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scorpionyx9621 · 3 years

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Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

#Long post GOD #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bat Family #Batman #red hood and the outlaws #RHATO #RH:O #Batman Urban Legends #Red Hood Lost Days #TW Voltron #TW Death #tw murder #TW Klance #Gotta love how i am pouring my heart out onto jason AND calling out the Voltron fandom #Regardless love Jason Todd people

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oswinsdolma · 3 years

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Yes, it's nearly 2.00am (because that's apparently the only time I have inspiration to write essays) but I've been thinking a lot about this lately and wanted to get it off my chest, so here you go:

The main goal of Merlin becomes disturbingly fractured along the way, which opens up the gaps for the prophecy to seep through instead of following the expected channels, but it can essentially be boiled down to three key elements 1) build albion; 2) decriminalise magic and 3) save Arthur, but when all is said and done, we never really see any of those objectives achieved.

Now, there are a few reasons for this, both from a writing perspective and a plot perspective. The first, and one of the most obvious, is that this show loves irony. I won't go into a lot of detail here because I've already written a whole ass essay in this very subject, but in a nutshell, you can look at this from two perspectives: firstly, it's important to establish that this technique is purely about the angst: it's the writers' way of provoking a reaction from an anguished audience, but it's foreshadowed just enough to make it more painful than it is shocking. Alternatively, there is the more plot motivated irony in that it genuinely makes a good story. Irony is a technique that has been used for thousands of years, not just because it provokes a reaction from the audience, but because it allows you to explore your characters in greater detail than before, riddling them with hidden juxtapositions and internal conflicts that are never resolved quite in the way you expect. The irony in Merlin is the epitome of this, with the whole motif of Arthur needing to die for his reign to begin. It is a classic example of the simultaneous despair and hope that mocks you from the shadows.

Following this, there is another force at play that deals with half truths and seemingly imperfect contradictions, and that's prophecy. It's not really a secret that I have very strong feelings about prophecy and its effects on all the characters, Merlin in particular, and the fact that fate and destiny are such key themes in Merlin both makes perfect sense and wants me to smash my head into a brick wall. Prophecies are another common trope that often go hand in hand with irony (think Oedipus Rex, Macbeth, The Iliad, all that doomed hero shit that I inexplicably adore), the key to their influence over the plot often lying in how they usually come true in the most unexpected of ways. This links back to that initial theme of irony, but this isn't what makes me angry: what is infuriating is that prophecies tend to come true, no matter what, and most of the characters seem not only to know this, but to let it take their autonomy over their respective fates, driving them to disaster.

Let me elaborate: especially in season five (I'm assuming just for the added fall at the end), Merlin talks a lot about how "one day, things will be different". He tells sorcerers that one day they won't have to hide. That one day, they won't have to live in fear of who they are and what others think of them. And Merlin is right: while it is not explicitly stated, it's generally established that this is one of the things Merlin should actively be working towards. But here's the kick: except for a few specific circumstances, when has Merlin ever actively tried to change Arthur's mind about magic? Yes, he has taken a few opportunities, like with Dragoon saving Uther's life, or with the Dolma's final request, where he has encouraged Arthur to rethink his choices, but otherwise, his support has been lukewarm at best. Instead, his primary concern was always saving Arthur, so he can become the king the magical world hoped he'd be, but he left out a crucial part, trusting in the prophecy to fill in the gaps. He knew it would come true, but it was, almost predictably, in the one way he never dared to expect.

And in a twisted way, there's that thread of irony again: Merlin thought he was saving Arthur so he could one day become the king who would see magic as a force for good, but instead, he created someone who was merely a survivor. It was Kilgharrah who said it first, and he who would mention it last: they are two sides of the same coin. But as willing as Merlin was to give his life for Arthur, and vice versa, he was never really ready to give him his mind.

Another interesting thing to note is Merlin's fixation on the "Saving Arthur" lens of the prophecy over the "Restoring Magic" part. Now, there are a ton of ways you can look at this, depending on how far along the scale of Queer Analysis you are, so I'm going to try and address a couple. At one end of the scale, you have the fairly simple and very believable "merthur" take. This basically boils down to the fact that Merlin and Arthur may or may not be deeply in love with one another, and that drowns out any voice of reason that may unfold. This is actually fairly canon compliant, particularly looking at incidents such as the Disir, when Merlin chooses Arthur over his and his people's freedom, though that choice was clearly, in hindsight, misadvised.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is the idea that it is the work of Kilgharrah, Gaius and other responsible figures in Merlin's life when he was new to his role in destiny, who reiterated at every occasion that Arthur must be protected at all costs. This may have ingrained into Merlin's thoughts and influenced his decisions from here on out.

Between those two points, there is a grey area, and I am of the personal opinion that neither extreme entirely satisfies the situation. For me, I think the characters in question are far too complex to have such simple motivations, and that the true reason lies somewhere between the two: Merlin undoubtedly cares for Arthur, and while at the start, his actions in protacting Arthur may have been driven by other (largely superficial) motives, over time, their mutual affection blossomed to the point where certainly the more personal quests were motivated not by need, but by love. However, there is a divide here, and while the line in the sand smudges from time to time, it never really disappears: a lot of instances in which Merlin is trying to help Arthur are entirely overshadowed by destiny, and in time, Merlin comes to accept that Arthur and Destiny are, in fact, one and the same, and this is where that ever-present tragedy lies. For all he truth in here, Merlin doesn't get everything quite right: he sees Arthur as a balance that needs to be protected, without fully realising that he doesn't just have to keep the sides of his equation in equilibrium, but he actually has to start solving them if he wants them to endure.

Having just said all that, sometimes I decide to fuck over complexity for a few hours purely because I am a shameless merthur hoe.

Also, can you take a moment to please note that this last section is highly subjective and it is completely up to you as to what you decide!! This is just my opinion and you're welcome to agree or disagree at any point.

So, aside from the Angst Factor™ and twisted character development, why was the main goal never fulfilled? Unfortunately, that is a question far cleverer people than me can only speculate, as the writers alone know the answers, but I'm going to give my opinion a shot. Honestly, there is something beautifullly poetic about something that never ends, or ends when there could be something more. Humanity has struggled with endings-and beginnings- since it learned truly how to think, because that kind of finality, that inkling that there might have been nothing before and after something else is incomprehensible. In leaving Merlin in a place where the next point was uncertain, the writers left the story open for us. In depriving us of that catharsis, they effectively made sure that the story would never be over, not until we want it to be. And yes, it was painful. I can't think of an ending that was more heartbreaking than that curious mixture of closures and openings all at the same time (hell, I could write a whole essay based on this concept alone!), but it was also a gift, ironically like that of the prophecy itself in that we can choose what we want to do with it, safe in the knowledge that there will be a happy ending again, one day.

In summary, we might not be left with catharsis in the way we wanted. We might not have got the happy ending that could also have stretched on and on indefinitely. But we were left with something else, something equally beautiful as closure, but in the complete opposite way. Amongst the remains of allwe had hoped to build, Merlin left us hope.

#sorry for the inevitable ineloquence here i am absolutely knackered #bbc merlin #merlin #merthur #i'm going to regret this in the morning

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rivalsforlife · 3 years

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Do you have anything you wished was different from Ace Attorney canon?

Hello I'm finally slowly starting to get around to answering some of these! Sorry for the wait.

Uh this ask got super long so a basic summary of it: narumitsu being canon in a well-written way would be nice even though I don't think it would ever happen, I stand by not bringing back Phoenix as a main protagonist in DD, and I'd also want to rewrite all of SOJ so that Apollo goes to Khura'in in place of Phoenix, to have more interesting character stuff going on.

So the longer answer is this:

Aside from some of the actually problematic stuff that I don't feel qualified to talk about, story-wise, I answered a sort of similar question about a year ago here. I have changed my opinions a little bit since then, particularly with regards to the canonicity of narumitsu... because while I do love narumitsu I feel like I don't trust Ace Attorney to actually do it properly. After all if this past November has taught us anything "making a ship canon" could actually be quite undesirable and I have no desire to see Phoenix and/or Edgeworth sent to superhell. (I literally know nothing else about supernatural sorry about that.)

If capcom were somehow able to make narumitsu canon but in an unobtrusive way and as a natural progression of the storyline, like oh hey, the court record profile for Miles Edgeworth's Obligatory Last-Case Appearance has Phoenix mention they're dating, and maybe there's a few lines suggesting they live with each other, but it's not like... taking the entire story to force them together and otherwise does not change the way they interact with each other and butcher one or both of their characterizations in the process? I'd definitely be happy about that. Not gonna lie even if they made narumitsu canon in the most terrible way possible I'd have a "holy shit I can't believe they did that it's the best day of my life" kind of moment before I could think about it critically. But I honestly see no chance of them ever actually making narumitsu canon, so that's quite unrealistic to hope for anyways.

Aside from that in that other ask I talked about basically the premise of an Apollo trilogy and not bringing back Phoenix as the main protagonist in DD, and I still stand by that, buuut in my other ask I did touch on making SOJ a different game where Apollo goes to Khura'in instead of Phoenix - and you know what I'm going to take some time to actually talk about my dream version of SOJ because there were a lot of little things about the one we got that I didn't like. And it's going to be very long. So it's under a cut.

SO yeah I talked about it a bit in the other ask. I think that Phoenix going to Khura'in is a rather weak idea both externally and in-universe. In one of the interviews, too lazy to find which one, Phoenix basically goes to Khura'in because the writers couldn't figure out how to challenge him anymore. ... And then they don't actually challenge him at all. Because oh well now we're going to this new country where they KILL DEFENSE ATTORNEYS WHO LOSE and then it's supposed to be *shocking* that Phoenix would risk his life for a kid or his best friend. you know the guy who ran across a burning bridge to save his best friend. you know the guy who got punched in the face, nearly killed by the mafia, and tazed trying to save his clients. This doesn't tell me anything new about Phoenix's character. His whole travel in Khura'in doesn't tell me anything new about Phoenix's character. Basically the only reason he's there is to see Maya - Maya who theoretically would be returning home in about two weeks. Maya who was still in her training for two more weeks when Phoenix visited so he wouldn't be able to see her anyways. ... And in the meantime Trucy had the biggest show of her life that was going to be on TV and Phoenix wasn't there for it. And of course Phoenix didn't return home after Trucy was accused of murder (yes he couldn't be there for the trial, but he definitely could have for the emotional support afterwards) and instead just sits for two weeks in Khura'in doing literally nothing after Ahlbi's trial.

(And yes I know about the anime prologue that has Phoenix think Maya's in danger... but that's not strictly canon since it's never mentioned in game, isn't technically a part of the game, and even still, why wouldn't he go home after knowing that Maya's safe and that Trucy had been ACCUSED OF MURDER. Honestly that's what makes me angriest about this whole thing is that it makes Phoenix out to be a terrible dad. We really don't need any more takes like that, especially not from canon.)

And what about Apollo, you may ask? Well, given case 5 of SOJ, Apollo actually has a personal link to Khura'in and ends up staying there afterwards... after being there for like a day or two. I should note here that it has been a while since I went through SOJ in its entirety so I am fuzzy on many of the details. But both through what I remember and some conversations with people who actually played the game recently, the motivation for Apollo to actually stay in Khura'in isn't that great. It mainly seemed like guilt about his dead dad who he hadn't been in contact with for years and had completely written off until a few days ago but oh he died and then went to go visit him so... better take up the law office!

If Apollo had gone to Khura'in in place of Phoenix and spent more time there, reconnecting with his childhood home and actually getting passionate seeing how corrupt the legal system is there (even though we have a corrupt legal system at home) and being driven to fix it, that would make for a stronger story, I think. The Khura'in plot is more personally focused around Apollo than it is Phoenix. Phoenix's connection to Khura'in is through Maya, but Maya doesn't really have much of a connection to it aside from "it's where spirit channeling is from and she trains there". But Apollo, I guess, grew up there. So it's so strange to me that they force all of Apollo's connection to Khura'in in the last case while Phoenix is running around doing who-knows-what for the rest of the game. Phoenix spends more time getting to know the state of Khura'in and the Defiant Dragons and case 3's whole thing but he isn't the one who in the end decides to sit down and fix it; that's all on Apollo. It almost feels like they forced one of the two plots in to everything. And it was probably conceived as a Phoenix story that they needed to fit Apollo into last minute because oops he's supposed to be a protagonist too.

Some other strengths to Apollo going to Khura'in include that it would shake up the character dynamics a bit. Instead of Phoenix defending Maya, it's Apollo defending Maya, and that's a particularly interesting thing to look at in the context of Khura'in's "we kill defense attorneys" system. Of course, Phoenix would risk his life to save Maya, 100%, every time. But what about Apollo, who hasn't met Maya, who only knows her as "Mr. Wright's former assistant" - would he risk his life for her? And I feel like Maya would argue more against him defending her because of that. "We're strangers, you don't know me, you don't have to risk your life defending me." (Sidenote that I was always upset that Maya didn't protest much when Phoenix offered to defend her, knowing his life was at risk - sure she knows him better and knows he's always been able to get her out of these situations, but at the same time, the fact that there was no "what about your daughter?" conversation sucks. I really wish SOJ wouldn't have like. completely forgotten about the phoenix-trucy father-daughterisms.)

Let's say Apollo goes to Khura'in. Phoenix stays at home. Phoenix gets a call from Apollo that's basically "uhh hi Mr. Wright you know your friend Maya, she's been arrested for murder, if I defend her and I lose we're both dead," then you can tie in to that moment in 6-2 where Phoenix (who can't make it in time for the trial!) believes in Apollo and his skills as an attorney, not just to save Maya's life, but also his own. It ties in a bit more to the overall challenge of defending someone at the risk of your own life. Again, Phoenix would have very few hesitations, if any, risking his life to defend Maya. Apollo may have more defending a stranger at the risk of his own life.

Then if you can actually have Apollo and Maya talk together that would be neat - Maya can tell him embarrassing stories about Phoenix's rookie days, for instance. Their dynamic would be quite a bit different from Phoenix and Maya's, and that would be an interesting thing to see, unlike what we have in SOJ where all of Maya's substantial interactions are with characters she already knows or brand new characters.

(It would also be pretty neat to know more spirit channeling politics and dive in more to Maya's perspective on Khura'in and also her role as upcoming Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique and where she plans to lead the village in the future and also reconcile with her family's bloody legacy, but I'm not quite sure how to fit that in right now.)

And how about Phoenix, back home in Japanifornia? Evidently he'd end up being in charge of defending Trucy. Now, I did love the siblingsisms in canon 6-2, but I feel like there is still potential for Phoenix defending Trucy. All of Apollo Justice has a bunch of good moments between Apollo and Trucy, and she's co-counsel on all his trials, but we've never had any substantial Phoenix and Trucy investigation or co-counsel moments. I feel like AU 6-2 would be a great opportunity to dive more into Phoenix and Trucy's relationship and how it may have changed after Phoenix got his badge back. Plus, Phoenix being "the only one who knows how she really feels on the inside", he'd have unique insider knowledge into some of the Gramarye stuff that comes up in the case and Trucy's personal connection to the Gramaryes, which Apollo knows a bit of, but Phoenix knows more of. ... Or at least, should know more of, given that he raised Trucy for nine years at this point and they're very close, and Phoenix knows her better than anyone else does, even if capcom has forgotten this.

... Of course having Athena defend the case would also be great because more Athena spotlight is never a bad thing, but it's hard to come up with a reason why Phoenix wouldn't be there to defend her. And doing more switcheroos in terms of role in the plot is a bit beyond the scope of what I have in mind right now. Sorry Athena.

Aside from that, Athena still gets Storyteller, Apollo still heads Turnabout Revolution, and Phoenix still gets the DLC case. Apollo stays in Khura'in in the end with a bit more to his motivations. Rather than it just being about carrying on Dhurke's legacy, it's also something Apollo is passionate about after all he witnessed here. While we're at it I'd still rework a lot of Turnabout Revolution to make it so that Phoenix genuinely believes in Atishon because that makes for sooo much more interesting of a plot and actual character development on Phoenix's part than "Maya was kidnapped again and Phoenix is only wrong when he has no other choice", but that'd require some more detail and this post is long enough already.

