#finding the equilibrium between accepting good narrative where it's part of a story and is made to make you think and refusing those

[jeremys-stash]

y'all saying "an anti wants to be on the AO3 board blablabla" and like... yes, the woman wants censorship that will bring a lot of problems, but also you're stating that you're pro here. You're stating that you don't mind people shipping incest, child/adult and other stuff.

I do get that censorship is bad, especially since you always have to do a case-by-case for the work depending on how the story is told etc... But also if you complain about "antis" then you're "pros" and therefore your speech is unreliable because you yourself have the same blindfold that you're complaining the other has; which is to be blindly pro everything with the others being blindly anti everything.

If you can't get nuance, I don't trust you nor your judgement.

[greensaplinggrace]

What I Would Change About the Ruin and Rising Ending

So this is separate from what I actually think would have been best for the story, in that Aleksander is the third amplifier and Alina is a tracker. Baghra never has her ridiculous plot twist info dump and Alina is actually allowed more agency and the ability to take initiative and the Darkling is actually written consistently from the start.

Here’s what I think should have happened in the ending if all the events leading up to it were the exact same: 

Alina kills Mal and with the power of the three amplifiers kills the Darkling. As punishment for using all three amplifiers, she and the Darkling both lose the power of Merzost. This power is then used to fulfill Morozova’s aching loneliness, creating hundreds of shadow and sun summoners all across the world. The Darkling comes back to life through the loss of Merzost, and Mal comes back to life through the loss of his tracking abilities and status as an amplifier.

This ending feels not only more consistent with the themes LB tries to convey throughout the books, but it also aligns more with character arcs, established lore, and the parts of the plot that actually made sense.

The Darkling was punished for using Merzost by the Fold’s creation, which was a place where his powers were rendered useless (although the fact that he still has much power over the fold feels contradictory to this fact). He still retained the ability to use it, however, the result of only using some of the Merzost’s power. Alina was punished much more severely for not only using Merzost but also taking all three amplifiers. Therefore she is stripped of that power entirely. The Darkling, who she killed with the power and who has also lusted for power, is stripped of it as well. 

Not only that, but the presence of hundreds of people like them now ensures they do not have more power than everybody else. It strips Alina and the Darkling of power without robbing them of a very important piece of their identity that should be impossible to take. By making it so that they now have hundreds of equals, that they have people to match them, challenge them, stop them. That they can no longer take more power, that they can no longer use their powers over those less powerful than them, that their greed does not destroy those around them. It makes them essentially powerless (consistent with the theme of punishment in regards to the Merzost), without removing their status as members of a persecuted and oppressed minority. 

This remains consistent with Alina’s character arc as well. Her growth as a character, coming into her abilities and learning to accept every part of herself, instead of denying an essential piece of her identity because she’s trapped by the past and her prejudices and her fear of moving forward - because she’s also trapped by her low self esteem and her loneliness and her fear. By allowing her to remain as a Grisha, her developmental arc - of learning self esteem and self acceptance, of learning to love every part of herself and to not deny those parts of herself for others or because of her worries, of finding a community, growing into a woman outside of one person, learning to connect with others and love others and love herself and love her powers - isn’t regressed in any way. It isn’t negated. 

There still remains a punishment for the Merzost and for her hunger for power. There still remains a way to acknowledge the thematic ties between loneliness and Grisha - especially Morozova’s loneliness and therefore Aleksander’s. There still remains the culmination of three books worth of seeking out amplifiers - a satisfying result of all her effort and her traumas; the powers she sought out to defeat the Darkling actually used to defeat him. There still remains the acknowledgement of Alina’s growth and change. She isn’t robbed of a valuable piece of her identity and her path of self fulfillment and self acceptance. 

I won’t get into this much now, but I also think Alina’s reluctance to accept herself as Grisha, hurting herself to remain untested and weakening herself by denying that crucial part of her, is the result of centuries of the oppression and persecution of the Grisha as a people. It isn’t just her own fears, but also the way the world has forced Grisha to integrate into society. How the Grisha’s oppressors have treated them, not allowed them to truly develop or grow or gain power. The way they’re viewed by society and the prejudices against them as a whole that stifles their ability to truly connect or form a healthy community.

That part of Alina’s culture and birthright was denied her by her oppressors. She lived amongst these people for years and grew up with their customs, and when she finally discovered the part of herself that made her Grisha, she was introduced to her people. Her community that the world, through endless hunting of the Grisha and stripping them of agency, using them and othering them and ostracizing them from society, refused the ability to truly connect. She was allowed to finally realize herself and who she was born to be.

Her stay at the Little Palace was distressing in a lot of ways, but I’m not talking about just the Little Palace, I’m talking about her journey throughout the books as a whole, as she learns about the people and community she belongs to. As she grows to love it and accept it and take pride in it. Her culture and her people - the Grisha. 

So when people say Alina losing her powers is good because she doesn’t want to be a part of the Grisha (even though she grows to love being Grisha, not wanting to was only in the beginning), and that she’s happier as an otkazat’sya because she grew up with them (the people who have oppressed her kind and smothered her powers), and that Grisha culture isn’t hers, I want to scream. The reason it wasn’t hers was because she was held back from it. Because Grisha oppression has become systematic and ingrained within society. Because prejudice against the Grisha runs deep. 

To say that it's good that she’s stripped of what makes her Grisha because she was raised otkazat’sya? When if the Grisha were free she never would have been in the first place? To refuse to acknowledge the harm done to her people and therefore her, in creating a world so against Grisha that she was never given the chance to be raised in her own community? Amongst her own people? Who would understand her and would never have let her get sick by refusing to use her powers and who would have helped her because they know what it’s like to be Grisha - because they are Grisha.

That’s fucking bullshit.

Alina doesn’t hate her powers. Her powers don’t cause her pain. It’s others and the world that hurts her because of them. And this is an important distinction. Alina losing her powers isn’t a healthy message. That others hurting you for how you were born means that the only way to remain safe is to strip away the part that makes you different. That Alina returning to the people she was forced to assimilate with and that raised her to deny a massive part of her identity is a healthy thing-

That’s not a message that should ever be given. Which is why Alina should have kept her powers as the sun summoner, even if she loses the amplifiers.

And the burden of being the only sun summoner is lessened with the spread of her powers as well. People claim that Alina losing her powers was good for her because the world burdened her too much because of them, but that’s an issue easily solved by the splitting of her powers. She now isn’t the only one with a weight to carry because of the way she was born, and in fact she no longer has to carry it at all. 

Additionally, Morozova’s amplifiers and the Merzost itself, which he created, being used to fulfill the loneliness he felt in the world and that all Grisha feel - that Aleksander especially suffered under (and which he suffered under in part due to Morozova), is a much more poetic and thematically consistent way to maintain equilibrium and fill the void of loneliness in the world than robbing Alina of her powers to do so. Which is just pointless and random and doesn’t align reasonably with any of the narrative elements. Morozova himself doing so through his amplifiers and the Merzost makes it a state of healing and even redemption. It ties his story and his character together with the plot and established themes.

It also keeps with the theme of balance. In that the Merzost is now gone and the amplifiers are now gone - abilities deemed to be unnatural and against the balance - and instead both of their powers are spread across the land. Not just Alina’s. Which was an unbalance and not in keeping with the themes established throughout the books. With both powers not only split but also split amongst many, real balance returns to the world.

I also think that both Mal and the Darkling coming back makes the ending more in line with the plot and all of the character’s arcs, and also more intriguing as a whole. Alina now has the opportunity to navigate her relationship with the both of them on new, uncertain ground.

I think this would be a unique start to a Darklina relationship in particular, as the Darkling now has many equals that are not Alina. So what would make him stay? A fun premise to explore in regards to both characters and their motivations.

On the other hand, Malina has to continue to grow with Alina still living as a Grisha sun-summoner, but now the pressure isn’t all on her. She’s free of the burden she was forced into, but not free of the powers which she came to love. She also hasn’t been stripped of her identity within a group of persecuted and marginalized people that she came to connect with.

Alina and Mal could very well live out their lives in peace. Or they could take a different path, with so many new avenues open before them. This could provide the opportunity for an even more complex future if the Darkling still remains involved with Alina (with them) even peripherally. Like if they still had dealings with him in some way, even if there isn’t anything romantic going on between him and Alina.

All in all, I just think it would be a better ending for all three of them in a variety of ways, and it also creates so many opportunities for different paths to be taken. It’s more consistent with the themes LB attempted to convey, the plot and character arcs as a whole, and the established lore.

[fuanteinasekai]

Tanuma Kaname and the Anime Problem

A sweet—and significant—moment in the middle of “Unchanging Form” that redefined Natsume and Tanuma’s relationship. Anime version: not found.

A BRAZEN THEFT

There’s a moment in “The Time-Eater” when a de-aged, amnesiac Natsume is sitting alone in Tanuma’s house, watching Sensei totter off in search of a cure. His friends observe him with concern. Taki comments to Tanuma that while Natsume’s transformation is difficult to believe, his “un-childlike, wooden” expression is still recognizable. After a brief acknowledgment from Tanuma, she rambles on that it’s good Sensei found their help, but wonders what will happen to Natsume if he can’t turn back. Then she sees Tanuma’s face, and her tone changes abruptly: she apologizes to him, saying she’s sure Sensei will fix the problem, there’s just not much they can do themselves.

There’s little ambiguity in this sequence: the change in Taki’s tone is visually apparent in the style of speech bubbles—from the soft curves of “normal” speech to the more angular lines of emphatic speech. And the use of a “…” speech bubble makes it clear that Tanuma is responding with silence, not just listening from the outside. Even Taki’s body language supports this reading, her fist awkwardly balled up as if to say “oh crap, I screwed up.”

The effect is to create a contrast. Though Taki had shown concern at an earlier point in the story, she now demonstrates an ability to emotionally detach enough to speculate about undesirable results—she’s the kind yet tactless bookish friend. Tanuma, on the other hand, is too hurt by the thought to speak. The implication is that Tanuma is more invested in Natsume as someone he can emotionally relate to—not just a friend to take care of or have fun with, but a mental equal to share life with.

This theme continues, sometimes subtly, throughout the story. Whether it’s gently checking on a frightened Natsume while Taki giggles about how fun it was to chase him, or single-handedly dealing with Natsume’s fear of being hated by his caretakers, manga-Tanuma consistently demonstrates a higher level of attention and emotional intimacy. He’s even the one to beg Natsume to “come back,” a symbolically important role. The implied intimacy is not one-sided—Tanuma is the only character Natsume is unambiguously shown to regain memories of.

