Apartment/condo/trailer hunting is making me ill

What do you think of companies like colossal, who are working to bring back the mammoth and thylacine, among others? I’m on their email newsletter list because I’m fascinated and feel the need to keep up with their progress but will it ever actually happen? I’m not convinced. Hopeful, but not convinced

Thanks for the ask! I hope you don’t mind if I ramble a bit, haha; as with all extinction stories, this is something that I have a lot of feelings about.

For as long as I can remember, the various Mammoth People have been making announcements like clockwork that we “will have a live mammoth within ten years!” The first time I heard it was, oh, about twenty-five years ago.

Back then, the plan was to clone directly from permafrost tissue; my understanding is that now the strategy has shifted to gene-editing an elephant to make it into a mammoth. I’ve also heard similar ideas thrown around about trying to make a thylacine out of a numbat or Tasmanian devil, or a Dodo from a Nicobar pigeon. At that point, I have to wonder what the point of it all is?

Professedly, we want to bring these animals back in order to heal the wounds we have left in the web of life. To have them step back into their places, as though they had never left. But how could a genetically-modified numbat or elephant ever fill such bespoke shoes? Even if we were capable of it, how would we even begin to “program” the instincts and behaviors of animals of which we know so little?

Do we, instead, simply want the satisfaction of seeing a lost animal standing in front of us (or at least, something that looks like one)? Anyone who loves extinct species is familiar with the hunger for photos, videos, sound recordings—anything, to see them. Will we be happy if science can present us with the living, breathing equivalent of a museum’s goose-feathered imitation Dodo? A Disneyland sort of creature, like Franklin Dove’s unicorns, with no natural place outside of some big budget exhibition?

(Has the existence of rebred Tarpans and Heck Cattle soothed the ache we feel when we look at cave paintings of ancient horses and bulls?)

Personally, I would jump at the chance to see an extinct animal be alive again, in any form or capacity. Even just seeing a realistic CGI reconstruction of a passenger pigeon flock, or a Steller’s sea cow, would absolutely thrill me. Selfishly, I can admit that I do just want to see them—to have that lost experience of knowing what it was like to look at these lost creatures. As long as I feel that way, I can’t judge de-extinction efforts too harshly.

The fact is, though, that DNA is much more fragile and complicated that anyone could have guessed during the first heady days of Jurassic Park.

When Celia, the last living bucardo died, the effort to clone her was already in progress. The team had so many factors on their side: tissue samples collected while Celia was still alive; an ideal proxy species to carry the cloned offspring; a thorough understanding of the biology and reproductive mechanisms of goats. It was as close to an ideal situation as could be hoped for. Nearly 300 embryos were created; a single one survived to term. That clone died minutes after birth, due to a malformation of her lungs, giving the bucardo the rare distinction of being the only animal to go extinct twice.

And that’s not even getting into the problems presented by the theoretical cloning of egg-laying animals (which also represent the majority of extinct species).

Technology progresses in ways we could never imagine. One day, I’m sure the things that these groups promise will be possible, and more; we’ll discover the cure for cancer, and the cure for regret. For the time being, though, de-extinction is a self-indulgent distraction. It’s attention-getting clickbait, at the expense of animals that are still here to save—a plan to raise the crumbling hulk of the Titanic, while ignoring a thousand other ships sinking around us without a lifeline.

I know some of the companies involved do state that they intend to use their discoveries and funding to benefit extant endangered species, but I don’t think it undoes the damage that is done every time a website runs a headline like, “This Company Is Bringing Back the Dodo by 2030!”. It all erodes the gravity of extinction in a way that greatly concerns me. The more times a person sees de-extinction presented as a simple, achievable matter, the closer they will come to the conclusion that, well, extinction isn’t forever. And if the loss of a species can be so easily reversed, then why should anyone be overly concerned about its prevention?

