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prokopetz · 2 years

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Do you know any hidden gem game from the last couple of years that you think deserve more attention?

You didn't really think I was going to pick just one, did you?

(Courtesy cut, because this post’s a big one.)

On the tabletop RPG side:

Minerva McJanda's Voidheart Symphony is very unapologetically an Apocalypse Engine hack of Persona 5, right down to assigning each of your character's relationships its own tarot-themed mechanical playbook with ranked special abilities and such. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it does a better job of following Persona 5's thematic through-line to its logical conclusion than the actual Persona 5 does. Technically not "from the last couple of years", because it's been in early access since 2018, but it just went 1.0 in March of last year, so I'm counting it.

Caro Asercion's cyberpunk science-fantasy game Dwindle is really more of a proof of concept than a full-featured game engine, but it's got a fascinating core mechanic, one that I was inspired to lift for one of my own projects. (With full credit, of course!) You'll need to do some hacking to get a full campaign out of it; as written, it's a perfectly serviceable rules-light oneshot.

Heather Flowers' Extreme Meatpunks Forever, based on the independently published episodic video game of the same name, isn't actually out yet due to pandemic-related delays, but is slated to hit the shelves this summer. Short version: found family meets extreme body horror in a game about gay mecha pilots punching Nazis. Both the pilots and the mecha are made of meat. (Presumably the Nazis are made of meat, too, but one can never be sure!) Full disclosure: I backed this one on Kickstarter, so this is definitely not a disinterested recommendation.

Keeping the body horror theme going, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul and Steffie de Vaan’s City of Flesh is a particularly grisly example of an old-school sword and sorcery dungeon crawler, set within the womb of a colossal, dying beast. It’s a zine-format game that self-describes with terms like “splatterpunk” and ”femmecore”, and if you know what both of those words mean you’re almost certainly part of this one’s target audience. This is the second game on this list with tarot-based mechanics, though in a different way from Voidheart Symphony.

Its title notwithstanding, Erika Chappell’s Flying Circus has nothing to do with Monty Python. Like the Extreme Meatpunks Forever, this one is about beating up Fascists, this time in a vaguely fantastical pastiche of post-WWI Germany. You play as a private company of ace pilots taking on a combination of charity missions and mercenary work for the highest bidder, with extensive downtime mechanics and a strong focus on community-building. As you might have suspected from that pitch, it takes a lot of cues from Blades in the Dark, right down the mechanics enforcing the fact that player characters are extraordinarily dysfunctional people, so be prepared for that. It’s also got one of the most intense non-map-based tactical combat systems I’ve ever seen, so maybe not the best choice if keeping track of G forces and engine RPM isn’t your idea of a fun time. If it is your idea of a fun time, though, highly recommended.

(If you’d prefer something a little more lightweight, the same author’s Dirty Pair inspired Double or Nothing is also great fun. It’s juuuuust slightly outside the two-year window, being a December 2019 release, but my post, my rules.)

Shifting gears to something a little less intense than those previous few entries, The Quiet Life – whose author is not credited in the text, but elsewhere goes by Duck – is a semi-competitive tabletop dating sim about gay nuns at a pastoral convent. Its framework resembles that of a board game as much as a tabletop RPG, so it's a good one to play if you're looking for something highly structured and don't want to do a lot of faffing about to figure out a scenario.

Rose Bailey’s Bright and Terrible is an older game, but a second edition (linked) came out just last year. The players are cast as wandering exiles of lost Atlantis, each wielding a terrible power and bearing the guilt of an equally terrible crime. It’s basically one of those “everybody is [insert media character here]” games where [insert media character here] is Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone and his various imitators, so if playing as an angsty, mostly-unsympathetic loser with far more power than is good for you (or anyone in your general vicinity) sounds like your cup of tea, maybe give this one a look. Note: a big part of this rec is because Rose Bailey shares my love of big stupid random tables, and this title’s got them in spades.

P H Lee and Aura Belle’s Four Ways to Die in the Future is in a similar boat as the preceding entry, being an anthology collection of older games that squeaks into the appropriate time window because the anthology itself is only recently published. As the title suggests, it’s a set of four sci-fi games revolving around death and mortality: Amid Endless Quiet, Island in a Sea of Solitude, Alone on Silver Wings, and The Tragedy of GJ 237b, being for three or more, two, one, and zero players, respectively. (If you’re dying – ha! – to know what a game for zero players is, well, the whole collection is only six bucks, so I invite you to find out.)

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Dr. Jenna Moran’s Glitch. This one might not seem like a “hidden” gem to many of this blog’s readers, but remember that Dr. Moran’ work is virtually unheard-of outside of a very particular circle, so I’m counting it here. Elevator pitch: diceless post-modern god game where you play as a pack of dysfunctional weirdoes for whom divinity is a terminal illness. This one also has a found family focus, except this time you’re playing as the bad guys. Well, the nominal bad guys; by default, the player characters are assumed to be drawn from the ranks of those who’ve realised that being an all-consuming eidolon of the Outer Void leading a crusade to destroy reality itself is bullshit, actually, even if you do get to wear a cool crown. Like Flying Circus, above, the learning curve and mechanical overhead are considerable, albeit for different reasons.

On the video game side:

(Note: the entries in the previous section are selected with no particular criteria beyond my own gut feel; nearly all independently published tabletop RPGs are underexposed, so it’s not like I have to be terribly rigorous! For video games, I’m adopting a somewhat arbitrary cutoff of “has fewer than 200 user reviews on Steam at the time of this posting”.)

Aeon Drive is a cyberpunk-themed pixel-art precision puzzle platformer with a strong focus on speedrunning and the obligatory cute red-haired girl protagonist. Basically, any time I say the phrase “precision puzzle platformer”, just assume I’m talking about a game that you’ll love if you enjoyed Celeste and won’t be able to stand otherwise. Beyond that, I’m not going to belabour the point – you know what you’re getting here!

The original Kathy Rain is both too widely reviewed and too old – being a 2016 release – to make this list, but the late 2021 remake seems to have flown a bit under the radar. It’s a pixel-art point and click puzzler about a jouranlism student investigating her grandfather’s mysterious death. Apart from improved graphics and audio, the remake features extra puzzles, an extended story, and an ending that actually makes some damn sense; the lack of the last one is something the original was rightly criticised for.

Open Sorcery: Sea++ is the sequel to Abigail Corfman’s 2017 Open Sorcery, and expands on it in nearly every way. It’s a piece of hypertext interactive fiction where you play as an amnesiac seer who’s been forced out of her body and cast into the Deep Web; the game takes place in a magical-realist universe where the Internet and humanity’s collective unconscious are the same thing, so that preceding sentence has several implications. As is typical for games of the type, you definitely won’t get the golden ending without either a guide or several careful playthroughs. Content warnings for some very frank discussions of disability and ableism, particularly with respect to forms of abuse experienced by physically disabled folks; much of it’s handled in a fairly lighthearted fashion – like the protagonist’s efforts to fight through a fairy court’s incomprehensible bureaucracy in order to get them to install a ramp for her wheelchair – but much of it is not.

Red Ronin is part of a highly specialised genre known as the “ice-physics puzzler”, which means that your character can only move in straight lines and can’t stop until they hit an obstacle. This one casts the player as a disgraced samurai on a mission of revenge, with the ice-physics movement representing the impossibly fast run-by attacks that samurai media is known for. Features an interesting dynamic difficult mechanic where the puzzles adapt to whether or not you’ve carried over resources from previous puzzles, which creates some fascinating routing challenges if you’re trying to speedrun it.

Star Apprentice: Magical Murder Mystery is literally Touhou meets Phoenix Wright, and I mean that not just in terms of its gameplay, but also in terms of its obvious inspirations. Kinda janky in most game-mechanical respects, but it’s a free student project, so it’s not like you’re going to feel ripped off for the price. If you’re a fan of either of the two franchises it takes its cues from, there’s a good chance you’ll love it anyway.

Sunblaze is, well, just copy-and-paste the description of Aeon Drive, above. This one differs in that where Aeon Drive is mostly about routing across large levels, this one focuses on single-screen execution challenges. It’s one of the few examples of the type that manages to strike the same balance of difficulty versus well-paced introduction of new gimmicks that Celeste does; perhaps not quite as expertly, but then, what game does?

Sunshine Heavy Industries is about building spaceships. You have all the usual concerns about fuel versus thrust ratio versus heat generation versus energy demands and so forth, but rather than being a hardcore engineering sim like most games of the type, this is essentially a complicated jigsaw puzzle, challenging the player to slap puzzle-piece components together in a way that satisfies all of each project’s engineering requirements while remaining under budget. The story is surprisingly good, though not even slightly serious. The game kind of falls off a cliff once you run out of storyline missions, since the randomly generated postgame tasks currently aren’t able to make use of any of the really interesting mechanics, but the developer is reportedly working on that.

Transiruby is a goofy casual metroidvania about a robot girl who can turn into a motorcycle. You can probably shoot through it in 4–6 hours unless you’re a completionist, and the difficulty curve isn’t too high. Free demo available. (Note: according to the publisher, the title is a reference to the fact that the protagonist transforms, and has nothing to do with gender. However, I have also been informed by certain mutuals that she’s definitely transition goals, so take it as you will!)

Treasures of the Aegean is a pseudohistorical adventure game that isn’t really a metroidvania, in spite of being tagged that way on Steam, as the ability upgrades are very few and don’t really affect your ability to move about the world – in fact, 100% of the game world is accessible right from the start. It’s a time-loop 2D puzzle-platformer where the world will be destroyed in 15 real-time minutes, and you have to explore a mysterious island to figure out how to stop it. The plot heavily involves the Minoan civilisation of Crete, though the historical particulars range from speculative to outright fabricated.

Like Voidheart Symphony from the tabletop game section, Viola: The Heroine’s Melody is a an entry that squeaks into the correct time frame by virtue of being a long-in-early-access title that got a 1.0 release during 2021. It’ a cute, music themed platformer RPG with rhythm-based combat. I’m going to put a disclaimer on this one: there are a number of conspicuous user interface bugs that may never get patched because the dev experienced a serious health crisis more or less immediately after the game’s 1.0 release, so you’ll need a fair tolerance for UI jank to get through this one.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #video games #tabletop rpg recommendations #video game recommendations #body horror #violence mention #death mention #nazi mention #ableism mention #swearing

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youchangedmedean · 3 years

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Why Dean’s Heaven Outfit is so Cursed

You may have seen my previous post about why Dean’s outfit in heaven is so cursed, but since then I have spotted even more.

According to Jared at the Virtual Con after 15x20 aired when asked ‘Were any lines added or ad libbed by you two [Jared and Jensen]?’ (starts at 29:28 timestamp)

... So, when we’re on that bridge and uh, and Dean says, “Heya Sammy” and then it cuts to Sam, and I’m dressed like, as best I could, like uh like the pilot with Dean, y’know. ...

So from this, we know that Sam on the bridge in 15x20 was supposed to be dressed like the pilot. I infer that Dean was also supposed to be dressed like the pilot but based on the wording it’s possible that’s not what he meant. As soon as we got BTS pics from the last day on set however, we all pointed out that they were dressed like the pilot but there is a difference.

So what did Dean wear in the pilot? He had on 2 different outfits. First a dark jacket and a red shirt.

After Dean gets covered in mud, he changes into a denim shirt and John’s leather jacket.

Another thing to note is that both Sam and Dean wear sneakers in the pilot. No boots for Dean.

So it looks like for Dean in 15x20, the heaven outfit is based on outfit 1 with the dark jacket, plain red shirt and jeans.

Dean consistently has plain red shirts through the seasons and continues to wear the dark jacket until 9x03 so I would bet that the very jacket was sitting in storage until s15.

Something to note is that while Sam is in a virtually identical outfit in 15x20 and the pilot, Dean is not. They must have had to source Sam’s outfit specifically for this. Sam does wear a hoodie and a beige jacket in later seasons so they could have built it out of Sam’s wardrobe but they chose not to. He does not wear these exact clothes at any other point in the series apart from in Heaven. Dean’s Heaven outfit is just made out of his clothing from later in the series. They both wore sneakers in the pilot but in Heaven Dean still has his boots while Sam is wearing sneakers.

Compare:

If I was building Dean’s heaven outfit out of later seasons outfits, I would have chosen his plain red shirt (note: this is not the Demon!Dean/MoC!Dean shirt, it is a different one).

By the later seasons, Dean doesn’t actually wear dark dark jackets much. His only black jacket in s15 was this denim one which he has had since 10x04:

But the wardrobe department decided not to go for these and instead decided on cursed items instead.

So what was Dean wearing in Heaven?

The Shirt

Now this shirt is just plain cursed. This is only seen at 2 other points in the whole series, and it was a new one for s15.

We first see it in 15x04 Atomic Monsters for the Chuck AU where Lucifer!Sam kills Dean. Directed by Mr Jensen Ackles himself.

Thanks to him, we also get a good look at the shirt

So this is the first time we ever see this shirt and its for a Chuck AU where Sam kills Dean.

The second time we see it, its in 15x13 and this is another cursed appearance. It is worn by Huntercorp!Dean while pretending to be our Dean in the bunker.

And why was Huntercorp!Dean there at all? Because Chuck was destroying worlds.

When AU!Dean leaves the bunker, there is an exchange that is a bit cursed.

Huntercorp!DEAN: Oh, uh, you think we could keep the flannel shirts?

DEAN: No.

So the shirt actually gets a mention by Huntercorp!Dean.

What we see here is that this shirt is NEVER worn by our Dean. It is worn by a Chuck AU Dean and Huntercorp!Dean fleeing a world Chuck had destroyed while pretending to be our Dean.

We never see our Dean wear this shit until Heaven which seems like an odd choice.

Dean also doesn’t normally wear red and black plaid shirt. In fact, the previous one he had has an interesting history as pointed out by @wigglebox when we were discussing it.

It is first seen in 12x21 and he continues to wear it into 12x23 when Dean has to go into Mary’s mind.

We then see it again and for the last time in 13x16 Scoobynatural.

Both of these episodes are sort of AU episodes where he’s venturing into another character’s mind or heading into Scooby-Doo world.

So both Dean’s black and red plaid shirts have a cursed history relating things not being real and for this specific shirt, AUs. They could have chosen a plain red shirt almost identical to the pilot but they chose not to.

The Jacket

Dean has this jacket for a long time. He has a blue one and a black one. This black jacket has been around since s9 and gets worn a fair bit. On the whole, it doesn’t have a very happy history, its first worn for Kevin’s funeral in 9x10 and is worn after Claire is bitten by a Werewolf in 12x16.

However, the most notable thing about this jacket is what should have been it’s demise.

Dean is wearing it in 13x23 when he fights Lucifer and AU!Michael takes over his body.

At the end of the episode, we see that Michael has changed dean’s clothes and presumably ditched them somewhere.

Dean comes back at the end of 14x02 wearing Michael’s clothes. He arrives back at the bunker in 14x03 and changes into Dean clothes but is missing his watch for the whole episode, presumably because Michael ditched it. The denim shirt Dean wears in 13x23 is never seen again (yes, I have watched s14 and s15 just to check and have spreadsheets for Dean’s outfits!). His boots are back in 14x03 but I suppose you could argue he had multiple pairs.

We are left to assume that the jacket is also gone (and it really should be gone) but it makes a miraculous reappearance in 14x13 Lebanon.

Now this episode is an odd episode. They get their Dad back by messing up time, Cas doesn’t know them until they reset it back again. The shirt in this episode is also notable and I will write a post on it soon. So again, we have part of Dean’s heaven outfit connecting to alternative timelines where it really shouldn’t be at all.

BUT IT GETS WORSE EVERYONE!

This jacket appears at just one other point in s15. Now if you had to pick the most cursed of cursed times to put it where would you put it on Dean?

The Vamp Chuck future in 15x09 where Sam and Dean die as vampires.

So this jacket should have disappeared in 13x23 but reappears for an episode where time is altered in 14x13 and when Chuck is showing Sam the future in 15x09 if they ‘win’ and they die as vampires. Dean is then killed on a vampire hunt in 15x20 and ends up wearing this jacket in Heaven. Cool, cool.

