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jiminiediminie · 3 years

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A not-at-all brief commentary on BE-hind story interview.

We really got over an hour of BTS just talking about their music. They really told the media yall don’t ask the right questions so let me do it for you. Love that for them.

But honestly I am so happy that they decided to do this. Because most of the time interviewers don’t ask the right questions or it is in a situation where they have time constraints. Or the interviewer never even listened to the album in the first place (think james corden saying his favorite track on be is dynamite probs because it seemed like that was the only one he knew).

I appreciate as well that it is the members interviewing each other. They could have just as easily sat each member in a room and asked them the questions off screen. But they didn't. I think that adds such a personal element to the interview. Bts members likely know about each other’s music (even solo music) better than anyone else. So who better to talk with the members about their music than each other?

Running commentary of each interview below the cut.

JK interviews Jin

Blonde jk for the win

I lost count of how many times they shook hands please they are so annoying

Jin please don’t downplay your talents. That hurt my heart. If I could describe his voice in one word it would have been powerful. I hope that jin got to see all the praise after the fix you cover. Because he killed it in that.

I loved getting to hear the behind the scene of jin’s role in stay; I didn’t know his role in it before he talked about it.

I’m glad jin got to release abyss and put so much of his own work into it. It is also so amazing to hear how much help joon is to all of the members when it comes to lyrics and music. A talented king.

Slightly surprised there wasn't more clowning around in their interview since these two are usually so chaotic together. I thought jk would clown jin when they started talking about jin being older but he didn't. Growth.

Hobi interviews JK

Hobi looks so soft in that cardigan

Hobi right off the bat asking about the mixtape. He knows what we want.

Jk talking about how he wants to try writing songs not just about his own experiences was so interesting to hear; can’t wait to see what he comes up with in the future.

Him talking about all the different things he wants to try but it’s almost too many was very relatable. That feeling of having so many choices you don't know where to start. But that does mean that when we do get a mixtape from him it will be from varying styles of music and i am all here for that. Personally holding out for rocker jk or acoustic jk.

His favorite song to sing is euphoria; that’s so sweet it is such a gem of a song. I think I would have chosen still with you since it’s pretty different than a lot of the other songs he sings.

Hobi saying “you’re all grown up” to jk and jk saying “i'm not the old me” really hit me in the feels. Hobi and bts really did watch jk grow from a slightly awkward pre-teen to the confident man he is today. They must feel so proud of him. 23 yo jk is not a baby of bts anymore. He does what he wants. He wears what wants. He has long hair and dyes it blonde then blue just because he can. He even talked about how his voice has matured. Im glad that the members see that too and seem to be proud of the person he has became.

3 main tracks. 3 mv. 3 choreos of different styles. Yes do it jk please im begging. After seeing him dance in black swan at mma i want to see more contemporary dancing from him. And i feel like after getting still with you and stay he can write songs that would fit that vibe. I just want to see jk’s dance talent showcased more.

I don’t know if the fans could survive 3 separate jk mv. We barely survived a live performance of my time.

Tae interviews Hobi

Tae in that emerald green sweater. He looks so good. He should wear that color more

I love how serious tae is about playing the interviewer. The actor in him never sleeps.

Hobi talking about the dual meanings behind the title of Dis-ease was so cool. Fans obviously caught that it could mean multiple things. But as far as i know that was never confirmed. Now that it is I am once again impressed with the thought they put behind everything they do.

A psychological occupational disease. Your mind hobi

I think it’s so cool that hobi recorded it by himself and how he said that doing it like that allows him to grow as a producer since he has to listen and edit himself. They really just always continue to grow in their roles in music don’t they?

Hobi talking about how he would love to solve his own problems but then remembering that he is part of a team really shows how much they trust and rely on each other. So he and jimin worked on the melody of the bridge together and then joon wrote the lyrics. And now we have the most iconic bridge of all time. Still holding out for a dis-ease live performance or music video (I’m a clown I know).

And lol at tae being like call me next time dude

“I would like to share my music with everyone” -- please do

Please tae is so sweet and attentive!? “When you talked about music i noticed you had a smile on your face and i thought ‘he really loves music’”. “But personally if i had your skills I’d be showing off and be proud of myself”. Kim taehyung is the embodiment of a teddy bear

And closing it with actor tae again -- “can i get your autograph”

Jin interviews Jimin

Two seconds into the interview they are clowning each other with jin saying to talk informally. Yet as soon as jm did (and that slight smile when he did), jin is like I was talking to myself. Chaotic as expected of these two.

Jm talking about his process for music being “just go as i feel” makes so much sense for him. He is an easy going person and it makes sense that it reflects in his work style.

It’s so cool that him coming up with the melody of the dis-ease bridge was just because he was humming to himself and the producer liked it -- almost serendipitous if you will

I love when people praise jimin for his vocals. So hearing him talk about how they used his vocal in place of a female for lgo’s chorus stroked my jm bias ego

Joon is seriously the best human ever. Jimin didn’t want to bother the other members to help with christmas love but joon contacted him and helped with the lyrics anyway. Bts seriously has the most amazing leader.

“I’d like to try making an acoustic style song”. Please do it jimin. Acoustic bts is my weakness but especially acoustic jimin. Songs like promise sound so good with his singing style.

Jin shaking jimin’s pinky 😂

“I’m a little disappointed in the MC” “but you know if you looked around there is no MC like me” -- jinmin’s relationship everybody

Jimin interviews Joon

Minimoni look so cozy in their sweatshirts sitting on a plush rug.

“You know we have this youngest member”. “Oh jungkook?” “No the real youngest” “Oh seokjin. That’s a shame” -- please minimoni are so funny and joon knew immediately who jm was talking about when he said the real youngest.

“It felt like I was doing the only thing i could do” . Please let me give you a hug joon

Joon’s mind continues to amaze me. How he talked about needing the concept or key word to give “flesh” to the song was such a good way to explain how he approaches music.

“What do you mean little? You play a very big role” -- lol jimin speaking facts. I already mentioned how amazing it is that he helped jimin and jin with their individual songs. The fact that members who want help with their own music always seem to go to joon really tells you how much of an amazing and talented human being kim namjoon is. I can’t remember the context, but there was this moment that jimin (or was it hobi?) said something like “what would we do if we didn't have rm”. They are truly lucky to have him.

Release that minimoni subunit now please and thank you

Tell us what you’re working on joon don't be shy. Joon mentioned that his music is like a diary. I would love to know his thoughts expressed in music now. 2018 joon who made mono and 2021 joon are two very different people. Bts has grown so much since then.

Joon interviews Yoongi

The work colleagues! Did you know they have worked together for 10 years?

Yoongi’s fuzzy sweater. So soft

Yoongi saying he writes songs when he is bored. Lol i love him so much

It’s really interesting to hear them talk about their lyrics getting rejected. I guess we don’t hear much about that part. And lol at joon just laughing and saying he guesses he didn’t grasp tae’s intentions for b&g.

I like that this was more of a conversation than an interview. I love it when these two just sit together and talk about technical stuff that i don’t understand (like the festa interview)

Yoongi is such a good person to make music with. JK wanted to add humming to telepathy? They added humming to telepathy. I had wondered the reason why there are two different versions of the song. I prefer the longer one tbh

Yoongi wants to make an acoustic song? Hell yeah. Jimin does too. So yoongi x jimin subunit acoustic song with yoongi playing the guitar (please). Also a folk song?? Yoongi your taste i like it

I can’t wait to hear yoongi sing im so excited for him

Yoongi talking about how they made this album with no pressure and got to just do what they wanted and that it was received so well. How he wants to keep making music like that. That makes me happy. I want them to continue to get to do that. I love the big productions and concepts of their albums. But if they are happier making albums like be that do not have that then that is what i want them to do.

“Please listen to telepathy a lot” -- what yoongi wants yoongi gets. Go stream telepathy

Yoongi interviews Tae

The title of blue and grey is because tae wants to overcome that feeling. My heart.

He looked so shy talking blue and grey. I am so excited to see him get to talk about kth1 when it comes out. I could listen to him for hours.

English guide track? Release it tae

“I felt kind of proud of myself” -- you should tae

Yoongi straight up asking tae why he didn't include joon’s lyrics was interesting. It’s cool to know that tae had the kind of power to choose what he felt would fit the emotion of the song.

It doesn’t surprise me that tae feels so much pressure to make sure the tape is good before it is released. It seems like when it comes to solo work the members really do feel more pressure since they aren't sharing the burden with the others.

“Please look forward to it” -- don’t worry tae everyone is

We know from the preview that there are 13 songs potentially on the mixtape. That would be so amazing if he released it with so many songs. Tae’s voice sounds so good in so many different styles so i know that it would be so varied.

Final thoughts -- I love that they got to do this. I hope going forward they do this more for their albums. And from what the members said they enjoyed getting to be so involved in the process of making the album. It would be amazing if that continued. While a lot of their hit songs are not made fully by the members, those songs that are often have more meaning to the fans. b&g, stay, telepathy. These were songs from the members. We got to hear their actual thoughts put into these songs. I hope that bh sees how well this album did and lets that continue.

Congrats if you made it to the end!

#my thoughts #bts #ot7 #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #jinkook #hopekook #vhope #jinmin #minimoni #namgi #taegi #jikook #naabc

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ectonurites · 3 years

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One of my problems with the Young Justice show is that none of the characters I knew from the comics felt like themselves to me? Like, Kon is the most obvious, but Dick, Wally and Roy also felt just a little... off. A little to one-dimensional, maybe, idk how exactly to describe it. Then they killed off Wally as part of DC’s vendetta against the character, which has always ticked me off ever since it started. And then later when they brought in more characters I love, like Tim and Cassie and Bart, it was weird then too. I get why Bart was different, because they changed his backstory to him being from an apocalyptic future with a mission, rather than him just being from the future and raised in VR, so his personality is a little more serious, a little more calculating. But characters like Tim and Cassie we barely even got to know. Even in Season 3, they focused a lot more on characters like Brion and Violet, who aren’t big at all in the comics, if they’re even in the comics at all idr, and so were essentially blank slates for them to do as they pleased with, like Kaldur, Artemis and M’gann pretty much were in the first season. Idk, I love getting to see characters I love show up and be seen, but they don’t really feel like themselves

Oh yeah I completely agree. The thing about the Young Justice cartoon is it really was the creators just wanting to do their own entirely new version of things using the basic build of the DC universe, and by establishing a world like that with so many very drastic differences, it ripples out (not necessarily in ways they were even thinking about when writing it tbh!) and makes some things hardly recognizable in a lot of ways.

Some of those changes are actually good, their version of Artemis is a super interesting character and same with Kaldur, and I thought the Roy cloning thing was cool and honestly until they just started Infinite Frontier as a reboot in the comics I was pro the idea of using something like that as a way to let Pre-New 52 Roy and New 52 Roy coexist because they’re so wildly different and people wanted the original version back.

But... all those changes make things so different. Superhero cartoons based on existing comics... are adaptations. And with adaptations, people are always going to be comparing to the source material. There are always going to be changes made just because of medium constraints (time being a big one), but for something to be a good adaptation it needs to keep the heart of the original work, or in the case of criticizing how a character was adapted, having the same core values/features/traits. This is why I think Young Justice ultimately kinda falls flat as an adaptation of the DC universe, because out of their main cast the majority is pretty unrecognizable. That doesn’t mean it fails as a show or even is bad because of it, like that’s not what i’m saying, but overall as an adaptation it doesn’t... properly adapt things. it drastically alters them and expects us to just go along with it, which we can, but... you know what I mean. I hope that makes sense?

But so that, where we know even the characters we do get to know well are altered drastically, then that leaves us in this super weird position with the characters who show up, and are familiar characters from the comics, but we don’t get to learn about in this universe. Are we just to assume that they are approximately the same as in the comics? Or are they different in ways we just don’t know? Are we ever going to know? Because man, personally, knowing just how different the characters we do know well are, I don’t really feel safe making any assumptions abt others! Especially when the little bits we do see of them don’t have the same character relationships or even necessarily personalities. Bc man, your friends do shape you in a lot of ways, and so does your history/past. Versions of Tim, Cassie, Bart, and Kon who didn’t get to go through YJ -> Teen Titans together are going to be so unrecognizable because it was so formative for them?? A world without the Teen Titans in general just changes SO MUCH for SO MANY characters. So it’s just. A lot.

Sometimes I just imagine a world where they deadass made a cartoon in this style but with all original characters so that A) they wouldn’t have people comparing it to the comics thus they could do more things without people getting annoyed at how different things are, and B) they wouldn’t feel the need to include so many fucking cameos and characters that distract from what’s going on, rather having just... the characters that will actually be relevant and explored in the plot.

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lxvescramble · 4 years

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I really love Eisuke and he is my absolutely favorite but tbh I have to say voltage seriously manipulated the election because there was the same problem before actually Zyglavis and Scorpio should have been 1 too and at the last minute they said it was a bug and now too again? It's too obvious voltage manipulated it, I think more they already prepared something for Eisuke and panicked when he started to lose. So they said people cheat. voltage should seriously stop these elections it's only toxic and not really fun anymore for many others :/

Hello, 😊

So ... I also find it tiring that every year there is this issue (cheating). I respect your opinion, it is boring and can be doubtful yes. Doubt will always exist. I personally do not believe that Voltage already has anything ready and such. I don't know, is it to believe that the company is very miserable, and besides what is the sense of not making a product that so many voters / readers (if they really existed) would be waiting for, since they voted so much for such a character?

