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secret-diary-of-an-fa · 2 years

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A Night at the Movies

So, I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately. I’ve even been going to the cinema to do, like a proper Appreciator Of The Visual Arts. And, naturally, I’ve acquired a review-itch that needs scratching. Rather than doing each flick individually, however, I thought I’d quick-fire this shit and do a series of capsule reviews contained within a single blog. Think of it like bullet chess, but it’s a blog instead of a boardgame that I usually lose.

The Northman A film that dares to ask ‘what if Beowulf and Hamlet were the same person?’ might sound like an art-house wank-fest of the highest order, but the Northman actually kicks arse. Actually, it kicks every arse in northern Europe and Scandinavia so hard that launches entire flotillas of buttocks into fucking orbit. Intense, brutal and epic from start to finish, its best trick is probably the magical realism with which it approaches its subject matter. It shows the world as the protagonist experiences it without making any definitive statements about whether what he’s experiencing is real or a figment of his imagination. Sanity is culturally and historically contextual, so a dude could have longwinded conversations with seers who are actually in his head or fall into a tomb and fight a non-existent zombie without being judged crazy by his peers. In some ways, the era of the Vikings was a better time- certainly a better time to be an absolute fucking crackpot. But I digress. The Northman explores its world and characters without judgement and lets us get invested in our own time and in our own way. It’s really refreshing to see a film that doesn’t insist on dumping modern modes of thought and ethics into its historic setting. Meanwhile, the protagonist’s character arc manages to feel more satisfying than anything in a more conventional movie as he gradually moves through blind dedication, disillusionment and pain and finally arrives at a place where he ends his revenge-quest (yes, it’s a revenge movie) not out of anger but out of love for his kin. It’s surprisingly beautiful in unexpected ways and, if it sounds like your sort of thing, it’s well worth seeing at the cinema where the tremendous scope can hit you right in the eyeballs unfettered by your tiny, shitty telly screen. I give it an unreserved ten out of ten decapitated Willem Dafoes.

The Lost City At the risk of stirring unnecessary controversy, rom-coms are usually very, very bad. They have to be sincerely heart-warming, genuinely funny and have a premise that allows them to transcend the limitations of their genre. If they drop any one of those three juggling balls, the whole thing dies on its arse. The Lost City, therefore, deserves extra helpings of praise for not just being really good but being really good despite having to work twice as hard as any other movie to get to that point. The jokes all land, the characters are all likeable, and the Indiana Jones-ish treasure hunt that ties it all together keeps things interesting even when the story beats are as well-trodden as its possible to get. It also scores highly for subverting expectations. There’s a love triangle that it nips in the bud with a grisly head-shot early on before it can grow and consume the whole film, the villain (played by Daniel Radcliffe having the time of his fucking life) has a surprisingly well thought-out motive and he ends up being more of a catalyst for the action than the only thing driving the plot (as often happens in movies of this type). Obviously lead actress Sandra Bullock turns in a fine performance, because she always fucking does, but who’d have had love interest Channing bloody Tatum pegged as a master of physical comedy? And yes, I will admit that the film won me over slightly by putting Far From Any Road and Red Right Hand on the soundtrack (and actually giving the plus-size best friend character something meaningful to do didn’t hurt either). That said, personally biases aside, I still feel confident in rewarding this film ninety-nine spooning skeletons out of a possible one hundred.

The Batman Crikey, this is a good Batman movie! I don’t know what else to fucking tell you: it perfectly evokes the noir, downbeat films on which Gotham city has always been modelled while also feeling fresh and original; the Riddler feels genuinely menacing and Bats himself feels like the genius he’s supposed to be in the comics. It’s also pretty hard to give Batman an arc, but this flick manages it, largely by setting the film early on his career (which means you could easily insert it mentally into the DCEU as a prequel, even though its pretending to be the stand-alone wallflower of DC movies). I only have one really, really minor complaint: the Riddler’s costume fucking sucks. I love The Riddler (from the version in the Tim Burton films, to the version in Gotham, to the version in the Arkham games and every version in the comics) and feel very strongly should be flamboyant and a tiny bit queer-coded where appropriate. He shouldn’t dress like some Q-Anon prepper twat who thinks that army surplus is a type of chic. But that’s a very minor gripe, and it doesn’t stop this movie taking home nine Alfred Pennyworths out of ten.

Moonshot I have a real fucking problem with films that set up a false dichotomy between saving the Earth through environmental programs and space exploration. In real life, any semi-competent government should be able to balance the two, ensuring both the future of our planet and the future of our species among the stars. I was therefore primed to dislike Moonshot the moment it started making noises about how Martian colonists didn’t give a shit about Earth and just used it to dump their rubbish (which would also be wildly impractical for a near-future space-faring civilisation, incidentally). It’s also a semi-romantic movie in which the main love interest is a slappable, entitled rich berk who really needs to get her stupid faux-nerd haircut caught in an airlock while a robot punches her repeatedly in the kidneys. Astonishingly, however, the film isn’t a complete carcrash. It succeeds, in spite of itself, because it’s very easy to get invested in the character of Walt, who’s a quick-witted, entertaining car-crash of the human being. We want him to succeed, but it’s hard to fathom why the thing he’s trying to succeed at involves seducing someone who hates him. Walt’s dialogue more or less redeems the film and, in spite of everything, there were a couple of moments that made me go ‘awww’. Evidently, being engaged to the hottest woman in our real universe has made me go soft. I give this this film a very grudging six out of ten stowaway space-cats.

Morbius I enjoyed Morbius, but I don’t necessarily think that means it was a good film. A large portion of the plot revolves around the idea that if you insert bat DNA into a human, you somehow come out with a vampire, which is just silly enough to be noticeable, even in a Marvel-associated project. Then there’s Morbius himself, who’s kind of a grumpy hypocrite. And yet… and yet I really fucking enjoyed this movie. Some of that enjoyment undoubtedly stems from the script, which is pretty heavy on dark humour (though not quite as heavy as I would like). Equally, part of it must come from the visualisation of vampiric powers, which are among the best I’ve ever seen and make the movie a visual delight to watch. Most of my enjoyment, however, comes from Matt Smith as the main villain, Milo, who enjoys being a vampire way, way more than Mr. Grumpy-Bollocks. He goes around murdering arseholes with his teeth, dancing at tonally inappropriate points in the plot and laughing his fucking head off whenever he gets into a fight with Morbius, as though having his teeth knocked out a by Hot Topic model reject is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to him. You know what, I’m giving this movie a solid eight out of ten dancing murderers on that alone.

Horns Or Horny Daniel Radcliff’s Horny Hornventures, to give it its full title. So, I’ll freely admit that I didn’t see this at the cinema- it was on the interwebs. And it’s pretty darn good. Ig (played by Daniel Radcliffe, who’s all over the fucking schedule in this blog) wakes up to find that he’s been accused of murdering his girlfriend. Shortly thereafter, he starts growing never-properly-explained horns that give him weird occult powers, including revealing people’s darkest desires and truths and (insanely) commanding the loyalty of snakes. Without spoiling anything, it doesn’t go where you think it’s going to go, and it’s endlessly entertaining while it’s not going there. It even gives us the immortal image of Daniel Radcliffe just casually wearing a snake like it’s no big deal. I choose to believe that for formal occasions, he wears it tied in a Windsor knot and has two tiny snakes for cuff-links, but that’s by the by. It’s a broadly well-acted film with lots of entertaining supernatural elements but, if it has a fault, it’s that it overreaches slightly with the size of its cast. There are so many people in this film, all of them harbouring dark secrets, that it’s easy to lose track of their names and some of them only have, like, two personality traits. Consequently, I kept thinking of them by their monolithic defining traits instead of whatever the script called them. There’s Hopeless Dad, Terrible Mom, Druggy Trombonist, Donut Slut (which I mean as praise, not slur), Repressed Gay Cops (two of them, no less! A matching set!), Boring Ginger (whose death drives the plot but has zero actual character, even in flashbacks) Lying Waitress and Arsehole. Of course, I can remember the name of Daniel Radcliff’s character (Ig) because it’s mentioned every five minutes, but just so he didn’t feel left out, I dubbed him Snake Necklace. But I’m being facetious for comic effect. I stayed invested right up to the end and was really rooting for the plot-designated good guys throughout, which isn’t always the case with me, so Horns was obviously doing something right. I therefore award it a solid seven slithery friends out of ten. Of course, if I’d written it, it would have ended with Snake Necklace and Donut Slut riding off into the sunset to the tune of Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard, which would have bumped it up to a nine.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Good fucking grief this is a good film. Like, a ridiculously good film. Without spoiling anything, I will say that it’s a film whose title mentions a multiverse and implies generalised chaotic mayhem and it delivers on both in great abundance. It’s amazing how many ideas are crammed into this flick, with the film-makers using Doctor Strange’s magic and the mechanics of an infinitely divergent multiverse to just explore every scrap of whimsy or odd little concept that they couldn’t squeeze into a more grounded movie. Yet, despite this, absolutely nothing is lost in terms of characterisation and meaningful interaction between protagonists. Our villain du jour is Scarlet Witch, AKA Wanda, but she feels less like a true ‘villain’ and more like somebody made dangerous by grief and a fragile mind, which means that the end of her character arc (which I’m not going to spoil) feels truly earned and even, dare I say it, redemptive. Strange himself remains the same arrogant yet charming rogue he’s always been, but still manages to learn an important lesson: that he doesn’t always have to be the one ‘holding the knife’ and can depend on other people to avert disaster. Even newcomer America Chavez (stupid name, great character) gets a good arc, where she goes from a mere desperate struggle for survival to a willingness to sacrifice herself that the film actually rewards rather than punishes. Then there’s the elements of body horror, the wholly appropriate cameos from much-loved actors from other franchises, the gorgeous visualisations of alternate Earths and Wong (who’s always a delight). I seem to remember thinking, while watching it, ‘Crikey, this feels a lot like one of those really good Sam Raimi Spiderman movies’. And then Sam Raimi’s name popped up in the credits as the director and I thought ‘ooooh! THAT explains it!’ I always have to mention that it’s a shame Disney ultimately owns Marvel Studios, because Marvel make some good stuff and Disney are just irredeemably evil (everyone talks about their slightly worrying cultural monopoly, but my beef is with their use of near-literal slaves to make their merchandise. I don’t know if that’s still ongoing, since it’s hard to find up-to-date data on it, but they haven’t made a song and dance about stopping, so I have to assume that yes, they’re still into some shady shit). Despite horrible reality casting a pall over the film, though, I still have to give it a hypothetically infinite number out of a hypothetically infinite number of dead Earths.

