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pass-the-bechdel · 4 years

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The Good Place full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

96% (forty-eight of fifty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

49%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Forty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

Positive Content Status:

Good - you might even say, strong - in the sense that it’s all there, pretty much all of the big representation bells are ringing, particularly the ones for women and racial diversity. That said, the show is generally content to sit pretty and not push the envelope on inclusivity, so if you’re looking for inspiration in-text instead of just in casting, you might be disappointed. At any rate, it’s a solid feel-good time, and not likely to make you mad (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

The numbers stay pretty consistent across the whole series, but if I had to call a winner, it’s season four, which has the highest percentage of female characters and the only above-average positive content rating (though that was awarded somewhat cumulatively, and so doesn’t feel particularly well-earned by that season above the others).

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

It’s such a close call, but season three must be the loser here by virtue of the lowest ratio of female to male characters; it also had one of the series’ two Bechdel fails. Like I said, it’s...a really close call.

Overall Series Quality:

There’s so much about it that is fresh and original and interesting, I wish I could love it more. After a magnificent debut season, the show suffers immensely for a lack of pacing and the absence of coherently-planned plot, and at times the stagnating characterisation and pointless filler caked into the cracks in the storytelling can be frustrating and/or tedious. I’m only as disappointed as I am because the potential for greatness was so strong. That said, even at it’s worst The Good Place is still entertaining, and most of it is better than that. It’s irreverent, it’s fun, it’s surprising, and sometimes it’s even as poignant as it is remarkable. I have my gripes, in droves, but that doesn’t mean this show is not worthy.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Imagine. Imagine a version of this show where the first season is basically the same, and the second season is...somewhat similar to how it is, but with more focus and direction, less time-wasting; a second season where figuring out that some fundamental change to their circumstances is necessary comes early, and instead of faffing about with ethical lessons in the fake neighbourhood again while Michael pretends he can get everyone to the Good Place, we get down to business with going on the run and into the Bad Place to find the judge and petition for help. Imagine this show, but the third season has none of that return to Earth crap, and instead, is the neighbourhood experiment from season four, properly fleshed out. And then season four is all about going to the Good Place and solving the problems there, addressing issues with the concept of utopia and the ineffectual bureaucracy of obsessive niceness (used for comedic effect in the actual show, but c’mon, there’s a whole untapped reservoir about morality there). Each season could have (gasp!) a properly-planned and plotted arc, dealing with a different school of ethical considerations, and I dunno, maybe the characterisation could have trajectory too, and the characters could vitally shape the storytelling, and maybe not get their personalities and experiences erased and rebooted over and over again, nullifying large swathes of the narrative which came before? Ideally, they could be reset zero (0) times, or at least have all their reboot experiences dumped back into them in the first few episodes of season two, so that they could proceed from there as whole people. Rebooting everyone’s personalities is not actually necessary to the plot in any way, and is, actually, incredibly detrimental to storytelling and especially, character development. Imagine this show, but just chilling out and actually telling a coherent story?

I am all the more annoyed by how things turned out on this show because I know that the four seasons were planned for, rather than being the result of cancellation; the idea that the creators sat down and ‘plotted’ (using that term loosely) to make this mess drives me a little wild. The (attempted) avoidance of the dreaded ‘stagnation’ seems obvious, and it leads to major narrative shortcuts and jumps and instances where the show spends an episode or two on what should have been a half-season’s development, minimum, and yet at other times all momentum grinds to a halt for a bizarre bottle-type episode where the characters just talk about a concept for a while or work on some unimportant romantic subplot. The various ethical concepts that the show heavily incorporated as its bread and butter in the first season start to stick out like sore thumbs in season two, seemingly wedged into one episode or another for no real reason other than just to be there, and the fact that the show lets go of the idea of moral choices in the life mattering at all in the end leaves the backbone of the show in a very strange shape. I said in the season four review that I didn’t expect the show to come up with some One True Answer about how people should live their lives, but that I was baffled by the fact that the show side-stepped that altogether; what I expected them to conclude was something in the line of ‘we recognise that life is complicated, not all situations are created equal, and it can be hard to know how to proceed ethically or even to access ethical options within one’s circumstances. Still, it is important to do your best, not only for yourself but for your community, because the more good you put into the world, the more there will be to go around and come back to you. What matters most is that you are doing your best with what you’ve got’. The fact that the show distracted itself with fixing how the afterlife rewards people within the afterlife means that it suggests no incentive to perform moral actions in life, and frankly...who gives a fuck? The real world is the place we’re all living in, and there’s no point starting a conversation about morality in real life if the conclusion is just ‘guess we’ll straighten out all the fascists and bigots and the other pieces of shit after they die, so don’t worry, everyone gets to Heaven eventually!’