And in terms of other details that need to be sorted out, there's the question of why Apollo would need to go to Khura'in in the first place. I'd probably say something to do with Dhurke. Maybe he comes back a bit earlier - actually alive, maybe, though crossing borders would be a bit of a challenge, or he reaches out to Apollo remotely somehow and Apollo goes to yell in his face about abandoning him (or at least that's what he thinks he wants.) Then we could have some more Dhurke and Apollo bonding time, potentially? Idk, if you switch up Phoenix and Apollo you're pretty much writing a whole new game and obviously I have not worked out all the details, but I think if Capcom had tried to go with this route from the outset they'd have a stronger game. At least stronger character motivations.

So... yeah. Those are my opinions. If you read through this whole thing I'm very impressed because it got very long!

#asks #soj spoilers #aa6 spoilers

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brkfstgrrrls · 3 years

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@2187s LEFT A NIGHTMARE AFTER THE TONE: 🥝🥝🥝🥝🥝 !!!

@rapturcd - Where to start to describe a friend? Nox is a close online friend whom I’ve had the pleasure of following for the last few years now. We’ve been able to keep up with each other from blog to blog, and continued to do so when she revived this blog right here, a Bioshock oc. I’ll admit that when I saw her move here, I had no clue what the hell Bioshock was other than some video game. I’ve been graced with so many exciting details, passion has been poured into every message and post she makes upon the dash, it instantly made me a fan of this little franchise. Though the Bioshock rpc is small, Nox has found a way to make it her own. Her blog is filled with so much helpful information, and one look at her extremely well thought out, and detailed OC page will tell you all you need to know about this vast universe. With every OC she makes, it’s done with love and care, but something about Nicholas is truly special. Aside from being from one of the most interesting and unique fandoms, Nicholas was crafted with more detail than the gods could give any living being. Nox is also a plot driven writer, I know I am too so if that’s your thing, you’ll be glad to know not only is she a peach but she’s very fun to bounce ideas with! She helped me learn so much about Bioshock, it made plotting feel effortless and an overall thrill. If you don’t follow her, not only are you missing out, but I’ll personally be offended on her behalf.

@segadore - It’s been a few years now, and I have not been able to get Fawn off of my tail, damn you— I’M KIDDING, no but really, Fawn and I have been buddies for the last few years, and I started following her on her Steve Harrington blog. I’ve already gushed in the past about how much I love her Steve, so in the same way she’s so kindly embraced my OCs, I’d like to do the same with hers. Let’s start off with this: Fawn is the one person I see constantly and without a second thought embracing all writers, you could write an oc, canon muse from a different fandom, female oc, doesn’t matter– she will love them like her own. You speak with Fawn ooc, and you’ll feel at home, you’re never a bore nor bother. They’re one of the few people in this RPC I feel so genuinely safe around, and they make me feel like a valued writer even when I’m being ignored by others on the dash, I feel important, and it’s thanks to them. Fawn writes a very amazing muse named Mykah, from what can only be described as a non-existent fandom. I learned about Dead Like Me through her, and I’ve since been completely hooked on this concept and universe. Mykah is a very special, and well-thought out muse. He’s a soul collecting reaper from California, and he’s got so much wit, charm, and attitude, how could you not love the guy? He’s got a tough exterior, but he’s so funny as well, you can tell when you’re reading something Fawn wrote, they have such a unique tone, your eyes will be glued to the screen instantly as soon as you see a reply in your inbox. From the bottom of my heart, I hope we continue to write for years to come. If you want some fresh content you’ve never seen before, and perhaps one of the kindest friends, with the most goddamn creative mindset, please, go look at Fawn’s content. For the love of GOD go look.

@wyntered - You know how when your favorite musician or celebrity makes a post on Instagram or twitter, you go “Ah! There’s _____ again, classic ol’ _____, love them.” and you get all giddy in your seat, overwhelmed just by their presence even if it isn’t for you? That’s how I feel everytime I read each and everyone of Chantelle’s posts. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get to read all of my rp partners replies to other folks, sometimes I’m too busy, or honestly? I don’t feel like it. But the amount of effort and research they’ve put into this, how could I not? I love reading both her replies to myself and other people, I love reading her meta posts and headcanons, because I know it’ll not only be helpful but just wonderful. It’s also so nice to see how much care she’s put into writing such a complicated man like Bucky Barnes, her portrayal is uniquely her own, and she’s truly made sure to set a realistic example for others. I’ve learned so much, and it’s thanks to her. They’ve also been so gracious in writing with my own Marvel OC, Alice, and never act annoyed or bothered. That’s not something you often find with people who write popular canon muses, but it’s something I’ve been lucky enough to find with Chantelle. Do yourself a favor, buckle up, and get excited. Go and give her a follow, because I just know in my heart she’ll be more than happy to embrace you with open arms. Thanks for giving me the most iconic and kickass friendship for my daughter! It’s probably obvious to y’all by now that I love Chantelle’s work, so you know this message is genuine.

@capnsolo - I found out a few weeks ago that Kayla and I have been mutuals for years, and neither of us knew it. We’ll ignore that for now. I know Kayla as the most fantabulous Han Solo mun on the block, no really, she’s amazing. We found each other again because I writer princess Leia ( over on @/hopescorned ) and well… SCOUNDRESS! Together, we’ve managed to create our own little version of canon to their storyline, and we continue to develop it each time we speak. I’m not very good at articulating my thoughts, but my point is, Kayla is a very skilled, and creative woman. She’s smart, she knows how to use canon as a crutch, but doesn’t rely on it. She let’s her brain do the talking, and she knows how to collaborate well with others, and happens to be very open minded and flexible to other people’s muses. No matter how outlandish the idea might be for a story, Kayla will find a way to work with it. I’ve never seen someone capture Han’s tone so well, each time I read one of her replies, I can truly see and hear Harrison Ford acting each of the stories we create, out in my head. She has a way with her words, and she’s a true talent. Please, even if Star Wars isn’t your think, at least give her work a chance, it’ll be a pleasant surprise.

@nostlgic - Ash & I have been writing together since February, and the day we started speaking, they were one of the kindest souls I’ve been graced with speaking to. A passionate writer, you’ll be pleasured to see that their muse list is rather long, and diverse. Ash is the kind of writer that is always up for the challenge. You have an OC no one is interested? Cool, Ash is now interested in writing with them. You have a crazy rp idea you want to pursue? Ash is the first in line to give it a try. Whenever I write with Ash, I know it’s going to be a new and exciting adventure, each story is different from the next, and with each muse, they shift tones effortlessly; Stephen King would envy them. I made a post probably a month or two ago about how I wanted to write with an Edward Scissorhands, and within approximately 10 seconds, they volunteered to add him to her muse roster, and a mutual friend of ours even went to comment “I was going to tag Ash but it seems she’s already here” and why is that? That’s just the kind of person Ash is, and I truly love it. Go and peep her profile, because I can guarantee there’s at least one muse you’ll want to write with.

･ﾟﾟ･*:༅｡♡ SEND A 🥝 FOR A BLOG RECCOMENDATION

#𝙍𝘼𝙏𝙏𝙇𝙀 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙍𝙎 ! ✧ ( answered )#2187s #rapturcd #segadore #wyntered #capnsolo #nostlgic #[ whew. i had to rewrite and remake this post three fucking times ]#[ and now i have a headache. also super dehydrated. ]#[ sorry. smoll brain not enough thoughts nor a big enough vocabulary to describe- ]#[ -what i'm thinking n' trynta say. ]#[ nirvana is also playin' so ima wee bit distracted.. ]

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courtneystriker · 4 years

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My Thoughts on the HG Prequel

I just finished reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and I got to say, my feelings are mixed. Below I have an entire review for the story which included how I felt, the expectations, the biases I had going into the new book, and how I felt after reading. Please note there will be spoilers. Also this review isn’t meant to hurt anyone and if you absolutely love the book so far...good! Enjoy it fully! As an aspiring writer myself and someone who studied in college/loves creative writing I’m well aware that people just have different takes on writing. Glad you are enjoying it :)

Anyways, here it goes…

The Expectations

As the Hunger Games series is one of my favorites of all time, I had a strong bias to like this book. Since it was first announced, without knowing any details, I was extremely excited and optimistic. I re-read the entire Hunger Games series twice beforehand in preparation; once with my fiancé and once on my own. The only thing I really wanted, knowing that it took place during the tenth hunger games, was that the arena reflected how new the hunger games were. Then, when we learned what the series was about, people started voicing some concerns or were disappointed by the plot, instead wanting it to be something like Finnick’s arena, Haymitch’s, Mags’, etc. etc. I was not among this group. However, I understand where they were coming from, because I always thought the idea of the first Quarter Quell (the one where the districts voted for the tributes) was an extremely interesting concept.

Yet I think these things are best left explored in fanfiction as they add nothing to the series and Suzanne Collins did an excellent job just giving us enough information to get the idea. At that point it’d just be a book on details, which could fall short or be a gimmicky, cheap way to keep people reading the series and keep her name relevant. And wasn’t that part of the message in her series, the thing Katniss so heavily criticized that gave a great irony to the books? Who would watch children killing each other for entertainment? Meanwhile, we as the reader are reading these books as a form of entertainment. Plus, Suzanne Collins so skillfully painted the illusion of knowing but not fully knowing their stories that it’s haunting, and I think that is one of the many reasons (along with the battle royale trope being naturally compelling, liking the characters, etc.) that a lot of us are more drawn towards these stories rather than (at least for me) a book on Snow.

That being said, I was not against the idea of a book on Snow because I find villain characters, especially grey ones, to be very interesting to read about, and I was pretty certain Suzanne was going to handle this beautifully, especially since you could already feel this atmosphere coming off of Snow in the Hunger Games series. I know some were really concerned about a Snow redemption arc, but to me it felt very obvious that it couldn’t be and it would be more of him sliding into evil.

I did have other concerns when I read the description for the first time. I could not believe they went with the whole tribute from District Twelve thing again. I loved Katniss and District Twelve, but I did not want Katniss 2.0. I said right from the beginning to my fiancé that she’d have to make the tribute from District Twelve extremely different for me to get on board (though I was holding on faith that Collins would). It just felt cheap and gimmicky to rehash the District Twelve thing, it sort of made me feel the same way I would have if she had written about one of the games I mentioned above. Sure, it’d sell, but it wouldn’t add anything to the series. I was thinking she better not hunt, sing, or have any qualities resembling Katniss really.

Another thing I worried about was the love story they hinted at in the description. It just didn’t make sense to me. Because how was Snow going to ever support the games if from an earlier age he fell in love with a tribute and vowed to protect her? Then later he’s all like pro-hunger games? Just this itself could weaken the entire series if done poorly, because it would weaken the main antagonist’s motives for not only the prequel but also the Hunger Games series as well. I kept thinking either the girl has to die in the arena betraying Snow somehow (which is what I was hoping for), Snow will have to betray her, or perhaps he would have been faking love for her for some sort of personal gain I couldn’t imagine. Either way, I thought it weakened the story's appeal to me. Yet overall I was still excited, desperately waiting for the book’s release.

And now that I have read it, I have to say it felt forced at a lot of parts and lackluster overall…

*Spoilers start here*

My Review:

Suszanne Collins’ writing style is one I’ve always loved and has consistently appealed to me. Even though this book is written in 3rd person (which some may like less if you don’t particularly like third person) it holds up well against the original series. So I really had no complaints in this regard besides the excessive use of songs (felt like fanfiction a bit). I think if you liked the original series and don’t mind third person you’ll feel right at home with her style.

The concerns others had about Snow’s redemption are completely dismissed in this book. Like I had predicted, she writes about his fall into evil, and although it’s not black and white evil (as I don’t like anyways) you can very much tell he’s a bad guy and that the hardships he faced in life only further pushed him towards obtaining status and power. Overall, he feels true to the character when we end up seeing him in the Hunger Games series, and his journey to power fits the images Finnick painted in Mockingjay. He is very well characterized in the book and perfectly unlikable while maintaining an intriguing internal dialogue (although it does occasionally feel tedious, but not enough to bother me; others may feel differently).

The way he is written is very much in line with Collin’s great characterization, one of the reasons I always loved The Hunger Games. All the characters felt like real people. They all had an extreme depth to them and I felt they all resembled people I had actually met in real life. There were little to no characters that relied solely on gimmicky personalities to get by. Even very minor characters that seemed depthless and swallow at first--like Katniss’s prep team--had more to them. So I thought going into this book I had nothing to worry about in that regard. I didn’t even really spare it a thought, but boy was I wrong.

I think Snow and Lucy Grey were the only characters that had (at least partly) the depth that the original Hunger Games cast had. I’ll discuss Lucy Grey later but first let me talk about some side characters. Where to even begin really? There’s a LOT of characters in this book. Frankly, way too many, which I think contributes heavily to the lack of depth in the characters. Honestly there’s so many that the names of characters were hard to keep track of while listening to the audiobook (my hard copy of the book was still in the mail and I didn’t want to wait). Things got a bit clustered in my mind quickly. There were twenty-four tributes, twenty-four mentors, Snow’s family, The Dean and Drs at the university, Snow’s Peacekeeper crew, and the Covey, and those are just the groups that I can cluster together. At least, the ones I remember having names and getting introduced, but I think that’s everyone really important. There was no real time to develop or get to know them really, which made the tributes’ deaths more meaningless as I could barely recall their names. It caused impactful scenes to weaken significantly overall and it made characters serve only to characterize and amplify Snow’s fall into evil.

Here’s what I mean by that. The head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul, really was the character I hated the most while reading this. She was just evil without reason (one of the weakest villain types with little to no personality besides being evil). She even made creepy rhymes as if she was in some sort of horror movie, and the entire point of her character was to contribute a lot to some of the forced plot points driving Snow’s moral decline. For example, there were all her tests, which seemed contrived and all directly connected to getting Snow to think the Hunger Games was a good idea. She was seemingly supposed to be a Dr. Mengele type character, as this book has a lot of Holocaust-esqe imagery. I’m fine with irredeemably evil villains, but instead of getting the depth that a Dr. Mengele character could offer (as some may know, many children that were part of his experiments actually said he was kind and gave them candy, and I find that deeply haunting to this day.) She is a flat, one-dimensional character whose entire personality could be described with one word: sociopath. Evil people are master manipulators, which is how they get away with evil things. I think at one of the funerals she puts on a good public face, and she seems to have power, money and influence. Yet the book doesn’t show this seemingly present quality nearly enough to make her a haunting character. Instead we get nursery rhythms and clearly driven lessons towards evil at are contrived. Like “Write about what you most liked about the war” or the assignment to improve the hunger games? Like what class is this? Why are they taking it? And why are the young kids of the influential deciding this instead of the influential people themselves?

Another character I feel was just there for Snow’s development and to represent an opposite viewpoint but lacked Collin’s usual depth is Sejanus Plinth. As a District 2 citizen whose family got rich off the war and moved to the Capitol, he is the main opposing viewpoint of the book, presenting Snow with a chance to do the right thing. I’ve seen people say he’s a Peeta-like character, but I completely reject that idea. He lacks in the charm Peeta has, relishes in self-pity (although he’s completely justified in his sadness and has a right to be upset), and while he has a heart like Peeta, he ultimately doesn’t know how to use it. Instead of working within his position to get influence like Peeta so masterfully does, he’s hot-headed and continuously makes poor decisions that ultimately don’t help anyone. It’s like he wants to help but doesn’t know how as he’s driven completely by emotion without reason. He too contributes to some forced scenes, particularly my least favorite in the book; when they sneak into the arena. Overall, he just falls flat for me. Again, I feel I don’t know anything about him beyond what he contributes to Snow’s story line and he doesn’t come across as realistic. It’s like Collins just wrote how someone would normally react to the hunger games, slapped a district number on him and went on her merry way.

I just wasn’t prepared for these sort of characters when the Hunger Games series made even the smallest of characters stand out dramatically. I feel neutral to annoyed by most characters in this novel. I could expand this portion, and maybe if people inquire I’ll elaborate on some of the other characters as I have strong opinions on them, but this post is already getting long, so I’ll move on to Lucy Grey.

