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dxppercxdxver · 4 years

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A Note on the Use of Distance, Or: The Evolution of Nines's and Gavin's Relationship as Seen Through Body Language and Physical Proximity, Or: Sparrow Writes 6k About DE That Is Literally Just a Narrative Analysis

Apologies in advance, this is gonna be a long one. If you stick to it and read the whole thing, I will love you forever. (Also, @domlerrys, I’m tagging you because we talk about meta a lot and I think you’ll like this.)

And Michelle, I’m sorry for the length, but there’s just so much to talk about, I had to. Also, “brevity” is not in my vocabulary. Oops. (I’m also sure you know most of this already, but I had a blast analyzing this.)

So, it’s been about a month, and I think it’s about time I typed up some of my thoughts about the use of distance in Detroit Evolution. (For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, 1) What are you doing? 2) Go check it out, it’s a beautiful feature fan film made by the lovely people at @octopunkmedia, and if you like good ace representation, I think you’ll like it.)

To give us the proper background, let’s establish our characters’ relationships with touch. (For those of you who’ve seen the movie, you know this. This is just for our friends who are unaware.)

RK900, or Nines, is very asexual. Not necessarily touch-repulsed, but touch-uninterested, unless it’ll make somebody else happy (namely, Gavin).

Gavin Reed is allosexual, but has a long, complicated history of abuse and psychological manipulation, most of it revolving around intimacy, and, as such, is extremely touch-repulsed. He does not allow people to get close to him.

Throughout the film, they’re very careful to keep physical distance between them, and if they’re forced to be close together, their body language is usually very closed off. Which lends this sense of relief to a pivotal moment in the film later. The very important exceptions are the moments in the Zen Garden, and moments of extreme duress.

Let’s break it down scene by scene.

We open on the Zen Garden. In this mindscape, we know Nines and Gavin behave as though they’re been married for several years. Their interactions are comfortable and familiar, though entirely imaginary, and this is where the use of touch and distance starts to show. Even though this Gavin does not have any of the same touch aversions as the real world Gavin, he keeps his distance from Nines, and Nines, in turn, does the same. When Gavin greets him, he’s standing ten or so feet away; when they walk together, Nines hangs back, and the both of them keep their hands in their pockets, avoiding direct eye contact. Obviously, any more romantic gestures are kept offscreen for audience suspense, but still, what’s shown is equally important. The two main exceptions to this rule are when Gavin reaches out to adjust Nines’s collar and when Nines reaches out to touch Gavin’s face. However, even when Gavin is unbuttoning Nines’s shirt, his arms are perfectly straight, leaving about two feet of space between them, and when Nines cups Gavin’s cheek, it’s not really a romantic gesture. It’s almost a reverential one, and he still leaves about a foot between them. This may not seem like a lot, but considering that this is Nines’s ideal world and even his deepest desires leave that space between them, it reveals how much relative distance matters with these two.

Onto the next scene. Protest. We start in the car, with Nines staring straight ahead, avoiding Gavin’s gaze. Gavin only touches Nines to shock him out of his trance with a gentle slap, then turns his body forward, effectively closing himself off. He maintains this distance, even straying almost twenty feet in front of Nines on their walk up. Here’s another major exception, a moment of extreme duress: Gavin takes Nines’s hand and guides him through the crowd, despite the fact that Nines could easily surpass any one of the protestors in a fight. Even here, however, Gavin keeps his back turned and does not make eye contact. For all he physically reaches out, emotionally, he’s incredibly closed off. Same deal inside Jericho; table between them, avoiding eye contact, careful distance. And even in a more lighthearted moment of banter (Nines mimicking Gavin’s delivery), Chris is standing between them as a physical mediator, and he remains between them the whole scene.

Onto the D.P.D. and the famous first instance of “I hate you.” “You love me.”!

When Nines brings Gavin his coffee, his body language is very open: arms spread, standing over Gavin. However, Nines is also intensely aware of his partner’s issues regarding physical proximity, and quickly draws away, clasping his hands behind his back and retreating ever so slightly to give Gavin his space. Once Nines has spun Gavin’s feet out of the way, they are closer, yes, but Gavin’s back is turned and Nines is careful not to lean in too close over his shoulder. They’re very closed off, and remain this way for much of the scene, never directly facing one another. Gavin stands up, spins counterclockwise to keep his back to Nines until he’s behind Nines, at which point he’s in control of the situation and flips Nines off. When they speak face to face, Gavin’s legs are kicked up on the table or he’s using the coffee mug as a sort of psychological shield. Nothing direct, nothing open.

STAKEOUT! This is a really good example of something Michelle does—that isn’t like other romance movies —that I really love. A common thing in a lot of romance movies is that “almost kiss,” but in a movie like this, where the main romance emphasizes a mental connection over a physical one, that sort of play would feel cheap and out of place. Which is why I love the stakeout scene so damn much. The stakeout is the perfect time for an “almost kiss” moment, BUT! What we get instead is so much better, with two people desperate to let their feelings out but too scared to fully voice them. So you get this awkward dance of them abstracting the concept and refusing to look at one another, deliberately avoiding eye contact. Both of them are faced forward and stay solidly in their seats, leaving as much space as they can allow, and the only times they look toward one another, the other is looking away. They can’t say what they feel unless there’s that protective bubble of space between them. So you get an “almost confessing I like you” scene, with beautiful moments of almost closing that physical distance, but instead staying firmly planted in their seats until Lazzo arrives. Even when Gavin and Nines are forced to be close together, they maintain a healthy distance between them, and their “almost kiss” is swapped out for an “almost admitting I have feelings” moment. (Plus, a bonus of great asexual dialogue, yay!)

Lazzo’s scene isn’t that notable, other than Nines’s and Gavin’s hands brushing on Lazzo’s shoulder, but again, Lazzo is between them and they’re focused on other things. Still got that distance.

The infamous jacket drape, one of the moments Nines breaks the pattern of distance. Gavin is still facing away from him, yes, but Nines deliberately reaches out to touch him in a non-invasive way, one of the only times he does so. Progress! Still a one-sided gesture, though, and even the height difference emphasizes the space between them, with Nines on his feet and Gavin slumped in a chair. Still not breaking that “arm’s length” amount they’ve set. (Tying this into the @high-on-otps‘s analysis about moments of vulnerability occurring when Gavin’s wearing fewer layers, Nines seeing Gavin in just a t-shirt and gifting him his jacket takes on a whole new meaning, with Nines almost stepping in to protect Gavin’s heart. Anyway, that’s a thought for another day.) On another note, this is also one of the two main instances where you see one of these two fools being open only because they think the other won’t notice: just a selfless gesture they don’t want to have to dwell on.

Now! Onto Gavin’s house, where the pattern starts to change. It’s a great way to track the progression of their relationship. They start out separated, with Nines pulled into himself, tablet held out, and Gavin hiding behind his computer, avoiding Nines’s eyes. However, I think this is when Gavin’s starting to realize that he might have feelings for Nines and the reverse might be true (hence his moment of contemplation in the car after he notes the parallel uses of the word “charming” as applying to him and Nines’s possible love interest), and being as tired as he is, his inhibitions are not necessarily gone, but at least hampered. So he allows himself to get close physically, and sort of mentally as well. He’s conflicted, and that’s written all over him, as he puts himself right up against Nines to steal his tablet, but also refuses to look him in the eye and quickly moves to stand up later. This conflict is also incredible to watch in general, but you can see his overwhelming desire to get closer and his defense mechanisms battling in his mind in how he sits: pressed up against Nines’s side, but none of his body overlaps with Nines’s at all, and he doesn’t look at him. Nines makes the first move, leaning his head almost onto Gavin’s shoulder, but not quite. They’re still not there yet. Of course, once Gavin leaves, he keeps his back turned, meeting Nines’s eyes once, for a split second, before entering his room and shutting the door. (And tosses him some gym shorts, of course, because nothing says “I love you” like “hey, you can borrow these sleep shorts.”)

Reentering Nines’s mindscape, we see a little more conflict from his end. (I love how we actually get visual representation of Nines’s internal conflict, while Gavin’s can only be gleaned from how he moves and holds himself. It’s a nice contrast. Frankly, I adore it. Good writing.) Once again, there’s still a fair amount of space between Nines and Zen Gavin, as Nines is burying his feelings in his work. The closest Zen Gavin comes is right behind Nines to talk about what Gavin might have been about to say before walking into his room, but he doesn’t make eye contact, and moves away quite quickly. When he is open and actually making direct eye contact, he’s standing over five feet away, and Nines deliberately turns away. You see? It’s a visual metaphor for the growing emotional tension! Yay!

