#or is the narrative haunting him because he WILL end up throwing away his shot in the duel with burr?

[lovingherwasgay]

the "i am not throwing away my shot" "just you wait" foreshadowing in nonstop still goes SO HARD even a decade later. lin was insane for this. truly a mastermind

[prettyflyshyguy]

WE'RE FINALLY HERE. WE'RE FINALLY AT S3E7 - FRESH BLOOD

And you KNOW ya girl has a lot more to say about this one so let's just get this party started shall we.

And now that I have CONTEXT I have THOUGHTS

The tragedy of this character is awful. But I'm appreciative for what it allows as a narrative device (as much as it is a shame that this random woman is negated to being that, and only that; a device) - after they've SEEN vampires be good and live a peaceful life. It's harsh that they just cull her off and decide that its a decision they are allowed to make.

This will surely not come back to haunt them when Dean gets infected in three seasons time.

I am a big sucker for anytime this show has them Decide something for others, only to be hit with "Oh no now its happening to us" and the immense emotional turmoil that causes.

Going to lean into this a lot more in the fic I think.

Bella hon I love you, but seeing Dean give a genuine threat because the man's got one thing to lose now and he's not letting anything take it away while he's still alive; marvelous.

Throw one too many low blow shots about him being no better than you and maybe just maybe he starts to act like it.

BLOOD JAR BLOOD JAR BLOOD JAR

Now I did skip to watch this episode cause I can't help myself, I like vampires too much and spn hits the spot. Having said that re-watching this with context on GORDON has made it a lot more interesting.

Now I really. Like. Gordon. He's a great antagonist. His voice, his mannerisms, the way he is so uncomfortably unsettlingly calm. Phenomenal. He has some really iconic lines and moments in this show and he's such a good foil to Dean.

Absolute epitome of "become the thing you despise" but deep end side of it. Like he's become so consumed by obsession and righteousness in his actions and his drive is just too strong.

I enjoyed that this ep looks at the primal survival instinct. And the duality of the Winchester's (mostly Sam) attitude towards Gordon being; man's gotta go, contrasted with the way Gordon talks to the Vampire. It's the gradual build up of detachment. Gordon is a monster. So are the Winchesters. None of them want to see that in themselves. The Vampire is too. They're all just coming at it from different angles. Each party has deep rooted trauma and pain, and each are dealing with it in a terrible way.

Sam's uncomfortable attitude shift of "It's Gordon or us" is harrowing. Dean being the more hesitant one is interesting. He's the first to chop off the head of a infected woman who's confused, upset, and pleading for help - but Gordon makes him uncomfortable (despite everything) and Sam's cold cut attitude doesn't help. I mean they've left him alive twice and each time he's only gotten more ruthless.

Dean cracks a joke about Sam not pushing back against killing him, but that feels far more like Dean fishing for Sam's conscience because he's unsure what the right thing to do is because Gordon isn't by definition an 'evil thing' in the lore books. Sam's no longer the grounding rock.

Oh if it were so easy.

You can really see they were dabbling with the transformation scenes in this and they just came in SWINGING when S6 rolled around.

the SPN vampire teeth are growing on me (HAR. HAR. HAR.) regrettably.

Ok so. This really begs the question. How much willpower does it take to resist. How much does that differ, per person? Is this Gordon just full SNAPPING upon being turned? Does he just immediately relent due to him already being on the brink? He has the most intense and unhinged attitude of all the hunter's that've been given primary screen time, so maybe its fair to say that part of him just completely caved in once he got hit with the overstimulation + hunger combo.

I think back to his introduction episode and how he talked to Dean about the hole inside yourself, like the pit or void you'll never fill or satisfy. How he used that to drive himself forward. Working solo, without a rock to anchor himself to (Dean has Sam) maybe Gordon just completely lost himself in this initial phase after turning.

This also echoes the S6 moment when Dean visits Lisa and also gets violent. Dean also loses control but ALMOST bites her. He still throws her and Ben around like they're ragdolls, which he clearly never intended to do.

Once again, great shots in this show. However I do wonder if its just my personal bias, or if there is a bit of an imbalance of woman corpse. Don't want to throw a stone from a glass house though. Just feels weird not mentioning it when I'm like "WOW SICK SHOT" and its. This picture.

Anyway. More to the point. "You don't understand. I was desperate. You ever felt desperate? I've lost everyone I ever loved. I'm staring down eternity alone."

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. It's so fucking human. What a shame, we're forced to see ourselves in something we deeply and truly want to believe isn't like us at all. Oh Dear. Reconcile THAT Dean you little shit.

This is so nicely echoed in S6 - the vampire is done, he's lost everything and he'd just rather have it end. The nihilism, the bottom of the pit. The end of the downward spiral.

Gordon's turn on Eternal Damnation and he wants to get off.

Once again I deeply enjoy the way the Hunters just drop everything so cold when something happens to someone. Including Sam and Dean in that, they struggle cause they're younger, less experienced, less jaded. The older hunters are fucking brutal. Gordon's partner, despite genuinely believing Sam has to die, just full send tells Gordon "No I can't let you take out Sam first. I need to kill you right now."

Despite everything, the common goal that they both wholeheartedly believed in, that they both gunned for so hard, thrown out the window when one is turned. Hung out to dry.

And how quickly they all turn on each other when this happens.

Anyway I think lore wise the vampires get stronger once turned, but I'm guessing drinking human blood enhances this further. Making notes for myself cause Dean's on a strictly vegetarian diet and this complicates matters for him of course.

But yeah, jesus, Gordon.

Anyway

Now THIS is something I gotta remember - Dean becomes a fucking menace when he's scared. Jokes get more intense, he has no filter, does not stop at nothing even despite the increasing protesting of the people around and closest to him and he full disconnects from loved ones.

"No. I'm a monster."

UGH. Compels me.

It's the resignation that's so fun I think. Like he just snaps, decided Yeah, this is it. Eats some people, then goes back to the original plan of Kill Sam. But its the way he leans into being the monster. Gordon was a mess before, but now its like he's truly just let go of a part of himself as he truly believes there's no alternative. Every vampire he's met and killed he saw as a monster and nothing more. Despite one, in front of him, exercising self control, he's still committed to viewing them as only monsters.

Once turned he can only accept the singular reality that he is a monster, and so, he does nothing to combat it. He embraces it.

Is it easier to kill him when he's a vampire? Or was it a further reminder that he was, and still is, a person?

Closing thoughts: good ep, easily one of my favorites. But you already knew that.

Love you Gordon you bloody legend.

[pepsi-maxwell]

not sure if you’re still taking prompts but the moments directly after max is betrayed by the firm when he’s alone with his thoughts?

i am absolutely still taking them! this ended up being equally about the firm and the pinnacle (and a touch of punk haunting the narrative as always) but i hope you still like it, anon!

under a cut for length

-

It’s a minor set back, that’s all. He doesn’t—doesn’t need them.

Doesn’t need anybody, he thinks, limping off, clutching his stomach. Especially doesn’t need people who don’t follow orders, who involve themselves in his business when he’s specifically told them not to—

Everything hurts.

He’s almost impressed at the immediacy with which they’d collectively turned on him, but the issue is that it’s him that they turned on, him they put the boots to, him they stripped of his shirt in the middle of the ring—

The dizzying vertigo of Ethan fucking Page of all people hoisting him up, throwing him down onto his back. Morrissey grabbing him by the hair, putting him through a table...

At least this time he’d been able to leave of his own volition, humiliating as it had been. Still not as bad as needing to be stretchered off with an oxygen mask strapped to his face.

Speaking of betrayal.

He makes it back to his locker room unscathed. Unassisted. It’s big, too big for one person, really, which only serves to rub in the fact that despite all his attempts to be otherwise, he is, once again, completely alone.

The one constant in his life. That no matter how hard he tries to keep people close to him, everybody always leaves. Everybody leaves and ends up better off than him, and it isn’t fucking fair. Wardlow, with his TNT title. FTR with all of their belts. The Firm, strong and united and ready to take on anyone, all because of him. His work, his efforts, and they’d just...

Thrown it all away. Had helped him get the chip, the title shot and hadn’t had the guts to see it through.

His stomach swoops unpleasantly at the reminder of who the title shot should have been against.

The spectre that haunts him. The one who’d left him first, who’d stuck the knife between his ribs. Who’d left a second time, twisting it, taking away any chance of catharsis. Leaving him adrift. Untethered, when he’d promised that Max would be tethered to him—

He braces himself against the wall. No blood, but he can feel the bruises forming already under his fingers.

He doesn’t need any of them. He doesn’t. And soon, it won’t even matter, because he has a new friend. A better friend, one who’ll help him get what he wants; the title he so rightfully deserves. He’ll show all of them.

Three weeks and counting.

[marmarparadoxa]

I always read opinions about hanji post time skip and ch 132 they say her decision to sacrifice herself was the decision of a suicidal person because of how inadequate she felt as a commander and unable to live up to erwin’s legacy or things like yams ruined Hanji’s character and was treated by him as unimportant character useless weak or gave up easily and was just there until armin grow up to be commander. As a hanji fan I feel so disappointed in hanji's treatment. What do you think?

Hi! I’m sorry to hear you feel like that as an Hange fan, and I’m aware that you’re not the only one who sees it that way. However, I felt very disoriented at first, when I started reading these opinions, because my experience about Hange’s character in reading the manga was very different from yours. Although I also have my complaints, I actually think that Hange had their time to shine in the last arcs, and moments and scenes and speeches for which I think I came to understand them better, and loved them and all the more felt proud of them, so I can’t say I feel disappointed by their treatment.

For one thing, I don’t think their decision to sacrifice themselves was the decision of a suicidal person. Hange never manifested any sort of suicidal ideation to begin with (as for instance, obviously Reiner did, and somewhat Armin - when he said, in reference to the serum bowl, that it wasn’t him, the one whom they should have revived), and overall, they never gave me the impression of someone willing to throw their life away. It’s true that they didn’t feel worthy of Erwin’s legacy, and blamed themselves for not having been able to show Eren alternative solutions. You can see, in certain moments, how much these thoughts made them doubt their value as commander. However, Hange was not the type of person who would let themselves be led astray by these thoughts, nor shy away from their responsibilities, to cry over themselves - and back to chapter 71, we can see what was their opinion of people who’d do that, in their reaction at Keith Shadis’ story.

Shadis shirked from his role as commander, because he wasn’t “special”, because he didn’t feel equal to his role. In learning that, Hange, for once, was not very sympathetic, but reacted very harshly, and labeled Shadis’ motivations as “childish reasons” and “inferiority complex”. And I think it was not only because they used to admire and have a crush for him once that they felt so outraged at that point, but mostly because of the kind of person Hange had always been. They were an incredibly strong-willed, resilient and self-denying person, who fiercely believed in the ideal they decided to dedicate their life to, and thus felt offended in learning about Shadis’ petty self-concern. And this is how Hange concluded their tirade against the poor Shadis that day: “Isn’t that what it means to cast away your own life and dedicate your heart to the greater good?”. And this leads to a further important point.

Being suicidal, or more or less actively seeking your own death for the sake of your own death, is a different thing from being prepared to altruistically give up on your own life, for the better good. And in view of the above, I’m convinced that Hange’s sacrifice falls under the second sort. In their very last moment, Hange was not thinking about their own misfortunes, but was still looking for the plan to take off, because they wanted to make sure that they could save their friends, and with them, the last chance for salvation for humanity.

So I didn’t like the briskness of the chapter, and I had a hard time suspending my disbelief at Floch having survived Gabi’s shot, and throughout the whole trip of the ship. That was not good-writing, and obviously Isayama wanted to kill off Hange, for whatever reason. But their readiness to take up their responsibilities, and sacrificing their life, was nonetheless consistent with the kind of person Hange has always been. When I think about their sacrifice, their speech to pastor Nick, on top of the walls, in chapter 34 always comes to my mind: “Do you know what exactly we in the Survey Corps have spilled our blood for? To take back the freedom the titans stole from us. For that cause...our lives were a small price to pay.” The Survey Corps required its members to devote their lives, their flesh, their hearts to its cause, and Hange was aware of that.

And when it comes down to it, what exactly could have Hange done to avoid their sacrifice? They couldn’t send any precious titan shifters (to Reiner’s chagrin) and of course they wouldn’t have sent any of the remaining kids (Mikasa, Jean or Connie), to go sacrifice themselves, instead of taking responsibility for their decisions. Levi, at that time, could barely stand up straight. So it had to be them.

I think that Hange was even more courageous, and their sacrifice was all the more admirable (and more painful for me) if you consider that Hange, though willing to take their responsibilities, and committed to their purpose, didn’t actually want to die. Their leaving the kids was so swift, rushed, and they didn’t show how scared they were. But it became manifest when they were asking Levi to let them go, and when he put his fist above their heart, and told them to dedicate their heart, their lips curved downward, and then they laughed it off, and flew away. They downplayed their feelings and rushed, so to be able to leave Levi and the kids - the people they loved - behind. Death, for them, didn’t come as a release from sufference or a crushing burden, but they accepted and went toward it nonetheless.

Then, if we want to address Hange’s character general treatment post time-skip, I think it’d be better to first briefly observe what was Isayama’s general treatment of all Paradis characters, post time-skip. My general impression is that, having come into play all those new different characters from Marley, which asked for narrative space and development, and the plot which had to keep going on, somehow there wasn’t space and time to a proper treatment of the old cast, so that its members, more or less, became rather static and passive.

However, I didn’t perceive Hange’s character as being “unimportant, useless, weak, or giving up easily, who was just there until Armin grew up to be commander”, as you said. In those four years, Hange had a most important role - they were the one who directed their first encounters with Marleyans ships, and talked to their members, and initiated their alliance. Among all Paradis’ political figures, together with Pixis Hange was the one who most took part in negotiations and diplomacy, and worked hard to give Paradis a future. They were shown happily getting excited over Marleyans’ inventions, overcoming  Marleyans’ hostilities. And then there’s that beautiful scene, when they restored hope for the kids, proposing the trip to Marley, and then expressing the Survey Corps’ ideal.  Later on, when Eren betrayed them in Liberio, when in the dungeon he threatened them, and then when the Jeagerists organized and Floch sequestered them, of course Hange felt let down, disheartened, and powerless, and doubted their value. However, given the circumstances, I wonder how these reactions would spoil Hange’s character, where in fact they are most understandable, and human. It made me sad to see Hange suffer that way (the scene where they were shooting at those SC soldiers and crying, and then seeing how Sannes’ words were still haunting them was painful to see), but it was also interesting to see more of their vulnerable side. And so, it was even more remarkable to see what they were able to do, despite the seemingly hopeless conditions, after Eren initiated the Rumbling - Hange didn’t give up easily at all. It was them who gathered the Alliance. They spoke with Magath, and Pieck, and thus persuaded previous enemies to join forces. Then they went and found Mikasa and Jean, and asked them to help them. And, in the morally wavering atmosphere after the start of the Rumbling, the scene of “I’m not accepting genocide!! You’re not getting me to agree with any reason to support this!!”, and their following speech was so powerful, meaningful, and important.

In conclusion, Hange kept on being Hange till the end, I think - they were still the playful, optimist crazy titan scientist (I mean, they asked Pieck’s Cart titan if she ever brushed her teeth in her titan form XD), and, in the bleakest moment, they didn’t lose hope (“It might not work out today...but maybe someday”), they were still keeping on looking to the future.

And I want to add one more thing, in regards to the “afterlife” scene. I imagine that a lot of people (myself included) felt let down when Isayama stated that it was only a “revolving lantern”. But now I think that it doesn’t really matter whether that's just something Hange’s mind created, or an actual afterlife plane. It was an unexpected act of kindness from Isayama, which completed Hange’s arc in a somehow uplifting note. Hange got reunited with their friends, and saw the plane, flying above them (so they knew their sacrifice was not in vain). And then Erwin told them “You did well”. That’s the message Isayama wanted to give us about Hange, and, if nothing else, I feel grateful for that.

