#but like to simplify it down (at least for them in s4)

[autistic-katara]

thinking abt that one tiktok i saw like a year ago that was like “will wouldn’t mind being queer if it didn’t mean being in love with mike/mike wouldn’t mind being in love with will if it didn’t mean being queer” again

[starbylers]

Mike’s lack of personal journey in a Mlvn reading of the show: why so many people complain about Mike’s character

Something just occurred to me…I actually would challenge any Mlvn to tell me about a character motivation/internal conflict of Mike’s that does not revolve around El. What struggles does Mike as a person deal with throughout the series? When trying to build an effective, realistic, well-rounded character you can’t have their biggest fear be ‘loosing this particular person’ as Mlvns love to claim is Mike’s. As a writer you have to understand your character’s deepest desires and what drives them at their core, they cannot be purely motivated by an external force. A character such as that will feel hollow, boring and difficult to connect with. This is basic character development stuff.

Examples (simplified to get the point across):

For the whole show, El struggles with finding her place in a world where she feels fundamentally different

For most of the show, Will struggles with his sexuality and feeling like a ‘mistake’

Dustin in s2 deals with his self-esteem and understanding that he is good enough even if he doesn’t have a girl’s approval

Lucas in s4 wrestles with a desire to be popular and to ‘fit in’ which we see him overcome

Max in s4 deals with depression and the process of wishing to no longer be here to realising she actually wants to live

But…what about Mike? A brief Mlvn interpretation of everything he does through the show and why he does it:

S1: he saves and looks after El because he fell in love with her. He also looks for his friend Will.

S2: he is heartbroken because El is not with him anymore, and then madly in love again once she’s back.

S3: he has ups and downs with El because teen relationships are just like that, and then they get back together because they’re truly in love. He’s also too in love with his girlfriend to care about his old interests.

S4: he fights with El because all couples fight, and then rescues her from Nina while taking friendly advice from Will. Finally he confesses his love, which he didn’t do before because he’s terrified to lose her oh and he’s not good at feelings (but they won’t digger any deeper into that last one 🤐).

Like…yeah they acknowledge Mike also helps with the supernatural stuff, he’s smart and observant. He generally takes charge of the group and looks out for his friends, and (at least in earlier seasons) he’s the leader. But those are character traits. Everyone has them. (Max is sarcastic and kinda scary when she needs to be, Dustin can be cocky but is highly intelligent, Lucas is very headstrong and follows his own judgement, Will is sensitive and empathetic). I’m talking about character conflicts/journeys. Can they tell us what journey Mike has gone on as his own person???

And this, this is why lots and lots of people complain that Mike’s character revolves around El (especially since they started dating). This is why people say Mike is the Duffer’s self-insert and is just meant to be a blank slate relatable character. This is why Mlvns characterise him as El’s obsessed loser boyfriend. Because if you view the show through a Mlvn lens then yeah, Mike looks utterly two-dimensional with no drive other than screeching El El El when she’s in danger (sorry it had to be said).

The problem is when you try to dig into what Mike’s deeper motivations could possibly be, it gets very bad for Mlvn very fast:

‘Mike is scared to lose El because he’s worried she won’t need him’

Let’s detach El from that and figure out the root of this problem, what is really going on with Mike here (we already know but just for the sake of my point), because he is a character in his own right and this was a large focus of his story last season.

What do we know? Mike expressed feelings of worthlessness (‘I’m just some random nerd...’) and feelings of inferiority (…‘who got lucky superman landed on his doorstep’) in his relationship. He acknowledges that his and El’s relationship was fundamentally built on her just needing someone. Also, throughout the series we see Mike has a strong desire to help and serve and save those close to him, it’s who he is.

Mike is so clearly driven by a need to feel needed and fears being an unimportant nobody. He doesn’t think he’s special or useful next to El and it hurts him, his self-esteem is very, very low. But Mlvns never acknowledge that, because that would require admitting that a) Will’s words in the van showed he recognises & loves the Mike as the brave and inspiring leader he wants to be, and in doing so soothed Mike’s personal insecurities (because those do exist, and the talk wasn’t just ‘relationship advice’) and b) Mlvn’s relationship makes Mike feel shitty.

