#every time i make an analysis post i hope its coherent and makes sense

[etherealspacejelly]

ok so i just watched star trek the motion picture for the third time and this time it was the directors cut with the extra scenes, and i have some Thoughts™️that may or may not be entirely coherant but i need to share them

here is my in depth literary analysis of why star trek the motion picture is the greatest queer love story ever written (/hj). buckle up because this is gonna be a long one

so our story starts (after the klingon cold open ofc) with spock on vulcan, during the final ceremony in which he is supposed to acheive kohlinar, the purging of all emotion. now, right off the bat, i want to make a comparison to conversion therapy/being closeted/repressed here. spock is trying to repress an entire side to himself, a part of him that is inherantly different to those around him, in order to be accepted in society. spock is already a very queer coded character, and i think reading this scene through that lens is a valid interpretation, especially considering everything else that happens in this movie.

the ceremony stops before its completion. because spock has Not purged all of his emotions. a consciousness calls to him from the sky. now, i think this line could be interpreted one of two ways. either this 'consciousness' is v'ger, or its jim. i think the writers intended it to be v'ger, but in the context of the scene it sounds a lot more like jim. of course jim would be the one preventing spock from purging his emotions: jim is the reason for many of spocks emotional slip-ups throughout the series. he fears for jims life when he is in danger, he feels friendship for jim but also shame about those feelings (that shame is also queercoded, but thats not the point of this post so i wont get into it here). he feels compassion for jim. he feels loyalty and a sense of duty to him. these feelings are so strong that he cannot purge them fully.

so what does spock do? he off goes in search of something that he feels will help him achieve his goal. he wants peace within himself, to find a balance between his two opposing mindsets, that of logic and that of emotion. purging all emotion was unsuccessful, so what else can he do?

he feels that v'ger is a being of pure logic, and wants to understand it, in hopes of achieving that for himself. in the process he meets up with jim again. now, you would think, that a vulcan nearing kohlinar who has been training for years to purge all of his emotions and act purely logically would not stop to change clothes and cut his hair when on his way to acheive LITERALLY HIS LIFE GOAL that is super important to him. and yet. when spock turns up on the enterprise hes wearing his nicest black robes and has his classic bangs back. why is that mr spock?? why would you take the time to do that?? especially when he then immediately changes into his uniform.

and while we're on the topic of clothes, what does jim do immediately after spock boards the enterprise? thats right folks, he changes into a shirt that shows off his arms and has a v-neck to show off his chest. any. particular reason for that jim? when you said just a moment ago that every minute counts and the earth is in danger? hmm. interesting.

and then of course we get that exchange between jim, spock, and bones. where jim 'needs' spock. just like he needed bones. theres a desparation in his eyes, he wants HIS spock back, and hes not seeing that spock in front of him. the conversation ends with jim looking dejected, since spock only seems to be there out of convenience and not because he Wants to be. wonder why that is...

of course then spock mind melds with v'ger. and to do so he has to. go through a very sphincter-like opening. and says he has 'penetrated' the next chamber. now im just saying. if anything is a metaphor for gay sex, this has to be, right?

anyway.

spock mind melds with v'ger and is flung back into jims arms. because of course he is. and what did he learn from the whole experience? that v'ger is pure logic, and therefore cannot experience beauty, imagination, and "this simple feeling". wait. hang on. what simple feeling would that be, spock? the one you're talking about while holding jim's hand (HANDS?? VULCAN HOLDING HANDS?? HELLO???) and staring into each others eyes? what feeling would that be, i wonder?

and then. SPOCK CRIES. for v'ger. he 'weeps for v'ger as he would for a brother". v'ger is 'empty', as spock was when he came aboard. "incomplete, and searching. logic and knowledge are not enough," he says. bones asks if spock has found what he needed, and v'ger hasnt. spock says that v'ger wants to know what it was meant to be, to reach out and touch its creator.

spock is crying because he empathises with v'ger. v'gers journey parallels his own. they were both empty beings of pure logic. spock found his fulfilment in... what exactly? its not explicitly clear. but if we continue the spock/v'ger parallel to its conclusion, what do we find?

v'ger has taken ilia's form, and decker decides to merge with v'ger not only to save earth, but also to reunite with the woman he loves. v'ger becomes satisfied only when this happens. so... spock found his fulfilment by reuniting with someone he loves? if we take this in context with the 'this simple feeling' scene, the queer subtext is right there.

at the end of the movie, spock is offered to return to vulcan, and he refuses, stating that his business there is finished. he has achieved his goal of finding peace within himself. not by purging all emotion, but by embracing emotion, alongside logic, and allowing himself to feel what he has repressed his entire life. he resumes his place at jims side, which, as edith keeler stated, is where he belongs.

this movie is a queer story, and i will die on this hill. all of the evidence together stacks up that way. it is a story of repression, self acceptance, and love.

ALSO THE POSTER IS A RAINBOW-

[kozykricket]

every time someone mentions celeste or i watch someone play celeste or i play celeste i am just reminded of how much of a masterpiece the game is. like... i just. every little bit of it is perfect, from the major stuff like yknow, music, character writing, and wonderful pixel art, the great level design (!!! really great !!!) to the smaller things like sound effects/jingles... visual effects like squishysquishy madeline.. and like, the whole "mountain as a metaphor for stresses and anxiety" i dont think can ever be captured in as perfect of a way as celeste does it (long post, i figured this needs a Keep Reading?)

like, i feel like not only does the music set the tone and mood alongside the writing, but the level design works in tandem with it so well too. the absolute atmosphere of reflections always catches me off guard, like... confession: i still can't really relate to the identity aspects of it, though i can very clearly see them in celeste. but as someone who has experienced a lot of anxiety in life, i can relate so heavily to it all, and... just, the way the music sets the tone, especially in places like chapter 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7. (and of COURSE 9 but i could make a separate post on ch9) why not ch4? well, i think 4 is just a nice solid break after the intensity of chapter 3, which is refreshing. it stands out, but in a nice way. i really, really find that the game can just. bring out FEELINGS in me more than any other game can. i mean okay, games can make me sad, or put a smile on my face, but theres more... complex feelings, that i can barely put words to, that i feel from the music, like after you've just fallen in reflections. the ... hopelessness, almost despair, with a touch of ominousness, and... questioning, almost, of if anything was worth it. the hopefulness of the summit climb music, the uncomfortable feeling of the mirror temple music when you're in the mirror that feels like the musical equivalent of bugs crawling all over you, slowly turning into just. lost, quiet, helplessness and like. god. im not a masterful musical-analysis-person but. i FEEL like its fair to say that the entirety of the farewell ost really feels like its telling a story, one of... so many different emotions, which is so fitting, considering how complex the feeling of saying farewell can be. i. genuinely cant put to words the way that tracks like reflections and most of farewell make me feel, because singular emotions dont seem to be fitting descriptions. and i feel like no gimmick in levels ever stays for too long without introducing a new one or new combination of gimmicks. its a game where i CAN indeed be proud of my death count, knowing that it means im learning, because. death isnt frustrating and.... playing mods, ive realized even more about how unique the level design can be... some levels are more about understanding rooms and doing things in the correct order, some are about precision, and yet... it feels like the best levels... are somehow designed in a way that even the most complex rooms can just. guide you through them, like you're doing a duet with the level itself, as objects fall into place for later, etc. (midnight monsoon from strawberry jam is a good example) theres just so much greatness in celeste i know i spent like half the post on the music, but i could also spend that much time talking about how perfect the level design and difficulty curve is. the game feels like it naturally teaches you how to get better at it, without ever getting too frustrating. im not saying there isnt spikes in the difficulty the first time through, but ill say those spikes feel like they make sense, and they... well, the game does good at training you and then putting you to the test. it does well at teaching you without saying much. at most, a crow will say "press x to dash here!"

and honestly? i still feel like im hitting post too early here. i... love the game so much, and i cant put it into super coherent words. i feel like i. can never truly capture how much i love it. some games just do that to you. maybe i can capture how much i love it, but not... how much of a masterpiece it is. like yes, okay, i love it, but. its also... so much more than just a Good Game. I... think I'll hit post. maybe one day, ill write my thoughts on the game in a more coherent fashion, but. i think i get my message across here :P (it makes me almost kinda. frustrated. when i cant fully get whats on my mind down in words. like i KNOW theres more... that i cant quite pull outta my brain rn)

[stabs-cake-with-salieris-dagger]

So, a long post over thinking about Vivre à en Crever (VAEC)

I don’t know how coherent this will be and I am really just some guy typing whatever thoughts come up. This is not an analysis per say, but interpretations that I find meaningful to myself resulting from how I emotionally engage with the text. Some points are probably wild. Mentions of Amadeus but not really spoilers for the play or film.

> The tortured artist, the bleak ending, the myth

This is going to segway a little into some thoughts I have after watching a play version of Amadeus, and some other things regarding history, interpretation, narrative that’s fascinating to me. I have plenty of thoughts on these topics but it's for another day, since it’s more about Amadeus than MOR. Compared to its predecessors Amadeus and Mozart! MOR has a relatively more hopeful and bright ending because of VAEC, despite the inevitable death of Mozart.

Mozart very much had many obstacles in life, and his situation and early death were tragic. Mozart’s life can kind of fit into the stereotype of tortured artist (although it’s still different from the most common known examples of van Gogh and I don’t think he completely fits the image) whose talent isn’t fully recognized while they're alive and struggle financially (mentally at times too) but is revered as a genius now. Few years before his death Mozart was in great financial trouble, and some sources have described him to be depressed, and this is certainly presented in MOR to a degree. But what really struck me after reading Mozart's biography and his letters was how content he was with the success of The Magic Flute right before his death. His situation was improving, yet he was then swept away by a deathly illness. I wouldn’t argue that isn’t sad, but I feel VAEC importantly captures the sense of joy of life that comes with the historical success of The Magic Flute (because in MOR it isn’t presented as something successful), and it’s partly why it makes the song very moving. Mozart has lived the life as best he can and written so much music in his short life, and that is something to be celebrated.

This is kind of a tangent but from a personal perspective, I find that artists having a sad period towards the end of their life sometimes leads to having their whole life be labelled as “sad” and characterized by struggling. Not to dismiss the hardships someone has faced in their life, but I think it’s fair that we equally celebrate their life in a way that honours their strength and creativity despite the difficulties. It’s very easy to fall into the mindset/trope of the tortured artist (I do very much for the record) and think that suffering leads to great art, but in the end of the day it’s unhelpful and even harmful. I think for most if not all artists, being creative is what helps to drive you out of the doom (both in the psychological and monetary etc. sense) not as a result of that doom, and I think creating any sorts of art is an act of fighting.

I think what VAEC does is combine the death of Mozart with the sense of how his music successfully “transcend the heavens” (his line during Lcrimosa) and that his story really doesn’t end at his death. The song is defiant in the very (MOR) Mozart way that he has conquered death through his musical legacy (lyrics very much shows that.) Admittedly I haven’t read enough about Mozart and none of us could ever know what Mozart felt then and what he could have felt about his status as a musician now, but from a narrative and human point of view, I find it nice to not have death be so painful and bleak. (This also makes me think of the decision a media has to make about following history more closely versus prioritizing building a narrative with themes and messages.)

Mozart already knows he’s going to die, but VAEC shows a resolution and determination to fully accept and let go of this life. The death scene gives me chills every time and it is truly just beautiful, and Mozart ascending to heaven also feels influenced by his now greatly esteemed status, that his legacy is viewed as “good and sacred.” In a way I find the ending to be fitting for how we (retrospectively) revere Mozart today. I do have thoughts on the myth of genius and the worship of great artists but that’s for another day. Society really does have a weird way of treating artists of all fields at times and that’s a long conversation. There’s also a lot to say about how classical music is viewed and used today.

I also think it’s essential to mention whenever VAEC is performed outside the show without the context, it’s almost always performed with so much joy from Mikele and Florent, which further speaks to the nature of the song.

To conclude, VAEC depicts Mozart’s death in a way that captures the joy of life and celebrates his creativity instead of depicting him dying in misery, and it feels fitting for how his legacy is viewed right now.

> What lies ahead for Salieri

I think VAEC does as much for Salieri as it does for Mozart. In my opinion, Amadeus Salieri is already sympathetic (and super complex), but I find MOR Salieri to be even less antagonistic, and VAEC plays an important part in it, plus also to make Salieir’s “future” less bleak. (Though I really wish one day we can have non antagonistic Salieri as a main character please. Let this man rest.)

I love the hell out of the last scene in MOR. Salieri actually showing up to offer assistance and appear supportive of Mozart is a great thing I love seeing (even though he doesn’t go all the way to outright apologize etc.) and without this plot MOR would feel so much more different. Mozart indeed seems to have “forgiven” Salieri but this can only happen if Salieri actually tries to do something to take responsibility. Maybe the bar is low and some people might say it’s not enough, but I think it’s great to see the character development. It also gives me a sense of hope that this is a starting point for Salieri to wrangle with his own emotional struggles and despite the death of Mozart, he can keep going. Recognition and willingness to change are very important first steps, and emotionally it feels like a starting point that can lead to a recovery.

This is admittedly very idealistic, because historically the rumours and slanders against Salieri became so widespread later in his life, and reading accounts of it made me quite sad. I think I still do like the choice of the last scene and VAEC because I’ll take anything that is positive for Salieri. At the same time it almost feels like a reflection of how modern audiences gradually stop seeing historical Salieri as villainous/antagonistic even if the fictional portrayals persist. Amadeus and MOR Salieri are all tortured by their own flaws and shortcomings, but MOR Salieri after the breakdown during Victime de ma Victoire has chosen a different path to try to make amendments (to Mozart and himself) and in this way picks himself up from the mud. (This is not to say I don’t like what’s done in Amadeus. It’s great but just so different and heartbreaking.)

VAEC feels like a resolution for both Mozart and Salieri as they say goodbye one last time. It’s definitely an ending to many things, but it’s not a stopping point.

> We’ll meet again (translation from the 2010 proshot by lesmisloony on youtube)

Suddenly having a moment overthinking the lyrics is actually what prompted this post, so here we go. VAEC could be easily read with or without Mozart and Salieri’s story in mind, but my thoughts mostly concern the song as read in context of the show.

“We part ways without knowing/ Where the memories will die/ Our life goes by in the space of a sigh.” I have already talked a lot about memories and legacy previously, and this first verse feels like Mozart wondering if he has done enough and will be remembered. This is also quite a common sentiment about life and death so I don’t think I really need to expand on it.

“Our fears, our tears/ Are worth nothing now/ Yet we’re still clinging to the thread of our desires.” It really feels to me that Salieri is reflecting on himself and his actions. There is some sort of regret, acknowledgement, and acceptance that comes with these lines. I find “worth nothing” to be a little harsh but also it fits Salieir’s personality. At the end of Mozart’s life, it is clearer than ever that the envy Salieri experienced is not invalid but out of proportions in a way that hurts both of them, but he couldn’t also just stop feeling it all of a sudden. I will need to come back to these because there are some other further thoughts I struggle to articulate right now.

“If we have to die/ I want it carved on our tombs/ That our laughter/ Fooled death and time.” The chorus, oh the chorus. The resolution, the reconciliation, and the defiance. There is a sentiment of conquering death with their memories and rendering them immortal. It also always makes me think that they could have been friends if things were different, even though a lot of it is just fiction being added onto history. Historically they’re at points friendly with each other but never seem close. Now I do think we don’t get enough interactions between Mozart and Salieri and then the show suddenly hits us with VAEC on the head, but I love that the show ends with mutual respect and understanding, which renders the association between them amicable. We/our can be read as general pronouns that represent anyone, but let’s face it we’re all going to read it as being these two. It is ironic and sad that Salieri’s name has such a strong (negative) association with Mozart, but without this many of us also might not know him today, so I do like that VAEC at least takes the tension between them away in the very end.

“We’ll see each other again/ In a place where nothing matters anymore/ We’ll understand where we’ve come from.” Now this, this part. Just the promise they’ll see each other again before they say goodbye is already so loaded and kills me every time, and also it makes me think about how maybe they could have been friends again. There’s a bittersweetness to it, but it also implies a certain future that is perhaps better, which leads to my next point.

The idea that prompted me was about the second and third lines, where I see it as how Mozart and Salieri’s memories and legacies have survived and interacted in a bit of a meta way. In different historical periods and contexts, their stories (however historical or fictionalized) are read and relate to differently, for different purposes from different people. The “reincarnations” of them meet, and perhaps some day these reincarnations of them could finally come to a deeper understanding of each other, that the two of them wouldn’t be able to achieve right now. There are many layers to this, because MOR itself is also one of those places where reincarnations of them interact with each other, that is both a manifestation of history and retrospective commentary. VAEC is both happening as a depiction of December 5th, 1791 and an interpretation with narrative, themes, and commentary on the event of Mozart’s death that is timeless. There will certainly be more creative works in the future based on the story of Mozart and Salieri, and every time we’ll get something else, and we love the story and like to take spins on it because it tickles our unruly human brains in some ways. So maybe someday Salieri can be freed of the envy and become friends with Mozart.

