#i have so many criticisms of that comic but the core emotional center of it still interests me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

maxwell-grant · 3 years

Note

Speaking of Tod Slaughter... any thoughts on Grand Guignol theater..?

Looking back on it, the first time I encountered the term Grand-Guignol was also the first time I looked at Fantomas, when I picked up the book above titled The Theater of Grand Guignol, which is all too fitting as Fantomas is Grand-Guignol to it's core. It's also a term that I've seen applied a couple of times to The Spider as well as some darker fan reinterpretations of Batman. Like film noir and sword-and-sorcery, it's a term for a type of storytelling that's associated with dime novels and pulps, influenced and was influenced by them in return, but isn't really the same thing and is, in fact, a separate "genre" (not quite the right term).

Indeed, if the common cultural association of pulp is that of something trashy and violent and darker than it's contemporary culture, one can see Grand-Guignol as perhaps the darkest of it's adjecent family, the Dario Argento to pulp's John Carpenter, the cracked mirror to all that exists.

Short and full-length plays were based on the hot topics unseen onstage at this extent before, from graphic scenes of murders, tortures, sexual violence to psychological thrills like resurrections of the dead, incest, suicide, characters being hypnotized, trapped or guilty of their loved one’s deaths. In most cases, it was a combination of several of those themes in one piece, which of course, multiplied shows’ popularity - AngryFishTheatre's article

‘At one performance, six people passed out when an actress, whose eyeball was just gouged out, re-entered the stage, revealing a gooey, blood-encrusted hole in her skull. Backstage, the actors themselves calculated their success according to the evening’s faintings. During one play that ended with a realistic blood transfusion, a record was set: fifteen playgoers had lost consciousness. Between sketches, the cobble-stoned alley outside the theatre was frequented by hyperventilating couples and vomiting individuals.’

Despite of its scandalous nature, for France Grand Guignol was more than a theatre: it was a tradition, an institution, and an attraction like the Eiffel Tower or the Folies Bergères, and Maxim’s... It was then highly fashionable. Celebrities of the day, South American millionaires and errant royalty went there assiduously to be scared out of their wits.

Going to the Grand-Guignol was less a social act than a private one and certain audience members preferred not to be seen. Some witnesses reported that the iron-grilled boxes in the back of the theater encouraged a certain ‘extremism.’

The cleaning staff would often find the seats stained - — Mel Gordon, The Grand Guignol: theatre of fear and terror.

It lasted almost the exact same time period as the American pulp era (from the late 1880s to 1950s), and even in it's origin, as the theater itself was built out of the ruins of a church, and it would attain fame and legacy as the shadow opposite to Moulin Rouge's glamour and spectacle. It's original intent on being focused on naturalistic theater led to breakthroughs of horror that made it the whole selling point, and much like the pulp lords of terror I talk about, their staged and spectacled terrors were still no match for the horrors of reality that followed.

“We could never equal Buchenwald,” the Grand Guignol’s final director, Charles Nonon, told TIME magazine that year. “Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality.”

And of course it goes without saying that the Grand-Guignol's influence on storytellers long transcended it's original lifespan. Gore for gore's sake is hardly something I enjoy, but I've definitely enjoyed many, many films that reached to extremes of horror and violence and gore for horror and comedy alike. I would not claim the Grand-Guignol started this because I could very well be missing out on something, but they are undeniably a huge part of the history of horror as we know it, along with the German Expressionist works of the 1910s that were as well both inspired by, as well as influential, on the Grand-Guignol.

Time and time again we see the pattern emerge, of creators or outlets or mediums that emerge as cheaper and less critically-reputable alternatives to the mainstream attain extraordinary and influential success both in their circles as well as those who would never admit to looking at them for inspiration otherwise. In fact, you could very well argue that it’s alive not just through films and comics and so forth, but in newfound forms of media created by people with all the freedom to put together whatever their imaginations and limited resources and lack of restraints can create.

Like Youtube Poop.

Now maybe I'm biased here because I grew up with YTP, but really, the main intent behind every YTP is to twist the media it's using to provoke a new reaction from you, every YTP is varying levels of a rollercoaster of jokes and edits and little narratives stacking up and flowing together, references and poop jokes and murder jokes and slurs and parody and criticism and SuS and literally anything the creator thinks is gonna get a reaction that wasn't in the original material. And it doesn't even have to be exclusively about jokes, there's a lot of YTPs that are centered on horror or drama or even are just completely original narratives using the assets at hand, sometimes even clocking in at almost movie-length.

There's no filter or censors or teams making sure it's tested to the audience, it's just as much chaos as someone with video editing skills can manage to create, and more so than anything else nowadays, it's the medium that abides and amplifies the same principle that ruled and defined Grand-Guignol: "The Hot and Cold Shower"

Grand Guignol, was not the inventor of this concept, but probably the first performing arts company that used it as its main programming principle. Every evening at the theatre was programmed with plays heavily contrasting in their nature. In the 6 plays presented on a regular night, every 2 horror plays were followed by a light comedy and the light comedy by another horror play or two. Using this contrast the creators aimed to give their audiences a fuller range of emotions. They called it a "hot and cold shower".

You could also make a similar argument for creators that used Garry's Mod or Source Filmmaker to create Youtube content, many of whom either followed the styles of YTP or created their own which ended up influencing others in return, and you can definitely see how YTP as well as these have influenced our current generation's taste in comedy as well as the editing styles of many prominent creators. It even seemed for quite a while that GMOD and SFM content of this type was dead, but it definitely seems like it's gotten a revival recently, and really just never went away. Likewise, a lot of people think YTP died circa 2012 or 2015, which is completely false, it just changed a bit, as things tend to do if they are to stick around.

The entire approach of extreme hot and cold, extreme horror and comedy shuffling per second and extreme absurdity overriding is something you definitely get nowadays a lot more out of these newer forms of media than anything that film and television's capable of giving, and just as Grand-Guignol started out relatively ordinary (focused mainly on naturalistic horror) before it completely spiraled into a perpetual race for excess, we've gotten so desensitized so quickly to surprises that you can see in real time the growing needs for content that's faster and more chaotic and funnier and more dramatic and more absurd and more well-produced but also worse produced and, yeah.

I definitely wonder how we may see future filmmakers and cartoonists and creators be influenced by, not just the above, but also the rapidly changing landscapes of meme culture and social media and the gradually less-funny theater of the absurd that reality's become. I definitely imagine we'll be in for some interesting times.

Y'know, if we make it that far.

Alternatively you could also argue Jackass is also a modern Grand Guignol and they just cut out the narrative middleman to get straight to the "people getting fucked up for your amusement" part, but at this point I'd just be inviting a retread of all the "Is -X- pulp" questions I got for "Is -X- Grand Guignol", and I may have stepped straight into a rake with this one.

#replies tag #grand guignol #fantomas #pulp fiction #tf2 #team fortress 2 #poultrygeist #youtube poop #ytp #sus

45 notes · View notes

dgcatanisiri · 3 years

Note

(1/2) I got such a big facepalm when Dorian appiered in tevinter nights and how writing deliberately mentioned that he have only the servants now. I just... Bioware really should stop pretending that Dorian didnt defent horrible things. If anyone of their scenarits gave at least half of theit shit, Dorian could have finally had a conflicked he (as a character) so despiratly needed in Inquisition.

(2/2) But it would probably make many players uncomfortable with their "Best Gay Friend" being not so perfect cinnamon roll UWU as they want, so Bioware just run from risk as fast as from a shitting elefant. Writers dont want Dorian to grow, just be a stereotipical LGBT-doll to bait the audience. The worst thing is - it actually worked... It sickens me. (sorry for my bad english btw)

I mean, I really would have been down for a “Dorian learns that slavery is bad” push through Inquisition - we have Krem, Bull’s trusted right hand among the Chargers, whose father sold himself into slavery because he couldn’t compete with the prices of slave labor, and yet there’s not even a passing encounter between them. We have Varric, who was friends with an escaped Tevinter slave, and yet Fenris isn’t even NAME-CHECKED, let alone discussed as an example of what is wrong in Tevinter. We have the encounter with Gatt, and, while I understand not making it a must-have encounter because of variation possibilities, Dorian just gets catty at him because he represents the Qunari, rather than having even a moment of recognition that this freed elven slave looked at staying in slavery and joining the Qun, and unreservedly joined the Qunari - kinda shoots holes in that whole “poverty is the same as slavery” thing when the Qun looks better to someone who has suffered under those systems.

But no. We have Dorian revealing that his father would have straightened him out if he’d gotten the chance (and getting the option to push Dorian to “forgive” him, which HELL. NO. and I resent the implication that it’s somehow “better” to do that). And we have Dorian getting harassed by Mother Giselle, framed in such a way that we can only disagree with her asking after the intentions of the Tevinter mage among the Inquisition - when a Tevinter cult centered around an ancient Tevinter magister is the actual enemy of the game. Her concerns are completely justifiable, but the game wants to set her up as a straw villain in opposition to Dorian, with no real room to accept her point of view. But DORIAN, no, he’s got to be in the right.

Like I’ve said before, Dorian just comes across as little more than a prop - there to drop the “homophobia is bad” anvil and then be the ego boost for the female Inquisitor with the “safe” flirting - flirting that leads to that conversation where the Inquisitor will accuse him of leading her on, he’ll offer that line of “in another life” that I despise, and then tell him to keep fluffing her ego. He’s there to be the bestie character, not a character in his own right.

I mean, note that when BioWare DID write a gay character who shut that “friendly flirting” down right off with Gil in Mass Effect Andromeda, Gil has been sidelined all over the fandom. And while part of that is certainly BioWare setting the scene with the combination of minimal focus on him and a homophobic storyline... When it’s compared to Dorian, it gets very, VERY concerning to me on the subject of representation.

Because, end of the day, BioWare is still a business, still trying to make money. And making money means focusing and continuing their successes, cutting their losses when things aren’t working out. So the business approach here says that Dorian is a success, so keep chasing a repeat. Meaning that there’s a not-unreasonable-expectation that whoever DA4��s gay option is, he’ll be a prop as well, yet another gay character suffering something exclusive to his experience as a gay man.

Worse, even, because if they don’t do something like this, when we’re heavily expected to be in TEVINTER and hobnobbing with the elite of that nation, then there are two options to BioWare - either they don’t comment on homophobia in Tevinter, gutting the emotional core of Dorian’s story outright by making it into “not that big a deal” in reality, or they try and argue that Dorian’s efforts at reform have already been turning the tide, which... No. That’s not how society works. If they were already near the point where Dorian’s (acknowledged to be!) long shot minority party has been able to impact society that much, then it was already nearing that change, and, look at that, the emotional core of Dorian’s story is gutted anyway, because now Halward was doing this at a point that it would have reflected poorly on him in society.

BioWare doesn’t THINK about how the things they include will impact the rest of the world. It’s all immediate gains at the expense of future world-building. I mean, hell, that much was obvious with all the snapback Trespasser put the Inquisitor’s choices through, making everything more or less the same.

But it hits with Dorian in a different way because the game wants us to see him as a “good” Tevinter, without ever asking the question of if there ever really can be a “good” Tevinter. And my answer is “not among the Magisterium.” The good Tevinters are ones like Krem, like Fenris, the people who’ve been beaten down by the systems of Tevinter and have no voice.

I stand by the idea that, if BioWare wants us to have some kind of conflict in DA4, some decision point, where Dorian’s life hangs in the balance and it defines who gets to “rule” Tevinter going forward... Honestly, I can very easily accept Dorian as a casualty. Of course, given how BioWare has gone out of their way to play him up as “the good Tevinter” in the last few years with their supplementary material (he’s been in like every comic story arc they’ve published over the last few years in some capacity, even just a one-issue cameo), I’m reluctant to believe they’d actually even go through with that - “oh, no one would sacrifice Dorian, so let’s not put that in, no one would choose [other option] over him.”

I get that, in a barren landscape, Dorian represents a very powerful SOMETHING to audiences. Hell, I even understand the people who are moved by his story, even if I’d deeply critical of it - just because I find it reduces him to a prop for the development of the straight man who would have done that to him, that doesn’t mean that other people can’t find meaning and can’t connect with Dorian himself. But it’s a very real counterpoint that, in a barren landscape, Dorian also by design fails to be what just as many people needed him to be as he provides. And, rather than listen to anyone who was left unsatisfied, the overwhelming attitude I’ve seen from both the fandom, in their treatment of anyone who DOES have criticisms towards him, and BioWare, in their portrayal through merch (having his hoodie modeled by and shaped for women’s bodies) and supplementary material (the comics, Tevinter Nights), don’t care to address, that they want to just sweep it under the rug and lavish praise on Dorian for being what he is in Inquisition.

And, again, all I see in Inquisition is a prop for gay pain causing straight people character growth and development. I’m not here for that.

#0alix0 #dg replies #dg plays dragon age #dorian critical

7 notes · View notes

insanityclause · 4 years

Link

Guillermo Del Toro is no stranger to widespread acclaim, especially from his ride or die legion of fans. Pan’s Labyrinth, the Hellboy duology, the list of genre-bending, timeless masterworks goes on. Coming off his 2 Oscar wins for The Shape of Water in 2018, and moving into finally releasing his animated Pinocchio film from the pits of development hell along with an adaption of Nightmare Alley next year, this couldn’t be a more thriving time for the Mexican auteur. Though amongst all the praise and glory, something has still felt missing these last handful of years. Besides his Oscar-winning film, Del Toro’s works prior to the 2010s are what generally buzz conversations of his genius. Those aforementioned films did, after all, skyrocket his name to fame. His titles from the last decade, however, are just as crucial to the Del Toro canon and emphasize his greater influence as a filmmaker. One, in particular, has seemingly gotten by in its young life at the hands of few. But now that Crimson Peak has officially turned 5, it’s time to turn that few into many.

Del Toro’s trifecta of the 2010s (not counting his work on television) stand out vastly from one another. Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak, and The Shape of Water: all love letters penned from the ‘nichest’ corners of his mind. These 3 arguably boast more diversity in genre than Del Toro’s 5 films of the 2000s (3 comic-book adaptations and 2 Spanish-set fantasies). Not a criticism, as established, those films now flaunt an immovable place within the cultural zeitgeist. Though with a career notoriously marked by a slew of unrealized projects (more on this later), it’s not often recognized how the ideas that did make the cut still lead a crystal clear trajectory in Del Toro’s growth as a storyteller. In the eyes of many, Del Toro pulls ideas out of a hat and gambles on which one actually sees the light of day. Humorous sure, but this is far from the truth.

Each Del Toro project feels like a pivotal step for what would come later, take his work on Trollhunters paving the way for his upcoming first animated feature for instance. Despite this trajectory, Crimson Peak feels criminally unsung 5 years later. Pacific Rim continued its life with a sequel and more planned spin-offs. The Shape of Water literally set a new bar for the Academy. This leaves Crimson Peak feeling like the pushed aside middle child of this trio. This isn’t a call for a sequel, and ‘underrated’ gets tossed around very loosely in modern film discussion. But for cinema as quintessential as Crimson Peak, it just doesn’t feel like it gets enough recognition – especially when the current film industry is seeing less big-budget, R-rated projects heavily steeped in genre.

You can easily trace Crimson Peak‘s short-lived spotlight back to its marketing. The timely October release and scare-heavy trailers sold a classic ‘Haunted House’ horror, when in reality, Del Toro’s film is a Gothic Romance. Set in the early 1900s, an aspiring American writer, Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), is swept away by a promising English baronet, Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). They discover true love and marry, leading the young newlywed to her husband’s decaying mansion in the English hills. The age-old manor is slowly, but surely, sinking in red clay – the very source of Sharpe’s wealth. Here Edith is forced to live with her new sister-in-law, Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), a reserved yet commanding force who works to hide the true nature of the house and its endless secrets. Mystery lingers as untamed lust, envy and greed unfold between the mansion walls, not leaving enough room for the restless red-colored spirits who haunt them. When it snows on this cursed hill, the clay surfaces, making it seem as if the land bleeds. Given more than just red clay rises from beneath, a deeper meaning is given to the place locals call ‘Crimson Peak’.

Just like the clay at the center of its mystery, Crimson Peak is an amalgamation, but of genre. It would be novice to expect anything less from Del Toro. The Gothic elements call back to many classic tales, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s adaption of Rebecca and, of course, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. On the horror side, homage is paid to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. It’s a devilish blend that only this filmmaker could pull off so beautifully. And oh is Crimson Peak so god damn gorgeous. To contrast common period pieces that go for muted or sepia-toned color palettes, Del Toro turns the saturation on high. The result is an eye-popping picture that heightens the core emotions at play: fear, pain, and more importantly, love. Simply mesmerizing, avid fans will be quick to recognize the same shades of golden yellows, sea greens, and ruby reds found in Del Toro’s other works. It feels right at home in his filmography visually, while packing its own unique punch.

Red, a color mainly associated with passion, here instead intricately represents endless bloodshed. A twist that would suggest Crimson Peak is just as equal a horror film as it is a love story. Regardless of what might have been initially marketed to audiences in 2015, this film is a Gothic Romance from start to finish. Del Toro himself made this distinction clear to the studio from the get-go and repeatedly draws the line whenever given the chance. Yet, much like the rest of his repertoire, Crimson Peak utilizes horror not as a means to an end, but as a means for introspection. Yes, there are classic horror conventions such as jump scares, but it couldn’t be more obvious that Crimson Peak isn’t trying to evoke the same kind of high and dry fear other films heavily rely on. Del Toro is actively trying to get under your skin to achieve a hell of a cathartic viewing experience.

The ghosts of our past and how we let them define us is a core theme in Crimson Peak. The film opens on a flashback in which Edith is visited by the charcoal black ghost of her recently deceased mother. The nature of this visit sets the groundwork for the rest of the narrative. Mother Ghost, dreadful in appearance, doesn’t necessarily come to haunt her child, but to warn her. “Beware of Crimson Peak,” she says. The way Edith takes in this otherworldly occurrence, and those that follow, sets her apart from everyone else in the film. Wherein others flee from or lock away the ghosts of their past, she learns how to wear them on her sleeves – reaching out to the dead multiple times in the story, each attempt more confident than the last. Not too dissimilar from what Del Toro was playing with before, Jaeger pilots confronting past trauma in their quest to defeat Kaiju. At the same time, the transformation that occurs in Crimson Peak when neglected demons consume you from the inside – humans becoming the true monsters of their supernatural tales – would only be amplified in Del Toro’s next film.