Yet when the anime adapted this scene, the dynamic is reversed. The visual staging and the progression of Taki’s tone of voice are changed to imply that she is, absurdly, apologizing to herself rather than Tanuma. The anime’s framing centers her and her stolen emotions, though it fails to do so for Tanuma later when it’s actually supposed to. Instead of reacting sadly to Taki’s rambling, Tanuma is shown observing with a blank expression at unrelated moments, looking as if he doesn’t understand why she’s upset.

The dialog remains exactly the same, simply recontextualized, and Tanuma is still shown reacting, merely at a different point; so it doesn’t save a millisecond of time or even art. The only practical reason for this change is to change the implication. In other words, the anime reversed the characterization of the manga in order to make the girl more sensitive than the boy. This continues throughout the episode: if a moment belongs to Taki, it’s Taki’s; if a moment belongs to Tanuma, he either shares it with Taki or gives it up entirely.

This is not an insignificant quibble. Taki and Tanuma’s personality differences and the way they relate to Natsume inform their roles in the broader story and the way their relationships with Natsume evolve. The anime erased one of the single most important aspects of this story.

Anime vs. Manga. [Remember that Japanese reads right to left.] The corruption of Taki’s “I screwed up” fist into an “I’m a delicate bird” fist is almost hilariously manipulative. Taki is feminine, but she’s anything but delicate—it’s one of her most admirable traits. And I could go on about the use of white space and merging shadows on the bottom left, but honestly the staging isn’t subtle. Natsume is talking to Tanuma, and Taki is watching. Any such implications preserved in the anime are so brief and unnoticeable as to be not worth crediting.

Prior to this episode, I had given the anime the benefit of the doubt, assuming that the numerous emotional scenes they cut from Tanuma repertoire were simply too long to fit. But there’s no such excuse here. Either (1) Taki’s lack of feminine intuition and Tanuma’s lack of masculine stoicism were unacceptable, or (2) the boy being more sensitive than the girl was too suggestive of queerness. Whether out of their own discomfort or to placate the audience, the anime has deliberately adapted the manga in a way that downplays Tanuma’s sensitivity and his emotional significance to Natsume. And while the above examples are among the most difficult to explain away, they are far from alone.

There’s a reason I’m bringing this up.

The popularity and availability of the anime mean that most people who’ve read the manga have also watched the anime—perhaps even seen the anime first—which means that their understanding of characterization and development is likely influenced by it. But Midorikawa-sensei isn’t using the anime to guide her writing, she’s using her own. (Little could be more obviously devil-may-care than making a story’s last minute reveal revolve around the color of something we’ve already seen. Have fun with that, anime!) And that means viewers (and readers) are being misled not only about what function characters play in the narrative, but also where the story is going.

DISTORTED LENS

For a look at the way a cynical, targeted heteronormative adaptation can influence characterization, themes, and even perception of the source material itself, there’s no better example than “The Other Side of the Glass,” a.k.a. the Omibashira Arc.

At first glance, the anime appears to have made a perfectly reasonable adaptation of the manga. When boiled down to plot points, it looks the same. And it’s still romantic enough, on Tanuma’s part, to make people uncomfortable (hat tip to the “fan” in the Crunchyroll comments complaining that Tanuma wasn’t Taki). Yet in reality, it’s a complete mess, with (in addition to a new cringe-inducing fake boy/girl scene) nearly the entire mansion sequence rewritten to change both the themes and characterization, spinning the emotional focus off its axis.

When I first read the manga, I was struck by two impressions: One, that it was much more delicate than the anime, with a painful, slow interplay between Tanuma and Natsume that spirals into emotional collapse for both. Two, that it was somehow also sloppy and inconsistent. At first I couldn’t put my finger on why, but then I realized, it was this:

Tanuma, looking supremely ungrateful, as Natori hands him the talisman stone.

What I perceived as “sloppiness” was actually the dissonance between the anime characterization and the manga. Because I had seen the anime first, I had subconsciously projected its version of the characters onto the manga, and thus found it jarring when, for example, the normally sweet manga-Tanuma continued to act petty and angry toward Natori long after the more assertive anime-Tanuma had shyly introduced himself.

Hmmmmm.

The anime’s replacement of manga themes with their own was too surgically precise to be unintentional. Once I recognized what they were doing, I started making accurate predictions about what else they would change. This is, without a doubt, a story revised to meet the anime’s priorities.

It would be impossible to list everything the anime changed without essentially transcribing the entire manga, so instead I will focus on three of the most important scenes.

Right to left, again!

First is the scene I mentioned above. This is where Natori apologizes to Natsume for not being able to get him out quickly, but also where Natori and Natsume treat Tanuma like a child—or worse, an object. Natori suggests splitting up and Natsume agrees, immediately charging Sensei with “following” Tanuma like he’s a wandering child, then with finding the exit. Tanuma is never addressed directly. Both Natori and Tanuma notice Natsume is in an agitated mental state, but it’s Tanuma who steps in and tries to provide emotional support, gently suggesting that they take a break. Natsume brushes him off, inadvertently rejecting Tanuma himself, and pretends to be okay. But in the next frame he’s mentally chiding himself not to “leave his heart unguarded” and “get led astray,” suggesting he’s afraid that his emotions for Tanuma will distract him and lead to disaster. Tanuma calls after him, but Natori interrupts with the talisman stone, snidely throwing his earlier rescue in Tanuma’s face: “Take this. It’s a protection stone. Since you’re no match for an ayakashi when it matters, are you?” Tanuma accepts with cold politeness, then gives up.

This is plainly intended to help set the groundwork for Tanuma’s emotional collapse. And it’s likely setting up his recklessness in dealing with Omibashira. The scene as a whole is a microcosm for the relationship issues that led to this point. Natsume relies on distance to maintain his equilibrium, pushing Tanuma away to “protect” him and calm his own mind, but also effectively rejecting Tanuma’s affection in the process. Though Tanuma tries to do something he’s actually good at, his rejection leads him to behave more recklessly so that he can be useful anyway—and perhaps earn Natsume’s respect. For his part, Natori is everything Tanuma thinks Natsume would prefer him to be: powerful, self-assured, with movie star looks. Perhaps worse, he speaks the judgmental opinions Tanuma is afraid Natsume holds, dismissing Tanuma as weak and useless. Natori takes Natsume’s side in pushing Tanuma away because it aligns with his cynicism: he, too, believes ordinary people must be rejected to be protected. That to make them “treasures” is to make himself “weak.”

In the anime, this becomes a scene where Natori does all the planning, where Natsume never pushes Tanuma away, where Tanuma insists on helping ineptly and Natsume is open about his fears. Instead of cruelly dismissive, Natori is silly with jokes about “not making a lady work.” Instead of distant and avoidant, explicitly trying to bottle up his emotions, Natsume is openly emotional, saying “If anything were to happen to you...” He’s far too articulate.

Thematic change #1: Instead of being emotionally repressed and struggling to adapt, Natsume becomes the Generic Hero, nobly worried about his foolish best friend who doesn’t know his own limits.

Second is this scene between Tanuma and Sensei. Here Tanuma fishes for validation from Sensei, pestering him incessantly about “that ‘Natori' guy” and “that ‘Reiko' girl.” He asks whether Natori can sense presences like they can, but Sensei brushes him off because sight is more important. He calls Natori “high pressure” but Sensei defends Natori, saying it’s a habit from having so many enemies. He’s about to interrogate Sensei about exorcists when Sensei finally snaps, saying “Don’t ask me, ask Natsume!” It’s a cruel, if not exactly intentional, reminder that Natsume never told Tanuma about Reiko or Natori or exorcists in general in the first place—yet another step closer to emotional collapse. Tanuma’s whole tone is clearly one of insecurity, digging for evidence that he’s better than Natori at something, however petty. Tanuma never lets go of this. Even at the end of the story, he’s making backhanded comments:

祓い屋って…やっぱり資格とか必要なんですか？ An “exorcist”.... Do you really need “qualifications” or whatever, after all?

This patent insecurity, framing Natori as a literal rival, evaporates in the anime adaptation. His exchange with Sensei about Natori is bastardized to make his opinion positive, with a laughably transparent “I think that ‘Natori’ exorcist might actually be a good person.” Instead of fishing for validation, Tanuma interrogates Sensei about how Natsume really felt about his involvement. As if he got involved out of bad judgment. As if it were not, instead, the emotional desperation of someone repeatedly shut out, repeatedly in the dark, finally having an opportunity to do something without being able to see Natsume tense up and try to escape. This reinvented scene is capped off with a wholly new comment from Sensei: “Someone weak like you will get eaten [in this world].”

Considering this scene was meant to be an illustration of Tanuma’s insecurities and his ineffective attempt to quell them, it’s almost comically cruel that the anime chooses to not only canonize Tanuma’s uselessness as a central theme, but to make their voice Sensei, the only character in the manga to give Tanuma any agency. Not only was Sensei the one who involved Tanuma in the first place (a fact the anime makes no attempt to explain), he’s also the one who trusted Tanuma with the task of freeing Natsume. The anime vaguely implies that Sensei and Tanuma worked up a plan together, but the manga was clear: Sensei more or less gives Tanuma a mask and kimono, slaps him on the back and says “you’re on your own.” Tanuma stumbled around interviewing dangerous yōkai by himself long enough to work up a sweat. The sake bottle gambit was all his.

(Though the above is mildly exaggerated for humor, it’s still more accurate than the anime.)

This scene doesn’t just miss the point, it flips it. Tanuma having good judgment is one of his central character traits. Natsume even says so in the same chapter, describing Tanuma as 思慮深い and 慎重, meaning that he is meticulously thoughtful, careful, and responsible. The problem, here, is not his lack of judgment. It’s that his judgment is overwhelmed by his emotions toward Natsume. Natsume, in his inexperience and emotional immaturity, has used the Natori-esque technique of outright avoiding people during yōkai problems. This leaves Tanuma with no outlet for his love and desire to support Natsume, a suppression and repression that eventually builds to the point of desperation. Natsume getting stuck in a bottle where Tanuma could not see or hear him was a crack in a wall that was already under a lot of pressure. As Tanuma says, blushing, at the end of the manga:

姿見えないから勢いで超キザなこと言った気がする… I have a feeling I got carried away when I couldn’t see you, and said something super-cheesy...

