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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 3 years

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“Elliot Page doesn’t remember exactly how long he had been asking.

But he does remember the acute feeling of triumph when, around age 9, he was finally allowed to cut his hair short. “I felt like a boy,” Page says. “I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday.” Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page visualized himself as a boy in imaginary games, freed from the discomfort of how other people saw him: as a girl. After the haircut, strangers finally started perceiving him the way he saw himself, and it felt both right and exciting.

The joy was short-lived. Months later, Page got his first break, landing a part as a daughter in a Canadian mining family in the TV movie Pit Pony. He wore a wig for the film, and when Pit Pony became a TV show, he grew his hair out again. “I became a professional actor at the age of 10,” Page says. And pursuing that passion came with a difficult compromise. “Of course I had to look a certain way.”

We are speaking in late February. It is the first interview Page, 34, has given since disclosing in December that he is transgender, in a heartfelt letter posted to Instagram, and he is crying before I have even uttered a question. “Sorry, I’m going to be emotional, but that’s cool, right?” he says, smiling through his tears.

It’s hard for him to talk about the days that led up to that disclosure. When I ask how he was feeling, he looks away, his neck exposed by a new short haircut. After a pause, he presses his hand to his heart and closes his eyes. “This feeling of true excitement and deep gratitude to have made it to this point in my life,” he says, “mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety.”

It’s not hard to understand why a trans person would be dealing with conflicting feelings in this moment. Increased social acceptance has led to more young people describing themselves as trans—1.8% of Gen Z compared with 0.2% of boomers, according to a recent Gallup poll—yet this has fueled conservatives who are stoking fears about a “transgender craze.” President Joe Biden has restored the right of transgender military members to serve openly, and in Hollywood, trans people have never had more meaningful time onscreen. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling is leveraging her cultural capital to oppose transgender equality in the name of feminism, and lawmakers are arguing in the halls of Congress over the validity of gender identities. “Sex has become a political football in the culture wars,” says Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

(Full article with photos continued under the “read more”)

And so Page—who charmed America as a precocious pregnant teenager in Juno, constructed dreamscapes in Inception and now stars in Netflix’s hit superhero show The Umbrella Academy, the third season of which he’s filming in Toronto—expected that his news would be met with both applause and vitriol. “What I was anticipating was a lot of support and love and a massive amount of hatred and transphobia,” says Page. “That’s essentially what happened.” What he did not anticipate was just how big this story would be. Page’s announcement, which made him one of the most famous out trans people in the world, started trending on Twitter in more than 20 countries. He gained more than 400,000 new followers on Instagram on that day alone. Thousands of articles were published. Likes and shares reached the millions. Right-wing podcasters readied their rhetoric about “women in men’s locker rooms.” Casting directors reached out to Page’s manager saying it would be an honor to cast Page in their next big movie.

So, it was a lot. Over the course of two conversations, Page will say that understanding himself in all the specifics remains a work in progress. Fathoming one’s gender, an identity innate and performed, personal and social, fixed and evolving, is complicated enough without being under a spotlight that never seems to turn off. But having arrived at a critical juncture, Page feels a deep sense of responsibility to share his truth. “Extremely influential people are spreading these myths and damaging rhetoric—every day you’re seeing our existence debated,” Page says. “Transgender people are so very real.”

That role in Pit Pony led to other productions and eventually, when Page was 16, to a film called Mouth to Mouth. Playing a young anarchist, Page had a chance to cut his hair again. This time, he shaved it off completely. The kids at his high school teased him, but in photos he has posted from that time on social media he looks at ease. Page’s head was still shaved when he mailed in an audition tape for the 2005 thriller Hard Candy. The people in charge of casting asked him to audition again in a wig. Soon, the hair was back.

Page’s tour de force performance in Hard Candy led, two years later, to Juno, a low-budget indie film that brought Page Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and sudden megafame. The actor, then 21, struggled with the stresses of that ascension. The endless primping, red carpets and magazine spreads were all agonizing reminders of the disconnect between how the world saw Page and who he knew himself to be. “I just never recognized myself,” Page says. “For a long time I could not even look at a photo of myself.” It was difficult to watch the movies too, especially ones in which he played more feminine roles.

Page loved making movies, but he also felt alienated by Hollywood and its standards. Alia Shawkat, a close friend and co-star in 2009’s Whip It,describes all the attention from Juno as scarring. “He had a really hard time with the press and expectations,” Shawkat says. “‘Put this on! And look this way! And this is sexy!’”

By the time he appeared in blockbusters like X-Men: The Last Stand and Inception, Page was suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks. He didn’t know, he says, “how to explain to people that even though [I was] an actor, just putting on a T-shirt cut for a woman would make me so unwell.” Shawkat recalls Page’s struggles with clothes. “I’d be like, ‘Hey, look at all these nice outfits you’re getting,’ and he would say, ‘It’s not me. It feels like a costume,’” she says. Page tried to convince himself that he was fine, that someone who was fortunate enough to have made it shouldn’t have complaints. But he felt exhausted by the work required to “just exist,” and thought more than once about quitting acting.

In 2014, Page came out as gay, despite feeling for years that “being out was impossible” given his career. (Gender identity and sexual orientation are, of course, distinct, but one queer identity can coexist with another.) In an emotional speech at a Human Rights Campaign conference, Page talked about being part of an industry “that places crushing standards” on actors and viewers alike. “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress and speak,” Page went on. “And they serve no one.”

The actor started wearing suits on the red carpet. He found love, marrying choreographer Emma Portner in 2018. He asserted more agency in his career, producing his own films with LGBTQ leads like Freeheld and My Days of Mercy. And he made a masculine wardrobe a condition of taking roles. Yet the daily discord was becoming unbearable. “The difference in how I felt before coming out as gay to after was massive,” says Page. “But did the discomfort in my body ever go away? No, no, no, no.”

In part, it was the isolation forced by the pandemic that brought to a head Page’s wrestling with gender. (Page and Portner separated last summer, and the two divorced in early 2021. “We’ve remained close friends,” Page says.) “I had a lot of time on my own to really focus on things that I think, in so many ways, unconsciously, I was avoiding,” he says. He was inspired by trailblazing trans icons like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who found success in Hollywood while living authentically. Trans writers helped him understand his feelings; Page saw himself reflected in P. Carl’s memoir Becoming a Man. Eventually “shame and discomfort” gave way to revelation. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” Page says, “and letting myself fully become who I am.”

This led to a series of decisions. One was asking the world to call him by a different name, Elliot, which he says he’s always liked. Page has a tattoo that says E.P. PHONE HOME, a reference to a movie about a young boy with that name. “I loved E.T. when I was a kid and always wanted to look like the boys in the movies, right?” he says. The other decision was to use different pronouns—for the record, both he/him and they/them are fine. (When I ask if he has a preference on pronouns for the purposes of this story, Page says, “He/him is great.”)

A day before we first speak, Page will talk to his mom about this interview and she will tell him, “I’m just so proud of my son.” He grows emotional relating this and tries to explain that his mom, the daughter of a minister, who was born in the 1950s, was always trying to do what she thought was best for her child, even if that meant encouraging young Page to act like a girl. “She wants me to be who I am and supports me fully,” Page says. “It is a testament to how people really change.”

Another decision was to get top surgery. Page volunteers this information early in our conversation; at the time he posted his disclosure on Instagram, he was recovering in Toronto. Like many trans people, Page emphasizes being trans isn’t all about surgery. For some people, it’s unnecessary. For others, it’s unaffordable. For the wider world, the media’s focus on it has sensationalized transgender bodies, inviting invasive and inappropriate questions. But Page describes surgery as something that, for him, has made it possible to finally recognize himself when he looks in the mirror, providing catharsis he’s been waiting for since the “total hell” of puberty. “It has completely transformed my life,” he says. So much of his energy was spent on being uncomfortable in his body, he says. Now he has that energy back.

For the transgender community at large, visibility does not automatically lead to acceptance. Around the globe, transgender people deal disproportionately with violence and discrimination. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise in the U.K. along with increasingly transphobic rhetoric in newspapers and tabloids. In the U.S., in addition to the perennial challenges trans people face with issues like poverty and homelessness, a flurry of bills in state legislatures would make it a crime to provide transition-related medical care to trans youth. And crass old jokes are still in circulation. When Biden lifted the ban on open service for transgender troops, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che did a bit on Weekend Update about the policy being called “don’t ask, don’t tuck.”

Page says coming out as trans was “selfish” on one level: “It’s for me. I want to live and be who I am.” But he also felt a moral imperative to do so, given the times. Human identity is complicated and mysterious, but politics insists on fitting everything into boxes. In today’s culture wars, simplistic beliefs about gender—e.g., chromosomes = destiny—are so widespread and so deep-seated that many people who hold those beliefs don’t feel compelled to consider whether they might be incomplete or prejudiced. On Feb. 24, after a passionate debate on legislation that would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people, Representative Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat, proudly displayed the pride flag in support of her daughter, who is trans. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, responded by hanging a poster outside her office that read: There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE.

The next day Dr. Rachel Levine, who stands to become the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate, endured a tirade from Senator Rand Paul about “genital mutilation” during her confirmation hearing. My second conversation with Page happens shortly after this. He brings it up almost immediately, and seems both heartbroken and determined. He wants to emphasize that top surgery, for him, was “not only life-changing but lifesaving.” He implores people to educate themselves about trans lives, to learn how crucial medical care can be, to understand that lack of access to it is one of the many reasons that an estimated 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide, according to one survey.

Page has been in the political trenches for a while, having leaned into progressive activism after coming out as queer in 2014. For two seasons, he and best friend Ian Daniel filmed Gaycation, a Viceland series that explored LGBTQ culture around the world and, at one point, showed Page grilling Senator Ted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair about discrimination against queer people. In 2019, Page made a documentary called There’s Something in the Water, which explores environmental hardships experienced by communities of color in Nova Scotia, with $350,000 of his own money. That activism extends to his own industry: in 2017, he published a Facebook post that, among other things, accused director Brett Ratner of forcibly outing him as gay on the set of an X-Men movie. (A representative for Ratner did not respond to a request for comment.)

As a trans person who is white, wealthy and famous, Page has a unique kind of privilege, and with it an opportunity to advocate for those with less. According to the U.S. Trans Survey, a large-scale report from 2015, transgender people of color are more likely to experience unemployment, harassment by police and refusals of medical care. Nearly half of all Black respondents reported being denied equal treatment, verbally harassed and/or physically attacked in the past year. Trans people as a group fare much worse on such stats than the general population. “My privilege has allowed me to have resources to get through and to be where I am today,” Page says, “and of course I want to use that privilege and platform to help in the ways I can.”

Since his disclosure, Page has been mostly quiet on social media. One exception has been to tweet on behalf of the ACLU, which is in the midst of fighting anti-trans bills and laws around the country, including those that ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says he will sign such a bill in the name of “protect[ing] young girls.” Page played competitive soccer and vividly recalls the agony of being told he would have to play on the girls’ team once he aged out of mixed-gender squads. After an appeal, Page was allowed to play with the boys for an additional year. Today, several bills list genitalia as a requirement for deciding who plays on which team. “I would have been in that position as a kid,” Page says. “It’s horrific.”

All this advocacy is unlikely to make life easier. “You can’t enter into certain spaces as a public trans person,” says the ACLU’s Strangio, “without being prepared to spend some percentage of your life being threatened and harassed.” Yet, while he seems overwhelmed at times, Page is also eager. Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”

Even if Page weren’t vocal, his public presence would communicate something powerful. That is in part because of what Paisley Currah, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, calls “visibility gaps.” Historically, trans women have been more visible, in culture and in Hollywood, than trans men. There are many explanations: Our culture is obsessed with femininity. Men’s bodies are less policed and scrutinized. Patriarchal people tend to get more emotional about who is considered to be in the same category as their daughters. “And a lot of trans men don’t stand out as trans,” says Currah, who is a trans man himself. “I think we’ve taken up less of the public’s attention because masculinity is sort of the norm.”