Every minute detail coincides with this strategized, therapeutic use of horror. And to the everyday moviegoer trained by common tropes, Crimson Peak is quite deceptive. Just like Mother Ghost at the beginning of the film, the red spirits never manifest with the intent to cause physical harm, but instead to give messages and guide. Red clay seeps down the walls and the mansion ‘breathes’ as the country winds burst in. The house feels alive in the most cinematic sense possible, but the case as to it being ‘horrifying’ is not so black and white. Expertly designed to every inch, there is plenty of beauty to be found in the manor. Much of it has just been corrupted by a debauched affair – keeping this story rooted as a Gothic Romance. Subversion has always been the name of Del Toro’s game, and it’s within Crimson Peak that he uses it to mix genre so well while still staying true to his vision.

Though Crimson Peak saw Del Toro take subversion to a new level, notably with his main character. This film is a key chapter in his overarching legacy; not the first of his works to be lead by a defiant woman, but the first to have the female hero entangled in an unabashed love story. Effortlessly played by the brilliant Mia Wasikowska, the not so damsel in distress at the center of Crimson Peak is one of the most significant characters of Del Toro’s career. In discussing Gothic Romance with The Mary Sue in 2015, Del Toro explains: “This is quintessentially a female genre, that was written with characters that were very complex, very strong. I wanted to make a movie in which to some degree I recuperated and, maybe if possible, enhanced all that.” And enhanced he did for every central male character acts in more distress than Edith ever does, even when she is literally at the edge of death. A more than welcome change of pace that makes for a more resonating film.

Edith’s willingness to tackle the unknown is captivating and her vigor inspiring. But she isn’t absolved of frailty. For someone who comes to terms with facing the dead, her sheer vulnerability to heartbreak and suffering brings great humanity to the role. Hardly recognized, but Edith is one of Del Toro’s most self-reflective protagonists. A marginalized writer, inspired by the great Mary Shelley no less, in the midst of drafting her magnum opus, she immediately faces backlash from her novel’s inclusion of the paranormal. “It’s not [a ghost story]. It’s more a story with a ghost in it. The ghost is just a metaphor… for the past,” she says – giving Crimson Peak a rare Del Toro tongue-in-cheek quality that he utilizes until the credits roll. Meta enough given that the crimson ghosts Edith later encounters are, in fact, echoes of the past, but when looking back on the public’s initial perception of the film, it creates a charming, albeit ironic, wit only found here.

Additionally, when tracing back to Crimson Peak‘s pre-production days, you’ll find something even more profound. Penned by Del Toro and an old collaborator, screenwriter Matthew Robbins; this was the first script completed after the release of Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006. The two first worked together an entire decade earlier on Mimic, which has now gone down as the only film Del Toro has truly lost to studio interference. Del Toro was supposed to direct Crimson Peak in the late 2000s, but along came Hellboy II and his involvement in launching The Hobbit (another R.I.P). Through this hectic time, Del Toro would reunite with Robbins in writing 2010’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, directed by Troy Nixey. However, the two also spent time together writing something else: an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

For those unfamiliar, At the Mountains of Madness is by far one of, if not, the most tragic of this filmmaker’s unrealized projects. After spending years trying to get this dream off the ground, Del Toro had the following to say to Empire in 2010: “It doesn’t look like I can do it. It’s very difficult for the studios to take the step of doing a period-set, R-rated, tentpole movie with a tough ending and no love story.” The payoff of Crimson Peak being a period-set, R-rated, tentpole film only 5 years after that statement couldn’t be sweeter. In the film, Edith is told to insert a love story for the better of her novel. Del Toro is obviously commenting on expectations tied to gender here, but you can’t help but wonder if he’s also referring to one of the biggest thorns in his own writing career – one that also ties back to writing partner Matthew Robbins.

When faced with the question, Del Toro has consistently said that all of his films carry an inherent Mexican touch just from the utter fact that they come from him, and Crimson Peak is no different. Whether if deriving from his personal experiences with tackling genre, both on and off paper, or from actual events tied to his life – Del Toro reimagines two separate ghostly encounters experienced by him and his mother through Edith – this film beams with the very essence of Del Toro’s soul. Perhaps most personified when the marginalized writer gets bloody and fights back with nothing but her pen, a visual that cements this as an important stepping stone in his career. It’s a fascinating through-line, connecting to very different segments of his canon while still defining a clear path. The mending of our wounds and subversion of gender roles is continued from Pacific Rim, while setting a bold new course for delving into unfiltered, mature romance in The Shape of Water.

This is only a fraction of what makes Crimson Peak quintessential Guillermo Del Toro. Gothic Romance has long been part of this auteur’s framework, and you would be remiss not to indulge in all of its glorious melodrama. Even if it isn’t your cup of tea, Del Toro will make it so. Reaching its 5-year anniversary, the film hits stronger than before. The intricate motifs, compelling use of practical effects (complete with the involvement of Del Toro veteran Doug Jones), and cathartic use of horror make for something that has yet to be replicated by a major studio. Its lacking box office performance suggests that maybe the world merely wasn’t ready for this masterwork? But just like its characters, we hold the power to define what comes next. Del Toro himself has previously ranked Crimson Peak as one of the 3 best films he’s ever made, and straight-up called it the most beautiful. Take his word and dive in no strings attached, because who knows when we’ll get another large scale, unapologetic Gothic Romance with this much grandeur.

#Crimson Peak #guillermo del toro #Tom Hiddleston #Mia Wasikowska #Jessica Chastain #Charlie Hunnam #Jim Beaver #Doug Jones

27 notes · View notes

davidmann95 · 4 years

Text

Superman’s 10 Best of the ‘10s

Good Miracle Monday, folks! The first third Monday of May of a new decade for that matter, and while that means that today in the DC Universe Superman just revealed his secret identity to the world on the latest anniversary of that time he defeated the devil, in ours it puts a capstone on a solid 10 years of his adventures now in the rear view mirror, ripe for reevaluation. And given there’s a nice solid ‘10′ right there I’ll go ahead with the obvious and list my own top ten for Superman comics of the past decade, with links in the titles to those I’ve spoken on in depth before - maybe you’ll find something you overlooked, or at least be reminded of good times.

A plethora of honorable mentions: I’m disqualifying team-ups or analogue character stories, but no list of the great Superman material of the last decade would be complete without bringing up Cave Carson Has A Cybernetic Eye #7, Avengers 34.1, Irredeemable, Sideways Annual #1, Supreme: Blue Rose, Justice League: Sixth Dimension, usage of him in Wonder Twins, (somewhat in spite of itself) Superior, from all I’ve heard New Super-Man, DCeased #5, and Batman: Super Friends. And while they couldn’t quite squeeze in, all due praise to the largely entertaining Superman: Unchained, the decades’ great Luthor epic in Superman: The Black Ring, a brilliant accompaniment to Scott Snyder’s work with Lex in Lex Luthor: Year of the Villain, the bonkers joy of the Superman/Luthor feature in Walmart’s Crisis On Infinite Earths tie-in comics, Geoff Johns and John Romita’s last-minute win in their Superman run with their final story 24 Hours, Tom Taylor’s quiet criticism of the very premise he was working with on Injustice and bitter reflection on the changing tides for the character in The Man of Yesterday, the decades’ most consistent Superman ongoing in Bryan Miller and company’s Smallville Season 11, and Superman: American Alien, which probably would have made the top ten but has been dropped like a hot potato by one and all for Reasons. In addition are several stories from Adventures of Superman, a book with enough winners to merit a class of its own: Rob Williams and Chris Weston’s thoughtful Savior, Kyle Killen and Pia Guerra’s haunting The Way These Things Begin, Marc Guggenheim and Joe Bennett’s heart-wrenching Tears For Krypton, Christos Gage and Eduardo Francisco’s melancholy Flowers For Bizarro, Josh Elder and Victor Ibanez’s deeply sappy but deeply effective Dear Superman, Ron Marz and Doc Shaner’s crowdpleasing Only Child, and Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine DeLandro’s super-sweet Mystery Box.

10. Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics

Oh, what might’ve been. In spite of an all-timer creative team I can’t justify listing this run any higher given how profoundly and comprehensively compromised it is, from the status quo it was working with to the litany of ill-conceived crossovers to regular filler artists to its ignominious non-ending. But with the most visceral, dynamic, and truly humane take on Clark Kent perhaps of all time that still lives up to all Superman entails, and an indisputably iconic instant-classic moment to its name, I can’t justify excluding it either.

9. Action Comics #1000

Arguably the climax to the decade for the character as his original title became the first superhero comic to reach a 1000th issue. While any anthology of this sort is a crapshoot by nature, everyone involved here seemed to understand the enormity of the occasion and stepped up as best they could; while the lack of a Lois Lane story is indefensible, some are inevitably bland, and one or two are more than a bit bizarre, by and large this was a thoroughly charming tribute to the character and his history with a handful of legitimate all-timer short stories.

8. Faster Than A Bullet

Much as Adventures of Superman was rightfully considered an oasis amidst the New 52′s worst excesses post-Morrison and in part pre-Pak, few stories from it seem well-remembered now, and even at the time this third issue inexplicably seemed to draw little attention. Regardless, Matt Kindt and Stephen Segovia’s depiction of an hour in the life of Superman as he saves four planets first thing in the morning without anyone noticing - while clumsy in its efforts at paralleling the main events with a literal subplot of a conversation between Lois and Lex - is one of the best takes I can recall on the scope on which he operates, and ultimately the purpose of Clark Kent.

7. Man and Superman

Seemingly geared on every front against me, built as it was on several ideas of how to handle Superman’s origin I legitimately hate, and by a writer whose work over the years has rarely been to my liking, Marv Wolfman and Claudio Castellini’s Man and Superman somehow came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite takes on Clark Kent’s early days. With a Metropolis and characters within it that feel not only alive but lived-in, it’s shocking that a story written and drawn over ten years before it was actually published prefigured so many future approaches to its subject, and felt so of-the-moment in its depiction of a 20-something scrambling to figure out how to squeeze into his niche in the world when it actually reached stores.

6. Brian Bendis’s run

Controversial in the extreme, and indeed heir to several of Brian Bendis’s longstanding weaknesses as a writer, his work on The Man of Steel, Superman, and Action Comics has nevertheless been defined at least as much by its ambition and intuitive grasp of its lead, as well as fistfuls of some of the best artistic accompaniment in the industry. At turns bombastic space action, disaster flick, spy-fi, oddball crime serial, and family drama, its assorted diversions and legitimate attempts at shaking up the formula - or driving it into new territory altogether, as in the latest, apparently more longterm-minded unmasking of Clark Kent in Truth - have remained anchored and made palatable by an understanding of Superman’s voice, insecurities, and convictions that go virtually unmatched.

5. Strange Visitor

The boldest, most out-of-left-field Superman comic of the past 10 years, Joe Keatinge took the logline of Adventures of Superman to do whatever creators wanted with the character and, rather than getting back to a classic take absent from the mainline titles at the time as most others did, used the opportunity for a wildly expansive exploration of the hero from his second year in action to his far-distant final adventure. Alongside a murderer’s row of artists, Keatinge pulled off one of the few comics purely about how great Superman is that rather than falling prey to hollow self-indulgence actually managed to capture the wonder of its subject.

4. Superman: Up In The Sky

And here’s the other big “Superman’s just the best” comic the decade had to offer that actually pulled it off. Sadly if reasonably best-known for its one true misfire of a chapter, with the increasing antipathy towards Tom King among fans in general likely not helping, what ended up overlooked is that this is a stone-cold classic on moment of arrival. Andy Kubert turns in work that stands alongside the best of his career, Tom King’s style is honed to its cleanest edge by the 12-pager format and subject matter, and the quest they set their lead out on ends up a perfect vehicle to explore Superman’s drive to save others from a multitude of angles. I don’t know what its reputation will end up being in the long-term - I was struck how prosaic and subdued the back cover description was when I got this in hardcover, without any of the fanfare or critic quotes you’d expect from the writer of Mister Miracle and Vision tackling Superman - but while its one big problem prevents me from ranking it higher, this is going to remain an all-timer for me.

3. Jeff Loveness’s stories Help and Glasses

Cheating shamelessly here, but Jeff Loveness’s Help with David Williams and Glasses with Tom Grummett are absolutely two halves of the same coin, a pair of theses on Superman’s enduring relevance as a figure of hope and the core of Lois and Clark’s relationship that end up covering both sides of Superman the icon and Superman the guy. While basically illustrated essays, any sense of detached lecturing is utterly forbidden by the raw emotion on display here that instantly made them some of the most acclaimed Superman stories of the last several years; they’re basically guaranteed to remain in ‘best-of’ collections from now until the end of time.

2. Superman Smashes The Klan

A bitter race for the top spot, but #2 is no shame here; while not quite my favorite Superman story of the past ten years, it’s probably the most perfectly executed. While I don’t think anyone could have quite expected just *how* relevant this would be at the top of the decade, Gene Yang and Gurihiru put together an adventure in the best tradition of the Fleischer shorts and the occasional bystander-centered episodes of Batman: The Animated Series to explore racism’s both overt and subtle infections of society’s norms and institutions, the immigrant experience, and both of its leads’ senses of alienation and justice. Exciting, stirring, and insightful, it’s debuted to largely universal acknowledgement as being the best Superman story in years, and hopefully it’ll be continued to be marketed as such long-term.

1. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics

When it came time to make the hard choice, it came in no small part down to that I don’t think we would have ever seen a major Golden Age Superman revival project like Smashes The Klan in the first place if not for this. Even hampering by that godawful Jim Lee armor, inconsistent (if still generally very good) art, and a fandom that largely misunderstood it on arrival can’t detract from that this is Grant Morrison’s run on a Superman ongoing, a journey through Superman’s development as a character reframed as a coherent arc that takes him from Metropolis’s most beaten-down neighborhoods to the edge of the fifth dimension and the monstrous outermost limits of ‘Superman’ as a concept. It launched discussions of Superman as a corporate icon and his place relative to authority structures that have never entirely vanished, introduced multiple all-time great new villains, and made ‘t-shirt Superman’ a distinct era and mode of operation for the character that I’m skeptical will ever entirely go away. No other work on the character this decade had the bombast, scope, complexity, or ambition of this run, with few able to match its charm or heart. And once again, it was, cannot stress this enough, Grant Morrison on an ongoing Superman book.

#Superman #Miracle Monday #Opinion

86 notes · View notes

mobius-prime · 4 years

Text

260. Sonic the Hedgehog #191

Metal and Mettle (Part 1)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Josh Ray

A few days after Scourge and the Suppression Squad have taken control of Freedom HQ, Miles alerts Scourge to an interesting and unexpected visitor - namely, Metal Sonic, through whom Eggman is speaking and watching.

Yeah, don't underestimate a fellow evildoer, Scourge. Meanwhile in New Mobotropolis, Sonic and Knuckles stand before the Council of Acorn to try to get permission to take the base back. Unfortunately for them, the council votes four to two to leave it for the time being, as they don't see Scourge as that big of a threat, and want to focus on taking New Megaopolis from Eggman before going after smaller holdings. Sonic, of course, does not take this well, and tries to talk to Knuckles about it once they exit the building.

Oh, Knuckles. You have to stop angsting about this, my dude. Sonic leaves the city on his own, musing as he races back to Freedom HQ about how despite their recent successes in battle, and many gains against Eggman and his forces, he can't help a strange feeling that overall they're losing ground. He hopes that kicking Scourge out of the base will cheer him up, but is brought up short by the sight of Scourge and Metal Sonic battling it out on the grass outside. Miles stands nearby watching, and not-so-subtly tests Scourge's leadership by asking if he wants help against Metal, as surely the others helping him would only be an insult since he conquered his planet on his own. Sonic, uninterested in any of the politics, merely barrels in to help, offering Scourge a truce to take Metal out, but Scourge angrily refuses, and both he and Metal turn on Sonic to attack. Meanwhile, Julie-Su finds Knuckles brooding on a bench in the park, and when she presses to know what's bothering him he snaps, yelling that he can't trust himself or anyone else, as no matter what he does, someone always ends up hurt, and he can't bear to face the few remaining members of his family. Julie-Su reaches for him, looking at first like she's going to comfort him, but then…

I mean, all things considered, Julie-Su, you make a fantastic point. Your family's loss has been largely glossed over until now - I don't think she was even given a single panel before now to mourn the deaths of her foster parents, despite how delighted she was to rediscover them before - and as you point out, it's not like Knuckles is suffering alone. Back at Freedom HQ, the fight continues, with Eggman telling Metal to hang in there as he's putting the "finishing touches" on some backup. Sonic and Scourge briefly wind up fighting each other without Metal's interference, during which Sonic criticizes Scourge for taking his advice to better himself to a brutal, negative extreme. Scourge merely mocks Sonic's restraint, pointing out how much more powerful he is as a king than as a hero.

Ooh, dramatic parallels to their prior talk! I love it! Metal interrupts before Sonic can respond, and as the fight continues once more we move this time to Angel Island, where Knuckles is having a talk with Archimedes while Charmy sits nearby.

So something that needs to be pointed out is that inexplicably, this is Archimedes' last appearance in the comic, ever. Unlike all the other characters who have disappeared from the comic, there's no reason given - no genocide, no dimensional portal to swallow him up, no deaths or sudden decisions to leave and find himself on another continent, nothing. He just… never shows up again. It's disappointing, as y'all know how much I like Archimedes, but again I really do think this stems from Ian's weird, irritating habit of erasing a lot of Kenders' contributions to this world. I know that he's trying to make the comic's world more like the games, and that in the games, Knuckles is the last echidna and isn't embroiled in all these politics, but dammit, there's nothing wrong with comic Knuckles being so different from game Knuckles! Personality-wise, he's still similar, still recognizable, it's just his circumstances that are different. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be blaming Ian for all of this - for all I know, Sega themselves ordered him to get rid of all of this stuff. I dunno, man, I'm just some random fan with a blog. Speaking of controversial decisions by Ian, though, it's nice to see him doing his best to treat Charmy's brain damage with respect here. He certainly acts more childlike than he once did, but he's doing his best, and isn't a punchline, still actively participating in missions and helping Knuckles sort his own problems out.

Anyway, Knuckles, encouraged by his mentor's words, uses his warp ring to head back to the city, where he and Julie-Su give a curt apology to each other with an agreement to sort things out more fully later, when he's had more time to work through his emotional distress. They consider heading to Freedom HQ to help Sonic, but Knuckles believes that Sonic can most likely handle the situation on his own. Of course, we know better - Sonic might be able to take on Scourge or Metal individually, but both at once is a real challenge. He kicks Metal aside, only to be startled by the sight of another robot coming to join the fray - a robot that looks exactly like Scourge. Wow, Eggman, you really didn't waste any time on that one, huh? How many Metal Sonics do you think he has lying around in his base just ready for a paint job and a new assignment?