This jacket becomes connected to our Dean but in altered timelines and worlds while the shirt is connected to alternative Deans. Both the shirt and the jacket have direct connections to Chuck.

So we see Dean in Heaven wearing this cursed outfit drinking cursed El Sol beer with the same cursed monkey from 14x13 Lebanon (see above, it was in the roadhouse too).

This is not an outfit that screams happy. This is not an outfit that screams Sam and Dean won. This is an outfit that seems to scream Chuck won.

I guess we’ll just have to wait until Jackles manages to get a continuation...

One final odd thing to note. We all remember Jensen’s video posted before the finale when he was dressing up as Dean for the last time “at least for now”. Well he wasn’t actually wearing the outfit Dean wore in Heaven although all the Heaven scenes were shot on the last day of filming, the 10th of September.

He was wearing the Heaven plaid shirt, but not the Heaven Jacket. It was Dean’s black denim jacket I pointed out earlier. If you look it has seams that the Heaven Jacket doesn’t and the pocket flaps are a different shape.

I have gone through all the Heaven scenes and he is wearing the Heaven jacket in all of them. But I can’t think of a reason why on a hot day in September when Jensen is getting changed into costume he would have a different one of Dean’s jackets on over the shirt he needs to wear for the scenes.

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cc-mr-vip · 3 years

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Season 3 Initial Thoughts

- ℂ𝔸𝕄ℙ ℂℝ𝔼𝕋𝔸ℂ𝔼𝕆𝕌𝕊 𝕊ℙ𝕆𝕀𝕃𝔼ℝ𝕊 𝔸ℍ𝔼𝔸𝔻-

Holy shit, this Season was a doozy. I absolutely loved this season. It was a lot more intense than both Season 1 and 2, but had the realism from Season 1 that I loved so much.

Also I was fucking wrong, boys. Well not completely. I did make the prediction that they’ve been on the island for at least 2 months, because for some reason that was a reasonable number in my head. A nice believable number for the kids to have survived and did all they did, but six months!? Like half a year!? They would have been 1.5 years away from getting blown up from the volcano in JW2. Bruh...

The Scorpius Rex probably had the most terrifying design I had ever seen for a hybrid dinosaur. It felt way more threatening than both the Indominus and Indoraptor, probably because of it’s very odd hodgepodge of a design. I also love the twist of it being extremely unstable and causing other dinosaurs to lash out after being poisoned. Having this thing chase around the kids was definitely terrifying to say the least. Also wasn’t expecting Sammy to get spiked by the poison too (and turn an odd shade of green, sorta narmy lmao). I knew she wasn’t going to die, but I wasn’t expecting a nice squick shot of the quills in her abdomen that was a fun treat.

Also finally! Kenji, my boy, finally has some character backstory and development! I will probably do a more deeper analysis on Kenji’s drawing of his family, but is already kinda confirmed what kind of person his father is. He didn’t care enough about his son to want to put pictures of him on the wall, only himself. It makes sense why Kenji was so self absorbed as well. I found it pretty heartbreaking that Kenji risked his life to try rescue his father’s “precious” art statue. I’m not sure if he tried to rescue it because he was scared of his father scolding him or if he just wanted to bring it back for his father for a pat on the back. Either way, it’s just brings up sad implications all around.

Honestly Kenji had some absolutely great development this season, in my opinion, way more so than the others had and way more interesting too. I think the episode that really marked a change in Kenji was Episode 5 (Eye of the Storm), when Kenji took it upon himself to be in charge of packing. For most of the episode, he was acting like typical Kenji, but he began to take his job way more seriously when it came to the safety of his friends. When Darius took after Ben, he properly took charge of the group (nice contrast to Season 1 where he was more nonchalant about it and tried to pass off responsibility). It was around this point that we didn’t see Kenji acting all high and haughty anymore, he was fully devoted to saving his friends.

I definitely wasn’t expecting Kenji to run off with the laptop to make the trade and save Brooklynn. The boy tried to fight a man with a loaded gun to save his friend, how foolish and brave of him to try do so. It was amazing to see Kenji, who spent most of the series cowering behind others, fully devoting himself to protecting Brooklynn in the finale (leading her to safety and shielding her with his own body). I do think that Kenji has some issues regarding losing friends; I think that the Camp Fam really is the first friends he’s ever gotten, which is why losing them hurt him so much (Sammy’s faux death and Brooklynn getting kidnapped).

The way at the end when Kenji refused to forgive and accept the idea that they were going to risk Brooklynn’s safety over the laptop...it was a very mature way to handle that situation. Pragmatically, Kenji was absolutely right, they shouldn’t be risking their lives over a stinkin’ laptop. It’s not they’re responsibility, they’re just kids. But his friends were good people and Kenji played along, but decided to take matters into his own hands. His friends are important to him and he’s going to do anything to keep them safe.

From haughty jock who only seemed to care about himself to a team member willing to risk everything to keep everyone safe, Kenji really has grown so much as a character.

All in all, I’m surprised the kids actually made it off the island this time. My friends and I were placing bets on whether or not they would make it off the island this season. Everyone had voted that they wouldn’t, but they did...hopefully? They got a stowaway so I’m wondering how they’re going to deal with that. Go back to the island? Keep going? Clearly it all isn’t over because Kenji’s character arc isn’t quite solved yet. I wonder how many more season CC will have. I do enjoy the series, but there’s only so much they can keep right?

This initial thoughts ended up more of a Kenji reaction post, so I’ll dedicate the end here to some other thoughts I had overall:

Yasmina and Sammy’s friend-(or maybe more)-ship was really cute and wholesome. I found Yasmina’s chumminess afterwards Hello-Zuko-Here levels of second hand embarrassment xD (Are they a maybe-couple? When Brooklynn mentioned crushes that Sammy might’ve had she mentioned Yaz lmao).

Thank god, Bumpy didn’t die. She has her own family now...for at least 1.5 more years until the volcano explodes...

Ben, you stupid child, of course you want to get off the island. I would have knocked you out and dragged you on the boat myself.

It was nice of the pilot and mercenary to board the kids upon finding out they were children. Even though they died / ended up splitting up the kids, the meant well.

I can’t believe Dr. Wu was in this season. He isn’t as much as a bad guy as I thought. He still left the kids, but at least he didn’t...kill them? Set the bar too low maybe?

And that’s all for now. This being a chock-full Kenji season, I’ll probably be doing some analysis or posts on him, but thought I’d make a reaction post with all my initial thoughts for now!

#jurassic world #jurassic park #jurassic world camp cretaceous #camp cretaceous #jwcc #Darius Bowman #kenji kon #Brooklynn #sammy gutierrez #yasmina fadoula #ben pincus #dr wu #season 3 #spoilers #bumpy the ankylosaurus #scorpio rex

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cyndavilachase · 4 years

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I’m Looking Forward Now 💖Thank you and good bye

So, it’s been a little over a week since Steven Universe Future ended…

I’ve been hesitant to write this, honestly, but I’m tired of holding myself back from properly expressing myself in fear of appearing overly invested in the media I consume, even in private. Writing helps me organize my thoughts and feelings, and I feel like these thoughts in particular may resonate with many, so I want to share them. I want to talk about what Steven Universe has done for me personally, both as an artist, and as a person.

I’ve been around since the day the first episode of the original series aired. I actually remember when Steven Universe was just a logo on Wikipedia’s “List of Upcoming Cartoon Network Shows” list, back when I was a freshman in high school. It piqued my interest, but when commercials finally dropped for it, I thought it was going to be bad because of the way marketing handled introducing Steven as a likeable character. There was still something about it that made me want to give it a chance though, so I went online and watched the pilot before the first episode's release. I was hooked immediately. I knew I was going to love it, and I did. I fell so absolutely in love with Steven as a character, and the world that he and the gems lived in. I became obsessed. I was always so excited for new episodes to come out. Little did I know what else it would do for me as I went through my adolescence alongside it.

As the show progressed, it was evident that what I wanted out of a western animated childrens’ cartoon was finally coming into fruition: this show was becoming serialized. There was continuity, there was plot, there was character development-- it was getting deep. It was pushing the groundwork that Adventure Time laid out even further (thank you, Adventure Time).

I will give credit where credit is due: earlier western childrens’ cartoons I grew up with like Hey Arnold, and Rugrats, among others, also touched on heavy topics, but Steven Universe was able to take similar ideas (and even more complex ones, concerning mental health and relationships) and expand on them outside of contained episodes and/or short arcs. These themes, which were a part of the show’s overarching story, spanned across its entirety. Continuity was rampant.

What did this mean? It meant kids cartoons didn’t have to be silly and fun all the time and characters weren’t just actors playing a part in 11-minute skits. Steven and the gems would remember things that happened to them, and it affected them and how they would function and play a part in their story. This was a huge deal to me as a teenager. I always wanted the cartoons I grew up with featuring kid characters to feel more. In my own work, I often felt discouraged when combining a fun, cutesy western art style with themes as dark or layered as anime would cover. I always thought it had to be one or the other because an audience wouldn’t take a combination of the two seriously enough, based on discussions I had with classmates, friends, and online analysis I read at the time. Steven Universe proved to me otherwise. This show was opening the door for future cartoons exploring in-depth, adult concepts. I felt so seen as a kid, and was inspired to stick with what I love doing.

I was actually very worried about the show’s survival. It was in fact immensely underrated and the fandom was miniscule. Then in 2014, JailBreak dropped, and it’s popularity exploded. Part of it was because of the complex plot and the themes it was covering like I mentioned, but also because of its representation.

I remember when fandom theorized that Garnet was a fusion due to grand, tragic reasons. Turns out, she’s simply a metaphor for a very loving w|w relationship. This was huge. I cannot stress how important it is that we continue to normalize healthy canon queer relationships in childens’ media, and Steven Universe finally was the first to do that proper. Introducing these themes offers the chance for a kid to sit there and ask themselves, “Why is this demonized by so many people?” I asked myself exactly that. Ruby and Sapphire were my cartoon LGBT rep. They were the first LGBT couple I ever ecstatically drew fanart of. I was dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia at the time, and they showed me that I was allowed to love women and feel normal about it. The process of overcoming this was a long one, but they played a part in my very first steps into becoming comfortable with my sexuality. I could go on and on about it’s representation in general-- how it breaks the mold when it comes to showcasing a diverse set of characters in design, in casting, and in breaking gender roles. It’s focus on love and empathy. Steven himself is a big boy, but he's the protagonist, and the show never once makes fun of his weight, or any other bigger characters for that matter. It wasn’t hard to see why the fandom had grown so large.

Fandom was always a joy for me. It was a hobby I picked up when I was in middle school, like many of us here did. I would always cater my experience to fun, and fun only. I only started getting more deeply involved in SU’s fandom when I had just turned into an adult. During the summer of 2016, between my first and second year of college, I drew for the show almost every day non-stop when the Summer of Steven event was going on and posted them online. This was a form of practice for me in order to become not just more comfortable with experimenting with my art, but also to meet new artists, make new friends, and learn to interact with strangers without fear. I dealt with a ton of anxiety when I was in high school. When I was a senior applying to art school for animation, I decided I was going to overcome that anxiety. I made plans to take baby steps to improve myself over the course of my 4 years of college. Joining the fandom, while unforeseen, was definitely a part of that process. I started feeling more confident in sharing my ideas, even if they were fan-made. I fell in love with storyboarding after that summer, when I took my first storyboarding class, and genuinely felt like I was actually getting somewhere with all of this. I remember finally coming to a point in my classes where I could pitch and not feel hopelessly insecure about it. I was opening up more to my friends and peers.

But this process, unfortunately, came to a screeching halt.

My life completely, utterly crumbled under me in the Fall of 2017 due to a series of blows in my personal life that happened in the span of just a couple weeks. My mental health and sense of identity were completely destroyed. All of that confidence I had worked for-- completely ruined. I was alone. I nearly died. My stay at college was extended to 4 and half years, instead of the 4 I had intended. I lost my love for animation-- making it, and watching it. I could no longer watch Steven Universe with the same love I had for it beforehand. It’s a terrible thing, trying to give your attention to something you don’t love anymore, and wanting so desperately to love again. I dropped so many things I loved in my life, including the fandom.

Healing was a long and complicated road. I continued to watch the show all the way up until Change Your Mind aired in the beginning of 2019, and while I still felt empty, that was definitely a turning point for me with it’s encapsulation of self-love. I was hoping James Baxter would get to work on Steven Universe since he guest-animated on Adventure Time, and it was incredible seeing that wish actually come true. The movie came out and while I enjoyed it and thought highly of it, I was still having issues letting myself genuinely love things again, old and new. It was especially difficult because cartoons were my solace as a kid, when things got rough at home. I remember feeling sad because the show ended, and not getting the chance to love it again like I used to while it was still going.

By the time Steven Universe Future was announced, I was finally coming around. I was genuinely starting to feel excitement for art and animation again. I wasn’t expecting there to be a whole new epilogue series, but happily ever after, there we were! Prickly Pear aired, and the implications it left in terms of where the story was going did it. I was finally ready to let myself take the dive back into fandom in January of this year. My art blew up, something I wasn’t expecting considering my 2-year hiatus. Following this, I was invited into a discord server containing some of the biggest writers, artists, editors, and analysts in the fandom. I had no idea there were so many talented people in the fandom, some already with degrees, some getting their degrees-- creating stuff for it on the side just for fun. The amount of passion and productivity level here is insane, and so is the amount of discussion that has come out of it.

I didn’t realize it at first, but it was actually helping me gain back the courage to share ideas. I lost my confidence in pitching while I was taking the time to heal, and graduating meant there would no longer be a classroom setting I could practice in. This group helped immensely.

I have made so many friends through this wonderful series, and I have so many fond memories talking to like-minded creatives, getting feedback and a myriad of sources for inspiration, as well as all of the memes and jokes and weekly theorizations that came about as we all waited on the edges of our seats for episodes to air. I needed this so badly, I needed to get back in touch with my roots, when I would go absolutely hog-wild over a cartoon I loved with people who loved it as much I did. Future has been a blessing for me in this way. I graduated feeling like I was back at square-one, but now I feel like I’m on my way again.

It’s 2020 and while I’m doing great right now, I am honestly still recovering from the total exhaustion that followed after graduating a few months ago, and finally leaving the campus where my life fell apart behind. Needless to say, watching Future was like looking into a mirror. Watching one of my favorite characters of all time-- one that grew up with me-- go through so many of the same things I went through not too long ago was absolutely insane to watch unfold. It’s such an important thing too, to show a character go through the process of breaking down over trauma and all the nasty things that come with it, and to have them go on the road to healing. Steven got that therapy. He wasn’t blamed. The gems were called out. The finale was everything I could have ever hoped for. The catharsis I experienced watching it was out of this world.

As I continue my own healing journey, I will always look up to the storyboard artists, revisionists, and designers that I have been following over these past 7 years, as well as the new ones introduced in Future. It's been such a joy watching these artists release their promo art for episodes, talk about their experiences working on the show, and post the work they've done for it alongside episodes airing.

Thank you Rebecca Sugar, the Crewniverse, and the fans, for making this such a truly wonderful and unique experience. Thank you for reminding me that I am, and always will be, an artist, a cartoonist, and a fan. Thank you, my followers, for the overwhelmingly positive response to my artwork. I have had so much fun interacting and discussing the show with you all again over these past few months. Steven Universe and it’s fandom will always have a special place in my heart, and it will always be a classic that I will return to for comfort and inspiration for decades to come. I am sad that the cartoon renaissance is over, but so many doors have been opened thanks to this show. I am so, so excited to see what this show will inspire in the future, and I hope one day I get the opportunity to be a part of that.

Goodbye Steven, thank you for everything. I wish you healing, and I wish Rebecca and the team a well-deserved rest. ♥️

-Cynthia D.

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illuminatedquill · 3 years

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Nevertheless, The Finale (Review)

(We could have had this. We could have had it. God, this hurts to write.)

Crash landing.

That’s what comes to mind as I watched the final scene in episode 10 of Nevertheless. We’re here. We made it.

