#the audience with on a surface level even when its contradicted by things that like. actually happen in the story

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

Idk why but i was thinking about the broader acotar fandom's attituide towards "crack ships" and how different it is compared to some other fandoms ive been in because most of the time what a lot of people call crack ships would be considered rare pairs or just. normal ships. Like, ive seen people call gwynriel a crack ship when gwyn is clearly deliberately set up to be part of a love triangle with elain and azriel which is to say, theres a real possibility of it becoming canon and imho thats not a fucking crackship, thats just a normal ass ship. Crack ships arent just non-canon or unpopular ships, theyre usually like shitpost ships that are funny because of how absurd they are and that most people dont earnestly ship. Thats why in ye olden days a lot of crackships were crossover ships from with characters from two very different pieces of media, like fuckin charlie bucket x aang from avatar or batman x sportacus from lazy town or whatever, it doesnt really matter as long as its weird and easy to make fun of conceptually

[lulu2992]

I’d like to (finally) talk about this interview with Mark Thompson, Narrative Director on Far Cry 4:

I love it when devs talk about their work because it’s always super interesting and informative! This video is no exception.

But what struck me most when I first saw the interview is what he says about Far Cry 3, a title he also worked on as a Level Design Director, which I believe means he was not (or barely) involved in the writing of the script. When he mentions what he thinks the issues with the game were and what had to be “fixed” in Far Cry 4, the thing is that... he often contradicts what Jeffrey Yohalem, Lead Writer on Far Cry 3, explained in various articles.

Under the cut, I highlighted some parts of Mark Thompson’s interview (in red) and compared them to Jeffrey Yohalem’s words (in blue, with the sources) so you can see how different their points of view are.

In this case, when it comes to the story and meaning of Far Cry 3, I’m inclined to give more credence to the Lead Writer’s explanations, but I think this example perfectly illustrates how even people who worked on the same project can have very different (and sometimes equally valid) opinions, understandings, and feelings about it, and why it can therefore be difficult for the audience to determine what the “truth” or the “right” interpretation is…

Open world vs story

MT: We ended up shipping a game where the open world had a lot of cool stuff, but it didn’t have a lot of depth or meaning, and it had almost no connection to what was happening in the story. And in fact, in some ways, the two were kind of opposed and they were kind of conflicting each other. So, on one hand, the story itself had this ticking time bomb of “I have these friends that I need to rescue, but holy sh*t, collecting plants, finding that next animal I need for the next upgrade, getting that next skill point… Oh, look, there’s a radio tower! Wait, wasn’t I heading to that outpost?” And then you’re like, “Oh yeah, sh*t, my friend Keith’s trapped in the basement, I should probably go rescue him… I’m a terrible friend.” That was my main goal: fix this sh*t and make sure that the story and the open world speak to each other, complement each other; strip everything down so that the story and the open world are the same thing and it’s the same game.

JY: People who have looked at the surface of the game think that the story and the game are at war with each other as they are in most games, with the story just plugging potholes and the gameplay is going along its merry way. I think it’s very exaggerated that, “Oh, go save the friends! Go save the friends!” but most people are out on the island doing all this other crazy stuff and experiencing the gameplay. And that’s actually the point of the story. It’s not a game about go save your friends. It’s a game about – doing a lot of picking skins from things, and wait, it’s just a pile of meat – this doesn’t even make sense, yet I’m still doing it instead of saving the friends. (Rock Paper Shotgun - Dec. 19, 2012)

The “white savior” trope

MT: We were definitely aware of some of the tropes that we fell into - unintentionally in some cases, intentionally in some - and (…) almost the first thing that we did was decide how we were gonna address the white savior trope, the outsider who comes in and helps simple people with his outsider’s kind of more advanced understanding of the world. (...) The first thing we said was, “This guy is from Kyrat, no matter what happens. That is the most important thing; he is part of this world, he belongs here.”

JY: “It’s a first-person game, and Jason is a 25-year old white guy from Los Angeles. From Hollywood. So his view of what’s going on on this island is his own view, and you happen to be looking through his eyes, so you’re seeing his view,” Yohalem explained. “It’s set on an island in the South Pacific, so immediately the thing that comes to mind is the white colonial trope, the Avatar trope. I started with that, and it’s like, ‘Here’s what pop culture thinks about traveling to a new place,’ and the funny thing is, that’s an exaggeration of most games, they just don’t expose it. (The Penny Arcade Report - Dec. 17, 2012)

JY: There’s a reason why Jason is a 25 year old white guy from Hollywood – these are all ideas that are in his head. You’re seeing things through his eyes. (...) It’s not that [Citra] needed a white saviour at all. She didn’t need a white guy at all. She was just looking for the ultimate warrior and someone to be her gun. (...) If this was about the white messiah motif, would I be so stupid as to have a main character’s nickname be Snow White? I’m making fun of that! (Rock Paper Shotgun - Dec. 19, 2012)

The player and the protagonist

MT: When we were doing the script review, almost immediately, the first thing we would do would be, “Okay, so how many lines does Ajay have? Okay, cut that by 75%”, and then we would review it and then cut out even more. Whenever possible, we would set up a scenario where we know or we think we know how players would react, and so we would remove the line that the character would actually say and then have the other person react to it. “Oh, you think that, do you?” - in that kind of way, so they’re like, “Oh f*ck, how did he know I was gonna say that?” Whereas, if the protagonist said that line, they’re like, “Oof, I wouldn’t have said that”, and then suddenly you’re kind of broken out of the experience. (…) When you’re in first-person, all you hear is this disconnected voice that might not be agreeing with what you’re doing. So, again, it’s just about stripping away those barriers of immersion so you can imagine yourself in this scenario.

JY: In Far Cry 3, Jason is a character and he’s not the player. The player is another character in the game. Sometimes Jason disagrees with the player, and sometimes Jason agrees with him. And the magic of that is that then it doesn’t matter! Basically, as long as the whole narrative is directed towards what the player is feeling—which for me is how videogames should be—then I get to target Jason as a resource where players can go: “I disagree with Jason.” And the player gets to convince Jason to do something else. So instead of trying to force the two of them together, I’ve decoupled them. (Killscreen - Dec. 12, 2012)

[ouyangzizhensdad]

unpopular opinion: most of the mxtx critical discourse happens becouse people cant let go of their prejudes against bl genre

Somewhat agree? I know you used “most” so you already acknowledged that there are other factors at play, but I do think it’s important to consider that reactions like these generally do not have a single, easy answer. 

While people tend to conflate danmei and BL, we can’t ignore that there have been larger discussions about how women *should* or *should not* engage or produce m/m content, in and out of fandoms, in ways that even people who haven’t drunk the anti-fujo kool-aid are inherently suspicious of “straight women” writing m/m stories (the Love, Simon controversy is an example of that where the author was forced out of the closet for the crime of writing a m/m story as a presumed straight woman). But danmei/bl being non-western, non-white genres certainly accentuate many of these tensions. Racism funnily both play into the patronising/otherising takes regarding how ‘terrible’ danmei-bl is compared to other m/m content, but also in the criticisms of westerners who engage in danmei-bl: ‘so you guys just want to fetishise asian men/asian gay men’.

As well, there’s been so much discussions about what *should* or *should not* been written when it comes more broadly to romance and sex, about what is problématique or not, the conclusion of which seems to lean toward the idea that any content that is not a safe, sane and consensual PSA or entirely wholesome simply should not exist. And that’s not even mentioning the sort of “psychologisation” or “trauma-turn” of these discussions, where people assume the psychological states of people who write or engage with problématique content, or propose that only people who have the right list of traumas can produce or engage with these types of content. And that hangs heavy not only in the mind of people who produce content but the person who consume it. If the only reason you could possibly want to engage with anything problématique would be that you are, in a way, deviant or broken, then perhaps you will start consciously avoiding these types of works or people who produce them. And all these relate to large discussions about how “””fiction impacts reality””” and discussions about social justice and consent, etc. etc. Once more, we have overlapping discourses and so, so much intertextuality. 

And the thing is that, generally, it’s not like these discourses are “rotten to the core,” ie that there is not important conversations to be had about these topics or that real issues did not spark these conversations in the first place. However, many people tend to want to collapse these complex discussions with complex and sometimes contradicting conclusions into a single, convenient answer by going to the extreme. And we have to recognise that there is something rewarding about feeling like you’re in the right, especially when these discourses become moralised. The trade-off between giving up entirely on something for the reward of taking the moral high ground seems very appealing! And it’s a lot less difficult than to navigate on a case-by-case basis works of fiction or fandom discussions, or to figure how to like something you might also disagree with or question regarding certain aspects. 

However, not only is it a vain effort, it is also denies art its capacity for meaning. It is vain because, well, the sources of the issues are unlikely to disappear and will probably only move onto a newer manifestation, and because humans be problematic 🤷‍♂️ and we be living in a society 🤷‍♂️. It doesn’t mean we should not be critical and have debates and conversations and expect better--but it means that this belief that the internet will be a good place if only we can squash fandom group X is just..... a fantasy. A comforting one, perhaps, but one all the same. I wouldn’t mind it as much if there wasn’t harassment and aggression resulting from these beliefs, and if it didn’t stifle art and creativity, the latter relating to an underlying assumption that there is nothing of worth in exploring in fiction difficult or shocking themes, or relationship dynamics that are not perfect or healthy. And that is just..... fundamentally misunderstanding the point of art and fiction. 

As well, somewhat in relation to these discussions, it’s important I think to accept that a lot of people who engage with MDZS in bad faith do so after they have been exposed by takes demonising the work that they took at face-value. It takes a lot more energy, good faith, critical thinking, and good reading comprehension to end up finding arguments against a perception of a work that you already accepted as true before you read it. Especially since social media has made it so much more dependent on other people’s opinions to decide what we engage with, and in which manner we will, I don’t think it can be understated. If you have already been served an opinion, it is easier than having to form your own, and easier than challenging it. Especially if people frame that opinion as morally right, and the people who disagree with it as degenerate sickos. Wouldn’t want to side with the freaks!!!

Finally, MDZS is not a work of fiction that can be read on the surface, and is a work that likes to play with tropes in a manner than is not necessarily a complete and total subversion, things that make it easier for people to miss the point of many of its elements. It’s even harder considering the level of the available translation and the framing of said translation--and the fact that many of the readers are not part of the intended audience and lack many of the cultural or literary knowledge that would help them navigate the novel. And, let’s be honest, it’s easier to miss the mark at times when a writer decides to handle more complex and controversial topics. It’s not like I don’t think MXTX could have not done some things better.

[dweemeister]

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Upon the publication Sinclair Lewis’ novel Elmer Gantry in 1927, an eruption of outrage ensued. The novel, a Juvenalian satire of evangelical Christianity in the United States, drew invectives from evangelical groups and high praise from literary circles. Despite its popularity among American readers, Elmer Gantry’s content long prevented American studio executives from even considering the film adaptation rights. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), from 1934 until 1968, enforced the Hays Code, a guideline for censorship, on all films made by the major American studios for theatrical release. Here is what the Hays Code says on religion – this section was never amended for the entirety of the Code’s existence:

No film or episode may throw ridicule on any religious faith.

Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains.

Ceremonies of any definite religion should be carefully and respectfully handled.

The 1960 film adaptation of Elmer Gantry, released by United Artists (UA), directed and written by Richard Brooks, and featuring one of Burt Lancaster’s most electric performances of his career, violates the second and third part of this section and, arguably, the first as well. By the late 1950s and early ‘60s, enforcement of the Code was beginning to wither – boundary-pushing non-American films (which were exempt from the Code), television, and evolving behavioral and cultural norms in the United States contributed to its eventual demise. One of the beneficiaries was undoubtedly Brooks, whose output around this time – including Blackboard Jungle (1955), The Professionals (1966), and In Cold Blood (1967) – reflects the relaxing standards of Hollywood’s self-imposed censorship. Of the films Brooks made in this period, Elmer Gantry might be the most complete, excoriating, and cinematic.

Elmer Gantry (Lancaster) is a garrulous, ruthless, and ambitious con man who invokes Scripture to hock whatever he is selling. His shtick is effective, as his energetic sermonizing tends to break down the resistance of most. One day, curious about a traveling evangelist tent show passing through town, he encounters Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons). Gantry, taken by Sister Sharon’s virginal piousness and her fairness, convinces Sister Sharon’s assistant, Sister Rachel (Patti Page), to join their traveling group. Sister Sharon is impressed by Gantry’s – or “Brother Gantry” – orations, and she adjusts her own sermons to complement his. Where Gantry decries the congregants as sinners, Sister Sharon promises salvation through repentance. As time passes, Gantry’s presence in this itinerant ministry becomes the talk of the Midwest and Great Plains. Sister Sharon and Gantry begin to attract new congregants and onlookers’ horror, alike. The sermons become increasingly theatrical, writes the cynical big-city newspaper reporter Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), who is torn by his admiration of Gantry’s façade and his revulsion for hucksterism. Meanwhile, sex worker Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) – who once knew Gantry when he was aiming to become a minister – is about to make an unexpected reentry into his life.

Character actors round out the cast of this motion picture, including Dean Jagger as Sister Sharon’s manager, Bill Morgan; Edward Andrews as businessman George F. Babbitt; and John McIntire and Hugh Marlowe as two reverends. Rex Ingram (1936’s The Green Pastures, 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad) cameos in an uncredited appearance as the preacher of a black congregation.

Elmer Gantry never feels like a 146-minute movie, as it moves through its scenes with fervorous pace thanks to some excellent performances and crisp filmmaking (more on both later). Brooks’ adaptation covers less than a quarter of Sinclair Lewis’ novel – Lewis allows its plot to unfold over the course of several years – and takes liberties in deleting or rearranging characters and plot points to fit neatly in a movie adaptation. Like the novel itself, Brooks’ adaptation ends without clear moral or narrative resolution – albeit at an earlier point in the novel. The character of Lulu Bains does not reappear in Lewis’ novel until after the events depicted in the film. To provide Elmer Gantry, the character, with the immoral backstory lost on a moviegoer unfamiliar with the novel, Brooks integrates Lulu into this film adaptation. On a surface level, that appears to deprive Lulu of her own characterization, agency, and backstory, but Brooks allows the character (and Shirley Jones) the space to portray and develop her complicated feelings – a stew of trauma, bitterness, and love – for her current life station and towards Elmer Gantry.

Reverential low-angled shots from cinematographer John Alton (1951’s An American in Paris, 1958’s The Brothers Karamazov) during the revivals make Sister Sharon’s tent seem cavernous, a fabric cathedral without need of stained glass, marble statues, flying buttresses. Looking slightly upwards at Sister Sharon’s of Elmer’s faces (at times with a Dutch angle), the film elevates the two above the masses listening intently on what they have to say, imbuing their scenes with striking imagery that draws the viewer’s attention. The decision to shoot the film in the 1.66:1 screen aspect ratio – wider than the Academy standard, but not as much as the widescreen standard sweeping through American filmmaking at the time – constricts the audience’s peripheral vision, forcing one’s focus on the speaker’s body language, rather than any miscellaneous activity occurring behind or to the side of the speaker.

As for the speakers or, should we say, actors, there are stupendous performances across the ensemble. For his turn as the eponymous lead, Burt Lancaster, known for his vigorous performances, provides Elmer Gantry with vigor aplenty. Modeling his performance off of the behavior of baseball outfielder-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday, Lancaster struts around the tent during revival meetings, his upper body animated in conversation and salesmanship outside those meetings. Even in stillness, Lancaster’s physicality swaggers, brimming with euphoria – his most private moments abound in sexuality molded by what his character might call the love of God. Even Lancaster’s haircut appears to be defying gravity more than usual in Elmer Gantry. The sweat on his brow, within the 1:66:1 frame, feels as if it is about to seep through the camera. As he delivers his lines, Lancaster masters the complicated beat – accelerating with certain turns of phrases and strategic pauses for emphasis – and wildly varying volume of Elmer’s sermons. “Love is like the morning and the evening stars,” he intones as Gantry (that is his signature quote), somehow making us believe in such bromides and other simplifications he sells to the revival’s attendees.

Jean Simmons, as Sister Sharon Falconer, is a clear-eyed minister who nevertheless falls – or, perhaps, “seduced” – for Brother Elmer’s pontifications. In her own way, Sister Sharon Falconer is as ruthless as the man who wheedles his way into her company. Simmons, retaining her British accent, speaks like a patrician but, as Sister Sharon, reminds all that even the poor, the downtrodden, the sightless, the hard-of-hearing can know the munificence of Christ. So different is she from Gantry that when the latter begins to aggressively court her, the scene elicits squirms. Not because the scene is poorly acted, but that Simmons and Lancaster (with assistance from Brooks’ screenplay) have developed their characters so masterfully that Elmer’s pretense-free seduction feels straight from an Old Testament story that invariably incurs God’s wrath. Their characters convince themselves of their mutual love, even though Gantry is probably incapable of loving and Sister Sharon cannot view love outside how she might interpret it through the Bible.