Lucy Grey is by far my favorite character even though she is bordering towards being a character from a fanfiction. Not quite a Mary Sue in my opinion but there is a certain connection to fanfiction I made with her. You may have guessed some issues I had with her by reading my expectations earlier in the post, but that has not displaced my love for her. Her personality is very different from Katniss’s, or even Peeta’s or Haymitch’s. She had a different type of charm than all of them, is a natural performer, and seemed more extroverted. Also, the whole idea of the Covey and her “not really” being district was intriguing. It really highlighted the displacement that war can cause and how people can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Although I was confused on how much mobility between the districts there were….and did District Twelve have a fence or no?) It really emphasizes one of the main themes of the book, extreme prejudice against both Capitol and District. Her spot sort of in between really drives home the point that there's literally no difference except extreme poverty, and even then there was poverty in the Capitol, only better hidden. Her bright mood (and clothes), her poised attitude, and her optimism made her endearing. She was confident in her skin yet still held the fear of a sixteen year old going into the hunger games.

There were only two main things that bothered me about her, which was of course the direct connections made to Katniss (which I’ll elaborate on) and the forced “love” story between her and Snow. I suppose that has less to do with her and rather more to do with my dislike of that subplot. And I'm a sucker for some good romantic subplots, but yikes!

I think having one strong connection to Katniss was all that was really needed in this book. I really liked the idea of that connection being the Hanging Tree Song, as I can only imagine how it made Snow feel watching “The Mockingjay” sing it in the propo. Despite me not liking that fact that Lucy Grey is also an enchanting singer as that felt like directly stepping in Katniss’s territory, I did enjoy the little twist of Lucy Grey writing the song. Yet the connections between the two when the plot took us to District Twelve went too far. It felt like it took away all of Katniss’s special places and things. The lake, her katniss roots, her gift towards music, her fondness for the meadow, sneaking into the woods, etc. I think one solid connection would have solidified their bond beautifully. Having so many seemed like it was really trying to force the reader to make the connection when it was already painfully clear I guess? Plus, having Lucy stand out at her reaping ( the whole song part read like a bad, contrived fanfiction bit to me) and having people care about her in the Capitol while moral questions of the hunger games were still surfacing made me start to think...isn’t this how the rebellion for Katniss got started? At least partly. I get it’s a different time. Too close to the war. It just felt way too similar. I guess Collins was going for the idea of a lost rebellion that in a way Lucy Grey started that Katniss later revives. Yet it feels like that invalidates the specialness of what Katniss does in the original series as it’s already happened; it just got erased. I guess history repeats itself, but I really just didn’t like it. I could see the appeal to some extent, and it could be a beautiful connection, but it just wasn’t for me.

Now on to the plot, which is the last thing I’ll talk about as this post is getting ridiculously long. A lot of the plot felt very forced or contrived, which was another shocker coming from Collins because her pacing and plot was done really well in the original series. Of course, a lot of this was driven by Dr. Gaul and Sejanus Plinth as the entire plot hinged on the moral debate of the hunger games these two represent. Other plot points just hinged on what happened to establish the games. I mean the rebel bomb explosion seemingly only happened to change the terrain so Dr. Gaul can then bring up the idea of the different arena and how that made the tributes act differently, thus creating the crazy arenas we see later in the series. I do have some praise for how Collins established the disparities between the earlier hunger games and the ones we see in Katniss day. From the way they lock the tributes up, don’t feed them, the spotty coverage of the arena, etc. All of that was exceptionally well done. The only complaint I have was that so many tributes died before they even got to the arena (though not because I wanted to see them fight). I had been expecting one to escape or something to further establish that this was new territory and was waiting to see how they handled it in earlier times, but I wasn’t expecting that many to die before the arena got started. It just seemed like a huge Capitol failure that they advertised loudly. I really wasn’t expecting that level of incompetence, just an escaped tribute that threatened to embarrass or harm the fragile beginnings of post-war Panem. Instead, most of the pre-arena stuff felt disastrous. A lot of the mentors' deaths felt forced, and it was weird that the academy never really came under fire at all from all the rich and powerful parents whose children were getting killed because of the mentor experiment. Like it seemed there should have been some interaction there, but there wasn’t. Maybe some was passively mentioned but still, it could have been a whole subplot that further established the debate of the hunger games.

While the pre-arena up to the break-in to the arena felt like the most forced part of the book and certainly I felt it needed more workshopping plot wise, it also harbored some great and powerful scenes, like Arachne pulling the sandwich away from the tribute while she was starving and laughing about it. Basically, all those interactions of poverty and captivity meeting the citizens of the Capitol were done well, but nothing spectacular (unlike the scene of Katniss screaming at Buttercup at the end of Mockingjay which is heart wrenching.)

The last plot point I’ll talk about is the “love” story. I wasn’t a fan, but it was sort of what a lot of the plot hinged on and led to the great scene at the lake between Snow and Lucy Grey. How easy it was for him to betray his “love” for status. This led to some of the most interesting and evil internal monologue Snow had in the entire book. I honestly feel the ending scene, the interaction Snow had with the jabberjays and Mockingjays in District Twelve, and the lynching scenes were among the strongest and most memorable.

The love story again felt forced (sorry I’m using that word so much it’s just so accurate) into the story. This hindered the book from having a strong plot in the same way the weaker characters caused forced interactions and plot points to move things along. Yet at the same time the kind of abusive and lackluster nature of their relationship throughout the book fit perfectly with the ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t really make it very compelling for the reader. Luckily Lucy’s personality kept my interested during these parts. I wouldn’t say their relationship was poorly written at all; in fact the way it was written makes perfect sense. I just think the plot relied too heavily on their “love”, which was gross because of the way Snow is, and the reader knew it had to inevitably end in some kind of betrayal or reveal that there was no love at all. This creates tension for the reader, but I kept wondering: if the love plot had been ditched could we have gotten a stronger plot altogether?

So overall, like I’ve said I’m really conflicted. I know I focused heavily on things I didn’t like, but honestly the book was well written in some regards, plot bouncing between really compelling and a little contrived, the two main characters being written well enough but other characters not so much. Some connections between Lucy Grey and Katniss made at the end were powerful, I loved the Covey, Collins still excelled at writing a lot of the social issues/scenes in the book, and honestly the idea of Lucy Grey being completely forgotten in the Districts that hurts my soul a little. Nothing compared to the feelings I got in any of the Hunger Games books but there’s still something there.

I really hope someone made it through this long ass post. The book was entertaining. I mean I listened to all 16 hours of the audiobook in like a day. I can’t wait until my hardcover comes so I can look through it. Maybe once I know what I’m getting into I can enjoy the book a little more than I did, because right now it’s sitting at very average for me. Maybe I went in with my expectations too high? I certainly like the Hunger Games a lot more and probably always will. Honestly, I love new content, but I’m also the type that likes firm, planned endings to stories (even though it hurts to let things end and the fandoms can suffer from lack of content). I think fans can oftentimes get caught up in what they want and pressure the writer into writing more, which ends up a disappointment since it wasn’t originally planned in the series from the beginning. While I don’t think this is by any means the case with Suzanna Collins or that Lionsgate even pressured her to write this book (I don’t like conspiracies of that sort of thing as a writer myself that plans to have a series in which a book comes out many years after the original part of the series is released), I do wonder if this is the end of the Hunger Games for good. I sure hope so, especially if she would be writing about the other victors. I love them too much and really don’t want to feel similarly about their books, and like I said at the beginning, it wouldn’t add to the series just to my guilty pleasure lol.

Hope you all have enjoyed your reading of the book more than I did :) Again sorry if I wrote anything to upset you! Please if you loved this book ENJOY IT! I’m actually kind of jealous if you did. Feels like missing out on something special.

#The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes #suzanne collins #tbosas #lucy grey #coriolanus #Dr. Gaul #Sejanus Plinth #Hunger Game Prequel #Hunger Games #Katniss #Peeta #hunger games series #review #catching fire #mockingjay #books #writing

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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Your post about romance was so spot on and this is from someone who really likes reading romances some of the time. I just wish there were more books where friendships (which after all make up the majority of people's relationships!!) were given the same weight and importance as romance gets unthinkingly. Like, I want books or fic which show the development of two (or more) new friends *as the plot and main part of the book*, and the same thing for the progression of pre-established friendship.

Human relationships are varied and complex and interesting and limiting writing to mainly concerning romantic or dating ones is infuriating! I enjoy reading character driven stuff, which is why I like some romances but I really want to see similarly detailed deep studies of friendship. Friendships are so important, and romantic relationships do not supersede them. Obviously there is gendered bias against romance as a genre but that is not the only reason to be uninterested in romance damnit!

Sorry for ranting in your inbox about romance and thanks for the post

Hah thank and welcome. Very true!

Yeah, the problem is not just how ubiquitous romance is but the inevitability of it. So many people are so much in the habit of hanging their emotional investment on ‘couples getting together’ that not putting one in is a risk, as a creator, and the faint suggestion of a possibility that a romance might eventuate between two characters constitutes a promise that the audience will be outraged to see not followed through.

So making a story focus at all on a relationship between two people who are considered valid potential romantic partners means having to go through incredible backflips and contortions as a writer to get away with not pairing them up, or there will be outrage. There will be outrage anyway, but hopefully on a contained scale that doesn’t have people throwing your book away.

(The easiest way, of course, is to give one or both of them an alternate partner, but then you either have to build up that relationship as the central focus instead, because you aren’t allowed to love anyone that much and not be romantically involved or be romantically involved For Real with anyone but whoever you love most, or accept that you’ve plastered on a beard of some kind in a way that at this point makes your main duo look even more romantic to people who are looking for that in the first place, even if it lets you write a plot that doesn’t acknowledge this.)

This has contributed enormously to the cultural truism ‘men and women can’t be friends.’ They aren’t allowed to be. And this weird intense romantic pressure is now increasingly extending to same-sex friendships, and it’s like...it’s good that gay visibility and acceptance are growing! That’s great!

But it means that all relationships are increasingly exposed to this honestly fucked up set of expectations. That every single love of any intensity is romantic and probably sexual. That that’s the only love that’s real, or that really matters. With occasional exemptions carved out for parents.

And that’s cultural, I want to say. The inclusion of and an interest in the romantic lives of characters in fiction is definitely natural and practically inevitable, but the outsize role it occupies in our current media culture is abnormal and totally non-compulsory. The central role of romance in so much of narrative is just...a pattern, a narrative schema that currently holds sway, born of an assortment of historical accidents and trends, and I don’t think it’s a good one.

I think it would be better for us as a culture and all our individual relationships for that particular social construct to be broken down.

Because this cultural obsession with The Romance in media mirrors and continually recreates the obsession with The Romance in real life. You know how many people are making themselves miserable by either being in a relationship predicated on the need to have one, any one, rather than actual mutual affection, or about not having a love interest currently at any given moment?

Like, quite separately from the actual frustrated romantic feelings themselves, people feeling like they are less or failures or just...unfinished somehow, because they don’t have a romantic partner. It’s so harmful and absurd! We all know this!

And there are of course a lot of sociological factors that have led to that point as well, but it’s linked particularly closely I think to the atomization of modern society.

You’re not likely to retain any particular community for long--we move around so much over the course of our lives, anything you have is designed to be taken apart. School friends are only rarely retained after school, work friends are only until you get a new job, family is quite often something to be avoided or something you have to leave behind, and not usually an extended network anymore anyway.

We are always moving into new contexts, or knowing we might be moved, and holding onto relationships from one context into another is generally regarded as an unusual feat betokening particular, though not lionized, devotion, and leaning on these relationships ‘too much’ or pursuing them with ‘too much’ energy is regarded with deep suspicion.

This, too, is not particularly normal in the human experience. We are not psychologically designed for this level of impermanence. And we have developed very few structures as a culture thus far to make up for it, which is why the modern adult is so famously, dangerously lonely.

But we have all these social protocols for acquiring a person and holding onto them. A person who’s just yours, all yours, who it is promised will fulfill all those gaping needs all by themselves, and if they don’t it’s because you or they are wrong, and need either a different partner or fixing.

The fact that this is insane and not how romance works over 90% of the time is irrelevant to the dream of it, and the dream overwhelms and controls the reality. I agree that codependency is really fucking romantic, and having a kind and supportive mutual one is a lovely fantasy! It’s just...

A lot of harm eventuates from pursuing this fantasy in reality with a media-based conviction that it is 1) a reasonable thing to expect and 2) a necessary precondition for wellbeing and worthiness.

But we have poured so much cultural freight and need into this one single relationship format. At this point having need in any other direction is regarded as disordered and suspect and probably a misdirected application of sexual desire.

The law, too, has put a lot of energy into supporting the focus on seeking the romance as life goal, because the nuclear family is built on the codependent marriage, and capitalism likes the nuclear family very much. The nuclear family is extremely vulnerable to market pressures and bad at collective action, and tends to produce new tiny humans whose main social outlet has been within the school system, which is specifically structured to condition you to accept abusive workplace conditions as a normal precondition of existence, and not to attempt too much intimacy.

Ahem. Spiraled there. But! It’s all connected! Many of the privileges piled onto the institution of marriage were put there specifically because the nuclear family was considered desirable for the expansion of the economy. That’s clearly documented historical fact.

So yeah, the modern cultural obsession with the romance is a symptom of collective emotional disorder, and it chugs along at the expense of the more complex emotional support infrastructures most of us need and deserve.

It’s not just about me wanting representation, wanting an image in the narratives of my culture where I can see myself with the potential for happiness. Everyone needs this. We learn so much about how to be, how to relate to others, from media at this point, since the school system and other weird age-hierarchy stuff keeps us largely segregated from human society for a majority of our growing years and limits our exposure to live examples.

So the paucity of in-depth explorations of friendship, of mutual support, of widespread narrative acceptance that you can have a good life without a romance as its central support pillar, is harmful to people in general.

It’s funny, I get frustrated about this periodically, when a piece of media lets me down, or even when I’m following along a funny piece of meta and then the punchline is ‘and the ace character is obviously in denial about how they’re already dating their favorite person’ or whatever.

(The meta is annoying on a surface level and distressing on a deeper level because it’s a threat; so many times a good platonic relationship will buckle under public pressure and it doesn’t matter how asexual, how uninterested in romance, how emphatically platonic the affection has been established as being, The Romance arrives in the next installment of the story because it’s what people expect. Which reinforces the general perception that any other love is illegitimate, lesser, and as soon as it’s meant to be taken seriously it has to be crammed into that one valid shape, and invalidates future insistences in the same mode.

Seriously people stop doing this, we long since reached the point where a character saying in words ‘I have no romantic interest in [person]’ is perceived as a glaring neon sign that they’re destined to get together and that does not do good things for fostering a culture of consent. Obviously people are in denial sometimes but it should not be understood to be the rule.)

But I don’t get upset about it until someone starts in with reasons I’m bad and wrong for not liking these norms.

Like, whatever, media does not cater to my needs, I’ll cope, but when people start trying to get in my head and make me not only responsible for my own discomfort that I’m managing thanks but dishonest and malevolent I...get upset. There’s history there, okay.

‘You don’t care about this ship because you’re homophobic’ ‘you don’t want a love interest in the sequel because you’re racist’ ‘you don’t like romance in stories because you’re a misogynist’ fucking stop.

And occasionally it’s like ‘i guess you have the right to feel that way but how dare you talk about it where other people might hear’ which...well, is particularly common and particularly ironic in the context of people hung up on gay representation.

If we as a society had a healthy relationship with romance, there wouldn’t be negative side effects to that crowd’s pursuit of their worthy goal of applying that schema in places it has been Forbidden, but as it is we don’t, and there are.