But not for the better. At some point, the engines burst into flame, the wings fell off, the pilots jumped out and we, the viewers, were forced to put our heads between our knees and endure the worst kdrama ending I have ever seen with my own two eyes in recent history.

If you’re reading this and haven’t seen the finale yet, I am warning you now: SPOILERS AHEAD.

For the last time, let’s get into it.

This is immensely painful to write. I don’t know what happened in the writers room between episode 9 and episode 10, because, how we came to this ending makes no sense. None at all. I spoke at length about it another post a couple days ago regarding the spoilers photos that were leaked; the writers, after having established so much growth in episode 9 for Na Bi, surely weren’t going to just throw it all out the window for episode 10, right?

Yet, here we are. That’s exactly what happened.

First off, I want to talk about the visual elements in this episode: it sucked. Normally, Nevertheless cinematography is top tier and always praise worthy and, here, it felt off to me. I wasn’t drawn is as I usually was. Also the pacing dragged for the first thirty minutes as we see Na Bi and Jae Eon deal with aftermath of their “breakup”. It’s not until almost halfway through the episode that it finally picks up with the destruction of her sculpture.

Jae Eon finds out and vows to help her rebuild it and then leave her alone afterwards. He makes a comment on how she’s at her prettiest when working on her art. Once it’s finished, he leaves her alone, as promised.

Okay. Good. So far, so good.

And then, we hit the café scene with Do Hyeok. And my stomach dropped. All that nice, comfortable, affectionate energy that was building between them vanished. Na Bi speaks about her sculpture and how her assistants really helped her (speaking clearly about Jae Eon).

And I knew. I knew how it was going to end. And so did Do Hyeok. He doesn’t know that Jae Eon is one of her assistants, but I think he guesses by the way Na Bi talks. Na Bi thinks the whole experience was terrible but from the way she talks about it, Do Hyeok points out “maybe you were actually enjoying it the whole time.” Seeing his cheerful smile drop was just crushing.

Oh, Do Hyeok. They did you so bad in this episode.

(And WTF do you mean she was actually enjoying it the whole time, writers?! She was freaking miserable for FIVE WHOLE EPISODES. What toxic BS is this? Sweet Jesus, I wanted to punch something so bad.)

And my outrage at how off the chemistry was between Na Bi and Do Hyeok; it was just so wrong. It felt so forced.

And then hits just kept on coming. Na Bi brings out the butterfly pendant and puts it on. God, please, no.

And then. Do Hyeok returns for his second confession scene. And, hoo boy, what Na Bi said made me almost have a stroke:

Do Hyeok: “Do you still like Jae Eon?”

Na Bi: “Yes, I think I do. I know he’s not someone who will make me happy. But, I was really happy with the moments I spent with you, Do Hyeok.”

What.

Na Bi knows that Jae Eon will not make her happy. She was really happy with the moments she spent with Do Hyeok. But she still chooses Jae Eon.

Does not compute.

No tears from Na Bi and Do Hyeok as they say goodbye to each other. A simple thank you from Do Hyeok and he walks out, flowers in hand.

Your childhood best friend who has been loving you unconditionally just confessed and you can’t even muster some tears as you part ways. Like I said, something is wrong here. Seriously wrong.

(I had to pause the episode and go for a walk around the house to clear my head when I saw this. Like, writers, how the hell does that make sense!)

Na Bi even admits in her confession to Jae Eon that she hates him. But then proceeds to ask him out.

And that’s it. They go on a date, wearing their respective colors (gag me, please), and that’s it.

Or, is it?

Because this show is always good with details. And I noticed something interesting at the end, when they’re walking along, holding hands.

Na Bi and Jae Eon walk by a restaurant and Na Bi spots Do Hyeok sitting inside. He’s clearly talking to someone, but we don’t see who.

And, interestingly, Na Bi’s hand almost slips out of Jae Eon’s. There’s a curious expression on her face as she cranes her neck to see who Do Hyeok is speaking with. It’s just a brief moment before Jae Eon pulls her away to continue their walk, and she resumes her hand holding.

So. There’s that. A potential set up for a second season. I don’t know, don’t ask; nothing’s been confirmed. We’ll see.

I have to say something - this episode was utter BS. Something weird was going on behind the scenes here, and I can prove it.

If you watched the preview, like I did, you might have been mistaken in the belief that Na Bi and Do Hyeok were clearly endgame. Why?

Because she accepted his flowers. The preview shows her walking inside the art gallery holding them, resulting in the lovely photos of them smiling brightly at each other in the above screenshots (the first two). But in the actual episode itself, Na Bi doesn’t accept the flowers and we don’t see the scenes I just talked about. It just cuts straight to her reunion with Jae Eon.

Do you see what I’m getting at? This isn’t some conspiracy theory. What was shown in the preview and what was shown in the actual episode was completely different.

They changed the ending. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Do Hyeok and Na Bi were going to be the endgame, and someone forced them to change it to Jae Eon and Na Bi instead. Perhaps for a setup for Season 2 or someone important really, really wanted Song Kang to get the girl this time.

If it’s setup for season 2, especially coupled with the last scene that suggests that Na Bi’s and Jae Eon’s relationship isn’t going to last (and it’s not, especially if the Fanfic writers have anything to say about it), I’m all for it. Because that means Na Bi and Do Hyeok are endgame. I’ll suffer through another ten episodes if it means that, long as the same cast and team return.

If not, then, this is the ending. And it’s terrible.

I know it hurts. But, I just want to remind everyone that this is just one chapter in Na Bi’s life and nothing between her and Jae Eon are guaranteed to last. I wrote a post some weeks ago how, if they really wanted to make these two endgame, then the writers needed to do the work. Show the characters working through their issues to become healthier, happier people and convince me that they could be a solid couple in the long run.

None of that happened in this episode. Or any of the other episodes proceeding it. Na Bi and Jae Eon spent five episodes just staring at each other and not talking, and then suddenly, a last minute redemption. If there is not going to be a second season, then this is the cheapest, most cop out ending for a kdrama ever. And it really hurts because they really set a high standard for themselves.

Nevertheless promoted itself as a hyper realistic show that wanted to be different from any other kdrama and instead ended up with the most cliche, disappointing finale I have seen in recent memory. What a failure. There needs to be a second season to redeem this dumpster fire of an ending.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to watching some other stuff to cleanse this from my memory.

I have two more posts planned for this show and then I’m out for good or until they announce a second season. First post - as promised, my character analysis for our “heroine” Yu Na Bi. I wanted to wait until the series finished to really get a take on her character and, well, I don’t think I’m going to be nice.

And the second post will be an overall review/analysis for the entire drama. All of it; the themes, the acting, the direction, the music, the plot, the writing; the good, the bad, the ugly.

My condolences to everyone who stuck it through from beginning to end. I’m really sorry you wasted your time.

As always, I welcome any discussion. Reply here or message me! I always love to hear your thoughts.

Until next time, everyone.

#jtbc nevertheless #nevertheless #kdrama #han so hee #chae jong hyeop #song kang #yu na bi #yang do hyeok #park jae eon

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emwritesstuff · 3 years

Text

as the world caves in | ch. 5 | bucky barnes x reader

synopsis: You are a ghost story. A former Air Force pilot who had her plane shot down by Germany in 1945, but here you were in 2023, alive and frozen in your 25-year-old body.

You haven’t seen Bucky since the 1940’s, before his fall, before you went on a suicide mission only to come back alive. You aren’t sure reliving those memories – and being a living memory of everything the man has lost – is the best for him.

But you and Bucky won’t be apart for long.

This will loosely follow the plot of TFATWS - so spoilers ahead, specially regarding episode four. Thread carefully!

masterlist | AO3

notes: I was going to make it only one chapter with the plot of episode four but it ended up HUGE, so I'm splitting this one in two. I’m posting the next one very very soon (probably tomorrow), just need to finish reviewing it sksksk

(warnings: mentions of death, gunshots, blood) (word count: 4K)

five: funeral

Ayo considered you for a moment, then turned to Bucky. “Eight hours. Do not forget.”

You exhaled slowly after she was gone, allowing yourself to return to a more relaxed state.

“You know Ayo?” Bucky said, after he made sure the door was well closed.

Sam mused from behind you.

“And you speak Xhosa!”

“When King T’Challa opened Wakanda to the world, I ended up leading the relations between our countries from our side. Learning the language was the least I could do.” You shrugged, smiling fondly when you remember the awkward phase where you still mispronounced everything, and how astoundingly lenient the King had been during it.

“Accomplished. It was sweet of you to defend me, at least.”

You raised an eyebrow at the glass of water you’re drinking, grateful that Zemo didn’t speak the language. If only he knew.

Well, you had a feeling he would. Eight hours. T-minus-fifteen.

“Hey, you shut it. No one is defending you. You killed Nagel.” Sam bit at Zemo, and you put down your water and took your phone.

It had been blowing up since the signal returned after your flight to Latvia, every single person who ever had your contact was looking for you. Understandably. It was your first “vacation” in a long time.

You swiped the notifications away, and your eyes met Bucky’s while Sam and Zemo squabbled.

“You shouldn’t be good at that. It’s not fair.”

“It’s just a phone, Buck.” You smirk up at him, and a corner of his lip tugs upwards in response. “And I’ve been around long enough to know how to deal with the ever-changing technology.”

“Does that mean you’re the older one now? I’ve been frozen.”

“Do I get older privilege?” You asked, not looking up from the screen. The news feed caught your attention, and you were quick to scroll past the one talking about The Winter Soldier’s appearance in Madripoor.

“…No.” Bucky pushed his bottom lip forward, shaking his head. You bit your lip to refrain yourself from telling him just how much of a child he was, but couldn’t hide your grin.

The next headline made the grin fall out of your mouth, it being replaced by a frown. You slid the phone to Bucky, you two sharing a concerned look as soon as he read it too.

“Sam. Karli bombed a GRC supply depot.”

You rubbed your temples and started pacing as Bucky explained to the other two men the situation. Three dead. Eleven wounded. Your heart wrenched, and you pressed a fist to your chest when you imagine how dire the things have to be for that to had become the latest desperate measure.

Wars have civilian casualties. People are bound to be caught in the crossfire. You knew this. You’d seen it. This was a deliberate attack, and it was a different time and conjecture, but you felt almost the same as you did when you walked through the rubble made of Europe, 80 years ago.

Seeds for a new war. You’d hoped you wouldn’t get to see it sprout again.

You finally looked up as Zemo questioned the three of you about having the will to complete the mission.

“She’s just a kid.”

You moved to rest a hand on Sam’s shoulder, but in the end, you might have been more looking to ground yourself than anything. He nodded at you either way, and you could see Bucky’s eyes on you from your peripheral.

“You’re seeing something in her that isn’t there. You’re clouded by it. She’s a supremacist. The very concept of Super Soldier will always trouble people.” Zemo spoke with certainty, as if he was a professor and the three of you his pupils.

“I doubt she sees things that way.” You raised your finger as soon as he opened his mouth to retort. “Not everyone has the chance to be studying politics and understand how revolutionary movements can become extremism. Most people are just fighting to get to see another day.”

You wondered if Baron Helmut Zemo would ever understand that, the struggle. The uncertainty that wakes up with you and goes to sleep when you do, only to pose itself the next morning.

“It’s that warped aspiration that led to Nazis, to Ultron, to the Avengers.” His next line seemed to be enough of an answer. You let your hand slide off Sam’s shoulder, realizing you had it in a tight grip the whole time, and resumed your pacing.

You doubted Karli Morgenthau had much chance to reflect on the long-term consequences of her mobilization. She was helping people, people who needed things right away; she was providing immediate relief. The world only had given violence in return.

“She will not stop. She will escalate until you kill her. Or she kills you.”

“Maybe you’re wrong, Zemo. The Serum never corrupted Steve.” Bucky retorted, but that obviously wasn’t enough to shake Zemo’s convictions.

The ache in our chest grew just a tad stronger, and you sank on the large sectional couch; Bucky seemed to have sensed your wariness, because soon enough he was bumping knees with you on the empty seat to your left. He radiated irritation, squared shoulders and head thrown back.

You laced your arm with his, nodding along with Sam as he talked about his aunt, understanding his plan when he reasoned that they might be doing a funeral ceremony for Donya. Bucky seemed to have loosened it up a little, and you agreed with him. It was worth a shot.

“You doin’ okay?” Bucky whispered, adjusting his arm so yours could have more room.

You raised your eyes at Zemo, stopping for a few seconds to observe the golden embroidery of the couch behind Bucky’s head before looking at him.

You squeezed his bicep. You mustered a small, strained smile.

Bucky’s eyes did not leave yours the entire time, two pools of blue and warmth and comfort that made you ache with how much you’d missed them all of these years.

“Jus’ fine.”

Bucky nodded.

“Liar.”

You flicked his ear with your free hand, which made him grunt. You giggled as Bucky shook his head and muttered something about you being such a child, and you could feel your nervousness easing up.

“Don’t be so grumpy, old man.”

---

You parted ways as Sam, Bucky and Zemo went to the displacement camp, and you went to the GRC office in Riga in search of information. You hadn’t been seen with them yet, so you took the chance of still being considered just a diplomat on a trip, seeking to maybe be of assistance in trying times.

It hadn’t been the most productive of mornings. The people at the office knew as little as you did of Donya Madani, or any of the other displaced people, which was appalling at the least. All they had was some half-assed records of when the camp had been formed, and that was months ago. Who knew how many people had joined by then. No wonder the Flag Smashers were at large, with more people joining and supporting the cause every day.

John Walker and Lemar Hoskins walked through the building’s doors, just as you were ready to leave. Hoskins recognized you immediately, whispering something to the new Captain America before both men approached you.

You shook their hands graciously, but your eyes remained on the door, you not wanting to waste precious time with the two. Especially Walker, who seemed to wear the shield on his back like it was a badge of honor, or even a safe-conduct to back up his moves.

It didn’t sit right with you, and not just because the man who wielded the shield before him was unreplaceable to you, and the man who stood before you seemed to have been handpicked to step inside Steve’s shoes, same size and all. His height, his built, his set jaw, the blue eyes, the blonde hair; as far as looks went, the perfect impersonator. It was the way he carried himself that set you off though, proud of himself and his own privilege. And you had barely any interaction with him aside from watching him perform in front of cameras, and, well, now.

“I’m very sorry gentlemen – but I should get going. This detour of my vacation is already on borrowed time.”

Hoskins nodded solemnly, but Walker took another step towards you. “I know about your previous work with Steve, it would be nice to have you on your side too.”

“Like I said, I’m off duty. Try not to make a mess out of it.” The lie slips off your lips easily, and you offer them an apologetic smile before turning to leave.

“There’s some Avengers on the hunt for the Flag Smashers too.”

Hoskins’ voice stopped you in your tracks, and you studied the two, wondering just how much they actually knew.

“Just think about it, okay? If you’re gonna help someone, make sure you’re helping the right people.”

That’s exactly what you were doing, but you weren’t about to tell him that.

“Hoskins. Cap. Have a nice day.” You nodded at them, not looking behind you as you take off to the cobblestone streets.

---

Sam and Bucky turned to watch you when arrived back at Zemo’s condo, closing the door gently behind you.

“Nothing.” You answered before they could ask, shaking your head slightly. From the defeated way they were sank on that couch, you assumed they were met with dead ends as well. “And Walker’s here, so expect things to get complicated.”

“You met with Walker?” Bucky asked, his jaw tensing up as he looked up at you.

“More like he met me. Offered me a job.” You chuckled humorlessly at the irony of it. Apparently you were now known for getting Steve out of trouble, and not for getting into it with him. How the tables turn. “He’s lacking intel as much as we are though.”

You threw your coat on the coffee table, and watched it slip down to the floor unimpressed. Bucky dipped to pick it up, draping it over the back of the couch while shaking his head and grumbling under his breath. Sam giggled, earning himself a glare.

Zemo approached your group with a tray of steaming tea. Bucky focused his glare on him.

“That little girl. What’d she tell you?” Bucky narrowed his eyes, a taunting tone to his voice.

Zemo paused, and his eyes jumped from Bucky, to Sam, to you, and the ground. The mood is restless, charged with tension, ready to spark like an open wire at the edge of water.