In the aisles or the congregation’s peanut gallery are Arthur Kennedy and Shirley Jones. For Kennedy, as the reporter Jim Lefferts, this is a dress rehearsal for the similar but more biting role of Jackson Bentley in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Like Bentley was to T.E. Lawrence, Lefferts views the work of Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon with a cynical lens but, to some degree, each finds a professional need for the other. As Lulu, Shirley Jones crackles with a sexuality essentially nonexistent in American movies at this time. Upon Lulu’s introduction, she tells her fellow sex workers her past experiences with the minister now stealing newspaper headlines:

LULU BAINES: He got to howlin’ “Repent! Repent!” and I got to moanin’ “Save me! Save me!” and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man’s footsteps!

With this suggestive language that would never have been tolerated by the MPAA a few years earlier, Jones delivers her lines with shamelessness, slightly colored by a modicum of romantic trauma that reveals itself later. Jones is not in Elmer Gantry long, but her presence, her character’s raw contradictions deepen the tragedies that seem to follow those entranced by a former seminary student now returning to preaching his idea of gospel.

André Previn’s unsettled score to Elmer Gantry leans heavily on brass dissonance and rhythmically complex string runs in the few instances where there is no dialogue or diegetic music. Though not used often, Previn’s music lays bare Gantry’s motivations of lust and profit, a man devoid of internal meaning and one who craves sensation. There are moments throughout the score where it seems like a Coplandesque Americana sound is begging to burst free. But Previn, more than capable of composing such music and considering the narrative to this adaptation, knows better than to let those tendencies escape. The raving strings and blaring brass bury melodicism, which is left for the jazzy interludes that accompany Lulu’s scenes (jazz at this time was considered scandalous by many Americans). Previn’s score might not suit those longing for free-flowing motifs, but the technical skill required to play, let alone accomplish the musical phrasing he intends, some of the passages he writes for Elmer Gantry are stunning.

Earlier in this write-up in reference to the Hays Code, I mentioned that Elmer Gantry villainizes and makes comic characters out of religious figures, in addition to portraying the events at Sister Sharon’s revivals as debauched, deceitful. But does Elmer Gantry “throw ridicule on… religious faith”? Probably not, although those who despise religious belief in and of itself might disagree. Given Sister Sharon’s modesty and her less-fiery diction early in the film, probably not. Brooks does not expand upon what Sister Sharon’s congregation looked or sounded like in the months of years before Elmer Gantry’s arrival. Instead, Brooks’ movie targets individuals seeking to make economic and personal empires of organized religion – and Elmer Gantry, whose ravenous pursuit for money and women, is the man to defile Sister Sharon’s ministry. Only once he ingratiates himself to Sister Sharon, Gantry begins to emphasize what sounds suspiciously close to the “prosperity gospel”, which broadly states that faith in God and religious donations will lead to material wealth and physical wellbeing. The prosperity gospel is not scriptural. But it is a central tenant of numerous evangelical traditions.

Like Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, and the Falwell family, Elmer Gantry is the byproduct of the United States’ Third Great Awakening, which also resulted in Prohibition and the State of Tennessee’s decision to prosecute John Thomas Scopes for teaching human evolution in a public school. Sinclair Lewis, like Richard Brooks and his cast for Elmer Gantry, warn of profiteering “prophets” that remain a fixture of American life. From the mid-1950s to the mid-‘60s, the major Hollywood studios were prioritizing epic movies such as Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959), and George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) – spectaculars intended to check the perceived threat of television to moviegoing. A film like Elmer Gantry that disparages religious ministers – even unethical, villainous ones – released during this time was nothing less than a landmark. Adapting a work by one of the great American writers of the twentieth century, Richard Brooks, with no small assistance from a cast topped by Burt Lancaster, results in a venomous film including one of the great characters of American film history. The book is almost a century old and the film is just past its sixtieth anniversary, but Elmer Gantry’s power endures. Elmer Gantry’s dialectic continues, even with evangelical Christianity akin to the homilies of Elmer Gantry supposedly on the wane.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Elmer Gantry is the one hundred and sixty-fourth feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[nezumiismissing]

Overcoming Similarities and Fear of the Self: A Lesson in Socialization

Ok so I'd like to start out by saying that this isn't going to be nearly as pretentious and academic as the title makes it sound, but I couldn't let go of how good it sounded (and since it’s me it’s at least a little pretentious and academic), so here we are. But anyways, onto the topic at hand.

Like most stories, No.6 focuses immensely on fundamental differences between people and places, and how those differences lead to conflict that either brings those groups together or destroys one or both of them. On a large scale, No.6 tells the story of the conflict between the West Block and lower classes of citizens, and the institution of No.6 itself as created by the city's elites. On a small scale, we see this larger issue of sociopolitical conflict reflected in Nezumi and Shion and their relationship as it develops throughout the story. This individual conflict is mostly philosophical, with each character having their own experiences with No.6 and therefore differing opinions as to what, if anything, needs to be done about it. However, these differences in experiences, and how Nezumi and Shion were taught to view the world, function not only as a reflection of larger scale issues, but also reveal how they form their opinions about both the world, and especially in Nezumi's case, each other.

Right from the beginning of the story, we are shown, and expected to accept, that Nezumi and Shion are fundamentally different, that their experiences are so drastically different from each other that outside of a certain level of compromise, they will never philosophically align with one another. But I think there’s more to it than that. Because even though this difference is what drives the entirety of the plot forward, acting as a micro level version of the wider sociopolitical conflict, one of the overarching themes of the story, that humans are fundamentally the same, or at least equal, no matter their experiences and beliefs, directly contradicts what is otherwise a story of dichotomies, creating not a grey area open to interpretation, but a single truth that must be accepted in order to accept the events of the story.

And here is where we get to the part where I ramble on about the complexity of Nezumi’s character and how it informs not only his actions, but his emotions as well. Specifically, Nezumi’s “fear” of Shion that develops throughout the story on the surface appears to be based on the fact that not only have they had vastly different experiences, and therefore view No.6 and its issues significantly differently, but also that because of these differences Nezumi is, for the first time, recognizing that there are things about the world and other people that he does not fully understand. By defying Nezumi’s expectations of what a citizen of No.6 should be like, and demonstrating his individuality and ability to defend himself, Shion proves that people are more complex than they often first appear, have motives outside of basic survival or corruption, and can behave in ways that to an outsider seem completely irrational. Looking at it this way, Nezumi’s discomfort with and eventual fear of Shion make perfect sense, as he appears to Nezumi to be someone who is now completely unknowable and irrational. However, Shion’s insistence on that theme, that humans are fundamentally the same, highlights a completely different idea: Nezumi is not afraid of Shion only because of their differences, or because he is an unknown entity, but also because through his interactions with Shion, Nezumi is forced to face the fact that perhaps they are actually quite similar, and that the one who was unknown all along was himself.

Throughout the story, we get very few, if any, chances to see Nezumi do any kind of self reflection. He has already figured himself out, he knows how the world works and what kind of people inhabit it, and no matter what may happen, he is able to approach it calmly and make completely rational choices. Except when it comes to Shion. From the beginning, Shion is so drastically different from what Nezumi is used to that there is no rational approach to take other than to simply observe him and try to decipher what he may be thinking at any given moment. Unfortunately for Nezumi, this is a task that remains impossible for him until he recognizes that there is a crucial part of his understanding of the world that he is missing, and why it is that he does not have it. This lack of understanding ties into many of Nezumi’s actions that to Shion, and us as the audience, appear irrational, specifically relating to why he leaves at the end of the story, as well as why he spends the majority of the story constantly contradicting himself and acting in ways that go directly against what he preaches earlier on to Shion.

This is especially apparent as we approach the end of the end of the story, when Nezumi’s focus on Shion shifts away from teaching him to survive, and instead towards preventing him from becoming too much like Nezumi. Part of this is of course, as the story points out, because to a certain extent Nezumi still sees Shion as an outsider, one who should not be enacting violence and should instead be protected. This is obviously uh, not a good and healthy way to think about another person that is supposed to be equal to you, but I think it also speaks to how Nezumi has grown through the process of self-reflection, even though this process remains unfinished even after the events in Beyond. Because I don’t think that Nezumi’s insistence on keeping Shion the same as he’s always been (which obviously also shows a lack of understanding of Shion as a person, and just people in general) is just about his desire to protect him, but rather a fear that if Shion becomes too much like him, then Nezumi’s actions and beliefs will have become externalized and projected in a way that forces him to face himself and all that he has done in his life. By this point in the story Nezumi has realized that some part of who Shion is as a person is also a part of himself, and Shion’s actions have shown that the reverse may also be true. Thus the possibility that further similarities will arise becomes likely, and out of fear that he does not actually fully understand himself, as well as an inability to self-reflect in a constructive way, this fear is taken out on Shion in the form of attempting to prevent him from changing in any way, in the hope that it will prevent the revealing of any more similarities, and therefore the further deconstruction of Nezumi’s sense of self. In other words, Nezumi’s desire to see Shion not change in the Correctional Facility is less an attempt to protect Shion from “reality” (which yes he does also want to do), and more a coping mechanism for Nezumi as he struggles with his own identity.

Now this is not to say that Nezumi and Shion are exactly the same, or that they should be interpreted as such, or that they will ever become exactly alike. Rather, it is more about the idea that all humans (with some exceptions of course) have the same or similar capacity for certain emotions/understandings of the world, and that what differentiates us from each other is not some innate difference that can never be overcome, but instead a result of socialization that, while not entirely able to be reversed, can be in many cases overwritten and changed through a continued process. In this specific case, for example, we see that Nezumi and Shion are both capable of strong feelings of empathy for other people. However, whereas Shion is entirely comfortable with processing this emotion, because of the way he was socialized (raised) by both the old woman and Rou, as well as a result of severe trauma, Nezumi has no real foundation for understanding human empathy, and so when he does experience it, his immediate reaction is to reject and rationalize it rather than attempt to process it, which would result in him having to fundamentally change his world views. Nezumi’s socialization also forms his conceptualization of the unknown as something to be feared, as the environments he was raised in required things that were unknown (such as No.6) to be seen as a threat rather than an opportunity to learn and develop. Thus the appearance of Shion, as well as his “strange” behavior brought over from No.6, serves as both a deep fascination for Nezumi as something that questions his construction of “humanity”, as well as something to be feared due to its existence outside of this construction.

Just to tie it all together, this is a huge part of why Nezumi ultimately has to leave at the end of the story. Just like every other person who has written about the ending has stated, Nezumi needs time to reflect and heal from his trauma, and that is something that is fundamentally impossible for him to do in the presence of either Shion or the remnants of No.6. After spending the majority of his life crushed under the weight of (and then forced to question) something that is both unknown and the source of his suffering, what he needs is the comfort of an unknown that fundamentally still fits into his preexisting world views while still leaving room for exploration that is free from the influence of others. Most of his life has been spent under the strict influence of those who raised him, who taught him that the world is ultimately a place of suffering, violence, and tragedy, that his trauma was justified, but normal, and nothing would ever fundamentally change about that world. The short period he did spend alone was time when he was too young to really be able to question that idea, and it instead became cemented in his mind as the “reality” he presents to Shion. Shion, on the other hand, so significantly disrupts this pattern that Nezumi is unable to rationally respond, and instead of taking the new information into account, resists it in self defense, not wanting to recognize that what he thought was reality only really existed in his mind. He needs an in-between place, a place where he can be alone with his thoughts and reflect on his life without the interference of people who he feels strongly connected to, who might influence his processing. He needs a place where he can not only recover from his trauma, but also the fear his socialization has resulted in that ultimately ended up only being the fear of his own humanity.

[insomniacowl]

Neon Genesis Evangelion review Introduction and Chapter 1

Introduction

The whole point I made this Tumblr was to bring all of my works scattered across different websites and in different languages together. This series is something I wrote between 2013 to 2015. Why I am starting with the translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion in 2020 is due to its ease of access now as it is on Netflix, and as we are reaching the long-awaited end with the final movie. 

 From here on is the direct translation of what I wrote back then, so there will be times when what I say might be outdated or not make sense out of that temporal context. While they add a layer of interpretation required, I chose to keep them in as it serves their purposes as integral parts of this analysis. However, in such cases, I will make sure to add comments along the way to aid the reader’s understanding.

Lines at the end of paragraphs demarcated with * are note added in during this translation 

Neon Genesis Evangelion review Chapter 1: What are we attempting to do here

The materials used in this analysis are

1) Original TV series, Death and rebirth, End of Evangelion, and related scripts and storyboards

2) Anno Hideaki and key production staffs’ interviews, including producer commentaries in DVD

3) Officially released materials that serve as guides to the story

4) Related games and materials-related 

5) Official manga

 For materials from categories 4 and 5, if it contradicts the information from 1 to 3, the information in the latter will supersedes the formal. All information sourced from outside of this list will carry with it a footnote.

 The flow of this series of analysis will first focus on analyzing the primary material and slowly transition towards the meanings that are hidden under the surface. I will also touch on personal, and community opinions on the series.

 *Since the primary language and the audience it was written for was Korean, the community opinions and theories are skewed towards theirs’s and those from Japanese forums at that time.  

The general point of view I will be taking in writing this review, is like this line art from Picasso. That is to not think of the intentions of the creator at first glance and to just enjoy the piece of art as it is for a while.

 However, I do not mean this to imply that I will be completely ignoring those intentions, symbolisms, and metaphors written into the story. It is to first enjoy the work of art that is presented to us, then try to understand what is being conveyed by diving deep into the structure, and components of it. 

 Some shows out there ask you to connect the dots yourself, but do not provide the necessary information or ignores continuity to try and provide cheap plot twists that serve no purpose in the narrative of the story. However, Neon Genesis Evangelion is not a show that did such things and is rich in the metaphoric ‘dots’ in the forms of character lines, expressions, actions, emotions, etc. Therefore, I felt the need to operationalize and express them.

The “Congratulation” scene that even the hardest of Eva fans find difficult to defend. What purpose did it serve?

Reason to why I am making this analysis, even though I am not a fan of nit-picking a piece of media, is to address the increasing support being given to the narratives such as “Anno didn’t intend to say anything!”, “It’s just something to troll the Otakus!”, “The final two episodes of the TVA is due to budget cuts”, and so on. My view is that such viewpoints arise from the lack of understanding of the purpose of storytelling, or even from the lack of effort to even try, and therefore, I can say with clarity that “Such statements are wrong”.

 If one were to understand the set pieces and plot points inside Eva, would they be able to say the same? My argument is that very few would. Even if the interpretation may differ due to subjectivity, being a reductionist that brush of Eva as ‘a series made to exploit the “Otakus” by filling it with incoherent tropes’ is wrong. To convince such people to the contrary, I present how philosophical and psychological ideas are weaved into the story, and by examining how they are expressed, try to explain” What makes Evangelion such a great series”.

 The ultimate goal of this analysis is the change the mind of people who started from “It’s a waste of time to analyze anime” and ended up believing in “This medium is not worth thinking deeply about at all”. Hopefully, it can become a source that could be pointed too to serve as a proof that Evangelion is not a series devoid of meaning.

*Hopefully, it can serve the same purpose for the medium of anime as a whole and not just for Evangelion at this point.

 The target audience of this writing is for people who have at least watched the original TVA at least once and the analysis will start at surface level at first and get deeper as we move further with the analysis. 

Why did Shinji had to strangle Asuka in this scene? Was there something that compelled him to do so?

Of course, there is still a possibility that we do not have a full understanding of the series yet. And I believe that we have not, and perhaps there are missing links the director has written into the series deliberately.

 Even so, attempting to understand a piece of art is worth the effort no matter what. Because that is what makes us humans. Humans are capable of loving others, this is one of the theses of Evangelion as well. To attempt to know the unknown by thinking of them as beings ‘worth trying to understand’ is a very human thing to do, and the ability to make this attempt is what makes us human after all.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of 2010s-18th Place

From here, we jump from one unstoppable franchise that defined my childhood to another!

#18- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012-2017)

The Plot: Fifteen years after their mutation, four turtles trained in ninjutsu finally get a chance to leave their home in the sewers and catch a glimpse of the surface world. However, they soon learn that the city of New York is surprisingly full of crime. The type of crime run by dangerous mutants, aliens from another dimension, and even a legion of ninjas run by a dangerously pointy samurai named The Shredder. With the training from their rat sensei, these unlikely heroes will save their city, foil the villains' plans and still have time for pizza!

Now I know that you might be thinking about how this is the dumbest plot for a T.V. show. To that, I say...yeah, pretty much. HOWEVER, the show is called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There is no way you didn't know it was going to be a dumb show going in, right? TMNT is a franchise born from stupidity but not hindered by it. The many reboots rarely, if ever, take themselves too seriously. And the main reason this franchise lasts so long is that the writers know to embrace the weirdness rather than make fun of it. Something similar can be said about this particular reboot.

Sure, there are episodes with more serious stakes than others, but those episodes still know when to keep things light-hearted and fun by placing a well-timed joke between the more dramatic beats. Or at least, they try to do that, but I’ll get to that later. For the most part, TMNT (2012) has a great sense of humor that will make kids laugh and give the adult fans an occasional chuckle. Even when the show does take itself seriously, it handles it well. And do you want to know why the jokes and drama work in this series? It’s all because of the characters.

