#but i agree these two have so much in common narratively

[whitedemon-ladydeath]

sjm spends every single book having Nesta and Feyre find common ground only for Something to come up and have to start over from scratch in the next book. it's like she just cannot have these two girls have common ground and see each other as equals. she needs Nesta to grovel and beg for some kind of redemption for """failing feyre""" and then readers, when going to defend SJM or that Narrative goes "😠 Nesta even admitted to treating Feyre badly" fail to fucking notice the very clear bias or the fact that Rhys is routinely putting his ass in the middle of it, making it worse, and is ignoring his own wife's wishes

I HATE how SJM writes sibling relationships. I HATE how she made Rhys into a pinnacle of an "ideal man" who routinely ignores his wife or enacts various types of abuse across the entire series. I HATE how SJM point blank made thr Archeron Sisters Rhys' weapons. I HATE how Amren said that Rhys could use those girls to colonize the entirety of Prythian. I HATE how the narratives in this series are written in such a way were just,,, meant to agree with Feyre using Lucien as a buffer with Tamlin, Feyre dismantling an entire court and getting many people killed, Rhys and his bootlickers locking up Feyres sister bec she's "an embarrassment" and then Destroying her home, and like THERES SO MUCH MORE

she Does Not Write Nuance Well. She DOESN'T write in a way that allows for nuances and moral flexibility bec she made Rhys and the IC a pinnacle of Moral Authority

[madtomedgar]

something i think gets dropped a lot in fandom discussions is the category of stories that both operate within a particular moral framework and are uncomfortable with it. there’s probably a word for this and i’m not articulating this super well but.

i think modern western storytelling, particularly the kind of stories that attract fandom type interactions, either have a morality system that the narrative wholeheartedly agrees with and has set up as “good,” which is being challenged by an outside “evil” (think lotr) or the system is framed as immoral, and our heroes see through that and overthrow the system to establish a reign of “good,” (start wars, original flavor).

And there are other kinds of storytelling around systems of morality. in western lit/media, they usually belong to more serious, high-brow works that don’t work well with fandom. but the kind of framework i’m talking about is one that also shows up in antigone. in that, there is a set way that Creon has to act, as a good ruler. If he doesn’t act this way, he isn’t a good ruler. And there’s a set way that Antigone has to act to be a good sister. And those two goals are at deep odds, so you wind up with Creon doing the right thing but also doing something so deeply wrong, and Antigone doing the wrong thing to do what’s right. And there’s a read here that’s like. Creon was sticking too closely to the letter of the law and therefore couldn’t see what was really right, like Antigone did, and so is a tragic villain. But you can also read them as both being right, and being unable to resolve that.

And in discussions of mdzs/cql, I feel like I see a lot of either people deciding that society and its moral requirements are bad, and the protagonist who rebels against them is good, OR people upholding the societal moral requirements against the protagonist in a way even the story doesn’t. Because what Wei Wuxian does in leaving the Jiang sect and breaking his promise is wrong for the society of the story. But it’s also true that he’s doing the right thing by protecting the Wens, and the problems with his brother are that they can’t resolve the issue of them both being right in incompatible ways.

And like. Taking revenge for your family by killing the entire family of the people who wronged you is socially acceptable, but I don’t think you can say that the story is happy about it. Being a good and obedient child is a social moral requirement, and the story isn’t framing telling your parents who suck to go fuck themselves, or having them fucked to death, as good. Instead it’s wrestling with the question of what happens when your parents abuse that loyalty and affection, or don’t accept it? What the fuck are you supposed to do when you have to both can’t inter a traitor in the city but you have to bury your family honorably? And there isn’t a neat answer!

Like... Wei Wuxian does owe the Jiangs, and also the handling of that debt is disastrous and unfair to everyone. Jin Guangyao is being a very good son, and therefore a very bad man, until he becomes a terrible son and then a good man (as in once he’s out from under his father, he chooses to do things that enhance the common good for no benefit to himself, and puts a stop to the demonic cultivation experiments that used live people, and generally seems to perform the role of a wise and good leader. I’m not saying what he did to his father or the sex workers was good because it wasn’t, though it is fun narratively). Wen Ning is a traitor to the man who took him in and raised him and to his sect, and he’s also a member of that sect with a potential moral obligation to take revenge, and he did the right thing by helping the Jiangs out. But it was also very much the wrong thing.

And so much of this push and pull and discomfort with, but not rejection of, this moral system is bound up in conflicting moral obligations, to parents, to individuals, to sects, to leaders, and what happens when they conflict. But it’s important, I think, that it’s not actually a rejection of these obligations and their weight. Yeah.

[bellshazes]

been thinking a lot about people's varied reactions to the chaos & perceived inconsistencies around the rules of limited life and because i taught games professionally for a decade and have done a lot of reading on games academically, I have a few propositions for the fandom to consider.

proposition one: Your interpretation of gameplay events is not the same as a monolithic "the narrative" to which all players are equally subject.

Narrative is not what happened, but the interpretation and meaning attached to the events that occurred. Narrative is when we "give experience a form and a meaning." (Harris-Miller)

This construction of narrative - giving meaning to experiences - can occur in the way a video is cut an edited, as well as in the audience's interpretation after the video is released.

Social play is player interaction, both in the derived from the structure and rules of the game (being "It" in tag) as well as the social roles brought from outside the game. (1)

In transformative social play, players use the game context to transform social relationships.

Most players in the life game are more concerned with narrative as it relates to transformative social play - such as, what does this event mean for me, my alliances, my enemies, and the shifting of roles along that spectrum?

Narrative within the game is dynamic and always changing in response to ongoing events and shifting relationships. Viewers' narratives about the games are more static since they exist outside the game context and are not a part of ongoing social play.

Letting go of a single unified "narrative" lets us think about the differences, tensions, and resonances between players' in-game construction of narrative, the narrative constructed by the player's video edit, and the retrospective audience construction of narrative. (*)

proposition two: Fairness is decided by the players, not the rules.

Playing a game requires trust and safety with the other players. (DeKoven) Even in tic-tac-toe you have to trust that your opponent will take reasonable amounts of time per turn before you sit down to play.

We can distinguish between ideal rules (rules as writ, such as a physical rulebook) and the real rules (the general consensus on what playing the game should look like). (2)

Real rules can include how sportsmanlike behavior is defined, and when "breaking" a rule doesn't count; a common example is forgiving a player who genuinely made a mistake on accident and did not intend to "break" the rules.

The real rules are what actually matter in developed gameplay, and they can be negotiated and constructed inside the game as new events, situations, and dynamics occur. (3)

Brushing past Scar's "illegal" kill on greens is not him getting away with breaking the rules, it's the group coming to a consensus on the real rules of the game. Cleo asking Impulse if her kill on him can count and him finally agreeing is not the breaking of (ideal) rules so much as it is defining the real rules.

proposition: Players' own individual motivations and definitions of sportsmanship or interesting play inform their contribution to the general consensus on real rules and leading them to play "imperfectly" in favor of having more fun or staying true to something.

Purely optimal play is boring to the players and viewers, and taken to an extreme allowed by the ideal rules, would violate the real rules implicitly agreed to by the players.

"Optimal" gameplay in the life series could look like hiding in a hole underground for the entire game if the end goal is to survive the longest, but that would make a boring video and would likely be considered supremely unsportsmanlike by other players and their audiences.

Playing perfectly optimally is one motive to play a game, but is basically never the sole motivator if it's one at all.

Even if everyone in the life series has a goal to "keep playing the game as long as possible," that could mean being focused on winning, or being focused on making allies or not making enemies, or it could compel you to give up your life for someone else who's running out of time because to you to play the game is to play together. (4)

Scar is a perfect example of someone who consistently chooses "non-optimal" goals such as always having the enchanter and goes to great and stupid lengths to achieve it even if it means sacrificing winning.

This "non-optimal" play provides something for other players to play off of and react to, often leading to transformative social play, significantly meaningful narrative, or interesting negotiations of real rules. (5)

synthesis: The most interesting narratives are born out of situations where players negotiate the real rules, not ones where the (ideal) rules are broken.

The life series is inherently highly experimental - even as more seasons build on the experiences of prior ones, the constant addition of new mechanics mean the game is more or less always being playtested rather than simply played.

The "rule" against carrying Third Life into Last Life failed because it is basically impossible to eliminate the out-of-game contributions to social play, especially in a social deduction game where knowledge of other players' habits and behaviors is useful metagame (6) currency that can't be un-learned.

Some of the series' most iconic narrative moments - the end of 3L or DL, he loves me, etc. are born out of the tension between ideal and real rules, where players are forced to take a stand or advocate for something opposed to the "ideal" rules such as allying with reds, sticking with your soulmate, or that there can only be one winner. (7)

I'm offering the above as a way of showing that I think these imperfections and changes between seasons are actually the coolest thing about them and have the potential for transformative fan works in addition to transformative play.

if limited life's copious tnt minecarts via skynet and highly-manual, inconsisent giving and taking of time for kills which may or may not be deserved according to strict interpretations of the rules as stated aren't to your taste, that's just how it is sometimes! It's understandable to not enjoy ideal rules that are loosely defined or interpreted or are imperfectly implemented from a mechanics perspective, but understanding that the players of the actual game did agree and consent and get to negotiate the consequences and meaning of these imperfections is not some unfortunate side-effect but in fact an important part of any gameplay.

The various types of narratives and the various motives for playing mean there can't be a single unified narrative for all players - but thinking about these things in terms of tensions and synergies opens doors for talking about the many narratives and the relationships between them. you can hold multiple seemingly-conflicting narratives as a viewer and put them in dialogue and produce new meaningful narratives in their contradictions or overlap! go forth and embrace the chaos and tension between the chains of context that produce meaning and the freedom to look at that complex web and derive fuller meanings from it!

because this post isn't long enough, more citations and examples from the series below the cut:

Some footnotes:

(1) Social roles within the game are more artificial than the ones that exist outside of it. That doesn't make them less meaningful, but when we consider the consequences of breaking a social role defined by the game compared to a real-world breaking of a promise or law, it's hard to forget the artificiality of the game. The consequences are relatively minor; the morality of betrayal, for instance, during a game can be acceptable because of that artificiality where it would be reprehensible in real life.

(2) A few different ways to think about game rules that are not mutually exclusive but complementary to each other:

Three layers of game rules: the underlying constituative rules of a game, the operational rules that directly guide player action, and the implicit rules of proper game behavior, such as etiquette.

Piaget's developmental stages from the Moral Development of Children are useful background here: the first stage is loose play without rules, second is strict adherence to ideal rules, and the final adult-leaning stage is the understanding that the real rules are what matter. You could call putting ideal rules over the real ones juvenile.