Another idea I don’t want to dwell on as much is meeting in heaven in the Christian sense. Mozart’s letters have mentioned meeting with his mother again after her death in a better place, and it is quite a widespread belief so I want to put it in here. The musical doesn’t seem to concern itself with religious elements much, and I honestly just prefer a non religious interpretation myself.

VAEC also has a lot of importance in the process of creating MOR was created early on if I remember correctly. They also made a point to find actors that would fit together well, and oh boy did they succeed tremendously on that. I think Mikele and Florent’s chemistry helps to sell the song even better. (Not very familiar with Laurent but he’s also great!)

> What’s on stage

Now to really put VAEC into story context. I always think it’s interesting they let Constanze ask “who let you in?” because it’s never implied they have servants so Salieri did you just tear down the door to go into Mozart’s house or what, but I digress. Mozart suddenly gains energy upon seeing Salieri. I really don’t need to describe this scene more, but Salieri’s mannerism is what I really like. Salieri talks in a very particular, articulated, and controlled way when he is supposed to be talking to someone in public, but the way he talks and acts here are much softer and probably true to his emotions. He is no longer putting up a facade to try to hide his feelings or try to appear commanding in front of Mozart.

VAEC is the goodbye, the last mark Mozart leaves on the world with Salieri. The implication of Salieri being the only person there to send Mozart off and also being the last link Mozart has to the living world when they let go of each other’s hands is just, perfect. Hits me hard every time the curtain pulls open to reveal the scene behind. I’ve caught early on that all the people who have “wronged” Mozart in some ways stand on screen right and the supportive ones stand on screen left, but what takes me quite a while to see is Constanze and Salieri are standing in mirroring positions on each side of the stage. Intentional? Probably? Constanze reaching out to Mozart is heartbreaking every time and I wish to see a bit more of it in the proshots. I also love the later addition of Leopold and Anna Maria standing in the mist to watch Mozart ascend. The death scene is always mesmerizing, and in combination with VAEC I think it shows that Mozart has thoroughly lived his life to the best he can and can now face death with acceptance and peace, and we know, because MOR itself is one of many proofs, that Mozart’s memories didn’t fade and live on to be known.

> Closing thoughts

Well I think MOR is not meant to be super deep. This is not necessarily a criticism, although I do have some but that’s only because of how much I love it, and every media should be critiqued. It’s fun, looks great, and gives you good feelings, and that is great. It does have depth and a good framework that I emotionally engage with deeply. I love it for the hope that it gives me. VAEC is such a beautiful song, and MOR’s last/scene ending is definitely one of my favourite scenes I’ve ever seen. And yeah I didn’t really talk about how gay it is but we already know that and I want to add more wilder points.

I definitely have more thoughts but this is as much as I can do right now. I’m quite fascinated by historical drama and biopics. It’s a little garbled but if you’re able to read this far, I hope you got something out of it even if you don’t have the same views! Thanks for reading and if you have any thoughts I’d like to hear them. I’m sure there will be mistakes because I’m not super familiar with this part of history nor do I have a full understanding of the Mozart myth. Please watch Amadeus and Mozart! if you haven't. Also please listen to this acoustic version if you haven’t. It feels even gayer with the piano. Cheers.

[mettywiththenotes]

How Izuku Compares Kouta To Tomura

I’m obsessed with how Izuku compares Kouta to Tomura

In this scene, where Mandalay tells Izuku about Kouta’s parents, we have this

“Smiling wide, as if to say... there’s no one he can’t save!!”

WHICH is a direct callback to Tomura in the Mall Scene

So in the scene where he looks at Kouta’s sleeping face, he’s comparing Kouta to Tomura. Especially because, at first, Kouta acts very much like Tomura, what with talking about how much he hates Heroes

So here, Izuku compares Kouta’s dislike to Tomura. A Villain. Not that Kouta is a Villain, but maybe he thought that, with that kind of hatred, Kouta could have become a Villain

ALSO, may I add, that Izuku says this

Which means he’s admitting that Tomura and Kouta are so similar in speech and mannerisms that he just can’t say anything to it. He doesn’t understand their anger, and he doesn’t know how to confront it

And the comparison doesn’t stop there

Let’s fast forward to after War Arc, where Izuku battles Muscular

Muscular shakes off Izuku’s attempt to get through to him, and Izuku remembers Kouta; how he went from someone who could have potentially ended up with similar ideals to a Villain, to sweet and shy and healing from his trauma. It shows, to Izuku, that everyone is capable of healing, even if they don’t seem to want to at first

And then immediately afterwards, he thinks about Tomura and how, just like Kouta, he has the potential to heal too. Like Kouta, he can heal and be saved

The thing with this scene is that Izuku is thinking from two ends of the spectrum. In his mind, he is thinking about how Kouta ended up healing and happy, while in front of him is an enemy who doesn’t want to change and won’t accept any attempt at communication

In his mind, he is thinking about how Tomura could end up on either side of this. He could end up a Kouta or a Muscular

But the thing is, looking at both sides, he thinks of Kouta first before he thinks of Tomura. Kouta is a kid who was crying and suffering, and The Crying Child within Tomura was doing the same as well. Izuku saved Kouta. Izuku can save Tenko therefore Tomura

The question is how he will do this. How will he treat it? How will he confront Tomura?

When looking back at the chapters, I got to the part where Izuku confronted Kouta

Which... ended terribly. Izuku tried to understand, tried to get through. He even used his own example and his own experience to try to connect. At first I wondered if Izuku would try to confront Tomura the same way

My reaction to that thought is: I should think not

Izuku has come a very long way since this moment. His development in saving, with Shouto (psychological but not knowing what he was doing - he didn’t set out to save him but thats what ended up happening) to Kouta (trying a half-hearted attempt to connect but eventually saving him and his heart) to Eri (connecting with her problems with her quirk and focusing on saving, eventually helping her smile again) was a progress that took learning from experience to perfect. After all of that, I should think Izuku has learnt more from this interaction with Kouta and the following people that simply just trying to convince Tomura won’t cut it

The big thing with how Izuku reacted with both of them was trying to understand. He tried to understand Kouta’s reaction to Heroes and that didn’t end well, and he discussed the same with Tomura

That he couldn’t understand him. He couldn’t see why he would feel the way he did about Heroes, just like how he couldn’t understand Kouta’s reasoning. He only tried to talk about it with them

But then Shouto brought up the very important factor of actions with words

Which, after that, Izuku does

And with Eri

With Tomura, another victim, there were nothing but angry words and action in the war. BUT it can also be argued that this moment below, where Izuku realizes Tomura needs saving, can also be put with this collection: it’s not a completed save, but one in the making. One that foreshadows the completed save that will happen

Now, Izuku needs to save more than ever. He needs to put his words into action. Maybe this time will have a perfect blend of understanding (that Tomura is in pain and hurting), words and action. Maybe Izuku saving Tomura will have every single part of saving blended all into one

And maybe idk, the future will hold a positive comparison to Tomura and Kouta. Or no comparison at all, because Tomura and Kouta are similar but not the same. Where Izuku can look between the two and realize that both were different circumstances but both were similarly hurting, needed somebody to see their pain and help them

Thank you for reading my ramblings

[theyarebothgunshot]

jib 7 breakdown and analysis 

a little while ago i said that i am open to requests for making analysis posts when it comes to cockles panels and just cockles in general, and i got quite a few responses. the first person who asked me was my lovely tea anon, and the panel in question is jib 2016 aka jib 7. 

first of all i want to give you my take on the overall vibe, and then second of all i will get into the details and link to certain timestamps in the video. 

standard disclaimer: i am not gonna be linking to every single thing i talk about, but i will try my best to link to the moments that stand out to me the most. my recommendation would be to watch the panel in its entirety alongside my comments. i have read long posts about this panel before, so not everything in this post is gonna be original or said for the first time ever, simply because there is a good chance that information has stuck in my mind and has subconsciously formed my view of this panel. this is also in no way, shape or form gonna be coherent, unfortunately. i’m just gonna hope that the cockles hivemind will be able to make sense of this regardless. love and light. and lastly, this is all in good fun, so don’t come at me if you think this is too out there please and thank you.

the overall vibe that this panel gives me is that jensen and misha are a unity at this point. they are in sync with each other, and this whole panel is very relaxed and in good spirits. there is also the fact that their outfits match very well. and with jensen ross ackles involved, that cannot be a coincidence, so i love that a lot. 

another thing that i cannot ignore is that it’s also a very sexual panel, with a lot of double meanings and innuendos and remarks that can be read as sexual if you are as pervy as me. 

now let’s get into the specifics. 

although i am sure this is not going to be news for any of you, i feel like a little background knowledge is in order. before this panel, misha had had a panel that day with j*red. the mishalecki panel was really fucking funny and filled with sexual innuendos. 

between these two panels, it appears that there was a break in which they all had nothing to do (i am basing this off other people’s experiences and reports that i have read in the past, as i unfortunately wasn’t there myself).

considering how this panel goes, i think there is a good chance that jensen and misha just had sex beforehand. and based on both of their demeanors, one could draw certain conclusions about who did what (i honestly don’t like talking about who tops and who bottoms because who gives a shit and things are rarely that black and white, but all i’m gonna say is that even though jensen has joked about his asshole before, jensen and misha clearly said switch rights).

from the very first second. the VERY FIRST SECOND. jensen is sauntering on stage like he is thee man. then the crowd is cheering ‘one more time’, and jensen looks at misha, starts cheering too, and makes a movement that is bordering on obscene before waving it away. conclusion: ‘one more time’ could also mean ‘one more round of hot steaming sex’ and he still had sex on the brains, so that was what he was thinking about. 

ahhh, the intricate ritual [1m34s] of greeting each other on stage as if you haven’t spoken to each other all day, even though you probably just had sex….. jensen ackles, i wanna study you. i wonder what the deal is with that. does he just like to pay misha extra attention on stage? does he revel in the fact that he knows that fans like this sort of interaction? can he just not help himself? questions that keep me up at night. 

also, there is just SOMETHING about the way jensen says ‘i’m doing well how are you?’ it’s almost flustered? borderline shy? and then he goes on to say that he did an impression of misha earlier, in a manner that’s just so flirty. idk guys. it’s flirty. kindergarten flirty, but flirty nonetheless.

misha, of course, immediately turns his entire body towards him. almost as if they both already forgot there is an audience in front of them. then he just gets closer and closer to jensen, for no reason whatsoever except for the pure magnetic pull they have on each other. pray4misha.

i think it is a testament to how in sync they are that misha immediately realises that jensen mentioned bicycle touring during his ‘impression of misha’, and i love the moment where jensen puts on an accent (something that misha normally does) and goes ‘is like sport’ and misha laughs and goes ‘is very similar to sport’ and they both lose it. idk, i feel like that might be a sort of inside joke to them as well. 

this might be slightly reaching, but hear me out: right away, jensen goes: ‘oh by the way, sore?’ why would he say ‘by the way’? what is he thinking about when he says that? is it about ‘is very similar to sport’? because i could totally see them having sex and refering to it as ‘well that’s kind of like a sport’, as an inside joke. it works. i’m just saying!!! 

look. i know this back and forth has been discussed to death. we all know that the implication is that jensen fucked misha and misha is kind of stunned that jensen actually goes there. so stunned that he repeats it: ‘sore? am i sore?’ almost as if to stall a bit in his response. yikes. 

i think that it’s fair to say that this is something jensen enjoys doing: riling misha up on stage. because a lot of the time, misha has the upper hand on stage (probably also in the bedroom but that’s another conversation), but sometimes. sometimes jensen just can’t help but throw a lil oil onto the fire. (see also: underbear panel, throwing himself on stage to get straddled, etc). 

misha goes on to say that ‘after the panel with j*red’ he is quite sore. you can take that at face value, and think ‘oh so he is joking around that the panel with j*red made him sore haha’ or you can see a little bit of the truth shine through: literally after that panel, something happened that made him sore. it’s always easier to lie when you are bending the truth.

i actually can’t believe i never connected the dots before, but when misha deflects and says ‘oh you’re talking about the bike riding’ jensen is quick to say: ‘oh no i was talking about what just happened’ but instead of pointing at the stage (which is where the previous panel took place) he is gesturing to backstage. i mean…. way to feed into my ‘they just had sex backstage’ theory, jackles. thanks for that. 

i cannot get over the way jensen is looking at misha throughout this whole ordeal, but especially when he goes ‘you heard it here first, folks’ and misha walks up to him. THAT FACE. fuck him. he’s so gone. 

sidenote: i have never wished to be able to read lips as much as i have since i have stumbled upon these two morons, because i WISH i could see what misha is mouthing to jensen. i know there is some spec that he might have said ‘i am a little bit’ (aka he is a little bit sore) and i could see that, but i just want to know for sure. and even though i have seen people state that jensen would have already known about the panel with j*red, i think it’s possible misha hadn’t filled jensen in yet, seeing as they probably were doing something other than talking. 

let me take this moment to tell y’all about one of my jenmish theories, and that is: i think that jensen sometimes is overprotective of misha and that can come across as jealousy when it’s actually just worry. and i think this panel is a good example of that.

misha says [4m25s] that in italy they call come influence and jensen just. straight up looks at misha like ‘what the fuck did you do, what mess did you get yourself into this time?’ this is another reason why i believe he actually didn’t know about what happened during that panel yet: the reaction looks very authentic. you see his eyes shift from one side to the other and back again, as he is trying to process it. and honestly when you look at misha, his face goes through this journey of ‘this is funny’ to ‘shit is this maybe going a bit too far?’ and ending on ‘okay wrap it up wrap it up’. this is further solidified by the fact that jensen starts to mime digging a grave (aka ‘digging your own grave’).

misha tries to ‘change the subject’ by saying cas is the bottom in the implied relationship with sam and jensen immediately brings it back to sports. see what i meant when i said that they are tying sex and sports together? here jackles goes again, doing exactly that. for no reason whatsoever. (except to once again proof my point). 

WHY [5m50s] do they both burst out laughing at ‘tight end’ why why why i don’t wanna know but why why also quick reminder of ‘are you sore at all’ help i am just. EVERY DAY they are making me perceive things and connect dots and i do not like it. anyways i’m not saying that this is all very graphic stuff about their sex lives but i’m also not not saying it, you feel? jensen’s face says it all tbh. on a more wholesome note: i love the fact that they basically wanted to say ‘we should take questions’ at the same time. again: in sync. 

when the first person to ask a question said ‘this is a serious question’ misha goes to explain to jensen that that was a joke during his panel with j*red, another reason to believe that he hadn’t told jensen about the panel yet. jensen’s face there…. heart eyes motherfucker. 

i really don’t see enough people talk about the ‘safe word’ [6m38s] bit. jensen is the one to bring it up ‘so we should probably establish a safe word at this point. mine is keep going.�� misha laughs, and then realises what jensen has said, and (here comes my dom/sub truthing) teases jensen by saying ‘what is your safe word?’ to which jensen replies ‘keep going’ but LOOK at jensen’s face after he says that. he shakes his head with a little smirk and looks at misha with such a knowing look in his eyes that says ‘you fucker you know damn well what my safe word is’ and he actually does a double take and immediately rolls his eyes at himself after that. it’s all very quick but it’s far from subtle and i am here for it. 

i fucking love this next part because when the person says ‘a real story about the real jensen and the real misha’ they both are just like ‘yes okay’ but as soon as they say ‘that you have never told anyone before’ jensen just looks down and moves his head as if to say ‘what the hell am i supposed to come up with then’ lmao it’s really funny, and they end it with: ‘to know you a little bit better’ and guys (gn) i beg of you to look at the way they look at each other here. [7m24s] jensen is just like ‘help wtf should we say to this’ and misha just smiles down at him fondly like ‘sigh our fans really want us to talk about our relationship and as much as we would love to share stuff we just can’t’.

when misha says ‘we have to dust off some of those stories that we usually try not to tell other people’, something comes to mind: the ‘3 least ordered items on the menu’ story, that jensen shared a year after this at honcon. i honestly think that maybe they started to talk about what else they could share with the public, after this panel, because they get similar questions like this one all the time. either that or jensen just thought about what he felt comfortable sharing, without talking to misha about it, and decided to tell that story. 

i also absolutely love when they say ‘this is a serious question’ at the same time. AGAIN: IN SYNC!!!