[dwellordream]

“If any character in English popular culture stands for the sheep, it is Griselda. Her chief detractor is, not surprisingly, the shrew. In Robert Snawsel's A Looking Glass for Married Folks, Eulalie preaches the Griselda gospel to Xanthippe and Margery, urging them to bear their husbands' blows and drunkenness with meek loving kindness. This is too much for Margery: "Are you a woman, and make them such dish-clouts and slaves to their husbands? Came you of a woman, that you should give them no prerogative, but make them altogether underlings?" Margery's scornful reference to slavery goes to the dark heart of the Griselda myth. Folklorists have argued about the ancestry of the famous tale for more than a century. 

William Edwin Bettridge and Francis Lee Utley have made a strong case that Griselda owes her features to a folktale from medieval Smyrna called "the Patience of the Princess." A prince buys a poor girl from her father and lays a wager with her that she will not be able to submit to all his demands with utter composure. The prince shuts her in a tower alone and tests her for twenty years, repeatedly impregnating her and then taking away her newborn infants, telling her that he is going to kill them. She builds a mother doll out of clay to talk to and cry to but never loses her patience, and in this way she wins the bet. 

The tale, which matches the European narrative more closely than any other yet found, throws into stark relief the specter of female sexual slavery that haunts Griselda's story. The most striking variance between them is that the girl from Smyrna is sold into involuntary servitude by her father, whereas Griselda has a choice and agrees to voluntary and total obedience. Passing into European culture, the story came to Boccaccio. In reworking it for the Decameron he reclothed it in local garb, fashioning his novella partly in terms of Italian wedding and dowry customs that were sharply weighted against brides and wives. Boccaccio thought Griselda's story significant enough to give it pride of place as the last tale on the book's final day of storytelling. 

Petrarch read the novella and converted it to an exemplum in Latin for male scholars. Griselda entered English culture through Chaucer's "Clerk's Tale," which is largely based on Petrarch's version. Plays, ballads, and pamphlets on Griselda issued forth on the continent and in England throughout the early modern period, with a cluster of publications and performances in the mid- to late sixteenth century. Arguably the most radical change between versions occurred when Petrarch reworked Boccaccio. The Decameron's final tale is told by the satirist Dioneo, a crucial choice by Boccaccio. Refusing to let the happy ending stay happy, Dioneo spells out the political import of the story and caps it off with a horn joke against the marquis: 

Everyone was very happy with the way everything had turned out ....Gualtieri was judged to be the wisest of men (although the tests to which he had subjected his wife were regarded as harsh and intolerable), and Griselda the wisest of them all ....What more can be said here, except that godlike spirits do sometimes rain down from heaven into poor homes, just as those more suited to governing pigs than to ruling over men make their appearances in royal palaces? 

Who besides Griselda could have endured the severe and unheard-of trials that Gualtieri imposed upon her and remained with a not only tearless but happy face? It might have served Gualtieri right if he had run into the kind of woman who, once driven out of her home in nothing but a shift, would have allowed another man to shake her fur to the point of getting herself a nice-looking dress out of the affair. 

Scholars often downplay Dioneo's bitter words about pig-tending and his final putdown of Gualtieri, attributing it to his cynicism; but their labors to match the tale's disturbing sadism with an uplifting exemplary meaning are less than persuasive. The passage is much more than a glib throwaway, as Edward Fechter points out: "the climax angrily repudiates theological allegory and exemplum." Certainly, it seems fitting that the last lines of the last tale in the Decameron should recapitulate the Boccaccian theme of cuckoldry as female revenge. Dioneo's parting shot about "the shaking of the fur" is also an invitation to his listeners and the book's readers to come up with better interpretations than do the silly sheeplike courtiers of the tale, who judge "Walter wise and Griselda the wisest of all." 

Furthermore, it is a jest that asks for scornful laughter, especially from listeners who have grutched throughout the tale at Walter's arrogance, egotism, and sadism. Petrarch told Boccaccio that the story so fascinated him that he decided to spread the tale to scholars abroad. So "snatching up my pen, I attacked this story of yours." The angle of Petrarch's attack on the novella (which he termed "a little too free at times") becomes manifest at the cuckoldry-free conclusion of "A Fable of Wifely Obedience and Devotion," in which he erases Boccaccio's satire and his bawdy call for female revenge: 

This story it has seemed good to me to weave anew, in another tongue, not so much that it might stir the matrons of our times to imitate the patience of this wife-who seems to me scarcely imitable-as that it might stir all those who read it to imitate the woman's steadfastness, at least; so that they may have the resolution to perform for God what this woman performed for her husband ...Therefore I would assuredly enter on the list of steadfast men the name of anyone who endured for his God, without a murmur, what this obscure peasant woman endured for her mortal husband.

Petrarch's straight-faced version has none of Dioneo's political satire or irony. He is writing in Latin to male scholars, not in vernacular Italian to women and men, as Boccaccio had done. Nonetheless, it is Petrarch that Chaucer credits by name in the vernacular, mixed-audience "Clerk's Tale," although he departs from Petrarch in crucial ways. The Clerk does follow his source in insisting that his moral applies not to wives but to all humankind: This storie is seyd, nat for that wyves sholde Folwen Grisilde as in humilytee, For it were inportable, though they wolde; But for every wight, in his degree, Should be constant in adversitee As was Grisilde .... (I 142-47)

Chaucer actually intensifies Petrarch's warning that wives should not try to imitate Griselda, calling her example "inportable," or unbearable. (The Merchant, whose turn comes next, blatantly ignores this caveat, complaining "Ther is a long and large difference I Bitwix Grisildis grete pacience I And my wyf the passyng crueltee.") Still, scholarly attempts to align Chaucer's Walter with God do not work because Walter is described as "tempting" his wife, a word almost always associated with sin and vice. In another departure from Petrarch, Chaucer's Clerk breaks in several times to condemn the marquis. After Walter first decides to try his wife, the Clerk interjects hotly what neded it Hir for to tempte, and alwey moore and moore, Thogh som men preyse it for a subtill wit? But as for me, I seye that yvele it sit T'assaye a wyf whan that it is no nede, And putten hire in angwysshe and in drede. (45?-62) 

Chaucer's version subtly calls Grisildis's ovine quality into question. The lamb of God is Christ, of course, and Grisildis' meekness when her daughter is taken away resembles his suffering: "Grisildis moot al suffre and al consente, I And as a lambe she sitteth meke and stille" But "moot" she? Within English popular culture, sheep and lambs do sometimes stand for the positive values of resignation and endurance-for example, in emblems on patience. But there is no doubt that sheep generally connote passivity, cowardice, and stupidity. In terms of sheer frequency, the negative secular connotation overwhelms the positive religious one.

 A related complicating effect is the criticism leveled at "the unsad" (that is, fickle and sheeplike) people of the realm, who at first deplore Walter's acts but change their minds when they see the pretty new queen (actually his daughter), leading "sadde folk" to exclaim: "0 stormy people! unsad and evere untrewe!" As the Clerk finishes his tale, he shows that he is fully aware that not all his listeners will appreciate Griselda's virtues. With teasing wit he acknowledges the Wife of Bath, who has been called the tale's motivating force and dialogic counterpart. Just before the comic envoy he promises "for the Wyves love of Bathe" to gladden her "and al hire secte" with a song urging them to ignore Grisildis and revel in shrewdam (rr69-74). 

By shifting the Clerk's role from that of the preacher of a pious exemplum to a merry jester-singer, Chaucer undercuts his clerkly authority and blurs the moral legibility of his tale, already obscured by Griselda's lack of moral agency and her husband's viciousness. Nonetheless, Griselda quickly proved alluring to husbands, and she retained that allure despite proving highly problematic as a pattern for wives. Like the new husband in the jest about the pottage, men who wanted very much to promote Griselda as a model found her too hot to handle. 

In the training manual he prepared for his young wife in the 1390s, the Menagier de Paris offers a confused and troubled account of why he wants her to learn about Griselda. He rushes to assure his wife that he'll never torment her "beyond reason" as the "foolish, arrogant" Walter does Griselda, nor does he expect such obedience: I have set down this story here only in order to instruct you, not to apply it directly to you, and not because I wish such obedience from you. I am in no way worthy of it. I am not a marquis, nor have I taken in you a shepherdess as my wife. Nor am I so foolish, arrogant, or immature in judgment as not to know that I may not properly assault or assay you thus, nor in any such fashion. 

God keep me from testing you in this way or any other, under color of lies or dissimulations …I apologize if this story deals with too great cruelty-cruelty, in my view, beyond reason. Do not credit it as having really happened; but the story has it so, and I ought not to change it nor invent another, since someone wiser than I composed it and set it down. Because other people have seen it, I want you to see it too, so that you may be able to talk about everything just as they do.

What he really wants, it seems, is for his wife to be au courant. Griselda had "much currency off the page as a talking point in the late fourteenth century" and was "a subject about which wives might be expected to have an opinion." Codified as a way to get women talking (instead of shutting them up), the narrative about testing is itself a means of testing a woman's opinions and conduct. Is Griselda sick or stoic? Enslaved or free? Is hers a saint's tale, with Walter an abstract tool in the central mystery of her endurance, or is it as much a story about Walter and his court? Is he a cruel tyrant or a stern but loving husband with every right to test his wife? Is Walter God and Griselda a female Christ or Abraham or Job? All these positions have been argued during the six centuries of the debate.

Some recent readers still find Griselda admirable and even question whether she should be regarded as a passive victim. Harriet Hawkins has argued that Chaucer's tale should be read as a criticism of unquestioning obedience to authority, even divine authority, while Lars Engle hears "an implicit voice of sane moral protest" in Grisildis's mild objections to her husband. Such strained attempts at recuperation show that Griselda disturbs more than she edifies, raising but failing to answer questions about the limits of obedience in the face of tyranny and the conflict between Christian duty and wifely subjection.”

- Pamela Allen Brown, “Griselda the Fool.” in Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England

[joeycupcakerichter]

A letter he'll never read.

This is just going to be a incoherent mess of thoughts that I need to get out of my skull because otherwise they're going to drown me. so I'm gonna throw it under a read more and post it here so the thought can be out of my head and I can go back and reread whenever I start to feel like I'm losing control again.

Dear [him]

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know I've probably seemed obsessive and weird and I wish I could stop but I think writing this down, explaining it even though I know you'll never read it will help me process the feelings and move on.

I'm sorry it had to be you. I'm sorry that you were the one that caught me on a bad day and made me smile. I read too much into it. If I've ever made you uncomfortable in anyway, I'm so deeply sorry. There's some things that I think you need to understand about me that I think will help the two of us make sense of this and move forward.

My marriage was one built on trauma and distress. I was married to a man that loved the idea of me, not the person I truly was. He spent six years trying to shove me into a box that I didn't fit into, trying to make me into the girl he always wanted when he simply was not. It may sound ungrateful to say, but I was drowning in his attention but you have to understand that this was not the kind of attention anyone deserves. It was manipulative, it was guilt tripping, it was toxic in every sense of the word. He hated the things I loved and if he didn't start off initially hating them, he would quickly begin to hate them because they were associated with me. I know you're probably wondering what that has to with you and I promise I'm getting to it

The earliest date I have to tell you when this started was February 4, 2019. Yeah, you heard me right, two fucking years of this nightmare coping mechanism that you didn't ask to be a part of. February 4th was the day I created a playlist on Spotify because I was going to go to the gym. The first song on that playlist was Rev 22:20 by Puscifer because that's the song that every time I hear it, I think of you. The beginning of the song is enough to explain what I was feeling in that time.

Don't be aroused by my confession Unless you don't give a good goddamn about redemption I know Christ is comin', and so am I And you would too if this sexy devil caught your eye

I wanted you so badly. You represented everything that my current relationship lacked. You would give me attention, but only if I earned it. I was married at the time, so confessing my attraction to you would be something that you would have to not care if it sent you to hell. It was stupid, and I kept my mouth shut about it. I wasn't about to have an affair with you. I know I was already emotionally cheating on my husband, but I was not going to take the next step. I would just cling to this concoction of you I'd made in my head to cope with the misery that I was forcing myself to live with. It wasn't healthy and it DEFINITELY wasn't fair to you. You didn't ask to have someone develop an infatuation with you that you didn't want. I did my best to be cool and remember who the fuck I was but I know you knew. I deluded myself into thinking that you were interested, even if you couldn't pursue it. I think that made it worse.

Your trip and the jokes we made about it truly cemented this stupid ass infatuation into my brain. The thought of running away from my life with you haunted my dreams. In fact, there was one dream that I had that I still distinctly remember that plays in my head on repeat every now and then. We were at a party, you pulled me into the pantry and we were talking and you looked at me, confused, and said, "You know I like you, right?" I woke up immediately after, confused and with my heart pounding. This came shortly after you told me that your friend had backed out of the trip and you had an extra ticket, if I just got my passport. I didn't, of course, but I remember you telling me that I could sit next to you on the plane and rub your back as you puked into your airplane bag because you were afraid to fly.

I'm terrified that I sound insane and creepy and unsettling. I KNOW you were just kidding around but it was something I could cling to. It kept me alive when I was laying in bed staring out of my window wishing I had to courage to just jump. That was a lot to put on you but I comforted myself by reminding myself that you would never know. I would never ever cross the line of telling you how much that stupid little joke meant to me. You'll probably never know this, but you saved my life. And for that I can only thank you.

I'll never forget when you left, either.

I channeled the confusing feeling of loss and pain into a story that I'm still incredibly proud of. I won't bore you (or creep you out) with details, but you left two months after your trip and I did nothing but write. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote that pain away until I couldn't feel it anymore. It was gone. I fixed it all. I was fine. I barely thought about you. That initial hyperfixation was gone. You were gone.

Until you weren't.

A mutual friend told me that you were coming back and I thought my heart was going to erupt. That was when I stopped writing my story because I didn't need it anymore. You were coming back. I tried to remain casual, but that December when you were finally back, I could've wept with joy. It was sad, it was pathetic but you were back and everything was going to be fine. I had my coping mechanism back. We both know I can't help but look at you when you're near by. Even just a glimpse could make me smile. You were so soothing to me. You still are. It's illogical and it doesn't make sense, but whenever I talk to you, or even just see you I am simultaneously relieved and set on edge. I have to watch myself. I don't want you to know this creepy stalker narrative I'd unintentionally crafted. It wasn't even stalkery.

I didn't cross lines, I just wanted to talk to you, be around you somewhere that was an even playing field. I've only texted you when I absolutely had to. I couldn't bring myself to bother you. I put you up on a pedestal and didn't ask you for anything more. I wanted more, I craved that sweet validation but I wouldn't cross that line. We were work friends, if you could even call it that. We were coworkers that sat together on break all the time. Sometimes I would feel like maybe you could be interested but I would always reminded myself that just because I wanted you to be, didn't mean you were. I constantly kept myself in check. I barely even mentioned you to my friends and even when I did, you were the mediocre white guy at work. Hell, I still refer to you as that because I need to keep myself in check. You are not the end all be all of men. Believe me, I would let myself believe that if I didn't keep myself in check.

When the pandemic hit, you were gone again. I thought it was forever this time and I decided it would be okay. It had to be okay. I wasn't going back to work if you weren't going to be there and by all logic, you shouldn't have been. You were the reason I didn't hate my job. I liked talking to you for fifteen minutes at a time that much. It's silly, but it made everything better. I didn't need to date you. I didn't need to sleep with you. I just wanted you to be my friend and you had been. I thought that chapter was closed.