Meditations on True Crime: A Very Long Post

In around February of this year, I was researching a potential video related to how true crime media portrays websleuths, contrasted against their efficacy in each specific case. The introduction was a brief primer on the genre’s evolution, beginning with its general association with low-budget LifeTime films, to a hobby with more dignity than that. I remember finding an article talking about Serial, and there was some commentary in there from another large true crime podcast host.

I didn’t think it was particularly useful for my purposes, but it said something to the effect of “true crime as a hobby can help women reconcile the trauma related to being in a world that is so hostile to us.” I rolled my eyes at it. It seemed dishonestly saccharine, like it was giving a sort of post-hoc legitimacy to just enjoying whodunnits. I didn’t think about it again for around seven months after I’d read it.

One of the subjects that I intended to talk about was Elisa Lam’s death and the online reaction to it. The story was adapted into a Netflix series a few months prior, and I was freshly reminded of how poorly it all sat with me. If you aren’t familiar with her name, she disappeared in Los Angeles’s Cecil Hotel in 2013, and her disappearance went viral after the respective police department release footage of her behaving strangely in an elevator. The case attained quick viral status and extensive discussion, due to the nature of the video and the hotel’s morbid history. When her naked body was discovered in a rooftop water tank a few weeks later, speculation exploded. But an autopsy isn’t an immediate followup, and the online sleuths would lose themselves to their imaginations in the time between. Many people wanted the murder solved, but many let their speculation fly off the rails. Shady hotel coverups. Metal musician murderers. Fear of the homeless. Ghosts. Demons. Government tuberculosis research. The gang was all there.

If you weren’t active online back then, it’s difficult to properly convey how huge this all was. Everyone was expecting Elisa to have been murdered. Iron-clad. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. She wasn’t. Her death was ruled an accident. She had a severe case of bipolar disorder and she wasn’t taking her medication. The severity of her illness was also not previously disclosed to the public. The working theory is that she experienced a manic episode with psychotic features, climbed in the tank in this state, to eventually strip out of her clothes in late stage hypothermia and drown there. It’s a horrific and painful way to die. All that’s left of you is water contamination – insult to fatal injury.

People weren’t happy with this, but not out of any sympathy for Elisa. There was palpable rage from many who had been following the case. No, she was definitely murdered. No, her killer needs to be brought to justice. No, this isn’t the real story. I don’t like it. I’m not satisfied. There needs to be an ending better than this.

Tragedy isn’t exactly in the habit of being kind to us.

When news of Gabby Petito’s disappearance was spreading, I noticed a lot of similarities between hers and Elisa’s. A woman in her early 20s vanishes while traveling, under very unusual circumstances. Footage was released during both investigations, which portrayed these women in mentally vulnerable states. The story was viral online. People rifled through Gabby’s instagram in the same way they did with Elisa’s tumblr. Social media detectives established an inappropriate amount of investment. Everyone is sure of a specific outcome. The family deserves answers.

Let’s talk about answers for a second. I’d like you to spitball a comprehensive explanation for this one: how could something like this happen? I’m not looking for a “how” in terms of events or circumstances. In this case, this isn’t a question. It’s a protest of the unfairness of it all. My daughter. My sister. My friend. Someone who meant so much to me. It’s a prayer to a vacant sky. It’s not a question, it’s agony. Nothing shy of resurrection can feel like justice. Even if the case leads to a criminal trial and conviction, it does nothing to fill the void loss burns within us. There is no good answer, because there aren’t answers at all.

Let’s talk about ourselves for a second. I noticed many people draw parallels between what they’d seen on the bodycam footage and their own experience with abusive partners. “This could have been me.” Do you really think this is appropriate? Could have been, would have been – these are statements with hypothetical validity. It has nothing to do with you. To emotionally identify with someone does not evidence anything. You’re here. She’s gone. This isn’t about you. She isn’t in the position where she can co-sign anything you say. If she can’t speak for herself, don’t invoke her.

