Two thirds into the last episode of Shadow and Bone season 2 and I have one and only one question :

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Seriously, no. What the fuck is happening?????????????

Why are they pulling a Lauren Hirsch NOW after 6 solid episodes????

Episodes 1 to 6 made sense. They were good, coherent, fun and still true enough to Canon to be enjoyable.

Episoded 7 and 8 just threw out the entire saintsforsaken script out of the window and decided to go full AU, with some elements kept, some elements completely discarded and others moved around to early or to late in the timeline.

And I don't like it. It changes too much. It's not enjoyable anymore, not in the sense that the episode isn't entertaining to watch (I'm finally getting some Matthias screentime), but in the sense that it closes too many doors to tell future stories. It doesn't make sense, both inside the canon story, and inside the two-degrees-to-the-left alternate version thry had started to tell. The same way Lauren Hirsch fucked up The Witcher by completely changing the characters' personal timelines and the events of the story, the SaB team ft Bardugo also changed too much.

Yeah, if they had actually stopped season 2 at episode 6, and then kept following the events of the Ruin and Rising book with some prequel Six of Crows stuff, and made them into a 3rd season, it would have made more sense. And then give us the Six of Crows spin-off standalone show. (I demand an actual 6oC show, that actually follows the books, thanks)

Again, this is just my (and apparently the others too) opinion as a book-reader. I do wonder if none bookreaders who went into the show without knowing anything feel about season 2? Are you guys liking it, is it objectively good when one stops trying to reunite show with book?

Also they need to stop pushing Nikolai/Alina and Inej/Tolya, especially that second one, DO NOT BREAK KANEJ OR I WILL BURN YOU DOWN. And freaking give us Zoyalai ya cowards.

Okaaaaaay, as I was composing my review, I reached the end, and... the end of the episode makes as much bloody (see what I did there) sense as the beginning, that is to say: NONE.

STOP TRYING TO RUSH THE PLOT. The advantage of TV show is that you can take the time to establish your characters and your timeline of events. Stop. Trying. To. Make. Everything. Happen. At. The. Same. Time. Show is not movie!!!!! I'm getting upset now. Ugh. What a letdown. And it had started well.

Never really yours

anon: Just wanted to say that "The bet" was absolutely cute!!! If you are still taking requests, I'd love to have celebrity!au + Taeyong + exes + 26 I'm looking forward to your next writings :)!

“Baby, please. Being with you once a month is still so much better than not being with you at all. I can’t live without you” “And I can’t keep looking for flakes of happiness in the same place that I lost it”.

pairing: celebrity! Taeyong x fem! reader

genre: angst, smut

word count: 1,734

warnings: mentions of death, drinking, slight body worship, breakups, for the love of god don’t read this if you’re freshly broken up

a/n: sorry for the angst, hope you like it anon!

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How did you get yourself into this mess again?

He looks good, his hair a turquoise shade only he could pull off that well. You wondered how he found time to attend your common friend’s birthday party tonight, it’s been months since anyone in your life had seen him in person. Being a k-pop idol meant having almost no free time and as Taeyong’s ex-girlfriend, you knew that too well.

You don’t know how you found yourself tangled up with him in your sheets.

It started off with an awkward greeting, your friend’s apartment not big enough for you to avoid stumbling upon each other. He asks you about your life, about work, about your favourite TV show ending. You lie about everything being fine, not mentioning the fact that you’ve been waking up crying every night because he keeps visiting your dreams. Hugging your waist, kissing your knuckles, only for you to open your eyes to see the cold spot he left in your bed. In turn, you ask him about Ruby, and when he tells you she passed away, big eyes brimmed with tears and avoiding yours, you insist you sit down with him and share a beer.

Taeyong isn’t a good drinker, but he would gladly do it if it meant spending more time with you. An hour of catching up and you remember exactly what drew you to him in the first place and what convinced you to get in a committed relationship with someone so unattainable. He is so sensitive, so sweet. Attentive to everything you had to say, gentle and encouraging with his words. He always knew how to calm you down, all your problems you shared with him shrinking into nothingness the moment he reassured you everything was going to be okay.

You know you shouldn’t have let him grab your hands, but the circles he drew on them with his thumbs had a drug-like effect on you. You know you shouldn’t have run your hands through his hair, but the little mewl he let as he nuzzled his head against you, made all your constraints fall out the window.

“I can’t stop thinking about you”, he murmurs as soon as the beer can is less than half full and you choose to believe him. He insists on walking you home and you agree, knowing damn well he will follow you upstairs without any complaints from you.

From the moment he steps into your apartment, he has his lips glued on yours. Hungry, fervent kisses were exchanged between you, making you struggle to lock your front door. You move onto the couch, never breaking away from each other and discarding a piece of clothing with each step.

“I’ve missed you so much”, Taeyong whispers against your lips and you want to pinch yourself to make sure this isn’t one of the countless scenarios your mind fabricates for you in your sleep. You want to say it back but you’ve cried it so many times in your pillow that it seemed pointless to be repeated.

He pulls you on his lap, hands running over your sides to unfasten your bra. Sucking one of your nipples into his mouth, his doe eyes look up at you to gauge your reaction. He loves when you tell him he does a good job, that he makes you feel good, such a people pleaser that it makes your heart ache.

“Mmm, yes baby. Your lips feel so good”

His eyes light up in your praise, urging him to flick his tongue over your bud until you’re moaning his name. You know your pleasure is his number one priority but the sensitivity is getting too much and you haven’t had enough of him yet. Crouching down, you pull his hair to rest on the couch’s headrest when you start nibbling on his neck.

“No marks”, he pleads, “I have a photoshoot tomorrow”

Ah, yes, there it is. That stomach-churning feeling that has the memories you’ve tried so hard to repress flooding your mind in a second. That little voice that reminds you that Taeyong is never really yours. Missed birthdays, missed anniversaries, missed calls. Homemade dinner you prepared for him getting cold due to another practice taking too long. Waiting for a week for a mere notification, a voice message. Only getting to hear his voice by turning on the TV, seeing his smile through a screen. Were you his significant other or his fan? Did his most loyal fans know even more about your boyfriend than you? No. Maybe they knew about his favourite number, or his album sales, but you knew how to do this.  

You kneel down in front of him, springing his member out of his boxers and putting him into your mouth. Slurping around him intensely, you let your tongue hang out as his tip hits your soft palate. He moans at the feeling and you gloat over the sounds he is making just for you. You knew how to make him feel good, and you had to prove to yourself that you meant something to him, maybe even as much as he meant to you.

After some more minutes of your pampering he pulls you up, and starts leaving kisses over every part of your body his lips can reach. He murmurs about how beautiful they are, how beautiful you are, how much he missed you. His words were as sweet as they were addictive, so you lead him to your bedroom to shut him up.

Taeyong soon finds himself on top of you, naked and rubbing his cock over your folds that are undoubtedly wet by this point. You haven’t slept with anyone since your breakup but you don’t tell him that. Hell, you couldn’t even admit to yourself that his loving was the only physical contact you were really craving, but the moment he dives into you it’s hard to deny it.

He captures your lips in a devout kiss, contrasting his deepening thrusts. You hold on to his arms to try and ground yourself from the pleasure that is devouring you completely. This feels so familiar, so right that you want to scream. How unfair is it that someone has to rip these moments of intimacy with him, that you need near as damn much as oxygen at this point, away from you?

One of his thrusts soon hits that sensitive spot in you and you moan at him loudly to do it again. He concentrates in pleasuring you more deeply and opens your legs further in the process, pinning your knees onto the mattress. The motion is rigorous and your neighbors must hate you for the thumping of the bedpost against the wall but you couldn’t care less. His eyes are focused on your contorting expressions, widening the moment your mouth drops open at the wave of your orgasm washing over you.

