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linisiane · 1 year

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What do Rick Sanchez, Don Quixote, and Harry Du Bois Have in Common?

In all three of these stories, these characters are ‘self-aware’ in that they intentionally play into the tropes of the stories they’re satirizing (Rick Sanchez satirizing sitcoms, Don Quixote satirizing chivalric romances, and Harry Dubois satirizing roleplaying games). However, the trick to their ‘self-awareness’ is that they’re lying to themselves.

This post is LONG, so feel free to skip to the end if you're just interested in "The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois" (in bolded green) if you don't feel like reading the rest of the analysis. I go into the meaning of the political vision quests, the meaning of the 4th wall breaking RPG elements like copotypes and Jamrock Shuffling, and the effect this has on the player's relationship to Harry Du Bois!

(Common) Rick Sanchez (L)

Although Rick acts like he can see the audience and uses marketable catchphrases like “Wubbalubbadubdub” to appeal to sitcom sensibilities (“Bazinga;” “Did I do that?” “Legen- Wait For It -Dary;” etc.), the truth of the matter is that WITHIN HIS REALITY, he is not a sitcom character.

He truly does not know he’s in a sitcom.

He’s just an asshole.

ID A screenshot from the show Rick and Morty, with subtitled dialogue that says: Wubbalubbadubdub! That's my new thing! I'm kind of like, what's his name, Arsenio! Wubbalubbadubdub! See you next week. Beside the screenshot is a picture of the mentioned Arsenio, who is the titular character to a sitcom called The Arsenio Hall Show End ID

Rick has ATROCIOUS main character syndrome. Truly obnoxious. We happen to be enjoying (debate-able) it from our TV screens, but he doesn’t know that! Hoe’s just calling his family ‘side characters’ and taking them on traumatizing ‘B plot’ adventures to humor-cope with his multiverse induced nihilism. (it is NOT WORKING)

Dan Harmon, as a big fan of the storytelling theory behind sitcoms, has a thing for these type of self-aware-but-not-really characters in his shows. Abed (from his other well-known sitcom named ‘Community') is basically a film student obsessed with film tropes—

Which means he’s eternally making meta self-aware quips on the show without actually being self-aware. He’s not Deadpool, he's just a movie nerd.

It's a wink and a nod to show the audience, Hey, we’re aware that nowadays people are savvy enough to comment on when they’re in a wacky sitcom plot.

This is ‘some looney tunes type shit,’ amirite guys?

(This trick is called lampshading, it got popular recently with Marvel movies and the influence of Joss Whedon's writing (@dingdongyouarewrong), but it's also going through a bit of cliche fatigue right now. "That happened" jokes are an example that I know so many people are sick of, partly because it feels like writers include self-awareness/lampshading as a shield from criticism by pretending you can't critique a problem they're self-aware about!

Let me highlight it to you in the rest of this essay as a tool in satire/pastiche.)

'Donkey Hotel' (according to my speech to text)

To explain Donkey Hotel's deal, I must remark: This guy is on some ancient mental illness type beat.

Now, in the ancient era of Hippocrates, there used to be the hot idea that there are four major human temperaments, and these temperaments are influenced by the balances of liquids in our body called humors. And that an imbalance of the four would lead to an over representing of a temperament.

Don Quixote had a 'Choleric' temperament, which is an overrepresentation of yellow bile and characterized with qualities such as 'hot and dry' and emotional irregularities such as increased anger or behaving irrationally. That's our knight!

Now obviously we know that the idea of 4 Humors in our body controlling our temperament is a BS simplification of mental health, BUT, there’s usually a kernel of truth in ancient theories. The universe really was made up of elements like Aristotle theorized, just not the fire, earth, water, air that he thought they were.

Similarly, our author our man, Cervantes, was using the 4 Humors more to develop a physical/biological explanation to Don's mental illness.

All this to say, Don Quixote is currently deluding himself into believing he is a gallant knight, off to defend the honor of his lady love, the total paragon of a chivalric romance novel because, and I quote, “he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.”

Let's pause.

An escapist stupor that completely wiped the mind of its host?

(FANART BY @so-engery! Check them out!)

ID Two images. One is is Gustave Dore's "Don Quixote Dreaming" drawing. The other is Disco Elysium fanart by Marie Enger @so-engery. Both showcase the main character of their respective works, slumped and surrounded by mad figments of their imagination, highlighting the parallels between the two. Harry with his Skill voices and Don with knights and fairytale creatures. End ID.

That’s our boy, Harrier Du Bois right there!

And while obviously Harry's condition at the start of Disco Elysium is more based on modern understanding of psychology (aka alcohol did it to him, not intense insomnia and a chivalric romance bookathon), it’s real neat we get this this little parallel before we even dig into Harry!

Now, with that neat explanation of why he’s self-aware out of the way, Don Quixote’s deal: Again, he’s not actually self-aware, he’s quite possibly the opposite of self-aware, and EVERYBODY (even the audience!) knows it. He’s only self aware in the sense that he’s acting like a character in a fictional story, which he is, but he’s got the wrong genre.

He thinks he’s in an action/romance, but he’s actually in real life—A satire of the action/romance genre!

Well, caveat.

Is Don Donning the 'Don' Inspirationally or is he Donning the 'Don' to Act as a Don About the Downs of Chivalry?

I read it as Don Quixote donning the 'don' title to act as a don at the college of 'please touch grass and stop romanticizing romantic chivalry.'

A super popular adaptational take, however, is to read him like he's an inspirational dreamer held back by a harsh reality.

Big Nate's Book Reviews on YouTube did a sweet review that highlights this perspective, along with his lil doobie,

that Don Quixote's perspective brings fresh child-like imagination and fantasy to the mundanity of the lives of the people around him. Nate says that Don Quixote and Sancho are "Truly the homies;" they're the first times he's ever felt that he could "find friends in characters in a book."

So there's definitely a joy and a message to the dreamer reading! BUT I tend to be a bit cynical about this, like it can feel a bit too similar to USAmerican Exceptionalism to me.

To clarify what I mean, let's do a Rick parallel.

Don Quixote, as a character, is more similar to the FANS of Rick and Morty than he is to Rick. (Which is its own commentary about how little we have progressed as a society since this book was published like 400 years ago, but also the way media is influenced by prior media.)

To explain THAT, lemme first say that there’s a sort of meta irony (which is how I describe this phenomena according to J-Reg’s theory of satire, but I don’t know the actual name of this) in the ‘he’s just like me fr’ guys. ‘Literally me’ guys. Guys who pseudo imitate Patrick Bateman, literally any Ryan gosling character, etc.