Another example:

Common Mlvn interpretation: ‘Mike was spending all his time with El in s3 because he’s in love with her and he is growing out of childish games’

What do we know? (1) Mike didn’t truly loose interest in DnD, he just neglected his interests when he got into a relationship, super healthy (2) He tries to act cool around El (‘Sorry that made me sound like a 7 year old’ / feigning disinterest in Dustin’s inventions) (3) When arguing with Will, Mike frames him getting a girlfriend as being the inevitable progression of life, the opposing choice from ‘sitting in his basement playing games’…but then he joins Hellfire in s4…as soon as El leaves. He didn’t truly believe anything he was saying to Will, he just can’t juggle being himself and having a gf simultaneously 😬.

Mike’s internal conflict here is clearly feeling like he has to grow up, and has to suppress his true identity in the name of achieving that. (And this continues somewhat into s4 with the fake, not-at-all-his-style Cali outfit in El’s fav colours). But again, understanding that requires understanding that Mlvn as a couple is not a safe space for Mike to be himself, and what Mlvns characterise as a normal teenage ups and downs is actually indicative of an unhealthy relationship.

Basically what I’m saying is it makes so, so much sense why Mike is one of the most disliked characters among the GA (aside from like the actual villains) and why he always ends up on those stupid lists. People are sick of him existing just to be El’s love interest. And that is not true in the slightest, but when you aren’t looking deeper than Mlvn…yeah it does look pretty bad, and I understand where they’re coming from. And as much as we say El is the one who Mlvns are obsessed with making everything about her boyfriend, the real victim of this treatment from them is Mike. Even his heart-to-hearts with Will are actually Mike thinking about El, apparently.

This is another reason why I’m so sure about Byler because Mike is essentially the original main character (aside from El I guess). I’m sorry but there’s no way he is the only one the writers managed to mess up this badly when they are capable of adding deeper personal development to characters who are much less central to the story. Even Finn himself said we’ve not been as personal with Mike recently but s5 will remedy that and people will be happy with his journey. The day Mlvns and GA are forced to look deeper at Mike’s personal internal conflict outside of how it relates to El is the day I will know peace 🙏🏽

[evyisaks]

**i started on this after episode 5 aired but then something happened and i forgot to finish it.

I’m going to use the original as example and for comparison here so like 1. i’m aware of it. 2. i’m the biggest skam og stan and S4 had ISSUES, so listen.

In the OG most of the stuff in S4 happened because of 1. misscommunication and missunderstandings 2. lack of communication from Sana’s side and also Sana isolating herself because she believed that she was better alone (a fucking parallel to Even but whatever Julie).

If i would to take S4 as it was and just like try simplify it and try to understand what Julie wanted to say with the season it was that Sana* pushed the girls away and didn’t tell them what was actually bothering her and what was going on. This does not excuse Vilde’s behaviour though at all, just making that clear because forever pissed about that not being acknowledged. 

But here’s the thing: 

Sana isolated herself a lot after episode 5, for reasons that are totally valid and Sana is my queen. However, from the girls point of view it was weird because they probably thought: 1. Why did she quit all of sudden and why was she was passionate about the whole thing in the first place and dragged the girls with her, only to bail on them. 2.  Noora quit the bus when Sana did because she didn’t want to be there without her. Noora kept asking Sana to hang out but Sana said no. 3. Also, the girls (mostly Eva) knew how Ingrid and Sara could be and I think that she even said something about it when Sana decided that they were going join groups with them.

The whole season was about misunderstandings and people not communicating. It was the girls not telling Noora about William’s new girl friend and she getting upset when she found. It was Sana not admitting to Noora that she liked Yousef. It was the misunderstanding between Yousef and Sana and the block thing. It was Sana not telling the girls about what the pepsi max squad were planning. It was Noora not communicating with William during S3 (off screen) and leaving. It was Even pre-S3 not communicating with the boy squad and pushing the away. It was Isak and Even not communicating about Even’s past. It was Sana not telling the girls who she felt and how they made her feel. That was S4. “Don’t let me be misunderstood”. And if it was done right it could have been a pretty good season, but I wasn’t so lets move on.

