#and it's true that their arc hits a lot of beats from such stories with the people involved being having nothing in common anymore
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Anasai of Ryddingwood.
Each of her poems was written as an elegy. This was for her father. She left instructions; it can be read, but should not be spoken out loud, except when it was right to do so. She did not explain when it would be right to do so.
#The wheel of time#wot edit#wot on prime#moiraine damodred#lan mandragoran#wot book spoilers#minor spoiler though#the poem in itself tells nothing#the poet was literally one of the clues given by the official account to unlock a promo picture#married to death#mine: wot#mygifs#still it's a very interesting poem in this context and I've been wanting to use it for ages#I remember seeing the quotes from Rosamund Pike about the loss of the OP being like the loss of a child#and it's true that their arc hits a lot of beats from such stories with the people involved being having nothing in common anymore#the bond was a bridge between them#now it's an absence between them#they have different ways of dealing with that loss and those ways happen to break them even further apart#Moiraine wants him to move on without her#Lan wants her to talk to him#they aren't compatible#the arc gets an interesting conclusion in the sense that their conflict doesn't so much resolve as it is stitched#Moiraine does not talk to Lan any more than she does to Siuan#and Lan very much cannot move on from her#but Moiraine accepts that he will stick with her whatever happens#and Lan accepts that Moiraine will not tell him everything#their bond is restored but the fractures remain#they don't change but they accept they won't always be able to understand each other#I do like that the show made a point this was a choice to renew their vows too#this arc was a platonic feast I tell you
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Let's talk about Akane's overprotection of Aoi and the dangers of not properly setting up a narrative tone.
We are told that Akane stalks Aoi because guys have been trying to force her into a relationship for years, so he protects her by beating up anyone who approaches. Nene and Kou are understandably horrified by this.
But in the very next page, Aidairo hit us with this tone switch:
What Akane is saying is contradictory to the violent and possessive narrative that was shown during his introduction, to this yandere role he played the entire chapter, but the manga is trying to convey that we should take him seriously here. Even the lighting and composition are the ones used when characters are vulnerable and Aidairo wants to show that what they feel is real.
It's strange...
Being possessive is never framed as something that leaves other characters in awe, just compare Akane's melancholic and peaceful gaze to the creepy tone used when Kou and Hanako have their "you are possessive" moment.
Both Kou and Hanako hate that part of themselves, Kou even rejects it, but it's still clear the rejection doesn't make him any less possessive. Both want to be dependable, they want to be the only choice, no one else is acceptable. It's a selfish feeling. Being 'the most important person' is more important than the joy of the person they want to help (Kou's wish is Mitsuba needing him, instead of Mitsuba happy as a human. Hanako wants to be the one to save Nene, the idea of Nene being saved by someone else does not satisfy him even if it would make her happy and safe)
So this isn't a "Akane is lying to himself" or a "he is delusional" case.
The narrative, which had presented Akane as someone violent and obsessive, wants us to believe his claim "I will protect Ao-chan... Even if she never looks my way" is not only what Akane believes to be true, but also something admirable. A sentiment Nene craves directed her way, claiming to be 'a little jealous' of Aoi, despite calling Akane scary a single page ago.
Let's rewind to see how we got here.
Akane and Aoi's stories suffer from being mostly given to us in gags for a good chunk of the manga, as they are not very relevant in the early arcs, but the crumbs come together after their confrontation in chapter 69.
Why is Akane stalking Aoi? Because he worries about her. Not about someone stealing her necessarily, but about her being hurt or forced into situations she is uncomfortable with.
They are very codependent. They have been for years.
We can see Akane being shocked at the sight of people bullying Aoi since they were kids, it isn't just 'boys who want to date her' that makes her uncomfortable. Jealous girls do too.
Even when Aoi is left alone, using clothes completely out of her cutesy style to attract less attention, and just living her life, she is still harassed.
Aoi's life is a nightmare, it straight up sucks. She hates that, and when Akane notices this discomfort, he hates that too.
He is far more protective than possessive, he doesn't care when people are touchy with Aoi as long as she welcomes the touch: Take Nene as an example.
Akane never touches Aoi at the start of the manga but Nene does, a lot. He never think "Nene is touching my Ao-chan! Unforguivable". "Maybe Ao-chan likes Nene more than me is not far!" or anything of sorts
Even when Aidairo uses the same over-the-top/creepy gag humor I personally find excessive, and Aoi straight up flirts with Nene, Akane's only thoughts about it are the usual "I love her so much"
When he does show dislike for Nene it's never because she is of value to Aoi. It's because of how dismissive Nene can be, not taking Aoi's safety seriously and easily excusing Hanako's actions.
We only see him be aggressive with Nene when Hanako possesses her and makes Aoi uncomfortable.
The problem here is the framing, the comedy focus. It's hard to take it seriously.
Everything about Akane's intro chapter is hard to take seriously. We are told he is "Hard working. Reliable. What a nice and sweet person."
But we aren't shown these honorable qualities much, not explicitly at least. The big panels, the main focus, is on his gag.
And his main joke is that he loves excessively, even for this school standard where everyone is weird (like Nene writing a self-ship fanfic with Teru) so he needs to be over the top, his behavior has to stand out!
How do they try to achieve this? Yandere jokes.
It is overplayed, they spend pages on it. WHOLE PAGES on it.
It is an old narrative trick to present a twist character as a comic relief to lower suspicion, to keep the more important characterization for after a reveal when they are oficially important, but framing all his actions as comedic and devoid of dept to make his reveal as No.1 more unexpected leaves him in a strange position: Akane is intended to be written as a protector but framed as a joke, to the point his introduction become the satire of a protector.
When he is revealed as the clock keeper and allowed to be given more focus, Aidairo try to explain his behavior and show signs of him being a genuinely caring and kind person, as the first part of his intro had promised.
But it's to late.
His crazy actions and anger issues is in most people's minds, a few lines can't erase pages and pages of his introduction as a yandere like archetype, so it's easy for first impression bias to come into play and interpret all his actions as a simple "He is obsessive." instead of trying to find dept or nuance to the established dependence he has on Aoi.
When we are shown that above wanting to date her, he just wants her to be safe and happy, it does not become clear. The reader needs to pay a lot of attention to small moments like these:
Which a casual reader likely won't. Most are reading for the toilet trio at this point in the manga.
This fumble on his character introduction makes it hard to know what should and shouldn't be taken seriously. Aidairo discarded the yandere narrative relatively quick (we haven't seen Akane's bat in ages) but this gag about being happy as long as Aoi is happy turned out to be important:
It was used to further contrast Aoi's and Akane's mentality on their big arc, and highlight how much nearly losing Aoi affected him.
So the only way we can tell what joke to take seriously cause it will be used to build up his character and what isn't important is hindsight.
I did not care about Aoi and Akane's relationship when I first read the manga, i went 'oh cool!' on their conflict, cause that was very well done, but since their characters were not well introduced, I did not notice a lot of the ideas being shown to me.
Akane is a sweet boy. That's his core, his consistency. Even with Aoi, being kind is the priority over being with her.
Let's compare him with Hanako, who is an openly possessive character, and see how they approach their love interests when they don't know if their love interest likes them back yet, and they aren't reduced to a gag (so we'll dismiss Akane being 'a yandere with a bat', and Hanako's joke of him being a tactless pervert, like peaking under Nene's skirt when her time was frozen)
(so pre-chapter 86 to Hanako and pre-chap 69 to Akane)
Hanako traps Nene, he will cling to her anytime he can, he cares about Nene and loves her dearly, he even says he "loves everything about her" but he is greedy for her attention, he is selfish, always trying to make her focus on him out of everyone in the room and keeping her in his hold, out of others reach. His unsubtle possessive nature is a charm of his, makes for an interesting character.
Akane has a different vibe to it. He doesn't have many serious moments with Aoi before their spotlight arc, unfortunately, but when he does, he focuses on reassuring her (even when her time is frozen and she can't hear him) and avoids touching her at best he can. He has known her for more than 10 years, but he doesn't act as if she belongs to him.
I am not saying Akane is not possessive of her, he is. But he tends to be more worried about her than anything.
Using hanako as the trademark of possessiveness again, check out these two scenes:
At the start of the manga Kou likes Nene, and Akane is under the impression Teru like Aoi, so both scenes follow the basic premise of "A know B has a crush on their crush, and they get possessive over a possible romantic rival being too close."
Hanako doesn't say anything, but his message is clear "She is mine."
Akane explicitly says he doesn't like Teru near Aoi but he doesn't try to remove Aoi from Teru or try to do anything violent. Why would he? Aoi is in no danger, nor is she uncomfortable, so he changes focus to the person who is troubled, awkwardly reassuring Teru that his distress is, in his personal opinion, stupid, so "chill bro".
He wasn't like that with Teru before.
He was so determined to stop the wedding he even rejected hanging out with Aoi, crying tears of blood and asking for her forgiveness in his mind but prioritizing not making her get together with Teru above her joy.
Is that because of his development? Yes! A big part is. Notice the way he treats his mental image as reality? That was his biggest flaw, he imposed his views on Aoi (the view being "everyone is stupid in love with Teru" in this case), and assumed what he believes is a universal truth, doing exactly what Aoi accused him of: Not seeing her, just an idea of her.
But the reason he went so crazy and determined, it's because Akane saw Teru as someone dangerous. Someone who would use Aoi. Hurt her. He believes he is protecting Aoi from the big bad president. A view that makes sense when we take into consideration both Aoi's history of being forced into relationships, and when we go back to their interaction.
Look at this and tell me this isn't a threat:
Teru acts as if he barely remembers her name, she is just 'that cute girl', mostly a tool for him to use against Akane.