"Ideal rules refer to the "official" regulations of a game, the rules written in a player's guide to Zelda or printed on the inside cover of a game of Candyland. Real rules, on the other hand, are the codes and conventions held by a play community. Real rules are a consensus of how the game ought to be played." (Rules of Play)

(3) "It is not that the basic rules of the game undergo a radical change; rather, they are experienced within a social context that decreases their value in favor of a socially-biased ruleset over which players have more control."

(4) I'm thinking of Bdubs in Limited Life session 7 here, since he gives time and stays alive, but if you take this concept a little further and more broadly you just get players like Skizz.

(5) Metagaming, defined broadly for my purposes as the larger social context of the game and not just the pejorative, could be its own too-long post, but I think it's worth mentioning as an avenue for thinking about the complex dynamics of the life series as social play. For example, Etho consistently is thinking from a metagame perspective, from stalling by accusing Cleo of metagaming or remarking that Scar's lost the dramatic moment so he can't attack now in Last Life, or threatening to break roleplay in Limited Life when he's mad at Scar.

(6) From Rules of Play: "Sutton-Smith's model for player roles includes an actor, a counteractor, and an overall "motive" or format for play. For example, if the motive is capture, the actor's role is to take, while the role of the counteractor is to avoid being taken. [...] In Sutton-Smith's model, the roles of actor and counteractor are both equally important in constructing the experience of play." I don't think this model is sufficient on its own, but it's a worthwhile point that conflict is part of the game and is in fact desirable within certain bounds.

(7) Scott in LL is really interesting narratively because his motivation is at odds with what the game asks him to do: he is extremely true to his word and chooses to take the penalty of being knocked down to red rather than trying to kill someone and making an enemy of them and/or failing and dying anyway. He's not breaking any rules, but his choosing to experience consequences because of his own motivation and social relationships is compelling. It pays off when he wins, and it pays off again when Cleo can't bear to kill him in DL - the metagame element of past social play relationships and player knowledge of other players contributing to the current dynamics of social play.

ETA: An important point I also wanted to make but didn't have space for up top is that Jimmy being a "canary in a coal mine" as a result of always dying first is not some immutable truth about fate that actually influences his games, but if you can accept that it's not actually fated then you can start to think about and react to the way that the in-game players construct narratives in response to the actual events of him always permadying first. Joel's futile attempts to prevent this are a product of previous seasons' social play, the transformative current social dynamics, and his own player narrative (again, narrative as meaning giving form to experiences).

Also, I strongly disliked DL's premise and thought the best parts were the chosen soulmates precisely because I think predestination is best left to Calvinists and choice, especially in opposition to prescribed rules or narratives, is the most interesting thing in the world. Of course Etho and Bdubs in Last Life is what hooked me and I am also smug that the players tend to refer to the series as "last life" even if 3L came first and it's been two whole seasons since then.

(*) On meanings:

I think that meaning is necessarily the complex web of relationships between any given things, and there is no objective meaning to anything. Words and events have no meanings outside of our interpretations of and dialogue about them - this is not nihilism, but a beautiful gift of communicating with other people. A real deep dive into semiotics is beyond the scope of this post and also my own abilities, but it informs this view. I don't think you have to read academically to know it; you can find the proof in arguments about whether a pop tart is ravioli. A stupid argument, but one that is negotiating the boundaries of words' meanings by drawing on the words' relationships to other words and the things those words represent. It's the act of making meaning, not uncovering it. So too is watching the life series and arguing about or making arguments for a certain narrative angle or emphasizing a detail etc. - I just think it's a loss not to celebrate the complex web that tugs in many different directions with many different motives. It's less simple, but much richer.

[bunnakit]

ok im going to try to articulate my thoughts on why i'm, personally, not bothered with the writing and what we've seen of the backstory in The Sign.

would i like to see more of their past? absolutely, however, with the limitations of episode count, the budget for special effects, etc. i totally understand the limited view we're getting and personally i do think they give us everything we need to know.

based on the amount of parallels we're seeing between this life and their first life we can pretty safely use current day phaya and tharn as a cipher to unlock their backstory to their previous life.

we see wansarut bold and unapologetic in the face of sakuna? is that his name in the book? remains unclear to me but sure. garuda!phaya. we see garuda!phaya push her boundaries and push to get closer to her despite her protests. this is a direct correlation to present day tharn and phaya and the dance they've done with their relationship. with this in mind we can pretty much assume their relationship formed similarly, through a back and forth, clash of personalities, meeting on common ground, and finally wansarut's walls coming down to let sakuna in where he then simply adores her in the same manner phaya adores tharn.

again, i would love to see that journey, but i'm okay not seeing it when i use the context clues given by the rest of the narrative to fill in those gaps. i personally find it fun to imagine what may have been different, what may have been the same, etc. i think it gives fanfic authors and creative types the opportunity to play with the characters and connect to them in their own ways. i don't always think we need to know every tiny detail of the characters we love as this allows us to see more of ourselves in them.

as for the way modern day phaya and tharn's relationship has been written i also haven't been upset with that either. there's a certain magnetism we've seen between them that draws them together in the way tharn instinctively leans into phaya immediately in episode 1, the way he wants so very badly to kiss phaya in episode 2, etc. i think it's been a beautiful waltz between them, a careful give and take, you step back and i step forward until our steps reduce and we meet in the middle.

there is a point to be made for how quickly things progressed after the kiss but these are two people whose instincts and bodies have been calling to each other on a soul deep level and i don't think it's entirely out of the realm of possibility to say that perhaps in that moment they became wansarut and sakuna again, they had the opportunity to greet each other again and say 'i've missed you.'

i think you can gain a lot from The Sign by looking at it through a romantic lens rather than something purely analytical, but that could just be me and my romantic whimsy.

as for everything about their karma, i'm simply not educated on that aspect of things enough and i'm not really worrying about it. i'm just kind of viewing it as some kind of misfortune on both of them for the perceived slight against chalothorn and rolling with it.

all this to say everyone's thoughts are completely valid. i've really enjoyed seeing the differing thoughts and gaining a different perspective from my own. i think the one thing we can all agree on is that these two deserve to be happy and be at peace and i hope we get to see that.

[piosplayhouse]

Hi! I came across a post complaining about the guy yuri poll and discourse aside, I vaguely remember you made a post about what is yaoi and what is yuri? I dunno if I dreamed this post up, but I've scrolled and scrolled and I can't find it. So, I wanted to ask (if you don't mind answering >.<), what is yaoi/yuri? (beyond the basic definitions) What counts as guy yuri and girl yaoi?

Uwaa ok so I will say Im planning to actually write a paper on this but I haven't done much research yet so ask in a few months and you'll hopefully have a better answer with cited sources. But here is a bit of what I'm conceptualizing at this point (corrections and additions very welcome!)

What set me down this path really was of course the fantastic Yaoizine hosted by tshirt3000, which includes a rather poignant author's note about broadening the definition of yaoi in public to the abstraction. Indeed, the actual origin of the term "yaoi" is an acronym for "yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi" (plotless, climaxless, meaningless) from 70s doujinshi spheres wherein it was used as a somewhat self-degrading term to define a specific type of porn-without-plot self-indulgent indie fancomic. These were of course, mostly of the male-male variety. However, as the Yaoizine makes clear, there's not really an inherent gendering within the word in any sense but genre expectation-wise. This becomes particularly salient in the case of perhaps one of the most famous wlw romances out there, Revolutionary Girl Utena. Tshirt cites an interview with the creator of the anime, Ikuhara Kunihiko, where he refers to the relationship between the two main female characters (among other things) as yaoi, recontextualizing the term from merely a mlm genre into a statement on the dynamics of power and consumption as they relate to gender-- an act of sexual passion paired with a reversal of societal norms = yaoi in this case, which is why utenanthy fits perfectly within the term.

Conversely, yuri (lily) is a bit more difficult to analyze from a gender-neutral perspective as it originated not as a counterpart to yaoi, but instead as a counterpart to bara (rose, a term used to refer to erotic gay male content) used when lesbians would write in to gay magazines trying to hook up and whatnot. However, it's pretty agreed upon that the genre grew out of Class S literature, a type of literature based on girls, often senpai and kouhai, going to an all-girls school together and experiencing a connection that straddles the thin line between romance and homosociality. Homosociality like this among women has historically been and to this day remains somewhat under the radar and perceived as a "phase" or an amateur attempt at romance before a woman eventually marries a man. This is where we see significant overlap between pre/early modern Japanese male homosexual literature and lesbian literature, where homosexuality is seen as a youthful phase that will inevitably be grown out of (as in the case with the chigo system, LUG (lesbian before graduation), etc). Essentially, it was very common for the characters of early modern queer literature (mostly written by queer authors btw) to have brief and passionate schoolyard flings before graduating onto "normal" sexuality. Of course, these narratives fell out of style and are considered dead today, but their remnants can still be seen in the subsequent shojo and modern gl manga boom. The yuri that grew from this in the beginning was usually explicitly erotic, but still somewhat held onto the predominant themes of schoolgirl innocence and youthful beauty. Over time, meanings and terminology shifted, and the "yuri" we use today is more interchangeable with "gl", meaning it's not so much of an indicator of explicit content as "yaoi" is. However, I would still argue that one of the largest indicators of a story's "yuri factor" (if you could say that) is its ties to the establishing homosociality progressed into homoromantic relationship genre expectation. Of course, there are many wlw stories that subvert this, (as there are many mlm stories that subvert the yaoi or even bl template) but to me, if you were to compare yaoi and yuri's theming, yaoi's focus tends to skew more towards the intimacy in explicit eroticism, while yuri looks more into the implicit eroticism in intimacy. If that makes sense.

Of course, when looking into "boy yuri" there's also a transfem-coding factor to consider, which I think is what the majority of people have in mind when they refer to a couple as "boy yuri". Historically, there is massive precedent for feminization between male queer couples in historical Japanese literature, as well as in early modern relatives of bl, mainly Inagaki Taruho's work, so it would be somewhat disingenuous to say feminization is a purely modern, female-created phenomenon. But anyway, those are my (somewhat messy and likely inaccurate) thoughts so far, let me know what you all think. Have a happy yaoimas and merry new yuri, as they say.

[juliaprecourt]

Perfect Blue, Black Swan, and Birdman

It is common knowledge that Perfect Blue and Black Swan have cinematic and thematic similarities. I'd like to argue Birdman (2014) shares just as much with these other two films. Outlined below are some of the most notable commonalities. 