ID A youtube screenshot of 3 different videos titled "literally me" "Literally Me" or "Literally me (I'm mentally insane)" with different Ryan Reynolds characters as the thumbnail. In the "I'm mentally insane" video description, one of the tags is the word "sigma." End ID

Often these characters are meant to be made fun of as parodies of another trope, like Don Quixote is to a chivalric romance protagonist, but there’s a certain subset of the audience that is either too dumb to get it or just doesn’t have the context or background to get it.

Like the dudes who watch fight club, and just end up making fight clubs of their own. Or the way people misinterpreted Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ as celebrating the US, instead of its true message of lambasting the US for its hypocritical treatment of its veterans. Or the glorification of Rorschach from Watchmen despite him basically being a MAGA. Or the way USAmericans didn’t get Starship Troopers because it was a parody of US military fascism.

There are tons of examples of these because of satire usually says more about the reader/viewer than it does about the author, like a Rorschach test (he really is aptly named). (And it’s why it’s more often fascists/conservatives wildly misinterpreting leftist media. People are more likely to come with a conservative perspective than vice versa bc conservatism is, by its definition, the norm. Though this does still happen on more progressive sides e.g. TJLC.) They didn't see or chose not to see the irony.

Cue the Reddit dudebros misinterpreting Disco Elysium as pro centrist or “all ideologies are equally bad" and the INSANE 'you have to have a high IQ...' 'rick is good and objectively correct' Rick and Morty fans.

ID Two screenshots. One of the infamous "To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty" copypasta. One of a Disco Elysium Reddit post titled "Disco Elysium is Not Politically In Favor Of Any Ideology." End ID

Speaking of Rick and Morty fans, this is what I mean by the idea that Don Quixote is more like Rick's fans than he is like Rick. Much like the way Don un-self-aware-ly misinterprets his satirical reality for the chivalric romance of his favorite novels, so too do Rick and Morty fans un-self-aware-ly misinterpret Rick's nihilist satire on the sitcom for what is cool and good to do in real life. Plus, I can totally see these type of dudes unironically saying "Milady" to keep chivalry alive. But, there's one level further to this, beyond even seeing the irony, which I call the 'he's just like me fr' guys.

Now, in the case of the 'he's just like me fr' guys, it's not that they're mistaking the satire for sincerity—they totally understand that Patrick Bateman is a satirical take on Yuppie 'grind till you make it alpha' culture.

They're doing a secret third thing—meta irony—where they understand that Patrick Bateman is meant to be bad but act like they're un-self-aware and missed the irony anyway.

It's supposed to be a joke, buuuuut it's a joke the same way people will say "SLAY!" as a joke until it's unironically a part of their vocabulary. The ambiguity is key.

I'd argue that the dreamer Quixote approach is an application of 'he's just like me fr' view to Don Quixote, where he's 'a Chad rejecting reality in favor of the perseverance of man's whimsy' to some people, even as they joke that he's delusional ("Literally me (I'm mentally insane)").

Don Quixote certainly isn't doing it on purpose—again, he's un-self-aware, and he even got bullied out of it in part 2 (which admittedly I haven't read). Yet, there's a genuine sadness there of a man with such a penchant for adventure getting bullied that makes you wanna start humoring him.

It's ironic but not: Meta irony.

ID A screenshot of Jreg's "Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire (Video)" thumbnail. End ID

But yeah, meta irony is all fine and dandy when it's about slaying, but when it's about emulating the patriarchal psychopath, Patrick Bateman, or using edge-y humor to spread alt-right talking points, you start to wonder if there can be something insidious to the 'he's just like me fr' approach.

To put it best, the wild popularity of the Dreamer Don Quixote interpretation feels like the result of USAmerican 'grind till you make it' 'individual exceptionalism' 'it would suck for you, but i'm built different' values distorting the absurdity of being a reality denying dreamer, the same way we struggle to understand the Starship Troopers because it just feels normal/celebratory to us.

Don Quixote

So I think Don Quixote resonates strongest, for me, in the way it boldly states that reality is beautiful and worth living in without needing the opium of escapist fantasy.

For one, Cervantes is a rare ye olden feminist king who takes the time to point out that one man's escapist chivalric masculine fantasy is another woman's misogynistic reality.

To demonstrate, he has many examples of female characters telling off men for projecting romantic fantasies on them, but a more relevant way is how he writes Don Quixote as literally renaming some random woman he's never met 'Dulcinea' because he's decided she is his Lady he's given his eternal servitude to.

He renames her Dulcinea because it's "a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him."

Which is PEAK satire of the misogynistic objectification of chivalry. If only the Rick and Morty "Milady" stans had the self-awareness this book had 400 years ago.

(Sidebar, but does anybody else think Don Quixote would make an absolutely killer Drag King persona? Don Queerote... Plus the ballet about him would help with the pre-existing choreo/music. Just a thought!)

But on another level, Don Quixote is full of interesting characters or stories outside of the chivalric knight conceit!

ID Pen illustrations (aka engravings by Gustave Dore) of two events happening simultaneously at the same inn in Don Quixote. The one above is of Don's assault on the wineskins in his sleep. The one below is of the reunion of Dorotea, Luscinda, Cardenio, and Fernando in the inn. End ID

People often clown on the novel for having so much time dedicated to the soap opera antics of side characters totally unrelated to the knight plot, but their antics being outside of Quixote's chivalric view emphasizes how life is interesting even when you're not following a delusional knight lifestyle!

Romance and reunions and betrayals that Don never really understands because he's too busy fighting windmills and wineskins! Yes, the delusion allowed him to go out and explore the world, but there's something so silly and sad about missing whimsy of real life in favor of living in escapist Knight Fanfiction. Reading about Cervantes's soap-opera-worthy life only reinforces this whimsy for reality and touching grass.

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

Preface: My main experience is JRPGs, not so much other Western RPGs and tabletop games. So although I’m saying it’s a satire of these tropes, and I noticed a lot of these things as ‘satire’ and 'parody,' I’m not totally enmeshed in the subculture the creators were going for, so I might need some corrections.

Finally, this transitions into the deal with Harry! It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality—so how does this play out with the RPG!?

Weeellll, it goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.

One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.

ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID

The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.

But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.

Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.

Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.

It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!

ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID

Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.

A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.

The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.

Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.

If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.

It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.

As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”

In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control. But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.

Harry Du Bois and Self-Awareness: Copotypes? More like Cope-otypes.

So that's on Disco Elysium and being aware of RPG elements in general, but let's deep dive into Harry and his Copotypes and political alignments like the OP!

I kind of want to round this last one out with what this all means. WHY am I, and others, linking self-awareness and satire? What's the link here?

Irony is one of the major tools of satirical writing, and there's always a little irony in being self-aware and doing it anyway, I think. It's specifically that Meta-Ironic element/Lampshading that is so rich for Touch-Grass satire because it parallels the futility/irony of self-awareness in real life.

The copotypes work this way.

