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jemmo · 1 year

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that final scene in this ep of utsukushii kare. it feels like someone just ripped out my gut, slashed it open and trampled over the bloody remains. i want to sob. I want to out loud, fat tears, shaking my body sob. but all im stuck on is hira’s brokenly confused face, kiyoi on top of him grabbing onto his clothes and crying, an absolute tornado of emotion the likes of which he’s never shown, all to hira, all because of hira, and yet hira sits there and it’s like the storm covers him but he’s inside this impenetrable building and not a single drop of rain hits him. he knows it’s raining, he can hear it battering down on the roof, but it’s just rain. he doesn’t understand the full extent, doesn’t know the wind is ripping down trees and lightening is cracking the sky in two. and because he’s inside, he doesn’t need to know, doesn’t care to know, doesn’t want to know. hira will happily stay inside, in his bubble, in his constructed world, and he will be alone, and he will suffer, but that’s alright bc he’s not out there.

it’s like he’s gotten used to the internalized problems he faces, and they stick with him, almost a comfort to him now, in that he’ll see them when they’re not there. the external things that make him worried and anxious now, they’re less so, but hira still is that high school kid, getting picked on for his stutter, that faded into the background. he’s stuck there, and he’s never grown past it, and there’s almost a security in not growing, not changing, even if the thing you’re stuck as is worry and anxiety and invisibility and self doubt and constant internal doubt and criticism and lack of confidence. at least he’s used to it. at least there isn’t anything new to challenge him. and it shows, bc whenever he is challenged, in the sense that something that doesn’t fit he’s established world and role happens, he puts himself down and apologizes, like it’s a practiced, default reaction. that’s how he got through before, it’s how he learned to get through. but now, in the place he finds himself, in the situation and relationship he’s in, this is not a place for that reaction. the people he’s around, kiyoi, he doesn’t need hira to put himself down. he doesn’t need apologies. he wants understanding. and hira just resolutely refused that, said that he not only doesn’t understand hira, but that he doesn’t want to, and he’s not going to attempt to. and I don’t think he could have said anything more heartbreaking to kiyoi. all he has ever wanted was for someone to see him and understand him and love him for it. hira gives him love, unendingly and uncritically. he’s love is irrespective of anything kiyoi does or says or feels. it’s love of an idea, of a theory, of a concept in a pretty shell. it’s not love of the human inside, it can’t be, bc he just said he doesn’t want to understand that person, and without that there can’t be love. you can’t love something you can’t see or comprehend, that there’s a person kiyoi that isn’t the god kiyoi there is in his universe.

and the thing is, I think hira could’ve understood kiyoi, back when he saw a side of kiyoi that no one else did and still showed him love. I think down the line he could’ve gotten to know that person more and liked him, but the thing is, it’s different bc of kiyoi’s feelings. bc kiyoi’s feelings contradict so much what hira believes about himself that he can’t understand him. it’s easier to not know kiyoi that way and stick to his established universe, rather than understand kiyoi fully, bc in that he has to reevaluate everything, about himself and his place in the world and kiyoi’s place too. that is not an easy task. and it’s not that hira wouldn’t, I don’t think. I think there is a feasible future where hira recognizes that choice he can make and chooses kiyoi, chooses to challenge himself out of love for kiyoi and a want to understand him, and maybe even a want to understand and love himself. but bc he doesn’t recognize that as a choice he can make, he can’t do it. and I think that’s what hira needs to face, which I think is more than kiyoi and his feelings and care for hira can manage to accomplish. hira’s mental dissonance is gonna be a work in progress, it’s just a matter or him realizing it and getting to a point of actually working on it. the only thing is, in the meantime, can kiyoi be patient with hira, and the hurt he makes him feel? should he? bc when hira outright refuses to understand, when it feels that rigid and definite, when there’s no feasible future where he will understand, what’s the point? that’s the heartbreak. that hira is constantly worrying about forever, but he just denied a forever with kiyoi. and the problem is him, just not for the reasons he thinks he is. he needs to realize there is no forever with kiyoi the god, bc gods don’t last forever, they’re ephemeral, they’re fleeting. there can be a forever with kiyoi though, the man, the person, the human being, he just needs to step outside, into the storm, and let it soak him. bc when he gets to stand with kiyoi in the rain, he’ll see it’s worth it.

#im on my rant shit but oh my god what an ep #like seriously #if I were ever to get the bravery to make a video essay it’d be on utsukushii kare #and it’d be 7 hours long of me incoherently rambling sobbing screaming and foaming at the mouth #bc this show is just that good #like never before have I wanted to crawl inside a character like hira #and never before have I wanted to hold and cradle and love a character as bad as I do kiyoi #they are everything #and this #this is how you do s2 drama #this is how you take a couple that have gotten together and show that things are not perfect just bc they kiss #there is so much more to a relationship #and so much more depth for character investigation and growth and struggle when a relationship is established #that’s when the real work begins #when you take something just beginning a small flame and try to build it and and stoke it into something that can survive and last and burn #forever doesn’t just happen it is created #and hira needs to find a way to make it #utsukushii kare #utsukushii kare 2 #my beautiful man #my beautiful man 2

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thesimperiuscurse · 3 years

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08.04

It’s The Kingston Legacy’s sixth anniversary, so here’s a throwback post to celebrate! Last month I forced myself to reread the entire legacy, and while I stopped, clicked off the tab, and emitted a soundless scream of pure cringe numerous times (I wish I was kidding)—the past generations are actually not as terrible as I remember. I think enough time has passed for me to detach myself from the childish storytelling and look back in nostalgia.

Thank you to my fellow Wordpress writers who have come along the journey, some for many years now, through every high and low. It’s astounding how much has changed in the legacy from when I was 15, and 21. Follow me down the (very) long memory lane, as I reminiscence about each story and my perspective on them now ❤

Generation 1 — Fern (2015)

To my shock, I found myself genuinely enjoying Fern’s story. I think this was because the first generation was purely me commentating on gameplay, and not trying to write a story (that’s when the cringe began). I was inspired by one of the original stories, Alice and Kev, to make a homeless sim and document her struggle for a better life: Fern, a snobby aspiring writer. Reading this, a huge wave of nostalgia hit me, and it reminded me of how wonderful Sims 3 gameplay is. Although I’m long past it now, there’s real heart and life in the design. I think it speaks about the rich personalities and quirks that I could write a whole life story off it. It was super fun making Fern camp out at Old Pier Beach, stealing from townie picnics and roasting apples on the fire, finding little ways to scrounge money, giving her a makeover in the salon, watching the townie dramas unfold around her. Although she faced homelessness two times and a shitty first husband (yeah, fuck off, Xander), Fern grew into a strong and independent yet sweet and gentle character, in love with the ocean like her great-granddaughter comes to be.

I never actually addressed this, but she (and her love Christopher) passed away in the story between the end of Gen 3 and start of Gen 4. It just felt weird to make it a big deal because they never died in game—still ‘alive’ and well, scattered across different backup saves and the bin.

Generation 2 — Briar (2015)

Briar’s story was strange, because it was half gameplay and half story, which meant that there were things that just did not... make... sense. She was quite an ‘unreliable’ character to follow because of her Insane trait. The plot revolved around her as a fresh detective, investigating supernatural phenomena in Sunset Valley. Her character arc was almost the opposite to her mother’s: a naive, optimistic, silly girl hardening through trauma into a cold and ruthless police chief. Ash’s death was the one moment I felt true sadness in this legacy, because he did really die. Imagine me actually getting emotional over my characters, lmao. Wild.

Also, Max is OP. To this day he is one of the best male characters in my legacy, a healthy and supportive best friend (to husband) in stark contrast to the following generation.

Fallen Angels — Cherry (2016-2019)

Yes. It’s this generation. Square the fuck up, Cherry. I will fight her any day. Old readers will know of my pure hatred for this story. It’s been about two years since it thankfully ended. My verdict now?

It’s not quite as horrifically shitty, Gabriel and Lilith being a lot nicer than I remembered (Gabriel’s only a bit of a dick at the start), but it still has glaring problems, such as the pacing and clumsy handling of sensitive topics. The story would have been far nicer if it focused less on Cherry and Luc’s relationship and their respective issues, more on the found family and her relationship with Gabriel (which was rushed due to me despising the story by that point). During the first chapters, I was cringing spectacularly at the combination of Luc’s initial jackass behaviour and Cherry’s whining. Toxic as FUCK. I had to skip 3.8 and 3.9 entirely. These two (because of my own shameful mistake) tainted the generation in my eyes, and even though all of the characters grew from their toxicity, I can’t really see past that guilt to the better parts of the story.

Jade has been telling me for years that this story isn’t all bad, and upon forcing myself to reread, I can see what you mean. I’m sorry LOL. Something that pleasantly surprised me was the writing quality (just the prose, not the actual story mechanics... lmfao), and Raphael, who made me smile every time he appeared. Every single careless, sarcastic line of his was a banger. The pictures are something else I like, too. Many of them stand up to the best ones in En Pointe—the fiery, gritty, industrial tones of Bridgeport just hits different. The world was rich and immersive, which is missing at the moment in En Pointe because of me being too lazy to build a proper Los Angeles world, but Act III is set in Boroughsburg so I’m excited to get back into the city scenes. 17 year old me wasn’t mature enough to tackle dark themes, but at least the visuals for them were nice, I guess. The atmosphere of the story I really enjoy. It’s just the toxic characters and way-too-angsty moments that ruin the whole thing for me.

En Pointe — Evangeline (2019-)

And here we are now! The early chapters are kinda painful to read because 1) Mako looked so ugly and 2) the dialogue was so clumsy and generic. I sighed in relief when Chapter 5 came around, because it was then both of those aspects really began to improve. Eva’s voice was simple, with her punchy remarks, much less romantic and descriptive than Cherry, so it was interesting to see her voice becoming more complex and layered as I more understood her character. Also, me visibly struggling with the natural lighting and only getting a handle on it 7 chapters later has me shaking my head.

I’m already beginning to identify issues with the story, mostly with character arcs and pacing. It’s a strange combination of fast pacing (spanning half a year in 8 chapters) and Eva becoming surprisingly comfortable with Mako’s touch due to their unusual pas de deux circumstances. It’s curious how real life time actually played into the pacing of the story—because of the slow publishing schedule, less time has passed in the story as real life, so it’s almost as if the time jumps were made up by real life time, making the jumps feel not too strange. Reading consecutively, however, Evako’s relationship growth doesn’t feel slow burn... a little underdeveloped, in a way, despite their lengthy conversations. I think that’s because of Mako being such a reserved and mysterious character, and that I’ve unconsciously come to rely on Tumblr to give more depth to the characters/relationships. Luckily, pretty much everyone who comments on the story also follows me here, so this dual-platform storytelling is okay, I suppose. I want to post more of #Mishako since there just isn’t enough time to explore their bromance in the story!

At the moment I’m not happy with the story, but it’s fine. I’m learning. There’s more than half the story to go, which means plenty of time to reflect upon the issues and improve. I’m really looking forward to Eva and Mako’s character arcs in Act III. At the moment their relationship is based on their natural chemistry and respect for each other, and since they are yet to face trials their bond isn’t super deep, but Evako are still my favourite couple in the legacy thus far, and feel much more real than any character I’ve written before. It’s been very interesting for my aro ass (and being way more logical than emotional) to figure out a dynamic that is actually compelling to me, because most of the time when I look at romance I’m just like 😐🤨 I’m liking it so far but we shall see how everything unfolds, because I have barely any idea what’s going to happen beyond Act II, lmfao.

That’s it for my incredibly long throwback! I hope it was at least nice for the OG readers, and interesting for anyone else who managed to battle through this essay, haha. This family has been an integral part of me growing up, as a person and writer and artist (what I’ve developed in visuals I apply to architecture), learning a great deal of awareness about real life through story research, which is pretty cool now that I think about it. I’m aiming to finish En Pointe by the end of 2022. I’m excited for what unexpected changes are to come!

#wordpress is being annoying like tumblr right now #they're trying to sneakily integrate the new site design into the old #pretty sure a lot of people don't like the new one #why can't i view media by month #now i have to scroll through a million pictures to find old ones #why is it selecting several when i just want to open one pic #fuck youuu #anyway #very busy week #lilaremonn #thesimperiuscurse

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sheepfulsheepyardinspace · 4 years

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Do you have any Star Wars fanfic recommendations, or have a link to someone else's list? I really wanna veg out.

oh my god, DO I. this may have been the best ask in the world. i’m not really sure what u want a feel for, so i threw together some of my favorite longfics for maximum veg time from the ot/pt and links for swr and swtcw recs. they’re pretty much all luke-anakin/vader centric, since that’s kinda my bread and butter.

let’s start with frodogenic, who wrote the first longfic i ever read in sw and might be one of the funniest authors ever. they once reviewed my fanfic & i nearly cried from joy. anyway.

The Father, 284k+, complete. “Ten years after ROTS, tormenting nightmares of his unborn child drive Darth Vader to extraordinary measures with unexpectedly drastic consequences. Clearly, experience has taught Darth Vader nothing...”

this is my og star wars fic and boy oh boy is it amazing. i will never get over this. i don’t want to spoil anything but when i say the final chapters are great? i mean they’re legendary. sometimes i still think about them & wish upon a star that i could be such a great writer. vader’s amazing, han is spectacular, and the ocs are fantastic.

Far More Than Rubies, 70k+, complete. “Nine years after AOTC, tragedy revisits the Lars Homestead. Little Luke Skywalker is suddenly plunged into chaos as the rebel movements discover a secret military project that may make a crucial difference in the war with the Empire.”

the spiritual twin of The Father, FMTR takes a look at padmé’s character and relationship with both luke and anakin/vader that’s hard to beat. it’s darker and heavier than The Father, but it hits those same sweet, sweet emotional beats while raising the age-old question: if padmé had lived, what would she have done?

The Family Tree, 12k, complete. “In which Luke Skywalker is stranded in a tree waiting for a flash flood to recede. Too bad he's got company...”

okay, i admit, this isn’t a longfic, but it is a longshot, and it’s amazing. the imagery and description always blow me away, and the interaction (canon-compliant) between luke and vader just [chef’s kiss] get me. vader’s in full, glorious form, and it makes it all the harder when luke wrestles with the knowledge that vader is his father.

Sibling Revelry, 25k, complete. “After Bespin and before Endor, Darth Vader is shocked to discover that Luke and Leia are twins. He's even more shocked when Imperial Intelligence reports that Organa and Skywalker are, erm, a tad closer than previously suspected.”

this is complete crack and humor in the best way possible. it’s crack treated entirely seriously, and you will be in stitches, i promise. no matter how many times i’ve read this i break down.

KittandChips (@kittandchips) writes what i can only describe as food for the soul. the luke-vader interaction is insanely amazing, the world building of daily imperial life and imperial governance is amazing, and vader just has a special je ne sais quoi that u must read to understand––tragic, funny, and so, so fatherly. they’re currently rewriting the Force Bond Series to fit in with newer canon, so i will joyously binge reread the entire again (including the new Force Bond: Mustafar Weekend).

Force Bond 1: Orphan, 47k, complete. “After Owen and Beru are killed by a mysterious stranger, young Luke ends up as an orphan on Coruscant. It's a race against time as Obi-Wan struggles to find Luke before Vader realizes the boy is his son.”

Orphan kicks off the series, which tracks vader and luke’s relationship through the perils of luke’s teenagerhood while growing up under the eye of the emperor and imperial court. it’s filled with slow growth, struggle and misunderstandings as darth vader tries to single parent, and pay off in every installment. the entire series clocks in around 777k+ and is the most joyful, fulfilling reading you’ll ever have. promise.

darth-nickels (@darth--nickels) writes darker, twistier, and terribly, terribly heartwrenching aus. they’ve got a whole host, but let me introduce to my two favorites. also, check out their faux-academia on vader. it’s amazing and i love it, but i admit i am an academia hoe.

Dooku Captured, Pt 2, 16k, complete. “Dooku is taken alive onboard the Invisible Hand, and Sidious' web is torn. The Sith Lord wonders if death might have been preferable to clumsy interrogation by Anakin Skywalker.”

Dooku Captured is a longshot au told from Dooku’s pov which takes the beginning of ROTS and throws it on its head. it’s a fascinating outside perspective of anakin and obi-wan’s relationship and such and interesting examination of dooku’s psyche and especially his complex relationship with the jedi order, qui-gon, yoda, and palpatine. i cannot rec this one enough.

Black Mirror, 90k, incomplete. “The Ghost crew returns to the Lothal when they hear the Empire is investigating the Jedi Temple there. They learn Vader is alone and decide to take him out-- but what they find could change the course of Galactic history.”

Black Mirror diverges into swr territory, but make no mistake: this is entirely an examination of vader and, later, obi-wan as well as ahsoka. luke makes his appearance later in the game, and boy oh boy will you love luke’s portrayal is a microcosm of luke and vader’s relationship within canon. heed the tags, though.

jerseydevious ( @jerseydevious ) is, first and foremost, one of my favorite people on earth. secondly, though, she’s an amazing writer with a deep understanding of vader’s character and psyche, a flair for beautiful depictions, and the true ability to wring every emotion out of your body.

Two and a Half Men (with a baby), 13k, incomplete. “After a long day of bargaining with Hutts and attempting to ignore his past, Darth Vader is nearing the end of his rope. When he discovers his two-year-old son, it's the straw that breaks the semi-rational Sith Lord's back; in a rash act worthy of the Skywalker name, he scoops his son into his arms, steals a shuttle from his own fleet, and punches in random hyperspace coordinates to a destination on the other side of the galaxy. Unfortunately, father and son are not the only ones on the ship.”

Two and a Half Men will stick with you, dude. like no other. i promise. it’s a whirlwind ride with obi-wan, vader, and piett and as funny as it is heartbreaking. it touches on some heavy issues and doesn’t shy away from looking at the damage done to vader––again, heed the tags.

Helioseismology, 4k, complete. “Luke gets shot down on a supply run and caught in an ice storm. It's extremely lucky that his father followed him there.“

i’ll admit. im completely biased about this one because it was a birthday gift to me and i am sucker for litcherally anything when jd puts pen to paper, but believe me when i say you will be awed by the depth and tangled relationships between these luke and vader that jersey can illustrate in a stroke of the paintbrush. im love. always.

izzythehutt ( @izzythehutt ) i am blown away by the intricate dialogue and characterization, always. and the latin puns? im sold. im also a sucker for latin puns, but that’s a story for a different time.

