#the show has just.... taken his entire character in this really ugly direction and its soiled so much of the show for me

[gothwizardmagic]

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[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona. 

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 5x10-- And the violence spread.

So, that’s it for season five. I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about the season as a whole and Wackner’s arc. I’m hopeful that writing this will help me decide.

This episode has a Previously, and it’s rather conventional. I’m guessing it’s here to bookend the season, with conveying information being only a secondary objective.  

Did we see Rivi scream, “You’re done, Wacko, you’re done! Canceled! Canceled!” in the last episode or is that new to this previously? I feel like I absolutely would’ve had things to say about a) Wackner being called “Wacko,” which has been RIGHT THERE this whole time, and b) the use of “Canceled,” which is a thing Rivi would never say but is VERY thematic (you know, cancel culture and also Wackner having a TV show and also this being a TV show that’s wrapping up* Wackner’s arc).

* The way things end this episode, I’d say we’re done with Wackner. The Kings have said they aren’t sure about the plan for season six, so never say never, but I think that if we see Wackner again, it will be as part of a different arc.  

I went back to 5x09 and while we do see the same shots of Rivi screaming, whatever he’s saying in 5x09 is in Spanish. So either he was saying this in Spanish or the dialogue here is totally new.  

I’m a little sad that I knew in advance Robert King had directed this episode, because I want to know how long it would’ve taken me to guess. I’d like to think this first shot, of Diane flopping down on her bed in a very pretty floral print dress, then Kurt flopping down in the opposite direction, would’ve given it away. We usually don’t get shots that are both striking and kinda balanced unless RK’s directing.  

This also has some big season three opener vibes—the scene where Diane turns to Kurt and says, “I’m happy,” thus jinxing the entire season.  

Diane and Kurt are about to go on vacation, which means, of course, that Diane and Kurt are definitely not about to go on vacation. I’ve watched 12 seasons of this show; I know all the tricks!  

If I didn’t get it from the initial staging of the opening shot, the camera panning to Diane and Kurt’s suitcases and then back would’ve been another clue that RK directed. He ALWAYS has the camera in motion.  

I love that Diane’s travel outfit is a dress you could wear to a fancy party and a statement necklace. Of course it is.

And if I needed evidence that RK and MK wrote this episode (which I didn’t; it is a finale so I knew they wrote it), Diane quoting Waiting for Godot is a clue there.  

I really should read Waiting for Godot, shouldn’t I?  

“Wow. Educated and a good lay,” Kurt responds. I know that the political stuff between Diane and Kurt can get more than a little murky, but banter like this reminds me why they stay together and why politics never drive them apart. Also, it’s really nice to see Diane and Kurt have some fun banter that isn’t about politics.  

And Diane making kissing noises and asking Kurt to meet her halfway! This just feels like I’m spying on someone’s private life and I love it. Not in a voyeuristic way, since this is actually a little uncomfortably private, but in a, “ah, yes, these do feel like real people” way. This is the kind of “a little goes a long way” character moment I always want more of, and Kings episodes ALWAYS include stuff like this.

And there it is. The phone rings as Diane and Kurt are about to start out for the airport. Diane thinks the call must be for Kurt, but it’s for her. It’s a very flustered Liz, informing her that STR Laurie’s execs are on their way to the office for a surprise visit.

If the Diane/Kurt scene didn’t tell me that Robert King directed, I almost certainly would’ve gotten it from the sudden cut to Liz, walking through the hallways and doing a million things at once with a ton of background noise. No one loves chaos the way Robert King loves chaos.  

This episode STRONGLY reminds me of the Wife season five finale. It is equally chaotic and also spins a ton of plates. But, mostly, the similarity I see between the two episodes is that they are both extremely fun and captivating to watch because of how much momentum they have, but everything just feels slightly hollow and not exactly focused on the thing you want to see.  

(Shout out to my friend Ryan, who messaged me the 5x22 comparison before I could message it to him!)  

I decided I should rewatch the first few minutes of 5x22. I am now 15 minutes into 5x22 of Wife and 2 minutes into 5x10 of Fight. Oops.  

Apparently, STR Laurie planned a surprise visit because they heard RL was dysfunctional. You don’t say!  

I felt like 5x09 concluded with STR Laurie being won over by Allegra and the RL team, so this is a bit of a surprising place to start the episode. But, since Diane seems surprised too, I’ll allow it.  

Now Liz and Diane have 90 minutes to agree on a financial plan! Kurt’s on the phone with the airline before Diane even hangs up with Liz.  

Diane is determined not to lose out on her vacation and asks Kurt to change the flight to 8:00. “Kurt, we are going on this vacation if it kills me!” is a line I would worry was foreshadowing on basically any other show.

The RL/STRL PowerPoint template is pretty ugly. They want to call 2021 their best year yet, thanks to the deal between Rivi and Plum Meadow Farms we saw last week. Even though we saw champagne and signatures, the deal isn’t done yet because Plum Meadow can back out if Rivi goes to jail.

RK also loves close-ups more than any other director on the show; I do not love close-ups.  

The Plum Meadow deal is such a big deal that for the quarter, they go from $45 million to $5 million without it. They should just not say numbers. I can believe it’s big enough to take them from a modest profit to being behind projections or whatever, but I can’t believe that they have $5 million in other business and $40 million on this one deal.  

It seems that Rivi was arrested. I don’t think it is ever said in this episode why. I assume the arrest relates to his behavior in Wackner’s court, since there were police officers there, and I suppose that Rivi is a big enough deal the police would actually take him to real court, but are we not going to address the weirdness of Rivi being arrested in a fake court where his employees are being tried, then taken to a real court by the same people who just an episode ago were disillusioned with real court? This seems like a plot point.

Carmen on a frantic phone call in the backseat of a car feels very 7x22.  

Who is James that Carmen has in her contacts!? And why does everyone always put Liz in their contacts as “Elizabeth Reddick” when everyone calls her Liz?  

Carmen calls Marissa to go argue in Vinetta’s court since she’s on Rivi duty. Carmen doesn’t take Marissa’s job in Wackner’s court seriously and then notes that this instruction is coming straight from Liz, so Marissa falls in line.  

Wackner’s case of the week is about rural Illinois wanting to form its own state separate from Chicago. There’s a farmer who feels like his tax money is only going to the big city and he wants it to stay in his community.  

They’ve just now added stage lighting to the set of Wackner Rules, dunno why they wouldn’t have done that earlier!

I don’t know what standing you’d have to have to bring a case about wanting to divide the state in two to court, or if this is even something a court would or should decide, but, sure, Wackner and Cord, go for it. There are no rules!  

This map splitting Illinois into two new states that Cord is holding is a dumb prop because Galena, where this farmer is from, is in the same section as Chicago. Do I pause every reference to Chicago on this show and then google information to see if the writers bothered to look it up or pretend they’ve ever set foot in Chicago? You know I do.

“Secession!” the audience screams. Does the audience of Wackner Rules really want to see this?

A Good Fight Short! And it really is short: “Stop this obsession with secession and breaking up the Union. It’s boring and it’s dumb, end of song.” I feel like that’s the thesis statement for this episode, or one of them (that this episode seems to have about ten thesis statements is kind of my problem with this episode, tbh). This episode is very much about danger of things becoming too fractured—the COTW, the copycat courts, the firm drama—and I feel like the writers come around to just saying no, this is enough, we need structure and consistency.

But more on that later. MUCH more on that later.

Marissa is swearing more because “the world has required it.” She notes this to Wackner as she calls him out on the secession case. Cord barges in.

Take a look at the employee of the month poster on the back of the door at 5:39. Then at 5:40, look at what’s in the box just to the right of the center of the screen: it’s an employee of the month poster with Wackner on it! Cute easter egg. (Would Marissa definitely notice this and have questions? Yes. Is this here as a cute easter egg for eagle-eyed fans? Almost certainly.)  

“Insane is just one step away from reality if you get people to believe, and you know what makes people believe? TV.” Cord explains when Marissa asks how they can possibly be litigating this case. That’s thesis statements two and three, folks. The first is that if you get people to believe, then anything is possible, which sounds like a tagline for a Disney movie but is actually super dangerous; the second is that reality TV is a way to persuade people and change opinions.  

So we’ve got: (1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. Let’s see if there are more.

(Yes, these theses do kind of add up to a whole—The rules don’t matter, so if you persuade people, through reality tv, you get factions of people believing their own sets of rules and facts—but what I'm interested in tracking throughout this episode is how well the writers actually bring these theses together.)

(And this is setting aside that key themes in previous episodes, that I think many of us were looking for resolution on, included outlining the flaws with the extant “real” justice system and exploring the role of prison in the justice system. From this episode, I don’t think the writers ever intended to really tackle either of those issues. That’s fine—I'm not sure that TGF has something to say about prison abolition and I don’t want a thought experiment where the writers actually try to fix the legal system—but feels a bit disjointed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but 5x08 and 5x09 needed to do a better, clearer job of setting up this finale. The key themes of Wackner’s arc were always present, but they needed to slowly narrow the scope so the resolution felt inevitable and clear. Instead, we spent time on things like parking spaces (when we could’ve had a real plot about how Wackner’s court gains legitimacy through violence, incarceration, and playing on people’s frustration with the real systems) and Del’s focus groups (when we could’ve instead done a plot about Wackner gaining fans who wanted to use his methods to do ill). Everything I just mentioned in the parentheticals is in the show! It’s not subtext! We see it all! We see Cord use violence and prisons to enforce Wackner’s rulings; we see the cops turn to Wackner out of frustration; we see that the people drawn to Wackner Rules and to Wackner’s court are increasingly sounding more and more like right-wing populists! I can’t be too hard on this arc because, again, all these ideas are there. I’m not coming up with them on my own!)

I’m just saying: this ending would’ve been a lot clearer and a lot more interesting had the writers focused on what I mentioned above instead of the distractions of the last two episodes.  

Whew, that was a ramble. Hope you’re ready for more rambles.

On a similar note, I’d like to reiterate my problems with how the writers used Marissa after the private prison reveal. I don’t have much more to say than what I wrote last week, but it’s another example of the same problem. Marissa objecting to Wackner’s court because she notices what it’s becoming and how Cord plans to use it for political gain (two Illinoises (??) changes the Senate and the Electoral College...) always was going to be part of the endgame. Marissa only seriously objecting after the fourth or fifth line Wackner crosses feels bizarre.  

Cord does NOT like that there is another court, and wants to protect Wackner’s IP. Wackner, as we saw last episode, does not feel threatened by the other court. In fact, he seems to be excited by it.  

I love Liz questioning Diane’s outfit like it’s unprofessional. It’s a little low-cut and showy, but I don’t think unprofessional is the word I’d use for it.  

Now they have 45 minutes to decide The Future Of The Firm and Diane wants to be considered a name partner. Oh, that debate is still raging?! Every time I think it’s done it comes back, which should probably be a sign to Diane that her options are to leave and start something new, jettison Madeline and the others, or step down. Staying on as name partner and calling it a black firm is just not an option.  

“Diane, there is a split in the firm that...” Liz starts, before asking some associates to leave the room. Ha! The reveal Liz and Diane aren’t alone is a pretty fun touch.

“The Black equity partners don’t want to be in your work group,” Liz informs Diane. “Because they think they’ll be punished by this firm?” Diane asks. “No, that’s paranoia. We don’t punish here,” Liz responds. “Of course you do. My fracking client. My union client. The Black lawyers who work on those cases—they're considered traitors” Diane says. “Because those CEOs are racists,” Liz counters.

Lots going on here, and I’m not sure I understand it all. Why would the equity partners—who are partners—feel like they’re being punished by being in Diane’s work group? (And also what does a “work group” mean and why haven’t they talked about it in the past?) When Diane starts talking about the lawyers who staff her clients, she’s not talking about equity partners; she is talking about associates.

And people are giving associates shit for working on Diane’s clients whom they happen to be staffed on!? That’s sad, though believable.

“So what do we do? Only bring in clients who can pass the racial smell test?” Diane asks. I mean, actually, yes. IF the goal is to be a black firm and to have that designation mean something in moral terms rather than marketing terms, then yes.  

“It’s okay if you’re a drug kingpin like Rivi, but it’s not okay if you want me as lead attorney?” Diane says. Also, yes. Diane makes good points here.  

“Diane, this is not about you,” Liz counters. Um, sure, but it has to be about something, Liz. Unless you’re trying to build a firm you don’t control that makes 88% of its revenue from a drug dealer (40 million out of 45 million this quarter = 88%; I told you they shouldn’t give me numbers) but happens to have black people in charge, you have to grapple with this question. I don’t think anyone who’s fighting for the firm to be a black-led (not owned, bc STRL) business is the type of person who thinks that having a black-led firm that does all the same shit as any other firm is in itself a good thing, so you NEED to address your client list. Madeline is anti-Rivi, anti-Cord, anti-Wolfe-Coleman (the rapist guy), pro-social justice, and pro having a black led firm.  

“I mean, why... why do white people personalize this?” Liz asks. “Oh, now I’m just a white person?” Diane responds. I... don’t know what to do with this! Liz is right that Diane is taking this personally; Diane is right that Liz needs to deal with the rest of the client list. But no one is saying the things that REALLY need to be said: That all their decisions are meaningless in the shadow of STRL, and that deciding to be a black led firm isn’t the end of the discussion if they haven’t decided what types of clients they want to have.  

“What happened, Liz? Last year we were intent on an all-female-run law firm,” Diane starts. Oh, THIS AGAIN! Diane never learns, does she? She never seems to realize that no one she’s approached with this idea is NEARLY as in love with it as she is. She probably still wonders to herself why Alicia—who partnered with her at the end of season seven basically just because it was the easiest, most frictionless thing to do—didn't seem more committed to their firm.  

“Diane, there is history here that we are trying to...” Liz says, but Diane cuts in to note that women (women like Diane Lockhart!) have history too! In fact, she’s spent “35 years fighting gender discrimination to get to this position.” “And we have spent 400 years fighting racial discrimination to try and, you know...” Liz starts, before cutting herself off to get back to the ticking clock.

Sigh. Just talk about the actual thing instead of talking around the thing, guys. Diane is obviously deserving of A name partnership, in the abstract. This is an undeniable fact. And while Diane is definitely making this about herself rather than the big picture, I don’t think Liz trying to trump Diane’s 35 year career with the history of black people is going to win her any arguments? Like, just say what you mean and say it clearly. What Liz, I think, wants to express is that Diane’s individual accomplishments aren’t the issue here and everyone thinks she’s deserving (though Liz suggested Diane was not deserving a few episodes ago, which I didn’t understand then and don’t understand now). The problem is that Diane is trying to fight a battle that’s about something much larger than herself with, “but I'm a good lawyer!”  

And that’s KIND OF what Liz is saying here, if I add all her sentences up and read between the lines, but, again, why not just say it?  

“Alright, now we have 43 minutes to fix race relations, gender relations. STR Laurie’s gonna fire our asses, and you know it,” Liz says. I am curious what that would look like. Wouldn’t that just mean that STRL wouldn’t control them anymore? I’m sure being fired would be bad and all, but wouldn’t it free them from the contract they wanted out of last year?  

“Let’s split the firm down the middle. I hire half the lawyers, you hire the other half,” Diane suggests. What does this mean? Why are you hiring your employees? Huh?

“You hire the white associates, and I hire the black associates?” Liz confirms. This seems like a very bad idea that would make things a lot worse and open them up to lawsuits! I also still do not know what they’re even talking about. And I don’t know why Allegra isn’t a part of this conversation.

“I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying it’s what we’re left with. It's what we can agree on,” Diane says. I really wish I understood what “hire” meant in this context because I don’t understand why they have to split anything or why this has to be done now and I don’t understand why this would possibly be a good solution. Can you imagine the backlash when people realize all the white people report to Diane and all the black people to Liz and that people were taken off of the accounts they’ve worked on for years to accomplish this? And this must be something that the employees would know about eventually; otherwise they could just randomly assign half to Liz and half to Diane.  

I’m sad Madeline isn’t in this episode because I feel like we needed to see more of her POV as well as the associate POV. I don’t really understand the divides at play within the firm or what the staff and other partners are asking for, but I suspect it isn’t this.

Hallucination Jesus is back, and at least there’s actually a point to him this time (he shows up when Jay is in Vinetta’s court and reminds Jay that Vinetta will rule based on her religious beliefs). I still dislike the hallucinations.

Jay advises Marissa, who is Jewish, to talk a lot about Jesus in her defense.  

Charmaine Bingwa is really great as Carmen, and obviously she is not fluent in Spanish, but it’s so funny to me that the only time you can hear that she’s Australian is when she’s trying to say Oscar like she’s speaking Spanish.  

"I know you’re hiding something when you speak English,” Rivi says to Carmen. Heh.  

“Community court” is such a nice, unthreatening term for referring to Wackner and his copy cats. Thanks for that, Carmen!

It’s a smart plan to mention Jesus a lot, I guess, but Jay and Marissa both should’ve realized that Vinetta is too smart to tolerate obvious pandering. I’m a little surprised Jay doesn’t get up and argue since Marissa is, obviously, not familiar with the New Testament.  

Marissa wins this round with facts and logic.

Why is the judge who was handling Rivi’s previous charge now in bond court? Make it make sense.

I like that Carmen calls out the ASA for swearing hahaha  

Why... would this Matteo kid just casually mention he was holding a gun, omg.  

In Vinetta’s court, you can be charged with murder and tried because... you had a gun and also there were murders at other times. Coolcoolcool no problems here.

Community courts for civil cases? Sure. That’s basically arbitration. Community courts for criminal cases? Bad, bad, bad idea.  

Vinetta’s reasoning: “Those murders happened on our street, and the police haven’t convicted anyone because they don’t care. We care. This is self-defense. And how is it different from your court?” Aside from the whole imprisoning people in her basement thing, Vinetta’s not wrong. I almost brought this up last week but hesitated because I couldn’t remember the details enough to decide if I wanted to recommend it, but there’s a book I read a few years ago that seems relevant here: Ghettoside by Jill Leovy. Again, been a while so don’t take this as a wholehearted endorsement or anything, but from what I remember, the central issue at the heart of the book (it’s non-fiction) is that a poor black community (I think in LA?) doesn’t trust the police (in part) because the police don’t solve murders, and then with no way of getting justice through the court system, there’s more violence as a stand-in for justice. https://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12631962/ghettoside-jill-leovy-black-crime

I’m not sure if that’s QUITE what Vinetta is saying but it seems similar, and it’s a decent point (though not a justification for her court). Why should she trust the system to improve her community when it’s ignored her community for years?

I like that the writers chose two very different, very understandable characters for their community courts. It’s easy to see why Wackner and Vinetta feel the need for alternative courts; it’s easy to see why others would trust them. This arc doesn’t really work unless there’s a legitimate frustration with existing systems...  

Marissa calls Wackner’s court a “joke,” which she should understand by now isn’t the case. (Marissa’s smart; she knew it wasn’t a joke the second she saw David Cord get involved.)  

Vinetta accuses Wackner of copying her court, which alarms Marissa. This isn’t addressed again, and I don’t know if it’s true! I could really go either way on this. On the one hand, I absolutely believe that Wackner saw/heard about it, liked it, and did it himself without thinking much of it—and if this is the case, then the ending where Vinetta gets in trouble for violating Wackner’s IP is a lot more of a gut punch. On the other hand, I don’t really feel like the seeds for this were planted. We see Wackner innovate a lot and try new things and he has an explanation for why he does everything—how much of that is Vinetta? And Vinetta clearly watches the show and likes it or she wouldn’t have recognized Marissa, so it’s a little hard for me to just believe her claim when literally all I know about her is she has a court that looks like Wackner’s and she is aware of and feels positively towards Wackner rules. Also, Wackner knows about Vinetta’s court (from Marissa) and sounded excited about it last episode. Sure, he didn’t necessarily know which one it was, exactly, but I assume if he’d copied the idea and then heard about a case involving people from the exact same community where he found the idea... his reaction would be different. So IDK. My reasons for doubting Vinetta’s claim are probably based a little too much in things I’m not meant to spend that much time paying attention to.  

“I fucked up. It’s in the same court, but now it’s a murder case,” Marissa tells Diane. I do like hearing characters admit when they fucked up!  

Diane hears that STRL is delayed, so she heads out to help Matteo. When she goes to change into her pantsuit, she finds that she’s grabbed Kurt’s bag by mistake. “Of course. That makes sense,” she reacts.  

Diane pushes her flight to the next day, also telling Kurt, “And yes, for some reason, I took your suit instead of mine, so fuck it.” I love it when the characters feel like real people.  

I am not sure why Kurt is getting to the office when Diane is leaving or why Kurt is there—to pick Diane up on the way to the airport, maybe?

Carter Schmidt walks into RL at the worst possible time, threating to blow up the Plum Meadow deal. Another 5x10 to Wife 5x22 similarity: he’s in both episodes.  

Liz heads out to help Carmen with Rivi, and then STRL arrives. Oops.  

Credits!

One thing about Wackner’s court that should definitely be a warning sign even though it seems noble: he ignores just about every warning sign, like this rowdy crowd screaming WE LOVE YOU WACKNER or the potential interests at play in a case about secession, because he thinks his fair judgement can overcome these obstacles. If the world worked that way, there’d be no need for his court in the first place.

Is anyone representing the State of Illinois in this trial? If not, then... how is it happening?  

Dr. Goat, some dude who claims to have some hidden historical document about how Illinois is actually two states, is clearly making stuff up and yet Wackner indulges him and Cord. I feel about this the same way as I feel about the Devil’s Advocate: That Wackner would not allow this to go on for more than five seconds before calling bullshit and therefore there is no reason I should have to sit through it.

Why is some guy screaming, “No taxation without representation” like dude you absolutely have representation. But of course, I’m expecting him to be logical, and the point is that he is not.

Dr. Goat’s Latin phrases—shock!-- don’t actually translate into anything like what he said. Even though this information is verifiable by a quick google search, the crowd starts screaming “Liar!!!!” at Marissa. If only I could say this felt unrealistic.

Wackner asks Dr. Goat to bring in the document.  

“You look like you’re heading to the beach,” Vinetta says to Diane, who looks like she’s heading somewhere but definitely not to the beach. Vinetta asks where Diane was headed on vacation. Diane says she’s headed to Lake Como, and unnecessarily clarifies that “It’s in Italy.” She assumes Vinetta doesn’t know that... but Vinetta does.

“So you’ve been there before?” Vinetta probes when Diane says it’s beautiful there. “Just once. We don’t get away often. We thought we’d splurge,” Diane says. Vinetta stares at her and smiles, and Diane hits her head on a basket that’s hanging in Vinetta’s kitchen. If I just write out the dialogue here, it sounds like a perfectly average conversation, but everything about this conversation is so charged: Diane is afraid to look like a wealthy white woman; Vinetta’s pleasantness is pretty clearly also a way of sizing up Diane.  

Vinetta shows Diane pictures of neighborhood children and young adults killed as a consequence of gang violence. You can see she’s not trying to do anything other than help her community, even if her methods are highly questionable.

Diane argues that Matteo should be given over to the police; Vinetta disagrees: “The police haven’t arrested anyone for those murders, any of these. Since the BLM movement, they’ve pulled back from our streets. No one’s coming to help. That’s why I started this court. It’s not a joke to us.” Wait I’m sorry did Vinetta just blame lack of good detective work in black communities on... the BLM movement?!?!?! Is there any foundation to this!? Why can’t it just be that the police weren’t actually doing a good job of policing/finding justice and were being antagonistic towards the community instead of being helpful and no one trusted them?? That explanation is literally right there.