Let's think about this year. Takuto. Do you believe that a character who has not spoken for a long time, does not have a story, would have so many votes? I don't have such a good memory, but I think that in the last elections Takuto didn't even have an expressive vote. I remember that when I got to the fandom the "cheat" was with Luke (kbtbb) an exorbitant amount of votes for him and that Voltage also excluded. I think that if there is a cheater, the intention is to really embarrass the company. Or It is to show a rebellion against Eisuke 😂.

As for the exclusion of votes, I believe that if a quantity far beyond the normal, come from the same ip (or id, whatever they organize voters) it is satisfactory for them to check if it is being clean, especially because these votes are bought, it is "easy" to keep track. Takuto still got many more votes than I expected. Perhaps because his presence there encouraged other people to vote for him. Because they liked the character or because he wanted to "knock down" Eisuke.

There is a possibility that the company is "bad character" and ignores hundreds of customers who paid for a character is there in the first place (because by the number of votes there should be hundreds of people), and for the convenience of having a product ready, cause a big constraint to your name, your reputation, for "laziness"? Does this possibility exist? Sadly yes. But I refuse to believe. I can't see a sense of it. These cheats have been repeated for years. So every year Voltage has to steal from Eisuke because he already has something ready, or because he sells more? If Eisuke lost every year it wouldn't make sense to leave a product ready for him. And if he sells a lot, it's normal for them to vote a lot.

I understand your position of indignation at Eisuke's victory routine, even though it's are a character dear to you. I have nothing against Eisuke. I also find it boring to see him there every year. So I wanted him to become ineligible as Saizo is at Tenka. It would make everyone happier, including the Voltage itself, which could be less attacked by cheaters. Remembering that this kind of cheating doesn't exist only at Voltage, recently I saw Shall We Date complaining about cheating at Obey Me events, unfortunately there are everywhere.

But that's it, I prefer to believe in the company. Especially because I can't see where she would "profit" with such an attitude. On the contrary, it only loses, it loses credibility, it loses supporters for future voting events ...

#election 2020 voltage #eisuke ichinomiya #voltage inc #voltage otome #love 365 #kissed by the baddest bidder #asks lxves #kbtbb

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sage-nebula · 4 years

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Thanks for the explanation! I've been a JRPG fan since the 90s and the changes made to the Let's Go games don't sound as though they'd be my thing either. Do you have a review of Gen 8 anywhere on here? I'd be curious to see what you think of Sword and Shield.

I don’t think I ever did a formal review of Sword / Shield because I wasn’t writing up game reviews at the time, but I’d be happy to give an impromptu one here!

Overall Score: 8.5/10

The Pros:

— Gameplay was a vast improvement from the previous gen. Dynamaxing is a much more fun battle mechanic than a one-time-per-battle use Z-Move; the Wild Area is FANTASTIC, especially with the wild pokémon roaming around; the bike came back without annoying music to accompany it; the post-game Battle Tower provided actual challenge, and so on. I actually had fun playing these games, particularly with so much space to explore and things to find. I’m not someone who says that story is never important in games—I’m far from that person, actually—but gameplay will always be the most important component of a video game because it’s how the audience engages with it. The Alola games were not fun for me to play; the Galar games were, and that was automatically such a relief after a gen that felt like a chore to get through.

— The characters are all fantastic! Aside from postgame characters Shieldbert and Swordward, I didn’t dislike a single character in the games. The rivals were great, the Gym Leaders were memorable and involved for the first time since Gen V, and Sonia has one of my favorite arcs of any Pokémon character ever given how relatable her story was. (Having one of the main characters be someone in her twenties trying to figure out what she’s going to do with her life is almost like Game Freak was trying to speak to the young adult audience who grew up with these games, tbh.) I didn’t like the characters in the Kalos games aside from one, and the Alola games were a massive disappointment, but Galar really came through and shone with all of its characters. The fact that they’ve only managed to get even more spotlight and depth in things like the League Card bios and the post-game Galarian Stars Tournament only makes things even better.

— The music was excellent. While there were a few tracks that weren’t especially memorable (such as the standard trainer battle music), there were many more that were absolute bangers (the Gym Leader battle music, the Battle Tower music composed by Toby Fox himself, Marnie’s Battle Theme, etc). I especially love the music for the northern part of the wild area, with how the bagpipes come into full crescendo. Absolutely spectacular.

— There was so much to explore! One of my primary complaints with the Alola games is that they were so small; only four tiny islands, without being able to explore the sea. Galar made up for that, though, with more towns, a huge wild area, and to cap it all off, extra locations added with DLC that allowed you to fully explore the ocean and many other areas. There were so many little hidden things around and I LOVED discovering everything, ignoring the plot while I did so. That was my jam.

— Speaking of the DLC, I cannot speak highly enough about Game Freak’s decision to release DLC with new areas / content rather than just releasing a slightly modified third version with different postgame (coughUSUMcough). Yes, the DLC still cost money, but it was half the price that a third game would have been, and honestly the DLC stories adding to the postgame (though you can do them at any time and the levels scale) added to the richness, depth, and overall playtime that the Galar games offered. I really, really can’t express how much I hope that this is the business model Game Freak takes with future releases. Please give us new stories via DLC rather than making us shell out for a slightly modified third version.

— Honestly, this is an unpopular opinion, but I really liked the way the story was handled. I LOVED the model for the Gym Challenge being a regional tournament that you have to be sponsored to enter, how the “gyms” were stadiums full of people, how it’s something that really affected the region and encompassed everything you did, story-wise. I loved, too, how the adults in the game ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING FOR ONCE instead of wanting to rely on literal children to solve their problems for them. Sure, it means we missed some instances of disaster, but honestly, I’ve been cleaning up the PokéWorld’s messes since 1998. I’m tired. I want to just have fun gallivanting off into the wilderness in-between doing a fun Gym Challenge. That’s all I want. So while some didn’t like the fact that the story wasn’t super deep, I liked it, especially since if the Kalos and Alola games taught us everything, it’s that Game Freak fails spectacularly at handling tough topics, to the point I’d really rather they not try at all.

The Cons:

— I’m still disappointed about the Dex cut. I’ve accepted it at this point, we won’t get the full Dex back unless Game Freak somehow gets more time to develop the games, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t find it disappointing. I think all pokémon should be included in the games at least once the main campaign is over, and it’s disappointing that they aren’t.

— I don’t know if it’s a fault of the game or thanks to my internet connection, but I experience severe lag when wifi is turned on in the wild area, which is again disappointing since it was promoted how you could interact freely with other players this way.

— I MISS MEGA EVOLUTION. My Charizard was bred and trained specifically to mega evolve into X. I really hope we get Mega Evolution back at some point because I’m angry that it’s gone.

— While I was glad to see following pokémon back in the DLC, it really wasn’t implemented well. They can’t keep pace properly at all. Again, I wonder if this is tied to the time constraints that went into development, and if it is, I hope they can smooth it out in the future.

— I was kind of disappointed in the way Rose ended up being depicted as the game’s Big Bad, because of the role they gave him in the game. In the game, he’s the CEO of a mega corporation that controls all energy throughout the Galar region. Given that we currently live in a world where CEOs of mega corporations who control everything are actively destroying the planet and don’t care that they’re doing it, it fell a bit flat for me for the games to be like, “no, it’s fine he controls everything that everyone’s lives depend on, the real problem is he summoned a legendary pokémon he couldn’t control.” Like, my dislike of Rose is far less about what he does versus what he is, and I feel like Game Freak chickened out of criticizing what actually needed to be criticized.

But yeah, that’s all I’ve got! I really enjoyed Sword and Shield; they gave me some hope for the direction the games might be taking in the future.

#pokemon #pokemon swsh #Anonymous

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atamascolily · 4 years

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lily reads “Aftermath: Life Debt” by Chuck Wendig

This was one of the first nu-canon novels to come out in 2016, meant to fill the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. So far, all of the nu-canon stuff has been readable (unlike, say, some of Legends’ more memorable failures) but I was pleasantly surprised to find that Wendig’s writing is the most exciting and engaging I have encountered to date.

The problem is, of course, that he keeps using it to accomplish things I disagree with, but I am sure he did the best he could within the constraints Disney gave him and I don’t take it personally.

Anyway, I had to skip the first Aftermath book because it’s AWOL from the library right now, but fortunately, Wendig is pretty good about explaining How We Got Here without huge infodumps, so I got oriented pretty fast.

This book is written in present tense, which also surprised me. Even though I have read several pro-published novels that use present tense, I’m still not used to seeing it outside of fanfic, and it feels delightfully novel. I like present tense because it encourages concrete verbs, as well as a sense of immediacy and groundedness in the action (which is one reason I use it in fics). Present tense forces me to be a better writer precisely because it doesn’t come naturally. But I also enjoy it as a reader.

Life Debt is set immediately post-Battle of Endor in 5 ABY. Leia is a few months pregnant. Luke is name-dropped a few times, but never appears. (Sigh.) Han is upset that the New Republic is dragging its feet on liberating Kashyyyk and he and Chewie decide to take matters into their own hands. When things go wrong, Leia asks Wendig’s OC Nora Wexley and her crew to bring him back.

Nora Wexley was one of the Y-wing pilots at the Battle of Endor. Now she roams the galaxy hunting Imperials for New Republic bounty, with a motley assortment of beings. There’s Sinjir, ex-Imperial and gay; Jas Emari, a Zabrak bounty hunter; and Jom Barell, who didn’t have any defining personality traits that stuck in my mind outside of his on-again, off-again friends-with-benefits with Jas;. There’s also her teenage son Temmin “Snap” Wexley and the refurbished battle droid he built as a personal bodyguard, Mr. Bones. Mr. Bones is an unrepentant murderbot and utterly delightful, especially when he tries to “blend in” by being more human.

More backstory: Nora joined the Rebellion after her husband Brentin was imprisoned by the Empire and presumed dead. Nora and Wedge have a thing as well. Mon Mothma is chancellor of the New Republic, and Leia is... I’m not sure what her official title is.

Meanwhile, on Team Empire, there’s Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, ostensibly in charge of a large slice of the Imperial Remnant, but who is being manipulated--to her deep resentment--by a man named Gallius Rax with ties to both Palpatine and Jakku. Sloane tortured Wedge in the previous book and Nora is frustrated she didn’t kill the Grand Admiral when she had the chance.

There’s also a hilarious sequence where the guy running Coruscant tries to surrender and Mon Mothma and Leia refuse because he doesn’t have anything they especially want.

In addition to the main plot, there are also short chapters titled “Interludes” showing various doings in the wider galaxy. I think a lot of these are supposed to be tie-ins for other material because they mostly don’t have any relevance to the current storyline. There’s one about a Vader-inspired death cult on Corellia, a pirate queen named Eleodie, Alderaanians mining asteroids from their former homeland and arguing about politics, Twi’leks freeing Ryloth, Malakili the ex-rancor-keeper gets a new job training a baby Hutt (?? - would have liked to hear more about that one!). I like the one about Maz Kanata’s castle, even though it still makes NO SENSE in terms of world-building.

I like Sinjir’s relationship with his slicer boyfriend, and I like that from his perspective, it’s not that the Empire particularly cares about homosexuality per se, (as long as you’re discreet about it), but the Empire uses relationships to manipulate and control people, so being open about them is a form of weakness. Just brings home the point that the Empire is a piece of shit (which is why it’s so hard for me to care about Rae Sloane or any of the scheming on Team Empire).

I don’t think I like Sinjir as a person, mind you, but he is certainly interesting, and he has no illusions that he’s a good guy, even though he’s now working against the Empire.

Also, there’s a bounty hunter named Mercurial Swift, which is the most metal name ever, and cameos from Brendol Hux, who ran some sort of boarding school, and whose bastard son is name-dropped occasionally.

No one will be surprised that my favorite scene is Leia meditating next to a sanctuary tree sapling on Chandrila she grew from a seed that Wicket gave her, and she touches the Force for the first time, and realizes that her child is a boy. Nice.

Anyway, Nora and her team find Solo--Chewbacca is a prisoner on Kashyyk when their rebellion attempt failed--and they sneak into a prison called Ashmead’s Lock on Kashyyyk, which happens to be where Nora’s husband Brentin has been this whole time! The prisoners have been stuck in stasis pods and mined for energy in a Matrix-like scenario that really should have been explored more, but they bust out, with Nora taking the prisoners home and Han and Chewie continuing to lead the rebellion.

Time skip! Brentin is distant and has PTSD, Snap is angry and acting out, Nora feels guilty because she’s attracted to Wedge and she isn’t able to connect with her husband anymore. Wedge is, of course, heartbroken.

Sloane comes to Chandrila for peace talks, and Leia leaves to go after Han on Kashyyk when Mon Mothma refuses to back her up. She ends up getting Wedge to come with her for back-up, and her pilot is Evaan Verlaine from the comics (nice to see you Evaan!)

Meanwhile, the Empire continues to be a piece of shit on Kashyyyk, and it’s way more graphic than I expected this book to go. They get what’s coming to them eventually, when Han and his team disable the chips that are keeping all the Wookiees prisoner.

The peace talks turn out to be a trap engineered by Gallius Rax--all of the prisoners from Kashyyyk are brainwashed to start murdering people at the big ceremony and Mon Mothma narrowly avoids assassination at Brentin’s hands thanks to Nora’s quick reflexes. Sloane escapes, is super-pissed about being manipulated yet again by Rax, and she and Brentin (who also wants revenge) go to Jakku to follow up on a lead about Rax’s past.

Han ends up stealing a Star Destroyer, and Leia saves the day, and they finally kiss and make up and it’s lovely. Han leaves Chewie behind on Kashyyyk to be with Leia. Norra and her remaining team members go after Sloane.