Sonic The Hedgehog (1 and 2) So, before I was even old enough to pick up a game controller, I used to watch my older sister playing the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the old Sega Master System, where I was entranced by the stylised, brightly coloured visuals, delightful music and the fact that the whole thing seemed to be about a speeding blue blur smashing through robots at ridiculous speed. So yes, obviously, when a Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise happened, I had to scratch the nostalgia itch and see the bloody things. And how are they? Not bad. I mean, not great, but I had fun, and fun is really their only purpose, so on their own terms, they definitely succeed. The adaptation of Sonic’s personality from the games to the big screen is kind of weirdly handled, insofar as the game character basically knows what the fuck he’s doing and is generally characterised as being fairly relaxed despite his superspeed, whereas film Sonic is a hyperactive ball of manic energy who never shuts the fuck up and has literally no idea what he’s doing (ever) which can get a little grating after awhile. Luckily, Jim Carey’s on hand as the evil Doctor Robotnik to balance him out and, in both movies, he’s kind of the best thing- clearly insane but too smart to be ignored; genuinely menacing while still being funny. There’s a lot more I could say- there’s a surprising amount to dig into with these films. However, I’ll restrain myself because, ultimately, they’re kids’ films with just enough nostalgia-bait in them to pull in the ageing nerd crowd too. Their job is to make you laugh, throw a good visual spectacle onto the screen and send you home feeling happy inside. They’re not the best films in the universe, but they’re good enough and that’s all you need to know. I rate them four out of seven poorly-explained magic emeralds.

And with that, we’ve taken a tour from an incredibly artful and mature film that reimagines the plot of a Shakespeare play through the lens of Norse culture to a dual-movie sequence about a blue hedgehog jumping repeatedly on Jim Carey’s shiny bald head. I’ve been pretty lucky in that nothing I’ve watched lately has been actively terrible, but I do apologise that y’all didn’t get to see me rip into some cinematic garbage with my teeth bared. Them’s the brakes I’m afraid. Maybe next time. But now that you’ve taken this voyage with me and we’ve emerged older, wiser, perhaps a little sadder but still gloriously, undeniably alive… I am going to have ask you respectfully to piss off.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #movies #films #cinema #Doctor Strange #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic the Hedgehog 2 #The Northman #The North Man #The Batman #Batman #Morbius #Horns

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hyperfixationtimego · 1 year

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Ah saw the terf thing tweet finally. Yeah as a trans Jewish person I can totally see that tweet supporting transphobia on Mindy's case. If not the transphobia then it looks like she is supporting the racism and antisemitism, which she does have a history for. In context of JK's post, I don't know how else to interpret it other than she's being snarky about losing the "sensitive sjws", and why would you like something like that? I doubt at this time Mindy was simply unaware and if she was. And if she was that tells me she isn't that connected with us. Also not all of us are the same. You choosing one Jewish person to represent all of us is not a look. You deciding that you speak for trans people here, also is not a look. Context matters and I don't know why you say this by not including other voices and context. Like what other context can you get by a show that has their character make a "joke" of nazis killing their Jewish friend?

yeah see this is why I hate discussing serious shit on here. this is an absolute wild misinterpretation of what I presented, my dude.

You not having a critical understanding of what it means to consider another person’s perspective, regardless of whether or not you agree with it, is not my problem, my guy. You “not knowing” how to interpret the tweet incident as anything other than a premeditated statement of transphobia is kinda just……telling me you’ve never seen a well-meaning cis person accidentally use incorrect terminology, or a cishet ally not understanding why a certain term, trope, or stereotype might be offensive or harmful to queer people. Like my dude, have you ever loved or cared about a cis person irl. They don’t share our experiences. They don’t share our history or our knowledge, because a lot of them have never had to consider it - that still doesn’t make them bad.

and lol you obviously didn’t even bother to read what I posted, either, cause u didn’t acknowledge her support of Josie Totah but like……whatever lmao

and. sighs. I genuinely do not think Kaling’s thought process with liking that tweet had to do with complaining about the “sensitive sjws” because that. literally does not make any sense whatsoever. if anything, I propose that she was more likely comparing the “lost audience” in that tweet to all the racist assholes who immediately shit on everything about the show from the concept, to the animation, to the character designs from the exact MOMENT it was confirmed the show would be reimagining the characters as POC.

perhaps I am insane, but I do not think it’s a bad thing for her, as an Indian woman, to indulge herself by projecting her own experiences onto a character she loves & to give that same opportunity to other people working on the show. like it is very strange to me that y’all are calling this “pandering” and “forced diversity,”…. they’re literally just having fun I think lol

And lmaooooo ur second point of “choosing one Jewish person to represent all [Jewish people]” LIKE MY GUY THAT IS NOT WHAT I DID AKSHDJDBFB I provided a LITERAL SCHOLAR’S OPINION on the controversy & supposed antisemitism in Never Have I Ever SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT DR. SKINAZI DOES FOR A LIVING. SHE IS AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE, AND SHE FOCUSES A LOT ON JEWISH REPRESENTATION IN MEDIA BECAUSE SHE HERSELF IS JEWISH 😭

I would love to see another scholar’s argument on the issue! If happen to find any other media analysis-focused Jewish professors who’ve discussed the topic, I’d love to check it out and compare the two! /gen

But until then, I am going to (tentatively, as I still have not had a chance to watch the show for myself) trust Dr. Skinazi on this topic because it is quite literally her field of work!!!! You may be Jewish, anon, but you are still just some rando in my inbox demanding me to listen to you without proper cause - I’m not going to simply ignore the literal scholar’s opinion on this one for you, my guy, that’s not how this works 😭

#ask box #anonymous #long post #negative

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homosexuhauls · 3 years

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Joanna Moorhead

Culture of silencing any challenge to prevailing ideology is damaging academic freedom, says professor

The press release that accompanies Prof Kathleen Stock’s new book says she wants to see a future in which trans rights activists and gender-critical feminists collaborate to achieve some of their political aims. But she concedes that this currently seems fanciful. As far as she is concerned, the book, Material Girls, sets out her stall – and she knows a lot of people will find it distasteful.

Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, says the key question she addresses – itself offensive to many – is this: do trans women count as women?

Whatever else about her views is controversial, she is surely on firm ground when she writes that this question has become surrounded by toxicity. But the problem for her is, at least partly, that many people do anything they can to avoid answering it. “Very few people who are sceptical talk about it directly, because they’re frightened,” she says. “It’s so hard psychologically to say, in reply: ‘I’m afraid not.’”

Stock is at pains to say she is not a transphobe, and also that she is sympathetic to the idea that many people feel they are not in the “right” body. What she says she opposes, though, is the institutionalisation of the idea that gender identity is all that matters – that how you identify automatically confers all the entitlements of that sex. And she believes that increasingly in universities and the wider world, that is a view that cannot be challenged.

“There’s a taboo against saying this, but it’s what I believe,” she says. “It’s fair enough if people want to disagree with me, but this is what I think.”

That last statement is loaded, too, because the gender identity row is closely linked, especially on university campuses, with freedom of speech. Campuses are a minefield for those wanting to discuss these issues, she says, and she has faced calls for her university to sack her. So she is supportive of the government’s controversial plans for a free speech bill, which critics including English PEN, Article 19 and Index on Censorship have argued will have the opposite effect.

In a joint letter, they argued that the legislation “may have the inverse effect of further limiting what is deemed ‘acceptable’ speech on campus and introducing a chilling effect both on the content of what is taught and the scope of academic research exploration”.

But Stock backs the bill: “I think vice-chancellors and university management groups have shown that they can’t manage the modern problems around suppression of academic freedom. I think there are some genuine instances of unfair treatment of controversial academics, and those academics should be able to seek meaningful redress.”

This week the University of Essex apologised to two professors, Jo Phoenix and Rosa Freedman, after an independent inquiry found the university had breached its free speech duties when their invitations or talks were cancelled after student complaints.

Stock grew up in Montrose, Scotland, the daughter of a philosophy lecturer and a newspaper proofreader, and studied for her degree at Exeter College, Oxford, going on to do an MA at the University of St Andrews and a PhD at Leeds.

Having come out as gay relatively late in life, she now lives in Sussex with her partner and two sons from her previous marriage. She regards her OBE, awarded earlier this year for services to higher education, as a signal that her views have at least some backing in the establishment.

“Academics being online, students being online – it’s introduced a whole new landscape for dealing with controversial ideas, especially when those ideas are controversial within your peer group or a student body. Threats to academic freedom don’t just come from China, or millionaires trying to buy a library wing for your college; they also come from students whipping up a petition within seconds of you saying something and trying to get you fired.”

Sometimes, she claims, it is more insidious than sackings: “For academics [the gender identity debate] has a chilling effect, because academics believe their careers may suffer in ways that are less visible: they don’t get promoted, or they’re removed from an editorial board.” The net result of all this, she says, is an impoverishment of ideas and knowledge, and damage to the dissemination of information.

Because another of Stock’s key arguments in her book is that her own profession, academia, has failed to look in detail at some claims made by trans activists. She questions some of the data that gets shared regarding violence against trans people, saying that a lot of it is produced by groups that adhere to a particular narrative.

“I don’t doubt that transphobic crime occurs, but I want to know to what extent it occurs in a way that could help the trans community better understand the problem it faces.” She’s disappointed, she says, in some fellow academics for not rising above the fray. “I thought the point of philosophy was that you would be able to argue things without resorting to ad hominem attacks – I thought that was the point of our training.”

How, then, in her view, have we got to where we are? Stock takes issue with Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, which campaigns for trans inclusion and opposes the views of gender-critical feminists. The charity’s Diversity Champions programme is very popular on campuses, and Stock believes this has in part “turned universities into trans activist organisations” through their equality, diversity and inclusion departments.

Beyond this, the introduction of student fees has played its part in the current situation, Stock believes. “As soon as students started to pay, they became customers, and universities became much more deferential. They started talking about coproduction of knowledge, giving them much more choice over the whole experience.” The problem with that, she believes, is that “some young people come along with fixed ideas about gender identity theory, and it’s awkward – especially when universities are branding themselves as LGBT-friendly and queer-friendly.”

