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nullset2 · 2 years ago

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Earthbound: an In-depth Critique and Review

Note: this review has been amended.

Many things have been already said about the Mother series, but with these series of essays, reviewing the series front to back, I attempt to humbly provide a different perspective on it. Earthbound has been discussed to hell and back (oops, "heck", I should say perhaps, if I am to convey my 90's North American Nintendo localization spirit –the games couldn’t have religious or adult, specially alcohol-related, references of any kind back then): the Mother fandom is one of the most hyper-focused and productive communities out there after all, its dedication to the franchise bordering on insanity with a healthy helping of cringe at worst.

I recall that Itoi once said about the Mother series: "I recommend playing the games in order because I think that's how they make the most sense... or at least I think they do to me, since I wrote them in that order. Maybe they reflect my different sensitivities over time, as I got older, and maybe it will resonate in that same manner with you too." I want to try to go against that: maybe there's something more to understand about the Mother series if we go backwards instead. Or maybe it's just poor foresight and whim on my end, I don't know.

We can start with a few little questions: why does a simple 1995 SNES RPG by famed Copywriter/Essayist Shigesato Itoi, "Earthbound", elicit so much attention? Why precisely this game? SNES RPGs are legion, what is it about this one that makes people enter a trance when they talk about it? Why are some people irremediably obsessed with it so much, that they get to marry and form families and multi-million dollar enterprises out of it? (Fangamer... I'm looking at you... thank you; side note: watch the "Earthbound, USA" documentary to understand what I'm talking about).

Have you ever felt as if an evil force controlled your life? As if the people around you weren't really human, and instead were some weird kind of organic automaton, a puppet which seemed to be guided by some perverse, perverted hivemind into behaving in progressively erratic, lunatic ways? Has that feeling become more pervasive lately?

Have you ever felt as if you had psychic powers? As if you shared a mystical connection to someone, as if both your minds were as one? As if you could manifest things in the real, physical world just out of sheer will? As if you were born in the wrong era, family, town or country? As if you had telepathy?

Do you like Charles Schultz’ Peanuts, The Beatles, and aliens? Well, Earthbound is just the thing for you.

Itoi is a "Copywriter" (this interesting job role in Japan, where a writer specializes in writing "Catch Copies", a sort of longer form slogan that is used in marketing for a product in Japan) who's rather famous in the Japanese mainstream, appearing in variety shows and publications everywhere. He has a passion for the Dragon Quest series of JRPGs. He recalls video games being his only companion through asthma attacks at night, because he had to pass them sitting up (this explains Ninten's proclivity to asthma attacks in the first game). He would then play long winded sessions of Dragon Quest to pass the time, which gave him a love for the genre. When he came to fame, he eventually got the role to work on the Mother series as the scenario writer from Nintendo's Yamauchi. Imagine that: it's as if, I don't know, Stephen King was given the chance to make an RPG by Bill Gates from Microsoft by mere coincidence, and they go like "oh yeah, that's pretty dope dude, yeah we’re bros, let's do this". Quite the ripple effect, right?

Attention is deserved to the fact that this game explicitly decides to try something new, so it produces a quirky, romantic marriage of what a Japanese person from the 90s thinks America is and a Dragon-Quest style RPG. Gone are the legendary heroes and the cloaks and swords and magic spells: instead of a shounen hero type, you have a simple everyday kid called "Ness" (arguably an anagram of "SNES" just as how Ninten is a truncation of "Nintendo") and his gang of misfit kids. Instead of swords and shields and armor, you have baseball bats, yo-yos and baseball caps. Instead of casting Magic spells with Mana, you cast PSI attacks with "Psychic Points'', one of which is named after your “most favorite thing”. Instead of drinking potions and elixirs you find in treasure chests, you eat hamburgers out of the trash and find presents in the game world. Instead of Orcs, Knights and Princesses, you fight New Age Retro Hippies and rescue the girl next door. You save the game by calling your dad and one of the worst status ailments in the game is "homesickness", which you cure through a carefully crafted interaction in the game where you call your Mom (who's always got a healthy serving of %FAVORITEFOOD% and a free place to stay in and recover your HP if you need the support).

Even back in its own day, Earthbound already looked dated, old timey Dragon Quest battle system and all, paling against the brave new worlds of Chrono Trigger and the like, and the fancy pre-rendered graphics, FX chip 3D graphics and Mode 7 Sprite Scaling shenanigans of the era. So I insist, why? Why does this game arise incite such all-absorbment in some people? Well, maybe it just was there at a special place and time in North American teens' lives. Coming in a big, flashy, special edition box by default, strategy guide and scratch-n-sniff stickers included, there was a genuine push from Nintendo to promote it. The Mother series is massively revered in Japan, so, perhaps, they were looking to catch lightning in a bottle a second time in America. Yet, due to many different factors, the game massively flopped and gained a cult following from ROM site pirates and IRC urchins in the Internet of yore, and got relegated to appear in "Top Ten JRPGs" and "Best Super Nintendo games" internet message board posts and geocities websites.

Enter Ness. A young kid living in 199X in the town of Onett in the fictitious country of Eagleland. One day, he's awakened in the middle of the night by a meteorite crash close to his house, and he decides to investigate it, not without tagging along with his trusty dog King and his friends Picky and Pokey Minch (Porky in the Japanese version, perhaps renamed not to infringe on copyright or to avoid conflation with "Waito Piggu"; his envious, slovenly, fat neighbor, son of the "that family" of Ness' neighborhood, with his disgruntled, unsophisticated parents Aloysus and Lardna). From the meteorite, a mystical fly who says "A bee I am... not..." named Buzz-Buzz emerges, and he delivers an ominous message from the future: "Kid, you're the chosen one, and three boys and a girl, a group of which you're a part, need to embark on an adventure to defeat Giygas (Giegue in the Japanese version), the all-destroyer". He warns you: Giygas is corrupting the people and animals in the world as part of his invasion; your tool against him will be a magical melody which you will find by visiting seven points in the world, your "your Sanctuaries" and which you can record with the "Sound Stone", the last artifact he gives to you. The power unleashed by this melody will be vital in the fight against Giygas.

So far we have the usual "an ancient evil awakens" and "chosen one" kind of story: get ready, say goodbye to Mom, and embark on adventure towards the first Sanctuary. Pokey, forever resentful of Ness' coolness, just won't have you become the Chosen One, though, so he embarks on an adventure of his own. After embarking, you meet your neighbor Liar X. Aggerate, who claims to have found some weird kind of artifact while digging, some kind of glowing statue that mysteriously looks like a Moloch effigy that draws people in, and is revealed throughout the game to have some strange kind of mystical power that corrupts whoever possesses it, making people obsessed with it. This artifact is called the Mani-Mani (Money-Money?) statue, and it will emerge at pivotal points in the storyline...

And then the fauna, flora and locals seem to have gotten out of control all over the world. These are the random encounters you'll face --you'll meet roaches, flying saucers, spiteful crows, drunks and ugly women with shopping bags, weirdos, wild dogs, snakes, sentient cars, walking mushrooms, dali's clocks, the characteristic Starmen (perhaps a David Bowie reference) aliens, and much other weirdness. Beat them until they become "tame": Earthbound's death toll is literally zero throughout the game, much like One Piece’s (or perhaps one, depending on how you interpret the final boss).

A little parenthesis about the battle system is that, even though it's as simplistic as a Dragon Quest, it brings a lot of weirdness to the table which I really enjoy, and which really contributes to the tone of the game. Let me state that I am not a fan of turn-based battles at all --but I love them if they have some sort of action element to them; even something as simple as timed hits or Mother 3's rhythm-based system makes all the difference to me. Every battle will play against a 60's-style trippy backdrop, known internally in the code as the "Visual Drug" visualizations (whatever that means, which makes me wonder what kind of weird stuff Shigesato Itoi is exactly into, over there in Japan...). The game also uses a very clever Rolling counter system, where HP and MP decrease on a fixed timer, simulating an analogue alarm-clock roller counter display, which gives you a few seconds of slack to cast recovery spells if you are mortally wounded to continue the fight, a mechanic which I find to be very cool.

The sanctuary expedition will then take you through many places in the world of Earthbound, and this is the game's biggest triumph. A quirky parody of America that tries to look like a Cartoon, the adventure is full of adult references, like how you visit Giant Step (Coltrane much?) in Onett, a mysterious footprint in the ground, or how you must fight the Diamond Dog in Magnet Hill. Go play slots with Pancho, Pincho and Thomas Jefferson in a Hispanic-looking desert where a song with "Grupero" rhythms plays. Fight the totally radical local ruffians, the Sharks! Their leader Franky will pummel you with the Frankystein mark II at the arcade, to the tune of a Johnny B. Goode style guitar riff. These and many more references abound.

You're then told that you should go to Twoson to meet Paula, a mystical girl whose family runs the Polaris preschool, who has been calling out to you in your dreams through psychic powers, because she's vital to defeating the evil power of Giygas. In Twoson, you learn from Paula's parents that she has been Kidnapped by the Happy Happy cult, a parody of the Ku Klux Klan, a group of blue supremacists that want to paint everything blue in the world. Here, you'll also find the second sanctuary, Lilliput steps.

In Twoson you also meet Orange Kid and Apple Kid. Orange Kid, a preppy genius kid who seems to be getting all the fame and prestige, charges you for inventions which are completely useless and break down after one use --compared to Apple kid, who seems to be a slob good for nothing geek that doesn't really know anything. Interestingly, in time, the events will turn to the favor of Apple Kid, who invents seemingly-useless inventions that actually turn out to be incredibly useful, such as the "Pencil Eraser", a machine which will erase every single pencil in the vicinity, including a coincidentally pencil-shaped statue blocking the passage.

You also meet the Runaway Five, a happy-go-lucky band of six bohemes, a reference to the Blues Brothers, who help Ness and the party overcome various trials, with the power of funk and soul. Also, beautiful singer Venus, the charm of the town. Earthbound has this cute thing where certain musical numbers are performed in-game through simple movements of sprites, again reminiscent of other operas in JRPGs, but there's a certain unique flavor in Earthbound's that's hard to describe.

Once you rescue Paula it's time to move on to the next sanctuary, on to the haunted town of Threed to fight zombies and pests, with the aid of the Runaway Five, whose funky, groovy bus scares the ghouls that were blocking your path prior. There, Ness and Paula are abducted by zombies, so they call for the help of your British boarding school friend Jeff and his queer-coded friend Tony, who embarks on adventure from the very Bri'ish town of Winters to come to their rescue, rides Nessie with the help of a bubblegum chewing monkey monkey to cross a lake to his father's (a fact which only will be revealed until later in the game), Dr. Andonuts', laboratory, next to the game's version of Stonehenge. Andonuts has created the Sky Runner, a flying machine which can take People across the ocean. Jeff is a genius boy, expert in engineering and rocketry, and his clever inventions are his main form of attack once he joins your party. Ready to fight a possessed circus tent?

You head to Saturn Valley, where you meet a weird species of creature called Mr. Saturn who inhabit the place, a strange, bipedal, armless species with superhuman genius that communicates in nonsensical phrases written in a weird font inspired by Shigesato Itoi's daughter's handwriting in the Japanese version; the Mr. Saturn are all named Mr. Saturn and look exactly alike, sporting a tiny ribbon and a huge nose with cat-like whiskers. Saturn Valley hosts the third sanctuary, the Milky Well, but first you must help them by combating master Belch, a horrid pile of puke who speaks in a sampling of a burp recorded by one of the developers of the game, who has kidnapped the Mr. Saturns. You access Master Barf's hideout by standing under a waterfall... literally standing, immovable, for three minutes.

Pretty meta, right? How about an Onsen dip now?

The first "coffee break" segment... I really love these, because this is where you begin to see that this game is actually really, really cool, and that it attempts to do things that other RPGs don't. At certain points in the game, you will be offered to sit down and relax, and the game will play a little cutscene with a beautiful animated background and song accompanied with some scrolling text will deliver a "the story so far" summary about the game, together with a few musings related to Ness' and the party's personal growth. It is implied that these sections are actually the voice of Itoi talking to you through the screen. Once you do this, you will access the Milky Well, the next sanctuary.

The game is very creative in its breaking of the fourth wall. From a dog named Ruffini in Onett who is possessed by "the spirit of the game's creator", to the game asking the actual IRL player for their name to be used throughout, to Ness' dad actually calling you by your name and asking you to "please take care of their child", the game's interactions display a ton of nuance and care, and massive amounts of content can go unseen by the player given the ridiculous edge cases to which they apply, in a way that I've only ever seen Undertale attempt to recreate to partial success.

Proceed onto the big city of Fourside, an impressive megalopolis dominated by Mr. Monotoli, who has now taken an up-and-coming Pokey under his wing as an apprentice. But Paula is kidnapped by Mysterious aliens at the mall, and the effort to recover her leads you to investigate different leads; enter Moonside: a psychedelic inverted version of Fourside where "Yes" means "No" and "No" means "Yes", and where people speak in incoherent slurrying of words, an illusion created by the Mani-Mani in the storage room of a Bar (localized as a "Cafe"). Once you defeat it in the illusion, you are informed that Monotoli has Paula and it's up to you to climb his tower to rescue her. A vicious fight against Monotoli's defenses is heroically saved here by the Runaway Five in the crux of battle, when everything seemed lost, to reveal he has possession of the Mani-Mani.

Then you will be able to fight many moles in a bubblegum monkey labyrinth, all of whom claim to be No. 3 in their ranks. You will also be notified that Apple Kid has met with Mr. Saturn, and is now developing a machine called the Phase Distorter, which will come in handy.

The game progressively unlocks PSI abilities through its story; a very interesting one is PSI Teleport, which unlocks around this point and you learn from a Monkey, allowing you to fast travel back to visited locations if you can survive a short sprint without collision. This allows you to travel to Winters to visit the Rainy Circle, the next sanctuary.

From here, once you're reunited with Doctor Andonuts, you find out that the location of the next sanctuary is in Summers: a relaxed, weird port town where people gather at Club Stoic to drink water, stare at rocks and discuss the "impending collapse of Capitalism" among other pretentious stuff. Don't miss the chance to take a picture with the Photo Man! A funny guy who drops from the skies, he will take your picture at random points in the game to the sound of "Fuzzy Pickles!". But first have some Brownies, ahem, I mean "Magic Cake", from a lady at club stoic to dream of Dalaam, a far eastern country which hosts the final party member, Poo, a magical prince who has been compelled by psychic energy to travel to your aid, who gains abilities through vicious training to achieve Mu (the place of nothingness) through a mysterious presence that takes away all his limbs and senses one by one. From this he achieves teleport, and travels to meet Ness and the party: his aid will be invaluable to point out the location of the next sanctuary from mysterious runes in an artifact in the Fourside museum, to be accessed only if you please somebody at the door with an autograph of Venus on a banana. You will find with this your next Sanctuary, Magnet Hill, and then travel to Dalaam to tie loose ends and visit Pink Cloud, your next sanctuary.

Your adventures will now take you through the Ocean to head to the town of Scaraba, which hosts another sanctuary: fight the Kraken of the Sea and its incredible background music. Solve mysterious riddles and travel to Tenda Village, a town inhabited by a race of tiny frog-like beings that will not talk to you due to extreme shyness unless you give them a copy of "Overcoming shyness", borrowed from the Onett library, so you find mysterious Lumine Hall, a room where your thoughts manifest as writing on the wall. Then finally, travel to the lost underworld in a hilarious change of presentation for the game where everything turns microscopic, so you can find the last sanctuary, Fire Spring.

Through pain, sweat, blood and tears you have finally collected all the 8 melodies in your Sound Stone, which puts Ness in a trance: he has visions of himself as a baby, being taken care of by his Mother, in a beautiful, monochrome scripted sequence, and then he has a trip, traveling solo to Magicant, naked in the Japanese version and in his Pajamas in the USA version of the game. Magicant is a product of the psyche of psychic children in the Mother series, a safe haven where you can discover weird things about yourself and unearth deep memories hidden in your subconscious. Use the help of the series recurring Fighting Men in magicant to power through your subconscious and discover an inner Mani-Mani deep inside your soul, which will put up a vicious fight. When you defeat it though, a massive level-up will occur for Ness, preparing you for the final battle.

Once you return to reality, you will be notified by Apple Kid that he, Dr. Andonuts and Mr. Saturn have prepared the Phase distorter for your usage to finally defeat the mysterious, all-encompassing evil force of Giygas. See, Giygas is an alien, known as Giegue in the first game; after the events of that game, he defects to space, regards all humans as evil and vicious, and turns into Giygas out of sheer insanity, which corrupts everything. He begins to abduct people away into his lab to use them as experiments.

But the problem is that Giygas is too strong to be defeated in the present. Apple Kid tells you that it is necessary to time travel to the past, so you can defeat Giygas for good, with one, ehrm, tiny reservation: organic matter cannot survive time travel to the past in the Phase distorter. So, for this, four robotic bodies are created by Apple Kid and his cohorts, to implant Ness' and the parties' souls into.

Now this is the part where I get schizo (you could argue that that's my default state but I'll leave that discussion for another time). The game takes a really dark turn here for some reason, and gets incredibly grotesque, and pits you against incredibly strong enemies for the final run: you are commanded to enter a cave that's fully made of organic matter, to find a weird organic entity created by pure evil, Giygas, which, shockingly, has been co-opted by none other than Pokey for his selfish gain. Pokey has decided to take the path of corruption at this point and you will fight him alongside Giygas, who, in battle, has a huge image of yourself on its putrid mass.

A lot of people theorize that this is an abortion allegory, that you’re aborting Giygas in the past so he was never born, which is plausible, given that you enter an organic cave to arrive at a womb-like structure that you find Giygas implanted in, and the fact that when the battle escalates and Giygas becomes aethereal, the background design in this battle seems to have been created through digital manipulation of a picture of a faetus in an ultrasound, but this has never been confirmed and is pure speculation, even if the allusion is very much there, not to mention how shocking this theme is for a 90s totally radicool game about little children prancing around.

The creature that Giygas has turned into, and that you must fight against at this point is so inexplicable, powerful and omnipresent that the party finds itself at a loss and succumbs to madness. Yet, in the final throes of pain, Paula, who has the in-game ability to Pray, does so out of pure desperation. People on planet Earth then, feeling that something is incredibly wrong, pray for the safety of Ness and the party; cutscenes to illustrate this are emotively displayed one by one, and then, suddenly, somebody who you would had never expected prays for the party:

Yourself.

Several tens of hours ago, the player was instructed to input their name just as a little funny thing by the spirit of the game creator, and most players will happily oblige. By this point, however, most players will surely have forgotten that they did so; to show that the game not only remembered it all along, but also used it to such impactful effect, produces a massive feeling of catharsis. The game shows that the player behind the screen also joined everyone in prayer, which gives Giygas the final blow.

Itoi writes that he took inspiration for the final battle in Earthbound from a traumatic childhood experience: you see, back in the day (even up to this day), some actual, real Movie theaters in Japan have a porn theater in the basement for some God-forsaken reason. The upper floors actually display normal, newly-released movies, but the basement will host a seedy projection room for smut where people go to hook up. Itoi recalls that, as a child, he walked into the basement of a movie theater and saw perversion on screen, which is reflected in some of the nonsensical moans of Giygas in the final battle. This scarred him forever, and thus, this is one of the many things which I so deeply adore about this game: it's a quirky, coming-of-age adventure of whimsy and joy, with psychic children going around a cute parody of America, yet, the author is not scared to turn it into an allegory for the loss of innocence, and to take it into a genuinely unsettling, morbid and perverted place by the end, in a manner that is incredibly off-brand, even for companies other than Nintendo, who usually keeps a very PG-13, and is ultra-conservative and family friendly to an extreme.

A defeated Pokey and Giygas then collapse. Pokey uses his evil powers to defect to a parallel Universe (no kidding, this is literally what he does, and which sets off the events of Mother 3), and Giygas becomes so mind-bendingly impossible to understand that he crashes the game (or, at least, the game simulates to crash, cleverly using the same CRT static fuzz effect that you see when you turn on the game for the very first time. This is a very good callback and is actually something incredibly avant-garde for the time: many players on console probably thought that their games were fried the first time they saw the final boss). This destroys the robot bodies that Ness and the party inhabited, but by sheer miracle, their souls return to their corporeal bodies and they come back to life.

Giygas is now defeated and peace is restored to the land.

