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izzyinarchive · 4 years ago

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discussing the final season of carmen sandiego

*spoilers* umm....so yeah, i finished watching carmen sandiego, and i’m left in a state of perpetual sadness and despair. i feel like the ending of the show wrapped up wayyy too fast, and kind of left off on a bit of an unsatisfactory note for some of the characters. although i love the large and diverse cast of carmen sandiego, one of the drawbacks of having all those characters and arcs and storylines makes it harder to cram in a satisfying conclusion for everyone in a twenty-minute episode. so here’s what i would do if there was more time.

let’s start off with the threads that i think were tied off pretty well:

julia & chase devineaux: i wasn’t really a shipper of julia and devineaux but i actually really enjoyed their relationship throughout season 4. we see a lot of character growth from devineaux in the way that he interacts with julia and the world. julia pushes devineaux to become a better person, to see things with a broader perspective and from other people’s points of view. and he does really change a lot into an understanding person instead of the overconfident, arrogant detective we first saw him as in season 1. in addition, he also grows to respect julia as a person and partner, and it’s completely adorable how he looks at her while zari tells julia that they’ll follow her lead. also i love how he keeps wearing his lucky cat jacket from san francisco in season 4.

el topo & le chevre: okay, i was pretty much shipping these two the minute they showed up on the screen together. you can tell how much they care about each other throughout the series. whenever one of them gets hurt, you can really see how they prioritize each other over whatever thing vile is planning. when things are good, they’re so sweet and they have so much fun together. and they take dumb cute selfies. they’re so, so adorable, and this season definitely brings the shipping fodder. and they end the season moving on from vile and running a food truck together. the only thing i’m mad about is that we definitely needed more screen time from them.

shadowsan: i didn’t like shadowsan in season 1 but over the course of the series he really went through a lot of major character development and i love how he’s now basically a grumpy dad figure to carmen. the season ends with him finally reuniting for good with his brother in japan, and it’s a satisfying conclusion for his arc. i also love how he was the one to help carmen in the finale when she’s struggling with the brainwashing thing. which is way better than the brainwashing being resolved by some bs like true love’s kiss. (also carmen and gray are way too hurt and they’re super not ready for a relationship.) carmen sandiego is a show that emphasizes the importance of family with this father-daughter duo, and i think that’s something really valuable. also i’m interpreting that shadowsan isn’t permanently moving to japan, but rather just visiting his brother. he’s still definitely going to be there for carmen going forward when she needs him.

player & carmen’s friendship: i love this show for having a male/female friendship with absolutely no romantic feelings going on. it’s a solid friendship, and depicts a wholesome, supportive relationship. absolutely no qualms here.

and here’s all the stuff that needs expanding/fixing:

tigress: i actually really love tigress as a character, and i personally think that there should have been more of her in the series. i would have liked to see more depth and motivation to her, since she has a lot of character potential. i don’t really know how i would rewrite tigress’s arc, because it’s virtually nonexistent and there’s not too much to go off of. i don’t think she needs a redemption arc, but i would give her more of a spotlight. (also low key fictional-crushing on her.) i would like to include sort of a tigress-centric episode, which can also generally be more expansion on the inner workings of vile.

cleo & saira: villain couple. villain couple. they need to be a villain couple, enough said. i would rewrite season 4 to have include an emotional downbeat moment in which saira struggles with being able to fit in with society and humans and being completely awkward at it while cleo, in all her regal and ettiquite-esque manners, tries to help. this wouldn’t really help with the main plot, but it would be humanizing and provide character depth. i feel like this could be the b-plot in the tigress episode somehow.

coach brunt: you don’t betray family. at this point, coach brunt has lost the daughter she raised, who, in her mind, has basically backstabbed her entirely. coach brunt was also betrayed by shadowsan and left for the police to find, and in season 4, malestrom basically abandons her to drown. and it’s highly likely that somewhere in her backstory she’s been betrayed many times, likely by her own blood family, which would provide context for why she’s such a loyal person to vile, who she thinks of as her found family. in rewriting season four, i’m adding one extra episode that’s solely on the backstory of coach brunt. in this episode, we would explore brunt’s upbringing and the first time she is betrayed by someone she considers family. in my opinion, coach brunt was likely pushed to fall by another influence, but she also makes the conscious choice to choose revenge over moving on. potentially, we could also explore brunt’s budding friendship with the mechanic, who we never see again after that one episode, as well as a reflection upon this from her adult self.

gray & the freaking mind control thing & his moral struggles: *sighs* i can see what the show is going for, but i really just don’t see it in the execution. the way that gray struggles with morality is like it’s an on and off switch. he’s either graham, basic civilian, or crackle, basically evil. in that one episode, he flip flops between being overly heroic, even taking out time from his day to specifically track down a random kid to return his wallet instead of just dropping it off at the police station or leaving it where he found it. and then the flip side is like he’s just robotically relapsing into stealing mode, where he just suddenly has to impluse to steal literally anything. i feel like this flip flop wasn’t really a good portrayal of his struggle and didn’t really demonstrate many active choices made by him. and the way that he’s just like “i’m actually just evil” when he confronts carmen at the lab is just super one-dimensional. i just don’t buy it that he flips to vile so quickly in the span of a few episodes. i feel like there should have been more active reflecting and the decision should have been dragged out longer.

also it’s revealed in the finale that gray also changed his crackle rod to not go beyond a stun, and i think this was a nice touch, because it demonstrates his aversion to murder, which calls back to the first caper, in which he’s confronted with killing the archeologist at the excavation site. but he doesn’t end up having to make that choice, because carmen stops him. but this time, it’s his own choice to take that step away from vile ideals. i don’t think gray is ever going to be a “hero” of the traditional sense or have a complete redemption arc, because it just doesn’t fit him. to be honest, i don’t know what the future will hold for gray, but i definitely think of he will fall somewhere along the lines of red x (teen titans) or catwoman’s (in certain comic runs) gray morality. (and i think the way gray returns to vile kind of screws this up.) he’s still going to steal stuff sometimes probably, but he’s not going to straight up murder people. he would probably be the type to work for himself alone mostly, but be okay teaming up with the good guys sometimes. definitely no joining evil organizations tho.

gray & carmen & the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight:” i definitely ship these two, but i think they’ve got a long way to go before they’re really ready to admit their feelings for each other. i’m happy that the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” didn’t culminate in a kiss scene being the thing that snapped carmen out of the trance. because that is just so cliche and not the message of the show. instead, it’s shadowsan who does. and that makes sense going along with the themes of family. i think the issue with this i dislike how there is no more elaboration after carmen supposedly kills gray. this is her best friend. i would imagine that the reaction would be greater, since he was also her friend and teammate during the months they were both working under vile. and then when carmen’s brainwashing wears off, she agonizes that she killed her best friend. but that’s it. the “i know you’re in there somewhere fight” is the last screen appearance of both of them together. then it’s directly cutting to taking down vile. there should have been a hospital scene where carmen rides with him in the ambulance and talks to him as he’s unconscious, and leaves behind a note for him to read when he’s awake.

i just really think there should be a “heart to heart” scene somewhere in this finale where they confront their feelings (not romantic stuff, but more about like shared trauma at the hands of vile and their broken apart friendship). this could happen at that sydney cafe. both times carmen and gray go on a “date” she leaves him sitting there alone, bewlildered. i think the finale should include a scene of them leaving the cafe together and then walking away and waving to each other. this shows development in their relationship, and that they are now closer, but it also visually shows that they still have differences as they walk away with a sort of two toned kind of environment angle that shows the different paths they have chosen. (and carmen calls him gray. and he doesn’t correct her.) it’s more of a see you later, than a goodbye though. we’re also getting rid of that part of when gray says he doesn’t want to complicate carmen’s life in the hospital scene. instead, he’s going to ask for a sheet of paper on which he will write an indiscernible letter to carmen. (the same letter will be seen in at the carmen brand outerwear hq a few scenes later for continuity, but unopened at the time, as if carmen’s not yet ready to read it. i feel like both of them need to heal a bit on their own before they’re ready to reconnect. gray knows he has hurt carmen in the past but he also knows it will hurt her if he disappears without a trace, so he’s leaving her with the choice if she wants to see him again instead of making the choice for her.)

ivy & zach & found family: carmen leaves a note behind for ivy and zach and leaves to find her mother. i feel like this did not handle team red’s found family very well. basically, the whole show is setting up this importance of family, especially found family not blood family kind of narrative. vile blood runs in carmen’s veins but she chooses to do good and find her own family. ivy and zach both choose carmen, their found family, over their racing career. i think that they should have stuck together, and when carmen goes to find her mom, they would have been totally onboard dropping her off at the airport and saying a “see you soon” or actually driving her to carlotta valdez’s house in lydia (the car). i just don’t think that splitting them up via a note is really a satisfying conclusion to the whole found family aspect. and in that time skip carmen really should have stopped by to say hi to the zach and ivy and the acme squad instead of maintaining the air of mystery. that would have definitely pushed the family feel, instead of the mysterious loner archetype.

that time skip thing: yeah, no. this part was completely not needed and unhelpful. instead, we’re going to have carmen hug her mother at the airport, and go to visit all of her friends and found family, especially shadowsan in japan and ivy and zach in presumably boston. and the time skip will be a few onths not two effing years. i think it’s natural for them to grow apart a bit and pursue their own personal goals in life after vile’s gone, but they’ll definitely be staying in touch and reconnecting and seeing each other pretty often. and lastly of all, carmen will meet gray at the cafe in sydney.

basically, this is how i would redo the episodes for season 4.

episode 1: the beijing bullion caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part, i would like more expansion on lady doksu and shadowsan's past since it seems like their pasts are more tied together than is revealed)

episode 2: the big bad ivy caper. (this episode remains as is for the most part.)

episode 3: the robo caper. (the scenes in which carmen first meets the robot and ivy runs it over with a truck can stay the same. where we start to deviate is with gray’s story with a revised, more complex, and in depth view of his moral struggles. instead of being unaware largely as gray flops between graham/crackle, he’s going to be a lot more aware. he’s still going to rob the house, but instead it’s because he feels hopeless that since he was previously a criminal, that’s all he’s ever going to be. gray doesn’t want to be a civilian, and feels like the only thing that he can do instead is be a part of vile. however, when he sees carmen again, he’s going to realize that if she got out of vile, then that means he has a chance to get out of it too. gray comes to a crossroads of deciding between carmen and vile, good and evil.

episode 4: this will be the episode that concentrates on tigress, with a cleo/saira b-plot. most of this episode will take place within vile, and give more insights on the workings of the organization.

episode 5: the himalayan rescue caper. (this episode is going to get a real makeover. with the insertion of episode 4, this creates more actual space between the last time we see gray grappling with his big choices, which makes it feel like more time has passed. so it actually feels like he had more time to think. carmen’s still going to try to rescue gray, and the part with player can stay the same. as gray is manipulated by malestrom, i think this episode should further emphasize how vile manipulates their recruits and amp up the shittiness of how malestrom is acting. i think malestrom should say something along the lines indicating that vile is gray’s only family left, this is what he was born to do, he belongs with them, and make up a bunch of bullshit lies about carmen. malestrom will portray this stuff as the “truth” and then say something like “we told you to the full truth, while carmen was hiding your past from you. didn’t you say you wanted to piece together more of your past?” (which gray did express interest in a previous episode.) since more time has passed, malestrom will play the “if carmen wanted to rescue you, she would have done so already. she abandoned you.” card. of course, it’s not easy to get into a super advanced vile facility, so instead carmen’s going to be having more struggles with getting in, which is the real reason she’s taking a while.) i want to keep the scene where he says that his name is crackle, not gray and not graham. i think this scene is particularly painful because graham/crackle is kind representative of the two sides of good and evil that gray thinks he has to choose between. gray will accuse carmen of abandoning him, both in the present but demonstrating that he’s still hurt by the time when she first left vile, and all those times when she kept secrets from him and disappearing in sydney. carmen asks him to leave with her, but instead of him being like “i’m bad, and i was always a villain,” he’s just going to be hurt and feel manipulated and be so conflicted. i feel like gray would choose vile, but not because it’s where he belongs but because he’s afraid of being brainwashed again if he doesn’t agree and because he just wants to know the truth, which vile happened to tell him first (and carmen had been hiding it from him for a while). why would it make sense for gray to willingly side with vile because he’s “throughly bad?” actions speak louder than words, and it’s clear that he’s definitely not evil enough for vile.

episode 6: the vile history caper. (we’re just going to keep this episode as is for the most part. but like more el topo and le chevre moments.)

episode 7: this will be the coach brunt backstory episode, piggybacking off of her hurt feelings about maelstrom’s intended betrayal.

episode 8: the egyptian decryption caper. (this one is just going to be as is for the most part. the cleaners kidnap carmen, but we’re going insert one more painstaking scene of gray learning of vile’s plan to kidnap carmen. he’s not going to know they are planning to brainwash her. he’s going to feel conflicted and try to protest, but then realizes that now that he’s stuck with vile, if he goes against them he’s probably going to get brainwashed himself. and the brainwashing was really traumatizing, so it’s understandable he’s really afraid of it happening to him again.)

episode 9: the viennese waltz caper. (mostly just keeping this episode as is, but more worrying gray scenes. i feel like he should have had a bigger reaction to seeing carmen so unlike her personality. carmen’s lack of empathy should have pushed himself to question if vile is really a healthy place for anyone if they’re so willing to brainwash his best friend in a greater capacity. i think gray should recognize how bad the situation is but he still won’t act upon it since he’s trapped in the nostalgia of their old squad and since he’s been abandoned by carmen before, he’s too afraid that reversing the brainwashing will result in a repeat of her leaving him again. and he’s still afraid of the brainwashing.)

episode 10 + 11 + 12. the dark red caper. (yeah, this episode is kind of just way too quickly wrapped up. i’m going to expand this into a three parter so we have more time to focus on everyone. basically, we’re going to expand this for the angst. and because this is the last season and i need more content. i feel like we can follow the general plot trajectory but with more nuance and include the improvements i wrote above about the finale. absolutely pushing the found family trope to its limits, and less vagueness since there’s not going to be another season. oh yeah, and the scene when carmen fights shadowsan, i feel like they could have amped up the emotional stuff and make it as much as about him being her dad figure as the doll because #foundfamily. and also the extra time gives more space for all of that other stuff like endings for all the characters, and more team red found family, and a bit about the non-jailed vile operatives, and the acme team, and also maybe a little infrastructure rebuilding montage, and also that carmen and gray moment.)

basically i just want a satisfying ending for gray, and i love him, and he can’t just stare out of the hospital bedroom and agree to stay out of her life while melancholy music plays.

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sophieakatz · 4 years ago

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Thursday Thoughts: Marvel What If’s Fridging Problem

This blog post contains spoilers for the first seven episodes of Marvel What If and also some key plot points from the Ant-Man movies.

Time… Space… Reality… It’s more than a linear path. It’s a prism of endless possibility…

…but women leading happy, healthy lives, without a man’s feelings being the most important thing in her world? Nah, that’s too impossible!

I mentioned last week in my post about the animated Marvel series What If…? that this show has a fridging problem. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember that I’ve talked about the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the “fridged woman” trope before, in my Thursday Thoughts about Ant-Man and the Wasp, but let me summarize:

“Fridging” is a story trope in which a (male) hero’s (female) loved one is killed in order to motivate the hero to take action. This trope is common to superhero comics and films. The problem with this trope is that the fridged woman is more plot device than character. She exists to die; the male character’s emotions are more important than her life.

Now, Ant-Man and the Wasp provides a fascinating commentary on its trope. In the previous Ant-Man movie, Janet Van Dyne was a fridged woman – her only purpose in the film was to die so that Hank Pym would be motivated by his grief to choose Scott to be Ant-Man instead of his daughter, Hope. But Wasp gives Janet the chance to unfridge herself. She’s not only alive, but she plays an active role in her own rescue, and she is also essential to solving all the other conflicts in the movie.

If you’ve seen episodes three and five of What If, then you probably know what I’m going to say next.

THEY RE-FRIDGED JANET VAN DYNE!!! TWICE!!! AND HER DAUGHTER, TOO!!!

*takes a deep breath*

*lets it out again*

In Episode Three, “What If… the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?” we follow Nick Fury on the worst week of his life. Apparently, sometime before this episode began, Hope Van Dyne became a SHIELD agent and died on one of their missions. We don’t get to see this; we only learn that this happened when Hank Pym and Loki-disguised-as-Fury argue over Hope’s gravestone. Hope’s death drove Hank over the edge of despair, since he already blamed SHIELD for the death of his wife, and so he decided to ruin Nick Fury’s life by murdering the candidates for the Avengers Initiative.

We never learn why Hope decided to join SHIELD or what the mission she went on meant to her. What Hope felt or wanted does not matter to this story. Hank’s feelings matter instead.

Also, as if it wasn’t enough to fridge the Van Dyne women, there’s arguably one other fridged woman in this story. Remember how I said that this is the worst week of Nick Fury’s life? Everyone who dies in this episode dies because it will hurt Fury; they are plot devices in his story instead of the heroes of their own story. This includes Natasha Romanoff. In-universe, Hank Pym fridges her in hopes of hurting Nick Fury.

I was pretty mad about this. But at the time, I didn’t think it would get any worse.

Episode Five pits the Avengers against a zombie apocalypse. Now, would anyone like to guess the origin of this apocalypse? Who is the first victim of the zombie plague?

JANET. VAN. DYNE.

Because the writers of this show can’t help but shove her back in the fridge. And they can’t help but kill off all the women in this episode, too.

Now, I know what you’re going to say. “Everyone’s death is free game in this episode! That’s the point of the whole zombie apocalypse thing!” And, sure, you’re right. Pretty much everyone dies, and if you view this episode in isolation, there’s nothing wrong with that.

But I’m not talking about viewing this episode as an isolated incident. I’m looking at it as a part of a trend, and in this trend, superhero writers fridge their female characters. In this episode, the axed women include Sharon Carter, Okoye, and, once again, HOPE VAN DYNE.

I admit that Hope gets a great speech about her emotions and motivations before she sacrifices herself. She steps up and demands the right to be the hero of her own story. However, her death is ultimately framed as an emotional motivator for Peter – her final words are to tell Peter to “keep smiling.” Later, we get a second round of Hope’s death being about a man’s feelings, when Scott-in-the-jar sees and reacts to her giant zombie form, and Peter comforts him.

(Tell me, What If, why is it possible for Scott Lang to survive as a head in a jar, but not possible for any woman to survive this episode?)

I don’t want to spend too much time on this episode, but we could also talk about Wanda Maximoff. We don’t know what she wants or how she feels, since she’s, you know, a zombie. But her zombification provides Vision’s motivation for all the villainous decisions he makes in this episode. The show also makes a point of saying that zombie-Wanda is just too darn powerful, and so there’s no way for Vision to cure her like he cured Scott-in-a-jar. I guess fridged women just can’t get a miraculous cure.