Philosophy is a vast space, most of it without risk of abuse. So what keeps her in this particular arena? “I was bullied as a child and I think that gave me experience of social ostracisation and toughened me up,” she says. “I’ve also got amazing support. Sure, some philosophers and colleagues are against my views, but others are very supportive.

“Plus it’s personal for me: I’ve struggled with my body in terms of femininity. I could easily aged 15 have decided I was non-binary or even a boy. And I feel very worried for teenagers who are now foreclosing reproductive possibilities and their future, or damaging their bodily tissues in irreversible ways, based on an idea that they may come to relinquish at a later date.”

One tragedy of the gender identity debate is how hate-filled and polarised it has become. Stock says she has suffered online abuse, but makes it clear that she is going to continue to state her case.

Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock is published by Fleet

#Kathleen Stock #gender critical #material girls #radical feminism #philosophy #radfem safe #was pleasantly surprised to see this in the guardian #although jfc could you walk on egg shells more

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crusherthedoctor · 2 years

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Infinite, Eggman, Shadow, Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Silver

(I apologize for dumping so many characters in here, I just really want to hear your opinions on them!)

Let's see if I can think of a divisive opinion for each of them...

Infinite: I think he succeeds as a deconstruction of Mephiles-type villains, whether that was the intention with him or not. (I think it genuinely is, unlike what Flynn likes to say about Scourge being a "parody".) They could have admittedly done more with him, and you could argue that the focus on him took away much needed time for Eggman and his conquest, but despite all that, I still like the guy, and it's probably a secret act of mercy that he's apparently not allowed to feature in IDW.

Eggman: Obvious one incoming: I prefer Eggman to actually be a villain, and a competent villain at that. This should not be a controversial statement, but here we are.

Also, while Jimbotnik is still widely beloved, I'm aware that more fans have been getting vocal about their issues with this portrayal for his differences to Game Eggman... not me though. I still wholeheartedly love this portrayal, because I believe he's similar where it counts, and the differences that do exist work to said portrayal's benefit, even if they wouldn't work as well for Game Eggman. Compare that to something like SatAM Robotnik, where I just cannot see Eggman at all.

Shadow: I'm not convinced that the Vegeta!Shadow mandate actually exists, since he wasn't all that Vegeta-esque in Forces or even TSR. With all the discussions that have resulted from it, I don't think I've ever seen any proper confirmation that didn't come from the mouth of either Flynn himself, or someone else who coincidentally has a bone to pick with SEGA.

Also, I feel that even before ShtH came along and shoehorned Black Doom Ten Packs a Day Man into it, Shadow's backstory already veered a tad too close to inappropriate territory, namely with the way certain elements were executed. Maria getting capped by the military and Gerald being executed by them is a tad too specific for a franchise like this, compared to if Maria died to her illness, and Gerald blamed G.U.N. for cutting off the funding to his efforts to create a cure.

Sonic: Certain problems that people have with Pontaff!Sonic - namely making jokes when he should be getting serious - have existed long before Colours came along. It's one thing to argue that it became more frequent by that point, but to say it never happened at all in the previous games is pure nostalgic bias. Even Unleashed was guilty of this on more than one occasion.

I also feel that people have been exaggerating how morally grey Sonic actually is. Yes, he's willing to make tough decisions regardless of how he may be judged for them, like in Black Knight. But he's still unambiguously heroic, always striving to do the right thing even when it's not the easy one, and a legitimately nice guy all the same. Occasionally making hard decisions does not automatically make him an anti-hero.

Tails: Fans that say he shouldn't be able to do as much as the big guns (Sonic, Shadow, etc) because he's "just a kid" have been influenced too much by the DBZ era of Sonic. Like it or not, Tails is the Luigi of the franchise, and he deserves to be treated as such. He's proven that he can accomplish just as great achievements as the rest, with or without a super form.

Amy: I acknowledge the importance of Amy's crush on Sonic, but I also find it to be the least interesting aspect of her. I'm much more endeared by her interactions with other characters, her endless optimism, her much-forgotten skill with tarot cards, etc.

Knuckles: I don't think the plot needs to revolve around Angel Island or the Master Emerald to justify Knuckles' appearance, but I DO think you have to be more thoughtful about whether his appearance makes sense beyond "there's a bad guy, go stop them", compared to characters with more freedom like Sonic and Eggman. Otherwise you end up with an '06 situation where he's got nothing to do, and his most triumphant moment is going the wrong direction.

Silver: For the love of god, stop handcuffing Blaze to him. Pretty please?

As well as that, one reason why I've never been all that enthusiastic about Silver is because his entire schtick creates a massive roadblock with no easy solution. This franchise is no stranger to characters with similar hiccups (Knuckles and Angel Island, Blaze and her dimension), but it's taken up to eleven with Silver due to the time travel factor. Do you have him time travel to justify his presence every single time, in order to stop yet another threat that's destroyed his future, thereby making him look like the biggest failure ever? Or do you have him cut out the middle man and stick around in the present, and risk fans complaining about losing what made him unique?

There's a lot of clutter with Silver that I can't be bothered with, and on top of everything else... meh.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Miles Tails Prower #Amy Rose #Knuckles the Echidna #Shadow the Hedgehog #Silver the Hedgehog #Dr. Eggman #Infinite

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mxpseudonym · 3 years

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This time someone did ask! @cactisjuice (I can never tag you?! Also is this a Sokka reference?) asked me to elaborate on my feelings that Peaky Blinders doesn't have good writing and why I'm on the fence about watching season 6.

First I want to say this: I really appreciate that, at the time, PB was the first show I'd actually sat and watched in a while and being part of the fandom pulled me out of a depressive spiral. Also, while I think some of the characters are generally attractive, I don't simp over any of them. I just... feel like that contributes to my ability to be more objective.

Alright, my thoughts: 2020 hit and I realized how important diversity is to me and my standards for the content got really high. You might remember when I went to do a Peaky Blinders rewatch a long time ago but I ended up not making it through the first season.

That's when I realized Steven Knight isn't trying to be progressive or really make a statement with this show. Nothin you can really do about that 🤷🏾‍♀️

Still, my grievances:

1. Something about the depiction of oppression in this show just doesn't sit right with me.

Maybe it's because everyone is white except for I think three people (four if you include the child they mentioned was being mistreated by nuns). "But the Shelbys are Romani." Yes, and the actors for them are all white. So what we see is a lot of white characters being oppressed, while the Black and Jewish characters are sort of an aside.

And because the show isn't trying to be progressive, it just depicts things without a real moral to them. Like season 5 just never sat well with me, especially when you have Alfie and an entire Jewish community in the show. I would have rather them just not go that route.

Also, it was US election season and you want to ambiguously take on fascism when there were/are clear signs of T**mp having international influence? 😬Okay, Steven.

Probably got more viewers though.

2. The writing for women is just so unforgivably poor that even at Peak fandom, I genuinely had to watch the show in spite of how the women are written.

**Honestly, those two alone are enough for me to just bounce. But I'll add in my most controversial, most 100000% preference-based statement:

3. When a show with a continuing narrative has seasons as short as 6 episodes each, I feel like there's even more of a need for the thread throughout to be super clear. You have no time for filler, and everything needs to be intentional. Season 6 is our last chance to see where this is going and what the story Steven's been trying to tell is.

Tommy is the main character, almost forcibly so. Yet, at this point, he's had no arc. He's not learned a damn thing. He's worsened his relationships with family. I don't even really know what he wants anymore. Tommy seems like he's going unhinged, which is fine, but we have six episodes left. I cannot think of an ending that would make me go, "wow, they really spent five seasons setting this up." And I'm gonna be real, I don't have faith that Steven Knight's writer's room is gonna prepare something beyond my imagination.

BUT

I'm so close to the finish I may just watch anyway. I'm marginally interested in seeing what's happening with Michael.

#Someone actually asked!#Peaky Blinders Discourse #Mx Opinions

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soopersara · 4 years

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Okay I have seen several people say that Bryan and Mike supported the original movie until after the backlash and was wondering if you knew of any sources on it?

Okay, I know you just saw some of the stuff I managed to dig up (or had friends find for me, thank you so much @lady-of-bath, you truly are the queen!), but since the internet has been blowing up over the announcement that Bryan and Mike are no longer working on the Netflix live action ATLA remake, I might as well throw this out in public too!

So, in the interest of being as objective as humanly possible, let me start off by saying that the internet being what it is, it’s hard to find sources of information about the creation of a 10-year old, widely panned movie. The fact that I can’t personally find it doesn’t mean that it isn’t out there, or that it wasn’t purged in the past 10 years. But, that said, I wound up with more than I expected. Brace yourselves 😉 (sources will be linked!)

So, back in 2008, both Bryan and Mike were very enthusiastic about the movie. And, in their own words, well... Bryan said:

The one thing we weren't joking about is that we really are helping on the movie quite a bit. Night has been very collaborative from the get-go, from the first time we ever met him. Very respectful of the project and of us. So we're helping out a lot on that.

They also did this interview with M. Night Shyamalan (posted in July 2009, though I’m not sure when it was filmed), in which it was confirmed that:

Bryan and Mike were actively working with M. Night

Bryan and Mike looked over M. Night’s script and approved of the changes

Bryan and Mike were planning to be on set for filming

Based on the content of the video interview, it’s clear that casting wasn’t complete at the time the interview was filmed, though the initial cast was announced in December 2008, before the interview was posted. So it’s hard to say whether Bryan or Mike had strong feelings about the whitewashing of the cast at the time, but based on the fact that Mike said (6:05 in the video linked above), “Well, if you don’t find anyone for Aang, I’d like to suggest perhaps I could, y’know, maybe play him”, I don’t think whitewashing was high on their list of concerns at the time. I know it’s a joke. I know that. But given Bryke’s tendencies to make insensitive, or downright insulting jokes, then double down on them years later (Book 4: Air, and Bryan’s later repost of the video with the world’s most condescending caption (featuring a dictionary definition of the word “joke”), I’m looking at you) rather than admitting that they were in poor taste (and the fact that that adult Aang looks exactly like Mike with a jawline), I’m inclined to believe that they genuinely DID NOT CARE about the ethnicity of the actors cast at this point. And again, this interview came before the casting and before the associated backlash.