Let’s talk about true crime for a second. It’s funny how true crime marketed to men has a distinctly different texture than true crime marketed to women. The former seems to involve knocking the perpetrator down a peg. It portrays them as something worth our disgust and ridicule. The latter tends to foster emotional identification with the victim. Podcasts and other media in this category tend to be by women, for women, and generally discuss women. This story is presented as catharsis for women who see themselves as similar to them. This woman is no longer a person, but an idea. And it makes me think of that stupid article quote that I resent myself for not having bookmarked. This is reconciliation. These women, in their passing, can be a motivating factor for us to break up with that one dumbass guy. I’m so happy this was a wakeup call. I’m so happy that this made me think about my own experiences. I’m so happy that this did so much for me. Sure, someone actually died, but what is that when compared to my own self-actualization?

I made a comment on Twitter about how disgusted I was with how people spoke of Gabby in such an evasively self-interested way, and someone who likely was of no relation to her interjected with how the family deserved the truth. Truth? What truth? What peace will grisly details give them? Is there any meaningful difference between knowing your loved one died of murder or collapsed from exposure? Or are you just a nosey person who’s projected an inappropriate emotional dog in this fight? Do you want answers for her family, or for your own curiosity?

I really don’t trust shit like that, nor am I willing to give leniency to people who say such things. I think we’ve been conditioned to relate to dead women in a way that’s completely separate from who they actually were. Alive, they’re deep, multifaceted individuals, with an array of likes, dislikes, quirks, and endless little details. Dead, they’re a concept to serve a purpose. The purpose is generally a form of narrative catharsis. The creep gets thrown in prison. A woman’s abusive partner gets the comeuppance he deserves. The story needs a good ending. The story needs an ending that satisfies me. People aren’t stories. Life is not a novel.

The real trauma of others will never belong to you. This not your therapy tool or plaything. This is real pain that will never be theoretical for plenty of people. Know your place. Keep your distance. Don’t objectify the dead.

after the cbt post I'm really unsure if I even want to apply for counselling now

the whole point of looking for therapy was to get help but if it makes things worse then maybe I should just carry on trying to do it myself?

I don't fuckin know

that was meant to be my out for feeling like this what the fuck do I do now

Like. First off this is about CBT, not about counseling generally, which has been really useful once I've found the right process. I don't know if you're in the UK or not, but while accessing NHS counseling hasn't always been easy and it took a while to find the right fit, when I did get a counselor and approach that fit my needs it jumped my healing forwards by miles, it really can be a lifesaver (plus tbh if you're really deep in the doldrums, it can help just by giving you some structure and space). Don't stop looking for counseling because it absolutely can make a huge positive difference, I don't know where I'd be without the counseling I got from the rape crisis center and the NHS. There's a lot of types of therapy/counselling out there and what works for you isn't something I can predict - for me what I've reacted to best is freeform talk therapy, but other people find that really hard to engage with and prefer more structured or theoretical therapies, and the NHS offer a lot of different ones (they just tend to jump to CBT first).

So, beyond that; some people do find CBT really helpful. But the way the NHS specifically uses CBT is outside its recommended use, which is treatment for OCD, BPD, anxiety and some PTSD symptoms (although not PTSD itself). The NHS basically uses it as a first stop for pretty much all mental health patients as far as I can tell (because, as I say, it's cheap and easy to apply) so, much like most people with MH problems I know have been on Citalopram (which is their first stop SSRI), most people I know with MH problems have been to CBT sessions. And with that range of problems, most of them won't find what they need in CBT, which, again, despite how it's currently used, is not designed as a general purpose treatment but specifically to help manage repetitive thought and behaviour patterns.

For some people, managing thought and behaviour patterns is what they need, at least temporarily. My partner found it very helpful to keep him out of breakdown territory during a hard time, and so have several friends I know (seems to have positive impacts particularly on friends diagnosed with BPD bc BPD diagnostic criteria, which focus on intense reaction and toxic thought spirals, line up really well with what CBT is designed to help with).