Nothing can compare to the feeling of having the person you genuinely love connect with you through body and soul. In these serotonin-filled moments of your pussy gripping him, trying to coax an orgasm from him, nothing has changed. You’re still together, like those times you sneaked a quicky in his dorms after dance practice. Or those times he managed to stay over at your place to have a movie marathon and binge on his favorite sweet potato snacks. Or those rare times he took you out on a date under the moonlight of the UN Village hills, making promises about forevers.

Taeyong doesn’t take long to cum, panting and glistening in after-sex glow, and you think you’ve never seen anything more stunning. He plops next to you, one arm serving as a pillow under your head, the other drawing abstract shapes over your tummy. You don’t know what to say as the euphoria starts to wear off, leaving you in the uncomfortable realization of what you just did. He is the one who breaks the silence first.

“Sometimes, I sit in bed and wonder what would happen if things were different”

Oh, God knows you did too. You’ve spent the majority of your relationship daydreaming about an alternative universe, where Taeyong is just your colleague from work that you started dating, where you can go to the grocery store down the street with him, or kiss his hand in the daylight without fearing for his career ending. Your answer was quite different though.

“Don’t. There’s no use.”

He turns his torso around, leaning on the hand behind you to look at you.

“Why?”

“Because”, you sigh, hating the way he furrows his eyebrows like he didn’t agree with your breakup as well, “you won’t give up being a celebrity and I can’t stand only seeing you once a month. We’ve been over this”

“Well, this time it can be different! I can ask for less promotions and you can ask for more day offs. We can make this work!”

“No, we can’t Taeyong!” You move away from him now, using up every ounce of self-control to deny him. “You think I didn’t try as hard as I could the first time around? This isn’t sustainable and you know it.”

“Why can’t we just try again? And if it doesn’t work then-”

“Then what? What will happen when I need you and you won’t be able to be here? Do you know how much it fucking hurts to only hold on to memories of you? It almost doesn’t matter if we’re together or not, I still miss you all the same!”

You get up from the bed, covering yourself with a bathrobe, blinking again and again to keep the tears from spilling out. He is looking back at you with those big puppy eyes that you love the most and you hate yourself for the way they lost their sparkle.

“Baby, please. Being with you once a month is still so much better than not being with you at all. I can’t live without you”

“And I can’t keep looking for flakes of happiness in the same place that I lost it”. It was so hard to avoid his eye contact, so hard to keep yourself from snuggling up to him in the bedsheets and let yourself get carried away in the lie. But you had to be strong, for the both of you. “I think it’s time you should go”

The Dissertation That Was Promised

Look, I wasn’t going to do this but then people told me to, and I’m a bitch for attention, so here we go.

Shout out to @wildernessuntothemselves​ and @savingprivatecass​ coz I wouldn’t have written this without cha. (Yes, it does only take two people to get me write this whole thing. Yes I am ok with being this eager.)

Click below for a 4k+ essay about why episode 3 of season 8 of game of thrones was shit (in my opinion). I like casually spoil everything. So... you have been warned. 

 This where I would in a few sentences sum up the core of the problems with the episode, but honestly it's too numerous for me to be succinct in my thesis, but I shall endeavor. The problem with the episode is: one, not appropriately setting the various scenes in a way that is comprehensible; two, setting everything up to come down to the clutch; three, that the show writers lack any teeth; and four, making the ending of the episode a twist.

(There are also the side problems that there are just like no character beats going on in this episode and the siege tactics are laughably garbage… but unless people really want me to make an additional post I’m just not going to talk about that)

But before we get into my arguments let's start with some acknowledgements. One, I am arguing why this episode sucks, so I will not be spending any time discussing what was good. There were a few scenes that I thought were good. Maybe I will write about them later, I am not now. Two, while I do think the episode was God awful and I do genuinely not understand why people like it so much, my opinion is ultimately subjective, if you liked it, that is fine, this is not written for you.

And three, and this has its own paragraph for a reason, the rules of this universe change around season six when the writers run out of book material. The rules change from being the characters defining the story to the story defining the characters. The book is all about the characters’ decisions deciding the plot and that is what makes a Game of Thrones unique. Most TV shows and movies are about the plot deciding what the characters do. Neither is inherently better than the other, it just is. In this essay I am accepting this as a fact, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about how this character should have died because of a stupid decision they made. In LotR that wouldn’t have resulted in a character dying and in most TV shows and movies stupid decisions don’t equate to death, and the same is true here. Those aren’t the rules of the universe anymore. This change happened a long time ago and is not why this episode sucks (though I do feel it is a contributing factor).

Ok ‘but Miss Lemon’ you say ‘why does this episode suck then?’ well thank you strawman reader, let us get into it. It might seem weird to start on such a minor note but really a key problem that undermines everything that is good and exacerbates every problem is that everything that happens is kind of incomprehensible. What I mean is, throughout the battle there is no sense of time or location.

There are like four moments that really encapsulate this but it’s in every scene and I could do a mini breakdown of every single scene of this episode and how they fail to establish this.

The first time I really noticed it was when Jon was running after the Night King on foot to attack him before he could walk into Winterfell (or into the godswood, I also had NO idea where Dany, Jon, or the Night King were in relation to everyone else. Btw, you being able to answer this question that does not make my point invalid, I’ve seen the episode twice and I couldn’t figure it out and this is something that I should just feel instinctively if done properly). The distance between Jon and the Night King seems to change throughout the scene. There is no sense of progress as he runs because he seems to get randomly closer or further away with each cut. It was frustrating to watch because I was being denied the tension and was just waiting for the writers to reveal which they decided on, him reaching the Night King, or the Night King noticing him and raising all the dead to swarm him. The scene was not communicating to me which would happen on its own, I was just waiting to the scene to resolve to be told. This is bad.    

Also because I have no idea where the Night King, Dany, or Jon are in this moment, or how long it takes Jon to take down that mini army of undead by himself, I have no idea how close the Night King is to Bran and if there is any chance of Jon catching up to him. There is no real tension in watching Jon run after him because I do not know if it is possible, it is again me watching moving pictures that convey no meaning as the writers play up the ‘will he won’t he’ until they decide to tell me which happens. The writers are dictating what happens not the pictures that are moving and supposively conveying meaning (only they aren’t and that’s the problem).

Another key moment of time and placement problems in when the Hound sets aside his fear of fire and his lack of faith that they can win to try to save Arya. We see Arya coming down a roof with the Hound and Beric watching below and they decide to help her. Then when we catch up to Arya later she is alone somewhere within Winterfell castle using her stealth to get around the underdead. How did she get here? Where are the Hound and Beric? I can infer that maybe instead of finishing her slide down the roof into the courtyard she climbed back up and went into Winterfell to get a moment to catch her breath and though the Hound and Beric yelled for her to come down to where they were she couldn’t hear them over the din of battle, and they went after her but they are taking awhile to find her because they don’t have a good grasp of how to get around the castle. But I am making a lot of assumptions for the writers to explain it away when there aren’t any clues to indicate that. We could have easily been shown what was happening instead of her weird pointless stealth around the zombies side mission. Was it cool to watch her stealth around them? Yes. Did it serve any purpose or make any sense? No. I would easily sacrifice that stealth moment that set up the payoff of the Hound and Beric saving her. How much more tense would it be to have Arya parkouring her way around Winterfell castle while a hoard of zombies swell after her while we keep cutting back to the Hound and Beric who are desperately trying to find Arya? Instead we have no idea where anyone is and the Hound and Beric show up when they are needed because the writers will it and not because we are shown it.  