‘i actually have a voice for you’ jensen can you please tell me why this sounds flirty and charming while you are actually about to make fun of your husband? i hate you (no i don’t) the fact that misha immediately knows what will happen, says a lot.

then jensen says: ‘dust off an old story for uhh..’ and burst out laughing. i swear to god i’d give my left pinkie to know what came to mind and what he whispered into misha’s ear. and i’m left handed. but i think we can all agree that whatever jensen said, it was something sexual, seeing as misha goes ‘nope’. those fuckers (affectionate).

something that i have mentioned in the past is that jensen always sort of ‘jokey’ goes ‘oh shit’ whenever misha says he’ll share something personal/private about them. i mean. jensen, it would be less sus if you didn’t respond. just giving you some pointers here, bro. because misha almost never shares something strange, it’s actually your reaction that makes me go ‘hmmmm.’ this time he even gets kind of elaborate breathing?? [10m27s]

oh to be a fly in clif’s car… honestly, the things clif must have heard and witnessed lmao. he clearly knows what is up between them (has made enough remarks about thinking that misha would be the bottom and that misha on his knees was nothing new for me to see that he absolutely knows.) 

this isn’t really important when it comes to cockles but they talk a bit about j*red’s internet dispute with at&t and jensen goes ‘oh they know’ gesturing to the audience. so clearly, jensen is well aware of the fact that fandom gets involved whenever something happens online with any one of them. just. thought that is an interesting fact. just in general. also love how i can tell that they both think j*reds crusades are bullshit (as they should). 

there is something really cute [14m13s] about the way misha goes ‘do you want your apple juice?’ and jensen goes ‘yeah!’ it sounds so domestic and mundane and i just. god i love them so much. 

i know we talk about jensen’s heart eyes a lot. but y’all. look [14m52s] at misha right here. he’s SO in love.

the thing that strikes me about jensen putting on ‘that voice’ for misha is that misha is honestly not bothered by it at all, but i think if the shoe was on the other foot, jensen would definitely be bothered. i don’t know what conclusion to draw from that but i just thought that is interesting. i always laugh at that bit, though, they seem to have so much fun.

i REALLY wanna know how jensen got from ‘will you dance for us?’ to ‘no but i’ll tell you what, misha and i will write a song for you real quickly.’ it’s such a fast transition that i am tempted to think that this was something he had been thinking about for a while now. he just wanted his mish to sing a song. and that warms my heart.

if you think i will ever get over how soft jensen is here… ‘you’re smart, you think on your feet, you make brilliant videos, put them on facebook, write amazing texts (*coughs* poems) and tweets and stuff, go ahead. spit out some lyrics, big guy.’ there is not one single thing about this that i do not adore. an ode to misha!!!! so casually!!! fuck. it might be true that if you want jensen to do something, you get misha to ask him, but it’s certainly also true the other way around.

the way jensen just. stares [19m02s] at misha, trying to get inspired by him, trying to feel out what cords to play. yeah. the way misha stands up but instinctively turns to jensen when he starts to sing. yeah. and then during the remainder of the song, he keeps on turning to jensen even though he faces the audience. and jensen loved it all. it’s so sweet. idk why but it just is. jensen just wanted his babe to thrive and get the love he deserves. 

aaaand in comes the dom shake [20m37s]. we love to see it. jensen just keeps on looking at mish. almost gets lost in it. touches his inner thigh (one of his habits, which he does a lot around misha or when talking about misha). 

i think it’s very interesting that jensen’s reaction [22m11s] to the question if he thinks dean will ever find a way to have a romantic relationship and to find himself in between normal and supernatural, is to immediately looks at misha. like? what was the reason? did he expect misha to answer a question that wasn’t about cas but about dean? did he think he should maybe answer it in a destiel-like manner? was he worried that the fan was hoping for a destiel-like answer and was he looking at misha to gauge what he thought was a smart way to respond? so many questions. 

i think it’s pretty interesting that jensen was very aware of the fact that people did not wanna see dean end up with a huntress lmao. he absolutely was aware of so many fandom things.

when jensen said that misha just crossed the line [23m40s], it’s another example of how jensen is ultra aware of what misha says and how it could get him into trouble and by the sounds of it, misha knows that as well but he just can’t always stop himself in time. from what we can see, he often realises just after he has already said something (when it is already too late).

listen. the fact that misha says ‘when harry met sally’ BEFORE the question was even finished, and jensen LAUGHS, like??? that panel was 5 years ago at that point. it clearly made a lot of impact on the both of them (jeez i wonder why, could it be because misha faked an orgasm and jensen got excited? hmm. who knows.) 

i think the dance portion is so fucking hilarious i’m wheeeezing. literally. they are just moving randomly AND YET THEY STILL SORT OF ARE IN SYNC? amazing.

you wanna know what i find really cute? the fact that jensen has such a soft spot for the resume off. part of me thinks it’s because they had a resume off in both 2012 and 2013. 

and jib 2012 took place during the famously rumored break up period. i wouldn’t be surprised if jib 2013 was that much more special to him because they finally got to make it right again. don’t look at me i’m getting emotional (on that note…… i might wanna write something about the break up period at some point. but idk. i mean. it’s a lot to delve into especially since i wasn’t in the fandom back then but. it compels me. we’ll see i guess.)

okay i know i keep saying this but they are SO in sync, as soon as they talk about photo ops and jensen goes ‘and to dab a little salt in the wound’ misha knows what he is gonna say, and they stand up together to demonstrate what happened. AND they both go ‘that’s not the punchline’ they are husbands. 

misha and jensen have both “twirled away laughing” in the EXACT same manner during this panel: misha when jensen starts to read the script, and jensen right here when misha says ‘what’s it like to be in a successful long running show’. they are mirrors. listen. listen. i know my mind is in the gutter a LOT of the time but like. uhm. there is this moment where they recall a woman saying in the photo op to ‘eat it’ (the string candy she gave to them) and misha says ‘and so we did’ and jensen looks at misha and it is SUCH an incriminating look i mean i don’t wanna be that person but 5 bucks he was thinking about eating misha out i am JUST SAYING. LITERALLY LOOK AT HIS FACE. [28m55s]

misha teases [7m02s] jensen by saying ‘what did you do? did you actually do it on purpose orrrr’ and i think it was to make jensen elaborate on it. which i think is a fucking good way to pull that off when it comes to jensen. cause jensen doesn’t like to brag, which misha knows, so by making that joke he is essentially trying to get jackles to tell the audience more about what he did, without him feeling like he is boasting about himself. and misha looks so pleased when jensen starts talking.

fuck i literally had to pause just now because. jensen says: ‘one of the characteristics of dean that i love to play is that he can bottle those fears up, stash them away, and just go. and uhm… sometimes i wish i could do that.’

this is actually making me a bit emotional because. he took his time saying this. it was a very deliberate move. he wasn’t sorry he said anything or regretted it. he wanted to get that out there. and i just. it makes so much sense if what we all think is actually true. he wishes he could just ignore all his fears and go for it. and it’s not hard to imagine what ‘it’ could be: coming out. whether that be just about his relationship with misha or being attracted to more than women in general, just in any way shape or form. it’s poignant. and misha turns away, but you can see him sigh a little bit. 

the whole bit about “apple juice” is just very cute and i enjoy it a lot. one thing i will say though is that i can kind of spot two tells of jensen: the way his face scrunches up when he is telling a lie that he thinks is clever, and the way he always leaves his chair to pour a drink when a question becomes difficult/hard/too funny to face head on. he has done both of those things time and time again, during panels with misha. just an observation. 

there is this little moment [10m13s] where misha tells the story about how he used to make apple cider with worms and dirt in it and in the end he goes ‘anyways. new england apple cider everyone. highly recommend.’ and jensen echoes that, ‘highly recommend. yeah.’ and of course that could just be a way to joke around and play along with misha but i’d like to think that he has visited misha and they had some apple cider together. just because i like the thought and i can, so. 

how CUTE is it that jensen remembers ‘i’ll just wait here then’, a line cas spoke 7 years prior to that panel, in a scene jensen wasn’t even in. i love it.

jensen slowly shaking his head when misha says ‘fuck’ and apologizing for it has SUCH major ‘excuse my husband’ energy. i love it.

‘i’ve got an idea’ [14m13s] ‘what? let’s do it’ misha imMEDIATELY regretted that lmaooo they are always so aware of double meanings and yet they cannot seem to help themselves. we love to see it. 

can you BELIEVE jensen ‘dance monkey dance’ ackles OFFERED to shamelessly promote a movie they have nothing to do with??? jensen, who hates the fact that they have to play some sort of show on stage, actually wanted to do that with misha??? i’m just- something something if you want jensen to do anything ask misha, but apparently also: if you want jensen to do something get misha involved and he’ll love it. 

and then he has the audacity to say ‘over to the wheel of love.’ i mean. i can’t.

(i don’t necessarily understand what is happening btw but that’s okay, because it leads to champagne. which is fun.)

okay so again apologies for my mind being in the gutter but jensen’s face [16m33s] when he says he is going to explain what [the champagne] tastes like……. hm. help. 

 honestly i just love the whole champagne bit because i love it whenever they get so playful on stage, and them “presenting” the bottle and going all ‘we know what we’re talking about’ ‘we’re kind of connaisseurs’ and the whole english accent bit. say it with me…. in sync. 

jensen popping a champagne bottle is something that can be so personal…. (i’m touch starved and going crazy, leave me alone)

i absolutely love the fact that jensen notices that misha is miming taking off his pants and misha immediately runs to him to explain and jensen just goes full on protective husband mode (YET AGAIN) ‘i turn my back for 2 minutes’ lmao it’s just such old married couple behavior. an old married couple that is horny and deranged, but still. 

i’ve seen the gifset of this moment [24m52s] many a times but i still think it’s so intimate. the way misha looks at jensen and walks backwards with him, for no fucking reason at all. sigh. misha’s hand clenches a little, and honestly i think he would have wanted to reach out to jensen in that moment. pat his arm or his back. and something happens a little while later that only proves my point even more…

that caress [60m5s] is probably one of the most intimate gestures i’ve seen between them. it’s so familiar. so natural. it says a lot.

and that’s the end of the panel. all in all i have to say that i enjoyed rewatching this panel with the analysis goggles on, because it’s really a very different experience and i picked up on a lot more than i did when i watched it just for fun. i think this is one of my favorite panels of theirs (at least until my next analysis lmao) because of the fact that they are so in sync with each other, which goes to show that their relationship was in such a good place (mind you i am only using past tense because i am describing a past panel, not because i think they’re not in a good place right now). this was a lot of fun folks, if you actually read all of this, god bles, you’re the best. see you next time!

[lucemferto]

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT TECHNOBLADE (or A Narrative Analysis of the Dream SMP Doomsday Event) - Script

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! I am planning on doing a big dumb, way too long analysis video on the Dream SMP which will – at my current pace – come out in five years. I am already way too late on this one.

Spoiler Alert for the Doomsday Event that took place on the 6th of January in the Dream SMP. Surely the worst thing to take place on the 6th of January 2021 … I’m sorry, what’s this about the Capitol?

In case you don’t watch the SMP and need context: The Dream SMP is a Minecraft Multiplayer Server, that, throughout the last year, has transformed from a normal Let’s Play to an ongoing new-media series streamed by multiple high-profile streamers such as Dream, TommyInnit or Technoblade. It comes complete with script – by which I mean loose bullet points – and story events. It has attracted a large fanbase specifically invested in the story and less so in the actual gameplay content. Like I said before, I will probably do a big video on the Dream SMP at some point in the future.

The storyline is long and complicated and trying to explain it all would take up the majority of the video and there are other channels who have already done a much better job than I could ever hope to do, so give them a watch. I’ll try to summarize all that is pertinent to what I will talk about in this video.

Okay, let’s speedrun this summary. Cue the music!

Major Players here are TommyInnit, a founder of the independent nation of L’Manburg, Technoblade, an anarchist who was deep in conflict with L’Manburg, Tubbo, Tommy’s best friend and current president of L’Manburg, and Dream, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Dream SMP (even though he is not the king, but we’re not going to get into that right now). Tommy had in the past been exiled by Tubbo for endangering L’Manburg’s shaky peace with the Dream SMP. Tommy had then teamed up with Technoblade, who was hellbent on destroying L’Manberg after some prior altercations – more on that later.

Tommy and Tubbo came into conflict during a festival set-up to celebrate the friendship between L’Manburg and the Dream SMP. After punching out their feelings, Tommy came to the realization that his friendship with Tubbo was more important than his vendetta against Dream and those who exiled him. Techno took that change of heart badly and teamed up with Dream to destroy L’Manburg … and that’s exactly what happened.

Techno and Dream, with little to no opposition, obliterated L’Manburg with no hope for recovery leaving its inhabitants stranded hopeless and alone.

… And that’s what you missed on Dream SMP!

Okay. So, usually I just put whatever thought slime drips out of my mouth hole into your subscription box. But then I asked myself: “Am I not taking this a largely improvised nonsense story from a bunch of 16–24-year-olds a little too seriously?”. And then I remembered. I’m a pretentious bitch. I made an 18-minute video explaining why the popular commentary YouTuber memeulous is secretly the time travelling Anti-Christ, REASON HAS NO SWAY OVER ME!

So, like the English Major drop-out that I am, I will present you with two theses, which I will then combine into one … supratheses! That word doesn’t exist, I just coined it, it’s mine! I am very smart!

[I know words, I have the best words!]

 Thesis #1: The Fandom focuses too much on Character Analysis in Favour of Narrative Analysis

The Dream SMP is truly something special. It is uniquely singular in how it tells a story of this scope through its chosen medium. While there is an overarching script that lays out the plot points of the future, each of the 30+ streamers on the SMP are their own cameraman, director, writer and actor. You cannot watch “the Dream SMP” – if you attempted that, you would be 80 by the time you caught up to the Doomsday Event. You have to choose whom to watch. You have to choose your focal point character.

Because by the way the story is told and consumed – aka in such a compartmentalized fashion; you watch one streamer and get one character’s perspective – it has sort-of unintentionally conditioned fans to look at the SMP and its characters less as one coherent story with messages and themes and more as sports teams they can root for. You’re Team Techno or Team Tubbo or Team Tommy or Team JackManifoldTV (formerly known as Thunder1408) and every other side is in the wrong! It’s like Twilight for a decade old children’s game about virtual Lego!

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the amount of discourse perpetuated by and revolving around so-called “apologists” – a terrible term that unfortunately has caught on – is really not something that I think is good for how we interact with the story of the Dream SMP.

The Dream SMP is discussed a lot on character-based level, which is, like I said before, hugely advantaged by the way the story is consumed by its audience. With traditional, visual media such as film for example, the audience can be made more aware of what messages the narrative might try to communicate on a narrative level without the need for an explicit narrator to tell you the moral.

As an example, in a movie you could have a smash-cut from the Butcher Army’s discussions about neutralizing the danger Technoblade poses to Techno being nice around villagers or taking care of animals. This would communicate on an extradiegetic level, that the Butcher Army is in the wrong with their assumptions. Alternatively, you could contrast Techno’s declarations that power corrupts and that Tubbo’s administration is cruel with Tubbo choosing not to punish Ranboo for his association with Techno – thus the narrative would communicate that Techno’s view of Tubbo and by extension the government is one-sided and not true to reality.

Stuff like that helps the viewer understanding a story holistically and manages to communicate stuff like themes and morals without having to solely rely on in-character logic and argumentation, which, as Ghostbur put it so eloquently, is comprised of a bunch of unreliable narrators.

Character analysis is great if we want dive deep, if we really want to give a character flavour and understand their motivations. It helps make the universe feel like it is alive, like it’s real. But – and this might be a shocker for you – it’s not real. It’s written. It is construction – and as such, in its construction, it has messages and themes and morals, intentionally or unintentionally.

By being so focused on specific characters and their individual journeys, viewpoints and motivation we really run the risk of not looking at the bigger picture and fail to see what the overarching narrative is actually communicating. And we may also fail to understand how characters might or might not fit into the overarching narrative.

Speaking of which …

 Thesis #2: Technoblade experiences very little Meaningfultm Thematic Conflict

Okay, let’s talk about Technoblade. I’m sure I’m not going to get any hate for this one.

I want to preface by saying that I don’t watch Technoblade’s streams; I catch up though clip channels and summaries. I’m mainly watching Tommy, Tubbo and Quackity – which is honestly already more than I can handle – but I want to be clear that while I’ll try to be as even-handed as possible – like I explained previously – the way I consumed the storylines will undoubtedly leave me with some bias.

Also, needless to say, I’m talking about the character Technoblade, not the actual content creator, unless I specifically say so. That should be obvious.

Now, I’m not doing a Technoblade character analysis, because that would be hypocritical of me – seeing how I just bitched about the overwhelming amounts of character analyses in the fandom – but I’ll try my best to summarize what is necessary.

Technoblade’s interesting in that he is a very static character – at least inwardly – he doesn’t change much. He is very steadfast in his beliefs and ideals and has very little introspection. He doesn’t question himself; he doesn’t waver, he is never in a bind about whether what he’s doing is right or wrong. He is very much a parallel to early TommyInnit – who, of course, famously said “I’m always in the right”.

And I want to emphasize that I mean this in no way as a critique of Techno’s character. A static character provides a nice contrast to more dynamic characters and can balance them out. It can also be utilised by the writing as a character flaw – which is what I hope content creator Techno is going for.

Like Techno doesn’t have a lot of empathy in the sense that he is particularly skilled at or interested in trying to see the viewpoints of others. There is never an attempt to reconcile, for example, the goal of the Pogtopians to reclaim L’Manberg and install another administration with his desire for an anarchist society. This is also compounded with his overreliance on violence as the only tactic for conflict resolution – Techno has a whole thesis statement about violence being the only universal language. I’m sure you’ve heard the quote.

And lastly, what really drives this all over the edge, is his all-or-nothing approach when dealing with the enemy – he is not so much eye for an eye as he is – to use another biblical example – you make fun of me for being bald and I’ll sic two bears on you that maul and kill you and 41 other children.