The Art Imitates Their Real Life: 

This is the major narrative device shared by all three films. The protagonists are all artists playing a role in a performance; Mima: a TV actor, Nina: a ballerina, and Riggan: a thespian. They are unaware of how closely the plight of their characters mirrors their own struggles. While pushing themselves to perform better, the line between their reality and the story they are performing starts to blur.

-Perfect Blue: 

The Reality: 

Mima is trying to make the leap from pop idol to actor. She has a “bit part” at first in the TV show Double Bind, but her manager Mr. Tadokoro campaigns for her to have more screen time. The producers agree, but it involves taking on a role that exploits her sexually. Mima's conflict with her old self and new self tear her apart. Those working on the show around her start getting murdered. 

Notable moment: This scene especially highlights the overlap:

Mima is sitting in a chair with the doctor, it appears they are shooting a scene in Double Bind.

Doctor: Can you tell me your name?

Mima: Me? I'm Mima Kirigoe.

Doctor: Okay. And what do you do?

Mima: I'm a pop idol... no, an actress.

Doctor: That must be hard work.

Mima: It's hard, but it's what I chose to do.

We pull back to see detectives watching through a double-sided mirror. 

Detective: She thinks she's a new young actress named Mima Kirigoe. 

The doctor comes out and joins the detectives.

Doctor: Dissociative Identity Disorder. In other words, "multiple personality syndrome." All those crimes took place when she was some other persona. 

Detective: So where's the persona of the original Yoko?

Doctor: Yoko Takakura, the original persona.....is nothing more than a character in a drama for her. Being a "normal" girl... how she was raped in a strip club. Everything happened as part of her drama series. By doing so, she salvaged her heart.

Mima presses her face into the mirror. 

Mima: That's right. I'm an actress.

Director: Cut!

The footage rewinds. Mima is sitting in a chair with the doctor, it appears they are shooting a scene in Double Bind.

Doctor: Can you tell me your name?

Mima: Me? I'm Rika Takakura.

The doctor comes out and joins the detectives.

Doctor: The original persona, Yoko Takakura, no longer exists. By killing, and later becoming, her sister the top model, she salvaged her heart.

Mima presses her face into the mirror. 

Mima: That's right. I'm a model.

-Black Swan: 

The Story:

Thomas: We all know the story: virginal girl, pure and sweet, trapped in the body of a swan (Odette). She desires freedom, but only true love can break the spell. Her wish is granted in the form of a prince (Sigfried). But before he can declare his love, her lustful twin, the Black Swan (Odile) tricks and seduces him. Devastated, the White Swan leaps off a cliff, killing herself. But, in death, finds freedom.” 

The Reality: Nina is auditioning for the lead role in Swan Lake, a dual performance as White Swan and Black Swan. In an out-of-character moment, she wins over the director Thomas, and lands the role. A fellow ballerina, Lily, visually similar but a dancer in every way Nina is not, catches the eye of Thomas and to a lesser extent, the man playing the actual prince. Nina isn’t interested in the prince, but it’s still a blow to her ego. At the end of opening night she likely dies of a self-inflicted wound. 

Notable moments: 

1) In the ballet (but not featured in the film’s adaptation), there is a ball for the prince with all the eligible bachelorettes in the kingdom. At this point, the prince has already met Odette at the magic lake, but before she can arrive, Rothbart's (Evil Sorcerer, the reason Odette is a swan) daughter Odile appears disguised as Odette and tricks him into falling in love with her. 

In the film, this is recreated by Lily stepping in for Nina when she oversleeps one morning. She plays Nina’s role beautifully, and Thomas finds himself moved by her performance. When Nina arrives and takes back performing her role, she sees Thomas’s eyes stray from watching her to look at Lily. 

2) Thomas shouts this to Nina as she rehearses the finale: 

Thomas: The Final Act. Your Final Dance. You’ve tasted your dream. Touched it. Only to have it crushed. Your heart is broken, wounded. Your lifeforce fading. The blood drips. The Black Swan has stolen your love. There's only one way to end the pain. You're not at all fearful. Filled with acceptance. You look down at Rothbart, and then at the Prince, and, yes, up at the audience...And jump!” 

This is foreshadowing the finale of the ballet and the events of the film. Nina, in full delusion, thinks she’s tussled with and killed Lily in her dressing room, but has actually stabbed herself with glass. With the shard deep in her own belly, Nina performs the finale, gracefully gesturing to her prince, Rothbart, and her mother, every line Thomas shouted to her all the more true. Then she jumps.

-Birdman

The Reality: Riggan confuses adoration with love, but in many ways so do his fellow actors, all craving a similar validation through acting. Off the stage, their lives are messy, especially their romantic ones. Most off-stage conversations are often philosophical ones. 

Riggan's is the least obvious because the source material is lesser known and less developed to the audience, but the story he's performing as a whole doesn't matter so much. Mike even comments in a fit during their first preview about how Riggan's adapted the work. (Riggan is the writer, producer, and star) 

Mike: This is Carver, man! The guy lost a piece of liver every time he wrote a page! If I’m supposed to drink gin then bring me fuckin gin! I mean, you fucked the time period! You took all the good lines for yourself!"

The scenes chosen for us to see demonstrate the clear overlap between “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and Riggan's life.

Notable examples:

1) Riggan’s girlfriend and fellow performer Laura’s character has a monologue in the play:

Laura: In the days before Nick’s depression really started to eat away at him, he had no idea I was pregnant. And I never intended on telling him. I guess we make choices in life, and we choose to live with them. Or not. I didn’t want that baby... Not because I didn’t love Nick. And not because I didn’t love the-- The idea of it. But because I just wasn’t ready to love myself.

Before we see her perform this the first time, Laura tells Riggan she might be pregnant. The second time is after she confirms she is not. Laura wants a baby, but based on Riggan’s reaction he isn’t into it. 

2) Riggan (as Ed) barges in on Lesley (as Terri) and Mike (as Mel) in a hotel room. Terri left Ed for Mel and Ed has hunted them down to confront his ex.

Riggan: What's wrong with me? Why do I end up having to beg people to love me? 

Lesley: Ed. Eddie. Please... Give me the gun. Just look at me. I was drowning. I was not capable of-- You deserve to be loved. You do. 

Riggan: I just wanted to be what you wanted. Now I spend every fucking minute praying to be someone else. Someone I'm not. Anyone…

This scene from the play is portrayed as the finale, and we see it performed three times. Riggan is desperate in his quest for love and validation, unaware that he is searching for it in the wrong places, like chasing after an old lover. It's relevant that Mike is his ex's new lover (in the play). Riggan is envious of him, his acting ability, and the respect and notoriety he has in the industry. Also, how he can quickly connect with his daughter (who Riggan is somewhat estranged from).

In the play, Ed at first wants to kill his wife's lover Mel, and maybe his ex-wife, but in the end he turns the gun on himself. On opening night Riggan uses a real gun and shoots himself in the head.

The Shadow Self:

-Perfect Blue:  A pop Idol was something Mima strived to be, but her group CHAM is stagnant. Mima, with the encouragement of one of her managers, decides to change careers to be an actress. It’s unclear how much of it was Mima’s idea, but she commits. Mima privately struggles through this change, and the chorus of upset fans and doubtful industry folks don't help. This triggers Mima’s "old self” AKA "Pop Idol Mima" to start appearing, often during moments when Mima struggles with the sexual aspects of her new career. Pop Idol Mima is forever in her frilly pink get-up from the opening number of the film, frozen in time, perfect and pure. Pop Idol Mima resists and criticizes Mimi’s changes. 

It isn’t revealed until the end of the film that Mima’s “shadow” is one of her agents, Rumi. This is in regards to the “Mima” that is communicating to her stalker and controlling the content of the website “Mima’s room.” Together they post intimate details and thoughts from “Mima” herself. The apparition of Pop Idol Mima she sees following her is only Rumi some of the time and mostly is Mima hallucinating in moments of emotional distress.

-Black Swan: It’s not a coincidence that Nina, dressed in pastels and a white feathery scarf, spies a woman on the train who looks just like her, but in black, on her way to the first day of the new ballet season. We are actually seeing Lily (Mia Kunis, a fellow dancer) for the first time on the train, but this is also the moment when Nina sees her first glimpse of "Black Swan Nina", the part of herself that she is not in touch with.  

Nina is challenged to find her inner black swan, because as the lead she must play both the white and black swan characters. As she pushes herself, she sees Black Swan Nina inflicting self-harm, on the faces of other dancers or Lily. The lines between Lily and Black Swan Nina are often blurred, but there is doubt as to whether she's even seeing Lily during Black Swan Nina moments.

 -Birdman: Right away we hear the gravelly voice of Birdman talking to Riggan, but we don’t know who it is yet. Birdman is the superhero character he is most famous for playing. Birdman berates him over his choice to leave the role behind throughout the film, enticing him to get some plastic surgery, work out, and get back into the suit to start making real money again. Birdman openly acknowledges that he is a voice in Riggan’s head, only physically appearing twice in the movie in moments where Riggan is most in his delusions and imagining he can fly.

The Rival / The Double: 

-Perfect Blue: Mima’s rival is mostly her shadow self, Pop Idol Mima. In the acting world, she has no one she is directly competing with. Her former bandmates are doing better since Mima left, and that wounds her, but she is trying to leave that life behind. As mentioned, Pop Idol Mima is sometimes Rumi, who is competing with Mima. Rumi is envious Mima got more famous than she ever did as a pop idol, and links Mima's success with her own, so when Mima decides to leave being a pop idol, Rumi takes it as a very personal betrayal. 

-Black Swan: It’s a new season and Lily, a dancer in the ballet who possesses similar physical attributes to Nina but embodies the effortless freedom Nina lacks, joins the troop. Nina has struggled for everything she has achieved. We see how regimented her life is, how micro-managed her eating is, and the physical toll ballet takes on her body. Whereas Lily comes in late and doesn’t need to warm up, even after a night of partying. She climbs up the ranks quickly with her magnetic ease. 

Lily becomes all the more a threat when she is made Nina’s understudy. When Nina is late, she steps in and performs both parts in a way Nina could only dream of. Lily catches the eye of the director Thomas and the man playing the part of the Swan prince. Nina is more upset about Thomas, but she is frustrated because she has no chemistry with her prince whereas Lily does. 

-Birdman: After Riggan’s co-star gets hit in the head with a stage light (maybe on purpose), Mike, (Edward Norton) is brought onto the project, injecting excitement into the crew and prospective audience. Mike is renowned in the business for eating, sleeping, and breathing “the stage.” Life is a stage to Mike, and he may just be full of shit, but he is what Riggan wants to be seen as. 