Thematic change #2: Instead of behaving uncharacteristically out of emotional vulnerability and insecurity, Tanuma is merely weak and foolish.

Third, we have the climax: Natsume’s emotional collapse when Tanuma finally gets hurt. Here, it’s the little details that really matter, like manga Natori showing up and utterly failing to acknowledge the collapsed boy at Natsume’s knees until Natsume falls apart. Anime Natori gets Sensei’s lines, reassuring Natsume as if he actually values Tanuma. Or the moment when Natori finally admits that Tanuma is important, which the anime gives soft-focus to emotionally center Natori instead of Natsume’s emotional needs. Or even the moment just afterward when Natsume—his and Omibashira’s eyes now open—regains his strength.

The manga has:

ぐずぐずするな夏目　あれを封じんとこいつもお前も帰れんぞ Sensei: Don’t dawdle, Natsume. Neither [you nor Tanuma] are going home if you don’t seal that guy. ああ　そうだな Natsume: Right!

The anime completely rewrites this:

夏目 無理なら私が行くぞ Sensei: If you’re not up to it, I'll go. いや 俺が行く 俺が行きます Natsume: No, I’m going [to Sensei]. I’m going [to Natori].

Thereby making Sensei strangely soft, and Tanuma an emotional drain Natsume has to shake off, instead of someone Sensei recognizes as a motivator.

Again the anime misses the point of the original manga. Or, perhaps more likely, dislikes the point. Natori is not, as they would have it, here to be the knight in shining armor, saving the silly boys and wisely imposing emotional advice. Natori is usually wrong about emotions, and this has always been so.

Though he means well and tries his hardest to be a good mentor, it’s Natori who offered to take Natsume away from the Fujiwaras, and gave him a nightmare about it. It’s Natori who told Natsume he had to “choose a side” between yōkai and humans, directly contributing to the child god’s rejection of Natsume. It’s Natori who, on finally being told of the Book of Friends, said he’d rather just burn it. When they first met, Sensei described him as “full of hate” for yokai, and there’s no reason to believe he’s improved. Yorishima’s accusation that he’s becoming more like Matoba is in his second most recent appearance (as of the end of 2018).

This should be no surprise: he’s only 22 and on top of that lacks even 15/16-year-old Natsume’s experience with healthy emotional relationships. From a strictly logical perspective, he has no basis to be wise.

Furthermore, his given name 周一 (Shūichi) literally means “circuit one” or “lap one.” Though it’s typically used for a first-born son, here it has another meaning: Natori is the first version of Natsume himself. He was the powerful “good kid” (as Hiiragi called him, and as he called Natsume) who was turned bitter, isolated, and cynical by yokai trouble and emotional neglect. His attitude and his life reflect the direction Natsume was heading at the beginning of the series, when he says “I’d rather talk to [a yōkai exterminator] than to yōkai.” Natori is the little boy who “just wants to live alone,” all grown up and living alone.

In other words, Natori is what Natsume could have become without the unconditional love and acceptance of the Fujiwaras, and of Nishimura and Kitamoto; without the protective buffer of Nyanko-Sensei, and without the emotional pull of Tanuma. Perhaps without the cautionary tale of Taki: his inverted mirror in ability, desire for sight, and family life. (And gender.)

(Similarly, Reiko is the “avoided path” whose tragically short and lonely life is redeemed by the growth her “Book of Friends” forcibly imparts on her grandson—and she, too, makes an appearance here through Sensei.)

In fact, this is supported by, of all things, Natori’s paper bag mask. Besides being funny, it hides a bit of subtext. The marks are meaningless alone, but taken with the shape of the bag you get 肉. This is the word niku, meaning “meat,” but more importantly “flesh” as contrasted with “spirit.” Natori’s life, and his path, are preservative for the corporeal body, but spiritually sterile.

Natori is here not to be a hero, but to admit he is wrong and Tanuma is right.  He is still Natsume’s best source for advice on human magic, and still the protective older brother figure, but he is utterly lacking in the kind of relationship experience that Natsume needs advice on. The best he can do is to say “it might be terribly difficult, but you need [what I threw away].”

This isn’t just a moment of realization for Natori—it’s a dramatic reversal. The boy he was so foolishly, cruelly dismissive of, believing him to be nothing but an intrusive, “reckless” child, is actually a desperately devoted key to Natsume’s happiness. In a sense, we’ve known this all along. The standard Japanese word for “necessary” [that Natori uses] is 必要 (hitsuyō), and it contains the same kanji as Tanuma’s given name 要 (Kaname). There’s good reason: Kaname literally means “the most important person or piece.” He is the lynchpin of Natsume’s emotional growth.

We see this just three stories earlier in “The Long Road Home” when Tanuma confronts Natsume for lying about his parents' photo, thereby setting his visit to his childhood home in motion. This visit makes Natsume feel “lighter” and helps him let go of the past so he can recognize the Fujiwaras as his (new) true home. Tanuma’s role is so important he gets an entire third of the arc. In other words, Tanuma is the anchor who steadies Natsume so he can have stronger relationships with ordinary people.

In downplaying Natori’s cynicism, the anime also erases the reversal, and with it the sense that Natori has been convinced of the impossible by Natsume’s loving (if unintentional) description of Tanuma’s devotion. This opens up the scene for a broader interpretation that's about ordinary relationships in general instead of Tanuma specifically.

Thematic change #3: From Natori the avatar of emotionally barren power conceding to Tanuma the avatar of love, to Natori the charming if a bit silly hero saving Tanuma from driving Natsume away.

These are not the only losses, though they are the largest thematic issues. The anime suffers continuously from a Natsume who is far too aware and open about his emotions, and a Tanuma who doesn’t get interrupted or sabotaged. The groundwork for their respective breakdowns is poor.

The result is a two-parter that satisfies as many fans as possible, at the cost of Tanuma’s (and Natori’s) symbolic role. Anime Natori is fluffed up for his fans, and anime Tanuma is sweet enough to satisfy his fans without threatening those who would be uncomfortable with his fundamental centrality. In other words, it’s a cynical, heteronormative adaptation that assumes there is no long-term purpose to Tanuma’s role—an assumption they may come to regret.

力になりたいと頑張ってもやはり出来ない・かなわないということはあって、前向きに行動をとればとる程それにぶちあたってしまう田沼。話したいけれど話すと、そいうジレンマに田沼がおちいるとだんだんわかってきた夏目。それを見て、それ見たことか！と言いたいけれどそうとも言ってしまえない不思議な可能性に、口から出る言葉が変わっていってしまう名取。と、それぞれの立場のズレあいが描けてとても楽しかったです。普段描けないような夏目の表情が描けた先生ナツメもワクワクしながら描けました。あらためて夏目は表情とぼしい奴だなと実感しました。

Tanuma, who wants to help, but can’t no matter how hard he tries. Who, having things he cannot handle, finds that the more positively he takes action, the more he runs into that problem.

Natsume, who wants to talk, but is gradually coming to understand it leads Tanuma into that dilemma.

Natori, who wants to say “See, I told you so!” but finds himself unable, a curious possibility escaping his mouth instead.

I enjoyed drawing the meeting of these incongruous positions. I was also excited about drawing expressions on Sensei-Natsume that I normally can’t. I felt a renewed sense that Natsume was a guy with few expressions.

In Part 2, I’ll be talking about the textual basis for canonical Tanuma-Natsume soulmates, and how this is downplayed by the anime.

[avahuang]

Onzuiver: a play in one act

C: So say you are 18 years old and you meet this guy. And he’s good-looking—it doesn’t really matter, but it makes the story easier if the protagonist is good-looking. And you are too, but you’re insecure about it. And it’s your first summer in Boston, you’re interning, and he asks you out. And he takes you out for dessert on the second date, and you have sex with him, and yadayadayada. At first it’s all fine, maybe for a month or two it’s all fine. By “fine” I mean that you remain intact, critical, in fact a little bit detached. You’re along for the ride, but you haven’t been thrown into the water—you’re not immersed, you’re not drowning. And then you leave the city, and the two of you break up—rather, he breaks up with you over video call, he knows it’s not right, long-distance, whatever—and then it begins. The really interesting part. Because you feel something really remarkable, a kind of acute panic—you can’t bear to lose this guy. All of a sudden it becomes evident, the pain makes it evident, that you’re really quite attached, that you feel deep inside you somewhere between the sternum and your sixth left rib a kind of wild floundering. And you become convinced that this horrible agony can only be rectified by rectifying the external situation, i.e. the two of you must promptly get back together. You need to once again seal the envelope that has been ripped open. But he fights your efforts, and then you push back because you can’t accept the reality of a world without the person you’re now convinced you’re madly in love with, every single thing that is not him seems leached of life, totally incapable of holding your attention. I mean you read all the advice about being strong, no contact, respecting yourself and respecting your partner, really good advice, but it has no sway over you emotionally whatsoever, you’re so far from any anchor to sanity, calm, self-respect: for the very first time in your young life you are completely immersed. Completely at sea, all alone, and you know this isn’t a novel experience, people survive it, but the thing about the chemical insanity of youth is that everything feels so incredibly zoomed in and an experience like this—really being in love for the first time—swallows up your entire horizon like a giant crimson sun emitting incredible heat. Just imagine staring at a huge red sun that seems unbearably close to you—you can feel the uncomfortable warmth, you have the peeling burns on your skin—and all around people are telling you that it’s an insignificant thing, ignore it. And you wonder aren’t they flooded by the sunlight, can’t they feel that it hurts? But of course they can’t, the sun’s only there for you, and you feel isolated by this private phenomenon, you can’t really talk about it because you know there’s something shameful about the outrageousness of it, how divorced from reality you’ll sound. It’s like admitting that you think a novel with elements of magical realism is actually true, that you can live in a totally sane and functional world and then cats just come up and talk in human voices and giant suns descend and hover meters away from the ground. It’s madness. But that’s the funny truth of it—our emotional lives are madness, especially the first time we experience really significant events. Everything’s so wildly distorted and things that have very little impact on your life objectively have a massive impact internally. And because they have a massive impact internally they begin to change your real, external life in significant ways. Believing in that giant red sun actually alters how you act.