There’s also the open and completely unacknowledged hypocrisy of a self-described anarchist working together with a man that installs and dethrones Kings with his every whim – someone who – and I cannot stress this enough – hits about every box when it comes to the definition of tyrant.

So, what I’m saying is that Technoblade is the Dream SMP equivalent of Dick Chenney. C’mon you know it’s true! He will bomb that freedom into your country whether you want him to or not. That’s some cogent political commentary in the year 2021.

Okay, so now that I’ve outlined his character, what kind of conflicts does Technoblade face. Well, it’s mostly physical or external. He fights a lot whether it’s against Quackity or Sapnap or bodying Karl Jacobs five times in a row. And – with the exception of maybe Sapnap – none of it is challenging. Technoblade is the best PvP-Player on the server – there really isn’t much tension to be had from a purely physical fight.

So, how are these fights supplemented emotionally. Well, internally there is not a lot going on. As I said before, Technoblade isn’t really an introspective character. Even during his shouting match with Tommy there’s not a sense that Technoblade is wavering or unsure of himself in the way that Tommy is. He exposits that one of the reasons, he acts like he does is that he feels dehumanized; that people only use him like a weapon and then discard or even try to neutralize him once he’s no longer useful.

But that is not something that Technoblade has to grapple with – it’s not conflict for him, it’s more conflict for Tommy. Technoblade is self-assured in that he’s a person and not a weapon – it’s almost like there was a character arc there, where Technoblade self-actualizes and breaks away from the people that want to use him. But we didn’t see any of it. Technoblade unleashes the withers; then he goes into retirement because he wants to be, I suppose, and then he returns to violence as a reaction to the Butcher Army. There is a story of vengeance here, but not any conflict about being used. There is never a point where we see Technoblade come to this realization or comes to assert himself.

In season 1 there’s never a push from Pogtopia where the narrative frames them as exploiting Technoblade. He fights with them of his own volition, he gives them weapons and armour of his own volition. Nobody pressured Techno into procuring their inventory for the fight. And in Season 2, he’s the one to approach Tommy about their potential partnership – he is in the position of power here, explicitly not Tommy.

Like, I’m sorry, if this ruffles some feathers, but I really don’t see this arc where Technoblade is being used. There’s a story of misunderstanding and maybe co-dependency – but not of dehumanization. This entire line of thought seems to solely reference that moment, where Tommy says to Sapnap “I have the blade” during one of their wars – which, to base an entire emotional arc around that without any further set-up, is, and I’m sorry to say that, incredibly flimsy.

Okay, so we covered physical and emotional conflict? But what about conflict on the narrative level? Well, that leads me to my suprathesis …

 Suprathesis: The Narrative is Unclear on how it treats Technoblade … and that’s Not Good.

Here’s a Hot Take: The narrative of Season 1 treats Technoblade way less sympathetically than that of season 2.

Let me explain. The narrative of Season 1 revolves mostly around Wilbur and Tommy. The emotional fulcrum of the overall narrative is Wilbur’s rise and fall from Grace – and Tommy succeeding him as symbol of L’Manberg’s “special”-ness. Now I will talk about all that more in detail, when I talk about Season 1 of the Dream SMP. So, you’ll just have to go with me on this one for now.

Technoblade, by contrast, doesn’t really have much going on thematically in Season 1. He mostly exists as a sort-of utilitarian character – he is an accessory to make story beats happen. Like him executing Tubbo doesn’t open up any sort of thematic conflict involving him – on a character level it sets up antipathy between him and Tommy and it grants us some insight into how he operates with his violence speech – but on a larger-scale narrative level it really just shows how far Wilbur and Tommy have drifted apart in how they react to the event.

His biggest contribution is during the Season 1 finale, but even there he plays second fiddle to Wilbur. Not just because Wilbur does way more destruction with his explosion than Techno does with his Withers, but also because Wilbur had an emotional and thematic climax to his arc and by extension the entire storyline. Like Techno’s is a cool moment and very epic visual but in terms of thematic relevance, his Theseus-speech is really more set-up for Season 2.

And Season 1 is very unambiguous about L’Manberg being good and Tommy’s ideals ultimately being morally justified – I mean, they have a whole speech about it in the end and it was built-up throughout the entire Season – Techno is cast in a … less than sympathetic light. He is, if not a villain, then definitely an antagonist.

But with Season 2 the narrative is either uninterested in or not very clear on exploring Technoblade’s flaws.

Like ask yourselves: is Technoblade’s character ever consciously challenged by the narrative? Are his actions ultimately shown to not be in the right? Are his beliefs about government and power ever called into question? Are the negative consequences that his actions cause ever shown to be larger than the “good” he does?

I think what exemplifies this the most is how the Butcher Army event played out on December 16th. Now, during that event, the Butcher Army, which was comprised of Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy and Ranboo, managed to apprehend Technoblade, who at that point was living the quiet retirement life, and tried to have him publicly executed – without trial.

Now, smarter people than me have pointed out that the Butcher Army had a bevy of in-character reasons that can justify or explain their actions. And that’s definitely interesting, but as I said before, I want to get away from that and look into how the Butcher Army is treated on a narrative level. Because this is one of the few instances where the otherwise grey-loving Season 2 has some very clear narrative intent when it comes to morality.

The Butcher Army is very deliberately framed as almost cartoonishly corrupt and violent. They very forcefully investigate Philza, mock him and then put him under house arrest – and there’s just no remorse in the script even from normally sympathetic characters like Tubbo.

Compare and contrast with the Tommy-exile scene, which is also an act of moral ambiguity and is treated as such. And things get even worse once the Army arrives at Technoblade’s abode and attack him after he softly tells them that he has left that live behind him. They then proceed to take his horse hostage, mock him and execute him without fair trial – and I haven’t seen it but from live commentary I gathered that Techno really played up the whole softie-schtick before the Butcher Army arrived. I mean, before the big Technoblade vs Quackity fight, Quackity had whole villain monologue for Christ’s sake.

And even afterwards, the Butcher Army really plays up the corrupt angle with Tubbo proposing a festival as a guise to publicly execute someone. And again, I know that on an intradiegetic there’s nuances and it’s not really comparable to the Red Festival, but in combination with what the audience has seen up until that point and with how much it feeds into the already established themes of history repeating itself and becoming like your predecessors, it really does not paint a pretty picture of the Tubbo administration.

You can feel the heavy hand of the script on your shoulder, which is a feat seeing how – as discussed before – that’s not something that can be easily accomplished in this medium.

And that is what I mean when I say that Technoblade is not really challenged by the script and is in this case even emboldened by it. Because after this whole ordeal the thought of Technoblade taking revenge by destroying L’Manberg doesn’t seem like such an extreme response to the viewer – even though in my opinion, it is.

As of right now it is too early to say how the narrative will judge Technoblade’s actions in the future. Will they be framed as extreme but ultimately justified or perpetuating a cycle of ever-escalating vengeance? Will we ever see a government that’s not just at best misguided and at worst completely awful?

Ultimately, I believe and hope that Technoblade will be challenged by the narrative, mostly because a character that cannot, believably, be physically challenged, who doesn’t have any meaningful internal conflict about what he’s doing; and who does come out on the other side having everything he always believed in be proven completely in the right by the narrative, would be incredibly boring. Not just to watch but also to play as.

As it stands now, if the destruction Techno, Phil and Dream inflicted upon L’Manburg is framed as ultimately in the right, I would find it personally a distasteful message to send. I would ultimately say that the “correct” way to counter corruption in government is to completely obliterate the entire country. Like we’re not talking simply disbanding the government – that’s not what Doomsday was – we’re talking complete and utter annihilation. And that would be cynical and depressing. Like, call me a big softie, but even bothsidesing this argument would be bad.

Like, I’m not calling for Technoblade to be transformed into or treated a monster like Dream. But I personally feel like the narrative needs to acknowledge that the Doomsday was something that was taken way too far and that it ultimately brought more harm than good. And Technoblade needs to held accountable by someone who is not a cartoonishly corrupt government-official or who is in conflict with him anyway, like Tommy.

I thought Philza or Ranboo could do that but seeing how their storylines are progressing I don’t believe that will be the case. But who knows, maybe Captain Puffy will come through for us. We stan a Queen.

 Conclusion

So, yeah, I made this entire video just to air out my grievances with how one-sided the mode of analysis is in the fandom, because no person actually involved with the production of Dream SMP will ever see this.

But after everything I am cautiously optimistic, that content creator Technoblade knows what he’s doing. He has talked in the past about how his character is a bad guy and he loves his Greek myths. After all what’s more Greek myth than hybris being rewarded with punishment? [Technoblade never dies] That bodes well for him.

Also, this isn’t the video I promised at the end of the last one!

[beautifulterriblequeen]

What if moonshadow elves lost knowledge about themselves?

Hello, hope you have a nice day ! :D

(wait, is it day, for you?) hem! Anyway.

I was analylzing Moonshadow elves again and now I’m asking myself something, wonder what you would think about it:

Remember my “epiphany about the moon arcanum”?, when I said there’s maybe another side of their arcanum Moonshadow elves don’t know about? Something more life-light related:hope.

At first I said “they don’t know about” without really thinking about it. But, what if it’s true? I mean, what if there truly is a part they don’t know about their arcanum, or maybe forgot along the years? What if the war made Moonshadow elves focus so much on death-kill and all they kinda…. lost some of their knowledge about themselves? 

(I think I remember one of your old analysis (I think it was you, I can’t find it anymore), where you compared “young ethari” in the endcredits to the actual one. Where we saw him first doing jewelry, full of hope about life, and the actual one who let that aside to focus on the war) 

Add to this their community is described as “really close-knit”, which means more or less isolationism and so a stagnant, unable to evolve society. A society where the same rules were applied for centuries and so inevitably lost their deep meaning with time. 

I thought it was maybe exaggerated to think this way, but then I remembered the creators said there is 5000years of history in TDP. Even with longer lifespan, there’s no way elves didn’t forget some things with time. (I compare this situation to another one: some discoveries were recently made in egypt, and we learned that a few thousands years ago egyptian themselves re-discovered things they had discovered several centuries prior and forgot)

So I tried to find proof in the show and the novelization, and guess what? We have some! (or, well, it’s more my HC, but as I said, it’ just a theory)

I think this way especially because of Runaan, who was so sure there was “only one way to release”. But then, Zym came and cut Rayla’s ribbon. My personal HC on this is that only the life who was supposed to be avenged can release the assassin from the binding. It would make sense when you know Moonshadow elves “take life but they do not take it lightly”. But even if I’m mistaking, the central fact is that there is more than one way and, clearly, Moonshadow elves don’t know it (if the leader of the assassins doesn’t, then who could?)

What I find interesting here, is that Runaan recites this ritual at the beginning, about how precious life is, like a litany but the way he insists (especially in the novel) about killing Ezran even after he saw the egg, could be the proof it’s just that, a ritual. A ritual whose words lost all their sense, their deep meaning for his people.

Ok, it’s not much, but I think the combination of isolationism, stucking to rules without understanding them deeply and time, is the perfect recipe to lose your way, no? 

Oh, and a crazy other point in between these two theories about “hope” and “lost knowledge” woud be: If there is another aspect of the moon, other elves more hope-related (like Ethari or Rayla), why not another form?

Like sunfire elves have heat and light-being mode, Moonshadow elves could have something else too?. It’s probably stupid, I’m only thinking this way because of how Rayla feels while in moonshadow form in the novelization. It’s not that she hates it or something, but it makes her feel dizzy, as if she wasn’t suited for this. And if not, maybe it’s because she’s suited for another form? 

(sorry, I hope I’m coherent on this one, I’m a little exhausted and my thoughts are a little messy ^^’)

______________

Okay, @lily-lilou​, just let me catch my breath, this whole thing is a ride and I loved it. We definitely vibing here, fam.

whew

Okay, from the top, because I’ve had a lot of these thoughts myself and I’m so stoked to see someone else independently coming up with them!

Yes 100% to Moonshadows losing a part of their own history. (And yeah, I do have a post somewhere on Ethari’s evolution. Probably called it that iirc) If we’re right about Moonshadows having lived in Katolis before the lands were divided, living right near their own Nexus as the Sunfires still do, then when they packed up and left, it’s very possible they literally couldn’t bring everything with them.

I have a quirky little hc that there are still, to this day, Moonshadow villages hiding behind ancient protection spells in Katolis, and that people wander past them every day and have no idea. But it’s one thing not to be able to pack up your actual village. It’s another to leave behind records of your people’s past, their accomplishments and dealings and discoveries.

*eyes Lujanne’s truly massive library, with its huge walls covered in runes and books* This is where the full history of the Moonshadow people probably is kept. And no one has access to it but her.

Those who headed east would only know what they carried with them, and what was handed down orally through the generations. But see, if my headcanon about the Moonshadow assassins being created at that time ends up being true, then that’s probably bad news for history and truth. When you create a whole new class within your culture, you need to bolster it with ideology. You use myth, cultural norms, and current events to make it seem important.

You tell everyone that being an assassin is the most honorable job there is. And then it’s suddenly cool to be an assassin. 

If there were no Moonshadow assassins before the humans were booted out west, then everything Runaan says to Rayla, everything he believes, is pretty young compared to his people’s full history, which he may not know, at least in its true and undistorted form. It’s an illusion. Rhetoric. Propaganda meant to hold soft elves who deeply value life to the hardest task they’ll ever undertake: taking that life from another, for a cause they cannot turn away from, a purpose they are culturally indebted to. Because their people, their princess (?), was the one who asked for the humans to be spared, and so every mistake the humans make from that point on is the Moonshadow elves’ duty to handle.

Runaan was wrong about how many ways there are to release. Has Zym truly been the only victim who wasn’t actually dead, in a whole thousand years? Honestly, probably not, knowing how politics works. But see, if you have an elite squad devoted to serving Xadia, and you tell them that their hands will literally fall off and they will die if they don’t do their jobs because there is only one way to release the ribbon they’re honor-bound to wear, they will take their target or die trying. And if you maybe exaggerated reports of the victim’s death for political purposes and actually have them in a dungeon, or they fled to the human lands as a refugee, or any number of other squirrelly options that Moonshadows aren’t naturally inclined to consider, then you can literally get away with murder-by-proxy. Or containment. Or intimidation. Or whatever your purpose is in taking out a human target who may or may not even be guilty of the crime you allege against them. It might not even be Zubeia and Avizandum’s fault. Unless they can detect truth and lies, they can be deceived by someone unscrupulous with an agenda of their own.

Long paragraph long, there are a lot of problems with the existence and practical duties of Moonshadow assassins. They’re kind of like the War Doctor: born form conflict, and thus only able to serve it, instead of peace. Yes, we all want Runaan to get his happy ending, retire, go home to his soft husband. But really, the whole institution of the assassins needs to go. It was born of war, and if Xadia and the human lands make peace, truly, then the assassins should be dissolved. As I said in one of my fics, Moonshadow assassins are Xadia’s dark magic, turning death into power. It’s gotta stop on both sides.

One of my oneshots for January’s Ruthari Week played with the idea of Ethari having a moonform instead of a shadowform, because yes to elves having two kinds of forms in each culture! I would love to see that for all the elves. And if we use Sunfire elves as a kind of roadmap, with “sun” and “fire” being the heat- and light-beings, then maybe the other elves get their two forms from their names as well. Or so my headcanon went for that fic: a moon form to balance the shadow form, where the elf’s body can glow like the full moon. I didn’t really touch on what that form’s ability would be, but I suppose, logically, it would serve as a portable full moon, powering other nearby Moonshadows even when the moon was down, or new, or a small crescent.

Okay, that’s just fun. I like that idea a lot. The only time “just stand there and look pretty” can be used as a battle tactic!

I can see Rayla getting to have the rare Moonshadow power. That would make her a good balance for Callum and his unusual arcanum as a human. Part misfit, part superpower. It would also probably be a power that puts her closer to Ethari’s soft and protective attitude, no matter what the power really is, since the assassins in Moonshadow culture have clearly adopted their natural shadowy form as a mission tactic, attacking specifically on full moon nights. Literally any other kind of power is probably going to be softer, lighter, more lively and bright, in concept if not literally so. Maybe the other power kicks in on new moons? or is available at any time? I really hope we get a second Moonshadow power of some kind. I am down for all the extra worldbuilding!

Thanks once again for your thoughts! *fist bump* Moonshadow elves. You get it.

[amillioninprizes]

Some thoughts on Veronica Mars, fan service, and noir

I’ve been on winter break and at home with a nasty combo cold-ear infection-stomach virus the past couple of weeks, and as so often happens when I don’t have much going on, my thoughts have turned to ruminating over the steaming pile of excrement that was season 4 of Veronica Mars. Why yes, almost six months and one cancellation notice later and I’m still complaining about it--as I told someone on Twitter, it was so stupid that it’s going to take years to unpack.

This particular rant is brought to you by a common refrain seen in both professional critics’ and S4 supporters’ reviews of S4: the movie was schlocky fan service, while S4 is TRUE NOIR. I’m here to argue that neither of those things are true, and that in the grand scheme of things trying to definitively call Veronica Mars noir or not isn’t the best qualitative judgement of the series.