Mike gets more interested in the project and even helps Riggan punch up the script, but it quickly becomes clear Mike is in it for himself. In the first preview Mike throws a drunken tantrum when Riggan takes away his real booze on stage. During the next performance Mike tries to have actual sex on stage with his girlfriend and has a very real boner for all to see in the last scene. He even steals Riggan's tale of why he's doing this play (a childhood encounter with Carver) and tells it in an interview.

The Antagonist: 

Who is pushing our protagonist, and who doubts them? 

-Perfect Blue: Mr. Mi-Mania is Mima’s biggest fan. When Mima makes the career change, he does not accept it and is encouraged by the “true Mima”(Pop Idol Mima) to save her from the industry folks pushing her on the new career path and tarnishing her image. He does this by murdering some of the people working around Mima.

-Black Swan: Thomas, the director, would have chosen Nina to be the star if she was only playing the white swan. Nina does sway Thomas to give her the role, but he relentlessly pushes Nina on and off the stage to give him the unrestrained performance he wants for the black swan. 

-Birdman: The critic Tabitha Dickinson is the word in theater, with her opinion making or breaking a play. She loathes Riggan for thinking he can just waltz onto Broadway from playing a superhero in order to write, produce, and star in his own production. She vows to write a bad review regardless of what she sees opening night. 

The Old You: 

Perfect Blue and Birdman are more obviously similar because their “old self” was a very different public persona. Mima was a pop idol, and Riggan was a blockbuster superhero. They were so well known for these roles and the image associated with them that they struggled for their professional peers and fans to see them in a more serious light. 

Nina is staying within her profession, but she is trying to make the move from being a girl in the chorus to playing the lead. And this year the lead ballerina must play two characters who are in stark contrast with each other. Nina is perfect for the innocent White Swan, but she must also embody the seductive Black Swan. Her colleagues are doubtful she can play the Black Swan, a temptress who steals the prince away. Her mother also wants to keep her in "White Swan Mode" as a completely codependent child, lamenting "What happened to my sweet girl?" at one point as Nina begins to rebel, exploring independence and sexuality.

-Perfect Blue: Pop Idol to actress.

-Black Swan: Chorus to star / White Swan to Black Swan. 

-Birdman: Action movie star to stage actor.

The Death Bow:

-Perfect Blue: Rumi, in full Pop Idol Mima delusion, hunts Mima down to kill her because there can only be one "Mima." After a brutal struggle in an alley, Rumi is stabbed in the stomach by a glass shard while retrieving her wig. Rumi then staggers into the streets and puts her wig back on. An oncoming truck's lights deceive Rumi into thinking she's in the spotlight with all her fans cheering. Envisioning herself as Mima, she joyfully soaks it in, before the real Mima pushes her out of the way to safety. 

-Black Swan: Opening night, Nina performs the finale perfectly, but we see in the climactic moment before she dives off stage that the wound she inflicted on herself is very real and all the more fatal because of her strenuous final performance. After she dives onto the mattress everyone rushes to her side to congratulate her. The crowd cheers, and her colleagues come to congratulate her. They notice her injury and are distressed. Nina doesn’t care, she looks up into the stage lights, blissed out, everything goes white. Perhaps she is starting to pass out or die. The cheering continues.

-Birdman: Riggan’s character Ed is in utter despair after breaking into his ex-wife's hotel room and finding her with another man. She says she doesn't love him anymore. Throughout rehearsals, Mike has pressed Riggan for realness, complaining about everything from the booze to the gun on the set being fake. On opening night Riggan has a real gun. Ed is supposed to turn the gun on himself, but Riggan hasn’t made up his mind on who to shoot yet. He feints shooting Mike, then the audience, but he settles on himself. The audience at first is blown away by his performance, giving him a standing ovation only to realize it's very real.       

Mortal Wound:

All three protagonists are severely wounded. Nina and Riggan's "mortal wound" leads to their “death bow”, but in Perfect Blue it is Mima's “double/shadow-self” manager Rumi who is deluded in that final moment. 

-Perfect Blue: Rumi tries to kill Mima, and stabs her in the side with an umbrella. Mima is only saved after tearing off Rumi's wig. Distressed, Rumi bends over broken glass to retrieve it, stabbing herself in the stomach. 

-Black Swan: Nina tussles with Lily in her dressing room, thinking Lily is trying to take over the lead role. They shatter a mirror, and Nina stabs Lily in the guts with a big shard. However, it was all a hallucination: Nina stabbed herself. The show must go on, so Nina finishes the performance brilliantly. We don't know what happens to Nina afterward.

-Birdman: Riggan is supposed to pretend to shoot himself in the play, but on opening night he intentionally uses a real gun. This doesn't kill him, but in the hospital Riggan likely commits suicide by jumping out a window.

Hollowness Of Fame:

-Perfect Blue: The world of pop idols was just as critical of a woman's appearance and behavior as it is for actresses. The constant feedback from the public's expectations of who she is and should be almost causes Mima to completely lose her sense of self.

-Black Swan: All the girls in the troop want to be the prima ballerina and once Nina has this part she sees the dark and fleeting side of this coveted role through the character Beth. The audience wants someone new and fresh and when they are tired of you or you're considered too old, you are quickly cast aside.

-Birdman: Riggan is desperate for public recognition. How he wants to receive it has changed. It used to be through his blockbuster movies, but now he wants to be seen as a stage actor. He values fame over his relationships. In a scene where his ex-wife comes to talk to him about their daughter, Riggan gets sidetracked telling this story: RIGGAN: The last time I flew here from LA, George Clooney was sitting two seats in front of me. With those cufflinks, and that... chin. We ended up flying through this really bad storm. The plane started to rattle and shake, and everyone on board was crying... and praying. And I just sat there-- Sat there thinking that when Sam opened that paper it was going to be Clooney's face on the front page. Not mine.

What Do You Really Want?: 

The three protagonists are trying to achieve "greatness" in their career field, but what deeper need is this success trying to fill? What does the character actually want? 

-Perfect Blue:  Mima wants to find herself. 

Mima doesn't start the film wanting this, but when she starts to lose her identity she realizes how important it is to her. The finale scene of the movie catches up with Mima sometime in the future. Her hair is longer and her clothes more fashionable and mature. She has just finished visiting Rumi, who rarely returns to that personality. Two nurses whisper that the person they see looks like the actress Mima Kirigoe, but that she has to be a look-a-like. Mima gets into her car, looks into the mirror, sees her reflection, and to the audience says, "No, I'm real!"

This is a hard-earned moment because Mima lost her sense of self. It was only until her final struggle with Rumi that she realized:

Rumi: We don't need two Mimas!

Mima: I AM MIMA! 

Rumi: That's funny! Mima is a pop idol! You're just a dirty old impostor!

Mima: LIKE I CARE! I AM WHO I AM!!

Mima in this moment finally stops attaching her sense of self to her career.

-Black Swan:  Nina wants to be perfect. 

Nina starts the movie and ends the movie with this desire. When Nina finally ”kills" the part of her holding herself back and finds the black swan, she dances uninhibited and free as both the black and white swan, a performance unmatched. She takes her final leap as the white swan. This may be Nina's last performance because she has severely wounded herself. “It was perfect” is the last thing she mutters. Nina learns, tragically, what it takes to be "perfect."

-Birdman: Riggan thinks he wants fame and adoration, but it’s actually love.

Riggan is addicted to these two things. They are his biggest temptations to play Birdman again. Birdman is constantly pointing out which celebrities are doing superhero movies and how much money they are making. But Riggan resists, hoping to get the fame and adoration he craves through the theater instead, an art much more highly regarded. Before Riggan's opening night, his ex-wife points out that he confuses adoration with love. At the end of the film, in the hospital where Riggan is recovering from shooting himself on stage, he at last has the fame and adoration he was desperate to gain. However, it doesn't heal him because it’s not actual love. 

Delusions: 

Along with “seeing” their shadow self, each protagonist has another destructive delusion.  

-Perfect Blue: The lines between the murders occurring in the show Double Bind and the actual deaths of those involved in the production get very murky. Is Nina dreaming she's killing people or is she actually the culprit?

-Black Swan: Nina’s coping mechanism for the emotional and physical stress she endures is picking and scratching at her skin. As she loses control more and more, her picking becomes more intense and the reality of what's going on with her body gets murky. What starts as a little picking at a hangnail turns into Nina pulling the skin off down her finger. The itchy skin on her back turns into budding feathers. Is she turning into the black swan?

-Birdman: The opening shot of the film has Riggan sitting cross-legged in his underwear meditatively floating. Throughout the film Riggan imagines he has telekinesis, bringing objects closer to him and possibly making a light fall and injure the costar he wanted to get rid of. In one scene he runs off a rooftop and flies away, landing outside the theater. An angry cab driver yells at him to pay his fare.

My Music: 

Our three protagonists have and are aware of their leitmotifs.

-Perfect Blue: Mima is going to make a special appearance with CHAM, but before the event she has a shoot with a photographer who presses her into a much more revealing session. This causes Mima a lot of distress, so Pop Idol Mima appears and says she’ll take over. She joins CHAM dressed in her frilly outfit and does the choreography and lip sync for "Angel of Love" (The CHAM song the movie opens with) instead of performing the actual song being played.

It’s a little different from the other two films, but Mima is synonymous with"Angel of Love." It’s also blasted on a boombox when the writer for Double Bind is murdered.

-Black Swan: Nina oversleeps for rehearsal and her mother doesn’t wake her up. When she arrives, she hears the white swan's music playing, commenting to herself “My music?” and is startled to see Lily has stepped in to perform her part. It wounds Nina to see another girl dancing to her music.

-Birdman: After Riggan spends a drunken night on the street he wakes the next morning to Birdman pumping him up. Riggan imagines he’s in a Birdman movie and blockbuster explosions and a giant bird robot appear in the background. He makes it to a rooftop and he cues the music by muttering “Music.” As his overture starts to play, Riggan, lost in his delusions, “flies” off the building.

Who You Could Become: 

Should the character fail or lose their way, there is a reminder or warning of what their possible future could look like.  

-Perfect Blue: Rumi, a bitter ex-pop idol turned agent who never got over her “failure” to make it to the top. Rumi projects herself on Mima, seeing her as everything Rumi had hoped to be. Rumi takes Mima's career change as a personal betrayal. 

-Black Swan: Beth, the former Prima Ballerina whom Nina looks up to. She was Thomas's star, his "Little Princess," but the industry is cruel and women age out of "star" material quickly. Heartbroken by the forced ending of her career and loss of Thomas’ affection, Beth self-destructs. 

Nina's mother is another glimpse at her possible fate. Her career was cut short because she got pregnant, but we don't know if she was ever on track to being a star. Nina's mother put all her energy and hope into her daughter's career as a ballerina, but also resents her successes. 

