#it was going to be something completely different and then i rewatched sense and sensibility

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 1/31/23

month started on a sunday, ended on a tuesday, very satisfying

listening

Toxic Las Vegas (Jamieson Shaw Remix). this has been on my "silly little walk for my silly little mental health" playlist for three weeks so it's time for its place in the tuesdaypost. part of the appeal is that it's two songs i already like but this remix does something where i go "whoa is that the james bond chord" every time even though it is NOT.

-

reading

Bullet Train, a black humor thriller set on a train full of asssassins by Kōtarō Isaka. i have been having... mmmmmmmm. a time. let us say. and i have been clinging to things that i have lost my mind about (mostly cowboys) in order to get through the agonies. so it is weird, now that i am branching out a bit more bc things are on a slightly different tack, to be like "yeah i liked this a normal amount and i agree with the 3.8 goodreads average. i will not remember this in three months." npr said basically: fun little genre piece with no real depth! i don't completely agree with this, bc the book is not action-scene focused! the very few fights are short, blunt, quick affairs. there's a lot of focus on personal ethics and legacies, and a great deal of terror derived from random chance. but yeah it's not really a literary novel.

this was a fast, fun read. a rare example where i liked the adaptation (the recent movie which is a VERY loose adaptation) much more than the original work.

i try not to be picky about sentence structure or work choice in a translated work, bc translation is a tricky business at best, but there were some funky choices here and there that did throw me out of my groove. it's written in present tense, which is fine, but i cannot remember the last time i read a professionally published non-romance book written in present tense. i described the movies as "really wants you to know it took AP English", and the book is similar in an interesting way-- book!tangerine is constantly quoting English literary-canon novels.

the book (and movie) have a very dry sense of humor that clicked with me. "it's not clear why the man is naming fruits". at LEAST two sensible chuckles.

the biggest book/movie divergence is with the character of the Prince: a fourteen-year-old serial killer, who we spend a great deal of the book with, who asks nearly every grownup on this train "why is it bad to kill people?". a rare book in which i actively wanted a child to die. i think this character is much improved in the movie, since the character is both aged up (a young teen boy in the book, an older teen girl in the movie), and given clearer ties to the rest of the cast. however, this adaptational choice does lose almost all of the terror of the random chance the book makes you sit with. in the movie, the prince has a motive. in the book, that kid just ain't right.

had a fun time but not enough of a fun time that i will be seeking out the other novels in the series on purpose. perhaps if i come across physical copies cheap it will ping my memory and i'll grab them, which is how i acquire a lot of my physical books. this feels like im damning with faint phrase, but i did have a fun time reading this! it's just that my brain is a sieve and lately anything that doesn't completely possess me is immediately forgotten.

-

watching

fallow week bc i have been #gaming. i need to literally put on my to-do list "rewatch The Big Sleep for febslash feb research" maybe that'll get me to actually do it. im going to take this opportunity to complain about how much fucking work it is to write smut. not even the technical stuff bc i do like to write smut that's threesomes where everyone is the same gender and has the same color hair. the hard part is going "okay what's sexy" and then like storyboarding out the sequence of events to make sure everyone's having fun and it CONSISTENTLY stays sexy the whole time. i have never had irl sex with a narrative throughline. difficult difficult lemon difficult

-

playing

still running around in wolfenstein: the new order making this big beefy boy do jumps and slides. went to the moon. came back from the moon. hit a very fun bug as i try to fight my way out of the london nautica where i crash landed, bc i died, the level spat me out at the last checkpoint, and there were no health or ammo or armor pickups anywhere. just what i could scavenge off the fallen. very unpleasant to fight through a room with 20 health but i did do one whole room before realizing this was a bug. i would not like to play the entire game like this. very stressful. the big boss at the end of the level was also extremely stressful.

but let's talk about the moon, the moon in the fucking sky. how was the moon? was the moon fun? no it was full of nazis. it was also jammed full of sixties computer banks tho. many instruments and dials as well.

as i write this on sunday night i am going to attempt Again to finish the second to last chapter in this game. i am So Close to finishing this game in under 20 hours [ed note, monday night: lmao still have not finished this game]. look at some more computer banks there aren't enough pictures to break up this post.

not sure if this is a side effect of the next-location action movie disease, but wolfenstein is very interested in how areas link together. lots of temporary facilities that have grown ad-hoc roots, lots of trains planes and automobiles. we drive a lot of trucks. we’re in helicopters and subs and moon rockets. we blow up a bridge and scramble through several trains, blowing one of them up. we fuck on a train also can't forget that cutscene. we live in the sewers. we scuttle around in vents. we are in some very far-flung locations but they all look the fucking same bc they are encased in brutalist concrete. i'm sure this is bc it's fun to have a gun battle on a train and on the fucking moon and bc like u only have so many guys actually modelling things for your levels.

this is a very half-baked observation bc i think i am beginning to get a migraine (as i finish writng this on monday night) but let's get this out of the way first: all buildings are political. something something things invented and built for war never actually go away, something something transportation infrastructure to ease conquest continues to keep the colonies within easy reach of the imperial core, wartime infrastructure like highways and bridges as a tool of empire, fascism is a constant state of war which in this game is partly represented by constant shooting and also constant building. something something the unsustainability of not only constant building things but constant growth. something something long linked history of fascist architects who love brutalism. this video game has great visual design and visual shorthands is what im trying to get at. i think.

the london nautica museum/labs/spaceport is a big gun. this is not a subtle game.

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making

here's a peek behind the curtain: i talk about cooking when i don't have anything else to report on. but i genuinely did not have anything else going on this weekend bc this took all my fucking literal and metaphorical spoons. this represents like three weeks worth of soup lunch (the red lentil previously discussed on this series) plus two quiches.

why so many quiches lately? i bought two dozen eggs before christmas and thought i would do more baking than i did, which was zero. tried this dal palak recipe, majorly fucked up the proportions of the spinach bc i cannot read the back of a package, and by the time i corrected my mistake i had a fuck of a lot of the spinach/onion/spices. unfortunately i fucking hate the texture of rice plus lentils plus this mixture all together, but felt bad about wasting so much food, so the lentils went into the soup (which i needed to make more of anyway) the spinach mixture went into some quiche (bc i needed to use up those eggs anyway) and uhhh idk what will happen with the rice yet. maybe fried rice to finish off the last three eggs in the carton. this entire debacle used all my spoons for the weekend.

there's also a pork shoulder defrosting (and after that marinating[from last summer's Father's Day Meat Sale i also wish i was making this up]) but that's not very photogenic. i desperately need freezer space and it's been a fucking minute since i had some meat.

[fortheturnstiles]

4 & 14!

4. Is there a film that you love except for the ending? What would you change about the ending? -- this question kind of stumped me in a way that i didn't expect but i think i have a couple. i rewatched The Nice Guys (2016) recently and upon revisiting i think the ending feels a little tacked-on to me, for the sake of tying up lose ends in a nice little bow. doesn't really do it for me i think the movie could just do without it. the ending of After Hours (1985) is okay but to me it kinda would have been funny if he died. maybe that's just me though. ok ok my actual Real Answer for this actually is Sleepaway Camp (1983). i saw this for the first time fairly recently and the experience of finally viewing it was both delightful and confounding. it's got basically everything i love about early 80s slashers -- simultaneously scary and funny, men in exceedingly short shorts, gruesome kills -- and then Boom. the ending...... i've seen some of readings of the film that embrace the perversity of it, but there's no getting around the film's ending as making a total abject spectacle of the transfeminine body, for the shock and awe of the cisgender viewer. and i wouldn't change angela's transness if the ending could be different it just wouldn't be centered around witnessing the reveal of her naked body as something horrific and purely on display as a means to evoke disgust. all that being said i love trans monstrosity and scaring cis ppl and rejecting the hegemony of "proper" bodies etc etc in but that movie was obviously not going for that it was made in 1983 by a cishet man lmfao. for the record angel was kinda right for killing all those ppl who were mean to her they fucking sucked

14. Who is your favorite director? Why? -- literally the hardest question for me to answer ever because i have a handful i love for various reasons i was about to just list a bunch of them but you guys probably already know based on the movies i post about on here lol. i think both in his approach to filmmaking in a philosophical sort of sense as well as his style and frequent subject matter amongst his work i'd have to say david cronenberg. kinda goes without saying i love the commonly occurring subjects and themes across his filmography (bodily transformation, perversity, crossing boundaries between the physical and psychological, disgust and desire, disease, technology, etc. etc.) -- when i first was getting into his films something that i deeply appreciated and was really refreshing for me was the way that his films are first and foremost presenting ideas in a manner that is open for interpretation, and typically avoiding any sort of moral judgement upon what his characters are doing or events in a narrative. there's so many ideas he'll put forth in a given film and they're not being set upon the viewer as absolutes or indisputable truths but as ambiguous and complex ideas that are meant to be questioned! his sensibility about film in general in regards to high/low art and sex and violence in the movies and the nebulous nature of the horror genre and whatnot overlaps with my feelings pretty much completely. i think he's never really compromised his vision for the sake of popular appeal or monetary gain he just makes his weird little movies and some people love em and some people don't. i sure do. also he's clearly a fellow sick bitch who likes freak sex. make horror cinema erotic again long live the new flesh let's all crash our cars into each other

movie questions ask game

[soleminisanction]

What did you think of the new Batman movie?

I frigging loved it. It's my favorite live-action take on the franchise by wide, wide margin.

Quick personal survey to establish my baseline tastes: I unironically love the original 1966 series starring Adam West because it's campy and happy and never fails to put a smile on my face and also Burt Ward was a babe and both he and West were much better actors than they've ever gotten credit for. (Did you know they almost gave Ward the lead role in The Graduate? Did you know they offered West James Bond? That is so wild to me.)

My opinion on the Burton/Shumacher movies from the 90s is meh, leaning positive overall. I dig the design sensibilities but most of the acting and storytelling didn't stick with me. I've never felt the urge to rewatch them but I also wouldn't say I dislike them. I mostly appreciate them as the starting point for the original animated series.

I wanna say that my opinion on the Dark Knight trilogy started positive and then turned sour as time went on but in retrospect I never actually bothered to watch the last one, and when I saw The Dark Knight for the first time it was in a double-feature showing with Hellboy II and I came away from that knowing without a doubt that Hellboy was the better movie so yeah. I will say that, while I think that they ultimately just slapped a Bat-branding on a completely unrelated story and characters, I respect that they gave the version of Batman they wrote the only ending that actually made sense for him.

And the less I say about anything that Zack Snyder has ever touched, the better -- that is a man who wouldn't know a good superhero story if it shoved itself down his throat.

But The Batman, oh man. I loved The Batman. I felt so seen by The Batman. I came away from that movie practically skipping with joy, I couldn't stop thinking, "Yes, finally! Somebody who gets it!" There was so much to love about that movie, I don't even know where to start.

I guess, since I was already thinking about it, one thing that I really like is how Riddler's games all feel almost like something from the Adam West show? But dark, and twisted. Like that "flying rat" pun in Spanish, and the other pun-based puzzles he left around, those were all very much like how they'd be done in the Adam West show, only these had the bloody plot twists attached to them. The "thumb drive" gag had me cackling.

But like, I also really loved how well thought out the themes were. Like, if you're paying attention, the movie explains without ever really spelling it out how the broken, corrupted system of Gotham City created both Batman and the Riddler. It's not "hrr durr the masked hero invites masked super-freaks to come along too," that's been done, it's "this system, this city, is corrupt and broken, and that broken system led two broken men to take extreme measures, one as a hero ultimately driven by the desire to make things better and one as a villain consumed only by hatred and revenge."

Heck, it even explains why Bruce couldn't just throw money at the problem, like all the disingenuous people on Twitter always try to argue -- his father tried that. And the broken system not only corrupted his well-meaning efforts, it killed him to protect its ill-gotten gains. That is such good writing.

Speaking of the Waynes, I also loved the deep lore cuts and, more specifically, how deliberately they were used to establish the differences in this world to the people who were paying attention. Making Martha an Arkham instead of a Kane? Tommy Elliot's father being the reporter who was going to ruin her, a reporter that Thomas Wayne inadvertently got killed? That's good stuff. I can't wait to see where they take it in the sequels.

But the best part of all, for me, was Bruce's character arc and the fact that finally, somebody understood the assignment and showed the arc that, I believe in my heart, every Batman needs: the moment, or arc, or story, or whatever it takes, that moves Bruce away from being motivated entirely by his love for his parents and into to being motivate by his love for Gotham City, his chosen family, and his comrades-in-arms.

So yeah. Suffice it to say, I loved it, I bought the bluray, and I hope very much that they actually talk Warner Brothers into letting them give Battinson a Robin in the next one because his interactions with the mayor's son throughout the movie were adorable and they didn't even talk. I need to see this man taking care of a child. I need it.

[magesmiths]

wip wednesday

tagged by @elmshore & @lyuyu 💜💜💜 

these are all little bits from a nat x detective (austen au) fic i’m working on (because i’m trash). it’s all very rough so here are a few little snippets:

The first time she sees her, it’s from across a busy dance hall, mid turn, in the arms of someone else. (She will, much later, whisper between breathless kisses how difficult it was to remember the steps, to keep turning her head away from the beauty that had ensnared her.) 

~

“Do you play?” She nods towards the instrument.

“Not as well as I should like.” 

“I’m sure you’re far better than you care to admit.” 

Nat relishes at the blush that blossoms on her pale cheeks. 