During our interviews, Page will repeatedly refer to himself as a “transgender guy.” He also calls himself nonbinary and queer, but for him, transmasculinity is at the center of the conversation right now. “It’s a complicated journey,” he says, “and an ongoing process.”

While the visibility gap means that trans men have been spared some of the hate endured by trans women, it has also meant that people like Page have had fewer models. “There were no examples,” Page says of growing up in Halifax in the 1990s. There are many queer people who have felt “that how they feel deep inside isn’t a real thing because they never saw it reflected back to them,” says Tiq Milan, an activist, author and transgender man. Page offers a reflection: “They can see that and say, ‘You know what, that’s who I am too,’” Milan says. When there aren’t examples, he says, “people make monsters of us.”

For decades, that was something Hollywood did. As detailed in the 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure, transgender people have been portrayed onscreen as villainous and deceitful, tragic subplots or the butt of jokes. In a sign of just how far the industry has come—spurred on by productions like Pose and trailblazers like Mock—Netflix offered to change the credits on The Umbrella Academy the same day that its star posted his statement on social media. Now when an episode ends, the first words viewers see are “Elliot Page.”

Today, there are many out trans and nonbinary actors, directors and producers. Storylines involving trans people are more common, more respectful. Sometimes that aspect of identity is even incidental, rather than the crux of a morality tale. And yet Hollywood can still seem a frightening place for LGBTQ people to come out. “It’s an industry that says, ‘Don’t do that,’” says director Silas Howard, who got his break on Amazon’s show Transparent, which made efforts to hire transgender crew members. “I wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t have a trans initiative,” Howard says. “I’m always aware of that.”

So what will it mean for Page’s career? While Page has appeared in many projects, he also faced challenges landing female leads because he didn’t fit Hollywood’s narrow mold. Since Page’s Instagram post, his team is seeing more activity than they have in years. Many of the offers coming in—to direct, to produce, to act—are trans-related, but there are also some “dude roles.”

Downtime in quarantine helped Page accept his gender identity. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” he says.

Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.

The debate over whether cisgender people, who have repeatedly collected awards for playing trans characters, should continue to do so has largely been settled. However, trans actors have rarely been considered for cisgender parts. Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.”

This includes having short hair again. During our interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?

Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.”

#suicide m #transphobia m #Elliot Page #transgender #representation #celebrities #actors #tv #movies #rep #trans #transmasculine #nonbinary #queer #long post

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jazy3 · 3 years

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Free Guy Review

!!!SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

If you haven’t seen the movie Free Guy (2021) stop reading right now! Drop what you’re doing and go get yourself a ticket! You’ll thank me later!

I loved this movie! I saw it this weekend for the second time because it’s that good! I first saw the trailer on YouTube a while back and then when theatres reopened a few weeks ago I saw the trailer again and my interest was piqued. I had high hopes for this movie based on the fun looking trailer, the premise, the cast, and the sense of fun and escapism that the movie seemed to embody and it did not disappoint. It’s always nice when you have high hopes for something and it meets or exceeds your expectations.

Free Guy is just such a fun and joyous movie. Never taking itself too seriously, packed with lots of heart, cool cameos, full of gaming and pop culture references, and it’s fueled by a unique concept that is well executed. There are just so many things I loved about this movie! It was a ton of fun to watch and the actors clearly had a blast making it. During the movie I kept trying to figure out where I knew most of the actors from but couldn’t place them. When I got home, I googled it and I instantly realized why. The roles are just so different and the actors embody their characters so completely you lose yourself in the film and get completely sucked in. I was honestly so surprised when I figured out what I knew most of the actors from because the roles that they’re known for are so different from their characters in the movie. Their appearances, established ages, and even the accents are so different that I literally did a double take, but that’s what makes the movie so good! Because the main actors obviously didn’t need the paycheque they were just there to have fun and it shows. I think if the situation had been different and the actors involved had been desperate for money or took the role for some other reason it wouldn’t have worked. The film would have come off as cheesy, forced, cringeworthy, or just plain bad. Free Guy is none of those things. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as ‘Guy’ a bank teller in a video game called Free City, Jodie Comer whose best known for playing Villanelle in Killing Eve as programmer Millie Rusk and her avatar Molotov Girl, Joe Keery whose best known for playing Steve Harrington in Stranger Things as programmer Walter ‘Keys’ McKey, and Taika Waititi whose best known for playing Viago in What We Do in the Shadows as the Head of Soonami Studios and the film’s main antagonist and villain Antwan. Rounding out the cast are Utkarsh Ambudka as programmer Mouser and Lil Rel Howery as Guy’s best friend and bank security guard Buddy. In a nutshell, Free Guy is about a bank teller named Guy who finds out he’s a non-playable background character (NPC) in an open-world Grand Theft Auto style video game called Free City. Guy becomes the hero of his own story after meeting Millie, the girl of his dreams, and winning fans all over the world by racking up points by being the good guy and helping others. After leveling up and helping Millie escape a dangerous situation in the game, Guy wins her over and she falls for him thinking that he’s another player. But when the world that Guy knows and all of the people in it are threatened, he teams up with Millie to save his friends before it’s too late. In the real world, Millie enlists the help of her former programming partner and best friend Keys in a race against time to stop their code and all of the sentient characters from Free City from being deleted by Antwan the developer who stole their code when the game’s sequel launches. I love that the movie had a unique premise and didn’t overcomplicate things. There are so many movies that I’ve gone to see over the last few years with such excitement only to be disappointed. For example, I loved Wreck It Ralph, but was so disappointed by its sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet. The trailers made it seem like it would take the premise of the first movie and move things into the online gaming world, and I was excited for that. Instead, the sequel left the premise of the first movie behind entirely and way over complicated the plot and the end result was extremely cheesy and disappointing. Free Guy’s strength is that it’s a self-aware movie made by self-aware people who are excellent at what they do. The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, nor should it, and that allows the story to flow and the characters to feel real and genuine. The movie achieves that perfect balance between being entertaining and telling a cohesive and important story because while the movie never takes itself too seriously the people behind it are serious about what they do. This was very clearly a passion project for all involved, especially Ryan Reynolds, and it shows! As he’s spoken about in interviews and on Twitter, Reynolds called on a lot of his friends to be in Free Guy and help him out and the end result was fantastic! I loved all of the cameos! The Chris Evans cameo was by far the funniest and the Alex Trebek cameo got me right in the feels. When I saw the movie in theatres me and everyone else in the theatre gave a collective “awww” when he appeared on screen. Enlisting real YouTubers to show up as fictional versions of themselves to talk about Blue Shirt Guy’s popularity was a nice touch and you’ve also got blink and you miss it voice cameos by John Krasinski, Dwyane The Rock Johnson, Hugh Jackman, and Tina Fey. Channing Tatum appears as the avatar of player Revenjamin Buttons which for the most part was hilarious. One of my few criticisms of the film is that they went a bit overboard the avatar’s antics as Guy and Buddy are attempting to leave and it got bit a cringeworthy. But I know other people found it hilarious so to each their own. I love all of the little details and references in the movie. Just listing them all would be a post in itself. If you’re someone that loves pop culture references and Easter Eggs this is the movie for you. The characters are fun and believable, and you get attached to them quickly. The actors commit completely to their roles which is makes the humour, romance, and heartfelt emotion of the film work. You buy it. 100%. Something that I absolutely loved was that the characters felt realistic and that the dialogue, attire, and settings for each character really felt authentic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a movie or TV show and walked away thinking, “The person who wrote that clearly never meet a kid, teenager, or twenty something in their life! That was so unrealistic.” The slang’s all wrong. The dialogue is so eloquent everyone sounds like they did Shakespeare in the Park last summer. You walk away thinking, “What the hell was that? No one talks that way!” What I loved about the characters in Free Guy is that they felt like real people you could actually run into or walk past on the street. I’ve read in interviews that in addition to the written dialogue the cast did a lot of ad-libbing and improvisation and the end result is both hilarious and relatable. The dialogue feels real because it is. The big exception to this of course is Antwan who is altogether off the wall and ridiculous. Antwan is such an outrageous, absurd, vulgar, and cartoonish character. He’s so fun to watch and the actors clearly had a lot of fun with his scenes! I’ve read that a lot of his lines with Keys and Mouser were improvised and I believe it. When he goes all Jack Nicholson on the servers? Lord. He’s such a great villain to watch. The characters that are established to be in their twenties like Millie, Keys, Mouser, and the other employees at Soonami Studios talk, act, and dress like they’re in their twenties. The actors that are in their forties are styled to look like they’re in their thirties and honestly, they’re in such great shape it works! I mean I was honestly shocked to find out Taika Waititi’s real age. I love how the costuming really fits each character and allows you to learn more about them. Keys’ clothing is your typical gamer chic which makes because as we learn from his interview with Millie coding is his life and what gets him up in the morning. From Mouser’s clothing we learn that he’s a sports fan, but also isn’t afraid to take risks like with that blazer ensemble he wears in his final scene at Millie’s apartment.