But the biggest disappointment, of course, is the New Republic’s inability to liberate Kashyyyk, which I think epitomizes the difference between Disney’s version of Star Wars and Legends for me. In Legends, it was never a question that our heroes would liberate Kashyyyk; that was important and the entire point of the Rebellion. Even though it happened more or less off-screen, it was mentioned and cited as proof of the New Republic’s victory and triumph. So to see Mon Mothma and Ackbar trying to dissuade Leia from this is just... wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Like I said, I think Wendig’s hands were tied on this one, but it just... lands wrong. It will never not feel wrong. Is it grittier and more “realistic” this way? Maybe, but what is the point?

Overall, this is an action-packed adventure, with lots of good moments and funny bits that feel very much “Star Wars” to me. The interludes range from fan service-y to “hey, that’s neat, tell me more!” to “wow, is there going to be a payoff for this years down the line?” In general, I find Disney Star Wars depressing as hell, but despite the downers I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. Like I said at the beginning, this is probably the best nu!canon thing I’ve read to date outside of the Shattered Empire comics.

I came to like most of Wendig’s OCs, even though I’d really rather read about characters I already know--like, say, Luke! Imagine that!

(I don’t know why Disney thinks we’re not interested in what Luke’s doing, but tbh they write him so poorly when they bother that I’m not really sure I want them to.)

#star wars #book reviews #WHY DISNEY WHY

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azure-steel · 4 years

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@oflockhearted said: "I'd totally fuck you" // you knew this would happen [tbh, I’d have been a little heartbroken if it DIDN’T happen ;u;] Send "I'd totally fuck you" for my muse's reaction to yours saying this to them - ACCEPTING!!

Cloud was having a Bad Day™.

The first instance of the legendary Bad Day™ was a stupid o’clock phone call about a delivery he hadn’t yet made and being chewed out over the receiver for not keeping to a time constraint he’d never agreed to. Keeping his tone at a level where he was at least amicable was a difficult task when he's stood there freezing his nuts off in the office wearing little more than his boxer shorts, while picking the sleep out of his eyes. He’d placed the device back in its base a little harder than he’d originally intended after that call ended rather abruptly.

Who needed a lie in on their day off anyway? Asshole...

Sometimes this job could be more trouble than Cloud felt it was worth. But only sometimes; awkward clients came with the territory, but that didn’t mean he didn’t sit and seethe about it at the breakfast table sporting an expression that looked like he was having a hard time chewing a few hornets. If Cloud Strife was an expert at anything at all, then sulking was definitely it.

Tifa had enough sense about her at the time not to ask what his problem was and so Cloud was able to sit and smoulder in peace for most of the morning.

The second instance of the legendary Bad Day™ occurs in the workshop; commissioned for a general service on what had to be the oldest motorcycle in the whole of Gaia. The thing was a fossil of a machine, held together with strange makeshift frames (Which looked as though they’d been welded together by a blind man... while he was on fire) and ratty shreds of duct tape, so old the glue was beginning to degrade and causing the strip to slide away from the original point of contact. Not that this was the actual issue here.

It took a while to find the outlet feed for the lubricative oil these machines needed to keep all the inner workings running smoothly, and the damn thing just so happened to be directly beneath the main body of the bike. Not really a problem if the tank could be lifted, though it seemed in this case - because this was just Cloud’s dumb luck today - the unit was fixed via the oddly welded frame (Done by a blind man... while he was on fire) so he’s now left with little choice but to get down on his back against the cold concrete floor and shimmy beneath the vehicle body. He wrenches a little at the valve, a pull one way, a jiggle the other.

Damn, this thing was jammed on tight! But he perseveres, with the hopes that he can loosen the cap just enough to get the pan beneath the thing and drain the oil. Of course, it simply doesn’t happen the way he’d planned it. The cap cracks under the pressure of of Cloud’s wrench.

“Oh no... please... no...” a panicked murmur just as the cap all but disintegrated and all of that lovely, ancient, crusty oil is dumped right out of the tank in one fell swoop. Luckily enough for Cloud - in this instance at least - he’d had his eyes closed but a good measure of it ended up in his mouth and Cloud is already spluttering, retching and cursing the entire day before he’s managed to scrabble his way from beneath the motorcycle. If this day could possibly get any worse, this pseudo-mechanic certainly couldn’t see how. If he could just punt this damn bike into the street and get away with it right at that moment it he certainly would have done.

After a hot five minutes or so of spitting out gritty lumps of rancid oil and violently wiping his eyes with his already filthy tank, he blindly makes his way into the bar where Tifa - his beautiful wife, the only good thing in his life right at this moment in time - is gearing up for the afternoon rush.

“Gods, Cloud, what happened?!” she asks, her voice shrill but not without that irritating hue of amusement dancing in her tone. Cloud barges through the bar gate with a haughty and rather gruff “Don’t!” thrown Tifa’s way and takes his place over the sink, water running before furiously attempting to wash the revolting taste of motor oil out of his mouth. He’s aware that she’s watching, possibly laughing behind those big round eyes of hers but he’s paying her no mind at the moment while he just desperately attempts to keep that mornings breakfast down. He must look an absolute mess. What a joke today’s been.

But then she says something that makes him pause mid-flow, in that low sultry voice she uses either when she wants something, or she’s taking the piss.

“Ugh... you know, Cloud, I’d totally fuck you right now~”

Did he hear that right? Surely not!

Slowly, he turns his head to face her, his expression the very picture of abject annoyance and he responds in the most pleasant tone he can muster - all things considered;

“As you can see, my darling, I have already been royally F U C K E D today.”

Needless to say... he wasn’t in the mood.

#oflockhearted #{what do you want? - asks}#ask meme #answered #I AM SO SORRY #But this came to me and I HAD to write it #There's something about putting Cloud through the fucking ringer that brings me unreasonable amounts of joy #x3c #long post

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oveliagirlhaditright · 4 years

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One thing I noticed when I was reading debates on So Kai's canon status on KHinsider, was that a lot of people were vehemently insisting that both So Kai interactions and Sor iku interactions could be interpreted as either romantic or platonic. I completely disagree, but, do you think a lot of people are under the impression that this is true because of their experiences playing Final Fantasy and other games that play both sides of a love triangle?

I don’t think so. Though I could be wrong, of course. Because the only game to really do that is V*II (and even then, you have C*leriths in particular--though C*loTis do it, too--that C*lerith is totally the intended, canon pairing. And even as a C*loTi myself, if I’m being honest... I think they might be right. It just seems that if most of the developers did have to choose in the end, they’d choose C*lerith. And you get the C*lerith scenes easier than you do the C*loTi ones). Some of the other games somewhat have other love triangles, sure. Like Q*uistis likes S*quall in V*III, and you can get scenes with R*ikku and L*ulu as T*idus in *X... But even there there’s a clear intended pairing. Squall never showed any interest in Q*uistis, as he was all about R*inoa. And while you can get those scenes with R*ikku or L*ulu, T*idus of course still falls in love with Yuna canonically in the end (and also, not every K*H fan has played F*inal F*antasy). And even a lot of other media that has love triangles has their intended pairing planned out from the get-go.

Warning: This post is probably going to get salty, because to explain what I think happened with the whole S*oKai vs. S*oRiku war all the years that K*ingdom H*earts has existed. And since I wasn’t as chill in the past as I am now, some of this stuff used to tick me off and I might unintentionally unearth those old feelings here, in making myself remember it all.

But at least for the the fans who have been here from K*HI on or from K*HII... I think they saw S*oRiku because they wanted to see S*oRiku. Like, apparently there were some fans who saw it as early as the first game, and were trying to argue it was canon over S*oKai even way back then. And while I’ve been with the series since only K*HI was out, I didn’t have Internet at the time (I got it right after K*HII came out, so I found these old arguments then). And just... no. Just no. S*oKai was so clearly canon in K*HI, while as S*ora and R*iku pretty much hated each other 99.9% of the game. I don’t get where those people are coming from.

And then with K*HII, a lot of people were like “Oh my gosh, S*ora totally touched R*iku’s butt! These two are so g*ay!” And also “no” there. Guys, this is a D*isney game. In what world do you think D*isney would ever let that happen. And then there’s the infamous S*ora cries when he finds R*iku while holding his hand while he falls to his knees, that really started all of this--because don’t you seeeeeee, that S*ora reacted so much strongly to finding R*iku here than he did K*airi?!--never mind the fact that to try and push that angle, you really have to take that scene out of context. But even if you count that scene as S*oRiku, instead of somewhat as a writer’s flop, that’s really all you have pointing at S*oRiku from I-II, while you have a million things pointing at S*oKai... and yet S*oRikus were adamant that S*oRiku was canon, and people were fools for thinking otherwise.

And if these games were always going to be S*oKai, like I think they were because tbh... J*apan still isn’t very open about when it comes to g*ay couples and you definitely see that with S*quare E*nix, I wish they would have just left it like it was instead of giving us C*oded and D*ream D*rop D*istance.

Why those games are how they are, I don’t know. But we at least know K*airi was originally planned to be in C*oded, even if that doesn’t excuse that she wasn’t in the end. But tbh... And granted, I’m clearly a S*oKai, so maybe I can just never really see S*oRiku because of that (even if I have tried, to see if these people are right and I’m missing something): I’ll admit it... But while C*oded is a game many people look to to say that S*ora and R*iku are g*ay, all I see here is friendship... even when I tried to look at it through another lens.

But this game is, perhaps, where you had to start to wonder if S*quare E*nix knew S*oRiku was so popular, and started q*ueer-baiting with it to try and sell games. You could argue that that was why K*airi was left out in the end. I think it was probably more for time-constraints (which is still bull), but you could still argue it. And you have that part where S*ora’s going inside of R*iku. Which at the time, a pretty famous amv maker (who recognized S*oKai was canon and shipped it) posted that scene alone and titled it “The Reason Re:C*oded Will Sell”. And tbh, they probably weren’t wrong. And you could say that that part in particular was q*ueer-baiting. But again... I don’t know if it was. Because to do so, they would have had to be trying to give that line a double meaning--rather than it just meaning that Data Sora had to go inside Data Riku’s data. I.E. Another computer had to access another computer’s data--which I don’t think they would do, because that wouldn’t have flown with Disney. And as I’ve said above, S*quare E*nix--until the FF*VII R*emake, perhaps--usually treats g*ay couples as a joke, like with the non-serious B*arret and C*loud ship, that’s played for laughs. The only exception is, perhaps, V*anille and F*ang. But they’re never even said to be flat-out canon, and F*ang was originally supposed to be a guy... yeah. Also, sometimes it seems like N*omura doesn’t know much about what goes on in his games’ fanbase--at least not originally--because he only heard that A*kuR*oku was a big ship in the fandom a few years back, and then quickly stated that that wan’t canon. So... I don’t know if they’d really do this. But it’s up to you, I guess.

Which brings us to D*ream D*rop D*istance. I don’t know why this game is the way it is. I don’t. Though people have said they don’t think N*omura was in his right mind while making this--because this was the time that those “N*omura’s Depression” articles were coming out, because after ten years he was getting nowhere with V*ersus X*III because of the company’s shitty decisions--and F*rustrated J*acob makes the good point in his D*D*D playthrough, that it sounds like N*omura was moreso making V*ersus at the time than D*D*D, because I think this was when Yasue first became co-director. And in interviews, Nomura was mostly saying things like, “This happened in D*D*D because the team wanted it”, but not that he did. Which is the opposite of how he usually handles KH. But this was the game where even I started to feel there was some q*ueer-baiting going on (though when I recently made a post about this, palizinhas--a friend of mine who does ship S*oRiku--explained that the game moreso felt again like N*omura just celebrating how great male friendships are (a big thing in J*apan, and also in N*omura’s work. *cough* V*ersus/F*FXV and perhaps even more *cough*), and I think I agree. But still... this game, and to a lesser extend C*oded, makes me feel bad for the S*oRiku shippers, because I feel they were teased about their ship when it would never become canon, and I kind of just wish S*quare E*nix had left it alone. And I guess it’s also worth noting, that D*D*D was originally supposed to be the start of K*HIII, as was 0*2 after that... which might actually explain a lot. In a world where that had actually happened, we would have had one better balanced game. We would have had the section that focused on S*ora and R*iku’s friendship, the part that actually focused on R*iku and K*airi’s a little bit (0*2), and then the one that finally pushed the S*oKai romance forward again (K*HIII). And in a game that was about how S*ora felt his strength came from his friends, and that he didn’t think he would triumph without them... it would have made sense if said game was divided into his strongest friendships (his one with R*iku in the first half, and his one with K*airi in the second, and his ones with D*onald and G*oofy all throughout). It’s kind of sad that isn’t the game we got in the end, as that would have fixed a lot of problems. Alas.

...And I don’t really know how to end this thing, so I’m just going to randomly end it here. Yep.

Edit: And I just remembered why Kairi may have been left out of Coded and DDD: because the fandom hated her. So much.

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retrauxpunk · 5 years

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sv 6.06

recap post of the penultimate episode of silicon valley under the cut (with spoilers as usual)

this miiiight be a downer post so if you want to avoid that ... this is your warning

...

... i think this is the first episode recap post i’m writing that doesn’t start with ‘what the fuck’ because honestly i think i found this episode a bit weird and not ................that good? and MAYBE it’s just because i’ve had a shitty couple days? i’m not totally sure.

but.

I dunno.

