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pandemicthestory · 4 years

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episode 17: defined

In here, the passage of time is impossible to measure.

Night and Emma have been sitting in the forest for minutes - but then again, it could be hours.

What’s weirder than the time freeze, though, is that the longer she stays here the less anxious Emma feels. When Night brought her here she was fuming, but now, that anger seems to have faded. So like, is this an enchanted forest? Or is it something to do with...him.

“I don’t know anything about you.” he says, unprompted. He knows this is a lie, but he wonders what she’ll say in response.

The dark forest darkens. It’s almost as if they have nowhere to be.

“Well uh, that sister I’m looking for...she’s sort of, the favorite. And it makes sense, so I’m not really mad. She’s the good one. I actually need her around, so that it doesn’t feel like everyone’s eyes are on me.”

Night nods.

“Do you mean that you aren’t good?” he asks.

“I guess it depends on who you ask. My friends would probably tell you I’m special. My uh...other relationships…”

Her mind wanders to Julian, and the plan they had to get away. It seems like so long ago that she planned to leave everything for him - almost like a distant memory. It’s interesting to her that she’s somehow ended up farther away than she ever could’ve predicted.

She returns to the non-Julian sitting in front of her. “Well no, I wouldn’t call myself good. And you?”

Night stares off into the darkness.

“I don’t think anyone is good or bad really.”

“Then why the hell did you ask me?” Emma asks, annoyed.

“I was interested to hear what you’d say.”

Emma scoffs to herself. “You think you can learn who a person is based on what they tell you? Sorry, but it’s the opposite. Everyone lies and no one knows themselves anyway so the lies don’t even matter.”

Emma seems to have given this idea some thought before.

“I think what people have to say about themselves says less about where they’ve already been, and more about where they might be going.” explains Night.

“Oh really? Are you a psychologist or something? Don’t answer that, I don’t even want to know. You freak me out.”

“You say you’re no good, and I think...I think that means that you don’t know your own potential...and that you’re setting a limit on yourself so you don’t have to find out.”

Emma opens her mouth to respond, but has nothing to say.

“So what are you, a psychologist?”

The two of them continue to sit in the forest, beginning to recognize more about what they have in common and some of what makes them different.

Emma breaks down the meaningful parts of her life for him. As a teenage girl, that basically consists of friends, family, school. She wonders why Night seems so interested in something that is, to her, so boring. Her face lights up when she talks about her friends. It darkens when she talks about Isabel.

She notices that he hardly moves. She notices that he seems like he knows how every story is going to end.

Night finds Emma to be confusing. He finds most people around him to be predictable - from his early childhood surrounded by other Inborns, to his high school classmates coming from different walks of life (both “real” and virtual). No matter the case, Night lives on his own planet far from the rest of humanity. Normally, he tunes everything out. So why is she any different?

He notices that Emma is shockingly unapologetic, yet senses her overwhelming guilt and insecurity. How can she be so confidently odd but seem to doubt her own worth?

And for that matter, why is that someone who loves her sister enough to chase her through different worlds...seems to not really know her sister at all?

Why is she a builder of computers and software, a creator of code, yet seems erratic with no laws binding her?

It’s her who breaks the connection first: “We should probably go, right?”

Sure, yeah, probably. He nods. They rise.

And yet, he continues to wonder: why is it that when he speaks, her eyes burn deep into him? In this forest, always dark and quiet for as long as he can remember, those fierce eyes are like sun.

* * *

6 MONTHS EARLIER:

Night can barely keep his head up in class. The long nights of aimlessly staring into the internet have made him almost nocturnal. Which is why it would be really unfortunate if--

“Night, what was your response?”

Shit.

Of course Teacher calls on him. He definitely hasn’t been paying attention to whatever’s been going on, so...his response is:

“I don’t have one.”

Some of his classmates laugh. Others roll their eyes, unamused--this kid’s vacancy was funny the first five times and now it’s just tiresome.

Teacher is among the unamused.

“Well see if you can think of one by the end of the period, and you can tell me after class.”

More laughter. Night groans and returns his head to the cold metal of his desk. Wait, what was the question again?

The vibration of his desk stirs his consciousness - the slight humming motion that lets everyone know when class is over. Those around him rise up and head for the door. A few students give him a pitying look, but most don’t really see him. This, he’s used to.

Teacher shuts the door behind them. She sighs.

“You already know what I’m going to say. And I already know what you’re going to say.”

“Then why did you keep me here? I--” Night responds.

“--You’re going to try to convince me that this is the best you can do. When I am quite confident that is not the case.”

“I just don’t care. And I don’t mean disrespect by it.” Night is unable to articulate himself in a way that’s not offensive, but again, that’s nothing new.

“I understand you Night. And I want to move forward instead of dwelling on the past. Have you made progress on your research assignment?”

Night pauses.

“That’s ok, I’m going to guess that you haven’t started. But you still have a week. You can do something brilliant, I know you can. If you used all of your mind, Night…”

He wonders what she’ll say, but she doesn’t finish.

“I want to believe in you, so help me to do so. You need to improve if you want to get on the right track...if you want to be building at the level that I know you’re capable of...well, some people aren’t so lucky when they graduate, and some are. I hope you’re among the lucky.”

She offers a smile. He wonders if she gives this speech to everyone.

* * *

“I’ma go ahead and take a night shower, cuz I gotta get up early and do school service. Don’t ask bro, I don’t wanna talk about it.” Sugar says as he heads into their bathroom.

Night just nods.

“Uh, aren’t you gonna ask me about it?” Sugar asks.

“You just said you didn’t want me to.”

“Yeah but you always up in my business anyway. What’s up with you? You know what, I don’t wanna know.” Sugar closes the bathroom door, and then calls from inside, “but you can tell me if you want to.”

Night boots up his computer. Maybe it’s time to start that research paper. Or to at least read the assignment description, because he honestly has no idea what’s supposedly due next week.

Ok, huh. Doesn’t seem to be the normal kind of research paper...it seems like, they’re actually expected to...make their own research. As in, find something new. Well shit. One week is going to be difficult.

Night is incredibly smart, and had this been a typical “find the history of blah blah blah”, this wouldn’t be a problem. But now he’ll need to think.

So he thinks.

And thinks.

And...gets sick of thinking.

He finds it interesting that there are young people like him all over the world doing the same exact assignments every night, yet everyone is alone and working independently. Maybe everyone is struggling to care like he is.

People should really band together and overpower the system that requires “research papers.” What a useless skill, honestly.

Night begins to search through forums on information and research sharing, diving deeper and deeper. There are certainly others out there looking for the same shortcuts.

It’s under an obscure reddit forum that he finds a question and answer about some...anonymous genius who writes papers. It’s expensive, but supposedly vouched for.

Huh.

Who could this ghostwriter be? They sound useful.

Night follows the virtual bread crumb trailer just a bit farther. He soon finds the ghostwriter’s well-disguised website, and drafts an email of inquiry. He sends the assignment prompt and notes that price is not an issue, only time.

Nothing more he can do now. He might as well troll around for another few hours before sleeping for two, and then maybe he’ll wake up to a response before class.

*ping*

Surprisingly, he doesn’t have to wait that long. Someone out there stays awake just as late as he does.

#writer #writers on tumblr #my writing #scifi writing #shortfiction #scifiromance

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hollenius · 5 years

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re neurodivergent headcanons in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, I think the first time (a year or so ago) I read something where someone online suggested Chuck was somewhere on the autism spectrum (high functioning/Aspergers), I laughed it off as a ridiculous suggestion, because he didn’t “fit” many of the stereotypical traits seen in other fictional characters or in the popular conception of the topic…but in retrospect, I think that came more from my misunderstanding of the “spectrum” part of it than anything else. It’s definitely a plausible/possible diagnosis comorbid with the anxiety disorder(s) he canonically has.

· We know Chuck’s a good actor (e.g. his ability to fool Jimmy in “Klick”) and is able to mimic and slip into different sorts of social behaviors (e.g. his ability to social climb from a working class or lower-middle-class family to the world of white shoe law firms), so he’s probably capable of using masking in most public settings. This is apparently a more common trait in autistic women, but men do it as well, if less frequently.

· Studies asking about the long-term effects of masking seem to imply it takes a physical/emotional/mental toll on the person using it, which might explain why, by the time we see him in BCS, the stress of acting “normal” in meetings and the like, when compounded with the worsening of his anxiety problems, leaves him curled up under a space blanket for hours or even days afterward. Trying to compensate for multiple issues at once is probably even more taxing.

· He seems prone to getting overwhelmed by things and either shutting down or lashing out in reaction. The most extreme form of the former is when he goes catatonic for hours/days in response to being tazed or put in the CAT scan machine; the most extreme form of the latter is probably him completely losing it and shouting/crying/having to be physically restrained by the hospital staff because he’s so upset about being surrounded by lights/hooked up to an EKG/being recommended for a CAT scan.

· Contrary to stereotypes, Chuck is decent at reading people (or at least he’s extremely good at reading his brother and knowing how he behaves) and he interacts well with people within a work context, but he doesn’t seem to have any friends outside of it, or much in the way of a social life–the other lawyers hold him in awe as a sort of glorified animate law encyclopedia, rather than someone they would want to hang out with or chat with informally. (Though Chuck doesn’t come across as the sort who would be interested in chit chat with coworkers anyway...) Being totally housebound and cut off from the outside world is upsetting to Chuck primarily because it interferes with his work as a lawyer–we never get the sense that he’s upset about it having any effect on his interpersonal relationships, because he doesn’t seem to have any. This is probably why losing Rebecca hit him so hard. He’s got almost nobody else, besides Jimmy and Howard, and he’s really not emotionally open and unguarded with anyone.

· He’s got problems dealing with his emotions in general. Even when he’s trying to do his little pain/emotion/medication journal as part of his psychiatric treatment towards the end of season 3, he seems to struggle with articulating his emotional state–he’s just got “average” written down for most of the incidents he’s logged, but he’s not able to write down what his emotion is after he’s unable to sleep after insulting/lying to Jimmy to drive him away for the final time, and he seems to abandon writing in the journal after that & rapidly deteriorates psychologically. From what we see of him in the show, he seems to alternate between being extremely repressed and completely exploding and freaking out.

· Some people have no interest in having or wanting friends, but I don’t think Chuck’s one of them. He seems pretty lonely. He remarks to Jimmy at one point in season 1 that he doesn’t really mind him hanging around to work on the Sandpiper case in his house because he’s glad for the company, which makes his systematic driving away of Jimmy and the few other people in his life all the sadder. The whole root of Chuck’s jealousy of Jimmy in the first place is that people like Jimmy, and they don’t like him. He makes attempts at being friendly, but struggles to do it on anything deeper than a surface level. (Of course, a lot of Jimmy’s friendliness and charm tends to be pretty shallow too, but I don’t know that Chuck really appreciates that or can tell the difference–all he sees are the results.)