-Riggan: There is not a specific character in Birdman who represents the fate that could befall him, but the threat of failure is just as present as in the other two films. Riggan’s play could flop, no one could take him seriously as a stage actor, he could lose all the money he invested, his daughter could lose even more respect for him, and he could become more of a has-been than ever.

A Sapphic Element: 

Take this one lightly, but all three have it! Black Swan explores this in much more depth, whereas Perfect Blue’s and Birdman’s have it just kinda tossed in.

-Perfect Blue: During the initial scene discussion of Mima’s career change it starts with a clip of Mima acting. She is in bed, another woman in lingerie crawls towards her, and Mima then anguishes "I can’t do this!”

-Black Swan: Nina has been kept a child by her mother. As she dances the Black Swan more and more, she starts exploring her sexuality. While she is attracted to Thomas, she is also drawn to Lily. Does Nina want to be Lily or be with Lily? Nina even has a wet dream about the other girl.

Birdman: Laura, Riggan’s girlfriend and fellow actor, comments that their co-star Lesley has a perfect ass. After Mike tries to have sex with Lesley onstage, a distressed Lesly is comforted by Laura, who makes a pass at her which isn’t rebuffed.

Some Birdman and Black Swan only:

Birds: 

A bit obvious, but Birdman and Blackswan both reference birds in their titles and stories. 

-Black Swan: Nina is performing the story of Swan Lake, which is about a pure maiden who is transformed into a swan. Nina can easily play this part; her transformation is in embodying the black swan. Nina begins to have hallucinations that she is physically becoming the black swan throughout the film: pulling feathers out of her back, her legs bending wrong, and her neck growing into the shape of a bird's. When she finally finds the character in her performance, Nina envisions herself growing black wings, the transformation complete. 

The narrative embraces the symbol of flight and freedom associated with birds. In one scene Riggen looks to be attempting suicide from the roof of a building, and we see him run off and fly away. He lives in the moment, soaring over the city and touching down in front of the theater. At the end of the film, Riggan does jump from his hospital window, but his daughter looks up to the sky and smiles as if he truly took flight. Also noteworthy: after Riggan shoots himself in the face, blowing his nose off, his face cast looks similar to his Birdman mask.

The Protagonist Catches Their Double Coping A Feel Backstage: 

It’s their big night, but the double is having all the fun.

-Black Swan: It’s opening night. Nina and her Prince do an elegant performance together but as soon as they reach backstage the Prince immediately distances himself from her. There is no affection between them. While Nina waits for her next moment on stage she sees the Prince with Lily, and Lily cops a feel of his package.

-Birdman: Riggan is preparing to go on stage. He spies Mike coming to the back of the stage, Riggan’s daughter Sam in his arms. They are happy and at ease in each other’s arms, and they kiss. 

Hope you enjoyed my little comparison! Let me know what ya'll think!

Thank you Cal for editing!

-Julia

[luna-rainbow]

Hi! I just saw your post about how Bucky’s rule number two should have included him, and I totally agree with everything you said about that. But something that stuck out to me as odd about the whole rules system thing is, it seems more like something a psychiatrist would use to treat someone who didn’t have a good moral compass or some other issue like that? I could be wrong but “don’t do anything illegal” and “don’t hurt anyone” kind of sound more like things they’d say to someone with anger issues/sociopathic tendencies/other conditions with which harm to others and/or deviant behavior is a possibility. The show seems to imply that he was suffering from PTSD though, which doesn’t match up with that? I don’t know, I thought it was weird.

Thanks for the ask nonnie!

I won't pretend to be an expert on therapy methods but your point is solid and I've seen it mentioned a couple of times by people who do have a background in psychology. (As an aside, difficult anger control can be a part of PTSD - unfortunately it's the way a lot of men have been socialised to deal with fear and anxiety - but that's really not the way Bucky's been portrayed.)

Contract setting within psychotherapy is usually a good thing, because it sets clear professional boundaries and also means both the therapist and client have a common list of goals to work towards.

There was this chain of posts before (in case the gif doesn't work) but I agree. Look at the gesture she makes as she says "With your history, the government needs to know that you're not gonna..."

This is such a fundamental misunderstanding (or misconstruction) of his role in Hydra and of the actual nature of his mental health problem. Bucky's history is one of being tortured, mind-wiped and made to obey orders. Neither the Winter Soldier nor Bucky was ever aggressive until he received the commands to be.

This iconic scene of The Soldier sitting placidly in Pierce's kitchen when someone entered the scene unexpectedly, and Pierce had to execute the maid himself. The Soldier did not inflict violence until ordered to. The only time he was aggressive against command was when he had flashbacks to his capture. And in Civil War, Bucky was only ever shown to be "aggressive" when forced to defend his own life (Don't tell me self-defence is now a mental health diagnosis).

From a therapy perspective, you're right - those rules are about curtailing someone's actions, whereas Bucky's problem was more about learning the confidence to make choices. This isn't someone who's going to act out, he's had 70 years of being tortured and conditioned into obeying orders. This is someone who's going to hesitate about committing to a choice, he's going to defer to others as much as he can, and maybe as he grows more confident, he starts making some questionable choices that tends to position his own well-being last because he's been trained to think he's the least important in the equation (and with a unhealthy dose of guilt).

From a narrative perspective, this was intended to reinvent Bucky as a "bad" super soldier, cos "there's never been another Steve Rogers", and paint Bucky as someone who would regularly do illegal and violent things, and is so sarcastic about the rules (because -- that's the least of his problems!)

[chaos0pikachu]

I am here actually to appreciate your post. I saw a blogger’s post saying The sign would have been ‘successful’ had it got filled with fantasy and romance and limit action to 10%. I wondered why that person, who says BL is all about romance, watched a show whose genre is action. Then I saw your post about people watching many shows to stay in fandom and I agree. Also you are right about dramas with a complex story receiving heavy criticism. Everything (even lack of proper plot or conflict) is exempted in a romance drama. No wonder most BLs are confined to ‘2 boys and their jealous & crying moments, routine conflicts enhanced by Escola or leads explaining how important Nikon printer is for their relationship’

Well damn hit me in the feels with this appreciation I'ma get all shy and shit.

I always wonder if by "successful" people mean in terms of critical acclaim, story telling, or monetarily. When it comes to Thai shows - and some please correct me if I'm wrong - it's difficult to tell how "successful" they are terms of audience reach/monetarily because there's no easily verifiable information. Like, there's Youtube numbers sure, but The Sign as an example, aired on Channel 3 what were it's ratings total on that channel? Idk, does anyone know that? Sincerely asking lol

Personally the way I like to judge a piece of media is what I call the Roger Ebert method; he often judged films based not solely on whether they were "good" or "bad but by how successfully they accomplished their goals.

If you read his review of Space Jam while it's clear Ebert doesn't think the movie is high art, "You can watch the movie on the sports and cartoon levels, and also appreciate the corporate strategy that's involved. [...] It is difficult for an actor to work in movies that combine live action with animation, because much of the time he cannot see the other characters in a scene with him. But Jordan has a natural ease and humor, an unforced charisma, that makes a good fit with the cartoon universe."

Ebert praises that the film, while filled with obvious product placement and banking on both nostalgia for the toons & star power of Jordan, accomplishes it's goal of being a family for that can be enjoyed by adults and children, and also the ability to blend techniques of live action, animation and 3D rendering.

I bring this up specifically b/c when I see "reviews" of shows in BL - the most common form of meta I see in BL fandom as a whole and that's not a knock just an observation - it's usually always about the narrative. Nothing about the filmmaking. And if there is discussion about he filmmaking it's usually misinformed or worse misinforming - no that's not what aperture means, yaoi framing isn't really a thing in film, the t-shirt is really just a t-shirt, etc, etc.

And like I get why. Fandom is more about story, what the words on a page or what the characters on screen are doing and saying. It's easier to talk about the amazing communication two characters have b/c you don't really need a film knowledge to discuss that. Which is a factor in why I think shows with lower stakes, more streamlined and straightforward plots get praised at a higher, less diligent and harsh level, than shows that are a bit more daring. They're less challenging in structure, they take less risks, so there's less to critique, and there's less room for a show to disappoint.

There comfort food, rather than trying something new at the restaurant. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, again, this is just a general observation.

To me, The Sign is miles better than Cooking Crush on a simple technical level. I only watched one episode of Cooking Crush and I found it pretty mediocre at best from all technical points: acting, editing, cinematography, directing, storytelling.

This isn't to say Cooking Crush is "bad" or that even if Cooking Crush was "bad" people shouldn't like it. I don't give a fuck if people like it, good for you chase the things that spark joy! I like lots of "bad" media, have y'all ever watched Jason Takes Manhattan?

For me, The Sign, like Space Jam, accomplishes it's goals and those were ambitious goals. An action fantasy BL that actually lives up to that premise and looks good?? The fight choreography looks great considering the obviously budget??

Like one of my issues with Laws of Attraction - aside from how painfully disinterested those kisses looked - was the fight choreography was bad.

The characters very rarely land hits in a way that looks real, or even marginally real. I can only speculate they didn't hire a stunt coordinator and/or couldn't hire stunt doubles so there was a worry of injury on set (for both reasons).

This isn't a disparagement on the actor(s) either, like stunt work is difficult and it's important to have professionals on set who can walk an actor through the steps so both them and others don't get hurt. Jackie Chan is probably one of the best known actors alive for stunt work, but watch how many times he fumbles and potentially hurts himself to the point where other actors are actively worried for him:

So yeah I'm going to give The Sign it's fucking gold star stickers b/c aside from some missteps in the gun handling - to many one handed gun fights but even then it wasn't all the time and bullets ran out of ammo! Y'all don't know how exciting for me that was to see - the fight scenes look damn good.

I understand the work that went into them, I understand the pre-production time that it took for the crew and cast to learn that and filming them well is another beast too.

There's a couple scenes with shaky cam that I dislike, but god do I love that first long take in The Sign. I love how good the CGI looks overall again, considering what is probably less budget than Black Christmas (2019).

I'm admittedly, fucking picky about what I watch b/c I'm really lazy and prefer watching films in general. I don't really like TV all that much, but if I am watching a tv show I wanna be impressed with more than just the characters talking to each other. Especially if said show is 12 hours or more.

When I'm looking at a piece of media - a comic, a novel, a film, a tv show - I'm thinking about stuff like "what were it's goals, and did it accomplish them? How was the filmmaking? How was the narrative structure? What is the time/place/culture this was made in?"

I'm not sure if people are arguing if The Sign was "successful" in terms of narratively, monetarily, or critically.

