#nonsense being she’s being so wishy washy back and forth on if she wants it or not and i’m getting a teeeeeny bit annoyed lol

[ilostyou]

about to get into the nitty gritties with my best friend over the eras ticket nonsense wish me luck 😵‍💫

[itsclydebitches]

Whats your favorite power system in all of fiction? The simplicity of dbz's? Something more complex like nen? Something not from anime at all?

I generally steer towards hard magic/power systems: something with defined rules that allow for both limitations and VERY awesome victories if you can figure out how to twist the rules in your favor. That’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. That (parody-esque, highly analytical world of HP) takes those rules to their logical endpoints. If transfiguration has the hard, established rule of “No transfiguration will last forever” then you get to see how different characters grapple with that rule. Some will see it as a limitation - “Dammit. That means we can’t use transfiguration to solve world hunger” - and others an opportunity - “What if I turned something deadly into an apple, had an enemy eat it, and then waited until the transfiguration wore off?” You also open up the possibility that a Super Special Protagonist will someday break that rule in a moment of pure awesomeness. One of my favorite moments in that series is when Harry rattles off all the ways he can turn a normal classroom deadly and though it’s horrifying (it’s supposed to be), he’s also right. Characters who exist in worlds with established rules and who bother to learn those rules are poised to exploit them in wonderfully satisfying ways. 

This is partly why RWBY’s system doesn’t appeal to me. It’s largely dependent on what the writers want at any given moment, making the world feel continually shaky rather than a real, immersive thing that the audience can delve into. Weiss no longer uses her time ability... even though, as far as we know, she could. Ruby can suddenly slam through steel walls... even though we don’t understand how. Marrow doesn’t even attempt to use ‘Stay’ at the start of the fight... even though he, again, could. It’s those “How?” and “But they could have?” that interrupts the immersion. I think RWBY’s system is best described by Geico’s latest commercial: 

“Why don’t we just get into the running car??” and then they don’t because it’s much harder for the plot if they do, not because there’s a compelling, in-world reason for them to avoid it. Only RWBY’s system has the added complications of no one fully understanding how cars work (aura), or whether a character still has access to a car (abilities), if they possess enough gas to drive it (dust), and so on and so forth until you get an audience arguing over the supposed benefits/downsides of taking the car at all, if it exists, if it runs, if, if, ifs that no one is able to answer, rather than acknowledging that we should understand precisely how a car works and the show should have explained why the characters wouldn’t use it when it’s seemingly 100% available to them. 

It’s also why Witcher’s system works much better for me. There’s definitely wishy-washy elements to it, but on the whole it’s far more rule-grounded than RWBY’s is. Things like “Witchers can cast signs, but signs pale in comparison to the power a sorceress has” explain potential question such as, “Why do these characters call on dangerous magic users they don’t trust when they themselves can already do magic?” We’ve been told what the difference between these types of magic is and we understand one’s limitations. Witcher also takes the time to think through an OP character’s place in a rule-driven world: basically, give them rules as well. O’dimm is defeated not because Geralt randomly develops the ability to slay god-like creatures, or because O’dimm is made stupid and very conveniently just doesn’t use his own ability, he’s defeated because he too has rules attached to him. He will follow the rules that he creates. That allows him to remain staggeringly dangerous - he’ll always try to tip those rules in his favor - but rules, by default, are always capable of being bent in favor of the hero as well. So when O’dimm says, “If you can solve my riddle AND make it through my world AND find the object that serves as the answer... then yeah, I’ll leave.” So Geralt does. He follows the rules established, using his brain as well as his physical skills, and successfully tells O’dimm to get lost. Salem, in contrast, has no established rules and thus we get the endless conversations of, “WHY doesn’t she just destroy Atlas herself? WHY did she wait until the story started to actively seek out the relics? What’s stopping her?” If the story says “Nothing” yet Salem isn’t winning, that’s a problem. Rules not only keep the audience grounded but also present opportunities for great characterization: O’dimm is more compelling because he treats everything like a game that he’s capable of losing. A Salem with vulnerabilities or psychological limitations would, in turn, be more compelling too. 