The Sokovian visibly relaxes his posture when he bends down to serve himself tea. “The funeral is this afternoon.”

It wasn’t not surprising to you that he was withholding information, though it was bold. His confidence was baffling, if anything.

“You’re on thin ice, Zemo.” You narrow your eyes at him, and he offers you a small, lofty smile.

Bucky looked at you and nodded before reminding Zemo of the Dora Milaje and demanding he kept talking.

“Leaving you to turn on me once we get to Karli.” He retorts to Bucky and hums, shaking his head. “There’s still much I want to know, including why an American diplomat is tagging along for an altercation against a group of Super Soldiers.”

Zemo looked at you, inspecting your form as you leaned over a tiled column. He lingers on, but you know you have the higher ground. You don’t look the part of super soldier, in the way like the Flag Smashers don’t also. It’s advantageous, it gets you to blend in with the rest of world. You were aware that Zemo has been suspicious ever since you walked through the heavy wooden doors the first time, though, and he was trying to carve information out of you through veiled threats.

“I prefer to keep my leverage.”

This seemed to spur Bucky on. He got up from the couch, stalking towards Zemo in a casual gait, only to grab the teacup from the other man’s grasp and throw it violently at another column.

Your breath hitched.

“You wanna see what someone can do with leverage?”

It sounded almost alien to you, the venom that dripped from Bucky’s words. You definitely hadn’t kept that in your memories of him, and you remind yourself that Bucky was no longer just that gallant boy from Brooklyn, he had more wars and baggage than anyone should carry.

So did you.

Sam got to Bucky before you could get your legs to move. “Take it easy. Don’t engage him. He’s just gonna extort you and do that stupid head tilt thing.”

As if on cue, Zemo tilted his head upright.

Sam retreats to make a call, whacking Bucky on the shoulder as he left the room. The sound makes you shift, and you walked forward to put yourself between him and Zemo.

“Thin fuckin’ ice.” You snarl. Bucky disengaged by leaning on his heels.

“Want some cherry blossom tea?”

You huffed and nudged Bucky’s waist to prompt him to follow you, wanting nothing more to get him – and yourself – away from Zemo before disaster ensued. He still held the information you needed, though his bargaining chips were running out.

You had the distinct feeling that he knew that too.

“No, you go ahead.”

The room you found yourselves next is small, but just as luxurious as the rest of the apartment, with thick embroidered cushions littering a daybed and stained glass on the windows, casting colorful rays of light over the floor.

“You won’t go home if I ask you to, will you?” Bucky asked, and you chuckled.

“Absolutely not.”

A pained little sound left Bucky’s throat, and you sat down on the daybed to face him. He was leaning against the wall, eyebrows knitted.

“It’s like you don’t know me at all, Buck.”

“I do. That’s why I’m worried.” You rolled your eyes at him, making him look away from you, jaw clenched.

You sighed. “Bucky. I’m a highly trained super soldier.” Retired, too, and probably rusty, but you decided to not put that thought on his head. “I have more field experience than you, I bet. Don’t trouble yourself too much.”

His shoulders sagged, and you raised your hand to smooth the collar of his jacket, like you’ve done a million times before, back when you were still only a girl, and he was only a boy. The familiarity in those acts of intimacy covered you like a warm blanket, and you caught yourself wondering if Bucky felt the same.

“I worry about you too, you know. Why I’m here.”

Bucky turned his head to look at you, eyes roaming over your face. “How much did Sam tell you about Madripoor?”

“All of it, I think.”

There was torment in his eyes, that he tried concealing by looking at the floor. He nodded curtly, and the gesture propels you to leap forward and hold his face in your hands.

“Not worried like that.” You knit your eyebrows together, speaking firmly at him. “Worried about you throwing yourself into another fight. And losing you to it, again. So here I am, James, and stop trying to get rid of me.”

He either crashed into you or you into him, you’re not sure, but it barely mattered. Bucky had his arms firmly around you, his forehead resting on your shoulder. A hug that came eight decades too late, making you have to blink tears away.

“Don’t wanna lose you again too.” Bucky mumbled into your hair, and you squeezed him just a little bit tighter.

“You won’t. M’ here.”

I’m here. I’m here. You believed it, because you knew yourself. Keeping away this long, because you knew that once you were with him, you wouldn’t be leaving.

You hoped Bucky believed it, too. You’d tell him over and over, just in case.

The moment was short lived, though, coming to an end the when Sam knocks on the door. You pry yourself apart from him like a band-aid, and the door opens, leaving you and Bucky to compartmentalize and get ready for the next steps in your mission with your backs turned to each other.

“You guys good?” Sam asked, looking from you to Bucky, and you groaned internally at the sight of the slight curl at the corner of his mouth.

It’s not like that, Sam.

“Yeah. Are you?”

He quirks his brow. You quirk yours. His smirk is more out in the open, now.

“C’mon, old guard, we have a funeral to attend.”

You and Bucky shoot him a double glare and follow him back to the living room, then out to the cobblestone streets. Sam specifically said no weapons, no doubt intending to keep things civil, but you strapped a knife to your boot anyway.

Bucky smirked at you when he caught you red handed and showed you the handle of his own knife secured at his hip. It’s funny, how among so many things that haven’t changed at all, remaining intact as if eternized in marble, so many other things did.

It’s the caution. Having a plan B, C, D, up to plan Z. It’s knowing every possible exit points when you enter a room, and it’s strapping a knife to your body even if you’re going on a mission of peace.

You wanted to think that the years made to fade most of your scars, but the smallest things reminded you that faded didn’t mean gone. The weight of the blade on your left foot was doing that, as you walked through the streets of Riga beside Bucky, Sam and Zemo.

“Karli Morgenthau is too dangerous for you guys to be pulling this shit.”

John Walker and Lemar Hoskins jogged down the steps in your direction. Bucky opened his arms in irritation.

“Ah! How’d you find us now?”

It wasn’t really a question.

“Come on. You think two Avengers can walk around Latvia without drawing attention?” Hoskins questioned rhetorically back, and his eyes land on you. You raised your eyebrows at him. “Y/L/N.” He didn’t sound terribly surprised.

“No more keeping us in the dark. You can start by telling us why you broke him out of prison.” Walker’s voice nearly overlapped Hoskins’, and his eyes traveled from Zemo to you.

“He did that himself, technically.” Bucky quipped, and shifted to your side slightly.

“I thought you were on vacation.” Walker sneered, making you shrug. You waved idly at the buildings.

“What? I’m sightseeing.”

“Oh, this better have an unbelievable explanation—” He raised his arms, taking a couple steps in your direction, but you didn’t budge.

You were resigned to simply rest your hands at your hips and wait for his temper tantrum to be over, but Sam clapped him on the chest and commanded him to not make things weird. Walker simmered down enough, which makes you beam proudly at Sam.

“I know where Karli is.”

You’d never be caught dead saying that out loud, but thank heavens for Zemo.

The new Captain America insisted on leading the action and turning it into a hostile one. You couldn’t stop staring at the shield on his back while he strutted ahead and turned, arguing with Sam about whether or not attempting to reason with Morgenthau was a good idea. She was indeed dangerous, but the echo of Sam saying that she was only a child earlier filled your ears.

It was risky, but Sam wasn’t reckless. You believed in him wholly.

“Is that why you roped a diplomat into this? There’s still time to change sides and save your job, Y/L/N.”

You didn’t doubt John Walker could and would get you to lose your job position, but you were aware of that possible outcome the minute you flew yourself to Latvia. That was the kind of inconvenience your future self would have to deal with. Sam looked at you for a brief second, forehead creasing with worry.

“Don’t threaten her, Walker.” Bucky warned him, and it was like you were fighting off a gang of bullies in an alleyway back home again.

“You’ll let him do this? Are you gonna let your partner walk into a room with a Super Soldier, alone?” Walker pressed on, holding Bucky’s stare.

“He’s dealt with worse. And he’s not my partner.”

You highly doubted that. These men were as hard-headed as you were, but you didn’t buy into the whole we-aren’t-friends thing. It was evident, in the way they checked on each other from time to time, and had each other’s backs.

“I used to counsel soldiers dealing with trauma, okay? This is right in my wheelhouse.” Sam stepped forward, and Walker was quick to resume the argument. He was desperate for a win, any win, and you caught yourself wondering if he was truly ready for the role he was given.

Hoskins seemed to be the voice of reason he lacked. Walker gave in, reluctantly, and motioned at Zemo.

“We’ll deal with you later.”

You tapped your feet impatiently.

“Boys, there’s no time for this.”

“I’m sure it will all come to an agreeable conclusion. My associate is just up ahead.”

There was a small girl waiting by the building in front of you. She guided the group to an abandoned factory of some sort, and Zemo announced that Karli was inside, and not long after he was being handcuffed to an iron vault door.

Sam stopped himself in his tracks while Walker manhandles the man, and you and him shared a look.

“You wanna come with?”

“No. It’s two against one, might set her off.” You shook your head, turning to look at Walker as he paced around. “You got this, Sam.”

Sam nodded at you and went in.

Ten minutes. You listened attentively for any signs of struggle, hoping things would go smoothly. Your knife felt heavy inside your shoe. Bucky seemed to be focused on the same task next to you.

John Walker grew more anxious by the minute, and you stopped listening to watch him pace around.

“It hasn’t been ten minutes, John. Just sit tight.” Bucky sighed.

“Don’t do that. Don’t patronize me.”

Rich, coming from him, who seemed keen on doing just that to everyone else. Walker squared his shoulders and marched on, Bucky having to stand on his way to stop him. You got off your post on the stairs and blocked the rest of the way. Walker glared at you, then at him.

“This is all really easy for you, isn’t it? All that serum runnin’ through your veins.”

Of course, he would consider the serum more of a blessing than the true curse it was. You exhaled sharply, struggling to keep your emotions in check, watching Bucky’s back as Walker continued.

“Barnes, your partner needs backup in there. Do you really want his blood on your hands?”

You could almost see Bucky’s resolve wavering.

“Bucky, don’t.”

“You really want a casualty that big, Ambassador?”

“You need to cool down, Walker. Sam is—”

You didn’t get to finish, because Walker is barreling his way through you and towards Karli Morgenthau. Hoskins is pushing you and Bucky back as you try to get to Sam and the girl before things blew up even further.

“Walker you can’t—”

“Karli Morgenthau, you’re under arrest.”

Karli knocks Walker down, and Bucky managed to shove Hoskins away to run after her.

“Y/N, ten minutes!” Sam said as the both of you ran off to join the pursuit.

“I know, Sam! There’s no reasoning with this guy!” You groaned. “I’ll go this way, cover more ground.”

Sam nodded, his concerned expression mirroring yours.

You split up as you take off to your right, passing through archways and enclosed cubbyholes, finding nothing but old industrial machinery and junk.

Gunshots.

You counted four, at least.

You managed to pick up the source of the sound after the third discharge, somewhere at the lower level of the building. It would take you forever to find your way down the traditional way.

You landed on the ground floor with a soft thud, and couldn’t help but grin as you look up at the window you had just jumped from. Not bad, though the impact was unexpected and almost knocked the wind out of you.

The sound of smashed glass prompted you to snap back to reality and run into the basement of the factory, the place holding massive iron pipes and boilers. Zemo had his back to you, gun in hand.

A flash of red curly hair poked from behind the last pipe. You tiptoed your way to Karli, crouching next to her. She was clutching her side, blood seeping through her fingers. The receiving end of the shots.

Karli looked at you with terrified eyes, then up, and your gaze followed hers to a man you didn’t recognize, but one of her friends without doubt.

“Get out of here, kid. Go.”

She wasted no time, clambering up the stairs and disappearing through a metal door.

Faster than you and Zemo could acknowledge each other’s actions, he was hit on the heat with flying metal, sending him unconscious to the floor. John Walker stepped into the light.

“Morgenthau?”

“Gone. I was too late.”

Walker appeared to believe you, or he didn’t care, eyeing with interest the shards of fine glass littered on the floor. Zemo had smashed every single vial of serum before being hit with the shield. You kneel next to him and check his pulse.

“Is he…?”

“No. Just out.” You breathed. Walker let out a disappointed hum, leaving you to attempt to waken Zemo by yourself.

Bucky and Sam entered through the door that Karli had escaped through, and Hoskins through the doorway you came in before.

“What did we miss?”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes #will reblog w taglist

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kaile-hultner · 3 years

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Nihilism is so easy, which is why we need to kill it

(I initially published this here a couple weeks ago.)

So last night it dawned on me that, after over two years of being relatively symptom-free, my depression snuck back up on me and has taken over. It’s still pretty mild in comparison to other times I’ve been stuck in the hole, but after 24 months (and more) of mostly being good to go, I can tell that it’s here for a hot minute again.

How do I know? Well, it might be the fact that I spent more time sleeping during my recent vacation from work than I did just about anything else, and how it’s suddenly really hard for me to stay awake during work hours. I don’t really have an appetite, and in fact nausea hits me frequently. I don’t really have any emotional reactions to things outside of tears, even when tears aren’t super appropriate to the situation (like watching someone play Outer Wilds for the first time). And I’ve been consuming a lot of apocalyptic media, to which the only response, emotional or otherwise, I can really muster is “dude same.”

For a long time I was huge into absurdist philosophy, because it felt to my depressed brain like just the right balance between straight up denying that things are bad (and thus we should fix them, or at least try to do so) and full-blown nihilism. This gives absurdism a lot of credit; mostly it’s just a loose set of spicy existentialist ideas and shit that sounds good on a sticker, like “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

In the last couple years, while outside of my depressive state, I went back to Camus’ work and found a lot of almost full-on abusive shit in it. Not toward anyone specifically, but shit like “nobody and nothing will care if you’re gone, so live out of spite of them all” rubs me the wrong way in retrospect. The philosophy Camus puts out opens the door for living in a very self-destructive fashion; that in fact the good life is living without care for yourself or anyone/anything else. The way Camus describes and derides suicide especially is grim as fuck, and certainly I would never recommend The Myth of Sisyphus to anyone currently struggling with ideation. That “perfect balance” between denial and nihilism is really not that perfect at all, and in fact skews much more heavily towards the latter.

Neon Genesis Evangelion has been a big albatross around my neck in terms of the media products I’ve consumed in my life that I believe have influenced my depression hardcore. It sits in a similar conversational space to Camus’ work, in that it confronts nihilism and at once rejects and facilitates it. A lot of folks remark that Evangelion is pretty unique – or at least uncommon – in its accurate portrayal of depression, especially for mid-90s anime properties. The thing I notice always seems to be missing in these discussions is that along with that accurate portrayal comes a spot-on – to me, at least – depiction of what depression does to resist being treated. This is a disease that uses a person’s rational faculties to suggest that nobody else could possibly understand their pain, and therefore there’s no use in getting better or moving forward. Shinji Ikari is as self-centered as Hideaki Anno is as I am when it comes to confronting the truth: there are paths out of this hole, but nobody else can take that step out but us, and part of our illness is that refusal to do just that. Depression lies, it provides a cold comfort to the sufferer, that there is no existence other than the one where we are in pain and there is no way out, so pull the blanket up over our head and go back to sleep.

Watching Evangelion for the first time corresponded with the onset of one of the worst depressive spirals I’ve ever been in, and so, much like the time I got a stomach virus at the same time that I ate Arby’s curly fries, I kind of can’t associate Evangelion with anything else. No matter what else it might signify, no matter what other meaning there is to derive from it, for me Eva is the Bad Feeling Anime™. Which is why, naturally, I had to binge all four of the Evangelion theatrical releases upon the release of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon A Time last month.

If Neon Genesis Evangelion and End of Evangelion are works produced by someone with untreated depression just fucking rawdogging existence, then the Eva movies are works produced by someone who has gone to therapy even just one fucking time. Whether that therapy is working or not is to be determined, but they have taken that step out of the hole and are able to believe that there is a possibility of living a depression-free life. The first 40 minutes or so of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 are perfect cinema to me. The world is destroyed but there is a way to bring it back. Restoration and existence is possible even when the surface of the planet might as well be the surface of the Moon. The only thing about this is, everyone has to be on board to help. Even though WILLE fired one of its special de-corefication devices into the ground to give the residents of Village 3 a chance at survival, the maintenance of this pocket ecosystem is actively their responsibility. There is no room or time for people who won’t actively contribute, won’t actively participate in making a better world from the ashes of the old.