Anyway, if that seems like just a reiteration of what I said in the season four review, well. I’m still baffled by it. The other thing I was going to talk about in the season four review but held for the full series instead was that one big thing that I have railed about all the time since season one, and that’s PACING. For all ye wannabe-writers out there, please understand how important pacing is. Even vital plot or character beats can seem like meaningless filler in a poorly-paced story, because your audience’s mind is hardwired to try and follow narrative cues that are being incomprehensibly muddled. Standard structure can be played with, but if you toss it out in favour of ‘stuff just happens, ok? Except when it doesn’t’, you just end up with a soup of disconnected story ideas, and nothing threading it together. Character interactions and especially developments can help to create the through-line you need to keep the story functioning despite itself, but as variously noted with The Good Place...initial characterisation? Strong, excellent. Development? Not so much, not least because they kept getting deleted and rebooted. Also, time skips kept happening, and that’s a great way to fuck over your narrative coherence even more: remove the recognisable constant we call time! It’ll be fine! As with all things, it is perfectly possible to play around with this stuff, but you have to know what you’re doing and be doing it for a good reason, and that’s not what they had going on here. This was narrative soup, and when you have a soup, the pieces all kinda meld together and lose any individual purpose, meaning, or power they may have had. The result in this case was not bad, but it really could have been so much better, and literally all it needed for that was some attention being paid to the story structure via pacing.

So. The good news is, I think I have pretty well exhausted all of my complaints by now, and that leaves us with the good stuff, of which there was no paltry amount. The show was not a hit by accident (even if I do feel that it’s success had a lot to do with people sticking around after the spectacular first season, and not because it stayed strong throughout), and even if there was a lot of soup going on, what comprised that soup was all really fun and unique, and this made for a wonderful piece of light-hearted television that could be as hilarious as it was insightful. It still had a lot of great takes on things, the commentary was strong (even if it pulled all its punches towards the end), and whether the storytelling was ebbing or flowing, it was always delightful. The show also managed to pull a miraculous finale out of its hat, and that’s a rare thing in television; however the story wobbled over the course, the ending provided enough satisfaction to forgive just about any sins, especially if you don’t happen to have been watching with a deliberately critical eye. Do I wish that Eleanor got to hook up with a chick on-screen some time instead of just making a lot of bi remarks? Yes. Do I consider the show to have queerbaited instead of providing genuine rep? No. Is the underselling of the queer content my most significant representation complaint? Yes, it is, and that's good news considering the world we live in and the dearth of quality representation that the industry has brought us to expect.

There's an important distinction to be made there, regarding the tokenistic representation that is very common these days in tv trying for brownie points and good publicity, exactly that kind of 'political' inclusivity that conservatives are always bitching about. It should not be surprising that I support that tokenism over the alternative of having no representation at all, but it can still be quite disheartening to feel like your identity or the identities that you value are being referenced as nothing more than an opportunity for some shitty producer to perform wokeness for attention, praise, and the almighty dollar. I bring this up because - even though The Good Place never really worked up much of a boost to its content rating - one thing I felt that it did really, really right was providing representation without it feeling tokenistic at all. Eleanor's bisexuality wasn't as prominent as I might have preferred, and as noted through the course of the show, there were times I feared it was more bait than real rep, but reflecting on it at the end, the way it was included feels organic, it never gets in the way in order to ensure the audience notices and is dutifully impressed. The number of women around and the multicoloured casting plays out even better; I never once felt cynical about the gender balance I was seeing, and I've said it before but I'll say it again: the fact that the show was packed with names from across the world gives me so much life. I'm still a little salty about Chidi's Senegalese origins getting the shaft (and we won't talk about 'Australia'), but the nonchalant diversity of naming goes such a long way to embracing the idea that this is a world for everyone (and an afterlife for everyone, too). And where anything else might fall apart or lose its way, that is an affirming thing. If you want feel-good tv, it’s here. This is the Good Place.

#The Good Place #full series review #Bechdel Test #female representation

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sepublic · 4 years

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So there’s an Owl House game on DisneyNOW

Spoiler alert, it... kinda sucks. Which, is to be expected of an obscure mobile game that’s only exclusive to a very particular app. Still, It’s Owl House content, so I’ll take what I can get.

The game is a VERY simple 2-D platformer. You play as Luz (yes!) and you start off in a ‘hub’ that is the Owl House itself.

The upper floor is where you catalogue previously-done missions so you can do them again. In a treasure chest there are really short side-quests that are updated every week. Each week, a new quest is presented with an item to get at the end that appears in the respective episode. A new episode, new quest, new item. It was actually the tenth quest for the Playground Armor that made me wonder if Episode 10 was available on DisneyNOW, and lo and behold, it was! So that’s neat. Each item has a little description added to it, and I played the game so nobody else has to. For example;

Obviously the canonicity of this game and its descriptions should be taken with a grain of salt, but if it IS true, then I find it cute how Amity is so obsessed with that star when nobody else cares. To her, that’s literal physical validation from a teacher she looks up to! Obviously there’s something concerning about putting THAT much stock into what grown-ups have to say, but still. Also it just occurred to me that since Willow left the Abomination Track, that means that Amity is now the best student in that class once more, meaning she eventually got back her badge. So, good for her.