Nightmare time! This is one of those moments of extreme duress I was talking about!! Also one of my favorite scenes! This is the first time, in the whole film, where all three of these criteria are present: physical proximity, open body language, and direct eye contact. Nines is holding Gavin’s arms, Gavin meets Nines’s eyes, and Gavin’s arms are spread out, not crossed over his chest or in front of his face. Obviously, this moment only lasts a second, as Gavin quickly moves Nines’s arms away, Nines backs up, and Gavin averts his eyes, but for an important beat, that distance was closed, only to be reopened again. Then, of course, they have their “should I stay” moment, where Gavin is sending mixed signals: body is turned toward Nines, but he looks away repeatedly, and Nines is standing a respectful distance away, waiting for permission to come closer or leave. Eventually, Gavin verbally and physically opens himself up: while he avoids looking directly at Nines, he keeps his arms at his sides and doesn’t turn away (huge steps for someone like Gavin), and as for Nines, he does the opposite, maintaining direct eye contact, but turning his body away to give Gavin the space he needs without pressuring him. When Gavin finally welcomes Nines into his bed, he’s making a huge step in his own personal growth. Similar to the couch setup from earlier, except reversed, with Gavin initiating the touch, and with two crucial differences: Nines and Gavin make the briefest of eye contact as they lean in (a silent agreement of “yes, this is a thing we’re doing”) and their bodies overlap. There is an intimate touch in the way they hold hands, fingers interlaced, instead of sitting ramrod straight side by side without making a conscious decision to reach out to the other. Add Nines retracting his skin on top of it, and you get an extremely psychologically open moment. A moment of duress, a moment of comfort (but they still aren’t facing each other yet, and the way it is now, it’s almost like Gavin’s afraid to acknowledge it, to believe it’s real).

NEXT MORNING. Hoo boy this one was a doozy, because it takes the openness of the night before and turns it on its head, twisting and distorting it. Gavin, before he’s awake, displays very physically open body language: spread out on his blankets, arms thrown out to the side up, stomach up. Nines is almost equally so, keeping his arms open as he hands Gavin his coffee and turning more towards him as he sits on Gavin’s bed. But Gavin, regretting the choices he made the previous night, avoids eye contact, curls into himself, and takes the earliest opportunity to put his back to Nines and retreat into the closet. His whole demeanor radiates “get away from me,” but of course, Nines hasn’t picked that up yet. So he presses a little closer, and Gavin makes his point by getting up in Nines’s space, but very deliberately avoiding looking at him and still keeping a couple feet of space. When Nines feels Gavin mentally retreating, he pushes his luck by abusing his commanding presence to intimidate Gavin into cooperation (drawing himself up to his whole height and putting his face right in Gavin’s eye-line). And what does Gavin do? When Nines gets in his space ("I'm not leaving just because you regret having acted like a person"), Gavin makes direct, meaningful eye contact (something he almost never does) and is facing Nines (another big thing), but every part of him screams "get away." In particular, the hands raised in front of his chest like a shield. The whole pose is supposed to look aggressive but every goddamn part of it belies him going into defensive mode. It's FASCINATING. He’s trying to intimidate Nines into leaving him alone because he is so scared of what Nines has seen and what he knows now. This conflict of wanting to accept Nines’s help and push him away is so clearly demonstrated in how part of his body language is geared toward Nines (the eye contact) and how part of is is blocking Nines from coming any closer (his raised hands). He holds this eye contact until Nines leaves.

The next time we see Gavin is back at Jericho, and anyone can sense the tension coming off these two (except, apparently, Chris Miller). They keep a table’s worth of distance between them. Nines, clearly still feeling snubbed from the night before, makes very pointed looks in Gavin’s direction; they’re barbed, full of accusation, very uncharacteristic of Nines, but Gavin did just tell him to wipe his memory, so he definitely believes it’s justified. Gavin avoids eye contact wherever possible, simply because he does not want to deal with this shit right now. I don’t know if he does this consciously, but after Nines’s reference to “last night,” he tucks his hand in his pocket, perhaps an unconscious recoil from Nines’s act of intimacy (holding hands), suppressing that. Cut to them standing in the hallway, Gavin is standing with his arms crossed, looking away, while Nines leans in closer with a much more open stance. He continues probing and Gavin shuts him out entirely, not even deigning to look at him properly before turning his back and walking away. This is one of the tensest moments of their relationship, where Nines is trying to build up the trust they had and Gavin is feeling hurt and betrayed and confused and is falling back on his coping mechanism of shutting people out. The physical distance and body language between them reflects that.

Onto Burn’s Alley! This whole setup is interesting; it’s a social situation in which Gavin and Nines are almost required to interact, as they have a shared obligation to make Chris’s promotion party a pleasant experience, but the tension from the previous night is definitely still bleeding into their conversation. Although they’re crowded around the same table, they put several people between them and focus intently on their drinks and their other friends, never directly addressing one another and avoiding eye contact (again, this movie might as well be subtitled “the one where Nines and Gavin can never actually look at each other for one goddamn second”). Once Ada arrives, Nines makes fast excuses and leaves the conversation, at which point they go back to their previous dance of throwing longing glances at one another when the other isn’t watching. Very good, much yearning. More internal conflict, Gavin can’t deal with his own warring desires of apologizing and running away, so he retreats outside, and Nines follows because now’s his chance to rebuild that trust he lost.

I’m classifying the alley argument as a whole new section because it’s honestly a caliber all its own and deserves a separate analysis. The use of distance here is so good. Nines, though eager to be allowed back into Gavin’s space, is respectful of his partner’s boundaries and situates himself across the alley, though his posture is more open, with his hands behind his back and a gentle lean forward (though this openness is quickly shut down once Gavin snaps at him, you can see Nines’s face fall, and it hurts). Gavin, on the other hand, is violently looking away, body turned in a completely different direction; every part of his posture is unapproachable. And as the argument progresses, we get more of that weaponized distance closing. When Gavin snaps at Nines (”Don’t bother.”), he finally makes eye contact, even keeping his posture more open (arms at his sides, face toward Nines, body mostly angled toward Nines), so Nines is, for the first time, able to properly see all the hurt Gavin’s been bottling up. And Nines steps closer. But, his hackles are raised, shoulders tensed, arms clenched tightly at his sides. They’re both spilling their hearts out, but it’s bitter and cruel and even at their closest, there’s still a foot and a half of space between their chests. When Gavin spits smoke in Nines’s face, the recoil is immediate, and Nines takes his leave of Gavin as Gavin turns away from Nines again. Once again, in a moment of emotional duress, they get closer and closer, but never quite close that gap, but this time, like that morning, the openness is weaponized and aggressive, with Gavin trying to force Nines away by saying “This is me, this is all you’re gonna get, so you might as well run” and Nines trying to get back in by saying “I don’t care, you will listen to me and you will let me care for you.” But because of the violent mannerisms, it backfires. And then the distance grows again.

Watching Nines walk Ada home from the bar, Gavin keeps a huge amount of distance between himself and Nines, both because he doesn’t want to be spotted and because he can’t bring himself to come any closer. With his hood up and hands in his pockets, he’s at his most closed off of the film, and because Nines’s back is to him, it’s obvious to see he’s being shut out, or at least feels like he is. At this moment in time, Ada is the literal and metaphorical wedge between them. Her presence is keeping them apart.

Alley ambush time. This scene. Oh man this scene. Aside from the blatantly romantic reunion scene and balcony scene, this scene has about the most touch and is a perfect narrative foil to Gavin’s nightmare. (I can’t believe I just realized that now, while I was typing this. Michelle, you are a goddamn genius, every major moment has a companion, mirrored moment; Nines giving Gavin his jacket, Gavin doing his speech to Nines and leaving his jacket there; Nines comforting Gavin after his nightmare of dying alone, Gavin comforting Nines and staying by his side to ensure he doesn’t die alone; parallel confessions in the car; of course, “I hate you” “You love me,” there’s the obvious parallel; Gavin initiating a kiss in the reunion, Nines being the one to move first on the balcony; they each get their own moment to shine in the same context and it is beautiful. Hats off to you, Michelle Iannantuono, really. Okay, back to the plot.) Gavin’s body language is at the most vulnerable it’s been all film, because Nines is in danger and he’s panicking. But even with his hands cupped around Nines’s face, Gavin keeps a little bit of distance, that same bare minimum “arm’s length” we see so many times. And the questions he asks are non-invasive, once he realizes that mentioning Ada just freaks Nines out, and then the questions just turn to pleas: “Don’t fall asleep.” Only after Nines falls unconscious does Gavin allow himself to get any closer, but even then he doesn’t let himself be face to face with Nines. The first thing Gavin does is turn Nines’s back to him, forcing that emotional distance, the exception being the arm slung across Nines’s chest to keep him upright. This is the closest they’ve been, other than after Gavin’s nightmare, and Gavin is still keeping that emotional distance by deliberately pushing Nines away from him.