Skam France S4 and imane is totally different from Sana though and that is what’s so frustrating. They are using the same themes isolation, misunderstandings, and miscommunications but Imane is so open.

1. She told Manon about Charle’s new girl friend

2. She was honest with Sofiane about her feelings and why she felt like they couldn’t be together.

3. She told Manon how she feels like she doesn’t know where she belongs. How lonely she can feel.

4. She told Alexia how she feels about ingrid

5. She told the girls so many times how she feels about ingrid

6. She called out Ingrid straight to her face

7. She pretty much told Lucas to talk to Eliott and not get information from other sources or look from them there

Imane is so open and people are not listening to her at all. People keep dismissing her feelings, everyone but Lucas really. And they are somehow making all the storylines (the email to Charles, calling out ingrid, Alexia’s dance audition) be her fault. It feels like they are going to make her apologize and get nothing back. And it’s so frustrating and I’m sorry, it’s not good writing.

It’s drama for drama. Just like the OG S4 wasn’t good writing, this isn’t either.  But at least for me, I could see where S4 was going with it but here i can’t because:

1. If Sana admitted how she felt for Yousef, the kiss between Noora and Yousef wouldn’t happen.

2. if Noora talked to William and didn’t just leave then maybe they’d be still together and not break up.

3. If Sana told the girls about what she heard they’d have her back 100% (if you fuck with Sana, you fuck with us)

4. If Even didn’t push the balloon squad away and talked to them then maybe they’d still be friends.

etc...

But this? I don’t know. It’s them telling us that Imane keeps opening up and keeps telling people about how she feels and they keep turning her down and dismissing her and invalidating her feelings. And with the unsolved storylines it seems like Imane is the one who is going to apologize.

[hopevalley]

You said in a recent post that you think Bill needs character development. Do you have anything particular in mind or do you just feel it's important that he gets something?

Now that I think about it, it’s pretty rare for me to not have something in mind when I say anything alluding to improvement on the show. I almost always have at least one idea, even if I don’t take the time to talk about it. It’s one of those things where, especially in episode write-ups, conceptual “this is how it could have gone” tangents tend to inflate the word count and distract from the actual write-up, both of which can be bad. (It depends. Some people love the excess, other people find it more difficult to follow.)

Anyway, let’s talk about Bill. Bill is a character who desperately needs plot. I think most of us can agree that in recent seasons, the writers have treated him like a laughingstock “Old Man Yells at Cloud” type of character—and it’s hard not to imagine they’ve done this because they’re just at a loss for plot ideas. (Or, just as likely, they’re not really allowed to write anything for him that they’re not explicitly told to.) This is bad. He’s stagnated as a character to the point of being generally unlikable. Even if you love Jack Wagner, the writers have made it increasingly hard to like the character he plays. And that’s a shame!

In a sense, he suffers from the same sort of neglect that Jack’s character did. He just kind of exists as an extension of other characters. Until Abigail was removed from the main cast, Bill became more or less a character who existed in relation to her. He was primarily Abigail’s friend and co-owner of the Café. If we stray from that, he was also Jack’s mentor, Nora’s ex-husband, and Henry’s enemy. 

That’s not to say that he wasn’t, and isn’t, his own character. I’m just trying to point out some of the narrative choices here: as the series progressed, we got less of Bill being his own person, and more of Bill as he existed in relation to other people.

I think just like Jack, we get a really compelling backstory for Bill, which they did take a stab at adding to in S6! He grew up in an area that wasn’t very safe and developed some kind of hero worship for a man who had the guts to stand up for the downtrodden & made his hometown a better place in the process. Bill’s parents were friends with Jonas Wilder, though we don’t know how. We know that Bill was ambitious and hard-working, because Jonas believed Bill would make something great of himself; when Bill’s parents died, presumably in his teen years, Jonas took Bill in and paid for him to finish his education (allowing him to go on to the Academy to become a Mountie). Feeling indebted to Jonas for this kindness that kept him off the streets and helped him achieve his lifelong ambition, when Jonas’s daughter Nora ended up pregnant out of wedlock, Bill agreed to marry her to save the family from dishonor. Bill ended up raising the child, Martin, like he was his own son, and loved him just the same. Unfortunately, the marriage of convenience couldn’t handle Martin’s tragic death, and Nora left him to grieve, feeling that both she and Martin had always been a burden on him.