Now, admittedly, this is the last information I can find from Bryke relating to the live action movie before the movie’s release in 2010. And a lot can change in 2 years. According to this post, a lot did change, and not at M. Night’s request, though this is a secondary source of a now-deleted forum post, so the reliability of the information is anyone’s guess. But, that said, there was an active controversy surrounding the casting of the live action beginning in 2008 (taking the timeline from the wiki because I can’t find a semi-comprehensive rundown anywhere else). The movie was released in 2010. Plenty of people associated with the original series made their disapproval public. Bryke, though? The first time I can find them even referring to the live action disaster is in this interview from 2011:

Wall Street Journal: Have you heard anything about whether there will be a sequel to the "Last Airbender" live-action feature film? Michael DiMartino: Uh, no. It's definitely not up to us, so.

No mention of their opinion of the thing. And three years of silence doesn’t exactly equate to an endorsement of the movie, but uh... three years is a lot of time in which they could have made their opinions known, especially about the whitewashing, which was a widely-known problem.

If they were truly concerned about representation, which seems to be the thing that a LOT of the internet is worried about after their exit from the Netflix live action, wouldn’t they have had something to say about it? Just asking.

Oh, but they did... eventually. In 2013, 3 years after the movie’s release, and 5 years after they (to my knowledge) last expressed an opinion on the movie, Bryan made this post in response to criticism of the Kataang kids’ skin color in LOK. And he had this to say about the live action movie:

I prefer to stay out of this type of discourse on Tumblr and let the large body of work Mike and I have put out there over the years speak for itself (which obviously DOES NOT include the gross misinterpretations and misrepresentations of our work in this guy’s work).

That’s as specific as it gets. Pretty passive-aggressive and open to interpretation if you ask me. The only reason you can tell that he’s actually referring to the live action movie is because in the original post, “this guy” links out to M. Night’s page, and the only reason you can tell that he’s referring to the whitewashing of the cast is because the post is a response to similar criticisms levelled against LOK.

Then apparently there was an interview in 2014 that finally went more in depth on the subject of the live action, but the original was deleted, and the transcript I was able to locate is practically unreadable. No names attached to any of what was said, so I really couldn’t tell you who thought what about the movie, and honestly, if anyone can decipher this garbled mess, I salute you. It seriously looks like a cat walked across a keyboard for an hour while autocorrect went bananas.

Ah, old internet drama. So hard to track down.

Anyway, all of that is why the wiki summarizes the situation by saying:

Before the film's release, co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino vocally supported the film, even appearing in an interview with M. Night Shyamalan. However, following the film's release and the negative reception it had received, the two remained quiet on the film, making only brief statements on it.

And that is why I’m laughing my butt off with every person I see lamenting Bryke’s exit from the Netflix live action. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have high hopes for the thing. Ideally, I’d like to see the whole thing cancelled, ATLA allowed to go down in history as a great show, and the creators to move on to new, unrelated projects (come on, dudes, you’ve gotta have at least one more original idea you could try instead of beating the ATLA universe into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp). And failing that, I’d like to see the show recreated faithfully, some plot threads in Book 3 tied a little tighter, and no canon romances with the possible exception of Suki/Sokka. But Bryke’s involvement was never a guarantee of quality. Sure, it might suck without them. But it could have sucked just as badly with them on board. Maybe now it will suck in new and unexpected ways!

#atla #atla live action #atla live action salt #anti bryke #bryke salt #as usual I'm just covering my bases #I put my diplomatic hat on as much as I could #hmmmm... maybe I should get an actual hat to wear when I'm putting on my 'diplomatic hat' for Tumblr

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airgetlamhh · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on Lostbelt 3

So, Lostbelt 3.

Just came out, and this time I played it in good time. Hopefully that’ll continue! Spoilers ahead for Lostbelt 3, and also for Qin Shi Huang’s interlude which has yet to come to NA. I’ll mark that section specifically so people can skip over it.

You might remember that I did one of these for Lostbelt 2, and if you haven’t seen that you can find it here. These are freeform and have no real set structure, they’re just one big post for me to gather and explain all my thoughts about the story. I’ll talk about characters, themes, pacing, etc. as they occur to me, and so expect this to be fairly chonky.

Now, once again, I’m going to lay out the thesis statement ahead of time, so people can feel free to skip over or read as they please. I expect this will be somewhat more controversial than my opinion about Gotterdammerung.

Lostbelt 3, the Synchronized Intelligence Nation, is bad.

I had wondered how to start this, but over time my thoughts kept coming back to the pacing. There are sixteen chapters in the Lostbelt, and almost nothing of any consequence whatsoever happens for the first eight. We fight Akuta, she runs, we fight Akuta, she runs, we spent like eight battles fighting the beasts Koyanskaya let loose and they amount to nothing and have no plot relevance whatsoever, we fight Xiang Yu and then he runs, and then we fight Xiang Yu and Lanling and then we’re forced into a truce and then nothing happens until Spartacus leads the people of the Lostbelt to rebellion and Qin drops the meteor and the march to Xiangyang begins.

Nothing happens.

Obviously that’s an exaggeration, there some events. Qin examines the Shadow Border, we meet some of the characters, but that’s all, really. A solid half of the Lostbelt is almost entirely useless faffing about, and then it rams the accelerator so absolutely nothing has any time to land and we speedrun our way through it. To put it in perspective, it’s one chapter shorter than Gotterdammerung, which was already five chapters shorter than Anastasia, and it feels significantly shorter than Gotterdammerung too. I complained in my write-up of that that it felt like things just happened for no reason, but at least things happened. In comparison, half of Lostbelt 3 feels bereft of content, the only important events of which could be condensed into about three chapters tops.

It feels like it’s a mid-year 1 Singularity. We have detours to kill random beasts unrelated to the actual plot, we get interrupted by fights as we try to talk, we faff about for ages and then speedrun our way to the actual climax. By the end of the Lostbelt, I was left with a lingering sense of “Wait, is that it?”

Moving on from the pacing, I think I should probably address the characters next. This is likely to be the largest section, since so much of the issues in the Lostbelt come from the characters and it’s only by talking about the characters that I can really engage with the themes. I’ll start from the least relevant and work my way up, meaning that I’ll be addressing basically the entire conglomerate of characters that aren’t Qin, Yu, Xiang Yu, Spartacus, Liangyu or of course Jing Ke.

Red Hare and Chen Gong, they’re comedy, make no mistake. They’re there to add a bit of humor to scenes and it’s fine, they’re funny. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to follow such a powerful scene as Spartacus saving the villagers and it inspiring them so much that the Lostbelt reconnects with the Throne of Heroes by having it result in nothing but comic relief, but they’re inoffensive.

Koyanskaya, she’s Koyanskaya. There’s a bit more hinting about her true nature here, but besides that she’s exactly the same. Nothing much happens besides that truly gratuitous torture scene that made me glad FGO’s story isn’t voiced, because it really was just deeply uncomfortable. I think that after two chapters and a prologue full of her being untouchable and smug and constantly ahead of everyone she did need to stumble a bit, but having her get punked by Shuwen and then gruesomely and gratuitously tortured while she screams and begs for help was completely unnecessary.

Han Xin and Li Shuwen, they’re fine. I’m not much of a fan of the whole stuff about Li Shuwen being so powerful as to stand up to four Servants, three of whom are meant to be insane powerhouses in their own right, but we’ll get to that in a bit. Han Xin when he’s allowed to just go apeshit at the end is one of the very few genuine delights about the Lostbelt, I really enjoyed him.

Lanling is a disappointment not because he’s badly written, but because he’s barely written. We start the Lostbelt to a flashback of his death and it sets us up to expect a bunch from him, but all that we really get is that he’s loyal to Yu. His only purpose in the story is to function as a connection for her outside of Xiang Yu, and boy howdy does this whole thing fail, we’ll get to that too. If he’d had more time, I expect he’d be quite good, but as it is he’s barely in the story and his only major character moment outside of Yu is when he tries assassinating Guda and admits he’s not really built for it.

Mordred and Nezha are there respectively to bounce off Spartacus and to reveal that Xiang Yu is based on her body respectively. That’s it. They vanish from the story for a good few chapters and I didn’t notice because Nezha becomes irrelevant as soon as you meet Xiang Yu and Mordred becomes irrelevant as soon as Spartacus died. You could remove both and the story would change not at all, and while I do think that Mordred’s role in giving Spartacus someone to bounce off of was nice and I enjoyed their interactions, introducing a whole character just to bounce off another means that when the other character is gone, the one you’ve introduced is just there. It’s insanely noticeable with Mordred.

Gordolf is a genuine delight. I think my honest favorite scene besides Spartacus’s in the chapter is when he and Guda have to decide who gets the only dose of antidote. Guda flat out telling them what hand they’d throw was perfectly in character but I genuinely adored Gordolf completely throwing the match and faking that it was an accident and that Guda got the antidote fair and square, after having it pointed out that he never once tried to lord it over Guda that he saved their life from the poison. When Guda forces him to drink it, Gordolf’s complete dedication to getting them the antidote and refusing to let Guda die because he’s the director and he is personally responsible for all their safety, that’s good stuff. I love Gordolf very very much, and I think that this Lostbelt really gives him some shining moments that emphasize why he’s so wonderful.

I think that is basically all the minor characters barring the village boy, who I will get to in a bit, but if you’re noticing a trend it’s that they’re mostly fine, inoffensive. Nothing stands out as truly genuinely very bad, but for the most part they’re all wasted potential. They exist to fulfil exactly one role, and then hang around long past their welcome in most cases, with Han Xin, Li Shuwen, and Lanling managing to avoid that, albeit in the first two more due to their overall lack of presence until the very end.

Now, Liangyu. Here’s where things start to break down a bit.

In this Lostbelt, Qin Liangyu is a warrior who distinguished herself enough to be frozen in Mt. Li, where Qin keeps their heroes to be used when necessary. Alongside Han Xin, she’s defrosted to handle the Chaldea threat. Her major point of focus in the chapter is engaging with the “Confucianism” that Chaldea represents. She’s the one who hears the poem first, she’s who reports it to Qin, she’s who steals the Shadow Border and who ends up confronting Chaldea first when they get to Xiangyang. When we finally get to hear her conviction, why she is so willing to fight for her home...

It’s revealed that Qin destroyed her village, her family. They had been inspired, not to rebel, but to simply seek to govern themselves and live as a nation outside of Qin’s domain. Qin’s response was to fire a meteor at their village. When the instigator escaped, he tried to do it again, and that was why Liangyu fights. To avoid the needless death and suffering that is guaranteed by opposing Qin.

