#i can literally predict entire movies & books & shows because i can SEE the thought process behind it

[pa-pa-plasma]

has anyone else noticed that people who aren't writers & know nothing about writing are acting like an authority on storytelling or is it just me

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[strvngcrs]

『 adam brody. forty. cis male. he/him. 』 oh heavens, is that DANIEL ABRAMS from FAIR LANE i see roaming around mapleview? minnie may’s always calling them -BROODING & -EVASIVE. i happen to think they’re not that bad! they’re a pretty cool HORROR AUTHOR and every time i’ve seen them, they’ve always been +DEBONAIR & +ELOQUENT. i hope i see them around again! 

classically rolls in ridiculously late bc i forgot i had to work last night & then proceeded to sleep in today wooo !!  good afternoon ghouls, it’s ya girl maia, finally here to deliver the definition of hot mess with good intentions.

GENERAL

FULL NAME.    daniel elijah abrams.

NICKNAMES.    dan, danny.

AGE & BIRTHDATE.    40 years old ; may 4, 1980.

GENDER & PRONOUNS.    cis male ; he/him.

ORIENTATION.    heterosexual.

MARITAL STATUS.    estranged.

RELIGION.    jewish ( non-practicing ).

OCCUPATION.    horror author.

INSPIRATION.     bill denbrough ( it ), donnie darko ( donnie darko ), lucas scott ( one tree hill ), stephen king.

PHYSICAL

HAIR COLOUR.    black.

EYE COLOUR.    dark brown.

BUILD.    athletic.

MARKS.     freckles scarcely spread across his entire body.

TATTOOS.    none.

PIERCINGS.    none.

HEIGHT.    5'11".

FACECLAIM.    adam brody.

PERSONALITY

ZODIAC.    taurus.

ALIGNMENT.    chaotic neutral.

HOGWARTS.    ravenclaw.

LABEL.    the arcane.

POSITIVE TRAITS.    cheeky, debonair, driven, eloquent, resilient, solicitous.

NEGATIVE TRAITS.    brooding, evasive, inquisitive, sarcastic, stoic, stubborn.

HOBBIES.    smokes like a chimney while writing until he forgets what day of the week it is, dabbles in hunting & fishing (thanks @ his dad), labels all crime / thriller genres as ‘predictable’ but continues to watch them, obsesses over & relentlessly criticizes his own work, drinks heavily & passionately plays moonlight sonata or fur elise as if he’s betoven’s disciple.

BACKGROUND

PLACE OF BIRTH.    california.

CURRENT RESIDENCE.    mapleview, north carolina.

NATIONALITY.    american.

ETHNICITY.    ashkenazi jewish.

PARENTS.   judith miller & mr abrams.

SIBLINGS.    mia miller.

BIRTH ORDER.    eldest.

CHILDREN.    penelope abrams.

EDUCATION.     university of california, los angeles; bachelor of arts in english.

LANGUAGES.    english, some spanish & french.

HISTORY

EARLY LIFE.    born to THE judith miller and some newspaper editor, daniel was raised by the latter and notoriously abandoned by the former. well, not completely abandoned - there’s an old shoebox containing a few letters as proof - but that was the only source of communication in their otherwise absent relationship. while little danny boy didn’t fully understand why he couldn’t see his mother, he sought out an alternative solution by watching her movies. his father wasn’t aware, at first, and dan created this extravagant fantasy of the person he thought she was based on the roles she played. however, once papa abrams found out his son was watching these movies (which were probably not fit for children in the first place lmao oop), he begrudgingly revealed the bitter truth. being forced to come to terms with the fact that his own mother willingly abandoned him with his father, daniel didn’t fully understand what it meant; he couldn’t properly process why. the hurt of absent mother was expressed more out of anger, feeling as though there must have been something wrong with him. there were fewer and fewer letters sent to judith until he gave up altogether and thus, dan’s out of control behavior was born.

TEENAGE FEVER.    SUICIDE MENTION TW.  he struggled in school. his emotions betrayed him. instead of relishing a happy childhood, daniel found himself pushing everyone away, getting into fights, sneaking out late at night to run around the city streets with his friends and get into all sorts of trouble with them. he couldn’t count on his hands how many times the police picked him up and brought him to his dad’s doorstep. it only got worse once one of his best friends was found dead, written off as a suicide, though it didn’t add up in dan’s eyes and seemed so much more sinister. the young man was nearly deemed to be a lost cause, until he discovered his passion for writing. 

                                  language arts or literature was the last thing anyone would ever think to group with daniel abrams. but his english teacher noticed how well he could articulate his thoughts and feelings on paper, and submitted one of his pieces to a writing contest, which earned dan the win and a cash prize. bewildered by a talent he hadn’t even realized was in him, daniel embraced it. he started writing in a journal ( which he kept safely tucked away beneath the mattress of his bed ), documenting every feeling and thought as a way to express his emotions in a more productive manner. this talent earned him a full ride scholarship to ucla with a major in literature and plans of diving into some sort or creative writing career or perhaps becoming an english teacher, to follow in the footsteps of his high school teacher who he came to idolize.

                                  mere days into his freshman year, however, his high school sweetheart showed up in the middle of the night at his dorm with a positive pregnancy test. it was then the chaotic world as he knew it turned a new leaf, revealing a silver lining in the form of their daughter, penelope, who daniel hadn’t a clue, just yet, would save him. and so a shotgun wedding was quickly planned around the pair, both families either completely supportive or in utter disbelief. it was quick, it was cheap(ish), and it was stressful as all heck. but they were young, and in love, and were looking forward to starting a family together, despite it being a little earlier than initially planned.

“ADULT”HOOD.    fast forward five years, and they’re signing divorce papers. fortunately, it wasn’t messy. the two had simply grown apart as they matured in their respective ways, and remaining together was only causing a rift to develop between the two. the last thing they wanted, for the sake of their daughter, was built up resentment to tear the little family apart. his wife, who daniel initially thought to be the love of his life, blossomed into an absolute goddess; she was ambitious and knew exactly what she wanted. daniel, on the other hand, was still somewhat caught up in his ‘bad boy’ habits of drinking excessively and his career was still pretty up in the air. the two just didn’t compliment each others’ lifestyles anymore.

                                   daniel moved out but remained in california, settling for a bachelor’s apartment where he was able to have penelope every weekend. during this time, he finally cracked down and worked on finishing a novel he’d started years prior. within a year, he found a publisher who took interest in his grotesque works, and by the time daniel was twenty seven, his first bestseller hit the shelves, changing his life for the better with the ability to provide for his daughter without stress of landing another odd job ever again.

                                   as his fame increased, so did his desire to slink back into the shadows away from the limelight. at first, he enjoyed the wholesome book signings by day and grungy celebratory benders by night. but it grew old pretty fast and he certainly didn’t want to end up as another washed up shmuck. so, on a whim, daniel decided to move out of california completely, removing himself from the toxic lifestyle he’d grown accustomed to and shacking up on a beautiful piece of land in the rocky mountains of north carolina. the serenity and scenery certainly aided in his inspiration, as well as his unacknowledged lowkey addictions slowly being rehabilitated from his bloodstream.

OLD YELLER.    now, in his utmost prime at forty years old, he’s written numerous cult classics, a few of which have successful movie adaptations. he was lucky enough to land himself in a second marriage, though.... that one is now deteriorating as well because he literally doesn’t know how to maintain a healthy relationship. he received full custody of his daughter when she was sixteen, under the unfortunate circumstance of her mother’s untimely death. although they’d been separated for nearly twenty years, daniel was still very much affected by the loss, more so empathetically for penelope. he’s still hooked on the drink, though he’s definitely calmed down quite a bit from when he was a young buck. basically a messy, depressy old soul who uses sarcasm to deflect his true feelings.

CONNECTIONS

ESTRANGED WIFE.    first marriage was a bust, and the second is turning out to be no better. they haven’t hit rock bottom just yet, in his opinion (which would be finalizing a divorce lmao), and he’s unsure if they should work things out or not but also really.......doesn’t wanna go through the process of another divorce. plus he likes her and deep down adores their bickering. the reason(s) why things started falling apart between them can be discussed of course. lowkey debating on whippin this up as a big official wc but.... if anybody already here would like to snag it, i would 100% mclove it.

COLLABORATORS.    literally anyone he’s worked with over the years, whether they be fellow authors, publishers/publicists, journalists, screenplay writers, etc. yeehooo the possibilities are endless !!

FOLLOWERS.    anyone hooked on his books, whether devout fans from his early beginnings or people who newly discovered his fictional writings.

FORMER CLASSMATES.    could be from high school or university, but he was in california for the better part of his life aka not a mapleview native. former friends to foes & anything in between. dan’s that one kid who spiked the punch bowl at all the dances and years later probably snuck in party favors to snort off the bathroom sink during their high school reunion lmao whew !!

ANYTHING.    literally anything. i’m my groggy state of mind on my lack of creativity rn so please, i’m beggin. if daniel can enrich your characters’ lives in any way, shape, or form, hit me up and we’ll hatch a plan.

[anxiouslyfred]

Reflections in Rooms

Summary: Roman and Remus are both aware that their rooms aren't exactly what people expect from them if anyone visits. When Patton visits his reaction to mistaking Remus's room for Roman's was something neither of them could have predicted. 

Authors Note: I wanted to write something last week and began this with no clue where it was going. Today I finished it and still have no clue where it was going for the entire story. Sorry if it’s bewildering at all. I’m just playing.

/\/\/\/\/\/\

If you live in a room for long enough it becomes a reflection of you in a way people very often won’t understand.

Both Roman and Remus realised this as almost every time a friend came over they’d assume the wrong room was theirs.

Janus visiting was the first time they recognised why it happened. Their remark upon being corrected had been “But you’re so chaotic and have no regard for anything being organised. How on earth can this be your room, Remus?”

Roman was not sticking around to hear the lecture over how organised any important movements were nor how the things Remus hated and rebelled against were conformity and that was never synonymous with organisation. He already had the lecture memorised in case there was ever an instant of a their friends calling while they were out.

“This isn’t quite what I’d expect by a Princes bedroom, Roman. Have you seriously been hiding all the interesting things you love for all this time?” Virgil groused, when he first visited. They’d become friends through a creative writing club and had planned to work on a story together that evening. “Seriously we could have been rocking out together to these bands and you cannot say that you didn’t think I’d like them. Just look at me!”

At least Virgil’s confusion was different to the reactions Roman had gotten before. A few of his friends had gotten very worried over how low some of the snippets left on his desk suggested his self esteem was.