We know the rest because we watched it, of course: Bill tried courting Abigail before the divorce was finalized, Nora wanted to get back together as a misguided way of forcing her life to normalcy so that she could pretend everything was okay again (even though it wouldn’t bring Martin back), and as it turns out, Henry Gowen is the most likely candidate to be Martin’s biological father…which explains why Bill thinks he’s such a slimeball.

There is so much you can do with all of this, and the showrunners did try for a while. The drama with Abigail was great. Bill was established as morally grey in the end, and more importantly, it was shown that he struggles greatly with showing his emotions—which makes it easier to see Nora’s point of view of their marriage. Perhaps it’s no wonder she felt Bill didn’t love Martin; it’s possible he wasn’t great at expressing it, particularly to/in front of her.

I should add that the Bill of the first and second seasons is a Bill who isn’t really ready to enter the dating world; not only is he terrible with his own emotions, the emotions of other people obviously make him uncomfortable. (Abigail attaches herself to him quickly and it puts him off. This tells us that Bill is the sort of person who needs to move slow.)

Bill’s character really hit a good stride during the counterfeit money plot, but the writing of the plot itself was pretty confusing (and I think a lot of viewers weren’t sure what was happening due to the sudden timeskips/travel jumping). It was particularly interesting to me that Bill was playing the long con and had been trying for literal years to bust his superior officer for being involved in dirty schemes. The man is supremely dedicated to Truth and Justice. More complex aspects of Bill’s personality are shown here very well when he refuses to tell Jack anything about his plan/what he’s doing (to protect him, because he cares). It ends up coming off completely wrong to Jack, who feels Bill is being patronizing/unfair, even though in Bill’s mind he’s just doing the objectively right thing to not involve innocent bystanders.

After the issue was resolved, Bill quit his job as a Mountie and decided to do freelance work. He’s shown through S4 to be clever, intelligent, and interested in Justice—or at least, his version of it. He’s very serious about not taking advantage of other people, and hates those who do this intentionally (see: the man who tried to con Dottie out of her husband’s life insurance). When a man wouldn’t tip Abigail properly, Bill overtipped her to make up for it. He tends to feel a certain obligation toward protecting/taking care of people he’s acquainted with (his best friend’s daughter, Abigail, Dottie, Elizabeth, Jack), and holds longtime grudges (Henry, the gang who killed his best friend). 

Random fact: Bill is the first character on the show to fall in love with Coal Valley and stay there entirely of his own free will/just because he can. 

Later seasons of the show take all of these characteristics and…I think try to simplify them—to the detriment of the character. Taking a complex character and boiling them down to the basics usually ends poorly. Bill in S4 wasn’t too bad—for the most part, he managed to remain himself. I think we’re supposed to laugh at Bill’s “sexist” assumption that AJ Foster is a man, but in context it’s understandable why he would assume that, and despite his cleverness he happens upon this information completely by accident. (The envelope with her name on it is not something he found with good detective skills; the windowsill moves when he leans on it to check somewhere else.) That said, he still knew enough to go back into the place and check, so I guess he’s still himself.

His inability to understand where AJ is coming from seems to work itself out; if he really didn’t believe her/really felt she was a bad person, there’s no way he’d have let her run away from jail without chasing her down. His “stay safe” comment actually tells us he understands her perspective more than he’s letting on.

And then we have S5. There are good parts, here. Bill taking a job from Jack without even asking to ensure he was able to be at his own wedding on time? Very good. Very Bill-like. Bill’s not great at telling people they matter to him, but he’s good at showing it! Unfortunately this plotline ended too cleanly for me (Bill being late returning would have really cemented it as a wholesome thing, and I’d have loved to see him make it to the reception to get a dance in with Elizabeth or something nice instead of making it to the wedding).