· He’s tone-deaf with jokes–he famously botches the attempt at a lawyer joke to his wife in the opening flashback in “Rebecca”, but he also makes an awkward attempt at humor when talking to Kim in a present-day scene later in that same episode (“the early bird gets the worm, which is good if you like worms”), which leads to some uncomfortable forced laughter from her. Some people are just serious by nature, but they probably wouldn’t bother trying to make jokes in the first place if that were the case. The fact that Chuck keeps trying to make jokes and failing suggests that there might be some impairment in that area. He sees Jimmy do it, and he sees it work for him, but can’t really manage it himself. (He seems to do ok with deadpan sarcasm though–that comment about young people loving local print journalism is probably my favorite Chuck quote.)

· He’s very verbal and articulate, but his speech patterns can be a bit odd. He can be indirect and overly formal, which may or may not be an overcompensation for the more stereotypical autistic behavior of being too direct in speech as to be insensitive. He usually winds up still coming off as elitist and assholish anyway, though he may not be intending this/aware of this. When he’s nervous or upset, he tends to devolve into talking at people rather than to them, such as when he starts rambling on about probable cause and assorted legal precedents to the police officers who show up at his house in “Alpine Shepherd Boy”, without noticing that they aren’t even standing at the door anymore. He’s got a lot of information rattling around in his head, which he throws out as a defense, but not always in a way that is helpful; I don’t think talking about Latin translations of the Hippocratic Oath to the doctors sedating him without his consent before sending him in for a CAT scan is doing him any good (NB: the actual Hippocratic Oath is in Greek anyway, and the phrase Primum non nocere dates from a later period, so either Chuck has no idea what he’s talking about, he’s conflating two related things, or he’s freaking out enough that he doesn’t really care at this point).

· He seems to ignore other people when they’re talking to him altogether if something sets him off or distracts him–when Howard tells him about Kim quitting HHM and teaming up with Jimmy, Chuck immediately tunes him out, to the point where Howard has to ask him if he’s still listening. Chuck says he is, but then walks off in the middle of Howard talking because he’s still distracted by what he said before, sending a confused/concerned Howard following after him. This is at its most extreme when he goes into his rant in “Chicanery” and is totally oblivious to both Galley pleading with him to stop and everybody else in the room staring at him in growing horror/disbelief until he’s far past the point of no return.

· I’m actually sort of curious about Chuck’s abilities in court prior to the visible deterioration of his mental health, because although he clearly knows a lot about the law, his personality is a bit off-putting. I don’t know if he just sort of brute-forced his way through things because of his knowledge of obscure case law, because based on what I know from the lawyers I’m friends with, there are all sorts of subjective factors that can come into play in a court setting. The sort of things that would drive someone like Chuck nuts, like jurors who deliberately choose to ignore evidence because they’ve decided in advance that they don’t want to convict someone of a crime. (To be fair, this would also drive me completely insane, because I have a really hard time at my own job dealing with people who think the rules shouldn’t apply to them for various reasons.)

· Chuck has an EXTREMELY black and white view of the world, and a sort of obsession with the authority of law and the importance of following the rules. He’s got really strong perfectionist tendencies within himself. I think a lot of why he gravitates toward the law is that he seems to find all the rules and procedures comforting, in a way--there’s a uniformity to the way the legal world works, and a framework in which everything proceeds--constraints which are equally binding on all participants.

· Maybe he just knows a ton about the law because he’s a lawyer, but it might also fall into the case of it being a special interest, since his knowledge of obscure case law seems to be regarded as extensive and superlative even by other lawyers. (He reads FEC and ISO reports for fun!)

· There’s something slightly elliptical about his thinking, and he doesn’t seem to realize that other people aren’t following his thought patterns. (He repeats his “One after Magna Carta!” justification for knowing the Mesa Verde address to Kim and Jimmy in season 2 as well as to the officials from the Bar in season 3, which seems to suggest that he thinks it is a very obvious and logical connection that other people should grasp, though I’m not sure that it actually is outside of his head.)

· I’m not entirely sure where the line between nervous tics and stimming is drawn, but he’s got a lot of little fidgety behaviors that come out especially when he’s stressed, especially scratching or shaking or wringing his hands. (The script to “Chicanery” indicates that he’s nearly drawing blood from digging into his hands while on his big rant, but it’s not visible onscreen because we’ve got that wonderful/agonizing slow zoom onto his face instead.) It's not clear if it predates the EHS or not. Sometimes there’s a clear tie in his behavior to perceived pain from electricity, but sometimes there’s not--sometimes it seems to result from him trying to distract himself from the electricity instead, like when he’s trying to stand outside the house for two minutes in “Bingo”. Sometimes he does it while he’s standing around in his house, thinking about something else, like while rehearsing arguments against Jimmy before he heads in to court in “Chicanery”.

· There’s a pretty strong preference for routine/predictability & distress when it’s altered. (Most people probably would not get so suspicious if a single newspaper wasn’t delivered one day, for example. If it was repeated or frequent or a pattern, yes, but not for a single paper.) His control issues are brought up pretty frequently in fandom discussions; maybe he’s a jerk, maybe he’s just not able to function well in unpredictable situations, maybe it’s a little of both (e.g. Chuck being really bothered by Ernie bringing him the wrong kind of apples, then saying that it didn’t really bother him that much...but then telling Ernie to write it down so that he would get the right apple the next time, indicating that he actually WAS bothered by it)

· It’s possible his perceived sensitivity to electricity grew out of an existing natural sensitivity or aversion to extremes in light or sound or anything else, but this is pure conjecture because we get so few flashback scenes. (Speaking only from personal experience, I don’t think I’m hurt by electricity, but I can hear lights when they’re turned on, and get uncomfortable/anxious under certain types of light, like fluorescents in big box stores when out shopping, so maybe someone who’s more sensitive to sensory things in general might be more prone to developing a sort of learned distress out of that.)

All of this is very inconclusive! But it’s totally plausible as a reading of the character.

#long post #meta #better call saul #chuck McGill #long posts about loathed characters!

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nellie-elizabeth · 5 years

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: I Have a Date Tonight (4x16)

Weird Al! White Josh! Dr. Akopian! I had so much fun with this episode and also I'm so nervous about next week and I don't know what to think!

Cons:

Okay, obviously, obviously, the narrative is promoting Greg over the other two. For my money, Josh was never in the running in a serious way, although I appreciate the connection that he and Rebecca have. I have some problems with the idea of Greg and Rebecca ending up together, even though I really do like them and think they're sweet. It's kind of difficult to be articulate about it, though. First is the undeniable fact that Skylar Astin is doing a great job, but he doesn't seem like Greg to me. The dynamic that him and Rebecca have now is perfectly sweet, but it does not in any way feel like a continuation of the same character and the same relationship that we saw before. I know that in some ways this is intentional, but in other ways it's kind of weak because we didn't get to see this new thing develop for long enough for me to want it as end-game? If that makes sense?

I also think this story does a bit of a disservice to all three of Rebecca's suitors. With Nathaniel, we have seen how far he's come, but I feel like at some point the show decided that we'd had enough development with him, so now his only personality trait is that he loves Rebecca. Same with Josh - we know he's been going to therapy and working on himself, which is great, but here at the end it's like all of his character focus is about Rebecca, instead of about being a fully realized character in his own right. That's kind of disappointing, and I don't know if the finale could possibly be good enough on its own to assuage some of my unfulfilled feelings.

I will probably be delighted with whatever happens with Rebecca. At this point, she's either a) picking Greg, or b) picking nobody, or c) picking some fourth option we don't know about yet, or d) picking nobody with the hint of a future suitor tagged on at the end. I think I'll be satisfied with the end of Rebecca's narrative, but I'm less sure that I'll be satisfied with the narratives for all the rest of the characters. And hell, maybe something will come out of left field and Rebecca will end up with Josh or Nathaniel. That's pretty much the only thing that could surprise me at this point!

Pros:

Despite everything I just said above, I did get intense warm fuzzies when Greg said that Rebecca was the love of his life. That was just so cute, and so pure, and it felt very real. Sure, I have my complaints, but if the show ends with the two of them together, I'll be pretty happy about it. Backing up to look at Greg's date in its entirety... honestly I loved everything about Greg in this episode. He starts off being confident, knowing that he and Rebecca have something special and don't need anything flashy. People start to get into his head and he gets nervous, so he goes too far and wants to book a hot air balloon... but the date ends up being Rebecca and Greg ordering take-out while sitting in the mechanic's shop waiting for Greg's car to get fixed. It's domestic, it's sweet, and it gives both of them a chance to reflect on how much they didn't want to do the whole big, elaborate date thing. Rebecca had so much fun with Josh and Nathaniel, but those dates didn't help her to make a decision of any sort. This one? Just being with Greg and cutting away all the pretense? It's pretty perfect.

It also occurs to me that this situation is a direct parallel to Greg and Rebecca's disastrous date to Josh's sister's wedding back in Season One. Back then, Greg decided not to put any effort in, and Rebecca was crushed. Here, Greg decided to put in all sorts of effort, then it went wrong, and Rebecca and Greg were both happy with the result of a casual, uncomplicated evening together. I think that's a pretty clear sign.

One of my favorite moments of this episode was the scene between Nathaniel and Josh. They are allied and paralleled in so many ways in this episode. They both have an unfair "advantage" with Rebecca that needs to be neutralized - Nathaniel's money, and Josh's hot body. They both take Rebecca on a simple date involving a picnic. And they both love her and want to be with her, but they both will probably be okay if Rebecca doesn't choose them. They even have a "good game" moment, and I can see them being friends when this is all over, no matter the results.

And those dates... Josh was just so cute, tying back in his past with Rebecca, but making sure she knows that it's not about looking backwards, but about coming full circle. They spend the date mostly talking about the past, though, remembering their experience at camp. I think Rebecca and Josh will always have a special connection because of the things they've been through together, and I think they can survive this situation as good friends.

Nathaniel and Rebecca's date made me so happy, and despite the obvious narrative pull towards Greg, I'm always going to be a bit enamored with Nathaniel/Rebecca. I mentioned earlier that I think the narrative is doing a disservice to Nathaniel as a character, and the best way I can articulate that is that I think Nathaniel is currently at a "mid-season-three-Rebecca" kind of stage. He's not ready yet to be the one that Rebecca ends up with. We've seen a lot of development and introspection from him, but he's still focusing a lot of his energy on being with Rebecca, despite the many times he's realized that he should back off. This mirrors so much of what Rebecca had to go through to get to a healthy place. If the show were centered on Nathaniel, and there was a Season Five coming up, we'd probably see him develop further into a person who could comfortably be able to commit to another person in a healthy way. I hope that he finds that love, and that while Rebecca was the first love of his life that made him realize he needed to change and grow, he's able to find happiness elsewhere. Plus, Nathaniel and Rebecca have hella good chemistry and they look super cute dancing together. The end.