Here’s a tip for people who want to write a comedy series: Comedy doesn’t come from the joke, but the character who makes the joke. A common complaint you’ll hear about Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is that it has the mistake of everyone having too similar of a personality. The jokes are still funny (sometimes), but it comes at the expense of making the characters stale. That isn't the case for this version. Each turtle has a unique trait that helps explore a joke (Leonardo being the straight man and Donetello's over the top freakouts, for example). Even Master Splinter gives an occasional laugh with his dry sense of humor. However, not every joke in TMNT (2012) works, and that’s either because some gags are out of character or are just not funny. For instance, Michelangelo is the team’s moron, so his humor comes from doing something stupid or random. Sometimes it earns a laugh, but for the most part, it comes across as annoying.

The writers also do a somewhat good job at handling drama with its characters. By making the audience like these characters because of their sense of humor, we immediately root for them when they’re being thrown into a more dire situation. The best example of this is every time the turtles and their allies face off against the Shredder, which is always an intense scene to witness. That’s because we care about the characters and will feel panicked when they are in a fight they might not walk away from unscathed. However, not every instance of drama works well. There are times when the show takes itself a little too seriously. While the adult fans will most certainly enjoy those episodes, the same can’t be said for kids. Most kids' cartoons during the 2010s manage to handle drama well in a way where both children and adults can be invested. They usually do this by remembering to keep a stable mix of light-hearted humor with serious storytelling, and sadly this series sometimes fails in finding that perfect mix.

In the first season (and half of season 2), TMNT (2012) did have that balance of comedy and drama. However, halfway through season 2, the humor and drama begin to contradict each other. It starts off with the more comedic episodes coming across as sillier than the dramatic ones that come across as too dark. For example, a story where the turtles nearly die from getting eaten by mutated pizza comes right before one where they almost die from fighting a trained assassin who's a mutated tiger. Things get even worse where even the tones don’t match up for an episode. A majority of the dramatic episodes in later seasons will have a dumb joke that ruins the moment's intensity. And every time, that joke is always made by Michelangelo, who we already established as being not that funny. Because of the contradicting tones, both new and old fans of the series can lose their enjoyment.

However, there’s one thing all fans enjoy that this series excels in, and that is having great action. While the current reboot definitely has the best action animation-wise, it’s mostly styled with no substance. That’s not the case with the 2012 reboot, as it does a decent job at mixing cool action into a story. It’s easy to make a fight between four mutated turtles fighting an evil mutant look cool, but it’s a whole other thing to actually have that fight make sense in a story. Because this reboot works in a half-hour format, the fight scenes between the turtles and the new villain of the week feel more natural and nicely paced with everything else going on within the episode. Plus, while not as epic as Rise of the TMNT, the fights are still pretty cool. They can be fast-paced, have phenomenal camera work, and can be pretty brutal at times when they want to be. And it’s somewhat because this series trades the traditional 2D designs for a 3D makeover.

It’s funny. When I found out that this version of TMNT was planned to be animated using 3D models, I was ready to hate it due to how unnatural it looks. The thing is that the 3D designs are what makes this show stand out from the rest. The level of detail each character has is impressive and would have taken much longer to animate if the show would have stuck with 2D. Although there are a few small complaints, I have character designs. These problems don’t really bug me that much, but they are still worth mentioning. One problem is that not every redesign for the characters work, especially with how they made Casey Jones (do a google image search if you don’t believe me). But I can learn to live with it because every reboot has that ONE design that not everyone will agree with. Another issue I have is that it is apparent when the animators took shortcuts. Such as making an army where the characters look identical to each other or having the transformation from human to mutant look a little lazy. Now I can accept that for two reasons: One. It would take a long time to make a new unique model for a character who would appear for just 10 seconds. And two. Animation (Especially 3D animation) is crazy expensive, and you gotta make cuts where you can. However, for things like the city of New York, one of the most populated/crowded states in the country, being practically devoid of all life can be pretty distracting.

But while the designs for the characters are great, the characters themselves are also...fine. Okay, truth be told, there isn’t much I can say about the characters. Most of them range from passably generic to forgettably bland. However, there are characters in this reboot that I feel are worth mentioning. For instance, this show has the BEST version of Master Splinter. His backstory of the life he had as Hamato Yoshi is legitimately heartbreaking, and the way he interacts with the turtles can be both heartwarming and hilarious. Then there’s the character who I’m iffy about, and that’s April O'Neil. And it’s NOT because she’s a teenage girl in this version (Although I can see why people can have a problem with that), but instead because she doesn’t seem like April O’Neil. Without giving too much away, TMNT (2012) does something that I’m okay with, and that's trying to make April less of a damsel in distress and more of a character who can actually take care of herself. However, the way the writers do that is by making her less like April O’Neil and more like...well, without spoiling anything, she’s more like another famous red-headed comic book character who deals with dangerous mutants. Finally, there’s the character I’m frustrated with: Michelangelo. When I was a kid, Mikey was always my favorite turtle from the bunch, and that was because he was the funniest turtle. This version, on the other hand, comes across as more annoying than funny. In fact, not only is Donatello the most hilarious turtle in this series, but even Leonardo has moments when he’s funnier than Michelangelo. And those are both characters who have had the reputation of the most boring in the franchise!

So, does this reboot of TMNT have its faults? Yes. Yes, it does. But do you want to know what else this reboot has? It has both style and substance. It has both drama and humor. It has fantastic designs and great characters to go along with them. In the end, if you’re a new or old fan of the franchise, odds are you're gonna have one shell of a time with this series.

(Also, while I pointed out it’s faults, I do enjoy Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...for the most part. I’ll explain why, some day.)

[chromsai]

Zxl Review

Well I finally got through yet another YuGiOh on this YGO Hell Challenge journey, so I want to quickly sum up my experience before moving on to the final YuGiOh in this challenge. Again, reminding you that this challenge will NOT be including V//r//ains, which means we have saved the best for last. Well, let’s do this...

Also, even though my past liveblogs have been primarily documented here on Tumblr, I opted to express my uncensored opinions on my private Twitter salt account for this show in particular mainly out of respect for those who followed me and didn’t want to see me salt so intensely every single day. For those who enjoy this show, I didn’t wanna be that annoying to deal with. For those who did get to see me salt, however, well... 

You know what’s up.

TL;DR: Zxl is not a show that I have ever preferred. I can understand why others might enjoy this show, however I personally can’t find or take away anything that is genuinely deeply substantial or compelling from it. I feel like this show lives off of being superficially loud and boisterous, dragging generic and vague themes out to give the illusion that they carry any real value. Of course that falls extremely flat when those themes are never explored or developed seriously and meaningfully, only being used for the hollow and unimpressive shock-value they can offer on a surface level.

Season 1 (Episodes 1 - 73)

Like I said, I don’t want to make this longer than I already feel it is; I just want to give my overall thoughts. Zxl has a tendency to introduce too many characters, too many high stakes, too many insignificant side stories (which are also meaningless), etc. at such a grueling pace. This first half of the show is plagued with inconsequential filler episodes AND antagonists (and “rivals”) with incredibly melodramatic roles... it’s just... just... so unnecessary to create a genuinely interesting show. Every climax in this show (not just this season) relies on shock-value reveals that tend to contradict characters’ beliefs, logic, and personalities.

Presentation-wise, this show is overall decent as they don’t often have noticeably bad animation, on the contrary Zxl overall tends to remain consistently well-animated. The only problem stems from the gaudy, overly color-saturated designs of various characters and card/monster designs. Character-wise, there are few decent designs like IV and Akari. Everyone else though? This show is consistently.... not a sight for sore eyes, I’ll tell ya that.

The soundtrack design is.... *shrugs*. Not terrible, but also, often extremely boisterous, which I suppose is appropriate. But none of the soundtracks are memorable at all.

As for the main point I suppose I should have mentioned: Yuma & Astral’s relationship and development.... well... this season did a not too bad job at developing their relationship (but no one else’s much), at the expense of copying DM’s Yugi & the Pharaoh’s relationship in terms of concept and setup. However, if it leads to something more wholesome and impactful? Well, that’s to be argued....

Overall rating for this arc: 1.5/5

Season 2 (Episode 74 - 146)

It might be a bit unfair to not break down this season into a series of components, as I did for my 5D’s review, however this season decided it’s overarching plot and its filler were one and the same so *shrugs again*.

This is the part of Zxl that gets good, according to many fans. That’s terribly subjective, of course.

And I’m sure my opinion that this season of Zxl is the worst half is also terribly subjective. Long story short, if season 1 was marred with superficial plot-less messy inconsequential subpar writing, season 2 is that but somehow worse. You didn’t think it could be but it was. With another unfantastic element added to the mix: repetition. Endless repetition in duels, in character “deaths”, in “reveals” (which aren’t reveals if the audience already knows everything that’s being “revealed”), in backstories, in “consequences”, etc. There’s repetition everywhere. Oh and retcons. There are plenty.

This is the culmination of too many unlikable, insignificant, and expendable characters in one 70+episode span, which I didn’t think was possible. And none of it matters because the themes are so convoluted and jumbled up, the ending of this season (and the show) doesn’t actually lead up from the exploration of any of the attempts of surface-level themes presented, it leads into a cliffhanger-teaser for a sequel that is extremely unlikely to ever happen, and a rewrite of anything in this show that COULD have had some consequence. So yeah, in the end, nothing that ever happened in this show matter. None of the characters experienced a growth in persona or self-reflection. The only thing we get is basic themes that can be stated and moved on with like “we can all learn to get along” (and yet nothing that led up to this final “conclusion” ever actually formulated satisfyingly) that stem from no other foundation of any of the so-called values introduced in the show. It’s all very hollow. 

I guess lastly my conclusion is that none of these characters actually are different than who there were when they were first introduced. None. (”But Sai—” THEY DID NOT DEVELOP, THEY WERE SIMPLY WRITTEN SO INCONSISTENTLY AND/OR INCOHERENTLY THAT THEY DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A PERSONALITY TO BEGIN WITH. THEY WERE JUST TROPES FROM THE START.)

Oh and also, I almost forgot: Yuma & Astral have an impactful, wholesome relationship? IMO, no. If anything, I saw so many red flags in it, in particular in this season of the show, in regards to it possibly even being a toxic relationship, but I don’t wanna get into the specifics of it and as I said this is subjective (tho as someone who has lived through some of these red flags, I’m not gonna be arguing with anyone in regards to this because lmao idc enough about them or about your opinion against this).

Lastly, I really despise the Barian designs. I’m happy for you if you liked they’re inflexible faces and gaudy.... appendages (?) but I’m different.

Overall rating for this arc: 1/5 

Final Overall Rating for this show: 1.25/5

Final Note: Finally. Jfc. I’m tired. Finally. I am free.

[emptymanuscript]

You ever get into something real complicated, ask yourself why the hell you’re doing this, and then realize the simpler version is right there >_<

For some reason I got it into my head to make a hardness scale for magic. And I was piling in all this stuff for a spread sheet, with Gandalf in Lord of the Rings as a control and... why the hell am I doing all that. When if I look along the bottom, there’s a much more usable scale.

So... my noodling for a Hardness of Magic - a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being least hard to 10 being most hard. ...I believe that softness should actually be a different scale instead of 1 being the ultimate softness. I feel like hardness measures a likeness to science while softness measures something like the explorations of psyche or society. But I dunno. I’ll deal with that later. Hopefully much much later or never.

1) INFERABLE - The Magic happens in a way that is inferrable but not observable The phrase “Peice of Cake” in the movie The Labyrinth.

2) OBSERVABLE - The Reader can observe the magic that is cast The Force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together - and somehow it lets you hear ghosts, predict your enemies, and use telekinesis. You can see it. There is a spell X. How it works or how it relates to other magics may still be unclear.

3) RELATIONAL - The Reader can infer how multiple magics relate Gandalf keeps casting light spells all the time - it’s almost as if light is a theme of his magic. Perhaps his ability to make fire and fireworks is related. But we are never told for sure. X and Y relate, so Z that shares some features may also relate.

4) RUBRICAL - The Reader can observe the rule by which multiple magics fit together Vancian Magic in D&D with its classes and levels of magic or how Voodoo Dolls work in fiction to control a person’s motion or give them pain but can’t hypnotize them - it’s about the explicit rule of spell X fits into magical school Z but spell Y doesn’t because only Z-ish spells fit. The school of Necromancy is the school of magic relating to death. A light spell wouldn’t fit.

5) CLASSIFIABLE - The Reader can observe the reasoning of the operation of the rule by which multiple magics fit together A Voodoo doll works by the laws of contagion and sympathy, what has been a part of someone is always connected to them and what you do to an image of someone is done to the real person. So because a person’s hair is separated from them but on the doll, the doll is now connected to the person by contagion. And because the doll is now a image of that person what happens to the doll happens sympathetically to the person. So the reasoninng of the rules - this connects to that, and manipulating this manipulates that - is explicit. Spell X fits into school Z and Spell Y doesn’t because of principle A. Only spells that directly affect the currently dead fit into the school of necromancy - so a spell that would kill a living person wouldn’t be considered necromancy in that paradigm. While a spell that made a body look alive would still be necromancy.

6) PREDICTABLE - The Reader can use the reasoning to predict another peice of magic that would fit the rule(s) by which the magic fits together Because a doll works in part by the law of contagion, the hair of the victim allowing a connection between doll and person, we can assume that you can use hair as a method for a different spell that connects, like a tracker because the laws of magic tell us that part of a person is always connected to them, and we can guess that before we are explicitly told that ultra-conservative jewish women burned their hair to prevent magic being used against them before they had any contact with the stories of Voodoo because an idea like contagion is in both cultures. The rule is predictive. Because of principle X we can expect magic Y to cause Z effect. If saying someone’s true name gives you power to control them, and you learn the true name of a river, the reader can expect that you can exert control over the river.

7) ASSESSABLE - The Reader can use the essential reasoning of the magic to evaluate different uses in relation to each other - allowing you to judge whether one iteration is better at a goal than another. In Fullmetal Alchemist, the same transmutations cast at the opposite ends of the story have radically different results and the story displays why they are different. Edward has a different understanding of the tools at hand. In such a way that the audience can observe and infer things that make certain transmutations better than others. This is even in the beginning though with Edward able to make a circle with his arms as opposed to drawing a transmutation array on the ground. It’s recognizable as the same basic art, he’s just showing an expertise that others, even skilled others, don’t share. Because of that information, the audience can recognize the power of varying alchemists by the complexity of their arrays and that more complex spells require more complex arrays. A more complex array for a simple spell would show us before we were ever told that the user was an inferior alchemist. X is true, therefore Y is superior to Z for purpose A.

8) VALIDATABLE - You can determine relevant or true information from irrelevant or false information. Let’s take FMA again.  The power level, sophistication of magical array, and knowledge of the subject are all important to the ability to transmute. But the fundamental driving force of magic is the law of equivalent exchange, you cannot create something that requires more than what is put into the exchange. This is the real reason why resurrection spells fail, because no one puts enough in to the exchange to equal what they want out of the exchange. Life is more than matter. And because of that principle we can spot improper spell use without being told it is improper spell use. If someone does something that otherwise looks completely correct but violates that most relevant piece of information, we know that something else besides just transmutation is going on. Which is also why some of the later big twists in the series make perfect logical sense, the fundamental relavence of information has been shown, so we have been prepared to logic out truth from appearances. If X is absolutely true and Y contradicts X, we can expect Y to be false even if Y feels generally right.

9) MODIFIABLE - The principles are understandably transposable for use in different expressions. This is a little like #6 in that it is predictive. But more than being predictive it is showing an underlying core principle of multiple effects. In the same way that light is different colors for the same reason that sound comes in different pitches and also that if you drop a rock in water you will get ripples. While they might appear on the surface to be very different, the fundamental way things work is the same - disturbing a fluid causes a wave, bigger disturbances cause bigger waves, more waves in a given period produce higher frequency phenomenen, less waves produce lower frequency phenomenen. And yeah, that’s science but I can’t think of a book that does this. Avatar the Last Airbender brushes against this with the idea that the principles of flow mechanics of water bending carry over into the principles of direction mechanics of pure fire / lightning. Energy redirection was essentially the same no matter what element was being bent or what type of bender was doing the redirection. But where this sort of thing is most common is in Role Playing Games where it is possible for the player to design their own powers / magic. Pretty much the entire GURPS Powers book is about using this level of hardness in a single system to produce radically different expressions in a game space that will interact predictably for the purposes of arbitration.

10) PARALLEL - An Alternative Science. At this point there’s not much hardness to be gained anymore. The fiction presents a set of fundamental laws and extrapolates from them to get the effects the audience percieves in the fiction. The laws are identified in such a way that the audience can determine for themselves how magic works in such a way that they can, if they choose, extrapolate and predict powers before those powers appear and are demonstrated because all the tools to do so have been given to them. Character errors in how magic works can be caught because the established rules provide an error-check framework. If a reader knows fire can only be created or controlled with a magic word that starts with an I because human magic was stolen from a latin speaking demon, we know the guy who promises a village an ever burning bonfire by speaking the word Aeternum into the bonfire pit is either a charlatan or an idiot. But he may possibly be an immortal charlatan or idiot since he knows the latin word for eternity. 

Or, in nice chart form for my Mohs sci-fi scale rip off:

A Proposed Hardness Scale for Fantasy

I think this would  make most fantasy hang out around hardness 3 to 7 with a few outliers which seems like the way things should be.

And... what a waste of time, oy.

[so-shiny-so-chrome]

Witness: Owlship

Creator name (AO3): Owlship

Creator name (Tumblr): v8roadworrier

Link to creator works: https://www.archiveofourown.org/users/owlship

Q: Why the Mad Max Fandom?