I think the way in which it's harmed me and others isn't the actual treatment, but the fact that it's treated as if it Should Work and that can make you feel way worse if everyone tells you 'CBT and mindfulness is a magic cure that fixes all your brain problems' and then it. doesn't. because your specific problem isn't what is designed to fix. and I think that harm is mitigated by knowing that a) what works for you is highly personal even within diagnoses, b) at the time you get CBT you probably don't have a concrete diagnosis beyond Something Ain't Right and c) CBT, even when it's right for you, isn't meant to be the end point.

CBT is, specifically, a stop-gap. It's meant to help you keep going with your life while you sort stuff out. Again, because of budget reasons the NHS kind of hope that your problems won't be too bad so that CBT will give you a good enough stable starting point to sort your own shit out without further support, which does work for some people, but for most of us CBT should be part of a larger treatment journey if used at all. CBT is a bandage - it doesn't close the wound, but where it works it stops you bleeding out long enough to either get to a hospital or for your body to heal itself.

I'm not going to lie to you - for a lot of us, getting through to the point where we're accessing the right treatment can be a slog. And because of how the NHS works, it can mean going to CBT, finding it doesn't work for you, and gritting your teeth through a six session course so you can go back to your doctor and say 'see, this didn't work for me and the CBT people agree, what else ya got?' My partner's just sat through 14 sessions of group therapy he found extremely stupidly designed specifically because sometimes that's what you gotta do to get referred on for one-on-one talk therapy, which is what he actually needs.

Like I say, the harm comes when you're made to feel like you're failing therapy. You don't fail therapy. Therapy that isn't working just isn't the right setup for you for whatever reason and that's not a flaw in you, there is no universal catchall therapeutic method. It's always going to be trial and error and if you are able to hold in mind that you're not Bad for finding a counseling style or methodology unhelpful, off-putting or alienating, then badly-fitted therapy shouldn't be nearly as harmful as trying to struggle on manfully alone.

The hardest but most rewarding part for me was the process of learning that I could just say 'this isn't working for me because XYZ, can we try a different approach' and...nothing bad would happen. I wouldn't lose my access to counseling and nobody shouted at me, and when I said 'this isn't working can we change it'...things got better. I was having an absolutely shit and frustrating time with my NHS counselor, I was finding going to counseling a huge stress, and after stewing for a couple of weeks I blew up and said 'I don't like this, this or this, I feel talked down to when you do this, I don't feel like you're listening to me about this, and this thing you're doing keeps making me feel worse' and he got defensive. but he also. changed his practise immediately. and we ended up having a really fantastic and productive 6 months of counseling and I am in private therapy now but I keep referring back to the work he and I did together because it was so useful for me.

So like the takeaways for me are a) know that the fact that this counseling might suck for you doesn't mean counseling in general won't be helpful, there's always going to be some trial and error to find the right fit, b) if it does suck, don't suffer in silence, tell them! if you're sitting there hating it, they're not getting anything out of that either so just let them know that you're uncomfortable, finding it hard to engage, etc (I know this can be really hard and I know for me I only started being able to push back when I was already a couple of years into my treatment journey but do what you can do to communicate your fears) and c) when it works it works.

Getting counseling that works is a journey. It can be wearing and esoteric and a pain in the ass, and sometimes you just don't click with a therapy and sometimes you just don't click with the counselor, but it is absolutely worth pushing through the bullshit because a) change often happens gradually while you're not looking and b) finding a concept who works for you absolutely can change your life super fast. It took me a couple of tries but when I found a counselor and approach that worked for me I managed within 16 sessions to get out of my house, to get a job I liked for the first time, to go out and meet people for the first time in a city I'd been in for 3 years, and to cut out a lot of the people who were making my life unsafe. It's so worth it but it is a journey that takes time and trial and error, so the sooner you start the sooner you're likely to get somewhere that helps you.

*sits down* *pours a glass of water* *pours one for scott westerfeld* *sips*

so here’s my pitch for an adaptation of Uglies specifically and the Uglies quartet* more generally. vague spoilers. i can’t figure out how to make the readmore work anymore so hit J or start scrolling fast.

