#or they’re strong on fundamentals and struggle with Attention To Detail

[ramblingguy54]

Sonic & Tails R: A Love Letter To Miles Tails Prower’s Characterization

     Warning: This will contain massive spoilers for the short radio play series of Sonic & Tails R. If you haven’t listened to the radio play yet on Youtube, I’d highly recommend any hardcore Sonic fan who hasn’t seen it check it out. It’s one Hell of a treat.

     For as far back as I can remember in my childhood, Tails’ story of trying to step outta Sonic’s shadow has been such a resonating one for myself. Even when I was a much younger kid playing my Dreamcast, during entries like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, there was some idea lingering about why Tails just stood out more emotionally in his journey to grow beyond depending on Sonic all the time for help. Now here I am a young adult in my late twenties having such a deeper appreciation of this little two tailed genius kiddo because he’s got an important element that’s made him so beloved for good reason.

     In spite of his genius being a rival to that of Eggman’s high IQ and of course proving to surpass it plenty of times when scenarios boil down to being a high stakes battle, Miles Tails Prower beneath it all is still just like any one of us. We’re all trying to find our place in this world about what defines us for who we are as unique people. He wants to be more than just seen as someone who’s alongside Sonic The Hedgehog’s never say die attitude, but prove he’s plenty capable of standing on his own two feet to protect everything the kid holds dear to himself. Underdog stories, when they’re naturally executed very well, can reel me in so easily. They are very much my bread & butter trope I adore seeing.

     To no one’s surprise, the two Sonic Adventure’s iterations portrayal of Tails’ characterization are hands down some of my favorite writing for the two tailed fox, regarding what the 3D era has done toward him, development wise. It gave him more of an existential struggle to endure like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t around to help stop Eggman? What if I’m not strong enough to accomplish what he can?”, making Tails plight to be seen as an equal all the more endearing when stopping Eggman in his climatic battle against the Egg Walker in Station Square. This here is a great use of a timeless lesson you can apply in life that if you set you heart and mind on anything, there isn’t a thing you can’t accomplish on your own, which is why many fell in love with Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s writing for Miles Tails Prower’s journey of independence.

     As someone who comes from a large family tree of relatives, I feel the weight of my existence on my shoulders at a number of points more than I’d care to count, admittedly. Seeing Tails struggle with his sense of purpose, in contrast to observing how much Sonic has accomplished with his carefree, yet deeply compassionate attitude, means the world to me in watching another trying to comprehend their value as a whole on how much they matter, overall. This is a big part of why my fondness for SA1 & 2′s quality has never wavered over these years, besides still obviously enjoying most of their game play mechanics. People can try to debate to their heart’s content on whether the Adventure games still hold up in their own eyes, but I’ll always respect them for how they tried to develop certain characters, such as Tails, Gamma, and Shadow The Hedgehog notably, to attempt expanding upon their characters, as well as world building.

     I won’t bother going into a rant about how Sonic’s recent 3D games have butchered Tails’ personality & relatable nature, due to the current writers in charge of handling the cast of characters. More or less, I greatly empathize toward the notion many have already stated about Tails being so cowardly and God forbid, looking at Lost World, downright severely mean spirited. Rather, I’m obviously writing this lengthy post to breakdown why Sonic & Tails R succeeds, where these certain 3D games have greatly faltered in exploring Tails’ emotional dilemmas as an insecure, yet still having the courage to prove himself, talented boy full of hidden potential he doesn’t quite realize, until his back is against the wall in life threatening situations.

“That day, I realized I couldn’t depend on you forever. Not that I can’t depend on you, but like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t here?”, you know?”

     Sonic & Tails R further delves into this fundamental rule of what has defined Tails in Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s stories of events where Sonic wasn’t there to aid his best bud in taking down Eggman’s evil efforts for global domination, most importantly his fear of defending the Earth without his role model. Besides what I already stated in SA1′s events in Station where he stopped the Egg Walker, as well as the missile Eggman launched from detonating before their climatic battle, Tails watched Sonic blow up in ARK’s capsule presuming him to be dead after Sonic imparted how much faith he has in the kid’s abilities to be truly strong in the face of any foe. Sonic & Tails R manages to use fan service in a way that doesn’t feel like “pandering” for the sake of it, using this past canon material to do more of an in-depth study about Miles’ anxieties of existing without Sonic.

     Wouldn’t put it past them if EmuEmi & crew were using SA2′s Sonic death fake out scene in that space capsule to further add trauma to Tails’ psychological attachment to Sonic, as well as his insecurities of depending on him too much, to boot. While it’s never obviously outright stated in their radio play, I definitely believe they were factoring this element into adding dramatic exploration for why Tails is so self-conscious about the worst case scenario of permanently losing Sonic. Watching Sonic supposedly die put Tails into a deeper state of self-reflection, so I very much enjoyed how they went using these past events to create a thorough exploration about him learning just as it’s important to realize you need to stand up for yourself without using someone else as a crutch all the time, it’s doubly important to remember there’s nothing wrong about asking someone for help when you’re about to be down and out with little options left.

     Sonic & Tails R beautifully builds upon the foundation these two games’ stories left behind years ago, creating new damn great material to explore with the most iconic characters of this cast, Sonic & Tails brotherly dynamic. I’ve been praising Sonic & Tails R out the wazoo for how well it captured Tails underdog story of overcoming death defying odds, but it managed to remind me how simply adorable and outright wonderfully endearing their brotherly chemistry is as a whole. This is a big friendly reminder Sonic isn’t all about being cocky wise cracking character making meta jokes left and right, but he can be plenty capable of showing serious compassion to anyone he values as an ally and friend. This is no greater evident, than with him verbally lifting Tails up in his time of need when he’s self-depreciating his own significance. It can be seen in Episodes 2, 4, and 7 giving Tails motivational pieces of advice.

    Episode 2 In Adabat’s Cavern

-Sonic: Wasn’t it your radar that helped us find these Emerald shards in the first place? How could you be slowing us down when you’ve gotten us this far?

-Tails: But, I...

-Sonic: I could never make something like that. You’re the smartest person I know, Tails. One way or another, we’ll figure this out, count on it.

         Episode 4 In Holoska After Helping Silver Save The Chao

-Sonic: So, what was that back there? At the cave, in Adabat? -Tails: What do you mean? -Sonic: Frozen stiff. Confidence shot. It’s not like you. It was more than feeling like you were “slowing us down”, right?

        Episode 7 Inside The Egg Carrier 3

-Sonic: Let’s split up! I’ll distract them and you can go after the energy source. -Tails: You’re gonna take them on all by yourself!? Let me help, Sonic! -Sonic: No time for this, Tails. Stop overthinking and just go! If I can get their attention, I’ll take the heat off of you and that room you’re going to probably won’t have any security. Take this emerald and I’ll take the other one we have. It’ll lead me right to you after I beat these guys. -Tails: O-Okay... -Sonic: Hold on, Tails! Listen to me. Don’t stop moving and be careful. I’ll be fine and so will you!

     Sonic & Tails R remembers the most crucial detail of their important relationship. One isn’t better than the other and needing to always rely upon that notion for helping one outta a jam, but instead showcases how they’re equals as a team/bros. Sonic may be super fast and strong, however Tails has his intelligence to analyze situations in a different angle Sonic wouldn’t necessarily consider, per say. Which isn’t to say Tails couldn’t put up a fight either, as we’ve seen in SA1 & SA2′s stories where he faced Eggman one on one with no outside help to best him at his own game of wits & strength.

     We get see the apex of this idea through Tails facing Eggman in his super improved mecha walker. Although Tails may get thrown for a loop here at first by Eggman, it’s his villainous speech about winners and losers in their world that ironically does the exact opposite of what he intended. Eggman wanted to crush Tails’ sense of self worth before finishing him off, but all it did was reignite the very lesson Sonic told him earlier before running to distract Eggman’s robotic minions. That said lesson of he’s more than capable of facing dangerous threats

-Eggman: Poor boy. We all have to learn this lesson, sooner or later. In every game there’s no one you can depend on. You’re all alone and you’re either a winner, or a loser. And as you know, loser’s lose all of their lives. Say goodbye, fox!

-Tails: You’re wrong! I can depend Sonic! I won’t let him down! I can’t because...Because he’s depending on me! And because of that I won’t lose to you!

     This radio play strikes a good balance in utilizing the grey moral area about depending on someone vs it being an unhealthy display of attachment derived from serious insecurity. Word’s can’t begin to describe how much I loved this moment to pieces because it’s oh so important for writing Tails’ characterization. If you’re going to tackle him being super self conscious about his reliance on Sonic, then you gotta remember why they are so close to one another to begin with. Sonic & Tails have an unbreakable connection, considering they’ve brought out their best qualities in themselves from being together as individuals. For Sonic, it’s his older brother compassion to Tails to bring him outta feeling melancholy. For Tails, the kid finally understands there isn’t anything wrong with depending on Sonic when he needs it most.

     After all, that’s what a real healthy friendship is all about. Whether you’re giving someone a dose of tough love, or simply a piece of motivational advice, it defines how much you truly care about someone, period. Sonic & Tails have this very same power from their bond, which is why new emeralds form from their compassionate friendship that hasn’t been shaken after all the years they’ve been together. Another detail worth noting is it adds to the lore in an impactful manner when Tikal expresses in Episode 8 about positive connections and thoughts from users of the Chaos Emeralds having a strong will & heart. Using the ideas they had for encapsulating Sonic & Tails’ dynamic to create new emeralds from their love for each other as brothers adds an emotional weight.

“So, Sonic’s not the only one who harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds? I can too!?”

“Yes, you have a strong heart! There is a power waiting to be unlocked within you, as well.”

          I’d always daydreamed about in my childhood seeing Super Sonic & Tails take down a threatening villain, whether it was Eggman or different powerful creature such as Chaos or the Biolizard. You can imagine how fucking giddy I was beyond belief to see this artwork of Episode 9′s cover for the radio play. Tails not only got to have another one on one with Eggman, but a team up with Super Sonic in his own respective Super form? Sign me the Hell up! Talk about an all you eat buffet of good writing for Tails’ journey reaching its climax. Getting to hear this play out, alongside the amazing song of Fly With Me, made it authentically feel like something straight outta if there were an installment of Sonic Adventure 3 being brought into reality, which certainly feels like it now.

     Episode 9 has so much awesome stuff with Sonic & Tails working together in their super forms. Particularly, my favorite scene is at the beginning when Sonic teaches Tails how to navigate his newly acquired speed in his respective Super form. My heart melted hearing Sonic help Tails through it all, while he was overjoyed about how fun this new form is for himself. Wholesome Sonic & Tails content is the perfect daily serotonin for me, easily. It’s an awesome fun fact to know they used a scrapped boss from Tails Tornado segment in SA1 for Eggman’s flying dragon three headed robot in their big final battle, once again using old canon material in a very effective manner to boost the quality of their fan made story.

     It’s been a real thrill to hear Mike Pollock play a straight forward serious Eggman making my day in more ways than one, considering that’s another thing I’ve been yearning for desperately besides Tails being a competent character again. His performance in Episode 9 when Eggman gave that speech about how long he’s been at odds with Sonic & Tails stubborn will power was simply excellent. The moment he told his mechanical dragon to crush them I got serious chills. That’s the Eggman I remember and grew up with. He could be a hammy villain sure, but Eggman wasn’t a doormat that could be swiftly beaten. Robotnik can be considered a serious threat in his own right and this radio play nailed it down to the very letter with how much he predicted their actions.

“Sonic, all I ever wanted to do was be like you. You’re not scared of anyone or anything. I could never be like that. At least, so I thought. I grew from that, but then I got so caught up in trying to prove it that thought it wasn’t okay to depend upon anyone, especially you. I just didn’t want to be that scared little kid in Station Square anymore, but now I understand. It’s okay to depend on your friends. It all means is that we’re stronger together, so the next time Eggman comes back and wants to start any trouble with you, or any of my friends. Emeralds or no emeralds, he’s gonna have to get past me and he won’t!”

Sonic By Episode 1′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here we come!

Tails By Episode 10′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here I come!

Turn your thoughts into power. Be all that you can be.

     The ending legit got me choked up because what of they decided to do for wrapping up Tails journey in a poetic fashion. Having Tails go off on his own separate journey to grow more independence pulled on my heart strings perfectly. Very much so, as I’m transitioning slowly, but surely, into gaining more freedom to go out into the outside world in my own life. Concluding the story, by Sonic & Tails holding onto the two Emeralds their bond had formed from positive energy, due to their powerful friendship, was so heartwarming. This is how you write an overview of what makes Sonic & Tails chemistry work so well as it does.

     Sonic & Tails R’s ending represents while some things never change, like Sonic and Tails bond for each other, it also shows there’s very much a necessity for people to grow, hence Tails’ whole solo journey in the epilogue. People can’t stay in the same place forever and will need go about finding their own path, even if it means saying “goodbye” periodically for a notable amount of time.

     It’s for these reasons I’ve listed in great explanation above throughout this detailed post cement Sonic & Tails R high on my list of favorite Sonic fan projects. They captured the magic of what made the Adventure games so beloved. Gonna be looking back on this passion project for many years to come. Everyone involved in this year long effort of a project dating all the way back Summer of 2020 ought to be immensely proud for how much their hard efforts paid off in the long run.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts here! 

Hope you enjoyed. 

[ot3]

i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey. 

anyway. here you have it. 

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith.  I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it. 

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene. 

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department  as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land. 

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass. 

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area.  In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.  