Actually, wait – let’s talk a little more about this show’s claim that there’s no miraculous way to save a fridged woman.

Episode Four, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” is basically “Fridged Woman: The Episode.” It is stated in dialogue that Dr. Christine Palmer must die because her death motivates Strange to become a sorcerer. The whole point of the episode is that Strange cannot save her and that he is wrong to try. If Christine doesn’t die, then the universe ends.

This tells me that the writers of this show know what they’re doing. They know what fridging is. They can use the trope and even provide meta-commentary on it. But they don’t seem to have any interest in moving beyond it, even though they could.

Because here’s the thing – I know how Strange could have saved Christine. The Ancient One says that Christine’s death is the only reason why Strange seeks out the mystic arts… but that’s not true. We all know that’s not true. Even the title of this episode knows that that’s not true. Strange would be motivated to seek out the mystic arts if he lost his hands.

What if the Doctor Strange of this reality went back in time, ruined his relationship with Christine so she wouldn’t want to go with him that night, and got himself horrifically injured in the car crash? He’d be prioritizing her life over his own, making sure that she got to live her own life, and he would preserve the timeline by creating the events of the canon movie.

It could have happened. This show is supposed to be a prism of endless possibility. It could be a show about moving beyond tired tropes and exploring new options. But instead, What If doubles down on the idea that the woman must die.

At this point, you might say, “Okay, Sophie, but not every episode of What If fridges its women! Did you forget that the very first episode of this show is all about Peggy Carter?”

Here’s the thing: even when the women live, their feelings matter less to the plot than the men’s.

If you want to hear about that, come back next week. This Thursday Thoughts is way too long, and I need a break.

Be good to yourself, be kind to each other, and you’ll hear from me again soon!

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jacarandabanyan · 4 years ago

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📚for the fanfic plot ask thing!📚

Okay so- plot of one (of many) fanfic I haven't written (because to be honest, I don't have the skill to pull this off yet) but often daydream about:

I would love to write a This-Is-How-You-Loose-The-Time-War-inspired spy-vs-spy KisaIta fic. It would feature baby ANBU Itachi trying desperately to find a solution to the tensions brewing between his family and the village (massacre was still a few years off when he first joined ANBU, I believe). This eventually leads to him hunting down all reports/intelligence related to the night of the Kyuubi Attack and finding a few small scraps of information that hint at the existence of the Masked Man.

(He is a pre-teen, so he doesn't really *get* that finding a different scapegoat/"revealing the truth of what happened that night" probably isn't going to fix issues that are rooted in three generations of Village Policy and History, because he may be a genius at killing people but his education has not emphasized critical thinking)

He eventually tracks what little (extremely scant) evidence he has to Kiri, where he comes to believe the Masked Man is operating.

He gets himself sent on endless missions to the Land of Water in pursuit of his pet project, gaining himself a reputation in the process. There are no shortage of missions- the Land of Water is rapidly devolving into three different simultaneous civil wars, and resentment over the last Great Shinobi War lingers enough that Kiri and Konoha will likely never be friends in Itachi's lifetime.

(This is gonna get really long, so here's a read more)

At the same time, recently-made-ANBU Kisame has been mostly assigned to intelligence-related missions, as in canon. However, over the course of his first few months worth of missions, he comes to suspect that there's a leak in ANBU, and he sets about trying to find it and silence it. He slowly develops a reputation for ruthlessness even among ANBU, a cut above the normal Kiri ruthlessness, as he secretly works to get his fingers into every hidden nook, cranny, and conspiracy until he finds the disloyal one.

(And maybe he's projecting his issues/self-hatred related to killing other Kiri ninha just. a little bit. on this mysterious leaker. How dare this person sell out the Village? How dare they give out the information that gets other Kiri shinobi killed? It's easier to hate the faceless traitor than it is to hate himself. And at least he still *has* values. He killed the Few to protect the Whole.)

Over time, as the two develop their reputations, their respective villages start pitting them against each other in the field. Konoha has an unofficial policy of trying to off Seven Swordsmen hopefuls before they can get powerful enough to actually get a blade, and Kirigakure knows that the unstoppable Konoha operative is a Sharingan-user, and Obito-controlling-the-Mizukage is always down to take down his estranged family members.

Danzo is less eager to have Itachi take care of the Uchiha for good, not out of any particular maneuvering on Itachi's part, but because he also remembers the last Great Shinobi War, and how brutal Kirigakure was during it. He sees their ongoing civil strife and fears that one faction will eventually WIN and turn their attention on their neighbors. Itachi has made himself the best operative at getting into and out of Kirigakure- if he wants to interfere from the shadows and keep the civil strife going, he needs to keep Itachi in the field. (Don't worry, he finds other ways to be awful/keep the pressure on).

Itachi and Kisame are a good match-up. Itachi might be a natural genius with a fancy kekkei-genkai, but Kisame has way more experience than him. Also, unlike laser-focused Itachi, Kisame is actually keyed into the intelligence world, so he always has more information than Itachi.

They clash over and over again over several years, and slowly learn more and more about each other. They mature into seasoned ANBU operatives, have epiphanies about themselves and their villages. And slowly come to like each other.

Itachi has his sexual awakening when he sees Kisame rise up out of an ocean of blood, shirtless, effortlessly hoisting a struggling Jonin one-handed over his shoulder, big tooth-filled grin on his face.

They infiltrate each others' villages and insert themselves into each others' missions in disguise. Itachi genjutsus a Kiri team to think he's one of their teammates, whom Kisame secretly has orders to eliminate. He feels a surge of relief when the teammate he'd known since his Academy days dissolves into a murder of crows moments before his sword pierces their chest- his teammate is still dead, but at least this time they were killed by an enemy, not Kisame himself.

Kisame knows his mysterious counterpart is a Sharingan-user, so he infiltrates the Uchiha compound to tease out what the situation is with the clan in Konoha right now (and maybe see if he can figure out who his counterpart is).

While he's in the village, tracking kekkei-genkai users, he discovers Root and exposes it. This is both a huge win for Kiri Intelligence and put Danzo in a tricky situation, since he supposedly disbanded it.

Eventually Kisame figures out that some of the leaked information is making its way to Danzo, so he goes to kill Danzo and try and figure out who he's getting his information from. This is right around when Danzo's started making threatening noises towards the Uchiha again, since Root was just rediscovered (by foreign intelligence, no less!) and he needs to redirect attention off himself and onto the Uchiha. He's even considering the total elimination plan again- Itachi's work in the Land of Water is valuable, but not more valuable than consolidating control over the Village.

(Or perhaps he doesn't need Itachi for this- Shisui is also a talented ANBU operative, after all. Sasuke was originally supposed to be the spare Uchiha left alive in the village, so they wouldn't loose the precious Sharingan, but it's becoming increasingly clear that while he's good, he's not as good as Itachi. Why keep the subpar tool and throw away the masterwork?)

Itachi develops a humorous problem where he's leading three different fake lives, and is covering up with by genjutsu-wammying anyone who might notice anything suspicious in the timing of his long absences. He's infiltrated Mei's rebellion as a spy who needs to disappear a lot to go do spy stuff, while at the same time pretending to be an official in the Water Daimyo's court, while also posing as a regular Kiri Jounin.

His Regular Kiri Jounin act is so solid, they give him a genin team. One of the genin is related to the civilian official he's impersonating in the Daimyo's court, and she constantly comes to see him and tell him all about her sensei. On of the other genin on the team is related to a the Mizukage, and Mei orders him to kidnap that genin away from their sensei, which is also him, so that he can be used as leverage. The third genin turns out to be a secret kekkei-genkai user, and actually wants to be kidnapped away to the rebellion so that they won't have to live in fear of being discovered, and also because they hate the current government. This genin who wants to be kidnapped is constantly fighting with the genin he's actually supposed to kidnap, and whines that "Sensei, you're not supposed to play favorites! Why do they get to get kidnapped but I don't? They don't even want to get kidnapped!"

(Itachi the Regular Kiri Jounin, who is Unquestionably Loyal and Totally Not a Radical Who Would Join the Rebellion, ends up dating Kisame, whose identity as an ANBU is technically a secret. This relationship runs on willful ignorance.)

Kisame and Itachi would end up taking each others' places at some point to take down each others' mentors- Kisame walks right into Danzo's office looking like Itachi, and no one blinks when they sense the genjutsu because Itachi is always casting genjutsus. No one even realizes anything's wrong until Danzo's dead and "Itachi" is making his getaway.

Itachi would be approached by Fuguki at some point with an offer to sell information, and immediately realizes that this is Kisame's leak. He argues to Danzo's replacement that the value of Kiri's ANBU turning on each other is greater than the value of having someone willing to sell the occasional nugget of info. He has to work not to laugh behind his ANBU mask, because Konoha nin just don't get how down Kiri nin are to turn on each other at the drop of a hat. "Turning Kiri ANBU against each other" please, as if the Seven Swordsmen don't regularly train their own murderers. As if one of the fastest ways to gain cache isn't by offing your superiors. It's like Konoha Intelligence knows nothing.

He wins his case, and reveals what he knows to Kisame, who goes and kills Fuguki like he did in canon. Obito reveals himself, same as in canon, and Kisame immediately knows how he's going to pay Itachi back. He's still disillusioned with the Shinobi world like in canon, but he had his initial Pit of Despair moment years ago, when he figured out there was a leak in ANBU and that truly there were lies everywhere. He's learned how to compartmentalize since then.

He pretends to join Obito so that he can feed Itachi information. Together they take down Obito, revealing his crimes to both Kiri and Konoha.

It should be over then- Kisame found the leak, Itachi cleared his family's name- but it's been around a decade at this point. Both of them have played so many roles as spies that they don't know how to go back to who they were before.

Itachi's almost spent more of his life in the Land of Water than in the Land of Fire at this point, and he certainly knows more people there than in the Land of Fire. He's passed his twentieth birthday by now, and he's no longer a pre-teen with no concept of the world and his place in it outside of Konoha Propaganda/Brainwashing. He doesn't know how to relate to Sasuke's fierce, uncomplicated desire to grow up to be the best Shinobi, because how can he think that's a good thing at this point?

Meanwhile, Kisame still kind of hoped that killing the liars/traitors who had sent so many Kiri-nin to their deaths would make him feel better about all the comrade-killing, but it doesn't. He can't seem to reconcile his absolute loyalty to the Village and its ideals with his disgust at everything they do.

For a brief while, he and Itachi join Mei's rebellion for realsies (Itachi still as one of his undercover roles) and help her topple the Bloody Mist government and install a new one, but it's not enough. What she's proposing is still a Ninja Village. It's better than what there was before, but that's not really a ringing endorsement.

Itachi's the first one to decide to walk away. He lets Kisame "kill" him on a random mission in a way that doesn't lend itself to a body being returned or retrieved, then settles down and builds himself a life as a secret kekkei-genkai child who grew up hidden like Mei, but never learned to be a proper shinobi. He spends his days at a quiet house outside Kiri proper gardening and making jam by the side of a lake Kisame made during one of his fights with Itachi. There's a ghost town near the lake, emptied during the Civil War years. He develops a reputation as a ghost.

Kisame walks away not long after. He can't really leave, of course- unlike Itachi, he has no desire to settle down in a foreign country, and too many people know him here- but he does step away from active duty. He "kills" Itachi The Regular Kiri Jounin-Sensei and takes his genin team for himself. The kids know something's up because their Sensei still visits them sometimes, though he half-heartedly tries to convince them he's a ghost. They help spread the story about the ghost living by the lake anyway, just in case anyone starts investigating.

Kisame quietly moves out of his shitty Kiri apartment to join Itachi by the lake. Some of the seven swordsmen do come investigating then, but when they discover that Kisame's just moving in with his squeeze who he really sexily fake-murdered, they decide not to do anything about it. Besides, they like Itachi and don't want to have to write up a report about how dangerous it is to Kiri security that he lounges around a lake all day, drawing birds and cooking elaborate meals in an attempt to blend the comfort food of his youth with the produce and spices native to Kiri that are honestly more familiar to him at this point than the ones that grow in the Land of Fire.

Itachi sometimes goes and visits Sasuke and Shisui back in Konoha, but mostly he hangs out in his new home and lives out his soft, domestic, non-violent dreams with Kisame and his cute little genin. It's a sappy ending.

#naruto #fanfiction #kisaita #kisame #itachi #This is totally different from my other Kisaita Spy AU because in that one only Itachi is the spy

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catharsis-in-a-bottle · 4 years ago

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MY THOUGHTS ON WW84

Spoiler alert: I didn’t like it, so if you don’t wanna hear me being an absolute bitch just move right along

tHiS iS a ShItPoSt

Also, alert for actual movie spoilers lol

Okay so, as per usual, ima just dump all of my thoughts non-chronologically with zero apologies.

FIRST THING’S FIRST: I wanted a better villain. Yeah, that’s right. You know who the villain was in the last movie? Fucking ARIES. The god of fucking WAR. And who is it this time? Some random dude turned ravenous by greed with NO GODLY POWERS? Pedro Pascal, sweetie, I’m sorry, but put that Mando helmet back on and get Grogu back in your arms because the whole ‘mAkE a WiSh you mOtHeRfuCkeRs’ thing just didn’t work.

Going on this ‘I want a god as a villain’ theme, the plot could have totally had more Greek gods tied into it!!! Like, the wish stone? There’s dialogue that’s something along the lines of “you look like you’ve seen a ghost” when Diana reads the inscription inside the wish stone and Diana says “I thought I did.” Like, that means Aries made the stone, right?? She’s having flashbacks and shit, yeah?? I just feel like the *backstory* of the stone could have had more prevalence, idk.

Disregarding the plot and everything else, Gal Gadot looks fucking badass in literally everything she wears.

But, Barbara, honey. What the actual fuck was that leopard shit? She legit turned into a feral furry and went apeshit on everyone?? And the costume design was,,,, um,,,, just very questionable for her

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. WHERE THE FUCK WAS IT????? In the last movie, Diana grows SO MUCH!! Like that was the WHOLE POINT!!! And now in this movie, she was an entirely static character, which really just didn’t do it for me. Building upon the theme of static-ness, part of the plot is basically the same as the last movie. Steve has to sacrifice himself and she despairs. It’s literally the same. Rather repetitive.

HOW THE FUCKING SHITTING HELL DID SHE JUST..... FLY???!!!???!!!??!!!

LIKE SHE GRABBED AN AIRPLANE WITH HER LASSO AT FIRST, YEAH, BUT THEN SHE WAS JUST...... FLYING???? LIKE DIDNT SHE LOSE HER POWERS???? WTF???????

*coughs*

Seriously Pedro Pascal grow your fucking mustache back and get a godDAMN BABY YODA IN YOUR ARMS

Alister went through some shit (that is almost definitely not how you spell his name)

THE COLOR SCHEME. Okay, this is a very weird and minute thing, but it’s noticeable for me in EVERY movie. The previous movie had a largely blue and cool-colored lighting throughout nearly the whole thing, except on the island of the Amazons, which I like because it really created the contrast between the island and, you know, the shitty realm of un-godlike humans. In this movie, however, it was very bright and kind of all over the place, and it really just kind of.... blew the mood? Like yeah, overly decadent 80s clothes and shit, but.... something about the previous movie, and how the visual appearance in terms of color made me feel, was just better.

why does tumblr put so much space between bullet points on the mobile app dear lord cthulhu it looks so weird in editing mode i mean y’all won’t see it when i post but s t i l l

Genuinely, I high-key want that golden bird armor thingy because not only *cool in battle* but also *shiny wings*

I hated Babara literally throughout that entire movie I’m sorry, especially when she, you know, became an asshole and started killing innocent peeps, ma’am we don’t do that in this house and it is absolutely okay to want popularity and recognition in this life but not to the point whERE YOU ARE LITERALLY MURDERING PEOPLE

steve came back in some random dude’s body lol

AT LEAST THE DUDE WASN’T AN ASSHOLE THOUGH he was actually really nice to Diana at the end so there’s that

THE FUCKING MEN. THE AMOUNT OF CREEPY AS FUCK, CONTROLLING MISOGYNY ON THOSE GODDAMN SIDEWALKS. THATS RIGHT BARBARA, THE ONE TIME I LIKED YOU WAS WHEN YOU BEAT THAT FUCKER’S ASS. YEAH DIANA, SHOVE THAT BITCH TO THE CONCRETE. My mom was literally making comments about like “yeah most men in the 80s were like that” and I was like JESUS FUCK. i mean lots o bastards are like that today so. yeah. Become Wonder Woman and fucking POWER PUNCH THEM

my gender is lasso of truth

The fight scene graphics in this movie were just OFF. Like, for some reason it looked really cheesy, you know? Overuse of the lasso, perhaps? Or badly timed slow-mo? The world will never know

I love the fact that Diana speaks so many fucking languages like I like her a lot in general okay it was just THIS MOVIE

Okay I’m done being an absolute snob on main, have a nice day, watch the first Wonder Woman and feel happy or edgy or whatever emotions happen to be generated at the moment, YES EDGY IS AN EMOTION

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adelarts-corner · 4 years ago

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Did you notice? Similarities between Rantaro Amami and Mukuro Ikusaba (in canon and theories)

Their characters have a lot of things in common and they went through similar things in their killing games (especially in chapter 1):

They're familiar with the concept of a killing game- they're not fazed by it and know what to expect. There’s an aura of mystery surrounding them. They also have insider knowledge (provided by the mastermind) about their killing games- Mukuro's working with Junko and Rantaro has his survivor perk. And because of that, they both appear suspicious to the player/the other characters at one point: Mukuro when Kyoko believes she’s the secret 16th student and mastermind, and Rantaro with his videos and his ultimate survivor lab. He was also afraid of being seen as suspicious because of his fake Ultimate Survivor talent and his survivor perk. But unlike Mukuro, he's eventually confirmed to have been a good guy all along.

They are the first to die and are killed by the mastermind. They don’t live past chapter 1 but have relevance long after their deaths: they come back into the plot from chapter 5 onwards. Solving the mystery behind their deaths becomes crucial and is the key to find out the mastermind in the final trial.

The mastermind actively wanted them to die and planned to kill them since the beginning. Their murders were premeditated.

