#the dialogue feels catered to the audience rather than the characters to me a lot of the time

[ssaalexblake]

my favourite dw episode being written by moffat is just me trying to keep people who want to box me into a specific type of dw fan on their toes 

[perseidlion]

Down Low - Movie Review

Last night, I watched Down Low, a queer dark comedy starring Lukas Gage and Zachary Quinto. The movie was written by Lukas himself and Phoebe Fisher and directed by Rightor Doyle.

Is this movie good? Well...no, not really, but it does have some redeeming qualities and overall I'm glad it exists. I watched it because I find Lukas to be a very compelling young actor. I've also been a fan of Zachary for years, so the two of them together in an unapologetically gay, wacky, horny, raunchy dark comedy was right up my alley.

LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD, THEN A BIGGER SPOILER AT THE VERY END.

There are several legitimately funny moments in this movie. Unfortunately, there are just as many, if not more moments where the jokes fell flat. The kinetic, comedic chemistry between Zachary and Lukas does a lot of heavy lifting. Their dynamic is very unique, especially in the comedy genre, which brings a freshness to the story.

Lukas plays Cameron, a delightfully chaotic and unapologetically gay sex worker who takes it upon himself to be Gary's (Zachary Quinto) gay life coach when he finds out that his opening act handjob is the first time he's ever been touched by another man after a lifetime of being in the closet. Cameron lures a man to Gary's house for a hookup. Things take a dark turn when the hookup arrives and subsequently dies in a slapstick sequence.

This is the kind of movie where instead of the characters being racked with guilt over accidentally killing a man, things turn into a madcap comedy of errors in an attempt to dispose of the body. I love a good dark comedy, so I was on board with this premise and ready to suspend my disbelief.

The problem is that the script, frankly, could have used a few more rounds of editing. For one, the characters say each others' names with alarming frequency, especially in the first act. I don't know if that was written into the script or if the actors weren't reading the lines as written, but the absurd number of times Cameron says Gary's name quickly became very distracting. It's hard to imagine they couldn't see this was a problem simply by counting the number of Garys in the script, but somehow this went unnoticed. It does get better in the second half, but it took me out of some delightful comedic moments in the first half.

There is a lot of potential in the bones of the script, however. The dialogue could have used some polish, and the tone was a bit uneven in parts - which is a shame because there was a chance to make a true classic of dark comedy from a queer perspective. This is Lukas' first writing credit, and I see a lot of potential in his style and comedic instincts.

The best part about this movie is that it doesn't cater to straight audiences. There is no over-explaining anything, and no sanding off the rough edges of hookup culture. Everyone can enjoy this film, but it's clearly not compromising anything about the story or its characters to make straight audiences more comfortable.

The story has heart as well. The friendship between Cameron and Gary is unorthodox but earned and well-developed. Cameron feels pity for Gary, but also genuinely cares about him. Gary in turn, finds his first real friend in this random twink he hired for a happy ending.

The foundations of the movie are solid, but some of the key scenes and setpieces, were they executed better with a more solid script underneath, could turn it into a true cult classic. It still might find a spot in cult queer films, precisely because the character dynamics are so unique and the whole thing is very much a gay male story without all the sappy trappings of a Hollywood narrative.

One of Down Low's biggest flaws is that the movie doesn't know what to do with Lukas and Zachary's chemistry. On paper, the two were probably supposed to be into each other, but their chemistry was that of unlikely friends rather than sexual. So when they...

REAL SPOILER

...do have sex, it isn't very sexy. I never expected a movie starring two queer men, written by a queer man to not deliver in the sex scene department. I don't think it was a problem with how the scene was shot, but rather Zachary and Lukas didn't convincingly feel into each other in that way.

I hope this movie represents only the first we see Lukas Gage writing. He's got an interesting vision and a talent for madcap comedy. Seeing him play a chaotic gay man he wrote for himself was a treat. Just...maybe keep the script in the editing cycle a little longer next time?

Rating: 3/5 Garys.

(I counted 6 mentions of Gary in this post, which is about 1/5 of the times his name is said in the first 30 minutes of the movie.)

[starlightandetherealshadows]

You replied in such a friendly way to the first one talking about the main character, telling them that there are other games to read, and yet anons come into your inbox being entitled... I mean, regarding making characters "their own," it's completely impossible for an author to cater to every person in the audience even if the main character is a blank slate. For that to happen one would need dozens and dozens of dialogue options/flavour text variations. I wish everybody would understand that. It's not only their character. It's a collaboration between the author and the audience.

I hope you're having fun writing, take care!

Hi dearheart,

Thank you so much for your sweet words and understanding!! I usually ignore questions like that or critiques with the way my story is written, but we all have our limits 🤣

This story is a work of my imagination I’m choosing to share with you all. MC is a character like everyone else! I think that it’s hard for people to understand just how difficult writing an IF is. Plus, some stories fit blank slate MC’s more than others! Slices of life for example. it’s about MC’s personal relationships and experiences. It’s not easier to write, actually I really admire the writers who have stories like this because goddamn that’s a lot of coding and variation text.

I’m writing MC in a way that feels realistic to me, and everyone who reads my story is stepping into MC’s shoes rather than creating MC from scratch.

Anyways, I really appreciate you being so kind!!! You’re a sweetheart.

[disniq]

Hey I'm new here, I love your blog!! I was wondering, do you recommend Gotham Knights? I kinda bought a gaming computer just so I could play it but now I'm worried it won't live up to my expectations...

Hi, welcome! Thank you!

I definitely recommend Gotham Knights for batfam fans! I think a lot of the negative reviews are because people were expecting another Arkham game and this isn't that. (And a lot of people played the Arkham series because Batman is a Badass™, so to start GK with the premise that Batman is dead put a lot of those fans into a bad faith mindset right off the bat, unfortunately)

Anyway, let me at least try to be objective here lmao. So;

Story - I enjoyed the main storyline. I think they did a good job repurposing comics lore into the GK universe, and even when I guessed elements of the plot it was still fun to play through it. (I'm actually on my third play through now, because I want to see each character's reactions and dialogue. The changes aren't huge but it's enough to keep me entertained) The side missions are also fun imo, and it didn't feel like a hassle to do them alongside the main quests.

Mechanics - this is where YMMV, baring in mind I play on console not PC. The fighting mechanics are a bit clunky to begin with but they do get smoother as you unlock more abilities imo. I also appreciate that they made an effort to *not* use the Arkham combat system, and that they made four very unique playable characters because they all do play very differently!

Characterization - what really sells the game for me is the amount of work they put into these characters. These are four characters with decades of history crammed into a 30 hour game and it's a hard balance between giving enough background information to people who aren't comic nerds without making the comic nerds feel like they're stating the obvious. Obviously I'm the latter, but I absolutely love the amount of care put into the details. It really feels like the studio knew their audience was going to be more batfam fans rather than casual batman fans and they catered to that (which, frankly, after years of living off of dregs, is a great feeling ngl!)

I do want to point out that I'm very much a play-for-fun kind of gamer, so I don't really care about the specs side of anything as long as it plays decently. I've had one glitch where Jason's hoodie strings defied gravity in a few cutscenes, which they seem to have fixed in the latest patch, but that's been it.

Hopefully my rambling is of some use, and I hope you enjoy the game if you do get it!!

[yuurei20]

Character Dialogue Comparison, ENG vs JPN: Wish Upon a Star, a Real-Life Festival

Original Choice A: I wonder if it’s like Tanabata… Translated Choice A: Wishing on stars isn’t uncommon.

Original Choice B: Isn’t that just Tanabata…? Translated Choice B: We make wishes on certain special occasions back home, too.

Whereas the Beansfest connection to a real-life event was never acknowledged in the game, in Wish Upon a Star the prefect references a real-life event directly: Tanabata.

The holiday “Tanabata” might not be very well known amongst the target audience for the English adaptation of the game, so it makes sense that these options were rewritten. Tanabata is based on a folklore story from China. There are many versions of it, but to summarize:

Orihime and Hikoboshi were a couple that were brought together by Orihime’s father and got married, but they liked each other so much that they abandoned their responsibilities (weaving for Orihime, cow-herding for Hikoboshi).

Orhime’s fathered separated them on either side of the Milky Way to force them back to work, only allowing them to meet on the 7th day of the 7th month. The first time they tried to reunite there was no bridge, so a flock of magpies came and made a bridge of their wings.

Rain on July 7th is sometimes referred to as “the tears of Orihime and Hikoboshi” because it is said that if it rains, the river (aka the Milky Way) rises too much for the magpies to be able to help, so the couple cannot meet.

So that is where the “rain on this day is bad news” part might come from in Twst’s Wish Upon a Star event. Hanging stars on trees might have also been inspired by Tanabata, as it also involves writing wishes on strips of paper and hanging them on bamboo.

As for how any of this ended up in the game at all: sometimes Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea recognize Tanabata with a parade, with Minnie dressed as Orihime and Mickey as Hikoboshi.

Original Idia: Uh, yeah, there’s no “wishing upon stars” once you become a high school student. Translated Idia: Uh, yeah, ‘cause we’re not in middle school.

(While these phrases mean exactly the same thing, it is fun to keep a record of the instances where the game carefully avoids the characters referring to themselves as high school students, such as in Books 5, 6 and the Phantom Bride event.)

Original Trey: Men in particular can feel embarrassed and not want to do stuff like this, ya know? Translated Trey: A lot of people are too embarrassed to get up in front of others and do stuff like this, ya know?

Original Deuce: Okay, so…you’re from a cold place in the northern part of the Shaftlands, right? Translated Deuce: Okay, so…you’re from a cold place that’s farther north than the Shaftlands, right?

The EN interpretation of this line seems to insinuate that Jack is from a country that is father north than the Shaftlands rather than from the Shaftlands themselves. Jack is from the Shaftlands, as are Cater, Trein, Vargas and Vil.

The Japanese language often drops subjects from sentences because verb forms make them redundant, and in the case of Jade's wish he is intentionally doing so for wordplay: his exact wording is “アズールとフロイドの願いを叶えられますように,” which is close to “I wish that Azul and Floyd’s wishes will be able to be granted (by me)." If Jade had been talking about the star doing the granting he would have said something closer to, "アズールとフロイドの願いが叶いますように” (“I wish that Azul and Floyd’s wishes will be granted”).

This means that Jade's actual wish isn’t technically that their wishes will be granted, but that he will become capable of doing the granting himself. (Whether he will do so once he has that ability is unspecified.)