There are a lot of essentialist claims and assumptions made by the film in this first act about how the body interacts with the social – the concept of disability itself just doesn’t seem to have made it into the ring of safety provided by Misato and the Wunder, which seems frankly wild to me, and women are almost singularly portrayed in traditionalist support roles while men are the doers and the fixers and the makers. I think it’s worth raising a skeptical eyebrow at this trad conservative “back to old ways” expression of the post-apocalypse wherever it comes up, just as it’s important to acknowledge where the movie pushes back on these themes, like when Toji (or possibly Kensuke) is telling Shinji that, despite all the hard work everyone is doing like farming and building, the village is far from self-sufficient and will likely always rely on provisions from the Wunder.

As idyllic as the setting is, it’s not the ideal. As Shinji emerges from his catatonia, Kensuke takes him around the village perimeter. It’s quiet, rural Japan as far as the eye can see, but everywhere there are contingencies; rationing means Kensuke can only catch one fish a week, all the entry points where flowing water comes into the radius of the de-corefication devices have to be checked for blockages because the water supply will run out. There is a looming possibility that the de-corefication machines could break or shut down at some point, and nobody knows what will happen when that happens. On the perimeter, lumbering, pilot-less and headless Eva units shuffle around; it is unknown whether they’re horrors endlessly biding their time or simply ghosts looking to reconnect to the ember of humanity on the other side of the wall. Survival is always an open question, and mutual aid is the expectation. Still: the apocalypse happened, and we’re still here. The question Village 3 answers is “what now?” We move on, we adapt.

Evangelion is still a work that does its level best to defy easy interpretation, but the modern version of the franchise has largely abandoned the nihilism that was at its core in the 90s version. It’s not just that Shinji no longer denies the world until the last possible second – it’s that he frequently actively reaches out and is frustrated by other people’s denials. He wants to connect, he wants to be social, but he’s also burdened with the idea that he’s only good to others if he’s useful, and he’s only useful if he pilots the Eva unit. This last movie separates him and what he is worth to others (and himself) from his agency in being an Eva pilot, finally. In doing so, he’s able to reconcile with nearly everyone in his life who he has harmed or who has hurt him, and create a world in which there is no Evangelion. While this ending is much more wishful thinking than one more grounded in the reality of the franchise – one that, say, focuses on the existence and possible flourishing of Village 3 and other settlements like it while keeping one eye on the precarious balancing act they’re all playing – it feels better than the ending of End of Eva, and even than the last two episodes of the original series.

I’m glad the nihilism in Evangelion is gone, for the most part. I’m glad that I didn’t spend roughly eight hours watching the Evamovies only to be met yet again with a message of “everything is pointless, fuck off and die.” Because I’ve been absorbing that sentiment a lot lately, from a lot of different sources, and it really just fuckin sucks to hear over and over again.

It is a truth we can’t easily ignore that the confluence of pandemic, climate change, authoritarian surge and capitalist decay has made shit miserable recently. But the spike in lamentations over the intractability of this mix of shit – the inevitability of our destruction, to put it in simpler terms – really is pissing me off. No one person is going to fix the world, that much is absolutely true, but if everyone just goes limp and decides to “123 not it” the apocalypse then everyone crying about how the world is fucked on Twitter will simply be adding to the opening bars of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

We can’t get in a mech to save the world but then, neither realistically could Shinji Ikari. What we can do looks a lot more like what’s being done in Village 3: people helping each other with limited resources wherever they can.

Last week, Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast and churned there for hours – decimating Bayou communities in Louisiana and disrupting the supply chain extensively – before powering down and moving inland. Last night the powerful remnants of that storm tore through the Northeast, causing intense flooding. Areas not typically affected by hurricanes suddenly found themselves in a similar boat – pun not intended – to folks for whom hurricanes are simply a fact of life. There’s a once-in-a-millennium drought and heatwave ripping through the West Coast and hey – who can forget back in February when Oklahoma and Texas experienced -20 degree temperatures for several days in a row? All of this against the backdrop of a deadly and terrifying pandemic and worsening political climate. It’s genuinely scary! But there are things we can do.

First, if you’re in a weather disaster-prone area, get to know your local mutual aid organizations. Some of these groups might be official non-profits; one such group in the Louisiana area, for example, is Common Ground Relief. Check their social media accounts for updates on what to do and who needs help. If you’re not sure if there’s one in your area, check out groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief for that same information. Even if you’re not in a place that expects to see the immediate effects of climate change, you should still consider linking up with organizing groups in your area. Tenant unions, homeless organizations, safe injection sites and needle exchanges, immigrant rights groups, environmental activist orgs, reproductive health groups – all could use some help right now, in whatever capacity you might be able to provide it.

In none of these scenarios are we going to be the heroes of the story, and we shouldn’t view this kind of work in that way. But neither should we give into the nihilistic impulse to insist upon doing nothing, insist that inaction is the best course of action, and get back under the blankets for our final sleep. Kill that impulse in your head, and fuck, if you have to, simply just fucking wish for that better world. Then get out of bed and help make it happen.

#Neon Genesis Evangelion #existentialism #philosophy #media criticism #cultural criticism #spoilers

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shezzaspeare · 3 years

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Pilot/Episode 1: Patching Things Up With Pastiche & Fanfiction

Hi, hello, and the wait is finally over! My name is Blessie, and welcome to the first episode webisode log installation I've decided to call these things an episode for now because why not also let me know what do you actually call these things episode of The Science of Fanfiction, where we take a closer look into our beloved works of fanon because we've all got plenty of time to spare till Season 5. Before I continue, I would like to thank everyone who's liked and reblogged the last few posts before this one. It means a lot for a small and growing Tumblr user like me, and your support is something I cherish more than my modules. You guys rock!

Anyways, like with most things, we have to talk about the boring and bland stuff before we proceed with the fun stuff. For today, we are going to settle the difference between a couple of things: first being the confusion between pastiche and fanfiction; then the distinctions between tropes, clichés, and stereotypes, which we'll tackle the next time. It's important for us to establish their true meanings in order for us to really understand what fanfiction truly is, even if it's merely just a work done for the fandom. I know – it's boring, it's something that shouldn't be expounded that much, but I believe that all forms of writing (unless it's plagiarised) is a work of art — and fanfiction is not something we always talk about. I hope that by the end of this, you'll learn about what they really are as much as I did. Let's begin to talk about the—

[Image ID: A flashback of John (left) and Sherlock (right) finding an elephant (not in the screen) in a room in The Sign of Three. End ID]

. . . I did say that this GIF will always have to make an appearance here, didn't I?

So, just as with Sherlock Holmes, all other works of fiction have their own pastiches and fanfiction, and many more original works out there have taken inspiration from them to create their own books. Although they've gained popular attention, this will not be possible if they did not have taken inspiration from the materials their writers had at the time.

[Image ID: Various actors as Dracula. Jeremy Brett in 'Dracula' (1978) (upper left), Adam Sandler in a voice role for 'Hotel Transylvania' (2012) (upper right), Gary Oldman in 'Dracula' (1992) (lower left), and Bela Lugosi in 'Dracula' (1933) (lower right). End ID]

For instance, Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (the second most adapted literary character, next to the consulting detective himself) has been portrayed on the screen over 200 times — from Gary Oldman to Adam Sandler — and has spawned off numerous books and pastiches of its own such as Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot'. Its cultural impact served as a basis of how we see vampires today, since some characteristics of the Count were made by Stoker himself. Stoker's creation is the brainchild of his predecessors and inspirations.

[Image ID: Vlad the Impaler (left) and a book cover of 'Carmilla' by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (right). End ID]

Other than the ongoing hysteria over dead back then and the existing vampire folklore, Stoker also took his inspirations from the published books on vampires he had at hand. He is said to have taken inspiration from Vlad the Impaler, a Romanian national hero known allegedly for having impalement as his favourite method of torture. He is also said to have been inspired by the J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Carmilla', a Gothic lesbian vampire novella that predates Dracula by 26 years. I could go on, but hey, we're going back to Sherlock Holmes now before I deviate any further. However, if you want to know about Dracula's literary origins, I suggest you watch Ted-ED's videos about the subject matter such as this one or this one.

Very much like Stoker, ACD didn't just conceive Holmes on his own. He took his own inspirations from what he had available at the time.

[Image ID: Dr Joseph Bell (left) and Edgar Allan Poe (right). End ID]

As we all know, ACD's biggest inspiration for Sherlock Holmes was one of his teachers at the Edinburgh University, Joseph Bell. He was famous for his powers of deduction, and he was also interested in forensic science — both characteristics which Holmes is greatly known for. He also drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe's sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin ('The Purloined Letter' & 'Murders in Rue Morgue'). As ACD himself has said at the 1909 Poe Centennial Dinner: "Where was the detective story until Poe breathed life into it?" Some other writers he took after are Wilkie Collins, Émile Gaboriau, and Oscar Wilde.

Now, what does this say about us Sherlockians/Holmesians (depending if you're the coloniser or the one that was colonised)? Basically, ACD laid the groundwork for us with Sherlock Holmes: his humble abode 221B that he shares with his flatmate Dr. John Watson, his adventures, memoirs, return, casebook, last vow, and all that. Now that we have this material at hand, we can now make our own versions, takes, or even original stories featuring the characters of the Canon. Our inspiration comes from ACD's Sherlock Holmes, and we now get the chance to make our very own stories/conspiracy theories about them.

As I have mentioned earlier, Sherlock Holmes is the most adapted literary character in history. He has been adapted in over 200 films, more than 750 radio adaptations, a ballet, 2 musicals; and he's become a mouse, a woman, a dog, even a bloody cucumber. On top of all that are numerous pastiches and fanfics, and finally, we have arrived at the main topic of our post!

Fanfiction and pastiche are often confused together since they have three common elements: they take after the original work, they usually use the characters in that original work, and more often than not do are they set in that same time frame/period or not long after that. The common misconception is that pastiche are printed fanfiction, which is only partly true. While pastiche is definitely fanfiction in some ways and vice versa, there are fanfictions out there that aren't necessarily classified as pastiche that have been published.

Let's get on with our definition of terms to clear up the confusion a little more. Pastiche, according to Literary Terms, is:

. . . a creative work that imitates another author or genre. It’s a way of paying respect, or honor, to great works of the past. Pastiche differs from parody in that pastiche isn’t making fun of the works it imitates – however, the tone of pastiche is often humorous.

A good example of a pastiche is Sophie Hannah's 'The Monogram Murders', which is her take from Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

[Image ID: A book cover of 'The Monogram Murders' by Sophie Hannah. End ID.]

Although this was a commission from Christie's estate, it's still considered as a pastiche as:

It's takes after Christie's writing style;

It is set in the early years of Poirot's career (1929), which is still within the time frame that the author wrote him in;

It features Poirot and;

It pays respect to Christie in a sense that it stays true to her (Christie) characters and way of storytelling.

Meanwhile, our good and slightly unreliable friend Wikipedia defines fanfiction as:

. . . is fictional writing written by fans, commonly of an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settings, or other intellectual property from the original creator(s) as a basis for their writing. [It] ranges from a couple of sentences to an entire novel, and fans can both keep the creator's characters and settings and/or add their own. [ . . . ] [It] can be based on any fictional (and sometimes non-fictional) subject. Common bases for fanfiction include novels, movies, bands, and video games.

To avoid any copyright infringement issues if I ever use a popular fanfic in the fandom, we'll use my (unfinished and unpopular) Sherlock Wattpad fic, 'Play Pretend'. You can read it here.

[Image ID: The second self-made book cover of Blessie/shezzaspeare's 'Play Pretend'. End ID]

Why is it considered a fanfiction and not a pastiche?

It takes after an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (BBC Sherlock) which is a TV show, not the ACD canon itself;

The author (in this case myself) uses her own writing style and does not take after the original story's style;

Although it is set well in modern-day London and after Season 4, it also features scenes decades before the actual fanfic is set and outside of London;

I added a considerable number of characters, i.e. siblings to canon characters;

I had my own take some of the canon characters' personality especially after the events of Sherrinford;

It is written by a fan – myself. It is a work of fan labour and;

It is only a work of fanon, and isn't likely going to be considered by the show as its writing style is different from the actual show.

To put it simply, you can have more freedom in a fanfiction as it does not necessarily restrict you to follow or take after the original stories. Alternate universes (AUs) such as Unilock and Teenlock are perfect examples of this thing.

So can a pastiche be classified as fanfiction? Yes.

Can a fanfiction be classified as pastiche? Not all the time.

What's the difference? While yes, they share the basics, pastiche is technically leans more onto the original work's fundamental elements whereas fanfiction is a broader range of works inspired by the original work but doesn't necessarily follow all or any of its fundamental elements.

In order for us to understand it more, I'll give another example.

[Image ID: The 'Enola Holmes' title card (upper left) and Henry Cavill as its Sherlock holmes (upper right). Underneath it is a a scene from the opening titles of BBC Sherlock (lower left) and Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal In Belgravia. (lower right) End ID]

Most of you are familiar with these 21st-century adaptations of Holmes: the 2020 adaptation of Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books and BBC Sherlock, which needs no further explanation – but for those who don't know, it's basically Holmes and the gang if they were alive today. I specifically chose these two as they are the ones that I believe would get my points across best. Though both are considered as wonderful pastiches with a well-rounded cast and awesome visuals, if we break them down bit by bit, we'll see which one is more of a pastiche and which one is more of a fanfic. (Yes, I know they're both screen adaptations. However, as Enola Holmes was based on the books and BBC Sherlock's fanfiction has the show's scenes written out in most fanfics, hear me out.)

They share these characteristics of a pastiche:

They feature characters from the Canon (Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and Lestrade);

They have additional characters added by the writers (Including but not limited to Molly Hooper, Eurus Holmes, and Philip Anderson for BBC Sherlock while Enola Holmes has Lord Tewkesbury, Eudoria Holmes, and Enola herself) and;

They pay respect to the original Canon as their stories are based on the cases (BBC Sherlock) or simply what was going on around them (Enola Holmes).

They also share these characteristics of a fanfic:

They are made by enthusiasts of Sherlock Holmes (Moffat has called himself and Mark Gatiss 'Sherlock Holmes geeks', while Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes books are not just one or two but six);

They follow a common trope (we'll discuss these tropes in the following episodes) that goes on in the fandom (Sherlock's Sister & Modern AU)

They are based on a fictional subject (Sherlock Holmes);

They used characters and story elements that are copyrighted by the author/author's estate (fun fact: prior to the production of Enola Holmes, the Conan Doyle Estate filed a lawsuit against Springer & Netflix over Sherlock's emotions since he was more 'sympathetic' than he was portrayed in the Canon – this was later dismissed by both parties) and;

Their writing styles don't necessarily follow ACD's.

Despite these similarities, there are very obvious differences between the two that separates them from being a pastiche and a fanfiction.

Enola Holmes embodies pastiche more as it doesn't stray far away from the original elements of the Canon. It's still set in Victorian England. While Springer added characters of her own and definitely twisted the Canon to suit her series, she didn't necessarily place them out of the social construct that was going on around the characters. It follows ACD's writing style more as Enola Holmes' setting still remains within the Canon's original setting.

Meanwhile, we can safely say that BBC Sherlock is a work of fanfiction. While it did give us The Abominable Bride, the main series focused on Holmes and Watson in 21st-century England, which is drastically different from Victorian England. There are phones, black cabs, and cellphones — things which ACD Sherlock Holmes doesn't have. It also diverted from the Canon in the characters themselves, which is mostly seen in the names: Henry Baskerville became Henry Knight, Charles Augustus Milverton became Charles Augustus Magnussen, the H in Dr Watson's name stood for Hamish and Sherlock's full name is actually William Sherlock Scott Holmes. They also changed the personalities of some Canon characters: Mary was actually an ex-assassin, Mrs Hudson was an exotic dancer who drove a kick-ass sports car, Irene Adler is a dominatrix, to name a few. Moffat and Gatiss created a world of their own featuring the characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which is really what most of us fanfic writers do with Mofftiss' rendition of Holmes.