Onto CyberLife. Here’s the other instance where they’re only open when they believe the other won’t know. This shit also hurt like a motherfucker because Gavin’s internal conflict is at its peak here. You can see he’s having a, for lack of a better word for it, “deathbed” moment; a sort of “now or never” feeling. He’s terrified of acknowledging how he feels, much less verbalizing those feelings to the man he loves, but at the same time, he’s worried that if he doesn’t do it now, he may never get a chance. And this is demonstrated wonderfully in how Gavin approaches Nines (and, once again, he’s down to one layer of clothing, just a simple t-shirt). At first, he hangs back from Nines’s hospital bed, looking anywhere but Nines’s face, and talking about how they need Nines for the case; vague, impersonal, dancing around the topic. Until Tina knocks on the window, basically giving him silent permission to switch tracks entirely. It’s at this point that Gavin closes some distance and parallels Nines’s earlier gesture after his nightmare, when Nines reached out to hold his hand; he reaches out and places his hand over Nines’s. (Also, another brilliant parallel? Nines reaching out to touch Gavin when he’s at his lowest point—after his nightmare—and holding his hand, basically saying “I accept you,” and Gavin reaching out to Nines when he’s at his most vulnerable—doubly powerful because Nines’s skin is deactivated and Gavin used to hate androids, so seeing him like this is his truest form—at the hospital, basically saying “I accept you.” God. Poetic cinema, my dudes.) Even moves the chair closer. And then he finally looks Nines in the face and spills his heart and soul out to him, piece by piece. And even when the heart monitor starts beeping, he doesn’t pull away. He keeps his hand firmly planted, only scoots back in the chair for a moment to check the machines, before immediately pulling back in and deliberately staying close, which, for somebody who has as toxic a relationship with touch as he does, is massive. (And, as we saw from the deleted scene, he felt safe enough to fall asleep on Nines’s bed. He looked at this shitty situation and said “I trust him” and put his goddamn head on Nines’s arm and fell asleep. Like. FUCK.)

And now, Nines’s corrupted Zen Garden. This is one of the most powerful moments of the film. In the past, Nines has almost never been the one to initiate contact with Zen Gavin, it’s always been the other way around (Gavin fixing Nines’s collar, Gavin approaching him while he’s analyzing the case), with the notable exception being Nines reaching out to cup Gavin’s cheek. But he’s internalized Gavin’s touch sensitivities so much that even his mind palace version displays the same behaviors, only initiating touch when he’s comfortable. Nines doesn’t violate Zen Gavin’s space either, lets Gavin decide what’s okay. And this is where he breaks that pattern. In his panic, Nines rushes forward without thought to envelope Gavin in a desperate hug— and is met with empty air. The minute Nines tries to reverse their dynamic is when he’s deprived of Gavin’s touch. Because of Ada’s meddling, Nines can no longer interact with this perfect world he’s constructed, and Gavin is, once again, just out of reach. Nine spends the rest of the conversation with his body language painfully open, pleading with Gavin to stay using everything but his words, and I think it speaks goddamn volumes that when he finally agrees to delete him, there is no grand gesture. Nines doesn’t swoop in and kiss Zen Gavin goodbye, nor does he hug him, or even say a proper farewell. He simply nods, turns his back, and walks away, and Gavin, after a moment’s lag, swivels his head to watch, with a soft smile on his face. Nines has realized that this Zen Gavin is a fool’s errand that he cannot hope to sustain, and his last act before wiping him entirely is to metaphorically say “I am done with you. I am walking away and I am not looking back and I am saying goodbye.” Which is so goddamn powerful, I cannot.

Okay. The moment we’ve all been waiting for.

The reunion scene.

This scene hits so much harder because all the previous scenes have kept so much distance between the two protagonists. If there had been more instances of close proximity earlier in the film, I don’t think this scene would carry the same weight it did, but as such, up until this point, there’s always been at least a foot or two of space between Gavin and Nines (and in the instances of them touching, they’re either side by side and not looking at each other or front to back and not looking at each other). But I digress, let’s get into it properly.

Setup time! Gavin’s still in just his t-shirt, Nines is in Gavin’s jacket (Narrative foil from earlier, baby!), and tensions are high. Brushing past all of Tina and Chris’s intervening dialogue, let’s talk physicality. Gavin fucking freezes the minute Nines is in the room, arms held at his sides, the most open his stance has ever been when Nines was awake to see it. Nines, in turn, also keeps his hands to the side. Gavin, disbelieving, takes a step forward, but because he’s also terrified as fuck that Nines heard him and will reject him, he holds out a halfway defensive arm, though there’s not much conviction in it, as its merely held halfway up and doesn’t cross in front of his torso at all. Nines continues to approach, although slowly, so as not to scare Gavin off, because Nines cares so much for Gavin and the last thing he needs is to make him panic, not when something this monumental is at stake. Gavin, with even more internal conflict, continues his approach, daring to hope that maybe this will turn out okay, until Nines says “I heard you.” The realization that Nines essentially saw the deepest darkest parts of him makes Gavin take a step back, but he also maintains the eye contact they’ve been holding; the subtle balance between “I want to run because holy fuck he saw too much, but also I want to stay because I think it might be it this time” is so gorgeous. Of course, once Nines makes it clear that he isn’t running, even though he heard Gavin’s entire confession, Gavin gets slightly more confident and moves forward again. Drawing from the BTS footage as well, you can see Gavin’s hands are clenched the entire time, until he makes it to Nines, when he can finally let go. And finally, with a cognizant mind, they close that distance, leaving mere inches from one another. Gavin reaches out to touch Nines’s hand, feeling his pulse, before gently turning over Nines’s hand so he can feel Gavin’s pulse. Nines, reflecting his earlier gesture, connects Zen Gavin to this Gavin by reaching out to cup Gavin’s face. And then they close that gap entirely and kiss. But it gets even better because, though Nines prods, it’s ultimately Gavin that makes the first move, and I think it always had to to be. Because Nines always lets Gavin move on his own time, even if he steers him in the right direction, occasionally. It would feel wrong if Nines moved first, because he doesn’t need to kiss for romance, but is willing to do so if Gavin wants, and the way this is done, it’s so clear that Gavin wants. This is just a testament to the amazing actors for portraying this so clearly (I know this scene’s been analyzed seven ways to Sunday, but like. The way Gavin’s eyebrows furrow up in the sheer desperation to be closer? The gentle sigh of relief from Nines? The single spin of the LED from yellow to blue the instant they connect? The way Gavin, someone who hates being touched, chases the fucking kiss as Nines pulls away? Like?? Incredible???). And even better, this whole scene is very much a give and take, as both characters let down the barriers they have built up.

Let me put it this way. Nines’s greatest treasure is his mind, and he protects it fiercely for fear of abuse. Gavin’s greatest treasure is his bodily autonomy, and as such, he protects himself from unwanted touch for fear of that autonomy being taken away. And this kiss is such a dialogue of back and forth, give and take. Nines exposes his mind (”I heard you. ‘A force you can’t live without’?” and of course, “You love me.”), opening up his most vulnerable part of himself. Gavin responds in kind by exposing his physicality, by taking Nines’s hand. Nines, once again, exposes his mind by copying his gesture from Zen Gavin, bringing to light one of his most closely guarded secrets and connecting his mind to his real world experiences. And Gavin exposes his touch, once more, by being the one to initiate the kiss.

If you’ll allow me to circle back to the parallel hand-holding from earlier, it ties into this idea of “mind vs. body.” When Nines takes Gavin’s hand after his nightmare, he is demonstrating that he accepts Gavin’s mind. Nines, who values intellect and personality above all else, demonstrates that he loves Gavin for his mind and not his body here, saying “I accept you and your mind, no matter how flawed you think it is.” Gavin, on the other hand, not only has a rough history with androids, but a rough history with physicality. When he takes Nines’s hand at CyberLife, Gavin is demonstrating that he accepts Nines’s body as it is—metal and plastic and synthskin, not flesh and bone—basically saying “I accept you and your body, no matter how flawed you think it is.” They are able to accept the closely guarded facets of one another in moments of heightened emotion and I think that’s incredible.

And after the reunion, the body language is so different. Nines willingly gets up in Gavin’s space without Gavin pushing him away (leaning over him to discuss how to track Ada down), and, of course, gives him his jacket back. Outside Ada’s warehouse, they stand much closer together, nearly touching on the hood of the car, and even make much more deliberate eye contact, shying away less. But what I really like about it is that they don’t do a total 180. That’s not how recovery works. Gavin’s still facing away from Nines during the briefing, Gavin and Nines are closer on the hood, yes, but neither Nines nor Gavin reach out a hand to touch. They’re making little baby steps and it’s wonderful.

Last but not least, the balcony. The culmination of all this.