#aromanticism #romance #society #social constructs #i throw salt #on a related note #i know The Untamed was Ambiguous because of censorship #but i was still enjoying not being able to tell dammit #you can ALWAYS tell normally #and that's so boring #people complain less about getting fake foreshadowing about who the murderer was than about not knowing who's interested in who #and who has a real shot with their target #being forced to be ambiguous was making those actors bring their A game #so i still wish i could have watched it play out without spoilers #because it's SO RARE that you can't immediately tell which way a story intends itself to be read on that front #and it was such a nice change #and i have legitimately cried several times over the loss of the joy i was getting out of that relationship not being so fucking dull #because like it's still fun and well done and stuff but it's not INTERESTING #i didn't even realize how much i was missing that until i briefly had it and it was taken away #so now i get sad a lot when i think about it #and it sucks that the forms for including romance in our media are so formalized #that the only way to get that realistic unclear coalescence of emotional energies #is by writing a romance and being forced to lie about it #a nonny mouse #ask #hoc est meum

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Alex ze Pirate “Mini Review” 1: About Male Abuse

Alex ze Pirate is in my opinion the WORST “comic” series Dobson has ever written up until this point (date for archives: June 2020). Sure, I agree with people that his “hot take” comics on Star Wars Fans, political issues and virtue signaling for the sake of making brownie points are worse overall cause they are uneducated propaganda that give insight in how much of a loathsome human being driven by spite he genuinely is, but Alex “offends” me as someone who enjoys fiction. It may not be the worst thing ever written, but it just does so many things wrong in terms of storywriting, storytelling, presentation and creating fictional characters, I can’t help but wonder what went wrong that Dobson even remotely thought this thing would be a “successful” comic series to establish him as a creator. Cause I can tell you, having read the likes of Don Rosa’s work on Disney, Hilda, Cleopatra in Space, Spirou, Asterix, One Piece (of which I will talk a lot in my next few posts) and many more, I can confirm by comparison that Dobson’s pirates as a published comic would have only one use on the public shelves: alternative for toilet paper during the COVID-19 epidemic

Believe me, I would love to write an in depth analysis of everything wrong with Alex ze Pirate, from the lazy artwork up to even the publication history of this trainwrack. But doing so would take a lot of time and there is one individual part of this I think deserve at least extra attention. Something that in my opinion embodies quite well a lot of things I consider wrong with this comic. So before I am going over Alex in its entirety (and believe me, the day will come) let me just talk within the next few posts about one certain aspect and story of the comic, that genuinely got me to loath this comic to the core: Sam the Cabin Boy and “his” own individual story Dobson drew in three parts around 2010.

For starters, lets talk who Sam is: Sam is one of the main characters in the comic and actually the first person who joined Alex and Peggy in the initial pages of Legends, the “original” form of Alex ze Pirate.

See, back in 2004, Dobson released Alex ze Pirate in form of a single comic volume called “Legends” which features Alex trying to recruit a crew. The thing is around 78 pages thick and based on what I saw pretty terribly paced. For comparison: When Luffy in One Piece got his crew together, he spend multiple volumes and at least three minor story arcs to get Zoro, Nami, Sanji and Usopp to join him. All while also giving us good insight into the kind of people his new crewmates were (especially Sanji’s and Nami’s backstory got to me), defeating the likes of Buggy and Captain Black, meeting Dracula Mihawk and defeating one of the biggest bastards Eichiro Oda ever created in form of Arlong. What is the story how Sam joins the crew? An orphanage organizes an auction and sells kids off. Which I assume was even illegal in pirate times, so kudos for already showing us how despicable the world of Alex ze Pirate is to begin with and how much it deserves to be nuked in some sort of alien invasion.

Sam also doesn’t really get anything to do when he is introduced, just helping Alex escape on a small boat. Which is weird because he does not know her at all, she is just some stranger who bought him off and has no means to keep him in check, so why even bother following her and not let the mob get rid of Alex?

Anyway, I wish I could tell more about Sam’s involvement in Legends, but I don’t have really more than some scans of it in the beginning and near the end. So I don’t know his involvement in the rest of the volume. I also can’t say how he plays out in volume two, because that does not exist at all. Cause for reasons I will never understand, Dobson just abandoned the idea of telling a “coherent” and ongoing story with Alex ze Pirate and instead went to his colored one page comics/strips with it, turning it into what some people called “Garfield with Pirates” (which I consider a genuine insult towards any newspaper comic out there, even something as Boondocks). And the first thing we see of Sam in “classic” Alex ze Pirate?

The perverted dwarf of the crew showing of his shota underwear so that Alex and Sam stop bickering who is the cutest, leaving him embarrassed and humiliated.

Which kinda sums up his role in the comic to a t. Cause this is what Sam is: He is the buttmonkey of the crew. And honestly, I would not have a total problem with Sam being a buttmonkey, if a) he wasn’t it all the time, b) he would actually do something to deserve any form of humiliation and c) if the other characters in this comic itself would not be some of the biggest assholes I have ever seen, who get away with abusing the poor lad.

See, here is the problem: In a crew featuring a choleric homophobic soulless ginger

A black rat person who wants to fuck the ginger even without her consent

A furry abomination that has the same brain wavelengths as Chris Chan

And a perverted dwarf who tries to impersonate Happosai from Ranma 1/2

Sam is the only decent person in the entire crew. He works hard, he even questions the morality of his friends at times, he is honest, he is not perverted, almost good to the point of childish innocence and he has a very humble “goal” which is he wants to own his own piece of gold. Not even a big pile of treasure, just one single coin would be enough for him.

So he is likeable and relatable. In fact, if anything goes by, he may have been one of the most popular ones in the comic. And yet he is the one who gets constantly abused by “fate” and his friends, because as Dobson would say it, he is supposed to be the buttmonkey. There is just one problem: People do not necessarily like buttmonkeys.

I can primarily speak only for myself here, but I hope what I have to say resonates with others too. See, I get it: A character who is the butt of a joke can be fun. Like Daffy in Duck Amuck. But there is a fine line where a character being humiliated for the sake of a joke is fun (and perhaps even deserved because of his own shortcomings or deeds/actions that make the humiliation sort of kharmic, like lets say Johnny Bravo) and a character being humiliated to the point it feels disproportional, unfunny and mean spirited if not outright sadistic, can be crossed. Take Meg Griffin from Family Guy for example whose only “purpose” for existing within the last 12+ years is to get shat on by her family and the writers. People have no idea for a plot with her, so what do they do? Have her father physically and emotionally abuse her, fart in her face for what is supposed to count as a joke and then add additional insult to it by acknowledging that they are only doing this, because they have no other idea for her and think abuse is fun. Let me just tell you from experience, it is not.

And that is essentially what Sam is: He is the Meg Griffin of Alex ze Pirate, used by his creator as the butt of very unfunny jokes, even if he does not deserve any of the things said or done to him. Want to see some examples?

How about the description Dobson gives Sam within the introduction of one of his volumes, showing how little Dobson as the creator even cares for him.

Why is he called an unworthy “slob” if he is the only one who actually works? Shouldn’t a slob be someone like Dobson, who can’t even take care of himself anymore? Also the confirmation that he was kidnapped at the age of 16. And as we have no clarification how much time passed between Legends Vol. 1 and anything afterwards, that means that in a way Alex is a child abuser.

And now, here some examples by the rest of the cast. Like Uncle Peggy framing him for all sorts of his perverted actions and even trying to kill him for no apparent reason?

Alex trying to kill him with chicken pox…

…Destroying all his worldly posessions which is hilarious because he is a poor orphan…

…Essentially describing him as worthless because he was born with an Y-chromosome…

… doing the kind of thing Dobson claims women would never do to man, using their sex appeal to hurt them…

…forcing him to do some unnecessary and rather petty work for her in a physics defying manner (seriously, the way he holds the axe does not compute with how he swings it. Try it out yourself)

… stealing his food and just being a cruel sadistic cunt to him just because it is fun.

Which is “funny” in so far as that there are a few comics indicating she would jump his dick and ride it like a little pony if she could.

By the way, Talus and Atea are not better. None of them calls Alex out on her bullshit on average, Atea uses Sam to trigger traps in one story arc…

And Talus, the closest to a “friend” he is supposed to have, once for no apparent reason made him dig through his litterbox

And don’t get me even started when the characters decide to gang up on Sam, to the point he gets sexually harassedor is called to be less worth as a human being than the dirt you find in your belly button

Fuck’s sake, even in fanart everyone gangs up on him, even the freaking big bad of the story everyone is supposed to hate or be afraid of

Bottom line, Sam is an abuse victim played for laughs in this comics. And just to clarify, I do not think this was Dobson’s intention. But if the character is undeservingly the butt of jokes for the majority of over 120 strips, it turns nasty. The way Sam is treated, I just find disgusting and indictive of just how unlikable any other character in this comic is to the point I do not want to see this being turned into a proper “franchise”. And I assume others were disgusted by it too, cause Dobson eventually decided to make a story more or less addressing the treatment Sam receives, while also attempting to prove that deep down the assholes with starring roles in this trainwrack care for him. How did this play out? Well, I am going to talk about it, so likely not well. If you want to see the details, grab yourself some popcorn and take a toilet break before we tackle part 2 of this thing.

#andrew dobson #so you are a cartoonist #sjw #comics #comic #webcomic #alex ze pirate #sam the cabin boy #legends #tom preston #disgusting #male abuse #unfunny

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thinkingbookthoughts · 3 years

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Strange the Dreamer, post read thoughts.

I just finished it last night, and hoo boy was it a read. This is the first book I’ve read by Laini Taylor, and it’s got me wanting to read more. I’m starting Muse of Nightmares tonight or tomorrow, and maybe after that the Daughters of Smoke and Bone trilogy. Anyway, [spoilers probably]:

First off, I don’t care for fantasy. I tend to have little patience for made up words (yes, I know all words are made up, you know what I mean) and hyper detailed world building. I enjoy the fantastical, but fantasy as a genre generally bores me to tears. I don’t want to read about fake cultures when I could be learning about real ones. That’s personal taste, whatever. Taylor however, writes it almost exactly the way I want to read it. She dips occasionally into exposition dumps, but I find it nowhere near as tiresome as the typical Tolkienesque approach. Even then, I’m interested. She’s created such a wonderful world that I want to know whatever she’s going to give me, and uncovering some new detail feels like a treat, not a slog. My eyes still glaze over at all the made up words and politics, but everything else makes up for it.

What keeps this book interesting to me is definitely not the plot though. I have no major issues with it, it’s fine, whatever. But it falls into the category of legendary fantasy tale that generally I have no interest in. Hero’s journey and all that. I find it boring. Again, personal taste, whatever. I tend to enjoy character driven more than plot driven anyway, and this book is absolutely character driven. The story itself is so simple I might even go so far as to call it formulaic, but the people who carry it are something else. When their hearts break, so does yours. I won’t lie, she does go for some easy gut punches, but they do still feel earned and in their place. She’s not afraid to let you dislike her heroes. Except maybe Lazlo, I’ll talk more about him later (though I feel like the sequel may challenge him more). Most of the people that we grow to like are complicated. They’ve done terrible things, or harbor toxic beliefs, but they’re also justified to a certain extent. And to what extent that is, is left up to you.

She does kind of beat you over the head with her themes, but I mean, this is technically YA. It’s not terribly clumsy, you just find yourself wanting to go, “OK I get it! Move on!” every once in a while. But that’s a hard line to toe as a writer, and as far as shortcomings go, it’s really not that big of a deal. I’m willing to forgive it, anyway. Sometimes you can feel when the “correct” answer is coming through, usually because Lazlo is taking a hard line moral stance, but it never felt so overwhelming to me that it seemed like right and wrong were being truly dictated. It’s not perfect, and writers are allowed to have opinions, so eh.

In general, I’m a big fan of her writing style. I get the feeling the novelty would wear thin if I read all of her books back to back, so I won’t lmao, but from the one I’ve read I love it. She has issues with repetition to the point where it crosses from emphasis to unnecessary and redundant pretty often, but god I am a simp for flowery prose, so I will forgive it. If I had to describe the way she writes to someone who is deciding whether or not to read it, I’d say that she writes like those verbose, rich paragraphs you find on tumblr. You know, where someone has had a few nice sentences flow into their head, but they aren’t going to expand on it so they post it as is, without the context that might make it anything more than pretty words. (No shade, but... look they’re not exactly high art, ok?) Except that she’s actually written the book. And I find it a very pleasurable experience. Like I said, I am a simp for all things purple. If you’re not, you’ll probably hate it.

It can, at times, absolutely feel indulgent, but in a way the whole book is. I mean the fantastical elements of this story really go hard. She’s not really attempting realism here. Grounded (enough), sure, but definitely not realistic. And it’s fine by me. I’m willing to give a story a lot of passes if I feel like the writer has earned them in other ways. I don’t care if every little detail is what would really happen. Not at all, actually. If I wanted realism I’d go outside. I’m reading a book, not a newspaper.

One example is what I saw described as the “insta-love” between Lazlo and Sarai. Personally, I had no issues with it. It felt earned and in place in the context of the story. It makes sense for the two characters, both of whom are young and have felt painfully isolated for their entire lives. And then in walks someone with a mutual attraction, who can interact with them and appreciate them in a way no one else ever has. Yeah of course they fall in love. Even if the relationship wouldn’t have worked out long term, it makes total sense that one would have started. And as for how quickly it happened, eh. They literally met in a dream, what do you want?

There are plenty of other crimes that I’m sure I would defend, but here’s one I won’t. Thyon Nero. He is so criminally underutilized in this story, I question his place in it at all. Which is a goddamn shame because I love me a petty bitch like Thyon. It feels like he’s all wasted potential. In a sea of interesting, well drawn characters, he’s flat as Saskatchewan. Unforgivable. If it had been another character, fine. But Thyon? Come on! We spend enough time with him that he should feel more interesting, but he just doesn’t. There’s an attempt to give him a tragic backstory and whatever, but it’s so cliche (rich pretty boy with an abusive family behind the scenes controlling him and making him feel like a pawn in their game. Snarky on the outside, hurting on the inside, blah blah you’ve heard it a million times.) that I need more! You can’t just give me a scene of him getting whipped by his shitty dad, toss off a sentence about him wanting to free from his family’s exploitation, and then dust your hands and call it a day. UGH. He honestly serves as little more than an occasionally funny, almost interesting character foil for Lazlo. He exists to show you what a good boy Lazlo is. And that’s it. They aren’t even proper enemies. How much they dislike each other in any given scene is directly inverse to how much the plot needs them to get along in that moment. Before they’ve even reached the city Thyon is little more than a mild inconvenience. So why set him up as this scary antagonist??? I’m really hoping the second expands on him. I need more. You cannot dangle a funny bitch like him in front of my face and then do nothing with him! RUDE.

Ok, now Lazlo, I said I’d talk about him. Here we are. Lazlo Lazlo Lazlo. First of all, hate his name. That’s a nothing issue, I just had to say it. Second, he’s kinda lame, huh? I wouldn’t say that he’s underdeveloped, I feel like I have a much better idea of who he is than I do Thyon, it’s just that his development isn’t that interesting. He very much feels like a protagonistTM. He’s passionate and funny, driven and like... always in the right on moral issues. He’s the immediately accepted outsider who’s also able to bring a new, but more importantly, morally correct perspective on their issues. He’s charming, but humble, shy but not enough to actually impede social interaction. I don’t hate him, I’d probably hang out with him if I was on that journey (assuming I wasn’t following Thyon around like the simp I am). He’s just that kind of perfectly imperfect character. His flaws only make him more likeable, he’s never outright wrong about anything. I’ll say it, Lazlo is a Mary Sue.

Lazlo is a Mary Sue and Thyon was wasted on his basic ass. And that’s that on that.

I will let that (correct) declaration wrap this up. It’s way too long already. Thank god not a single person on earth reads these. Small miracles.

#booksbooksbooks #books #bookblr #booklr #strange the dreamer #good book #liked it a lot more than I thought I would #book thoughts

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florrickandassociates · 4 years

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TGF Thoughts: 4x02-- The Gang Tries to Serve a Subpoena

Under the cut.

This isn’t the first episode of season 4, but since it’s the first episode that doesn’t take place in an AU… it’s basically the first episode.

Reddick, Boseman, and Lockhart has been rebranded as “RBL: A division of STR Laurie”. Remember when Will tried to rebrand Lockhart/Gardner as “LG”? At least RBL isn’t a well-known appliance brand. But I think this might be the same “sleek” font as the LG rebrand.

The acquisition of the firm has led to a remodel. I enjoy how every season RBL looks a little bit less like the LG set.