So, to go back to your anime examples, anon, I don’t have one single story to point to, though I do prefer the more complicated systems. Just because they present far more opportunity for creativity while likewise allowing the audience to feel confident in their understanding of the world and the possibilities for how things might turn out (making a believable twist on the author’s part unbelievably EPIC). Even DBZ follows broad rules like “Saiyans get stronger when they lose” and “Intense emotion is capable of providing a powerup.” Indeed, we even see some villains making use of this rule: I want a stronger opponent, you need motivation, so I’ll kill someone you love to give you that boost. It’s simple, but it (mostly) hangs together. 

In contrast, power/magic systems that refuse to establish rules so that the authors are never forced to come up with creative solutions, or that keep/chuck rules based on what’s convenient, just end up being frustrating. To my mind that sort of ambiguity works best in horror: How the fuck does Night Vale work? Good question. Don’t right know. It’s that sense of “This world makes no sense” that adds to our discomfort, discomfort the genre actively wants to create. However, making your fantasy/action series nonsensical when you want viewers invested in the fights is a mistake. Your audience can’t get behind either the potential outcome or what the author eventually decides to write if there isn’t a common foundation to work from. You’re less likely to enjoy, say, a card game if you’re playing blind, or your opponent changes rules whenever they please. I need to understand what’s possible and be able to trust that we’re both using the same rulebook in order to get invested.  

[christianslaterreview]

Mobsters (1991) dir. Michael Karbelnikoff

Synopsis:

Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano, portrayed by Christian Slater, is a young, working class Italian whose family is being terrorized by the Mafia as his father owes money to one of two main bosses, Don Faranzano (Michael Gambon). Luciano teams up with three of his boyhood friends to overthrow Don Faranzano and the other boss, Don Masseira. The film follows the boys as they quickly rise to top and become embroiled in Mafia politics, love stories, and personal conflicts that threaten to ruin lifelong friendships.

Review:

This is going to be a hard review for me to write because I really don't care about this movie. Like, at all (I mean look at my shitty synopsis lmao). Usually I'm so ardent about my reviews because I so desperately want the film in question to be good. Typically, Christian Slater's films have just enough about them that's good that elements of them are not only salvagable, but sincerely enjoyable. They're also usually just bad enough to remain interesting. Bad enough to make me care.

Mobsters, however, was so formulaic and devoid of any actual substance that the end product feels like a parody. It was so clearly hitching it's wagon to the popularity of other films in the same genre such as Bugsy and Good Fellas, but in their hurry to piece together some semblence of a film before the trend fizzled, they forgot that a movie needs elements beyond snappy one liners, empty banter, period costumes, and pretty faces with famous names. The audience is rushed through most of the narrative with focus only given to a handful of major plot points - but this is of course only when we're torn away from the laughably long and gregarious sex scenes which are peppered throughout the entire film to really help move things along - so all the opportunities to truly get to know the characters, their drives, their vulnerabilities, etc. in compelling B-plots or excellent pacing of the A-plot are nowhere to be found. The result is a film that feels like it was developed purely for flashy, promotional material with the story being tossed inside this hollow, pandering concept as an afterthought.

One of my main issues with most films is the pacing. I expect every film to have Tarentino level pacing where the story is slowly teased out in a seemingly chaotic but methodical progression. Tarentino is the fucking master of knowing just how long to let a certain plot point sit on the back burner before bringing it back full force right before you forget it ever happened. He knows just how long to keep the camera focused on one character's face, how long the back and forth dialogue needs to continue before bursting into action, how long to keep the audience waiting before a reveal (if the reveal ever happens). And before I get totally lost on this tangent and end up becoming a Tarentino stan blog, my point is that Mobsters fails in every single one of these devices.

Instead of feeling like 2hrs passed by so quickly because I was just that engaged, the run time of this film felt unbelievably long because literally nothing of real interest happened until about an hour into the movie. Right off the bat, we're thrown into the drama as Luciano's Mother and Father are assaulted and threatened by one of the main bosses, Faranzano. But rather than feeling like we're being poignantly acclimated to the brutal setting of this story, it just feels sudden and awkward, like a cheap, theatrical bid for emotion and drama. Granted, this might not be the screenplay's fault per se. None of the actors did a particularly solid job throughout this film, which did end up weakening whatever elements of Mobsters could have been salvagable.