Millie’s clothing shows the contrast between her and her avatar Molotov Girl, and Antwan’s ridiculous coat enhances the overall wackiness of his character. Guy’s clothing tells us something too. He wears the same thing every day until he meets Millie in the game at which point, he starts deviated from his Free City programming and chooses a different blue shirt. I also really love that they put thought into why Keys needs to wear glasses. Something I noticed on rewatch is that Keys is far sighted which is why he has his glasses on when he’s looking at his laptop or computer and sometimes when’s talking to other people, but not when he goes to see Millie at her apartment or when he goes to get them coffee at the end of the movie. Another interesting aspect of Keys’ character that I noticed on rewatch is self-confidence is really something he struggles with in contrast to Millie and Mouser who are very confident. Millie is a genius programmer and Mouser is excellent at what he does, and they are both very confident in their coding abilities, but Keys isn’t despite being every bit the genius that Millie is. At the beginning of the movie when they first notice the issue with Guy Mouser jokes that Keys needs to be better at his job. In response Keys meekly says he thinks he’s pretty good at his job and trails off at the end. Mouser is just joking around, but because Keys lacks self-confidence comments like that hit him hard. Mouser is moving towards his own desk as he talks so he doesn’t notice how self-deprecating and uneasy Keys’ response is. In the interview from the indie games conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment, he brushes off the interviewers comment that he’s a genius and says Millie is the real genius because she created the AI engine and he just wrote the code to make it work. Later on, when Keys helps Millie get into the stash house, she calls him a genius and he tells her that as he’s currently sitting on a toilet stealing user code he doesn’t exactly feel like one. Millie responds offhandedly that he never does, but luckily, she knows better. When Keys realizes that Millie was right, and that Antwan did steal their code and their game worked he tells Millie they need to celebrate because once everyone sees their build she’ll be celebrated and she could win a noble prize. Both Millie and Keys are geniuses in their own right. The game wouldn’t have worked without both of their skills and Guy wouldn’t have come to life without both of them working together. Millie’s AI engine made his sentience possible, but Keys is the one who gave him hopes and dreams so that when he met Millie in the game, he came alive. When done right the settings we see tell the story just as much as the characters do and I love how realistic the settings in Free Guy look. The floor at Soonami Studios where Keys and Mouser work looks like a real office and I love that the desks have clutter and personal effects on them like real cubicles do and that they show Keys taking a box of his stuff with him as he leaves. The lobby with the moving water videos and Antwan’s massive but largely empty office fits perfectly with the obnoxious, zany, and over the top character that he is. I also love the contrast between Keys and Millie’s apartments and how those settings tell us a lot about each character and where they are in their lives when the film starts. When Keys comes home from work to find that Millie has broken in, we see that he lives in a stylish one bedroom apartment with an open concept kitchen full of stainless steel appliances, a large living room centred around an expensive wall mounted TV and entertainment system, with his computer and gaming station set up in the corner. On the walls we see artful clusters of black picture frames, through a partially open door we see a bedroom off to the side, the apartment is full of black and white furniture including a plush couch and nice lamps, and features a textured silver accent wall. All of which makes the fact that Millie managed to break in even more impressive because it is clearly an expensive apartment in a nice building. Keys’ style is minimalist and upper scale and based on what we learn about the events that took place before the start of the movie this indicates that Keys got the apartment and all of the nice stuff in it using the money he received when Antwan bought his and Millie’s game. In contrast, Millie lives in a bachelor apartment and spends her time in coffee shops ordering one single black coffee over four hours. This tells us that she kept her original apartment that she had from before the game was sold and is living off the money she got from the sale while she spends all of her time trying to find the proof she needs to win her lawsuit. When we see Millie’s place, we find that it’s cozy, full of plants, throw rugs, quilts, and comfy furniture. She’s got a bike in the corner, you can see her bed from the centre of the room where she’s got her computer and gaming station set up adjacent to the coffee table and the rest of the living room furniture. Her kitchen is smaller and full of wooden cabinets and her bathroom door has DIY multicoloured square panels on it. Keys and Millie’s apartments are very different and through these settings we see the contrast between where these characters are in their lives, their wealth, and their personal style. The song ‘Fantasy’ by Mariah Carey is featured heavily in the film and is guaranteed to get stuck in your head in the best way! Jodie Comer’s cover of it is amazing! It fits the moment where Guy makes it to the island that is Millie and Keys’ original build and shows it to the world perfectly. This movie made me appreciate Mariah Carey’s music in a whole new way and I can’t be the only way. After watching the movie, I went looking for the song on Apple Music, wound up listening to the Mariah Carey Essentials Playlist, and I’ve become obsessed. I knew some of her hits, but after listening to her music more I get why people love her so much. Her five octave vocal range is amazing, and her music is just so fun to listen to. The film has a really great soundtrack overall and I’ve had many of its song on repeat since I saw it. Something I really loved about this movie and the reveal at the end that Keys is in love with Millie and is desperate for her to notice, but she’s been oblivious the whole time is that they don’t do the supposedly nice nerdy guy whose really a jerk trope. So many movies do this where you have a nerdy male character whose unluckily love, looked over, or his love is unrequited, and we’re supposed to root for him because he’s a quote “nice guy”. But really, he’s not. He’s a jerk who feels slighted because a woman in his life doesn’t love him back or notice him and he feels as if she owes him something. The scene at Millie’s place where Millie tells Keys he looks cute when he brags, and Mouser encourages him to tell Millie how he feels is super frustrating to watch but it’s so important to Keys’ character. He asks Millie out for coffee and when she turns him down to jump back into the game, he doesn’t make a big deal about it even though Mouser wants him to. Instead he gets up and goes and gets her a coffee anyway. She goes to tell him her order, oblivious to the fact that he’s memorized it, he tells her he remembers, and goes to get the coffee anyway much to Mouser’s and the audience’s dismay. This is big because Keys clearly doesn’t want to be walking down the street by himself to get coffee. He wants to be getting coffee with Millie so that he can tell her how he feels to see if she might feel the same way, but when she turns him down he goes and gets the coffee anyway because he truly loves and cares about her and he values their friendship enough to put his own feelings aside and suffer in silence rather than lose her and what they’ve built. So, he takes the opportunity to get some air rather than continue to sit there in disappointment. Which is why he’s so confused when Millie runs after him and calls out to him from across the street. He doesn’t understand what she’s doing there. She turned down his offer to get a coffee and he already knows her order so why is she there? I love that they chose to make that scene non-verbal. I think if Millie had come out and made some big declaration of love it would have felt cheesy and overdone. But her running after him and silently communicating through her smile and body language that she understood and that she felt the same way was perfect. It was subtle and beautiful and perfectly acted. It also felt realistic to the characters because in real life when you’ve known someone a really long time and you’ve spent a lot of time with them you don’t always need words to convey what you mean. What Millie wanted to express in that scene was so big and so all-encompassing she couldn’t find the words to say everything that she wanted to say so she didn’t. She just stood there and smiled knowing that being the genius that he is he would understand. It’s like Keys says in their interview, words will fail you, but code never does. His coding worked and now she understands so rather than try and say it all and fail she just looks at him and smiles to show him that she finally gets it. She finally understands what he’s been trying to say to her all this time. And you can see the exact moment Keys realizes why she’s there. The moment where he goes from being confused as to what she wants to realizing that she saw the video and she knows how he feels and that she wouldn’t be standing there smiling at him like that if she didn’t feel the same way. When I watched the scene the first time around, I was anxiously clutching my nachos the entire time because when Keys ran towards her my immediate thought was, “Oh my god he’s gonna get hit by a car and they’re never gonna get to be together! Oh my god!” But then he didn’t get hit by a car and Millie ran out to meet him and for the first time in their relationship she met him halfway and they kissed and it was beautiful! I think because Free City had so much violence in it that’s where my mind went and I’m very glad they didn’t go that route. One of my only criticisms about the movie is that I wish they had stayed on Millie and Keys just a little bit longer. They kiss and embrace and then very quickly they cut to black. I wish they’d linger on that moment just a little bit longer because I love those characters so much and in the scene that follows where Guy and Buddy are reunited we see them hug and then walk away together to start their new lives and I wish we’d gotten just a bit more time with Millie and Keys. I also really loved the parallel between the different kinds of relationships within the movie and how platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones. The reveal at the end about Guy being Keys’ creation and a love letter to Millie and her realizing she’s been loving Keys vicariously through Guy and them finally coming together and being on the same page is beautiful because from the very beginning the movie is full of clues, hints, and foreshadowing that all comes together at the end. Meanwhile, we see the friendship between Guy and Buddy and how important that friendship is to him because it’s something that he created on his own. His love for Millie is born out of the programming that Keys gave him, but his friendship with Buddy is something that Guy created all on his own of his own volition. Which is part of what makes Buddy’s death on the bridge so tragic. I cried when Buddy disappeared. Reynolds and Howery play their characters with such sincerity that his death pacts an emotional punch you don’t expect. I love that the security guards at Soonami are so moved by Buddy’s heroism and are so captivated by what’s happening with the live stream that Millie is able to sneak past them into the server room and stop Antwan from destroying what’s left of the game. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that during the final battle after Millie gets booted from the game and Guy has to fight Dude on his own the glasses he’s wearing are very similar to the ones Keys wears in the movie which I thought was a cool nod to Guy being Keys’ creation. This really is a movie in which you find something new every time you watch it. For instance, the second time around I noticed that the foreshadowing that Keys is in love with Millie, but she’s oblivious to it because she’s so focused on the game was really well done. In the video from the indie game conference that Millie plays for Keys at his apartment when asked by the interviewer about their chemistry Millie responds first and says that their friends, their relationship is completely platonic, and laughs off the idea that they have chemistry. In contrast Keys falters and is silent and then eventually says meekly that they’re just friends. Millie is looking ahead at the interviewer and to the side away from Keys as she’s laughing and so she doesn’t see Keys’ reaction. At the end of the apartment scene after Millie breaks in to ask Keys for his help, he tells Millie he cares about her and he almost says something else. It feels like he’s about to say, ‘I love you’ but then he catches himself and instead tells her that she needs to leave. When Keys visits Millie’s apartment to tell her that she was right and they’re sitting on the couch he reaches out and puts his hand on her knee and then snatches it back when he realizes he’s gotten too close. He wants so desperately to be closer to her and in his excitement, he gets closer than he normally would before realizing that putting his hand on her knee in that close proximity is not a platonic gesture. Millie is so caught up in the realization that Guy, the person she’s fallen in love with, is an AI and not a real person that she doesn’t notice. My heart broke for Keys in that scene as he realized that Millie had fallen for Guy and kissed him and was so upset about it and meanwhile, he was right in front of her desperate for her to see how much he cares. It must have just wrecked him to go home that night and realize that Guy was based on the lovelorn character he created and that Millie had fallen in love with his creation while at the same time being so oblivious to his real world affection for her. In the scene at Millie’s apartment after they’ve gotten the server from Antwan and Mouser encourages Keys to say something, I noticed on rewatch just how weak and meager Keys’ attempt to ask Millie out is. He stumbles his way through asking her to get a coffee and trails off at the end so it’s no wonder Millie doesn’t clue in that he’s trying to ask her out. And in Keys’ defence he sent her a whole video confessing his feelings for her and all of the little things he loves about her and then told her to watch it and he has no idea if she did or not. We the audience know that Millie only saw half of it, but Keys has no idea if she saw none of it, part of it, or all of it. He knows she got Guy to remember, but she’s also sending him mixed messages. One minute she’s saying he’s cute when he brags and the next, she’s turning him down for coffee to talk to Guy. From the outside it’s so obvious that Keys is in love with Millie, but she doesn’t see it because she’s always looking the other way, not paying attention, so caught up in the game, and too focused on their work to see what’s right in front of her. On rewatch one of the big things I noticed is that Keys is always on the edge of telling Millie how he really feels but he always stops himself because she brushes him or the idea off and because he’s scared of what will become of their work and their friendship if she doesn’t feel the same way. It’s a huge leap. If Millie doesn’t feel the same way it’s going to make their relationship incredibly awkward and could potentially destroy their partnership so Keys decides it’s better not to say anything or only hint at how he feels rather than run the risk of ruining everything. Something else I noticed on rewatch is that in the interview they give Keys says he thinks of himself as an author and that code is what gets him up in the morning and that he loves the ones and zeros of binary because words can fail you and let you down but code never does. At the end of the movie when Millie goes to talk to Guy in Free Life he tells her that he loves her and while he knows that’s his programming he’s realized that he’s a love letter to her and that somewhere out there in the real world is the author. Such a great callback. All in all, I can definitely say that Free Guy has been my favourite movie so far this year! Definitely my favourite movie of the summer. I went to see it twice in theatres and I’ve never done that for any other movie before. I’ll rewatch them at home sure, but I’ve never actually paid money to see something twice on my own. I’m very excited to see the sequel and my hope is that it will be just as good as the first. Until next time.

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thoughtfulpaperback · 3 years

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In the Heights (2021 Film) Review.

Okay after four watches. And I truly mean four seperate watches. I am ready to talk about this film and address some of the controversy.

I'd like to hit the biggest criticisms out of the way before going into just my general thoughts.

1. "There are no black people in the film"

False. First addressing the main cast and main supporting characters with substantial screen time (they get names and feature heavily in two or more of the main characters storylines) there are three black actors portraying African American or afro latino characters. Obviously this is disproportionate and of all those main and supporting characters the two with the biggest storylines are light skinned or have "traditionally euro centric thought of" physical features such as light green or hazel eyes.

So this hardly is grand representation for black or even "indigenous" (usually meaning dark skinned but not black) looking peoples. But it is more than we've traditionally seen in films about latinos they skew more towards Antonio Banderas looking (he's not latino just fyi).

I think where the film actually does well in its inclusion of black people is in the background scenes/dance numbers. I tried and you cannot count the number of black background characters in the first half of the film.

The second half of the film is arguably less inclusive. That is to say that as the film progressed there was notably less black background characters/dancers. Most notably during a dance sequence in a Merengue club. I could actually count the number of black people in the scene (three black men). But if I am honest the movie/plot itself falls apart towards the end with the inclusiveity it tried to have.

I also am going to mention this as both a pro and con for the film, I loved that we had black women who were deep dark. Like Amara la Negra dark, what I dont like and I think it needs to be said is that like most film there are more dark complexed men than women and there is a disproportionate amount of lighter skinned black women than both dark skinned black men and women.