Though there's another story in this issue, we won't be covering it. Why? Well, it's the first real installment of "In Another Time, In Another Place"! I've mentioned it before, but it's basically what Ian decided to do when it was clear he couldn't keep putting in half-adaptions of random games anymore, but still needed to do tie-ins for newly-released games. With the pattern we've been taking with these tie-ins lately, you'd think this one would be for Sonic '06, but nope! For whatever reason, Sonic '06 goes completely unacknowledged within the comic verse (at least for now), with the sole exception of Shadow joining up with GUN. However, as I've mentioned before, Ian did state somewhere along the way that Sonic '06 did in fact happen somewhere during the course of the comic's plotline - it's just that due to the very nature of the game's story, the events of the plot are entirely reset and erased from the timeline at the end, meaning an adaption doesn't even have to take place, as technically, even though those events did happen, they also… didn't.

But all that aside, the tie-in in today's issue is actually for the little-remembered DS title, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which was an RPG developed by Bioware of all companies (and yes, they did include one of their trademark Bioware romance sidequests, though it's probably of little interest to anyone who doesn't ship Sonamy). While again, we're not covering it due to it being non-canon, it's an important thing to note regardless. For one, these In Another Time, In Another Place installments became pretty commonplace throughout the comic as new games were released, but perhaps more importantly, this was the game that apparently really got under Kenders' skin. The problem is that after all he'd done to develop the world of the echidnas and all the political and military factions thereof, this game's plot ended up heavily centering around a band of echidnas in dark armor emerging from a parallel dimension where time moves more slowly, with an intent to take the Master Emerald and use it to cement their place of power in the real world once more, though one female echidna realizes the error of her people's ways and abandons her army to side with Knuckles against her megalomaniacal and powerful male leader. Gee, sound familiar? While I don't believe that Bioware or Sega actually copied Kenders' ideas outright - the way I've described it makes it sound similar, but there's a ton of differences in the plot and presentation that definitely indicate they're two different ideas by different people - Kenders certainly seems to think it's a rip-off, and this was from what I understand at the core of all his problems with Sega that led to his eventual lawsuit that forced the reboot of the comic. It sucks, too, because even aside from losing all the years of history in the preboot, the plot of Sonic Chronicles was actually quite fascinating and it ended on a cliffhanger, which will never, ever be resolved because Sega doesn't even want to touch that can of worms after everything that happened. I think the game has actually been quietly stricken from canon, too, because the cliffhanger literally involved Eggman having taken over the world while everyone was away, and there's just no way to solve something like that offscreen. Just a bad time all around, folks. As they say in the fandom - thanks, Ken Penders. Still, though, we have quite a ways to go before we hit the preboot's end, so let's forget about the negative stuff and keep trucking on.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 191 #writer: ian flynn #pencils: tracy yardley #colors: joshua d ray

18 notes · View notes

noxstellacaelum · 4 years

Text

Filtering Female Characters Through the Male Gaze

Female characters filtered through the male gaze: A (way) too long post about why we need a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing showrunners, writers, directors, crew – heck, all roles -- in TV and movies.

Yes, I know I am not the first person here on this.

And note that while I have included a few tags b/c I talk about my frustration with Shadowhunters, Veronica Mars, the Irishman, Richard Jewell, and a few other recent shows/movies, I don’t get to this stuff until the very end, I appreciate that fans may not want to wade through the entire essay, which (again), is a bit of personal catharsis.

I recently had a random one-off exchange with a TV writer on twitter. The writer said that she had enjoyed the movie Bombshell much more than its Rotten Tomatoes rating would have suggested. She wondered if the disconnect between her experience/perception of the movie and that of mainstream reviewers might have been shaped by gender: Specifically, she observed that Bombshell is a movie about women, but most reviewers are male.

I have complicated feelings about Bombshell. On one hand, yes, there was and is a toxic culture at Fox News. Yes, Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly were victims of that toxic culture. But no, these women were not mere bystanders: They traded in the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia (for starters) that still characterize Fox News today. Why should these wealthy, privileged white women – both of whom spent many years as willing foot soldiers in the Fox News army -- get a glossy, Hollywood-approved redemption/vindication arc? On the other hand, I am glad that the movie makers made a film about sexual harassment, and that the movie presented Kelly, in particular, as an at least somewhat complicated character. This would not be the first time that a movie about women – especially complicated, and not always likeable women – has proven to be polarizing.

My ambivalence about Bombshell notwithstanding, the writer with whom I exchanged tweets is (not surprisingly, since she is in the industry and I am not) on to something when it comes to gender, character development and critical reception. It’s not just that Bombshell was about women, but reviewed largely by men; it’s that stories about female characters (real or fictional) often are filtered through the male gaze in Hollywood: On many projects – even those focused on female characters – creators/ head writers are male, directors are male, showrunners are male, and producers are male. This matters, because preferencing the male gaze impacts what stories about women get told, who gets to tell them, and how these stories are received inside and outside Hollywood.

First, though, the caveats. I do not mean to suggest that men can never tell great stories about women. Of course they can. I also don’t mean to suggest that being female exempts creators, writers, directors, showrunners, etc. from sexism or misogyny (or any other forms of bigotry, as my discussion of Bombshell suggests). There are plenty of women who prop up the patriarchy. Rebecca Traister’s work speaks to this issue, as does the work of Cornell philosopher Kate Manne. There is an important literature on the concept of misogynoir (misogyny directed at black women, involving both gender and race), a term coined by black queer feminist Moya Bailey, as well. Intersectionality matters in understanding what stories are told, who gets to speak, and how stories are received in and outside Hollywood. I also don’t mean to suggest that there are no powerful women in Hollywood. Shonda Rhimes; Ava DuVernay, Reese Witherspoon (increasingly, given her role as a producer of projects like Big Little Lies), Greta Gerwig’s work in Lady Bird and Little Women, and others come to mind. As I am not in the entertainment industry, I am sure others could put together a far more complete and accurate list of female Hollywood power brokers. And, finally, I appreciate that Hollywood is a business, and people fund and make movies that they think their target audiences want to see. So long as young, male viewers are a coveted demographic, we are going to see projects with women who appeal to this demographic onscreen.

Given these caveats, why do I think that the filtering of female characters through the male gaze is an issue? For me, it has to do with a project’s “center of gravity” -- that place, at the core of the project’s storytelling, where the characters’ agency and autonomy comes from. It’s where I look to understand the characters’ choices and their narrative arcs. When a character’s center of gravity is missing or unstable or unreliable, the character’s choices don’t make sense, and their narrative arc lacks emotional logic. Center of gravity is not about whether a character is likeable. It’s about whether a character – and the project’s overall storytelling and narrative voice – make sense.

When female characters are filtered through a male gaze, a project’s center of gravity can shift, even if unintentionally, away from the characters’ agency and point of view: So, instead of charting her own course through a story, a female character starts to become defined by her proximity to other characters and stories. She becomes half of a “ship” . . . or a driver of other characters’ growth (often through victimization, suffering, or self-sacrifice) . . . or mostly an object of sexual desire (whether requited or not). Eventually, she can lose her voice entirely. When that happens, instead of a “living, breathing” (yes, fictional, I know) character, we are left with a mirror/ mouthpiece who advances the plot, and the stories, of everyone else.

What are some recent examples of this? The two that I have mentioned recently here are Shadowhunters and Veronica Mars S4.

- With SHTV, I will always wonder what might have been if the show – which is based on books written by a woman, intentionally as a “girl power” story – had female showrunners. Would an empowered female showrunner have left Clary, THE PROTAGONIST OF A 6 BOOK SERIES – alone on an NYC street in a skimpy party dress, in November, with no money, no ID, no mother, no father figure and no love of her life, stripped of her memories, her magic, and chosen vocation, as punishment, after she saved the world? Would a female showrunner have sidelined Clary’s love Jace, and left him grieving and suicidal, while his family lived their best lives and told him to move on? Would a female showrunner have said, in press coverage of the series finale, that the future of the Clary and Jace characters was a matter for fan fiction? After spending precious time in the series finale wrapping up narrative arcs for non-canon and/or ancillary characters. And to my twitter correspondent’s point, I guess I am not surprised that mainstream entertainment media outlets didn’t call out the showrunners’ mistreatment of Clary, and by extension, Jace, and the obliteration of their narrative arcs -- and yes, I am looking at you, Andy Swift of TV line (who called the above-mentioned memory wipe “actually perfect”).

- Likewise, with Veronica Mars, would a more diverse and inclusive writers room have made S4 Veronica less insightful and less competent than her high school self, or quite so riven with self-loathing, or quite so careless and cruel with the people in her life who love her? Would a more inclusive creative team have made S4 Veronica less aware of the class and race dynamics of Neptune, yet more casually racist, in her mid-30s, than she was in high school?

- There are so many other examples from 2019. Clint Eastwood falsely suggesting that a female reporter (who is now deceased and thus unable to defend herself) traded sex for tips from an FBI agent in Richard Jewell. Game of Thrones treatment/resolution of the Ceresi and Daenerys characters – where to even start. Martin Scorsese’s decision to give Oscar winner Anna Paquin’s character a total of 7 lines in the 3-plus hour movie the Irishman.

- And, in real life, I wonder whether a Hollywood that empowered and supported female creators would make sure that people like Mira Sorvino and Annabella Sciorra got a bunch of work while also making sure that Harvey Weinstein never again is in a position of power or influence. Same with female comics targeted by Louis C.K. Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose … the list is long, and Kate Manne’s work on what she calls “himpathy” is useful here.

To be clear, I am not saying that stories involving “ships” of whatever flavor, stories of suffering and self-sacrifice, and stories of finding (or losing) intimate relationships are “bad” or “wrong” or inherently exploitive of female characters. I don’t think that at all. I also don’t think that female characters have to be perfectly well-adjusted, virtuous, or free from bias, or that they should never be make bad choices or mistakes. I want female characters who are flawed, nuanced. I don’t mind lives that are messy, or romantic entanglements that are complicated. Finally, I don’t think that that faulty, reductive, or unfair portrayals of female characters is a new thing. Mary Magdalene was almost certainly not a prostitute, after all. And classicist Emily Wilson – the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English – has brought a hugely important perspective (including an awareness of how gender matters in translation) and voice to the translation and study of canonical characters and works.

At the end of the day, I just want female characters to be able to speak with their own voices, from their perspectives. I want them to have their own, chosen, narrative arcs. I want them to speak, act, see, and feel as autonomous individuals, with agency, and not just in reference to others. And, I think that more a more diverse and inclusive approach to staffing writers rooms and in choosing show runners, directors, and key positions in storytelling would help.

#shtv #veronica mars #clary fairchild #clary #jace #clace

57 notes · View notes

noonmutter · 4 years

Text

Mun Dash Game

Rules: Name your top 10 favorite characters from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people.

Editor’s note: These are in no ranked order or anything like that, they’re just ten favorites as I could think of them.

Bismuth - Steven Universe. You may notice a theme here; I like my characters complex, their motivations valid, their decisions misguided, and their actions questioned by everyone, often including themselves. I loved Bismuth’s entire concept and I’m sad that she hasn’t had more time front and center to develop beyond her introduction as both a plot device and as a catalyst for Steven’s advancement. Same story with Jasper, though she got a few more appearances. I want to see these people grow and for the people they hurt to grow with them, damn it. Even if that growth is downward into an even worse state, I want to see it because positive or negative, emotional fallout is awesome.

Demona - Gargoyles. There was going to be a Gargoyles character here and I am basically legally obligated to pick either Demona or Thailog because I am a sucker for great voices and tragic villains. Demona’s story wins out by a decent margin because her suffering was entirely borne of her own poor decisions, many of which she felt were right at the time. She just refused to accept that she was wrong or that she could try to make things better at any time, and I was fascinated by that from the first time I saw it. This shit was in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 19 years.

Baby Doll - Batman: TAS. She only showed up once (in the original animation style, anyway) but good god damn did it count. She was angry, hurt, belittled, and so unbearably lonely that when everything fell apart and the dust settled and she couldn’t kill all her problems away, she just broke down. “Why couldn’t you just let me make believe?!” is still crystallized in my head, and it still gives me little pangs when I think of it. And at the end of it all, she sobbed “I didn’t mean to” as she hugged Batman’s leg. And he comforted her. Also in a kids’ show that predates Steven Universe by 21 years.

Scanlan Shorthalt - Critical Role, Campaign 1. I bet you thought after those first three it’d probably be Vax or Percy, but... Look, the character was fantastic and the player made him that way and frankly made that campaign. He’s my go-to for when I need a good cry, and he’s why I learned to build a bard. The same man who started the campaign by asking his bestie what the worst race/class combo was and saying “Okay I’ll play that,” at the end of the campaign made the word “Nine” hit his fellow players and viewers in the chest like a sledgehammer, and nobody has topped that since. His second campaign character, Nott, has also got one of the most poignant backstories I’ve heard in a while, and man will it twist yer gut. Meanwhile both of those characters provide some of the best goddamn comic relief you’re liable to find. Emmy Winner Sam Riegel, ladies and gentlemen.

Francis - Left 4 Dead. I love this grumpy asshole biker. I love that Steam took his “I hate everything” (except vests) schtick and ran with it. I love that the trailers for the second game included him and Rochelle meeting up and commiserating on their hatred of everything, up until Rochelle says she hates his vest and he short-circuits. I miss Francis and I miss playing Left 4 Dead all the time and I yearn for a remaster or rerelease that works better with current setups cuz the original one has uh... not aged well, technologically. Francis and Zoey made life worth livin’ in that game.

Jogurt - Shining Force. This is probably the most obscure one on my list but that’s because Shining Force is an old-ass Genesis game/franchise that is, I admit, pretty generic as far as the plot goes. I love it to pieces regardless because it had some fun with it, and the character designs were wierd and some of the interactions were downright silly. Jogurt was the easter egg secret character in this game, and he’s a little hamster thing with a football helmet on. At the time you get him, most of your fighters have stats in the 20s or potentially 30s and their level is 9, 10, or they’ve been promoted to a new class; every single one of his stats is one and he had not been promoted. If you are able to keep him alive long enough to get him the XP necessary to level up just once, which takes some doing since an enemy can be unarmed and as long as they don’t miss, they kill him, you’ll get a ring called the Yogurt Ring.

When worn, it makes a character look like Jogurt. In the remake for Game Boy Advance, the image for the character shows that it’s a costume with a huge visible zipper up the back. That’s all it does. That’s the joke. And I adore it.

Freddy Krueger - A Nightmare on Elm Street series. I have a love-hate relationship with Freddy. On the one hand, creativity in horror movies--especially in the kills--is something to be embraced, and no matter what else you think of them the Elm Street movies got real fuckin’ creative most of the time. On the other...there have been nine (official) movies with Krueger in them, and only the first three were good. The remake in 2010 was disappointing because it tried to both play to nostalgia and ignore it at the same time and also made Freddy darker, which made him less fun to watch.

Still, I enjoyed the hell outta Freddy’s concept, for much the same reason that I love Chucky the Good Guy Doll so much: they’re both snarky monsters who really enjoy the horrors they’re inflicting and they have incredible presence because of the actors who brought them to life. (Mark Hammill worked with what they gave him for Chucky but uh...what they gave him sucked).

Lorewalker Cho/Margeaux - World of Warcraft. The first, because he’s voiced by Jim Cummings and he’s a knowledge-hungry panda who Blizzard has not been stupid enough to kill off thus far. In the middle of an attack by what is basically Cthulhu, he wants to you bring him research notes on Cthulhu’s fishmen. I love him and I would commit war crimes for him.

The second, because she was a bit character that had me fully invested in her and her story within ten minutes. And then Blizzard ripped my fucking heart out. And I yelled at Questifer about it. Aaaaaaaa.

Granny Weatherwax/Sam Vimes - Discworld. They’re both staggering badasses who have neither time nor tolerance for the bullshit trappings of men, while at the same time harboring a deep and abiding love for their fellow beings. They also approach that from completely different ends. They are also both unquestionably the most noble characters I’ve ever read. They are the sum of their principles and their refusal to budge. Steve Rogers could learn from them. In D&D, they’d be paladins to their core, and they’d absolutely hate that.

Spawn - Image Comics. I have, admittedly, read exactly one Spawn comic book, and mostly love him because of his design, his backstory, and the fact that he’s voiced by Keith David in all animated iterations including video game appearances (and only the animated ones were ever good--the 90s movie was fucking horrible). I am hoping the rumored new movie will make things a bit better for the live-action version, but until that actually comes out, I’m not holding my breath.

Tagged by: @safrona-shadowsun and @ourcollectivefantasy

Tagging: Have you done it? Then you’re it.

#prompty things #stuff about me

6 notes · View notes

thesydneyfeminists · 5 years

Text

A Feminist’s Review of Avengers: Endgame

** Warning: Contains Major Spoilers **

I want to preface this review with another warning: while I am a self-confessed nerd who has long enjoyed comic book movies and geeky pop culture, I was quite disappointed in this film. In my criticisms, I'm going to be honest as to why. If you are on a high from the film and just want to enjoy it without having somebody rain on your parade, then it is probably best to skip this review. However, if you’re curious about this feminist’s perspective on why Endgame fell flat for her, please read on.

Image Description: Film poster for Avengers: Endgame. It shows all the main characters, including Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Thor and Thanos (among others) in their full battle gear against a dark night sky. At the bottom of the poster, the title of the film is written in large, blue and gold letters. The Marvel Studios logo is just above the title. There is undiscernable text at the top and bottom of the poster. The release date (April 26th) is written in white at the very bottom center. The “a” in “April” is the Avengers symbol. Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Endgame

When my partner asked me for my first impressions, I said the movie should’ve been called “Iron Man 4 (and Some of the Avengers”). The entire film felt like a swan song for him, a requiem for the character who started it all. It was made clear that Iron Man was the film’s emotional centre, the person whose stakes viewers are most meant to care about. While I don't mind Iron Man as a character, I am aware he is the favourite of most of the franchise’s fanboys. It really felt like that was the crowd this movie was aimed at. In contrast, women and other minority groups did not fare so well in terms of representation or importance in this film.

The writers had choices on who do they decided to turn to dust at the end of Infinity War. There was ample opportunity to leave behind a more diverse group of heroes to carry out the tasks in Endgame. For example, instead of Antman, we could have had Wasp. In the comics, Wasp is the female avenger, not Black Widow. It would have been such a nice nod to the canon and added an additional female character to the core cast. Instead, we ended up with a majority-white team of mostly men. The two women who were involved were treated in a frustrating manner.