Yet another thing that I incredibly love about this game, is that at this point the Game world will allow you to roam around freely to catch up with people. Everyone will now have different lines, expressing how things have now changed after the defeat of Giygas, and some people will say their goodbyes to you or give you their thanks; some others will have funny quips or jokes, or even provide more backstory about them. Enemies no longer attack you, and all music themes have been replaced with "Because I Love You", an exquisite piece of the soundtrack.

Attention should be given to the music, an aspect that admittedly I've been glossing over previously in these reviews. Composed by Nintendo all-time great and grandioso Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka and Keiichi Suzuki, the music in Earthbound is one of a kind. Seriously --if you've never listened to the soundtrack actually running on-console from an original cart, you're missing out; no matter how good emulation ever gets, there is something special about the care and quality with which the tracks were crafted for the original Super Famicom. The SNES is great for sound, and introduced a sampling system: unlike the Famicom, where sounds have to be created with primitive sound waves computed by a primitive chip, the SPC chip in the Super Famicom allows for professional-quality samples to be imported into the game's ROM and used in arrangements, which produces almost CD-quality audio (the small memory size of an SNES ROM meant that the samples used in music had to be heavily compressed --the next revolution in game audio was to come with the SNES CD addon, later materialized in the Playstation genus). I would like to give a shout out to the Maternalbound project: a project which aims to "deluxe"-ify Earthbound by adding custom uncompressed samples and reversing the Nintendo of America 90s censorship, resulting in an even more compelling interpretation of the soundtrack.

The game's usage of the Leitmotif as an expressive element is stellar; spoiler alert, a lot of movies, games and productions out there use the leitmotif extensively. Once you notice it for the first time you will never stop noticing it everywhere: the leitmotif is a resource which uses small melodies to create psychological association in the story with a certain character, theme or feeling. These melodies are remixed creatively throughout the game and reused at critical times to create a sense of callback and continuity, with changing moods.

You know what else does Earthbound use heavily? Sampling. The eclectic musicians which produced Mother 2's soundtrack added yet another layer of quirkiness through intelligent usage of sampling: Dungeon Man’s theme is from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band reprise. The intro song uses a Monty Python sample. Jackie's cafe uses another sample, etcetera...

The problem is that this puts the game in a complicated legal situation. See, as far as I know (with some caveats), sampling is perfectly legal and falls under fair use; but it turns out that Japan is actually pretty lax about copyright and they blatantly use copyrighted content everywhere without permission. I understand that you need to obtain authorization to sample in America before publishing your work --for a very long time it was believed that things like these, along others, represented legal hurdles which held Earthbound from a re-release, but fortunately this was proven wrong with 2014's re-release of Earthbound on the Wii U virtual console, which transpired to the Switch in time.

Itoi's close, personal relationship to then Nintendo developer Satoru Iwata is important. It is famously known that Mother 2 went into development hell because the team was unfamiliar with Super Famicom tech, producing an as-of-now unknown version of the game that was full of glitches, bugs and missing features close to the game's original intended release. It is famously known that Iwata's involvement with the Mother series, into which he was pulled in as an emergency, saved the project. "We either throw away all our work and start anew and be done in six months, or we keep what we currently have to be done in one year". His important contributions, "being very good at producing tools that other people could use to speed up their work, and dividing work equitatively among the team so things could be done in parallel", according to Itoi, were Iwata's best abilities.

"For children, adults, and even young ladies" was the Catch Copy for this game when it was originally released in Japan. Games are a medium which skews in popularity towards teenage boys, both in America and Japan. This is covered under the umbrella term "Hardcore Gaming", a term which I somewhat despise. Over time, attempts have been made to turn this Hardcore, Red Ocean market into a Blue Ocean; however, most of these feel disingenuous, half-hearted or politicized and plagued of empty Diversity gestures: sure, everyone's grandma played the heck out of Wii Sports that one Christmas, but that was it. What I mean by this is that games that put accessibility before all are usually more marketed as products or consumables rather than as pieces of art that want to draw people in so they graduate into bigger, better, more complex games. Your grandmother is never going to discuss Materia in FFVII or going to play Tears of the Kingdom to make cool machines, nor is your Mother going to stick around to learn how far games have come since Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo or to chug jug with you. However, and for some reason, Mother 2 --Earthbound-- successfully achieves this. I have an older sister who doesn't really like games, but I remember that she picked it up and loved it. She wasn't really proficient at English back then, nor she actually really cared about Japanese RPGs, but she went through it.

In a very recent interview, Shigesato Itoi said that Mother 2 "is a game that turns adults into children, and children into adults", and I honestly believe that. It's a game the likes of which will never materialize again in our world and in our iffy political and cultural climate. Most people have forgotten about it by now, but its soul carries on in a small, ultra-dedicated fanbase, which is still active to this very day, and will continue to be, and maybe, one day, we'll sit down together and have our Mom serve us Pizza while we play PSI Rockin. Let us pray.

0 notes

possessionisamyth · 2 years ago

Note

gaming wins did a video on RE3R what a surprise people shat on it in the fucking comments so did he kinda they mentioned they were surprised to get as long a video as they did (he didn't mention the call backs to RE1 with the introduction of the hunters and running from a boulder (or even Nemmy catching the rocket which is something that can happen in the second Tyrant boss something i just remebered that he did), wish he mentioned the differences between easy - hard vs nightmare and inferno)

I do agree with the comments he made about Carlos and when is Carlos being brought back

I stopped watching videos like cinemasins when people decided to take everything they said as objective truths instead of the funny satire they intended thus ruining many peoples media literacy when it comes to critical analysis of the things we watch, read, and play. I know they made cinemawins in an attempt to circumvent this result, but by then I was already over the genre of white guy does rage quit video essay on things I enjoy. Moreso when a lot of those reviewers who were popular at the time were revealed to be very mask off about neglectful, racist, or sexist practices within their business.

But this is a long way to say, I don't watch those videos or those channels anymore to get those people's reactions. I especially don't read the comments. Ever. It's not good for the baby. (me, im the baby)

There are some things in RE3R that I felt were worth criticizing. The bugs putting maggots in Jill's stomach via the depositor in her throat and making her puke it out was 100% someone's kink. And it was unnecessary. Nemesis should've been a stalker enemy like the tyrant with boss fight encounters instead of having all his appearances timed. The two nightmare sequences were an attempt to show how the mansion incident is still affecting Jill, but they needed to be written better than they were.

I know the original RE3 had a lot of alternate scenarios you could get based on where you decided to go at what time. It was like those choose your own adventure books (which I always hated), but it helped people not all play the game the exact same way until they talked to others about it. There were attempts to do this with a few timed events in the remake, but they just led to alternate "You Died" animations. Which to me just wastes my time and isn't worth the trouble.

I have a thing where the more frustrated I get with a game the less likely I am to finish it because I am a casual player. I'm there for a good time and a good story, and the longer I'm having a bad time, the higher my chances are of just watching a playthrough or reading through the wiki. I don't replay for achievements. If there's information I missed that I feel is worth going back to get because I had fun playing it, then I will pick up the game again. But that's it. Maybe that's another reason why I do not really fit in here. Everyone I've seen or talked to who've been playing for a while tries to get every costume, and every treasure, and every achievement, and beat every game mode, and I don't care about all that. ^^; If my friend says "hey did you see this note?" and I didn't, I can look up a video on it. BUT, if a friend says "hey, did you get this dialogue sequence?" and I had a good time with the game, I'll replay it to try and get that sequence for more information.

And maybe that's also where the RE3R falls short for the huge amount of completionists in this franchise. The variety in their encounters has become extremely streamlined in comparison, and it's easier to focus on the big or more obvious things they took away instead of some of the fun or unique changes they made. Like how Carlos' design is the glow-up of the century. Or how Jill's rail gun is now a strap metaphor (to me). Or how they gave Mikhail some actual dialogue to set up the image of a personality instead of him being dead weight until he sacrifices himself. Or how Tyrone gets more than a few lines and we get to see a glimpse of his and Carlos' dynamic instead of him just dying to Nikolai like in the OG. Also, I don't care what anyone says. Carlos punching hunters is a fun mechanic. The slow-down time effect in games is a fun mechanic in general for me (because I can't fucking aim and it saves my ass every time).

I think the second to last boss fight with Nemesis would've been more fun if you had to be precise with those shots while he was running on the tanks. If there was a consequence to missing like small spurts of acid spewing from those tanks you had to dodge, that could've changed it up from the previous boss fight where you do the same thing with the buildings. It would've been annoying, but hey. That's kind of the point of boss fight progression with the difficulty increase. It also would've been better than just adding zombie dodging like you already half-ass do with him in Dead By Daylight. Ah. I'm getting off topic. You get my point.

BUT YEAH! Very much bring back Carlos Oliveira, my husband, immediately at once.

#resident evil #re3 #re3 remake #re analysis #heh nothing personal kid #anonymous

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1kook · 4 years ago

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right place, wrong time

— a someway, somehow jungkook drabble summary Home was Jungkook, it had always been Jungkook… but it wasn’t this Jungkook. warnings angst, heart ache, its actually kinda sad :/ lmfao, jk is a little... uh... como se dice.... jerk without realizing it.... justice for oc.... also there’s a scene where oc throws up so !! rating m wc 1.5k

notes THIS TAKES PLACE 5 YEARS BEFORE SWSH ITSELF ! OK ! enjoy <3 i wanted to try writing angst again <3 also i have no self control i said i would post this in 7 hrs yet here i am. and its not proofread <_<

When you were kids, the fact Jungkook’s birthday fell early on into the school year was a huge deal; everyone in your class was invited, both new and returning students, and the event itself was practically the opening scene to the school year itself. As you got older and he began to move away from colorfully decorated parties, his early birthday still earned him a lot of attention, had everyone at your high school congratulating him from the moment the first bell rang until the last. There weren’t any grand birthday bashes during high school, but the Jeons were a loving family, party or no party, and always got him a cake to celebrate each new year.

Up until you left for college, you had never missed Jungkook blowing out the candles for his birthday. Be it a backyard party bustling with kids or a smaller affair at his favorite restaurant, you had always been invited, always cheered for him with each new year of life he welcomed.

As a kid, you had always been adamant on getting the spot closest to him as you sang happy birthday, beaming at your best friend like he was your entire world. His childhood photo albums had been proof of that, filled with a chronological sequencing of every birthday he’s had with you at his side, your smiles changing with the times— from missing teeth to full of braces, you had always been at Jungkook’s side.

As a young-adult, you had to bite down your pride and watch Sojin fulfill that spot.

You had missed his last two birthdays since entering college. Your first year away from home, everyone you knew warned you about not going home too early into the year, something about how it would solidify your homesickness and you’d never be able to assimilate afterwards. So you had congratulated Jungkook from Taehyung’s phone screen, greatly appreciating the way Taehyung angled the phone away from Sojin as best he could. Then your second year, you had been drowning in that first wave of projects and essays, and simply couldn’t squeeze a five hour drive there and back into your schedule. Jungkook understood; there was no party this year, just a simple family dinner. The video call ended soon after you congratulated him, his attention drawn away by the voice of another woman you knew all too well.

For his twenty-first birthday, Jungkook was adamant that you attend. He had told you about it before you had left for the new semester, bent over by the front wheels of your car, making sure everything was in tip-top shape before you went off again. His t-shirt was drenched in sweat, trails running down his hairline, over the prominent veins of his neck.“I want you there,” Jungkook had said, taking your offered hand as he stood back up. He must have miscalculated— or maybe it was on purpose —his step, because when he stepped forward, he was all too close. He didn’t let go of your hand. “Please?”

Your eyes flickered over his chest, to his neck. He smelled like home, or at least the image of it you had created in your mind during your last two years away. Home was lavender fabric softener billowing over you in waves, the faint traces of this morning’s cologne, the subtle scent of his metallic work tools. It was his chocolate curls tickling his eyebrows, his easygoing smile, the way he pulled you closer, made the scents wash over you all over again.

It was Jungkook. It was Jungkook. It was Jungkook and his warm touch. It was Jungkook and his softened gaze. Home was Jungkook, it had always been Jungkook… but it wasn’t this Jungkook. It wasn’t this Jungkook and the hickey on his neck.

The sight made your stomach recoil, eyes quickly averted from the site of the crime. He had gotten here later than usual, said something about having to take Sojin somewhere first. So that’s what that meant. Jungkook, unaware of the fact the collar of his t-shirt has let you in on his private life, squeezes your hand. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

And you were stupid and you were in love, so of course you said yes.

It’s a cookout this year, his backyard filled to the brim with relatives and friends and so many cans of beer you don’t know what to do. His parents are ecstatic for your return, babbling on and on about how much he missed you for the last two birthdays. You take it in stride, and maybe in a different timeline you would have believed it, but not this one. Aside from greeting you at the door and taking your keys off your hands, you had barely seen the birthday boy all day. You mingle with old friends, his relatives, tentatively sip at your can of soda. You’re tired, the long drive having sapped the majority of your energy for the day.

Sometime around sunset, you meet eyes with him across the yard. Jungkook smiles, he always smiles. You okay? he mimes with a thumbs-up, and you want to say yes, but Sojin is sitting on his lap, an obnoxiously loud display, and when he puts his hand back down, it immediately finds its home on her thigh. You send him a half-hearted shrug, play it off like you're still a little carsick from the long drive here.

(Truthfully, you are sick, but you’re not sure it’s from the drive.)

Even at twenty-one, his family maintains their tradition and sings him happy birthday. With your return, his mother delegates you to cake cutting duties again, so you’re on standby for the song, at his side with the cake cutter in hand. Jungkook is grinning from ear to ear, Sojin attached to his hip, his arm sling around her shoulders. His family sings and sings, and Jungkook is happy. His eyes jump around the table, taking in the sight before him the way he does every year. And when they reach you at his side, Jungkook beams, reaches for your hand beneath the table and squeezes, all the while keeping his girlfriend closely hugged to his other side.

You cut the cake. Sojin gets her slice and promptly whisks Jungkook away.

By ten pm, you find yourself in his upstairs bathroom puking your guts out. It’s the carsickness, you tell yourself, or maybe the cake frosting, throat gagging around nothing, tears clinging to your lash line. But is it really?

“__?” someone says, and you make a weak attempt to turn towards the door. You don’t know what you expected— had you actually wanted Jungkook to find you in this sorry state? —but it isn’t Jungkook. “Shit, what happened?” Taehyung worries, hurrying to your aid. And you’re grateful that there’s someone here to help you, to save you from yourself and your stupid, heartbroken thoughts. But it’s not the man you want it to be, and that has you squeezing your eyes shut tightly, until the mascara on your lashes imprints itself against your under eyes instead.

The man you want bumps into you downstairs, catches Taehyung helping you into the spare bedroom to lie down. “__?” Jungkook calls out, eyes big and scared. “Where— what’s going on?” he asks, thrusting his plate into Sojin’s hands before rushing to your side. He grabs your forearm, and the touch burns, so you yank yourself away.

Faintly, you hear Taehyung explain. “She’s sick,” he says, pulling you closer. “She’s been out of it since she first got here. I think it was the long drive.” Yes, it was the long drive, you agree.

Jungkook, unfazed by your first recoil, reaches for your arm again. “I’ve got her,” he tells Taehyung, underestimating his strength when he tugs you closer, has you stumbling into his chest. His rough handling makes your stomach tighten, your head feel dizzy.

“Jungkook,” you gasp, hand on his chest. “Wait— I’m—“ And he’s trying to move you back up the stairs, probably into his bedroom to lie down. But the sight of the stairs and his overwhelming scent and the hickey on his neck, the hickey Sojin left on his neck, makes you nauseous all over again.

Taehyung yelps in your defense. “Jungkook,” he scolds, carefully maneuvering you out of Jungkook’s harm’s way. “You’re making it worse.”

From a few feet away, Sojin calls out his name. “Jungkook?” she says and her voice is so sweet, yet so sticky; it makes you gag. “Baby, they’re calling for you outside.”

And everyone is saying his name, so he doesn’t know where to look, doesn’t know who to prioritize, not when everyone wants his attention. He looks at you, and your heart soars for a millisecond. Then it plummets when he settles on Sojin instead. “I— you’re right, Tae,” he sighs, backing off, letting go. “You got __, right?” Taehyung nods. “Call me if anything happens.”

And he leaves, slips his hand around Sojin’s waist and guides her out the door. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t even tell you to get better soon. He just leaves.

Taehyung lays you down, doesn’t say a word when you start crying because he probably thinks it’s about your stomach and the vomiting. “It’s okay,” he soothes, helping you out of your shoes. “Does it hurt?”

Yes, you sob. It hurts very badly.

#networkbangtan #jungkook #jungkook fic #jeon jungkook fic #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook x reader #bts fic #jjk #bts x reader #swshd #mine

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ateezmakemeweep · 5 years ago

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you’re taking reaction/imagine requests? asdfghjkl um- can we have an imagine with ateez teasing and embarrassing you in front of your classmates during your online classes during quarantine? i know it sounds lame zxcbxm

❥ kim hongjoong

��so i was thinking i could do this part and maybe you could do-“

hongjoong opened the door to your shared bedroom, making you look up from your computer and narrow your eyes at your boyfriend. you subtly shake your head at him before continuing to speak to your project partners.

he had heard you complain for the past week about how they hadn’t been doing anything, that their powerpoint slides and essay portion still wasn’t done despite the deadline being tomorrow. he raised an eyebrow at the girl’s nasally voice saying that she still didn’t quite understand what she had to do.

he could only listen to you for so long try to explain it to her, voice high and shaky the way it always is when you’re uncomfortable; he knows how much you prefer working alone, that group work and public speaking are the two worst aspects for you in school.

it’s why he prances his way over to your desk as you look into the camera, only sensing his presence when he leans over your shoulder and places his arm down on the desk. “are these the girls who weren’t doing shit?” he asks, mouth in your ear but the words loud enough for everyone to hear. your cheeks flame and you push him away from the desk, stuttering out an apology as you glare at hongjoong who’s looking at you from across the room.

embarrassment and all, though, it must’ve hit a nerve in them because when you checked back at the document a few hours later, after yelling and scolding hongjoong for a good thirty minutes, everything was completed.

❥ park seonghwa

you had told him to stay out of the camera. that you would stay in the living room with him but that he couldn’t make a sound or have his presence known.

and it’d been working until your teacher called on you to answer a question, his voice hard and commanding the way all of your classmates have grown used to. everyone had just thought the man hated you all, his blunt way of speaking and loud, booming tone scaring the shit out of all of you for the first few weeks of class.

you came to learn that’s just how he was, a severe case of tough love that some long-time professors just harbor after dealing with loudmouth college kids. but when seonghwa heard the man harshly call your name, his head looked up from his phone and he narrowed his eyes; he didn’t like someone talking to you like that.

“can you give us your thoughts since you’ve just been sitting there with a stupid look on your face.”

he isn’t able to see the small smirk on your face at the professor’s words, instead throwing his phone aside and poking your arm gently.

“who the fuck is he talking to like that?”

your eyes widen as you immediately mute your sound, pushing seonghwa back and shaking your head at him. “seonghwa, are you crazy!?” your laptop is turned away so your classmates and professor don’t see you and your boyfriend talking back and forth, the crazy overprotective man next to you saying he doesn’t care who it is, no one’s allowed to say shit like that to you.

“he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, he’s just like that!” but when seonghwa shakes his head and deems that’s completely unnecessary, you take your laptop and stomp off toward the bedroom. you ignore the call of seonghwa’s voice before you close the door, warning him through gritted your teeth he better not follow you.

when you turn your camera back on, your cheeks are warm and embarrassment floods through you at the smirk on your teacher’s lips and the curious looks of your classmates.

“your boyfriend’s not gonna beat me up, is he?”

❥ jeong yunho

you were listening to the professor’s lecture with your feet in yunho’s lap, the boy quietly doing his own studies as he listened to music through his headphones.

the video session was scheduled for an hour and a half, looking at the time in the corner to reveal only forty minutes have passed. you let out a sigh, resting your head on your hand as you do everything in power to pay attention to the professor’s monotone voice.

yunho looks up and sees the bored expression on your face, pausing his music but remaining nonchalant as he moves his gaze back to his textbook. but just as he hears you start to yawn, he moves his long finger to your foot and scratches up the bottom of your sock-covered skin.

and thank god your mic is muted because you jump and yelp at the ticklish feeling and your laptop falls over into the couch cushion, your squeaky “yunho!” followed by his deep chuckle making you smack him playfully as you adjust yourself again.

you notice a few of your classmates smirking and hope it has nothing to do with your little mishap, squinting at yunho as he continues to laugh at you. when the teacher announces it’s time for a class discussion, you go to move your feet but he grabs your ankle, a pout on his face as he promises not to do it again.

but you missed the way his pointer and middle finger were crossed behind his thigh, the mischievous boy waiting until you started talking to scratch his nail under the bottom of your foot.