No one is horrified by this. No one reacts to her blaming the victims for wanting a better life. No one points out that her loyalty comes entirely from a place of fear and loss, that Qin took away everything she held dear and then threatened to do it again and again and again. She fights because Qin would otherwise wipe out everyone, and this is heralded as splendid loyalty and honest devotion, despite the fact that it’s effectively the same logic as why someone might not resist their abusive partner. That is all Liangyu is meant to do, show us some kind of loyalty and validity to Qin’s path, and they even have Mashu lost for words when she is confronted. All to show us that true loyalty is submission, and that it’s a valid and good reason to fight, to be too scared of the tyrant above you wiping out everything if you don’t. Not something to oppose Qin for, but something to commend them for inspiring.

That reading, despite being a clearly obvious one, isn’t ever once entertained by the story. No one points out Qin’s tyranny as the starting point for Liangyu’s suffering, even though it clearly is. It’s not that it’s refuted, it just never once comes up, because the characters acknowledging it or challenging it would hurt the clumsy point it really wants to make.

As a digression, this Lostbelt is a step back for Mashu. Her climatic character moment in Part 1 is rejecting a world without suffering and having the purest conviction necessary to block Ars Almodel Salomonis, but now she’s shaken and starts thinking that maybe that was a mistake all because it was only a possible future she rejected with Goetia, instead of the actual people in front of her? I can’t see that as anything but a regression, considering it was a point that her conviction was able to overcome the most powerful attack in the series even as it destroyed her body to protect those behind her. It’s done almost entirely to make us question whether or not Qin has a point, and given that the answer to that is a resounding and obvious “no” all it ends up doing is taking a hammer to Mashu’s solidly built up character every time she responds to an obviously flawed argument with “...” to give it unearned validity.

Spartacus next. He is an honest to goodness genuine joy. There are a few bright spots in this Lostbelt and Spartacus is one of them. He is very well written, allowed to think and philosophize about the nature of rebellion and whether it’s needed, and his musings on why he rebelled and whether or not it was justified to rebel against Qin when their people smiled so innocently like he’d always hoped for was unironically fantastic character work. His sacrifice reigniting the will to ask for more inside the people to the point of connecting to the Throne once more is absolutely fantastic, and his interactions with Mordred are great too. I absolutely do not have a single bad thing to say about him, he’s just wonderful.

Jing Ke. She’s a delight. She is a constant denier of everything that Qin suggests, and she functions as a beacon of good sense in the chapter. Where others are falling prey to some nonsense writing that makes them wonder if they’re doing the right thing, Jing is constantly pointing out the horrible, horrible tyranny going on, and constantly reminding people that Qin is in fact, a monster. Her final moments, getting to trick Qin into downloading a virus, arguing against them on philosophical grounds and then mocking them when they’re surprised that she would use that as a chance to kill them, and the argument itself of humanity’s virtues being in its ability to communicate and progress even if they don’t have a certainty of peace ahead of them, all of it was great. I’m sad she died and never got a chance to see Guda again in the Lostbelt, but all in all, she was well written.

Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren. This is where things get really, truly, genuinely disappointing. As concepts, they’re really cool. Xiang Yu as a machine built from the body of a god with the ability to calculate and compute the future giving him an inhuman mindset is a really neat idea, as is Meiren being effectively a True Ancestor. Them finding love as two non-humans who understood each other where no one else did is good in theory.

In practice, Xiang Yu and Yu Meiren’s romance, the emotional core of the chapter, is without question the worst romance written in the Lostbelts thus far, and probably the worst romance in the game. It isn’t until chapter 13 of this 16 chapter game that we get any exploration of it at all beyond Meiren being devoted to Xiang Yu to the point that she completely cripples her own agency as an interesting and individual character to work entirely for Qin when they threaten Xiang Yu’s life, and the exploration we do get is just...explaining how Xiang Yu is a robot and how he lived in Panhuman History. No examination of their mutual feelings, just Meiren describing how her Xiang Yu lived.

This Lostbelt is not a reuniting of lovers long past. This is Meiren finding a man who shared an origin with her lover and devoting herself entirely to him, even though they aren’t the same person at all. This could have been an incredible hook!

Imagine if this Lostbelt looked at Meiren’s two thousand years of stagnation in mourning for Xiang Yu and her sole desire being to be reunited with him and then it gave her her wish. She betrayed her own history for the Lostbelt’s, because it gave her a chance to see her beloved again, but this Xiang Yu is not her Xiang Yu. He doesn’t even answer to the same name, doesn’t recognise her at all. Having thrown away everything that connected her to Panhuman History just to see her beloved again, she is now trapped in a world she doesn’t recognise with a man who isn’t her Xiang Yu, her sole connection being...Gao Changgong, a regular human from Panhuman History. The greatest of ironies, her only meaningful connection being one of the humans she hates, because she sacrificed everything for a man who doesn’t even know her name.

Lostbelt 3 is a story about stagnation and the dangers of easy ignorance, but Meiren’s story doesn’t engage with that central theme whatsoever. Hers is a story entirely about how she merely existed just to exist before she met Xiang Yu and after he died, and her only experience being happy was with him. A few short years in literal millennia of existence are all that she cares about, and indeed she doesn’t change even slightly over all those years. And despite this stagnation leading her to consign her own history to death, the history that her Xiang Yu is from and fought for, the story never once engages with that. She is, in fact, rewarded in the end by becoming a Heroic Spirit and getting reunited with her Xiang Yu.

And really, that’s what gets me. They have a perfect setup to tie into the theme of the Lostbelt, how an uncertain future of progression is sincerely better than a stagnant peace born of ignorance, and they don’t tie their Crypter into it nearly as well as LB1 or even LB2. Kadoc is obsessed with conflict and overcoming Guda to prove his own strength in a reflection of how Lostbelt 1 is a hellscape where might makes right, and Ophelia is stuck doing nothing but following her role without a choice in a reflection of Surtr existing only to fulfill his role, being capable only of destruction and incapable of changing that. In contrast...Meiren doesn’t engage with SIN’s theme of the worthiness of peace at the cost of stagnation at all, really.

I’m talking a lot about what she could be instead of what she is, because what she is is obsessed with Xiang Yu. Her sole concern in every single appearance besides her single moment of independent characterization with Gao on his deathbed is Xiang Yu. She sacrifices her initial independence to obey Qin for Xiang Yu’s sake, she fights for nothing more than Xiang Yu’s sake, she wants nothing more than to be with Xiang Yu forever, even if it’s not her Xiang Yu, even if it’s sacrificing the world her Xiang Yu fought for. She chooses the peace of stagnation and is never once punished or even questioned for it. She tells Lostbelt Xiang Yu about his history in her world, and then he tells her that he understands why her Xiang Yu loves her, and then decides on the spot that he loves her too. That’s it.

Every other existing romance that they play back into in Fate is one that they put effort into selling. I mean, just think about Sigurd and Bryn! Imagine if, instead of all the little touches and bits in the chapter where they go in hard on selling that Sigurd and Bryn are madly in love with each other, they just didn’t have that. Imagine if Kadoc and Anastasia barely interacted except for Kadoc telling Anastasia how her past went. It really feels like Urobuchi looked at Meiren and Xiang Yu’s existing famous romance and decided that he just didn’t need to sell it, even though it literally wasn’t the same people involved.

And to be clear, I understand the intention. Xiang Yu has an alien mindset because of his calculation of the future, and this alien mindset means that he does things that are hard to understand for us. But at the end of the day, Lostbelt Xiang Yu hears a single story about himself in Panhuman History and decides that it makes sense that, given everything he and Meiren experienced there, that they would fall in love. And then he chooses to fall in love too, in the span of a single conversation. That isn’t believable, but more to the point it isn’t satisfying. This isn’t a great reuniting of lovers, it’s Meiren telling a stranger how a hypothetical alternate timeline version of him lived and him deciding he loves her because of that one single story.

And the way this love is represented is...it’s kinda typical Urobuchi. Meiren’s tragedy is undersold and given second billing to talking about how tragic Xiang Yu’s life was and how bad it made her feel and how she wished she could have done something, while LB Xiang Yu ignores her plea to stay and to not fight anymore by declaring that he must fight for the Lostbelt because of his programming, not for her, and then after he’s defeated and Guda beats Qin he declares that he’s actually madly in love with Meiren and will ignore her stated wishes again to fight until he dies, whereupon he promptly talks about dying with regret for leaving Meiren behind and quotes the poem and everyone claps. This great romance begins by Meiren telling Xiang Yu about how sad his life was in her history, is defined solely by Xiang Yu doing anything he wants at any time while Meiren feels sad about it, and ends with Xiang Yu ignoring Meiren’s wishes to sacrifice himself for absolutely nothing and to have it later revealed he knew exactly how she would react to this and did it anyway.

It’s not that I don’t buy the romance, it’s that I can’t buy it. It’s every terrible romance you’ve seen in fiction before where there’s no chemistry to sell it but the author keeps telling you how perfect they are for each other, only in this case the author tells you how perfect Meiren and Panhistory Xiang Yu are for each other and then shrugs and decides that Lostbelt Xiang Yu is basically the same anyway so it works. And it really, really does not.

The Xiang Yu of Panhistory is somewhat interesting from what we hear in the chapter, but Lostbelt Xiang Yu is very bland and Yu Meiren is just a tragically wasted character. Instead of a story of being shaken out of stagnation and learning to grow and move forward, we get a story of stagnation being the good and right choice for her. Instead of a story of trying to make the past happen again instead of acknowledging that they are two different people who cannot simply pretend everything is as it was, we get a story where Lostbelt Xiang Yu decides it makes sense that an alternate universe version of himself would fall in love with Meiren, and then skips all the actual development to decide he’s madly in love with her too. Instead of a story of Meiren realizing that her closest connection for the longest time was a living human and that she can live for more than just the memory of a man long dead, we get Meiren’s character being solely, completely about Xiang Yu from beginning to end, and even later in Chaldea where she exists for nothing more than “haha married couple” jokes.

There is, to be clear, an attempt at relating this to the other theme of the chapter, humanity. Meiren and Xiang Yu are both discriminated against for their inhumanity, and it’s pointed out that they’re so fitting for each other because they, as non-humans, understood each other. I think this could have worked if it was given more emphasis, but as it stands it just kinda...isn’t. It, and they, take a backseat to Qin’s emphasis on this theme, so all this theme does for them is another justification as to why they are totally in love and why Urobuchi doesn’t have to write them actually being in love.