And then my husband left me. And I found out you were back again. Despite everything I'd figured, that you wouldn't go back for a third time, that you wouldn't even be able to, another mutual friend mentioned that you were back. And I was ready to run back into that hellhole's hateful arms to have you close and as my friend again. I couldn't talk to you outside of work, I didn't know what to say. I was scared it was going to come out wrong because things were different now. I was different now. I wasn't going to be married for much longer. I let myself stray into thinking maybe now could be different.

You gave my husband an instrument to fix and he left it and me here so I figured I could give it back to you, at the very least. I was gonna shoot my shot. "of course I remember you". Now I'm not sure if that was as flattering as I initially took it but you forgot and I cried. But I left you alone. If you had any of the same feelings I had, you wouldn't have. It was okay. You didn't have to match my energy. Mine was out of control and emotional, coming only a week after my husband left the state. I was a train wreck and I'm glad now that you didn't come pick it up. I would've embarrassed myself. I would've tried to tell you all of this to your face and it would've been a mess. It wasn't fair to you. It wasn't fair to me. I was in mourning, I was in shock. Just like most of the people I knew, you probably wouldn't have known what to say. What do you say to a woman who had been abandoned so easily and quickly? Awkward pity in my experience with people who weren't you. But I told you. You knew. That's all I wanted.

And now, I'm terrified that I'm becoming FAR too obvious. I wasn't subtle before, but I KNOW I'm not subtle now. I'm terrified of making you uncomfortable, or even worse, acting like Mandee. Becoming so overbearing and not picking up on vital social cues that would tell me that you didn't want me around. Every now and then, I'll forego sitting outside to sit with you but I won't do it every break. I don't want to seem like I won't leave you alone. I don't want to seem like a crazy woman who's obsessed with you. Maybe I still am, despite my best intentions, but I try so hard not to be. You don't owe me ANYTHING. And sometimes I get the vibes that I need to leave you alone so I do. And I resign myself to the fact that I ruined it because I couldn't keep my shit together.

My standards are so low right now, that you can talk to me first and I feel like maybe we could still be friends. Not a damn thing more than that. I can't stress that enough. Despite everything I've written here, it's not like I want you to sweep me off my feet and save me from everything. I just.... I want to be your friend. I want to actually know you other than anecdotal conversations.

I don't know how to finish this. It's pathetic, its cathartic and I just needed to get it out of me. I'm so tired of keeping it in and while I won't tell you, just writing it down helps. So thank you. Thank you for everything you don't know you've done for me. I'm sorry I let it go this far and get this... weird. Thank you again.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 184

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 36 - “Go for the Goal! Marathon Race” Date watched: 13 May 2020 Original air date: 14 October 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/hrE6zQT Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Gamabunta is that you?

This show has been on a pretty good run lately. We had the vacation arc, haunted school, our festival fun, a day in the life of Urara, some romantic developments, Rin entering the wedding industry, and Karen as a knight. The defeats of Girinma and Arachnea were both suitably epic and inspiring. Well forget all that because it’s a Gamao episode and in true Gamao form, he ruins any goodwill we may have had for him. He can’t even do a last chance black mask monster transformation episode well. Let’s take a look.

The Plot

Cinq Lumieres Academy is having an all-grade level 4 kilometer race, and Nozomi is trying to get out of participating, but Rin keeps insisting she practice. Rin doesn’t have a lot of time TO practice with Nozomi, between her responsibilities to the Futsal Club and having to tend to the family store. More on this later, because it’s time to flimsily set up Nightmare’s scheme this episode.

Gamao is sitting on a bench when he’s approached by Kawarino. Gamao begs the senior executive for a management position at Nightmare but Kawarino remarks that his accomplishments so far amount to nothing. He says maybe he could change his mind if he were to obtain the Dream Collet, and considers giving Gamao the black paper, but decides not to before he disappears. However, Gamao discovers that Girinma "accidentally” left it behind for him, and is convinced he’ll be able to get into upper management. As he runs off to enact his plan, Kawrino reappears and snidely remarks to himself that he doesn’t have much faith in the frog.

We return to Nozomi and Rin’s running practice A few key shots of Rin show that she’s extremely tired but pressing on, because she really wants to repeat her first place title from last year. Karen notices this and decides that they should all join in the practice, so the next day when they run the practice course, all five girls and even Coco and Nuts are present. They begin to climb to a hill that could rival anything in San Francisco, and Nozomi starts to give up, but as she stops to encourage her friend, Rin succumbs to fatigue and collapses.

Everyone gets Rin back to Natts House and when she’s feeling better, she opens up to Nozomi, saying she wanted to do for Nozomi what Nozomi did for her when they were in elementary school. We flash back to a time in their youth when the school had a race, and Rin was the favorite to win, but she tripped and fell and almost gave up running entirely until Nozomi caught up to her and encouraged her to finish the race together. Nozomi promises to do her best in the race for Rin’s sake.

It’s important to note that the route for this race leaves the Cinq Lumieres campus and gets into the town (which I am realizing has never been named). There are signs along the route that point the way, and Gamao has taken a position as a sign holder at a junction. When he sees the Precures coming, he turns the sign to divert them off the route away from the other students, and when he has them all gathered in a dead end forest, he turns the ground into a beyblade arena crater and makes his presence known. When they naturally refuse to hand over the Dream Collet, he transforms and so do they. He tries to mow them over like Tasmanian Devil, zooming around the pit like fat beyblade.

I’m not kidding that’s his plan

The Precures are understandably tired as they’ve been running, but after he mocks them for running for no reason, Dream gets riled up and retorts that trying hard at something isn’t pointless at all, and then they all kick his ass. He pulls out his black paper, but clearly he wasn’t aware of the side effects when it latches onto his face and turns him giant. Now a giant, mindless toad monster, he leaps into the air and comes crashing down on Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua. He smooshes Rouge as well, and then tries to attack the fairies, who are watching from the edge of the pit.

Dream manages to catch his tongue before he can hurt them, and the other Cures emerge, one beneath each foot, lifting him up and throwing him into the wall. With Milk’s help, they summon the Symphony Set and perform Precure Five Explosion, finishing Gamao off once and for all. He will not be missed.

They make their way back to the race route and realize as they turn back into the school grounds that they’re in last place, ruining Rin’s chances at a repeat victory. However, she’s happy enough that she gets to finish together with her friends, just like she did all those years ago. Nozomi declares a race to the finish and sprints across the finish line ahead of everyone else as the episode closes out.

The Analysis

As you may have gathered from my introduction, I don’t have a very high opinion on this episode. Sure, it has some nice character beats, but it doesn’t introduce anything new or build on any facets we haven’t seen before, except to give us another reason why Nozomi and Rin are close friends. It’s not offensively bad or anything, I don’t think there’s any episodes that I outright hate in this franchise, but it’s bottom tier for this show. There’s very little narrative payoff to Rin’s plot in the episode. She overworked herself to the point of collapsing to motivate Nozomi, and ultimately Nozomi did internalize the importance of the race from Rin’s perspective, which she repeated during the battle. It’s nice but I’ve grown to expect more meaningful declarations during these pivotal villain defeat episodes than “I helped her as a kid and she wants to help me now.” The whole point of Five Explosion is a manifestation that they’re stronger together than apart, but this episode isn’t about the full team’s unity, so it falls flat. If it hadn’t been Gamao’s send-off I might have liked it a smidge better, or if it had been Hadenya attacking instead, or even Bunbee, then it may have made sense.

Moving over to Gamao, for a black mask final battle, this fell far short of what Girinma and Arachnea put the girls through. He didn’t seem any more threatening than a strong Kowaina, he only really got in one attack on the girls as a monster before they took him down with Five Explosion. He had a pretty cool effect of being so massive and fast that he generated really fast air currents but they didn’t do any damage to anyone. This battle is a ton of wasted potential. The best part of the fight was actually before he used the black mask. Spinning around the arena like he did was clever, and it worked better than just about anything else he’s ever done. Gamao’s shortfalling is that he’s lazy and shortsighted, he wants to take the easy way out, his plans amount to simply beating the girls up and that’s it. Compare this to Bloody from the previous episode, who nearly talked Nuts into just handing it over, and well, Gamao comes out of this unfavorably. About the only good thing I can say about him is that his black mask form looks really cool, and it’s huger than any we’ve seen so far. I really wish they’d used it more. If they’d swapped him out with Girinma in episodes 23-24 I would have liked that a lot more, it would give Gamao a better sendoff and it feels more appropriate that the weakest villain is the first to go. Alas.

Lastly, the art quality in this episode is in the toilet and that might be the biggest factor in making it seem underwhelming. The characters appear grossly deformed and oddly proportioned a lot.

Even when they’re kicking Gamao’s ass in the fight, which is a series of dynamic still frames, the quality is poor. There’s a shot when Coco and Nuts step in to announce that they’ll be running with the girls, and their models just bounce into the frame like they leaped into the air and landed, rather than stepping. It was bad and kind of hilarious by the same token.

This episode feels like an afterthought on both the writing and animation standpoint. The last few have been so-so in visual quality and if you’ve been following along, you know that’s normal for this point in the show, and of course it’s nowhere near as bad as Max Heart could get, but this is an episode that should have had weight to it, and to see it squandered like this makes me sad.

On the upside I will say I enjoy the little back and forth between Nozomi and Milk, ever butting heads. Milk tells Nozomi that they can all do their best in the practice run, while sitting comfortably in Nuts’s bag being kind of a slouch herself. It was amusing.

Speaking of slouches, Coco probably should go for more runs, because next episode he’s putting on some weight after eating a diet of nothing but cream puffs. Look forward to more on that!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 Kettei!

P.S. dear Pretty Cure Splash Subs: your meme subs are not funny.

[meandmyechoes]

I'm SO Angry about Joran's finale

Look, I knew where I was heading, and I'm not even upset I invested a month's time to what any seasoned viewer can sniff a "14 and edgy" show. But boy, am I so ANGRY over something I haven't in a while (Giselle face)

Tell me why a show starts with four women in the cast somehow lets the only male character steals the spotlight in its own finale?

Who even is the fucking main character at this point. I'm so sorry Yuki and Rinko, they did you so dirty. The cool sword fight isn't even cooler than episode one. With a little thought, I do understand the narrative weight of Yuki confronting her family's killer(s), (and I think her explanation about closing the book is sound in her defense, albeit my disagreement), but the duel does not convey emotional weight. You either talk it out or fight it out and what we see, is someone who was fighting Wolverine bare-fisted last week, lost, in her transformed state. And these people essentially just, die?, to avoid therapy. I can excuse Sawa reserving fighting Jin since she still wants answers from him and she's been shown having a soft heart, but how do you explain her ebbing power level? Can't she beat Jin, talked it out, and agreed to let him go/him slipping away after an emotional revelation? AGENCY.

Kuzuhara Jin. I don't mind his story. But um… he's also the only character that had an entire episode of backstory, hmmm wonder why that is. I obviously do not pity him, or hold particular high praise for his tragic backstory. It was alright, it was believable, for his later actions as well. And I know I see relationships not default as romance unlike most outside people, but i'm not the only one a little lost on what he feels for Sawa. To me it's very simple, he sees Sawa as a vessel for his guilt and redemption. After the backstory, we have confirmation he does care for her as to repay her mother's kindness. And I think that would've been enough. Showing Jin more fatherly with Sawa would've been a nice echo with Sawa and Asahi, and clear up the confusion caused by ep9 where some sre led to believe he has romantic feelings for her. Therefore, I def. think his confession about Sawa's mother is an overkill. Like, we get that from the flashbacks, but it's still pretty iffy to hear it.

I'm already think of rewrites before I can even finish shouting about what's bad. I think in the original timeline where Sawa's brought to the Palace, had a brief alliance with Jim to take down Yoshinobu, then duels Jin for the truth and dies im her arms would've made me less angry, even though that's the most "traditional" route you can think of. In every arc she fights a big bad and in the last, cumulative masterpiece of a finale she just… dies? And Boy, there's isn't even a close-up of her beautiful face while the hopeful dialogue tortures the audience.

It doesn't make no fucking sense that Sawa died. And it doesn't make no fucking sense Rinko literally backstabbed her. It wasn't even a heroic departure. Rinko doesn't have enough personal beef to kill her which just make her seem petty and insensible. They wasted Rinko as a villain and tgey wadted a friends-to-enemies arc for her.

First off, Sawa didn't get the big hero vs boss fight; then she dies without a close-up for cinematics and— after all these hardships she still didn't get to live?? Also like, didn't you show her supernatrural healing abilities in ep 1??? She knows that right? Why doesn't she run straight to a doctor? (okay the stab would was probably more gruesome than shown given it's Rinko and she knew her time is running out so she'd rather stay with Asahi—) Even Jin, your big male saviour, asked her to live, and the show decides to kill her off?? What kind of lesson is it supposed to deliver? "Life is unpredictable" or "Finish the job or they'll finish you"? Do you just like negating your own characters??

I think it'd be better if Arc 2 and 3 switch places if they are to stay within a similar amount of plot. They could've introduced Rinko earlier and really give her the narrative foil antagonist (and duel) she deserves as man-made/orders/past vs Sawa's nature/choice/future. Heck might as well push back the Janome plot by two episodes, show more Nue's Angels bonding to warrant why Tsuki earns a namesake in Hana's daughter. (And please dwell into his/her queerness, and make his fall more convincing)

I wishfully wished Hana would fight but I know it's a long shot. At least she didn't die. Or so I thought. I can't help but read the reason her daughter is travelling with Asahi is because she and his cheerful editor husband are both murdered - while Sawatsuki is so young that their death doesn't seem to bother her? I fucking hate that implication, but I wouldn't be surprised if THIS show pulled this on us.

Are they suggesting Asahi is gonna become the new executioner or at least, seek revenge for her sister? Let's put aside if and how she finds out who murders her. But Why. Not why would Asahi want to avenge her sister, but why would you take a character established by hope and second chance, to take on an old path? To be haunted by the same ghost her sister suffered for a decade?

Why does the show decides "history repeats itself" is a good message to send? That one should always be confined by the past and revenge is the only way to seek solace? That a cycle of violence is "cooler" than recovery and honouring a loved one's legacy positively?

I called Asahi obtaining blue blood weeks ago, because they have to show her inheriting Sawa's legacy one way or another, and this is the simplest way. But like you could have the blue blood doing positive change?! Like rebuilding the Karasumori village to take in orphans?? The blue blood helping "find dragon veins" to sustain their own economy if we so follow thy own setting? I'm just, at a loss by the end of an episode. Granted, the epilogue is pretty open-ended to me, and it's obvious teasing the stage play. Objectively its sale and popularity in no way gurantees a second season, and I'm not sure what story they can tell either.

This show, is beautifully drawn, and beautifully orchestrated, yet it fell short in throwing in every wow factor a teenager's "edgy" debut story would have to pass for hooking the audience interest. They need to learn how to edit. I'd like it better if the scale just draws in a little and flesh out a personal story. In the end, I'm more disappointed in its lost potential if only it was handled more sophisticatedly than I can be bothered by how they did the characters dirty.

[woonietune]

Whose fault was it that Woon killed himself?