The rest of the gang spends the episode betting on Rebecca's love life, and it is so much that I never knew I needed. First off, just having the whole gang together warmed my heart in unexpected ways. There was so much fun energy, and interesting character dynamics, and jokes from characters we don't get to see enough of... I liked seeing who was rooting for which guy, and I think there's something very interesting about how that ends up panning out.

For the main three gals: we've got Paula rooting for Josh. Paula is supposed to be Rebecca's best friend, the one who knows her the best, and yet here we see her picking the guy that seems the least likely. Heather, someone who's been a friend to Rebecca for most of her time in West Covina, goes with Nathaniel, someone who she has grown to appreciate more over time. And Valencia, the one who started as Rebecca's adversary, picks the guy that narrative-wise makes the most sense for Rebecca at this point. I think all three women have interesting points in why they chose their men, but Paula is focused on the story-book aspect, Heather is focused on how Nathaniel has grown, while Valencia seems to see to the heart of Greg and Rebecca as a good couple.

White Josh. Love of my life. I was just complaining that we haven't seen enough of him lately, and then we get this. Guys and Dolls is one of my favorite musicals of all time, so that "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" number was just excellent for me on every level. I like that we start with White Josh being his normal judgmental self, but then he literally says "JK LOL" and is all about it. There's something so fun and carefree and mean-spirited but in a way that's still kind of allowable. We get a fun group dance number, lots of hilarious jokes, and a general feeling of celebration and lightness. In some ways, it's this subplot that gives us permission to be okay with the bizarre Bachelorette-like scenario that Rebecca has going on here. The tone of the show is telling us that this isn't Rebecca having another back-slide. This is silly and weird, but it's okay to have fun with it.

We also get that message more explicitly with Dr. Akopian. As much as Rebecca is doing great with managing her mental health, she can still get a little bit intense at times, and stalking Dr. Akopian definitely qualifies as problematic behavior. I love that poor Dr. Akopian is just trying to live her life, but she tries to be patient with Rebecca as well. Still, she knows her boundaries, and asks Rebecca if she can have her morning back. She's a therapist, and we know her in this show in that context almost exclusively. But just like every other character on this show, no matter how minor, she has a life outside of Rebecca, and it's fun to see little hints of that.

I could keep going, but I think that's all I've got for now. This was an excellent episode. I'm conflicted about so many things. Some of those things I think it's good to be conflicted about... others, I'm not so sure. Still, every time I've had doubts about this show, I've been proven wrong. I cannot wait to see what the finale holds next week, and that musical concert thing afterwards is sure to be a lot of fun!

8.5/10

#review #crazy ex girlfriend #crazy ex girlfriend review #crazy ex-girlfriend #crazy ex-girlfriend review #crazy ex-gf #crazy ex gf

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samrosemodblog · 6 years

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Sometimes I wish I was more articulate with my points or arguments.

In the past I was very argumentative, I would rant and rave for paragraphs to pages to try and get my point across, but most of the time all it ever did was make a problem worse. I’m not good at getting my point across and almost always try and say everything in explicit detail instead of making a concise point.

I still do this too (I’m doing it right now) but at least it’s not always over angry ranting like in my past. Every now and again I’ll angry rant, but it happens far less often these days. I’m a lot more chill and relaxed than I used to be, and its easier to let a lot of things slide than to take them too seriously.

But I’ve always admired people who can make their point in fewer words than I can. Whenever I watch a video that articulates a point I’ve had, or something I’ve realized unconsciously better than I ever could, it makes me wish I could do that.

I probably should’ve taken debate in school now that I think about it. Oh well, I’ve always hated confrontation too much to do so.

I definitely grew up with the ‘Internet Reviewer Boom’ side of the internet, when Channel Awesome and Screw Attack were huge draws, and I always admired the way people could deconstruct and verbalize their thoughts and make it entertaining to boot.

But every time I tried to review something myself, what would happen is I would have one passionate review, try to start a second, and fall flat because I realized I really only care for reviewing things I either have absolute passion for, or think is utter trash. And there’s honestly not a lot that fall into either end of the spectrum.

If asked about my opinion on something I found just okay, I couldn’t cartoonishly rage at it for not being better, nor could I really deconstruct what would’ve made it better. It just was.

Plus, I’ve always felt like I often have the ‘unpopular opinion’ about whatever it is I have opinions about. It happens a lot in MLP, a lot of the fan favorite episodes end up being some of my least favorite and vice-versa. Season 8 as a whole has been awful, but a lot of people have enjoyed it and argued with me on that enjoyment (Or they find it bad for completely different reasons than I do, and don’t like why I consider it bad), and its really just a matter of personal opinion at that point and I hate arguing with personal opinions of enjoyment.

Then I’ll see something where I really agree with what was said, but then the person who wrote it is often the center of controversy and drama, and just the mere association with them brings that drama on your head too. I might agree with 95% of what someone will say, but I can’t express that without trouble looming my way too.

And then the 5% I don’t agree with I’m not articulate enough to try and explain why I don’t believe that’s the case, so I have to wait for someone who can articulate it better than I can to make my point for me.

Its why all of my story telling tends to be about the way interactions are perceived and subtle, as opposed to things just being blatantly spelled out for people. You have to infer for yourself what a line was meant to induce in people, and this has definitely caused a lot of the more ‘controversial’ reactions to my work.

Motherly is the easiest examples to draw from, with things like Apple Bloom’s relationship with her sister (which was based on another blog that no longer exists now), my treatment of Starlight as a whole (and especially her relationship to Twilight), or the whole ‘Redemption’ arc for Rain Catcher (with people insisting him and Scootaloo should get back together when no they should not).

But you get my point. When I DO start to have characters explicitly state their point, you get panels that have walls of text because I have to explain all the subtle intricacies that have been going on, and they have always been my least favorite panels to write. I know I can be too subtle sometimes, but I also don’t like being slapped in the face with it either.

In the end this has caused me to often be like, unless I can express myself perfectly, I should just shut up and let someone else say it. Opinion I agree with? Cool, I’ll leave it at that. One I don’t agree with? Better shut up and ignore it or do something else with my time. Somewhere in the middle? Cool, let’s do something else now!

I guess the Tl;dr of this whole thing is, I wish I was better with words. Expressing oneself is important, and its important to use the right words while doing so. And I wish I was better at it, but I don’t even know where to begin with improving that.

I can always keep making walls of text like this, but eh, its far from effective.

#Sam Ramblings

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adanseydivorce · 2 years

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Retrospective thoughts on S1 of Teen Wolf

•Okay so I have to say I did not enjoy this season overall. I didn’t expect this show to be good at all but I expected to have a fun time with how ridiculous parts were and like I said I mostly wanted to watch it because I think I’ll like the characters. But this season was really really plot focused which isn’t really my preference even with like, good/interesting plots. And the main plot about the transitions and the actual conflict with the alpha etc. were just really boring to me. I wouldn’t even care about things like the special effects or bad lighting because I can dismiss those things easily enough but the show really wanted to lean into like.. action/suspense a lot when if it had leaned into being more campy and ridiculous I would have been able to enjoy it more xd. I don’t even think my not being especially into werewolf lore can be blamed here. I also think I expected this show to be more an even blend of like soapy teen drama and the paranormal storyline when it’s actually firmly focused on the latter at least for this season (which it’s a short season so I guess it’s getting all the world building stuff out of the way and will have like fun dynamics and character stuff more later, is what I’m hoping for). 1.05 and 1.11 which were the most grounded in the former side to the show were the two episodes I had fun watching which leaned more into being a high school CW show (I don’t actually know if it was on the CW or MTV at this time because I’ve heard it referred to as part of both networks I think but anyway). I also found the finale pretty engaging.

•On the characters: I do solidly like Scott Allison and Lydia although I only am emotionally investment in Allison at this point, and that I came to in the last three episodes of the show when there was focus on her internal life, thoughts and reactions to trauma which I really loved and from what I know of her arc before she dies I definitely want to see the rest of it unfold, so am sticking with my plan to watch at least through s3 and then see if I want to invest further. Scott is very sweet and a good boy and I like him but his conflicts etc. are the main plot which I found boring like I said. I basically already liked Lydia from seeing fandom stuff about her but although not much is going on with her with season I did really like the moments where you can see a visible contrast between how she portrays herself and how smart she actually is I thought they were well done and I was a bit annoyed they had Stiles explicitly be the one to draw attention to that I wish it was something the viewer can just pick up on and that Lydia could articulate later on but that’s whatever I don’t expect this show to be subtle . Stiles is alright I was expecting more tbh, but maybe that comes later (and I also might be subconsciously a bit biased against him just because I know enough about fandom for this show to know he has Leopold Fitz status aka. objectively a fine or good character but gets the most clout in the fandom compared to the protagonist of color and other characters of color who are dismissed or mischaracterized to prop him up so that just means he’ll have to work a bit to be a character I care about + I don’t get invested in men that often, which is probably a lot of why I so did not have a good time watching this show even though I’ve seen things of the same quality I enjoyed a lot). I know Derek is polarizing but so far he just seems very bland. Jackson was interesting to me for two seconds in an episode but in the rest of the season I did not care.

•Throughout the season I thought Allison’s familial conflict was the most compelling and interesting thing being set up which is part of why she was my clear favorite but I also just feel so uncomfortable when her family is on screen which maybe is a good thing because you’re obviously not supposed to like and root for them, but it was also a bit irritating that the thing that I felt had the most substance I still had roadblocks to my enjoyment for.

•The scene in the finale where Scott’s username and password are both Allison and the alpha who’s name I don’t remember’s reaction etc. was hilarious and perfect, and Scott’s first howl was fun. I wish there had been more moments like that tbh.

•So final thoughts I’ll watch all of s2-3 (I was contemplating maybe skimming some things but ultimately I do think I will watch all of those seasons and then see if I want to watch the rest of the show or tap out, or maybe skim the last three seasons for just whatever interests me at that point).

•Is that everything? If I remember something it feels crucial to add I’ll reblog later.

•Oh and Scott’s mom is so lovely she dies right xd

•I didn’t have genuine shipping feelings about anyone, not a single pairing. Not even Allydia which is what I thought for sure I’d be into. I don’t mind any potential pairing either they are what they are(except Sterek which seems evil).