The younger woman lowers her eyes, a small smile appearing on her face “I would hate for you to be disappointed, Miss Sewell. So I shall venture never to play in front of you and prove you wrong.” 

“Oh, but that would break my heart.” 

~

Lottie can see her from the other side of the wide circle as her eyes look up under those dark lashes. Nat watches her instead of her partner, inclines her head and curtsies, a smile pulling at her lips and never breaking eye contact. Barely remembering to bow herself, Lottie’s eyes finally find her own partner. 

It’s a slow, measured dance; one focused on maintained eye contact and hands held up, close to their partner, but never meeting. 

(Lottie later remarks, in a rare moment of privacy, that the dance is needlessly complicated and Nat smirks at her, drawing close. She whispers, careful to not quite touch, lips so close that Lottie can feel her breath on her skin. “It’s about the anticipation, Miss Fitzwilliam.”)

tagging whoever is reading this, not sure who has been tagged and not so please do it if you like and tag me <3

[thesublemon]

planning ≠ coherence

I talk a big game about liking coherence in art, and it’s probably clear that I have an apophenic tendency to enjoy textual interpretation. And this might lead people to think that I have a preference for carefully planned and plotted art, or that I look down on the messy and improvisational. But this is actually almost the opposite of the case. Not because I don’t really like coherence, but because artistic coherence is something more complicated than planning, and isn’t even necessarily possible to achieve with planning.

The thing about improvisation, is that at its best it’s about finding the choice that feels right. I listen to jazz more than any other kind of music, and one of the reasons I like it so much is the exhilaration of someone landing on a musical idea that simultaneously makes a song feel bigger and more complete. A solo isn’t fun if it’s just a bunch of disconnected ideas (similar to how whimsy isn’t fun if it doesn’t also “work”). It’s fun if it picks up on the things that the other players are doing, or ideas that showed up earlier in the song, and then makes them feel like they go together. Even if they “go together” in the sense of being coherently discordant, eg repeating ideas that don’t work multiple times. If beauty is fit, then the joy of improv is finding fit in unexpected places.

This goes for narrative too. In long-running stories like comics, book series, and TV shows, much is often made about whether certain choices were planned from the beginning. If things were planned, that’s a reason for praise, and if things weren’t planned, that’s a reason for derision, either towards the showrunners or towards people attempting to interpret the work. Say, “This plot point only happened because an actor wanted to leave the show. Therefore it has no meaning to read into.” But making things up as one goes is not what makes a story lose its plot, so to speak. Making things up is only a problem if the things the artist makes up don’t go with what came before.

In Impro, a very excellent book about the craft of improvisation, Keith Johnstone calls this process of making-things-go-with-what-came-before “re-incorporation”:

The improviser has to be like a man walking backwards. He sees where he has been, but he pays no attention to the future. His story can take him anywhere, but he must still ‘balance’ it, and give it shape, by remembering incidents that have been shelved and reincorporating them.

Johnstone is big on the idea that satisfying narrative depends on a sense of structure, and that reincorporation is one of the most important tactics for creating structure. To paraphrase him, a story where a character runs away from a bear, swims across lake, and finds a woman in a cabin on the other side, and “makes passionate love” to her has no structure. It’s just a series of events. Whereas if the bear then knocks the cabin’s door down and the woman cries out that it’s her lover, then suddenly it feels like a story. Because not only has the bear been reincorporated, it has been linked to the woman. From this perspective, if a story has no sense of reincorporation, or new developments don’t make sense with what came before, then it will feel incoherent, no matter how planned out it was.

I also keep thinking about Paul Bouissac’s discussion of gags and narrative in The Semiotics of Clowns and Clowning. He explains that what makes a scene funny is not whether it strings a bunch of gags together, but how those gags are organized. To use an example from the book, it’s one thing for a clown to pretend to hurt its thumb, and ask for an audience member to kiss it. It’s another thing for it to keep hurting different parts and then finally hurt its groin and act scandalized at the idea that someone might kiss it. Bouissac calls this sort of repetition “anaphor”:

Anaphor is one of the main tools of textual consistency. In linguistics, it designates the use of pronouns or any other indexical units to refer back to another word or phrase in the text. It links together parts of sentences and bridges the grammatical gaps between clauses, which is a consequence of the linearity of language. In rhetoric, anaphors are repetitions of words or structures that build up the cohesion of discourse and create momentum toward a climax. In multimodal communication, words, gestures, objects, or musical tunes can play the same role by reminding the receiver—that is, the spectator in the case of a performance—of signs and events produced earlier in the act.

One of the things that fascinated me about Farscape as a teenager, was that in contrast to other scifi of the time, it made no pretenses of having been planned—unlike say, Babylon 5. Or even shows like The X-Files, Lost, or Battlestar Galactica that gave you the “feeling” of a plan whether or not they had one, or were capable of following through. Farscape felt incredibly coherent, both in terms of theme and plot, but this coherence came about purely on the strength of the writing’s ability to ideate and then reincorporate. It would take someone’s weird costume idea, like the villain having glowing rods that screw inside his head, and snowball that into a whole storyline where the villain is a half breed of one hot-blooded race and one cold-blooded race, and can only stay alive by thermo-regulating the inside of his brain. And then decide that his vendetta against the hot-blooded race has motivated his obsession with the protagonist since the first season. Yet these twists never feel like “ret-conning” in a pejorative sense, because it all feels narratively and thematically sensible. (Unsurprisingly, making the show was described as “more like improv jazz than plotting out a symphony”).

None of which is to say that I dislike planning or polish, either. Stephen King, as a so-called “discovery” writer, famously writes off the cuff, without outlines. As he puts it in On Writing:

You may wonder where plot is in all this. The answer—my answer, anyway—is nowhere. I won’t try to convince you that I’ve never plotted any more than I’d try to convince you that I’ve never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course).

But his best stories feel like whatever bloat might have been generated from this narrative improvisation has then been pared down to what that improvisation was really getting at. And I can’t lie, I get a particular joy from reading or watching something and feeling without a doubt that the artist is in complete control of my experience. It was one of the most gratifying aspects of rewatching The Wire recently: the feeling that the little meanings and foreshadowings I was seeing in each choice were almost certainly intended. Nothing is more satisfying to an apopheniac than feeling like the patterns you see are actually real. And nothing is more annoying than a story that tries to pull some sort of reveal on you (“Dan is gossip girl!” “Angel is Twilight!” “Rey is a Palpatine!”) that doesn’t make any sense because it wasn’t intended from the beginning. Just because those characters existed in the story before, doesn’t make it good reincorporation. So if a story is a story because of structure, then if the choice is between a planned structure and no structure, the former is almost certainly going to be better.

Point is, it’s not really the process that matters. All creativity is improvisational in a sense, because all creativity involves making things up. What matters is how dedicated an artist is to the integrity of their work. If a writer has carefully planned their whole story out, with every twist and every theme clearly in mind, but can’t adapt if they start writing and find out that something they planned doesn’t actually work, that’s one kind of failure mode. The narrative equivalent of designing a perfect castle and then building it on a swamp. On the other hand, if a writer tries to go with the flow, but can’t reincorporate that flow, then that will be another failure mode. To the extent that I respond to improvisational art, it’s because improvisational art is often more attuned to these questions of whether something is moment-to-moment right. But what matters, above all, is the rightness. That’s what defines coherence. Whether there is a sense in the work that it is oriented around something, and whether the choices contribute to that something.

[henlp]

Most anime is bad.

It's fair to say anime's success in the West, starting in the 80s-90s but gaining mass recognition and appeal in the 2000s, mostly comes from a wide range of premises for stories told, and how emotional payoffs are (for the most part) earned by the writing, be it hype moments, shocking scenes, or the often-expected bittersweet finale.

However, in spite of these positives, it's very frequent that the story for an anime/manga/novel/game/etc. ends up being bad; and for the longest time, I couldn't figure out exactly why. Even a decade ago, when I was far more lenient and forgiving to the content I consumed (because I had yet to achieve the jaded, joyless state I find myself in <current year>), I could tell something was amiss.

Think I first took notice of this when the era of the Big Three was coming to an end, with One Piece carrying on as Fairy Tail instead took the shovel to the head. Alongside Bleach and Naruto, these three manga series all suffered major issues in their final arcs, so blatant that it became too difficult to accept. Something stank in Denmark Japan, and it made no sense why these (supposedly) good series where floundering as they neared the finish line.

A few years later, with more media under my belt, out came Black Clover. Both my weeb cousin and a good friend had spoken highly of the series, alongside many of the places I used to check for animus, so I watched the OVA... and hated it. There wasn't anything inherently wrong with the pilot for the story, mind you, at that point it was only the screeching from the protagonist that bothered me. When the series proper began, I made the conscious effort to try and power through in spite of the awful first impression, to see what the hype had been about... and I still wasn't seeing it. In fact, the story's erratic and hyperactive pacing, alongside its cheap animation, made it almost impossible for me to watch. Only by virtue of the previously aforementioned hype moments on occasion and the catchy OPs did I stick around long enough for the story to get interesting and for me to have any investment in the characters. It didn't get good, but it had at least become tolerable. Lucky for me AND it, I was still at a point where I wouldn't drop shows as easily.

It wasn't looking good for my outlook in regards to japanese entertainment. Even if I would end up consuming more anime than any western shows (at least animes don't fucking despise their audiences), my eye kept getting more critical, and I kept getting less adventurous, due to several shows disappointing. But I still couldn't figure out why this was. If anime and manga were appealing to me still, why was I less inclined to give 'em a pass, why was I more and more dissatisfied. And then I got my answer in 2021, thanks to two shows: Jujutsu Kaisen and the second anime adaptation of Shaman King.

A story's quality can generally be quantified based on three things: characters, world, and plot. Each informs the other two, and a good story never has one of these working against the others. But it can also happen that all three work in their own right, but not in tandem. A fourth, rarely-considered factor for evaluating story is EXECUTION. So when it comes to anime, manga, novels, games, etc, the problem usually is in execution. You could argue that there are different cultural sensibilities for storytelling in Japan, or corporate factors interjecting themselves in the process; but that would be an explanation, not an excuse. And nowadays, enough japanese creators quote some of their influences as not just being other japanese creators, but also creators from around the globe (past and present). There's not this magical bubble keeping the Land of the Rising Sun ignorant of other types of storytelling and development processes.

So how did I arrive at this conclusion thanks to Jujutsu Kaisen and Shaman King 2021? Both shows suffer terribly when it comes to execution of their stories, although in different ways:

-With Jujutsu Kaisen (at least the anime, I've not read the whole manga), there were several instances where I found myself asking "Did I miss an episode or something?", because you frequently had characters reacting and conducting themselves with one another as if there was a deluge of development between them off-screen. No better example than EmoBangs McGee, who becomes BFFs with the protagonist in less than 5min, later having a fight that was probably meant to be very heart-wrenching, except there was no development for their relation (and powers), so it made no sense for them to act in that fashion (if this is different in the manga, by all means let me know);

-With Shaman King 2021, meanwhile, I was well-familiarized with the characters, the world, and the plot. I knew the main elements of the story, I had in fact rewatched the show in the past decade, and in spite of filler content and Black Sabbath cameos, still remembered it strongly. But as I am watching the new show, the word that comes to mind is "cheap": cheap animation and rushed pacing. Maybe this is due to certain events, or the studio trying to rush past the initial stages of the story, but still. All it had to do was clear the filler, give each scene and character the love and care they needed to make their moments the best they could, and let it go from there. It's been twelve years since FMA Brotherhood, if you're going to be a greedy bitch and redo an anime adaptation, there's no excuse for it to be of such low quality.

As you can see, both failed in execution, with the latter in its new adaptation and the former (possibly) in its original format. When I realized this, suddenly the fog dissipated, and I could see why all those stories had failed: Bleach failed because its power creep and character conflicts were executed horribly; Naruto's atrocious pacing (in both manga and anime) was done solely to extend the story needlessly; Fairy Tail's final arcs (although not only that) dropped the ball because Hiro Mashima was actively trying to ensure there were no sad elements to the story or the end of his characters' arcs; Black Clover‘s poor execution came in how its first few arcs play out, trying to speed up through the world-building, which left most characters too anemic and underdeveloped until far later into the story.

But of course, this is an issue that exists in far more IPs than just the ones I’ve mentioned so far and others of the same caliber. It happens with the cream of the crop as well: Boku no Hero Academia's more recent decisions have been executed very poorly, when they were just a single step away from being done very well; post-timeskip One Piece has relied too heavily on characters having skills and forms that we aren't familiarized with, and fights that don't resolve in a smart fashion, but due to nakama power fueling Luffy; season fucking 2 of One-Punch Man is the poster child for terrible execution of anime adaptations, considering the original webcomic, the manga, and season 1. This issue is (almost) everywhere, and yeah, I get it: anime and manga are produced through such a hellish process, that a lot of times the authors or production staff don't have the time to go through their stories to make sure everything's on the up-and-up. Yusuke Murata is not exactly a common example, of someone that's allowed to go back to both redraw and rewrite entire chapters; and I am somewhat glad that, at least when it comes to JUMP, they seem to be getting slightly more lenient with the talent and their teams if it means better results in the long run.

However, the issue persists. I neither know nor think that anything can be resolved even if the extremely demanding workload of manga/anime production were to be alleviated (we've had plenty of examples in the West, of media that has all the time and money in the world, still imploding and salting the earth around it), but at the very least, it can be something that creators who are not under those retraints to take into account, so as not to make those same mistakes.