When his view of Teru changes to someone kinder who genuinely cares about Aoi as a person, he no longer enters protective mode.
He is still bothered about the idea of Aoi being with someone else, he does noooot look pleased even with his fairy tale vision of a happy couple, but the way he treats this possible 'rivalry of love' when he does believe Teru loves her is so different from his "Don't get close to her!! I will NOT allow it!!" approach.
There is no insecure overthinking. No aggression. He is playful about it. He even teases Teru.
He just wants to focus on rescuing Aoi. A 'rivalry' isn't important. He needs her to be safe.
These two parts of Akane have been juggling for a long while.
But now, character focus is the priority, and I am thankful the damage is being undone, that Aidairo let Akane's love take up whole pages instead of small panels buried under pages of jokes.
Their codependence, no matter how many issues it has, and how it can sabotage them, is based on so much care for each other.
It's a shame I only believe Akane was sincere when he said he'll always be there to protect Aoi regardless if he 'gets to be with her', because of what we see later in the manga, not because of what had been set up in his intro.
#Every time i see the page of Akane gently cradling Aoi's face and crying over her being safe my heart break#tbhk#toilet bound hanako kun#jshk#jibaku shounen hanako kun#look at me trying to do a narrative structure analysis despite always failing lit class#aoi akane#akane aoi#aoikane#aoiaoi#long post#character analysis
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I Owe an Apology to Cherry Magic Thailand
This is me righting a wrong. A few weeks ago I wrote this post in response to an ask about Thai BL including what Thai BLs airing at the time I was enjoying the most; I listed Cooking Crush and Dead Friend Forever, which was true. I didn't list Cherry Magic Thailand, and the reason for that is the timing of that post coinciding with the very unfortunate Cherry Magic Thailand episode 8 which was a filler episode that made some really unfortunate choices. None of those choices affected the relationship writing or character arcs of the main characters, but the conflict was poorly written--it didn't fit well in the narrative, it didn't even really make sense, and it didn't land the way it was clearly meant to--and I was afraid that the writers of the show would not realize the really interesting things they had done with the main characters in the Thai adaptation and how that would have to change the way the story progressed in order to be consistent, and so I was ready to watch this show go off the rails. But happily, I was wrong, and instead we got an excellent episode 9 and 10, so I am here to publicly tell you:
Watch Cherry Magic (Thai adaptation)!
The one episode 8 misstep is worth living through for the greatness that is happening in this series.
If you're familiar with the source material, here are a few things that I absolutely LOVE the Thai adaptation is doing (very light spoilers, I kept the big stuff out so that you could read and still be pleasantly surprised if you decide to watch the show):
The "magic" is used in fun and clever ways that keep the show funny, interesting, and fresh
Achi [the Thai Adachi] is more self-actualized and self-driven from the get-go, and is more willing to fight for the relationship
Karan [the Thai Kurosawa] is even more of a simp, and is less outwardly perfect than in the Japanese live action, and is also a little hornier (though not as much as the anime version lol)
Both Achi and Karan have stronger character arcs in the Thai adaptation than Adachi and Kurosawa did in the Japanese live-action
Jinta and Min [the Thai version of Tsuge and Minato] are also really great; they're hitting a lot of the same beats but at different times, which makes their progression feel stronger, and there is less of an emphasis on the age difference between them than in the Japanese live action
Min also gets an arc with Rock [Rokkaku] that gives him more depth than in the Japanese live action
We get more of Jinta and Achi's friendship than we did with Adachi and Tsuge
Pai [Fujisaki in the Japanese adaptation] is a fujoshi, which is from the original manga, but the show is still doing something really interesting with her as (I think?) a nod to Fujisaki in the Japanese live action being on the aro/ace spectrum
They have done a great job making the show feel Thai (e.g. including Thai cultural festivals, changing the scarf to an umbrella, adjusting the humour)
There is a kiss!
Anyway. I'm really enjoying it, and it's worth fighting past the annoyance of needing a VPN set to Thailand and waiting an extra day in order to access the show on VIU's website.
#cherry magic thailand#cherry magic#30 sai made doutei dato mahoutsukai ni nareru rashii#bl meta#typed so that I can stop thinking it
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Hiii Shan,
I cannot remember for the life of me if I asked you about it or not and tumblr search does not help. I've been listening to the @the-conversation-pod round-up ep and apart from making me burst out laughing in public transport, it got me thinking about 'I Cannot Reach You' and the friends-to-lovers trope. Have you ever listed your fav dramas that use it? If not, can I ask for one pretty pretty please?
Thank you for listening to the @the-conversation-pod! And this is such a good question, because friends to lovers is actually a hard trope to get right and often isn't executed that well. It's also a term that is often misapplied to mean something more like friendly to lovers, aka a romance that starts out with the main pair meeting and keeping things platonic for awhile before they escalate to romance.
A true execution of the friends to lovers trope in its purest form is a relationship change narrative, and that requires an established and important friendship, a major transition in the way both members of the pair view each other, and most importantly, lots of angst. If there's no serious anxiety and fear about the changing feelings and losing the friendship present in the narrative, it's not actually friends to lovers, it's just a natural romantic relationship progression. So something like Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo, while a great story about a pair of college students who establish a friendship before eventually realizing they like each other, is not really a FTL as defined here. And my beloved Sing My Crush doesn't qualify either, because romantic feelings were present the entire time, just suppressed.
So with those parameters set, there are only a handful of dramas I think have done this really well. Onto the list:
I Cannot Reach You
You already mentioned this one, so let me just reiterate what I said on the podcast: it's the best friends to lovers bl ever made. This story absolutely nails the relationship change arc and puts us in Kakeru's shoes as he realizes his best friend since childhood 1) is gay and 2) has developed feelings for him, and takes us along for the ride as he decides what he wants to do with that. Yamato is the absolute picture of tortured angst and the whole thing is excruciating in the best way, because it makes the payoff so very sweet.
Fight For My Way
I am pretty sure I have recommended this show to you before, and I will keep right on doing it because it's a fantastic romcom and my favorite friends to lovers drama of all time. This one is heavier on the comedy beats, but still gets to the heart of the fear and anxiety, and also goes deep on how hard it is when one of the friends clues into their feelings much sooner than the other and hangs in as a loyal friend while nursing their wounded heart in private. Watching Dong Man finally figure out what the hell is going on and catch up to Ae Ra was one of the greatest pleasures of my years of drama watching.
Theory of Love
I said what I said and I meant it! This drama is controversial because it hits the angst really hard and pushes the characters to some ugly places and some people just can't deal, but it's such an authentic portrayal of how much it hurts to be in love with your oblivious friend, and how much we hurt ourselves by not being honest about our feelings in a misguided attempt to protect the relationship we already have. I love it dearly and will defend it to anyone.
Romance Is A Bonus Book
A bit on the lighter side, watching this drama is like curling up on the couch in a cozy sweater with your favorite book and a cup of tea. It manages to both take the relationship arc seriously while never once making you doubt that these friends will be okay, because they are truly ride or die. There is also an age gap at play here, so we have the added bonus of watching Dan Yi wrestle with her changing feelings for her best friend that she has always thought of as a little brother. I will never forget her staring into the mirror to practice telling Eun Ho "I don't see you as a man" and getting increasingly desperate as she realizes that is no longer true. *chef's kiss*
My Only 12%
See-iw and Cake, my beloveds! I love this pair a lot, and think this drama is a fantastic example of how powerful the friends to lovers trope can be when combined with a queer awakening and the added layer of fear that brings to the story in a non-bubble show. The arc of their close childhood friendship morphing through time, separation, and changing identities is so so good. This one comes with a caveat because the last two episodes of the show are abruptly bad and weird (New Siwaj *shakes fist*) but happily, the FTL arc is already complete by then and none of the nonsense messes with the couple.
Hospital Playlist
I know you know this one, but I cannot possibly finish this list without talking about Ik Jun and Song Hwa. This is such a slooooooooooow burn that plays out over 24 episodes, and it's brilliantly done. What I like most about this take on the trope is how mature and adult it is; these two are 40 year old booked and busy professionals, and they also value their friendship more than anything. I love that you get the whole arc of their relationship over 20 years as they meet, have initial sparks, don't get together for reasons, genuinely settle into a platonic friendship and date and even marry other people, and then realize their feelings are changing again later in life. The payoff after all this time and patience and quiet yearning is so beautifully earned.
#i cannot reach you#fight for my way#theory of love#romance is a bonus book#my only 12%#hospital playlist#friends to lovers#shan recommends#shan answers
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One final Never Have I Ever love triangle thematic analysis
I've said this in one of my posts before, but the narrative is always going to favor what is best for Devi. A lot of what makes this show so juicy to dive into is because so much of its meaning is rooted in symbolism and higher concepts, not just the individual interactions you're looking at onscreen!
I think that's what doesn't work for some (not all) pro-Dxton anti-Ben folks. They see Paxton being respectful and kind to Devi, they see that he's the attractive object of her desire from day 1, and they see that the two of them genuinely do help each other in certain ways. But when these same people look at Benvi, they only see Ben making obnoxious comments to Devi (+ others), they see childish behavior and mistakes being made, and they see them frequently butting heads due to their shared competitive nature.
And honestly? I get it. These conclusions are easy to come to when you're looking at the surface, but they don't take into account the full story that's being told.
Let's get into it. 😎👇
So I mentioned earlier the idea of what is best for Devi. Not what is best for any regular person out there -- what is best for Devi Vishwakumar! Our girl expresses in no uncertain terms that she enjoys her hypercompetitive rivalry-turned-bond with Ben ("Ben's smart and we talk- mostly argue- for hours!" // "I don't want to break up with Ben. He really pushes me.") The fact that they fight and compete is not a detriment to their compatibility, it is actually the thing that makes him most desirable in her mind. She would not have wanted to be with him in the first place if this were not true. Their sharp-tongued communication style may not be the standard picture of a 'healthy' relationship for most people, but, well. Devi and Ben are far from most people.