*theoretically it’s a trilogy with a bonus novel, but I fuckin love Extras.

First, it’s a webseries, because Hollywood refuses to  option a series brutally dissecting the culture of cosmetic surgery and brainwashing through a dystopian lens (gee I wonder why).

The first few videos are amateur vlogging, taking us through the first part of Uglies, aka “Tally and Shay fuck around and find out.” it’s their shared dark web youtube channel, maybe it’s uploaded to the Crims’ private server or something and as bonus content sometimes we see videos that Shay made with Zane before the Crims cut out. either way we have to be convinced, as an audiences, that the girls are sure this is secure. The scene with Paris is never in-video, or if it is it’s just audio of Tally recording herself breaking into the party, so we don’t see the Pretties.

anyway. Tally’s hoverboarding saga, the hypothetical makeover side, sneaking out to the ruins, the good shit. it’s a webseries from the PoV of two kids who don’t know too much about making videos so shots are limited and we can really lean into the suggestions of this world instead of trying to build whole sets.

use of CGI, but only for detail work, leaning into the uncanny valley, making the world of Tally’s city very clean and polished, too clean, and putting skeletons in the Rusty Ruins.

the hoverboarding-down-a-roller-coaster has to be in there, preferably filmed on a GoPro equivalent, but if there isn’t enough budget we cut away from a painted shot of the ruins where Tally’s at the top into static bc the camera went too fast and then it’s Tally and Shay losing their minds with the adrenaline comedown and they kiss nope where was i

Shay’s letter--i can’t remember if it being on paper was a plot point in the books but I’m really feeling video message, ideally uploaded to the same channel, and then when Special Circumstances drop the bomb on Tally we as the audience go oh shit. they’ve seen everything.

this is where the mode of the story changes--no more amateur vlogging, now it’s Tally recording reports for SC. They’re not transmitted, so we just get this video diary of Tally’s trip, a little camera running the whole time, and then....I'm not sure whether it’s Tally talking to herself to vent her feelings, or the footage is cut together as a summary and the video is prefaced with a Very Official Special Circumstances report, so it’s like a debriefing.

The Smoke. That whole thing. the very last part is chaos and confusion and found footage. >:)

PART 3, which is Tally’s video diary of the whole next part of the trip with David. This part is more edited, more condensed, than the earlier parts, and the connecting throughline isn’t always clear. some of it is just the two of them talking, some of it is long epic scenery shots, some of it is after everything goes down and they get Shay back and they’re having these Very Serious Discussions, and those are shot like...the camera is being the record. except for where it isn’t.

SPEAKING OF SHAY. if it’s at all possible to pull this off, Shay is cast with two different actors, one for the first two thirds and one for the last third (and most of Pretties). The first Shay is an actual teenager, zits and all, not a beauty by any means. The second Shay is classic Hollywood cast-a-20-something-as-a-teen, rounded out with makeup to be just inside the uncanny valley. surrounded by everyone else, who’s been living in the woods. This should be the most jarring thing.

The last video is a discussion of informed consent, and the making the plan happens largely offscreen so then there’s a long sequence of Tally hoverboarding back to the city (shot by drone) where she’s just narrating, and the leadup to the ‘make me pretty’ penny dropping that oh. This is Tally leaving a message for herself and she’s not sure who she’s going to be when she watches it.

PRETTIES. Less of an outline on this one, but it works from the same framework of three parts, three storytelling styles--the first part is total Instagram Influencer, professional vlogging, glitz and party culture. The camera is floating now so Tally’s always in frame. Same trick pulled with Tally’s actor so you’re looking at actual different people. Tally and Shay are dating but the conflict is them both refusing to talk about whether this is a casual thing or an actual relationship so when the thing with zane happens it’s a mess.

when tally and zane start looking for the pills, that’s when it flips back to a narration style similar to Uglies, where Tally’s carrying the camera and they’re documenting their crazy adventures, thumbing their noses at SC. maybe it’s also intercut with like, news stories, because trying to film the ice rink scene would be bananas. unreliable narration as they try to pretend they’re completely law abiding.

 from the balloon and onwards, it’s all found footage. maybe anthropological stuff of the village, official reports, and then those end with the camera falling to the floor as the anthropologist is like ‘you’re not supposed to be--’ but we do make it all the way to the camp and the Specials showing up, and this is where the CGI comes in again to get just that over the edge of weird badwrong.