In Loco Pirates, 34k, complete. “A down-on-his-luck Hondo Ohnaka manages to capture the unicorn of all bounties--Luke Skywalker, which sends Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith, on a painfully familiar trip to the planet Florrum to collect his prize. The failed negotiations leave Vader in the awkward position of being stuck in a besieged pirate bunker, trying to balance keeping his wayward child safe (and in his custody) with controlling the tongue of a loose-lipped pirate who--to the surprise of no one--has a bad habit of telling 'amusing' anecdotes from the Clone Wars.”

hondo, aka the best character of swtcw, is brought to life just as vividly on paper as on screen. his entire personality brings luke and vader’s difficulties in a sort of incredulous light, which makes it as funny as it is vulnerable and tragic. the sequel, Palpatine Ad Portas, brings piett into the spotlight, and oh man do his interactions with palpatine and vader bring u all the uncomfortable vibes. relish in it.

sparklight ( @littlesparklight ) man. lemme introduce u to an amazing prolific and detailed writer. i will never get over the series they’ve written & neither will u.

Where Our Intrepid Hero Doesn’t Get Away, 122k, incomplete. “One-shots surrounding either AU situations of canon/legends works where Luke would normally have gotten away (or Vader is simply inserted into the action to come pick his child up) but in these instances doesn't, or completely new scenarios of the same. There are no deep ruminations on consequences of the situations here, just our awful Sith dad picking his son up when he'd rather not be.”

exactly what it says on the tin. u know those glorious moments of fanfic where luke’s gotten captured and ur on pins and needles, waiting for vader to show up in a moment of dark glory? here’s the moment. here’s all the moments.

Space Race, 122k, incomplete. “Owen gives in to Luke's wish to attend the Imperial Academy and Obi-Wan is too late to avert it, though he's not too late to make sure Luke leaves Arkanis before Vader can gets his hands on him. Luke spends over a month running around the galaxy before his father gets him, and from there...”

this story relishes in chase and boy is it fun. it will keep you on the edge of your seat and it’s an amazing ride.

The Suns of Tatooine, 85k, complete. “Luke ends up on a moon swamped in dark side energy after a mission goes wrong, then his father appears... and then they go on a bit of a learning experience. This could've been the only thing that would come of getting through a Sith complex with his father, but thanks to going to free Han earlier than the gang did otherwise, more revelations are had. Will that change anything?”

this series is a thoughtful, contemplative piece examining the nature of the force and the relationship the skywalkers have with tatooine. the descriptions are beautiful, the inventiveness is amazing, and you’ll be thinking about it for long afterwards.

an additional few…

Between Flight and Longing; 34k, complete. “Luke Skywalker and Han Solo journey to the planet Balen'ar on a desperate mission and find more than they'd bargained for.”

a classic and it is for a reason. the interaction between han, luke, and vader is so spectacular and the slow trudge of going through the forest with your greatest enemy and best friend is something hilarious. the end is bittersweet and fantastic.

The Sith Who Brought Life Day, 13k, complete. “An Imperial officer loses a bet and has to get Darth Vader a present for Life Day.”

somewhere between terrifying and dull, this fic presents a canon-compliant look at the hunt for luke and the grinding wheels of the empire. the oc is amazing and it echoes in true star wars spirit: sometimes it’s just some dude who can change the galaxy.

Quintessence, 5k, complete. ‘“Well, Master, I think I’ve found the one positive aspect of this situation.” “Which is?” “The Temple won’t have to pay the costs for our funeral pyres.”’

pure hilarity and shenanigans abound in pre-aotc obi-wan and anakin hijink goodness. lemme tell u––u will deeply sympathize with mace windu afterwards. additionally, check out the rest of the author’s oneshots! they’re deeply thoughtful and the interactions the author writes between obi-wan and anakin are always gold.

some extras & shameless self-promotion

here’s a full list of recommendations for star wars rebels fanfic in case this is what you’re looking for (remember when this used to be a swr blog, lmao)

i’ve also written sw fanfic, both swr and luke-vader centric. drop by and tell me if it’s any good!

#also if anybody knows these authors' tumblr accounts pls lmk so i can link them #guys remember piett?#i miss piett #firmus piett #star wars #star wars fanfic #sw fanfic #sw fic #three two one boom #jerseydevious #luke skywalker #darth vader #anakin skywalker #star wars rebels #late-in-the-day #idk if any of these r new at all to anyone #but they r my faves :)

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life-rewritten · 4 years

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Spooky Season! A look into a Masterpiece (He’s Coming To Me Review)

I've been waiting to talk about this show and how my love for it will never end. Surprisingly the source of the show is GMMTV, whilst known for so many problematic elements in BL genre; He's coming to me manages to avoid every single issue naturally had with this genre. And because of that, this review is an ode to a masterpiece that should not be forgotten and should not be underrated. It's also Halloween, so this is another excuse to go back and look at the best things about this show. Hopefully, we get more like this GMMTV.

Ratings: Plot: 9/10 Directing: 9/10 Acting: 910 Satisfaction: 9/10 Overall: A* Rewatch factor: 8.5/10

AN IN-DEPTH REVIEW

Nothing wrong to say about this show. And that's a breath of fresh air; I remember first watching this show in 2019 very late because we had issues with the subtitles, and I went into it very sceptical and had low expectations. By the end of this show, I was so grateful and happy that this exists.

The title of the show (He keeps coming to me) is what the heart of the show is about. Thun, our main character who keeps going to Mes, a ghost who he can see, his determination in keeping Mes by his side, to being his childhood acquaintance, to his best friend and finally to his lover, is felt and focused on when he has to brave the world and society norms, and some truths about himself. Meanwhile, Mes has to discover his reason for being a ghost and unravel the mysteries tying him to his fate with Thun. So incredible to watch and see their love story unfold.

Criticisms/ Comments

As I said, there are no negatives when it comes to this show. All we could maybe mention is the slow pace from episode 1-3. But even at that, the relationship dynamics are shown genuinely because of the time it takes to develop the story.

This love story uses the trope friends to lovers which entails a soft cute and heartwarming bond between Mes and Thun since they first met each other. The two want to spend as much time with each other even though their worlds are different (spirit realm vs human realm). Thun is determined to have Mes keep coming to his side, learning about the lore and rules surrounding ghosts in our world; the use of incense, the way Mes starts of not being able to hold onto anything, the fact that Thun is the only person who sees Mes. He can't hide his feelings even when he's with his friends, he makes up excuses just to return home to spend time with Mes, and he makes it his mission to discover why Mes died, so Mes gets reincarnated. The slow pace might make people think the show is a bit boring, but it's just a way to introduce and show exposition to the other characters surrounding this world. If you rewatch the show, you also start to recognise foreshadowing symbolisms, devices and hints pointing to the final revelation about how Thun and Mes are tied together.

I also think some people struggled with as well the lack of 'skinship' from Thun and Mes, but this is a device used to emphasise one of the obstacles of our couple; the lack of touch ( because Mes struggles to learn the rules of how to hold objects or touch Thun). We the audience try to uncover the reasons for why sometimes they're able to feel each other by mistake and Mes starts to work hard to hold objects and cook, and turn on the incense which keeps him tied to the environment it's in. I didn't have an issue with the skinship because the actors were phenomenal at showing little subtle hints to feelings on their faces of longing, want and love. The scenes where skinship was required wasn't stiff or awkward or weird like other shows of this genre make you feel about them. It felt natural, a tad unrealistic (in terms of the way their heads tilted and the camera spun) but so what? The show wasn't meant to focus on that; it focused on the bond and love between the two, they just enjoyed talking and spending quality time being domestic with each other, and that's adorable. Alright, let's look at the positives:

Character Breakdown and Plot Meaning

The characterisation of HCTM is so excellent; it still shocks me how much I didn't expect it to be this way. All our characters are critical to the plot, even when they're just side characters with no deep story arcs to themselves. Thun and Mes interact with people who are part of their path in recognising what they are to each other. Before I praise the characterisation of the two, let's focus on some other characters who were so good in this show:

Thun's best friends: Prince, Plufai and Khiem

These were a phenomenal group of friends who were so caring and patient and genuinely the heartwarming part of this series as well. I enjoyed watching how much they went out of their way to ensure that Thun was okay, even when they didn't understand why he was the way he was and also felt frightened by some of his actions (talking to himself randomly, and acting out). One of my fave story arcs during the season is when Khiem (Played amazingly by Sing) thinks Thun is taking drugs and so starts a secret series of investigations keeping an eye on his actions. It wasn't because they were judging him but because they were worried about his wellbeing.

Also, my heart melted for Prince (Played by another excellent favourite Chimon), who had unrequited feelings for Plufai and struggled to deal with her feelings for Thun and his own seemingly cold/nonchalant/evasive actions concerning her. It's the way he wasn't toxic or problematic and also was willing to step down if Thun did have feelings for Plufai. I also really enjoyed watching his relationship with her develop and the natural chemistry between the two.

Lastly, PluFai first starts as every female character from a GMMTV show, a competition, someone there to be a beard to the main character. Still, I enjoyed her heart. I also loved her being the mirror character to Thun's mum when it came to her relationship with Mes in the past. Both women show strength and understanding and acceptance once they discover the sexuality of the person who they had feelings for. And I thought her way of dealing with it, their friendship being robust and full of communication was really what sold it for me. There were moments when I was frightened about her connection to the mystery of Mes's death, and it broke my heart when she realised what she was to him and what it meant for her grandfather. I also enjoyed the way she takes it on her self to make it up to him and how forgiving she is to her grandfather despite the fact I didn't think he should be. She showed strength, understanding and warmth and kept being that way and also consistent. And I love that because she wasn't problematic female stereotypes that GMMTV loves to add to women, she stayed great and true throughout the show. And I loved it.

Thun's Family: Mum and Dad

Honestly, the way the writing of these characters was what made me love this show the most. Thun's dad shows up only in episode 1 before he dies surprisingly and Mes sees his ghost disappear. I thought that's all we needed to know of him. Still, we really get to learn more about Thun's family dynamics; there are answers to why his mum didn't join them during the grave excursions, why she was absent during those years he meets Mes, his father's knowing and understanding gaze as Thun cries about not being able to see him and also how he's hidden the fact he sees ghosts. We get information as well about the relationship with him and the mum after Mes broke up with her.

Next, we have Thun's mum, her first appearance is warm and pleasant. Still, we won't be able to fathom that she's wearing the watch that Mes has been drawing all this time, she's the girl who provided Mes with the same gift he created for Thun, she's already been close with someone who came out and so she was a source of strength for Thun when he struggled with accepting his sexuality. That coming out scene is so incredible and has made this show a fantastic piece of media for representation for LGBT. I loved her relationship with Mes, despite it being an obstacle to our couple at first, she's so understanding of him, and she's so grateful he returned and is the person her son loves. But also it's the plot twist that Thun sees ghosts because she too can, and she was hiding that as a secret until she meets Mes. It made it better, a relief to know that he's not alone and there is a reason for why he's able to see them. It also made the relationship with our couple easier because she understood and saw Mes, so Thun and Mes's relationship was more readily accepted.

He's coming to me brought these characters and connected it to its world-building, rules and understanding of its supernatural themes whilst still providing consistent dynamics about friendship and family and life in general. Not only is it a BL show, but it had other focuses as well rounding it up and making it much more wholesome and needed. The characters held no toxic tropes commonly also found in BL, the relationships felt real and authentic, and each of the characters had development and growth that tied them together to the plot overall. Now onto the heart of this show: My all-time faves Thun and Mes

Thun

One of my favourite characters, honestly rewatching this show was so incredible, especially when I started to notice more about this character after all the revelations revealed throughout the show. I went into the show surprised at how open Thun was to Mes already, the way he cared and wanted what was the best for Mes who has always been alone and neglected. Even when older Thun shows up and still shows the same amount of care even though he dislikes the fact that he could see ghosts, he's so warm and protective over Mes, and it made me swoon and smile. I enjoyed watching him come to terms with who he was.

At first, we don't see any hints that this is something the story will focus on. But as we go deeper into his university life and his reason for why he studied law etc. It becomes evident that Thun knows he's gay but is struggling with internalised homophobia, it's also pretty clear he's had feelings from the beginning for Mes. He even knew when Mes started having feelings for him too.

They just didn't want to confront what it meant. Ohm Pawat's acting is so incredible you can see the subtle changes in Thun, and meanings with his actions with Mes that they both have requited feelings for each other but they don't want to cross the line. Thun has memorable speeches during the show as well about his struggle with his sexuality and how people perceive him. It's incredible how the show mirrors his on the surface secret about seeing ghosts and being seen as abnormal to the world to his internal/ more profound secret about his sexuality and also feeling abnormal. It's so telling that once Mes enters his life, he no longer feels it a struggle to embrace who he is, he uncontrollably speaks to Mes and laughs and stares romantically whilst hanging around his friends, he can't help but run to him when he needs him. Especially during the rooftop scene, the fear of losing Mes causes him not to care what others think, and he proceeds to call for him and confess his feelings and stay out in the rain waiting for him. He also proceeds to accept his sexuality even more, once Mes enters his life, he kisses Plufai to determine what he truly feels and once that occurs he decides to head straight and try to talk to Mes about it, thereby afterwards always making Mes know what he is to him is more than friends. I can talk a lot about his character and how much I enjoyed his development and how he chose to finally trust the people around him and also his determination to keep Mes by his side. Which we, later on, find out is also the reason for why they could touch and feel each other. The show emphasises that it's about his determination, his perseverance and love for Mes that keeps the latter coming to him. And towards the end, his wish comes true, and Mes returns to his side because of that. Awesome and beautifully written.

Mes

Singto has been an unstoppable force in GMMTV as an actor, and Mes is another character that is just as memorable and great as the others. While Thun's characterisation surrounds his will and determination to keep Mes by his side, Mes's surrounds his warmth and caring aura. I love. love realising that both Mes and Thun mirrored each other when struggling with their sexuality, both had girls who were loyal and great to them, but they couldn't hide who they were anymore.

The show emphasises the importance of this, telling the audience that yes they're gay, this is a show about two gay boys falling in love, and this is also about how they accept who they are whilst dealing with the obstacles that are supposed to separate them.

Mes is so soft, he's this adorable, mischievous (with personality), ball of fluff and I enjoyed his character. He wasn't written as a stagnant and a boring character; he had his own goals, his own self-exploration, his own storyline and mystery to be solved. And the way the show told his story, was fantastic, the way they mixed the supernatural elements of Mes and the mystery of his death back to Thun was so great. Mes and Thun were always destined to find each other; they were on the path to each other though one of it included him being murdered by his relative, every character is connected together to help get these two together at the end. I love how the show makes us feel like Mes has an unrequited love for Thun at first.

We see Singto's acting to the finest, the longing, the jealousy and the worry about their new blooming relationship. He also shows guilt and character depth when he realises that Kwan is Thun's mother. The pacing and directing keep us in the dark for why he's gone for so long and ran away after their first kiss. We later get the truth revealed as Thun comes out to his mum, and it's such a brilliant way to get the audience even more heartbroken about the reveal. Due to dramatic irony. The mum is the reason for why Thun can happily accept Mes as his lover in his life yet is also an obstacle because Mes can't get over what he did to her in the past. It's brilliant, and such a great way to write the story.

I am so happy as well that Mes returns to Thun's side. I cried like a baby watching their week together, knowing that the time to say goodbye was coming closer. Their conversation about everything and their uncontrollable feelings was so meaningful and heartbreaking; their confession about how they've loved each other from the start; how they've known how the latter felt but refused to accept it because of all the obstacles in their way. Mes still unsure but deciding to spend the last moments together as much as possible. And their relief in discovering that they can touch each other, and the reason for why. These two's love was so beautiful to see.

Lastly, I enjoyed the fact that this is a happy ending. With this genre when surrounding these topics death, separation etc. You expect sad endings mostly because that's the way directors like to end LGBT shows for a long time (something I absolutely detest), from episode 1, the show actually foreshadowed the ending, and comes through with it, I cried so much when I realised that it was not yet Mes's time to go all because of the reasons stated in episode 1. I also cried because GMMTV directors let a great representation show have a hopeful, romantic ending, and a show for many people to relate to, but also to run to and forget about reality.

That's why this show is a masterpiece. I didn't even go into the devices and symbols used in this show, but there was a lot of meta, foreshadowing, dramatic irony etc. That also made this show brilliant. The directing and production quality is also fantastic and deserves praise. The actors; all of them were incredible. I just want another show like this please GMMTV?

#thai bl #he's coming to me #halloween #wrpup #bl series #hctm #ohm pawat #singto prachaya #october #thunmes #gmmtv #metthun #ohmsingto #bl drama #fvete

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killingeveperspectives · 4 years

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Perspective: Killing Eve Season 3 Retcon – Can a show Retcon itself into a different genre?

Recently, I learned about the term ‘Retroactive Continuity’ and I am pretty proud of it because now it sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Retroactive Continuity, or retcon for the intimate like me, is the addition of new information that changes or reinterprets events/narratives previously established, therefore opening new possibilities for the future. It can correct inconsistencies, change world/character limitations, or allow for a dramatic plot twist. For example, a character previously established as an incurable psychopath goes on an emotional growth journey. Killing Eve got fundamentally retconned season 3 and it changes everything. And I need to talk about it. (Look, it’s been a while I wrote this and re-addressed some points here :) )

Villanelle is not a psychopath anymore, I guess

Villanelle was written explicitly as a primary psychopath meaning she was mainly born this way®. Which is different from a Secondary psychopath, whose emotional developmental arrest is caused by disturbingly severe neglect and abuse in early infancy. The impairments in their brains and psychological development prevents them from thinking and, most importantly, feeling like a regular person do. They have a different subjective experience. Psychopathy is incurable in adults, which sets limitations to character development.