A note on “fanservice”

Something that’s been very strange to me in the critical discussion around S4 is that the fan-funded movie has been retconned as a fanservicey failure. This is weird because it did get a positive Rotten Tomatoes score, actually turned a profit despite the unorthodox distribution model, and was overall well-received by fans except for maybe the 5 Piz lovers out there (he absolutely did not deserve better you guys; he works at This American Life and lives in Brooklyn, he’ll be fine).

A lot of the things pointed to in the movie as fan service actually weren’t. In every interview about the movie and S4, RT and KB always talk about how they started with the image of Veronica punching Madison at the high school reunion and worked from there. The problem is that almost no one had been asking for that. If they had bothered to read any online discourse about the show (and we know RT definitely does), they would know that fans are actually somewhat sympathetic to Madison--after all, she was the intended recipient of the drugged drink Veronica received at Shelly Pomeroy’s party, plus growing up in a family that she wasn’t meant to be a member of must have negatively impacted her. When the preview scene of Veronica encountering Madison at the reunion welcome table was released, Veronica didn’t come off sympathetically. In a similar vein, as much as I liked Corny as a side character in the original series, I didn’t need him to come back for that random scene at the reunion. Nor was anyone asking for an out-of-nowhere James Franco cameo (which given what we know about him now is super gross in hindsight).

So why was the movie well-received by fans? Veronica was in character after an unevenly written and performed S3, and she was back in Neptune, doing what (and who; Ay-yo!) she was meant to do. So while the mystery was subpar (and what Rob Thomas mystery isn’t?), the character side of the story made sense and was satisfying. I wouldn’t call that fan service so much as good writing. Plus, what is even the point of wasting time, money, and effort on making a tv show or movie if it’s going to actively alienate the audience?

S4: more trauma porn than true noir

Admittedly, I’m not exactly the world’s foremost scholar on film noir (in my opinion, the height of cinema is teen romcoms c. 1995-2005), but I do feel I have enough pop cultural knowledge to have a working understanding of what film noir is, and as internet folk would say, S4 ain’t it chief. Sure, S4 was bleak subject matter wise, but that does not automatically equal noir. HappilyShanghaied, who does have a film studies background, wrote a pretty excellent post about why that is shortly after S4 dropped that I could not improve upon, so I will just leave it here. 

In addition to this analysis, I would also point out that S4 was lacking in a unique visual style common to noir films, especially compared to the original television series and the movie. The original series made use of green, blue, and yellow filters to fulfill a high school version of the noir aesthetic (quick shoutout to Cheshirecatstrut’s color theory posts for more on what we thought this meant before it turned out that Rob Thomas did not actually intend to imbue meaning into any of this), while the movie adopted a more mature muted blue-grey palette. S4, however, was more or less shot like a conventional drama and was brightly lit, perhaps signifying Rob Thomas’s apparent plans to turn the show into a conventional procedural.

The movie: more than fan service 

If anything, the movie was more noir than S4. Take Gia’s storyline for instance. While Veronica was off obtaining elite degrees, Gia spent 9 years in a virtual cage being forced into a sexual relationship without her total consent (because that’s the only storyline women can have on this show), and then set herself up to be murdered at the very moment she could potentially break free. That’s pretty fucking grim.

Then there is the whole police corruption storyline, which is a hallmark of noir fiction. The glimpses we get of the Neptune sheriff’s department point to a larger conspiracy at play than just crooked cops; Sachs lost his life trying to expose it and Keith was gravely injured. This was the story I was excited for future installments of Veronica Mars to address, especially given its relevance to today’s politics. Unfortunately, this thread was entirely dropped in S4, where the police department (because, as Rob Thomas revealed in interviews but not onscreen, Neptune has incorporated) is merely overwhelmed by the scope of the bombing case rather than outright corrupt. (Side note but Marcia Langdon was also a more complex and morally grey character when introduced in the second book than she was on screen in S4. Another wasted opportunity).

Noir is also marked by a sense of inevitability or doom as a result of greater forces at play. An example of this in the movie is Weevil’s storyline. After building a life and family for himself, he ultimately ends up rejoining the PCHer gang he left as a teenager due to a misunderstanding based on his race and appearance and the assumptions authority figures make about him because of those things. No matter what he does, he is still limited by an unjust and racist society. Contrast this with the final explosion in S4; it’s not inevitable, just based on Veronica’s incompetence. Rob Thomas claims that he tried to create a sense of doom to LoVe’s relationship between the OOC Leo storyline and the last minute barriers before the wedding, but those aspects just served to make the story unnecessarily convoluted.

What is noir anyway? Was Veronica Mars ever noir? Does it matter?

But this is all assuming there is a set template for noir anyway. This New Yorker essay points out that trying to definitively establish a set of rules for noir is difficult and that the classic noir films were more a product of midcentury artistic and political movements than a defined genre. The noir filmmakers working at the time would not have described their work as such. The kicker of this essay is the final sentence: “But the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter-day attempts at film noir, or so-called neo-noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia.” I found this particularly amusing because as Rob Thomas infamously proclaimed in his S4 era interviews, he wanted to completely dispense with nostalgia going forward. Rob Thomas and S4 supporters have said that Logan needed to die because noir protagonists can’t have stable relationships; but, if there isn’t a defined set of rules other than “an element of crime”, then was it strictly necessary? Hell, writing a hardboiled detective who does have a stable relationship and maybe even a family could have been an interesting subversion of genre expectations. Unfortunately, Rob Thomas isn’t that imaginative.

There’s also the issue that noir and hardboiled detective fiction aren’t interchangeable genres. This article lays out that idea that they aren’t the same because noir is ultimately about doomed losers; in contrast, detective fiction, while dark, contains a moral center and has an ending where a sense of justice is achieved. An interview with author Megan Abbott makes a similar argument; she states that in hardboiled detective fiction, “At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.” Based on the descriptions laid out here, I would argue that in its original format Veronica Mars far better fit the detective fiction model; while she wasn’t always right, she was never a loser, and she solved the mystery. S1-3 all had relatively hopeful, if not totally happy, endings, but you never see anyone complaining that they weren’t noir enough; if anything, they were more emotionally complex than the ending of S4, where Logan’s death is essentially meaningless. One could make the argument that S4 did push Veronica towards a more noir characterization by the definition of these articles by making her more incompetent and meaner than she was in previous installments, but that is a fundamental change in character, which is not coherent writing.

And that is ultimately why S4 was so poorly received by longtime fans and why there will be no more installments of Veronica Mars anytime soon (at least on Hulu). Even if S4 had been noir (or at least shot like one), the serious issues with plotting, characterization, and lack of adherence to prior canon that this season exhibited would still exist. Defending the poor writing choices made in S4 with “it’s noir!” does not mask them or automatically heighten the quality of the product. Perhaps ironically, in ineptly trying to be noir in S4, Rob Thomas likely prematurely ended Veronica Mars by failing his creation and fans with lazy storytelling.

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: The Tatami Galaxy, Episodes 4-8

In which a million trains of thought collide all at once and I do my best to piece together the fascinating puzzle this show presents me with.

Connection Chaos

I try to keep a fairly measured pace while writing for this blog. I only have enough time to watch and discuss so much material in a day, and there’s a fine line between not having enough to talk about and having so much to talk about that I waste the entire day getting a post out. For some anime, that line is thinner than most, and some shows are just so densely layered that I can only get through a small chunk of episodes before I start feeling like I have too much to talk about at once (Hello, Revue Starlight). And, of course, some shows are just so damn good that I don’t mind spending hours on end organizing my thoughts and working my wrists to exhaustion on doing them justice (Exhibit A, every other Gintama post I wrote). But it’s the rare show that makes me keep watching well beyond what should have been my stopping point, not just because it’s good, but because I just can’t stop wanting to know more. Five episodes of The Tatami Galaxy is way too much to talk about in a single chunk; it’s too damn complex. By all accounts, I should have stopped myself from going past three. But the more details this chunk of episodes revealed to me, the hungrier I became to see more of the complete picture, and the further I pushed myself to keep revealing it bit by bit. Hell, part of me still isn’t satisfied by stopping here and wants to keep going until I can piece together the entire damn mystery. But I gotta stop here, or else my brain’s gonna burst trying to figure out how to write a coherent analysis of literally everything going on here.

Point is, The Tatami Galaxy is the kind of riveting puzzle-box that’s almost impossible to put down, where you can so easily get lost in trying to solve it that common sense falls by the wayside. It really does remind me of Higurashi in that way, especially considering the similar ways it builds connections and recursions between its time loops. But whereas Higurashi was a fairly slow-burning affair that revealed information at a deliberate pace, The Tatami Galaxy never stops bombarding you with new clues, new objects of interest, new morsels of meaning to chew over. To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what I make of it as a show; with how many different things it has going on, I’m spending all my effort just to understand its instruction manual. But it is god damn fascinating trying to unravel all its twisting threads. This is easily the most purely intellectual anime experience I’ve had in a while, and if nothing else, it’s a reminder of how rewarding it can be when I tackle a show that seriously challenges me. So let’s dig right into the gristly meat and see just how much of this puzzle we can piece together thus far. Here’s hoping we don’t explode our brains in the process.

Proxies All the Way Down

The most concrete information we have on what’s really going on here comes in episode 4, as we finally get some information on what’s going on with the big-chinned god Higuchi. Apparently, he’s one of the latest proxies in a way that started long ago, handed down through generations of master and student to settle a score that’s long since been forgotten. His rival? None other than the asshole director Jougasaki from episode 2. They’ve been butting heads for quite some time now, and they’ve both begun the process of finding a new student to replace them as their proxy. That’s where Akashi comes in; she’s one of Higuchi’s students, possibly preparing to take up his pointless battle. And Ozu’s the student planning to succeed Jougasaki, although he’s currently acting as a double-agent undercover in Higuchi’s camp. But his actual goal’s far more ambiguous; whoever he’s fighting for, he seems happy simply to cause chaos in his wake. And for as much as he’s been dragging Watashi down, he seems equally dedicated to helping him along his way. He rescues Watashi from the smiley honeybee death cult in episode 5, he covers for his escape right afterward, and he helps him out after his near-disastrous experience with Hanuki in episode 6. He doesn’t even carry on the pen-pal prank to the point where Watashi becomes trapped in it; Akashi was the one who kept it going after Ozu got bored with it. It’s even implied in episode 6 that Ozu might... be in love with Watashi? Possibly? Certainly, his invisible presence wasn’t reacting to positively to Higuchi’s girlfriend spilling his secrets to Watashi. And it would explain why he’s so obsessed with the idea of them being bound by the black thread of fate, sinking to the bottom of the ocean together.

And that’s where things really get interesting; how many agents of change are influencing the loops? The more loops we go through, the more it seems to indicate that the events taking place across them are mostly the same. There are constant references across these episodes to things that happened in previous loops, but discussed as if they took place in the current one. Ozu always hits Jougasaki with that expose documentary, Akashi is always working on that Birdman plane, Jougasaki always has his love doll, and so forth and so on. Events play out in-universe exactly the same way every time; the only different is what path our POV character takes through his rose-colored campus life, and thus, what part of these events we’re able to see at any given time. Watashi’s choices are ripples in the water that make subtle changes in where exactly everyone ends up and how. He’s like a fish swimming through a stream; the stream goes its own way, but his presence influences its flow. Ozu and Akashi, for example, always seem to find their way into Watashi’s life, no matter what path he goes down. So perhaps Watashi isn’t just an agent of change, he’s the particular agent of change Higuchi is looking for? And Ozu and Akashi, as Higuchi’s disciples, are always adjusting their own lives to fit in with his, in hopes they can influence him down the path their master desires? I dunno, it’s a theory, at least. Because whatever the case may be, it’s probable that Watashi’s the locus for why this surreal situation is even occurring in the first place.

Three Ways to Purgatory

Which brings us to another all-important question: how aware is Watashi of all the things he experiences across the loops? Because it’s really starting to look like he doesn’t just reset to zero at the beginning, completely unchanged by his latest trials. He has brief memory flashes of things that happened in other loops, such as setting off fireworks at happy couples out of spite. He even seems to recognize that he’s been to the old fortune teller multiple times, and that their repeated conversation is growing more and more abridged so as to not be repetitive for the audience (one of many winking moments that made me chuckle across these episodes). But more importantly, regardless of how much direct memory he’s transferring across the loops, he actually does seem to be learning from his misadventures. When he opens episode 5 with his usual demand of asking who’s responsible for his sorry situation, he acknowledges, for the first time, that it’s his fault. Well, okay, he says it’s probably his fault, and just this once, but still, that’s progress! And then, he starts the very next episode with his biggest step forward yet: not hedging all his bets on one damn club. For the first time, he recognizes the danger of pidgeonholing himself into a situation that might not pay off, and he diversifies his interests between multiple pursuits to try and figure out what suits him best. That’s a huge fucking step forward, and it gives him enough options to actually repeat the loop he’s in for three iterations until he once again runs out of options.

On that same topic, Episodes 6 through 8 provide a decent guide for figuring out all that continuity stuff I mentioned above. However the perspective shifts between the events of this threefold loop and whichever side of Watashi’s life is in focus at the time, Jougasaki still gets his perversity thrown up on screen by Ozu, who’s still doing it as part of Higuchi’s proxy war with the dude, and Akashi’s still on that same team. It’s not just the same events from multiple perspectives across these three episodes, it’s the same events from multiple perspectives across the entire show. And it’s further evidence that no matter what situation Watashi ends up in, he just keeps running into the same problems. All three of his would-be love interests in this trypitch are unrealistic fantasies for him; a “loose” older classmate he could take advantage of while drunk, a literal lifeless doll he can project any desires on to, and a pen pal who he can present himself to as far greater than he really is. They’re all so attractive to him precisely because they’re so unreal; they’re perfect fantasies that he can imagine himself excelling in, with no risk and no consequences. But the instant all three of them present him with the opportunity to make them real, they crumble into pieces, because they’re dreams he could never live in reality. He could never take advantage of a girl drunk, an inanimate object is a poor receptacle for perverse desires, and his pen pal was nothing more than a prank that got too far.

It’s a pretty revealing series of failures of Watashi’s part, because they all lay bare the root of his issues: he’s scared to make his dreams reality. He can happily indulge in the fantasy of being popular, beloved, the most eligible bachelor on campus, but actually pursuing any of those goals is too scary. There’s too much risk of failure, of embarrassing yourself, of coming up short and regretting ever trying at all. So he half-asses everything and waffles his way through campus life over and over again, devoting himself to singular pursuits in hopes they’ll fill the void of an actually meaningful life, claiming that no, of course he’s in this for the art, really, he couldn’t care less about the beautiful girls he’s sure to meet, but if they were to throw themselves at his feet for being so talented, well, who is he to stop them? It’s the most cowardly way he could possibly live his life. Even his attempt to retreat entirely into a realm of non-threatening niceness only reveals itself to be one more imperfect reality, even before they turn out to be a smiley honeybee death cult; when you’re obsessed with never rocking the boat, you create a space where nothing can truly move forward.

And in the background of all that turmoil? Who other than Akashi, a flesh-and-blood woman who gets along well with Watashi in person and seems like she wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of them becoming a little closer. She’s the realest chance at a real relationship Watashi has... so, of course, she’s the one interest he can’t even begin to pursue. By the end of episode 8, even he has to acknowledge what Ozu’s always needled him about; the problem’s him. It’s his inability to take a stand, to reach out and try to make something concrete out of his life. Whatever path he takes, as long as he keeps making those same mistakes, he’s just gonna keep ending up at the exact same place.

Seizing the Rose

Still, for all the shit I’m giving Watashi, I’d be remiss to pretend he’s not compelling in his screw-ups. We were all young and dumb once upon a time; hell, I’m still young and dumb, and I’m only a couple years older than Watashi. It’s hard as shit to figure out who you want to be, and there’s a lot about Watashi’s hang-ups and uncertainties that hits pretty close to home for me. I can have so much trouble figuring out how to join a conversation where everyone else is on the same page, what are the rules on when it’s polite to add your voice to the chat? When is it okay to stake out your own identity and when is it better to let the flow of the groupmind carry you along? Heck, as someone currently learning Chinese, Watashi’s difficulty speaking English while his classmates converse around him was hilariously relatable. My mind just cannot keep up with the speed of spoken foreign language sometimes; I’m too busy try to mentally finesse every last bit of grammar and syntax, all but ensuring the conversation moves on without me. But as Hanuki rightfully points out, sometimes, you just have to leave the second-guessing behind and jump right into the think of things. Whether it’s learning a foreign language, forming a relationship or friendship, or simply pursuing something you enjoy doing, the only surefire way to make progress is to try. No matter how awkward or embarrassing or painful it is, all you gotta do is keep moving forward until you’re experienced enough to get it right.

And it looks like Watashi might finally figured that out for himself. Because when he triggers the loop’s reset at the end of episode 8, he’s no longer whining about how it’s all Ozu’s fault or he’s certain he would have had better luck if he just chose his clubs differently. This time, his statement of purpose is that he wants to reach for life and grasp it with his own hands. This time, it looks like he’s finally ready to throw his pride to the side and play the goddamn game. And with Ozu’s leering face projecting from the clock as it turns back, it looks like we might have finally reached the definitive loop. This is gonna be the moment of truth, when we finally figure out exactly what’s going on and Watashi finally figures out how to steer his life the way he wants it to go. And I can’t wait to see how this madness shakes out when all is said and done.