“and i think that’s something really import-ANT…in this lesson,” you say, the way you jump making him snort. you kick him in the side before sitting up, apologizing to your professor before you attempt to continue your intellectual discussion.

❥ kang yeosang

you thought it was lucky that your class time matched up with yeosang’s practice time, a quiet peaceful hour and a half for you to sip your coffee and really pay attention to the lecture.

but since you were in your room, you didn’t hear the front door or the sound of shoes hitting the floor. you only became aware of your boyfriend at the same time as your whole class, your bedroom door pushing open and yeosang jumping to belly flop onto the bed directly behind you.

“hi, baby! shit, i am so sweaty, i can’t believe-“

“uh, yeosang-“ you try to say but the boy only takes a heavy breath and continues to talk, going on about how difficult the new choreography is and how if he doesn’t start working out hard, it’s gonna be the death of him. and you love that he’s telling you all of this, you really do, but you’re also not ignorant of the fact that your entire call has turned silent in amusement and fascination at yeosang’s cute rambling.

“why are you sitting over there, can’t you just lay with me so i can-“

“yeosang, please stop talking,” you beg him quietly, the panic in your voice causing him to look up; your cheeks are burning and you look about ready to burst out into awkward laughter, the boy’s face dropping when he sees about 25 boxes of random faces staring at him.

“oh-oh my god! oh my, god! i’m so sorry, i’m just gonna- why wouldn’t you tell me!” he frantically runs out of the room, your own hand covering your face because it’s not even like he gave you a chance.

“i’m sorry,” you say to your class, your pink cheeks causing your professor to smile and shake her head, carrying on with the lesson like you and your boyfriend aren’t gonna hide under the covers in embarrassment for the rest of the day over this.

❥ choi san

your teacher didn’t require sound during lectures but she liked to make sure everyone was up and awake for the eight a.m class, always asking you guys to leave your cameras on so she can see you’re “attentive and alert.”

and usually you didn’t mind but today san was fast asleep so you had your headphones in, your camera turned away from your bed and facing the bright window as you tried your hardest not to nod off right then and there.

you didn’t think you woke san when you snuck out from under his arm but you found that you were sadly mistaken, just twenty minutes into the lecture his whiny morning voice starting.

“baby….come back to bed,” he mumbled into the pillow, a smirk on your lips as you look over at him. his one eye peeks open and he sees you sitting at the desk in front of your laptop, wearing his shirt and a pair of shorts with knee high socks that makes him all too desperate and needy to have you back in bed with him.

you watch his eyes rake over you and a pout make its way on his face, holding his arm out as he whines out your name. “soon, san, i’m almost done,” you tell him, even though it’s a lie and you hope he’ll fall back asleep within the next few minutes

but he waits for all about five before he gets up, concentrating on writing notes down with the professor’s voice in your ear that you miss the way he shuffles toward you. it’s not until he wraps his arms around you from behind and buries his face in your neck that you realize he’s here, your eyes shooting to the camera and cheeks flushing before raising it to the ceiling.

“san! my whole class just saw that!” you squeal, the way he pulls your neck back to kiss your lips proving he’s completely unbothered by the fact; he just wants you back in the warm bed, who cares about school?

❥ song mingi

“guys, you have to be quiet!” your roommate tells the boys, “y/n’s on a video chat with her class and-”

mingi, in a burst of excitement to finally see you after being apart for a week, ignores the girl’s words and bursts right into your room. his deep, happy yelp of your name and excited waves causes you to snap your head back and smile immediately at him; your heart softens at the way he’s bouncing like a giant child.

you return a small wave before nodding toward the door, holding up your two palms and wiggling your fingers to indicate ten more minutes. but the boy just doesn’t get it, making his way over to you before he stops and sees a whole laptop of people staring at him.

he looks at you in surprise, like he wasn’t already warned that you were doing this, before jumping to the side and waiting politely in your bean bag chair.

you turn back around and have to fight the smiling desperate to make it’s way on your pink cheeks, ignoring the way your friend in the class starts private messaging you asking who the cute boy behind you was.

❥ jung wooyoung

“why’s your camera off, y/n?”

your eyes narrow at the obnoxiously familiar voice coming through your laptop speakers, shaking your head as you do your best not to curse him out.

given that your real class time is over two hours, your professor allows for a fifteen minute break where usually everyone either turns off their cameras to eat or has one big chaotic chat, usually led by no other than

“wooyoung, shut up,” you snap when you can’t take it anymore, his nonstop questioning and high pitched giggle piercing right through your eyes.

“why don’t you say it to my face?” he counters and you can just hear the smirk in his voice. you leave your computer and stomp out of your bedroom and down the hall, kicking open the door to see the boy himself sitting in front of his laptop with a shit eating grin on his face.

“we are never taking another class together again!”

❥ choi jongho

“any last minute questions?”

“oh, um yes!” you reluctantly speak up, hating to ask in the first place and especially now over this new type of video chat set up. “about the project, should we be using apa format or-”

“goodbye, baby, goodbye!”

your mouth drops open and heat immediately creeps on your face, jongho walking past you with headphones in as he sings and dances like there’s no one around. but there’s about thirty of you around, his singing piercing through the speakers of every single one of your classmates as they watch him shimmy and shake across the room.

he continues his singing until he closes the door to the bathroom and you don’t even think he noticed you sitting in your desk at the corner, an awkward laugh threatening to bubble out of your mouth as you try to regain your composure.

“i’m so sorry,” you blurt out, cheeks pink as you shake your head and try to ignore the giggles coming from your classmate when, even from the bathroom, they can hear jongho singing his heart out.

#ateez #ateez reactions #request

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the-insomniac-emporium · 4 years ago

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i stumbled upon ur writing looking for lady d x non-binary reader fics and ur work has just been a godsend i’m obsessed. it’s inspired me to start writing my own even though i’ve never written for fandoms before. i’ve never written for other actual characters before either so i was wondering if u could spare any tips for writing for lady d and her daughters? 🙏🏻

I can certainly try! I'll divide the tips into lil sections for each characters. Might be less tips, more character observations that help me figure out how to write them? Putting under read-more for length. Also! If you ever want someone to look over what you write before you post it, I offer my services! I can't guarantee how fast I can respond, but I've been editing/proof-reading/giving general feedback for my friends for years, with everything from fanfiction to college level essays.

Alcina:

Large and in charge, literally. Regardless of the situation, Lady D wants to stay in control, or at least look like she's in control. Okay, minor exception being anything involving Mother Miranda, since she's the one person Lady D has any real respect for. Otherwise, Alcina maintains a good grasp on any situation, looking for ways to put herself in control.

For example, she often uses her height as a means to establish dominance, even within RE8 canon. If you watch a video of the Four Lords meeting, Alcina stands up once she starts arguing with Heisenberg, towering over him in an attempt to intimidate. We also see the aforementioned exception in this scene, as Lady D sort of "shrinks" a little when Miranda responds.

As much as Lady D wants to be in control, she's not always actually capable of it. In the game, we see her struggle to contain her emotions, and often releases them in outbursts. Such as the infamous vanity throwing scene (god I love that so much). It can provide some nice contrast in scenes, having Lady D be so in control one moment, then as soon as she's behind closed doors she's letting it all out.

Uses the most old-fashioned language out of her whole family. It's kind of hard to describe how one goes about writing this way, but I recommend trying to find some journals that were written in the early 1900's and reading them. Or just some classic novels (not Moby Dick, tho, that one's a bit much, in my opinion). One thing I can say is occasionally swap contractions (can't, don't, I've, etc) for the full version of the word (cannot, do not, I have, etc). Something about that always makes dialogue feel older, though I can't really explain why. Whatever you do, just don't rely too much on using synonyms. Replacing common words with their cousins can make dialogue feel "fancier", but you often run the risk of unintended connotations (feelings, positive or negative, associated with a word) messing with how a text is interpreted.

Puts up a front/facade around most people, as part of her noble background and need for control, with words like "stoic" and "composed" coming to mind. Very rough with troublemakers, no mercy. But!!! So very incredibly soft with her family/loved ones. I've seen some people accuse her of "faking" her love for her daughters, but these people either played a different game than I did, or they can't read emotions as well as I can. Gentle touches when she's checking if her kids are okay, little glances and gentle nods for reassurance, pausing a chase just to help her daughters, etc.

Bela:

Wants to make her mother proud. Legally obligated to make her mother proud, because she's the eldest daughter. Not that I know how that feels, being the younger of two children. Regardless, Bela is the most well behaved of the daughters, even when her mother isn't around. However, she does resent this position to some degree, based on in game dialogue/dialogue files that are in the game but aren't used. Personally, I see her as someone who's willing to let certain things go in exchange for favors/blackmail ammo.

Cleans up after her sisters a fair bit, sometimes literally. Feels responsible for them, to the point where their mistakes are her mistakes, and she's forced to compensate on their behalf. Because of this she ends up complaining a lot, though almost only when her family isn't around.

Still very protective of her family, she simply does most of her protecting behind the scenes. Knows how to manipulate a situation, which she probably learned from her mother, and can be quite convincing when she wants to be. Less likely to use violence to solve a problem than anyone else in the family. Will she use violence if need be, or if someone fucks up enough? Yes, absolutely, but she'll focus more on efficiency than misery (unless someone really fucks up).

Generally speaking she's more eloquent than either of her sisters, though not by much unless she's trying to impress someone (usually her mother).

Cassandra:

Two words: Angry. Horny. To her, they might as well be one word. Horngry. Cassandra struggles with her emotions more than either of her sisters, being a pressure cooker ready to pop basically all the time. It's not hard to set her off, but it can take ages for her to cool back down. Let's her frustration (of any variety) build up until she can bludgeon someone to death with it. Harshest on the servants, and spends the most time toying with others in the dungeon.

Like Bela, Cassandra wants to make her mother proud, but it's less of an obligation and more of a "I'm the middle child and feel like I don't get enough attention" type deal. Is more than willing to stoop to "tattle telling" activities in order to get the attention she craves. Usually sticks to obediently following her mother's orders or hunting down enemies, though.

Bit of an artsy type, and the most likely to take trophies from her victims. Gross ones, usually. Okay, well, that's debatable, but I'm talking about general consensus rather than my specific tastes. Personally, I don't care if she's got some weird blood paintings. Hell, I've got extra blood, and also am clumsy and bleed a lot anyway, she can have mine!

Hides her non-anger emotions as best as she can. Hates talking about her feelings (even if it helps), to the point where it's usually impossible to tell how she's feeling deep down. Remember, anger is a secondary emotion! No one is ever just angry, there's always something else hiding underneath, such as: Sadness, disappointment, loneliness, jealousy, etc. Keep this in mind when you're writing her. Make sure you pinpoint the center of her anger, and hint at it, letting her actions show her true goal.

Swears the most, easily. Tends to speak in shorter sentences than her sisters, and prefers being blunt to being eloquent/flowery.

Daniela:

Love, love, love, love, love, ahhhh deep breath... love. Loves love, or at least what she processes as love. Would do anything for romance. Except she also craves "natural" romance, creating a sort of paradox that adds to her delusions, as she engages in the pursuit of unintentional romance (not to be confused with "The Pursuit of Unintentional Humor", a song that I very, very much enjoy). Wants to be loved for who she is at the same time that she attempts to mold herself into a more lovable shape. Struggles with intimacy, wanting to feel vulnerable without actually being so.

On some level she understands that draining people of their blood, and then drinking said blood, is not equatable to a healthy relationship. But seeing as this is the most common form of supposed "intimacy" that she experiences, she refuses to acknowledge the true nature of what she does. Instead she clings to the idea of "forever bonding" with her partners, pretending that each one is still with her, even when she no longer remembers their names.

Hates being rejected, no matter how gently. "Ugly" cries, but only if she's alone, often turning her pain into anger, just like Cassandra. However, her outbursts don't seem to last as long. In reality, her breakdowns simply occupy the inside of her existence, rather than the outside. Sure, she's giggling and causing chaos, like usual, but on the inside she's breaking a record for most depressing internal monologue.

Reads a ton, but not always "quality" books. Goes through a dozen books or more a week, often rereading her favorites several times, mainly within the romance genre (obvs). This affects her speech a fair amount, making her both cheesy and occasionally smooth as hell.

#j says things #character study #don't wanna tag as tips cuz this is so specific to resident #resident evil

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rosy-cheekx · 5 years ago

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“You’re such a dork.” for the emotional writing prompts! I don't know anything about critical role, really, so for TMA :)

I spy, with my little eye, Bryce’s attempts to shove her own interests into her fics. Anyways, I am an American in college so I was basing this on my own experiences oops. Enjoy!

Date night was Wednesday evenings. Jon and Martin both found it preferable for a variety of reasons; it was the most likely nights for happy hours at the pubs in town, guaranteeing a cheap drink, and keeping to a weekday night minimized the chance of Jon seeing one of his students out. He hated seeing his students. Not that he hated them of course, he really rather liked them…not that they would ever know that. Being a professor, of parapsychology of all things, was rather rewarding. He knew the content inside and out (it felt good, using the mark of The Eye to actively work against it, to pass along information instead of consuming). And they didn’t seem to mind him either.

That was the thing about university students. They really didn’t care about who he was or where he came from. The fact that he was a scrawny, scarred Englishman in a lecture hall in Scotland didn’t matter to them. In the classroom, all they cared was whether he taught the material well (he did) and was kind to those with late assignments (he was. He had been a university student once too; he remembered the anxiety and depression that took him and his mates in waves). He was a good professor; Jon knew that objectively in the marks his students received. But in the subjective? His student had decided they liked him.

This had dawned on him at the end of his first semester; when he was inundated with emails of sincere thank-you for a great semester, for being such a helpful teacher, for taking the time to help review, et cetera. Martin had grinned at him, poking a tongue out his mouth and making some remark about teacher’s pets coming full circle (Jon was never a teacher’s pet though. He had always asked too many questions. He welcomed those questions with open arms now, to be the teacher he hadn’t had.)

The next semester it had been more obvious that students liked him now that he knew where to look. It was in the open “good-mornings” and questions about his weekend plans, and in the fact that he had the best attendance records of his department. It was in the way they asked genuine questions about his material and the waitlists miles long to get into his sections. Later on, it was in the gentle ribbings about his looking tired and the grey hairs even as they celebrated his fortieth birthday with him, bringing in cupcakes and sneaking in between lectures to decorate his office and the sincere questions over his scars, his life, his relationship with Martin (his introductory lecture always featured Martin and Her Regency, their thick orange tabby). To make eight wonderful semesters short, he was familiar with his students, and they weren’t afraid to be familiar back. Which was wonderful in the classroom and all, but not when he was trying have a relaxing evening with his husband.

Which brings them back to Wednesdays. Wednesdays were the days least likely to have students out in town, he had learned from Dr. Kerrigan, the positive psych professor, because Thirsty Thursdays started off the weekend’s partying and drinking for the undergraduates. Wednesday was the day students, in theory, buckled down to finish homework and give themselves a free weekend.

So here they were, Martin in a collared shirt, printed with tiny flowers, and jeans, hair bleached white from the Lonely and curling softly at his temples; Jon in a slouchy ribbed turtleneck and high-waisted pants, his own thick curls half-piled atop his head. Jon was listening intently as Martin spoke animatedly, talking about his own day as a guidance counselor at the local primary school.

“…and I swear Jon, if it wasn’t bad enough that Kimmy has decided never to speak to Lawrence again, now Lawrence has confided in me that he is positively in love with her.”

“Did he say that verbatim? In love, I mean.”

“I mean, no, but he said he was willing to give her all his Squishmallows for a playdate. Squishmallows. That’s real eight-year-old commitment, right there.”

Jon barked out a laugh and put on a puppy-eyed expression, grinning all the while. “Martin Blackwood, do you hereby take Jonathan Sim’s stuffed animals, to have and to ho-”

A gentle swat to the knee with Martin’s shoe cut Jon off. “Oi! Respect my children. They may be fools but its not their faults their brains aren’t developed yet. And yes, I know, ‘they’re not developed ‘til twenty-five and you can argue that your students’ brains aren’t developed either.’ But it’s different. They’re babies.”

“And I’m the All-Knowing One,” Jon mused thoughtfully around a forkful of food, earning him another love-filled kick.

“Speaking of,” Martin pointed to Jon with his glass, eyeing him deliberately. “Midterms next week, yeah? How do you think it’ll go?”

Jon shrugged, scratching at the back of his neck. “Alright, I hope. First exam went well but could’ve been better. I’m worried about Avonni, honestly, he’s nodded off a few times in class and I’m not confident he has someone to get the material from.”

“He has you.” A pointed, snow-white eyebrow.

“Right, but sometimes students don’t want to ask for notes because they think I’ll say no. Maybe I should email him. Speaking of email! Did I tell you what Suzanne sent out?”

“Oh no, what?”

They carried on like this through their meal and into dessert, and not for the first time Jon was struck by the sheer normalcy of it all. His greatest concerns were Suzanne’s passive-aggressive emails and his students, not the inevitable destruction of reality as they knew it to be. They were scarred, inside and out, everyone who had escaped The Magnus Institute was, but they were safe and free and happy. In defiance of everything that had happened to and because of them.

“Dr. Sims!”

Uh oh. Spoke too soon.

Bite of lava cake halfway to his mouth, Jon squeezed his eyes shut, rolling his eyes back in his head and willing there to be another professor with the surname Sims in the restaurant. When he opened his eyes, Martin was valiantly trying to suppress a smile as he eyed something, someone, over his head. Jon twisted awkwardly in his seat to see—

“Parker. What a surprise.” His voice was warm but carefully measured, and the dark-skinned boy waved, shit-eating grin on his face. “I have told you that you can call me Jon.”

“Yeah, I know, but you earned that doctorate! And “Doctor Jon” sounds awful, like you should have your own show or something.”

He hadn’t earned that doctorate, actually, but Martin’s expertise in lying and the disastrous apocalypse that had left everyone disoriented meant it had been easy to exaggerate some of Jon’s CV and manufacture a fake diploma.

“I do have my own show. Monday and Wednesday mornings, where I teach a bunch of caffeinated undergrads parapsychology,” Jon replied easily. “You’re welcome to tune in.” He liked Parker; he was a bit of a class clown, liked to ask off-topic questions or pretend to sneak a look at Jon’s answer sheets, but he was sharp and knew his stuff. Jon respected that. He reminded Jon of someone he dearly missed.

But Parker had already turned his attention to Martin, who was watching the interaction with mirth in his eyes. “Hello sir! I’m Parker McMichael, Jon’s favorite student.” Martin shook the extended hand and nodded in mock seriousness.

“Of course. Pleasure to finally meet you. Are you the one with the essay on ESP or the one on psychokinesis?”

“Neither,” Parker shook his head proudly, short dreads swaying gently with the movement. “The Validity and Continuity of Near-Death Experiences,” he made a mock marquee with his hands, arching curved fingers to indicate the title hanging in the air. “Researching any consistencies in near-death experiences stories, whether they’re legitimate, and what they mean if they are. But-” Parker shook his head and turned his attention back to Jon. “That’s not why I’m interrupting.” He took his phone out of pocket idly as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve come to settle a dispute among the 11 a.m. section.”

Oh no.

The Ceaseless Watcher whispered to him, unbidden, the dispute in question. Jon generally knew how to suppress the powers, and they were weaker than they had been, once upon a time, but when he’s caught off guard with the desire to know, to Know, it could still overtake him.

“This you?” A blurry screenshot of a Youtube video is shoved under his nose, a part of a text chain titled Sim’s Spoopy Spirits, captioned by many text bubbles expressing disbelief and objections and a variety of emojis. Jon took the phone and examined it, the truth already sure in his chest. Yes, that was him, dressed in his Jonny d’Ville costume, eyeliner streaked and eyes closed, mid-ballad. God, he wished he could be rid of those Youtube videos.