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[bombshellsandbluebells]

hey friend, i mean this genuinely, but what's overtly romantic about Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship? maybe I'm not remembering a scene, but what does the show do that shows them being obviously romantic with each other? to me, the soundtrack including a "romantic" song while they eat lunch isn't really enough, as a lot of mid-2000s queerbaiting shows did similar things to wink at queer audiences in a way that cishets wouldn't notice.

Hi friend. Thank you for asking. I’ll try to explain my thoughts best as I can.

Here’s why I don't read Aziraphale and Crowley as queerbaiting: usually when queerbaiting happens, there's something used to suggest a queer relationship (a line, a scene, certain framing, marketing decisions - a wink and you'll miss it moment like you said) to entice queer audiences to watch and consume the media, and then afterwards a moment that explicitly goes back on that and denies it.

My understanding is that the point of queerbaiting is literally to bait audiences to watch. It's an unfulfilled promise of delivering content that people want to see that the media has no true desire to follow through with. It's to pretend to cater to an audience in order to gain that audience without actually delivering what they want.

Ex. Riverdale specifically cutting a trailer to include a scene of the two main girls kissing so that people would see the trailer, assume it means the show is going to explore a queer relationship with those characters, only for it to be revealed when the show actually airs that that scene truly meant nothing and was just a one-off moment to entice a certain audience. (I might be wrong on this, I don't actually watch Riverdale but this is what I gathered from Tumblr.)

Ex. Supernatural having moments between Dean and Cas that read as incredibly romantic, only to then follow up with a million moments that directly contradict that reading. Dean directly saying, "You're our brother, Cas" after a scene that got read as romantic. Etc. etc.

Ex. Marvel including blink-and-you’ll-miss-it representation to keep a certain audience loyal and tuning into their media under the guise that they’re supportive allies without ever actually focusing on queer stories.

To me, Good Omens never did that. It never had that moment that went "oh no, you're reading this wrong." It never denied or contradicted or went back on anything that suggested romantic feelings between Crowley and Aziraphale.

I feel like their relationship is treated with respect in the show. It's treated as important. It is the center of the show and arguably the most important relationship in the entire narrative, even though, importantly to note, Good Omens is NOT a romance. It is a story about stopping the apocalypse first and foremost, not just about Crowley and Aziraphale and their relationship. The main themes are about choosing your own fate and the relationships in the show directly relate to that (Adam choosing the Them, Newt/Anathema getting together initially because of a prophecy and Anathema then making the decision to stay with him after a book is no longer telling her what to do, and Crowley and Aziraphale choosing each other when their nature tells them they shouldn't.)

But Az/Crowley's relationship is still framed romantically. Think of the way moments between them are shot and edited. The music choices not just at the end but throughout the whole piece. The scene where Crowley saves the books and significant time is spent focusing on Aziraphale's reaction. The scene between them in the car. Them choosing each other in the end over everything. The way they look at each other and the way the editing handles that.

If Az/Crowley were a man and a woman, no one would think twice about labeling their relationship as romantic even without explicit "I love yous" or a kiss or sex. And granted, yes that happens with other media that is used as queerbaiting. BUT again, the most significant thing to me is that nothing in the text ever goes against the idea that they are in love. There's not one moment where they go "no, no I don't feel that way, he's just a friend" or anything else to contradict a romantic reading. The editing, the writing, the music choices, the way scenes are framed, the filmmaking in general is all very deliberate and at no point does it ever suggest that you SHOULDN'T interpret it romantically. (And frankly, I am a huge supporter of the idea that media is getting too lazy with it's visual storytelling and that MORE things should be shown purely through the filmmaking rather than dialogue. I think that framing their relationship the way they do is stronger than an "i love you" in dialogue without doing the work in the filmmaking, but that's a topic for another time.)

And those filmmaking choices were used deliberately from start to finish, all the way to the ending scene of them at lunch together.

I do want to say that I absolutely understand the reason why people felt let down. People want desperately to see themselves and their experiences represented in media, and there has been too long of a history of media promising something that people desperately latch onto only for it to not be sincere. And because of that, people want things to be expressed in media so explicitly that it can't be denied. I absolutely understand that. I just don't think that that always means that things have to be directly spoken in dialogue or confirmed with the things we think they need to be confirmed with (sex/kissing). I think film and tv can include things sincerely just using film language and filmmaking choices and for it to still be real and sincere and intended.

Ultimately I guess what I'm saying is I think queerbaiting is a very specific marketing tactic that happens with the end goal of getting viewers to tune in without actually delivering on what you know they're looking for, and I just don't feel that Good Omens falls into that. I felt like I was watching a story about an important relationship that was portrayed as the Ultimate Most Important relationship in these characters life in a genuine way, not being sold a false promise that the show later explicitly denied and contradicted. I never felt like the show said "gotcha" to me or "no you were wrong for reading it that way" or "of course that's not what that meant" which always happens with queerbaiting.

I was just watching a story about the apocalypse and one important relationship in that story. And I personally felt incredibly seen and represented by how Aziraphale and Crowley's story was told. Maybe not everyone did, but I did.

[doodlesandbooks]

Ranking Star Wars movies

Its almost May the fourth, and this was inspired by Ben Shapiro’s terrible version so, I thought I might give it a go. Its ok if you disagree with me, since this is purely opinion based (mostly) almost all versions of this ranking can be correct. (you know subjective... in the eyes of the audience... etc) 

plz no hate... I’m fragile lol. 

Ok so 2 quick things

1, I’m sorry, it starts out pretty angry and critical but then steadily gets more happy and praise filled, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings but I have been very passionate.

2. I will not insult the actors. The actors all did a good job. I do mention if something is particularly great. but they were doing what they were told and doing it well. It’s not my place to diss actors, I’m here to criticise the movies. 

Starting from worst moving up to best: 

1 The Force Awakens. 

what. even. was. this. I actually get so angry thinking about it. 

2 The Last Jedi. 

why. Luke was so great. why did they substitute him for Jake Skywalker and then just. ugh. so bad. 

3 The Rise of Skywalker 

the only reason that this is higher than the others. and the only reason I am not dancing around its corpse’s bonfire screaming was the acting. The actors were really good. At moments I even liked Rey because of how hard Daisy Ridley worked to make her character compelling. that’s as far as the praise goes I’m afraid. It nullified Vader and Luke’s sacrifice and I cannot stand for that. At all. I’m getting angry even thinking about Palatine and the cloning thing and arrrrggghh. I’m going to stop before I cry. 

Also, identity theft is not Ok, Rey. 

4 The Phantom Menace. 

I did not dislike this as a film... I actually liked Jar Jar Binks, buuutt... it wasn’t quite as good as the others. I also really didn’t love the neimiodians. But it did introduce Darth Maul and Duel of the Fates, so kudos. (also I love Liam Neeson as Qui Gon) and I didn’t really dislike little Ani’s introduction into the franchise.

I think some of it was catered towards children, and although many people have said children would like it better if it wasn’t or that it was a poor decision, my 7 year old sister said it was her favourite Star Wars out of the originals and the two prequels she could watch... so I guess that Lucas was right to include cute stuff kids would like... (she’s not old enough for the battle of heroes final bit yet, we’ll see if she changes her mind later!)

5 Attack of the Clones

SO I actually loved Hayden Christiansen’s acting. He did a really good job. All of them did, but I felt obliged to say that to rebuff the honest trailers’ cruelty about this particular film. I thought mildly creepy teenage dork Padawan Anakin (or Padawanakin as my family has dubbed him) worked pretty well. Ok, so a lot of the dialogue was not great, but mullet Kenobi was awesome, I found the romance compelling... (although, I’m not sure if that’s just cause I identified with Anakin’s social blundering) and I really loved the introduction of Kamino. Also. Clones! Count Dooku was great too, anything with Christopher Lee is a big win ... Also I loved Padme’s costume design so much. That lovely pastel gradient one by the lake was just -chef kiss- awesome... ok I’m done now sorry... 

“I don’t like sand” is a good line and you can fight me.

6 A New Hope. 

This is where the ranking gets complicated because I love all of them. (I loved TPM and AOTC too but yeah) 

the gap between the caliber of the films gets less and less vast as we go but now it gets tricky. so if you disagree from here on in, fine. 

I loved a new hope, but the reason its only 6 is because I didn’t get that invested in the characters first movie in. (that I think is where TPM gets it right) as a little girl I would frequently dress up as princess leia’s iconic look. I love this movie. great climax, great pay off, great characters. Great acting. Just a really solid movie with good world building and interesting characters. 

Also, its nice to see a less macho dude as the hero, right? Rather than blundering about and aggressively quipping on his friends, Luke is kind and genuine and I liked seeing that in a male lead. 

7 Empire Strikes Back. 

See. I told you ranking was getting tricky. 

This movie was phenomenal and break through when it came out. I think I had heard the ‘I am your father’ trope before I watched the movie, unlike people who watched it for the first time, so that may be why its not higher on my list. But Yoda and Luke and Vader were awesome. Princess Leia was both feminine and badass, which as a little girl watching it, inspired me. and Han Solo is just really really really awesome. 

8. AAaahhh. I don’t know. I love both of these films like tonnes. but. 

Revenge of the Sith. 

Ok. beautiful Shakespearean style tragedy climax. Padme’s tragic wonderfulness. Obi Wan freaking Kenobi. Palpetine’s subtle awful cruelness. The tragic hero war veteran trying so hard but ultimately failing in the end, Anakin Skywalker. Hello there. General Grievous was really cool. Hayden’s acting was incredible. I believed that Anakin was deeply conflicted and  wrapped around Palpetine’s finger the whole time, I genuinely could feel his every sadness and fear, his sorrow and his hate. It was beautifully acted. that Window scene with Padme and Anakin. the battle of Heroes. Such a wonderfully done film. I understand if there where some qualms about dialogue and pacing, but I genuinely loved it. this movie was a dark awful look at war and the people it scars and the tragic fall of an emotionally vulnerable and hurt young man. It is one of my favourite movies. 

9 Return of the Jedi. 

the only reason this is higher up on the list than ROTS is because it felt a little more...? nicely... something... polished maybe? I don’t know. 

This was a childhood favourite. Leia, again, badass. Han, again, badass. Luke and Leia being twins? As a little twin myself this was so cool to me! Ewoks... even they worked! not sure about troopers vs ewoks bit, but when you don’t think about it too hard its still badass. and I genuinely almost cried when unnamed Ewok 1 crouched over dead unnamed Ewok 2. I don’t cry at films. it is impressive that the lest compelling bit of the film compelled me enough to drive me almost to tears. 