The last big moment of lack of time and placement is Arya in the kitchen with the Hound, Beric’s corpse, and Melisandre. Where is the kitchen in relation to the Godswood? They barricade it, so how does she get out and around the zombies? How long would it take to get for her to get to the Godswood? Then she just comes flying at the Night King, from where? Did she climb a tree to dramatically jump down and just watch Theon charge at the Night King and die? How does she get around the White Walkers? Wouldn’t it have been more tense to watch her STEALTH her way out of the kitchen to the godwoods, see her running cut between Theon’s charge, so we know that Theon is actually buying her time?

And that’s what leads me to my next point. One of the reasons this episode sucks is because everything comes down to the clutch. Now what do I mean by that? Everything ends when Arya kills the Night King and nothing leads up to her doing that. There is no back and forth, Arya comes out of nowhere and kills the Night King and then the episode ends.

Now this is key, I am not saying (right now) that the problem is that Arya kills the Night King. What I am saying is that there are only three scenes in this episode that matter (arguably four). When Arya is saved by Beric and the Hound, the scene where they talk in the kitchen, and when Arya kills the Night King. (For those curious the arguably fourth scene is where Theon dies, but we will discuss that in a second)

Now what do I mean by a scene mattering? Ok so because the rules of the universe have changed and things are no longer about characters deciding plot but plots deciding character then the only scenes that matter are scenes that contribute to the plot. The plot of this episode is stopping the Long Night, the only scenes that matter are scenes that contribute to that plot or contribute to a plot of a later episode. This makes it very easy to discern what is a scene that matters looks like. Let us accept that the killing the Night King does mean that everything falls dead, they do establish this in the previous episode at the end, and I will not even critique that this as stupid (it is tho). Therefore a scene matters if it contributes to moving Arya or the Night King to the godswood, or buying time for that to happen (or again setting things up for another episode). Now my amendment ‘or buying time’ comes with its own amendment, it must be demonstrated that time is bought.  

This is why the Theon scene does not count as a scene that matters, it didn’t feel like he was buying time nor was it framed that he was buying time. If it were framed that way we have seen Arya running cut between his charge to establish what he was doing and what it accomplished. He throws himself at the Night King and instantly dies in a last valiant, if stupid and pointless, attempt to save Bran. He does not buy time because Arya could have shown up at any point because time and location are not established, if the writers wanted Arya to show up and kill the Night King just before he kills Theon they could have because it wouldn’t go in the face of any time or location constraints that were set up, because they do not set them up. This is what I meant by this issue exacerbating problems.

Now maybe people disagree with me (I mean people definitely do that’s why I am writing this), who do you think contributed to ending the Long Night? From what I’ve seen argued, people think Jon, Melisandre, Beric, and Dany contributed to ending the Long Night (and obviously Arya and Theon, but I mean besides them). I will give you Beric on a technical level though I will discuss why this scene is also not so good later. I will even give you kind of Melisandre since she does put the idea in Arya’s head to go after the Night King, but since not one of you (don’t fucking lie) thought that was it about her going after the Night King this barely counts and is not the moment people talk about anyway.

Nothing Jon does contributes in anyway to ending the Long Night. His goal is to wait on a dragon until they see the Night King then he and Dany will go fuck him up in a sweet aerial battle. This plan falls apart when Dany, enraged by the death of the Dothraki (we will get to this later), flies in early, and fails again later when an ice storm is summoned. Later we do get a brief battle that ends with Jon on the ground, his dragon gone (not dead just it vanishes, don’t worry about it), they haven’t killed the zombie dragon, they haven’t killed the Night King. Jon tries again to kill the Night King but fails when the Night King raises up all of the dead. Later Jon yet again fails to kill the zombie dragon (not that it mattered at that point if he did). Jon contributes zero to the plot but we see a lot of it, this is wasted time.

Now the problem isn’t that his plan fails, that is fine, the problem is that this is Jon’s war, as Dany maddeningly put in one episode earlier (in another example of terrible writing, what the fuck do you mean Dany, how is the war for the dawn, in any way, only Jon’s war?) and he doesn’t do anything. Maybe he slows down the Night King but as the problem with Theon’s scene, because we do not know time and location, it doesn’t feel like he’s accomplishing anything. It doesn’t even feel like he’s failing, it feels like we are waiting for the writers to finally inform of us of what is going to happen, rather than moments leading into moments.

Dany does not nothing for the same reason Jon does nothing. Even the “mistake” she makes of losing her temper and going to avenge Dothraki doesn’t matter. Her and her dragons might as well not been there for all the difference they made. It’s all well and good to see the dragons breathe fire but when we do not see the consequences of that.... Winterfell felt completely run over by the undead by the end, you didn’t feel any weight to Dany’s contribution of blowing undead to shit with her dragon. Nor did we really see any big moments of dragon fire providing time to accomplish things.

I know the counterpoint ‘but Miss Lemon, the whole point was that the Battle for the Dawn was hopeless unless they managed to kill the Night King, that was the point’. Ok, then that makes for poor storytelling, because watching things happen on a screen that do not contribute to things happening for the plot moving forward, when there aren’t character beats happening, when there aren’t consequences for characters’ choices (dammit I said I wouldn’t bring this up) is boring.

Melisandre lighting shit on fire was a waste of time and was only there to look cool. There I said it. Her lighting the Dothraki’s swords on fire was cool and made for a truly iconic (if totally idiotic) scene. But like, the only important thing that happened is now they don’t have any calvary, which would have been true if Melisandre didn’t light their swords on fire, so pointless. ‘What about when Melisandre lit the trenches on fire’. Yeah, she did that. It was almost good too. It was almost good in that it was a character actually accomplishing a thing. It was almost good in that this was the first good strategy the main characters employed in this whole episode. It was bad tho because even though we see that time passes before the undead just… decide that breaktime is over, nothing crucial happens during that time. Time was bought, but it wasn’t used, so it might as well have never happened. Wasted moment. Also it demonstrates that the show writers do understand how to combat the undead effectively and just chose to have the characters make stupid ass plans. So not only wasted but bad.

People keep talking about all of the hero moments that characters had in this episode, and this has been really annoying me, because while I agree that they were supposed to be hero moments. At the end of the day, they weren’t. Because nothing anyone did mattered. By leaving everything to the last minute moment of Arya killing the Night King, of that being the one big moment that changes and saves everything, means that nobody gets to accomplish anything, and everything feels wasted and pointless. It’s bad storytelling.

(Also, I as a human being, am incapable of being tense for the whole episode especially when it is as long as it. At some point I stop being tense and start being annoyed and bored. This is bad pacing.)

Ok, moving right along to the writers not having any teeth. ‘But Miss Lemon, you said it was ok if characters didn’t die because of their mistakes’. You’re right I did say that, and boy howdy did characters make so many mistakes and never got punished, but you’re right, that isn’t why I’m making this point. Look people are saying ‘oh my god, the shocking deaths, what a body count’, and all I can say is ‘did you accidentally put on the red wedding episode? Coz we were not watching the same episode’. So who died? Big Mormot, Little Mormot, Theon, Baric, Melisandre.

Ok, we all need to be honest with ourselves. Jorah has had nothing to do for a while now and contributes nothing to the plot but being sad because dragon queen don’t want to bone him, which is just bordering on creepy by this point. He is one manifesto away from being a white knight. It matters zero to the plot that he is dead. What plot lines are ended because Jorah is dead? Narratively, what does it matter that Jorah is dead? Dany will be a sadder, but that probably isn’t going to affect any of her choices. She isn’t really missing out on any of his stellar advice because he doesn’t give her advice that her other advisers couldn’t. And none of us seriously thought that Jorah might end up with her, so it’s not like a potential love plot was cancelled.

