whether or not we’re taking anyone’s words literally.

#the folklore of supernatural #interdimensional geoscope #jack the giant killer #jack and the beanstalk #jawbone #jawbone of an ass #lol #samson #achilles #the mythology of supernatural #last holiday #mrs. butters

[therucrap]

RPDR 13 Episode 1 RuCrap

Hello dear internet! I just started a new page for my first ever RPDR RuCrap so please share and follow and I’ll continue if they catch on! Hope you enjoy!

The lucky 13th season of RuPaul’s Trauma Spectacular launches with the promise of “all new surprises” and a brand new twist that will leave you wondering how you ever sat through a boring old premiere with a coherent intro, climax, and conclusion when you could be enduring a dizzying hour and a half of WOW presents Happy Death Day 3: Covid Edition!

We open up on the trusty trauma center - I mean Werk Room - and the first to enter is NYC’s “Dominican Doll” and human drag lingo See ‘N Say Kandy Muse in an elaborate bejeweled patchwork jean mini dress and MATCHING DENIM BOOMBOX and she immediately informs us that we may know her from the now former Haus of Aja which was recently deconstructed like the pair of Wranglers that Kandy is wearing as fingerless gloves. Kandy is no longer alone in VIP because the befeathered Joey Jay arrives and half-heartedly delivers her intro line. “Filler queen!” We discover that Kandy is likely going to provide our Greek chorus confessional this season and all in a soft smoky eye when she informs us uncultured swine that Joey is wearing the cheapest variety of feather - chicken. Kandy didn’t construct an entire outfit from the remnants section of a Joanne Fabrics and not learn a thing or two about quality, sweetie! Joey is determined to beat viewers to the punchline and immediately clucks around branding herself as “basic” and “filler.” Joey is from the city of Phoenix (and possibly the online University as well) but she’s here to rise like a chicken!

Thunder mysteriously rumbles as RuPaul appears on the digitally enhanced Werk room TV but what could this be?! For all you newbies this is one of the several instances in every season where Ru mixes things up and gives us what we really want: a twist that is equal parts confusing, fucks up the natural order of the competition, and is ultimately unfulfilling! Come on season 13, let’s put a bunch of queer people through even more turmoil in a pandemic! Ru has a surprise but they’ll have to head to the mainstage to get the full story that they’ll be recounting to a mental health professional later!

We’re merely four minutes in and here comes Ru down the runway dressed like a glitterdot jellyfish! Our tour guide on Trauma Island introduces us to the main panel of judges for the season - Disco Morticia Addams and the two human Trapper Keepers who are now separated by glass because for the first time in Drag Race herstory we’re in the middle of a international health crisis, mawma!

Now let’s get down to trauma! Ru explains that the queens will be pairing off to lipsync unexpectedly as they enter! What could possibly go wrong? Well if you’re hoping that someone comes in wearing blades on their feet well just stick around because I have quite the treat for you! Our Dungaree Diva and the Chicken Feather Filler hit the Mainstage looking as confused as Shangela researching CDC protocol on her way to Puerto Vallarta last week. The judges interview our test subjects and immediately bring up the Haus of Aja and Kandy clarifies that she’s now an esteemed member of The Doll Haus along with last season’s ever-gorgeous Dahlia Sinn. I personally prefer not to say that Dahlia was eliminated first but instead that she was season 12’s brocco-leading lady! (Writer’s note: if you’re thinking “there’s a drag show called The Doll Haus in my hometown... is it THAT Doll Haus?!” No, there’s a drag show called The Doll Haus in almost every city in America but now, like with the former Sharon Needles, Kim Chis, and Penny Trations of the world, this one’s been on TV and alas, the others must now rename themselves)! Joey also charms the judges with her plucky demeanor and it’s already time to lipsync feather they like it or not!

Gay anthem Call Me Maybe by Canadian legend Carley Rae Jepson begins and Kandy immediately pushes a fake button on her DENIM BOOMBOX to start the party. Honestly... crown her right there on the spot. We will ALWAYS give points for prop work and the Carrot Top of the Bronx does not disappoint. Both are energetic but it’s The Dutchess of Denim who wins by infusing humor and our feathered friend is given “the Porkchop” but before we can even wrap our head around what this means for the state of the competition we snap back to the Werk Room to meet our next unsuspecting victims!

Now dear reader, this is the part where I’m just going to cut the shit. The set-up they’re selling us is that the losers of these premiere lipsyncs will be eliminated from the show but they are obviously not about to Porkchop half of the cast on day one so just stick with me while we suspend disbelief and go on RuPaul’s Totally Twisted Trauma Adventure as she convinces 6 gay people who just spent upwards of $10,000 on clothing, jewelry, and hair and then meticulously packed it into regulation suitcases to travel here during a pandemic after probably not making any money for the last four months (this was filmed in July) that they are going home on day one! This herstory-making twist, like so many before it, exemplifies the show’s worst qualities: a lack of empathy for its contestants, an underestimation of viewer intelligence and ability to decode heavy-handed editing witchery, and its love for completely dismantling its own format every year for the sake of drama. Whatever keeps the Emmy’s coming, baby! When you’re on the other side of one of these twists you usually feel like you just finished your morning coffee only to find out that the barista gave you decaf. Your mind will be blown when it’s happening but the payoff is usually at the expense of the show’s own legitimacy. With that said... this is the punishment we come to gleefully endure every year and we’re not here to complain, we’re here to watch gay people break down, dammit!

It’s deja Ru all over again as we snap back to the Werk Room where Chicago’s Denali walks in on ice skates and immediately ruins any chance of a deposit return for the bumpy, rented roll-out vinyl floors and declares “Let me break the ice!” She’s wearing the expensive feathers that Joey Jay didn’t spring for. Denali might not be the first ice skater on Drag Race but she’s the one I didn’t watch shit on a dick on Twitter last week so let’s give credit where it’s due. Ugh I wish Trinity the Tuck could block THAT from my memory! Next up is Atlanta’s Lala Ri whose white blazer, body suit, and unteased hair is immediately called basic by an icy Denali in confessional. Denali is confident but we know something that she doesn’t and Lala is wearing a sensible dancing ankle boot not two blades on her feet so let’s see how this turns out!

The lipsync song is “When I Grow Up” by Nicole Scherzinger and her assistants who were accidentally given microphones a few times! Denali struggles to conceal her wayward nipples during some ambitious dance moves and all while in skates but Lala gives us a good old fashioned drag performance and a big finale split unbothered by an elaborate costume and ultimately ices Denali who signs off with “Feeling icy, feeling spicy!” Asking these queens to lipsync upon entering is one thing but asking them to improvise their exit lines 10 minutes in is just cruel!

Denali heads backstage devastated where SURPRISE... Joey Jay is sitting alone in a sad room made of plywood walls featuring a bunch of pictures of first eliminated queens, an ominous “Porkchop Loading Dock” sign, and some cocktail tables with no cocktails (how dreadful).

Before we get the full picture and God for bid our bearings on Mr Charles’ Wild Ride let’s leave this plywood hellscape and jump back into the familiar comfort of the Werk Room’s pixelated neon pink faux brick walls where LA’s modelesque Symone stomps in wearing a dress made of tiny Polaroids of herself. She’s stylish, her energy is fresh, and she’s clearly one to watch. Then dear reader life as we know it changes. A breeze comes through the room and God herself blesses us when living legend and matriarch of the Iman dynasty Tamisha Iman from Atlanta arrives in a pointy-shouldered red power suit and proclaims to us simple townsfolk “Holler at me, I know you know me. Holler at me, I know you know me. Tamisha is here!” The sea parts, the crops are replenished, and all war stops on Earth. On stage Tamisha reveals that she’s been doing drag for 30 years (which seems like a long time to us mere mortals) and that she was originally cast last season but was diagnosed with colon cancer two days later and had to stay home for chemo. The lipsync gods wisely choose The Pleasure Principle by Janet Jackson and Tamisha gives us exact Janet arm choreo while Simone is sultry yet commanding as she shakes her Polaroids. The judges determine that Simone was picture perfect and American hero Tamisha Iman is sent to Porkchop’s Shipping Crate of Horrors to join the nest with the fancy feather option and the chicken feather option.

We begrudgingly crawl back onto RuPaul’s ever-circling carousel of doom and plop back into the workroom where accomplished LA celebrity makeup artist GottMik stomps in wearing a wacky toile dress and a full face of white makeup declaring that it’s “Time to crash the system!” GottMik is Drag Race’s first trans man contestant (and first knowingly cast trans contestant at all) for which we cheer excitedly and then immediately look at our watches because that took too long. Next up Minneapolis’s towering Utica wriggles in with a sneeze and declares “She’s sickening!” which is just the pandemic humor I came here for! Contaminate me, mom! This gay scarecrow is wearing a series of crazy patterns and a big strawberry on her head and the two of them appear to be from the same traveling circus. These two Big Comfy Couch characters slink over to the main stage where Utica explains that her cranial statement fruit symbolizes tackling obstacles because she used to be allergic to strawberries as a kid but she grew out of it. In RuPaul’s heavy universe of heart wrenching struggles that contain chronic illness and societal rejection, Utica’s animated world that suffers only of outgrown childhood strawberry problems is a welcome one. These two lanky rag dolls will be lipsyncing to Rumors by her majesty Lady Lohan of Mykonos and the vibe is instantly wacky. I wouldn’t say that either of them are the next Kennedy Davenport but they did complement each other well on the invisible obstacle course they were both miming through. Utica’s hair flops over her eye, there’s galloping and floor humping, GottMik does a split, there’s elbows and knees aplenty, and all that’s missing is dancing poodles. The judges are tickled by the kookiness of both of these human windsocks but Gotmikk snatches the win. Neither of these two are going to win So You Think You Can Dance but luckily this is RuPaul’s So You Think You Can Trauma so we’re in luck!

Our homosexual Groundhog Day continues back in the Werk Room where we meet NYC’s Rosé who gets the Brita treatment where she’s presented as a legendary New York queen and then the editors quickly get to work making her look delusional. She’s accomplished, confident, and Drag Race’s favorite personality type to dismantle and then trick into returning to All-Stars for a redemption only to dismantle again. Rosé’s fresh-faced foil Olivia Lux enters and lights up the place right away in a velvet pink and yellow gown. She’s a humble NYC newby who has competed in shows hosted by the established Rosé and we already know what’s about to happen here. The lipsync is Exes and Oh’s by Elle King which which was a choice. Olivia strips off her gown to reveal a bodysuit so she can really articulate and Rosé does the world’s least exciting split that looked like me trying unsuccessfully separate wooden chopsticks. Olivia triumphs and Rosé fizzles as she heads to the It Didn’t Werk Room aka Porkchop’s sparsely decorated storage closet to be with the other Have Nots.

We’re almost to the finish line and we limp, slightly disoriented, back to the Werk Room where we meet Tina Burner, another NYC theater kid with the confidence of a thousand Patti LuPones who is dressed like a Ronald McDonald firefighter. What she lacks in nuance she makes up for in nonstop fire puns. Next Chicago’s glamorous Kahmora Hall saunters in glowing and is clearly unimpressed with Tina’s constant Joan Rivers impression but maintains a full pageant smile. No choice but to stan. Our final queen is the refreshingly optimistic Elliott with 2 T’s who busts in wearing a bolero jacket, some red pants from the store, and a short pink wig that screams “Sorry I’m late! Here’s my flash drive! I can go on whenever!” Elliott dances in sing-talking her entrance line like the TGIFriday’s server she is: “I’m the queen you want to see. Elliot with two T’s. Okay! Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh! Okay!” Elliot is a dancer from Las Vegas and has the unhinged camp counselor energy of someone with snacks in her purse at all times.