Jay suggests the Jesus strategy, again.  

“It’s women! We could just move on, install men,” STRL guy says. I don’t know if he’s joking, but ugh. Also, what is RL if it has neither Diane nor Liz? A bunch of lawyers who will all promptly quit when they see their bosses get fired and a few opportunists?  

Kurt is watching golf in Diane’s office, and the STRL people love it. Of course Kurt accidentally makes friends with them.  

Court stuff happens. It’s not good for Rivi, and then Liz and Carmen come up with a theory: Plum Meadow is stalling the deal so they can find Rivi’s more stable second and make a deal with them instead.  

Wackner giving Dr. Goat a single point on his stupid little board, for any reason related to his obviously fake totally unverified document, is dangerous. Why would you signal to a crowd that’s clearly not interested in fact that they have a point? That’s basically egging them on.

I know Wackner’s judgment is obviously not 100% sound—need I remind you of the PRIVATE PRISONS?-- but I thought it was more sound than this.  

Wackner shows off his knowledge of paper and proves that Dr. Goat’s document is a fake. Why... did he just give Dr. Goat a point???  

Or is he moving the point from Dr. Goat to Marissa?  

Dr. Goat sounds like a fake name I would call a character in my recaps long past the point of anyone other than myself remembering the joke. (See: Mr. Elk)

“The truth is ugly. The only thing uglier is not pursuing it,” Wackner tells Marissa. How is taking on a case about very obvious falsehoods, funded by someone with a vested interest in the case, that gets people riled up, some noble pursuit of truth?  

STRL and Kurt are now drinking and discussing hunting, while Diane’s arguing for Matteo in Vinetta’s living room. Vinetta is—as was always obvious, sorry Jay—far too smart to fall for this patronizing bullshit. She screams at Diane and plays back a recording (on a baby monitor) of Diane coaching Matteo to lie about his faith.

Soooooo yeah no you can’t do that, that is bad, recording conversations between lawyers and their clients is not good even if it leads to you exposing their schemes...

Then Vinetta places Diane under arrest, which obviously isn’t going to end well for Vinetta.  

Liz and Carmen suggest a post-nup to Rivi to see if Isabel is planning on turning on him.

“I’m going to have to kill her,” Rivi says sadly. I don’t think Rivi will ever kill Isabel because we already did that with Bishop.  

I’m going to assume that Diane chooses to stay in basement prison instead of calling one of the many, MANY, MANY people she could call to get her out/take down Vinetta because she doesn’t want the situation to be publicized or further deteriorate. That said, it’s really not clear why Diane just accepts being sentenced to basement prison with a cell phone.  

Love the STRL man looking at that picture of Diane and HRC. They’ve gotten so much mileage out of that photo.  

Wackner’s court has no rules, but at least since it has no rules, I can’t complain about how its rules make no sense!  

What is this, debate practice?! Ugggghhhhh I can’t deal with this case for much longer.  

Marissa takes a breath, then decides to pursue a strategy she knows could blow everything up.

“Then why care what Judge Wackner decides? Why should you defer to him? Why defer to anyone?” Cord says that’s the point—the people have decided to trust Wackner. “So if you don’t like this court’s decision, you’ll just start a new one?” Marissa asks. “I guess,” Cord concedes.  

“So then why does this matter? This court?” “It matters only insofar as we continue to agree that it matters,” Cord says. “So if you don’t like Judge Wackner’s rulings, you can just ignore them and create a new court?”

Good point, Marissa. Good point. (Does this count as a thesis?)

“I’m guessing that I will like the way the judge decides,” Cord says. Well, that’s basically a threat.

Wackner takes a break and heads to chambers—without Marissa.  

Kurt goes to visit Diane in basement jail. He’s granted a conjugal visit, which means Matteo gets moved up to the bedroom so Diane and Kurt can have some alone time.

Diane is staring at an image of Lake Como in her cell. I thought it was odd she brought a printout of her vacation destination with her, so I LOVED the line where she explains that Vinetta printed it out for her. COLD. (You know who also would’ve done this if they’d for some reason had a basement prison? Bree Van de Kamp. You know what show DID do a basement prison arc I’d rather forget? Desperate Housewives!)  

I love how Diane responds to basement prison by making jokes non-stop.

“I thought the craziness would end with 2020,” Diane says. Nope.

Kurt brought alcohol; Diane brought pot gummies.  

I love that Kurt has never had pot before. I was going to say that I bet Diane’s had a few experiences with recreational drugs when I remembered we had a whole damn season of Diane microdosing.  

Christine and Gary’s acting and their chemistry really bring these basement prison scenes to life. The writing and directing are really sharp, but it’s the actors who make these scenes something special. You can tell Diane and Kurt love each other a lot. You can tell they’re disappointed about their vacation and exhausted by the chaos of the day. You can tell they’re in disbelief over this situation but also find it funny.  

Didn’t Rivi and Isabel have an adult daughter who died of COVID a few episodes ago? Weird she isn’t mentioned in this scene. Maybe from a different marriage/relationship?

Isabel called the SA’s office because she thinks Rivi’s a threat? I think this is a power play.

Heh, Carmen saying, “Shut a black woman up!?” in disbelief in court. Love it.  

Isabel instead flips her story and supports her husband and fights for his release. With no intervention from Plum Meadow, this gets the judge to free Rivi. I don’t really understand what’s happened here or why. I get the resolution, but I don’t get why Isabel called the SA or why this went away so quickly. I still don’t even get why Rivi’s been arrested.

Diane and Kurt put up Christmas lights for ambiance and talk about how they never go on vacation.

“I wanna see the pyramids on this coast!” drunk & high Kurt insists, hilariously. “I mean hemisphere. I like the Aztecs. They, they care about people.” I’m not going to transcribe the rest of the dialogue because it loses its magic when you’re not watching the scene.  

After some fun banter about travel and movies, Diane changes the topic. “I should quit, shouldn’t I? That judge upstairs? She looked at me like I was the most entitled white bitch on the planet. And that’s the way they look at me at work.”

Kurt tries to say that’s not true, but Diane knows it is: “Yes they do. I’m the top Karen. And why do I care? I mean, I... I could find another firm. I could quit. I can’t impose my will on people who don’t want me.”

YES. I see a lot of debate over what the “right” thing to do is here. But I think we are long past “right” and “wrong.” At a certain point, this stops being about absolute moral truths. If Diane doesn’t have the respect of her partners and employees, that is a very real problem for the firm and for Diane. How can she continue to impose her will on a firm that doesn’t want her, all the while claiming to be an ally? (The back half of that sentence is the most important part.) Forget whether or not Diane “should” have to step down. Forget what’s “fair.” If the non-Diane leadership of RL thinks the firm should be a black firm, and the employees of RL think so too, and Diane just doubles down on her white feminism, she’s creating an even bigger problem for herself and ruining her reputation in the process.  

Kurt stands up on the prison cot and warns Diane she might make a decision she’ll regret. This scene is so cute. Why can’t other shows do drug trips where the characters just act silly and have great chemistry? Why does it always have to be some profound meditation on death whenever characters get high?

“I think I like starting over. I like the chutes and ladders of life. I mean, I want the corner office, but then I wanna slip back to the beginning and fight for the corner office. I mean, I think maybe it’s better that I don’t get the top spot,” Diane says. LOVE to hear her admit this. I’m not sure I would’ve come to this conclusion on my own, and it sounds like it’s a bit more about how the writers like to write (you know, the “we love our characters to always be underdogs”) than Diane, but... you know what? I believe it. I fully believe it. Diane LOVES to fight, LOVES to feel like she’s in the right, LOVES power plays and to be making progress. She LOVES winning. The fact that she isn’t just choosing to retire right now, even though she’s past retirement age and has a great reputation, is in itself enough for me to believe that she would find it fun to repeatedly start over.

Plus, it’s a fun new direction for the show to take in season six, because they’ll get the same sense of conflict without the actual conflict. This season’s arc was firm drama and resulted in a firm name change... but it didn’t feel like a knock-off of Hitting the Fan. Diane trying to work her way back into power (I assume by becoming a better actual ally, otherwise doesn’t she just end up in the same exact situation?) should also provide conflict without being repetitive.

Hahahahahaha Kurt immediately reacting to this serious statement by being incredibly silly and horny and then Diane singing “I Touch Myself” to him, man, I love these two. I want to know the story behind this song choice.

Wackner emerges from his chambers. The score is tied. Wackner calls Cord corrupt and notes that they can’t just decide to call Downstate Illinois a new state based on his ruling. Now it’s thesis time!

“I was taken by Mr. Cord’s arguments of individualism. So much of our country has been built on people finding their own way, not being held back by bureaucracy. Yet, if we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos. And that was not the point of this court. Or at least not my point. Judgment for the defense. There will be no Downstate Illinois.”

“If we only follow individualism, that way lies chaos.” is probably the clearest of the many theses of this episode. To recap, we have:

(1) Factions are bad. (2) People are persuadable and the rules don’t actually matter. (3) Reality TV changes minds. (4) Institutions only exist when we collectively agree they exist (5) Individualism = chaos.  

But let’s put a pin in this for now and let the chaos of individualism play out.  

The crowd does not like Wackner’s decision, and decides that an appropriate way to express their displeasure is to make anti-Semitic remarks towards Marissa and then start throwing chairs. What nice people.  

As the crowd goes totally 1/6 on Wackner’s court (thanks for pointing this out to me, Ryan—I cannot believe I didn’t make the connection myself!), the door slamming into the desk finally pays off since Marissa and Wackner are able to use it to keep the crowd from reaching them.  

They immediately turn to the police, or they would, if they could get service. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that as soon as things get bad, they want to involve the existing system.  

Wackner Rules is, somehow, still taping in the midst of all the chaos. I don’t know if I think they’d air this, but someone certainly would. (I wonder if any of the cameras we see in these scenes are actually the cameras filming the other angles of the riot.)  

Cord shakes his head and walks out, unharmed.  

“You think they’ll kill us?” “I think they might,” Marissa and Wackner fret.  

“My dad said the whole world would be a better place if everybody realized they were in the minority. ‘No matter where you are,’ he said, ‘Make sure you keep an eye on the exits, and make sure you’re closer to the exit than the Cossacks are to the entrance.’” Marissa says. Love Eli Gold coming through with thesis number 6 (and maybe thesis number 7).  

“Your dad sounds a little paranoid,” Wackner says, correctly. Remember how I mentioned I accidentally wound up watching 5x22? Eli calls Alicia and responds to her hello with, “DISASTER!!!!” I miss him.

“He was, but he wasn’t wrong. He said, ‘Stay away from parades. They’re cute until they’re not. And don’t trust any pope who was Hitler Youth.” “What’s that law called?” “Godwin’s Law. My dad said anybody who argued for Godwin’s Law has never been near an actual crowd. Crowds love you, they hug you. Then they grab a gun and try to kill you.”

“Why? Why do they do that?” “I don’t know. Hate is fun. It’s clear-cut.”  

I really like all of this. It is a little preachy, but it isn’t wrong and it’s self-aware. And, more importantly, it’s in character. I absolutely believe that Marissa would tell lots of stories about Eli in a moment of extreme stress. It’s nostalgic, probably comforting, and it also helps her feel like she’s on the right side with the right arguments. So, even backed into a corner, she’s still a winner: she has theory on her side.  

Wackner speaks a foreign language (I do not know what language but I wish I did) and says, “A guy could get killed doing this,” which makes him and Marissa laugh as things crash around them.

Idk about you all, but I couldn’t really get myself to actually worry about their safety during this scene. Maybe Wackner’s, just a little, but I got the sense we were supposed to focus more on the chaos and destruction and monologuing than on the actual danger. That’s not to say the stakes didn’t feel high, but rather to say that this didn’t feel like an action sequence where you don’t know what’s going to happen next. The point was to watch the court fall and think about why it fell, not to worry about if Marissa would live.  

Diane and Kurt are woken up by sirens and loud noises. The cops arrive and are shocked to find professionally dressed white people in a basement cell. They let Diane and Kurt out with compassion, but scream, “don’t you fucking move” to the people on the floor.

“It’s okay, they didn’t do anything,” Diane says. This is, as I theorized earlier, probably why Diane just sits there until her punishment blows over instead of escalating things.  

If the cops weren’t there to free Diane, why were they there? Why, because they like David Cord and David Cord has gotten Chicago PD officers to protect Wackner’s IP.  

If I had to say one thing in favor of Vinetta being the originator of the community court idea, it would be that it’s SUCH a gut punch to watch Diane and Kurt walk away from their bizarre little adventure as Vinetta gets arrested in the background, and it hits ten times as hard if Vinetta’s only being charged because some white guy is claiming IP that’s actually hers.

(I think Vinetta is probably, at this point, actually being arrested for imprisoning people illegally, but, still.)

“Pfft. Some judge,” one of the cops who adores Wackner says of Vinetta. Racist much?  

Marissa and Wackner emerge from the backroom. “I think I better get back to work,” she says, meaning her RL job. "Me too,” Wackner says, grabbing a Copy Coop apron. He’s an employee of ten years.  

I don’t think this lands as well as it’s meant to. I think the point is supposed to be that Wackner’s just some guy—not a billionaire, not an academic, not a judge, not a lawyer—with an idea. But it’s a little too neat. And it doesn’t explain how Wackner financed his court initially, nor does it explain why he has basically unlimited access to Copy Coop space and resources. I’d buy it if he were the OWNER of Copy Coop, but I have so many questions about him being an employee.  

Diane tells Liz she’s actually going on vacation this time, and they laugh about how Kurt bonded with STRL.

“I want you and Allegra to be name partners. I’ll be an equity partner,” Diane says. “Why?” Liz asks. “Five years ago, when I hit rock bottom, this firm took me in. So I don’t like the idea of splitting this firm in two. And I can’t lead if no one will follow.” “And your clients?” “We’ll manage them together.” YES! I love this. I don’t love it because I necessarily think it had to go this way, but because it’s so refreshing to see Diane say that she actually is willing to take a step back because she cares about the firm and the people there more than she cares about being a name partner. This isn’t something we usually see. When we hear “this firm took x in” it’s usually being said incredulously against someone who’s decided to leave and steal clients (cough, Hitting the Fan, cough).  

It’s been pretty clear for most of this arc that Diane and Liz like working together and they like their firm, but that no one (other than Diane, I guess) is willing to let RL lose its status as a black firm, and that the employees and equity partners weren’t going to be satisfied until Diane stepped down. Diane really had three options: Stay and piss everyone off and claim the whole firm for herself, quit and go somewhere else and totally abandon the good working dynamic she had, or step down and put her money where her mouth is.  

Also yeah the clients were never actually going to be an issue! They were only an issue because Diane intentionally went about informing them she was stepping down in a way she knew would make them worry!  

“I think I need to prove myself,” Diane says. I’m not sure that’s the key issue or that she can ever prove herself fully, but we’ll worry about that next year.

“I missed you,” Liz says. “I’m here,” Diane replies. “I know. Thank you,” Liz says.  

Diane decides she’s going to move downstairs so Allegra can have her office. I think there’s another office on this floor, since she, Adrian and Liz all had offices. This feels a little bit like Diane’s in love with the idea of making things difficult for herself and maybe hasn’t fully grasped the point, but, you know, I’ll take it.  

Diane tells Kurt her decision and he asks if it was the right thing to do. She says she doesn’t know—but she says it with a smile. Kurt notes he’s going hunting next month with the STRL folks and will put in a good word for her. Ah, yes, because STRL still controls all of this and all of this is moot! Thanks for the reminder Kurt! Diane says she wants in on the hunting trip. Of course.  

And the elevator doors close. Remember how closing elevator doors was a motif earlier this season??? It’s back!

Then we get a little coda with Wackner Rules airing a new episode that’s just violence and destruction. This sequence seems to straddle the line between being there for thematic reasons for the viewers and there to show what happened in the show’s universe, but I think it’s main purpose is theme, so I will not go on a full rant questioning why Del would want to air this.

A white blonde lady in an apron watches the destruction of Wackner Rules. She looks concerned. “That was violet,” she says with dismay. And then we see she’s holding a guy in a jail cell in her kitchen.  

And then we see other courts, as America the Beautiful plays. One’s in a garage debating kicking someone out of the neighborhood; another is across the street about the same case. There’s one in Oregon about secession. There’s one among Tiki Torch Nazis deciding only white people can own property. There’s (inexplicably) one about pronouns. There’s one with arm wrestling, one that happens while sky diving, and a bunch of others. It’s pretty ridiculous, and not necessarily in a good way. It feels at once like the natural extension of the Wackner Rules show and like an over the top parody you’d see on another show. Tiki Torch Nazis screaming “only white people can own property!” is the opposite of subtle writing. Tonally, this sequence feels more like the zany humor of Desperate Housewives or the insanity of BrainDead than anything TGF has done before (and TGF’s been plenty surreal), and it doesn’t quite work for me. It feels like it is trying to prove a point in the corniest, most on the nose way possible. It almost feels like it’s parodying its own plotlines.  

On my first watch, this ending for Wackner left me stumped. I knew the writers were making an argument against individualism (Wackner’s speech + the repeated references to The Apprentice) and cults of personality. But I couldn’t figure out a real life analogue to Wackner’s court, and since this ending was so obviously trying to be About Something, that bugged me. Sure, that last sequence could be an argument against people making community courts, but WERE people making community courts? I didn’t see the urgency.

And then I talked to @mimeparadox. And as soon as he said that it was about factions and people playing by their own sets of rules beyond the justice system, it clicked. I’d been looking for Wackner’s plot to be a commentary on the legal system. It is much broader than that. It’s a commentary on the weakening of democratic systems (the Big Lie, etc.), more broadly, and Wackner and his common-sense approach are just a way to get liberal viewers to go along for the ride.  

Now that I understand the point, or what I think is the point, I like this conclusion. Circumventing the system leads to chaos; that’s why we have institutions and bureaucracy, and I think the show is arguing that these institutions should still be respected despite their flaws. The many theses of this episode all come together to make this point (though the reality TV stuff is a little more tenuous and I'm a little shocked we got through all of this without any commentary on social media?): If we stop having a shared belief in institutions and instead follow individual leaders (whom we may learn about through reality TV), the rules will stop mattering and we’ll end up with a fractured country and widespread violence.  

But, and maybe this is just about me being upset I missed both the obvious 1/6 parallels AND the point of the arc the first time through this episode (my defensive side feels the need to also note I first watched this episode at like 5 am when I was barely awake), I don’t know that I actually think this episode does a great job of driving its point home. There are SO many moving pieces to the Wackner plot and SO many references. There are so many threads we never return to from earlier in the season, and there’s so much that strains credulity (like Wackner taking Dr. Goat seriously for more than a split second). It’s pretty clear what the themes are—even though I’m saying I missed the point my first time through, I've hit on all these themes separately in past recaps and posts—but, I dunno, something about this episode just feels scattered. Maybe it’s all the moving pieces, maybe it’s all the moments where it sounds like the characters are voicing related ideas that don’t quite snap together to form one coherent picture, or maybe it’s that Wackner’s plot gets two endings (the actual ending + the coda) and it’s up to the viewer to put together how they relate.

I really don’t know. At the end of the day, I think there was a little too much going on with Wackner and that the writers needed to use the episodes between the private prison reveal and the finale to narrow—not broaden—the scope of what they were trying to do with Wackner. But I also think that what they were doing with Wackner was really, really smart and original. I don’t think I can overstate how impressed I am that the writers took an idea that sounded, frankly, awful when I first heard about it and turned it into something captivating and insightful that I was happy to spend nine weeks watching.  

Overall, a few bad episodes aside, I thought season five was the strongest season of TGF yet. I haven’t seen this show be so focused in... well, maybe ever. Having two overarching plots that received consistent development and felt like they were happening in the same universe at the same time REALLY helps make season five feel like a coherent whole, and I can’t wait to rewatch it.  

[mircallablue]

So, in the wake of BeauJesters seeming passing, I’m going to take a moment to be more than a little self-indulgent and explain why I love these characters and their unique dynamic so goddamn much, as well as why I’m so disheartened by the way the show seems to be taking them. Warning: essay ahead lol. This is just a rambly rant that I’m writing because it’s cathartic to vent a little bit of frustration, and I love these characters so much. (and I love the entire cast, every goddamn one, and every other character in the show too. This is about love, not hate). 

So, for a few brief and wonderful episodes in this campaign, I actually believed that I was being told a love story about falling in love with your best friend, and figuring out your sexuality, while also unlearning all of the untrue lessons that the world taught you about love while you were growing up, and in so doing, finding value in yourself. Which, for me personally, is just super relatable. Like, that ticks every damn box I have lol, which partly explains why I love BeauJester so much, and I know a lot of B/J shippers feel the same. I’ve shipped B/J from super early on, but I never in a million years really believed it would happen, for a lot of reasons. Mostly homophobia, biphobia and heteronormativity. But I enjoyed their dynamic nonetheless, even though I thought (and was often TOLD by other shippers) that it didn’t stand a chance in hell of happening. 

So you can imagine how VALIDATING it was when Marisha, both in character and out of game, confirmed that Beau had very significant romantic feelings for Jester. All of the crumbs we’d collected over the course of the campaign were finally coming together and all of the gaslighters who told us we were delusional suddenly had to acknowledge that there was something there. And once it had been acknowledged, it was OBVIOUS. Omg it was so obvious and I loved every second of it. It was so undeniable for the next few episodes, and in hindsight, that there was something building there between them, there was potential. There was definitely a connection between these two characters. And for a few weeks, it was great. 

Then Liam - out of character - mentions that Caleb is in love with Jester. And it is immediately, fandom wide, treated with more respect than Marisha and Beau. 

I know a lot of people get very very angry when this is brought up, but it is just the ugly, unfortunate reality that a lot of people in this fandom treat Jester like a manic pixie dream girl. Even the people who do not consciously believe her to be that (and I don’t think there are many that genuinely believe it), are perfectly fine /treating her/ like one, as long as it serves one of the straight men that they love so much, usually Caleb. And this is where the heteronormativity comes in. Because even though it was an out-of-game confession with no bearing on canon, Calebs feelings immediately took precedence over Beaus in terms of the fandom narrative. 

I personally have never liked the way Liam handles romance in game. He did pretty much the exact same thing in campaign 1 as well, where his sad boy pines after the happy girl from afar until he’s uncontrollably in love with her, and then with no warning he drops it like a bomb. He just happened to drop it out of game this time. The main reason I don’t like this style of romance is because of how (unintentionally) manipulative it is. You see it in bad romcoms all the time. The guy makes a public declaration of love that pressures the girl into reciprocating or looking like the bad guy. But the main reason I don’t like /this particular/ declaration is the timing. 

Liam - who has always said he likes things to come out in game - inexplicably decides out of game reveal something as major as Caleb being in love with Jester, right after Marisha IN GAME took steps towards Beau and Jester being together. And it completely changed the narrative. Suddenly it was “top table top table”, and that's if Beaus feelings ever got mentioned at all. It was not at all helped by the fact that a lot of cast members (sam) still pushed Fjorester HARD, even with Jester telling Nott to stop, which must have sucked for Marisha/Beau. But even as recently as episode 99, Beau was still flirting with Jester, and there were definite hints at Jester maybe having unacknowledged feelings for Beau.

