#but even OUT of characters the cast just would NOT engage or acknowledge the validity of that direction

[pagesofkenna]

i wanted to make a post about a thing but the more i think about it the more i want to say and it's just going to end up being a big ramble essay, so instead i'll just give the thesis statement, thusly:

as the #1 Ratgrinders Apologist (self-appointed), of course they're the final boss fight to the death. i expected nothing less and the people trying to make discourse about it are ignoring the entire context of this being a Dungeons and Dragons game

[kittenjammer]

Hi! So I was going through your snape tag (btw sorry for the million notifications you probably got), and I noticed you weren’t very much a fan way back on the early days of your blog. Feel free to completely ignore this if you don’t feel like answering (it is truly none of my business), but I’m always fond of hearing people’s “how I came to like this character” or “why I changed my mind about this character” stories and I was wondering what yours was :)

Hiii! Thanks for the ask! (No worries on the notification spam lol) and I appreciate that you reached out!

Yes! I think he was one of the characters I had the most difficulty empathizing with because I had such a strong, emotional reaction to him. Especially after OotP forward. He's divisive! (Also looking back through my Snape tag has me internally cringing a bit with how little grace I extended to the poor guy...ah well. With age/maturity comes wisdom...? D: )

I'm ngl, after reviewing some of the earlier posts, my immediate reaction is to delete them as my opinions have definitely changed, but maybe it's good to leave it as a record of my evolving mindset towards the character? lol

Ok, so what changed?

Well, it certainly helps I'm now closer to adult Snape's age from Book 1 than Harry's age when I was first reading the HP series as it was being published. I didn't give much thought to Snape beyond he was a mean teacher and a bully, for the first four books at least.

I got into the HP fandom around when GoF had been released so I was discovering plenty of fanfic and fan meta. Snape was one of the more ... well ... fans reactions to him that liked him or even wrote him sexually with the cast confused middle-school me, to be honest. I was more interested in the child characters than the adults, so I was vaguely aware of how he was portrayed in fandom but didn't really engage.

This changed after OotP was released, and we finally got some explicit Severus Snape backstory and history with the Occlumency lessons. I had a really an emotional reaction to SWM and some of the memories we got a glimpse of. I was empathetic and not completely surprised to learn Snape was from an abusive home, that he had possible trauma and issues that explained his actions and why he was so cold and angry. Like Harry, I was really disappointed in how his father and Sirius treated Snape. There's just no excuse for how they sought him out to pick on him for fun. I was on Harry's side with confronting Sirius and Lupin about how his dad and they acted.

Also, I read everything with shipper eyes, and immediately felt there was more to Severus and Lily's relationship beyond her just coming over and reacting to James actions lol. They called Jily a crack!ship but it looks like they were validated in the end lol.

However what really made me emotionally react with anger was that we are basically being shown that Severus knows what it's like to be a scared child being abused and tormented by authority figures and other children, but he does it to his students?? I could not understand his actions at a time but I would get genuinely angry when I did think about it. To child me, this felt like a betrayal, both for a fictional character and when actual people did this. Looking back I was reacting so strongly due to my own personal experience with trauma in the home and with authority figures abusing children.

I recall not caring much about him in HBP or DH. I was much more upset with Sirius' death than Dumbledore's, so Snape's "betrayal" was just not something I recall reacting emotionally to. In DH, I definitely remember reading his memories and just feeling irritated with him. To me, he was a guy with trauma and emotional issues, sure, but I felt his behavior towards Harry, Hermione, and Neville was not excused for me. At most I felt begrudging respect for him and acknowledged he was not a completely terrible person. Harry naming one of his son's after him felt so bizarre, and I just could not understand why Harry wanted to honor him. Forgive him, sure I could understand Harry doing that, but naming his child after Snape just left me feeling confused. I could not understand how Snape could have loved Lily so much, but treated her son like he did.

I know I'm basically rambling, but it really has been a journey. :P

When I grew out of HP and the fandom after DH was published, I never gave much thought to him or his circumstances until I (unexpectedly) returned to the HP fandom last summer. I reread all of the books as an adult and I had the life experience and maturity to understand that:

A) Snape was funny! A lot funnier than I remember.

B) His actions throughout the book were too subtle for teenage me, but they made me really question my previous feelings for the character.

C) Everyone Dumbledore was kind of terrible to him!

I read a lot of really well written meta on the characters and HP. Specifically I think it was @pet-genius posts on reddit I found that really helped me put my thoughts and feelings regarding HP, primarily Harry, in order. And I can't help but compare and contrast Harry and Severus as characters and how they each approach their trauma and grief.

@ashesandhackles metas on Snape was also really helpful in highlighting the examples in the text that showed how Snape's actions sometimes directly contradict with what he said, especially to Harry. He's always presenting himself as this cold and controlled person, disparaging emotional reactions and connections. Yet he's one of the most emotionally reactive characters in the series next to Harry!

I was able to see clearer a lot of things I liked about him. That he's an incredibly skilled and hardworking person. That he cares very deeply for people he does allow himself to have feelings for and connections to. That he was scared, so scared, probably all the time after Voldemort's return to power, but he never wavered in his determination to continue to show up and fulfill his duty. Him making the Vow with Narcissa to try to protect Draco. The incredible pain he must have been in when he used the Killing Curse on Dumbledore, the one person left that knew everything about him and still valued him. That he dies keeping silent about the Elder Wand ownership, protecting Draco from becoming Voldemort's next target.

I also viewed his relationship with Lily as so much more complex than unrequited love. There's a meta out there (I will edit this post and link it if I find it again) that argues Snape wasn't really in love with Lily, and that "Always" quote is so much deeper than a romantic, or sexual, type of feelings for her. I think it argues that Snape elevated Lily to a symbol of Good, or at least used her memory to guide him on morality. I felt so much more respect for the guy that he had dedicated his life as penance, basically, for betraying his once-best friend once more.

This is getting long, I hope this wasn't too much. I have changed my feelings on how Severus treated Harry and the other kids close to him in that year's class. Looking at how he acts to others and comparing to how he acts with Harry, I now now I feel Harry was a very specific trigger for Severus and he showed Harry and Harry's potions class a side of him that he generally did not show to anyone else. This is just my personal interpretation based on how other adults, from Dumbledore to even Lupin, and kids speak of Snape as a professor and seem to think Harry is just exaggerating that Snape hates him. When, no, Snape really is projecting his hate and rage and grief about James and Lily onto Harry and he does actually hate the kid. Which, it's probably easier for Severus to think he hates Harry rather than hates himself.

I could keep going but I will stop here for now. I hope that answers the question? But feel free to chat more :) I hope you don't mind I responded with a blog post, I can take it down if you would rather it be answered privately lol.

I suppose the tl;dr version is that Snape makes me angry because he makes me feel things about myself that I don't like, but with age and reading other people's thoughts on the character has definitely made me come around to they guy!

[itsclydebitches]

TBH I think the whole "You didn't have an issue with this in 'insert x show here' but you have an issue with it in RWBY? What are you, sexist?" thing can easily be defused with a simple, "How did RWBY present this plot-point compared to the show I like?"

Sure, technically Cinder Fall and Darth Maul are the 'same' character, but how are the two presented in their respective shows? Cinder eats up screentime and none of it goes anywhere and gets frustrating. Maul is a relatively minor villain that had one season's worth of attention in CW and then was the villain of a few episodes throughout Rebels before getting killed off.

The only reason someone would be confused as to why people like Maul but hate Cinder is if they just read the two's respective wiki pages.

Really the whole "Your issues with RWBY are just subconscious misogyny" is just some people wanting to slap labels onto others so they can feel validated on not agreeing with their opinions.

Generally speaking, I'm wary of any take that boils down to a single sentence, "You're just [insert accusation here]." Not because such accusations are always 100% without merit—with a canon dealing with as many sensitive subjects as RWBY, combined with a fandom as large and diverse as it has become, you're bound to come across some people whose "criticism" stems primarily from bigotry—but because such dismissive summaries never tackle the problem a fan has pointed out. If one fan goes, "Ruby's plan was foolish because [reasons]" and the response to that is "You just can't handle a woman leader," then that response has failed to disprove the argument presented. The thing about "criticism" based in bigotry is that there isn't actually a sound argument attached because, you know, the only "argument" here is "I don't like people who aren't me getting screen time." So you can spot that really easily. The person who is actually misogynistic is going to be spouting a lot of rants about how awful things are... but very little evidence as to why it's awful, leaving only the fact that our characters are women as the (stupid) answer.

And yes, there is something to be said for whether, culturally, we're harder on women characters than we are men. Are we subconsciously more critical of what women do in media simply because we have such high expectations for that representation and, conversely, have become so used to such a variety of rep for men—including endlessly subpar/outright bad stories—that we're more inclined to shrug those mistakes off? That's absolutely worth discussing, yet at the same time, acknowledging that doesn't mean those criticisms no longer exist. That's where I've been with the Blake/Yang writing for a while now. I think fans are right to point out that we may be holding them to a higher standard than we demand of straight couples, but that doesn't mean the criticisms other fans have of how the ship has been written so far are without merit. Those writing mistakes still exist even if we do agree that they would have been overlooked in a straight couple—the point is they shouldn't exist in either. Both are still bad writing, no matter whether we're more receptive to one over the other. Basically, you can be critical of a queer ship without being homophobic. Indeed, in an age where we're getting more queer rep than ever before, it's usually the queer fans who are the most critical. Because we're the ones emotionally invested in it. The true homophobes of the fandom either dropped RWBY when the coding picked up, or spend their time ranting senselessly about how the ship is horrible simply because it exists, not because of how it's been depicted. Same for these supposed misogynists. As a woman, I want to see Ruby and the others written as complex human beings, which includes having them face up to the mistakes they've made. The frustration doesn't stem from me hating women protagonists, but rather the fact that they're written with so little depth lately and continually fall prey to frustrating writing decisions.

And then yeah, you take all those feelings, frustrations, expectations, and ask yourself, "Have I seen other shows that manage this better?" Considering that RWBY is a heavily anime-inspired show where all the characters are based off of known fairy tales and figures... the answer is usually a resounding, "Yes." As you say, I keep coming across accusations along the lines of, "People were fine with [insert choice here] when [other show] did it," as if that's some sort of "Gotcha!" moment proving a fan was bigoted all along, when in fact the answer is right there: Yes, we were okay with it then because that show did it better. That show had the setup, development, internal consistency, and follow through that RWBY failed to produce, which is precisely what we were criticizing in the first place.

What I also think is worth emphasizing here is how many problems RWBY has developed over the last couple of years (combining with the problems it had at the start). Because, frankly, audiences are more forgiving of certain pitfalls when the rest of the show is succeeding. I think giving a Star Wars example exemplifies that rather well. No one is going to claim that Star Wars is without its problems (omg does it have problems lol), but there's enough good there in most individual stories to (usually) keep the fans engaged. That doesn't mean that they're not going to point out those criticisms when given the chance, just that disappointment isn't the primary feeling we come away with. Obviously in a franchise this size there are always exceptions (like the latest trilogy...), but for most it's a matter my recent response to The Bad Batch, "I have one major criticism surrounding a character's arc and its impact on the rest of the cast, and we definitely need to unpack the whitewashing... but on the whole yes, it was a very enjoyable, well written show that I would recommend to others." However, for many fans now, we can't say the same of RWBY. Yang getting KO'ed by Neo in a single hit leads into only Blake reacting to her "death" which reminds viewers of the lack of sisterly development between Yang and Ruby which segues into a subpar fight which messes with Cinder's already messy characterization which leads to Ruby randomly not using her silver eye to save herself which leaves Jaune to mercy kill Penny who already died once which gives Winter the powers when she could have just gotten it from the start which results in a favorite character dying after his badly written downfall and all of it ends with Jaune following our four woman team onto the magical island... and that's just two episodes. The mistakes snowball. RWBY's writing is broken in numerous ways and that's what fans keep pointing to. Any one of these examples isn't an unforgivable sin on its own, but the combination of all of them, continuously, representing years worth of ongoing issues results in that primary feeling of, "That was disappointing."

Looking at some of the more recent posts around here, fans aren't upset that Ruby is no longer interested in weaponry because that character trait is Oh So Important and its lack ruins the whole show, they're upset because Ruby, across the series, lacks character, so the removal of one trait is more of a problem than it would be in a better written character. What are her motivations? Why doesn't she seek answers to these important questions? Why is her special ability so inconsistent? Where's her development recently? What makes Ruby Ruby outside of wielding a scythe and wanting to help everyone, a very generic character trait for a young, innocent protagonist? We used to be able to say that part of her character was that obsession and we used to hope that this would lead to more interesting developments: Will Ruby fix/update their weapons? Is her scythe dependency the reason why others need to point out how her semblance can develop? What happens if she is weaponless? Surely that will lead to more than just a headbutt... but now we've lost hope that this trait will go anywhere, considering it has all but disappeared. Complaints like these are short-hand criticism for "Ruby's character as a whole needs an overhaul," which in turn is a larger criticism of the entire cast's iffy characterization (Who is Oscar outside Ozpin? Why was Weiss' arc with her father turned into a joke and concluded without her? etc.) and that investment speaks to wanting her to be better. We want Ruby to be a better character than she currently is, like all those other shows we've seen where the women shine. Reducing that to misogyny isn't just inaccurate, but the exact opposite of what most fans are going for in their criticisms.

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

[1/?] Sorry for venting. I just saw some bad takes that gave me a lot of feelings. Personally, JC stresses me out every time he comes on screen, but I don't mind it when JC fans say fan-typical things like how they like JC because he wears purple, or is grumpy, or they think he's hot, or that they ship x*ch*ng because the cql actors have nice jawlines. They're harmless, fun takes, and while I don't agree with some of them, I see where they're coming from

Hello there anon, vent away as that is what my blog is open for as I love/hate on Jiang Cheng as he is in the plot, as well as all of my beef with what has been done to him for the EN side of the fanbase! I am more than fine listening and engaging with the unsavory "unpopular" discussions of his canon behavior and this goes for anyone of course that needs an open play area. I'll try to engage with what you have sent point by point as succinctly as I can.