Do not try to subvert conversations that SHOULD be happening, just because in anime there's a stereotype of scenes where everything stops in its tracks just so characters can have a conversation, be it executed well or poorly (an aspect I'd wager stems from when the source material is manga or a novel). Don't think that because a character's power level let's them blow up the moon from orbit, that immersion can't be broken if you don't justify how they might struggle against another on the same tier. Be wary of the very common issue with 'Wanime' (Western animation using the anime style), where creators completely put aside depth for spectacle, to the point that it becomes indistinguishable from a parody show such as Megas XLR.

Always remember, execution is the be-all and end-all to every character development, emotional payoff, hype moment, world building, and plot progression. Think about every scene, and if it actually informs the audience of what should be happening. If it doesn't, then you'll have to try and fix it before, not after. And if you can't do it (which is fine, most of us are fucking dumbasses), now you understand why even a lot of shonen action series have a bunch of slice-of-life, semi-filler scenes interjected in-between big events, so that you can have context and weight to what will transpire.

[markcampbells]

Pass the happy! 🌻🌈 When you receive this, list 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 10 people in your notifications! 💖

Jess! Thank you! <3

Many of my closest friends, and all of my family, are vaccinated. Sadly, I don’t live local enough to anyone that I could easily visit, but with some planning, I will eventually be able to see the people I most want to again -- @malionnes [who I haven’t seen in far too long anyway] and my friend Sarah top the list. I feel a lot more at ease knowing my loved ones are protected.

The USS McKirk Discord server has been the joy of my days recently. @jimbotkirk and @tochaoticallygo broke me laughing earlier this week when Hannah gave my fic one of the best reviews I will ever receive, and making so many new friends like @lokilenchen, @better-late-than-nevah, and all the beautiful folk over there has been something I really needed. <3

An extension of that--the fic I just mentioned. It’s the first multichapter I’ve written since literally high school, and as much as it’s been hard and personally resonant work getting some of my own demons (and some inspired by friends’ experiences) out on the page, it’s been some of the most rewarding writing I’ve gotten done in this hellscape of a time, and I’m really fucking proud of it and the way it’s landing for people. I truly never thought I would have this much fun writing something so heavy, and it helps that these characters are so dear to me and that I’ve had so many friends (literally everyone mentioned above in this ask) cheering it on has meant so much.

I’ve been doing a buddy read of a book with a dear friend who I don’t get to talk to as much the last few years, seeing as he moved to Canada, rightfully, to be with his lovely wife, and it’s been great getting to have a regular excuse to talk to him. We were definitely on the phone for about forty-five minutes yesterday and it was great. I sent him and his wife a care package and they sent me a video of them opening it when they got it, and I was so glad to see their faces and reactions.

My mom and stepdad have both been bringing me joy for two completely different and hilarious reasons. My stepdad has, and I swear we are in two different houses at the moment, been on a complete period drama (mostly Jane Austen) bender, which has been utterly hilarious to witness, especially because it included a three-minute phone conversation about how good Alan Rickman was in Sense and Sensibility. He’s watched this stuff with me before and never needed too much prodding, but him going back to it on his own was super sweet, and I’m glad he’s happy with it. And my mom has been watching (rewatching, for her) Star Trek with me pretty consistently as I’ve gotten further and further throughout the pandemic, which has added a both fun and hilarious layer to my first-time watching (Mom seeing a certain character onscreen and saying “uh oh...” as I have a chicken nugget halfway to my mouth like “what do you MEAN uh oh!?!?!?!??!”). And I got to talk with my sister on the phone today for the first time in a while--we’re in two different time zones and I’m usually at work or asleep when she calls--so that was really nice. I just love my family.

[thisbluespirit]

Your tags on the North & South post say that it’s one of your top 3 period dramas. What are the others?

Haha, good question!  I should actually rephrase that, because I really meant that it’s in my top 3 classic lit adaptations - period dramas altogether would be a different and more complicated thing.  I might be here forever or burst in the attempt or something.

Anyway, much as I’d like to be interesting and different #1 is Pride & Prejudice (BBC 1995; adapted by Andrew Davies) because it really is that good.I’ve enjoyed all of the other P&P adaptations I’ve seen, but this is the best of them still.

#2 is North & South (BBC 2004, adapted by Heidi Thomas) and sometimes I wonder if it’s actually my favourite.  Elizabeth Gaskell is hard to do - she’s less well known and she’s very Victorian in ways that don’t play so well to a modern audience, but this is completely respectful and allows characters to have motivations that aren’t modern and also perfectly accessible.  And, as ever, with the BBC stuff from this era, it’s beautifully made and cast, and I love the score.

#3 is much more difficult!  I might have to think about it for possibly several years, is that okay?  Or give you a different answer every day or something.

Maybe for today, The Way We Live Now (BBC 2001; adapted by Andrew Davies) because I had such a great time reading my way through Trollope in my late teens/early 20s and this was a really great adaptation of one of his best.

But it might equally be Northanger Abbey (ITV 2006) or Persuasion (BBC 1995) or Sense and Sensibility (1995).  OTOH, they are all comparatively short, so I might just be going for them because of ease of rewatching.  Maybe it’s Wives & Daughters or Our Mutual Friend.

[hollygoeslightly]

I love to read your posts on Sanditon, you add a certain depth to the story that I'm addicted to. I don't know if it ever came up before but do you think Sidney felt loved/chosen by Charlotte, If he did, in which scenes? I could only identify Young Stringer's comment, as a moment that he felt chosen by her. On the other hand, it's easy to see how much interest and love he felt for her, even when they fought. Theo's eyes show how hard he fell in love since their first encouter.

Hey!

Thank you so much, that’s really lovely of you to say.

Before I address the instances where Sidney felt “chosen” by Charlotte, I think it’s necessary to look at their individual character arcs (Charlotte in particular) and how that influences how they express their feelings for each other (I have a feeling this is probably going to get a little wordy, so apologies in advance).

First of all, let’s go back to the beginning and the Charlotte the audience was first introduced to in 1x01. At the beginning, Charlotte very much lands on the sensibility end of the sense and sensibility scale (the goal being to reach a happy medium between the two) – she is a charming, kind, outspoken romantic who wears her heart on her sleeve. Charlotte is also immediately attracted to and intrigued by Sidney when she first sees his portrait in the foyer of Trafalgar House. However, as we know, Sidney doesn’t exactly make the best first impression (or second or third) and Sidney and Charlotte end up in a push/pull relationship full of misunderstandings. However, by the time of the masquerade ball in London in 1x06, Charlotte and Sidney have reached a tentative peace and Charlotte has realised that she is madly in love with the tall, dark and brooding idiot who has been instrumental in her coming of age.

“I hardly know what to think anymore… about anything. I’ve always felt so certain of my judgement and now I see I’ve been blinded by sentiment and naivety. I’ve got it all so wrong. No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me.”

In 1x06, Charlotte’s world view undergoes a seismic shift and she discovers that people who are willing to be open about their thoughts and feelings are not always trustworthy (like Otis) and those that play their cards close to their chest are not always driven by ulterior motives (like Sidney). This discovery not only causes Charlotte to question her own judgement, but to struggle to find her footing. It is this Charlotte that must come to terms with her love for Sidney (landing her firmly on the sense end of the sense and sensibility scale) and this Charlotte is forever waiting for the other shoe to drop – for her happiness to be snatched out from beneath her, because she is after all, only a farmer’s daughter.

On the other hand, Sidney’s begins his journey as a man who very much believes in sense over sensibility. As a way to cope with his broken engagement to Eliza, Sidney has become emotionally disconnected from his own life – he is an outlier, someone who engages with the world around him with as little cost to his own feelings as possible. However, just as Sidney was instrumental in Charlotte’s coming of age (which is still ongoing), Charlotte is instrumental in helping Sidney become his best and truest self – a person who actively engages in life. In comparison to Charlotte, Sidney is much closer to finding the happy medium between sense and sensibility, while Charlotte still feels too gun shy following Eliza’s reappearance to completely trust that her possible future with Sidney will not be taken away. When you take Charlotte and Sidney’s individual character arcs are into consideration, it’s easy to see why Sidney has been far more verbal in expressing his feelings to Charlotte, and to therefore, pinpoint the moments where Sidney has “chosen” her.

It’s also important to note that choice doesn’t present as a theme in Charlotte’s narrative in the way it does with Sidney. Quite simply, Charlotte in unable to “choose” Sidney, because for her there was never any other choice. Charlotte was attracted to Sidney from the beginning, and while she enjoyed Young Stringer’s company as a friend, he was never a real contender for her affections. Despite all their misunderstandings, for Charlotte it was always Sidney. For Sidney, his feelings for Charlotte are complicated by his past with Eliza. That’s not to say that Sidney makes a choice between Charlotte and Eliza, rather he made the choice to say goodbye to his idea of Eliza and a future with her that he had spent 10 years waiting for. Sidney’s choice was between a dream he had held onto tightly for so long or finally embracing becoming his best and truest self as a result of his love for Charlotte (side note – Sidney is again faced with the theme of choice when he is forced to decide between his own happiness or his brother’s ruin). So while Charlotte doesn’t “choose” or verbalise her love for Sidney like Sidney does with her because of the differences in their character arcs, that doesn’t mean Charlotte���s behaviour doesn’t indicate how much she loves Sidney or that Sidney is not aware of her feelings for him.

Okay, now that’s out of the way, let’s look at the ways Charlotte expresses her love for Sidney. To do this, we need to go back to episode 1x02 and Lady Denham’s luncheon and Charlotte’s response when questioned about her marriage prospects.

Lady Denham – “And you miss, are you still keeping up the pretence that you are not in Sanditon in search of a wealthy man to marry and to keep you?”

Charlotte – “Indeed I am not ma’am. I have no thoughts of marriage at all and if I were to choose a husband wealth would not come into it.”

Lady Denham – “Poppycock!”

Charlotte – “Should not a good marriage be based on mutual love and affection? Without equality of affection, marriage can become a kind of slavery.”

Not only is Sidney sitting next to Charlotte during this exchange, but he hangs on her every word. It’s worth going back and rewatching the scene again if you have the chance, because Theo James does a fantastic job of conveying just how much it matters to Sidney that Charlotte wishes to marry for love and not money.

The first time Charlotte demonstrates just how much she cares for Sidney is in 1x05 during the cricket match between the gentlemen and the workers. During the first half of the episode, Charlotte and Sidney’s relationship is noticeably strained after Sidney sent Otis back to London and Charlotte accused Sidney of keeping Otis and Georgiana apart due to racism in 1x04. Following Tom’s tantrum (dude, you were clearly out), Sidney is left on his own to forfeit the match due to a lack of players. Now it would be easy to assume that Charlotte offers to play to help Tom save face or to help cover Mary’s embarrassment regarding her husband’s childish behaviour (Tom is The Worst), however they have already both left the match. The reason Charlotte offers to play has nothing to do with Tom or Mary, and everything to do with Sidney and ensuring he is not hung out to dry by his brother. Charlotte is not concerned with the possible damage she may do to her reputation playing a man’s sport or the fact that she is still angry over Sidney’s treatment of Otis, she doesn’t even demand anything in return for her assistance – Charlotte offers to play for one reason only and it is because she cares for Sidney.

Keeping in mind the conversation between Charlotte and Lady Denham in 1x02, the final two examples occur in 1x08. The first example is quite subtle and as a result is often overlooked, however it’s my favourite for a whole bunch of reasons, the top being that Sidney gives Charlotte complete autonomy in determining how their relationship will develop, or if it will develop at all. When Sidney arrives at Trafalgar House with contracts for Tom to sign, he asks Charlotte if she needs anything while he’s in town and Charlotte in turn asks whether she can walk with him as she needs a dress fitting for the midsummer ball. Sounds rather banal, I know. However, what Sidney is actually doing is confirming his declaration of feelings from the night before – he is telling Charlotte that not only do his feelings remain unchanged, but that he is still thinking of her and that he wants to be with her. And he is doing all of this while also allowing Charlotte complete control over what happens next. This scene is one of the many reasons I rail against the argument that Charlotte was passive during the final two episodes, because this moment here, Charlotte’s decision to walk into town with Sidney, is far from passive. Charlotte could have responded that she didn’t need anything, letting Sidney down gently or named something inconsequential to pick up, indicating that she returns his feelings, but needs a little more time. Instead, she asks if she can join him, telling Sidney without words that she loves him and wants to be with him as well. Sidney knows that Charlotte wishes to marry for love, that she is unwilling to trade money and security for a loveless marriage, therefore he also knows that Charlotte indicating that she returns his feelings is far from inconsequential. This moment repeats itself during their walk along the clifftops when Charlotte notes they are not walking into town and Sidney calls himself a fool and offers to head back. Even here he is giving Charlotte a way out. But Charlotte loves him and she tells him she would much rather a walk along the clifftops (“with you” is left unsaid).

The second example is an obvious one, but in the end, it’s really the only moment that counts – Charlotte was going to say yes. Charlotte, who believes marriage without love is its own form of slavery, was about to say yes to Sidney’s marriage proposal before Edward crashed the ball and the whole world went to shit. If that’s not choosing someone, I don’t know what is.

I’ve said this a million times before, but I’ll say it again – we are still in the middle of the story. This isn’t just an opinion, but a fact – comments from Andrew Davies, Kris Marshall and the fact that S2 was even on the table, tells us so. Therefore, I think all those moments you want anon, of Charlotte telling Sidney she is in love with him and vice versa, would have occurred in S2. It would have been a fitting end to both their arcs and I have no doubt that series would have ended with Sidney and Charlotte finally reunited in wedded bliss.