While Black Widow essentially leads the Avengers at the beginning of Endgame, she (nobly) throws herself off a cliff halfway through the film, essentially ending her story. This plot point was vexing for a few reasons. First, the writers/directors got rid of one of the only women on the team, turning most of the rest of the film into a sausage fest. Second, Black Widow’s sacrifice was not given the same weight or gravitas as Tony Stark’s. At the end of the film, we see a beautiful funeral for Tony. But there are no moments of remembrance for the other characters who gave their lives (Black Widow, Vision, even Loki). They are only briefly (and quietly) mentioned by Clint and Wanda. Outside Endgame’s main storyline, the timing of Natasha’s death is also awkward sinceMarvel is supposed to be making a Black Widow movie in the next few years.

Image Description: Close up photo of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) from the neck up. She is looking above and to the left of the camera with a serious expression on her face. Right above her eyebrows, the words “avenge the fallen” are written in a white to light-purple gradient. The “a” in “fallen” is the Avengers symbol. At the bottom of the photo, in the center, is the Marvel Studios logo. The release date for Endgame (April 26th) is written in bold, white letters beneath the logo. Image source: http://collider.com/endgame-black-widow-death-explained/

As for the remaining female character, Nebula, she proves to be the “weak link”. While all members of the team had their struggles in trying to obtain the infinity stones, it is Nebula who gets captured and ends up compromising the entire plan. While I don’t have an issue with Natasha and Nebula’s scenes in and of themselves, they do come across as problematic in a film that gives little limelight to its female superheroes in general. Right from the beginning, Captain Marvel is sent off-screen for most of the film, a major disappointment for those who were hoping to see her involved. I suspected this would happen and sadly I was right.

As I mentioned before, at the end of Infinity War the writers could have kept some key figures to make a more diverse remaining team. However, even with the characters they chose to leave behind, there were missed opportunities. One of the biggest missteps for me was Valkyrie.

When Bruce visits the village of New Asgard to find Thor, he first encounters Valkyrie. In the film Thor: Ragnarok, Valkyrie had a drinking problem which she overcame by the end of the story. This time around, it is Thor who is battling alcoholism. She tells them about his drinking, and, rather than asking her to come along and help on their mission, they bypass her completely. I was really upset Valkyrie did not feature in Infinity War and felt doubly irritated that she was sidelined yet again in this instalment, for no good reason. Had they included her, she could have been the one to rescue Thor and use his hammer, instead of Captain America. Given that she is an elite Asgardian warrior, this decision would have made much more sense and been a great moment for her fans. She is also one of the very few openly LGBTQ+ characters in the MCU. Including her would have given the filmmakers opportunities to better represent this marginalized group, rather than their paltry attempt at the film’s beginning.

Then there’s Thor, who, in my opinion, was treated so poorly in the film. Other feminist writers have already explained why the fat jokes and cruelty directed towards Thor’s substance abuse and mental illness were extremely problematic. They turned one of the most damaged characters into mean-spirited comic relief, rather than addressing the serious issues he was contending with. I really felt sorry for Thor the character, but I feel worse for the real-life people who were triggered by his horrid treatment.

Image Description: Photo of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) from the waist up sitting in a chair. He is looking to the left of the camera with a serious/ angry expression on his face. He is wearing a light-blue t-shirt and dark grey, zip up hoodie. With his right hand, he is picking up what appears to be a donut from a wooden bowl. Next to the bowl is a can of soda. The background is mostly wooden walls and one hallway table with decorative vases. Image Source: https://www.screengeek.net/2019/05/02/avengers-endgame-thor-changes-explained/

Given so much needed to happen in this movie, I was also annoyed by how much time the directors dedicated to trivial things like Captain America’s ass and Thor’s beer gut. I’m all for comedic moments in a heavy film, but I wanted to hear some more speaking lines from characters who appeared toward the end, ones we had not seen for the last 2 1/2 hours. The final battle scene felt bloated and confused as writers tried to squeeze in nods here or a glance there to the rest of the crew. At least, however, the greater ensemble was back, fighting together side-by-side. That is until Captain Marvel showed up.

Now, I am a fan of Captain Marvel. I enjoyed her origin story and was excited to see her in this movie, even if it was late in the game (no pun intended). When she made her arrival and took down that ship, it was the first time I cheered during the whole movie. And then it all went pear-shaped. When Captain Marvel was given the gauntlet by Spiderman there were so many creative choices they could have made. Anyone who knows the canon would be aware Captain Marvel is more than capable of handling the power of the infinity gauntlet and could have done what the Hulk and, ultimately, Tony Stark did. Instead, they came up with this convoluted plan for her to fly into Antman’s quantum machine. I mean, the woman can fly at the speed of light so she could have done that in the blink of an eye. But, somehow, Thanos stopped her by flinging a heavy metal object towards the machine faster than Captain Marvel can fly.

Image Description: Two photos laid side by side. The one on the left is a close up of Captain Marvel from the chest up. The one on the left is a close up of Thanos from the neck up. Captain Marvel is looking below and to the right of the camera with a serious expression on her face. The star on her chest is glowing. Thanos is looking slightly above the camera, also with a serious expression on his face. Both backgrounds are cloudy skies. Image Source: https://mashable.com/article/captain-marvel-avengers-endgame-theories/

While that act alone was infuriating, it’s not the scene that most annoyed me. It was the moment when, for no apparent reason, many of the female superheroes crowd around Captain Marvel stating she had their help. I didn’t like the scene for two reasons. One, it felt unnatural and contrived. Many of these characters didn’t even know each other and were all preoccupied fighting on an enormous battlefield. There was no reason why they would all suddenly have a 90s girl power moment and gather around one woman at that particular moment in what was an incredibly chaotic struggle. And two, even with the backing of all Marvel’s strong heroines, they could not get the job done. No, that glory was saved solely for one man: Tony Stark. The takeaway seemed to be, even combined, women can’t do the job properly; they need the men to step in and show them how it’s done. Maybe this sounds like a stretch or too harsh a criticism, but this was the very visceral reaction I had during the film. Marvel’s filmmakers have a long history of utterly depowering their female characters and this scene just seemed to follow in those footsteps.

I was also very disappointed by how small a role T’Challa and many of the amazing Wakandan characters had in this movie. As the leading tech hub in the world, I don’t know why the Avengers weren’t going there to ask for help in creating a time travel machine, or why they couldn’t have made it the new HQ, given Tony Stark had retreated to a log cabin somewhere in the woods. There were so many ways the writers/directors could have included these fantastic and important characters.

Image Description: The Marvel Studios logo set against a blurry, close up shot of a comic panel. The panel is blurry and undiscernable. It is tinted entirely red. Image Source: https://marvelstudiosnews.com/2017/12/10/marvel-studios-highest-grossing-superhero-movie-8th-consecutive-year/

The only glimmer for me at the end of the film was that it established the old guard were retiring or moving on to other things. We had something of a handing of the baton moment: Captain America gives his shield to Falcon, making him his successor, and Thor finally, officially makes Valkyrie the leader of Asgard (or what’s left of it). It is my hope that in future Marvel films, the creators will focus more on their characters of colour, female characters, and LGBTQ+ characters. They have an opportunity now to start a fresh wave that will resonate with so many more people than the classic, white, fanboy nerd. After all, you don’t make $1.2 billion in one weekend just because white millennial guys went to see a film. Many people love superhero films for a variety of reasons. It’s time we started serving them, too.

By: Tessa Barratt

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sydney Feminists. Our Blogger and Tumblr serve as platforms for a diverse array of women to put forth their ideas and explore topics. To learn more about the philosophy behind TSF’s Blogger/ Tumblr, please read our statement here: https://www.sydneyfeminists.org/a

2 notes · View notes

comicbookuniversity · 6 years

Text

Ten Thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War

I’m writing this the day after my second viewing, but by the time you’re seeing this, I’m hoping the majority of you have seen this.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, SPOILERS.

1. This was easily one of Marvel’s better films. The scale of it all could have easily collapsed this into a mess, but McFeely, Markus, and the Russo Brothers kept this film moving along at an exciting and steady pace that built into an intense climax- insert sex pun. I loved this film and loved it more the second time around. I don’t think it was as good as Black Panther or Civil War, but neither of those films operate in the same way as this one. This film was a rollercoaster experience, and a fantastic one. I think this film has to be judged in a different manner, because even Black Panther and Civil War still operate by relatively conventional film standars. Infinity War is a different beast; one must be fluent in the language and conventions of the MCU to really understand it. There has never been another film quite like this; the closest examples don’t operate on the same scale. Never has it been more true to think of the MCU as the world’s biggest and most expensive TV show than it is when you’re watching Infinity War. I will need more time to think upon where it lands on my list of Best Marvel films.

2. Between this film and Ragnarok, Marvel has made an excellent case for Thor traveling around the stars in a similar to the Guardians of the Galaxy. I would love to see Thor and Valkyrie gather up a crew and bring the fight to whatever cosmic asshole is trying to threaten the innocents of the universe. They should be called the Thor Corps. I am surprised at how Thor had somehow become the protagonist after Thanos, if you don’t want to consider the bad guy the protagonist, even though he functionally is whether you like it or not. Until Ragnarok, Thor had been more muscle than heart, and when you consider how much more focus and success has been built out of the characters of and the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, its surprising to think that Thor would be given so much screentime. It makes sense that he is the Avenger with the best chance of actually beating Thanos in single combat, but you don’t build stories around military tactics- you build them around emotional journeys. Thor has lost nearly everything, whereas Steve and Tony still have more to lose. When that is considered, it makes sense to focus on the building rage of a god while you build towards the ultimate loss of the great leaders of men. And Thor with his new hammer was freaking great.

3. I’ve seen a few critics argue that there were few characters arcs and that humor was used as a substitue. Plenty of great comedies have used humor as character work, and I think Infinity War also substantively used humor to efficently establish and advance character development in between the dramatic moments of the film from wherever the last time we saw them. This film had so many moving pieces to balance and it did so artfully.

4. Dr. Strange might have jumped significantly higher up my list of favorites thanks to Cumberbatch’s effective performance and the incredible fight sequences the movie utilized him in. Holy crap, you guys, Dr. Strange was fucking awesome in this film. Speaking of the weilder of the Time Stone, I decided to rewatch the Dr. Strange film the next night, and something occurred to me. I’m still debating whether this is just a common factor or a deciding influence, but I looked up the run times to all the Marvel films and had my hypothesis mostly confirmed. Generally speaking, the longer over 2 hours (including credits) the film goes, the better it has been recieved both financially and critically. This makes sense, because Marvel has even more time to develop all the relationships between characters; and the greater we are invested in these relationships, the greater the payoff. I think the Dr. Strange film would have been better if it had an extra 10-15 minutes to develop all the relationships at Kamar-Taj and a little extra for Rachel McAdams. I say only a little for McAdams, because I don’t think the film really needed that much more time in that arc since it was about him leaving her and the world she represents. My larger point is that Marvel should embrace two hours as the new minimum for their films.

5. Thanos is definitely one of Marvel’s better villains and that’s largely thanks to the brillaint performance of Josh Brolin, who commits to seeing and bringing the vulnerbility under all of Thanos’ power and evil plan. He’s still not Marvel’s greatest villain as that honor belongs to Killmonger, who will likely hold the honor until the next Black Panther film. Despite Thanos’ plan, Brolin, the writers, and directors of the film really give him certain amount of sympathy in seeing his commitment to his cause and the fear that ultimately drives him to act as he does. And it is fear that ultimately drives Thanos to act, because he sees the injustice in Life’s capacity for growth at the expense of the living. Thanos is someone who cannot and will not accept that Life is unjust and rages against this existintial condition with all his strength, and by the end of the film, the strength of the universe itself. But despite the great work of Brolin, what really helps Thanos is the sheer amount of screentime that the studio was willing to give him. With so many characters, many of of whom anchor their own franchises, it makes sense center the film on the least well-known character and force others to react to them, because it’s not about them in this moment. It’s all about their lives being interupted and forced to react to this almost natural disaster like situation, where winning doesn’t feel like an option and losing less feels like the only prudent mindset to have. Against the threat of Thanos, the superheroes are reminded of their own vulnerablity and mortality, and they feel more human than ever in this dark moment.

6. As introduced by Jonathan Hickman, my favorite members of the Black Order were Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight; look they all had wonderful names, Black Dwarf, Supergiant, Ebony Maw, and then they had the other name for their group- The Cull Obsidian. Damn those are wonderful freaking names, so I’m a little disappointed that the members of the Black Order didn’t even get named, outside of Thanos’ passing reference to Ebony Maw simply as “The Maw.” Also, this Ebony Maw has a different power set than his comic counterpart, but damn was he great; easily the creepiest and best member of the Black Order. Black Dwarf did have a weapon that kept changing into different modes that I thought was awesome. I wasn’t ever expecting them to be big and I was never certain if they would last beyond this film, but would it have added that much time for the Black Order to have gotten called by their names?

7. I thought Vision would have recieved a more significant arc in this than he did; Peter Quill did and all he did was lose his girlfriend, whereas Vision litterally has an Infinity Stone in his head and is willing to sacrafice his life to destory it. Vision spent most of his time being stabbed instead of being a hero. He would have made a good point of contrast to Doctor Strange; they’re each the weilders of Infinity Stones, but have radically different ideas of how deal with the stones when presented with the threat of Thanos. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense, due to the fact that he he is a Thor class fighter and that he hasn’t had much of a chance to develop as a character. To me, Vision is a low-key Superman figure of the MCU (or more accurately Martian Manhunter in direct compairson, but he’s just a more stoic version of Superman), and he suffers from the projections of Superman as tedious and boring figure being placed upon him. I think Vision suffers from the same problem that Star Trek does when compared to Star Wars; instead of treating the intellectual and philosophical pursuits with respect and excitement, the filmmakers assume that the audience is going to find it boring and treat it as boring instead of finding away to actually make it exciting. I think the best examples of the superhero genre are essentailly philosophical and ethical works that present the issues in a dynamic, colorful, and charming story, but because of what can be best called an attitude of anti-intellectualism based from ignorance, rather than something worse, the philosophy is often overlooked in favor of the simpler steps that would tie the character arcs and themes to larger philosophical concerns. I know it is not the most well liked of the MCU, but Vision’s scenes in Age of Ultron are some of the most earnestly poignant on the fragile beauty and duty of and to life itself. And these scenes also speak pretty directly to the core of Avengers philosophy, which has now been summed into a single line thanks to this film: “We don’t trade lives.” I just think Marvel missed an oppurtunity to really sell Vision as being more than a secondary figure and someone who is a product of the moral core of the MCU.

8. Considering how thoroughly representative of nearly every tone and narrative aspect of the MCU this film is, it only serves to highlight how underrepresented women and people of color are in the MCU. None of the Avengers or other characters who would typically hold franchises of their own are given nearly the same amount of screentime or material to work with in this film, because of it’s epic scope and the relatively simple nature of the conflict; but that being said, the women of the MCU are still given very little to do overall. They are supporting players while the men are off leading the charge or creating strategy that determines the fates of hundreds of trillions. The first person to die on screen is a black man, and there’s only one black man who is in a real position of power. Marvel still has trouble of thinking beyond America’s history of slavery and a segregated citizenery with African-Americans to see America’s other troubled relationships with national, ethnic, and religous groups and also give them some kind of positive representation. The only woman or person of color given a significant role similar to the signifcane of say Iron Man or Dr. Strange fighting Thanos on Titan is Scarlet Witch. This is a film where Scarlet Witch really gets to unleash her full power, and it’s seen in a tragic moment of where she is forced to kill her lover for the sake of the universe while holding back a nearly omnipotent being who defeated the Sorcerer Supreme just moments ago. Before I go on with this analysis, HOLY CRAP that’s kinda crazy to think how powerful she must really be, so I 1000% agree with Okoye when she asked why Scarlet Witch was not on the field of battle the whole time in Wakanda. Like, damn, she must be so powerful, so can we please get a film where Elizabeth Olsen is given more to do than play rookie and wear a sexy corest? And while there admittedly is a certain value to seeing her power arise from her love to Vision in this tragic moment, the fact that we have seen so very little of Wanda compared to her many male peers and her moment of great power is defined in part by her romantic relationship is not the most progressive choice. Had we had more time with Wanda in previous films, I don’t think I would find this choice as anything other than a sad moment in a star-crossed relationship, but because she has had so little time by comparison (and even without comparison) to her male counterparts this moment loses a little bit of the power it could have had as a symbol of female power equaling male power.

9. I’ve seen a few people complain about how the drama and value of the deaths of half the universe is undercut by the knowledge that these characters will be back in their own films within the next year or two. But I call bullshit on this complaint because it is based in cynicism and ignorance. There are three parts to this complaint: the first two problems are tied together in that the characters don’t know they’re going to come back, so if the film had botched its execution of setting up the emotional beats in this film to continue and progress our attachment to the characters, then it would have all fallen apart. But the film didn’t botch it, every line and edit is proposeful and effective in engaging and reminding us of why we love these characters in the first place, so since the film was executed well, we can sympathize and empathize with the characters in their sadness and shock at all these deaths. Second, even if we didn’t know from announcements made by Marvel or somehow guess from Marvel’s previous works that these characters would be coming back, the film establishes that its not over. Dr. Strange clearly knows what is going to happen (or at least something extremely close to the victory he searched for in all the possible futures). And even if Dr. Strange didn’t know, do we really believe these characters who we just watched try so valiently to fight Thanos from achieving his goal would allow him to go unpunished for his crime? Let’s assume for a split secon that there is not some way to fix what Thanos did, do we really believe that the film would spend so much time on all these different characters for it to just end on the one guy sitting on a hill when all their emotional threads are just left unfinished? The answer to all of these scenarios is no. There was never a version of this film that was a single part or the final film; this is clearly the first half of a story, so the audience value of all the deaths comes from thinking about and then later finding out how it all be fixed to as much as the heroes can fix it. People who compalin about the deaths as having no value or drama are just being babies about having to wait.

10. After having seen this twice and considering how well Marvel has been doing since the release of Civil War, I really think Marvel has found it’s groove and I am so excited for the future. While I would understand if they want time to do other projects, I would hope that the Russo Brothers, Stephen McFeely, and Christopher Markus always have one hand on driving the MCU. Feige has been there since the begining, but I feel like working with these four has really helped him focus overall and loosen his grip to trust the filmmakers he hires to execute their visions within the MCU. Gunn, Watts, Waititi, and Coogler all breathed new life into Marvel with their style and emotional honesty, and it’s this trend Marvel should continue to follow if they want to keep their success going. Infinity War is representative of many of the best elements of Marvel, and everyone involed in it should be proud of the work they’ve accomplished with it. That being said, Marvel still has progress that needs to be made, and it looks like it is going to be able to effectively do this by closing one chapter of the MCU and starting the next. I am so very excited for the journey we’ve all got ahead of us.