ID A screenshot of a youtube comment. @jbeast3385 "Harry fundamentally takes on extreme interpretations of every ideology in the game as a coping mechanism for the tragedy that is his life, and it's amazing to see the amount of care given to extending an understanding of why each ideology appeals to his fractured mind. Each quest makes him something of a Don Quixote, searching for a purer purpose through political thought, failing spectacularly with it, but still fundamentally developing him and inspiring others beside him." End ID

The copotypes and the political alignments are a parody of classes and moral alignments. Rather than being a knight or a wizard, you're a superstarcop or a sorrycop! They don't do much, like there are no fireballs for an art cop, but they do poke fun at the ways the player is choosing to play Harry! Instead of chaotic good or neutral evil, you can be a communard or an ultralib! Which both involve spouting hilariously inappropriate talking points to the other citizens of Revachol.

What's fascinating, as @fagcrisis of this post says, is that these alignments are statements of how your Harry copes with the real world and the past/how he justifies what he does.

From the Solution to the Boring Cop Thought:

When someone says something political, the first three thoughts in your head are a ludicrous hodgepodge of communism, fascism and stock tips. When they ask you why you did something, it's superstardom, apocalypse, or the *mea culpas* of a flagellant cop monk

You start off making some choices based on the limited dialogue options of Harry's bizarre personality. If you play it like any other RPG power fantasy, BAM, the game hits you with the "Regular Law Official" thought, and you're labeled "Boring Cop." Or if you're apologizing to get the 'good' route, BAM, the game hits you with the "Rigorous Self-Critique" thought, and you're labelled "Sorry Cop!"

The game makes you 'aware' of your playing style, a little poke to say 'Stop being so scared of failures! You're boring! Sorry is not enough! Stop trying to be 'lawful good' (ACAB) and be a human!'

From the same Solution:

It's not easy, reaching for the fourth option -- the normal one. But you have. And now you're not *just* crazy, you're also *boring*.

Some people get this taste of self-awareness and fully embrace diving into the deep end of the game—Disco baby! Others lean into the sorry/boring/moralist cop in an ironic 'self-aware' sort of way—like the technique of Lampshading, since we're our own writers as RPG players.

But on a Harry level, it's also about HIM becoming self-aware of his habits, of internalizing these thoughts about his actions, his past, his coping mechanisms.

Seeking either “sweet oblivion” or to become “a different kind of animal,” many of the possible roleplaying choices are rooted in his desire to forget, evade or reframe the past. Whether self-destruction through drug abuse, fantasies of superstardom or visions of impending doom; it’s all in the service of not wanting to face the past, and the disastrous effects Harry’s continuous failure to do so has had on his life. - Vice

As the @fagcrisis of this post noted, Dora pretty much ALWAYS mentions the way Harry escapes reality by thinking of himself as an archetype, like other people are NPCs in an RPG. "like hes a self aware character but in the shitty way where him knowing he is a character and him acting like it only makes it worse because there isnt a story to escape from, he just cant cope with the real world" He's pulling a meta-ironic ''he's just like me fr" with Guillaume Le Million (who hangs himself) and superstardom the way "he's just like me fr" guys do it for Ryan Gosling.

And each copotype and political alignment are an opportunity to satirically critique the flaws and failures of each coping mechanism.

Cope-otype: Fascism

"Fascism, being marked, according to Paxton, by a need to compensate for humiliation, promises easy solutions to someone like Harry. It’s a crutch to prop up threatened masculinity, a rhetoric to shift blame for personal failings to ominous outside forces." - Vice

This game's satirical take on fascism is sort of perfect, literally making it about the lower intestines, 'gut instinct,' and bullshit (@spilledkaleidoscope). To be frank, fascists are 'full of shit,' and the vision quest highlights the way fascism isn't about a coherent ideology like 'returning to the past,' but rather it's a hodgepodge of SHIT thrown together to prop up hurt ego, threatened masculinity, of giving an easy scape-goated answer to the question of how Harry's supposed to face his past and his future.

The answer? He shoots it.

It's accurate in a way that doesn't reinforce the 'cool' aesthetics and pageantry fascism is obsessed with, what with literally calling fascists full of shit and all. Kim notices your change in expression, your stoic 'noble suffering' fascist face, and immediately calls it constipated. Bless.

Yet, even as Kim calls you out, even as you're aware of fascism's failures, how it destroys you ala Harry Du Bois -> Detective Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, Fascist!Harry still believes because he can't face a wounded ego.

Cope-otype: Ultralib

Ultralibs on the other hand? I think it's telling that Idiot Doom Spiral is basically ultralib Harry's foil and a major questline NPC—the one who gives you Tequila Sunset.

Even the names are foils. Idiot Doom Spiral names himself that way to romanticize it, to make it into a marketable story, "but it keeps him in this state too, like a vicious cycle. The name ‘George’ is a name that still connects him to humanity," while Idiot Doom Spiral is a way to 'accept his place' even though it's miserable and keeps him from doing something about it, nor connect with other people, as @kindaeccentric put it in this post.

Similarly, the megarich light bending guy in the UltraLib quest LITERALLY is much more unlikely to connect with poorer people because the Rougon-Macquart coefficient literally dictates that we cannot see the richest people because their networth bends the light around them. It's an inversion of the way rich people are ignorant to poverty in real life, and here's a really good fic that covers this coefficient!

Finally, this mirrors Tequila Sunset as a name as well, the way it's a cope for hating himself. Instead of being miserable, he glorifies his misery by calling himself a funky, disco drink name, even as it symbolizes being washed up or even symbolizes the pale swallowing all, depending on how you play him (@palin-tropos).

So much of the ultralib plotline is about adding value — whether by sprucing yourself up with a new name like Tequila or Idiot or by 're-conceptualization' — through stuff like grind/hustle culture. An obsession with increasing networth but also 'giving back' to the community, as philanthropists put it.

But the satire of the ultralib vision quest is highlighting how hollow 'adding value' is, how much of it's just competition for wealth for the sake of wealth with no real meaningful answer or value.

ID Two screenshots of the game Disco Elysium. The first is of the horseback monument as it is. A matrix of cables and ropes isolate the fragmented bits in thin air. The second is described as this through in-game dialogue: HORSEBACK MONUMENT - The scaffolding around the old monument has been taken down, In its place are the spoils of your investment. Numerous rods and ropes still hold the original reassemblage in place. YOU- Reflect on the re-conceptualization. HORSEBACK MONUMENT - An apricot sceptre shines party-bright across the monument. Glitter balls dangle like severed heads below the eternal king of disco. It is unmistakably a vision of you in your prime -- a killer on the performance floor, icon for all. End ID

It's 'reconceptualizing' the Horseback Monument — the symbol of both the bombing of the revolution and the enduring of spirit the communards anyways, the way they've built a monument to freeze in time the moment of the profligate king being blown up — by building it in your own image. The fact that to do so you need to exploit the labor of an artist so you can make a profit, and it doesn't truly 'give back' to the community in any way. In fact, it's almost the opposite, like you've ruined the community monument by painting yourself AS THE KING.