The reaction both brothers were stunned to witness was Patton’s when he first followed Roman home. They’d gotten talking near the end of the work day and it just felt right to invite him over to carry on chatting together and perhaps share some of the creations that he hadn’t shared with the team at work.

Roman had gone to make drinks, giving Patton directions to his room upstairs while he did so when he heard the yell. “Roman your friend isn’t letting me go! What on earth do I do?”

“Let him hug you and then direct him to my room, maybe?” He called back, raising an eyebrow at that reaction. Sure, Patton usually liked to hug everyone in greeting but refusing to let go of Remus was the opposite of how people usually reacted given the unfortunate scent that surrounded him.

“Still not going to free him. This is my new best friend now. He likes kittens!” Patton yelled back before one of his apologetic sounds could be heard, presumably as Remus corrected him to the pronouns for the day.

Once the drinks were finished Roman was finally able to find out what his friend meant. His sibling usually focused on oceanic creatures rather than anything on land so something must have changed.

“I'm drawing catfish, not kittens or cats or anything like that. What's your name anyway?” Remus was explaining, although the picture did currently only have a cats face on it. Patton was hanging off her back, only just letting Roman see the lilac choker that clarified her pronouns.

Entering the room Roman snickered a little, already knowing that from how Patton spoke some of Remus's drawings would probably cause concern. “He's Patton. What's it going to look like when you add the body and colour?”

“It's gonna have mangled limbs of twisted together legs and fins, and a scattered red and yellow mottled pattern mixing fur and scales all over its body. I need to make the eyes bigger though... or smaller, fish have small eyes right?” Remus described already turning to search images of fish so she could decide what size the eyes should be, clearly having decided to ignore Patton hanging onto her.

“Nooo.” Patton whined, reaching clearly with the intent to take the sketch and protect it from Remus's plans. “Pretty kitten.”

Remus still nodded, pushing the drawing out of reach and pulling a folder from beside her desk up. “Yep, it'll be a beautiful kitten, just like these ones.” She insisted, show casing her variety of finished artwork to Patton cheerfully ignoring any upset noises.

Roman was only just close enough to see the pages being turned, but had already seen his sisters art after it was completed enough to know the pages. At the start it would be trips into uncanny valley, all the things Remus saw in robotic attempts to recreate humans or poor game and film CGI designs of people sketched out again as she tried to work out what was so off about them. Then the pages would turn to gore, murder scenes they'd heard described in various books and news broadcasts that she wanted to imagine more vividly. Those ones had Patton almost crying and rushing Remus to move past them without giving any sources or descriptions of her thought process.

After the gore Remus had pages of just normal ocean life as she had wanted to perfect how light works under water before allowing herself more creative attempts. It was her latest project and she'd only moved onto creating her own designs of underwater animals in the last few months.

That was where Roman decided to interrupt again, “So have I lost my friend to you for the evening? I can head back to my room now, if so.”

“Don't be jealous cause I'm more interesting than a Disney fan, Prince Pukey.” Remus immediately countered, raising an eyebrow as she turned. “But you're more than welcome to take your friend back anytime if he'll let go of me.”

“Your friend too, Remus. You are my new kiddo and I need to see everything you've been creating. I love the sharks. They look like puppies, not as terrifying as the movies make them.” Patton tightened his grip, still hugging or clinging to Remus as though she'd run if he let go.

The siblings blink for a moment, Roman stunned that this guy from work essentially has declared Remus as a friend after knowing him an hour and Remus because this guy just walked into her room, seems aghast at any pictures of injuries, war or fighting but has basically just adopted her too. “Where on earth did you find this maniac, Ro, and are there any other I need to prepare to be adopted by?” Remus asks after a moment, folder forgotten in her hands.

“Work. Logan is my main other friend there and they aren't really the adopting type. They will probably criticise any creation scientifically though so I'm trying to avoid inviting him home.” Roman muttered, still taking in what had happened. “Padre, you have literally yelled for hours over anyone suggesting something close to the things Remus has been showing you when we're at work, what...?”

“We make shows for Kids, Roman! That's not an appropriate place for this type of stuff, but there's nothing wrong in Remus exploring such dark subjects as long as she let's people walk away if it gets to be too much.” Patton scolded lightly, grinning as soon as Roman shrugged in response, letting the explanation be left at that.

Patton never did get to see Roman's room on his first visit to their home, but he did make a new friend that he might never have met otherwise.

[gastrobrack]

Brave New World 2020 review from probably the biggest fan of the book you’ll meet in your life

(Mostly Spoiler Free) Okay so. I’ve been waiting for this show for a really long time because I absolutely love the book and it means a lot to me. My standards were admittedly pretty low because it can’t get worse than the 1998 movie, so I didn’t really mind when I saw the trailers and stuff where other people were complaining. 

TL;DR I thought the show was actually pretty enjoyable, but you have to read the book first in my opinion, or else it seems like it would be hard to follow at times. Where the show really screwed up royally was Mond’s storyline, which felt completely out of place and confusing, and when it ended up dominating the end of the final episode it just kinda ruined the story for me. The show is definitely more focused on the setting and characters than the societal predictions and themes of the novel, and for me that’s okay because we have the book to tell it better anyways.  I’d say watch it if you liked the book or are curious about it, but I don’t think it would really be enjoyable for the average viewer.

Side note: I watched this in the wee hours of the morning and some of the praise might just be the special interest talking, I’m just happy to be here and get more content

That being said, I think this show is like the Riverdale of Brave New World. However, in its defense it’s at least got the energy of the parts of Riverdale like the “epic highs and lows of high school football” and the “serial killer gene”, so it’s at least pretty funny. Personally, I knew that they would have to change a lot both to adjust for the longer runtime (around 9 hours) and to make the book enjoyable to a TV audience, because of course in the book you can have 2 chapters of exposition at the beginning and that’s not as enjoyable for a TV experience. So, let’s get into the pros and cons of the show!

PROS

-I really liked Bernard! In the book he means a lot to me personally (hell, I’m writing this while listening to my Bernard playlist) so I was of course kinda worried they might screw him up again like they did in the ‘98 movie, but I was pleasantly surprised! They did change him and divide his original personality between John and Lenina, but somehow they managed to create a new Bernard that both kept me on my toes and at the same time felt authentic and likeable! 

-Honestly, almost all the characters were done very well. They were all expanded upon in an interesting way while also staying generally pretty accurate to their book counterparts. I generally felt the same about them as I did with the novel, so I think that means they did a job well done. I think that John and Lenina were very different, but they still ultimately had the same general motivations. A lot of the cast’s interactions felt very natural, and I liked that they expanded upon Lenina and Fanny’s (or Frannie as she’s called here) friendship. 

-The show looked great, I know a lot of people really didn’t like the look of it because it wasn’t what they thought it would be when they read it, but for me that’s basically exactly what I imagined it would be. The costume designer clearly had fun making a bunch of outlandish outfits for everyone to wear and it’s all very pleasant to look at. 

-I think they did a good job fixing some of the problematic elements of the book without actually damaging the integrity of the things they were changing. For example, in the book, the savage reservation is quite literally just a native reservation, written in a way that clearly suggests Huxley didn’t really put a lot of thought into his depiction of real people. In the show, it’s a theme park where British people get to immerse themselves in the cultures of the old world, with the savages themselves being poor theme park workers reenacting events to shock and mystify the Brits. Now, admittedly, I think this makes a lot more sense as it ties into the consumerism that runs deep within their society. I know some people are mad about this because they think it’s cancel culture or something but honestly it’s not a big deal to me.

-This one might not be as important to some people, but I liked that the cast was pretty diverse, and the fact that John is the only straight one honestly made sense to me considering it would be in the World State’s best interest to encourage bisexuality amongst its citizens. Some of the characters (Helmholtz and Mond) are being played by women, and some people are kinda upset about that but I don’t really think it changed too much, although to me it is funny to think the showrunner thought he was doing something by “casting women of color to play white male characters” considering everyone I know who read the book didn’t picture either of them as white. 

-Honestly, I think the show did humor very well. It was very funny in a sort of dry way, and never felt forced or out of place. It all seemed like it naturally stemmed from the characters’ awkwardness and culture shock (on both sides) and it made me really happy as someone who loves all these characters to see them make me laugh.

CONS

-Now, I’m not usually one to complain about this too much, seeing as I love the book in a non thematic and academic context, but the message kinda got lost in all of it. I think the issues they brought up certainly were there, and could lend themselves very well to being good. The writers just focused on the entirely wrong things in the last episode, and that misguided focus completely changes the lens in which the rest of the show is retroactively viewed for me. 

-Mustapha Mond was just, where do I even begin. In the book, Mond doesn’t show up much except to provide exposition, and his position as an authoritative figure ultimately moves the plot towards the end of the novel. In the show, Mond gets this weird AI plotline that makes no sense, as in this version they have a sort of internet contact lens type system that allows them to connect to everyone else, and it is powered by said AI. The system itself doesn’t bother me as much as how poorly handled this plotline was. Not only was it completely random and was the only plotline in the show not to have some sort of roots in the events of the book, but it was extremely confusing to me. This leads into my next point, which is:

-The ending. Oh my God the ending. Now, look. I’m not gonna say much because I want this to be as spoiler free as possible, but the ending just honestly was a dumpster fire. The writers chose to focus the whole ending on the aforementioned AI plotline, despite the book providing a much more solid framework for an ending that they already seemed to be setting up. This shift in focus comes very late into the final episode, and it honestly doesn’t make any sense why the writers would really want to go this route. It feels like they were just adding things that didn’t fit into the story, and I can’t really discern why except for the possibility of setting up an unnecessary second season. I love the book, it’s my special interest, but I think I speak for everyone when I say we do not need a second season especially if its gonna be full of plotlines that make no sense and serve no purpose.  This heavily changed ending not only undermines the whole thematic purpose of the novel but honestly kind of goes actively against everything the book was trying to say in the first place. 

-They really don’t set up any of the world building, and although I caught on very quickly due to my familiarity with the book, it seems like it might get confusing for unfamiliar watchers. In the book, they explain their process for birthing and then conditioning children into their social body very in depth before they get into the actual plot and characters, and I think this show could have used some of that. Here, they talk a lot about conditioning but don’t actually explain what the conditioning is or why they have the caste system in the first place. 

-This is a minor disappointment more than anything and I didn’t actually notice till about the second episode, but there’s no more Ford talk, which is kinda disappointing cause it was pretty fun in the book. 

-Obviously it goes without saying that there’s sex in this, I mean it IS Brave New World. However, in this one, it just feels excessive and kinda just like it’s there for shock value more than anything. 