A: i am still asking myself this question! something about fury road grabbed me at just the right point in my life to interest me, and the people & community i found have been just wonderful at keeping me feeling interested & connected. i love that the world presented is clearly well thought-out and cohesive, while at the same time allowing for a huge variety of explorations even while staying strictly within the bounds of canon.

Q: What do you think are some defining aspects of your work? Do you have a style? Recurrent themes?

A: well, it's pretty clear that i adore the relationship between max & furiosa, since they star in 90% of my fics, and au's are kind of my thing. i don't consciously have a style that i write in- i just try and write more-or-less what i think could reasonably happen, i suppose, and to be honest i think of my actual writing as pretty utilitarian, rather than anything with a nice artistic style. probably the most frequent recurring theme in my fics is pining leading up to a happy ending, and i like to think i flirt with miller's idea of "engage to heal" pretty frequently as well.

Q: Which of your works was the most fun to create? The most difficult? Which is your most popular? Most successful? Your favourite overall?

A: i have fun with all my fics, or else they don't get written! i'm not good at making myself do things i don't want to do, especially if the only reason to be writing fic is to have fun in the first place. most difficult would probably be "birds in last year's nest" (the omega!max fic) because i really wanted to handle the issues in it well, while the easiest to get written was "out of the bag" (cat!furiosa) despite its length because it basically just wrote itself. my most popular is definitely "around the corner" (petshop au), which has a very dear place in my heart even if it's not the most polished of my fics. my favorite is usually whichever i've published most recently :)

Q: How do you like your wasteland? Gritty? Hopeful? Campy? Soft? Why?

A: hopeful above all, with a good balance of gritty and soft, depending on the particular fic. i like to explore the realistic effects of things, but i'm also happy to gloss over the tricky details in favor of fluff. i've only written one fic with an unhappy ending so far and i don't see myself adding to that number anytime soon, and i am just not great at humor so i avoid trying to be funny.

Q: Walk us through your creative process from idea to finished product. What's your prefered environment for creating? How do you get through rough patches?

A: my writing process is simple: i get an idea (usually i steal it), i bundle myself up in bed, and then i do other things while writing a sentence or two every few hours. sometimes i get into the groove and can bash out a few thousand words in a day, other times i flounder for weeks without anything holding my interest. when i do write i always work chronologically, which means finding the actual start of the fic can take a few tries, and figuring out the end can be difficult if i haven't really filled in the details in my head yet. for rough patches i put my head down and try to force words out, but if it doesn't want to happen i just let it go and move on, unless it's for a gift, or something like nanowrimo where i want those bragging rights. i don't use written outlines or keep notes of anything, which is a bad habit but one i can't shake. if it's not important enough for me to remember, how important was it really in the first place?

Q: What is your biggest challenge as a creator?

A: right now it's finding the motivation to write when i've got other stuff going on in my life, especially on days when i am tired out even on my days off. other than that- staying focused on a project long enough to get it finished! i also struggle with juggling multiple characters especially in the same scene, making sure that everyone gets their turn and sounds authentic.

Q: How have you grown as a creator through your participation in the Mad Max Fandom? How has your work changed? Have you learned anything about yourself?

A: my writing, both in terms of technical skills and how i compose a story, has just improved leaps and bounds since i started writing fics, thanks in large part to the feedback i'm lucky enough to get, as well as the sheer volume i've been able to put out. i've definitely learned a lot about what kinds of ideas interest me to write, which is not necessarily the same things i want as a reader.

Q: Which character do you relate to the most, and how does that affect your approach to that character? Is someone else your favourite to portray? How has your understanding of these characters grown through portraying them?

A: i probably relate to max the most, or at least the version of him that lives in my head- it's easy for me to get inside his pov, but that means i have to stop myself from making *every* fic his pov! furiosa is a close runner up in terms of how much i like writing her, which is lucky because she's the other 50% of my fics, but it's a lot harder for me to get inside her head, so i have to pay attention more to what i'm doing when i write her.

Q: Do you ever self-insert, even accidentally?

A: i probably do, but not intentionally. of course i use my own experiences and feelings when writing, but i always try to translate them to the mindset of whoever i am writing. it's just been drilled into my head too many times that writing yourself as a character is not what you are supposed to do, i think.

Q: Do you have any favourite relationships to portray? What interests you about them?

A: max & furiosa, 100%. platonic, romantic, as soulmates, as enemies- i love every possible permutation of how they can interact with each other since they're so similar but still very distinct. i love how much of their relationship is unspoken but perfectly understood- or not, and how that can set up their interactions.

Q: How does your work for the fandom change how you look at the source material?

A: i pay a hell of a lot more attention to what's happening in canon, and pick apart even minor gestures or bits of speech to really drill down into the character's heads. if i was just watching the movie(s) to enjoy them, i'd stay a lot more surface level instead of analyzing details like what the interior of the war rig says about furiosa, or what's in max's kit at the beginning of the movie vs the middle, etc.

Q: Do you prefer to create in one defined chronology or do your works stand alone? Why or why not?

A: nearly all of my works are unrelated. i love coming up with little tweaks that don't really effect anything but might contradict each other (which of the wives takes on what role post-canon, how long it takes before max comes back for the first time, etc), and writing in a single series would mean i'd have to address those differences. short fluff or pwp pieces where the entire fic is just a single scene tend to share enough similarities that you could imagine they take place in the same 'verse, but to be honest, that's just me being lazy ;b

Q: To break or not to break canon? Why?

A: canon is fake and the author is dead! that said, i do actually try and stick as close to the canon facts as possible unless it's something i'm deliberately changing, because after all without canon there wouldn't be any shared understanding of the characters that makes fanfic possible. this is one of the trickiest parts about writing an au, because i have to find the right balance of familiarity to canon with what's different about each au in order to have the changes i make to the characters/setting/etc make sense to the reader.

Q: Where do you get your ideas for your AUs?

A: all sorts of places! some of them are given to me- i love prompts- others i steal from other fandoms, like bodyswap or wings or turning furiosa into a cat, some i search out via idea generators, and at this point i honestly can't watch/read any new stories without going "but how can i turn this into an au??" i also like to say "what if" almost *constantly* and sometimes that leads to full fics, other times i just make a post on tumblr with some half-baked ideas of how it could work out. what if furiosa's mother didn't die before the movie? what if max had a pet dragon? what if it started raining and didn't stop? it's honestly harder for me to write a strictly canon fic at this point :)

Q: Share some headcanons.

A: i actually don't have a ton that apply to every fic, because i like switching things up- but here's some ones taken for granted in 99.99% of my canonverse fics: furiosa lives after the end of the movie without any major complications, max comes back to the citadel at some point, furiosa has her own room with not much more than a bed, a workbench, and a window, the war boys are willing to accept the wives as the new rulers (and that the wives form a council rather than a dictatorship), and somehow the bullet farm & gastown fall into line with the citadel's new way of thinking. also, max has a sweet tooth and furiosa doesn't remember most of her dreams.

Q: What advice can you give someone who is struggling to make their own works more interesting, compelling, cohesive, etc.? 

A: something i try to keep in mind at all times is: write for yourself and not your audience. does your heart of hearts want to ship those two characters? hell yeah make 'em kiss. have a scene that is super cliche or over the top but you can't stop thinking about? write it! your stories need to be interesting to you first and foremost, because a reader absolutely can sniff out the difference between a scene you thought would be "good" and one you had fun with. you can always edit later to shape your fic into a different direction if you feel like you need to.

Q: Have you visited or do you plan to visit Australia, Wasteland Weekend, or other Mad Max place?

A: i've been to wasteland weekend twice now and hope to visit many more times in the future! it's a super fun experience in general, and it's also helped me get a feel for what a mad max world would really be like, rather than just relying on my imagination. i'd love to visit australia some day, both for mad max and other reasons, but ideally not while there's an apocalypse going on.

Q: Tell us about a current WIP or planned project.

A: *throws dart at gdocs* let's see.... i've got a fic started where furiosa is a viking, and after a raid gone wrong she ends up injured at max's farm where she has to learn the language and customs and come to terms with being his slave (until they fall in love, obviously). haven't worked on that one since july but hey, it's not going anywhere.

Thank you @v8roadworrier

[consilium-games]

A Rambling and Brain-Fried Post on Hermeneutics

It's a godless and blighted hour (11AM) as I write this, and scheduling heartache has left me swirly-eyed and sleep-deprived. Lately I've absorbed a pretty specific combination of media that's led me to think dazedly about hermeneutics, basically "systems of interpretation of a work of media" such as stories. And in light of my past couple games, and a game whose premise I haven't finished chewing on, I think getting some thoughts down (and maybe even some discussion?!) might help someone. I don't know, maybe me?

Inciting Events

By now anyone reading this has heard of Undertale. Spoilers happen here. The creator of Undertale recently released a . . . possibly-related videogame called Deltarune. I say possibly related with good reason, and I don't intend to directly spoil the game as it just came out, but it gave me interesting questions about narrative interpretation--hermeneutics--more generally. I also will probably talk a bit about Doki Doki Literature Club! which you might not have encountered or played. Some high-level spoilers will occur. This post will contain zero 'fan theories', as that has nothing to do with my game-design beat--rather, academic theories on "how do people approach interpreting stories" has a lot to do with my pretentious narrativist game-design ethos!

Also of note, I've watched a playthrough of a videogame called Witch's House, and without spoiling that, it struck me that one of the puzzles will behave drastically differently, depending on whether the player reads one of the ubiquitous hints. Meaning, not only do the hints constitute a mechanic, but discerning how to trust hints becomes a game objective. And further, since "reading a hint" is an in-game action, but recalling a hint is not, the game may behave unpredictably to the player who reads a hint, doesn't save, dies, and reloads--and doesn't read the hint again.

Lastly, I've revisited some analyses of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, and it put me in mind of discussions about This House Has People In It and The Cry of Mann, and in particular: discussions about those discussions, arguments about how presenting interpretations can color people's formed interpretations. And last warning, I'm still pretty brain-fried, I'll blame that if I end up rambling incoherently.

Setting Out

There's a lot of literature about literature, and literature about literature about literature. Perhaps some day people will spill ink about ink than anything else. Fortunately, we haven't yet entered a boundless singularity of self-referentiality. So I can afford to stake out a couple terms I expect I'll mutter:

hermeneutic: a specific approach, strategy, or philosophy to understanding a work. This can be totally informal ("Christian songs are easy to write, just take a pop song and replace 'baby' with 'Jesus'") or very rigorous ("Derrida's analysis of identity puts it to blame for religious and nationalist fanaticism"), but just treat it as technical shorthand for "approach to understanding a thing".

auteur theory: mostly used in film analysis, in our backyard it means "the author of a work arbitrates its meaning". So, eg Stephen King can definitively and canonically say "Leland Gaunt is an extradimensional alien, not Satan, the Adversary and the Prince of Darkness, from orthodox Christianity". And if King says this, that makes it true and the audience should understand Needful Things in light of this fact King told us with his mouth but not with his story.

Death of the Author: by contrast, 'Death of the Author' means that once a work has an audience (the creator published it, or put it on Steam, or hit Send on Twitter, or just played a song on their porch), the audience has liberty to interpret it however they please, and the creator's word about What It Means has no more weight than the audience. Which would mean that if King tells us Leland Gaunt is an alien, and Needful Things is closer to Lovecraft than King James, that's cool--it's a neat theory, Steve, but I think it's about . . . (Note: I don't know if King has made this claim, but Needful Things does have a few weird neat textual indications that Gaunt is some kind of Cthulhu and not the Lightbringer.)

code-switching: technically from linguistics, borrowed into social sciences, in this post it means a creator of a work putting something into the work that implicitly or explicitly prompts the audience to consciously alter or monitor their interpretation. As a very simple example, suppose someone says with a straight face and deadpan delivery, "I'm a law-abiding citizen who supports truth, justice, and The American Way." Now, suppose they make air-quotes around 'law-abiding'--it rather changes the meaning, by prompting the audience to reinterpret the literal wording.

Okay, I . . . think that'll do. So hi, I'm consilium, and as a goth game designer it should come as no surprise that I like my authors with some degree of living-impairment. Interpreting a text has an element of creativity to it that the creator simply can't contribute on the audience's behalf. More than that though, there just seems something off about the idea that, say, a reader of Needful Things might read about Sheriff Alan Pangborn, and interpret the specific way he defeats Leland Gaunt as allegorical of how cultivating creativity, community, and empathy can help prevent the dehumanization of consumerism and capitalism--only for King to say "no, Alan was just a parallel-universe avatar of the Gunslinger and thus could defeat Gaunt, who was just an extradimensional eldritch predator". If King were to say such a thing after audiences have gotten to know and love Alan on the terms presented in the text, and King were to come back with "maybe that's what I said but that's not what I meant"--my response would have to be a cordial "interesting theory, but it doesn't seem supported by the text".

So, I generally like Death of the Author! But . . . but. I've taken to gnawing on this idea in this game-design blog because--of course--It's More Complicated Than That. Roleplaying games as a medium work about as differently from other media as, say, sculpture and songwriting. And despite essentially just putting bells and whistles and protocol on top of possibly the oldest human artistic medium--storytelling--RPGs have a lot of weirdness they introduce for analysis and critique.

For example, my reservations on Death of the Author! Specifically: taking "in-character, in-game events and narration" as the work of interest, and "the other players at the table" as the audience, what happens when you describe your character Doing Something Cool--based on a mistake? We need a teeny bit of "creator as arbitrator of meaning", so we can at least say, literally, "oh, no, that's not what I meant"! Otherwise, the other players' "freedom of interpretation" leads to your character doing something nonsensical and now they have to have their characters respond--they have a worse work to create within.

This gets at something pretty foundational in treating RPG stories as art: almost any other medium has a creator create a work as a finished thing, and only then does an audience ever interpret it. Whether plural creators collaborate or not, whether the work exists as apocryphal oral tradition and mutates through telling, whether some audience members take it up as their own with flourishes (such as with a joke), there still exists this two-stage process of "author creates" and then "audience interprets". Except in stories within roleplaying games as generally practiced.

In RPGs, the creators almost always constitute the entire audience (I'll ignore things like "RPG podcasts" and novelizations of someone's DnD campaign here, as they make up a vanishingly tiny minority). The audience of the work not only creates it though--they experience the work almost entirely before you could ever call the work 'completed'. Even if we falsely grant that every game concludes on purpose rather than just kinda petering out because people get bored, leave college, have other things to do, or whatever else killed your last game, players experience the story in installments that don't exist until the end of the session. So "interpretation" gets . . . weird.

Basic Hermeneutics

On a surface level, the story of an RPG usually doesn't demand a lot of depth and analysis: some protagonists, inciting incident, various conflicts, faffing about as the PCs fail to get the hint, some amusing or tense or infuriating whiffs and failures along the way, and charitably, some kind of resolution to the main conflict and dramatic and character arcs. Usually metaphors tend to be explained straight up ("my character's ability to 'blur' things reflects her own weak personal boundaries and over-empathization"), and motifs often even moreso ("guys, seriously, what happens every single time your characters see spiders?"). A lot of this comes from necessity of that very immediate, improvised, as-we-go nature of the medium! You have to make sure your audience gets what you intend them to get--because in mere seconds they'll create some more story that depends on the bit of story you just created. And back and forth.

But, quite without realizing it or meaning to, we can't really help but inject other chunks of meaning into stories we help create. Maybe even chunks of meaning that contradict others' contributions at the table. Spoiler alert: I do not have a theory or framework to address this. The Queen Smiles kind of digs into this, but this goes beyond my current depth. So, what can we conjecture or say, what scaffolding could we build, to build a more robust "literary theory of game stories"? I have some basics as I see them:

Auteur theory (creator arbitrates meaning)

This can only apply to one player's contributions, not across plural players.

Necessary, for both basic clarification and because perfectly conveying the ~*~intended meaning~*~ frankly just doesn't work as a thing you can do off the top of your head when your turn comes to say what your character does.

GMs (where applicable) shouldn't use this to defend poor description or ill-considered presentation of "cool things for PCs to care about and cool things to do about it"--just because the GM intended the cop to be sympathetic doesn't make him so, and if he's not sympathetic . . . the protagonists will not treat him so.

Dead authors (freedom of interpretation)

Players can try this out on their own characters, and should, but should ask other players about their characters if something seems odd, confusing, intriguing, or otherwise. "You keep making a point of meticulously describing your character's weird nervous tic. The exact same way every time. How come? What's it mean?"

Players of course can answer engagement like this any way they please, including stabbing themselves with the quill: "you figure it out, if your character were to ask mine, mine would supply her answer which I may or may not know".

GMs (where applicable) should really lean on this: improvise, throw ideas and themes at the wall, and frantically build on top of the audience's ideas, since those ideas clearly resonate with the audience.

Code-switching (deliberately modifying interpretation)

We all do this all the time: the dragon is not telling you to roll for your attack, after all. The GM is, by switching between narrating the world, and communicating with a player.

More subtly we do this when switching between "what our character believes" and "what we players reasonably expect". Your costumed superhero might think of herself as righteous vengeance incarnate, but you hope everyone at the table knows you think she's conceited and delusional at best, and a full-bore psychopath at worst. This hopefully doesn't mean you play your psychopath superhero any less sincerely, but it does require a bit of ironic detachment, you know something about her that she can't know about herself (beyond that she's a fictional character, of course).