This remodel makes the offices look like a spaceship/villain’s lair/cyberpunk nightclub. There is a giant spiky cocoon thing (nope, I don’t have better words to describe that) coming out of the ceiling in the conference room and a new spiral staircase near the name partners’ offices. It looks ridiculous and intimidating (and it is supposed to).

There are also dogs roaming around off lash.

And neon lights and a giant fucking GARGOYLE outside of Adrian’s office. It’s so huge it looks like it was taken from the Harold Washington Library. (This may be the most authentically Chicago thing in this episode.)

Much like the last episode, the first thing we see after the teaser is Diane arriving at work and being greeted by Marissa. And, also much like the last episode, Diane is disoriented.

As it turns out, there’s been a bit of a time jump since the end of the last episode-- Diane’s been traveling/resting (doctor’s orders), so this is her first day back to work in 9 months. “What happened here?” Diane asks. Does it make sense a name partner would be so out of the loop on major renovations? Nah. We are not meant to spend much time wondering why Diane/Adrian/Liz would agree to an acquisition or how the talks played out. This is the premise for season 4 and we’re just supposed to accept it. I’m usually wary of this kind of re-premising, but this doesn’t bug me too much. We saw last season the firm had no identity (bc when the firm had an identity in season 1 it was ALL BC OF BARBARA KOLSTAD) and we saw them lose their top clients. Diane’s been on leave so she probably wasn’t that involved in conversations, Adrian probably welcomes acquisition because it’s more money, and Liz… has always only been idealistic to a point.

My point is: our heroes aren’t actually, and have never been, heroes. Sure, they’re the underdogs dealing with a big corporation… but also, they sold to the big corporation.

Marissa says the cocoon spike thing is a sunset. K.

Jay’s never been up to STR Laurie’s floor. The dogs running around, however, have been upstairs. Monday and Wednesday are pet days, but the pets always come through the RBL floor instead of the STR Laurie floor.

The name partners can bring dogs. (How many name partners are there if there are this many dogs and STR Laurie is at most 4 people and RBL is 3 and none of the RBL partners brought in dogs?)

JUSTICE FOR JUSTICE! (Poor Justice is probably not still around 11 years later but I had to say it.)

In the partners’ meeting, even the food everyone’s eating looks more upscale. Adrian officially welcomes Diane back. One of the non-name partners is not so happy to have her back. Or, rather, he’s not so happy the name partners got a ton of money in the deal and the non-name partners got screwed. Fair point.

I guess neither Lucca nor Rosalyn got the partnership.

Adrian expositions that they were acquired because they couldn’t survive after losing ChumHum, and STR Laurie is the 7th largest firm in the world. Got it.

Diane’s check from the acquisition of the firm is so huge it stuns her. You would think she would have known these details. But we’re here now and this show works better if you look at the themes instead of wanting all of the character motivations to always make sense. I’d probably be chewing this plot out if it happened on TGW-- why would x make y decision!? Why didn’t we get to see it!?-- but with TGF I have an easier time accepting radical changes in tone.

And TGF did need a change in tone. You can’t get that much mileage out of episodes about 45 (whose name might not even be mentioned this ep? I will try to look out for that as I watch) and clearly no one on the writing staff is interested in small, character driven intraoffice power struggles as the primary plots. If the writers have something to say about massive corporations, I’d rather sacrifice a few scenes of character development for a season that has a POV than sit through a season as uninspired as s7 of TGW.

(Perhaps this is why I’ve always liked TGW season 6 more than others-- it’s messy, but it’s INTERESTING. I like the Kings’ work best when it has energy and say what you will about season 6, but it’s not lacking for energy.)

There is a dog peeing on Adrian’s office door and he is NOT happy about it (no one would be, but he is ESPECIALLY fed up). One gets the sense he’s not just appalled that it’s happening but tired of the dogs altogether.

Diane is summoned to go upstairs to meet with the overlords. According to Adrian, Mr. Laurie isn’t bad, but Mr. Firth might be.

Upstairs, there is a very long, very white hallway. It looks like it’s out of a sci-fi movie.

I see TGF has finally leaned in to their tradition of casting British actors by just… having STR Laurie be a British firm.

The set decoration of Mr. Firth’s office looks like it belongs on Evil. It’s over the top, has a piece of art that looks like horns (much like the therapist monster thingy… just watch Evil okay) and light fixtures that are clearly crosses.

Mr. Firth asks Diane what she wants to do and she says she wants to get back to work. “What work?” he asks. Diane wants to get back to her clients and Mr. Firth tells a story about a poor man who wanted to give everything, even the moon, to a thief. Neither Diane nor I understand. Mr. Firth says this story is about how he’s giving Diane her “moon” by having her head up their pro-bono cases because she shines when she has a goliath to face. True, but what does this have to do with the story!? I legit thought that story was going to be about how Diane gives too much of herself and should learn to accept high pay checks while doing no work and getting out of STR Laurie’s way. Maybe I missed something?

Anyway, Diane is getting the pro bono department with 22 lawyers and 40 cases. This is to keep her happy and to make STR Laurie look good. Feels too good to be true. Diane gets investigator time and partner billable hours, and she’s told this is fine-- make the firm a good citizen no matter how much it costs. WTF is going on here? Is this a trick?

Diane walks downstairs, happy, as Lucca heads up the stairs. Maybe she’s not a partner, but she’s important enough to be summoned upstairs.

Mr. Firth explains to Lucca that he is “the sorting hat of lawyers.�� Lucca explains she’s never read Harry Potter because she doesn’t “like wizard shit.” Impressively brave to say that to your new overlord, Lucca. I have missed you and your give no fucks attitude.

“Yes, fuck wizard shit,” Mr. Firth responds, somewhat stiltedly.

Mr. Firth wants Lucca to work on a divorce case for one of their top clients as the client has a personality clash with their head of family law. Their head of family law is, of course, David Lee. Welcome back, I guess. At least David Lee happening to end up at this firm that acquired RBL makes a ton more sense than all the ways they found to keep David Lee relevant to TGW in its last two seasons.

David Lee hasn’t changed a bit.

Diane’s first client is XIOMARA VILLANUEVA!!!!!!

But in this universe, she’s a restaurant owner whose restaurant is about to be torn down because of eminent domain. Diane tries one of her usual tricks- asking Xo (I’m sure she has a name on this show and once they say it again I will stop calling her Xo) to bring her food truck outside of the courthouse so everyone can smell how great her food is and be more sympathetic to her case.

“You’re not the lawyer I expected,” Xo tells Diane. Diane responds, “I’ve changed.” Diane, I am pretty sure that’s not what she meant, but ok!

Lucca and David Lee’s first meeting with Bianca Skye, the high profile client, is a bit awkward, but Bianca instantly takes a liking to Lucca. (“I didn’t know this firm had any black lawyers,” Bianca notes. “Oh, they hide us,” Lucca jokes. But it’s not really a joke when all the black lawyers are the RBL staff and they’re on a different floor…)

David Lee has Bianca tell Lucca her whole case-- which is fairly straightforward-- with way too much detail. Before Lucca asks David if he’s just trying to run up billable hours, it’s clear he’s dragging this out on purpose.

“Oh good, the Angry Black Woman has made an appearance,” awful human being David Lee says after Lucca calls him out.

David Lee plays rank on her and tells her to watch and learn. Yes, making a racist comment and then being condescending without explaining your strategy is DEFINITELY the way to get the lawyer characterized by her complete lack of interest in being a cog in a machine on your side.

Adrian, Liz, and Barry are all helping Diane do a mock trial before her first day back in court. It’s fun.

Adrian is SO over the dogs. His face when a pack of them run past is priceless.

Diane’s mock trial strategy goes well; the evidence is on her side. And Julius, as luck would have it, is the judge on this case. (Why this is in federal court I don’t know.)

Julius is very happy to be a judge.

Canning is back. Feels weird to have him here without Alicia. But, honestly, I was prepared for worse. As we’ll see as this scene progresses, Canning is the PERFECT person to have as opposing counsel. If there’s a new rule to exploit, he’d be the first to know about it. If there’s a slimy strategy to use while playing innocent, that’s his schtick. If there’s a corporation doing bad things, he’s your guy.

Canning tries to explain his condition to Julius. I guess Julius must have been in the New York office when Canning was at LG in late season 5. Diane laughs, knowing that Julius can’t be tricked by Canning.

Canning probably also knows it won’t work, because he’s already prepared to ask Julius to recuse himself. I feel like this is entirely reasonable. Diane isn’t just an acquaintance… they were partners at the same firm for over a decade.

Diane is TOTALLY the type of white lady to overdo the pronunciation of “chorizo”.

The delicious smelling food seems like it’s going to work, but we quickly learn that what used to constitute tricky is now just child’s play. The CEO of Rare Orchard, who has been subpoenaed, has decided not to show up. He doesn’t have an excuse. He isn’t delaying. He’s just not going to show up. Like, remember when we thought it was egregious that the CEO Canning was defending in 4x11 kept putting off depositions and Alicia calling the judge was an effective strategy? HA! (Anyone know if this case is based on something or if it’s the writers taking some creative liberties for the sake of plot? My fear is that aspects of it are real because I can’t see the writers being this interested in a plot point they invented.)

Canning says he thinks the CEO doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of the subpoena. Julius reminds Canning that he is a federal judge and his subpoena is legitimate. Canning is all, “yes, I know that’s your position” as though laws are opinions. AAAAAAAAA.

This show loves this kind of thing, just totally taking the basic assumptions away and letting chaos reign.

This CEO sent Julius a memo telling him to “go fuck yourself.” Eeek.

Diane doesn’t even get to do much lawyering.

Then there is a random cut (which I hate) to a scene of a massive set falling apart during a battle scene. Why the fuck is this here? And what is this from? If I ff to the credits will it tell me? Nope. Dammit. Someone help me out here.

Credits! Things are exploding again, yay! Aside from the images on the TV, these credits look really similar to S3. I think they may have increased the saturation on the color of the liquids exploding but I could be making things up.

Julius’s outrage at the situation continues after the credits.

David Lee tries to get Lucca to agree to just be comforting to the client. Lucca is like, no, because I was brought on for a reason I am going to do my job.

DLee calls this “PC shit” and says something else racist. Bianca answers the door and asks to do the depo prep on the run. What this means is that they’re all getting on her private jet and going to St. Lucia.

David Lee is TERRIFIED of the private jet. I would be too since I hate small planes (and all planes, but particularly small ones), but I am still enjoying watching him squirm. Lucca is too.

Lucca DELIGHTS in reminding David they’re in a small metal tube with nothing holding them up. It’s fantastic.

Bianca offers David Lee a CBD cocktail, because of course she does. This episode is doing a good job of reminding me of why David Lee and Canning were both once really effective characters, so if the writers can use them this way moving forward, I’ll be happy.

Bianca googled Lucca and demands to see pictures of her very cute baby. She then takes Lucca’s phone and starts up Tinder. This is a strange dynamic because it’s friendly but also sudden and also Bianca is paying Lucca for this time. But both of them could use friends, so I’m just going to be cautiously optimistic a real friendship could grow out of this.

David Lee chugging a CBD cocktail is most definitely something I needed in my life. Thank you writers!

Our characters are wealthy but everyone they deal with in this episode is ultrawealthy. Like, disgustingly wealthy. Bianca seems nice but holy shit no one needs to fly to St. Lucia for lunch.

Court stuff happens. This episode is more interesting than just “court stuff happens” but the point is pretty simple-- Julius gets increasingly outraged at the breakdown of the system he believes in, and things keep getting more and more bizarre.

Julius turns to the corrupt judge Adrian is sleeping with (I think the writers need to tell me what I am supposed to think of her because… I just don’t understand who she’s supposed to be, unless “corrupt judge who creeps me out yet for some reason Adrian is still into” is the point OR unless I am supposed to see her corruption as somehow excusable... ) for advice. She calls their job “shadow play” and says the system is all fake. That would explain why she’s open to bribery, then. She agrees to help Julius get the CEO into court, but I think she’s just helping to illustrate how futile this will be if he tries to resist again.

David Lee also doesn’t like the food on the island. It’s so funny.

Lucca’s dress is really cute.

Bianca says Lucca must think she’s crazy for flying just to get guava for lunch. Lucca says, “No, it’s just a very different lifestyle from mine.” That’s an understatement. Bianca’s life changed in the last few years, and she’s worried it’s all going to go away (so, it’s implied, she’s living it up now). It seems she has some sort of skincare/cosmetics empire.

Bianca is worried that in the next recession (oh look at that timely comment), her products will be the first thing people cut back on. Curious to know if this is happening.

Bianca’s other concern is that she has no friends now because she’s rich. Everyone wants something. “You’re so full of shit,” Lucca says, refusing to pity Bianca. This makes Bianca like her more.

Bianca talks about a service to matchmake friends. She found it weird, but she doesn’t find “this” (befriending Lucca, even though she is probably paying Lucca WAY more than the friend matchmaker fee) weird. Lucca is always entering into friendships so formally! Okay it’s just two scenes (this one and the one where she and Alicia become friends) but still.

Lucca reminds Bianca she’s also her lawyer.

Bianca asks if DLee is drawing out the case. She’s not stupid. Lucca says David isn’t drawing it out, but I think they both know the answer.

(Question based on what happens later in the ep- if David actually has reasoning, then why in the world would he not tell Bianca OR Lucca about it? And why do they need to have overly long meetings to draw things out? Can’t they just schedule them with large gaps? Idk the whole thing is weird and if David isn’t going to share his strategy that’s on him.)

The CEO finally shows up in court and Julius thinks he’s won. He hasn’t. He says he’s asserting privilege he can’t reveal because it is privileged. The CEO acts like Julius is in the wrong, which pisses Julius off. The CEO gets held in custody and Julius says that the restaurant can’t be bulldozed until the CEO complies.

Then Julius gets the mysterious MEMO 618. Dun dun dun.

I know there must be more but I feel like we know what Memo 618 is? Like, no we don’t know who sent it or exactly what it means, but we know the effect of what it does. What is the mystery? Who sent it?

At night, Julius takes the mystery memo to Judge Hazelwood. She plays dumb because-- as we find out later-- Adrian is within earshot. Adrian’s jacket is apparently very recognizable because Julius spots it. I believe it; Adrian has a distinctive style.

Adrian talks about taking their relationship public. So Judge Hazelwood bribing people didn’t end the relationship?

Adrian also asks about Memo 618. He knows she knows what it is. She distracts him by getting on top of him.

Depositions for Bianca’s divorce get contentious but she has the upperhand. Lucca suggests that Bianca settle now and get the ex out of her life-- “balance money with psychological wellness.” Sounds reasonable to me!

At work, Judge Hazelwood is more forthcoming. And Julius did recognize the jacket. Judge Hazelwood tells Julius to let the CEO out and stop asking about the memo. Julius wants to get her on tape, but instead she tells him to get in an Uber and go to an address. She also warns that the court has a program if you break your phone. Sounds like a threat…

Julius finds the Uber easily and then goes on a long journey to the countryside. The driver, it turns out, is a former federal judge who didn’t comply with a mystery memo and he warns Julius to just do what they say or he’ll end up an Uber driver barely able to support his family. (THINK OF YOUR SIX CHILDREN, JULIUS.)

Lucca wearing heels at her standing desk is… just silly, why would she do this? She wouldn’t take off one heel to stretch her foot; she would have a pair of flats to wear in her office. (This episode is written and directed by men, just fyi.) (Do women actually do this? I hate heels so I would never even consider it, but I feel like everyone hates heels??? Even the people who wear them all the time???)

David is all mad at Lucca for encouraging Bianca to settle because it has tax implications. Two things: One, if there’s this obvious reason to delay, I feel like Lucca would have figured it out. Two, LUCCA IS ON DAVID’S SIDE. And if he’s allowed to say this out loud now, he could have said it earlier. So… no pity for David Lee. This is why you cooperate with your colleagues instead of antagonizing them.

Liz-- who has been quite underused in this episode-- is also fed up with the dogs. She and Adrian storm upstairs to say, in Adrian’s words, “they can’t use this floor as a toilet for their motherfucking dogs.”