They have some sort of relationship with the mastermind, and their murders seem personal. Junko and Mukuro are twins, and Junko killed her for despair- meaning she killed her because she loves her, as she says herself that she wants the people she cares about to feel despair. (She admits in chapter 6 that she threw the dr1 cast, her friends and classmates, into the killing game for that same reason.) So Mukuro gets the despair of being betrayed and killed by her own sister and Junko, well- gets the despair of killing her sister. Rantaro and Tsumugi may have met in DR 52 if you believe the chapter 6 trial revelations. His memories are gone but Tsumugi remembers running the previous killing games. Rantaro's "reward" for surviving the game was literally to participate in the next one where he was given a survivor perk that allowed Tsumugi to predict his movements and his actions, and lead him right where she needed him to be. He basically survived just to die by the same mastermind in the end.

Solving their murders also gives out a lot of lore and information about the nature of the killing games: a wicked plot from the despair sisters in dr1, and a series of broadcasted killing games by Tsumugi and Rantaro who has participated in two of these games in ndrv3.

Some other things, that aren’t killing game-related:

Being the older sibling, deeply caring for their little sisters, but feeling like they're failing them and not living up to that role.

They traveled to a lot of places, and they’re used to running into dangerous things in their trips and heartbreaking experiences- Mukuro as the Ultimate Soldier and Rantaro as the Ultimate Adventurer and the disappearance of his sisters every time. His killing game experiences and Ultimate Hunt memories count too.

Mukuro and Rantaro have conversations about that in their UTDP routes (in ndrv3 bonus modes).check it out if you haven’t, it’s super interesting!

#danganronpa #rantaro amami #mukuro ikusaba #junko enoshima #tsumugi shirogane

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worldismyne · 5 years ago

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Analysis: Warrior's of Hope (Peds Psych 101)

SPOILER WARNING FOR DANGANRONPA ULTRA DESPAIR GIRLS

This post will look at the Warriors of Hope as a group. Now since we are talking about the Warriors of Hope, we will be discussing child abuse. So if at any time you feel things are getting to you or need to decompress after the essay, feel free to click this link.

What is a Paragon?

To start, we will be focusing on the paragon trope, defined by Overly Sarcastic Productions as a hero that is both righteous and charismatic; your "do no wrong" hero, if you will. They do what is right all the time because of their personal beliefs. Protected by a heavy coat of plot armor, they gather a small group of companions who learn through their example to be better heroes; and together they overcome evil and spread peace throughout the land. That’s the basic formula of a paragon hero, if you want or need a more in-depth explanation, I would strongly suggest watching OSP’s video.

In the first game, we follow Naegi, your textbook paragon hero up against Junko Enoshima, the queen of charisma. I feel it important to mention that Junko, while almost a paragon in the way she gathers her followers, is missing the key ingredient of knowing she’s doing is right, because she admits to the opposite. She’s doing the wrong thing on purpose to see what will happen and how far she can take it.

While in the second game you look at Hinata (our paragon hero) up against Komaeda; someone who believes wholeheartedly they are right, but lacks the charisma to rally allies in-universe. You can love Komaeda all you want, but no one during the game's central plotline seems to particularly like him or want to follow him. Which makes Junko and Komaeda foils of each other in a way, each consisting one half of the paragon trope.

So what does this have to do with Another Episode? Simple, the dynamic is flipped. The Warriors of Hope are each paragon’s in their own right, varying on the scale of righteous and charismatic. But what makes them villains is that what they believe to be right, is in fact horrendously wrong. Their righteousness and charisma become their greatest flaw when pointed at the wrong enemy. It showcases how this type of character can be equally dangerous on the “wrong side”. We see this especially in Nagisa, who has openly convinced himself the ends justify the means. A place where children can be safe is the top priority, nothing can stand in the way of this ideal, not even the lives of other humans.

Additionally the real heroes of this tale are two halves of the paragon hero, like Junko and Komaeda. We have Fukawa; hideously unliked by everyone around her but righteous to a fault, and Komaru; an ordinary girl who appeals to everyone, yet has no strong beliefs outside of her need to feel safe. We are reminded throughout the game over and over again that the reason Komaru was picked as the heroine was not because she wanted to help others, but because as an ordinary girl. And this isn't portrayed as a bad thing. When teamed together, Fukawa and Komaru formed a paragon duo strong enough to overcome the obstacles before them. The game flat out states they are meant to work together, in order to make up for each others shortcomings.

So it is here we see the typical dichotomy of Danganronpa flipped in Another Episode. In which two character types that were typically used for villains are up against a group of paragons set on a path of destruction. Bringing to question, if someone like Naegi were to be sent on the wrong path, could they be redeemed and change direction?

And the answer the game gave us… was no.

At both the end of the game, and the end of the anime we are left at a standstill where neither side will move. No outside force can change how a paragon thinks other than the paragon themself. Sure outside circumstances may kick-start introspection, but they can not change the way this type of character progresses by force. Not to say that change is impossible; but that journey would take more time then both the anime and game could allow, especially if we were to cover all five characters. But further discussion on the matter should be left on a character, by character basis.

Age and Developmental Stages (Time to Get Scientific)

As a BSN with a particular interest in pediatrics and psychology, a great deal of my analysis�� will refer back to my classes. Writing characters under the age of eighteen can be really difficult for writers, especially if they are not in constant contact with at least one individual from the age group they are trying to portray. Often times in media, we find child characters to be annoying, grating, and unrealistic; because on an instinctual level, we understand that's not how children that age typically act. You won't see an eight year old acting like a teenager, or six year olds throwing tantrums.

This is especially important, because children are not bound to the same rules as adults when it comes to understanding the world around them

According to Kotoko's mother, Kotoko was still 10 years old while she was alive. And while we can't determine when exactly her murder took place, we can say it happened shortly after the despair incident but before Junko was locked in the school. Since the children still refer to themselves as Super Elementary School Levels, they can be no older than 13 based on the Japanese school system making them range anywhere from 10-13. So what does this tell us about how they should think?

Erikson’s theory of child development indicates they are just now gaining their own sense of identity outside of the roles they had been assigned. There is pressure to look to the future and what they want to be when they grow up. If they don't see a place for themselves in society or dislike the role they've been forced into, they will be more likely to rebel and cave to peer pressure. We see this especially with Nagisa who struggles between his role as the new leader verses his previous role as the dutiful son. If they are on the younger side, their sense of self worth relies heavily on the praise of their peers and mentors, seeking approval of their accomplishments. They define themselves through peers and test values/belief systems against society.

Above all else is an inherent inability to understand abstract concepts, or ideas that extend beyond where they are and what they know. Simply put, they cannot understand why adults are bad or that someone may have an ulterior motive. They know that their parents were bad, so all adults must be bad. This idea is reaffirmed when their peers share the same conclusion.

Everything is black and white, good or bad, right or wrong. They are just beginning to understand that an idea, such as freedom, means something different to everyone. Until they fully comprehend this, they are unable to fully empathize with individuals that don't share their viewpoint. When it comes to things that are not physical like love, empathy, morality, justice; they simply can’t understand it the way adults do.

In their mind, their view is right because they are good, anyone who disagrees must be wrong and therefore bad. This is not a moral thing, it’s how they cognitively process the world.

This is in no way saying their actions were justified. Simply, that they were just beginning to understand that there are things outside of what we see/say/do. The idea that someone can be both good and bad, nice yet dishonest; was not something they knew before Monaka betrayed them.

Coping Mechanisms in Children

When it comes to abusive situations, a huge emphasis is placed on power and control. Children in these situations will do anything to seek the control they do not have. This can include laying low, people pleasing, hurting themselves or others, aiming for over-achievement or perfectionism. It's not entirely uncommon to see children using multiple coping mechanisms at once, jumping from one to another until they regain a sense of safety and stability.

In times of stress, children will exercise their ability to control their perception of what happened. This can include denying the effects of trauma (Masaru), detaching their emotions from what happened (Kotoko) and failure to see that something can be positive and negative at the same time.

Children may also try to change or justify their situation. They can try to rationalize, or explain why something bad happened to them, even if the explanation is not grounded in reality (Jataro). Or they may try to please/appease those who hurt them by seeking approval (Nagisa).

I cannot emphasize enough the importance power and control has over children in these situations. Power is safety, exercising that power is a reminder of that safety.

Building the Children's Paradise has less to do with recreating Lord of the Flies, and more to do with creating a place where they have control over everything in their environment (rules, peers, and who is allowed close to them). Anything that threatens their position of power is an immediate and personal threat to their own sense of safety. For example, the peers they consider friends are brainwashed into doing exactly what they say. The only adult allowed near them acts as a slave to be manipulated and mistreated.

The Influence of Role Models and the Importance of Subjective Information

We know very little about their parents from a omnipotent view. With the exception of one letter from each parent, all information comes from their victims. However, there is still much we can determine about them, in how the children themselves behave.

According to the "Identification" theory; a child's behavior patterns, beliefs, and values are greatly influenced by their parents. And not because it was something that was taught, but it was something they saw routinely growing up and adopted themselves. While this does not eliminate their ability to make their own choices, a great deal is to be said about learning through example. Self destructive behaviors like substance abuse, low self-esteem, and violent behaviors are often traits learned by watching their parents. We know in great detail about what the parents did to their children, but very little about what their parents did to themselves or peers.

Likewise, the kids have an opposite view of Junko which is equally as biased and inaccurate. According to the Warriors of Hope Junko is sweet, caring, and blameless. As someone who met one of their most neglected needs, she represented a sense of security and love they never had. But we all know Junko's true nature and how manipulative she can truly be. The children actively deny any accusation against her because she became, essentially, their surrogate parent. It's not clear how involved she was with them, but we are given a sense that at face value, she took care of them the way a big sister ought to. Once again, an example of this black and white thinking still held by the children, it also gives us insight on the validity of their information.

Questions like "Why does Junko want to destroy the world?", "Why is my dad an alcoholic" or "Where’s the rest of my family?" may not have occurred to the kids as important, and certainly were not included in the original narrative. With no intent to excuse the abusive behaviors, it's important to keep in mind we are given a very narrow and subjective view of their home lives that purposefully excludes any positive redeeming aspects. This is all by Junko's design; as a way to keep them in a traumatized, despair-induced state that would facilitate the killing of adults.

We know this, because several rules of the Children's Paradise Commandments expressly forbid remembering the past and emulating the behaviors exhibited by their parents (including Nagisa trying act as a competent leader). Any positive influences their parents (or any other adults) had are actively being repressed to perpetuate the massacre of Towa City.

Cultural Considerations

If you're reading this, there is a high probability that you live someplace other than Japan. Your views on everything are influenced by the culture you grew up in, and just because we can relate to other cultures, doesn't mean that we completely understand them and the issues their country faces on a daily basis. The best we can do is look at the window they provide us.

In Japan mental illness is a taboo topic to discuss publicly. It's seen as something to be ashamed of or suffer in dignified silence to protect the family's reputation. Equally taboo is the discussion of child abuse, with the Japanese government only starting to track of cases in 1990. 50% of all sexual abuse cases go unreported because of Japan's cultural stance on upholding strong moral values closes off the discussion, in a “it could never happen here” sort of way.

Foster homes in Tokyo are packed to capacity with kids that were taken from their abusive environments with nowhere to go. Not because people don't care, but because culturally, the discussion of abuse and having an adopted child are not embraced the same way as in other cultures.

In fact, both Kotoko and Nagisa point out that the surrounding adults wouldn't help them. It's not entirely unthinkable, given Japan's history, that they had tried to reach out for help; only to be let down by a system that was still adapting to discussing the topic. The revolution of reporting and advocating for children's rights is still a new and growing practice in Japan.

When Danganronpa Another Episode released in Japan, the number of child abuse cases were the highest ever, surpassing 70,000 reported cases for the first time and has been rising since they first started reporting cases. This isn't to say people were abusing their children more over the last few decades, but that people's stance on reporting abuse has drastically changed and continues to improve. Games like Another Episode not only champion the cause of child advocacys among newer generations, but spreads it to a wider audience, including people who will form and change the governmental and social aspects of Japan's culture in the future. Games like Another Episode provide an important platform to discuss societal issues that have for years been ignored because talking about them was 'uncomfortable.' To unironically quote G.I. Joe. "Knowing is half the battle."

Abuse in DR

The topic of child abuse is not a new one to the DR universe. In fact several characters share similar childhoods and have spoken quite openly about them.

(Masaru: Oowada, Kazuichi)

(Jataro/Monaka: Fukawa, Mikan)

(Kotoko: Sayaka, Hiyoko, Akane)

(Nagisa: Togami, Ishimaru)

What separates the Warriors of Hope from the other characters, is their age and proximity to these negative events growing up. We closer see the impact of what these things to do to their personality and worldview because they're still children. It's all the more heartbreaking because we understand, while dramatized, it is something very real and in some cases, relatable. Seeing their stories play out, makes us uncomfortable, because we know that there are children out there that experience similar pain and there is very little we can do about it at the very moment we are reminded these things exist.

However, it is important to acknowledge the things about society that upset us, as it is a crucial step in orchestrating change.

I'd like to end by highlighting charities and organizations working to fight child abuse in my own country. If you do not live in the United States I would highly recommend finding reputable charities in your area that are working to help, if you are interested in volunteering or donating to the cause.

Thank you so much for reading this crash course through child psychology and I look forward to seeing you in the next analysis.

http://www.ylc.org/

https://promisehouse.org/

https://lnfy.org/

#danganronpa #ultra despair girls #danganronpa another episode #danganronpa ultra despair girls #drae #long post #character analysis

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themattress · 5 years ago

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Danganronpa Chapter Ranking

Ranking all 18 chapters across the three games.

First, I will rank each corresponding chapters over one another.

Chapter 1:

1. Welcome to Dangan Island + Destination Despair (DR2)

DR2 is the technical best of the series and it definitely has the strongest opening. While I actually prefer DR1′s prologue, DR2 definitely ups the stakes when it comes to the actual introductory murder mystery, creating a spooky nighttime locked room situation right off the bat and keeping you guessing as to how the murder went down. The high point, of course, is the revelation of Nagito’s true nature, which let you know that this is a guy to watch out for.

2. Welcome to Despair + To Survive (DR1)

Like I said, the prologue to DR1 is my favorite one - just the opening scene alone perfectly sets the tone for all that’s to follow, I also really enjoy getting to explore the school and interacting with the adorable Sayaka Maizono. The problem with this chapter is when Sayaka gets killed. Not only is the investigation a very standard one, but the mystery is too easily solved - Sayaka even wrote her killer’s freaking name down and most players will figure that out well before any of the characters do! I know this is the first case and all, but come on!

3. Ultimate Revival + My Class Trial, Our Class Trial (DRV3)

If DR1′s first chapter problem was being too easy to solve, this one’s problem is that it’s impossible to solve because the game withholds the key evidence for the sake of a twist - evidence that exposes the female protagonist you are playing as, Kaede, as the culprit! It’s a shame - despite some issues here and there (goddamn Monokubs...), I was liking the atmosphere this chapter was setting up with its ticking clock factor, the Ultimate Academy was well designed and kept distinct from Hope’s Peak, and Kaede was a wonderful, lovable protagonist the likes of which we hadn’t seen before in this series. But that one ending twist which results in her getting taken from us in favor of some dude ruins the whole chapter.

Chapter 2:

1. Boy’s Life of Despair (DR1)

Only DR1 manages to have its second chapter be an improvement over the first: with not only expansions on all of the characters and even the school itself, but a mystery that isn’t so easily solved because a certain rich douchebag deliberately tampered with the crime scene in order to make the case more challenging. The only mark I have against this one is the weird gender politics at play, and even then it’s not insulting or anything: Mondo’s toxic masculinity is even highlighted as his fatal flaw. And of course, this chapter gave us Genocide Jack. WIN.

2. Sea and Punishment, Sin and Coconuts (DR2)

While a step down from the preceding chapter, it’s not by much: this is still a quality chapter with quality character and plot development and a quality murder mystery. My biggest gripes are that it becomes obvious who the culprit is early into the trial and how they committed the murder but it takes a long time for the characters to decide on those things. If that wasn’t enough, the revelation of the killer’s motives is ridiculous, with two shocking swerves on top of each other, one of them a lie and the other one the truth. The actual scene leading to the execution, however, more than makes up for that with how emotional it is, with one of Derek Stephen Prince’s best performances in his career as Fuyuhiko reveals his inner vulnerability.

3. A Thin Line Divides Heaven and Hell (DRV3)

This second chapter is a HUGE step down from the first one. Shuichi is immediately a far blander, less compelling protagonist than Kaede was, there are too many detours before the murder happens, the mystery is way too convoluted and the culprit’s motivation is an even bigger shocking swerve than DR2′s, and the execution just goes full Saw to the point of being almost too uncomfortable to watch. In the end, it doesn’t even feel like this case mattered, it was all a drawn-out way of revealing the underwhelming “twist” to Maki’s true identity which only ended up working against her character. The best part of this chapter would have to be the body discovery, which is one of the most shocking and effective in the whole series.

Chapter 3:

1. A Next Generation Legend! Stand Tall, Galactic Hero! (DR1)

Third Case Syndrome hits DR1 the least out of all the games, as despite the problem of the class trial’s pay-off not matching the intensity of the build-up, it still doesn’t cheat the player in any way. The mystery is still well designed and on paper the crime is brilliant, and even the way it falls apart in execution makes logical sense given what has been established about Celestia and Hifumi throughout the game. There’s even fun to be had in the trial given Celestia’s legendary breakdown, plus her execution being among the series’ funniest. But execution truly is the main issue here, as the writing falls flat compared to the manga and anime versions, which don’t make certain things that should be mysterious too obvious while making other things that should be better highlighted (ex: Celestia’s true colors) more clear.

2. Trapped by the Ocean Scent (DR2)

I like some things about this chapter, particularly early on: Fuyuhiko’s character development, Ibuki’s concert, Nekomaru’s sacrifice, Nagito continuing to be his delightfully twisted self, and Monokuma’s hilarious “Wizard of Monomi” movie. The build-up to the body discovery with that supposed suicide video is also legitimately scary. But it all falls apart in the class trial to a comical degree, with the revelation of the culprit having so much wrong with it I hardly know where to begin. Everything about Despair Disease in general feels like filler and a way to ax off three characters that Kodaka had no idea what to do with. It’s just a glaringly bad chapter.

3. Transfer Student From Beyond the Grave (DRV3)

This is where Third Case Syndrome hits its nadir: once again some legitimately good and scary build-up (including the requisite second murder happening halfway through the investigation when you’re not expecting it to) is destroyed by a farcical class trial that is riddled with plot holes, convoluted mechanics, and random extreme character turns that makes it clear that Kodaka was just doing all this to kill off characters he felt had reached their limits rather than staying consistent with what came before. Special mention must go to Korekiyo’s motives. While Celestia and Mikan’s motives aren’t sympathetic either, there are sympathetic reasons behind them. But with Kiyo, the reasoning behind his serial killing is...incest. Literal brother-sister incest. We had a potentially interesting, creepy character in Kiyo, but he was utterly squandered and turned into one big incest/see-saw meme. Such a waste!