Devi is an incredibly emotional, dynamic person who's always searching for another high. The competitive nature of her relationship with Ben is enough to satisfy her itch for novelty/excitement (her differences with Paxton don't hit this box), yet Ben's presence also provides a comforting long-term consistency in her life. He's seen the very best and the very worst of her and he always comes back. He frequently brings Devi back to herself, too, when she loses sight of what matters (friendships, family, sense of self, her goals, etc).
Then there's the dream vs. reality dichotomy that very much applies to this love triangle. Simple as it may be, it's accurate. I believe it was built that way on purpose because of how well it reflects Devi's relationships to Mohan and Nalini, which is the beating heart of what NHIE is all about. One (Mo/Pax) is more outwardly palatable than the other and provides an easygoing, self-soothing escapism that she needs in order to work through her grief. This person represents youth and the rose-colored past; Devi's tendency to idealize and indulge. The other person (Nal/Ben) is sharper around the edges, a bit harder to swallow, but pushes Devi to do better and supplies the support she needs. This person represents Devi's grounded reality; her time in the present and the woman she is growing into.
They are both important pieces of Devi's journey, but the themes of past vs. present speak for themselves. The past is something we keep in our heart; in this case, it's someone who has impacted us and we'll always carry with us -- but the ultimate goal is to move forward from that. The central relationship of Never Have I Ever is that of Devi & Nalini as they heal and grow together. In terms of Devi's romantic life (which is what this analysis is about), her relationship with Ben is the one that more closely shadows the series arc between her & Nalini.
I'd like to address some things by the individual season now. One of my observations watching s1 for the first time was that Paxton was usually aligned with bad things in Devi's life, whereas Ben was aligned with the good. ie, Paxton was the root cause of Devi's falling out with Elfab and Nalini // Ben is the one who repaired those relationships. These things aren't Paxton's fault, nor do I place any blame on him. They're just subtle narrative choices that send up unspoken flags saying, hey look, this isn't the right person for her. This theme remained in s1 for the most part, but given that it was NHIE's debut season, it planted several seeds for me about who the boys were for Devi and how they fit into her world.
Season 2 does a lot to sort out the difference in what Devi thinks she wants (Paxton) and what her heart truly wants (Ben). Yes, I'm going there, too: head vs heart. Devi's underlying preference for Ben > Paxton should be easy to spot as early as 2x01 -- if only for the fact that Devi finally bagged the hot guy of her dreams, yet, choosing to be with him isn't easy for her. In fact, as both Devi and Eleanor confirm later, she wanted to choose Ben in the first place. Like... that's crazy when you think about it!!! Despite all the pieces falling into place for her and Paxton, and against her friends' shallow advice, she decides that she won't let go of Ben. Instead, she makes the misguided decision to date both. This isn't the kind of mistake she'll ever make again. It isn't Devi acting out because of Ben -- it signals a profound attachment to him when, all things considered, picking Paxton should have been a no brainer. That revealed everything I needed to know in order to understand that being with Paxton wasn't what she wanted in her heart of hearts.
Then, of course, 3x10 brings that all home with the stomach knots comparison. It tells us that since Devi and Paxton have moved into a place of friendship, with him no longer on a pedestal, those romantic feelings (particularly on her part) have dissipated. As a bonus, Devi even explicitly states that Paxton was a dream! Ben, however -- her flawed reality -- is the one who still gives her butterflies. This is the result of Devi's slow awakening to her true inner self, the Devi who values realness and authenticity and loving through imperfection. It's a step closer to the complete acceptance of herself. (Notice as well that right after this point, it becomes more undeniable than ever that Ben is who she wants to be with.)
As long as Paxton was a romantic possibility for Devi, their relationship was tied to her feelings of insecurity and inferiority. Again this is not Paxton's fault -- he assures her of the opposite all the time -- but this is Devi's story, and we are shown over and over that Devi fears true vulnerability with Paxton (both sexually and emotionally). Compare this to the way she has always felt confident, seen, driven, and unabashedly herself in her relationship with Ben, even when they were enemies. At a glance Devi may appear to act more immature in Ben's orbit, but the truth is that she grows with him more than anyone else (besides Nalini) thanks to Ben's penchant for encouraging accountability and showing her that actions can have consequences.
Anyway, TLDR version:
Paxton = Devi's youth, Mohan, grief, distraction, the past, idealism, and the head (constructed ideas).
Ben = Devi's future, Nalini, healing, confrontation, the present, reality, and the heart (authentic truths).
Never Have I Ever's romantic story structure rests on the premise of these symbolic definitions. They are gospel, and while the characters will grow and change and become better versions of themselves, they will do so within the lines that are already drawn. The lines exist for a reason -- they are a narrative tool! These characters cannot and should not 'grow out' of their roles because those roles are their identities within the show's framework. Character development isn't getting wasted, because the characters are exactly who they are meant to be right through to the end. They are symbols. If that's not your cup of tea then so be it! But there's nothing wrong with this writing style. In fact it's one of my personal favorites because everything is so neatly defined, yet fascinating to read into 🥰
The imperfect Ben had to be Devi's true love because her love interests are, in a way, reflections of herself. By no fault of his own, Devi always felt the need to be "perfect" for Paxton because that's how she viewed him; a false paragon of everything she wanted to be. That is the point of their story together. Her acceptance of the deep love she has for Ben (and Nalini!), despite his sometimes off-putting demeanor, is aligned with Devi's acceptance of her own imperfections -- that she is hot-headed, she can be self-absorbed, she makes mistakes -- but that she is also brilliant and driven and caring and radiant, and she is equally worthy of receiving the love that she has to offer others.
Narratively speaking, it was never truly a competition.
#never have i ever#benvi#devi vishwakumar#ben gross#ben x devi#devi x ben#bevi#nhie spoilers#nhie#analysis post#*success
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Here me out, I am not against a byler sex scene cause I don’t think it would be anything remotely explicit anyways so discussing it in depth for me feels pointless, but I have issues with tying a sex scene into the character arcs of mike and will as if it’s the only logical way to wrap up their story, only because had there not been a pandemic and multiple delays, byler would have happened while at least one of them was still a MINOR (maybe both I would have to do the math) and there’s no way the show woulda had a sex scene in those circumstances so it’s more likely to me that having a sex scene—while it would be interesting to go there now that the actors are older—it is not the end all be all for their character arcs and not something that *has* to happen for their end narrative to make sense, since it probably was not going to happen in the first place. So maybe let’s reframe the discussion away from “they have to bone or else all the build up and such makes no sense it’s the only way to end things because blah blah blah” and more as it would be fun/cool/hot to see something more adult now that they ARE actual adults, and it would feel satisfying to their story, but that’s it. cause some people are starting to feel so passionate about the idea that i am concerned they are going to make themselves very angry if there isn’t one …
Hmm, I kinda see your point, but I also feel like there's no real point in speculating about what might have happened in the hypothetical past where the pandemic and the strikes didn't happen because A) we don't live in that timeline lol, and B) the Duffers have always had the ending in the show in mind from the jump and many/most of the beats they knew they needed to hit along the way, BUT I personally don't think they've planned out literally every single detail from the start with no wiggle room.
The writers have said as much, like for example when they tweeted all the crazy things that were supposed to happen in season 2 like possessed Will killing Bob or El mercy killing her mom. They've definitely added and subtracted some things along the way.
Beyond that, regardless of the ages of Finn and Noah, it's not outlandish to argue that sex is still thematically connected to the characters and their arcs. Byler is a story about sexuality, of which sexual attraction and, well, sex play a huge role.
And ST is a coming-of-age show, of which sex often plays a huge role regardless of the age of the actors. During S3, the writers didn't shy away from including sexual themes such as Max's happy screams comment, and the actors were still minors then. Every season has progressed these themes further. The writers and filmmakers are the ones putting the sexual symbolism and jokes into the story, and we're just picking up what they're putting down, right?
Like, I don't think Murray using the phrase "experiment sexually" was accidental, nor was hosegate, nor was Mike checking out Will's ass lol. It's all fair game when you're telling this kind of story (as long as you're creating a safe and comfortable set, of course). Because of this, IMO, there's a high chance the ST writers would've still at least implied that Byler had sex even in your hypothetical scenario. There actually isn't a hard-and-fast rule that prevents actors who aren't legal adults yet from acting out light, non-explicit sex scenes.
You say that, "byler would have happened while at least one of them was still a MINOR (maybe both I would have to do the math) and there’s no way the show woulda had a sex scene in those circumstances," and I understand why you'd say this, but if you look closer at films and shows in media history, that's not always true. I can name several shows and films that call this theory into question.
While it's true that most modern shows with teen sex scenes do tend to also have adults already playing teenagers- there's a whole page on TV Tropes about this phenomenon called Dawson Casting- (and these tend to show a lot of skin, i.e. Euphoria), which makes it easier to explore sexual storylines, that's not the case across the board.
In your hypothetical scenario, the Byler sex scene obviously wouldn't have been an explicit one (and no one's saying it will absolutely be that way now either), but that doesn't really mean it wouldn't have existed in some form. There are many examples of coming-of-age shows/movies where the actors were technically still underage at the time of filming, and it showed them making out intensely before cutting out (and sex was implied) or it showed something slightly more (closer to Stancy) but still not anywhere near HBO-level.