(Silence)

C: So for a long time you’re just trying to get this guy to love you. There are all these things that happen—you graduate, and you get a new job, and you move back to Boston—but these are not really things that matter to you at the time. There’s a part of you that acknowledges that they are new and profound, but the central fact of your existence, sad as it is to say, has become this guy. And remember, you’re still super isolated by this, because there is an objective world in which you are a high-functioning young woman, care about your career, care about your friends, are even-keeled and self-confident and cheerful, and it’s shameful to admit that you have a private obsession that’s totally consumed you. And the thing is that because this guy’s a little bit older than you and he’s been through the wringer already with someone else, had his heart masticated and spat out on the ground a couple of times already, and through unimpaired eyes understands that the two of you really are a bad match, he likes for your good qualities—you’re attractive, smart, fun to be around—but the phenomenon that you’re experiencing, this mad love which seems in the moment like the first real thing you’ve maybe ever felt, is totally one-sided. And he can tell something really serious and strange is going on with you, that you’re obsessed with him, and he’s bemused and a little repulsed by it. And he’s trying to be decent, but it’s confusing because you’re totally incapable of having an emotionally honest conversation with him--I mean, think about it, you can’t go to the guy you’re desperately trying to win over and say, you’re this giant red sun in my life and I think your heat is kind of frying me to death--so he can only observe from outside symptoms what’s going on, a good deal of it you’ve managed to internalize and isolate from everyone else, and you’re telling him all these totally bullshit things, trying to sound reasonable--I want to be with you, it’s okay if we keep things casual, it’s fine if we’re not a long-term match--and he really does like you some of the time, and of course it’s flattering to be the focus of such intense, seemingly irrational attention, it would make anyone feel special and powerful--so he keeps wavering between what he knows he observes in the objective external world and the pull of you--your urgency--and things continue like this for a while, time passes.

(Silence)

C: And then the really bad thing happens, which is that through sheer force of will and pure relentlessness you manage to convince him that dating you is maybe not a terrible idea and the two of you get back together. Yes, really. [looks at audience] And the thing is of course that no one explodes or dies, it’s all relatively anti-climatic after all this time, all this longing. The two of you aren’t really that compatible with each other, he was right from the beginning, in fact he’s kind of a shitty partner--hypercritical, hypocritical, jealous, emotionally unstable, just as he warned you. But because you’re so invested at this point and he kind of is too--after so much time and pain you both just want things to be stable for a while--you go on dates and have sex and message each other cute emoticons, the normal stuff, and you’re too needy and he’s too absent, and then after a couple of months you realize that you’re actually, uh, not really happy. You have what you want, this beloved person, this glowing ball of sun, and in fact most of the time it just feels kind of lackluster, kind of wrong. And of course there are really tender moments, transcendent wonderful moments, because there’s some inherent compatibility and quite a lot of attraction and he cares about you after having known you so long, it’s just the mere exposure effect, and so there are bright spots, glints of the light on the dark pond. But you begin to understand what’s actually been going on all this time, which is that you’ve actually been madly in love with a narrative layer on top of the real person, some idealized person who looks like your actual boyfriend, has the same blond hair, same crooked nose, and you’ve wedded all these fantasies to them, believed they are the answer to the mundane parts of your life, your dissatisfaction, thought they would elevate your life, save you from your uncertainty about your job and all your insecurities about yourself and your desire to find purpose, find meaning, be capable of one single independent thought separate from all the ingrained values that’ve been fed to you by your parents and society and all the capitalist institutions around you and all the mid-brow whitebread media you consume. But of course this idealized person doesn’t exist, godfuckingdamnit, you’re in love with someone who doesn’t exist and never will, and instead you’re stuck dating someone who you have all these confused feelings for because he’s become inextricably intertwined with the person in your head, you’ve been interacting with him believing that he’s this person all the time, and now turns out he isn’t, he’s just some 25-year-old who has good qualities and bad qualities like anyone else, and you see that it’s not going to work, I mean he’s not going to fall madly in love with you, and you guys could continue maintaining this thoroughly mediocre equilibrium, this relationship where neither person is miserable but both are kind of vaguely dissatisfied, but why bother? So the plot culminates in the only way it can, in a breakup, and you cry for a bit while listening to an Adele song and then you chug on with your life. And it takes a while to really be able to process and understand this experience, to articulate all of these things to yourself in a coherent way. For a long time you’re really ashamed of it, and then you realize how common it is, that in fact it’s just a kind of side effect of being that age the same way weight gain is a side effect of Lexapro: being swallowed up by your emotions and interacting with an idealized version of someone instead of trying to really understand who they actually are. So it felt in the moment Capital-S Shattering but now that you can zoom out you realize that it’s actually quite normal, and in fact some people never grow out of it. And then you’re hit with the final heartwrenching revelation, which is that now that you have sort of reprogrammed yourself into a healthy mature adult and you’re aware that you should never idealize your partners and probably never will again, you’re thoroughly insulated from that all-consuming madness, the heady temperature and magic. It was purely a production put on by your teenage hormones and that glorious feeling, which made every tiny thing seem so significant, which could alter time in ways that were beyond language, is not going to be repeated. You could date every incredibly cool person in the world (and for a period of time after the breakup you make a real go at exactly that), but you’re never going to feel the same way again because it was just an internal thing, a reflection of your emotional and mental state at the time, and you can’t replicate it. Tragic but true: adulthood cannot be undone. And so all that energy you put into the guy and into trying to win his love can’t just go into another partner, at least not right away. You consider the possibility that real adult love could be (well, more subtle hopefully) just as significant, but decide you’re probably not ready for it. And then you realize that all the care and thought and time--all that momentous effort--has to go into yourself, into the person who generated all of those feelings in the first place. You have to redirect your focus into your own life and address the emptiness and dissatisfaction that made you susceptible to this whole madness in the first place. It’s not a good revelation, it’s like looking for keys frantically all over the house and realizing two hours and one locksmith later that they were in your front left pocket--like what a waste, couldn’t I have just been a little less stupid in the first place? But all of us start out kind of dumb I guess, and all you can hope for is that every iteration of yourself is a slightly better iteration. That’s all we’re ever given.

(Silence)

[eugenialapteva]

Young Love

The scene:

A young woman, I shall call her Eliza, is sitting next to a young man, whom I shall refer to as Ethan. They seem to be of a similar age, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, and it is clear from the way in which they are seated, close to each other and holding hands, that they are a romantic couple. They are travelling by coach to the airport furthest away from central Stockholm. Eliza is wearing blue jeans and a cream coloured woollen jumper, her boots are sturdy but smart looking and her brown hair is neatly tied up in a bun. She looks confident and self-assured. Ethan is wearing a generic dark coloured jumper and black jeans. The observed interaction begins just after Eliza has come off the phone with her mother.

Ethan: I still can’t understand anything [he chuckles]. No, actually, I think I understood a little – “dobzhe”, that means “good” right?

Eliza: Yeah, “dobry”, it can mean a lot of things. Like “ladny”, which also means nice. But it’s pronounced differently depending on if it’s a person or a thing. For example, if I say “it tastes good”, or “she’s nice”… [She continues to explain the various uses of the word in detail]

Ethan: Oh so it’s like for an item or object?

Eliza: Exactly.

There is a short silence.

Ethan: Good chat with your mum?

Eliza: Yeah, always good chat with her. We always have good talks.

Ethan: Ah good. That’s what I like to hear [He is stroking her hand gently, silently]

Do you think it’s good business this – going back and forth to the airport?

Eliza: Yeah I think it’s good, not only for the shuttle bus to this airport – all capitals have the same system. But this company benefits from it being the only mode of transport to the airport. No trains go there. So they have a monopoly […]

Eliza takes out her phone and is looking at a ‘story’ on Instagram. Ethan leans over to have a look, still caressing her hand.

Ethan: Where is that?

Eliza: Canada.

Ethan: Where in Canada?

Eliza: I don’t know.

Ethan: Cos there’s the English speaking part and the French speaking part.

Eliza: Eh, yeah.. of course, I know that. I went to school you know, I know about the world. We go to school in Poland too!

Ethan: Oh really? I didn’t think so. So you know how the world works then?

Eliza: Yeah.

He smiles and humours her cheerfully, still caressing her hand, his body snuggled up beside her. They start planning their week and Eliza checks the calendar on her phone.

Ethan: Sure, you can see your friends on Friday, that’s absolutely fine with me. I can see you on the weekend. I’m around.

Eliza: I’m working Monday and Tuesday 9-5, Thursday 2-8. You’re off Sunday right?

Ethan: Monday.

Eliza: Oh right.

Ethan: So Saturday? When do you find out your schedule? […] Yeah, yeah that’s cool.

Eliza: Do you have plans Monday?

Ethan: No, just going to be off. If you’re free…and if the trains are running…

Eliza: You do what you need to.

Ethan: Yeah, I'll wait to see what you say.

Both on their phones, but Eliza looks more engrossed in the activity. Ethan is staring at his phone rather purposelessly. As they are approaching the airport, Eliza gathers her things and puts on her coat in preparation.

Ethan: You checked in?

Eliza: Yeah [her voice sounds impatient]

Ethan: So we just go straight in. Easy.

As if noticing her sharp tone of voice, retrospectively, she gives him a little cuddle. They speak inaudibly and suddenly Eliza exclaims:

Yes! 2-1. Winner, that’s me [pointing at herself triumphantly].

Ethan smiles, but does not say anything.

Outside the bus Eliza heads straight for the luggage compartment. She locates their bags within seconds and points to them.

Eliza: They’re there. One over there and the other one is behind.

She takes a step back, to allow him to go ahead and collect them.

Analysis:

As I conjure up the scene of these two adolescents in love and in conversation, I am struck afresh by the same sense of nostalgia which I felt at the time of the observation. The image of this outwardly self-possessed and poised Eastern European princess on a journey with her doting and starry-eyed young prince, taps into my personal narrative of adolescent love, evoking within me a sense of poignancy and pain; a curious fantasy of familiarity and kindred minds.

Within a minute or two of observing the contact between Eliza and Ethan and listening to their dialogue, I was overcome by a powerful feeling that I already knew the power dynamics of their relationship; I could foresee the inevitable calamity and heartbreak that is built into the choreography of their complementary dance. Of course, I soon became aware of how intensely coloured these presumptions were by my own psychical templates and interpersonal experiences from infancy onward. That said, by the same token, this spontaneous reaction of mine – bearing in mind with vigilance its subjective and affective quality – seemed to provide a useful instrument for the observation; a way in, as it were, to the internal worlds of Eliza and Ethan and their romantic relationship.  