I’ll try do this chronologically.

it was a good point of yikes with richard not actually having secured the AT&T deal and just telling his employees that he had because like, that’s a good potential source of conflict. i’m down for that.

i liked when he was talking to AT&T guy and then there’s a cut to dinesh and gilfoyle standing their like shocked parents. dinesh’s expression of ‘WHAT’ ... yeah i like that. also gilfoyle looked especially fine as hell, particularly the hands.

okay.

... gilfoyle using THE AI TO DEBUG CODE? i think this broke my suspension of disbelief. this seems wildly stupid and implausible given, like, gilfoyle’s WHOLE CHARACTER? i don’t really buy that someone who’s as security-conscious and conscientious as he is would, um, DO THIS? please feel free to present counterarguments if you disagree with this (or any other points in this post tbh) because i’m honestly open to hearing them, in fact i would welcome anything that made this episode feel more sense-making and less ‘what the fuck did the show just decide to fire all their tech consultants and throw character out the window?’

LIKE. it’s partly the fact that this seems a bit farfetched on the technological realism front but it’s MORE SO the fact that it just seems so NOT GILFOYLE.

GIVEN THAT FIVE EPISODES AGO HE GOT MAD AT DINESH FOR LETTING THE TWO AIs TALK. HE’S CLEARLY AWARE OF THE RISKS.

and he acts like this cavalier dont give a fuck asshole but i DO NOT BELIEVE that he would risk ALL OF PIED PIPER’S CODE with his AI?????? FUCK what is this!!...?

..............????

okay.

i’m ............ upset that they seem to have COMPLETELY DITCHED this whole jarrich thing they were building up. i’m NOT saying i’m mad that they’re not canonically a romantic couple. i’m saying that -- shipper goggles completely not in the picture -- the first four episodes built up so much stuff for them, there was SO MUCH about their relationship, and with 6.05 and 6.06 there was just fucking NOTHING. and it just. feels like kinda shitty writing? UNLESS?? in the final episode there’s a lot of richard and jared content to make up for it?

like the first four episodes had so MUCH content about their relationship (jared’s whole generally lovelorn thing, accidentally driving to the hacker hostel, quitting, richard throwing a fit when he quit and watching with this cocktail of sadness and bitterness and anger as jared leaves, their fight at the hacker hostel, JARED BRIEFLY FORGETTING TO BE MAD AT RICHARD AND SMILING DURING THE WHOLE BUYING HOOLI THING, richard apologising and telling jared he missed him, JARED FUCKING CRYING) and then there’s just NOTHING? what the FUCK? IS THIS? it HONESTLY feels like the writers were building up to a big richard and jared moment (whether romantic or platonic, either works) but then that storyline got axed by an executive and they got forced into dropping or something, or they just fucking collectively FORGOT about this whole arc seriously WHAT. IS THIS?????

this is the first time in my life i’ve gotten this level of upset about any tv and i guess, well, whatever they do with the finale, it can’t be as bad as what they did with game of thrones!! (i don’t watch game of thrones or read asoiaf, but it was pretty impossible not to catch wind of that whole clusterfuck) that’s gonna be my source of ......... solace.

so yeah.

for FUCK’s sake. all of jared’s talking about gwart, i just. if that’s meant to be sincere i don’t fucking buy it because no fucking way did jared imprint so hard on a person who was fundamentally a rebound

I’M STILL MAD ABOUT THE LACK OF JARRICH STORYLINE WHAT THE FUCK this is not even a queerbaiting issue THEY HAD A FUCKING STORYLINE TOGETHER AND NOW IT’S VANISHED INTO FUCKING SMOKE WHAT THE FUCK

ALSO DID THEY SERIOUSLY JUST WIPE OUT HOLDEN OFF-SCREEN ARE WE REALLY MEANT TO JUST IMAGINE THAT IN THE GAP BETWEEN EPISODES JARED JUST CONTINUOUSLY EMOTIONALLY ABUSED/HARRASSED HOLDEN INTO QUITTING WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK

honestly when i set out to write this recap i was just like ‘this prob won’t be a long post because all i really have feelings about and want to talk about is the ending of the episode’ but clearly ... that has turned out not to be the case

okay anyway, yeah, i mean, it’s definitely plausible that if richard and jared were to real life people that jared would rejoin pied piper and they’d just simply never address their falling out, right, i mean people are plausibly that emotionally constipated sometimes and don’t communicate in situations where you’d expect them to.

BUT THIS ISN’T REAL LIFE IT’S FUCKING TV and it appears to me rather much like shitty screenwriting when you set up a relationship conflict that’s fucking PACKED with juicy emotional moments and then it DISAPPEARS INTO THIN AIR what the FUCK

jesus christ

okay

anyway.

russfest.

honestly when jared was seeing gwart around i was a bit like, okay if this meant to be a legit hallucination it’s a bit Much because, really, jared being that genuinely devoted to gwart that the breakup with her cut him that much? i’m not buying it

so i’m glad it turned out to be Not a hallucination

i liked the twist that actually yaonet wasn’t throttling pied piper, pied piper itself just wasn’t good enough. i liked richard breaking down over it. tbh on a subjectively level i found it a bit painful to watch because he really did behave like a toddler and that was a bit, like, second-hand-embarrassment. but i don’t like object to it or anything.

WHY IS THIS SEASON ONLY SEVEN EPISODES.

the fucking speed with which richard breaks down and then magically finds a solution honestly feels way too rushed and unearned.

U N E A R N E D

that is how i feel about the resolution of this episode. like.

okay so if i remember/understand this correctly, richard’s [extremely hand-wavey solution] was to apply his compression algorithm to son of anton which allowed it to become more intelligent and learn faster/better? and that basically FIXED PIED PIPER? he used gilfoyle’s [a tad unrealistically] bitching AI to like ... have pied piper fix itself?

i barely understand it.

and it’s not like i demand a fully fleshed-out solution, right, like with the middle-out jerkoff epiphany, that wasn’t fleshed out but there was enough detail for it to feel believable. whereas with this ... it did not feel like that.

yeah the whole thing felt way too rushed.

what even was it? like, gilfoyle was using son of anton on pipernet to debug things ... whereas richard first used his compression algorithm on son of anton, then set son of anton loose on pied piper? okay that makes, like, enough sense that if they poured more time and detail into this, then i’d probably be totally happy accepting this in the storyline and my suspension of disbelief wouldn’t have been fucking skullfucked

but this, just. this pacing. i did not like it. it felt massively unearned because there were, what, a very small number of minutes between when richard finds out his tech is inadequate to when he finds a solution?

GOD THEY COULD’VE MADE THIS SO MUCH BETTER IF THEY’D PUT AN EPISODE BETWEEN PROBLEM AND SOLUTION INSTEAD OF JUST LIKE TWO FUCKING MINUTES

this makes me SO MAD IT GIVES ME THE CONFIDENCE TO THINK I COULD WRITE A BETTER STORY THEN THEY DID? FUCK???????

???

okay like yeah totally possible the writers had constraints outside of their control and they did the best they could. but. i’m still not ... happy with the result lol

anyway yeah i’m fucking cheesed off about how richard gets skullfucked with the inadequacy of his own tech, has a breakdown, and then MERE MINUTES OF SCREENTIME LATER, he has a wild solution that works!

and sure, they had it appear to fail first, which was good. but then it magically was back up and running! and yeah i liked how russ said ‘lights!’ and it turned out that this magical new pied piper had gotten so awesome that it build this new feature for itself or whatever, but, honestly, it happened way too quickly to feel believable or satisfying and i’m mad.

because this show has set a pretty high standard in the past and now it’s been a fucking let-down with this episode. god.

what the fuck is this pacing? it was so good at the beginning of this season!! WHAT IS THIS???

AND IF THE PROBLEM IS TIME

THEN WHY THE FUCK DID THEY HAVE SO MANY PLOTLINES WITH FILLER? THE WHOLE ETHAN CONFLICT. GILFOYLE AND MONICA VS TRACY. GAVIN FUCKING BELSON’S STUPID BOOK DEAL. can you imagine how much better this russfest plotline would’ve been if they’d had MORE TIME from not doing those ultimately unimportant subplots? fuck

i have legitimately worked myself into a rage writing this post. i did not expect to have this many feelings, to this level of intensity.

and it’s fucking frustrating because the bones of an awesome arc are here! the moment when the AT&T guy sees the giant hologram from the plane, that could’ve been actually epic rather than a feeling of ‘i know this is meant to be epic but it just feels totally hollow because they completely fucking compressed the biggest part of this whole episode into five fucking minutes’

and richard’s breakdown where he’s jumping on the laptop, screaming about ‘six years’? god that point would’ve been amazing if there’d been more time to explore it!

on a lighter note, i was amused when richard said he had gilfoyle’s laptop because i was like ‘oh okay it’s nice to know that richard is a l33t enough hax0r that he can get through gilfoyle’s undoubtedly Strong laptop security with [presumably] relative ease’ ... and then it turns out it’s dinesh’s laptop and i’m like, ah, okay, less impressive then XD

...there’s no way that the girls in jian-yang’s ‘coding class’ were stupid enough to believe that writing fake amazon reviews constitutes ‘coding’. not in fucking 2019.

i’m mad.

god this has lowered my expectations of the series finale SO MUCH which i guess may be a good thing because, y’know, there’s less capacity for disappointment now.

IT’S OKAY.

EVEN IF THE SERIES ENDS ON A SHIT NOTE, WE HAD FIVE AND A HALF SEASONS OF SHOW THAT RANGED FROM FUCKING AMAZING TO NOT AS GOOD BUT STILL ALRIGHT.

and i have a whole imagination’s worth of potential fan content to be created once the show’s over. i don’t know how long this sv love affair will last but i sure fucking intend to keep it alive as long as i can.

on the topic of fan content, if you’re interested in making sv fan stuff and receiving it as a christmas/holiday gift, please consider signing up for the silicon valley secret santa/gift exchange that i’m running :))) the official blog for it is @svexchange2k19 and the sign-up form is here

#silicon valley #rain watches sv s6 #sv s6 #sv s6 spoilers #silicon valley spoilers #spoilers #precipitation #my sv text posts

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alxndre-0001 · 4 years

Text

Black Mirror Episode Impressions

So I got into watching the series a little before classes begun and here are some thoughts:

Warning: If you don’t like a non-rainbow image of people,then do not proceed.

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

Fascination over other people’s misery

Aka social voyeurism, our tendency to find satisfaction in other people’s scandal. I feel like the sex with the pig wasn’t the voyeuristic act itself, it is a stand-in for something far more insidious and cruel, our tendency to fascinate over the humiliation of other people.

On how public opinion shapes political and personal events

Note how PM Callow was forced to fuck the pig not because of any apparent security reasons to save the princess but it was ultimately the social pressure, which changed overwhelmingly after the finger was cut, that drove him on. The social pressure which was misinformed since the netizens who clamored for it did not really understand the problem behind closed lines. They merely relied on media which was twisted to cater to sensationalism and people’s natural love for anything scandalous. In effect, PM Callow fucked the pig.

But it wasn’t only that event which was shaped by public opinion, I think the suicide of the artist/ kidnapper was also egged on by public opinion that is if we assume that he did all of that to prove a point, like a social experiment that people will forget about the kidnapping if they are presented with something as horrendous as fucking a pig. His point having been proven, his predictions were confirmed that people are truly fucking terrible. And it depressed him so bad enough to kill himself. But this theory backfires if we assume that he planned everything out and knew what was going to happen down to the very last detail. The other reason for his suicide, for me, and which I think is more far fetched is that upon seeing the pig fucking on the telly, he actually participated in the hypocrisy of the masses which he dared to expose. The artist, if I remember correctly, actually sat and watched Callow as he fucked the pig, if he did know his plan was going to work anyway, why sit and revel in the disgusting horrowshow? Perhaps he found himself fascinated by the scandal as well? I don’t know but the artist’s suicide is the most baffling angle in the episode for me.

Public opinion causes movement both on a social and personal scale.

Our words have an impact to shape reality, if Callow was not pressured to fuck the pig, he wouldn’t have had. But one cut finger later, and the tides of the masses changed.

But there is also an interesting angle about the performance art of the artist. If the whole pig fucking thing was meant to be taken as an art work, then the artist’s statement makes a lot of sense. Often in art, even in literature, art works with controversial value (think Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Egon Schiele’s artworks, Balthus with Therese, Dreaming) often become sensational because of the controversy they generate. The masses no longer see the whole point of the artwork. In Lolita for example, the people pounced on the pedophilia and incest plot of the book when all Nabokov really wanted to portray was something else entirely, that Humbert was a bad man and that he hopes readers should not be easily taken in by the poetic words of a madman and essentially an unreliable narrator. But the merit of Lolita as an artwork was reduced to its shock value, the entertainment which people consume.

Similarly, in this episode, the artist wanted to send the message: Look beyond the entertainment to see something far more important (i.e look beyond Callow’s sex with a pig to see that the Princess was indeed freed). But of course, humanity being the disappointing lot that we are, glued our eyes to the pig fucking. I started to realize what a truly fantastic show BM is from this point on because it did not only criticque the people who watched the pig fucking and literally dropped everything they were doing to do just that. It also criticqued US, the audience that watched the episode itself. I admit that while the pig fucking was going on, I wasn’t even thinking about the princess and whether she was alive. I was only absorbed by the scandalous thing happening right before me. Who am I to criticize the citizens when I am just like them? This is the self-awareness that sets apart this episode from the others, I guess. It was like watching a microcosm of real life, the ultimate Black fucking Mirror – like looking at yourself in a mirror only to find that your image has been darkened by so much filth, our darkest tendencies being handed to us in one show. Great first episode, by the way, Brooker.