On the Mainstage Tina cycles through the last of her introductory fire puns and tells the judges she was in a boy band which honestly tracks. Tina and Rosé share a similar NYC gotta-get-a-gimmick energy but for some reason production has decided to give Rosé the womp womp edit and Tina the superstar edit. The song is Lady Marmalade because we haven’t been though enough and Kahmora serves subdued sexy glamour, Elliott does the splits, and Tina bobs and weaves between the two with full play-to-the-back-row comedy queen energy. Tina extinguishes the dreams of the other two and RuPaul sends the final two losers to the chokey.

The worst is over (we think) and our frazzled cast of hopefuls finally gets to know eachother in their two very different groups. The winning queens in the Werk Room are celebrating and as blissfully unaware of the doom around them as Miss Vanjie and Silky Ganache at a Puerto Vallarta circuit party during a pandemic. Over in Porkchop’s Junk Drawer the camera looms unnecessarily close to the crestfallen losers’ now disheveled wigs and sweat drenched makeup. Ru’s voice bellows over the speaker to tell this motley crew to get out and then as the last bit of light leaves their weary eyes she checks back in to tell them that she wasn’t serious! Oh good! Finally a moment of mercy for these once hopeful queens on their first day of RuPaul’s Wipeout! She then reveals that the full twist is that she is only going to send one home but they have to vote amongst the group of losers to decide who it is! Yes, that’s correct! This group of broken queens who just met and mostly have never seen eachother perform will now be expected to turn on eachother and give up their last bit of dignity to either grovel or just straight up fight with eachother! This must be what the Donner Party’s last night looked like. The queens look around broken and wounded but still hungry, their eyes barely open, their lacefronts only partially attached to their heads, and start deciding which of their own is about to get consumed. Her highness Tamisha Iman reminds them "Well, I'm the only black girl so don't vote me off” and just like that we are TO BE CONTINUED!

Thus concludes our first headspinning episode that despite being reliably frustrating has once again sucked us in and against our better judgement entertained us to the fullest! As for our 13 queens- you can use code HERSTORY on Talkspace while relaying tonite’s events to a sickening liscensed therapist!

#rupaul’s drag race #drag race #RPDR #denali #lala ri #kandy muse #joey jay #symone #tamisha iman #gottmik #utica queen #rose #rosé #Olivia lux #Tina burner #kahmora hall #elliott #elliott with 2 ts #season 13 #drag #michelle visage #carson kressley #rupaulshow #ross mathews #vh1

[natsubeatsrock]

Guide to Avoiding Fairy Tail Criticism

Fairy Tail is far from a perfect series. I'm not here to argue otherwise. I've made plenty of critiques about Fairy Tail over the years and I've been a strong proponent of people being allowed to say things they don't like about the series.

Though, as I watch the fallout of Hbomberguy's video on RWBY and how its fans are dealing with it, it's hard not to think about the stupid things people have said negatively about Fairy Tail. This series has its fair share of stupid, bad faith complaints repeated by critics over and over. While I've talked about some of these in the past, I think it's worth talking compiling a list of things that people who hate Fairy Tail say that I can't take seriously.

"Fairy Fail."

Let's just get this one out of the way. It's not clever in any way. I can't believe this has become as popular an insult as it has. I've seen so many people jokingly refer to this series with this name. No one who unironically uses this is genuinely interested in engaging the series on fair terms at all.

More than that, it's not even true. Despite any issues regarding the series, Fairy Tail is still a fairly popular series with fans, especially outside of Japan. It's one of Kodansha's most successful IPs of the 2000s. The fact that people put it on the same level as Shonen Jump's Big 3 is impressive. If this is what a failing series looks like, I can't imagine what success would look like for Mashima.

"Mashima didn't plan anything."

This is one I've fallen victim to in the past. To be fair, Mashima hasn't been the best at explaining this to his fans. For critics, it's easy to see that Mashima says he comes up with plot points as he goes. Of course, the reason this is a critique is that this is as far as many go.

As Mashima explains it, it's not that Mashima didn't have any plans for future events for the series and how future events would go. While he didn't start the series with many concrete plans aside from the basics, he has had plans for how the series would go. But rather than being fixed plans, Fairy Tail's decisions have been more fluid paths Mashima chooses to go down as the series continues.

This isn't a bad way to write a story. As a story progresses, you may realize that certain ideas may be less possible than others or things you've planned at the start make less sense than you originally thought. Again, the critique could be that Mashima's style of writing is responsible for some of the series' weaker moments. However, it's wrong to say that Mashima shot from the hip every week, as some people have described his writing. Luckily, Fairy Tail is the only series Mashima has written this way. Both Rave Master and Edens Zero have been planned more from the beginning.

"It's like One Piece, but worse."

I've seen it thrown around that Fairy Tail looks like One Piece. If that's all there was to it, I don't think this would be on this list. Despite what people tell you, Mashima was never an assistant for Eichiro Oda. Mashima got into the landscape without being anyone's assistant. That's easy to dismiss.

However, I've seen people argue that Fairy Tail is a poor attempt at trying to copy One Piece's formula. Ignore for a moment that Edens Zero is closer to following that model and even it isn't a copy. Or that every series this side of Dragon Ball has been accused of being similar to it and people have been doing the same with series after Naruto.

The focus of Fairy Tail isn't similar to that of One Piece. There is no grand treasure or giant goal that the series revolves itself around finding. A lot of the main conflicts to Fairy Tail present themselves less as threats to the individual goals of characters or but to the guild's existence.

"There is no point to Fairy Tail."

I've talked about this one in the past. One thing you'll see people say regarding Fairy Tail is that there wasn't a goal the series was getting to. People will often make the poor comparison to Bleach in this regard, despite Bleach's focus being Ichigo's growth towards being able to protect the people that care about him.

This is a point that even fans of the series miss. I've recently been describing Fairy Tail as a series told through the lens of its main characters about the guild. The focus isn't on how the Fairy Tail guild grows towards being the best, especially since they start at the top. We're meant to watch the characters in the guild as they interact with the world around them and the other guild members.

If that sounds like a weird way to run a series, it's not. Durarara has a similar setup but splits the focus from one core group of characters to several groups and individual characters split up across its main city. Its plot focuses on how each different group connects with each other in ways they don't know and we can't expect as viewers. I wish people would engage Fairy Tail criticism on this level because there are ways to criticize in its implementation of this. However, people see that there's no "I'm gonna be Hokage" or "I'm going to find the One Piece" plotline and think that the series has no point to it.

"Natsu/Lucy is a bad protagonist."

This is related to the last point. The series is less about how Natsu or Lucy achieve their specific goals and more about the guild after they meet each other and start working together. If the series were about those things, we'd get more time focusing on Natsu's search for Igneel or Lucy's growth in the guild. Once you understand what the series is about, the focus the series takes makes sense.

However, I want to spend some time explaining the functions that either character. Again. While the series is, for the most part, told through Lucy's perspective, Natsu is the main driving force of the series. The comparison I've been making for years now is the Sherlock Holmes stories. If Natsu is Sherlock Holmes, Lucy is Dr. Watson. Mashima's referred to both as the main character and the argument could be made that this focus expands to other main members of the Strongest Team.

"Juvia had no arc."

Yet another one I've been responsible for sharing. I've had a weird arc over the past few years of writing about Fairy Tail going from tacit defense to reluctant attacks to my current stance of nuanced critique. However, I've never been a huge fan of how Juvia's been written, despite liking Juvia herself. It's been thrown around that Juvia didn't have a real character or arc, especially outside of Gray.

Juvia's arc involves coming to experience love better. She goes from learning to love other people as friends to engaging with romantic love. She even gets the opportunity to share that love with others. While the focus of that arc becomes centered around Gray, it's not as if Juvia becomes less loving of others or that her arc focusing on Gray makes no sense considering he started her on the path of becoming more loving.

As much as I should sympathize with this argument, it's become a lot more annoying to see this kind of argument levied towards female characters. You're not seeing people argue that Jellal's change is too focused on Erza. I'm not even saying this as someone who loves how this has been played out in the series. It's just annoying to see at all.

"Watch Craftsdwarf's videos on Fairy Tail!"

I've talked about a few of the issues I have with the series already, but I keep seeing this brought up. I'll give credit where it's due. Craftsdwarf's "Overly Long Analytical Tirade on Fairy Tail" does make good points about the series. And considering it's broken up into different parts, it's more digestible than that rant about RWBY. I'm a big fan of the kind of media analysis videos and I've often linked some of my favorite videos in my posts here.

However, Craftsdwarf's videos aren't perfect. The videos come at the series from a hilariously uncharitable point of view, resulting in repeating many of the points I've already mentioned in this post. Their analysis of both Fairy Tail and Rave Master is often shallow and ill-formed. It might be helpful to watch the series to see a negative perspective about Fairy Tail. However, I worry that the points made in that series will be the foundation of future criticism of this series.

“Fairy Tail is the worst (popular) battle action shonen.”

It’s funny seeing this one levied towards plenty of series that aren’t Fairy Tail. People say this about Dragon Ball. People say this about the Big 3. People say this about other hits in Weekly Shonen Magazine like Seven Deadly Sins and Fire Force. People say this about the current popular stuff from WSJ like MHA and Black Clover. Fairy Tail is far from the first or last series to get this complaint.

Even ignoring how hilariously hard this is to quantify as objective fact as opposed to personal preference, I’ve noticed that most of the people making this claim don’t do the work to understand why things they don’t like happened. To be honest, I don’t know too many fans who are willing to do the same. A lot of fans have the infuriating mindset of “it’s bad, but I still like it”.

Despite whatever anyone tells you, Fairy Tail has internal logic outside of “nakama power”. Characters face genuine loss and win for logical reasons. Even if it’s not as consistent as fans would like it to be, I don’t think the anime/manga fandom is worse for this series being as popular and beloved as it is.

Let me know if I forgot any or if you’ve heard another one.

#fairy tail #to be clear #i haven't seen hbomberguy's video #not because i don't watch long form criticism #he's not doing it in good faith

[aion-rsa]

Will the Rocky IV Director’s Cut Kill its Charm?

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Rocky IV remains a prototypical example of 1980s American franchise filmmaking, having conveyed a patriotic Cold-War-evocative ethos through the aesthetically shiny lens of scrappy superhuman pugilists pummeling each other over revenge and world peace, all to Vince DiCola’s absurd synthesizer-strewn score. Oh, and lest we forget, it had a robot!  While those attributes entitled the 1985 film to the smug dismissal and earnest appreciation of posterity, star/writer/director Sylvester Stallone’s upcoming director’s cut risks erasing its allure.