[rotworld]

Voice and Style

an anon asked:

Do you have any tips for learning how to write in a different writing style?

and honestly i just went off the rails lmfao this is a long post, but hopefully it's useful. i wasn't 100% sure what you meant by style, but i assume you mean more along the lines of "voice" than the difference between like narrative, persuasive, etc. but let me know if you meant something else! what i'm going to do is 1) talk about voice in writing, 2) author voice vs character voice and examples, and 3) actually answer the question. i promise 1 and 2 are relevant to get to 3!

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to start we need to break down what "voice" is. this is a term that gets thrown around a lot when people talk about writing, and i've heard people get a little heated about it lol but i'll give my take at least. there are actually two kinds of voice: the writer's voice, and character voice. we'll start by focusing on the former.

describing an author's voice is tricky, because it's largely subjective. some parts of it are concrete and easy to analyze, while others are down to the author's personality, perspective, and life experience. while it is something that you continue to hone as you gain experience, it isn't something you can measure or "rank" comparatively. so...what the hell is it lol

if we boil it down to the simplest components, here's what i think goes into voice: tone, syntax, word choice, and perspective. this isn't all that voice is, but these are the fundamental building blocks, and the way you use them is a mix of personal preference/affinity, your level of experience as a writer, and who you are outside of writing.

->tone is often described as the "attitude" of your writing, the mood you evoke with a combination of the other components. in "twelve moments in the life of an artist," david sedaris recounts his struggles with an attempt at an art career and a meth addiction, simultaneously. the subject matter is difficult and emotionally distressing, but because it's sedaris writing it, it's fucking hilarious. it's funny because of the tone, the ridiculous statements he makes, the witty observations and the flippant way he describes things. someone else could write the same story and make it a dramatic tragedy, but sedaris' tone is one of humor.

->syntax is the way a writer constructs their sentences. i know this sounds boring lol but it can play a huge role in a writer's voice. when do you use long and complex sentences versus short and simple ones? do you use repetition, and for what purpose? when do you use active or passive voice? for example, "the monster bit him" vs "he was bitten by the monster." these sentences mean the same thing but have a subtle difference in where the focus is. these might seem like small, insignificant details, but they can drastically change how a work sounds. the rhythm of your writing also ties into syntax.

->word choice is just how it sounds: what words do you use when you write? are you more of a "purple prose" type who likes flowery, detailed descriptions, or are you more sparse and "beige?" do you use certain phrases of colloquialisms?

->perspective is straightforward, too. do you like or have a tendency for 1st, 2nd or 3rd person? there's some variation in 3rd person, too, like omniscient 3rd or close 3rd. i think a writer's strength and preference in this, as well as when they deviate, also contributes to their voice.

but what about character voice? this is kind of similar, but limited to specific characters and how you portray them. it includes their dialogue and word choice but also their perspective or worldview, their opinions, and their personality expressed by their interactions. it's the kind of thing that differentiates characters speaking even without a speech tag to label them. there might be really extreme differences between character voices and the author's voice, depending on the character.

i always feel kind of narcissistic using my own work as an example lmao but i think changeling is a good example, since each passage is super focused on a particular character and their perspective. in first person, or close 3rd like this, a character voice can come out in narration. huntress sounds like this:

The hunt ends. Her catch, meager. Still, she will not waste it. Wolf Mother travels far to see the meat put to good use.

She walks the crossroads, strange paths through the strange world. Sniffs out the road she needs and steps through thick fog. Darkness gives way to orange autumn haze. Eternal harvest season. Blackened corn rots on the stalk. Machinery rusts in the fields. Bloated animal bodies decay in old barns. It is sad and stifling, the stench of forgotten things. And there—the farmer’s son. Lopsided boy. He stands on his porch, wiping blood and grime from his hammer. Distrustful, he watches Wolf Mother. Above, a slow-turning weathervane creaks.

her sentences are often short and choppy. the unusual syntax (the hunt ends. her catch, meager) gives it a feeling like a feral stream of consciousness. rotten corn, machine rust and bodies decaying are visceral, smelly descriptions because her sense of smell is especially strong and she relies on it to interact with the world. in contrast, ghostface sounds like this:

He’s hanging around Haddonfield when She comes calling, because he doesn’t have a realm of his own. Oh, no, no, no, of course it’s not a problem. He doesn’t mind at all, honest! It’s just, you know, he’s real good at this whole ritualistic murder thing. Got a knack for it, you might say. He was something of a professional before he ever got brought on board with an impressive résumé spanning most of the continental United States—not that he’s bragging, of course. He’s just experienced, motivated, highly-organized, versatile, and frankly, overqualified.

this is almost conversational. he's "hanging around," he's "got a knack for it," like the way you talk to a friend. his narration has a very informal and emotive vocabulary. he talks about his skill at murdering people like he's at a job interview, and he's extremely arrogant. my hope, as the author, is that all of this comes across and you get a strong sense of these characters just from brief passages.

finally, we can go back to the original question lol how do you write in a different "style?" i think you have to analyze different styles and voices, and figure out what you're going for. do you want to write something dreamy and surreal, or more dry and sarcastic? what tone are you going for, and how can your usage of word choice, syntax and perspective help you attain it?

i'm giving you homework lmao track down your favorite book and try analyzing the author's voice. take some notes on the tone, and if it contrasts the subject matter or genre (is it cynical? is it nostalgic? is it a lighthearted, fairy tale-esque fantasy or a more somber, gothic one?). also pay attention to the word choice. how vivid or descriptive is the prose? does it evoke certain imagery or themes? (in kraken by china mieville, a story about a giant squid that goes missing from a museum and the chaos that follows, he uses a lot of water and squid metaphors.) use the elements of voice listed above as a checklist of things to look for. if there's a certain writer you want to emulate or take inspiration from, studying their work like this could help a lot.

one last thing: since we talked so much about voice, i want to ask why you want to change your style. you can ignore this part if you want lol this is just a pep talk and something i think is good to mention. if you want to focus on differentiating character voices, or trying out a new style for fun, that's awesome! you can and should experiment with style, but remember that your voice as a writer is something unique to you. it's not something that you have to fundamentally change. we can all learn from other writers and hone or refine our style, but i think who we are on a personal level affects our affinity for certain stylistic choices that form our voice.

for example, on a scale of purple to beige, i lean pretty lavender lmao but i'm not ashamed of that! i was influenced a lot by writers who have a (capital R) Romantic flair to their prose, so i like flowery language and descriptions of nature. if it gets too purple and "in the way" of the story, then sure, i might need to trim down certain passages. but my affinity and tendencies aren't something i'm going to get rid of altogether, rather something i'll practice so they're super polished. once you identify your voice, i think you should embrace it and roll with it.

[rhalgrs]

4, 19, 32, 40, 45! (Gryphon, Ao, and Schach!)

So this is probably going to be long lol - I’ll go through each question at a time, and skip whatever characters I have nothing for, or nothing applies to. It’s all under a ‘read more’

4. Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

Gryphon-four: 

Four grew up in the city-state of Ala Mhigo. The only thing they remember about Ala Mhigo from their childhood is imperial rule, and their parent’s stories of how it was before. Every day, they saw Garlean soldiers marching the streets, they saw the image of a strong empire that supposedly protected its people, they saw the dwindling supplies of food at home, the shrinking pile of savings, their parents hiding their tears from their child as they tried to figure out how to continue providing safety for their child. The constant incidents shaped their view of the world - a fierce pride and protectiveness of Ala Mhigo, and a blinding hate for anything Garlean. 

The last straw that convinced them to leave for the Ala Mhigan Resistance at merely 17 was being caught stealing a sack of flour, consequently having their pinky cut off on the spot to make an example to everyone, and at that moment their decision to join the Resistance shaped the rest of their life. They’re not shy in telling people about how they used to live and why they joined.

Ao: 

Ao used to be quite the bright and sunny personality, excitable and willing to take on any job as a fresh adventurer, pleased to help anyone and everyone. At one point, he took on a job that brought him to the cold reaches of Coerthas. The job was to slay a creature that had been spotted near an abandoned outpost, as it was causing trouble and potentially nesting there, and the knights and dragoons were busy in areas that were actually strategically important. Ao was confident he could take on it himself - plus, the reward for slaying it was rather appealing. Unused to the cold and snow, however, he was soon caught up in a whiteout of a blizzard, cold biting deep into him, mistakenly assuming the snow would soon cease. So, there he sat, hunched over in the cold, trying to not let the snow settle and bury him, when a wyrm very much bigger than anticipated found him. 

The resulting fight looked like a massacre. Fresh blood splattered across the trampled snow, a broken and bloodied dragon dying with torn wings and maimed tail. Ao lay beside it, clutching its severed talon to his chest as proof of his victory - but wounded. A blow every here and there leaving him with bruises and a general sense of pain, perhaps a broken limb… and crimson staining the ground, flowing from a deep wound in his throat - a misstep leading to him nearly dying. He only survived thanks to a trader and his pack chocobo finding him after passing through and examining the struggle they’d seen from a distance. 

Ultimately, his throat was damaged to the point he could no longer speak without pain, leaving him essentially mute and with scars across his face and down his neck. It was a hell of a reality check to show him he wasn’t invincible. His time recovering led him to be depressed for a while, and once he did get better, he stayed quieter, less flashy, and his instincts caused him to grow more cautious. He tries not to bring it up, and if he’s asked about it, all he’ll be able to manage is telling some half-truths. 

Schach: 

As a young adult just trying to figure out what to do with his life, Schach had no idea what he wanted, jumping around from engineering to music making. One evening, a walk in the nearby forests led Schach to get lost for hours, not realizing he didn’t know where he was until he stumbled across a ranger taking samples by coring trees. After a bit of chatter, he learned what this person was doing, eventually talking about what they’d studied and learning that the ranger had studied forestry. He never realized his passion for the environment and flora could grow into a career, but at that moment he decided that what this park ranger had explained was exactly what he wanted to do, and ultimately went into studying the field of forestry with no doubts.

19. What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

Four: 

They’re too willing to give up literally anything for their job, including relationships - they’ve taught themselves how to not get too attached. A handful of times they’d actually gotten into a relationship, hiding their occupation from their partner, only to abruptly break things off or vanish with no explanation. Mostly, it was simply because they had to move for work, and they claim they don’t really care and that relationships are just a cover for a normal life. Their previous partners really don’t like them because of this. 

Ao: 

He really just doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and he’s a little eccentric in how often he might actually see them, considering how often he travels. He’s a little unstable at this point, too, and would be far too worried about if he’s being a good partner or if his partner even cares for him - at any rate, he just hasn’t found anyone he wants to date yet.

Schach:

Really, the biggest flaw would be how he might get too engrossed in his research and not quite notice if his s/o is in a bad mood or doesn’t want to hear more of it. Their attention is not always quite there, and while he is incredibly caring and gentle, he just is oblivious to how little he might pay attention at times. 

32. Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

Ao:

If he’s put into a situation where he can’t solve problems by either fighting or running away, he’ll grow incredibly uncomfortable. Pretty much, he hates being confronted or being insulted without the ability to retaliate in any way. 

Schach:

He definitely likes having groups of people to discuss work with around him, and never minds participating in a bustling academic fair! As soon as he’s in social gatherings around, let’s say, groups of drunk people or others who are only there to mess around with friends and not have conversations with, he gets self-conscious. He really doesn’t know what to talk about to others if they’re not interested in his work, and realizes not everyone cares enough to talk about academic work or field research.

40. How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Four:

They’ll be courteous enough - maybe a bit paranoid with food workers, watching like a hawk what they do with food they’re preparing to make sure it’s not poisoned or anything. 

Ao:

He tries to be nice, and if he could he’d strike up a conversation, but usually his interactions with them are either pointing and gestures, or writing out stuff on paper if need be - the bare minimum of communicating what he needs. 

Schach: 

He’ll definitely just try to chat with them for a minute or two if they’re genuinely nice to him, and has ended up befriending a few vendors he frequents. Aside from that, he also works to help supply lumber to a few merchants, so he knows his way around some rather specific markets quite well. 

45. What does your character believe will happen to them after they die? Does this belief scare them?

Four:

They would like to believe that when they die, their soul is carried into the Halls of the Twelve. They fear that they’ve done too many bad things to ever go there. Thinking about how they might really simply disappear in a burst of aether scares them. 

Ao:

He doesn’t think about it a lot. His attitude is ‘what happens, happens’. His brushes with death made him think how the only thing he cares about is staying alive. 

Schach:

If you ask him what happens, he’ll launch into an incredibly detailed discussion of how your soul will explode into a burst of aether and then re-enter the lifestream, and how your body will decompose and find its way back to the earth. This doesn’t really scare him. Instead, he’ll rather cheerily tell you that he’d like to have a tree planted on his resting place after he dies so he can give back to the environment. 

[thelittlepalmtree]

Chloe is Fifteen

This started out as a quick post and then I got really upset lol

I think a lot of the people in the fandom forget how young the characters in MLB are. I honestly think they’re all around 15 if not closer to 14 though I know there’s some ambiguity. We have to remember the kids watching the show are even younger, between 6 and 10 as far as I know.

A few months back I got into a very heated argument with some people because they seemed happy to write off Chloe as a villain. After all, she’s a bully, and they were bullied, so she’s a terrible person, right? But the truth is, even if you were bullied as a kid, it’s not all or even mostly on the bully. Because the fundamental truth about kids that young is that they can’t be blamed for their actions.

Now I’m not saying don’t hold them accountable, by all means, we should respond to negative behavior in a way that teaches them why it’s wrong and that they can’t do it again. But the reason we do that isn’t for the pleasure of punishment, but in order to teach that child more appropriate behavior. If punishment isn’t what they need, it’s not going to be the best response because at the end of the day the goal is to end that behavior and replace it with positive behavior.