And then Xiang Yu dies, and Meiren goes crazy because her entire world and every facet of her character revolves around one man, and we have to kill her because he ignored her pleas and then died knowing he would die and knowing she would go crazy when he died. This, after spending the entire chapter from the first time we meet her being completely ineffective and failing at every turn, only becoming a threat once she devours her own Servant and even then only for a few minutes before she ceases to be relevant. Thanks, Urobuchi. Love it when you write women.

It’s a genuine disappointment, because you could do so much with Meiren and Lostbelt Xiang Yu bonding as themselves, not as Meiren from 2000 years ago and Xiang Yu from Panhistory, and with Meiren being able to honour her love without letting it chain her down to stagnation like it did in practice. But they don’t do any of that. They tell us that this great romance exists without putting in any of the work, and then expect it to work. And for me? It didn’t, at all. It is again, without a doubt the worst romance in this arc, and probably the worst romance in FGO.

Finally, Qin.

I think Qin is a fantastic villain. They are completely, utterly loathsome in every way, and the early chapters with Spartacus and Jing Ke around really highlight it. Spartacus’s musings about rebellion culminate in a reassurance that it is in fact right and just to rebel against the oppressor that is Qin despite the peace they offer, and Jing Ke consistently and constantly responds to all their justifications by pointing out what absolute drivel they are. It is a sincerely excellent setup for a Lostbelt King that isn’t a tragic case of someone trying to save what they can after a horrible accident, but one who in their arrogance created a hellscape that was pruned solely due to their own tyranny. Qin is the perfect balance of hypocritical and arrogant and cruel while being utterly convinced of their own perfection to make a fantastic villain to break out of the “tragic king after apocalypse” type we’d had for the first two Lostbelts, and has the perfect ingredients to a tie-in back to Goetia and how Goetia earned the title of “King of Humans” in their final moments.

But, unfortunately, the chapter starts softening up on them as it goes on. Where before, we had people calling them out for tyranny and obvious wrongdoing, by the end we have Holmes praising them for shouldering the difficult responsibility of humanity all by themselves and being the one we get on our Lostbelt CE, a spot reserved before for the inhabitants of the Lostbelt that we befriend. Because, ultimately, the Lostbelt doesn’t want to condemn Qin.

What Qin does is monstrous in the extreme, but by the end of the Lostbelt it feels like the game has forgotten that. Instead of pointing out the obvious problem in Liangyu’s loyalty being based on the certainty that Qin would murder everyone if she didn’t do it for them, Mashu and Guda have to just accept that it’s valid. Instead of reminding themselves of Spartacus and Jing Ke’s rejection of Qin as a tyrant, they praise them for taking over the responsibility of humanity. Instead of having the Lostbelt represented by the boy who dared to look up and dream of something more, it’s instead represented by Qin descending to live among humanity in their final days. Even Qin’s final act for Meiren has them claim without irony that they guide their people by the light of reason, when the entire chapter has been about how Qin uses threats of incredible violence to control everyone and how they had to conquer the world by force to enact this horrible regime, and no one points out the shocking hypocrisy in Qin claiming that they guide through reason instead of, you know. Giant meteors.

I didn’t name that boy, because the story doesn’t name that boy. In a story that is ostensibly about the horror of humanity being stripped of everything that makes them an individual and showing us that the spark and drive to be different and to learn and grow and change still exists even after over two thousand years of Qin trying to stamp it out, they don’t name the boy. This isn’t because names don’t exist in Qin’s empire, because explicitly the heroes are all named, and implicitly such a massive divergence would need to be highlighted in some way, so it’s not an intentional dehumanization which would actually fit.

Instead, despite this child being the first citizen who dares to enjoy a poem and who dares to step outside the boundaries of his village, despite him being proof positive that Qin’s tireless attempts at stamping out the human spirit are doomed to failure even after ruling the entire world for hundreds of years, despite him being inspired by Spartacus’s cry of rebellion against the tyranny of the world he was born in...he doesn’t have a name. And that really hurts the Lostbelt, I feel, because it just doesn’t take the time to even name our Lostbelt friend. He is, ultimately, not important. The symbol of the Lostbelt is Qin as the ultimate human, despite the entire point of the Lostbelt being that it’s a rejection of this concept, that Qin’s choice of becoming the one and only human is wrong and that the individuality of Panhistory is superior. Instead of enshrining the boy who dared to be different in the CE, pride of place is given to Qin.

That’s my biggest issue with Qin, really. We are given a perfect setup for Qin as a villain and indeed do reject their whole worldview and ideals and everything as being completely wrong, to the point that Holmes even rejects the idea that they are a human. In the final parts of the chapter, Holmes declares that the defense Qin dedicated themselves to is the domain of a god, and that despite their insistence that they did so as the only human and that they rejected becoming a god, ultimately they were deluding themselves, having simply taken on the role of a god while declaring themselves a human. This is the harshest condemnation that Qin ever gets and the final culmination of theme of humanity and what it really is that’s there throughout the Lostbelt, a complete and total rejection of the idea that one can do what Qin did and still claim to be human.

But instead of engaging with this, the story softens up on Qin by the end because it wants you to roll for them. It’s exactly what happened with Skadi, a solid character and path built up from the beginning and then swerving towards the end to make them more likeable. That Qin is the one on our Lostbelt CE and that it’s all about how Qin did their best to “shoulder the responsibility” for mankind instead of highlighting their tyranny is just kinda emblematic of how the story treats it once Jing Ke is gone, because when she’s not in the party people stop pointing out the obvious tyranny going on, and when she’s dead everyone starts acting like Qin is almost reasonable and that their path was a valid one that wasn’t so wrong, even though theirs was more right. It even completely ignores Koyanskaya pointing out that Qin loves humanity like an owner loves its pets, not as actual individuals, but this love is treated as completely valid thereafter instead of being a huge problem.

Big Big Spoilers For Qin’s Interlude Now, Skip Ahead To The Next Bolded Section If You Don’t Want To See Them

One of the reasons I’m so harsh on them for what could, in context, be seen as relatively minor softening up on Qin compared to the actual defeat we deal them is because of this Interlude. As a brief overview, Qin completely ignores the ending of their Lostbelt, which lasts for three months despite every other Lostbelt lasting a day at most before it vanishes and the implication of the final chapter being that it’s ending soon, returns to Epang Palace despite it having been destroyed and corrupted with a virus and despite having promised to live as a human on the ground with the rest of the world until the end, and then uses the data on the Shadow Border that somehow survived the virus and destruction of the palace to somehow construct a machine that allows them to create Singularities.

They then use this to create a bunch of Singularities related to “what-ifs” where they were a cruel king who ruled over Xiangyang and murdered all their subjects so they can piggyback on the Human Order instead of being destroyed with their Lostbelt and everyone in it, and then keeps the Singularities around as time bombs to destroy Panhistory like Goetia did if they ever feel like Guda might lose. When this is figured out, no one in the know bothers to tell Guda to protect their feelings, and no one intervenes in any way or challenges Qin in any regard besides telling them to believe in Guda.

This interlude turned Qin into the most loathsome character in the game for me. They declared they would put it all on the line challenging Guda and then lost and stepped aside, even helping to destroy the Tree of Fantasy, and even having Da Vinci praise their grace in stepping aside when it was clear that they had lost. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, Qin lied. Qin pulled the trigger on everyone in their entire world and then decided that they didn’t actually want to uphold their end of the bargain, so they abandoned the people they swore to live alongside until the end and constructed a scenario where they have the sole authority to destroy all of human history forever if they feel like it, something made possible only because author fiat dictated that they still had the data and the capacity to use it after the twofold destruction of the Epang Palace and only because author fiat dictated that their Lostbelt lasted for months after the Tree was destroyed when every other Lostbelt disappears after hours. And all this happens because fundamentally, they don’t want Qin to be wrong, and they don’t think Qin was wrong. They pay lip service to the idea, but the end result is that Qin is always meant to have a point, and that despite having people point out their obvious hypocrisy at ther start like Jing Ke, by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond you are meant to take them at face value as a Hard Enby Making Hard Decisions doing their best to save the entire world.

SPOILERS FOR THE INTERLUDE OVER, YOU’RE SAFE NOW

To begin the summary for Qin as a character, I’d like to point out Fate’s relationship with Great Man theory. This theory is, in brief, a suggestion that the course of history is largely influenced by exceptional individuals and leaders that exert their will on the world as a result of their own superb capabilities, such as being more intelligent, charismatic, powerful etc. than all other men around them. This is obviously a theory with a bunch of holes, but what’s interesting is that Fate has always engaged with this idea and has always refuted it conclusively.

In Fate, if you are a single human trying to save the world, you will fail. Kiritsugu’s chasing of the Grail and his ultimate failure because of his own flaws making it physically impossible for him to consider a path to salvation that didn’t involve killing is a rejection of Great Man theory. Shirou understanding that one single person cannot possibly save everyone in the world is a rejection of Great Man theory. Amakusa’s inability to save the world in any way besides erasing free will is a rejection of Great Man theory. Goetia’s decision to erase history and start again to make something better and his ultimate defeat is a massive rejection of Great Man theory. Zelretch, for all his insane power, is literally paralyzed by that selfsame power into not being able to do anything, while someone like Aoko who doesn’t think of anything but what’s right in front of her is actually able to accomplish things because she doesn’t try transcending the limits of what a human is capable of. It is one of the Nasuverse’s most consistent themes, that it is fundamentally wrong and doomed to fail if you ever attempt to impress your will on the entire world in a misguided attempt to save it.

And yet Qin simply doesn’t engage with that. Qin is Great Man theory distilled into a character, and by the end of the Lostbelt and beyond the game gives up on challenging that. They declare themselves as the ultimate human with the sole responsibility to administrate mankind and despite losing, the game respects them and their path and refuses to condemn them the same way that it condemned Ivan for doing all he could to save his people, even if it meant inflicting his own ideas on the entire human race. And that’s a consistent problem with the last two Lostbelts, but it sticks out more for Qin because Qin didn’t face an apocalypse. Qin brought the world to an end with their own two hands, but the game simply cannot keep up the condemnation as much as it should, because it wants you to like them and wants you to roll them and spend money to do so. And that’s where Qin falters for me. They’re a fantastic villain, but the game doesn’t let them be a villain, regardless of how much it clashes not just with FGO’s themes, but with one of the overarching ideas behind a lot of stuff in the Nasuverse as a whole.

I’ve basically talked about the thematics and the characters together in the last section, so this is just me talking about its construction as a story here as a short(er) final roundup.