Chapter 4:

1. Do Ultimate Robots Dream of Clockwork? (DR2)

One of the most challenging yet also one of the most unique and rewarding chapters in the whole series. The Strawberry / Grape funhouse is the stuff of nightmares, and the game doesn’t pull any punches in how horrific the situation inside it is, with the characters slowly starving to death and with the only way out being to either kill someone or brave a creepy life-threatening escape room. Then once the murder happens you get to play as Nagito during the investigation, getting further insight into his fucked-up mind before he pulls a morbidly hilarious 180 on his attitude and becomes a total condescending jerkwad rather than a creepy self-denigrating suck-up. And the investigation and trial amounting to figuring out how the funhouse is structured and how that structure was utilized in the murder is intellectually stimulating in the best way. Add to that one of the most emotional culprit revelations and executions and you have one of the greatest chapters ever put in a mystery-solving game.

2. All*Star*Apologies (DR1)

DR2′s fourth chapter is better, but DR1′s comes extremely close. Not only is it a locked room mystery where just about everyone except the protagonist and deuteragonist are a feasible suspect which leads to the most fun, challenging and satisfying class trial in the game, but it also ends up being the story’s emotional high point. The reveal of who actually killed Sakura and why, the reasoning behind why an innocent party tried to take the blame for it, and the long-overdue uniting of the Killing Game’s participants (even Byakuya!) against their true enemy, Monokuma...it’s powerful stuff that lingers in your memory long after it’s finished.

3. Live and Let the Languid World Live (DRV3)

Now don’t get me wrong: this chapter was the best one in DRV3 since the first chapter, but I feel like it’s trying too hard to recapture the glory of the previous games’ fourth chapters and mostly failing. The virtual world and trying to figure out how it works is a blatant copy of the funhouse from DR2, except that we barely spend time in the virtual world compared to the funhouse and whereas figuring out the structure of the funhouse actually took a lot of thinking, the secret of the virtual world is painfully easy to deduce and leads to another instance of the player being several steps ahead of the characters. Kokichi as a Nagito-esque antagonist just doesn’t work and it’s frustrating to watch him play all the other characters like fiddles when it’s so transparently obvious what he is doing. Lastly, while the deaths of Sakura, Alter-Ego Chihiro, Nekomaru and Gundham were sad, there was still a note of triumph and hope in them as well. There’s none of that in the deaths of Miu, Gonta and his Alter-Ego. These deaths are just sad, depressing wastes, even moreso in retrospect after Chapter 6.

Chapter 5:

1. Smile at Hope in the Name of Despair (DR2)

Nagito was right: DR2′s Chapter 4 was merely “the opening act” for THE best chapter in both the game and the entire series. Seeing Nagito finally go full-on batshit insane and carve out a path of destruction that leads to his own death is enthralling, as is figuring out the hows and the whys of his death, peeling back the layers of his madness and malice until you arrive at the horrifying truth, all culminating in one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the series when Chiaki finally reveals the truth about herself and offers herself up as a sacrifice to stop Nagito’s heinous scheme from coming to fruition. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it! The bizarre triangular dynamic between Hajime, Chiaki and Nagito really made this game’s story as good as it is despite uneven writing early on, and this chapter is the culmination of it.

2. Voyage Without Passion or Purpose (DRV3)

When it comes to the game’s overarching story, I don’t really care much for the events that transpire in this chapter. But when taken as a stand-alone, it’s excellent. Someone has been killed and someone is responsible for it, but for the first time in the series you aren’t just unsure about the culprit, but the victim as well! To make matters worse, the culprit shows up to the class trial inside a mech suit that has a voice changer, and he keeps changing his voice between Kaito and Kokichi’s to further muddle which one of them is actually dead. And to top it all off, not even Monokuma knows the solution to this mystery and you actually have to work together with him in order to solve it! Gotta hand it to Kodaka: this move was inspired. If only I actually gave a damn about Kaito, Kokichi and Maki, this case would hit much harder.

3. 100 Mile Dash; Pain of a Junk Food Junkie (DR1)

This time, the opposite holds true: I like these events as part of the over-arching story, especially everything that happens from the execution (the scariest one in the whole game, IMO) and onward. But when taken on its own, this chapter is a mess. Not only is the mystery and trial literally contrived by Monokuma in order to set a trap for one character, but it tips its hand too early by showing the discovery of the victim’s dead body well before it’s time for that scene to happen, and the constant flashing back to Kyoko telling Makoto about the existence of Mukuro Ikusaba is somewhere between comical and infuriating. I think the worst part is that there’s no permanent consequences for anyone: nobody actually dies in this chapter! Not the supposed victim Mukuro, not Monokuma, not Kyoko and not Makoto. It even turns out that Alter-Ego Chihiro managed to kind of survive its execution in the previous chapter! WTF? We’ve spent a whole game getting used to the finality of death, but now death is cheap!

Chapter 6:

1. Ultimate Despair + Goodbye Despair High School (DR1)

I think that DR2′s final chapter is arguably better, more epic and more conclusive than DR1′s, but I still can’t help but prefer DR1′s, similar to how I prefer Phoenix Wright’s “Turnabout Goodbyes” to Trial & Tribulations’ “Bridge to the Turnabout”. Everything about the overarching story and its mystery comes together perfectly here, Junko Enoshima never had the same villainous impact that she does here, and the conclusion where Makoto saves the day by becoming the Ultimate Hope, Junko puts herself through every execution in the game, and the surviving students open the door to an uncertain yet still hopeful future is just iconic.

2. This is the End, Goodbye Academy of Despair + The Day Before the Future (DR2)

Like I said, this one might be superior on a technical level, as it pulls out even bigger plot twists, features even deeper emotions and a greater sense of closure and catharsis, has a grander sense of scope, and Junko being given an even more final defeat since she’s a villain that if you want to defeat you can’t just kill physically but spiritually as well. Chiaki’s role here especially gets me choked up, and Hajime’s narration in the epilogue is the perfect note to end the story on....both the story of DR2 and the conjoined story of DR0, DR1 and DR2.

3. Goodbye Danganronpa + Everyone’s Killing Game, Closing Ceremony (DRV3)

This is an ending that’s better watched than it is played. Watching it, it’s comedy gold in how absurd it is. But actually playing through it is a chore, and having to do such a chore for the sake of an ending that is intentionally designed to piss you off is no fun at all. While I’d say the game’s third chapter is technically worst, this one is definitely my least favorite, especially when you take that god-awful, pointless epilogue into account. Kodaka, if you want to end Danganronpa, then go all the way and end it on your terms; don’t pussy out with that crap!

And now, my final ranking of all the chapters is as follows:

1. Smile at Hope in the Name of Despair (DR2) 2. Do Ultimate Robots Dream of Clockwork (DR2) 3. All*Star* Apologies (DR1) 4. Boy's Life of Despair (DR1) 5. Welcome to Dangan Island + Destination Despair (DR2) 6. Welcome to Despair + To Survive (DR1) 7. Ultimate Despair + Goodbye Despair (DR1) 8. This is the End, Goodbye Academy of Despair + The Day Before the Future (DR2) 9. Sea and Punishment, Sin and Coconuts (DR2) 10. Voyage Without Passion or Purpose (DRV3) 11. A Next Generation Legend! Stand Tall, Galactic Hero! (DR1) 12. Live and Let the Languid World Live (DRV3) 13. Ultimate Revival + My Class Trial, Our Class Trial (DRV3) 14. Trapped by the Ocean Scent (DR2) 15. 100 Mile Dash; Pain of a Junk Food Junkie (DR1) 16. A Thin Line Divides Heaven and Hell (DRV3) 17. The Transfer Student From Beyond the Grave (DRV3) 18. Goodbye Danganronpa + Everyone's Killing Game, Closing Ceremony (DRV3)

1-9 are the “strong chapters”, while 10-18 are the “weak chapters”.

#Dangan Ronpa #Opinion #Analysis #Comparison

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hawkinspostbite · 5 years ago

Text

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐚 𝐓𝐞𝐬𝐭

Words: 4,392

MASTERLIST 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

A/N: I do not claim to, nor do I own Stranger Things; the concept, characters, plot, etc.

[ᴊᴜɴᴇ 𝟹𝟶, 𝟷𝟿𝟾𝟻]

For some reason Kate found herself walking down old Cherry Road at one in the morning to go and meet Billy, despite the fact that he had been nothing but suspicious the past few days.

The rain had stopped around eleven, so while the ground was still wet, the air had become sticky again, and it was possible to walk outside without getting drenched.

Walking to Billy's was the most efficient way of not getting caught - Her car wouldn't be parked nearby, so no neighbors could snitch to Neil or Susan.

But there was another added level of difficulty, that being the fact that Max was home that night, and El was staying over.

If the girls had decided to play their spy game again, they might find that Kate was closer than they thought she was.

Approaching the Hargrove residence, Kate noticed that the only room that seemed to be active was Billy's.

She breathed a sigh of relief, noticing Max's room was dark, and walked up to the window, tapping on it softly.

The curtains drew back and Billy opened the window, helping to pull Kate inside.

He quickly shut it behind him, and Kate noticed sudden differences in the room since her last visit a week ago. It was freezing, Billy had collected multiple fans and they were all pointed towards his bed.

It was slightly darker than normal, the only light being his small desk lamp on his night table. And for once, no music played through his radio - It was silent, save for the four fans.

Without a word, Billy passed Kate to lock his door, and then sat on the bed.

She stood in the middle of his room, taking it all in. "Why is it so cold in here?" She rubbed her arms, bumps arising on her bare legs.

Billy shrugged.

She stared at him again. He seemed completely different from the way he was acting just a few hours before. He was no longer stiff, and his face was soft again. His cheerful tone was gone, and it seemed to be normal Billy again - As normal as he could be.

He sighed. "Sit?"

Kate contemplated, shifting in her spot, before slowly moving to sit beside him on the bed.

He didn't grab her hand like he normally would, or smile goofily at her. They just sat beside each other awkwardly.

"Is there something going on between you and Heather?"

That was all she could say. She could've smacked herself.

The only evidence he could know that she had was the fact that he was literally at her house all day.

He couldn't know about El seeing Heather, or the ice, the bag, whistle, or the blood.

Billy turned to look at her, scrunching his brows. "No, why would you think that?" He seemed almost offended that she would even ask that.

Kate's mouth hung open. "Because you were at her house. Because you were having dinner with her parents! Billy why wouldn't I think that? First Karen, now Heather-"

His eyes widened at her use of his first name. It was an unspoken thing between them, calling each other by their last names. When one of them used their first names, something was serious.

"You can trust me Kate." Billy finally grabbed her hand, holding it gently.

"Can I?" Once again her cheeks heated up. "Why should I?"

"I didn't do anything with Karen!" He dropped her hand and jumped up from the bed.

There he was. The real Billy.

"And I didn't do anything with Heather."

"With her?"

Billy groaned. "Nothing with her, nothing to her. Come on!"

Kate thought for a minute. She didn't want to say anything incriminating - Anything that could be used against her in a future argument.

"Okay. Okay." She kicked off her shoes and laid back in his bed.

She made herself comfortable under the covers, she was practically shivering from the fans. She gave him a questioning look, before Billy joined her, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. That struck her as a little odd, if he liked it cold, that must mean he was hot, so why wouldn't he just wear shorts and nothing else like normal?

He reached over to turn the lamp off, and Kate snuggled into him, breathing in deeply. This was the Billy she knew, this was the Billy she liked - Soft, comfortable, himself.

She laid her head on his arm, and soon sleep overtook her.

A few hours later, Kate awoke suddenly. She tried not to move, as to not wake Billy.

But she was quick to notice that she was no longer in Billy’s room.

The ground beneath her was cold and grainy. The air around her was wet and musty, the room was dark. “Billy?” She called out.

Kate looked down, her hands were bound by rope.

She sat up. “Billy! Damnit!” She shouted. She went still, hearing footsteps behind her.

“Billy.” Kate breathed a sigh of relief.

He towered over her, his shadow glooming darkly over her body. His eyes were stormy. He didn’t say anything.

This was not Billy.

This wasn't one of his bedroom kinks, it wasn't a stupid prank. Kate was going to be murdered by her boyfriend.

She had to do something, anything. But she really could do nothing.

“Billy, please! What the hell are you doing? What is wrong with you?” He knelt down, placing a hand on her cheek.

Under any other circumstances his touch would be comforting, but this was cold and foreign.

“Don’t be afraid. It’ll be over soon.” Kate swallowed nervously, watching Billy’s eyes. “Just try and stay very still.”

He brushed his finger against her cheek before standing up and stepping away, looking forwards into the darkness.

A low growl sounded from the night, sending bumps onto Kate’s skin.

From out of the shadows a creature stalked forward.

It had four legs, sprung from it like a spider, it was dripping wet and oozing some sort of slime. From the end of one of it’s legs a tentacle sprung out, opening to reveal many rows of jagged teeth. I

t roared, sending Kate into a panic. So many words were flying through her head, ranging from the nastiest of curse words to the most frightened phrases she could think of, but none of them made their way past her lips.

Before the creature attacked, she managed to get out two words: “Billy, help!”

It’s tentacle attached itself to her mouth, burrowing down her throat and into her chest. Tears sprung from her eyes as she felt it creeping into her veins, slowly poisoning her blood.

In a flash she saw so many things.

She saw something hit the windshield of a car, sending it into a tailspin, she saw complete darkness, she saw the chemical storage unit at the pool, Karen Wheeler, and then herself.

She saw the stream of water from a shower, Heather, and then a dark room.

She saw the bathtub filled with ice, the blood on the bathroom cabinet, Heather tied up.

She saw herself again, and Max and El, and the three of them leaving Heather's.

She saw Janet and Tom on the floor of their living room.

But the most disturbing thing she saw was herself, lying asleep in Billy's bed.

And then her eyes opened.

“Stop!” Billy shouted, causing the creature to pause it’s actions. “Not her. Let her go.”

The creature roared in protest, before drawing it’s tentacle out from the depths of Kate’s body. The retraction sent her into a fit of coughs, gasping and choking for air.

The creature continued to roar in protest as Billy bent down and began to frantically untie Kate from her restraints.

He pulled her up, pressing the keys to his car in her palm. “Take my car, go.”

Kate could hardly breath. “But what about you-“ She gasped, her face frowning. She didn’t want to leave Billy alone with that thing, whatever it was.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Just go!” He squeezed her hand, shoving her towards the direction of the doors.

With tears in her eyes, Kate sprinted towards the door, leaving Billy to the mercy of the monster.

Outside it was hot, sickeningly hot. The moist air clung to her, and fog littered the ground before her. She ran to Billy’s car, getting inside and speeding away.

It was a miracle she made it to his house unharmed - A huge rippled crack on his windshield, as if somebody threw a rock at it, and there were dents all around it.

At Billy’s house, she left the keys in the driver’s seat, and then she ran. She ran all the way home, and didn't stop to look back once.

She made sure every door was locked, including the one to her room. She stepped into the bathroom adjoined to her bedroom, needing desperately to rinse her face.

She pressed a finger gently to the underside of her nose.

She hadn’t even realized that her nose was bleeding.

[ᴊᴜʟʏ 1, 𝟷𝟿𝟾𝟻]

It was Kate’s last opening shift of the week - She actually worked open to close today, and she hadn’t slept at all after returning home the night before.

She closed the rest of the week and had off for the fourth. She was extra cautious on her way to work, and much to her despair, she had realized that she worked with Billy all day.

When he arrived she was careful to avoid all contact with him, not even looking at him over her sunglasses.

He was sitting under his umbrella, wearing a long sleeve shirt and a towel draped over his lap, despite it being close to ninety degrees outside. A cup of ice sat in his lap, from which he occasionally took a mouthful.

Kate stayed on edge her entire shift, that was until she saw Max behind a car in the parking lot, binoculars in hand.

She climbed down from her post, giving a short tweet on her whistle to grab Max’s attention, and to her surprise, it worked.

Max quickly walked over to the back side of the pool fence, where she would not be seen by Billy, and Kate went to meet her.

“Hey, what are you doing here? I told you that I can’t let you guys in while I’m working.” Kate whispered.

“We’re not here to swim.” Max replied. So she wasn’t alone. “We were just watching Billy.”

“Why are you watching him?” Kate tried to be nonchalant. Deep down she knows she should’ve told them about what had happened the night before, but she didn’t.

“Something happened last night, with El. She just woke up in the middle of the night, out of nowhere, saying that she saw you. And you were in trouble.”

Kate breathed in. “Trouble?”

“That’s not everything.” Max looked around to make sure no one was near them. “She said she gets visions in her sleep all the time, but this time was different. She said it felt like she wasn’t alone, like there was someone there with her.” Max inhaled slowly.

Kate’s eyes widened.

“When she got up, her nose was bleeding. Just like when she uses her powers, but this time she didn’t use them on purpose.” Kate nodded. “And then the guys called later on, and we went to Mike’s. And now we’re here.”

Kate nodded again, trying to absorb all of the information.

Max’s eyes scanned her body, falling on the small bruise on her right arm. “What’s that one from?”

Kate had a consistent problem of being clumsy, which meant bruises everywhere, and Max had a nasty habit of being nosy about them.

Kate’s hand quickly grabbed at her arm, holding it. “I ran into one of the weightlifting bars when inspecting the locker rooms this morning.” She shrugged.

El emerged from the pool gates, looking for Max. “I’d better go.” They nodded to each other. “Keep an eye on him? And be careful. Call Mike’s if anything happens.”

Kate nodded once again, she watched Max meet El, and then Mike, Will, and Lucas joined them. She returned to her chair, looking over at Billy, whose eyes were trained on her.

She ignored him, pushing her sunglasses further up her nose, and continuing on with her guarding.

The last swimmers left at eight thirty. Billy had taken it upon himself to clean up the pool area while Kate shut the gate and locked up the desk.

“I’m gonna get a shower, I’ll walk you out when I'm done.” Billy snuck up on her at the desk.

She clutched her chest, him having frightened her. It was normal Billy this time.

She could tell by his tone that he was tired from having been in the sun all day, and he genuinely did want to walk her out, but whether or not his intentions outside of the pool gates were good or not, she didn’t know.

“He speaks.” She thought. “

Um, I’m also gonna get a shower.” Her eyes flashed to the doors to each room. “Check the boy’s room before you go.”

“I’ll meet you out here in ten?” He posed the sentence like a question, but his tone implied it was more of a command.

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded, before turning and walking into the boy’s locker room.

Kate waited until she heard the shower turn on before going into the girl’s room. She had left her key ring on the top of the desk, confident that she and Billy were the only ones on the premises.

She had only brought one key inside with her, and made sure it was with her before locking herself on the inside of the room. The door locked from both the inside and the outside.