The film (at least in its first have) does try to showcase diversity in the heights and amoung latinos, but it by no means is free from the same issues of colorism and favoring lighter skin tones black or non black, because the film was also devoid of more indigenous looking peoples. And I will admit my view of indigenous peoples is skewed by my knowledge of indigenous mexican communities i know nothing of the islanders or South American indigenous communities. But i didn't see much of that in the film from what I could tell.

So overall is this film anti-black

... I dont know if I can make that call, but I would think no because it does try to include that history in film and does try to be inclusive with its casting and dance numbers, but it for sure does not escape colorism and by no means is the best form or representation of afrolatinos and arguably more indigenous Groups.

It is for sure disproportionately light skinned in the second half and again unlike the first half you can count the number of black people in the background or in dance numbers.

2. It's a completely different story from the Broadway show.

.....not false, but not 100% true. In fact I think this is why it falls apart a bit. The film keeps a number of the songs from the original Broadway show with minimal changes. It works for some songs such as no me digas, Benny's dispatch, in the heights, carnaval del Barrio, 96,000, and breathe. But it makes others such as "when the sun goes down" seem out of place.

It also, imo, minimizes the role and impact of Abuelas character. That isn't to say that the character isn't still a big part of the story they fit her in differently than in the show, but it is so minimized that when we finally get her big number (and only number in the film) "Pacencia y Fe" it is a bit out of place

It is still the most heartfelt number (and made me cry each time I've seen it) and most relatable to my families experience so I loved it but being honest it is a bit out of place with little build up to it except a scene which is in the trailers where abuela talks about her mother.

Okay so with those things out of the way I want to talk general and key thoughts.

1st: style of the film and disjointment

I personally am still unsure about the style of the film. It sort of blends campy and unrealistic with the real. So you get numbers in people's head where fabric falls from the sky, self-moving wig heads, dancing on the sides of building in gravity defying fred astaire ways, and animated gestures and moments. I think its cool for the kids, but was a bit of a choice in my opinion. I didn't hate it, but almost every time something cooky happened I was just a bit unprepared for it and I dont think that'd how the audience should feel.

In fact the whole film felt disjointed because one moment you had these grand dance numbers with lots of people and minimal effects but great use of camera work like 96 000, but then you'd have scene in a very small space that felt more "Jersey Boys" film/camera work like Benny's Dispatch.

The worst camera work in my opinion was during When the sun goes down. While the idea of dancing on the side of a building was initially cool I kept wishing the camera would have moved differently at many points. Fred astaire's dancing on the walls is still the best filmed gravity defying dance sequence in my mind.

2nd: reducing the drama for Nina and Benny.

Okay so whether its colorism or just time considerations. I didn't like how the changed around Benny and Nina's relationship and build up in the film. In fact my favorite moment for the two (and my favorite songs of the play) from the original show happen in Blackout and then Sunrise. The moment in black out was given to Usnavi and Vanessa and sunrise is not in the film.

I think the shift in the role Benny plays in the business (Rosario's Cab Company) is more complex and better in my opinion and I do love that was added in the blackout scene rather than just doing away with seeing anything of that character with the removal of relationship drama.

3rd: LGBTQ+ representation. I won't claim that there is a bunch but having Daniela and Carla as a couple was pretty cool.

4th. Representation of Latinos

Flawed as it is, I think what in the heights gets right is the telling of complex stories of latinos that don't revolve around violence and crime. I love the look at latinos as business owners and as members of vibrant communities. From my own experience, latinos in film are or tv are not usually seen as such and when you do get look at a latino business owner it is a scene where they are being interviewed by the cops, or the neighborhood is shown as being run down.

Even the usually heavily used storyline of undocumented latinos was done in an interesting way in the film.

I haven't connected so much to a film before and I cried multiple times at the feeling of relating to certain characters and feelings.

I would recommend it to others, but I would also be clear that stylistically it is a choice. I think it probably works better for someone who hasn't seen or doesn't know of the original show. The friends i have taken enjoyed it and my siblings also loved it.

#in the heights

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rpgmgames · 4 years

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February’s Featured Game: Ressurflection

DEVELOPER(S): charlottezxz ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Fantasy, Cartoon, RPG WARNINGS: Paranoia, fear and tension, mild swearing and blood. SUMMARY: Ressurflection is a Fantasy/cartoon RPG set in the fictional universe of the Arbvar and taking center stage primarily at the coastal city of ‘Horizon Bluff’. Its story and game play are heavily character driven, with its narrative divided into two parallels told both within and outside the mirror itself. Ressurflection’s core themes draw from our inevitability of fearing death, and that at some point or another, we all must accept it, and to treasure what’s really important in the time that we have.

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *charlottezxz: Hiya this is Charlotte, lead game developer for Ressurflection! I’m some silly, overactive drawing monkey who works a lot with Narrow on Ressurflection! I’m always sketching and conceptualizing monster bois, taking a lot of inspiration from various games, primarily monster hunter! I’ve had avid interest in the Indie scene for a while now and a lot of the great friends I've made have been due to it and a lot of my recent favorite games have come from it! I would have had Narrow say a few things here but he’s hiding in a corner somewhere!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *charlottezxz: Ressurflection started out as what can be described as two separate stories. Myself and Narrow wrote our own stories and every so often we swapped over ideas or combined them together with each other. One day I said to ourselves ‘You know what? This could work quite well as a game rather than just a story’ so eventually Ressurflection was conceived, around the idea of a mythical mirror capable ‘Ressurflection’ the title of the game. We’ve gone through quite a few iterations of the story before it came to its current form and to be honest if we even showed or compared them side by side they’d be pretty unrecognizable as the same thing except for certain characters, locations and the mirror itself to identify its primordial form having any kind of ancestral relevance to how it is today. As for what Ressurflection is about, I think our synopsis can get that across quite nicely! ‘Horizon Bluff has always annually held its ‘Legend of the Wyvern Glass’ festivities. The Wyvern glass was a long lost mythical mirror, once fabled for its power of ‘Ressurflection’ and coveted by a kingdom now all but gone. That is quick to change however with the arrival of the Roulette Runner’s circus to the coastal city of Horizon Bluff. Trouble is soon to set in motion not just the kingdom’s sudden reappearance but the entrapment of one of their own acrobats within the mirror silver. Yet things are soon to worsen...with the spread of a purple ‘corruption’ across the city and the fact that our most unfortunate trouper is far from alone within the mirror, finding himself at the mercy of its ‘Mirror Maiden’. > The apparent all powerful manipulator of its realm…’

How long have you been working on your project? *charlottezxz: Conceptually we have been working on it for 4 years which is hard to even fathom, however that’s more tinkering around the idea for the story and conceiving it as we learnt the engine. The blog itself is hitting its 4th birthday in February! Ressuflection’s development went on as i attended university, so its always been a side lined hobby of ours.Steam says 108 days worth of hours in the engine and most of the game progress other than concepts has been done in 2019. So I could say 4 years for the ideas/stories and concepts and a year of that for actual game making!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *charlottezxz: We each have our own inspirations, Lost Odyssey, Final Fantasy 9, Xenoblade Chronicles, Monster hunter and many older PSX titles such as Medievil, Tomba and Heart of darkness are great influences and inspirations to me personally. The dark, dangerous environments of Heart of darkness contrasted by some innocent characters, the monster designs in capcom’s franchise and the storytelling and themes with a cinematic approach to cut scenes found in some of FF9, Xenoblade and Lost odyssey, a lost game stuck in the recess of the xbox 360. There are many more but these spring to mind first and foremost. Narrow himself draws inspiration from games such as Earthbound, the Persona series and FF10!

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *charlottezxz: We started the project in VX ace to begin with, until MV released. It was in Ace that I experimented learning RPG maker and in the early days of MV too. Although before Ressurflection’s time i also dabbled a bit in XP. MV seemed more in line for what we wanted, as i really wanted to try animating beyond SV sheets and do more, with Java being a bit more flexible and the scope of it being able to allow dragon bones later. However it hasn’t been without its hiccups! Part of that is the sheer amount of time you underestimate games and certain elements to take in their development. That and everything that comes with it, streamlining, trimming the fat...in the past week alone i spent days optimizing pictures, sounds and music in the game to cut down the staggering file sizes they were. So far they have retained their form without being as costly on the MB! Since I do the vast majority of the game development myself, everything takes a lot longer to develop. You underestimate all the little things to consider and that you may need later. By the end of development, I hope to have the vast majority of the game consist of custom assets and be able to truly call it something that is ours. Though that path is long ahead we won’t stray too far from it.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *charlottezxz: The game itself has always been a story-driven RPG at its heart, although certain game mechanics have been scaled down or developed further from puzzles to battle flow. As mentioned previously, the story has changed considerably which changed the direction of the overall narrative and gameplay as a whole. Certain characters and scenarios have been culled completely too. At its start the story wasn’t as heartfelt nor was the scope of the story all that big - Oh and the game had a time limit, a bit like Majora’s Mask! But it is a lot more meaningful now and we hope that you will enjoy it when the time comes.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *charlottezxz: It has been just myself and Narrow for the majority of the development but we reached a point where we wanted to reach out to find a musician for our game. We eventually came across Geoff who has done the majority of our music up until recently. However we have had friends help and contribute along the way such as Harry helping sprite some NPCs for me, Bart helping formulate and do some math balancing, Vaijack has also contributed to music making him our second musical boi and more on the way, our preliminary demo testers( it would take a little to list them all) and more peeps i’ll be sure to credit!

What is the best part of developing a game? *charlottezxz: For me it has to be conceptualising all the little ideas we have and bringing them all into being. This is especially so for any monster and character bois! I spend a lot of time visualizing and planning the design of areas, locales and creatures. Would this thing live here? Why would it be this way? If this is a historical town wouldn’t it have x and x? Then when we ultimately put it together, and all the pieces of the puzzle line into place and then you can just...experience, the final thing, that for me is the best part in developing our game for me.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *charlottezxz: I learn best by doing, so more often than not I just dive into things, including the engine blind and tussle around with it. It’s a silly way of doing it, but I've often found myself learning more that way than following tutorials. Although in any game I've played, RPG maker or not, i do like to ponder and deconstruct scenes within them. The Witch's house, Pocket Mirror, Dreaming Mary, Mad fathers and Ib are all wonderful games that are great to learn from, dissect and understand what makes and made them tick. This applies across any game I've played or intend to play! I look at game making as one giant puzzle with lots of intricate little details that need to be solved, it’s more fun and engaging that way!

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *charlottezxz: There’s some characters I like a great deal, but i can’t talk about as it would be spoilers to the plot, that and it’s hard to pick any overall favorites. Charm comes across as a fun character to write for as she’s quite witty and sarcastic, the kind of dialogue that comes a bit too naturally to me. She’s a budding magical prodigy of the circus under the tutelage of Jerine. She bigs herself up a lot but isn’t quite ready to deal with the problems of the adult world just yet, as much as she strives to get into it. Then there’s the likes of Ashley as well, she’s the loudest circus member and a close friend to Zakai, its ringmaster. She’s a super hard working down to earth country girl who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and jump into the thick of things. Honestly I love all the cast, but there’s those two for now!

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *charlottezxz: I would say ideally we should have had all our ducks in a row before we dove into development. My development style is very messy, especially since when we started development we had a lot of learning ahead of us. That combined with focusing on a lot of coursework and real life things meant I often forgot how we made things for consistency. This has improved considerably since i started getting more organised now, keeping lists and things tabbed for reference. My desk has bits of paper kept with it with information I need to retain. I forget far too many things for my own good, but now I'm taking better count measures! I would advise anyone to keep tabs of important information about your game such as consistent sprite style sizes, resolution size, x and y positions of certain things and important variables and switches.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *charlottezxz: There’s a few ideas bounced about to do side stories for some of the cast of characters in the circus, such as before they became one and the origins of how certain members joined the circus essentially the ‘First Stringers’ and ‘Second stringers’, these being those that joined afterwards. These would be great to do as small little episodes added onto the game post development, but currently they are just ideas and won’t be given too much thought until the game is either done or close to fruition.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *charlottezxz: My most hopeful thought is for people to enjoy the game and have as much fun and interest in it as myself and Narrow have had in creating it. It’s the kind of game we want to make and hope that the characters and story chime with people enough for people to see the journey through to its end! It’s a big scope of a project but i have endless enthusiasm for it, no matter how long it takes it will get out there at some point!

