browncoatparadox

[browncoatparadox]

Sometimes reading Arthuriana feels like reading Alice in Wonderland.

“Well,” said Alice, “these are a dreadfully strange assortment of objects!”

“They all symbolize different aspects of Our Lord’s martyrdom,” said the Fisher King, casting a line into his teacup.

“Indeed. I am sure everything symbolizes something else, for if everything was only itself I should be very confused. Might I ask what the point of the bleeding lance is?”

Alice regretted asking the question as soon as she had done so, for she saw the pun that would likely be made about the word point. Instead, however, the room erupted in applause and shouts of “The Grail! She has achieved the Grail!”

The next castle she visited, Alice resolved to herself as the inhabitants of this one danced for joy, would be more sensible.

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A Halloween PSA

On this day remember….

The Fairy Folk will ride but if you hide yourself at Miller���s Crossing you can rescue your Fae lover.

If you meet a man named Talbot who looks like he’s been through some rough times. Be kind, but clear out. He may be hunting Dracula, but when the Wolfsbane Blooms and the Autumn moon is bright he has a hard time telling friend from foe.

Avoid crossroads and if you see a body lying in the middle of one for heaven’s sake don’t mess with it.

Remember the vampires find Halloween a bit tacky but if you end up buying a costume from a pop up store run by a strange Englishman choose something with practical skills, especially if you’re on a Hellmouth.

If you’re planning a real estate scam with spooky overtones remember Justice rides in a psychedelic van and theatrical swindlers always get their comeuppance.

If you’re in Chicago and the thing that goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, there’s a number you can call. It’s in the book.

If someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes. That’s why we wear the costumes after all, so the things that come from the Otherworld can’t tell who’s safe to mess about with.

It’s never just a book…anything can come from reading a book.

And if you’re driving home late at night beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts, but if you do pick one up, eyes on the road, and be polite. Manners cost nothing and spirits appreciate it.

Happy Halloween.

[browncoatparadox]

you’re my best friend.

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I'm so sad that Cutter, one of the most terrifying antagonists I've ever heard, is losing so badly here. He's semi-immortal! He gaslights, gatekeeps, and girlbosses! He always has a smile on his face and you can somehow tell even in an audio-only medium! He's the shadow leader of an evil corporation! He refers to everyone by their first name and offers a chai latte to someone that he has tied up for torture! This man embodies affably evil! Please just listen to even the first 12 minutes of this video, it gives you a really good idea of his whole vibe.

Small Bracket Round 1-27

He's Horrible (❤️ ω ❤️)

Warren Kepler (Wolf359): Fans say: "smug ass bastard man he's so entertaining he's awful and horrible and i want to punch him in the face he's the character ever."

Isaac “Felix” Gates (Red vs Blue): Review: He’s horrible he’s my favorite character he’s a monster he’s never done anything wrong he’s committed war crimes he’s my little Angel he came straight from hell.

Marcus Cutter (Wolf359): Fans say: Worse than Kepler

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chucks got a lot of transphobes riled up today so i should probably add: there are infinite genders including no gender at all and no matter how much devils seethe and cry and gnash their teeth this will not change. thats just scientific fact SORRY DEVILS im a doctor

[browncoatparadox]

okay so i have gained a new species of spore for my collective brainrot and i have found the perfect selling pitch to drag everyone i care about down with me. if you know the show this is hilarious. if you haven't watched it pay attention:

the show's called leverage. you know how there's those crime serials that aren't good at all but we've all watched a little too much of at least one of them even though they are blatant copaganda which is morally terrible? take your favorite one of those, but remover the copaganda. all the characters are criminals but their only victim is capitalism. every cop in the show is stupid at best and blatantly corrupt to a disgusting level most of the time. there is just as much genuine and intelligent social commentary as this premise demands.

i sense i already have you hooked. i can make this better. stick with me for a minute on this: the character dynamic is a muppet movie but also the Scooby gang

stick with me here!