Villanelle can’t empathize, perceives people as objects and is very utilitarian. She doesn’t know how to show people she likes them, and her idea of love is possession. Endearing as she is, this is the character the writers wrote. And this is the character portrayed to us in the show. Villanelle is unapologetically a psychopath. She is remorseless, amoral, derives pleasure from killing, all the better to get paid for it. She is basically a self-indulgent goddess. This is enunciated repeatedly in Season 1. Of course, we are not just told, we are shown. Her face glimmers in every kill with enjoyment and cruelty. She is able to conjure any emotion to manipulate – depicted more terrifyingly with Nadia. She emulates emotions from others to connect with people like depicted in the opening scene. My favorite chilling moment is when she gives the “what it is like to die” monologue to Frank, just to terrify him before killing him. Or this face:

Season 2 dives deeper into her psyche where she tells us how she feels, or better yet, doesn’t. We establish she feels this overbearing boredom and seeks to feel anything, so she collects things (or people, no difference) that make her feel something and these things she cherishes by possessing them. The poverty of emotion is reiterated. Again, we are shown, not only told, time and again. The writers are quite clearly asking us to just accept Villanelle for what she is: a psychopath. Like Jodie Comer said herself during that season: “I think some people are bad and that’s what they are, and I don’t think she should be redeemed.” It felt impossible to make it more established within the narrative and the world building. She is, like all adult psychopaths, incurable. These are the character’s limitations, in a purely storytelling sense.

Then, Season 3 happened. In season 3 Villanelle’s character’s development is irreconcilable with the previous seasons. Much of the character’s limitations were simply erased to give her room to “grow”, starting early with one of my favorite scenes of the entire season:

It was marvelously shot and so symbolic. This time around she is gifting Eve something intimate and safe: a teddy bear. Then we have Villanelle by herself and vulnerable, stripping the layers of her feelings towards Eve, the mask of anger cracking as she tries to convince herself she wanted Eve dead, to finally giving in to longing. Her own words are repeated back at her in a loop in a little booth. It was an admission. The booth, the privacy, the lighting, the acting: It was a confession. More than that: it was a love confession. As if falling in love was something she could now do? I don’t want to entertain the actual nature of her feeling, but this is a level of emotional complexity she is just prohibited of displaying by the character’s limitations. And yet, it happened. And I will argue, all the elements of this scene deliberately lead the audience to believe these were romantic feelings.

But this is foreshadowing, and the major shift in perspective happens in her bottle episode. In this episode we see Villanelle display genuine empathy and care for her brothers, not only by sparing them but by giving them more than enough money to go see Elton John. A bonna fide display of correctly conveyed affection and consideration. Which, again, is prohibited by the characters limitations. Then the episode builds the narrative that her “psychopathy” was the result of her abusive upbringing, especially in the confrontation with her mother, when we are clearly asked to side with Villanelle.

Here is where the show subtly retcons Villanelle’s character. It cleverly never denies she is a psychopath. It retcons her ability to emotionally grow, by shifting the emphasis to childhood trauma. Nevertheless, for Villanelle as a character, the emotional growth is still prohibited – despite of trauma. The sleight of hand is passable because audiences (actually, any empathic human being) find it incredibly hard to grasp that trauma cannot be overcome. That’s why it feels plausible she has a very complex, deeply transforming emotional response to killing her mother, despite still being a psychopath. Because that is a response that feels plausible to us, the audience, despite being inconsistent with what is plausible for the character’s the inner experience of reality.

This shift not only changes all the interpretation of her character that was previously established but also changes all future interactions. Here is where we see Villanelle getting conflicted about killing, not in a utilitarian sense of it being impractical or boring, but in an emotional struggle. She starts to worry about how others perceive her, and specially that she is perceived only as a “monster”, pointing to a development of a moral compass, deeper self-awareness, self-evaluation and ability to feel remorse. This is all not only incredibly far-fetched: it was prohibited. This is a clear break in continuity from the character of previous seasons. However, after S3E05 it feels plausible.

Villanelle is a carefully crafted monster

We are, then, asked to believe that Villanelle was made into a ruthless killer, which logically follow can be unmade. Hence, her past needs to be explored so it can also be somewhat resolved, symbolizing the undoing of her atrocious (but delightfull?) persona “Villanelle” (the distinction between Oksana and Villanelle was useless before and should still be. But now it feels like it makes sense). Initially, it was established that her mother died, and she had an abusive drunk father who abandoned her in an orphanage. While I believe there was potential in creating a convincing traumatic abusive background from the established narrative, it may have seemed too unsettling to have a man mistreat an infant, which might explain the writers choice for such through retcon. Transferring the source of the neglect to the mother, might heighten the stakes, since daughters are expected to develop a strong bond and mirror their mothers. Thus, adding depth to their face-off and making her murder more symbolic. Addicionally, a full house – with her mother, stepfather and brothers –would allow Villanelle to flesh out her relationship to family and explore the conflict more thoroughly before confrontation. Despite the symbolic tension, in the end we have no definitive answer to the nature x nurture question, nor to what happened in Villanelle’s infancy, except that the metaphorical darkness may have been passed on from her mother.

Villanelle’s joy in cruelty is the most alienating aspect of her character – also the most gripping – and thus, in order for her arc to be more digestible and relatable, it also needs explicit retconning, which is mostly explored through her relationship with killing. Therefore, her cruelty is also displaced to her abusive upbringing. Most specifically, displaced to another character: Dasha. She is the source of the cruelty transmitted into Villanelle through severe trauma during her teenagerhood, ingeniously avoiding the gravity of discussing infant abuse (Dasha brings a downpour of plot inconsistencies). This is unmistakably conveyed in this scene:

Villanelle was something soft and whole that got broken and reshaped into steel, into a stone cold killer, by external forces. Thus, Dasha is an estranged mother figure from the past who tortured Villanelle into a killer, mirroring the dynamic between Villanelle and her mother. Since there is no clear narrative surrounding her early infancy, and her mother needed to be killed to spark the transformation, Dasha becomes the surrogate through which the conflict of Villanelle’s transformation can be explored. The story doubles its efforts to get the audiences to not only believe Villanelle can change, but also that she deserves to change. And here is where we enter dangerous territory.

Killing Eve is not a spy-drama anymore, it is a rescue romance

I stand with the writers, Killing Eve was not a romance. Not until Season 3. The topic of how audiences, especially queer fans, perceive the show as a romance is worth a whole essay on its own. However, in Season 3, audiences are treated with a romantic atmosphere (remember the teddy bear scene?). Everything is toned down; the pace is slower and the investigation is put to the side. The cat-and-cat game is replaced with this reinforced sense of destiny, of fate, where characters seamlessly come together, as if all their actions were just leading them up to that moment. Their approach carries no sense of danger, their obsession is replaced with anticipation. Characters stop thinking about each other neurotically, that scrumptious voyeurism is gone. Character’s don’t need to be reminded of each other. There is no need for it anymore, it has been written for them. They will meet each other, no need to pursue.

Gone is also Eve’s curiosity and intrigue about Villanelle, along most of her character’s motivations, with one simple retcon: Eve wants to rescue Villanelle.

To which Eve replies: I don’t think so. Meaning “I believe there is more to Villanelle than killing and I will cling to that” (Why, we don’t know. But that’s for another time)

Previously, despite the irresistible attraction Eve felt for Villanelle, the story never portrayed Eve as trying to redeem her. It was precisely the fact that they are polar opposites that brings them together, each trying to quench a deep hunger through the other, in all the wrong ways. Eve pursues in Villanelle much of her unfulfilled impulses and is challenged to embody them herself. Eve’s never been attracted to what Villanelle might have of redeemable, she was drawn to what Villanelle had of profanely feral. On the other hand, Villanelle longs for the safety and intimacy she sees in Eve but has no way of even comprehending what it means.

This honesty to the character’s true desires and realities is what has allowed the show to explore an enticingly destructive dynamic while avoiding romanticizing it, which would downgrade the show to a disservice. However, ultimately, there is a writer trying to sell a story. And in this case, they are setting up a redemption arc within a romance, despite character desires and realities not aligning with that. But in season 3, Villanelle’s psychopathy got retconned to make her crush on Eve without it being too problematic and Eve’s past season character development got simply blissfully ignored so her crush on Villanelle could flourish without it being too problematic, and in the end, their attraction got stripped away from all it’s complexity and danger so they could bring characters together without it being too problematic. These characters got rewritten to give us the tease of a romance we have seen iterated one million times elsewhere.

The premise of the show was to explore the dangerous temptation to bite the proverbial apple. Still, at some point the tension needs to be resolved, and the writers decided to shift it to a rescue romance. A very slippery slope. A slippery slope to romanticizing disturbingly destructive relationships, to perpetrating the cliché that “Love redeems all”, even psychopaths can change if they have someone who believes in them – not only dangerously dishonest but painfully dull. As if somehow having your life and your sense of self ruined for a person is some sort of martyrdom to match the person’s redemption itself. What a beautiful pair they would make, cozy in heaven. But damned be the day Killing Eve becomes cozy. While writing the redemption of the serpent and the power of female love despite the obliteration of Eden; they forgot the most delicious part of the story was the apple.

#killing eve #killingeve #killingeveperspectives #killing eve season three #killing eve s3 #killing eve review #killingeve retcon #villanelle #villanelle retcon

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dovakhiindrabbles · 3 years

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Two in one I’m on a roll! Anyhow, I thought I’d jump into Emeline’s side of the family before moving back to Aisha and Isran – I want to tie the two together but I really need to introduce these two and elaborate on their relationship with one another and Rosie before I do that! They haven’t gotten enough attention when they’re both incredibly important members of Rosie’s family – after all, this is where our Rosie got her name!

A warning for death and violence however! If you’re sensitive to those themes please keep them in mind before reading!

More Info underneath!

To avoid confusion, I’ll be referring to our Rosie as just Rosie and her grandmother as Rosalie!

Continuing from that, I’d like to introduce a new face: Rosalie Julienus-Asarmeson (The first of her namesake – though she took the title of Rosalie Sr. with Rosie’s birth). To be blunt, Rosalie has had a rough and difficult upbringing that led to the short-tempered, and brash woman that Tulius would eventually meet. She grew up an orphan in Bruma, abandoned at a young age and left to fend for herself in the cold mountains. Occasionally a pitying member of the Fighter’s Guild or the Great Chapel would offer her help only for Rosalie to promptly stick out her tongue and declare she didn’t need any help. She was considered a bit of a nuisance and continually sought after by guards who she’d smugly give the slip.

However, years of further and further alienation built Rosalie into a distant, frustrated soul. Her few good deeds would go unnoticed upon a mounting pile of small ones and the citizens of Bruma never quite understood how to connect with a child whose very first memories of the city were coated in loss. Attempts were made on both ends but never at the same time, or at the very least, not enough to make Bruma her home. At fifteen, she left and made her way to the Imperial City, desperate to find a sense of worth. Rosalie found the closest semblance in the Arena.

It was when Rosalie won the title of Champion that she was recruited by the Imperial Army, years later. She’s noted for her incredibly strength and resilience – even fighting bare handed and by whatever means in order to win. Her potential is finally recognized and though Rosalie would never admit it, it’s the possibility of finding that support system she’d always lacked that convinced her.

However, she almost immediately comes to regret this when she’s put under the command of Tulius, a newly promoted captain given the task of keeping Rosalie out a trouble for a minute training Rosalie. The two are almost always at each other’s throats, bickering, arguing, and fighting until it almost reaches a breaking point. Almost. Things thankfully, begin to change when Tulius (definitely not after being given a stern talking to from his command) stops trying to make Rosalie do things his way, and instead attempts to appeal to her. He observes her habits, mannerisms, and actions and attempts to implement that into her training. Rosalie of course, notices this and moves to the offensive – changing her movements and throwing him off at every turn. It’s confusing and frustrating and ultimately culminates into the very thing they should’ve done from the beginning: talk.

It begins as a furious argument – Rosalie upset over Tulius constantly trying to get in her head and Tulius then enraged that he wouldn’t have to do any of this if Rosalie tried to work with him! Rosalie then admits that she doesn’t know how to work with others, she’s always been on her own, why would she immediately bend over backwards to appeal to some stuck-up captain? This opens up a dialogue, and the two have a deep and meaningful conversation that points them in the direction of friends. Both take steps to be more thoughtful and patient with the other and soon enough, Rosalie becomes Tulius’s closest friends and advisor. Through years of surviving and fighting on her own Rosalie had become an excellent strategist, and Tulius had roused the strength and loyalty in his soldiers to carry out these plans. They became an inseparable duo and along the years, those feelings of friendship became more.

As a couple, one could often find the two sneaking off plenty of times to spend time with each other – people figured out soon enough, they didn’t have to say there was an ‘impromptu meeting’ but the lovestruck doofuses did anyways. Their relationship was always full of understanding and kindness, and even when the famed and feared General Tulis was at his most vexed, he could always be calmed down by equally feared Legate Rosalie just holding his hand. Rosalie and Tulius had a single daughter, Emeline, who they adored with all their hearts and souls. It wasn’t rare to see a baby Emeline in a sling on Tulius’s back as he tried to have a meeting or Rosalie doting on her toddler in the middle of a training. Rosalie wanted to be there for her child in all the ways her parents never had been. She truly loved her daughter and eventually Rosalie more than words could ever describe. Tulius too, was a notorious sap, who could be in an absolute rage only to melt at the sight of either his daughter or his granddaughter. (His famed ‘sweet voice’ was a well-known joke among the soldiers)

Rosalie was one of the most highly valued and respected members of the Imperial army, commended by Emperor TItus Mede II and even offered a place among the Blades. She could’ve easily been alongside Tulius as General had she not had that fateful meeting with her own former soldier, Ulfric, who initially idolized Rosalie. She was this intelligent, and masterful Nord leader among the Imperial forces and in his eyes, exemplified everything he himself wanted to be. Rosalie herself, kept him at a distance. He was a gifted young man who’d trained among the Greybeards but he always teetered along an edge. He struggled connecting with others from his training among the Greybeards and blindly loyal to the traditional, fracticous ways of Skyrim that Rosalie never understood.

She did her best to steer Ulfric towards growth and act as the supportive figure she never had in her youth when Ulfric was kidnapped in the midst of the Great War. This would eventually culminate in the dangerous, hateful figure seen in the Civil War who eventually kills Rosalie when the two meet again, with Imperial Legions investigating early Stormcloak sightings. (Not shortly after Civil War is declared but many hadn’t considered it with the scale and ferocity seen with Rosie’s time. Many thought it’d be a lengthy but ultimately useless endeavor. I’d say 188? Making Rosie 13) Rosalie’s death is considered a catalyst for the size and intensity the Civil War is seen with in Rosie’s day. Rosalie’s death was considered a tragedy all throughout Cyrodil, and Tulius himself was despondent and guilt-ridden for not being with her for months afterwards. Inadvertently, Tulius distanced himself from much of his family, even Emeline, and Rosie’s visits to Cyrodil lessened more and more. Their relationship is only rekindled when the two reunite again in Helgen and Tulius is fueled by revenge and frustration. Rosie joins her grandfather to seek vengeance against the man who destroyed not just their lives and families but those of so many others.

———————————————————————————————————–

My apologies, I know that’s quite a bit! But Rosalie’s character is so extremely important to the motivations of Rosie that I couldn’t ignore her! Tulius too is also someone who’s relationship with Rosie has a lot of depth and change throughout her story that I really, really wanted to at least touch on it! That being said, here’s a few more lighthearted facts!

Extra!

- Rosalie almost sobbed for hours when Emeline told her that she was naming her daughter after her biggest hero, her mother. Rosalie spent all her years as Rosie’s grandmother striving to be the best example possible and even was the one to introduce Rosie to the two-handed weaponry she adores so much.

- Tulius calls his granddaughter, ‘Rosebud’ and spoiled her to no end. He and Ehsan would write letters exchanging gift ideas when birthdays or holidays came around.

- Emeline as a child used to steal her father’s cloak so he wouldn’t leave her for his ‘boring meetings.’ She was glued to her father’s hip all throughout her childhood and was without a doubt her father’s daughter.

- Rosie and Rosalie will eventually meet again in Sovngarde when Rosie goes to vanquish Alduin. It’s a heartfelt and teary reunion and Rosalie leaves many messages for Rosie to send back for the family she misses so dearly. It brings back a bit of light that Tulius had long thought was gone when Rosie relays the message to ‘wait just a bit longer’ for them to reunite.

- As a child, Rosalie’s only source of comfort and idolization came from the Hero of Kvatch. She adored hearing stories of his rise to heroics and courage that never faltered even during the most difficult of times. (He was a little bit more of a shy doofus but most people don’t entirely remember that) It was his stories that made the harsh, cold nights a little easier to weather.

Anyhow, I hope you all enjoyed this important look into Rosie’s family and even more so hope that you have a marvelous day! If you have an questions feel free to send them my way!

#Rosieverse: Rosalie Sr #Rosieverse: Rosalie #Rosieverse: Tulius #Skyrim #Skyrim tes #General Tulius #Tulius #LDB #Dragonborn OC #My Dragonborn #Rosieverse #blood tw #tes

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dialbforbethany · 3 years

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Critical Reflection - RTR

Portrait of a Drag King

[ https://youtu.be/B79xoDt3_qA ]

The foundation of this documentary started with researching what the life of a drag king is like. Why they do drag, how drag makes them feel and what kinds of drag are there? It was important to know the basics of drag before communicating with our subject and understanding the possible differences between stereotypical drag kings and the drag our subject uses. We also investigated how drag kings/gender non-conforming persons are represented in the media if there is any. We decided having conversations with Mia as a group would allow us to find out what kind of things they could - or wanted to - speak about and also possible topics for us to research more, one being this idea of gender being a performance that Mia had mentioned in our first call. Cutting down topics into the ones we wanted to cover in the film was the final pre-production step.

Production started with creating a list of ideas for things to shoot with Mia. This included things like profile shots, footage of their bedroom/belongings and shots of their clothing. We first met with Mia to film the interview. A list of interview questions were prepared by the whole group, but due to our close relationship with Mia, we were able to have more than enough time to ask additional questions and receive lengthy answers. The informality facilitated the interview and made talking about the sensitive subjects much easier for us but more importantly for our interviewee.