Specials is a mix of surveillance footage, recorded reports, and callbacks to the Crims’ channel in Uglies--at least one shot-for-shot remake but way more dangerous. sometimes the camera is just left running on a log in their campsite and no one even notices, and this is the tragedy, they’ve grown so used to their lives being recorded that they don’t even bother to care.

From Tally going down in Deigo until her message at the end, she doesn’t appear on screen, but she does carry the camera in to her saying goodbye to zane.

HEY REMEMBER HOW I LOVE EXTRAS? EXTRAS IS A MOVIE.

by this point there’s enough following and enough buildup that you might actually get a movie out of this, especially since it’s tackling things that are less explicitly ‘societally expected body modification is bad.’

it’s also dissecting the meta narrative that’s been set up throughout the webseries--it starts with Aya recording herself talking to Moggle, and then we zoom out, getting Moggle in the shot, and from there it’s just leaning into the wild fucking scope of this book. mag lev train? hell yeah. mountain?? hell yeah. the flaws in a society obsessed with reputation and vlogging which cannot be successfully explored within that medium??? hell YEAH. I FUCKING LOVE EXTRAS.

I personally think it would be very cool and narratively sexy if the entire thing was subtitled in English and the characters spoke in Japanese except where they switch into English, like in the book, but I also get like....familiarity and the danger of exoticizing. but driving home that this is the whole world that lives like this.

footage from the webseries is recut and narrated over into something more professional, and interspersed with the movie to catch up people who haven’t watched the webseries, and also to show how the narrative of history gets cleaned up. but if it’s done right, three things should happen:

We barely see anything of Tally’s Ugly days and the Smoke. There are shots of her chatting with her friends and laughing, way back from the Ugly days or the Pretty ones, but we never hear her voice except for the final letter

Shay and the rest of the Crims get important footing in the narrative but Zane is nowhere to be seen.

everyone in the audience, including people who haven’t read the books or watched the webseries, should LOSE THEIR MINDS when she shows up

There’s a post-credits scene of everyone covered in cake after it exploded.

*pauses to drink water* in conclusion give me licensing rights and a good director.

“Hey bro! Check out this Nike ad!” This was my entry point into a new world.

…

Since Carlos had lived mostly outside the United States, he was able to follow soccer on a level I’d never encountered in my hometown. Back then, before social media and the advent of scarf-wearing Northwestern fútbol hipsters, big-time European soccer was like the metric system: Known to almost all but ourselves. But Carlos knew, and immediately used LimeWire to curate me a massive archive of 1990s through early 2000s soccer highlights. What was I doing in the world without them?

Oddly enough, in trying to inculcate me in soccer fandom, he started not with game highlights, but with the advertisements. Yes, Carlos was an educator and a voluntary footsoldier for Big Apparel. Going in, I had no clue about high-quality, internationally popular Nike soccer ads. The ads, written by the legendary Wieden+Kennedy firm, were miniature movies, films that were often creatively daring but also quite funny. The most popular of these ads might be “Good vs. Evil,” from 1996, where Nike’s best soccer players team up to play Satan’s literal army. The blending of sacrilege, theology and comedy just worked, like a more ambitious version of Space Jam that somehow took itself less seriously than Space Jam.

…

Yes, I know ads aren’t supposed to be high art. I understand that they are the purest distillation of manipulative greed. And yet, they sometimes are culturally relevant generational touchstones. While Nike was weaving soccer into enduring pop culture abroad, it was having a similar kind of success with basketball and baseball stateside. These ads weren’t just pure ephemera. Michael Jordan’s commercials were so good that, as he nears age 60, his sneaker still outsells any modern athlete’s. “Chicks dig the long ball” is a phrase (a) that can get you sent to the modern HR department and b) whose origins are fondly remembered by most American men over the age of 35.