Stallone, who announced his plan for a new Rocky IV cut last year, has completed his redux of the famous franchise‘s four-quel. However, unlike that other director’s cut dominating current conversations, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Sly’s upcoming Rocky IV Director’s Cut is an update of a film that was properly released by its director. Having premiered back on Nov. 27, 1985, Rocky IV was a box-office-topping hit that proved profoundly profitable for studio MGM, with a worldwide gross of $300 million ($733.3 million adjusted for inflation,) against a budget of $28 million. Moreover, despite its oft-focused foibles, the film retained enough interest 33 years later to be directly followed up in Creed II. However, to borrow his parlance from 2006’s Rocky Balboa, Stallone seemed to have “stuff in the basement,” to unleash for the fourth film.  

“We’ve just been working on punches and sounds because it’s never complete,” explains Stallone of his director’s cut approach in an Instagram update. “I’ve said this before, you can go back and see a movie that you’ve done 50 years ago and go, ‘I’ve got to re-edit that.’ And every director feels the same way. It’s not about making a movie, it’s about remaking. Unfortunately, you run out of time, you run out of money. They basically throw you out of the room. So, therefore, you don’t get a chance, but on this one, I finally got a chance, so I’m feeling great about this.”

While the full extent of the changes Stallone made to Rocky IV obviously won’t be known until he premieres his new cut, some tidbits have made the rounds. One of the earliest-known changes is the elimination of one of its most campy, pseudo-sci-fi elements, the aforementioned robot. Specifically, the Jetsons-esque talking robot—a real-life invention called SICO, created by International Robotics Inc.—that well-to-do champ Rocky gives as a birthday present to his leachy live-in brother-in-law, Paulie (Burt Young) in the film’s first act. However, the robot—complete with a fancy-for-1985 cordless phone system installed—became a punchline, even for within film, during which it was implied that Paulie eventually altered its settings to sound and act like an alluring female maid that worships him while fetching his beers. Thus, the elimination of the robot not only deletes the amusing automaton, but it also necessitates an essence-altering recut of Paulie’s birthday party scenes. Yet, Stallone’s response to a fan’s posted desire to give SICO a reprieve was met with Ivan Drago-like coldness, stating, “I don’t like the robot anymore.”

MGM/UA

And that brings us to the film’s Siberian Bull big bad himself, Dolph Lundgren’s Ivan Drago, whose claim-to-fame fight in which he beat Carl Weathers’s Apollo Creed to death will apparently be extended in a yet-unknown manner in Stallone’s new cut. The role positioned newcomer Lundgren for stardom in what was only his second onscreen appearance, having previously appeared six months earlier in 1985 Bond movie A View to a Kill as a thug named Venz; a role he acquired due to his real-life romantic relationship with co-star Grace Jones. Besides being an imposing spectacle of a human being (which he remains to this day), Lundgren’s outing as Drago was meant to depict him as the ultimate villain, a soulless Soviet slayer shaped by communism, steroids and all-around godlessness. However, while that façade was shattered by the end of the film (and even more so in Creed II), it remains to be seen if extended Drago scenes—specifically in the Apollo fight—ends up weighing the film down unnecessarily.

Read more

Movies

Rocky IV Director’s Cut Will Ditch Robot

By Mike Cecchini

Culture

Could Rocky Balboa Really Have Gone the Distance?

By Tony Sokol

If there’s one thing that critics can’t take away from Rocky IV, it would have to be Stallone’s artfully economic approach as a director. The film manifests as a slim, trim 91-minute affair that saves money by being deliberately diluted with lengthy montages—FOUR of them in total. In fact, even if we generously discount his blatant reuse of Rocky and Apollo’s Rocky III-closing sparring session for the opening scene, two of said montages fully consist of recycled footage from the previous three films. Indeed, the movie kicks off by playing “Eye of the Tiger” during the franchise-obligatory recap of the previous film’s final fight, and Rocky’s contemplative car ride after Apollo’s death is riddled with flashback scenes, during which a soundtrack song, Robert Tepper’s “No Easy Way Out,” plays out in full! You certainly have to hand it to Sly, the man knows how to get a big bang for his production buck. Yet, as with other intrinsically-Rocky IV aspects, one must wonder if Stallone has soured on his in-retrospect-amiable montage method of movie-making as much as the Robot.

On another note, Rocky IV is also known to be riddled with major movie mistakes, and I do mean A LOT of them; proverbial warts that have also come to define the film. For example, a major continuity mistake occurs before the Apollo/Drago fight when Apollo is in the ring trash-talking Drago, shouting, “I want you! I want you!” while his bare hand mockingly points at the Russian. Of course, just minutes earlier, we saw Apollo getting his hands taped up in his dressing room, and he was clearly gloved up when he came down to the ring in a James Brown-accompanied spectacle entrance. Additionally, a similarly bizarre mistake occurs during Rocky’s mid-movie vision of Drago in the aforementioned “No Easy Way Out” montage, which shows the Russian in the red trunks that he would later wear in the film’s final fight. Yet, most egregiously, Drago is clearly sporting the actual cut under his left eye that Rocky would deliver to him in the second round! While I could see Stallone wanting to fix mistakes like this, it would still be a shame to lose them.

However, a director’s cut of Rocky IV could yield benefits. After all, it could correct Apollo’s funeral scene, in which an odd focus error occurs on the right side of the frame that blurs out a few attendees, leading viewers to think it was censored. Moreover, it could prospectively integrate legendary lost elements. For example, Drago’s iconic evil line—delivered after he just killed Apollo—declaring “If he dies, he dies” was originally complemented by another would-be famous line that wasn’t even delivered in the film, but could finally get its onscreen due. Rocky IV’s teaser trailer featured an ominous introductory monologue from the villain that, contemporaneously, was just associated with the character as the movie line. Delivered in Lundrgen’s labored Russian accent, lines such as “My name is Drago” and “Soon, the whole world will know my name” were prominent pieces of the film’s early ephemera. In fact, the latter line was famously sampled at the end of New Wave act Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s 1986 hit (famously used in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off), “Love Missle F1-11,” in which the trailer clip—along with imitated lines from Scarface and The Terminator—was included to exemplify the song’s commentary on American cinematic ultraviolence.  

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Regardless of how it turns out, fans of the campy four-quel will be anxious to see what surprises Stallone has in store for the Rocky IV Director’s Cut. However, he has yet to reveal release date.

The post Will the Rocky IV Director’s Cut Kill its Charm? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[bestworstcase]

farran rewatches tangled: before ever after, pt 1

(01:50-05:00)

i’ve been wanting to do a full, start-to-finish episode-by-episode rewatch of the series for a good long while now with a focus on just... picking apart every episode to see what there is to see and well. i somewhat optimistically planned to do one post per episode but i... i was a fool. 

as a set of... basic guiding principles here i 1) am going to evaluate the text of each episode on its own merits, 2) without taking into account authorial intent  or extratextual creator statements, and 3) yeeting the phrase “it’s a disney princess cartoon, it isn’t that deep” out of my brain.*

(*except in the case of Cartoon Physics, which must simply be accepted in the same way that the existence of unbreakable magical hair is accepted.)

the first thing i want to talk about with before ever after is the way it establishes the characters of rapunzel and eugene and how it sets up the development of the new dream relationship for the rest of the show during the introductory sequence. 

before ever after does this thing a couple of times where it frames a character or scenario in such a way as to lead the viewer to expect one thing, only to reveal more information or additional context that significantly shifts our understanding. and these are interesting moments to examine, because of what they can say subtextually about the characters involved. 

consider the opening.

once the introductory narration is done, we’re thrown into a chase scene that is structured to trick us into thinking that the stakes are much higher than they truly are—the tense, dramatic scoring, in particular, prime the viewer to assume that the situation is serious.

look at this establishing shot. it grounds us in a location—we can see corona in the background—and sets a specific mood. rapunzel, eugene, max, and fidella all look serious and determined; meanwhile their pursuers are obscured in shadow, making them appear far more threatening than they really are. 

rapunzel’s seemingly genuine fear of being caught (“they’re gaining on us!” and “there’s more of them!”) strengthens this first impression, as does the fact that the pursuers continue to be obscured in shadow even when they, realistically speaking, shouldn’t be, as in this shot where the pursuing guards are galloping in full sunlight but still too darkly lit (and distant) for us to make out any identifying details: 

but now that we’ve had a few seconds for this impression to “set,” the show begins to dismantle it. rapunzel and eugene exchange a little playful banter, part ways, rapunzel glances back over her shoulder, and...

for the first time, we get a good look at one of their pursuers—and it’s a coronan guard. at this point, the tone of the chase shifts; the score becomes less tense and more adventuresome, beats of comedy are introduced with eugene’s log jump and rapunzel’s bunny crossing, and we end on this shot:

a bright, welcoming meadow opening up out of the more rugged / forested terrain of the chase. rapunzel gallops on into the nice-looking wilderness beyond, while eugene turns around to get in a last, witty one-liner in.

now on the one hand... this is a fun way to ease us into the action of the story with an attention-grabbing but low-stakes chase sequence, while establishing the playful dynamic in the new dream relationship. but! i argue that this whole chase scene, and the subsequent scene with rapunzel and eugene on the wall, is in fact a microcosm of the core conflict within the new dream relationship: to wit, that eugene is content and ready to settle down, rapunzel very much is not, and they are not yet ready to reconcile that difference with each other. 

how so? well,

#1: the shifting of the viewer’s understanding of this chase reflects both sides of the new dream perspective on palace life. 

in rapunzel’s view, being corona’s princess—a role here represented by the royal guard—is a frightening, suffocating job, one she struggles to reconcile with and longs to escape. her distress at the idea of being “captured” before they reach the wall—and having to return to the palace for the welcoming ceremony, as we learn shortly—is real, not because the guards pose a real threat but because she’s running away from them to get a break from the princess responsibilities that are drowning her.

eugene, on the other hand, is having a grand time. he banters, he grins, he mocks his pursuing guards, because to him, there are no stakes here. he enjoys living in the palace with no more bounties or convictions hanging* over his head, and he’s more interested in pausing to crack a joke at the captain’s expense than in winning the race to the outer wall—which in rapunzel’s mind is a representation of freedom. 

(*heh.)

so as viewers, the first impression we’re given of this chase scene is more in line with what rapunzel is feeling, and then shifts to reveal eugene’s perspective, which is more in line with objective reality (they’re racing the guardsmen to the outer wall, and nobody is going to get hurt) rather than rapunzel’s internal feelings (of fleeing to escape the intense pressure on her shoulders, even just for a little while). 

#2: and this, in turn, shows us precisely how far apart rapunzel’s feelings and eugene’s feelings about their present situation are. 

these are two people who love each other very much but are on completely different planets emotionally. eugene is content and relaxed, rapunzel is antsy and stressed out. they get along on a superficial level and enjoy each other’s company, but there is a huge disconnect lurking just beneath the surface that neither of them is yet aware of. 

the scene on the wall drives this message home.

we see the pure delight on rapunzel’s face when she reaches the wall...

...which intensifies as she climbs onto it and sees what waits for her on the other side...