The fact that two months after the pig fucking, the whole thing was forgotten, people moved on with their lives which scares me tbh. This only goes to show that we have become desensitized with the sensationalism and violence that goes on in the real world as it is shown almost daily whether in newspapers or television. Reminds me of what Susan Sontag said in her work, “Regarding the Pain of Others” where she cites the influx of violence and brutality in television as having altered the way we empathize about real people and real world events. The word is desensitization. And it is true, when we reduce real events into mere forms of entertainment, we dilute their gravity as events with consequences on real people.

It was believed by the French Enlightenment thinkers that distance ( a child from UK may not empathize with an enslaved child in a Boko Haram situation because of geographical constraints) and time (zeitgest, generational gap) delays our moral response. The distance in this episode and in real life as well is the technology. The screens in our televisions and computers, create a distance which delays and frustrates our ability to protest to morally objectionable acts and to truly connect with each other. Or we may protest, but it is fleeting or hollow – we may protest that there is child slavery in Nigeria but it stops there, we move on. Take the people at the pub for example, the ones holding their mugs of beer anticipating Callow’s humiliation, acting as if what was about to happen was the fucking Superbowl, they look as if Callow was not a person, like Callow was not even one of them. Nobody really thought about the humiliation Callow could be feeling at that very instant. They did, however manage to feel some form of sympathy for him midway but sympathy is not empathy much less compassion. Someone even said feeling sorry for somebody can be a mere recognition of the fact that you’re doing so much better than the other person.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

Does existence need to have a body? Or is it the mind that gives existence to a person?

Are the cookies an extension of the person or are they a different entity from the person himself herself? I find it odd because they can be given punishment although they do not cause any effect to the original as in Joe’s case. If the purpose was to punish then necessarily, the cookie should have been considered a different entity but still an extension of the original, forming part of the original, even if it feels like a simulation of the real us.

Is it just the real person who can be punished? Who knows in the future, a simulation of us can also be punished. Akin to our social media selves, in a sense the persona we have in social media are mirrors, mere shadows of our real selves, just like cookies, they are a fragment of ourselves. Our online personas or cookies can be punished as well despite them just abstracts of us when we are subject to online humiliation, criticism, our online selves can be manipulated as well by companies who profit from it, like Smartintelligence.

In the very last scene, the people gave Joe’s cookie an existence enough to consider its confession as legally binding to convict a person. They did not treat it as mere evidence but something that could speak for itself, one woman even saying in the effect that Joe need not talk as the cookie already talked for him. Also the part where Joe’s cookie was subjected to repeated punishment. If it was considered as punishment, then necessarily, one must consider his cookie as existent in the first place? No one can punish a non existence after all.

Matt’s ending was fitting, like “a taste of his own medicine” kind of thing, pretty ironic in my opinion because in the first scene with the cookie of the woman, he controlled the cookie, forcing it to submit to whatever he wanted. But in the ending scene, he was deprived of his own existence, he was made invisible because he was basically a non-person, as if he does not really exist. It’s also kind of snarky how in the first few scenes, he said that people did not want to feel invisible and yet that was exactly what happened to him. In a sense, he is just like the cookie of the woman, he is deprived an existence of his own through the conditions imposed on his freedom by the prison authorities. Notice that in both cases, their existence are conditional, the woman’s cookie to the whims of Matt, Matt is totally blocked from anyone through the whims of the the prison officials or whatever they are called. Since they have no freedom on their own, we can say they are tools, they do not exist.

Which also reminds me of one idea which goes like this: a self cannot be created without others. Does Matt still exist when others are totally effaced in/from his life? How can he have a self(existence) when he could no longer jnteract with others? I feel like Matt’s punishment is even more cruel that that of Joe’s

Torture can also be of different forms

Will it be ethical if we create versions of ourselves in the future without giving them the same rights as we do have? Are copies of us considered as humans?

The similarity in White Bear where there was some sort of a cycle of punishment. I find it interesting, the repetitive nature of punishments to highlight their meaninglessness and banality.

WHITE BEAR

Public persecution through social media or the internet.

Our particular inclination to fascinate on other people’s misery.

“Are the sound waves making them behave like that?”

“Maybe they’ve always been that way, they just needed the rules to change.”

Well, interesting to note because technology (the white bear radio waves) are mere enablers of our innate tendencies to enjoy other people’s misery, be it in social media or otherwise.

Using the excuse of serving justice as a veil for such tendencies, when in truth we become even more brutal than the people we condemn. Ironic that we condemn rapists, murderers, terrorists, people who dehumanize others but in our condemnation, we have dehumanized such people as well.

Social media to ventilate social outrage which becomes quite easily disproportionate. It becomes a place to condemn people.

Shockingly unfair that Victoria did not know what she was being accused of, yet people do not really point this out. Her lack of knowledge about her alleged crimes or the fact that she was an accused in the first place makes this episode almost Kafkaesque ala The Trial, although later on we do know what she is accused of. Is it ethical in the first place to condemn a woman who has no idea what she is being accused of? Is justice merely carrying out the punishment or does it also concern giving a fair trial to a person?

The performative nature of social media in expressing social outrage, in fact everything in this episode feels like a performance. The participation of the viewers, the whole structure of the show hinges on performance, the value of entertainment even to the detriment and humiliation of very real people. Our humiliation becomes a commodity for people to consume.

On the punishment of Victoria It is cruel because she is made to relive the humiliation several times and yet her memory is erased every single time. If the point of the punishment is to reform Victoria (assuming it really is) then why not let her reform on her own and understand the consequences of her actions? This is where the intent of the punishment is revealed— the punishment means nothing, it is not meant to reform any criminal or prevent any form of future criminality, it is merely a performance after all. It is absolutely meaningless. I wonder if our criminal justice system operates on the same principle – the meaninglessness of punishment which is fundamentally cruel because it completely dehumanizes the accused.

FIFTEEN MILLION MERITS

The myth of meritocracy

Notice how the bikers are basically given the false hope that they could escape their monotonous daily lives if they could only earn enough credits to buy a ticket to enter Hot Shot and have a chance to elevate their status in society. One finally gets the credits, buys a ticket to HotShot, however this is where the myth falls apart. Notice how Abi, basically within the first few minutes that she got in the rehearsal room was already asked to go on stage, on the ground, as we later learn that she was attractive. She did not even get to sing in the rehearsal room the judges barely considered her singing voice despite her having the best voice thus far in the competition or something like that according to one judge. One of the girls in the rehearsal room was practically complaining that dhe had been singing for a week yet Abi gets scouted first, the girl who just stepped inside the room like five minutes ago. Notice also that Bing was scouted on the basis that he looked “ethnic”. Both Abi and Bing’s talents, merits or what have yous flew off the window the moment their physical qualities became the basis for letting them go on stage. What happened to good old talent and skill?

On the “ethnic” comment, I find it quite racist, as it feels like it referenced how white people exoticize Black people.

Meritocracy is a lie because in this episode, one’s hardwork and talents did not become the reason for how Abi and Bing escaped the bike room. Abi got out because she was hot and perfect for porn, her singing was discarded. Bing on the other hand, got out because he sold out. It wasnt his talent that made him leave the biking room, it was the shock value of his dissent which appealed to the judges and the masses and not his prepared dance.

Bing is a tragic anti hero because unlike Abi who had compliance juice which coerced her to porn, Bing had none and consented fully to his own exploitation. He was adamant about the hypocrisy of consumerism, the endemic classism in that world, capitalism and so on. However, the moment he benefited from the system that actively exploits others including himself, he sold out. He took the benefit and forgot the cause. This is not very different from people who are fully aware how a system creates inequality to others, but because of the advantage they acquire from such system, they refuse to question the status quo. In Bing’s case, he pretends to criticque the system with his shard of glass, but it is a hollow dissent, it’s all just fashion, there is no conviction or real belief to it, at least no longer.

On the nature of exploitation

The reason Bing went to the show was his rage against the exploitation that the system were committing against basically everyone. But he eventually played by the system which he used to critique. Which brings the question, is Bing still exploited? He who has actively consented to the exploitation of the system just so he could live a better life? Will his consent erase the exploitative nature of the deal he got?

An example: are employees who are basically treated like slaves, no wages, no rights no nothing, any different from a class of employees who are given high bonuses, plenty of benefits but are not allowed to unionize or bargain with their employers although they willingly disregard such abuses because of the benefits they receive? I think they’re both exploited just on different levels. Just because one receives benefits from an exploitative system, does not mean they are no longer exploited, exploitation does not need to be total for it to be exploitation. Just because something is wrapped in something pretty, does not mean it is good.

Similarly, Bing’s participation in that very same system, makes him exploited despite his better life and richer status. He only got out of s smaller box to go to a bigger box, and yet the reality of the exploitation still remains, the system still fucks him over, he hasnt really gotten out. In fact, this time it’s worse, the system has profited from his outrage, the only thing which sustained him and which remained real and authentic to him. He laments during his performance that the system makes everything real into the artificial shit it sells to the masses. But that’s exactly what he became in the end, he was a COMMODITY, his individuality as a person was reduced to nothing but consumption for the audience. And this is why he is an anti hero. Imo

Which makes the ending even sadder. Bing looks out on a seemingly real landscape view, drinks a fresh juice from a jug very different from the vending machine crap he used to get before, and despite the debate on whether the view was real or simulated, one wonders still that Bing got his new, “authentic” lifestyle from reducing his individuality as a commodity, from bare exploitation of the system which he now participates, so are they real, afterall? One musician said, is something beautiful if it came from ugliness? Is something authentic if it came from exploitation?

Commentary on how capitalism exploits what is authentic and real to something that can be consumed or basically, a product. Capitalism operates on taking advantage of other people as well as anything real and genuine in this world, making a product out of all of them. In this way, capitalism objectifies people ( as in the way Abi was reduced to her beauty and entertainment value for porn), it is a system that slowly dehumanizes the worth of a person. And yet, the masses love it,we love objectifying people for our benefit, to entertain us etcetera etcetera. I feel like the reference in the episode to reality talent shows was not very accurate but still a good one. I would have liked it if the producers used a more relevant kind of reality show which operates on other people’s drama (Keeping up with the Kardashians, Jersey Shore and basically other shows that thrive on scandal) because it much likely depicts our tendency to make entertainment of other people’s lives. Where does one draw the line? Reality tv has been such a part of us and though I don’t particularly enjoy them because of the sheer and blatant script behind their “real” interactions, but I also don’t know. Television and the internet has become such a ubiquitous media form that people can hardly be blamed for failing to assess the kind of entertainment they consume. But just a quick snarky comment, the Kardashians are just like Bing, they play by the system,of course they have amassed an empire out of it, but still doesnt change the reality that they are a product of the system, the system that thrives on this exploitation.

Again, what an interesting episode. I love episodes that analyze our relationship with media and the entertainment we consume because as much as we’d like to believe television and media are just for fun, they aren’t. In fact, I think media has the most insidious kind of influence on anyone, and also most subtle because some references and statements can be jacketed into harmless, good fun. Again this echoes, at least for me, the message in The National Anthem , that through media and television we create a distance between one another, delaying our moral response to things which may be otherwise exploitative.

SHUT UP AND DANCE

The hypocrisy of vigilante justice. The people in Shut Up and Dance had their own brand of justice which involves taking the law into their own hands. But in doing so they resort to highly questionable methods such as coercing the criminals into various other crimes. I feel like this kind of meting out a penalty in the name of “justice” is fatal for several reasons. One, this encourages a sort of moral superiority exercised without individual responsibility. Note that the hackers were the ones who can determine who were the criminals to be punished and for what punishment they should be given in relation to the seriousness of their crimes, what then was the basis for their standard of someone committing a wrong? When justice is determined by a select few, it becomes no justice at all and opens the gates for abuses. The hackers could easily base the misdeeds of their victims on purely arbitrary grounds and subject anyone, even on the flimsiest misconducts into excessive punishments.

Conscience as the best judge The hackers code of justice seems not to be based on the law, the hackers did not after all say Kenny and the rest committed violations of the law, instead they operate by relying on the pressure created by personal conscience. Note that the hackers mainly blackmailed the victims to a release of the incriminating videos or whatever, however the victims were driven with fear knowing that what they did had moral consequences whether to their reputation or families.

The hackers were clever not because they laid out almost unexpected traps but because they force the victims to face their own conscience, to take individual responsibility for their actions, that which they believed they were protected from because all their crimes or misdeeds were done in anonymity, in secrecy. The conscience being a powerful motivator, the hackers were very subtle in their coercion, as they did not even have to directly present the horrific effects in the even the videos or objects get leaked to the public.

Excessive punishments

This episode together with White Bear, White Christmas and Hated in a Nation all deal with how punishments are given and considered. Note how the structure of the narrative are different for White Bear, White Christmas, Shut Up and Dance. In these episodes, the audience is hidden from the fact that the main protagonists are criminals convicted for some crimes ( Victoria with child murder, Kenny for child porn, Joe with murder???). In fact, the stories are told in a way as if to humanize the criminals as they were later on subjected to horrific punishment after the audience is made privy that they indeed committed some horrible thing. Unlike in Hated in a Nation, the narrative was pretty upfront that the targeted individuals were somehow already publicly condemned albeit for very slight misconducts and or misinterpreted, blown out of proportion statements.