It locked from the outside, to keep sneaky trespassers out of the pool member’s lockers. And it locked from the inside to keep frightened swimmers in during storms.

Each lock used a different key.

While in the shower Kate tried to wrap her head around everything.

With Billy - It was like a switch clicked in him, he just showed up one day completely different. He couldn’t control himself, he couldn’t decide whether to be kind or cruel.

And El had seen Heather tied up, she had seen her whistle covered in blood, she had seen Heather drowning in a bathtub filled with ice. Or was that something that just Kate had seen?

How did she see?

The visions - They couldn’t be a coincidence. Eleven was the only person Kate knew of that could see things, real things. And Will.

But that was back when he was possessed by the Mind Flayer, which was destroyed. Or was it?

Of course it was.

But none of that explained how or why Kate saw what she saw. It didn’t explain why her nose had been bleeding, or why Billy had kidnapped her, or why she was so terrified of the only person she could used to be able to trust.

By now the shower water had ran cold.

Turning the water off, Kate dressed herself, in some clean shorts and a shirt, before pulling on her boots. She stuffed her swimsuit and sandals into her backpack, along with her fanny-pack, left the girl’s locker room.

She set her bag down on the top of the counter.

From inside the boy’s room she heard Billy’s voice. “Pool’s closed.” He said, faintly.

“Harrington, is that you?” He called.

“Hargrove?” She walked up to the door, yanking on it.

But it wouldn’t budge. It was locked.

“Hey!” Billy yelled from inside. “Do you hear me? Pool is closed!” Billy pounded at the door.

She turned to look at the desk. Her keys were nowhere to be found.

“Shit!” She exclaimed. The only key she had was the one to the girl’s room. She couldn’t even get into the office to use the spares.

“Shit!” The door rattled again. There was nothing she could do.

“Who’s there?” She listened to Billy from the inside. “Who’s there?” He sing-songed.

Surely he wasn’t actually speaking to anyone.

She came back from around the desk, yanking on the door again and again. “Hargrove!”

He gave no response. “I find you, it is your funeral.”

Who was he talking to?

Kate stepped away from the door, defeated. She could hear him laughing inside.

Suddenly Max was standing in front of the door, unlocking the door with Kate’s keys. “Hey!” She said, but Max ignored her, tossing the key ring back onto the desk.

Mike and Lucas lead the charge, with Will and Max following behind. “Hey!” She called again, following them inside.

They burst through the door leading into the weight room, El was inside, shutting the door to the sauna, with Billy inside.

Mike locked him in with a pipe in the handle, and Lucas and Will chained it up.

Billy was pounding against the door, grunting and yelling. “What the hell is going on!” Kate shouted.

She stood between Mike and Max, El standing in front of them. They were silent.

“Max.” Billy whispered.

El turned to look at her.

“Do it.” Was Max’s only response.

Will walked up to the dial, cranking it to the highest temperature - 220. “Will- Hey, what is going on?”

“Max! Let me out of here!” Billy screamed from inside the room. Still, nobody had answered Kate’s question. “Let me out!”

Billy’s focus suddenly flashed to Kate. “Kate.” He breathed out.

She swallowed hard. Whatever was going on, she needed to find out, and stop it.

“You kids. You think this is funny? You think this is some kind of sick prank, huh?” Billy spat at the glass separating him from the group. “You little shits think this is funny?” He shouted.

They all looked at each other. “What is this?” He breathing picked up. “Open the door.”

He locked eyes with Kate again.

“Open the door!” He kicked it, startling them all. “Open the door! Open the door! Open the goddamn door!” He had pressed his face against the glass.

Kate watched the movement in Billy’s eyes, constantly shifting and changing. Her chest began to feel tight, the all-too-familiar feeling of anxiety creeping into her body.

She clenched her fists, wanting so badly to just step forward unlock the door, but something told her not to. The anxiety in her chest, that quickly spread it’s way to her stomach, told her not to.

So she didn’t.

Suddenly Billy dropped to the floor, screaming. Will walked back up to the temperature gauge. “We’re at 220.”

Max’s eyes widened, and Billy’s sobs could be heard from inside the sauna.

Kate swallowed again, she couldn’t hear Billy cry - It never ended well.

“It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault, Max. I promise you it’s not my fault.” He whimpered.

Max walked up to the door, looking inside. “What’s not your fault Billy?”

“I’ve done things, Max. Really bad things.” Kate’s eyes began to well up, the anxiety overtaking her head, making it feel fuzzy.

“I didn’t mean to.” He cried. “He made me do it.”

“Who made you do it?” Max asked.

“I don’t know. It’s like a shadow.” El looked at Will.

Kate froze.

It couldn’t be.

“Like a giant shadow. Please Max.”

“What did he make you do?”

“It’s not my fault, okay!” He shouted at her, still sobbing. “Max, please! Please believe me Max, it’s not my fault. I tried to stop him, okay? I did!”

Max sniffled.

“Please believe me Max. Please believe me.” Billy sobbed on the floor of the Hawkins pool sauna.

Max pressed her palm against the window. “Billy, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Max, please.” He cried.

Kate stepped forward, standing next to El. Her chest continued to tighten, her heart thumping wildly. It was getting harder to breathe.

“We want to help you. We want to help you.”

She took two more steps up, getting closer to Max.

Kate gasped, the anxious feeling that overtook her body was abruptly replaced with something new. Her vision flickered, everything in front of her now edged in grey. It was almost like she was watching the world through a pair of binoculars, like she had tunnel-vision.

“You just have to talk to us, okay? You have to talk to us.”

Kate looked behind her.

Will had pressed his hand to the back of his neck.

“I believe you Billy. We’ll figure it out together, okay?”

“I feel him.” Will whispered. “He’s activated.”

Mike looked at Will and then back to Max. “I need you to trust me, please.” Max pleaded to her brother.

“Max, get away from the door.” Mike said quietly.

“What?” She turned to look at him.

“Get away from the door!” Mike shouted at her.

Kate’s brain had to work double-time to make her move, the tunnel-vision making it hard to focus on anything.

She forced herself forward, grabbing Max and pushing her to the ground.

No sooner had Mike spoken, then did Billy smash through the glass, a piece of the porcelain wall in his hand.

Kate focused in on the shard, which was stained with blood, Billy had managed to slice Kate’s forearm as she grabbed Max.

He stared at Kate, locking eyes with her.

She looked away, her and Max stood up, with their backs pressed against the wall.

Billy’s arm swung outside of the window, the shard in his grip. El pushed the boys back.

“Let me out, you bitch! Let me out!” Max sobbed. Kate pushed her towards Lucas.

“I’ll fucking gut you!” He screamed as Lucas grabbed his girlfriend quickly.

Kate stayed in her place as Billy dropped the piece of porcelain and began yanking at the pipe attached to the door.

He pulled it out, the chain jingling. “Let me out! Let me out-” Lucas shot Billy in the face with a rock from his wrist-rocket, cutting him off.

Billy flew backwards, hitting the floor.

“Kate, come on!” Lucas shouted, ushering her over to stand with them.

Blood dripped down her arm, off her fingers and onto the floor. “Holy shit.” Lucas said, examining the wound.

Kate began to feel dizzy, her vision clouded darker. Her skin felt sticky, but she shivered.

A wave of nausea overtook her, causing her to gag. She stood still, trying her best not to raise any red flags with the kids. But she didn’t know what was happening, not to her and not to Billy.

The lights began to flicker, and the six of them huddled together, El standing in front.

Inside the sauna Billy groaned.

This could not be happening. The lights, the heat, locking Billy in a room - It was all too familiar.

Billy roared, and Eleven stood strong, holding her arms out to protect her friends.

Billy railed his body against the door, doing his absolute best to open it. “He can’t get out, can he?” Max spoke.

“No way.” Beside her, Lucas shook his head. “No way.”

Billy was still pounding on the door. But sure enough, with one last roar, Billy tumbled through the door.

El gasped, pushing the group backwards. Billy towered over her.

But it was not really Billy.

His body was etched with blackened veins, and his skin was slick with sweat, just like it was when she had found him in the chemical storage unit. His eyes were wild, and dark, yet familiar - They were the same cold eyes she had seen the night before.

Lucas stood with his arm around Max, and Kate stood to protect Mike and Will if need be.

El and Billy just stared at one another.

El raised her hand, lifting the bar next to her. With a shout she sent it and Billy flying backwards against the wall, attempting to crush him under the weight.

She yelled, lifting her other hand as Billy fought against the bar. He groaned, choking.

“El! You’re choking him!” The words slipped from her mouth before she could stop them.

Mike and Will looked at her like she was crazy. Of course she knew, she understood that this was not the real Billy, but the real Billy was somewhere in there.

El and Billy screamed at each other as Billy managed to push the bar off of his neck, slamming it to the ground, sending El down with it.

“Billy! No!” Kate shouted, stepping away from Mike and Will, despite Mike’s grabbing hands at her shirt sleeve.

Her brain was working against her body, screaming at each leg to move, frantically trying to ignore the fact that she was losing vision, as well as the overwhelming feeling to throw up.

Billy turned to look at her. “Stop. Stop it, she’s a kid.” Kate spoke with the same tone Billy always did when talking about them - Her kids.

Billy breathed heavily.

“You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to hurt her, this isn’t you!” She shouted at him, reaching her trembling hands up to punch his chest. “Billy!”

His hand grabbed the side of her face, shoving her away. She stumbled, losing her footing on the weight-lifting bar and smacking her head off the ground.

She laid on the concrete floor, dazed, her body was ultimately useless at this point.

Billy grabbed El by the hair, yanking her around.

“No!” She screamed, overcome with terror.

Billy turned to look at Max and Lucas, then Will and Mike, before wrapping his hand around El’s throat, squeezing tight.

Kate’s hand went to her throat, a slight throb began. Her eyes began to well up.

Billy lifted Eleven into the air, she was choking, gasping for air. “No! No!” She gulped, tears cascading down her cheeks.

There was nothing she could do.

There was nothing anyone could do.

Kate watched from the floor, her throat tightening, her vision going dark, her body limp, as El fought against Billy, battering her hands against his arm.

“No! No! No!” She cried.

Mike stepped away from Will, grabbing the pipe from beside Kate. He yelled, hitting Billy over the back of the head with it.

Billy dropped to the ground, so did El. “Go to hell you piece of shit!” Mike shouted.

Kate sat up, her head was spinning, worse than it ever had before.

Mike went to hit Billy again but Billy grabbed the pipe, throwing it against the wall.

El groaned on the floor.

Billy walked towards Mike, until his back hit the wall, he lifted his arm up to hit him, but before he could deliver the blow, Billy was lifted off the ground.

He screamed, as did El, who was up off the floor, using every ounce of strength she had left to levitate Billy. She walked around until Billy was parallel with the wall, and with one final scream, El sent him flying through the brick and onto the ground outside.

The lights continued to flash, El dropped to the ground, sobbing, Mike held her as she cried.

Will and Max stood in shock, close to each other while Lucas bent down to help Kate stand up.

She blinked, her vision returning to normal, and the feeling of nausea leaving her.

Her head was still woozy and her arm throbbed, but she suffered through it and leaned her body on Lucas’s.

The six of them stood at the hole in the wall, watching as Billy lifted himself from the ground and ran into the woods.

With Kate’s permission and guidance, Max drove them all to Mike’s house, where they managed to sneak into the basement with no interruptions.

Max helped Kate clean her arm, and wrapped it in some gauze and medical tape she had found in the bathroom cabinet in the basement.

They all camped out in Mike’s basement that night, most of the collapsing from exhaustion.

Kate was grateful for the rest, but she couldn’t help but fear what was to come in the future days.

#stranger things #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things oc #stranger things headcanons #will byers #mike wheeler #eleven #Max Mayfield #Lucas Sinclair #Billy Hargrove #kate content

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tacitcantos · 5 years ago

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After the cinematic atrocities that have been the new Star Wars movies it’s no surprise that The Mandalorian has been hailed as the first successful new Star Wars property in the Disney era. And it’s not hard to see why: its production values are stellar, its story simple but archetypal, and it fully embraces the grunge of the original trilogy. And while it is without a doubt better than the new movies… that doesn’t make it good.

A lot of you are no doubt going to disagree with me. And that’s understandable, because The Mandalorian isn’t bad exactly. It’s more that it’s not good, or as good as it could or should be. It’s a plodding and unimaginative series that meanders around flashing fanservice at the audience because it knows most of the audience will be pleased by any invocation of Star Wars iconography no matter how lacking in substance, a passable pastiche of Star Wars and various westerns, but not a particularly smart or good example of the genre, with little depth under the surface.

And it is a pastiche of westerns. From the twang of its music to the barren landscapes that fill it, The Mandalorian is firmly entrenched in the traditions and tropes of the western. Like all westerns its stakes are personal and its character iconic, lone gunslingers and dusty outlaws and unscrupulous criminals, and the plots of its various episodes vary from reminiscent to outright copying: the relationship between Mando and the young bounty hunter in episode 5 is extremely reminiscent of the one in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, and episode 4 is a beat for beat remake of the Magnificent Seven.

It’s in comparison to the westerns it so clearly wants to ape that the problems with The Mandalorian become most visible. It draws on the atmosphere and tropes of the genre, but isn’t willing to put in the effort to make either successful on anything but the most superficial level.

The western and its tropes are relatively rigid because it’s been so extensively and exhaustively explored that to be successful any modern day western like The Mandalorian either needs to nail its beats and themes, deconstruct it, or bring something new to the conversation. And The Mandalorian does none of those things.

All the places The Mandalorian has problems or is unsuccessful are due to not not understanding its genre and its genre conventions. There’s four core, interconnected ones that permeate The Mandalorian:

The series has no clear thematic message. It’s not really trying to say anything; not about the warrior culture of the Mandalorians, not about bounty hunting, and not about the postwar status of the Star Wars galaxy. Worse, it has nothing to say about the themes of the western, the genre it’s firmly entrenched in.

Mando is a shallow and static character. There aren’t any real layers or complexities to explore. What you see on the surface is very much what you get, with no hidden depths or surprises. Static characters can be a powerful tool in the right hands: Clint Eastwood’s laconic gunslinger in A Fistful of Dollars and The Good The Bad and The Ugly is proof of that, but Mando is too jokey and fallible to have the gravitas of that kind of silent killer.

Its plot is impersonal and predictable. The plot of most of the episodes are a series of events with little to no character growth or thematic exploration. They’re simple and tend towards sloppiness, with predictable turns and twists which makes watching them cognitively unengaging.

There’s a far more interesting story to be told in this time period that The Mandalorian almost completely ignores. Post Imperial fall but before New Republic ascendancy is a setting that’s perfectly in keeping with the western and could lead to all kinds of interesting story possibilities. Story possibilities that The Mandalorian completely ignores, and ones that makes its own absence of message and character all the more glaring and conspicuous.

As I said before, each of these problems are sort of circular and feed into and make the others worse, but let’s try and tackle them one at a time anyway. Starting with...

1. The Series Has No Clear Thematic Message

Theme and message are key to any successful story. They’re the soul of a work, the underlying pattern that gives the events of a story meaning. A work needs a viewpoint, needs an idea it finds interesting to explore through its characters and plot, or the work has no deeper resonance and feels shallow and forgettable.

For example, Unforgiven is a movie with such a pointed message and theme that it single handedly revolutionized the entire western genre. It’s a movie that wants to show the difference in the appeal of bounty hunting vs the ugly reality, to deconstruct the glamour and tropes of the western, and how killing takes a toll on those that do it. It was such a thorough and brutal deconstruction of the genre that everyone western or neo western after Unforgiven is in conversation with it whether it wants to be or not.

The Mandalorian… it’s not that it needed to deconstruct the western genre in the way Unforgiven did exactly, but it did need to have something to say, some theme or viewpoint to express. And it really doesn’t.

Take Mando’s dislike of droids for example, and his perfunctory arc to overcome that dislike. What’s the narrative purpose? Obviously it’s initially meant to show that he was traumatized as a child by the death of his parents, but what does it say thematically? What does his learning to trust the IG droid say? If, for example, the show had an anti-warrior culture viewpoint, it could use the concept of a droid having choice instead of just doing what it’s programed to make Mando question his own Mandalorian training: did he truly have another option after his parents’ death? Was he indoctrinated? Taken advantage of? I’m not saying that the show specifically needed to have a pro or anti-warrior culture viewpoint, but it did need to have a viewpoint on something.

Not only because not having a message makes the show forgettable, but also because it has serious negative ramifications on the plot and pacing. It’s why The Mandalorian feels so listless much of the time. Because it has nowhere to go, it doesn’t care about getting there fast. There’s no burning message that the show’s creators want to impart to the audience, no topic it’s fascinated by, and so it tends to meander around pointlessly, its plots and characters empty vessels. None of them can mean anything, because The Mandalorian has no meaning. It’s just kind of… there, transposing fanservice for depth.

2. Mando is a Shallow Character

The problems with Mando as a character start in the first episode. The first episode of a series should introduce the main character, give the audience an idea of who he is and what he wants. A first episode doesn’t need to completely expose all of a main character’s layers, but it does need to define him clearly and make him a character the audience can identify with. Who is Mando? What does he want? To collect bounties, obviously, but why? Is it a drive for justice? Does he take pleasure in the hunt? Does it disgust him to have to deal with criminals?

The first episode of The Mandalorian completely punts on answering any of those basic questions. It’s 45 minutes long, but somehow doesn’t tell us anything about Mando besides the immediately obvious premise that he’s a bounty hunter and a Mandalorian.

A better structure would’ve, just as an example, followed Mando through a whole hunt. Maybe when he tries to leave the original planet with the blueface alien his ship is blown up or they’re stopped by a crime syndicate who wants the blueface alien for their own reason, and the rest of the episode is him trying to get off the planet with his bounty. You could punch up the character of blueface alien, start a dialogue between him and Mando that actually gives us an insight into his character. Maybe he lets the blueface alien go at the end because of the bond they’ve formed, maybe despite the bond he still hands him in because at his core he’s a bounty hunter through and through. Either option tells us something about him.

The only real emotional layer the episode reveals about Mando is in a scene where he visits his Mandalorian clan and it’s shown though flashback that his family was murdered when he was a child, and we can infer that he was taken in by the Mandalorians afterward, but again, we get no indication of how he feels about it.

What’s strange is that there’s a more interesting version of this scene in episode 3, where it’s revealed that only one Mandalorian can go above ground at a time. This is a potentially interesting idea: why was Mando chosen instead of the other Mandalorians? Does he feel a burden to represent his people? Is this his driving motivation? Does he feel like he’s not equal to the task? But there’s no followup to this scene to give us a hint to what Mando is thinking about it wasting a perfectly good opportunity to ground him as a character with a concrete motivation.