Then the hiatus happened. When we return, Beau is throwing herself at Yasha, and there’s not even a song for Jester on her playlist.  And then Travis reveals (also out of game, like Liam) that Fjord has feelings for Jester (in a playlist heavily curated by known fjorester, Dani Carr). And even /that/ is treated with more weight by some fans than Beaus in canon confession. And Yasha is having all of these super convenient dreams where Zuala tells her its ok to move on, and Beau and Jester are barely speaking. And now Beau is calling Yasha her GIRLFRIEND? WHAT??? Did I miss 20 secret episodes that aired during hiatus or something???? Beau and Yasha have still, in 107 episodes, only had ONE meaningful conversation and yet their relationship is being treated as deep and inevitable. Sure, you can read into their other interactions if you want. But as a queer person, I am sick to death of my love needing to be represented as subtext.

And so it has become pretty clear that the cast has decided out of game to go in a different direction. And of course they are well within their right to do that. But I just can’t help feeling incredibly disheartened, and again, more than a little bit gas-lighted. It really does seem as if Beaus' feelings for Jester have just been scrubbed from canon - as if they never even happened. All, seemingly, to make way for a typical happy-girl-sad-guy relationship with either Fjord or Caleb, and a typical pair-the-spares barely-any-depth relationship between the two out lesbians because its easy.

For the entirety of campaign 2, BeauJester has been treated as one thing - inconvenient. Inconvenient by the fans, who prefer other ships and have treated BeauJesters terribly, and now it seems, inconvenient by the cast, who have seemingly discarded it and scrubbed it from canon. 

And one thing that really upsets me is the amount of genuine viciousness and vitriol coming from (some) BeauYasha shippers. I really wish BeauYasha was something I could get on board with, I do. And a lot of people who are sending me hate seem to assume I don’t want them to end up together. But I would be fine with that. But as it stands, they’ve literally only had one real conversation in 107 episodes, and they’re calling each other girlfriend? While literally having not spoken about anything like that? While one of those characters is supposed to have canon romantic feelings for another woman? Imagine that situation with any other characters and it would be comical.

I swear, the queer ladies in this fandom have been done dirty. All of us. Imagine if, in campaign one, Grog and Keyleth, in episode 107, started calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend in the middle of a battle. (I picked those two because they probably had the fewest moments together of any VM pairing). That’s pretty much what happened here, and we’re supposed to like it - be grateful, even - because it’s wlw rep? And I swear, the number of times I’ve been called lesbophobic in the last month is absurd - all because I’m not comfortable with a canon lesbians canon feelings being swept under the rug. All because I want wlw relationships to be allowed to have the same depth and growth as the straight ones. Yes, even if that relationship is B/Y. We should not settle for less. Imagine if they had done this with any other character's canon feelings for another. People would be angry.

And I know there are going to be a lot of people saying “It’s their game, they can do what they like”. 

True. I never said otherwise. But it is also a show. It is a product. They sell merch. It is something that they have taken the time and the steps to make sure that we care about. And this is what that looks like. 

I know what happened here isn’t technically queerbaiting, but damn if it doesn’t cut the same.

[ratingtheframe]

So 2020 sucked... but the films didn’t! The top twenty films of 2020 (in my humble opinion).

AT LAST. This godforsaken year is over and as we venture into a new year, let's hope and pray that the art’s industry finds a way to build themselves back up again, in a way that is safe and necessary for them to bring us the entertainment we so crave. It has been a crazy and unprecedented year for the film industry, a year that it has never seen with losses of an estimated $5 Billion at the end of March. Some of the most anticipated blockbusters of all time had to be put on hold and postponed for hopefully next year with No Time to Die, A Quiet Place II, Wonder Woman 1984, Dune and Black Widow being a slim few that never got onto a silver screen this year. However, there is no reason to fret or relinquish the loss film has had this year, as hopefully next year once we’ve had a better understanding of this virus, these films along with many others will have their audience. Amongst the postponed releases, many films have been resilient to the virus and still managed to gain a spot in the cinema despite the circumstances. 

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was the only multi-million dollar film to be released this year and even though the risk of release could have meant nothing for the film, it still managed to rake in a staggering $361 million, an expected profit for a film of its size. However, despite the film's success, Nolan made it clear that this shouldn’t be taken lightly and that the safety of film consumers comes before the profits themselves. 

Even though we will have to be more cautious in the cinema, films will return, once we have regulated safety measures in cinemas and film festivals to ensure that customers can feel comfortable. For now, HBO has planned to put many releases from Warner Bros. straight onto its streaming platform as well as in the cinema next year, in an attempt to prevent the spread of COVID whilst still being able show the films we’ve been craving. There’s no telling what next year will bring, what the Oscars will look like or if filming for the next Batman film will ever end, however it's clear to see that the film industry has shown resilience amongst this pandemic and will continue to do so in years to come, no matter the challenges.

Here are twenty of the films that made it to the cinema (or streaming platforms) this year, that proved the durability of the film industry during this time. 

20. Tenet directed by Christopher Nolan 

We can all agree that Chrisopher Nolan’s Tenet should be handed the award of Most Confusing Yet Entertaining Film of the Year, or ever made in fact. The sci-fi epic adventure that sees its lead (named “the protagonist) travel back in time and then forward in time and then back in time again (?)... yup, I didn’t get it either, but I’m not the only one seeing as Robert Pattinson who played alongside John David Washingston hadn’t a clue what was going on either. And he was in the film. However, despite the film's confusion, it doesn’t make it a bad or “lazy” film, for every aspect of this film from lighting, sound design, casting, direction, stunts WAS ON POINT and those elements are truly what sets this film apart. The story may have been perplexing but at least there was one. 

19. Nomadland directed by Chloé Zhao

It is such a shame that Nomadland may not get the audience it deserves due to the COVID-19 pandemic as it is a truly moving and rich film. The Nomads are a group of real Americans who’ve hit the road in various mobile homes after the Great Recession in 2008 caused millions to be homeless and redundant. Frances McDormand plays Fern, one of these Nomads and child of the road whilst the film follows her simple, yet melancholy journey across Western America.  Chloé Zhao has been tipped several times for an Oscar with Nomadland after winning the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Let’s hope that if this goes onto the Academy Awards, Nomadland will find the audience it so craves. 

18. Uncut Gems directed by the Safdie Brothers 

YES, Uncut Gems came out THIS YEAR, which is an insane thought seeing as I saw the film in a packed cinema before it was released onto Netflix. The Safdie Brothers, Josh and Benny brought us Uncut Gems this year, a declining tale of a man’s test with fate and the many many second chances he gets at life, only to f*** all of them up. Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a pawn shop owner and frequent gambler. This is Sandler’s best ever role and the multifaceted, gritty work of the Safdie Brothers (Heaven Knows What, Good Time) really brought something brilliant out of him. 

17. The Half of it directed by Alice Wu

The Half of It wins the Most Surprising Film of the Year. A highly credible film directed by Alice Wu, The Half of It is EVERYTHING we want and need in this world. In fact, it’s everything we kind of already have in this world, but hardly see on screen. Non white leads, queer non stereotyped relationships, unpredictable endings; The Half of It was an all rounder for me. Some may roll their eyes at the amount of diverse elements to the film and see it as a way of gaining brownie points, but why does that have to be a thing? Why can’t having active and authentic representation across all films just be normal rather than political? If anything, it should be encouraged. The story was brilliant (and made me cry) as it had so many layers to it as well as the characters.

16. 7500 directed by Patrick Vollrath

Definitely the wildcard of this list, 7500 is an Amazon Studios film starring Joseph Gordon Levitt. I’ll admit, my hopes weren’t high, but after taking the time to watch this film I was truly blown away. And who KNEW Joseph Gordon Levitt could be so deep and in tune with his emotions on screen. He plays a pilot whose plane gets hijacked mid flight. There. Enough said. I could hardly BREATHE throughout this film in apprehension of what was going to happen next.

15. Kajilionaire directed by Miranda July

2020 thus far has been the best year for female filmmakers. From Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Josephine Decker’s Shirley, Rose Glass’ Saint Maud and Miranda July’s Kajilionaire, a clear cut foundation has been carved effortlessly for female filmmakers this year. Miranda July’s Kajilionaire especially rocked my senses a little as I saw so much unfamiliarity yet beauty within this film. A simple storyline that follows Old Dolio (Evan Rachael Wood), a young woman trying to feel more connected with her parents. A certainly bittersweet tale that has this rose tinted like vibe to it that attaches itself to the visuals and music of the film, that make everything feel light and playful. This contrasts well with the story itself as being sad and melancholy, further proving the fact this film is more than face value. Face value films have never gotten us anywhere and its films that go beyond entertainment that truly last in the industry. 

14. Bombshell directed by Jay Roach 

Bombshell is a PERFECT title for this film; a film that left me angry, sad and questioning the immorality that is still prevalent in the mostly male dominant society we live in. Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie and Nicole Kidman (best trio ever) star as three news anchors on Fox news whose lives are brutally torn apart when the Head of Fox News, Roger Ailes is accused of sexual harassment on many different occasions by female members of the workplace. Despite the silence being now broken, these three women still face a whole load of other problems that come in speaking up against a powerful, white and rich male. Threats of permanent job losses, victim blaming and a weak image are the consequence of speaking up about sexual assault as a member of Fox news. The brand itself has an incredibly misogynistic view of women and continues to have an idealised image of how women should be on the news with those working at Fox actually admitting it brings in viewers. Women with tons of makeup and dresses shorter than is comfortable is Fox news and Bombshell went above and beyond exposing this scandal that truly shook American broadcasting forever. 

13. Borat Subsequent Movie Film directed by Jason Woliner 

Borat Subsequent Movie Film wins the award for Most Jaw Dropping Film of the Year, as its protagonist and creator Sacha Baron Cohen, went above and beyond to show us the true dark depths of America. Ballsy, outrageous, jaw dropping, scandalous; every bold word can be used to describe this film and the lengths it went to get right to the heart of American society. The ugly heart. By now you should be aware that the ex president’s attorney was shoved right into the firing line after he was taken into a hotel bedroom by a reporter who happened to be an actor. Rudi Gulliani was left red faced after Borat bursts into the hotel room proclaiming the young reporter is his daughter, with Gulliani still unaware the entire outrageous event had been caught on camera. And not just any camera. A MOVIE camera. A true triumph in free speech and comedy, Borat Subsequent Movie Film will live on forever as the most outlandish film there is.

12. Miss Juneteenth directed by Channing Godfrey-Peoples 

A real eye opener into current American society using a touching story between mother and daughter as a backdrop. Turquoise is a single mother struggling to get by and support her daughter Kai through the Miss Juneteenth pageant, held annually in Fort Worth, Texas. A real competition, the Miss Juneteenth pageant promises one lucky young woman of colour a full scholarship to a black historical college of their choosing. Turquoise desperately wants this for her daughter as it’ll give her the opportunities in life she never had. A truly moving and authentic film, this scored 100% on Rotten Tomatoes which is a highly impressive and deserving score.

11. The Trial of the Chicago Seven directed by Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin’s lyricism in words was again brought to us on screen this year with his depiction of the Chicago 7 (eight if you count Bobby Seale); seven men who were accused and put on trial for eliciting the Chicago riots of 1968. When in actuality, the police themselves had more to do with riling up the protestors than anyone else, even pushing a crowd of protestors through the front window of a restaurant to make it seem like they had vandalised the property. If anyone was going to make such a film, Sorkin would be the one to do it as with any event or idea he covers, Sorkin’s words as a writer MAKE YOU CARE. Even when you had no recollection or understanding of something, the way Sorkin depicts these events on screen has you absorbed into the story till the last second. An incredible and powerful story and a film that I could constantly go back to in order to learn about the injustices of American politics.  

10. The Devil All the Time directed by Antonio Campos 

I feel like The Devil All the Time still hasn’t got the recognition it deserves. There is something incredibly powerful and priceless about having a group of exceptionally talented people come together to create something for screen. This film wins Best Casting of the Year (if you don’t count Dune) as the likes of Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Bill Skarsgård,  Mia Wasikowska, Harry Melling, Riley Keogh, Jason Clarke and Haley Bennett graced our screens in this dark and ominous tale. Any story that is set in a small town and is about stories interweaving is bound to be interesting and thought provoking in it’s telling, with this adaptation being no different. The star of the show was Robert Pattinson’s thick Tennessee accent along with his clean yet filthy character interpretation of a perverted priest. Not one line in this film was thrown away and every single moment held a weighty tension, further confirming to us each character’s downfall by the end. An amazing adaptation and something you will reeeeeally enjoy.

9. Soul directed by Pete Docter 

What was supposed to be Pixar’s second release of the year, Soul is Pixar’s most highly executed film to date. The amount of detail and care the animators and creators of Soul had taken to this picture is INSANE; insanely beautiful. With the black community going through so much this year, having something like Soul be put out to audiences shows support of this ever changing and growing movement. Even though having black representation on screen isn’t on the top of everyone’s priority list, it’s still important that the effort is there in order to really show what the world is like on screen and to cater to more audiences. Soul itself had everything; diverse, three dimensional characters, a clear and heart warming story and comedic, uplifting points that only strengthened the important message of this movie; life itself.

8. The Lighthouse directed by Robert Eggers 

Again, another film that came out right at the beginning of the year, Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse was a whole new world that we had never seen before. Shot on a Panavision Millennium XL2 using a lense from the 1930s and black and white film, The Lighthouse was a decrepit, eerie and brilliant movie to watch throughout. It just makes me satisfied as a viewer when a director not only creates a film, but creates one that is so beyond anything we’ve ever seen and could likely have been made in an entirely different era altogether. Robert Pattinson KILLED IT in his role as a surly drunken sailor alongside Willem Dafoe, whose Irish accent was enviable. Overall a highly executed film that exudes brilliance and a creative mind.

7. The Hater directed by Jan Komasa 

I would say The Hater is the second wildcard on this list. It’s a Polish drama that hasn’t had a lot of rep in the media, however, this doesn’t detract from the film’s execution and drama. A real downfall story that sees a jealous ridden man go from a media intern into illicting terrorism. Like, HELLO how does one go to such an extreme? The only way to find out would be watching the film...The film really spoke to the dangers of social media and the ease of getting someone to insight violence onto someone else, all through a computer. My mouth was hanging on the floor during several moments of this film and I can 100% guarantee the Netflix film will have the same affect on you.

6. La Belle Époque directed by Nicolas Bedos 

La Belle Époque (or “The Good Times”) wins the award for Most Heart Warming Film of the Year. A surprisingly unique concept that follows a man trying to relive the best moments of his past after his wife wishes to divorce him. A company that specialises in creating your past memories offers him the opportunity to go back to the time when he and his wife first met, using actors, set design and music to recreate the moment. The French film emits a strong sense of nostalgia throughout with brilliant music and set design. It’s just one of those films that heavily expresses the idea of “what if” within a film whilst answering it boldly through its unique story.

5. Ema directed by Pablo Larraín 

Ema took me a few days to fully absorb and appreciate as an experimental film, rather than one with a clear cut narrative. It's a film that expresses an idea, a feeling as opposed to a story which is completely okay and doable in this day and age. Ema is a liberating, freeing and psychedelic world of a film, with the message of the film being wrapped up in Ema’s attitude as a woman and the way she sets fires to things wherever she goes. Literally, as the opening sequence is of her setting alight a basketball hoop. There is some strong, vivid imagery within this and the MUSIC...definitely the best sound track I’ve heard this year. Ema’s in my top five for its uniqueness, rawness and the weird sense of liberation it gave me after watching it.

4. Saint Maud directed by Rose Glass

Probably the biggest breakthrough film of the year and despite the pandemic, Saint Maud certainly got the rep it deserved. An entirely new perspective of horror was brought to use in troves in the form of this Irish film created by first time director Rose Glass. I cannot express how brilliant and revolutionary Saint Maud was for its simplicity, story and filmmaking techniques. An ambitious and all round brilliant film that sits prettily in my top five films of the year.

3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire directed by Céline Sciamma

Portrait of a Lady on Fire wins the award for Best Foreign Language Film and it still hurts to think it never even made it to the Academy Awards this year. One of the most moving and earthy films that I’ve seen this year, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a slow, sensual and ambiguous picture that shows a love story between two women through the form of art. I became quite obsessed with the music of Antonio Vivaldi after seeing this as the time period and music intertwined really well in this film. Exceptionally made and incredibly raw, Portrait of a Lady on Fire went straight for the heart in this film by also putting the grievances of love at the forefront of this film. 

2. Parasite directed by Bong Joon Ho 

You are probably extremely bored and tired of hearing of the success of Parasite as a breakthrough picture, however there are an abundance of reasons for it! Winner of Six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Parasite really pulled the rug beneath the Academy Awards feet and certainly proved that no matter your race, it's the story that sells and that will bank you an Academy Award. A wonderfully crafted story, one that could have been found in theatre or even opera and those sort of structured narratives are what really grab people’s attention. 

1. Another Round (Druk) directed by Thomas Vinterberg 

And finally, my favourite, Most Enjoyable Film of the Year had to be without a doubt, Thomas Vinterburg’s Druk, which I had the pleasure of seeing at the BFI London Film Festival this year. The theatre-like structure of a narrative has been implemented seamlessly into this film and even if structure means nothing to you, you can feel when a film has been crafted differently to bring about a dynamic and earthy narrative. I’ve previously watched two films of Vinterberg’s; Festen and The Hunt and even though those two films hold a high rating, Druk is definitely Vinterberg’s best film yet. Extremely entertaining whilst also carrying a rather dark side to it, Vinterberg sells you the best and worst of two worlds whilst exposing the effects of alcohol consumption. 

And that’s it! 2020 in films! If you agreed or disagreed with anything on this list or think something else should’ve made the list that came out this year, be sure to leave me a comment on this post or via instagram on @ratingtheframe. It’s crazy to think that this obsession of mine turns two years old next year and there are still so many amazing pictures to be seen! And as always, you will find each and every one of them right here on @ratingtheframe.tumblr.

Bring on 2021!

[firstagent]

Review! Digimon Adventure: (2020) Episode 47: The Villains of the Wastelands

In this episode, Taichi and two enemy camps fight to determine who’s the most incompetent leader.

Perhaps the most relieving part of this string of filler hasn’t been the shift to lighthearted stories and lack of exhausting life-or-death situations. Maybe it’s because Taichi was relegated to second fiddle status as the show threw the other kids a bone. Now that the bottle has spun his way again, he’s back to consuming all the oxygen in the room and stifling any attempt at enjoyable content. Some eeks through thanks to the sheer zaniness and stupidity of the guest enemies, but the zaniness and stupidity Taichi himself provides is far less amusing. Not only is his stupidity utterly shameful for a Digimon protagonist at this point in the series, but the show’s lackluster effort to portray it as endearing leaves us wondering how to draft our apology letter to Tagiru Akashi.

Bad decisions are the powerhouses of character development. Kid does something dumb, kid pays for it, kid learns lesson. While we love our deeper flaws and repressive childhood traumas, bonehead mistakes are free real estate. Sometimes they even bring out the deeper flaws (yeah, we miss SkullGreymon too)! For the first half of this episode, all Taichi does is make bad decisions. When he learns that Joe and Gomamon were taken in two different directions, instead of exhibiting a lick of common sense and calling for backup, he and Agumon split up, denying him any firepower and denying his partner any chance of evolution. It is a lapse in judgment totally in character for this moron, and hardly the last one he makes here, but also one that needs to be recognized as a disaster in the making.

Not only is Taichi not punished for his hubris, but you knew he wouldn’t be. The reality check that Taichi has needed time and time and time again continues to elude him, allowing him to be the same idiot he was early on, only now with more dangerous knives to play with (at least when he doesn’t tell them to wander off on their own). This is no different than Tagiru continuing to be a rude, boisterous halfwit too stupid to realize his faults all the way up to the point where that’s exactly who was needed to save the world. Taichi may not be quite as insufferable as Tagiru, but the fact that Taichi is rewarded with more evolutions and bigger victories than Tagiru had makes his lack of progress more offensive. Also not helping is nobody calling Taichi out for his stupidity, while the rest of the Hunters cast, to their credit, barely tolerated Tagiru themselves.

Like Hunters, if the main character isn’t going to grow, the job falls to the episode’s guest ally. Nohemon is defeated because he failed at his job of guarding the water source in town once factioning took hold and things got ugly. Which makes sense because scarecrows are pretty useless once the birds aren’t afraid of them. He doesn’t believe in Taichi either, but shows him the way since he has nothing better to do. Until his big shot at the end, he doesn’t actually do anything other than give Taichi bad advice. Even that only works because of a lucky break, but if he wrests some control back in the end it’s something.

The only reason Taichi, Agumon, and Nohemon succeed is that their enemies are somehow even bigger jokes than they are. At lease these jokes are kind of amusing. A Gaossmon who bosses over a Tyrannomon because an evolution failed to disrupt their hierarchy is a fun concept, and Atamadekachimon and Minidekachimon are just made for laughing at. They and their idiot Goblimon armies let Agumon waltz into one camp and manage to set the other one on fire by themselves. The farce only continues from there and goes a little ways into making up for Taichi’s lack of anything resembling competent leadership.

If pointless episodes like these are going to find any value, it’s in serving to make its featured characters more likable. They’re often a necessary evil early on as we learn about the characters and begin to root for them. This far in, there’s no reason to swallow Taichi’s mistakes. He’s a bad decision maker and he should feel bad about it. If he won’t, we have no reason to cheer for his journey. After doing everything wrong and again only pulling out a lucky win at the last minute, he returns home and acts like their teammates getting kidnapped and him weakening his partnership to save them alone wasn’t a big deal. Yamato absolutely should punch him in the face.

My Grade: D+

Loose Data:

This is the first time in the anime we have reason to pay attention to Nohemon, and talking through the crow rather than the face is is a fun touch.

Nohemon asks if Joe was the wimpy human that got carried away. Taichi says yes. Way to stick up for senpai.

Taichi also ignores all of the Nohemon’s good reasons not to split up with Agumon and also gets mad when Nohemon calls him a kid. Class act, this one.

When the episode isn’t about him (and sometimes even if it is), Joe continues to be nothing more than a joke character. Asking for a lawyer? Really?

If shooting a bow and arrow is as easy as Taichi makes it look, then Nohemon really isn’t that special and should have just found a replacement once his arm got chewed off. Anybody would do.

Why are the two camps fighting over water when Team Gaossmon has a large enough reservoir that it floods the entire cave when busted open?

Awfully nice of Tyranomon to stand there like an idiot for a second while Nohemon aims his big shot to stop him.

Much as Taichi and Agumon should have been overwhelmed and defeated in their efforts, a surprise intervention from the rest of the team would have been too convenient an escape. Having said that, Hikari mumbling her brother’s name in her sleep at the start of the episode and greeting him at the end would have offered enough of a BS excuse for how they knew he was in danger that it could have been tolerated.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore! Support the site by joining our Patreon!

[lorei-writes]

IkeSen Masamune Analysis #5

I haven’t written one of those in a while. Who knows, maybe I’ll get inspired to put more posts like this together - although I’m not sure if “analysis” wasn’t too big of a word when I picked it. Oh well. It happened already, I presume? So let’s continue onward with that, even if it was a mistake.

1st part: the trauma & the grief

2nd part:  discovering the new meaning to love & getting in touch with himself

3rd part: the pathos of the dramatic route

4th part: future customs & how modern their relationship is (by future standards)

#5: Flaws

It oftentimes seems to me that flaws of character tend to be overlooked on behalf of the great qualities somebody has. After all, why focus on the ugly if beauty is one step away?