I suspect there is one very good reason for doing so. In all these episodes, a very crucial theme presented was the question of whether excessive punishment even for the worst criminals (Victoria, Kenny) was ethical. Note that social punishment being one of the main premise, the writers of Black Mirror must have realized that for us to look at punishment as immoral and inhuman, we need to look at it objectively without the crimes committed by Kenny and Victoria being factored in. Black Mirror seems to be saying this kind of excessive punishment is immoral and inhuman and cruel in all instances whether done upon a guilty or innocent person. Suppose in the very beginning of White Bear, we already learned that Victoria helped and watched on as a child was being murdered by her boyfriend, would that have changed the way we looked at how she was basically maltreated the entire time? Knowing our tendency to believe that the very worst criminals deserve the worse treatment, I bet many people would say Victoria being tortured in such manner was justified. In fact, there was a survey online about whether she deserved her lot and unsurprisingly, majority believed she truly had it coming (compare it if Victoria was perfectly innocent). For them, it was justified because she’s an absolute scum from the lowest depths of misery and so she must be horribly treated. But because the narrative was structured in a way that we see Victoria and Kenny as humans first before criminals, we were forced to reconsider the torture and social humiliation done upon their person. We think, “Wait up, was it really right, what they did to these two?”. If we knew them as criminals first, we would have responded differently, that Victoria and Kenny deserve even more beating and cruelty. But such thinking is deeply flawed. THIS KIND OF PUNISHMENT IS WRONG IN ALL INSTANCES WHETHER DONE UPON A GUILTY OR INNOCENT PERSON. Black Mirror is saying to judge the wrongness of an act, we must look at the act itself and not the person who committed the act. The wrongness of an act does not change just because it is being done upon a terrible person. To think otherwise, to believe that the wrongness of an act is relative to the person who did it means to have a partial idea of justice, that justice is kinder only to those who are infallible, those who have never done any mistake, those who possess no flaws. Criminals after all, have rights and in no way I am saying they should be exempt from the law. By all means, jail those menaces but give them their due.

See how narrative structure can be so powerful? In the beginning, we are fooled that Kenny and Victoria are perfectly fine individuals who were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Tabula rasas, no stains. Of course, the audience would have a deep sense of injustice, I dont know about anyone, but I did with Kenny, because I wrongfully believed he was a minor ( lol the actor looked so young) and looked utterly horrified for something so innocent such as jacking off in-front of a camera, like big fucking deal, right? It isn’t a crime, surely. And yet when the plot twist was subtly but beautifully delivered at the end, I was forced to face the moral ambiguity of the whole situation. Was it wrong to coerce Kenny to commit more crimes and kill another person? Was it wrong for the hackers to release the video and not have kept the end of the deal? Or was it perfectly justified because Kenny was a fucking pedophile and just imagine the children in those photos who are fucking jacked off by some person? And this is the true gift of Black Mirror, to place us at morally ambiguous points about our use of technology to justify our transgressions against other people. Moral ambiguity is the best way to present satire and commentary without the show becoming preachy about some moral code, Black Mirror allows for the audience to think for what they may but first consider the consequences.

I see this all the time especially with criminals of heinous crimes, social media outrage pours on, often wishing ill to such people. And though I understand and empathize with the outrage, and though social media outrage has no substantial effect to the meting out of the final punishment, we cannot deny that we are guilty to the thinking that cruel acts are justified when done to cruel persons. We have the tendency to view justice as some sort of a thing which can be deserved only by good people and not those who have failed morally or otherwise, in some way. That’s why we have right to due process, why we still give fair trial to an accused even if his case is so damning, precisely because we recognize that justice is for everyone.

Having said that, I think Kenny needs to go to jail and FAST however he did not deserve all the psychological torture and manipulation. Aside from those other acts he did unwillingly, his punishment should only concern that for the child porn however he was driven to commit robbery and even had to undergo having to kill someone. The punishment was severely disproportionate from the crime he was supposedly being judged for. We live in a society with such a flawed sense of justice.

Black Mirror as a whole

And yet the most persistent message so far by Black Mirror, is that try as we may to criticize the people in their universe, we are very much part of that world. The ridiculous people of the UK, the audience in Hot Shot, hell, by watching the show itself – which is in an entertainment form, we can become complicit to the exploitation in media. In fact, I noticed how many BM episodes, show the very performative side of the internet and essentially of humanity– everything is a performance, there is an actor, and there is the audience who benefits from the show.

Shut up and Dance for example reminds me of a puppeteer show, Kenny and Hector and several others, dance to the music of the hackers, their actions are controlled as if with strings in a puppet show. Also the title itself shut up and dance, maybe it’s a song, but we know someone else is shutting them up, making them mere puppets of the show. Also, the ending music which was truly haunting and disturbing, was one of-my favorite songs during high school. It is called Exit Music by Radiohead which was supposedly to be used in a Romeo and Juliette movie, the one with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, a story based on a play.

In Nosedive, Lacie was unhealthily obsessed with putting up a show for everyone to give her the social approval and validation she needed to hike up her ratings. The technology in their world also exploits this need to feel seen, to feel important, to feel that one matters despite it being provisional, the rating system system presents a very classist way of categorizing people based on the social ratings given by just about anybody.

In White Bear, Victoria was subjected to a series of humiliations and brutal attacks only to realize that what she went through was a simulation of the kidnapping and murder to a child she committed with her boyfriend. She was revealed into an audience, who enjoyed each and every instance of her suffering and I believe they even paid for the show? Though she is a criminal, was it really justified, the performance derived from someone’s misery?

Some people said it was an amusement park, like a carnival. In fact, now that I think about it, Victoria does feel like a caged animal, the whole town is her whole cage. The people who take pictures of her down the road resemble onlookers in a carnival show where because of an attraction’s grotesque nature, they are fascinated to take pictures of it. She is subjected to multiple tricks, just like a lion in a carnival, where she expected to bring out a most pleasing experience for the crowd. The fact that she is a tamed animal made for performance is brought down by the fact that each day she has to forget the previous events, otherwise her horror, her suffering and her utter ignorance for the cause of it all which is the selling point of the show would be lost and the show would become uninteresting to the public.

White Bear is so interesting to me as a manifestation of the performative capacities of technology and of men because we already see it happening right now. In Twitter for example, a man who by sheer amount of fake news or misinformation can quite easily become the hunted in a public persecution. Granted Victoria is a whole different situation because she is actually a criminal, however, sometimes we mask our love for entertainment regardless of who suffers in a sense of social outrage, justice, horror to moral violations but the truth of it all is our hypocrisy. We don’t really want justice to be served, we just want a stage to present that we are morally superior than other people. And I deeply lament that. There is a thin line between expressing opinions on social injustices or crimes and enjoyment over other people’s misery. Regardless of whether the person is criminal or an innocent person, this kind of social performance and dark pleasure is unjustified.

This is really no different from public executions all through out history. I always wondered about the appeal of such events which bring hordes of onlookers as if putting a person in the guillotine was so entertaining. Some people say it was to deter crimes by showing a horrific picture of what can happen as a punishment. If it’s really about that that brought the audience, they why go to witness an execution, the knowledge itself that the guillotine is where criminals end is enough to scare some people. But I think it is more than that, maybe it’s also about social voyeurism, a dark fascinating picture of another person’s suffering, the “thank god it’s not me” mentality. The audience from the public executions in France is really no different from the people in Hated in A Nation or White Bear. We just look because something suffering can be entertaining especially if done on people we particularly dislike, we do nothing until we become the hunted and see how exactly that feels like. There’s a word psychology gives to it: SCHADENFREUDE, or the feeling of pleasure one gets from the misery of others.

and so on...

HATED IN THE NATION

The excess of call out culture — the plot revolved around personas who mysteriously die one by one until it was discovered that they were actually attacked online days prior for some unpopular remarks. The cause of death? Bees or ADIs supposedly made to function like real bees who can cross pollinate flowers. The episode, for me, examined the effects and ignorance of call out culture which can escalate from genuine offense at someone’s statement or action to a witch hunt of some sorts, sometimes even leading to death threats. The journalist, the rapper and the random lady all did something very minor and not even illegal to warrant them becoming the victims of the DeathTo hashtag. It’s also quite obvious why the producers used bees to represent as the attackers, hives of bees = hive mentality.

Individual responsibility — the hacker, upon his manifesto being found out, laments that the people who participated in the DeathTo hashtag were irresponsible, that they refused to consider the consequences of their actions or to take individual responsibility for their participation. I also wonder why the internet seems to dilute our understanding of individual responsibility.

Which reminds me, of one activity we did in Philo class in college, our professor asked what if we all had a cloak of invisibility like Harry Potter, what would be the first thing we’d do? A lot of us, unsurprisingly answered robbing a bank or retaliating on someone who had wronged us in the past. Either way, all the answers were more or less conventionally wrong. She asked us to participate in that activity either before or after she showed us the White Bear episode. It was only after a few years that I realized the crucial question she wanted us to explore: Why does anonymity (both in social media and in terms of hiding behind the cloak) increase our propensity to do wrong? The obvious answer is people are often only encouraged to do good because others are looking. That is not to say it is wrong but for me there is also another reason and which I wondered many times — anonymity shields us from personal responsibility. The internet, anonymity gives us a reprieve from the reality that our freedom goes in two ways, our actions have consequences

#black mirror

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once-upon-a-ouat · 5 years

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I'm super curious, OQ & Rumbelle?

Did you absolutely have to ask about Outlaw Queen? Okay, I will try not to bitch and just lay out my thoughts when it comes to just the writing.

OQ started out really cute and adorable and I was honestly rooting for them in 3B, although, in hindsight, it was all very rushed. They had to have them in a relationship in exactly 6 episodes (9 if you count the flashbacks) and I get it that they were pressed by time constraints if they wanted to do the whole Marian thing, but that’s the thing - they didn’t have to! The moment they brought her back, I knew the ship was absolutely fucked. Further proven in 4x03 with Robin’s behavior (that scene where he kisses Marian just annoys me so much but I promised not to bitch). Both Regina and Robin were in the wrong in 4x08 and I may give Regina a pass for that, considering everything she’s been through, but not Robin. Not to mention that he wasn’t even a little happy when Marian was woken up (nobody bring up Zelena into this because back at the time that episode was written even the writers hadn’t known it was Zelena (and that is very apparent but I need to stop)). The whole Zelena and her pregnancy thing was absolutely outrageous, it wasn’t handled at all and it basically didn’t go anywhere for Robin’s character or for his relationship with Regina (since we didn’t even see them discuss how to deal with it) and what was the fucking point of it, really? Don’t get me wrong, Robin Jr is a real delight, I love her so much and Zelena made a lot of progress since she became a mother, but just... what were they thinking when they wrote that? They clearly weren’t thinking at all.

Season 5 was supposed to have Robin as a major character, yet, he was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t do absolutely anything except for almost get killed and then get killed, so why did they even bring him back from New York? Should’ve left him there with real Marian and brought Zelena back some other way tbh. There was zero character development for him, he barely had any time, his relationships with ANYONE else weren’t further developed and then they just fucking murdered him to move along Regina’s storyline and because he was fucking useless. His character potential was absolutely and painfully wasted as he was used as a prop for Regina and Zelena and their relationship, and I am getting really angry over here. For what it’s worth, I did enjoy OQ in 3B, they were really cute and I had my hopes up, but their relationship was completely ruined by some of the worst writing I’ve seen on the show. This is probably in my top 3 major pet peeves with OUAT’s writing as a whole. They just wasted so much screen time and potential there and that left me kind of repulsed with the canon reality of OQ. I can only enjoy this ship in fics nowadays tbh. Fanfic writers seem to have a better grasp on what is the proper way to develop that particular relationship and how to handle the trials Robin and Regina had to face. (I tried to contain the angry but I don’t think I really succeeded there so sorry for that. I did my best but this just gets me every time.)

I already talked about Rumbelle a bit here, but I will throw in some more thoughts.

I feel like I need to finish my rewatch of the series in order to reach a final conclusion as to how I feel about Rumbelle. I did like them a lot as well as I had some major issues with them. Aside from the writing in seasons 5 and 6 which I was really not a fan of, I am still not sure how I feel about the relationship itself and what its very existence entails.

To elaborate on that, Belle has claimed many times that she accepts Rumple’s darkness but would like him to be a better man which is understandable. However, I am not completely convinced of this since she didn’t just want him to not be evil and murder people or ruin their lives. She pretty much wanted him to be a hero which was in Rumple’s abilities but at the same time it wasn’t really... See, this is what I mean when I say I need to rewatch all of the relationship development because little moments that represented the nuances I am looking at are most certainly escaping me and I can’t really make up my mind. What I’m getting at is that I don’t think Belle should’ve accepted the fact that he kills people and be okay with it. I’m very far from that thought. But she wanted him to change his ways completely which Rumple had the potential for but not really the desire and motivation tbh. Also, how much can you change before you’re a completely different person? And isn’t love falling for the person as they are? So basically what I want to say here is that Belle always saw the man behind the beast and she loved him, but what about the beast? She said in 5B that she accepted that part of Rumple as well but did she really? I am not completely convinced about that. And again, I don’t think she should’ve been okay with all the evil deeds he’d done and kept doing. And I’m not even sure what balance they could’ve reached there (not ruin everyone’s lives but still make deals that might be unfavorable to the other person? Only make deals that benefit both parties without strings attached? I don’t really know, that’s the thing!).