This whole scene could actually have created a potentially interesting conflict for Mando where he’s torn between saving baby Yoda from the imperials and not tarnishing Mandalorian reputation by betraying a client. Sadly absolutely nothing is done with this idea, as the rest of the Mandalorians seem entirely happy to cover for him when he tries to escape with baby Yoda.

And choosing to save baby Yoda is pretty much the last character growth Mando goes through for the season, besides some perfunctory getting over his dislike of droids in the finale. He’s a largely static character, unchanging and flat. As the series goes on he’s fleshed out a little, but only a little: who he is as a person is still shockingly vague and vacuous by the end of the season.

It’s one of the reasons the series a whole is really emotionally flat, without any ups or downs, triumphs or failures, joy or despair. For example, in the last episode when Mando sees the piled armor of the dead Mandalorians, did anyone feel that as a punch to the gut? Of course not, because we don’t really know who Mando is, don’t have any way into his head, don’t identify with him in the way that we do with the best fictional characters.

Static Characters and How to Write Them

Part of the reason Mando is a shallow character is because he’s a static character that doesn’t undergo any real change. Now, static characters aren’t inherently shallow ones: there are countless examples of iconic static characters in fiction, and especially westerns, but the rules for making a static main character effective are different than those for dynamic ones, and is in many ways harder: not changing or growing through the story can make them feel stale and lifeless, and makes for a passive and unengaging viewing experience on the part of the audience.

There are a few ways to make a static character compelling, but all require careful deployment of the character in coordination with the rest of the story. Here are a few, but notice how none of them really apply well to The Mandalorian:

One approach is to reveal different layers to the character throughout the story. Instead of changing they remain the same, but our understanding of them changes. This doesn’t really work with Mando though, because as we talked about, he’s not a complicated or complex character. What you see is very much what you get and there are no hidden layers beneath the surface one.

Another approach is to have the character growth heavy lifting taken on by another main character. It’s why the lone badass archetype is almost always accompanied by a more relatable secondary character. It’s an approach that’s effective because it lets the badass keep his mystique, while also letting the story reap the narrative benefits of having a character grow. The Mandalorian actually kind of does this by giving Mando baby Yoda at the end of the first episode, but the problem is that baby Yoda is just as static a character as Mando, even if he’s a much cuter one.

Yet another approach is to use the static character as a focal point for other more dynamic characters. They can become a mirror and contrast for those secondary characters and their growth. This requires a deep bench of characters though, and the only really recurring characters of note in The Mandalorian are ex rebel dropshock lady and discount Lando, neither of whose actor can portray anything resembling a human being, and both characters who are even shallower than Mando.

A final approach is for the static character to simply have overwhelming charisma or gravitas. Clint Eastwood’s unnamed gunslinger in the Dollars Trilogy is a perfect example of this kind of character; a figure of dread, more force of nature than person. Mando fails at that though, because he’s far too fallible and his badassness swings wildly from one episode to the other: sometimes he’s able to wipe the floor with dozens of battle droids, and other times he meets an ignoble defeat at the hands of Jawa’s, after which he throws a flamethrower temper tantrum at them.

Helmet Woes

Part of the shallowness and lack of gravitas of Mando’s character stems from the decision for him to never take his helmet off. Facial expressions are an undeniably massive part of human interaction and communication, and the primary way that most actors express their characters thoughts and emotions, which in turn is key to getting viewers to identify with and care about that character.

There are ways to make a faceless character work, but it requires skill on both the writing and acting side, skill The Mandalorian clearly doesn’t have. The dialogue often feels try hard, as though the writers feel the need to bludgeon the viewer to make up for Mando’s lack of facial expression, and often veers wildly from sullen to uncomfortably jokey and pedestrian.

There are a fair few movies and tv shows that have been able to make a faceless character work. V For Vendetta, for example, used strategic head tilting and theatrical body language to characterize V. An even more effective example is Boardwalk Empire’s Richard Harrow, who’s actor is able to use the half mask of the character’s face as a tool to make him by turns compelling, sympathetic, and chilling.

Both cases though require an actor who understands how to communicate solely through voice and physicality. And as likable and talented as he is, Pedro Pascal, who plays Mando, is not that actor. His vocal inflection is limited, his body language nearly nonexistent, and you can always tell he’s not entirely comfortable in the armor, that it’s not the second skin it really should be for a Mandalorian.

Just look at Mando’s default stance. Because of the bulkiness of the armors gauntlets, Pedro Pascal often walks or stands with his forearms rotated outward, giving him a strangely ballerina esque stance not at all evocative of a hardened and ruthless bounty hunter.

Even with an actor better suited to the physicality of the role though, the idea of a faceless main character will always be fundamentally mismatched in tone with the show as a whole. Face is personhood, and a faceless character should be an enigma: a lone bounty hunter who’s story is told through action and not words. The movies The Mandalorian should be emulating are of the kind Clint Eastwood’s Dollar trilogy exemplifies: archetypal stories imparted through visuals and largely bereft of dialogue.

You can see a more modern example of this approach to storytelling in 2015’s Fury Road which has minimal dialogue for the first third but still manages to tell its story effectively and compellingly. Or for an even more extreme example of this laconic approach, see Genndy Tartakovsky’s excellent series Primal, whose tale of a man and his dinosaur has no dialogue whatsoever.

But The Mandalorian isn’t willing to commit to that mode of storytelling. And that’s depressingly predictable: it’s a Disney property after all, and that means it needs to appeal to a broad audience, that it’s a cog in the endless intellectual property money machine. In that machine that kind of audience narrowing approach isn’t something they’re interested in.

So instead The Mandalorian as a whole tends to be pedestrian and safe, a show the whole family can watch together. Which would be fine, but that show is fundamentally at odds with the faceless main character The Mandalorian insists on. It’s another example of the show wanting to invoke the atmosphere of the western without willing to put in the effort to make it work.

3. Its Plot is Impersonal and Predictable.

Another place the show isn’t willing to put in the effort, or maybe simply isn’t talented enough to, is with its plot: both in the broader arc of the season and each episode. Just as with Mando’s shallowness as a character, right from its first episode the problems with the plot of The Mandalorian are glaring. The structure of the episode is innately flawed, disconnected and episodic without a clear through line.

An action sequence unrelated to the main plot at the beginning of a story to prove the main character is a badass is a perfectly serviceable trope, but The Mandolorian burns through ten of its 36 minutes on a hunt that has nothing to do with the main plot of the episode and the only information it imparts to us about Mando as a character is that he's a bounty hunter and a badass. The episode needed to be leaner, bereft of anything that didn’t move the plot forward or give us a reason to care about Mando.

The series is full of little slips and missed opportunities like that. The structure of the last two episodes, where Mando gathers a team to face the forces he’s been running from all season is far more boring than it needed to be. For a show about criminals and low-lifes and bounty hunters in the best tradition of the western, having Mando’s allies be completely trustworthy is a real lost opportunity.

A better structure would’ve had each member of the team have differing motivations and goals so that there’s an underlying tension to the episode. Will Cara go rogue at the chance to take out a high level former Imperial officer? How well reprogrammed is the IG droid? How trustworthy is Discount Lando? These are questions that are hinted at, but the show never makes credible enough to create any real tension. Cara doesn’t care about the Imperial aspect of the forces pretty much at all. And any hint the IG droid is even mildly untrustworthy is defanged by the montage that makes it clear he’s now his own person. Discount Lando decides not to double cross them as soon as it’s revealed he was going to, pricking any tension from that balloon before it has a chance to be inflated.

The episode that’s most illustrative of how weak the plots in The Mandalorian are though is episode 5, in which to pay for repairs to his ship Mando teams up with a younger bounty hunter to go after a high profile criminal.

This is a promising start. Pairing the older and more experience Mando with a cocky young gunslinger is a great way of exploring Mando’s character through contrast, since after all he must have once been something like the younger bounty hunter. How has he grown? How has bounty hunting changed him? How does bounty hunting change everyone who does it? What does it take to be a bounty hunter?

Your guess is as good as mine, because the episode goes on to explore exactly none of those questions. Mando and kid capture the bounty, the kid double crosses Mando, Mando kills him, and then him and baby Yoda jet off to the next planet. That may sound like an overly glib description of the plot, but that’s all there actually is in the episode. The plot of the episode is entirely impersonal. Things happen, but it means nothing from a character or thematic perspective.

Narrative Economy

Every beat in a story shouldn’t just push the plot forward, but also build character and theme. While not westerns, some of the best examples to illustrate this concept come from James Cameron’s early filmography before it started to become self indulgent and… blue. Aliens and Terminator 2 are both masterpieces of sparse and effective storytelling.

Take the yellow power loader from Aliens. Not only does it serve the plot purpose of allowing Rippley to battle the xenomorph queen at the end of the movie, but earlier in the movie it also serves as a character beat:

“I feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here, is there anything I can do?”

“I don’t know. Is there anything you can do?”

“Well I can drive that loader.”

This beat tells us something about Rippley; she doesn’t like feeling useless, and it’s also the first step in her arc of proving herself to the marines.

The Mandalorian is nowhere near as tight in its storytelling or plotting. The incident with the sand people halfway through episode 5 is bizarrely representative of so much about The Mandalorian.

This incident serves no plot purpose, the sand people don’t ever come back, and it tells us nothing about Mando. It’s a pointless aside that’s only there to provide fan service.

A better version of episode 5 would’ve seen some kind of bond be formed between Mando and the kid so that the kid’s betrayal and Mando having to kill him would’ve had some weight and meant something. Considering how extensively and blatantly the show cribs from westerns it’s bizarre they didn’t go this direction. The pairing of the old veteran gunslinger and the young brash one is a really common one in the genre, and best exemplified by the previously mentioned relationship in Unforgiven.

As we talked about, in Unforgiven the pairing of Clint Eastwood’s retired gunslinger and a fresh young bounty hunter is used to show the difference in the appeal of bounty hunting vs the ugly reality.

And the movie weaves that theme through its plot. For example, when Clint Eastwood and the young bounty hunter eventually catch up to the criminals they’re hunting the ensuing gunfight is anything but heroic. Morgan Freeman’s character shoots one of their targets through the gut, and both sides are left listening to him call out and beg for water as he slowly dies.

The experience so perturbs Morgan Freeman’s character that he abandons the chase. The shoot out thus both moves the plot forward, and reinforces its theme that killing is hard and unglamorous and takes a toll on those that do it.

4. The Post War Story the Mandalorian Could’ve Told

What’s frustrating about The Mandalorian is that there’s a far more interesting story to be told than the one we got onscreen, a way to recontextualize Star Wars iconography in a way that’s visceral and immediate and thought provoking and more in common with the westerns it wants to evoke. Werner Herzog’s speech in episode 7 really makes it clear what a missed opportunity the series is as a whole, and hints at what could’ve been:

“The empire improves every system it touches judged by any metric. Safety, prosperity, trade opportunity, peace. Compare imperial rule to what is happening now. Look outside. Is the world more peaceful since the revolution? I see nothing but death and chaos.”

Placing The Mandalorian in the post Return of the Jedi timeline opens a lot of fascinating story possibilities and perfectly sets the stage for it’s western setting of a lawless frontier where there’s no strong central authority. While the fall of the empire in Return of the Jedi is without a doubt a good thing for the universe on the whole, all revolutions are messy and any time a regime falls, good or bad, it creates a power vacuum.

A power vacuum that should be filled with crime syndicates armed with abandoned imperial equipment, planetary governments who are newly independent now they’re out from under imperial yoke and are looking to flex their muscle against their neighbors, new republic expeditionary forces looking to woo those same planetary governments into the new republic itself, and most importantly Imperial remnants. It’s simply a universal truth that large groups of heavily armed soldiers don’t simply pack up their things and go home when they’re newly disenfranchised.

And not just one Imperial remnant or two, but dozens, each with their own motivations. Much in the same way real world terrorists and revolutionary groups often hate each other as much as their designated enemy, all these imperial splinter groups should be infighting and scrabbling amongst themselves for resources and power.

Imagine how much story juice there is to be squeezed in exploring those splinter groups: one could’ve been led by a petty warlord who’s little more than a heavily armed bully interested in money and power, another a strict believer in the Imperial doctrine of stability before human rights and actively fighting against the New Republic, another still a decent person who now out from the militaristic drive of the empire is just trying to keep the planets under their protection safe from crime syndicates and upheaval.

And a bounty hunter is the perfect character to explore this story. With crime syndicates at such a high tide there’s plenty of bounty hunting to be had, and a fledgling new republic would no doubt be putting out hundreds of bounties on imperial war criminals and fleeing high level officers. And a Mandalorian specifically works perfectly: someone who’s largely impartial and uninterested in the greater politics of the galaxy, of the struggle between New Republic and Imperial remnants.

There Except Not

The Mandalorian vaguely gestures at some of these ideas, but it’s always in an undercooked way: the messiness of revolution exists only within a single line from Cara about leaving the New Republic and in Werner Herzog’s speech in episode 7. The concept of newly empowered crime syndicates is sort of there in episode 4 with the raiders preying on the local village with an AT-ST. But the raiders are a tiny outfit that apparently messes with a single isolated village and there’s no indication that the galaxy or even this part of space is suffering from them as a whole (or even that they’re a consequence of the post war status quo. For all we know it’s always been like this).

Infighting between Imperial splinter groups exists for all of the thirty seconds it takes Werner Herzog to die at the end of episode 7 so that the series can get a new big bad. It’s never explained and exits as swiftly as it’s introduced.

And all of this, all of the above, all the missed opportunity in The Mandalorian, hurt its story as a whole. Even just the concept of different Imperial splinter groups with differing motives could’ve been fodder for an episode or two of Mando using his cunning to pit them against each or double cross both, perfect for plot twists and reversals. Or for another example, take Cara’s reason for leaving the New Republic:

“And then when the imps were gone the politics started. We were peacekeepers. Protecting delegates, suppressing riots. Not what I signed up for.”

“How’d you end up here?”

“Let’s just call it an early retirement.”

This is a really interesting idea: the conflict and challenge in transitioning from fighting a pure evil like the empire to the much harder and less straightforward job of governance is a great arc Cara’s character could’ve explored and grown through throughout the series. But this snippet of dialogue is all there is of it in The Mandalorian, and she has essentially no other character growth or development.

There’s a really fascinating post war story to be told in The Mandalorian, in the power vacuum in an empire’s fall and the complexity of transitioning from rebellion to governance, a story that fit it’s western atmosphere and ambitions so much better than what’s there right now: but the show is completely uninterested in telling any of it.

Weaving those elements into its plot and characters and messages would have helped fill some of the emptiness at the core of the show. And that’s really one of the best ways to describe The Mandalorian. Yes, it’s pedestrian and badly paced, but more than anything it’s empty, a space western without anything to say.

#the mandalorian #star wars #mando #disney cannot star wars to save it's life

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commentaryvorg · 6 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.2

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, as we began chapter 4, Gonta has become even more desperate to be useful to everyone, Monokuma gave out another motive that makes no sense as a motive from his point of view, Keebo became partially responsible for every future death through inaction, the true nature of this situation was hiding in plain sight in Shuichi’s lab, and Kaito vowed to protect his sidekicks despite having no way to guarantee it (because he’s also become even more desperate to be useful to them).

Kaito also found a Flashback Light, so we’re about to do that. Everyone’s gathered in the dining hall except Kokichi.

Himiko: “I guess… he must be a real pro at hide-and-seek. I magically looked all over the school, but he was nowhere to be found.”

And you’d think Himiko would be good at finding hiding places, because her, uh, magic, often involves secret passageways and hidden compartments. So I guess Kokichi really is just that good at hide and seek.

Tsumugi: “But I’m still uneasy about these Flashback Lights… Are they really okay to use?”

I don’t know, Tsumugi, you tell us.

Anyway, Kokichi shows up.

Kokichi: “Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the card key.”

Shuichi: “You couldn’t use it?”

Kokichi: “Yeah, I had no idea where to use it, so I just gave up instead.”

This is of course a lie, and Kokichi did in fact find where to use the card key and view the outside world. So now’s the time to talk about this.

It could be argued that at this point, Kokichi falls into despair upon seeing the outside world and genuinely wants the mercy kill outcome that he gets Gonta to try and achieve. But that cannot be the truth, because he deliberately outs Gonta in the middle of the trial while everyone is still pretty sure Kokichi did it, and later outright shows everyone else the outside world, even though the whole point of the mercy kill would have been to prevent them ever seeing that. That interpretation just does not make sense, and I’ll be giving more detailed and precise reasons why as we get into the case.

But even if we ignore the events of this particular chapter’s case and the theoretical attempted mercy kill, him falling into despair here still doesn’t fit. See, Kokichi has made it very clear by now that he’s aware this killing game is being put on as a show for people’s entertainment. His entire plan in chapter 5 hinges on the fact that there must be an audience; if he’d started believing here in chapter 4 that everyone was dead, that plan wouldn’t make any sense. And he’s clearly already working on that plan during this chapter, based on his hints at being the mastermind and the fact that he gets Miu to build him some things that he’ll need for it, most notably Electrobombs.

So, since Kokichi is basically certain about his audience theory by this point, when he sees that the outside world is supposedly completely barren and uninhabitable – therefore there’s no people who are watching this? – he has to conclude that it must be a lie.

Upon seeing a supposed apocalyptic world outside that’s really just a big lie to make an exciting story for people’s entertainment, he might even have started to wonder what else is a lie – everything from the Flashback Lights? Maybe even their very talents?

This isn’t the moment Kokichi falls into despair. This is the moment he figures out that everything is fiction.

Kokichi was already angry at the gamemakers for forcing him into this game he hated just for the sake of other people’s entertainment, and he was already vaguely intending to claim to be the mastermind as part of getting some kind of revenge on them. All this would do is make him even more furious at them for fucking around with him on an even deeper level. It’s very like Kokichi to throw a tantrum when somebody else uses lies against him, like he will in this chapter’s trial. So he’s now more determined than ever to get some kind of petty revenge and beat the gamemakers at their own lying, manipulating game.

Kokichi: “Oh, hey, the Flashback Light. Lemme see that. Kaito doesn’t have the balls to turn on the switch—”

Kaito: “Of course I do!!!”

Good job making it look like you’re manipulating Kaito to do whatever you want him to when he was literally about to turn it on anyway, Kokichi.

Maki: “Similar meteorite impacts happened millions of years ago… All living organisms on Earth were annihilated…”

Yeah, no, that’s not what happened. A mass-extinction, sure, but not literally everything. Even if it was a fictional, more intense meteorite impact than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, I still don’t believe it’d wipe out everything – some organisms are really stubborn little fuckers. And if it did wipe out absolutely everything, then the chances of life arising again, on the same planet, are astronomically small. The person writing this story apparently doesn’t really know their science and is just going for spectacle.