To me, Chloe shows a lot of signs of being a child with an Emotional/Behavioral Dsiability (that’s what we call it in education though to earn that label you can have any number of diagnoses) and therefore needs some serious help learning coping mechanisms. We’ve even seen evidence of childhood trauma (a neglectful parent: Audrey) which is almost always present in children with E/BDs. Chloe clearly has really strong emotions, and when she feels them she gets overwhelmed and struggles to control her behavior. Does that make her a bad person? On screen it certainly comes off that way.

I recently subbed for a paraprofessional who was a one-to-one aid for a girl who seemed to have an e/bd. She was academically on grade level, but needed to take breaks when she got worked up. When I arrived, she was in crisis, crying in the back of her room because her teachers basically didn’t give a fuck about her. Throughout the break she took (which was about an hour long), she expressed how angry she was at her class for being chaotic. She couldn’t cope with the teacher’s shaming the class for their behavior when she was behaving properly (the fact that the teachers sucked in that class is another story), something that most of us adults would probably be able to realize wasn’t a big deal. At several points during her crisis she threatened to hurt herself or other students in the class (I was the school counselor this whole time so she responded to this behavior). If another parent was watching this happen, they might be angry and demand she be taken out of the school, they might feel unsafe even. And she knew the severity of what she was saying, but she was upset and she couldn’t control herself. When I and the other teachers were patient with her and finally helped her focus on other things, like drawing and sensory activities she was completely calm and able to return to class. The rest of the day, she only took one more break which was during a test. 

I think most people, if they met the girl I worked with that day, would never classify her as a “bad person.” It is very clear that she simply needs extra help. She needs to learn more appropriate coping mechanisms for her emotions. And yet Chloe, who does not have any support at all, could be described almost exactly the same way. It’s easy to hate Chloe because she’s mean, but why is she mean? Why is Marinette nice? Why is Alya nice? Why is Adrien Nice? It has very little to do with some inherent goodness and quite a lot to do with how all of these characters were raised. We see Marinette with loving parents who are always there to support her. They encourage her to pursue her dreams and work hard, but they also give her all their love and attention, maybe not pushing her to excel. This is unlike Alya’s parents who both work hard, Alya is clearly given a lot of responsibility as she takes care of her little sisters. That might be why she’s always willing to jump into the action, her parents have shown her that she not only is capable, but that she needs to be capable. And Adrien, who still has trauma in his past, was always held to high expectations, his bad behavior would never have been enabled the way Chloe’s was. The backgrounds of all these characters were made clear specifically to show us what makes these characters who they are.

And Chloe was given that background too. At first we see that she’s spoiled by her father, but the slow release of details about Audrey was so vital to the growth of her character. Honestly, as a teacher, seeing Chloe’s backstory is heartbreaking. Having a parent that doesn’t give a shit about you and a parent that tries to overcompensate by just giving you whatever you want and not actually parenting you is such a recipe for disaster. Think about it, when you were a kid, if throwing a tantrum got you everything you ever wanted, would you ever learn to stop throwing tantrums? This kind of lazy parenting on the part of Mayor Bourgeois is so damaging to a kid. If all goes well, they might be able to get past it when they’re in school--except for Chloe everyone at school enables her behavior as well, so she’s never learning the basic emotional control that we all learned.

And on top of that her mother is Audrey Bourgeois. Chloe is clearly so desperate for her mother’s love, I mean it’s honestly heart breaking to watch. I mean in Audrey entire screen time she only ever gave a shit about Chloe when someone said she was the meanest girl in Paris. That’s just more reinforcing of negative behavior. She never stood a chance.

So we’ve got a girl with a lot of anger and no positive ways to manage it. On top of that she’s fifteen, and even the best fifteen year olds are still fifteen. She’s got all kinds of hormones and feelings running through her, oh and did I mention, because of her behavioral problems, all her peers hate her? So of course she’s got no incentive to be nice to them.

So how do we help kids like this in real life? How do we get them ready for real life? Well we show them a lot of compassion and understanding first of all. Then we teach them positive coping mechanisms, and then we manage their behavior (meaning reinforce good behavior and punish bad behavior). When it comes to behavior management it is so much more important to reinforce good behavior than to punish bad behavior. Because that shows kids how managing their feelings well gets them a reward, and makes them want to manage their feelings in a positive way.

The fact that Chloe loves being Queen Bee is exactly what makes her such a great character to me. She is finally being given positive reinforcement for her positive behavior and she loves it. She’s so excited to get to be good! That shows me what a truly realistic and sweet kid Chloe really is. It shows me that she has so much potential if only one of the adults in her life would just step the fuck up and PARENT her.

Unfortunately, that role went to Ladybug, who is just a teenager herself. Of course Marinette can’t understand the complexity behind Chloe’s behavior and how much being Queen Bee meant to her. This is nothing against Marinette, just that she is also a fifteen year old kid. It’s not her job to parent Chloe, and she’s not doing that job. So Chloe, who was finally making progress (albeit it was set back by the visit from her mom), is now being thrown back into the terrible situation she was in.

Criticizing or Hating Chloe is not like Criticizing or hating a typical villain. For one, Chloe is not the villain and is (as of right now) one of the heroes of this story, Marinette just doesn’t like her. Secondly, criticizing White Diamond, or Shadoweaver is completely different from criticizing Chloe. They are adults who are completely aware of how their behavior is toxic and yet still behave that way. They have control of themselves and even if they did have a tragic backstory, they aren’t children with brains that haven’t fully developed. Chloe is.

If you hate Chloe, ask yourself whether you’d hate Adrien if he behaved the way she did. The truth is, what makes you a good person at fifteen isn’t anything inherently good and special in you. It’s your experiences and how the adults in your life taught you to behave that made you that person--even if they were bad like Gabriel Agreste is to Adrien, they may have taught you to be good.

[flying-elliska]

I know this is super cliche and an idealization of reality, but I am like obsessed with french culture and how elegant it seems. How you guys focus on details and beauty. What are aspects of French culture that you like the most and how do you think they could be incorporated in everyday life?

Ahaha hey anon 😂💕 well it is a bit cliche, but I totally get being admirative of and inspired by certain aspects of a culture (as long as you know it's not the whole of it I don't think there is anything wrong with that)

For me my favorite aspects of French culture ? Things I am now much more aware of now I don't live there anymore (and there is a degree of idealization there too, I guess, with the missing)

- Quality over quantity. A sort of...minimalism I guess but this isn't so much aesthetic as knowing what to care about and what not. It's not important that things are perfect or immaculate or super shiny or perform in excess. What matters is character. Intentionality. I've read somewhere that elegance is about editing and I think this applies. Take a few things off from your outfit before leaving in the morning. Do more with less. Details are important, too, but don't overcharge, go for sharpness. I think a lot of French ppl are instinctively weary of anything too shiny, too fake. Polished is good but we need to see a veneer of struggle, of fire. Know what is beautiful and interesting about you and let it stand for itself, no matter how flawed. Style over fashion : knowing how to read the dynamic of a shape, how to present an allure and a silhouette, how to contrast color. Privacy and a sense of mystery are important, too. Whenever you show something, make it count.

- Existentialism. All my favorite French people have this mix of critical fire, simmering anger at the injustice of the world, and sad resolve and compassion towards the flaws in human nature. Humor that is a little dark and absurd, too. And a big sentimental heart behind all that arch, blase posturing. Know where your reserves of passion are ; fall in love with words and how to express ideas for the beauty of discussion ; find things to get mad about ; do things even though they're doomed to end in fire, for the principle. Be angry and fierce and eloquent - but not tedious. Don't be too obvious about the arguments you are trying to make. (To simplify - do the right thing but be a bitch about it, lol).

- Earthly delights. So much of my happiest memories of France are linked to nature, food, sensorial experiences. Plucking lilac under the may rain. Perfume shopping with my mother. The smell of Linden blossom in June, Rimbaud-style. Stealing apples and currants and raspberries as a kid. Picking mushrooms w my grandma. Buying herbs at a market. Putting my bare hands (and feet too sometimes) in the ground during gardening. Making jam from wild plums, acid sweet, with a touch of lavender. Detach this from any puritanical judgments on pleasure or moral values or status. This is an essential, fundamental part of being human. Let it saturate you and reform your poetical language. Buy some nice pungent cheese sometimes, with a nice red wine. Just because.

- Try to be real and meaningful and thought-provoking more than to be nice and consensual and non-threatening. Not all French women follow this advice, but all my favorite did and do. Seek real connection, at the risk of fragility, awkwardness, disagreement. Having a strong opinion and the arguments go defend it will get you more respect. Don't try too hard to be likeable. And you can be a bit rude too sometimes as long as you are charming about it (and always say hello.) Smiling too much is not indicated either. This is a land of salt over sugar. Read complicated books for fun. Don't put too much stock in appearances. Take pride in being attentive. Appreciate your negative emotions. Cultivate your rebellious spiritedness. Try to find out what people really need, when you make a gesture, so it doesn't ring empty.

-In doubt black anything always works

Of course this is very much born from my own experience ; you can read anything and everything into culture, and French culture has some damn nasty demons. I love getting inspired by different cultures myself - that said I hope you can find things to love in your own culture, too. These are the things I am choosing to keep from my birth culture as I move into the wider world. You will have to make your own version of it through contact, too (and films and books and friends etc ! Totally valid !) Just...beware the bitchy perfectionism lmao

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E15 (Apr 24, 2018)

Hello hello hello! As @eponymous-rose​ is away doing Important Science, I’m covering TM recap duty tonight! Tonight’s guests: Marisha & Liam. Tonight’s announcements: 

This Saturday is International Tabletop Day! G&S is running special programming all day to celebrate.

VM Origins #6 is out at all available online comic retailers. The final touches are being placed on the comic collected edition; details to be released soon!

Wednesday Club airs tomorrow at 7pm PST.

826LA hit the $35,000 reward tier this week! This means Matt will be hosting another Fireside Chat soon. (Liam reveals that the vintage robe & a tiger ring Matt wore in the last chat were gifts from him after a certain jazz-hands-related event in the last campaign.) As a reminder, all donations are doubled up to $40,000 thanks to a generous critter matching donations. 

Pillars of Eternity is out in two weeks! Reminder that the characters of VM will be playable as voice sets in this campaign; the new portrait art for Vax was released this week. Check it out at versusevil.com/criticalrole! Liam extols Travis’s voice acting and the “finesse” in his performance and hopes that fans will be very happy with it.

Reminder: Dani Carr hosts Critical Role Recaps every week. 

CR Stats for Episode 15

48 natural ones this campaign so far ($4800 from D&D Beyond to 826LA!)

67 natural 20s so far, even without a Lucky rogue!

Over both campaigns & 51 initiative rolls, Ashley averages only 9.5 on her initiative rolls. :( However, she’ll be on Talks next week! Yay!

Beau is super into working for the Gentleman right now. As long as she makes friends in high places, she’s happy (in part because she knows they won’t last long). 

Liam doesn’t miss trap duty at all. (He’s enjoying being a screw-up wizard.) That said, he still enjoys watching Sam bring his magic touch to his old class. 

Beau fundamentally trusts that people will always act in their own self-interest, which is why she told Jester to take care of herself first. To Beau, selfishness & survival are synonymous--most people want to make sure they aren’t going to get caught or killed. That’s how she can trust untrustworthy people to work for the good of the group, and why she thought Caleb & Nott needed to be part of a bigger conversation.

Sam, of course, very briefly FaceTimes into the show with the knowledge that Liam called him a comedic genius. He wishes everyone to know that this is accurate, does a remarkable Howdy Doody impression, and leaves.

Caleb didn’t have any experience with the Zone of Truth spell before and paid close attention while it was being cast, but “nobody asked him any questions, so I guess it’s fine.” 

Caleb’s one-on-one with the DM hasn’t changed his playstyle or character interpretation yet, since it didn’t reveal anything significant. He does think it might have given Caleb a mildly different outlook on certain things/his mood a little bit, but no fundamental shifts yet. Beau’s one-on-one shifted her perspective a lot--she doesn’t respect authority at all, so being put in her place was a good check on her personality & took the edge off her wrecking-ball habits. Both Marisha & Brian talk about respecting someone willing to call them out on their crap.

Gif of the Week: this glorious thing by @scottc_miller on twitter. Poor everyone. Poor drunk Nott.

Beau is officially warming up to Molly. Awwww, my heart. “I don’t know if Molly’s warming up to Beau, but...” Brian: “Self-preservation, guilty until proven innocent...an optimist!”

Molly’s amnesia reveal hasn’t really changed Caleb’s opinion of him. He does trust that Molly told the truth within the Zone’s context, but he knows that may not be the whole truth. The only person who’s changed in Caleb’s estimation is actually Beau; Liam talks about a low score he rolled on an arcana check on the magical symbols, which Beau surpassed, and in the moment Caleb realized that meant Beau must have had some formal schooling. “A little checkmark went ‘boop!’ in a box.”

Beau is aware of her own terrible flirting with women, & Marisha references Beau’s strong preference to be in charge in her interactions. Marisha also talks about some of her Meisner acting classes/acting methods in how scenes are structured and it’s actually really, really cool. Liam segues into his first week in NYU at his very first voice acting class where they laid on the floor and did “pelvic thrusts” to loosen the diaphragm. Marisha recalls her college voice acting teacher telling her she was terrible and shouldn’t pursue voice acting because she spoke from the back of her throat. 

All of Caleb’s spells have been selected for RP reasons over functionality/utility. Liam knows it’s not the most optimal build &, as might be expected, doesn’t care in the slightest. You go, boo.

Liam and Marisha giggle over fighting such a classic old-school monster as a gelatinous cube. Liam honestly wishes Frumpkin could have been dissolved; Caleb emphatically does not. Marisha remembers finding the old cube mini with Matt which could be opened up so other minis could fit inside, and they sat in their living room for some time putting minis inside it. The pair that slays together stays together. Liam also remembers a Comic Con that had light-up gelatinous cube minis which he attended riiiiight after meeting Marisha. 