Luke vs emperor vs Vader. I don't have enough room to fan girl here. I loved it. The more I learn of Vader and Luke, the better it gets. Luke almost turning to the dark side but not because he saw what it did to his father, Vader struggling with that inner conflict until finally, his pure love for his son overcame the twisted sad love for his abuser. That beautiful, beautiful moment where Vader is forgiven by Luke. Forgiven for everything that he did... he was redeemed with his last breath. thinking about this almost makes me cry even now. he was accepted into the force and joined Obi Wan and Yoda, even after everything he had done. Luke’s grace and love and hope are just beautiful. I love Luke Skywalker because of how hopeful and wonderful he is. and it’s not naive hope, it’s just hope. True. Genuine hope that he carries with him to the end. 

And that moment between Leia and Han and the end when the Death Star blows up, it summed up their relationship beautifully and was a lovely thing to watch. They worked so well together and it was wonderfully brought together by that moment. The quiet joy of Vader’s funeral and the loud hearty joy across the galaxy. 

This move was so beautiful. 

There we go. I’m done now. 

ooh, wait I forgot some, I liked the clone wars but it wasn’t perfect, like rebels, loved Rogue one, meh about the clone wars movie (what was that art style?), didn’t love but didn’t hate Solo. I think that's all of them. :)

[deliciousscaloppine]

I came across this post, so I thought to make some comments - posted this way for the sake of brevity because it’s a very very long post with the following discourse as it came to me. 

The following screenshot is just a tiny segment, but I am sure a lot of you have faced this problem, or a similar one, where people might select your more “safe” works and i don’t mean works without sex, and reject pieces you might consider very well done, or more indicative of writing skill.

So in the following, I will endeavour to expose some of the psychology of reading + some basic principles you should keep in mind when writing. These are not rules, or recipes, or restrictions, but more of things to take in mind when preparing a text for circulation.

 You should already know by the wording of this post, that most people in boards, committees, institutions, publishing houses, professional writer agencies etc, evaluate you as a reader and not as a writer. 

That is why you often hear that as a writer, you should read a lot. Not just to hone your craft and be aware of where you belong in writing history, which is very useful in finding where to send your writing, but also because most people who choose things to be published only experience them through reading and not through the effort and technical skill that it takes to produce them.

So as a rule for very small contests, journals etc  reading your material, you must not employ stylistic particularities that might make your work unreadable to inexperienced readers. That is a major fuck you to poets, because I can’t see how you can construct a powerful poem without extensive linguistic nuance, or at the very least, word play that creates emotional resonances.

More bad news on this, is that a very strong emotional response can be deemed by the reader as an act of manipulation on the writer’s part. Or they might have the reader DOUBT their judgement. “Basically I felt things, I am compromised, and I cannot make rational decisions. And since being on a board is all about advancing your career and or safeguarding your prospects, judging things based on feeling is seen as disagreeable for these kinds of people.

Even worse, a very powerful text that does not know how to release tension, might make a reader feel vulnerable. And vulnerable readers might even become hostile to sharing your work with others because of how it affected them and for fear that it might reveal something of them to others, or more importantly because it might not be received well by these others and so upset a certain social order within a group. 

This is why politically sensitive issues get the short end of the stick when it comes to publishing, and why even though there might be a demand for content that deviates from mainstream stuff, there is no cohesive audience to support actual authorial diversity. 

You must also know that people who are visually impaired, or are fatigued, or have dyslexia or ADHD might be on this board or anywhere where they assess writing, so when they read a lot of things, their ability to engage with them in depth is GRADUALLY MINIMIZED. 

But that is not a bad thing, because you should be a conscientious writer, you should write in a way that is accessible by most people. That is the better writing on many levels, and you should develop this skill because it will also help you with editing your works with more ease.

So in summation the general audience also evaluates you as a reader. Only the reading experience matters to them, and you should strive to make it as seamless..and as “painless” as possible.

THE BASIC PRINCIPLES 

Writing something and managing the reader’s experience are two different things. Figure out what you want to write and then analyze what kind of language, voices and structure you need to develop in order to convey the general meaning of your work, but also how to relay it in a tone that will not agitate needlessly the reader.

This is a lot of work, especially for poems and short stories and it may be omitted if you are feeling inspired. But for anything longer than 10K doing this groundwork will save you a lot of trouble later. It will make your writing succinct and to the point.

Reading takes a lot of time, the reader does not want to feel cheated; basically that they spent time with you that it could have been better spent elsewhere. 

To avoid this, it is YOU who must set the expectations of the reader and then fulfill them In Your Own Terms. You are driving the story, you are controlling to what the reader is exposed or not, for how long and to what end, so do not omit units of meaning that you might think are self-evident, and of course don’t just dump them in the work, pace them and pace the reader along with them. Be very sensitive and masterful when dealing with difficult issues, shed light on them, rather than just use them for sensationalism because that can and will turn the reader against you.

In a very rich thematic work, the reader will generate meaning for themselves that you might have not foreseen or intended, but THAT IS AN ADDED BONUS to your work, and not what will happen naturally in the reader’s mind. So intent and purpose are of the essence. 

No one is asking you to write a cozy little “moral of the story”, and of course your purpose should not be limiting in the perspectives you explore through your work, or the amount and depth of issues you want to address. 

A clear purpose, however, is the solid scaffolding with which you build your story. It’s a place for you to stand and oversee and manage all the other elements. 

In order to create meaning you have to develop one or more themes and for this you have to create certainties to the reader by use of repetition. Repetition means a single event that is treated differently by two or more sets of characters - or voices when it comes to poetry. It also means two characters who are alike but face different circumstances, or a single character who comes across the same events and people in their journey, or even a character that comes across a wide and nuanced world, but behaves the same from start to finish. Basically anchors, starting points, predictable systems by which the reader will learn to evaluate everything that happens in the world of the story.

Of course repetition should be subverted, that is what generates meaning in the end. For the subversion to be meaningful the voices or the characters of your work must be thoroughly explained, and for this you must not resist definition. Explain the circumstance of the character through a backstory, through dialogue, through their interaction with the world of your work and other characters, and in this also define who the reader is and who you as the narrator of the story are.  

You should always define clearly who you are and whom you are addressing. The more nuanced the definition, the more succinct and universal the work becomes, and if there should be political reasons for your work to be rejected, this definition is also your first line of defense, a way to fight for this work so that it will gain readership and recognition. 

This type of honesty and directness is what in the end manages to earn the reader and their emotional responses by degrees and in their own time. So you are not cheating, or manipulating anyone, you are giving them the necessary space to enter the reality of the work and the natural time to be affected by it. 

The reader needs and seeks that sense of intimacy and privateness in which they can unfold the parts of them that connect with your story or poem. 

There are readers who need everything and everyone to be relatable to them, and they are not very good readers, but you will earn them by catering to them often. 

BUT more importantly there are readers who just love being exposed to new things, concepts and voices, and by defining your story on as many levels as you can you will for sure have them at your side because they will want to discover as much of you and your work as they possibly can. 

DEALING WITH REJECTION

Now if you do get rejected A) Don’t feel bad. 

Most people in boards, or any other institution that judges writing might have some knowledge of literary history, and theoretical analysis, but they have jack shit knowledge of how to write. This is a marketable skill. People who have it get paid to exercise it in multiple fields, they don’t need to be on boards. 

So from the view of the people who rejected you, you are already doing better than them because you sat down, wrote something, and deemed it good enough to circulate. If only they had your confidence and work ethic. 

However, for a writer to reach their full potential and to generate their best writing, AN AUDIENCE is VITAL. And whatever board is between you and that audience, it is a group of people hostile not only to you, but the craft of writing in general - so you have 0 things to gain from them, or very little, as much as they are willing to give you. 

Think on the fact that these people are not meeting any of the people who are sending things to them. They are not engaging them further than consuming and evaluating their “content”, and it’s only valuable to them as that: “content”, not an artistic experience and certainly not as a point of discussion. 

Real writing happens after a long string of revisions, usually prompted by discussions and exchanges with other writers, friends, relatives, anyone really who will be exposed to your writing and will want to “chip in”. Real art in general is communal and shaped by many people, so do not be afraid to reach out to people, any people and listen to their many and varied voices. Even you do not agree with them, or don’t want to take their directions, you will have gained intimate knowledge to how the reader’s mind works, for the things it searches when it enters your text, and that will make you a more perceptive writer in the future.

If you observe that these people are reluctant to offer you feedback understand and internalize that there is something technically wrong in your text that is making it inaccessible to them. They will not be able to explain this to you, and immature writers won’t immediately notice it, because your brain will automatically fill in the blanks of your writing, so you will have a better view to your story than the reader AND THAT IS A PROBLEM. A problem you fix by loads of work. 

You should always ask yourself if you are forgetting to give vital information to the reader, or if it’s too obscure for the reader to access, or if it is so focused on a particular type of reader and blocks everyone else - sometimes genres have structures that might be not comprehensible to readers who do not follow them. More universal works explain everything, they even explain why the sky is blue, and that makes them more accessible to everyone.

B) Do not be afraid you will be blacklisted if you challenge rejection.

You have already been blacklisted. When people start nitpicking it’s you they don’t like, and if they knew anything of writing they wouldn’t leave you in the dark, they would tell you what’s wrong and want you to do better if your problem is really a punctuation mark, a break line, or an odd sentence structure, and ask you to resubmit with unreserved enthusiasm after minimal revisions.

There is also some very intense hawking on minority writers currently, basically they will use you for bonus points, but not if your reality starts  contradicting their own, or does not fit the image they have of you. 

Often they might try to soothe animosities by creating workshops, or offering mentorship sessions from which you might get one or two things published. Do Not Fall For This. If you have an uncompromising voice and as a writer you probably do, It Leads Nowhere. You will have to pretend you are at a lower level to please these people, and if they have some particular knowledge they will not give it easily to you, more often than not they know nothing and are where they are through networking, if they discern any real talent in you they are already seeing you as a threat and that goes specifically for prolific writers, writers who churn things very easily and with some polishing these things could be very marketable.

If you are noticing a pattern of rejections and you know it is an unfair rejection, send a letter, make a public plea for your case. A polite one, asking to learn under which criteria your work was judged, and if there are revisions you can make so that you may submit it again. 