-This isn’t really a con so much as it is just a disclaimer, I know a lot of people are excited for Demi Moore as Linda and Joseph Morgan as the new character CJack60, but don’t get your hopes up too much, they don’t get to do much. If you read the book, you’d know that about Linda but I’ve seen reviewers get upset that she wasn’t in it more when she was one of the big names attached to the project. (FWIW she did a great job and I loved Linda in this whereas I didn’t in the book) As for CJack, he spends a lot of time just standing there and looking at things and doesn’t get to do much until the last 2 episodes or so. 

CONCLUSION

As someone who really loves the book’s setting and characters sometimes even more than the actual messages and predictions, I’ve always wanted an adaptation that focuses more on those elements, especially since that would make for an easier transition to the screen. Seeing this was a very nice breath of fresh air, because it embraces the inherently satirical and dare I say funny aspect of the story, as well as the characters’ individual quirks and distinct personalities. Obviously it’s not as hard hitting and important as the book, but I think those messages were better left in book form anyway. For someone like me, who loves the book with all my heart, this show honestly gave me most everything I wanted and it felt the most true to the spirit of the book’s world and characters out of any of the adaptations. I would say check out the show if you’re interested in it or enjoyed the book, but you should definitely be familiar with the book before you watch this. 

[linkspooky]

Synonyms or Antonyms: Dazai and Dostoevsky

From the moment they meet within Bungou Stray Dogs, Dazai and Fyodor are set up as foils. 

Foil Definition. In literature, a foil is a character that shows qualities that are in contrast with the qualities of another character. The objective is to highlight the traits of the other character.

That is to say from the moment they are drawn in panel together, the audience is naturally meant to compare and contrast them. Their entire first scene plays their similarities and differences up. First, Dazai dresses as Fyodor not only as a joke but to draw the eye to how similar they are, both of them dark haired skinny males with pale complexions who wear overcoats. 

Dazai explains he was able to predict where Fyodor would end up, because if he were in the same situation it was what he would do. When he says that, Fyodor shows Dazai the same smile he showed him earlier, like Dazai is looking in a mirror. 

Dazai and Dotsoevsky are able to read each other so well, knowing the other like they know themselves. Which allows both of them to continually one up the other and predict the other’s movements. However their relationship extends far beyond ‘Being the same’, or just the fact that they’re both highly skilled manipulators who are able to pull off complex plans. It’s even much more than Dazai and Fyodor are just smarter than everybody else in a way that isolates them. They are each other’s inverse in almost every way while appearing to be exactly the same. I’ll elaborate in detail beneath the cut.

1. No Longer Human

First off, while Fyodor’s character, such as being referred to as a demon and his ideology for crime and punishment draws from Dostoevsky’s novels, the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor is a direct literary reference to No Longer Human. 

The character Yozo (who Dazai is in part based off of due to his tendency towards buffoonery to use as a mask for his feelings, and his ability is directly named after the book) in the fourth Memorandum of No Longer Human discusses the antonym of crime with his ‘friend’ Horiki. Already from the way the narrator describes his friendship with Horiki you can see parallels in how Fyodor views his connection to Dazai. 

The conversation starts when Horiki refers to Yozo as a criminal. Don’t be so cheeky, I for one have never been tied up like a common criminal the way you have.” After that the conversation turns into an antonym game between the two of them. Yozo turns it into a game to distract from the serious accusation that he is actually a criminal and he got away with not only committing double suicide with a lady who amounts to a stranger to him, but he’s lived his life so far stealing money from the other women he’s been in relationship in. The “joke” of the conversation is that while it sounds deep, the two of them are just playing a game.

Any of these two words could be set up as antonyms as long as you give enough justification. It’s a joke of binary opposition and dualism. In short, you can give justification that things are opposites, or you can give justification that things are actually the same, there is no universal truth there is only differing justifications. 

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

At the end of the conversation Yozo relents to this point, he tries to think of antonyms of crime but they are all synonyms. Crime, and god, Crime and repetance, Crime and confession, Crime and punishment  he finally questions whether the last is synonym or antonym but before he can finish the thought he’s interrupted. Just before then though, he believes himself having come to an understanding of the chaos of Dostoesvski’s mind. 

Hence the relationship between Dazai and Fyodor. We are meant to question, are they synonyms, persons with similar meaning, or are they antonyms absolutely incompatible ideas as irreconcilable as oil and water. Note that in the original novel Yozo does not really come to a conclusion on this thought, and in all of my thinking this over I don’t think we are meant to see them as all the way one way or the other just yet. 

Either way this conversation has already been referenced several times in Bungo Stray Dogs. “God, is the antonym of crime”. Then you have Dostoevsky who positions himself as the opposite of crime, and therefore sees it is his responsibility to become God. 

However, the antonym of God is posited by Yozo not to be crime, but rather satan. Therefore we have Dostoevsky not only taking on the role of God, but also of a demon. Despite being referred to as “Demon Fyodor” several times, Dotsoevsky actually positions himself as both at once, he is both God and his Antonym the devil, and therefore they are synonymous because they are both him. 

Horiki at one point in the conversation even references, that while talking philosophically about crime Yozo is also a criminal. What does Fyodor do, but get Dazai arrested and separated from the rest of the Detective Agency for the crimes he committed in the past, because despite which side Dazai is on in the eyes of the law he is just as much a criminal as Dostoevsky is. Even if they are on opposite sides of a conflict (antonyms) they will still be seen as the same in the eyes of society (synonyms). 

Then there’s of course the scene from the movie Bungo Stray Dogs: Dead Apple which directly references not only this conversation with Horiki, but at the same time the novel Crime and Punishment.

Therefore in the original text Yozo may see them as antonyms, but Fyodor makes the argument they are synonyms. While he does so, both him and his shadow (his ability removed from him by the fog) are standing in juxtaposition of each other holding contrasting objects. A skull, and an apple. Apples can literally symbolize so many things, but here it’s just a symbol of binary opposites life and death. Or rather what is perceived as binary opposites. Life and death perceived as antonyms can also be seen as synonyms as Dazai explained to Chuuya. 

Death can be viewed as something opposite and entirely alien to life. That is life cannot possibly exist within death, because death by its nature kills life, or death can be viewed as a natural part of life. Therefore it is impossible to understand the value of life without contemplating it’s perceived opposite death. 

Poison and medicine can be seen as opposites, one kills and one saves, but if you overdose on medicine its easy to poison yourself with it. The more closely you examine them, the lines between supposed opposites begin to blur. 

Then you have Dostoevsky, crime and punishment are seen as opposites. Crime is unjust, and harms. Punishment is justice, the opposite of crime, it’s foil and prevention. Except, Justice can harm too, it just harms criminals. Except criminals can just be innocent people falsely accused. It’s never as black and white as it seems to be. Therefore, Dotsoevsky’s belief that they are not enemies but rather friends, it’s impossible to punish crime without thinking like a criminal. To punish crime, Dotsoevsky becomes a criminal. 

The apple, and the skull while seeming like opposite symbols can actually be the same thing, hence the title of the movie Dead Apple. 

2. Dead Apple

As the movie is canon material I also think it serves as a great introduction to the psychology of Dostoesvky’s character especially in comparison to Dazai. There are two subtextual psychological components to the movie, drawing from both Freud and Jung. 

In a brief summary of the movie itself, ability users are separated from their abilities due to a fog which causes their abilities to take form and attack them. This is really obvious Jungian shadow symbolism. Their abilities which always exist as a part of themselves and therefore a subconscious part of them are brought to the surface and they are forced to confront them. 

In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side.

Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).

For example among the three main characters of the movie each of them are confronted with a shadow version of themselves, Rashomon for Akutagawa, Demon Snow for Kyoka and Beat under the Moonlight / The Tiger for Atsushi. There are several Jungian symbols associated with this process already, for one it’s specifically a fog that allows these shadows to manifest. The fog of the mind is what allows us not to be aware of the subconscious. When abilities are stolen they manifest with crystals that appear on the forehead, which also happens to be where the brain is. Neither of the three main characters are able to win their ability back until they accept something repressed about themselves.

(Pictured literally a tiger in shadow, two Jungian symbols the beastial instincts that represent the unconscious mind, and also the shadow which obfuscates). 

Kyouka that she does not want to hate Demon Snow even though the ability is responsible for killing her parents and also making her a murderer. Atsushi is the slowest of all to regain his ability back, due to the fact that he subconsciously rejects being an ability user. We see his flashback in the movie, first he blames the Tiger for his miserable life, he sees the tiger as the opposite of himself beast rather than man, an out of control monster. Then, when he realizes the tiger also protected him during life, despite being violent, Atsushi comes to the realization that his relationship is more complex than light and shadow, complete opposites.

People tend to deny their shadows, but the shadow is not necessarily the true self or more right than conscious mind, at the same time its still a part of yourself that needs to be acknowledged. Atsushi’s ability is even named “Beast under the Moonlight”, the moon is a classic symbol associated with Jung, because it represents the unconscious mind, the time of dreams, illusion, and when shadows are the longest. 

In the climax of the movie they literally ascend a tower, directly underneath the moonlight. 

Then there is Fyodor whose ability never separates from him and attacks him during the fog, and why is this? It’s because Fyodor already knowingly, willfully embraces his own shadow. He has no reason to deny what everybody else represses, because crime and punishment are friends. 

In other words Fyodor already is his own shadow. He’s a walking Id. 

The id, ego, and super-ego are three distinct, yet interacting agents in the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

The three parts are the theoretical constructs of how the activity and interaction in our mental life is described. According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

Why are both the protagonists and antagonists assembled in trios in dead apple? It’s because both of them are representative of the trio of the psyche. Fyodor, Dazai and Tatsuhiko are deliberately grouped as a trio, because they are Id, ego, and superego. 

Id, or I desire is uncoordinated instincts similar to the shadow. Reading the movie through this lens, it paints an interesting psychological portrait of Dotsoevsky. Of the trio he’s the most straightforward with his desires, he’s the one who seems to be ‘evil’ only for the sake of indulging in it and enjoying it. 

He plays the part of laughing villain the entire movie, and yet he also makes it clear this is an act to him. Therefore, when he claims that this is all for a laugh that’s not a statement that can be taken as a direct truth. 

As the symbolic Id of the movie, as the one who embraces his shadow he also plays the role of bringing the repressed truth that Tatsuhiko hides. He’s the one who encourages Tatsuhiko to rampage at the end of the movie. 