McLovin's sex scene in Superbad comes to mind (his actor was still 17 at the time, and his mother had to watch while it was being filmed). Thora Birch was 16 when American Beauty was filmed. More recently, there was the Jevon sex scene in Chucky this season. Devon's actor recently turned 18, but Jake's actor is still 17. And yet the season was non-subtly building up to the scene, it was 100% tastefully done, and it cut away before anything super specific happened.
Now that both Finn and Noah ARE adults, and we know there will definitely be a time jump, this hypothetical is extra meaningless. And if the Duffers want to go further and bolder with a Byler sex scene, they can, even if this wasn't the original plan. And there's lots of brilliant analysis that argues the Duffers have been planting the seeds for a while for at least some kind of sexual resolution.
But your assertion that, "some people are starting to feel so passionate about the idea that i am concerned they are going to make themselves very angry if there isn’t one" doesn't seem based in reality either. Spicy bylers might want a sex scene, and many might believe there at least will be something implied like Jancy, but I don't think anyone will actually be angry if there isn't one. Correct me if I'm wrong? I think most people are just happy there's a space to talk about Byler in unfiltered ways, to analyze the mature themes of the show, and also to have fun while doing so, especially since the season is still a ways away. It's not like people will actually fist fight the Duffers if Mike isn't moaning and giving Will backshots in S5 💀.
What do y'all think?
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Christina Posabule Headcanons and envisioned story arc (Long Post)
I really like Christina since she's sort of a blank slate character; we only get a little bit about her in the series. It means there's a lot of opportunity for fanfiction with her.
What we know is that she has a similar personality to Orel- sweet, naiive, innocent, a true follower of God.
We also see that her father beats her much like Orel's dad beats him. She's not as numb to it as Orel is, though, which we can see in how she reacts in the window compared to Orel who doesn’t react at all to it.
I'd assume both of their fathers blame them for their own mistakes, and neither of their fathers really love them.
Orel and Christina both have pretty miserable family lives, seeing as how a small religious dispute managed to destroy the relationship between two families who are just clones of each other, and Christina is seen playing catch with God, which is pretty depressing.
Another thing worth noting about Christina's family is that they don't care for Block at all, their counterpart to Shapey, and let Orel's family keep him, but Christina, much like Orel, loves Shapey and Block both.
What else... she ends up with Orel happily married in the end, and their bond is genuine and sweet, and I think she has a bit more of a rebelliousness to her at the start, since it's HER idea to sneak out, and it's her idea for Orel to say the debtor's prayer even when he has doubts about doing so, but at the same time she's still not as numb to everything as Orel is slowly becoming.
Ok so headcanons. First off that ending for Christina wouldn't hit as hard if Christina didn't also go through some shit, too, but it might be fun to explore how there's a portrait of Orel's parents in the end scene but not Christina's, wouldn't it? I'm not sure how I would approach that yet.
I see a lot of people say that Christina's mother would be the abuser to her instead of her father, since it's genderbent and in a Christian family, gender roles are emphasized a lot.
I saw one piece of fanart that was pretty neat where they proposed the idea that Christina's Nature incident would be with her mother in the kitchen, where she gets attacked by her (accidentally) with a knife, since that would be the feminine equivalent to a gun. Which is a fun spin on it.
It wouldn't really make sense for Christina's dad, Art, to take her on a hunting trip when it is meant to be a father/son thing, and not really something you'd do with a daughter, especially as a crazy Christian.
Christina probably wouldn't have super protective parents, to be honest, seeing as how they didn't care at all about her little brother, but I do see her life as being a bit more sheltered for her, simply because she's a girl and one of two children. She'd still be allowed to go outside and do whatever; her parents wouldn't always be paying attention to what she is doing, only getting angry after she makes a mistake that interferes with their lives or appearance as "good" parents.
She'd be held to a different standard as a girl, and so there'd be different lessons to learn as one, and the hypocrisy of what is expected from a woman/girl can be found in that. I think her dad would still teach her the lessons, to satirize how men determine what women are supposed to do/be like.
I still like her Nature incident occurring with her mother.
Poppit would still be emotionally distant from Christina as afore mentioned. Art is the one telling Christina things about being a woman, about being a good Christian, but Poppit would be the one showing her how to cook and how to be a good housewife, and the like, and from that Christina would see glimpses of Poppit's own true nature, though Poppit is never directly physically abusive of her, and just neglectful and unhappy with her marriage. Her husband is an alcoholic and it is to be assumed that she, like Bloberta, also quit drinking after introducing him to alcohol.
However it is fun to picture Poppit as being more like Clay than Art is. While Art and Clay both drink and act similarly, perhaps Art is the one to pull Poppit into marriage rather than Poppit doing so to him? That might be a fun twist. It could be that he was already drinking before he met her and she agreed to marry him after being sort of manipulated into it. She quit drinking after seeing how it made Art act. I think it might be interesting if Poppit is secretly in charge of the family, with Art being actually submissive to her? It would make both of their words about what a woman SHOULD be like hypocritical as the husband is submissive to the wife in this family.
As for why Art beats Christina, I think it’s because both parents are superficial people who want their daughter to look like she is a certain way, and with the idea proposed that Poppit is actually in control, maybe she asks him to since that's his job as the father? It could be related to her backstory, which I'll get into later.
So with this in mind maybe Poppit is the actual narcissist between the two of them, while also being emotionally distant and OCD. I like to think she’d be superficial a lot like Clay is and her tidiness is of course to maintain an image of someone put together when she really isn’t.
She holds the fact that she quit drinking over Art and has a slight superiority complex about it, with a similar backstory to Clay in being shown affection by one parent, and none by the other, with the added detail of having siblings who she was forced to compete with for the affections of the less loving parent (likely her father) resulting in a weird Electra complex of sorts. And maybe she was beaten by her father which is why she has Art do the same to Christina.
I'm not sure precisely what breaks Poppit besides that she is stuck in an unhappy marriage and feels like she has lost control of her life as a result, so she's having an affair with someone, which is where Block comes from, and is pretty neglectful of Christina, having Art pay more attention to her while she tidies up the house to ignore any nagging thoughts in her head since she can't touch alcohol anymore.
Perhaps Christina didn’t have much of a reputation for getting into trouble like Orel does and so it stands out when some particular incident happens that makes Poppit decide to take action with her daughter finally and give her attention for once. All the while she might return to drinking after some other shit happens.
so now Christina has twice the problem Orel did and this builds into her starting to see that maybe there’s something not normal about her life, maybe both her parents aren’t all that great, but for now she still loves them and she does what she can to please them.
another incident occurs and Christina has a grounded arc. I saw a concept of her saying “my body is a temple” which is a fun play on it that I like. Then that leads into her nature arc with Poppit where she finally learns her mother’s true nature and grows to hate her.
instead of becoming numb, Christina would be scared and choose to run away from home and meet Orel again, only to learn that Orel also went through a similar traumatic event, yet despite it, acts just the same around her. She ends up returning home because she regrets running off but as both children start their dumb little emo phase they’d start visiting each other a lot more often in secret and view the other as someone to take refuge in. He’d help her be less afraid of her parents as he and her grew more cynical, and their relationship would have its ups and downs but both are faithful to each other through it all and they always love each other deeply.
I also like to imagine Orel would introduce her to Stephanie during this little shared emo phase because that would be cute.
I'm going to stop there because otherwise I'll keep going all day, but this is pretty underdeveloped and needs some work. Lots of holes to fill in with this story arc, refining needs to be done, but that's kind of my basic idea. Once it IS properly fleshed out, I might start writing it as a script or a comic or something IDK. Feel free to leave feedback or ideas and thanks for sitting through all of that.
#christina posabule#moral orel#headcanons#art posabule#block posabule#orel puppington#orel x christina#clay puppington#stephanie putty#bloberta puppington#is there even a word for headcanoning a story arc#idek dude.#moralton
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A thread of stuff I remember from Brian Ruckley's IDW2 retrospective panel from TFNation this weekend, in no particular order:
• Brian scoured the TFwiki for all the female TFs that he could use; he was very clear on presenting them as a normal part of TF society from the start, no weird 'explanations' needed
• He planned out the main story beats he wanted to hit in his head, but didn't make extensive notes or anything
• If it hadn't been truncated, the Exarchon plotline would have - pending Hasbro approval - dealt with the Quintessons and their region of space, cut off from the rest of the universe. They wouldn't have been involved with Cybertron's origins
• He praised the work of all the artists but in particular Anna Malkova, who he considered the best thing to come out of IDW2 and particularly impressive for moving from artwork to comic storytelling
• Flamewar was an obvious favourite, one of many characters without much existing fiction which allowed for more freedom
• One of the main themes of the series was trauma, embodied in characters like Cyclonus and his ghosts
• Geomotus and others showed that neurodivergence exists in Cybertronians; he wanted to show that there was a variety of ways in which characters could see the world
• The Technobots annual was condensed down from a full story arc which would have featured the Terrorcons; the Technos were chosen as Brian's favourite combiner team
• He didn't want loads of combiners running around too soon, hence the Enigma being thrown into the sea; it would have resurfaced eventually
• He considered one of his biggest weaknesses to be that he didn't make individual issues read as well on their own rather than 'in the trade'; he hoped that he had gotten better at it as the series went on
• Favourite TF character types included female transformers and teleporters; he wanted Skywarp to be a trickster-type figure
• As the series went on Starscream would have remained neither a true Decepticon nor in any way an Autobot, trusted by no one and yet charming/threatening/maneuvering them into keeping him around
• A continuing theme would be the gap between how Cybertronians see themselves and how other species view them; organic planets would consider these giant robots terrifying
• He doesn't consider himself good at big shock reveals and doesn't like bait-and-switches, so tried not to do either during the series
• Despite the long-form storytelling aspect of the book, his personal favourite issues were the one-shots that divided each story arc, like Wheeljack on the moon
• The senate attack that kicked off the war in earnest was originally meant to come earlier in the series
• He didn't originally know that the continuity was being rebooted when he was asked to pitch for a TF comic; there was a lot of back-and-forth at the start as Hasbro kept adding requests
• The series would have gotten to humans eventually, although Brian wanted the TFs to encounter them already in space rather than on Earth
• He enjoys writing comics more than novels, and would happily do only the former if given the chance
• He needed a science-related TF to be the initial murder victim; he sent a shortlist of names to be approved and they chose Brainstorm
• Hasbro did not want too many original characters created for the series; the ones he invented were all done so because they were integral to the narrative
• Once they were told about the license being lost, Brian made a conscious decision not to kill a bunch of characters off before the end; he thinks that it would be too cynical, and that deaths have to serve a contextual and narrative purpose to be meaningful. He also recognises that every character is someone's favourite, and now they can imagine the adventures they might have in the future
All in all, a really interesting and honest panel! Thanks to Brian and all the artists for my favourite TF continuity ever; RIP IDW2
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I’m so SAD. And the thing is that Yes RT as a Company was not fair to many of its employees. But what the people who are cheering the ending of it don’t seem to grasp is that it was still a job. Being able to Leave a bad company is so different from no longer having a job at all bad or not. My mother recently went through the same thing and I’ve been very stressed about money and trying to figure out transport bc she’s my ride as I wait to get my license (disability issues catching up to me darn these eyes)
And then I haven’t seen it a lot thankfully but people who are happy with the idea of a rwby reboot? Taking out all the emotional connections we are NINE SEASONS into a story that when we left it was in its FINAL ARC. I don’t have a source so take this with a grain of salt but I swear I remember Miles or Kerry saying that rwby was pronouns a 12 volume show to get it to its end when someone asked how long it was gonna be. This was way way back so I apologize if this isn’t true or real. But even without that v9 left us with a clear Location and we had Goals and new lore to implement. If not three more volumes at lease two or a SUPWR long V10.