Also the way he died was dumb. How the fuck did he get from inside Winterfell to outside (???). Why did he? It’s not like he knew Dany was alone. How did he get there in time? Why did Dany’s dragon desert her for so long. Like I know her dragon left to get rid of the zombies swarming him but I feel like that takes one, maybe two barrel rolls to deal with that. And also her dragon should never have been in that situation, she lit had no reason to land him. Also she has two dragons, where was her other one? It wasn’t with Jon. It’s almost like everything happened or was hand waved away to kill Jorah off for the shock value of it. Hmm… It didn’t feel like Jorah died because choices he and others made led to him dying, it feels like the writers decided he was going die and wrote around that.

Ok, Lyanna Mormont also doesn’t really contribute to the plot but to be sassy. Like, I like her, but let’s be honest. We aren’t going to be in the North much longer and she isn’t really an important North noble. She was important back when they really needed northern support and allies but the North is tenuously united to the cause. If you want to argue that Lyanna Mormont is team Northern Independence, then my counterpoint is so is Sansa, she doesn’t really need Lyanna’s help. They are almost definitely going to still do the North wants independence plot with or without Lyanna Mormont and she would not have been a big shaker of that plotline.

Ok, while I admit that Lyanna’s death was badass and it was really fun (and also really distracting) to watch King Cailan's death from Dragon Age: Origins play out in HD with a little girl in his place, it was also really fucking stupid. Why the ever loving fuck is a twelve year old, who is the last of her house, and a leader of her people, on the battlefield? Why does a mindless zombie giant (and also the only one for some reason) pick her up? Is it because he wants to eat her, even though he isn’t that sort of zombie? Is it because he respects her and wants to give her an honorable death for the audience? Coz I think it’s that one. And it’s distracting and obvious.

I have already explained why Theon’s death is stupid but this is where I would like to point out that narratively it is inconsequential. Theon’s arc was done. This does not mean there was not more to do with his character, he does have some potential that was wasted. But that would have all been interesting character stuff. Plotwise killing him doesn’t affect anything and his big character beat of coming home, becoming both a Stark and a Greyjoy, and redeeming himself for driving Bran and Rickon out of their home, was accomplished. Nothing Theon could have done after the fact would have really affected the plot. He’s not going to sit on the Iron Throne. He’s not going to change Sansa’s mind about Northern Independence (he has no reason to). He’s not going to convince his sister to break her peace treaty with Dany to ally with the North to secure their own independence. He’s not going to convince his sister to join the crown after all. He’s not going to convince Dany to let the North go. He’s not going to kill Cersei (or maybe he would makes the same amount of sense as Arya killing the Night King, maybe I’m wrong).

Baric’s death is similarly inconsequential. His story was completely tied to the White Walker Arc and he has nothing to do once it is over. He has no stake in the Cersei fight. He has basically no real character arc to finish either.

His death was also stupid because even though this is his big moment, he is accomplishing the goal that he was brought back again and again to do, this is literally his life’s purpose, and the scene is entirely framed around the Hound. Not only does Baric have basically no connection to Arya at all, but this was the Hound’s moment. This was the Hound overcoming his fear of fire and moving past his nihilism to fight for Arya. This was not about Baric at all. And if you rewatch the scene you can see that all of the framing focuses on the Hound completely. And not making Beric’s death scene about him is fucking lame.

Melisandre falls into the Baric camp as well. She is entirely tied to the White Walker Arc and has zero to do once it’s over. I guess you could argue that people were denied putting her to death for her crimes, but honestly in the scope of things, the only thing that differentiates her is that she is guilty of is killing someone we liked.

But like her death is built up and she’s like ‘oh I’m not surviving the night’ and you expect her to get this blaze of glory moment. This really awesome death where she makes up for the fact that she burned people alive for literally no reason (not that she knew that at the time but still), and instead she dies from literally being written out of the plot. I’m sorry but that was a really underwhelming death.

All the deaths are safe is the point I’m making. The consequence of killing a character is that you end all of their potential plot lines, places where the story was going to go. If you kill characters that didn’t affect that and who didn’t have plot lines, then you aren’t taking any risks. You’re just killing characters to kill them because this is Game of Thrones and characters die. But characters don’t just die in Game of Thrones. They die for reasons that have apparently been forgotten. There is a reason why Ned’s death and the Red Wedding are remembered and are defining moments of the series, and it wasn’t just because we were surprised.  

Ok, so moving right along to the twist. Look, I’m not ragging on it just because it was a twist. Because honestly, I know I said it was a twist, but it’s not a twist. Not a real twist. It’s a twist in the way that bad mystery novels have twist endings, when information is withheld, details excluded, things made up after the fact, to create an ending that no one could have predicted. It’s bad storytelling. If you want Arya to be the one to kill the Night King even though she has no relation to the White Walker Arc at all, fine. Set that up. Setting it up during the episode in which it happens does not count by the way. We’ve had 8 seasons of setting up either Jon or Dany killing the Night King, you had since season 6 or if I’m being generous 2 previous episodes of season 8 to start laying the ground works for Arya suddenly doing it, use that time you hacks.

And when I say they have set up Jon or Dany (but mostly Jon) killing the Night King I do not mean that just characters think that or that the audience inferred that from storytelling tropes. If that were just the case then subverting that expectation would be totally valid. But that’s not just what happened. The meta narrative, the tricks the writers and directors use to talk discreetly but directly to the audience, told us that Jon would kill the Night King. You cannot subvert that expectation, that’s not subversion, that is lying. So I don’t feel like I’m watching a magic trick, I feel like I’m being conned.  

Like I literally don’t get why people liked the episode besides the ain’t it cool of it all and the fact that there was a surprise. I mean, I guess it was good in the way that roller coasters are good. But I ride roller coasters for the adrenaline of it, I don’t watch TV shows for that same rush. I want something a little bit more. Nothing matters, you could have just watched the last couple of scenes and not really missed anything. Nobody that dies matters. No one did anything. There weren’t any really big characters moments (except Theon, I will give them that much). This is the biggest most important episode. This is the Battle for the fucking Dawn and it was somehow worse than the Battle of the Bastards. (Also if you think that Game of Thrones is about politics and Cersei is the #realvillain you have not been paying attention. I swear to God if I see someone say this one more time I going to die.)

Graduating High School.. Nine Months Pregnant?

20 Pop Culture Stereotypes We Must Debunk (Because    They’re Fucking Stupid)

1.   Race determines class

“White people were equated with richness and land” (Williams, pg. 431). Who’s to say you can’t be a person of color and also be loaded?! Sure, the Real Housewives have women of color who are ~loaded~, but the majority of shows depict non-white individuals and families as poor. Have you ever seen the TV show Everybody Hates Chris? The whole show is about a poor, African American family living in Brooklyn, NY—constantly worrying about money. Their father, Julius, is even so tight on money that he kept a picture of himself in his own wallet to keep as a reminder to not spend money. Shows like this may be hilarious, but continual negative portrayal of race and class hurts those who are included in the stereotype.

2.   Race determines education level

“Members of society are judged, and succeed or fail, measured against the characteristics that are held by those privileged (Wildman & Davis, pg. 111).” Why do we put less pressure on some people to go to college, and others are just assumed they’ll go, or maybe it’s assumed they’ll never even finish high school? How can we look at a 16-year-old black high school student and compare them to a white 16-year-old student, and think that we have enough information to label one of them as academically frivolous, and one as a failure?

3.   Race determines actions

Being white will never make you an angel, being a person of color will never make you dangerous. The media constantly portrays black people to carry guns, Middle Eastern people to be terrorists, and white people to be trashy, yet, more responsible with guns…? However, according to Chris Wilson with Time, mass shootings from the past 35 years were overwhelmingly white, male shooters. So why do we allow the media to make it look as if the white man is innocent in shows and movies, when in reality they’re the ones who are dangerous?  