As he gives this speech Fyodor and his shadow overlap, because Fyodor is his own shadow, a walking shadow, he deliberately indulges in the worst of himself. That is why he sees himself as a demon, that is why he acts out on his god complex. That is the methodology which he chooses to bring forth his ideals, a world without Ability Users. 

Therefore his actions in the movie make perfect sense with his established motive in the manga, to commit a purge on ability users. Dazai even asks if Tatsuhiko will be saved by an angel or a demon before Dostoevsky introduces himself as a demon. 

It’s more binary opposite symbolism and the intention is clear. Dotsoevsky views himself as soemone who becomes a demon to save others, in line with his actions in his major introduction chapter in the manga. 

Demons are also in the bible, the creatures in charge of punishing sinners. Despite the fact that they are seen as rife with sin themselves. Another contradiction, for Fyodor a demon is something he has to become in order to punish crime, therefore he walks side by side with his shadow, therefore he indulges his id. 

Then, you have the other two serving as the opposing roles of the mind. Tatsuhiko is superego. Not only is he capable of controlling others to such an extent that he can make their abilities manifest against their will, but the extreme control he has makes him an utterly joyless existence. 

The balance between the two, the ego Dazai is the only one of the three of them who seems to have found any reason to live at all. His reason being the opposite of Fyodor. [Death] and release of the yoke of sin saves the soul. In comparison to Oda’s words. People live to save themselves huh, how true...

Dazai is the only one out of the three who has any semblance of control or purpose to his own life, and it comes from following Odasaku’s words. 

Ango’s summary of the three of them at the end of the movie shows that he does not quite understand Dazai, which makes sense as to why they never quite became friends. Demon Fyodor, Dazai “Disqualified from Humanity” and Tatsuhiko (turns into some kind of weird dragon) all three of them may seem inhuman but the moment you refer to them as aliens you fall for their illusion. All three characters are still undeniably and painfully human. They want to be seen as aliens to avoid being confronted by this, that’s the game all three play. 

Here’s the thing, Dazai is the only member of the trio who is not alone and part of that is because he had a friend who just saw him as he was, a flawed human being. 

3. The Demon Fyodor

For this final part I could list all the similarities and differences between Dazai and Fyodor, but that would just be a boring list so instead let’s analyze Fyodor who is currently the more mysterious character as to his motivations, using Dazai as a reference point. 

Before anything else, I’m going to use Oda’s words on Dazai as a reference point, because Oda had the best read on him. 

"Listen. You told me that you might find a reason to live if you lived in a world of violence and bloodshed. You won't find it. You must know that already. Whether you're on the side who kills people or the side who saves people, nothing beyond what you would expect will appear. Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity. (...) Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man. Save the weak, and protect the orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know... but that'd make you at least a little bit better. (...) Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because... I am your friend."

So, let’s define Dazai as a character who good nor evil means very little to, and is on the side of saving others simply by choice. He’s not motivated by lofty ideals. He’s not even a particularly moral person, willing to indulge in the unsavory sides of himself if it gets the results of ‘saving others’. 

He’s someone who can commit crimes with little foibles. Though I would not say he does not feel any guilt at all because there’s a clear difference between his mental health when he was in the mafia killing people, and when he was on the side of the Armed Detective Agency. He also has the ability to feel attachment to others, because he was clearly sad over Oda’s death. He’s not empty of all emotion, but at the same time a lot of Dazai’s life is spent in contemplation of his own emptiness. 

While Dazai moves pieces on a chess board and can see the bigger picture, I would argue that his motivations are much more personal and selfish than Fyodor, even though Fyodor is a cackling demon of a villain. Dazai is motivated by human beings and their individual stories, he leaves the Mafia not because of the hundreds of people he killed but because his one friend died. He is pushed to becoming a better mentor, because both Atsushi and Akutagawa need him to be. I’m not saying selfishness is bad, or selflessness is good the entire point of this essay is to deconstruct that simple black and white thinking. 

Let’s say simply put, Dazai is a selfish character, lacking in ideals but still motivated to save others. He contemplates life and death similiar to Fyodor, and the same way that Fyodor finds punishment for criminals in crime, Dazai tries to find a reason to live in pursuing death.

Even that, is a personal motivation. 

So then in comparison, Fyodor is impersonal and acts against his self interest. If Dazai is on a path of salvation, living to save himself, then Fyodor’s path is marked for self destruction. 

Starting with his formal introduction in chapter 42, Fyodor is introduced as a soulless man, lacking sympathy for anybody else. However, I would argue the opposite the chapter clearly shows Fyodor sympathizing with the child he spends most of the chapter talking to.

Remember the entire chapter Fyodor is playing Ace for a loop, he’s only letting Ace see him as he wants to be seen. Therefore everything he’s described as to others “Something more awful, and heinous than a villain” is the act he puts on. 

In the chapter we see a child honestly encourage and try to connect with Fyodor, only for his attempts to fall on deaf ears by the end of the chapter when Fyodor chooses to kill him as a witness. Fyodor gives the impression that he was not listening to the boy the entire time.

Yet, if Fyodor was ignoring him, if Fyodor did not feel a thing about the boy and was not sympathizing him in the least then why did he take the time to explain things and talk to him before sending him off at the end of the chapter? If Fyodor is able to kill him so easily so as to not see him as human, why does the boy feel like he is understood? 

Rather than just ignoring him and treating him like a piece on the board, I argue that Fyodor did see the boy as a person. The panel shown afterwards does not display the emotion of a remorseless slaughter. The entire panel is shown as empty. Fyodor regrets this action, killing the boy in such a way. 

At the same time he feels like he must do something he personally does not want to do. In order to punish evil he must become something even worse than evil. 

Therefore you have Dazai, living to save himself, attempting to be a better person than himself when he’s really just kind of a self obsessed person, and you have Fyodor, who lives to save not himself but the whole world and therefore he must damn himself to demonhood and become the worst version of himself. 

Dazai searches for life in death, hence why he constantly attempts suicide. In its own weird way, his suicide attempts, his getting involved with death, murder, it’s all him looking for a way to live.

Whereas Fyodor genuinely believes with all of his heart, that death is something that cures the sickness of life. Not only do we see him have the opportunity to save someone only to kill them as a witness, denying himself the possibility of redemption. We also see him manipulate a child into suicide in front of Kunikida. 

Because as he currently believes it, the world as it is will never bring salvation to those children. His act of manipulation is just a symptom of what is currently wrong with the world. After all, Dostoevsky pretty easily got this man to agree to arm his little brothers and sisters to the teeth and put them into danger. A child who exists in this world as it is cannot be saved. 

Every character who ideologically alligns with Fyodor is looking for freedom from the world, in some form. Fyodor’s style of manipulation itself is a paradox, he controls their every action even resorting to blatant mind control in some places, and therefore he frees them from the burden of making their own decisions. 

Then, if Fyodor is actually an idealist who genuinely does want a better world, and not just a laughing demon then why does he specifically target Kunakida the idealist of the detective agency? It’s because he’s an idealist, that Fyodor wants to crush him. In other words he wants to break weak and faulty ideals that cannot save the world. 

Yet, it’s also an act of self loathing. It’s not that Fyodor is necessarily evil, but rather someone who becomes evil for the sake of his ideals. The reason for that is ideals are so high and mighty he needs to become god to enforce them, he desires a world much better than this one therefore he carries the weight of the world of his shoulders. As a person, just like Kunikida, Fyodor is constantly being crushed under the weight of his own ideals. That is why he seeks to crush Kunikida, to prove that Kunikida is weak, and therefore he is strong.

If what he seeks is paradise, then it makes complete sense that he would see it necessary to become god in order to achieve that. However in the end, Fyodor is not a demon, nor god, nor alien, he’s infallibly human. He’s so completely obsessed with the bigger picture, with providing salvation to all, that he will never be allowed to moved by personal motivations. 

He sympathizes with the child who is wearing Ace’s collar, but cannot allow him to live even if he wants to. 

It’s not that he will never allow himself to be moved, it’s not in Fyodor’s own mind he cannot. If he were to cede to one personal bias then he would never be able to accomplish his goals that are so lofty that he would need to become god in order to accomplish them, therefore it’s better to become an inhuman monster rather than be tripped up by personal feelings.

Whereas Dazai is motivated towards good and saving others, almost exclusively by the fact that there are people in his life who he is personally invested in. 

It shows finally even in the difference for how they use people. Both Dazai and Fyodor rely on trickery and manipulation to move people, and sometimes it can seem like they only view others as mere pieces on a board. They have a tendency to also assume they know what is best for other people and move them without their consent. 

The difference being that at the end of the day Dazai still sees others as individuals. He always leaves the element of choice. While Dazai pushes Atsushi and Akutagawa together even though they hate each other, because he believes the two of them are what’s best for each other he always leaves Atsushi with the choice of how he wants to proceed. 

Therefore they remain individuals, therefore they are still people in his eyes. Even if Dazai always plays with his cards close to his chest, his plans fundamentally rely on trusting others, and others trusting him. Even in Dead Apple, his plan involved knowing Chuuya would use Corruption and that Chuuya would trust in him to stop him. 

So, let’s say Dazai is someone who generally needs other people to carry out his plans. This is in contrast to Fyodor who once again, takes the burden entirely on himself. 

Fyodor’s allies are more akin to slaves who worship him. 

He literally messes with their brains to free them from hardship. Which goes along with again the binary opposition, his brain is modified to feel unhappiess, therefore he is happy. Because by that black and white logic, unhappiness only exists as the opposite and antagonist to happiness. The extension to Fyodor’s extreme logic, that the absence of crime will therefore bring peace to the world. All of Fyodor’s direct subordinates are liberated in this way, if he takes on all the decision making for himself, takes on all the burden for himself, then they are freed. 

Goggol explains what are probably Fyodor’s own viewpoints via foiling, and being allies very well. That it is easier to imagine all of them as inhuman monsters who cannot possibly have a reason behind their actions. It’s more comforting, it’s freeing. 

To do what he needs to do to change the world, Fyodor must become an unfeeling villain and he does the same to his subordinates, he actually modifies them and removs them of their emotions. 

So therefore it’s a paradox, his allies and servants see themselves as completely free in their devotion to him, yet at the same time Fyodor’s manipulation is the opposite of Dazai’s. Rather than leaving it to choice and trust, he removes their ability to choose, he removes their ability to disobey him. It’s as if the only way he can think of for people to be righteous, is to remove their ability to sin in the first place. 

It’s even apparent in their joke question and answer session. Dazai tells Fyodor to just inspire his subordinates to be better people the way he does with Atsushi and Aktugawa, and it seems like the idea did not even occur to Fyodor. Fyodor tells Dazai the way to win a woman is to cut off everything else to the point where she becomes completely dependent on you. 