Respect the Greats

And now, since I couldn’t figure out a way to naturally weave this in with the rest of my analysis, let’s close out this post with another tribute to Masaaki Yuasa’s incredible sense of style. This show may be the best use of his talents I’ve seen yet, with some of the most audacious, dynamic, cleverly realized uses of his surreal, stoner-vision visual tics out there. Here, in no particular order, is a list of moments from across these episodes where his magic really shined through:

-The blackout/blue face outline aesthetic to convey the darkness of Higuchi’s hideout in the beginning of episode 4.

-Higuchi’s mesmerizing song sequence, a masterwork of dynamic movement and momentum.

-The perfect smiling drones of the honeybee death cult going all multicolor and electric-shock explosive when they let their defenses down and spill the ugliness in their hearts.

-English being so disorienting to Watashi that he pictures his fellow classmates blasting the language out of their mouths almost like they’re firing it from a gun.

-The wild and wibbly animation when Watashi gets drunk with Hanuki. Really, is there any better use for Yuasa’s talents than animating the world as seen through the eyes of someone absolutely tripping on drugs or intoxicants?

-The black of Watashi’s attempted escape with the lifeless doll punctuated by stark white flashes of lightning.

-The turning pages of a book treated like a stormy sea.

Odds and Ends

-...those are Legos in the hotpot. Sure. Why not.

-”Rock-Paper-Scissors!” GOD FUCKING DAMMIT THAT WAS A PERFECT DIFFUSAL OF TENSION I’M CACKLING

-”I was constantly on the verge, like the Cuban Missile Crisis.” SURE.

-Hold on a second: the personification of Watashi’s ideal black-haired beauty has a last name of Kohinata? Hibiki, somebody’s macking on your wife! Show him your determination to fist!

-”Thanks to health food, my life became more and more unhealthy.” Unfortunately accurate.

-What the- WHERE’D THE GHOST COME FROM?!

-”Quit it with the pretentious monologues already!” I never thought I’d be saying thank you to an anthromorphisized penis, but... thank you, anthromorphisized penis.

-”English is more about feeling than grammar.” I feel called out.

-Oh my god, the book Ozu gives Watashi in episode 8 is “The Night is Short, Walk On Girl,” which is not only by the same author as the guy who wrote Tatami Galaxy, but was also turned into an anime by Yuasa almost a full decade after he did Tatami. It’s all connected, y’all.

-Watashi’s idealized hero form looks like Papyrus from Undertale and I don’t know how to deal with it.

-Woah. Hold the goddamn phone. The old lady’s price just went down. For the first time.

-WELP SPOKE TOO SOON ASKDJHASKDHKADSH

Wow, that was a heck of a post. One more session to go now, so I’ll see you next time for the end of The Tatami Galaxy!

[greenlightmusicreviews2]

The Revenge of GLMR!!! | Reasons, Review & Analysis

Because opinions are like voices, we all have a different kind, so just clean out all of your ears, these are my views • atcq "award tour"

There’s a lot different ideas that run through my head when I’m listening to music, and - although it’s been a while - especially when I try to review music. Obviously, there’s going to be bias because I have certain sounds and textures and concepts that I like more than others, but there are three that I expand on down below: effort, competence, and experimentation.

Of course that’s not to discount other aspects like... production value, mixing style, lyricism, songwriting, composition, style and a lot of other aspects to what makes a song work or an album flow - egads! - album sequencing!!!

I really like music, and at the bottom of that, I really want to like music. I’ve spent a lot of time writing my own music and sitting next to friends as they mix and produce the music I write, and so it’s exciting, new and different to sit on the other side and seriously think about the music that I get to listen to. I want to take more time with this endeavor and put in the work to maintain this thing. Maybe that means starting with familiar stuff and getting a feel with how I think about music with artists or albums I know. At the end of the day, I’m a guy on the net with a blog, but I hope you sweet, beautiful people find something worthwhile, interesting, funny and hopefully insightful from this thing. Maybe you can get something cringeworthy out of it. We may never know, but hopefully, we may.

In the words of Josh Homme:

If you've got the time and you've got the space you've got to make something of it. We might balls the whole thing up but you've got to try!

Effort

One of the things I put a premium on is effort: did’ja at least try to make a good song or record? Because if you didn’t, then fuck you.

In my teenage years I listened to a lot of alt-metal, post-grunge, hard rock and generally loud guitar music, so understand that I speak with some authority when it comes to that genre of music. Seether, Hinder, Nickelback, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Saving Abel, Three Days Grace - even bands that were influenced from the original crop: Daughtry, Theory of a Deadman, Popevil - and even bands that were just a little outside of generic rockers, bands like Foo Fighters, Audioslave, the sort of acts that were pretty well-respected but still made similar music but of a little better quality than their imitators. So I’m a bit of an expert when it comes to the post-grunge sound, that sound a generation or so removed from the Seattle heavyweights they hold in such high regard. My favorites of the bunch were: Foo Fighters, Nickelback, Seether, Puddle of Mudd, throw in some Everclear and that’s a good sampling of bands that I really liked at that time. These are bands that sounded like they put in a good amount of effort in the records that they made.

I hear distant scoffs, but only because it’s fallen out of fashion to dislike Nickelback, but hear me out: if you think Nickelback was generic and derivative, then you weren’t given the chance to hear Nickelback-lite.

Nickelback is a band whose blueprint was always more CCR, ZZ Top and Metallica than anything else, and their albums, save for maybe Curb typically reflected this.

They combined these three somewhat disparate influences with the sonic template that the Big Four of Grunge popularized and made some incredibly catchy and well executed music.

Hoobastank, on the other hand, you could tell sort of wanted to imitate Incubus, but recognized the immediacy of a band like NIckelback. Their music was similar, though never venturing further than Drop-D tunings, but their songwriting was sub-par. There was never, I sensed, the effort that truly made certain bands stand out. The lyrics especially, where they offered fairly banal observations and pleas for help:

Show me what it's for Make me understand it I've been crawling in the dark Looking for the answer Is there something more Than what I've been handed? I've been crawling in the dark Looking for the answer

- “Crawling in The Dark” by Hoobastank (2001)

The sound is part and parcel of what rock bands in the mid-2000s were aiming for in order to receive radio play: dull production value, samey chord progressions, vaguely introspective lyrics and leads that sound like U2 outtakes. Was there any effort, any character, any color, any life to your production, music or lyrics? Unfortunately, once executives and the ilk come in, well, that’s where a lot of “corporate rock” gets its reputation from.

Competence

Competence is one of those things where all it’s asking is, did’ja do it well? Does it sound awkward or cringey, or is it well-executed and hits the mark?

An example that comes to mind is Foo Fighters’ 2014 album Sonic Highways. After 2011′s Wasting Light, which was a watershed moment for the band, they began to really lean into their own legacy. Grohl and Co. became a standard-bearer for rock music at this time, and to an extent still do. What came after was a pretty bloated concept record about the musical history of the United States in 8 different cities tied together with an HBO documentary. While the documentary was actually decently made though not perfect, the record suffered from the band overextending themselves. They recorded the album in 8 different cities while interviewing famous musicians with deep roots in those cities, and then Grohl would go and write lyrics based on what he had learned in those interviews, weaving in little things they said here and there in order to form a coherent narrative for the song.

It didn’t quite work. The music is decent for the most part, but Grohl was just not able to make it compelling enough. Dave’s insistence on the record not straying too far from the band’s original sound didnt’ make sense when the entire concept was based on a city-by-city celebration of American-made music. The finished product was colored by Vig’s by-the-numbers production and Grohl’s own hesitation about making it too different.

There are musical projects that are well-performed and well-produced (i.e. competent in a couple different dimensions), but the overarching concept can be marred by the artist’s own musical limitations.

Danny Worsnop has had a successful stint with Asking Alexandria. His foray into country music with The Long Road Home is pretty good. Kid Cudi, the rapper whose Man On The Moon records were well-done pop-cum-rap albums, didn’t quite hit the mark with 2012′s WZRD and much less with 2015′s Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven, both attempts to make rock(?) records.

An artist’s own musical limitations can hinder musical projects, even if other aspects of the music are otherwise done decently well.

There’s a dimension where a record can be “competent” in what it does and score a 5/10 or higher. There’s also a dimension where a record can be “competent” in what it does and score a 4/10 or lower. It’s tied to the effort made, and of course, goes by an artist-by-artist basis. Same thing with...

Experimentation

Not every song or album has to be a genre-bending, mind-expanding, sound-expanding trip through another universe, but artists that make an attempt to go beyond their comfort zone or beyond an established boundary get credit for doing so.

This is, again, kind of by an artist-by-artist basis. You can’t have multiple Beatles, for example, who rewrite the music playbook or whatever. But when an artist tries to go even a little out of their comfort zone, it’s appreciated. Take an artist like Ian Thornley. An extraordinarily talented guitarist and songwriter, his band Big Wreck recorded In Loving Memory Of... in 1997 and, although it took its blueprint directly from Led Zeppelin III, did some pretty interesting things sonically and early on demonstrated some great potential in developing their sound. Their follow-up was a bloated piece of work that unfortunately fell into the trope of “let’s go thicker on the guitars and have overblown ballads” that most rock bands in the 2000s fell into. After their break-up, Ian continued this trend with the plodding generic music of Thornley.

A band that actually threads this needle pretty well is Queens of the Stone Age. Josh Homme creates each record with its own unique identity, doing so competently, with effort, and not sounding (at least not all the time) like a phoned in attempt to sit on his haunchy laurels. Era Vulgaris, a personal favorite of mine, was this dirty, sleazy, almost evil sounding record while its follow-up ...Like Clockwork plumbed the depths of Homme’s struggle with depression and created gorgeous sonic landscapes on songs like “The Vampyre of Time and Memory” and “I Appear Missing.”

I like a little experimentation whether with production, music or lyrics. It’s not going to kill a record if they don’t really experiment, but the artist gets points for at least trying.

Final Thoughts, Concerns & Whatever Else

These three things are what immediately came to mind when I thought about what goes through my head when thinking about music. It’s not super technical, and probably comes from my own background as a musician without a background in theory and who pieces music together mostly through feeling and intuition. But there’s a bunch of other things that I know should look out, and want to look out for. Things like production value, lyricism, composition and style. The way I listen to music hopefully will change for the better, and looking back to previous reviews, I can do a hell of a lot better, and plan to. I actually hope to find better and more unique and interesting ways to describe how I hear certain sounds and even improve on listening out for certain, subtle aspects of production jobs.

Welcome back to Green Light Music Reviews! Sub-par music reviews for a healthy colon! Enjoy!!

[marinsawakening]

What is your opinion on ABA therapy, and when should ABA therapy be stopped? Do you think it’s viable for children beyond a certain age?

 ABA is abuse. Full stop. Always. There is no such thing as ‘good’ ABA, it is not viable for children of any age, and will most likely traumatize them. 

ABA, for those not in the know, stands for Applied Behavioural Analysis, and was invented by Ivar Lovaas and Robert Kroegel. The therapy’s goal, ostensibly, is to make autistic children ‘indistinguishable from their peers’, which is done through a system where autistic behaviours are discouraged and ‘normal’ behaviours are rewarded.

First of, making a child ‘indistinguishable from their peers’ is not a goal any autism therapy should strive for. This does not actually help the autistic person in any way; all it teaches them is that their way of being is wrong, and that they need to suppress it. Our autistic behaviours are our natural way of being, and suppressing them in order to pass as neurotypical takes a lot of energy, which will often lead to mental health issues. Aside from that, we need our natural behaviours to thrive; stimming, for example, is used to regulate sensory input and emotions, and without this as a coping mechanism, our ability to regulate those will be severely diminished, which again, can and does lead to mental health issues and/or burnout. All this is aside from the fact that consistently teaching a child that what they are is wrong is obviously going to lead to low self esteem. 

The thing with ABA is this: it does not train autistic children how to regulate their emotions, how to regulate sensory input, or how to redirect harmful stims. It teaches autistic children that their behaviour is wrong, and it ignores their needs. It does not teach them how to express themselves in a positive and healthy manner; it teaches them that what they want is irrelevant, to obey other people even if they’re in pain, and to ignore their own needs. You can do this with no negative reinforcement at all, and only utilize puppies, sunshine, and rainbow magic, and this would still be abusive. ABA addresses autistic behaviour and tries to suppress it so autistic children appear normal, so that they’re less of a bother to neurotypicals. That’s all it does, and it’s wrong. 

If you don’t understand what’s wrong with ABA, picture this: every time your child smiles, cries, or shows any emotion at all, you scold them and refuse them access to their toys, or at best, you ignore them entirely. When your child shows no emotion at all, even after you put them through actively stressful/hurtful things, you praise them and give them access to their toys. You do this throughout their entire early childhood, perhaps even for 30 hours or more a week. That would be abuse, right? It would lead to adults who don’t know how to regulate themselves or their emotions, and it would traumatize your child.

Yeah. Exactly. That’s my fucking point. 

But alright, say think it’s wrong to prevent a neurotypical child from expressing their natural behaviour, but perfectly okay to do with autistic children, somehow. You should know that Ivar Lovaas used electric shocks and physical violence to punish children when they exhibited autistic behaviours. The entirety of ABA is based around the idea that autistic children need to be taught how to be human; that we have no love, no thoughts, no nothing, that we’re simply problems to be solved. I’m begging you to read this interview with him and then maintain that any therapy this man invented is anything other than abusive. Some nice standout quotes from the father of ABA:

“You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense — they have hair, a nose and a mouth — but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but l you have to build the person.” 

“Autistic children are severely disturbed. People seem to be no more than objects to them. They show no signs of warmth toward others (…)”

“They have tantrums, and believe me they are monsters, little monsters.”

“You see, by then I knew that she could inhibit [self-injurious stimming], and that she would inhibit it if she knew I would hit her. So I let her know that there was no question in my mind that I was going to kill her if she hit herself once more, and that was pretty much it.” 

Some other posts for your reading pleasure that expand upon why ABA is the actual worst:

@neurowonderful‘s ABA Masterpost, with lots of additional links, as well as their video What is ABA?

@strangerdarkerbetter‘s ABA Masterpost.

@howtoautism’s ABA Masterpost. 

Against ABA 

Various posts on the Autism Women & Nonbinary Network on ABA: one, two, three, four. 

This article by The Aspergian. 

If, after reading my explanation and all the links in the posts that I linked, you still don’t understand what’s wrong with ABA, then frankly, I don’t know what to say to you, other than that I hope you never meet an autistic person ever, let alone a child. 

TL;DR: ABA is abusive, it is never viable for anyone, and I will not budge on this.

I should note that, since ABA is the only insurance-covered autism therapy in the USA, some actually decent therapies for autistic children have taken to calling themselves ABA even if they’re not. However, if the goal of the therapy is to make a child ‘indistinguishable from their peers’, it’s almost certainly ABA or something equally as bad. 

I’m going to ask people not to send any further asks on the subject of ABA: it greatly distresses me (I’m literally shaking right now, I’ve had to compose myself multiple times throughout writing this, and I can’t actually read through any of the things I have linked here in its entirety because it triggers a panic attack), and as such, I also apologize if I don’t sound coherent here; hopefully the articles I’ve linked do a better job at explaining this than I do. Anyone who tries to argue with me about ABA will get an instant block. 

[redorblue]

The ministry of utmost happiness, by Arundhati Roy

I’ve talked about this book with my book club, and I’ve heard from a lot of people that this book is hard to get into. On the one hand, I understand - if you’re not familiar with the setting and the Urdu vocabulary (like me) it can get confusing, and the amount of names and places and people doesn’t help. But as I’ve been emphatically telling all those people: it is so, so worth it. Yes, it can feel overwhelming sometimes, but you’ll be rewarded with stories (intentional plural) that are as beautiful as they’re heartbreaking, with characters that feel alive and enigmatic at the same time, and (probably) with a whole new picture of modern day India. You obviously can’t expect to learn everything there is to know about a country and a people as big as that from one book - and a fictional one at that - but it provided me with a whole lot of starting points to do my own research. Plus, it’s one of those rare books that leave me with wide eyes and more emotions than my shriveled heart can deal with, so excuse my enthusiasm - both intellectual and emotional.

One of the complaints I’ve heard about this book from people who have actually made it through the first ten pages is that the narrative structure is confusing. Again, yes, I see your point, but I think there’s a reason why the story is so episodic, with narrators appearing out of the blue and mentioning people and events that only get explained much later. Somewhere towards the end of the book (in my paperback version it’s on page 436) Tilo writes a poem that in my opinion is the key to understanding the fractured nature of the book:

“How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything.”