After this point, the movie just rushes through introductions in a series of montages with a voiceover by Slater in his ... "accent". The movie barely has time to get on it's legs before we've already reached the next milestone in the boys' story as they're making a name for themselves as bootleggers. However, instead of actually demonstrating the struggle, the danger, the politcs of rising to the top, we just get another expositional montage with voiceovers. Have fun trying to remember what overlapping whispers are important plot points and which ones are just a little flavoring to show the glamorous gangster lifestyle the boys are entering into.

The stitled, awkward pacing of this film can actually be broken down to a pattern if you were paying close enough attention: major plot point, expositional montage mentioning specific Thing, the Thing happens in literally the next scene, 12 minute long sex scene, and repeat for 2 hours. It doesn't make for a very compelling narrative at all.

Additionally, the characters themselves were so one dimensional and poorly acted (sorry Christian :/ ) that not even they could save the movie. The accents were cheesy as hell, but even worse than those was the dialogue which consisted of banter and one liners that wanted so badly to be insidious and clever, but only ended up sounding like borderline nonsensical gangster jargon that was regurgitated by memory from someone who had seen Good Fellas once. And when the dialogue wasn't an unsuccesful mimicry of shrewd banter, it was equally meaningless, psuedo-artfilm dialogue. But instead of using dialogue as a device to allude to greater themes and deepen both the emotional and philosophical landscape of the film, everyone's dialogue was just a series of free floating, psuedo-intellectual lines that when strung together, didn't actually make a conversation or even develop the characters themselves.

Which is yet another problem with Mobsters. Although the characters are based upon real life historical figures, the characters themselves are barely developed on screen. Everyone's personalities are almost indistinguishable from one another because every character is so one dimensional. Despite the bounteous material the writers had to work with such as Lucky Luciano's righteous anger at the injustice his family and others have faced, Lansky's battle against the anti-semitism he faces, or the political landscape of the time controlled by the Mafia, all the characters are still underdeveloped caricatures.

The main focus of the film could have been the conflict that exists between Luciano's desire to see an end to the vicious reign of the Mafia while also seeking to be the Ringleader himself. It could have been a slow burn film focusing on the strategy and politics of attempting to dethrone the cities two biggest mob bosses. It could have been about how Luciano's and Lansky's friendship developed and devolved throughout their enterprise. It could have focused on literally any number of things to help anchor the story in a main conflict. But instead, the focus of the film flits from politics to personal drama to love scenes with only the cast of characters to connect the threads. None of those plot points were artful B-plots that helped flesh out the story and the characters; they were pitiful, unskilled attempts at creating a world to immerse the audience in without having any knowledge about how to effictively do that. As a writer, you can't give equal attention to all the different threads throughout a story otherwise the audience doesn't know what the main point is - that's why they're called B-plots.

Moreover, Mobsters used yelling really loudly and dramatically as a superficial plot device over and over again and each time it did nothing but made me want to hit mute for a moment or two. Syd Field's put it best when she said "All drama is conflict. Without conflict, there is no action. Without action, there is no character." However, what Karbelnikoff doesn't understand is that conflict is not just people displaying extreme emotion; there needs to be substance behind what is creating this conflict and that the audience needs a chance to become invested in the storylines and motivations the conflict is contigent upon. People aren't moved just by emotion itself; people are moved when they can empathize with a character's struggle. But we can't do that unless the director takes the time to walk us through the world they've created so the stakes actually seem real.

This film is chock full of scenes where characters that don't seem to have a reason to fight are fighting. I'm sure it's supposed to demonstrate what a rough business being a mobster is and how the pressure of ambition and the ever present threat it might overtake you, but instead it just makes the characters seem volatile and juvenile to the point that I don't even want to sympathize with any of them.

Lastly, this wasn't even a beautiful movie. Just like a Marvel movie, every shot was obvious, straightforward, and boring. In a movie that is all about the excess and glamour and violent opulence, you'd think the cinematography itself would reflect that. Instead, I wasn't surprised or moved by a single shot throughout the whole film. The overtop villains had such potential for unsettling, aggrandizing angles but every scene felt about as creative as watching talking heads.