Fanart of the Week: this by @sephiramy! Look at how good everyone looks, awwww. 

Liam jokes that he personally excluded Quebec from the giveaways and it’s inexplicably hilarious, especially given Matt’s apologies for it on the regular show.

Beau’s hand going numb on the cube attack didn’t phase her at all; she’s still in the “adolescent” phase where she isn’t afraid of any bad things that might happen to her.

In re: screwing the DM with in-universe D&D choices: “Path of the Duck for the fuck.” 

When it comes to HP management, the rest of the party is trying to make sure they can get people up when they’re down, especially since Jester canonically dislikes healing. Marisha reflects on the last campaign where she & Sam often filled the blanks around Ashley’s healing, and feels everyone’s trying to fill a similar role now. Liam and Marisha would ideally like another healer, but neither Beau nor Caleb are paying much attention to maintaining a balanced party comp. 

The cat’s paw version of Caleb’s spell was always planned given his attachment to Frumpkin.

Liam talks about pre-stream puzzles from campaign one, including a complicated hydraulic puzzle that Taliesin’s dragonborn paladin sidestepped with one brute force elbow. He also remembers a child’s square puzzle that took “a group of adults an embarrassing time to solve.” 

Cast- and staff-wide digression into puzzle-shaming Gandalf for flunking the Moria door riddle. Gandalf the Grey--more like Gandalf the Bad at Riddles, amirite

Beau’s ability to solve the magic puzzle feels to Marisha like the lessons your dad makes you learn as a kid, even though you never think you’ll use them--(such as being made to learn to change your own oil despite thinking you’ll always use AutoZone), but then you end up using the skill later on and resent it the whole time. 

Caleb’s increased participation in discussions lately is an intentional choice on Liam’s part. 

Beau’s improvement in dealing with the rest of the M9 is due to her becoming more comfortable with them.

Caleb recognizes Fjord’s arcane power, but doesn’t question it at all due to the magical nature of their world. (Neither Liam nor Caleb trusts Fjord to be neutral good: “He spat saltwater out!”)

Marisha makes a great point about how everyone in a D&D party is by definition magical and special, but everyone in the M9 right now feels like they’re still discovering what that means. Liam points out that VM very much felt like strong, special people with greatness thrust upon them; M9 feels like a troupe of random carnies. 

Marisha on why she’s playing a human in D&D when so many possibilities exist: “Some people like playing ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.” She likes going from an all-powerful half-elven archdruid prodigy to a schmo who can just punch things really hard. 

While discussing impostor syndrome, Brian quotes David Milch: “So much of the accomplishment in art comes not from the discovery of one’s gift but from its acceptance.” He likes that the leveling system supports the slow growth of a character in an RP sense and allows the character to learn and accept his or her strengths. He likes that it’s not straight escapism, it’s the combination of one foot in reality and one foot in fantasy.

Liam points out that since their group is very theater- and story-driven, they often use the leveling process to support story choices and character growth over class optimization. Marisha relates it back to the choices in Disney movies, where sometimes the protagonist discovers their innate power & embraces it in order to succeed, vs. where sometimes a protagonist must overcome an innate feature and rise above it in order to succeed. She loves that dichotomy. (Brian feels Scanlan represented similar principles in the last campaign.)

Liam’s favorite moment of the last episode was Sam’s small drunk goblin irritation. 

In re: the rising from the floor at the end of the last episode, Liam hopes there’s a way to talk their way out of any upcoming fight, since Caleb’s pretty tapped. Beau: “This is fine.”

After Dark: I Know What You Did Last Summer Edition

On transferring from the relationship between Vax & Keyleth to Caleb & Beau--both Liam & Marisha have had some disputes about everything that went down in the High Richter’s house. Marisha: “I wouldn’t use the word ‘disputes.’” Liam: “What would you use?” Marisha: “...Clarifications?” They both are struggling with how much their in- and out-of-game relationships have changed over the course of the two campaigns. 

The crew photoshops Liam’s hairy V-necked chest onto Marisha live. What even. How.

Marisha does miss some things about spellcasting, but enjoys watching everyone else struggle with concentration checks and saving throws. 

Liam and Marisha both enjoy building characters and then assigning the classes that fit their story, instead of deciding what class to play first & building a character to that.

Brief aside where both Marisha (not Beau) & Caleb (not Liam) talk about how much they love Jester. 

Liam discusses in- and out-of-player knowledge when it comes to Fjord. Liam knows there’s an eldritch horror behind him, but Caleb has no clue. Marisha sees him as the altrustic half-leader who’s hiding a lot. Liam hypothesizes that someone was about to die, and Fjord saved whoever it was by offering himself to Cthulu. Liam doesn’t think Fjord is good-aligned. Marisha doesn’t trust his smarts. 

Marisha tells a story about Taliesin’s hair at C2E2. They were doing group photos when a family with a little girl came up who asked Taliesin his favorite hair color. He answered “I’m really into the peacock fade with the blue and the fade into green and the purple and the emerald,” and the poor girl was a little overwhelmed. (Marisha once answered her second-grade teacher’s question about her favorite color as “iridescent” and feels the teacher was more impressed with her vocabulary than her color choice.)

If they were pulled into Exandria today, Marisha would like to be a wild magic sorcerer or a paladin; Liam would be a wizard. 

If the M9 were stuck in a cavern with no food, Marisha would eat Fjord first since he’s probably already a little salted. 

Beau’s martial artistry is inspired by Ip Man. 

Liam steps out for a moment after a coughing fit, then returns in order to stand very, very close to Brian. Close enough that Brian’s ear rests on Liam’s stomach. Close enough that Marisha feels left out and both of them cuddle on Brian’s lap to end the show. I’m glad I’m not kidding. 

See you Thursday!

[emilisgough-blog]

So why The Radio Is Still Famous At this time

Over time, many technologies are becoming popular inside the entertainment and leisure market, have remained for quite a while, and eventually faded away into oblivion. First, it had been the cassette player. For nearly ten years, many music companies flourished by manufacturing cassette players, and recorded cassettes. It absolutely was closely accompanied by the advent with the walkman, which further popularized cassette players as well as the cassette industry. When Sony launched the Discman, it revolutionized the music industry, and firms that have been into cassette manufacturing underwent a transition to produce music CDs. Discmans provided excellent playback quality, and then for a very long time it seemed things cannot be improved upon up to far as playback quality is worried. People strongly believed Discmans have there been to keep forever. However, using the interest in internet increasing day-by-day, Discman lost its fan club to online music portals and websites. As on today, you are able to listen or hear just about anything on the web. It can be worth acknowledging that amidst these inventions and emerging market trends, the radio has still managed to retain its popularity, and is also still a crucial way of entertaining your self. Why? The answer is obvious. When you need to spend some money to get new CDs and DVDs, or load your MP3 player with sound tracks downloaded online, the air offers everything instantly - and never have to spend just one extra dime. With many different Radio stations offering a very good selection of songs and music albums, the potential of FM just is not ignored.

FM stations and popularity of the radio The fundamental advantage with the radio is finished the years it may be compact in space, can be carried everywhere, is very simple to afford, and it will not cost much. You'll be able to slip a little radio unit to your pocket and go about almost anywhere. Radios have a dedicated fan club following a FM stations. Moreover, the most crucial simple truth is a good century after its invention, the air is still "going strong", and yes it appears to be if it's still good for another century, except if another modern invention or discovery takes a place. Why is the radio still popular? • Excellent options for FM music stations. There are lots of radio channels available. You do have a huge variety about what you want to listen to. Be it music, news, sports updates, weather related information, new movie launches, reviews, commercials, etc, you will find it all in FM stations. • Hearing the news. Many people still prefer to pay attention to news stories over the radio. You can avail many radio news channels, and remain updated with what is happening in the political arena. • Listening to commercials. Radio commercials are a fun way to understand new popular product releases. You're able to know what's in and what's out. You can also get just what the new superstore is selling, as well as what new offers are around to the listeners. • Market updates. Many radio programs offer stock trading game and also other important updates. You obtain an idea which company is doing well, and what one is struggling in the market. • No extra expenses. It's not necessary to sign up for radio channels. They're absolve to tune in to. For more details about may bo dam see this popular resource.

[sol1056]

the dangers of dabblers

It’s important to remember VLD isn't being run by anyone who loved the original so much they were desperate to do a remake/reboot. This was completely top-down: someone at Dreamworks thought it’d make a popular franchise cornerstone, and of course they’d want to hire some or all of the team that made AtLA/LoK into a pop-culture juggernaut. (It’s worth noting that by S3 a lot of those names had moved on: several directors, and at least two writers.)

Somewhere there’s an interview with the EPs where they admitted they walked into their first DW meetings unable to remember who was the original main character. I think JDS thought it was Sven (Shiro), while LM was certain it was Keith. Or maybe vice-versa. Point is, I doubt either had thought of the series in years, and their vague recollection was sketchy, at best. (And apparently didn’t care enough to freaking google it, either, which says volumes.)

Which means that given it’s the EPs’ role to set the story’s outlines, we have two people aware enough of the original work to instinctively mix it up, just like fanfic would. But at the same time, they lack a strong-enough tie to the original work, which means they don’t feel obligated to slavishly mimic the original, either.

Sometimes that combination goes well. Sometimes, it doesn’t. 

If you’re used to fanfic, you've seen this before: a new writer in the fandom, and you check their stats to find they’ve written fifty, a hundred, or more stories -- but never more than one or two, maybe up to five, in any one fandom. They write and move on -- and to them, your treasured fandom is just one in a long line. They’re not emotionally invested, and they see this as freedom to do whatever they want, without guilt.

Sometimes, a dabbler's stories will give readers a fresh view from a semi-outsider’s perspective. But those cases are successful, imo, because they still respect the fandom; the ones who don't inevitably end up writing interesting premises that devolve into frustrating disasters. The fault lies in their disinterest in playing with care in someone else’s sandbox -- and I don’t mean the original creators. I mean the fandom itself.

The first hint will usually be a certain amount of apathy towards the canonical main character(s). The writer will instead latch onto a secondary or a tertiary character, layering on head canons and tilting canonical events like a funhouse mirror. For readers at least passing familiar with canon, it can be cool to see it from new angles, if sometimes a little disconcerting.  

This is fine, so long as the writer values their chosen replacement protagonist to the same degree they're convincing readers to do so. Without that loyalty, the dabbling writer will have no qualms tossing that character aside to turn their attention elsewhere. If, as a reader, you were willing to emotionally invest in this secondary or tertiary character getting the spotlight -- I’d be quite surprised if you’re all that happy when the writer bastardizes them for plot convenience, assuming they don’t get bored and abruptly drop that character completely.

Unfortunately, when a writer’s just passing through, there’s little point in complaining. They don’t get it. They don’t get the story, they don’t get the characters, and they’re not emotionally invested enough to even try. At best, they’ll be baffled. At worst, they’ll retaliate with outright disgust -- or even malice -- when readers cry foul.

(If you think it wasn’t textbook when the EPs complained bitterly about how the execs ‘made’ them put Shiro back in, then you haven’t been in fandom nearly as long as you think you have.)  

For all the talk of nostalgia goggles, VLD as delivered displays minimal respect for -- and hardly any emotional investment in -- the original. Which, okay, fine: but neither do the EPs display any respect for -- or emotional investment in -- their own version of the story.

And that’s a major problem.

You can see it in how the EPs skipped the basics in character creation: hand-waving character ages, head-canoning their own original characters (seriously?), and failing to provide even simple backstories. Even beginner writers instinctively know the value of nailing down a character's base stats: age, height, weight, race, sexuality, family history. These details inform characterization, and I will never get over my astonishment that the EPs not only skipped this fundamental step, but that they'd be so dismissively nonchalant about having done so.

You can see it in how the EPs are utterly baffled by the popularity of the Keith/Lance ship. For that matter, you can see it in how the EPs sprinkled numerous Allura/Shiro hints in S1/S2, and seem completely ignorant of the effect. Just like with real people, when we're lukewarm about a character, we struggle to see why someone else would care, so we’ll miss major shipping potential. Add in what sounds like a real lack of genre savvy, no wonder the EPs had no clue they’d created some powerful fandom bait.

You can see it in how the EPs will freely torque characters or worldbuilding to push plot or manufacture conflict, even if that requires a character contradict what they’d said only minutes before. Or how the EPs drop character arcs, fail to create compelling stakes, and break internal consistency without even bothering to lampshade. You can see it in how the EPs never follow through on consequences; when you really give a damn about a character, you want those consequences because that heralds growth.

You can see it in how the EPs don’t seem bothered by making Allura beg for a lion, or lingering on her terror, or even just demoting her. Or the fact that they’ve kept racial dogwhistles in the dialogue. A hallmark of emotional investment is empathy with others who feel the same, and the EPs have evinced little empathy for viewers angry and upset over the way Allura’s been reduced to a magical plot device.    

You can see it in how the EPs dismiss the #notmyshiro contingent; they’ve moved from surprise to mild irritation at questions about when the ‘real’ Shiro will come back. Or how they laugh about -- veering close to mocking -- viewers upset by the ‘clone’ issue. If the EPs had any loyalty to the Shiro they’d created, they would’ve known that reaction was coming.

You can see it in how the EPs shrug at marketing material with out-dated or non-canonical information. You can see it in how the EPs don't know or care that the comics ignore -- if not outright contradict -- the story's rules. They're supposed to be running this show, but they act like passive bystanders with no stake in the game. They don't just disavow any authority; they frequently even deny any knowledge. A writer is a gatekeeper of their own story, and the EPs have failed on multiple counts to gatekeep with any diligence.