#S watches TW #Kira and Erica are the two characters I haven’t met yet that I most want to meet and I know they’re in 2 and 3 respectively (?)#Ideally I wanted to meet Malia too but if she’s only in the back half of the show I wouldn’t necessarily commit to that at this point #S speaks

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logh-icebergs · 6 years

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Episode 30: Lost Things

March 18, 798/489. In the Empire, Reinhard’s fleet prepares to warp Geiersburg Fortress into the Iserlohn Corridor. On Iserlohn, Yang prepares to submit to a dubiously lawful inquiry by the hostile—but democratically elected!—Alliance government. Hilda convinces Mecklinger to pay a visit to her sick cousin, who teaches us all about the importance of having hobbies. And Geiersburg’s test warp, thanks to Kempf and Mueller’s adept leadership, goes off without a hitch. Meanwhile, Reinhard sinks deeper into depression, Julian blows off steam at the shooting range, and Reuental and Mittermeyer (you guessed it!) go on a date.

Reinhard Alone

Reinhard may be dead inside, but he still looks amazing. Episode 30, in particular, has some of my favorite animation in the series, so please enjoy all the ridiculously beautiful heartbreak as much as you possibly can through your tears.

We haven’t spent much time with Reinhard since the traumatic season 1 finale, so we’re long overdue for a check in with our fast-rising Empire-side hero. How’s he been doing?

Not great! (From episode 28.)

Once you're immersed in how LoGH tells stories, it’s tempting to say that Reinhard’s newly sour affect “should come as no surprise,” given what he’s been through. And though that is true on an in-universe level—nobody who suffered the tragic loss of a long-time romantic partner only months ago should be expected to have recovered already—it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that surprise at the way LoGH treats Reinhard’s grief is unwarranted.

In my episode 26 post, I talked about how my past experiences as a queer consumer of media had primed me for LoGH to handle Kircheis’s death poorly, and what a surprise it was when my expectations were subverted. In that light, Reinhard’s grief—the way it changes him, the way it has a tangible presence, the way other characters tiptoe around and discuss it—is a surprise. It’s a constant reminder not just of how important Kircheis was (and still is) to Reinhard, but also of how committed LoGH is to treating its queer characters and their relationships with respect.

LoGH can be a difficult show to watch. Not only does it have over a hundred incredibly dense episodes to get through—some of which are basically impossible to parse unless you watch them more than once—but it’s also deeply, sometimes overwhelmingly sad. Depending on the context, though, that can be good, or at least validating. And Reinhard’s grief, upsetting though it may be, is fundamentally important to a queer reading of LoGH.

Like I said during episode 26, Kircheis’s death is a turning point for the slow dissolution of LoGH’s heteronormative surface reading. And the unflinching portrayal of Reinhard’s grief from here on out is evidence of an ongoing decision on the part of LoGH’s creative team to allow what was formerly confined to subtext to remain above the surface.

The Locket

The way Reinhard’s voice softens when he talks to “Kircheis” via his locket is dramatic and says a lot more on its own than is possible to express in a mere text caption. If you missed it the first time, definitely go rewatch this scene in episode 28 (the timestamp is 3:45) to get the full effect.

The most obvious manifestation of Reinhard’s grief is, of course, his locket, in which he keeps a family photo and a lock of Kircheis’s hair. Some of Reinhard’s colleagues, as I’ll get to in a minute, worry about him because of how much he’s changed since Kircheis’s death. But I would argue that a lot of what’s so disturbing about Reinhard’s transition into Life Without Kircheis is the lack of change, at least in one respect: He still relies on Kircheis for emotional support, as is evident in the gifs above, and for strategic advice, which we see a bit of in episode 30 (below), and will see more of in the future.

Hilda is particularly attuned to Reinhard’s new habit of playing with his locket whenever—were Kircheis still alive—he might have looked to him for input, approval, pushback, or whatever.

There’s nothing inherently unusual about accessing one’s memories of a departed loved one for guidance, but Kircheis was Reinhard’s only intimate relationship before he died, and now that he’s gone, Reinhard still shows no interest whatsoever in diversifying his support network. As a result, his only intimate relationship is now with an inanimate object—or, to put it another way, he has nobody.

Of course, Reinhard’s isolation isn’t entirely self-imposed. Annerose was also a source of strength and comfort before she voluntarily withdrew from his life. If things had gone differently and Annerose had stayed, Reinhard might not feel so lonely—but would that have been healthier, for either of them? I’m not sure. My guess is: not significantly.

Other People

I’m not sure Reinhard realizes how obvious it is to everyone around him the extent to which he’s been utterly destroyed by Kircheis’s death. The fact that he wouldn’t care even if he did realize is, well, not unrelated.

From the relatively trivial to the life-altering, rumors and hearsay play a substantial role in our understanding of LoGH’s world and characters. Reuental and Mittermeyer, who have already spent a good deal of time gossiping about Reinhard and will continue to do so far into the future, are responsible for a good portion of the Empire-side gossip that we see—probably as a factor of their daily standing date. In episode 30, Reinhard’s two highest ranking admirals discuss the depths of his grief in vague terms:

It’s worth mentioning (as always) that Reuental and Mittermeyer’s bodies during this scene are beautifully aligned, without being symmetrical. The line of Mittermeyer’s torso is precisely parallel with Reuental’s left arm! Look at it! In case you hadn’t noticed, I am in awe of the animation team’s treatment of these two.

Reuental and Mittermeyer’s discussion of Reinhard and Kircheis is, of course, about more than just Reinhard and Kircheis—this is Reuental we’re talking about, after all, and he is pathologically incapable of saying one thing without also meaning at least five other things. For the time being, though, this scene mainly adds another, third-person dimension to Reinhard’s grief: We already know how it is affecting him personally; now we also know that it is affecting the people around him, that they’re aware of it, and that these are important enough facts to merit scenes of this length devoted to conveying them.

Hilda, on the other hand, is a lot less prone to gossip than Reuental and Mittermeyer—or maybe she just hasn’t found the right gossip partner?—so her feelings about Reinhard’s situation are communicated to us differently, mainly via looks (above) and internal monologue:

Worry not, dear reader: I’ll be spending tons more time on Hilda and her well-articulated emotional intelligence in the very near future. For now, feel free to repeat “Hilda knows everything” to yourself whenever you see her on your screen, because that basically sums it up.

I also love this little exchange, after Reinhard shuts himself away (again) in the room on Geiersburg where Kircheis died:

Kempf and Mueller’s quick look of mutual understanding here is so simple, but goes a long way towards expressing that the topic of Reinhard’s grief is never far from anyone’s lips among the admiralty.

These are all—even the lengthy conversation between Reuental and Mittermeyer—comparatively small moments in the overall landscape of LoGH. But taken together, they convey that Reinhard’s grief is not small; not for him, not for the people around him, and not for the galaxy.

Reinhard’s Oberstein Eyes

On a subtler character note, remember a few episodes back when Rebecca likened Reinhard’s eyes to Oberstein’s? Well, you may have thought she was being facetious, but she extremely was not. Allow me to demonstrate:

Here are Oberstein’s eyes as they appeared in episode 4. Their most noticeable trait is, obviously, the fact that they’re flashing red. But another distinctive characteristic of Oberstein’s eyes is that they don’t have any highlights or other details beyond the pupil and flat, uniformly blue iris.

In contrast, this eye-heavy moment from episode 28 is a good example of how eyes are typically animated throughout LoGH—with the remarkably consistent exception of Oberstein’s which are, of course, artificial. Mittermeyer and Reuental’s eyes here both have distinct highlights, and seem to move naturally.

Here’s an example, from episode 9, of how Reinhard’s eyes in particular have been depicted before now: Note the visible highlights that change and move with his expression. Reinhard’s eyes do a lot of characterization work for him, and obviously got a corresponding amount of attention from the animation team.

Compare that to Reinhard’s eyes here, in this moment from episode 27. Like Oberstein’s eyes, Reinhard’s irises are now flat and lifeless. They don’t move with the rest of his face and have none of the energy we’re used to seeing from him.

But unlike Oberstein’s, Reinhard’s eyes aren’t synthetic. So when he lets his guard down—which he can only do when he’s alone with his memories of Kircheis—we see unbridled pain and anguish flood back into them. Poor Reinhard.

Stray Tidbits

Can someone please explain to me exactly what is going on here? Why does Yang’s desk only go up to Schenkopp and Cazellnu’s knees? Why is Yang proportional to his weirdly tiny desk? Why is his entire head smaller than Schenkopp’s crotch? This single screenshot keeps me up at night with questions.

Maybe the furniture store that sold either Mittermeyer a tiny chair or Reuental a huge chair also has a location in the Alliance.

Try to imagine something more suspicious than not having a pet. How about liking books more than pets? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Time for some fun facts: Other than Da Vinci, the three historical figures that Hilda’s cousin mentions are Cao Cao, Lazare Carnot, and Tughril Beg. Biographical info on Cao Cao and Lazare Carnot makes it pretty clear they were both, like Mecklinger, Renaissance men who had a wide variety of cultural accomplishments in addition to their political/military careers; it’s harder to find information on Tughril Beg but my guess is that he falls into the same category.

#Legend of Galactic Heroes #Legend of the Galactic Heroes #author: Elizabeth #Empire #Reinhard #grief #queerness #eyes #Reinhard's locket #Geiersburg #gossip

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televinita · 7 years

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Zoo 3x08

♫ If you’re looking for truth, don’t come looking for me ♫

-- Echosmith, “Safest Place”

And if you are looking for me, I will be over here playing Mitch's new theme song on repeat while you read.

But first:

WELL ALL RIGHT THEN. Abigail found the secret passcode to earning my wrath, and it's called "emotionally torturing Jackson about his family and failure to save them and/or being responsible for their deaths" (LISTEN ZOO I know you don't know this but I am still pretty emotionally compromised about The O.C. and Ryan's savior complex and the number it did on his head after a certain fiery car accident of his own, so I don't think now is the best time to prod this wound.)

I'm not saying I can't use this footage of Jackson strung up by his wrists, or that I didn't feast like a tiger upon the spoils of said emotional torture, just that.......actually on second thought I can't remember why I came to this review complaining.

(Also wow I really enjoy the part where Jackson started to snap out of Zen mode when he heard she'd compromised Mitch, and him desperately trying to talk Mitch out of Duncan mode. I still do not know quite how to articulate what it is that delights me about their relationship to each other, but Jackson's side of it was on full display)

Alpha Ship

Keep you far, keep you far from what I know You'll be fine, you'll be fine, just don't look closely now

First of all,

"Aunt Jamie can't really hold her liquor" OMG. I'll take "things that definitely still happen in the AU where Mitch and Jamie had a life together" for $200, Alex. (that quote in some context, at least. maybe not the two-man abduction carry)

Anyway I am just gonna be over here making high pitched squeals about Mitch smoothing her hair out of her face and everything else about these 4 seconds before Max starts talking, because I kinda feel like this is as close to an aftermath-of-rescue with them in these positions as we're going to get this year, and I would like to to wring every drop of visible Caring I can out of it.