And my very last bone to pick with this film is the ENDING. It felt like they decided to toss in a random moral to the story solely for the purpose of offering some kind of closure. I mean, to be fair, there's no other way they could have wrapped it up since the entire film is just a series of loose threads. But it was just the perfect way to punctuate the end of this wishy-washy movie (about MOBSTERS) with a vague cliche sentiment of "can't we all just get along?"

To me, Lucky Luciano is perhaps an anti-hero. I empathize with his desire to seek retribution and justice and instigate egalitarian politics, however, he doesn't seek to eradicate the institution of the Mafia, he just wants to run it *differently*. This could have made Luciano a supremely compelling character, but the movie never really frames him as a good guy or a bad guy. He is just kind of matter-of-factly presented to the audience with no real commentary. So by the end of the film, the fact that he's painted as this feel good hero within the last few minutes felt contrived and meaningless.

If Luciano's aim was to be the biggest mob boss around while also instituting a more egalitarian regime, why wasn't that the main focus of the film? It's definitely brought up, but it isn't given the focus it should have. We just knew that he wanted to overthrow the other bosses, but didn't delve into what his visions for the Mafia were or how much his desire for success was consuming him.

So the ending sentiment of the movie being "and then the bad guys were dead and a really Nice Guy became head of the Mafia and everyone was treated a lot nicer :)" felt juvenile and cheesy.

Mobsters gets a total of 1 Slaters out 10 Slaters. I'm not prepared to give it a zero, but I have no justification for that because, news flash, my rating system is wholly subjective and based on what I feel inside my heart. I will not be accepting criticism on this point. Thank you for understanding.

[mysticdragon3md3]

Welcome to the Ballroom ep1

In which I go from really liking the show, to getting very confused by character inconsistency for the sake of the genre’s typical story progression/pace. o~o?

I like this show!  ^o^  The protagonist is super relatable and adorable!  Sengoku-san had me laughing soon into the episode!  ("Excuse to get close to girls"?  C'mon man.  LOL)  And I'm intrigued by Shizuku's situation.  If she's so dedicated to dance that she's protective of it vs people who don't take it seriously, but the teachers think she hasn't decided on any life path yet, then why is she keeping her passion for dancing a secret?  Are her parents ashamed of her dancing?  How is she going to the dance studio so often without them knowing?  Do her parents actually permit her to dance, but expect to her grow out of it as a career?  o.o?????  

And is it just me, or do Fujita and Shizuku remind anyone else of Haikyuu's Hinata and Shimizu?  They've all got such similar character designs!  Even Shizuku's name is smilar to Haikyuu's Shimizu Kiyoko!  ^o^  Well, I who didn't see that coming?  The manga industry does ride trends.  When Bleach became popular Otomen and lots of other series came out with smiliarly designed characters.  Suddenly, all the female mentor characters were no nonsense bad asses with short, dark hair, just like Rukia Kuchiki.  And the entire Shonen genre had become so trendy through Bleach, Naruto, and Death Note, that even Shojo manga-ka were being told by their editors to make a "Shonen series".  Even Watase Yuu, whose series are "all girly all the time" suddenly had a male protagonist series.  That was crazy.  (Especially since the male protagonists still had all the stereotypically "girly" problems.)  And most of all, Soul Eater homaged all 3, Bleach, Naruto, and Death Note.  The manga/anime/Japanese videogame industries ride trends.  I seriously doubt Persona 5 would have had a volleyball character, if Haikyuu hadn't made the sport so popular.  And that's not to mention all the articles I've read about the sudden interest in practicing swordplay, among women in Japan, after Touken Ranbu became popular.  And let's not forget the rekijo (female history geeks) were mostly spurred by manga/anime set in the Sengoku Era.  Anyway, it might be fun to imagine a Hinata type of character in this predictably romantic character set-up.  

There's something weird about this direction in the 2nd half of the episode.  I had really liked it so far.  But that imagery of Fujita being impressed by the dance competition DVD was really jarring.  Now that I think about it, I don't think there was any other imagery that surreal, so far yet in the episode.  I know it's meant to really sell the impact of pro dancing on Fujita, but it was mostly just odd.  The episode so far, hadn't eased me into that much surrealism.  So far, the episode had portrayed all the emotions with very realistic, yet very effective use of minutia, detail, and subtlety.  But that revelation moment's jarring oddness was too distracting to take seriously.  