Despite all they’ve been through, Gavin and Nines still hold distance between themselves on the balcony, though they’re a little freer with the direct eye contact and body language. Gavin’s arms are no longer crossed in front of him, he actually looks toward Nines a lot more. Nines is leaned up against the railing, facing Gavin and meeting his gaze, though you can tell Nines is bothered because his arms are crossed in front of him, preventing him from being totally open. And when he starts to say something that sounds like regret, Gavin also crosses his arms in a defensive position, until Nines reassures him that it’s not Gavin, it’s him. At which point, Gavin is the most vocal he’s ever been about his feelings (I think Michelle pointed out this is the one time in the film Gavin even slightly alludes to Nines being attractive, like the dork he is) and assures Nines that he doesn’t need anything sexual to make this relationship be one he wants to pursue. He keeps his body language remarkably open, turning to face Nines entirely and keeping his arms to the side. Nines, upon realizing Gavin means what he says, has his moment of initiating touch and reaches out to cup Gavin’s face again, uncrossing his arms to do so. There’s yet another beautiful genuine moment of connection where the opposite of the original kiss happens: Nines opens up physically (regarding his interfacing), Gavin opens up mentally (flirting with Nines as opposed to just awkwardly touching him), and Nines closes the distance once more, kissing Gavin as the sun sets just out of frame, turning Gavin’s face into the light. Yet another beautiful narrative foil. Stunning. Ideal. (Also, a note on the confession, the fact that this kiss cements the idea that “This won’t be easy, but it will be worth it, because being with you is just better” just kills me every goddamn time. They’re really willing to put in the work to make this relationship work! Which is amazing!) And then they linger, foreheads pressed together, in the most intimate display of affection in the entire movie. Soft smiles, hands on bodies, completely open and vulnerable and free. Just ... content.

All in all, hats off for really emphasizing each character’s troubled relationship with touch and how that carries over into how they behave around one another. From how Gavin uses his hands and other items as shields while making direct eye contact to how Nines lets Gavin come to him and respects his partner’s boundaries so much that even his brain version of him has these same boundaries, the use of distance and touch and their slow journey to getting physically closer in the spaces they occupy is a fantastic way of showing the progression of their relationship and I consider it an honor to get to see this story unfold. The fact that Nines’s journey would be meaningless without Gavin’s to mirror it and amplify it and vice versa is testimony to the incredible writing showcased here. Bravo to the cast and crew, really.

Tl;dr (and honestly, I wouldn’t blame you) The moments of intimacy only carry as much weight as they do because in every scene prior to them Gavin and Nines hold meaningful distance between them and the only times they break that subliminal pattern are in times of extreme stress or vulnerability.

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eldritchsurveys · 4 years

Text

910.

Do you have a significant other at the moment? Do you love him/her? >> I have several significant others. Sure, I suppose.

How many people do you live with? Are these people related to you? >> One. She is not, except legally.

Have you ever considered anyone or anything too personal for your liking? >> I don’t know what this means.

Are you a confident person, or do you keep to yourself usually? >> I am a sometimes-confident, sometimes-not person who generally keeps to itself.

Have you ever had to have surgery before? What was this for? >> No.

Are you listening to any music right now? What song is it? >> No.

Where was the last place you vacationed to? Did you enjoy this time? >> New Orleans. Yes.

When was the last time you ate pizza? Where from? Was it good? >> Hmm... a few weeks ago, maybe? I don’t remember.

Is there anyone right now that you are simply/overly infatuated with? >> No.

What is your orientation? Gay? Straight? Metrosexual? Anything other? >> As far as anyone I meet is concerned, I’m asexual. People who are more familiar with me might learn the details of what that actually means for me, but most people don’t need or warrant that information.

Is there anyone you know who is utterly repulsive? Who is this person? >> No one I currently know is repulsive to me.

Are you related to any elected officials? What is their position? >> No.

Do you have a certain standard you follow, when it comes to relationships? >> I’m not sure.

Who is your closest friend? Why are they so close to you? >> Hm.

Who did you last hug? When did this hug take place? Where? >> King Crimson. About an hour ago. Inworld.

Who was the last person to play with your hair? Are they cute? >> ---

Who was the last person close to you, that died? Did you cry? >> Tommy, my first partner. Yeah, eventually.

What was your favorite year of your life? Why is this your favorite? >> ---

Is there anyone out there who can make you smile at any time? >> Probably not.

What is your favorite television show? Why do you watch this show? >> I have many favourites. Shameless is one. I like it because it’s consistently entertaining and dramatic and I have grown fond of the characters.

If you're in school, do you like this school you attend? Or do you not? >> ---

Have you ever done anything really dangerous or illegal with friends? >> Yeah.

What is your favorite word to say out loud? Did you just say that word? >> I have no idea. “Deuteronomy” is fun to say. No, I didn’t say it out loud.

Who is the one person out there who makes you feel very special? >> ---

Is there a certain person out there who gives you butterflies? >> No.

Do people call you a low-life sometimes/always? Why do they call you that? >> I don’t know if I’ve ever been called that. If so, it was a long ass time ago and I don’t know why.

Do you want to tell anyone anything right now? Who is this person? >> No.

What is the fourteenth word of the song you're currently listening to? >> ---

Are there any foods out there you just cant refrain from eating every week? >> There’s a dish from a place that sets up at the farmer’s market some weeks that I am pretty much addicted to now. We go there weekly, so it’s my new Saturday breakfast as long as they’re there.

Do you like Mexican food? Whats your favorite meal under that genre of food? >> Yeah. I don’t know what my favourite meal would be. I like most of the things.

Do you enjoy shopping? Who do you usually go shopping with anyways? >> No. Grocery shopping is done with Sparrow.

When you see someone attractive, what's the first thing you look for? >> ---

How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Do you find this healthy? >> Once. I mean, why wouldn’t it be...?

Do you ever criticize people around you, that you know can't help it? >> Internally, sometimes. I try not to indulge that habit, but unfortunately my Inner Critic doesn’t just criticise me, it criticises every instance of the behaviours and traits that it hates.

How old were you when you lost your virginity? Who'd you lose it to anyways? >> Seventeen. Some dude.

Do you wash your own clothes? Or does someone else do that for you? >> Sparrow does the laundry, usually.

Are you afraid of thunderstorms? What exactly makes you afraid of them? >> I’m not.

What color are the shutters on your house by the windows, if there are any? >> I forget. Red? Some of the buildings in this complex have red shutters and some have blue, I just don’t remember which one my building has.

When was the last time you attended church? What is the name of this church? >> Uh... Christmas, I think? Did I go this past Christmas? The name of the church is Kentwood Community Church.

Do you enjoy talking smack to those annoying telemarketers? Is it funny? >> I don’t answer the phone.

Do you consider yourself a healthy person? Physically and mentally? >> Physically, mostly. As far as the rest is concerned... it’s a process, I guess.

Who was the last person you held hands with? Were they taller/shorter? >> ---

#surveys #survey #random survey

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fearfearer · 4 years

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more thoughts about the magnus archives as i reread the transcripts

i was thinking about how gertrude robinson was really an extraordinary person (not extraordinarily Morally Sound, but extraordinary) just because of who she was, whereas the only extraordinary things about jonathan sims are things that have been arranged for him (i.e. his role). i don't mean this as a diss for jonathan, as i'm not extraordinary either. it's just striking that gertrude was so driven and confident compared to jon. of course, now we know that basically everything she did was in the pursuit of a moot goal (i.e. killing people in order to stop rituals that were already doomed to fail) so maybe my point is somewhat moot as well.

i've been doing some rereading of episodes on my phone (i.e. away from this text document on my computer) and i'll have a realization like "right, i should note that down when i get back to my computer" and i have forgotten all of them now that i am back at my computer. suffice it to say there are quite a few things i misheard/misunderstood on the first listen, unsurprisingly.

reading through the first 20 or so episodes i'm surprised by how well i remember each of them, considering i was listening like 4 episodes a day when i started. then again, it was only a month or two ago that i even listened to them, so one should hope my memory is at least this good. anyway the first episode i'm re-listening instead of rereading is 22 bc that's the first one where we hear martin's voice, i'm pretty sure

i've also noticed some errors in the official transcripts, which aren't a big deal because obviously what matters most is the audio, but still... some of them have been simple typos. magnus archives hire me as your official transcriptionist and i'll make all your transcripts 100% error-free bc im smatr

(reading through the rest of the transcripts and my standards went way down in terms of grammar/stylistic consistency, as most of the later ones are fan transcripts by several different people. i found quite a few mistakes, but obviously i have no particular way to help fix them short of sending an email to the tma transcripts fansite person like “hey there’s all these mistakes. upload my good version instead?” bc i’m not that much of a dick)

the whole reason martin went to the spider guy's building was because he didn't want jon to be disappointed in him for not doing Due Diligence. he says so twice. then he went back for the same reason. it seems the fandom joke is "jon asks his assistants to do crimes for him" but in this case martin is like "oh no maybe i didn't do enough crimes to satisfy jon"

jon was doing his archivist voice HEAVILY in season 1, huh?

tim's first appearance is so jovial compared to how he ends up...