It's why even Harry admits that "You're just insane, insane and gone. Even six billion won't fix you if she’s not there." Each copotype and political ideology contends with their own version of this as Harry learns to grow and face his past head on.

The Marriage of Fictional Conventions and Real Human Psychology

In the end, you can't just lean into an ideology or an archetype and hope that it'll answer all you problems.

But more than that — being self-aware about your issues doesn't solve anything either, no more than lampshading "fixes" any problems with your TV show.

It is this parallel between what Harry learns as he progresses and what the player learns as they progress that makes us empathize/resonate with Harry.

From acting erratically, then realizing it's part of an ideology, self-awarely adopting an ideology, to seeing how it fails and learning not to hide behind it. From "He's a blank slate so I can project my power fantasy onto him," then "I don't actually have a lot of power or control here," to "He's not just my RPG character, he's a person."

He's becoming a person, twice over.

It's ludonarrative resonance or consistency. A marriage of literary convention and real human psychology, on two scales.

And this resonance demonstrates why this genre of self-aware pastiche character is so popular: At it's best, you're forced to contend with the characters as fully realized people, paradoxically because they highlight the difference between fictional conventions and reality.

By acknowledging and poking fun of the fictional conventions, Harry Du Bois, Don Quixote, and Rick Sanchez feel more real to us.

And their stories come packaged with rich themes about dangers of disconnecting yourself from reality and the short distance 'self-awareness' alone can take you, which will resonate with almost every one of us here on the Internet. At least, I know it resonated with me.

BONUS:

Shen Yuan from Scum Villain Self-Saving System (@whetstonefires) also fits this list!!!!!!

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sirianasims · 9 months

Note

What is your single best piece of writing advice?

Ouch, starting 2024 out swinging there 😂

My best writing advice that is actually my own is:

Only Story

This is the phrase I keep saying to my writer friend to the point where I may get a tattoo of it some day, and the one that guides me home when I get lost.

Only Story is a way to focus my ADHD ass on what is important and keep writing.

Only Story means focus on storytelling. To me, at least, the narrative is the core. Humans are natural storytellers, it’s how we communicate. Style, language, writing skill and so on are important, but secondary. Don’t worry too much about it. Just tell your story and the rest will follow. You will get better at telling stories over time, and then you can eventually trust fall into it.

Only Story helps me pull back from obsessing over or endlessly adding irrelevant details. Strip away anything that doesn’t serve the story. This doesn’t mean that you can never add things unless they advance the plot or develop a character, but it helps to reduce clutter. By all means, add that superfluous side plot if you want to, but make it a conscious decision.

Only Story is how I get back to writing whenever I start second-guessing myself and worry too much about whether I'm good enough, whether I can even call myself a writer, whether anyone will ever care. It helps me reaffirm my purpose - to tell the story. I don't write to get followers or likes, although feedback is always hugely appreciated, but I write because I have stories to tell.

Only Story also reminds me to keep writing, because that is the only way I'll become a better writer. Every time I write a story, I get better at writing a story. The story may not be perfect, but it will be a story. And so will the next one.

Go write it.

You said single, but I am all about handing out bonus content so you get this as well; Dan Harmon's take on writer's block from an AMA on Reddit.

My best advice about writer's block is: the reason you're having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it's the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from "writing well" to "writing badly," you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don't like to admit it, because we're raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let's just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that's a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn't going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it's no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you're an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team "I will one day write something good" to team "I have no choice but to write a piece of shit" and then take off your "bad writer" hat and replace it with a "petty critic" hat and go to town on that poor hack's draft and that's your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard[...] Happy hunting and pecking!

#answered asks

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sillygoblinantics · 22 days

Text

I wanted to bring this up as I saw something recently that spread information about the elements to writing and character story.

So allow me to sperg to those who are looking for knowledge about the elements of story.

How should I structure a story?

Depends on the type of story, for the sake of consistency in topic; we’ll go into the multilayered story.

You may have heard this name before or read books by him but the way we write and outline our stories came from the mind of Joseph Campbell.

youtube

This is a good video for my visual learners out here, it’s very good and gets the points across very well!

While Campbell is the go to for his 12 step structure there are a plethora of other authors and writers who’ve just as equally mapped out the hero’s journey!

Dan Harmon a man that needs no introduction as far as bibliography goes: a fellow nerd, dnd fanatic, telovision writer and creator.

In his story circle, he takes Campbell’s journey and breaks down the fundamental key points to how any storyteller should structure an episode or general story outline/arc.

In other words: it’s simple and straight to the action!

It’s so easy to forget or lose track of your story without a simple point of reference to structure your characters arcs!

Arcs?

Character arcs

This are crucial to not only telling but showing the moments of who we are following on the journey.

Without hurdles, highs and lows, pain, and every kind of thing that life has and will throw at you, than what thrill and satisfaction will the audience get from their turning point?

“Rome was not built in a day, for if it was, the Romans would be left with nothing to do”

- Illymations (animal crossing video)

I like quoting this when the topic of storytelling comes up.

If you had everything you ever wanted and didn’t need any kind of work to get it would the reward still feel rewarding? Probably not. That’s why when you put off doing simple chores and finally get around to completing them that you feel better; it’s rewarding!

Your character should have to run an obstacle course to get to the finish line, but it’s can always look different.

Some stories start with a climax while others have it in the middle!

As long as your character goes on a journey where they return home having grown into someone new and learned something important that forever changed who they started as. You have a story.

And the setting can be just about anywhere and any time. Past/Present/Future, modern or scifi, even in a coffee shop.

Note:

I want to specify that by no means should the point of my lil sperging be disregarded by personal bias and opinions of the names mentioned as its not relevant

Properties of the three acts!

The three act structure is the three different key moments to any narrative: the beginning, middle and end. When I talk about acts I’m not talking about plot, that’s a different story ;3 (badumm tsss)

Act 1:

Introduction

Act one is where we establish the world, setting and rules that apply to it.

It is also where we meet the character(s) of the story.

As we proceed I will be using the Steven Universe movie as an example for the 3Act Structure.

Act one perfectly captures the key points of the first act!

A recap of the events in the show

Introducing Steven and company

As well as the motivations and personality of each main focal character: Steven, amethyst, pearl and garnet

We get a somewhat forward send off to one character

We reach the very last few points of the first act believing nothing bad could change the day before

Once we meet the final focal character we are thrown into the main overarching plot.

Once Spinel gets poofed, act one ends

Act 11

Not in Kansas anymore

The second act is where the character(s) have to interact with the changed/new environment, the struggle or challenge being had.