Not to mention Rumple’s million fuck ups, all about the same thing. You’d think that after centuries of making the same mistakes, he would’ve learned but nope, nope, he didn’t. Honestly, turning him back into a Dark One in the end of 5A was such a stupid ass decision on the writers’ part. They were finally past that, why did they have to bring it back? After all the hard work and heartbreak we went back to ground zero because the writers couldn’t figure out another conflict for the Rumbelle ship. They were just reusing the same problems that Rumbelle had faced a zillion times in the past and, honestly? I really wish I hadn’t been here for it. It was just painfully stupid and stupidly painful to watch when they had other options for conflict (Rumple was abandoned by both parents and ended up abandoning his son. With a new child on the way, why not make that the central conflict of his arc? And have Belle struggling with the fact that they are trapped in Storybrooke while she’s always wanted to see the world? And Rumple being unable to do anything about that since he’s not the Dark One anymore and them having to work through those thoughts? Just a few suggestions, you know?)

Anyway, this got more negative than I wanted it to be. I don’t hate Rumbelle, I actually like it a lot, but I would’ve cheered for different writing choices tbh. Let’s just leave this off here before I can add more negativity to this.

#ask #intothewickedwood #ship opinions #anti outlaw queen #anti rumbelle #there was some salt in there #so i'm tagging it to be safe #operation end

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okapiandpaste · 5 years

Text

I’ve seen some debate over Berkut’s character, and even though I remember loving him during my first playthrough, I am filled with mixed feelings. I do think he was well written, and man he had FANTASTIC musical themes and voice acting. Mind you, I’ve only played through his story arc once, so I may have misremembered some things...

First and foremost, it’s important to remember he’s a villain. He’s supposed to be awful. But, I think the biggest argument I’ve noticed is whether he’s a tragic villain or not. I’d say, yeah he probably is. However, I don’t think it’s because of what happens to him in the end, which is why people don’t want to consider him tragic. I know people dislike Berkut primarily because how Rinea’s character was handled.

Like most people, I am frustrated by how Rinea is shoved to the side. Rinea is frikin adorable and I love her, so of course seeing her treated poorly by Berkut and eventually...you know...is very upsetting. She also doesn’t get very much dialogue either. This is honestly my biggest nitpick with entirety of Shadows of Valentia.

It’s clear Berkut and Rinea do love each other, but it sucks that we only get to see that during a memory prism flashback, which means there’s a chance you’ll miss the scene entirely. Berkut is genuinely really sweet during this scene, but he doesn’t act like this at all during the actual game. Whatever makes him crack and become obsessed with being king happens before the game starts.

I wish we could’ve seen more of his downfall, even though we already get to watch him go off the deep end. It would’ve been oh so much better if he started off as nice as he was in the flashback. There were serious time constraints when the game was developed (tbh surprised it turned out so good), so it’s understandable. Still...I like to think of what could’ve been.

Anyways, I believe he is a tragic villain because, guys, he’s the same age as Alm. He’s 17. He’s just some stupid teen with father figure problems who delves a little too far into dark magic. Don’t get me wrong I am so pissed at what he does to Rinea. But, he was possessed on a level even worse than what happens to Celica. After he broke the mirror, he slowly loses control of himself because of Duma’s power. We really see the last of his fear and regret when he breaks the mirror. He knows he’s released something horrible but lmao it’s too late by then. Rudolf should have a lot of blame in this too, because his neglect is why Berkut does this in the first place.

I’ve seen a lot of “oh Rudolf wasn’t actually bad all along!” but the more I think about it, the more he sucks. He had righteous goals, but damn doesn’t mean you should neglect the people around you and abandon your son like that smh

#text heavy #wow that was a lot #I have so many feelings and wish they did more with Rinea #me rambling #berkut #rinea #fe sov

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jcmorgenstern · 5 years

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I finally watched 3x19 and I'm sorry but this was the dealbreaker for me. I tried to be openminded about the show twinning Clary to Jonathan but this episode just highlighted why that was a shit decision and 3x20 looks so anticlimactic I want to cry. Magnus had no agency in his storyline. Maia's storyline revolved around her shitperson ex. The heavenly fire was embarrassingly stupid (but blacksmith Izzy was hot af). Dark Clary and Jonathan are fucking flops. I'm out, friend.

I’m so sorry you feel that way, nonnie. If it makes you feel any better, I think everyone kind of feels like they’re clutching at scraps. And like, I feel for the individual writers because tbh they’re all like…one-shot writers under a lot of stress and pressure and are doing their best, but…the season really didn’t come together for me either, mostly for the reasons you’ve said. I don’t know what kind of constraints todd and darren were under, so I understand it’s possible a lot of stuff was going on behind the scenes we didn’t know about, but I’m kind of disappointed with how they chose to organize the season.

I have to admit, I never liked the clary/jonathan bond from the get-go, (honestly i was morose for weeks and bitched about it so much my coworkers at the lab were like SHUT THE FUCK UPPPP about your stupid tv show) mostly because it tripped off so many consent issues for me. like, tbqh, if I wanted to see a man feel entitled to a woman literally all I have to do is go outside. so if they were going to do it, I expected some MAJOR rennovations but…they really didn’t, so far. I like what Kat and Luke brought to it but….the seb/jace bond was already on Thin Fucking Ice as far as “fundamental consent issues” go, but like in canon he doesn’t really have THAT much interest in Jace (esp sexually) so like….you can dance around it in fic. but the way they’ve chosen to romanticize jonathan’s obsession and entitlement to his…sister… is….really just not very enjoyable?

And like yall. you know I enjoy a good bit of sebclace/morgencest but like….not like this, where it kind of feels the writers kiiiiind of don’t give a shit about consent at all, or didn’t really make an attempt to work it through (or really even think about it lol). This is doubled when you look at the Maia/Jordan plotline where like….ok if this was a beautifully written slice of life character study (10 episodes per season, 1.5 hours each) I could see them delving into the realism of Maia kind of getting back with Jordan only to realize he’s bad news. but like. the show is not beautifully written, they don’t have the time or space to delve into a complex issue in a meaningful way, so really it just comes across as romanticizing a shitty/abusive ex. Which…again. Not ideal.

The club scenes were fun but honestly (and yall know how little I say this), it really nailed home how fucking good the first half of COLS really was in terms of,,,,intrigue and this fun romp through Europe with these dark undertones and honestly the show felt a bit cartoonish? Like take it from someone who writes a lot of bad fanfiction….it felt like bad fanfiction. bad fanfiction with HUGE and glaring consent issues lolololololololololol

and like I’ve talked about both these things with @neenwolf a lot and…what she said and I agree with wholly is that…even if they have maia curb stomp Jordan (they won’t, he’s going to die tragically so she can suffer more), they still made her ENTIRE storyline about ….dudes, specially her shitty ex so like….no? They marketed this as “maia gets the pack and becomes alpha and shows people who’s boss” but that….never happens at all and it’s. a little embittering. (Very. embittering). and like she’s got the Good Thoughts so Nina if you wanna add more pls do

Honestly tho…re:3x20. if there’s anything I’ve learned about this show is that they SUCK at cutting trailers so like…idk. I’m expecting a little more than the trailer, but at the end of the day…3a’s finale feel VERY flat for me so I’m expecting more of the same. We know Jonathan does a villainous face-heel turn so ……it’s gonna be junk, from my point of view, and like all the other threads I enjoy are kind of shit rn so like…..can we not???

And I’ve been thinking about Magnus more and….I think my big problem there was that he wasn’t really working through his issues or even grappling with what had happened to him, he was just….kind of used as a shipping prop. and I get why it happened–they wanted to replicate the success of 2x18, but didn’t realize this is…a very different scenario and that people actually cared about what’s happening with magnus (sleeping for 15 hours? coping with alcohol? breaking down in front of alec and feeling ashamed of it? feeling so unwhole without his magic he’s willing to die to get it back?) separate from just ~m@l3c drama~ like what the narrative requires there is not shippy montages but actual character work looking at Magnus’ struggles, and at Magnus himself. and so overall it just left me with this bitter feeling that a) magnus losing his magic, his only independent plot since 1902, was all just to further the ship and b) that anyone actually thinks we WANT m@l3c drama in the year of our lord 2019. (seriously can there be just ONE chill couple in this show for ONCE).

everything about heavenly fire IS embarrassingly stupid (how the sword starts flaming right when she picks it up?? ghslkfjhghghhghghhghgghgg) but yeah blacksmith izzy was….Very Good. (I’m so proud of my honorary Iron Sister!!!) I was kind of concerned she’s smelting with liquid metal with bare skin but a) i know jack shit about the finer details of forging and b) honestly that’s probably the least of izzy’s worries writing-wise so whatever.

anyway we can go on but rest assured nonnie it’s……..Not just you who’s like “wtf lol” it’s kind of all of us at this point.

#sh critical #friend anon #crispy chat #sh spoilers #honestly............yeah #big sigh

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thelegendofclarke · 7 years

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Sorry to bring up The Discourse again but how do you feel about the fact people don't acknowledge that while Sansa's traditional femininity is rewarded in-universe, it is a mark against her on a meta level? Many people decry Sansa as "weak" or "boring" or "stupid" due to her "girly-girl" status and her more traditionally feminine storyline, she is consistently in the bottom of character polls because people have been programmed to devalue or even hate "girly-girls".

Hey Anon!

You’re totally fine :) I really don’t mind discussing or even debating this topic tbh. It’s the condescension, vitriol, and being called an unfeminist asshole ect. ect. that I’m not particularly a fan of haha.

You’re getting into a few different points here and I’m going to attempt to talk about them in a semi -organized, coherent manner. So bear with me… Your first point of “while Sansa’s traditional femininity is rewarded in-universe” touches on one of the (floppity trillion) things that kind of ~grinds my gears~ about how this topic is discussed.

Its a pretty significant misstatement and misconception to say that any woman is “rewarded in a patriarchy,” especially an incredibly oppressive patriarchy like Westeros. No woman is ever rewarded in a patriarchy. Not being punished is not a reward. Not being mocked or ostracized is not a reward. Being praised for conforming to an arbitrary set of standards aggressively imposed on you by society is not a reward. Not being beaten or otherwise abused is not a reward. Having basic human rights and freedoms is not a reward. Being treated with basic human decency and respect is not a reward. And tbh, thinking that these things are “rewards” is one of the things that allows a patriarchy to function in this manner in the first place.

It’s one of the most effective tactics of oppressive societies: they shrink the size of your world and the scope of your permissible behavior, punishing you when you cross an invisible line that is perpetually moving, until you are basically stuck on a tiny patch of grass like a dog unwilling to cross an electric fence. So then, when they finally open the gd gate to take you for a walk, you’re supposed to feel grateful and say “thankyouthankyouthankyou” and pee yourself with excitement. And you do; even when you’re owned, even when you’re property. even when you’re still firmly on their leash, they can somehow make it feel like freedom.

Margaret Atwood has some very good (and creepily accurate/applicable) quotes in The Handmaid’s Tale that really get to the heart of the problem with the idea that freedom in the most basic sense is a “reward”…

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”

“There is more than one kind of freedom,“… “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.”

And also about the fallacy that women in an oppressive patriarchy are granted any kind of real agency:

“I compose myself. My self is a thing I must now compose, as one composes a speech. What I must present is a made thing, not something born.”

“I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.”

“That was one of the things they do. They force you to kill, within yourself.”

A system of perpetually limited freedom, agency, and self determination doesn’t allow for rewards really, at least not for the oppressed demographics. Everyone is a victim of whatever group is in power (i.e. men in a patriarchy). So then you have to start getting into the area of debating who is a “better victim” or “more of a victim,” and those conversations are alwaysss yikesy. I don’t think there is any fair or objective or comfortable way to answer a question like “whose pain, abuse, and/or oppression is most important?” People like to point out that there is always the option not to engage in patriarchal standards, but the consequences for this can be severe. So then that begs the question, is there really an option? And are we willing to blame people for choosing what ever the “not abuse” option is. Its the concept that’s at the heart of coercion: taking away someone’s choices until they come to believe that the only choice left that isn’t ~terrible~ is the thing that they want.

I can ~kind of~ see where people are coming from when they make the argument that Sansa and women like her are “rewarded in universe.” Sansa does receive a lot of praise in the narrative from other characters for being good at traditionally feminine skills. Definitely far more by a large margin than characters like Brienne and Arya, who don’t comply with prescribed gender roles. The skills Sansa has are more socially acceptable in universe of course; they are much more valuable in terms of cultural currency, and make her much more marketable in a society where women are essentially chattel to be sold or traded. But as I have kind of talked about before, comparing the treatment different types of women are subjected to in a patriarchal society and how it affects them just isn’t that cut and dry. Traditionally feminine women are supposed to be the most “rewarded” group of women, while women who do not act “how a woman should” are meant to be the most disadvantaged or disenfranchised group. But when you really examine the POV’s of women like Cersei and Sansa vs. women like Brienne and Arya, you can see if affects them mentally in very different ways.

Cersei, who outwardly seems to be the epitome of a Good Westerosi Woman in her appearance and her actions, and has the ultimate “reward” (being the Freaking Queen), seems to have the most veraciously negative mentality about her gender and her role in society.

Cersei sniffed. “I should have been born a man. I would have no need of any of you then. None of this would have been allowed to happen. How could Jaime let himself be captured by that boy? And Father, I trusted in him, fool that I am, but where is he now that he’s wanted? What is he doing?”— ACoK

“We were so much alike, I could never understand why they treated us so differently. Jaime learned to fight with sword and lance and mace, while I was taught to smile and sing and please. He was heir to Casterly Rock, while I was to be sold to some stranger like a horse, to be ridden whenever my new owner liked, beaten whenever he liked, and cast aside in time for a younger filly. Jaime’s lot was to be glory and power, while mine was birth and moonblood.”— ACoK

“If the gods had given her the strength they gave Jaime and that swaggering oaf Robert, she could have made her own escape. Oh, for a sword and the skill to wield it. She had a warrior’s heart, but the gods in their blind malice had given her the feeble body of a woman.”— ADwD

Cersei learned how to perpetuate and perform femininity in a socially acceptable way, despite her constant frustration and contempt for its constraints. But it has left her in a state of basically complete self loathing; she is bitter and angry and just so incredibly unhappy.