And then AJ comes back to town and Bill’s entire personality goes into the toilet. I kind of get where the writers were coming from with that plotline, but it could have been better. (Bill would NOT like being used by someone, especially someone using his emotions against him. But I don’t think he would be as cruel as he was in S5 to someone he knows was mistreated, and I don’t think he would say her facing a sentence was “Justice” when the whole reason he left the Mounties was because he had his fair share of differences with the law and its definition of justice.

(This is made worse when he admits in S6 that his hero as a child was a man who stood up for and protected those weaker than himself. This was already established as Bill’s primary characteristic/motivation, and it’s been shown over and over again throughout the show. To have S5 randomly disregard it felt bad.)

I kind of look at it as a misguided attempt at writing banter, because that seems to be what they were going for (with AJ irritating him over and over again). Sadly, they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. They just made it look like a potentially toxic relationship, and clearly that is not what they were going for.

–

So this brings me to our current Bill, who…for the most part, has been doing decent. He’s just…stagnated, that’s all. He doesn’t do anything. Is it because his plotline with AJ in S5 fell so flat? I’m not sure. S6 didn’t do a lot for him either way; he was just kind of there. If anything, they’ve helped him move on with his emotions (one of the saving graces of S5 was his talk with Abigail where he finally lets himself grieve and relies on someone else). It was nice to see him getting a little emotional with Elizabeth in the S7 Christmas film because it does show us character development.

But he needs more.

What specifically? God, anything. I don’t think he needs romance (and this late in the game they’d have to work hard to make someone not-AJ work, though even I’ll admit that AJ could be a stretch depending on the writing). He definitely needs friendships, though. Found Family. Bill didn’t really get to choose his marriage, and most of his life wasn’t him living for himself so much as living for other people. Giving him more friends in Hope Valley, cementing his relationship there, showing us where he lives and what his living space looks like, letting him be open and honest with other people…. Heck, show him talking to Jack’s horse alone, or with baby Jack alone—I’d take any of these tidbits. Bill’s never really talked to other people but he can start with something small like this. Or heck, he could confide in Elizabeth. Or Rosemary. OR ANYONE. 

Even if Bill doesn’t get these wide sweeping action arcs, he needs plots that help establish him as an important person in Hope Valley. He has a lot of power and sway in town and to ignore that and make him a joke seems like SUCH a waste. 

Abigail was his only solid friend in town (maybe Frank as a close second); with that option gone they need to get him up to speed with someone else. Nathan can be his new adopted son (I would love this). Heck, Bill could actually adopt a child. I don’t care. He needs something that helps move his character, that gives him a reason to exist in scenes, and that gives us, the audience, a reason to root for him.

I have some hope because the S7 movie did a good job of not turning him into a laughingstock. Things seemed pretty solid. If we get a good plotline with the trial Henry has to go up against, I think we’ll do really well. We know Bill doesn’t care for Henry, but Truth and Justice matter more than anything to him, so he’ll do the right thing, whatever that is. I just have to hope the writers remember that about Bill and don’t use his rivalry (if you can call it that) with Henry to make light of things.

[clearspantents]

An unnamed Army brigade commander has seemingly constant strikes against his units, jammed radios, enemy air attacks, indirect fires landing from what looks like every direction.

All while the battalions and companies in his formation are moving around the battlespace, returning fire, hitting enemy sensor nodes as they wade through thousands of displaced civilians in the rubble of the city they’ve patrolled.

“The pace of fighting was exceptionally fast – confusion was the norm” is the battle vignette that Col. Charles Lombardo hopes commanders will take with them when they leave a ramped-up rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California.

How the Army plans to prepare for war and grow the force

That location is one testbed for an overhaul of how Army leaders push authority down to the lowest levels of fighting units.

Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, looks at ways to reinvigorate Army doctrine on mission command and how that will fit in garrison, at training centers and on deployment in an article he co-authored with Maj. Gen. Douglas Crissman at the Maneuver Center of Excellence and Maj. Kelly McCoy, a TRADOC strategist. The article was published by the Army University Press in April.