Kaito: “Then what happened to that plan? The one to save the world from the meteorites?”

Tsumugi: “Oh right… I just remembered that…”

Sure, you definitely just remembered it and didn’t know about it this whole time because you came up with it.

Miu: “Sh-Shut up! I’m tired of this! Let us outta here! Let us out!”

Meanwhile Miu has apparently snapped. Based on her reaction here, this might well be the moment she starts seriously plotting murder. I actually find it pretty neat that, for once, we have a character who decides to commit a murder not because of any chapter-specific motive but just because the overall stress of being stuck in here with the constant threat of being murdered has driven them over the edge. Chapter-specific motives shouldn’t have to be necessary. Admittedly, in a game like this one where there’s a much greater sense of co-operation than in most, it figures Monokuma would think they are necessary, so it also figures that it’d be one of the only two paranoid and non-co-operative people who’d snap in this way.

(Kokichi already snapped basically as soon as the game began, but he didn’t consider becoming blackened because he knew that’d just be playing the game and losing.)

Gonta: “Miu, calm down! It’s okay! Gonta will protect you!”

AAAGFHDSGHDSGH

Kokichi: “We probably need one more… Everything will start to connect after we remember one more thing…”

Meaning that, based on what he saw of the outside world, Kokichi’s already put all the pieces together and figured out most of the “story”.

Kokichi: “That’s why, if the meteorites really did fall on us, anything could’ve happened. A mysterious virus could’ve spread, or some weird technology… Or even an unknown substance brought to Earth that could’ve bent time and space—”

And, see, this doesn’t come across as a Kokichi who’s secretly in despair because he believes the outside world is in ruins. If that were the case, he’d just be saying something like “hey, maybe the meteorites really did wipe out humanity, who knows?”, because he likes to drop hints about truths he’s figured out like that. Instead of that, he’s listing all these fantastical possibilities which have no definite correlation with what he saw out there – because he’s figured out this is all fiction, and therefore he knows that any of these things really could be where the writers want the story to go from here.

Kaito: “Tch, that’s just stupid! It’s like the setting for some third-rate anime or game!”

And Kaito is unintentionally helping out with the implication that this is what Kokichi’s really thinking about.

Kokichi: “Do you think I’m making this up? But then, how would you explain Flashback Lights, Exisals, and even Monokuma? We may be used to it *now*, but that kind of stuff goes against common sense, y’know? Which means… it wouldn’t be too farfetched if any of the things I mentioned actually happened.”

Kokichi’s laying this on thick. He’s never really talked about this kind of thing to this extent before. This is making me much more convinced that I’m right in my assumption that he just recently figured out this whole thing is fiction. The reason I came up with that idea in the first place is that it’s the only thing that makes any sense, not because I knew of anything in particular hinting at it being the case – but his behaviour here, the first time we see him after he’d have figured it out, definitely seems to be a deliberate hint towards it.

Gonta: “Oh, before we go, Gonta put manhole cover back how it was. If we wanna challenge underground again, this time Gonta definitely—”

Kokichi: “Ah-haha, no-one’s dumb enough to challenge that dump again!”

So I wonder – did Kokichi see the outside world from the door at the end of that tunnel? Because that might explain why he would want to discourage people from trying the tunnel again now, if he knows what’s at the end of it and wants to keep everyone from falling into despair until he’s ready to have that happen as part of his plan.

Shuichi: (We can’t keep going like this… We need to find a way out. I need to solve all of these mysteries.)

Not just you, Shuichi! Yes, you’re the detective, but almost everyone’s started relying on you so much that they’ve forgotten there’s things they could do to help, too, leading to you forgetting that you’re not alone in this.

And now it’s Free Time.

Kaito: “Meteorites all over the world… No! There’s no point thinking about it right now! I’m better off thinking of something else!”

Kaito may be freaking out a little about the possible end of the world. But, being Kaito, he’s refusing to let himself dwell on that and trying to stay positive! By… ignoring the problem, but, I mean, what else can you do in this situation.

(He’s in Keebo’s lab for some reason. I guess he’s interested in all the sci-fi technology in here. Shame it never occurs to him to try and encourage Keebo to actually use this stuff.)

Tsumugi: “A biohazard from a mysterious virus spreading… Infecting people with an unknown disease…”

Excuse me, Tsumugi? I know this is just a reference to some videogame or other, but man, that sure is appropriately timed with the recent revelation about the meteorites, now, isn’t it. She’s deliberately foreshadowing while passing it off as one of her usual arbitrary references.

Gonta: “What can Gonta do… to be useful for everyone? Gonta think he could protect everyone… in underground passage! Gonta… no can take it anymore! Gonta not wanna lose anyone else!”

Oh Gonta; he just wants to be useful and stop anyone else from dying. He’s not even thinking at all about the meteorites next to this much more immediate issue.

Himiko is in Tenko’s lab! Aww. (While apparently being unfazed by the hidden Monokuma that happens to be dancing right by her feet.)

And she’s actually who I’m about to have Shuichi hang out with. He needs to have one more new hangout partner this chapter, and of the remaining people he’s not already been hanging out with who are generally pleasant people (on the surface), Himiko seems like the one Shuichi would have the most active reason to go for. After the hell she went through last chapter, and especially since he helped encourage her through it during the trial, it seems plausible that he might want to continue reaching out to her and trying to be her friend. Plus, she’s the other final survivor, so it seems appropriate. Also, there… may be one other reason I’m picking her, but we’ll get to that next chapter.

Himiko: “Nyeeeh…”

Shuichi: “Himiko?”

Himiko: “Nyeeeh…”

…Unfortunately, doing Himiko’s early FTEs at this particular time is not quite in line with canon, since they’re written for depressed-Himiko and not positive-Himiko. I imagine most first-time players who choose to hang out with Himiko during their main playthrough also get this awkward whiplash, because probably most of them don’t do so before this point. I know I said I’d keep the FTEs in line with canon as much as possible, but it can’t really be helped in this case. Still, the actual topics she talks about are something she’d have talked about regardless of when it happens; the only awkward part is her attitude about doing so.

Himiko: “It’s real magic, okay? You get it, right?”

Shuichi: “Real magic, sure.” (I feel like this conversation will go nowhere if I disagree…)

Himiko: “No, it’s magic. How many times do I have to tell y—”

Pfft, she’s so used to having to correct everyone that she’s genuinely caught off-guard when someone plays along. Having Tenko be all in on her magic thing must have been very refreshing for her, even if she was under too much of a depression haze to really feel happy about it.

Shuichi: (Isn’t it strange that such a lazy girl would go through so much work for a magic trick?)

Shuichi’s questioning this, but Himiko has occasionally mentioned her reasons for being a magi – uh, mage – before. She wants to make people smile, just like Kaede did!

Himiko: “A typical amateur question. You don’t need annoying preparations for magic.”

You really do, though. She must put a lot more work into her magic than you’d think to look at her. (And even if it was real magic, presumably you’d need lots of practice to get good at spellcasting, right?)

Shuichi: “You have a master, Himiko?”

Himiko: “Nyeh…? Did I not tell you?”

Shuichi: “This is the first time I’m hearing it. So there are apprentice magicians?”

Himiko: “Hm, that’s right. My master was an amazing archmage…”

Himiko’s master is going to be the topic of the rest of her FTEs, but the fact that he exists is basically the only thing we learn from this first one. It abruptly ends right after this because Himiko gets mad at Shuichi calling her a magician again.

Nighttime! Which means…

Shuichi: “It’s time for training!” (I feel like I haven’t done it in a long time… Alright, to the courtyard!)

Training! Shuichi’s so into it now! Kaito would be proud.

On the way out, he runs into Gonta.

Gonta: “But Gonta think it best not to go out at nighttime.”

Look at him worrying about everyone’s safety. Don’t worry, Gonta – Shuichi, Kaito and Maki would protect each other if anything happened!

Shuichi: “But the promise I made to Kaito is really important to me. I can’t break it.”

It’s adorable how much this means to him and how determined he is to keep it up already. Shuichi and Maki (and Himiko) will absolutely continue their training every day when they escape from here too.

Gonta: “Gonta not know you make such important promise to Kaito. Gonta… so useless.”

Aww, Gonta. He’s had nobody that he’s grown close enough to (FTEs aside) in a genuine enough way that he could have made that kind of promise with. Not only is he feeling useless, but even though he considers everyone here a friend, he must still be feeling kind of alone in his uselessness.

Shuichi: “Not at all, Gonta. Don’t worry about it. We all know how much you care about us.”

We do! Knowing that already helps in terms of emotional support, Gonta! You don’t need to go risking your life to be useful when you’re already important just by being you!

Gonta: “Shuichi, Gonta come to decision!”

…But that’s exactly what he’s just decided to do.

Gonta: “Gonta will sleep good tonight and prepare for tomorrow! Good night!”

And he’s suddenly so much happier now he’s figured out a way he can be useful, even though it’s this.

Kaito: “Ah, good. You’re here, bro!”

Shuichi: “Yeah… it’s been so long since the three of us have done this.”

The three of them have only done this together once, in fact – and yet they still feel so much like a trio by this point that Shuichi’s talking about it in a way that makes it seem like they’ve done so more often than that already. I love these three so much.

Maki: “…It’s because Kaito was scared of ghosts.”

Which is to say, it was Tsumugi’s fault. She cheated us out of more adorable training trio scenes. Boo.

Kaito: “First off, 100 sit-ups! You guys better get pumped up!”

Yeah, they better, because Kaito’s… not going to.

Shuichi: “One… Two… Three!”

Maki: “25, 26, 27, 28…”

…

Kaito: “When you really think about it, the universe is impossibly vast.”

Oh, Kaito. I’m pretty sure the reason he suggested sit-ups rather than push-ups this time is that he knew he was in too much pain to do much training, and so he at least wanted to be able to look up at the stars while he’s “slacking off”. It’s also a clever misdirection that he can make it look like he’s simply being distracted by space rather than that he has a more worrying reason to not be doing any.

Shuichi: (Kaito stood up slowly, his body hesitant.)

There go Shuichi’s observational skills picking up on evidence that indicates Kaito is in pain… and then not following up and coming to a conclusion from that evidence, because – well, probably because there’s still some truths he doesn’t want to pursue, especially when he’s not in class-trial, if-I-don’t-face-the-truth-we-all-die mode.

Kaito: “Sorry… gotta use the bathroom.”

Translation: just gonna go cough up some blood, guys, brb.

(Also, look at him apologising. Simply needing to use the bathroom should not ever count as “doing something wrong” even in his warped logic, so he’s not really apologising for that, is he.)

Shuichi: (Kaito slowly began walking away toward the school building.) “…I wonder what’s wrong. He’s not in much of a hurry for needing to go to the bathroom.”

Again, making relevant observations that he won’t be consciously drawing any conclusions from because that’s too worrying a truth.

Maki: “Do you want me to go check on him? I just finished doing my 100 sit-ups.”

Shuichi: “What? Already? But, ah, maybe you shouldn’t go… Because it’s… the boys bathroom…”

Maki: “…”

Shuichi: “…Did that not occur to you?”

Yeah, things like gendered bathroom taboos kind of get lost by the wayside when you’re forced through hellish training to become a child-slave assassin.

Also, man, the problems in this game that could be solved if the school just had unisex bathrooms. Shuichi would have found the secret passageway, Maki would have discovered that Kaito is dying…

Maki: “By the way… this seems like a good time to ask, but… Did you… like Kaede?”

So, of course, Maki’s asking this because she’s starting to wonder if she “likes” Kaito in that same sense and is trying to figure that out.

Maki: “Well… I assumed you didn’t, because that would be weird.”

Shuichi: “What do you mean, ‘weird’?”

Maki: “Liking someone you just met… especially in a situation like this…”

Shuichi: “… Then tell me… under what circumstances is liking someone *not* weird?”

Maki: “…Huh? I… don’t know. I don’t… really understand what that is.”

But she doesn’t understand why she would start feeling this way, because regardless of how great a guy Kaito may or may not be, it doesn’t make any sense that she’d feel this way about him, or about anyone for that matter, and it’s inconvenient and annoying. But if Shuichi also felt that way about Kaede in the same kind of situation, maybe it’s not quite so nonsensical after all?

Here’s the thing: the way Maki approaches this and her opinion of this concept here read as incredibly aromantic. I would know – I’m aromantic, and everything she just said sounds perfectly logical to me and is very similar to how I feel about such things. Yet I gather that such an opinion is an outlier and most people don’t usually see it this way.

Obviously, Maki does in fact feel this way about Kaito, or at least is beginning to, since she explicitly admits to her feelings at the end. I’m going to trust her judgement of her own feelings in that future moment enough to assume that she isn’t mistaken about them, since learning to trust and understand her own feelings is a large part of her character arc. So… Maki is demiromantic? There’s no evidence that she felt anything towards Kaito before he befriended her, so it could entirely be that the platonic affection she gained for him once he reached out and started helping her is what this has grown from. (That said, I’m not demi, so I don’t know exactly how that feels and whether that’s applicable here. She could also just be grey-aro.)

I’ll be honest: I kind of doubt that the writers were deliberately trying to portray Maki as being on the aro spectrum here, because haha canon aromantic representation in mainstream Japanese media, especially that which is more complicated than just plain aro, that’s a joke. They were probably just trying to write her as someone who’s been so emotionally numbed by her hellish backstory that she never got a chance to feel anything romance-related until now, now that she’s started to open up and be a person again. But the end result is that they’ve written a character who is incredibly aro-coded, whether they meant to or not.

Maki: “…Nevermind. Just forget I ever asked.”

Shuichi: “Forget you asked? Why did you bring this up, Maki?”

Maki: “…No reason. I was only curious.”

Shuichi: “No reason? Maki, you’re being… cruel. You ask me a personal question, then act like you don’t care—”

Shuichi’s reaction here strongly indicates that he did feel that way about Kaede, because if he truly didn’t, then he wouldn’t be hurt so much by Maki’s apparent indifference. But I should point out that this is the only actual piece of evidence in the canon storyline that Shuichi felt this way. I never mentioned his romantic feelings towards Kaede during chapter 1 because they weren’t relevant. The most important point is that they were friends. Everything Shuichi was shown to feel about Kaede back then was entirely consistent with a deep friendship brought about by this awful situation causing them to bond very quickly. All of it would have been the same even if he didn’t also happen to have had romantic feelings towards her. The romantic feelings were just an extra thing, confirmed to be most likely the case here, but not remotely the main focus.

And I appreciate that! The writing of chapter 1 could have insisted that we should care about Kaede and Shuichi specifically because there was romantic love involved, but it didn’t. Platonic love is just as important.

(This is also the case with Maki’s romantic feelings towards Kaito, for that matter. This scene and the very end of trial 5 are pretty much the only points at which they are relevant while Kaito is alive. The rest of the time, the focus isn’t on anything except their friendship. Her romantic feelings are a little bit more relevant, but there is a point to that that’s not just purely for the sake of romance itself, which I’ll talk about when we get there.)

Kaito: “Hey! Were you guys making out while I was gone!?”

So, clearly Kaito is oblivious to what they were just discussing, and I also highly doubt that he really thinks Shuichi and Maki are into each other – at no other point does he seem to think that way or particularly care about that kind of thing. This comment probably came about because Kaito was worried during his blood-coughing session that Shuichi and Maki might have figured out something was wrong, so he deliberately tried to shut down any conversation of that nature that they might have been having by making an awkward comment like this as soon as he returned.

Shuichi: “*Anyway*, what’s wrong, Kaito? Why did you leave all of a sudden?”

…Not that it was very successful, perhaps because of the very nature of the conversation Shuichi and Maki were actually having.

Shuichi: “Continue? I… don’t recall you doing even one yet, Kaito.”

Heh, Shuichi is being so sassy about it. He’d… probably be less sassy if he was more aware of the reason why Kaito hasn’t even started yet.

Kaito: “So, from the beginning! Of course, you guys are gonna restart with me!”

It’s so like Kaito to turn his own problems into an excuse to motivate his sidekicks to train even harder. Plus, this way it might not seem quite so obvious by the end that he’s done way fewer than them, at least if they don’t stop and think about it.

Kaito: “Let your sweat wash away all your sadness, fear, worry and hardships. Just start moving your body and your pain will become memories before you know it.”

Oh, Kaito. He’s giving such good advice while being so wonderfully hypocritical about it at the same time. (Although, in fairness, he’s specifically talking about emotional pain, and at least some of his own pain is physical, which is only going to be made worse by moving his body.)

Maki: “…Then you should train, too.”

Maki might have partially picked up on the fact that Kaito is in some amount of emotional pain, if she’s saying this.

Kaito: “Well, I don’t have anything to worry about. Cuz, I mean… I’m Kaito Momota! Luminary of the Stars!”

But what is she talking about, Kaito is fine. The Luminary of the Stars couldn’t possibly have any worries, obviously. If he did, then he wouldn’t be able to be a very good luminary, right? So, precisely because he is the Luminary of the Stars, he must be fine. He has to be.

Shuichi: “H-Hey! No fair, Kaito!”

Meanwhile, Shuichi is only finding it unfair that Kaito not having any worries means he supposedly gets out of having to do any sit-ups. He is not disputing the truth of what Kaito just said at all. Kaito apparently really does have Shuichi fooled, at least in terms of his emotional wellbeing, if not necessarily his physical health.

(But Maki is perhaps a little bit less fooled in the emotional department, in keeping with how last chapter made it clear that she didn’t see Kaito as particularly emotionally strong, not that that stopped him from making a difference to her.)

Shuichi: (In the end, Kaito convinced us to do all of our sit-ups over… But Kaito and I had to give up, and only Maki was able to finish.)

Apparently Kaito did end up doing at least some sit-ups after all. Still, the final tally is: Maki did two hundred sit-ups, Shuichi did a decent amount over a hundred, and Kaito… didn’t even make it to one hundred. Yeah, he is not okay.

(Given that his symptoms include stomach pains, and that sit-ups exercise the stomach muscles… looks like Kaito’s plan to give himself an excuse to look up at space while not exercising backfired on him. Whoops.)

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[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 4 #daily life #free time events #commentary

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cepmurphy · 6 years ago

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“Never even heard of Moomanbeans.”– The Ghost Monument

The Thirteenth Doctor Era opened with a confident, original story that set out how it saw the show working. Does the second episode match up? Er, not quite.

This does work much the same as The Woman Who Fell To Earth. Once again, we’re dealing with something low-key, grounded, and grimy: Angstrom and Epzo’s spaceships are lived-in junkpiles long out of date, something out of Red Dwarf, with the blast shields raised by levers and pulleys, and the space racers fighting an endurance test simply for cash. When we see Ryan being brought around, it’s in alienating flashes of weird science rather than anything comforting. Sorting out the blast shield, getting the boat to work, figuring out the way to neutralise the Murder Bandages with gas, all of this is dirty-hands practical work.