[2/?] (some of these are obviously crack, and I am a fan of a few problematic faves). But then there are stans that just have to put other characters down to make JC look good. Like, I think some fans take their freedom of interpretation for granted because most of these takes aren't even labeled 'headcanon,' 'ooc,' or 'crack' anymore. Stans feel that their interpretations are valid, and while they are, valid =/= canon, and they're treating these takes as canon, which becomes popular fanon.

I enjoy Jiang Cheng for what he is, however as I had said it took me another reread to get to my stance of him being the negative mirror to Lan Wangji's positive and my comfort with that for the story once I realized what purpose he served. He is only insofar tragic in regards to his circumstances, but it does not absolve him for what he is at his core (no pun, but I can make a very nice metaphor that even with a piece of Wei Wuxian in him he is still forever unable and unwilling to stand by him equally all while stagnating where as Lan Wangji is able to flourish, grow and mature with nothing of import left from Wei Wuxian in a technical sense). As for ships, I am a little dirty Xicheng whore for fun and can say there is a sense of entertainment for me making it work with two people where one is wildly ignorant and the other wildly rabid. But that is outside of what is established as canon in the work and I always try to keep the two strictly separate due to the skew fanon perpetuates.

3/?] And now, it's not clear what part of the fanon references canon JC or the canon events of mdzs. JC is an asshole; I don't like him as a person, but I do think that he's a complex character motivated by many issues (sup, YeeZY), which makes him fascinating to explore. Unfortunately, erasing his culpability also removes his agency. JC should be allowed to be an asshole character who makes his own decisions even if they're the wrong ones. He has made his own tragedy by constantly casting Wei Wuxian as the villain of his life.

Now thanks to you I will be using YeeZY to forever and now to acknowledge Madam Yu (this is your fault for the new tag). From a standing from storytelling I agree that he is complex in the Jianghu for MDZS. Where in the usual political intrigue of Wuxia, he would be the mustache twirling villain that is outright unforgivable in narration, it is by favor of Wei Wuxian's narration that has an early steeping of empathy for him. And he is not meant to be seen as ultimately sympathetic, the work builds up his hate against Wei Wuxian who tries to rationalize it all several times until he is finally unable to. Jiang Cheng is the antithesis to Lan Wangji and the false bait to get attached to in Wei Wuxian's first life. I will make the note their meeting in Yiling is lukewarm between both as they exchange nothing really in terms of conversation and all pleasantries are left in terms of Jiang Yanli for Wei Wuxian. By this point Wei Wuxian has already switched his yearnings of platonically wanting a part of Jiang Cheng's life, to subconscious romantic inclinations about Lan Wangji and the perceived loss of being in the other's life.

The very point of Jiang Cheng as the deconstruction, is that he has no passion in life despite his apparent exploits because he put a shadow to hang over himself as an excuse to say others think he is not good enough. He has no deeper motivations than pure selfishness by the end of the work and is pure frivolity that he has built up losing the meaning of his sect as a tradition. He had his agency (more than anyone I might add in the work due to his social position) that he used to build his reputation as a passive rich sect leader that has little to do with civilian problems.

4/?] And I think a JC, somehow, that realizes that he did something wrong and is working hard to change for the better and gain self-actualization to become that UWU best jiujiu the stans want him to be, who is ready to talk (not yell at) with WWX, apologize to him, and create a better, healthier relationship with him is a much more powerful reconciliation and happy ending than 'everyone is wrong and mean and they all apologize to JC, which magically gets rid of all his issues'.

He is forced out of culpability in reconciliation because simply put, his audience do not like the reality that relationships fray and dissolve with no further resolution other than we as adults both need to move on for safety and good health. It is not acceptable in real life and fiction is allowed to place that also in it's thematic relationships. He has a small, small spark of recognition at the end of the main story, however he himself seems to choose to ignore it, as change is hard and he has never taken to that well as was foreshadowed with his dogs and the idea of sharing a space with Wei Wuxian. To write this is an awful lot of work into his psyche which is not a nice place, he is a terrible being and downplaying that to make a sugar sweet person does not work instantaneously. He is the one responsible for the entire fallout with Wei Wuxian and he hysterically realizes that even as he tries to continue to blame Wei Wuxian.

The issue that I have with his current stan culture, is that they already view him as something he is not. They play at bicycle with all of the other protagonists that have positive traits that they strip as they see fit; Good affirming loving to children adult Lan Wangji, Self-sacrificing ultimately did it all for love and care Wei Wuxian, Hard exterior but softened to who they consider an annoyance Wen Qing, Loyal as partners in their exploits on the field and always have each others back Wen Ning. They even take Jin Guangyao's persona of playing damsel and using that as a positive to soften up Jiang Cheng into something he has never been for anyone for ships.

[5/5] Also, making WWX/WN/LWJ apologize just makes them look better than JC. Like, stans supposedly love JC, so they ahouldn't be lazy and work hard to give him actual character development. Again, I'm sorry for spamming your ask. It just really baffles me about where they get these 'hot' takes (All I'm going to say is that JC was ungrateful, and WN had a reason verbally dismantle him).

They see this, but, they will spin it in any way to excuse Jiang Cheng due to the story itself showing that he was in the wrong to everyone he flung accusations at and his hate. No one but him is at fault for his spite as he had gotten his revenge on the ones that had ruined Lotus Pier and killed his parents. His own resentment pitted him against good and well meaning people that he refused to help as he mimicked his mother's words about raising their heads higher out of goodness instead of keeping low and staying self-centered. There is the underlying criticism of taking individual arrogance as self-care at the cost of others. Each point that Wen Ning makes is exactly what Jiang Cheng himself knows as he hated Wei Wuxian for being something he could not be or even wanted to be. Jiang Cheng wants kindness but does not understand that kindness to others needs to be selfless and accept the hurt that can come with that in life. He encompasses the fall from the path of buddhist lifestyle, "The Three Poisons" to Wangxian's "Without Envy" at the stories end.

[6/5] P.S. I'm not saying I want reconciliation fics, but I just feel that if stans want JC to have a happy ending, then I think that he should actively work for it. I think it would be interesting to see what force of nature would push him through a character development because throwing a therapist at him would result in a murder.

"I'm not saying I want reconciliation fics, but I just feel that if stans want JC to have a happy ending, then I think that he should actively work for it."

They do not think he has to work for it, they say his tragedy is enough, while heaping accusations against Wei Wuxian and saying his own are not enough to absolve him. Something Wei Wuxian has never denied and told all present they are allowed to forever hate him for what he had done in the past, but that they need to find a way to live in a life that is always moving on. He learned that grudges do nothing once they are absolved and it leaves you with hate with nothing else to do with it once that object is gone. In terms of reconciliation, I do not ever think that either want anything other than a distant peaceful out of each other's life set up. Jiang Cheng does not need Wei Wuxian in his life to be satisfied and never has since he used him as the handicap to hide behind to stay angry and miserable. Being without that fallback opens the world far more for him to change than him ever interacting like an old friend with Wei Wuxian ever again, if he ever had the guts to do that.

[cybernaght]

The Rebel/叛逆者: A Review of Sorts

After being only semi-invested in the Rebel, I ended up getting so into it in the final weeks of its release, I’ve shelled out on IQIYI premium just to get the final couple of episodes a few days earlier.

That’s right kids, it’s a Review of Sorts. Unfortunately, I could not find a translation of the novella the drama is based on, so will be looking at it as a separate entity. 

Most of this post is spoiler-free, however I have dedicated a few paragraphs at the end of it to discussing the final episode, as there are a few specific things about it I wanted to mention. There is a clear spoiler warning before that part.

If you don’t want to risk it, TL;DR version of this review goes something like this: Rebel is very decent, and positively one of the best things that I have seen to come out of China since I’ve jumped into that particular rabbit hole. It’s pretty well written, it’s very beautifully dressed and shot, and the cast is killing it. I thought it dropped the ball a little in post production, and I did not always love the pacing. Other than that, it’s incredibly decent, and well worth watching, unless communist propaganda really irks you, in which case stay very well away. 

I have been having many conversations with @supernovasimplicity​ all the way through watching this drama, so there are likely to be some thoughts here that are influenced by those. 

The story centers around Lin Nansheng, a struggling servicemen in the Guomingdang party. He has a great analytical mind, and absolutely no emotional capacity for his job. He has trouble handling violence, he is impulsive, he cannot speak to his superiors without bursting into tears, and has nothing even remotely resembling a poker face. And that is what makes this drama as enjoyable as it is. 

I don’t think Lin Nansheng’s journey would have been nearly as exciting had he started it from a place of competence. He botches up everything he touches because his big brain switches off the moment his emotions kick in. And so, when you see him grow in confidence, learn to control himself, learn to fake his smiles and compliments, you can’t help but feel a strange sense of pride. It also makes Lin Nansheng very likeable as a character for reasons other than Zhu Yilong’s ability to look like a bush baby.

It did take me a while to feel fully engaged with his performance - not because there is anything lacking in it, but just because it’s hard to be truly surprised by his choices after the exposure I have given myself to his work. That said, at about a half-way point I got charmed by him anyway, and there were quite a few scenes that were truly mesmerising. There were scenes where he broke out of the familiar mould of big unguarded eyes and fluttering wet eyelashes, and tried something that was not pretty: every time to a great success. I am hoping to see more of that in his future work. 

I really wanted to like the female lead, Zhu Yizhen, but unfortunately both the way she was written and the way she was performed by Tong Yao left me somewhat cold. It did not help of course that the screenplay ended up sidelining her at every turn, leaving her with very little personal agency. She was set up so interestingly, but in the end her sole purpose became being someone for Lin Nansheng to pine over. It is particularly curious from a perspective of meta storytelling: seeing how this is all centered around superiority of communism, which as a whole was, arguably, ahead of its time in the matters of binary gender equality.

The ensemble cast of the drama is stunning. Wang Yang came very close to  stealing the show at several points as Chen Moqun, somehow managing to make his rather unlikeable character interesting. I can say the same thing about Zhu Zhu who absolutely shined as Lin Xinjie, showing an incredible range and imagination in her performance.

The overarching story of the show is engaging, with some incredibly suspenseful elements; every narrative arc including a nice progression through it. As spy thrillers go, it was fairly well plotted. You could if you go looking for a few things that did not pay off in a satisfying way (notably, the Chekhov’s cyanide capsule), but you overall the story really was well told for the most of it. 

I did, however, feel like the pacing started to fall apart in the last quarter of the drama. Last episode in particular really did feel rushed, not just due to its pace, but also in a way it failed to pay off the final mission in any visible way. There will be more on that in the spoiler section of this post.

Important to note that The Rebel is a show made in Communist China in the year 2021. It does not ideologically side-step from the path that was laid out for it by that fact. Which is to say, it is, undeniably, filled with propaganda. Communists are the good guys, and if you think a good guy (or gal) is not a communist, they probably secretly are. With one exception of a friendly character who is not a communist, and whose fate we actually never find out. Curious, that. 

The Rebel is not a kind of a show where censorship-appeasing scenes are shoehorned in. It’s a kind of a show in which the main theme is Sacrifice For the Party.

Aside from the being the moral vector of the show, Mao’s gentle teachings explicitly help get Ling Nansheng out of prolonged depression following his injury, and almost annoyingly, this sat incredibly well with the character, as he was written. Lin Nansheng is conceived as this naive idealist who wants to be on the front line, who needs validation and support of others. His - and I can’t believe I’m saying this - his being disillusioned in his beliefs and choosing to join a party which includes people whom he likes and trusts makes sense. Him finding this one thing that gives him hope and letting it propel him into gaining confidence and competence makes sense. 

In many ways, the Rebel is a story of Lin Nansheng’s failure to become an antagonist within the world of the drama.

I have honestly spent this past couple of weeks pondering whether being well written makes political propaganda better or worse, whether the subtlety of it makes it more or less palatable, whether it’s enough, as a viewer, to be aware of it to shrug it off. Ultimately, this is not something I could or should make moral judgements on, but I do believe that it’s possible to acknowledge the fact that propaganda exists in the drama, and still appreciate it for a good piece of television that it is. 

That said, I am very well aware that me being kind of okay with it stems entirely from my own removal from the culture this is made in, and I am, perhaps, lucky to even have a choice as to whether I want to engage with a product which is, undoubtably, here to dress political ideology in fancy clothes.

I have, on the other hand, also seen many things in Russian media of the “Annexation of Crimea is Good Actually” variety and those make me feel very unwell, so feeling somewhat at ease with blatant political propaganda in Chinese media makes me the biggest hypocrite.

But, I digress.

Before we go into some specific plot-related things, I would like to mention that the Rebel has this weird dichotomy in which the production is sublime, and the post-production… not so much. The show very well shot. Every element of it sits perfectly together, not a single prop out of place, not a single extra underdressed, not a page of script not put to good use. It’s lit to perfection. It’s scored beautifully. So much of this show is just stunning.

And then… there is post-production. 

This is not even about bad CGI (and the CGI is, indeed, bad), it’s just that most of post-production as a whole feels rushed.

Starting with surprisingly imperfect editing, which at times just fails to make the scene flow together. The final line of dialogue would be spoken within a scene, and it would fade to black instantly without a single breath to indicate a full stop. A montage sequence would be created, but every shot within it condensed to a second, making it feel incredibly fast-paced when the effect should be the opposite. There would be a cut away from a speaking character and to the same speaking character from a slightly different angle, making it dynamic without any reason to do so. There are a couple of truly startling jump-cuts.

I did not speed this gif up. This is part of a romantic montage, edited like it’s a goddamn action sequence.

And of course dear old friend slowing down footage shot at 24FPS. Please don’t do this. You think no one notices - but we do.

There are other tell-tale signs of production rushing to the finish line: occasional, but very noticeable ADR glitches, very sloppy job done at sound mixing, which contribute to parts of the show feeling ever so slightly off.

It’s not unforgivable, but it does make me wish the same amount of care and efforts that went into shooting this drama would also go into it after it was all in the can. 

Oh, and just because if you know me you know I have a professional fixation on fights, and I am happy to say most action scenes are toe-curlingly delightful. Hot damn those fights are good. I am absolutely in love with the shot below, for example. Placing an actor behind a piece of set so he can exchange places with the stunt double during a one shot is such an old trick, but the execution, timing and camerawork are just... flawless. This is what perfection looks like.