It’s badly written, really. Like I mentioned earlier, basically nothing happens for about half the chapter and then the latter half puts the pedal to the metal and speedruns its way through everything. Nothing is given the time or dedication it needs besides Spartacus’s sacrifice in the chapter, I feel, and that works to its extreme detriment.

In terms of things that happen, it strained my sense of disbelief as bad or worse than Lostbelt 2 did. I knew it was going to be rough when Mordred, one of the Knights of the Round Table who was easily able to go toe-to-toe with Siegfried and stomp most people she fought in previous appearances, ends up firing her Noble Phantasm at Xiang Yu and doing no damage whatsoever despite being a direct hit, and then Xiang Yu ends up defeating a group of four Servants including powerhouses like Mordred and Spartacus without breaking a sweat and explicitly while holding back.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, that I’m starting to sound like some BLer who cares for nothing besides calculations and VS debates and whatnot, but that’s not what I’m about. I don’t care to argue whether my favorite Servant could beat Goku or not, partially because the answer is an obvious yes because they’re my favorite, but mostly because that’s just not really relevant for a story.

What is relevant, however, is the idea of suspension of disbelief. In telling a story, you don’t need to be realistic, but you need to be consistent. Having internal consistency is a vital part of selling your work to the audience, because if they start thinking that anything can happen at any time because the author wants it to happen, they can get pulled out of the story real quick. If you introduce someone as being Double God and being able to wipe the floor with every single one of the protagonists without breaking a sweat, you have to make sure that when or if they are defeated, their defeat is internally consistent. Either they lose their strength somehow, or the protagonists find some way to power up or change their tactics or do something different to defeat them next time they fight. When you pull a victory or defeat out of your ass without some kind of internal consistency, you had better make sure that you’ve got your themes on point, because if you’ve failed in making something internally consistent and you can’t justify the event happening because it fits perfectly with the themes of the work, then it takes people out real quick.

That’s where this Lostbelt falls down really hard in terms of story construction outside of its characters, because it has neither. Xiang Yu is introduced as an unstoppable murdermachine that we can only hold off temporarily or wait for him to retreat, even when that means devaluing our own Servants’ capabilities and making Mordred who is a Knight of the Round table look like a chump. But then later, Spartacus vaporizes a meteor with nothing but his Noble Phantasm, except Xiang Yu was just straight up too much for him, even though Xiang Yu is pretty much the greatest symbol of Qin’s oppression and its source, the incredible violence that they are willing and able to visit upon anyone at any time if they feel like it. Spartacus loses horribly to one symbol and then annihilates the other and it feels weird.

Later, we’re also introduced to Meiren being a True Ancestor with infinite mana who curses us so badly that we only survive with Koyanskaya’s aid. Even Koyanskaya is urging us to run and there’s explicitly nothing we can do to her. That’s fine! It’s a good setup for a really tough boss! But what it means is that now we have two people set up as completely unbeatable even with all the help we have, including Red Hare and Chen Gong. That’s an awkward setup that really needs a solid resolution, especially when the final battle with them is fighting both, together, while both are completely fresh and Chaldea has just fought their way through Xiangyang, defeating Liangyu, Han Xin and the royal guards, and Li Shuwen.

And the game doesn’t engage with it. We beat them both despite them both individually being able to wipe us out earlier in the chapter, and despite nothing having changed for us. If anything, they should have the advantage of conviction, or at least Xiang Yu should. But we beat them and Nezha gives some nonsense about how Xiang Yu lost because he never had any rivals to fight against, despite him having been used to conquer the world, and despite him having fought alongside the great heroes enshrined in Mt. Li during these conquests. Meiren isn’t even acknowledged, which isn’t much of a surprise, but it is disappointing. Despite her being held up as an insurmountable threat at first, she’s not even considered worth mentioning in favor of talking about Xiang Yu.

That problem continues along with Qin, who comes at us with a Grand class Saint Graph and whom we end up defeating all by ourselves, not as a battle of wills but flat out defeating them, even though we only have Mashu, Red Hare, Nezha, and Mordred who have all been exhausted fighting through all of Xiangyang. People are hyped up as insanely dangerous and then lose not because of the thematics and not because the story has constructed things so that their loss makes sense, but just because the author says it happens. All the battles are handled with in-game battles, which the game grew out of a long, long time ago. The difference between the climactic battles with Ivan and Surtr and the climactic battle with Qin in terms of actual writing is night and day, and the sole saving grace, that it is explicitly characterized as a conflict between the two philosophies and a battle of which one comes out on top, just isn’t enough to overcome the insane hype of being on par with a Grand that Qin gets for absolutely no reason. It devalues Grands and it made the victory against them feel unearned even with the idea that it’s a conflict of philosophies, which I usually eat up. To compare it to the great example of that in Fate, it feels like Shirou VS Archer, except instead of the point being that Archer cannot bring himself to fully deny Shirou’s ideals and is defeated by Shirou reminding him of their beauty even though he wields the power to crush Shirou instantly if he wanted, it’s like Shirou proved his point about ideals by beating Archer up fair and square. It just isn’t nearly as well written.

It isn’t all bad. Like I mentioned, Spartacus, Jing Ke, Gordolf, they were all genuine delights that I loved. The meteor, the assassination, those were both excellent scenes. But overall, the Lostbelt was half nothing happening and then the latter half made up of one or two cool moments with a hell of a lot of bad shit connecting them. Its theme of stagnation is indecisive and muddled because of Qin and Meiren, its theme of humanity has its conclusion ignored and conflicts with the overall idea of Great Men in the Nasuverse, its treatment of its female characters barring Jing is uncomfortable at best, and it tries to sell us a romance without putting in any of the actual legwork to make it believable.

I wish Lostbelt 3 had been better. I can see easy routes to make it better. But more than anything I wish that Meiren had been done better. She’s an immortal True Ancestor who has lived for thousands of years and seen the birth of modern humanity, living through so much of our history, and instead of having a story of learning how to break free of her stagnation she’s just obsessed with a male character who isn’t remotely as focused on her to the extent that every choice and decision she makes in the chapter is focused entirely around him. It’s just...uncomfortable.

For all the hooks she had as a character, Meiren is reduced to an accessory for her man, and I think that’s a crying shame.

#FGO #Fate/Grand Order #Fate Grand Order #cosmos in the lostbelt #Synchronized Intelligence Nation #SIN #lostbelt #FGO spoilers #Lostbelt 3 #Shi Huang Di #Qin Shi Huang #Xiang Yu

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aizawasbedtimestories · 3 years

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i was wondering what your thoughts were on the theory that aizawa might be asexual? sorry it's kind of a controversial ask but i'm genuinely curious about what you think

Me, coming out of my silence to just talk? More likely than we all thought.

I think it can be likely that he is, but I like some de-stress Aizawa sex like any other person here, as everyone here knows. Since I am good friends with @thehawaiianqueen-art (who does a lot of meta and works with the asexual idea) I am often exposed to the idea that he’s asexual, and by taking a few steps back and thinking about it, I believe it could be. However, I would never put a character into any sexual spectrum without knowing their canon sexuality. That said, everything is possible, really.

However, for me personally, since he was a comfort character for me always and I like the idea of sexual acts with him, I believe that there are other factors for why he just not might be as sexually active as other characters. Mainly his head is everywhere but on his own needs. He’s a teacher, hero, caretaker, he really has so much to do, and it takes over his whole day. I’d be surprised if he even remembered to masturbate since we all know he’ll take his free time to catch up on sleep.

Either way, I like both theories, and I don’t think that one of them is better than the other. As long as we don’t have a canon statement, I think it’s false to assume anything, but everyone can hc what they want. Since Aizawa is very sexulized throughout the fandom, I am quite glad that some people are more focused on asexual content, providing us all the other needs we could have. It’s much better to keep the fandom diverse because it will make it more fun to be around! ^-^

#Aizawa #Aizawa Shouta #Shouta Aizawa #bnha imagines #bnha headcanons #bnha scenarios #bnha fanfictions #bnha imagine #bnha writing blog #mha #my hero academia #bnha #boku no hero academia #aizawa x reader #aizawa x s/o #aizawa bnha #lotusflw3r #aizawa talk

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tothedarkdarkseas · 3 years

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If you woke up tomorrow and suddenly became the new writer for gorillaz... What would be the FIRST thing you'd add/change that you believe is important to get gorillaz on the right track, vs what would you add purely for yourself?

This is tricky to answer, because the fandom is so split on when and why Gorillaz starts going "wrong." I'd probably say I disagree with certain choices in every phase from 3 onward, but I also wouldn't say I abjectly hate any of them or any have truly worn me off the band (admittedly, this current phase has the least to offer.) I say all this to give me cushioning when my suggestions are bad/no one can agree on what's good and what's crap, haha. It's also tough to tell where the line is between The Good Of Us All and Just Good For Me, but I am absolutely aware those are very distinctly separate things.

I would start simply with more interviews. Not short statements for a magazine or ads for new products, not a cobbled together collection of ideas to fill a page in a novelty book. I don’t say that to be a hater, I think the almanac had a few worthwhile written sections, but I don't think it's controversial to say large portions were just taking up space, felt very out-of-step with the character (Paula’s revisiting comes to mind) or didn't feel like they added anything-- goofy for goofy's sake is fun in doses, very much not saying the only worthwhile interviews are the serious ones, but it can feel strange when it is the only significant written content we get for a band that have, in the past, provided actual measured thoughts about the music (mostly Noodle and Russ here) or served themselves as a satire of pop culture and mocked archetypical celebrities (particularly the irreverent, lived, sponsor-unfriendly specifics of British pop culture, as the writers are more at-home with this than, say, exploring much about actual Japanese culture in Noodle’s travels; this is Stu and Murdoc's domain.) I want to read interviews with individual members and with the band as a whole that have no focus on marketing, no focus on their own products or sponsorships, and perhaps most crucially IMO, are not reliant solely on what we’ve seen in music videos already. Honestly, the merch-plugs and promotional materials bother me way less than the short interviews or quotes (from Twitter, etc) we get just referencing the most recent events of a Song Machine video, or really blandly calling back to previously written lore without even a joke attached. I’m not trying to make some grand statement about Gorillaz “always” doing this, or this “always” being bad, I do think these critiques can be overstated sometimes-- but from the perspective of a fairly neutral fan, yeah, I think it’s as true as any subjective feeling can be that Gorillaz’s writing is fairly unwilling to say something new about the characters, maybe because the writers or actors are bound to a script with just a few plot points. Like, I just want Gorillaz to actually be funny again. I acknowledge and respect where they’ve made some attempts but I’d like to see more life in the characters-- and this may teeter into adding things just for me, but I’d like them to a bit meaner again as well. I’d like all of the characters to bring their own laddishness or snobbery to the table, I’d like them to take potshots at pop culture and start beef, I’d like the man we define as being a gross arrogant arsehole to actually come across as these things instead of the characters just rolling their eyes at him and getting virtually no unique characterization of their own-- there’s so much comedy and commentary lost when only Murdoc is allowed to be nasty, and even he can’t really say something to make an enemy. There are of course fans who love the softer family aspect but I reckon there are just as many fans who prefer the band to be sort of Always Sunny-ish, be a little bit insufferable but too much fun to quit. I definitely think there’s a way to strike that balance, because they’ve done it before. Speaking for myself I wouldn’t say Gorillaz is totally ruined and will never be good again etc etc, I don’t want to throw all my merchandise in a fire, I just think they’ve made some questionable choices in the real world, they’re struggling to stay in step now that they’ve got to be their own label, and the characters are not bringing much to the table to genuinely laugh at.