...and the camera swings around to show us this gorgeous view of a lush, vibrant landscape pulling us into the sunrise. rapunzel heaves a longing sigh and tension falls out of her shoulders as she soaks in the view. 

this moment evokes the same mood as rapunzel’s early scenes in tangled, when she looks out of her tower window at the beautiful world outside. 

notice even the echoes of the tower landscape in the landscape outside of corona in the series: the lines of the cliffs on the left side of both shots are the same, and the colors of the wildflowers in the series landscape echo the colors of the flowers kept on the windowsill of rapunzel’s tower (here’s a better screencap of those, for comparison’s sake:)

anyway, the point of all this is to establish that rapunzel, despite having been freed from her tower, still feels trapped in her present circumstances. seeing the lanterns and finding her true family didn’t cure her restlessness but has instead intensified her wanderlust, and she once again finds herself in the position of sitting inside a wall and staring out at the world she isn’t allowed to explore.

the key difference in the series is that, where eugene’s role in the film was to help rapunzel escape her tower and seek out her dreams in the wider world...

...in the series, he has become an anchor tethering rapunzel to her life in the palace, and we see this illustrated symbolically when his interruption is what pulls rapunzel away from the view beyond the walls. 

now, this is a wonderful shift, because it doesn’t grow out of any arbitrary or out-of-character behavior in eugene but is, rather, an artifact of their changed circumstances. eugene still values rapunzel’s freedom and happiness just as much as he did in the film, but he’s oblivious to how stifled and trapped rapunzel feels within the coronan walls, and he’s oblivious because, a) rapunzel hasn’t told him, and b) he’s having a great time living in the lap of luxury with zero responsibilities, and c) that blinds him to the amount of pressure that is being put on rapunzel’s shoulders. he isn’t in tune with what rapunzel is feeling or why, and that damages his ability to act as a source of support for her in this stressful transitional time in her life.

this is the core conflict of their relationship, not just in before ever after, but over the course of the entire show. which is brilliant! it is so realistic for somebody like eugene—a 23-year-old man who has lived an exciting, adventurous life while cultivating a self-absorbed, devil-may-care attitude and is now ready to settle down and live a nice, peaceful, happily-boring married life with the woman he loves—to have this kind of incompatibility with somebody like rapunzel—an 18-year-old woman who has been sheltered and abused her entire life and who is only just beginning to figure out who she is and what she wants and is absolutely not ready to settle down and spend the rest of her life staying put and doing the same things every single day. they’re at completely different stages of their lives! of course there’s a tremendous gap between their expectations and desires within the context of their relationship and of course this causes problems as soon as this mismatch in priorities rises to the surface!

as a final note, as this scene on the wall wraps up, it introduces something that is... something of a recurring theme in before ever after, namely that things keep interrupting new dream kisses before they can happen.

in this case, it’s the captain—having caught up with rapunzel and eugene—telling them their little game is over and that it’s time for rapunzel to hustle back to the palace so she won’t miss the welcoming ceremony. this is another important beat in establishing the basic interpersonal conflict here; it’s not just that the kiss is interrupted, but that the kiss is interrupted by a manifestation of the strict requirements of rapunzel’s role as princess, which at the end of the day is what’s pulling rapunzel and eugene apart. i will talk about this more once i get to the proposal, but suffice it to say for now that the very same force that is stifling rapunzel and making her long for escape is what ruins this little romantic new dream moment, and that gets directly at the core of the conflict here. 

rapunzel has all these factors weighing her down and making her uncomfortable in her position inside corona, and none of them have anything to do with eugene, but they still create this stress on her relationship with eugene, because—due to his own comfort, his own readiness to settle down, and his current lack of empathy for rapunzel’s situation*—he’s blind to how unhappy rapunzel is in their current situation, and that makes hamstrings his ability to provide the emotional support she needs right now. 

(*something i will talk about more in my next segment; for now, the tl;dr here is even though eugene loves rapunzel deeply, and even though she drastically changed his outlook on life in a matter of days, it takes much longer for habits of personality to change, and in before ever after eugene is still very deeply entrenched in his self-absorbed flynn rider persona. the core of his character growth over the course of the series is his journey of growing out of that persona as he becomes more emotionally open and less content to laze about enjoying his luxuries every day.)

TO CONCLUDE: i love the opening sequence of before ever after because it is a microcosm of the interpersonal conflict within the new dream relationship. it establishes very neatly and succinctly that the love rapunzel and eugene have for each other, though genuine and deep, is not enough, and that they have serious work to do in bridging the gaps between them in order for the relationship to become lasting and strong. the journey of new dream over the course of the series is one from this starting position of fragility and miscommunication hidden just beneath the surface to the end point of two people who are in tune with each other and understand each other perfectly, and all of that is built on the foundation set down in these first few minutes of the very first episode. 

#rta #tts #farran rewatches tangled

[itsuhtrap42]

The Last Jedi and Nonviolence

Peace and Purpose:

The Philosophy of Nonviolence in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

   Evan M. Banks

   Spring 2019

 “And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

-Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

 “Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.”

                                                       -Yoda, Revenge of the Sith

 “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.”

-Kylo Ren, The Last Jedi

  “Your weapons, you will not need them.”

“What’s in there?”

“Only what you take with you.”

Yoda and Luke, The Empire Strikes Back

    Studying religion and philosophy in the Star Wars universe has been a time-honored tradition among eccentric scholars with a penchant for all things geek since the first film debuted in 1977. What is widely regarded as one of the best qualities of the franchise is that it follows relatable characters and tells relatable stories in a fanciful and faraway place. Moviegoers from all over the globe identify with these characters as they face Earthly problems—love, betrayal, slavery, loyalty, devotion, religiosity, pain, loss, anguish, and triumph. It is in this reality that the developers of the franchise discuss complex philosophical, religious, and moral questions that humanity has struggled with since time immemorial. However, what sets these conversations apart from the human condition as we know it is the ever-present existence of the mysterious energy field that is commonly referred to by Star Wars’ pantheon as, “The Force.” At no period throughout the experience can a viewer reasonably argue that in the Star Wars universe, the Force does not exist. Yet, to what degree does the Force affect itself upon actors within the universe? This is a question that, throughout the stories, the creators of this morality play try and tackle—or at least use to explore the possibilities of what truth is. The existence of an interconnective power that may or may not influence actors’ decisions, thoughts, and actions comes with it the necessity of religions and philosophies within the universe itself that attempt to explain or interpret this phenomenon. These in-franchise vehicles are necessary to characterize the feasibility of the otherwise impossible feats carried out by benevolent or nefarious space-wizards who can harness and observe this powerful Force.

           For over forty years fans and scholars have discussed the subtle and overt nuances in Star Wars and it does not take much to get two fans together to begin arguing about the nature of the Force, the role of government in society, what makes goodness and evil, and even the intrinsic value of a life, i.e. was Han justified in shooting Greedo in Episode IV? But by 2017, forty-one years later, the narrative started to take a turn. Filmmakers were criticized for rehashing the same old stories over and over again—which is wholly ironic considering that George Lucas derived a great deal of his inspiration from Joseph Campbell who posited that many of the Earth’s great myths were of independent invention yet held the same truths, and every great epic story since their advent were variations and derivations of these same morality plays. In light of these criticisms it was essential that the filmmakers explore new ideas and communicate a new message—at least one they had not communicated before. And in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, that message pertains to how effective nonviolent action can be in the face of extreme tyranny. To discuss this relationship, a foundation in established Star Wars philosophy is essential.

There is no better place to start than Joseph Campbell. As a prominent and influential scholar, Campbell posited many theories regarding the nature of myths and their relationships with culture and even one’s own being. George Lucas is known for utilizing Campbell’s mythological models of storytelling.

Star Wars became an immediate, global phenomenon in large part because it portrayed a cosmic struggle between good and evil that was vivid enough to resonate with the audience but general enough so that any person, from any religion or background, could identify with the heroes and root for their struggle against the villains. This universality was completely intentional; George Lucas, adhering to Joseph Campbell’s concept of the mono-myth, believed that all moral teaching share certain core messages about good and evil. Lucas envisioned Star Wars as a galactic version of this one mythic story that would crystalize the basic truths that he believed resided in the heart of every religion or philosophy. For Lucas this was the idea that we all face an internal struggle between kindness, selflessness, and compassion, on the one side, and greed, corruption, and cruelty, on the other.[1]

Campbell himself even cites Luke Skywalker specifically as a mythic hero that the audience is to learn with.[2] Campbell illustrates that aspect of humanity—the need for society to have rightness modeled for it, what that rightness looks like, and how good and evil interact with that rightness. In Star Wars, evil and good are elements brought upon by actors but evil does not exist within the Force itself. Nature does not have the capacity for evil. Nature just is. The Force is. But when individual actors or actors en masse begin to learn to manipulate nature—manipulate the Force, that power is capable of being abused. And out of that abuse, a perversion of the nature of The Force is born—an Evil that is not only physical, but structural, and spiritual. This perversion must be combatted. How best to combat it, not whether one can win against it, is the question posed in TLJ.

Star Wars presents a dilemma in how one associates themselves with power balances and the role of an individual within these power structures.

Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He’s a robot. He’s a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn’t help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That’s something else, and it can be done.[3]

Considering this, Campbell comments on the accessibility of such a humanist philosophy and states that Star Wars asks the question, “…are you going to be a person of heart and humanity—because that’s where the life is, from the heart—or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called ‘intentional power’?”[4] In this question lies the heart of the nonviolent argument that Rose in TLJ articulates. She states plainly explaining the moral lesson of the film, “That’s how we win, not by fighting what we hate, saving what we love.”[5] Campbell argues further that this idea of the “heart” is what is effective at challenging the machinations of evil, or in the case of TLJ, an extrajudicial tyranny. That positive change starts from within oneself and only once one achieves this balance and contentment with humanity and its role in love against tyranny can evil be triumphed over and redemption had.[6]

Campbell is very clearly speaking in the vein of nonviolent resistance much in the same way that Gandhi purports that the means and ends are one—that in order to truly achieve peace through nonviolent means one must embody the principles they preach. “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…We need not wait to see what others do.”[7] This concept of embodying change through a personal and in an inwardly-focused fashion is rife throughout TLJ. This message of inward change permeates throughout the franchise but reaches its most tumultuous as Luke Skywalker suffers a crisis of self when he turns from nonviolent means for a fleeting second as he stands over a sleeping Ben Solo with an ignited lightsaber assuming he can deny his nature and take a life in the interest of goodness. Luke had already learned the effectiveness of nonviolence from his encounter with The Emperor in his quest to change the Satyagraha—Gandhian “Soul Force”—of his father, Darth Vader. When Luke fails his own humanity, his own nature, and betraying his love, the galaxy is once again occupied by a systemic evil promulgated by a betrayed and confused power figure. While Luke fails in this respect, what he has passed on from his experiences with Vader, continue throughout the leadership of The Resistance in Leia.