Well. My personal opinion is that by doing that, a character is stripped of its complexity and ultimately loses some of its appeal, the flaws being one of the major factors contributing to their overall believability. They make them relatable, are a point of struggle, bring realness into fantasy - so honestly, personally, I lean towards enjoying imperfections. 

As such, let’s look at some of Masamune’s flaws and perhaps wonder how some of them affect him. As always, it’s just my perspective on the matter. So please, if it makes you angry - take a step back. You don’t have to agree with me on that one. It’s okay.

Probably the most obvious one would be his lies - because for a honest and direct person, Masamune lies a lot, even though mostly to himself. He lies to people close to him, consequently keeping them at an arm distance, never allowing for anything possibly presenting his weakness spread to the world. He doesn’t allow himself to hurt - he must be strong. At all cost, every time and every where, and he must always push forward. That by itself, of course, is draining. Perhaps he doesn’t even consider those half-truths and white lies to be dishonest in any way? Does it influence him? It does. It was shown how scared he can be when the one person he has found courage to be vulnerable with could be taken away. It’s one of the factors driving his rather risky choices, it tires him out physically, makes it harder for him to form deeper emotional connections. Generally, I presume it would suffice to say that Masamune isn’t used to somebody taking care of him.

Similarly to the above, Masamune is merciless towards himself. I wouldn’t say he’s addicted to work, but he certainly values it more than himself and his own well-being. He works late hours, is always in the centere of the battle, is willing to accept new responsibilities despite the workload (for example: his route - taking over the impoverished territory and redistributing rice to feed people struck by hunger)... As mentioned in his eternal love route epilogue, Masamune always strove to be deserving of praise, under all conditions. However, is that humanely possible? No. People make errors - and that is okay. It doesn’t come easy for him to accept that. (For example: an event in which he and MC were tasked with finding out a culprit threatening lord Nobunaga - I believe Mitsuhide was also in the group, however, it was only our pair that visited the inn. Due to a mistake on his part, MC was almost stabbed. Almost, as Masamune stopped the knife in time. As it was shown later, he didn’t take it well, distancing himself from her and spending the night training; Does it happen outside events? Yes. It can show in many ways, but one of them would be the fact that he doesn’t like discussing his past self and his weakness from that time. He also hides tears, for very long even from the woman he fell in love with).

He’s not fluent in emotion and his entire route is lined with him discovering that the thing he feels is love (more on that in 2nd part of the analysis, linked above). He undergoes tremendous character development.

There’s also another facet to it - despite being technically a character that’s all  about this “fun”, he’s disciplining himself strictly. He’s always holding himself back, pushing away all the needs and desires that interfere with who he thinks he should be. And what can interfere with it? Anything that lasts. Because for all he knows, there may be no tomorrow. Masamune doesn’t allow himself any stability.

Now, those were more of character traits. However, there’s more to Masamune that could potentially be seen as “damaged”.

This may be debatable, however, I do think that one of the reasons behind his lifestyle (not that it’s the only reason and that he doesn’t enjoy it. Only that it’s a thing that could possibly magnify it) is... Well. He tells himself he is ready to die, but for a man that made his peace with death, he clings desperately to anything good about life.

Now, I don’t doubt his motivation. I believe that if a time came and it was necessary, he would sacrifice himself without a doubt. He would live his life as to be a perfect leader, no matter the cost. But since he doesn’t know when the time will come and since he doesn’t want to regret anything, he doesn’t allow himself to live slowly. It must be fast - it may be over before it fully began.

I don’t consider this by itself to be a flaw. I think a part of him enjoys it. However, I presume that this ongoing intensity combined with little close connections (remember, he’s still a lord to his vassals) can be draining at times, almost desperate.

I’ve already talked about the trauma related to killing his father. However, I think that another traumatic event overlooked in his case is the loss of his eye - and I do dare to say that it was really bad by itself as well.

And I don’t mean just pain. Well. I’m chronically ill and I don’t think I would lie much if I said that being forced to alter your routine is really hard at first. I don’t think that it would be a lie to state that losing a part of functionality of your body can be traumatic by itself as well.

So, he lost sight in his eye first. As such, he was seen as a nuisance by his family - he was hated and this hatred was internalized. For a child to wish they were never born...? It hurts. It hurts a lot, much more when it’s the people, who should protect you, who hurt you like so. He was “defective”.

Now. He decided to take it out. To just get rid of it, to cut it out of himself, to let it be part of the past. He didn’t need to, but he did. Possibly because this eye was a part of his weakness and that he couldn’t have. And this time, it must have hurt again, this time physically.

And by the end of it? He was left with a scar on his face, another reminder of his own perceived imperfection, reminder of a flaw. The all-so-confident Masamune doesn’t generally show it to people - when they fall into the lake and he needs to take off his eyepatch, he tells MC it’s okay to look away. She doesn’t even have a chance to think about it, and he already tells her it’s not a pretty sight. Despite all the temporary lovers he had, there was never any other person before MC who he allowed to touch his scar.

Now, why to even mention all of that? Aren’t there enough positive qualities that I could talk about instead?

But even that all aside - isn’t all in the past? I don’t think so. In moments where he gets pulled away from the reality, Masamune still reaches for his missing eye and instinctively covers it with his hand.

____________________

Well, sure. Let me put it like so:

With this everything, he could have easily caved in. He could turn to pure egoism, he could fund his own whims and be a medicore ruler. He could be selfish.

But, at the end of the day, he chose for his goal to be to allow people to have a future in which they don’t have to go hungry. Where they don’t have to struggle to have this basic need met, as it wasn’t so obvious then.

Because he cares about others so much.

I don’t think this really shines through with his flaws being ignored. And sure, plenty of that stuff needs to be worked through. But... It is only that despite this struggle, he still retained his heart - and as we’ve been informed in his eternal route epilgoue, he was a really sensitive and empathetic child.

As per request, a tag for @tsubaki3192

[watchathon]

Stitch Day Special: Lilo & Stitch

In case you’re finding this post just by browsing the tags I’ve used for this post, this is the Watch-a-Thon, a blog where I’m hoping to watch an episode of a show every one-to-two days, with a short blog post where I give my thoughts on what I’ve just seen. Each new point starts with a hyphen and a bolded first word.

- Like so. 

But today? Well, today I’ve got an extra-special post in the wings about a movie, one of my favorite Disney movies, starring my absolute favorite Disney character: Lilo & Stitch!

- I like the variation on the Disney logo. That is the kind of stuff that they just couldn’t do with their new big fancy CGI logo. 

- No clue why Jumba tried to deny that he created an experiment. I don’t much mind since it led to a funny joke, but c’mon, evil genius, you should be smart enough to plead guilty.

- “I would never, ever... make more than one.” *glances meaningfully in the direction of the series*

- “What is that monstrosity...?” He’s a cute widdle fluffball, that’s what he is!

- “Meega nala kweesta!” Canonically, this translates to “I want to destroy”, but that seems a little lukewarm for the reaction he got. Maybe a looser translation is in order...

There could be an entire aristocrats joke in those three words. The whole script to Batman v Superman. The opening notes to “Never Gonna Give You Up”...

Or maybe just “bitch”.

- Blood work is a lot different in space...

- Weird to imagine given the rest of the franchise, but Gantu was once a respected captain of the galactic federation.

- It’s easy to perceive Stitch as a dumb brute, but he’s pretty smart. He connected the dots all on his own, within minutes of his imprisonment, that if the guns are locked onto his DNA, he can use his saliva to trick them. Jumba wasn’t kidding when he boasted of his experiment’s intelligence.

- And not only was Gantu a captain, Pleakley was an expert on the planet Earth. Weird, innit...?

- “Are [humans] intelligent?” “No.” An exchange that only hurts more with every year.

- Love the implication that Pleakley was just suggesting several different relatives to assist with the capture of Stitch from when they were on the deck up until they got to the prison where Jumba was held.

- Now this is what we (or rather TVTropes) call an establishing character moment. A fish floats by holding a sandwich in its mouth, implying (soon confirming) that Lilo was the one to give it the sandwich, before rushing to the hula practice that she was late for, stopping to take a picture of a tourist along the way.

- And then after she arrives at hula practice, she explains that she had to give Pudge the fish a peanut butter sandwich because he controls the weather.

- No clue why the other girls are disgusted by Scrump. I always wanted a Scrump when I was a little lass.

- “Did you ever kill anyone?” Lilo asks the right questions.

- Nani, y’could’ve avoided this if you’d given a thumbs up instead...

- I don’t get the glare Cobra gives Nani after Lilo says that her friends need to be punished. Voodoo isn’t a failure of parenting. In many cases, at least...

- Licking Nani, growling after her capture, Lilo already has a lot in common with Stitch.

- Lucky that Lilo is such a quirky kid. The scene (semi-)explaining why she takes pictures of tourists was deleted, but it doesn’t feel like anything is missing because she already has a few habits that just plain inexplicable, like feeding Pudge, practicing voodoo with a pickle jar...

- Lilo wishing for an angel because of how lonely she is, that’s a sad moment. But also kinda funny in hindsight after she sarcastically names Stitch’s love interest Angel in the series.

- Lord give me the undisturbed...ness, of that frog who watched Stitch get run over by several trucks and only tilted its head.

- If they thought Stitch was dead, why did they keep it in the shelter? I mean, Lilo would probably adopt a dead dog, but she’s the outlier.

- I like how Jumba programmed, as part of Stitch’s destructive tendencies, an urge to steal everybody’s left shoe.

- You can just about pinpoint the moment where Stitch’s heart drops at learning that he’s on an island with no major cities.

- Just occurred to me that the badness level is red, and Stitch’s evil counterparts in the series (627 and Leroy) are both red.

- Ah, David. One of the best Disney love interests, mostly because he isn’t entirely a love interest. There is a mutual attraction, but Nani just isn’t ready for that with everything going on in her life, and David respects that and is happy to be a friend.

- I like how everyone except Lilo heavily suspects that Stitch isn’t a dog. 

- Ohhh, the thought of Stitch having drank coffee. I mean, I’d love to see it, but it’d be Hell for Nani.

- Stitch looks just plain adorable with a lei.

- Well, Lilo, you did tell Stitch he should create something. And he did, he just destroyed his creation afterward.

- Pleakley is a gender-nonconforming icon.

- The first time we see Stitch doing something without even the intention of destroying anything is when he finds the book about the Ugly Duckling. It’s clear that he’s fascinated just by looking at it. And when Lilo explains the story? It resonates with him. Or, well, perhaps he wants it to resonate with him.

- I wish I had an evil koala dog that played records.

- Are we sure that “Meega nala kweesta” means “I want to destroy”? Maybe it means “I was born to dance”, ‘cause Stitch learns about dancing and in less than a minute he’s already an expert.

- I imagine this montage, or slightly earlier, would be when that deleted scene of Lilo trolling the obnoxious racist tourists originally came into play. And I like this scene, but, I do wish that scene hadn’t gotten cut. And I wish that they fully animated it and inserted it into the movie like Warner Bros did with The Iron Giant.

- Nothing cheers me up more than this scene of Stitch and his newfound family going surfing. And especially since Stitch is aquaphobic. He’s very much aware that he cannot swim, and likely wouldn’t survive if he fell off the board into the ocean. But even he eventually gets into the spirit of it, asks Lilo himself to go surfing, and enjoys a nice bonding moment with his family. And David.

- Of course Jumba and Pleakley had to ruin a perfectly sweet moment.

- And so we transition from a heartwarming wholesome moment, to a heartbreaking tearful moment. You can just see Nani holding back tears as she says that she needs to take Lilo home. 

As for Stitch, David probably didn’t even realize that Stitch could understand him when he said that Lilo and Nani had a chance until Stitch came along. But Stitch did understand, and he’s visibly hurt by the idea. He always wanted to destroy, but in this moment, he’s ashamed of how he might have destroyed Lilo’s family.

- And the Ugly Ducking metaphor comes back, when in this moment, as Stitch is coming back to a family that he fears he may have ruined, he sees a lone duck... before that duck is followed by a big family of ducklings.

- Lilo says that Stitch cries at night. So, it would seem that even before he completely learned how to be nice, Stitch wasn’t entirely emotionless.

- This whole act of the film is heart-wrenching. First Nani gets confirmation that she and Lilo will be separated, then Stitch starts to fear that he may have caused it. Then because of that? Stitch leaves, taking only the Ugly Duckling book with him. And he can only see in himself the page of the Duckling, lost and crying.

- Then Jumba tells Stitch, who’s already in a bad place emotionally, that he was made to destroy, has no family, and could never have one.

- I don’t want to think about what happened to that chainsaw.

- There’s a certain feeling that comes up in the middle of this fight scene, where you realize that a house is being destroyed, a house belonging to a family that was very much at risk of separation. And you realize that this will only hurt their case beyond any repair.

- If the past day hadn’t been bad enough, Stitch is told by his best friend Lilo that he ruined everything, and to get away.

- And so Nani really does have her sister taken away. Now, taken away by aliens is a lot different than taken away by social services. It’s worse. This way Nani knows that Lilo definitely won’t get a loving family, and Nani will definitely never see her again.

- The confusion is visible on Jumba and Pleakley when Stitch goes and comforts Nani with a quote about family. All they know about Stitch is that he was made to destroy. And then, once he’s captured, he does just about the opposite.

- “Ih.” To this day I sometimes say Ih on reflex when asked a yes-or-no question. Guess I watched this movie way too many times as a kid, huh? ...I regret nothing.

- Originally, the big red plane-looking thing was supposed to just be a plane, and it would’ve flown through a city. And it was changed because it was too soon after 9/11. But me personally, I think the big red thing is real cool, and I like it flying through the valleys.

- “Stitch is unconscious.” I like that Jumba calls Stitch by his name here. In the series, he always calls Stitch “626″ but his name is Stitch. And I like the rare occasion when that’s respected by the mad genius who created him.

- I want to believe that Stitch dodged that laser for the sake of the frog he was holding more than for his own sake. Stitch is strong enough that a few moments later, he survives an explosion of a whole truck that he’s lying on top of.

- Stitch proudly calling himself “cute and fluffy” is another thing I just love. Might be reading too much into it, but I like that he can call himself by those descriptors and still have total confidence in his ability to kick Gantu’s patookie.

- My favorite scene in the movie, and the scene I took the picture from.

Stitch corrects the Grand Councilwoman about his name. And when he’s told that he needs to go in the ship (the implication being that he’ll be punished like he was meant to be at the beginning), he doesn’t rebel or try to escape. He only politely asks that he be allowed to say goodbye.

He explains that his family is “little and broken, but still good”, both explaining it to the councilwoman and reassuring Lilo and Nani.

This is the ultimate display of how Stitch has grown. And he grew because, despite what Jumba said, Stitch could find, and did find, the one true place he belonged: With a good, loving family.

- The Grand Councilwoman is clearly remorseful that they’ll have to separate Stitch from his family, but she can’t bend the law for this one case. And she doesn’t, but it just so happens that, legally speaking, Lilo owns Stitch. And, well, what self-respecting Grand Councilwoman would steal a child’s property?

- A lot of people (including middle-school me) say that the stuff with Stitch and the aliens get in the way of the story of Lilo and Nani. I disagree. These two stories are intertwined, both about people wanting to stay with the family where they know they belong. I just couldn’t, at all, imagine one without the other.

- Now this is the kind of ending I love. It’s become common for animated movies, sequels in particular, to end on the two main characters getting separated. But here? Stitch is now a definitive part of the family, and won’t be separated from them anytime soon. Anime? What anime?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I guess I’ll be doing this on the rare occasion I cover movies...?

Anyway, this is a great movie. A modern classic. And one of very few things that doesn’t just hold up from when I was a kid, it gets better. When I was a tiny kid, I was only interested in the space aliens. When I was in my early teens, I thought the aliens were kiddy stuff. 

But nowadays, I can truly appreciate it. I can appreciate how both aspects are vital to the movie. Lilo and Stitch are both equally important. You can’t have one without the other.

And most of all, I can appreciate the story of Stitch (as well as Jumba and Pleakley) finding a family, and Lilo (as well as Nani) saving theirs from being torn apart.

Lilo & Stitch brings me to tears of both joy and sadness every time I watch it. And I guarantee I’ll be watching it many more times in the future.

...Does it still count as a Stitch Day special if I’m posting after midnight? No, probably not. I thought I’d only take two hours, then I took four and a half. Guess that means I had more thoughts than I thought I did!

[risingsouls]

Recruited: Chapter 11

[Another chapter in the books! This one runs parallel in time to the last (which will be pretty obvious) and has a little more action! So enjoy, have fun, etc.

And don’t forget: you can find the rest of this series and soem of my other BS for this blog here!]

Nabooru

Their trio of space pods burst through Noya's atmosphere and slammed into the surface, a triangle of craters left in their wake. Nabooru replaced her scouter on the side of her face, a press of the button causing the yellow characters to flash across the orange glass as it started back up. She opened up the door and floated out of her pod, touching down on the maroon dirt. A teal, creeping vegetation sprawled over it as far as the eye could see. In the distance, she noted the silhouette of a city or village  and a range of mountains beyond it.

She stretched and glanced to her side as Nappa and Raditz joined her, both working out the kinks in their own joints from the long trip. "Awfully quiet here. Where do you think that team is? Hope they didn't kick the bucket before we got here," Nappa said, popping his knuckles. "Maybe it means we'll get a good fight out of these guys if they're calling in reinforcements."

The repetitive pings of a scan sounded from Raditz's scouter. "I wouldn't get my hopes up," the other Saiyan replied, turning around to check the other direction. "I'm not getting a single reading, save for five decent ones off in that direction."

He nodded opposite the mountain range. "Make that three."

Nabooru raised an eyebrow and began her own scan, Nappa following suit with a huff. "You're fucking with us. Why the hell would we be called here if they didn't need us?"

"No, he's right. I'm only getting those three readings, too. That must be the team we're meant to rendezvous with."

Raditz flew up several meters and gazed around. "Looks like something went down over there," he called down to them. "Might have been a settlement or something. Doesn't look like there's much left now."

"Let's go check it out. Something feels off here."

Nabooru followed Raditz and Nappa to the site of what could have potentially been a compound of sorts, a decent sized village, or something else entirely. The damage sustained in the area made it difficult to tell, the edifices reduced to little more than a half foot of wall at best. Scorch marks and craters dotted the area, and they could hardly walk a few feet without finding a corpse or the remnants of one. Each had a variant of blue skin, ranging from near white hues to navy. A few wore what she guessed were plain clothes, while most sported a sort of white armor. Soldiers. Most of the bodies were heavily mutilated, physically torn or shot with concentrated ki blasts to pieces, others sporting deep gashes as if from claws. Maroon soil was stained with emerald blood. Fresh.

"I thought I recognized that power level." Nappa squatted down next to a corpse missing every limb. The lower half of its skull had been crushed as if beneath someone's foot. "Looks like Shikoo and his team's work, don't you think, Raditz?"

"Seems that way. Doesn't seem like they need our help, though. And they never have before." His frown deepened. "Maybe it's some kind of trap."

Raditz vocalized Nabooru's growing fear as each piece of evidence seemed to confirm the theory. "Who's Shikoo?" she asked, turning her attention from the massacre and back toward the direction in which their scouters pinged the readings. Two of the power levels weren't much and would hardly be a challenge for even Raditz. But the third was more powerful, and while only around Nappa's power level, her insides squirmed. Why would they be sent here if this team had everything under control? Was there some secret of this planet they weren't privy to that presented a danger they couldn't handle?

"One of Frieza's favorites, and I'm sure you can see why. What the guy lacks in power he makes up for in brutality and dirty tricks," Nappa told her, folding his arms over his chest. "Makes us Saiyans look soft. But I'm sure you've seen the guy. He's bigger than me, looks like a cross between some kind of reptile and a dog. Red fur and scales. Loud and brags constantly."

Nabooru's brow furrowed and she clicked her tongue. "Mm, yes I've seen him around the base once in a while. Never considered him important enough to learn his name, especially after he and his idiots tried to force themselves on me back when I first started on the force." The corner of her lips quirked upward in a malicious smirk. "He didn't take being turned down very well. But I took care of him and made it clear he should leave me alone."

Raditz chuckled. "Good. The blowhard deserves all the beatings that come to him. Especially for that shit. Nappa and I may have heckled you for a romp in the sack, but he's so full of himself, of course he would try to force his ugly ass on you. I hope these guys took him down a peg or two."

"Confirms the rumors anyway," huffed Nappa. "Guy's disgusting. Pretty pathetic when you gotta resort to force to get off. Guess he ain't much of a charmer, no surprise there."

She kept her surprise about their stance on rape to herself. Considering the violent nature and disregard for life, their history of taking what they wanted by force, rape didn't seem like it would be far off the table for them. Both the Saiyans with her had taken her refusals without much hassle, so she supposed it shouldn't have with at least these two. A point of respect for them, at least, considering the rampant trouble they had with men attempting such with her people back home. As a race of all females and how their style of dress revealed far more skin than Hylian garb, men had a sense of entitlement to Gerudo women, and seemed to believe that meant they were asking for it. 

"I suppose we should contact Frieza," she said at last, reaching up to her scouter and selecting the proper channel. "Let him know what we found and what we're meant to do instead."

Once the scouter connected successfully, Frieza greeted her before she could open her mouth to speak: "Ah, what good timing, Nabooru. You have landed on planet Noya and met with the other team there?"

"Yes, my lord. But we are confused. When we landed, we found the planet had already been successfully purged of its in--"

"Yes, yes, I am aware of the success in purging the planet. The instructions to rendezvous with the soldiers sent to Noya were...purposefully vague. The task for you and the Saiyans is to kill that team. Don't worry your pretty head over why, dear. It's unbecoming of a soldier. Their punishment has been a long time coming."

He broke the connection before she could confirm her understanding, but by the questioning expressions in her comrades' faces, her own revealed her opinion on the troublesome news. Surprised wasn't the right word for what she felt. Frieza was known for orders that felt out of place or cruel. Unwarranted and harsh. But piecing together their situation, Nappa's words, and the fact that they had been split from Vegeta only further impressed upon her a sinking feeling of dread. She less suspected a trap for them than viewing it all as one for Vegeta, a "favorite" of Frieza's like Shikoo. Or if it was one for them, was this a precursor to the orders Vegeta would be handed? To end his team and allies in the rebellion they plotted?

"What'd he say?" Nappa asked at last, snapping her out of a spiral of paranoia and back to the task at hand.

"He means for us to kill Shikoo and his crew."

"Really?" Raditz's brow furrowed. "What did they do?"

"He didn't say. Just that their punishment was a long time coming."

The Saiyans exchanged a look of disbelief with a hint of concern. Nabooru wondered if they considered the same possibilities as her. If they wondered if some other team or Vegeta and Frieza themselves lay in wait to off them, too. As much as she wanted to ask, she didn't know who could be listening. And they had a job to do. If anything followed this, they would have to face it once they dealt with Shikoo and his cronies. The memory of them offering to help her find her way back to the barracks and then cornering her, how they tried to touch her anywhere they could reach and tugged her hair, their taunting words from how pretty she was and how good she probably felt to insulting her lack of control of her ki yet. Maybe she didn't back then, but her strength proved enough to subdue the three of them and send them to the hospital ward. She escaped their disgusting behavior, but how many hadn't, if what Nappa said rang true?