4.   Race determines where you live

Similar to race determining your class, race also doesn’t dictate where someone lives. For example, in the show Shameless, a white family is actually living in the poor, “ghetto” area of town that they refer to as the South Side. However, back to Everybody Hates Chris as I mentioned prior, TV loves to show people of color living in shitty places as if it’s normal. We can’t let the world tell us you must live within constraint or restriction because of your skin; it’s 2018—love thy [literal] neighbor, dammit.

5.   Class determines your future, or lack-there-of

“Everyone knows that money brings privilege” (Wildman and Davis, pg. 111). Sure, it can. I won’t pretend that money doesn’t make it easier to afford things such as college. People act like student loans don’t exist, that grants don’t exist, FAFSA (even though they suck, but it’s whatever), loans, etc. do.not.exist.But these are excuses. Millions of students who are set up for failure because they can’t afford college or because their parent’s don’t have the money, but that doesn’t stop them.

6.   Class determines your likelihood to end up an addict

Face it—TV either depicts drug/alcohol addicts as either extremely poor, or extremely rich. No one ever seems to care about a middle-class addict. What’s worse though, assuming that being rich or poor increases your likelihood to be an addict, or by not paying as much attention to addicts who are neither of these classes. The rich have money to blow on, well, blow…. and the poor just somehow are expected to be more likely to hang out with the wrong crowd, try a drug once, and then do everything and anything they can in order to get money to keep on getting the drug—none of this is something that we should stereotype.

7.   Class determines the likelihood you’ll get pregnant at a young age

Your class and status don’t determine when you have sex and if you’re using protection, your decision to have sex without protection or situations of birth control failure are how you get pregnant at a young age (I’m leaving out situations of rape from this so I don’t write a novel). According to studies done by the US National Library of Medicine, socioeconomic status doesn’t determine the age you get pregnant at, but may determine to different pregnancy and birth complications due to lack of money to afford things such as healthcare, diapers, medicine, etc.

8.   Being feminine means you’re gay

“The new man is non-sexist, believes in gender equality and relates to women as human beings” (Milestone and Meyer, pg. 116). Apparently, the ‘new man’ is seen as a gay man to many. What even is femininity? A guy isn’t gay for wearing pink, giving a shit about how he looks, having female friends, or for his hobbies—I personally appreciate a man who takes care of his appearance, shows his feelings, ya know, showers and stuff. Kidding—I promise I have higher standards than a guy just showering. But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that none of these surface-level features give anyindication that a man is gay. And if he is, who even cares?!

9.   Being masculine means you’re a lesbian

*See #8*

Kidding, but really. Stop judging people based on how they look, dress, act, whatever. 

10.Gay people are promiscuous

First off, not your business. Second, you can just as easily say something dumb like that girls in sororities are sluts (trust me, I was in one and I got this comment a handful of times). I don’t even know how this stereotype came about, but I know that my gay friends joke about it al the time. If your gay friends make a joke about it, cool, it’s funny to talk about his “dick appointment”, but it’s different between a good friend making a statement, and you being an assumptive asshole.

11.Gay people have HIV aids

Every commercial I’ve ever seen on TV about medical treatment for HIV only show gay couples. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gay and bisexual males are more susceptible to getting HIV because they tend to have anal sex, sometimes unprotected, which then puts them at serious risk. Sorry not sorry, but these commercials can’t just pretend straight couples don’t have unprotected anal sex. HIV doesn’t discriminate, so neither should we.

12.Gay people can’t have children

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. How do women who can’t conceive have children? Adoption, IVF, surrogate—there’s tons of options, and these are options for gay couples as well.

13.Gay people can’t be religious

There’s this notion that gay people must not believe in God because some people believe that homosexuality is a sin—even though God definitely says to love thy neighbor and that he loves all of his children, aka all of us. Shows such as Modern Familyare great examples of this. A gay couple, Cam and his husband Mitchell, attend church and even take their adopted daughter, Lily, with them. Sure they live in California where there’s more acceptance, but the fact that the show even displays this is great for ending this stereotype by showing it as normalized.  

14.Teen moms won’t graduate

I talk about Shamelessand Teen Moma lot, but hey, they’re perfect examples for a lot of these stereotypes. Shamelesssupports this stereotype by showing a 15 year old named Debbie who gets pregnant and drops out of high school. !!!BUT!!! Debbie eventually gets her GED and becomes a certified welder. Hell yeah. Teen Mom, which is a reality show, rarely shows teens graduating or getting any type of certification to better their education. Girls who are in similar situations may see this and be like “well shit, if they didn’t finish school and they’re fine, I’m not finishing either!”— then the girl and her baby daddy end up relying on their parents for everything. I graduated with a girl who was nine months pregnant, literally about to pop, and now she’s a young mom, yes, but she got to go on and attend college and is almost finished with her degree. By supporting pregnant teens and giving them the push they need, they can attempt to better their future and give their baby a great life (not that it won’t be great without education, but you know what I mean).

15.Teen pregnancy is easy & fun

If you’ve seen Teen Mom, you know that teen pregnancy isn’t easy. Yes, the show does glorify it sometimes by being like “oh, get pregnant at 16, you’ll get on TV!!!!” but they also show the raw, uncut scenes of the girls and couples hardcore struggling. Imagine missing class, missing prom, missing fun experiences you could be having with your friends when you’re not even twenty years old. Imagine the judgment by friends, family, and strangers because they assume you weren’t being careful. There’s a lot more to being a teen mom than being on TV and picking out cute baby clothes—don’t let TV and the media make you think you should get pregnant for fun.

16.Teen parents = unfit parents

I’ll be honest, this is a stereotype that I’ve believed for a long time. Teens are young, haven’t experienced life yet, aren’t fully educated, and aren’t always very mature—so why would they make good parents? Good question. Answer: no one is ever ~ready~ for their first kid. If you’ve never had children before, you’re in the same position as everybody else who has also never had kids. It doesn’t matter if you’ve babysat for years or if you have a college degree, having your first child isn’t something anyone can fully prepare for. You can have money, buy the best diapers, whatever, but you’ll still be learning how to care for the baby day by day no matter what age you are.

17.Trans people are confused

“you’re confused”

“it’s a phase”

“you’re just gay.”

-all quoted from a dumb ass, probably

For this, let’s go back to Linda Alcoff’s “The Problem Of Speaking For Others”. You don’t know how someone realized they weren’t the gender assigned to them at birth. You don’t know how they feel in their own skin every day. You don’t know the hardships and troubles and braveryit took for them to come to terms with being trans and be open about it to others. If you speak for them and try to say “oh, she’s confused” or “he’ll grow out of it”, all you’re doing is demeaning them, belittling them, and you’re lying to yourself and to them. Being trans isn’t easy. Support your trans friends or coworkers or whoever, and let them know that they’re always welcome in your life as they are.

18.Trans people are drag kings/queens

Similar to the last stereotype, being trans isn’t something you dress up in for fun and then change out of later. Anyone can dress in drag, not just transgender people. As Janet Mock discussed in Redefining Realness, drag can empower people and make them feel pretty and good about themselves. However, it doesn’t make you trans just because you partake in drag.

19.Trans people are predators

“Can you be guaranteed to find a public bathroom that is safe and equipped for you to use? (Taylor, pg. 296). Think about it—there’s a higher chance of a trans person being assaulted by someone because of who they are than a cisgender person being attacked in a bathroom by someone who’s trans. As much as I hate to get into this—I’ll be brief. No, trans people aren’t creeps. No, they’re not lying about their identity. No, they do not want to use the female restroom for ANY other reason aside from beingfemale.

20.Being who you are is easy

“We tend to forget the thousands of minute decisions that consciously construct the artificial world that has been created” (Smith, pg. 128). Though this quote is about movies, it’s true for real life. We make decisions every day that can drastically alter our lives. The thing is, we make these decisions in order to please others; we make choices that define us once we think about how it impacts others, what they’ll think, and what the worst-case scenario of these decisions may be. This is where it becomes difficult to be who you are. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re worried about what other people think more than you worry about yourself and your happiness. Put yourself first, worry about yourself, and make yourself proud—fuck everything else.