Brienne on the other hand, couldn’t look or act less like Cersei. She is one of the most “masculine” female characters in appearance and stereotypical behavior. and yes, Brienne does have insecurities from the criticisms and mockery she receives.

Lady Stark had been kind to her, but most women were just as cruel as men. She could not have said which she found most hurtful, the pretty girls with their waspish tongues and brittle laughter or the cold-eyed ladies who hid their disdain behind a mask of courtesy. — ACoK

There is not question she is judged and degraded and treated atrociously. BUT, she doesn’t seem to suffer from the same resentment, self loathing and all consuming anger that Cersei does. She wants to be a knight, but she never tries to pass as a man nor wishes she had been born male. Yes, she recognizes and resents the limitations placed on her because of her gender, but she also actually expresses respect for women as well:

“No, but you have courage. Not a battle courage perhaps but… I don’t know… a kind of woman’s courage.”— ACoK

“[L]adies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them.” — ACoK

So that kind of shows how even The Best Women aren’t really “rewarded” in a system like Westeros’s. There is nothing rewarding about being pigeon holed and forced into a teeny tiny box. There is nothing rewarding about constantly being at the mercy of rigid expectations based on conformity and stereotypes and prescribed gender roles. And there is definitely nothing rewarding about being taught to hate yourself based on your gender.

Which also relates to your next point about how Sansa’s brand traditional femininity can be a mark against her on a meta level; and how she, and other characters like her, get called “weak” or “boring” or “stupid” due to their “girly-girl” status… This is essentially one of the reasons why people argue that the rise of the Warrior Woman Character can, at times (NOT ALWAYS), be sort of a double edged sword.

On the one hand it has been amazing for feminism. Its breaking the mold, its fighting the idea that there is only one way to be a Good Woman, its showing that there is no wrong way to be a woman. These types of characters show that sword fighting can be just as feminine as sewing. In fact these characters represent the idea that there really is no such thing as the distinction between “feminine activities” and “masculine activities.” Things do not have a gender. Activities do not have a gender. They can’t actually be male or female. They are actually neutral; their existence or practice doesn’t exclusively depend solely on one gender or the other. There is no difference between sword fighting and dancing; they are both just physical activities people can take part in. There is no difference between pants and dresses; they are both just clothes, pieces of material we use to cover our bodies. The only reason we think of them as masculine or feminine, the only reason we consider them to be gender coded AT ALL, is because we are taught to do so. And the Warrior Woman character defies these stereotypes.

But these types of characters can also be ~warped~ to help perpetuate patriarchal norms just as much as classically feminine characters can, because the fucking patriarchy ruins everything. (Seriously though, it is the reason we can’t have nice things.) That’s one of the hallmarks of a patriarchy, it appropriates something that is supposed to be empowering for disenfranchised or exploited groups and ~twists it~ to their own benefit. The Handmaids Tale has another great example of this with The Republic of Gilead’s perversion of the bible verse Matthew 5:5, “blessed are the meek.” Instead of citing the entire phrase, as the narrator Offred points out, “they never mention the part where ‘the meek will inherit the earth’.” The quotation of scripture is manipulated to support the idea that the Handmaid’s should be submissive, that it is their duty to acquiesce to their subservient role in society.

So as a result, instead of defying gender coded distinctions, these types of females can be applauded as the “superior” type of female character because they are skilled in areas that are “traditionally masculine.” A woman who is good at sword fighting is “more badass” than a woman who is good at sewing, because being able to sword fight is a more valuable skill than being able to sew. And of course it is, its a traditionally masculine skill; the Bro-er the Better. Then all the big time, toxic patriarchal shit rears its ugly asshole head with the concept that anything feminine or “girly” is bad and that anything masculine or “manly” is good. That femininity is weakness and stupidity while masculinity is superiority and strength; that masculinity is preferential while femininity is, at best, acceptable.

This type of thinking makes the Warrior Woman Character, who is good at combat and sword fighting, stronger and more admirable, and a superior role role model, and just all around Better than the Girly Girl Character who likes sewing and dancing. It takes beautiful, strong, dynamic female characters of both varieties and polarizes them in a really annoying and unnecessary way. It makes a plot/arc/storyline where a female character learns to fight or some other traditionally masculine skill an “upgrade” and a hero story, while a plot/arc/storyline where a female character does something more traditionally feminine is a “down grade” or a ~chick flick~ and not to be taken as seriously. It makes female characters who have many different skills (both traditionally feminine and masculine) into Mary Sue’s and says “she must be bad at something! she must have glaring flaws and obvious weaknesses!” or else she “isn’t believable, isn’t relatable, and isn’t at all lovable.”

It dictates that characters like Sansa Stark must be weak and stupid, because they are skilled at sewing and not sword fighting and they have to rely on intuition and their intellect instead of fighting and their physicality to protect themselves.

And I mean, honestly… It 👏 Is 👏 So 👏 STUPID! 👏

#hope this answers your question anon!#alys answers #asoiaf for ts #got for ts #sansa stark #cersei lannister #brienne of tarth #god one day i WILL learn how to write a concise answer #apparently i juST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS!#fuck the patriarchy #now i need a nap #sexism tw #long post #anonymous #alys meta

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gurguliare · 7 years

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I would love your thoughts on Dirhavel, vocaroo or text? Just because you were recently blogging about Hurin and I suppose this is kind of related. :)

A lot of my interest in Dirhavel is in his sources. The most detailed description we get of who he consulted in composing the Narn is from a pretty early stage of Tolkien’s legendarium-composition, which, let me just paste that here:

…this lay was the work of a Mannish poet, Dirhavel, who lived at the Havens in the days of Earendel and theregathered all the tidings and lore that he could of the House ofHador, whether among Men or Elves, remnants and fugitivesof Dorlomin, of Nargothrond, or of Doriath. From Mablung he learned much; and by fortune also he found a man namedAndvir, and he was very old, but was the son of that Androgwho was in the outlaw-band of Turin, and alone survived thebattle on the summit of Amon Rudh.(2) Otherwise all that timebetween the flight of Turin from Doriath and his coming toNargothrond, and Turin’s deeds in those days, would haveremained hidden, save the little that was remembered amongthe people of Nargothrond concerning such matters as Gwindoror Turin ever revealed. In this way also the matter of Mim andhis later dealings with Hurin were made clear. This lay was allthat Dirhavel ever made, but it was prized by the Elves andremembered by them. Dirhavel they say perished in the last raidof the sons of Feanor upon the Havens. His lay was composedin that mode of verse which was called Minlamad thent / estent.

Okay. So the first glaring Problem is Mablung: we know Mablung didn’t escape Doriath in the final timeline. But of course Mablung is in all other ways the ideal source for the Narn poet—we need that Mablung’s eye view on Nienor and Morwen on the trip to Nargothrond, Turin as he was that final morning in Brethil, etc. There’s another possibility, I suppose, which is that Dirhavel talks to one of the unnamed riders who form the rest of Morwen’s escort and (perhaps?) escape the clusterfuck at Nargothrond to ride out with Mablung again when he goes seeking Nienor and Turin in Brethil—but that’s not super satisfying, unless we can come up with anything else about the rider. We could also think in terms of people Mablung might choose as a confidante. Beleg’s out. Melian’s out, unfortunately. Hmm. Well, let me not string you along, I obviously have an idea here, although it’s a stupid one: NELLAS. Maybe a) Mablung started talking to Nellas after the trial/Beleg’s disappearance, since no one else was going to keep her updated and she was not going to stop creepily staring at him from a tree until he gave her an answer … b) it developed into a genuine friendship?? … c) Nellas took inspiration from Nienor and disguised herself as one of the riders who go with Mablung to Brethil? Or just legitimately went as a volunteer, who cares. Or like, everyone knew she was going along as a volunteer, but she still went in disguise, because it made her feel better.

…Hmm. Anyway, my point is, I like the idea of Nellas among the refugees in Sirion, and I like the idea of her making Dirhavel promise that he’ll list “Mablung” as his source, not “Nellas, who hates publicity.” I think it fits well in a few other ways—we know she spoke (and passed on to Turin) the beautiful ancient Doriath dialect or whatever, and one of the few pieces of information we’re given about Dirhavel is that he “has great skill in” Sindarin, which suggests to me not just fluency but mastery of multiple registers and a linguistic interest in Sindarin’s character as a language: maybe he got some material from Nellas, or it was what allowed him to talk to Nellas in the first place, or ideally both. Also, I have no basis for this actually, but Nellas seems like the kind of person who would be a really good mimic, A+ impressions—I hope this played a role in her teaching Turin about animals—and again I think it would be cool if there really was this feeling of Nellas like, channeling Mablung for the purposes of getting his testimony, in kind of the flip of Beleg summoning her for Turin’s trial.

Downsides to this theory: CoH specifically says that “Nellas of Doriath never saw [Túrin] again, and his shadow passed from her.” I don’t want to take this from Nellas!! I want to let his shadow pass from her! Still, I feel like ‘burning voyeuristic curiosity’ is distinct from ‘helpless loyalty to a memory,’ so maybe I can fudge it.

Moving on, I’m also suuuuuuuper interested in what “the people of Nargothrond” means here tbh. GWINDOR SURVIVED AND WENT TO THE HAVENS jk I love the freaking jab about “the little that… Gwindor or Turin ever revealed” too much to tamper with his post-mortem reticence, at least for the duration of this theory post. But, so, people from Nargothrond… I mean, I guess what puzzles me is the idea that it’s specifically Nargothrond’s survivors who know what happened to Mim, for example. Does that mean there were survivors in the area up to 5 years after the sack?? I guess that makes sense, now I think about it—people living off the land/going from part-time woodelf back to full-time woodelf, people who were left for dead in the battle—but I had never considered it before and it’s kind of weirding me out. Or do we imagine that Glaurung reserved a subset of the prisoners for his own slaves? That’s. Uhhh. Weird. I really don’t know what to picture for “witnesses to Mim’s death,” although I guess they could just have found the body after Hurin left. That’s a little more reasonable. That said what would make way MORE sense would be for Mim to have been one of the sources, given how many private Turin-Mim conversations are recorded. I realize Androg is supposed to have been eavesdropping but did he REALLY relay ALL of his eavesdropping to his adult son. Also, if you were Mim, would you not take this golden opportunity to pointedly enter your own “death” into the historical record

“I actually just camouflaged with the hoard because I was wearing so much shiny shit at that point. But listen, I saw his face, he WOULD have killed me if he hadn’t been busy playing hackey-sack with the Nauglamir. What do you mean he threw himself into the ocean somewhere near here, why would the ocean kill him, this isn’t safe”

…As for Dirhavel himself, I don’t know if I have a ton of headcanons. I guess I was thinking of him (??) as the kid of refugees from Brodda’s house, although man, now that I say that that feels like the kind of thing that would absolutely be mentioned if ‘true.’ Okay, here’s my thinking: I imagine him growing up in the Havens, not having ever been himself enslaved by the Easterlings, even as a child, and I also assume he was at least late 30s/40 when he died, so it would make SENSE if his parent(s) escaped in the 490s, and… hm. I guess that’s not super strong evidence. Because he’s listed as a man of the House of Hador and not, say, a man with a Hadorian mother and a Haladin father or something, I was thinking it would make sense if both his parents came from Dor-lomin and knew each other before Sirion, which was much more of a melting pot, but there’s really a bunch of unjustified assumptions I’m making there that don’t stand up to close examination, so, eh. On the other hand it’s kind of cute. Look. Whatever. I’m going to arbitrarily say I also picture him being related to Asgon. OH the other reason I was thinking about Brodda-refugees was because I was like, “where would the special affinity for Sindarin have come from,” and we know Brodda specifically seized most of Hurin’s holdings/people, and like sure everyone spoke Sindarin by then but I imagine nowhere moreso than in Hurin and Morwen’s service? To be polite to all the elf ambassadors constantly tramping through the garden if nothing else? So, that is my still deeply shaky basis. Thanks.

I was going to throw in some bullshit meta at the end here about blah blah the longest lay from those days not because more stuff HAPPENS in the Narn but because of the human preference for some granular description in the language whereas elves save the details for the telepathic music video, and also about the elves prizing the Narn because elf musicians never INTERVIEW people, the survivors of Nargothrond have never been INTERVIEWED before, no one ever talks to us!! It’s so enlivening. Then I decided I wouldn’t type it out. Then apparently I typed it out anyway. I do love the Narn being composed in Sirion because it really captures something about Sirion’s feeling of ill-defined urgency, like, we know we have to do SOMETHING… it’s all down to us… but what…… and in what timeframe… oh god, are we going to have to talk it out. I like the mechanical constraints—it can’t be a Numenorean reconstruction or whatever because it’s too immediate and living a piece of history, and he wants it to be history, and yet the Narn is in some senses about the end of history for Beleriand, or the end of its great bastions, so how do you get it written? Well, by engineering one more pause for breath. Okay. Sirion. And Dirhavel running around in the middle of that is someone I FEEL like I have a very clear image of, even if I haven’t actually talked about hypothetical personality at all here, nor would I because I suck at textual ghosts. Cute, though.

#Anonymous #no one expects the fannish inquisition #silmarillion #holy shit this is long.#'maybe i should go back and put in some thoughts on andvir--' 'MAYBE NOT'#dirhavel #nellas #sirion

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