The journey of human development is by no means simple. The path toward psychosexual maturity, as Freud astutely proposed, is a long and precarious undertaking for all human beings. Twisting through the plethora of infantile desires, wishes, impulses, obstacles, deprivations, identifications, satisfactions and loss, its course depends on the negotiation of a highly complicated set of developmental stages and processes in early childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The successful transition from one phase to the next is determined by a unique combination of fortuitous and constitutional factors – a mixture, if you like, of our innate genetic makeup and the dynamics of our lived experiences and relations with others and within the self.

According to Freud, then, even the most seemingly unobtrusive symptoms and pointless actions (much like parapraxes, jokes, gestures and dreams) have an intention and bear a connection to the person’s past experiences. In other words, the secret of neurosis in general is that the symptoms, however vicariously, are closely connected to the person’s innermost phantasies and early experiences of sexual life.[1] ‘Sucking at the mother’s breast’, Freud explained, ‘is the starting-point of the whole sexual life […] This sucking involves making the mother’s breast the first object of the sexual instinct.’[2] By discovering what he believed to be the sexual causation of neuroses Freud radically extended the concept of sexuality.

Central to this Freudian thesis was the fact that we must relinquish our first and primary love-object (typically this is the mother) in order to be able to advance to a sexually fulfilling and affectionate non-incestuous love relationship as an adult. In effect of this renunciation, however, ‘the final object of the sexual instinct is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it’[3] [emphasis mine]. Following up Freud’s formulations, perhaps a closer glance at the body language of Ethan and Eliza might offer a good point of entry to start understanding their ways of relating to each other psychoanalytically.

From the outset, Ethan’s body is somewhat bent and twisted toward Eliza – he strokes her hand fondly and remains seated in the same position of proximity throughout the journey. Meanwhile Eliza, adopting a more assertive stance, has a straight back and is faced at an angle away from Ethan in the direction of the bus. It is interesting to notice how the nature of their respective body languages mimic the different levels of engagement in their spoken conversation too. From what we observe, a structural imbalance of kind seems to permeate the relationship in multiple ways. While Ethan displays a keen interest in Eliza’s family and culture – he inquires about the Polish language and wants to know more about her conversation with mum – Eliza, on the other hand, seems to make minimal effort to reciprocate these gestures. Furthermore, it is Ethan who initiates conversation when they fall silent, he who suggests they meet up the following week, and he who listens attentively and responds to Eliza’s remarks and deliberations about the Polish word for nice and airport shuttle bus service.

On the surface, then, Ethan appears to be active and outspoken. His gratuitous engagement could be seen as a demonstration of the positive excitement and enthusiasm of being in love with someone whom he greatly admires – a harmless feature of the loving experience. Having said that, I wonder if Ethan’s propensity for ‘activity’ also signals a protective measure of the ego aimed at the avoidance of painful affects of passivation. His eagerness to adapt to Eliza’s schedule and to comply with her needs and demands (accepting her triumph, collecting their bags), parallels his accommodating body language and is suggestive of a denial of self – an unconscious subservient mode of defence against fear and anxiety about abandonment, the origins of which would date back to his childhood.

One could propose, in Freudian terms, that Ethan’s readiness to submit to Eliza’s mental organisation, through idealisation and his compliant attitude, provides him with a familiar way of sustaining psychic equilibrium, which must have taken precedence over the satisfaction of his individual desires and needs at some point in infancy. For one reason or another, something in early childhood might have prohibited Ethan from being able to freely express his wants and wishes to his primary carer – without fear of persecution – causing these incestuous wishful impulses to be forced into repression prematurely. This means that some psychical processes were denied satisfaction through discharge and cast out of consciousness; however, as we learn from reading Freud, in the dark and delirious unconscious they continue to grow and flourish, acting as a constant impediment to the adult’s libido and freedom.[4]

The patterns of behaviour we notice in Ethan might well be manifestations of benign defenses that help us to adapt to reality. My own experience of love – and retrospective exploration of my own role in that dynamic: as the idealised object – has made me deeply conscious of the subtle line between healthy admiration and violent idealisation, while also being cautious about how easily exploited that position of idealised object can be, albeit unconsciously. What is more, as I witnessed the interaction between these two lovers, the irritation and impatience in Eliza’s voice seemed agonizingly tangible. Clearly – or at least that was my impression – she is an educated, intelligent and competent young woman, but equally evident was that she seemed unaware of the impact of her words and actions on her loved one (with the exception of that one significant moment in the interaction, after her abrupt sounding ‘yeah’, when she gave Ethan a little hug).

Speculatively, one might draw from this relative lack of sensibility and tendency toward omnipotence – revealed in the way she asserts, and indeed prioritizes, her needs and wishes over Ethan’s – that circumstances were ‘good enough’ (to borrow Winnicott’s term) during her childhood. Perhaps, unlike Ethan, as a child she was freer to act and exist without taking into careful consideration the other’s separate existence and personal interests. Her phone call to her mum (the close attachment they seem to have) suggests possibly that family members for Eliza can be taken for granted, approached more or less as things that exist in service of her own needs – as blank screens onto which we are allowed to project and express all our anger, wants and needs without undue punishment.

In a different but related vein, psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin writes that: ‘The ability to enter into exchange with the outside object implies a successful shift from the pleasure principle, self-containment in phantasy, toward the reality principle. That is, the individual’s entrance into a shared reality of creative inter-relationships built on mutual recognition and exchange.[5]

Having recognised this curious conjunction between the mother’s care and her baby’s sexual activity, we are arguably in a better position to appreciate how Freud’s remark on incest helps us understand how in various ways both Eliza and Ethan remain under the sway of the pleasure principle, lodged within the incestuous family matrix: a milieu, which as Luce Irigaray so pertinently puts it, ultimately favours cohesion and unity over difference and desire.[6] Together, Eliza’s competitive and perhaps somewhat inflated self-perception, and Ethan’s compliant approach and underlying sense of inadequacy, seem to complement each other in a dyadic structure which is both fragile and romantic.

[1] Sigmund Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XVII, p. 257

[2] Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XX, p. 314

[3] Freud, ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love’, S.E. 11, p. 189

[4] Freud, ‘A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men’, pp. 169-171

[5] Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, pp. 37-38  

[6] Luce Irigaray, (2017) To be Born, p. 47

[isagrimorie]

[January Meme] - “Most important episode for each POI character and why?”

for @potcpoi

Oh, this is hard but I’ll do my best!

Harold Finch

God Mode

This remains as my favorite season ender of all-- the way this episode, these flashbacks recontextualize Harold is amazing. He is an unreliable narrator, and this episode breaks down all of Harold’s initial pitch to John and it left me breathless. 

I will fight anyone who say flashbacks are useless because in the right hands, in the right story, it can change everything, and this is my go to example for it. It’s just honestly, honestly amazing. 

The Day the World Went Away

God this it’s crafted so well but it also does something so terrible but damn is this episode excellent. Especially this scene. Michael Emerson gives a brilliant and blistering tour de force performance, this monologue was fantastic.  The way his voice shakes at the way he denounces his rules. The very rules I’ve wondered about from the start.

I’ve wondered why he was so unshakeable and steadfast about his rules, and man, does this deliver in every single way. The music, the tense build-up. And I remember on a recent rewatch (knowing what happens to Root, and the distance from the initial hurt really helps), how I felt my heart race just from this scene. I knew what was going to happen, and yet when we reach that moment. 

Damn. 

John Reese

Foe

here

Matsa Nyaya

here

These two episodes remain, in my head, as important episodes for John Reese. This formed the John we get to know and Kara Stanton is an important part of the formation of John.

Kara Stanton was the monster he needed to survive his tenure in the CIA, even as it hurt who he was. John got good at killing people, even to the point where Kara let John took the lead but Kara was also always there to hold him true to the path the moment she feels him stray.

Ordos is the place that breaks both Kara and John's faith with differing results and I just feel like this moment and the episodes in season 2 was part of John's character, seared in blood. Until his work with the team helps him walk the line back out of darkness, and we get this moment:

"But then I realized: Sometimes, one life, ...if it's the right life, it's enough."

from here

Joss Carter

As a whole, all of Carter’s moments from:

In Extremis

by @cocoabuffster

satan’s raisin

This moment and the moment after this, where Carter digs up and moves Stills body was a pivotal moment for Carter, IMO. It’s one thing helping someone out of prison, and another, actively covering up a (supposed) murder to help out someone she now knows was a dirty cop. Carter is forced to choose between the law and what she thinks is right.

This is the pebble that causes the avalanche and where it continues rolling into the moment —

God Mode

Everything that happened before was a lead up to this moment of choice and the moment Carter does it, it’s not a decision that’s out of character. It build off the moments from season 1, to 2 Pi R, In Extremis and then actively intervening to keep Elias alive, caught between the devil she didn’t know and the devil she knew, she chose the devil she knew.

It’s such a turning point for Carter that ends with Carter taking down the head of HR, and earning Elias’s undying loyalty.

Sameen Shaw

Boy. This is… I’m going to have to restrain myself here but:

Relevance

Need I explain how amazing and beautiful this episode is? It's a backdoor pilot in itself, what a fantastic introduction to one of my top favorites. It has everything that is my jam-- the superhero stealth entrance, the espionage, the fierce and fantastic Sarah Shahi as the equally fantastic Sameen Shaw.

And, a beautiful thematic music for both Shaw and the second phase of the show.

Razgovor

I'll be honest from Zero Day up to the episode before Razgovor, I despaired that the show forgot how to write Shaw but this episode assured me, that no-- they haven't.

The Devil’s Share

It’s a brief moment in the episode but it says so much about Shaw, the lengths she goes to save people, and the way she operates after. And how that worked against her in her career and in her life.

If Then Else

This episode distills Shaw down to who she is, and much as I love the kiss, it’s actually the above moment that hit me. Someone as pragmatic as Shaw, she gets to deliver one of the more optimistic statements of the show… “Life is crap… but you’re not alone.”

It felt like such a significant moment not only for what the scene represented but for how, I think it tied in who Shaw is.

6,741

Oh man, what else can I say about this but— this is one hell of an episode, and what a fantastic character study of who Shaw is, at the very core of her. She is a straight arrow, and Samaritan, in all seven thousand plus simulations can’t break that. It is also a brutal study about what happens if a person whose certainty and personal is everything is taken bit by bit— chiseled down to the bone.

Sarah Shahi was phenomenal in this episode and in this season, and I hope Reverie will give Sarah Shahi the material to rise to these heights again.