The idea of Starting Over makes no sense. There is nothing to reboot bc it’s not finished. Had we all the money and time in the world I could MAYBE see volumes 1 and 2 getting an update and polish, combining the short two part episodes into one and ADDING some team bonding stuff. But post V3 when all the bigger stuff hits the scene (not to mention all the lovely slowly building stuff from V1 and 2 that we see carried throughout) rebooting is Stupid. Bc we still wouldn’t have an ending. CRWBY through the ages knew where the story was going. They have an ending. They know the beats they want carried out. I can’t imagine any other voice actors for the girls OR REN FOR THAT MATTER MONTS VISION MY ASS HIS FUCKING BROTHER JUST LOST THE RIGHTS TO LITERALLY CARRY MONTY IN REN it makes me so mad. The idea that a company with enough money for WB to accept would turn it into some Flashy Fight Scenes and snappy one liner thing when rwby has always been about love and community and determination and spirit.
V4 felt different bc Monty was gone. Not because the show Fell Off. it has its slow parts like any show ever animated or otherwise. But the idea of someone else Taking it and Turning it into something else. Where’s Monty’s vision in that if the ppl close to him never get to touch his project again? The people who made rwby what it is being locked out of it and having to see someone else play their character or change completely the path it was on?
People lost their jobs on a days notice and a passion project that spanned ten years which had love for Monty in each and every volume might never get to be finished. Or worse will turn into something different completely. And that is why I’m sad.
I hate this timeline.
I have hope that things will work out but I have to admit that hope is thin.
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with only three episodes left, what do you think is in store for the rest of the volume? personally, i’m having trouble imagining a solid resolution fitting into such a small window. not that i doubt there’s a way to end this volume succinctly—rwby is always throwing curveballs i could’ve never predicted hitting, which i love—but i suppose the hangnail in resolution’s cuticle is that jrwby are all finally facing their lifelong, beaten-in worldview being turned on its head and that seems like the kind of thing (on top of neo’s untold ever after story) that needs more time to be resolved. in which case, ig we’re not looking at a clean wrap up? do you think they end this volume ascending the ever after? escaping back to remnant? (i ask those two questions separately bc i wanna say they might have different answers lol)
as a point of comparison, here’s everything (not necessarily in chronological order) that happened in the last three episodes of V8:
1 - ironwood vs everyone beat down
2 - winter heel face turn completed
3 - met ambrosius + staff of creation rules
4 - magic rules lawyered penny into a flesh body to save her from the virus with a side dish of horrible body horror robot body death scene and holy shit atlas is FALLING.
5 - creation of whacky portals for evacuation to vacuo
6 - emergency evacuation broadcast CANCELLED!
7 - cinder remembers the power of friendship and uses it for evil
8 - cinder recovered the lamp and scored the password and used the last question to spy on team oz which is fucking hysterical by the way, so she knows the entire plan
9 - YANG DIES?
10 - ruby and blake fall too. and neo
11 - the evacuation dumps everyone in a sandstorm so they can’t call for backup and also the exit is one-way (“oh dear. ambrosius \:” love that enthusiasm sir)
12 - HARRIET TRIES TO NUKE MANTLE?
13 - ironwood murders jacques
14 - eleventh hour harriet heel face turn also zeki dies because atlesian tech goons thought the nuke needed to be plugged into the IOT for some reason god bless
15 - PENNY???
16 - and winter becomes the winter maiden
17 - TEAM RWBY TOTAL PARTY KILL!!
18 - jaune also
19 - salem and cinder playing chicken over who is going to blink first like they don’t both already know that it’s going to be salem
20 - ATLAS OBLITERATED FOREVER
that’s a lot of things!
now, it’s a lot easier to set up and execute a dense, tightly-paced climactic spiral of disaster than bring a lot of interconnected emotional crises to satisfying resolution in the same amount of runtime—but on the other hand, V9 has a lot less going on. it doesn’t FEEL that way because the emotional development has been so rich and done so, so well, but there honestly are not that many narrative threads to tie off. basically, the big ones are:
1 - ruby’s emotional crisis
2 - jaune’s corruption
3 - neo
4 - how do we get home?
5 - what do we do once we get there?
compared to the sheer amount of dominoes V8 had to juggle, handling this stuff is a nice little walk.
the key thing to remember—& this has been true for every one of rwby’s climactic sequences and also counts as writing advice—is that none of these major threads are truly discrete. they’re all interwoven with each other and bound together with all the smaller filaments (like the cat’s arc or little’s arc or the framing device of ‘the girl who fell through the world’ and what really went down with alyx and the tree), so you don’t have to resolve them separately and indeed you can’t because it all has to happen at once. what this means, from a writing standpoint, is you layer up and make every scene work towards the resolution of two or three major threads and however many minor filaments you can fit comfortably so that everything is doing work for everything else. if you’re efficient you don’t need a lot of time to pull off a stunning climactic sequence, and efficiency is something rwby has always been very, very good at. this is true even of V1 even though V1 feels laughably inefficient by the standards of V8; which is to say, they started off good and got much better.
the other piece to bear in mind is that V9 is not meant to be self-contained; it is not a character-focused breather volume to let the protagonists heal up before returning to remnant to carry on as they were, it is The Answer. when rwbyjn go home they are not going to return to the story they fell out of at the end of V8. that story is OVER. it ENDED. the final word was checkmate and the world they knew is GONE FOREVER. salem WON. the ever after is an epilogue to that story and the prologue for another; it isn’t building towards a resolution so much as it is building a hook.
(<- remember V3 “beginning of the end” and “end of the beginning”? this story-within-story device is something rwby has utilized before; this show is a singular contiguous narrative in the literal sense, but it’s structured as a trilogy.)
so V9 needs to be a satisfying farewell to the middle book and also make the case for continuing on to the third and final story—which very much works to its benefit here, because the sweeping emotional changes being developed actually SHOULDN’T be resolved. a clean wrap up would critically weaken the narrative structure. the immediate crises need to be realized—there must be a moment of peace, of closing one book and beginning the next; a hopeful glimpse of the story to come, of what it could be—and then they go home. and the new story begins.
in the figurative sense you could call it ascension. in the literal sense, no, i don’t think any of the remnant characters are going to ascend because i don’t think they can (frankly i’m bemused as to why so many people seem to believe otherwise; it seems to me that the cat has made it very clear that ascension is closed to non-afterans). but the idea of ascension? oh, yes, they’re carrying that forward with them.
as for whether they’ll return to remnant—yes. i think the probability that they don’t find their way home by episode ten is zero. how they return is an open question but also not a question at all, because the tree is the question and their answer is the door; this has been spelled out, explicitly, albeit in wonderlandish terms. what we don’t know yet is what this will look like, because the tree is also the blacksmith and the ever after runs on wonderland rules. it’s not going to be literal. (<- unless abstraction is less absurd than the literal option, which is possible given the likelihood that the ever after itself is fictional.)
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Today’s new Frontiers article from IGN is the one I’d most been hoping for - an interview with Ian that clears up his role working on this game
As I’ve said many times before, the job of “writer” can mean many different things in the world of video games. Sometimes they’re creatively responsible at a high level, but other times they’re just charged with filling in the dialogue for an adventure that already exists. Even in recent years on the Sonic series, Pontac and Graff have had more involvement in some stories than others, despite being credited as the writers for all of them. So the big question was always how much input Ian would have on Frontiers. Well, now we have an answer:
“With the other tie-in media, I’m the one to pitch the story, the characters, the themes, etc. With Sonic Frontiers, SEGA provided the story, backstory, plot beats, usable characters, and so on. So it was a very different approach to telling a Sonic story than what I’m used to.