Now we got all that out of the way...

SPOILERS FOR THE SERIES FINALE BELOW

Here’s the thing. I wanted to love the ending and I found that I could not.

The final mission was presented as important, and honestly the scene in which Zhu Yizhen is sending the vital message out as Lin Nansheng holds his ground in hand to hand fight is incredibly dynamic. Party, this is due to the fight itself being incredibly well choreographed, yes, but it’s also where it sits within the narrative, how high the stakes are for everything surrounding it. 

But then, the tension all but bleeds out. The Important Message is sent, the fight is won, and we are treated to ten minutes of a very slow car chase, problem of which is not even its speed as much as its placing within the story. As in, by this point both of those operatives have lost their cover, and completed their Very Important Mission. It would be very sad if they died, but their survival does not technically contribute to their cause. Moreover, Zhu Yizhen getting mortally injured in order to protect Lin Nansheng as part of her mission read a little empty when the mission is technically over. 

While I personally found Lin Nansheng slow recuperation and his low key ending enjoyable, I think I would have preferred to have seen a more tangible pay-off to all the sacrifices made in the name of “bright communist future”, just a little more justification for every moment of death and despair we witnessed. I would have certainly at the very least preferred to see Wang Shi’an’s death on screen. Considering how many likeable characters martyred themselves on screen, denying us the death of the one antagonist just seemed cruel. 

I really did love the ambiguity of the final few scenes however, if we consider the children choir at the end a fantasy. The idea that Lin Nansheng will live out his life in this hope that Zhu Yizhen is still alive, imagining her just outside of his field of vision, his only joy being in this fantasy of her… now, that is incredibly strong. I equally like the idea of rest being promised to him at the end of his journey, and said rest being painful, and slow and unwelcome.

But it felt like as they chose not to to lean into the “sweet” part of the bitter-sweet tone of the ending and we’re unable not commit to the “bitter” part either, so it lands with a splat which is somewhat lacklustre. 

---

This concludes my thoughts on the Rebel. 

I am more or less out of Zhu Yilong’s filmography to watch, which is probably a good thing at this point. I have just emerged out of several back to back work projects - literally today - and will hopefully once more have time for things I grew to enjoy doing during the lockdown. 

Those things, if you have not guessed, include watching Chinese television and writing things about Chinese television. 

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who��ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D

[shinneth]

Could you spill the tea on lapiven? (I feel it doesn’t get enough attention)

hahahahaha has spilling the tea just become my calling in life now

I can tell you right now I can’t really do this ship justice. Because I actually don’t ship Steven and Lapis. 

Of course, I’m cool with anyone who does. And I’ll even admit that of all her options, Steven is probably one of the healthiest candidates for Lapis to foster a deeper relationship with.

I can totally see where the appeal lies in Lapiven. Steven was the one who liberated Lapis from that mirror his own family hoarded away for millennia, and he managed to repair Lapis’ gemstone. 

So Steven is basically single-handedly responsible for giving Lapis her life back.

Kinda scary when one considers how easily Lapis could have never been recovered from the mirror and just remained trapped in that and Pearl’s storage space for lord knows how long.

And of course, Steven went out of his way to help Lapis despite her nearly drowning him and Connie, as well as fucking over the Earth by stealing the ocean early on. Always a compelling element in the shipping.

I would say it’s a bit of a misstep that Lapis interacted only with Steven and Peridot (and in the case of the latter, she only did that because Steven wanted her to); in contrast to Peridot, Lapis felt very disconnected from the rest of the cast and sat out a lot of events where she easily could have played a role.

I mean, to be fair, Lapis had valid reasons to not affiliate herself with the Crystal Gems. They’re kinda responsible for her wrongful imprisonment, after all. 

But compare her to Peridot, who went out of her way to get to know everyone and Earth itself. While Peridot had a very involved development arc that persisted even after her official redemption, Lapis just languished in the background while keeping to herself. Not exactly engaging and certainly not making her more endearing, you know?

Really, the breaking point for me is Raising the Barn. I’m one of those people who believes Lapis was genuinely a piece of shit in that episode, and I’m very annoyed to this day that she never had to answer for that when she came back. 

After all, Lapis’ actions didn’t just hurt Peridot - she hurt Steven, too. 

She basically left Steven, Peridot, and everyone else to die; there’s no two ways about that. 

Yeah, she felt bad about doing it, but even after Steven found Lapis hiding out on the moon and a heartfelt talk, Lapis still wouldn’t budge on her “Screw this, I’m outta here” agenda. 

Yes, Lapis did eventually return in Reunion in a badass fashion and officially declared herself a Crystal Gem at long last, buuuuut....

This reasoning really rubbed me the wrong way. It’s valid and logical, but it’s also easily interpreted as Lapis only deciding to return to Earth and stand by her alleged friends when she realized there was no goddamn way she’d ever be welcomed back anywhere else.

Just sayin’, this worked waaaaaay better when Peridot had an opportunity to return to Homeworld and still be in good graces with Yellow Diamond - only for her to throw that away because she would not sell out the Crystal Gems. 

Basically, Lapis’ return and formal alignment felt like one of convenience, rather than the genuine change of heart we saw Peridot experience. 

Considering this major misstep in Lapis’ character was never addressed/revisited after her return in Reunion, needless to say I was heavily annoyed that Lapis was basically going to get away with being an asshole who broke Steven’s and Peridot’s hearts in the process. She was willing to leave them to die. I just can’t in all good conscience say that Lapis is worthy of Steven’s love after all that. 

Maybe if they properly addressed this later on, I’d be more lenient, but I think we all know there’s a high likelihood Lapis would somehow be completely absolved of all blame in that incident, because god forbid we have assholes who just stay assholes in this show (y’know, outside of strawmen like Kevin, Eyeball, and Aquamarine). 

That being said, Why So Blue? was one of the better episodes of Future. Nowhere near the leagues of In Dreams, but I do appreciate it for being an episode that actually focuses on Lapis (without any involvement from Peridot).

I also like that it’s one of the very few SUF episodes that has Steven actually act like himself, rather than have him dwell on how fucked-up he is. He and Lapis had some genuinely good interaction in this episode - I appreciated Lapis bringing up regrets over the death and destruction she caused as a terraformer (that for once I’m not blaming her for because that was literally her job in a do-or-die society). And I like that they’re self-aware enough to acknowledge that Lapis isn’t exactly the most pleasant gem to be around.

In the end, I won’t deny this: Steven brings out the best in Lapis. That’s reason enough to ship them.

Kinda by default since she really only ever interacted with Peridot beyond him (and THAT relationship is a hot toxic mess, I do NOT care how popular it is), but it is what it is. 

Lapiven is a very niche ship, but in a way that’s a blessing in disguise, as I’m pretty sure that’s spared them the wrath of the moronic antis. Still, I sympathize with your relatively small fanbase.

Even though I don’t ship it myself, I’ll always defend your right to to so yourself, if you so choose. 

I’ll give Lapiven this much: I’d ship it over Connverse every single time.

[96thdayofrage]

Hollywood and Broadway need to realize that you can tell the stories of people of color without whitewashing or blackwashing them. Real life, if not yet reel life, is already kaleidoscopically diverse.

Of course, this assumes these agents of cultural production want to tell these stories. Their answer, however, seems to be that as artists it is not their mission to tell the stories of people of color but to tell universal, human ones. This implies that the stories of people of color are not, or as British author Nikesh Shula has observed, “White people think that people of color only have ethnic experiences and not universal experiences.” Evidently so do some people of color.

The colorism controversy surrounding the lack of Afro Latinx representation in the Hollywood version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is recent but not new. As Ishmael Reed pointed out in his 2019 critique of Miranda’s Hamilton, in addition to glorifying its titular slaveholding hero and the Founding Fathers as a whole, it fails to present the voices of the “Native Americans, slaves, and white indentured servants” they victimized, voices Reed himself would subsequently include in his play “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.”

In response to such criticism, Miranda generously conceded his limitations, while still defending his melanated whitewash of American history: “All the criticisms are valid,” he tweeted, adding, “The sheer tonnage of complexities & failings of these people [the Founding Fathers] I couldn’t get. Or wrestled with but cut. I took 6 years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour musical.” The implication: the oppressive weight of these complex individuals somehow justifies jettisoning acknowledgement of the reality of their failing as slaveholding white supremacists.

In an interview with Reuters, Miranda once again invokes “tonnage” to defend his film: “To be quaint would be a dream come true. No one movie can encompass the sheer tonnage of stories we have to offer.” But “tonnage” vision may not be the only reason for the film’s failure to see Afro Latinx people. (Ironically, the Reuters interview begins with the observation that Miranda is “hoping [his] musical In the Heights changes the conversation in Hollywood about the wider appeal of such movies, just as Crazy Rich Asians did in 2018.”)

Jon M. Chu, the film’s director, provides another, noting that while the casting of Afro Latinx people was “discussed,” “in the end, when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get people who were the best for those roles.”

The sentiment is echoed by Melissa Barrera, one of the film’s white passing Latina: “I think it’s important to note though that in the audition process, which was a long audition process, there were a lot of Afro Latinos there, a lot of darker-skinned people. I think they were looking for just the right people for the roles, for the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent.”

Certainly, Miranda and Chu were aware that the film’s casting did not accurately reflect the racial demographics of Washington Heights, any more than the cast of Hamilton reflects the racial composition of the Founding Fathers. (Read another way, the dark-skinned Afro Latinx Dominican community of the Heights were the wrong people to be represented in a film about their own community.) But Hamilton’s oxymoronic, color-conscious colorblind casting is intentional. A similar intentionality cannot be read into In the Heights, and not just the movie version. (One wonders how the original Broadway musical addressed these issues during its 2008-2011 run: Were dark-skinned Afro Latinx people represented any better? Sadly, it seems colorism plagued these productions as well.

This is unfortunate, since just as Hamilton whitewashed the emotional, financial, and intellectual investment of the founding fathers in slavery and genocide, the film adaptation of In the Heights opts to omit the reality of colorism within communities of color, an issue that was suggested, albeit fleetingly, in the original Broadway production in which the father of Nina, a light-skinned Afro Latina, disapproves of her black, non-Latinx lover Benny. (Not only is this subplot excised from the film, but the romance between the two characters has also been truncated and Benny’s overall role in the film reduced.). In fact, Miranda decided to remove this suggestion of racism from the film, telling the LA Times, The film “isn’t about the parental disapproval of this interracial relationship because we wanted to focus on the specifics of the racial microaggressions Nina faced at Stanford, which Benny very much understands and has her back on. So it didn’t make sense for her to be fighting that war on two fronts.” What Miranda fails to appreciate is that battles against racism and its handmaiden colorism are swaged simultaneously on multiple fronts and that his own film’s conscious attempt to minimize these conflicts may itself be interpreted as a not so micro microaggression.

What makes the current conversation about colorism even more remarkable, is that we’ve had it before. This is not the first time Chu has been criticized for colorism. In 2018, when the Singapore-based Crazy Rich Asians was released, it was criticized there for not accurately portraying that nation’s diversity. The film’s leads are light-skinned East Asians, those in subservient roles are dark-skinned Southeast Asians. As Singapore journalist Kirsten Han, put it, “The focus is specifically on characters and faces of East Asian descent, which plays into issues of racism and colorism that still exist, not only in the U.S. but Asia.”

Responding to his critics, Chu told a press conference, “We decided very early on that this is not the movie to solve all representation issues. This is a very specific world, very specific characters. This is not going to solve everything.” Now, three years later, Chu has directed another film about a specific world and specific characters that excludes specifically dark-skinned people, creating more problems than those it was not intended to solve.

Still, Hollywood has had plenty of opportunities to clean up its act, only to squander them[3] as it deliberately continues to erase people of color from their own lived narratives. The film 21 (2008), based on a true story about a group of MIT students gaming the tables in Vegas, replaces Jeffrey Ma, a Chinese American, with a white character renamed Ben Campbell, while the rest of the real Asian American members of the blackjack team are similarly  whitewashed. In an interview with The Tech, Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House, the book on which the film is based, said that he had been told by a studio executive  involved in the casting that “most of the film’s actors would be white, with perhaps an Asian female.” In Stuck (2007), based on another real life incident, this one involving a black woman who accidently hits and kills a homeless man with her car, not only does the main character undergo a name and race change, but, adding insult to injury, the film’s race-switched white female lead sports cornrows.

Fictional characters of color are also subjected to whitening. In 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), the sequel to2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Bob Balaban is cast as Dr. R. Chandra, the creator of the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000, quite a departure from the Dr. Chandra, a.k.a. Dr. Sivasubramnian Chandrasegaram Pillai, of Arthur C. Clarke’s original novels. In the film Wanted, based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, The Fox, a character  physically modeled on Halle Berry, is played by Angelina Jolie. Reuben St. Clair, the black social studies teacher featured in the novel Pay it Forward (2005), in the film becomes white Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey). Presumably, in the eyes of the filmmakers all these actors were “the best fit for the role,” even  where the race and the names of the characters they portray were changed to accommodate them. If the shoe fits – alter it.

Movies, television and Broadway shows are entertainments not history (though they can be both). To be sure, actors should be given leeway to practice their craft, and escapist histories can provide a means of critically reexamining contemporary constructions of race and being (see for example, Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad). But such imaginative excursions devolve into extravagant indulgence when they substitute for or impede the production of stories that attempt to engage history, particularly history that has been erased by what Reed calls the “Historical Establishment.”

Sure, in the eyes of producers, a film about Anne Boleyn will capture a greater audience share than one about Sojourner Truth. A film about Boleyn starring a black woman could potentially outperform them both, if only because of the controversy it will generate. After all, Boleyn is a known quantity, a brand, a bankable historical commodity. Truth is not, at least to the gatekeepers of popular historical dramaturgy. As history, Gone with the Wind (1939) is irredeemable trash. Yet, for many, both in America and abroad, it offers, like its predecessor The Birth of a Nation (1915), a distorted vision of past American greatness.[3] As for Hamilton, aside from the entertaining irony of turning the melanophobic Founding Fathers into people of color, it tells us nothing meaningful about either but a lot about the marketability of sanitized history, just as In the Heights’s erasure of an entire darkly pigmentated community of color from its own storytells us all too much about our present.