We follow them as we have to trek the difficult terrain and solve puzzles that help the character get closer to the end goal

In the movie Steven needs to face three problems: reviving his family (gems) stopping the injector and figuring out who spinel is.

The hero usually faces three trials

They’ll get through 2 but the third is often not successful.

We get garnet back but not fully (this is the failed trial. For now)

Amethyst is first to be brought back

Pearl needs to be reminded of a rebellious spirit to come back

Spinel runs off

And now we enter the final lap

Act 111

Race to the finish line

As we get to the climax and resolution, we have the big confrontation between the character(s) and the driving force. Sometimes said force is the reason for our arrival into the second act, either by a force of nature or by something/someone.

In the movie Steven confronts spinel rather he chases her, we learn more about her past and her motivation and her relationship with Steven’s mother. The two are able to talk about it now knowing the full story so as Steven returns and catches the others up, all is well until a seed of doubt and fear plants itself in spinel as she panics. Before we get a 1v1 between Steven and spinel garnet returns.

Conflict and the climax have been reached when the highest point of tension finally erupts! And as we fall so too does the tension as we reach the resolve.

So… where do we get there in the movie?

Spinel slowly realizing before during and after she lets all the bottled feelings she’s kept inside out and she calms… as we close to the victory lap the first minor plot returns with the diamonds coming to earth and spinel finally gets her need.

Wait need? What about the want?!

I left it out for this section.

Characters want vs need

In the beginning the character has a want or that’s what they think until the middle of the story… right in the middle of act 2. Our hero realizes that the original want is no longer there. Now, they have a distinct need. This is when our character grows up and matures!

In the movie Steven has to learn or relearn that he isn’t his mom and doesn’t have to be someone that others expect him to act or be.

Alright I’m low on spoons, but that’s my points!

Oh and characters aren’t perfect just the same as people, if everyone was there wouldn’t be excitement or interesting stories to be told!

#Youtube #goblinantics #sillygoblinantics #story and concept 101 #steven universe #sperging #storytelling #story fundamentals #writing

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what-gs-watching · 1 year

Text

"If you have to ask, you're streets behind."

Welp. This week on What G's Watching: comfort shows.

Because gang, I got (somewhat surprisingly) laid off yesterday. Internal politics, blah blah blah, a lot crying, a lot of beautiful messages from coworkers, some insomnia, more crying, cleaning random things, turning my airpods up as high as they go and screaming through playlists. You get it.

So if I thought I was watching everything before, just kidding. It's about to get so much worse. Which means, right now, I need comfort shows.

Today's comfort show highlight? Community. A pure and beautiful masterpiece.

Here's the thing: I watched Community from the beginning. Like, when it started airing weekly on NBC in 2009. From the very first episode. Because I'm ancient. I was a fan of Joel McHale from Talk Soup (oh yeah, we're going back that far) and I would have watched him in anything, so I was down for a show about a community college, hell, I'd even gone to one for a little bit.

But it's so much more than that. It's hilarious and real and way too meta for most people and all of the characters are imperfect and ridiculous and some of the plots are so dumb, but it makes you feel things.

The overall point of the show was that Jeff was a lawyer who lied about having a bachelor's degree and got caught so he goes Greendale Community College to replace it. He lies about having a spanish study group to hook up with a blonde in his class - Britta - and ends up creating an actual study group with the help of Abed, who I'm not gonna lie, might be my favorite character.

Group of the usual suspects, right:

- Jeff is the handsome manipulative one (I'm still not quite sure why Joel McHale is handsome, like, its WEIRD but I'm here for it)

- Britta starts out as a chick in her late 20's who maybe got lost along the way and was trying to clean her life up and then she kind of becomes a caricature of herself later on, but it works

- Shirley's a mom going through a divorce, wanting to start her own business

- Pierce is a rich old guy that's been going to Greendale for years just for something to do (Chevy Chase returning to TV, which sounds great but then it gets weird behind the scenes)

- Abed is sweet and magical and likely on the spectrum (and the best unreliable narrator)

- Troy is a former high school football star that suffered an injury (he's Childish Gambino! Before anyone knew he was Childish Gambino! But he will ALWAYS be Troy to me)

- Annie is young and a perfectionist and a control freak who had a pill addiction that landed her there (Allison Brie becoming Allison Brie)

and it starts out as you would assume it should, but it gets unexpectedly hilarious. And I give that credit to Dan Harmon. For his flaws, Dan Harmon is a tortured genius and I will, and mostly do, watch anything that man is involved in. He puts shit in your face that you never wanted but in a way that makes you laugh out loud and then hurt a little bit, for a while.

Honestly the charm of the show comes from the fact that it never truly takes itself seriously. Abed relates to the world through media (hi it's me, I'm the problem, it's me) and he insists time and again that they're in a tv show. Episode about everyone turning into Zombies because of tainted food at the Halloween dance? Completely plausible. 'Bottle' episode because Annie lost a pen and she can't fucking take it anymore, someone must have stolen it? Yes. Series-running story about the "Ass Crack Bandit" that drops a quarter on you when you least expect it, resulting in one of the best episodes of the later seasons? 100%.

Abed deciding that by rolling a dice to see who goes down to get the pizza being delivered, six different timelines are being created? That one will knock you on your fucking ass. And it makes no sense, but it really, really does.

This show has given me a lot of random things that still rattle around in my brain, even now N rewatches deep. Way back when offices were a thing, I'd once shouted "BOOKS!"when it was particularly quiet and a single engineer stood up across the room and just pointed at me, incredulous. After that he and I didn't stop terrorizing the entire team with random quotes. I still find myself humming 'Daybreak' (IYKYK). Yesterday while I muddled through my feelings I started yelling "I'm high as hell and I'm about to get SHOT!" It's infectious, it gets in your bones.

The best part of course is the relationships, complicated but sweet and endearing. Troy and Abed form a friendship that makes me sad almost because it's childish and pure for a while and it does (what I think, I'm not an expert though so who knows) a pretty good job of portraying the bond that can come out of accepting someone on the spectrum wholly and fully.

They build a blanket fort. They pretend to have their own morning tv show (🎶Troy and Abed in the mornnnniiiing 🎶). They dress up in coordinated Halloween costumes. They get obsessed with Inspector Spacetime (we're gonna get to Doctor Who, I promise). They spout off the best random Spanish rap and create 'Baby Boomer Santa'. They invent the Dreamatorium. They pillow fight for hours because they think if they stop, their friendship will end.

The two of them desperately make you wish you had a friend like that in your early twenties to just get real WEIRD with, because they'd always go along with it and have your back no matter what. I still, very much, want to build a blanket slash pillow fort half as majestic. (Which, maybe I should. I have a fuck ton of time right now.)

Honestly, Community is one of those things I sometimes measure people against. Seen it and loved it? You rank a little bit higher with me. Season 4's your least favorite? it's okay bud, we all agree. You wanna use your name in poorly concocted puns? That's you're i-dean-tity, I'm with it. You found something that's streets ahead? YES. Be my best friend.