“All that aside, it was a dream come true to work on a major Sonic titles like this, and an incredible learning experience. I hope everyone enjoys what I was able to bring to the table.”
This has me slightly disappointed on some level, as I really would like to see what Ian could do when given the reigns, but I get it. Video games have a ton of moving parts, and they need to budget out things like level art and character models ahead of time. You can’t always just let the writer come in and say they want to add more characters or plot beats, because that means more work for everyone else. And in a series like Sonic, the gameplay is going to come first, with a story conceived to fit the desired mechanics
That being said, other things in this interview do have me excited:
“Sonic, Tails and Amy embark for the Starfall Islands to investigate the disappearance of the Chaos Emeralds. Things take a turn for the dramatic immediately, and Sonic is left alone with a lot of questions. The story is his journey to uncover all the mysteries of the islands, rescue his friends, and discover how everything ties together.”
"’Melancholy’ is a good word for the story overall. Sonic’s indomitable spirit carries him throughout the adventure, and it’s what allows him to help each of his friends as they tackle their own personal challenges. Someone else you encounter will have their very identity shaped by their interactions with Sonic, which isn’t always a comfortable process. Then there’s the secrets of the Starfall Islands themselves and how the tragedies of the past have led to the adventure today. Sonic’s ‘never say die’ attitude is certainly put to the test.”
“For new players, I hope they enjoy their time with Sonic, get to know his friends, and are satisfied with the journey to uncover all the mysteries of the game. For veteran players, I hope they enjoy the individual character arcs and the threads I tried to weave between Sonic Frontiers and the rest of the Sonic Series.”
While it might not be a plot Ian came up with, it sounds like he may very well be the right man for the job with this one. We’ve known for a bit that the story would be more serious than what we got in the 2010s, with Ian comparing it to the games of the ‘00s and the IDW comics on the BumbleKast, but I’m very excited for Sonic Team to try telling a story like this again, and for Ian to be the one steering the characterization and writing the dialogue. (I do wonder if they decided to reach out to Ian specifically because of the tone shift.) He just gets the characters, being able to do both hard-hitting character drama and genuinely funny comedy with them, and it sounds like he has decent leeway on that front
(He also makes it sound like he had some involvement in figuring out the pacing of the story as development progressed, so it definitely doesn’t sound like he was just hired to translate an existing Japanese script. He has input, even if most of the big picture was decided on by other people.)
Like, I’d love to see Ian conceive a whole Sonic game story from scratch. But one of my favorite things he’s ever done, Archie Mega Man, is largely just Ian fleshing out the character work in a storyline that already existed. And that’s my favorite take on the Mega Man story! We’re not at the finish line yet with Frontiers, but Ian’s involvement here and the type of story they’re telling - one that seems to skew much more sincere than cynical - has me excited for the possibilities. Between this and the many hands-on previews saying the game is genuinely fun when it’s in your hands, I’d say I’m officially allowing myself to be excited for this
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To be honest I wasn't a huge fan of one of the gods or at least one of their messengers appearing to Aqua but this post changed my mind. Oshi no Ko is good at making you as the reader think you have enough of an overview of the characters and story to make accurate assumptions about their motivations and backstory, when in truth it over and over again hits you in the head with the knowledge that you don't know shit.
(Akane is by far the best example of this. She's incredible at profiling people/characters, but she's also a teenager with not enough life experience to recognize that her analysis will only scratch the surface of who she's looking at.)
A lot of who Ruby and Aqua are is hidden from the story deliberately for a very long time. We only get to know them at the end of their previous lives and beginning of their reincarnations, but there's constantly missing beats and puzzle pieces that recontextualize their behavior and motivations over and over again.
For example, Ruby only mentions offhandedly that Aqua changed after Ai's murder, but it's only when the theater play arc happens that the extent to Aqua's trauma and literal years of need for therapy is revealed. It takes even longer for the manga to reveal the deep seated loneliness and abandoned of Sarina, which in retrospective also heavily affects how Ruby's character is affected.
We are still in the process of finding out who Aqua and Ruby's parents actually were. The story clearly has just begun to scratch the surface of the iceberg and will probably lead to another layer of depth revealed once more of their father's character is shown.
So, who's to say that the overarching machinations aren't even more beyond all of these characters' knowledge? It's been made explicit that there's some form of divine intervention involved, but neither Aqua nor Ruby were the start of it (or necessarily even at the center of it.) They are simply two pawns that were put in place by a higher power that has yet to fully reveal its true motivations.
And even then, characters in this story lie all the time. They lie to others to protect themselves or those they care about, they lie to themselves and even allow themselves to be lied to. I'm really interested to see how much bigger the whole web of characters and connections really is.
#oshi no ko#oshi no ko spoilers#trying not to keep my hopes up but I've come around again to the way background info is revealed in drips and drops#truly the epitome of 'wow cute idol drama story' (actually dark supernatural mystery AND interpersonal drama with trauma up the wazoo)#meta
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I would love to hear your Indigo Disk thoughts
YES!!!!!!! 💎🐢💥 full disclosure I only just finished Indigo Disk's main storyline like....less than 24 hours ago so I am still RIDING HIGH FROM THE RUSH OF IT ALL. will probably be spoilers ahead, as a head's up:
first off I love that like. right off the bat youre getting hit with cyrano and cavell old man yaoi. busting out the cute little nicknames like HELLO!!! AND then you have geeta showing up and rika is there for no reason whatsoever and it's like. well ok i think they were having lesbian activities on the plane over you love to see it!
anyway setting wise, the Big Ol Blueberry is pretty fun! I love running around and the Synchro Machine is SUCH a ridiculously fun feature (FINALLY, TRUE GAMING: Dana can run around as a Ninetales and smack a big ball around.) I love all the Unova callbacks and I LOVE THE DIFFERENT CLUB ROOM LAYOUTS!! The monochrome one made me tear up and SEEING THE FUCKIGN. POKESTAR STUDIOS ENEMIES. IN THE FUTURISTIC ONE. MADE ME FEEL SOMETHING. pokestar studios my beloved i miss it sooo much 😭 My buddy Snap was talkin about how the Terarium really kind of lacks... yknow, landmarks and points of interest, though, and god I agree so hard. I love that Kitakami had its own little set of interesting features and places to go and use as landmarks and the Terariuam kind of. Doesn't really have those. It's a bit of a pain in the ass to navigate and easy to get lost but not in a fun way.... even though you have these little neat natural features like The Pride Rock and Chargestone Caves, I wish we coulda had a little bit more :( For such a widely used part of the school it doesn't feel very 'lived' in by the students there. It would've been fun to see more gathering places aside from the Very Sterile Outside Classrooms.....
The Area Zero Underdepths, though...hooouughhHHHhhh. I just. I really have to admire the fact that Indigo Disk said "ohhh you want answers?? you wanna know what's going on in this place? fuck you, youre gonna have MORE questions after this, and theyre gonna be even CRAZIER ones." YOU GO IN THAT HOLE AND LEARN NOTHING AND IM NOT EVEN MAD ABOUT IT. GO LOOK AT THE CRYSTAL TREE DOWN THIS RANDOM PATHWAY. i neeeed to make a terapagos post sometime and talk more about it i cannot stop thinking about this little freak. POKEMON THAT SCARE ME A LITTLE I MUST SAY. POKEMON I DO NOT FEEL IN CONTROL OF. i Know they didnt make its charged terastal form look like a dream catcher for no reason. I Know its Stellar Form Looking Like That isnt for no reason. I know its borderline dangerous power and THAT LITTLE STUNT IT PULLS. AT THE CRYSTAL POOL. THAT'S INDICATIVE OF SOMETHING I THINK. >when Terapagos's cry was the sound Terastalizing has been making all fucking game. SCREAMS.
also again oh my god if you beat the main indigo disk storyline go to the crystal pool right now GO. GO FEEL SOMETHING. GO!!!!
ok well that's. less about setting and more about story though huh. well!! story wise, absolutely loved it! I know there was a lot of apprehension when the DLCs got more properly announced and we found out they didnt really center on Our Dear Paldea Friends as scarvio proper did, and yeah I definitely can see why that's a frustration and a deterrent for some (and I'm soo so excited to hang out with Nemona and Arven and Penny in the epilogue next month....peach time (: ) but for me in the end I'm really just so enamored and delighted with all the new friends you get to make in the DLC and they more than carry that little narrative's arc on its own. The Elite 4 of the BB League are all GREAT, they got nonstop autistic girls out here in gen 9 (nemona, amarys, briar ?!??!) and it ROCKS. and i LOVE Carmine so much, everyone always wants mean rivals and mean women and folks cant even handle Carmine 🙄 you can tell she genuinely has such a big heart and cares about her friends and her brother!!! and Kieran wahhh wahh kieran my newest Little Guy ;____;.... he is SO fourteen and I did not expect to go into the DLC getting really invested in a new character's arc but it's just GOOD. He REALLY feels like a loose yugioh character in Indigo Disk, he's so angry and obsessed with victory and ultimately under it all still capable of so much kindness and regret and he's just GOOD. And his champion battle was terrifying and a BLAST!! THE MUSIC RULES. HE EVEN HAD INCINEROAR.
god and all the music in Indigo Disk was a banger. gen 9 music save me. gen 9 music. save me gen 9 music.
i'm SUPER hyped to do more BBQs with my bestie and do more postgame stuff with the "hanging out with Gym Leaders" thing and the Legendary hunting and such... lots more to roll around in and have a good time with. All in all had just a great time with it, I genuinely might put Violet as my favorite Pokemon game of all time at this point! I do grow very sad thinking about just how even more fantastic this game couldve been if it had 1-3 more years to cook properly though, like..god damn. I was getting some LAG on those cutscenes, and I know I made out pretty alright in the bugs department!!
but for now i'll just be thinking about the shit that happens at the crystal pool for the rest of my life. also Indigo Disk gave me the best possible trainer ID photo i never need to change it again
#TY FOR ASKING!!!! i do love talking pokemon especially scarvio stuff theres so much to unpack#and oh god i gotta talk about that fucking turtle#asks#anonymous#scarvio spoilers /#indigo disk spoilers /#pokemon chattering
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That was fun! ATLA:LA FULL SPOILER REVIEW
I do hope there’s a renewal. I think solid performances all around. Some clunkiness here and there in performance or execution of the story. But a really promising adaptation that did get better as the episodes progressed.