#avengers infinity war #avengers #marvel #mcu #captain america #iron man #thor #doctor strange #scarlet witch

42 notes · View notes

susandsnell · 6 years

Note

it's been bugging me for a while now, but five worst parts of the dark Knight and one good part. bc I know you hate the movie 😂😂

boh. oh my gosh. b please don’t hate me. 😂😂

Five worst parts of the Dark Knight:

5. The Filmmaking. More specfically: LONG AND WASHED OUT PALETTE. IT’S SO FUCKING LONG. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS WITH TEN PLOTS TO WRAP UP AND HAVE NO FUCKING COLOURS IN IT. WE GET IT, NOLAN, A MAN DRESSED UP AS A BAT BRINGS YOU NO JOY AND SO NOW WE HAVE TO NOT HAVE ANY JOY IN OUR HEARTS EITHER, THANKS A LOT. HERE I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE FUN AT A MOVIE ABOUT BATMAN, BUT YOU SURE PROVED ME WRONG.

4. The Writing. Holy pretentious dialogue Batman! Where do I begin?Harvey Dent’s “I will state the theme of my arc in the most lazy and blatant foreshadowing speech until Emma Stone literally says she’s gonna die in the opening of The Amazing Spiderman 2″ gets quoted all the time and yes, superhero movies aren’t known for their subtlety, and not all great movies need to be subtle, but the “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is egregious not only for the reasons I stated, but is a nauseating indicator of the film’s cynicism (despite what the boat climax purports to be proving!). Alfred’s “some men just want to watch the world burn” speech is similar albeit less facepalmy and Theme Stating. It’s blunt and heavy-handed, overly expositional, and very hit-you-over-the-head with regard to commentary.

And here’s the thing! It could work in the context of the type of movie it is - The Shape of Water pretty much opens with a statement of the “who the real monster is” idea, but it works because the film is a fairy tale and presents itself as such, whereas this movie wants to have its cake and eat it too as a “super adult DEEP subtle COMPLEX movie” with incredibly clear and simple shit like this. Beyond that, Nolan really has a dialogue issue in a lot of his works where nobody just has a fucking conversation. Everything has to be the most serious issue in the world or a ten thousand word treatise on the fundamental dichotomies of human nature or some shit you’d hear in a freshman philosophy 101 course from that guy nobody can tolerate who thinks he’s G-d’s gift because he wears glasses or some shit, I don’t know. Even the Joker, an agent of chaos, gets wrapped up into it! Like he is a showman, but the yammering and rambles of shit that isn’t even that deep but pretends to be gets on my damn nerves. And the worst part is that it comes at the expense of the characters.

They don’t really…develop emotional bonds (even with Rachel, the token woman And Therefore the Object At Which Emotions are Thrown). I’m not invested because none of these characters are real or relatable or have human interactions. The script shouldn’t be an anchor that drowns the actors and suffocates the characters to the point that there’s no chemistry, no connection, no believable core. Alfred is practically Bruce’s father and I get no love out of them! Harvey and Bruce don’t connect at all! Lucius Fox, the only POC in the entire movie, is literally reduced to a plot device despite having moral concerns!

3. That damn third act. This one takes special mention because it just pisses me off. It’s just too much! The chase with the Joker would be fine, but that’s not the end. His plot already extends way beyond where it would logically end (hence the bullshit runtime), but on top of that, on top of the drama with the escape ferries hammering you over the head with the point they’re trying to make about humanity and the obnoxious moralizing, and then you have Harvey’s fall to the dark side which I’m sorry, needed a lot more time than just getting crammed in to the back end of the movie. His descent into evil happened way too quickly. Two-Face is a great villain! But take Batman the Animated series (to me, the best adaptation of Batman there is, while not perfect) as an example: he’s established as a character and his descent into Two-Face receives the full focus of entire episodes and impacts the characters later on! Having him play sideshow to the Joker is a huge mistake, especially with something as huge at play as threatening Gordon’s family; it completely disrupts the focus of the plot and unnecessarily prolongs the film as a whole, but he goes down pretty easily in one of the movie’s shitty-ass fight sequences that I’d make their own point if there weren’t worse things because I can’t tell who’s punching who. And if you’re gonna rush Dent into villainy only to kill him, that makes his whole plot kinda a waste.

And The Dark Knight Rises was a lot more criticized than the Dark Knight, so how’s this for a fix for the entire trilogy? Don’t kill Two-Face. Keep Joker getting carted away gloating about having corrupted him, but then have Two-Face get away too. Don’t make whitewashed lamely written Bane the villain of the next movie - instead, let the tail end of this movie build Two-Face up as the main villain for the final part! That way, you have more time for development, cohesiveness, consequences, exploration of themes, and you don’t waste characters.

2. Batman / Bruce Wayne’s entire character. Okay, so whenever I fawn over the Lego Batman movie and how it confronts the issue with modern portrayals of Bats and rightfully points out it’s not deep, he’s just a humongous dick, this feels like the source material of that popular portrayal. Of course, it pre-dates it in the comics - Miller and company are to blame for Grimdark Asshat who Batmansplains, but I feel like Dark Knight especially, for its success and greater accessibility as a film, is what widely propagated this portrayal.

Secret identity or cape and cowl, there is a serious issue in your Batman movie if your Batman is terrible. He’s the protagonist, the titular character, and he’s fucking terrible! At best, Bruce Wayne is like…completely deadpan and not even there (I don’t give Bale shit because I think a lot of the fault lies with the writing/direction, Ledger was pretty much the only lively performance in the movie), placeholder of a protagonist. At worst, he comes off as deeply self-centered, self-aggrandizing, entitled, and violently unstable. I don’t care how bad the Joker is, when in custody, he still had legal rights, and Batman fucking tortured him. Even brutal criminals should not ever be tortured for information! And the film never engages with Bats reaching the point of beating people to a pulp as means of interrogation; he just feels conflicted about who’s worse and broods over it after the fact instead of, I don’t know, maybe thinking twice about torturing someone. The darker Marvel Netflix shows have their characters doing a lot of grim things, but the narrative or other characters almost always holds them accountable for it in ways beyond “aww, I feel kinda sad that I beat mentally ill people to a bloody pulp” – it challenges them often, or has other characters call them out. Batman just does this shit and people are like “oh you shouldn’t do that” and he’s like “AHHH I’M A MONSTER” and it borders into uncomfortable real-life implications with regard to authority and violence. There’s something to be said for introducing grey morality into superhero media, and I get the anti-hero thing, but Dark Knight codified the “white guy grimdark antihero being actually just a terrible fucking person who is the good guy in name only” deal we see in a lot of our media today.

It’s one thing to have a complex and flawed protagonist, but you have to balance that out with redeeming qualities, otherwise, he’s not even a fucking superhero! Again, I refer back to the 90s animated series: Batman has his moments of ruthlessness, but it’s balanced out with the philanthropy work we see in Bruce Wayne, and moments of genuine compassion that he shows many of his enemies – he apologizes genuinely to Two-Face, often tries to give them an out, and is frequently super kind to Harley Quinn, bringing her the dress she was accused of stealing when she was sent back to Arkham in the episode where she tried to redeem herself, and frequently trying to get her to acknowledge that the Joker is abusive towards her, as well as convince her she can still start over and be a good person. On top of which, Batdad is super popular in both the show and the comics. He’s frequently shown as having an especial soft spot for children; addition to all his adopted kids, you also have a lot of his interactions with children, whether as Bruce or as Batman, marked by gentleness, care, and compassion, largely based on what he went through as a child.

You get no such moment in the Dark Knight. I cannot for the life of me think of kids who would go to see this as a Batman movie and leave looking up to Batman and wanting to be like him except on the surface level of wearing a cool costume and punching bad guys. There is nothing heroic or admirable about this Bruce. He fights crime as a vigilante - brutally, I might add -and this time, it comes off more as a desire for vengeance than a desire for justice, a point which the film raises, but ultimately doesn’t resolve or engage with in a satisfying character arc.

The closest thing we get to humanizing this character is his relationship with Rachel, and even then, his interactions with her have heavy shades of Friendzoned Nice Guy which is especially bullshit because he won’t pursue a relationship with her yet is bitter about any decisions she might make about her own love life. He doesn’t even care about her that much as anything more than a conquest! He really doesn’t, and Alfred tearing up the letter proves that – with regards to how he behaves towards her, it really feels like it’s not so much that the letter would break his heart as it is that he’d resent her beyond the grave!

Worse yet, he gives no shits about anyone else. This has a lot to do with Nolan’s scripts having a toxic masculinity problem where it’s not cool for guys to sympathize with or have emotional bonds amongst themselves, but like… he’s allies in a shared venture with the other characters, and nothing more. Alfred is practically his dad but you wouldn’t know that. Gordon, as revealed in TDKR, was kind to him after his parents’ deaths, but they’re just partners. Harvey is a rival for claiming a woman! In other adaptations, Bruce and Harvey’s friendship is fleshed out a lot so the guilt and shock of his transformation into Two-Face is really impactful! Here, Bruce doesn’t really give a shit beyond it just being another thing to do.

And that’s what heroism and motivations are to Batman in this - just a thing to do. I don’t want to watch a hero who’d rather bitch about doing good than actually just fucking do good, this is the safety of your city, not a school essay! He doesn’t really seem to want to help people, he wants to complain about people, but then thinks he’s so fucking special and such a snowflake martyr for still helping them regardless! It’s such a deeply childish and yes, toxically male mentality. I know it’s become a meme, but the ”I’m not the hero Gotham needs, but the hero that it deserves” line pisses me off so much for this reason, as well as the fact that he thinks that Gotham’s flaws justify the fact that he beats the fuck out of people and roars in their face to get answers; I think the perfect refutation to both that line and how a superhero protagonist that explores what heroism means can actually be found in Wonder Woman – “It’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe.” In fact, that’s what made Wonder Woman so good (and feminist!) – it’s rejection of toxic masculine ideals and emphasis on love, compassion and vulnerability being one’s strength, and that people are inherently deserving of being saved if you believe in the good of the world - a much better treatise on good and evil than “see, people sometimes don’t explode boats but they still suck so it’s okay for a billionaire in furry cosplay to beat the shit out of mentally ill people because that’s what this city deserves, a guy who’s more into violence than saving people.” He just doesn’t care, so why the hell should we?

And there’s just no arc. He just reacts to shit and that’s it, which makes him boring when he’s not being a fucking maniac. Despite the script not allowing him to have feelings for other human beings, having him break his no-kill rule with Harvey at the end would have been impactful….had he not already broken it in Batman Begins by leaving White Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson I love you but there is no reason to have whitewashed him or Talia the way Nolan did in the series - same as he did with Bane and arguably Catwoman since she’s been portrayed as a WOC many times before, actually come to think of it, there is a LOT of whitewashing in this trilogy) to his death.

The film comes up with no real way to challenge it’s hero, have him grow, or change, or even show consequences for his failure to change, making him come off as stunted, unlikeable, and yeah, not much of a hero.

1. The sexism. (You knew this was coming, and yes, it is the worst part). I already mentioned how the men in this movie all fall prey to toxic masculinity as is common with Nolan characters, then even more characteristic of a Nolan movie is The Dead Girlfriend, Wife, or Daughter (you know, the only three things women could ever be!) of Sad White Guy(s). Rachel is the only female character (strike one) and she is handled nothing short of atrociously. Her entire job as a lawyer, intelligence, and hard work established in Batman Begins (which is also too grimdark but actually doesn’t piss me off half as much!) is hardly even mentioned and takes a backseat to her being a prize for the men (including her boss!) to throw feelings at and squabble over. While the male characters have no personality except for one characteristic and a goal because this script was written by an edgy thirteen year old boy, Rachel has no personality except to be a living emotional crutch/plot device. She does not exist as an autonomous individual outside her relationships to the men in the movie. Shit, she’s barely autonomous within these relationships! Bruce is a bitter little shit about her not wanting him back and we’re supposed to feel for him despite him literally offering her nothing relationship-wise for two movies and actively pushing her away at times! He feels he can’t be with her, but the framing is such that she shouldn’t have the right to be with anyone else, either! What the hell? I would even go so far as to say that her choosing Harvey just as she gets blown up, as well as how both of them got to that point, almost feel like the narrative punishing her for not wanting Bruce. More male entitlement bullshit.

And her fate…well, I mean. There’s a damn reason The Dark Knight is my go-to example when I want to explain what Fridging/Stuffed in the Fridge means. After having every possible stereotypical pigeonholed white girl trope tossed at her, Rachel is killed off callously for the character development and man angst of not one, but two self-obsessed stubbled white guys who make it about themselves and their right to act like phenomenal turds. She’s Helen of Troy – a woman blamed for people’s reactions to her (Harvey becoming Two-Face, Batsy or Bruce being saaaaaad, etc). She’s the Lost Lenore; a person reduced to how their death impacts their romantic interests. We have reached peak Nolan here, and frankly, peak Batman too, because the franchise (comics, movies, etc) has always had this same problem with its treatment of women. Her fucking death isn’t even about her! It’s Harvey’s fucking villain origin and Bruce’s sad ending and Alfred’s resentment and note-burning and would she have waited, oh boo hoo, how about, did she have a fucking family, what would have happened if she hadn’t been murdered young, et fucking cetera.

The thing that really gets me is that Rachel is by no means the worst treated woman in speculative fiction (especially not those that make a claim to some degree of intellectualism); she’s white, so her death is beautifully tragic and she’s put on a pedestal rather than being subjected to racialized misogynistic tropes (being treated more roughly by the narrative, having her suffering ignored or erased altogether, her death being callously ignored except for a throwaway line of dialogue, etc), she’s not unnecessarily and gratuitously sexually brutalized for shock value (that looks uncomfortably like fetishism at times) like the women on Game of Thrones or in nu!Bond movies, or, if we’re still in the Batman universe, Barbara Gordon in any iteration of the Killing Joke (which is another tentpole of misogyny in the Batman universe and I fucking hate it and it clearly influenced the Dark Knight, so, chicken, egg). She isn’t forcibly sterilized and her inability to get pregnant treated as making her a freak like AOU Black Widow. She has no pointless and insulting fanservice scenes like Carol Marcus in her underwear in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Her suffering is not treated as empowerment like any number of women written by Joss Whedon, she isn’t used to be chewed up and spat out and destroyed in a romance with either a guy who terrifies her and in whom she’s shown no prior romantic interest or an outright villain who has caused her nothing but pain in some stupid half-assed not-redemption arc where she has to sublimate herself and be stupidly forgiving beyond the willing suspension of disbelief so some horrible man can evolve.

But why this sexism sticks out to me is that it’s so insidious; if it were more on the nose like the examples I listed above, it’d almost be less jarringly offensive, but it masquerades as her being an empowered yet tragic character and weaves into an overall narrative that validates all the tropes I mentioned, and legitimizes itself in a way that feels fundamentally dishonest about how sexist it’s being. Worse yet, there’s the fact that The Dark Knight is more than just self-contained; its influence on not just comic book movies, but all kinds of media as we know it, is undeniable. And as far as setting the example goes? This hugely well-regarded, influential film is almost entirely white, and tells us that women exist as distractions, tragedies, and extensions of men’s storylines, and this bullshit has been echoing in similar media works since.

AND NOW, THE ONE (or multiple!) NICE THING(S):

All this being said, I admit there actually are a lot of things I like about this movie if I can separate them enough from the main issues! 😂For one thing, Hans Zimmer’s work on the score is top-notch; I listen to Like a Dog Chasing Cars and Harvey Two-Face all the time and the music alone provokes stronger emotions for the characters than anything in the movie actually did. The opening heist is just fantastically entertaining, and up until the messy third act, the pacing and plot is pretty tight and engaging! Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is of course fantastic; although he’s not my favourite Joker, he really gave it his all, and is by and large the highlight of the film. Nolan is really good with visual appeal (with the exception of that damn colour palette) and the shots are fantastic. I really love the chase scene with the Joker and wish the rest of the movie held my excitement like that.