When you begin challenging people you will discern a pattern a) they did not pay attention to your work, b) they really have no criteria other than vibes, so maybe it’s time for you to seek the other rejected writers. Social media is great for this, and it’s great for gaining an audience. Work it. Ask people who got rejected at a competition or a journal to publish their rejected works. Make a top ten, organize a forum online or in your tiny city. Print a zine. Be cheeky, invite the people who rejected you, tag them. Create some havoc, generate interest, find out who is funding or subsidizing these events and make complaints of unfair treatment. 

Your goal is to get an audience, to circulate your material, and hone your craft by the comments you receive so it will be marketable in the future. Do not  get stuck in acquiring some fickle frenemies on some board, or other institution.

For the pacifists among us:

If you want to submit again and you are not sure if they allow it, don’t even ask, change a few things and submit it anyway because a) they might not even realize b) people in these boards change with time and you can try again no one will notice. No one is observing you, we are too many and too overworked here to remember anything, take advantage of the collective amnesia. Submit it as many times as they take submissions, getting on people’s nerves is very effective. People are constantly wondering if they are the asshole in an interaction, take advantage of this too, affirm it to them that they are in fact the asshole without engaging in an argument with them.

[kaypeace21]

why is there so much denial of Will being gay?? Like, nothing Will has done has shown him to be anytging but possibly gay. Like, nobody thinks he'z gay because he's a nerd that doesn't have a girlfriend!! We think he's gay because of all the fucking subtext!!!!

There are a few reasons for this, and they’re all (for the most part) rooted in homophobia. 1) There are those who (may or may not) notice the subtext, but ignore it with the excuse of “he’s too young; stop sexualizing him!”. All while shipping lumax, and mileven. Whether they want to admit it or not, this is homophobic! They view (subconscious or otherwise) being queer as inherently sexual, dirty, and adult. And that only straight relationships can be pure and innocent and based on compatible personalities. Straight kids can have innocent crushes (but in their eyes) queer kids can’t- they may not even exist, to them. 

 2) There are some mileven shippers (who whether they want to admit it) hate Will, because the possibility he has powers or is gay- threatens their precious het ship. Because a lot of them don’t see El as her own person (just a part of their ship) or a vessel for being a badass with powers. They don’t appreciate her for the nuanced character she is.  They either get angry at the idea of Will being gay or having powers, or are only happy with him being queer if he’s sad and in an unrequited one-sided love/ or is single forever. Or they’ll say “why don’t you just ship him with someone else… like Dustin?” Ignoring the fact Dustin hasn’t been queer coded like Mike (or had romantically coded scenes with Will), or that people ship byler for Will and Mike, not cause it’s simply m/m. I mean, can you imagine byler shippers saying ‘Just ship El with Dustin, it’s a guy and girl… it’s practically the same thing”? No, of course not! It shows their bias- and how they feel privileged and entitled to their straight ship even though there are millions of similar ships in media to choose from- unlike queer ships which are far and few in between. However, we’re supposed to be the ones who pick another option- and are told our ships are ‘all the same’. Whether they are aware of this bias, they consider queer ships a joke, and all the same.

3) Those who relate to Will and his struggles,  hate the idea of relating to a queer character. There is a reason why shows like ‘Will &Grace’ in the 90s were popular, but even today the second a character who people assumed was straight is revealed as lgbt+ viewers get angry! It’s because they feel ‘tricked’ into liking, relating and empathizing with a character that they would otherwise have immediately put in a ‘box’ and  distanced themselves from . Whether they are aware of it or not, they would immediately attribute stereotypes to them and never try to empathize with them, because ‘they’re gay, and ‘how can I relate to that’? They don’t want to relate to them (because subconscious or otherwise) they think being gay is bad or just too foreign.They don’t see queer people as full-fledged people. They’re just gay- nothing more.

Which is why when they angrily say “he’s just afraid to grow up, HE’S NOT GAY!”  They are essentially saying a gay, abused kid, who has ptsd, and was violated by the MF (and was also hinted m**ested by Lonnie too) can’t be afraid to grow up, since he lost his childhood. Only straight people have these type of human-fears and characterizations!

Forget the fact, that Will also wouldn’t want to grow up- because than he’d have to acknowledge his sexuality (at a time where all you heard about gay men was they were evil , mentally ill, going to hell and dying of aids as a punishment by god). Not to mention Will’s ptsd and the fact he lost 2 years of his childhood on top of that.He even says “I’m not … going to fall in love” (not convincingly) , right after the movie date with Mike.

4) They’re so used to straight media, and everyone being presumed straight and having media catered to them (the straight audience)- That they’ll ignore or miss every hint there is a queer character. 

So what are the hints of Will being gay (or at least- some other lgbt identity.

Called many homophobic slurs  since s1 ( specifically ”queer, fag, fairy, and gay”) by his dad and bullies. Jonathan in s1 tells Will to “not like things just because people tell you you’re supposed to, especially not him” ( ‘him’ referring to their dad). Is positioned behind a rainbow apple poster in the av room (ref. to Alan Turning the gay creator of computers), dances with a girl with a rainbow hair-clip, has rainbow bandaids, has his mom says she’s ”so proud” (lgbt+ pride ref) of the rainbow ship he drew . When Will disparages himself as a “freak”, Jonathan asks Will, who would you rather be friends with-  David Bowie (who was openly bi since the 70s) or Kenny Rogers? Will says Bowie, and Jonathan agrees saying “see, it’s no contest”. In the pitch to netflix the Duffers described Will as having “sexual identity issues”. In the leaked s2 snowball script it says “he’s not looking at the cute girl- but Mike.”

All of s2 directly paralleled ‘romantic s1 mileven scenes’ to ‘supposedly platonic byler scenes’. No joke, they had identical scenes, with almost identical framing and dialogue, but it’s all dismissed as friendship (even though the scenes are identical).Byler was also  paralleled to Jancy, Stancy, Jopper, bob/joyce and others. . You can headcannon Will as whatever you want, but like it or not- Will is queer and m/m! We could debate his exact queer sexual identity , but Will was never written and will never be written to be ‘straight’! Stay mad!

If Will was Wilma, the majority of the fandom would be byler shippers. Think about it! Mike having byler scenes that are identical to s1 mileven scenes, and then additional unique byler scenes. Mike staying by Wilma’s side 24 hours a day for several days (not even changing clothes), carrying her out of the hospital, grabbing her hand (with a zoom in shot),constantly asking her if she’s okay at least 5-7 times, putting his arm around her twice, being the only one who could tell something was off with her (and it wasn’t her normal type of quiet). Calling and running all the way to her house and banging on the door to check on her, desperate. Proclaiming “i’m the only one who cares about Wilma!” Watching her sleep cause he’s so worried, that shed scene reminiscing about how they first met in perfect detail, saying “I asked, I asked if you wanted to be my friend. You said yes, you said yes. It was the best thing I’ve ever done. (like a marriage proposal)”  The “crazy together” scene. Them being close since they were 5 vs the girl he knew for a week (but is somehow in love with?). If the witness said about El in s1 , “ same height… it could be the Byers girl”, instead of ‘boy’ (pointing out the resemblance). Mike getting into fights and getting upset (almost crying) about the bullies insulting Wilma. Mike having a whole binder of her drawings and caressing one of the drawings, after he thinks she died.  Being the only one of her friends to stay awake at the hospital, waiting for her to wake up- so he can see her and hug her first. Almost everyone would be team byler if Will was a girl- they probably would of started shipping it the second Wilma stared at him and was the only one who didn’t lie to him, in the first ep! Another parallel to El! 

And again think about s3 if Will was a girl.They paralleled the (comedic) mileven breakup vs (the sad/serious) byler breakup. Then Mike just complained and burped on the couch vs apologizing to Willma multiple times/even going into a storm to apologize a 2nd time (and to ‘talk’). Willma having a breakdown over the fight vs El laughing and high five-ing Max after.The shed vs the pool shed scene- “best thing I’ve ever done” vs “you’re the most important thing in the world to me”, “blank makes you crazy’ (as El stares confused) vs “crazy together’ (where Wilma says ‘yeah, crazy together). Mike going on ‘movie dates with Willma all the time’ right after making out with El. The last mileven kiss where Mike has his eyes open the whole time, doesn’t kiss back, and says he doesn’t remember saying “I love her” to El (and doesn’t say ‘I love you’ back). Right after having a talk with Wilma about playing games when she comes back (the crux of their fight). Mike getting excited that he’ll be able to visit El and Wilma on Thanksgiving and them visiting him on Christmas (those are holidays where family usually introduces their S.O.) Having the last scene of Mike,  be him looking back at Wilma’s house, and have that whole monologue in that scene be about “feelings changing”, and then he goes to hug his mom like the s1 byler scene where he thought Wilma was dead. And that’s not even all the scenes- and every time byler won by a landslide. If Will was a girl, it would be obvious writing on the wall, that Mike would eventually choose Wilma over El by the end of the series.

But since they are 2 boys, we’re delusional, because queer kids don’t exist … apparently.

[silyabeeodess]

Thoughts on “The Promised Neverland” Season One

So... Yesterday, I binge-watched The Promised Neverland.

It’s amazing.

I’ll write down individual points I liked and disliked about the series below the cut, as there will be some spoilers; however for those who haven’t seen the show yet and don’t want to have anything ruined for them, I’ll just say here that I highly recommend it.  I’m not a big fan of the horror genre due to certain issues with story that tend to be commonplace in it--specifically in film/tv--but this series is near perfection.  You’ll be left on the edge of your seat at all times, placed in the constant unease and unknown that the main characters feel as they try to survive their situation.  In the very least, give episode one a watch: Fair warning though that you might not be able to stop.  

Jumping right off of that last note, let’s get to pacing. In short, it’s great!  In many cases with an anime’s first season, especially when they’re based on an ongoing manga series as intense as this one, they can fall into a trap where it seems that the creators just want to be sure to give the show a satisfying conclusion in the limited number of episodes they’re given at the start.  As a result, you can have a great manga series that gets rushed through in its anime adaptations.  Instead of pushing through a whole manga and/or giving the show original plot points to patch over the holes the former hasn’t touched yet, Season One of The Promised Neverland focuses on a selection of chapters in which to tell its story. I don’t know enough about the show behind the scenes to know if they’d already been given a second season, but either way, this was a wise choice.  Even though the season does end on a--in one sense, literal--cliffhanger, the conclusion is satisfying enough that it could’ve ended there if the anime didn’t gain enough popularity to keep going or couldn’t be finished for some other reason.  More importantly though, there isn’t anything regarding story or characters forcibly cut to makeup for adding in points that are important to the greater story overall.  Effectively, Season One was able to take its time introducing/developing the characters and setting in a self-contained story.  There are some time-skips, as the events occur over the course of a few months, but this never affects the greater points concerning the characters actions/end goals.  It’s only an issue regarding physical growth as the children work to build up their strengths in secret--and you see plenty enough on-screen action taking place over the course of the season to make this growth overtime apparent.   