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *charlottezxz: That the games story and overall feel doesn’t quite hit the right notes, it's always a little back concern. From a technical perspective I would say that the game might have some oversighted bugs or critical crashes that slip under the radar or not run as smoothly on other PCs on release. We will do our best to optimise the game as much as possible for MV and squash those pesky bugs during testing, but it is on our minds often as a niggling fear.

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *charlottezxz: Gut everything from the base project that you know you most definitely will not be needing and give all your files smart tags and naming conventions. It would be great if MV allowed for sub folders, but it does not so naming your files smartly is key to finding what you need. Any of these files you know you will use often in certain ways, make them common events and call for those in events and cut scenes. This saves you mass editing them later. With naming conventions this could be Actor_1_Hurt or Chapter_1_NPC. Anything you want at the top of the list name it with _ to begin with. The bigger our project gets, the more important this has become for us and we hope it serves other inspiring devs well all the same.

Question from last month's featured dev @rojisroomrpg: How do you keep yourself happy and healthy when making your game? *charlottezxz: I’m normally a happy-go-lucky person, so I'm rarely not happy when working on Ressurflection. It's the happy little hobby I devote most of my spare time to. However, recently i would say my hands, wrists and neck have been hurting from spending a little too much time drawing assets and pieces for the game. Taking more breaks and spreading that time with other activities in between has helped to ease that pain and i would like to advise any dev to do so for their own health, including always having one or two bottles of juice, water or whatever beverage always at hand to sip at as you dev away!

We mods would like to thank charlottezxz for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Ressurflection if you haven’t already! See you next month!

- Mods Gold & Platinum

#ressurflection #gotm #game of the month #rpgmaker #rpg maker #rpg maker games #ressurflection game #gotm 2020 #2020 #february 2020 #february #indie games #games

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imaginedmelody · 5 years

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I think I’m finally ready to try and write my “The Magicians” season finale reaction post.

I’ve been collecting my thoughts on this for the last almost-week, because I knew that this post would be a difficult one; it’s hard to sort through all the opinions and feelings and put them down in a way that makes sense. I’ll try to hit on my major takeaways under the readmore. Bear in mind that my reaction is mixed. Conflicted is the word I’ve been using. I really sympathize with the pain that much of the fandom is feeling, even if I don’t feel it on a level that’s the same (or perhaps comparable) to theirs. I’ll try to dig into that in this post a bit.

I’m a new viewer to this show, as I’ve said many times before. I tried to watch it two years ago, and found it confusing in that I felt like it failed to resonate with me even though I still felt strangely drawn to it. I would watch an episode, feel unsatisfied and only barely interested, but then the next day I would feel oddly compelled to watch the next one. After about 5 episodes of season 1, I gave up. I picked it back up again about 9 weeks ago; I guess I was one of the many viewers who came along because of 4x05, although I didn’t realize that was why I was pulled back in- I just started seeing more and more about the show on my social media again, and it was enough to make me want to give it another try.

This time, I was hooked. I marathon-watched the whole show in probably 4-5 weeks and loved almost every moment (except for a couple of the really distressingly disturbing ones). I was so moved by 3x05, “A Life in the Day,” that I wrote this post about how the show felt like a missing piece had slotted into place at the end of that episode; like a photo that you don’t realize is slightly out of focus until someone adjusts the resolution and it just resolves. I got caught up enough to livetweet somewhere around episode 7 or 8 of season 4, and have been enjoying my integration into the fandom, although I’m still very peripherally a part of it.

I say all this because, as a new viewer, the fallout of 4x13 has been...confusing. Not confusing as in “I don’t understand why this is happening,” but in the sense that the fandom’s collective grief can feel kind of alienating to new viewers. That’s not intentional on the part of seasoned fans, and it’s not something that anyone should feel responsible for or obligated to change. It’s just difficult because we have only just invested in the show. We may be devastated at the loss of Quentin, many of us for the same reasons longtime viewers are (the loss of queer representation, for instance, or the way it seemed to counteract the positive development of a mentally ill character). But at the same time, a lot of us are more positive overall, even if we think killing off that character was a bad choice. We’re still kind of wrapped up in our enthusiasm, so that our grief just feels like another strong emotion we’re feeling, rather than a betrayal. And it can be awkward because we don’t want to express that too boldly or strongly, because we don’t want to appear to be trivializing the grief of other fans. I think that’s an unfair position that the show, not the fans, puts us in. We’re already new to the community, and now we feel less engaged in what is very much a communal emotional response. Positivity feels like rubbing salt in other fans’ wounds. So we’re not sure where we stand.

I was in shock when the show killed off Quentin. Like most viewers, I couldn’t believe it. I waited for them to find a way to reverse it. It was like a hole forming in my heart when they didn’t. I mentioned on twitter later that night that I cry all the time when I watch TV and movies- literally, if something is in any way beautiful, or sad, or exciting, or happy, I’m getting teary-eyed. But once the credits roll and the story is done, my emotional response is usually finished too. If I’m gonna react to it in any other way, it’ll be intellectual (through meta or fanfic) rather than emotional.

But when this episode ended, I finished my cup of tea, went upstairs, and got in the shower. And all of a sudden, before I even knew it, I was crying. It had been 15 minutes since the episode ended and I was still emotional enough to cry. Since then, because I’m a glutton for emotion who likes to lean into anything that makes me feel strongly, I’ve rewatched the episode once and the “Take On Me” scene like eight times- and every single time I’ve cried, even if it’s just a little. It touches some raw emotional place in me that very few shows get to. And I think I’m in awe of that as much as I’m in pain because of it.

I never quite got to the outrage that other fans did, though. That could be for a number of reasons- less prolonged attachment as a new viewer (although I feel very attached to the show and characters); greater privilege to not feel personally attacked by the loss; just having more emotional energy to engage with the scene. But I felt simultaneously anguished and energized by the episode, including the death. It broke my heart, but it also pulled me in. It’s very confusing. I’m angry at how things increasingly seem to have been mishandled, and I’m disappointed at the fallout this has for the show and the fans, and I’m in disagreement with the validity of the choice. But I still feel engaged and almost excited by it. That’s a hard balance to reconcile.

It really does seem to me like the writers dropped the ball. The fact that they knew they were killing Quentin off bothers me, but actually, the thing that I find most galling is that the other actors weren’t in on the plan. We have it on good authority that they filmed a fake scene, where presumably Q comes back somehow, and all the actors were led to believe that was what was in the episode until two days before the finale, when they were told the truth for the first time. My question is: why? Did they not trust the actors to keep the secret? I can kind of understand faking out the audience, but why play that mind game with your actors, who are part of the creative team and should know what’s going on? Why deprive them of the chance to say goodbye to Jason Ralph as a fellow cast member? So far, in every interview, no one has really explained what the point of that fakeout was. If I was an actor on the show, I’d feel really upset about that.

The other thing that’s really been grinding my gears is something that I saw mentioned in comments before I ever saw it in context in the article (and thank you to everyone who helped me find the source). It’s a quote from John McNamara, one of the showrunners, from an article in the Hollywood Reporter, in which he says this about the decision to kill off Q:

“... in a way, I'm not sure what we would have done with the character had he lived.”

I took issue with that statement for two reasons. The first is from a writing craft perspective. I understand wanting to take risks and shake up expectations, and I understand that “kill someone off” is common writing advice when you get stuck in a project. But it’s my firm belief that the main character (and even on an ensemble show like this, yes, there is a clear lead character) should pretty much always be safe. Because the premise of the show is structured in some essential way around him; that’s why he’s the lead. And that’s why almost every show that gets rid of its main character, either by recasting or just removing and replacing with other characters, goes downhill in quality- because that original character was integral to the story.

I’ve said before that literally the only story I can think of that is better for having killed off its protagonist is friggin’ Julius Caesar. When I teach that play, we discuss at that moment in Act 3- and then again at the end of the play- what it means for the narrative if your title character dies halfway through his story. What it means that Marc Antony is the lead for the rest of the play. How Caesar is still so central to the plot even though he’s dead. Part of the reason this doesn’t work on TV- the reason the plot can’t still centralize the character they killed in the narrative- is because a play is a single self-contained entity that you consume all at once, and a TV series is, well, serialized. The show can’t keep centering a character who’s no longer present, because it wouldn’t resonate in a long-form narrative that you consume in small installments. That’s why shows that kill off characters don’t keep bringing them up. They throw in a couple of heartfelt moments that directly or indirectly reference the character, and then they move on and you’re supposed to let them go. A protagonist has to live to keep being important to the story.

So I am of the firm belief that if your main character has outlived his usefulness, the problem is with your narrative as a whole, not with that particular character. If you can’t think of anywhere meaningful for that character to go, you don’t need to kill him off- you need to restructure your whole story so that it’s responsive to him again. It doesn’t have to revolve around him all the time- the show has frequently centered around other characters prominently and effectively, and Q doesn’t have to be in the spotlight all the time- but if he’s no longer relevant? Your whole story has a problem.

But the second thing that aggravates me about that comment is this: not only do I think Q should not ever become decentralized and disconnected from his show’s narrative, I don’t think he has. The events of this season provided so much room to develop that character. He learned his discipline (minor mendings), which has tremendous practical usefulness as well as symbolic significance. “Escape From the Happy Place” reopened a potential relationship that contains a whole wellspring of emotional resonance as well as complication. His father died- you can do a lot with the grief related to that. His reconnection with Alice felt hollow to me, but even that could be useful narratively (especially if she goes on to lead the Library, which could create a layer of separation and potential for either teamwork or conflict of interest that could sustain several intriguing narratives). Even his tendency toward suicidal self-sacrifice could have been brought up; the conversation he had with Penny about whether he was trying to be a hero or just finally finding a way to kill himself could be had after a failed self-sacrifice attempt just as meaningfully as a successful one.

Quentin has been filled with potential this entire season in the storyline. All of this plus his emotional reckoning with Fillory in the scene where he brings the garden back to life... it seemed like the writers spent the whole season re-establishing all the potential Q had. It didn’t read like a season in which the writers didn’t know what to do with him any more. So the decision to kill him off does seem purely like an effort to challenge themselves as writers and wrong-foot the fans. Which I don’t think is enough of a reason to do it.

Because here’s the thing: I’m a writer too, and I understand that the dichotomy of pursuing your own writing vision and capitulating to the fans’ wants and needs is a delicate one. Writers hate being told what to write, and with social media and fan conventions and other very close forms of engagement, fans have more ways to make their desires known than perhaps ever before. They have every right to make the choice that supports their creative vision, and to do things that force them to stretch their limits as creators. But this feels like it went wildly off its mark. It feels less like an experiment and more like a careless move, and I think they could have approached it a lot better.

I wouldn’t rule out seeing Q again on the show one day. I think if they’re willing to fake us all out once, they’d do it again. I’m comforted by the fact that they appear to have consulted the author early in the process and gotten his blessing, although his comments since then seem to walk back his involvement or contradict what the showrunners have said. (Whether that’s because they’ve overstated his involvement or enthusiasm, or whether he was involved in the decision and is now trying to distance himself from the fallout, it’s impossible to say.)

What is less heartening for me is that some of these writers/creators come from Supernatural, a show that has gone on for far too long and has been retreading tired old ground for years. I only watched to about season 8, but it just feels like an endless cycle of similar plot arcs and killing off and resurrecting the same characters over and over again. The Magicians, admittedly, feels a lot more well-crafted, so I don’t think they’d get as lazy as SPN seems to be- but it’s still a worry, all the same.