The plan with the edit was based off our previous documentary about a skateboarder. We again wanted to emphasise this feeling of fluidity and moving forward and did this by having the visuals constantly moving and keeping the tempo fast paced. We started by cutting down the interview to the most relevant parts to create a foundation for the film and afterwards the visuals were matched up with the audio to keep the linear structure of the narrative flowing. Archive footage was used to show ideas and concepts that Mia could not show us themselves but if we were ever to release this film to the public, we’d have to make sure that the archive footage we use is copyright-free or that we have permission to use it.

Our film’s main objective was to show how one creatively expresses gender through drag and performance. We tell the story of someone who has battled with being in the closet and gender dysphoria and has now finally found a way to express their gender and sexuality. Our character reveals to us how it feels to be trapped within a box of other people’s ideals but also expresses the unusual yet comfortable feeling of gender ambiguity and euphoria. It is this shift in mindset and character that drives the narrative and message of our film.

This documentary starts with an introduction to our subject – Mia – through their narration of a metaphor describing the immense pressure that was put on them from a young age to be a certain way. Mia’s thoughts, poetry and memories guide the narrative finally ending with their feelings towards their identity and how they may change with time. We use a past-present-future structure to allow the audience to follow Mia along this journey of self-discovery.

The main goal with our visuals was to mirror the personality of our character using bright colours and mixed patterns. Even though the visuals harshly contrast some of the topics discussed, we wanted to keep this liveliness and youthfulness to emphasise the idea of growth and transformation. We applied on top of the visuals, layers of animations and drawings which emphasise the depth of our character and the complexity of the subject matter and all the overwhelming thoughts that come along with struggling with gender identity. Simple illustrations help the audience to more deeply understand a subject which is often difficult to comprehend. We used art drawn my Mia themselves that give a first person view into the specific thoughts one may have when going through something like this. We intercut archive footage in the edit to show a before and after but also in some cases to further demonstrate some of the points that Mia makes. We paid close attention to Mia’s clothing to match the topic of gender as a performance and included footage of their bedroom/belongings to give a more detailed insight into who our character is and what they like to surround themselves with.

Unfortunately for us, we never really thought about doing anything with the sound as we were so focused on getting the visuals to look how we had imagined which ended in only using audio from the interview. Although our interview sound was of good quality and all the selected parts were relevant to our narrative, at times the documentary would have benefited from some longer pauses in-between segments of voiceover to fix tempo issues and prevent sensory overload. Of course, now we realise the importance of sound design in creating an all-rounded film and if we were to ever remake this documentary, we would most definitely put more effort into the sound edit to create a more atmospheric film.

The main thing that makes our film so engaging is the interesting and strong character who speaks about a very emotional and personal topic that is rarely seen in mainstream media. The lively and dynamic visuals mirror the styles of film/media that are popular with our generation at this time meaning there is a level of relatability and connection between the subject and the audience.

I think we successfully portrayed our character, as we surrounded every part of the film around one aspect of their personality. The narrative is led by our character and covers the intimate details of their thoughts, memories and opinions. Showing Mia’s belongings, artwork and poetry gives the audience a first-hand view into Mia’s world. The unique and unforgettable essence of Mia is found in every corner of our documentary.

thank you mia :D

#dialBforbethanyRTR

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odanurr87 · 4 years

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2019: My year in K-Dramas - Part 2

And we’re back! So, um, yeah, this took a lot longer than I imagined at first, but the truth is I was also dealing with coursework and other projects. As a result, I decided to break this last post into two, so instead of 6 shows in 1 post, you get 6 shows across 2 posts, building anticipation like a kdrama! And, I mean, two of those shows are My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun... Those two powerhouses deserve a bit more attention, maybe a couple of rewatches. Anyway, let’s get this show on the road!

WARNING! I’ve purposefully kept any big spoilers out of this post but some light spoilers may remain. Proceed with caution.

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When the Camellia Blooms (2019)

Gong Hyo-Jin as Oh Dong-Baek and Kang Ha-Neul as Hwang Yong-Sik.

Release Date: September 18 - November 21, 2019

Episodes: 20

Available on: Netflix

Summary: Dong-Baek is a single mother who moves to the town of Ongsan to open up a bar, the Camellia, while trying to raise her son, Pil-Gu. Six years later, Yong-Sik, a police officer and the youngest son of Dong-Baek’s only friend in Ongsan, returns and is instantly smitten by her. Yong-Sik is determined to woo her but Dong-Baek is also equally determined to resist his advances at first, a situation that is further complicated by the sudden reappearance of Dong-Baek’s ex and Pil-Gu’s biological father, Kang Jong-Ryul, who tries to win her back. When a serial killer known as Joker resurfaces after years of inactivity threatening to go after Dong-Baek, Yong-Sik launches an investigation to catch the elusive Joker once and for all.

What I liked:

The down-to-earth feel of the show. Save for the murder mystery element of the show, When the Camellia Blooms is pretty down-to-earth, depicting characters that could very much exist in our neighbourhood and exploring problems related to everyday life. How many kdramas show the struggles of a single mom trying to handle a love life while raising her son? I bet there are not a lot of them, and the only similar one I’ve watched, and would recommend, is One Spring Night, that depicts the life of a single dad balancing a romantic relationship while raising his son (it’s probably a more realistic representation all around down even to side characters). Even Yong-Sik is not the idealized male protagonist that most kdramas favour, at one point referred to as a “country bumpkin” by Dong-Baek’s ex, and while he may come across as rather simple-minded, he’s also refreshingly honest, determined (both in his pursuit of Dong-Baek and Joker), hard-working, and always there when the chips fall. While Dong-Baek’s ex is an ass for the majority of the show, I appreciated his inclusion because it clearly showed the contrast between the two characters vying for Dong-Baek’s affections: the man who pities her, and the man who encourages her; the man who’s ashamed of how she’s living her life, and the man who’s proud of what she has accomplished; the man who loves his memory of her, and the man who loves her as she is now; her past, and her present. Which one of the two will become her future?

The supporting cast. I am going to put them all together in the same bag as I don’t think anyone was particularly outstanding, but they all contributed to making this show a most entertaining watch from beginning to end: from Yong-Sik’s superior and chief of police, Byun Bae-Soo (played by Jeon Bae-Soo), through the simple-minded landlord with political aspirations, Noh Gyu-Tae (played by Oh Jung-Se), his cunning wife and ace attorney, Hong Ja-Young (played by Yeom Hye-Rae), to Dong-Baek’s kleptomaniac friend, Choi Hyang-Mi (played by Son Dam-Bi). At one point I even became more interested in the relationship between the characters of Gyu-Tae and Ja-Young, so strong were their performances. And I couldn’t help but feel sad for Hyang-Mi despite her many opportunistic deeds, a character who’s had a life as unforgiving as Dong-Baek, especially when we learn the reason behind some of her actions, and happy for her when she realises family isn’t always blood and ultimately chooses to walk a path of redemption. Sure wish we had seen more of that. You could make the case that Gyu-Tae and Hyang-Mi are the best out of the supporting cast, perhaps because of how much their characters grow over the course of the show.

What I didn’t like:

How the murder-mystery was handled/resolved. The first episode starts with the murder of an unknown person at some unspecified point in the future, a typical enough hook. We’re shown that person is someone who Yong-Sik apparently knew and cared for, but even when later episodes extend that scene frame by frame, tempting the audience to participate in this game of whodunit, the identity is only allowed to be revealed when the series catches up to that moment. The murder mystery element is sprinkled throughout the series as Yong-Sik is intent on protecting Dong-Baek and catching the serial killer Joker. But this isn’t Broadchurch, where the entire show revolves around solving the murder mystery and seeing its effects on the people of the small town of Dorset. No, in a way, the murder mystery in When the Camellia Blooms feels like a strategy, designed so that when the real goal of the show is revealed, the exploration of motherhood, you’ll be too invested to back out. One could argue the same for the romance between Dong-Baek and Yong-Sik. As a result, the murder-mystery feels drawn out and starts losing some of its steam as we approach the final episodes. Involving Dong-Baek’s mother in the whole affair was oddly convenient but felt out of place and worked against the show. Here we have a woman who knows, or thinks she knows, who the killer is several episodes before the end, and not only does she not tell the police about it but she actually confronts the killer. In any other show, the outcome would have been inevitable: the woman is murdered, leaving the police another clue as to who might have done it. However, since the show has already planned a happy ending for this character, she can’t be killed (incidentally, this happens with another character as well), even if the show later tries to toy with our feelings by suggesting she’s dead (not because of Joker though). The reveal of the culprit’s identity was a letdown, not only because the writers showed their hand early on but because we were never really given good suspects to begin with, and in a murder mystery that’s essential. Yes, we’re given a good pool of suspects for Joker’s latest victim, but since we also know Joker killed other people and is targeting Dong-Baek, not to mention the tone and themes of the show, we can readily eliminate almost all of them. They could’ve toyed around with the idea of a copycat, killing a person and pinning it on Joker, but they didn’t. And don’t get me started on how they finally catch Joker, this dreaded serial killer who had managed to avoid capture for years but turned out be to a bit of a joke, pun intended.

How insufferable Pil-Gu became towards the end. To be fair, I blame the adults (and writers) in this show more than I do Pil-Gu. I had no qualms about how his character had been handled for most of the show, but then along came Episode 17, where the writers decided to amp the drama to 11 just for the sake of it, a trope I really don’t like. Basically, through a series of misunderstandings that no adult feels compelled to clear up, Pil-Gu throws a tantrum, accusing her mother of not loving him anymore, and why does she need to get married, and why can’t she live alone with him for the rest of her life, etc., etc., forgetting it was Pil-Gu who, earlier that episode, had asked Yong-Sik to stay at their home and protect his mom. Like I said, nobody even bothers to explain the situation to him (even though he’s shown to be pretty smart and should’ve probably figured it out himself) and, worse, Dong-Baek plays along and decides to break up with Yong-Sik, determined never to love anyone other than Pil-Gu for the rest of her life. Jesus. As if wanting to twist the knife further, Episode 18 ends with a grown-up Pil-Gu, a jarring and decidedly out-of-place transition, suggesting he grew up to be a fine man as a result of her mom’s decision, but anyone who’s ever watched a kdrama knows better than that: you’re just padding out events for the sake of drama and this show didn’t need that. At this point, I lost whatever appreciation I might have had for the character of Pil-Gu and was half rooting for Yong-Sik to be promoted and get his ass back to Seoul ASAP, never to return to Ongsan again.

The existence of Episode 18. Yes, this is the episode where Dong-Baek and Yong-Sik break up, but that’s not what I’m getting at as I discussed that point previously. Episode 18 also sees Pil-Gu suddenly want to live with his biological father out of a misunderstanding (so many misunderstandings in these last few episodes!) and Kang Jong-Ryul try to act as that father to him. It’s clear he’s out of his depth with Pil-Gu, but he seems to be trying so it feels jarring when Dong-Baek returns for Pil-Gu and punches him in the face. Look, Jong-Ryul has been a bit of an ass throughout so he has more than earned that punch but not in this context. The show immediately kicks in the music that depicts this as a moment of triumph and personal growth for Dong-Baek but I kept thinking, “The one time this dude is actually trying to step up to the plate, assuming his responsibilities as a father, and he gets punched for it? Sure, he’s not that great but he’s only had Pil-Gu for, what, a week? Less? And it’s not like he kidnapped him or anything. This doesn’t even make sense.” And what growth are we talking about when she immediately caters to the whims of a kid and breaks up with Yong-Sik? Who is the adult in this relationship? Are there any adults in this show? There’s a decidedly marked absence of fathers, and those there are aren’t shown in a very good light but that’s another matter. Episode 18 is, quite simply, an episode that shouldn’t exist as it really brings nothing to the table and only pads out the inevitable.

OTP: While not my #1 pick amongst the shows I watched in 2019, it was refreshingly different, with the show slowly building their relationship in spite of Yong-Sik’s relentless attempts to woo Dong-Baek. In any other show, such determination could’ve come across as annoying, perhaps bordering on harassment, but this is mitigated by Yong-Sik’s sincere personality, his active listening of Dong-Baek’s problems, his support and encouragement of her, and ultimately his respect of the boundaries set by Dong-Baek, a woman who is not accustomed to such repeated shows of affection and is ill-equipped to handle them. It was very rewarding to see her evolution as a character, finding the confidence to grow out of her shell, even if there were some flaws in the journey.

Verdict: While the show trips a little at the end it was a solid watch, and I could see myself returning to it every once in a while because of its mundane (and I’m using this word as a compliment here) aspects. It doesn’t hurt it has some good humour in between all the crying. Oh, yes, there’s a reason why I chose that particular gif to represent the relationship between Yong-Sik and Dong-Baek.

Rewatch meter: I’m going to cheat and say it’s Medium-to-High.

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Bring it on, ghost (2016)

Kim So-Hyun as Kim Hyun-Ji, and Ok Taec-Yeon as Park Bong-Pal.

Release Date: July 11 - August 30, 2016

Episodes: 16

Available on: Netflix, Viki

Summary: Park Bong-Pal is a 2nd year Economics student with a side job as an exorcist due to his strange ability to see ghosts, a fact that has prevented him from having a normal life and that he deeply resents. One night, while performing an exorcism at a high school, he comes across Kim Hyun-Ji, a former high school student turned wandering spirit, who has no recollection of her past but possesses an innate talent to fight ghosts and spot their weak points. During this encounter, the two accidentally kiss, and Hyun-Ji briefly recalls some of her memories. Convinced Bong-Pal holds the key to her memories and determined to find out more, she manages to persuade a reluctant Bong-Pal to let her move in in exchange for helping him fight ghosts. But Bong-Pal soon learns that not all ghosts are evil, and some may be even cute enough to fall for.

What I liked:

Kim So-Hyun as Kim Hyun-Ji. Do I need to add anything further? That picture should be enough evidence in and of itself. Kim So-Hyun looks like she’s having a blast acting as a kickass high-school student/ghost who has a penchant for upsetting Bong-Pal and looking criminally cute while doing so. With a personality like that, it’s no wonder Bong-Pal couldn’t help but fall for her. Who wouldn’t? Perhaps what makes her character so lovable is precisely the fact that she works off of Bong-Pal’s more curt personality. As they say, opposites attract.

Lee David as Kim In-Rang and Kang Ki-Young as Choi Cheon-Sang.

The humor. I’ll admit that I miscalculated with these two in the beginning, resigning myself to having to endure their interventions in what I felt was shaping up to be an otherwise great show. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find they made for some good comic relief, especially after they convince Bong-Pal to let them handle the business side of exorcising ghosts and join him and Hyun-Ji in their nightly escapades. That sounded better in my head. The humor is never crass and, most importantly, it never outlasts its welcome. Hey, they even try to do him a solid and hitch him with his crush, but Hyun-Ji has already managed to work her magic on him unbeknownst to her. In fact, much of the show’s humor is also a credit to the comedic rapport between the characters of Bong-Pal and Hyun-Ji, especially in the earlier episodes when their different personalities are most notable, but also later on when feelings of jealousy start to surface. Their playful bickering is often reproduced in some of the background music used and is also present in some of the ghost fights as if saying, “Yeah, we’re fighting a pervert ghost in a sauna and having a blast, what of it?”

The formula. What do I mean by that? For the most part, this show works like a procedural, with Hyun-Ji and Bong-Pal fighting the ghost of the week in each successive episode, while at the same time having a multi-episodic story-arc. This is the formula used in US TV shows: introduce an interesting story-arc in the first few episodes, then forget all about it until the final episodes of the season, with filler episodes in between. The difference being Bring it on, Ghost is actually a good procedural: there are no filler episodes, every ghost fight serves a purpose, whether it be to develop our protagonists (at times providing interesting backstory) or to strengthen their bond, and the main story-arc is always subtly running in the background until the paths of our protagonists and villain cross and events come to a head. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, US TV shows should seriously consider having shorter and tighter seasons, as their quality suffers otherwise. Bong Pal and Hyun-Ji’s ghost fights will also sometimes include moral or life lessons that flow naturally and never feel forced; nobody’s beating you over the head with them and shouting, “DO YOU GET IT NOW?!” As you can imagine, they’re certainly more subtle than US TV shows, but then again kdramas seem to have mastered the art of telling a lot without actually saying it, something others could learn from.

What I didn’t like:

The amnesia trope. Look, before you say anything, I understand why it’s there, sorta, it’s a reversal of Kim Hyun-Ji’s clinginess (that is an actual word) to Bong-Pal, if for different reasons. I don’t mind that it happened, but what I do mind is that it’s never reversed, making it somewhat difficult to believe that she’d fall for a stranger in what appears to be a very short amount of time. You could argue she’s unconsciouscly attracted to him given their past connection, and the show does at one point suggest that she may be regaining her memories, or that it’s possible at least, but nothing comes of it. This sudden bout of amnesia also offers her temporary protection from the villain, but at the end of the day I am left thinking that the show could’ve done without it or reverse it at the very end.

OTP: It’s a team effort, but Kim So-Hyun kills it!

Verdict: An infinitely rewatchable show with an all-around solid cast and great sense of humor. Like Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon, this show is sure to put a smile on your face if you’re feeling down or if you simply want to have a good time.

Rewatch meter: High

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One More Time (2016)

Kim Myung Soo as Yoo Tan, and Yoon So-Hee as Moon Da-In.

Release Date: October 26 - December 14, 2016

Episodes: 8

Available on: Netflix

Summary: Yoo Tan is the lead singer of an indie band called One More Time, together with his girlfriend, Moon Da-In, and his childhood friends. However, with bills mounting and his hopes for success dwindling, his relationships take a turn for the worse. When he’s offered to sign a contract with a music label, Yoo Tan sees his long-awaited chance and decides to burn all bridges to his past life, but an unexpected event that forces him to constantly relive the past twenty-four hours makes him reconsider his outlook on life.