They bust through the doors to the long hallway (which in real life would DEFINITELY have a key card reader on it) and push past the receptionist.

Mr. Firth is holding a very cute dog named Avenger. Mr. Firth also refers to Liz as “Elizabeth”.

Liz asks that the dogs stop “shitting” on their floor. After all, this was supposed to be a partnership, not an acquisition (does anyone believe that? I think Liz is just using their BS corporate talk against them). Mr. Firth says he will find a way to deal with the dogs. Adrian takes the opportunity to mention that the equity partners need their money. “How do we want to satisfy this?” Mr. Firth asks. “Give them money,” Liz says. Mr. Firth agrees to meet about this next week. He also gives Liz and Adrian access to the executive elevator. He’s just trying to appease them so they’ll be more on his side.

Liz and Adrian both recognize that was too easy, but decide to take the win. I feel like this problem is going to come back…

Julius apologizes and releases the CEO. He recuses himself but says that in the meantime the restaurant will stand.

Diane knows something’s off and confronts Julius. She’s furious but Julius asks her to leave. I wonder what Diane would’ve done in Julius’s situation. It’s very easy to become complicit…

The restaurant is torn down anyway, making Diane even angrier. She tells Julius it’s on him and he reminds her that he is a judge.

And this is how systems are perpetuated.

That’s the end of the episode, save for the message about the two week break before episode 3 from the cast and crew. I appreciate that they included this, and that they included the whole crew rather than just the Kings and the cast.

I don’t even recognize most of the crew! I recognize the cast (duh), Dan Lawson (the costume designer), the makeup artist (I think I’ve seen her in various instagram posts), Brooke Kennedy, and the Kings.

Jonathan Coulton is in the video too (he’s totally a part of the TGF family at this point-- and is one of few people to be on TGW, BrainDead, TGF, AND Evil) to lead everyone in an adorable (but somewhat out of sync) singalong. Awwww.

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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octagoncalibrator · 4 years

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Some thoughts of Heart of Deimos.

I made a reddit post but I thought I might repost it here and see if the response is any different. Mild spoilers for Heart of Deimos, the most recent Warframe update, under the cut.

First off, this is a bit of an effortpost, and it will be quite meandering and confused, sorry about that. We are now two days into Heart of Deimos and I had some thoughts I wanted to put on paper as it were. There's a TL;DR at the bottom.

The Bad:

In all honesty, taking into account the usual DE release-then-fix cycle and the quick patching they've already done to things like the Son token costs, there's very little about this update that I think is objectively bad. Deimos might be the single best open world release of the set, lack of a catchy musical number aside. It's not any buggier than any other release, which may say more about DE's QA than anything, but I have fallen through the map a few times, and host migrations have broken multiple vault runs.

The combined token system is a pretty big departure from the other open worlds, and I found it very confusing initially. Without the prior context of using Ticker for bonds in Fortuna, I think it would be really opaque, particularly for new players who aren't already up to speed on how the open world resource loops are expected to work. Alongside the complex token system, it's also understandable that people are frustrated with the expectation that they -must- participate in mining, fishing and conservation to get the tokens, since these don't really leverage the well developed aspects of gameplay.

The initial quest was lackluster from a storytelling perspective, with some really nonsensical events, a lack of development for each individual beat, and a frustrating lack of building on the already existing lore in favour of introducing new lore. It was pretty blatantly a tour of the zone mechanics, though maybe we'll see a more engaging plot when the equivalent of the Profit Taker and Exploiter bounties are introduced over the next year. The new warframe being dropped in by Mother as an afterthought, without a scrap of context, almost felt worse than the way previous quests have just given us the blueprint with no explanation at all. Protea's quest felt a lot clearer so it's disheartening to see them taking a step back there.

Finally, prior to finding the Albrecht lore I thought the playable content of the update was quite short and uninteresting.

The Good:

The Family voice acting is really, really good. Some of the writing is a bit iffy in the classic overwrought DE sense (which IMO is charmingly earnest anyway) but the delivery is fantastic, and while initially I was put off by the characters being shallow, I came around on it - I will go into more detail under 'The Ugly'.

With regards to the grind: even though the resources from the open world minigames are mandatory, participation isn't - so far I've run conservation exactly once, for about an hour, and I am clear for the third rank up with the Entrati. The world drops and bounty loot are more than enough to cover the vast majority of other costs, which is honestly fantastic. For all the complaining, DE has definitely learned from PoE and Fortuna with regards to letting people dictate their own playstyle without handicapping their progress. You can focus down specific requirements with specific minigames, no trouble, or you can just play bounties and run and gun your way to incidental loot. The combined token system was really confusing initially but combined with the incidental drops it makes progression quite organic without forcing you to spend your time on any particular task (looking at you, pre-Thumper PoE). There also seems to be a pretty solid spawn chance for tokens in the caves of the open world, and since the rank ups are now 1 of each kind of token instead of 10, this is possibly now a feasible way to skip the conservation grind entirely.

With regards to the lore: despite my earlier complaint about narrative quality and disconnection, DE does seem to be tying Parvos, the Entrati and the Glassmaker together, which is interesting. Prior to finding the Necraloid area and hearing the excellent Albrecht Vitruvian lore (seriously, mad props to the writers and the VA, the fourth log gives me powerful Darkest Dungeon narration vibes) I was ready to drop the game until a few patches and more content was added, but now I'm fully willing to grind for a couple weeks to hear the rest. I'm curious to see where they will go with the Heart and the Man in the Wall, particularly in regards to stuff like the reliquary drive and how it relates to the Necraloids and pre-warframe Orokin technology in general.

The Ugly:

The Family are the ugly, get it? This bit is mostly just because I want to talk about the new characters and the themes of Warframe as a narrative.

There's a kind of tension around the family that I initially found offputting - here we have a family of immortal alien gods who made their name ripping secrets from the flesh of reality, literally sprouting from the meat flowers of an infested moon... and they act like the cast of Arrested Development, switching between lofty poetic proclamations and petty squabbling that wouldn't be out of place on a sitcom. At first it seemed like it was just bad writing. Over time though, with exposure to the wider plot and the various deeper interactions, I started to warm to it. It's really interesting how DE has juxtaposed the deformed appearance of the Entrati, their perfect-marble-statue-like Orokin aesthetic, the pulsating infestation, and this very human, very relatable behavior. It really pulls back the skin on the Orokin as a people and uses a bit of clever metanarrative to show us that even the Tenno remember the Orokin as being more than human, when they were just as flawed as anyone else.

The individual characters felt very shallow at first, like cardboard cutouts of the typical family transplanted into a blob of writhing meat, but the pleasant surprise of the relationships mending between Entrati rank-ups and the subtle undercurrents you start to notice when interacting with them over a longer timeline really turned that on its head. There's some really excellent combinations of writing and delivery that add subtleties to each character, like the Daughter's undercurrent of thirst for either the Tenno or for butchering mutant fish, or the animalistic yearning of the Son and his bleeding heart hidden under the callous and cruel facade.

Family, parenthood and belonging are arguably the core themes of Warframe's narrative - the Tenno are orphan children clinging to a single parental figure who herself is a stolen child, while their allies like the Ostrons and the Solaris are people who cling to their human connections and their shared culture despite outside forces, and draw their strength from each other. The grand enemies of the setting are collectivist empires who have shredded their humanity in pursuit of strength and profit respectively. Then you have the Orokin, whose grand flaw is hubris in isolation, and a deliberate abandonment of shared humanity in pursuit of impossible perfection. The entire Parvos questline related to blood, with Nef wanting to abuse it for gain and Parvos denouncing him. Even the Sentients, arguably the only alien culture in the setting, love their families and oppose the Orokin and by extension the Tenno largely in defense of their people.

DE has leaned hard on quite creepy, quite -relatable- strangeness to give the Family depth, which helps reinforce that they're demigods of a dead empire, even if they are also quite friendly and personable. It lends some real weight to the way the Orokin have been depicted as cruel, hollow people, since we now have direct evidence of how their culture and the expectations of their various roles tear at those interpersonal connections. There's a lot of heart and clear work put into developing these themes, and I think that it's a bit sad that the quality of the writing is frequently overlooked in the broader Warframe community in favour of focusing on the flashy mechanics and cool new novel features. DE's writers are some of the best in mainstream video gaming currently, and even with my complaints about the main quest earlier, this consistent ongoing thematic cohesion and the variety of individually good beats more than make up for incoherent feature-driven storytelling.

TL;DR:

Despite some teething issues and bugs Heart of Deimos might be the best open world update so far, the way DE presents the Family and develops on the overarching themes of the story are pretty excellent, and I am excited to see where they go with it. Thanks for reading my incoherent and largely irrelevant thought-spew. Have a good one.

#warframe #heart of deimos #rambling diatribe #I have no qualifications just many opinions

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phosphorescent-naidheachd · 4 years

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I saw TROS earlier today and, well, it was definitely a Star Wars sequel movie, for better and for worse. I can see why some people on my dash hated this movie and why some of them loved it. I can also see why some of them threw their hands into the air over it and shrugged. (FYI, I’m in the third category.) More scattered and spoiler-laden thoughts below the cut:

--“Never underestimate a droid.” This line would have been so much more meaningful if the spy had turned out to be a First Order droid rather than Hux. A droid that had broken free of its programming, just like Finn (and later Jannah and the other unnamed former stormtroopers). But as always, the Droid Revolution that we deserve is probably never going to be a thing, at least not onscreen where it counts.

--Just like TFA, the copy-and-pasting from the Original Trilogy was painfully obvious, but what was forgivable in the first film of a new trilogy is less so in said trilogy’s concluding film.

--Trần Loan/Rose deserved more screentime and prominence. And did we really have to turn Poe into a former spice runner? Really? *sighs heavily*

--Zorii Bliss felt sort of shoehorned in? I didn’t hate her, but it felt like TPTB only introduced her to give Poe another person to flirt with. And I say this as someone who was not expecting PoeFinn or any other LGBTQIAP+ relationship between named characters to be made canon in this movie at all. Hopefully fans will give her more depth in fic!

--Jannah was really interesting and I would have loved to see more of her. Once again, hopefully fans will take her character and deepen/explore it in fic.

--LANDO!

--Finn was all but explicitly confirmed as Force sensitive, and it’s What He Deserves.

--I mean, Finn also deserved his own storyline and a stronger conclusion to his character arc in this film, especially considering he was promoted as one of the leads of the sequel trilogy. But while I’m irked that he was relegated to a side character, I can’t say I didn’t see this coming, especially after TLJ.

--Likewise, I knew Reyl0 was going to be a thing after TLJ. I found their relationship less grating than Anida1a in the prequels, but it still didn’t do much of anything for me in this film. Do I understand from an objective POV why some people enjoy it so much? Yep. It’s the grand, tortured, Byronic Romance™, where it isn’t really about whether the characters have anything in common or even like each other, it’s about their near-mystical connection and their inability (and lack of true desire) to be rid of it; it’s about the lengths to which they will go for each other/themselves; it’s about the powerful man who is emotionally vulnerable and eager to serve his True Love at the expense of all else. It’s also the whole enemies-to-lovers trope, and so on. I understand the appeal of this mashup intellectually, it’s just not my cup of tea here. YMMV and all that, and that’s as it should be.

--Palpatine back from death is as ridiculous here as it was in the old EU, but I can roll with it. I think the movie made the right decision not to explain all the nitty-gritty details of how he cheated death or manipulated the whole Snoke deal... ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, y’know? Ditto to Rey Palpatine lol.

--Leia’s death felt pretty narratively cheap to me, but I understand that there was only so much TPTB could do with the footage they already had of Carrie Fisher in costume. Still, poor Leia. She drew a deeply shitty hand in life, didn’t she?

--That said, it was nice to see Leia training as a Jedi in flashbacks, however briefly. (Is it just me, or did her saber hilt vaguely resemble Obi-Wan’s?) Does it make a lot less sense that she would then send Ben away to Luke if she’s had Jedi training? Yes. Can I created headcanons to explain this? Also yes. And do I really care about this particular inconsistency when there are far worse ones out there and this one makes dudebro sections of the fandom spitting mad? NOPE.

--I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not inherently against the redemption of Kylo/Ben. But, as I had suspected/feared, they “redeemed” him at the narrative expense of other characters I personally find more interesting... and they still didn’t manage to make said redemption feel narratively earned to me. Is there undoubtedly ancillary material in SW books and comics that give more background behind Kylo/Ben’s turn to the Dark Side and eventual turn back to the Light? Yes. Do I want to read it? Not really, no. Also, unless something happens onscreen in the SW universe, it doesn’t really count as true canon. So it’s disappointing that the movie shoved other characters and plots to the side to make room for Kylo/Ben’s redemption arc and then didn’t even do a good job with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

--Also, of course TPTB had Kylo/Ben die saving someone rather than narratively deal with what it means to work towards redemption after having done lots of terrible things, and having to recover from having been manipulated/groomed by Sidious. Not surprised in the slightest.

--I would have preferred a Stormtrooper Rebellion storyline, but I’m not going to blast TROS or the sequel trilogy for being what it is rather than what I wanted it to be. I will, however, blast it for its sloppy execution of its existing storylines. Which leads to my next point...

--Even though TROS was long, it still felt rushed and, like the first two movies in this trilogy, it felt largely disconnected from the other sequel trilogy films. The Star Wars Story Group really should have planned this trilogy out better. If TPTB were going to go with two different directors/writers, they should have made sure said directors/writers were on the same page rather than seemingly fighting each other’s visions of what the overarching story should be at every step.

--I’m willing to handwave a lot of stuff that happens in TROS, mainly because I’m long past expecting coherence from this franchise... or pretty much any major franchise, tbh. (For instance: Thousands of people show up to aid the Resistance when Lando calls them but not when Leia did in TLJ? OK. Force Ghost Luke shows up to catch Rey’s lightsaber but not to help her against Palpatine? Sure.) These issues don’t really make or break the series for me, so I can work with them with a minimum of grumbling. Which isn’t quite the same thing as letting TPTB off the hook for their laziness and inconsistencies.

--Honestly, I hate to say it, but it would have made for a stronger story if Chewie had died aboard the ship when Rey and Kylo/Ben were fighting over it; that would have driven home the consequences of Rey’s lack of control and lessened the artificiality of the stakes in this movie. But I get that this is ultimately a family film, so it’s more of a minor quibble than anything else.

--It’s kind of weird that Rey’s hair is back in the three buns again for the entirety of TROS after she wore her hair differently for almost all of TLJ. But that’s a fairly minor quibble too, and one of the sort I can easily create a headcanon to explain. Actually, come to think of it, I wonder if they didn’t do this at least partially to be able to recycle some of the unused TFA clips with Leia and Rey?

--Frankly, I’m not sure why Rey suddenly cared so much about what Luke thought, considering A. he was a huge jerk to her for most of TLJ, and B. she seemed to have broken with following his advice towards the end of TLJ. And since she didn’t have a great relationship with Luke, it seems weird that she’d take his last name. Shouldn’t she have gone with Organa or even Solo, if she’s naming herself after a mentor? But whatever, I get that it’s about the symbolism more than the character or logic. And I can create headcanons to explain all of this.

--It’s a little weird that there wasn’t any more resolution to Kylo/Ben’s storyline and Rey’s feelings about it after his death. But with Leia dead, I guess there isn’t anyone left who’d especially care if Kylo/Ben turned back to the Light aside from Rey herself. Still, there should have been something more. Especially since Ben didn’t show up as a Force Ghost alongside Luke and Leia on Tatooine.

--While I’m at it, I wish we could have had a minute’s conversation with Rey telling Finn about her heritage, if only because I think he would have understood. But I wish we could have learned more about Finn’s heritage (which didn’t need to be a known SW lineage, btw) too, so...

--For that matter, I wish we could have had Finn get a chance to tell Rey about his being Force Sensitive, which might have made her feel slightly less alone. I wish we could have seen Finn figure out what being Force Sensitive meant to him. And so on.

--Not sure where people are getting the idea that Lando & Jannah were flirting, because I didn’t read their interaction that way at all.

--General Poe and General Finn were great, but also sort of felt unearned after the events of TLJ.