Thanks for the question!

[letterboxd]

Pixar’s Picks: Family Films.

You’re stuck inside, saving the world. So we asked a group of award-winning Pixar filmmakers to help self-isolating families plan the very best movie nights (and days, and nights, and days…). And we talked to children’s film specialist Nicola Marshall about the beauty of movies made for kids, especially now.

Children deserve to watch great films, but kids are famously honest viewers. They’ll tell you instantly when they don’t like something. And when they do, it pays off: in Academy Awards (this year, for Hair Love and Toy Story 4), in stone-cold cash (as Box Office Mojo’s Top Box Office Grosses by G-rating confirms), and in precious family memories.

But where to turn when you need a quality watchlist of family films? When you want a guaranteed banger that the whole family will love, or when you want to move your child to next-level-cinephile status with a choice that will floor them? The answer, to us at least, is obvious: Pixar to the rescue!

We asked a group of the renowned studio’s directors and story artists—the people behind WALL·E, Finding Nemo, Inside Out, Bao, La Luna, The Good Dinosaur, Purl, Cars 3, Toy Story 4 and more—to show up in your hour of need, and show up they have, with personal recommendations that we’ve split into three Letterboxd lists: All Ages, 7 to 12 Years and 12 Years and Over.

From two-minute shorts to the entire Harry Potter collection, there’s something for every viewing window. From Charlie Chaplin to Greta Gerwig, the films cover a century of cinema; and from slapstick to horror, a multitude of genres.

Our filmmakers were remarkably restrained, nominating more Studio Ghibli films than Pixar movies, though they collectively agreed that Toy Story should most definitely be there. So we’ll say it for them: please explore all the films of our contributing filmmakers: Angus MacLane, Domee Shi, Kristen Lester, Daniel Chong, Peter Sohn, Valerie LaPointe, Brian Fee, Enrico Casarosa and Andrew Stanton. Thanks, you wonderful people.

Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ (1988).

Since many of us at Letterboxd HQ are grateful parents, this feels like a good moment to reflect on the enormous importance of ‘family’ films—so we pulled in our friend Nicola Marshall for a chat. She’s the founder of the Square Eyes film foundation, a curator of children’s film festival content, and a friend of the Henson family (not long ago, she created a live show with The Muppets and Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie).

Like most of us, Nicola is currently in self-isolation, after the hasty wrap-up of the 23rd annual New York International Children’s Film Festival (of which she is an advisory board member).

We’re living in an extraordinary time. How do movies help kids work out what’s going on in and around their lives? Nicola Marshall: Films are an essential way to unpack big feelings during big times. Like all of us, kids are expressing, and suppressing, all kinds of emotions right now, and are sponges for absorbing the emotions of the adults around them. Using a familiar medium to help unpack all we’re feeling, no matter how old we are, feels like a great plan to me. Art always supports processing and groundedness in uncertain times.

What’s your overall impression of the choices made by our Pixar friends for these lists? These are brilliant, eclectic selections—what superb curators these remarkable Pixar creators are, right? An excellent mix of films made for young audiences, and titles bound to appeal to them.

I’m thrilled to see, alongside some beautiful surprises and unknown gems, a lot of long-time personal favorites (Ernest & Celestine, Millions, Ponyo, The Muppet Movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Red Balloon, My Neighbor Totoro, The Kid, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Wallace & Gromit, Modern Times, The Iron Giant, The Phantom Tollbooth, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Yellow Submarine, Bicycle Thieves, Megan Follows as Anne of Green Gables… they go on!).

While the lists lean heavily on a canon of western-produced films, there are some terrific international cinema choices in the mix here (The World of Us, Good Morning), and a bunch of lesser-known historic titles I’m super eager to check out (Preston Sturges marathon, here I come!).

Yasujirō Ozu’s ‘Good Morning’ (1959).

Some of the Pixar directors included horror films—Get Out, It—and some Hitchcock thrillers in their 12 Years and Over lists. These selections are for older teenagers, clearly. What are your thoughts on the role of scares in kids’ viewing experiences? I’ve always been interested in the psychology of frightening films. Personally I’m too much of a big scaredy-cat for horror to be a genre that generally works for me (self-censorship all the way!), but there are a whole bunch of people out there who really love a good freak-out; kiddos included.

As a kid I think you’re always testing and readjusting your limits on where your fear boundaries are. One of the highly anticipated and super popular NYICFF collections each year is 'Heebie Jeebies’—short films that go out of their way to freak and fright. Kids (and the adults who attend alongside them) adore this collection and the expectation of being spooked.

I think humans love experiencing extreme feelings in small doses, to feel alive, whether we have big sensation-seeking personalities or not—and seeing something terrifying on screen has a certain safety to it. I also think scary films in collectively tricky times offer catharsis and adrenal release, and give us permission to scream long and loud, when that’s all we really feel like doing!

The New York International Children’s Film Festival wrapped up suddenly as the coronavirus pandemic began its march into the United States, but you did manage to screen much of the program. Other film festivals weren’t so fortunate. Would you like to take a small moment to celebrate the main takeaways of this year’s fest? NYICFF was so lucky to share three of the planned four collective viewing weekends, just ahead of a swift city-wide shutdown. I’m a tad biased, but I really do feel you only have to look to NYICFF’s annual programming to get a genuine sense of the state of the world for young people globally; the issues they face and what themes are currently resonating.

Our programming director Maria-Christina Villaseñor consistently curates a remarkable selection of films that speak to the experience of young people, valuing their views and voices, always insightful, and never condescending.

This year saw a number of films—feature and short—that depicted stories of kids determined to make a difference and taking self-guided steps into activism and action. My faith in our future is pretty darn solid right now thanks to the optimism and commitment of these kids—and the filmmakers giving voice to young audiences and speaking to big themes and shared cross-cultural truths.

Nicola Marshall.

What can the rest of the movie industry learn from all-ages creators and studios? I wish that there was greater wider-industry acknowledgement of the massive contributions that content for family and kids audiences make in terms of moving the overall film industry forward, both artistically and societally. As well as showing us fresh, meaningful and authentic ways to tell stories, the genuine commitment to diversity and inclusion in this space is meaningful, often to the point where it feels completely natural, unforced and expected in content for this audience, rather than some kind of box-ticking effort.

What do you think this pandemic will offer the storytellers of the future? I think we will come out of this time ready to offer stories with even greater connectedness and empathy. I think our collective slowing will allow, if we let it, an incredible development incubator. How we make our way through this uncertain time as adults and work through our relationship with fear and the unknown will hugely resonate with the kids we’re sharing our lives with. I think we can use art and story and myth and expression and feeling to navigate us all through.

For all those hunkered down with small people, what better time to share your favorite screen stories, and discover new films together. What we chose to watch and to share and to rewatch; to talk about and unpack our feelings around and distract ourselves with through this weird, big time will make a real difference to the kids in our lives, and their innate imaginative-storyteller selves, now and future.

Finally, what are your favorite Pixar movies? Pixar has always excelled at making incredible films with grown-up sensibilities squarely aimed at young audiences—truly cross-generational cinema, my very favorite kind. I love WALL·E for its seamless mix of art and heart, Brave for its representation of girl-strength, and Inside Out for exploring the shared humanness of feeling things deeply, and for reassuring us how valid and essential sadness is.

Related content

Pixar’s short films ranked according to Letterboxd community ratings.

Our 2018 interview with ‘Paddington’ and ‘Paddington 2’ director Paul King.

[lynsunrise]

Sanditon, Sidney, Charlotte,my love

As time passes I feel like I just have to do something to emphasize the influence that Sanditon has on me. I simply feel that the time has come when it’s nearly a crime to be silent and not to tell how I feel about it. It is just my personal humble opinion. The way I feel. And. It is so hard to express one's feelings when they are so passionate but I want to try my best. That’s the least I can do to express my gratitude to all those people who brought Sanditon to life.

There are some spoilers in my text. I say this because to upset somebody is what I am most afraid of at the moment. So I have seen four episodes so far.

Let me then begin with the first episode. I will base my praise on my impressions that are as if carved in my heart and are always before my eyes. The moment when someone falls in love… I have read a few lines from an interview of the wonderful Theo James and I can remember that he was saying about that we always wonder how it happens, how does it happen – falling in love. Maybe Sanditon with its amazing cast and story can draw the curtain aside a bit and let us take a closer look at the one of the greatest mysteries of life that will never be solved. And thank God it will not.

The very first episode when Charlotte enters the Trafalgar House and sees that picture. What is it then that’s happening with us as well? I can say that I want to have the same picture on the wall in my home, a copy, to be able to adore it and feel constantly inspired. That picture of Sidney Parker is magnificent. Especially those eyes. They caught her eyes at once. It isn’t simply a picture of a “very good-looking” young man with that air of fashion, elegance, it is so much more. We cannot tell yet what but we know it. That person from the picture looks at you finding out everything about you but not saying anything about himself. In an interview there was said that Theo James makes Sidney Parker have the mysterious atmosphere when you never know what he’s really thinking and it is truly amazing because I keep thinking even of that picture and I think I can see a beautiful soul of the man but clouded with thick mystery. He knows everything about you, penetrates your heart, you know nothing about him but are drawn to his aura. 

And then the beautiful loveliest Charlotte meets Sidney, a real human, that very one from the picture. And the way she feels, the way she compares the real human to his image…

Here I must say that Rose Williams is just like a rose that began to grow inside my heart right away from the moment I saw her for the first time  because I didn’t know about her before Sanditon.  

Her loveliness is disarming, totally. Her intelligence, naivety, sincerity, her pure soul are everything! Charlotte is so unique. So unique. The brightness of her reacting to the world around her is adorable. Every smile is a gift.

And then she sees Sidney from the distance at first and then he comes closer and jumps out of the carriage and we all see the tall handsome man of such a statuesque beauty that it takes one's breath away. He is so alive! Lively, bright, witty, a bit sarcastic, abrupt but the most charming and attractive of all.  He is also gloomy, moody, pensive, thoughtful. He is sincere, he is elegant.

We can also see it at the ball, at the beginning. But we can only guess what is going on inside his soul. We see how unbelievably magnetic and handsome he is, like a burning dark flame, a dark fire that is impossible to avoid and so hard to see through. But at the same time his soul is so absolutely honest, boyish in a good way (when he at once begins to talk to Charlottte when answering her question), this combination of genuine interest and somber cloud around him. A self-made serious reserved man and a fiery passionate young one – two in one. This is a completely romantic combination.

Definitely. We are so lucky to be able to enjoy watching Sanditon. We, romantic people. Sidney Parker is the definition of the mysterious nature of the man, exactly the one who can thrill. Those expressive eloquent dark eyes and expressive eyebrows and that dazzling smile are capable of melting down an iceberg. Charlotte Heywood is the definition of a free heart, loving heart and her loveliness and sincerity are remarkable, and she is so beautiful ant true to her soul, I cannot imagine anyone else in this whole world playing her instead of Rose Williams. Such a Jewel, treasure, oh my God! And I cannot imagine anyone else on Earth besides Theo James playing Sidney Parker.

I keep returning to the second episode when we see Sidney appear on that busy street, and the atmosphere suddenly changes. Now I am able to think only of romance. He is there, talking to Tom, and we see how different the brothers are, and I cannot help noticing that in spite of all he has been through that hardened his outer shell of the heart there is always something so adorable and boyish in good ways in his whole atmosphere. Something so genuine. I guess he is the kind of person that “When he loves he LOVES, he cannot love by halves” and I suppose it is the same with Charotte. So I am so thrilled and excited about what might come next. And when she was apologizing to him because of her words at the ball I was staring so intensely at them, and when she said “think too badly of me” he was as if relieved because he maybe was beginning to feel too moved by her or so, and there he found a way to distance himself but I may be mistaken. I see in him something so adorably vulnerable and painfully vulnerable too, especially it was easily seen in his eyes, written on his face at the end of the painful and beautiful episode 4. The way he was looking at her, so shocked I shall never forget. His eyes when she said the word “slavery”…I felt a pang in my heart.  He was so hurt. So hurt. If only he could then explain everything to her but it couldn’t be.

So far, the episode 3 gave us the most blessed happy moments of theirs. And I can say that I have already watched each a hundred times. The beginning is a masterpiece, we see that picture again and this time it is like Charlotte's confidant in what she saw at the coves and there is something in her eyes…I do not even know how I should name that emotion. Something so secret, subtle, tender, infatuating. When the passion was far more hidden but by being so it was unbelievably strong, genuine if we speak about Love... This scene. Something like a rare diamond that by being discovered shined dazzlingly. Something so truly human, beautiful, mysterious and inspiring. True sensibility, it is so powerful, so charged with sensualism. When she shares the secret yet unknown to herself with those eyes of Sidney…

This is most romantic, teasing for the heart and amusing how they meet during that day. And then that accident where they get to know each other better and be amazed once again. Then the splendid witty dialogue of theirs. I am swept off my feet by its chemistry and intensity. Incandescenting. Beauteous. You look at them and smile and screw up your eyes because they are bright like the Sun. And other moments…And of course that stroll along the beach. Unforgettable. The impression from this scene will never vanish from my heart. Especially that smile, “Admiral Heywood”…. Also the voices… I cannot find enough words to express how I adore this beautiful delicious British accent. Especially when I hear the voice of Theo James. Actually I am listening to all actors with the utmost admiration, the language is like a sweet melody. English is not my native language, and I try my best to express my great admiration for it.