(Side note: I am often adamant that unless it’s a legacy franchise like Doctor Who, most shows should intentionally be constructed to be a maximum of 5-7 seasons. I think a lot of broadcast shows are less high-quality because they are just vague pitches that get riffed into a show; the writers and creators don’t come into it with an endpoint in mind, so the show goes on as long as they can add any material at all to it or until they get cancelled, whichever comes first. That means that the plot feels aimless and unstructured. The difference between “prestige TV” and “regular TV” is not just better writing and acting overall- it’s that those shows tend to have a very defined arc, and they know where they’re going, so everything is in service of a common idea. Not just a vague and easily sellable premise that can have a ton of stuff derived from it with little effort. I think The Magicians sits above most broadcast shows in quality, but this is where it is starting to show its weak points. And that’s why I think the creators need to be very deliberate about making sure everything going forward contributes to a very defined arc.)

So that’s where I am right now. Emotionally a wreck; disappointed in the process of this choice and feeling the grief other fans feel; strangely invigorated at the same time? Unsure where to go from here, really. Still committed to watching the show as much as I ever have been, but wary at the same time. It’s complicated. But I’m ready to embrace the complexity of it.

#the magicians #the magicians spoilers #imaginedmelody writes meta #(although i don't know if this is really meta?)

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searbao · 6 years

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(The Sunday Times article for those of you unable to read it)

Last Sunday, just days after being nominated for an Oscar, Timothée Chalamet bounded into a busy London bar like a man who still believes nobody knows who he is. Heads turned. Autograph hunters were in the yard outside. At one point during our interview, he shouted “Boom!” so loudly that tables of drinkers turned, stared, turned back, then turned around again. “It’s, it’s...” one said, slightly uncertain as to who he was or, more likely, how to pronounce his first name.

It’s plain old “Timothy”; and what filmgoers recognise him for is his breakthrough role in Call Me by Your Name, a gay coming-of-age story that has grown from cult hit to mainstream contender. He is smart and sensitive as Elio, who falls for his family’s American hunk of a guest, Oliver (Armie Hammer), during a picturesque Italian summer.

In person, Chalamet’s hair bounces, as does the rest of him. He is thin and wiry; as graceful as a ballerina and as energetic as the Duracell bunny; fond of light physical affection. He talks at the motormouth clip typical of Hell’s Kitchen, New York, where he grew up.

I have never met anyone as delighted to be alive as he is right now. Who can blame him? At 22, he is, for Elio, the youngest best actor nominee since 1944. He would be the youngest ever winner: not bad, considering he was previously best known for a bit part in Homeland and quit Columbia University to audition for, but not be cast in, Manchester by the Sea and the latest Spider-Man. In a fortnight, he will be at the Baftas for both lead actor and the coveted rising-star prize. But everyone knows it’s the Academy Awards that matter most. How does all that feel?

“This is how it matters to me,” he says. “Call Me by Your Name has gone beyond my wildest dreams. People came out because of that film. But I don’t want to be known for something that happened when I was young. So [the nomination] comes with tremendous gratitude and is something I’ll humblebrag about to my friends and family, yet this is hopefully just the start. There’d better be more.”

The good news, I say, is that he is unlikely to win, as voters seem unable to look past Gary Oldman’s prosthetics in Darkest Hour. So the accolade might be a millstone, but not as heavy as it could be. He laughs at my cheek.

“The truth is, you want to prepare a speech, but — I don’t know,” he says, frozen. “These ceremonies are overwhelming enough, independent of having to get up in front of legends and have your mouth move.” A fellow nominee, Daniel Kaluuya, the young British star of Get Out, is equally excited. “When we lock eyes,” he says of Kaluuya, “we give each other a look of ‘What the f*** is happening?’”

The crazy thing is that Call Me by Your Name is only the second best film starring Chalamet nominated for best picture this year. The best is Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s exquisite straight coming-of-age story, in which Saoirse Ronan’s titular teen struggles with men and her studies. It’s an astonishingly astute film, with Chalamet playing Ronan’s second boyfriend. He sits by the pool reading literature, looking brooding — which is exactly what Elio does. Chalamet claps along loudly when I bring up typecasting. He’s too hot now to sweat the small stuff.

Gerwig has been nominated for best director at the Oscars, which makes her the story of the night. Although other awards have found room for Lady Bird in several categories, they have overlooked the one that counts: best director. Some thought her film was simple compared to, say, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, with its crew of hundreds moving a boat off a beach, and that such traditionally male-made projects are simply harder to do. Size matters, it seems, to panels of predominantly male voters. Or perhaps they just don’t like women to direct.

“There’s no difference in being directed by a woman,” Chalamet says sharply. “But in the public representation, there is a huge difference, and that’s why it’s so important Greta was nominated, and so shocking she is just the fifth woman to be so.”

He looks bemused as I float the idea it might be easier to make a film that is character-driven, as is Lady Bird, than something on a grander scale. “And it’s interesting,” he adds, “that the conversation is framed in relation to production of the movie, because it’s clear that it’s way harder to get an audience for smaller films. Budgets are significantly less.” He sounds irked, clearly finding questions about the battle of the sexes dated and odd.

Yet Chalamet should be used to this by now. He has come into the industry in the era of Time’s Up, which strives for better treatment for all, especially women. It’s hard being in the middle of a storm that’s still raging. There was a late caveat to this interview, namely that I couldn’t ask Chalamet about Woody Allen. The actor recently donated his salary for the director’s forthcoming movie, A Rainy Day in New York, which he filmed last summer, to funds including Time’s Up. He had made a statement about it a couple of weeks ago, and that was that.

I pushed back. Journalists have been accused of dodging difficult questions, but if the interviewee refuses to be asked, that leaves us in limbo. I was then allowed one specific question about Allen, by email. I asked three. Chalamet answered this one: “You were the first lead to donate your salary for a Woody Allen film. What has been the reaction to your statement?”

He replied: “I’m just focusing on the work as much as possible. I mean, I literally get to have this conversation with you in relation to Lady Bird, which freshly presents a female coming-of-age story, independent of a male romance being the catalyst; and to Call Me by Your Name, which similarly presents male coming-of-age with a new lens… Thanks to these films, I’m getting new opportunities. But I’ve also learnt that, along with the opportunities, I have new responsibilities, and none of this is lost on me.”

I have sympathy for him. Allegations against Allen have been public for years, and it’s not as if established A-listers such as Cate Blanchett or Javier Bardem are quizzed about their decision to work for the director. Chalamet’s feeling, I imagine, is that his salary statement was enough, and such a move has probably helped end Allen’s career anyway. I’d be stunned if anyone sees A Rainy Day in New York, and gobsmacked if a leading actor signs up for his scripts again.

Still, although we can’t talk about Allen, we can discuss Time’s Up. Chalamet is in a business going through a great upheaval. He calls it a “really important moment in Hollywood”, and there’s a sense that, like every new generation, he looks at those above him with suspicion, at times even disdain. “I’m in a new wave of actors that doesn’t stand for stuff like this and is part of that change,” he says proudly. “It’s actually been a lesson for me to learn what the — well, prejudices isn’t the right way to put it — the old-school way of thinking was. How they used to talk about these things.”

Does he expect the change Time’s Up seeks will be organic? “It would be a little passive to say it’s going to be totally organic,” he says bluntly. “But we’ve seen in the last months that there is real momentum.”

I can’t shift from my head some theatre I saw him do online from five years ago. The monologue was from White People by JT Rogers. After a largely satirical diatribe, he ended with a furious — and heartfelt — “What right does any human being have to be hateful?” before storming off stage.

Call Me by Your Name’s fandom is now at such a pitch that it already has its own nerds. They have noticed that the opening line of Love My Way, the track Armie Hammer does an elaborate dance to, is: “There’s an army on the dancefloor.” Cute. “OK, I did not know that,” Chalamet admits. Just that morning, they were discussing a possible film in which “he plays a president and I play a KGB spy”. They are the Brangelina we need right now.

Yet leave any film in the sun for long enough and it will get burnt. First, there has been press and online comment that it’s a story about grooming, which is weird, given that Elio is 17, Oliver is 24 and the age of consent in most American states is 16; in Italy, it’s 14. Still, that criticism persists. As does one about straight actors — which Chalamet and Hammer are — playing gay men. It can’t have been for box office, given that the former was unknown, but critics have questioned why out actors couldn’t be cast instead.

Chalamet pauses, which is rare, and answers carefully, as if they teach actors how to make a statement in the age of the hashtag along with the Stanislavski method.

“Well, first, it’s important for actors of all identifications to be represented, so any propulsion to bring that movement forward is good,” he begins. “But as relates to Call Me by Your Name, this is a story that presents love, sexuality, identification and orientation in a definitionless way. That’s one of the beautiful things about the movie. Ultimately, Luca [Guadagnino] is the best person to talk to, because this is his film and he does what he wants.”

“I don’t know anything about the sexuality of Armie or Timothée,” the director said huffily when I interviewed him last year, before adding that he didn’t think Elio would necessarily be a gay man later in life. Maybe the amount you care about the sexuality of the cast in Call Me by Your Name is directly related to how binary you consider sexuality. The film’s youngest actor, like most of his millennial peers, simply doesn’t care.

What about a sequel? “F***, yeah,” Chalamet says. “It’d be a dream. And the great thing about being an actor is that the storytelling would have nothing to do with me.”

I wish him luck with “those awards” as he leaves for another ceremony. He laughs. I meant the Oscars. “Oh, those awards?” He laughs louder, as if it hasn’t sunk in, and disappears into the lift. Up, up he goes, and, hours later, is named actor of the year by the London Critics’ Circle, beating that Oldman.

#timothee chalamet #call me by your name #lady bird #i hate paywalls #putting under read more so i dont get a dmca for this lol

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livingwithashipname-blog · 7 years

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Ermanda’s Inner Sanctum: Scorpion 4.04 “Nuke Kids on the Block”

As much as I loved the end scenes, the episode copied the mission setup of 3.03 It Isn't The Fall That Kills You. I love parallels and moments that recall past Scorpion jobs and tech to solve new problems or heartfelt character & ship developments (e.g., the “bored” Waige parallel to Quintis at the end of 3.15 Sharknerdo). Given that season 4 is a reset of the series, I expect a revisit of various topics to show character development over the past 3 years, but unilateral copies are weird deja vu moments that spoil the magic of the series in my opinion. The remaining elements of the episode were very enjoyable though because they led into the touching end scenes that I think sparked excitement for everyone in this fandom. Let's get into the juicy bits!

Sylvester Dodd, Esq.

Sly is juggling his responsibilities as a Scorpion employee and Alderman of West Altadenia quite well since he uses his experience in one field to assist with another. Now he plans to be Cabe’s defense! Yay! I am guessing he learned his lesson after Heywood Jahelpme Morris! 😂 Anyways, this is a great development because it serves as an extension of a father-son bond Sly and Cabe strengthened during Sly’s Alderman campaign last year. With Patty Logan in the mix, this new arc will be comedic and touching! Sly’s character development has really improved from previous seasons. He gives an amazing speech to rally the team behind his goal to study and pass the bar exam in 2 DAYS!!! All I can say is GO SLY GO!!!