[dragon-ball-meta]

Just discovered your blog today and am enjoying it immensely. I do have some questions about which is more "valid" between the DBS anime and manga though. The manga at least on a surface level has a tighter adherence to the manga's continuity, such as the lack of Gregory, no showing the Trunks' first SS transformation from the anime version of his past, and the SS Caulifla and Kale fusion churning out a SS fusion, which would seem to be what Old Kai meant when warning Goku and Vegeta 1/2

“2/2 But those are ultimately minor I suppose and perhaps they have explanations like "Trunks wasn't transforming for the first time in the Super flashback". I'm not a Toyo stan by any stretch and can't stand how he butchered my boi GOATku among other things but it seems like the manga would be just as valid/canonical as the anime. Toriyama works closely with Toyo as with the anime team and calls the manga a continuation. Sorry if this has been asked before, and keep up the good work“

Well first and foremost, welcome. Glad you’re enjoying this blog. As for the question, I’ve touched on it before, but I’ll dip into it again.  There’s definitely a bit more of a hierarchy than people want to admit, at least in terms of which would be “more canon” when it comes to the mediums of Super. To that end, I like to look at continuity, characterization, and lead platform.  See, the thing about Super, as it stands, is that it was never meant to have an ongoing manga. At all. It was written, conceived, and meant to be an anime series with Toriyama’s involvement. The “manga”, as it were, was originally meant solely to be a preview/promotional series for said anime, something to hint at things to come. That’s why the Beerus arc is so short and rushed.  When it came to the Resurrection F arc, however, that was when Toyotaro pitched the idea of letting him turn the series into an actual, full-fledged series, something Toriyama was ok with more or less because it meant that at least he wouldn’t have to draw it, and because he was interested in seeing how the anime and manga writers respectively would adapt his storyline ideas.  In that sense, the anime was the original, intended medium and means by which the series was meant to be carried forward, hence why I would consider that the lead platform. Beyond that, let’s look at continuity. Truth be told, neither manga nor anime are 100% flawless in it, making references to things that were filler in the name of comedy, or simply forgetting or ignoring a detail or two from the past. But even in cases of references to filler, I’d argue that they don’t INHERENTLY represent continuity errors per se, as they don’t directly contradict events depicted, and on occasion don’t even necessarily indicate that the exact filler events actually happened; in some cases, they’re just in-jokes or references for longtime fans and viewers.   Trunks’ “first time” transformation also doesn’t necessarily pin it as his first time in continuity, so much as simply reuse the animation and have the boy transform in a moment of grief. Don’t recall any direct reference to that being his first transformation at all. Similarly, I wouldn’t say Gregory inherently means Filler Gregory is meant to be who this one is, as Gregory in Super really doesn’t speak or have anything close to the same personality.  Similarly, Android 18 being as mad as she was about the mispronunciation of Marron as Maron can be seen as a nod to Krillin’s filler ex-girlfriend without actually acknowledging her. (As well as clearing up the whole “she’s named after her” thing since even the pronunciation is different in Japanese.) They’re not necessarily baking these things into continuity, just referencing them. One big problem the Super MANGA has, however, in an internal continuity issue. Toyotaro often feels a need to EXPLAIN things that don’t necessarily need to be explained, in an effort to feel like he’s fleshing things out more. The problem is... he often writes himself into a corner that way, as he doesn’t seem to run his ideas by Toriyama or check them against the man’s notes as much as he should, and thus finds himself in trouble later. Case-in-point: His decision that Super Saiyan Blue’s use had a mandatory cooldown period between uses, or else the multiplier the user receives from the form drops exponentially each time. Seemed a good way to potentially limit the form at the time, keep it from being “overused”, except... they very quickly found themselves in situations where it would HAVE to be used, to say nothing of the narrative issue of having Vegeta be in a reduced state of Blue by the time he faced Hit, thus making Hit’s win less shocking, and Hit himself a bit less formidable, to say nothing of downplaying Goku’s skill and reaction to it; he should have had a far easier time naturally, after all. This also causes some issues with Vegeta’s tactic vs Zamasu of popping into SSG for a speed advantage and then quickly in and out of SSB to strike, as that should have lowered the effectiveness each time, and THAT was done to deal with ANOTHER restriction Toyotaro had baked into the form of it draining ki almost as quickly as SSJ3 had back in the Buu arc, and that Godly Aura was actually just wasted ki. All of this then had to be negated via Toyotaro’s own version of SSB Kaioken, which was just... “Perfected” Blue. Which is just Blue without an aura. Which then leads into Goku knowing how to use Hakai despite not actually being a God of Destruction, not having ever even practiced it to know if he could do it, and only allegedly having seen Beerus use it once offscreen, which has to be inferred by the reader.   These are actually just a FEW of said issues in the manga version of things, but in my opinion, the biggest signifier and offender comes in the final category: Characterization.   It’s no real secret that Super does retread some characterization ground, but there’s a reason for that. New viewers, same characters, etc. Vegeta was sort-of given a full arc already, but due to popularity and ‘demand’, he has to be given a central role and can’t sort of fade back like Piccolo, Krillin, Tien, etc. were able to do once their respective arcs were done. (This also allows their own mini-arcs in the anime to feel more fulfilling as they’re not constantly shoved in your face, and they can touch on things happening or building up in the background of episodes, BUT, let’s move on.) As a result, one of the purposes of Battle of Gods, and how it was handled as an arc and the eps that followed it, was to establish a new sort of rivalry between Goku and Vegeta so as to renew that arc/dynamic for this particular series.  

And that’s where the manga... sort of falls flat. Vegeta is kept in prominence despite a lack of any sort of established/renewed rivalry with Goku; BoG was done in shorthand, after all, and the events following that, as well as the entire Resurrection F arc, were skipped wholesale. In fact, Vegeta himself seems to have gone through a VERY radical personality shift in that... he’s... nice. And I don’t mean nice-ER, he’s outright nice. He shows open affection for his family, he literally runs over to embrace his baby in happiness and rejoices that it’s a girl, he engages in pleasantries with the rest of the cast before the Tournament of Power and asks about their wellbeing, he’s got almost none of his original character traits other than a flair for the dramatic... and bear in mind, Vegeta still has that hardass-ness to himself in the End of Z, which these events are supposed to lead into. And this isn’t even touching on how the narrative seems to shift frequently toward him being THE hero of the series, often actually placing Goku in near-helpless situations and having Vegeta inexplicably bail him out, or just have Goku be in awe or starstruck at how awesome Vegeta is now. The Future Trunks arc, for example, has Vegeta healed only to the point of being able to stand, yet when Goku is shrinking back in fear at the sight of TWO Fused Zamasus coming at him, Vegeta... transforms, swoops in, rescues Goku, AND nukes both Fused Zamasus with a single blow. (It doesn’t “win the day”, no, but it’s a mite riduculous). The current arc is also trying to wholesale shift focus away from Goku onto Vegeta in a leading role, which is a distinctly non-Toriyama move.   And now, let’s talk Goku himself. HOO boy, where to begin...   For all the talk of flanderization of Goku in the Super anime (which I could write entire rants on but I’ll refrain for now), the manga does him ten times worse. Almost every negative fandom meme or interpretation of Goku is reinforced in this arc, sometimes even to the point of literal, direct lampshading of it. For example: Goku in the anime makes a comment on how he doesn’t see why Bulma would “kill” Vegeta if he’s not right there when Bulma starts labor, as he was dead when Goten was born and Chi-Chi doesn’t hold ill will over it. The manga? It quite literally has Goku state he wasn’t around for the birth of Goten OR GOHAN. He couldn’t even be bothered to be there for the birth of his son he was alive to see. When Whis pops baby Bra out via magic so Vegeta can attend the ToP, Goku is... apparently still so dumb that he legitimately wonders aloud if that’s how ALL babies are born. Goku, in this same tournament, has ZERO strategic or technical skill, and relies solely on brute force and powerups (which is actually how VEGETA typically fights but I digress) and even has both Roshi admonish him for it and even has Goku agree with it and declare himself a “bad student” and say that he’s “done letting everyone around him down”. This manga also has Goku and Gohan’s relationship visibly strained, with Goku seemingly trying to cut himself out of Gohan’s life completely as the kid has no interest in fighting. To top this off, rather than attending the tournament in a gi fashioned after his father, whom Gohan canonically does admire, the manga has him deliberately ask to have another carbon copy of Piccolo’s. Hell, Gohan is so far from Manga!Goku’s mind here, that it doesn’t even occur to Goku to ASK Gohan if he wants to fight in the ToP after Buu falls asleep. In fact, Piccolo suggests it... and Goku PROTESTS the idea, saying the kid’s got no stomach for fighting and they should look elsewhere. The only time Goku seems to show an interest in Gohan is when he shows off his power in a fight vs Kefla. This is distinctly, demonstrably, simply NOT Toriyama’s Goku, in any way, shape, or form.   Now, to speak on the other characters and their characterization... when it does exist, it’s one-dimensional and also often based around fan conceptions and memes. Krillin? Comedic coward who can’t fight. Goku even says that he thinks Krillin’s sole usefulness in the ToP might come in the form of him “being really good at running away”. He’s literally only in because Toriyama said so, and is literally immediately ringed out before he can so much as move. Tee hee so funny. Tien, who has no personality of note, is then also immediately out. Piccolo is just Gohan’s coach, really. Android 18 shows no emotion at all, even for her brother’s apparent death; this is later played off as her knowing he didn’t have his bomb anymore (something even Krillin somehow forgot???) so knowing he couldn’t have self-destructed... even though there are other ways to do that besides a bomb but w/e. 17 literally shows more care and affection for 18′s husband than she herself does as well, and their bond is pretty much non-existent. Chi-Chi and Goten pretty much do not exist. Trunks’ reunion with Gohan, meeting his family? Never happens. And Bulma... OH BULMA. What he did to that woman is criminal. She mostly plays the role of the worried Soldier’s Wife, fretting as she awaits her dashing husband’s return from war! The Bulma that wouldn’t take no for an answer? The Bulma that always insisted on going to the front lines to try to see things for herself? The Bulma who would be eager to see this future and see if she could find the notes of her other self and what else she may have discovered? That Bulma does not exist in this manga. HELL, the Bulma who was the smartest woman in the world barely does; what was Pilaf noticing one small math error in an equation in the Super anime becomes Pilaf “WELL ACKSHUALLY”-ing both Bulma and Future Bulma here and PERFECTING Time Travel so they can go to any point they desire, with Bulma being visibly upset about being upstage-aaaaaand she’s pregnant. It’s just... not good at all in this arena.   Now one last thing to mention: Toriyama himself actually did explicitly state that his canon Broly movie, which he did write himself, was set to follow the events of the Super anime specifically, with him saying the manga would probably continue telling its own story. And indeed, there are things about the Broly movie that do tie into what people thought to be just “filler” in the anime, such as the number of wishes Shenron had left tying into the episode where they summoned him and then fought over wishes. The fact that he DOES specify that he wrote it to follow the anime, however, seems like a firm establishment of heirarchy to me personally. I’m sure some will disagree but... that’s life. lol Anyways, hope that helped clarify my stance on it, at least.

[queermediastudies]

Blurring The Lines of Gender In Sally Potter's Orlando

Sally Potter’s 1993 film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel Orlando follows the narrative of gender ambiguous aristocrat and poet Orlando. Potter efficiently tackles Woolf’s other worldly plotline, in which her hero(ine) lives as both man and woman over the course of 400 hundred years. Potter’s reimagined version of Woolf’s fictitious, gender-bending world, highlights the disparity between men and women, along with the fluidity and performativity of gender itself.

The cast plays a role in both Potter and Wolf’s attempt at highlighting gender performativity. Orlando is played by actress Tilda Swinton who is noted for her androgynous appearance and capacity to play roles of ambiguous gender. In a movie review of the film by the Slant, the author address Swinton’s ability to inhabit these differing roles: “Of course, it’s less than shocking to say that Swinton—by now America’s favorite androgyne—slips effortlessly into the role of the titular male nobleman who awakens halfway through the film to find himself a woman”. Swinton’s character experiences an inexplicable change in gender, as Orlando wakes up in 17th century England in the body of a woman. This scene follows Orlando from her bed (which is often the identifier for a lap in time), to her mirror wherein she turns toward her now female body. With a brief examination of her reflection she says “Same person. No difference at all. Just a different sex.”

This scene is perhaps the most illuminative in terms of Potter’s message of gender performativity. As Butler states in her acclaimed work “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”: “Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time // an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler 520). This film, similarly to Butler’s claims of gender as a notion of socialization and adaptation to fulfil certain modes of behavior and presentation, poses a definitive question regarding the validity of gender constructs. Further Butler speaks to the assumed value and connotative notion toward the body and the way it is presented: “Gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gender” (Butler 520). Orlando’s character is ageless, and thus changes very little throughout the film, aside from the way in which the character performs gender, making this distinction all the more blatant. Costume plays an integral role in how the audience is able to track Orlando’s gender. In the first portion of the film he presents quintessentially masculine for the time he is in, however there is a looming femininity about him.

file:///Users/shaneainsleymoffatt/Desktop/02a7b1bf2cc344670d9926e1aa4d47fc.jpg

After the first laps in time, while Orlando is working in Constantinople, his appearance slowly becomes more feminized although he continues to be identified as male.

Potter perpetuates this questioning of Orlando’s gender via the way he is able to perform it, and the ways in which such performance fluctuates. As a woman, her dress and way of conducting herself is indicative of “womanliness”, and yet she vacillates in her capacity to “do gender.

In a scene amongst famous poets and writers of the time, Orlando struggles with the notion of what constitutes womanly behavior. As the men speak to the predominate assumption of gender roles at the time, Orlando struggles to comprehend why such rigidity would be placed on anyone purely on the basis of sex. The poets iterate conceptions of public verses private spheres of existence, masculine persuits of intellectualism, worldliness and achievement in contrast to the womanly persuits of home, society and virtue.  

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

https://images.app.goo.gl/DU5fcTCxvXcfKWDt6

She again flounders with the perception of proper feminine behavior, when proposed to by Archduke Harry. In his proposition he warns her of the inevitable fall into destitution and ruin if she is to refuse his proposal. Particuarly because knowledge of her being a man and then a woman is commonly acknowledged within English high society. She does however refuse him, preceded by another laps in time to the Victorian era.