Even more subtly, sometimes weird game interactions (of the rules, other PCs, other players) imply things we wish they wouldn't, but can't quite control, and often everyone knows this. "Why can't you muster up your courage one more time?!" "Because I ran out of Fate points," your character doesn't say. Instead, your fellow authors share a look over the table, and gingerly tiptoe around an obvious, character-appropriate thing, and seize on some other thing to say or do, hopefully just as obvious and character-appropriate. But, everyone switched codes, from "characters doing things for reasons" to "the rules inform our story, and we follow them because they help".

Prepaid analysis (game-specific themes or arcs)

A lot of games have some baked-in themes right off the shelf, and provide good starting points and directions of inqury for interpreting a story born out of playing them. Monsterhearts deals with teenage cruelty and queer sexuality. Succession deals with faith, one's place in the world, and how these relate to morality. Bliss Stage tumultuous coming-of-age and taking care of one another, or failing to. If you use eg Lovesick to tell a story that you can't approach or interpret in light of "dangerous, unstable, desperate romantics"--you probably picked the wrong game. You should pick a better game.

Besides these themes, many games also have more abstract ideas--arcs or processes--that they really enshrine. Exalted gives Solars (mythical heroes patterned after ancient folklore) a mechanic called "Limit Break" which mechanically funnels a Solar toward destroying themselves with their own virtue. Likewise, even if you somehow excise Monsterhearts' focus on teenage cruelty and sexuality, you really shouldn't play if you want to avoid social stigma as a theme, because most of the mechanics hinge on it.

We players often deliberately bring in some themes and ideas we'd like to play with, too. "I want to play a character whose determination will be her own undoing--and probably everyone else's." Or even just "I really like themes where physical strength is tragically and stupefyingly unhelpful". Those make for great starting points and prompt good questions to interpret stories!

I know someone with more literary theory and less sleep deprivation could add a few basic givens, but I think this at least goes to show we have ground to stand on and territory to explore. And probably more importantly, it points out some useful kinds of questions we can ask about the story of a game and how to interpret it. So, why did I ever bring up Undertale back there?

Audience Awareness

The following works have something in common: House of Leaves, Funny Games, This House Has People In It, The Cry of Mann, The Shape on the Ground, Undertale, and Deltarune. Besides "being very good", they all explicitly pose the audience as an entity within the story--but, they do it in a very unusual way.

See, the story of a Mario game is about Mario even if the player controls Mario--and though it's a subtle distinction, this also applies to eg Doom, where you play as an explicitly nameless faceless protagonist, intended to be your avatar. Even in the most plot-free abstract game, if we can salvage out a story (if perhaps an extremely degenerate and rudimentary one like 'how this game of chess played out'), the 'story' happily accommodates the audience within it.

That's not how the list I gave does things. Not at all.

Instead, the works I listed single out the audience as something else: in House of Leaves, unreliable narrators call out the unreliable interpreter reading the narrative. In Funny Games, the audience doesn't participate--but the audience watches, and the film knows this, and singles the audience out as complicit in the horrible events that unfold. This House Has People In It casts us as the prying NSA subcontractor watching hours of security footage and reading dozens of e-mails, and makes it clear that even our Panopticon of surveillance doesn't give us a complete account of reality. The Cry of Mann casts us as gibbering voices from an eldritch plane of cosmic horror. The Shape on the Ground poses as a disinterested and clinical psychological test, but it clearly has some ideas about what would lead us to take such a 'test'.

And then there's Undertale and Deltarune. Last warning, I'll say whatever I find convenient about Undertale and probably '''spoil''' something about Deltarune in the process. I do not care.

Hostility to the Audience

If Undertale itself had a personality, one could fairly describe it as "wary of the player": it plays jokes and tricks, but it knows the player is a player, of Undertale, which Undertale also knows is a videogame. It gives you ample chance to have a fun, funny, and sometimes disturbing game, with a lot of tempting and tantalizing unspoken-s hiding juuuust offscreen. But Undertale's point as a work involves giving you the chance to not do that while still, technically, engaging with the game.

Namely, the Genocide Run. By killing literally absolutely every single thing in the game that the game can possibly let you kill, the game very purposely unfolds entirely differently--and on multiple playthroughs, the game will outright take notice of multiple playthroughs, and challenge you for--in effect--torturing the narrative it can deliver by forcing it to deliver every narrative. Let's think about that for a moment:

Most videogames have some kind of excuse of a narrative, and lately, many have really good, nuanced stories to tell--and many of those even go to the (mindbendingly grueling) effort of delivering a plurality of good narratives that honor your agency as a player--maybe even a creator, as best a videogame can with its limitations.

But, what can you say about a story that has multiple endings? Or multiple routes to them? And what can you say about a story that, in some of its branches, simply goes to entirely different places as narratives? It strains the usual literary critical toolkit, to say the least.

Now, a game like Doki Doki Literature Club! approaches this exact same idea of addressing its story as manipulable by the player, of the player as an agent in the story, but in a pretty straightforward way as far as "a narrative that works this way": the narrative already describes "and then the player came along and messed everything up". All of the player's different routes serve this one overarching narrative: the game has an obsessive fixation on you and wants you to play it forever (which, given its nature as (roughly) a visual novel . . . perhaps asks quite a lot).

Undertale takes a step back from even this level of abstraction, though: the implicit and often hidden events of its world and narrative unfold / have unfolded / will unfold, and a given player's "story" consists of "what the player does to this multi-branched narrative-object". The game judges you to your face for contorting its weird timeline-multiple-universe meta-story . . . but lets you do it, to prove the point it wants to prove.

And without much controversy, we can conclude that point roughly summarizes to "playing games just for accomplishment and mastery doesn't give as rewarding an experience as immersing in the story and characters". The subtler point under that, though, comes out through multiple playthroughs: "immersing yourself in a story and cast of characters too much will harm your life and your enjoyment of other things". Undertale, were it a person, would probably look nervously at you after several 'completionist' playthroughs to "see all the content", and it explicitly describes this exact behavior to the player's face as something objectionable--even calling out people who watch someone else play on streams and video hosts.

"Just let it be a story"

Which brings us to Deltarune. I've no doubt dozens of cross-indexed internet-vetted analyses and fan-theories will arise in the next few months (and I look forward to them), but on a once-over the game seems to have one specific thing to say to the player's face: "you are intruding on a story that isn't about you". The game opens with an elaborate character-creator (well, for a retroclone computer RPG), then tells you "discarded, you can't choose who you are, and you can't choose who the character is either". It has fun with giving the player dialog options--then timing out and ignoring the input. It even tells the player in in-game narration that "your choices don't matter". The story itself doesn't even care very much about the player's character, instead hinging on the development and growth of an NPC, following her arc, without much concern for the player's thoughts on the matter. And at the very end, after playing mind-games with the player's familiarity and recognition of Undertale characters--the close does something both inexplicable and disturbing. This is not your story: it's not about you, your choices don't affect it, and it doesn't care what you think.

As an aside, it seems like quite a good game--but I think that comes in part because of this very drastic intent and the skill with which it executes that intent (ie, bluntly at first, subtly enough to almost forget, and then slapping hard enough to prompt a flashback).

And holding this alongside Undertale's stark (even literal) judgment of the player for 'forcing' the narrative to contort to accommodate the player's interaction with that narrative, it seems clear to me that where Doki Doki Literature Club! has fun with the idea of "player as complicit in something gross, and as motivating something cool", Undertale and Deltarune seem much more interested in making the player take an uncomfortable look at how they engage with narratives.

Defensive Hermeneutics

On one hand, Funny Games, The Cry of Mann, and Undertale and Deltarune stare back at the audience, judge them, treat them as an intruding, invading, even corrupting force from outside the work, criticize the audience for enjoying the work, and even call the audience out for engaging in detailed critique, like some kind of cognitive logic-bomb, or a cake laced with just enough ipecac to punish you for eating more than a slice.

But on the other, House of Leaves, This House Has People In It, The Shape on the Ground, and Doki Doki Literature Club all want the audience to participate, to scrutinize, to interact with the narrative and question it, as well as themselves. What does that first camp have in common besides wariness and hostility to the audience, and what does this second camp have in common besides treating the audience as creative of the work's meaning? I'll call it "a defensive hermeneutic".

Notionally, the audience has hermeneutics: ways of understanding a work. But, a creator can't help but have some understanding of the likely mental state and view of a(n imagined) audience, approaching the text in some way. A creator can thus bake in or favorably treat some approaches over others, and can even use this to guide criticism about their work.

That first group, which I'll call "defensive", has one striking common feature: the 'surface level' plots either don't matter, or have very simple outlines. Funny Games' plot is exactly as follows: two psychopaths terrorize, torture, and eventually murder an innocent family. The Cry of Mann shows us what looks a lot like a small child trying to mimic a melodramatic soap-opera, before Things Get Weird (and any extant 'surface level' plot goes under the waves). And Undertale and Deltarune give us the stock "hero appears in strange land, arbitrary puzzle-quests ensue, climactic final confrontation restores peace to the land". This serves as the set-dressing and vehicle for the actual plots--or sometimes simply cognitive messages--to get into the audience's minds:

"What, exactly, do you get out of slasher torture-porn movies? Why do you create the market for things like this?" "Are you sure about where your sense of empathy and identification points you? What makes you think you have a grip on reality enough to judge who's right and relatable, and who isn't?" "Don't just passively consume games like they were kernels of popcorn. But don't gorge yourself on the same dish, either--there's more out there, but you have to look for it."

In short: these works don't want you to nitpick the works themselves. Their entire message consists of second-or-higher-order interpretation. To put it another way, they want to make sure you don't pay attention to the handwriting, because the gaps between the words spell out a poem and the words themselves only create those gaps.

Participatory Hermeneutics

By this same token, I'll call the second camp "participatory": they treat the audience as a kind of creator in their own right--Borges did this a lot and with relish in his later years, and Doki Doki Literature Club! makes it a game mechanic. A creator using this "participatory" hermeneutic essentially doesn't consider their work 'finished' until the audience interprets it. This should sound familiar. The audience contributes meaning to the work, by interpreting it, and a "participatory" work counts on it. And, to contrast with the "defensive" camp: they use complex (sometimes even overcomplicated) plots, which matter and inform interpretation, and tie into the second-order meaning that the work attempts to convey. The "surface level" plots don't solely carry a tangled "interpret this" into the audience's brain. Instead, the surface plot has enough complexity to have a plot-hole, enough character depth to have problematic characters, and enough weight on its own merit to have unappealing implications. In other words: even without convoluted postmodern hoity-toity highfalutin' hermeneutic jibberjabber, a member the audience can find a story they can just enjoy on its merits.

Before anyone angrily starts defending the characters in Undertale or complaining about the directionlessness of This House Has People In It, I hope I've made it really clear, I lumped these works into these two categories based on an overall tendency and commonality, in approaching this one really abstract concept, and as with any work, any binary you can think of will have gradations if you look among "all works, ever". And, even more importantly:

I really love all these works, and I love what they do and how they do it. They all also have flaws, because flawed humans made them, and flawed humans enjoy them. That all said: the "participatory hermeneutic" has everything to offer for my purposes, while the "defensive hermeneutic" . . . might get a post of its own someday.

So What Now?

In aeons past, I wrote about feedback and criticism, and this seems like a good time to dust off that idea with a new application. In particular, that old post talks simply about players (and GMs where applicable) helping each other to contribute their best, and get the most enjoyment out of a game. Here, we'll look at some basic questions players can pose each other as creators of a work, rather than participants of a game or members of an audience.

So let's take that 'player survey' and repurpose it for Dark Humanities and getting a toehold on literary criticism:

Can you describe your approach to your character?

What do you want to convey about your character?

What was one thing you want to make sure we all understand?

How do you interpret my character so far?

What theme or motif do you think our characters express together?

What misconception or misunderstanding would you like to clear up or prevent?

What themes do you want to explore?

And just like the 'player character questionnaire', everyone should update and refine their survey every few sessions. As a given game goes on, for example, you might get to know one of the PCs so well that you never need to worry about "misconceptions or misunderstandings", regarding that character's motivations and personality and thematic implication. But, that character's connection with eg themes of parental abandonment might change, and when that topic comes up, you can devote a question or three just to asking things like "might your character be treating this person as a surrogate mother-figure?" Maybe the player never thought of it that way! Maybe the player thinks that would be a great idea! But neither of you will think about it without pausing a moment to consider things like this.

And once everyone has shared a bit about their characters' themes and clarified everyone else's, you can discuss deliberately pursuing an idea, through your characters. Obviously your characters have no motivation for this, but your characters don't even exist, so they don't have any say in the matter.

For example, cyberpunk naturally deals with corporate oppression, alienation, dehumanization, and technological obsolescence. But, when one PC regularly takes recreational drugs, and baits another into joining them, a third concocts elaborate revenge fantasies, and a fourth picks up broken people like stray cats and tries to parent them into being functional . . .

Maybe they all share a more specific theme of "dysfunctional coping mechanisms". The drug-user is nice and obvious--and their partner joining them in partaking perhaps has a need to belong. The vengeful obsessive might be compensating for feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability by hurting or preparing to hurt others. And the self-styled Good Samaritan and would-be Guardian Angel might be doing the opposite--just as unhealthily.

Importantly, everyone keeps playing their character, the character they made, the character they want to play. But, with some good chewy discussion about story, everyone can also look for spots where, indeed, their character might just so happen to--do something to further this sub-theme of "dysfunctional coping mechanisms", on top of the background of alienation, obsolescence, and dehumanization.

Academic, critical, literary discussion of roleplaying games as games seems like a sadly underexplored subject. But critical discussion of the stories themselves, the ones happening at each table, might as well be completely unknown--so here's hoping someone can build on this!

[thevortexofourminds]

And one more time...

Art, photography, journalism, and objectivity

Tiernan @tiernanogphoto / @tiernanogmuse kindly allowed me to “take his post (here) apart” ;) And that is what I will try to do. Because - with all due respect (I love you, T! I really do. And I hope you know that) - I don’t really see the point you were trying to make other than to (in parts) just disagree ;P

In his “rant” Tiernan raised the question of “when you shoot photos, are you trying to capture ‘reality’ as it is, or are you trying to make art?”, and mentioned that “photographers are divided”, and that “these approaches can lead to very different results.”

Agreed. Different results. The thing though is: You cannot capture reality. That is not possible. Not in photography. Not in movies. Not in books. Not at all. Even just trying to capture reality is absolutely pointless because you will inevitably fail. Simply because it is not possible. You will certainly create something else. And it might be wonderful. But what you will do is not to re-create reality.  And I am not even talking about how subjective “reality” is. Reality happens in your head. And in mine. In every person’s. So there is no _one_ reality. There are as many realities as there are people on this planet. And that is not some philosophical “Hippie bogus”, that is science. The world is multi-dimensional. Photos are two dimensional. That alone makes it impossible to “capture reality”. And even if we use 3D techniques there is still the smell, the sounds, your mood that day… whatever… so many factors.. that are missing in the photo. Ansel Adams once said:

“You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

And the same is true when looking at a photo. What’s IN your head will not shape, no, it will CREATE reality - your reality. What you see in a photo is your reality. Not the one of the person who made it.

So, yes, please everyone who wants to, try to capture reality. Go ahead, I won’t stop you. And I am sure that you will create something amazing. But it’s not reality. Like… if you do photorealistic painting… Some people call it art. Others call it “just technique”. And sure, everyone can learn to paint photo-realistically. But “creating reality” is not the point of photorealism. This goes much deeper. Claiming that these people are not artists clearly shows that there is not the slightest bit of understanding for art. Just as if you claim that ONLY photorealistic painting is real art. Both claims are blatantly stupid. 

The way we perceive the world - even if we “just” talk about perceiving the world with our eyes - is largely different to how a camera “sees”. The camera captures one specific timeframe - a “moment” if you will - which can be a fraction of a second or even many seconds. Maybe minutes, hours, or even days. But the result is one static picture. It might simulate motion, but in an abstract way.   Our eyes and brain _continually_ perceive the world. There is not one moment. There is a constant flow. And if we close our eyes, what we saw is gone. Left is only a memory. And that memory changes over time. That is also science.

Tiernan wrote “Good artists, I feel, seek to enrich the quality of life.”

I disagree. Heavily. That is one way _some_ artists see their art or themselves. Whether these are good artists? That is certainly a question of the audience. I highly doubt that artists like van Gogh, Picasso, Magritte, Miró, etc. tried to enrich the quality of life. It might be that this was _one_ of their goals, and certainly, they fulfilled their own need to create and so … yes… it probably enriched their own quality of life, but no, I highly doubt that enriching the quality of life is what was they sought for.

Sure, if you only focus on art that is “mostly entertainment”… and focus on these artists… then yes, that might be their “mission”. But I know tons of artists (even personally), who don’t give a flying fuck whether they enrich the quality of life. Their “missions” are as numerous as their number. What they have in common is their _need_ to create and communicate their own “vision”.

Quite frankly, I am surprised, T! I am really surprised that you basically use the same argument my mom used to make: “This is not beautiful, so how is that (good) art?”