What I liked:

The concept. The idea of being stuck in a time loop is not a particularly new one, with Groundhog Day being the most obvious, and highly entertaining, exponent, although I do remember an episode of Stargate SG-1 called “Window of Opportunity” that exploited the same concept, if to a different effect. As in Groundhog Day, One More Time uses this idea as a vehicle of self-reflection for the main character, transforming him from a bitter, selfish, and somewhat egocentric person, to someone far more likable, who recognises the value in the friendships he has forged and rediscovers the love he holds for the woman who has always been there for him. But this is only the prelude to our story as One More Time extends this concept by providing a reason for the time loop: tying it to Moon Da-In’s life, or death. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray’s character, Phil, is eventually confronted by the fact that, for all the things he can do as a result of the day resetting, he cannot prevent death no matter how hard he tries. This is a sobering moment for our main character. However, Yoo Tan goes through an even more harrowing crucible, as the person whose death he seemingly cannot prevent is his girlfriend, Da-In. Thus, the series shows us Yoo Tan’s many attempts to save her while delving into Da-In’s past. Will he succeed and get a second chance at a life with Da-In? I guess you’ll have to watch the show for that.

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The songs. With a running time of 240 minutes, give or take, don’t expect a large soundtrack (compared to most kdramas), but I believe that is something that actually works in the show’s favour, as the songs are always used to highlight a given context, thus engraving them in your mind and rendering them memorable. I don’t really know how to explain it, and I blame my musical illiteracy. Sadly, the powers that be didn’t think that such a short web series was worthy of having a physical or even digital soundtrack release, what made finding any trace of these songs rather difficult for the past few years. Fortunately, one of the composers and singer, known as ODD, has recently released some tracks on her YouTube channel. These are: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘Birds,’ ‘Without you,’ and ‘In this night.’ While ‘Moonlight’ is my personal favourite, all four tracks are entirely deserving of being released, at least on Spotify so I can listen to them over and over again. With Spotify apparently coming to South Korea this year, that may yet be the case. There is also the main song, ‘One More Time,’ sang by none other than Kim Myung Soo himself in perhaps the most emotional scene in the drama, but it still remains elusive.

The leads and their chemistry. I had absolutely no trouble believing these two were in love with their longing stares and beautiful smiles. Kim Myung Soo and Yoon So-Hee did an incredible job (and the writers too, obviously) selling me on their relationship in such a short amount of time. At every point in the show I could understand where the characters were coming from, how much they cared for one another, and why they’d go to great lengths to protect their better half. Yes, they go through a rough patch at the beginning of the show, but that only makes it feel more real and it’s a necessary stepping stone in Yoo Tan’s character arc. I also really liked how the show took the time to explore Da-In’s past and see events from her perspective, highlighting just how central her character is to the plot of the story. Can’t say anymore for fear of spoilers. Really wish these two actors were to collaborate again in main roles.

Kim Ji-Young as the Grim Reaper. The way the show integrated a Grim Reaper was well thought out, and making her a child was a stroke of genius played to great comedic effect. I mean, who’d think this cute child was the embodiment of Death? Her childlike appearance is contrasted by her adult personality, and you can see she’s more than a bit fed up with troublesome humans who make her job more difficult than it already is, and she grows increasingly annoyed at a particular pair of them. I’ll let you guess who. Come to think of it, she reminds me a little of the older version of Samshin, the goddess of birth and fate, from Goblin. A great character all around without whom the show would be considerably lessened.

What I didn’t like:

Honestly, there’s really nothing that comes to mind. Sure, I could nitpick and say that some characters and storylines are dropped midway through the show, but I think it’s fair to say they had served their purpose, and trying to account for them in later episodes would’ve wasted the show’s valuable runtime. Could it have benefited from having a few more episodes? I suppose it’s possible, and I would’ve welcomed the chance to spend more time with these characters, but I believe the show was effective in telling its story across eight episodes, and any more could have placed the narrative under considerable stress. For instance, while I absolutely love Angel’s Last Mission: Love (incidentally, also starring Kim Myung Soo), one has to admit the plot was stretched longer than it needed to, and certain events do not hold up under further scrutiny.

OTP:

There is no sadness that last for eternity. There is no love that lasts for eternity either.

I’m going to vote that there is.

Which one are you voting for? Love or sadness?

Sad love.

Verdict: They say that good things come in small doses. If so, that fits this show perfectly. It was my introduction to Kim Myung Soo, who would then go on to deliver a stronger performance in Angel’s Last Mission: Love, as well as my introduction to Yoon So-Hee, whom I’d love to see in more main roles. While delivered in a short format I’m not used to, the show’s creators made the most of it and not a single minute feels wasted. An interesting concept that benefits from some tight writing, beautiful music, solid leads, and a lovable OTP, packaged as a mini-series. What more could I want?

Rewatch meter: High

#kdrama #kdramas #one more time #when the camellia blooms #let's fight ghost #bring it on ghost #kim myung soo #kim so hyun #gong hyo jin #kang ha neul #ok taecyeon #yoon so hee #review #netflix #viki

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oneoutofamillionbooklovers · 4 years

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Book Review: House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City)

House of Earth and Blood, 1st book in the Crescent City series by Sarah J. Maas

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ~ 5 stars ~ Genre: Adult Fantasy, Romance, Science Fiction

Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers, proceed at your own digression.

“Allow me to demonstrate why you can all kiss my ass” - Bryce Quinlan

Indeed, Bryce did just that. At the beginning of House of Earth and Blood, Bryce presents herself as a shallow party girl. Her life that was not void of struggle, pain, and insecurities could be forgotten as long as she could dance it all out with her best friend, Danika Fendyr. However, in an instant everyone Bryce loves is murdered. Two years later, Bryce is alone and has burrowed back into being the person everyone thinks she is, the drunk party slut. When the murders start up again, the powerful Archangel, Micah, asks Bryce to pair up with Hunt Athalar, Micah’s personal assassin, to investigate. Hunt, being the cold, brooding, deathly attractive fallen angel that he is, doesn’t tiptoe around Bryce. As the two get closer to solving the murders, they find that maybe they don’t hate each other as much as they initially thought. “Through love, all is possible”.

Maas outdoes herself with the Crescent City! She paints a modern utopian setting that is home to a mix of different mythological creatures: angels, fae, sirens, spirits, etc. With complicated hierarchies, history, legends, and worlds, it took me a little while to get into a rhythm. However, before I knew it, I was navigating the city from the old square to the seventh level of hell. Maas blew me away with our main character. Bryce Quinlan is the perfect heroine clad in sky-high stilettos, deep red curls, and an edgy leather jacket that she inherited from her best friend. She seems perfectly content to live her life however she wants, answering to no one, except maybe Syrinx (her pet). It’s no question that Bryce has felt suffering. Her father, the Autumn King, was controlling and abusive. What made me respect Bryce was her ability to turn that pain and insecurity into passion and aggression. She isn’t looking for someone to protect her and despite her brash and impulsive personality, readers could feel how much she was calling out for help, the kind of panic that paralyzes her. She lost everything in her life in one day. Having her best friend at her back made her think anything was possible and the lack of support from Danika and Danika’s pack (including Connor, Bryce’s previous endgame) breaks her. She is living because she feels like she needs to, not because it’s a life worth living. She puts on her trashy party girl mask and makes herself feel the pain and resentment from everyone because she feels like she doesn’t deserve happiness. When the murders start up again, she is asked to investigate alongside Hunt, the fallen angel. And this time, Bryce is looking for answers.

Hunt. Oh boy. Brooding. Cold. Broken. Lonely. Hunt. Words do him no justice. After fighting in a failed rebellion for an archangel that he loved so deeply, one more scar was engraved on Hunt Athalar’s poor heart. Adding to that list is the murder of his beloved mother, and his enslavement to the archangel Micah after the rebellion fails. A life for a life, Hunt becomes the shadow of death and Micah’s personal hitman. With two thousand more lives on his plate, Hunt takes the deal with Micah to help Bryce solve the murders in exchange for lowering his debt. To hunt, it’s simply a timeline. Find who’s killing people, kill a demon or two, look after a trashy party girl, and then freedom. He never expected to care for that, (shocker) not so trashy girl. Maas writes of a broken man, a fallen angel that has forgotten his self-worth. The way he is depicted reminds me of smoke: dark, unattached, blinding, but always near the heat of a flame, passion, aka Bryce.

Bryce and Hunt’s hate to love relationship slowly reveals how broken each of them are. Hunt and Bryce are all alone and have to save themselves a bit before they can learn to support the other. I found it adorable watching them find out they deserved love. Through moments where Bryce is falling for Hunt, they turn his dry camera roll into a flourishing and loving slide show. He starts finding the joy in taking pictures, the feeling that maybe life holds enough purpose to document it. My favorite moment is when Bryce tells Hunt that his pain and suffering is like looking in a mirror. He laughs and asks her how it feels to be emotional twins with the shadow of death, the Umbra Mortis. This sort of redemption is what makes their love so heartbreaking, as if they are coming back from a place of surviving not living and are together finding out why they want to keep on going.

At the end of the book when Bryce is telling all her loved ones how much they mean to her, Hunt is pleading with her to hold on and stay safe. His sweetheart turns from a sassy quip to a blessing on his lips. Bryce tells her half brother, Ruhn, how much she forgives and loves him from their past arguments. She tells her friends, Juniper and Fury, how much she appreciates them and her mother and adoptive father that she loves them. Bryce learns she is living for them, she is living for herself. It was hard being alone but she is willing to sacrifice it all for them. Bryce takes the drop to save everyone and sees Danika cheering her on. I was a sobbing mess as Danika and Bryce got to share one last adventure together. Light it up. Indeed, they did. The way Danika convinces Bryce to keep living for herself, that she doesn’t need to be so tough all the time is a sigh of relief for readers. We can finally watch Bryce letting people in, she can accept that she’s living. It’s a weight lifted off of all of our shoulders as Bryce finally gets to say the goodbye she has been waiting two years to make. She ascends and continues her life for no one but herself. Maas writes an outstanding bond between these two girls. While I have the tissues, tears, and Pinterest boards to prove my love of the romantic relationships she has written in the past, the pure love between friends and family hits a specific place in my heart I can not describe. Only some people can say they’ve met their true love, yet many can speak to a best friend or a sibling. What I find shines the most in this novel are the platonic relationships. Whether it is Danika, Ruhn, Lehabah, Syrinx, Aidas, Jesiba, Ember, or Randall, the depth of all the people Bryce loves is overwhelming.

Speaking of love, Bryce and Hunt’s personal growth is enormous. Hunt goes from being a closed-off brute to finding that he deserves love and deserves to be someone other than a killer and a slave. For so long Hunt has had no other option than to make bad decisions. Maas writes about his unwavering love for Shahar. He worships the ground she walks on. With Bryce, it’s different. He knows how broken she is and has seen her at her worst. It’s no illusion that Bryce is just a simple hard-headed half-fae. But, he loves her anyway. He realizes that he loves Bryce and that he doesn’t have to live alone anymore. He doesn’t feel the need to sit and suffer because of his past mistakes because Bryce has made him feel alive, needed, wanted, worthy. Bryce sits along the river and sees Connor through the mist on the isle of the dead. She knows she will never see them again. But for the first time, Bryce isn’t looking for something in the past, she’s looking forward. She pulls out her phone and replies to his text from two years ago, the text she never knew how to reply to, never had to heart to. It reads: “Text me when you’re home safe”. Bryce texts back: “I’m home”.

As Maas wraps up the first in the Crescent City series, she leaves her readers with a new sense of hope, one that is stemmed in Bryce. We aren’t looking through fog anymore. We don’t have to watch as Bryce takes her life for granted. We know from now on, what happens to Bryce doesn’t make her a victim, it makes her a hero, a survivor. This kind of emotion can only be captured by a writer with amazing talent and depth.

Bryce, Hunt, and many of our other beloved characters found their homes. Not in the cliché way like, “home is where your loved ones are”. After two years of feeling alone and unsafe in her own mind, Bryce is finally able to feel at home and accept the death of her friends. That growth is what I find heartbreaking and inspiring and exceptional.

Here’s a link to Amazon if you want to buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/House-Earth-Blood-Crescent-City/dp/1635574048

~ 4/25/20 ~

#crescent city #bryce quinlan #hunt athalar #sarah j maas #danika fendyr #ya fiction #book review #house of earth and blood #five stars #romance #first book

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vikingsong · 5 years

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Thoughts on SPN 14x17

In the midst of what appears to be a general fandom freak-out about the promo for 14x18, Id like to offer a few thoughts on 14x17 from both fan- and writing- perspectives:

1) I liked a lot of things about this episode. Will it make the highlight reel of best episodes in the entire series? No, but it is a pretty solid one and much better writing than a lot of episodes have been, especially in the past 5+ years. I appreciated that the main trio each had individual quests/arcs in this episode during which they each display moments of character development. It felt relatively balanced, structurally speaking.

2) Castiel’s convo with Anael: Cas has wrestled with his faith in his father, since, oh, /Season 4/. He has struggled again and again to reconcile his general sense of abandonment by his father against the handful of instances where his father has decided to intervene to either resurrect Cas or otherwise save the day. It’s not a once-and-done issue for Cas; he’s gone the full spectrum from blind faith, to trying to replace Chuck as a new-and-improved, more involved (read: more smiting) version of his father, to cynicism and depression. So—whether one agrees with his theology/worldview or not—it’s a big deal for Cas to say to Anael that they are not alone, even if Chuck doesn’t respond. He’s still willing to reach out to Chuck, but this time it doesn’t utterly crush him when Chuck doesn’t immediately answer (though I think Chuck could still show up eventually, but that’s just a vague theory). And in a sense, Cas is summarizing a major theme of the entire series: community and teamwork vs isolation and conflict. This theme is represented in the Winchester view of family, which “don’t end with blood,” and it’s represented in all of the plot arcs where each member of the ensemble characters has, on at least one occasion, rejected another ensemble character out of lack of trust (usually following some kind of betrayal). So it seems fitting to me that Cas is sharing that view of community with Anael, even in the midst of yet another solo side-quest to try to fix everything...again. Humans are contradictory creatures a lot of the time, and Cas is too, now, by extension of his interactions with the Winchesters. He’s sharing the things he’s learned from his human family with a member of his angel family. I’d love to see more of that dynamic in the future.

3) Anael’s character gets some development, too. It still feels a bit slap-dash and contradictory to me as it stands now, but I think it has a lot of potential if it’s handled well in future episodes. It investigates the question of what happens when someone cares too much and punished for that? What exactly does that do to them and, more importantly, how do they respond (another major them in the show)? It’s an interesting contrast to the way that Lucifer was originally presented. He was said to have loved Chuck more than humanity, so he disobeyed the direct order to be more devoted to humanity. Now it appears that Anael loved humanity too much, so she rejected Chuck because he refused to “meddle.” Both Anael and Lucifer were punished for their actions. Lucifer responded by creating demons and embarking on a world-domination spree for millennia, but Anael chose to go around healing people while also indulging her taste for luxuries. So how exactly did she get from point A to point B? It brings to mind Rowena’s story arc as well. How might Anael grow as a result of interacting with Cas and his human family? I’d personally like to see that character arc. And I also think she and Rowena might get along splendidly.

4) Head injuries!: I know I’m not the first person to make this observation, but head injuries are a big deal and—demon-blood, Mark of Cain, and archangel vessels aside—the Winchester brothers are still human. And the reality of life as hunters is that a routine job could kill you, not just the jobs that involve saving the world. So it seems this season someone finally pointed out that something like that is enough to break any human, even a Winchester. Yeah, I know they have a habit of getting resurrected so it lacks true dramatic tension, but it injects a healthy reminder back into the show that one day—say, end of next season?—the time will come when the Winchesters won’t actually survive dying. (Only in SPN does that sentence make sense...)

5) I like the Jack-teetering-on-the-brinck arc and I personally think he’s been heading toward being the S14 big bad all season. Michael was a diversion. Lucifer was a diversion. Both have been beaten before (see Season 5). And both have served to set up just how much of a threat the fandom’s favorite smol nougat-loving son actually is. The moment Jack destroyed Michael—at the cost of most of his soul—I just knew that was where this was headed. It’s Buffy Season 6 all over again...the obvious threat for the first half of the season—which is actually a valid threat on its own—is the one the protagonists focus on so much that they can’t see one of their own going off the rails until it’s almost too late. When that happens, it comes down to connection and relationship to save the world, not just winning by wasting the bad guys. I’m eager to see if SPN has a similar “yellow crayon” scene.

6) Dean’s convo with Mary. I particularly liked that Dean recognized that he and Mary are alike—it was a brief line, but it shows a lot. He’s gotten to know Mary as a person, not just his idealized memory of her. We know he has already forgiven her, which is huge. (Btw, that scene where he tells her he loves her and hates her, but most importantly, he forgives her is one of the most powerful scenes in the entire series, IMHO. Seriously. The writing was great and Jensen Ackles’ delivery was flawless. JA also made some really great observations in an interview or something about why he felt that scene made so much sense in Dean’s character arc.) So to have Dean be able to recognize that his mom is a complex person, too, and that not all of his problematic traits are from his dad or because of the bad things Dean’s been through—well, that feels like personal and relational growth to me.

7) Sam’s convo with Mary: He’s still dealing with survivor’s guilt, so it naturally hits him extra hard when he learns yet another person is dead because of the domino effect of his choices. It takes his mom—whose approval he still craves, in a way, since he grew up without it—telling him that he’s a good man (after so many people have told him over the years that he was tainted, an abomination) and that he made the choices he made for the right reasons, even though they didn’t turn out the way that he’d had wanted. (I personally think he should have shot Nick promptly in the fight scene in 14x17, both because self-defense and because the Winchesters have killed threats, even human ones, for a lot less than what Nick is trying to do, so it feels a bit strange character-wise to me that he didn’t. But I digress.)

8) Last but not least, Jack’s arc: It’s so much more interesting that he’s trying to figure out how to be good while still effectively going to the dark side than if he suddenly went 100% soulless and evil without remorse. Because this still feels like Jack, and that’s the source of tension for the ensemble of characters who know and love Jack. They fear for him and well as fear the threat of what he could become. There’s much more depth there to explore as well as the potential for a very Winchester-style redemption arc.

So yeah, 14x18 looks like it has plenty of tension and angst and such, but l just wanted to pause and recognizes the plot and character developments of a solid episode this week. </rant>

#spn #spn 14x17 #character development

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Lucifer Season 6 Episode 1 Review: Nothing Ever Changes Around Here

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This Lucifer review contains spoilers.

Lucifer Season 6 Episode 1

“Who wants to be tickled by Satan’s whiskers?”