Believe it or not, the app itself has ACTUAL voice acting from the official VAs and everything! And I’m fairly certain the lines are unique, they’re too smooth to have been put together from various words plucked out of context from the show itself. So far we’ve only got Luz, King, Eda, and a generic Emperor’s guard as characters.

Initially, you start off controlling Luz, who can only move around, jump, duck, etc. You go through a level and hop over enemies (which look like this in Bonesborough, or like this in the forest);

There’s also an arm that swipes at you from a barrel and a fanged treasure chest, but they’re super-easy to avoid. Spoiler alert; These levels are EXTREMELY easy. Also, all of the levels are just the same exact rooms and layouts, but slightly remixed so that if you go to the end of one room, you’ll go to a different room after it than last time, or start off in a different room than in the previous level... You get the idea. It’s the exact same level layout, down to the placement of enemies and smaller items you have to collect multiple of in order to advance. Because every level is the same, it definitely gets a bit tedious.

Also, the music- There’s only ONE song, and it’s a tiny snippet cut out from the show’s OST and put on loop indefinitely. Within the context of the original song it was taken from, this piece is fine. But when it’s been completely cut off from the original song and looped on repeat it quickly becomes maddening and you only realize how much it bothers you until AFTER it bothers you.

Like I said, the quests are simple. You start off going through a couple of rooms before you grab Eda’s arm... Then her leg in the next level... And then her entire body, humorously enough. For the body segment it’s a flying level where you avoid slow, flying enemies as you ride on Owlbert and tap the screen to go up a little, otherwise you’re just slowly sinking into oblivion. It’s a welcome change of pace with different music for once, but then it ends all too quickly.

Other levels involve you collecting 8 key items scattered throughout the level to accomplish a goal (getting Eda’s merch to sell it, collecting stuff for a guard, etc.) The way the level is structured, the rooms just keep going on until you collect 8 items, so... You can’t really ‘miss’ an item and there’s no correct way or order to do it. Again, it’s really mundane. Also, you can only get hurt by running into enemies (jumping on them to stun them is fine) or by falling into pits, the latter of which puts you at the beginning of the room. You lose one of four light-ball lives, but said lives are scattered all over the game for you to replenish so no-biggie. In the forest there are spotted mushrooms you can bounce off of, and early into the game you can grow a rising platform-plant in select spots. Likewise you get a pair of shoes with tiny bat-wings (but not in the actual gameplay itself, only on the picture when you receive them) that lets you double-jump;

(These are a reference to the winged-shoes that Boscha and her group wear in Episode 8, although Luz’s shoes never get these bat-wing additions in the episode itself. I doubt they will in the show since this is pretty much a gameplay mechanic, but you never know!)

You also get a snaggleback shell to deal with enemies, but you never get the chance to use it? More on that later.

After completing the fetch-8 quests twice in a row, you then get a brief mini-game where you have to drag and toss human merch from your table to a wave of customers who have the corresponding speech bubble asking for it. You satisfy one customer, they go away and more appear. This goes for a bit until the mini-game ends, and then you go home.

But! You left King behind and when you go back to Bonesborough, an Emperor’s guard has taken King hostage! King is dozing off the entire time, I should mention. You do a fetch-8 ingredients quest twice for the guard, and then grab a pot he needs to cook his soup... And after THAT, he reveals that he’s planning to cook King!

And then... nothing.

At this point, you have two options; Go to the left and hit the edge of the screen, OR go right, initiating the guard’s line about cooking King... And then the conversation ends and you turn away to indicate this. That’s it. You don’t get one of the dialogue options from Luz. This doesn’t kickstart a level. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go back to the hub? You’re just trapped in this brief between-levels moment. You can’t use the snaggleback shell, in part because the game never tells you how to use it... You’re just stuck there for all eternity as the guard gloats about cooking King but then never does that while you stand there.

Is the game glitched? Is it just... NOT finished? I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s not exactly very compelling. The main thing that keeps it from being a legitimate slog is the fact that it’s A) Owl House content and B) Each Level is so small, quick, and an easy breeze that you can clear it pretty quickly. Unfortunately for me, playing the game causes my phone to heat up REALLY quickly, so I have to take breaks so my device doesn’t overheat and damage itself. Maybe if I play on a non-mobile device I’ll be able to actually continue.

There’s not really much else to say about it. The game is the most bare-bones 2-D platformer with the bare-minimum of repeating level design and pretty mind-numbing, generic quests. You earn EXP or whatever for your witch rank at the end of each quest, but you don’t really level up? Honestly I’m only here for the surprisingly-smooth animations of Luz running and jumping around, the voice-acting, and getting to see backgrounds from the show. Also the relic side-quests are neat too, I guess, and those are even shorter than the ‘main quest’ levels.