I also think that this is a VERY dangerous approach. Art was never - never ever - not political. Even during times when politics wasn’t even “invented” yet and it was called religion. There was always art. Paintings, sculptures, music. Art always had a function. This “L’art pour l’art” bogus is a very new thing in art history. Sure, the emphasis of the function of art shifted over the millenia, centuries, decades. And yes, at this time, there is a big emphasis on entertainment. But no, that is not what art - in general - is about. 

Art is the first invention humans made. And it is one of the few things we are different from animals. Art and conscience (probably. Scientists are still divided on that subject). Art is the underlying tissue of humanity. Art is what everything else is built upon. NOTHING we have is not connected to at least one art form. Even if people have nothing else, what they have is the need to express themselves. In stories, songs, pictures, dance, … Art was there before anything else was. And the first artform was storytelling. Journalism is old, yes, but not as old as art. And journalism uses “art techniques”.

Tiernan wrote “Both [art and journalism] are important, but I think journalism more so; It can mean the difference between life and death, how often is that true of art?

Is literature art to you? There is one book that led to the deaths of millions and millions and millions of people. Granted, the deaths of these people was caused by the misunderstanding that this book is journalism and not art ;)

Sass aside: Why did and do books get banned or burned? Why did and do artists (of all sorts) have to flee their countries? Because it’s “just fiction”? Or because what they and their books, movies, pictures, whatever… caused was/is dangerous to certain regimes? Was/is that not a matter of life and death?

I agree with that art might not have this - as you call it - immediate impact on life and death of many people. Fact is: Without art, I wouldn’t be here today sitting and typing this. Because I would have certainly killed myself. But sure, I am not many people. ^^ But just because there is no _immediate_ impact of art, claiming that journalism is more important…  I am sorry to say it so harshly, but that is completely bogus. Art always changed the world. Art was always used to change the world. In the good and the bad. Art always taught people how to survive. Granted, in an entertaining way. Often through stories. How do stories work? I’ll give you a comparison: Why does cough syrup come raspberry flavored? Because it is incredibly stupid to assume we’d drink it just because it’s good for us.

Saying that journalism is more important than art because journalism has a more immediate impact is like saying: “Chest compression is more important than having frequent meals”. You’re comparing apples to oranges. No… wait… apples to the moon. Both kinda round'ish, but that was it. Completely different things. If anything then art influenced journalism. How to write/present something effectively: Art techniques. Cough syrup.

Once more about objectivity:

Where should I start? First of all: You heavily contradict yourself. You wrote: “anyone who says there is no such thing as objectivity does not understand the concept”. And then you continue with: “Think of the buildup to the Iraq war. Instead of seeing investigative journalists, striving to be more objective (since complete objectivity is impossible), (…)”

So… what is it? Is there objectivity or not? You write that anyone who says there is no objectivity doesn’t understand the concept but then claim that objectivity is impossible.

I do fully agree that journalists need to strive for more objectivity. And they need to always have in mind that they automatically are biased and act accordingly. But that is it. There IS no objectivity. There CANNOT be complete objectivity. Complete objectivity would be presenting ALL the (necessary) facts without any kind of interpretation. And interpretation is ALWAYS subjective. Interpretation cannot be objective. Not possible. More objective? Sure. Completely objective? Nope. And even just the selection process of which facts to present is subjective. What does the person who selects deem to be necessary? And presenting the facts alone is not journalism. Facts are just facts. And without interpretation useless. A journalist’s job is it to collect and interpret facts. Journalism is informing people and shaping opinions. And that is never, that can never be completely objective.

Tiernan wrote “Yet while art rarely reaches that level of immediate importance, it can illuminate deeper truths, those only be covered at a surface level by even the best of journalists.”

Fully agreed. During my literary studies, I did some classes on fairy tales, on “Death in fiction” etc… Metaphysics par excellence. ^^ I certainly won’t go down this rabbit hole here, but there are some amazing books about the “inner workings” of myths, about the deeper truths, about how these works of art cover our human self, describe our human development, etc.

C.G. Jung took many of these ideas and created his own theories about the collective unconscious with its Archetypes etc. While there is certainly a lot of disagreement in the science world about Jung’s theories, it is nevertheless fascinating.

The same story patterns are everywhere. All around the world. In every culture. Music is everywhere, it influences us, whether we want it or not. Religion, politics, advertisement.. everything uses art. Subliminal or not. To influence us. The way we perceive the world is shaped to a large degree by our artistic environment. You think you had one original thought? Think again. Everything you said, everything you wrote came from somewhere. And went through the filters in your subconsciousness. And these filters? In many instances: art.

So… yeah… a big “no” about “Journalism is more important than art”. Journalism wouldn’t even be possible without art.

[neoduskcomics]

What Star Wars Means To Me

I was twelve years old when I saw Star Wars end. I was sitting between my dad and my brother at a screening of Revenge of the Sith, a movie that my prepubescent mind had convinced itself was the greatest thing it’d ever seen.

The movie’s climactic battle had come to an end, and as I watched the final scenes play out, I could feel the film’s looming departure steadily but surely setting in. In the movie’s last moments, Owen and Beru looked out into the binary sunset, cradling their new baby nephew, with John Williams’ score emotionally building toward the final credits, and a hollow emptiness began to overwhelm me. Episode III was coming to a close, and with it, so too would end the saga of Star Wars. Something that had brought so much happiness, so much excitement, so much magic into my life was now ending before my eyes. Everyone knew that there wouldn’t be another prequel or sequel or anything else. This was it—these final frames all-too-quickly spinning past the projector. In just a few seconds, it seemed that Star Wars would be gone forever.

As I left the theater with my brother and my dad, they started up a discussion about what we had just watched, but I was too emotionally drained to join in. It was hard for me to come to grips with the fact that the Star Wars movies were really done with. Sure, Star Wars itself would still go on in some form. The Clone Wars cartoon was enjoyable. And they started making those cool-looking Force Unleashed games, too. Plus, there were the comics and the books and all sorts of other stories being made.

But it just wasn’t the same. You could write a thousand books, make a thousand TV shows and develop a thousand video games filling in whatever nooks and crannies the films overlooked in the Star Wars canon, but they would never, ever be a substitution for sitting in that theatre and seeing the quiet fade-in of the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

When the movies left, it was like a bit of magic had left the world, too. And between the ages of seven and thirteen, that magic inspired me. It made me read and create and imagine more than any time I spent at school ever did. Whenever a new movie came out, I fantasized about what the next one might be like. And when the movies ended, I fantasized about what a whole new Star Wars trilogy might be about. Maybe it would follow Luke creating a new Jedi Order, or maybe it would take place thousands of years before the prequels and show us the origins of the Jedi and the Sith. I hoped and dreamed and wondered, but I knew how unlikely it all was. Lucas would never make another movie, let alone give Star Wars to someone else so that they could go on to make an Episode VII. And so, Star Wars, as much as I continued to love it, slowly faded from my life. There was no use crying over spilt blue milk. Star Wars was done, and it wasn’t coming back.

And then I heard that Disney bought Star Wars and that they were going to make an Episode VII.

At this point, I’d like you to recall the scene at the end of Ratatouille where the evil food critic Ego takes a bite of Remy’s titular cuisine, and then suddenly he’s transported back in time to a moment in his childhood when he could still feel the warm embrace of love and happiness, and the cold, melancholic ice that once encased his withered heart melts away in a matter of seconds, restoring life and wonder to his old, bony body. Do you remember that scene? Because that is exactly what I felt like when I heard this news.

And I am not hyperbolizing here; I was literally shouting with jubilance when I heard that there would be an Episode VII. I can scarcely recall another moment in my life when I felt that level of genuine, startling happiness. It was like throughout all those years of Star Wars’ absence, all those years of resignation, a repressed excitement for the franchise was building up within me, never surfacing, never finding the right opportunity to ignite, but steadily rising and rising in pressure. And then, on that day, at that moment, upon hearing those words, all of that pent-up excitement just exploded out of me like a volcanic eruption. I didn’t know who was making this supposed Episode VII or what it would be about or when it was happening or even if it would be any good. None of that mattered. Star Wars was back, and I was going to celebrate like the Empire had just fallen.

Flash forward to the holiday season a couple years later, and even the non-geeks could see that the franchise had been reawakened in full force (get it, awakened, force, see what I did there). Star Wars logos, T-shirts, cups, toasters, mugs, toys, Lego sets and waffle irons filled the stores and display windows. Star Wars really, truly was back. What a fucking exciting time it was. I couldn’t help but just let all that giddiness get to me. There was magic in the air, and it wasn’t the magic of Christmas, but rather the magic of mystical techno samurai flying across solar systems to murder each other with glow sticks. Holy shit. Star Wars was back. STAR WARS WAS BACK. The hype was real, and it was everywhere.

But with that hype came an extreme and sustained spike of nervousness and skepticism. Criticisms of every new bit of information spread like fire throughout the interwebs. Did you see that weird new lightsaber? Is that another Death Star? Doesn’t that character just look like a rip-off of this other character?

After all, people loved Star Wars, and they couldn’t stop themselves from asking if this revival would live up to their expectations. Would The Force Awakens be a worthy successor to the franchise—a true return to form after decades of waiting for a real sequel to Jedi? Or would this simply be another prequel trilogy to dash the fans’ expectations and burn everything they loved about the series to the ground, buoyed only by the parallel stories of fans and creators determined to make sure Star Wars lived on? Lucas had failed us for the last time. People needed something GOOD.

The Force Awakens destroyed at the box office. Unadjusted for inflation, it became the highest-grossing film ever to hit American theaters, and the third highest-grossing film ever to hit the world. It was released to critical acclaim and massive audience approval. Abrams had done it. He had made a new Star Wars movie that both he and the fans could be proud of. All that hype was justified. All that waiting paid off. Star Wars wasn’t just back, it was good again. Great, even.

But as people celebrated Episode VII’s monetary and critical triumph, and as memes and excited chatter spread across the web, a notably large group of people simply did not feel that The Force Awakens met the standards they had set for it. To the point that they began to convince others that it was actually a bad, perhaps the worst ever, Star Wars movie.

And I’ll be honest—even I wasn’t sure how to feel about The Force Awakens when I first saw it. There was so much pressure on it to be good, and I was spending so much of the film’s runtime questioning whether or not I liked it, that I don’t think I was really, genuinely experiencing it. The movie felt like such a self-contradiction. It was so weirdly, at times even jarringly similar to the Original Trilogy, and at other times it was so strangely and uncomfortably different from it. The Resistance? That’s just the Rebellion. Starkiller Base? That’s just the Death Star. Kylo Ren? He’s not as threatening as Vader. Rey? She’s not as relatable as Luke. Part of me thought it was great, but another part of me felt terribly, soul-wearingly conflicted. I had to search my feelings about this film long and hard before I would be ready to draw a final conclusion about how it fit into the series.

It wasn’t until I saw it again a week later—when the crushing weight of all that pressure and anxiety and anticipation had time to dissolve—that I felt as though I was truly watching the movie for the first time. I was relaxed, passive, and ready to be entertained. I already knew what the movie was. I already knew what was going to happen. There was no more nervously waiting and watching to see what would become of my beloved franchise, what new things they were introducing to it, what old things they were keeping, and whether any of it was any good. I could just sit back and accept the film for what it was. And this time, I absolutely adored it.

The Force Awakens is in no way a perfect movie—far, far from it. But it was a miraculous work of Star Wars storytelling that won over both audiences and critics with its skillful direction, clever writing, compelling characters, great sense of humor and warm spirit.

Yes, TFA was closely and purposefully tailored to the original movies, but it was so, so much more than just another adventure film about a desert-inhabiting youth taking off to explore the galaxy and blow up giant space stations. It was a tale of friendship, hardship, humanity, and facing your darkest fears. It was about Rey struggling to look beyond the unknown terrors that lied before her—to confront her destiny and take up the lightsaber so that she could protect her new family. It was about Finn embracing his own humanity and working up the resolve to fight that which he spent the whole movie trying desperately to get away from. It was about Han reaching the culmination of his character’s growth from self-absorbed, smarmy money-grubber who ran from danger to a damaged and guilt-ridden father who renders himself both physically and emotionally vulnerable in order to save his son’s very soul.

Every relationship feels meaningful. Every dramatic revelation feels earned. Every joke hits. Every effect is dazzling and eighty percent of the time completely practical, which is why this movie will look far better in ten years than the prequels do now.

Poe and Finn are two of the most likeable characters to ever grace Star Wars cinema, and it’s no wonder that everyone wants them to be a couple when they had such an amazingly fun first date. Kylo Ren freezes a fucking blaster bolt in mid-fucking-air with the goddamn Force. BB-8’s thumbs up made every audience I saw the movie with burst into laughter. Poe blows up, like, fifteen TIE fighters in a row, followed by Finn shouting “That’s one hell of a pilot!” not even knowing at this point in the movie that Poe is still alive. The scene where Rey touches Luke’s lightsaber and is thrust into an acid trip of Force visions is both terrifying and mesmerizing. The two guards steadily backing away from Kylo Ren’s temper tantrum is adorable and hysterical. That moment when an emotionally distressed Kylo Ren struggles to pull Luke’s lightsaber from the snow, only to see it zoom past him and be dramatically caught by Rey as John Williams’ iconic score begins to build is fucking fantastic. And Han’s final confrontation with his son is so horrifically tense, and so well-executed and fitting as a conclusion to Han’s story that the internet, as liable as it was to do so, miraculously did not explode with blinding rage when it found out that Abrams had killed off one of the series’ most beloved characters.

Is there reason to be skeptical about the direction of the franchise? Yes. Is Disney perpetrating some worrisome behavior with their successive hiring and subsequent firing of every prospective director they get ahold of? Yes. Will Star Wars just become another MCU where we get two to three new movies every year and they all kind of begin to just meld together without any sense of consequence or meaningful continuity between installments? Maybe.

But I just can’t bring myself to think about that sort of thing right now. And maybe it’s not even really useful to think about it like that at all. Because regardless of what I or anyone reading this thinks, all that stuff is basically out of our hands. Maybe Star Wars will become stale and burned out after a few years of sequels and spinoffs. Or maybe, after establishing their new claim to the franchise with a few safe movies, the company will start to be more willing to experiment with new styles, stories and characters. I mean, with that completely new trilogy on the horizon, it does appear to be where this ship is headed.

But, who knows. Speculation is all we have. And all I can really say for absolute certain right now is that, for the moment, I have Star Wars in my life again, and I’m going to cherish it for as long as I can. Because I spent ten years in a world without Star Wars, and I have a lot of love left in me to give the franchise before I burn out, as a lot of other people seem to have already unfortunately done. I’d rather not go into the future of this series revival already prepared to hate the new Han Solo movie or Rian Johnson’s new trilogy or whatever else might come our way.

Because at the end of the day, despite the way many fans and even some past creators have treated it, Star Wars, pure and simple, is about joy. And when we live in a world that’s so filled with dread, fear, corruption, terror, hatred and downright tragedy, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to just let yourself give into something like Star Wars. I don’t mean to say we should just unconditionally love everything with the Lucasfilm logo on it, but maybe just recognize that sometimes it’s more valuable to be open and understanding and willing to love something than it is to be skeptical, critical, nitpicking and pessimistic, especially with something that is so widely adored and cherished the world over.

Maybe people won’t like The Last Jedi. Maybe they won’t like the Han Solo movie, either. Or maybe they’ll love them. But Star Wars isn’t any individual film. It’s a part of our culture, a symbol of the human spirit’s fascination with adventure, mysticism and the battle between good and evil. It means a billion different things to a billion different people and spans generations.

My dad once told me that when he used to take my brother and I to the toy store—years ahead of The Phantom Menace being unveiled—he was shocked to see that Star Wars toys still lined the shelves when a new movie hadn’t been made in well over a decade. But that’s what Star Wars is. It might have peaks and valleys, and there might be times when it feels like it’s all but left us, but in reality, it never really ends. It’s an invaluable part of human history whose effects will be felt for generations to come, and right now, it’s thriving in a way that nobody has seen in years.

We owe it not just to the franchise but to ourselves to enjoy every moment of it. Because Star Wars is the very embodiment of love, joy, hope, humor and adventure. Because Star Wars is a reminder that sometimes it’s okay to just let yourself be a kid again. Because while everything can be going wrong in the real world, Star Wars will always see to it that the light triumphs over the dark. Because while life is tragically short and full of hardship, Star Wars is forever.