In conclusion: while pastiche and fanfiction could have been the same thing, they're actually not. There's more to them that just printed fanfiction or pastiche e-books, and we all should take some time to see and observe them in a closer perspective.

And that's it for our first episode! I hope you enjoyed it. It was a lot fun for me to write this, especially now that I'm only starting. I would also like to note that while intensive research has been done on this series, some parts of this comes from my own observation and opinion, which may vary from yours. I am very much open to criticism, as long as it is said in a polite and civil manner. I'm still young, and to be educated as I go is something that could really help me with this series.

Like and reblog this you like it. It helps out a lot. Be sure to follow me as well and the tags underneath if you want to see more of TSoF.

See you soon!

Blessie presents – The Science of Fanfiction: A Study In Sherlock (2021) • Next

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SOURCES • Pinterest, Google Images, Wikipedia, Literary Terms, Conan Doyle Estate, Definitions, The Sherlock Holmes Book, and Google

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leverage-commentary · 3 years

Text

Leverage Season 2, Episode 14, The Three Strikes Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer, Writer of this episode.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this is the Three Strikes Job.

John: This is the first half of the big season finale which we like to do. And we are meeting our favorite recurring character Detective Bonanno, played by our friend Mr. Blanche, right?

Dean: Yes, Robert Blanche.

Chris: Robert Blanche.

John: Fantastic find; local actor. And it was interesting because really as we had come to- first time dealing with split season, first time Sophies not around, we had to- you know, we really hunted around for the character we would be emotionally anchored to for the season finale; you don't want it to be a random vic. And- cause last year was the whole Nate arc-

Chris: Right.

John: And having- Robert having established his character made him really beloved, made it easier.

Dean: And we've never really done a pre-opening like this that's quite this violent.

John: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: So it was a little bit out of our tool box, but yet we tried to do it in a way that it didn't seem like a completely different show.

John: This is the edited version. In the original version, a toddler wanders through the field of fire and is brutally mowed down.

[Laughter]

John: I'm glad we cut that out, that was weird.

Dean: That wasn't good.

John: Just seemed odd.

Dean: Especially when the toddler pulled out a gun and-

John: And was doing the [unintelligible] the dubs were cool though. I liked those.

[Laughter]

John: So this is Sonny at the toll booth; there's no two ways around this.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: How tough was this to shoot?

Dean: You know, it was actually pretty easy. We had about six cameras shooting simultaneously; we did it 3 different times and moved the camera each time. And this van you may recognize from Beantown Bailout-

John: Yes

Dean: Which also got shot up. So whenever we need to shoot up a car, that’s the car.

Chris: And did we add-? Or did we-

Dean: Now here’s the interesting thing-

John: We putty it in.

Chris: We putty it in? Oh.

Dean: The actor was not available this day to shoot. So that’s a different actor made up to look like Robert Blanche.

Chris: Oh wow, that’s great.

John: That's great. So our local Portland actor has a double? A stand in?

Dean: Has a double. [Laughs]

John: Wow, that's great. Oh, she's fantastic. And now this is- again, one of these sorts of things where we’re trying to anchor all of Nate Ford’s emotional cues. And you actually tried to shoot this identically, if I remember correctly.

Dean: That's right. We wanted to try and match the look and feel of the hospital scene from the pilot, but just skewed enough so that we know we’re someplace else.

John: Paul Blackthorne's name. And this was a lot of fun. This was a big giant episode concept.

Dean: One of the things you have to understand is- you gotta know when we do these two-part season finales, they're really shot like a movie, cause you shoot them all at the same time. And this one is, as you will see - far more ambitious than what we did in season one. Yet because it’s at the end of a very tough season where the writers actually ended earlier than normal; we only have four days to prepare to shoot this two-part season finale.

John: Yeah. We actually started prepping off outlines.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And then I think I turned in the first half? First half first? Second half-

Dean: Yeah.

John: I think I kept in order at least. And then, you know, turn them each in. And by that point, nicely enough, the Portland crew was such a well oiled machine that they knew what they wanted. Also, we had learned by this point to really try to find anchor locations.

Chris: Yeah.

John: To build and tie our acts around. So knowing that we were gonna do the baseball scam, they knew they could start processing all that was needed.

Dean: This is also the first time in season two that we brought back this recurring nightmare of him reliving the death of his son. The idea was that he had to some degree resolved it at the end of season one, but yet it’s still there just below the surface, and then suddenly kicking in to the end of season two it comes back up again.

John: And it was really the last trigger. If you’ve been watching the arc all the way through, we’ve been playing with his control issues and the fact that he's drinking again, and that feeling of helplessness has triggered him back into his addictive behavior. I mean, he’s already kind of bathing in his addictive behavior at this point in the previous episodes, but this is what really pushes him over the edge.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Also normally we like to have fun kick in pretty early after the opening scene, but yet this- because we're trying to set up a larger emotional arc in this two-part season finale. We have an emotional opening with Bonanno getting shot, then we have another emotional beat where he’s reminded of his son, and here another emotional beat where he’s trying to connect with Sophie and his frustration of not being able to reunite with her is bubbling. So we really actually took a long time on this before we let the fun kick in, which is not usual.

John: Because we were really gonna screw with Nate Ford in these two episodes, and you really feel like you just can't, ‘Oh, remember that stuff you should have noticed in previous episodes? That’s why he's doing this.’ We really needed to reset it.

Chris: One of the reasons that I think this plays so well is that if you watch them back to back, which I'm so glad they were broadcast that way on TNT, is that this scene here really pays off in part two.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And it’s- you know, it's a little ways to go if you have to wait a week between them.

John: Yeah.

Chris: But now it really plays like a movie.

Dean: And big kudos to Jeri Ryan because she had- she only had a few episodes to create an arc, and really everything she did in the previous episodes come together in these last two.

John: Yeah.

Dean: She’s really part of the team by now.

John: Yeah. And that bit where she drinks his booze in order to get it away from him was actually the first physical bit we ever pitched talking about the character. We were trying to figure out a way to differentiate between Sophie and Tara, and the idea where Sophie is a little more sensitive, a little more coddling...

Chris: More empathetic.

John: More empathetic, yeah. Tara will just basically drink you out of your own problems.

Chris: Right.

John: This was a tough day. Mainly because Tim really dug in on this.

Dean: Yeah.

John: This rage- this was a tough day. You know, he’s angry. And you can hear him-

Chris: Yeah.

John: And you can- he really- this was a small set for them to be screaming at each other on. It was really nice.

Dean: Yeah. And it really helped the other actors as you’ll see just in the way they are reacting. I mean, you see Christian is really messed up by this.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And it was a great way to-

John: Yeah cause one of his best friends in the world is sitting eight feet from him screaming at his face.

Dean: Yeah.

John: I mean, you know. And yeah, they're all really digging in on the idea that Nate Ford has gone off the rails.

Dean: But once they jump in, then the fun begins again.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: And now we start to get into that rhythm of, ‘Ok.’

Chris: You can see his little look on his face right here is the cue for the fun on Hardison.

John: Yeah. As soon as- yeah, as soon as the sarcastic ‘these guys are goons’ face comes up.

[Laughter]

Dean: Now by the way, those goons faces on the board are actually people who work here at post production at Electric.

[Laughter]

John: So don't be alarmed if you see them at your local bank or supermarket.

Chris: And I'll call out another couple of people whose faces are on this, too, you two guys a little later.

John: Oh yeah, we’re a little later. Exactly. This was also fun because this was something we kind of picked up on if you watch the second season episodes. A little bit more of detective Nate Ford.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, he was a guy who hunted bad guys.

Dean: Right.

John: And we put him back in the context a couple times this season of hunting bad guys. You know, and this one in particular he figures out exactly the situation in which case they should pursue.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Good crime scene photos. Big shout out to Derek.

Chris: Gruesome, yeah.

John: Gruesome, yeah. Nice.

Dean: But because we shot this scene before we had shot the scene with Bonanno getting shot-

John: We had no footage, that’s right.

Dean: We had no footage, so we had to make up fake crime scene photos and hoped that they would somehow-

Chris: Derek had those crime scene photos pretty easily, don’t you think?

John: That was a little disturbing.

[Laughter]

John: ‘I just went out and did it in a back alley in Chicago.’ This is also fun because this is one of the few times we’ve had Hardison of all people go, ‘I don't want to do this one. This one seems like a bad idea.’

Chris: Yeah. Now look at this shot.

Dean: Now this actor here- those of you who may have seen my film Flyboys, he was one of the pilots in Flyboys. And he did me a solid and came and did this little guest spot. And this is Richard Kind, who I had not worked with since Stargate-

John: Wow.

Dean: -and has been a family friend forever, and I think one of our most underrated actors in this country.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of part you typically don't see him in. I mean he plays kind of a nebbish-y guy.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And boy, did he just bring a gravitas and a menace and really built a whole backstory to his character.

John: Well let's talk about it- that’s where this story comes from. We really wanted to do our city of industry, corrupt east coast port town. I grew up near Boston, you grew up in New York-

Chris: Yeah.

John: -and, you know, this is very much based around that, sort of, north of Boston, Route 1 type of town.

Dean: Right.

John: And so getting an east coast actor, just a guy who could bring you that kind of New York power family vibe made a difference. And he showed up- he loved the script, showed up with three ideas. Three lines of dialogue, in three scenes that gave this character backstory, depth, and pathos. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a very good actor.’

Chris: And what the fact to do is Brad Culpepper the Third. I mean that he was from a long line-

John: Yes. And he dug in on that and he found something that just made you, you know-

Dean: He also came up with this concept that he wasn’t in it for the money, he was in it for the power and the legacy.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Which is an interesting distinction.

John: Yeah, exactly. There is- he really dug in on the evil speech of evil. The idea that he is not a bad guy in his own head in any way shape or form. This was- what hotel was this? Was this the Governor?

Dean: This was the Governor Hotel.

John: They really did us a solid this episode, they did a fantastic job.

Dean: We ended up shooting three different episodes at the Governor, and then they were our host for the Leverage convention.

John: Oh, also the wrap party.

Chris: Which was fantastic.

John: I don't remember that much.

Chris: The Leverage convention, which was awesome.

John: I can't believe you people missed it.

[Laughter]

John: We’re gonna assume nothing horrible happens. The horrible irony of when we try to recall these DVDs.

Chris: Oh, no, please.

[Laughter]

John: Lovely little- this was a great neighborhood; they put up with us. And this was a lot of fun, whenever you can play the annoyed brother vibe between the two of them.

Dean: Oh, I could watch it all day long.

John: Yeah. This was also the night we found out we got picked up for a third season.

Dean: That’s right.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’s right.

John: This is fun, that’s Beth in the rig on the ledge. If you go to my blog, you’ll see the pictures of her doing this. It’s insane. There's just no way we should be allowing her to be on the edge.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: That’s city hall, by the way, in Portland. That’s city hall.

Dean: That is, that is.

Chris: They let you just jump off the roof in city hall?

John: You know what- if you're in Portland, show up, ask, and they'll let you. I'm sure there will be no repercussions to me saying that. And this is kind of fun, Paul Blackthorne as the shadowy character that you kind of touch on. And this is all based on- his character’s actually based on a guy down in Florida-

Dean: Yes.

John: -who got an arms deal with the US government, who was like a bar guy.

Chris: Yeah, he was kinda like a party kid.

John: Yeah, who somehow got a 300 million dollar contract with the US government selling recycled arms from Eastern-

Chris: Recycled arms from Eastern Europe, yeah.

John: That’s Beth on the rappelling line. Remember that? We shot that.

Dean: And I’ll tell you, this is an example of how Beth, even alone, just completely captures your imagination. She has no one else to act with here except for our AD off camera reading dialogue, and yet she's completely engaged in the story, in the character.

John: Yeah, this was a lot- this was- actually you wrote this whole chunk.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, here's another great local guest star.

John: Yeah. And that was another thing that Portland gave us. There's a lot of great local theater guys, a lot of local great actors who can really land a joke.

Dean: Yeah, it was so surprising.

Chris: I love that he has the ice tea, it's such a great-

[Laughter]

Chris: Such a great touch.

John: I like- and also the sort of- I don't know if it’s the weird veiled hostility between Hardison and Eliot gets turned outward whenever they run one of these cons-

Dean: Right.

John: -but that guy is going to be the subject of their rage at each other. This guy was really great.

[Laughter]

Chris: And this is a crime lab bit. I mean, let’s be honest, there are eight different CSIs on; we wanted to have a little fun.

John: Yes. We were kind of making fun of the CSI- the whole idea that CSI shows up at your house. I had my house broken into, they didn’t show up.

[Laughter]

Chris: The fact that the beat cop could be-

John: Bossed around by-

Chris: Bossed around by CSI guys was born out of those shows

John: And this, by the way, the bit with the balloons, was Richard.

Dean: Great.

John: Just awkward, just trying to shift it, trying to ground it. And again, this- what amazes me when we got into the research of it, was how cheap it was to buy these guys.

Chris: Yeah.

John: I mean really- like $10,000 gets you somebody's kid in city politics.

Dean: That's true.

Chris: The promise of a job when you're out of the office. You know, I mean, that's what brought down the Illinois governor.

John: Yeah, that's right. That’s right. And that's what is kinda fun is we do- oh, I love this bit.

Dean: Comedy frame.

John: Comedy frame! What is this? A locked off comedy frame.

Dean: Exactly.

John: Locked off frame, two people come in facing each other-

Dean: And I love this little smile right there on Christian’s face .

[Laughter]

Dean: He was just enjoying the bit until he realized, ‘Oh wait, I have to perform in the bit.’

John: Is that on the X? Is that- how did you get the RED so low?

Dean: Oh we just put it right on the floor on a sandbag.

John: Oh that's good.

[Laughter]

John: Thanks to these nice folks for letting us trash their home, by the way.

Dean: Yes. And for those of you who may have noticed in the wide angles, just the little numbers on the evidence things on the floors.

John: Yes, that they’ve scattered all over the ground. Yeah no set-dec did a great job.

Dean: You can see the numbers in the background.

Chris: Oh those are great!

John: And- and earning his pay-

[Laughter]

John: Nicely done.

Chris: That’s a nice little transition there.

John: It is a nice- almost like you put some thought into this.

Dean: And I swear I didn't. And this is our line producer’s wife .

John: Yeah.

Dean: Who also did a guest star in last year’s two-part season finale.

John: Last year’s finale!

Chris: Oh, that’s right!

John: I like the idea she was on vacation in LA last year.

Dean: Exactly.

John: And now she’s back and involved in another Leverage scam. In my head it's the same person.

Dean: And this is an interesting scene for their arc, because, you know, Beth - Parker - really didn't trust Tara coming in.

John: Well she's not part of the family.

Dean: And only in this scene does she actually start to earn her trust, and they start to bond.

John: And we also wanted to reset the fact that, again, Parker is good in the short con. If you throw a surprise at her she doesn't handle it well, because talking to people doesn't even go well. Interestingly enough, she relates to people better in character than as Parker.

Chris: Yes.

John: Yeah. And so until Tara gives her- so yes, the awkward- we really pulled up every political trope we could find.

Chris: Oh, sure.

John: I think we sat down - adultery, pregnancy, corruption. Then we just went through the Times one day, just pulled up every scandal from that summer.

[Laughter]

John: And the 4-18 months. And there's actually a mayor’s conference, too.

Dean: That’s right.

John: We found out where the mayor’s conference was.

Chris: It's in Vegas. Sure that's where you would have the mayors conference, and that’s where he would meet her.

Dean: I like the little turn Parker makes here, after she’s been coached part way through it, now she gets it. So now she’s feeling comfortable doing it.

John: Now she understands, yeah.

Dean: And you can see her-

Chris: ‘Yeah, I'll just wait out there.’

John: And that is an actual office- that's a conference room at the city hall?

Dean: That sure is.

John: That we rappelled down into.

Dean: We had to use it as the mayor's office, cause the actual mayor's office was too small.

[Laughter]

John: That's right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: Infamously the mayor took the smaller office in the city of Portland cause he just felt like he only needed that much work space.