Jon’s gaping silence must have been enough of an answer for Parker because he whooped a little too loudly for the restaurant they were in and pumped his fist to his chest before typing very quickly on his phone. “I knew it! Take that Sabina,” he was mumbling to himself, lost in his texts for a moment.

Martin took the opportunity to clear his throat. “Sorry, uh, no one’s asked so I will. How did you know to look for him-us-here?” Jon frowned, He hadn’t thought about that.

“Oh, a couple of my mates work here and mentioned seeing Dr. Sims and his husband here a lot on Wednesdays and I dunno about you so much, but Dr. Sims is pretty habitual. Figured it was as good a guess as any. Some things can’t wait til Monday.”

“..an email. Parker. You could’ve sent me an email.” Fingers ran over scarred face, as if he could wipe the irritation (and Martin’s poorly-hidden laugh) from existence.

“But then I couldn’t do this.” His phone was back up again, level with his own face and he twisted so both his own and Jon’s faces were in the shot. “I’m here at 7:02 pm on Wednesday the 26, here to make a very important announcement,” Parker spoke to the camera with confidence. “Dr. Sims just confirmed to me that he is the one, the only, Jonny d’Ville.” Parker held the camera to Jon’s voice. “Anything to say to your adoring fans?”

Jon sighed and tugged on an errant curl. “Don’t forget, reading due Monday.” He wasn’t genuinely upset with Parker, just filled with fond embarrassment.

Parker sent the video off and clapped the back of Jon’s chair. “Well, Dr. D’Ville, its been a pleasure. Everyone’s really excited to get a confirmation on your status of coolest teacher. Any plans for the evening?”

Jon sighed through his lower lip, stray curls framing his scalp flying upward in the sudden burst of wind. “Watching a documentary and trying to forget—wait. What?”

“Oh yeah no, everyone thinks it’s badass. You’ve got a super nice voice and the stories you told were really interesting, if a little buckwild.”

Jon felt his cheeks flush and Martin grinned slyly at him from across the table. “Y-Yes. I guess we were rather good.”

Parker gave his farewells and Jon’s shoulders sagged (he had immediately righted his posture on seeing Parker, his grandmother’s voice in his ear reminding him of his manners), turning his full attention back to his husband. Martin had maintained that grin and was eyeing him intensely, like he expected Jon to say something.

“What, Martin?”

“God, you’re such a dork.” The words were soft, expression fond, and Jon could feel the radiation of unadulterated love Martin gave off in his smile, the one only ever used for Jon. “You really love your students, don’t you? You know how much they love you, right?”

Jon grumbled, but he couldn’t quite sweep the smile off his face either as their waiter made his way over with their check.

“No comment. But we are switching to Tuesday date nights.”

#tma #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #prompts #date night #jmart #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #fanfic to a tea

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theradioghost · 5 years ago

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Can you talk more about the history of the language and storytelling techniques/conventions of audio dramas? That's an incredibly intriguing concept but I wouldn't have the first idea where to look for more info about it. It reminds me a lot of the idea of video game literacy and how a lot of games aren't accessible to people who are brand new to video games because there are so many established conventions that aren't explained to new players

It has taken me nearly a month to reply to this, which I know is in reply to this post, and I am sorry for that! But also, yes!!!!! Hell yes, yes, I see exactly what you mean about the video game stuff.

Unfortunately I think there’s not much out there already written about the developing conventions of the new wave of audio drama. In large part, I think, because coverage of new audio fiction from outside the community has been so notoriously poor. But maybe also partly because there seems to be a strangely negative take on classic radio drama from a lot of the US sector within that community? Which I think really comes down to exactly the things I was talking about -- Old radio drama feels wrong to a lot of people now, because its storytelling language just doesn’t exist in our culture the way it once did; and even fewer people are familiar with late-20th-century American audio fiction like ZBS that might feel more comfortable or closer to other present-day mass media storytelling techniques. I see it claimed sometimes that there’s something inherently unsophisticated about old time radio storytelling, which is just flat out untrue, and I would highly encourage anyone who’s wondering to check out something like the “Home Surgery” episode of Gunsmoke or “The Thing on the Fourble Board” from Quiet, Please to see just how effective and well-done a lot of those old shows were.

(Leaving the UK out of this, because audio fiction stayed way more prominent there and I do not think the same problems exist, and leaving everywhere else out because unfortunately I just don’t know enough about how the medium fared elsewhere, or how it’s doing now. Alas.)

I’ve been thinking lately about parallels to this in other media that I have been able to study and read other people’s writing on, and I think a good comparison is possibly novels? The western “novel” as we think of it is really something that didn’t exist at all until about the 18th century (there are earlier works that have been kind of retroactively labeled ‘novels,’ some of them centuries earlier, but even if they have the characteristics of what we now call a novel, they’re very much disconnected from the evolution of the novel as something we have a name and a definition for). There are no novels from the medieval period, from the Renaissance. There are books as long as novels, but they’re not novels.

The thing is, when you read 18th and even 19th century novels, it shows, because the techniques for telling a story in that form hadn’t been really figured out yet. What you get is a lot of meandering, episodic doorstoppers, some of which have hundreds of pages before the main characters even enter the picture. A lot of writers at the time, and into the 19th century, actually hated the whole concept of novels. I think it’s a bit like going back and watching Monsters, Inc. and then watching Monsters University. The first one was revolutionary, yeah, and it’s a good movie still, but it’s not hard to see the visual difference between the two just in terms of the tools that the people making them had available to them. Before you can write a story or animate hundreds of thousands of individual hairs on one character, you have to figure out how.

One of the big, obvious things about novels from that period, though, is that many of them are first-person, and many are epistolary. It’s hard to find one that isn’t supposedly a memoir or a journal or a set of letters. The third-person perspective in long-form prose was something that had to be figured out; it didn’t just exist in the void, automatically summoned into existence the moment we started writing novels, which I think is really fascinating. There’s a lot of work in those early novels that’s being put into explaining why, and how, and to whom the story is being told. Because otherwise, how does it make sense that the book exists? It’s not a poem, or a play; it’s not taking the form of a traditional story or myth, not attempting to be an epic. Those early novels were about contemporary, real-seeming people, so the writers and audiences wanted an explanation for how the story had been recorded that relied on other existing forms of writing -- letters, journals, memoirs, sometimes claiming to be older texts that had been “found” (gothic novelists seemed to like this one). Sometimes the narrative voice is just the author using first person to actively tell you the story. They hadn’t yet bought into the presumption that we take for granted now, that a novel can have a voice that knows everything, without being the voice of any character in it.

And I think that it’s fascinating how similar that is to the heavy use of recording media as frame narrative in modern audio drama. It’s worth noting: classic radio drama doesn’t do this like we do now. By far, the standard for OTR is the same as the third-person omniscient perspective, the film camera; the storytelling presumes that you’re not going to need an explanation for how you’re hearing this. The audiences those shows were made for were used to fiction told solely in audio, in a way that a lot of modern audiences are not, and so that narrative leap of faith was kind of inherently presumed.

There’s also a way more common use of omniscient or internal narration in old radio drama that I feel like I mostly see now only in shows that are deliberately calling back to old styles and genres. A good example is The Penumbra; we hear Juno’s internal thoughts, just like so many of the noir-style detectives from the 40s and 50s I grew up listening to, and we never really ask why or how. (Except, of course, when the show pokes fun at this affectation, which I think really only works because it feels more like lampshading the stock character tropes of noir, as opposed to the actual audio storytelling technique it facilitates.) To take it further, there are some old radio shows like the sitcom Our Miss Brooks which go so far as to use an actual omniscient narrator to facilitate a lot of the scene transitions, but do so in a much more confident and comfortable way than modern shows like Bubble, where the narration reeks of “we’re making this audio drama in the hopes we can finally make the TV show, and we actually hate this medium and don’t know how to work in it, so rather than learning how to make what’s happening clear with just audio, we’re going to tell you what’s happening and then reference that we’re just telling you what’s happening.”

Bubble’s narration doesn’t work, because it’s actively pushing against the show, telling you things that sound design could have told you just as easily, sometimes actively acknowledging that the narration feels wrong instead of just not using narration. Our Miss Brooks is admittedly not one of my favorite old radio shows, but its use of narration is much smoother, because it’s written with a confidence that it’s only being used to clarify the the things that would be the absolute hardest to show with audio alone; confidence that they know how to tell everything else with sound. Internal narration from the likes of Juno Steel or Jack St. James or my favorite classic detective Johnny Dollar works because noir as a genre is inherently tied to the expressionist movement, where the (highly idiosyncratic) personality and worldview of the characters literally shapes how the world around them appears to the audience; it works to hear their thoughts, because we’re seeing the world through their eyes. We don’t have to know how they’re saying this to us, they just are.

None of which is at all to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with using framing devices! Actually the opposite, kind of. First of all, because I genuinely do think that it’s a sign that we are actively, at this moment learning how to tell these stories, and how to listen to them, which is just so, so exciting I don’t even have words to express it. And secondly, because as a person who loves thinking about stories and storytelling enough to write this kind of ridiculous essay, I am obsessed with metafiction. I’m a sucker for the likes of Archive 81, The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale, Station to Station, Greater Boston, Within the Wires. They’re stories that take the questions that framing devices are used to answer for writers and audiences who don’t feel comfortable not asking them -- Why is this story being told? Who is telling it? Who is it being told to? -- and use those questions to the full advantage of the story, exploring character, creating beautifully effective horror, creating a bond with the listener. (Hell, one of the admittedly many things that Midnight Radio was about for me was exploring how much value and comfort I have found in listening to stories that acknowledged I was listening to them.) I think, though, that not all stories necessarily are their best selves when they feel like they have to address those questions, and as fiction podcasts become a bit more mainstream I’m really hoping that writers will feel more comfortable in trusting the audience to suspend that disbelief, and that audiences will feel more comfortable doing it, and that framing devices will be less unjustly maligned.

Of course, all of that is focused on writing techniques, and I think that’s because I’m a writer who has studied writing! I know very little concretely about the part of audio storytelling that relies on sound design, so while I have a definite feeling that classic and modern audio fiction is using different sound design languages, or that the audio language of British audio drama (where there’s much more continuity in the history of the medium) is different from audio fiction from elsewhere, that’s a lot harder for me to put into words like this. It’s something I would desperately love to see explored by someone who did know that field intimately, though.

#there also ARE books out there about (mainly classic) audio fiction and I really need to read some of them #anyway! here's today's ridiculous ramble about The Medium #hope this was maybe enjoyable and/or interesting rather than just self indulgent lmao #stories and media tag #geekeryisafoot #asks #my posts

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iforgotmypreviousaccountlol · 5 years ago

Text

Starting Line

Happy Holidays, @carson-asmo-lover

This is your Secret Santa gift. I hope you like it!

AU: Asmo is a uni student who just moved into a new apartment unit, Solomon is living next door learning how to bake. Every day, Asmo would smell the sweet aroma of baked goods from his room and in the hallways. One day, after a hectic day from uni, he stops in front of the door trying to guess which baked good is being made for that day. The door opens, cue awkward silence, Solomon invites Asmo into his apartment, and into his life.

ASMO

There, there it is again. Asmodeus glanced at his wall clock. Right on time: 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The sweet smell of sugar and pastry permeated his room. His next-door neighbour is baking again. He closed his eyes and inhaled, trying to take a guess which pastry his neighbour decided to make today. It has been a good past-time for whenever he found himself bored on some days when he doesn’t have uni classes. Not that he had nothing better to do, he had to catch up on a lot of schoolworks but he isn’t in the mood to do them right now.

He moved in just a few months ago so he could be closer to school, but now that he enjoyed the new-found freedom that is living alone, he realized he missed the constant presence of his brothers. Sure, having his own place meant that Lucifer wasn’t around to nag him when he goes out to party most nights, or if he brings people back to his place for some night escapades (He never did bring someone over though. Maybe he should.) He made a mental note to go home for the weekend if the workload permits.

“Cinnamon rolls,” he finally said, propping up from the couch. The sweet smell of the cinnamon powder that contrasted with the slightly sour cream cheese made Asmo’s mouth water. He groaned. “If you’re gonna make pastries, at least offer some to your neighbours so we don’t get hungry from the smell.”

Now he has no choice but to go down and buy something sweet to satisfy his craving. He put on a peach sweater and wrapped a white scarf around his neck. He stared at his reflection for a moment. His champagne-colored hair was longer on one side, stylishly swept to frame his face. His diamond stud earring reflected light when he turned his face in a certain angle. “Alright, enough. I look stunning, as always.”

He wrinkled his nose at his neighbour’s door when he passed on his way out, the smell of cinnamon is much stronger in the hallway. He hadn’t even met the mysterious baker, given that he’s almost always out to some party when he isn’t in class, it’s strange that they never even once bumped into each other in the lobby or the elevator. He shrugged and went on his way to hunt for some cinnamon rolls.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Asmo was almost dragging himself back to his condo unit after a hectic morning. He had a 3-hour lecture for Fashion Marketing and he had to pass a 10-page essay on Fashion Theory (which of course, he crammed last night. He even skipped a campus party!) and he’s just about ready to pass out and is determined to take a long nap for the whole afternoon. That would have been a solid plan, except it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the scent of baked sweets wafted from his neighbour’s room and into the hallway.

He stopped on his tracks and inhaled the scent, his brain immediately fell to its routine, trying to discern which ingredients are being used to create what pastry. “Milk, definitely. What else? Eggs? And oh—”

The door suddenly opened. Asmo jerked back in surprise, his hand latched to the strap of his sling bag. He blinked once, twice.

A tall man with silvery-white hair with stunning blue-gray eyes, wearing a black turtleneck with sleeves rolled up to his elbows and white apron, came out of the room carrying a small trash bag. Asmo was never one to be at a loss for words, especially not in front of attractive people, but his tongue refused to make an audible sound.

“Oh, hello. I suppose you’re my neighbour? I believe this is the first time we’re meeting each other?” The man continued, “I’m Solomon.”

Asmo shook off his surprise and cleared his throat. He wore his usual disarming smile and nodded at him. “Asmodeus. I just came back from school, I was just, uh,” he said while gesturing to his unit’s door.

“I see.”

Awkward silence filled the space between and around them. Asmo noticed a faint sprinkle of flour on Solomon’s right cheek, he clamped down the urge to reach in and dust it off.

The fire alarm started beeping causing the two to jolt in surprise. Solomon raced to the trash chute, dumped the trash bag and raced back inside his room to turn off the oven. Asmo stood unmoving to the doorway. He wondered if he should offer help.

Thick smoke came out of the oven when Solomon opened it, he fanned the oven with a mitt. The fire alarm hasn’t stopped beeping so Asmo mindlessly stepped inside and grabbed the nearest flat object (which happened to be a pan of piped cream puff dough) to fan the alarm component on the ceiling. He honestly had no idea what he’s doing. The piped dough from the baking pan fell and scattered on the floor, one even hitting him right on the cheek.

“Oh. It stopped,” he commented, the pan still raised over his head.

Asmo glanced at Solomon who was still kneeling in front of the oven and saw that a bunch of dough pieces is now strewn around the kitchen floor. A solitary piece of dough stuck on the baking sheet finally gave up and dropped on Asmo’s forehead. He blinked slowly, unsure on how to react.

Solomon snorted, obviously trying but miserably failing to hold back a laugh. Asmo flicked away the dough which earned a chuckle from Solomon, which in turn triggered Asmo to burst into laughter.

“Sorry, that was… not funny.” Solomon said in between laughs.

Asmo doubled over. He wiped a tear that escaped his eye from laughing and said, “It kinda was.”

“Listen, why don’t you sit and clean yourself up. I’ll just tidy up for a bit and we could enjoy the successful batch I made earlier. Think of it as a welcoming present.”

Asmo considered it for a moment. Sleep or… this? “Sure.”

Solomon smiled, and started cleaning up the mess.

Asmo pulled out a chair and sat. His rose and gold eyes followed Solomon’s movement. It mesmerized him; the grace in his movements, certain and self-assured. He stared so hard he didn’t even notice that Solomon was already standing in front of him asking something.

He shook his head a tiny bit. “I’m sorry, come again?”

Solomon chuckled. His chuckle sent a shiver down Asmo’s spine.

“I asked if you would like tea or coffee. To pair with the cream puffs.”

“Tea, please. With milk.”

Solomon nodded and proceeded to the kitchen counter to make the tea. Asmo wanted to face palm and cringe. Why is he acting this way?

“So… tell me about yourself,” Solomon said.

Asmo paused. In any other instances, he would’ve already started talking about himself without even needing to be prompted. Why is it that he can’t think of something interesting to tell this guy?

“Why don’t we talk about you first?” Asmo deflected the question.

That earned another smile from the fair-haired man. He brought the cooling rack containing the cream puffs and a tray of tea and cups.

“What do you want to know?”

Everything, Asmo thought. Instead he asked, “What’s your major?”

“Chemistry. You?”

Huh, that surprisingly fits him. “Fashion design. Why are you always baking?”

Solomon sipped his tea. “I promised my little brother Luke I would teach him how to bake. You see, a friend of mine, Barbatos went overseas for a job. He was the one who was supposed to teach Luke. But since he can’t, I decided to give it a go.”

“That’s incredibly nice of you.”

“Thank you. For now I still need to watch videos and study the recipe but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. Well, except for the incident earlier.”

Asmo nodded. The cream puffs looked so good he wanted to pull out his phone and post it on his Instagram but he stopped himself. He reached for one and popped it into his mouth.

The milky taste and the slight crisp of the puff blended well, it tasted divine—Asmo’s thoughts stopped at the same time he stopped chewing. WHAT IS THAT? It’s bitter and spicy and sour, flavor after flavor assaulted his taste buds faster than his brain can process the actual taste of the pastry.

He looked at Solomon, the latter clearly expecting a comment or reaction from him. Good thing he quickly managed his expression. He smiled, the cream puff still stuck on the roof of his mouth.

He was saved by the ringing of Solomon’s phone. When Solomon turned his back to reach for his phone, he quickly spit out the pastry on his handkerchief and stowed it on his bag’s pocket.

Solomon’s eyes widened slightly at him when he saw him gulped down his tea as a desperate attempt to wash out the aftertaste. “You sure are thirsty. More tea?” Solomon offered.

“I am. Yes, please.” Asmo nodded vigorously.

“So, what can you say about the cream puffs? It’s my first time so I can understand if they didn’t turn out perfect.”

That would be the understatement of the year, Asmo thought. He also dreaded the question. To tell or not to tell? “Do you have any more of the strawberry tart you made the other day?”

“How did you know I made some?”

“Please. Everyone on this floor probably knows what you’re baking every day.”

Solomon chuckled and proceeded to get a strawberry tart from his fridge.

Asmo swallowed, bracing himself. Just a small bite. A chaos of flavors.

He placed his palms flat on the table for 10 seconds then rushed to the sink to spit out the tart and gargle water. “What the hell was that?”

Solomon raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean? It tastes normal to me.”

Asmo’s jaw fell when he saw Solomon eating his tart with no problem, enjoying it even. He can’t believe he spent his days craving for sweets his neighbour baked when in reality they taste this atrocious.

“That’s it, Solomon. You’re not allowed to bake anymore,” Asmo said, shaking his head.

“Huh? I thought I was doing fine. I really need to learn though, I can’t disappoint Luke.”

Asmo bit his lip, considering. He sighed. “Fine. You can bake all you want, but never without me. I’ll oversee whatever you’re doing to make sure you never end up making those… those unidentifiable monstrosities again!”

Solomon smiled; in his grey-blue eyes, Asmo saw wonders, and potential, and… a future. “Deal.”

SOLOMON

Solomon checked his watch. It’s Friday and Asmo will be coming over in a minute or two. It’s already been more than a month since they started their “baking lessons.” Granted, it’s not every day; it’s only twice a week, thrice when their schedule permits. But would it be a stretch if he admitted to himself that the highlight of his weeks are the days when Asmodeus comes over to watch him work?

A knock interrupted his thoughts. He should just give Asmo a spare key, he thought while walking towards the door.

“You’ll never guess what happened in class today! So see, I crammed a paper again last night so I almost came late for class. Our professor for that class was Professor Simeon, you know? He’s wonderful but can be very strict so I didn’t want to be late and be scolded but then, on the way to the classroom…”

Solomon’s lips tugged at the corner as he watched Asmo lament about his tiring day at school. His strawberry champagne bangs swept stylishly, slightly messed up by the wind. His gold and ruby eyes sparkling along with his words and gestures. Asmo always looked alive to him. No, not the usual alive as in living. Really alive. Maybe that’s what happens when you know to find love in everything.