It is important to note that The Resistance is not a state-sponsored entity but one that stands in protest to The New Republic’s appeasement of The First Order. The aptly named, Resistance’s primary focus in the films has been to flee as they work to destroy weapons of mass destruction. While not entirely nonviolent, these fighters do not entirely belong to the order of the Jedi and are thus not required to adhere to the tenets that Luke Skywalker purports. Which means there are elements of evil among them. Scholar Charles C. Camosy in, Chasing Kevin Smith: Was It Immoral for the Rebel Alliance to Destroy Death Star II, argues that it is a matter of motivation in determining whether taking lives in the interest of removing a WMD from the arena is moral. Essentially, the difference is that while Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope, and thus like the First Order in The Force Awakens, is pleased with the destruction of whole planets as a symbol of power with the intention to subdue whole populations to the will of The Emperor and the machine, the Rebellion akin to The Resistance are primarily concerned with the saving of lives and indeed mourn the mass death that came from the destruction of these weapons. In the opening sequence in TLJ, Poe takes out the deck cannons of the dreadnought and as soon as the evacuation is complete, Leia commands that he returns—intending only to secure the escape. A disarming tactic. Poe is to learn that engaging with violence beyond what is completely necessary is unjust. But doing violence even as a defensive countermeasure comes with it some intrinsic badness in that there is harm done. In this line of argument, Camosy is supporting the notion of Just War Theory. Yet, he does acknowledge the conflict inherent to Just War Theory in that there are no clear distinctions between good and evil on Earth as there are in Star Wars.[8]

From the opening scenes of A New Hope, the “culture” of Star Wars conditions us to root for the Rebels. Looking at the movies through this lens can blind us to the questionable decisions of those we are told are the “good guys.” The ability to challenge the dominant cultural lens through which most of us look at the world and ask critical questions of our own “side” is as rare today as it is important.[9]

And here viewers can see the crux of the argument in TLJ. The unnamed Benicio Del Toro character, “DJ,” very blatantly demonstrates to the protagonists Finn and Rose that The First Order does not have the monopoly on evil. Evil permeates society and even their own organization—the Resistance. Finn and Rose had just escaped from the casino city of Canto Bight that that was filled with arms dealers flaunting their spoils. Its not enough that they harm in business but even these arms dealers’ hobby involves enslaving children and harming animals.

After Rose communicates a personal connection to the harm that developing weapons can cause, she shows Finn the dangers of the military industrial complex—a true perversion of nature: metal twisted to destroy as quickly and efficiently as possible. As viewers are enraged with the idea of these developers testing weapons on the same people that built them, they are momentarily ripped from the idea of “good guys” and “bad guys” when DJ illustrates that The Resistance has been buying weapons from these same people, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence. “Good guys? Bad guys? Made up words…Finn, let me learn you something good, it’s all a machine partner, live free, don’t join.”[10] Barry Gan in Violence and Nonviolence takes an in-depth look at “The Myth of Good Guys and Bad Guys.”[11] He deconstructs the notions of the two types of individuals and illustrates that as one perpetuates this myth, they feed a beast that treats others as less than human and in turn justifies the maltreatment of individuals who are, more than likely, just like themselves. And in an interest of defending groups against a “bad guy” that does not actually exist in logic, “we become convinced that it is wiser to spend money on arms rather than education, on training people to destroy communities instead of build them.”[12] By choosing to juxtapose arms with education, Gan is demonstrating that society’s most powerful tool in the promulgation of nonviolent interests is education. This is something that the Jedi religion and indeed, Luke Skywalker’s crisis touches on extensively during the experiences he has in TLJ.

The morality and nature of myth explored throughout Star Wars is typically dichotomized between two entities in conflict with each other wherein either persuasion is plainly categorized as “good” or “bad.” The goodness and badness of entities and actors is more or less hand-fed to the viewer. It is clear who one is supposed to root for in the story. Yet, as the characters become more complex through their story arcs, so does the philosophy and differing opinions on the nature of the Force and its relationship with goodness and badness or good and evil. Indeed, they vary in opinion regarding the nature of good and evil itself. The Last Jedi attempts to bridge gaps in conflicting interpretations of the Force and brings with it the approaches to violence supported by two competing cosmological arguments—cosmotic and acosmotic.

These concepts lend themselves to the conversation regarding evil itself in such a way that is quintessential to Star Wars’ in-universe philosophies that support or denounce the use of violence. In “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi” Terrance MacMullan characterizes cosmotic beliefs as holding “that there is really only one true thing or order in the universe, that is morally good and that evil is just a corruption of this one true thing.” This is best demonstrated by the fact that while the Jedi submit to the will of the Force, the Sith harness The Dark Side. The Jedi do not submit to the will of the light side but just the nature of all that is The Force. The Dark Side is a delineation of the natural and thus requires a modifier. Never once has the term “the light side” been mentioned in the films. Service to the Force is understood by the old Jedi Order to perpetuate the continued dominance of good. This is opposite of the acosmotic.

Acosmotic beliefs consider good and evil both being natural phenomenon and while not necessarily diametrically opposed but exist in tandem as encouraged by Daoist beliefs surrounding the Yin and the Yang.[13] So what does this have to do with Star Wars? In the cosmotic interpretation of Luke’s new Jediism, the struggling Jedi Master is attempting to come to terms with the idea of balance between good and evil instead of inherent good. He is moving the conversation away from the inherent goodness of the Jedi and the inherent badness of the Sith and discussing a more nuanced balance of the Force. “…And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die, the light dies, that’s vanity.”[14] Luke is demonstrating that as actors within a violent system, the promulgation of Star Wars’ equivalent of the Yin, as if the Jedi have agency over it, has resulted in their hubris and this their diminished ability to affect good on the galaxy. That in this, the Yang would also require agents. Supreme Leader Snoke mirrors this sentiment when he encouters Rey aboard his flagship, “Darkness rises and light to meet it.”[15] But the film does not end on this notion of balance; it takes a turn to a different lesson.

This film is not only Luke teaching Rey, it also has a component of him learning that he does indeed, as an actor in The Force, have the ability to affect change in a positive way. And he calls upon his past experiences to draw wisdom. Yoda, when Luke attempts to burn down the tradition of the Jedi, appears as a teacher, and in standard Yoda fashion, delivers yet again, a very powerful lesson—that he need not try to uphold the traditions that he believes damaged the galaxy but simply, “pass on what [he] has learned,” and strongly consider his failures.[16] As Luke reconnects himself with the Force it is possible that he looks back on his greatest successes—times when he was present, yet takes no violent action at all. For instance, when he destroys the first Death Star, he allowed the Force to do it for him. When he defeated The Emperor through Darth Vaders’ redemption, he did nothing but throw his weapon away. These occurrences demonstrate that the nature of the Force is interested in the vanquishing of evil and Luke’s greatest victories came when he released control of his weapons and turned his mind to the Force. But Yoda required he consider his greatest failures. Every time he failed, the Force seemed to very obviously return the harm back unto himself. When Luke turns to weapons and conflict as a means by which he could do good, such as confronting Vader in Cloud City and losing his hand, and when he takes up arms against Ben during his training and loses everything, The Force is telling him that courting violence comes with consequences. It is during these realizations in TLJ that Luke seemingly retracts from the acosmotic and embraces yet again the cosmotic with a newfound understanding of how effective his nonviolent actions can be. So Luke astral projects himself in front of the First Order army and performs the greatest feat ever displayed by a Jedi on screen. It is one of extreme nonviolence and in so doing humiliates those that would do harm and removes entirely the value the First Order places in violence and destruction. This story is the last thing that the next generation of freedom fighters tells—one of “peace and purpose.”[17]

As Rey says those final lines while she and Leia consider Luke’s broken weapon, Leia responds to Rey’s concern about how to move forward suggesting that with the weapon broken, “we have everything we need” thus mirroring Yoda’s warning to luke when he enters the dark side cave in Episode V when he tells him, “your weapons, you will not need them.”[18] While it may have taken 37 years for Luke, Leia, Rey, and the rest of Star Wars fandom to actually heed Yoda’s powerful words, it seems that the overwhelming message in Star Wars: The Last Jedi is that active political resistance through nonviolence and the destruction of weapons is the best way to resist tyranny and promote peace and justice throughout the galaxy. Indeed, that only the Force should be the deciding factor on whether a life is to be taken, or harm done. There is no telling whether this narrative will continue in December 2019, but it is sincerely the opinion of this author that this message needs to be carried through to its ultimate conclusion and that peace come not at the hands of destruction and death but by the promulgation and promotion of passive political resistance.

 [1]Terrence MacMullan, “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi,” The Journal of Religion and Pop Culture 31, no 1, Spring 2019, 103.

[2] Joseph Cambell, The Power of Myth: With Bill Moyers, Apostrophe S Productions, 1988, 23.

[3] Ibid, 178.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Johnston, The Last Jedi, 2017.

[6] Ibid, 23.

[7] M.K. Gandhi, “General Knowledge About Health,” Indian Opinion 13, chapter 153, New Delhi, India, 1913, 241.

[8] Charles C. Camosy, “Chasing Kevin Smith: Was It Immoral for the Rebel Alliance to Destryo Death Star II,” in The Ultimate Star Wars and Philosophy: You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned” ed by Jason T. Eberl and Kevin S. Decker,” 2016, John Wiley and Sons, 67.

[9] Ibid

[10] Johnston, The Last Jedi, 2017.

[11] Barry Gan, Violence and Nonviolence: An Introduction, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD, 2013, 25-38.

[12] Ibid, 37.

[13] Terrence Macmullan, “Balance through Struggle: Understanding the Novel Cosmology of the Force in The Last Jedi,” The Journal of Religion and Pop Culture 31, no 1, Spring 2019, 101-102

[14] Rian Johnston, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Los Angeles, 20th Century Fox, 2017

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Irvin Kershner, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 20th Century Fox, 1980.

[argentdandelion]

Ways to Salvage the Dragon Egg Princess With a Sequel

(Originally posted on Pillowfort two weeks ago.)

In a previous analysis post on The Dragon Egg Princess, it was made clear how messed-up Koko's identity conflict was. Koko was raised as a human princess, but later discovered she had hatched from a dragon egg, was the last of the dragons, and was now expected to become "a dragon". Supposedly, she had to become "a dragon", including assuming dragon form, because it was her true self or "destiny". The book's conclusion, given its build-up, was unsatisfying and only made sense if there was off-screen child abuse forcing Koko into a particular identity.

However, The Dragon Egg Princess can still be salvaged with a better-executed sequel.

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A Few Book Flaws

Remauld (Koko's magic teacher) and the namushin (forest spirits), as my analysis makes clear, are one of two things: some variety of “misguided” or “overzealous”, possibly blended with obliviousness or patronizing attitudes, or simply...immoral.

Some of the flaws of the previous book are how neither the namushin nor Remauld are ever acknowledged as bad or flawed in any way. In fact, not one person even dislikes them. Secondarily, the namushin (including their magic council representative, Zaki) and Remauld have pretty flat characterization and motives, a likely casualty of the book having too many characters and too little time to develop characters that would logically be better-developed or important. Most of Remauld's characterization is "wise magic teacher who admires dragons and pushes Koko into her "destiny"". The namushin are simply "kind, helpful forest spirits popular among humans that have a habit of simply appearing on the scene", and are so underdeveloped one never even sees their direct dialogue.

Furthermore, Koko's whole pressure to assume her "destiny" as a dragon, "represent" dragons, and be the princess of dragons seems pointless when she's the only one left. Dragon culture exists only as a fossil, so who would acculturate her? Who would she rule over?

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The Bad Guys

Due to their questionable motives and ways of going about them, Remauld and/or the namushin could be perfect antagonists for a sequel, and the new role would theoretically help develop their personalities. Luzee, the evil fairy antagonist of the first book, isn't exactly a fleshed-out "round character", but even she has more characterization than most of the good guys, exempting the protagonist, Jiho, Koko, and arguably the bandit leader Micah (who felt largely superfluous to the book, anyway).