Finally, it’s odd to say this, but I really like the world of the movie once I ignore the characters and plot. The Gotham that was built in Nolan’s trilogy, the contrast between the classes with the lavish receptions and dinners versus the underbelly, the corruption versus the goodness, how these disparate elements work in a terrible symbiosis, the architecture and technology reflecting this character – it’s incredibly vivid, both grounded in reality and yet sufficiently speculative fiction-y enough to be intriguing. I just wish that the people in it matched the quality of the setting. 😂😂😂

14 notes · View notes

sally-mun · 7 years

Note

As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

| First| Next >>

#sciver #Sallymun plays Major/Minor #I hope you guys enjoy this because it was not easy #if you know someone who's thinking about this game please show them this post #REBLOG TO SAVE A LIFE

39 notes · View notes

rosiep66 · 7 years

Text

"IRON MAN 2" (2010) Review

”IRON MAN 2” (2010) Review I must say that I am grateful to Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) showrunner Kevin Feige and the filmmakers of ”IRON MAN 2”. I am grateful that they only waited two years to make this sequel to the 2008 hit film, “IRON MAN”, instead of three years or more. But even if they had made the movie more than two years after the original film, I believe the movie proved to be worth any wait. Some IRON MAN fans and film critics had expressed the opinion that ”IRON MAN 2” was inferior to the original 2008 movie. I certainly feel differently. I believe that this movie was superior to ”IRON MAN”. Mind you, this new film had a few flaws. One, I was baffled by Tony Stark’s reluctance to join S.H.I.E.L.D. I had assumed after the appearance of the organization’s leader, Nick Fury, in the original film’s Easter egg sequence that he was eager to join. Even Tony’s appearance in 2008’s ”THE INCREDIBLE HULK” seemed to hint this. So what happened? Is it possible that screenwriter Justin Theroux failed to see the last ”HULK” film? One would think so. It took me another year to discover that “THE INCREDIBLE HULK” is supposed to be set a few days or a few weeks after the events of this film. Only . . . why? Why did Feige make this convoluted move with the franchise’s timeline? I found it so confusing. The movie’s score, like the 2008 film, sucked. As much as I was impressed by Matthew Libatique’s cinematography, I must admit that I did not find it as impressive as his photography in the 2008 film. But I will discuss this subject in greater detail, later. Nor was I that impressed by Tony’s initial behavior toward Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow. I found it slightly sexist and somewhat tacky. Even Pepper Potts’ snarky response that he would open himself up to a sexual harassment lawsuit could not erase ugly taint that surrounded his comment. ”IRON MAN 2” may not have been perfect; but as I had stated earlier, I believe that it is superior to the first film. Do not get me wrong. I loved ”IRON MAN”. I still do. But in an article I had written about some of the Summer 2008 movies, its plot struck me as simple and a little unoriginal. I cannot say the same about its sequel. Thanks to Theroux and director Jon Farveau, ”IRON MAN 2” focused upon the consequences of Tony Stark becoming and admitting to being Iron Man in the last film. During the six months since the end of the last film, Iron Man’s actions as a superhero has allowed him to maintain world peace. His actions have also attracted the attention of a U.S. Senate committee, led by Senator Stern, who demanded that Tony release the Iron Man technology for military application. Stark refused, claiming his competitors are years away from successfully recreating the technology. But more trouble seemed to plague Tony. The palladium core inside the miniaturized arc reactor that he had created to power his Iron Man armor and prevent the shrapnel from a disastrous Afghanistan trip in the last film from reaching his heart . . . was slowly poisoning his blood system. Foreknowledge of a possible early death led Tony to acts of excessive and dangerous behavior – including re-instituting the Stark Expo first initiated by his father back in the 1970s, appointing his personal assistant Pepper Potts as the new CEO of Stark Industries, in and participating in the Monaco Grand Prix, at the Circuit de Monaco. It is in Monaco where Tony has his first encounter with Ivan Vanko, a Bratva member and Russian physicist who happened to be the son of another physicist and former Stark Industries employee, Anton Vanko, who was fired by Howard Stark and deported back to the Soviet Union. Anton Vanko had also worked on the original plans of the arc reactor with Stark Sr., but the plans remained in the hands of Stark Enterprises. Vanko Sr.’s death at the beginning of the movie sent Ivan into a spiral of grief, leading him to create his own suit containing an arc reactor. Vanko used his new suit to attack Tony at Monaco. The attack attracted the attention of another weapons industrialist named Justin Hammer, an arch-rival of Tony’s. Hammer arranged Vanko’s escape from jail and recruited the Russian physicist to design drones similar to the Iron Man armor for the Stark Expo. Tony also has to deal with the return of S.H.I.E.L.D. in his life. Unbeknownst to him, the organization’s leader, Nick Fury had assigned one of his agents to infiltrate Stark Enterprises to assess Tony as a possible agent. His spy turned out to be Tony and Pepper’s new assistant, Natalie Rushman aka Natasha Romanoff. Although Fury has become reluctant to recruit Tony for membership in S.H.I.E.L.D., he managed to provide vital materials to the industrialist to allow him to develop a safe element for his arc reactor implant that also provides superior power. One would begin to wonder if the screenwriters had dumped one too many plotlines in the movie’s script. Some critics have complained that the movie possessed one too many villains. I would disagree. ”IRON MAN 2” simply had a complex plot that did not – in my opinion – struck me as difficult to follow. In fact, I believe that the plot’s complexity allowed the movie to be superior to the 2008 film. As for the number of villains, there were two – Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer. ”IRON MAN” also had two villains. Robert Downey Jr. reprised his role as Tony Stark aka Iron Man. I am trying to think of something to say about his performance. But what is there to say? He was magnificent as always by skillfully portraying every aspect of Tony’s personality – both the good and the bad. Yes, Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was a charming, caring, brilliant and strong-willed man. But he was also narcissist, egotistical, and somewhat self-centered. This is a man who used his Iron Man technology to bring about world peace, instead of using it for personal gain and who had enough trust in his personal assistant to name her as the new CEO of his company. Yet, this same man resorted to alcohol to escape from his demons and was thoughtless enough to give his new CEO strawberries as a gift – completely forgetting that she is allergic to the fruit. Downey Jr.’s performance as Stark seemed to be among the best comic book hero portrayals I have ever seen on the silver screen . . . back in 2010. In one of the last scenes in ”IRON MAN”, Tony said the following to his personal assistant, Virginia “Pepper” Potts: ”You know, if I were Iron Man, I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity. She'd be a wreck, 'cause she'd always be worrying that I was going to die, yet so proud of the man I'd become. She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more crazy about me.” In ”IRON MAN 2” Pepper certainly discovered how stressful her life could be as the object of affection (or desire) of a celebrated costumed hero. Gwyneth Paltrow returned to the role of Pepper Potts, Tony Stark’s personal assistant-turned-new CEO of Stark Industries. And I have to say that the actress did a skillful job of conveying the stress and anxiety that threatened to overwhelm her character. One of my favorite scenes featured a moment when Pepper’s emotions finally overwhelmed her, as she tendered her resignation in an angry tirade. As everyone knows, Marvel Entertainment had decided to replace Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle for the role of Tony’s best friend, Lieutenant-Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes U.S.A.F. I will not discuss the circumstances that led Cheadle to replace Howard. I will say that Cheadle gave a top notch performance as Rhodey. Do I consider him to be a better choice than Howard? No. I would say that the quality of both actors’ performances struck me as equal. Not that I find that surprising. Both Cheadle and Howard are excellent actors with a strong screen presence. I did notice that Cheadle’s sense of humor never had the opportunity to flourish, until the movie’s final scenes. And his screen chemistry with Downey Jr. did not seem as strong as the Downey Jr./Howard pairing. But he certainly did not disappoint. I must confess that I have only seen Mickey Rourke in three other movies, besides ”IRON MAN 2”. Aside from his award winning performance in ”THE WRESTLER”, I was never that impressed by him. When I had learned that he would be cast as the main villain, Ivan Vanko, I had qualms about Jon Farveau and Marvel’s decision. In the end, I found myself very impressed by his performance. He managed to portray a menacing, yet emotional personality in a suitably low-key manner. However, I could barely understand some of his lines through the thick Russian accent. It is a major pity that Marvel/Disney did not keep him around. Sam Rockwell was as volatile as Rourke was low key. And surprisingly, his volatile performance perfectly suited his character, Tony Stark’s fellow defense contractor – Justin Hammer. What I especially enjoyed about Rockwell’s performance was his ability to inject a raging inferiority complex underneath the gregarious personality. Scarlett Johanssen had the opportunity to strut her stuff as Natalie Rushman aka Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow, Pepper’s new assistant and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. I must admit there were times I wondered if Johanssen’s character had a personality. It finally dawned on me that she simply possessed a no-nonsense persona that could kick ass.

Director Jon Farveau returned as Tony’s bodyguard and chauffeur, Happy Hogan. Thankfully, he got to do a lot more in ”IRON MAN 2”, which included coming to Tony’s rescue with the Iron Man suit during Vanko’s attack during the Monaco Grand Prix, and assisting (somewhat) Natasha during the latter’s breach at Hammer Industries. Samuel L. Jackson’s role as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, was increased in this second film. And all I can say is . . . thank goodness! I really enjoyed his strong screen presence and lively conversations with Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. I got the feeling that the two actors really enjoyed working with one another (unless I happened to be wrong). Clark Gregg returned in the role of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson. Not only was he his usual quiet and assuming self, but also deliciously snarky. John Sterling of ”MAD MEN” made an appearance as Tony’s father, the late Howard Stark, in old film clips viewed by Tony. Slattery’s Howard Stark struck me as lively and witty as Downey Jr.’s Tony. His performance made it easy for me to see the genesis of Tony’s own personality. And the late Gary Shandling tossed aside his usual comic persona to convincingly portray U.S. Senator Stern, a determined politician who wants the Iron Man armor in government hands. However, he was allowed a rather snarky and very subtle joke in the film's last scene. As I had stated earlier, I was not that impressed by Matthew Libatique’s cinematography in ”IRON MAN 2”. Mind you, I did not find it terrible or a travesty to the art of motion pictures. But I cannot recall viewing any fantastic airborne sequences that were featured in ”IRON MAN”. Aside from Rhodey’s arrival at the Edwards Air Force Base in the War Machine armor, the movie did not feature any daytime aerial scenes, just slightly confusing night time sequences near the beginning and the end of the film. But, as I will point out later, there was one exception. However, I found most of the film’s action sequences very exciting – especially Vanko’s attack upon Tony in Monaco; the birthday brawl between Tony and Rhodey in the Iron Man and War Machine suits; Natasha’s fight against Hammer’s security guards; and the aerial chase sequence over the Stark Expo between Iron Man and the Vanko-controlled War Machine. I must be one of the few who, to this day, still regard “IRON MAN 2″ as better than the original 2008 film. I also regard it as one of the better films of 2010, despite its few flaws. It would also proved to be the second to the last time in which I would truly enjoy Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark aka Iron Man.

1 note · View note

artificialqueens · 7 years

Text

MacArthur Park (Rajila) - Juniper

Summary: Raja has an epiphany during Delta and Manila’s lip sync. Drag Race set. 3k.

Author’s note: Two from me in one queue! A good chunk of the beginning is an expansion of Untucked, but I feel it’s necessary. This idea was just eating me alive, so I hope you enjoy!

Exhilaration.

It was probably the only accurate way to describe what Raja was experiencing as she left the main stage, hands jittering as she moved toward the lounge. Every bundle of nerves were on fire, and she had no desire to fight back the wild eyes and smile she was sporting. She opened the door, heart still thumping loudly, threatening to rise up out of her chest. She quickly reached for a cocktail, slipping the straw between her teeth, trying to find a normal heart rate. It was just her on the couch, along with a producer and three camera men she was supposed to act oblivious of.

A stage was nothing new to Raja; she’d been up above crowds for almost twenty years, dancing around in a dress, pretending to sing someone else’s songs. As she matured, gained a professional reputation, she began hosting shows, speaking to young minds that wanted to hone their crafts to be just like her. Raja, the fashionable, runway-drawn, fierce artist that she was. However, never had she been forced to write a script of stand-up comedy and deliver it in front of a crowd, her idol, and the entire nation watching at home.

She’d done well, maintaining composure as she drew laughs from the audience of strangers, bucket of fake blood stemming from her scalp and all. It was one of the most exciting moments she’d experienced in the competition thus far, the rush like that of a high-speed amusement park ride, throwing her all out into the sea of vultures below, eyes expectant.

Shangela’s plan of throwing Raja under the bus had failed; she had opened the show and left a lasting impression doing so. Raja amusedly sucked down more alcohol as she thought about it.

One by one, the girls made their way backstage; Carmen, Alexis, Shangela. Each queen recounting their acts, what got the most laughs, which jokes they were most proud of. Raja’s stomach was finally starting to settle, mentally reminding herself not to grind her teeth on camera at the slight shade she was receiving from Shangela.

She’d set the tone, and it seemed that everyone was excelling in the challenge, so far. It was going to be interesting to see what the judges would have to say. All the girls were lifting glasses off the table, fiddling with the lemon on the edge, a scantily clad Carmen somewhere behind, ditching her fat suit and readjusting her tuck.

The door creaked open again, and Manila slipped through, wide eyed at Carmen. She sat as the queens grilled her, asking questions suggested by the producer, and her answers led Raja to believe that maybe she hadn’t done so well. It was a competition after all, but she’d found a good friend in Manila, and wanted the very best of her challengers by her side until the end. She’d be damned if that wasn’t the Heathers.

Yara entered, and Raja’s mind drifted away, thinking about the long evening they still had in store. Her feet were already aching, the blonde wig hot on her head, and as she finally came to a calm state, she felt exhausted.

Delta came in last, and her nervous energy was picked up by Raja immediately. She knew her sister, and something was definitely up. Delta and Manila talked about the struggles of being out on your own, not having anyone else to bounce jokes off of, or take up dead space, and Raja’s heart skipped a beat. If it truly was as bad as she sensed, it wouldn’t be a shock to see two of the Heathers in the bottom.

They were all escorted back out onto the runway, enduring the critiques. Raja was pleased, and for most of the girls, there were compliments aplenty. Confirming her fears, the judges tore into her friends. She watched Michelle’s polished fingernail point at Delta, demanding that she get out of her head. Raja shot her a worried look.

Once back in the longue, Raja relaxed onto the sofa. The dynamic of the room had shifted, as it usually did when people’s feelings got hurt, and Raja winced as Delta began to rant, laughing apathetically about disregarding her criticisms.

They change the subject, having a relaxed kiki, discussing the words of Ru, Santino, Michelle, and their guest. Shangela cuts Raja off mid-sentence, and the annoyance bubbles inside her gut once again.

Manila beings to talk a lot, as she often does, spewing off words and defenses about being called a copycat, before Delta speaks up again. She’s beating herself up, acting as though she’s so underwhelmed by her performance and her place in the competition. She feels undervalued, and Raja shakes her head as the self-deprecating comments keep coming. There’s a sarcastic tone, but it hurts Raja’s heart.

Delta is more than a friend. A lifelong companion, a drag sister to have by her side forever. Raja’s seen Delta up on stage, collecting tips and applause. She knows how amazing she is, how beautifully her mug is painted, how intelligently her style shines through. She’s a polished queen who has earned her respect, and it pains her to see the dark cloud hanging over her head.

Suddenly, she’s on the floor, ripping off her wig and mocking the elimination process. She’s raving about the absurdity of it all; this isn’t a drag competition, it’s just a show made to exploit them and put them through the ringer. Raja’s tapping her foot, the other queens visibly uncomfortable at the vibe being created, as Delta swears that she’ll refuse to lip sync.

It doesn’t look good for her, Raja knows. Delta has already been in the bottom twice, and track record could definitely play a factor if her competitor brings it. She steals a glance at Manila, trying to save face, but she catches the occasional lip quiver. She’s talented, but so is Delta, and she feels guilty for knowing which Heather she’d rather have stay.

She grabs Delta by the wrist, pulling her into the gold bar. She isn’t going to let her sister crash and burn without a fight.

“Okay, you’ve gotta stop this,” she pleads, but her words fall on deaf ears. Delta’s mind is riddled with insecurities, and it seems that no matter how many well-deserved compliments she’s paid, her heart is overcast. The song is a classic, a disco hit that Delta knows, even without studying. Delta is a firework, and Raja knows she can pull through one more time to stay another week.

She’s trying to act calm, not letting her own nerves show. It wouldn’t feel right without her by her side. Sure, she’d have Carmen and Manila, but they weren’t Delta. If she was going to win, she wanted Delta with her through it all. She’d have to go sometime, but not now. Not like this.

They all go back onto the main stage, Raja’s predictions coming true. She doesn’t have time to be irritated with Shangela’s win; her heart is racing as the raised platform is deserted, one by one, until it’s only Manila and Delta.

Raja isn’t sure what she believes in anymore, but she says a prayer, nonetheless.

She’s biting her lip. She thinks to the nights they’ve spent gossiping, twirling the hotel phone cord around her finger. The coffee runs, granted to them after many complaints to Chanel. All the hours they spent, working their fingers to the bone, only to be rewarded with disgusting food and a lack of sleep. The Heathers made it bearable. By the second day she’d found someone so similar to herself in Manila.

It was going to be a damn shame to watch her sashay away.

The opening chords flood out of the speakers, and the lights move. Manila gracefully flutters down to the floor, yellow feathers dancing on their own. Her attire is almost eerily fitting to the song.

Donna Summer’s voice speaks to Raja as she tries to keep her gaze even, willing her spirit to give confidence to Delta. She’s performing, brilliant as always, and comically uses her chunky bracelet as a prop.

Then, the song is building, and everyone’s eyes turn to the Asian queen as she throws her whole body into the song, hands shaking, eyes crossed. The sheer energy and passion strikes Raja to her core, and the laughter of the judges seems like it’s coming from a million miles away.

Her eyes burn as she tries to force them onto Delta, but she can’t rip away. Manila is dancing the house down, so theatrical, and hungry to stay. The raw emotion is radiating off her body, and it’s entrancing.

Everyone is all smiles. The anxiety creeps up Raja’s center as she sees RuPaul’s gaze intently fixed on the younger queen, aware that Delta is quickly fading into the background. Manila’s bending her body back, arms in the air, expression crazed. Her fingers drag down her face, wiping the tears and mascara all over her cheeks.

Slowly, the exhilaration from before comes back, and she feels her body bopping to the beat. Raja’s cheeks ache from smiling so widely, and she has to restrain herself from taking a step forward.

In so many years, she has never felt like this. This truthful, honest display is beautiful to her, and it reaffirms her faith in the art of drag. It’s so beautiful. Manila is so beautiful.

It feels like five hours and two seconds all at once, but it’s finally winding down, and Manila stumbles as she runs into Delta, sweeping her up in her storm. She clings to her friend, crying out apologies, and Raja wants to run up and cradle them both.

The applause is thunderous as each queen returns to her respective end of the stage. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind what the result will be, and yet Raja still curses when Manila is declared safe.

Everything afterwards moves in a blur, and Raja steps up to embrace Delta as she’s walking offstage. The other Heathers join in, and Manila is still sobbing. Raja finds herself gripping her wrist during the group hug. It doesn’t last long enough.

They all step backstage, feet bruised and battered, spirits weary. Typically, they’re allowed to go back into the workroom to de-drag, so long as they pretend not to see that tale-tell message on the mirror, spelled out in cheap lipstick. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Manila talking to Chanel, who’s holding a clipboard in her hands, and Raja can only assume she’s pleading to just go back to her room. She’s exhausted, and Raja can relate.

–

A few hours later, Sutan gives up on biting his lip, and finally pushes up from the bed. He knows he should be mourning the loss of his friend, but his mind is racing through a million thoughts a minute, and he’s craving some fresh air.

It’s not long until midnight, and they have an early call tomorrow. Still, he grabs for his pack on the coffee table, making sure his lighter and keycard are in his back pocket before heading outside.

There’s fancy outdoor lighting hanging everywhere, casting an orange glow on the outside pavilion Sutan always heads to when he needs fresh air. Metal tables and chairs sit unoccupied, and for a moment, he thinks his only company is the slight breeze and the cloudy night sky.

He sees his blonde tuft of hair first, peering up for any signs of the moon. He’s in a hoodie and gym shorts, bare feet dangling over the grass, as he sits on a short cement wall.

As Sutan approaches, he can see black streaks still staining the younger man’s face. Splotches of thick foundation remain, and he can’t help but wonder how long he’s been out there.

“Hey, Heather,” he said softly, as to not startle him. It was strangely silent for such a populated hotel, the only true sound coming from hidden crickets. “Your face is going to rot.”

It’s a joke, but neither laugh. Sutan leans against a pillar adjacent to the wall, lighting up, and for a couple of minutes no one speaks.

“Do you think Gabriel hates me?” Karl finally asks, voice hoarse from disuse.

“No, Manila,” he responds with a hefty sigh. “He knew he was going to be in the bottom, it was just his luck that you happened to kill it, right? It’s an honor to leave to another Heather.”

Sutan feels strangely calm. For a moment, he wonders if he’d feel any different if the outcome had been in Delta’s favor.

“Would you have hated me if I sent you home?”

“Probably,” Karl says, after a few beats. “For a while, anyway.”

Sutan takes a long drag, the sparks at the end of his cigarette burning their way up, dying and turning to ash. Something stings, and he wants to pretend it’s not the thought of going back to a life without Manila, never hearing her laugh in the morning or seeing her stupid cross-eyed face.