[thefudge]

TLJ thoughts, post-viewing

sooo, i have a lot of feelings about a lot of things. also the subtitles didn’t prepare me. for a lot.

this movie is made up of many quiet, non-verbal moments and rian johnson lets those moments sink in and dwell with you and that’s great

rey exploring the workings of the force, for example. there’s a really cool sequence where she’s trying to find out who her parents are and she lowers herself in the embodiment of the dark side and it’s very trippy and cool. it’s not rushed and it’s v atmospheric. she gets the incentive to do that thanks to kylo. his revelations about luke and his general aura of “troubled darkness” inspire her to dig deeper.

i think what i liked most about reylo was its sense of gratuitous intimacy. what i mean by this is that they seemed to connect without effort, without having to manipulate the plot to make it fit. they seemed be in their own little movie, dealing with things beyond the usual surface level of star wars ‘good vs. evil’. kylo’s philosophy about letting the past go is definitely flawed, but the way the movie frames reylo, they do seem to “let go” of their surroundings and circumstances when they’re together. it’s sort of timeless. 

i will say, i don’t think the romance was that "romantic”, if that makes sense? and i think it’s a good thing. their bond is very real, but it goes beyond “romantic drama” and your usual hero/villain trope. it has shades of that, ofc, and there is palpable sexual and romantic tension, imo. but i sensed something more mature and interesting between them. it could go either way. do i want reylo to have a future in ep 9 and after? yep. is it possible they won’t? also yep. mainly because kylo let rey down. and here’s the kicker: it’s not rey that really rejects him. it’s him that rejects rey. because she tries quite a few times to bring him over to her side, and i think her anger and sadness stem from the fact that, ultimately, kylo didn’t choose her, and ergo the light. he’s still v much conflicted and i think she can sense that. but rey is hungry. she wants all or nothing. she can’t have half of him. so she doesn’t reject him as much as tell him straight up that she won’t stand for being second. for instance, she expects him to fold to her side immediately after taking down snoke. when he doesn’t, she’s quite literally in tears. this hurts her on a deeper level than “oh no, the dark side won and the resistance lost an important ally.” no, this feels like her parents all over. leaving her, deserting her. that’s how i read it, tbh. 

and kylo does some reprehensible shit in the latter quarter of the movie, lol, like i won’t woobify him, since i like my antiheroes to be antiheroes.  but he's not quite villain level?  if u look at snoke, if u take that cool, collected snarky asshole - that’s a villain. he knows who he is, and what he wants. kylo is hopelessly confused and always looking for validation. he tells rey that she’s the one always looking for father figures - but oh, benny ben. it’s actually you. he wants someone to really see him, and that’s why he’s drawn to rey. but just to clarify: he doesn’t have it in him to kill his mother. he has an open, unambiguous chance and he stops. he is willing to destroy her when she stands behind walls and is shielded by the resistance. yet when she’s in the open, no. that was my read on it. 

his fight with luke is...very much one-sided. luke appears as a force-hologram to fight him and kylo just wants to obliterate him for very, very personal reasons. kylo is not the cool, collected new emperor who is going to “kill the past”. he lives so much in the past that he doesn’t even realize luke isn’t even there. 

and btw, kylo doesn’t kill luke, though he wishes he had. early on we get this foreshadowing. when the first force-bond happens between him and rey, he goes “no, you’re not doing this. the effort would kill you.” meaning that, to transport yourself through space via force (without a bond) takes a looooot of energy. luke goes on a suicide mission, basically. he knows using the force like this will kill him. he’s almost having fun toying with kylo at the end. 

when kylo realizes he’s a force-hologram, luke smiles and says “see you around, kid.” not exactly anakin vs obi-wan, if u know what i mean.

and then back on the island, we see luke peacefully give himself over to the force and vanish. it’s v tranquil and quite satisfying and the original star wars theme is used so well, imo. do i think we could’ve had more of luke? sure. but he went out on his own terms. that’s the whole point - kylo didn’t kill him. he killed himself.

again, i want to emphasize that kylo is still very much an antihero, dipping his toe into villainy (and failing - which makes him more angry, which only makes it harder to be the villain he wants to be haha). he’s not a Good Guy. many posts will crop up in the tag about what a poor, lost soul he is. yes and no. rey actually understands him when she closes the falcon door on him. she knows him and appreciates him. he will never really be ben solo and that’s a good thing. trying to be ben solo so hard is what got him in this mess. he isn’t supposed to be a Good Guy. so no, i don’t want him to “turn” (see my thoughts on “turning” below). i want him to truly move beyond the past and reform himself on his own terms, just like luke. because hey fam, luke isn’t a Good Guy in this movie either AND THAT’S GREAT. anyway, i certainly won’t be romanticizing him (kylo). he’s a compelling antihero who definitely has baggage and trauma (luke did try to kill him as a boy, though he has a wildly dramatized version of the event lol) but he is also someone who has to help himself. ultimately, rey’s goal isn’t to “save” him but to push him to save himself. honestly, if kylo had followed her and “turned” and reluctantly joined the resistance, it would’ve been a total let down and a betrayal of his character. him “turning” wouldn’t help him. he’d still have that darkness and that anger inside of him, multiplied. boy needs therapy - aka working through his issues, not ignoring them and joining the Good Side. 

Other things I liked: 

- admiral holdo’s arc - beautiful, well-done and surprising. laura dern kills it. 

- benicio del toro!!!!! no small parts with this man. he is delightful. imagine rick from “rick and morty” but way hotter lol. he was probably my favorite addition, after rose. he’s the middle-ground guy, he’s more han solo than fucking han solo. he doesn’t believe in good guys vs bad guys and he shows both finn and the audience that the two sides err because they believe their path is the only path. he perfectly encapsulates the very real contradictions in modern-day ethics and how our “pure and wholesome” activism often shields us from some terrible truths. he does have a semblance of a heart underneath his cynicism but i love that in the end he doesn’t suddenly discover the power of friendship with finn and rose. he’s a jaded asshole with shades of good, who’s probably seen some rough shit. BUT, he has this super cute moment with rose before things go to shit regarding her necklace and it’s !!!!!! it shows how much he understands human nature. i kinda ship them. aaaanyway. i definitely think he will return, his arc is not done. 

- ROSE TICO SMILING AND BEING HAPPY. ROSE TICO RIDING THAT KANGAROO CREATURE AND ENJOYING LIFE. i treasured those scenes a lot. she’s a great combo of feisty and childlike, tough and innocent. gosh, she reminds me of bonnie bennett so much ;___;

- general hux. yall, it’s true. it’s all true. hux may have won me over. hux in TFA was just a lite over-the-top villain imo. but here??? he’s such a fun, dynamic character, rian gave him a lot of fun, humorous moments. and honest to god, he’s also given some humanity. when kylo takes over, he is genuinely affected and disturbed by his level of aggression. and he’s....idk, much less evil in this one. probably because of the humor. he just seems like a man dead-set on fulfilling his mission, brainwashed to the core. and underneath the brainwashing, he seems to be your average overwhelmed white dude. i don’t think he’ll be redeemed or anything but...it’s weird how at the end of TLJ he is probably the MOST reasonable dude from the first order???

- there’s this great little message about failure. i think here TLJ was inspired by Rogue One. because a lot of the characters in this movie learn to let go and accept defeat. you can’t always save everyone, you can’t always fight back. sometimes, the brave thing is to retreat and treasure the ppl you love. so i def liked that.

- GODDAMN GHOST YODA. i honestly thought i’d hate it because...gimmick, amirite? but that scene with luke was SO emotional and also funny and visceral and just - i was a bit teary-eyed, ME, THE GRINCH. i was suddenly nine again, watching star wars for the first time. ANYWAY. 

- luke skywalker deserves a separate entry. mark hamill did so much with this character in the last few scenes. also some of the stuff he says about the force in this movie is legit beautiful and i love how he criticizes the vanity of the jedi - because this was what was missing from the prequels. anakin fell because the council was tone-deaf. the jedi are often responsible for their own doom and so they must always be vigilant - which is a goddamn thankless job. i love that luke acknowledges this. 

-luke/leia moment. GAAAAH. HE KISSES HER FOREHEAD GOODBYE AND SHE KNOWS HE’S NOT COMING BACK FROM THIS. I DIED.

- in that order of business, leia finally FIIIINALLY gets to show off a bit and use the force in a pro-active manner. it’s also clear to me that episode 9 would’ve been the story of her and “ben” and i think she would have been the catalyst for his eventual development. but sadly, we’ll never see that ;____; 

-there is some gorgeous cinematography and visual direction in this movie. particularly in the third act, on that salt planet? the red trails? shivers. 

-i didn’t hate any of the new creatures like i thought i would??? probably because they were used sparingly and with a sense of humor.

Stuff i kind of didn’t like:

- phasma. phasma, phasma, phasma. WHAT was that??? like tell me that wasn’t anticlimactic as hell. she was, sadly, a pointless character. unless she somehow survived the fire and destruction, which i doubt, i really don’t see the point of casting wonderful gwendolyn christie just to stand there in armor. 

- MAZ KANATA. is barely in this. i call bullshit. 

-sigh, okay so i loved rose to death, but her arc revolved way too much around finn. on the one hand i get it, on the other hand.... i was hyped because ppl were saying she gets this big moment to shine. and granted, imo, she shines every moment she’s on screen. but i think her climactic scene was... *fart noises*. it’s completely centered around finn. she saves him basically, and it’s definitely heartfelt and lovely but also...it’s finn’s moment 100%. because it’s him who has to learn about his own worth. i do think they make a good team and i ship them a little bit, but the one-sided kiss was not satisfying and i’m tired of having to watch my darling woc give their love and devotion freely, only to be  tertiary characters in their own story. like, imo, it should’ve been rose who flew straight into that cannon and tried to take it down for her sister. she should’ve been the one determined to take it down. and it should’ve been finn to save her and tell her they must find meaning in other things. finn definitely cares for her and in the last scene we have of him, he’s tending over rose and waiting for her to wake up BUT. will rose ever be number one for anyone, like the white girls, i wonder? eh, i’m probably just grumpy old aunt. she does get to have an internal world, she’s a believable human being, she matters. the thing is, white girls in these movies can bend their little finger and they’re considered worthy and complex. rose has to jump through hoops to be seen the same way. anyway.

- i liked poe dameron’s arc, which is “hey, maybe i should stop posturing and listen to women more lol” which is “learn when to retreat and stand down” but...honestly, you hire gorgeous oscar isaac who can give you real emotional weight and you just...kinda under-utilize him. yes, he did a lot of stuff, but he...didn’t take time to internalize it. this dude feels like he’s got a lot of demons and conflicting desires and a rich inner life, yet we only skim the surface of that. like, he’s aways in go-mode, we rarely get a quiet moment with him. like pls fix this, episode 9. 

-luke’s reaction to han’s death is pfffffffffffff. maybe we’ll get more in a deleted scene? 

- also....can we stop pussyfooting and legit talk about han as a dad? because they keep hinting he wasn’t a good one, nor a very good husband to leia. but...it’s very unsatisfying to keep hearing about it without good storytelling to back it up. 

- the world-building & the origins of the first order. i had problems with this in TFA and, big surprise, i still have problems with it here. basically, why has the first order taken over the new republic? how did they gain support? were there remnants of the old empire that survived and thrived as the first order? what about the knights of ren? luke mentions kylo took some students with him when he destroyed the jedi temple, so....what about those guys? like, this very fraught and war-torn landscape doesn’t have a solid history. how did A become B? why is every corner of the galaxy oppressed? why are some planets thriving more? are they all arm-dealers??? i find that hard to believe. yeah, we have the expanded universe for that, we have books and comics etc. but i need these movies to give us a sense of their own universe. i’m...still not convinced. 

-lolol, snoke dies like a bitch. and it’s so anticlimactic and duuuumb. dude, a five-year old coulda seen that coming but your ancient super powerful ass couldn’t? laaaame. he’s like “oh, yes, i sense no more conflict in you, kylo ren. just a deep certainty”. YES FOOL, because he’s decided to remove u, because he’s confident he wants rey, and not you, by his side. it was soooo lame. but i guess we had to remove him to make the audience think kylo was turning good for a second there.

-which reminds me... and you probably saw this coming, i hate the idea of “turning”. rey keeps talking about ben turning to the light. and this verb annoys me to no end. it’s made clear that they both already have a lot of light and darkness in each other. it’s about finding balance. where’s my grey jedi??? episode 9 pls????

Extra Reylo stuff i didn’t see mentioned which i adored: 

- during their first force-bond moment when they sense each other, kylo ren runs out of the medical unit and into the corridor like a goddamn luckless teenager, expecting to see rey pop up in a prom dress.  it’s precious. i love awkward!kylo. also rey tries to shoot him bc she thinks he’s actually there and kylo bends down, thinking he was shot. it’s a rly cool moment. and it doesn’t feel malicious like, he doesn’t expect anything less from her. 

- there’s so much charged electricity between them and it’s not all sexual. it’s kinda mystical and i dig it. i’m weirdly reminded of xavier and magneto??? as in two enemies who have such a rich history and whose bond transcends human morality. 

-OKAY. i saw no one talking about this but THAT GODDAMN SNOW WHITE SCENE. so rey decides she’s going to turn kylo to the light because that’s their one hope of defeating the first order etc. luke tries to stop her, but she’s like i’m going after my man. okay. she gets on the falcon, then she puts herself in this casket-like pod and AND. we get this lovely, breath-taking sequence of her arriving at the first order base, slipping gently into the hangar in her casket. and she’s def nervous. AND THEN. she looks up through the glass and there’s steam at first and through the steam we see kylo’s face, looking down at her wistfully. IT’S SO WEIRDLY FAIRY-TALE WTF. and then ofc the guards come in to shackle her. BUT JESUS. the prince looking into the casket to find snow-white WHAT ARE THESE AESTHETICS. it felt like a nod to the infamous scene in TFA where he carries her bridal style. it’s very fairy-tale-esque. 

- i love that in the scene with the multiple reys, when she reaches through the mirror to see her parents, the shadowy figure who appears and touches her hand seems at first to be kylo and then she realizes it’s herself. i also love that she talks to kylo about that experience. GAH. 

- i just rly loved that there was so much humanity in their interactions.

Reylo stuff which sort of bothered me/left me wanting more: 

- like excuse u rian,  during the praetorian guards fight, i needed more moments where kylo looks at rey and is worried for her sake. i needed that fight to be a bit more visceral and about the two of them and their survival. they do fight together and it’s great but then...they’re sort of separated and carry their own small battles (i did love how rey saved him with that lightsaber throw)

- the whole “you come from nothing, you are nothing.” yea yeah, he’s a dummy who doesnt know how to express his feelings, he’s mr. darcy x 1000 of faux pas. but i still think adam driver’s acting went a little much there. the way he delivered that line was a bit off for me. ofc, he follows it with “but not to me”, because he’s basically proposing to her, but i needed a bit more, an extra line from him confirming her importance. or maybe no extra line, but a bit more feeling. did i mention i love wrecked!kylo? the “please” killed me haha. 

Final thoughts:

- enjoyed it more than i expected to, and it does operate with way more nuance than TFA but it stiiiill fell short with some characters. it didn’t have the weight of rogue one for me, but it’s more lighthearted and entertaining, which i appreciate, cuz it reminded me of my childhood. and ultimately, whether we like it or not, disney does operate on nostalgia. all in all, it’s a worthy star wars movie, 8/10. rian deserves an A-. (he also wrote this thing and whoaaa...i wonder how much more ambiguous and dark this movie woulda been if he’d been given full non-disney freedom)

[youngboy-oldmind]

ALBUM REVIEW: Revival

“It’s true, I’m a Rubik’s. A beautiful mess/At times juvenile yes. I goof and I jest/A flawed human I guess”

Detroit legend and highest-selling rapper of the decade, Eminem, releases his eighth (ninth if you count Infinite) album Revival: a project that is over hated, yet plagued with cringey lyrics, inconsistency, and an excessive runtime (77 minutes), propelling his decline and mainstream hate that’s haunted him since the late 2000s.

Overall thoughts

I say this with pain because I genuinely think this project could’ve been comparable to Jay-Z’s 4:44. Both rappers have been successful since the 90s and they both know their best is behind them. However, Jay-Z hit the mark where Eminem vastly missed. BUT, this isn’t a review of 4:44. Unfortunately, this is a review of Eminem’s controversial 2017 project: Revival.

Revival misses the mark for several reasons. First, the songs he chose for pre-release singles turned off fans from the jump. He pre-released “Walk on Water”, which captured the interest of fans who appreciate Eminem’s calmer, more introspective side. However, his second single release “Untouchable” made me hesitant to expect this album to revive Eminem’s career. This song isn’t strong enough to headline the album. At best, it’s a little annoying. And at worse, its skippable in 60 seconds. Furthermore, it was a political song, so any listeners that disagreed with his message immediately disassociated from the project.

Second, his lyricism is weak throughout the album, downright offensive at some points. Not offensive like its edgy or has shock value. Offensive like I can’t believe he made me listen to such shtty similes and metaphors. Contenders for the worst lines include but are not limited to:

“Instinctive nature to bring the anguish to the English language/ With this ink you haters get rode on (wrote on), like a piece of paper”

“I’m looking at your tight rear like a sight seer/ Your booty is heavy duty, like diarrhea”

“I just bodied the beat, so that hole must’ve been dug/Cause it just died, like food coloring does”

Along with weak metaphors, he also uses his signature play-on-words style to create painstaking lines such as

“The plan’s to bring her to my house/You’re drinking Jack and Beam, I’m thinking soon this tramp’ll lean (trampoline) so we can bounce”

“From the first time I saw you, I actually/Said to myself, ‘I gotta meet her’ (meter) like a taxi”

“I ask does she want a computer lodged in her vagina/Said my dick is an apple, she said put it inside her (in cider)”

Some of the vocal performances were painful as well. On “Chloraseptic” and “Untouchable”, he straight up lets out ridiculous drawn out yells. I have difficulty accepting that the producer of those tracks and long-time friend of Eminem, Denaun, heard him make those noises and didn’t tell him on how bad it sounds.