I do want to see where and how far this goes and I think 2 more seasons of this is not too much to ask.
If nothing else I wanna see the Zuko redemption arc bc he is definitely the stand out of the main cast. He really served up the complexity of Zuko’s character really well and his performance was very well done.
Gordon has a tricky job bc Aang has to juggle such heavy moral crises and his lack of acting experience shows in the more emotional moments. Like any time he has to cry, he hasn’t quite got the skill to summon tears on command so I know any time he does cry it’s probably eye drops. But I think his portrayal of Aang is a solid effort and he can only get better from here.
Ian Ousley was a well done Sokka. But I think he had, not an easy job, but the type of character and Sokka’s wit and sarcasm are a very common character style these days so he wouldn’t have been too strapped for inspiration or examples and probably had some room for adlibs. Again the emotional beats are where he needs improvement but I did enjoy his performance. (Again putting aside the questionable nature of his casting and idk which rumours are true)
Kiawentiio as Katara was a bit of a slow burner. Her performance was quite stiff in the beginning, like she hadn’t figured out how Katara worked just yet. She definitely improved as the episodes went by, bc she had more to do. She was more comfortable in her scenes and her line delivery had a more natural flow to them. I think she could stand to put even more emotion into how she walks and talks because Katara is such an emotional character whose happiness and anger are equally intense. Which makes her cold fury and control over water bending that much more potent by season 3. So I think she definitely has the most room to improve and really flourish and shine in a character like Katara.
I think Sunhyung Lee was great as Iroh and hit those emotional beats so well. It’s good to have experienced actors alongside these younger ones to round out the story and help bolster the performances of their younger scene partners.
There were certainly areas where the story felt flat or they didn’t take the time to set the scene before jumping into the action. That’s the unfortunate byproduct of an adaptation is knowing what to cut and what to keep. Not everything was ever going to make it bc that’s just not possible.
But ultimately I think this was a solid effort. I think they pulled in the most important story beats and sprinkled in all the classic fan favourite moments without it being too fan-service-y. What they achieved was quite commendable.
And the effects were so good. Like really well done visual effects.
I hope it gets renewed. I really enjoyed myself watching this and it made my heart so happy to experience.
I hear y’all are giving this the Ember Island Players treatment where a lot of you are meh while a small pocket are enjoying it. Idk I enjoyed it.
#avatar the last airbender live action#atla la spoilers#atla la#avatar the last Airbender spoilers#long post#atla:la review#review#spoilers#Ian Ousley#gordon cormier#kiawentiio#paul sun hyung lee#Dallas Liu
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AI, the Bachelor, and Basic Critical Reasoning
Reading about the importance of friction in AI (or the need for chutes to occasionally become ladders) reminded me, of course, of my favorite category of thing to talk about: reality dating shows, and specifically The Bachelor franchise. Could I make a comparison to healthcare and doctor’s Rx decision making processes and patients are deeply unaware of the factors at play behind what treatment they are prescribed (something which I have spent my whole career on)? Yes, I could, but this is my true passion so I’m writing about the bachelor. Healthcare and patient autonomy will just have to wait.
The Bachelor franchise appears to be an innocent dating show where people may or may not find true love, but it’s actually a carefully orchestrated production. The cast members are real people having authentic reactions, but the producers are the engineers behind the whole scenario. They put the cast members into scenarios they know are designed to provoke certain reactions, fulfilling the character beats that get hit every season: the early 1-1 recipient jealous that her boyfriend is talking to other girls, the girl asking if she can steal him for a second, the third contestant (and the bachelor’s actual favorite) in fantasy suite week telling the bachelor that she will leave if he has been intimate with the other contestants. In order to serve these story lines and the creation of easily recognizable characters -the mean girl, the girl-next-door, the “strong woman” - the contestants sentences are chopped up and remixed, scenes are shown out of order and without context, and music cues play a huge role to serve the audience something digestible out of thousands and thousands of hours of footage. Much like AI, this is in a lot of ways helpful. It smooths out the edges and allows us to simply sit on the chute and slide instead of awkwardly navigating a ladder.
However, much like a subscription that auto-renews without any comprehensible form of cancellation, these patterns in The Bachelor can be grating and offend our most basic critical reasoning skills. It’s physically painful to watch people being set up to fail over and over and being asked to simply suggest that it was a natural part of the process. Why was Madi Prewett made to stay in the same house during fantasy suite week (for the first time ever in the franchise) as Hannah Ann and Victoria? Were we expected to believe there were simply no other Airbnbs in the country of Australia? Why was Arie forced up to break up with Becca in excruciating detail on camera? Is Thomas actually so evil that he came on Katie’s season just to become the next Bachelor (he is not and that is one of the greatest off-screen redemption arcs of the modern era)? These moments of highly manufactured drama (lord spare us all from another shrimpgate) actually lessen the strength of the nicely packaged show and pull us out of the action, reminding us that what we are seeing is just a highly produced product, not a real-life human interaction. That is why, in many ways, the fourth wall breaking moments are actually critical to the show. A great example of this is in Joey’s recent season, where he obediently recites the standard footage about how Malta is the perfect place to fall in love. Instead of the camera cutting away, it stays, and we see Joey burst out laughing at how cheesy the lines are, and tell the producers jokingly to do better with the lines they are feeding him. By acknowledging the fact that this is a highly produced environment, the viewer is able to trust that the rest of what they are seeing is real because we get to see these powerful moments where the characters on the show are exactly what they are: human.
Shanae, about to embark on a 3 episode arc on Clayton's season where the contestants fought over who ate the shrimp. Seriously.
Joey laughing at the producer fed lines in Malta
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yesssss, say more about everything everywhere when you can, please!
hehe sure thing anon!
so the first thing to say is, well, evidently this film lived up to the hype for me! I enjoyed it so much that I'm gonna screen it on Tuesday (copyright strike 2 incoming?) alongside some other of Michelle Yeoh's films. but hey, since you asked~ let's talk a little lot about Everything, Everywhere, All At Once!
it was a very, very tightly made film: one of those films where every element comes to reinforce the other elements, from the goofy Daniels physical comedy to the martial arts to the family drama at the centre. and of course the editing was as fantastic as you'd expect; absolutely tight sense of rhythm, excellent clarity in even the most chaotic action scenes.
between this and the Stephen Chow films I saw earlier in the week, it really underlines just how much martial arts and comedy are close siblings. I think the reason for this is well, you need some kind of short-term arc to make sure a fight scene is more than just a monotonous run of hitting each other until someone falls over. there are many sources of this tension. one is of course the ebb and flow of new strategems and small victories that put different characters in more or less advantageous positions (the bread and butter of shōnen). but a joke - the setup and payoff structure - is a perfect fit, just the right size to give a good little arc to a scene, especially when you overlap several in parallel.
so if you get good at combining humour and martial arts, both get stronger: the thrilling execution of the martial arts strengthens the joke, and the joke adds flavour to the punching and kicking. hence the immense success of someone like Jackie Chan.
the other element is well, the long term setup and payoff. this is a classic comedy plot structure; Hot Fuzz is a good example of a film which does it very well, where the first half of film, plenty funny in its own right, is essentially setting up jokes which all come back around in rapid succession during the grand finale.
but here it's a little more, because all the jokes are setup for not just jokes but beats in emotional arcs. I believe one of the Daniels said of the farting in Swiss Army Man "the first fart will make you laugh, the last fart will make you cry"; the idea is the goofy physical comedy comes to become a symbol of the two characters' relationship, so when Manny departs, it's not just a funny farting man but the end of something beautiful and transformative.
this film builds on that structure. in one of the early fight scenes, Evelyn is connecting to all these increasingly absurd universes in order to find powers relevant to the fight. however, every single one of these universes - even the one with the hot dog fingers or the Ratatouille parody - becomes tied in to the emotional climax of the film, in which just about a dozen different story arcs, including ones that seemed at first to be entirely jokes, fire off all at once in one glorious intercut sequence that tie back in to the central thesis.
hmm, does this remind you of anything?
(I'm not even kidding honestly; the narrative preoccupations and sense of humour in this movie are really very very similar to Homestuck. I think this is entirely a matter of independent invention - there are plenty of other stories to tackle the multiverse concept, and from the sounds of things this movie has been cooking for quite a while - but I do think it's funny.)
so one of the things I love about this movie is its willingness to commit to the bit and develop each of these more or less goofy alternate universes into something more than a one-off joke.
ok, so, we adore the execution, what of what it is Saying? on the one hand, this movie is about some high concept scifi ideas - what if modal realism/Everettian many-worlds is true, and it were possible to make contact between branches in a kinda mystical way - but really the central narrative arc is about Evelyn herself and her relationships with her daughter and her husband.