Honestly I’d give the game a 1/10. It’s only a 1 and not a zero because it’s still Owl House content and not TOO much of a chore because thankfully you get through it quickly.

#the owl house #owl house #app #game #disneynow

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incarnateirony · 5 years

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It’s unpopular but I’m gonna say it.

Early Supernatural was literal trash TV.

It was fun trash TV. Clearly we all enjoyed that trash TV. And it’s okay to like trash TV. Not all TV is designed nor necessary to be thinking pieces.

But it was trash TV.

It took them a whole goddamn season to figure out that they might maybe could make moral lessons for the guys out of the episodical monsters beyond oogieboogie oh look a ghost, where’s dad.

It was a feelgood piece despite angst, a tug of war to enjoy the relationship of brothers, and also a genre and era piece that had a spirit of its own reflective of the evolving american dream for freedom rather than old ones of indebted 3/2 beds.

But it was also unsustainable to stay like that. Not only did the characters learn (lest they be incompetent) but technology grew and the horror survivalism genre couldn’t be a part of the lure; lessons expanded between episodes, meanings deepened, and by the time season four hit -- no longer plagued by eternal threat of cancellation -- the tone started shifting, but slowly.

I’m going to say it.

Lazarus Rising isn’t even a good episode compared to modern SPN.

Castiel’s entrance was grand and there was a great mood to the mystery of his entrance, but the writing of stock one liner Dean flirting with anything and anyone with a pulse and very telegraphed path of Sam’s direction with Ruby would, at best, stand as mediocre in later seasons. We have rosy glasses about it because at the time, it WAS sensational, and that WAS the beginning of a new threshold, but this was the era when they started doing more than pitching bad annual concepts.

Kripke’s “five year plan” was a few paragraphs of a draft with a vague idea of an ending, we already know it was changed dramatically, but the gaping plot holes we offhandedly dismissed in the first seasons or just terribly designed challenges like the conveniently disengaging protection railroad that somehow we made to unseal itself when hell opened, we weren’t even given to ask WHY about these things, and season 3 was too compact. Season 4 entered bigger mytharc, bigger vision, and deepening poetry than the season 2 gasp of “Maybe the monster could be RELEVANT beyond shooting the big bad creepy demon at the end of the season.”

Seasons 6-7 were a goddamn fly by the seat of the new showrunner’s pants disaster, back into plot hole territory, and mostly had sentiment by virtue of a few individually fun episodes (Clap Your Hands If You Believe, Heart Will Go On, French Mistake) but ultimately had about as much thought put into it as the eighty seventh cop drama on TNT. And that’s being generous.

Seasons 8 onward, Carver had a lot of recovery to do, because season 4-5 HAD set a bar that had been miserably failed and sort of tossed in the garbage disposal, a mytharc mess to clean up of failed angelic civil wars and Dick Monster Hell, and whatever else, and he at least came in with a long term plan and started devoting structure to it, revisiting meaning in independent adventures, and so on. But by then certain elements had been sort of pre-bloated by Gamble’s handling of angelic issues and it was still incredibly linear in its path-work.

But I really wouldn’t call it a show really given to be thought about until the last handful of years, when Dabb really took to endless cascades of structural callbacks, when an episode wasn’t just a lesson for the mytharc, which they are, but also tended to incorporate multiple structural callbacks. That’s not to say structural callbacks were empty (hell, before he took over Dabb already had a habit of it), but actually paying attention to how Dabb handles his storytelling shows an attempt to bind together this unstable spiral of the past into something useful and NOT in constant self conflict between various plot holes of any given area left hanging open, or just half constructed sentiments that needed continuation.

People may not like the story he’s telling, but respectively, the story he’s telling carries the most art to it. Even disregarding the amount of class I find in use of perennial mytharcing with the level of subtle intricacy he pulled off that it went unnoticed by most of the world rather than gobsmacking people with the bible -- just on an actual public front, Dabb’s SPN is a thinking piece, not a pretty pictures on the TV in a self contained bubble piece (be it episodical, seasonal, or showrunner bubble), and I’m starting to think that’s why some people have trouble with it.

In fact, the people who hate Dabb, or advents LIKE Castiel as mentioned above, tend to only bounce around and prefer episodes that don’t require callbacks or connectivity.

And that’s it that’s the tea.

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ayankun · 4 years

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yalright let’s do this

AGENTS OF SHIELD SEASON ONE REWATCH COMPLETE BREAKDOWN MEGAPOST

hella spoilers for the entire canon up through season 5, but not 6 because I only saw it the once and am having a hard time remembering ANYthing about it.

I cannot determine specifically what it was about this season that caused to be branded “literal garbage” in my mind-hole for seven years.