"If the team finds out what I've done, I will lose everything. I'll lose Clem -- Jamie -- everything."

Well that hurt me good and deep. Can someone please call all the ambulances? My heart is under attack.

He has a fair point to be worried about: even if they understand, how would they in good conscience be able to keep him around if they don't know what he can do as Mr. Duncan, or how Mr. Duncan takes over? How can they be sure of their own safety alone with him, given how the biodrive might affect things?

On bright side: I forgot I had seen the kiss in this episode early, so that was a bolt out of the blue of PURE UNADULTERATED SHIPPY JOY when my eyeballs encountered it after seeing the context of Mitch being Sketchy As Heck and deserving none of Jamie's wholly sincere reassurance*, but desperate for it anyway. I choose to believe he was on the verge of spilling the beans at that point, but maybe not quite all the way there until the kiss sealed it.

*you are hereby forgiven for the Reiden Tower lies

Morgan & Morgan

I love Squirrelly!Mitch and I loved everything about him and Max working together and accidentally almost having some heart to hearts. Especially Max The Number One Mitch/Jamie Shipper giving him advice that Mitch actually takes about coming clean (or tries to take; thanks for being both the solution to and the cause of all our ship problems today, Max!).

The temporary blindness side effect was my favorite part, especially his insistence on hiding it when Jamie needed an actual airplane-crashing scenario to be distracted enough for only moderate concern at his short-circuiting and Max's oddly eager intervention (honestly, at a certain point he might as well have been hopping along singing "We're off on a secret mission!"). I enjoyed the humorous elements, but would not have opposed a multi-episode arc for the more serious, if this show had made room for it.

Bizarro Alpha Ship

Lies unfolding, cover your eyes

I've remained pretty neutral on the whole Duncan Reveal thing, and I think the reason is: listen, if you want to give me two Billy Burke characters at the same time on one show, then that... well, let's just say this is a fair imitation of the list of Billy Burke characters I have scoured the far corners of the internet, libraries and streaming video sites to enjoy.

But. THE ENDING. 100% agree with empress-of-snark's assessment:

I’ve never really wanted to see one of my otp’s beating each other up, but like…. I get it now. There was something immensely satisfying about seeing Jamie elbowing/kicking Mitch in the face, and I don’t understand but I enjoyed it (probably cause it wasn’t really him technically, but).

I also really enjoy when he first turns around with that eerie, dead-eyed stare (oh hey Gary Matheson redux) and she realizes who he is. This is ONE thing I'll admit sci fi does well -- the mind control / body takeover trope. I delighted in this exact same thing once on Under the Dome’s third season. There is nothing more chilling than seeing a character you would have sworn on your life would never harm their significant other be prepared to do exactly that, with no off switch. It's a much better experience as a viewer to know that it’s beyond their control than to find out they are actually human monsters, though.

And it's an even better experience when Jamie just steamrollers over any unhelpful emotions she's about to have with the steely resolve of Fine, It's A Beautiful Day To Kick Your Ass, and suddenly I'm wondering how low-prole it would be to edit and remix this fight with a subtle backing of "Move, Bitch." (why is the chorus of this song always relevant to my interests)

In other words: all fear and trust and betrayal issues can take a backseat for now because Jamie has one job right now, and I love that she has enough confidence and skill to know she can go through him if she has to.

Odds and Ends

I sat through Logan's entire waste of screen time in order not to lose my understanding-the-plot momentum, and so far I regret that decision.

Okay fine the Kenyatta family spooning was pretty adorbs.

Max trying to use the L word = aces

Out of all of AI Logan's comments, "I have an unfortunate announcement" is my very favorite. I want to use that all the time. Why isn't easy embedding of sound clips a thing.

Jackson attempting to strangle Abigail with his legs? Kinda workin' for me.

I think my favorite thing about Max and the Summoning Rod is that it's very much like the things Mitch ran Jackson through last year. Not so fun to be the guinea pig getting told to buck up, is it?

Should it concern me that I didn't even realize Clem was absent (off in Tankland) until they mentioned her?

Overall: minus Logan's non-AI scenes, WHAT A FUN AND WILD RIDE THIS WAS. By far the highest quality-per-minute density of the season for me. Superb sister episode to Howler Sloth.

I've had so much fun skipping back through it and watching the characters run around*, I keep legit forgetting the plane is going crazy because there is an octopus with snake legs (or something) they had to hack to death. There is so much IN this episode I can't possibly cover it all. It feels like lasted 900 years in a good way.

*or in the Morgans' case, sometimes, remain calm and blissfully unaware while the women nearly die following the Bitches Get Stuff Done model; the juxtaposition between the two drastically different panic levels cracks me up every time.

I have already watched a few minutes into episode 9 because that was a WTF cliffhanger, but I think this is as far as I am gonna get before next new episode.

#cbs zoo comeback project #I kept thinking of more things I was happy about so it got long #honestly I could write more if I had the time and maybe gifsets to split it between

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steve-harringtcns · 7 years

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Hated in the Nation may be my favorite episode of Black Mirror.

Show: Black Mirror

Episode: Hated in the Nation

Rating: 5 Stars

Length: 1.5 hours

Channel: Netflix

Favorite Line:

I really love the concept of Black Mirror. The show uses technology to shine a light on flaws within our society that already exist. For example, one of the shows “lighter” episodes casts a lens on the obsession with popularity on a social media platform. I say “lighter” because, as someone who has maybe 100 Instagram followers and doesn’t actually care who likes her selfies, this kind of episode just didn’t affect me so much as the episode Playtest, about AR.

Hated in the Nation takes that basic concept and creates a movie-length episode, revolving around social media. In particular, the episode conceptualizes the negative aspect: trolling, hate messages, and the like. Picture a world where the most hated person on social media for that day were to die as a consequence of their special status. Hated in the Nation takes this and makes it even more insidious.

Most of the episode is spent trying to stop the attacks on these “most unpopulars.” However, the true villainy of the episode is that these are not the targets at all. Rather, the perpetrator is using his hash-tag “DeathTo” to capture data on anyone who uses it, and these people become his ultimate victims. Essentially, he flips the script, attempting to shine a light on the “consequences” of vile social media attacks.

The reason this episode fascinated me, more than maybe any other I’ve seen thus far (with the exception of Men Against Fire) is because our world primarily relies upon social media to send messages of displeasure. Sure, people rave frequently on the internet. But more often, the most eye-catching material is the hate. 1-star reviews, Facebook fights, even Donald Trump’s twitter. It’s not just that people are obsessed with hating. We’re obsessed with hate.

I find myself often coming across drama on the internet and, captivated, will spend hours reading through post after post. I read the negative comments on an article, and then the responses. While many are thoughtful, articulate people, others are trolls, using the guise of anonymity to say the most vile of things.

Push come to shove, so few of us would actually kill someone we hated. Even in the name of “the greater good,” pulling the trigger just isn’t something a lot of us could do. The same cannot be said of trolling someone into suicide, or at least into leaving whatever position they were in that made you hate them. Gamergate comes to mind, or the story of a rape victim from Notre Dame. People whose lives are so, so affected by hate that they are either forever changed, or worse: dead.

I know that not everyone does send hate. I personally can barely respond negatively to a post (this is more cowardice than me being a “good person,” as responding to racism to shut it down is included in my inaction). After watching Hated in the Nation, I struggle to see how anyone can send anon hate, or any death threats via the internet. Granted, we don’t have tech bees flying around murdering people. But we do have people dying as a result of what happens on social media. And even if they don’t die, people lose their livelihoods over it.

I’m not arguing against using someone’s hateful speech on Facebook as a reason to fire them. Just the opposite. At the beginning of the episode, the director seems to be drawing a distinct line. The first victim is subject to both vicious online attacks, including the “deathto” tweets that ultimately kill her, as well as a petition to get her fired. This plot point seems to be, at least in my mind, a great breaking off point. And something we could all learn from. Words have consequences, and this includes the words in response to what another says. Here, had the petition been successful, the woman would have been fired as a consequence of a great deal of people thinking the article she wrote was vile. Instead, she was killed, because people would rather resort to a cruel hashtag to vent their frustrations.

Two particular points in the episode are worth mentioning. The first is the interview with the teacher who sent a cake with the words “fucking bitch” to Jo Powers, the first victim. In this scene, the teacher is adamant that the hashtag “deathto” is just a hashtag and she didn’t do anything wrong. More than that, she points to everyone else who uses the hashtag. She even goes so far as to crowdfund the purchasing of the cake, aptly pointing out that, had it just been her, of course that would have been weird. This hive mentality is pretty blatantly symbolized in the use of bees to kill the victims. There’s a sort of compounding that happens on the internet. Once one person sends a hateful message, other people see it and think it’s okay for them to do the same. I see it all the time in people I follow: They get one message calling them ugly or telling them to die, and then they have 5. Then ten. Then they turn off anon, and they suddenly go away. It isn’t just the anonymous function that does it. It’s seeing someone else send it. The hive mentality allows us to do something we would otherwise find reprehensible, because at least someone else agrees with us.

The second point is more tragic. The woman who started the perpetrator’s crusade was his roommate, who attempted suicide after a firestorm of social media against her. She couldn’t take it, and she felt the hate pounding on her like a living, breathing entity. It stuck with me, watching this woman struggle as her entire life was turned upside down from a tragic mistake on her part (albeit, one that hurt someone else). The point is, whether at the hands of her haters or not, the woman tried to end her own life because of them.

I don’t know. I was fascinated. I love this show and the way it makes me think about our world, but this episode blew me away. While some of the episodes fuck me up way more, this episode is focused in reality, and the technological enhancements are only the living embodiment of what we already have. Because of the realism, I was left feeling like this already happens. Not the way Black Mirror envisions, but it still occurs. And I think that’s why it will stick with me, the same way Men Against Fire does. Because even if those episodes are not ones that particularly worry me (I highly doubt I will ever be popular enough on the internet to get death threats), they’re the ones that seem the most likely to exist in the here and now.

Also, it’s worth mentioning here because the episode kind of does it and then ends: What the fuck 300,000 people died. It’s horrific. I am not at all endorsing that, and the episode I think could have been horrifying and interesting if I were more viscerally connected to any one of those 300,000. The attempt to tie in one person who was in the whole episode was interesting, but ultimately the fact that 300,000 people participated in a vile hashtag resonates more than that those same people end up dead. So definitely not glossing over that, but it just wasn’t the most striking part of the episode.