So, in conclusion it seems a lot of Fyodor’s mindset is a result of him purposefully taking on the burden of saving the entire world on himself, because he cannot allow himself to view others as equals. In order to continue justifying himself, he needs believe that he is the only person capable of doing these things and therefore he knows better than anyone else. 

Dazai and Fyodor are both smart enough to be aware of not only the emptiness of life, its lack of purpose, its senseless cruelty. Their reactions however are opposite, Dazai decided to live in spite of being unable to ever find meaning whereas Fyodor decided to dictate that meaning to everyone else and decide it for them, like his words are the word of god. 

Bestowing sins is the work of god. If god god does not Exist, I’ll become him. 

[mariellewritesalot]

The Inner Workings of Moving Forward

(GIF from EP1 S2 of New Girl: “Re-launch”)

No matter how well I know by now that the only thing constant in life is change, the entire process of coping with it is--funnily enough--unexpected. 

Back in March when the news of Coronavirus seemed so distant but urgent, almost fiction in my detachment from it not happening around me, I had a different outlook of what the rest of 2020 looks like: on the 21st I was supposed to have my Sablay pic taken. I was also: generally a hot mess in matters of the heart, writing a movie script for a hellish subject that was driving me up the wall, constantly daydreaming of graduation day with all the sunflowers, and planning my birthday despite it being so far in November. Even when life throws me curve balls, it wasn’t so bad when everything was “normal” because I knew which days to look forward to, initially. The news of the first few cases here was especially terrifying for me, having my mother in Houston, visiting family, and my sister-in-law here expecting their first child. I was raised in a family that was functional enough but not affectionate in a sense, so I seemed stoic when ECQ was declared. We have a roof over our heads and the pantry is chock-full of food that would last at least 2 weeks at a time. I should be fine, we’d be okay, right? 

It isn’t as comforting, though, when a huge number of people are struggling to survive. The irony of it all is that even when I am especially good with words, I showed my love for my family through my actions: I was on video call with my mother every day, I cooked meals for everyone in the house (albeit not constantly), and I made sure to give them their space while I navigated mine. Time passed, as it always does. I was slowly losing spirit and getting on each other’s last nerve wasn’t as far-fetched as when we only had to see our family for a few hours in the middle of our daily lives. I worked up goals and routines to keep me going, read books, finished writing Don’t Write Me Off ,stayed in the house so much I feel awkward outside of it. My mother eventually came home, the baby was born (my sweet little nephew, Troi, who I’d love and protect as long as I’m around), their little family moved away, I finished my certificate course of Malikhaing Pagsulat and I am on my way to get my Bachelor’s degree this school year. Surprisingly, here were are, attempting remote learning. It’s my second day back in UP, but not really, because I am at home in an “outside” blouse and crumpled shorts I slept in. In no way is everyone ready for this and we all know it. I am excited to learn, but even with the predictability of each day slightly assured (I’m always going to be home anyway), it doesn’t take away the crushing blow of losing a year (possibly more) of your life to something you can’t control. More accurately, an incompetent response to the pandemic that’s leading to millions of us suffering.

I can admit this with my whole chest: I am terrified of big changes, even when I know that things always work out anyway. I thought this to myself, sitting inside my mother’s ancestral house that’s now home to Troi and his parents one weekday. How things are changing around and within me, even when I don’t force them to. Newsflash: It’s the way life works! Not entirely something new, but hey, self-awareness is something I stand by. It’s also equally fascinating to think that my mother had a life outside of us, one that included an actual home with memories she barely remembers now. I’ve been living in our house all my life, I’ve never had to experience moving places, only renovations. When I envision my future, I know I will be living in a different place, maybe with my own family if it happens, but thinking about leaving a space I’m heavily used to is nauseating to me. Of course I want to move forward in all aspects, this I’m sure of, but I am willing to confess that I may have trouble with letting go. Literally and figuratively. I think, over the years of complicated events, I’ve gotten better at coping. Insanely better, but that doesn’t take away the emotional, mental, and physical toll of practically birthing an improved version of yourself. Over and over, I might add, since we’re constantly moving even without our feet dragging us to places.

This was a mini existential crisis of a blog post, but in a way, it’s a comforting thought that when things go wrong I always have writing to turn to. It’s a skill as it is a form of escape, maybe even a stressor in the academic or capitalistic sense. I am all for self-love and recognizing our worth. It’s just that some days, we have to stop taking ourselves too seriously, or at least step outside of our bodies for a stroll around the park before accepting the way things are and will be. It’s easy to feel like a main character in a novel when there are things bigger than we’ll ever be, in the grand scheme of things. The only way out is through it, we’ll keep moving. Caitlyn Siehl said it best in her poem: “it ends or it doesn’t.”

[erikahenningsen]

I watched Just Mercy with my family tonight and I thought it was a great movie I cried but I think I made one of my friends uncomfortable bc I texted her that I think the death penalty is horrifying and I can’t comprehend how people believe in it after watching the electric chair scene in the movie and sobbing and based on her awkward response I think she believes in the death penalty so that’s a bit awkward. Anyways how have things been going at your job recently?

I didn’t mean for this answer to be so long but here we are.

I’ve been working in criminal justice reform spaces for some time now and something that’s really, really challenging is figuring out how to meet people where they are. Knowing that the government should not be in the business (and it is a business) of executing people based on evolving moral standards and empathy because killing people is wrong no matter who is doing it makes sense to you and me, but many people do not feel the same way (although a lot of people support capital punishment because killing people is wrong, which is wild to me). To people who support retributive justice, restorative justice principles are radical and even dangerous. It’s very easy for people to dismiss exonerations as evidence of the system “working,” even though if you asked them to spend 14 years behind bars (the average amount of time the 367 people who have been exonerated by DNA testing in this country so far spent in prison) they would probably not be too happy about it. It’s also easy for people to agree that the death penalty is wrong for people who are innocent, but most of the people sentenced to death are not. (It should be noted that the Supreme Court ruled in Herrera v. Collins that, unless there was a technical error during a person’s trial, evidence of innocence alone is not enough to overturn a conviction or death sentence because, if it were, the court would be overwhelmed by innocence claims, which is absolutely fucking NUTS—Scalia literally wrote that there’s no constitutional basis for consideration of evidence of innocence. So even if you are innocent, good luck getting off death row, especially because people sentenced to death do not have a right to a lawyer for the appeals process and most appeals have to be filed within a certain amount of time and can only be filed once.)

Many people do not know someone impacted, wrongfully or otherwise, by the criminal legal system and do not live in overpoliced communities, and by virtue of being white do not believe racial bias exists. So you have to figure out how to make reform personal to them. Frequently, this appeal can be made economically. Really, what has made criminal justice reform more and more a bipartisan issue is that our criminal legal system places an enormous economic burden on taxpayers and state and federal budgets. It costs much more to house someone on death row than in prison, partially because of the litigation costs. That money is coming out of taxpayers’ pockets. I worked on a project for a year that works with corrections agencies to reduce and reform solitary confinement and spent a few days in touring prisons in Louisiana, and the staff there were skeptical as hell of us and what we were asking them to do. But segregation units are expensive, and corrections officers who work in them have higher levels of stress and poor health outcomes, so we were able to appeal to them that way. It’s terrible to reduce human beings to dollar amounts, but for a lot of people it’s the only way to get through to them.

If this is a topic that interests you, I definitely recommend reading Just Mercy if you haven’t read the book, and also checking out Bryan Stevenson’s HBO documentary, True Justice. End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice by Brandon L. Garrett gets really deep into the data on the death penalty’s disparate impact on low-income communities and communities of color, and shows that the vast majority of death sentences and executions are coming from only a few counties. If you’re interested in the history of the electric chair specifically, Old Sparky: The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty by Anthony Galvin is fascinating (Thomas Edison used to stage press conferences to electrocute animals—wild stuff), and Galvin unfortunately makes the accurate prediction that since it has become more and more difficult for states to obtain lethal injection drugs, we will see a resurgence in the use of the electric chair—which we’ve already seen in Tennessee. (Another not-so-fun fact—the Supreme Court ruled in Bucklew v. Precythe that if you object to your method of execution on an Eighth Amendment claim, you must then propose an alternate way for the state to execute you and you have to prove that it will cause you less pain.)

The job is going okay. Lately it’s been a lot of conference calls, research, and report- and letter-writing. I miss being in our office and seeing my co-workers, because I really like them. We’ve put most of our work on the back burner to focus on COVID-19. It’s really difficult to try and deal with this crisis under our dumb governor and even dumber mayor. New York has more cases than Italy and Cuomo still doesn’t want us to use “scary words” like “lockdown” and has consistently been late in taking precautionary measures. It’s infuriating to have the entire country sucking Cuomo’s dick on social media while he uses his insane popularity rating to cut Medicaid and roll back bail reform so we can crowd even more people into Rikers, where the infection rate is seven times higher than in the general city population. Makes so much sense, Andrew, thanks. (I literally had to go take a walk and cool off when I read the budget lmao.) We also have to face the fact that the NYC government is going to have to make about $2 billion in budget cuts and the mayor has already cut programs like SYEP. On a more positive note, things are very tentatively looking like they could be getting a little better in NY. The death rate is really high but it seems like hospital admissions are starting to plateau a bit. There’s a lot of really good research going on worldwide. If we can get everyone on the same page about what we need to be doing to flatten the curve, I’m hopeful things can keep improving.

[theambivalent]

Back to Game of Thrones....

There is absolutely no way I can predict how each character’s story arc will end.  

And no matter how confident other people out there on the internet are, there’s no way they can predict it either. The filming process for this season was insanely protected to the point where they issued the filming locations ‘no fly zones’ via the local government. No drones, planes, helicopters, even toys were allowed to fly overhead. They also are not allowing critics to view episodes ahead of time to review. I’m exceedingly grateful for that one! Nearly every season leading up to this has had an episode leak or two – causing a flood of spoilers to lurk online. So, I'm glad this isn’t going to happen this time around thanks to their tightly sealed practice.

So, while these hopes & dreams for my fantasy ending may not be ‘rock-solid’, this is what I think will happen on this season of game of thrones...

[I’m not sure if I can get to ALL the characters, but I'll try]

1: #Gendrya

Yes, I know there’s a bit of an age difference between Gendry and Arya... but I feel their characters have this inexplicable genuine connection. Whether it’s a romantic love or an exceedingly deep friendship, the connection is there. In my dreams, they'd become a couple after seeing how awesome they work as a team taking down wights & possibly even a White Walker or two at the battle of Winterfell. *sigh....  but will it actually happen? How it happens and when in the season it will happen... or if it even will happen - I don’t know – but it would be nice to see them together [should they both survive].