if this boat lady is speaking spanish in brazil, then it doesn't matter if it was "bad spanish" or not. anyway now i understand why we already knew peter lukas was serving the lonely by the time jon mentioned offhand that peter lukas was serving the lonely. it was my whole “let’s not bother noting down any FREQUENTLY RECURRING names”

well i guess robert smirke was a real person. should i feel dumb about this? idk. it’s such a fictional-sounding name, to be fair. but i guess that set the precedent of using a real person as an important historical figure in the fiction that we see happening again when edmund halley is referenced later on. also episode 35 has foreshadowing for the separation of 14 powers, and people thought it was 13 because they mention 13 halls PLUS the one they came through.

totally forgot about tim goofing around in episode 39... he was really not having the worst time at this job before bad things started happening and he realized he was trapped, huh

the worms were trying to make a doorway into the Worm Wealm

ep 40 jon's like "I need to hear it. I need to record it. Or else I can't finish." (lightly abridged)

listening to the season 1 Q&A for the first time and EARL BIGMAC

also good to know there's only going to be 5 seasons. very good to know. this seems like a good kind of series to write with a fixed endpoint in mind, as it's very easy to do an episode that has effectively no bearing on the MetaPlot but which is still a short story in itself and therefore doesn't count as "filler"

jonathan sims performs with a mythical space pirate music cabaret. so he IS a ham

jonny says, "no rude words. i could say bums, maybe..." (alexander j newall does a laugh while i do the exact same laugh irl) "...but i won't."

some dumbass writing into the Q&A to ask if the background music is diegetic... get a podcast brain, ya fool. though for my part, i have to say that one of the most striking things about this podcast when i first started listening (though i never made a note of it before) was the Too Spooky Music, and i didn't like it at all. the reason was that i am, and have been, vulnerable to Getting Spooked about irrational things at night, such that it becomes really hard to fall asleep... and one of the things that has an outsize effect on my level of Spookédness is spooky audio. so if i was watching a video at night and i was worried it would Get Me Spooked, i would just turn the sound off, and it would turn out fine. but obviously you can't turn the sound off on a podcast. and i've been listening to podcasts after work, i.e. after 5pm, and i go to bed at like 8 or 9pm because i'm old. so the way it turned out was that even if the actual subject of the podcast wasn't that scary to me, the music would amplify it in an unpleasant way and make me more likely to have trouble sleeping. also i think most of the episodes would have been fine without the music, or maybe with some less intentionally-disconcerting background music.

this just in: i seem to have totally missed episode 50 on my first listen-through, despite having gone in linear order. bc i'm listening to it now and i've definitely never heard this before. fortunately it doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on the rest of the series, so it's not like i missed any crucial information. tbh the only worthwhile bit was a brief moment of tim being a ham, which was good. i hope i didn't miss any other episodes the first time... still don't know how i managed to miss this one.

the official transcript said [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] ...

so gertrude and leitner WERE played by jonny's parents <:3c i'd thought as much when i saw the cast names but i like that it's confirmed. his mom is a really good actress too. i always find the gertrude episodes to be striking in a certain way

"it's Fine working with your parents. it's Fine." as someone who worked with my mom for like a year i can confirm this

i'm tickled to find that the official transcripts have a sense of humor. i wonder who is behind them. i also wonder, what is the excuse for not having a full set of official transcripts when it is a script-based show? surely you know what is going to be said beforehand, and you have it written down, and if someone ends up saying something different in the final recording, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to give the original script a little edit, and bam! that’s a transcript. i wonder if this approach is not feasible for some reason.

whenever martin reads statements, he says something about jon... whenever he talks to someone, he says something about jon

i think episode 110 is an instance of the tape recorder turning ITSELF off... at the end of the episode. because they walk away, and they say something distantly, and then it turns off. lots of other times, there had to be a diegetic reason for the tape recorder to turn off at the end.

i noticed something which i missed last time, which was that there is a rumor between melanie and georgie and basira that implies that jonathan is asexual. worth noting, i think. [side note added in later: yeah it’s canon. cool]

also i listened to episode 103 again and yes. i had thought-- i had been SURE-- that the person interrogating the traffic cop (using the asky ability) was martin. but it was actually jon. how did i possibly manage that mistake? i'm not great at distinguishing voices, but i'm not THAT bad. the only possible answer: when i was listening to the episode for the first time... i must have been eating a crunchy snack.

"it doesn't have to make sense! alex has to make it sense." (jonny sims re: writing the spiral)

glad to know that jonny sims regrets using his own name for the protagonist. doesn't make a difference either way at this point but yeah

YES i knew episode 100 was improvised. and i see, all the statementers had actually had supernatural experiences, but because the archivist was absent, their statements didn't have the coherence and clarity normally lent to them by the eye (in exchange for becoming cursed). i think melanie or basira actually said pretty much that in the episode itself, but i still couldn't be sure that all of those people had something real to talk about.

"in the same way that tim is dead, michael is helen." good shit

the archivist is canon a bit of a drama queen. the first bullet point in my first tma notes document is vindicated

jonny sims mentions another podcast (apocrypals) that sounds 100% up my alley, so that is appreciated, i will add that to my list i think. (listened to episodes 0 and 1 of apocrypals and i'm heavily struck by how VERY clearly i can hear the smiles in chris sims's voice. i did not know smiling could be so audible, truly.) (listened to quite a few more episodes of apocrypals and it’s certainly entertaining at times. i should’ve been reading along though. maybe some other time)

I DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SEASON 4 TEASER THE FIRST TIME AROUND.........................................

i must confess something that people who know me well may already know: i hate when stories have a bad ending. an unhappy ending. a painful ending. a hopeless ending. bittersweet is the furthest in that direction i can tolerate. my perspective, which is pretty deep-seated, is that there's no point in getting to know and love characters if you're only going to be hurt by that connection to them when the end turns out to be bad. if i have even a mild inkling that a story is heading toward a bad ending, i make a conscious effort to regard all characters from afar and not develop any strong attachments. this is not so much "how i think all stories need to be," but rather, "the characteristics a story needs to have to appeal to me personally." so i understand that my view is very subjective and mostly based on my own mental weakness. but i can't help but apply it to the media i consume. and the idea that someone would do something like "make characters very human and strongly developed" IN COMBINATION WITH "heading toward a bad end" makes me upset. like, picture a horror movie. think about the characters in a horror movie. with the exception of a main character, if there is one, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to survive to the end of the film... BUT... the characters generally aren't fleshed out and very sympathetic. i wouldn't go so far as to say they're disposable, but you're not SUPPOSED to cry when they die; you're just supposed to get scared. their purpose is as objects of fear, and you never expect or even hope for a happy ending. but in the magnus archives... all i'm saying... is that i would cry if any of the remaining members of the main cast died. and it seems clear that we're not heading to a happy ending. so i'm somewhat afraid, and not in a good way. i don't know how much i can trust jonny sims to give me the story i want, and obviously, i'm not entitled to it.

if your name is jonathan and you want to shorten it, the short form is jon. it ain't john, no matter what the official transcripts say. where'd you get that h, huh? stole it from someone else's name? are you shortening it like JOnatHaN? you can’t just be that sneaky!

i listened to scrutiny again and it hits so hard. now, in heart of darkness, when manuela begs jon not to force her statement, it's really heavy given the direct context of the previous two episodes where we see how compulsion works and how it hurts.

also when jon was talking about how to destroy the dark sun and he was like "i just need to see it," when i first heard it, i assumed he meant something along the lines of, "by seeing it, i will learn how to destroy it." but now i understand that the mere act of the eye seeing it destroys it, because being known is what the darkness is weakest to.

the magnus employees who work in the library probably at least have a LITTLE BIT of a feeling that they work in an almost normal place, given that jon and all his assistants were able to have that impression before transferring to the archives. so i wonder how the magnus library people feel about their institute's director getting arrested for double murder and now the big boss is a completely unrelated ship captain who seems to want nothing to do with the place but simultaneously is trying to continue business as usual

on second listen, listening to jon ask helen when the guilt stops (wrt hurting people in order to feed one's patron fear) is pretty chilling. because it seems like he's definitely accepting that he will have to hurt people, and what he's concerned about is how bad it makes HIM feel. of course, helen then answers with precisely what i just wrote, so...

i should've read the transcript for episode 159 instead of relistening because i forgot that peter lukas's actor got so gravelly and hard to listen to in this one. anyway, time to re-listen to the season 4 finale... then i'll listen to the season 4 Q&As and stuff... and then the new episode. (DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI)

i heard in the Q&A that the voice of peter lukas did multiple takes for episode 159?! but it was because of technical difficulties. right. because i can’t imagine the way it turned out being deemed the best take. sorry

ok, things i missed last time i listened to 160: daisy and the other two hunters are missing. also jon mentioned "magnus's body" and martin mentioned "an old man's corpse" and at the time i took this to mean (somewhat unthinkingly) that when jon and martin returned from the lonely, they killed elias/jonah's body. which would be a weird thing to happen "off-camera," so to speak. so i think i must have been wrong? slightly confused. ok, no, i'm now sure that elias survived, so i must have misunderstood. definitely alive.

as martin leaves and jon is about to begin the statement, he sounds so peaceful and satisfied. that's good acting.

by the way, in one of the previous few episodes, i noticed that jonah seems to have body-swapped by switching out his eyes into his preferred body, which i'm pretty sure i missed the first time.

i like that jonny sims checks reddit to see whether people have solved the mystery. that's just a really funny way to do things, sneaking a peek like "hmm how mysterious is my mystery? let's see who has figured it out..." and for the record, i wasn't even close to figuring it out. but to be fair to myself, i didn't try. like i said from the beginning, i started listening with the intent of going along for the ride. plus the mystery had already been solved before i started listening to the series, so it's not like i had a lot of time in between updates to contemplate whether elias was jonah, etc.