                                                Citations

Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique, no. 20, 1991, p. 10.,       doi:10.2307/1354221.    

Bornstein, Kate, and Evin Taylor. Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. Vintage   Books, 2016.

“HIV and Gay and Bisexual Men Understanding HIV/AIDS.” National Institutes of Health, U.S.   Department of Health and Human Services, 5 Apr. 2018, aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-          hiv-aids/fact-sheets/25/81/hiv-and-gay-and-bisexual-men.

“Making Systems of Privilege Visible.” Making Systems of Privilege Visible, by Stephanie M Wildman and Adrienne D Davis, p. 111.  

Milestone, Katie, and Anneke Meyer. Gender and Popular Culture. Polity, 2012.

Min, Kim. Socioeconomic Status Can Affect Pregnancy Outcomes and Complications, Even With              A Universal Healthcare System. U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institute of                 Health, 5 Jan. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756361/.

Mock, Janet. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & so Much More.       Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Smith, Greg M. “It's Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 2001, p. 128., doi:10.1353/cj.2001.0025.  

Williams, Claudette. Gal... You Come From Foreign. McGraw Hill, 2002.

Wilson, Chris. “Mass Shootings in the US: See 35 Years in One Chart.” Time, Time, 2 Oct.         2017, time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/.

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews... The Mist (S01E03) Show and Tell Airdate: July 6, 2017 @spike @paramountpictures Ratings: 0.428 Million :: 0.12 18-49 Demo Share Score: 4.75/10 TVTime/FB/Twitter/IG/Path/Pin: @SpotlightSaga **********SPOILERS BELOW********** 'The Mist' has literally been driving me crazy. It's a project that I've taken on, completely committed to, no matter what the outcome... Although, you know, I knew in my heart of hearts that this was going to be tough road to travel. TV is such a completely different vessel than film and writing, books, or in this case, short stories. You have your Film Fans, who are protective & rabid, and that's understandable... 'The Mist' that was released in 2007, was listed as #4 on Bloody Disgusting's 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', and it earned it, hardcore! We've already praised Marcia Gay Harden enough (or have we?), but it's really hard to argue that the film is anything but an unexpected gem that horror fans absolutely fell head over heels in love with, and rightfully so. The short story written by Stephen King has its own set of accolades and personal touches, and it all must be set on its own particular shelf. Despite the straight up 'mixed to negative' reviews that the television series has been getting, you're going to hear fans of the tv series avidly defend it... Ratings aren't exactly high, but they're steady. The same people who were watching it from the beginning are sticking with it, give or take a few minor down & upticks. Just like the film and the short story it's based upon, the show has it's own set of true blue fans. This is 'The Mist: The Series', its in its own realm, and we have to accept that. As hard as it is to stop yourself from compulsively comparing the three separate entities, you simply cannot give in... You have to look at each piece as its own room, with its own door, with its own individually made key... Each complete with its own decorative key caps, so that we know the exact door we're opening. So, when you get right down to it, I guess the most important question is what does a relatively low-budget television series have to present to a rebranding network on the dwindling eve of its 'end of the year' transition? What does it have to offer an already established franchise like 'The Mist', that a near $20 Million budget film and the infinite imagination of words on paper written by a world renowned author like Stephen King, within the pages of a collection of short stories have that has not already been offered up already? The answer is simple... Long term character work, but they must get it right to make this project stick it to its critics and it's overeager naysayers. Now here I go again, bringing up Marcia Gay Harden, but I have a good point. Harden was able to represent the opposite of what Thomas Jame represented in the film. The movie itself had limited time, but it made the most of its seconds on the clock... Separating the two complete opposite sides of a spectrum under extreme duress. It wasn't the monsters that buzzed about and added additional scares to the film that were so successfully frightening in the long run, it was the idea that under the weight of the world, two different sides of people emerge... One are heroes who do absolutely terrible things in the name of humanity, and the other are villains that think they are heroes because they are acting in the name of what they believe to be righteous. Pretty brilliant, right? That was the horror of 'The Mist', the film. We, as human beings, are the very things that go bump in the night... We are the bad guys, even if your intentions are pure. I've literally watched that film a gazillion times, so its extremely hard to get out of my head. It's only fair for me to judge the show without an extreme bias... And the only way to rid myself of that extreme bias is if I watch these episodes again and again and again. Four, y'all. I'm talking, I watched this specific episode 'Show and Tell' four times! Before you start sending me fruit baskets and letters of condolences, I started to notice that while many of these actors just aren't up to par, that the ones that are or are shaking up to be (Frances Conroy, Holly Deveaux, Danica Curcic *my breakout vote for the series*, Romaine Waite *step up, now, papo*, and even newcomers like Luke Cosgrove & Okezie Murro) are really attempting to step up and create some sort of magnetic character development for the audience to hold onto, to explore on a much more intense level, where time constraint that a film would face, really isn't a major issue. It's just that we have actors and actresses like Isiah Whitlock Jr and Alyssa Sutherland who simply didn't seem to get the memo that 'The Mist: The Series', needs them to tone down the cheese-factor. This is horror... And 'The Mist' (no matter the format) isn't a cheeky or B-Film Trip down a 'Full Moon' or 'Troma' like lane. I hate to rag on actresses, especially competent ones, but it's not always the actresses or actors that are to blame... It could be direction or something as simple as a horrible miscast... But Alyssa Sutherland (Eve) is not doing this series any favors. I'm a bit confused on her reactions in relation to her daughter Alex (Gus Birney) being trapped with the boy who 'supposedly' sexually assaulted her. It doesn't feel natural and it seems like the kid being accused is clearly innocent. After 4 viewing of this episode, I've developed an intricate theory, but I'll save it for later. The main issue is that the characters are all so separated right now, so until we start killing some off, thinning out the herd, and meeting important characters up somewhere in the middle, there's really no reason to dive too far into such a subplot. Honestly, and no disrespect to Sutherland, I just truly believe she was horribly miscast and unfortunately I feel like the young Gus Birney would fly better in the series if she had a different mother to play along side her. Hopefully their chemistry starts to percolate in the next few episodes, but for now it's not feeling conducive to the young actress trying to spread her wings. Speaking of spreading wings (oh, come on, you know I had to use that).... 'The Mist' shows off a different kind of horror than what we've come to expect from 'the brand' itself. It looks as if whatever is in The Mist is feeding off the psychological fears of each individual. This is where the show could not only get interesting, but use a completely new type of horror twist to attach to 'The Mist' name and flavor. The imagery was out of this world. Sure, the budget is low, but it looks like they are using good chunks of money on moments where it really counts, where they really need to capture their audiences attention... And believe you me, that scene where that boy sprouted wings in the murky fog of the dense mist was absolutely breathtakingly horrifying. Having Frances Conroy react to that scene was the best possible decision that the creators of the show could make. Although, 'Show and Tell' still shines down a mediocre light on 'The Mist' as a whole, this was the first episode where I didn't feel like it was such a chore to sit through. Sure, I had to watch it multiple times to truly find the things I appreciate about the episode the most, but not everyone will need that extra time to see what makes the positive side of the series pop. Like I said before, the cast is a bit too large in the numbers department, it's time to start killing these characters off, and if these are the type of innovative ways they plan on tackling this issue, then that's a pretty damn good reason to stay tuned in... At least for now!

The most important scene in Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2 comes early on and offers a brilliant summation of everything the writer-director does so well.

The Parr family, having attracted the attention and irritation of the government with their superhero shenanigans, sits in a lonely motel room, munching on Chinese food. They’ve just saved the city of Municiberg from the Underminer, who set his giant drill on a path to destroy City Hall.