2: “Three [children] for you. Gold shall be their crowns and gold their shrouds. And when your tears have drowned you, the valonqar shall wrap his hands about your pale white throat and choke the life from you.”

This quote is known by all book readers... but only half of it was recited on the show. The valonqar section was literally crossed out entirely. For those who don’t know: Valonqar means “little brother” in High Valerian. So, book readers had always thought that either Tyrion or Jaime would be the one to kill Cersei. Jaime, because although they’re twins... he is the youngest. I always envisioned that could be two options as to how Cersei dies.... but also....  

And this is a thought my nephew planted in my brain (thanks, Andy!)

...if either Tyrion or Jaime die in Winterfell, I also see Arya taking one of their faces to go to king’s landing to kill her... although that might be far –fetched. Cersei is, afterall, still on Arya’s list of names – so you really never know!  

Other characters who fall under a ‘little brother’ category: The Hound (Sandor Clegane), & Bran Stark

If the term is Gender neutral, it could make it Arya or Daenerys...

I am honestly just looking forward to watching her die. But since that line was removed from the prophecy on the show, I wonder if it will not happen? Or perhaps happen in a different way?

Whether or not Cersei even die is on the table now, since the show is past the book and left out this section of the prophecy, and it’s a bit frustrating!

So many questions!

3: Daenarys will die

Although we are past the books, I still think the show has the same formula: get the audience to root for a character, and then unmercifully slaughter that character in an intense scene.

We've seen it nearly every season: Ned Stark, Rob Stark/ Catelyn, Oberyn Martell, Hodor, Ygritte...

I mean think of all of the “bad” guys on the show who have died: Joffrey... and I guess Little Finger? That's only two... TWO!! Nearly every other person killed has been a character that was groomed to be loved by the audience. Why should Dany be any exception?  

Maybe she’ll play the part of Nissa Nissa, and Jon Snow will have to kill her so his sword can become lightbringer? Maybe not. Maybe the ice dragon will eat her, or the Night King will turn her into his Night Queen??? *gasp! What do you think?

4: Jon Snow will earn the Iron Throne

Bran is the only one who has proof that Jon is a Targaryen... but there is no actual physical evidence that Jon Snow really was the baby of Lyanna & Rhaegar. I mean, there is word of an annulment and secret wedding, but there’s no physical proof that Lyanna is his mother... except for Bran’s visions, which he can’t share with anyone in the south. Of course, we all know that his visions are real, and anyone who speaks with him can’t refute it because he often points out something that no one else would know about them. Thing is, should the end game be Cersei vs Jon on the throne, Cersei could easily say Bran’s vision-claims are untrue. Regardless, I think the people of King’s Landing will follow Jon vs Cersei if they both survive. Why? I think the people will see which of the two really took charge to defend the realm against the White Walkers and their wights. Jon will be the first king elected by the people in an informal way.  

I really hope that happens! I mean look at this gif! that’s the king Westeros deserves!

5: The Hound will Kill the Mountain  

...or vice-versa? ...But not in that Clegane–Bowl fashion that we’d expect. I think it will be a battle within a battle with lots of other things going on at once. I only think this because we’ve only got 6 episodes until it ends. And although the producers promised us ‘mini-movie’ length episodes, the first two are just under one hour. So... we're still going to be lacking in time, compared to what we expected.  

6: Arya Kills Lannister Twins

I know I mentioned before the thought of Arya wearing Jaime’s face to get close enough to Cersei.... But what if, Jaime himself kills Cersei, and in turn Arya swoops in to slit his throat shortly after. It would be a bit poetic, as it would echo the ending of the Red Wedding massacre. Picture this: Arya finds out Jaime was the one who crippled Bran. She’s furious with him, and adds him to her list. The Battle against the White Walkers will lead them all south to King’s Landing, where somehow after certain events unfold, Jaime chokes Cersei to death. At a moment he’d least expect it, Arya steps in from stage left, and slits his throat, and the two lovers die in eachothers arms... aww... sounds like a ‘beautiful’ end. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime has stated recently that Jaime’s last scene is ‘beautiful’.

My head is still spinning as to the other characters, but I'm insanely excited for how it will end!

[lady-stardust7-blog]

Seclusion: Chapter 3

Summary: Belle French arrives at a secluded cabin in the Scottish Highlands, expecting to spend a week there by herself. What she doesn’t realise is that Euan Gold has had the exact same idea.

[1] [2] [read it on Ao3]

Chapter 3/6

Gold always slept better when he spent the night in his cabin. There was no need to set an alarm, and no traffic or drunkards making loud noises in the night like there was in the city. Last night had been no different. He woke up and stretched his body out, then froze at the realisation that something was touching his leg. He turned his head to see Belle, fast asleep and mouth slightly open, although somehow still managing to look rather attractive. Belle wasn’t the issue. Her hand resting on the bare skin of his inner thigh, however, was.

He sighed. He knew something like this would happen. He couldn’t speak for Belle, but he was prone to moving in his sleep. Sharing a bed with somebody was bound to end with some crossovers between their sides, and the fact that it was with a stranger made that ten times more awkward.

He wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Moving her hand would risk waking her, and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea at his hand holding hers on his thigh. On the other hand, he didn’t want her to wake up naturally and for them both to be aware that her hand was resting very close to somewhere inappropriate. He swallowed and decided on his course of action.

He slowly made to slide out of the bed, inch-by-inch, but the moment he felt the bristles of his hair move as her hand slid across it, he stopped, feeling electricity spread through his body. He remained still again and thought about his other options.

It was at that moment that Belle stirred, repositioning herself to somewhere entirely worse. Her wrist now rested on the certain part of his anatomy that he was trying to avoid her coming into contact with in the first place. He bit back a whimper and pushed his head back into his pillow as he felt himself immediately begin to harden. He tried to focus on something else - anything else - rather than where her hand was right now. The only thing that would be worse than her waking up to her hand resting on his cock would have been for her hand to be resting on his erect cock. Needless to say, his attempt at distracting himself didn’t work.

He was going to have to just take her hand outright and put it back on her side of the bed in one smooth motion – like ripping off a plaster. He was just gathering up the courage to do it, when-

“Oh!” He heard her gasp as she yanked her hand away. Fuck.

Feign sleep. Feign sleep.

He started breathing deeply as he turned his head to the other side, eyes remaining shut. He listened out for her movements, but she seemingly stayed very still for quite some time until he felt her weight lift off the bed and the bedroom door close behind her. He listened out until he heard her walk to the bathroom and turn the shower on before he let out a long breath.

Nice one, Euan, he thought to himself. That literally could not have been more mortifying. Maybe he should just travel back to Glasgow whilst she was taking a shower, they need never see each other again.

He got out of bed and got dressed with the realisation that he was just going to have to get on with the day. If he didn’t make eye contact with her then maybe the issue would never be touched upon again. He walked into the kitchen to make breakfast, and was just dishing up the bacon when she came out of the bathroom.

“Ooh, you made breakfast!” she said, smiling as she took a seat at the table. “What is that?”

“This is a full Scottish breakfast,” he replied, sitting opposite her and tucking into his own meal. “And that’s haggis, a true Scottish delicacy. Give it a try. It’s good.”

She surveyed it with interest and popped a bit in her mouth.

“Oh! That is good,” she agreed, going for another bite. “What’s in it?”

“I’m not saying, it’ll put you off of it.”

“What?” she spluttered. “You can’t say that! That’s put me off it already. What’s in it?”

He tried not to laugh at that, but it escaped him anyway.

“It’s – ah, sheep’s heart and lungs encased in its stomach, with onions and a few herbs and spices,” he answered.

She looked at him for a moment, once again analysing the contents of her fork. She took another mouthful of it but grimaced, and Gold chuckled.

“Told you,” he said. They tucked into their breakfasts and they fell into silence. Gold’s mind drifted back to that morning and he had a feeling from the way she was looking down that hers had too.

“How did you sleep?” he asked, then inwardly cringed when he realised that probably hadn’t taken their minds off it at all.

“Yeah, uh, good,” she replied, far too quickly, stuffing her mouth with beans.

The rest of breakfast went much the same way, Gold and Belle talking about anything but the elephant in the room. After that, Belle decided to go on a short hike whilst Gold caught up with some work, giving them time to reflect on the embarrassing events of that morning in the comfort of their own heads, without having to worry about avoiding the gaze of the other.

When she returned, Belle set to work on reading the huge pile of books she had bought. Gold decided to join her, and suggested that they take a short walk from the house with camping chairs and read them under the clouds. They sat beside each other, occasionally conversing before heading back to the comfortable silence of their respective books.

When Gold felt his stomach rumble, he realised how late it had become, and he instructed Belle to wait outside whilst he went back to fetch a few things. He returned with a picnic hamper in hand, filled with a few sandwiches, fruit and muffins.

“A man of surprises aren’t you!” she exclaimed as she opened it. He felt a small surge of pride.

“It’s not much,” he shrugged. “It’s just a few things I brought with me when I arrived.”

“A Scottish breakfast and a picnic in one day,” she continued. “I’m telling you, I could do with a man like you at home.”

They tucked into their food and watched as the sun set beneath the mountains, casting an orange glow across the land.

“I didn’t even realise how late it was getting. This trip is going too fast,” said Belle. Gold hummed in agreement.

He hadn’t initially intended to spend Belle’s honeymoon – if you could still call it that – with her, but she seemed to enjoy his company and he enjoyed hers. It was nice to be around such a positive energy – especially when he was so used to being around such imbeciles at home. It wasn’t often that one could just sit and enjoy another’s presence without feeling the obligation to fill the silence with meaningless small talk. Then again, perhaps the comfort was just a side effect of the fact that they had shared a bed.

“It’s meant to be a clear night tomorrow,” he said. “If you want, I could show you the stars. There’s no light pollution for miles so you can see hundreds of them, it’s beautiful.”

“I’d love that!” she beamed. “Is there anything we can do when we get back? Have you got any board games, monopoly or something?”

“Luckily for you, no, because I would thrash you at monopoly,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “I could set up on the DVD player, I’ve got a few movies back at the cabin.”

When they finished their food, they packed the picnic up and made their way back. Belle busied herself looking through the collection of movies on the shelf whilst he sorted out the leads behind the TV. He heard her giggling to herself.