--The abilities that come from being part of a Dyad are overpowered and a little silly, but hey, they’re also following a long-established SW tradition of overpowered silliness, so... *shrugs*

--Confused as to why Rey suddenly killed Kylo/Ben when she did?? I mean, if it was because she was angry Leia had just died, wouldn’t that be acting from the Dark Side and shouldn’t that have, idk, narrative consequences for her?

--I don’t see why some people loved or hated Rey’s ending so much. It’s pretty open, IMO, just like the endings for all of the surviving characters. Who says Rey is going to stay on Tatooine or be alone there, after all? For all we know, she just stopped there for a few days to bury the lightsabers, grieve for Kylo/Ben, and meditate. For all we know, Finn or one of her other friends from the Resistance is going to drop in any moment now. Heck, for all we know, one of her friends is hanging out inside the Falcon where we can’t see them, giving her a little space. (Was her friendship with Finn and Poe depicted pretty shallowly in this movie? Yeah. But so was her relationship with Kylo/Ben tbh, even with the Dyad Force bond thingamajig.) Rey has a whole world of choices available to her. Does it suck that we didn’t get to see that onscreen? Yeah. Does it mean she’s doomed to be eternally lonely as a hermit on a desert planet? Not in the slightest.

--Someone really needs to tell the writers of these big franchises that using ring structure is pointless if there isn’t meaning behind it. There’s nothing inherently significant about repeating events or revisiting locations.

--Overall, I felt pretty meh about TROS. I didn’t love it or hate it. As with any movie in a series, there’s good stuff to be mined from it, and bad stuff to be handwaved away or given headcanon explanations. But mostly, I just can’t dredge up the energy to care very much. And I’m not in the mood for TROS fix-it fanfiction so much as I am TROS crack fics.

--I haven’t talked about everything that worked or didn’t work for me in TROS here, but if you have any questions, I’m always happy to answer them to the best of my abilities!

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mannatea · 5 years

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Not That Deep: A Psycho Pass Critique

This post is not spoiler-free, and is the result of multiple rewatches over the span of five years. If you remember any of my old Psycho Pass meta, please toss it straight into the garbage. I swear I’m better at conveying my thoughts now. (Joke’s on you if you think I’ve learned to condense my posts, though.)

Disclaimer: all opinions expressed within this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts and opinions of my followers or friends. I welcome discussion/debate.

Psycho Pass (abbreviated to PP for simplicity’s sake from this point forward) is an anime in that very specific genre that belongs to societies that are portrayed as Utopian but aren’t. For the record, the setting can’t really be described as ‘dystopian’ or ‘futuristic hellscape’ either. The series calls itself “cyberpunk.”

In the year 2112, Japan has closed itself off from the world and implemented the Sibyl System: a judgment oracle. Citizens of the country are monitored by the system and have a “psycho-pass” assigned to them. This “psycho-pass” measures their stress levels, brain activity, and potential to commit a crime. When a person’s crime coefficient (CC) exceeds 100, they are considered a latent criminal and put into isolation to receive mandatory therapy. If they do not recover, they remain in isolation. The story follows the main character, Tsunemori Akane, as she joins the series’ version of a police force.

Trigger warnings for this series include gore, violence (sexual, emotional, physical), and an obscene amount of philosophy.

Again, below the readmore/cut will be spoilers.

Worldbuilding/Craft

I feel like it’s important to get into the meat of the discussion as quickly as possible with this series, especially considering the title of this post: Not That Deep.

I’m not going to bother ‘rating’ the different facets/aspects of the show because I don’t think it’s necessary, and this isn’t really a review so much as a discussion/critique. Either you liked the series or you didn’t. If you’re reading this you either have an open mind or you want to get angry, and both reasons are at least a little valid.

PP is a series that REALLY wants to be deep, but falls flat in almost every conceivable way. I’m saying this as someone who enjoyed it enough to write fanfiction about it the last time I watched it, and who not only recommended it to multiple friends, but screenshared the entire series with one recently so that she could see it.

I think the general concept of Sibyl and Akane’s futuristic society is presented in a digestible way. I appreciate the attempts to integrate cool future tech into the show, but I’m especially impressed by the way they go about it. It’s all stuff that your average person living right now would adopt and use regularly if given a chance (auto driven cars, drones, AI secretaries, holo clothes/outfits). Without those specific scenes, I feel like the worldbuilding would almost collapse in on itself; these little details made it easy to imagine living in the world, and gave a little personality to the characters as they made use of them—like little glimpses into their personal taste.

It also helped to take the focus and pressure off of the less-nice aspects of the Sibyl System. No wonder people are generally pretty happy/content in this world: they can wear sweatpants and just holo something else over it! (Sign me up!)

Unfortunately the worldbuilding beyond that isn’t great, but I also don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s bad. It’s just...kind of mediocre...while still managing, at least for the first season, to feel coherent.

We have hues and crime-coefficients. They are not the same thing, but they might as well be because one isn’t bad without the other being bad: EVER. Ginoza’s CC rises as his hue darkens throughout S1. Togane’s hue is black and he has the highest CC on record. Makishima’s hue is clear and his CC is 0 (when he wills it to be). What’s the point of having both, then? Is it just for a fun color-coding system? It’s never explained in any way that makes sense. The one character likely to have a high CC and a clear hue is Makishima (a sociopath), but he has both a clear hue and a low CC. (Kamui is another anomaly, but he can’t be measured at all, so he doesn’t really fit into this specific discussion.) Basically, having hues and CCs both exist just feels a little bit too much like “it sounded cool so we included it” instead of: “These both serve serious purposes in the world.” They want really bad to fling philosophy at the viewers, but seem to neglect this really large aspect of the world where it would be perfect to latch on.

Technology is advanced to the point of having cybernetic arms that function effortlessly and people can almost achieve full cybernization if they have the money/will to. Kamui was 184 people stitched together lol... And yet Akane has just one living grandparent (who apparently can’t even move on her own). I’m not really put off by this, but you’d think the technology/health debate would be a much bigger part of the story beyond the news broadcast that was shown.

I think the biggest niggling little worldbuilding issue is the fact that the implementation of Sibyl happened ~20 years ago. I like the detail for what it gives us for some characters (Masaoka and Ginoza specifically), but I find it mostly implausible. Maybe it was fully implemented 20 years ago, but the framework was another 20 years in the making. It just doesn’t work otherwise. The second it was implemented families would have been shattered and that shattering would have put even more people into isolation due to their CC rising. I mean, if someone took my 5-year-old away from me, I’d be in isolation REAL QUICK, ‘cause that’s the kind of trauma you don’t just Get Over or Move Past.

Speaking of five-year-olds, in the boarding school episodes, they mention a law that protected minors, which feels out of place because Kagari was not protected by that law...which means it couldn’t have been around very long in the first place. If the scanners can flag a 5-year-old child and take him away from his parents, high school students aren’t exempt either. The mention of the law would have been a nice touch if it had only recently been appealed/removed, but it was only around for a few years ~20 years ago, so it feels awkwardly placed/silly.

Again, not everything worldbuilding/craft-related is bad. Like I said earlier, the world in general feels pretty cohesive and the characters belong there. The issues mostly sit with the fact that they tried to include a lot of ‘neat’ or ‘dramatic’ (or even ‘dark’) things...without stopping to consider if they actually fit within the narrative they were trying to construct.

Plot/Storylines

This is where the series shines. Or at least, this is probably the strongest point in PP’s favor.

The biggest criticism I have: it doesn’t actually do anything new and exciting.

That said, I don’t think every bit of media out there needs to flip the script to be enjoyed, and I liked PP just fine for what it was.

Season One was definitely stronger in this department than later material. What made S1 feel strong was having enough time to actually move the plot along while also developing the characters. S2 was comparatively rushed and had a lot of really unnecessary plotlines and gore. The movie was...eh, but I think it was an improvement over S2. (I haven’t seen Sinners of the System yet, so I can’t comment on those installments.)

I can find fault with a lot of S1 stuff, but for the most part I think it did a pretty good job and any faults I’d bother to point out would just be me nitpicking. The storylines melded into one another, everything was connected, et cetera. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of character relationships/development, but I’ll talk about that later. Besides, I’d rather have a cohesive series than not, so this isn’t exactly a criticism so much as an observation. The production team(s) did an excellent job of making the most of the screentime they had to work with.

S2 feels flawed almost from the start. Rather than build off of what we already learned in S1 and further develop the characters, it chose to rush headlong into a half-assed plot featuring an unbelievable antagonist. Yikes. I think it brought up an interesting question in “WC?” but instead of striking a believable balance they really just made an antagonist who was 184 people’s bodies stitched together. I can’t get over how stupid that was. Honestly, it was straight-up foolish of the writers to go through with that concept. Makishima might have been a pretentious pile of shit, but at least he felt like a human being. Kamui as a concept was just too overblown to work.

Also working against S2 was Togane. That whole plotline was completely unnecessary and throwing Akane’s grandmother under a bus on top of that was just the icing on the idiot cake. S2 was the Break the Cutie trope tenfold, but there was no danger and therefore no sense of urgency or fear. It was just gross for the sake of being gross, which was disappointing. I’m not saying that Togane isn’t the type of person to beat a crippled old lady to death, because he is, but I also never thought he was an idiot, and the progression of his attempts to blacken her hue jumped straight to the moon instead of progressing at a pace that felt more natural/reasonable. If the guy hasn’t been eliminated by an inspector after blackening many of their hues, he’s not the kind of dope to take silly risks. He could have tried any number of things to ruin Akane that didn’t involve her poor old granny (who had no real screentime and whom the audience had no connection with anyway).

S2 also gave us Ginoza doubting Akane’s sanity early on (acting like she might have written WC on her own wall), which not only feels incredibly out of character for S2 Ginoza, but never amounts to anything/goes anywhere anyway.

Hungry Chicken was an interesting touch, but SO MANY PEOPLE DIED that its impact was diminished. Division 3 had such a non-appearance in the series anyway that them being there at all just felt stupid without more lead-up.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think S2 is irredeemable, but I feel like it missed the mark consistently from start to finish. A shame, because the concept of a ‘plural’ psycho-pass might have been nifty if, say, Kamui was made up of 5 or 6 people’s bodies. Then the holos would feel meaningful. Then each ‘part’ of him would feel like a different person with different feelings and motives and skills.

Anyway, I think S2 muddied the waters too much with Kamui and the body doubles and Shisui all that nonsense, too. At a certain point if your plot gets too complex, especially with overblown concepts thrown into the mix, it just feels silly. That’s basically what happened to S2.

Again, S1 wasn’t perfect. Makishima was exhaustingly boring. Cool, so you can quote a bunch of crap you’ve read. Great. So can I. Who are you as a person, though? That Guy in my Philosophy 101 class who argued with the professor? Yeah, I could picture that!

People love waxing poetic about how amazing an antagonist Makishima was, but the dude was a hollow shell quoting things other people said 100+ years ago. It felt like he didn’t even have his own thoughts, and as far as I saw, there weren’t even any fake philosophers mixed in with the rest to make us feel a little extra immersed in the world (and/or give us another philosophical spin on the situation).

Hey, maybe that was the point, but I’ve never seen that criticism leveled fully at the character/plot in general, so here we are.

It was just too heavy-handed. By the end of the series I wanted him dead just so I could stop listening to his mini-lectures.

Still, it may as well have been amazing compared to 184-People-Stitched-Together being the main antagonist.

I think the movie jumped in face-first and was perhaps a little too...all over the place? But I didn’t have to endure 184 people as a single person, or ears in boxes, so... I consider it a win.

The bitter reality when it comes to Psycho Pass and the plot is that...the plot is its greatest strength, but it’s Not That Deep...even though you can tell that it’s consistently trying to be. Oof.

I think if they’d shot for something less complex, especially in S2, they’d have at least met their goals of depth/consistency. Instead what we ended up with was having a fairly decent plot devolve into one of the worst second seasons I’ve seen.

Characters & Character Development

For such a small cast, I think PP did a pretty piss-poor job with most of their characters, but the series as a general rule is so plot-heavy that it’s not really surprising.

I can’t help but expect a lot from a series that only has a few ‘main’ characters. In this case, Akane is the Big Main Character, and is flanked by Kogami and Ginoza. In S1, there was a decent balance (with Masaoka and Kagari thrown in). In S2, it was mostly just Akane and The Bad Guys, which would be fine if the plot was incredible, or The Bad Guys were super duper interesting, but as discussed previously, the plot was akin to liquid cat barf and the characters weren’t treated much better. It was a little insulting to be handed characters who could be really fun in the right hands (literally everyone) only to see them used as plot vehicles/hallucinations/memory thoughts. Kogami randomly appearing for long boring scenes wasn’t fun or cool; it was uninspired. It’d be way cooler if it was for five seconds and felt like a...memory, almost...a passing thought. For more screentime, it could even happen more often. But no, it’s gotta be like two minutes long.

How about the scene where Saiga talks to Koichi who just keeps turning into Kamui and he talks for like five straight minutes? UGH. Is this supposed to feel deep and meaningful? It doesn’t.

Shion sleeps with Yayoi so she can monologue plot things while Yayoi is getting dressed. Can I add that Yayoi doesn’t matter at all at any point, and Shion conveniently can do anything that needs to be done because Reasons?

Togane isn’t around long enough to feel like a worthwhile villain. Nobody cares about Shisui because we honestly don’t even know who she is! Oh, were we supposed to feel bad for Division 3? We’re supposed to feel gross about Akane’s grandmother but the writers took one line in S1 and used that to try and break the character (while also knowing full well it wouldn’t have any effect on her). Let’s not forget Mika, who is remembered as being incredibly annoying...while everyone forgets/doesn’t notice that she’s the student from the boarding school who didn’t die (and we never see her outside of work doing her own thing, which adds to her just being a pain).

Ginoza seems a little like he’s supposed to fill a spot his father left, but he doesn’t, and he’s pushed to the background to...not really do anything of import. Hinakawa is a worthless character who exists just for one plot-specific purpose. Saiga exists so that more dialogue can happen and not seem too out of place.

I’m not saying the character writing overall is trash, but it definitely ain’t good, and I think S2 is where it really struggled. S1 gave us a really interesting character in Kogami. Akane was learning and struggling to fit in at work and do things well, which was somewhat relatable. Ginoza was struggling with his mental health throughout the entire first season and had a lot of character development. But then S2 happens and the development kind of...stopped? Akane didn’t seem to really learn much because she was too busy always being right? Kogami noped out of Japan so I didn’t expect anything with him specifically, but why couldn’t Yayoi have moved into the limelight? Shion? One of the new guys? ANYONE?

Don’t get me wrong. I still have characters I like, and I can see potential in the others. I just wish I was seeing more than potential is all, especially with characters like Yayoi that have been around from Day1 and still haven’t really done anything noteworthy.

General Criticisms/Other Thoughts

There’s a lot of shock-value violence (SVV). I guess you could say I ‘get’ the purpose of it, but there’s literally no reason that helmeted person couldn’t have beat a man to death with a hammer instead of a woman, especially considering that we have to see Spooky Boogie’s corpse looking grotesque and plenty of other crimes against women.

I feel like S2 was especially guilty of SVV, but it existed in S1, too, pretty much to the point that it started to anger me. It might not have bothered me as much if some of the violent acts were cases that stood alone, but they were all linked to the main plot and that somehow seemed to make it worse.

I also wasn’t a fan of Akane constantly being naked/near naked, of Yuki being in her underwear/negligée, of every crime against a woman ending up with a woman’s clothes being removed, and (the list goes on). One of these things? I might be able to overlook. All of them? Come on. Don’t pretend these creators weren’t doing this for their own purpose.

(I know the scene with Aoyanagi gave us the men getting undressed too [This is your natural self!], but then they showed her with all these action scenes, legs spread wide open, coordinated lacy undies/bra... C’MON. All the butt-shots of Professor Saiga and Kogami don’t make up for this or cancel it out. I KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS ARE DOING AND I DO NOT LIKE IT.)

The music was mediocre but acceptable/fitting.

The animation is nice.

Overall

This isn’t a series I’d recommend to just anyone. It has a lot of issues, and they range from being petty annoyances to straight up offensive. If you can ignore the misogynistic undertones and general lack of consistent attention to the characters, there’s a decently interesting plot waiting for you.