And now this scene with Fujita saying he wants to sign up for dance lessons, even though he's _thinking_ with absolute certainty, "I can't do this"?  The juxtaposition is too odd.  I feel like the camera work is changing to contrast the Fujita asking for lessons and the Fujita rattling off a list of very realistic reasons why I CAN'T take lessons, to make them seem like 2 different people...But when has this character showed that dichotomy so far during his character set-up?  There was that one moment when he glared at the bullies, but it was very small and very quickly covered up by his submissive personality.  This is just too much contrast at once!  Another jarring contradiction.  

I don't want to be jarred out of this series though.  Everything from the character design to the animation, says that this series will carry a tone of subtlety, a recognition of the significance of the little things...Everything I love about the "slice of life" genre.  But unless that genre sets up very early and very often that it can switch back and forth between squishy chibis and serious scenes, it's all too much to take during the last third of the introductory episode.  I mean, look at all the lines defining each character's eyes and facial expressions!  The sakuga for every pointed toe on the dance floor!  This is the kind of thing that usually gets left in the manga, but doesn't get translated into an anime adaptation.  *o*  Everything about the line work, the lighting, the music (or lack of), the solidly drawn characters with such realistic volume and weight, the set-ups of the scenes are all just so realistic, that when this show does surreal imagery or unbelievable character actions...it just feels unrelated to everything that's been set up so far.  I'm really confused.  ~_~  

I don't know...this is really weird.  I know that the "reluctant teacher" is a time-honored trope since the story of the Daruma's disciple...But is it really fitting to set up this adversity to the protagonist's spirit, when the episode hasn't satisfactorily set-up a determined will for the protagonist?  I don't feel invested in Fujita persisting in The Box, or even dancing in general.  Usually in sports anime, the protagonist's introduction at least establishes his determination, so that during the training, we're cheering for him.  But even Fujita doesn't know what he really wants.  How can we?  Sure, there's been those sequences of him impressed by dance, but there have been a lot MORE scenes of him feeling wishy-washy and not even *that* determined to find something to be passionate about.  The amount of screentime spent on portraying something matters; it determines the emotional impact.  He was doing more sulking than exploring options.  He followed Shizuku to the dance studio _by accident_.  He was just wandering, directionless, and only slightly curious about her.  In fact, the most passionate I've seen Fujita during his initial introduction, was when he saw Shizuku also hadn't decided on her career form in the teacher's office.  He just liked that he had a comrade in his directionless indecision.  I feel like Fujita is motivated more by that fear of being alone at the bottom, more than a fascination with dance---even after that surreal impressed sequence.  

But I understand.  The entire premise of this series is that the protagonist needs to find something to be passionate about.  That dictates that he start out as a character who is listless and directionless.  But did the episode have to spend so much time establishing that listlessness, that it's hard to believe he's suddenly passionate about something, when the episode came to that?  If this were a more typical sports anime about "a protagonist who gets into ballroom dancing because he wants to find *something* to be passionate about", I feel like the protagonist would more typically have been the enthusiastic type, running around, trying anything and everything, for a place to belong.  His lack of passion wouldn't have been a problem, but finding an outlet for that passion would have been the conflict to resolve.  But I see that this series was trying to be different.  By not giving Fujita an inherent drive for anything, despite not knowing what to direct that determination towards, his character arc becomes more focused on finding passion, rather than finding an expression for passion.  Still, maybe that sports manga cliche, became a cliche, because it's just so effective.  ^^;  

I mean, the story *needed* Fujita to start his dancing lessons, so it essentially turned him into someone else, during that scene where he asked to join the dance studio. Someone who would definitely set him on the path into dance. Shouldn't the series have drawn that out longer, so it would have been more believable for him to start dancing?  But, no.  You can just see where the first chapter of the manga was about to end, and they needed to get the plot rolling, ending on that cliffhanger of him being accepting into classes, so readers would look forward to him tackling challenges.  That's just how the weekly manga is structured.  Every week, new first chapters of new manga series are all competing to get a spot in the next month's issue, to continue on as a series.  