Although I believe they’re not, the reasons seem to be a series of misunderstandings and the fucked-up destiny that Dong-soo didn’t believe in---the gisaeng who was only trying to protect Woon (someone she didn’t understand and whose love for his friends she probably resented), the assassins of Heuksa Chorong who were trying to kill the man (Cho-rip) who they believed was trying to kill their beloved boss, and then Dong-soo not showing up in time. Dong soo, who wanted to protect everyone and who believed in the letter of justice--remember he chided Woonie for trying to kill Hong when everyone knew Hong was the cause of everything--yes, killing Hong would have made Woon get in serious trouble but it was a short-cut to saving hundreds of lives? Dong-soo was all about protecting people, but he also believed in Woon, believed everything he said, and he was fresh from Cho-rip telling him just that. He believed Woon’s lie about hurting Cho-rip.  Dong-soo, in his innocence and faith in Woon, only contradicted Woon on the point of destiny not being real and always was supportive of Woon--he never contradicted Woon when Woon listed his own sins. Even when Woon perpetuated Chun’s pattern of lying--such as taking the blame for killing the boys camp commander and Crown Prince Sado, when Dong-soo had seen Chun kill the former with his own eyes and even said on the spot at Crown Prince Sado’s murder to Chun “so you’re the one responsible for this.” Dong-soo knew who was truly behind all the evil at Heuksa Chorong. He knew... and yet could not kill Chun when given the chance to fight him. Dong-soo was young; I don’t blame him--he was the best swordsman in all Joseon, but had he truly mastered the Living Sword? There was so much he didn’t know-and he didn’t know because Woon hadn’t told him. If Woon had only told him half his story, would Dong-soo have killed Chun the night of that fight? Even Gwang-taek had regrets about not killing sometimes

I’m not sure of the extent of Dong-soo’s unwillingness to kill, but we all saw what Dong-soo did in order to save the Prince Heir (try to cut off Woon’s own head in that spectacular stunt when Woon leans back on his horse in that fake attempt to kill the Prince Heir) and all he did to protect Ji-sun; Dong-soo was learning the power of his own sword, Had the matter involved Woon, had the matter involved knowing the extent to which Chun had played in manipulating Woon, would Dong-soo have dealt a fatal blow?  I’m still not sure. It may not have been in Dong-soo’s character; even in the series final battle, Dong-soo could not muster the courage to stab Woon, who presented a good argument for Dong-soo’s doing so--and called himself a state criminal. And in any event, Dong-soo’s killing Chun would not have worked in the tragic narrative the script was trying to tell....

Yes, it was after that fight that Woon rushed Dong-soo and gave him his best shot---tried to kill him in a scene that surprised everyone. IF DONG-SOO COULD NOT DO HIS JOB then after that riveting scene where Dong-soo effectively blocks Woon’s blade, Woon would kill Chun. He said he would become an assassin. It was the only time in the entire series he was fully committed to becoming one. Because who did he have to kill? His own abuser, the person who had abused Ji-sun, killed Woon’s own father, and DESPITE his apparent admitting his own sins to Woon, was still guilty. And what had Chun told Woon long ago? In order to become an assassin, one must kill one’s most beloved person. So Dong-soo rushed Woon with “my best move”--and yes, he probably knew Dong-soo would block it, but he needed to do it. And he held onto Dong-soo  longer than he needed to, in what to audiences was a clear embrace, and whispered words into his ear that in what for all intents and purposes was a lover-like gesture (argue that and much of PanAsia will argue back). Woon’s most precious person was Dong-soo.

When Woon was on his knees after delivering a fatal blow to Chun, who did Woon say he would give up being an assassin for? For whom would Woon change his life? Not Ji-sun (he had told Hong “that woman’s life is my life,” and Hong had promptly called out that lie). Not Chun himself, although Chun had told Woon twice not to follow his path of woe and killing--ha, Chun’s programming Woon was too deep, as I’ll explain later. Woon was on his knees, swearing he would change his life, and he did. He did keep his promise that he would throw away the life of an assassin.  “I will forsake it all, Dong-soo-yah.” Woon changed his life for Dong-soo.

Not that Woon had ever done a very good job of being an assassin. He’d merely identified as one, accepted the position as one, and allowed others to believe he was one. He did carry out assassin assignments, but he’d tried to heal the first people he’d been assigned to kill and had tried to protect so many others along the way. He didn’t like the job and said as much that he wanted to return to live with Dong-soo. But he’d faithfully remained a servant of Heuksa Chorong when he could’ve easily escaped under Gwang-taek or Dong-soo’s protection. He believed that he couldn’t leave--he bought that lie, hook, line and sinker from Chun, and he would not let anyone else protect him.

It was Woon who fought to protect himself (he never allowed Dong-soo, for all those proclamations of protection, to save him), and it was Woon, whose political machinations, in a match for Dong-soo’s physical strength, helped stopped the internal political coup against the Prince Heir that fateful historical day. Woon redeemed himself. As it should have been. That’s what makes a hero. Woon was never a simpering maiden like Ji-sun (who I disliked---Jin-joo fought for herself and saved Dong-soo and others countless times--it bothers me that both women in the script wielded weapons but both were discouraged against fighting and the former was even denied emotional independence from Dong-soo). I can’t blame Dong-soo for not saving Woon. That job was supposed to be Woon’s if Woon was ever to be a truly redeemed and healthy person.

And even after Dong-soo’s speech on the wharf, where Dong-soo had said there is no destiny, after he had convinced Ji-sun that one makes one’s own destiny, and had told Woon “I don’t bow to destiny like you,” Dong-soo did not protect Woon from Chun, who still haunted Woon. So Woon went out  to kill Chun---no reason to do that, really. The man was effectively no longer the leader of the guild, had really resigned his post to Woon, was a broken man after Ga-ok’s death, and had no one to fight after Gwang taek’s death.

And Woon stabbed Chun and dealt him a fatal blow. The narrative has Chun limp away and actually be killed by state enemy arrows while saving Jin-joo in an echo of a redemption, but the truth is, he was never a father, and the damage he had already inflicted on Ga-ok and the death-path he set up for Woon were sins he couldn’t change with his feelings for a girl he thought for a moment could have been his own daughter, who WAS the daughter of the woman he had loved and lost, albeit a daughter by his rival (a man he regretted killing--maybe because then there was no more “fun” as Chun called it? Who knows? The man lied so much all his life, I find it difficult to believe much of his regrets at the end, only his suffering and loneliness). Chun may have been a different person had he made different choices in his life. If with all his talent and swordsmanship had chosen to leave the guild with Ga-ok and have a family, or dissolve it like Woon later did--but no, like Ga-ok said, he loved dominating people too much. He drank too much. He wanted to fight Gwang-taek too much. He mind-fucked a little boy, and set off a time bomb in him, lying to him for years, that would go off a decade later.

Chun was, what we would call in these days, a classic narcissistic abuser. What would be called in those days, a man taking advantage of his privilege and his power. Although, come to think of it--that’s a man common as the grasses in the field these days too. And given what the statistics are for child-rape in my own country and in this century, back then, when there were no laws to protect them, when it was open-season on those not powerful and male, I have no doubt that the writer intended Chun, who was way too touchy-feely with Woon, raped Woon as a child. I know many people in the WBDS fandom won’t go that far. Oh, maybe the scene suggested that Chun “felt” Woon’s killer rage when Woon walked by him on the path that day as a 12 yr old. Maybe Chun knew that Woon was the son of someone who had made a blood-vow with Gwang-taek, the Yeo Cho-sang who had once been a worthy fighter even if he was a village drunk now--but why the interest in the child that moment? Woon was simply walking down the road. Chun asked Woon his name so he DIDN’T know for sure that Woon was Cho-sang’s son. Even so, is swordsmanship hereditary? Chun looked Woon up and down. He had no evidence Woon could fight and would make a good assassin. He touched a boy’s hair, showed uncharacteristic paternal affection he would not show later--although he remained touchy-feely. With a pretty 12-year old he had hunted down like a rabbit.

And he would lie, lie, lie to the boy and play mind games with him like a classic narcissist who loved power and dominance.

How Woon recalls the memories he blocked out is typical of victims of abuse and one of the devices used very well in a script that is far from perfect (although memorable because of many reasons--the characters, the fighting scenes, the poetic parallels, the stunning outdoor shots, the ton of money poured into production, the standard K-drama emotion-range of love and tragedy being extra intense). Woon recalls bits over a period of 10 years, doesn’t know the truth until Chun tells him that it was Chun himself who murdered his father, and may not remember the whole truth- until the day he impales himself on Dong-soo’s blade, and re-enacts what his own father did that day. Yeo Cho-sang  impaled himself on Woon’s own blade.

What truly happened with Woon was that even after Chun’s death, even after Woon was able to redeem himself in the coup and save lives, even after believing Dong-soo and Sword Saint that a man makes his own destiny, and believing that he was free of his burdens, he was not free of Chun.

Like many victims of abuse, he perpetuated Chun’s narrative of LIES that he was a murder---a course set by Yeo Cho-sang, blamed himself for the murder of Crown Prince Sado when it was Chun who had killed the Crown Prince, even told the Prince Heir that as the truth is shown playing in Woon’s mind.

Yeo Woon, still held in the grip of Chun, even though Chun is dead. Still a prisoner of a narcissist pirate. Still a victim.

And one of the things these perpetrators do is foster guilt, terrible guilt in their victims that EVERYTHING is their fault while instilling some sense of debt and confusion and loyalty. Woon’s father may not have let Woon take up the blade, may have told him the nonsense that about the killer destiny. But Woon’s words to his father that night Woon could not kill him were “I AM NOT A KILLER.” Chun heard those words and yet let Woon believe Woon had killed his own father. What a great guy that Chun. I can’t believe audiences fell for that charismatic typical sociopath. It’s such Ted Bundy classic bullshit.

Chun gave Woon the blade that Woon’s father wouldn’t and allowed him to use it. Woon said NO to his father, but he couldn’t say no to Chun. Stockholm Syndrome in a way because Chun had rescued Woon from a father who beat him, who had killed Woon’s mother, who had given him the sword to defend himself, a boy referred to as “girly” throughout the whole series, that Yeo Cho-sang had refused his own son.

Yeo Cho-sang, a ineffective abuser because Woon was a damn tough kid, did not get through to Woon and manipulate him the way Chun did. And then Chun did not teach Woon a thing, no swordsmanship, no wisdom so forget anything approaching genuine parently mentoring--Chun merely lied, gaslighted, gave him assassin assignments and exploited his gifts in every way. In the end, Chun was Woon’s killer.

Other people were bystanders. Chun killed Woon in the field that day. A person without Woon’s history who had heard Cho-rip’s words “It’s all your fault” would have known them to be false. Woon heard what he had believed all his life. His suicidal self (he had attempted suicide before in the series, asking Ji-sun to kill him, holding his own blade before his throat before Chun, trying to kill Hong in what he knew would end up in his own conviction and death) believed Cho-rip that he did not deserve to live.

And a healthy person would have believed that he deserved Dong-soo’s love and care. Time and time again, Woon didn’t speak his truth to anyone, not even to the person who most needed and wanted to hear it--Dong-soo. Woon didn’t tell Gwang-taek and Sa-mo at the wharf what happened to him, how he became an assassin--they asked. They both tried to parent him. They both tried to care for him. Dong-soo tried with all his heart to save Woon. Woon refused them all--not believing he was worthy.

Why?  Chun had said there was there was blood on Woon’s hands. Woon believed Chun, not his own father, that he was shit. That he had a killer destiny. That whoever he had saved did not make up for that. That he had to die. Cho-rip listed the people who died because of Woon. Cho-rip said that even the Prince Heir and Dong-soo would not be safe if Woon lived. Woon believed that. In order for Dong-soo, his most beloved person to live, Woon would have to kill himself. Dong-soo’s being alive was more important than Woon’s being alive.

The following video killed me. It echoed a lot of what I speak of in this meta--and the song in its repeated use of the word “come” creeps me out because of the power Chun had over Woon and the sexual implication.  The MV seems to indict Chun, Gwang-taek, and Dong-soo in Woon’s death. I don’t blame “let me take care of you” Gwang-taek  who sent Woon back to Heuksa Chorong  (and don’t get me started on Gwang-taek’s other flaw of believing women shouldn’t wield the sword--in those days women could not enter military or police and had only a choice as bandits, outlaws or assassins if they did and his love Ga-ok had died by the sword--but I address that in my fix-it fic because I have Woon say, as he suggested to Dong-soo, that there was no protecting everyone--that one shouldn’t go around saying one could when one couldn’t, that sometimes men would not be around to protect women). I don’t blame Dong-soo, who in his desperation, told Woon something literally impossible to carry out but impossibly romantic--that if there was something Woon could not bear, Dong-soo would bear it for him. I don’t even blame Cho-rip, who in his stupidity, in his hyper-academic reasonable-ness and allegiance to the law, was trying to protect the Prince Heir--and who probably felt bitter still for having been stabbed by Woon and who didn’t have all the facts about how Woon saved people--and who, yeah, had been treated as a third wheel by Dong-soo and Woon, all his life, would say those things to Woon after having been STABBED by Woon’s own employees.

I blame Chun.

I see one victim and one cruel perpetrator.

Chun killed a beautiful, good person. Yeo Woon who all his life tried with all his goodness and intelligence to do right, who stood up to his father and the Prince Heir to save even his own life while he tried to save others (this is also typical of abuse survivors--their compassion and caregiving excesses, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for others, even as they fight for their own lives like crazy--PTSD is a desperate coping mechanism for survival); Woon was exploited and defeated by Chun’s crazy programming at every turn. In the end, Chun won.  In the end, Woon was Chun’s mirror--he believed he was the irredeemable murderer Chun actually was, and his own goodness believed that such a person didn’t deserve to live.

And it was a grotesque tragedy--Woon dying for Dong-soo. Dong-soo unable to protect with his own sword and Woon dying on it in his arms.Just as Woon changed his life for Dong-soo, he decided to die for him. One huge flaw of the series is how Dong-soo is drinking, almost in a parody of Woon’s own father and Chun, in attempts to forget Woon and hallucinates Woon in the end, and yet this is so unsatisfying. As is the very end when Dong-soo promises to teach martial arts to a child (is it the same child Woon reached out to and tried to teach how to hold a sword?) Woon died for no reason. No reason.  Even as a cautionary tale, even as a supreme tragedy--and yes, Shakespeare wrote tragedy so yeah it’s a genre and fine fine but that makes the funny bits at the end of the series ring false and strange (Cho-rip's little courtship of Mi-so! Cho-rip of all people!), and the story doesn’t end with any solid ending or tribute to Yeo Woon--at most, an oblique one.

Gwang-taek and Ga-ok got prolonged, hugely weepy, classic K-drama funerals, but stunned audiences didn't have time to mourn Yeo Woon before Sa-mo was a-flirting or Cho-rip was kissing Mi-so right out there in public, and nope, no funeral, nothing. The whiplash, wow. i would have at least like to have had the vaguest recognition that some of Woon's brave deeds were recognized (maybe the gisaeng told?) or know where Woon was buried. Woon was, after all, one of the two main leads, and arguably (although most reviewers won’t even argue the contention) Woon’s character stole the show; I don’t know how many times I’ve read the series should’ve been called Assassin Yeo Woon instead of Warrior Baek Dong-soo.

We know that Baek Dong-soo went on with his life, lived well past what men of his time did, and became famous for writing a martial arts book. Yeo Woon, as may be the point of the script, is a figure lost in history. But should he be lost after audiences have grown to love him or mourn him so much? Ah, the reason for this blog and why I’ve written so much fix-it fic.

And yes, I am a survivor of abuse. Yeo Woon didn’t have to die. As the script was written, he may have--I predicted it from the episode his father went down.  Was there any escaping that trauma? But as in all transformative art and reimaginings, I can save him. Fandom can reclaim him. He’s not dead. He’s not. I will save him again and again.

eta: omg so many typos--caution to maybe edit before posting. I did put this up on A03 though. I’ll put up a somewhat funny story re Cho-rip later. I just needed to purge myself of these fandom thoughts.

[angelfireeast]

Mon-El’s worst lie

kremlin annihilation week: day 5: worst lie ↳  Mon-El using the tragedy of day Daxam died to leave a positive legacy for himself as the Prince of Daxam. Lying to make Prince of Daxam’s legacy that of noble, brave, selfless, heroic, self sacrificing, leader who was loyal in his duty people to the very end. 