“Anyway, what are we making today?” Asmo finished, hanging his white coat on the rack near the door.

We. It shouldn’t have sounded as nice as it did. “We,” he said the word with maybe a bit more excitement than warranted, “are making red velvet cake.”

“All right! That’s great. I love red velvet.”

“I already prepared—”

He stopped because of the irritation that flashed in Asmo’s eyes. He bit his lower lip to suppress a smile.

“Throw it out.”

“That would be a waste. At least try out the batter before rejecting it.”

Asmo put both his hands on Solomon’s shoulders and looked at him seriously, emphasizing his words, “Solomon, I know for a fact that you are an amazing and smart chemist, but you’re hopeless in the kitchen.”

Solomon laughed which earned a chuckle from Asmo. “No, no, I didn’t add any suspicious ingredients this time. I swear. I followed the instructions word for word.”

Asmo begrudgingly took a spoon and tasted the batter.

“Good?”

He shrugged. “Surprisingly.”

It was two weeks ago when Asmo finally figured out what he was doing wrong all this time. Solomon had a bad habit of experimenting with ingredients, most likely because of his chemistry experiments. But even after figuring out what’s the problem, Asmo continued supervising his baking. Not that he’s complaining, and not that he would ever ask the arrangement to be over. He would never admit it out loud, but he liked having Asmodeus over.

Solomon started whipping the frosting with a hand mixer while Asmo stayed close to watch him. It took a lot to focus and not glance on his side.

Asmo said, “Hey, you got a little something—”

His eyes met Asmo’s in time as Asmo’s fingers dusted something from his cheek. They stayed frozen in time for a moment; staring at each other, Asmo’s fingers barely grazing Solomon’s cheek.

The moment would’ve lasted longer if the mixer’s whisk attachment hit the side of the bowl in a wrong angle and sprayed both of them with frosting. They blinked at each other before bursting into laughter.

“Kitchen blunders for the nth time,” Solomon joked.

Asmo pulled out his phone and suggested they take a picture, Solomon let Asmo take their “selfie.” After Asmo was satisfied with the pictures, Solomon reached for a paper towel to wipe frosting from Asmo’s usual immaculately beautiful face.

After the cake cooled, Asmo helped design the frosting. He also took pictures to post on his Instagram. Solomon made an account last week just to look at the pictures occasionally. The photo of the cake earned hundreds of likes and comments in minutes. Well, that can’t be helped, Asmo is a popular guy. Solomon would be too if he actually bothered to socialize, but he found it rather exhausting to deal with people he’s not interested in.

“Hey, could you send me our picture from earlier?” Sol said.

“Oh yeah, sure.” Asmo fiddled with his phone. “…And sent.”

“Thank you,” Solomon replied.

They settled down on the table to eat the cake they made and have some tea. They talked about their days and their upcoming exams. Eventually, the sun started setting. Its golden rays streaming from the window, dyeing the room in a soft orange hue.

“I think you’re okay now, Solomon. Remember to just always follow the instructions and don’t add any unnecessary ingredients to whatever you’re cooking or baking, and it’ll turn out fine.”

Solomon raised an eyebrow. He pushed away the idea that Asmo will now stop coming over because they already eliminated the cause of the weird taste (which isn’t actually weird for him).

“It's a force of habit. I’m always curious so I can’t stop myself from experimenting with things.”

“I guess…”

“Why, am I eating up too much of your time?” He asked.

“Of course not. I like spending time with you, Solomon.” Asmo’s cheeks flushed a bit.

Solomon sipped his tea.

Asmo took the small window of silence to change the topic. “Anyway, I got a call from Mammon the other day and guess what? He’s appearing in a mag—”

“Me too,” he interrupted.

“Hmm?”

“I like spending time with you too.”

Asmo was caught off-guard but eventually smiled. He reached for his bag and pulled out a silver box with a champagne-colored ribbon. “By the way, here.”

Solomon’s brows wrinkled. “What’s this?”

“Happy Birthday, Solomon.”

“How did you—”

Asmo winked at him. “Information comes easily when you have a lot of friends.” Asmo laughed and continued, “Kidding. I’m in the same class as Meph, he works in the registrar’s office as an assistant so I asked him. I had to do him some favours, but eh, it’s worth it.”

“Thank you, Asmo. Really.”

Asmo’s phone beeped, he looked at his notifications. His eyes widened a fraction.

Solomon smiled. He had an idea why Asmo was surprised. He glanced on his own phone, notifications pouring in fast. He clicked on a post, his first one ever.

It’s a photo Asmo took of them earlier. Asmo, lively as always, was throwing a peace sign while winking, his ruby and gold eyes full of wonder; Solomon, his blue-grey eyes a pool of mystery, was smiling a bit, looking at him contentedly. The caption? Best birthday with ‘that special someone.’

His phone chimed, a notification appeared on top of his screen: Asmodeus liked your photo.

#obeymesecretsanta2020 #obey me au #obey me asmodeus #obey me solomon

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theexistentiallyqueer · 5 years ago

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It’s been a while, what with me being being more active on Twitter these days, but I had some thoughts churning around in my brain and this felt like a better place to post them rather than threading them over there.

This is a post about Persona 5 and restorative justice. Before I go any further, though, a note: this is meta about restorative justice and prison abolition as ethical philosophies only, how it can be expressed/structured in works of fiction, i.e., Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, and what the importance of doing so is.

I should also note that I am not a philosopher, a legal scholar, or an activist, I just like to read, and I strongly encourage you to look into the topics I’m discussing in this essay. If you want specific recommendations you can DM me; again, this being meta about a video game, I think linking those titles here would diminish their importance regarding what they’re actually about.

Ready? Okay. Let’s get started.

what is restorative justice?

‘Restorative justice’ is a concept in ethical and legal philosophy that holds itself in contrast to two other kinds of justice: punitive and carceral. Punitive justice is justice as punishment, i.e., an eye for an eye, while carceral justice involves justice as the confinement of criminal offenders. While both have heavy overlaps with one another, they’re distinct in the generality vs the specificity of their outcome: punitive justice can involve the death penalty, property seizure, permanent loss of rights, etc., carceral justice refers strictly just to the incarceration of criminal offenders in institutional facilities (jails, prisons, etc.).

Restorative justice, in contrast, roots itself in the understanding of closing a circle: the best and most holistic way to heal harm one person inflicts on another is to have the person who inflicted the harm make reparations to the person they hurt in a tangible and meaningful way. This can take many forms, and if you’re passingly familiar with restorative justice already, you may have heard about it involving the offender and the victim meeting face-to-face. This does happen sometimes. Personal acknowledgement of the harm you’ve inflicted on someone is important, and direct apologies are important, but these need to also be coupled with actions. The person behind a drunk hit-and-run of a parent could help put their orphaned child through school, or a domestic abuser could be made to take counseling and go on to help deter domestic violence in other households, and so on.

The vast majority of states across the world use punitive/carceral models, though small-scale community trials of restorative justice have been attempted, to varying degrees of success. No one is going to argue that it would be easy to implement, but it is important. Restorative justice is about recognizing that crime, specifically crimes against other people, are fundamentally still about two people: the perpetrator and the victim. And we have to look beyond the words perpetrator and victim to recognize that they are both human beings and challenge ourselves to build a society where our concept of justice means healing hurts instead of retaliation.

It’s not easy, but it is possible. It requires changing your own perceptions of justice and humanity and society and the big wide entire world to have the kind of mindset that allows it to be possible. But it is possible, and I know that from personal experience, because it’s my own mindset and I’ve been through trauma too.

prison abolition and the god of control

Persona 5 has an authority problem. By which I mean, Persona 5 has a problem challenging authority in any way that functionally matters.

The game is drenched in heavy-handed prison imagery, from jail cells to wardens to striped jumpsuits to cuffs and chains to an electric chair. Throughout the long build-up of the main storyline we’re treated to a confectionery delight of punitive justice, stick-it-to-the-man justice: the Thieves find a bad guy who coincidentally has personally hurt or is actively hurting one of their members, and they take it upon themselves to make the bad guy miserable and then send him off to jail. By the end of the arc you’re meant to feel like you accomplished something heroic, that by locking someone up you’re balancing the scales of justice. In the Kamoshida arc Ann even frames this in restorative justice terms, telling him he doesn’t deserve the easy way out of ending his own life and needs to live with his mistakes and repent, but he’s still sent off to jail regardless and Ann and Shiho are left to struggle through the trauma he put them through without anyone to really support them. This repeats itself, over and over: Madarame, Kaneshiro, Okumura, Shido--expose the bad guy, bring him low, publicly shame him, and then send him away (or, in Okumura’s case, watch him die on live TV to riotous cheers from the public).

And what does this all accomplish, in the end? You get to the Depths of Mementos on Christmas Eve to find the souls of humanity locked away in apathy, surrendered willingly to the control of the state, and your targets right there with them, thanking you for helping them return to a place where they don’t have to think of other people as people any more than they did before. In prison, they can forget that they are human beings and that all of the rest of the people in the world are too. The Phantom Thieves march upstairs and defeat the Gnostic manifestation of social control, that being that masquerades itself with lies as the true Biblical god. And then you go back home and the adults tell you that everything is okay now, the system itself isn’t rotten, and you just have to sit back, stop actively participating in the world, and let them take the reins.

It’s one of Persona 5′s most ironic conceits. “Prison abolition....good?” the player asks, and Atlus swats you on the hand and says, “Silly kids, prison abolition completely unnecessary because you can trust the state to not fuck up anyone’s lives anymore ever.” All while using prison imagery to present prisons as institutions inherently divorced from what might constitute actual justice.

Prisons exist because hierarchies exist, and so long as hierarchies exist, inequality will exist and people will commit harm who otherwise likely would not. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Atlus. You can’t frame prisons as an inherently unjust institution used to control people because you didn’t do anything to get rid of the hierarchy. You just gave the hydra a few new heads.

restorative justice and rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is Persona 5′s favorite buzz word, and for all that it’s used the game never really clearly defines what it’s supposed to mean. Yaldabaoth uses it as a euphemism to describe the process by which he creates his ideal puppet, but Yaldabaoth bad, and by the end of the game, Yaldabaoth dead. We get barely any time with Igor after that for Igor to define rehabilitation properly on his terms, which is notable in that Igor is the one who’s supposed to be the spiritual mentor of the wild card within the Persona universe.

We can only infer from that that it’s the player who’s meant to define what rehabilitation is by the end of the game, but because the game fails to take any concrete stance on its themes that could in any way undermine the idea that society isn’t functionally broken, it’s hard to figure out what conclusion we’re supposed to draw. As I stated above, the game immediately walks back any insinuations that it’s the institutions themselves that are rotten by having Sae and Sojiro step in and assume responsibility for making the world just by continuing to operate within the rules society itself has created. If you can’t beat them....join them?

If anything the closest we can get to coming up with a definitive understanding of what the game wants us to understand rehabilitation as is when the protagonist is in juvie. During those months we’re treated to an extended cutscene of all of your maxed out confidants taking action to get you out of jail, but because you can trigger this scene even if you haven’t maxed out all of your confidants, and because the outcome (getting out of juvie) is the same even if you haven’t maxed out any besides Sae, then we’re right back where we started.

But that cutscene still has a sliver of meaning to it despite it being largely window-dressing, because the game does push, over and over, the argument that it’s through your bonds with others, through building a community, that you’ll rehabilitate yourself and find true justice.

And that’s what restorative justice is about: community.

the truth: uncovering it vs deciding it

I can’t find enough words to convey how infuriating it is that Atlus comes so close to telling a restorative justice narrative and then completely drops the ball on displaying it at all in Goro’s character arc.

Goro’s concept of justice is fundamentally punitive, the textbook “you hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back.” In doing so he goes on to hurt a whole bunch of other people: orphaning Futaba, orphaning Haru, triggering a mental shutdown in Ohya’s partner Kayo, and also killing countless millions other instances of mental shutdowns, psychotic breakdowns, bribery, and scandal that caused people material harm and, in a handful of cases, killed them.

Yes, Shido gave him the gun, but Goro pulled the trigger. And in a restorative justice framework, you don’t bypass that fact: you actively interrogate it.

There’s been a lot of really great meta about what the circumstances of Goro’s life were like, including the Japanese foster care system, the social stigma of bastardy in Japan and the impact it has on an illegitimate child’s outcomes, and the ways in which Shido groomed and manipulated Goro into being the tool of violence he made him into. These things aren’t excuses for what Goro does, however: they’re explanations for it. They are the complex social issues that create a situation where a child feels his best choice, indeed maybe his only choice, is to take the gun being offered to him and use it on other people. If you want to prevent more kids from slipping through cracks into those kinds of situations, you need to understand the social ills that made those cracks appear in the first place and you need to fix them. Otherwise there will always be another kid, and another recruiter, and another bad choice, and another gun. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.

Even so, none of that bypasses the fact that it was Goro’s hand on that gun, that it was Goro who performed the physical action of killing Wakaba’s and Okumura’s shadows, and that, as a result of Goro’s direct actions, Wakaba and Okumura died. You can say Okumura deserved it all you like, but Haru doesn’t deserve to be an orphan. Haru deserved to repair her relationship with her father. Okumura deserved the chance to learn and make direct, material amends to the employees he hurt and the families of those who died on his watch, and they deserved to have him give them a better way to heal.

But this isn’t about the loss of Okumura making amends to his family or his victims: this is about Goro Akechi, and the fact that even in Royal his fraught relationship with Haru and Futaba is never explored, barely even addressed. There’s not even any personal, direct acknowledgement from him of the pain he put them through.

You can say he doesn’t care, and that’s fine that he doesn’t care. And it is. He’s a fictional character, this is a video game, they are anime characters.

But Persona 5 flirts with the idea of restorative justice and never fully explores it, and it’s a weaker game for that.

the thin place, the veil between worlds, the line in the sand

This is the last part, I promise, and I’ll be short and brief here, because the truth is that none of this matters, at least not in the way that you think. Persona 5 is a story. It’s a lie that we buy. It’s all zeroes and ones and electrical signals and optical images on a blank black screen.

But art can be powerful. Art is like magic, the deepest magic, the oldest kind. We human beings are creatures of art and poetry, of images and patterns, of music and words. Good art, really good art, can allow us to explore new ideas and critique our internal assumptions about how the world works.

No, fiction doesn’t affect reality, not the way that you think it does.

But if you’ve gotten this far, I just got you to read an essay on restorative justice and prison abolition in regards to a Japanese role-playing game, and that is something to think about.

How do you define rehabilitation? What kind of justice do you believe in? Is the way you conceive those things really the best way?

And how much more interesting could a story that challenges those concepts be?

#persona #persona 5 #persona 5 royal #goro akechi #akira kurusu #meta #words

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suraira · 4 years ago

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Principles You Can Use From Rowling’s Philosophy of Writing

by Ruthanne Reid

If you’re like me, you loved the Harry Potter series. Maybe you watched the movies or even visited the theme park, and you wondered about JK Rowling’s writing process and the strategy she uses to write her best-selling books. If you’re like me, though, you’ve also been deeply hurt by things Rowling herself has said. On Twitter, on her website, in interviews, and more, Rowling has promoted harmful views of trans people, and you might be one of her many readers who find it painful, or even impossible, to return to the Harry Potter books you once loved.I understand. Before I dive into the wisdom we can draw from Rowling’s writing process in order to write our first draft (or others), allow me to share a principle with you. Death of the Author: Or, How to Love the Book, Not the Author In 1967, a French literary critic named Roland Barthes wrote an essay called La mort de l’auteur, or Death of the Author, in which he states that any piece of writing should be separated from the author that wrote it. In other words, he believed in judging the written work completely on its own merits, without involving personal beliefs or actions of the author in question. Sometimes, this is possible to do. Sometimes, it isn’t, and we readers have to apply discernment to what we read and the lens in which we view things.I have two examples for you. HP Lovecraft First, HP Lovecraft, whose incredible work literally created today’s modern horror genre. Do you enjoy any kind of tale with Elder Ones, or chaos gods, or even just good old Cthulhu? (I know I do!) His work was so creative, so new, that you’d be hard-pressed to find any horror story that doesn’t show at least some of his influence.Unfortunately, Lovecraft was also an extremely xenophobic racist. Now, I enjoy a good chaos god, and I’ve made the decision to separate his xenophobia from his writing. That means, of course, that I must view critically anything he wrote that implies white English people are somehow the pinnacle of humanity.It means I purposely do not allow his racism to infect my way of thinking. By doing so, I am practicing la mort de l’auteur. JRR Tolkien Here’s a second example: JRR Tolkien, whose work defined modern fantasy. Do you enjoy anything with elves and dwarves or made-up languages? We owe Tolkien for that. He redefined and polished the fantasy genre so well that everything from movies to MMORPGs still use his templates. Unfortunately, he also described his orcs as “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” Yowza. Now, was Tolkien a racist? Not exactly. In fact, according to the standards of the time, he was absolutely liberal and anti-racist. So then what do we do with this bizarro and racially horrifying description? We see it and choose to discard it. Generations of artists and authors have done exactly that, turning orcs into anything but“least lovely Mongol-types,” and aiding this genre.Again, it’s important to see the problem so you can avoid letting it influence your work. We enjoy the good parts while consciously discarding the bad, rather than being influenced by it. So What About JK Rowling? She’s not dead. In fact, she’s still saying harmful things, even as we speak. Instead of listening to her readers, who (at least initially) approached her in love, trying to help her understand, she doubled down, rejected their experience and their words, and in the process, caused an unbelievable amount of pain. Here’s the thing about la mort de l’auteur: it is entirely up to you whether to apply it to what you read, or to simply discard the whole thing and find less troublesome authors. Both roads are valid. In no way do I condone her attacks on the trans community, or her persistent sharing of misinformation. I choose to apply la mort de l’auteur for the simple reason that I benefited from the good things she’s written, and I wanted to share them with you. However, if you aren’t comfortable doing that, you are absolutely welcome to walk away. In fact, I’d suggest these writing articles instead: Neil Gaiman’s rules of writing, or how to create your own rules of writing. Okay. Awkward stuff done. Ready to dive into the process stuff instead? Let’s go! 9 Rules From JK Rowling’s Writing Process Over the course of her writing career, Rowling shared a lot of solid writing wisdom, and in my opinion, eight writing rules stand out—along with a ninth we can apply from her choices since. Whether or not you’re writing your first book like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) or last book in a series (like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), I think these rules speak to Ms. Joanne Rowling’s philosophy on writing.They are great writing tips for you to reflect on in your spare moments and then apply to your writing process, for short stories, novels, bestsellers, or even the first time you’ve ever attempted a book. Rule One: Protect your writing time “Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it.” This is especially hard for those of us with family. Our loved ones come first, and while that is important, our loved ones also need to understand that we need time to write. Setting reasonable boundaries is a crucial step for a writer—even if they’re as simple as, “Mommy needs fifteen minutes of quiet time, okay?” If you have trouble setting boundaries with loved ones, try setting a reasonable boundary for one week. See how it goes. If it’s too much time or too little, tweak it. Establish a routine that signals to others that it’s your writing time, but also lets them know that outside of your writing space, you’re there for them. Not only will this teach the importance of flexibility and discipline to others, but also that your writing is valuable. It’s your work, and your dream! Needing quiet time to write doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family. Your writing deserves your time, too. Open communication about this can help everyone understand and respect that. Rule Two: Treat your writing like a job “You’ve got to work. It’s about structure. It’s about discipline.” It’s easy to forget that writing is a job. We don’t always feel like doing our job. We certainly don’t always feel inspired. To be writers, we must train ourselves to sit down and write even when we don’t feel like it. Those moments are the ones that really matter, even more than the shining, flying, muse-kissed moments.Writing when we don’t feel like it is what turn amateurs into professionals and rough drafts into polished manuscripts. “The muse works for you. You don’t write at her beck and call—you train her to show up when you’re writing. “ Rule Three: Believe you ARE a writer “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.” Yes, writing is possible with another job. Yes, writing is possible with other responsibilities. Are you a writer? (I know your inner critic snarled no, but I also know a tiny candle-flicker of unquenchable hope in you whispered yes with so much longing you could cry.) You ARE a writer. That means you write. A runner runs. A painter paints. A cook cooks. You are a writer. You write. Accept this, fight to believe it, and be amazed at how far that takes you. Rule Four: Write what you know “Write what you know: your own interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets will be your raw materials when you start writing.” This doesn’t mean you need to experience aliens in order to write about them. It means that all good stories have universal application. A great example is this Google Doodle. (Trust me. I’m going somewhere with this.) Take two minutes and thirty-six seconds to watch this: Halloween 2017 Google Doodle: Jinx’s Night Out It’s adorable, right? Without a single word, this video told an effective story. You felt for the little ghost, both when it was sad and when it was happy, right? News flash: you’re not a ghost. That was universal application. It doesn’t matter what culture you’re from or what language you speak; all human beings know what it is to be lonely, to feel left out, to be frustrated, determined, and to finally be with friends. That story works because the creators used their interests, feelings, beliefs, friends, family and even pets to tell this story. (I’m fond of the kitty, myself.) I’m greatly oversimplifying, but here’s the gist: you already know how to tell a moving story because you live one. If you’ve ever had emotions, ever responded to anything, then you already know what universal application looks like. Listen to the people around you, and apply empathy. You don’t have to be a ghost to write a good ghost story. Rule Five: Read “I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I’m in good company there.” Read. Read. Read some more! The more you read, the bigger your arsenal of words will be. The more you read, the better your grasp of metaphor, poetry, beauty, passion, and empathy will be. The more you read, the greater you will be as a writer (and probably human being). It’s like learning more dance moves or impressively difficult notes on an instrument. The more you learn, the better you’ll be. So read in your genre. Read outside your genre. Get in the habit of finding time to pick up a book instead of your phone (unless it’s to open up another book.) You DO have the time to read. Even if that’s just ten minutes a day. Any time counts. And the more stories you read, the more likely you’ll start to implicitly develop the skills you need to become a great writer. Rule Six: Persevere “Perseverance is absolutely essential, not just to produce all those words, but to survive rejection and criticism.” This is one of those unpleasant truths about publishing: you’re gonna get rejected. A lot. I wish there were a way around this. Harry Potter was turned down again and again because that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And it isn’t only publishers: when you get published, and your work is out there, you’ll get bad reviews, too. Mostly, they’ll just be people who don’t understand what you’re doing. Intellectually, you’ll know that. Your heart, on the other hand, is going to break into a thousand pieces. But here’s the secret: you can’t stop writing because of push-back. You MUST NOT stop writing because of push-back. Keep going. Don’t stop. When you get rejected, pick up your pen and keep going (and use the way you feel to put more universal application into your work). And when you’re feeling really discouraged? Remember that when someone doesn’t like your book, they might also just not be your ideal reader. That person just wasn’t your target audience.If your book isn’t to someone’s taste, that’s all right. It will be to someone else’s.Keep writing your book, because your ideal readers need it. Rule Seven: Bring your whole self to the page “What you write becomes who you are … So make sure you love what you write!” Writing is a little like a Mobius strip, in a way: Your beliefs and experiences and feelings all help craft your writing. However, your writing clarifies, corrects, and often reveals your beliefs, experiences, and feelings. As you write, you’ll discover things about yourself. You’ll clarify things, too, because it’s only as you come to write them that you realize they needed clarification in the first place. Now, understand: this means that if you haven’t given yourself a good look to find your biases (we all have them), you will bring those to the page, too. It’s important to see who you are as you bring your whole self to the page. Writing is a brave, bold venture, and life-altering discovery is part of the journey. Rule Eight: Accept that failure is part of the process “Failure is inevitable—make it a strength. You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with.” Failure is normal. Also, it is okay. You’re going to write a lot of crap. You’re going to push past those things and write more crap. It may take you twelve years. It may take you a million words. If it does, then you’re on the right path—the same one your favorite authors walk. Accept that it will take time, and that sometimes, your pencil won’t be your friend. If you accept it, then when it happens, you won’t throw in the towel and set the house on fire. Instead, you’ll be able to go, “Well, dang; that sucked, didn’t it? Knew it would happen. Time to write some more.” Rule Nine: Respect Your Reader Sadly, this rule doesn’t come from writing advice she’s given, but in a way, it’s the final conclusion of the previous eight. This involves bringing your whole self to the page. This involves empathy and universal application. This involves perseverance, never quitting, and willingness to tackle your writing troubles. If your readers value what you created, they will listen to what you say. Your words have the power to uplift or hurt others. None of us can ever really know where someone else is coming from, and it’s essential that both our stories and our interactions reflect respect. Respect yourself enough to be a better person. Respect your readers enough to hear what they have to say. This sounds scary, I know, but I promise you, it’s worth it.