Purely for myself... first instinct/no-thought answer: I would add official artwork of Stu with a small bald spot chatting up a girl in the clinic while holding a little baggy for his prescription itch cream, and another of Murdoc leaving an alley in Soho, sneering at the camera but swiping a thumb at the side of his mouth. Or a song with Brian Molko. Or Stu recording a football chant for Chelsea on his own, ala Sleeping Powder. These are all acceptable.

#headcanon posts #er... sort of!#long post

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charliejrogers · 4 years

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The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Or, Sorkin’s attempt to show you how nothing has changed in 52 years)

If you know anything about Aaron Sorkin, the much-acclaimed writer/creator of television shows like The West Wing, The Newsroom, you know that subtlety is not his strong suit. So, I was rather hesitant going into his newest film, The Trial of the Chicago 7, the infamous trial of eight gentlemen accused of conspiracy to incite violence/rioting in Chicago during the notorious 1968 DNC riots. Without diving too deep into the history, August 1968 was not Chicago’s finest hour. When the protesters chanted as a warning to the police, “The Whole World Is Watching!”, they weren’t wrong. Years ahead of the 24-hour news cycle, people all across America (and across the world) were glued to the TV watching the Chicago police beat the ever-living snot out of young folks protesting the Democratic Party’s decision to support the ever-controversial war in Vietnam. The film’s subject matter is sure to draw parallels to and resonate strongly with both the protests and civil unrest that took place this past summer following the death of George Floyd and countless other Black folk at the hands of police. So despite it’s appropriate timeliness, I was hesitant to watch this movie because I really wasn’t interested in watching Aaron Sorkin (who not only wrote but directed this film) try to mansplain to me that the trial of the Chicago 7 was all about injustice! Without knowing anything else about the trial beforehand (and I really didn’t), I already knew it’s a famous case of injustice. I wanted to watch the movie to learn about the people, the humans involved, and the nuance of the situation.

The film gets off to a rough start in the nuance department. After an effective montage introducing us to six of the eight members of the Chicago 7 (we’ll get to why there’s that numerical discrepancy), we meet the character who will be the lead prosecutor of the case: a straight-laced, clean-cut lawyer played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In an attempt to plant the seed early on that the eponymous trial is a sham, the first real scene of the film sees Gordon-Levitt meeting with Nixon’s newly appointment Attorney General John Mitchell who is pissed off that the prior AG didn’t resign from the office until an hour before Mitchell was confirmed. As retaliation, and in line with history’s understanding of Nixon’s pathologic paranoia, Mitchell decides to re-open the case exploring whether there was any conspiracy to incite riots in Chicago 1968. As JGL explains, this was something which Johnson’s AG as well as prior FBI investigations already decided did was not a viable case. The conversation that ensues is a little too on-the-nose. JGL shares his concerns that he doesn’t believe that the Chicago 7 are actually guilty, but Mitchell tells JGL, “then imagine how impressed I’ll be when you get a conviction.”

Of course, this conversation is largely a Sorkin invention, as is the weird decision to try to humanize the prosecutor played by Gordon-Levitt. I say "weird" because the film doesn’t do anything with it. We don’t get a real sense beyond that initial scene that JGL feels guilt or remorse for being a cog in the Nixon machine. The beginning of the film sets him up to be a similar character to David Schwimmer’s fascinating turn as Robert Kardashian in The People vs. O.J. Simpson. But in the end, it’s clear that Sorkin uses him just as a way in the beginning of the film to provide the thesis statement for the film, as if he were writing this script as a college term paper. This bothers me so much because it makes a late-film surprise appearance by Michael Keaton as Johnson’s AG lose a good deal of its impact. It would have been so much better if we as the audience came to the same revelation about the political origin of the trial at the same time that the defense lawyers did.

Sorkin’s lack of subtlety reared its ugly head in a few key moments that caused me to audibly groan while watching this film. Towards the end of the film, one of the more dramatic defendants, the merry prankster hippie Abbie Hoffman (played very well by Sacha Baron Cohen), is on the stand and is asked a particularly difficult question by the prosecution. He pauses. The prosecution asks what’s taking so long. Hoffman responds in a serious tone that runs opposite of his usual character, “Sorry, I’ve never been on trial for my thoughts before.” The film then slowly fades to black. I half-expected to hear the famous Law & Order “chun-chunn” sound next. That’s how cheesy and self-righteous the scene was.

The film’s ending too, where the defendants read off a list of all the fallen soldiers from Vietnam prior to their sentencing, felt a little too Hollywood to be believable… and indeed it didn’t happen that way. Elsewhere in the film, one of the more “prim and proper” defendants, the young head of the Students for a Democratic Society Thomas Hayden played by Eddie Redmayne, reflexively stands in honor of the judge’s exit as is court custom, forgetting that he and the rest of the defendants agreed not to stand. That’s not the bad part. The bad part comes later when Redmayne’s character travels to someone’s home and the Black maid who answers the door says to him, “I heard you were the only one to stand for the judge,” and then the camera just sorta lingers on her disappointment. We get it! The judge is a bad dude! Let’s move on!

Seriously, let’s move on. For all my griping, this is a very good movie. Those instances where Sorkin’s moral heavy-handedness is plain to see are so glaring because for the most part, the movie does a fantastic job of addressing the film’s (sadly still) politically controversial themes (police brutality, the culpability of protesters in starting riots, systemic racism, etc.) with a good deal of nuance. This mostly happens when Sorkin just sticks to the facts of the case, like when dealing with the whole saga of Bobby Seale, the eighth and only Black man of the Chicago 7. The day before the trial begins, Seale's lawyer required emergent surgery. Seale’s motion to have the trial postponed till he receive proper counsel is denied, as is his request to represent himself. Therefore, on trial without counsel, he frequently interrupts the court arguing about the unconstitutional nature of his trial, until the judge, played to chilling perfection by Frank Langella, becomes fed up with the interruptions and orders that Seale be bound, gagged, and chained to his chair. It’s a crazy powerful and uncomfortable scene, among the most haunting images I’ve seen in cinema. Finally, Seale’s case is determined to be a mistrial, changing the number of defendants from eight to seven. Hence, the Chicago 7.

But, the most inspired sequence of the film comes late in the movie when the defense gets wind of the prosecution’s plan to play a recording from the night of the riots where the prim and proper Tom Hayden can be (arguably) heard urging hundreds of listeners to “let blood flow all over the city.” Tom still believes that he would do well on the witness stand, but his defense lawyer (Mark Rylance as William Kuntsler) insists on showing him why this would be a bad idea. The ensuing scene sees Rylance role play the part of the prosecution cross-examining Hayden while the film intercuts scenes of a flashback of the actual events. the “truth” of that night, significantly muddies the water for this case. It by no means proves that the Chicago 7 are guilty of a conspiracy, but it certainly highlights the more human aspect of their situation. How is one expected to keep their calm when their best friend is beaten? And to what degree are people to be held responsible for decisions made in the heat of the moment?

The movie also has also interesting commentary on who should be the “face” or progressive politics, even today: the well-to-do and respectable Hayden or the in-your-face hippie comedian Hoffman? It’s an interesting question that never seems fully explored or resolved. Sorkin seems to land in the camp that Hayden’s respectability merely maintains status quo whereas Hoffman’s flagrant anti-establishment views is required for real change. But I don’t know how much of that is me just loving Cohen’s performance as Hoffman and finding Redmayne’s Hayden to be (appropriately) insufferably pretentious. Sorkin certainly gives Cohen the better lines.

Overall, this is a movie held up by its two primary strengths: its cast and its film structure. Aside from general inconsistencies of the script’s tone and the notable weakness I mentioned previously about overplaying the political motivation for the trial in the film's first 5 minutes, the film is nearly perfectly structured. We are sort of dropped in medias res into the trial and only get the facts of those few days shown to us in carefully placed flashbacks that help to flesh out the drama of the trial. It helps maintain pacing in what could have been a drag of a legal drama.

But really, it’s the cast and their performances that sell this movie. Sacha Baron Cohen is the star in my mind, so perfectly cast as Abbie Hoffman, but Frank Langella as the septuagenarian, prejudiced judge of the case is equally powerful. Yahya Abdul-Manteen II as the Black Panther Bobby Seale lends an air of desperate seriousness to the film, Eddie Redmayne shines as that white liberal dude who takes himself way too seriously, and Mark Rylance is wonderful as the courageous lead defense attorney, particularly in scenes dealing with Bobby Seale. While the whole trial weighs on him heavily as the film progresses, his genuine concern for Seale is palpable.

I spent much of this review telling you the things that were odd about this film, and I stand by that. But as I said, those things stand out because this is such a slick production that the cracks become that much more obvious. It largely avoids Sorkin’s penchant for blunt lack of nuance and offers a story that helps to greatly contextualize the very world we live in. It’s interesting that a story that sees ten men (including their lawyers) fail to win a fight against The Man still feels like an inspiring underdog tale. It resonated well with this viewer, especially as the ending makes clear that justice is eventually served. Yet, I recognize this may be a dangerous tale to tell these days, and why I think the movie is so successful is that it gives plenty of sobering evidence to suggest that justice (both then and now) is by no means guaranteed.

***/ (Three and a half out of four stars)

#trial of the chicago 7 #aaron sorkin #sacha baron cohen

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