Unfortunately the series just feels...lacking, in the end. There is a S3 coming out (apparently featuring other characters), so the creators aren’t done playing in this world. Maybe S3 will fix some of the consistency issues?

I’ve seen a lot of people make comments about Psycho Pass being a ‘genius’ work, ignored by the general public despite its godliness. I agree that it doesn’t get the attention you’d expect a series of this caliber (nice animation, decent soundtrack, likable main female character who isn’t some moeblob) to have, but I think I hit upon all the reasons it’s not everyone’s cuppa in the first place...and while it is open for fanfiction and so on, the lack of attention to the characters by the series itself makes it less likely to appeal to the sort of people who write fanfiction. So there you have it: a pretty decent, mostly coherent series that’s terribly violent and misogynistic. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but worth a watch if you can get past those pesky negatives.

#psycho pass #psycho pass meta #don't sleep on this title yall

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chercher0w0 · 5 years

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A Discovery of Witches - Show vs Book - 1

If you don’t want to read this long rambling mess of thoughts, I’d say that, in summary, the show and book are great complements for each other. As usual, I would say that it’s best to read the books first and get all the plot through Diana’s POV, as well as more of her inner thoughts. Then, follow up with watching the show to see the other supporting characters more fleshed out, as well as, in general, be able to get solid visualizations of the places, people and magic in the story.

Goes without saying that under the cut there are spoilers for the whole of ADOW S1, as well as mild spoilers for Book 2 and 3, especially at the end where I speculate about Season 2 =w= (( for more ADOW and bishmont feels, my fandom trash site is @cherchersketch. Once S2 is out, I’ll probably throw my episodic book vs show ramblings there ))

Opening

In lieu of some sort of opening song, every episode starts with these words, as well as Matthew’s voiceover, ending with him reciting a phrase that his father once said, “In every ending, there is a new beginning”. It’s interesting because in the book, the titular phrase “ A Discovery of Witches” only appears towards the end as Diana is trying to find out more about Ashmole 782. The mention of Phillipe’s words don’t even show up until near the very end of the second book, Shadow of Night. It is an intriguing way to get viewers interested in the show though. From the very first episode, it’s speculated that Ashmole 782 contains the origins of all 3 types of creatures, vampires, daemons, and witches. It is also reminiscent of Matthew’s speech in episode 2 that only two emotions keep the world turning, desire and fear. The title cards confirm that that is true, Ashmole 782 does, at the very least, contains the origin of witches and their first spells. Especially since, in the actual scene where, in the book, Diana sees those words scrawled on a piece of paper, together with one of the missing Ashmole 782 pages as well as a letter from her parents. Instead of the letter and this phrase, the show uses the house as the expository catalyst instead. In episode 8, Diana only receives the missing page. The house shows, through some sort of flashbacks, more or less what the letter states. It’s one of the many ways the show writers really did a great job changing details so the exposition can be shown, instead of just told outright.

Opening Scene

Honestly, when I first read the book, I was surprised how different the very beginning is. As usual, the main point for switching things around is to be able to organically show and gradually introduce viewers to the world of the series. From Matthew’s opening dialogue, which is the very first shot we see as well as the first dialogue we hear for this and every episode, “Once the world was full of wonders but it belongs to humans now. We creatures have all but disappeared. Daemons, vampires and witches hiding in plain sight, fearful of discovery, ill at ease even with each other.” it immediately lets us know how this world is different from ours, the existence of these three types of supernatural creatures, as well as their hostile attitude towards each other.

It also shows us Diana not having complete control of her powers, accidentally activating them in public. And most importantly, establishes the magic of the book, Ashmole 782. I love the shot of the librarian not finding it initially, then suddenly seeing it in the empty spot as she’s walking back with the rest of Diana’s requested books. In the actual book, it directly opens with Diana having Ashmole 782 in front of her, a brief description of it, and then a bunch of exposition about herself, her parents and her powers.

Bishmont

Another thing that surprised me, how they changed many scenes to have more Diana x Matthew scenes. Because lbr, we all know what sells. Haha.

From the very first time they meet, the scene in the book and TV show are very different. Also, quite understandably, due to the differences a more visual medium like TV has versus a book which can more easily describe stuff that can’t be shown. In the book, Diana has slightly more control over her powers, in that she vaguely knows it just takes a bit of desire, so to retrieve the book she needs, she just imagines the book in her hand and it flies there. She only realizes that Matthew is also there, noticing her use of magic, because as a witch she can feel when the different types of creatures are looking at her, so she feels his stare as cold spots in her back. In the show, Diana’s grasp of her powers are weaker and more erratic, so the book she hopes to get instead flys off the shelf and lands in Matthew’s hands.

In the book, Matthew’s initial realisation of his craving for Diana is much more reserved than in the show, though it’s through similar catalysts. On the show, we get that scene of Matthew sniffing Diana’s dropped sweater and just barely being able to control his predatory instincts, prompting him to momentarily run to Scotland to hunt. In the book, a similar thing happens, in that Diana leaves her sweater in his car from being driven home from yoga. It’s implied he got a similar reaction to her scent, though he only tells Diana about it later on, once he’s returned from Scotland.

Another beautifully added scene is the one before the dinner Diana invites Matthew to. In the book, it goes as expected. On the show, the addition of Peter Knox barging in beforehand to harass Diana, leading to Matthew rushing in with vampiric speed to stare down Knox is gr9 because there can never be enough growly protective Matthew scenes.

One aspect of Matthew’s initial stalking of Diana that I feel the show really improved on over the books, is when he breaks into Diana’s room to find Ashmole 782. On the show, he takes advantage of the fact that Diana is out rowing to look through her room to find it. In the book, he just creaks in while she’s sleeping and even makes sure she stays asleep by feeding her his blood. Kind of approaching Twilight’s Edward level of creepiness, though at least it’s more of a means to an end instead of some weird desire to watch Diana while she’s asleep.

Since they don’t usually show the whole thing on TV, unless it has a higher rating, I didn’t really catch on that they haven’t fully done the nasty at this point. Only realized it when I read that Matthew is specifically refusing to go all the way (for now. Until we learn why in Book 2 ;w;) and on a rewatch saw that yea, he’s just... using his hand or his mouth :x

One thing I do enjoy in the books over the show is that there’s more time for Diana and Matthew’s relationship to slowly develop. When I first watched it, it felt a bit too fast to be honest, though I did still enjoy the chemistry between Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer, and a lot of the bishmont scenes were 🔥 🔥 🔥 It was pretty obvious that a lot of scenes had to be cut out to fit everything into the 8 episodes. In the book, though they’ve also known each other in the same short amount of time, but the way Diana and Matthew’s feelings for each other gradually develop through several dates and yoga lessons (OMG the yoga) makes it seem less Insta-lovey.

Diana

As I stated at the beginning, the book and the show complement each other. On the show, Diana is shown as being extremely athletic, often rowing by herself or going for a run. It doesn’t really seem to have much significance other than showing that Diana has hobbies outside of her academic work and occasionally providing an excuse for her to be alone so she can be snatched up (yes we know the scene I’m talking about). In the book, there is actually an explanation for it. We are told that Diana’s power incontinence leads to a build up of adrenaline which leads to her panic attacks, an unfortunate effect of the spellbinding on her. To work off the excess adrenaline, she turns to sport as she hates having to rely on medication to regulate it. Also, as previously mentioned, book!Diana seems to have a bit more “control” over her powers whereas TV!Diana does’t seem to at all. She also seems to have more of a witch’s power for the third eye, seeing visions when she looks at certain objects, like Matthew’s armour.

Matthew

I would say the main difference between book!Matthew and TV!Matthew is his anger management. From Diana’s description in the book, in the beginning Matthew seems to have an extremely quick temper, being able to go from calm to furious in a matter of seconds, even over seemingly small matters. Later on, it is revealed that he has an inherited blood rage problem. But without knowing that, initially it just seems like a red flag issue and someone Diana should avoid. On the show, Matthew Goode portrays a Matthew (Clairmont) that is always tightly in control of himself, but not necessarily with a hair trigger fuse. His bursts of violence only appear when Diana is threatened so it seems more justified to the viewer. And book!Matthew’s eyes do the thing where they go all black when he’s in the throes of a blood rage. I’m interested to see how it will be portrayed on the show in the next 2 seasons. Honestly, TV!Matthew never seemed overtly prone to anger like in the books. Just the “usual” overprotective vampire growling and fighting. Guess we’ll have to see how the show is gonna portray it because it’s a pretty major point conflict in the relationship in book 2 and 3.

A bit of a minor detail but in the book, it is shown how impressive Matthew’s academic career is since his living quarters are in an exclusive area of the campus, as befitting his title as one of the very few with an All Souls scholarship.

Gillian (and her friendship with Diana)

Book!Gillian is a bit more of a throwaway character than TV!Gillian. Book!Gillian seems to be more of a casual acquaintance to Diana, just another one of the Oxford area witches trying to get her to join the local coven. I like the modification in the series where they made her a closer friend to Diana. It gives a greater impact when Gillian ends up betraying Diana’s trust, spilling the secrets Diana thought were safe with a friend to Peter Knox. It amplifies the feeling of loneliness and isolation that Diana goes through when she learns there is no one in Oxford she can really trust, other than Matthew even though she’s only just gotten to know him. She is also portrayed as slightly more sympathetic on the show. In the book, she is just an example of the many witches in the area who despise other creatures, and thus looks down on Diana for fraternizing with a vampire. This disdain, plus her ambition to be a part of the congregation, leads her to doing Peter Knox’s dirty work, like breaking into Matthew’s lab and sending Diana the gruesome photos of her dead parents. On the show, she seems to have more of a timid personality, making her a bit of a doormat that is easily manipulated by Knox. She is also given a lower position, still being unable to qualify for tenure while Diana is one of the youngest to have done so at Yale, giving Gillian a bit of an inferiority complex. This makes it easy for Knox to feed her lies about Diana using her powers for her own academic gain, leading Gillian to carry out Knox’s dirty work in order to gain more of a status in her witchy community.

It’s also an interesting detail that later on, when Matthew sucks her blood as payback for breaking into his lab, on the show it’s presented more as him wanting to know what Gillian has seen and how much she was able to report to Knox. It kind of implies that the extra blood loss that lead to her death might have been due to her dragging herself all the way to the house of the coven leader, at least, that’s how I saw it. Matthew later on even mentions that he didn’t mean to kill her. In the book, since we’re not really shown the scene, it is just mentioned that Matthew sucked her blood and killed her for revenge. Since Matthew is one of the two main leads, and Gillian was a closer friend of Diana’s than in the book, it makes sense they would want to tone down the extent of Matthew’s culpability while still having Gillian end up dead.

Marcus (and his children. Or lack thereof)

There’s a bit more of Marcus in the show than the book, which is nice. We see book!Miriam more in the beginning since she’s the one who guards over Diana in the Bodleian on Matthew’s behalf. Understandable as being Matthew’s lab assistant gives her access to the same areas in Oxford, unlike Marcus who works somewhere else. I liked the added interaction of Marcus and Diana where she asks him what food to prepare for her dinner date with Matthew, in exchange for letting him and Miriam draw her blood. It’s a cute scene.

We are first shown that vampires are increasingly failing to sire by TV!Marcus failing to save his friend, James. They then analyse his blood, proving that he has the same genetic markers as other cases of failed sires. In the books, it’s just a vague mention of it happening to other vampires. The show kind of gave me the impression that it was the first time Marcus had tried siring but in the books, he has a whole family of children in New Orleans. I’m curious how the show will incorporate that then, since they’re sort of an important plot point for certain events, especially in Book 3. Also, the point that Marcus attempted to sire James without asking for his permission first brings to mind Matthew’s previous siring of Cecilia that led to her suicide. It’s not given a huge emphasis on the show though it comes up twice, so having read the book Matthew’s anger at Marcus siring James without asking for permission is an extra D:

Pacing and plot changes The biggest difference between the book and the show, is that the book is written in a first person limited style, from Diana’s POV, with a smattering of third person limited chapters to show some scenes where Matthew is away from Diana. The show show employs more of a third person omniscient style. From the start, we are shown all the members of the Congregation, as well as other characters that loom in the background, slowly closing in on our main characters. It’s less of a jarring experience when certain events occur.

Satu In the show, we are shown from the beginning how Peter Knox recruits her into the Congregation, as someone who can take his side in Congregation matters. She is portrayed slightly more sympathetic as instead of just appearing in the middle to open up Diana, we see her already confronting Diana early on to try to gauge Diana’s powers. We also see her try to learn more about Diana by reading through Congregation archives. And we see Peter Knox’s power over her initially as he subdues her using his power. Also, like most witches, she is convinced that Matthew is using his vampiric powers to put Diana under his spell. Though these don’t justify the extremes she goes to, it is less of an abrupt shock when she appears to whisk Diana away from Sept-Tours and open her up to see Diana’s secrets and true powers.

Juliette Another whoa-that-came-out-of-nowhere antagonist in the book. In the show, as with Satu, we see her slowly closing in on our main characters as she is shown to have an obsession with “Matthew”, under Gerbert’s control. Though it does seem kind of :x that Marcus and Miriam didn’t warn Matthew when Juliette broke into his room. It was only a matter of time before she tracked him down to Diana’s home in Madison.

Sophie and Nathaniel Definitely preferred the introduction of Sophie and Nathaniel in the series than the book =w=;;; In the book, when they show up out of nowhere to hand Diana one of the items she needs to travel to 1590, it seems a bit Deus Ex Machina-y because we are only following the events through Diana’s limited POV. In the show, we see Sophie slowly try to decipher who she is supposed to hand her family heirloom to, through her prophetic dreams. The idea of creatures intermixing is also gradually introduced as we find out that Sophie is a daemon born to witches, carrying a witch baby. Also implying that her prophetic dreams is due to her witchly heritage. It also shows us, from the start, Nathaniel’s proficiency in computers, which will come in handy later on.

Deleted Scenes It’s a 579 page book that has to be condensed into less than 8 hours of screen time so of course some things have to be cut.

Yoga Oh the yoga scenes. It would have been vaguely hilarious to see Matthew doing yoga XD Also, it added to Diana and Matthew slowly getting to know each other, as well as the possibility of all creatures getting along. Pacing-wise, it would probably have been a bit too early in the show to introduce the concept of all the different creatures working together in harmony. Throughout the 8 episodes, there’s a nice development from outright hatred, with Gillian’s attitude towards Diana hanging out with Matthew, begrudging cooperation, within the members of the Congregation, tentative co-existence, with Nathaniel’s daemon group talking about how they interact with other creatures and humans, to the shadow congregation/conventicle that Diana’s family, Matthew’s family and Sophie’s family end up forming towards the end of the season.

The ghosts Another practical cut because plot-wise, they don’t really add as much. It would have been fun to see Granny ghost and the other’s checking Matthew out the first time he steps into the Bishop house XD

Season 2 speculations

- Suddenly watching a period piece. Haha. Though considering the ending of Season 1, it’ll probably expand on the story and intersperse bishmont’s 1590s shenanigans with present day details, like Marcus’s leadership of the Knights of Lazarus and what happens between Emily and Gerbert - bloodRage!Matthew. Yes please. I AM HERE FOR IT 🔥 🔥 🔥 - T H E M A R R I A G E and finally getting to see bishmont do the do 😏 - Diana’s R A I N B O W magic. Also, I honestly still can’t quite picture what the knotting that she does with her magic looks like so it’ll be interesting to finally get to see it on screen. - Also quite curious to see if they’ll leave the loss of their first child in. On the one hand A N G S T plus a parallel to Matthew’s first marriage to Blanca. On the other hand, is there enough screen time? Also, the whole fear of hereditary blood rage could cover the same A N G S T.

Honestly, there’s so much plot to cover, I’m curious to see how they’ll do it in 10 episodes (EDIT: thanks for the update on S2′s ep count @adow-trash . Sorry I’m super new to the fandom. Only started diving in on Monday)

#A Discovery of Witches #ADOW #all souls trilogy #Deborah Harkness #adow spec #bishmont

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