Maybe the set-up of this series would have been better served emphasizing portrayals of the joy Fujita should feel at finding any passion or direction in life.  There should have been a series of little struggles and tiny, mundane discoveries of finding a passion---Maybe even spending time defining multiple interpretations of what Passion is.  And you can't tell me that this series wouldn't know how to portray the minute, subtle, everyday things.  That's what it's been doing with every animation of its characters faces and even taking the time to shadow the unique curves of individual characters' facial features.  And this series's tone has been "slice of life" overall, THE genre for portraying the significance in every tiny moment.  If this series had established Fujita by a series of little moments of direction/passion which bring him great joy, then it would have built up to the moment when Dance impressed him.  

Right now I'm not sure why *THIS* character should garner my investment in *THIS* task.  I like this character, but I'm not so sure dancing should be his direction in life.  And yet the story is already moving along, assuming we're already invested.  Please don't do this to me, show.  I already like this character.  Yuri on Ice did the same thing to me, empathizing with the protagonist but losing me on the sport in question.  This can't happen AGAIN so soon.  ~.~;  At least Yuri on Ice kept me invested in the "character study" side of the story.  But who is this Fujita?  Is he the same Fujita that was introduced at the beginning of this episode?  Has the story given me adequate reason to believe in this drastic change in his personality or at least his actions?  I'm just really confused.  

I mean, normally I love these moments when the sports anime protagonist pushes through a wall through sheer determination, but this is Fujita we're talking about?  Where would that determination even come from?  I don't understand how he's such a different---completely different character all of a sudden.  Sure, you can say because he's so impressed by dancing and he's finally found something he wants to be passionate about.  But a jarring, surreal sequence that felt like someone had changed the channel to another series, then a scene where Fujita's actions were COMPLETELY OPPOSITE from what he was thinking AND what he had been narrating all the way up to that point, aren't enough to sell me.  It wasn't effective.  Not emotionally, not logically.  It was someone else.  Who is this???  

I mean the only way this series might get by now, is if Fujita turns out to be some sort of prodigy, like Yui from K-on.  Someone who can keep progressing and performing the thematic activity of the series, even without any logical resolve and determination.  The problem is that Fujita is male.  And that makes him a "Shonen genre" protagonist.  They always have to have that "manly" determination and resolve.  ...But I just don't buy why he's having resolve about dancing.  I just don't buy it yet.  I mean, I love watching it, I love watching these type of "determination pushing through adversity" scenes, that's why I love the Shonen genre.  But there's some real dissonance going on there.  @_@???  

But damn, the direction of this series, when it comes to individual movements is great!  ^o^  

I mean, I love these training cliches, sports anime cliches, and plucky shonen protagonist cliches---I love these themes of determination---but...Does it really fit?  I mean, I paused the episode to get some tea, and when I came back, the training scene with The Box reads well, in and of itself.  But is increasing the effectiveness of a scene by divorcing it from everything else that's been established since the beginning of the episode, of this series, really considered "effective" (storytelling)?  Even Sengoku-san has made a sudden change from altruistic, happy-go-lucky, admirable "manly" guy to abrasive, "reluctant mentor".  This series has some serious character-consistency issues.  o~o  

Maybe this story assumes too much.  It assumes that the viewer is from a culture where there is constant pressure from a young age, to already know your path in life.  Even by junior high, Fujita's grade level, having a completely blank career form is already very late and very concerning.  As discussed in a Mother's Basement video essay about My Hero Academia (https://youtu.be/LmRfmJqE0kM), the pressure of choosing career early in life and the weight of indecision is a visceral, every day, concern in every Japanese youngster's life, from may age 11 to onwards and forever.   I'm sure most Japanese don't need a story to "prove" to them why they should care so much about this character's concern for direction in life.  With the Japanese audience's real life background, they're probably already impatient for him to find his passion and rooting for every second Fujita inches closer towards a passion.  But I'm American.  A story needs to sell those themes to me, needs to make me care, needs to be emotionally effective in establishing those assumptions, so I will be invested in the rest of the story, that his built on those assumptions.  

I'm sorry.  I really like Fujita, Welcome to the Ballroom is beautifully animated and art directed, and I want to look forward to continuing this series.  But I'm kind of indifferent.  *sigh*  

I'm probably still going to get Fujita's Nendoroid though.