Namushin

The cataclysmic war which ended in the death of all dragons (barring Koko) was initially caused by humans being afraid of supernatural creatures (including dragons) and attacking them, and Luzee secretly stoking their fears to gain more power. Koko outright mentions, just once, the cause of the first war as one reason people might not want to be a dragon. Based on this, and the fact over nations don’t have big magic forests like Joson (fantasy-Korea, basically) and have very little if any magic or magical places left, the Namushin could have a motive to attack humanity.

Although one could write them as wanting to kill all or most of humanity, the most internally consistent motive is wanting to kill those people of other nations who haven’t been incorporated into the Nackwon’s armies and are associated, even loosely, with the destruction of magical areas. Or, they merely want to restore the magic forests of the other nations, at all costs, as quickly as possible, with no care for what humans suffer and die in the process. (the spirits and spirit vines from The Legend of Korra could be a good parallel.)

They might want Koko because dragon magic could uniquely accelerate the process, or Koko would be useful to scare off their human enemies, and they believe they have Koko’s loyalty.

It’s mentioned the Joson people don’t have their own special sections in the Nackwon’s human armies: they’ve already been integrated into the general forces of the Nackwon because they are “magic, just like the Nackwon”. (something like that…) Therefore, the namushin could very well exploit Koko’s status as the princess of Joson to get the entire Joson nation as allies or give themselves political legitimacy quickly.

Remauld

Luzee initially tried to drain Queen Nanami (the queen of the dragons)’s brother for power, but he turned back into his dragon form and fled. He’s not mentioned outside a brief explanation in the magical viewer. Remauld said dragons were his friends and seems really enthusiastic about it. What if Remauld was Queen Nanami’s brother, who’s been in human form all this time? What if he felt like, as the only dragon left, he had to be a de facto parental figure for Koko and thought her human parents inadequate for the task? What if he didn’t want the pomp and restrictions of being the ruler of dragons, or was too much of a coward to confront Luzee if it could be avoided?

There’s also the possibility Remauld was Queen Nanami’s mate, which would have similar characterizations. Dragons can shapeshift into humans, but what about vice versa? Koko can shapeshift leaves into toads, among other magical features, so it’s plausible that Remauld is skilled enough to change his very body, or Queen Nanami changed his body herself. It’s stated dragons breed rarely, and they were lucky if one egg was laid per year.

Hundreds of years ago, Queen Nanami had to give a dragon’s egg to the powerful fairy Luzee as a source of magic so she could protect them against humans, before her turn against the Nackwon entirely and attempt to kill all dragons. Knowing the urgency of creating a dragon’s egg, Nanami may have chosen a shapeshifted Remauld to bypass whatever reproductive difficulties had, because a half-dragon's egg made quick was better than a full-dragon's egg too late to be useful.

Perhaps Remauld never told Koko that he sired her egg because he was ashamed that he, a lowly (compared to dragons) wizard who idolized dragons, had to be her father. Perhaps he wanted to maintain what he thought was a comforting illusion Koko was a full-blooded dragon, who only hatched weirdly because of a “dragon’s instinct to survive making it appealing to its caretakers” (his explanation for why Koko hatched as a scaly humanoid that quickly became indistinguishable from human). If Koko’s father was a magic-human, one could easily blend Koko’s identity conflict into a more coherent dual-species theme of uncertain or mixed identity.

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Koko With Actual Subjects?

If Koko had actual subjects, her identity would be a lot more important, so Koko learning of some other dragons is a good idea for a sequel. Perhaps the namushin never found them because they live in the other nations, and their data-collecting is spotty in the nations that don’t have magic forests. Perhaps it’s hard to tell a dragon in disguise from a real human unless they’re using magic, and it takes a lot of luck to perfectly observe a candidate at just the right time. However, the dragon-folk are fully aware dragons don’t exist as a separate culture or faction any more, or their loyalties are to human rulers, or they think of themselves as “humans who can turn into dragons” rather than the reverse, so they think Koko has no authority over them.

Koko initially assumed she was special and necessary because Joson loyalty allegedly had a trace of dragon’s blood, and the Namushin (evasively) told her she was related to Queen Nanami. Perhaps, five hundred years ago, some dragons defected from the dragon military and hid as humans. (perhaps in nations other than Joson---a good excuse to explore those in the next book) Because humans so feared supernatural creatures and dragons, they hid their true natures for many decades, even generations. They told their children who grew up among humans they had exceptional magical ability (or even the “unique ability to turn into dragons”) because they were descended from the illegitimate children of Joson royalty, who, yes, had traces of dragon blood, which were especially obvious in some people by sheer luck. Since the Joson royals sure don’t want word of indiscretion getting out (especially if the dragon-humans still live in Joson) and will use force to maintain secrecy, they should keep their unique abilities secret.

These “humans who can turn into dragons” would be an interesting foil for Koko. They would delight Remauld, frustrate him, or both. They would provide Koko an alternate identity option she hadn’t even considered under the yoke of crushing expectations/child abuse. And since Koko is not only “a dragon”, but also “a dragon princess” and “princess of Joson”, she may very well be a poor choice to represent these “dragon folk” as a whole, because she shares little in common with them. The “dragon folk” might not even be (or look) Joson in their human forms. However,  one could also present them as second-generation or even twentieth-generation immigrants from Joson, only distinguishable from their neighbors at all because of their preference to interbreed with other dragon folk. (It’s unclear how long it takes for dragons to breed, or whether their human forms affect generation times.)

The above idea might allow something thematically similar to, “the only Tsimshian (Native American tribe with the lowest or second-lowest population) in the nation, who was adopted by Caucasians, and who figures Tsimshians are extinct, is brow-beaten into identifying as Tsimshian in the ‘purest’ way for Magic Reasons and is conflicted about it, but then realizes there are modern Tsimshians with very different backgrounds and identity expressions a few states away and must grapple with her identity again”.

One could probably combine “Remauld and/or the namushin are villains” with “Koko learns of humans-that-can-turn-into-dragons” into the same plot. Perhaps the namushin flush out the “Dragon Folk” in the process of restoring other nations’ forests/attacking other nations, or basically expand their tree-based “satellite vision” into other nations now that the immediate threat of Luzee is gone. (Luzee breaking out would make the Namushin’s projects pointless, after all; she would simply take over the world again and probably kill all namushin)

#Analysis #Books #Fantasy Books #Fantasy #Identity Conflicts #Identity #Literary Analysis #Meta #Dragons #Writing

[magma-paint]

Tutorial Tuesdays: Heads Up!

It’s been a long time, life is a jerk. Anyway, drawing heads! Before continuing, I recommend reviewing the last Tutorial Tuesdays post on pencil pressure and drawing with basic shapes since those are going to be put into effect. Ready to go? Alright, since this is going to be a long one, click the Read More link and away we go!

The head is likely the part of any character you’re going to find yourself drawing the most. Expressions, headshots, closeups, busts, you name it. So let’s start by drawing a basic head and start with the most common view, the 3/4 view.

This is the most basic process condensed into four steps. Lightly sketch a circle and a guideline, the former typically is the form of most of the skull and the crosslines will help with placement of the eyes, nose, and ears. Then define the shape of the face, including the cheeks and jawline, with a bit stronger pressure  but still keeping pretty light. Sketch in the ear and the curvature of the back of the head, as well as the neck. The furthest line of the neck will be relatively close to where the jawline and ear connect. Then sketch in the features; very lightly sketch in circles where the eyes are--above the horizontal guideline but no further down than touching it--and sketch the eye shape and pupil/iris, alternating sides with each stroke to alleviate the frustration that comes with “drawing the other eye”. You know what I’m talking about. The nose will be close to the guideline intersection, if not actually on it at certain angles. And viola, a basic head at 3/4 view. This same process is used when facing at 3/4 the opposite way.

For a profile view, or looking at the head from the side, same basic four-step breakdown:

You’ll notice that the nose sticks out and you can see where the head connects to the neck at the back. Another guideline helps with ear placement. I should have put the guideline for that on the 3/4 view, but I find that the main guideline and jawline contour work better for me. Use the additional guideline for the ear if it will help with the spatial relation of that feature. More experienced artists may tweak areas to fit their signature style. For example, placement of the lips. In anime, especially more realistically styled anime, the lips appear as very small peaks with the valley between them being there the mouth is.

Now onto probably the second most common view, the front view. Also using the same four step condensed breakdown:

(Some of it cut off, oops) Now you can see how the face is arranged when looking at the viewer straight on. This is the easiest to practice, followed by 3/4, then profile. You can even cheat  by using the Symmetry pen in digital programs (just make sure you anchor down the point of reference first with Control+Click!). While basic, this works for just about any human character, though using references is highly encouraged to get a feel for the anatomy before messing with it to fit a particular style.

“I draw anthro animals, does this still work?”

Yes. For both super cartoony stylized characters and more realistically built and furry styles. Let’s start with looking at the fastest thing alive:

See? Circle, guideline, map out the features, and soon you got a cool boi.

Furries or more realistically styled anthros will tend to have more shapes and forms in their facial construction to better adhere to the anatomy of the animal they’re based on. JKU, my friend Elliot’s fursona, is an alien but the anatomy is based on a dog or a wolf. Study the animal you’re drawing if you need help or even to make a basic breakdown of the shapes you would need.

“How about object heads, like Cuphead?”

Absitively-posolutely! I personally use the circle foundation when drawing the Cup Bros or even just for general mapping the direction they’re looking, but once you master it, you can take the basic shape of the object you’re using, like this candle girl, and manipulate it to get it where you need them to face without relying on the circle.

Alright, now that you understand the basics of drawing a head, let’s move onto

Hair is a total mess and if there’s one thing I will warn beginning artists right now, DON’T DRAW STRAND BY INDIVIDUAL STRAND. It helps to think of hair and draw it in larger chunks and forms as a whole than by each individual one. As I shall demonstrate with my boi Guzma:

Okay, now that we have removed accessories from the picture, let’s set this up.

The process goes by starting with a basic head and the respective features of the character. Now we add the hairline, a visible boundary where the hair coverage begins. You‘ll sketch it for the forehead, the sideburns, and the nape of the neck if you’re in rear views. Now, piece by piece, we sketch the hair; I started with the floof at the top, then the right side of the sketch, then the left. If you have a character with a symmetrical hairstyle/haircut, remember the technique to avoid “the other eye” (or cheat by using the symmetry pen in digital).

The hairline itself varies from character to character or style to style, sometimes more seasoned artists won’t use it since it becomes hidden anyway. It does come in three basic shapes: flat (as seen on Guzma), protruding (it comes out a little bit in the front but following a smooth contour), and a widow’s peak, as seen on Equius:

The hairline is also useful in drawing and styling a character’s bangs or even indicating how the hair parts. Know what else it’s nifty for? It’s actually one of the most noticeable indicators of age. And you knew this example was coming and you probably even saw it coming from a mile away so let’s get it over with.

In 2018, Ace of the Gangreen Gang from The Powerpuff Girls became an official member of Gorillaz, temporarily taking up the role as the bassist while Murdoc was in jail. Since the band members age in real time, the same applies to Ace. Besides the addition of a couple wrinkles, the most noticeable effect time has had on him is the receding hairline and decreased volume/body his hair has compared to when he was within spitting range of becoming a legal adult. I could even do an entirely new tutorial on hair by age, but this is just the basics.