In reality we can only really speculate on how successful a Thai BL is based on data that's not not entirely accurate - social media, youtube stats, awards, etc - and even then most of that is based off international audience.

I can glean that 2gether was successful for gmmtv b/c it got a second season and a film, pretty much skyrocketed Bright and Win's individual careers but again, and created a cross country alliance for activism. But even all that is still speculation not facts (except the alliance that's a real thing that happened lol).

[This is all regardless of my own feelings regarding the show which is not kind. But feelings have nothing to do with individual discussion about how monetarily successful or accomplished a show is or isn't.]

Like it might be valid speculation on both shows but it should always come with a disclaimer of - these are not facts. Also, what is "popular" or "successful" can and will be dependent on individual countries too.

Take Cutie Pie for example, I would argue that it wasn't super "successful" here with American fans, but given how overwhelmingly popular Zee and NuNew are in both Thailand and Korea, I would then argue that the show was a success in Thailand and Korea. So was Cutie Pie "successful" or not? I would say yes!

Because "success" isn't and shouldn't be measured only by how western fans receive a piece of media.

In regards to The Sign, I'd argue it appears to be very successful with only the partial data I have at hand - social media which includes places like twitter, facebook, tumblr, the success of their sold out showing for the finale, a special episode, etc. If people argue it was unsuccessful in terms of narrative, well that's debatable and I have no interest in debating why the show is good except in terms of technical filmmaking and storytelling.

And even then it's a pointless debate like or dislike whatever just don't lie or mislead people regarding film terminology and techniques or harass people because they did like A Thing or clog up the tags with annoying posts about how you didn't like said Thing.

Overall, I don't give "reviews" on things I watch either positive or negative cause, well, I'm lazy lol, I don't believe putting how much I hate a show in it's tags and a thorough rating system would be to much work. I actually like how My Drama List rating system works, I just find most reviews on it to be Annoying lmao. Like giving Kinnporsche a 5 or below is absolutely bonkers to me but whatever es lo que es. But I also don't think my thoughts and opinions on shows are that valuable in terms of discussion.

These are mostly my general thoughts on fandom at large and it's not directly at any particular people its just observations at large across various social media platforms.

I think if you like more squeecore shows that's totally gucci, I just wish didn't proposite that 1) those are the only valid shows in terms of BL/queer media and 2) didn't overhype them to such sky high levels

[oneknightstand-if]

Going around asking all my favourite IFs this-

My friend (who has written one and a half IFs so far) told me that she balances all the routes very carefully. If one choice reduces one stat and increases two others, then the other choice also does the same, though it might not be the same stats. She does this for most choices. She believes it's the only way to not have a route that's perfect or seems like the canon path.

I'm just starting writing an IF, but this does not seem to be working for me. Maybe I just need to add more stats?

Either way, do you agree with this? How do you balance your routes within the game?

Nnnnnot really. It depends what's being rejiggered here. Just some small personality stuff that affects flavor text? Then that's fine. Most of my own choices tend to do that too.

But if this is skill levels and affinity with other characters and other important stats that determine if you can pass important stat checks and stuff and that's being messed with *every* *single* *choice* (and no neutral 'do nothing' options)... that's just exhausting.

That also seems to be a style much more common for the official Choice of Games product line (something similar is even mentioned in the official guidelines there that I read before) as compared to Hosted Games.

It's one of the main reasons I overall much prefer Hosted Games to Choice of Games. It's very hard to role play if you need to constantly babysit the Stats Menu with every choice. Doing that makes the whole IF overall feel way more "game-y" and less natural.

I also like the ability to be neutral (an option that doesn't rejigger anything!) or have routes that are not "equal" so that a player can purposefully go after a min-max golden route if they want, or go for a route that's more chill, or set the game into hard mode. And I've got dead ends/bad ends that fly completely in the face of all routes must be equal.

So while you can see that I'm collecting data from the end screen of One Knight Stand to try and keep things somewhat balanced, I'm much more in the "let the narrative flow naturally even if it's not perfectly balanced and let the player customize their experience to their wants" instead of having every option in every choice being equally balanced.

Considering the opposite is definitely something being pursued by the CoG product line, there's certainly an audience for both styles of IF's... it just depends upon the story you're trying to tell and who your target audience is.

[not-goldy]

just because he sings all JMs songs on his live- to promote his music to his unique fans, boost his reach, generate sales from the free ad and marketing- doesn't mean he supports him."

LMAO NO WAY you really think jungkook put jimin's songs out to a bigger audience? how insulting wow. i see now you are one of those jikookers who think jungkook is the bigger artist between the two right... right... how could i forget those stream increases after those handful of lives (never happened btw nice reach jungkook!) or how it boosted jimin's sales (never happened again) no you're right so kind of superstar jungkook to help poor jiminie lmfao give me a break. honestly a shame god free jimin from the likes of you

Screech like a pterodactyl all you want numbers don't lie. And i know you are dumb but Unique fans simply means, in marketing terms, fans of Jungkook who are not fans of Jimin or BTS.

You, as a solo, will count as a unique fan of Jimin while I by virtue if being both Jk Stan and Army as will not count as Jm's unique fan even if he's my bias because I fall within the intersect on the fan venn diagram.

Common sense, should tell you- you don't need to be a marketing expert for this- cross promoting eachother to eachother's unique audience is good for business. If not, hybe wouldn't spend so much money building a platform like Weverse using BTS's massive fan base as leverage and even sometimes deliberately sending notifications of other groups to us acting like it was an accident.

Since they have the same fans, there would be no need for any BTS member to show up on Suga's shows to promote nothing yet here we are- does that make Suga a bigger star than Jimin or Jungkook or any member he features on his show?? Are you stupid?

You are wrong and you know it. Your toxic ass tryna create drama but no one's falling for it mate 😹

I'm glad you enjoy my emojis and gifs- they are cute aren't they😊

Now take your attention seeking drama queen crown off to the misery lounge and bitch complain to the other miserable folks in your band.

You will sit here and complain about Jimin not being pushed and supported and given the same treatment as Jungkook yet turn around puffing your chest out alleging Jimin is bigger and needs no damn support from no one let alone Jungkook.

Choose a struggle. Choose a narrative and stick with it. If JM is big and powerful and successful all on his own why the hell does he need assistance from anyone at all?

And I agree he doesn't need Jk's assistance. What is that going to do for him? Why give Army and Hybe trouble for focusing their energies and resources on the poor helpless ones with the actual problems who need help and support from fans and the company?

Since Jimin got his degree and he knows everything- don't you think it makes sense why Jungkook should be pushed and supported by well everyone? Poor Jungkook he needs to be pushed to be put on the same scale as his successful hyung because he is lacking.

Guys like share and comment Jungkook needs all the help he can get

And turn out your pockets we need money for studio

While we are at it the Pride fight for love shirts are out

Let's do our thing and sell out. We need the money to buy handcream. And keep streaming to keep him on bb🥂

Yall keep setting Jimin up it's crazy

If he wasn't my bias, I wouldn't even want to mention him post him or talk about him to avoid attracting lunatics like you.

Makes a lot of sense why Big OT7s stay far away from Jimin. His solos are toxic as fuck.

And to think, we show random kpop idols love just because BTS mention them or talk about them.

Too many of us had no choice than to accept Jikook just because Jimin fucks with jk. We all have our own ship preferences and yet here we are.

Not long ago I had my own people call me out for supporting Taemin when he'd been accused of making colorist remarks. I could Stan the devil if Park Jimin smiled at him just once. It's crazy the vitriol and hate towards Jungkook even though he's Jimin's favorite- a fact he's made known and iterated over and over.

Naa Jimin, it's time to put timberland boots in the guts of some of your so called Stans. They can't call themselves your stans and hate your family it's crazy.

And I used to hate Army for hating on Jm stans and solos but godamn I'm gonna have to jump on that bandwagon.

Free Jimin from Me, Mr Jimin will pick me choose me over your pathetic ass any day. Wanna bet?

Talking bout yea Jungkook did all that for Jimin but it was in the pandemic years ago- well Hobi went to support him eons ago what's up?

Jk sent trucks to his friends a while ago. So what's your point?

Jimin earned BBs months ago what's your point?

Hybe abused and traumatized him years ago, what's your point?

Nothing you say matters hereon, from your own logic, since they happened years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes ago- so again what's your point bringing any of them up?

You're gonna act like you know shit when we only know what these men CHOOSE TO MAKE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.

Imagine judging someone by the little to no knowledge you have of him and what he does behind the scenes.

Not too long ago he was an asshole and fuck boy with zero social skills- now suddenly he's the model friend sending out trucks and buying jewelry for his friends??

YOU AINT SHIT

[wildissylupus]

(I feel like I'm going to regret posting this later, might delete it to)

Ok, I've seen this too many times and now I need to talk about it...

Ramattra and Null Sector are Villains yes, but they are not the main villains.

Talon is.

The narrative that is being set up currently is establishing Null Sector as the immediate threat, which signifies that it is not the biggest threat. When people complain that the Ramattra and Null Sector storyline is just the common "civil right group are the villain" clique, it takes away the power that Talon actually has over the narrative.

I actually have several analyses planned for this, Talon and Doomfists ability to manipulate people, the contrast of Ramattra, Mondatta and Zenyatta's ideologies and what they mean to the plot, a Ramattra analyses.

All of those are in the works, but I want to get this pit there now cause I'm tired of people demonising a story that is not even past the first act.

Specifically the people calling the current plot the "civil right group are the villain" clique. Yes, I will agree that it looks that way, however for this to actually follow the clique we would have to see the characters not question the status quo, for them to want what was happening before the story to continue.

That's not the case here.

Genji, Sojourn, Mercy, Tracer, Cassidy, all question what Null Sector is doing because this is such a radical shift from what they were doing in Uprising. Mercy and Tracer actively point out that they didn't help much in Uprising, that after they won that battle, omnics were still suffering.

Again this is something that I'm going to explore more in a future analysis but right now it's something I want to point out because I big part of the clique is no one questioning the status quo, something we clearly see characters doing in the story of Overwatch.

Another thing this clique does is only present two sides. Again this is not the case for Overwatch's story. We see multiple ideologies fighting for the same thing but also being vastly different, again this is its own analysis to come but Mondatta, Ramattra and Zenyatta all have the same goal of peace for Omnics but all have different views on how to achieve it. Mondatta believed that it was Omnics duty to make peace with humans, Ramattra thinks there can be no peace with humans, and Zenyatta believes that through the connections we build is how we achieve peace.