Now, all that said: it's entirely possible that behind the scenes, none of this is true. It could be the EPs fight daily to have insight into marketing material, or that corporate politics has marginalized them in the creation process for vlogs, comics, toys, or whatever else. It could be that they lie awake at night, agonizing over where the story is going, and wanting to do right by the world they've created. 

If this is true, they're utterly failing to communicate any of that. What we get in their interviews and public appearances are EPs who don't take their story seriously, aren't emotionally invested, and for the most part seem kinda surprised anyone else is.

And truth is, it’s damn hard to care about a story when even the creators don’t.

[ruchikakamat]

How leaders can manage a hybrid working team

If we know one thing for certain in these pandemic times, it is the fact that the workplace is different in 2021 and industry leaders now need to prepare for the changes that have come and are yet to come.

A quick recap of the known changes, training and retraining of employees is now part of any strategy for 2021, especially as the workplace is constantly evolving and the demographic of the workforce is also changing. Whether you start your start-up or have an existing company, you must take workplace trends into account when defining your office culture. Trends in the workplace are largely oriented towards the changing world of work and hinting towards the need for more flexible working hours. New approaches to retention focus on how to build and maintain a strong and diverse workforce and a healthy work-life balance. Another fundamental change that is looming in 2021 is how business leaders and human resources teams now approach hiring and retaining employees. 2021 will be a landmark year for businesses and employees as they strive to preserve the best of both worlds, personal and professional.

According to a news report by the Institute for Labour Market and Occupational Research, companies that fail to take account of workers changing expectations of flexible working hours could end up losing good talent. With more remote work, there will be a shift where companies will try to do more with less.

We believe that by 2021, many companies will make their strategies about introducing decentralized employment, decentralized work and a decentralized workforce. As employers and HR managers adapt to this new strategy in 2021, they will also in parallel need to focus on improving employee well-being.

All this with one goal in mind — productivity

While some teams under the guidance of a great leader seem to get things done effortlessly. Others struggle to even meet deadlines. Physical and mental well-being has always been the major reason affecting teams as well as individual productivity. A study revealed that even before the pandemic, around 61% of the workforce admitted that they’re burned out at their current job and nearly 31% experienced a high level of stress at work.

Business leaders must join hands with team leaders and HR to work on creating a work-life balance to ensure smooth functioning and higher productivity.

The goal of any HR leader and manager is to ensure that their team is productive even now. To ensure this, policymakers and leaders must provide contexts, create enabling spaces, and identify specific times that emphasize productivity. When employees experience positive vitality and well-being they will be more productive. But when people are exhausted or stressed, or when their work habits become unhealthy, their productivity is exhausted. An enabling work environment allows employees to focus, and that too helps them to be highly productive. When attention is scattered, the focus suffers from a lack of coordination and communication between people in the team or even between different groups which results in low productivity.

Looking forward:

The Glassdoor’s Workplace Trends for 2021 report identified several positive changes in 2020 that have worked and are forecasts that will continue to evolve. Here are five trends that companies should be aware of as they look ahead to 2021 while adjusting to the hybrid work environment. These are just some of the changes in the workplace that are likely to set the tone and trends for 2021 and beyond, but they are not the only ones.

Don’t move too fast

Individual preferences will take time to become clear and they might need time to adjust to the new change and so will the organization. With tomorrow being uncertain and no one knows what change in government norms and what side of the world will impact the business, the approach must be to take slow steps. In a hybrid work environment, rather than thinking about the long-term, leaders can go slow by setting milestones at shorter intervals, say 3 months instead of yearly milestones. These goals will help individuals to marry with their personal goals.

Install a robust digital infrastructure

Ensuring a basic level of well-functioning, and reasonably-priced digital infrastructure is a must. In a hybrid workplace where half the workforce is working remotely and the other half is performing their day-to-day function from the office, it is necessary that everyone is virtually connected and have access to every work-related detail, anytime and anywhere. Leaders must allow experimentation with commercial IP interconnection agreements to benefit innovation and growth in the overall digital ecosystem. But having a robust digital infrastructure alone is not enough, it is necessary to ensure that every individual is trained for using the infrastructure.

Personalized motivation

There are multiple ways to motivate a team and one of the most popular ways to motivate team members before the lockdown was team lunch that not only motivated teams to achieve more but was also a great team-building initiative. In a hybrid workplace, arranging a team lunch is nearly impossible. Leaders will have to focus on personalizing motivation as far as possible. This is the way to future motivation. One of the popular ways that are gaining momentum with team leaders is leveraging technology and the use of gamification to foster motivation.

Drum up recognition

Turn up the volume of recognition, leaders. When work is not recognized employees are likely to feel disengaged. During remote working or hybrid working where teams don’t meet every day, it is difficult to ensure the recognition is visible to all. This creates a physical barrier that dilutes the power of recognition. To ensure recognition and appreciation is given at the right time and is visible to all, turn up the volume by making it accessible to all by publishing it on social platforms, intranet platforms, internal newsletters and other collaborative platforms.

Read the rest here — https://www.letsbuzzz.com/how-leaders-can-manage-a-hybrid-working-team/

[wordsovervisuals]

After anti-big budget director Sean Baker’s success with iPhone shot-indie film Tangerine in 2015, he seemed ready to take his filmmaking to the next level. Whereas in Tangerine co-writer Chris Bergoch and Baker focused on two hookers roaming through the streets of LA on Christmas Eve, The Florida Project (2017) centralises unemployed single mother Halley and her defiant six year old daughter Moonee. Conceptually, Baker therewith chose two minorities with similar issues of prejudice and poverty, but his most powerful attribute, his attention to detail, makes these films fundamentally different, even though both are very much worth watching. 

Moonee, captivatingly portrayed by Brooklynn Prince, is the epitome of juvenile freedom, raging through life like a fearless storm in a world populated by similarly struggling families in a pastel-coloured, $35 a night motel. Only a few miles ahead lies the painfully shiny representation of privileged happiness; Disney World; although its screaming contrast with the motel is only a subtle echo to the much louder and more skilfully executed narrative of the film. When mother Halley gets fired from her lapdancing job, life seems to carry on as normal: her and Moonee try to sell spa-going customers cheap perfume in parking lots and they eat leftover waffles that a downstairs neighbour sneaks them from the employee entrance, all the while both Halley and Moonee seem untroubled by the increasing pressure to make it through the week. Their lives are dictated by this vicious circle of “hitting and getting hit”, a circle not unfamiliar to many families living below the poverty line, which disables any of the motel’s inhabitants to genuinely get ahead in life. 

Despite their recklessness and, at times, ferocious malice, Halley and, especially, Moonee have the viewers’ sympathy from the very first few frames as The Florida Project confronts its audience with the unfairness of being forced to raise your kid in a motel bedroom. This comes down to the actresses’ stellar performances and tender chemistry, as well as Baker’s poignantly realistic writing. While most would question the point of it all, Halley, in her own way, tries her best to provide and simulate something faintly similar to a mother-daughter relationship, making us, despite ourselves, root for her. It is, unfortunately, only a matter of time before Halley’s act of seeming invincibility unravels as she’s forced to sell the only currency she has left. 

Seasoned actor Willem Dafoe plays the relatively small but important role of manager Bobby, who, too, tries to make the best of things while labouring through power cuts, the children’s pranks and rent payments. His stoic and mostly unwanted fatherly intentions emphasise the futility of it all: like a drop in the ocean, Bobby’s kind actions make no difference in the face of his tenants’s utter poverty. Baker’s careful comparison between different layers of society; Bobby the manager versus the building owner versus its tenants; demonstrates and pinpoints an element of futility in Moonee’s (and our) world. The poor stay poor, while the rich get richer. A terribly significant message that cannot be stressed enough in today’s political landscape, a message beautifully but painfully conveyed in this film.

The Florida Project’s cinematography is appropriately designed, with lots of energetic handhelds combined with static wides, as vibrant colours bounce off the screen (not unlike Moonee’s unstoppable energy) in beautiful 35 mm compositions. The choice of mostly unknown actors creates a strong sense of, what can be called, suspension of disbelief, wherein the audience soon forgets they’re watching a film and the viewer is immersed in, instead of just touched by, what’s on the screen. All in all, a beautiful and life-affirming piece of filmmaking that, I assure you, will stay with you long after you’ve left the theatre. 

[aion-rsa]

Shameless Season 11 Episode 2 Review: Go Home, Gentrifier!

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This Shameless review contains spoilers.

Shameless Season 11 Episode 2

“I want some nice things in my life for a change.”

A major hurdle that season ten of Shameless had to work through was not only the loss of Emmy Rossum’s Fiona, but also the idea that some other Gallagher should now take her place as the show’s central protagonist and stabilizing force in the family. Their decision to appoint Debbie to this position did not work in the show’s favor, but season eleven is already off to a strong start by how it’s relegated Debbie back to more of a supporting status. If anything, Shameless’ final season understands that it doesn’t need someone to fill Fiona’s place and that truly showcasing the cast as an ensemble is the strongest way to go out. Lip’s struggles get a little more attention than everything else, but the episode’s reasonably balanced and all the stories are driven by the same economic conflicts and desire for acceptance, whether it’s in a new neighborhood, job, or from a family member.  

Right from moment one “Go Home, Gentrifier!” feels more natural than last week’s premiere and the whole episode eases into a very comfortable rhythm. It’s extremely satisfying to see the Gallagher family operate as a unit for large portions of this episode. There’s such infectious chemistry between these characters when they all get to bounce off of each other and Frannie’s fifth birthday operates as a reason for everyone to get together for the bookends of this hour. There’s such an enjoyable energy to these scenes between Gallaghers, but this also extends into how this is genuinely a very funny installment. Longtime Shameless writer Nancy M. Pimental’s script features exceptional dialogue, which helps “Go Home, Gentrifier!” work a lot better than it necessarily should. 

There’s a strong sense of comedic timing and joke development through many of the scenes, which helps give mundane scenarios a lot more impact. There’s a great running gag in The Alibi Room about Tony and Kermit’s distance that beautifully develops. On that note, Shameless also deserves credit for turning the strange hookup between Tony and Kermit from the premiere into a legitimate storyline. It felt odd and not necessarily earned when it first happened, but I’m now excited to see where it goes. If this season ends with the two of them in a relationship together I’ll be genuinely happy.

Mickey is often presented as one of the series’ broader characters, but “Go Home, Gentrifier!” makes beautiful use of him and he’s another strong example of this episode’s comedic strength. The fact that a derivative infomercial bullies Mickey into finally getting a job (while he also ignores the point of that infomercial) is actually perfect. His roleplay scenario at his interview is just as good and a testament to how much potential there is to have Mickey out of his element and in a nine-to-five context. Granted, that plan becomes very short-lived, but it opens the door for even more rewarding material between Mickey and Ian over their contrasting strategies to make an income.

Ian and Mickey’s problem becomes representative for many of Shameless’ characters as they all adopt wildly diverse approaches towards economic oppression. It’s worth pointing out that both of the characters with the most conventional jobs are the most frustrated. Carl begins his illustrious career as a South Side police officer and his partner is played by Joshua Malina here who’s in fine form as a deleted character from Grandma’s Boy. Carl’s attitude is incredibly gung ho to get into some real police work, even if he manipulated the system to get this far. Ironically, his partner is the laziest kind of cop that skirts by on the bare minimum and has perfected the art of staying in the background. 

It’s an interesting idea to neuter Carl and use the police force to reflect another broken area of Chicago. The premiere hinted that this corruption would be through the police force’s abuses of power, but it’s a more unique turn to have Carl aggravated over the opposite problem. Despite his frustrations, the way in which Carl supports his partner and still finds ways to embody the unity of the police force is really sweet. This camaraderie may inadvertently ruin his partner’s life and solve Carl’s problem in the process, but he only has altruistic intentions here.

Shameless’ biggest weak spots over its past seasons have been its treatment of Frank, Kevin, and V. In Frank’s case, he’s continually paired up with a revolving door of guest stars like Luis Guzman or Katey Segal, only to know that his latest get rich quick scheme will have to come to an end by the season’s close, if not sooner. Kevin and V also continually work through extremely odd jobs that feel like rejected Kramer subplots, most of which are incredibly disconnected from the rest of the series. It shouldn’t have taken Shameless this long to have Frank, Kevin, and V all share a storyline, which easily solves both of those problems. 

A story arc where Frank is Kevin and V’s weed connoisseur so that they can get the best possible product also makes a lot of sense for everyone involved. The detail that Frank’s actually a skilled gourmand in the field is the icing on the pot brownie. “Go Home, Gentrifier!” succeeds when it brings these characters together and it already seeds more compelling developments to come as Frank’s worth begins to cause friction in their new business. It’s also a rare situation where Frank is completely on point and fully capable. He doesn’t screw up once in this episode and he even is able to unintentionally read between the lines with Tony and Kermit. If this was someone’s first Shameless episode they’d think Frank is some Heisenberg-esque genius and that’s a fantastic angle for him during this final season. Maybe some Nazis will end up executing Kevin in front of him during one of the series’ final episodes. 

Liam also attempts to make some easy money off of food, but his product is completely legal and functions more as a commentary on the depressing state of public schools. Liam has become a real joy over the course of Shameless’ latest seasons and the show lucked out with how Christian Isaiah has turned into such a charismatic performer. This energy often sees Liam turn into an inspirational leader and that’s no different here when he transforms subpar cafeteria food into the opportunity to become a martyr. Forget about Ian’s Gay Jesus and get ready for Liam’s Cafeteria Food Jesus.

Liam’s actions bring him together with his fellow student, but Lip and Tami don’t receive the same warm reception from their community. Lip and Tami’s problems with a neighborhood vandal turns into a deceptively deep story. A lot of characters get pushed out of their comfort zones in this episode and slotted into roles that feel foreign to them, but billing Lip as a gentrifier is by far the most extreme example. 