Mon-El tells Kara, Alex, J’onn & Winn the story of his harrowing escape from Daxam. Describing how he protected the fictional "Prince” with his own body, how they stepped over a dead body and found an abandoned kryptonian pod. He described how the owners of the pod were dead and the “Prince” tricked him into the pod locking the controls to send him away. How he couldn’t stop it and had no choice but to leave. He spoke of the wounded “Prince” telling him “You need to save yourself.... Those are my people out there.” [how he looked down to blood on his hand from wound in his side] “and we share in their fate.” He spoke of “The Prince” nobly bidding him farewell as stood bravely alone on his crumbly world. When quested he confirmed he was royal palace guard "For the great royal Family of Daxam”.

Lets address those lies:

Obviously he’s not a guard. Royal Family obviously not great.

Lie: Mon-El put fictional person first. He was selfless through the whole ordeal hell bent on helping this fictional person escape, who was the only living person around, using his own body to shield this person fictional from things falling and not wanting to leave this fictional person behind. Only leaving because he is forced to.

Truth: In reality he put himself first throughout all of it. His red long sleeve shirt came second because he took the time to grab it and put it as the woman he was sleeping with begged for his help pleading “Please don’t leave me! Take me with you”. He turned to look at her before he abandoned her.

Lie: In his story there was dead body on the ground they were forced to step over.

Truth: He stepped over the very alive wounded person on the ground begging for his help. A person who grabbed weakly at his leg with a bloody hand as he stepped out of her/his(?) reach, looked down at him/her, and looked around before abandoning this person without helping in any way as he ran on to safety.

Lie: The Kryptonian pod was abandoned and it’s owners already dead.

Truth: His guard carjacked the pod and murdered it’s owner. His body guard took his gun, grabbed the Kryptonian, yelled at him and throw him to the side and murdered him. Mon-El screamed ‘NOOO!’ as the shot was fired but did not move a muscle to stop the murder or the car jacking. He then gets into the pod going the way around the dead owner of the pod so not step on the body.

Lie: Mon-El was forced to leave. He had no choice. No one else was around when the pod took off but the noble fictional Prince to vowed to stay with his people.

Truth: Mon-El had every choice in the matter. He had choice in everything at every point. He could have helped people, could have tried to fit two people in the pod or waited for woman and child to get into the pod before himself, he could have stopped his guard from murdering the Kryptonian but he didn’t. There was lots of people around the pod begging for help and Mon-El chose to leave them. He looked around at them as he abandoned them.

Lie: The fictional Prince of Daxam is a hero who saved someone’s life.

Truth: The Prince of Daxam is selfish prick who went out of his way to NOT help anyone let alone save someone’s life.

Lie: The fictional Prince felt a great sense of duty & loyalty to his people.

Truth: Mon-El feels no duty or loyalty to his people. He didn’t the day Daxam died, he didn’t the day he made these disgusting lies up, he didn’t every single day afterwards, and he sure as heck felt NOTHING towards his people or those who be hurt by his people (slaves) when he learned his parents were alive and are rebuilding Daxam. At every opportunity Mon-El he chosen to turn his back on his people, his responsibility to them and felt no guilt about it.

Of all Mon-El’s lies and even lying to Kara about who he is (and more) this is still the one that haunts me. This is the biggest most disgusting lie that really tells you what the kind of person he is. He behaved so badly that day on Daxam, so dishonorably and atrocious, and betrayed the people who placed their trust in him as their ruler and yet he had the nerve to turn around and glorify the Prince of Daxam based on those events? The planet was dead, it’s been like 30 years. No one there cares about the Prince of Daxam and he was lying about not being the Prince. He could’ve simply not said one  word about the Prince and just lied about being a commoner. But no he found a group strangers and decided this is likely the only chance to make record of Daxam and his leave his legacy as the Prince. He decided to change the narrative of legacy from the ‘Worst of the worst frat boy of the universe’ to heroic wonderful leader. 

He chose the worst thing that’s ever happened to his people, the day he failed those around he was meant to serve in the worst way literally stepping over their bodies as begged for his help, and the worst behavior he’s ever shown(I’m guessing it’s the worst because what else is worse sex crimes and murder? He’s already apart of slavery). He decided he wasn’t going to honor the dead. He wasn’t going to atone for what he did by respecting the dead. He wasn’t going to take responsibly for his actions and tell the truth. He decided he was going to use this tragedy to leave a good legacy for himself. He decided to cash in on this tragedy to make himself look good in the eyes of greater universe. He wanted history to think he was less of scumbag. He slowed no respect for the dead. No remorse for what he did. No feeling for the way he acted. No feeling the woman he left to die in his bed, for person he stepped over, for man murdered so he could have an escape pod, for people who cried out for his help as he flew away. That’s pretty severe level of narcissism is mind boggling. Or rather level of sociopathic behavior. I really hate to throw a word as heavy as that around but when I think of all his behavior it really fits.

[herselfportrait]

INTERVIEW: THEO POLYZOIDES (KING NUN)

(Written for Let it Happen)

We’re in a strange room in Sheffield’s Café Totem. It has dark red walls, plastered white in small patches as if someone had shot holes in it. It’s sparsely furnished: two old sofas sit among open guitar cases and equipment; I am sat on one of them, King Nun’s Polyzoides is sat on the other. The band have had a meteoric rise to success in the last year, joining Dirty Hit’s coterie alongside The 1975, Wolf Alice and Japanese House. Since their emergence in 2016, the London four-piece have whipped up a following that is growing like an epidemic. Their debut EP ‘I Have Love’, a collection of violent and vulnerable songs, have been drip-fed to us, each one a slightly different shade. King Nun have never been so versatile, and never made it look quite so easy.

“One thing that we’re trying to do is absolutely be a punk band with a violent direction, but see if we can take away the clichés that are often associated with it.” Theo said. “That’s what we tried to achieve with ‘I Have Love’: I went through a beautiful, magnificent breakup – it really was fantastic – and because of that, when we went into band practice, I was like ‘Guys, I think we should do an EP just full of love songs’ - but love songs with a violent intent in sound. I was exploring this whole idea of how you can have catharsis from a punk song, and how you can learn to help your situation through being completely down and out.”

Love songs, for a band with a reputation for lo-fi songs that spit and snarl, would seem like a contradiction. “We said we’d make the EP into a much cleaner thing” he began to explain. “We’d take down the distortion a bit and all the effects, so the aim was that you could play any of these songs acoustically and it would still come across like a punk song. We wanted it to be punk and rock’n’roll, but the messages behind it and the way they would be conveyed would be like an old-fashioned love song. Over the way that it was produced and recorded, these things kind of blended together.” The contradiction in style what made ‘I Have Love’ come together: Theo’s vocals cut sharply through a runaway instrumental on ‘Chinese Medicine’, whereas ‘Heavenly She Comes’ sees King Nun throw caution to the wind, drowning in a morass of sound.

Something you’d never have supposed is that Theo was deeply influenced by folk songs during the EP’s production. Though you’d think folk music was the furthest thing from King Nun’s punk identity, Theo explains how the two aren’t as many worlds apart as you might think: “’Revelator’ by Gillian Welch cuts to the bone so hard it may as well be a punk song. It has this initial machine gun reaction, yet it’s completely clean, single-stringed acoustic. Her voice is very, very delicate. The bridge between these two things, between a really toned-down folk song and a really in-your-face punk song is almost the same effect - it’s just a different message. Bob Dylan’s more more down to earth sings like ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright’ has the same effect as something that just explodes in your face. In some ways, it’s far more cutting than that. The marriage of these two things is not entirely ridiculous.”  

Despite a smattering of singles which laid the foundations for their success, ‘I Have Love’ was King Nun’s first, official body of work. The pressure was, at times, taxing on Theo’s creativity: it was the first time he stumbled into a writer’s block. “We were working on a new project that we’re actually still working on now, and we’d just finished the EP. I was still thinking about it, because we had to keep going in and re-recording little bits and still deciding if we were going to have a particular song on the EP or not. The time came to do the lyrics for this massive project which has got loads of songs in it, and I just couldn’t come up with anything good at all. The way that I ended up getting through it was just writing absolute gibberish and trying to decode what the hell I was talking about. I just started setting up scenarios almost like scriptwriter, writing out narratives and scenes. Narrative is something that I’m really trying to work on and progress on, so I think focusing on that particular thing I knew I wasn’t so good at was really what got me through. Starting from then, it began to make sense. Repeatedly hitting my head against a wall is how I got past it.” he joked.

It's a question all bands grapple with, right from the start all the way up to the highest rung of the ladder. At what point can Theo sit back and think, ‘Yeah, we’ve made it’? “That’s an incredibly difficult question to answer.” he admits. “The mantra of how we do things is to inspire as we have been inspired on as large a scale as possible. We’ve seen it before when someone would put our band name next to a band that inspired us initially, or comparing our sound to theirs, and us thinking ‘Maybe they felt the same listening to us as they did listening to them?’, and maybe in turn what we felt listening to that particular band. We want to reach a level where we’re playing the venues that we’ve always freaked out over when we were growing up.”

The elephant in the room was the fact that King Nun had the golden ticket: they are one of the Dirty Hit elite. For a band as humble as they are to be part of a label where the likes of Matty Healy and Ellie Rowsell trample their way to the top of the album charts in their jadons for the fun of it, what was it like getting signed? “We went there thinking we were going to get a specific deal. Then we spoke to Jamie O’Borne, the man in charge, and he had so much more passion for our music than we’d ever seen in any label before. It would often happen when we’d have to say ‘Have you heard our band? Do you even like the music?’, because they’d have this whole façade where they’d sign you and then you’d go off and do some shit. But Jamie was so invested and so excited, it was really exciting for us – we got excited about our own band. The deal that we got offered showed he had considerably more faith than we’d ever dreamed of.”

Apart from when his superstitions get the better of him, saluting magpies and clicking his fingers to have all the luck he can get for a gig – a surprisingly exhausting thing to do - what challenges does Theo and King Nun face at this point in their careers? “I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and it’s super awkward and weird, but our biggest challenge is dealing with an audience that’s a bit out of control, or certain characters who are just up to no good, whether that be being violent, or whatever. The thing is, from there, you’ve got to address that. We came up with ‘Greasy Hotel’ so we could come up with an opening, so that I wouldn’t have to dive into it out of nowhere, and know that’s what we’re about straight from the off. Especially for new bands, it’s a really daunting feeling to realise that something might go down and you’re responsible to fix that. Aside from that,” he shrugs, “I’m fucking chill.”

You can’t really ask questions about the release of an EP without the inevitable "album question". Though bands, as a general rule, never want to reveal their secrets (a bit like magicians), this is what Theo could tell: “‘The album is going to get super dark, super fucked up. By playing punk music, suddenly I developed an appetite for ‘I want to write some shit. I want to see blood and gore and veins and the teeth.’ I want to create something that’s haunting in places and just really disturbed in others. Then, narratively, I want to tie it all in a lift at the end, which is my favourite kind of ending. It’s not going to be as happy as ‘I Have Love’: it’s going to be dystopian.”

[elizabethisjustakitten]

Mary is the villain of S4 and Eurus is not real

Mary is so important -narratively speaking- and I will love her forever but that doesn’t mean I don’t think for a moment she is not truly the evil behind the S4. She is who this series was all about. For me, she will remain the villain of S4.

Because she managed to do what Moriarty (if that really was Moriarty and they didn’t change their roles) couldn’t accomplish. Mary moved the story to the whole new level, she was the catalyst making Sherlock realise how blind he was. He let a liar near the most important person in his life, while he was off, chasing some minor players. He let her literally burn his heart out. And not by shooting him, but by taking John Watson from him. She chained John to herself, made him into the self-loathing man he is. He was thriving these first years with Sherlock. But then Sherlock killed himself and Mary made her way in, manipulated (and I’m sure about all of this being intentional manipulation) John into loving dating her and made him virtually cheat on Sherlock. And when he came back, their life never was the same.

I make these wild conclusions and assumptions on my belief that they couldn’t make the whole Mary thing unsolved. And I think this whole series is actually narrated from some weird, twisted alternative villain perspective, if not trough eyes of actual sociopath, since most of the characters are ooc and their emotional responses don’t make sense.

And we hear Mary’s narrative trough S4 so much, it makes me thing that the sociopath narrating these episodes could be her. Amanda herself told us that Mary is a psychopath, remember? And I think what we see in S4 is not just how the story proceeds, but it’s the past as well.

Mary, though portrayed as a caring wife and mother, is certainly heavily coded as “the devil” trough the show. She shoots Sherlock in cold blood and sometimes reacts inappropriately and coldly in situations that should be emotional (agra, the whole dying thing, even a bloody Sherlock in a drug den). Which makes me think she is just trained sociopath or psychopath that studied human emotions and behaviour just to fit in. Why, you ask? To manipulate, to make herself the victim maybe. Certainly, to hurt.

So we have what they set as the main villain for S4, but we see Mary Morstan (Moran, damn it) die at the end of first episode. But what if the death we see is mainly symbolic? What if what we see dying is Mary Watson, the idea John conjured of her in his head. She dies heroically, at her last attempt to save somebody. She dies telling John that her life as Mary Watson was the best, though there are clear signs she was bored out of her mind in the relationship. She dies telling Sherlock she likes him. Because it’s gonna be hatred and wrath from now on.

That’s what makes me thing about villain of this season and it draws a Mary/Eurus parallel. They are both clever sociopaths/psychopaths portrayed as villains. We have the scene where Eurus is not able to distinguish between Sherlock screaming and laughing as a kid. And then there’s Mary shooting Sherlock just because she....what? Panicked, that her identity is not safe anymore? SHE SHOT A PERSON TO KEEP A SECRET. And if the AGRA explanations is real (which it isn’t, or not entirely), it was a lame secret really. Also for most of TFP we see Eurus trough a screen. You know who else we see on a screen since she is supposedly dead? Mary.

The video recording is where the fictional Mary Watson dies and real Mary Morstan comes to play. She literally titles the video Miss me telling Sherlock WHO SHE IS. It’s not just to get his attention, it’s to let Sherlock know she is there, watching his every move and they are in danger. She is Moriarty’s legacy.

I whole-heartedly believe the video wasn’t a plea to look after John. It was a threat. Save John Watson. Save him! She was mocking Sherlock, telling him she set a plan to motion and there’s little to none Sherlock can do about it. The coding was clear. Save John Watson. Do it again, die for him again to save him. It didn’t do you any good the last time, did it?

It’s a circle. Sherlock finds himself back at the Reichenbach and we as viewers do with him, but this time we know how it’s gonna end. And it’s worse, because if he called from that roof, John wouldn’t pick up his phone this time. Go to hell Sherlock, indeed.

So what if we erase Eurus from the narrative and put Mary there instead? What if Sherlock is not the one emotionally compromised by someone who is family, but John is?

The whole Mary Morstan meeting Jim Moriarty and plotting together makes suddenly so much more sense than Moriarty going to most secured prison just to meet somebody he doesn’t even know. They didn’t meet on “Shutter Island” although that’s the story Mary wants you to believe. Because villains in this series always had a theatrical element to them. If we look at the whole horror movie sequence as unreliable sociopathic narrator, it’s as good explanation as any at this point. Making Eurus Mary and putting her into narrative instead project all the things they really did in S3 into series of weird tasks in TFP.

When we meet Eurus as Faith she gives Sherlock a note that sends him on a suicide mission. Mary does the same with the Miss me titled video. What if those two notes are actually the same one? What if the person giving Sherlock the note is the same one? I toyed with the idea that the note is not actually from Faith/Eurus but it’s the note John send to Sherlock by Molly. And it’s not an explanation why he needs to get out of his life (or it kinda is). It’s just what they said it is. A person. One name. Moriarty.  John gave Sherlock a note with a warning, telling him who Mary really is. She is working for Moriarty or is Moriarty. We can’t be sure. 