The general spoke with Army Times about how near-peer adversaries “challenge us in all ways and the only way that we can really overcome that is leadership and mission command.”

The biggest challenge, he said, is at low-level unit training and garrison operations.

“There’s too much top down direction, too much philosophy of compliance in mission command,” Townsend said.

The effort is being spread across the Army, permeating beyond just combat training.

"We continue to analyze the right level of instruction devoted to mission command throughout a leader’s professional military education,” Col. Ken Hawley, director of policy and plans at Army University, told Army Times.

The university recently adjusted the Noncommissioned Officers Education System and the Captains Career Course common core, updated the Advanced Operations Course to the Command and General Staff College, increased emphasis at Pre-Command Course, and revised the Tactical Pre-Command Course to place greater emphasis on the commander’s role in mission command, he said.

Some of that is happening through what Townsend described as “tweaks” to doctrine such as reinserting the term “command and control” rather than using “mission command” as a catch-all.

“We used the same words to mean too many different things and confusion resulted. The uniqueness and importance of our approach to command and control was lost,” he wrote.

That’s why this year TRADOC will update its doctrine in a revised ADP 6-0, “Mission Command: Command and Control of Army Forces.”

Looking back to an earlier time in his career, Townsend said that when he was a company commander he answered to one person – the battalion commander.

Even if the battalion S4 called own and said they wanted an equipment inventory done because the division G4 is calling for this, it didn’t necessarily change his schedule.

“That’s nice to know but it’s not on my training calendar this week so I’ll get to it when I get to it,” Townsend said.

And his battalion commander supported adhering to that schedule.

A basic change is for higher-level leaders, especially at the general level and above, to stop filling the schedules of their subordinates for them.

Townsend wants to see unit leaders filling their own “white space” on a schedule.

Some of that was necessary as the Army had to free up manpower for recent wars and create “turnkey training” where a cookie cutter approach was used and a whole support system put in place to feed, clothe, house and model training as a unit pushed out the door to combat.

“They go through this hamster wheel, then they’re ready for their next deployment,” Townsend said. “We sort of forgot how much leader development is deciding what to do for yourself.”

Now commanders will need to figure out a lot of that on their own and be as expeditionary as possible in their thinking, training and behaviors.

The simplest version of it is to push aside the non-combat essentials such as giving commanders the discretion for whether to conduct safety briefings or instead use valuable time in the day for combat specific training.

That emerged from Army Secretary Mark Esper’s memo that removed many of the mandatory, non-combat training requirements.

But as Townsend talked to troop and battery level commanders in the field, he soon learned that what’s said and what’s believed can be vastly different.

“They didn’t believe it,” Townsend said.

The response he got was that leaders at those levels and lower knew what mission command was, taking decisive action and prudent risk, but they didn’t really buy it when they were being told to execute it.

And a lot of that will flow from the combat training centers such as NTC and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, Townsend said.

“We’re going to expect more from our CTCs, which will backwards evolve and affect home station training,” he said.

Much of that is simplifying how commanders issue orders.

The general said much of the time a commander should just issue an operations order and let their subordinates go from there.

“Provide just enough information but not too much,” he said. “Just enough direction but not too much.”

He has a vision for how that home station training works. If the battalion is headed to the field for two weeks, then at least three days of that exercise should be devoted to squad training. The squad leaders brief the platoon and company commanders on what they need, and that gets resourced and executed.

“You’ll see the higher-level events will be better,” Townsend said.

The four-star has seen improvement in the past two to four years, especially at the combat training centers.

“Our sparring partner is bigger and badder than they’ve ever been,” Townsend said.

And at his level, Lombardo is seeing the effects of changes on both ends.

They’ve seen units be able to jump a brigade combat team’s battalion command post 90 to 120 times in a rotation. And cut down that jump time from 18 hours down to just over three hours.

That’s largely a function of having each of the 10 battalions in a BCT rotation jumping their command post every other day for weeks on end.

Some of that is shrinking down to the essentials. Instead of three computer screens, use one. Make a three- day supply fit on one truck where in the past a tactical operations center took multiple busloads of gear to stand up, he said.

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