As a man Orlando also struggles in his ability to inhabit “manly” ways of being. He is emotional, gentle and does not be inclined to take up heroic aims. There is however, a clear critique on the way in which he is able to move through the world more seamlessly as a man comparative to the characters time spent as a woman. In a brief scene of Orlando walking through a long hallway dressed in Georgian era women’s clothing, this difficulty is covertly expressed. Her large and overwhelming hoop skirt makes the navigation of a simple task like walking through a hallway seem absurdly difficult.”. In Andersson’s work on Queer Media, she discussed both the notion of identity as an ever-evolving “production” contingent upon one’s positioning: “In the same way identity is said to be marked out by difference, that is by what it is not. Instead of thinking of identity as “an already accomplished fact” identity is seen as a “production, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (Andersson 2002). Potter expresses the differentiation in gender presentation and the access (or lack thereof) dependent upon the way one presents; even in the minutiae of activity.

            Potter’s examination of gender performance harkens back to an almost Shakespearean methodology. Aside from the performance of gender the audience can observe in Orlando, characters like the Queen interestingly exhibit a similar queering of gender identity. Orlando has a close working and personal relationship with Queen Elizabeth I played by Quentin Crisp, a queer English actor known for his gender bending performances. The interplay between the two characters denotes the performativity of gender even further. Similar to a Shakespearean comedy, the Queen’s gender has a meta and manifold interpretation; she is a woman performing the acts of a traditionally masculine role, played by a male actor who defies the traditional roles of masculinity.

https://images.app.goo.gl/8QFjjAmshbYgYGP56

The films queering of love can be perceived as either accurate or problematically heteronormative. Orlando’s gender remains perpetually ambiguous, and thus each romantic connection can be applied to a queer reading. However, each romantic affiliation Orlando engages in, does fall within heteronormative expectations. He first falls for Sasha, an unattainable Muscovite princess; with whom he has a contentious and overly idyllic relationship with. Within this context he becomes possessive, petulant and assumes totalizing notions of ownership over her on the basis of affection. As a woman she has a sexual relationship with Shelmerdine, an American revolutionary who is represented of the masculine ideal. By the end of the film she presents more androgynous, is not in a romantic relationship and has become a serious writer. She does however have a child, which appears to fall into the trope of motherhood as some variety of completion for women. There are moments in which the film deviates from hetero notions of romance, as Archduke Harry professes his attraction toward Orlando “whether man or woman”. In spite of this, there still seems to be a gap in representation of queer romantic love within the film.

            Another short coming within the film is the highly privileged positioning of Orlando’s character. While Orlando may experience the limitations of existing as a woman within a patriarchal society, she is also in a position of fiscal abundance and operates from a position of socioeconomic privilege. In Doty’s work “Making Things Perfectly Queer”, he address the disparity in intersectional representations of queerness: “Clearly we need more popular and academic mass culture work that carefully considers feminine gay and other gendered queer reception practices, as well as those of even less-analyzed queer readership positions formed around the nexus of race and sexuality, or class and sexuality, or ethnicity and sexuality, or some combination of gender, race, class, ethnicity and sexuality” (Doty 14). The film follows the story of an upper class, high society individual who experiences the socital demands of gender expectations, and moments of queer desire, however Orlando does not encompass an intersectional representation of queer experience. Largley I believe this is due to the fact that it is an adaptation of a Woolf novel, who herself often created her narratives from a position of socioeconomic advantage; however, Potter does deviate in her reimagining of the text, and thus there was potentiality to make this narrative more intersectional and accessible to a modern queer viewer.

            My predominant interest in the film had to do with my affinity for Virginia Woolf, and my previous knowledge of the novel. The novel to me seemed a form of breakout text, as it dealt with notions of gender identity, the position of women within society and was developed out of a queer relationship between Woolf and Vita Saxton West (who she based Orlando off of). While I did feel that the film was able to navigate the complex fictional world Woolf develops, from a mode of cinema, I do feel that there could have been more work put into making this narrative more inclusive and indicative of modern queer lives. I was able to see myself represented in the film on the basis of being a woman and relating to the sexism and limitations the film exposes. I did feel it examined gender roles in a way that was relatable, however there was potential to take the analysis further and admonish some of the elitism which existed within the original text.

 https://images.app.goo.gl/xQf7MQGRAafmqEiQ7 

References:

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Feminist Theory Reader, 2020, pp.

353–361., doi:10.4324/9781003001201-42.

Andersson, Yvonne. “Queer Media? Or; What Has Queer Theory to Do with Media Studies?” July 2002.

Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Canby, Vincent. “Review/Film Festival; Witty, Pretty, Bold, A Real She-Man.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Mar. 1993, www.nytimes.com/1993/03/19/movies/review-film-festival-witty-pretty-bold-a-real-she-man.html?auth=login-google.

[ivystjamess]

IF IT WEREN'T FOR IVY'S CONSTANT NEED to both prove herself and receive praise from her parents, she likely wouldn't have auditioned for into the woods. it wasn't grease or mamma mia with the prize of sandy dumbrowski or sophie sheridan waiting for her to grab. it was just...into the woods. and sure, while she wasn't passionate about the show itself, she was passionate about the validation and attention scoring a good role might bring. ivy st.james had her eye set on the role she wanted and as always she was fully prepared to use every tool in her arsenal to snatch it up. ivy wanted to be cinderella just for the sake of being cinderella. she liked her songs and the pretty costume and for once, didn't really mind setting her sights on a role other than the primary female lead. while she could easily blow any role in the show out of the water, ivy had carefully crafted her audition materials for the directing panel to see her as cinderella. ivy st.james and cinderella would soon be synonymous in their eyes if she could help it. 

despite having just finalized her song on monday after receiving davis' input, ivy felt more than prepared come wednesday. auditioning was routine to her at this point, pull her hair out of her face, put on a nice outfit, prepare, prepare, prepare, and she'd be set. oftentimes it felt like ivy first learned to walk, then speak, then shortly after she learned how to audition. it was years upon years of lessons for this specific thing that left her knowing that if she were to engage in conversation, keep it short and sweet, to drink plenty of water, and not let a single thing get into her head. 

those were the basics. but ivy was both blessed and cursed with berry-st.james genes that always left her going a little bit overboard. at school wednesday, ivy refused to speak and claimed she was on vocal rest through a text to speech app she'd downloaded on her phone. she had told julien he could hitch a ride with her, but they had to keep their conversation minimum to none. even when ivy only kinda wanted something, she would do everything within her power to make sure she got it. playing danny had been alright, but at the end of the day, she wanted sandy. as long as she could help it, she wouldn't miss the mark on getting what she wanted again. 

while in the reception area of the lima players building, ivy sat patiently, sipped on her water bottle, and reviewed her materials in her head. she tried not to acknowledge those around her too heavily. this was community theatre. the pool was wider. while it brought fun talent like davis or some of the boys from dalton to the table, it also brought the clarington-smythe sisters. while her and emory were mostly friendly, they were still competitors. and when it came to darcy? ivy knew she couldn't take one look at the girl without getting completely thrown off. rarely did she have to face these pre-audition obstacles at mckinley, but even in a more expanded setting, ivy had to remain in her own little, focused world or suffer the consequences of a botched audition.

eventually, her name had been called and she was relieved to stand and enter the audition room. in her typical fashion, she handed a resume to each of the directors before surrendering her book to the accompanist and talking through her music. once all the formalities were out of the way, it was down to business. from the moment ivy entered the room, she was polite and smiled like her life depended on it, but the real magic would happen in a moment once she got her slate out of the way, "good afternoon, I'm ivy st.jarnes. today i will be performing journey to the past from anastasia composed by stephen flaherty and lynn ahrens." she let that information sit with the directors before announcing, "in addition to my song, i will be performing  rather be a man by joseph arnone, then as a dance sample, i will be performing one step closer from the little mermaid with the help of davis goolsby" with her audition materials out in the open, only one thing left to communicate. with a smile, ivy sweetly stated, "i would love to be considered for the role of cinderella, but i will gladly accept any role. thank you." then cast a glance towards the accompanist. moments later, her music began, and showtime. 

`heart don't fail me now, courage don't desert me, don't turn back now that we're here.' 

ivy vocalized effortlessly, sure to keep an unwavering optimism in both her tone and her expression. in ivy's eyes, journey to the past was the perfect song to audition with for cinderella. the song held a sense of adventure that was ideal for a show like into the woods which was all about a journey. she kept her blocking to a minimal and let her voice do the talking. sure, there was an occasional pace to the left or the right, a clasped hand over her chest here or there, and near constant longing, furrowed brows. she could act and dance her heart away in later portions of her audition.

'home, love, family, there was once a time when i must have had them too.' 

while she continued to hit each note with ease, ivy tried to step into cinderella's slippers. it certainly wasn't a character she could relate very deeply too. her home life was close to ideal and rarely did she turn down male attention, but just imagining herself in a beautiful gown and golden slippers was enough for the trained performer to put a believable desire in her tone. cinderella might have longed for her mother or to go to the festival or to run away with the baker, but what did ivy st.james long for? her mind wandered to the depths of her heart and her wants. she wanted julien to stand up for her more, she wanted to be taken seriously as a performer outside of her parents, she wanted the other members of new directions to appreciate her efforts, she wanted to be liked, and she wanted to maybe even be prom queen one day. sure, those wishes looked nothing like cinderella's but as she belted the emotional peak, her hearts desires might as well have looked the same as anastasia's or cinderella's. 

'yes this is a sign, let this road be mine, let it lead me to my past, and bring me home at last!' 

ivy concluded the song with a smile and tried not to look too breathless as she seamlessly transitioned into her monologue. sure, it was a little more aggressive, bitter even, and while that was the opposite of cinderella, ivy wanted to show off that she did have a range. and beside, there was some obvious reluctance from cinderella to her prince, she wanted to show her capability in that regard. her recitation of the monologue elicited a few laughs which was always a good sign and had ivy's heart singing as if she were sally field at the 1985 oscars. 

now that her monologue had successfully wrapped, it was time for davis to enter the room. ivy worried that maybe it was poor etiquette for the end of her audition to overlap with the beginning of his, but the directors seemed to be eating up their collaboration as the instrumental portion of one step closer from the little mermaid began.

it had been davis' idea to do this waltz-y number and ivy didn't mind. she'd do pretty much anything to put herself over the top of the rest of the competition. after conversing for a little, most of their private rehearsal in her basement consisted of choreographing the number and perfecting all of the little tricks so the pair looked elegant together rather than foolish. throughout the dance, ivy kept her eyes locked with davis' as she concentrated on hitting each precise and quick motion. into the woods definitely wasn't a dance heavy show, but as far as ivy (and davis) was concerned, it was better to cover all bases than leave a director wondering. 

come the end of the dance, she was a little winded, but flashed a winning smile at the judges all the same. she thanked them again as she went to grab her book from the accompanist. each director gave a standard thank you back and reminded her she'd hear from them sunday. while sunday couldn't come soon enough, she held her chin high and binder close to her chest as she exited the room. and as a show of good sportsmanship, ivy even issued a "break a leg" to davis on her way out. 

out of sight from the directing panel, ivy finally let out a breath. she'd done all she could. now it was just a waiting game.

END.

[basketballandtextbooks]

disaster take

i saw this discourse on other blogs and come to the realization that most people probably won’t agree with me but... here’s my two cents:

wendy and kyle are very similar characters, not identical, but the character writing in south park is usually quite shallow (for any character in the cast) and normally any depth that can actually be found in any one character is entirely coincidental or accidental on the part of the observer. For example, in a previous post I mentioned that Kyle probably learned to dance after the events of the rain forest episode, and we know he must have because of highschool musical. This creates and interesting nugget of character depth that fits with his overall character but the connection is most likely entirely accidental. Did the writers think that deeply about Kyle’s character, or did they just forget the throwaway joke they kin-assigned Kyle for one episodes purposes?

for me these gaps between writers intent and interpretation are entertaining and it’s very fun for me to play detective, putting together the whole characters through the lens of ‘death of the author’ and figuring out how the characters behave based on not only their behavior in any one individual episode, but how the inconsistent and shallow character writing makes an overall character-arc (no character is more fascinating in this fashion than Eric Cartman, who has the most cohesive and entirely accidental character arc that spans from episode one and showcases a fascinating and horribly flawed individual)

All of this stated, the similarities in how Kyle and Wendy are written may not be intentional, but the fact is that given the same exact situation they respond similarly and to varying degrees. A good example of this is when they are jealous or their ego is bruised, they both have a tendency to have excessive if not murderous reactions (teacher into the sun, nuke canada, burn down the school, bully your friends)

I don’t think anyone can really make a good faith argument denying that they have strong similarities. There are of course differences, during the smurfs Wendy showed a much cooler head than Kyle would in the same circumstance. They do not need to be identical to share strong similar characteristics

Now for how fandom has perceived Wendy.

There is good reason that some individuals feel that the fan-reaction towards her isn’t entirely based on her writing being inherently ‘worse’ than Kyle’s. It also isn’t true that everyone who loves Kyle and hates Wendy is sexist or suffering from a case of internal misogyny.

That said, Wendy is held to a higher standard than Kyle is. Or more accurately, she is held to account for her actions in canon and Kyle is not. A primary example that I’ve heard multiple times in explaining why she’s a ‘bad’ character or a ‘bad’ person is that she broke Stan’s heart by dumping him. Some accuse her of cheating on him (with either Gregory or Token, pick your poison).

We can dismiss the cheating accusations immediately, there isn’t even a sliver of evidence she ever cheated. The times where she pursued other love interests they were either broken up or not together.

But the underlying message that hurting Stan makes her a bad character and not holding Kyle to that same account when Kyle, as early as the super best friends episode and as terribly as the assburgers episode, has a pattern of hurting Stan and in worse ways.

Wendy dumped him, that’s awful, but she’s allowed to have different feelings for other people and she’s allowed to end a relationship with a boy who constantly vomited on her. But the fan perception of this is “what a bitch” while the reaction to the style friend breakups is “oooh the angst”

This is only one of the ways we can see her being held to a different standard than Kyle. Not every fan is guilty of this, but enough people share this sentiment that is entirely justified for people to point out what appears to be underlying misogyny in how the characters are treated.