JON'S AMERICAN ACCENT FOR THE IONIZED YEAST AD

ALEX WAS THE VOICE OF JARED HOPWORTH?! i mean it was so messed up it could have been anybody but god

ALEX DIDN'T LET GERTUDE CACKLE

i've listened to the bloopers (including a gertrude cackle?) and the season 5 trailer (martin seems slightly cavalier about the end of the world but maybe he's just trying to keep his shit together for jon) and i'm going to listen to the new episode Soon.

final conclusion on rereads/relistens: i had pretty poor comprehension of some important happenings. i’m realizing just how easy it is to mishear/fail to hear exactly what is happening in a podcast when you’re doing other stuff at the same time. there are still a couple things i don’t quite understand, but i think i’ll have a look around the wiki one of these days.

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cryptoriawebb · 7 years

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Baywatch Review:

So I caved and went to see Baywatch. There was one final showing and darn all, I have a horrible crush on Zac Efron. What can I say? He grew up unfairly fine. Wow.

Anyway…I heard this movie wasn’t good, didn’t expect much from it but a part of me hoped it would still be somewhat entertaining. In any case, I had hope for the Rock. He’s like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

Coming out of the theatre I can honestly say I wasn’t sure what to think. I felt…confused, more than anything else, because the movie itself seemed confused. Was it an action piece? A comedy? A parody? I didn’t know. There were so many awkward tonal shifts throughout the entire thing, and yet…they weren’t as glaring or as clunky as other movies I’ve seen. You could recognize these moments for sure but instead of cringing, which I have been known to do, I’d sort of stare and wonder to myself: am I supposed to laugh? Is this character being serious? Are they reciting their lines satirically? What is happening?

It’s hard to react to a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. I’ve never seen the original show—my only association with it is through Friends, but that was enough to kind of clue me into its content. 80s—90s camp and slow motion, with sex appeal to boot. You think there’d be a lot of great parody material there; as my one friend put it, this movie seemed like it was trying to be 21 Jumpstreet and just did not succeed. The opening credits were the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen, but something in the direction didn’t give off an immediate “THIS IS WHERE YOU LAUGH” signal. I did anyway, of course; it was just…strange. My friend and I actually wondered aloud if we were supposed to take this scene seriously. That’s unusual for an opening sequence. It certainly felt like a comedy, the intensity, slow motion and outrageously poor CGI title seemed like glaring clues. However, those extremes lingered as the movie progressed.

There was a lot of fourth-wall-breaking too. Particularly, at least that I can recall, references to the slow-motion. Hypothetically, a humorous situation; I like content that pokes fun at its source material. However, these blips of humor arose in otherwise serious sequences—not dramatic or upsetting ones so much as character challenge and progression. The first instance, for example, is the recruitment tryouts. Ronnie and Summer discuss why CJ always looks like she’s running in slow-motion. Delivery of that line felt so isolated compared to the determination projected throughout the rest of the scene, it didn’t translate well at all. I don’t need to take my emotional cues from a movie but I feel a bit uncomfortable when I can’t determine something that should otherwise be obvious.

Another example that comes to mind is the constant headbutting between Mitch, the police officer whose name I’ve forgotten and their boss whose name I’ve also forgotten. They are lifeguards, both authority figures stress, they don’t investigate and they don’t solve crime. I really feel like this had potential to be funny, and because of the repeated reminders I get the feeling it was supposed to be. However, most, if not all of these instances played like a drama instead. Like I should stay quiet and empathize, rather than giggle…except the former didn’t feel right either. Don’t get me wrong, there were several genuinely humorous moments in the film, they just seemed few and far between, and not enough, at least I don’t think, to brand the overall product a comedy. Or anything comedy. More like a tempered action B-movie with humorous moments.

If that’s the case, and I really think that’s kind of where the movie ended up…what the heck was up with David Hasselhoff appearing out of nowhere? Like…what place did that have? Even if this was a comedy there was no build-up to it at all and not enough fourth-wall-breaking to excuse how out of place it felt. I mean did I laugh? Of course, it’s a David Hasselhoff cameo. That does not, as I said, excuse clunky writing.

On the flip side, I actually liked all of the “good guys” if you will. The opening sequence, slow-motion diving and titles aside, set a pleasant feel-good tone that promised what it unfortunately couldn’t deliver. I loved Mitch, his stubborn determination and dedication, as well as the charming, super-hero persona he’s established around the Bay. His chemistry with Efron was also a highlight. Personally, I thought all of the lifeguards maintained a balanced and believable chemistry with one another—even Alexandra and Zac, which, while expected, doesn’t always translate well in these kind of movies. That is, I’m stubborn and get tired of subplots but I really liked the approach to their relationship. Ronnie and CJ’s relationship was a bit unusual for the type of movie I thought this was going to be but I liked it as well. I did feel the kiss was a little surprising but maybe the directors meant to play their relationship as mutual crushing without Ronnie being aware of it. Either way, I liked it. CJ was really attractive but maintained a down-to-earth personality I also feel like I don’t see enough of in these sorts of movies. Then again, I don’t watch a lot of this genre so that might be why. I also can’t remember the name of the Rock’s main female costar, the other female lifeguard (Victoria?) but I liked their chemistry as well. It was almost…not quite a romantic kinship, but maybe between that and friendship. An understanding comradery perhaps.

My favorite relationship, as I said before, was between Brody and Mitch. I love the pop-culture nicknames, it reminded me a little of the TV show Scrubs, and the relationship between Doctor Cox and JD. Mitch and Brody didn’t have the same underlying fondness (although I’m really not sure that’s the right word) but I actually liked watching what they did have develop. The blatant disrespect for one another that did kind of grow into a mentorship and honesty in Brody, it was strangely heartwarming for such a messy movie. Which is odd, considering how formulaic Efron’s character and character arc felt. As I said, I’ve never watched Baywatch; I don’t know how much this new film borrowed from the original Brody’s story, but I kind of felt like I was watching one of many Zac Efron films of late. Unfortunately, because he definitely has talent. I’ll also say I think the turnaround happened sooner than I expected, which was…slightly different, so points for that?

The last thing, although it really refers back to the tonal problems, is the overall villain. I can’t for the life of me tell if she was supposed to embody the typical ‘Bond’ caricature, despite denying so on-screen, or if the writing was really that bad. I can’t imagine it was, only because it seemed really—really—cliché. That, and the script was solid in a lot of other areas. I’d like to think she was a poorly articulated parody; she didn’t start out that way upon introduction but…it was almost like as the movie unwove it got sillier and sillier but wasn’t allowed to be at the same time. So the end result makes little sense, and you get a villain you’re not sure if you should take seriously until she’s literally blown to bits. (What kind of villain meets their end that way unless featured in a comedy/satire??)

Overall thoughts: …this movie is a mess, but it’s not a bad enough mess I wouldn’t watch it if it were on TV. It would not be my first choice at all, in any way shape or form, but I could sit through it without bemoaning my existence. I was pleased by the content, tone aside: I thought I’d be headed into two-and-a-half hours of gross sexual innuendos and content but there weren’t as many as I thought. Speaking as an asexual, I appreciated that.

Two final thoughts I forgot to add elsewhere: 1) the CGI during the boat scene did not look real at all. Like, if computer graphics are going to cause that much trouble, just use real fire or write in some other tragedy. Don’t place B-movie graphics in a Hollywood film. It reflects poorly. Unless, again, that was intentional but I don’t think so.

2) The swimsuits. I definitely think they were designed based around the reputation following Baywatch, and was addressed briefly at one point in the film. Unfortunately, the humor fell flat because again, this movie did not know what it wanted to be. To sort of go along with that I also thought Efron was a little too muscular…

Truthfully, I’d probably watch a sequel if one ever materialized. I know there was talk but given the ratings, it remains anyone’s guess if we’ll actually see it come to fruition. Which is too bad; a little more editing, perhaps better communication I think this movie might’ve been a lot of fun. Or more fun than it was.