This is largely a nitpick, so I figured I’d put it here even though it’s kind of out of place.  (Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to place it on the list beyond this anyway.)  There’s a point brought up in the show that you think would be a little more important to the story, where the kids bring up that winter is also on its way so they’ve got triple the urgency to leave while they have the chance. (Not only would they have to deal with the cold, but also a lack of food to forage as they survived on their own.)  However, you don’t see the weather change in the story despite time’s passing, so you don’t see the problem either with why they need to go before winter beyond Ray’s birthday in January.  Everything pretty much always stays green, which is weird because you know the place can get snow as seen from Norman’s flashback to when he was sick as a little kid.  It just seems like a silly point to bring up since it’s only mentioned once and even the setting fails to depict it.

For the characters, I’ll split this into a few points.  One thing that I enjoy is that no one character is painted as being solely in the right.  You can argue that Emma is the main protagonist we’re meant to follow, and I’d agree there, but we’re not meant to take everything she says or does as gospel as some shows like to depict their heroes/heroines. It’s stated early on and repeated at points later in the show that her idealism and naivety, while good, can also lead to tragic results if she allows them to get in the way of rational thinking. This creates a nice balance between the other two main protagonists, Norman and Ray.  Ray is pretty much the opposite of Emma, thinking of their situation from a “survival of the fittest” mindset and willing to go to whatever extreme to save his friends and secondarily himself: He’s critical and always willing to consider the worst, capable of tackling some of their hardest challenges as a result, with the others able to reign him back and show him what things he’s allowed to have hope in despite how impossible things may seem, never allowing him to give up even when that may be the only “rational” option. Norman can admire these strong aspects of both Ray and Emma, understanding Ray’s rationale while also working to meet Emma’s ideals, with both catering to his planning.  He can, however, also take too much onto himself--to the point of leaving others in the dark to some of his plans and martyrdom.  Granted, much of his use of controlling knowledge in this way is effective, but he can also assume what’s best without really consulting anyone else.  He assumes what he thinks others can or can’t handle, not entirely accepting their input and adding more onto himself than necessary. This is what makes decisions like Emma’s choice to tell more of the other kids the truth so important whereas Norman can keep even Emma in the dark, as much as he likes her, about some of the issues that arise with Ray following his reveal as the “traitor.”  They make for a very dynamic and engaging trio to follow.  

Even the antagonists, who both the heroes and the audience is made to fear, are given this treatment.  We all know about how a lot of stories try to make their villains “sympathetic,” for better or worse, and The Promised Neverland certainly does that--just never to the point where you’re willing to dismiss their actions.  Mama Isabella and Sister Krone can be as monstrous as the demons over them, and the show depicts this from their condescending treatment toward the children, to their willingness to kill without remorse for the sake of their own lives and positions, to their chilling facial expressions.  We’re just also given a glimpse as to how such monsters can be created.  Their actions are neither justified or ignored, but rather grimly understood.  Mother’s Basement on YouTube covered this in more detail on Isabella in particular, so I’ll link his video here for those interested.

One thing I will say negatively regarding characters though is that I don’t really like how Sister Krone was utilized.  Beyond shuffling through each chapter’s synopsis after the point where the anime ends because I really wanted to know what was over the wall and couldn’t wait, I haven’t read the manga; however, from what I’ve seen, a lot of people seem to be in agreement that Krone wasn’t used properly. Just compared to the treatment the other characters received in the anime, I have to side with them.  Krone’s appearance in the opening immediately interested me, and her polar behavior in her introduction to that just as much.  From that point on though, she remains kind of static.  We see a lot of interactions with her and this old doll that could’ve added to her character, but the dialogue and body language taking place then really only focuses on how creepy she is.  And that pretty much sums up her entire character for the longest while: She’s creepy.  She incredibly open about her goal to become a Mama to the audience, so there’s not much mystery there.  The softer, friendly façade we see her wear in the opening is hidden in the bulk of the show--to the point that, when she engages with the kids in a friendly manner that would actually make them think she can be trusted, she’s only shown as a silhouette and so we can't see her face.  When we do see her try to pretend to be amicable and on the kid’s side, she’s either taking them down in a “game” of tag like a berserker or grinning like a titan from Shingeki no Kyojin.  We already know the main children aren’t going to trust her, but it just doesn’t make her believably deceptive regarding the others.  There’s even some weird moments where her actions seem contradictory, such as trying to turn Isabella in despite--at least as far as Krone believed at the time--getting moved to be a Mama at another plant.  I get that she didn’t like Isabella, but there was just no point to continue going after her or anything to indicate that Krone would after getting what she wanted by becoming a Mama herself.  Why would her hatred of Isabella outweigh her main objective?  The one time we see Krone really develop as a character, sadly, is when she dies and we’re given a true first glimpse at how young girls are selected to be Mamas and Sisters beyond a scar and retelling.  I would’ve liked to have seen more exploration into her mindset and character, even if it could only be done in subtle actions. 

It’s rare to have a horror story without death, so let’s talk about how The Promised Neverland uses it.   Well, anyone who simply wants to see a bloodbath will be incredibly disappointed, but I’m certainly not!  The setup, showing, and aftermath first death in the very first episode is all that’s needed to establish the overwhelming threat of the demons and immediate threat that is Isabella.  It was orchestrated in a way where that horror seeps in slowly, even without actually seeing a character die onscreen and instead just the body.  You immediately know something’s wrong when the camera focuses on Isabella leading Connie away in near-complete darkness, without bg music, as Connie innocently tries to talk to her and only receives a bare smile in return.  The presentation of the corpse wasn’t a gorefest, but instead Connie’s greyed face--drained of life and lying in an awkward pose--looks as if her body was left abandoned for some time. This was a great artistic direction, not only nodding to the use of the flowers protruding from the body, but also to the cold manner in which she was killed as “cattle.”  This isn’t a bloody, aggressive killing, nor is any real respect shown to her remains: She’s a number, thrown away by Isabella and left to wait until the demons ship her off in a tank.  Krone’s death was orchestrated in a similar but different way, with flashes of the kids--unware of what’s happening--eating dinner happily as she fights for her life against a demon that hardly even seems to register her lashing out and approaches her steadily.  Again, a character is killed in a methodical fashion, the same flower piercing her in the chest with a slow and almost delicate as it is precise movement.  The fear seems to stem less from threat of death itself and more in the manner in which they’re conducted, not just in the treatment of humans as food, but the detachment of their killers. 

Now to the animation.  Personally, I really like it.  I’m a big fan of all of the subtle movements and expressions that were given focus, from a shaky hand to the crinkle of an eye.  This attention to detail can make the viewer almost hyper aware of how the characters move and react to things, which is pivotal to this show in particular given how much the characters themselves need to read one another’s body language in order to figure out what they’re hiding from each other.  This is brought up too at different points, such as Norman telling Emma to keep smiling and act normal, later paying off when Isabella tries to interrogate her about not being her “happy self” in the hallway, and Sister Krone recognizing that the kids know about the tracking devices based on their lack of a response to her telling them about it despite their playing dumb.  These explanations serve just as much as a way to tell the audience to pay attention.  

People sometimes bring up the CGI as a bad thing, but I actually like it.  Yes, it’s a little weird to look at, but I think it’s so off-putting that it actually adds tension to the scenes, especially during key moments when the characters are just walking through the House and the camera focuses on them doing simple actions like opening a door: The environment is supposed to feel uncomfortable.  You don’t know who’s around the corner listening in to your conversations.  You don’t know who’s going to come into the room while you’re in the middle of planning or hiding an important tool for your escape.  The House isn’t safe: If the whole area is a farm, the House itself is a cattle pen.  Everything just looks normal.  Therefore, using CGI as a technique serves as a good way to cater to those unnerved, off feelings than changing that environment itself would have.  It feeds into the perspective of the main characters, how they know how wrong everything is despite the illusion of a comfortable home. 

Last, but not least, we get to my absolute favorite thing about the show: The camera. I absolutely love the shots taken in this series.  My favorite thing is how often the camera will show characters with some kind of frame, be it the leaves of a bush or around the edge of a doorway.  This use of framing places the audience in the perspective of a spy, someone lurking behind the next corner and listening in on the kids’ plans of escape. It makes you feel like, at any minute, they could get caught during what is otherwise a still moment of dialogue.  Then, when they do actually get caught, it’s when the camera tends to be the most normal, catching you off-guard.  It’s just beautifully done.  

[dukethmas]

in the mood to spread love

@jason-redhood / @arkhxmknight: ik you’ve heard me say this a lot but the way you write jason is just so lovely. the level of care you include in your writing, whether intentional or not, is clearly conveyed with every word, every gesture you write. your writing encompasses Peak Aesthetic™️ and it’s not forced either, it’s effortlessly picturesque. even with the tender and sweet moments you write, it doesn’t work against the neon lights, rather it works with in perfect unison. you completely control the situation and the imagery you utilize adds another layer of depth to the entire situation. it’s realism but drowned in neon lighting and neck kisses and love. vani you’re the master of conceptual writing and infusing adoration and unconditional love into the narrative, your writing truly is love dyed red 

@shattersstar: mac! everything you write feels like a dream! every word you write reminds me of the soft and nice side of nostalgia, like I'm looking back on this moment and reminiscing. it’s just a hazy and cloud-like dream when reading anything written by you and I just love it! even when you write angst, your writing still drips with an undeniable softness. and the way you write memories too is comment dit on...memorable. you always manage to set up each story with so much detail it’s hard to miss it. you paint the scene of us so beautifully and immerse us into the story; you make it so we’re not just audience members, rather we’re effectively in the story as well. your writing just feels like a dream and it makes me wonder if anything is real. 