I know a lot of people feel a certain way about Friends, like, oh they're the friends everyone wishes they had, but I'm sorry. No. The friends you wish you had are the Greendale Seven. And there's too many moments and too much to go into here, but you need to trust me on that. Because they're all just flawed people trying to do better in a flawed place that manifests a little bit of the mania we all feel. And it lets you feel it, but it always wraps you up safe at the end. Jeff always brings it home with a perfect Winger speech. And sometimes I really wish life was a little bit more like that. Because sometimes we suffer a fucking gas leak year in our existence, sometimes it's like that, and it'd be nice if everyone just shrugged that off, if everyone just accepted the fact that we're all flawed, selfish people is actually a strength.

At one point in the first season, Abed gets obsessed with "The Cape" (which was a real show, y'all) and he's skulking around in this ridiculous get-up and Jeff yells "That show's gonna last three weeks!" and while Abed runs off he yells "SIX SEASONS AND A MOVIE!"

During the show's run, #sixseasonsandamovie became a mantra, because it was always on the brink of cancellation - season six was revived by Yahoo Stream, which isn't even a thing anymore - and I still think about that when I want something to last. I want #sixseasonsandamovie for everything that I love. I want everything to have that little bit of magic and faith.

I started my latest rewatch a couple of weeks ago, compelled to seek out the comfort for some reason, my brain trying to tell me something was wrong. My brain had been right. So yesterday I eventually climbed into bed with puffy eyes and I got back into season five. I'm already into the part where the show starts to dismantle a bit (the second half of season 5 and all of 6 are distinctly different but still perfect), and that makes sense for me right this second, it's fitting. Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes people leave. Sometimes you have to clone yourself in a game of 'the floor is lava' so you can properly say goodbye.

I'll finish it again in the next couple of days I'm sure, and I'll put it down for a while (until the next time my brain is trying to tell me something). But I'll be thankful I had something to turn to while I attempted to sort myself out.

Greendale is always the perfect place to sort yourself out.

#community nbc #troy and abed #what g's watching #six seasons and a movie #streets ahead

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writer-by-the-sea · 2 years

Note

writer to writer, but you can respond as Elliot if you want. How do you conquer writer's block? I understand that's why you started this blog in the first place, but do you recommend it?

Hah, sorry. I am zero help here, but here's some advice from reddit.

Link

Writers block is really just the anxiety of not living up to your own expectations. I really like Dan Harmon's advice.

"My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!

#hits hard

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mogwai-movie-house · 2 years

Text

Rick and Morty: Juricksic Mort (TV episode, 2022)

Rick and Morty used to be the funniest and smartest thing on TV, at least for the first four seasons, but the past couple of years have seen the quality nosedive and end up with a 'good' episode being like this, with nothing overtly terrible happening in it, but nothing remotely memorable or funny either.

I still don't know if the reason for the drop in quality is due to new, incompetent staff writers being drafted in, or whether Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have just lost interest and stretched themselves too thin with other projects.

A small example of the detail and consistency lost with these changes: in this episode, Rick's iconic portal gun, and integral part of the show, which in previous seasons has been something recognized as being entirely unique to his genius, that aliens from far flung galaxies have done everything in their power to try acquire... here, some dinosaurs from the past that turn up for just the one episode have a better one, which they offer to Rick telling him they can somehow tell he's having problems with his own.

The people now writing the show are not smart enough to come up with a plausible reason why the dinosaurs a) know Rick's gun isn't working, and b) can make one themselves and treat it like it's no big deal. Or even ever use it again. It's introduced, dealt with and forgotten in literally 30 seconds, all for some attempt at a joke that doesn't land.

This destroys any weight of meaning to the previous seasons of the show in the same way that the equally awful writers of the Loki TV show destroyed all value of the infinity stones that linked the Marvel movies together by showing their show's characters have drawers full of them as a joke. Stuff like this is the kind of lazy, blinkered, shortsighted and tone-deaf writing that is now repeatedly ruining this once magnificent show.

★★★★½✰✰✰✰✰

#rick and morty

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fatalferalfemme · 4 months

Text

Dan Harmon on writer's block

My best advice about writer’s block is: the reason you’re having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it’s the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from “writing well” to “writing badly,” you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don’t like to admit it, because we’re raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let’s just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that’s a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn’t going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it’s no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you’re an asshole. So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft. Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn’t make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!

0 notes

community-stuff · 11 months

Note

So…I have a problem.

I’m worried that I’m not capable of enjoying Community anymore. I feel like everything in this show either doesn’t mean anything, or has something sinister behind it. I can’t enjoy the good natured tone of the first three seasons, because season 6 feels dedicated to stomping all over that and acting like that stuff was stupid. I can’t enjoy Annie anymore, because she feels like Dan Harmon’s weird schoolgirl fantasy. I can’t enjoy the good autism rep with Abed anymore, because seasons 5 and 6 have characters abusing him for his autism and getting away with it.

It's just…….I wish this show gave me the same feelings it used to, y'know? This show meant the world to me for so long, years even, but now when I watch it I just think of ugliness.

I want to kill myself.

That sounds really hard. It sucks when things that are important to us no longer bring joy. I hope that you can find other things that are as important to you as community once was

Please do not come into my ask box saying you want to kill yourself. I will not be responding to any more asks with suicide as a subject matter. I say this with the kindest possible intentions: it is inappropriate to send a complete stranger a message saying that you want to kill yourself. I hope that there are people in your life who you can talk to about this. I’d link some suicide hotline numbers, as those have helped me in the past, but I don’t know what country you’re from

#suicide tw #i probably shouldn’t have responded to this at all tbh #i can’t imagine the kind of hopelessness and desperation that might lead to reaching out to a stranger like this #and i really wish i could help #but i can’t

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sunnygang · 2 years

Text

as solar opposites is a fantastic show and continues to be such, it's more and more obvious dan harmon is what's wrong with rick and morty

#the last season sucked major ass #it was soooo bad #but solar opposites is soooo good #and it just means dan harmon is the problem #or some other ppl in the writers room #but still! fuck off dan harmon bro what are u doing

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thesoftboiledegg · 2 years

Note

(for whenever you watch the rnm premiere, no pressure) TAKES! WHAT ARE YOUR TAKES? :D i always look forward for your rnm analysis and i came here immediately after watching the episode to see what you think! :)

Ahh, thank you! 💖 I'm glad that you enjoy them that much. That's so flattering.

Anyway, I felt like this episode was a sweeter version of the season 3 premiere. Both episodes featured the citadel, went back to the Earth that Rick destroyed, wrapped up a cliffhanger, hopped around multiple dimensions and involved family dynamics. But the season 3 premiere was all about showing what a horrific monster Rick could be (OK, he was lying when he said he didn't care about Morty and Summer in that episode, but still.)