(below: spoilers, and content note for talking about suicide and abusive family relationships, i know, juicy stuff)
Evelyn, played brilliantly by Yeoh, has a lot of unresolved issues, and rather than really deal with them, she tends to deflect, e.g. by attributing her own homophobia to her father, hiding in paperwork and cooking when her husband wants to express any of his own needs; by the time she really catches on it's almost too late to do anything about it and she's all but driven everyone away. not for nothing is the image at the centre of that final sequence a rock diving off a cliff in pursuit of another rock.
one thing I like, on reflection, is that Evelyn, for all the progress she makes, does not solve everything. when she desperately appeals to reconnect to Joy at the end, it's not that she finally fully understands her daughter (even if she's made some big steps on the immediate conflicts like actually accepting that she's a lesbian); she still fusses about things like Joy's weight. but she is at least able to be honest about where this is coming from and actually admit how important Joy is to her, which she hadn't done before. (this whole scene is a callback to a scene earlier in the film where Joy is about to drive away and Evelyn stops her, but doesn't manage to say anything but that she's fat; this time Evelyn actually manages to say what she should have that first time). this change of heart is enough for at least this Joy to decide to stay connected to her mother. we don’t see how their relationship evolves subsequently.
something that this film made me think of is an old essay on here by Kai Cheng Thom (@sintrayda), titled (and I suppose you can imagine why this has come back to me recently) Stop Letting Trans Girls Kill Ourselves. let me quote a couple of paras from that:
the predominant (white, colonial) queer/trans narrative of “proper” consent to being cared for goes something like this: someone expresses that they are in pain, or you happen to see that they are. you offer them help. if they refuse, you back off, no questions asked. any further attempt to help could be a considered a violation.
this narrative holds a lot of resonance for me, but i believe it comes from a traumatized place: it is rooted in queer and trans experiences of abusive families and intimate partnership in which we are not allowed to refuse, we are not allowed to leave. our reaction is to swing the other way in the extreme: we encourage people to leave, we don’t question the refusal of love, even when it is clearly needed.
(...)
more often than not, these parents [of severely traumatised children who said they intended to run away] were concerned and loving but did not know how to respond. they asked me what they should say. from my own place of both clinical training and queer narratives, i suggested that they tell their children that it was okay to be angry, that they were allowed to be angry, and that if they did indeed run away, that they would always have a home to come back to if they wanted. i believed that this was consent, was the secure attachment that is so prized in child psychology.
my supervisor (therapist instructor) agreed with my intervention, but also suggested that i had missed an important element: i should also tell these parents to say that if their child ran away, they would go out and find them and bring them home.
the emotional effect this had on me was profound. this was not something i had been taught to believe in queer community – that love and care might mean following someone even after they have rejected you. that it might mean reaching out, and failing, and then reaching out and failing, again and again.
that abandonment and rejection by a person in pain – child or adult – might be way of finding out just how hard someone is going to work to help you not just stay alive, but change your life for the better.
Thom is writing here about an ideological position that discourages intervention when someone is suicidal; one that is still painfully relevant, when your friends are far away and you have to weigh the possibility that calling an ambulance to ‘help’ them could very easily get them beaten and incarcerated. I don’t want to talk about this too much on this post; even though it was too late for my decision to matter for Fall, losing her has made me think of other times I’ve learned someone’s suicide attempt and had to decide whether to risk sending an ambulance.
Anyway, I won’t talk about that more. The more relevant factor is that there is a similar thesis at work in Everything, Everywhere for better or worse. In this case, it’s clearly right. Joy cares a lot about her mother, even though she’s increasingly estranged from her family; it is clearly very important to her that she can bring her girlfriend to the New Year’s party, and she is upset by the fact that she struggles to speak Mandarin as fluently as the older members of the family (the constantly switching languages, blending English and Mandarin even within one sentence, are another brilliant touch, it’s so natural and I’ve never seen that done so well). She just needs Evelyn to meet her halfway; appreciate who she actually is rather than worrying about her turning into Evelyn 2. So in this case, fleeing Evelyn was a way of expressing just how serious the situation was; she would rather not have this connection at all than have it continue in its current form. Evelyn, to her credit, figures it out and they’re able to continue on a better foot.
I am certain there are many cases like this, where the right thing to do may well be to ignore a hard rejection. And yet part of me still finds this idea difficult, perhaps for similar reasons as Thom. Not so much because of a blanket one-time ‘consent’ principle, but more because I feel like a relationship that categorically cannot be terminated is dangerous. An abuser who pursues someone across a country may well believe they’re acting out of love. I don’t think it is a failing of the film to not address such cases.
I suppose I end up thinking about my own life - a scale much less grand than ‘parent and child’ but still actually life and death. Fall spent several months at the beginning of this year keeping me at arm’s length, I was blocked on Discord etc., before we reconnected literally weeks before she died. I missed her, but did little to act on it; my general attitude in such cases is to give a person time if they need to be alone, and not be pushy, to make it clear that whatever relationship we have is something that they can choose to have or not. I don’t think that’s wrong. But how do you even recognise the times when what someone really needs is you to try anyway? Could I have made more effort to reach out to Fall without making things worse for her?
Who else am I failing this way?
Unknowable...
Moreover, are there times when the opposite is true: when I’m just making matters worse attempting to ‘help’ and I should back off, even if the person can’t bring herself to tell me? The short run, the long run... it’s an endless series of tricky high stakes judgement calls which will last until I die.
Which brings us to the other strand of Evelyn and Joy’s arcs and the whole premise of the film. This is the idea of the Everettian branching multiverse being true, and what that means on an emotional level. OK, they don’t actually invoke Everett’s interpretation of quantum mechanics; the film is actually inspired, a long time ago, by the philosophical stance of modal realism, which says that all “possible worlds” are real ‘in the same way that ours is’. What ‘possible’ means in this case is pretty broad, something like ‘logically possible’.
In this film, all the worlds are marked by some earlier or later point of divergence. The premise is that a technology allows you to connect your brain to the brains of ‘you’ in other branches. The actual mechanics are (appropriately) kept vague in service of jokes, broader themes etc.; thus a universe can exist where humans have evolved (somehow) to have floppy hot dog fingers but this world still recognisably contains Evelyn, her laundromat, and the woman from the IRS. And indeed in a universe where life did not evolve, there are two rocks which can nevertheless be recognised as Evelyn and Joy. So yeah it’s not hard sci-fi big deal lol.
Still, the impact of this is the question: if all these possibilities true, why is anything important? The film invokes the Copernican revolution, followed by (implicitly) the development of multiverse theories; Joy’s driving POV is a nihilistic one. She knows she can make anything happen in any world, so all of it loses significance.
Evelyn’s answer is essentially to commit to her relationships with other people. The final sequence of the film is not a fight scene, but (once again blending humour and character drama) Evelyn rapidly solving the emotional problems of a whole series of enemies by discerning exactly what they need using her multiverse powers. The life she returns to is actually the most mundane one: not the one where she’s a movie star but the one ‘this’ Evelyn began in, where she’s running a laundromat and doing taxes. It becomes a form of roleplaying: a framing narrative selected from all the possibilities in which she can enjoy the relationships with the people around her. That sounds dismissive, but I don’t mean it that way. What are ‘actual’ roleplaying games but that, after all?
We don’t get Evelyn’s power in reality, but we do get the power of ‘baseless speculation’, which can be paralysing as well! What if I had studied geology or even art instead of physics, would I have not had that mental health crisis? What if I’d been a better friend or partner to a number of people? Gotten an ADHD diagnosis sooner? What if, what if. The answer is obvious to say, but difficult to feel: those doors are closed and futile, so you can only commit to the possibility that you ended up falling down.
One thing the film kind of dances around, but then again maybe not really, is the fact that all the good choices that Evelyn makes at the end of the film, there is presumably a universe where she didn’t do that. A branch where Joy drove away, they never catch up to the raccoon, Evelyn’s rock stays on top of the cliff.
This is the problem of that old transhumanist cult leader Eliezer Yudkowsky’s attempt to draw out the ethical implications of Everett’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. He says, you must be very careful, because each small probability of something going wrong is an uncountable number of branches where it results in death and suffering. The problem is that any ‘decision’ you make is also subject to branching. There’s a universe where you talk Eliezer’s advice to heart and always wear a bike helmet, saving some billion versions of you from spinal injury; there’s also a branch where you don’t do that, so the spinal injuries happen anyway. Even if Eliezer’s essay reduces the proportion of death in some portion of universes, it’s matched by equally many where he didn’t write it. In short, it implies nothing at all.
This film, however, is much more focused on the personal experience than matters of ethics, and so perhaps it dodges this bullet. Having linked herself to all these possible universes, Evelyn chooses to subjectively experience the one where things go well for her and the people around her, rather than to give up and throw herself into a black hole everything bagel like her daughter attempts.
When I watched The Matrix Resurrections, which was a very frustrating and disappointing movie in general, one of the things that got at me was the lack of imagination of the ending. Having at last managed to escape the yoke of the Machines and make themselves gods of a virtual realm, Neo and Trinity don’t really do much to change the nature of their reality. But this doesn’t really bother me so much in this film. And sure, for one thing, of course, the fully ‘ascended’ Evelyn and Joy are not ‘really’ gods, since presumably any intervention they make is just another branching of the universe (though this isn’t really raised in the film). But more than that, it’s not relevant to the metaphor.
I feel like the connecting/dividing link is perhaps the view of Kyōsogiga, that one should not be afraid to ‘just be’: affirming the significance of those small moments and relationships. Evelyn, ADHDful as she is, figures out in the end that what matters to her is not all these projects that she has pursued or one time or another, but just taking time to enjoy these intersubjective connections. Which can certainly stand to be said again and again because I don’t really think I’ve internalised it lol.
All in all, fucking great movie, the Daniels outdid themselves, as did all the choreographers and cinematographers and actors and so forth involved. Can’t believe how long I slept on those guys.
#film#everything everywhere all at once#toku tuesday#we're gonna watch it on tuesday so let me put that tag on there now hehe
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