“Well, at least you’re honest,” he breathes out. Karl doesn’t smoke, though he does look in need of some vice to drown his sorrows with.

Karl feels guilty, and he doesn’t hide misery well, Sutan notes. He wants to reach out, but keeps his distance.

“It’s gonna be you and me, Heather,” he says, eventually, and Karl looks up, under eyes dark with fatigue. “Until the bitter end.”

“You think so?”

“Unless Shablamgela has some secret weapon and sends both of our asses home,” he snorts, and suddenly Karl is laughing weakly. It sends a tingle through him.

Karl pats the cement next to him, and Sutan stomps the butt of his cigarette out before hopping up. They watch the grass sway with the breeze. There are no flowers.

“What did it feel like?”

Karl groans, rubbing his face. He bumps Sutan’s shoulder and he chuckles quietly.

“The absolute worst. I felt like I was going to throw up, I was so scared. My heart was beating out of my chest.”

Sutan said nothing, content to listen.

“This sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I couldn’t shake it. Ru’s eyes were burning into my skin. I didn’t want her to go, but I couldn’t lose. I didn’t think I wanted this so bad. It’s about more than the money and title, now. I’ve worked so hard, my whole life, and I always end up second best. I don’t wanna waste my life away in an office job. I’m meant for this, I know I am. Nothing brings me joy like sketching out my next outfit, plotting out a performance. It feels right, Sutan.”

His stomach flips at the sound of his name.

“Yeah,” he breathes in agreement, before clearing his throat. “I know what you mean. Like, I’ve done so many other projects…but there’s something about drag. It just draws me back.”

“It’s gonna suck to send you home, too.”

Sutan sees the quirk of Karl’s lips, and he shoots him a narrowed glance.

“Shut up, Heather.”

They’re laughing, for real now, sadness being alleviated each second. Karl leans his head against his shoulder. Sutan lets his eyes close. He can feel the other man’s breath on his arm, and it tickles him, but he makes no effort to move.

He thinks back to the elimination, watching Manila silently scream with passion, move with artistry. The makeup coated tears he so longed to wipe away. It was enchanting, intoxicating, and for a few seconds, he let himself dare to imagine what he might have done if he had let himself take those steps further.

She was beautiful, even dressed up as a Muppet. Something clenched around Sutan’s heart. Perhaps all they had in common was more than coincidence. Two sides of the same coin, meant to be together.

He knows he shouldn’t, that he’ll probably regret this, but he doesn’t care. It could be his fried brain talking, forced into near solitude and wringed out for all it was worth, but he thinks the moon is looking to him, and she’s saying to move toward his body.

He twists, placing a hand on Karl’s knee. His head perks up, and their eyes meet. Sutan is scanning every inch of his face, trying to see if he’s reading the situation correctly. The feeling is unmistakable.

Karl smiles, suddenly, and Sutan does this same. He only moves in about an inch before he hears the other boy speak up.

“We could really make a difference in the way drag is viewed, I think. The world is gonna be wowed by us when all of this is over and airing. Even if I don’t win, I’m so ready for what’s to come. We should be proud of ourselves. I can’t wait to see what Sahara is gonna say.”

In an instant, Sutan jerks back, eyes focusing on nothing. He’s willing his face not to heat up, thankful for the heavy shadows encompassing them. His nerves are rattled. How could he have forgotten?

Sutan has a big ego, but he isn’t stupid. He knows what certain things look like, how they feel, and how they sound. The tone applied to Karl’s voice when he says his name is not at all the same as the way he says Antoine’s. He’s dizzy, so embarrassed by what he was about to do.

Karl stifles a yawn, covering his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I’m fucking beat. I think I’m gonna turn in,” he says, and Sutan can only numbly nod. He’s both grateful and upset. Wants him to go, desperate to ask him to stay.

Karl hops off the wall and walks back toward the building. Sutan can hear him swipe his card, the faint beeping mocking him.

“Love you, Heather!” He calls out, and Sutan waits until he’s gone to reply.

“Love you, too.”

#raja gemini #manila luzon #rajila #delta work #hurt/comfort #slight angst #juniper #rpdr fanfiction #submission #canon compliant

47 notes · View notes

wr8tur · 7 years

Text

SUPERGIRL RANT TIME FULL 1

WARNING THIS IS GOING TO HURT FANS SO PLEASE SKIP IT

I’ve been trying so hard not to disparage any pairings because I don’t want to hurt people’s feeling since we are all entitled to our opinions. And this is just my opinion so please do not hate and stop reading my fics because you don’t agree.

I knew this show would not be pushing boundaries and it’s sad because they missed a lot of opportunities to. I wanted it to because we got a heroine stand alone TV show when we couldn’t even get a heroine stand alone movie! But then it wasn’t even a heroine stand alone TV show because Martian Manhunter is there and Superman and Flash appear too.

And I know other heroes made cameos on Smallville but that was like later on when the writers needed to extend plot and audience interest because Clark saving the day by himself wasn’t captivating enough.

The only reason I stayed as long as I did was because of Cat Grant! I freaking loved how unapologetic she was, a perfect contrast to Kara, and a contributor to her personal growth as a character. And no, I didn’t ship them. I kind of saw it as a cross between a mother/daughter and a master/padawan relationship.

And yes we have Sanvers but like I said that isn’t pushing boundaries. Alex is a character created for the show and Maggie is already out and proud in the comics.

Doesn’t mean I don’t like either of them. I just mean that their homosexuality is a safe and obvious writing choice.

What boundaries were really pressed when CW already greenlit Clexa (who I know ended but I’m blaming Fear the Walking Dead for that), bisexual White Canary, and Rafael Solano’s crazy ass sister? Point is girl on girl loving’s been around the CW for a while.

But for Kara be with Mon El? The cliché of the girl next door falling in love with the bad boy while she’s helping reform him so he may change the error of his ways? I mean, come freaking on!

That might have worked if this were a show about teenagers! But this isn’t The Breakfast Club or Dawson’s Creek because despite her name, Supergirl is not a girl. She’s a young woman who should know better than to fall prey to love interests who offer her no growth as a character because the only thing Mon El taught her is that MAYBE not all Daxamites are douchebags.

And even then, that’s not a very big moral lesson for Kara to learn, seeing as she should already know it! She’s spent enough time on Earth to know about racism, sexism, and whatever else ism there might be.

I suppose she’s learning to forgive, a lot. Because Mon makes a plethora of mistakes that people are supposed to just brush off because he’s from a distant planet and doesn’t know better. Basically, he’s like a child learning the ways of people on Earth hence why I think he’s infantile and frequently acts immature when he doesn’t get his way or he doesn’t understand why he’s wrong.

I think the intention was for Mon to be a character that would push Kara to see the worst in herself so that she and the audience will realize she has faults and is far from perfect.

He’s supposed to humanize her, make her more relatable for audiences because we don’t want pure and perfect. We want them a little damaged, broken along the edges. We want to be able to empathize, put an aspect of ourselves or something we aspire to be in a character so we’ll love them more.

But I feel like the reason it doesn’t work is because it feels like he’s attacking her, who she is at her core and not just simply challenging her beliefs and ideals. He’s putting her down and it feels as though it’s so he can justify how cowardly and self centered he is. I find it hard to sympathize with the words of someone who really has no moral standing to be teaching a lesson seeing as it is coming from a petulant and narcissistic need to be right and superior than Kara rather than an actual helpful approach.

I mean take Snapper Carr. He’s harsh with Kara but we can sense it’s because he wants to push her to be better. Mon just feels like he’s lashing out, retaliating, because Kara’s been calling him out on his obvious character flaws.

Lena is the one who challenges not out of spite but out of a desire to educate. And maybe yes, she’s looking for sympathizers to her cause but her opposition mainly stems from intellectual differences and not solely emotional. Lena’s managed to engage Kara’s mind by offering different views about the bad aliens and bad people. Lena is teaching Kara that there are sides to every story, Lena is showing a different path/view than the one she knows and always follows, Lena is encouraging her to dig deep and think about things from another person’s perspective.

If that isn’t character growth, I don’t know what is!

Ugh… Let’s put this in genderless terms for those who may claim that I’m being biased because of the Katie McGrath issue.

On one corner, we have someone who, may or not come from royal lineage which means they’ve been entitled their entire lives, gets stranded on a planet after discovering they might be the only one of their species left, has to adapt to the ways of the new habitat.

Then on the other corner we have someone who’s been disparaged all their life, who has been earning the right to their name because they felt like they didn’t deserve it but then to find out that they do and now is solely responsible of bringing their entire lineage to the light, to rectify the mistakes of their entire family, by whatever means necessary, all on their own.

And this person is choosing to do it simply because they believe it’s what they should be doing, not just because they are worried what a potential love interest/ best friend might feel.

Because Lex spent a lot of his time feeling sorry for himself, only stepped up his game in Smallville after he met Clark. Besides, that episode where Lex got split in two made it seem like his evil side gained dominance over his good so it’s quite different from what Lena’s going through where she’s choosing the path for herself.

Tell me, which character arc you’d want to see more?

Because I’ve seen similar characters of the first one but I have yet to see a character who has been so close to actual darkness and have no one in their corner yet manage to retain some semblance of light all on their own?

Because that’s who Lena is, a person who’s been struggling with darkness even before she met Kara, even before she may or not have fallen for Kara/Supergirl. She’s been alone because she’s been cast aside, repeatedly reminded she’s worthless and undeserving, but finds the strength within her to constantly prove everyone wrong and succumbs to no one’s ideals but her own.

Which I know is hypocritical of me to demand since in my fics Lena’s reason for wanting to be better/good/not really evil has something to do with Kara.

Then again she’s a proficient conniver in Winning Ways thus retaining the whole she’s not totally bad but she’s not totally good either thing I think she has going for her. Plus, she didn’t really change who she is so she can get Kara. I mean she totally used Kara’s weaknesses to her advantage so maybe not so hypocritical?

Then again, my Lena’s never masked her intention in my fics. She’s always managed to let Kara know she’s her reason for doing things as opposed to Mon El’s approach of wanting to change just so he can be around Kara.

I digress…

Lena is a much more interesting character because even before the Luthors episode, her character already had so much going for her. She was already going through a struggle we hadn’t seen before because her freaking brother was a murderous psychopath who didn’t care who was in his way as long as he killed Superman. And yeah, Lionel killed his parents in Smallville so I’m guessing this universe’s Lionel is just as seedy.

I didn’t even know Lena’s adoptive mom was alive, though I suspected, but I still wanted to see whether or not Lena was on the light or dark or gray. I was captivated by her character already.

And now she’s wasted as secondary plot device….

Maybe Mon is supposed to be the character we sympathize with? Maybe he’s the flawed individual who’s dripping with potential but needs guidance to realize his true purpose.

Maybe if they had focused more on his adapting to human ways instead of combining the hero element, he would work more as a character because right now there are too many heroes on the field since we got a glimpse of Superman and now James wants to be a hero as well.

Maybe I wouldn’t mind Mon and Kara KaraMel relationship if I didn’t feel it was so infantile and shallow and utterly predictable.

Maybe if Mon was the rebellious headstrong beginner hero they intended him to be instead of the ignorant and arrogant conformist he’s coming off to be I wouldn’t feel such a need to ship Lena with Kara.

Maybe if Mon had more time to grow, if they gave a full season for him to learn and evolve, he’d be a better character.

Maybe if it felt like he would still be trying to be a better person and a hero regardless if Kara wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with him or not, hence the conformist comment, or confessed to Kara that she’s his reason for wanting to change then I’d respect his character.

Maybe I’m just disappointed I haven’t found an on screen canon girl on girl couple I can totally be in love with.

Maybe I’m just being greedy.

Or maybe I just long for the day when I shouldn’t have to be grateful for a semi main gay character to be on a television show.

In this day and age, I’m sick of the breadcrumbs.

I know I’m just an amateur fanfiction writer and perhaps I’m being too harsh and critical and I’m sorry if it feels like I’m saying the cast and crew aren’t doing their jobs right. I know how hard writing can be. I know the writers are doing the best they can but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