🎧 WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER - High School Musical cast🎧

Waige

Ow my Waige! Walter supports Happy’s presence because she could act as a buffer if he drones on and on about genius things. He fears the same result will occur with Paige as his previous romantic interests. He really wants this to work after the road it takes for him to get here! And as she does best, Paige finds a unique way to accommodate Walter! This scene takes me back to 2.15 Da Bomb, which is my all-time favorite Waige scene. It reminds us how Paige is different from every other woman in Walter’s life whether she and Walter are on good terms or bad! I love their new dynamic and I look forward to more cuteness from these cuties! 😍😍😍💙💙💙😍😍😍

Baby Quintis

IT'S OFFICIAL!!! Happy wants a baby ASAP!!! EEK!!! 😃😃😃👨‍👩‍👧👶🏻🍼🤗🎉 Given the nature of the press release and the sneak peeks for the episode, the prevailing question amongst the fandom is why Happy wants to spend more time with Waige than her own husband. When Toby realizes Happy’s behavior change is a psychological response to a strong emotional desire, he remains supportive. He is not jealous because he knows how badly Happy wants a family of her own. 💚💚💚💚💚

This is really great for everyone in the fandom who have wanted to see a pregnant Happy since the idea was teased in season 2B! If you have been paying attention, you have noticed the foreshadowing elements that indicate the story's direction. Since the writers teased this storyline at the end of season 3, I have tossed between the direction the writers would choose because of Toby's words to Happy in episode 3.07 We're Gonna Need A Bigger Vote. But this current episode strongly suggests that Quintis' first child will be a bio baby in my opinion. One of the biggest reasons why I am now convinced of this is because Quintis literally can not afford to adopt considering their current financial status. Another is found in Happy's wardrobe, which is uniquely tied to all pregnancy mentions. I forgot to mention this detail in my last review, but there was a significant wardrobe change, reflective of the looser and softer clothing of season 3A. The episode, along with 4.03 Grow A Deer, A Female Deer, also foreshadows how this new arc will unfold.

Happy will carry a child. She has stated that is what she wants. Happy and Toby can not afford adoption. However, TV is funny like that and could create a unique adoption scenario, if desired.

Baby Quintis will be a girl. The fawn from episode 4.03 was female (and spoiler alert: sneak peeks of the next episode reinforce this).

Quintis will struggle with conception because nothing comes easy for these geniuses on this show, even in their personal lives. The writers’ goal in season 3 was to explore how Happy and Toby would navigate a sudden life change given the stress of their current circumstances. This season’s arc will likely test their resolve to develop their EQ and overall preparation for parenthood, teaching patience and perseverance.

Happy will experience complications, but at which moment is unknown. Her mother, Grace, died from childbirth complications, but this is not Happy's fate unless Jadyn Wong or CBS surprisingly decides not to renew her contract for another season, if ordered. In addition, I do not think the story about the soldier's wife and her circulation problem and their infant is a coincidence.

The baby will likely be a preemie. The fawn was delivered prematurely and survived in episode 4.03. If this baby is born at the end of the season with a pregnancy reveal between now and Christmas, then the length of the season without a significant time jump makes this a likely scenario.

These are factors I believe are inevitable. However, these are very focused on Happy. Where does Toby individually fit in this scenario besides being a sperm donor and supportive husband? I go back to the conversation between Scotty and Toby in episode 3.24 Maroon 8. Scotty's wife was prepared to give birth very soon and he was very concerned that the injury he sustained in the crash landing would cause him to miss the birth or never see either of them again. Since there have been subtle clues about an impending struggle in Toby's personal life likely slated for the second half of the season, it might be possible that the writers play with an idea where Toby faces difficulty in reaching Happy for the birth of their child. This is also likely considering Collins is still at large and we don't know what role he plays in the story later this season. Yet, one could also argue that the comment Toby makes while he's dancing links to a future parallel with the "Shiny Happy People" moment of 2.13 White Out on a lighter note. Baby Quintis is going to create a lot of character growth and influence a lot of other arcs for the season! I am really excited about the possibilities!!!

STOP WITH THE QUIEEN DRAMA!

If you are reading this title and think I am about to bash Quieen as a ship, then let me ✋🏾 you right there and say hello because you must be new to my blog and these reviews. 😉😂😂😂😂 This is more of a mini rant about the missed opportunities in a Happy and Paige friendship for the series. I personally do not expect these two characters to have the same relationship that Happy has with Walter or that Paige has with Toby because their personalities are different and thus they will not naturally flock to one another as friends. (Yes, I am aware of the irony of this statement considering Paige is in a relationship with Walter.) The tension that exists between them in this episode is understandable given the circumstances. At first, it didn't make sense why Happy would want to hang with Waige and Ralph out of the blue when the press release for the episode dropped. The sneak peek revealing Paige and Walter's initial conversation before the mission suggested that Walter may have been behind this change given what we know about him as a character. He does weird things when he is concerned about something. Thus, he naturally defaults to experiments to test his hypotheses. But throughout the episode we see that Happy's behavioral change is a result an inner emotional turmoil just as Walter's defense of Happy's presence on his dates with Paige suggests the same. It's another unique Walter/Happy parallel showcasing their EQ struggles as the most robotic characters in the series. The situation on a whole also links so well with Happy’s characterization.

Yet, the navigation of Waige's relationship presents opportunities for Paige to come to Happy to seek more insight about Walter since this show has established the strong Happy/Walter friendship and how they are very similar people. Heck, Happy and Walter had the same walk when they entered the warhead hangar! 😂 The impending Quintis baby developments also create a chance for Happy to come to Paige for parenting advice like she did in 3.04 Little Boy Lost now that she wants to start a family. She is inspired by the bond between Ralph and Waige and follows them to understand the scope of that connection. Her focus on this is the reason why she is projecting her guilt over an accident leading to a catastrophic event and disappointment over being dismissed from the drive-in movie towards Paige and her EQ contributions to the team. That frustration extends to a lesser extent to Toby and Cabe. She is uncomfortable with the emotion, hence, she regresses. However, the function of drama between Happy and Paige is annoying to use as a bonding tool in high stress situations when there is so much potential in their friendship without it. As Toby states, Paige's work with Scorpion is a reason why he and Happy are married today. Paige managed to piece together a last-minute wedding ceremony for them. Happy gave Paige advice regarding Drew and Ralph from her own personal experience and even hilariously called out her jealousy towards Linda. So all I'm saying is WHERE IS THE LOVE?!! The drama is reflective of a common trope and societal fault that simply needs to dissolve. The women of Scorpion do amazing things for this team and it is about time we see more SIGNIFICANT heartfelt moments between them! My hope is we will eventually see a bond form from respective learning experiences because there is so much potential and new material that can blossom from a portrayal of this relationship on screen.

Drabbles...

The lawyer interviews... 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

So who is really Alderman? Sly or Patty? Patty is cracking me up because she is clearly running this ship! 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Ralph is so throwed and Paige doesn't like it... 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂💀💀 Geez guys, how did we get here already?! He was a little kid just the other day!

Walter is lucky Paige didn't hear his "I told you so!" He would have been in so much trouble! 😂😂😂

Paige and Happy are in full-on petty mode... 👀😱😱😱😳

How do you not have an explosion protocol even though the warhead is being decommissioned?! *facepalm*

Toby's moves to The Commodores are downright hilarious!!! 😂😂😂😂😂💀💀 I wonder if he plans on using those moves in the bedroom... #KinkyQuintis! At least Toby notices the danger before the others literally die from exhaust! Silver lining? 😂😂😂😂😂😂 He's such a dork!

Happy: Why do you want to be human anyway? Being human sucks! She's ruined all of us. Toby: Well... she is the reason we're together. That is a good thing, right?! (Happy remains silent). Aww Happy! My baby is all emotional and she is uncomfortable about it! 😢😢😢😢

Omgness! The way Walter closes the plug after Paige shoots down his definition of a fun date during catastrophe… 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂💀💀💀

H: The sign says, "No Swimming,” boss! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Walter (to Happy & Paige): You two make a great team. Me: I agree! Why use a fight to get them here, writers?! We've been known this!

Explode the warhead?! Lordt, here we go again! 😳😳😱😱😱😱😱

Did anyone notice Happy’s subtle question of concern over the safety of the lighting guy given the new plan?! HOLY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!! 🙌🏾 🙌🏾 🙌🏾

Okay Happy… don’t drop this plastic wrench! 😂😂😂😂😂

Paige and Happy make up and Walter is confused… this is the subtle comedy I like!!! 👍🏾😂😂😂😂

Cabe being treated as an intern is just too much! 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Cabe coming up with a method to locate the warhead based on the science the geniuses presented earlier… PRICELESS! He’s a great fit for this team as Toby suggests! Papa Cabe FTW!!! 🙌🏾😂😂😂😂😂

These geniuses are terribly direct at the worst times!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Sly saves the county money and funds science club in one fell swoop! And he’s gonna be Cabe’s lawyer?! Oh yeah! 🙌🏾 🙌🏾 🙌🏾 🙌🏾

H: I want a baby... soon. You were right. I want a family... I’ve always wanted a family and I want one with you because I love you. T: The woman who hates being human wants to make another human? H: Yeah, something like that. T: Shall we start now? OH MY QUINTIS HEART!!! 😍😍💚💚💚😍😍 ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY LOVE OAK!!! 😍💚💚🌳💚💚

Waige is too stinkin cute! I am feeling 2.15 end scene flashbacks! Are you?!! 💙💙🐟🍹💙💙 Also cue the “bored” parallels between Waige in this episode and Quintis in episode 3.15. Paige and Toby, respectively, remind their robot significant other that they will never get tired of their antics/personality! GIVE ME ALL THE WAIGE AND QUINTIS PARALLELS!!! 🙌🏾 🙌🏾 🙌🏾😍😍😍😍😍😍💚💚💙💙

#ermanda's inner sanctum #cbs scorpion #s04e04 #nuke kids on the block #scorpion cbs #waige #quintis #baby quintis #quieen #episode review #team scorpion #livingwithashipname

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njawaidofficial · 6 years

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27 Things We Learned On Set With Auli'i Cravalho

https://styleveryday.com/2018/03/13/27-things-we-learned-on-set-with-aulii-cravalho/

27 Things We Learned On Set With Auli'i Cravalho

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

1. If anyone could play you in a movie, who would you pick?

I would choose Viola Davis because I think she’s one of the best — if not the best — actresses of color.

2. Describe your style in three words.

Imma. Be. Cute. Which means, I’m gonna be cute in whatever I’m wearing, whether it’s heels or flip flops.

3. Craziest fan story?

“It was probably one of the worst moments of my life…”

I am Moana first and foremost and then I’m Auli’i, and I remember I was walking through the grocery store and I could tell that there was a mother and her child just kind of tailing me throughout the entire store… So, I kind of turn around, and I was like, “Hi, I’m Auli’i Cravalho. I think you know that.” And she’s like, “Oh my gosh, it is you. It’s so nice to meet you. Do you mind taking a picture with my child?” And I look at her child, and her child’s probably like four… and this kid does not know who I am. And she’s like, really tired, I can tell. She wants to go home. She has no idea who this 17-year-old girl is. And I’m like, “Sure, you want to take a picture?” So the mom picks up her kid who is NOT having it, and places her in my arms. And she starts bawling. Absolutely bawling. Just screaming her head off. It was probably one of the worst moments of my life because her mother wanted nothing more than for me to hold her and I was like, please just take her home.

4. Which emoji do you use the most?

Either the laughing/crying emoji or the red heart emoji. I’m either crying or just loving.

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

5. What’s your biggest pet peeve?

Grammar. Just wrong usage of grammar — it kills me.

6. Last person who texted you?

I texted my mom last. She said, “Good luck today,” and I said thank you.

7. What’s one beauty product you can’t live without?

Sunscreen. I’ll give up mascara, I’ll give up a hairbrush — sunscreen.

“I’ve been told that I look like Vanessa Hudgens.”

8. Who’s your celebrity doppelgänger?

I’ve been told that I look like Vanessa Hudgens and Miranda Cosgrove from iCarly.

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

9. Favorite reality show?

I actually don’t watch any TV at all. I don’t have a TV. I don’t want a TV. Because as cool as reality shows seem, my reality is enough of a craziness for me to live. But, it was through Rise that I was like, mom, I know that you raised me without TV, but I feel for intensive study purposes we should get Netflix. And she was like, fine. So now I’m binge-watching Stranger Things, and all of the shows that I didn’t get to watch.