Third, and most importantly, Eminem’s tone is extremely inconsistent throughout the project. I wouldn’t be as critical towards the goofy songs if Eminem set and maintained one tone. He began the album with “Walk on Water”, discussing the stress of constant scrutiny and how unrealistic expectations make him doomed to fall short. This is a great topic to talk about as someone who was 18 years into his fame. But then, he begins topic ping-pong for almost an hour, switching back and forth between maturity and childishness, (with some high spots that I’ll discuss later). You cannot complain that people stress you out with high expectations, and then make songs that’s just punchlines revolving around breasts, butts, and vulgar sex.

Logic has great examples of priming your expectations and tones. He makes it clear when a project is a concept piece, like Incredible True Story or Everybody, or when he’s just having fun, like Bobby Tarantino I & II. Because Eminem keeps switching between serious songs and dumb songs, it makes everything seem disingenuous. For example, on the song “Like Home”, he basically rips Donald Trump a new one, going so far as to compare him to Hitler. But on the song “Heat” he makes a joke that he agrees with Donald Trump that women’s privates are supposed to be grabbed, which is why “they call it a snatch”. You can’t criticize the president in one song and then agree with them in the next, even if you’re joking. You can have fun songs and serious songs, but they should keep the album’s tone consistent.

Okay, I’m done criticizing, cause there are some great things about this album. “Walk on Water” was a great intro to the album. “River” is great collab between Ed Sheeran and Eminem. While the content of “Remind Me” is unremarkable, Rick Rubin delivers on the beat, creating an entertaining chorus that samples Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ “I Love Rock n Roll”. I will give credit to “Offended”, which is ambitious to say in the least. I skipped it on first listen but it actually grew on me. And of course, the final two tracks “Castle” and “Arose” are the album’s peak.

If Eminem would’ve shaved the track list to 9 songs instead of 19, weeding out the childish/forgettable songs and making it more tonally consistent, this album would be much better. My ideal Revival album would be:

1. Walk on Water

2. Believe

3. River

4. Like Home

5. Tragic Endings

6. Nowhere Fast

7. Offended

8. Castle

9. Arose

This would bring the runtime down to 40 minutes instead of 77 minutes. At 45 years old, 8 albums into his career and 18 years in the game, Eminem doesn’t have 77 minutes’ worth of material to talk about. And it shows.

I mentioned earlier that this project is over hated. Although there are things I strongly dislike about this project, it isn’t nearly as bad as media and music reviewers describe it. Two of his previous projects, Encore and Relapse, were much worse than Revival. I think it’s an exaggeration to call Revival the worst of his career, but it is definitely indication of a decline.

Album Breakdown

“Walk on Water” ignites the album with an emotional piano ballad, Beyonce’s beautiful vocals on the chorus, and Eminem’s surprisingly self-exposing verses. He talks about the pain of having a section of hip hop disregard him, while having another section constantly hold him to a standard he feels like he’ll never reach again. It’s more melodramatic than what I expect from an Eminem song, especially the dramatic pause at the beginning of the first verse where he dramatically asks “why.........?”. Seeing Eminem express vulnerability instead of constantly acting like a god gave me hope.

But then...I heard the last 5 seconds, and I knew I was in trouble.

“Cause I’m just a man/

But as long as I got a mic I’m godlike/

So me and you are not alike/

B***h, I wrote ‘Stan’”

This transitions into “Believe”, a track that carries on the topic from the previous song but establishes that he is not self-conscious and knows he’s superior in the rap game, asking the audience if THEY believe in him. It’s disappointing to see him abandon vulnerability so quickly. It took five minutes and four seconds for Eminem to backtrack and basically say “Nah, I can reach every height. You guys just need to believe in me”. Like he’s blaming critics and fans for his decline, not his skills or style. I did not care for this shift. And speaking of shifts, we hear Eminem’s first attempt at a trap beat, which sounds off with his rapping style. He’s constantly taking odd pauses to squeeze in rhyme schemes. Not the worst song, but already starting the contradictions to the initial tone of the album.

Eminem’s second attempt at a trap beat, “Chloraseptic”, was painful. I can’t sugar coat it. Half of the time I had no clue what he was saying, and the half that I could understand had no substance. He mocks Migos’ style, using adlibs, shouts, and voice bites that make him sound old and desperate to fit in modern trap music. Over his career, Eminem’s best tracks have either a rock sample or a piano melody. But this is clear evidence that very few Eminem tracks should be trap songs.

As I mentioned earlier, “Untouchable” was released early as a single. This song was painful because I knew what he was going for. So it sucks to be distracted by the subpar delivery. The rock guitars and harmonized vocals in the chorus hit my ears too hard, making me wince and decrease the volume at the chorus. Eminem’s verses have him shouting/teasing “white boy, white boy” “black boy, black boy” which is too immature for someone of his status and stature. And there’s a line in the first verse where he says “then we wonder why we see this side of youuuuuuuuuuuu”, drawing out the last word in this painful, awful voice that definitely should’ve been scrapped. In the second half of the song, the instrumental switches from a hard rock sample to a piano melody that illustrates a sense of anxiety. Also, in the last verse, he switches perspectives and talks as a black person under systematic oppression. While I appreciate the effort, it doesn’t really translate into anything emotionally because his solutions to these problems are shallow.

He talks about police brutality and systemic racial issues. The problem is it’s all surface level. Someone with his age and experience should be able to add more to the discussion. But he comes through with messages like “We need to hire black cops and stop putting cops in neighborhoods they are unfamiliar with. This country was built on slaves. It’s unfair Kaepernick got hate for kneeling during the national anthem. Racial profiling is the cause of violence”. These are things I was able to articulate as a middle schooler. But he delivers these thoughts like he’s speaking from the woke-est perspective the world’s ever seen. When in reality, there are tweets that hold more substance. And because of this, Eminem’s yelling doesn’t feel like anger. It just feels loud and misguided.

Fortunately, we then transition to one of the stronger songs on the album, “River”. He discusses a toxic relationship filled with cheating, lies, and an abortion. Eminem has always delivered good bad-relationship songs, so I’m not surprised another one is one of the best on the album. Ed Sheeran’s singing on the chorus is dope, especially at the end when the instruments drop at the end and Sheeran’s tender vocals cap off the track. Cannot complain; its easily the best track so far.

“Remind Me” is the first goofy track on the album. Eminem is taking a break from serious topics like meeting other’s expectations, success and failure, police brutality, and a devastating relationship, to talk about a girl with “implants so big” she could hang him up on her rack, with her “big ol’ tits”. This song is only tolerable because Rick Rubin’s sample was fun to hear. Otherwise, this song is unbearable.

“Like Home” is his next political song. He takes a patriotic stance while criticizing President Trump. And that’s about it. Pretty much a diss track where he spent 8 lines setting up a Hitler punchline and then calling Americans to unite against Trump. Alicia Keys sings the chorus but its nothing heart stopping. Definitely one of the more forgettable songs simply because it wasn’t painful to listen to.

The thing about bad songs or forgettable songs is that if you string too many together, they become more difficult to tolerate. So I’m coming off the heels of the annoying “Remind Me” and forgettable “Like Home”, when I get to “Bad Husband”. Here, he’s talking about how bad he was to Kim, his ex-wife. This song seems good on paper, but two things make it bad: X Ambassadors on the chorus and X Ambassadors on the chorus. X Ambassadors and Eminem do not fit well. Their loud style doesn’t fit the quiet, soft vocals that Eminem implements. It’s also hard to take Eminem’s apology seriously. On the chorus, X Ambassadors call him a 1) lord 2) good father 3) good dad 4) great father. No genuine apology contains repeated self-appraisal. Imagine if someone hits you with their car and says “Wow, I’m such a bad driver. I’m a great manager. Great parent to my kids. I donate to the local homeless shelter. And I baby sit for free. But I’m such a bad driver.” Is that really an apology?

And to that note, I’d take being hit by a car over hearing X Ambassadors on the chorus.

“Tragic Endings” picks up the album. Skylar Grey is amazing on the chorus. The entire song sounds like a sister of “Love the Way You Lie”. This talks about a toxic relationship with someone who doesn’t encourage him. I’m not surprised he once again hits a high point with a bad relationship song. Eminem’s verses are alright, and the instrumentation carries the same tragic-ness that surrounds the content of his verses. Skylar Grey and Eminem have collaborated on multiple songs over the years and they tend to compliment each other well.

Side note: There’s a curse in this album that’s wreaking havoc. After a certain number of bad songs, my appreciation for a song comes from the fact that it doesn’t make me want to take off my headphones. I’m approaching every song with “it can’t get worse than its already gotten”.

Then it got worse... “Framed”. With an instrumental possessing a western, cowboy-saloon vibe and a chorus that creates a “cowboy please shoot me in the head and end it all, this album is torture” vibe, “Framed” is a storytelling track where Eminem is framed for a murder. Apparently, some of his gruesome lyrics are so incriminating that he could be considered a suspect for a murder. Now, I love story telling tracks. One of my favorite records of all time is The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. But Eminem is too old and passed the point of his career where associating with assault, kidnapping, or murder is entertaining and/or interesting. It was shocking in 1999 when he talks about dumping his wife in a pier so he can be with his child without her interference. I would never condone that, but I was highly attentive. But 18 years later, saying you have Ivanka Trump in the back of your car is just creepy. Definitely the worst song on the album.

“Nowhere Fast” features Kehlani on the chorus and exciting violin strings that accompany Eminem’s commentary on the rap game. Kehlani is definitely talented, but I don’t think her style matches Eminem. Overall the song is middle of the road. Not horrible, not amazing.

Now that he’s dissed Trump, talked about a bad relationships, his “killer” lyrics, and the rap industry, it’s time to go back to a fun song and make more jokes about butt & boob implants. “Heat” is very similar to “Remind Me”. They both use a rock and roll sample and discuss the same shallow content. The sample isn’t as entertaining as “Remind Me”, so that makes it harder to tolerate the excessive double entendres and play on words just to illustrate offensive commentary on a woman. I try not to overuse quotes, but I had to save the worst line.

“Girl, you’re just gonna have to put them other chumps on the back burner/You got buns, I got Asperger’s (Ass burgers)”

I mentioned earlier that this next track “Offended” grew on me over time. The issue with tonally switching back and forth is it’s difficult to tell how seriously Eminem takes himself. How can I know Eminem is actually self-conscious about others’ expectations of him, when he immediately calls himself godlike and makes multiple songs about boob jobs? Here, Eminem makes it clear he is trolling and wants to offend and irritate a hater. Once I understood that, I was able to just enjoy it as a dumb track. The instrument is fun and bouncy, and the chorus is extremely childish, but purposely done so that it’s hard to criticize it seriously.

I can sum up the next two tracks, “Need Me” and “In Your Head” as forgettable. “Need Me” is another track about a toxic relationship ft. P!nk’s amazing vocals. Although the ratio of P!nk to Eminem on the song makes me think it should’ve been a P!nk song featuring Eminem. And on “In Your Head” Eminem simply describes his displeasure with past decisions, the most notable part of the song being The Cranberries sample on the chorus, which ended up being wasted on a take it or leave it track.

“Castle” comes outta left field as a MAJOR upgrade from the rest of the album. It almost feels like it belongs on a different album completely. The chorus is slow building with these subtle organ keys and a bassline where the instrumental doesn’t quite kick in but it hints at a explosion about to occur. Liz Rodrigues on the chorus helps Eminem deliver this song; a series of letters that Eminem writes to his daughter, apologizing for things in her life that are impacted by him and his decisions. They’re written in 1995, 1996, and 2007.

The first verse talks about his excitement about having a new baby daughter. The second verse talks about his failed album Infinite and how he’s not sure how he’s going to provide for them, but he’s stumbled onto an idea (The Slim Shady LP, which thrusted him into mainstream success). The third verse is in 2007, where he states his guilt for her life being thrusted in public light, his distaste for fame, his pills addiction. During that time, Eminem was suffering from drug addiction and nearly died from an overdose. The song ends with him taking pills and audibly collapsing onto the floor.

“Arose” picks up where “Castle” leaves off. Eminem talks over a piano ballad and an echo-ey drum that makes you feel like you’re in an empty dark room. Eminem is currently in the ER hooked up to life support machines, talking about the things he’ll miss if he dies in the hospital bed. Amongst other goodbyes, he tells his daughters to take care of each other and he’ll always be in their memory. Truly heart wrenching. But as he says goodbye to everybody, he suddenly fights to stay alive, his heart starts beating, and he recovers. As he recovers, he mentions rewinding the tape of time. Rewinding to before he made the mistake of overdosing.

Then, in an expert display of technical skill and creativity, the track rewinds to the instrumental for “Castle”, and Eminem delivers a final verse that has a much more “onward and forward”, positive outlook. It brings tears to my eyes every time I listen to it. He describes shredding the old letters and not letting the past hold him back. And that the first half of the song is what he would’ve wrote to his daughters if he had made it 2 hours later to the hospital, which is about how long the doctor said he would’ve lived if he hadn’t checked in. In this masterpiece of a closer, Eminem connects back to the concept of reviving. Without question, the best song on the album and the best outro of any Eminem album

Final Thoughts

The Intro “Walk on Water” and outros “Castle”/”Arose” feel like they belong on a completely separate album; they’re totally different from the tracks that encompassed the middle. So while those three are great, the album ultimately suffers from inconsistent themes and messages. If Eminem would’ve stuck with vulnerability and maturity, this album would’ve been great. Overall, the project isn’t horrible. But besides the few high points, I’m disappointed.

Top 3 Songs:

1) Arose

2) Castle

3) River

Overall Grade: C-

[opulent-today-slope]

From my Twitter (with a few coherent adds and edits)

Threads HERE and HERE

If the Harry Potter culture has taught me anything, it's that one should be careful when they want to include so many social issues into one topic. In that sense, it’s like Glee: it wants its two cents about every social issue in the book but puts in so many issues, it ends up saying nothing at all.

The Houses were most likely a simplified commentary on British classism for an under-11 audience, since boarding schools are usually for rich kids. How JKR fell on her arse is when she made the wealthy kids with pure families be in one House for a "down with the prejudiced system" narrative, but not only do you have to have certain genes to get into the wealthy-coded Hogwarts but Harry, Ron and Hermione are a complete contradiction to this theme:

Ron may be poor but his family are pureblood

Hermione's parents are dentists, so she's most likely middle-class

Harry lived with his middle-class extended family (in Surrey, a middle-class stereotyped part of England; on Privet Drive -- wealthy people live on a street named Drive) as a peasant but inherited loads of money from his definitely-not working-class parents

This “down with the system” narrative is “middle-class vs upper middle-class” disguised as “rich vs. poor”. And then you have the other things, such as the elf slavery and Hermione being concerned about it for as long as the plot says so, and then Ron's prejudice towards giants seems more like a quirk than something he needs to learn from... 

I think this is also a problem with HP's reception: JKR probably just wanted to write an entertaining, meaningless kids' book that would blend into any library bookshelf, but when the world overpraised it for childish, surface-level allegory, JKR "needed" to add more of it. Things like Neon Genesis Evangelion and even The Hunger Games knew what they were going to be from the first draft -- nine times out of ten, JKR knew how she wanted HP to end, but critics were too busy going "OMG! Dobby = slavery!" for her not to notice. I feel like "Hogwarts Houses = British class system" was going to be the only allegory she'd use, but when the foreign critics didn't pick up on it and the non-British readers went "Why is Slytherin full of snobbish rich kids?", she tried something else, so she went with racism (this isn’t based on fact - it’s an assumption).

But the Harry Potter culture has taught me a lot about fan culture too and how much they won’t take responsibility whatsoever. I remember being at school and seeing people shamed for not reading the books, let alone liking them. Harry Potter created the modern Spoiler “Culture” that the Marvel movies have exploited for the last decades (”Snape kills Dumbledore”, anyone?), therefore making the world a worse place (I’m half-jesting, of course).

As for the "JKR revealing everything after the books are done" narrative ... it wouldn't have happened if ungrateful fans didn't ask her about characters' X, Y and Zs when fanfiction exists! The fans couldn't let her say that Dumbledore was gay and leave it at that? They’ve had seven books, eight movies, tons of merchandise, a fandom and wizard rock, yet they had to ask whether Sirius was intended to be gay and then get mad when they don't hear the answer they want. Despite being a big advocate for representation, Harry Potter ain't it and it didn’t intend to be it. Now, thanks to these ungrateful fans, there's the Fantastic Beasts movies, a stage play, and a website that reveals that plumbing didn't exist in Hogwarts until the 20th century, and JKR can't keep her mouth shut about opinions that nobody asked for. Meanwhile, Twilight got mocked to death and Percy Jackson would kill to have a decent film series!

Am I sorry for the Harry Potter fans? Yes and no. Yes, because they've spent the last four years discovering that this was a parasocial relationship all along (and JKR didn't know her unwanted opinions hurt the very people who made her famous, apparently), and no because their greed opened a Pandora's Box. The Hunger Games may be getting a prequel book but Suzanne Collins didn't invent representation that wasn't there because several THG fans asked her about a character's religion on Twitter. Hideaki Anno shuts down most NGE questions with "Interpret it however you want." I'm barely a HP fan (the 2nd book is the only one I've read) but I'd respect JKR a ton if she had been a Hideaki Anno or a Suzanne Collins. Because ever since 2015, it's like she can't turn it off!