The book isn’t coherent in the conventional, easily detectable sense of the word because the story isn’t. It can’t be, what with all the different conflicts and catastrophes and bigotry that it sometimes barely touches upon and sometimes elaborates a bit more. In fiction, we’re used to the characters having smaller social circles than we do: less family, less friends, rarely colleagues, barely any of the everyday acquaintances that most of us just have, without knowing where exactly they came from or any intention of deepening them. One of the three focal characters in this book is a bit like that (although that’s intentional and meant to make a point about her personality), but the other two, to whom belong the most confusing parts of the book have the huge social circle that comes with living in one place for a long time, especially when one of them has a rather colorful personality. Point is, it’s normal that seen from the outside, people’s lives aren’t coherent or easily understandable because they’re suffused with context that doesn’t always get an explanation when it’s handy because sometimes there isn’t one, or it leads to another story that leads to another that leads to yet another... Because in the end, no one is an island, we’re just not used to seeing it in fiction.

The same goes for the conflicts that are touched upon here. There’s rarely an easy explanation or black-and-white sides to be taken (which is not to say that the book doesn’t take sides, because it clearly does, but it shines a light on different views on an issue), and if real-life conflicts don’t work that way, why should a literary representation of one be any different? If you give it enough time to affect enough people, it automatically becomes a “shattered story”, and the only way to make any sense of it at all is by allowing the narrative to adapt to that - to become fractured and messy and told from the eyes of people who come with their own lifestory and everything that entails. Long story short, I think the structure of the book makes a necessary point about the story it tells, adds to its lifelikeness and doesn’t even need to be that confusing - you just have to let it unfold in front of your eyes without getting hung up on every single name you don’t recognize.

Another complaint I’ve heard is that the characters are not relatable, or that they don’t feel like fully developed human beings, and here’s where my sympathy stops. It’s true that there’s rarely any interior monologue or other kind of explanation that explicitly tells you why has done this or said that, but I don’t think it needs to. Through pretty neutral accounts of events and backstory it gives you enough clues to at least make educated guesses (otherwise known as interpretation) about a character’s choices, and to deduct important tenets of their personality. It might not be as satisfying sometimes because you never get the ultimate proof that you guessed right, but where’s the fun in having it all served to you on a silver platter? I think that’s exactly the reason why so many people don’t like main characters - you’re too deep inside their heads, too aware of their logical flaws and mental loops and repetitive insecurities. It’s much more fun if the author leaves a bit of space for the readers to fill in thought processes, and Arundhati Roy leaves a lot of space for that. There’s a lot to unpack here, and I’d love to write about so many of the characters in there, but this has already gotten longer than I thought, so I’ll only talk about my two favourites, Musa and Tilo.

I feel like I have a better grasp on Musa’s character (and also, I fell for him. Hard.), so I’ll start with him. On the surface, his life appears to be nothing but a  string of tragedies, with him as a simple vehicle that the author uses to tell us about how fucked up the situation in Kashmir is. After all, he was pretty much forced into the underground after Amrik Singh made him his newest source of entertainment, and “underground” in this context means that he’ll have to join the rebellion. But I think that is a very superficial view on his character. For me, the two defining aspects of his personality are his sense of justice and his bond to the people and the valley of Kashmir. Sure, he could have fled to some faraway place in India, or elsewhere, kept his head down and hoped that Amrik Singh’s network doesn’t stretch that far. That wouldn’t have been easy, but theoretically doable. In reality, however, going someplace else wasn’t really an option. He’s tried that already with studying in Delhi, and even though he obviously knew how bad the situation was back home, he still chose to return after he graduated because he doesn’t want to live anywhere else. He loves Kashmir and his people with all his heart. So the underground it is - because he can’t bear the injustices done to them, because he owes it to his daughter to be brave, because he can’t run away from his grief and this might be the only way to work through it.

And it takes a toll on him, of course it does. It’s heartbreaking how both he and Tilo remark on how he has become less substantial (smudged, as Tilo calls it) than he used to be, which is such an on-point metaphor for what being in a war (and a pretty hopeless guerilla war at that) does to a person. But in his thought processes and his interactions with Tilo (and briefly with Garson Hobart - I can’t remember his real name for the life of me) show that he’s - maybe not the same person as before, but a person, a complete human being, which is a lot more that what you usually get. I mean, let’s face it: he’s a Muslim in a rebel organisation, which is more than enough to get you labels such as terrorist, fanatic, extremist etc. I was a bit afraid that someone in my book club would call him that, because my reaction would have probably got me banned from the book shop. There are so many instances where you can see how kind a heart he has, how intelligent he is, how caring - and yes, also how much he suffers from seeing his people suffer and how he puts everything he has into make it right, but what’s important here is that it’s not his only defining feature.

(This is the point where I realised that this post was definitely going to be too long. So I split it, with more in-depth analysis of Musa - or rather getting my feelings for him off my chest - here.)

Tilo, on the other hand, is not as easy to grasp because she is presented to the reader as she presents herself to the world - stoic, not exactly talkative, very hard to reach. A lot of that has got to do with how she grew up, in an environment heavily influenced by racism, classism and prudery where her mother felt like the only way she could raise her daughter was to pretend they weren’t biologically related and then adopting her. I guess you could say that such an arrangement is better than growing up in an orphanage, and it could have been a lot less damaging if her mother wasn’t so very concerned about her public image, or so demanding, controlling and condescending. But she was, and the effect that had on Tilo is obvious - she’s someone who “lives in a country of her own skin”, the borders (seemingly) closed off. It’s not that she can’t care for people; it’s obvious that she’s loved Musa for a long time, and that she came to care deeply for Naga and Dr. Azad Bhartiya, even before she adopts Miss Jebeen the Second and moves in with Anjum. Rather, her issue seems to be that she has trouble accepting other people’s feelings towards her and getting attached to anyone. It’s why, for example, her marriage to Naga didn’t work (who, on a sidenote, really got treated unfairly in Garson Hobart’s POV), why she didn’t want to go through with the pregnancy when she came back from Kashmir, or why she didn’t even break things off properly with Naga and just... floated out of his life. To be fair, his family’s racism towards her didn’t help either because I’m pretty sure it stung her more than she let on, but her behaviour fits her overall pattern in interacting with people, so I don’t think that was the main issue.

It’s probably also why her post-university relationship with Musa works so well. They’re both aren’t controlling people, they trust that the other would never hurt them intentionally and they know that their communication works well enough that long-time separation doesn’t shake the foundations of their relationship. It’s a very unique bond they share, one that doesn’t go away from one of them marrying someone else and sleeping with them, even loving them, as Musa did with his wive Arifa. They know what they have, wherever they live and whatever they do. That’s another aspect I loved about the book: it never pits the two women in Musa’s life, Arifa and Tilo, against each other. Not even Tilo is jealous when she learns of Arifa’s existence, she simply trusts that if Musa loved Arifa, Arifa must have been a remarkable person. This is a testament to Tilo’s magnanimity - just because you have attachment issues yourself doesn’t mean that you’d automatically be okay with the person you love starting a family with someone else.

But Tilo knows that she’s not that person (at least not at that point), and although she worries a lot about Musa, she knows that a conventional happily ever after wouldn’t work for them. On the one hand because Musa is so tied up in Kashmir’s struggle for independence - which Tilo wholeheartedly supports - that she would never ask him to give it all up to live a life of safety with her (another thing about Tilo I deeply appreciate). But on the other hand I’m pretty sure it also wouldn’t work for Tilo herself. She’s too aimless, too far away to go through with the whole getting married, settling down, having kids etc. shtick. She needs this kind of open relationship that leaves her her space, that gives her a kind of attachment she can bear. It’s mainly emotional, and the few times a year it gets physical, as in being in the same room, it happens mostly because she decided to come back to Kashmir, with the exception of the few times Musa comes to Delhi. I do think that from her side, things might have been different if Musa had lived longer (after Tilo adopts the baby and moves in with Anjum), but on his side things would still have been the same, and I firmly believe that she’d have stayed true to herself and not asked him to walk away from his cause for her.

Which leads me to the question that has made me reread almost the entire book as soon as I was done the first time: Why did Tilo and Musa break up after university? It’s never said explicitly, but I’m pretty sure that he asked her to marry him, in all probability also to come back to Kashmir with him, and she said no and that was that. I still haven’t found an answer in the text (see, this is what I mean by interpretation being both fun and frustrating), but I have a theory. I think that his belonging, his rootedness in a family, a people and a region, was too much for her, who has never been made to feel like she belonged anywhere, was accepted and appreciated anywhere. In that situation, it wasn’t enough that she loved him and he loved and accepted and appreciated her, because in real life, the love of one man doesn’t magically fix every single one of your issues, even if it is the love of your life. So she refused him. And he, honorable person that he is, didn’t press the issue, stayed true to himself and went back to Kashmir. Where they met again years later, under unimaginably sad circumstances, to rekindle, in their own way, one of my all time favourite fictional romantic relationships.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Playtime is over: I can't keep on supporting Brexit if this is how the govt behaves

By Mark from Southend I have always been a eurosceptic. In fact, I still am. Even now, I feel that many of the reasons for Leave are sound. The concerns around accountability are valid, as are worries about political integration, the creep of direct effect, and the lack of a sense of emotional connection with Europe for many Brits. As powers have been taken from national and local governments and centralised on a pan-EU basis, the quality of those domestic legislative bodies declined while their capacity for aimless bureaucracy rose.

All of that is as true today as it was in 2016. It's why I voted Leave. But not every eurosceptic argument holds up so well. Certain events have knocked away other foundational pillars of Brexit thinking. Front and centre has been the border with Ireland. From my comfy corner of England, the thought that there was still a potential tinderbox of emotion in a corner of the UK seemed very remote. Clearly this was wrong. I was vaguely aware there would be some technical problems about the border to resolve post-Brexit, but I presumed that it wasn't beyond the wit of man to do so. Well, it transpires that man has been trying to come up with something for several years on other borders without success. What seemed peripheral three years ago has become fundamental. Brexit also stirred nationalisms in all component parts of the UK and not in a healthy way. Peter Oborne, who recently recanted his support for Brexit, said that the EU had in fact become part of the glue that holds the UK together. He is undoubtedly correct. EU membership also provides extended diplomatic and economic protection to the interests of the Channel Islands and Gibraltar and also - by extension and to a degree - the Falkland Islands and other UK dependencies. It is incumbent upon the UK to have regard to its historic obligations. Thus far, frankly, we have not. With all those component parts of the UK stirring, we have to ask a plain and simple question: Is the dissolution of the UK a price worth paying? I value the Union. I'm proud of my British identity. I cannot continue to endorse a process that will tear this apart. But I just don't see any proper thinking about this at all on the British side.

During the campaign, I was happy to accept a Norway-type arrangement, as were many other Leavers. But once it was over, two things quickly became clear. Firstly, that a well-organised and well-funded section of Leave support with strong media connections would treat anything less than full severance from the EU as treachery. And secondly, that the prime minister would place ending free movement and the views of her most hardline backbenchers above all other considerations.

The no-surrender Brexiters have a dream of a free trade wonderland across the world, but it is just that: a dream. It relied on the idea of a stable international trading system based on increasingly global regulatory standards.

But this is precisely the opposite of the world we now occupy. Trump and China are causing a rise in general trading instability and a retreat into safe regional blocks. The world is moving to a state of predator and prey. Alone in it, we will be eaten. There cannot be a worse time to go it alone. The trade argument in favour of Brexit has collapsed. The only counter the hardline Brexiters have to this is conspiracy theory. Whenever objections are raised, they scream about Project Fear.  If there is such a project, it seems to include the UK and Irish Governments, the EU, the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the RHA, FTA, BMA, Corporation of London, Airbus, JLR, as well as businesses in sectors as diverse as horticulture, tech, architecture, and food and drink.

As for the prime minister, her red lines have prevented us from ever being able to secure the frictionless trade with Europe she claimed to want. In an effort to keep her hardliners onside, the Conservative party - a party I've supported all my adult life - been stretched into some painful and absurd contortions. There can be no more embarrassingly meaningless phrase in the English language than 'Malthouse Compromise'.  The constant recurrence of this proposal shows a fundamental lack of seriousness in UK negotiations.

When I voted Leave, I hoped Brexit would make Westminster take its repatriated powers seriously and look to forge robust, evidence-based policy. But the reality has been quite different. The UK body politic is clearly not able to cope with Brexit. The continual failure to even make small steps towards intelligible policy has eroded my confidence in our ever being able to do so at all. What a contrast this has been to the EU. I always considered it a technocratic monolith, but let's be clear: it has been transparent, professional and coherent throughout.

My only real issue with the EU's approach is that they did not allow any scoping talks or any substantive discussions to take place prior to the Article 50 notice being served. But that should have put the onus on the UK to carry out our own such exercise and present our position in detail with that notice. It should have comprised lever-arch files of analysis on multiple sector, putting our position on both withdrawal and future relationship in full detail. Instead it comprised a couple of sides of A4 paper. This was reflective of a country that is not to be taken seriously. The withdrawal agreement itself is similarly dispiriting. It will keep us in a sub-Norway position for years while our economy and influence simply erodes away. This is far worse than the EEA option I backed. All other Brexit avenues are closed, unless a suicidal no-deal is your preference. It certainly isn't mine. Even if a Norway-style approach was now settled upon, I do not think it could be said to have a sufficient democratic mandate. In fact, no form of Brexit does. No-deal pushes the original referendum result far beyond what a marginal win dictates. After the experience of the last three years, my position has fundamentally shifted. If the cross-party talks produce some form of agreed approach for the future, it should go for a public vote. If no such agreement is forthcoming, we should revoke our Article 50 notice. The balance of risk has changed. Westminster simply cannot get to grips with what it is being asked to do. Brexit cannot be a success on the basis of where we are now. It is time to bring this sad chapter to a close.

[kaleidographia]

[Review] Tales of Vesperia: The Brightest Star in the Night Sky Doesn't Shine as Strongly as I'd Hoped

Warning: Contains allusive/thematic spoilers.

The day is finally here! Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, containing content previously unseen outside of Japan, has finally been released, so that us English speakers and/or non-PS3 owners can experience the new storylines, characters and features for the first time! Alas, this isn’t a post about that, firstly because this post is going up day-of-release and I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, and secondly because I am writing this from outside of the country and won’t be united with my pre-ordered copy until I return next week, RIP.

Therefore, this post is written from the point of view of someone who has only played the Xbox 360 version. I will try to keep it brief for the sake of not spoiling newcomers to the game, and also hopefully not to complain about things that are fixed (or broken??) in the Definitive Edition.

Tales of Vesperia is a game in the long-running “Tales of” franchise from Bandai Namco, the first one in HD, originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2008, later receiving an updated PS3 version in 2009, exclusive to Japan. Like many older fans, my introduction to the Tales of series was with Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube, and I fell in love hard; I was therefore extremely excited to play the next games, but unfortunately, I never owned the platforms for them until very recently. Along with Tales of the Abyss, Vesperia and Symphonia form the “holy trinity” of games in the series almost everyone loves; find a Tales fan and ask them their favourite game, and the answer will likely be one of those three (note: I’ve heard very good things about Graces and the two Xillia games, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to judge them firsthand myself). The three games, while not directly related in terms of plot or setting, share a lot of things in common, as they had mostly the same creative team, often referred to as “Team Symphonia” (as opposed to “Team Destiny” which made most other games since then). One notable difference is the scenario writer, Takashi Hasegawa, while Symphonia and Abyss were written by Takumi Miyajima.

The Tales series is known for its reliance on anime and JRPG tropes, often used in a way that plays off cliché expectations only to then layer plot twists and character development and produce a much deeper experience than what would be expected from the get-go. When used effectively, these methods produce a story that is both fun and emotionally challenging. Tales of Vesperia is no different, offering a cast of archetypes that should be highly recognizable to those familiar with the genre, and yet this may be best set of characters in a Tales game. The party has impressively good banter, chemistry and dynamics and several scenes had me laughing out loud or yelling, and I never had a bad time watching their relationships unfold.

Unfortunately, the game spares little time fleshing out backstories or learning more about each individual character outside of the main plot. By the end, I was left wanting, as the cast was so endearing and vibrant, yet I knew next to nothing about them aside from what had been relevant to show onscreen. I longed for more information about where they had come from and how they had gotten where they were, but it is a testament to the strength of the character writing that their storylines reached a satisfying conclusion despite this relative sparse amount of information about them. “Backstory is not story”, Craig McCracken and Frank Angones were fond of saying to fans of Wander Over Yonder, but for a game with the size and scope of a 60-hour JRPG, not providing that window of information feels like a hole in the worldbuilding.

Mechanically, Vesperia builds on the model established by Symphonia and refined in Abyss, where combat takes place in a 3D arena and the player can run around, hit enemies and rack up combos fighting game style (the franchise calls this “Linear Motion Battle System”). While Symphonia was in 3D, it restricted the player to a single side-to-side corridor of action. Abyss added the ability to run around in 3D space by holding down a button, a feature Vesperia also has. This makes combat easier and more fun, as nothing is quite as satisfying as avoiding an attack and then running around and hitting the enemy from behind. And, as the game allows up to four players controlling different party members, and I have a player 2 (shoutout to my roommate Opal), Vesperia’s system is the most well-suited to multiplayer. If nothing else, I never felt lost while on the battlefield yelling for backup. The one major flaw is that boss fights come with massive difficulty spikes and I often had to grind and formulate careful battle plans with Opal just to not get continuously massacred by bosses.