Mary, knowing this, sends a video. Telling Sherlock to go to hell, throw himself into danger. Because she can’t have him just sitting after John’s warning, she needs to destroy them together.

If we look at TFP as narration of happenings from S3 in no particular order, we get this: 

 The patience grenade is the bomb in The Empty Hears. But this time it goes off. For all we know Mary has no idea what actually happened in that tube car. But after it, Sherlock and John are good. More than good, they are awesome. Back in Baker Street, happy. So for Mary, the bomb goes off, because they are more in love than before. 

Then there’s the whole shoot one of them or I shoot your wife scene. You can look at this as Mary’s choice between shooting Sherlock or exposing herself. Shoot him or the wife is dead (again, death here is used as a revelation rather than an actual death = the metaphorical death of Mary Watson).  

The 3 Garridebs is John and Sherlock solving crimes together to Mary’s delight. She watches them like lab rats during an experiment. She really likes to watch, did you notice? Trough S3 she tags alone, silently watching, observing. She relishes in it. In Sign of three she literally makes John find them a case.

The I love you scene is an easy one. Just coded into heteronormative sequence and the other way around. It’s not about the actual I love you being said, it’s about making Sherlock think about it. It’s about the best man speech. Sherlock is running out of time to confess, or to make John confess or do anything really. And in the end we literally see Sherlock flair up in anger over his love (love=death, so of course the manifestation of the confession will be a coffin. And even if we treat death as a revelation this series, it’s self-explanatory with the I love you) and smash it into pieces. He goes of the rail, both in reality with drugs and here with letting his frustration flow rather than lock it away. And who pulls him out of it, tells him to “man up”? John Watson. Of course. I still believe Molly in that scene is the manifestation of John in every bit. She is even dressed in the same clothes as she was, when Sherlock himself used her as a substitution for John.

Then there’s another choose who you gonna shoot scene. This is Magnussen. We know Sherlock would never shot John, he would never turn against John, no matter what. Being caught in seemingly unsolvable situation, he turns his gun to himself, trying to commit suicide. And that’s what Sherlock did when he shot Magnussen basically. He turned the gun at the wrong person and put himself out of the game by it.

I know a lot of you think that Eurus is Sherlock or John mirror but why it can’t be Mary mirror as well? TFP is Abominable Bride, but it’s Mary’s Abominable Bride, where she recounts all the ways she managed to win over Sherlock Holmes by holding John Watson on a leash. People do really get sentimental over their pets.

And as for my Baker Street Boys? (Yes, I know it sounds like a boy band name). I believe Moriarty and Mary Morstan were both proud of creating Sherlock Holmes. They created a valuable opponent. And after getting him a pet to play, the game just got more interesting. Mary/Eurus just wanted to play with Sherlock. But I believe the play wouldn’t be as two equal playmates. Rather they consider themselves the creators of their world. They play with them as they would with toys, not with equals. They are just puppets for them. But that’s where they are mistaken. 

WHen we consider all this, it makes the whole Mary thinking she is in John’s head delusion that more creepy and important at the same time. Think about it. Not only Mary believes she managed to get to John so close, she literally haunts his dreams and makes him miserable even after she is gone, but she is proud of it.

And then there’s this scene…

First we meet E. on the bus, smiling on John, slipping him her phone number. What if the scene we are seeing is not some strange lover John cheated on Mary with, what if it’s John cheating on the memory of Sherlock with Mary herself. The memory therefore being of how they met? 

If this is true, it makes the scene where John confesses to Mary’s ghost that much more important. Because what if John is not confessing to Mary for cheating on her? What if he is finally confronting his grief over the fact that he didn’t believe in Sherlock anymore and run to another woman while Sherlock was risking his life on the front line? What if it’s not “Mary, I cheated on you” but rather “Sherlock, I didn’t wait for you” moment. Which makes it all so much bittersweet and the hug makes more sense than ever. Because Sherlock knows now how deeply their love runs. Sherlock now knows Mary was there just to dull the pain. Because John Watson truly believed the love of his life was dead. mary made him feel as cheating on a memory. But not on the memory of herself, but the other way around.

(Also sorry, I know this is half-assed meta and some things are not really detailed and other explanations are missing. I need to rewatch S3 and 4 and I will work on it and post any updates)

[iandeleonwrites]

“Why did I come to Brooklyn to see this?”

It’s a Saturday night in Greenpoint. The brisk autumn air is moist with traces of the East River only a block or two away. I’m famished. There isn’t anything like a bodega or deli anywhere in sight. This is barely Brooklyn.

Nevertheless, here we were, discerning horror fans of the Greater New York area, all assembled in celebration of the Brooklyn International Horror Film Festival’s inaugural year.

Proudly local, this small festival has made great use of alternative spaces throughout the Brooklyn area for their screenings. Bushwick haunt Catland, an occult book store and performance space, in particular, has served as a hub of sorts for the fest, hosting a variety of spooky events throughout October.

But tonight we’re sitting inside a small theater at Triskelion Arts, a performance venue on what might be called the outskirts of Manhattan––just over the bridge from Bowery and Lower Manhattan.

A maximum of 40 people are in attendance to catch the premiere screening of We Are the Flesh (Tenemos la carne), a 2016 Mexican film that the BIHFF’s programmer describes in his opening remarks as being “like a Jodorowsky film, only angrier and more sexually perverted.” I tremble with anticipation.

The eager audience chuckles at the allusion to the Chilean midnight master––more, perhaps, out of a general sense of name recognition than a real understanding of what cinematic sensibilities such a comparison might yield. From the crowd’s subsequent reaction to the feature, I could almost guarantee these same folks would have booed films like El Topo and Holy Mountain as well.

The scene which really got everyone going tonight came about halfway through We Are the Flesh. It was a moment in which the adult brother and sister duo that make up two thirds of the film’s cast are compelled (with little persuasion, really) into an act of sexual intercourse with each other, their supposed latent desires laid bare and physically manifested.

The film’s other lead, a charismatic and manipulative older man (coming off like some kind of south of the border Charles Manson) berates the young brother for not being able to get a hard-on at the sight of his naked sister and proceeds to force her into fellating him until he does indeed get it up––again, not much force is required for any of these things to take place.

The film works more on the level of an allegorical exploration of sexuality and the unconscious than a realistic portrayal of incest and abuse. The brother and sister are also in their late teens or early twenties, so they’re not kids, and the sex scenes, as a result, are especially graphic.

As the scene progresses, there’s a jarring but delightful surprise in the use of multiple POV to depict the sex act from both of the sibling’s unique perspectives. Looking out from the brother’s eyes, we gaze downwards at his sister’s searching, hopeful eyes as her lips slide up and down his cock, willing her brother to forget their familial relationship.

Soon fully erect, a reverse shot gives us the low-angle POV of his sister, who stares past the brother’s cock, losing herself in a face that alternates between the wide, toothy grin of the lecherous older man and that of her brother. All three characters appear to be in the midst of surrendering to the pure ecstasy of taboos.

By this climactic point, the Greenpoint audience is in an uproar. Some presumed out-of-towner blurts out: “Why did I come to BROOKLYN to see THIS,” and turns the screening into a heckling session. A young couple walks out, never to return and someone takes out their phone, probably snapping a picture of the screen to share with their friends.

Others either laugh, smack their lips dismissively, or crinkle something loudly in their hands, shifting in their seats uncomfortably—anything to create some distracting noise to avoid sinking into the disquieting depths of the movie in front of them. They’ve lost all respect for the filmic experience, found the material too alien, too disturbing. But isn’t that what a horror audience is supposed to thrive on? And what did that guy mean about coming out to Brooklyn…what kind of associations did he carry inside about NYC’s second-largest borough?

We Are the Flesh is a sensuous film that celebrates the complexity of the human experience through visceral imagery that challenges conventional notions of family, impropriety, and the afterlife. But it wasn’t the ruminations on death or the gratuitous shattering of the incest taboo that sent this crowd of supposed horror hounds over the rails.

This was to be a group of people hardened by countless hours of gore and exploitation cinema, veterans of pornography and brutality in all its forms. Indeed, the audience seemed most at ease during scenes when a woman was either crying (performing femininity) or someone was screaming in anguished pain. Such actions are par for the course in the horror genre. Horror they could handle. But this was something else.

Why did we have to come to Brooklyn to see this?

The statement says it all. Considering Brooklyn’s infamous notoriety as a haven for queer, creative, and rebellious youth, it becomes clearer that what was most upsetting to this largely white male (presumably non-Brooklyn) audience tonight was the frank, public portrayal of a brown man’s rather large penis, just a stone’s throw away from the rarified and gentrified air around the Williamsburg Whole Foods and the city’s financial district.

Horror has always been mainstream, box office fare, romanticized in the American collective consciousness as a vehicle with which men may prove their emotional superiority over women in times of fictional distress and channel that supposed weakness into a chemically-charged sexual conquest of power dynamics and gender roles.

Yet these horror jocks were quaking in their boots at the mere sight of a rival penis rendered so gorgeously and prominently on the big screen. Their attitude toward the film, and by extension the festival’s selection committee, was disheartening. I wanted to turn around and reassure them, like Michael Jackson in the Thriller video: “It’s only a movie,” but there was no turning back. No amount of bloodletting or cannibalism would put this crowd back on the path toward enjoying this well-made, deserving movie we’d all paid to see.

I felt embarrassed to be there, though what began as an exaggerated case of locker room insecurities soon broadened to encompass much more, a very real over-arching fear of the animal body and its mechanisms. Without the need for Cronenberg-level depictions of anatomical monstrosity, this jumpy crowd was brought to an almost sophomoric level of vehement discomfort at the suggestion of even the body’s humblest functions.

Intimate views of male and female genitalia continued throughout the film, but it was really the following examples which opened up a whole new world of displeasure for the remaining members of the audience: 1) a shot of the sister squatting and vigorously peeing after sex, and 2) a scene in which the sister crouches over her brother���s mouth and dribbles a few drops of menstrual blood onto his lips while proclaiming the unattainability of real love. All common enough occurrences raised to the level of horrific by this hypersqueamish audience.

Now it was the women’s turn. The three ladies sitting in front of me are simply not having it, I literally hear them say: “I can’t even.” Everyone seems to be whispering to each other, talking over the subtitled dialogue. Not a single person ventured to shush the others. It was like we had all collectively given up on this movie, treating it with the kind of casual familiarity reserved for timeless communal favorites like Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was a shame, because it really was a beautiful film.

Later, when it had ended, the most overheard phrase in the lobby was: “I’m sorry,”—as in, “I am sorry I brought you here.” It didn’t seem like anybody had been a fan of the film, although it seemed to me we’d gotten exactly what we were after, we’d gotten scared, profoundly unsettled at the revelation of our basest selves, not long gone, but lying right there, dormant within all of us.

In thinking about this audience’s cool reception of the film, it became clearer to me how much the film’s narrative structure mirrors that of Plato’s allegory of the cave. Having reveled in the construction of their cardboard, womb-like cave, the film’s characters lose themselves in an orgy of sex and violence that culminates in a blinding act of consensual cannibalism. This is all they have come to know as real.

The next scene is a kind of morning after in which everything we thought we knew about the film suddenly changes as a queer boy rises from the floor of this mad party and stumbles out the door into the light, taking us out of the squatter’s flat we have been in for the entire film and onto the real streets of a large Mexican city.

The abruptness of this shift from dark to light / fantasy world to real, as with Plato’s escaped prisoner, is blinding. We know from Plato’s thought exercise that the escaped prisoner upon adjusting their eyes will perceive the new world as more genuine than the old. In attempting to return to the cave to impart this new found wisdom on their fellow prisoners, they would again be blinded, now by darkness, and may even be killed by the others for what they perceive as the disastrous effects of leaving the cave.

The idea of this liberated cave party in a squatter’s building seeming safer than the world outside resonates with the film’s overarching theme of acceptance of life at the margins. In this way, the story of incest and cannibalism appears largely allegorical, a place where fantasies are cultivated, rather than repressed.

Guess what these horror fans hated even more than a night out in Brooklyn, or giant dicks, or girls pissing?…ALLEGORIES, they can’t stand them. When the film takes viewers outside of the cave for the first time and the possibility that the events we had just witnessed were not meant to be taken literally, it hit these people in the audience like a flaming bag of dog shit to the face.

The teeth sucking began again in earnest then, and it was like Plato had freed all of those prisoners at once and they all got dragged out into the light only to beg to be put back in their chains. This audience was not ready to have the wool pulled from their eyes. They would have been much more comfortable with the standard slasher fare, women being mutilated, castration anxieties, all the usual stuff.  

Programming We Are the Flesh was a brilliant move by BIHFF organizers as it pushed the envelope away from escapist fantasy and into a new, disquieting realm of social terror, one which forced these bourgeois modern viewers desensitized to violent acts of aggression to confront their complicity in the mundane horrors of globalization, poverty, and isolation. If you wanted to strike fear into the hearts of this Brooklyn borderland crowd, all you had to show them was a little honesty.

We all are the flesh. Grow up horror fans.

 - Ian Deleón  2016

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Cam’s Top 10

December 30, 2019 10:00 AM EST

2019 has been a pretty disappointing year overall for me when it comes to video games, but there was still plenty to love too.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

2019 has been an insane year for me. After getting my Bachelor’s in Journalism, I’ve been working to get my foot into the gaming industry to write and talk about what I love, and I’m forever thankful for the opportunities that have unexpectedly fallen onto my lap. I’ve traveled the country and have met and made connections with numerous members of the industry that I look up to, and eventually want to stand along side. So much has happened in such a short amount of time that I’ve spent most of the time that I can outside of playing games to prepare myself in big ways moving into 2020. If you are reading this, whether you are someone I know or someone I don’t, you are helping my dreams become a reality so, thank you. Now let’s get into what you came here for.

Depending on who you ask, some will say that 2019 was a great year for video games, while others will say that it was okay at best; I happen to sit on the latter. We have been spoiled with absolutely mesmerizing gaming experiences in both 2017 and 2018. If I’m being honest, I don’t think any game in 2019 would be in a serious discussion for Game of the Year if they came out in either of those time frames. Last year, I was incredibly conflicted about which title would be my Game of the Year between Red Dead Redemption 2 and Dead Cells to the point where I just said both (at this point though, it’s Red Dead).

For 2019, my GOTY immediately sat at my number one spot, and no other game made me question that choice as the year has progressed. 2019 has just been a mixed bag of games that a lot of people genuinely love, but nothing that most people could hold hands on and say is an absolute frontrunner. I don’t want to seem too down on the hard work that these creators put into their games, because I had some great gaming experiences in 2019, and still am going into 2020. I love talking about games, and I’ve been anticipating writing my top 10 games of 2019 so let’s get to it, shall we?

(Notable Games That I Did Not Get to Play in 2019: Ape Out, Astral Chain, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Judgment, Katana Zero, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Link’s Awakening, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and Telling Lies)

Honorable Mention: Death Stranding

Alright, let’s talk Hideo Kojima for a second. I’m sure it will sound crazy to some, but Death Stranding is my first real crack at one of his games. I’ve always wanted to get into the Metal Gear Solid series, but the stars have never aligned for me to do so. Ever since the fallout of Kojima and Konami to the announcement of the game at E3 2016, all I ever thought was “what’s the big deal here?” while everyone else was dancing their pants off. All I got from him is that he likes to go big and over-the-top while naming his characters way too literally. Regardless, I wasn’t entirely sold on Death Stranding until a few weeks before its release. By the time I pressed start, I still had no idea whether or not I was going to like “a Hideo Kojima Game.”