Back then, she still tried to cling to her no killing rule for her sanity and her ignorance to the sort of backlash killing fellow soldiers would have. But now she not only had permission, she had the will to do it. If not only for her own revenge, but for the horrors they inflicted on others, too. This time, she wouldn't hold back. She didn't have to.

Three scouters beeped to signal approaching power levels, and Nabooru couldn't help but snort as the hulking beast Shikoo and his cohorts landed before them. 

"Come to see how real soldiers work, apes?" Shikoo grinned at Nappa and Raditz, showing off sharp, yellowing teeth in his elongated, canine-like muzzle. A forked tongue flicked out to taste the air. "Where's your diminutive leader, huh? Someone finally give the prince with no subjects the licking he deserves?"

His cohorts snickered and Nabooru noticed Nappa's fists and jaw tighten with the flare of his temper. "You idiots won't be laughing in a minute." The Saiyan general smirked and cracked his knuckles. "I've been waiting for a chance to stomp you."

The smaller two--an orange skinned male with a too-blonde Mohawk and a weedy, birdlike soldier with beady black eyes--shifted in obvious discomfort under Nappa's threat, but Shikoo remained unperturbed. "Please. You wouldn't dare. Not with my favor with Frieza. The alliance my people have is too precious for him to allow a couple monkeys to pick a fight with me."

Nabooru snorted, but his claims had her mind shifting back to her people. The fate of the Saiyans. "That explains a lot. But too bad for you, Frieza seems to think killing you is more important than whatever deal you and your people have with the empire."

Yellow eyes snapped to her, slit pupils dilating for a moment in recognition. His hackles rose and hair surrounding a line of spikes along his back stood on end. His aggravation melted back to sick amusement and he laughed. "Well, well. I remember you. Come crawling back for that fun I promised you after all, huh?" His attention fell back to Nappa and Raditz. "Taking orders from women now? You Saiyans really are a joke. Guess it is a step up from short, angry, and overcompensating. Easier to look at, too."

"Can we get this over with? This guy's voice is making me sick," Raditz complained. "I'll take the two wimps in the back alone if I have to."

"You're still on that?! What did I tell you?!" Shikoo snarled. "Frieza will have your heads if you try anything!"

"And what did I tell you? Frieza himself sent us here to kill you." A smirk curled Nabooru's lips and she turned her attention to Nappa and Raditz. "You mind if I take him? I'm really kicking myself for not finishing him off all those years ago."

Nappa huffed and folded his arms, making a show of his indignance. "Damn, guess I can't argue with that. Much as I wanna bury this mutt myself, I think you've got a bigger stake." He nudged Raditz. "You take the orange one and I got bird brain." Without waiting for a response, the larger of the two surged forward and slammed his leg into his opponent's side, sending him sailing with a squawk. The general laughed and swept after him. "Try and make this fun for me, birdie!"

Raditz shot a series of magenta blasts toward the other minion who, more prepared for the onslaught than his companion, dodged backward nimbly and blocked what he couldn't with raised arms. "Give him a few good ones for me, won't you Nabs?" He shot her a wry grin and pursued his opponent with ruthless abandon. 

“Stupid move on their part, leaving you alone with me,” Shikoo snarled, vicious grin back on his mug. “You don’t have the stomach to kill me. I saw it in your eyes then, and I’m sure you’ll falter again now. And that’s when I’ll finish what I started all those years ago. Maybe I’ll make your monkey friends watch.”

Nabooru rolled her eyes skyward. “Please. I feel so bad for you, I’ll give you a free first hit.” She beckoned him with her index finger. “Come on, big guy. Let’s see if you can do more than just flap your ugly mouth.”

As she hoped, Shikoo snarled at her taunt and lunged. Black claws extended outward and he swiped them toward her throat. Nabooru’s hand shot up and she grasped his wrist, her hand barely covering half of its circumference. He grunted and struggled against her strength. “So you’re a whore and a filthy liar…”

Her grip tightened, and bones crunched beneath her hand. “I’ve kind of proven the first one wrong by turning you down, haven’t I?” She caught his opposite fist. Her smirk widened when his eyes flashed in rage. “But I suppose you’re right about the liar thing.”

"I'll kill you, bitch!" he roared, tugging back in an attempt to free himself. 

She held fast, orange energy flaring up around her. After a few more tugs, she released him, forcing him to stumble backward when he lost his balance. Nabooru shot forward and buried her fist in his scaled belly. Shikoo wheezed and doubled over. Head at her level, Nabooru wheeled back and kneed him in the face with bone-crunching force, whipping his head back and sending him wheeling backward once more. Blue blood oozed from his nose and mouth.

"This has been fun." Shikoo seethed as he raised his head again and spat blood on her boots. He shook with his rage, and Nabooru only wished Nappa and Raditz had remained with his crew to witness his embarrassment. She flexed her hand, forming a cylinder of ki in her palm. She wrapped her fingers around it like a hilt and willed it outward, curving and widening it into the shape of a blade similar to those she favored back home. "But I'm tired of playing. You're not really worth breaking a sweat over."

Using his shock at the sight of her ki blade, she shot forward again. She swept the blade downward, tip aimed at the ground between his feet. She brought it back up in a swift arc, between his legs and through his skull, splitting him vertically in half. His responding punch halted mid-swing, and his body fell apart with a stomach-churning squelch and a pair of thuds as each half fell to the ground.

"Geez, Nabs. Did you have to go crotch up? You made me cringe."

Her ki blade dissipated and she rested her hands on her hips. She turned to face Nappa as Raditz rejoined them, neither appearing to have taken too much damage. Raditz looked slightly ruffled with a bloody lip, but otherwise, both defeated Shikoo's goons without issue. "Of course. A disgusting bastard like him deserves it. If I wasn't supposed to kill him, I might have stopped at around his belly button."

Raditz wiped his mouth and grumbled. "Has anyone told you you're terrifying? You've been around Vegeta too long."

"I didn't realize you two were so squeamish," Nabooru snorted. She glanced at Shikoo's split corpse, the glee from her victory short lived as she remembered his claims. How Vegeta was within the tyrant’s clutches and, if Frieza knew what they planned, could be in danger.

 "Speaking of Vegeta, what do you think Frieza has him doing?" A subtle attempt to probe their thoughts on the matter while potentially gaining some reassurance. "He's done this before right?"

“Sure. And I didn’t realize you were such a worrywart.” Nappa and Raditz exchanged knowing glances. “I thought Vegeta was just messing with us, but you two really are up to more than just training when you’re left alone with free time, huh?”

Her posture stiffened and heat rushed to her cheeks. “What is that supposed to mean?” She narrowed her eyes and marched over to them. Their grins only widened and she prodded both of them in the chest with her index fingers. “Just because the two of you can’t keep it in your battle suits doesn’t mean we’re a couple of horny teenagers who can’t handle being alone together. We actually want to get stronger unlike you slackers.”

“I have noticed he’s been in a better mood than normal once in a while,” added Raditz, ignoring her. “Sort of confirms that his smug attitude when he told us ‘maybe, maybe not’ last time we asked wasn’t just him messing with us.”

“Makes him a damn hypocrite though. He told us to quit trying. Guess he didn’t want to share.”

“We’re not sleeping together! Ever! Not even once!” Nabooru could kick that idiot for basically bragging to the other two Saiyans. She had faith neither of them would spread it around whether they believed it or not, but their insistence still pissed her off. “We train. That’s it.”

“It’s not a big deal. In fact, I approve. It’s about time the two of you got laid.” Nabooru slapped Nappa’s hand away before he could plop it on her shoulder. He winced. “Besides, it’s beneficial for us all because, like Raditz said, it puts Vegeta in a better mood for a little while. We all win.”

“Maybe he’s just in a better mood because you two aren’t bothering him as much.” She flipped around on her heel. “Can we please just get out of here? Seeing that ugly bastard again did nothing for my mood, and if you two keep this up, I’ll do the same to you as I did to him and make up the most embarrassing stories for your deaths I can think of.”

She heard the two snigger, but they joined her in flight without more of their incessant teasing. It at least distracted her from her paranoia and concern for the prince’s wellbeing outside of the usual sort of abuse or inanity he would suffer in Frieza’s company. A premature assumption, perhaps, but she decided to take at least Nappa’s lack of concern as a good sign. Or enough of one to keep her from fretting until she knew otherwise. 

[056crowshit6556]

Disillusionment in the characters of Mitzi May and Mordecai Heller

I wanted to discuss what I find to be a fascinating relationship between Mitzi and Mordecai.

There’s no better place to start than with Ivy Pepper’s dream sequence in “Nightmare”.

Okay, so breaking this scene down. The three characters Viktor, Mordecai, and Mitzi surround a tree which represents Atlas, or at least, a conceptualized version of what Atlas has become, everything he built, and everything he represented. Ivy calls the thing they’re surrounding a “ghost”, and asks why they don’t turn around, i.e. move on with their lives. Why don’t they leave?

Mitzi and Mordecai are attached to the tree by a blue ghostly mist. It’s specifically attached to their eyes, showing how their connection to Atlas gives them ‘vision’, focus, purpose, and foresight.

I find it particularly fascinating that Mitzi and Mordecai are the ones attached to this tree by the soul sucking/soul giving light, but I think it’s appropriate considering that Atlas was their entire world. He is what connects Mitzi and Mordecai, which is what I’m going to try to explain through this post.

Both characters were born and raised in abject poverty (appropriately enough, one came from ‘northern’ poverty, the other ‘southern’ poverty— a subtle but efficient dichotomy between the two). Both had talents that Atlas fostered, both of them liked how Atlas made them feel special, both of them vied for his attention, which is the main source for the animosity and connection between them in the first place.

I’m interested in their relationship because I find it fascinatingly bitter, complicated, mysterious, and for some reason, very tender. Not tender as in affectionately warmhearted, but tender because both of them are a soft spot in each other’s memories. Mitzi acknowledges Mordecai as “a helping of salt to rub in her wounds” and Mordecai states that he has “mixed feelings” about this meeting. That I’ll explore in a moment, but first, it stands to mention what Mitzi says to Asa in “Heartstrings”:

“You only know someone until you don’t”

Which to me, might be a little tongue-in-cheek on Mitzi’s part, suggesting that she knows something about Mordecai that no one, not Asa or even us, the readers, fully understand. If there’s something about Mitzi’s character that has been shown so far it’s that she goes through the motions of social grace and banter while maintaining a sense of condescending, underlying humor about the irony of situations. This line went over my head until I went back and read it, and the subsequent scene of them talking in the car further adds to the implication that they know each other more intimately than expected.

Being taken in by Atlas, they were exposed to each other as a consequence of circumstance. They both shared Atlas to a degree which bordered on the unhealthy, because I don’t think they formed identities beyond the ones they formed in relation to Atlas. With the added fact that they were both fairly young and impressionable when Atlas took them in, and the subsequent familial rivalry and resentment their relationship created, there’s no surprise that they’re both disillusioned and blindly clinging to the dead tree as seen in Ivy Pepper’s dream.

The problem I see between Mitzi and Mordecai is that because of circumstance, they had to be vulnerable with each other, and even though jealously may have created resentment between them, I think the two flashback scenes in “Hamstring” and “Confessional” state multitudes about that resentment. It’s not just jealousy, (Mordecai asserts that he has no interest in defending her, which sounds petty and jealous although he could have valid reasons— it’s unclear at this point), but I figure that the other layer to Mitzi and Mordecai’s resentment of each other stems from the assumption that they were vulnerable with each other at some point. Whatever happened at this moment, which Mitzi refers to as a “bad memory”, altered their relationship in some form or another.

“What’s left to question between you and I?”

“That remains between us.”

I can’t imagine Mordecai taking too kindly to anyone he has to be vulnerable with, and I don’t think Mitzi would enjoy admitting she has weaknesses or flaws either. It’s one of the reasons I find their characters to be so similar. Neither of them like dropping their protective facade but I think in the past they did with each other. (Mitzi’s facade being a socialite debutante, Mordecai’s facade being a cold-blooded sociopath). I think they perform traits of those facades, but the problem is I think those traits were fostered and encouraged by Atlas, maybe without him even meaning to. It’s like...two children will act a certain way because they can tell those actions please their parent. It’s really sad and really distressing but that’s the way these two characters operate in the realm of the story.

The man Mordecai is interrogating, Grombach, states that Mordecai doesn’t seem like the “cake-eater” type, but he does fit right in with that crowd.

And Zib, who knew Mitzi before she met Atlas, states that she’s not the sleepy eyed girl he found in Georgia anymore in “Blood-money” (although I think Zib might be looking at Mitzi through nostalgic rose-colored glasses).

Case in point, Mitzi and Mordecai’s characters are alot more multi-layered and complex than simply a socialite-flapper and a triggerman-cake eater, although they did perform those roles reasonably well.

(That’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to tell who is taking the gun in that particular flashback. Mordecai claims that Mitzi didn’t shoot anyone, so it’s reasonable to assume that Mitzi is handing the gun to Mordecai. (I could be completely wrong but it’s fun to speculate). She taught him how to maneuver, or at least interpret, social situations. In turn, he could have done something, or helped her, commit a murder. It’s ugly but that’s his speciality. If Mitzi is handing the gun to Mordecai and asking him to eliminate someone, then in such an instance she stops being “Atlas’s little wife” and starts being a boss. Maybe Mordecai trusted her judgement on it and the plan went horribly wrong, and so he blames her for it. There’s alot to unpack there so I’ll just leave it at that).

This idea of creating a persona is even perpetrated by Mitzi, who claims Mordecai to be her ‘little project’ in the mini-comic “Photoplay”— and although I’m sure he was reluctant at first, Mordecai allowed Mitzi to help him integrate into Atlas’s society— the 1920s flapper way.

(Not to mention that line from Mordecai: “You like it because he likes you to like it?” That sums up perfectly what I’m trying to get at— I’m not saying Mitzi’s interest in photography is a facade, or Mordecai’s interest in being a bookkeeper or a hitman is a facade either, but what I’m getting at is those interests were directly correlated to Atlas and were absolutely influenced by Atlas. They call each other out for using Atlas’s money or clothes, and I imagine there’s been other times where they purposefully nitpick the other when Atlas gave them a gift. It’s jealousy in its most blatant form).

That one line by Mordecai is so good because it encapsulates the way their relationship was at the beginning before “things visibly deteriorated.” They were both butting heads with each other, nitpicking the other because they knew how Atlas changed both of their lives. It’s so childish but definitely prevalent among siblings— Mordecai thought he had some sort of upper hand, that he was his own person, but Mitzi reminds him that he’s wearing Atlas’s shirts, inevitably reminding him that he can’t escape Atlas’s influence. We want to think we’re our own person, free from influences, but those closest to us inevitably remind us where and what we came from.

And neither Mitzi or Mordecai can hide from each other the fact that Atlas took them in and gave them financial security, food on their plate, clothes on their back, and a sense of purpose. He made them feel different than how they actually feel about themselves. This is expressed by Serafine to Mordecai in “Redivivo” and “Keepsake”:

“And like dat, he’s lit up a path out de black mire you got yourself in. Shinin’ a direction for you, real clear. His direction. But once you take dat direction, once dat light is on you, dat’s all you got. De other loa leave you. You are obliged to him only, always. Or else you are lost again.”

And in “Vestige”, Mitzi admits that she liked how he made her feel special.

Serafine sums it up pretty well: Mitzi and Mordecai found someone that ‘lit up’ the path in front of them.

I want to briefly mention their interaction in “Hamstring” and “Monomania”. Mordecai speaks very differently to Mitzi than the three other male characters in the story (I’m referring to Zib, Rocky, and Wick). It could be the mysterious nature of their relationship but the conflict it adds to the story is intriguing nonetheless. More so, I always got the impression that he spoke to her as an equal. Zib doesn’t like that Mitzi’s capable of deceit, Rocky places her on a pedestal and views her as a damsel-in-distress, and Wick sees her as the elegant flapper widow of the late Atlas May (and a romantic interest, not a business partner). The difference between the aforementioned relationships is that Mitzi and Mordecai don’t want anything from each other, and they call each other out quite bluntly— Mitzi tells him he can’t treat her as both an enemy and a confidante, Mordecai places some blame on her for Atlas’s death. So when I say that their relationship feels equal to me, it does seem that they have an equal amount of dirt on each other, but at the same time, they tell each other the truth. Two cats in the same boat and the boat’s name is Atlas? Such close familiarity means they can’t hide things from each other, not really, and they can’t raise their expectations of the other person when they already know that person’s limits. In contrast, Zib wants Mitzi to run away with him and forget Atlas, Rocky wants her approval, and Wick wants her because of his romantic interest in her. I’m not saying their intentions are wrong or mistrustful, in fact, they aren’t. All characters have motive, it’s what drives the story. The thing is, they’ve all created misconstrued personas of Mitzi, but I don’t get the impression that Mordecai has, and I don’t get the impression that she’s construed a false premise of him either. 

That’s the consequence of “growing up” together, building an identity alongside someone, and then, as Mordecai puts it, they witness each other’s identities “visibly deteriorate”— whatever happened between them before Atlas’s death was the incident which revealed each other’s vulnerability. Mordecai tells Mitzi to “keep her charade” out of the way, insinuating that he knows she’s capable of putting on appearances, but it’s a possibility that he’s trying to remove her from the bootlegging business because he doesn’t want to see what happened to Atlas happen to her. Personally, I would love to see the narrative ironically drive Mordecai to lose his current composure (a kind of karmic retribution for looting Lackadaisy’s storeroom, even if his underlying intentions were to push Mitzi farther away from the business, he still did a great job of putting her life in danger). I don’t know if that voodoo sigil Serafine carved on his chest is going to do anything, but if it did, it could make him behave in a way that would expose his charade as Asa’s hired gun as well as his persona as a cold unfeeling triggerman.

Mitzi continues to run the Lackadaisy Speakeasy out of commitment to Atlas; Mordecai continues to take out targets for Marigold out of commitment for obtaining the truth about Atlas’s death— but the problem here is that they’re doing these things in service to a ghost. Neither of them can make things go back to the way it was. Atlas is dead, and without him, they’re lost. Their current commitment to Atlas is commitment to his memory, which is why in the dream sequence they stare blindly into his ghost, tethered to the dead tree.

And clinging to a ghost is a dangerous path to choose.

The lines “You’re obsessive” and “You’ve brought [losses] on yourself in your persistence” stands out to me.

In my opinion, Mordecai is projecting when he tells Mitzi she’s bringing shame to Atlas’s memory, because in an ironic way he’s kind of doing the same thing? This is coming from the same cat bastard who was running ‘round the woods stripped down to his underwear killing people on Marigold’s behalf like he ain’t got no goddamn sense. Literally our first introduction of Mordecai’s character in the comic paints him as an incredibly unhinged individual, so I think the irony of him saying Mitzi is embarrassing is just as hypocritical as Mitzi saying he’s obsessive. It’s so poignant and so deliberate how they project these things onto each other.

(Mitzi accuses Mordecai of being obsessive and she’s right, but her reluctance to give up the Speakeasy is borderline obsessive too. On a brief side note, it’s sad to think about but I genuinely think he’s going to get himself killed because he can’t let go of Atlas. And likewise, Mitzi is going to get into some kind of trouble (either with Wick or the law) because she’s clinging to Atlas’s memory and everything associated with his memory. They’re both obsessive to a degree and it’s showing through their self-serving choices throughout the story thus far. I could be wrong about this but my assumption is that Mitzi refuses to give up the Speakeasy because she feels some sort of underlying guilt, and Mordecai refuses to give up searching for answers because of a sense of obligation; but as stated above, Mordecai projects his feelings of guilt onto Mitzi, and Mitzi projects her feelings of inadequacy onto Mordecai).

The big elephant in the room is whether or not Mitzi and Mordecai conspired to murder Atlas. Personally I think no, but I do think they did something that indirectly caused his death. Perhaps they took out someone together, and that created a chain of events which led to Atlas’s demise. That would further instigate their obsessive guilt over what happened, but it’s a mystery for now.

It’s because of their fixation on Atlas’s memory that they’re both attached to the dead tree in Ivy Pepper’s dream. If they weren’t, they’d be lost in some desolate exodus across the desert landscape, a wasteland similar to the one conceptualized by T.S. Eliot in his work “The Waste Land.”

A few lines from the poem paint an eerie landscape similar to Ivy’s dream:

and

lastly

“I was neither living nor dead”

It’s a common theme among modernist literature that, as William Butler Yeats stated in his poem “The Second Coming”, the “center cannot hold.” After the horrors of World War I, combined with the rapid growth of consumerism and materialism as well as a decline in religious faith, things seemed to “visibly deteriorate”, people in the early 20th century were so disillusioned with the state of things that they felt they had no “center” to keep them tethered to this world; in a sense, what could give them a purpose or sense of meaning? At the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche famously quoted “God is Dead”, but it wasn’t in praise of humanity for turning towards science and reason, but despair because it begged the question: If God is Dead, then what the hell do we believe in? What do we put faith in?

In the case of Mitzi and Mordecai, that faith was in Atlas May.

Trees make excellent visual representations of “centers” in storytelling because our ancient ancestors considered the tree to be their home, their safe haven, the “center” of their world. Why else do trees continually reoccur as symbols of centrifuge throughout mythology, storytelling, and religion? Why else would it be called the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in the book of Genesis, or the World Tree Yggdrasil in Norse mythology, or the Kabbalah in Judaism if it wasn’t alluding to the fact the we evolved as a species alongside the trees?

It makes sense that the story’s center is Atlas, represented by a tree— but that’s the problem— Mitzi and Mordecai are centering themselves around a dead tree. But the memory of Atlas is what continues to give their eyes “light”, and so they don’t look away to face the reality that they are lost in a habitual wasteland.

With Atlas gone, both characters experience disillusionment with either themselves, the world, and maybe even their perceptions of Atlas. Basically, they built their identities around him, and I think they gave each other their most honest representations— which resulted in a sort of strained tenderness between the two which defers foremost to bitter resentment.