“I didn’t have you down as a Mary Poppins fan… oh my gosh, is that Bridget Jones?” she teased.

“I didn’t handpick them,” he said indignantly, straightening up and joining her search. “I just bought a random selection to furnish the place for guests.” She picked out another, the cover illustrating the silhouette of a madman with a chainsaw behind three cliché looking students.

“’A tranquil weekend break in the highlands turns horrific as three college students discover the truth behind the cabin’s remoteness.’ Nice choice. Very suitable for guests in a cabin,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes with a smirk.

“Whoever chooses to watch a movie as frighteningly dull as that sounds deserves to feel uncomfortable here.”

“Come on,” she egged him on. “Anybody would think you’re scared. Let’s watch it.”

“It doesn’t sound like it has much plot,” he said, weakly. She sniggered.

“It’s just a bit of fun,” she said, tilting her head in a plea. “Besides, it’s that, or Hairspray.”

If he was being completely honest, it wasn’t so much that horror movies scared him as it was that he was sensitive to jump scares, and he didn’t want Belle thinking he was a coward. Still, the fact remained that she had challenged him, and he couldn’t back out of that now. He had to prove that a horror movie wouldn’t get the better of him.

He put a few logs in the fireplace and set it alight so that they had a bit of warmth as Belle put the movie in. He took a seat on the sofa next to Belle, and prepared himself for the poorly written movie that they were about to watch together.

As predicted, the movie didn’t have a strong plot; although that judgement may have been due to the fact that he was directing his attention to the music and the background of the scenes, on lookout for scares, so that he could maintain his air of indifference around Belle.

The fire had begun to dwindle so he retrieved a blanket for them, making a condescending remark about the movie in the process. Belle chuckled, and then it went silent again.

He kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, the flicker of the TV the only light that illuminated the concentration on her face and her hand resting on top of the blanket beside her lap.

She was adorable, really. And Gold didn’t use that word lightly. He had realised that when reflecting on his actions: if it had been somebody else who had arrived at his cabin then he would have settled for the long trip back to Glasgow – or even have outright commanded that they found somewhere else to stay. Belle, however, seemed slightly tolerable from the outset. Her sense of wonder was contagious and made him want to get out and explore too. And then there was when she had suggested they share a bed. True, this sofa was unbearably uncomfortable and he wouldn’t have slept a wink, but that was beside the point. How could he have denied the invitation to share a bed with a beautiful woman?

He darted his eyes back to her hand, feeling the butterflies in his stomach having a god damn party. He could just reach across and hold it: a simple gesture to determine if anything was there – if she felt anything back.

He put his own hand on top of the covers and slowly glided it across, one agonising inch followed by the next. Then he stopped. There was no more than a centimetre in the gap between their hands, but it may as well have been a shark infested river for all that Gold was concerned. He was a coward, and watching all the horror movies in the world couldn’t prove that otherwise.

He sighed and looked back up at the movie, internally cursing at himself. It was at that moment that a woman let out a blood-curdling scream from his TV, which made him jump out of his skin and involuntarily whack Belle with the hand that had previously rested innocently beside her.

“I’m so sorry,” he gasped, turning towards her. “I wasn’t… did I hurt you?”

“No,” she replied, and to his relief she was laughing at him. A lot. Well, that certainly killed the mood. “You are scared.”

“No, I am not,” he said, adamantly. “She screamed out of nowhere. That would have made anybody jump.”

“Aw, you poor thing,” she cooed, in a mock sympathetic tone. “There, there. You’re safe here.” Through her teasing she had put a hand on top of his, and whatever retort he’d been ready to say had been forgotten.

She turned her attention back to the movie but her hand didn’t move, and he relished in the warmth from her small hand radiating his. The build-up of nerves that he felt previously turned into excitement instead, and he found that despite his best efforts, he couldn’t direct his attention back to the movie.

He realised just how completely focused on their hands he had been, when another jump scare popped up, and he didn’t even realise. The only indication that it had happened at all was how Belle suddenly flinched – though not as extravagantly as he had done the previous time, he noted. He decided to use the situation to his advantage.

“Feeling a little frightened?” he said, adapting the same tone that she had minutes before. “Bless. You’re safe with me.” He popped an arm around her and pulled her in close, which she seemed to find funny. Like her, he didn’t pull away once the moment had passed, and she remained in his arms.

His heart could have leapt a mile. She hadn’t pulled away! She was resting into his chest and he suddenly wondered whether she could feel how fast his heart was beating. Not that that would have been the most intimate part of his body she had felt today…

The rest of the movie flew by and for the life of him he couldn’t have recalled a single scene from it, for the fact that he was revelling in how she was snuggled up to him. He realised that she must have zoned out at some point too, because when the credits rolled up she made no motion to move, and so neither did he.

He grabbed the remote and turned the TV off, and squeezed Belle into him. She made a soft murmur of contentment and remained relaxed against him.

He had no concept of time passing by until he heard her snore gently into his chest. He decided to cut short his small fantasy, and shook her gently to wake her up.

“You should go to bed,” he advised, and she made a small hum. “Come on.”

He guided her into the bedroom and turned his back as she got changed, stripping to his underwear himself. He was slightly concerned that she wouldn’t want to stay in the same bed as him after that morning, but she hadn’t voiced any complaints and so nor did he suggest otherwise.

Once he heard her get under the covers he turned off the lights and joined her. Immediately he missed the comfort of her body, and so he took the leap of courage he had been trying to summon earlier that evening, and scooted over to her until he was spooning up against her, an arm draped around her waist.

“Is this okay?” he asked, aware that she might not appreciate a man in his underwear snuggling up to her.

“Yeah,” she breathed, resting one of her arms over his in reassurance.

It wasn’t long before sleep took her once more. He heard the sound of her soft snores, although he wasn’t quite ready to join her yet. Not whilst he could appreciate the feel of her body against his.

[westworld-daily]

All the things we learned from the 'Westworld' PaleyFest panel

The famously close-mouthed cast and creators of HBO’s “Westworld” opened up a little Saturday night at the Los Angeles PaleyFest. The panel of hosts and cowpokes finally confirmed a long-running fan question from the series finale and shared stories about what it was like working on a show in which you’re not sure if you’re a human or a robot.

Show creators and co-showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy joined Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores Abernathy), Thandie Newton (Maeve Millay), James Marsden (Teddy Flood), Ed Harris (Man in Black), Jimmi Simpson (William) and executive producer Roberto Patino at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for an evening of spoilery talk about sentience and Harris’ eyebrows. Here are highlights of everything we learned from the “Westworld” panel.

No one knew what the maze was while filming

Harris and Marsden’s characters spent a large part of their time in “Westworld” hunting down the mysterious maze. When asked about the maze, and if they knew that the big reveal would be that the maze is a literal puzzle box hidden inside a can of pig’s clover, Marsden replied, “Oh yeah of course.” Much to the delight of the crowd.

Harris conceded, “I still don’t know.”

Wood had a few ideas and shared her original theory that the maze would lead to “Westworld” character (and park co-creator) Arnold. Truly, the cast was kept in the dark almost as much as the audience.

‘Samurai World’

A whole new world of hosts was revealed in the final episode of “Westworld.” The fan-dubbed “Samurai World,” with hosts dressed up as ancient warriors, was uncovered as Maeve was blasting her way through the park’s cavernous control rooms. So what’s next for this new world? No one was saying. The tight-lipped showrunners downplayed the entire thing.

In the absence of news, Newton offered up “Under the Sea” as a potential future world for the series to explore. “No humans, just fish,” Newton said.

Confirmation: Maeve did go off-script. She’s officially sentient

A long-running question from the “Westworld” finale was also answered. When the host Maeve attempts to flee the park on a guest train she’s told by Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) that her actions are all programmed (or scripted) into her code. Her decisions to escape the park were someone else’s orders. Undeterred, Maeve continues to the train, but before she reaches her freedom, she has a change of heart and quickly gets off and heads back into the park. Why Maeve made this decision is still a matter of speculation. (One theory is that she returned to find her host daughter.)

Whatever Maeve’s reasons, the act itself was confirmed at PaleyFest as her first authentic moment of sentience. “It was really the first decision she’s ever made,” said Nolan.

The moment was even designed and shot to feel that way, switching to handheld cameras for Maeve’s split decision, to try and capture Newton’s performance in a new manner. “For me it’s a very emotional moment in the episode,” Nolan said. “You’re witnessing the birth of free will.”

The player piano will return with even creepier adaptations of modern-day music

The player piano is now a “Westworld” staple, and yes, the old-timey contraption will return to delight audiences with eerie renditions of modern-day music. A few favorite covers from the first season included Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” and The Cure’s “A Forest.”

So what’s on tap for season two? No real surprise that Nolan was hesitant to reveal any future “Westworld” covers, however, Joy had a particular creepy tease.

Joy noted that she and Nolan have been spending a lot of time with a little girl in their home. (Nolan quickly confirmed it was the married couple’s daughter, which received a hefty laugh from the crowd.) As a result, they’ve been hearing the soundtracks to a lot of children’s movies and television shows and, according to Joy, the exposure has proven to be incredibly inspiring. “There may be a strange shout-out to a very innocent and joyful song, that we will take and co-opt and make dark,” Joy said. “Just to traumatize our daughter.”

Jimmi Simpson’s eyebrows clued the actor into one of “Westworld’s” big reveals

Despite playing a sizable role in nine of the 10 “Westworld” episodes, the true identity of Simpson’s character William wasn’t revealed until the finale. Turns out, William was the younger version of Harris’ character (who was only referred to as the Man in Black for most of the series). The big twist surprised many fans despite some online theories predicting the outcome. (More on that later.) But did the actors themselves ever predict that they were linked?

The cast was given information about the characters bit by bit, a decision both showrunners expressed interest in continuing into the second season. This meant most of the actors were left completely in the dark for weeks— or even months. However, Simpson claimed that he got a big hint about William’s future thanks to his eyebrows.

Apparently the makeup artist pulled Simpson aside in the middle of the day just to look at his eyebrows. “I was walking to lunch and Lisa [Joy] was walking down the lane and I started thinking, ‘If they want to change the look of my face they must want me to look like someone else. So who could I possibly look like in this cast? And this man [Harris] was the only person I settled on.” When Simpson asked Joy if the eyebrow tweaking was for that reason, her face went blank and she responded, “I don’t know. Don’t tell Jonah.”

Joy recalled her conflict over the reveal. “If I say something, Jonah is going to kill me, but I also don’t want [Jimmi] to be insecure about his eyebrows,” she said.