I enjoy, savour every dialogue, every line, scenery, costume, glance.

There is such a wide variety of beautiful things for eyes to notice, look at and admire, examine.

The landscapes and even the weather, even the coolness of the air, all is perceivable. You close your eyes and in a grey cold windy evening imagine walking along that sandy shore. And if Charlotte is walking there shivering with cold, the contrast between the cool air and the fire of a kiss is head spinning and breathtaking, and no cold can compete with the fire of that kiss…If it could be there, near the sea... But it is just my fantasy…the way the film influences my thoughts…

When I am watching Sanditon I feel absolutely “safe” because I know I feel the presence of this solid Script like a guardian standing behind it. And I know we are in good hands. This is such a relief. When you can rely on the perfect script.

I also adore the brilliant splendid sense of humor that we can see coming from many characters, it is as if they are radiating it without even intending, it is the way they are. For example when Tom Parker pretended to be seriously impressed by the impropriety of Arthur's conduct at the table when the latter took the famous pineapple…And Charlotte and Mrs. Parker couldn’t help laughing, smiling. It was adorable. 

The sincerity I can see in every scene. True adoration, surprise, infatuation, admiration.

I feel that I will rewatch the series over and over again to be able to discern all possible details not only in human emotions but in the historical atmosphere of the Regency period. Through the series I will understand it better and feel like living in it for a moment. Studying all the wonderful details. All is created with such historical accuracy, care, love and knowledge!

Those eyes of Sidney when he said “Forgive me” in the third episode are forever in my heart.

These beautiful lines, this amazing script. My head is full of the dialogues from the film, each intonation, each lowering of the voice is imprinted on my mind as if a design on wax. Sanditon imprinted a kiss of Love and fascination on my very soul. On the core of my heart.

Thank you!

[goddess-aelin]

5x12 and 5x13 rewatch

-“I’m not a child anymore, I’m a commander” you are 12!!

-oct*via telling bellamy that it’s his fault? What a surprise!

-e*ho, R*ven, and Shaw literally are trying to kidnap Madi? I would’ve reacted the same way bitch

-“Safe to say she’s not up for mother of the year” GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP R*ven! Shut up!!!! You’re trying to kidnap her daughter! Actually she is up for mother of the year because guess what! She’s trying to keep her daughter safe. Also she was thrust into this position and never asked for it? What the actual fuxk

-clarke is literally the most selfless person. She saved ec fucking hos life after she tried to kill her. Fuck e*ho, fuck sp*cekru, fuck this season

-Vinson is so gross!

-bellamy literally willed Gaia back to life, what an icon. I’m still mad at him tho

-e*ho is NASTY. Becoming a trainer, you would know bitch!!! “Correction person” fuck you! She’s the reason you’re alive- more than once!! Fuck You fuck you fuck you

-“he survived your betrayal in polis” you mean AFTER HE FUCKING BETRAYED HER!? What kind of fucking backwards logic are these writers smoking? I don’t ducking understand

-I thought love was weakness. Isn’t that what the commanders tell you? “All but one” PLEASE. Till the day she died, L*xa truly believed love was weakness so can we stop spewing bullshit

-wow, comparing bellarkes love to cl*xas? But they’re platonic! Cmon!!

-honestly tho what puts w*nkru apart from the prisoners on eligius? They both have mass murderers. They both want the same thing. Imo, Octavia is just as bad. So what makes that side the right one?

-“I loved her so much” please!!! You knew her for 3 months tops, hated her about 2 of them, and was leary of her the rest of the time. So please stop glorifying something that isn’t as epic as you claim

-huh how is r*ven flying the transport ship to save Shaw different from clarke protecting her daughter? I’m legitimately confused as to these moral high grounds the writers keep finding that shouldn’t be there

-so murphy getting shot in the gorge? That’s entirely on Murphy. Not on clarke? I don’t understand how they can blame that on her like wtf??

-I’m also confused about this stupid fucking b*cho look at the end? I know bob is an amazing actor. And I know in the script that was supposed to be a reassuring look to her but he looks like he hates her. So mr Morley, what were you actually trying to convey?

-the reason why I have such a huge problem with the flame is that everyone looks at her like she’s a god. It’s an AI! Not some mythical thing

-this is so fucking dumb. Bellamy would never bow to a commander. So. Dumb.

-diyoza is literally the only sensible character, other than clarke.

-r*ven is literally flying the ducking ship to bomb her friends??? She has absolutely no moral high ground over clarke whatsoever.

-they tried to make e*ho look epic and guess what! didn’t work! I still hate her! And she’s a bitch!

-the destruction of the valley is no ones fault but mccrearys

-“so much she left me to die in a fighting pit” you legit put her child in danger. You betrayed her first

-anyway, that look on bellamys face? That’s love bitch

-honestly I don’t like the “I can’t do that again” scene. I just...after everything. They need a good talk first

-ok that “I’ll meet you on the bridge” scene is cute af

- take that bindi off of your head! Ugh!!

-oh god. The soft little “hey”

-JORDAN

-FUCK THAT ENDING SCENE IS SO GOOD. Bob, Eliza, Chris, and Shannon should be incredibly proud of it. Chris’ acting was amazing. Bob and Eliza barely said two words yet they conveyed incredible emotion. Shannon’s introduction was inconic

Conclusion: the last few minutes made the episode worth it but honestly, I do not like. This, by far, was the weakest and dumbest finale and season. I did not like most of the characters and their logic made zero sense. I’m really hoping s6 turns completely and has the characters talk because they need that. I know from the trailers that everyone is going to be shitting on clarke though. And I do not approve. She made some mistakes, sure. But she did all of those after she was not included, pushed to the side, and disregarded. Her friends betrayed her first. I would not have reacted any differently, especially since a child is involved.

[scrawnydutchman]

Why “Super Best Friends Play” is the Hypest Let’s Play Channel on Youtube

Let’s players are a popular, albeit divisive lot on youtube. On one hand, many go on record saying the Let’s Play format is cheap, lazy and maybe even a bit exploitative, as when it comes down to it it’s basically just some random people playing a game you could play yourself instead. On the other hand, many others love Let’s Players because they think there’s something endearing about seeing other people experience the things you love in their own unique way and it’s a very down to earth way to get to know some of your favorite online personalities. So where do I land on this? Well, I think Let’s Play is like any other format in that there’s a right and wrong way to do it. If you fall into basic tropes you can tend to blend in with other generic personalities in your field. If you do it, you gotta have a charm and an appeal that really stands out and can grow a dedicated fan base if not a particularly large one. That’s where Super Best Friends come in. I’ve been following the shenanigans of Matt, Pat & Woolie (and for a time Liam) ever since I first saw the Machinima episode on Spider-Man games I’ve had years of entertainment that both genuinely intrigues me on some solid game design and makes me laugh to tears. The Best Friends Zaibatsu are some of the earliest pioneers of the “group” format of Let’s Play in the same vain as Game Grumps, Achievement Hunter and Funhaus, where the appeal is not in a single persons interaction with a game but in a groups interaction with both the game and each other. It reignites the feelings of playing alongside a good friend and having some laughs fucking around with a videogame. But even with the charming concept of watching some good friends bond over their love for media, it wouldn’t work if important elements weren’t in play. Super Best Friends Play is the hypest Let’s Play channel on youtube for the following reasons: They have distinct likable personalities, they give genuinely interesting insight on the games they play, they’re downright hilarious, they genuinely put in effort for their presentation and they use their means to hugely benefit other communities.

Likable Personalities

The format of group let’s play is arguably a completely different ballpark than just doing a let’s play by yourself because it conveys a different challenge. The challenge is to be entertaining as part of a group, NOT to be funny on your own. It’s easier said than done because there are many cases in which one member receives way too much attention or another is becoming increasingly toxic. It’s why removing and adding new members to your group can be such a risky move for your fan communities; the chemistry of the group becomes completely different (Dan-era Game Grumps is an entirely different beast from Jon-era Game Grumps). Luckily the Best Friends have wonderful chemistry with each other that never gets old. Matt’s always the endearing leading man with the golden laugh, bottomless bag of Simpsons references and hilariously derailing one liners. Pat always brings his deadpan wit and sarcastic tone (and makes for a great straight man as a result). Woolie is the Zaibatsu’s hype man; knowing how to make any epic moment a million times better with his reactions. Former member Liam was often the quiet sensible one but when he got a laugh MAN was it a big laugh. They’re all such colliding personalities but they come together in such an endearing way that makes the whole experience lovable but not overbearing. These guys are a fundamental part of my sense of humor today. It’s the reason that unlike other let’s play series on Youtube the Zaibatsu let’s plays have great rewatch value. It also helps that they actually complete most of the playthroughs they start (cough *Game Grumps* cough). Whether they’re referencing old media, getting hype over a great game moment, laughing their asses off or are getting in stupid arguments (I recommend the “shitting pants” argument from the L.A. Noire series) watching the Best Friends is always a great time.

Great Insight on Games

So remember that old anti Let’s Play argument about how commentating over recorded game play is so easy anyone can do it? Well, I have a rebuttal. Yes, anyone can do it . . . that doesn’t mean everyone SHOULD do it. Aside from personality being a driving incentive for anyone to sit through a 10 minute video of some random person playing Detroit: Become Human, one would argue you should also present some knowledge of the game you’re playing. Otherwise it doesn’t matter what game you’re playing; there’s nothing distinguishing one let’s play series from another. Every episode of Conan O’Brien’s Clueless Gamer is just Conan’s unfunny improv set to canned audience laughter as he does a show out of necessity and not out of passion. Not knowing about the game can also cause other impeding issues such as the series taking forever to progress or the player becoming unlikable as they disregard fundamental aspects of the game (DarkSydePhil). When it comes to knowing something about the games they play, Super Best Friends not only express intoxicating passion for the medium but also express some applied knowledge on game design which makes for more interesting commentary. It’s very appropriate since the lot have been game testers on a number of titles. Whenever they have something to say about how to activate bugs, tight controls, decent polish on mechanics or even how well the games narrative is woven into the gameplay it teaches me a little more about how the medium works. They’re also clearly very passionate about their favorite franchises, such as Matt’s take on the Final Fight series above (I recommend you check out all of the Best Friends independent channels btw, which I will link to below):

Matt: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiP_FwGyJQ_6P8k5ON5mncQ

Pat: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpmNJI_KhjkpXw1UPmtC3-Q

Woolie: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyOJzQzyDGihKpTO3-zyhYg

Liam: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7zkWVkHBSMGpfHVgaFqr1A

They’re Downright Hilarious

I really don’t have a lot to say here. I know humor is largely subjective and these guys spout so many obscure references you may not even get a lot of them, but . . .goddamn . . I don’t think anybody on the entirety of Youtube has made me laugh as hard or as consistently as these guys. For the best of the best, I recommend their Spider-Man Machinima episode (my introduction to them), the Punch Out Outtakes (which oddly enough is funnier than the actual episode) Their L.A. Noire playthrough, Their Punisher Playthrough and their Gang Beasts Fisticuffs. You can see all you need to know about their chemistry, wit and delivery. Links to all below

Spider-Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gea09ImEtmM

Punch-Out!!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOwQXNxcRRM

L.A. Noire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bPqjD_zg5g

Punisher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wznGw9fJNCc

Gang Beasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhFGjK_ZUEk

They Put In Effort For Their Presentation/They Largely Benefit Other Communities

*this is just one of many outstanding animated intros commissioned by Super Best Friends, courtesy of Volta Bass*

If there’s one thing I can always use as a defense for most Let’s Play internet celebrities, it’s that they use their means to really benefit other communities. Say what you want about Markiplier, but there’s a reason he was awarded celebrity of the year by the Make-a-Wish foundation. Say what you will about Ihascupquake but she played a fundamental role in launching Jaiden Animations very successful career. Needless to say the popularity of Let’s Players has had a hugely positive effect on countless communities and that’s something we could always use more of, especially in an age where a lot of role models are . . . not great.

Super Best Friends is not only a great example of this, but is probably the best example I can think of. Why? Because they do more to benefit both the indie game community and the animation community than any other let’s player despite being one of the smaller channels out there (criminally small I might add). T.E.C 3001, Skullgirls, Shovel Knight and Divekick ALL owe a great deal of their success to the Zaibatsu’s funding and influence and each game has some sort of mention of them attributed. Also, as an animator myself I HIGHLY appreciate the Zaibatsu for their regular employment of animation talent like 2Snacks, Plague of Gripes, CrankyConstruct and Volta Bass. Because of how much they hire such talent every new series has a stunningly gorgeous intro and outro for each episode. These guys are an indication that some Let’s Play Channels larger than them have to STEP UP THEIR GAME when it comes to hiring talent and making strides in the indie community. *P.S, if anyone in the Zaibatsu is reading this, I would be honored if you would have me do an animated intro/outro for a series. Just say the word and I’m there*. 

But their effort doesn’t stop at hiring other talent. They also do great in providing their own entertaining edited content. Just look at this intro they made for Saturday 

Morning Scrublords: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDcHWHKueM&t=286s

One will notice this hilarious intro is a parody of their already amazing intro for Friday Night Fisticuffs. And this isn’t the only variation of the intro they’ve ever done either. That’s what I like about these guys the most; they’re genuinely passionate about being entertaining. They aren’t just let’s players; they do a little but of everything from sketches to animated adventures to podcasts to livestreams. You can tell they have a huge blast doing all of it.