There is also the fact that Uprising happens before Storm Rising, when we first see Ramattra. At this point Ramattra has lost his friends, his fellow Null Sector founders, his support network. And Talon, specifically Doomfist, has been shown to use that kind of loss to manipulate people. (Widow, Reaper, Sigma)

What I'm saying is that there is a high likelihood that the reason why Ramattra is going so far this time is because of Talons influence. Afterall, they're helping him, they're providing the resources, the support. Without Talon I doubt that Null Sector would be like it currently is, you want proof?

Here;

This is Ramattra's first appearance. It is also very obvious from what we know of Doomfist that he is trying and succeeding in manipulating Ramattra to fit his own goal of conflict.

We see Ramattra start on the path he is now in his Reflections shortly story;

But if you look at the language used, nothing indicates what he's doing now with the subjicators. This is Talons influence.

Anyway, I've said my peace and I've already gone to far into analysis territory. This is more of a rant if anything though I do still have more analysis planned.

[maximusmaximillian]

Why Namor x Shuri doesn’t work from a storytelling standpoint

Before I went and watched Wakanda Forever for the first time last Christmas, I saw so many people talking about how Shuri and Namor should’ve been a romantic couple. So I walked into the movie and for the first half, I could kinda see why some people could come to that conclusion. And then the second half happened and I was genuinely wondering if we saw the same movie. 💀 And while I didn’t (and still don’t) ship them, personally, and was (and still am) very confused as to why some people did (and still do), I wasn’t really bothered by it. Initially. But the more I think about it, the ship makes even less sense when you think about from a story writing perspective.

I will (begrudgingly) give Namor x Shuri shippers one point, Namor and Shuri do have good chemistry. Letitia Wright and Tenoch Huerta do play off each other well. But I would argue that it takes just as much chemistry to play enemies/rivals/antagonistic relationships as it does to play romantic/platonic/positive relationships. Any two characters on screen (on on paper or on stage or any other narrative art form) must have chemistry. Compelling character dynamics are important to tell a good story. Imma call it negative and positive chemistry.

Positive chemistry

Let’s look at Shuri as an example cause she has no canon love interest in the comics or in the movies, so most of this is fan theory.

Shuri and Peter Parker would likely have good chemistry because

- they’re both intelligent so will likely have the same interests

- they’re around the same age so they would likely be able to relate to each other

- they have the same dry sense of humor

- they have the same goal of wanting to defeat the bad guys -eg- Thanos

Whether platonic or romantic, they would make sense as a pairing.

Another pairing post WF we can look at is Riri and Shuri, and they work because

- they’re also both very smart but are often undermined because of their ages

- they have shared trauma and as a result are fiercely protective of one another

- they also have a similar sense of humor

- they both have the same goal of wanting to defeat the Talokanil and especially Namor (He does try to kill both of them. Several times. 💀)

- they literally finish each other’s sentences

Once again, platonic, romantic or even sisterly, it makes sense.

What makes both these pairings work to a degree is the idea of them being equal in some regard. Whether equal in intellect, or age, or race, or any other metric, they clearly both see each other as equal, even with Shuri being “the Crown Princess of an international superpower” and Peter and Riri being “average” civilians. They more or less agree on a common enemy and how to deal with said enemy, with morals and values that more or less align. (Within the context of the world they inhabit.)

Negative chemistry

But Namor and Shuri have what I would call negative chemistry. They do have some things in common which can be where their chemistry stems from, such as

- they are both rulers of powerful kingdoms who love their people and will do anything to protect them

- they both experience great personal loss and therefore are motivated by grief

- the surface world poses a great threat to them and may be exploited for their resources

- they admire each other’s kingdoms (the physical spaces that their people inhabit)

However even with these similarities we see that there are some glaring differences.

- Namor does not view Shuri as an equal, despite their similarities. His line of “you are queen now” showed that he was never willing to conduct to business with Ramonda, likely because she was the only person on the surface world who bested him when she lured him out of Talokan to facilitate Shuri and Riri’s rescue mission. He was simply looking for an excuse to get her out of the picture. Also, Namor’s love only goes as far as his people. Shuri’s love of people goes far beyond Wakanda’s boarders.

- He is reckless with his grief. He is correct in hating the surface world, and in particular white people for the pain they caused his people. But wanting to wage war with the whole world is extreme. Shuri on the other hand, has a better handle on how she externalizes her grief. She recognizes that even though she is angry at T’Challa’s death, the rest of the world doesn’t deserve to feel the extent of her wrath. Even when Namor does kill her mother, she rightfully directs her anger at him. She doesn’t become antagonistic with anyone else or try to take vengeance from anyone else. Sure, she has some outbursts at Nakia and M’baku, but she never really alienates them.

- Namor and the Talokanil, immediately resort to violence and war when they feel a threat from the surface world. But since no one knows they exist, this threat is hypothetical for now. (We know it’s going to happen when they do find out, given the track record of some countries in the world, but not yet.) A direct contrast to Ramonda and Shuri, who in the face of real eminent threats, resorted to peace and showed their aggressors mercy.

- Namor, despite wanting Wakanda’s help with his mission, ultimately doesn’t view Wakanda with anymore sympathy than he does the rest of the world. He has made it clear that he hates the surface world and everyone in it, which includes the Wakandans. I mean, “no love” is literally his name. Wanting to destroy the whole world, funny enough, including other Mayan descendants who were enslaved or colonized, is no different from wanting to wage war on his so called ally, killing half of them and then killing their queen. He never liked or respected them as people. That was not going to change with Shuri.

It’s also another reason why he killed Ramonda with no hesitation despite knowing what he knew about Shuri. It would be easy to forgive him if he had never met Shuri. Then Ramonda would simply remain as the nameless, faceless monarch of a powerful country. But the fact that Shuri opened up to him about the grief she was already carrying, only to inflict more pain, makes his crimes way more egregious. He knew Shuri on a somewhat personal level and still chose to kill the queen. Knowing she was her mother. It goes back to the point of him never seeing Shuri as human or recognizing her feelings as valid. All he wanted to do was push her to the extremes of grief so she would become reckless like he was. It’s clear that Namor doesn’t see Shuri as an equal. Which means that any positive development that would happen between the two would take a long time to properly write.

I’m sure someone out there has come up with better terms than “positive and negative chemistry” in a screenwriting book somewhere, but I was just thinking about different character dynamics and how they work. Many compelling relationships have that element of chemistry. For example, in the first Black Panther, T’Challa and Shuri bounce well off of each other. Positive chemistry. It’s also why Killmonger makes the perfect antagonist to T’Challa. Negative chemistry. It’s all chemistry that translates differently. Batman and Joker. Superman and Lex Luthor. Thanos and the Avengers. Team Dynamics within the Avengers. Thor and Loki. The Guardians of the Galaxy. And so many more. It’s all different types of chemistry. So yes, Namor and Shuri are arguably both great characters with complex motivations, and together, do have stellar chemistry, but is it chemistry that produces romance? I don’t think so.

In conclusion, yes, ship who you want (even when it makes no sense), these are fictional characters (who represent real world dynamics), it’s just for fun (how?), etc. but looking at it from the perspective of a storyteller, the character dynamics would not make it work. If you write a story with two such characters and they end up in love, it wouldn’t make sense.

(These are just the 3 am thoughts of a sleep deprived college student 😀)

[year2000electronics]

HLVRAI 2, and Super Paper Mario 11?

YOU GOT IT

2. …my three favorite characters and why I love them so much.

GORDON: i love the way wayne plays such a frantic protagonist. he's simultaneously the straight man to a lot of the science team's bits but that's not the whole story because every bit of character this man is given makes him feel deeply DEEPLY abnormal. hes convinced hes the only one here but his dream is to stream on justin.tv. love it when men Yell.

COOMER: not only is holly hilarious but coomer has the strongest narrative arc in the series. she found a concept and STUCK with it. coomer perfectly interlaces "most comedic old man ever" and "deep existential dread" and neither parts of him feel like they clash with each other its just so. banger. hes so funny but i care him so much. when hl2vrai drops i just know whatever happens w him is gonna be INSANE

BENREY: yeah i mean. yeah. benrey is easy to overhype i get it especially cos theres so many ways to dilute how literally funny his character is. i love how weirdly polite he can be when hes not antagonizing gordon. hes such a little brat and yet hes so niceys. he also just works really well in the idea that like yeah he is the antithesis to improv but also narratively speaking he allows gordon to funnel a lot of negative energy into him, and having a character who is primed to NEVER agree with gordon makes the group dynamic twist up in hilarious ways. i just also think the way scorpy does bits is funny as fuck

11. …what I think of the central character(s).

THAT WOULD BE THE FOUR HEROES YEAG... i think a very common and very true critique levelled against SPM specifically is that sometimes it feels like youre happening to play a game that has mario In It. like yeah sure mario is the hero of prophecy but thats only because the game is directly telling you that. what doesnt help is that although i think the four heroes each have pretty cool and distinct flavours of being written, i think it gets lost in the waysides a little as you have them available as playable options 90% of the time, which means that the only standout moments are when control of them is wrenched from you (ie the character statement of peach being the only one who ends up in the overthere, the world 8 boss fights against the bleck minions, Luigi) so its like. i wish i could get into em more but i think its just a flaw thatd always be there. i dont know. i dont know.

luigi counts as one of the four heroes though and super paper mario luigi is one of my FAVOURITE luigis for this exact reason. because you only have him playable for a world or two, that means he makes a lot of decisions and has a lot of screentime that Only Luigi Could Have so hes BURSTING with personality. honestly spm luigi is one of the most interesting portrayals of luigi i could go on and on and on

i guess tldr theyre pretty good i wish they were connected to the story more

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hey! I’m trying to write a murder mystery novel and while I’ve got the broad lines laid out I’m not sure how to write a relationship like it’s already established. Not a romantic relationship, mind you but a mentor/friendship type of thing between my main character and someone higher up in the company (she’s an intern and he’s a chief editor). I really feel it’s important to make them close and make my readers like him because that will make the plot twist a lot better and painful, and believable.

Giving Weight to an Already Established Relationship

Regardless of whether the relationship is platonic or romantic, or what kind of relationship it is, if it's already established when the story begins, you need to find other ways to give the relationship weight so the reader will understand its importance. And, if there's a limited amount of page time before the two characters will be parting ways for whatever reason, it's all the more important to give it that weight as soon as possible. Here are some things you can do:

1 - Illustrate their good rapport by showing how well they get along. Show what they have in common and what they agree on. Show how their differences compliment each other, and how their disagreements aren't monumental. Show that they get one another, they both understand what makes the other person tick. Illustrate their empathy for one another, their easy communication, their in-jokes, and how they have fun together. Even if there has to be a lot of seriousness in the relationship for whatever reason, you can let the little smiles, smirks, and jokes show through in the right moments.