[trophywifejimgordon]

okay so, oswald’s stupid aliases meta? oswald’s stupid aliases meta. 

after returning to gotham in 1x3, oswald fairly quickly takes on a few false titles, first when confronted by a fish mooney lackey in an alley who recognizes him as the ex umbrella boy (in a panic, he tells the man that he must be confused, his name is dmitri... yeah, no), then when trying to endear himself to don maroni (trying to claim italian heritage, he calls himself paolo), and finally, in 1x4, when introducing himself to barbara (”i’m peter. peter... humboldt.”). 

so.

of these, and i’m separating the last one into two parts, i pretty much have the least to say about dmitri. while oswald has some time off screen to think about the other names, the confrontation with the mook forces him to come up with that one on the spot, so imo it’s the least likely to have heavy significance; likely he just chose it because it’s a very slavic name to fit the very slavic accent he’s not fooling anyone with. if i were really pressed about it, i might point out that dmitri is derived from demeter, the greek goddess of the harvest (among other things). demeter is responsible for the growth of the crops, but also presides over the cycle of life and death and the sacred law; one of her titles is “law-bringer,” referring to the idea that idea that law and order formed in agricultural society. the interaction oswald has here with this mook is notable in that--before he kills the guy--oswald insists that “gotham needs him! [he is] its future!” oswald aligning himself, consciously or not, with being responsible for gotham’s fertility, its health, and most of all its structure, would not be out of character for him, and is in fact directly supported by his interactions with the man to whom he gives the fake name. 

but that’s all pretty tenuous. 

next up, paolo! this one, i had fun with. see, i had a somewhat classical education. i read the inferno. that being so, my immediate connection with the name paolo (and, indeed, the only major literary connection i could find) was to the story of paolo malatesta and francesca da rimini. they’re condemned to the second circle of hell for their lust, yadda yadda, whatever. i’m mostly just concerned with the man himself; one source (from the owlcation page on paolo and francesca) describes him as “a romantic sort, a man not really interested in the world around him.” (emphasis mine.) which is fun, because guess what oswald’s doing at the time that he gives this name? he’s almost just been hired as a dishwasher at bamonte’s, maroni’s favorite restaurant. given the job, he’s warned that he hears nothing, sees nothing, says nothing. in all likelihood, oswald gives maroni this name mainly for its obvious italian origin, attempting (successfully) to endear himself to the obviously italian don by claiming “his mother’s” italian ancestry. however, there are a lot of italian names he could have chosen from. i don’t see why his choice of this one couldn’t also be a subtle way of reaffirming that he’s following the rules set out for him. paolo malatesta’s wikipedia page (and like, wikipedia as a source, i know, i know, but) takes this a little further, recounting that paolo is traditionally portrayed as a man “not very inclined to aspirations for power.” very NOT oswald, obviously. at the same time, very appropriate for his meek act as he slowly endears himself to maroni. even spicier, though, is this: “recent investigations, however, reveal [paolo] as a young man very attentive to politics and immersed in the political intrigue of the time.” so, could this mean that his fake name is not only a reaffirmation of his lowly position, but also a very, very veiled hint that he’s more than he seems? it would feel appropriate, in this case, that the traditional interpretation of malatesta is the one that oswald is banking on to facilitate his squirm into maroni’s inner circle, while the contemporary reading is the one he actually identifies with. that’s oswald all over; in touch with the old ways, yet in a class all his own.

a little less dramatically, paolo, like the anglicized “paul,” has roots meaning “small” or “humble.” so, in more ways than one, the name can be seen as oswald bending at the knee to maroni’s apparent superiority... and beginning to bide his time.

now, peter humboldt. 

you know, i really never did like this name? i’ve watched 1x4 at least six or seven times, and it always kind of made me go :/ when he offered it, because it’s just kind of... ugly, i guess. i have to say though (while i still think it’s ugly on sound alone), i’m fully obsessed with it now. 

like i said, i’m breaking this down into two parts. my analysis of the “peter” half, as with my analysis of “dmitri,” is a little more tenuous, just because it’s a fairly plain, common name. however, the low hanging fruit is the apostle peter, and never let it be said that i don’t take the low hanging fruit. so... peter. on the surface, oswald doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the story of peter the apostle, and that kind of threw a wrench in my analysis for a while. being inclined to fit that particular square block into this particular round hole, though, i got there. don’t worry, y’all. my penchant for bullshit knows no bounds.

first thing’s first, it bears note that “peter” was an alias of sorts for the apostle, too, since his given name was simon/simeon. he was jesus’s first disciple, and went from that to eventually heading up the church after the crucifixion and all following, becoming the “first pope.” such an ascension is a little reminiscent of oswald’s from umbrella boy to the head of the gotham underworld, i guess. and that’s cool. But We Can Go Deeper. i think it’s always kind of useful to keep in mind who the alias is for at the time; who oswald is trying to fool. in this case, the recipient of his bullshit is barbara kean, with an audience of an already in-the-know jim gordon. before his ascension, and furthermore, before either of them joined with christ, peter was already affiliated with a few other disciples: andrew (his brother), john, and james. (neither here nor there, but st. james was the first of the disciples to be martyred. jim...) peter and james--and the others, but i’m talking about peter and james--worked together; they were fishermen. in light of his audience, i think that it’s not entirely inconceivable that oswald is affirming his pre-ascent connection to james gordon (who he does exclusively refer to as james for the duration of the scene, rather than the ‘jim’ we get a lot more later on). not to mention, you know, the whole nautical theme. it’s not a particularly inspired link, but it does kind of work for him. additionally, while i still admit this is not the strongest meta i’ve ever written, oz choosing this name for these reasons would pair nicely with a running theme later in the season (that gets more or less dropped off by season 2, disappointingly), wherein oswald is repeatedly implied to have at least a tenuous christian background and some possible lingering expression of faith... think about the season finale, when falcone tells him he’ll burn in hell and oswald is momentarily taken aback, admitting, “i do worry about that.” 

(while i’m on this particular bullshit, one other thing that peter is known for is denying jesus three times after his death, but ultimately being forgiven and heading jesus’s church anyway. because i am a lover of Increasingly Tenuous Connections, i kind of see this as foreshadowing of the twist in 1x7. oswald’s protests to fish in the pilot that he would never betray her are reminiscent of peter’s insistence that even if every other disciple renounced jesus, he would not. naturally, he did betray her, and implicitly falcone through her. he continues renouncing his falcone ties, first by secretly joining maroni and then by openly joining maroni and threatening to spark a gang war... but at the end of it all, we learn that his “loyalties” (such as they are) never actually changed--he’s still falcone’s man. just. idk. idk. i’m Thinking About It.) 

aaaaand, finally, humboldt. 

so :) 

this is the part that i honestly wrote this whole thing to explore. because the thing is? i looooooove that he chose the name humboldt, now that i feel like i know why he chose it. i still think it sounds like a stupid name, but the subtext? the implications? UGH! 

right off the bat, my first impression was just that it sounds like the word “humble,” which goes back to the thing with paolo. neat enough. but, this name isn’t given to don maroni--it’s given to barbara. and remember, that’s important. so, what does humboldt mean, other than that? well, the one person with that name famous enough to bear mentioning is apparently alexander von humboldt. i’m certain that the name is, one way or another, a reference to him... and i’ll get to why in a second. he was a prussian (so, eastern european--check) polymath, as well as a naturalist, romantic philosopher, explorer, etc, and raised mainly by a single mother to boot. not all of his hats are directly related to oswald’s interests and skillsets, i’ll grant you, but the fact that he was a naturalist does have direct implications for why i think oswald choosing this name was a deliberate reference to this person by the writers of the show, because see, the thing is, there were quite a few animals named after him... including Spheniscus humboldti.

the humboldt penguin.

given that it’s gotham, i do have to acknowledge the possibility (probability) that that’s as deep as it goes. the writers were looking for a clever way to slip another penguin reference in there (they’re not. exactly. subtle, especially in season one, with the way that the characters are going to turn out), they looked up breeds of penguins, found this one, that’s it. but, on the other hand, there are other breeds of penguins that they could have chosen, and they chose this one. whether it was deliberate or only an accident, the decision was made, and i am running with it. 

because, like, another fun thing about humboldt: he was gay. 

(side note 2: you know tfw you’re on someone’s wikipedia page and there’s a ton of information about them and their life and their contributions to science but you’re like outta my way i ONLY want to know this man’s sexuality? ah, the personal life tab. where would we be without you.)

well, it’s one of those situations where you have to decide if you’re going to try to ascribe modern sexuality labels to historical figures, and at the end of the day, i won’t really get into it. however, though there is some scholarly discourse that cites him as a largely asexual figure (and while i’m definitely not getting into it and do not intend this as an attack on the asexual community in any way, i have to say an obviously gay man being desexualized to make him more palatable feels... familiar), the facts seem undeniable that he experienced same-sex attraction, whether or not you want to define this as exclusive. it is speculated that he had notable affairs with or at least vehement attraction toward wilhelm gabriel wegener, reinhardt von haeften, françois arago, and possibly his valet seifret, among others. maybe gotham writers didn’t intend for this little throwaway alias to be read as an announcement of oswald’s sexuality (although, even if “humboldt” wasn’t, the exchange he has with barbara--“i never get to meet any of jim’s friends, because he doesn’t tell me anything” “men.” “don’t i know!”--sure was... something), but as i am not a coward, i am perfectly content to read it as one anyway. and don’t forget what i said--this is the alias he gives to barbara. barbara, about whom he knows a possibly suspicious amount, given that she’s almost irrelevant to his political schemes. barbara, whose apartment he went to for jim gordon. barbara, who is, perhaps, his perceived romantic rival. 

look, it’s probably just a name and a penguin joke. but what’s the point of metatextual analysis if you can’t be like “he showed up and told barb his name was peter humboldt because he wanted to affirm that his origins are tied to saint jim’s and let it be known that the two of them are in competition for jim’s attention all in the most dramatic way possible and while smugly congratulating himself on being so clever and subtle”?? this isn’t really a threat--in contrast to how creepy he is with women he is threatening, namely fish and liza, oswald is downright courteous to barbara--so much as it is an indulgent expression of petty jealousy. i think he wants jim but perhaps doesn’t even realize the extent or in which way yet; he just wants barbara to know, on some level, that she’s sharing, and jim to know (because jim is just as much an audience to his performance here, and he knows that the alias is fake, might be driven to consider, with that detective brain of his, why he chose what he chose...), on some level, that they’re tied. 

oof. ok. that was a lot, but one last thing. since i’m already indulging in gratuitous oswald parallels with humboldt anyway, i might as well point out this line from a letter he wrote to reinhardt von haeften, after von haeften’s engagement to a woman: “Even if you must refuse me, treat me coldly with disdain, I should still want to be with you... the love I have for you is not just friendship or brotherly love, it is veneration.”

i’m on my bullshit, but... you can hear it in his voice, right?

[honeymoonjin]

day 14

This chapter was such a cathartic experience for me that I wrote book report for it. I have little else to offer at your altar of magic aside from my undying gratitude for your continued hard work and utter awe of your literary prowess. Please enjoy my attempt at articulating the emotions you have managed to evoke in me with this chapter. Thank you once again! 💜 Jan

Set to Self Destruct: An analysis of Sora’s Day 14 of “The Gentlemen”

Every genre brings with it a set of expectations that shapes the kinds of stories it can tell and the themes it can explore. “The Gentlemen” is entirely shot from one specific location, with its participants prohibited from leaving the premises of the villa (with the allowance only for Y/N and the fan favorite winner of that week to leave for a one night date). This restriction creates a scenario where 1) at first the occupants fall into an unspoken, almost idyllic community and 2) inevitably the conflicts that arise as a consequence of a Utopian society. With the added pressures of a competition, an environment that fosters moments of high emotional tension, physical and emotional intimacy, and 8 very different personalities, it feels as if the show was doomed for dissonance right from the start. It should be no surprise that the rather straightforward, raunchy reality show devolves so quickly into a “bottle episode” filled to the brim with an emotionally charged battle of whose tongue is the sharpest. On the surface, “The Gentlemen” is a story about a single female protagonist judging the sexual abilities of seven random men but this premise and the setting with which the story plays out on, serves to explore the deeper ideas of one’s role in the balance of social harmony verses the human tendency towards self destruction. 

The setting of a story can be a powerful tool in expressing a character’s journey. “Bottle episodes” have often been used for dramatic effect in visual storytelling, with the limited setting and cast allowing for a slower pace and deeper exploration of character traits and motives. Having the entirety of “The Gentlemen” be one long drawn out “bottle episode” allows for the audience to experience a slow-burn like intensity of those personalities. It takes the fundamental process of how a group stuck in a certain location together for an extended period of time inadvertently falls into certain social constructs in order to reach an equilibrium of cohesion. The roles which each occupant of the villa naturally fell into set a precedent for many of the events that followed on the show, most obvious being Y/N as the “queen bee” (the one who holds the most power in the group), Seokjin as the designated “counselor” (the one who is expected to help his fellow competitors when an emotional issue arises), and Yoongi as the “mediator” (the one who is the voice of reason and rationale when tensions run high). And yet it is revealed that there is a price for that harmony, for even roles that are not as explicit begin to weigh heavy as the days wane on. The cohesion of these roles were meant to serve as cogs that fit together to uphold a sense of teamwork in an otherwise tension filled living quarters. But people are not cogs and emotions are not gears to be compartmentalized into neat roles to serve the higher purpose of the show. And as occupants spend more time with one another, natural biases, feelings of jealousy, possessiveness, envy, and pride start to surface under the umbrella of selfish acts, we begin to see that fine balance corrode the fragile peace. 

The road to self destruction has begun in earnest.   

It all comes to a head at the 2 week mark of the show’s timeline. At this point, tensions have been running high: from revelation of Namjoon’s and Seokjin’s romantic feelings for Y/N, to Jimin and Hoseok’s long running rivalry, to Y/N, Jimin, and Taehyung creating a polyamorous relationship in secret, to Jungkook feeling like the odd man out. The pressures of the show were eventually bound to break someone’s resolve and we see that personified in Jungkook in this episode. After speaking with Seokjin about his warring feelings towards certain members of the group and his desires to act on his frustrations regarding the restrictive parameters of the show, Jungkook was able to unload some of the pent up tension he had been carrying around for the last few days. The audience is then lulled into a false sense of security that the equilibrium of the group has been restored when in actuality, it was a red herring that something drastic was about to unfold. At first glance, the guidance that Seokjin offers Jungkook feels like a band-aid on a bleeding artery when in actuality it was more akin to Seokjin inadvertently stepping on a landmine he believes he has already defused. And his misstep triggers the entire villa to fall victim to the explosion. 

In the climatic scene of the episode, Jungkook’s pent up emotions rears its ugly head in the form of harsh words, tactless criticism, irreparably broken trust, and even fists thrown. His actions turn from verbal assaults to physical ones and the damage seems to fissure out towards the entire group. The destruction is absolute; no one is left unscathed. Why is this scene so effective? Its power is not from the dramatic way Jungkook punches Jimin for calling him out on his childish behavior or the out of character way Hoseok tries to break up the fight only to be elbowed in the face by Jimin nor is it in the heartbreaking way those that are left behind in the villa are tasked with the self imposed responsibility to pick up the literal pieces of their tenuous friendship. It is in the fact that the audience understands the self destructive actions of the characters and perhaps to some degree relate to it on a very human level. We understand that Seokjin wanted to talk through the problems with the group because he didn’t want to shoulder all of the burden himself anymore. We understand that Hoseok acts the way he does because he uses it as a defense mechanism to protect himself. We understand why Sejin did not step in earlier when he was asked to by Yoongi and why Yoongi is bitter about it as a direct result of Sejin’s choice to abstain from deescalating the fight before it got out of control. We understand that Jimin and Jungkook clashed with each other so viscerally because they see themselves in each other and it’s a jagged pill to swallow when presented with a mirror of all of the ugly sides of ourselves we think we do such a great job of hiding. Perhaps exaggerated for a more dramatic effect, but at the core of these interactions, we see the flaws that we carry as human beings and are forced to face the unpleasant feelings that it elicits in each of us. We understand because we can empathize with their struggles. 

How does a community attempt to repair itself when its very foundation is practically razed to the ground? Perhaps there is an argument to be made about a complete dismantling of a previous establishment. The audience can view this inevitable clash as a “controlled burn”. In terms of forest management, a “controlled burn” is a fire set intentionally for purposes of farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. These “controlled burning” is conducted during the cooler months to reduce fuel buildup and decrease the likelihood of serious hotter fires. In the same way fires are a part of a forest’s life cycle, the clash that occurred on day 14 might serve as a way for the characters to start fresh, with hopes of emotional maturity and foresight for rebuilding relationships moving forward in the competition. 

The damage done during day 14 of “The Gentlemen” may arguably be irreversible, perhaps even amplified by the uncertain nature of the show, but challenges were inevitable with a setting like this one. And yet, there are seeds of hope scattered among the debris. In John Yorke’s “Into the Woods: a five act journey into story” he writes “…story matches psychological theory: characters are taken on a journey to acknowledge and assimilate the traumas in their past… By confronting and coming to terms with the cause of their traumas they can finally move on.” Day 14 revealed a lot of stances, opinions, and confessions that were previously kept secret due to the need to preserve the harmonious nature of the greater good, “the community”. But human nature does not allow for peace to reign for long; it yearns balance. Thus dissonance created discourse. Yet from strife there is revelation. From the ashes of fiery emotions, there is a chance at peace anew: either reestablish order or embrace the chaos. Yet most likely it’ll come down to a melding of the two in order to find the balance a community craves whilst also giving into the character’s more baser human desire for self ruin. 

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jan i literally can’t stop crying thank you so much. there’s no way for me to put into words the feeling of someone caring so much about the story and even about one particular chapter that they’ve written such an articulate and profound ESSAY on it like,,,, i have no idea what i’ve done to deserve this, because writing this story is just this little passion project that i’m fostering with my brainstorming group and with the readers. it feels like a collaborative effort and so i never really saw it as anything more than just the fun gimmick of an interactive fic in a crazy situation. 

you see things in my story that even i don’t see, make it sound beautiful when i worried it was awkward, and i can’t thank you enough for that. and when you brought up Into the Woods i LOST it, i adore that book and hearing someone quote a masterwork like that when referring to my fanfiction? it’s so absurd but so special all at once. 

i’ve never really considered becoming an actual author because the pressure of money and income relying on it seems scary to me (even commissions stress me out) so i’m eternally grateful to you for always making me feel like this is something professional. getting a glimpse into that life by you writing an analysis on d14 is just.... i really can’t describe how special it is. 

every week i aim to make each chapter better than the last, and we have a very different landscape in the house on day 15 after our controlled (perhaps not so controlled) burn. i’ll patiently await your thoughts then, but i just want to say that you inspire me to work harder each week ;;-;

[odanurr87]

Flash Review: What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim?

Park Seo-Joon as Lee Young-Joon, and Park Min-Young as Kim Mi-So.

Release date: June 6 - July 26, 2018

Episodes: 16

Available on: Viki

Summary: Lee Young-Joon is the Vice Chairman of the YumYung Group, a large corporation and the family business. He’s smart, successful, and supremely confident to the point of narcissism. Kim Mi-So has been his secretary for the past nine years, proving herself to be extremely efficient in the execution of her duties and the only person who can keep up with his ego and intellect, anticipating her boss’ will and seeing it carried out. One day, out of the blue, Kim Mi-So announces she has decided to quit her job and start a new chapter in her life, what takes Young-Joon entirely by surprise. This event forces the two to review their relationship, as Young-Joon realises he doesn’t want to let her go, and Mi-So starts seeing other sides of her boss’ personality as she realises he might have feelings for her. As this is a kdrama, the return of Young-Joon’s hated older brother, Lee Seong-Yeon, complicates matters when he suddenly enters Mi-So’s life, turning himself into a rival romantic interest. Meanwhile, Mi-So starts looking into an old kidnapping case connected to the two brothers.

What I liked:

The pacing and execution of the romantic relationship. One of my main complaints when I reviewed The Secret Life of my Secretary (TSLS for short) was that I felt that show took too long to develop the relationship between the boss and his secretary, dragging the deception more than it should have, and even when the leads eventually admit they have feelings for each other, 24 episodes in, it didn’t quite feel believable and the wrap up felt a bit rushed. The Vice Chairman and Secretary Kim manage to get there by Episode 8, selling it every step of the way, giving us another eight episodes to see how their relationship progresses and concludes. Romantic misunderstandings, that staple of most romcoms, are thankfully kept to a minimum, something I was extremely grateful for. For instance, when the beginning of one such misunderstanding rears its ugly head at the end of Episode 8, Secretary Kim doesn’t waste a second to clear the air with the Vice Chairman and declare her feelings for him, marking the beginning of their romantic relationship. They still have their disagreements (Secretary Kim is definitely not a pushover) and face their share of obstacles and objections to their relationship; we see how their relationship plays out in the workplace, sometimes with hilarious results (Mi-So can be very protective of her boyfriend!); we’re treated to the expected bouts of jealousy from the two leads, the apparently required drunk scenes, etc. In short, it’s what you’d expect from a good Hollywood romcom but longer.

The absence of the “family member X trying to usurp power from the lead brother” trope. So refreshing to do away with this trope every once in a while. You will find no evil conspiracy here directed at any of the leads, a staple of kdramas where a chaebol’s involved, giving us more time to explore the relationship between the Vice Chairman and Secretary Kim, which is frankly what this show is all about. We still have that jerk relative that shows up to cause trouble, but he’s mostly harmless. I will address this plot in the next section.

The humor. The humor in this show is comprised of four elements, which I’ll proceed to highlight in bold. If you’ve watched the show, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is Kang Ki-Young, who plays Young-Joon’s best friend, councilor, and president of the Yumyung Group, Park Yoo-Sik, as he does a fantastic job providing comic relief, taking advantage of the fact that he’s the only person who can make fun of Young-Joon and get away with it. I particularly liked his interactions with his clumsy and forgetful secretary, a pairing many viewers shipped. While I was taken aback by how much I liked him in Bring it on, Ghost, I was definitely less surprised to see what a great job he did here. Easily the best supporting character in the show. However, I feel Park Min-Young’s Kim Mi-So gives him a run for his money, not for being a prankster but because of how she reacts in any number of situations (as does Yoo-Sik), from trying to hide her boyfriend from her sisters, through punching a stuffed cow to make room for her virtual boyfriend, to trying to suppress her feelings of jealousy when faced with the prospect of having a rival for Young-Joon’s affection. You could call it situational humor perhaps, but seeing Mi-So’s facial expressions and her demeanor in these situations is priceless. These two are not the only actors/characters who partake in the show’s humor, but I believe they’re the standouts. Next on the list are the show’s well-placed sound effects, from weather effects to animal sounds, which really bring out the humor in certain situations. The sound effects in this show are 100% on point. Last but not least is the inclusion of a certain animated devil who pops up from time to time when Young-Joon or Mi-So are having lewd thoughts. As Young-Joon says at one point, “Fighting!”

Secretary Kim’s many facial expressions. Pity the sound effect wasn’t timed right in this scene.

What I didn’t like:

The older brother and the execution of his storyline. Perhaps I am less inclined to like his character because I initially watched the episodes out of order. During the first few episodes, Young-Joon’s brother, Seong-Yeon, clearly appears as the more likable of the two, returning home after years abroad, ready to make amends, only to find a brother who has nothing but contempt for him and a family who still favours Young-Joon. One should sympathize with him under the circumstances. However, for my part, Seong-Yeon showed his true colors even before he regained his memories. As I mentioned earlier, his return also results in the two brothers holding an undeclared contest for Mi-So’s affections, with Seong-Yeon believing he has the upper hand because of a past connection with her. When Seong-Yeon boasts how he’s going to exploit this connection to get her that was the moment I went, “This dude’s an asshole. He’s really going to exploit a painful memory simply to one up his brother.” Young-Joon, on the other hand, was actually doing his best to protect Mi-So from it, even at the risk of losing her. However, beyond Seong-Yeon’s likeability as a character, from a narrative standpoint, I just can’t believe the two brothers haven’t settled their score after two decades. Further, his transformation from jerk to good brother after he regains his memories seemed a little rushed, a little forced, with some scenes seemingly set up to cast him in a more favourable light. I have my strong doubts that someone who’s experienced that kind of mental trauma would make such a recovery in such a short amount of time (days? weeks?). Ultimately, he came across more as a plot device than a character.

How the parents handled the kidnapping. Letting your kids believe a lie for decades is not the way you handle a traumatic experience! It strikes me as unbelievable, irresponsible, and utterly reproachable, that the parents would rather scar their children for life than send them to therapy, especially when time proved that the lie had not improved the brothers’ relationship and possibly made it worse. There’s also some inconsistency with the character of the mother, who at one point looks to Mi-So to take care of Young-Joon, hinting she knows of their relationship, only for her to later ask Young-Joon not to date Mi-So because that would make Seong-Yeon unhappy. The gall of this woman. Fortunately, Seong-Yeon intervenes (this is the favourable light scene I mentioned earlier), as the mother was about to make yet another parenting mistake. I’m also slightly skeptical she didn’t figure out the truth behind the kidnapping earlier, specifically, the moment Mi-So’s involvement is revealed, a secretary Young-Joon personally selected over more qualified candidates. It’s a relatively minor detail though.