In conclusion, if anyone wants to start a genuinely entertaining Let’s Play Channel, they ought to take some notes from the Best Friends. They’re great because they diversify, they put their money and time into making great content, they have solid insight, clear passion and they’re goddamn hilarious. For these reasons, they will always be the HYPEST LET’S PLAY CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE.

[paulisweeabootrash]

Retrospective Review: Rewatching Azumanga Daioh as an Adult

This may seem hard to believe if you are a younger reader or one who got into anime only recently, but there was once a time when recommendations spread by word of mouth, it was absolutely commonplace for anime seasons to last longer than 13 episodes, and the vocabulary of the anime fandom wasn’t nearly as full of internet-originated in-jokes.  A time when the internet-savvy congregated on forums dedicated to specific topics instead of social networking sites, and the imageboards that generate so much of the internet meme landscape were just starting to take off among lonely nerds as an obscure haven for perverts, racists, and assholes instead of the role they have today as… uh… well... a well-known haven for perverts, racists, and assholes.  A time when there was no such term as “weeaboo trash” because that Perry Bible Fellowship comic hadn’t been published yet, let alone used for that meaning.  It wasn’t some golden age, but it was different, and today I’m taking a self-indulgent trip back to the end of that period, when I was in high school in the mid-2000s.

Azumanga Daioh (2002).

1. Why is this show important to me?

My introduction to anime consisted mostly of Pokémon and Sailor Moon, and took off with scattered episodes of several other shows that aired on WB and Cartoon Network, which were generally driven by action and combat.  I can’t remember the circumstances or even who did it, but someone who owned, or perhaps pirated, a copy of Azumanga Daioh must have shown me a few episodes at some point.

Here was a show that had been on the leading edge of the moe trend a few years earlier, and although certainly available, such things were not yet common.  Moe has, of course, taken over a large chunk of anime since, to mixed reception since it can range from innocently delightful to extraordinarily creepy.  Azumanga is close to the innocent end of the spectrum, and absolutely delightful (as, BTW, is the author’s current ongoing manga series Yotsuba&!), with a softer, cuter art style than I was accustomed to and instantly-lovable characters.

It was clearly in a different genre and had a different sensibility about how to make a show, too.  It had few repeated or filler elements, unlike any of the shows following the “monster of the week” formula.  It was broken up into several vignettes per episode — a practice that I was familiar with from the format of many Nicktoons, but while American shows with that format told multiple self-contained stories, the short segments here were typically parts of larger episode-long stories, often focusing on different parts of the same event or different anecdotes about the same character.  It showed us, the foreign audience, something about life in Japan, and at least for me was the first time I’d heard of distinctly Japanese school practices like applications for public high schools, students cleaning classrooms, or the particular kinds of seasonal festivals they have.  It lacked story arcs driven by overcoming some enemy and instead was driven by character relationships themselves and the instantly-relatable experience of school.  It was an encounter with something utterly different — and it made an excellent first impression.

Eventually, I bought a copy of the complete series of the manga it’s based on.  Azumanga Daioh was originally, well, a manga, written by Azuma Kiyohiko and originally published in the form of a 4-panel comic strip that ran in the magazine Dengeki Daioh.  See, it’s Azuma’s manga in Dengeki Daioh.  Azuma manga, Dengeki Daioh.  Azumanga Daioh.  Ha.  Clever.  Anyway, in there, I encountered largely the same characters and interactions, a mix of believable school life and quick gags, just presented in a different format.  I eventually got the DVD box set of the show, too, and I’ve rewatched a few favorite episodes several times, but this review is the first time I’ve revisited the whole series in years.

2. Who are all these people?

Rather than focusing on a small core friend group like Three Leaves, Three Colors, another much more recent adorable high school slice-of-life I greatly enjoy (and should maybe review?), Azumanga has a pretty large ensemble.  Most of them are students and the “story arc” such as it is follows them through three years, from entering to graduating from high school, over a single 26-episode season.  So rather than cover a plot synopsis, I think it would make more sense to dive into specific characters and their relationships.  The show its at its funniest and sweetest with the dynamics of certain combinations of the main characters, and there are a lot of combinations available.  Covering all of the recurring named characters approximately in the order we meet them (except a few characters who show up only in an episode or two each and another classmate named Chihiro who shows up on the periphery as a friend of Kaorin), let’s look at the relationships that stand out:

Yukari and Nyamo: Yukari Tanizaki, the English teacher who is the homeroom teacher to most of the cast, is unprofessional and insensitive from the first moment we see her, traits which are elaborated in later episodes into a sort of impulsive over-the-top-ness that clashes with the fact that she actually is a pretty good teacher.  Emphasizing her less-serious attitude, students even refer to or address her by her given name (although the subtitles exaggerate this a bit by consistently calling her “Miss Yukari” when she’s usually just addressed as “teacher”).  Minamo Kurasawa, the gym teacher, is a long-time friend of Yukari.  She and Yukari (who calls her “Nyamo”) were even classmates at the same high school they currently teach at.  In addition to being central to the gym class/sports-related episodes, she’s also Yukari’s more caring, approachable, and professional foil, which sets up interactions where Nyamo tries to be helpful and manage situations in the face of Yukari being antagonistic (and, outside of school hours, drunk) towards her and the students.  Yukari in particular prods at Nyamo’s sore spots: being single and having done embarrassing things in high school.

Tomo and Yomi: Tomo Takino is 100% genki girl.  I mean, come on, she’s the illustration for the TV Tropes article by that name.  She’s not only enthusiastic, but loud, intrusive, and pointlessly competitive to the point of being just plain mean.  She’s the kind of person who might mature into a less competent Yukari if she burnt out a bit.  Koyomi Mizuhara, on the other hand, is much more serious and self-conscious, and although she still genuinely is Tomo’s friend and goes along with some of her silliness, she barely puts up with Tomo’s teasing and flurry of bad ideas.  She is the Nyamo to Tomo’s Yukari, complete with Tomo enforcing a nickname on her, so she’s almost always called “Yomi” throughout.  Yomi is much more considerate than Tomo, too.  This often comes out in Yomi scolding Tomo’s insensitivity, but it’s also seen less directly when they are giving Chiyo (more on her below) birthday presents — Tomo offers first a joke that doesn’t go over well, then a magic wand she apparently expects Chiyo to believe will make her grow taller, which Chiyo dismisses, while Yomi offers a book which Chiyo enthusiastically accepts and says she expects to enjoy.

Osaka, Tomo, and Kagura: Ayumu Kasuga is a distractible and soft-spoken transfer student from Osaka whom Yukari, Tomo, and Yomi pester with misinformed questions and assumptions about her home city.  Tomo, naturally, saddles her with the nickname “Osaka” as if that is her entire identity.  The nickname quickly catches on, with even Yukari calling her that instead of her actual name in class.  She is accepted as a friend by the other students who still consider her eccentric and baffling, but not annoying or embarrassing like you might expect.  (In fact, the other girls react more and more to Tomo as the annoying and embarrassing one.)  During the second year of school,  she bonds with Tomo and Kagura (introduced as a star athlete from Nyamo’s homeroom during the first year, she becomes a major character in the second year) over their similar incredible forgetfulness and poor academics.  Yomi calls them “bonkura”, translated as “knuckleheads”, and the three of them adopt the name for themselves as they study together — an idea which is doomed from the outset.  The three of them together, or any two of them, play off each other wonderfully.

Chiyo and Osaka: Chiyo Mihama, a child prodigy who is only 10 years old at the beginning of the series, is so academically gifted it can upset and embarrass her classmates, but on the other hand is naive, and not just because she’s a child.  She is in fact clueless about the outside world.  She fails in the first summer break trip (ep. 5) to understand that the other characters’ families are nowhere near as rich as hers, and in the second summer break (ep. 14), even after a year and a half of being around high schoolers, she entirely fails to understand Nyamo’s off-screen explanation of “adult relationships” (kids innocently being oblivious to what sex is seems to be a common basis for jokes in Japanese media).  Chiyo being five years younger than her classmates — and on the other side of puberty from them — also makes her lag far behind them in athletics.  On the one hand, this makes her very self-conscious and afraid of being a burden on her classmates in team activities, and on the other, it sets up a running gag of Chiyo and Osaka teaming up to be by far the worst pair of athletes across the board.  Oh, and Osaka’s dream about Chiyo’s pigtails in the New Year’s episode is one of the weirdest and most authentically dreamlike dream sequences I’ve ever seen.  Although maybe that just says more about my own dreams than about the show.

Sakaki and Nobody (or, Multiple Kinds of Unrequited Feelings): Sakaki is considered effortlessly cool and somewhat intimidating — Kagura calls her a “silent lone wolf” — but she’s not big on that reputation.  Students openly admire her, especially for her athletic talent, and treat her with distance and respect by almost universally calling her “Miss Sakaki” (since this is apparently her family name, not given name).  She does not enjoy this treatment, but is also too private (and perhaps too insecure) to complain about or discuss it.  She is indifferent to sports despite excelling at them, and doesn’t even recognize Kagura when she proclaims herself Sakaki’s rival, presumably because the first-year sports festival just didn’t stick out in her memory the way it did in Kagura’s.  Despite calling it rivalry, however, Kagura quickly inserts herself into Sakaki’s life in a friendship that Sakaki responds to more with quiet tolerance than reciprocation.

Kaorin, meanwhile, mistakes Kagura’s one-sided friendly rivalry for a very different kind of attention, and accordingly treats her one-sidedly as a romantic rival (although she does eventually calm down about it).  Kaori (family name not mentioned), usually addressed by the more affectionate “Kaorin”, is shown at first to ambiguously admire Sakaki, but it quickly becomes clear that she is infatuated with her.  And, despite the insistence of many fanfic writers since, Sakaki never catches on to this, even with Kaorin gazing dreamily at her while dancing with her, or clinging to her arm while posing for a picture together.  I'm sure, given how over-the-top she is, that Kaorin’s unrequited feelings are supposed to be funny, but I find it sweet and sad and end up rooting for her.

Sakaki and Cute Animals: Sakaki is not unfriendly, or even very socially inept, though.  She gets along well with the main cast, especially Chiyo.  But she is aloof, not just because of shyness but because she has a secret love of all things cute, especially cats and dogs, and gets caught up in her own thoughts about cute things.  Although she loves animals, they don’t necessarily love her back.  There is a series-spanning running gag with a cat in the neighborhood whom she repeatedly tries to pet, no matter how many times it bites her for doing so.  In fact, in that very same episode where Kagura declares her rivalry, the strongest emotional reactions we see from Sakaki are horror directed at Kagura for scaring that cat away and, later, being moved to tears by a story she’s constructing in her head about another cat while Kagura is trying to talk to her.  Sakaki’s thoughts on cute animals also yield a second running gag: "Chiyo's dad".  An orange cat-like doll (evidently some kind of character or mascot in-universe?) that appears numerous times in the background early in the show appears in Sakaki’s New Year’s dream and introduces himself to her as Chiyo’s father, so Sakaki refers to the doll as “Chiyo’s dad” for the rest of the series without explanation, much to the confusion of the other characters.  While he’s an inanimate object in the background before the dream, afterwards he appears as alive and magical, sometimes in Sakaki’s imagination and sometimes intruding into the real world as short transition clips between scenes.

Kimura vs. Everyone (mostly Kaorin): Last and certainly least, let’s consider Mr. Kimura, the literature teacher.  Within a minute of the first time we the audience see him, Tomo asks him why he became a teacher and he blurts out that it’s because he likes high school girls.  Which a group of creepy boys in the class call “brave”.  Ugh.  This presages chronic inappropriateness of varying levels from Kimura — from unsolicited suggestions for cheerleading uniforms to hanging out during gym class to watch the girls swim to heaping unwanted “favors” on Kaorin, to whom he is obviously attracted.  Beyond the increasing variety of his inappropriateness, he doesn’t really develop as a character.  He is, interestingly, shown as an otherwise decent person outside of school, but this is not portrayed as excusing him.  Rather, it’s made clear that his creepiness is contextual, and his role throughout the series is consistently as a grotesque comic relief, not a sympathetic character.  Kaorin even consciously tries to improve her opinion of Kimura because his wife is so nice, leading her to believe that this means Kimura himself must have good points to deserve someone like that, only to be immediately shown otherwise.  We the audience are laughing at him, not with him, and at some points are genuinely upset at him on the girls’ behalf.  Or at least, I hope that’s how the rest of the audience takes him.

3. Yeah, but there's some kind of progression, right, even if it's not really a story arc?

Again, it's not the kind of show that has an overarching goal or conflict.  The goal, such as it is, is the characters' graduation from high school.  The topic of what they'll each do after graduating comes up several times, as you might expect, but isn't that much of a plot point.  Not all of the main characters even have clear plans laid out that we know of, but the plans we do know about match their established personalities well.  Tomo changes her mind repeatedly between several half-baked ideas.  Osaka decides at the last minute to try to become a teacher based on Chiyo straining to think of something fitting Osaka's... unique way of looking at things.  Chiyo is perhaps overconfident, planning to study abroad in America despite being only 13 when she graduates.  Sakaki anonymously showed interest in veterinary school early on, but didn't discuss it with her friends until much later, after she started showing her weakness for cuteness in front of them.