Playtest still makes me wanna throw up and if I ever stop having nightmares about it I might write about why that episode is definitely the most horrific of the ones I’ve seen. And I think that’s why Black Mirror kills me so much. I have friends who were horrified by White Bear (and for me the premise was incredible but the episode fell a bit flat). I’ve read reviews of people who loved Shut Up and Dance, or hated it. For me, each episode falls into several categories of: horrific, fascinating, realistic, intense, etc. But no two people will look at an episode and come out of it with the same, nagging feelings. Maybe Hated in the Nation will absolutely wreck someone who has a lot of online followers, or someone who has sent anonymous hate. It didn’t leave me wanting to curl under a blanket, but I respect a show that can bring out so many responses in everyone.

#Christina watches black mirror #black mirror #hated in the nation #internet hate #television #episode reviews #idk it's a new thing I'm starting this month #because I want to be able to look at these later (at the end of the year probably) and say wow I watch too much tv

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emilymulleraccd · 6 years

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Week One Thursday

Video: WHAT ARE IDEAS AND WHO GETS TO HAVE THEM?

“We’re all nomads in the land of ideas.”

Mike Rugnetta spends the last three episodes of Idea Channel reflecting on what they tried to do over the past five years – kind of like the final season of Mythbusters reflecting on favorite myths of theirs or when sitcoms look back at memories from past episodes. These aren’t explanations of how every episode was made, but more of a broad view of what Idea Channel was about and why it was important to Rugnetta & co.

This episode specifically focuses on ideas. Rugnetta reminds us that all subjects of mental activity are ideas, implying concepts and concrete things alike are ideas in terms of how our brain functions and thinks of them.

Idea Channel has focused on unexpected and complex ideas, specifically. This happens when you combine something familiar with something unexpected or unfamiliar: Rugnetta uses an example of “skateboarding is a type of ballet” - it’s a kind of paradox or juxtaposition, making it more complex than the more straightforward ideas of home, a tree, what’s for lunch, etc. These complex ideas take those normal ideas a step further, combining elements from big, old ideas; concepts like love, being, popularity, evil, liberty; and experience-based things like world events, personal experience, media, entertainment, the mundane, the familiar, etc. Rugnetta calls it a “theoretical framework.”

Idea Channel focuses on these complex ideas because of their natural inclination to encourage conversation. Rugnetta realizes the challenges with this – many people don’t feel welcome to theorize, believing it’s not something everyone (us “commoners” and regular people) are able to do. He suggests that the act of taking these old concepts and making them new and less precious, less stern, etc. makes them more accessible. Rugnetta stresses the importance of taking ideas and making them your own, but through discussion – exploring and testing together in conversation as opposed to trying to build and perfect on your own. Collaboration, Rugnetta believes, leads to greater ideas.

I’m inclined to agree with what Rugnetta is arguing – we see it daily in our design work. A good designer recognizes the importance of critique. Considering others’ opinions, perspective, and input allow us to forge stronger work. We are limited to our own experience, so the collaboration of ideas with other bolsters our own thinking, while also challenging us to decide if we believe our own ideas. It’s kind of like nights spent around the kitchen table with friends or new acquaintances: you share ideas and learn and challenge each other’s beliefs; those times spent around the kitchen table are vital for all the reasons Rugnetta brings up.

Video: A DEFENSE OF OVERTHINKING IN POP CULTURE

“Popular culture is an abstract location where values are secured and challenged.”

In this video, Rugnetta discusses pop culture, its significance, and why he feels it’s important to ‘overthink’ it. This summary may feel a bit redundant because the video felt redundant. It was a bit of a doozy. I’ll also summarize in bullet points to help keep it a little more concise (and, well, I just function better doing it this way rather than how I tried to do it for the first response). (UPDATE: Now that I’ve pasted this into Tumblr, the bullets & sub bullets are all messed up. I apologize for the mess.)

· Rugnetta starts by stating popular culture is “important material for intellectual investment” and stresses the importance of overthinking.

· He often receives four arguments against overthinking and why it’s ‘bad’:

o Argument 1: Movies are ‘just movies,’ video games are ‘just video games,’ etc.

§ All you need to gain from these media comes from their surface level content

o Argument 2: Going beyond surface level content to find deeper meaning is opinion masked as fact.

o Argument 3: Uncovering ideas and concepts is reading too far into these things – their creators never intended for them to be dissected and if you’re finding your own meaning in it that’s bad.

o Argument 4: Why bother?

· Rugnetta explains Idea Channel is an exercise in challenging /ignoring these arguments. He believes:

o Nothing is just itself.

o Meaning & significance are deeply personal to audience/viewer – this is what makes something useful.

o Meaning in media that is unexpected or unintended is still ‘part of the work’ because it is a result of experiencing the work. (My agreeing opinion: if a creator doesn’t want someone to take their own meaning away from the work, then the creator probably should rethink doing any type of work that could be misconceived. Meaning, the people that create the type of work Rugnetta is talking about are most likely okay with people forming their own ideas of what it’s about…)

o Media is a useful, powerful tool in deepening one’s experience of the world.

· Why do we do what we do:

o Things that contain theory cause people to think deeply about their surroundings & experiences.

§ Films are philosophical exercises.

§ Video games are executable thought experiments.

o There is a stigma that only certain thoughtful works “DO philosophy,” meaning something has to be pretty well established or ‘high class’ to be considered philosophical.

§ Rugnetta argues all media is capable of doing at least some amount of potential philosophical work. I.e. there is potential for meaning to be found in anything and everything, depending on one’s own perspective.

· The main place for this is pop culture:

o Popular culture: working definition: media and goods which are available to the masses.

§ Media is any material of communication to be consumed by other people

§ Books, texts, gifs

§ Goods, products, makeup, chargers, fidget spinners

§ The masses are, well, the people.

o Pop culture is not what’s made FOR the masses but what’s available TO them.

§ Pop culture has to do with accessibility more than popularity in many cases (the opera example)

o High (smart & artful)/ low distinction is hard to identify how it fits in with pop culture

o Set of things, media and goods, but also abstract location – contradictory things mix before being available to masses (Don’t quite understand this part)

· Why its worth overthinking:

o Pop culture is pretty much the only place where vastly different outlooks come together to interact and have shared experiences.

o It can make personal stories available to masses (spreads awareness, connects people, etc.)

Off the bat I disagree with Rugnetta calling this ‘overthinking.’ My definition of overthinking is bad: overthinking is when I go down the rabbit hole of every possible outcome of my life after graduation, when I spend hours dwelling on something someone said, or when I second- and third- and quadruple-guess my choices in design, et al. What I believe Rugnetta means by ‘overthinking’ is simply thinking deeply. By this definition, I agree with the majority of what he’s saying. I don’t really know how to articulate why, because he pretty much argued his point to death. I don’t necessarily disagree with anything, I just maybe don’t fully understand tiny parts of it. Something about abstract location and contradictory things mixing before being available to the masses – do they HAVE to mix? Is he just mentioning the idea thing like in the previous video? I don’t believe things have to mix before being available.. some things just exist and by simply existing are enough for people to latch on to. Maybe? I’ll think on that…..

Video: THINKING WITH OTHERS

“It matters what stories tell stories. It matters what ideas we think other ideas with.”

Idea Channel’s last scripted video talks about people and thinking. It basically meshes many concepts from the previous two videos and adds to them.

· Idea Channel has always been about people and for people:

o Comment responses

§ Viewers get a say in the show itself.

· They challenge or agree with his points & his views.

o People, not media or tech, have agency. PEOPLE make actions, not objects.

o How fans respond to pop culture and its impact on audiences

· Why people:

o “Critical empathy”

§ Overthinking = critical thinking. (Oh NOW he calls it critical thinking.)

o Rugnetta used to think of critical thinking as vague and attempting to be objective (pretentious) But it’s actally:

§ “Interwoven modes” of thinking

§ Quantity, space, change

§ What humans should do to be good

§ Different disciplines

o What IS critical thinking?

§ People & thinking

§ Self-guided, self-disciplined thinking

§ Intellectual integrity, empathy, etc.

§ Avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues

§ Complexities

§ Thoughts about things

§ Thoughts about thoughts (This reminds me of hearing people say that the human brain is the only brain smart enough to study itself – those mean this both medically and philosophically, I think.)

o “Critical thinking requires you to be aware of yourself.” (My thoughts: you can’t look at the world without seeing yourself in it and it in yourself)

o What this means for Idea Channel:

§ Difficult selfless thoughts about many things, which then inform the self

§ Inspect, dissect, examine & grow

§ The show changed, shifted & grew because of the thinking done here and because of the conversations here (viewers)

o We learn more from each other than alone (ties back to the Idea thing)

o Many people put emotion in contrast to thought but emotion is thought

o “Intellectual virtue” – still not sure what this means

· Back to critical empathy:

o It’s the “process of establishing informed and affective connections with other humans.” – Look, I’m a fairly deep thinker but some of this stuff is just way over my head. Also, he talks fast. I’ve rewatched many parts many times and some of it is still lost on me.

§ “Profound civic implications” (Again, hard to follow.)

o How does your identity connect and not connect with someone else’s?

o “Good thinking emanates from doubt” – the “doubting game” synonymous with critical thinking but adding to it – the Believing Game. Is this not entirely contradictory to doubting?

§ Be welcoming to every idea we encounter

§ “The doubting game is the rhetoric of propositions, while the believing game is the rhetoric of experience.” Hmmm.

o Idea Channel uses the Believing Game by choosing to believe what people were saying to them. Is this just in the instance of temporarily entertaining the idea to see if there is validity to it?

o “Think with one another” – It helps you lean and grow

o Think about each other

o Believe each other (Again, this is temporary, right? Because believing people right off the bat seems like quite the opposite of thinking critically.)

o Pop culture is so much more than just stories – it helps us see and think about the world, where values are secured or challenged, etc.

o Pop culture isn’t yours but it is available to you. – He’s mentioned this a few times between a couple videos and I still don’t understand it. I mean I think I do but I don’t understand why he says it. It seems redundant to say this because I don’t think people necessarily had a contrarian viewpoint, and it seem fairly obvious.

o Think with and about these things, and one another. – Good way to end.

I like that the essence of this video is about relating to people and that people matter. I feel like the first two videos were agreeable but not necessarily as impactful as this one because this really makes the case for why the other two are important.

0 notes

mononohke-archive · 7 years

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Anime Roundup - Winter 2017 [Spoilers]

As always, this season flew by despite how disappointing it was (for anime that started airing during it, not leftovers from Fall 2016). Well, maybe it was also because near the end I started playing video games and fell behind on my normal watching schedule. Either way, it didn’t feel like a whole 3 months. I’m a little late, as usual, and I didn’t write as much this time around. (Chalk it up to laziness and distraction by the aforementioned video games.)

Overall: I think this season qualifies as the worst I’ve seen yet. So many disappointments but only one or two highs.