But officials don’t see all of the destruction that was averted — they only see the rubble that actually exists. Yes, nobody wants supervillains like the Underminer robbing banks, but there’s a process in place to ensure those banks and the money within them, and having superheroes leap in to save the day just complicates that process.

The scene is notable both for its small, detailed animation — pay attention to how Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) can’t seem to grasp anything with his chopsticks and finally just stabs an eggroll through the middle — and for the way it tosses a bunch of questions the movie knows it can’t possibly answer up into the air. To change the law that has made superheroes illegal, the Parrs will have to break it, to show that superheroes can still be useful. Or, as G-man Rick Dicker wearily sighs in an earlier scene, “Politicians don’t trust anyone who does a good thing just because it’s right. It makes them nervous.”

The first time I saw Incredibles 2, all of these ideas jostling for space within the movie struck me as a movie frantically searching for a story to tell, one it eventually found but that didn’t quite cohere with everything else. The second time through, though, the movie made more sense to me as a meditation on the popularity of superhero stories and what it means to live in a world where what’s legal isn’t always what’s right. It doesn’t offer solutions, because it knows there aren’t any.

But the movie is also keyed in to something that’s always present in Bird’s work, something that’s caused some to accuse him of being an objectivist along the lines of Ayn Rand: an obsession with the rights of the exceptional and how they can be stacked up against everybody else.

Incredibles 2 strikes me both as Bird’s deepest exploration of this idea and his biggest refutation of it. Bird might be fascinated by the exceptional among us, but he’s also not interested in exceptionalism if it doesn’t benefit the larger community.

Brad Bird Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images for Disney

The works of author Ayn Rand — including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others — have been hugely influential on the thinking of various political and economic theorists over the years. (Among current politicians, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is a notable devotee.) To put Rand’s writings in modern terms, you could describe her objectivism as a kind of extra-strength libertarianism, in which the truly great among us should, as much as possible, not be shackled by the law or by conventions.

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, a futuristic dystopia in which citizens who don’t contribute to society leech off the business classes, who create both wealth and useful material goods (mostly trains and railroads). The action of the book — if a book so heavy in long discussions of philosophy can be said to have “action” — mostly involves the various characters learning that society needs them more than they need society, that the world is only as strong as its strongest, who should be subject to as few rules and regulations as possible. Rand stops just short of saying, “Billionaires should be able to straight-up murder whomever they want,” but reading the book, you have to think the idea occurred to her at some point.

This is a vast oversimplification of a book I read once in high school for an essay contest, but Rand’s ideas that regulations are bad and wealth creators are good have trickled down into the modern Republican Party in ways that are hopefully obvious.

The question is if they’ve also trickled down to influence the films of Brad Bird, one of modern animation’s few auteurs, but also a writer-director who keeps returning to the idea that society places unnecessary constraints on exceptional individuals. You can see where the comparisons come from.

Bird has made just six films — 1999’s The Iron Giant, 2004’s The Incredibles, 2007’s Ratatouille, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2015’s Tomorrowland, and 2018’s Incredibles 2 — and four of those wrestle with the above idea at length. There’s a touch of that idea in Iron Giant (which we’ll get to), but it doesn’t dwell on it at length, while Ghost Protocol (one of the finest modern action movies) is mostly about how it would be totally rad to free climb the world’s tallest building. (Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland are live-action; the other four films are animated.)

The “objectivist” tag was first applied to Bird extensively after the first Incredibles. And to be sure, the very premise of the film plays in this territory: superheroes have been outlawed due to safety concerns, and one character bellows, “With everyone super, no one will be!” This is particularly true of a concluding scene in which young Dash Parr, blessed with super-speed, intentionally throws a race at a track meet. The plot reason for this is that he can’t let anybody know he has superpowers (which are still illegal), but it plays as a weird critique of the idea of participation trophies and the attempt to make sure no child’s feelings are hurt.

The criticism followed Bird through Ratatouille — which is ostensibly about how anyone (even a rat) can cook but is also kind of about how if you don’t have talent, you should get out of the way of people who do — and especially Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses abscond to an alternate universe where they build the sci-fi future imagined in the ’50s and ’60s and mostly abandoned in our modern era of imagined dystopias.

A world where the exceptional cordon themselves off and refuse to save the rest of the world is literally Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, where the book’s mysterious hero, John Galt, hides out to proclaim his superiority to everybody else. And now Incredibles 2 toys with many of these same themes, which makes sense as a continuation of the first film. (When I asked him about these themes, he mostly punted on answering the question, saying he didn’t think about it that much when writing his movies.)

I think it’s worth considering all of these ideas in the context of Bird’s career, which got a bit of a late start. After beginning as a young wunderkind animator at Disney in the early ’80s, Bird was fired after raising his concerns that the company was half-assing it, instead of trying to protect its rich legacy.

Bird spent much of the ’80s bouncing from project to project — he worked on, among other things, a Garfield TV special and the Amazing Stories episode “Family Dog” (his directorial debut) — until in the early ’90s, he landed a job as the animation supervisor on a new TV show named The Simpsons, a job that made his career and allowed him to direct Iron Giant. When that movie flopped, he was brought to Pixar thanks to a college friendship with John Lasseter (who has recently been pushed out of the company after accusations of sexual misconduct).

But his directorial debut still didn’t arrive until he was in his early 40s. And while that’s not exactly unprecedented, it is at least a little unusual in an industry where someone with the evident talent of Bird likely would have proceeded through the ranks of a major animation company and directed his first film somewhere in his 30s.

Bird’s self-admitted demanding nature likely make him difficult to work with — something that surely contributed to his difficulty getting a film made, despite numerous almost-realized projects, like an animated adaptation of the comic The Spirit. (Bird was also probably hurt by his certainty that “animated film” and “kids film” shouldn’t be synonymous, even though animated films aimed at adults have always been difficult sells in Hollywood.) It makes sense that Bird’s frequent musings on the shackling of genius might be a political, but it’s just as possible this is an artistic idea, based on the struggles he had getting his career to take off. (My friend David Sims has had similar thoughts at the Atlantic.)

So, yes, we could read Bird’s filmography as a celebration of Ayn Rand and of climbing very tall buildings. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t also read it in the context of the career of a director who felt stymied at every turn for almost 20 years, before he unexpectedly became one of the most successful directors of his generation almost out of nowhere.

Even then, we’d be missing something big.

The Iron Giant paints a very different picture of how those with great talents should behave. Warner Brothers

One of the things that makes that early motel-room scene in Incredibles 2 so potent is the fact that there’s no clear right answer to the issues that Bird raises via his characters. Nor is there a right answer in a later scene in which Helen Parr (Elastigirl) talks with a new friend about whether the ability to create something great or the ability to sell it to the mass public is more important to the world. Nor in the frequent arguments about whether breaking unjust laws is the right thing to do, even if society requires people to be law-abiding to function.

It’s impossible for any animated movie to truly be “timely” because they’re produced on such a long timeframe. But Incredibles 2 feels eerily tapped in to the political debates we’re having around the globe right now. If you have massive amounts of power and feel like the world is circling the tubes, is your primary duty to society or to the self? Or your family? Or all of the above? Brad Bird doesn’t know this answer, so the movie doesn’t either.

This is a common thread across his filmography. All of his movies grapple with objectivist themes, to be sure, but they also don’t conclude that doing what’s best for the self is what’s best for everybody. The closest thing to an answer Bird ever provides is “Do what’s right, and what’s right is what benefits the most people.”

In short, his movies always posit that the exceptional should be allowed to express their talents to the best of their abilities — but only insofar as they can benefit society at large.