There are arguments based more on her writing than her actions, I have heard the ‘she’s always right and that’s not realistic’ on at least four different occasions now. But not only is this factually untrue if you’ve actually watched the show, it ignores the many times Kyle has also been right for seemingly no other reason than the writers convenience. Making him the moral center of the episode or a center of a joke. I find the ‘she’s too perfect’ to be a bad faith argument because the research behind it is shoddy and even when the person behind it acknowledges cases where she was wrong (killing her teacher, bullying, petty grudges to name a few) it’s always hand-waved away as ‘oh, okay, that once, but other than anything that disagrees with me, she’s too perfect. This is a very clear case of confirmation bias. Any evidence that backs the argument that she’s too perfect is guarded and anything that refutes it is discarded.

There will be some fans that hate her and love Kyle for completely unrelated reasons to holding her to a different standard, sexism, or internalized misogyny. But it is a fact that a significant amount of the fandom holds her to a completely different standard and a very possible reason for that is either her gender or how she disrupts their precious ships.

I would make the argument that she has a far stronger and more engaging characterization than Clyde using the same standards I set above where I judge characters based on the totality of their appearances rather than on individual episode. A even removing that framework and basing solely on episodes that focus on them individually, she has a stronger character. And yet I have never once heard or seen anyone making the argument that they dislike Clyde because his character is too flat. This is another case where she, and the majority of the female cast, is held to a different standard. I’ve never seen anyone say ‘it’s hard to write Gregory because he has very little character and the writers only created a flat stereotype’. But I see that sort of perspective all the time for female characters that have more screen-time and development than Gregory ever had.

I love all the characters above and I find their characterizations and lack thereof to be a fascinating puzzle that I spend my free-time putting together.

But female characters in South Park do suffer from what I would consider a form of internalized misogyny. Most fans don’t do this on purpose (thus internalized) but the society we’ve been raised in has a tendency to put men and women on different scales.

This isn’t a scale that’s fair to either sex. The unconscious mentality that “its okay if he has no personality because he’s a guy” does men a disservice too. If you do fall under the category of someone who judges the female characters more than the male ones, I’m not trying to say you’re a bad person or even that you’ve done a bad thing. I want you to reconsider your opinion. Take a moment to actually think about it. I know I’ve been guilty of holding men and women to different standards. In both real life and fiction, I expect less from men. I look down on them in an unhealthy fashion that if I don’t address, could lead to ending up in harmful situations or harming someone else.

fiction is a lens that we can use to better understand reality. I am an advocate that you can treat fictional characters in any way you like and it doesn’t fucking matter. You want to kill Wendy because you think she’s an annoying bitch? Go for it. It doesn’t matter. Wendy is not real.

I don’t want you to change your fandom behaviors, I want you to reexamine them and ask yourself how deeply the disparity in how you view men and women goes. If you use fiction as an outlet for misogynistic or even misandrist feelings, I think that’s valid, but I want you to know that you’re doing it.

If you hold men and women to different standards, whether in fiction, real life, or both, I want you to be aware of it.

Now the elephant in the room.

Damien is one of the most popular characters in South Park and he has one episode focusing on his character. His personality is frequently discarded because in canon, he’s an uppity little git who is both petty and weak. He wants to be liked, is affected by bullying, and cries to his daddy about it.

In fandom he is frequently portrayed as a cool and collected impervious person who, yes, has a temper but instead of how petulant and bratty he appeared in canon, fandom portrays this as ‘badass’.

To put it simply, fandom has a tendency to ignore canon entirely in the name of what’s ‘hot’. They want the prince of hell to be sexy and dangerous, so he is just that.

The majority of popular fanon characterizations fit these same molds. They want Butters to be cute and sweet, so every character flaw he’s ever had is hand-waved away.

How does this relate to my topic?

Fans of the female characters are not impervious to this. Heidi Turner is an extremely flawed and vicious individual who would stoop to any low to protect her damaged pride. She is also a victim in a toxic relationship that put her through a horrible experience. And so the fandom either acknowledges one half, how cruel she can be, or the other, how pure a victim she was someone protect her. And neither combine her to a whole character. A person who was in a bad situation, had a lot of positive traits, bad things happened to her, and she didn’t bad things in return. Her penitent for cruelty in some earlier episodes when she was still a bg character is completely hand-waved away by both camps.

She’s an interesting character and she’s dumbed down for the pleasure of the audience, isn’t this the same treatment the men receive and thus invalidates my entire thesis that they’re held to a different standard?

For starters, the idea that an argument is entirely invalid because of one exception is in itself a fallacy, but to avoid acknowledging her existence would be confirmation bias. She is an anomaly, a female character given the same treatment as the male characters. Is it because she’s deeper or better written than the other female characters? I would argue no, critically watching her episodes she has tons of the same troped behavior that the fans love to despise in the rest of the female cast. Although unlike the other characters (both male and female), where I must do an in-depth watch of the series over the course of 20+ seasons in order to create a whole understanding of them, the majority of her arc happens over the course of two seasons.

An easily digestible amount of content. No one needs to put together the puzzle pieces to understand her like you do with the majority of the cast, it’s all there.

Except it isn’t, and this is why I mentioned her behavior in earlier seasons is discarded. The way people frame her is solely from the seasons where she’s a primary character, ignoring the clear characterization we got from her in earlier seasons that do help to create a more whole understanding of her personality and character.

That all said, there are still portions of the fandom who hate her purely because she blocks their kyman or style or insert-gay-ship-here. There are fans who hate her not because of her flawed personality or even that they find her character flat, but purely because they want to see ‘two hot boys kiss get the gross girl out’. Which is a pretty common mistreatment of Wendy as well.

Now, male characters are on occasion given this treatment but nowhere near as often. While creek shippers and crenny shippers might fight until their last breath, neither group seems to actually hate Kenny or Tweek. But in the ship wars of a ‘het ship’ vs a ‘gay ship’, the female character is frequently trashed by the gay side.

I could go into an aside about the troubling fetishization of gay men that borders on outright homophobia at times, but this has been surprisingly alot.

I guess my point is that any which way you fandom, try to at least understand that sexism is real and be aware when you might be perpetuating messages that can appear unbalanced. And maybe, ask yourself why you do that.

[thewebcomicsreview]

Ko-Fi Commission: LeaseBound

Leasebound is a “gender-critical” (TERF) webcomic that attained notoriety after releasing a chapter with hateful depictions of trans people, leading to it getting banned from Smack Jeeves. It’s currently self-hosted on a comic press site without a cast page, archive, or even menu, and doesn’t appear to have a patreon (and likely won’t, given its content). It’s a small enough comic that I wouldn’t normally feel comfortable reviewing it, except that the creator explicitly encouraged me to and appears to be getting off on the bad press. 

The story starts with two characters finding out that they both rented the same apartment because the landlord was incompetent and double booked it.

And this particular landlord doesn’t have any other rooms available. There’s a host of logical objections to this set up, such as

Isn’t this fraud on the part of the landlord?

Wouldn’t a major deception like this void the lease?

Why don’t the women move to some other landlord’s apartment and sue the shit out of the woman who sold them a single apartment and surprised them with a roommate?

How does a huge apartment complex with at least 18 rooms have two people booking rooms that don’t talk to each other?

Is the groundskeeper also doing the paperwork and background checks? You don’t buy an apartment at the apartment store, it’s like a whole process.

Isn’t this just the fanfic “but there was only one bed!” trope taken to an even more illogical extreme?

But that road leads to becoming CinemaSins, so let’s just acknowledge that the premise is ludicrous and all the characters are morons so we can move on with our lives. Anyway, the characters introduce themselves as Jaden and Riley, and casually accept sharing a bedroom. They exposit a bit about how Jaden dropped out of college and Riley never went, and

Uh

RILEY: Sorry- I wasn’t trying to pry. JADEN: All good. Earlier you said you had a “few things” in mind RILEY: Right, yeah! I thought it was be good to set some ground rules. JADEN: You can add’ “more organised” to the list then too. Haha. RILEY: Wait, really?  JADEN: Stories for another time

What the fuck? What list? What is Jaden talking about? Why is there an apostrophe hanging out after “add”?

You know how in PS1 JRPGs the translation would be really bad and sometimes people would just say weird shit that didn’t seem to have anything to do with what was just said?

That’s how Leasebound dialogue reads, bizarre punctuation and all. The add’ with an apostrophe is baffling, but I also like how “Haha.” is it’s own sentence with a period at the end.

 Anyway, the rest of the chapter is about how Riley owns a cat but has to keep it a secret because she doesn’t know if the landlord allows pets and I guess didn’t think to ask when she was applying for the lease.

So, the status quo is established. Jaden and Riley wanted to buy a single apartment but got foisted with a roommate, but they’re happy because that means the rent is cheaper. Personally if I wanted a cheaper apartment and was willing to have a roommate I’d get an apartment with a roommate in the first fucking place but we really can’t keep complaining about how stupid the premise is we have to move on. So Jaden is in the living room and, hold on, sorry

This living room is massive. The kitchen has a fridge, and oven, and two matching sofas. In chapter 2 Riley’s going to fit in a four-seat table in here. This is supposed to be a studio apartment in Downtown City

Y’know, City. Not any particular specific real or fictional city with a name, but City.

And Jaden and Riley, neither of whom have college degrees, are so hard up for cheaper rent that they’re comfortable with the surprise revelation of having to share a bedroom with a stranger. But they’re also in a huge apartment in the middle of a metro area? This living room is nearly as big as mine, and I have three roommates and live in Cheaper Suburb. Why are you buying all this space at City square foot prices if money is tight? Get a smaller apartment, or if you really need the space get an apartment that’s not in the middle of City? The author of this comic is 23, has she not looked into getting an apartment? Bigger ones are more expensive.

Okay, okay, the premise is dumb. Let’s move on. Riley and Jaden make sm-

Why are you sharing a tiny bedroom if your Living room is party sized and has multiple sofas? Why not partition off some of the living room with room dividers from IKEA to make a faux bedroom with privacy?

Ahem, Riley and Jaden make small talk and order a pizza and it takes a long time and it’s not super interesting but it’s supposed to be cute and I can’t really fault a slice of life comic for taking its time. Riley’s worried that her girlfriend won’t like that she has a roommate (Riley why don’t you move in with your girlfriend?), and Jaden gets a call from work that they’re shortstaffed.

They’re so short-staffed that they’re going to send an employee out to go pick up Jaden. Can Jaden not get to work on her own? That seems like the kind of thing that would make her not want to move in to this specific apartment. Why would you move to an apartment that you couldn’t get to work from? You’re in the middle of City, and your job is a big nightclub in City, and City has public transit. You previously did not live in City, meaning you used to live further away from work than you now do. How did you get to work before? Isn’t picking up a Jaden a tremendous waste of an employee’s time? Even if the club is aware that Jaden can’t get in on her own and is willing to bend over backwards for her here, why not “Jaden, we need you at work pronto. Take a uber over, we’ll reimburse you”, which is dramatically easier for all involved? Why is everyone in this comic so fucking stupid?

Sigh

Well, Jaden goes to work, and that leads us off into the infamous chapter 3, “The T is for trouble”

We open the chapter with a bad-faith trigger warning that looks like a real content warning but is actually designed to get trans people really mad as Jaden heads to work and-

Hey hey, Rusty started putting links to her tumblr in the comic pages. Someone was expecting pages from this chapter to go viral, wasn’t she? Was the chapter where Riley and Jaden spend a few pages ordering a pizza not giving you enough engagement? But now that you’re the official #2 Terf Webcomic you get lots of angry people in your tags that you can reblog and be snarky at. Bet that makes you feel powerful. I know the feeling. I built my tumblr following by writing reviews and advice columns for five years, but you went from zero to hero in like a week and all you had to do was say mean things about trans people oh my god I figured it out

You’re Mary. Rusty Hearts is Mary Bradford from Dumbing of Age. You want the validation of the “wrong” kind of people giving you shit. That’s why you made sure all your transphobic comics had links to your tumblr and your getting pizza comics didn’t. That’s why you keep reblogging my ads for my comic that I place in your tags. That’s why you see me post the review and make a response like this

And you know what?

Nah.

I’m not going to include chapter 4. I’m not going to read it. I’m not even going to include chapter 3. There’s nothing that I can add to it that hasn’t been said by a ton of other people. I can post your anti-trans stuff and get the vapors about how bigoted you are, but at the end of the day I’m not the Social Justice Report. I’m The Webcomics Review. And your webcomic sucks. It’s boring, it’s stupid, it doesn’t make any sense. Your premise is ludicrous and quickly abandoned to bait and switch people into reading a political polemic (I did skim chapter four, it’s literally people standing around in a circle talking about how trans people are bad like a terfy Ayn Rand novel). Your characters are all morons in order to get to plot points you want to get to, and your first two chapters are a mountain of pointless exposition and characters being vaguely cryptic about their backstories.Your art is bad not just in that you can’t draw well, but in that you don’t bother to include details to give your world a sense of place, and the details you do include like that luxurious living room actively undermine your alleged story (to the extent that there’s a story at all).

But hey, you got your 15 minutes of fame (and zero patreonbux) from the anti-trans stuff. You got people to read your comic. Good hussle. Well done. Tatsuya Ishida does it better.

Leasebound gets zero genders out of a spectrum.

Like this review? Follow me on patreon, or buy me a Ko-Fi! Or even just read my own webcomic, Saffron and Sage!

[throwingideasatthewall]

The Clone Wars    Senate Murders

          (Season 2 Episode 15)

Ack      ....  So     are     we    going     to    address     the     guy      that    got     killed?      . .      Oh      This   is a new one       . . .         Oh       No       . . .        The        Bab        ies        -      Will       Only    Pro     Long

  Oh good

 [I was worried      I was going to have to pull out  The old   “Amidala kills children,”      Thing,]

   Any way,      That’s            Good        I like        babies not getting         hurt,         [Cute things in      general]    

      Oof           That’s           Not-

     [pretty sure       that’s the            point]

       Whelp

Well I have teased       Amidala pretty       unmercifully,      Regarding       That        Episode,        I do    still give her       a bit of slack          (Age    appropriate)       Because she still    has a chance to        un-feck the situation      [In the       story]

 Least we know    it      isn’t her getting   poison      ed this time,

 Oh,   never     mind,

That actually    did   apparently   help     (slightly)     (in the   unaccountable)        (Slightly           less       toxicity          in         air)

     Smooth

      Hold             Up           Wait,          Wasn’t              Ready           (Sus             Pect-           Ing-       Animation           That       smooth,

      I          think that was      Sa-        tine          -            Good         ref      (erence)          Picking       up        right       where       he      left        off  

   C-3PO

   Nice

  Whelp

-Windows        -

   Okay,        Minor        Issue?