Oh well. At least Zac Efron is pretty.

#baywatch #zac efron #dwayne johnson #the rock #priyanka chopra #alexandra daddario #kelly rohrbach #jon bass #david hasselhoff #mitch buchannon #matt brody #returnedtothecrypt

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makingstuffup · 7 years

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Here’s an argument that we see from ace tumblr on a regular basis. It’s the argument that people not knowing about your identity or believing that it’s real is, in and of itself, a form of oppression (often phrased as “at least people know you exist”). This argument is being used in someone’s blog post to prove a certain point.

[T]here is one more term which I must define, namely that which I call "oppression by omission." By this, I don't simply mean the invisibility of minorities (either "invisibility" in the larger society, or as "invisibility" within minority spaces, such as this blog post about the invisibility of Native/Indigenous people in spaces for people of color). There are countless ways in which minorities of various kinds, and those positions of relatively less social power, are not taken into account, left out of decision-making processes that have an impact on them, etc. Oppression by omission is not "you are so marginalized we do not have to consider how this will impact you," although that plays a role in it. What I am mainly talking about here is the experience of minority groups about whom the master-narrative is "this group does not and cannot exist at all," and when one of the central ways by which oppression is occurring is through society's repeated (even ubiquitous) assertion that people like this do not and cannot exist, and that people who "claim" to be this way are mentally ill, frauds, or are otherwise incapable of accurately relating their own experiences. In some cases, anyone who even accepts the experiences of these people is considered deserving of ridicule. When oppression by omission is occurring, the people impacted by it are very unlikely to "come out" about their experiences, not because there are explicit statutes on the books about people like them, but because the social ostracism, or perceived threat of such, is immense. In subtle and not subtle ways, most of us are taught at an early age that there is something different, or scary, or not OK about our experiences. This ostracism, or perceived threat of such, is almost always also invisible to those who do not see these minorities in the first place. The invisibility begets invisibility; with few to no positive role-models, few to no positive and empowering stories to identify with, and relentless negative messaging (in some cases through spec fic), invisibility can become the only "safe" world we know, and we can be hesitant to challenge it. Oppression by omission can take place on a small scale or a large one, within the larger social framework or within minority spaces, alone or in conjunction with other forms of oppression. It is different from what is usually recognized as "oppression," the more overt and visible forms. But it is not without often profound impact on the people who are thus erased. There have been efforts aimed at challenging invisibility, even challening the oppression by omission, in certain communities. The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network has been doing this work for a decade, and recently a documentary has been made about asexuality and asexual people. Yes, asexuals face considerable oppression by omission: check out the lovely videos made by swankivy, such as here, where you can watch videos she made about her "Asexuality Top Ten." ("You can't really be asexual, you must be...")

What do you think the context of this is? What point is the author trying to make? Take a guess before you read the rest.

This comes from the blog critpsitheory, which aims to combat the oppression of people with psychic powers. The entries date from 2011 to 2013.

It has a long list of bingo cards, a list of how to evaluate media for anti-psi bias, a list of common microaggressions against psi, and more. This is the post the quote came from, and the author goes on to say:

The concept of oppression by omission is also helpful for understanding the invisibility faced by more esoteric minorities, such as Otherkin, therians, psi/sang vampyres, or even what it's like to be part of a multiple system. To some degree, transgender people also face oppression by omission, such as "genderqueer people do not exist," "transmen are really butch lesbians who took it too far," or "trans women are all cross-dressers who want to colonize women's identities and bodies." Bisexual/pansexual people also face it. The list goes on. Now all of these experiences (and many more) are very different, and very diverse within each category. The only parallel I am drawing is that in each instance, the social master-narrative is, at least at times, one of "non-existence," and so each and every time someone tries to come forward with a counter-narrative and express his/her/hir experience of the world, for whatever reason, he/she/ze has to deal with that master-narrative in some way. It might be because someone else is shutting them down or putting them down. It might be because they have to couch their experience in other terms in order to get through someone's filters. It might be because they have to, in some sense, "test out" all the people they talk to about this aspect of their lives to see if they can accept it. It might be that they choose never to tell others, because they know that telling others is fundamentally emotionally, socially or even physically unsafe. (See this video, for example.) What does psi omission look like? It really takes many forms. It can be that psi experiences are omitted from the biographies of famous people, even when these people wrote extensively about their experiences -- such as Mark Twain (for example here, and the several articles linked here) or Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. It can be the dearth, or even total lack, of non-sensationlistic non-fiction produced about the subject. It can be discourse or study that focuses exclusively on whether or not the "claims" are "real," with little to no attention paid to the narratives of the people living with these experiences (except when the purpose is sensationalism, or the entertainment of non-psi people). It exists in the lack of realistic characters, with experiences like ours, present in "realistic fiction" on television, in books and movies, etc. -- characters who are full people (not two dimensional plot devices), characters whose role in the story is not to "do psi things" every week (or simply to be scary, or to stand there and look sexy), characters who exhibit self-determination, characters who can serve as positive role-models. It exists in the complete lack of serious support groups (in the US, anyway) for young people trying to understand their experiences in a world that denies, stigmatizes and ridicules them. It exists in "othering" language and the use of us as rhetorical sarcasm (which I will cover in more depth on this blog).

Now, whatever your personal beliefs on the existence of psychic powers, I hope we can all agree that people with psychic powers are not an oppressed group. The author lists bi and trans people as also suffering from this “oppression by omission,” and I hope we can all agree that bi and trans people actually are oppressed.

What does this tell us? It tells us that this argument is a bad one, and can be used to “prove” the oppression of any identity whatsoever as long as it’s less well known.

This blog came out of the heady days of roughly 2009-2012, when some sectors of the internet collectively discovered social justice in the aftermath of RaceFail. In the naive enthusiasm of those days, many people started creating privilege checklists, bingo cards, etc. for every identity they could possibly think of that faced societal stigma or invisibility or was not considered the norm.

There was one popular social justice blogger at that time who argued that being able to not drive drunk was a privilege, not being a necrophiliac was a privilege, and not being attracted to your siblings was a privilege similar to straight privilege. This blogger also endorsed monosexual privilege and binary privilege (the word “allosexual” hadn’t been invented yet, but I believe she also endorsed “sexual privilege”). (I’m not going to name her because she no longer endorses those ideas as far as I know.)

There were bloggers, some of them trolls but not all (and plenty of earnest people reblogged and supported the trolls’ ideas), who endorsed the ideas of “transethnic” and “transabled” oppression, which meant that people who identified as a different ethnicity than they were, or who identified as having a disability that they did not have, were oppressed.

Take a look at this list of personal privileges and oppressions, and “some of the oppressions and systems that kyriarchy is composed of.” (Warning: the author admits to committing sexual abuse.) I think this person was later revealed to be a troll, but they were satirizing a very real and common way of thinking.

The word “queerplatonic” came out of that time, and is representative of the ideas of that time.

“Privilege Denying X” was a popular meme at that time, and in response to the ace discourse - which was going on then and has never stopped - someone created the blog “Privilege Denying Asexuals,” which responds to ace tumblr’s rhetoric with many of the same arguments we are still using. (It’s an interesting exercise to see what’s changed and what hasn’t.)

In roughly 2013, tumblr slowly began changing courses to say that not all forms of societal stigma, discrimination, and lack of visibility were actually examples of a privilege/oppression dynamic. Materialist analysis slowly began gaining the upper hand, and now you’d be hard pressed to find someone on tumblr who thought that drunk drivers, necrophiliacs, “transabled” people, goths, furries, “vampyres,” people with dyed green hair, etc. are oppressed. In most cases where groups like this are concerned, it is no longer common for people to equate the forms of discrimination and invisibility described in this psi post to oppression.

Ace discourse is simply one of the last holdouts of this kind of rhetoric.

I do not mean to say that asexuals are like drunk drivers in that they are harmful, or like “psychic vampyres” in that the experiences they describe don’t exist. Some of the groups that people claimed were oppressed then are real, some are not; some face real difficulty in society that should be respected, some do not; some are not inherently harmful to others, and some are. People who don’t experience sexual attraction are real, often do face difficulty, and their lack of sexual attraction is harmless to others, but that does not make them an oppressed group, and it certainly doesn’t make them oppressed under homophobia and transphobia, the systems of oppression that the LGBT coalition exists to fight.

#ace discourse

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teaandforeshadowing · 7 years

Text

TJLC Survey Assumptions

As with all statistics and data analysis, certain assumptions have to be made in order to interpret data and charts correctly. No set of data is 100% accurate, and very seldom is it a true representation of the population you are sampling.

Therefore, I ask you to please look at the following lists and take every amount of data I put out with a grain of salt. Please try not to cite this data as scientific evidence or base arguments on the data I present; I started this project for fun and simply because I was curious, and it should be treated as such.