Root

Root Path

by @asleepinawell

semi-functional nerd | “You want to know what the plan was the day they…

The episode where the Machine not so subtly pushed Root to be more of a team player… and it back fires because at this point, TM is also still learning about Root. And, at this point Root reverted to her usual MO— working alone.

I love the moment where Root really comes face to face with the consequences of her actions pre-TM. And where Harold and Root gets a little closer and Root gets to flirt with Shaw a bit more, but then, because her open book facade really is just a facade and she’s revealed more than she’s comfortable with, she opts to leave instead of take up Harold’s offer to help the Machine and Root then and there.

It’s a series of first steps to the right path with a skittish step side ways until Root finds a bit more equilibrium.

Lionel Fusco

Blue Code

In Extremis

It’s funny how (for me) the defining/important (narrative) moments of our detectives happens in the woods at night. Carter finds herself at a crossroads in God Mode and in Blue Code Fusco accepts his fate but also realizes that no matter what he does, he’s never going to escape what he’s done. Its this moment that propels him to the moment in In Extremis, where he’s willing to get his devil’s share but it’s Carter’s faith in him that carries Fusco through and makes him believe that he can make something of himself, and be better than he was.

dreamwidth

[pooja-r-bi]

April: Fourth Week

Finally we came up with story and an idea for our opening sequence. Since our team can’t meet face to face to plan our pre-production we decided to use technology in our favour, and as a result we arranged zoom meeting and conference calls to share our ideas and finalized a story. 

Story

A girl named Akansha who has social anxiety, schizophrenia OCD, her only family is her stepbrother whom she’s really close to. She is a 20 years old fine arts and theatre artist.

During her theatre rehearsals she’s meet a guy named Aarav, who’s handsome, polite and humble. She madly falls in love with him which slowly starts turning into obsession and tries to be her best version around him, as she’s extremely comfortable with him. As she has schizophrenia she starts believing that Aarav too has feelings for her. then another girl named Idaya also joins Akansha and Aarav’s theatre group. Idaya too is of the same age as Aakansha, she good at socializing, gets comfortable with everyone easily an is very pretty, Aarav eventually falls for her which makes Akansha jealous and disturbed. Then while sharing her feelings with her brother she tells him about how much she hates her, its strikes to her brother that he could take an unfair advantage of the situation. As her brother goes in a debt of millions and has no money left with him, the only way to save himself for him is to use his late father’s wealth which he left for Akansha only according to the will. So he slowly starts drugging her heavily without her knowledge, makes her believe in her delusional fantasies of Aarav and guides her towards murdering Idaya which would lead to her going into prison and all of the wealth would be his.She soon an becomes an addict, due to which growing closeness between Aarav and Idaya disturb her more. Her brother then convinces Akansha to kidnap Aarav’s girlfriend so that she gets to spend more time with him and eventually he will forget about his girlfriend.

 However, Aarav suspects that something is wrong. While high on drugs Akansha threatens Idaya (girlfriend) that she will kill her but Idaya tries to escape and during that attempt Akansha tries to stop her but instead she ends up killing her. After the murder Akanksha is caught red-handed sent to prison and re-hab center where she finds out that she was being drugged but her brother is not caught. 

After Akansha is sent to the prison Aarav is shattered and goes at her home to collect the guitar he gave her, where he finds out the truth, then he saves Akansha and after she’s free he leaves for Boston to start a new chapter of his life. In the end, Akansha is back at her studio trying to accept the reality and that her actions were a result of her delusions, her brother goes to the prison and Aarav too pursues a new journey. 

Since we finalized the story, so now we have to create the screenplay, shot division and master break down for our opening sequence. Our director is going to create the screenplay using celtx. But to design the master breakdown we needed to visit our location to visualize our screenplay. We didn't have flexibility to choose the desired location due to pandemic so we marked school as location as it would be convenient for everyone to be present there. We shortlisted our art room, Dance room, music room and parking lot as our key locations for the shoot.  We scheduled a 2 days visit to the school with our teacher to finalize everything for the upcoming week.

Below is the screenplay

Going through the storyline we remembered that we didn’t pre planned on what genre we are going to write our story, besides we already wrote the story. Although this was our second time planning the pre production we still made this blunder. Now that we already wrote the story we mentally tried to match the elements of our story with different genres and we came to the conclusion that it is a hybrid of Crime/Drama/thriller.

Then we researched the codes and conventions of the same

What is a Crime Thriller? 

• A crime thriller usually consists of a battle between a protagonist character and an antagonist character, normally when there is a disruption in the equilibrium. The storyline then normally shows a chain of bad events that usually build up tension and suspense for the audience. The aim for the protagonist is to restore justice and peace to the community whereas the antagonist seeks to destroy the peace.

Conventions of a Crime Thriller 

• Low key lighting 

• Quick cuts 

• Shadows 

• Tense music 

• Changes in the angles of shots 

• Diegetic sounds of heavy breathing 

• Black and white shots 

• Montage of shots 

• Protagonist 

• Antagonist

Characters 

• Protagonist The protagonist is often a brave individual male who tends to seek to restore the equilibrium. 

• Antagonist The antagonist will usually have a hidden identity from the audience and will be uncovered as the film progresses. Often the antagonist seeks out revenge from a pervious past event.

Themes of a Crime Thriller 

The storyline will be designed so that the audience will think that it can happen to them, this will make them feel scared which is what the producers want. 

Cinematography of a Crime Thriller 

• There will normally be a lot of close ups and extreme close ups of the protagonist character, it is often to show the characters emotions, also it can be used to focus on props to aid the narrative 

• The shots of the antagonist character will be quickly cut and normally will aim to hide the identity of them, for example a shot of the back of the character or a low key shot/shadow. 

Editing of a Crime Thriller 

• The director will include lots of jump cuts because there will be things happening that the audience will most likely be unaware of but this is an essential part of the film to make sense. Cross cutting is a key point in editing, this is because it is used to build suspense which is essential in a crime thriller. Continuous editing is used to help the audience understand the film in a better way.

Sound of a Crime Thriller 

• Music is an essential part of any film, it allows the target audience to understand the mood of the characters and hint main parts within the film. In crime thriller films the sound will often start slowly and build up, this will add tension and make the shots seem more dramatic than they need to be for the audience. Generally start with a slow tempo and relatively quiet› Eerie music to create suspense› Music that keeps the audience guessing to what could potentially happen› Silence  Creates tension and panic3. ›› 

Mise-en-scene 

• The location of a crime thriller film is important for the film because it helps the audience establish the theme.  Typically it would be a dimly lit warehouse, even a dark alley, cities etc. Using claustrophobic spaces to portray the ‘entrapment’ in the characters mind.

• Lighting in a crime thriller is often low key.  Different levels of low key lighting that creates suspense or a mysterious atmosphere. Low level lighting creates shadows. Creates fear and tension› Black and white coloring increases the effectiveness of shadows. Title of film could be written/colored in specific ways to portray the film. Color is a direct link to emotions and thought so dark greys are used.

• Costumes- antagonist will be in dark clothing so the audience cannot see them compared to the protagonist will be in ordinary clothes.  Naturalistic costume and make-up to make it more believable as how we present the characters is how the audience will perceive them.

• Theme-In plots about crime, thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective and more on generating suspense. Common themes include, terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit and romantic triangles leading to murder.

• Make up-Lack of make-up can make the characters seem more natural and normal like an everyday person. To show fear in a woman for example, smudged eye make-up can suggest that she has been crying displaying her emotions.

• Film stroke (Black and white or colour) black would go with confusion and uncertainty.

This week we also learned about video nasties and video recording act 1984.

When video recorders were first introduced in the UK in 1978, there was no legislation governing what could be released on video or to whom video recordings could be supplied. Because of the lack of legislation, small distributors who produced low budget horror and pornography sought to release their films that had previously been refused classification or cut by the BBFC. Some of the films released contained scenes that contravened UK laws on animal cruelty and obscenity, and were available to children of any age.

After public and political concern, the BBFC introduced a voluntary scheme for rating video recordings. Although the major companies submitted their titles for age rating, there was no obligation for smaller companies to do so and therefore the problem still remained. In response, The Director of Public Prosecutions issued a list of videos that he believed to be in breach of the Obscene Publications Act. This came to be known as the ‘video nasties’ list. However, a work could only be prosecuted once it had been released and so many copies of these ‘video nasties’ were already circulating peoples’ homes.

Following the ineffective prosecution of the ‘video nasties’ list and the reluctance of the smaller companies to submit their works for classification voluntarily, Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act in 1984. This act required that all video works (including laserdiscs and DVDs) must be rated – and, if necessary, cut or rejected – by an authority designated by the Home Secretary. From 1985, all video works released in the UK would be submitted to the BBFC and be rated at an appropriate category. The supply of age-restricted videos to persons under the age stated on the certificate would become illegal and the supply of unrated videos would also become a criminal offence.

[jhwdrawsthings]

The Last Jedi Teaser Poster Anyalsis

Worth a Thousand Words

An Analysis of The Last Jedi Teaser Poster

Having just returned home from Star Wars Celebration: Orlando, I am filled with emotions, excitement and anticipation for the next installment of the Skywalker family saga. I was fortunately enough sit in the The Last Jedi panel, after 20 hours of sitting on a concrete floor, and an additional 10 hours before hand, queueing outside. However, that panel was worth every second of the wait time. And while most people will say the long anticipated teaser trailer stole the show, as an artist and illustrator, for me, the star of the show was the teaser poster, that was also revealed.

My jaw literally dropped as I stood in stunned silence as the crowd cheered around me. In fact, my line buddy, a member of the 501st by the name of Matt, repeatedly asked if I was okay as stood agape at the poster, amazed in it’s brilliant design as well as very clear and intentional use of visual story telling. I was flabbergasted at the bold choices made by Lucasfilm in this teaser poster, and I do believe that this is more of an indicator of the film’s story, rather than the trailer. This poster tells us, the viewer, everything we need to know about the direction of the upcoming movie, as well as helps dispel the rumors that The Last Jedi will be nothing more than a carbon clone of The Empire Strikes Back.

Before I go into detail I just want to say that it’s no secret that I ship reylo, however, for the purposes of this discussion, I am setting aside my implicit biases and talking about the facts stated in this poster, rather than fan speculation and conjecture.