You have Parker, who fit into the Scooby gang as Scooby and would be played by Gonzo. her crime thing is that she is a cat burglar and she is very good at it. her skill with it is borderline slapstick (hence Scooby) and she is very autistic coded and misunderstood (hence Gonzo)

You've got Eliot, who is the Shaggy and is played by Sam Eagle. He is the brute force of the team and he wants you to think he is all serious and grimdark. but he loves making the employees and victims of their capitalist targets aware of unions and he is a big himbo. i say he is shaggy because he plays Parker's straight man, he has the second most cartoonlike abilities, and he has a passion for cooking

Hardison is Velma as played by Kermit. he is a geeky hacker with a passion for orange soda and he is the heart of the team. he gets overlooked as leader even though he is the driving force of everything they do. like Velma. he also has that trademark Kermit brand of slapstick and deadpanned humor in balance.

Sophie is Daphne as played by miss piggy. she is basically the world's best grifter, she usually the front man interacting with the target the most. she has that crazy streak and the self defense capacity that miss piggy and Daphne (when she's done right) both have. she also has the confidence and style.

Nate is Fred and he is the human character. Fred has "let's split up gang" and Nate has "then we have to steal *fill in the blank with something comedically unfit to finish the sentence*" Fred and Nate are both flat characters with the main trait "i think I'm the leader but my smart friend does all the work" and the main interest of "trapping and screwing over capitalists" he mainly gets to call himself the leader because he's the idea guy and he has an apartment. his role in the muppet analogy is the peak of my pitch if you're still here. because while this is definitely not the Christmas Carol, Nate is the human character because he is Ebenezer Scrooge if instead of being a capitalist, Scrooge was an alcoholic and instead of character growth he was just steadily losing his mind. his moral compass and general intelligence are on a roulette wheel that is spun at random intervals lasting from seconds to the occasional few hours. also he and Sophie have divorced parents of grown children syndrome and the other three are said children. in vibes, of course, they aren't actually related.

if anyone stayed with me through all of that you should seriously watch it. even if i sound like i pulled this all out of my ass. it's so good.

it's an actively anticapitalist, copaganda free crime show where you get to see fun characters beat up every thing bad in society and fuck it all over. it balances fun comedy and wild characters with serious topics and moments in a way that is very natural and genuine. it also has one of my favorite autistic coded characters, a positive and healthy relationship that develops in a way that feels natural to the characters (as well as a rockier one if you're into drama) and it is in the midst of what looks to be an actually well handled revival series with the original cast. i haven't caught up yet but I'm so excited for it. the original had 5 seasons and the revival is waiting to be renewed for season 3.

please go watch leverage. it's so good and it deserves more fans. also i want more fic and that next season

[browncoatparadox]

I think Greater Boston is a really great example of form supporting content because like. One of the main throughlines of the show – the main theme, as I’ve always felt it – is the way that people are interconnected, the way that our choices affect those around us, what it means to take responsibility for those choices, what it means to be part of a community who affect one another. 

And GB starts out with disconnected monologues, easily-separated segments, characters who seem totally distant from each other, even the ones who actually do know one another. We never hear Gemma and Charlotte have an actual in-person conversation until Season 2. We never hear any of the Stamatis siblings have an actual conversation until Season 3. Letters go unreceived, phonecalls go to voicemail, meetings don’t happen. We’re introduced to this huge ensemble cast, this wide array of plotlines and motivations, these two stories that seem initially to be mostly separate – the creation of Red Line and the personal fallout of Leon’s death – and at first, it can be kind of hard to make sense of the connections.

But over time, those monologues become dialogues become conversations and relationships, and even solo third-person narration gets pushed out of the picture. It becomes increasingly clear to the audience how the smallest choices that each of these people make can reverberate through the web of the story, can have profound effects on the lives of complete strangers, without either party being fully aware of it. And as those characters do become aware of it, and start to learn and figure out how they want to be responsible for their choices and what they mean for themselves and for others, their stories meet up, and the monologues are replaced with political debates and council meetings and families and interconnected groups of friends and allies. The seemingly-separate plotlines converge; the entire history and fate of the city of Red Line is profoundly tied, in innumerable ways, to one man’s split-second decision that he couldn’t bear to ride a roller coaster, to the grief and conflict the people who cared about him felt when he died. The evolution of the show’s formal elements retrospectively feels completely natural to the way the story and characters have progressed.