Six weeks have passed, and Lucifer prepares to ascend into Heaven and begin his dream job – master of the universe. But the Devil’s having second thoughts about taking on God’s responsibilities, and “Nothing Ever Changes Around Here” cleverly sets up Lucifer’s sixth and final season to potentially explore the often unspoken desires that drive each character.

Though it was well documented that the season six episodes were completed and ready to air, conventional wisdom expected Netflix to wait much longer before releasing the series’ final ten episodes. Surprisingly, Lucifer fans had only to wait two and a half months to glimpse the aftermath of the angel-demon war which now centers around Lucifer’s reluctance to become God, and as it turns out, Mazikeen’s desire to remain on Earth rather than become Queen of Hell. However, in the end, it’s all about letting go and the inability to leave the past behind to embrace new challenges.

While much of the familiar remains in place, there are enough fresh narrative details to explore, not the least of which is the developing romantic relationship between the ultra adorable Eve (Inbar Lavi) and the angst driven demon Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt). There’s a lot to love about this season premiere, but the Hell themed dinner party Linda (Rachael Harris) and Amenadiel (D. B. Woodside) host for Eve and Maze on the evening before Maze leaves Earth to take up her duties in the underworld allows each character to shine.

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In keeping with the episode’s theme, Linda can’t help but play therapist to the budding couple as they navigate the rocky waters that lie ahead, but it’s the incredibly patient and understanding Amenadiel who stands out as he recognizes that Linda’s “celestial therapy” reveals a great deal about Charlie’s mother. However, it’s his poignant reminder that “every act matters” that punctuates an evening full of beautifully awkward twists and turns. When Linda challenges Eve to consider her life as the Queen of Hell’s partner, we’re fully prepared to watch Eve reconsider her options and the relationship to implode.

Of course, that’s not what happens, and when Maze admits that she doesn’t “want to talk about it because I don’t want to go,” the result is quite unexpected. We’ve watched Maze agonize over her place in both the celestial and earthly worlds, so to watch her reject the role she seems destined to embrace reveals the depths of her personal growth. Now, we only have to wait to see if Lucifer (Tom Ellis) officiates at their wedding and Chloe (Lauren German) serves as Maid of Honor.

Like others on Team Lucifer, Linda struggles to reintegrate into a more mundane lifestyle free of celestial intrigues, and while Lucifer seems to have little difficulty walking away from his consulting job at the LAPD, Chloe finds her impending situation a bit more problematic. This episode’s murder takes place at an exclusive magicians club to which Lucifer takes Chloe on their last night in Los Angeles. Once the death defying act results in a magician’s death, Chloe can’t help herself and plays the detective one last time despite having resigned from the force.

Forensic scientist Ella Lopez’s appearance on the scene lends an air of familiarity, but it’s the dynamic interchange between Chloe’s replacement Carol Corbett (Matthew Scott Porter) and the former detective that drives the murder investigation. Though Chloe secures the crime scene, Carol tells her in the nicest way possible that not only does she have to back off, and until he determines otherwise, she and Lucifer remain suspects. Carol gracefully handles her intrusion, ultimately asking for her input. He’s a great character, and to a large extent, replaces Dan who now finds himself killing time in Hell. That said, he lacks Dan’s relationship baggage that made Chloe’s ex-husband such an easy target of Lucifer’s insecurities. It will be interesting to see whether he’s allowed inside this tightly knit group and made privy to some of their secrets.

Still, Ella’s ignorance of the celestial identities of those around her looms ominously overhead. Though Lucifer’s impatience at the crime scene stems more from a desire to continue his date with Chloe than a reticence to take over as God, it’s Ella’s heartfelt confession that God has stopped listening to her prayers that gives Lucifer pause. This may be the first time he’s actually thought through the ramifications of sitting in the Big Guy’s chair. Though he’d likely be loath to admit it, Lucifer often uses Miss Lopez (Aimee Garcia) as a human faith barometer, but this encounter with her forces him to step outside his wonder-seeker persona to acknowledge what it will really mean to walk in God’s shoes. “God needs to be selfless. He needs to care about all of humanity.” Not exactly Lucifer’s modus operandi to this point.

One of the more attractive aspects of Lucifer’s relationship with Chloe centers on his willingness to expose his emotional vulnerabilities, and here, we have to wonder whether he’s setting up a scenario in which he opts out of a Silver City return. It’s also unclear how Chloe truly feels about giving up her life on Earth, but if the “locked room mystery” shows us anything, it’s that the detective may not be ready to play God’s companion and leave her intellectual pursuits behind despite her outwardly supportive stance.

Nevertheless, it’s Lucifer’s ambiguous journey to Hell and an audience with Dan that generates the most thought provoking aspect of the season premiere. Dan raises a good point when he brings up Lee’s ascension into Heaven, but Lucifer’s lackadaisical response rings a bit hollow. Really? There’s nothing he can do for Dan? Though we learn Lucifer’s visited Dan (Kevin Alejandro) a number of times, an act in and of itself that seems a bit odd given their tumultuous relationship, it’s Lucifer’s exit that raises additional questions.

“Nothing Ever Changes Around Here” opens with a stunning shot of the white tuxedoed Lucifer driving down an LA street in his black Corvette on his way to meet Chloe for their evening on the town. It’s a wonderful scene that gives the Devil one last opportunity to engage with the common man whose desires don’t always embody the best of us. Still, it’s the final baffling image of Hell’s throne and its occupant adorned in fishnet stockings and platform boots – most certainly not Lucifer – that throws us off balance.

Since Mazikeen makes it clear she’s ready to abdicate her responsibilities as Hell’s queen, it’s unlikely she occupies Lucifer’s former seat. Dan’s observation that something’s different implies that Lucifer might play a role regarding his successor, but it’s also not known whether he knows of Maze’s plan to marry Eve and remain on Earth. It’s a puzzle.

The ironic nature of the episode’s title “Nothing Ever Changes Around Here” should not be dismissed, and while it’s true, the members of Team Lucifer may, in fact, end up returning to their former lives, nothing will ever be the same for them. There’s no question the anticipation of seeing Lucifer take up God’s mantle still looms large, but whether or not we ever witness that conclusion, the series’ writers give fans plenty to absorb and enjoy along the way. And, as we all know, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Too soon?

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gorogues · 6 years

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“Therefore I Am” and “Welcome to the Jungle”

Spoilers for this week’s episodes of Flash and Legends! Cut for length. It’s long, but I’d like to think it’s worth the read.

Two very good episodes this week. The Flash episode takes place in the present day, but has quite a few flashbacks from the DeVoes' life four years ago. The Thinker (Clifford) and the Mechanic (Marlyse, though I'm not quite sure how to spell it) are husband and wife, and in the past they were very much in love. Clifford was and is a history professor, but four years ago he was frustrated that people didn't listen to him and didn't think he was intelligent enough to make them listen and ultimately educate them. He had a plan to build a thinking cap to increase his intelligence, and Marlyse built it for him -- she's the techanical genius, with doctorates in mechanical engineering and robotics. Clifford then hoped to power it with Wellsobard's particle accelerator, and the DeVoes attended the press conference seen in the pilot episode. There, Marlyse asked Wellsobard a question, and his smug response indicated that he knew who Clifford was and knew what was going to happen; he said he was a big fan of Clifford and wished him luck.

Marlyse immediately realized that Wellsobard knew there would be an explosion and wanted it, and she thought that they shouldn't go ahead with the plan, but of course Clifford wanted it too and was determined to carry it out. So he put on the thinking cap when the dark matter started going haywire, and was struck and nearly killed. When Marlyse asked how he felt, he replied "Enlightened". From that point on, he was hyper-intelligent and knew just about everything, but then he suffered a seizure and learned he had a degenerative disease similar to ALS as a result of the accident. His new intelligence was feeding off his body, and would kill him within a couple of years. This really upset him and he wished he'd never gone through with the experiment, but Marlyse built a special chair for him which prolonged his life (the one we've seen him in earlier this season), and that takes us to where we are today.

In the present, Barry and Joe go to interview him and Barry is convinced the innocent-seeming Clifford is the one he's looking for even though everyone else on the team disagrees. In fact, Barry investigates him to a very creepy and illegal extent, such as breaking into their home, leading the DeVoes to complain to Detective Singh and getting Barry suspended. It's pretty clear that Clifford was manipulating him into doing it and trying to separate him from his allies, because the rest of Team Flash was legitimately getting freaked out about his actions and he could have lost his job.

After some harassment, Barry decides to break the restraining order the DeVoes have on him to confront Clifford at his lecture hall. Clifford says he knows Barry is the Flash, and unsurprisingly knows a lot about him (for one thing, he's had a camera in the Samuroid which has been in STAR Labs all this time, and Cisco really should have been smart enough to sweep for surveillance devices). He admits to being the mastermind that Barry has sought, and says he has nothing to fear from the Flash because "you can't out-think me". He brags that Barry's speed is nothing compared to the power of limitless thought, and that he has the fastest mind. Basically he's cocky as hell and doesn't give a damn.

So Barry goes back to Team Flash and tells them about his little meeting, and they accept that he was right. Cisco dubs DeVoe "the Thinker", and Wally makes an unexpected return. He fought Starro while he was away!

At the very end of the episode, Clifford and Marlyse talk as they go to their underground lab, and Clifford says he approves of Cisco's nickname. He gets tremors when he's unplugged for too long, so Marlyse hurries him into his special chair and they watch Barry and Iris on a spycam. He says he'll let them get married, as he thinks that love is important.

The relationship between Clifford and Marlyse is really sad; they both loved each other dearly before the accident and she clearly loves him still, but he's been very distant from her since then. He may still care about her, as suggested by his comment about love, but he's not the same person he once was. The accident may have done something to his brain, or perhaps he's become separated from his humanity since his intelligence was boosted. Or both. My spouse and I disagreed about his motives pre-accident; I thought he was arrogant but generally well-meaning, and my spouse argued that he was malevolent from the start. So I don't know, I'll have to watch those scenes again later.

It was cool to see the old-school thinking cap in all its dweeby glory and have it play a significant role in Clifford's backstory, and I really like that Marlyse is a skilled genius in her own right. She seems to downplay her intelligence in favour of Clifford's, though, which is sad but not uncommon. I wouldn't like to see her turn against him because that'd probably be really heartbreaking for her -- since she loves him so much -- but it'd be nice to see her accept her own genius and believe in it.

Anyway, it was a really interesting episode and I'm glad we got such an in-depth look at the DeVoes' earlier lives. The villains in this show rarely get that, so it was good to see and helped to make clear why Clifford is and will be dangerous.

******

The Legends episode is heavy on both Mick and Grodd, and gives us a lot of insight into Mick's character. He also gets some significant personal growth too.

In 1967 Vietnam, at the height of the war, some US soldiers are attacked by a mysterious force which we later learn is Grodd. Yep, Grodd has become an Anachronism, so the Legends have to go solve the problem even though Sara's still in a coma. They split up, with Mick and Nate going off together while Zari, Amaya, and Ray question the only soldier who'd escaped. Mick is far crankier than usual and complaining about everything, and eventually tells Nate that his dad served in Nam and he doesn't want to encounter him. So of course they're promptly caught by his dad and his squad. His dad carries a flamethrower too and bears more than a slight resemblance to his son's personality and mannerisms, and Mick refuses to surrender to him. Turns out his dad is named Dick Rory, and the two of them have a staredown but Dick ultimately accepts their presence. He believes they're with the CIA. But when Nate wants to know what the hell is going on with Mick, Mick says he never saw a shrink because he never regretted burning his dad to death, and is really angry about the subject of him. He's quite unimpressed with Nate's attempts at tough love to get him to talk.

Dick sees Mick's burns and comments "Bad burns, son", to which Mick retorts that he isn't his son. Mick tells Nate that all his dad did after the war was sit in his chair and drink, so you can see the source of his anger towards his father. But when they're attacked by US soldiers who were mind-controlled/influenced by Grodd, Dick saves Mick's life by pushing him out of the way, and the two use their flamethrowers together to chase off the enemy. Mick stares at some fire -- something we know he does when he's struggling with his thoughts or dealing with uncomfortable feelings -- and acknowledges to Dick that he saved his life. It turns out that keeping his men safe is very important to Dick and he keeps a list of those who've died under his leadership. He's obviously traumatized by the war, though he indicates that he plans to marry a woman (presumably Mick's mom) after the war and maybe have kids someday.

Later, Nate finds Mick self-injuring by burning his arm. He tells Nate that he'd always seen his dad as a monster and blamed him for all the sick things he (Mick) did, but now he sees that he's worse than his father. He says he should have burned to death in the house instead of his dad. So he's obviously really fucked up emotionally at this point, having now understood that his dad had been traumatized by the war.

Ray later floats the idea that all the Legends' 'chance' meetings with their ancestors or their younger selves due to Anachronisms may not be coincidental, which is honestly one of the more interesting concepts the show has used. All of these meetings had seemed rather coincidental, so it's good to know that the series may be going somewhere with it and that one of the characters themselves realized it. Not all of these meetings have led to great revelations or character development, but some have, and perhaps time itself is trying to help them deal with personal issues or at least make them realize a few things about themselves. Or perhaps an individual is guiding them for some reason. Maybe Mallus, who may want them to get off his back and not fight him like Rip has been wanting them to. They won't be able to do that if they get erased or significantly changed by the Anachronisms.

The story with Grodd is that he's been controlling people and keeping them from fighting the war. He still plans to rule over everyone though, because he's obviously pissed off with humans in general. Eventually, he tries to stoke World War III and kill LBJ, although the various Legends manage to foil those plans and keep him from getting the Waverider to take over the planet. Amaya had briefly managed to get through to him, although that later gets ruined.

Dick learns of the enemy encampment (which is actually Grodd's camp) and plans to attack it even though Nate tells him not to because the other Legends are there. Mick says he's with Dick. The two of them attack the camp and Mick saves his father's life, and they take most of the people there prisoner -- including some of the other Legends. Dick is about to execute the captives but Mick turns his heat gun on him to save the others. When Nate reminds him that'll be erased if he kills his father before he's born, he says he doesn't care and has nothing to lose. But he tells Dick that he *does* have something to lose, and that if he kills those people he'll hear their screams forever. Once he's talked Dick down, he punches him, saying that he's always wanted to.

Later, Dick tells Mick that he appreciates what he did, and thanks him for keeping him from crossing that line. Mick notes that he's been pulled back from that line himself, and they part ways; Mick starts to talk to him about his future kids, but decides not to and just leaves. He then shakes Nate's hand and indicates that he appreciates the earlier tough love, and says he doesn't need the lighter anymore. He lets Nate keep it.

At the end, Sara wakes from her coma and the two halves of Firestorm are preparing for their inevitable separation. Plus, Grodd is saved by Damien Dahrk and given access to a different time travel device, so uh-oh.

So this episode told us a lot about Mick and his family dynamics, and it was good to see him learn from it and make peace with it. He gave up his lighter and possibly his self-injuring behaviour, and hopefully he can continue that. He learned a lot about his father and why the guy wasn't much of a dad, and while he has to live with the fact that he killed a traumatized veteran who could be a decent man, he will hopefully be able to deal with it. It's possible that in the future he'll find he can't really cope and will start self-injuring again, but that's something we can't really predict right now. However, he seems to have mostly forgiven his father and may one day begin to forgive himself.

Good episode, and it gave us a lot of food for thought: about Mick's history and issues, and about the idea that there's a guiding hand at work. I enjoyed it.

#Heat Wave #the Thinker #Gorilla Grodd #the Flash #the Mechanic #Citizen Steel #Dick Rory #the Atom #spoilers: The Flash #spoilers: legends of tomorrow #Flash TV series #Flashapalooza #Legends of Tomorrow #Legendspalooza #episode recap #queue

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stringnarratives · 5 years

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Death by Misadventure: “Russian Doll”

[This post brought to you with major spoilers for season 1 of Netflix’s show “Russian Doll” and the 1993 film “Groundhog Day,” as well as minor spoilers the 2011 film “Source Code.” It also includes mentions of suicide and death. “Russian Doll” is rated TV-MA for mature audiences.]

“Thinking about death without, for the moment, actually dying is heady. Humans must surely be the only animals who contemplate doom, and as long as we do so, we are still human—and paradoxically not doomed.“

- Virginia Heffernan, “The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom”

I’ve written the intro to this blog post five times.

Two of them were placeholders, representing the various iterations the post went through as it was being written. Par for the course, as every blog post shifts directions once or twice in its lifespan. Two of them were vague and disconnected, a little less graceful than I prefer on average. One was far too short, the other winding in its logic in a way that lost sense even to me early on. And the last one?

The last one was perfect.

It was graceful, it was anecdotal, it was philosophical. I physically got out of bed in the middle of the night to write it. I had dreams about this intro! It was the best in casual pop culture analysis blog-writing introductions that I had produced to date.

And then it was gone.

Maybe I saved over it, maybe it never saved to begin with, or maybe it really all was just a very weird and vivid and nerdy dream. But when I logged on for final review last night, it was apparent - the intro was gone without a trace. No proof that it had ever existed except for the disappointment of one unfortunate blogger.

Honestly, there are very few narratives more appropriate for an iterative struggle like this one than the one we’re discussing today. Its characters too are given the opportunity to try things over again - whether they want it or not. Only for them, the thing that has them starting over is a little more dramatic than a lost file.

In fact, it’s death.

“Russian Doll” begins with the 36th birthday party of software engineer Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne), who begins to experience a time loop of repeated deaths - being hit by a car, drowning, tumbling down stairs - that always lands her back at the night of her party. Perplexed (to say the least) by the happenings, Nadia attempts to break out of the cycle through various means to no avail before encountering Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett), a fellow New Yorker and a friend-of-a-friend who is also stuck in a time loop of the night his girlfriend breaks up with him. Together, they discover how to escape the loop, just before it wrecks both of their lives completely. (If you’ve never seen the show, or don’t want to see it, there’s an even more in-depth synopsis of “Russian Doll” over on Refinery29!)

"Time loops” in narratives often (though not exclusively) go one of two ways: They are a vehicle for self improvement or a vehicle for rescue.