  ?

  Oh it’s a whole bunch of them

   That’s nice-

      Senator            Stonk

“what will the public think   if I don’t want to make child soldiers,?”

     -Boomer

    (Probably)

   “But he wants to know    how very sorry he is,”

    Haha

      That   is the correct tone

  “Sorry-”

   Sorry doesn’t get you anything

   It’s an attempt to control the     narr-     ative

And    nothing else

 (If you screw up just      fix the problem     don’t keep dragging the tox,”

   Votes

  That’s nice

This is a very non-toxic         healthy tea

  (I know he’s kind of assuming authority          here

    But they   seem to be pretty close friends-

   Who are covered under the friend-      ship rules

“ A.k.a. not doing it to a random stranger who doesn’t like it,”

 Good rule

Oh God      It’s        

THAT

fucker..  

   ?

With the line about   convincing     other people of good?

I-

 Nope-

Note; this isn’t an official X

 It’s just a show my venomous   hatred of this guy..

And the episode he   Spawned    from

 Which was the first one to     earn a strike from me...

For normalizing    abuse...

With that in mind I give this episode the benefit of the     doubt...

  Even with that     concerning opening line

  So I will acknowledge I am slightly doubtful

 [not quite   putting on the   SWAT gear,    maybe just     a bat]

With that-     in mind- let’s continue...

... .

Mistakes       ...     

Em-     That at least counts as   one tox

Bring up the previous   things you did wrong     does not fix it

It’s guilt tripping

And an attempt to get the other party to validate   your toxicity

Dude’s      Towing..

Just after a joke   about how sorry doesn’t do anything

I hope the writers can see the irony in that

(Utilize          It)

  Peace         -         Dick

  Ah

   Hey-

[Repeat generations/friends can be friends with older     members,      just      Weird,]         -        Any       ,Way-

  Aight

  Ni’     gh    t’

 Ah- did they skip over to it or they   going?

“exciting isn’t quite the word   I would use,”

Toxic,     authority assuming,     enabling,

Authority assume     is not ok  regardless of what generation you   are

[Dude’s going to be a Traitor,        Isn’t he?

  They focused on him

  Might be actually a good bit of tension    if he didn’t      (Former   Separatist)

Terri-fying

Yeah surrounded by a bunch of toxic boomers   who will   feel free.    To be as doubting       distrustful.    negative     and overall unhelpful

As you allow

And they feel like pushing the   boundary...

Mind

Or-     gana

Dick move

It’s her     personal opinion       -      and it ain’t   tox?

People can have   dislikes

Not like she called you an   Overinvolved boomer       —        or held you to any   accountability       (Yet)          ...    

 Who order-

[This is getting really     tox

and I don’t trust the   writers           ✖️ Just   putting      it     over        there         in       case      I need it           .....

 Hm

 You

 ..  [Grooming        isn’t cool

 Self deprecation       isn’t either]

  Aight

  Hm

 Also there’s a process you need to go to to speak?

Money doesn’t   matter -

Killing    -      and     hatred      but       the   pacifistic        bitch        vilified

*Spoken   in  complement

She kicked     ASS   last episode

*sorry   for the vulgarity       I’m excited      . .       Also,    so is this     Padme’s episode.

 Cause        Neat.

 Good

 But are votes   casted by     clapping?

(I’m not sure)

 Okay

  Whelp

That’s     either a bad guy       or damn good red   herring

I’m intrigued

Also, whatever happened to     Clovis?

Like,      he still a        senator?

He get   kicked?

Uhm

Dude,

 False   appreciation

Also yeah     what was with that dude       earlier?

[Uncle what’s his name apologize to him for Padme’s comment despite Uncle what’s his name being the one who made it, implying dude took a serious issue with it,]

Also,   Oo, is this working of the previous quote about the line between friends and foes being blurred.

              [I like                  consistency]

So it has to be one of those guys,

The ones in the   room with her,

I’m putting a guess on   Senator-

 The one uncle       what’s- his-name         apologized to

      That guy

[Or it could be that guy that]

No actually he’s probably   abstain        ed for that reason

Sorry      I’m getting ahead          -     But it does say     “Murder,”

   And        I      am    curious        .     Really   going   over       -         Also    why   is that guy   bowing?

[Tran-slation?]

Right        .        obvious     villain       .

 Also   light bullshit..

There’s no-   way guy could’ve made it over there

The thing is still in session

We saw him less than a    minute ago

 And she just came in directly

[He’d be         halfway down the hallway]

For likely scope

Yeah, this dude is totally a     Red     Herring       -        He’s    way    too    over     the     top       ...    I’m putting my bets      On that human Senator          Guy           .       CHILD SOLDIERS      ARE BAD!       [sorry I just   felt the need to say that,]

  Okay,    Uncle-what’s his name-

Other person

 That guy-

  Drink      -ing!

  Nice

  Vi-ctory

   Oh, this looks like a problem

    Child groomers          In-       corporate-

    Off

Second Red herring!

(It’s that guy   and I’m sticking with        it)

  Private

  Yeah,  like how did he even get into the room without a key card?

  I know Amidala’s a senator and      by that,               A public      servant,         But you figure if they’re bringing out the    alcohol, they’d shut the door

   -Declare      off hours

  -For the celeb     ration-

 Separatist      Con        Spiracy-

   She has a     point-

   You did a     hundred percent enable his behavior

    (No argument            there)

      Pro- separatist

Ah, uncle back stabber there would contradict you

   Not sure if you’re the same species

But,       you do know about his bullshit,

Don’t assume accountability       free snarking             Territory           (They’re all enablers so I’m not even going to bother with the math,      About who screwed up more,          All the   elders   here are held to the same standard,       About,

 Uncle Backstabber a little more

   *Since I know what he did,

Account

From the most bastard,       of the group,

Who’s the next Red herring?

It’s that dude     I swear      Soon

Yeah child soldiering is a bitch

As is enabling

But she has no idea what’s going to happen     being the past.

Dick,    whelp,

Poor       Frita       (I think)

He’s going       he’s going to get roped into this too     isn’t he?

      “ We you must be doing something right,”

Nah,  enabling abusers  never a good idea

   But then again there’s no rules for dealing with trauma individuals because they aren’t supposed to be any

   How long that takes and what it entails

   Is down to who ever is        asserting accountability     (Excluding      the actual accountability, cutting      Them off)

That’s unnegotiable

(And it can’t involve   death)

Too.     harsh-

No you haven’t-

Well, yeah

But that’s     accessory at best     ... Ono you’ve done a wonderful job

No he hasn’t

Don’t coddle   the abuser

 He’s screwed up pretty consistently

 Pretty sure       it’s more than five

And was leading to let the future get     hecked         ...

 Very       Likely

He wasn’t hurt

The other lady   spent a lot more time defending

She should get the ‘don’t listen to them’

If anything just    ‘reflect the bitch’          (Neutral)          Aight    

     Too          Late!

      Can someone stop      playing the sad music?

      This isn’t sad

     And you can’t make me       sympathize for the abuser

   (I- don’t trust this     writer)

    That Dude sus

    Aight

  Faker-

He’s dying you        dumb ass

(Having a      heart attack       probably

  All the stress            of denial)

   Whelp

Call!

 Please

 Whelp

 -Oh wait      bitch is dead?

Uhm.

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD  the WICKED WITCH IS DEAD!    

 (I know that seems really harsh-            But dude- deserved it

And I never have to deal with that character        anymore!

So,

 Al-      right       the      funeral;

 Um,

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD  the WICKED WITCH IS DEAD!

 (I’m sorry I really hated that      character-)

* In reality      the loss of life is a very serious thing and      I don’t mean to make light of it

 But no one is required      to feel sad about their abusers-         Nor toxic individuals        Nor anyone else        Yes the loss of life is a     serious thing           But it should not             And could not         control a person’s life

I’ve always played accountability    over death          Or death   penalty           ...

“...was is a flawed man,”

  He tried to sell someone into   slavery...

  The fact that Amidala was an adult           and could get out of the situation           Doesn’t forgive        how terrible that situation was.

    Un-healthy           And        Wrong

   “Own    mistakes”

 And he tried to guilt trip everyone       into giving him validation

    Specifically           Amidala

      Every        occasion

    [Also      flawed          Some          one        breaking            the           code           once             or           twice,           (Under            five)            Is        flawed,

       This         dude          tox,  

       He should’ve been sentenced     to      accountability along time ago

    For trying to make the world      a generally terrible place for someone

    Multiple times-

  That’s not okay

   [and he clearly         didn’t learn his lesson]

    [Note; whether a person “learned their lesson” or not,            Is irrelevant

   [They already    knew the rules before]

But he never compromised his principles-

    HaHAha,

    What?

That’s because   dude didn’t have any principles

He broke them long before,

Also why the frick does Master Yoda care?

Dude    was          a      politic,

 The     Fuck,

He engaging this propaganda?

Why?

Why does he care about any of this.

Why does   ANY     one

[Satine, alright, hermen got murdered and she might be looking for evidence on who-done-it   That’s fair

?

Oh says it’s an everyone event

That makes sense

Guessing the Jedi are required   to come or else the branded as that asshole

Fair

 Eyes

Aight

What-      ever-

   ?

Why the guard?

Like cultural customs

Aren’t honor guards          for veterans      (And possibly extremely         high positions,      Like         Chancellor?

As technical commander of the army?

Like,      Explain?

That guy-

 Sus

 Very     �� Sus-

   Pas-         sed

    I’d say      to find his killer

     But yeah I can’t really   blame anyone for not    caring that much     about that dude

   Specifically      Amidala

(Though     accountability law..

   D

   Frita is honestly my favorite        character

   I don’t know       why.

     Possibly his relation to the           chancellor and how      he still a good natured guy,

     Aight

     Yeah     he was a dick,

Hope those aren’t memories     [also        totally the        Kamooin               B-            Right?

                    [Like                         I’m totally still after                          Dude, ]

But she’s   the only one that     touched the bottle]

That we saw?

Dude did suggest it

      Still        heavily          sussing              him                .          No           Face               .              Also       is that his wife?

     (Don’t think it was         ever established)

     I-

    Mentor

     ?

   How old is this person?

I’m gonna assume     adult

 So.

He toxically asserted   authority over me.

Or wrong choice of words and they meant like     “best friend”

 Cause that’s kind of     tox,

Me?

  - -

  This is     getting       Hella          tox

    You’re       a      person

    Yeah you might miss him   and that’s totally fine

     But-

You’re still a person completely able to   self determine.

   ‘ take his place,’

   Oh no

   Oh no

   Shit

   Just what she needs         overinvolvement 

   Right

   Not        threatening at all    

    Oh         Red           .         We        never       see      them      enter            .         Right            .            Well this turned from a private party     to a    Conference

   I thought he was just calling    to offer condolences.

   Questions.

Oh,    Did you not tell the loud ones what happened to their loved one?

  (Like normally I’m all for no one should      witness anyone else’s death          Or that news be public

   But this is assumed authority.         And that stuff is pretty normal

     Regardless       of how terrible.       Senator Fa

This guy seems like a drip

[Guessing that’s the reason why       Amidala is going to end up taking charge,]

Because      the Chancellor     hired a sham detector    Whelp

   Dick way to put it

  True, the protocol for murder          isn’t cutting and clear

   Dragging random people into it, isn’t

   You see it          you’re        immediately accountable,

      (Only by view of the body,          Not by word of mouth)

Because this kind of approach is super          in-effective,

  Whelp        Great

  Also there were thousands of       senators in that building that could screw up the thing

Only five

(I’ll give the        murder        mystery            It’s             Dues,           And           let it          continue,             But       (im-probabilit-           ies is not a good thing)

        Might              Want                    To                  Avoid

(Also     if that’s the     qualification;       I’m sussing         Amidala,          Dude      was                 a           dick           to          her)

    THOUGH              I’M STILL-         SUSS      -ING           DUDE       IN           Blue?     dude with the    beard

   That      one.

   Build-ing    <—-    He          Sus

   Him

—-

 Ha!

Here

Hey   that was almost emotion,      Nice

(also, dang how frequent are   murders?

Him

<—-

  He          Sus

   He didn’t take a seat         like everyone else

   [Also, it was purple    Dude wearing purple     that’s who I’m talking about]

Also are you going to introduce him as the     detective ?

‘cause you’re kind of   screwing with these people

Not   telling them what’s going on

Answering in vague Snark

Him.    ...

For no reason

Considering he was an uncountable toxic frick who allowed it lots of people to get hurt-

  I’m       mad,

 A ight

Right..

 And

Okay, He’s got a point

Immediate accountability     is the case murder     for good reason

Surprised they didn’t start       this right after the     murder

When it happened

Dude- [i’m not going to criticize       the spatial awareness]

Him

<—-

 Right         there

  Murder

A good point since     they really haven’t explained anything?

   Okay,         Right

Or anyone     stealthy

  Though yeah I guess    politicians

  [just don’t like the        generalization]

   Someone good        With he rbs..

  Okay.

  Neat.

  Insult.

Poor.   Frita

  He didn’t deserve     this,

(Well yeah he’s an enabler,)

But       He’s the least toxic..

[Also poor Frita,       Always       getting sucked into these mysteries

   He’s the shaggy        of this damn group

   [Likes food          and hanging out with people,          Gets dragged into      bullshit,

 Rip

Insulting     the whole damn room             .....            This character is                 obnoxious

            But in a fun way

             The narr              -atives-            clearly having fun

Ono        yeah       he   was    an   open   dick

  [Seriously they’re treating him    like-]

  ?