@krysalla: your writing...god holly you’re writing has such a beautifully slow pace. it feels holy and I love when you contrast that every now and then with some angst because it always catches me off guard. and the way you pack each fic with emotions is so powerful, there’s a range of emotions and often times they leads back to love. the way you just write your sentences is so beautiful and stunning, mesmerizing with each word. your writing is just so tender that it brings you to tears, knocks the wind right out of you and then you come around from behind and hit us with horny fics when we’re already down..you really said horny people rights you’re so powerful. the concepts you write as well, the scenes you write,,..you’re such a genius what did we do to deserve you.

@caffeinatedtimdrake: sabi your writing is poetic yet highly prosaic, all and nothing at the same time. it oozes poetry but it doesn’t compromise the narrative’s prose, rather it just amplifies it. the dialogue feels natural with the poetic verses sewn into the story. it’s just beautiful writing and your stories?? just as beautiful and compelling to read. your writing also bleeds romance, the kind that echoes Jane Austen’s works but completely in it’s own genre. A mix of Austen’s novels and Joe Wright’s literary film adaptions is what your writing feels like: romantic, hazed with love, a classic. everything you write and share is a gift to read and our eyes weren’t prepared for Quality Literary Merit. 

@prettylittlebrownskingyal: can I just say that every time you post your writings I gain a year of my life? ari, you’re writing is just that exquisite and mesmerizing. it’s packed with immense imagery and beautifully soft language. you perfectly and quite proudly display your tone and mood throughout each piece and it exactly matches the story you’re telling. the imagery is just awe inspiring really, we can see every expression and hear every laugh. you cater to the senses as one should and it’s done so well it doesn’t feel like reading, it’s more like living. everything you write reminds me of nature and the sun, your writing is equally warm and bright, creating vibrant scenes and stories; i need to put sunglasses on otherwise I'll be blinded by your talent.  

@redoutlaws: you’re an evil writer and I love it. I really admire the way you write because it’s almost like stream of consciousness but it isn’t. you tell the story from point a to point b but the emotions between muddle the path so it’s like we ended up at a different location than planned, it’s absolute genius. and it’s agonizingly painful to read your angst because you use dramatic irony so well. I just love how you don’t shy away from the emotional aspects of the characters and the dialogue between them is always so naturally flowing and powerful. and the way you build tension throughout you fics..exquisite you literally invented literary techniques

@lovegraysons: even though I’ve only read your dick grayson headcanons ik you’re an amazingly detailed and vivid writer vera. those head canons were beautiful and it read like a fic honestly. it was tender and heartwarming and it played like a montage in my mind, series of images just flashing together. it was beautifully written and the detail you included created such a vivid picture of the two moving in together, it was just so soft and tender we weren’t ready for that level of love. 

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Hollywood DIDN’T Fuck Up? Tell Me More!

NOTE 1: When I refer to “Hollywood” in this blog, I mean the mainstream film and telly in general, not just films and shows produced specifically in and around the small part of LA known as Hollywood. It’s just really convenient cultural short-hand, okay?

NOTE 2: To provide context for those of you who aren’t familiar with my work, I’m a socialist and generally progressive. When I complain about gender-flipping and other virtue-signalling bullshit, it’s because its cheap and usually serves to alienate a show’s most dedicated core audience, NOT because of the political ethos it purports to be in aid of.

Way back in the Dark Times of 2016, the world was ‘treated’ (if that’s the right word) to the worst thing that had ever happened to pop culture up to that point: a shitty, gender-flipped reboot of Ghostbusters with one-note characters that shat all over the legacy of the original, beloved film while trying to replace it. Naturally, when I noticed that a new Ghostbusters film was set to come out later this year, my initial reaction was an even mix of anger, sadness and disappointment with the world in which I am forced to live. Then I got online and found the official trailer for the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife and found myself overwhelmed with a sense of joy, triumph and- above all- catharsis. They haven’t fucked it up! For once, the mainstream film industry has done something right! Oh, how I’ve missed feeling unambiguously positive about a pop-cultural touchstone!

You see, Ghostbusters: Afterlife isn’t a continuation of 2016 timeline, nor is at a fresh attempt at rebooting the justly-venerated classic: it’s a thirty-years-later sequel that pays homage to the original without trying to ape it. Instead of being inadequate stand-ins for the original cast, the new protagonists are clearly their own, separate thing with their own, distinct identities. Instead of trying to copy the completely-impossible-to-replicate tone of the original, it seems to have opted for a more contemplative atmosphere with low-key humour that can stand on its own without forcing an unfavourable comparison to the original. Instead of being gender-flipped (like the 2016 debacle), it opts to utilise a mixed-gender central cast that feels appropriate and well-suited to modern audiences.

Will it be as good as the original? Almost certainly not, but because it’s not trying to symbolically replace it it doesn’t have to be. It seems to offer a sweet, touchingly crafted coda to the original while also seeking to create an identity that isn’t wholly reliant on it. And if it turns out to be shit? Well, it doesn’t matter, because (again) unlike the 2016 edition, it’s not trying to unseat or replace its forebear, meaning that it can’t retroactively taint past culture with its shitiness. That said, I don’t think that’s going to be an issue, because against all odds, this one actually looks good.

However, I’m not just happy that a good film is coming out: I said I felt triumphant and cathartic. That’s because of one very important line from the trailer: “there hasn’t been a ghost sighting in thirty years”. And just like, Ghostbusters 2016 has been ret-conned out of existence: it no longer has any validity anywhere on any GB timeline. The erasure that it tried to enact against the original has bounced back on it and cancelled it out. It’s rare for a movie studio to admit that it was wrong- either directly, or through dialogue in a later film- but that’s unequivocally what’s happened here. They might as well have put up a big, white-on-black screen simply stating “WE’RE SORRY FOR 2016. WE PROMISE IT WON’T HAPPEN AGAIN.” Of course, I’m under no illusions: Sony (the studio in question) aren’t doing this because its a good and noble thing to do: they’re doing it because its profitable. They’ve figured out that if they make a Ghostbusters film that pays proper respect the original, they’ll pack out cinemas with people who are in desperate need of psychological healing after the last fucking attempt to squeeze money out of the franchise (myself amongst those people). But you know what? I’m taking the win. For a film studio to show any interest in making amends for its past mistakes is almost unheard of, even when doing so would be good business-sense. The massive, bloated egos of the people involved usually get in the way. So fuck it: I’m just going to be grateful for the combination of rare good sense and self-deprecation it must have taken to make this film happen.

In related news, I’ve also started seeing adverts for a new show in the Star Trek timeline, simply entitled Star Trek: Picard. Sadly, this one isn’t going erase ongoing farce that is discovery, but it does feel like a tacit admission that iteration of the show wasn’t worth of the pixels it was printed on. Star Trek: Discovery, you might recall, abandoned previous Treks’ use of an ensemble cast to focus almost exclusively on a single, unlikeable character. Why? Because it was the only way the creators could gender-flip a series that had never actually catered to one specific gender before, and you can’t properly peacock yo woke credentials without a pointless, self-righteous gender-flip. Going back to established character like Picard (who is, very visibly, an older male archetype) seems a lot like an apology for this particular dick move. Of course, Star Trek had more of a right to the gender-flipping nonsense than any other series, purely because it was always admirably forward-looking and you can’t blame it for being a bit overenthusiastic about that sometimes, but its still nice to see a Trek show that rocks up with the intention of catering to the actual fanbase rather than an imagined audience of self-consciously fauxgressive hipster arseholes.

The point is, I’m happy. I am experiencing uncomplicated happiness about the state of pop culture for the first time in a very long time. There’s no telling what shape the next decade of culture is going to take, but it’s not even February and 2020 is already sending some pretty unambiguous signals. On the one hand, we have Star Trek finally crawling back to its original, predominantly male fanbase. On the other, we have films like Birds of Prey and upcoming aqua-sci-fi Underwater bringing superhero and sci-fi fiction to a more female-predominant audience in a way that seems original and doesn’t force anyone else out of the picture. And the new Ghostbusters just seems to be for everyone. We’ve been through a long period of artificial strife with film-and-telly producers creating contrived divides along gender-lines in order to sell sub-par products to idiots who are stupid enough to believe that they’re scoring a political win by buying a fucking cinema ticket. But it might finally be coming to an end, as all pigshit-thick cinematic and televised trends inevitably must. There’s no substitute for just making good films and shows. If early indicators are reliable, we might actually be entering one of those rare, gleaming golden periods when Hollywood actually remembers that.

[segadores-y-soldados]

(not @-ing the person because if they wanna find this they can) (also not putting this under a cut because it deserves to be “out” (lol) in the open)

“God knows I'm an hardcore r76 shipper but I genuinely don't agree with any of this. Teasing tone?banter? It's interesting to me how people perceive things completely differently. Honestly I always thought as reaper as the concept of people catering to the edgy teen stereotype, he's super macho and mysterious. Now he's getting more background and that's good and right, but it started out as a stereotype of a het teen fantasy. I don't mean this as bashing op, everyone is entitled to their Hc.”

---

I think we’re getting something really LOST in translation here.

Because unless I’m wrong

It seems to me like you think I’m stating that Gabriel/Reaper’s mlm-coding is somehow...intentional.

And that leads me to ask:

Do you know what queer/gay coding is?

Queer/gay coding is NOT necessarily intentional on part of the creators.  Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.  When queer/gay coding IS intentional, that’s a form of “queer baiting” - attempting to get a greater audience, usually LGBT+ people, by dangling a “queer/LGBT character” in front of them.  Typically, queerbaiting is never actually fulfilled and instead leaves LGBT+ fans feeling frustrated, denied, and used.

When queer/gay coding is unintentional, it is seen by the creators as “a mistake” and that the fans are “reading too much into it.”

But here’s the thing.

Queer/gay coding exists.  It’s real.  It happens A LOT, whether intentional or not.

http://theroguefeminist.tumblr.com/post/56658099133/queer-codedqueer-coding

http://lgbtfiction.com/index.php?title=Queer_coding

Here are some good starting places to read up on what queer/gay coding is and how it can manifest.  Specifically for our purposes, we wanna look at: “More commonly, however, queer coding is used to reinforce negative and harmful stereotypes. For example, male villains are often depicted as effeminate and flamboyant in contrast to the "manly" hero, reinforcing both damaging stereotypes about masculinity and tropes such as the Depraved Homosexual.”

“Even traits that have become tropes for villains (being well-dressed; having feminine mannerisms or manner of speech; being aristocratic in manner, wealth and appearance; being a smooth talker; having flamboyant hand gestures, manners of dress, and decor in their homes/lairs; having little to no interest in women; being conniving or catty etc etc etc) show how deeply imbedded queer coding as been to the point where queer qualities are associated with evil.”