The main progression that happens is some evolution in the characters' relationships and attitudes.  There is of course the progression from strangers to friends among the main cast, but also some character development growing out of things that started as gags.  Osaka, for example, begins as the butt monkey of the class, but by the end of the first year, she is very well accepted by her classmates, and she even gets along particularly well with Tomo, who was originally shown teasing and stereotyping her the most but has now toned it down a bit.  Nyamo’s miserable singlehood, previously a running joke, leads her to open up to the idea of trying matchmaking instead of dating.  Sakaki becomes more willing to express her love of cute animals in front of the other girls, starting with Chiyo, and her running gag experiences with the hostile cat play out to a resolution when she adopts, of all things, an endangered wildcat which is the only cat that doesn’t bite her, then has a final encounter with the hostile cat where she tries to make amends.  Chiyo's academic talents were met with light irritation and mockery at first, but by the end, her new friends are grateful for her help and rise in applause when she is recognized for her grades during the graduation ceremony.  Kagura relaxes her Tomo-like tendencies more and more, and shows a degree of gratitude and sentimentality towards her new friend group that would’ve been shocking when she was first introduced.  Even Tomo, usually the show's last bastion of immaturity, shows tiny bits of improvement: self-reflection and regret during a serious conversation with Yomi over what American audiences would call "finding your passion", and later leading the applause for Chiyo.  To compare Azumanga to Three Leaves, Three Colors again, it’s true that this show doesn't go into as much depth in character relationships as that one despite running for more than twice the number of episodes, but I don’t think that’s a flaw in Azumanga so much as a combination of Azumanga’s larger main cast, gag comedy focus, and choice of a different “zoom level” on the main cast’s lives.

The show itself evolves a little bit, too.  As it goes on, more episodes have segments that flow together and they contain more references to events in previous episodes.  By the last few episodes, with graduation looming, it almost feels like it has become a conventional plot-driven show.  The shift from shorter to longer segments, shorter to longer jokes, etc., is seamless — and pretty typical of comic strips where perhaps the author hasn’t “figured out” their own characters at the beginning.  Surreal elements also get more common, like the “Chiyo’s dad” running gag and increasingly-elaborate looks into what characters are imagining.  As I recall, these changes reflect the stylistic evolution of the original manga, but... uh... my copy of the manga is with my parents at the moment so I didn’t check myself on that.

4. How is it different in retrospect?

As I said, I first saw this in high school, so I was about the age of the main cast.  Perhaps this was one of the things that made it so enjoyable.  The characters seemed relatable, and I lacked the aversion to depictions of ordinary life that some people had because I didn’t have a particularly negative high school experience despite being decidedly uncool.  (I was, in fact, neither interested in being cool nor in being self-consciously uncool, and was content with the set of people I got along with.  I was never really an angsty teenager so much as a sad one.)  My experience of the show is, if anything, even greater appreciation now.  Some of that difference comes from knowledge and some from aging.

I’ve become a bit less of a poser and/or snob about some things since then.  I’d seen a lot of obviously-atrocious dubs growing up, and they really put me off the idea that anyone actually cared about dubbing into English well.  Since then, I’ve lightened up a bit, partly because it seems like nowadays distributors do a lot less 4Kids-style butchery of shows when they’re translated and partly because I’ve realized that there is plenty of bad Japanese voice acting, too, so sometimes the English version is just plain easier on the ears.  So I’ve watched this mostly in the English dub this time around (some episodes in both to check the different versions of specific jokes) and I really enjoy it.  The voices are character-appropriate and the English lines fit the lip movements better than the original Japanese voice track while only rarely resulting in rhythms and stresses that sound unnatural in English, which really impresses me.

Just from the sort of vocabulary one picks up by being weeaboo trash, I occasionally notice differences in meaning between the dialogue and subtitles when watching the sub version.  And I even picked up on an interesting translation choice for a joke I hadn’t noticed before.  When Yomi tells Osaka that Chiyo is a child prodigy in ep. 2, Osaka responds comparing Chiyo to a boy she knew growing up, resulting in her expressing a different misunderstanding in each version about how the boy was described by adults.  In the English dub, Osaka says something about him “smarting off”, the joke being she thinks that means he’s smart.  In the English subtitles, she says he was “precocious”, to which Yomi says she doesn’t think that meant he was smart by calling him that.  This time around, I finally caught that the Japanese dialogue there clearly uses the phrase “otoko no ko”, insinuating that the boy is a crossdresser and/or gay.  Even though I don’t understand the full Japanese joke, the implication is clearer than it was in English (because I, um, also didn’t think of the double entendre on the word “precocious” until now), as is the degree of the misunderstanding.

I appreciate now how many scenes are psychologically-savvy.  Just in the episode in which the main cast of students move up to their second year of high school, we see two scenes that just click with me as “yes, people do this, and I don’t know why we don’t seem to notice it!”.  I mentioned above Kagura wanting to compete more because of the sports festival while Sakaki thinks nothing of it at all, which hinges on the simple difference in the sports festival having been a memorable event in Kagura’s life but not Sakaki’s.  That episode also features a scene in which Tomo eggs on her classmates to eat their lunches early because it’s a thing that (according to her) second-years do, which sets up Mr. Kimura to arrive the room for literature class, see everyone eating, and therefore assume he must be the one who has the time wrong and go back to the faculty lounge for his own lunch.  This tendency to defer to others in decisions in our own lives, not through peer pressure per se but through assuming that something done commonly or confidently must be correct, is just something I don’t see portrayed or acknowledged much in Japanese or American media.  And I love it.  For those two scenes alone, this is one of my favorite episodes in the whole series.

As far as the characters, I still find the students charming and relatable, and I’m willing to bet that everyone knows someone like most of them in real life.  They fit Japanese character archetypes to a certain extent, but are also developed enough especially in their interactions with each other that they come off as realistic to me.  So they hold up well.  But mainly, I find I have much more appreciation for the teacher characters as an adult.  I can think of times when I’ve been the Yukari in a situation, whether that means being overbearing and inconsiderate when I think I’m being funny or whether it means or digging through a messy desk swearing that I know exactly where something is before creating a landslide.  And I can think of times when I’ve been the Nyamo accidentally antagonizing the Yukari by trying to be helpful.  I even appreciate Kimura, not because I think he’s relatable or a good guy, but because he’s distressingly realistic.  His creepiness comes at the same time as genuine competence and, as far as we are aware, a normal and functional home life.  It is widely-acknowledged yet never stopped by the administration, even though it ranges from unprofessional obnoxiousness to genuinely alarming sexual harassment.  Kimura is unfortunately plausible and all-around frustratingly topical.

Revisiting these characters, I’ve also realized something about myself.  When I first watched this show (and read the manga), I got a serious crush on Osaka.  She would go solidly in the “endearingly pathetic” column if I were to evaluate her that way, and she also reminded me at the time of a few different confidently strange and spacy people I went to high school with.  And then, getting older, I realized…  She’s endlessly distractible by trivial things.  She asks weird hypotheticals and follows odd tangents to other topics.  She often misunderstands people.  She’s hopelessly unathletic and clumsy.  Oh no.  I'm the Osaka of my circle of friends.  So, uh, that’s a thing that happened, and I have no idea what to make of it.

Azumanga is relaxed, wholesome, and hilarious, and its characters and major events are believable even when highly stylized for comedic effect.  When it's not in hyper-simple comedy mode, the art can be downright beautiful.  It’s clearly an artifact of its time given, for example, the lack of cell phones (even basic ones) and persistence of film cameras, but that kind of aging happens to any show.  The situations are still relatable despite not being topical, which makes me think — or at least hope — that this can last well into the future as something new audiences find worth watching.

—–

W/A/S Scores: 8 / 3? / 3

Weeb: There are lots of little things that will seem odd if you go in believing that Japanese school schedules and activities are the same as American ones, but anime is so saturated with high school comedies nowadays that it is much less weeb now than it was then to expect that background knowledge.  Many non-school things like flower-gazing or the fact that seasonal fairs in Japan have different activities and expected clothing than in American ones will seem distinctly foreign but understandable to a naive audience, while a few episodes might need some looking up to “get” because they expect audience familiarity with things still obscure to most Western audiences, like lucky dreams in the New Year’s episode or the yōkai in the second culture festival episode.  Mostly, familiarity with the conventions of other anime or of Japanese culture will enhance enjoyment but aren’t strictly required to enjoy it.  The art style sometimes shifts for specific gags to a particular style of minimal-movement chibi characters on very simple backgrounds which is more at home in the 4-panel comic world in which Azumanga originated (and in pre-moe-era comedy anime, or at least the few I've seen) than in other manga formats or newer anime, creating an additional small hurdle even for those with different Japanese media exposure.

The show runs into more of a barrier with hard-to-translate jokes than anything else, leaving the viewer the choice between replacement jokes with similar general ideas in the dub vs. the occasional feeling that there should be a joke but you’re not quite getting it in the sub.  One particular joke that they made no attempt to adapt ended up being utter nonsense in both the sub and dub unless you get that "Mr. Yukichi" refers to 19th Century Westernization advocate Fukuzawa Yukichi, who is on the ¥10,000 bill, and I gave the show an entire extra point on the Weeb scale just because I had to look that up.

Ass: Unless you’re Mr. Kimura, probably no “ass” score at all as far as sexualizing the characters, but there is the occasional sexual joke or implication.  Even the obligatory beach episodes aren’t fanservicey in the way or to the degree that a contemporary moe high school show often is.  Probably the single most sexual-looking thing is characters holding their skirts down in the intro, which is tame by comparison to anything released in the last decade.  Kimura, however, does make the show unsuitable for audiences… well… younger than the show’s main cast, probably.

Shit (writing): I have very little problem with the bulk of the content.  I think the show works and the characters are relatable and delightful.  But I do have some gripes about translation, mostly in the dub.  Although I still maintain the dub is unusually good in acting and synchronization, they do take more liberties than I’d like with changing jokes, and the dub and sub both lose some subtlety in how characters address each other, as mentioned before.

On top of that, there are some odd localization choices in the dub.  For example, the way Yukari, their English teacher in the original Japanese, is not portrayed as teaching a foreign language at all in the dub, while still making a big deal of her foreign language skills outside of class, or how characters repeatedly say “taiyaki pastry” in the dub instead of just establishing once for the English-speaking audience that taiyaki is the name of a specific style of pastry and using the name “taiyaki” from then on.  Also, I know this is very small and specific, but I noticed a place in ep. 17 where they inserted a strained pun in the dub where there was intentional awkward silence in the sub, so that’s just… weird.

Shit (other): The animation is often sparse, and although this is usually fine, it does sometimes come off as cheap.  The biggest problem visually is that the DVDs I’m watching have noticeable and pretty frequent combing, which I was able to reduce but not eliminate by fiddling with video player settings.  On the other hand, kudos to the director for hitting a sweet spot on shots that are lingered on or actions that are repeated for “too long” (e.g., Nyamo demonstrating chopstick use, or any of the scenes of Chiyo and Osaka failing at sports, or Osaka trying to wake up Yukari) because they end up hilarious when they could have been tedious.

Oh, and I love the soundtrack.  Some people may also find the frequent use of recorders annoying, but those people are (1) wrong and (2) not writing this blog.  The soundtrack is appropriately lighthearted and/or relaxing.  The opening theme “Soramimi Cake” is catchy and accompanied by an opening credits sequence that decently shows who the main characters are.  But “Raspberry Heaven”, the ending theme… ah… the sequence accompanying it is a beautiful dream and the music is movingly bittersweet for reasons I lack the music theory background to articulate.  Like, this is a really weird example, but it conveys my feelings: have you seen Soylent Green?  You know the scene where Sol is listening to a medley of classical music while he’s being euthanized?  If the last thing I ever heard were “Raspberry Heaven”, I would die totally content.

Content Warning: Kimura.

—–

Stray observations:

- I think Kaorin may have been the first unambiguously gay character I saw in any anime.  Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura would’ve beaten Azumanga to the punch with representation, but I grew up on the butchered-for-pearl-clutching-audiences versions of those shows.

- Kimura has, incidentally, produced one piece of lasting weeb culture.  While trying to save his illustration for a proposed magical girl cheerleading outfit, he drops a picture of a woman.  Tomo picks it up and wonders out loud who it is.  Kimura responds, in heavily-accented English, “my waifu”.  So… yup.  We have him to thank for the whole waifu/hasubando phenomenon.  Or, well, the terminology, since attraction to fictional characters is probably a phenomenon as old as fiction itself.

- More of a fun fact than a stray observation, Kuricorder Orchestra, who collaborated with Oranges & Lemons on the Azumanga soundtrack, recorded two Yotsuba-inspired concept albums, which are also adorable.  They’re hard to come by in official copies, but I can’t help but notice that nobody seems to be stopping anyone from uploading them to YouTube...

- The background music in the cheerleading scene in ep. 6 is the “Grandpa Polka”, a.k.a. “The Clarinet Polka”, which fans of various other weird geeky media may recognize as the melody for the Candy Mountain song in “Charlie the Unicorn” and/or as the song between “Love Shack” and “Pump Up the Jam” in Weird Al’s medley “Polka Your Eyes Out”.

- My junior high, oddly, did have sports festivals somewhat like those depicted in anime, but I don’t hear much about other American schools doing similar things.

[xxsparksxx]

I know they are real and they mess up but i dont want to watch a show that portrays the characters one way then another just to suit the storyline, book Rare diff to show Rand its mixing it all up bits and drabs from book and show. D was played so true and steadfast last series that just because R is not giving her pretty speeches she is prepared to have a hall pass, this makes her an hypocrite.D has spidey senses she must know Hugh is s snake to be disloyal to R .

Fair enough, anon, but why keep watching if you’re not enjoying it?