Featured Anime: Ao no Exorcist S2, Gintama., Rakugo Shinjuu S2, 3-gatsu no Lion, ACCA, All Out!!, ClassicaLoid, Nanbaka + S2, Onihei, Trickster

Total: 10 | Average Score: 6.8 | Word Count: 4,581

~ (DIRECT) SEQUELS ~

Ao No Exorcist: Kyoto Impure King Arc [5/10]

Let me be blunt, the only thing I actually give a crap about in Ao no Exorcist is Yukio. Specifically, Yukio as a character and his brother complex for Rin. That is really what carried me through the first season of AnE and made me feel like it deserved more than a 5. In season one, the whole dynamic between them, Yukio’s complicated feelings for Rin, and their rivalry was the main theme of a significant part of the show. But in this season and arc, Yukio is barely there at all. The shift focuses more to Suguro, his family, and the Impure King. While I don’t dislike Suguro (Nakai Kazuya being his voice helps), I really don’t care enough to watch a whole cour about him and his family. There’s a lot of Rin too, of course, but he’s the main character and that’s obviously unavoidable.

Well, at least there a little bit of Yukio, however. He’s there for a few episodes and there’s like half an episode dedicated to his and Rin’s relationship, but that’s a pittance compared to the last season. For those reasons, AnE has dropped one point and just went into boring/average territory. If Yukio is a major part of next season or some future season, the score will go up to 6 again, but this one will stay at 5.

To give some credit though, I’m really grateful that they brought back all the original cast for this long awaited sequel. Unlike D.Gray-man last year, I never felt like something was wrong because all the voice actors and art style were different. It is unfortunate that they couldn’t get Keiji Fujiwara to reprise his role as Rin and Yukio’s father, but still 99% of the cast is the same.

Gintama. [8/10]

It is with a heavy heart that I have to give a title in the Gintama series less than a 10 (only applies to the main show and not movies/specials/OVAs). Unfortunately, the recent change in Gintama’s pace is tiring and got boring rather quickly. This problem was beginning to show in the previous season, but at least that had enough episodes and arcs to have more change.

This season honestly didn’t have a bad start... it was really great seeing the Joui4 together again especially Sakamoto (since he appearances are normally so limited) but then it went into Kamui and Umibozu’s backstory arc. To be clear, I like Umibozu, don’t care about Kamui, and love Kagura, but this whole arc was mostly about Kamui, Umibozu, and Kouka (Kagura and Kamui’s dead mother). Kagura herself felt like an afterthought in this arc. This was more about explaining Kamui’s issues with his dad and how Umibozu met Kouka.

Now, aside from my general disinterest in Kamui, the problem is not really with the backstory itself. It’s the fact that Gintama had turned into a battle shounen. I really dislike the pacing in battle shounens, especially if they are done badly *coughsNanbakacoughs*, and the worst part is that Gintama normally does these bits right in previous drama arcs. In this one though, it was boring... maybe not unbearable, but I found myself tuning out a lot more than I would watching Gintama - y’know, one of my all time favorite anime.

Personally, I think the comedy in Gintama has always been stronger than the drama. The drama, when done in arcs between a lot of comedy, is really when it’s at its best because that is when the show brings a necessary change of pace and adds more depth to the characters. When it’s just one drama arc after the other, the battle shounen portions tend to take over. Plus, I just really miss the humor. It always gelled with me and that’s why I loved the show so much from the beginning. I miss laughing my ass off every episode, but in season I only chuckled a few times.

There is one silver lining though and that is Utsuro, who is becoming more and more interesting. While it is kind of cliche that he came back from the dead and turned out to be immortal, I think the way it’s presented is really good, and I can’t wait to see more of him. The last episode giving his backstory definitely pulled me in for the next season. I just hope it lightens up a little more because the comedy is where Gintama always shined the best.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Descending Stories [9/10]

This show... how am I supposed to talk about it? I want to do a proper review that does it justice, but obviously that review would be spoiler free. In this post though, I think I’ll just quickly summarize my overall feelings.

First, let me say that Rakugo has totally met my expectations in S2. It expanded on the story pretty much just as perfectly as it needed to. There was one little thing that ruined it just a teeny bit near the end, but honestly it was otherwise masterful. For me to articulate exactly how I feel, I really need to rewatch both seasons. Sorry, I’m gonna skip actually putting effort into this lol, but I will try my best to get out a proper review on MAL later. Maybe one day I’ll even attempt an analysis, but that’s far off.

~ INDIRECT SEQUELS & NON-SEQUELS~

3-gatsu no Lion [9/10]

3-gatsu no Lion is easily one of the best and most emotional anime that I’ve seen recently. I’m actually surprised that it is a Shaft production (most famous for the Monogatari series and Madoka Magica), but it has Shaft all over it with Akiyuki Shinbo at the helm. I know some people have mixed or negative feelings on his style of direction, but I like it in all the other Shaft shows I watched and I especially like it here. It’s the first time I’ve seen Shaft do an anime like 3-gatsu, which has no fanservice, no harem (elements), no strong humor, nor any fantasy or supernatural elements.

In my opinion, they did an excellent job. If 3-gatsu was not presented in the way it is, it might not have been as interesting as it is. It would’ve been so easy to make this a dry and boring adaptation, but Shaft brings it to life with such incredible bold, imagery. And it pulls off mood whiplash (sudden mood changes) a lot better than most anime I’ve seen. Normally, I think they clash with the overall tone, but when 3-gatsu does it, it feels like an exaggerated version of what happens in real life, where tone does not stay consistent between moments.

Then there’s Rei, the main character. He really skirts the line between being relatable or not. On the one hand, he is a Shogi genius and makes his own living at age 17. On the other hand, he has a complicated past, depression, and is a very down to earth and nice person. The whole series really rests on Rei’s shoulders, as he is the narrator and everything revolves around him. But I think he’s excellent written and relatable despite being essentially a child prodigy.

Speaking of the shogi, I was also worried that it would be hard to understand the series because I don’t know shogi very well. Thankfully, that’s not the case. While there is a significant amount of focus on the shogi, the real focus on the characters. I’m sure for people who are familiar with shogi, it gives an extra layer to the narrative, but even for those who aren’t, it’s not so focused on the games that there’s nothing left. At least shogi has similarities to chess, which most westerners have a passing knowledge of. Still, even if you know fuck all about shogi and chess, I think the great depth of characters and the wonderful visuals carry the show and make it incredibly watchable.

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka [7/10]

I... liked ACCA. Don’t love it, but liked it well enough. It has a uniqueness to it that you don’t see often in anime. For example the cast are all adults and most of them are government bureaucrats, the plot revolves around a conspiracy, and the anime is fairly slow paced and is very light on action. More than half the series is spent on world-building, with very little romance or other cliches. I could probably go on.

The color palette and art style is also a highlight with lots of bright, pastel colors. ACCA is just a neat little package of an anime that I appreciated watching for being something a little different. Have to say though, I’m not sure how much this will stick to me in the long run. Some of the world, maybe, and definitely the art style/colors, but not really the characters or plot.

All Out!! [6/10]

What initially drew me to All Out!! is a) rugby, never seen that sport before in an anime and b) incredible diversity in body types with a very wide variation in height, muscularity (although most are muscular guys), and weight (never seen so many chubby guys in an anime). So, while All Out!! does have some things that set it apart, unfortunately in literally every other way, it’s pretty much exactly the same as other sports anime. The protagonist is, OF COURSE, a newbie who joins the sport for the first time as a high school freshman. He’s overly energetic and most of the rest of the team thinks he’s annoying, but he’s super motivated and improves at an incredible rate. And he has another freshman friend who is a lot more experienced and naturally talented at the sport who serves a foil (especially since they have opposite personalities). The captain is an extremely motivated guy who’s tough on his team, but he’s also incredibly protective of them ie. team dad, and so on. The cliches just don’t stop...

That doesn’t mean AO is unenjoyable, just that the unique elements in the beginning wore off rather quickly and I was left with another run-of-the-mill sports anime (especially since this show is 25 episodes and not 12). My ratings for sports anime thus far have worked on a different scale than most other anime simply because sports is such an unusual genre with its own strict conventions that I have no choice but to rate them compared only to others in the genre. That means if sports anime were judged relative to the rest of anime I’ve seen, they would be rated lower (by between .5-1 points) because 95% of them have the exact same plot and many of the exact same characters.

I mention this because as I’ve watched more and more sports anime, my standards have steadily been getting higher and are finally starting to match the rest of my rating scale. If this was one of the first sports anime I ever watched, it would easily be an 8/10. Now, as the dozenth sports anime I’ve seen, it’s only a 6/10. I am finally getting really tired of the old sports anime cliches and want more unique experiences. That’s why I praised Baby Steps so much for being different when I recently saw it. Looking back, I may have to re-rate some of the other sports anime I’ve seen, especially more recently like Days of the Summer/Fall seasons last year.

So, do I regret watching All Out!!? No, it has some good and fun stuff in there. Will I watch if there’s another season of it? Probably (even though I don’t necessarily want to) because I only avoid sequels if I give the first series a 5/10 or less... even then sometimes I’ll keep watching for the sake of keeping up (fcking K). Would I recommend AO in the end? Nah, unless you’re really interested in rugby.

ClassicaLoid [8/10]

I... feel almost ashamed to give this show such a high rating. Looking at MAL, my score is a whole 1.53 points higher than the standard deviation, and one of the most incongruous scores I’ve ever given - in the positive direction. In the negative direction, I happen to have some highly unpopular opinions on anime like Erased, Sword Art Online, and Mirai Nikki.

For a long while, I just couldn’t decide on a score. Normally, I know pretty early on what score I’m going to give an anime, give or take a point in either direction (or two if the anime pulls something towards the end). By the end of a show’s airing, I usually pretty much know exactly what I want to give it. (This doesn’t apply so much to my precise ratings, but rather the broad score I give on MAL.)

For ClassicaLoid, I didn’t know whether I wanted to give this show a “guilty pleasure, I know this show is bad but I enjoyed it a lot” 6/10 rating, a “fuck it, because I loved this show that much 8/10 rating”, or a 7/10 as the balanced alternative. As you can see, I ultimately decided on an 8 (more specifically a low 8, but an 8 nonetheless) in the end. Yes, I really do love this show, and I did find it just that enjoyable and hilarious. It’s one of the funniest comedies I’ve seen recently and definitely my favorite comedy of 2016 (over the likes of Sakamoto Desu Ga? and Handa-kun).

The thing about ClassicaLoid is that if I didn’t love the characters so much and find it funny, it would be a pretty bad show. It seems pretty polarizing because a lot of people think this show is stupid and hate it for that reason. In my opinion, it is stupid, but it has some self-awareness and never takes itself seriously. The other thing is the humor. If the humor does not gel with you, you will hate this show, and that’s also highly subjective and polarizing. I think the humor is spot on most of the time, with great comedic timing and gags. There’s also, I guess, the “gimmick” of the show which is arguably the whole point - the remixes of classical music in the vocaloid style.