First and foremost, what stood out to me is the simplicity in the poster’s design. We see only three characters, Rey, Luke and Kylo Ren. After doing extensive research, I found that this is the ONLY poster with just three characters. All previous Star Wars posters depict the main ensemble of cast members, as far back as 1979’s A New Hope. Never before has a Star Wars poster depicted only three members of the cast, and it is a clear statement that these three characters are the most important in relation to the story. There is also a not so subtle nod to Luke Skywalker in the original promotional theatrical poster for A New Hope. Both Rey and Luke are positioned in almost the same spacial area, in the same pose, with an ignited light saber raised up. For Luke, this symbolized his acceptance of his heroic journey, and the inherent power he possessed. For Rey, however, the meaning is vastly different. The sequel trilogy is very much about passing the torch from the old generation to the new, and unlike in The Force Awakens, Rey is present and accepting of that power, physically and metaphorically, in The Last Jedi, the second installment, rather than the first. Rey is our new hero, now heroine, embarking on her own heroine’s journey.

Now I know not many fans like Kylo Ren, and in fact they perceive him as a whiny emo cry baby, trying his best (and failing) to emulate Grandpa Vader, but his importance in the story cannot be overstated! He is the descendent of Darth Vader, and Leia Organa, and as much as most fans dislike him, that’s just simply a fact! The Star Wars trilogy movies are about the Skywalker family, and he is the new Skywalker of the trilogy. He is important to the cinematic universe as a whole, and characters from the The Force Awakens who easily had double the amount of screen time as him, such as Finn, were purposefully omitted from the poster in lieu of Kylo Ren. Regardless of how much fans like his character, he is going to play a very impactful role in the film to come. I know that he is not the most important character or the focal point of the poster, however, given the overly negative response he solicits from fans, I felt that it is important and necessary to make my position, and the poster’s narrative clear; even if you don’t like his character, Kylo Ren is a key player in the Skywalker family saga, and the cinematic universe as a whole.

When analyzing any piece of artwork, regardless of the the medium, the best jumping off point is the focal point. In The Last Jedi teaser poster, the viewer’s eye is immediately drawn to Rey, brought forth by the strong contrast of the blue halo of light emitting from her lightsaber. In terms of visual hierarchy and storytelling, she is the most important element to not only the poster, but in the movie it represents. Her position, in the lower center of the foreground suggests that she is the most grounded of the three characters, and thus the one that we, as the viewer, is meant to relate to the most. However, she is removed from both Luke and Kylo, positioned below them, which indicates that she was not a initially part of their conflict. And originally, she wasn’t. Rey was just a scavenger, abandoned by her parents on Jakku, struggling each day to survive. At that point, Rey didn’t know or care about the Force, Resistance or the First Order. Her primary goals and motivations were pure and simple, survival.

This coincides with the backstory indicated in not only The Force Awakens but also in Claudia Grey’s novel, Bloodline. There are no indication that either men knew who Rey was or her origins until she found BB-8 and became tangled in fight with the First Order. Luke and Kylo have a contentious and tumultuous past, filled with conflict and anger, as they stand on opposite sides of Rey’s light saber. This is a visual metaphor for the Force, and where Luke and Kylo represent the Light side, and Dark side respectively. Separating them is Rey, and the light of her saber. Although she is removed from their history, Rey has been flung into the foreground of the struggle between opposing sides of the Force. She is part of their present, and thus their future. In short, the resolution of Luke and Kylo’s conflict rests on Rey’s shoulders, both metaphorically and visually in the poster.

The struggle been Kylo Ren and Luke is an interesting and important to the story, but what is more important is what it represents! At its core, Star Wars is a fairy tail, and was intended to tell stories and teach children about the human condition and morality. Understanding every detail of Luke and Kylo’s past is less important as what their struggle represents. It is the timeless struggle of good vs. evil. If the timeline in Bloodline is to be trusted completely, and there are no extra twists and turns in the interum, Kylo Ren turned to the Dark side of the Force approximately six years prior, and has been unable to locate or confront Luke since his disappearance. What has changed in that time? Why will Kylo suddenly be able to locate his former master on Ahch-to? The answer is right in the poster, Rey!

This of course opens the doors to a whole new set of theories, such as a Force Bond, or Snoke obtains a copy of the map and so on. But there is practically no solid evidence to substantiate any of these claims, and at this point, they are pure conjecture.

I also find Rey’s placement in the middle quite interesting in the wider context of the history of the Force itself. One of the central themes Star Wars has always been finding balance. In the prequel trilogy we saw this through Anakin’s development from the heroic Jedi knight, to the Sith Lord, Darth Vader. And yes, Anakin is responsible for choosing his actions and must therefor accept the consequences of such actions, however, the biggest contributing factor to his descent into darkness was the Jedi Order and their absolute refusal to acquiesce to the basic human nature of love and attachment. In fact, one can argue that the Jedi Order is even more barbaric and cruel than the Sith. Companionship and attachment is one of the hallmarks of humanity, and by denying them, they are essentially denying being human. But the Jedi Order in both the prequel and and original trilogy was the personification of the Light side of the Force, while the Sith representing Darkness. Too much of either side’s influence causes the Force to spiral out of balance, and thus the galaxy is thrown into chaos again. This was demonstrated numerous times on both sides, such as Anakin’s betrayal, or the New Republic unknowingly creating the groundwork for the First Order.

In short, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Both light and dark must be present in order to achieve balance, and Rey’s placement, directly between the light and dark, makes her the fulcrum, or the point of equilibrium. In essence, it is Rey who is who is going to bring about that balance.

Another interesting observation I made was that all three characters, Luke, Rey and Kylo Ren are all colored in red. I cannot stress this enough, the psychology of color is important! Specific colors invoke particular and subconscious imagery and responses. Color theory and its use in marketing and illustration is a universal language. In fact, color tells just as much, if not more, of a story as the composition! There are two primary colors in the poster, red and blue. Red is the color of darkness, evil and passion. Blue on the other hand conveys serenity and tranquility. Why is Kylo’s lightsaber red? Not because he uses the Dark side of the Force, but because the color red has a strong visual impact and the human brain automatically associates red with darkness and power. It’s no coincidence that the color red is associated with the Sith, while blue is attributed to the Jedi! Everything you see on screen or in print was designed to create a specific response from the viewer and convey as much information as possible with no words.

Further more, in both The Force Awakens and the teaser trailer for The Last Jedi, it’s made quite clear that our heroes and villain are all experiencing a crisis of faith in the Force. Rey had her entire existence turned up on its head looking for guidance and training. Luke, it is suggested, fell into despair and solitude after the death of his acolytes because his teachings and philosophies failed to save his own nephew. Kylo, who just recently murdered his own father in hopes of committing himself entirely to the darkness, felt more weak and confused than ever before (this is said nearly word for work in The Force Awakens novelization). Because the color red is frequently associated with the dark side of the Force, and I find it quite compelling that all three figures are bathed in red. To me, this suggests that the trio are all going to be struggling with their inner demons, which often implies the temptation of the dark side. In fact, the only beacon of light and hope comes from Rey’s light saber. Some have argued that the light comes from Rey herself, but when you compare her upper body to her lower body, you can observe that just like the figures above her, Rey’s form is red, and the blue reflected in her face is emanating from the lightsaber, rather than Rey herself. This coincides with Rian Johnson’s choice to make the Episode VIII title font red, and maintains visual continuity. The most logical conclusion one can extrapolate is in The Last Jedi is going to delve into much deeper and darker overtones and story lines than it’s predecessors.

The positioning of Luke and Kylo in relation to each other is another aspect to this poster that I find intriguing. Luke and Kylo’s heads are above Rey; in this poster they are literally watching over her, and her choice to accept the Skywalker lightsaber. However, they are on opposing sides of the saber, as described above, representing the light and the dark. As a viewer, this design illustrates a sense of tension and conflict in both Luke and Kylo, but also in how they view Rey, and her choices. This image is clearly setting up the overtone that Rey has to struggle between choosing accepting either Luke or Kylo. In other words, it’s another iteration of the never ending struggle between the light and the dark.

Looking back in The Force Awakens for a moment, we remember that Kylo Ren extended the offer to teach Rey, “You need a teacher. I can show you the ways of the Force!” We all know the choice Rey makes at the end of the movie, but what about Luke? Will Luke even want to teach Rey after his previous failings at reviving the old Jedi Order? The following does begin to tread into the territory of conjecture and theorizing, however I do believe there is solid evidence to back up what I am about to speculate, or else I would have omitted it form this analysis. At The Last Jedi panel, Daisy Ridley, under the watchful eye and ear of Kathleen Kennedy, did reveal some very interesting information. We, as the audience were MEANT to know this information prior to viewing the poster, or else the CEO of Lucasfilm would never have permitted that information be divulged (like the Rogue One mishap at Celebration Europe 2016). Summarized, Daisy stated that Rey indeed does meet her hero, Luke Skywalker, and like in real life, how we  (Rey) envision our heroes does not always coincide with the reality of our heroes. This very clearly sets up the idea that Rey and Luke are going to have a less than harmonious relationship in The Last Jedi. This is also backed up by some previous leaks and spoilers from MakingStarWars.net, however until we know the veracity of those rumors, I do not treat them as fact, like I do the things said directly from the people at Lucasfilm. The statements from Daisy Ridley at the panel, however, were purposeful in sparking ideas and igniting the flame of this idea that Luke and Rey will not have a peaceful mentor/mentee relationship in the same light as Yoda and Luke’s relationship.

Mentorship has always been another key themes throughout the Star Wars saga, from Anakin’s tutelage under Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, to Luke studying with Yoda. There is every indication that those reoccurring themes will continue, but in a different fashion. It’s been made pretty clear that Rey is going to struggle with Luke’s training, and we already know of Kylo Ren’s unrelenting conflict within himself, stemming from the teachings of Supreme Leader Snoke. Snoke ordered Kylo to kill his own father, an act that he did follow through with, but the novelization has proven that that act made him more conflicted than ever before. Where it should have brought him strength, instead he found weakness and doubt.

And all of this ties back to Kylo Ren’s original offer to Rey to teach her. It is my belief, based on the evidence above, that Rey is going to struggle between the teachings of Kylo Ren and Luke. You may ask “how will Rey learn from Kylo? They aren’t on the same planet?” Well even that is partially answered in Episode VII, and confirmed in tweets made by Pablo Hidalgo. Pablo definitively said that Rey learned so much so quickly at Starkiller Base because she extracted the information from Kylo Ren’s mind during the infamous interrogation scene. So in a way, Kylo has already become her first mentor.