On one hand, they create a sand-box of impermanence for moral redirection, forcing the protagonist to right their wrongs before proceeding with their lives. Nobody remembers the awful things done or said during the time loop; they only witness the reformed character that comes out the other side. In perhaps the most famous example of this type, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) relives Groundhog Day until he comes to respect the residents of Punxatawney, Pennsylvania in the 1993 film “Groundhog Day.”

(In literary/cinematography analysis, this is aspect of repetitive moral rebuilding within a time loop is frequently associated with religious symbolism or themes. That’s a whole other rabbit [or should I say...groundhog?] hole that I won’t go down in depth here, other than to say that “Russian Doll” seems to use this typicality as a misdirection for both characters and viewer. Nadia does investigate whether or not the fact that her loop begins in a former Yeshiva school could have something to do with her entrapment, but since Alan also experiences the phenomenon and starts in a different building, this is proven unlikely.)

When time loops aren’t being used to rehabilitate a morally questionable character, they’re often used as a mechanism for rescue. Whether it’s a specific person in danger or the world as a whole, being stuck in a time loop gives a character the opportunity to try and fail to remedy a situation without immediate consequence. Ultimately, the only thing that could prove a substantial or lingering challenge is the question of futility. Is this something that can actually be fixed, or is there a “destiny” that the situation must conform to, no matter their actions? Whereas in the first example, a time loop gave the character a playground to practice functional goodness, heroism-focused time loops give the character the opportunity to perfect a complex good deed when they are vastly underpowered to do so. “Source Code” (2011 film starring Jake Gyllenhaal) is one such of these films; one man relives the last eight minutes of a stranger’s life in order to determine who has bombed a Chicago commuter train, starting with a grand total of zero clues. The time loop is only broken after he has completed his task. (There are some plot twists in there, though, trust me. A fairly satisfying “nothing on TV” Saturday afternoon movie.)

All of that noted to say that “Russian Doll” doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into either of these categories.

Neither Nadia nor Alan have significant moral wrongs to right (at least that are shared with the viewer). Instead, both are ignoring major turmoil in their lives - their true emotional states.

Nadia is ignoring childhood trauma that affected both her perception of herself and those around her, opting for self-sabotaging behaviors as an adult. At the opening of “Russian Doll,” she faces her birthday party half-heartedly, expressing more loving affection to her missing cat than the guests who have gathered to celebrate her. It’s later revealed that she ended a long-term relationship because she couldn’t bring herself to meet her partner’s daughter, though she refuses to acknowledge the emotional block.

While we see somewhat less of Alan’s predicament, in our introduction, he contends with his own fastidiousness in day-to-day life and the betrayal of his girlfriend, who leaves him for her college professor on the night Alan planned to propose. This throws him into a spiral - he gets drunk and, in the first loop, at least, commits suicide in his despair then proceeds to block out the action as he lives through future loops.

Instead of being the termination of all of these personal struggles, dying gives both main characters a wake up call. Whereas death, in most narratives, is a dreaded obstacle, for the majority of the show, it is actually the impetus for the characters’ movement and growth in “Russian Doll.” It is simultaneously an elimination of the worst-case-scenario, giving them the repetitive space and time to probe old wounds, and a paradoxical resuscitation, breaking them from the habits that they had hidden in for so long.

Nadia, removed from the boundary of death for herself, reckons with the fact that she does care deeply for the people around her, in various ways: She works hard to ensure her foster mother Ruth doesn’t die in a house fire, she attempts to mend her relationship with her ex, and she comes to care about Alan. Little by little, her closed-offedness falls away in layers leaving her emotionally vulnerable enough to actually be reliant on Alan by the end of the show - a huge step from the Nadia visible at the beginning of the season.

Alan, realizing the loops, has alleviated himself from the burden of perfectionism that he seems to be trapped in before meeting Nadia, abandoning his attempts to reengage with his girlfriend, fighting the professor she’d cheated with, and eventually coming to accept the situation. He embraces messiness and in it, finds release.

Does this qualify as an act of self-salvation (and, therefore, a definitive heroism-loop)? I daresay the answer is no. Neither character went into the loop with the goal of saving anyone, though much less themselves. In the end, they escape the loop (assumedly) with the other’s help. But even this could not have been done if internal changes hadn’t occurred first. Without Nadia’s awakening to her emotional attachment to those around her and Alan’s recognition that his perfectionist routines are weak against unyielding time-space phenomena (and, indeed, other major events in life as well), neither would have come to accept help at all.

The characters in “Russian Doll” are neither immoral nor heroic, in any traditional sense. They aren’t seeking to be taught a lesson, nor are they seeking to teach others. They aren’t immortal in any permanent sense. They’re just people - broken, flawed and affected by circumstance, carrying trauma. Little by little, it’s death that helps them to realize that brokenness, and, ultimately, is what brings them back to life again.

#russian doll #television #television shows #tv #tv shows #netflix #title #titles

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jameshpuff · 4 years

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Jupiter in Capricorn 2/12/2019-31/10/2020

Aries and Libra

Aries/Libra Sun

Sun square Jupiter natal gives great opportunities for success but also some tests of character along the way. You are very fortunate but also have to make your own luck. Lucky breaks and popularity can lead to an inflated ego and other excesses in life. For example, you may have a tendency to overestimate your own abilities or resources. This could lead to a scattering of energy or wasting money on unnecessary luxuries.

Aries/Libra moon

Moon square Jupiter transit gives a general feeling of well-being and ease but rarely results in any dramatic events. Socializing is favored but you may have to watch a tendency toward excess when it comes to food, alcohol, and drugs. You may experience changeable moods, and changing tastes can present difficulties if you have wandering eyes.

Aries Rising

This is a time to gain in status, particularly on the professional front, but could also indicate marriage in some cases. Jupiter in your tenth house is a very fortunate place for this expansive planet. Increased public recognition and professional success characterizes this position. This can be a time of profitable productivity, career advancement, and success in business. Work-related travel or the reaching of a wider audience is possible during this cycle. Your worldly status may change for the better. There could be a promotion, new job opportunities, a diploma or other form of major award, or a marriage. You may come into the limelight now in a positive fashion. Authority figures and influential people tend to look upon your favorably and seem to be “in your corner”. An event may occur that expands your career or professional interests, and you derive more pleasure in these activities. More freedom is likely to be experienced in your career. Integrity and honesty will get you everywhere now. The more willing you are to put yourself in the limelight, the more positive the rewards–this is not the time to be a shrinking violet! This can be a time of fulfillment of career goals if you have been working toward specific ones. Because you feel worthy of recognition and of success, these things tend to come naturally to you now.

Libra Rising

You are likely to see benefits to home, family, property, and domestic comfort matters during this cycle. Much joy and enjoyment can be found in your family and your home life now. An increased sense of security and safety may be derived from your domestic situation. Improvements to your home life, family, and basic psychological foundation are in focus. A strong sense of stability, inner contentment, and balance arrives now. Opportunities to buy or sell real estate for financial gain may present themselves. Home improvements, such as real estate or renovation purchases, are favored, as is moving to a new dwelling. Some of you may buy or sell a house, and others may welcome a new addition to the family. You may move to a larger or more comfortable dwelling. Long-standing family problems may be ironed out. Relationships with parents and other family members go well. You may find special enjoyment in getting in touch with your roots or family traditions. You take a greater interest in long-term security and wellness for you and your family. There could be a family reunion. Your parents may help you financially or an inheritance is possible. You take more pleasure in nurturing others. A stronger sense of psychological well-being may come now, as you take less interest in more worldly ambitions and activities, very content to stay around your home or your “nest”.

Taurus and Virgo

Taurus/Virgo Sun

Sun trine Jupiter transit is about the best of all solar transits. You should be feeling on top of the world and enjoy warm and friendly relationships with everyone. You should use your high spirits, enthusiasm, and self-confidence to make the most of the good fortune associated with this transit. There may be a tendency to sit back and enjoy the happy vibe, but in doing so, you could miss cashing in on any big opportunities for growth.

Taurus/Virgo Moon

Moon trine Jupiter transit gives a warm fuzzy feeling that makes this is an ideal time for sharing your emotions with loved ones. If single then socializing, in general, is favored because of your increased popularity and generous mood.

Taurus Rising

An expansive, optimistic attitude is with you now, as you are less concerned about petty problems and inconveniences. You may have opportunities to travel, study, expand your horizons, and meet people who are of diverse backgrounds. You tend to become more intellectually curious, and academic matters go well. You are open to learning, particularly about subjects that you may normally take little interest in. Furthering your education in any capacity is possible and is likely to be very successful now. Success in business is likely through expansion or connection with foreigners. Advertising and promotional activities are highly favored and could be one of the main keys to business success right now. Legal matters may be especially favorable for you now. Authors could publish their works, expand their audience, and receive favorable feedback for their work. Educational and travel opportunities expand your horizons. Teaching or learning is favored, and writing flows easily. This is also an excellent period for positive dealings with in-laws! Your mind is more expansive and tolerant, and you are under less stress than usual. You are less inclined to sweat the small stuff. Your priorities are easier to see, as you gain perspective on your life and its meaning. Your creative juices flow, and you generally benefit from robust health. Faith in your purpose and in a higher meaning to your life helps to ease stress and open doors for you.

Virgo Rising

Your fair share of fun, romance, and good times are in store. You are especially imaginative, original in your self-expression, and creative during this cycle. Creative projects are likely to fare well, and could possibly even bring some type of recognition or reward. Love and romance may enter your life or is enhanced with good humor and warmth, and social engagements abound. For singles, meeting a special person is highly likely, although it is not necessarily a person who is “partnership material”. You are feeling quite free from responsibilities at this time, making it easier for you to let your hair down and have a good time! Investments in stocks and other speculative matters could earn good profits. Healthy risks are likely to pay off, but be careful of overconfidence in speculative investments. Relationships with your children may be especially fulfilling now. Pregnancy or childbirth may occur during this period, if applicable. This is a fabulous year in which to take a vacation you’ve always wanted to take. Those with artistic or athletic talent can be especially prolific and prosperous at this time. Your creativity and social life are stimulated this year, and plenty of opportunities to express yourself uniquely and creatively will present themselves. You may find great joy and reward in your creative projects and hobbies, and could discover a previously hidden talent for a particular craft. Pleasure-seeking activities, recreation, and amusement are increased. You are far less inhibited when it comes to expressing yourself creatively, and you are a lot more fun to be around.

Gemini/Leo

Gemini Rising

This is a time of spiritual contentment–of coming to terms with power and sharing issues in your life. During this cycle, you are less sensitive to power struggles and issues of sharing resources. You are less likely to resort to manipulative tactics, and less concerned about leaving yourself emotionally vulnerable to others. You may see benefits in the areas of joint finances, shared resources, loans, taxes, sexuality, intimacy, healing, personal transformation, research, investigation, and psychological matters during this cycle. This is a time of increased psychological understanding, intimacy, and perhaps accumulation of wealth if you manage your resources well. You are more capable of helping friends and loved ones who are dealing with a crisis–you can be leaned upon. Any type of in-depth study or research is likely to go well. An insurance settlement, tax rebate, or an inheritance could come your way, and this is an excellent time to work on financial planning and strategy. A new home or new car is possible now. Financial gains may come through a partnership or there may be an increase in a spouse’s income. Sexual opportunities are likely to abound, or your focus on one partner becomes more expansive, warm, and intimate.

Leo Rising

During this cycle, you are likely to see benefits in the areas of work and health, as well as daily routines. You find much joy in your work, self-improvement endeavors, and taking care of your health. This transit enhances your ability to handle the details required to do a good job, and others become more aware of your skills. Benefits may come through co-workers or employees during this cycle. Any type of service that you may provide is likely to go well. You are more successful in hiring people to work for you, if applicable, and improvements to your working environment are likely. You find more enjoyment in the work you do, and it is easier than usual to find employment now. You may get a new job during this cycle, or significantly improve an existing one. Work tends to be very available to you. Menial tasks tend to take priority, but you are likely to enjoy doing them. The best way to handle this transit is to take pride in and recognize your usefulness–this is bound to give you a great deal of joy, and you are likely to be rewarded as a result. As well, the more integrity and honesty you bring to your services, the more “payback” you will receive. Health is likely to prosper this year, and medical procedures or programs, if necessary, are more apt to be successful. There may be an inclination to put on some weight, however, if you don’t watch your sweet tooth. Some people get a new pet during this cycle.

Cancer

Cancer Sun

Sun opposite Jupiter transit brings opportunities for success, good fortune and increased happiness. Everything will seem to fall in place without too much effort, leading you to believe you are on a lucky streak or gifted in some way. If you let any good fortune go to your head then this transit can result in loss, embarrassment and a lowering of self-esteem.

Cancer Moon

Moon opposite Jupiter transit brings good feelings and generosity but also the potential for lack self-control and unwanted attention. If you are a shy person this is a good transit for sharing your feelings and opening up to your loved ones. You should feel more relaxed and sociable. However, your good cheer can turn to unhappiness if your kindness is seen as a weakness by others. Take care that your overly generous mood is not taken advantage of.

Cancer Rising

This is a period in your life that is very conducive to partnering and/or winning public approval. You find much joy in sharing your life with a special someone during this cycle. Learning a lot about yourself through a partner is likely now. You may enjoy benefits through marriage, common-law partnerships, business partnerships, negotiations, and contractual agreements. This is a year when you are more likely to establish or solidify a significant partnership. A partner from a different cultural background could expand your life view now. Relationships entered into now are generally successful and happy. Sometimes, this transit absolves an existing partnership, but if this is the case, it is likely to come as a relief or it is a “blessing in disguise”. Meeting someone better for you may be a reason for this. You can negotiate more successfully than ever, and, if applicable, win in legal matters. Financial benefits could possibly come through partnerships. Legal matters or challenging relationship problems from the past can be resolved, and more casual disputes can be settled as well. You may find yourself taking on the role of consultant or advisor, or you could benefit from help from same. Good publicity may come your way. If your work takes you before the public, you can safely expect popularity. Relationships and partnerships benefit from expansive, warm energy, difficult relationships may be absolved, and/or successful new ones are entered into this year.

Scorpio and Pisces

Scorpio/Pisces Sun

Sun sextile Jupiter transit brings optimism, good luck and happiness. Depending on whether you believe in fate or free will, you either get lucky or your positive thinking attracts good fortune. Either way, this is one of the most fortunate of all transits in astrology.

Scorpio/Pisces Moon

Moon sextile Jupiter transit makes you want to be with other people and have fun. This is a great time to catch up with old friends or spend time with family. All existing relationships, especially those with women, will be warm and enjoy emotional growth.

Scorpio Rising

Educational and communication opportunities present themselves during this cycle. You may increase your knowledge and skills set, and find much enjoyment in so doing. During this long-term trend, neighbors or relatives could be especially beneficial. Your knowledge grows and your ability to disseminate this knowledge sharpens. You express your ideas with more enthusiasm, and they are received well. You are able to understand complex subjects and explain them in such a way that others can readily understand; thus, teaching or authoring may be prosperous now. Opportunities for travel or advanced study may present themselves. This might be a good time to take a course due to the fact that you are more receptive to learning and expanding your knowledge and skills. You may decide to buy a new car, or transportation opportunities present themselves, making it much easier for you to get from point A to point B. You are more cheerful and sociable, and others tend to appreciate your company more as a result. Gifts or opportunities may come through visits, short trips, messages, emails, or they could come through contacts with siblings, classmates, and neighbors. Some sort of positive news or announcement is likely to be part of the picture. If you’re an author, you will find many opportunities and your creative juices flow nicely. If you’re a student, school is especially favored. If you’re in business or trade, you are likely to find sales are especially strong. In general, you find much joy in communicating, learning, and socializing. Particularly if Jupiter transits trine to planets in the seventh and/or eleventh, new friendships or partnerships may be formed now.

Pisces Rising

This transit brings benefits and fresh energy to networking activities, the formulation of broad, long-term goals, acquaintances, clubs, and organizations. You can rely on your friends for their help and support, and your circle of friends may increase during this fruitful transit. Your long-term goals and wishes tend to be broad and perhaps unusual or ahead of the times. You may particularly enjoy dreaming up ideas for the future. Achieving your goals tends to come more easily now. Others tend to value your advice and often turn to you for help. You could become more active with friends or in your community. You may have opportunities to join or lead clubs or groups. Group activities and associations could be avenues for fulfilling your own goals. You may take special joy in sharing a common cause or ideals with others. You are especially hopeful and more inclined to believe that if you wish it, it will be! Income from your business or career is likely to increase. More tolerance of others is displayed now, and you are more inclined to take interest in alternative subjects. Reaching out beyond your personal circle can certainly open doors to you and bring joy into your life during this cycle.

Capricorn

Capricorn Sun

Sun conjunct Jupiter transit gives a general feeling of well-being, happiness, and optimism. Good luck at this time can be seen as an opportunity for growth, personal, professional and spiritual. You should feel this as an urge or a strong desire to do all you can, experience everything to the fullest. Just as you may be the beneficiary of compliments, gifts or money, you will also be more generous and bubbly.

Capricorn Moon

Moon conjunct Jupiter transit makes you feel happy and content. You will want to share your good mood, making this a good time for socializing and partying. This is a time of optimism, generosity and good fortune.

Capricorn Rising

At the beginning of its transit through the first house, Jupiter is conjunct your Ascendant, marking a time of much optimism and cheerfulness. Throughout its journey through the first house, Jupiter’s transit brings noticeable improvements to your environment as well as self-confidence to your personality. You are more obviously expansive, exuberant, and enthusiastic. This transit heightens your optimism and increases your generosity. This cycle has the potential for being a relaxed, fortunate, and hopeful time. You are greeting life with a fresh, can-do attitude. What happened in the past is not very important to you now–it’s the future that you’re eyeing now. You are filled with faith in the universe–faith that everything will work out. This is an excellent period for self-improvement. Dealings with the public are favored, and others tend to look at you as a leader. Events occur that help you overcome problems that previously seemed challenging or even insurmountable–you have an altogether different perspective on life now, and are not inclined much to sweat the small stuff. You want to create a distinct first impression on others, and you tend to do just that. Furthering your personal ambitions and interests comes more easily during this cycle. At times, you may feel like the sky is the limit! You feel considerably more free to be yourself, and others tend to accept you more readily. You might need to guard against becoming too full of yourself or overly self-interested, however. There is also a risk of overindulgence and other forms of extreme behavior. Weight gain is often associated with this transit. Be careful that a carefree attitude doesn’t end up a careless one. Particularly if Jupiter’s transit trines planets in the fifth and/or ninth, this is a favorable time for creative matters, romance, travel, and higher education.