OTP: Damn, these two can kiss! If that’s not chemistry, I don’t know what is. Every moment these two are together is just perfect. I’ll admit I disliked Young-Joon’s unhealthy possessiveness, but I understand this was a conscious choice to show how much his character changes as a result of his love for Mi-So, eventually willing to let her go and choose a new path. I know some people disapproved of Mi-So’s decision to stay as Young-Joon’s secretary, seeing it as a regression and arguing she should try something new, but I disagree. At the end of the day, what’s important is that Mi-So is no longer pressured by circumstance to follow a path but is now finally able to decide for herself knowing she has someone in her life who will support her regardless. I’d question the timing of her decision but not the decision itself. She can always quit later. I also appreciated this show wasn’t afraid of showing the two characters actually tie the knot. Makes for a good change of pace.

Verdict: Initially, I dropped this show like a bomb in the middle of the first episode, as the thought of having a hardcore narcissistic boss as one of the leads did not appeal to me one bit, and having just finished watching the disappointing The Secret Life of my Secretary I really didn’t want to waste much more of my time on a show that promised to be similar. I was utterly wrong, as it turned out. What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? is a great office romcom, with Park Seo-Joon and Park Min-Young easily delivering on the romance and the comedy, aided by Kang Ki-Young and a solid supporting cast. This is an easy recommendation and definitely worth watching multiple times.

Rewatch meter: High

[izaswritings]

all that’s left in the world | chapter nine

Title: all that’s left in the world—

Synopsis: —is me.

Neku’s been shot and Shibuya is threatening to go the same way as Shinjuku, but just because the first Game is over doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten how to play.

Or: Neku deals with a nightmare city and his most annoying (and mathematical) partner yet; Shiki and Joshua commit an escalating number of illegal moves, Beat and Eri hunt down a stray Reaper, and Rhyme watches and waits for the counter-attack. Shibuya refuses to go down easy.

Fandom: The World Ends With You | TWEWY

Warnings: cursing, murder and erasure mentions, and referenced character death via the Reaper’s Game. If there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

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AO3 Link is here!

Previous chapters are here!

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part nine: neku

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It’s all gone. It’s all gone away. She took it all away.

I told her to stop, I asked her to stop—she won’t stop. Stop her. Please, someone stop her.

She’s going to take everything.

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Neku is starting to lose patience.

It’s day two in this new nightmare game, and their progress has been… null, basically. Surprise surprise. The night was long and restless and Neku barely slept at all, too wound up and waiting and convinced, deep down, that any second now he’d blink and the day would change, time taken away, Day 2 start. But the blackout had never come, and now it is morning, and he feels like he’s been here years instead of only 24 hours, the timer on his hand ticked down to six days and counting.

He wakes up before Minamimoto, and watches the seconds fall away for a long time before he thinks to move. Six days. Six full days. Neku curls his hand into a fist. He knows he’s not going to kill Joshua. But then, what is Neku going to do?

He’s already lost a day. And yeah, sure he has six days left to make it count, but— but still. He feels ill. He watches the sky lighten outside of his window—the blood red shine in the clouds is lovely, fucking perfect, leave it to Coco to fuck up literally everything—and exhales very softly. Okay. Okay.

Day 2, here they go.

“Now might be a good time for another future vision,” he says to the girl whose voice has been haunting his head, only half joking. He’d heard echoes of her throughout the night—whispered mutterings and pleas, and flashes of a ruined road through a suburb. But once again, there’s no reply, though there’s a static buzz in his ears that feels kind of itchy. Neku sighs.

Minamimoto wakes up not long after, and they hit the roads before the city has fully lit up. The border is a no-go; all that’s left is to scour the town. The problem is—and yeah, it kind of horrifies Neku to realize it—but the problem is there’s nothing to do. They don’t know where they are. They don’t know where they’re going. There’s no missions or wall requests or shops or anything, and yeah, okay, it’s getting to him.

I can say this for Joshua’s Game, Neku thinks, bitterly, picking his way after Minamimoto—who has, once again, taken off without even checking if Neku was awake. The asshole. At least it was never boring.

He’s sort of annoyed he has to even admit that, honestly— even more annoyed to find he misses it. The daily missions had been terrifying, the shopping exasperating, the Support Reapers their own brand of trouble… but at least there had been something to do. A goal to fixate on, distractions to find, people to Reaper Creeper or whatever.

There’s none of that here. There’s nothing here. Just monsters, and empty buildings, and fucking Pi-Face, who has, somehow, in less than a day, stolen the title of “worst partner ever” right out of Joshua’s hands. Neku hadn’t thought it possible, but hey! Here they are!

He’s in a life-or-death deathtrap of a game, and he’s bored. Neku is aware of the irony.

He shoves his hands in his pockets, irritated with himself, and kicks hard at a rock in the road. They’re in some ruin of the main city shopping district—the numerous alleyways and big destroyed pavilion give it away, honestly—and while they’ve fought a few Noise, and run into another one of the possessed people again, all in all its almost mid-day and Neku is starting to get restless.

He tries not to think about what Minamimoto had said last night—or implied, anyway, but isn’t that basically the same thing? It’s not like… Neku doesn’t feel at home in the Game. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even miss it. Maybe it was the place where Neku found himself—maybe it was the place that really made him see the city, and the people around him—but Neku is glad the Game is over. He really is.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Minamimoto wasn’t entirely wrong. Because—and its sick, kind of, because Neku feels settled, here, for the first time in a while. The lightning in his hands, the power in his grasp—it soothes some restless drive Neku hadn’t even realized was there. It’s easier to stop jumping at shadows, because the danger is back and it is real, and it is terrible, it is the worst thing ever, because some part of Neku, beneath the terror and the anger and the frustration at doing all this again—some part of him is whispering, finally.

And no, that’s it, he’s got to stop thinking about this, full stop. Neku clenches his hands in and out of fists and sighs.

“This isn’t working,” Neku says, loudly, stopping on one street corner. Minamimoto… keeps walking. “Hey, Grim Heaper! This isn’t working. We have to figure something else out.”

Because god knows they aren’t getting anywhere with aimless wandering. They’ve already found the border of the city, their one achievement from yesterday— but they’re caged in here, so that’s a useless avenue too. Neku really doesn’t get it. Kill the Composer of Shibuya, but they can’t even get into Shibuya. He can’t tell if this is on purpose or if Coco just, like… forgot or something.

It’s probably on purpose. There’s probably something else going on. God forbid Neku ever gets shot by someone normal, who makes mistakes, like a reasonable person. No, no. He gets all the megalomaniacs, instead. And Joshua, whatever Joshua counts as.

And… Minamimoto is still walking. Holy shit.

“Hey!”

“Eight, nine, ten seconds wasted,” Minamimoto snaps back. “Useless radian. Who gives a digit what you think? It’s all figured out. Don’t become an unknown variable.”

Neku hates that he even knows what that means. It feels like some kind of insult, maybe? Neku was good at math in school. Numbers made sense, sort of. Leave it to damn Pi-Face to make it irritating, though. Ugh. “Figured out,” Neku repeats. “Figured out by who!? Look, asshole, we’re basically walking in circles. There’s nothing here!”

Walking in circles. Wait. Does that count as a math pun?

Neku is briefly distracted from rage by the urge to strangle himself. Never again. He will not be swayed. Joshua would never let him live it down.

(If he ever shows up again. If he even—)

“My calculations are flawless,” Minamimoto is saying, providing a wonderful distraction from the direction Neku’s thoughts were taking. Thank god. “Constants should just stay in line and act as they’re supposed to.”

“Great, wonderful, except I’m not a constant.” Neku resists the urge to throw up his hands. “Why are you even— we already established we’re not getting into Shibuya. What are you looking for?”

Minamimoto snorts. Neku narrows his eyes, and talks fast, before he can get insulted again. “And don’t tell me I don’t need to know. Are you a Reaper or not? Don’t you know how the Game works? We’re in a pact, asshole. Work with me here. Where are we going.”

Minamimoto makes a face, but he finally stops walking, and turns back around to consider Neku again. “What else? There’s only one possible solution.”

“Kill the Composer, yeah, but—”

“Think! The numbers add up. If we can’t get into Shibuya, you useless hectopascal, then we don’t need to. Easy math.”

Neku stalls, at that. Sure, he’d thought as much. But… it doesn’t make sense. Why would Joshua leave Shibuya? Why would he even need to? Unless he’s here for Neku, but… hah. Wishful thinking, right? Neku may be alive and well (or, he was), and that says a lot, but… it’s been a month since the Game. Two, three weeks since he spoke to Joshua, and invited him to the statue. And invited him again. And again.

Joshua never answered.

So, yeah. No. Maybe the math is making sense to Minamimoto, but it’s definitely not adding up for him.

But again: saying any of this to freaking Pi-Face is just, hah. Not happening. Neku shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away, ducking his chin to better hide his expression in his collar. “Why does it even matter?” he says, grudgingly curious. “Do you want to be Composer that bad?”

Minamimoto scoffs. “That’s a zetta stupid question. Why not?”

And that’s. Well. “Are you serious?” Neku snaps, suddenly irritated with the whole mess. Everything this guy did. The Taboo Noise, the explosions, everything. And his goddamn reasoning is “why not?” People had died. Reapers and Players alike— Sota, Nao, the support Reaper. It makes something curl tight and ugly in his chest, makes something else echo in his ears.

There are things from the Game that haunt him always, and this is one of them: Sota’s face, smiling pained but true. Even Joshua seemingly struck silent. The way Sota just seemed to… fade away. Gone in a matter of seconds, nothing left behind, as if he’d never been there at all.

You two survive. Get your old partner back. I hope all three of you… get back safe.

“Whatever.” Minamimoto turns away. “We’ve wasted enough time. If you’re done, I want to at least check out Shinjuku Park before—”

“No, I’m not done!” Neku yanks at his shoulder, spinning him around; the older teen is taller than him, sure, but Neku curls his fingers in that stupid collar and holds tight, something cold and angry singing through his veins. “For someone who likes math so much, you aren’t that fucking good at it!”

Where every other insult slips off, this is the one thing that seems to knock Minamimoto sideways. He gapes, for one instant, and then his mouth snaps shut, an angry flush darkening his cheeks. His eyes are bright with rage. “You—”

“Shut up,” Neku snaps, furious. “What is with you!? Do you get the Game or not? I’m not some part of your stupid equation! I’m not going to just agree and follow you because you say so!” He snarls, a little. “What is your plan? Do you even have one? Because if its ‘kill the Composer,’ again—”

Minamimoto grips at Neku’s wrist, almost in warning, nails digging into the skin of his hand. “My calculations are flawless! This opportunity—”

“Because you did so well at killing Josh the last three times you tried,” Neku says, flat. He lets go of Minamimoto’s collar, stepping back and away in disgust. “For flawless calculations, they sure didn’t work out right, did they?”

Minamimoto’s lips curl back from his teeth, the first open expression of rage Neku’s seen from him yet. “You—”

“Useless radian? Factoring hectopascal?” Neku crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Brain-dead binomial? Right. Okay. You haven’t done anything.”

Minamimoto looks wild around the eyes. “I did everything!” He opens his arms. “Reborn! I can never die! I—”

“You didn’t accomplish shit!” Neku retorts. “You know, except for killing a bunch of people. Congratulations. You’re a grade-A murderer with nothing to show for it.” He throws up his hands. “Shades may have brainwashed the whole damn city, but at least he had a reason! But, what, you just did all that for kicks? Because you could?” Neku lowers his hands, scoffing. “Get a new hobby, if you’re so bored.”

There’s a beat of silence. Minamimoto is grit-toothed and furious, but then something flashes over his face, and he almost seems to falter. His eyes narrow. His fingers curl, and his smile returns, almost a bare of teeth. “Josh, huh?” he says, coolly. “I guess you figured out your little partner’s identity after all.”

Neku lifts his chin, leaning back on his heels. “So what if I did?”

“Then you’re in the same boat as me.” His smile flashes to a grin, wide and fierce. “The Composer’s identity is jealously guarded. Past failures don’t matter. We eliminate him, or he eliminates us.”

Neku stares at him. “That’s… what? But I’ve known for—”

He cuts himself off. It’s too late. Minamimoto is staring at him. “What?” he says. The anger returns. This time he steps forward. “What did you say?”

Neku scowls back at him. If the Grim Heaper thinks he can play at being intimidating, he’s got another thing coming. Neku has vivid memories of this guy getting crushed under a car. The more time he talks with Minamimoto, the more said memory becomes a cheerful recollection. “I found out about Josh at the end of my third week,” he says, stiffly. Hell, he’d told Shiki and Beat and Rhyme, too. No one had stopped him. He hadn’t even known he wasn’t allowed, and nothing happened afterwards, either. Yet another thing to add on the exhausting list of shit Joshua’s done that Neku doesn’t know how to feel about, apparently. “It’s been, what, a month since then?”

“So you hid it—”

“Uh, no, he outed himself pretty obviously. He knows I know.” Neku places a hand on his hip, unimpressed. “Don’t ask me why, either. I don’t know why Joshua does anything, but at least he makes more sense than you.”

Some sense, anyway. The things Joshua says and the things he does, always at odds. But on some level, Neku understands Joshua better than he’s understood anyone, and even now, it still applies. Minamimoto, though. No. And it burns, really, because Neku is trying, he’s partnered with this guy and there must be a reason, there must be some way they can work together, but the more he interacts with him the angrier he is. Sota, Nao. Even Joshua, still, somewhere deep inside Neku’s head, the part that forgets Joshua was never dead at all, the part that’s stuck, always, on that moment—the hand shoving him away, and Joshua’s knowing smile.

Neku, I thought you couldn’t afford to lose.

“Tell me what you want,” Neku says. “Or you’re doing this on your own.”

Minamimoto scoffs. “I don’t need you.”

“Yeah, you do. Partners, remember? If I don’t fight, asshole, then neither can you.”

Silence. Minamimoto narrows his eyes. “…You’d be wide open for attack.”

“Sure.” Neku tilts his head. “But I got really good at running for my life, those three weeks in the Game. But what about you? Reapers, right?” He meets Minamimoto’s gaze and holds it. “Do you still remember what it’s like to live on the run?”

Minamimoto’s fingers curl and uncurl by his sides, restless fists. His expression is thunderous. Neku waits. “Talk,” he prompts, cold. “Otherwise, I’m out.”

His lip curls in a sneer, but in the end, Minamimoto looks away. There’s a pause. He hisses under his breath and then says, grudgingly, “You ever hear the Music?”

Neku blinks, a little thrown. It worked? Holy shit. “What music?”

“The Music,” Minamimoto says, with scornful emphasis. “The city. Shibuya’s eternal code.”

Neku presses his lips. “…Yeah,” he admits. “Only after leaving the Game, though.” His mouth twists, and he looks away, missing it suddenly and fiercely. He wishes he were home. “It’s… it’s really something.”

Minamimoto snorts. “Is it?” Neku snaps his head up, glaring, but Minamimoto isn’t looking at him, eyes distant, staring hard down into the ruined alleyways. “A month, huh? Maybe it’s changed, then.” He smiles, cold and hard. “It was wrong.”

Neku considers him, silently. Slowly, his arms uncross. His stance loosens. He waits, and he listens.

“It used to make sense,” Minamimoto mutters, sounding bitter. “Perfect equations, clear solutions… clean, precise, perfect. Like prime numbers. It stood on its own.” He shakes his head. “But whoever was crunching in the equation—ugh! It was infuriating! Those off-hand notations! Those useless digits! It messed up the whole operation!” His hands clench to fists by his sides.

“So, you decided to take over,” Neku says, neutrally. Despite himself, he understands. The Music—Shibuya’s song—he can’t imagine listening, and hearing it get distorted. The clamoring notes, the harmony, the unceasing melody… he’s not sure he’d, like, jump to murder, but… he’d want to fix it too, if he heard. If the melody started to break.

“One misplaced variable and the whole thing breaks down,” Minamimoto agrees. “QED. An equation that isn’t working has to be redone.”

“…Fine. Okay. I can get that.” Hell, it even fits. Hadn’t Shades—and even Joshua—said the same? The whole point of that nightmare three-week Game was to see if Shibuya could be saved. Shades had thought brainwashing was the solution; Joshua hadn’t seemed to think there would be a solution at all, though he must have changed his mind. And now Minamimoto— the final piece in the puzzle. New management, new rules, and new song.

And yet. “But Shibuya isn’t like that anymore. I mean, I don’t think so, anyway. And even if it was…” That melody. The sing-song harmony. “Everyone’s got their own world. Off-key notes are bound to happen. That’s just… that’s part of the song, too. It can’t always work out. People aren’t like that.” He smiles, a little. “Shibuya isn’t like that.”

“Hah!” Minamimoto says, looking amused and something like scornful. He reaches up again, as if to mess with his hat, and after a momentary pause rolls his eyes and settles his fingers in his hair instead, pushing back the stray strands. “Is that what you think? That’s no solution at all!”

Neku frowns, annoyed again. He leans back on his heels, shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Oh yeah? Then what’s your idea of Shibuya?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Minamimoto opens his arms, cackling. “A new equation! A working component! Factor out the unneeded variables and reach the ultimate value, the true balance between the numbers!”

Neku narrows his eyes at that, thinking it over. “That’s…” Minamimoto is grinning. “No.”

Minamimoto blinks. His fingers curl, smile turning hard with challenge. “Oh?”

Neku crosses his arms, feeling tired all over again. “That’s not— that’s not how people work. You’re the same as Shades.”

“Megs didn’t have even half the vision—”

“Same concept, though, isn’t it?” Neku shakes his head. “People don’t—people don’t make sense, okay? Look, I get it. I used to think… walking those streets… it was all noise. It was all—messy and unplanned and chaotic and everyone had their world and I had mine and the moment those lines got crossed, it was just… so I get it.” He sighs. “But you’re wrong. I was wrong. Shibuya, other people… we can’t pretend to stay separate. We’re all a part of the same whole. We change ourselves and each other without meaning to. We knock into one another and make a mess, and find ourselves in the chaos.” Like CAT’s artwork murals. The symbols piled together, the noise condensed into a beautiful whole, a tapestry of art and music and math and fashion and dreams and—everything. Anything.

“Other people aren’t worthless,” Neku says. “Use whatever math term you want to insult me, but your attitude is just pissing me off. You aren’t the only one in the world, you know. Sorry, but it’s my home too.” He shrugs. “So, no. I don’t think it would have worked. Shibuya isn’t always going to make sense—to follow an equation or a plan.”

Minamimoto looks bored. “The typical nonsense of a radian.”

He should feel insulted, maybe? But all Neku can feel is tired. He turns away. “Whatever. I tried.” It figures, that for all the lessons Neku has learned, he’s not too good at teaching them. But that’s fine, too. Minamimoto’s worldview isn’t his problem— but Neku wonders, honestly, how long he’ll be able to keep that arrogant attitude, when the world as Neku knows it tends to run roughshod over the people who think they know everything.

He wonders, if the answer comes, if Minamimoto would even recognize it.

“You were right about Shibuya needing to change,” Neku says, finally, looking up at that churning gray sky. He can admit this much. But at the same time… Neku saw Shibuya change, little by little, those three weeks. Ai and Mina, making up; Sota and Nao, willing to lend a kind hand and kind ear for someone else’s sake; Ken Doi sticking to his principles; Makoto’s boss leaving Reaper Creeper and the honest advice he gave when he did. People didn’t change because someone new came in charge and told them what to do. Shibuya changed because its people talked to each other. Because they tried. And because someone else listened.

“But you wouldn’t have been able to change it.”

This time, Minamimoto doesn’t say anything.

Neku sighs. His headache has returned with a vengeance; it pounds behind his eyes like a heartbeat, like static crackling in his ears, the echo of another voice. He rubs at his temple, and turns to start walking. “…Never mind. Let’s just go.”

He gets five steps away before he realizes Minamimoto isn’t following. He turns back around. “Look—” Minamimoto has turned away, head tilted back, frowning as if in concentration. His fingers are tapping restless on his knee. “…What is it?”

Minamimoto waves a dismissive hand at him, looking distracted. “Zetta shut up for a sec. I need to…” He doesn’t finish the thought. His eyebrows knit. “Ugh, this place is messing with the parameters.”

Neku scowls at him, a little annoyed. That whole conversation, and what, he’s already dismissed it? Go figure. “What are you talking about?”

But Minamimoto doesn’t seem to hear him. He has one hand up, eyes sharp, like he’s listening to something in the air. He turns his back to Neku and walks three paces, and then his head snaps to the side, eyes widening. For a moment, he seems almost stunned.

Then his expression lightens. His eyes gleam. The smile returns, stretching wide and wild across Minamimoto’s face, and Neku feels a shiver crawl down his spine, the static in his head suddenly reaching crescendo. Whispers and echoes and a warning, breaking through his mind like glass.

Behind you.

The city is cold and white and empty around them. And it is silent. But far away, if he strains his ears, Neku almost thinks he can hear a second set of footsteps.

Minamimoto fixes his eyes into the distance, and laughs low and soft. “What are the odds?” he says, and the tattoo markings of the Taboo crawl up his arm. “Right on time. This mission is already over.”

Neku catches his breath. His head is pounding. “Who—”

“Who do you think, radian?” Minamimoto turns and smiles. “It’s the Composer.”

[realfuurikuuri]

Chapters: 14/? Fandom: Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart (Cartoon) Relationships: Mao Mao/Tanya Keys, Mao mao/badgerclops Characters: Mao Mao, Badgerclops, King Snugglemane, Adorabat, Orangusnake, Basically everyone from the show, Fanchild - Character, Tanya Keys, Shin Mao

Summary: MissingArm!AU: When escaping the cave, it wasn't his tail that got crushed. In exchange for his innocence, he gained a sordid past. The Pure Heart Valley seemed like a good place to escape. To start a new life with a new family to forge a new identity. However, when the past rears its ugly head Mao Mao's forced to step up or be put down.

Direct AO3 Link: XXXX

Chapter Below Cut: 

AN:  Fun fact: this chapter was actually finished and ready to post Wednesday, but I forgot to post it, so now it's coming to you Friday. I was also busy playing SUPERHOT and it's sequel MIND CONTROL DELETE. It's a great game and I don't even like FPS that much. Still haven't finished Devil Survivor, but I'm getting at Belial's fight so I'm making progress. As always thanks Spookylovesboba and enjoy the chapter. This chapter's song rec: The Mystic by Adam Jensen (A strange creator with a strange sound, but I like it I guess)

Was he dead? There was darkness all around him. It was terribly cold. He was wet, too. Had he finally crossed the River Sanzu? Or maybe he was still crossing it? Strange, he thought he’d be hung up about dying, but Mao Mao couldn’t actually say he was. There were a few things he still wanted to do. Make up with his son. Make up with Tanya. Enjoy being free from the Mao-clan. Oh well, there’s nothing a dead-man could do about that.

Fortunately, he wasn’t dead. It took some time, but his eyes adjusted to the darkness revealing a rocky ceiling, rocky walls, rocky floors, and a rocky everything else. He was underground, but this certainly wasn’t a grave. He must have fallen down the sinkhole, he rationalized to himself, although the stalagmites hanging from the ceiling, the shallow river running underneath him, and the vast empty darkness made him think this was more than a sinkhole.