The reasons behind this are crushing in their own way, but Lip is not a character who has fundamentally changed or sold out his values with his new life and house. This turns this episode into more of an examination on false labels and the widespread damage that they can cause. It’s really quite sweet to see Lip side with the greater good and help out his community rather than take pride in the good condition of his new home. In a strange way, the vandalism that adorns his house becomes a badge of courage for how strong Lip’s values really are.

Labels are also crucial when it comes to Debbie’s desire to be viewed as a princess, even in lieu of Frannie’s repeated dismissals of the idea. Her actions over Frannie’s birthday help unpack the episode’s themes in a very different way. “Go Home, Gentrifier!” mildly addresses Debbie’s quarter-life crisis here and that she’s reacting out of anxiety over getting older, but it feels pretty baked into this storyline. It’s Frannie’s birthday, but Debbie is also older and the fact that she has a daughter that’s now five certainly subconsciously contributes to Debbie’s desire to dress up as a princess and hide away in fantasy. The episode simplifies this to some extent, but the deeper implications are still there.

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“Go Home, Gentrifier!” works out any of the kinks present in Shameless’ season premiere as it confidently moves ahead in its final season. This episode is very crowded, which is something that Shameless always struggles with, but all of these storylines feel natural and that they’re contributing to a larger whole. It’s still very early on and it’s possible that none of these plot threads will be relevant by the end of the season, but “Go Home, Gentrifier!” officially has me optimistic for what’s to come and that Shameless can end on a note that’s worthy of its eleven-year run.

The post Shameless Season 11 Episode 2 Review: Go Home, Gentrifier! appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ngIR4p

[rhenal]

Hello again

Wow, it’s been a year now since i last posted anything here. I’m still alive, if anyone is still here at all to care. Um. Last post I did was about the status of my mental health, so I guess a follow-up would be prudent, no?

So now it’s official. I have both Aspergers and ADHD. I thought it was just ADD, but no. The hyperactivity aspect is something I very much have. It’s just that it doesn’t manifest physically - it simply manifests mentally in that my mind is always everywhere at once - that my train of thought manifests more like a puppy on its first snow day than like an actual train.

I’ve been on antidepressants for 13 months now, but I’ve only really felt any real effect from them for the last month and a half as I finally got to change med type. The first type barely helped and gave me nightmares two nights out of three, but those things were small and irrelevant enough for me to it really bring it up until now. Because for all that time, I have been searching for and adjusting to ADHD meds as well, and you only want to sort through one set of side-effects at a time. Turns out I’m really sensitive to side effects, so finding the right type and dosage took a long time, and I’m not certain that the one I’m on now is the best choice still. 

I’m still on full-time sick leave for burnout, since February 14th last year. Currently it will last until the end of August, then we’ll reevaluate from there. Hopefully I can start studying again by that point, if only at 50%.

Turns out, it takes a really long time to recover from a bout of burnout that has had five entire years of buildup. 

So what am I doing now? Mostly just being useless. Restless but without the energy to do anything about it. I barely eat these days, and my sleep cycle is just completely nonexistent. See, in large part due to aforementioned double-whammy of Aspergers and ADHD, my capacity for self discipline is basically nil. With me being on sick leave, I have nothing that forces me to get up and do stuff. There is no reason other than my own health to get up in the morning.

Add to that the fact that both my current antidepressants and my ADHD meds lower my appetite. I do not get hungry anymore. I just get tremors in the late afternoon when I’ve forgotten to eat all day. I can go entire days where I am never ever hungry, and when I finally manage to make something to eat and force myself to just eat it dammit, I can barely get half the meal down.

My doctor has actually advised me to eat small snacks through the entire day to make up for it. You know, the thing that you’re usually heavily discouraged from doing? :’)

In conclusion, my daily life is kinda shit. I’m doing what I can to get better at it all, even going to group therapy every week, but it feels like a Sisyphean effort. 

I’m too burnt out to study or work, but without study or work, I can’t really recover properly. It’s one real bastard of a catch 22.

I’d move back home, but that’s not really an option. Not now that the family’s got a much smaller apartment. I’d have to live on the couch, in a living room with no possible way of real privacy. And I’m an introvert. I am really fortunate to have a family as loving and supportive as I do, and I love them dearly - but I NEED my space. When I went there over the winter holidays, just those two and a half weeks I was there was enough to suck me completely dry of energy. 

If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear them. Because I need them desperately.

So well. That’s where I am now. 

[garbling thought-vomit about social issues and the failings of tumblr as a community below. Probably best ignored.]

So, why’d I disappear from Tumblr? Should be obvious. The state of my mental health is bad enough without having to deal with the constant anxiety of dealing with this social network. The nonexistence of nuance and the total intolerance of anything even remotely problematic. And the idea that if you like anything that has any problematic aspects in it at all, that means YOU are problematic and are to be ashamed.

It’s actually a really hostile environment for creatives. 

The pressure to be perfect and totally 100% inclusive at all times with not a nanometer’s space for human error or honest mistakes, the attitude that ‘if you’re not perfect 100% of the time always you are EVIL AND BAD AND SHALL BE SHUNNED FOREVERMORE’. 

The attitude a lot of Tumblr seem to have that the only things you are ever allowed to write or otherwise portray are essentially self-portraits because if you haven’t personally experienced it you should never ever write it ever. Kinda makes it impossible to even try to do properly inclusive work for fear of getting even a single minute detail wrong. It’s actually really really fucking hostile and I hate hate hate it. Like, I keep seeing creators of all kinds - writers, artists, cartoonists, animators and game devs alike try their very hardest to make something as inclusive and culturally diverse as they can, only to be rewarded with heaps upon heaps of abuse from Tumblr users just because they weren’t 100% perfect in every single aspect, or that their efforts were seen as ‘virtue signaling’ and are only doing it to make themselves look good and that is false and sin and to be PUNISHED.

It’s like the reward for trying your best to make something that everyone can enjoy without feeling left out is only hate and vitriol. 

(All the while creators who do not care about inclusivity at all get perhaps but a mere fraction of this abuse, I might add. It’s pretty fucking insane when you think about it.)

It’s suffocating.

And it’s total fucking bullshit.

People make mistakes. 

People change. 

And people can absolutely grow from those mistakes and be better. 

But Tumblr as a community keeps fostering this attitude that if you have ever said or done anything even remotely wrong on any level, regardless of the context or how long ago it was or how much better you have grown to be since then, once an uninformed or unthinking statement - accidental or not - always a racist. Or homophobe. Or transphobe. Or ableist. Or any kind of -ist or -phobe imaginable.

I’ve been very fortunate to not really have had to endure any witch-hunt personally, but I saw them happen all the time. And it just. Well. I got really fucking tired of it, and it further worsened my mental health by quite a lot. I just cared too much that I couldn’t stop ranting about it in my head. Sometimes for days.

So I left.

Why am I back? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess I still have a lot of thoughts about things and I’ve been really isolated this last year, so I just need a place where I can put them.

I intend to go on a bit of a purge of the blogs I follow and start with a zero-tolerance policy for witch-hunting bullcrap and other drama. 

See, I have a pretty simple, straightforward moral code. It’s often difficult to follow, due to the human brain working as it does with it’s shitty, garbage, garbage ‘us vs them’ mentality, but it is something I intend do always strive for.

No one should ever be judged for that which they can not control

Ever. That includes the entire spectrum of skintones, every single possible gender identity, sexuality, romantical affiliation, neuropsychiatric status - normal or otherwise, physical condition, place of birth, state of family or culture they grew up in. Or anything else I can think of.

No one picks the toolbox they’re born with. All that should ever matter to anyone is what they build with it.

Fuck jokes about skin colour - ANY skin colour - it’s tacky and only serves to further strengthen the idea that they somehow make people fundamentally different, and that idea can get set on fire and shot into the sea. 

Yes, there are absolutely issues with the culture surrounding differences in levels of melatonin. White people like myself carry a lot of privilege in the west, and darker skinned people of all kinds absolutely do face a lot of unjust treatment in the world. No matter what country in the world you are in, that place’s “default” - how I detest that unfortunate consequence of the human brain functioning as it does - will always carry a strong privilege compared to those who do not fit that default.  But it’s all cultural. There’s nothing inherent in looking any certain way that dictates a person’t being. It’s all the norms and values of the culture they were raised in - and cultures change. It’s slow. It’s difficult. But it is absolutely a worthwhile struggle, is it not?

And, maybe a reasonable path to changing a culture to be more inclusive is to maybe not constantly call attention to such differences? Because that only strengthens the idea that the trait pointed out is ‘other’ - not part of the ‘normal’. 

And we want to widen the definition of normal to include all of us. Right? That’s pretty much this entire community’s mission statement, isn’t it?

I’m thinking that simply acting like a trait is normal, that it’s not something that’s even worth calling attention to, does a lot to normalise that trait. To help it be included within the definition of normal. 

Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.

And then there’s the whole thing with white guilt/cultural shame or pride or any somesuch. I have thoughts. Probably pretty controversial thoughts. So I’m preparing myself for pitchforks.

Feeling shame or guilt over whatever hand you drew in the grand lottery of genetical happenstance is just really fucking stupid. That much should be thoroughly established by now. But the thing is, so is feeling pride, for the same reason. You did fuck all to affect what you got. The deeds of your ancestors have nothing whatsoever to do with you. 

You don’t get to choose your toolbox. You can only choose what to do with it.

It feels kind of weird to condemn cultural pride as a concept like this, but I do. I really honestly do. Because it’s dumb. Incredibly hard to drop, absolutely - most of us are fed with it since birth, after all - but it’s still dumb. I mean, what on earth did anyone do to earn the culture they grew up in? Nothing. Because it’s entirely out of your hands.

Treasure your culture, absolutely! Revel in it. Learn all you want and can and strive to carry it forth to the next generation, and to teach anyone who wishes to listen. Absolutely do! Take pride in your accomplishments. Take pride in what you do to carry your culture forth into the future. Take pride in what you help others accomplish. Take pride in what you do to raise public awareness of the reality of your culture. Or your sexuality. Or gender identity. Or any other aspect of your being that is being woefully misrepresented somewhere.  But don’t take pride in simply being what you are. 

Because that’s just part of the completely random toolbox you got at birth - a toolbox you could not have possibly chosen any part of.

Taking pride OR feeling shame over things that you had no hand in is something you have no right or reason to do.

Never judge anyone - not even yourself - by what they have. Judge only by what they DO with what they have.

These thoughts have all been spawned by my time on tumblr. It’s a community that wants to be progressive and inclusive, but is much too often anything but. It’s all complaining, all vitriol, all salt, all echo chambers fostering this kind of thinking. Very little, if any, actual attempts at working towards real improvement.

I remember seeing a comic that circulated some time ago. About equality vs equity. There were these three kids standing by a fence, trying to watch a game of some sport or another taking place at the other side. They were all different height. 

In the equality picture, all three kids got a box to stand on, of equal size.

In the equity picture, they got a different amount of boxes, making it so all of them could see over the fence.

But there was a third picture. One rarely included. 

This picture adressed the fence itself. It swapped the wooden fence to a wire fence. One that all three kinds could see the game through, without any need of boxes.

That’s the kind of world I’d much rather live in. One where the barrier itself is adressed. Where there is no need for boxes to stand on. 

Yet all anyone can really, truly do, is do as Michael Jackson said, and start with the man in the mirror.

We can complain. We can decry. We can wallow. But it’s all for naught if we don’t then step up and act on it.

I'm sick and tired of the ceaseless complaining without action and the oppressive feeling of helplessness fostered here. I want to actually DO something to help the world be better. And if I’m not in a position where I can help personally, I can at least reach out to those in a position to do so.

This is why I donate to charity whenever I can afford it, despite my miniscule budget of a university student on sick leave with a lot of medical fees.

This is why I endeavor to always smile to strangers, be they the retail worker at the checkout, a simple passerby or the cold beggar on the street.

This is why I am always eager to share what I know with people who may need it, be it pointers about mental health or simply how to patch up a torn pair of pants.

All minuscule, inconsequential acts in the grand scheme of things. But it’s something. It’s my small straw, pulled to the anthill. Makes me feel just a little tiny bit less helpless about all the terrible things in the world.

Because even if it’s something small, it’s better than doing nothing. Far better than simply complaining and wallowing about a problem without ever following it up with action.

I don’t even know what I’m on about anymore. I should probably stop writing. Get something to eat. Go to sleep. Bye for now, then.

[ghostmartyr]

You seem to be a big fan of the Stormlight Archive series. How strong of a recommendation do you give it?

(I think I managed to do this all spoiler free.)

Very.

So the Stormlight Archive is a high fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson. I like most of his books, though his earlier work is a little too intent on wrapping things up neatly, in my opinion. Where he really shines is designing settings and magic systems. Even if the plots and characters weren’t engaging (they are), he creates insanely cool worlds, with a lot of variety.

World? As a Sanderson fan, I’m somewhat lacking, but from what I currently understand, all of his books take place within the same universe. You don’t need to read one series to follow another, but there are a lot of cool easter eggs if you do, and there are some fundamental consistencies to his various settings that come from everything being based in what is referred to as the Cosmere.

Anyway, Stormlight Archive. You’ve got the magic, you’ve got the massive battlefields, and you’ve got the motley collection of a cast expected to handle some great, nefarious evil from eons ago. You’ve also got a lot of separate story threads that don’t mind taking their sweet time to come together.

That’s something I’d actually warn about; these books are dense as heck. The first book in particular feels like its beginning is designed as a prologue for the entire envisioned ten-book series. There are currently three out. It’s all very worth reading, especially if you’re interested in the world, but it takes a bit to reach the perspectives of the characters who qualify as leads. On my first go I struggled some with the sheer number of names in the first few chapters, partly because I wasn’t sure which I needed to pay attention to.