And when Harris was asked if he now thought of his younger self as Simpson, the actor responded, “I’m just wondering what’s wrong with my eyebrows?”

Fan theories drive the ultra-secretive Nolan nuts, but they’re still game

“Westworld” fan theories started churning from the premiere of the pilot episode, and as the series moved forward so did the online speculation. In fact, some of the theories were so good they actually guessed the Simpson/Harris twist.

“It’s annoying sometimes when people guess the twists, and then blog about it after you spent two years [working on a project meant to keep the world guessing],” Nolan said. “It’s gratifying on one level because if someone guesses your twist that means you’ve done an adequate job laying the tracks for it. I’m not a big believer of the rug-pull.”

Joy, who admitted that she stays off the Internet when it comes to “Westworld,” didn’t seem as disturbed and used “Game of Thrones” for reference. She noted that everyone can read the “Game of Thrones” books and not be surprised by a pivotal twist like the Red Wedding. “But it’s still incredibly immersive and incredibly engaging,” Joy said of the fellow HBO epic. “I don’t necessarily think that knowing the ending spoils something for people.”

The audition process for some of the hosts was ‘completely sadistic’

An audience question about the creation of the rundown host Old Bill, the cowboy bartender seen in the pilot episode chatting with Anthony Hopkins, opened a window into the difficult casting process.

Nolan called the audition piece the actors were given “completely sadistic.”

Basically each actor reading for the part of a host was given several different personalities to play. In between each character transition, the actor was instructed to channel a clock that’s breaking, or someone having a stroke. This direction was later revealed as the state they would revert to during the diagnostic check run on all the “Westworld” hosts. And it was the only thing the showrunners were watching during the audition process.

As for the creation of Bill himself and his jerky robotic movements, Nolan explained that they created the odd feel by overlaying the blinks from a previous take onto one of the actor’s eyes — subtle touch that really made Bill appear like a malfunctioning host.

We may not know much about season two — when it's airing, where it will take place — but we do know one thing: We won't be seeing Harris in a samurai suit anytime soon. "I'm the Man in Black,” Harris said. “Not the man in a samurai suit.”

[panpanpanini]

Thoughts on MLP The Movie: Unpopular Opinion Edition

(I made a small post about this a few weeks ago, closer to when the movie premiered, but now that the hype has kind of fizzled out I thought I’d take the time to fuss more in-depth.)

So... I really thought the MLP movie was bad.  Terrible.  I had sooo many problems with it, so where do I start?

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD!! 

My two biggest complaints are:

1) The movie didn’t hold up in terms of quality-- nevermind MLP expectations, it was just a bad movie in general.

2) Target demographic was noticeably shifted (downwards), especially when compared to the show.

Let me start by saying I’m not at all notorious even among friends for being this grouchy, self-elevated, overreaching entertainment critic/analyst.  I can enjoy most things at face value, ie. MLP.  I despise fanaticism (not fandom, fanaticism), and I’m long past the mindset that if I like something, I have to be blindly uncritical of it.  

Please also note that I have not read the movie prequels or supporting media, and I went into this movie with only limited knowledge of those materials.

*deep breath*

(1) So, starting from the top: “It was just a bad movie in general.”

Visually, the movie barely held up for me.  Anyone who’s even had a basic flash animation class knows about this thing called ‘motion tweening:’ it’s an optimized process for creating movement, with which you can set a path for objects to move and deform as opposed to painstakingly animating each frame one by one.  It’s a much quicker process, but the (immediate) result often looks way more mechanical than its traditional counterpart and can often come off as... soulless, or even lazy.  It was unbelievably easy to notice this throughout the movie and it was a huge distraction for me.

You can more easily see what I’m talking about here.

As a side note, I was never really on board with the ToonBoom style from the get-go; I eventually got used to it, but I was never able to totally immerse myself in it-- the whole tweening thing just cemented my dislike for it.  

Continuing my comments on style, the new character designs were interesting, but... so many of them felt too disconnected from established MLP universe conventions.   In fact, the only ones I could only get on board with were the hippogriffs (with a preference towards their seapony forms).  My biggest problem with them has to lay in the fact that nearly all of the new characters-- background and supporting-- were bipedal, when in-show nearly every new race introduced has been on all fours like our titular ponies... and to add insult to injury, so many of them had hands!  Their designs just felt too distant for me to connect that they live in the same world as our pony heroes.  

Note: I realize most of these creatures inhabit lands self-defined by Celestia to be ‘beyond Equestria,’ but that doesn’t dismiss that they still felt like they belonged in a movie not prefaced with ponies.

(Tempest is a little different.  She was visually darker than most ponies than we’re used to seeing, and to the surprise of nobody the poster child for edgy pony OCs, complete with the perfect voice.  Unfortunately, her intimidating demeanor was sometimes too much for me, as it’s much more *effectively* threatening than what we’re used to seeing in-show-- the closest being the Shadow Pony in the S7 finale.)

On a more positive note, I really enjoyed the new environments.  Just the fact that we had new locations to begin with was endearing already, but unlike a lot of the other stuff (see above) they were on par with what I was expecting from MLP on the big screen.  I seriously think the environments had more character/place in the MLP universe than most of the (we’ll call them NPCs) NPCs that occupied them.

Speaking of character, I can forego most of what I’ve talked about above in lieu of a good story (spoilers: the story wasn’t even all that fresh, it was predictable and full of classic kid’s movies tropes).  What I can’t ignore is blatant out-of-character writing.

“But Salt Mom, if you hate out-of-character writing, why are you still watching the show post-season five?” -Most Starlight Glimmer Opposition

As I mentioned at the start, I still enjoy the show at face value.  We’re seven seasons in; our beloved ponies have seen some noticeable character development over the years, which is what some people (perhaps those ruled by nostalgia for the earlier feel of the show) like to label ‘out-of-character writing.’  But the changes are justified by their development, which is why I don’t see it that way.  The movie, however, seems to completely forego character development and reduces them to (at times, vapid) caricatures of themselves and the out of character writing is now completely obvious to someone like me who doesn’t typically enjoy ponies through heavy analysis.  

Pinkie was by far the most glaring.  Pinkie is already one of my least favorite ponies, so maybe I’m biased here, but she was for the most part written as comic relief.  She wasn’t a pony Grubber-- she did play the part of ‘voice of reason’ in the climax with Twilight-- but she had an irritating tendency to completely downplay the seriousness of their situation, as they all did (she was just the most obvious, second being tied between Dash and Rarity).  Since when have they all been so naive?  Except for Twilight, all our heroes had minimal speaking roles (and even more damning, speaking roles with substance), most notably Fluttershy.   

Other problems included the princesses (once again) being victims of weak writing-- they’ve been proven to be capable of putting up more of a fight than we were shown, jeez!-- for the sake of putting the Mane 6 in the spotlight, probably something some people would call ‘forced progression’ (related: bad pacing).  

... Which leads into the movie’s general issue with logic.  

OH BOY.  I had so many issues with the movie logic.  As mentioned before... the ponies’ general naivety, their blatant disregard for the grim nature of their situation...  Capper betrays them, doesn’t explain his reasons, doesn’t get a proper chance to apologize, and our ponies are totally cool with him by the falling action sequence of the movie?  Celaeno’s crew (and similarly, the seaponies) is swayed into changing allegiances with a simple, three-minute song?  The Mane 6 add six or so characters to their posse and suddenly it’s possible to take back Canterlot, after being overwhelmed so easily in the beginning, when the princesses weren’t yet turned to stone?  Really?  How could Tempest-- a pony who comes off as smarter than the rest-- be so desperate to have her horn back that she couldn’t foresee the Storm King’s betrayal?   

*angry flailing motions*

In summary: the animation was mechanical, character designs suffered from a serious disconnect with established MLP canon, and everything from logic to pacing to character behavior suffered from bad, trope-y writing.

---

(2) “The movie demographic was shifted noticeably.”

(A lot of what I’ve addressed above can also be applied to this section of grievances.)

Very few times have I watched anything in general and walked away feeling like a real dumbass.  This was one of those times.  Everything from the humor, the songs, the logic (see above)... it all came together to make me feel dumbed down and like a huge moron for even buying a ticket.  Overall, it was extremely apparent to me that they’d knocked the target demographic down a few years, and that the movie was made with younger kids-- rather than families as a whole-- in mind.  

The brand of ‘humor’ (I use that term loosely) employed by the movie has to be the cringiest one in the book.  It was clear that it was the most vanilla one they could have gotten away with and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot because honestly, none of it was funny at all.  Grubber was purely on the screen for comic relief (we literally don’t see him again after the finale); Pinkie’s naivety was obviously supposed to be funny, as were Rarity’s trademark dramaticisms-- They got close sometimes to pulling a laugh, but then it just... fell short and wound up feeling more pathetic and forced than anything.  Was it even humorous to the kids? 

I laughed literally once during the entire movie, and that was at a very transparent marketing joke (perhaps not deliberate) made towards the beginning, after the Mane 6 fall from Canterlot and band together to decide how to proceed.  They end up saying something to the effect of “hungry, hungry, hippos” as they’re brainstorming and I chuckled because... Hungry Hungry Hippos is also a Hasbro property. 

I thought I might be able to find solace in some of the songs-- I’d heard SIA’s contribution in the days leading up to the movie and thoughts it was a decent tune-- but alas... They turned out to be completely vapid, with the sole exception of Tempest’s song.  Compared to the extensive library of songs we’ve gotten in the show, the lyrics and melodies we got in the movie were neither clever nor catchy (I recall thinking that rhyming schemes were nearly non-existent) and I found myself waiting with bated breath until they were over.  “Time to be awesome?”  Blegh.  Completely forgettable.

IDK.  Maybe I need to see the movie again to confirm my position with it; after all, I had already decided I didn’t really like it before the end of the first act.  For the better part of a year I couldn’t get away from the hype surrounding MLP The Movie, but when I finally saw it it didn’t deliver on the same level and ended up being a huge let-down.  It was lacking in a lot of things standard to its TV-counterpart, including what makes the in-show universe so appealing (lore, memorable songs, and magic), and if they end up putting out a sequel I hope it can bounce back in the same way EQG2 built on the shortcomings of its predecessor.  

That’s all I’ve got.  If you’ve managed to get this far, thanks for reading.  ✌

(Bonus) Things I would have liked to see: an entire pirate fleet (instead of a single crew); more Capper and time spent in Klugetown; more Storm King and the land he comes from; the hippogriffs actually doing something (isn’t Queen Novo supposed to be friends with Celestia?) to contribute to the finale, even if it was them swooping in just before the final fight.