So let me repeat my original point:

Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is mlm/gay-coded.

That list of design elements?

Those are statements of FACT about his appearance and mannerisms.

I dunno how you think you’re gonna “disagree” with the fact that he wears jewelry, heels, has a faint lisp, is almost 100% sassy/sarcastic/snide/sardonic, has a paired Contra reference spray with another masculine character, permits only one masculine character and reluctantly permits one feminine character to call him by a nickname, drops a ton of pop culture and music references, has a very clearly defined “aesthetic,” etc.  These are all things you can double-check in the game, in his character design, and in his voice lines.  Here, let me give you some links to start with:

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157092621240/reaper-art-assets

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157341261265/reaper-references

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157452109935/reaper-and-soldier-american-cultural-references

And for good measure, you can also have this one on Soldier: 76:

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/157721843510/soldier-76-fact-sheet-references-and-some

In fact, with all the new Uprising content, I could actually probably write ANOTHER Reaper/Soldier: 76 “paired cultural references” just with the Commando skin-Predator line-Contra sprays alone.  

Which brings me to my next point:

“Honestly I always thought as reaper as the concept of people catering to the edgy teen stereotype, he's super macho and mysterious. Now he's getting more background and that's good and right, but it started out as a stereotype of a het teen fantasy.”

Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s appeal to “edgy teen stereotype[s]” and “het teen [fantasies]” is about as deep as a puddle.  And you wanna know why?

Because about ALL of his references - save for the “I’m not a psychopath” one and “Nevermore” - are approximately 30 - 50 years old.

Present day.

So by “in-game time,” Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s references are approximately 70 - 100 years old.

The man is a NERD.

Again, I’d like to refer you to the essays above.  Almost EVERY reference Gabriel Reyes/Reaper makes is older than you, me, and most of the people on this website.  He quotes Chick Hearns, Al Davis, AC/DC, The Last Starfighter, and Predator.  He now has a Contra reference spray.  His Pumpkin skin is a goddamn Headless Horseman homage.  His Raven skin is a Edgar Allan Poe reference.  The very name “Gabriel Reyes” is very likely to be a reference to Misión San Gabríel Arcángel and El Camino Real.

Do you know who Gabriel Reyes appeals to?

Men like my father.

Men in their 40’s - 60’s.

(This is why I wrote that “Gabriel/Reaper is basically a ‘mlm character designed and written by straight men (mostly).’”)

“Edgy het teeangers” don’t get the majority of Gabriel/Reaper’s references.  Bloody hell, half the replies and tags on my “Reaper References” post are simply “oh I never knew this” or “thanks for sharing this” because many people under the age of 40 simply don’t know them.  How could they?  How could you?  Have you ever heard the phrase “Welcome to the Black Hole?”  Unless you’re an Oakland (now Las Vegas) Raiders fan or you follow American football, how would you know it?  Did you know who Chick Hearns was before the “It’s in the refrigerator” quote?  Do you know the story of the Headless Horseman?  Did you how important San Gabriel Mission is to the history of Los Angeles?

The vast majority of Overwatch players under 20 simply don’t know all this stuff.

Sure, maybe they get the Nevermore reference.  Maybe they get the “I’m not a psychopath” reference.  They probably get the “Back in Black” reference.

But they probably don’t get all or even the majority of the references.  Many of them are just too old for young people to immediately recognize.

While ALL the Overwatch characters have pop culture references built into their in-game dialogue, their voice lines, their skins, their sprays, etc, the only other character to truly have as many “old references” is

Soldier: 76.

Jesse McCree definitely has some as well, but his are mostly limited to “The Dollar Trilogy” and “Mad Dog McCree.”  Soldier, meanwhile, has references to Evel Knievel, Michael Jackson, Apocalypse Now, Contra (again), Commando, and M.A.S.H.  In fact: “So I brought this up briefly in the Reaper References post, but as far as I can tell, Reaper and Soldier are the only two characters who make references to a major American movie star: Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This is rather odd considering characters like Reinhardt and Mercy are geographically and culturally closer to Arnold’s home country of Austria; Reinhardt in particular shares a similar sense of bravado and battle-lust that Arnold has portrayed in many of his films (Kindergarten Cop Reinhardt when?).”

“Reaper, on the other hand, has the voice line “If it lives, I can kill it,” which is a reference to Arnold’s famous quote “If it bleeds, we can kill it” from Predator, a movie that also features Schwarzenegger in a military role.  I’m waiting for someone to get an “Hasta la vista, baby” line - bonus points to Blizzard if they give it to Mercy.”

I haven’t gotten either of these yet, but the Contra sprays were a step away.  At this point now, I’m waiting for Gabriel/Reaper to get a Rambo or Stallone reference to complete the set.  

But sure, yeah.

I’m “reading too much into it.”

Never mind the fact that someone - or more likely, several someones - at Blizzard approved all these cross-references between two masculine characters.  Again - they don’t have to be intentional to be coded as queer/gay.  But with Uprising - in particular with the Contra sprays - we know that some of them ARE intentional.  It is not “coincidence” that the actual name of the Contra sprays is “Commando,” a reference to the Commando: 76 skin, which is in turn a reference to Schwarzenegger’s Commando movie.  And it’s not a “coincidence” that stills from the very first Contra box art has stills from Schwarzenegger in Predator, and Stallone in Rambo.  And that Gabriel/Reaper has had a Predator quote for ages now.

Do you think Blizzard - a company with their headquarters in Los Angeles, a video game company with their headquarters in Irvine/Los Angeles - is unaware of video game history?  Or Schwarzenegger movies?  Or Los Angeles/California history in general?

But sure, yeah.

I’m “reading too much into it.”

Which brings me to my final point:

“I don't mean this as bashing op, everyone is entitled to their Hc (headcanon).”

I need to ask:

What EXACTLY did you think you were going to accomplish by coming onto a post - written by a mlm trans man, describing really obvious, blatant mlm-coding in a masculine character’s design, a character who fits the two examples of queer/gay coding I’ve quoted above, all the way down to said character’s SHOES - and saying that you “disagree” and that I am “entitled to [my] own headcanon”?

You offered nothing as a rebuttal, you offered no counter evidence, all you did was lampshade that my discussion on the Reaper-Soldier interactions were not said in “teasing tones” and were not “banter” (hey, by the way, if you want to hear the lines again: http://overwatch.gamepedia.com/Soldier:_76/Quotes there they are.  You can hear the sarcastic laughter when Soldier starts the “you sure take to this bad guy thing easily, don’t you” and you can hear the teasing/mocking/sarcastic emphasis when Reaper says “boy scout” so literally no one has to take my word for it - the actual audio is right there).

You just did the deadass “gendered opposite” of when straight cis men went “I never expected Lena/Tracer to be a lesbian/wlw.  I never saw ‘the signs.’”

But hundreds if not thousands of wlw Overwatch fans will tell you the exact opposite.

And they’ll also tell you that many of them never dared to believe Lena/Tracer would be confirmed “canon lesbian/wlw.”

Because they had been burned one too many times before.

So what really, really ruffled my feathers about your response

Is the implication that I - a mlm trans dude, someone who has thought about their own masculinity every single day for the last 13 years - was somehow misreading mlm/masculine gay-coding.

That I had formulated some sort of “headcanon” about Gabriel Reyes/Reaper.

It’s true that I have MANY headcanons about the character -

But his mlm/gay-coding is not one of them.

The post was not meant as a defense of “is Gabriel Reyes/Reaper canonically gay?”  No.  Gay-coding has nothing to do with “level of canon.”  Gay-coding is about the presentation, design attributes, and stereotypes built into a character - intentional or not.  Gay-coding is about the implementation of ideas, concepts, traits, and biases about LGBT+ individuals - subconscious or not - that creators put on certain characters, especially “villainous” ones.

No, the point of the post was to simply list those exact design elements and “personality traits” that demonstrate just how mlm/gay-coded Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is.  The point of the post was to tell other mlm and our allies, “Hey - you’re not alone.  You’re not insane for seeing these traits.  These traits are real.  They are present.  They are veiled under a very thin layer of black kevlar, but they’re there.  You are not alone.  I see them too.”

You proved why the post was necessary.  

You proved why this whole list needed to be written in the first place.

Because some people will “disagree” even when presented with a straight (lol) list of elements and traits - things you can literally visually see on Gabriel Reyes/Reaper’s standard design - that show how the mlm/gay-coding was built into his character. And that includes before Reaper even HAD the “Gabriel Reyes” backstory.

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/156816655280/blizzards-shitshow-of-a-timeline

http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/156928707135/blizzards-shitshow-of-a-timeline-part-2-the

You say that you thought Reaper was designed as an “edgy het teenager fantasy,” but Reaper has ALWAYS had the bangle, the heels, the skintight clothing, the slight lisp, the multiple belts, the hand gestures, the “sassiness,” the sarcasm.  These all existed before “Gabriel Reyes the character” did.  And even once Blizzard had thought of Reaper’s backstory, they continued to fill it with mlm/gay-coded stuff - voice lines, references, more sarcasm, only they also paired it with a “strong friendship/bromance” between Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison.

The question here is not if Gabriel Reyes is mlm/gay-coded.

By two definitions of queer/gay-coding, by a long list of design elements and traits, by the tone of voice of some of his dialogue, by everything that Blizzard has added to “Reaper” since the mere act of designing him -

He is mlm/gay-coded.

The question now is how intentional is all this.  

And if it will actually result in anything meaningful.

So don’t try to imply that I’m seeing or perceiving things that aren’t there.  

Like the vast majority of other mlm individuals, I’ve been burned A LOT by hoping and waiting and wanting the mlm/gay-coding to “mean something more.”

I’m not waiting for that here.

Rather, I am writing down what MANY of us are thinking but are too nervous to say: that Gabriel Reyes/Reaper is mlm/gay-coded, and therefore we are NOT “seeing things that aren’t actually there.”  They are, and I want my fellow mlm individuals to know that they are.

[rhymaresh]

The Gendered Gaze and Objectification of Women in Teen TV Shows (E4’s Skins vs NRK’s Skam)

This essay will be discussing the issue of the gendered gaze in teen-catered television shows, focusing primarily on two shows with similar content and a similar targeted demographic: the British TV show Skins, and the Norwegian teen drama, Skam (translating to ‘Shame’). I will be exploring issues of spectatorship, the gaze in relation to gender politics, and the effects of the objectifying gaze on audiences.