Having spent some time observing other people talk about this series, that’s not a thing to worry about. There is always something to pay attention to, so the idea of picking the ‘right’ one is silly.

I could read this series a dozen times over, follow the plot just fine, and still miss something like a million tiny details that enhance the story. I know this because common discussion topics are things I didn’t even realize were there to notice.

If that sounds daunting, that’s because I don’t know how to recommend things without being overly cautious about what style of writing people are willing to put up with.

These books are long, but they’re wonderful for it. They themselves are a fitting example of one of the oaths that help structure the main story line; “Journey before destination.”

Because there’s so much to potentially focus on, I don’t know the best way to say why this series is so wonderful to me, but I’ll try.

One particularly appealing part to me is this world’s system of magic. It’s based on different sects of people swearing different oaths. They’re known as the Knights Radiant. Different Knights swear different oaths to beings called spren, who serve as their partners. The partnership and the oaths bind the Knight and spren together, bringing out incredible abilities.

Only the Knights Radiant no longer exist.

They abandoned their oaths.

Where the story picks up is the age where the evil the Knights were instrumental in facing is coming back, and there’s once again a need for them.

Except people are terrible, and the ideals that the Knights lived are as dead as their oaths. Worse, a broken oath kills the spren partnered to the Knight, so spren aren’t exactly inclined to try rebooting the whole system.

But some are still willing to try, and willing to work with people again.

This is a series where the main characters are largely broken. They make or have made horrific mistakes. They’re subjected to unimaginable cruelty. They fall into psychological pitfalls and don’t know how to fight their way out. They don’t know how they can possibly deal with all of the problems laid at their feet.

(The way the books are formatted, one main character per book gets consistent flashback chapters. The third book is pretty much one long string of “oh my gosh you were a terrible person wtf how.”)

So in a world of broken, tarnished oaths, people try to live up to them again.

And there are some masterpieces of promises in those oaths.

The original creed, which is the one oath all Knights share, is,

“Life before death.Strength before weakness.Journey before destination.”

As anyone who’s suffered knows, even that starting point can be difficult. Then the individual sects push even harder.

“I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

“I will put the law before all else.”

“I will remember those who have been forgotten.”

Ten orders of Radiants, each with their own philosophies, and a partner who will die if you turn your back on them. Not all of them have spiffy quotes yet (and one order demands truths instead of oaths), but the ones listed above are only Second Ideals out of several more, and based on what the characters go through to reach just the Third, they can be doozies.

This is not a series that is shy about the atrocities people are capable of.

It is also not a series that neglects the glory they can reach. The perspective characters are often people carrying the burdens of both.

I like reading about royally screwed up people, but I don’t like stories that beat on them with no point. This story is kind of about the redemption of a species, and about how hard it can be to be better when you have been the absolute worst of yourself.

You’ve got a member of the order who needs to speak truths for their bond to work, and she’s buried her own life history and self in lies so she can survive.

A person who bonds with an honorspren says that honor is dead, and by all accounts, he isn’t wrong.

This series just has such damn good characters, full of tragedy and heroics.

And severe psychological damage.

Depression, anxiety, trauma (lots and lots of trauma)… there really isn’t anyone who wouldn’t benefit from therapy, and all of those issues are active companions to the journey. Being kind of a mess myself, seeing characters swearing oaths, doing magic, and being all around badasses throughout their psychological woes is really neat, and adds to the relatability.

Other fun features include heavy class and race criticisms, Xtreme gender roles, and omnipresent religion. Just as part of the everyday setting. It’s all ripe for critique and discussion in-universe (one of the best characters is an atheist princess scholar who turns people into fire), and memorable enough to feel like a real society, with all the problems and neat concepts that civilization gets up to.

I go back to my “cool” comment. The magic’s cool, the worldbuilding’s epic, the people are damaged, and your word as your bond means something.

So… yeah, I really like it.

[kivrin]

Julian Ovenden talks NIGHTFALL and playing RFK in THE CROWN

Parade, December 13, 2017

Text below the cut

Julian Ovenden has starred on several American series, Related, Cashmere Mafia and Smash, to name a few. But he is probably best known in the States for his role as Charles Blake, unsuccessful suitor to Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), on Downton Abbey ­ — until now.

This December, the talented Brit launches two memorable roles. The first is William De Nogaret on History’s Knightfall  and the second is Robert Kennedy on the second season of Netflix’s The Crown.

Knightfall, which reunited Ovenden with his Downton co-star Tom Cullen, is an in-depth look inside the medieval politics and warfare of the Knights Templar, the most powerful and mysterious military order of the Middle Ages, who were entrusted with protecting Christianity’s most precious relics. The ten episode season unfolds in a combination of elements, including faith, politics, and action.

While Cullen is a Knights Templar, Ovenden’s character William De Nogaret is not. Rather, he is the King of France’s right-hand man, who is driven by a passion to destroy the power of organized religion, and is not above chicanery to achieve his goals. The two men come to be at odds.

Parade.com had the chance to talk to Ovenden about how Machiavellian his character is on Knightfall, what it’s like to play an agnostic when he grew up in the church, how historically accurate the story is, his second time playing a member of the Kennedy family, and more.

In your opinion, is Knightfall a story about faith since the knights are in charge of the Holy Grail, is it a political story because there’s so much going on at France at that time, or is it an action story?

I think one of the interesting and appealing things about the show is that it has texture and it has layers, so you’re right in pointing out the religious aspect because obviously that’s a major one. The knights were protectors of the Christian faith and of the pilgrims who went to the Holy Land. Then the knights were driven out of the Holy Land and disbanded or separated into different temples.

The show concentrates on the temple in Paris, where they’re struggling. They’ve lost their sense of identity. And in terms of the religious side of things, they struggle with toeing the line religiously. They are often put in difficult positions and they don’t know what their role is.

And also in terms of the religious side of things, when religion comes into contact with power and corruption, it’s interesting to see how that affects the characters, the King of France for example, the Pope, my character. The character that I play is the atheist, I suppose, in the show. So there’s a whole range of attitudes towards religion.

And the politics?

Politics was very important at the time. France was changing into quite a modern country and had to deal with this renegade bunch of soldiers who were a very rich order and very powerful and how they fit into France’s political landscape.

And then there’s a whole load of action in the show, so it’s a sort of a medieval adventure/politics/religious investigation. It’s got quite a few elements to it which, I think, make it quite interesting.

So how Machiavellian is your character William De Nogaret because he appears to be the bad guy?

Well, it depends on your point of view I suppose. I didn’t try to play him as a bad guy, I tried to play him as a sort of anti-hero, the polar opposite to Tom Cullen’s character of Landry. His main motivation is to France, to attain as much power and money as possible and to be as successful as possible, whereas Landry’s motive is to keep the Holy Grail, to keep the brotherhood intact. And De Nogaret goes to the nth degree to try and keep France in power and as strong as possible.

He does some pretty terrible things, it has to be said. But I wanted to make him a believable character rather than a stock villain, I suppose, in a similar way to Francis Underwood in House of Cards.

Perhaps not now after all this stuff that’s going on, but there’s a sense that he does garner some sympathy from the audience. There’s a certain delight in watching someone who is very politically astute and able to read people. There’s a delight in watching those people at work. But he does have a vulnerability, I think, and he’s a humanist. He stands apart from most of the other characters in the show who are driven by religious zeal.

You did mention he was an atheist and in real life your father, Canon John Ovenden, was a chaplain to the Queen of England, so are you comfortable playing against the family business?

That’s the wonderful thing about acting, you know? You get to taste lots of different things. Yeah, I’ve spent quite a lot of my time in churches, I was a singer in choirs when I was a kid and, obviously, with my father being a priest, so I’ve seen that side of it. It is then rather interesting to come at it from the other perspective. But drawing a parallel with what’s happening at the moment in terms of religious fundamentalism that is the cause of such strife in our world today and the way that religion, although it does a lot of good in the world, can do a fair amount of bad, I think that’s the same in our show, really. In the wrong hands it’s corrupting.

There was a historian on the set. So how accurate is this because the story of the knights has been shrouded in mystery?  

I find it surprising that this part of history hasn’t been treated in this way before because I think it’s quite a rich time period. There are certain films like Kingdom of Heaven that I think was one that focused on this period, and there’s various stuff about the Holy Grail, but in terms of the knights, I think you struggle to find much drama about them and there’s lots to tell.

It’s a really fascinating group. They were such a powerful order and there’s a fair amount that we know about them. But you’re right, there is a lot of mystery. There’s a lot of secrecy that they’re shrouded in.

I think doing a show on History, in particular, one is trying to toe the line as much as possible in terms of being true to the established facts. But also because it’s not a documentary or even a docudrama, you’ve still got to make it entertaining. I didn’t know much about them. I have to say I learned an awful lot over the ten episodes that we worked on, stuff that was really, really fascinating. And, of course, there’s supposition, there’s the stuff that we either pushed together or we conflate dates sometimes to make things run more seamlessly for an audience.

But I think the bare bones of it certainly are true. For example in the first episode, the Jews being ordered out of Paris, that happened.

Thanks to your character.

Yeah, right. Pretty horrible. And I had no idea about that. We had a really great historian working with us, a guy called Dan Jones, he’s an expert on this particular period in history. So I think it’s a fun task to try and strike that balance of being entertaining but also being as true as possible to the facts.

The costumes, for example, are really great and the sets are really great. An audience can tell because we live in a world in which television really is very authentic now. If you watch high-budget television, which this is, it has to look right, otherwise it won’t survive, and there is great attention to detail for the most part in this show.

You have another historical role coming up in The Crown. You’re a Brit playing Bobby Kennedy, is that revenge for Season 1 where John Lithgow played Churchill?

Well, he obviously had a much bigger part than I have. I have a very small part in this, but it was a joy to do, it was lovely. I’d worked with [executive producer] Stephen Daldry once before and I was a big fan of the show, so I took the opportunity to taste the atmosphere and the experience really because, as with every show really that’s on at the moment, I think it’s the most deluxe in terms of its setting and its cast. It’s got a lustre about it that’s really appealing so it was just wonderful to be involved. Also to play an American politician was fun. I played JFK about two or three years ago on…

Smash.

Remember that? I’m working my way through the Kennedy family. It was great. It’s nice as an actor to stretch and, obviously, doing something in a different accent and it’s a difficult accent to do. I had Michael C. Hall, who plays JFK, keeping me on the straight and narrow with the Boston accent.

But also comparing the two projects, when you’re playing real-life characters, obviously on Bobby Kennedy there was absolutely masses and masses of research material and he’s a very well-known chap, so you really have to be quite strict with yourself in terms of what you’ve put out there. But with Knightfall, obviously, there’s much less so you can use your imagination a bit more which was fun.

So Charles Blake didn’t get the girl on Downton Abbey, but was Downton responsible for you getting a lot of other roles? You had a career before it but was Downton Abbey special, was it a career builder?

I think it helps to be on a show that’s very successful. It encourages people to make offers rather than having to go through the longer audition process for some jobs. Because I didn’t worked on it from the start, it didn’t change my world like it did for some of the actors on that show like Michelle [Dockery] and Dan [Stevens], who it made their career in a way. So I didn’t have that experience. I’d been an actor for 15 years before it happened and been proud of what I’d achieved. I’d been working most of the time really. But it was lovely to be in something that everyone was watching, particularly in the States. So it did help but it wasn’t like a massive windfall in that way.

Do you have a dream role? You mentioned you started singing in church, so maybe a musical on Broadway or  something like La La Land?

I don’t know. I really enjoy and I’ve done a fair amount of musicals. But it’d be nice to do a musical film. I’ve done a little bit of music on camera. I did a live version of The Sound of Music, for example, which was the same kind of deal that you had making a Christmas special [in the U.S.], which was quite fun.

But I don’t know, maybe a biopic of a famous musician would be really, really interesting. A composer or something like that where I could marry the two passions — drama and music — together.

But really to be honest with you, I’m just happy working in collaboration with brilliant people and trying to keep doing better and bigger work. My career has been sort of one small step up the ladder every so often. I feel like I’m getting better and improving my craft, which is really satisfying. I’m still learning and still hungry for new experiences, which is really great. So we’ll see what happens after the show and see what people think of it and whether it’s a success, and then, hopefully, it’ll lead to something else afterwards.

[rdc-breeze-blog]

‘By detailed analysis of one exploitation film of your choice and with reference to film and theory discussed during the lecture/seminar, examine how that text may either reinforce or challenge social, political, cultural, and/or sexual boundaries for its audience.’

We often reference the tantalising ‘Magic of the movies’, the unbelievable ability of the filmic medium to transport an audience into another world. We also commend a films ability to document what is going on around the world, albeit in another country or right on our doorstep, however whenever we look at film as an art form we often miss the point; audiences tend to scrutinize the entertainment factors alone, praising or criticizing the visuals over anything else and this leads them to sometimes miss the point.

Scholars from all platforms of studies associated with film have delved into a plethora of relationships and theories between film and how Social, Political, Cultural and Sexual boundaries within them are recognized and examined by its audiences. The time between the 20th century and now, Hollywood films and entertainers alike within the industry have been greatly shaped by these ideologies and in that, have greatly shaped the ideologies themselves. Films that have developed a cult following have especially impacted national politics, inveigled cultural identities and have even affected social change as well.

The Breakfast Club is a beautifully simple film directed by John Hughes (1984), about a group of individuals who at first don’t recognise their similarities, but as they’re forced to reconcile with each other through detention on a Saturday, they soon realise they have much more in common than they originally thought. The film perfectly illustrates how a film text can develop a relationship between the audiences and how they interpret these commonly used themes in films today. By breaking down the film into digestible aspects, even if definitions of these ideologies vary, this essay will examine how The Breakfast Club specifically has constructed each scene to cast an either reinforced or challenged nature to the cultural, social, political and sexual boundaries faced by the audience.