#how to write #writing advice #writing #tw jk rowling #jkr #jk rowling #tw long post #long post #long text post #top writing advice #rules for writing

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #330

“and i don't want ya / and i don't need ya / don't bother to resist, or i'll beat ya / it's not your fault that you're always wrong / the weak ones are there to justify the strong”

If you have a job, do you like it? I'm unemployed. Do you like any kinds of fruit? Well of course. Are you waiting for something right now? Covid and this headache to fuck off, May for my tattoo, to be paid to take some pictures again... What is your favorite kind of animal? Kind, not the actual animal itself? In that case, social species, usually mammals. What kind of Dippin' Dots do you like? Holy shit, I haven't had that in like a damn decade or something. I don't know, I barely remember the taste. Who is the most badass woman that you can think of? My mom. My mother is a fucking warrior. Do you have a Pinterest account? Yeah. I get a lot of photography ideas from there, as well as base pictures to make Mark icons, haha. If you were to write a book, what would it be about? The stories I and my friends have weaved in RP. Have you ever seen the television show The Munsters? AHHHHH YES!!!!! Mom loves that show, so I used to watch it with her growing up. Have you ever written one of those 'Roses are red...' valentines? I don't think so. Would you/have you spent more than $200 on any one person for a holiday? I haven't, but I would for certain people. Do you have a favorite Robin Williams movie? Probably Night at the Museum. Thoughts on Slender Man? Have you even heard of him? I think it's a cool creepypasta; he does look pretty unnerving with his height and especially lack of a face. The movie was good too, btw. Do you know what the Tardis is? I think almost everyone does in this generation, haha. Doctor Who ain't no joke to a whole lot of people. Are there any children's shows that you'd watch today if they were on? Sure, like Pokemon or Avatar: The Last Airbender, among others. I wouldn't at all be opposed to watching The Lion Guard, either. I actually want to, with my whole TLK love. I'm not embarrassed to watch "kids" shows or movies at all. What would you call yourself the King or Queen of? Having not an ounce of knowledge on how to love things in moderation/avoid total obsession with things, haha. If I paid for you to take karate lessons, would you? No, especially not now with my legs. Do you read more fiction or non-fiction? Almost solely fiction. What modern technology are you especially grateful for? Laptops, ig. Do you have a favorite science topic? Genetics. Very fascinating stuff. Have you ever read any Sherlock Holmes stories? No. What is the saddest movie that you've ever seen? Either Johnny Got His Gun or Boy in the Striped Pajamas. What's your most popular post? On what? If Facebook, I don't really know. Possibly my "coming out" one or a lovey-dovey essay when Sara and I were together. On Tumblr, it's definitely the gif I made of Mark and Chica (his dog) with I think over 10k notes. Manga or anime? Anime. I don't read manga, though I've been tempted with Deadman Wonderland since the show only had one season and ends on a ginormous cliffhanger, but there's more story to be had. A card game that you're good at? None, really. A popular book you haven't read yet? To Kill a Mockingbird. I feel like every school student has read it at some point. Favorite Mean Girls quote? I don't know any. It's a fine movie, but I've never understood the hype. Name your top 3 albums from your favorite band/artist. Black Rain, Ozzmosis, and... then I can't choose. I love so, so many very dearly. Name your top 5 music videos. I don't really watch music videos, so I definitely can't name five. My #1 favorite is probably "Wrong Side of Heaven" by Five Finger Death Punch; I absolutely cannot watch it without crying. What are you most passionate about? How did this passion develop? Animals. I was born simply adoring animals and have always wanted to protect them and their environment. Do you like monkeys? Do you believe in evolution? Yes and yes. We've literally watched it in action. What embarrasses you the most in front of other people? Discussing RP if you're not involved in it. I'm terrified of people thinking I'm weird. Have you considered running for president? Absolutely not. Which famous person would you like to be BFFs with? I'd say Mark, but I'd be way too interested in dating him instead of being just friends, haha... So with that said, maybe Bindi Irwin? Would you ever go skinny dipping with the last person who commented you? Lyndsey would be that person, so no. She's a great friend of mine, but realistically I'd probably only ever - if ever - do that with the company of my s/o. Are you still friends with the last person who broke your trust? No. How long did your last relationship last? Around two years. Have you ever been banned from anywhere? Online, yes, as a little kid on the Animal Planet forum, haha... Has anyone kissed you when you weren't expecting it? Yeah, Juan. Did you like it? It was a sweet moment, but I didn't want it. Does your dad smoke? Like a chimney. Is your mom over 50? Yeah. Are you currently listening to anything? Yeah, kinda hooked on "The Horrible People" by Manson. I've found a lot of great music lately. Would you ever consider getting breast implants? No, but once (if...) I lose all the weight I want, it's going to be a moderate priority to get a breast lift. I've hated my body way too fucking long and am dying to be satisfied with it again, and with how much weight I need to lose, I would essentially have grandma tits. :x Do you know anyone who is bisexual? Me, haha. Among some friends. Who would you tell, or who did you tell when you lost your virginity? That's not something I'd just go to tell someone afterwards for no reason... I'd only ever mention having lost my virginity if I was actually asked or if it was relevant to a conversation. Is there something you have been trying to learn lately? I'm really trying to practice opposite action and behavioral activation, among other things I've learned in group therapy. When you think about your future career, do you envision yourself becoming the head honcho or CEO? If not, why not? Well, I want to be my own boss as a freelance photographer. In any other job, I definitely wouldn't want that. Too much responsibility and leadership skills. Can you think of a time when you seriously misjudged a music artist based on their name? I don't think so? Have you ever kissed someone that you didn’t really want to kiss (not assault, just indifference)? Why did you go along with it and how did you feel after? Yes, Tyler. I felt like I was "supposed to." I felt really uncomfortable afterwards. If you have to wake up early for something, what time is just TOO early for you to be there and be presentable and sentient? Have you ever had to be somewhere that early? Probably like, 5:00. No. Have the majority of your romantic relationships started with a physical attraction or a deeper connection? Always an emotional connection. Did you ever write a fan letter to a celebrity? How about submit something to a magazine? No to both. What hair color is the most attractive on the opposite sex? Of natural colors, black, but I like unnaturally dyed hair most. Where do you like to go to when you are stressed? On a carride, so long as I'm controlling the music nice and loud and not talking. Where do you go to get your hair cut/dyed? To a family friend's little salon/small business. Why do you want the career that you want? Because I adore art and think it's pretty darn magical that you can freeze a moment forever to not just remember in your head, but actually see. Have you ever watched iCarly? Yeah, I enjoyed it when I was younger. What was your favorite class during your sophomore year of high school? Art. Do you wear bandanas in your hair? No. Have you ever been on a blind date? No, not interested. How many living grandparents do you still have? None. Have you ever worked in an office? No. Who does the grocery shopping in your house? Mom. Have you ever stayed in a hotel without your parents or older relatives? No. Did you have an Easy-Bake oven when you were little? Sure did. Have you ever seen a donkey? Yeah. Have you ever made out in a hot tub? Pretty sure no. Do you always flush the toilet after you use it? Yes. What were the last words you said to your dad? Probably "bye, love you." Have you cuddled with someone you weren’t dating? Nah. Who has the ability to hurt you the most emotionally? JASON. Are you a really understanding person? Yeah, very. Are you the type of person that enjoys getting hugs? Yes. When’s the last time you wore a wig? For a witch costume many years ago. Why were you last hospitalized? Suicide attempt. What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without food? At least 12 hours, but I think I almost went a day once back when recovery started and my appetite was non-existent. What was the last name of your third grade teacher? Mrs. Britt. How was the last chicken you ate cooked? They were chicken tenders. What is your favorite kind of chip? Hot crunchy Cheetos. What grade did you have your first boyfriend? 7th. Have you ever been told that you’ve lost weight? Yeah, back when I actually WAS losing loads of weight. >> Do you have the same political views as your parents? Some things, but definitely not all. Does anyone call you babe/baby? No. Have you ever made a significant other cry? Sadly. If you could make your lips bigger, would you? Maybe just a teeeeny bit. Are you one to sneak food into movie theaters? Yep. Fuck them prices. Are you prone to illness? Definitely not. What races do you usually date? History says Caucasian, but I have no actual preference. I'll date any race. What’s your cup size? C. Ever flirted with a teacher? Yikes, no thanks. Who was the main cook of your Thanksgiving meal last year? My older sister made the most stuff. Have you ever been dumped really harshly? Well, considering it literally traumatized me... Do you have any ex’s you can’t stand anymore? No. Are you more of a phone or a computer person? Computer, definitely. When was the last time you made a sandwich? What did you put on it? Yesterday for lunch. Ham, American cheese, and mustard. Have you ever made friends with someone that you didn’t expect to get along with? Yeah. Do you own any accessories with your name on? No. What brand of eyeliner do you use? I pay no attention to this. Have you ever been sexually harassed? No. Have you ever sent a naughty text message? Suggestive ones, yes. How long have you had your pets? Roman, around two years. Venus, around three or four years. Who was the last person to tell you that they love you, other than family? Sara. Has one of your friends ever tried to hook you up with someone? Colleen tried obnoxiously hard to push Girt and me together. We all went out to eat pizza once just as friends hanging out, and this bitch prefaced an uncomfortable and nosy question to him with an even more uncomfortable "because I'm trying to get you in her pants...", and that, my friends, was the closest occasion I've ever come to slapping someone right across the face. I looked at her in absolute disgust, and Girt was clearly thinking "what the actual fuck" as well. I do not miss her feral mouth. Are you good at staring contests? No. Eye contact is very difficult for me to maintain. Do you like peanut butter? I love peanut butter. When was the last time you had to present something to your class? In this mandatory but entirely pointless entry class at my last college, we all had to do like this PowerPoint introducing ourselves. I hated it. Who was the last person that told you they missed you? I think my friend Chelsea. What store is your favorite shirt from? It's not a real store, but rather an online brand: Cloak. Mark is one of the owners/creators so I obviously support them intensely. Have you ever fell off your bed while you were sleeping? No, thankfully. Do you have something you’re supposed to tell someone, but you haven’t yet? No. What type of food do you never really eat? Vegetables, oops. Have you ever cut someone else’s hair? No. Do you like going to weddings? Not really, if I'm being honest. I'm only interested in photographing weddings for the only the couple pictures and pay, really. I'm not big on formal events. What’s your favorite flavor squash? I don’t like squash. Do you or anyone in your house have a severe allergy? No. Who was the last guest in your house and what were they staying for? Our landlord/family friend, just to hang out for a little bit and chat with Mom. What fad were you actually into? Hm. What was the last spontaneous thing you did? I'm not a very spontaneous person, so I really don't know.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''the beautiful people'' by marilyn manson

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hillnerd · 6 years ago

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Hello hillnerd! I've read more than one of your interesting analysis, so I was wondering, if/when you'll have the time could you explain why/how Ron's character was mistreated by the movies? We all know what a terrible portrait of Ginny they've done, but I've always felt like they did a worst job with Harry than with Ron. Thank you very much, and if you've already spoken more deeply about, don't you worry about it ^^

Aw thanks so much! I’m glad you find my extra long rants interesting! ;)

So! Ron Weasley is my favorite character in the HP series. I found myself continually getting more and more disappointed with his portrayal as the movie series progressed, and have had lots to say on it over the years, but don’t believe I’ve ever had one semi-cohesive long post about it. Here we go, kids!

I have explored this when I went into classism and how it plays into Ron, and the Weasleys, portrayal in the films. This, I feel, is key to understanding how perverse the changes ended up being in the films. To me it’s not just about the character of Ron not being portrayed accurately, but rather an all-around disdain for poverty/working class people.

I won’t repeat what I said in my other essay- but please do read it to get a fuller picture of my issues with Ron’s portrayal. To sum it up, classist tropes of poor people being stupid, lazy, unloyal, and fearful is what Steve Kloves reduced the Weasleys to.

I also am not a huge fan of the movies, so have not given many of them a lot of rewatches- nor will I for this- so it might get hard for me to remember all issues, and I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of them.

HOW RON WEASLEY WAS RUINED IN THE MOVIES:

When people watch the films they come away from them having some understanding of who the characters are in the books. Harry might come across as more serious in the movies- but his bravery, his dedication, his self-sacrifice, and even at times his sarcasm- are still there. Hermione and her whip-smart intelligence are not just present- they are upped to the point of ridiculous at times- they also went on to make her even more empathetic, friendly and kind than she was in the books (she’s more of a prickly little thing- but they portray her as this sensitive empathic character who never puts a step wrong in the movies… ) and made her more physically capable than in the books too. (punching malfoy, able to physically lift Harry into the air when being swung around on the whomping willow, dueling capabilities etc)

Then there is Ron. Most people come away thinking Ron is a coward, or stupid- at best they find him amusing. The movies seemed to go out of their way to wipe away all of Ron’s positive attributes and replace them with problematic behaviors that were completely antithetical to who Ron was, and even change scenes so that he did the exact opposite actions as well. They robbed him of almost every act of intelligence, kindness, wit, heart and bravery from the books. I’m fine with changes from the book as far as scenes- but I am not ok with them completely altering his character to make him selfish, unkind, cowardly, stupid etc. The movies didn’t just ruin Ron Weasley in them- they created a legacy of suck. I mean, that’s why there are video essays titled ‘is Ron useless’ on youtube where they have to do a breakdown of the character, in the newest HP phone game Ron isn’t featured like Harry and Hermione and is worth less points, in the play he’s portrayed as a dingus who can’t point a wand in the right direction… People fundamentally don’t know Ron, and that’s due to the movies (and their influence - even on how people interpret his character when they read the books, imo.)

Let’s get into it though!

This started with the first film:

the one film that was truest to who Ron was in the books.

The Devil’s Snare

Let’s compare the scenes:

youtube

Now, they had to cut one of Hermione’s feats in order to streamline the journey to the stone. The riddle with the potions would be a lot harder to make interesting in film, so having her shining moment be the Devil’s Snare makes absolute sense.

As it was her one moment of glory, it also made sense for her to get to stay calm. I can’t begrudge that change.

What I DO have issue is, Kloves decided to sacrifice Ron’s character in order to bolster Hermione. He made Ron become completely irrational and panicky, while cool calm Harry and Hermione looked on with amusement and derision.

He could have easily had both the boys unable to keep from wiggling- or had Hermione just crawl off in time like in the book- but no.

This was the beginning of a pattern we continue to see throughout the movies.

They kept feeding the notion that in order to make Harry and Hermione looks cool’/brave- they needed to have Ron cowering beside them- when that is the exact opposite of who he is as a character.

We also have another moment earlier in the book/film that undercuts Ron in order to bolster Harry.

_________________________________________________

Their first quidditch lesson:

BOOK

MOVIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ix0BhYSZBg

Ron’s been flying a broom since he was a kid. Yet he’s struggling to get the broom to go up while most of the class succeeds, and then it strikes him in the face? Really? Neville is already about to have an accident with the broom and made a lot more sense for this piece of physical comedy- but they did it to Ron…

In this film it’s not that big of a deal- after all he has loads of great moments- but it goes to show that Kloves doesn’t understand Ron’s role in the series for Harry- beyond being his best friend, he’s also a knowledgeable guide to the wizarding world. They almost completely remove this from Ron, and give almost all exposition to Hermione or Hagrid. Ron’s essential function is removed. This is just a tiny example. It gets worse as the films continue.

————————————————————————————————

THE TROLL

In the book he is very capable and is able to do Wingardium Leviosa to save Hermione WITHOUT her coaching him in the bathroom. But he can’t have his moment without Hermione teaching him in the movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxMy9T49fM

————————————————————————————————

Chamber of Secrets

This is it. The film where Ron is firmly established as a coward.