I don’t feel the characters are actually being all that inconsistent, across s3 and back into s2. I think they’re being shown as consistently trying, which means they are also making mistakes. Yes, book Ross and Demelza are different to show Ross and Demelza. That was always going to happen because things were changed right from the very beginning. Right back in 1.01: aging up Demelza and aging down Ross means they began with a different relationship. In the book, they know each other for three years before they marry. In the show, we have...what, ten or eleven months? It’s never clear, but it’s certainly not three years.

Change leads to change leads to change. The important thing to me, at this stage, is not comparing where they are in the show to where they are in the book at the same point, because all of these small changes - done for the sake of tightening the script, for time concerns, or budget concerns, or modern sensibilities, or whatever - create a world that is recognisably the same, but also has to maintain those differences in a logical, sensible way.

Yes, in s2 she was portrayed as steadfast and patient - and she is still, in many ways, showing those qualities. But yes, she is impatient at times (as she was in s1 and s2), and she is confused, and she is clearly desperately shadowed by the spectre of Valentine, which of course is going to change how she acts. Not that I suggest she’s ‘turned to Hugh’ for any of these reasons as a concrete ‘excuse’, but she’s clearly struggling, within her marriage and with Hugh, and there is absolutely nothing in her behaviour in 3.08 that suggests to me that she feels she has the freedom to be with Hugh because Ross slept with Elizabeth. Her conflict, to me, is clear.

There are some changes where I do agree with you that they’ve ‘changed the characters’ to suit the plot - namely, Demelza wanting Ross to be an MP. I can see where show!Demelza is coming from, in the sense of her wanting Ross to have the recognition he deserves and the power to promote the changes he wants to create a more just society, and also, probably, her harder feelings about George and George’s continuing upwards rise in power - but it jars. She knows him better than that. In the book, she is strongly against it, and I wish they’d kept that in.

I absolutely disagree that Demelza feels she has a ‘hall pass’ because Ross isn’t making her pretty speeches, but I’ve discussed this so many times that I’m just not willing to go into it again. You must know my views, if you’ve read my blog; I won’t reiterate again. If I’ve not explained myself clearly enough in the myiad of posts I’ve made about it, I’m probably never going to manage to explain it all clearly.

I absolutely do not think she is a hypocrite. If anything, she is avoiding being a hypocrite by being open and honest with Ross about the stirrings in her heart - something that Ross was and is completely unable to be with Demelza about Elizabeth (both because of his disinclination to talk and, later, his awareness of how it would come across to her because of how much she dislikes Elizabeth and thinking about what happened). She has always wanted him to be honest with her, and with himself. How is her honesty, then, hypocritical?

Demelza no more has ‘spidey senses’ than anyone else. She doesn’t know Hugh is a snake. That’s not how he comes across to her at all. And she doesn’t want to be disloyal to Ross. That’s the whole point of what she says at the end of 3.08 - and we see it, also, in her throwing away the sketch, and her expression when Hugh visits, and even in the song she sings to him.

Demelza is not a saint. Neither is Ross. The very fact that they are flawed characters is, to me, what makes them so endlessly interesting. 

Once 3.09 is out, I’m planning to rewatch the whole series and try to get a better overall feel. It can be quite hard, going from week to week, nitpicking all the changes and all the things that feel wrong on a first watch, etc. I have a suspicion, though, that it will all make more sense within the context of the series as a whole - just as, in s2, the change in Ross and Demelza’s emotional closeness between 2.02 and 2.03 made more sense, later on, in the context of the whole.

But as I said: if you’re not enjoying it, why keep watching it?

[bartsugsy]

I just wanna say, I'm so happy you're embracing your feelings towards Rebecca. It's just reached a whole other level of ridiculous now heh 😂😂😭😭.

this was probably the wrong (right?) time to send this message because i’ve been yelling about this theory all evening and….

i have some more Thoughts

ok, i think i sort of accidentally went back to trying to really fathom out her character again, but it always feels pointless, because i don’t know how we’re supposed to take her. i don’t know ultimately where her story should be or where it should be going. as far as i can tell, she’s there to further along robert’s story. that’s it. and that makes me annoyed because as much as i sort of just utterly despise her, why do i want to watch a female character help build up a male character without the writers even bothering to even try to make her character work in any kind of sensible way, or fleshed out, or even the slightest bit consistent? she’s so sloppily written and… you can sort of figure things out about her, but nothing that makes me understand why she is someone i would root for? 

like. i just want to know what the writers think of her. are we supposed to really be that invested in her? and if so, why haven’t they tried harder to make that happen by making her seem like more of a real multi-faceted character? as opposed to someone who, until literally two days ago, has never made a decision that someone else didn’t influence.

i just don’t really know where they can take her? because now she seems to have realised how shitty robert treats her and i enjoyed her earlier this week, tearing a strip off of him and rejecting him because she deserved to have a scene like that, but…

idk i’ve spent a lot of time talking about her with people today and thinking through her very thinly constructed character and it feels like they’ve started to do a 180 - they’ve had her take a stand against robert, they’ve had her stand fast in this one decision that she’s made by herself, against what other people have told her (yes with the prompting from vic, but she’s stood by it, so i’m sort of giving it to her anyway, baby steps etc). is that the extent of her character arc? where else can she go from here?

rebecca spent years - 5? years? 6? - idolising robert. She thought she was in love with him and she thought that she was the only one who knew him. She thought she was his aaron, essentially - the one person in her family who knew he was the sort of person who would cheat on chrissie, who was allowed to see all of him. i think she thought that she was more special to him than chrissie, and in that, didn’t actually ever see the real him at all.

earlier today i accidentally rewatched the first rob/rebecca kiss - the one that happened the day before ssw, rob’s inexplicable way to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to cheat on aaron that still makes literally no sense to me and almost annoys me more than The Incident because of it, but is saved only by the fact that it had less than zero effect on the story. the things that that scene - and the scene before it - did establish were: robert treats rebecca like shit and rebecca doesn’t really seem to notice. she just lets his words and tone mostly roll off her, still presses forwards and tries to see if he’ll give into her. she doesn’t stop or give up at that scene either. he strings her along just enough that she can just sort of blankly ignore the shit he says to her otherwise, especially when she brings aaron up.

and i think she must be jealous of aaron. it’s the only way her story works, in all honesty. for her to think that she was always something special to robert and to slowly be forced, over the course of the months of her returning to the village, to understand that the person she spent years she was to robert is in fact aaron dingle.

that and she must think of robert in a slightly delusional way - she puts him on a pedastal, ignores a lot of the bad things about him in favour of the good, because he really does treat her like shit. he’s occassionally genuinely nice to her, cares about her just enough, but largely treats her like a play thing - someone he can use to get his own way. he has so little regard for her feelings and she makes it so easy for him, lets him treat her that way, that he just continues, has really no respect for her (as little respect for her as i imagine she has for herself).

but despite every shitty thing he’s ever done to her, still she wants him. even after they’ve ostensibly drawn a line under things, she still makes promises to him, still tries to help him, still tries to stay in his life and bribes him to help her and… for all that i think she spent so many years convinced she was the person who knew him best, i think she blithely ignores so much of him in favour of this idea of who she thinks he is in her head.

this is literally the only way i can make sense of her continued responses to him, alongside both his behaviour to her on show and his canonical behaviour to her previously.

(i’m not really sure what to say about the first abortion anymore, because it 100% seems like something robert would do and i always stood by that, but in the light of her talking quite calmly about it to chrissie and saying it was the right thing to do, i sort of wonder if maybe rebecca was just throwing it in robert’s face for shock value, if she didn’t put up quite the fight that was originally implied, if it seemed a lot more of a joint decision? or maybe it wasn’t, but rebecca still recognises retroactively that it was the right thing to do? she certainly doesn’t seem to blame robert for it or any trauma she’s suffered relating to it when speaking to chrissie? which makes me think that she was trying to hurt robert and blame it on him, more than anything else?

idk, i feel vaguely uncomfortable about this line of thinking, hilariously enough, because i always want to make sure i’m holding robert as accountable as possible to his numerous fuck ups, but i think canonically speaking this is no longer as big of a fuck up as we once were led to believe it was. and at least that makes a damn slight more sense that she’d still continue loving him, wanting him in that same blind way as she does when arrives in emmerdale. no much more sense, but some.)

ANYWAY BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND

so i think rebecca is in love with this idea of robert that she has in her head, and there are ways you can parallel that with aaron and his relationship with robert during the affair

the difference comes from the second thing we know about rebecca, which is that she’s very easily led - and has shown very little agency at any point during her time on the show. where aaron would fight back against robert, rebecca never has - until recently.

we see him time and time again openly manipulate her. i won’t go into detail because i’ve done it already. one or twice.

(me: rebecca is such a boring character. also me: writes literal dissertations on her PICK A SIDE LO smh)

(me: liked rebecca before the Incident. also me: now writes thousands of words on why her character doesn’t work HYPOCRACY EVERYWHERE)

(me: knows that the character i thought rebecca white was was someone who despite everything, would ultimately do the right thing by the people she cares about and was largely better than giving into drunk, awful robert’s ridiculous seduction and had mad respect for her when she initially walked away, but also knew that she could potentially be at the mercy of Plot. also me: has been dealing with that and having to realign my every notion on who rebecca white is ever since because i am an obvious slave to canon and if she honestly didn’t do anything wrong that night, why the hell did she try to walk away in the first place)

(me: apparently has never held robert sugden to the same standard. also me: loves him anyway bc at least when he’s doing terrible things the show either invests in redeeming him or acknowledges that his actions are terrible. it took a long time for me to even like his character the first time i watched it but i got there and that time and backstory and the fact that it was so in character makes it easier to sympathise with than rebecca the walking plot device. still think he acted worse of the two of them that night, but as always, that’s just my take on it. but at least he’s shown remorse. she’s done nothing but imply she’s as big a victim as aaron in all of this. which. no.)

A N Y W A Y

She has the least amount of agency of any fictional character I’ve ever scene, has never been able to make a decision for herself that wasn’t somehow influenced by someone else… until this week.

Rebecca decides once and for all to keep the baby. Again, yes, Vic had to prompt her to take that step, but she’s still learning, she’s not used to being a grown adult person but she can totally take care of a living breathing child. 

she also, to my first point, has finally stopped buying robert’s bullshit. maybe it’s something about being pregnant and contemplating motherhood and one of his comments was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but she’s been outright wary of him, completely unwilling to be around him, in a way she never was before. 

so…. there we have it. character development, such that it is. is it satisfying? sort of….? but not really? there’s still not much else to her, is the thing. and where else does she have left to go? she’s found a spec of agency, she’s realised that her feelings of love weren’t for the actual flesh and blood robert sugden, but the version of him she has in her head.

she’s on a mission to get aaron to see the same (not aware that aaron knows far worse things about robert), despite her determination just one day before that she didn’t want to get involved. 

but… again, where can this storyline develop that’s satisfying not only for robert and aaron but rebecca too? 

it’s my firm belief that actually the most interesting direction to take her in would be to take her character development to the extreme - have her go out for revenge. become a character that grows from having no agency to taking every single drop of agency for herself and getting her own back at the man who she held in her heart for years, but turned around and crushed it

(around the time she realised that not even a baby would make him want to be with her)

everyone around her thinks she’s keeping the baby because she thinks it’ll win robert back. but if she’s keeping the baby for her and wants robert out of her hair for good, or wants to teach robert a lesson, or wants to take revenge because robert is eventually interested in the baby and still has basically no concern for her…

to be honest, with the way she was able to still look at robert, to let every horrible comment he’s said to her go and still want to be with him, still actively try to be with him despite being turned down repeatedly, it actually feels like a more believable direction for her character to take than anything else. because… that blind desperation has to come from somewhere. out and out villainise her - they’ve built seven months worth of backstory as to how and why she could be pushed to the extremes and it would make her a hell of a lot more interesting. hell, it would be better constructed as a dive into soap villainy than chrissie’s turn ever really was (which was ok, but extreme and pretty out of odds with the character we’d seen from her before - i really don’t mind though because i fucking loved her scheming overdramatic ass). plus, rebecca deserves to be able to put robert through some pain 

(obviously not ultimately really hurt him in any way but, you know, still)

idk, it’s just. a more enjoyable concept. it would fit her character magnificantly, when all is said and done. she’s been so meek, so easily manipulated for such a long time, has made near on every decision around robert, that giving her this opportunity to really do a 180 and take is to a soapy extreme would be amazing.

will they do this? i’m assuming not? if we’re supposed to like rebecca???? and i still don’t really know if we are or not. 

what could they do instead? a lot of things that are less interesting, probably. and less satisfying for all of the characters involved. like. i guess she’ll just plod along, hating robert but staying firm in her decision?

or maybe she’ll start liking robert again which would make no sense but i guess the plot means that everyone forgives everyone else on a soap in one way or another eventually, but when ‘not liking robert’ is actually a genuine part of her character development… idk, is that satisfying? is that a good thing for her character? because i don’t feel like it is and i don’t feel like she should like robert again. he doesn’t deserve it from her. and i don’t have any interest in watching him make it up to her.

i don’t know. it’s 2am now and i want to sleep. i feel like maybe i’d be able to start comfortably theorising about her if i knew whether or not we were supposed to like her character. i do know that… there are a couple of ways they could take this storyline that would be ok with me, but this is literally the only way i could think of that would help save rebecca’s character and still make sense -

- but i just don’t think, regardless of what we’re supposed to feel, they really care about her enough to worry if she makes sense or not, so. she could really go in any damn direction (and i’ll be here once more, scrambling to make sense of an illogical character all over again)

(see, this is why i know i should actually just give up)