So we talked about hairlines and drawing in large chunks. What about characters with hair accessories or their hair pulled into ponytails or pigtails? Allow Plumeria and Bubbles to demonstrate:

Take your basic head and define the hairline (though it may be impractical on any angle on the PowerPuff Girls). Draw in the part and bangs if applicable and define the volume of the hair close to the head. Lightly sketch a circle on each side where the hair gathers on the head and map out the length of the hair. Define the pigtails first and then the hair accessories. And you good!

For specific textures of hair, look for references or additional tutorials. Bald characters such as Russel Hobbs or Dr. Eggman don’t really need much of a tutorial, but you do want to make sure the head is constructed very well to make it convincing. And on that topic...

TROUBLESHOOTING

These are some traps that beginning artists fall into or rookie mistakes seasoned artists shouldn’t be making on prime pieces. Let’s break them down:

Balloon Heads and Painted-on Faces

These two are beginning (more pronounced for anthro) artist pitfalls and tropes that were very common among the Sonic fandom back when Sonic X was at the peak of its popularity online in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Ohohoho... man, those were some times. Now, I do like Sonic X and even Sonic Underground, but it’s frustrating how prevalent balloon faces are in these professionally--well, mostly professionally--made shows put to television. As demonstrated here:

On the left, the example keeps all the features of Amy’s face within the basic circle with no indication of volume. Nothing that would indicate what parts of the face are supposed to stick out and it’s not exactly in a style that makes it simplistic enough to slide. The right, while not perfect, could reasonably be translated to 3D or CGI and the anatomy would check out and make it more convincing. At least, in 3/4 view or front view and some frames of Sonic X can be brushed off as an odd camera angle or going into a moving frame or just being too far away from the camera to properly discern some features. In profile view it’s less forgivable and more common to Sonic Underground and beginning artists.

In profile view, balloon heads/painted-on faces are a very noticeable mistake derived from keeping all the features inside the circle. At the very worst you can have the inset in the middle, where the nose is inside the guide circle and looks very much like it was just painted on. This is something that most artists usually grow out of in their last years of elementary school (or for those who use the metric system, primary school). At best, the mistake is just sticking the nose on the outside of the circle without accounting for convincing shape of the face, such as the Amy sketch on the left. On the right, the muzzle and, if you can see it, “eyebrow” stick out to convey how the eyes are covered based on the Mobian skull and the muzzle sticks out to accommodate the internal structure of the face. As seriously as you can take a cartoon character’s anatomy and biology, anyway.

Really the only case I could see these mistakes being fine or harmless is on object heads like Lucius (a billiard ball) and Claire (a sugar bowl) in the rubber hose style. However, the style is deceptively easy in which it may look simple but you have to have a good grasp on the style or it falls into the uncanny valley. Balloon heads and painted on faces seem to be more common to stylized anthro characters, but I’ve made a number of fluffy anime creatures and anime-styled human characters in seventh grade that fall into the trap.

Lopping

More common to human and humanoid characters, lopping is a mistake in which you draw the face alright but the hair at the top of the head really doesn’t look right to the point that the head itself doesn’t look right.

You’ll notice in this drawing of Lapis that the face shape looks okay, the eyes and nose and mouth are where they need to be, the hair is the right style, but it looks... off. Sketching a dotted line to outline the head at its most basic form shows that the hair placement defies the rules of anatomy. Such a mistake is what I call lopping, as it looks like the head was lopped off and the hair is trying to cover it. This is why I stress starting your sketch with basic shapes and then constructing details around the foundation.

Looks much better, right? And since in Steven Universe the gems don’t really have ears (at least, that’s my observation), you can lightly sketch in an oval where the ears normally are (in 3/4 and profile views) to help draw in the face shape and jawline.

As always, practice drawing these regularly and don’t shy away from references if you need something to study or a visual aid or guide. Happy drawing!

Next episode: No plans, but will take requests or suggestions in my inbox/Discord.

#tutorial tuesdays #tutorials #drawing heads #art reference #references

[globrights]

do you know the thing that's like "you had me at x". well the words "youtuber mac" are the opposite of that I blacked out after seeing them and haven't been able to read anything past them

more about youtuber mac: 

he made 10 clickbait “i’m coming out” videos that he filmed over the years every time he found out he STILL had a super strong gay following 

every single one of those videos were basically him going on a rant about how god hates the gays, how homosexuality is a sin, and how they need to repent for their sins and be a totally straight god-loving catholic like him 

the videos get tons of views because he always has a boner the whole time 

his subscribers like to encourage him to make more by often commenting stuff like “sorry im still gay :(” “this video actually solidified my lesbianism” “my mom said she’ll only let me stop being gay if u post nudes”

he posts so many workout videos - he has a whole series on creatine shits and one of a very suspicious looking workout bike 

he also does collab videos with charlie, where they wrestle like they used to when they’d try out for school teams 

this culminated into them making the workout drink Fight Milk™, which they of course promoted on their respective youtube channels

charlie posted a full uncut vid of them making the drink but mac freaked out and made him delete it because he was afraid someone would steal their recipe 

a big thing about mac’s subscribers is that a lot of them claim to be watching it to make fun of mac/ironically tuning in to laugh at mac’s repression bc they think it’s funny/convinced it’s all a gimmick somehow  

but the truth is most of them are unironically in love with mac and want him to love himself and overcome his internalized homophobia

fight milk sales shot up after a video of mac saying “we jizz in the drink and that’s what makes it good” gets uploaded by someone who visited a bar that mac reportedly works at 

mac stopped collaborating with dennis for a few years bc loads of fans started finding and commenting on videos of their old collabs on his channel with stuff like “mm love that het content” “i was actually planning on going to straight church last sunday but then i saw this” “mac when you said god hates the gays you were right im god and i hate this” 

mac even deleted the videos and it made dennis upset and there were conspiracy theories on twitter supported by annoyed vlogs made by dee that mac and dennis broke up for an entire ass day before moving back in with each other again and the mac fandom thinks its the funniest fucking thing in the entire world they’re constantly joking about it (but not anywhere mac can see) 

eventually mac and dennis do make a collab video bc fans kept insisting especially since mac and dennis would still do many collabs with charlie but not with each other, demands for a macden collab soared after charlie posted a charmacden video that was just like the three of them going around to different animal shelters to look at cats (mac made them find a couple dogs too though) 

mac and dennis’ collab is basically a whole ‘day in the life’ vlog type thing which they decided to do on purpose bc a) they didn’t want to put effort into it bc they didn’t want to seem like they cared and b) they wanted to make a boring video (a hard task given how naturally entertaining they think they are but they think vlogs about nothing/regular days other youtubers put up are boring as shit so why not) but it ends up being like hella fucking romantic bc its just them both hanging round town, taking turns filming each other, laughing their hearts out, staring into each others eyes, looking away and blushing when things get heavy, and it’s literally over the most ‘mundane’ shit like them getting taco bell and going to the grocery store 

everyone who watches it is CONVINCED this is mac’s coming out video 

a lot of viewers soon find out that mac likely came out off camera to his friends after dee posts a couple videos and vlogs referencing/showing a trip to an official arbitration and p much everyone thinks mac and dennis will prob come on out about their relationship any day now 

but then dennis mysteriously posts videos about how he’s arrived in north dakota and replies to none of the comments asking about mac’s whereabouts 

on that same day, mac posts a video entitled ‘fuck u’ and it’s just a ten second shot of him and the gang (minus dennis) blowing up the range rover 

#ask #macdennis #ban me block me PLEASE #anon: i fucking hate this #me: here's more im so sorry but also fuck u #Anonymous #how dare u awaken me tbh #youtuber au

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 4x11 The Other Side

Now that I’m finally on my vacation and have the time to write these posts, I need to catch up. I actually rewatched up to 5x04, so now I need to go over 7 episodes so I could continue my rewatch of season 5.

Season 4 is one of my favorite seasons of The 100 mostly because of its last 3 episodes, which are all among my all-time favorites episodes of the show. While I still think that 2x16 is the show’s strongest finale, season 4 has the strongest finish with 3 amazing episodes in a row. It helps that this is both the stage of the season when we’re past the plotlines about Grounder politics and religion – never my favorite part of the show, though it was better done in season 4 than in season 3 – and where the focus was on what made season 4 so good: human drama and conflict between people and within people’s minds and souls, in the face of the end of the world and an enemy that cannot be defeated: climate change in its most extreme version.

One of the three storylines in 4x11 is the tense standoff about who will be in the bunker and survive, which turns the main characters against each other, including Clarke against Bellamy, but where none of the sides are villainous and everyone has good reasons for what they are doing. The show prides itself on grey morality, but it doesn’t always get it right – this is one of the times it does.

But while that storyline is the usual story of people fighting for survival (for themselves, their loved ones, whoever they consider “their people” – since the morally right goal of saving everyone is impossible), the other two plots are about people who have decided that they don’t want to survive, or who are struggling to decide whether they want to live or not.

It’s also the episode remembered for the first death of a main character who was a part of the original cast at the start of season 1 since episode 2x08. It’s one of the saddest deaths on The 100, but also one of those that felt most unavoidable.

“See you on the other side” is one of those repetitive catchphrases on The 100 that has changed its meaning so much over time Jasper said it several times – I remember that he said it in The Pilot, just about to cross the river (just before he got speared and nearly died), in 3x13 just before drinking the potion that Luna’s people gave him and others so they would lose consciousness before they take them to their oil rig – and he tells it to Monty as he is about to die.

This story of PTSD was done much better than whatever the show was doing with Finn. There is a parallel between Jasper and Octavia in how damaged they were after  to the deaths of their first real love, but while Octavia mostly directed her grief outward into violence and, for a while, murder (an with a dash of death wish), Jasper was only verbally aggressive to others – and more so in season 3 than in season 4 – but his psychological state mostly manifested in his loss of a will for survival.

This storyline is very controversial, from the fans who started hating Jasper and calling him annoying – because the show was honest about the fact that depressed people are not always pleasant to be around – to people who were upset that the story didn’t get an uplifting outcome with Jasper overcoming his problems. But it wouldn’t be realistic if everyone in the show overcome their traumas. In reality, some people just break and stay broken. And I think it’s important to show that, too. It doesn’t make the story hopeless and nihilistic, because, at the same time – and in this very episode – we also get stories of people – Harper, Raven - who do manage to overcome trauma and decide to live.

I’m still glad that the show didn’t go with their original idea – Jasper shooting himself in the season 3 finale, right after he wrote his suicide letter. Not just because his death would have been overshadowed by other deaths that season, and because it would’ve made season 3 way too dark, but also because, in a way, his season 4 arc and suicide was less bleak, odd as that may sound. Season 3 Jasper was focused on his pain, anger and despair, while season 4 Jasper was reconciled with the idea he would die, and focused on going out having some fun before his death.

I also think it would be very unrealistic if, in the face of such bleak future – probable death of radiation or years of possibly awful life stuck in a bunker – at least some people wouldn’t make the decision to live out the rest of the days with an end-of-the-world party and go out in their own time, at their own choice and in a more pleasant way, such as overdosing of drug-like tea. And knowing how things turn out in the rest of season 4 – and that most of them would probably be condemned to death of radiation, anyway – and how horrible the life in the bunker ended up being (and that it took the lives of almost 400 out of the 1200 people), I can’t really say that those who stayed behind in Arkadia and committed suicide made a wrong choice, even if it’s not a choice I would make.