Both the Light and the Dark are justified in their beliefs and teachings. Adam Driver previously stated in an interview that Kylo Ren vehemently believes he is and was justified in his actions, and it’s quite clear that Luke fully intended to disappear into the galaxy as a frizzled old hermit. What will happen if Luke does not agree to initially train Rey? She has all of these newly awakens powers, and no way to control them. Just like Kylo stated, she really does need a teacher. But which teacher? The Light or the Dark? Or, at what this poster suggests, something in the middle!

By placing both of Rey’s mentors above her, two Force users who are much more skilled and honed than she is, it indicates that both mentors are going to be fighting within Rey’s psyche. Luke will be teaching her one method, while Kylo and his Dark side influence will be pulling Rey in the opposite direction. This is wiring and character growth done right! The setting and characters have been established in the first film of the sequel trilogy, while the second installment places challenges and obstacles in their path. Without those challenges, characters will not grow or develop. Even more evidence for this is Rian Johnson’s prior statements that the characters in The Last Jedi are going to be tested and pushed beyond their limits. What would challenge Rey more than knowing she is can identify and relate to the person she hates the most, Kylo Ren? That would force the characters into a position where they have no choice but to adapt and evolve into something that spans beyond the juxtaposition of the Light and Dark side of the Force.

In other words, Grey Jedi!

Most likely it won’t be in so many words, but the concept behind it will remain the same. A world of Force users that are not bound by the narrow dogmatic codes of the Jedi or Sith! And while I do find both of their ideologies absolutely fascinating an an integral part of the Star Wars canonical universe, by constricting Force sensitives to Jedi/Sith, Good/Evil, Light/Dark is extremely limiting and grossly inhibits the idea of character depth, subtlety, progression and nuance. Maz Kanata and Ahsoka Tano are prime examples of Force sensitive individuals in the Star Wars universe who are canon and are Force sensitive, but do not fall into the dichotomy of Jedi and Sith. There has never been a main hero character in the films (which are the primary story telling means in the entire franchise that reaches the most viewers and has the biggest impact on mainstream pop culture). Luke Skywalker was seen as universal good, the epitome of the Joseph Campbell’s hero, who embarks on heroic journey on behalf of goodness and justice. The passing of the torch from Luke to Rey indicates a paradigm shift in the understanding of the Force for not only the characters but the viewers and fans as well.

The light saber in the poster is another piece of evidence for this! There is no partition between red (Darkness) and blue (Light). Instead there is a gradient emanating from both ends of the lightsaber, further emphasizing that this story will not be so simply as “kill the monster, save the world” but instead of dimensionality and gradation. There is middle ground to be found in the Force between the Light and the Dark, and Rey is the key to unlocking it. Or as Rey quite simply puts it in the trailer “balance.”

                                                        ********

On a personal side note, I do believe this teaser poster does further add fuel to the Reylo fire, and it makes be believe even more fervently that Reylo will eventually become canon in some iteration, but I wanted to keep my personal biases and theories out of this analysis. If anyone enjoyed reading this and would like to read my views on The Last Jedi teaser trailer and how it relates to Reylo, I’d be more than happy to comply. But I wanted and needed to get this poster off my chest first. My mind has been boiling over, wanted to put these thoughts down in some sort of organized fashion because as someone who is fluent in the language of illustrations as a medium for visual story telling, this poster blew my mind. I stood just flabbergasted at how blatantly the story implications were, but when I asked people about their thoughts they all came to different conclusions. And yes, that is the point of this poster, to get people talking and theorizing about what it all means, however visual story telling generally complies with a set of rules that are universally, albeit often subconsciously, understood by the viewer.

 Whew! I wrote this entire analysis in a single sitting. I apologize if there are any immediate grammatical errors, but I proof read this a number of times, so I am pretty sure that it’s correct.  EDIT: Thank you to @sleemo who helped me fix the grammatical errors in this!

[chuckbhai]

Dot in the sky

If I had to begin this story, with my hand on heart. Speaking only the truths to myself, it would be a narrative I have never truly understood.

Arbitrarily almost, we crossed paths albeit virtually. Curiosity arguably, the driver of this interaction led me incrementally deeper. As I delved further for little reason more than to humour the situation, I found a response I had yet to encounter. She took to me in a manner of subconscious disbelief, that an oddity like myself could exist. At least it felt that way, yet I knew this had a little less to do with me than she seemingly thought. We continued to humour one another intermittently.

After some time had elapsed she fell prey to her presuppositions to some degree and urged us to halt this interaction for it would lead to an inevitable unpleasant end. Yet her difficulty in doing so indicated some form of interest, at least that is what I understood from the situation. Curiously, and with a sizeable amount of promise and goodness that had manifested itself in my opinion of her and what had transpired between us innocently, I countered the haste toward the proposed termination, which I viewed as unnecessary, by providing my contact details as I knew it would at least provide a source of contemplation if anything. She hastened to the close, and I willfully accepted whatever would come.

The first major source of my attraction would come when she seized opportunity and called me. With no warning, and caught blindsided for a brief moment I was left stunned. A shiver of excitement ran down my spine as her boldness spoke to my deepest desires, she was undeniably different. I had ceased to encounter an individual with sufficient faith in my avatar to behave so spontaneously, nor had I encountered such boldness in a woman who had any measurable interaction with me. The curiosity coupled with the feint pointers had now grown into a deeper and more profound pursuit. I had found what I yearned for unwittingly, in this very moment to pursue her with a strenghthened conviction.

At the height of my experience in my days so far, I left my expectations open-ended. What developed subsequently had proved this a wise decision.

We spoke. And immediately the purpose of this call for her, became apparent. She too had been brought forth by her curiosity and aimed to establish whether or not I was the same oditty on the spur of the moment that she had come to know over time. To say the interaction was fruitful is to understate revelation. For a swab of bravery had left us dancing in Nirvana, even if it be that we were to part ways after this.

With a major tool acquired, I remained opened to new heights. We would talk, and talk and talk. We would speak as if time had no bounds. With an undertone of tension, reciprocity and warmth we explored worlds within one another. From the vast disparity in our origins to the great value in our mutual significance, we had traversed it all. From her most sincere convictions to her greatest fears, it became all I cared for. Her weakness and fragility became my most pleasurable duty and her strength and confidence were the objects of my admiration. This was it, as far as I was concerned, as her honesty and loyalty read like a novel to me, I never looked back.

As we continued day upon day, we knew this would not last forever. Time was not infinite, our obsession with this exchange became a burden and soon the repercussions would announce themselves. As we did little to resist temptation, the beauty of our dialogue was contrasted with regular bouts of conflict. This development led to an unorthodox script, filled with the glory of discovery at one time and painful excess and transgressions at another. Often a single conversation had the undulation characterised by nothing I had ever seen. The force of nature began to balance us, as our hearts sought conflict with our rationale.

In a moment of thoughtlessness, I transgressed my place and she departed. The regret and anger at myself only intensified as my hurt ached for her soothing return. I wrote and wrote all that I could, for no other purpose but to proclaim to her the significance she was to me and that she deserves the finest this world had to offer, even if that is not me. A feeling I still hold to this day.

A few days the length of an entire season to me had passed, and I found it in me to deliver the message. As she responded, my world was reset and my heart found it's equilibrium again. All it needed was acknowledgment from her, and an understanding of my weakness. I was content, in the knowledge that she was too.

We progressed carefully on, not without fault but thoughtfully nonetheless. We had much of the same difficulties but began nagivigating them with our increasing understanding. My heart spoke to me all that time ago before chaos had ushered it's way in, and I wanted more than ever to share my journey of life with her, and to partake in hers.

As the narrative ascended once again, the boldness in me yearned for progression. Just as her boldness led us down this floral path, my boldness too would come to the fore as I journeyed to relish her physical presence, I wanted it more than ever.

As we spoke on a certain Thursday night, I made the assertion that I would fulfil my desire to meet. It was a false threat, spoken with humour but possessed an element of seriousness and consequence at least to me. As I left the house before noon, headed in her direction for no reason other than arbitrary business on her side of town I was convinced that I would not meet with her, and so I left unprepared in every sense. Upon my first stop, mere blocks away, the temptation and thought of regret had I not acted upon my convictions began to consume me. I warned her of my iminent arrival and hurried in her direction. As I arrived and lie in wait for the blessing of her presence, I experienced an anxiety and unpreparedness the likes of which I had never wrestled with before. It became painfully unbearable. Unfamiliar territory, reflection upon the actions that led me here, the reality of what was about to happen, the severity of the risk, it was all far too much. This was little however, in comparison to next few minutes.

She walked in. My God she walked in. She just. She smiled. She. She just. She was there. She was more beautiful than I had ever imagined, she stole the breath of every pant I had endured. I could do little but stammer. Dishelved, underdressed and unprepared I loved and hated this moment with all my heart all at the same time. Ultimately I left with absolute regret.

She didn't message. And as for me, too embarrassed after the happenings to utter a word, we waited in silence again. I delivered nothing in person that she saw in me all this time, I knew it.

In time to come however we worked through it and with subsequent acquaintments it soon became time to sit down in one another's presence and experience the third dimension.

On our first true encounter, the meeting exploded into the euphoria of that very first phone call. However in her presence, staring into her beautiful, glorious eyes and cataclysmic smile it was a world beyond. Words do little justice to that day, and I hope some day I could capture the articulation needed to express the way I truly feel.

Ironically, the path that led us in and out of destruction in the previous dimension of our relationship replicated itself. Nirvana, obsession, destruction and rising from the ashes again. I had little vision, blinded by love I made all the same mistakes again. And in part lost faith in myself. We slowly began rebuilding.

The story that speaks to me today and in recent times past is one that upon reflection yearns for and is fulfilled by the dynamic and the beauty of our mutual presence and the communication of our affection. I hunger to be with her and make her happy, unfortunately in the denial of my true capacity as a consequence of my place in life and temporary blinded foresight, I do little but deliver sub par. I treasure her and her presence and what we have, but I cannot say that I have done the ultimate justice to her and what she deserves. I am concerned with forging my path in the world, trying to understand myself and who we are together and reaping from that growth. Yet in that process I unwittingly forsake the acknowledgement of what is required of me to be with her, now or ever and fail in an important aspect of what it means to pursue her hand.

I find a renewed confidence however, in the success we have had in overcoming past obstacles, and in the manner in which she has sculpted my potential in such short a space of time. I reflect today on the future of possibility and the rise above all the difficulties to a little dot in the sky. A dot in the sky that marks the entrance to a space where perfection plays eloquently with reality. A place in which my darling and I will reside, forever.