Tbh, I’m not at all familiar with vocaloids and even so, I found the remixes to be mostly average or even a bit cringeworthy. They were the weakest part for me, but that only applies to the songs themselves. The actual visuals that accompanied the almost once-an-episode sequences? They were not bad. Sometimes they were even funny or resulted in hilarious things (Schubert’s fish adventure comes to mind), but most of the time they were a pretty mindless distraction.

One of the real strengths is the characters. I seriously either love the characters* or I like them. They bring life to the show with their varied personalities. It’s kind of amazing because many of them skirt the line between being one-note quirky archetypes and actually being kind of deep. My favorites include (in no particular order):

- Kanae, who is mostly the straight man character, but plays beautifully off the rest of the cast because she has to put up with so much shit, but has her own silly and selfish sides. (Also, she’s one terrible idol.)

- Schubert, definitely my favorite classicaloid of the bunch. I was kind of surprised because he was introduced a little later than the rest, but Schu is so genuine... so weird, yet so underappreciated in-universe that I think is the opposite irl. His unpopularity is what makes him popular in the first place because aside from being a catty bitch to Mozart (who deserves it, btw), he tries really hard to be a good person.

- Liszt, who is amazing, I love that she’s badass and reliable (the only one who pays rent) but also a sucker for love. And she’s basically a trans women, isn’t she? She’s not the only originally-male-irl classicaloid to be given a female body, but she’s the only one who completely embraces it.

- Chopin, who in my opinion is a little underused, although that’s partially justified because he’s always hiding. He’s definitely the most relateable, being a shut-in who just on the computer all day playing games or watching stuff (sounds familiar), but he’s also blunt af and has such witty lines.

- Beethoven, I initially had mixed feelings on him, but came to love him over time. See, he may be voiced by my favorite voice actor (Tomokazu Sugita), but at first all his jokes revolved around GYOZA!!! and being a gigantic fucking ham. It got old kind of fast, but thankfully he gets more jokes and depth over time. I especially love his dynamic with Kanae and Schubert.

*The sole exception is Mozart. Here is where I rant about Mozart because thaT FUCKING PUNK BITCH IS THE WORST, AND IT SUCKS THAT HE’S A MAIN CHARACTER WHO GETS SO MUCH SCREEN TIME AND EPISODES DEDICATED TO HIM. ... Okay, I’m gonna calm down. I’ll stop shouting now and explain why I hate this pos. Here we go: He. Is. Not. Funny. Or. Likable. In fact, the only one who is not funny or likable. He’s always annoying, unhelpful, sexually harassing Kanae, and genuinely a terrible person except when it benefits him. Actually, the problem is not even that he’s terrible, but rather that he’s terrible and gets away with it.

Compare him to someone like Sousuke, who’s a little similar in some ways, except... hey, get this, there are consequences (funny consequences) when he’s being a douche. Sousuke, along with Schubert, are the butt monkeys of the ensemble. Sousuke is even referred to as “tool” by Liszt and mostly everyone else. If Mozart was also a butt monkey, he would be a lot more tolerable, except he’s not. Mozart behaves like an annoying dick 98% of the time and the anime has the fucking audacity to try and make him sympathetic.

I also have to bring up his voice actor, Yuki Kaji, who is easily my least favorite voice actor, so maybe I do have some inherent bias against him. See, if Mozart were played by someone who’s not annoying as shit, then maybe he would’ve been more likable, but Yuki Kaji has the range of a triangle (he’s one-note). Compare him to Beethoven, who could easily be so fucking obnoxious, except he’s played by the exceptionally talented and charismatic Tomokazu Sugita. /sighs. Well, I think I’m done ranting now.

Finally, I want to cover the jokes. It’s true, at first they appear to be of the very “lol random xD” type humor, but I think they are deceptively well constructed. There were many episodes where I was laughing out loud and some episodes where I spent the entire time laughing my ass off (again, I bring up the Schubert fish incident). With a few exceptions, I don’t think the humor or gags ever got old because the anime keeps doing more and more with the characters, throwing them into crazy situations. The absurdity of it all is hilarious and the likableness of most of the characters supports it.

I’m probably one of 10 people in the west who is very excited and happy that there’s a season 2. Only two more seasons left until it’s back :D.

Nanbaka [6/10] / Season 2 [4/10]

I’m put in kind of an awkward position by this show... At first, it was going to be published with the Fall 2016 Roundup until I realized that there was going to be a second season. So then I delayed it for Winter 2017 except the quality of the show has gone down significantly between the first and second season. I wrote most of my thoughts for the first season already, so I’m just gonna talk about season one first by itself and then compare it to season two. Here are my thoughts on S1:

At first glance, yes, the character designs are incredibly silly… an anime podcast I listen to described them as “deviantart ocs”, (which is not too inaccurate), and everything sparkles like a shoujo manga for some mysterious reason. But aside from the strange design choices, the humor was pretty solid and characters are pretty likable. Not just the main 4 characters, but Hajime (my favorite) and the other prison wardens, and their fellow prisoners all have a charm to them.

The first half of the show is pretty damn funny, definitely a solid 7/10, but then the New Years competition arc starts and the pacing screeches to a halt. There are four whole episodes dedicated to this arc and they actually introduce a plot, drama, and some intense action near the end. It comes out of nowhere. The problems don’t stop there, unfortunately. I can forgive the terrible pacing somewhat if they kept up the laughs, but that’s not what happened. Instead, the genre switches and suddenly becomes a drama with a whole conspiracy plot about some of the main characters. Insofar, the only comedy anime I’ve seen pull off dramatic arcs is Gintama (but as I’ve said even that gets tiring after a while). Nanbaka is simply not as well-written as Gintama in either way, and the actual “plot” was a total let down compared to the humor which I genuinely liked.

This plot continues for another few episodes and it takes a little while to get back to the laughs. Humor and characters are the only thing this anime kind of nails. When the author attempts drama, it turns into another generic shounen anime. What a shame. If this anime stuck to being a pure comedy, I definitely would’ve rated it higher.

Ohhhhh boy, now onto season two. My worst fears for the anime basically happened. Imagine the New Years Competition arc I just complained about. Now, slow down the pacing another 500%, take out all the humor from the first season, and chuck in some boring ass cliche shounen crap. That is what S2 is in its entirety. It’s like they sucked out all the fun and hilarity of the first season just to “advance” the plot. I put advance in quotes because the pacing is seriously glacial. It rotates between plot exposition/backstory and “action” comparable to a Naruto filler arc for the entire run time.

For example, my favorite character Hajime gets locked in a jail cell early on. Then some of the jail mates (including Jyugo, the main character) decide to break him out a little while later in the show. Guess when they reach Hajime? If you guessed the very last episode, you’d be correct! Inbetween is just pointless, boring fight after pointless, boring fight and fucking endless exposition! Either the character talks for minutes on end about their powers or the strategy of their enemies or about some thing in the past or there’s a flashback/backstory explaining the characters (by the way, a whole bunch of new characters are introduced except without the humor, they’re all shit) or the plot, it’s just UGH.

Halfway through, I came to dread Nanbaka. Most of the time, I would put on the show and zone out as much as possible, although in reality, I spent a lot of time bitterly remembering how funny the first season is and how it actually had characters I liked in them doing funny shit and being likable. If the first season was a lot of fun but was bogged down by the action/drama, then the second season is the bog. Watching it is liking wading through a swamp about waist high. It won’t kill you and it’s doable, but it’s unpleasant, tedious, and you rather wished you just walked around it.

If you really want to enjoy the show, just watch season one. Even then I only recommend the first half and the last couple of episodes. AVOID SEASON TWO AT ALL COSTS. I am certain there’s going to be a season three later this year or next year, but hopefully I’ll resist the temptation to watch it just because I watched the first two seasons.

God, it makes so angry how this show could’ve been a fairly pleasant humorous affair but ruins it completely and chucks it in the fucking garbage disposal. Way to waste your potential, Nanbaka.

Onihei [6/10]

Onihei is... unremarkable, but not a hard watch either. It’s just... alright? Very very middle of the road, but I can kind of appreciate that because it didn’t require much effort on me to watch, and I could just enjoy it without thinking too much about it. It helps that I’m already into samurai, but I admit I was hoping for more initially. Once I accepted that it was just going to be a simple collection of samurai/pre-modern japanese stories, then I began to enjoy it more.

My biggest complaint is that there were too many episodes not focused on Heizo (aka Onihei, the main character). Heizo really was the best part of the show, and I liked it most when they focused on him and his backstory, but about a quarter of the show is about other characters that I just didn’t really care for aside from two or three of them. It’s fine that this show is mostly episodic, but because it frequently shifts focus, it is quite inconsistent because some episodes are better than others.

There’s also the fact the show looks very cheaply made, especially in those creepy ass CGI people in background shots. It has almost a B-movie feel, but not as much of the B-movie charm as I’d like. Still, it’s not really bad at all. It’s a good thing I like historical anime and that the main character is great because that is what pushes it up from a 5 to a solid 6.

Trickster [5/10]

First, let me just say that Trickster baited me - and baited me successfully with the promise of attractive boys and homoerotic subtext. At least it delivered and pretty much met my expectations 100%, but unfortunately, it did not surprise me by being better than I thought it would be. It’s kind of a pity because Trickster actually has pretty good production values, but it falters in more important places: the characters and plot. Both of those elements are pretty clumsily handled. If not that, then they feel cliche, like I’ve already seen [x type] character and [y] trope countless times.

The characters in particular I feel like could’ve made up for the plot, but the anime chooses to focus on the least interesting ones (yes, I know this is a book adaptation). The main character, Kobayashi, is unlikable from the start and even when you unlock his tragic backstory late in the anime, it feels too little too late and it’s another overused trope. Hanasaki, the character who probably gets the most screen time is... actually alright. He’s annoying at first too, but his character development is not handled that badly either. The best characters are probably Inoue and Akechi; the former barely gets any attention at all, and the latter’s subplot is so fragmented by the rest of the characters and their own plots that it gets lost.

In fact, what I just said may just sum up the biggest problem I have with this anime. The whole thing feels fractured, like the writer wanted to give all the main characters (except poor Inoue) their dues, but didn’t know how to tie their separate plots together elegantly or didn’t know how to give all of them development/depth in one flowing plot. With tighter focus, I’m sure it would’ve turned out better, but the cliches and their rather bland execution still drag it all down.

The production values do deserve some praise though. The voice acting is great as always and the animation is overall good, but the music and direction had some standout moments that really elevated certain parts of the show. Unfortunately, the overall mediocreness of Trickster put it at a 5/10.

#*#anime roundup #anime roundup: winter 2017 #winter 2017 #writing*

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