Jasper’s death scene, his last moments with Monty, is beautiful and heartbreaking. But I still didn’t cry during that scene in this rewatch, which surprised me. Then I was even more surprised when the tears only came later when Monty found out that Harper was alive and she told him she loved him, which she had tried to deny before, because she wanted Monty to leave her and not risk his life for her. I think it’s because, for tears, you need some kind of catharsis, a relief, and there is nothing like that in Jasper’s death scene. It’s like watching the Buffy episode The Body – similar to dealing with deaths of people close to you in real life, where you’re just frozen and you’re not getting any kind of closure or seeing any kind of meaning. Monty keeps fighting and trying to stop Jasper from killing himself even after it is already too late, or getting angry that he can’t do anything about it anymore. because it’s not in Monty’s nature to give up hope. And that’s why he doesn’t even say “I love you” when Jasper asks him to, until it is too late and Jasper cannot hear it anymore, because to say it would mean to accept his death.

Monty has lost so much at this point – having to kill his mother twice, now losing his best friend who was like a brother to him, that the moment when he thinks that Harper is dead (seeing a dead body of a blonde woman, who turns out to be Bree), and then realizes that Harper is alive was such a big relief both because of Harper and because Monty has managed to save someone he loves, and his arc is not all grief and darkness.

Oh, the times when Raven used to be really a main character and had a great arc about struggling with her pain, disability, and (temporary) loss of mental functions! (I love season 6 and it may end up as my favorite season, but it pretty much made Raven a side character and didn’t do her too many favors.) Though the Raven episode most often compared to 6x07 Nevermind is 3x11 Nevermore (because of the similar title and same writer), Raven’s story in 4x11 actually is more similar to Clarke’s story in 6x07: it’s an internal struggle where she is deciding whether she wants to live, and where she talks to dead characters, who are actually embodiments of parts of her own mind, pulling her in different directions and fighting for her soul. Here they are “Becca”, tempting Raven to die, because a part of her doesn’t believe she can still be the brilliant mind who solves all the problems – and “Sinclair”, who helps Raven find hope and fight to live, and come up with a solution how to heal her brain. She does it by basically “rebooting” herself through temporary “death” – which is similar to how Gabriel brought back Clarke in 6x10. Considering the fact that Sinclair is just a product of Raven’s mind, it’s a bit funny when he tells Raven that she shouldn’t compare herself to Da Vinci and Mozart etc. because she’s better than all of them – but I guess Raven is imagining Sinclair as giving her huge amounts of praise in order to give her faith in herself. He was always the mentor/friend who gave her a chance to work as a mechanic on the Ark and believed in her even when she didn’t believe in herself.

The bunker drama

I wasn’t happy with the way 4x10 put Clarke is a pseudo-antagonist role, by focusing on the Conclave (an incredibly stupid way to resolve the question of survival of the human race) with Octavia as the hero, and making the viewers forget what the situation was when Clarke made her decision. Add to that that she is pitted against Bellamy, and that she is siding with Jaha, and you have all the ingredients for the fandom to see Clarke as a villain. But in fact, her decision made most sense in the circumstances – not only was Octavia realistically unlikely to win, but the most likely outcome was that Luna would win and doom the entire human race to die. But this episode corrects that and explains her reasons – and that they are different from Jaha’s. Once that the news comes that Octavia has won and decided to share the bunker – which was Clarke’s suggestion that all the Grounder leaders ignored in 4x09 – the situation changes completely, and it’s obvious that Clarke, who already didn’t feel good about what she was doing, started having doubts, while Jaha was very sure that what they were doing was right, and insisted that it’s all about saving their people.

Clarke, on the other hand, thinks that Skaikru need to be in the bunker because they are the only ones who can operate machines that ensure such things as air and water in the bunker, so they’re essential for the survival of the human race. Which is true. But sharing the bunker would also solve that. However, at that point, no one is sure if Grounders already know about them stealing the bunker and if they will start killing all of the Skaikru. Bellamy has faith that Octavia can stop it, but not everyone does.

Of course, even if Clarke had good reasons to steal the bunker, the whole thing with kidnapping Bellamy and keeping him there against his will, chained, while he was desperate to save his sister, was another messed up thing to do, and Clarke clearly didn’t feel good about that, either. It’s the understandable why she did it, to save his life, but I’ve never been OK with the “kidnapping/imprisoning you for your own good” thing, whether it was Lexa kidnapping Clarke and keeping her prisoner for a week in Polis, Bellamy handcuffing Clarke to make her prisoner in Arkadia, or Clarke keeping Bellamy chained up.

That said, I’m not sure how certain Clarke was sure that keeping the bunker closed was the right thing to do, either, because when she was explaining her reasons to Niylah, she seemed to really be talking to herself and trying to convince herself, and Niylah was just a sounding board. That relationship always consisted of Niylah being Clarke’s friend who was there to comfort her when she needed some human touch but wasn’t able to turn to anyone she had stronger emotions for – and while they had sex a couple of times in the past, this time Clarke just needed someone to lie beside her and put an arm around her, but when she talked about the reasons, she had her back to Niylah and not even looking at her, but looking somewhere into the distance.

The relationship between Clarke and Jaha is a pretty interesting one, and I wish it had been explored more, but they did do some of it here. He was a close family friend she grew up with, almost an uncle figure, then he became the symbol of everything she hated, the person who executed her father and imprisoned her for a year. Earlier on in season 4, she was still calling him out on what he did to Jake, but then, having to do things like make the list, she started thinking that she was turning into Jaha. In this episode, even though Clarke was the one who came up with the idea to steal the bunker, Jaha was the one who was confident about what they were doing and acted like he was in charge (prompting Bellamy to make the good observation “I don’t remember the election that made you the chancellor again”) convincing the uncertain Clarke that their path was right. It reminded me a bit of the dynamic between Pike and Bellamy in S3.

This whole situation was pretty complicated: on one hand, Clarke was telling herself that she was saving the human race by saving “her people”, but if everything was resolved without bloodshed, sharing the bunker would mean letting more people potentially survive, because the bunker had the capacity of holding 1200 people, while there were just a little over 400 Sky people. So, one could argue that the “big picture” favored opening the bunker ASAP. For Jaha, it was all about “saving our people”. But what does “my people/our people” mean? Everyone defines that according to how they feel. Jaha sees it as the collective of people from the Ark that he feels responsible for – but 1) it’s not like the lives of people from the Ark are inherently more important than the lives of people known as Grounders, and 2) some of those “our people” were not even in the bunker. Kane, Octavia, Raven, Monty would be left to die, among others. On the personal level, who is more “your person” than your lover or child or sibling, or close friend? But Jaha has always had a rather tribalistic vision and cared more as his people as a collective, than the individual people in that group. Kane was the closest thing to a friend Jaha had at this point, but he was OK with leaving him to die. But it was obvious that Bellamy would never agree to leaving Octavia to die, and Abby would never agree to leave Kane. And if Bellamy or Abby were outside the bunker, I’m 100% sure Clarke wouldn’t agree to leave them to die, either. However, after his wife’s and son’s death, Jaha didn’t have anyone he loved so much that he couldn’t sacrifice them. And since he kind of sacrificed his son to the “big picture” – by putting him at risk of death (which kept haunting him), I think that Jaha doubled down on his belief in his messianic role to save the Arker,s and that he had kind of convinced himself everyone else should be able to sacrifice their loved ones to that.

Which is why he didn’t see it coming when Abby stuck a syringe in him and knock him out, to go and help Bellamy go and open the bunker door. I remember that I saw that coming the first time I watched it and even guessed Abby’s reply to Jaha saying that he’s sorry about Kane’s inevitable death: “He was a good man”. – “He still is”. Jaha was also wrong to bring up Jake, because I think that Abby’s guilt over betraying Jake (which led to Jaha executing him – which she did not anticipate) only made her more determined to do differently this time and save Kane and not betray him. Oh, the time when Abby doing things to save Kane was something you could root for and that didn’t cross the line into creepy, misguided and deeply morally wrong!

This is one of the very few times in the show where Abby and Bellamy had significant interactions – even working together. And they managed to fool Murphy.

I love the fact that Bellamy made himself look self-destructive, by injuring himself while chained, only because he had a plan how to get out and open the door.

This is one of the two or three times in seasons 3-4 when Bellamy tells Murphy that he has no idea what it’s like to love someone, and Murphy has to keep explaining that he’s wrong and referencing his love for Emori.

Being focused on the big picture and trying to save the human race, as Clarke was doing throughout season 4, made her have to repress her feelings and almost severed her human connections (e.g. leaving some of her best friends out of the list, stealing the bunker even though some of the were outside and she was leaving them to die). She’s never been more “Head” than in season 4, because she believed she really had to be. But Bellamy was always her one soft spot where her ability to repress emotions for the ‘greater good’ would hit a brick wall. Bellamy (and Octavia, probably because of him) had to be on the list, not because of any objective reasons (which doesn’t mean that Bellamy isn’t very valuable for his leadership qualities, but that wasn’t why she put him there), even when she was leaving out a genius like Monty. We’ll never know if she could have stayed strong if ALIE had tortured/threatened to kill Bellamy (because the show hinted he was her biggest ‘weakness’ but never allowed that to happen), but she did let hundreds of people die in bombing mostly to protect him, she gave up 50 spots for her people to survive, when Roan blackmailed her by threatening to kill Bellamy, which Roan knew would work because threatening to kill Bellamy got Clarke in season 3 to give up fighting and let him take her to what she thought would be her death at Nia’s hands, and now, she was convinced that she was ensuring the survival of human race by not opening the bunker, but she still couldn’t bring herself to shoot him. But even the fact she thought she could do it shows how out of touch with her emotions she was at that point: Girl, I could have told you there’s no way you would be able to.

I’ve always thought – after seeing how the next two episodes of season 4 went (and then the next two seasons confirmed that) – that the moment when Clarke couldn’t shoot Bellamy and ended up crying, was the moment when she finally faced up to how she feels about him, and that she’s been aware of her feelings ever since. (Even if you disagree on that, there is no way you could spend 6 years on her own, radioing him every day, without realizing exactly what you feel.)

In 4x10, Bellamy was worrying that he wasn’t able to tell his sister that he loves her. When Bellamy and Octavia reunite and hug, Bellamy tells her “I love you so much” – which is the first time we’ve ever seen him say “I love you” to someone. To date, Octavia is the only person he’s said it to on-screen.

Octavia exiles Echo – pulling the “I said your people will get to survive, not you” trick, and considering all her experiences with Echo up to that point. I don’t blame her at all. She correctly guesses that Echo won’t tell the other Grounders (other than Indra, who is playing along) that Skaikru stole the bunker, since she will still die anyway. Echo indeed turned out to be more concerned with survival than revenge. 

Timeline: The episode starts two days before Praimfaya, and ends exactly a day before Praimfaya

Body Count: 11 Arkers who killed themselves, including Jasper, Bree, another Delinquent, and Riley.

At least 60 Delinquents have died (4 in season 4), while 40 are still alive. But not for long.

Rating: 10/10

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 4x11 #the other side #the 100 season 4 #jasper jordan #raven reyes #monty green #harper mcintyre #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #thelonius jaha #abby griffin #octavia blake #niylah #john murphy #bellarke #bellamy x clarke #bellamy x octavia #kane x abby #kabby