RANT TIME DONE

#supercorp #lena luthor

2 notes · View notes

phynxrizng · 7 years

Link

Respond to this postbyreplying abovethis line New post on Witches Of The Craft® February 2017: Leo Lunar Eclipse by mistressmyst February 2017: Leo Lunar Eclipse a message from Lynda Hill To view more of Lynda's insight, visit her website, Sabian Symbols February’s Leo full Moon on 11th February (at 12:32 am GMT) is a appulse lunar eclipse. As an eclipse it is not particularly powerful, but it is a lunar eclipse nonetheless. The two main elements of this eclipse, the Moon and the Sun, both have Sabian Symbols that speak of ‘circuses’ and performance. The Moon is on Leo 23: A BAREBACK RIDER IN A CIRCUS DISPLAYS THEIR DANGEROUS SKILL and the Sun is on Aquarius 23: A BIG BEAR SITTING DOWN AND WAVING ALL ITS PAWS. Many have said what a circus we are experiencing at the moment; we can feel like we’re witnessing ‘circus acts’, and, we may be wondering what is reality and what is just a part of the ‘circus’. The ‘performances’ that we are seeing, or, participating in, may have us feeling as though we are not sure where we are likely to land, and, there can be a feeling of reality versus theatre. This sense of mystery, or being uncertain, can be sense even more strongly as Mercury is on a Symbol that can bring further confusion with Mercury on Aquarius 6: A MASKED FIGURE PERFORMS RITUALISTIC ACTS IN A MYSTERY PLAY. There are, though, redeeming energies in this full Moon with both Jupiter and Uranus in good sextile and trine aspects to the Sun and the Moon. This shows the possibility, indeed, the necessity, of accessing our beliefs in the goodness of life, and, our personal freedoms. This is made stronger by both Venus and Mars in Aries; we are coming out of a very Piscean time where we may have had a ‘sink or swim’ feeling around events, in both a personal and a political sense, especially as we have been witness to some very strong political movements that have challenged or inspired us to action. We are likely to be revving up our energies and gathering up our strength and embracing more and more our individual thoughts, beliefs and feelings, and, we may have had to throw out things along the way, especially recently. Adding to the sense of of the need for more personal autonomy is Mars on Aries 11: THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, OR THE RULER OF ONE’S COUNTRY. This Symbol speaks of the need to call the shots, to be in charge, to not let others call our agendas. Easier said at time, for sure, but, we do well to remember our true place in the scheme of things – we are asked to take control and not let others push us around or define us merely by our ‘country’; where we come from, what we do for a living; how much money we have. It seems we, our leaders, and our world may have a lot at stake. Yet, how do we tell what is reality and what is theatre? This lunar eclipse has been amplifying intensity levels and will bring this act to a head. WORKING WITH THE LUNAR ENERGIES The full Moon each month marks a time of heightened energies and events. It often marks the culmination of the energies released at the new Moon. Emotions can be supercharged as the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the zodiac and illumination is increased – it’s like we can see in the dark – and we can be hyper-aware as well as being hyper-awake. The effects of a full Moon can be major or minor, depending on how they interact with your own chart. Sometimes, realizations or events that are unleashed, or unlocked, can stretch their meaning months into the future. A lot can be learned at the time of the full Moon and whether it’s lunacy or illumination, or a combination of both, there’s magic unleashed. The Sabian Symbols He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount. Chinese Proverb Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting. Karl Wallenda I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse’s good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment. Ludwig Wittgenstein I get enough exercise just pushing my luck. Bumper Sticker If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus. G. McAllister Better ride on an ass that carries me than a horse that throws me. Romanian Proverb No one reaches a high position without daring. Publilius Syrus The full Moon is on Leo 23: A BAREBACK RIDER IN A CIRCUS DISPLAYS THEIR DANGEROUS SKILL – the following is from my book The Sabian Oracle: 360 Degrees Of Wisdom: – this Symbol works well if we feel that we are doing something that we are born to do, something we’ve worked hard to succeed at, doing those things, perhaps that feel ‘second nature’ to us. If we are not ready, or, practiced at what we’re attempting to do, we can be thrown off, we can end up having to go back and learn the ropes some more in order to accomplish what we’ve set out to do. Commentary: ‘A Bareback Rider in a Circus Displays Her Dangerous Skill’. She puts herself in the middle of the action, taking risks that are second nature to her. Training has prepared her to perform tricks and maneuvers that seem awe-inspiring, well timed and carefully planned. She is so well rehearsed that even the most dangerous stunts are done with ease. These things, however, can be so daring or dangerous that others would have trouble even imagining doing them, let alone actually attempting to do them. She has an amazing sense of balance and belief in her center of gravity. Oracle: You may believe passionately in what you are doing, but in order to prove yourself to others you need to present your abilities and feelings boldly and skillfully. You may need to be fully prepared to rush into the “ring” and show what you’re capable of. This done correctly will impress others, and may cause others to be in awe of your talent and the risks and dangers involved. However, remember to be wary of “running into the ring” unrehearsed, unprepared or in the wrong frame of mind. A sense of timing and the knowledge of what you’re doing is critical, as is being unruffled that others may be watching to see how well you succeed. If you have confidence in your abilities, there’s a good chance that you won’t be “bucked” or “thrown off”. You will have the ability to complete your mission and be applauded by others for your achievement. If, however, you are scared stiff of taking on this challenge, do you think you should chance it? If you are merely looking for applause, acclaim or recognition from others, without being sure of what you’re doing, this may indeed be a dangerous and foolhardy stunt. Do you feel you have the balance, skills and courage to do what is necessary? Keywords: Defying gravity. Controlling one’s animal instincts. Courage and mastery over one’s energies. Shows of strength. Situations where one might get “bucked”. Rushing in where angels fear to tread. Being shown in the media. The allure of drama and danger. Life as a circus or carnival. Amazing displays of skill. Superheroes. Comic book characters. Impressing people with well-rehearsed skills. The Caution: “Showing off”, losing control and falling. Demanding attention. Looking for applause. Fooling with nature’s energies. Arousing or controlling animal passions. Acting wildly and not thinking about the consequences. The Moon symbolizes: Emotions, moods, mother, family, clan, domestic issues, relationship to home and country. Feelings, sentiments, nourishment, emotional nurturing, monkey chatter mind, lunar and menstrual cycles, clarity of emotions or lunacy. Female energy – yours and others. The Sun is on Aquarius 23: A BIG BEAR SITTING DOWN AND WAVING ALL ITS PAWS – this Symbol can have us feeling like we have to ‘perform’ in some way that may not be second nature to us, although, if we’ve put in the time, studied what we need to know, practiced and rehearsed, we can move into a whole new sense of accomplishment as long as we are not compromising ourselves, or, doing what others expect of us. Staying authentic to who we truly are is key here. This speaks of the need to develop responses and perform above and beyond the normal expected level. Having to do what others tell you, or perform along the lines of how you’ve been trained may be fine for a while, but eventually you are likely to tire of doing the same things or not being taken seriously. Perhaps there are things you don’t want to do, but it seems your duty to perform. Look to your situation and see if you are compromising yourself or just acting out conditioned responses. Perhaps you are indeed excelling your normal level of performance, only you can tell. Keywords: Developing skills. Making excuses. Performing rote responses. Expecting others to perform. Entertaining people. Being theatrical. Stomach rubs. Big, tall, brute energies. Sitting down or standing up. Fur and fuzzy hair. Playing instruments. Dancing. Performances. Hand and arm waving. Animal training. Bears. Training in general. Learning by example. Fun vs. drudge. Circus performances. The Caution: Being unable to recover your feet. Instinctive and creative performing for the crowd or desire to be the center of attention. Defying authority. Being vulnerable. The Sun symbolizes: One’s core center, spirit, heart, issues to do with father, men, self, ego, your male side. How you radiate your sense of being. What others see, how you are recognized or remembered, sense of identity and connection with male energy – yours and others. Mercury is on Aquarius 6: A MASKED FIGURE PERFORMS RITUALISTIC ACTS IN A MYSTERY PLAY – just what is going on can be a mystery with Mercury on this degree. As with the Sun and Moon Symbols in this lunar eclipse, Mercury can have us wondering if what we’re seeing or hearing is really real. We may feel the need to somehow ‘perform’ in order to ‘fit in’, although, often with this Symbol, we have an even stronger sense of the need for stripping away what is false, what is theatre, what doesn’t ring true to our authentic selves. This Symbol shows being theatrical, conveying a story, putting on a show, getting messages across to others. “Mystery Plays” portrayed archetypal stories from the Bible, often performed in Latin. “Performers” traveled the countryside, entertaining and teaching with drama as well as humor. Sometimes the “Mystery Play” can show that things are not quite as they seem. Mysteries can play a big part here – is someone wearing a mask? You may find that you are not shown the true face of people or situations. Look to see who the performers are. Are you part of the play or in the audience? Perhaps you need to be cautious in what you reveal. Keywords: Rituals. Shamanism. Archetypes of personality. Putting on a show. Portrayals of performances that don’t always add-up. The unmasking of someone. Comedy. Banditry. Mystery. Drama. Acting. Rituals. Executioner’s masks. Smoke screens. Doing the technical but not the emotional. Saying or doing things because they “should”. Having alternate personalities. The Caution: Deceptive or neurotic performances. Unwilling to admit to changing times. Not knowing who the players are or what the plot is. Cautious revealing. Tricks. Ploys. Mercury symbolizes: Mind, thought, communication, memory, expression, intelligence. News, exchanges, chatting, conversations, short journeys, connections with others, telephones, emails, siblings, neighbors, the reasoning mind. Day-to-day activities. Cars, keys, small animals. Venus is on Aries 6: A SQUARE BRIGHTLY LIGHTED ON ONE SIDE – if we’re feeling hemmed in, like there’s no escape, as if there’s no clear way forward, we will do well to remember our creative and spiritual options – we can look towards the ‘light’ –there is always a way out of dilemmas when this degree is around. This Symbol often shows a positive nature that knows how to find ways out of situations by creating creative solutions. Don’t become too concerned with one side of issues in the material world, even if you feel boxed in with no way out. Don’t have all your eggs in one basket. You have the ability to simply look around with a more objective eye and apply simple, active solutions – there are always ways out of dilemmas. Look for the light and head towards it. Keywords: Illuminated solutions that provide ways out of tight situations. Having to put up walls to protect or defend versus taking down the barriers. Putting all your eggs in one basket. Feeling fully contained. Walls and fences. Boxes. Understanding the borders of one’s activities. Looking for stabilization. Lighting up dark corners. Sunshine. Stepping outside the square or feeling there is no square. Moving out. Windows and doors. Rubik’s Cube. The Caution: Surrendering, feeling trapped, seeing only one side of situations. Bouncing around. Wanting to escape tight situations. Feeling locked in or boxed in. Venus symbolizes: Relatedness, cooperation, what attracts you. The experience of sweetness, beauty or delight. Social interactions, love, friends, how you reach out to people. Feminine persona, relationship with mother and females. Money, possessions, sense of values. Mars is on Aries 11: THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC, OR THE RULER OF ONE’S COUNTRY – it is quite extraordinary that Mars is on this degree, really, with all that’s going on politically in the world right now. Mars here can remind us to take charge of our lives, to be our own ‘president’, to call our own shots. Even if we feel somewhat at the mercy of other’s ‘authority’ over us, we can break out of that by reminding ourselves of our autonomy… What interesting times we are living in. This Symbol shows that it’s time to take charge, to expand your base of operations and to show that you have the integrity and the necessary energy to get things done. It’s also about bringing a sense of order and discipline into your life – physically, spiritually or emotionally. Find your sense of inner power and make it work for you and don’t let others lord it over you. Be in control of your own destiny and individuality. Show that you can be given a position of responsibility and get things done. Keywords: Developing willpower. Inner power, discipline and integrity. Discipline of thoughts, emotions and actions. Leadership, power and ability along with their responsibilities. Accepting responsibility for one’s actions. “Calling the shots”. Rulers, presidents, leaders. Taking charge. The need for loyal subjects. Being voted in. The democratic process. The Caution: Taking control, lording it over everyone, being overbearing. Egotistical and self-centered. Undermining others through a lack of awareness or self confidence. Mars symbolizes: Drive, determination or agenda, how you get to your goals. How you express and handle anger, ambition, assertion of self and ability to step forward. The male principle, sexuality, the ability to step up to the plate when one needs to. Fight or flight. Jupiter is stationary retrograde on Libra 24: A THIRD WING ON THE LEFT SIDE OF A BUTTERFLY – Jupiter goes retrograde on February 6 on this degree, adding to the need to find our balance, our equilibrium, etc. On a physical, emotional or political level, we can find the left and right working against each other as each side tries to gain control of the other. Needless to say, this can lead to all kinds of struggles. Finding our This Symbol can show imbalances of many kinds; physical, mental, spiritual or emotional. Understanding and accepting fragility and differences in our self and others can give greater empathy for those who have difficulty operating efficiently in the world. When the transformation into full potential occurs, it is wonderful, however, you may feel that you are unnaturally developed or somehow lopsided in the emotive, intuitive realms. Instinct may swamp logic or logic may take from instinct or intuition. Physically, one side of your body could work more efficiently or smoothly than the other. It helps to try to regain balance and equilibrium – try finding that still space in the middle. Keywords: Creative overbalance. Bodily impairments and handicaps. Being light, flippant and fluttering from thing to thing. Over-sensitivities. Oddities. Beautiful imperfections. Idiot savants. Imbalances. One side of the body being more perfect than the other. Wings, arms, legs, feet. The Caution: Unrealistic reliance on being different. Obsession with strange things. Flapping around and not getting anywhere. Restlessness, nervousness. Lopsidedness. Jupiter symbolizes: The big picture, expansion, exploration, aspirations, religious and philosophical ideals, issues to do with traveling, foreign lands, people and traditions, culture, education, generosity, luck, abundance, support, optimism. Insight through knowledge and wisdom. Saturn is on Sagittarius 26: A FLAG-BEARER IN A BATTLE –Saturn on this degree can bring out the desire, or the need, to stand up, to wave our flag, to salute our standards. However, with Saturn here, the push back may be rather strong, or, we may feel somewhat tired of constantly having to step up. It is going to be very interesting to see which way events go over the next few weeks, with Saturn on this degree. The trick is that Saturn is just now entering the orb of the Galactic Center, where we are said to be able to connect with the ‘Law Of Attraction’ (I feel that we can connect with that ‘law’ on any degree of the zodiac, it is just particularly strong on the degrees from Sagittarius 26 to Capricorn 1). With Saturn here, we may feel that things are out of our control, but, with faith, we can direct our responses, and, our realities into our chosen direction. Having said that, we may still need to stand up and be counted, at least in some measure. This Symbol shows standing up in “Battle” carrying the “Flag” for your nation, political, social or moral beliefs, or for some issue that needs defending or supporting. The “Flag-Bearer” is often the one ‘out front’, in front of the situation or the army; the one who’s unarmed and yet determined to represent their side. You may feel that there have been achievements done by you or others that need to be acknowledged. Responsibilities pile up on you, and the struggle is not always easy. Don’t worry, though, although everyone around you is busy, they are noticing your leadership abilities. You are often the linchpin of the whole situation. Keywords: Having the courage of convictions. Standing up for ideals. Representing one’s collective in a worthy cause. Carrying the standard or the ‘Flag’. David and Goliath. Being the messenger. Advocates. Ensigns. Leadership. Self sacrifice. Fighting for political ideals. Flag waving. The Caution: The sacrificial lamb. Overzealous idealism. Empty shows of courage. The fear of stepping out of line. Not knowing when to back off. An inability to keep quiet. Saturn symbolizes: Authority, rules, discipline and obligation The heavy stuff. What we fear, loss, karma, aging, the establishment, orthodoxy, tradition, status, the concept of time, walls, boundaries, limits, older people, restrictions, patience, conquering difficulties. Uranus is on Aries 22: THE GATE OPENS TO THE GARDEN OF ALL FULFILLED DESIRES – concentrating on where you want to be can indeed bring you more and more to that place. We need to step up to the plate and step through the gate, even if it means overthrowing some things that are outworn or unfulfilling in our lives. A sense of peace and fulfillment can be at hand with this degree, although we may have to let go of non-essentials in order to step into that rewarding space. This Symbol brings up fabulous opportunities and possibilities. You could find yourself in beautiful places with your desires met. There can be the promise of happiness; stability and feeling like you’ve arrived where you want to be. At times, though, you may be right at the point of what you want, but perhaps you need to make the deliberate action of opening the gate; admitting to your self what you want and where you want to be. Perhaps you need to knock, showing your intention of wanting in. Maybe you already have everything you need – look around. Keywords: Craving happiness. Gardens and their treasures. Trellises and flowing plants. Pathways to bliss. Gates and doors. Unlocking and opening gates and doors. Analyzing your heart’s desires. The grass being greener on the other side. Rewards and treasures waiting. The allure of somewhere else. Initiations. Passages to a better life. Acquiring property. Sexual fulfillment. Opening up to life’s possibilities and rewards. The Caution: Denying your self the right to receive just rewards. The grass being greener on the other side. Always wanting more and more. Possessions owning you. Uranus symbolizes: The unexpected, things that are individual or ‘different’. Charged, energetic dynamics, electricity, light, lightning bolts, sudden changes, those who live on the fringe of society. Sudden turns and twists of fate. Rebellion, surprises, liberation, freedom. Neptune is on Pisces 11: PEOPLE TRAVELING A NARROW PATH, SEEKING ILLUMINATION – staying true to your path can bring enormous rewards, especially if you’re been clear about what and where your ‘true path’ is. That light at the end of the tunnel does not have to be an oncoming train, although, at times, especially lately, that may be exactly what it has felt like. This shows having a quest, “Seeking Illumination”, having a “Path” and staying on it regardless of what life throws at you. Sometimes the search for high ideals and understanding places us at odds with the more conservative social expectations of others. It is the ability to persevere with the search, regardless of the cost, that marks the sincerity of any path or journey. You may, at times, have to go without some comforts or stick to a rigorous agenda. Most times this quest is very illuminating, sometimes it’s confusing. You will need to reject that which is unworthy, while staying true to your objectives in order to stay focused on the goal. Keywords: People “on the Path”. Sticking to one mindset, diet, regimen or habit. Having a cause to follow. Not looking sideways. Awakening one’s base senses in order to progress. Physical ecstasy. Being in the now. Going towards the light. Staying true to self. The promise of light at the end of the journey. The Caution: Being blinded by the light. Not knowing where you’re going. Denial of physical pleasure. Puritanical and one-eyed. Distractions. Narrow minded. Disillusionment. Neptune symbolizes: Mystical, “out there,” spirituality and con artists. Dreams, mysteries, mystics and religious issues. Intuition, clairvoyance, seeing into the invisible. Addictive, chaotic, charming, deceptive, illusory, co dependent, sensory awareness. Pluto is on Capricorn 19: A CHILD OF ABOUT FIVE CARRYING A HUGE SHOPPING BAG FILLED WITH GROCERIES = this Symbol, especially with Pluto on it, can bring up issues of having taken on too much, feeling burdened or held down by responsibilities. It can, of course, show situations where someone is not mature enough or ready to carry out all that needs to be done or taken care of. One can feel tired and weighed down, although, there can be a leap ahead in our development if we can rightfully sort out what is truly ours to shoulder and what is not. This Symbol shows having to “Carry” heavy loads, to shoulder responsibilities, do chores and jobs and help others, sometimes because there’s no one else who can or will do it. Often, the “Child” gets these responsibilities because they are the one who others know is going to take it seriously, completing the task, taking care of details. You may feel that you have been burdened with responsibilities beyond normal expectations and possibly beyond your capability. Despite being keen and enthusiastic, you must be careful not to try to take on too much, or do too much, or too quickly. Like a child, you need to play, be creative and rest. Keywords: Being the one everyone counts on to do the job. Feeling weighed down. Having to carry the “bag”. Lifting heavy weights and bearing the consequences. Taking on things above and beyond what one should. Acting the grownup. Maturing quickly. Looking after paperwork. Running errands. Providing food and sustenance for everyone. The Caution: Overloading the innocent and the inexperienced without thought of the consequences. Never being ‘off duty’. Dropping the bundle. Carrying the family. Pluto symbolizes: Unconscious motivations, depth psychology, history. Sex, procreation at a deep level, intensity, profound emotions, taking hold of one’s power. Being king or queen of one’s underworld. Strength, survival mode instincts. Big money. Big power. The Plutocracy. Power vs power struggles. Chiron is on Pisces 23: A ‘MATERIALIZING MEDIUM’ GIVING A SÉANCE – Chiron was on this degree for several months last year. Many people felt that their psychic abilities and intuition were increasing, leading to stronger impressions and being able to pick up on what’s going on. Chiron here can bring rich rewards from checking out what we ‘materialise’ through our thoughts, through the stories that we tell ourselves. What are the stories that take up your time and energies? How true or viable are they? This shows the ability, or the need, to pick up subtle energies and psychic clues in the environment. The “Materializing Medium” can receive radiations, frequencies or vibrations that cannot easily be sensed by most people. You may be experiencing a surprising sensitivity and awareness to spiritual forces and energies. This can cause confusion, other times enlightenment. Sit with any new impressions until you understand their authenticity or depth. Sometimes there is a need to free ‘stuck’ or earthbound entities. This can show someone who can “Materialize” things; make things happen just by thinking about or concentrating on them. Keywords: Spiritual channeling. A need to free up “stuck” or earthbound entities. Efforts to materialize things. Coming straight out with things. Giving voice to spirit. Tarot readings, clairvoyance and clairsentience. Things seen ahead of their time. Bringing messages from the other side. Contacting the dead. The Caution: False fronts or performances. Making things up. Using mind control to get a desired outcome. Weird energies or people. Quacks. Imposters. Fakes. Delusional. Chiron symbolizes: Our wounds, Chiron is known as The Wounded Healer. The wounds are The Stories That We Tell Ourselves, it is where we have to focus on healing, it can show things that are out of shape or misplaced or in need of repair. The Moon’s North Node is on Virgo 4: BLACK AND WHITE CHILDREN PLAYING HAPPILY TOGETHER – the Moon’s north node on this degree brings up issues to do with seeing others as equals; to see people on the same playing field, people just wanting to get ahead in life, being free to be themselves without fear nor favour. This Symbol shows the integration of people of different races, religions, economic status or places. You may find people from different or seemingly disparate or separate areas coming into your life, making it richer, more rewarding and interesting. Prejudice of any kind, whether religious or race based, economic or class systems, is an illusion based on social perception and excludes people that could add to our lives. Social perceptions can color how we see others and these need to be put aside. Rather, it’s about embracing brotherhood and caring. The integration, acceptance and enjoyment of all people brings depth and meaning to life. Keywords: Universal brotherhood. Overcoming prejudices and boundaries that separate people. Knocking down social barriers to relate freely. Being able to let go, relax and have fun with people from anywhere. Adopted siblings. Foster homes. Affirmative action. Trust and joy. Play that unites people. The Caution: Acting with morality that is swayed by public opinion. Not being able to adjust psychologically to situations that require creative responses. Racial prejudice. The Moon’s North Node symbolizes: This is known as quite a ‘karmic point’ (although all planets and points in a chart can be’karmic’). One’s destiny in this life. The things you are meant to integrate, move towards, become. Destined relationships and relationship issues can show up here. The Moon’s South Node is on Pisces 4: HEAVY CAR TRAFFIC LINKING TWO SEASIDE RESORTS – this Symbol can have us racing backwards and forwards, it can have us travelling, moving around, etc, or, it can have us thinking too much, not being able to settle where we are, not feel settled anywhere. This shows moving about, getting from destination to destination in a free flowing manner. Driving or flying or in a bus; there’s lots of activity going on. There’s also a need for space sharing, patience and give-and-take as people have their own needs. This can show communications and linkages between separate worlds leading to increased pleasure, OR, frustration, confusion or psychic indigestion and the need for a holiday. There’s a lot going on and confusion can set in if one doesn’t follow the rules to ensure a smooth flow of operations. Being ‘squeezed-in’ can bring a sense of panic but it can also bring pleasurable interchange between people and a chance to tune out. Keywords: Going with the flow. Running back and forth. Having to move continually. Pollution and car exhaust. Rush hour and road-rage. Plans for arrivals and departures. Public holidays. Traffic jams. Traffic banking up. Having trouble making left hand turns. Detours. Packing and unpacking. Luggage. Travel itineraries. Impasses. Nervous systems. Urine therapy. Constant phone calls. Switchboard jams. Heat and smog. The Caution: Distrust of connecting elements. Creating barriers. Constant traffic. No real human interchange. Road rage. Traffic works. No time for leisure. Accidents. No escape. The Moon’s South Node symbolizes: Past karmic patterns to be overcome, can be habits that are good, but can describe things, relationships, issues that you need to let go of, or, hold you back from manifesting your true destiny. Relationships that feel karmic and difficult, memories from the past. mistressmyst | February 10, 2017 at 5:56 pm | Categories: Articles | URL: Comment See all comments Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Witches Of The Craft®. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://witchesofthecraft.com/2017/02/10/february-2017-leo-lunar-eclipse/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

1 note · View note