Storywise, Vesperia starts off very strongly, sort of peters out near the middle, and then the third act falls apart. At first the theme is anti-authority, with a protagonist who grew up in the slums, neglected by nobles, who became a knight and then quit out of disillusionment when it turned out all they did was squabble about politics, and the inciting incident and early driver of the plot is his quest to “fix the plumbing” as a popular Tumblr text post put it. It’s clear Yuri has all the reason in the world to not trust authority and he even goes full vigilante against unjust abuse of power, but while this thread seems like the most important theme in the story, after a while so many other elements come into play it ends up lost and doesn’t really make much of an appearance except to highlight the differences between Yuri and Flynn’s approaches to life and how they prefer to help people. On its own it’s a compelling idea, but it never gets the follow-through it deserves, and my expectations were certainly subverted—but in a bad way.

It’s hard to talk about the third act without spoilers so I will probably come back to it for a proper analysis at a later date, but its ultimate message was already kind of limp in 2008 and is even more laughable now. For a game whose initial premise was so strongly against authority, the ultimate resolution of the main conflict reads as incredibly daft in light of just about everything that is happening in politics at the moment. There’s a very strong environmental allegory and the comparisons to climate change are not subtle, but the writers probably bit off more than they could chew because realistically trying to solve this problem in the time the story allotted would have been next to impossible; I still would have hoped the implications of the given solution had been actually explored instead of settling for an “oh well, guess everything’s been fixed now”.

I’m being harsh about the plot because to me Vesperia has a lot of wasted potential. Don’t get me wrong: I do love this game. It is in fact up there with the holy trinity as far as my opinions of the series go, but it lands in third place out of the three because it just fails to live up to what its first half promises about the world it created. To put it bluntly, if the story had just ended at the conclusion of the second act, it would have been much stronger. That the game continues for another 20 hours on a completely different track with an unsatisfying, unrealistic conclusion is a huge shame because it brings down what could have been a real masterpiece of tropey anime JRPG narratives. I live for that stuff, there’s a reason I want to play every Tales game, but that’s what makes this letdown the most disappointing. At least the characters themselves get good conclusions; it is unfortunate I can’t say the same for the main plot.

Despite all this I think Vesperia is a worthwhile experience, and one of my favourite things about is its aesthetic sense. Every location is immersive, polished, and the pinnacle of what I want to see in a videogame, to the point I dream of Symphonia and Abyss remakes made in the same style (and every other game in the series, to be honest, but that seems unlikely with the direction it’s taken since then). I genuinely cared about the party and I wanted to see them succeed and I was ultimately happy that they did even if I did roll my eyes a lot. The combat was so satisfying and so fun to play with a player 2 it makes me twice as mad that Zestiria’s camera goes completely wild during multiplayer and prevents me from joining in. I should note that for someone who plays as many games as I do I am notoriously terrible at them so I heavily favour story over mechanics, but Vesperia is a game that reminds me that engaging gameplay can make a huge difference. Yeah, I suck, but at least I’m having fun while sucking. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games.

If you like JRPGs, games that let you run around and hit things, or fun and intriguing character dynamics, you’ll probably like Tales of Vesperia. If you’re looking for a coherent story from start to finish, you’ll probably disappointed, but there’s just enough there to keep you engrossed until the end. Overall, Vesperia is solid, and the parts it fumbles aren’t bad enough to ruin the whole thing, but hopefully the extra content in Definitive Edition helps to smooth it out; I’ll have to find that out for myself.

Aside from how it messes up the voice acting this time around. Oh, Bamco.

[sportparade]

The Pursuit of Perfection and the Pursuit of Glory

A Panegyric for Rose Lavelle’s Style and the USWNT at the 2019 FIFA World Cup

At 77 minutes into the final, up by two goals, Jill Ellis subs in Carli Lloyd to close out the match. She might have given younger phenoms Lindsey Horan or Mallory Pugh the opportunity to experience the final, but the hard-nosed manager put her trust in experienced veterans. Over the next twenty minutes US players would dribble the ball into the corner, and to pass time further they wound possession back through their defense. It was not a playful moment but a classic checkmate. Take no risks, stick to the strategy, ensure the win at all costs. Perfection.

When the final whistle sounded the players on the field met their teammates, standing on the sideline in arm-by-arm formation. Their exuberance poured in on itself in hugs that became a huddle that pulsed and exploded back out with expressions of joy—the perfect expression of a team cohered upon a collective goal of victory. Not until they climbed atop the podium did Fox Sports’ cameras catch glimpses of the individual stars performing for the camera. Co-captains Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan took ritual turns on stage representing the team and the nation. But by now the backs of their jerseys all bore the same name and number: Champions 19. The announcers explained the significance of this national victory: it established a dynasty in women’s soccer, repeating as championships four years earlier, runners up the cup before, and now a world-leading four-time champion. The USWNT has a “dynasty” said German commentator Ariane Hingst, or was it Briton Eni Aluko (they spoke in voiceover from an unseen studio). Alexi Lalas and JP Dellacamera spun a narrative of a team challenged by a 2016 Olympics disappointment and the constant pressure to prevail amid an improving overall field that they led and stimulated. American players Aly Wagner and Heather O’Reilly (I think it was) spoke admiringly of this group of women for accomplishing this unprecedented feat together. The story was Team USA, on an Olympian stage, that deserved every American’s, every woman’s, and every sportsmen’s esteem.

This celebration had been elaborately prepared. The front of the Champions 19 jerseys had each player’s individual number, and four stars commemorating the United States’ four cup victories. Nike paid for the privilege of the first commercial, which they used to debut a dramatic tribute to this champion team, instantly remembered in black & white photos framed by a graphic designer expert in adobe suite. The trophy presentation had a steadycam follow Rapinoe and Morgan and Lavelle down the line of dignitaries, shaking hands with Euro-looking presidents but breaking decorum to hug the American delegates like teammates. The commentators waxed poetically with practiced bits of encomium. The preparation of the stakeholders and their objective matched the execution of the team who claimed their championship. This was not unexpected, but it was not taken for granted. Meeting expectation reinforced the team and the sport’s professional quality and power. The perfectionist playing style couples perfectly with the corporate ambition to grow the sport for its potential for both commercial revenue and female empowerment. If Rose Lavelle had not scored a virtuoso second goal, one might be hard pressed to deny the specter of an organization that conspired to ensure the success of its precious investment. You know it is nonsense, but everything would have turned up too perfectly.

Lavelle’s goal was the most unexpected and most glorious moment of the tournament for the United States. In her youth she had watched the 2015 victory in a pizza parlor, and now she was the central cog among a squad composed mostly of stars from the previous team who had had Lavelle’s prodigious moments back then. Against England she nutmegged a defender and lasered a shot on goal that would have been the play of the tournament had it squeaked into net. Instead she saved another moment of greatness for the final.

Gifted the ball mid-pitch, Lavelle sprung downfield in a style I can think of no better way to describe than as a poignant prance. Bouncing steps with powerful spring propelled her through the defense too fast to tackle, lest she counter with a tap into open space. But their backs to the line the defense had to press and she pivoted to her gunpowdered left foot and fired a line drive into goal, untouched. Her prancing attack compares to Muhammad Ali’s combination punches or Michael Jordan off the dribble—playful improvisation under extreme duress that soars confidently above conservative defenders. Quickness made their grace powerful, electrifying the scene when they perform. Ali and Jordan are usually likened to jazz musicians as an expression of quintessentially black American culture. Lavelle could not be more fair, playing college ball at nordic Wisconsin, but she and her teammates dance to hip hop (Crime Mob, after the semifinal) like all Americans now. We can choose to place her in that tradition or leave her to be herself. Watch it again.

Lavelle’s stylish goal glorified the national team with her daring and individual brilliance. Surely the Fifa committee took notice and awarded her the bronze trophy for the third best player, after dutifully awarding golden ball and goldent boot to Rapinoe, and silver boot to her co-captain Morgan. Becky Sauerbrunn’s masterful defense also warranted acclaim. I felt sick that Tobin Heath and Crystal Dunn had good opportunities thwarted, and that other young players had not been put on the pitch to claim their part of the victory. Lindsey Horan especially is recognized by most as a preeminent midfield attacker in the world. Footy time? Ellis left her on the bench in favor of strategic purpose in two knock-out matches, including the entire final. It felt cruel to insert the veteran Lloyd instead, but Ellis’ results make her judgment infallibly correct. When Ellis exited the reception line it was Lavelle who leapt forward to greet her with an embrace in center frame at center field. Lavelle had been the chosen one, and she had redeemed coach and team with an everlasting moment of greatness.

Some criticize national team futbol for stifling the spontaneity of individual play that flourishes in the professional leagues. The national team goals overshadow risky creative displays, and the parity of talent that trains together irregularly makes standout performance less likely. That makes Lavelle’s action all the more glorious. Rapinoe’s penalty kick under extreme pressure of expectation and scouting by the opponent was the most impressive display of individual nerve, the most courageous moment of the tournament. Lavelle’s was the most joyful, the most brilliant, and the most hopeful for the future. The apparent dullness of national team football is actually more dramatic for those who appreciate the social significance and partake in the feelings of solidarity. Both the team and its stars bask in the acclaim of a World Cup, with a historical resonance whose breadth can never be matched in a professional match.

I will criticize Fox Sports’ commentators for not honoring individuals enough. JP Dellacamera describes the action by compulsively naming each player as they touch the ball: “Sauerbrunn. To Mewis up the left side. Rapinoe. Back to Ertz.” et cetera. His phone recording-ready delivery paints a robotic instrumental picture despite the individual attention. He could relax and describe the movement more aloofly, and spend less time characterizing the players. But his analyst sidekick Aly Wagner describes the game like she’s in it, competing without any sense of humor or levity, arm chair coaching the team to victory. The experts in the booth with Rob Stone spoke in the same professional critical tone deliberating everything, emotionless except for Lalas who channelled his pride into ham-fisted panegyrics. They had prepared their talking points and takes before the show, and would not deviate to soak in the moment afterward. Thankfully they muted themselves for the celebration of Rapinoe’s and Lavelle’s goals, when the emotion of the individual players captivated me.

If Fox Sports had done individual profile segments like the NBC Olympic model, they were nowhere present during the final and afterward. What about star back Kelly O’Hara who succumbed to concussion symptoms, and her replacement Ali Krieger? What about Becky Sauerbrunn who earned a bleeding gash for her head-to-head challenge, and re-entered the game with a warrior-esque black bandage over her pink headband? And Crystal Dunn reinventing herself in a new position to lift the whole team and redeem Ellis’ most unconventional move, where was her story? What about Ellis on the sideline, the other players cheering or dying to sub in, and their individual stories? The broadcast was therefore both underprepared and overprepared, unable to cope with the unexpected action in a creative way. Their half-prepared postgame surely reflects a relatively limited investment in women’s soccer, relying too much on ex-player analysis and generic anchors both somewhat out of touch with the spirit of the women’s soccer fan (well the men much more so). Only Karina LeBlanc struck all the right notes in her post-post game streaming show, that salvaged the glory of the moments lived by these individuals. It was supremely competent coverage, with extraordinary picture and sound, but their practiced words never became poetry.

What made the image of goal celebrations so exciting was the shorter focal length of the lenses. Telephoto images of players during the national anthem flattened each face against a background blurred to abstraction. This pop style framed the stars Rapinoe and Morgan like comic book heroes. The central camera following the game also abstracted the players from its near aerial height, peering upon their movement like gazing over a pinball machine. But the cameras on the sideline captured the goal celebrations at wider angles, in the presence of the players who addressed the camera with poses, and immersed us viewers in their world. Here they are in the flesh, moving through the same space we do on a soccer field, with expertise and total satisfaction. The realism of these moments jumped past the discourse of strategy and scripted ceremonies to a live moment of glory. Their excellence as athletes and as women was there to see in a way that my essay wants to remember but cannot grasp. For that we need poetry; or, to await the 2020 Olympics and 2023 World Cup to live the spontaneous game broadcast on whatever device takes us to the field (the campus in Latin), where champions come to life.

—Grant Wiedenfeld, July 7, 2019

[kalinara]

So today’s Rip Hunter Appreciation Week topic is favorite episode.  And honestly, that’s hard to decide!  I think I talked about Out of Time for the last Rip Hunter Appreciation Week.  So this time, I’m going to pick Land of the Lost.

Land of the Lost is basically an episode that seemed like it was designed solely with "appeal to Kalinara" in mind.

One of the things that strikes me about Land of the Lost is how smoothly it wraps up Rip's season 2 story.  I remember back when the season was supposed to have only 13 episodes, without an announced back orders, the creators had said that they planned to finish season 2's arc by episode 13, and use the back half for something new.

Obviously they didn't do that.  Probably because four episodes isn't really long enough to establish a completely new plotline.  So the Spear and Legion arc got stretched out a bit.   But I think they kept Rip's own arc on its original time table.  I honestly think Rip's Moonshot storyline was an early jumpstart on what he'll have in season 3.  (I've mentioned before that, assuming Darvill stays a regular, then his departure in Aruba makes complete sense as part of a storyline branching off of Moonshot.)

But I digress.

As Rip Hunter's season finale, Land of the Lost is a great episode.  It doesn't particularly make sense, but if I watched Legends to make sense, I'd probably have a concussion by now.  What it is, however, is awesome.

Outside of Rip's plot, we have dinosaurs (awesome), an explicit acknowledgement of Amaya's significance to the timeline (which I've wanted for ages), a look at Ray's time in the prehistoric, and Mick actually deciding to use his Chronos experience.  All things that I am happy to check off my wishlist.

And in Rip's plot, we have:

1.  Evil Rip being hot and competent, effortlessly taking over the ship.  And then that truly lovely bit of "fuck you" defiance when he was pinned down, in a ship with an active self destruct, and decided to turn around and (awesomely) blow up the medallion instead of surrendering.

And how awesome was that shot?  Off hand and without aiming!

2.  Sara and Jax getting the main heroic plot to save damsel Rip from his own mind.  They're a great team up that work really well together, and I particularly liked how the episode subtly underscored Rip's relationship with both characters.

3.  A mindscape!  I was a bit sad they couldn't or wouldn't get any of my wishlist characters back (Miranda, Jonas, baby Rip, Savage, Druce, et al), but I thought they did a pretty good job with the budgetary and other constraints.  I thought the concept of the mindscape was coherent (the idea of Rip's conscious mind as the dominated ship, with the warped view of the team works very well with his overall arc.)

And there are so many interesting things to explore ABOUT the mindscape and what subconscious!remnant!Rip might have experienced during the who-knows-how-long period of time he was trapped in his own head.

My "possible future posts" list has so many bits from this episode on it.  It's ridiculous.  (Subconscious Rip vs. Conscious Evil Rip, Evil!Mick, Subconscious Rip's attitude toward the crew(s), and so on!)

4.  GIDEON!  This episode did an amazing job of fleshing out Gideon as a character, rather than just a cheery, sometimes sarcastic/sassy voice that banters with Rip.  From the beginning, we got the whole brig conversation, in which Gideon appeared to be defying orders to speak to evil Rip at all.  (But really, how could she ignore her long-time partner when he called for her?)

Mindscape Gideon was such an interesting kettle of fish.  Not in the least because we finally got to see the woman behind Gideon's voice.  But there is so much interesting analysis about Gideon as a mental projection/concept of Rip, and what exactly that means from his perspective, and then of course how Gideon-the-AI intersects with that concept.

And of course, Time Ship.

(As someone who grew up gobbling Anne McCaffrey's ship series, I find the romantic potential between a man and his AI partner/ship incredibly interesting.  Oddly, I don't have a whole lot of interest in versions of the pairing where Gideon gets a human or physical body, though.  For me, the appeal in the pairing is in all of the unconventional ways they can explore their feelings and regard for one another.)

5.  We actually got to see Rip's bedroom!  In season 1, I had generally started to worry that he didn't have one at all and maybe just slept in his office.  Assuming he slept.  And it was amusing to see that he's STILL a packrat.

6.  Phil isn't dead!  Or he is.  :-(  But Rip does remember being Phil, so at least a little bit of that poor helpless fellow is still alive.

7. Cognitive Intrusion is creepy and violating as fuck, and I am both thrilled and amused that the show finds a way to make the Time Masters worse and worse every time they're mentioned.  I love that Rip disliked the procedure too.

My only tiny quibble is that I wish the crew had shown a tiny bit of doubt in using the machine on Rip.  I'm not saying that they shouldn't have done it.  It was absolutely necessary if they were going to save Henry.  But still, I would have liked them to hesitate a moment when they learned how violating it actually is.

It does appeal to my gallows humor that two mind-rapes make a right though.

8.  And of course there was the reunion at the end, which was everything I could hope for.  Rip, all fragile looking but safe now.  The cautious welcome back.

I still think "I liked you better when you were killing people" is objectively speaking the worst thing any of the protagonists on this show have said to each other.  But Rip doesn't seem to mind.

There is just so much to unpack and dissect and well, it's probably a good thing we have a long hiatus between seasons because my blog audience is going to be SO SICK of all of the crazy follow up posts I'll be making about it.