Best guesses:

there’s some cheesy stuff that probably didn’t sit well with me at the time, and, at the time, there was no way of knowing that that kind of stuff was going to be ultimately eradicated

there’s some good stuff, like character stuff and plot stuff, but it didn’t successfully implant positive emotional responses in my brain-hole, leading me to be frustrated/offended at its own self-importance

there’s some stuff that just Doesn’t Work. I won’t call anybody out, but there are some main side characters whose casting, in my opinion, leaves much to be desired. when it comes to acting ability, I feel that it’s important to have the ranges of your entire cast match each other. if you’re gonna hire B-listers, at least make sure they’re ALL B-listers. if you’re gonna splurge and get some S-tier talent, pleeeeease don’t embarrass the B-listers by thinking you’re doing them a favor by including them on your project. Understood, this opinion is highly subjective and I can’t expect everyone in front or behind the screen to buy into it, but it’s definitely a pet peeve of mine that causes strong reactions in me*

some of the plots are tired and/or straight up boring. I got through them easily this time through because I was able to focus on the things I like, which is largely character interactions and re-learning the backstory for stuff that I know will continue to be important later on. imagine listening to your grandpa’s stories about his life, but instead of telling you the cool stories about going to the moon or whatever, he’s telling you in great detail about the time he got his shoelaces stuck on like, a rusty nail sticking out of a fence. It’s not a great story but it does explain why his mom only bought him velcro shoes after that and one time when they were trying on shoes in the store a couple of years later, some other kid started making fun of him for having velcro shoes and long story short your grandpa’s relationship with that kid is what got him interested in astrophysics and also he married that kid twenty-five years later -- but right now the story is specifically about spending forty minutes trying not to get tetanus.

Now that I’m older and wiser, what really surprised me throughout, though, was that not only was I not having any type of reaction that validated my “literal garbage” classification, I was noticing that there was A Lot of stuff that ticked a lot of boxes.

I’m talking technical stuff, the textbook basic filmmaking stuff, the stuff that I subjectively find objectively “Good” because it means that creative decisions were made with intent and were also executed proficiently enough to make that intent clear.

I’m talking SYMMETRICAL NARRATIVE which has to be one of my all-time favorite techniques, one that I personally use a lot, and I’m very biased in responding favorably when I see it, so I think ultimately this is a huge reason why this season cannot be classified as garbage this time around. Because it shows that they cared! It shows that they had A Plan! It’s an emotionally satisfying technique that can be used to great effect when tipping the audience off to how far we’ve come from where we started. It creates this nice tidy structural loop which I find very appealing.

Just real quick, you see this in individual episodes or even scenes, too. Here’s a classic A+ example from episode 2:

Simmons has given Skye a bottle of water as a gag because that’s what happens on planes, and that bit is a set up to this bit, where Coulson is talking about how he rebuilt the Bus from the “studs up” and it demands to be treated with kid gloves; ergo:

Only to have the thing completely wrecked over the course of the episode. In the denouement, “just starting to warm up to this place,” Coulson says ruefully, righting a broken glass as if that will put the plane back together; Skye immediately tosses a coaster down and moves the glass on top of it.

As a callback, it juxtaposes the starting-state and ending-state in your mind and highlights the contrast between the two. And it’s also a nice character-building beat where you, the audience, get to observe Skye’s character in that she remembers a trivial detail that happened to be important to Coulson. You also get to see Coulson observing the same, and you understand a little bit more about both of them. *chef’s kiss*

So this is a pretty powerful and common technique, and I guess you could say that any well-resolved narrative is by definition going to recall you to the specifics of how it started. Like ep 1 we start with Mike and Ace, their call and response “what are we/we’re a team,” and an understanding of Mike’s desire to be his kid’s guardian and hero and his desperate search for the tools that will allow him to become that. In the finale, we see the pay off where Ace (via Skye) reminds Mike of this motivation, and Mike is finally in the position to protect his kid by taking out the Big Bad.

But I don’t want to go through the list to demonstrate that everyone’s character arcs likewise left them in a thematically resolved position relative to where they started. Obviously this is an expectation of all (well structured) narratives.

(And I don’t really mean to talk about callbacks themselves, such as Fitz’s obsession with monkeys or May’s repeated demand of “don’t call me that.”)

Stuff that only comes up at the beginning and the end. Here’s the kind of symmetry that I mean:

Skye’s use of GPS encryption and the location of the diner where she first meets Mike. Both topics come up in ep 1, and are revisited in ep 20 when she’s stalling for time against Ward and brings him to the diner by telling him that it’s the GPS coordinates necessary for decrypting the drive. It says, last time you were here, Skye, you were living out of a van and fangirling over people with superpowers; now you’re an official agent of SHIELD (fun while it lasted, anyway) and you’re currently doublecrossing your own doublecrosser who was directly responsible for transforming you into the competent spy you are today.