Dean: That's right. Mayor Sam Adams who’s been incredibly helpful to this show, and we’re very grateful.

John: Yes. Very cool guy. I don't regret that duffle bag full of cash at all.

Chris: That is a great shot there.

John: That is a great shot. That really establishes that space.

Chris: She’s- jeez.

John: She's beautiful, yes. I was referring to the setting, but-

Chris: Sorry, I was just-

John: Yes, Jeri Ryan was very beautiful, too.

Chris: I was just lost in Jeri Ryan.

John: It happens. And this is the great speech. And again, we listened to transcripts and looked at testimony. I mean if you look at Blagojevich-

Chris: Blagojevich, sure.

John: The remarkable bluntness with which they announce their terms and prices always amazes me.

Chris: Yeah. And it almost sounds like movie dialogue, but it’s not! It’s just the way they talk!

John: Yeah.

Dean: The evil speech of evil.

John: And we come up with evil speeches of evil, and then when you go find the real ones it's like, really? You said that? With a straight face? Alright.

Chris: Yeah.

John: No, research is your friend. We really- you know, this is a remarkable static act with an awful lot going on. I never noticed that before.

Dean: Well I think- again, this is- when we separate our team into different locations, but yet having them communicate, it really gives a sense of energy to it.

John: But we only have, like, three agendas.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, running it at any one time. This was a tight little shot. I remember this. This was- we were in that back bedroom, and trying to shoot. And then you had to- you had a totally different blocking, if I remember correctly.

Dean: Yeah, instead of being in the room with him, we decided we’d squeeze him through the doorway and make him feel like he’s in an even tighter space than he was by framing it that way. But it also gives a chance to use this hallway and bring in our guest performer.

John: Yeah. And the clue that travels over two different episodes. Hopefully, again, I'm glad that they aired these back to back because it would be tricky to-

Chris: Yes it’s- to track- there's a lot of stuff that this really did play like a movie.

Dean: And once again, we got to the-

John: Oh, the big smile.

Dean: -comedy frame.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: That’s for all you young filmmakers out there, that is the comedy frame. And then the look- just the look of pity on his face. Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And the badge on the- there's no reason the CSI guys should have a badge on a shield. Chris just loves the badge on the shield- the badge on a chain.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: He likes that.

John: He really likes that look. If he can be doing like a 1970s- if he could be doing the British version of Life on Mars, he’d be the happiest man alive.

Dean: Oh yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: Now I got a question for you. So was- now we had a Maltese Falcon joke, just one line in-

Dean: The previous episode.

Chris: -the previous episode. Did that give you the idea for the Maltese Falcon? Who came up with the Maltese Falcon bit?

John: No, you know it was- it was literally, I was trying to figure out, ‘What's the MacGuffin? What’s the maltese falcon? You know what, it'd be actually kind of fun to just call it that.’

Chris: Just the Maltese Falcon, OK.

John: Cause it’s so famous now, it's a little meta. And, you know, the fact that it would be called something rather than a shorthand for something-

Chris: Right.

John: Cause we use that in the writers room all the time.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

John: The maltese falcon, what's the thing? Macguffin, Hitchcock famously defined it as. And this is Nate deciding to bail on the pitch and making- and this is tough. He’s basically processing offscreen dialogue and acting like he’s coming to a decision.

Dean: I love Richard’s reaction to it, it's like ‘What?’

John: We just went for the whole-

Chris: ‘You just paid all this money, you don't want to engage in graft with me?’

John: Behind though-

Dean: Even out of focus he's stealing the scene.

John: I know. He's really upstaging the hell out of- out of focus. Look how far back he is. Aaand you're back.

[Laughter]

John: And we've announced our agenda.

Chris: We've announced our agenda, we know our- and here we go.

Dean: Now this place was great, this ballpark. We wanted to shoot here all year and hadn’t really found a way to do it.

John: And that's why I give full props to Chris, is cuz I had the crime story back half of this done, and I could not figure out what the con on the mayor was. And you had fallen in love with this location you had seen- you were like-

Chris: This was great, I had gone to a game here.

John: We can finally pay off this location. And that’s- again, that's an advantage of being a city where you get to know- cause the baseball con was always a half an episode.

Chris: Right.

John: And we could never quite get it to be a whole. And then it was like, ‘Oh, we need half an episode. Boom.’

Chris: Well also there's a lot of public corruption around building ballparks, and we did a little research that minor league ballparks bring 30 million dollars into the local economy.

John: That was great. The day we did research and found out it was just a flat 30 million for almost every ballpark, it’s like, that’s just a great number.

Chris: Yup.

Dean: And by the way, I think some of the best special effects we’ve ever done are in this two-part season finale, but I don't think you'd even notice it. For instance all these shots in the ballpark, we had to erase and change all the signage-

John: Oh, that’s right.

Dean: -because we didn't have permission. And then later, we had to put in the crowds that were reacting. So there are amazing special effects in this, but they are so real you didn’t even know.

John: That’s right. Utterly seamless. If you see them, we screwed up. Yeah, and this particularly since those aren’t lockoff, the camera is moving, you know, the character is wiping in front of it, yeah.

Dean: And again, I love what David is doing in this scene, he is just channeling Smithers.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: And there’s Paul Blackthorne, he’s really doing the job for us as evil European dude. He has a large black car-

Chris: Yeah.

John: He's got a halfway rolled down window. We know what his job is in the story, we know what his job is in the narrative.

[Laughter]

John: But what I love here is the fact that Richard there's just so dismissive. I mean the body language here besides- Why is this a good shot? Because you don’t have to turn around to get both of them.

Dean: Exactly.

John: He’s very casually powerful.

Dean: Right.

John: This is a man who’s used to the world running the way he wants it to run.

Chris: Right, in this little burg of Bellbridge.

John: Yes.

Dean: And this is such a terrific location, and we were there early in the morning, got this great light. I was so excited to shoot this.

Chris: And they have a nice-

John: Story shcmory. Pictures.

Chris: They have a nice rapport here, too. They have this kind of easy going, you know, banter.

Dean: You know, so much of this episode- these episodes, was wish fulfillment. We wanted to be in that ballpark all year, we wanted to get near the water under the bridges...

Chris: Yes.

John: You also- in case you're skipping through the commentaries, you’ll notice this happens in Bellbridge, Massachusetts. Bellbridge is the corrupt town in Chris’s episode, Order 23.

Chris: Yes, yeah.

John: We decided to create just one imaginary Massachusetts city we could crap on for an entire season.

Chris: Yes.

John: Just to make sure we had clearances, and we always knew-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So please, if you're from a real Bellbridge, don’t be angry.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, their rhythm here is lovely. They are partners by this point, in a very different way. And the fact that Jeri has established that over six episodes is pretty cool. How tough is it to shoot in a ballpark, my friend?

Dean: Well some of this we actually stole footage at a real- during a real game, but the rest was very easy because they were so cooperative. I mean, this is the actual locker room and they let us have it for the day, and gave us equipment and were-

Chris: And those are the- are those the uniforms?

Dean: Just terrific. Those are the actual uniforms. The ‘P’ is actually for Portland.

[Laughter]

Dean: But in our show it’s-

Chris: Palmerstown.

John: And I love the fact it's actually the Portland Beavers, because if we come up with a comedy mascot we couldn't have beat beavers.

Dean: No.

John: And by the way the Portland Beaver? Good guy.

Dean: Very good guy.

John: Very good guy. Really cool. We hung out, everything.

Chris: Oh apologies to Crash Davis here, but boy does he do- he does-

John: Oh he's so digging in.

Chris: Does a great Bull Durham.

John: Really digging up. This is- we went back and forth- are we doing Major League or Bull Durham here?

Chris: It's pretty Bull Durham here.

John: It’s pretty Bull Durham.

Chris: The journeyman catcher who shows up unannounced, it’s-

John: Yeah, and also the idea that these- you know, talking to a lot of these guys who play this level ball, the precarious nature of their lives- I mean the guys who are kind of on rota from a major league team make a lot of money.

Chris: Yeah.

John: The guys who are journeymanning this out, a lot of them have day jobs, man.

Dean: What I love about this is that Eliot himself doesn’t like baseball. Because we’ve already established what a big, giant sports fan he is.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: About how excited he was about all the sports channels in- both season one and season two.

John: But it's hockey- and it’s always hockey and football. And interestingly, we gave him your problem with baseball.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: Yes we did, it really worked great.

John: I love baseball and I'm like, ‘I have no idea what he wouldn't like.’ And you said, I don’t like-’ Oh.

Chris: Oh, and John did a beautiful job directing this.

John: This is my directing debut right here

[Laughter]

Chris: Mark it down folks.

John: Japanese power drink commercial. Because it really was one of those things I had in mind and it's like, ‘Alright describe it. You know what? I can't describe it, I'll just shoot this.’

Chris: I think I originally wrote it as it’s like a car- like a local car ad.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh my god, how great is this Japanese sports drink commercial?

John: Also, again, you're lucky to have Chris Kane because a lot of actors wouldn't do the comedy beat in the commercial.

[Laughter]

Dean: Nails it.

John: He nails it. Look at the big smile!

Dean: And he enjoys it!

John: Look at that, having a good time.

[Laughter]

Dean: But he hates baseball, and then he comes in here and the minute he cracks that bat you just see- you know, heroin to the junkie.

Chris: He really did- he gave it a real arc, you know.

John: And also, I like the fact that this is the first time he uses a baseball bat for what it's actually meant for.

Dean: Right.

[Laughter]

John: He's been beating people up with baseball bats for like 20 years, and never really hit a ball with one before. Also, by the way, cool digital ball.

Chris: Oh watch this.

Dean: Exactly.

John: There you go.

Chris: Oh that is great.

Dean: I'm telling you some of our best digital effects-

Chris: That’s fantastic.

John: Oh look at that look.

Dean: And the second one- watch the indentation on the pad on the wall when the ball hits it. Small thing for effects artists, but really lovely, just oh that little indentation.

John: Oh that’s nice, the shadow. And there we are.

Chris: Oh there you go folks, there's Dean and John.

Dean: Oh dear, oh dear.

John: We’re also doing the voices here on the radio shows. On the DVD there should be about nine takes of this scene. Because the two of them, at one point it got very weird and sexual with her speaking Spanish, and Hardison getting all ramped up.

[Laughter]

John: It- this was definitely one of the ones where you just, like, park the camera and let the two of them go.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Interesting, one of the challenges of shooting the greenscreens is color temperature.

Dean: Yes.

John: We actually had a little bit of trouble with this shot because- most people don’t understand, there’s a lot of different greens that go on green screens. It was not dead right, doing the special effects goes from easy to unspeakable.

Dean: Exactly, and so this one had- a lot of work had to go into being able to see what was on the screen.

John: Ironically, a lot of this was harder to see than the incredibly complex crowds and baseball stuff.

Dean: The stands, exactly.

John: This was a lot of fun. Outside real city hall, outside Portland city hall, at a coffee shop across the street at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Dean: Yeah, this was the first thing we shot that day.

John: And again, this is- it was interesting how originally there was an entire subplot where, how they’d been lured there, how the mayor- and you don’t need it.

Chris: Yeah. This is much better.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just sees them, he walks across the street.

Chris: Yes.

John: We even took that bit out. We originally had him see them.

Dean: I love the really, really bad heist.

[Laughter]

John: The bad lift.

Dean: Smithers stumbles into the table.

John: And Kind just drops the look there a little bit.

Chris: A little disgust right there.

Dean: Just a little squint.

[Laughter]

John: And the turnaway when it’s like, ‘Oh horrible lift.’ They don’t even have to- they both know what happened, they both know it was unspeakable.

Dean: Well, you know, amateurs to pros, you know?

John: And this was fun, these are based on real blueprints.

Chris: Yeah, real blueprints for-

Dean: This was that other shot was the beginning of the day. This was the last shot of the day, and we’d run out of time. So I had to shoot this all in one shot.

John: Oh this is a one-er!

Chris: This is a one-er, take a look at that.

Dean: This is a very hard steadicam shot. While it’s not that impressive of a shot, it's a very difficult shot.

John: And also-

Dean: Cause you’re doing all the coverage with one camera.

John: And you're banging focus like crazy.

Chris: You’re getting a lot of information, right.

John: And also the actors can’t mess up.

Dean: That’s right.

John: At no point can they stop, can they drop a line, can they, you know.

Dean: The only thing we did is one little reverse at the very end on David’s character. But as you can see all of this-

John: To give you a cut, or?

Dean: Just to give us a cut in case we needed to combine.

Chris: It’s interesting how great these end of day one-ers come out.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And they're born of necessity.

Dean: That’s what so interesting about television is, you know, it really forces you to be creative.

John: Yeah. Oh there you go, I see what you did.

Chris: Oh here's the ballpark.

Dean: Now this is a mixture of stuff that we staged and stuff that we stole during an actual ballgame. But all the-

Chris: The actual ballgame you shot before, I think, the script was written.

John: I think I sent the outline saying we would be at the ballpark. And so Dean had to come up with a shot list based on basically our friendship-

Chris: This is great.

John: -figuring out what I would probably put in the script.

Dean: These are all real things there.

John: Yeah.

Dean: That we shot. Now all the crowds, though, we added digitally.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

Dean: So in all these wide shots when you see these full crowds, they had about- there was a scattered amount of people. In all the shots where it’s full, that’s us.

John: Yeah.

Chris: That’s great.

Dean: For all these shots here. And of course all the signage is changed digitally.

John: And Kane went down, caught a couple pitches, and actually on the shot we have him hit, he actually connected, put it on the warning track. It was a good day for Chris Kane.

Chris: That’s a beautiful shot, too, there; love that.

John: That's a beautiful one, yeah.

Dean: And this actor is actually a state senator.

[Laughter]

Dean: Who had helped pass the legislation for us to-

John: I actually think we’re the bad guys at this point. Seriously, we’re doing an episode about graft and corruption and-

Dean: Well the hilarious thing is, he wanted to play the corrupt mayor.

John: I know. And we were like ‘You know dude, that's probably not the best idea for you to play the corrupt mayor.’

Chris: I can see the campaign commercials.

Dean: All those crowds, digital.

Chris: Wow, that’s great.

Dean: I mean that's really something.

John: And look at that, through a moving shot.

Dean: And then all the signage behind them is changed as well.

John: And that’s our-

Dean: And if you notice, that’s Hardison’s orange drink on the sign.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: Oh my god, that's right.

Chris: And to do with- with a moving camera is very difficult.

Dean: Very difficult.

John: And this is a conference on the mound from both Major League and Bull Durham.

Dean: And the pitcher is actually our second AD.

John: Kyle, yeah.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That's right, you give him a nice hero shot here, too.

Chris: Oh, that's a great shot of Kyle.

John: I also love- This helps lock in the arc where he’s like, ‘I'm now fully committed to winning baseball as much as I am to winning fights.’

Dean: Exactly.

John: No this was a lot of- and this is a lot of fun. This was- it's amazing what you can do with implication.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, just put two people in the same geography and let the characters draw their own conclusions.

Chris: Yeah, let them do the math.

John: A lot of time you'll try to oversell the con, and what you have to remember is people create narrative about the world around them, you know?

Dean: Oh and I love this bit.

John: Yeah this is a lot of fun, the stuntie really took a hit. And down!

Chris: Oh, oh, oh!

[Laughter]

John: I love he does kind of the -

Dean: Notice that the ref is cross eyed; he's a real ref!

[Laughter]

Dean: That is not something that- I didn't ask him to act cross eyed.

John: I love this- that dude is dead. That dude is dead. He’s plainly just- he's not getting up. Right now they're asking people to leave the park quietly.

Chris: I think he did that in one or two takes, I mean, he just got it.

Dean: Yeah.

John: He just- it was a beautiful fall.

Dean: By the way, this is another one-er and this is a very difficult scene to light for television where you don't have that much time. And our DP was really creative in the way he made the sun blazing through the back to light up pretty much the entire set.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Now was it easier because you're working with the RED camera for something like this? Available light...

Dean: The RED helps, but at the end of the day it’s about your DP and your gaffer, and we really have, really, two of the best guys in the business.