I’ve made jokes once or twice about how minor characters on GB don’t seem to be able to stay minor characters, but I think that might kind of be the point, or at least an almost inevitable element of how well the shape of the show supports the substance of it? No one’s actions are truly minor when you’re looking at how everyone affects one another. You couldn’t have this story without any of these people. It doesn’t have a complicated plot or a huge cast just for kicks; that complexity of human choice and interaction, that unfathomable number of people whose lives are tied up with ours, is in a lot of ways what the show is about.

And that’s a hell of a thing to pull off, and to pull off as beautifully as Greater Boston does.

[browncoatparadox]

I HAVE WAITED ALL YEAR TO POST THIS

[browncoatparadox]

Jonathan Harker fighting to keep his nerve and not collapse into despair in Dracula's castle: I did not spend the last months of my entire life studying for the bar exam. I Did Not Spend the Last Months of My Life I Will EVER Get to Live Studying for the Bar Exam.

[browncoatparadox]

Me watching tv: it’s what murderbot would have wanted

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Happy (early) Hannukah to my fellow Jews!

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i am not brave but sometimes i am made brave by my friends which is to say i am made brave by love

[browncoatparadox]

Not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing (drift compatible)

[browncoatparadox]

[image id: 8 images combining wolf 359 characters with text posts to make it seem like they’re saying them. because it’s a podcast, all the screenshots are taken from the wolf 359 liveshow where the actors dressed up as their characters.

1. lovelace says ‘Ive actually been dead for 7 years and everything I do/say are just coincidental post death muscle spasms’.

2. eiffel (while minkowski is telling him off) says ‘sure. blame the guy who’s a huge idiot who causes a lot of problems, again’.

3. hera says ‘God gave me depression because if my ambitions went unchecked I would have bested him in hand to hand combat by age 16′.

4. lovelace says ‘me: queen of having had enough’.

5. hera says ‘i’m never passive aggressive’ and on a second line ‘unlike some people’.

6. eiffel says ‘*writes ‘wish you were here’ on a balloon and sends it up to the aliens’.

7. this one implies thoughts rather than statement; eiffel, hera, and minkowski are all staring at lovelace, and the text is ‘reverse murder mystery: ‘who the hell reanimated this person’‘.

8. cutter is talking to minkowski. minkowski thinks ‘none of your emails are finding me well’.

end id.]

[browncoatparadox]

No, I'm pretty sure that's the Doctors Without Borders. Doctor Who is a character. He's an incompetent evil scientist with a heart of gold who fights a platypus secret agent.

thoughts on doctor who?

Is that another Tumblr imaginary movie?

[browncoatparadox]

I suddenly woke up stupid early on my day off with multiple weird random aches and pains and a revelation about the Leverage chess metaphors.

They’re all wrong.

Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nate’s shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe you’re going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line. 

Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.

Couple important things about kings in chess: 1. They don’t move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because 2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), it’s game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.

This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesn’t just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. He’s almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy you’ve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, it’s not game over, in fact, it often isn’t even a PROBLEM. Let’s look at a few times that happens, just for fun: - In The King George Job, Nate’s getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says “NOPE, don’t do that, I can fix this without blowing our cover” and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isn’t up and she’s not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it. - In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. That’s just called LOSING. -In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nate’s going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job. 

So if Nate isn’t the king, who is?

Hardison.

Let’s look at our points about kings again:

1. Doesn’t move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because that’s where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range – you don’t want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little… uh… interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time… .

2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But that’s just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. He’s our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no “well he’ll be fine for a few minutes” and no “well he kinda had it coming.” No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)

So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isn’t in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?

Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything – she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parker’s whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. She’s the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story – a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as “the crazy one” and ultimately becoming the mastermind.

Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knight’s deal is that it’s sneaky – it’s the only piece that can turn corners – and it can jump over obstacles. Sophie’s whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldn’t need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)

Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one – it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. It’s also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. It’s your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but I’m jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, it’s not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. That’s where he likes it. 

Bishop: Finally, here’s where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I don’t know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isn’t necessarily the one making the plans – that’s the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but we’re operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.

[browncoatparadox]

I am consuming a media and you are going to hear about it