 No it couldn’t possibly be because he was an       ex separatist,

Open book         Case,

Con-troversial

 Politicians      arguing over basic human decency

   And common sense

    ‘Do we really.. Ok        that’s enough politic jokes

   The movie started it         so I had to finish it.

  Now on with.

      Dude drunk

     Dick

  “ I’m        totally-”

 Um, this is     delicious corruption

How long until     Amidala figures what’s going on?

  Whelp

He just     left?

   He really is a       quack

    Did you find him         on       fakedetectives.com?

     Palpatine?

    Crud

    Okay,

    That guy,

    Target

   Good

  Aight

Also it’s that guy     Authority ass-     umer sus,

  No       No,

Good plan

Ono

  Good      plan

  Evil.

  Aight

    .

  Good

In-vestigation

   Yes-       Good

    Let’s           Do           It           ...

    It’s that guy

    Him

He     -a dick

Also not to claim authority over   him

Not, not to be     cu-     rious-    -

No-pe

Authority   figures     don’t 

 He was an ass

Also yeah just     put   all the possible suspects in the room      -         That       Guy

Uhm

Ty-pho

Agana!

  That       fricker

   Onu          looked         at him         before         his death                 -             He came back last       to the party-

       He was the first             to suggest opening the drinks             -              Also the thing with the detective       and him just trying to get over as quickly as possible

        He sus,  

Aight,   

Right,       -       Don’t - get stabbed

Um-

Aight

Wha-

 Ha, such a red         herring-

 Okay-

Oh, Red herring        Co-nference

  Didn’t notice the     snake lady          (Kamoin)     Empty     Chair       -        Also     they know each other?

  Good,        evil for them,

  Fair

 Aight

Also yeah the         boomers here didn’t do it       -         More     likely someone from the Present     Gen.. . 

Theory

That      Guy..

Guy’s like damn

Like just give her your time and your place and       your alibi.

Whelp,       Aight

So I’m pretty sure if I had paid attention to the     bottles,        That wouldn’t have   matched up       ...

Yeah he was a separatist

              DAMN

    Like I saw the hand on the dock            But I thought it was an assassin        or team up

                But  

                 DAMN

                               I feel                                   verified

              Until it played music                       victory music                         Over the arrest                       of a distressed                        and less toxic                            person

*While   painting      the      toxic     person           as a        saint

                  Which I cannot                          condone

         As such;

                  it earns my most                             regretful                              strike;

Official;

   For attempting to     excuse a toxic       person’s          actions

* I want to emphasize that this is not ok, a person does not get off for un- accountable actions, simply by apologizing, never mind the fact          - that it is an attempt    to guilt-trip       Invalidate          And      Gas-    light               The       Recipient,       But also should not apply to someone that has repeatedly attempt to Gaslight, guilt trip and sell a person into slavery;         (Crossing more than five accounts)

[never mind the selectivi       ty of what it is applied        “Ano” getting away         With slavery, be        -cause he        Was “So-      rry,” gun        held to      (-near)        his       Back      While      Lolo       doesn’t     just   mummer      sorry)

         That once you commit harm              against another person.. it can                not be taken back, the victim       owes you no sympathy, no    right to their emotions, and        certainly, no un      accountability-       Forgive      Ness-      From what you have done.

   You must live with what you have        commit

   Regard        Less

[peoplemask]

An Open Letter With Respect to Reviews Published on Rocket Stack Rank

By now, many have heard criticisms of Rocket Stack Rank’s reviews of stories containing non-binary and/or trans characters. Reviews that misgender characters in a story, that misgender authors of stories, that focus heavily on genitals or delegitimizing non-binary pronouns. On the site, RSR explains that its criticisms are limited to stories and publications, but that its negative reviews shouldn’t be considered criticism of an author. And yet we find it hard to understand how a criticism of a character’s identity, especially when shared by the author, should not be considered a criticism of the author, or any reader that would share that identity.

The reviewer, who is not trans and/or non-binary, makes judgments about the validity of pronouns and identities, and decides which author “makes good use of [transness]” and which authors do not. This is problematic and hurtful. This is a way of saying “you do not belong.” A way of saying “stories about you don’t belong.” When reviews specifically cite pronouns of characters as justifications for rating a story down, a line is crossed. A line where not only writers but readers may find their identity questioned, belittled, and willfully misunderstood. A line that RSR crosses often and with seeming impunity.

Things get even more uncomfortable when we look at the way that non-traditional narratives are treated by the site. Especially for styles that come from outside a Western/European/White American tradition, the complaint of “this is not really a story” rears its ugly head. “This is not a story” type of sentiment seems to be disproportionately applied to stories by authors of color and/or non-Western authors. RSR reviews of stories from authors of color and/or non-Western authors frequently use dismissive and outright offensive language, such as calling some of these stories “exotic” and similar. Here, like with stories by non-binary/trans authors, RSR signals to marginalized authors: “you do not belong.” To us, this dismissive approach shows a complete refusal to engage with texts on their terms – which, in effect, disproportionately negatively impacts writers coming from outside the traditional inroads into SFF.

RSR and its main reviewer, Greg Hullender, have gained a considerable influence in the field, with a Hugo nomination, a third-party link on the Hugo website, and now a place on the Locus jury. RSR has positioned itself as an authority on short fiction, an objective source of reviews with an emphasis on numbers and ratings to aid in the selection of stories for awards. The deeply ingrained biases of the reviews (pointed above), are especially problematic considering RSR’s growing influence. RSR and Greg Hullender’s approach once again seeks to reaffirm the institutional inequalities of short SFF by dismissing undesirable “outsiders.”

When confronted with his biases, Greg Hullender often refuses to acknowledge he has an issue, pointing out that he is a gay man who engaged in GLBT activism in the past, and thus cannot be transphobic.

Greg Hullender also uses his identity as a gay man and former activist to police and pass judgment on the kinds of sex characters can have in stories – and the judgments go beyond the stories reviewed, to what kind of sex people can have. Here again, Greg Hullender often insists on his views being generic and objective, judging acts outside of his preferences as disturbing, abusive, and deviant. These judgments often go hand in hand with other issues – such as an anti-trans and an anti-NB stance – in his reviews. Thus, reviewing JY Yang’s Tor.com novellas, Hullender equated sex with a nonbinary person with paedophilia.

We have repeatedly observed how RSR’s main reviewer, Greg Hullender, uses his identity as a gay man as a shield against legitimate criticisms. The assumption is that because the main reviewer is a gay man he has some sort of inability to be bigoted toward any other marginalized group or person. That this would excuse him calling stories with non-binary characters fads or arguing that singular they pronouns are somehow not correct unless they are tied to a specific genital state.

This Twitter thread by Bogi Takács contains a large number of screen-caps and commentary, including specific instances of the issues mentioned above: https://twitter.com/bogiperson/status/934609665966727168

We have been working to draw attention to this ongoing problem for almost as long as Rocket Stack Rank has operated – at first indirectly. But the amount of problematic reviews continues to grow just as RSR’s stature in the field continues to increase. The exclusionary reviews and their growing influence in the sphere of awards cast a long shadow in the field. It is worrying to see important institutions within SFF endorsing and promoting RSR over the objections and concerns of writers, readers, and other reviewers (including writers, readers and reviewers of color and trans writers, readers and reviewers).

We hope that our concern is acknowledged and that current promotion of problematic reviewing habits cease to be rewarded in SFF publishing.

Thank you for your time,

Brooke Bolander Indrapramit Das Ada Hoffmann Keffy R.M. Kehrli Rose Lemberg Sunny Moraine Suzanne Palmer Charles Payseur A. Merc Rustad K.M. Szpara Bogi Takács JY Yang

Note: The above signers collaborated in drafting the letter, additional people who wish to cosign have commented below.

Edited to add: Statement by Locus: https://twitter.com/locusmag/status/936291052100579334

An Open Letter With Respect to Reviews Published on Rocket Stack Rank was originally published on Keffy

[asplendidbeginning]

Concerning Mortis and the Symbology of the Force Part III — The Agenda of Higher Beings

April 4, 2015

Adjua Adama

When looking at the Priestesses and the Overlords of Mortis as one general amalgamation of a higher plane of existence beyond the tangible world of our main heroes and villains, it was seen in Part II that the beings of a higher power, serving as guides and instructors for the instruments of destiny in the real world, often play the role of the trickster as part of the standard hero’s peregrination — shaping and molding the actions of corporeal chess pieces through contrivance, surrealistic visions, trials, and suggestion.

No one exhibits those characteristics more than the Priestesses: the beings who christen Yoda with the knowledge of post-mortem omniscience and omnipresence. Perhaps intimating that Yoda couldn’t handle the additional understanding of the Chosen One’s inevitable destiny, destroying both the corruption within the Jedi and the Republic, before eliminating the Sith at the height of their power (metaphorically exhibited as Anakin’s taming both the Daughter’s Griffin and the Son’s Gargoyle toward the end of “The Overlords”), upon successful completion of a conspiratorial Priestess/Sith final exam, ‘Serenity Priestess’ plants a seed that draws Yoda toward a different Skywalker other than Anakin. As they exist without time or space, she allows Yoda to hear a baby’s prospective clamor, and echoes the great Jedi master’s notable final words: “There is another Skywalker.” Given the additional criteria used to convince her sisters of Yoda’s prerequisite qualifications for greater power — that, “he will teach one who is to save the galaxy from the great imbalance…,” the die is cast for Yoda’s return to extant-Phantom Menace apprehension concerning Anakin’s promise as a Jedi, and upon his inevitable fall into darkness (really a fulfillment of the first half of his destiny as the Chosen One), the simultaneous birth of Luke and Leia will trigger the memory of that moment ‘Serenity Priestess’ shared with him, and Yoda (with the assistance of Obi-Wan Kenobi), will continue the pursuit of the prophesy with renewed vigor amidst the despair surrounding the destruction of their once proud Order. But the great Jedi master, with a principled Obi-Wan at his side, isn’t privy to the prescience afforded the exalted beings of the Force: Anakin will be that phoenix who rises from the ashes, but he must first reawaken from his dark sleep via the trigger he created out of an act of rebellion against the very dogmatic doctrine the Force created him to destroy.

It was previously documented that trickster characters, particularly within African spiritual motifs, engage in “signifying” — essentially verbal play that cannot always be trusted, as the signifier often has a greater agenda that plays into their personal interests. As John Wideman (1988) noted within his review of Henry Louis Gates’ The Signifying Monkey, “…even the most literal utterance allows room for interpretation…” The Priestesses, as well as the Overlords, understand that Anakin’s destiny, “…lies along a different path…” than the Jedi hierarchy are willing to acknowledge or understand. They can be used, however, to protect and nurture the key to Anakin’s resurrection, and subsequent destruction of the Sith, via Luke — even as their understanding of Luke’s destiny is still mired by the very axiology the Force has deemed apocryphal. Though both Anakin and Yoda are exposed to various elements of their futures, only Yoda is permitted to return with that knowledge — select impressions of the impending destruction of the Jedi at the hands of the clone army, the rise of Darth Sidious, and the revelation that there is another Skywalker on the way. Permitted to keep a map of his future deeds would derail the Chosen One’s path — which could be used by Palpatine to outmaneuver even the Force itself. That Yoda is able to retain these elements leads to the skepticism exhibited on the gunship in Revenge of the Sith, when he says, “…a prophesy that misread could have been…,” to which Mace Windu nods in agreement. And if Anakin’s outward affection for Padme already gave him pause, this new revelation perhaps furnished an understanding that their relationship is stronger than previously thought, with this other Skywalker on the way. Why doesn’t he expose Anakin’s “violations” to the rest of the Order? Because he knows, through his visions on Dagobah, the Jedi will take a hard fall, and this “other Skywalker” might be the path to the Order surviving. The Priestesses perceive — had Yoda and Obi-Wan continued to believe Anakin was the Chosen One, they might falter when he betrayed them in the name of the Empire. After all, if your Messiah turned out to be the Devil, that might make you question your beliefs, and even your life’s work, leading you to simply give up and end it right there, perhaps even in suicide. However, if you believe the prophesy is valid, but you only misidentified the Messiah, you can still have hope that this period of emerging darkness is just a season to be endured, until light is restored at a future moment. Yoda and Obi-Wan turn to Luke and Leia as their new investments in a possible bright future, not realizing that Anakin is still in play for the Light Side.

The Key Element to Decoding Anakin’s Messianic Destiny

When The Phantom Menace debuted, perhaps the most striking element of Anakin Skywalker’s past was the revelation of his virgin birth: a deifying rather than humanizing trait. Though the Western world is familiar with the story of Jesus of Nazareth, the rest of the world is replete with mythological and religious tales that begin with a similar transformative figure, where a higher power acts as its father. Thousands of years before Christianity was codified, the people of the Nile told of Heru (or, what the Greeks would call “Horus”), the being who would destroy Set (the visage of darkness), also born of a virgin birth. Author Joseph Campbell (2008), in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, documents that earthly mythologies are replete with paragons that forever shape the world, but whose origins often are derived from a single woman impregnated by the cosmos (see “The Virgin Birth,” p. 255-69). In essence, whatever possesses the power to shape the world only exists in spirit at first, and can interact with the world by transforming himself through birth via the mother. “And she is virgin,” he writes, “because her spouse is the Invisible Unknown (p. 255)” — or the Force, as it’s called in our favorite fantasy world.

Campbell also corroborates that the sanctified universal mother often retains a transformative nature in the cycle of the hero, who makes an appearance to the world in many “guises.” She has to simultaneously act as the mother of life and death, and she brings both feast and famine, or disease. The virgin mother of Star Wars, Shmi Skywalker, appears to Anakin in a vision on Mortis as a transformative figure as well. Though there is a cryptic confirmation from the Father that this is a trick emanating from his perfidious Son, away from the celestial plains, Shmi does retain the dichotomy of one who brings life and death. In life, she serves as the medium used by the Force as the universal mother, affording it a manifestation of flesh and blood, rendering it the power to change the physical world. In death, she serves as the principle key to send Anakin toward his inevitable first metamorphosis —which will destroy the corruption within the Jedi Order, and by extension the Republic, abiding both to begin anew.

Contact Adjua at adjua_adama@coffeewithkenobi.com and on Twitter @Adjua_Adama.