He is moaning, squeeking, shaking, crying, and all around acting a total miserable coward in scene after scene. Again this is the exact opposite of who Ron is as person. In the books he’s this fiery tempered guy who is ready to first fight/duel any ahole who crosses his path- but in the movies, he’s this:

youtube

FOLLOW THE SPIDERS

youtube

In the books he never is falling apart like that, even when facing the spiders- his biggest fear. (He is literally phobic of them, but this is now shown in the films.) Harry is stoic, to the point of ridiculously stoic, during these moments- while Ron practically crying. Now I’m fine with Ron being show afraid in this particular scene- my issue is how it’s played for comedy, how they add in moments of ‘now can we panic,’ and have Harry show about as much emotion as a door knob the whole scene.

If this were the one scene where Ron acts like this, hey I’d let it pass.

Nope. It’s become his entire personality. He is in the same state CONSTANTLY in this film. Dignity? Ron does’t get to have a moment of that. He’s constantly making this face:

When in the car, when near his mum, when being yelled at by the howler, when being yelled at by moaning myrtle, when Harry is injured etc.

If his excessive fear weren’t the only big problem that’d be one thing- but no.

He is also striped of his purpose in being a guide to the wIzarding world.

—————————————-

MUDBLOOD AND SLUGS

When Hermione is called a Mudblood in the books she has no clue what that means. Ron is the one who, rather eloquently, explains it.

This is instead given to Hagrid and Hermione. While Ron pitifully barfs int he corner only able to add a feeble ‘it’s sickening’ for laughs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpj3krxJtNU

——————————————————————-

PRISONER OF AZKABAN

They continue to make Ron a coward, but also erode his friendship with Harry and Hermione, and make him ‘irresponsible’ on top of it.

INSUFFERABLE KNOW-IT-ALL

Ron gets detention from Snape for defending Hermione against him.

In the films he agrees with Snape’s bullying comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjxZyljxrxE

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SCABBERS

Ron’s concern about Scabber’s health is made into a one-off sort of joke in the films, and for some reason a narrative of ‘Ron keeps losing Scabbers and is an irresponsible pet owner’ is established in the films.

Molly has to chase him with Scabbers and shouts ‘DON’T LOSE HIM!’ and then later the cat/rat fight is reduced to a ‘Ron’s lost Scabbers’ instead of it being a clear case of ‘the rat is dead, most liekyl because of her cat.’

Again we see Ron being shown as inferior (dumb ron unable to keep up with pets), while Hermione is built up ad able to talk down to Ron. (Ronald has lost him again!) (Also, anyone else HATE that they did this with the Ronald bit with Hermione and Ron?) Even Hagrid condescends to Ron when he finds the rat (and Hagrid is shown as quite clueless, but apparently not as clueless as Ron now….)

——-

There’s a moment added to the films where Harry goes to return the crystal ball to Trelawney and asks if Ron wants to come with him— Ron, a bit rudely, says no. This was used as a way to get Harry alone with Trelawney for the professor to give her prophecy- but why did they have to do it at the expense of Ron?

—————

THE SHRIEKING SHACK

Ron on multiple occassions in the book goes out of his way to attempt to save Harry. ALL of these are cut.

Ron literally put himself between Harry and danger. Instead in the films he’s stupidly sitting beside the whomping willow,

then he’s just screaming, terrified, as he’s dragged away.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhi1bOuIj0E

Then Ron, with a severely broken leg, stands on it to confront a murderer while Hermione scaredly whispering.

Instead they give this line to HERMIONE, while Ron incoherently whimpers on the ground like a coward.

youtube

They knew Hermione had a TON of ‘moments’ in this film already- why did they need to give one of Ron’s ONLY moments to her???????? She had just punched Malfoy (instead of slapped him), literally had the strength of a grown weight lifter to lift Harry by the shirt into the air as they fought the whomping willow and will go on to the have the time adventure… yet, here we are- She has this line as well.

Ron is robbed of every ounce of dignity and gumption and self-actualization he HAS.

————————

Then at the end of the time adventure they have Harry and Hermione laughing at Ron as he, again, incoherently babbles and makes this face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OavYqCjM45k

Oh ahahah! It’s DUMB OLD RON! XD

Everything valuable he brings to his friendship with Harry and Hermione is cut- and replaced with this garbage.

—————————————————————————————————-

GOBLET OF FIRE

Again all nuance for Ron’s character is lost- and he’s demonized while Harry and Hermione are lifted up. They also, throughout the movies, have done a pretty crap job of showing Ron’s place in the wizarding world when it comes to wealth and when it comes to how he’s treated and what he goes through. His lack of money is treated as a joke with his robes, and in general is not taken seriously beyond a a few Lucius is a bad guy scenes and the first movie.

HARRY AND RON’S FIGHT

In the books Ron and Harry’s fight leaves Harry devastated- and Ron’s behavior doesn’t come out of nowhere either. They establish that Harry and He had an agreement to go into the tourney together if they could- but it looks like Harry did it without him. [the post by @owlpostagain does a brilliant analysis of it]

Ron does not come into their fight angry- in fact he’s trying (And failing) to be positive for Harry.

Ron brings NO ANGER to this exchange. HARRY DOES, though:

In the books Harry isn’t reasonable when he tries to explain this to Ron- he’s angry and insults Ron. Of course in the films, they make Harry ever so reasonable and Ron just a moody whiny asshole who is purely angry and spiteful in this exchange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an7WWOY94Qs

The utter misery Harry experiences while he and Ron are on the outs is cut (I mean, at this point, why would he be miserable? Ron is a pretty awful friend in the films.) Best explored in a post I can’t find now- just go and reread how miserable Harry is. (eta: FOUND THE POST!!! Thanks @vivithefolle!)

[This post] by @purpleklimt PERFECTLY sums up all the part in GOF where Harry is desperately missing Ron

He then goes on to attack Ron a SECOND time in the books

They leave out Harry’s part in this fight- and make it solely Ron’s fault in the films.

When they make up in the books Harry is SO relieved he won’t even let Ron apologize. He starts off cold- but immediately turns it around with relief.

But in the movie he’s angry and condescending to Ron (after having a SUPER out of character ‘everyone look at me, who wants me to open the egg!!!’ scene) and continues acting so AFTER they’ve ‘made up’? It’s not a happy reunion. And Ron is acting… really stupid :P For no reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s_dukNgLPg

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TRAINING

Ron goes on to help Harry train for the next task in the books, letting him practice hexes on him. Ron does nothing at all to help Harry in the films. Literally nothing.

———

YULE BRAWL

Again Ron is shown as angry- but they have to up the ante don’t they- where he literally makes Hermione have a breakdown in tears saying he’s ‘ruined everything’- when she had a great time at the ball in the books :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bynhxDUqqgU

Where as in the books they are having a fight of equals:

————-

They also add in a lot of scenes where Hermione is like, a rock for Harry emotionally (which she has never been in the books at all. The closest was in book 7 at the graveyard at xmas.)

————————————————————————————

ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

This is the ONLY movie after the 1st one to show Ron’s true friendship for Harry.

It’s not a coincidence that it’s the only film NOT written by Kloves. Here he is defending Harry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktfsgXyRbuc

Ron is a bit of a non-entity in this movie in general, but he’s a good supportive friend, and even has his cleverness pointed out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_p6j28GC3A

I guess they had to when they cut out him being prefect :P

They do a minor bit of Hermione getting Ron’s lines when Harry meets up with them at Grimauld place:

Ron: We told Dumbledore we wanted to tell you what was going on. We did, mate. But he’s really busy now, we’ve only seen him twice since we came here and he didn’t have much time, he just made us swear not to tell you important stuff when we wrote, he said the owls might be intercepted.

Movie:

Harry: You couldn’t have put this in a letter, I suppose. I’ve gone all summer without a scrap of news.Ron: We wanted to tell you, mate. Really, we did. Only –Hermione: Only Dumbledore made us swear that we wouldn’t tell you anything.

But it’s not the worst infraction. It does cut into Ron and Harry’s bond though in order to bolster Harry and Hermione’s. :P

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HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

Steve Kloves is back- and he seems determined to undermine Harry and Ron’s friendship, bolster Harry and Hermione’s, and generally cut out anything but buffoonery from Ron’s stories.

He has Ron kissing Lavender for seemingly no reason, has Ron looking like a moron as he does quidditch (The helmet… ) and just in general doesn’t give Ron any dignity.

When Ron is poisoned- a VERY SERIOUS incident- Ron immediately goes from dying to sitting up to make a joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3K8XmZX3Q

The MOST EGREGIOUS one, though, is THE ENDING OF THE MOVIE

First let’s look at what we find in the books

They are a TRIO- Ron and Hermione are equally supporting him- but as usual Ron has the most lines of verbal support in the book- because that’s his role as Harry’s BEST FRIEND.

In the film… I mean… LOOK AT IT!

youtube

Ron is COMPLETELY SILENT. And seated about 20 feet away from them as the ‘grownups’ talk and Hermione pledges her ever loving support to Harry, while Ron, again, IS SILENT! FOR THREE MINUTES!

WTF

I JUST…. WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!!!?!?

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DEATHLY HALLOWS

Ron is actually portrayed ok at times here- They are ALL OVER the place with Ron’s characterization though, and do LITTLE to show the sacrifices he’s making leading up to their journey (and don’t support that narrative much later either.)

At times a bumblerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiTgShhO-JM

But is finally allowed to hold his own when things get serious- but shows a weird sort of serial killer-esque darkness as he confronts the frozen deatheater.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk5I27gTOj0

Again they make him an idiot at the ministryhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgGMs3tezw

But Ron’s injury for once is treated seriously. :) (no sitting up to make a joke!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvpgvg_0neQ

The locket scene they do NOT honor Ron’s character, and have him become incredibly cruel compared to how he was in the bookhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZi_9E3ULwI

Again they do what they’ve done with ALL the fights based around Ron (note how they CUT all of Harry&Hermione’s fall-outs?) they make Ron completely randomly unreasonable- and bolster Harry’s perspective as just misunderstood and not at all out of control angry

Don’t get me wrong, Ron was horrid when he was essentially possessed by the locket- but he NEVER went to the low blows Ron of the films did.

They go on in the film to show that without Ron, Harry and Hermione are fine. They are dancing and having a good time without him. And why wouldn’t they? He’s never been the rock of support and common sense he was in the books.

In the books they are hopeless without Ron. Miserable without him. that’s why when he’s back it’s a BIG deal _________________________________________________

♪REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD♪ meh

When reunited, Harry and Ron don’t have a particularly close bond- They destroy theh horcrux- and Ron’s emotional reaction of sobbing after his worst fears are out is cut- because of course all Ron-humanity is cut- and then his bond with Harry where they embrace and Harry comforts him is also cut- because only Harry & Hermione are actually close in these movies….

Movie version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1XUfFnmflU

The clip cuts off but after

All that, and all they say is:

‘Just think, there are only three to go.’

Oh ok! No Ron explaining things, no Harry and Ron bonding- Ron’s not a good friend anyways, right?

Augh.

Where Ron comes in saving the day and bringing them tons of knowledge (the taboo, snatchers, potter watch) film Ron comes back bringing nothing (because Ron in the films NEVER is smart or bringing anything to the table. The TWO TIMES in the WHOLE FILM SERIES he does, it’s commented on like ‘wtf?!’ from Hermione….), and his presence doesn’t seem to particularly change anything for Harry and Hermione either. They were fine without him and Hermione is laughing and smiling LESS with Ron around, so is Harry.

Anyways! Then there is Hermione’s torture. Ron in the books is going mad with grief for her- He on MULTIPLE OCCASSIONS defends her and even says for them to take him instead. in the movies he reacts with a worried look and silence, then when he’s down in the basement seems less worried about Hermione than he was about anything in all those other movies he was freaking out in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHLFlqZ8T8

Look at how sedate he is. Jesus.

In the books he’s shouting her name and desperate for her.

But in the movies… BLECH

At least they still let him save her. (I’m surprised they let that stay.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2zNRrOXbPY

————————————————-

I only saw Deathly Hallows part 2 when it first came out- and haven’t seen it since because i really didn’t like it. The final fight sequence sucks so hard :P

But anyways- what I remember- Ron essentially does nothing and contributes nothing until he gets him and Hermione into the chamber of secrets and they randomly kiss.

ROOM OF REQUIREMENT

He is portrayed as plain old SILLY in the Room of Requirement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiGbypAnFU

————————————————-

MY FRIEND IS ABOUT TO GO DIE.

He gives a lame ‘what? Are you mad’ then as Harry goes off to die, Hermione gives Harry a big old hug- (neither character would let Harry do this- but Ron just STANDING there??? THE FUCK?) and Ron just stand there silently. Again, why is kloves so afraid of having these boys touch? Show affection????? (honestly I think all the times Ron shows anything like friendship in the films it’s usually silent moments that are improvised by Rupert.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg1LLVWZyg8

Like you’re telling me THIS BOY

Is gonna just stand there while Harry goes to die???

——————————

And then hermione almost seems embarrassed to be interested in him

——————————

19 YEARS LATER

Then in the final scene of the book, where Ron had tons of lines (the most besides Harry and Albus) he’s just this potbellied silent dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKA6rmVfW8

Like…. I can’t.

I HATE what the movies did to Ron. (don’t get me STARTED on Ginny.)

At every place they could they silenced him, took away his moments, made him a buffoon, made him a coward, made him a rotten friend, removed all his best traits- and left him to be mostly… THIS

He’s a selfish cowardly lump who is just around to keep the AUDIENCE entertained. Honestly you could cut Ron from the movie series and almost nothing would have to be changed- that’s how little they let him inform the narrative.

#isidar-mithrim #ron weasley #meta #ron weasley defense squad

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plays-the-thing · 5 years ago

Text

Netflix’s Witcher: What Makes a Good Adaptation? – A companion piece

If you’ve somehow found this without seeing the video first, here’s a link:

In this video I analyze the screen adaptations of Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the Witcher series. I use the comparisons of the three to discuss what makes adaptations in general work and to explain why I feel the Witcher is heading down the road to mediocrity.

However, this is a hugely complicated subject, and the works themselves are also complex, especially Martin’s work. I make plenty of claims in the video that a reasonable person could disagree with without any explanation for why I think they are true. Unfortunately, if I were to go down every rabbit hole that I touch on the video would be hours long, so I have to gloss over some potentially confusing or controversial statements.

Enter this post. Here I will be attempting to pre-empt any questions that I think people may have, and go through my thought process on certain claims. I don’t recommend that you read the whole thing. Each explanation will be followed by a timestamp and relevant quote from the video that I am expanding upon so that you can quickly search the page and find what you are looking for.

I’m sure there will be things I don’t think to cover, or things that are poorly reasoned both here and in the video, so feel free to ask additional questions. Just please check to make sure you aren’t asking something that I already covered here.

I will also be attempting to give as much credit as possible to all the wonderful writers and creators who have influenced my thinking with regards to these works. I’ll be linking as much as possible to my sources, as well as to additional content that expands on ideas I mention. Also I’ve included some personal tidbits and commentary, just for fun.

Under a cut for length.

INTRODUCTION:

Huge props to the people who put together the behind-the-scenes footage of LOTR. I’ve watched all the bonus footage numerous times in my life. If you have any interest in the nitty-gritty of how movies get made, I can’t recommend it enough. It really shows all the work and complexity that goes into making movies. That they even get made at all is honestly incredible, especially massive undertakings like LOTR.

[3:30] And if you've ever wondered what the hell happened to The Hobbit, to me it seemed like they were indulging all of these worst impulses instead of catching themselves and editing them out like they did in LOTR.

As soon as I saw that they were making three Hobbit movies my hopes plummeted. It just reeked of executive meddling, and of trying to make the story into something it just isn’t. Lo and behold, that’s what we got: sticking in loads of unnecessary and thematically incoherent material to stretch out the runtime and make it more “epic.” I couldn’t bring myself to watch past the first one, but Lindsay Ellis has an excellent video series exploring in detail what went wrong with the trilogy.

PART ONE: LORD OF THE RINGS

[8:40] If you followed the events and the chronology of the book they would just hang out with Faramir for a little bit and then the movie would end

Technically it’s more complicated than this because that’s already following the revised movie timeline. In reality, Frodo would have just left the Black Gate. They *are* moving the events around to some extent, usually by a few of days here and there, but they can’t move stuff together that takes place weeks apart or the whole timeline would crumble.

[9:55] You can call it the theme, the soul, the spirit, the point, or whatever else you want, but the great works of fiction have something at their core that pulls everything together and elevates it into art. It’s a difficult thing to describe, but I think this scene perfectly tapped into the soul of Tolkien’s work.

Huge shout out to Bob Case and his video “Blame of Thrones” for first introducing me to this concept and the language of the “spirit” of a work to describe this phenomenon. In many ways the first two parts of this video are merely building on the LOTR-GOT comparison that he makes in that video, digging a little deeper and looking at more specific and concrete (and spoileriffic) examples of what he’s talking about so that we can apply these ideas to the Witcher…and beyond. Like all his work, it’s excellent. His YouTube is pretty much inactive these days, but he also occasionally writes content for Shamus Young’s blog if you want more of his work.

PART TWO: GAME OF THRONES

Alright, here it is: the section that really caused me to want to make this companion piece. Earlier I mentioned that I have sympathy for the GoT showrunners, and I really do. Martin’s work is incredibly complex, and so this section dominates the blogpost because there is so much to explain and no way that I could explain it all in the video without incredible bloat.

First I should mention that I, and all the writers I am going to credit here, share a very specific interpretation of Martin’s work. This isn’t the only interpretation. I doubt it’s the interpretation of the majority of readers. Obviously, I fully believe it is the correct interpretation, but the showrunners clearly had a wildly different one.

People who have this interpretation express it in different ways. Joannalannister collects hers in her tag #the-meaning-of-asoiaf. PoorQuentyn expresses it here, and in his analysis of Davos, Quentyn, and Tyrion. Other writers express it in their own ways.

With my lit degree hanging over my head, I can’t help but see it as a problem of competing artistic movements. To me, HBO’s Game of Thrones is part of the art movement of the past few decades, namely postmodernism. Art movements are complex, but basically postmodernism is the cynical reaction to the sincerity of modernism which came before it. Cynicism is, I think, the defining trait of Game of Thrones.

But it is NOT the defining trait of the books. In my view, Martin’s ASOIAF is part of the art movement that we are moving towards, which is starting to become known as metamodernism. Metamodernism is a reaction to the nihilistic pessimism and cynicism of postmodernism, and replaces it not with the unbridled sincerity of modernism, but rather oscillation between the two modes. It can be both ironic and sincere, deconstructionist and constructionist, apathetic and affectual. Once you have peeled back all the layers however, it is ultimately hopeful and optimistic. It embraces a sense of radical optimism. In metamodernist works optimism is often radical because the world the characters live in can be so dark. But that darkness serves only to highlight those characters that can hold fast to virtue amidst such darkness.

So, be warned. If you believe that Martin’s work is all about controlling the Iron Throne, and believe that cynicism is for the wise and honor is for fools, we just aren’t going to see eye to eye.

[12:45] Ned is a competent northern politician who has some trouble adapting to southern culture. Through a combination of bad luck, some understandable mistakes, and a misconception about his position, he fails in his goals.

The show didn’t invent the idea of Stupid Honorable Ned. Plenty of people believed this, even before the show. Obviously I believe they are wrong. If you would like to read more about it I would suggest Steven Attewell’s analysis of Ned’s chapters that he does on his blog, particularly Eddard XI and Eddard XIII. Steven does a much better job of analyzing Ned as a political actor than I ever could.

[13:00] Most of these changes are subtle…the best example is the council debate about whether or not to assassinate Daenerys.

Many of the ideas in this section are pulled from two essays by turtle-paced: Poor Doomed Ned and The Argument to Assassinate Daenerys. Turtle goes deep into the details of the differences between the Ned Stark of the books and the show, and I skimmed some of their comparisons for my argument. Steven Attewell’s analysis of this chapter is also worth reading.

[14:09] It’s a good argument, and I think in the books we are expected to mostly agree with Ned, both morally and politically.

When I say “expected” I mean from the authors point of view, which of course relies on me being correct about my interpretation of Martin’s work. Obviously I think I’m right, but if you don’t agree with my interpretation you may not agree with this statement.

[14:16] Notice also that the supporters of the assassination: Littlefinger, Varys, Renly, and Pycelle are all villains (all except Pycelle are trying to destabilize the kingdom), and the people who oppose it, Ned and Barristan, are heroes.