After trying out Death Stranding for myself, the verdict is I like it. The scary part is that I think I INCREDIBLY love it, and the reason that is scary to me is that I want to do everything this game has to offer. I want to do every premium delivery, earn every absolutely pointless star and I don’t care because I love…delivering packages. I love sorting everything as best I can and keep them clean for the drop off. I’ve played almost 30 hours of this game and I am still on Chapter 3. I just refuse to mainline this game because it is such a disservice to the world that has been made.

Even with all the things I love about this game, there are an equal amount of things that I hate about Death Stranding. I still can’t even say much as to what I think of the story. The stealth mechanics are terrible, even coming from a developer that practically invented the genre. Specific areas of this gorgeous world are just designed for you to want to bang your head against the wall.

While I equally hate what I love about this game, what I love about the game wins at the end of the day. So I will keep playing it slowly but surely, probably until the end of next year along with everything else that 2020 has to offer. I will finish this game; I will complete everything possible because I want to feel that satisfaction and I will likely write a very long article about that entire experience.

Until then, it doesn’t feel right to rank it on my 2019 list. I have no idea where I’m going to be at with everything once the time credits roll. All I know is, Death Stranding is one of my favorite games that I will never play again, once everything is said and done.

10. Creature in the Well

Creature in the Well is the first game from developer Flight School Studio, which focuses on an engineering droid known as Bot-C who awakens from a deep slumber in an endless storming desert. Coming across a small village with a lifeless power plant, Bot-C ventures inside to restore the plant while evading an unknown creature that lurks in the dark. Known as a “pin brawler,” Bot-C travels through different dungeons that involve pinball puzzles.

By charging energy cores and batting them at bumpers I solved engagingly fun puzzles that helped me restore the plant to its former glory. It is a straightforward but challenging experience that makes me want more of that addicting gameplay. Knowing this game was created by a two-man team makes me applaud it even more. Creature in the Well left a lasting impression, and I will be keeping my eyes on what that team is working on next. The game has one of my favorite art styles of this year along with atmospheric music and environments, making it a favorite of mine in the indie sphere of 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Creature in the Well.

9. Control 

Within the first couple of hours of playing Control, I was enthralled with everything about it: the world, the lore, and the aura, which is one of my favorites in any video game. It is beautifully made and feels haunting no matter what part of the bureau that you are exploring through. Being able to throw debris at enemies and levitate across platforms is incredible fun, even if the combat as a whole is pretty one-note.

At first, Control shot up to my Top 3 games of 2019, but as the game progressed and more of the story was explained, I felt like it fell to shambles. By the time I hit the end of Control, it didn’t feel like there was a proper “ending” to the story. It felt like a “to be continued” moment for the game’s upcoming DLC, with the number of things from the main story that didn’t get resolved. Even though the game didn’t entirely land on its feet, I still love the premise of what Remedy brought to the table with Control, along with its fun combat.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Control.

8. Borderlands 3

After waiting far too long since Borderlands 2, Borderlands 3 hit all the right notes for me except for what I was looking forward to the most, being the story. In Borderlands 2, I was so blown away by how strong a narrative that Gearbox was able to create in a universe that was so explicit and self-aware. Ending on a cliffhanger teasing the departure of Pandora to travel the galaxy for vaults on other planets encapsulated me, but I was worried about what was to come, especially after the end of Handsome Jack.

The story that was served in Borderlands 3 is such a disappointment on every level, but that doesn’t mean the full package wasn’t still great. With the amount of the quality-of-life changes made in Borderlands 3, the franchise is at the best place that it’s ever been. It is the first entry where I want to play as every Vault Hunter, just because all of them stick out so interestingly.

Even though I don’t get to play in co-op often, when I do it is some of the most fun that I have ever had in gaming. Gearbox may not have gone in the direction that I wanted with its story, but I love shootin’ and I love lootin’, which is exactly what Borderlands 3 is truly about.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Borderlands 3.

7. Indivisible

Indivisible is one of the few games from that come back to my mind of the most memorable gaming experiences that I had in 2019. When I reviewed it, I said that it was hard to put into words how I feel about the game, and up to now that is still true.

It has my favorite art direction of any game in 2019, all handcrafted and beautifully detailed. There’s a vast and unique set of party members that you can recruit into battle (including a lightning dog!), which gave me nearly endless ways to execute combos. The platforming is incredibly satisfying on so many levels, and it’s easily my favorite in the genre this generation. The story presented makes you truly consider the consequences that you might bring onto others based on the choices that you make.

There is very little about this game that I don’t think works in its favor. Give it a shot.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Indivisible.

6. Pokemon Sword and Shield

Pokemon was the first gaming franchise that I fell in love with. To this day, whether or not I am anticipating the newest mainline entry of the series, I will always pick it up and play the latest installment.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how the franchise has been a far off memory from what it once was back in the first three generations. For the longest time, there was nothing in the recent Pokemon entries that brought back the love I once had, until I played Pokemon Sword and Shield. When I found out that Nintendo was moving away from a handheld-only platform with the Switch, I finally thought we would be getting a new title similar to Pokemon Coliseum or XD Gale of Darkness back on the GameCube.

While Sword and Shield isn’t particularly that, it feels like what a modern-day Pokemon game should be. I’m always going to like the grindy old school versions more, because that is what Pokemon is to me. But with the incorporation of the Wild Area, being able to run into Pokemon from any generation and the variety with which they show up feels fresh. I can run into a Snorlax and then walk a few steps into a Drapion.

I know that a lot of people within recent years have criticized the series for having random encounters, which I still think is a weak criticism being a turn-based RPG, but I like how Game Freak was able to appease all players in that sense. This of course just speaks to the number of quality-of-life changes that Pokemon Sword and Shield made to make the series more accessible, combined with its great new setting. The Galar region–while on the nose a little bit too much–has a fascinating backstory, and how the legendary Pokemon Zacian and Zamazenta fit into that story is much more interesting than previous generations.

Pokemon Sword and Shield may honestly make the best changes that have ever been done in the entire franchise. The best part is, I’m not even finished with the game yet. I’m only five badges in as of writing this, and when I’m not playing Pokemon, all I’m thinking about is wishing that I was, which makes me so enormously happy. The only reason it isn’t higher on my list is that it is still just more of the same (which is not a bad thing at all).

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Pokemon Sword and Shield.

5. Baba is You

I’ve never been a huge fan of puzzle games. There are specific titles in the genre that I live and die for, but as a whole, I don’t go out of my way to play them unless they’re recommended to me. I heard great things about Baba is You and after hearing about its concept, I wanted to try it out. By playing as this rabbit-sheep thing known as Baba, you move words around changing the effects of items and environments around you. I can change a wall into water, or I can change my playable character to a rock instead. All of the game’s systems are new and cool.

Baba is You happens to make me feel like a complete imbecile the majority of the time that I play it, and I love every second of it. I will spend an hour trying to figure out a puzzle and not feel fatigued of my efforts, just stupid. Why is that ok? Well, it’s because after all the trial and error that I ensue by the time I figure it out and win, I can’t help to think that all that time and investment was worth it. It’s one of those puzzle games where you want to YouTube how to beat a specific level just to progress, but you refuse to do so because you’re doing the game dirty and you want to figure it out yourself. It makes me want to feel validated by beating every level so I can say “I beat Baba is You.”

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Baba is You.

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses 

It is crazy how in-depth and detailed that Fire Emblem: Three Houses is. It includes a massive suite of fleshed-out characters that you get to learn about and build them the way you want to utilize them on the battlefield, or you can let them do whatever they want. While teaching my students, I found out pretty early on that I could recruit kids from the other two houses over to my house (Golden Deer REPRESENT), taking them away from the other house leaders. However, knowing that there are technically four different routes that you can choose from in this 60+ hour game, I decided to stick with my original house members to focus on them because they were in the house I chose for a reason, and I didn’t want to sacrifice their characterization for other unassociated students.

Developer Intelligent Systems decided this time around to get rid of the weapon triangle, which isn’t a bad thing per se. But in previous Fire Emblem titles, I felt more inclined to use every character as equally as possible, and with the absence of that long-running franchise mechanic, it also made the combat feel slightly less engaging. I haven’t gotten to finish Three Houses yet, but with the amount that I have played so far it is probably, in my opinion, the best first-party title on the platform in 2019.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

3. Disco Elysium

If I had to make an unbiased, objective choice for Game of the Year in 2019, it would have to go to Disco Elysium. It is simply one of the most well-written games I have ever played (and there is A LOT of writing). Throughout every conversation I have with an NPC, I learn something about them or the world that exists around me while I’m trying to solve a crime about a man hanging from a tree. Each character I interact with has great charisma, and I feel like that fits into the city of Revachol as a whole.

At the start of the game, your character doesn’t know who he is, so you’re figuring it out along with him. As an RPG, your skills speak similarly to how your brain sends messages to you before you decide what to say out loud. Depending on how you build the detective, you can attempt skill checks to get the information you want, whether it is with charm or force. It is all so intricate and fascinating that I wish I had more time to play games, because it is another that I have yet to hit the credits for.

That being said, everything that I have experienced up to the point that I am currently at has been innovative and gripping. I can’t wait to go back to explore more of Revachol and find out its mysteries along with the murderer.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Disco Elysium.

2. Kingdom Hearts III

Oh god, here we go. Listen, Kingdom Hearts III…no matter what people thought of the game whether you loved it, liked it or hated it, it never would have met anyone’s expectations. After waiting almost 15 YEARS it could have been everything fans wanted and there would have still been backlash.

When it comes to me, I loved it. Were there issues? Of course. But where the game succeeded is where it truly matters to me. Kingdom Hearts is about friendship, caring for one another, making connections and how those connections lift us. Even though I think that Nomura could have structured the game better instead of shoving everything that we’ve been waiting all these years for in the final act, I think it delivered in the end. Kingdom Hearts III, especially with being such an acquired taste to many gamers, could have been A LOT worse than people were making it out to be. Even then, it is still a great game, even if it isn’t the great game that everyone wanted.

The combat is exactly as you’d expect from a mainline Kingdom Hearts title (although I wish they kept Limit Commands). There are numerous quality-of-life improvements made, like being able to upgrade your Keyblades and transferring them over to new game saves. Square has already added the much-beloved critical mode and is releasing a patch where players can modify exactly how they want to play through the game.

Kingdom Hearts III is great, and the upcoming Re:MIND DLC seems to be adding a lot of things that fans wanted originally in the main package. There is much still to look forward to as a Kingdom Hearts fan, and I’m incredibly excited to see where Nomura takes me.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Kingdom Hearts III.

1. The Walking Dead: The Final Season 

The final season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead can be — and to a degree is — a reprise of the first season, but it is so much more than that. It is a game that teaches you valuable lessons in parenting and how to build up children as they take your place as the future of humanity.

Playing as Clementine one last time felt like a chapter of my life was coming to an end. I’m not a parent yet, but seeing this young woman grow from the girl she once was into a motherly figure must feel similar to watching your own kid in the same way. This was also the first time where I felt like I could build Clementine into who I think she is as a person. I loved that there was an option to romance someone for those who see her having a partner, but I loved it even more that I could decide Clementine doesn’t need that, because she has AJ. She has always walked her path up to this point that way.

Throughout the game you are teaching AJ important lessons about life. These lessons may be focused on the reality of living in a post-apocalyptic world, but they all translate into normal life as well. Constantly I saw myself being presented with challenging questions of morality on what AJ should learn, and constantly I sat by myself in an empty room questioning my choices over and over, just because I didn’t want my choices to affect his decisions poorly. Even if Clem and AJ were partners throughout the story, at the end of the day, he is just a kid who was born into this world that doesn’t know what it is like to be a “normal” child like the other children that he meets, and it is Clementine’s job to show him what is right and what is wrong.

I experienced a vast variety of emotions playing through Clementine’s final chapter. I laughed, cried, cheered, and applauded due to the wonderful, frightening, and heart-wrenching moments that occurred throughout. But it wasn’t just a sendoff for the series, it was a bow of respect to Telltale; the old Telltale who started it all. With everything that the studio went through, it was an utter joy that Skybound was able to bring back a portion of the original team to finish the game. I was continuously invested in the story and characters, not even including Clementine. By the time credits rolled, I was crying ugly tears while smiling cheek-to-cheek.

All I have left to say is thank you. Thank you to every single person who had a part in making The Walking Dead a reality, whether it be the final season or any season prior. Thank you for creating one of my favorite characters in any medium and thank you for telling her story…Clementine’s story.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for the final episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 30, 2019 10:00 AM EST

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[mrmichaelchadler]

Short Films in Focus: IVRY

Jake Oleson’s “IVRY” is the kind of work that people love to call “lyrical” because of how it evokes emotions as a visual poem. While this is a documentary, it reminded me of fictional works such as David Gordon Green’s “George Washington,” Jeremiah Zagar’s “We The Animals” (available soon) and the films of Terrence Malick, films that bring in inexperienced actors and let them improvise to add something deeper to the narrative and filmmaking process. 

“IVRY” is a profile documentary about Ivry Hall, a young man from the South Side of Chicago who boxes, and teaches boxing to the younger kids in the neighborhood. When we hear him speak, we soon realize that he is speaking to one of his students (Elijah), offering wisdom and life lessons designed to push this kid in the right direction when the situation could push him into several other undesirable directions. Ivry has been in jail many times since the age of twelve, has had multiple tattoos and has seen everybody close to him fall off the edge never to be heard from again, because that’s what this neighborhood (Englewood, to be precise) has to offer. Ivry makes the point (in so many words) that we have more to offer ourselves than what our environment can give us, if only we look deep within. 

In just under 10 minutes, Oleson presents a deeply layered profile of someone who narrowly escaped the probability of having a short life and who now has a future in front of him. Oleson and cinematographer David Vollrath shot the film entirely in 16mm and it looks wonderful; Jay Wadley’s beautifully haunting score anchors "Ivry" without much of a break so that it feels like a whole piece where every moment matters. 

“IVRY” is a solid documentary short made with great confidence and with a subject worthy of such beautiful treatment. 

How did you find you subject?

I first met Ivry four years ago while shooting a series of short docs for a non-profit supporting his boxing gym, the Crushers Club. It’s an amazing organization run by this force of nature, Sally Hazelgrove, providing a safe space for at-risk youth in the South Side of Chicago to turn to instead of the gangs. Ivry was thirteen at the time and we managed to shoot this incredible match of him sparring on this sweltering hot night in July. Four years later I’m back in Chicago and decided to visit Crushers. I was shocked to find out most of the kids I met were no longer involved in the gym. Only a few remained, one of them being Ivry. I learned that a lot of kids had either been killed, incarcerated or fell back into the gangs.

What drew you to him?

I invited Ivry out for coffee in March and he told me all about his upbringing in Englewood—how he had been to jail multiple times before the age of twelve, and how he completely changed his mindset after his mother passed away at thirteen. He spoke so eloquently about his experiences for a seventeen-year-old, but also had this intense drive that blew me away. I wanted to know what had instilled that fire within him, and what made him outlast all of the other kids who left the gym these past four years. It quickly became apparent that this was worth exploring in a film. 

Why shoot in 16mm?

It may seem a bit backwards to shoot a documentary on film but ever since I first tried it a few years ago it’s completely upended my youtube-generation approach of shooting absolutely everything involved with the story. The limitations have been freeing in a way and have helped me focus my ideas and stay sharp while shooting on the fly. 

How much of what we’re seeing is documentary, and how much is reenactment (if any)?

There were points in Ivry’s story that I wanted to underline with more of a cinematic approach, but others that I wanted to be less heavy-handed and more raw. So we shot a lot more traditional fly on the wall coverage in the first few days of the shoot and slowly built out the steadicam scenes with Ivry’s help as the shoot progressed. So all of the steadicam scenes were staged and based off of previously captured moments and everything else was more fly on the wall. I think we struck a nice balance in the edit between the two approaches that fits with the different points of his story. But ultimately it was about letting the story dictate the tone and throwing out any visual ideas that seemed to water things down. The voice over was taken from a fifteen minute conversation I recorded between Ivry and Elijah two weeks before the shoot. During production, we shot another candid conversation between the two of them at the gym to help give context to the viewer. 