“Who woulda thunk that there’s an entire cave system underneath the town,” he told no one in particular, which was why he was so surprised when he got an answer.

It wasn’t words, instead, it was a nasal grunt of pain. Mao Mao sifted through the rocks to find the source. He suspected a sweetipie was the source of the noise, but when he saw Orangusnake’s head poking through the rubble he grabbed him by the throat and yanked.

His heart skipped a beat when he pulled the head, the neck, and the rest of the body. Mao Mao staggered back and began to wretch. What just happened? What did he do? He just killed a man! Normally, that wouldn’t bother him, but he just yanked out a man’s head like this was some sort of video-game. Mao Mao took a step back to gather himself. He breathed in and breathed out. The panic drained out of him only for more to settle back in.

“What are you doing,” Orangusnake’s head asked.

“Nothing I’m just-” Mao Mao did a double-take. Orangusnake was fine, or more aptly put, the snake was fine.

“You! You! How- why- what are you!” he screamed at the snake, snatching by the throat again.

Instead of answering back, he let out strangled gasps. Mao Mao groaned and dropped the snake to the ground. He tried to slither away, but Mao Mao stepped onto the end of his tail.

“Alright, alright,” the snake said,” my name is Coby.”

“I thought it was Orangusnake.”

“No, our name is Orangusnake.”

“What do you mean by our name ?”

“Me and Tanner.”

“Who the fuck is Tanner?”

“The orangutan!”

“What Orangutan?”

“You know the arms, the legs, the face on my stomach.”

“Wait… the face isn’t some weird decoration?”

“No!”

“That’s a person?”

“Yes!”

“... is this some weird sex thing?”

Mao Mao never got his answer. The snake wiggled from his grasp and began to slither away. Mao Mao snatched at the ground only to catch pieces of gravel. He turned to the snake who had wrapped himself on a stalagmite out of his reach.

“Get down here,” he ordered.

“No,” Orangusnake spat back.

“I’m not going to chase you around this cave all damn day.”

“Then I'll stay up here.”

Mao Mao put his face in his hand and sighed,” look. Orangusnake, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, where is the other one? Tanner?”

The snake’s head perked up.

“See my point? Now get off your ass. We certainly won’t find an exit like that.”

“What about finding Tanner?”

Mao Mao looked to the pile of rocks and debris that now plugged the hle they fell through. He’s either dead underneath all of that, or,” he added before the snake could object,” he’s on the other side of the mess, which hopefully connects back over here.”

The snake dashed from the stalagmite, wrapping himself around Mao Mao’s torso and tugged to drag him forward. “Then what are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

Mao rolled his eyes and sighed, taking solace in the fact that half-of-Orangusnake, Coby he called himself, was finally moving.

* * *

Mao Mao explored the winding caverns. For once, having a glowstick came in handy. He held up Geraldine to get the only light they had. More than once they came to a dead-end and had to double back. Coby complained the entire time like he was the one actually doing all the walking. He whined and whined with that annoying nasally voice of his. The only saving grace was that it all became an Indistinguishable mess to his ears. Thankfully, if Shin taught him anything its how to fake paying attention.

“Do you understand what I’m saying,” Coby asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“So, what should I do,” Coby asked.

“I can see that.”

“Are you even listening?”

“Not now,” Mao Mao said too late to catch himself.

“Of course, you weren’t listening,” the snake said,” you don’t even care!”

“At least you know that.”

“This is why your son doesn’t like you.”

Coby immediately recoiled back, regretting his words. For good reason. Mao Mao’s first instinct was to choke the life out of him. What did this snake know about Jǐngtì? Then came the sobering thought that the snake probably did know a lot. More than Mao Mao did, at least. Everything he knew about Jǐngtì was 5 years out of date. He was no longer the same toddler he carried on his shoulders. He was different from how he remembered. Maybe he never remembered correctly in the first place. He was different from how he remembered. Maybe he never remembered correctly in the first place.

“Alright, fine. I’m sorry for not listening. What were you saying?”

Coby seemed taken aback by the heel-face turn. He eyed Mao Mao suspiciously. “Why the sudden change?”

“It will pass the time while we look for an exit,” Mao Mao said.

“You mean look for Tanner,” Coby said.

“Yeah, sorry, look for Tanner is what I should’ve said.”

Orangusnake pulled back and narrowed his eyes. “What has gotten into you?”

“Nothing. Noting at all,” Mao Mao lied.

He wasn’t going to tell Orangusnake the truth. He wasn’t going to tell him that when Jǐngtì was born Mao Mao constantly told himself he’d be different from Shin. He wasn’t going to tell him that he quite literally regurgitating the same meaningless lines Shin used. Mao Mao would’ve laughed at the irony if self-hatred wasn’t boiling in his stomach.

“I was talking about my crew.”

“What does the rest of the Sky Pirates have to do with anything?”

“Everything! They’re why we’re stuck down here.”

“They are?”

“Yes. Weren’t you listening?”

“Sorry?”

Oragusnake rolled his eyes and gagged. “And stop being so apologetic. It’s weird.”

“Sorry,” slipped out of Mao Mao’s lips before he even realized it. Orangusnake sighed and brushed it aside. “As I was saying, this is all the fault of my crew.”

“How?”

“Because they weren’t listening!”

“What do you mean?”

“They just don’t listen! I say to do this, they do that. I tell them to do one thing and they do something else.”

Maybe you should try being more clear with your directions?”

“It’s not that they don’t understand. It's that they just don’t follow directions. It’s like they just want to spite me.”

“Then I don’t know what to tell you? If they don’t want to listen then they don’t. I can’t really help you with that.”

“What about your team? Why do they listen to you?”

That question made Mao Mao stumble, figuratively, and literally. Mao Mao managed to break his fall before he smashed his head against the rocks, although it was a second before he got back up. He was distracted by the hundreds of thoughts that flashed through his head in an instant. The first answer that came to mind was that they listened to him because he was reliable. However, even he knew that wasn’t the answer. If anything he’s the one relying on them. To take care of Adorabat, to take him to the hospital, to fix the house, to even watch his son. The next reason why they might listen to him is because of his experience, but the only thing he has experience with is failing everybody around him. Why did they listen to him?

“I don’t know,” Mao Mao answered in a voice barely above a whisper.

“What’d you say,” Coby asked.

“Nothing, just a grunt of pain,” he lied, making his stomach boil all over again. “Actually, I said I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“I don’t know why they listen to me.”

“Oh… well, don’t ask me. I don't know why they follow you either- urk!”

Mao Mao pinched Coby’s mouth close with his hand after having stabbed a glowing Geraldine into the ground. He closed his eyes, listening to something. Underneath the sound of their conversation, underneath the ambient sound of the stream by their feet was something else. A quiet chatter; like someone absently muttering to themselves, or the grind of teeth. Soon, Mao Mao’s eyes could make out a vague shape in the darkness.  It was not something Mao Mao released his hand from the snake’s mouth, resting it comfortably on Geraldine’s hilt.

When the creature finally got close enough he pulled out Geraldine and swung at the figure, however, he stopped just short of slicing off an Orangutan’s head.

Mao Mao jumped in surprise when Coby freed himself from his waist, traveled up his sword, and wrapped himself around the Orangutan. Mao Mao watched the two, he heard them say things, but the words were lost somewhere in the confusion of watching a snake and Orangutan kiss. It was then that Mao Mao realized something Orangusnake: Orangutan - Snake. He assumed the name had some meaning but didn’t expect its meaning to be so literal.

“So, you just let him guide you? You let him fight for you and do basically everything at his whim?”

“Yeah,” Coby, err Orangusnake said unironically.

“So you’re willing to let him risk your life because you trust him?”

“Yeah.”

Mao Mao squinted his eyes and had his mouth hanging open like a fish. He didn’t move until he cocked his head to the side as he felt some sort of answer starting to form. The relationship Tanner had with Coby was similar to one of his own. The reason why Coby let Tanner control his movements and why Badgerclops and Adorabat followed his lead was the same, and it was the lack of that reason that made Jǐngtì so rebellions. But, what was the reason?

Mao Mao racked his brain, forcing the gears in his head to turn. He could feel an answer coming. It was right in front of him, yet it was like the steam from a teapot. Something you could briefly feel if you reached out, but would always disappear leaving a vague notion of what it was. He’d probably be able to grasp the answer if it wasn’t for that chattering!

Mao Mao’s eyes shot open. Mao Mao took his sword out of the ground to rest it on his shoulder. Orangusnake noticed this and was about to say something before Mao Mao glared at him, scaring him to silence real quick. The chatter hadn’t disappeared. The noise surrounded them like a barely audible whisper. He assumed it was Tanner making that chattering noise, but he was wrong. They weren’t alone in these caves.

Something approached and Mao Mao thrust his sword forward, stumbling when it glanced off the ant’s exoskeleton. It was large and red, like a fire ant, but its eyes glowed a furious yellow. Coby screamed and to Tanner’s credit he quickly moved as the ants began to swarm. No point in fighting a losing battle. Mao Mao joined them, running blind in the darkness.

The ants came out in droves, following them with their mandibles chattering and chomping at the air. Mao Mao cursed his hubris. There wasn’t a cave system underneath the valley, but an entire ant colony. Certainly, a problem that should be dealt with, but that would come later. Right now, he followed Orangusnake up a rocky slope. The slope grew steeper and steeper until they were scaling a vertical wall.

“We’re almost there,” Orangusnake shouted,” just keep moving.

Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one climbing with one arm. Mao Mao held Geraldine with his tail, doing his best to climb the wall, but claws don’t work on stone. He reached the top, grabbing onto the rocky ledge only to have it crumble under his fingers. The air was beginning to whistle past his ears when Orangusnake snatched him by the wrist. He pulled him over the ledge.

The two, perhaps three depending on how you count, stopped to catch their breath.

“Let’s never do that again,” Orangusnake insisted.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Mao Mao huffed,” and Orangusnnake…”

“What?”

“Thanks for saving me.”

Orangusnake stared at him for a solid second before pretending to retch,” that was so sweet I feel like I’m going to die of diabetes.”

“Well, I know what to do the next time you try to take the Ruby Pure Heart,” Mao Mao said.

Orangusnake mimicked vomiting before turning his attention to the path ahead. Mao Mao did the same when he noticed the echo of a gentle melody. Strange, but worth investigating. He and Orangusnake headed down the path as the music grew louder. Mao Mao had the feeling he heard the song before. He wanted to say at the thumb wrestling festival, but that couldn’t be it. Why would festival music be playing in the depths of a cave? Actually, a better question would be why is any music playing in the depths of a cave?

They came upon a massive ornate door. Gilded doorknobs and felt coverings and the works. If Mao Mao was an idiot, and he was in just a good enough mood to be one, he might have fantasized about whatever big phat reward waited for him. He looked to Orangusnake who gave him a nod and threw the door open.

Snugglemagne let out quite the undignified shriek. “Sheriff? What are you doing here,” he asked.

“What am I- what are you doing here?”

“Practicing Harpsichord.”

“20 feet underground in a sealed chamber?”

“I’m very shy.”

“What about the monsters?”

“Overgrown pest, I’m afraid. I’ve laid out traps, but they don’t seem to be working.”

“That’s because they’ve made a nest underneath the town!”

“Oh. Better get an exterminator then.”

Mao Mao pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where’s the exit to this hellhole?”

“You can’t miss it. About 60 yards back, up the steps, and through the secret passage.”

* * *

The passage opened to the front of the castle. The sky was dark, only lit by stars and lightning bugs. Mao Mao was surprised to see the critters were still out; summer’s end was only a month or two away. Orangusnake took a deep breath of fresh air and stretched. It looked rather weird without the armor.

“Well that was a trail,” Orangusnake said,” I’ll be back for the Ruby Pure Heart some other time.”

“You can try. Kill you later?”

Orangusnake paused before repeating,” kill you later,” in confirmation as the two went their separate ways.

* * *

Mao Mao walked up the large hill back to HQ. His stomach growled and he hoped Badgerclops made actual food instead of a toast-tower again. It was just his luck that the one time Badgerclops doesn’t forget the Aerocycle is the only time Mao Mao would need it to get back. He went for the doorknob to find it locked. He went for his keys only to find them gone. With no other choice, he knocked on the door.

He could hear voices on the other side and it was another second before the door actually opened. Mao Mao couldn’t tell who was more surprised to see the other person: him or Jǐngtì.

[letterboxd]

Grand Gestures.

Casually breaking new ground for the rom-com genre, writer-director Natalie Krinsky tells Dominic Corry about creating her quietly revolutionary new film The Broken Hearts Gallery—while leading man Dacre Montgomery reveals his Letterboxd habits.

“Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it.” —Dacre Montgomery

An antidote to 2020 malaise if ever there was one, the upbeat, emotionally frank and unapologetically sentimental new big-screen romantic comedy The Broken Hearts Gallery is here to lift your spirits and mend your broken heart.

Blockers and Bad Education star Geraldine Viswanathan leads the film as Lucy, a New York art gallery assistant prone to hoarding physical memorabilia from past relationships. After being dumped and fired in quick succession, Lucy meet-cutes Nick (Stranger Things break-out Dacre Montgomery), an aspiring hotelier with a large empty space on his hands, in which Lucy decides to stage the titular pop-up exhibition, filled with objects representing lost loves.

Proving there are still plenty of new places to go in the well-worn rom-com genre, Krinsky’s film is generating passionate responses on Letterboxd, where fans are celebrating its contemporary sensibility. “Refreshingly modern,” writes Anne. “Diversity is easily achieved and there’s really no heteronormativity. People are just people, love is just love, and that’s what wins me over.”

“Definitely a very 2020 film,” writes Jovi. “It couldn’t have been written in the same way even ten years ago. It captures being in your twenties in the modern day perfectly.” “Bloody loved the female empowerment and the unconventional narrative and characters,” enthuses Meg.

Geraldine Viswanathan and Dacre Montgomery in ‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’.

Reading through the reviews, the most common reaction is praise for how unapologetically inclusive the film is, in a way that feels appallingly novel for a mainstream film. As Krinsky explains it, “I wanted to make a film that was reflective of the world that I see around me and the world that these characters would inhabit if they lived amongst us mortals.” Or, as Montgomery casually states, “I think it’s where we’re at in 2020 with casting and stuff.” The ease with which the film does this indicts most of modern cinema for its lack of representation.

Krinsky’s inclusive casting and characterization decisions stretch across the entire cast, encompassing that essential feature of modern rom-coms: the quirky ‘best friend’. As well as lending authenticity and personality to the leading characters’ lives, the bestie is often where the ‘com’ in rom-com comes in. The Broken Hearts Gallery has an abundance of quirksters, from Lucy’s roommates (who include Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo as saucy, serial heartbreaker Nadine) to Nick’s straight-talking BFF Marcos (a very funny Arturo Castro).

But the chemistry between the central couple is everything in romantic comedies, and The Broken Hearts Gallery benefits greatly from its fresh-faced, emerging-star leads, both of whom are Australian. “We had a rapport with each other much faster maybe than usual,” Montgomery says of his and Viswanathan’s shared background. “I haven't worked with an Australian actor or actress overseas so that was really nice. She’s a wildly talented, comedic actress. It was my first foray into this sort of genre. I was sort of shit-scared and she’s really held my hand through it.”

Geraldine Viswanathan and director Natalie Krinsky.

Krinksy, likewise, was blown away by Viswanathan’s talents, having seen her work in Blockers and Hala. “She does this great physical comedy in Blockers, and then in Hala, she plays this really vulnerable, dramatic teenage role. I was so taken by her ability to pull both of those completely different parts off. I just immediately had this feeling, which I hadn’t ever had before, of: ‘this is Lucy’. She’s got this comedic timing that is very much like Lucille Ball, it’s got this effervescence to it. She’s able to do so much without saying a word. And then she opens her mouth and it’s a gift.”

It’s no small thing for Viswanathan to have been cast as Lucy. Many an actor’s career has been made by a leading role in a romantic comedy, and—current industry upheaval notwithstanding—Viswanathan looks set to break out even further with her performance here. Montgomery’s and Krinsky’s enthusiasm for her work echoes a central theme in The Broken Hearts Gallery: when Montgomery first met with writer-director Krinsky about the film, she told him the story was somewhat inspired by the idea of seeing men support women in their careers, as Nick does with Lucy. “That was a big thing for me,” he explains, “because I have a lot of really strong women in my life that have supported me—my partner, my mum, my grandmother, so on and so forth.”

Those who know Montgomery from Stranger Things will be interested to learn why he pivoted to romantic comedy. He tells us he was looking for something diametrically opposed to his break-out performance in that show. “As a viewer, I love comedy. As an actor, can’t think of anything scarier. I function in this realm of ‘plan, prepare, do everything the way I know’. The great thing about this was it was ever-evolving. It really did force me to come out of my comfort zone.” (Montgomery will pivot again for his next role, which he says is “kind of a dream role. I can’t speak about it now… Again, it’s 180 degrees in the other direction, so it is a wild ride.”)

Krinsky is also switching things up, career-wise. The Broken Hearts Gallery is her first feature film, after cutting her teeth in television writers’ rooms (Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, 90210). She credits that environment for training her to fix storytelling problems on the fly. A story a decade in the making, Broken Hearts came from her own romantic aspirations and fears. “I had had many conversations like [the one Lucy has early in the film with Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar), where he dumps her after telling her she’s ‘a blast’]. So that certainly came from my life. I’d been fired from my job. I was moving apartments and I was going through the detritus of these past relationships and kind of trying to figure out what I was going to keep and what I was going to hold on to. You kind of pepper in those things [that are] reflective of relationships in your twenties.”

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ director Natalie Krinsky.

Going into the film, Krinsky was very conscious of trying to set it apart from rom-coms that have come before. “Making a good romantic comedy is actually quite difficult because it’s so well-trodden, and because there are beats that we want. We want to cheer for two people falling in love. Because of that, my philosophy going into this was very much centered around Lucy. We’ve seen a lot of romantic comedies in the past where we see a woman trying to fit herself into a mold in order to be with someone and ultimately realizing, ‘Oh, that mold isn’t who I am’. Lucy is a character who certainly has her foibles and has her anxieties and has her eccentricities, but she consistently asks the world to love her because she is weird, not despite the fact that she is weird. That messaging was really important to me.”

In another case of the film gently nudging the rom-com genre forward, it acknowledges how ridiculous grand romantic gestures can be, but still manages to include a few. Krinsky believes there is room for grand gestures in real life. “I certainly hope so. I would like a grand gesture every once in a while—wouldn’t we all? We deserve it. I’m a little bit hopelessly romantic in that way. And I will say I like the surprise. To be able to just, show up home and say, ‘I was walking around today and I saw this cactus. And I thought of you. And here it is.’ Maybe that’s not so grand, but it’s the gesture at least.”

We note that another unique aspect of The Broken Hearts Gallery is the feeling that it doesn’t seem like it’s going to live or die on whether or not the two main characters end up together. “I think they both needed to confront a little bit of who they were,” Krinksy agrees. “Which I always think is the truth about really falling in love, is that in order to have a good relationship, you need to have a good one with yourself first.”

Clearly a huge fan of the genre, we ask Krinsky to recommend her favorites from the canon. “I love some of our recent classics. When Harry Met Sally is a perfect romantic comedy. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a perfect romantic comedy. I love Clueless—even though it’s more com than rom. And then I really love some of the older ones. Broadcast News is one of my all time favorites. Going back even further two of my go-tos that hold up today are His Girl Friday and It Happened One Night. Those two, especially if you’re talking about the ‘strong female lead’, they held them in spades and that fast quippy dialogue I just really live for.”

Montgomery, meanwhile, turns out to be somewhat of a cinephile, something he cultivated as a teenager in the Australian suburbs. “I worked at McDonald’s and I spent all my money on going to [electronics and DVD store] JB Hi-Fi. That’s my childhood in a nutshell. Growing up, I was either at the cinema or in my room and spending all my money on DVDs. All my friends worked at video stores. That was kind of my jam.”

And then—mic drop—Montgomery casually shares the news that he has a secret Letterboxd account. Yes, dear reader, it appears that Dacre is a full-on ’boxd-head. “Oh yeah. I mean, that’s why I was so happy that this [interview] was coordinated. Other than obviously having a chance to talk to you just in general to chat about the platform, it’s a combination of a couple of things that I’m going to put quickly in a couple of words: obviously you can create watchlists on Disney+, Netflix and so on. But then you’ve got so many bloody platforms, all of your lists are in different spaces and all of your movies are spread out on different platforms.

“For me, the biggest role for [Letterboxd] is I can formulate everything in one place, on one platform and look at it. It’s just got so … much … stuff. If I’m up for a horror movie, but I want it set in the snow, I can log on there and it’s, like, The Thing, Hold The Dark. All these great movies. Which I love. And I can read reviews of them before or after.”

Montgomery’s partner is also on Letterboxd, as is his childhood best friend. “Every time we leave the cinema, he gets on Letterboxd and writes a review—his honest, immediate reaction to what he’s just seen. It’s the first thing he does. It’s a great outlet for him. He’s had filmmakers reach out to him, which is another lovely thing. I think a lot of the arts and creative community is actually active on that platform. My buddy just spent the $20 for the year thing and now he can see what his top actors are that he watches, what’s his most-watched decade. I love that sort of stuff. I’m such a cinephile, to be able to collate everything into one sort of succinct thing—that’s my dream.”

Naturally, we ask Montgomery to represent his home country and name-check some Aussie films and filmmakers. “Obviously I’m still quite young, but a lot of cinema like Felony, The Rover, Animal Kingdom, that whole sort of genre, like all the David Michôd films. That sort of realm, I loved growing up. Baz Luhrmann’s films, obviously. Don McAlpine, Australian cinematographer. Bruce Beresford. There’s such an amazing pedigree of actors as well, most recently, obviously the Edgertons [Joel and Nash], Ben Mendelsohn, Heath, obviously, and Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman.”

Curious to learn more about why a bona-fide star would lurk on Letterboxd where his own performances are ranked, rated and reviewed, we ask Montgomery: what does he get out of it? “I don't have this in-built bias or expectation, even though you’d think I would to kind of go, ‘Why didn’t they like that?’ I love reading the bad reviews. I’m all about it. I’m just interested to see what they engaged with. I think that’s the great thing about Letterboxd as opposed to any other platform is that I can just kind of log in under my alias and read everyone’s uninhibited dialogue that’s come out just after they’ve seen the film. And I love that. Good, bad, ugly. The whole lot. I think it’s the coolest thing ever.”

So then, the final, obvious question: has he been reading the Broken Hearts reviews? “I love to look up the Broken Hearts Gallery page. I think people are just enjoying this level of escapism. If they had the ability to go to a drive-in or to the cinema, wherever they are, people are just kind of going ‘it was so nice to get out of my house and out of my head’. It’s what any cinema tries to do, that level of escapism. I think it couldn’t have come at a better time. Once it’s done its cinematic release, it’ll be on streamers and then people can have that level of escapism who weren’t able to go to the cinema, so that’s really nice.”

Prepare yourself for The Broken Hearts Gallery by checking out this extremely thorough Letterboxd list of romantic comedies, expand your romantic comedy horizons with this list of South Korean rom-coms, and get a feel for where Letterboxd members are at, rom-com-wise, with this romantic comedy showdown.

‘The Broken Hearts Gallery’ is in theaters where possible. Dacre Montgomery’s first book of poetry will be released in October. Comments have been edited for clarity and length.