“I actually don’t watch any TV at all.”

10. So, you’ve never seen your Rise co-star, Josh Radnor, in How I Met Your Mother?

No! I haven’t! I really have to watch it, I know that I do. Especially now after meeting and knowing Josh. He’s so smart and kind off camera. Knowing all of that, I now need to see him in How I Met Your Mother.

11. What’s one thing you can’t live without?

My mom, my cat — my family. I’m not in Hawaii and they’re miles away. I just have to feel that they’re close to my heart.

12. What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?

I don’t feel guilty about any of my pleasures, really. I will eat ice cream straight out of the tub!

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

13. Favorite place to visit?

Hawaii — back home. There’s no better place. I go back as often as I can, so if I’m off for a long weekend, I will be on that 10-hour flight back.

14. Hidden talent?

I’m double jointed!

“I’m so proud of myself for working a full-time job as well as completing my school work.”

15. What accomplishment are you most proud of?

I’m working so hard to graduate high school. So I will be graduating and I’m so proud of myself for working a full-time job as well as completing my school work. I’m almost there!

16. Dream vacation spot?

I would love to visit Spain!

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

17. Name something on your bucket list.

Jumping out of a plane — with a parachute! I should probably say that.

18. Biggest fear?

Drowning. Specifically, in the shower, which is why I don’t sing in the shower. Fun fact.

19. Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

“I got to meet Justin Timberlake. Greatest guy. Beautiful blue eyes.”

I’ve received a lot of really good advice in my 17 years of living. But I will say that, before I performed on the Oscars, I got to meet Justin Timberlake. Greatest guy. Beautiful blue eyes. But most importantly, he told me that I was meant to be there. Which was crazy to hear, because at 16 years old, I was like — this is too much. There are so many amazing people who have worked hard to get into this industry, and I managed to just kind of slip my way in and now I’m living this amazing dream. However you got here, you’re meant to be here. That was just mind-blowing and it just warmed my heart.

20. Background wallpaper on your phone?

[checks phone] L-M-A-O, it is Moana! I am Moana!

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

21. Describe the perfect day.

My perfect day would be surrounded by my family, all of us drinking some type of warm hot cocoa/coffee/chai/tea beverage. It’s cold outside and we’re just having a blast.

22. What’s been your favorite song to perform on Rise so far?

Might be “Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise)” [from Spring Awakening]. I love that song. It’s a strong belt song. It’s with all of my gals and we are all just singing our heads off. There’s also some really cool choreography — I’ve never really been a dancer, but I got to learn choreography and put some moves into my singing. It was really fun all around.

23. You’ve now worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda on both Rise and Moana. Any fun stories about him?

“I will never forget singing to Lin-Manuel Miranda over FaceTime while he was dressed as Hamilton.”

Lin actually wrote the rap that my co-star Damon Gillespie raps in the pilot. So you’ll be able to hear that. It’s amazing, as per usual with all of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work. Working with him on Moana was absolutely amazing. The first time I stepped into a recording booth to sing the actual music, we had to FaceTime with Lin while he was here in New York for Hamilton — the BUSIEST guy on Earth — and so we FaceTimed him, and, I’m pretty sure he was in a white button-down, and I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but it had a little bit of flounce to it and I think he might have been in costume for Hamilton as we were FaceTiming him. He was like, “Okay! I’ve got like 20 minutes, I’m below the stage! Just let me hear it!” And so I sang, “How Far I’ll Go” for the first time and I will never forget that — singing to the incredible Lin-Manuel Miranda over FaceTime while he was dressed as Hamilton.

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

24. Which Disney character do you relate to most other than Moana?

Mulan. I loved Mulan. I always have. I don’t think I realized it when I was younger, but older me now realizes that part of the reason I loved what she did was because she was breaking gender norms. And she was like, “I really couldn’t care less if this is what a girl is supposed to do, because this is what needs to be done.” She also just really wanted it. To honor her family. So that’s something, as I sit here in this interview, as I go out in the world, I always want to make my family proud. So it’s always something I keep in mind.

25. Do you have a favorite memory about The Rock from working on Moana with him?

“Dwayne Johnson is amazing.”

Dwayne Johnson is amazing. He’s so funny, he’s so nice. I really couldn’t have gotten luckier working with the cast of Moana, because they were all so professional but also so heartfelt. And, it being my first movie — my first job — it was really important, I felt, to work with kind individuals. So, I got to work with him while we were in Los Angeles on the press tour, and — you can watch the video on YouTube — Dwayne had spent weeks trying to learn my name. Auli’i — he got that down. But on my last name, Cravalho, I was like, “Oh yeah, my name’s Auli’i Craval-YO” and he was like, “Wait – Craval-HO” and I was like, “No, actually you can drop the HO, it’s a YO.” And it was hilarious, you can actually watch that. I don’t really let up on that and he takes it all in good sport.

26. What’s the last thing you searched for on Google?

The boroughs of New York. Because I don’t know all of the boroughs of New York just yet, and I’m trying to figure out where I should live.

27. What do you hope for in 2018?

I think actually a lot of my hopes, I’m currently seeing come to fruition. I am in an amazing show. I know that people are going to see it, so I’m very excited for that. I’m also really proud, on a personal level, of my generation. I’m proud that they’re speaking out, that they’re making a difference. And that’s MY generation. In 2018, I will be 18. And a lot changes. I’m looking forward to the elections — 2018 holds a lot for myself and for everyone who wants to see change.

Taylor Miller/BuzzFeed

Don’t miss Auli’i on Rise when it premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET, and then airs every Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

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tyleroakley-obsessed · 6 years

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Broadway musical “The Color Purple” is in Memphis through February 18, 2018. Today I had coffee with Nikisha Williams, an honorary Memphian who’s back in town for the Orpheum’s run of the show. Nikisha is from Mobile, Alabama, and attended the University of Southern Mississippi (in my hometown of Hattiesburg) before coming to Memphis in 2013 for three years. I’m calling her an honorary Memphian for a couple reasons that will become clear in the interview below. But first, get your tickets and make plans to check out this heartfelt musical this week or weekend. There are evening shows Wednesday through Sunday, plus matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Now, get to know Nikisha a little bit better with this Q&A. Holly: Hi Nikisha! Tell us about yourself and how you got to Memphis. Nikisha: I was hired by Amon Eady at White Station High School to be assistant choir director in 2013. He left after a year to pursue a doctorate degree, and asked me to become director. I did that for two more years. While I was here, I did shows around town including Playhouse on the Square. My first role was in “Hairspray”, then later I was the lead role of Felicia in “Memphis The Musical”. I also did performances with Opera Memphis and other groups; it was a great performance experience here. Read more about Nikisha here. Holly: What were your impressions of the Memphis theater/arts scene? Nikisha: I didn’t know much about the Memphis performing arts scene before I moved here. I knew it was a good music scene, but I found out about the theater, dance, plays, and opera – it didn’t take long for me to find it because everything is so accessible. Also, a lot of my [White Station High School] students were able to be a part of the shows in town, so I was teaching them in the classroom and then seeing them learn outside of the classroom. Memphis is a great outlet for anybody trying to perform, not just recording in studios. The theater, dance, and cultivation of performing arts is really spectacular. Nathan McHenry & Nikisha Williams in Playhouse on the Square’s “Memphis The Musical” in 2016. Photo by Bill Simmers. Holly: What happened after you left Memphis? How did you ultimately end up coming back for “The Color Purple” at the Orpheum? Nikisha: I moved to NYC and auditioned for everything. I worked at Ellen’s Stardust Dinner, which is a musical restaurant, so I was singing Lady Gaga and asking people if they wanted a side of ranch (laughs). It was a great way to pay for the expensiveness that is NYC. So I was singing and serving cheeseburgers when I got a job at Disney…that allowed me to get my actor’s union card and start auditioning for more regional theater and Broadway shows. In March [of 2017] I auditioned for “The Color Purple”. It was a long process. I went in for the initial call and sang. Weeks later, I went back and sang show’s actual music and did some scenes. Every two weeks, I would go back and do more. At the last call, all the directors were there and I did everything they asked, and got to join the show. Holly: You have a very unique, impressive role for this show. Tell us about that. Nikisha: I am a “swing” which means I can play several different roles. I’m an “offstage swing”, so I’m waiting in the wings to cover someone’s role. I’m an understudy for seven of the nine female roles in The Color Purple. (Ed. Note: How does she remember it all?!) If someone gets sick, or takes a personal day or is on vacation, I’m ready to go on. This Friday and Saturday in Memphis, I’ll for sure be in the ensemble cast as one of the Church Ladies. It’s a fun role and I get to be the comic relief. These ladies have all the gossip. Photo provided by The Orpheum. Holly: Whether someone is familiar with “The Color Purple” film or not, what can we expect from this version of TCP? Nikisha: It’s an abbreviated version of the movie, and since it’s musical theater it definitely has its lighter points. We want to tell the [difficult] story… and we do, but at the end, you get so much out of it. Even though Celie and everyone go through their journeys, at the end of the day…I don’t want to say it’s a “happy” ending because it’s not cheesy like that. But you’re still feeling empowered at the end. Celie comes out a better person. And the way its show is very realistic and relatable. It’s nice at this period in time to see all these female leads and see these issues addressed and turn into something beautiful. All of the characters have very individual personalities, but they learn from each other and help each other. Sug in the juke joint. Photo provided by The Orpheum Theater. Holly: What are your favorite songs from “The Color Purple”? Nikisha: The whole score is gorgeous. The first time I saw it on Broadway, I listened to cast recording religiously. One of my favorite moments on stage is when we are all in Harpo’s juke join and Sug Avery is singing her song, “Push Da Button”. Everyone is on stage, playing off of each other, and with these little ad libs with their partners. And of course, “I’m Here” is the definitive women’s empowerment song. Holly: Even though the show is set in Georgia, they mentioned Memphis half a dozen times. Nikisha: At that time (early 1900s) Memphis was – and still is – a spot for a lot of music and culture. Being in Georgia in a place where there was nothing, someone coming back from Memphis…it was like a superstar coming back home. Holly: And while Beale Street wasn’t mentioned, I was imagining Beale Street being where Sug was coming home from, since at that time the street was known as a hub for black music and business. Nikisha: There was so much jazz, big band, and blues. Because that’s the history. It’s cool that they incorporated that into the show. Holly: Why should people see “The Color Purple” in Memphis? Nikisha: Because it’s a story that transcends time, and it’s relatable to everyone. No matter what color, gender, or age, you definitely take something away from the show. At this point in history, it’s something that people need to see, especially with the women’s empowerment movement. It’s a reminder, even through all the struggles, that you can still overcome if you persist within yourself. You’re enough, you’re beautiful and you can keep moving forward. I had a chance to see the show last night, and I recommend it. The set and special effects were more pared down than some of the more rah-rah shows I’ve seen, but that was clearly by design. This production focuses on the compelling personalities of the characters and the actors’ incredible musical and acting abilities. The world of The Color Purple, like the actual world, is woven through with tough issues like sexual assault, domestic violence, and racism, but the wit and joy of the characters seemed determined not to weigh down the – for lack of better word – mood. As Nikisha said, it’s still musical theater. You could make the argument that this show is about giving voices to characters living in an oppressive world, not the oppressive world itself. Photo provided by The Orpheum Theater. There’s also good dose of wink-wink sexual innuendo that adults will appreciate. The Color Purple is at The Orpheum through February 18, 2018. Check here for showtimes and ticket info. Go There: The Color Purple February 13 – 18, 2018 Orpheum Theatre This interview was edited for length and clarity. Are you a home owner in Memphis, with a broken garage door? Call ASAP garage door today at 901-461-0385 or checkout http://ift.tt/1B5z3Pc

http://ilovememphisblog.com/2018/02/meet-nikisha-williams-from-the-color-purple-at-the-orpheum-right-now/

#I Love Memphis

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