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timeflies1007-blog · 5 years

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Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 4, p. 4

Season Four Overview: The Most Important Woman in the Universe

Donna Noble’s return to the show is one of the biggest godsends that has ever occurred on this program. After a very strong first season, the show had declined a bit in quality—it still offered us the chance to watch a lot of marvelous actors and some very well-written episodes, but it had definitely gotten markedly less consistent. Even with Donna, there are more weak episodes here than were present in the first season, but the number of high-quality episodes definitely skyrockets. Part of Donna’s success is the shift in character type. The classic series sometimes had female companions, like Barbara and Romana, who were a bit older than the average companion, but Martha and especially Rose were much more in the tradition of relatively young companions like Ace, Sarah Jane, Tegan, etc. The casting of Catherine Tate was already an interesting move away from what was becoming the established type for companions, but just as importantly, Davies allows the character to play to Tate’s comedic strengths. Donna is funny and loud, to the point that some fans have labeled her as “screechy” or as a “joke companion.” Most companions haven’t strayed very far from the traditional ingénue type, and having a loud, comedic woman—the type of character who is often reduced to being the female lead’s best friend—play the main companion is absolutely marvelous. We get so many delightful moments of Donna’s exuberance, like her mimed reaction to the Doctor in “Partners in Crime” and her mystery-solving efforts in “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” and Tate sells the character’s energy and humor amazingly well.

While she’s easily the most overtly comedic companion of the reboot, the show also takes her very seriously as a character, and some of the season’s best scenes center on her growing awareness of the world around her. Traveling with the Doctor produces something of an awakening for all of the companions, but there’s a more dramatic shift for her. Rose was also stuck in a pattern of being unable to find meaningful work or a sense of purpose, but that’s a different experience for a 19-year-old than it is for someone over 30, and Donna carries with her the extra burden of having gone through repeated failures to find the life she wants over a long period of time. “The Runaway Bride” also established a slightly shallow, gossipy persona, and so the moments in which her kindness and empathy come to the forefront are especially resonant. The end of “The Fires of Pompeii” and her reaction to the Ood’s song of captivity are stunning moments, in large part because they show how much more depth there is to Donna than was initially apparent. In spite of her exuberant sense of fun, Donna also possesses a lot of resentment, presumably the product of a lifetime of dull jobs, failed relationships, and people telling her not to be so loud. This resentment winds up being a huge asset to her, as she is very vocal about the things that frustrate her, from occasional lapses in the Doctor’s behavior to the rules about interfering with history. Davies blends her narrative of personal growth with the monster-of-the-week plots beautifully, to the point where even many of the most important pieces of plotting speak to Donna’s development as a character.

While I do think the season conveys a very clear sense of how Donna’s previous life experiences affect her actions as a time-traveler, I would have liked to get a bit more of a sense of what that life was like. To be fair, we did see some of this in “The Runaway Bride,” but this season is focused to an unusual extent on Donna’s escape from ordinary life. Even “Partners in Crime,” which is set in contemporary London, mostly depicts Donna’s efforts to rejoin the Doctor by investigating unusual events, and so it doesn’t give us much of a sense of what Donna’s life is like when it’s not centered on the Doctor. The first season of the reboot was revolutionary in the extent to which it worked Rose’s home and family into the narrative, but in some senses I think subsequent seasons have built on that season’s success in the wrong ways. I loved Jackie Tyler, I really liked Pete Tyler, I was bored for a while with Mickey Smith but eventually I got round to liking him, but part of the charm of our introduction to Rose was that she was placed into a quite specific and detailed world. Yes, her family was important, but we also got a lot of attention to her life on the Powell Estate. The early scenes of “Rose” give us a lot of information about her job and how she spends her time, “Aliens of London” showed us her neighbors, “The Parting of the Ways” showed us where she eats chips—they aren’t especially significant details, but she really is placed into a particular world, and Jackie benefits from that specificity as well. After Rose, Davies stuck with the idea of showing us some of the life on Earth of the companions, but he basically shifted to just family members. I was frustrated that we got basically nothing about Martha’s status as a medical student after her first episode, because it meant that her parents and siblings were the only connections that she had to Earth. Donna is written the same way here—Wilf is a very nice character, and he’s beautifully acted by Bernard Cribbins, but he is written as the only thing that Donna cares about on Earth, and I’m a little bored with that. Most of their scenes together involve talking about the Doctor, so Donna’s one connection to Earth is still almost entirely about her Doctor life. I like having companions’ family members on the show, but more than that I want to see companions that have interests, or at least things that they do with their time that are not traveling in the TARDIS. Rose was mostly just working at the shop, eating chips, and hanging out with Mickey, but even if her life was dull it was well-rounded. Later companions start coming back to this; Amy never really gets enough attention to her life on Earth (and “The Power of Three” is the only episode that really tries) but Clara is grading papers and holding parent-teacher conferences and going on dates with Danny, and Bill is serving chips and looking for cheap housing and getting interrupted on dates with Penny and writing lots of essays. Not all of the details work well in these examples, but my overall impression is that Rose, Clara, and Bill get worlds, while Martha, Donna, and Amy get relatives. Other than “Turn Left,” which gives us a very different version of Donna, when she’s not traveling with the Doctor she’s trying to find the Doctor or talking to Wilf about how much she wants to find the Doctor/how happy she is to have found the Doctor. Tate’s performance makes the character feel so grounded and real that it doesn’t matter too much, but I would really have liked to see something that Donna wants that doesn’t involve the Doctor.

This lack of attention to Donna’s life on Earth sort of dovetails with the other problem that I have with her arc this season, which is that it feels weirdly frontloaded, to the point where there isn’t sufficient material to work with in the second half of the season. While I would say that the strongest sequence of episodes overall this season is “Silence in the Library”/“Forest of the Dead”/“Midnight,” my favorite part of the season for Donna is actually the beginning. “Partners in Crime,” “The Fires of Pompeii,” and “Planet of the Ood” do an absolutely splendid job of setting up the relationship between the Doctor and Donna and of showing how much she has grown since “The Runaway Bride.” If we can sort of see the start of this season as the introduction of Donna as a major companion, since she’s presented as just a one-episode character in “The Runaway Bride,” I would consider these three episodes to be the best companion introduction certainly in the reboot and probably in the entire history of the show. We learn so much about the character in this sequence, and she’s just so likeable and such a good counterpart to the Doctor that the season starts off magnificently. The problem is that she grows into the ideal version of herself quite quickly, which means that the second half of the season struggles to figure out what to do with her. I absolutely adore the work that episodes like “The Fires of Pompeii” and “Planet of the Ood” do with the character, but I do think that they represent fairly climactic moments in Donna’s growth as a person, and they come awfully early in her time on the show. After that, the season is sort of stuck portraying Donna as someone who has had flaws, because she’s already successfully worked through the major ones. If the season had allowed her to retain a little bit more of that shallowness that she used to possess for just a few episodes longer, the season would have felt like a more consistent progression for her, rather than a sensational leap at the start of the season followed by a long plateau. (I mean, she’s still awesome and loveable on said plateau, but in the first few episodes she’s awesome and loveable and developing as a character.) I think that seeing more of her life at home—as herself, not as Alternate Dystopian Universe Donna—would maybe have allowed us to get a more extended progression toward her best self. If we had more encounters with things that frustrate Donna or that distract her from the drive that she shows this season, her arc might be able to unfold more gradually rather than springing into existence like a jack-in-the-box. Again, Tate infuses the character with so much depth that she’s still enjoyable even in these later episodes of the season, but I just never find the character as interesting as she is in those first few stories.

The Doctor’s development is also inconsistent here, although it does extend longer than Donna’s does. He starts the season seeming like he has put aside some of the problems that characterized his behavior in the previous season, as can be seen in his admission that he ruined Martha’s life and his determination to avoid repeating that. He’s doing really well for a while—until the Sontaran episodes, he’s treating everybody nicely and enjoying the universe and being helpful. Then we move into a segment of this season that focuses more on his arrogance, which has very mixed results. It culminates in the wonderful “Midnight,” but that episode is led up to by a number of stories that demonstrate his ego, most of which just come across as annoying. His behavior in “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Doctor’s Daughter” is particularly irritating, especially because it just sort of feels gratuitous. There isn’t any need for him to behave in so extreme a fashion in either case, and it’s not done in a manner that is funny or interesting or compelling. When we get to “Midnight,” it at least looks like we’ve had these moments of irritation for a purpose, as the Doctor’s tendencies to embrace the status of hero work against him more than they ever have before.

This season is sometimes seen as the high point of the reboot, and as of the end of “Midnight,” I think it was on track to make a legitimate claim to that distinction. While there are some weak episodes early in the season, “Partners in Crime,” “The Fires of Pompeii,” “Planet of the Ood,” “The Unicorn and the Wasp,” “Silence in the Library,” “Forest of the Dead,” and “Midnight” are such a wonderful collection of episodes that I don’t really mind having to sit through “The Doctor’s Daughter.” “Midnight” is such an explosive, revelatory episode that it puts the season at something of a crossroads, and in an unfortunate piece of irony I would say “Turn Left” is where the season starts to take a wrong turn. Part of the problem is that this is the point at which the weak points in the structure of Donna’s arc start to become more apparent. She has a terrific moment of world-saving at the end of “Turn Left,” but it’s not really dependent on the qualities that we’ve seen in development across the season. In “The Fires of Pompeii,” Donna’s compassion and loudness and resistance to being told what to do come together and help her to convince the Doctor to save the Roman family. In “Turn Left,” she sacrifices herself, allowing her body to get in the way of traffic so that the other version of herself will take the right job; essentially, she goes from a character whose traits and abilities are valuable to a character whose tragic death allows the world to function properly. Then, in the season finale, she gets a sort of honorary doctorate; she gets to play the Doctor’s role, but she hasn’t actually learned how to do any of the things that she does here, she just got a lot of abilities projected onto her. By the end of the season, she’s bordering on being a sort of receptacle; her body is used to push events in the right direction in “Turn Left,” and then the necessary knowledge gets poured into her in “Journey’s End.” The qualities that we see early in the season have very little to do with these resolutions, and that’s the downside of giving a character problems to overcome and then letting her overcome them by about episode three.

If Donna’s arc goes in something of an odd direction, the Doctor’s is arguably even worse. I love “Midnight,” but the one respect in which the otherwise stellar episode is a bit of a letdown is that it doesn’t serve as the turning-point that the Doctor really needs. He could have seen the events of “Midnight” as a reason to re-evaluate some of his behavior and try for a little bit of humility, but his reaction to the events of that episode mostly takes the form of looking sad about the dark side of humanity. By the end of the season, his arrogance appears to have increased, as is especially visible in his willingness to arrange Rose’s future without getting her input. In general, the Doctor seems to have engaged in a lot of self-reflection before the start of the season, as can be seen in his admission of having hurt Martha in “Partners in Crime,” but much of the rest of the season comes across as more of a regression. This is also apparent in the season’s attention to the Doctor’s complex relationship with violence. The season leans pretty heavily on irony, as the Doctor shouts about pacifism more frequently than ever before and yet continuously gets caught up in violence. The idea of the Doctor as a fighter obsessed with non-violence is an interesting aspect of pretty much every incarnation of the Doctor, and the Tenth Doctor’s particular mixture of heroism and introspection make him an especially good version of the Doctor to really engage with this contradiction. I’m not sure that the season ever really goes beyond pointing out the inconsistency, though—often loudly, and with a total absence of subtlety. It’s interesting to see the gap between the ideals to which the Doctor aspires and the reality that he lives, but I think of this kind of contradiction as an effective starting-point for a story rather than an end in itself. Pointing out that the Doctor is arrogant and prone to violence in spite of his distaste for it is a reasonable move to make, but it would be a much more compelling narrative if he actually tried to work on these things, and what we get instead is basically a never-ending reminder that the Doctor has a lot of problems. In some ways, this lack of self-improvement makes sense, as the exploration of the Doctor’s narcissism continues into the specials, reaching its most interesting point in “The Waters of Mars.” (Even there, though, as in “Midnight,” the Doctor has a pretty stellar confrontation with his own problems, but still hasn’t quite figured out how to respond to them in subsequent episodes.) There’s certainly no requirement for a character’s sense of morality to be on a constant upward trajectory, but at the same time “Journey’s End” is the second season finale in a row that leaves me massively exasperated with the Doctor, and it’s especially annoying when other characters get sort of engulfed by the narrative of the Doctor’s everlasting struggle with his main flaws.

Because I see the seasonal arc as doing something of a disservice to the two main characters, I don’t see it as a particularly strong one; that being said, the details that Davies uses to build toward the plot are often very well done. The missing planets, the disappearing bees, and the hints that Rose is coming back are all expertly set up, and it’s nice to see the severed hand play a role after several seasons of occasional appearances. This season is sort of an odd mix of originality and repetition, in that there are a lot of extremely inventive premises, but there is little variety in terms of how they are resolved. “Midnight,” the library two-parter, and “Turn Left” are particularly great ideas, but their conclusions are so similar that they start to produce diminishing returns. Even if the “characters sacrifice themselves for the Doctor” angle gets overplayed, though, most episodes contain a tremendous amount of fun and creativity en route to that resolution. For me, properly enjoying this season involves skipping the Christmas special and “The Doctor’s Daughter” and stopping after “Midnight,” before the storyline takes a wrong turn, but in between the problems, there are about as many absolute triumphs as any other season. Donna is such a refreshing burst of warmth and joy that she makes the whole season far better than it would otherwise be, and she and Tennant really sparkle together. We get to watch some of the best comedic scenes of the entire reboot, as well as some of the creepiest scenes of monster-induced terror. The wrong turns that this season takes are frustrating in large part because when the season does work well, it’s absolutely sensational.

Monsters, Aliens, etc.: Generally pretty great. The Vashta Nerada are solidly spooky, the Ood are terrific, and whatever is happening in “Midnight” is dramatically-captivating terror. I don’t love the giant wasp or the little fat-molecule creatures, but they make it possible for entertaining stories to unfold around them. The Sontarans don’t really register very much, and Davros and the Daleks get slightly buried under the avalanche of plot at the end of the season, but there are enough good monsters this season to make up for a few lapses.

Planets: “Midnight” unfolds brilliantly and terrifyingly in spite of taking place almost entirely in some kind of futuristic tour vehicle, but even here the mysterious nature of the planet provides strong support for the story—there’s something about the phrase “exothermic sun” that makes the setting’s danger seem properly scientific and plausible. Beyond this, there are some great physical settings, including the gorgeous library, a fabulous-looking Pompeii, and the awesome country mansion in the Agatha Christie episode. “Partners in Crime” is the best contemporary London has looked since Season One, and while I have a lot of issues with the finale, London looks pretty great there as well. Not everything is perfect, but I’m overall very happy with the settings for this season.

Female Characters: Well, “Journey’s End” is about as disastrous as this show has gotten in terms of gender, but other than that the show does a mostly wonderful job with women this season. Donna is, of course, the highlight, both because she is marvelously likeable and full of charisma and because of the ways in which she works against the expectation that the companion will be a traditional ingénue. Martha also makes a fantastic comeback this season—while I wish she could have been written this way more frequently when she was the female lead, she is much, much better this season and it’s really wonderful to see her embrace her potential without being encumbered with any silly unrequited love plots. We also have some great supporting characters, including the Hostess and Sky in “Midnight,” a magnificent, thoroughly redemptive return for Harriet Jones in “The Stolen Earth,” and a stunning debut for River Song in “Silence in the Library.” I have a lot of problems with the writing for Rose this season, Sylvia only works some of the time, and Astrid and Jenny are pretty serious missteps, but some of the reboot’s very best moments for women occur in this season.

Overall, I find this season slightly overrated, not because I don’t like it but because it’s often seen as the best and I don’t think it quite deserves that. While Donna is probably my favorite out of all of Davies’s characters, I find the first season’s nuanced exploration of the Ninth Doctor’s post-Time-War trauma and exuberant portrayal of Rose’s introduction to TARDIS travel to be a stronger story than this season’s somewhat scattered treatment of its characters’ problems, and so I would consider Season One to be Davies’s best work. Nevertheless, there are so many absolutely glorious moments this season: Donna’s reunion with the Doctor in “Partners in Crime,” her insistence that the Doctor save someone in “Pompeii,” her reaction to the Ood’s song, River’s marvelous introduction and heartrending demise, the mysterious terror unfolding throughout “Midnight,” and lots of wonderful moments of friendship between the Tenth Doctor and his best companion. A/A-

Episodes Ranked So Far:

1. The Satan Pit

2. Midnight

3. The Doctor Dances

4. Blink

5. The Family of Blood

6. The Empty Child

7. Dalek

8. The Parting of Ways

9. School Reunion

10. Forest of the Dead

11. The Fires of Pompeii

12. Partners in Crime

13. Utopia

14. Human Nature

15. The Impossible Planet

16. Silence in the Library

17. The Sound of Drums

18. Doomsday

19. The End of the World

20. Planet of the Ood

21. Father’s Day

22. Smith and Jones

23. Rose

24. The Unicorn and the Wasp

25. The Unquiet Dead

26. The Stolen Earth

27. Turn Left

28. Christmas Invasion

29. The Runaway Bride

30. The Girl in the Fireplace

31. Aliens of London

32. The Shakespeare Code

33. The Lazarus Experiment

34. Tooth and Claw

35. New Earth

36. The Sontaran Experiment

37. The Age of Steel

38. Bad Wolf

39. Rise of the Cybermen

40. The Poison Sky

41. Boom Town

42. World War III

43. Army of Ghosts

44. 42

45. Gridlock

46. The Last of the Time Lords

47. Idiot’s Lantern

48. Journey’s End

49. The Doctor’s Daughter

50. The Long Game

51. Voyage of the Damned

52. Love and Monsters

53. Evolution of the Daleks

54. Daleks in Manhattan

55. Fear Her

#doctor who #female doctor #reviews #season 4 #tenth doctor #donna noble #david tennant #catherine tate #russell t davies

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