Conversely, the season 6 premiere is about showing a gentler, more affectionate Rick. He goes back for Morty and doesn't make up a bullshit (and mean) "explanation" like he did in season 3. He and Morty show each other genuine affection, although Rick still pulls back a little. We also get a protective Rick moment when he shields Morty with his body.

Even when he tries, yet again, to claim that he doesn't care about the family, Jerry dismisses him. They all know he's lying. He doesn't try to fight it, either.

Some other stuff I noticed:

Feral Jerry looked like Dan Harmon, lol. I wonder if that was intentional.

I liked how Beth and Space Beth argued, but it didn't come across as "lolz women are so catty and hate each other." They just had personality conflicts and got over it in the end.

Seeing Beth, Space Beth and Summer fighting together was awesome. Girls kicking ass.

One thing I disliked was how the episode wrapped up the season 5 cliffhanger in two minutes. I also had that problem with the season 3 premiere--the aliens (the Federation? I can't remember now) invading Earth left, and that was the end of it. I know this isn't a serialized show, but they could've done a lot with that.

I love the details of Rick pulling back when Morty tries to hug him and tensing when Summer hugs him. He does NOT like being touched. Makes sense for an autistic man (and he's obviously reserved in general.)

Feral Jerry was awful to Morty. Although I guess this is the same guy who basically agreed when Beth said she was happy that Morty and Rick were gone, so no surprise there. But damn, why did he yell at Morty? What happened was Rick's fault, not Morty's. He's a 14-year-old kid. This family really loves taking their shit out on him.

I did NOT expect so many trailer scenes to come from this episode. Totally thought the "cute" thing at the end was from something else, like the Rick and Jerry episode. I also thought that Rick fighting the robots would show up later this season. So we saw even less in the trailer than we thought we did.

What are they hiding from us? Damn. I love how we know nothing about this season.

Also, I guess it's canon now that Rick likes kawaii things, lol. He flat-out says that he picked it up because it was cute. Lolita dress! I want to see him in a lolita dress immediately.

This episode did a great job of showing while the family's learning to be a little nicer, they've still got a lot of issues and resent one another. Beth clearly isn't still thrilled about having kids.

Boy, I did NOT expect Murder Rick (or whatever we're calling him) to be "our" Morty's original Rick. I feel like I might've seen people theorize about that, though? It also makes it kind of strange that Rick destroyed Earth and hopped to another dimension, but maybe he was like "Eh, fuck it, he's not coming back."

I want to wrap this up by saying that I loved how this episode focused on Rick and Morty's dynamic while including the whole family. I was worried that the show was starting to lose sight of Rick and Morty, but their relationship was the heart of the episode.

Rick is still a hot mess, but he's healing and growing and I love him so much 💓

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith #beth smith #jerry smith #summer smith #ask #review #solaricks

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king-fluffikins · 3 years

Text

Aftg headcanons

I firmly believe that the foxes banded together after tkm to get Neil a smartphone

Mostly so they could track him at all times, but also so that they could video call each other when they graduated and moved away

At first Neil had trouble understanding that he had People Who Cared About Him enough that he could just. call. Whenever.

But after that one time where he needed something sports-related from Matt and decided to call him, and Matt picked up in the middle of a bench press, no questions asked, and stayed that way until he’d finished helping Neil ten minutes later, Neil realizes the power he holds

He calls everyone all the time now

For the smallest things

He’ll call Renee to show her a pretty flower, then he’ll add Matt and Nicky to the call to show them the squirrel a few feet behind it

Matt calls Dan, who calls Allison, etc etc etc, until it’s one big fox group call

These calls can last for hours, to the chagrin of the other people around them

Even Andrew joins, if only to prop the phone against a pot plant while he does something else and occasionally winds in and out of frame

Aaron also joins, but not as much

Mostly he’ll tune in to see one thing and then mute the call instead of leaving to continue studying

Nicky, of course, is the one who most often instigates these mass calls

Once, someone added Wymack to a call. nobody knows who. most suspect Andrew, on charge of chaotic tomfoolery, but nothing has of yet been confirmed

Wymack said exactly one thing: “fuck off” and then he left

The fox group chat is now affectionately called “fuck off”, and Wymack laughed his head off when Kevin showed him

Speaking of the group chat, I am adamant that Neil is the main minion meme provider

As soon as Dann and Nicky introduced him to memes, he could not get enough of them

He has a whole Pinterest board of memes

But not the tasteful ones

The kinds that middle aged soccer moms send on Facebook groups

He finds them all hilarious; but literally nobody else does

Eventually he makes his way onto TikTok and becomes super famous for his botched dances and compilations of Andrew saying increasing percentages

(Nobody knows what the percentages mean, but there are multiple running theories. Some more outlandish than others.)

But things REALLY get good when Neil discovers Rickrolling

There are a few pages on tiktok that circulate videos that have been edited to cut to Rickrolls, which Neil needed explained to him first (Nicky was very helpful)

He goes through a love-hate relationship with the meme, as it makes him experience intense (Riko-)levels of anger, but on the other hand he also finds them funny as hell

He sends along every Rickroll tiktok he finds to the group chat, which always starts a shouting match

“FUCK YOU NEIL, I WANTED TO KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN WHEN THEY MIXED RED BULL WITH PEPSI.” (Nicky)

“Literally nothing, dipshit.” (Aaron)

“🖕.” (Andrew)

“That’s not very nice, Andrew.” (Dan)

“Why are we not talking about how he put a fullstop after an emoji????” (Nicky)

“🙂.” (Neil)

[four second voice note of Nicky screaming, with Renee harmonizing in the background]

I digress

One day Neil realizes he can make his OWN rickrolls

He’s gotten into the habit of sending video messages; I.e. filming himself talking and sending that, rather than typing or recording an audio

It has to do with his rising self esteem and so on and so forth but that’s for another post

And eventually he just. clicks. That he can stick Rickrolls onto the ends of these videos

And the foxes will watch them every time

But there’s just one problem.

He has no idea how.

These days, the foxes play RickRoll Roulette with all of Neil’s videos, because they never know which are genuine communications and which are memes

They’re wrong every time

But nobody knows yet that Andrew is the one who edits the videos for Neil.