2- Establish their history by working in important details of their past, such as how they met, their early interactions, and pivotal moments early in the relationship. This can be done through narrative exposition, through character thought and memory recall, through dialogue with each other or other characters, through dreams and flashbacks (when used sparsely), and with "props" such as the character looking at the photo or video of them together early on. This allows the reader to be "present" during some of the moments they missed.

3 - Let them show how much they matter to each other even if it's only one moment. For example, maybe the mentor gives the mentee their father's watch and says they want them to have it because they're like the child they never had, and they're super proud of them, and love them to bits. And this prompts the other to say equally nice things. This gives the reader a direct window into how much these two mean to each other.

4 - Illustrate the stakes of the relationship beyond sadness if they were to part. What else is lost? Having a mentor? Beloved Friday night barbecues? Someone to walk the character down the aisle when they get married? A person whose knowledge or skill is valuable to the character's mission? By illustrating the full weight of what could be lost if the other character isn't there, you give the reader a deeper understanding of how important this person and relationship is.

Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[coldninjaruins-blog]

Confession, I think Stranger things is a decent show with decent writing and that's why I think byler is endgame.

To be honest I'm very critical of the show's writing. I think ST is a good show but with quite a few flaws yet I'm still pretty confident in byler endgame because I genuinely believe it's what makes the most narrative sense (yes, even still with the existence of the monologue). That's not to say I'm immune to byler doubt but it's usually more related to external factors like "they'll really go for it?" than what we see in the show. If the plan was to have Mike accept in Will as gay and portray positive male friendships with their relationship, they shouldn't have changed Mike and Will's dynamic in season 3 and 4 and not have Will be in love with Mike.

Like can you guys imagine Will coming out to Mike with the same dynamic they had in season 2? That would have been fucking adorable, it would have been a wonderful representation of a friendship of a gay boy and a straight boy having a close relationship.

But they didn't, they had to give us dramatic fights like the rain fight, the rink o mania fight, lines like "we're friends, we're friends" that awful half hug, portray Will's love for Mike so beautifully while showing that Mike and El's relationship doesn't really work.

Like I love season 2 and I think the writers already had byler in mind when they wrote it (that's why they had so many parallels with miIeven, and the miIeven scenes were mean to be view as romantic) but if they really wanted to keep their platonic relationship after that season they could do it, or even after season 3! I know many say Mike and Will's friendship becoming more distant after season 3 was the natural course of things but while I agree, I think the scene "what if you want to join another party? " "Not possible" was an opportunity for the writers, they could make their friendship the same as before, it was the "olive branch" I think most people wouldn't find it weird if there was no drama between Mike and Will in season 4 (I repeat I still agree it was also natural course but I think the writers had 2 choices on which way to go) take for example to Mike and Max's relationship, they spent season 3 beefing but even though we don't have a scene with them like the "not possible" in season 4 and though we know Max disappeared or pushed way everyone, there really doesn't seem to be any problem between Max and Mike, we have the scene of the two of them talking in episode 1, Mike mentioning Max with Lucas and Dustin (Max, Lucas, Dustin. ..they're great) and Max making a letter to Mike as well. (Also, let's be honest it's a common thing for ST writers to introduce certain things and never touch them again, or leave them in oblivion, like Mike being really mean to Max in s2 and never apologizing to her or mentioning it on screen, my point is that it wouldn't be weird for the writers to do something like that).

But nooo, they had to have Mike act weird, give Mike and Will communication problems (a usually romantic trope) and make Will's love for Mike much more obvious instead of giving him a new love interest.

They made Will basically a third party to Mike and El's relationship in s4, and that's weird from a narrative standpoint. They put more emphasis on Will's feelings than they did on Mike and El's romance and that's just not normal. They didn't do this with Steve and Jancy or Dustin and Lumax. Will appeared so often in Mike and El scenes that it became predictable for viewers.

They wanted you to empathize with him, to feel bad for him, to rotate for his happiness.

I'm just saying in a very long-winded way that decisions were made and if they really don't plan on making byler endgame it wasn't just one mistake they made but MANY, MANY bad decisions, not just around Mike and Will's relationship but Mike and El's as well. For example I would worry more about the monologue if it had been something that was Mike's idea at the moment he sees El is having problems something like "She's dying and I never told her how I feel, I need her to fight" but not only did they do the van scene but they reminded us of the van scene with Will saying "Mike, don't stop, you are the heart, remember that" which people must accept regardless of whether they are bylers or not that it did have an influence on Mike starting his monologue because if it was really that unnecessary the writers just wouldn't write it, even the track for the monologue scene is called "you're the heart."

In conclusion, in my personal case what gives me hope the most about byler endgame is that even though ST's writing is not perfect at all I think the writers are really trying in the case of Mike and Will's relationship because like I've said it before and I'll say it again, their relationship is one of the best written of the entire show, you can tell the diligence and care that was put into their scenes, into their bond...

And again, it was a thousand times easier to give Will a new love interest in season 4 but they didn't and I'd like to think there's a reason for that also the fact that Will was planned to be gay even before stranger things was stranger things and it was just a pitch called Montauk, at least to me shows that they care.

If Byler isn't endgame they really messed up a lot of things.

[marvelstars]

Padmé, Luke and Anakin: compassion as unlimited love

Disclaimer: this is an answer that got too long for @husborth great points about the fandom mistreatment towards Padmé and her role in Star wars and wanted to add my two cents. You can read Husborth´s great take here:

You made many good points about Padmé character mistreatment by the fandom, I just personally disagree that this perjuice agaisnt women is a Christian/Catholic cultural staple, the belief that women are weak is part of many cultures unfortunately but in the old and new testament from the Bible is common to see figures of women taking leadership roles that lead towards the salvation of their people not by being violent or men like but by being wiser, patient, understanding and brave stories like Ruth or Esther show this. Lucas got inspired by some of these stories to develop Padmé and Leia and it´s also why he wanted to add a daughter for Anakin and the reason why Luke originally was going to be a woman.

But getting back to Padmé, this is why I personally get mad at Obi-Wan for using Padmé´s worry for Anakin to get in her ship without her knowledge so she would lead him to Vader and the fact he didn´t do anything to try to convince Anakin that Padmé didn´t know he was there and he didn´t particulary care to use her or thought about her well being given he knew Anakin was completely out of control.

I don´t think the fandom talks enough about this fact. Obi-Wan USED Padmé to get to Mustafar so he would be able to kill Anakin by an order from Yoda. This is pretty clear in ROTS and it´s also why while they had a pretty cute friendship and familiar relationship, I don´t see Obi-Wan as a character who understood what happened with Anakin and also don´t see post destruction of the Jedi temple, for very understanding reasons why he would have compassion for Anakin, this is also why the Obi-Wan series kind of get away from canon imo, Obi-Wan wasn´t raised that way and his plan of using Luke to kill Vader and the Emperor in the original trilogy by raising up Luke´s idea of his father while Vader was his killer when he knew they were the same person supports this imo.

But I disgress the fact is that out of most characters in Star Wars, Padmé is the one character who recognized a psycotic break when she saw one. It isn´t Padmé´s fault the only way Obi-Wan saw to stop Anakin was to cut him into pieces and let him dying burning alive.

I agree with you in that the narrative ultimately gives Padmé the reason and that compassion would have gone a longer way and ultimately saved the galaxy, that Luke´s story reflects this, that punishment only served to add fire to the darkside and even killing Anakin would have zero effect on Palpatine´s Empire and given Anakin was the one who ultimately killed the Emperor when Yoda was defeated, then Anakin´s death would only mean a longer time for the Empire if not the 10,OOO years Palpatine planned for the Sith Empire but Obi-Wan didn´t know the details of Anakin´s fall, he didn´t know about his nightmares or how much Palpatine grooming got into Anakin´s mind and how to treat a person in the middle of losing his mind and given his formation, killing was what he was teached to do with a Sith.

So Obi-Wan saw a Sith who just destroyed his family, Padmé saw Anakin, the sweet slave kid who risked his life to help a Queen and her planet, the joking husband who loved her with his life, who was happy to leave everything behind, his work, his role as Jedi Knight to help her raise their kid on Naboo, she saw Anakin completely out of his senses, paranoid, hurting and alone and decided what was needed was her giving him some breathing room so he would get back to his own senses, Padmé here knows about the darkside but isn´t sure how this affects a person this was why she backed away from Anakin when he started talking about taking over the Empire and become Emperors because this wasn´t her husband talking anymore and still she tried to convince him to get away from it all in an intent to help him get back to himself.

At this point Padmé knows he´s not been sleeping or eating, that he had nightmares of her dying which awoke what happened with his mother, that Palpatine has become a tyrant who has keep a close realtionship with Anakin since he was a little kid and that Palpatine used her and the crisis on Naboo to become Chancellor, it isn´t hard for Padmé to put two and two together to understand Anakin´s mental unstability has a lot to do with Palpatine and that this happening just after Palpatine became Emperor isn´t a coincidence.

I personally liked a part of the alternative story in which Padmé tried to kill Anakin using a dagger because this is also in character for Padmé, at least her amidala persona would have thought about this in a pragmatic way but I also believe she ultimately would have taken the path of compassion,in a way also reflecting back towards Luke own decision.

This is also why Vader keep beating himself over Padmé and their child death for years, because he knew he could have used this oportunity to be with Padmé and raise their kid but this guilt also pushed him deeper into the darkside for many years while also keeping him connected to the light side which Palpatine noticed, instead of feeling satisfaction for power Vader just fell into a state of constant mourning for Padmé, their kid, the younglings and everything he did that day while trying to make it count for something working on the Empire because he knew there was no fixing what he did and that he was completely consumed by the dakrside.

Now this is also why I give Luke so many points for getting to her mothers conclusion with not much or at all information Padmé and Obi-Wan had about Anakin. He just goes out of his way to save Vader because he doesn´t want to become a patricide but also because he felt this yearning from Vader for a Son which reflected his own yearning for a father. Luke is showing compassion that reflects his mothers but his reasons for going ahead with it had a lot to do with how he was raised, family is important on Tatooine, he grew up with her grandmothers family, he knew how the darkside worked because he also felt that strong temptation himself and also almost fell in the throne room, which also served him to understand how easy it´s to fall under such pressure and that his father had a similar pressure and he knew Vader had tried to protect him in his own twisted way which meant Luke was Vader´s weakness and he´s Vader´s weakness because he loves him.

I agree with Husborth Padmé and Luke correlation in their compassion towards Vader should be talked more as well in the fandom imo all these nuances are what make of star wars such a good story and it´s a shame we often forget in the fandom to talk about it in a nuanced way.