Same thing: the only time we see Lola fly is at the end of ep 1, when Coulson and Skye are heading back to the Bus, and in ep 20 when Coulson rescues Skye from off the Bus.

Ep 2: 0-8-4. We’re introduced to the very first object with the titular designation, and Simmons idly wonders “imagine what it would do to a person.” Ep 22, it’s used to evaporate Garrett. Same ep, we also meet the little, what even is it, that dendrotoxin EMP (??? I don’t recall whether the gadget is named) that Ward uses, and Coulson uses it in ep 17 to incapacitate Garrett.

Similarly, all the cool alien gadgets we spent the first few episodes gathering and locking up, including that first 0-8-4, are all broken out into the wrong hands in ep 18.

Also in ep 2 we are introduced to the idea of being thrown out of the airplane and Skye & co specifically prevent Ward from being sucked out. We’re introduced to the concept of Coulson’s cellist! Fury also makes a cameo (”talkin to me about authority”) !

It’s a little later on, but ep 6 has Simmons jumping out the plane, and Ward proving his Good Teammate status by jumping out after her (while Fitz is struggling on his way to do the same). Ep 21, Ward boots FitzSimmons out the plane, and in ep 22 Fitz finally has the chance to properly save Simmons himself.

Ep 19 Coulson has a chance to save his cellist (again)

Ep 22, Fury comes back all Deus ex Machina and relinquishes authority of SHIELD directly to Coulson.

There’s also some dialogue recycled on purpose to make a point, like Fitz-Simmons introductory scene is recreated almost verbatim in ep 21:

Ep 2, talking to Skye about his mission vs ep 18 talking to Raina about his mission

(gotta admit, the man took this role seriously. check out that cheekbone game he achieved in such a short time)

And again, Ep 1 Ward vs Ep 18 Ward. They even framed it the same!!

All this to say, Season 1 is Structurally Sound and it has my blessing.

Now let’s move on to the list of things I liked that surprised me:

It’s pretty well polished, visually. Joss Whedon’s veteran control of the director’s chair is readily apparent in the pilot, setting the visual tone for the series. There are some made-for-tv shots over the course of the season, sure, and the least impressive compositions tend to involve CGI backdrops, but they do make the most of their interior sets and work hard to dress up various LA locations to, er, inspire the idea of the international scope of the show. In my last update, I talked about ep 8 The Well in the context of Quality Directing, so it definitely goes above and beyond the basic shot-reverse shot when it wants to.

Ward. Just for the record, I think Brett Dalton is great at his job and really brought exactly what they wanted to this character. Eps 1 and 2 are a little shaky and stiff, but everyone’s performances are, as they let these characters coalesce around them. I remember not liking Ward when I was watching this live, and honestly I think this was intentional. He’s that character that you expect that you’re expected to like, you know, the traditional cocky savior type that lots of those fancy heroes are. But because he’s so tropey in his characterization, you’re just ... over it? And then when they flip the script and you’re supposed to hate him -- WOW. It’s like two Christmases at once. They took something you were already doing and rewarded you for it.

I’m not unaware of the “redeem grant ward” phenomenon. I’m aware that the character had fans who were honestly drawn to and appreciative of the character before that persona was revealed to be a lie.

And honestly, it’s not that I like OR dislike Ward at all. As a person. It’s annoying that he’s a cocky bad-boy. But it’s sweet when he plays nice with Simmons. It’s embarrassing that he and May have “a thing.” But it’s cathartic when he opens up to Skye about his past. And Then, the sequence where we know he’s Hydra but Skye doesn’t. And Then, the sequence where Skye knows he’s Hydra but he doesn’t. And Then, his weird yucky confusion where he still wants to pursue something with Skye or doesn’t want to put down puppy-dog-eyed Fitz.

As a character, Ward is a great character. His set up is so bland that the twist does appear to come out of nowhere, but on a rewatch all the groundwork is there. His characterization as a baddie is enthralling. I’m forecasting into season 2 a bit, but you want to follow his nefarious exploits just as much as you want to see his ex-friends smash his face in. Brett Dalton played it right, A+ good job. It makes Framework!Ward just that much more of a beautiful thing, to get to see what it would have been like if the Season 1 persona had actually been the man.

Also as covered in the last update, I was really very pleased to see how much character work was being done in this season. Because I only watch and rewatch starting from the second season, there are important plot points that I’d been grudgingly attributing to this season about which I’d forgotten the specifics, such as, what’s the deal with Gravitonium, howcome we hate Ward so much, where did they get that memory-torture-machine, why are you acting like I recognize Titus Welliver’s character? What surprised me was how much of a focus there is on character development as well. A lot of good origin story stuff, like how green FitzSimmons is and how soft and good-hearted Skye is and all the reasons we respect and trust May and all the reasons we would follow Coulson to the ends of the earth. Watching a found family start to put down roots is worth it, too, ten times out of ten.