John: And again, this is also- so much help to be able to do the research on this. Where it’s like, ‘Well, how could he possibly communicate in code how much money-?’ No, he would write it down and give it to him.

Dean: Right.

John: That's what they do, apparently, I had no idea.

[Laughter]

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Or they'll just say it, unaware. And this yeah, this was a lot of fun, because also- Richard really found the idea that he was supposed to help Nate feel overconfident.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, he's supposed to play into it a little easy. And he's- now he's totally into it.

Dean: I love how cross eyed the ref is, that's so great. I mean, the umpire, that's just so great.

John: Boom! That was a good solid hit. That's- Chris Kane put it on the warning track ladies and gentlemen.

Dean: And if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the crowd chanting ‘Roy, Roy.’

[Laughter]

John: Oh he's become a hometown hero in roughly two weeks. What's the next shot up? Oh there we go, back at McRorys.

Chris: Now- now we're back.

John: Now this is one of our lovely roundy- and oh, this is great. One of our roundy-rounds where we just basically- script kids, when you want to communicate pipe and reset, the way to do it is have somebody not give a crap about the pipe that you're talking about.

[Laughter]

John: He has his own agenda, it makes it instantly amusing.

Chris: Somebody comes in irritated.

Dean: And boy did he knock this out of the park.

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Kane, who didn’t care- I mean Eliot, who didn't care about baseball at all, is so proud of himself and he's so mad they didn't share his moment of glory.

John: His joy. They named a sandwich after him. Also, that’s a nice beat that they all chose. It’s like, you know, alright, you gotta give it up. That's a nice moment; boom, boom, and the fistbump.

Chris: You got a sandwich named after him.

Dean: Eliot has a hoage? No a reuben.

[Laughter]

John: I also like- I had not noticed before because I was kind of- Nate’s taking a phone call and I was watching it for that beat, the, sort of, fun that Jeri Ryan’s playing there, it's like, ‘OK, I'm part of the family now, this is genuinely amusing.’

Dean: Now this is a fun reveal shot.

John: One of the cross cuts that I gave you again as your birthday gift. Moving in opposite directions?

Dean: Moving in opposite directions so that they are always looking at each other screen direction wise.

Chris: Right, right.

John: Cause we know awful things happen when you cross the lines.

Dean: If you cross the line, cities fall.

[Laughter]

Chris: No, but I mean, when you do phone calls that's an important thing to do.

Dean: For me I think so. I’m old school.

John: What I love is the fact that he starts the incredibly confident powerful guy that we know. And by the end of this swing around, Richard lets himself just kind of look- just

Dean: Now he's-

Chris: Nice reveal there.

John: Yeah, and nice reveal on that blown out window. And now he's just a pawn, he's just a broken little man, you know. And that's very- the last shot is plainly Nixon.

[Laughter]

John: It’s plainly like- what's that famous shot of Nixon at 2am in the oval office?

Dean: Right.

John: It’s that look at him. And he did all that in one take, conveying pipe to Nate.

Dean: And now we switch to our handheld, because our guys are in trouble. And I love how much Nate is overcompensating. Whenever Nate’s overcompensating, you know something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

John: And his addiction is taking over. Be it booze or control.

Dean: And in this case, both.

John: Yes. He's not really got his head on in this particular case. Yeah, everyone's arguing with him, everyone- and this is another great thing, when Nate spins out you don’t ever have a problem with the plot, because the problem with the plot is the point of the plot.

Chris: Right.

John: Like with, ‘That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense.’ Exactly! Tell that to Nate!

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's important for him to know.

Dean: Our editor did- Brian Gonosey, did a very interesting choice here from cutting from Nate to Nate. Which we almost never do, and it gives it, kind of, strange, nervous energy.

Chris: Well you're kinda-

John: It's claustrophobic.

Chris: You get the sense of people's eyes on him.

Jon: Right.

Chris: A lot of people looking at him.

Dean: But it’s not- again, that kind of cut we don't normally do on the show, and it really makes this a nervous scene.

John: Yeah, you’re going-

Dean: Nate to Nate to Nate to Nate.

John: Yeah, cause you're hopping- Jeri to Parker, you're seeing him plead his case. Jeri to Beth, Jeri to Beth, you know, you're seeing him through their eyes. And then back to the reactions where they know, yeah.

Dean: Something’s wrong.

John: And each one of them is making a very specific decision at that point.

Dean: Again, this port- these guys were so great to let us shoot there.

John: Oh man.

Dean: Gave us such wonderful access.

John: That’s the real port, that's not stock, baby, that’s-

Dean: That’s right, that’s the real deal.

John: And- and a lot of fun doing the TSA stuff, doing the Homeland Security stuff. The research on this was as horrifying as you'd imagine. Most of this is security theater, your ports are not secure, sleep tight America.

Dean: And this actor was also discovered in that same improv group that we found the actor from the doctor episode.

Chris: Oh that’s interesting.

Dean: The Order 23.

Chris: John, you made a good point about how Order 23 pays off. A question about Order 23, about security at the courthouse.

John: Yes, in Order 23 there's a beat like ‘How do they get the gun in there?’ And it’s because the courthouse has not been refurbished, because the budget on the town-

Dean: Right.

John: The city is so poor. And that's also why he felt confident hiding the money there.

Chris: Right, right.

John: That pays off here in the- you find out the reason there's no money for the city is the mayor has grifted it all.

Dean: Right.

Chris: All the security money that he got, federal anti-terrorism money went into his own pocket.

Dean: And I love how Eliot is now playing a celebrity.

[Laughter]

Dean: And he's so proud that he's a celebrity.

John: And we also flipped roles for once, cause Hardison is usually not the one who’s annoyed, it’s-

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, no it's true, he is.

John: It's really he’s- and it’s really both, ‘Get back on the job,’ and, ‘I'm not the center of attention.’

Chris: Yes.

Dean: These two are magical together.

John: Yeah, that's a great- this is a great noir set up.

Dean: Yeah, even with the black car in the distance, which is a bit of red herring.

Chris: Look at this shot, I mean this is a movie shot.

John: Beautiful. Now how do we- was this at night? Or were we during the day here on this?

Dean: This was at the end of the day, so we actually spilled into night and had to light it to keep it looking like this. And that's an actual oil tanker that they allowed us to shoot at.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: And then that- this walkway is actually exactly where we just located it. It's directly below the docks. And it really was- a lot of the fun was walking around the location going, ‘OK, this scene can happen here, this scene can happen here.’ And we didn't get too poisoned shooting in this warehouse. We all had funny coughs for about a week, but we were OK.

Dean: They warned us about spiders and raccoons under this-

John: Yeah.

Dean: So we were looking for eight-legged raccoons at some point.

John: At some point we were very worried there would be a horrible combination.

Chris: Oh really? Wow, I missed this part.

John: Well you weren't up here for shooting at the oil tanker, getting poisoned by fumes.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I looked at the schedule and went, ‘What’s the day you hang out in the baseball park?’

John: I noticed that. You came for the baseball park-

Chris: ‘Oh, I’ll come for that.’

John: You really didn't hang out with us in the oil tanker hold. Yeah, black lung kicking in.

[Laughter]

John: This is a great cross cutting by Brian, this kind of- what he's doing is he's finding some- finding an odd rhythm here. It's not danger, it's unease.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, every shot is a little too short, it's a little too- yeah. And again, sort of end of day shooting, everything in the warehouse from the moment they walk in- like they get to the oil barrel, through the end of the episode pretty much, you did in a one-er.

Dean: Yup.

John: One direction one way, one direction the other.

Dean: Your easy bake oven reference is awesome. I don't know how many people under the age of 40 are gonna get it, but god I love that reference.

John: Who under 40 watches television anyway?

Chris: I appreciate it so much. Made me laugh so hard.

John: They've still got those. I got one for my niece.

Chris: With the one little bulb that actually makes the cake.

John: Who knew? I love, Parker is constantly finding crates full of guns.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure she could open a gift with purchase from Neiman Marcus and it would have guns in it.

Chris: And by the way, kudos to you to find- when we put this thing together, to find the transition between corrupt mayor and arms deal in the docks. I mean, the thing was built around certain setpieces.

John: Yeah. And also it sort of made sense these- when you research, the amount of legal arms dealing that goes on in the states is magnificent.

Chris: Right, right.

John: And when you find out these guys run these things out of Boston, New York, Miami, you know.

Chris: Right.

John: It's got to be somewhere.

Dean: And this is one of the rare times where our team is really losing at the end of an episode.

John: Oh yeah, they’ve got to lose. They really- they have- and this was interesting, because it really was one of those times where we sat back and said, ‘In what version of this show are our guys the bad guys that get caught?’

Dean: Right.

John: Just write this section of this show like that show. Like we're writing NCIS or we’re writing CSI or something. And really put our guys in the dead seat. And man he just radiates rage.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And it's not just because Richard Kind is a bad guy, it's because he's lost control.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, that is Nate Ford in a world he doesn't want to live in.

Dean: Now we got them in this impossible situation, and- but we can’t end the show without a little bit of fun.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the win within the loss here is, I think, is truly inspired.

John: Oh yeah, managing to get them out of there.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun. I can't remember where the idea from- the idea of the multiple exits came from. We were playing around in another episode with ambiguity, somebody- signal of, like, time and ambiguity, and that held over, because you use all the parts of the animal, and that hung out and that's of course-

Chris: That's Katie O’Grady.

John: Katie O’Grady.

Chris: She’s a terrific Portland actress. She runs an acting school up there.

John: Yup, yup. And she really came in as kind of one off, and it’s- after two episodes it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could see this character coming back. I could see this fed,’ you know. A lot of Portland actors did that. A lot of Portland actors turned one day into a recurring role.

Dean: Yeah.

John: The- and just barely buying him enough time. And that's the important thing here, is that each character is finding a little piece of the solution. That was the fun of this episode is, there's a famous fighter pilot saying which is, ‘Stay alive for the next 10 seconds.’ That's all you have to do. In the next 10 seconds, your wingman will get the guy, or the guy will get out of position, and that's all they are trying to do for this section of this script.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Thers a great turn here where he reveals that he was somehow part of this attempted assassination of one of the family- the extended family.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the rage that comes out of Nate is everything that’s built up over the entire year.

John: And what's really interesting is, because you shot this all in one piece- this is not split up into takes, this built in real time.

Dean: That's right.

John: You know, this really builds from that confession- and I was out of position the first time he did the wrench, and I was like ‘What the hell just happened? Did Tim just crush Richard Kind’s head?’

Chris: It's his friend! They're friends!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, they're friends, but the wrench wasn't in the script. Tim just picked up the wrench!

Dean: Right.

Chris: He just picked up a wrench. And we were like, ‘Is that a rubber prop wrench?’

Dean: I love her character is like, ‘Then just kill him.’ I mean, she has no moral position on this, she just wants to get out alive.

John: Yeah, this- like we were talking the other day, where Sophie still exchanges Christmas cards with people she's ripped off, Tara Cole has walked out of a lot of burning buildings with metal suitcases full of bloodstained cash.

Dean: And never looked back.

John: And never looked back. And in that moment she is absolutely serious. If you're gonna kill this guy, get it done. You know, but she’s not gonna coddle him.

Dean: Now this may be one of my favorite bits that you guys have ever come up with, and it starts with a great turn.

John: It’s like- you know why? Cause it’s a locked off comedy frame, my friend.

Chris: That is.

Dean: Locked off comedy frame. But it's one of the oldest gags in television.

John: It is.

Dean: Is that slow turn look.

Chris: The turn look.

John: And then the turn reveal, and this-

Chris: ‘Oh no. Oh no, you're not gonna do it. Oh no, no way, Jose.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And once again, Aldis Hodge showing why he is a truly, truly special talent. This part is not written.

John: No.

Dean: This part is just him going-

John: The printed page ends with, ‘They turn and look at the van.’

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Yes and-

Dean: All of this is him being brilliant.

John: And that means also that Beth and Chris had to find the timing to when they were both gonna turn.

Dean: Right.

John: And that's the thing is, they work together a lot, now they've got a lot of, sort of, physical cues from each other. But yeah, this is all him, this is all him going off. And this is born of 207 when we shot him and Will Wheaton versus each other; they spent the whole day in the van alternating. And so Aldis was making a joke about the fact he has a very weird relationship with that van, cause he's in it and nobody else is.

Dean: And he even brought back in the fact that everyone teases him that the van smells.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: That the van smells, we made that a recurring thing.

John: So that's become a recurring thing and it was really- it was really the actors discussion of his character that led to the bit.

Dean: Now a lot of people may miss this-

John: Oh this is my favorite bit-

Dean: -but just watch Parker when the doors shut.

John: Yup.

Dean: Because Parker is so close to Aldis she gives a kiss goodbye and leaves the little lip print.

[Laughter]

John: I never noticed that before.

Chris: Oh she did, she leaves the lip print, that’s great.

John: Not in the script.

Dean: One of my favorite camera moves right here. ‘Aaaaand, let’s begin.’

[Laughter]

John: There is- definitely been working together long enough now that we know- and now that jazz music is in the background, we’re up and running.

Chris: There you go.

Dean: It all kicks in. And again, how Richard was able to now change from that dark to humorous. Literally turning on a dime.

John: And this is him-

Chris: Oh there's so many speeches he made saying goodbye.

John: This is him doing the- that is Kirk saying goodbye to Spock.

[Laughter]

John: By the way, from the Wrath of Kahn, that is the speech he's doing right there.

Dean: And we- my favorite digital effect.

John: No van, no van there.

Dean: All painted.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: ‘I’ll miss you.’ No and that was- but of course, again, you were blowing stuff up at a dock.

[Laughter]

John: Without any real permission or notifying the authorities. It’s really I think I'd be disappointed now if you called ahead.

Dean: That’s right.

John: And this is the reveal, and this was really tricky, trying to figure out the timeframe, how they could get around, how quickly they get around.

Dean: So we had to use the bomb as the time signature.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

John: Because the- when we got there originally, this was structured slightly differently, but the exits in the physical locations didn't match. But that’s why TV is great, you have a writer on set-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So you can actually have the director walk around with you and go, ‘This isn't gonna work.’ ‘Sure it will.’ ‘No it won't, fix it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: Well I think originally the thing went inside the-

John: Yes, yeah. And we couldn't do that, and you couldn't see the blow, and then you had to blow all three doors simultaneously if you did it, and it would've been madness. And Katie's look of rage there is magnificent.

Chris: That’s great, as the car goes by.

John: It really- ‘I am an angry, angry fed.’ And this is also one of the times when we don’t let Nate off the hook.

Dean: Right.

John: You know and Aldis is genuinely- yeah.

Chris: Yeah, he managed to transition from the fun of saying goodbye to the van, to actual rage.

Dean: Genuinely pissed off. And now another bit of John Rogers directing on this episode is the car getting away.

Chris: Nice!

John: The car- yeah, this is-

Dean: Right here, here we go and then look at this nice power slide.

Chris: Oh, good job.

John: I caught the reflection in the side of the car that was suction cup bounce and they actually hold on. You didn't give me the wet down one.

Dean: And this is my favorite reveal of a character ever.

John: I have no idea how you did this! Did you lower him by rope? How does he get in the shot?

[Laughter]

Chris: Well he comes in-

John: And we’re coming around, this is all a one-er and… he… is… there.

[Laughter]

John: He just- it is one of those things where, much like-

Chris: How would he fit inside?

Dean: [Mimicking Mark Sheppard] There's no one else that can make an entrance-

John: Quite like Mark Sheppard.

Dean: -like Mark Sheppard.

[Laughter]

John: And by the way, we decided to make him- because we were cooking up a threat, and- we’ll actually continue talking about this in the next episode...

Chris: In the next episode.

Dean: Please stay tuned for the second part of this.

Chris: Stay tuned.

Dean: But this was a lot of fun, and thank you for listening to the first half. Stay tuned for part two.

#Leverage #Leverage TNT #Leverage Audio Commentary Transcripts #Audio Commentary #Transcripts #Parker #Alec Hardison #Elliot Spencer #Nate Ford #Sophie Deveraux #Season 2 #Episode 14 #Season 2 Episode 14 #The Three Strikes Job

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