The boxing scene must have been challenging. How did you end up designing the sequence into what it has become?

We originally didn’t think we’d be able to shoot Ivry’s fight at the Golden Gloves because the dates didn’t line up. Instead, we shot this surreal sequence of him sparring in the gym with the strobing lights to be the climax of the film. When we came back from shooting the Golden Gloves it was obvious in the edit that the fight would replace the surreal sequence we shot. It sat on the cutting room floor for a few weeks before I decided it might be interesting to use the dreamlike footage as a representation of the fight going on in Ivry’s head. I spent a long time cutting selects that matched different moments from the Golden Gloves fight and spliced them together in a way that hopefully feels like one seamless fight. It took a long time but I feel like the climactic fight now has an electricity to it that reflects the passion that Ivry has to keep fighting in life. 

The coda at the end brings us right to today. When was this made? Any idea what happened to the kid he was talking to?

The Golden Gloves were April 14th, 2018, and we locked the cut early July so just a few months ago! Elijah is currently on summer break from O’Toole Elementary and still training at the Crushers Club with Ivry until he leaves for Alabama State in the fall.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on a script for a short about mental illness and in talks of doing a series of short docs like Ivry in the near future. We’ll see what happens!

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[junker-town]

How The Process failed Jahlil Okafor

Jahlil Okafor pulls a blanket over his lap, leans back in the leather recliner, and gazes up at the projector screen. The lights dim and Reese Witherspoon begins to narrate the opening sequence of Home Again, a romantic comedy that proves to be light on both romance and comedy. But Okafor doesn’t much care about the plot. He’s here for the setting.

Okafor’s girlfriend rests her head on his shoulder. A plate of sweet potato fries sits on a small, circular table that stems from the console between their two chairs. This is just the first of two movies he’ll watch on this September afternoon, both in the comfort of the iPic luxury theater at New York’s Fulton Market. Okafor is in town for a week of physical therapy and workouts, but he’s been known to take a train from Philadelphia to Manhattan just to catch a flick or two at the iPic. By the end of this trip he’ll have seen every film the theater offers.

“People want to know why I like going to the movies so much,” Okafor says. “If I was a psychologist and I had to evaluate myself, maybe I like how dark the room is and I'm able to sit there like a normal person and not be bothered and just enjoy watching a fantasy.”

Okafor has become accustomed to the darkness. He was once the top recruit in a high school class that included Karl-Anthony Towns, Myles Turner, and D’Angelo Russell, then earned an NCAA championship and first-team All-America honors in his lone season at Duke. But the past two years have not gone nearly as smoothly. The basketball world has judged Okafor harshly, labeling him as a delinquent after a series of off-court incidents as a rookie and a bust following two seasons of neglectful defense and injuries. Yet he kept to himself, content to let others shape the narrative of his pro career.

I'm unsure if I'm still on the team. Am I really a part of this process? Am I really a part of this culture?

This past summer, he sank deeper into anonymity. When Joel Embiid christened the 76ers’ young core as the “FEDS,” (Markelle Fultz, Embiid, Dario Saric, Ben Simmons), Okafor’s name was conspicuously absent, despite the fact that he was the third pick in the NBA draft just two years ago. While his teammates posted group photos on Instagram, Okafor swore off social media. As trade rumors swirled — and continue to do so — he stayed mum.

But silence should never be mistaken for apathy or acquiescence. The past two seasons affected Okafor deeply. He addressed his physical issues this summer, adopting a vegan diet that left him 20 pounds lighter and free of the chronic knee swelling that hampered him last season. But the offseason was about emotional growth as well, as Okafor finally arrived at a place where he is ready to open up about all that has transpired and where he goes from here.

“I'm unsure if I'm still on the team,” Okafor says now. “Am I really a part of this process? Am I really a part of this culture? That's why the guys have been out there on social media, but I've just kind of been in the dark. I'll go to a Sixers event, smile, take pictures with the kids and stuff like that, but I’m still thinking, ‘am I a part of this team?’”

Between the two showings at the iPic, Okafor heads to midtown Manhattan, where the National Basketball Players Association has installed a fully outfitted court in its Sixth Avenue office. Rick Lewis, who has trained Okafor since he was 13 years old, puts the 6’11 center through a series of perimeter-focused drills: length-of the-floor dribbling; hundreds of three-pointers; pull-up jump shots. Beads of sweat drip down the back of Okafor’s neck and he tosses his shirt to the side, revealing his newly trim waste and a nascent six-pack.

For most of Okafor’s life, scenes like this were his refuge. His mother died when he was just 9 years old, and he buried his grief in hours of jump shots. “Each time I would go into the house where my mother used to be, I would start crying,” Okafor recalls. “I would just always go right back outside and start shooting and forget everything.”

Photo by Elsa/Getty Images

As a rookie, though, basketball turned from an outlet to a burden. In November of 2015, Okafor was involved in an altercation outside a Boston nightclub; video emerged of his swinging at a man who had taunted him. In the aftermath, two other stories surfaced in the Philadelphia Inquirer. One revealed that police had stopped him for driving 108 mph on the Ben Franklin Bridge earlier that month. Another report claimed that a man had pulled a gun on Okafor during a verbal dispute outside an Old City nightclub in October.

Reactions were swift and predictable: Another young athlete was immature at best, a bad person at worst. The Sixers suspended him for two games, and Okafor apologized in a series of perfunctory tweets. Inside, though, Okafor was struggling. For two weeks following the Boston incident he hardly left the house, sending friends and family members to pick up food.

“I was embarrassed, to say the least,” he says now. “They started criticizing the way my dad raised me. And that was the biggest thing that hit me, because I know when my mom passed, he did everything he could to put me in the best situation.”

Those around him say Okafor was deeply ashamed. During games, he wanted to hide. “I had to go on the court in front of all these thousands of people, and I know they had all just witnessed what I did in that video and were judging me for it,” he says. “So I remember not wanting to be on the court, being embarrassed to be out there. That was the first time basketball wasn’t my escape.”

It wasn’t until a long talk with Lewis in a Memphis hotel room that Okafor began to find his way out of his funk. His longtime coach talked about recovering from mistakes, referencing Bill Clinton as an example of moving past infamous moments. The key, Lewis preached, was owning up to those transgressions. But Okafor was 19 at the time, and anything more than a surface-level apology was uncomfortable. Two years later, self-reflection comes easier.

“We were almost about to win that game against the Celtics and it ended up getting away from us in the fourth quarter,” Okafor says of that night in Boston. “I remember just being upset because I thought we were about to get our first win. And I just decided I'm going to go out that night. I don't remember a lot of it, because I was really intoxicated. And me being drunk, I wasn't in my right state of mind. I remember being taunted — just random stuff I would hear all the time on the court. I just reacted differently.”

I remember my teacher said that you could go on the school bus every day and not throw up for 300 days, but if you throw up that one day, everybody's going to know you as the kid who threw up on the bus.

Those early experiences hardened Okafor. He was shocked when the speeding ticket became major news, then again when a rumor spread that he’d used a fake ID at a bar near his house, an allegation he vehemently denies. As the public made snap judgments about his character, he felt his trust in others erode.

“When you watch the [Boston] video, you’re gonna say ‘what a bad guy,’” says Lloyd Pierce, a 76ers assistant coach. “It was a one-off and who knows how and why it happened. But if you’ve never seen that one day, and you’ve judged Jahlil by everything else, you know he’s the sweetest, nicest, best teammate, upbeat. He’s a great guy. You’re never going to have a bad encounter with Jahlil Okafor.”

But that’s not how the public saw him. And Okafor couldn’t help but think back to a lesson from grade school. “Growing up, I remember hearing that one mistake changes everybody's idea of you,” he says. “I remember my teacher said that you could go on the school bus every day and not throw up for 300 days, but if you throw up that one day, everybody's going to know you as the kid who threw up on the bus.”

Following his rookie year, Okafor has kept a low public profile. Rehabbing his image as a basketball player, though, has proved to be more difficult. As much as the video of the Boston fight has haunted Okafor, another clip has caused more lasting damage. Last season, footage went viral showing Okafor standing flat-footed in the lane while the Heat missed a short jump shot, grabbed an offensive rebound, and eventually scored. It became the Zapruder film of Okafor’s defense, Exhibit A of his ineptitude at that end of the court.

Last season, Okafor ranked 61st out of 62 qualifying centers (ahead of only Towns) in defensive Real Plus-Minus, a stat that measures a player’s estimated on-court impact on his team’s defensive performance. According to basketball-reference.com, the Sixers were 4.9 points per 100 possessions worse on defense with Okafor on the court last season and 2.5 points worse when he was a rookie. Says one league executive, “He can’t guard anybody and he doesn’t try to guard anybody.”

Pierce doesn’t agree, particularly when it comes to questions of Okafor’s desire. He says Okafor sought him out after the video hit Twitter, asking what he’d done wrong. Pierce told him that he’d handled his assignment correctly — Okafor was supposed to retreat and keep the ball in front of him. It was Okafor’s listless body language that made the play look so bad. “Could he have done more on the play?” Pierce asks now. “Always. But he was where we want him on the floor. It always comes down to perception, optics. In 48 minutes, you’re going to find a clip on every single player on every team.”

Okafor, of course, didn’t go third in the draft because of his defensive merits. He was a dominant low-post scorer in college who mixed size and power with deft footwork and a soft touch around the hoop. He found open shooters when double-teamed and handled the ball well for his size. Though he wasn’t much of an outside shooter, Okafor loved to face-up his defender at the elbow and attack off the dribble. A good portion of those skills translated immediately to the NBA; he averaged 17.5 points per game as a rookie before a meniscus tear in his right knee ended his season in early March.

Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

Things changed last season. After missing two years due to injury, Embiid finally took the court. Along with Okafor and Nerlens Noel, that gave the Sixers three centers who were recent lottery picks. When all three were active, there weren’t enough minutes to go around. But the trio was also frequently injured, giving coach Brett Brown little opportunity to see how they fit together. Okafor and Embiid played just 80 minutes as a tandem; the Sixers were outscored by 34 points during that time.

Okafor’s playing time fluctuated and some nights he didn’t dress at all. His frustration reached a peak in January, when Brown called him into the coach’s office, took out a calendar, and informed Okafor that he would sit out the next four games. “That whole week I was just pissed off,” Okafor says.

He returned to the lineup at Washington. Two minutes into the game, he caught the ball on the right wing against Wizards center Marcin Gortat. Okafor turned, backed into Gortat with a pair of hard dribbles, and then accelerated toward the middle of the lane. He scooped the ball into the hoop with his left hand, drew a foul and set a tone. For the rest of the game he attacked relentlessly, even staring down his own coaches after several baskets. Okafor finished with 26 points and nine rebounds. “It was just me being pissed, kind of saying to our organization that I think this is unfair,” Okafor says. “Just letting the basketball world know that I'm still the guy that everybody thought I was.”

The Sixers hoped other teams would notice, because they realized they would have to trade one of their centers. In February, negotiations over an Okafor deal intensified to the point where the 76ers told him to stay home while the team traveled to Charlotte. But the deal fell apart and the next day. Okafor boarded an American Airlines flight to rejoin the team in Boston. An uncomfortable situation grew worse.

“It was awkward,” Okafor said. “I'm at home, watching my team play on TV, not a part of that team, but not a part of any other team. I was anxious. Eager to figure out where I was going to be. Kind of excited to have an opportunity to be with a new team and have a fresh start. Sad that I was leaving my teammates that I'd gotten really close with. And then I ended up playing the next night. I can't really put into words how difficult it was.”

So Okafor remains a Sixer — for now, at least. The 76ers continue to discuss trade options, but they have yet to find a suitable offer, in part because his value has plateaued. Says a rival general manager, “Everybody knows he’s been on the block. The fact that he’s been injury-prone obviously doesn’t help — he’s only played 103 games total in two seasons.”

He also represents an increasingly irrelevant NBA archetype: the back-to-the-basket center. As the NBA hurtles into the pace-and-space era, teams are searching for big men who shoot well enough to spread the floor and move well enough to contain ball screens and protect the rim. That’s not Okafor’s game. Not yet, anyway.

This past spring, as Okafor’s knee pain persisted, he read that dairy products can cause swelling. On a whim, he cut it out of his diet entirely. A week later, he visited the team’s trainers and they were amazed: The fluid in his knee was gone. So next he cut out chicken, then steak, then all animal-based products. And so it was that Okafor found himself shooting a spot for PETA at a vegan restaurant in Philadelphia last month.

Now 20 pounds lighter and pain free, Okafor is noticeably quicker. And in Okafor’s mind, if his body wasn’t a finished product before this summer, neither was his game. “I would hear somebody else get criticized, like ‘oh, this person is not good at that, but oh, he's going into his second year,’” Okafor says. “But when it's me, it’s ‘well, he's not good at that, he'll never be good at it.’ I never got the ‘oh, he's going into his second year.’”

I was kind of already thinking that I'm not really a part of this future. So it wasn't like 'oh my goodness, they left me out.’ I kind of left myself out.

Okafor has a point: He is still just 21. The early statistical evidence against him might be damning, but it’s not absolute. When Marc Gasol was a rookie, for instance, the Grizzlies were 5.8 points per 100 possessions worse on defense when he was on the court. He merely went on to win the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2012-13. But Gasol’s anticipation and awareness are otherworldly. By contrast, Okafor has struggled to pick up on the nuances of positioning at both end of the court. Those who have watched him closely point out a host of subtle flaws. Instead of rolling hard to the basket when he sets a screen, he tends to float on the perimeter. He lets defenders push him off the block, instead of working to establish deep position. On defense, his lack of quickness is magnified by the fact that he hasn’t grasped spacing and positioning, a problem that also leaves him out of place to rebound effectively.

Still, even the executive who trashed Okafor’s defense isn’t ready to give up on him: “I think he can get a lot better, but he has to know that he’s not good enough,” the exec says. “It’s going to take a total egoless approach.”

That might not be possible in Philadelphia. Two years of criticism, of loss after loss, of fans turning against him, have taken their toll. If Embiid has come to represent the fruits of The Process — to the point where he has adopted that moniker as his own — Okafor has become a discarded byproduct overshadowed by his young teammates.

“I definitely feel like I'm the scapegoat for a lot of The Process issues,” Okafor says. “Something I learned is that when you lose, people find a reason why you're losing and I think that's where the defense thing really blew up — ‘oh, he can't play defense, that's why they only won 10 games.’ But there were a lot of other reasons why we only won 10 games that season.

“And then the second year rolls around. It's JoJo's first year playing NBA basketball, so he doesn't get the blame. And it's Dario's first year, so he doesn't get the blame. Nerlens just had surgery and Ben wasn't on the court either, so I felt like it was me again as the scapegoat.”

Against that backdrop, he begins his third season in Philly. Pierce raves about Okafor’s attitude and professionalism; if he’s unhappy, he hasn’t shown it. But internally, frustration continues to mount. “I was kind of already thinking that I'm not really a part of this future,” he says of his teammates’ photos and tweets. “So it wasn't like 'oh my goodness, they left me out.’ I kind of left myself out.”

So is it time to move on? Okafor pauses. He wants to make it clear that he respects the organization. That he loves his teammates. That he has no complaints about how he has been treated. But, he confesses, “Sometimes I do think it would be great to get a fresh start, be on a new team, new surroundings, new teammates. I think about that often and I think that's something that could benefit me.”

He lingers in the fantasy, at the chance to find a way out of the darkness, a chance to feel home again.