The tie-in stuff wasn’t as overstated and stifling as I remembered it being. They were allowed quite a long leash even this far back. Centipede is based on Extremis, but helms a a unique narrative. The Asgardians-of-the-week are just MacGuffins for driving character stories. Turns out all of SHIELD has been Hydra all along! Sucks to be you, a show about the Agents of SHIELD ... oh wait, Daddy MCU’s insane twist is mirrored in the DNA of your team’s composition AND baked into your overall season arc? Well then. Carry on!

Engaging with Season 1 explicitly as a prequel is a powerful thing. First time through, I had the distinct realization that “too much of a good thing” was at play regarding Coulson. He’s everybody’s favorite MCU character in 2013, hands down, but ... getting intimate with him for 40 minutes a week really waters down his mysterious G-man appeal. BUT. After spending six+ years with the man, Season 1!Coulson is a precursor to the 3-dimensional Director you’ll fall in love with, rather than a distortion of the one-liner MCU!Coulson you thought you wanted.

So what’s next! Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and here all all the things I associate with AoS that were not present in Season 1:

Robot hand.

DaISy JoHnsOn

AGENT/DIRECTOR MACK where is he I need him

Fitz’s facial hair

Their underground SSR base with the exposed brick, I miss that place all the time

Hive, Bobbi*, Hunter, Kyle MacLachlan, Maveth (everything** about Seasons 2 and 3, really). Robbie Reyes. Aida and Kasius!! I know these things are temporary, but they’re so important to the best bits and I love them.

Getting to see episode after episode where there are scenes at a time containing a majority (up to 100%) of women and/or POC characters with executive agency, and none of those characters are token or temporary but were placed there with intent to normalize a diversified cast.

My absolute favorite episode of all time, 4x15 Self Control.

Things I am not looking forward to:

**Lincoln. I’ve seen these seasons four times and just now I had to google his name because I wasn’t sure it wasn’t Logan. He’s garbage and I’m glad he’s dead. Other opinions are available.

Misc. Thoughts

*I said I wouldn’t name names but Adrianne Palicki is a C-lister who can swing a B+ if the stars align. I love Bobbi, though, especially the way the character’s reputation precedes her, how her adorableness complements her badassness. In fact, the character’s a great foil to May, who is also a badass lady and S-tier agent but has a completely different approach to being those things. Bobbi’s a reminder that badassness and aloofness are not correlated at all. Also there’s a headcanon out there that she’s non-binary (one of the reasons she prefers Bobbi over Barbara) and that is a concept I can get behind. Bobbi’s perfect and I’ll fight you if you don’t agree.

Poor Trip!!!!!!! When you always start from Season 2, he’s really just a flash in the pan, there and gone. I’ve always been like, “well, he didn’t really have a home here, no carved-out niche, so I guess getting Coulson’d and becoming something to avenge is the best a character like him is gonna get.” But now that I see that he comes late to the game as a literal stand in for Ward, his story is that much sadder. He was never intended to BE a character. He’s introduced with Garrett as a pawn/distraction during this arc’s who-is-Hydra shell game, he’s kept to demonstrate what kind of friend and agent Ward should have been, his defining character trait as a gentle flirt only serves as a catalyst for Fitz’s coming to terms with his feelings for Simmons. The poor guy is just a walking plot point, up until the bitter end. :<

I had entirely forgotten and/or never tracked the fact that Fury put together Coulson’s team specifically to monitor him after project T.A.H.I.T.I. I’d forgotten the distrust Coulson has for May after he perceives that she has betrayed him by being a part of this. It’s a season-specific reveal that is literally never mentioned again. It’s important to the fabric of the narrative of that particular arc, offering up May alongside Ward and Trip as fodder for the aforementioned shell game, but the true inciting incident of this entire show just gets swept under the rug and ceases to matter. I’m kind of :/ about that.

When you’re bi and non-binary, you’ll get a lot of mileage out of wanting to be/be with Daisy and/or Fitz, don’t judge me

In conclusion, Season 1 is the opposite of literal garbage, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is my favorite show and my favorite MCU movie, Daisy Johnson is my favorite Marvel superhero (not related to Season 1 but still true), and nobody had better spoil Season 7 for me pleaAAASE don’t let it happen.

#agents of shield #aos #so I guess this is what I ended up doing today #v productive

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some-flyleaves · 7 years

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steven universe and homestuck :Yc ?

fandom comparison

obligatory disclaimer: not up-to-date with either, lost track of SU at some point before “MindfuI Education” and have yet to read Act 6 of Homestuck. a majority of what I remember about both at this point is probably via dashboard osmosis & scattered chats. but based on that!

better protagonist: hmmmmm see neither Steven nor John stick out to me much, they’re both well-written characters and all but I can’t say either compels me strongly. arguably both stories have more of an ensemble cast to the point where “protagonist” is more of a “here’s the person you probably got most familiar with first” code than an actual fitting label.

for the sake of simplicity though I’ll stick with those two. as for who makes a better protagonist I’d have to say Steven, with him discovering the world of the gems alongside viewers for better or for worse and overall seeming to have a more clearly-defined character arc that hinges on self-discovery and a major flaw of his own (wanting to help everyone always & thinking his way of helping is objectively best).