And in amongst this, there’s collaboration and people working things out as a group. The defeat of those Murder Bandages with acetylene gas and a spark isn’t the Doctor just being well-clever on her own: she relies on the others to work out what she’s up to and play their part when in a dangerous situation.

Problem is the plot lacks enough menace for this to work.

Epzo would clearly have shot Angstrom and left them if he could, but he’s been prevented from doing so by the rules – the Doctor rapidly neutralising his attempted threat to do it anyway, seeing through his bluster, is a nice scene but it still means he’s only ever just grumpy. The water is poisonous but there’s never any sign of thirst, despite everyone being in a desert with no supplies (and autumn clothes!). The sniperbots would have left them alone if Epzo hadn’t shot one, which is a nice touch in general – violence backfiring is very Doctor Who – but means nothing would have attacked them until the last ten minutes.

The first half of the story works better than the second because up until the boat sets off, there’s a sense that something could happen – and with them stuck on in space and one of the ships crashing, did happen. Other racers have died trying to reach Desolation and something has clearly killed the planet. It’s been “made cruel”, we’re told. Epzo only saved the Doctor and Yaz because he thought they were “bonuses”, he’d have clearly abandoned them otherwise. Something monstrous is happening on Angstrom’s impoverished homeworld, her part in the race is out of sheer necessity.

In the first half, we’re in a hostile, unkind place and our heroes have no resources.

And then it’s just riding a boat and walking around a bit and fighting some bandages. It just doesn’t live up to the first half. There’s little sense of peril.

The bandages actually work as a monster the first time we see them, when they’re suffocating a man. It’s nasty. It’s a clear threat. But when they’re flying around talking… yeah, no. Talking flying bandages are too silly, especially in an episode that’s had an aesthetic of lived-in grimy junk and harsh sand.

Another problem that sticks out is the obligatory lesson about non-violence. Ryan and Graham both thinking they should shoot back at the robots is a perfectly sound idea, and so is proving that this won’t work in the world of Doctor Who. The scene where Ryan goes Call of Duty, with the badass rock music that kicks in and then cuts out while he runs screaming that he doesn’t know how to reload, is funny stuff. But for this to fully work, the Doctor needs to have some great clever non-violent idea… and she built an electromagnetic pulse.

She built a bomb for robots. It even has a detonation wave! Utterly wrecks the moment for me.

Wrecking it further, how does Epzo ensure he and Angstrom are given joint prize? He threatens violence. So that’s good now? (The punchline, where race organiser Ilim scoffs “no!” when told to take the others offworld too and abandons them to die, is quite good. Who saw that coming?)

There’s also two abortive subplots, the Stenza and “the Timeless Child”. The Timeless Child gets a mention here and then is dropped, and frankly it’s such a boring nothing slogan that I’m glad it’s dropped, long may it stay so! As for the Stenza, the discovery they’re butchering worlds feels like it’s leading somewhere – annoyingly, it will not. Rather than the return of Tim Shaw, this should have led to a run-in with the species. Alternatively, and I’ve argued this, it’d be good if either Epzo or Angstrom were themselves a Stenza; the second half would have more tension if you can’t be sure if the supporting cast might turn on our cast, because surely that’s what one of Tim Shaw’s guys would do.

A note here: who might turn on our cast? Epzo or Angstrom, who look human (I do like that, Farscape style again, they dunno what a human is), and it’s Ilim who does shaft them at the end. The sniperbots are just robots following a programme, they’re not monsters. There’s something in this that we’ll be coming back to in later reviews.

While the plot is a curate’s egg, the character work for our leads is still strong (less so for Yaz). The Doctor continues to be a practical improviser, someone who examines holograms mid-exposition and makes gadgets out of old robots and won’t stop trying to figure out why the planet is dead – and she won’t stop doing that out of concern someone, somewhere could be in trouble as a result. When Yaz wakes up, the Doctor is mid-argument with Epzo and while he protests, she’s successfully won him around to her plan for a safe landing.

Graham is still reaching out to Ryan, still concerned when he’s in trouble, and still backing him up. When Ryan wants to fire on the robots, who has his back and is arguing it makes sense? Graham. A crucial scene for the two comes when Graham tries to get Ryan to open up on the boat and Ryan’s too much of an angry young man to do it: “I’m not a kid.” Soon after, he tells Graham, “You talk about this stuff way too much.” Ryan doesn’t want to talk about the things that bother him, even as he clearly should and Graham knows he should.

And what’s keeping them together and talking? Being on Desolation and being with the Doctor. Their argument soon changes into cooperation to get the boat working, after Ryan figures out it has a battery and not an engine, and this is solvable by (again in the series) practical work. The guy we met last episode who thought he couldn’t do things is doing them. Over the course of the series, Ryan will open up more and more and become more confident.

In the end, the theme of the episode: this is stated in an argument between Graham and Epzo.

“We all need other people, mate.”

“We’re all alone. That’s how we start and end and it’s the natural state of all points in between.”

By the end of the episode, everyone is alive, and everyone won because they worked together; the Doctor has Angstrom and Epzo agreeing to be joint victors, the Doctor is saved from despair by the companions believing there must be a solution. This is quite nice and mostly works. It’s another running thing in S11.

What’s S11 so far? Regular people working together and fixing things.

#doctor who #doctor who reviews #Jodie Whittaker #doctor who s11

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lupinusalbus · 6 years ago

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Game of Thrones seems to be Making Dany into a Woman Scorned

In Sunday’s shocking episode of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen slaughtered thousands of innocent people in King’s Landing after their military leaders had officially surrendered to her. As the title of the episode suggests, “the bells” of surrender by the opposing army seemed to provoke Dany into a murderous rampage rather than causing her to stand down as Tyrion had requested. Although Daenerys did have reasons to be incensed by Cersei and even her own advisors, this is not really the explanation given by the director or by Emilia Clarke herself when they were interviewed about the episode.

The episode’s director, Miguel Sapochnik, explained what was going through Dany’s head before she went off the deep end. “She feels empty. It wasn’t what she thought it was. It’s not enough,” he said.

Emilia Clarke herself added:

Dany felt super alone in the moment. “Every single thing that’s led her to this point, and there she is, alone.”

So although Dany’s history and identity as a Targaryen certainly played into her decision to cross the line into evil, the inference from these two key people is that her terrible actions were somehow initiated by a deep inner sense of meaninglessness and despair. The show does seem to be playing up this explanation plot wise. Dany recently lost two of her key advisors and intimates, Jorah Mormont and Missendei of Naarth. Although these losses alone would probably not have caused her to burn down King’s Landing, the two did tend to temper her frustrations and also offered companionship and affection. But probably the greatest contributor to Dany’s sense of loneliness and emptiness would be the deterioration of her relationship with Jon Snow. As far as what we have seen on the show, Dany has never before suffered rejection from a love interest. Drogo adored her, and Daario Naharis was admiring and subservient. The show appears to be setting up Jon Snow as a love who is at least on par with Drogo for Dany, if not greater.

In spite of Dany’s sometimes imperious demeanor with Jon, in episode four she is portrayed as being quite vulnerable to him. She begs Jon not to reveal his parentage to anyone so that their relationship and her claim can remain as it is. Dany is shown seeking Jon out on at least two occasions at Winterfell, when his response is to avoid interacting with her because of his feelings about their newly revealed blood ties. He also rejected her sexually at least two times, with the most recent occasion resulting in her telling him, in effect, that she inspires fear in Jon rather than love. This, coupled with a chilly reception from Sansa and other Northerners has deeply affected Dany psychologically. In particular, the love and confidence that Jon inspires in those around him has lead Dany to become paranoid about his claim. Of course, her paranoia is somewhat justified, as we have already seen several people around Jon expressing greater confidence in him, even to the point of active betrayal, such as with Varys.

It’s true that the show has not really done a great job developing Dany’s descent into emptiness and despair because of the abbreviated number of episodes, but this does seem to be where they are going with regard to providing an explanation for her actions. Of course, the massacre has also been foreshadowed by Dany’s actions in Essos, including her mass burning of the Khals and other instances of violence; but the key development lately seems to be her sensing of a lack of love and admiration from Jon Snow and Northerners. Because of her Messianic tendencies and sense of destiny, this has been a terrible blow to her ego.

But it is no excuse to kill thousands of innocent people, including the women and children that up until now she has always professed to protect. The only character on the show who was willing to try and stop Dany’s quest for the throne was Varys. He observed Dany’s developing sense of isolation and despair at Winterfell and this was enough to spur him to action upon learning of Jon Snow’s true heritage. So although Dany’s arc (and Varys’s) has not been sufficiently developed, an explanation does seem to be in place. This explanation for her mental instability, if true, certainly should have been enough to disqualify her from taking the Iron Throne. The failures and misjudgment of those around her, especially those of Jon Snow and Tyrion, will undoubtedly play heavily in the final episode.

#daenerys targaryen #jon snow #lord varys #got season 8 #dark dany

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test5288 · 4 years ago

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Are you Alive?

A Literary Analysis of Jeffery Deaver’s “Afraid”

Some authors struggle to provide readers the most thrilling roller coaster ride of a suspense narrative; nevertheless, thriller writer Jeffery Deaver can build psychologically complex characters, both heroes and antagonists. “Afraid” -- his original short story mainly revolves around Marissa and Antonio. Marissa is a beautiful woman with features of the north. She had been a runway model and afterward took up fashion design which she loves. However, she is forced to take over their family business -- managing the arts and antiques operation. Antonio, on the other hand, is a man full of mystery. They first met at a gallery on the Via Maggio, where Marissa’s company occasionally consigned arts and antiques, and there they found common ground with each other. Antonio took Marissa to his house in Florence. However, the journey from Florence’s Piazza della Stazione to Antonio’s house, an ancient, two-story stone mill with small windows barred with metal rods, made Marissa uneasy. Along the way, she encountered strange events. She obtained information from a strange old woman who gave her clues on what had happened to Antonio’s “wife” -- Lucia. The story went on with Marissa and Antonio arriving at the place and with Antonio retelling a boy who drowned. Marissa later realized that Antonio was a murderer who had killed his wife and the boy based on what she saw in the basement. When she was about to fall into despair, she saw the letter Antonio left her and found out that all of this was an elaborate horror script designed by Antonio. There have been many turning points in this story. The author titled the short story "Afraid" to allow readers to think about its connection to the content. How does this title relate to the following story? Does this title relate to the main character? Then we bring these questions to Jeffery Deaver’s story.

Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author who writes American contemporary crime/mystery fiction. He has written prolifically and published more than forty novels, a non-fiction law book and three collections of short stories. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. He is also a lyricist of a country-western album, and he’s received dozens of awards. Born on May 6, 1950, Jeffery Deaver grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. He studied journalism from the University of Missouri and later earned a degree in law from Fordham University. He began his professional career as a journalist then he practiced as an attorney. These career opportunities provided him with ample knowledge to embark on his writing career. His debut stand-alone novel Mistress of Justice was published in 1992. It is a mystery and legal thriller and Deaver’s law background came in handy to highlight legal issues. Subsequent to writing stand-alone thrillers, Deaver began to publish trilogy series in 1988. He wrote the Rune Trilogy (1988) and John Pellam series (1992). His successful series, Lincoln Rhyme, was published in 1997. The books in the series immediately climbed The New York Times Bestselling novels’ list. Afraid is a part of the short story compilation “More Twisted” which was published in 2006.

“My first and foremost goal is to keep readers turning the pages. Mickey Spillane said that people don't read books to get to the middle; they read to get to the end. And I've tried to embrace that philosophy in my writing,” said Jeffrey Deaver in an interview. Jeffrey Deaver has famously thrilled and chilled fans with tales of masterful villains and the brilliant minds who bring them to justice. His style in writing allows us to feel the thrill of reading suspense short stories like Afraid. He is able to creatively write the plot and characters, and we shall be analyzing them in the next few paragraphs.

One of the main characters in the story is Antonio. Based on the author's description, Antonio is a handsome man. He is an even figure, with thick, dark hair, brown eyes, and a ready smile. He is a native Florentine and works in the computer field. However, readers will feel a sense of mystery in this man, and his identity is not as simple as he said.

Antonio and Marissa met in a gallery, and the two had a good impression of each other. Marissa shared a lot about her unhappy past experiences in life. Seeing the hopelessness in the woman's eyes, Antonio made up his mind to create a terrifying "plot" for Marissa. On their way to Antonio's house for their weekend together, Antonio stopped the car at the curb of a run-down neighborhood, and that was where his plan started to take place. An old woman who introduced herself as Olga told Marissa that she resembled Lucia who died last year and she also seemed to recognize Antonio's car. After arriving at the destination, in Antonio's old mill, Antonio retold the story of a boy who drowned. This later made Marissa suspicious because Antonio said no one knows exactly what happened. Next, she saw his wedding photos with Lucia in the basement, and then Antonio portrayed himself as a murderous murderer. All of these happenings made Marissa terrified. How Jeffery Deaver characterizes Antonio will make readers feel the suspense of the story. The mood changes, and just like Marissa, readers may also feel unsafe and unsure of the situation. Readers might feel afraid that Antonio will do something crazy or hurt Marissa. As every word coming out from both mouths intensified and pushed through the climax, it builds fear toward readers.

The story continued with Marissa feeling helpless. Fear surrounded her like a long-lasting mist. She can only run away madly. As Marissa was about to escape from this place, the secret was gradually solved. Antonio confessed his identity; he is an artist whose medium is fear. He creates stories that will make people feel afraid. At the end of the story, he allowed Marissa to choose from the three phone numbers. One was the number to take her to the train station, the other was the local police station’s number, and the last was Antonio's number. He left after leaving the choice to Marissa. Antonio leaving Marissa and giving her some space and time to choose from the three phone numbers which might also get him in trouble allows readers to see the good side of this man. By leaving the place, Antonio was able to assure Marissa that he's nowhere near her and that she's safe. This act will make readers realize that Antonio cares about Marissa's well-being. When he wrote in the note that don't she think that being so afraid has made her feel exquisitely alive and that he singled her out to help her, it might make readers wonder if Antonio also has feelings for Marissa. Even if Marissa has a high chance of hating him, Antonio still chose to carry out the plan until the end. His bravery and other distinct characteristics makes Antonio's character so great yet so complex. These characteristics might also lead readers to think that Antonio and author Jeffery Deaver have some things in common.

Marissa Carrefiglio is another one of the two main characters in the story. She is a beautiful blonde woman who manages her family's business's arts and antiques operation. It was also mentioned that she fancies fashion a lot, being a runway model as her job when she was younger. Reading further, we could see how much she disliked her current job. However, without a choice to refuse her stern father's words, she is stuck with that job, being obedient at this point. This scene will make readers think about how society was back when women were meant to obey a man's order and remain silent. It will also make readers ponder if there are still cases like those of Marissa's until now.

"Nice work but there's an obvious problem with it," whispered a handsome man as Marissa responded with a frown, "Problem?" "Yes. The most beautiful angel has escaped from the scene and landed on the floor beside me," replied the man as he turned to her and smiled. This scene was where Marissa and Antonio first met. It seemed like she felt slightly bothered when the man first mentioned a problem with the tapestry. However, as their conversation continued, her slight bitterness slowly faded away, replacing it with a little bit of sweetness instead. The man somehow flirted in this scene, and here, we could see how she may act if someone were to have a problem with something, yet how fast her mood can change if the person were to figure out how. As Antonio listened about how melancholic Marissa’s life was, he starts to plot a “horrific act” to excite the young woman and help her escape from her own unhappy experiences. Marissa’s situation could be relatable to the experiences of others who have lived through a life filled with miserable experiences. And perhaps the readers might be able to imagine Marissa’s experiences happening to themselves, feeling the unhappiness in their kopfkinos or rather a scenario that would be playing in their minds.

In the following scene, when Antonio stopped the car at the curb of a run-down neighborhood, left and took the car keys with him, it made Marissa feel trapped. The woman then spotted two twin boys staring by the sidewalk, which made her feel uncomfortable. As soon as Marissa shifted her gaze away from the twin boys, she was shocked to see an old woman staring at her. The old woman’s name is Olga. Olga asked Marissa if she has a sister named Lucia because she resembles her, Marissa politely denied. As the old woman was about to leave, Marissa asked her about who this Lucia is, showing a bit of her curious side at this point. In this scenario, readers may become curious like Marissa. The mystery of Lucia’s identity will make them intrigued and keep on reading to have their questions answered. When Marissa questioned the old woman about how she knew Lucia, Olga didn’t answer, instead she left quickly after apologizing. Antonio returned with a small, grey paper bag after Olga left momentarily. At this point, the continuation of this scene will make readers even more curious about who Lucia truly is. How Jeffery Deaver wrote the start of the suspense in this story could make the readers start thinking about what will happen next. As Antonio and Marissa continued their long drive, her curiosity rose up more. And when Antonio told her about the death of a young boy at a fast-moving stream near their destination, the suspense started to build up.

Skipping to the part where she and Antonio have arrived at their destination, she suspects nothing at first. Later, Antonio asked Marissa to light up the candles that were beside the bed. She went to grab some matches in the kitchen and noticed that the wine cellar door was left unclosed. Marissa found it a bit odd to see that the inside were organized and spotless, unlike what he had told her earlier: “messy”. She went inside and paused when she saw a half-deflated soccer ball under the nearby table. Marissa remembered what Antonio had told her about the boy’s death, questioning how he knew it took half an hour for the lad to drown. She felt fear at this point, falling for the act Antonio had set up for her. This scene may give readers chills down the spine, given that Antonio had set up a horror act on Marissa. Like he said, it felt great to feel alive once again. Here, the readers might feel the fear Marissa was feeling, having goosebumps on their skins and the thoughts of what will be happening in the following scenes.

The hair-raising plot twist Jeffery Deaver wrote has indeed delivered the suspense and horror he wanted the readers to feel. From the details of the scene to the words of the main characters, the horror he wanted to execute was a success. Without the brilliant illustration of Jeffrey Deaver’s characters, readers would miss much of the thrill of the story. Many people are feeling unhappy and hopeless; they do not feel “alive”. But Antonio, who is into horror and suspense stories, was able to help and give hope to Marissa’s unhappy life. We have our own skill and talent and this story encourages us to try and help others in our own little ways. Most of the time when we hear the word “afraid”, the first thing that comes to our mind is a negative thing. But this story shows readers the good side of it. Through this short story, Jeffery Deaver makes us ponder how being so afraid can make us feel alive, and how being so afraid can make us be more vigilant and aware of our surroundings.

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