I have done my best to interpret the responses I got so that they could be used as legitimate data points while also staying true to the participant’s intentions and original opinions. Listed under the cut are descriptions of these interpretations followed by assumptions readers should make for each question.

This post will be updated as I release new data. If you have any suggestions or additional assumptions that you think I’m missing, please don’t hesitate to contact me about it Please don’t hesitate to ask questions or for clarification either, my ask box is always open!

The Data So Far:

24-hour Update ~ Part 1: Fandom Favorites ~ TBA

General Assumptions:

The medium influences data - This survey was posted on tumblr, and while TJLC is mostly tumblr-centric, there are fans outside of the tumblr-sphere who are informed of TJLC through other means. I cannot say for sure how many non-tumblr users took the survey, but it is important to consider that a lot of the personal data may be more indicative of the tumblr demographic than TJLC. The internet is also a public place, so it’s inevitable that some people took the survey who were not part of TJLC. I did my best to omit these responses so they would not sway data.

The time/day influences the data - I posted the survey to tumblr around 3:30pm EST on a Saturday, and while I reblogged the post every 4 hours for 24 hours after the initial post, the post's activity died down in the first 8 hours. Although the notes are clearly not indicative of who took the survey, it is safe to assume that more bloggers in timzones when it was day time had exposure to the survey than those in timezones where it was night time.

The survey's language/origin influences the data - I wrote the survey in English and referenced the American school system. This may have deterred international or non-English speaking TJLCers. The blog I run is also in English, and I have very little exposure to non-English parts of the Sherlock fandom, so it should be assumed that the survey may not have reached these TJLCers.

Personal opinion influences the data - The survey is completely voluntary, so while there were a few responses indicating that they are not 100% TJLCers and more of a lurker/casual bystander to metas, most people responded to the survey because they had strong opinions. Case in point, very few negative responses were received, but they were very strongly negative (trolling antis). Many participants did not answer every question, so the total number of responses to the survey does not reflect the number of responses to each question. Be sure to take note that sample sizes vary from question to question.

Anonymity influences the data - This survey was done over the internet, which provides some level of anonymity to begin with, but participants were also not required to sign in or name themselves in any way. While this can encourage more people to take the survey, it makes it possible for participants to lie or take the survey more than once. I strongly discouraged this behavior in the description on the first page, but that is the extent of my control over this variable.

Edits to the survey influences the data - I made several edits to the questions in the survey, making clarifications and changing answer options. The hundreds of participants who took the survey before these changes made their choices based upon what information was available at the time and may have answered differently if they'd taken it after the edits. Unfortunately, I do not know the exact times edits were made. [See sections below for the specific questions this affects].

Q1: Age

Interpretations - The nature of this question made it possible to limit answers to exactly the kinds of data I needed: whole numbers. Very little interpretation was needed. Less than 10 people put decimals in their answers, which I rounded to the nearest whole.

Assumptions - None

Q2: Pronouns

Interpretations - I edited this question very early on, changing the answers from single bullets to check-boxes to be more inclusive. I also added an "Any" option for those individuals who do not care which pronouns are used. Any responses similar to "I don't care" were placed in the "Any" category. Any responses similar to "I don't know" were omitted. Any responses indicating specific pronouns that were "She", "He", or "They" were placed into an "Other" category. These were more often than not variations on "Xe". Here's the full list:

Ey/em, Ne/nem/nir, Xe/xir, Xe/xer, Xe/xem, Ve/vir, Ve/vim/vis, Xe/xyr, Ze/zem

Assumptions - Participants were able to make several selections and enter in their own answers. Some overlapping may occur.

Q3: Gender Identity

Interpretations - Any responses similar to "I don't care", or "Female" were omitted. Any responses similar to "I don't know" were placed into the "Questioning" category. Any responses indicating specific identities not on the list were given their own categories.

Assumptions - None.

Q4: Sexuality

Interpretations - Any responses similar to "I don't care" were omitted. Any responses similar to "I don't know" or "X-ish" were placed into the "Questioning" category and an additional category if applicable. Any responses indicating Demisexual/romantic were placed into the "Asexual/Ace-spec" category. Some responses indicating specific identities not on the list were given their own categories, other single instances were omitted for simplicity.

Assumptions - Participants were able to make several selections and enter in their own answers. Some overlapping may occur. Prefixes are indicative of both romantic and sexual identities.

Q5: Location

Haven't tackled this one yet, too many time zones. May just narrow it down to country.

Q6: Employment

Interpretations - Any responses similar to "student", "in the job market", or "stay at home parent" were placed under "Unemployed". Any responses similar to "Education" or indicated a seasonal position were placed into the "Employed full-time" category. Any vague responses that I could not place into a specific category with confidence were omitted.

Assumptions - None.

Q7: Education

Haven't tackled this one yet, too many unamerican answers. I'll have to take a whole day to figure this one out.

Q8: I am...

Haven't tackled this one yet.

Q9: Holmes Fan

Interpretations - I converted all the data in terms of years: 11 months, 12 months, 1/13 months all got rounded to the nearest whole year; 2 months, 3 months, and 4 months got rounded to X.25 years; 5 months, 6 months, and 7 months got rounded to X.5 years; 8 months, 9 months, and 10 months got rounded to X.75 years.

Any responses that were less than 1 month were included in the “0.25 years” category. Any responses similar to "X+ years" were rounded down to X years. Any responses similar to "since childhood" or did not otherwise indicate a specific date were omitted. Any responses similar to "4 or 5 years" were averaged between the two dates provided. Any responses similar to "#" without units were interpreted as years.

Assumptions - All values indicate a minimum amount of time.

Q10: Favorite Holmes

Interpretations - For any responses that listed several adaptations, I chose to sort by the first adaptation listed and omitted all others. Any responses similar to "I don't know/can't pick" were omitted. Any responses similar to "It used to be BBC Sherlock" or "BBC Sherlock before S4" were noted, then omitted. Any responses similar to "I like all of them" were placed into a new "All of the above" category. Any responses indicating a version of Sherlock Holmes not listed were placed into an “Other” category. Those others are listed below:

BBC Radio 4 (with Clive Merrison) x3

Detective Conan

Howard Sherlock Holmes x2

Monk

NRK Oklahomo x2

Russian Holmes x7

Sherlock Hound

They Might Be Giants

Veggie Tales

Assumptions - I searched the Sherlock Holmes Wikipedia page for a list of adaptations and chose those which I thought were the most well-known and well-liked in the fandom. House M.D. is not a direct Holmes adaptation, but I chose to include it because it is focuses very heavily on the Holmes-based characters in comparison to other Holmes/Watson dynamics in other not-Holmes media (such as Jenny/Vastra in Doctor Who, or Kirk/Spock in Star Trek). The inclusion of this option may have influenced people to select it over other options because of the popular doctor/hospital drama aspect of the show.

Q11: BBC Sherlock Fan

Any responses that were less than 1 month were included in the “0.25 years” category. Any responses similar to "X+ years" were rounded down to X years. Any responses similar to "I don't know" or did not otherwise indicate a specific date were omitted. Any responses similar to "4 or 5 years" were averaged between the two dates provided. Any responses similar to "#" without units were interpreted as years. Any responses longer than 7 years were omitted.

Assumptions - All values indicate a minimum amount of time.

Q12: TJLC member

Any responses longer than 3 years were placed into a "Longer" category, or omitted. Any responses similar to "I'm not" were omitted completely. Any responses similar to "I'm just a lurker" were noted, then omitted.

Assumptions - All values indicate a minimum amount of time.

Q13: TJLC rating

Interpretations - The nature of this question made it possible to limit answers to exactly the kinds of data I needed: whole numbers. No interpretation was needed.

Assumptions - None.

Q14: Active Participation

Haven't tackled this one yet.

Q15: Passive Participation

Haven't tackled this one yet.

Q16: Favorite Part

Interpretations - For any responses that listed several parts, I chose to sort by the first part listed and omitted all others. Any responses similar to "I don't know/can't pick" were omitted. Any responses similar to "The Johnlock" were placed in the "Characters" category. Any responses similar to "Ben and Martin" were placed in the "Acting" category. Any responses similar to "Symbols and subtext" or “Canon references” were placed in the "Writing" category. Any responses similar to "Everything" were placed into a new "All of the above" category.

Assumptions - The inclusion, exclusion, and combination of some options may have influenced participants to chose another answer over their favorite. Many people indicated that they would have picked writing had TFP not happened, which dismisses 12 previous episodes of writing.

Q17: Favorite Episode

Interpretations - The nature of this question made it possible to limit answers to exactly the kinds of data I needed: single episodes. No interpretation was needed.

Assumptions - None.

Q18: Positive Impact

Haven't tackled this one yet.

#feel free to ignore this post #its simply for reference for later data posts #survey #tjlc #tjlc survey #taqqy talks

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