John gets some personal favoritism points though because he’s flat-out fun to read (as is everyone in home stuck, really). I can’t really say I’d be too hyped about an episode where Steven is alone in his room and plays a game.

better villain: Vriska gaytog has been using Yellow Diamond and Lord English as the designated villain and I’ll copy. since I have yet to properly meet Caliborn I can only really judge local cue ball skeleman based on ominous foreshadowing, so my vote’s for Yellow Diamond. that said, destroyer of the motherfucking space-time continuum or however it goes is a very high bar.

better plot: based ONLY on what I’ve watched/read (see disclaimer above), Homestuck. sorry, stets - without getting too deep into the “filler” discourse, there’s a reason I kinda slowly lost interest in the show, whereas I can’t remember being flat-out uninterested in a single pesterlog.

of course, by virtue of actually being planned in advance and from what I see of the homestuck anime’s… lukewarm reception, I’m sure SU takes the gold here in the long run. it’s certainly less convoluted and probably fits nicer into a traditional narrative structure. but man, the banter in Homestuck can make you forget you’re not reading legitimate chatlogs between real people while also moving along the plot, and I gotta give it endless props for that.

better cinematography setup: you know what? I’m cheating and changing this to be a general question about how the narrative is conveyed in its given format, because “cinematography” is pretty much exclusive to film/television. so… better composition, I guess, if we’re being all artsy, which I am because I’ve been going over this stuff all semester :V

on one hand I think Steven Universe can be held back by its 11-minute (or 22-minute for the two-parters) format, and don’t get me started on the scheduling disaster that is stevenbombs. too much of a good thing. >8,T within the episodes I’m not always a fan of the scene setup and feel there could be a lot more angle variation than there is, but to its credit when the show messes with fun dramatic angle shit it pulls it off brilliantly.

Homestuck, meanwhile… is a sprite comic with a shitton of text tacked on. and flash animations that 9/10 times require an epilepsy warning. and, uh, supplementary shitedits? it’s hardly the most intuitive format to get into and the length is daunting as shit, never mind the acts and subacts and sub-subacts etc. however, it makes use of its convoluted format to the fullest, which I can definitely appreciate. people who have a lot more thoughts on the whole webcomic phenomenon can probably articulate this better but imo it’s just fucking cool.

SO BASICALLY if we put any given frame of SU and a Homestuck panel side by side, unless it’s like… a smear frame vs hero mode guest art, SU wins. but it’s a toss-up! we’re comparing apples to a gif of an exploding orange with jpeg artifacts in every vandalized frame. don’t make me pick one. >:V

more fun: Homestuck, for sure. see above points about character banter. not that I don’t(/didn’t) get any enjoyment from SU, but I’m not gonna lie, half the fun of that was the fandom. I’m… less inclined to rewatch any given episode, especially nowadays, than I am to pick a random log and go.

more thought-provoking: see now I was almost tempted to give this to Homestuck by default because it requires so much sleuthing just to get through on a first read, but for me personally? gotta be Steven Universe, moreso in the characterization than plot department. not that both stories don’t have realistic characters worth every deep analysis the fandom has provided and then some, but I kiiiiiiinda get the sense people might be Reaching when I read, say, an analysis of one of the trolls who doesn’t get much development beyond their gimmick (hello, like 10/12 players of the alpha troll crew, all of whom I have yet to meet but Still). I don’t get that from SU character analyses, generally. if I agree, ofc :P

more relaxing: fucking neither honestly, I don’t watch/read stuff to relax I consume media to WIN. by which I mean my idea of relaxing with media tends to involve Video Gaem if not spacing out in front of a firealpaca canvas but I digress.

I definitely remember at least a few occasions of reading random HS scenes & watching various SU clips (on separate days) while procrastinating hardcore on schoolwork? but I’ll watch paint dry sooner than do my damn schoolwork so it doesn’t qualify, huh. tl;dr another toss-up because I suck

more consuming: hell if I know, I tend to be pretty all or nothing when it comes to watching/reading stuff so 8V I think I’m generally more engaged with homestuck nowadays but I also haven’t y’know Finished It so. eh

favorite: Episode 413: Ace Stares Blankly at Their Flashing Cursor for 20 Minutes Before Deciding They’re Indecisive and Going to Joke About It Instead of Answering The Damn Question

#phyllored #ace answers #THIS GOT LONG but it was fun >8Dc thank!#fandom comparison #sentient space rocks #...shit what was my HS talk tag. I know I /had/ one despite not talking hamsteak much on my blog but er. whoops

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