 The Breakfast Club throughout reinforces the cultural values of idealism, family and most importantly, fear. During the groups’ meltdown towards the end of the film where they slowly connect through common social denominators, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), states: “I see me, and I don’t like what I see”. Idealism plays a fundamental role in the forthcoming of this film; each character seemingly takes on their own internal struggle with a need to be successful in the eyes of their guardians- whether that is their parents or peers. The interesting aspect of this boundary given to the audience is that each character has their own view on ‘success’, whether it is athletic, social, academic or simply personal achievement, however, they all share that same desire nonetheless. As the story prevails we come to understand that each character finds themselves undergoing drastic measures to ensure they fit into this category of successfulness, this can be seen when Brian attempts to commit suicide for failing to achieve an admirable grade in his physics class. This cultural theme of idealism and family is sometimes hard to interpret, but its something any audience member can relate to. Because of the variety of different struggles we’re met within the film, this offers an insight into the different versions of cultural idealism, especially within a ‘family’ environment. Everyone has their own personal family life, daily routines and family niggles only they would understand, John Hughes has taken the primary classes found in most cultures and portrayed them through five very different but very similar characters. This helps the audience deduct that people of all ethnicity have a lot more akin than they think; in terms of understanding how this reinforces cultural boundaries through film text, this is a really simple but easily recognised piece formed by John Hughes. Moreover, the way each character acts is a fair reflection of the worry they have of their parents or peers view on them. This is part of the reason each character isolates him or herself to a specified stereotype.

 “Teens are always shown as one dimensional. They're stereotyped. When I was in high school, I cared about more than getting a date or making the team.” (Jared Leto, Hollywood actor) [1] The stereotypes in The Breakfast Club are comfortably noticeable in the characters and their social groups. The main premise of the film plays on these stereotypes and how they evolve as the film pans out; the breakdown of five very contrasting character clique’s within an abstract but controlled social environment is John Hughes’ methodology to show how in a world where we’re bound to our class systems, we’re all very much alike when stripped back to bones and flesh. These stereotypes are conveyed purposefully through the clothes they wear and the way they act and represent how the members of the Breakfast Club see one another from the onset of the film. By analysing each character, we can begin to realize how gender is portrayed and make additional connections to how this further reinforces a cultural and social boundary to the audience. The two main girls in the plot, Allison (Ally Sheedy), ‘the Basket Case’ and Claire (Molly Ringwald), ‘the Princess’, represent the constitutional typical and atypical female role. Claire is essentially a somewhat hackneyed portrayal of what a person thinks when the word female is discussed. She is the cliché pretty, well-spoken, sharp and thin idealism we consider a female should be and in addition to this, she is clothed in the colour that symbolises feminism; pink. Claire is the main contributor to emotions being brought up during the film, this instantly brings to the audiences attention how women cope compared to men. Male roles rarely want to bring up feelings because it may downgrade their masculinity and furthermore, may contrast too highly against their stereotypical role as a ‘leader’. In comparison to Claire, following the same political boundaries of the cliché proposed to the audience, Allison is the binary opposite of what someone would consider ‘a typical female’. She is distance, very aloof wearing nearly all black baggy clothing that screams borderline Goth. Whereas Claire is very much aware of herself and what she provides as an entity, Allison is almost unsure of herself and this can be seen as the film progresses. When everyone starts to develop a connection between one another, during one scene Claire takes Allison to another room for a makeover. During this scene Claire makes a passing comment about how Allison looks better “without all of that black shit around your eye.” Claire insinuates this is out of kindness but there is argument that there is another motive behind the comment; to Claire, Allison’s attire is not normal and so she may be trying to change it. This shows how instead of accepting Allison’s appearance, Claire’s initial reaction is to try and mold Allison’s ego into something else; audiences can depict from this the obvious political boundary cast between the lines that the main western societies have, and will, always try to shape the way people think. This is a common occurrence across many different mediums and can be seen again through the analysis of the other side of gender within The Breakfast club.

 Andrew (Emilio Estevez), ‘The Athlete’, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), ‘The Brain’ and Bender (Judd Nelson), ‘The Criminal’ within short notice have tension that promptly sparks the argument over masculinity within the stereotypes. Andrew, the athlete, is very proud; he follows the typical conventions you would find with sportsmen being punctual and focused. This clashes instantly with the other two characters Brian and Bender. Brian is the typical ‘nerd’- high waisted jeans, nutritious lunch and a seemingly normal home life. Bender on the other hand plays out the loose canon, has no respect for anything or anyone and abides by the rules he sets himself. Because of Andrew’s sporting attire being tights Bender, and Brian, who seems to be only joining in out of interest and to gain Bender’s respect, begin to mock Andrew. This is an obvious example how political classes show a level of hierarchy even within adolescents at a high school, which loosely relates to the discussion of masculinity and the sense of belonging. Andrew becomes visibly upset with the remarks and as a result attempts to insult Bender back calling him a “faggot”, this shows us the mentality that men need to be strong and cannot admit any weakness. This is demonstrated throughout the film, Bender has his own issues as his home life is bad. We learn this within the plot and gives reason to why Bender attacks the other characters in a senseless appeal for attention and a typical defense mechanism. Personally I feel that Bender is in fact defeated inside and he plays on the criminal character to ensue an appearance of masculinity, because if he were to be open with his feelings and act accordingly this status would quickly diminish.

However, Brian on the other hand greatly challenges the political and social boundary presented to the audience through stereotypes. Brian, through his indecisive and contingent nature portrays gender concern. For example, Brian tells the group he “feels stupid” for failing class which led him to attempt suicide. Brian looks at himself as someone who is relatively smart and by failing class and losing his mentality enough to try and commit suicide, he doesn’t display the characteristics of the typical male role. This is abnormal for a leading male role and helps audiences relate to a character not commonly seen within films.

Brian is essentially the only stereotype that does challenge these boundaries and common themes, Andrew and Bender always portray the typical gender role and show us how important masculinity is within film and the connection it has with it’s audiences.

Dramatic representations of reality are created effortlessly through the use of camera angles in The Breakfast Club. This media tool is exercised so simply within the film and as a result perfectly portrays the reinforcement of the political education system that is still apparent today. The majority of the film is located within the library, being that this is one location it is easy to identify the changes in camera angles that pursue a deeper meaning. This can be shown when Vernon (Paul Gleason), the head teacher, is talking to the students and the over the shoulder shot used, is aimed down towards them. This straight away establishes an authoritative status in regards to Vernon and implies to the audience that the students are of a lower superiority: they’re inferior. This can be further evidenced when the shot changes to a medium close up of the students sat around their desks, the shot is now eye line with the students supposing they’re all equal- despite their social standings.

This is really cleverly done because we’re left with this contradictory view that the students are equal in comparison to their head teacher, who is superior, but they’re not equal between themselves. The basic switch in degree level between the two shots creates a comparative boundary between social and political standings of the students. In school they’re simply students like everyone else but between them they’re an athlete, a criminal, a princess, a basket case and a brain; a cliché in their own social environment. This theme is continued throughout the film and highlights easily how The Breakfast Club mainly reinforces the political, social and sometimes cultural boundaries between the audience and it’s text.  

 Another way The Breakfast Club reinforces social boundaries to the audience is approaching the subject of an ego trip and within that, overcoming the need to be liked. This is subtly done through the use of their non-diegetic sound; Brian’s speech at the end of the film nicely rounds up this idealism however the soundtrack to the film ‘Don’t You Forget About Me – Simple Minds’, is a perfect use of the media tool sound to propose this boundary. The soundtrack, “which at first was refused, but later agreed to be recorded after encouragement from their label”[2] could have never featured given it was refused another 3 times as well before Simple Minds decided to take it on. It’s hard to think that such a monumental film track and a key tool in The Breakfast Club’s attempt to portray social boundaries may never have seen the big screen had it not been for forced measures by the label. The song features two prominent lyrics that concrete the theme of egotism and the inkling to overcome this need: “Don’t you forget about me” and “As you walk on by, will you call me name?”

In terms of the films text, these lyrics refer to the world outside of detention and the so called ‘Breakfast Club”; there is a question about the future and whether or not the unforeseen friendships will last or be crippled by the social groups at high school. The song lyrics perfectly coincide with ongoing conventions of the film, whether or not the different social categories will eventually let their guard down in order to realise they are not so contrasting after all. This is used so effortlessly it’s certain that meaning behind the lyrics may go amiss, the soundtrack is played only twice during the film, once at the start and once at the end; at the start the song is used to foreshadow possibilities that may emerge later in the film but this could never be registered by the audience. However, John Hughes introduces the song again at the end alongside the famous snapshot of Bender punching the air; this ties the song lyrics and the relationships built between the students together during the film, leaving the audience to ponder over the social boundary proposed as the film closes. This type of mickey-mousing style sound production can also be seen in the opening of Milded Pierce (USA 1945: Michael Curtiz) where the soundtrack is used similarly to echo both the camera and character movements. The soundtrack in Milded Pierce follows the same structure of use as The Breakfast Club; the soundtrack also taps into the emotional turmoil of the characters and whether that is obvious to the audience or not the notion is still operating. In some ways the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club even shows signs of leitmotif as well, given that it is used twice during the film but for different reasons. This can be more famously recognised when used in a movie like Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg), where the music composed by John Williams uses leitmotif all through the plot, the theme song is used at different conjunctions in the film at a different pace to insight multiple meanings.

 The most obvious example of how this film text reinforces a boundary to the audience is perhaps the Bender and Claire harassment/romance dynamic. Bender gets some of the films’ most famous and memorable lines, his constant obnoxious pestering of the students and staff, especially Claire, brings a certain character to the film’s plot. However, the provocateur himself alternates between being a smart arse towards Claire and indulging his genuine anger and this balance of identities shows us the common sexual themes present in everyday life. Through Bender, John Hughes displays how adolescents can often assign themselves a role like ‘abusive asshole’ to a private context they wouldn’t necessarily get away with in the adult world. It’s a disturbing subject but totally authentic and easily relatable for the audience. “You couldn’t ignore me if you tried” and “slip the hot beef injection” are but two of Bender’s crude comments made towards Claire. This narrative evidences how sometimes teenagers will say or act out of character to obtain a reaction from someone, but this would be painstakingly unacceptable outside of the adolescent margins they find themselves in. Claire, the wealthy popular princess is socially the polar opposite to Bender’s domestic doomsday life. Her social belonging represents everything he never got a chance to experience; the “importance on belonging, on being included, and on being part of a group; group affiliation not only supplies emotional security, but also is a source of status and reputation with motivational properties” [3] and not having these motivational properties is the main target for the effects of his fiercest rage. The hate and prejudice alongside the contrasting un-surfaced romance between the pair coins the foundations for her to be guilt-tripped into asking him out at the end of the film; a clear indication of how the plot and narrative reinforce this most basic sexual boundary to the audience. The Bender/Claire dynamic also touches up on the ingrained misogynistic attitudes in our world today, something that does not seem to have developed enough since the onset of the film in 1985.  Bender is always shown to be in control in his relationship with Claire, he manipulates her into bringing down her barriers and uses this to insight the opinion he wanted of himself from her. During the film Bender persuades Claire to show her secret talent, upon completion he then proceeds to clap longer than the rest of the group and adds: “wow Claire, my image of you is totally blow” sarcastically. This, considering the group has only just gone through some degree of team bonding, shows the total lack of respect men typically show women or have done in the past both sexually and socially.

 Upon analysis, The Breakfast Club as a whole both reinforces and challenges social, political, cultural and sexual boundaries given to the audience. More so reinforcing these boundaries, the film touches a lot of conventions that have been heavily discussed across the years; approaching the subjects of idealism, egotism, growing up, love, family and fear through easily recognisable adolescents, the audience is met with a background of intergenerational conflict. However, in hindsight the film appears to pose a very broad question that’s only surfaced due to the aforementioned analysis: Who are you?

For adolescents especially, who’s primarily the target audience, this is perhaps the most important dynamic active in their lives, bearing everything from sense of self to stereotypes to awareness of their future. John Hughes most definitely knew this; he’s manipulated a very simple film plot to create a vast spectrum of boundaries to the audience. The Breakfast Club takes five cliché’s, puts them into a controlled environment and watches as political rebellion, social integration and cultural participation ensue following the collapse of the characters inner ego. From Bender’s ‘done it all’ demeanor to Claire’s Disney World virginity, we come to terms with the “enduring faith that the future of our world rests with the young, and so we look to this period of life more than any other for an evaluation of current society and the probable social future." [4] The audience are faced with a plethora of real world themes that they are then forced to consider through the carefully selected mise en scene, sound, camera angles and what I think to be the most important: narrative. At first, the film appeared to be testament to the famous journey of becoming an adult and facing the pressures all adolescents find themselves in within when being a part a social hierarchy, however, on reflection the film represents a couple hours of self-contained rebellion, an expansion rather than a breaking of boundaries.

          [1] Jared Leto, Hollywood Actor

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/339884-teens-are-always-shown-as-one-dimensional-they-re-stereotyped-when

 [2] Wikipedia fact

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_You_(Forget_About_Me)

 [3] Quote taken from research page (Cotterell 1).

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am483_97/projects/coe/adolescents.html

 [4] Guarino, A., & Ianni, A. (2010). Social learning with local interactions. (pp. 1-26). (Discussion Papers in Economics and Econometrics; No. 1011). University of Southampton.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/economics/about/staff/ianni.page#publications

   Filmography:

-indiana Jones: raiders of the lost ark

-Milded Pierce

-The Breakfast Club