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gokupowers · 2 years

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Did you read the homestuck epilogues? What did you think of them

hmmm the last time I read them was like, 3 years ago? when I was 15 so I don't have the greatest recollection, but I remember thinking wow hussie has his head up his ass. the meta textual schtick (Dirk literally being a villian so there's still a story/canon) was very ouroborous but not in a clever way. more of a human centipede reaching back to eat ur own ass kind of way. hussies style lends itself to being really meta-aware, which can be intruiging but a lot of times comes off as gimmicky at best and constantly self masturbatory at worst. its greatest flaw is hussie's need to constantly reference the fact that he's writing a narrative. there is a reason why so many works avoid being meta or at least confine it to a couple quips & a throwaway joke. you need the conciet that a reader is willing to pretend the events of the story are real in order to enjoy any work of fiction. one or two references are fine, and Dirk taking narrative control was funny so I won't say it didn't totally work. It's just that hussie is so prone to lamp shading and criticizing his own work and its fanbase that there's no joy to be had. it's the same flaw with later seasons of community, though Dan Harmon did it to a much lesser extent. it's hard to enjoy something that's constantly referring back to the fact that it's "something" once the novelty of being self aware wears off. it comes across as really self aggrandizing and annoying instead of witty and transgressive. It also makes it so clear that Dirk is Hussie's self insert and dirks constant self flaggelation aligns with hussie constantly criticizing the bounds of his own narrative. I mean hussie's just such a weird guy, even if he makes fun media. I think the main problem with the epilogues is that hussie takes himself and Homestuck too seriously. Homestuck isn't meant to be some gritty realistic meta textual epic; it's full of dick jokes and slurs and drawn in MS paint. hussie is not Derrida or Lacan or Barthes. he is a guy who made a webcomic for fun and I think people should remember that more often... the epilogues just aren't fun. not fun to read, and seemingly not even fun to write.

That being said I liked davekat being canon that was pretty cute. Can't remember fuckall else but I thought the choice between meat and candy was an interesting concept, just executed poorly.

I have read Homestuck 2 and im intruiged by what they're doing, though I do think it's funny that Homestuck 2 and pesterquest are so different tonally from the original in that they're much more reverent towards the canon and much less hostile to the audience. It's woobified and kind of lame, but at least I can tell they're having fun doing what they're doing! shoutout 2 farah & the team ^_^

#homestuck #epilogues #ask #homestuck 2

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stagefoureddiediaz · 2 years

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See, I don't think the showrunner necessarily lie, but more put out feelers. Tim said no Buck Begins, and no Eddie PTSD and people begging for both and being disappointed by that let him know their plans to head in those directions were good! With Kristen though, I don't know. She seems to be more a fan of cop stories and action than big, hard conversations (Tim wrote the ones for her episodes that she didn't think were needed) so with everything going on, I'm not sure we'll get any kind of big conversation with Buck and Chim, maybe just them ending up helping each other in the heat of a rescue and a nod of acknowledgment, followed by them chatting more, at the most. I hope I'm wrong and you're right because I'd love to see some resolution for them since we didn't get the apology scene for Eddie and Bobby. Maybe Tim will step in again and let us see it in the finale.

Hey Nonnie

I think they do lie - all the time - and I don't really have a problem with it because its about protecting their product at the end of the day. If you tell everyone that you're going to do something, many people (esp GA people) won't bother tuning in - because if you know whats going to happen whats the point. Of course a little bit of it is a bout putting out feelers, but its a side benefit rather than the reason. and yes KR might be big on cops and big action, but Tim is still in charge and he will keep ensuring the character stuff is prominent because he knows what he created in a way no one else can and understands what his audience likes/wants.

That is one of the differences between a show creator being a show runner and just having a show runner. when you create something you understand it in a way no one else can - both the feel of the show overall and the characters as individuals and collectively. You see it a lot when Show creators completely stop being involved in a show - what the audience sees changes a lot - Community is a perfect example of this - When Dan Harmon got removed from running the show - it was never the same again because the new show runners didn't have that same knowledge or connection with the characters Dan had created. So while Tim is still overall show runner he won't let the character stuff be sacrificed - its why he writes that stuff into KR's scripts (and probably the other writers as well) because he is the one with the true picture - the whole thing after all its his creation and his 'baby'

The thing is that when those interviews were conducted the scripts and plot arcs are already written, Buck begins is slightly different to the other examples - the reason Tim initially said no to Buck Begins is because the show itself is Buck begins (I don't mean that agains any of the other characters so don't come at me) 911 starts more or less at the beginning of Bucks probationary year - everyone else is established in their careers, but Buck is not. It is a common trope to use a character starting out on their journey in their career/life/whatever as a vehicle to explore the world you've created - think of all the times you've watched a show and it starts with someone starting something new or discovering something new about themselves and then exploring it. This doesn't mean that Buck is the main character - not by any means, its an ensemble show, it just gives the writers an in - the audience needs something to help them navigate this new world the've sat down to watch, so a character who is also doing that is an easy way in. SO Tim eventually deciding to have a Buck begins was in part down to audience pressure (but I also think he wanted to set up some of the storylines we're now seeing play out and technically Buck begins is kind of a Buckleys begin as it revealed a huge amount about Maddie as well!)

Back to the other examples - when Tim gave that interview about Eddie's PTSD not needing to be explored - the writers room will have already be a good way into the plotting and outlining of the writing process for season 5 so those decisions will have already been made. Same with KR's interview about Chim and Buck not needing to talk - the scripts for the remainder of S5 would be more or less finished - edits would still be happening etc, but the sort of thing we're talking about would mean fairly major rewrites because its not just a case of adding a scene in, it has implications for other parts of the story and that has massive knock on effects for other departments. When they decided to rewrite Ghost Stories in 5a that impacted their filming schedule etc so it wouldn't have been done lightly or without massive reasons. The show runners and writers room would've started planning for S6 as soon as filming was complete on S5 - in fact they will more than likely have threads in place for S6 from much earlier - conversations in the writers room will include discussions about character motivation and decisions will be made to have a character do something in the current/next season with the intention of picking it back up again later on down the line - maybe two seasons later - it's not going to impact on the current story as that will still be 'resolved' but it will make the characters feel more real as well. Regardless of knowing if they're getting renewed publicly - privately the conversations with studio execs will already be happening and they'll have a fairly good idea of what is going on and will have been given the green light to at least start the planning process. Writers and the heads of other departments don't get to go off on long hiatus's like actors do - they will all be busy planning next season and the pre production process (which I wrote about and is linked on my pinned post) will be underway.

The other thing is that that punch was a big moment in 5a - it was out of character for chimney and the writers room would know its the sort of thing an audience wouldn't forget (it was one of the things we all spent hiatus talking about and analysing the implications of) so they're not just going to leave it hanging in the way they have - it will have a proper resolution - its one of the things 911 is really good at - coming back and picking up threads and exploring things in detail. That punch and the reasons behind it fundamentally altered the relationship between Buck and Chim. they haven't in anyway explored that yet and its impact isn't just a little side thing, it impacts two different family dynamics - the Buckley-Han dynamics and the firefam dynamics.

Hopefully this explains everything!

#kym answers things #nonnie asks #911 on fox #911 fox #911 spoilers #911onfox #911 #911 discourse #911 production processes #did i make sense #did I explain how it works

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