Each of them represents a different sort of evil. Littlefinger is a scheming sociopathic villain. Varys is a well-intentioned extremist whose willingness to commit utterly heinous acts in the pursuit of his goals makes him a villain. This is because, as Huxley puts it, “The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.” Renly is narcissistic ambitious evil, willing to throw a realm into war to satisfy his own ego, and is totally uncaring about the lives of other people. It isn’t precisely correct to say that Pycelle is a villain because he represents the banality of evil. He thinks he’s just doing his job, but he’s morally bankrupt and politically corrupt.

[16:40] It would take too long to list all the ways that Tywin is awful, and everyone knows it.

To clarify, I mean that everyone in-universe knows it. For some god-forsaken reason, some readers seem to think that Tywin was just being effective after he unleashed the Mountain on the Riverlands and violated every military and political norm in Westeros.

If you are going to say that he is “Machiavellian” I would encourage you to actually read The Prince, where Machiavelli says “Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred” and goes into the reasons why.

[17:17] Tywin on the other hand accomplished a lot of short-term gains by being as treacherous and dishonorable as possible. But this has a cost: by proving themselves fair-weather allies they surround themselves with the same. Nobody trusts them, and so their allies scheme and betray them.

Oberyn and Doran are both scheming in their own way to revenge themselves on the Lannisters for the deaths of Elia and her children. The Tyrells poison Joffrey and scheme to spirit Sansa away to Highgarden.

[17:36] Ned failed due to a couple of minor mistakes, some bad luck, and treachery.

I mention a few times that Ned, and more broadly the Starks, get “unlucky.” Again, Steven Attewell does an excellent job of documenting this with his keen eye for how GRRM cheats political realities, but I’ll note a few of the many ways George has to bend over backward to screw the Starks.

In AGoT Catelyn leaves King’s Landing roughly around the same time that Tyrion leaves the wall, and both are on horseback. In order for them to meet at the Inn at the Crossroads Tyrion has to travel roughly 2,000 miles in the same time that Catelyn travels 400 miles. This is basically impossible, but necessary for the plot so that Catelyn can lose Tyrion at the Eyrie. If she had caught him somewhere further north she could have simply chucked him into her own dungeons and managed his trial herself.

Cersei has been trying to kill Robert for goodness knows how long with just as unreliable methods as “get him drunk on a hunt.” In order for Ned to get screwed she has to succeed in killing Robert at precisely that moment. If it had failed like every one of her other attempts she is most likely dead, because Ned would tell Robert the truth about her children as soon as he got back.

In order for Theon to take Winterfell, veteran military man and castellan Ser Rodrik Cassell has to stupidly empty the Winterfell garrison while he knows that Ironborn raiders are running loose in the North, not even leaving behind a mere twenty-five to fifty men that would have completely thrashed Theon’s assault. If Theon can’t take Winterfell, the Red Wedding doesn’t happen (as Martin has told us that the real inciting incident of the Red Wedding was the fall of Winterfell).

[17:41] However, killing him was a terrible idea, and backfired on the Lannisters instantly.

Continuing this theme, the Lannisters were in an absolutely horrible position at the beginning of the War of the Five Kings. They pretty much just have their bannerman in the Westerlands. Stannis seems to have the support of most of the Crownlands, and he and Renly are splitting the lords of the Reach and the Stormlands (with Renly having the larger chunk). The Starks have all the support of the North and the Riverlands combined. The Lannisters are surrounded by enemies who outnumber them on all sides. Killing Ned immediately jumpstarts a war that will almost certainly crush the Lannisters. That it didn’t took some very thin plotting and improbable developments at times, but overall George made it work. For more analysis of this, again check out Steven Attewell Blog: Race for the Iron Throne.

[17:48] Tywin was killed by both a guest whom he considered his ally, and his son.

I firmly believe Oberyn poisoned Tywin. Here’s a good rundown of the evidence. Beyond simple means, motive, and opportunity it also provides neat answers to lingering odd questions like why Tywin rotted so oddly and aggressively, why Tyrion knew he would find him in the privy, why Oberyn was willing to chuck his life away for a confession before seeming to have secured revenge against Tywin.

It’s also thematically juicy. I love the idea that Tywin, who so egregiously violated Westerosi norms culminating in the total breach of the social contract at the Red Wedding, was a victim of contrapasso. He can’t be protected by social norms, so he gets poisoned by his guest and ally. Did Tyrion know he was dying? Had he put it all together? Was that bolt really an act of mercy? Perhaps it was one final service to the Lannisters, to keep the dream of their alliance with the Martells alive. Who knows, but boy is it interesting to consider.

[18:13] his alliances fall to pieces, and his children are abandoned by even their own family.

I’m referring here to the infighting between the Tyrells and Lannisters (and Martells, though they never had any intent of staying true to the alliance) after Tywin’s death (though there was some before as well, just intensified after Cersei takes over from Tywin). Kevan forces Cersei to take the walk of shame, and Jaime and the rest of the Lannisters abandon her to that fate.

[19:41] Just like Lord of the Rings, and the Witcher, ASOIAF is clearly dedicated to anti-violence. Not pacifism: all three works have heroes dealing out retributive violence in order to try and restore justice.

I understand it might be odd to suggest that three works which feature so much violence can be dedicated to anti-violence, but depicting something is not the same as endorsing it. I would argue in the case of Martin’s work in particular that his depiction of violence, so un-romantically brutal and direct, is intentionally revolting, and therefore is designed to be anti-violence. Martin purposefully makes you want revenge on certain characters, gives it to you, and then forces you to stare at the inhumanity of this thing you thought you wanted. Yeah I wanted Theon to pay, but not like that. Yeah, I wanted Cersei to pay, but not like that. Yeah, I want the Freys to pay, but I don’t think I’m going to like what Stoneheart is going to do to them.

There is a certain amount of this in the Witcher as well. I can specifically think of one scene in The Blood of Elves, but I promised no Witcher spoilers.

The violence in LOTR is much more romanticized, but as Faramir says: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” The hero is still Frodo, who doesn’t fight anyone or anything in the whole story. Frodo is a pacifist, but his pacifism is enabled by others who are willing to fight.

[20:07] In a Dance with Dragons Daenerys allows the old slave-holding class to maintain too much power and so they immediately attempt to continue the old violence of slavery. Daenerys did not commit enough violence against the slave-owners, so they were allowed to continue existing, and as long as they existed they were always going to abuse and oppress the ex-slaves.

A couple years after the release of ADWD, an obnoxiously wrong and poisonous idea began to creep into the ASOIAF fandom: Daenerys’ violence against the slaveowners in Slaver’s Bay is dangerous and immoral, and peace is the better option. This idea was most persuasively argued in the Meereenese Blot’s series of essays.

I’ll quote some of the conclusion here:

“They are supposed to feel this generic distrust for everyone, and to fail to grasp that their peaces were actually quite successful. Dany is supposed to conclude — wrongly — that her behavior through most of the book was silly and foolish. And if you came away with those impressions too, it’s perfectly understandable…The whole plotline is designed to maneuver Dany into a mental place where she’ll decide to sideline her concerns for innocent life, and take what she wants with fire and blood.”

This idea, much like the idea that Daenerys is some sort of unhinged fascist just waiting for the right trigger, makes me unbelievably angry. This idea that I am supposed to value the life of the slaveowner and the slave equally, and that maintaining a “peaceful” slave-owning society is an acceptable alternative to violent revolution is so fundamentally revolting to me, that it turns my stomach even to write that sentence.

Some fans went even as far as to suggest that Daenerys’ occupation of Meereen was a parallel to the US occupation of Iraq, and that she was engaged in erasing an authentic slave-owning culture that she despised. If you read the above series of essays, you can see that they are, at the least, enabling that kind of thinking.

To be clear, I do not consider any slave society to be worth a damn thing. Anything that continues it is evil and all that attempts to destroy it is good. That being said, once again Steven Attewell does a better job than I ever could of rebutting the ideas of the Meereneese Blot, and explaining how the correct parallel of Daenerys’ actions in Meereen is the American mistake of abandoning radical reconstruction. He describes her actions in Meereen as abandoning a revolution half complete. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you are American.

Martin is not a pacifist. He has said he would have fought in WWII. He demonstrated against Vietnam. As far as I know, the first time George ever used the words “Fire and Blood” was in a book released in 1982 called Fevre Dream:

“I never held much with slavery […]. You can’t just go… usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.”

Daenerys is a slave-freeing, slave-owner-killing Hero with a capital H. She has made mistakes. I weep for the lives of the slaves that she has thrown away by abandoning her revolution, by failing to give the people of Astapor the strength to defend themselves, by maintaining a false peace that allows the Meereneese KKK to kill ex-slaves in the night. I shed no tears for the slaveowners that she has killed. When you treat other human beings as property you forfeit your right to Prosperity, Freedom, and Life. Preferably in that order—I would prefer that a slave society could peacefully transition, that those who attempted to continue it could be locked up, and that bloodshed could be avoided. But sometimes violence is necessary.

Daenerys will make more mistakes, I am sure. I believe that she will swing too far in the other direction, temporarily. But that’s a topic for another time.

[20:57] She comforts the hound even as he threatens her and helps him on his path from violence to peace.

Sandor did not die, despite what the Elder Brother told Brienne. He uses his words very carefully, to suggest that the Hound is dead, but that Sandor Clegane the man is simply “at rest.” He has become a brother of the isle.

“On the upper slopes they saw three boys driving sheep, and higher still they passed a lichyard where a brother bigger than Brienne was struggling to dig a grave. From the way he moved, it was plain to see that he was lame.” - Brienne VI, AFFC

[21:40] If they don’t understand why Tywin is a villain then of course they won’t understand why the Others are the main villains of the series, and will probably replace them with some blonde queen. And if you don’t understand that the cold of the human heart is the real enemy than of course you’ll think you can stop winter by just stabbing it. Like Tywin would.

In the books the Others are the villains. They are what the whole story is building towards, much like in LOTR the story builds towards Frodo casting the ring into the Fire. Martin has said that he thinks that the finishing chapters of LOTR, like the Scouring of the Shire, were important, so we may see something like that, but the clear emphasis will be on the existential evil, and cleaning up Cersei or Aegon “Targaryen’s” mess will be a clear step down in importance. It’s something that the heroes have grown beyond, but still need to handle, just like Saruman in the Shire.

[22:04] There’s nothing wrong with liking Game of Thrones, or disliking Lord of the Rings, or anything else.

I really do mean this. I am going to be critical of things you like, and am going to praise things you love. People are different, that’s to be expected. I am not here to pretend that people should only like the things I like. I’m interested in what makes these stories work. I said much the same thing in my last video about some of the new Star Wars properties. People tend to get really attached to the media they like (I’m no exception) and that can color our perception of criticism. Do try to keep in mind that if you like something I criticize it isn’t an attack on you. You have a sacred and personal relationship to the things you enjoy that no one can take from you. I like all kinds of stuff that other people might consider bad, and that’s okay. Actually it’s great, because it gives us something to talk about.

I may genuinely hate Game of Thrones because it butchers something I came to love, but that doesn’t mean I have anything against the people who do like it for their own reasons. We’re all just out here enjoying what we like.

PART THREE: THE WITCHER

There is less in this section for two reasons. First, I promised not to spoil anything past the material covered in the show and I’ll stick to that here. Second—full disclosure here—I haven’t read all of the books because after Blood of Elves I got pretty bored and from what I had heard they did not improve in quality, and if anything got worse. Having already felt that going from the anthologies to Blood I was happy to end my reading there.

If something I say is contradicted by a later book that I didn’t read feel free to let me know.

[23:31] First I should mention that Sapkowski’s works are not on the same level as Tolkien’s and Martin’s, who are the best and second-best fantasy authors of all time. I have enjoyed the Witcher books that I have read, but they are not anywhere near as complex or beautifully written.

This is just my opinion, see above paragraph. I really do think that it’s a pretty common opinion though. I’ve read it before, and you often see people recommend the first two Witcher anthologies in a “if you like it maybe see if you like the rest of them?” sort of way. Book sales numbers also support this, though by all accounts they are exploding in the wake of the show.

But, one potential issue is that I’m reading a translation so I have no idea how good Sapkowski’s prose actually is. You get a lot of sentences in the US edition like: “it must be both bothersome and irritating.” Translation is art, not science, and passages like these make me worry that the translator is just translating each phrase without worrying about all the subtlety that makes language beautiful. These are minor examples of course, but they worry me about what else might be changed. So take my criticism of his writing with a giant, translated, grain of salt, in that I don’t read Polish.

[23:58] Despite this, Geralt the Witcher has been worming his way into popular culture for years, interestingly on the back of a series of video games

Google trends clearly show that the video games are what primarily generated interest in the character before the show. There were no English editions until around the time the games started coming out, and the US editions all feature concept art from the games on the covers. The release of the subsequently translated books after the games received very little attention in comparison to the games.

[24:15] In my opinion, that decline of focus on Geralt was the greatest weakness in the books, and the focus on Geralt is the greatest strength of the games. Because Geralt is at the core of what made Sapkowski’s story and world engaging in the first place. He is a fascinating character in a way that Ciri, who is a fairly standard fantasy “chosen child,” could never be.

This is just my opinion, and I explain why I think Geralt is so great in the subsequent paragraphs. Reasonable people can disagree on this, but I’ve come across more than a couple fantasy characters who could be generically described as “royal orphans with special powers.” It’s not exactly novel. Geralt is pretty novel, at least in terms of what I have read.

[24:49] He suffers many of the same psychological problems that characters like Tyrion and Brienne suffer from in Martin’s work

The technical name for these kinds of issues is “internalized bigotry.” This happens when you get treated consistently horribly by the society you live in due to some fundamental fact about yourself that you didn’t choose, and eventually you begin to believe and “internalize” their opinion of you. For example, people expect Tyrion to be unlovable, conniving, lecherous, and debauched. Eventually he simply leans into these characteristics, because in a way it’s almost easier to be what people expect you to be.

[25:48] To top it off, he hides all this inside a cynical and nihilistic exterior, he pretends he doesn’t care when in fact, he cares more than anyone.

The shot that accompanies this, of Geralt looking intently at what’s happening in the room while others tend to be watching with a sort of mild curiosity like you might at an unexpected circus performance, did an awesome job of conveying this idea.

[26:36] This was kind of a cool idea, but predictably their scenes ended up being generally less interesting and engaging then Geralt’s. Yennefer’s were sometimes fantastic but Ciri’s rarely were.

This was the opinion of fans that I most commonly observed. I don’t have any empirical evidence of this. If you have any that either supports or contradicts this please let me know, I would be fascinated to see it. I could see someone really loving Yennefer’s scenes, and I personally enjoyed a lot of them, but I don’t understand how someone could walk away from the first season with Ciri as their favorite character of the three. I’ll come back to this in a later section.

[27:40] In many ways the first two books, and the games, have more in common with Sherlock Holmes than they do most other fantasy stories.

Really a more accurate comparison would be Philip Marlowe since Geralt is definitely more of an American Pulp detective than a British one. I do love the similarity between Geralt’s Witcher Senses in The Witcher 3 and Sherlock’s detective vision in Crimes and Punishment. I can’t make the same comparison to a Philip Marlowe game, because no one’s made one yet.

Actually that’s not strictly true. There was one game that came out in 1996.

[28:12] But Netflix’s Witcher has barely a whiff of detective fiction anywhere. I think this has caused a lot of fans to feel alienated by the show, even if they can’t explain exactly why.

It’s not reasonable to expect people to know why they like or don’t like something. It’s a feeling, and unless they have experience with writing, narratology, literature, film studies, or just read a lot of tvtropes.org, they are not likely to be able to put their finger on what it is. This causes people to disproportionally blame the things that are most obviously wrong. The premiere example of this is Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace. Jar Jar was obviously bad, but he doesn’t even come close to the top ten biggest problems with the movie. It was much worse that there was no main character or understandable plot and drama. Check out Red Letter Media’s legendary review for more on that.

I think a similar thing happened with Ciri, in that her story was sort of obviously underwhelming and so received a lot of flak, but there are deeper problems with the show.

[32:04] The third change is more subtle, but I’m worried that this Geralt genuinely believes in neutrality.

Just like Ned, the showrunners would not be the first to espouse this view. This quote in particular about “evil is evil” is obnoxiously peddled about as a justification for fence-sitting despite the fact that Geralt’s actual behavior doesn’t support it at all.

I don’t know for sure if the showrunners genuinely think Geralt tries to be neutral. There’s some evidence for yes in the first episode, the Borch episode, the Striga episode, and a couple of others. There’s strong evidence for no in the Duny/Pavetta episode. We’ll just have to see.

To be clear, when I mean “neutral” I mean in the face of immediate violence or injustice. Geralt often doesn’t care who is king, as he explains to Ostrit. But he won’t let a Striga continue to kill people just for coin.

[37:20] When the writers took away Ned’s best arguments for his actions, when they took his story of existential triumph, of not compromising his morals, and turned it into a simple tragedy, they showed they clearly did not understand his heroism.

See PoorQuentyn’s explanation of existential heroism, and how it applies to ASOIAF.

[37:58] In the books, Ciri and Yennefer are included in the story through their connection to Geralt, because he is our hero and the foundation of our connection to the world. In the show they are included before ever having met Geralt, and they take up time that could have been spent focusing on those devilish detective details that make Geralt’s stories and character work.

Originally this video had a lot of discussion about how well these two other characters worked, but it ended up being kind of useless because it comes down to personal opinion, and the writers failure to properly use Geralt massively overshadows whether or not someone liked or didn’t like either of the other two leads. Again, I get why someone could like Yennefer’s scenes. I get why someone could maybe even like her scenes more than Geralt’s. Anya Chalotra did great. I thought the writing was a little weak at times, but on balance pretty decent. Geralt gets the benefit of all his stories being straight adaptations, and she didn’t, so it was a pretty decent job.

On the other hand, I thought Ciri’s storyline was a giant waste of space. When I think of all the best moments in the show, Ciri doesn’t show up in any of them. She spends the entire season running away from and interacting with fairly minor and forgettable characters that did not need to be introduced in this season. Calanthe, Eist, and Mousesack were great characters and the actors gave great performances, but that did not make up for the fact that her storyline went nowhere and did nothing to justify its inclusion. If someone loved Ciri’s storyline I would genuinely be interested to know why.

[39:10] I do have some sympathy for the writers of the Witcher.

Many times in this video I mention sympathy for various writers. Moviemaking is a massively complex undertaking. If you know anything about the difficulty of getting these things together you’ll know that it’s an absolute miracle any movie gets made and takes herculean effort from everyone involved. Television series are arguably even worse because they are longer, more complex, and often have a lower budget despite that. The people involved are honestly doing their best, and I recognize that, even if I criticize the product.

[39:47] They are in this unfortunate position where they can’t really pull the majority of their writing straight from the books because the material isn’t really strong enough by itself.

The books are very dialogue heavy. As I allude to, the one scene that was very close to the book is that scene with Filavandrel and it’s just obnoxious because the two characters just dialogue at each other. It goes on even longer in the book. How well that works in a book is up for debate but it wasn’t going to work on the screen, and it didn’t.

These problems are not insurmountable though. You can put other footage over these monologues. You could have included some footage of Elves fighting in their war. You could have footage of the “cursed” daughters of Lilit being locked in towers or autopsied while Stregobor explains it. I get this is more budget, but that budget went other places.

On the other hand some great scenes that I think would have translated excellently shot-for-shot from the book with little additional budget, like Renfri and Geralt in the Alderman’s attic, are entirely cut. Ah well.

[40:25] Well, I have my theories, but it in the end it doesn’t really matter.

I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody thought it needed to be more “epic” than the first two books are, so we got all this princess and political stuff in early. If there’s any merit to the idea that this series “copied” GoT, it’s somewhere in here, just like how the Hobbit got poisoned with all of the “epicness” of LOTR.

[44:54] Lastly, I’m gonna do my best to put out more regular content going forward. I’m aiming for at least one video a month.

I place no limitation on topics. It’ll probably be mostly media analysis, but if I’m honest I��m just going to write about whatever interests me. That’s the best way to keep myself interested.

That being said, if you have something you think I should analyze let me know. If I’m interested, I might do it.

#witcher #netflix witcher #lotr #asoiaf #game of thrones #anti-got #lord of the rings #adaptation #video companions

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