The female body has been subject to objectification through spectatorship and voyeurism long before the age of media, starting with nude paintings of women catering largely to male collectors and leading up to present time when in a patriarchal, consumerist society the female body has become a commodity. Television has become oversaturated with objectifying representations of women to the extent of which it is has become near impossible to place a female body in the spotlight without it becoming subject to objectification. As Constance Penley states in her book, Feminism and Film Theory,

“Cinematic images of woman have been so consistently oppressive and repressive that the very idea of a feminist filmmaking practice seems an impossibility. The simple gesture of directing a camera towards a woman has become equivalent to a terrorist act. This state of affairs — the result of a history which inscribes women as subordinate — is not simply to be  overturned by a contemporary practice that is more aware, more self-conscious. . The impasse confronting feminist filmmakers today is linked to the force of a certain theoretical discourse which denies the neutrality of the cinematic apparatus itself.” (Penley, 1988)

The field of female representation is hard to navigate under these conditions, perhaps even more so when the media in question is aimed at teenage audiences. As statistics show, watching television is one of the main leisure habits that teenagers engage in. The effects of negative representation and objectification has been proven over and over again to be detrimental to young, impressionable audiences and recent decades have seen an increase in body-image related issues in teenagers and young adults, making it almost impossible to not draw a line between the two facts.

“Versions of what it is to be a woman, then, are offered to the teenage viewer; versions which become part of the range of ideas which form an identity. Whether they are incongruent with other ideas being offered, or identical to them, may, of course make a difference to how much influence they have. So, for example, if all the cultural messages a young woman receives tell her that she must, first and foremost, be a perfect body, then it is possible to surmise that this would have more impact than if it were only coming from one direction.” (Frost, 2001, p. 98)

The increasing amount of teenagers consuming television shows has led to the birth of an entire new genre, that of teenage drama shows such as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Freaks and Geeks, Skins, and 13 Reasons Why, to name only a few. As Rebecca Feasey notes in Masculinity and Popular Television

“Television has routinely featured teenagers and the teen experience in a range of talent shows, variety programs, soap operas and sitcoms, with such programming culminating in the teen television drama of the early to mid-1990s. These texts do not merely reflect adolescent interests and anxieties, but rather, they play a significant role in managing and shaping the teen experience. However, even though the small screen appears saturated by the trials and tribulations of the teen life and a varied spectrum of adolescent concerns, this youth demographic has little or no control over such representations.”  (Feasey)

Many of such TV shows seem to present a teen reality that has more of an intended aspirational aspect to its characters than an intent to represent teen life and struggles as they are, most of them concerning themselves mainly with centering their plot around skinny girls, rich families, large parties and expensive cars. However, as one The Guardian article aptly notes, Skins was one of the first teen dramas to actually take an interest in portraying something more similar to reality. A fact which perhaps contributed to its incredible popularity over the years.

“Skins [...] took the radical step of considering what young viewers might want and aspire to by actually thinking about and consulting young viewers. It told the story of a group of mates in Bristol who were leaving school, who slept with each other, went to parties, drank a lot, smoked weed, and talked like the kids they were. Their personal dramas weren’t the dramas of adults transposed on to slightly younger adults to act out; they were smaller, more honest and more precise than that. The first series [...] played with typical teenage issues. They were exaggerated and comic, but believable nonetheless: the characters were dealing with losing their virginity, eating disorders, school trips, sexuality, divorce, friendships, and not feeling good enough for your peers.”  (Nicholson)

However this does not make Skins exempt from issues of objectification when it comes to female characters. In fact, in its attempt at realism it may have further added to the issue in a vicious cycle of objectification. In fact one of the first scenes on the show involves one of the main characters looking out the window at a naked woman who is unaware of him watching her. In another scene from the same episode the camera pans up Michelle’s body as Tony watches her dance at a party. Later, in another episode Tony is spying on one of the teachers who steps naked out of the shower. In these scenes the camera becomes the tool through which voyeurism is performed.

Even past that, the show’s female characters are objectified by the males ones to the extent of them becoming mainly a plot point in the story lines of the male ones. Of course, the objectification of women extends outside the world of film and it’s realistic to believe teenagers would treat each other this way, however it is possible to maintain realism as well as address these issues. From the very start we see Tony and Sid treating Cassie as nothing more than an object, a means to an end, a tool for Sid to achieve his goal and lose his virginity. Female nudity on the show seems to only have the purpose of giving pleasure to the male spectators through voyeurism. Especially in teen television shows, this contributes to the oversexualisation of girls, both on and off screen and raises concerns regarding objectification and consent.

The question that needs to be asked in this case seems to be: is it possible to create a television series that offers a realistic representation of teenage life while also dealing with such issues? It seems hard to think this would be possible. However, in the years since Skins came to an end in 2013, another teen TV drama has risen in popularity. Created in 2015 Skam (Shame), a Norwegian TV series focusing on the lives of a group of teenagers from Oslo, is now airing its last season and has one-upped the british favourite both when it comes to representation and objectification as well as production.. Less over the top when it comes to its characters and the dramatic situations they are put through, Skam presents a more realistic, more self-aware version of teenage life, choosing to subtly point out the issues that come with issues such as the male gaze rather than encourage it (much as its British counterpart has). As one viewer states, in an article for the Guardian, “Skam’s real appeal goes beyond its current leads, no matter how telegenic and lovable they are. ‘The show is very willing to tackle ignorance among Norwegian teens – you see a lot of it and you also see the part where they get educated.”” (Hughes)

Skam, just as Skins before it, deals with a lot of the issues prevalent among teenagers today: friendship, romance, virginity, sexuality, mental health, body image, religion, sexual assault and consent, to name just a few. However, unlike Skins, when it comes to female objectification, instead of simply putting it in practice, Skam points out its problematic aspects, both through its well written dialogue as well as through elements of cinematography.

In the short time it’s been airing, Skam has proven to be one of the most innovative tv shows as well, fact which has contributed to its widespread popularity. Each season of the show is focused on one main character and takes place in ‘real time’ with clips being posted on the show’s website throughout the week and adding up to form one complete episode every Friday. The clips are accompanied by screenshots of texts between the characters and by posts made on their social media, which add to the storyline. The music in the show is also very significant to the scenes it accompanies, from Akon’s I Wanna Fuck You to Yusuf Islam’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. The scenes are shot mainly on location, and only a few weeks before the respective episodes are meant to air. This way, the director, Julie Andem, and the production team can receive the teenage fan’s feedback and sometimes alter the storylines in order to maintain its realism.

So far out of the four season of the show, three of them have had females leads, while one season focused on a male character’s journey to coming to terms with his sexuality. The first season of the show dealt with issues of insecurity, cheating and trust, the second season dealt with issues of consent and sexual assault, the third one tackled self-acceptance and mental health, and now, on the last season with a Muslim girl as a main character, it is expected issues of religion and discrimination will be tackled. Due to the predominantly female point of view throughout the show and possibly the female director however, the instances where women are objectified are addressed as opposed to being left as they are. In one particular instance, one of the male characters with a notorious reputation as a ‘player’, takes advantage of one of the girls’ crush on him and after having sex with her and getting what he wanted, proceeds to ignore her. As a Dazed article notes,

“Skam speaks directly to its viewers as a peer rather than from a pulpit. Another moment shows a character called Vilde, who is told point-blank by the guy she is lusting after that he’s just not that into her. Her friends attempt to comfort her, telling her he’s not worth it. Still, she can’t help but feel inadequate. “I know you should think that if a guy doesn't like you, it’s not you there’s something wrong with. It’s him,” she says. “But how does one think like that? I keep thinking it’s me there’s something wrong with.”” (Taylor)

Throughout the entirety of the show the entire storyline attempts to deconstruct female objectification rather than encourage it in the same way Skins did before it. Due to this it is rarely that the camera focuses on the female body in a sexualising or objectifying way. Even when two female characters end up making out while drunk at a party, with one of the male characters watching them, the scene never becomes sexualising.

In conclusion, while Skins certainly captured the reality of teenage life and validated a lot of the experiences and emotions, its oversexualisation of the female body and in particular of teenage girls’ bodies, makes it at the very least almost uncomfortable to watch and at most damaging to its young audiences. Skam, as its Norwegian counterpart, is not afraid to show the same realities, while still educating audiences. Its use of the camera as an instrument of the Gaze is far less extreme than the one Skins offered its audience. In an age of social media and consumerism where women’s bodies are objectified perhaps more than ever it is almost a novelty when a teen-targeted TV show treats its female characters with respect while still managing to capture all those key moments of their adolescence, and manages to do so without showing their bodies framed in oversexualising ways.

[emzworlddance]

Week 6 - Bollywood Dance

Bollywood dance is the dance performed in Bollywood movies.  Bollywood movies are Indian movies which are heavily influenced by musicals in Broadway. Songs and dance are used to express dilemma from characters that are difficult to portray from direct dialogue, especially in India’s conservative culture. The Bollywood dance style has no defined rules and is a beautiful blend of all Indian dance styles be it classical Indian dance, folk Indian dance or the more current R&B, hip hop music. Dancers also wear bright coloured clothing. Bollywood is a glamorous industry!

o Did the movements challenge me? If so, in what way? What did I do to cope with the challenge?

Since Bollywood is a commercialized culture in India, a lot of their dance moves are energetic and sharp. I was challenged to show energy and power in Bollywood dance, rather than being fluid and graceful. This reminded me of commercial jazz in the Hollywood industry. Dance moves were defined to grab the audience’s attention, especially from screens, people look at the whole picture instead of a particular dancer’s skills. The general public also may not have professional dance knowledge to understand the art of dance, so they may appreciate dance in a different way. Hence, commercial dance such as Bollywood will cater the general public by producing what interests them to generate revenue, this includes moves that are easy to follow or tricks that would surprise the audience.

o Did the concepts (cultural perspectives) challenge me? If so, in what way? What did I do to cope with the challenge?

The challenging part of Bollywood dance culture is whether I could accept the originality of their dance instead of feeling that they copy Hollywood culture. Of course, Bollywood is heavily influenced by Western culture since the 1980s and the inception of MTV and part of me is feeling that Bollywood is the counterfeit of Hollywood (because “Bollywood” and “Hollywood” sound similar). I started to understand that a lot of things nowadays are influenced by Western culture, particularly from America, but Bollywood dance has remained its original Indian culture by portraying their vibrant outfits, classical Indian dance, as well as collaborating with Hollywood dancers and artists and create a Westernized version of creative production.