What’s interesting is how often Bird’s most openly objectivist moments and story ideas are presented as bad things. That collection of geniuses making up Tomorrowland, for instance, invents a machine meant to bring doom to our world, while the famous line about being special or super from Incredibles is actually spoken twice — the first time by a child and the second time by the movie’s villain. Helen is the closest thing the Incredibles franchise has to a moral conscience, and she’s always the one on the side of the idea that “everyone is special.” We just have different talents.

Ratatouille might be the best developed expression of this idea among Bird’s films. His portrayal of a restaurant as a collection of people who do very specific jobs to the best of their abilities, all adding up to a kind of symphony, is very much like filmmaking, with the film’s hero, Remy the rat, standing in as a director. The movie’s villains are those who would stand in the way of Remy realizing his full talents — but you can also read that as being against prejudice, as a celebration of the idea that anyone can cook and great art can come from someone you’d never expect (like a young and hungry would-be animator from Montana, not exactly a hotbed of Hollywood talent).

It’s telling that Ratatouille’s great chef is a rodent and not the gangly human who discovers he’s the son of a great, dead chef. Talent isn’t always predictable, following along conduits you’d expect. But when you find it, it’s best to encourage it but also make sure it’s tempered with kindness, as it is in Ratatouille, a movie where even the restaurant’s waitstaff is briefly but memorably celebrated.

All of which brings us back to The Iron Giant, a movie rarely discussed in conversations about Bird’s interest in exceptionalism. If any Bird creation is exceptional, it’s a giant metal man who eats railroads and can become a literal death weapon, but the arc of the film is about the giant trending away from that which makes him exceptional and would harm others, and toward what about him is exceptional that could benefit others. It’s a movie about a really amazing walking gun who decides, instead, to become Superman.

Superman’s a fitting icon to consider as a way to understand Bird’s ultimate philosophies. Yeah, he could kill all of us with a flick of his fingernail, but he doesn’t. So could the superheroes of Incredibles 2, but they make the choice not to.

That’s why Incredibles 2 stands so beautifully as Bird’s most fully engaged wrestling with all of these ideas. It never offers easy answers because there aren’t any. The question of how we build a society that benefits everybody and gives them the same rights as everybody else, while still allowing people as much freedom as possible to exercise the talents and abilities unique to them, isn’t one that can be answered easily. It’s arguably the work of democracy itself, and it will never be finalized, as long as human beings strive for a better world. Thus, those of us who are exceptional, be they people or rodents or whole countries, are only as exceptional as they are good.

While it’s not always easy to determine the right course of action, determining what’s good almost never is. It’s what takes you away from celebrating the self and back toward figuring out how that self can fit into the community of others, how your own exceptionalism can become a part of the great symphony of life.

Original Source -> Why Incredibles director Brad Bird gets compared to Ayn Rand — and why he shouldn’t be

via The Conservative Brief

How to Get Started Using Colored Gels in Your Portrait Lighting

There is a progression that takes place in the journey that is our lighting knowledge: ambient light > on-camera flash > bouncing that flash > off-camera strobes > gels.

At first it is learning the ways of ambient light (read: I don’t want to buy a flash). As our career progresses we decide to buy our first flash and throw that sucker straight on the camera, only to question why the shadows on faces are gone… along with the artistic merit. Soon after that, we discover a site like Strobist and point the flash at the ceiling and realize our first “Eureka” moment as a photographer.

Then we buy our first off-camera strobes, and it is all downhill from there…

Off camera strobes are something that I think should be classified as a different genre in the medium of photography. I say this because they are a part of the knowledge base that some photographers will never need to understand to be successful (like photo-journalists and landscape photographers). However, for advertising photographers like myself, they are crucial to my workflow and often make or break an image.

We often talk about how bringing lights to an image creates mood, but rarely discuss how it can destroy it, but I digress.

At a certain point in your career, you will reach a level of knowledge that must expand outside of its F-Stop constraints and into a Kelvin world that is not just a derivative of white balance. I am, of course, talking about gelling the lights.

For the standard still photographer, this is probably a skill set that will not be critical to his or her success, as it might slow down time on set and impede efficiency; however, if you ever want to work in Hollywood (or at least Los Angeles) you should be driving to the store to pick up a gel set before finishing this blog.

Now the reason I mention Hollywood is that movie and set lighting are more of a product of the color of a light, rather than its brightness. How often do you watch a film or tv show and think, “is every light that green in a dark alley?” What you are taking in is actually quite special, for it is a color palette painting the on-screen action.

If you want a nice example of this, watch “Man in the High Castle” on Amazon Prime. In it you will see light coming through windows that appear like they lit with an neon sign… quite beautiful really.

But you are probably wondering, “how do I incorporate this into my photography?” It is really quite simple: practice (after buying the gels at the store, which you are currently driving to). There are multiple ways and theories behind approaching split lighting with color. One would be to perfect the hell out of your orange and blues (natural balance), while the other would be to master the effects set (your greens, yellows, reds etc).

Going with the natural gels route, you will find your lightings beginning to compliment the skin of your model. As an added bonus, you will also find that you specular highlights will also gain more depth and form will have more dimension.

The second approach, lighting with the non-natural set (effects colors) will give the image a unique artistic quality not found in the natural tones.

This is where it gets a little dangerous, because (as is the case with adding lights) using the non-natural color set can destroy an image, especially a portrait. The reason for this is that we need to have context and balance for the eye of the viewer to not have aversion. Imagine yourself standing in a room with a single green lightbulb. While the light from it is probably fun, the reality doesn’t strike you as normal, because light in our minds is white.

As with all photography tips, the answer of how to do this properly is the hard part, because you need to learn both. In this way, you will be able to tell the viewer’s eye where the balance is with the knowledge built from the natural color gels, as well as create a narrative with the color set.

Sure, there are rules to be bent (or broken) when it comes to bringing color into lighting, but the fundamentals must be your base upon which you build.

One of the best ways to start learning your color-based light system is just like you did when you started lighting altogether, one at a time. From there, gradually build your repertoire, but be very respectful of the time it will take to do this.

If time is not an issue, take a month to work with only one gelled light before adding any complexity to a schema that has added a dimension of depth that should be considered exponential in its most algebraic nature. The reason I say this is that where you can add a gel to a light, you can add two… are things getting confusing yet? Let’s dive further down this rabbit’s hole.

Beyond the factor of color, we can also dial in saturation in a number of ways. To a camera’s sensor, the latitude of dynamic range will also affect the gamut that is taken in of your breadth of color. Think of it this way: throw a red gel on a light and crank it to 11 (figure of speech for blowing the thing out) and you are not really going to see red; heck, you’re lucky if you see pink.

Now set that very same light to a measured 18% and you will see a beautiful deep red that caresses the shadows with a feel that is on par with the gain of a sensor at high ISO.

Remember, what we have just done here is reflecting the variables that exist within one light and one gel. The next step along the way is anything you make it, be it counterbalanced color with offset lighting of varying power or the introduction of gobos to create diffused atmosphere, it is up to you.

Now go take the first step and snag two sets of the same gels… why two? Because you will probably melt the first one in a day (don’t worry, as this is par for the course). Practice and patience are your best friends along this journey. Beyond what you have read here, I encourage you to shoot to your eye’s taste, as this is the path to creating your vision.

Finally, for a couple tips to help you along the way:

Learn lighting first with no less than three heads. This way you will understand the purpose of a key, fill and kicker before trying to modify them.

When practicing, underexpose so you can get an idea of the true color tone before cranking the light up and dialing out the saturation with watts.

Finally, and this is the biggie… KNOW YOUR CAMERA’S SENSOR!!! Not all cameras process color the same way. Some put heavier reception on the in green or red channels, and knowing what tones will have more depth will compliment your efforts.

About the author: Blair Bunting is an advertising photographer based out of Los Angeles, California. You can see more of his work on his website, blog, Facebook, and Instagram. This article was also published here.

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