Modern Nike ads will never be so remembered. It’s not because we’re so inundated with information these days, though we are. And it’s not because today’s overexposed athletes lack the mystique of the 1990s superstars, though they do. It’s because the modern Nike ads are beyond fucking terrible.

…

They’re bad for many causes, but one in particular is an incongruity at the company’s heart. Nike, like so many major institutions, is suffering from what I’ll call Existence Dissonance. It’s happening in a particular way, for a particular reason and the result is that what Nike is happens to be at cross-purposes from what Nike aspires to be.

…

For all the talk of a racial reckoning within major industries, Nike’s main problem is this: It’s a company built on masculinity, most specifically Michael Jordan’s alpha dog brand of it. Now, due to its own ambitions, scandals, and intellectual trends, Nike finds masculinity problematic enough to loudly reject.

This rejection is part of the broader culture war, but it’s accelerating due to an arcane quirk in the apparel giant’s strange restructuring plan, announced in June. Under the leadership of new CEO John Donahoe, Nike is moving away from its classic discrete sports categories (Nike Basketball, Nike Soccer, etc.) in favor of a system where all products are shoveled into one of three divisions: men’s, women’s and kids’. Obviously Nike made clothing tailored to the specificities of all these groups before, but now, Nike is emphasizing gender over sport. Gone is the model of the product appealing to basketball fans because they are basketball fans. It’s now replaced by a model of, say, the product appealing to women because they are women.

And hey, women buy sneakers too. Actually, women buy the lion’s share of clothing in the United States. While women shoppers are market dominant in nearly every aspect of American apparel, the clothing multinational named after a Greek goddess happens to be a major exception. At Nike, according to its own records, men account for roughly twice as much revenue as women do.

You might see that stat and think, “Well, this means that Nike will prioritize men over women in its new, odd, gendered segmentation of the company.” That’s not necessarily how this all works, thanks to a phenomenon I’ll call Undecided Whale. The idea is that a company, as its aims grow more expansive, starts catering less to the locked-in core customer and more to a potential whale which demonstrates some interest. Sure, you can just keep doing what’s made you rich, but how can you even focus on your primary business with that whale out there, swimming so tantalizingly close? The whale, should you bring it in, has the potential to enrich you far more than your core customers ever did. And yeah yeah yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but those were birds. This is a damned whale! And so you start forgetting about your base.

You can see this dynamic in other places. For the NBA, China is its Undecided Whale. It could be argued that the NBA fixates more on China than on America, even if the vast majority of TV money comes from U.S. viewership. The league figures it has more or less hit its ceiling in its home country, so China becomes an obsession as this massive, theoretical growth engine.

…

Here’s the main issue for Nike in this endeavor: The company, as a raison d’être, promotes athletic excellence. While women are among Nike’s major sports stars, the core of high-level performance, in the overwhelming majority of sports, is male. Every sane person knows that, though nobody in professional class life seems rude enough to say so. Obviously, there’s the observable reality of who tends to set records and there’s also the pervasive understanding that testosterone, the main male sex hormone, happens to give unfair advantages to the athletes who inject it.

Speaking of which, there’s a famous This American Life episode from 2002 where the public radio journos actually test their own testosterone levels. The big joke of the episode is just how comically low their T levels are. Sure, you would stereotype bookish public radio men in this way, and yet the results are on the nose enough to shock.

As a nerdy media-weakling type, I can relate to the stunning realization that you’ve been largely living apart from T. Before working in the NBA setting, I was an intern in the cubicles of Salon.com’s San Francisco office, around the time it was shifting from respectable online magazine into inane outrage content mill. Going from that setting to the NBA locker room was some jarring whiplash, like leaving the faculty lounge for a pirate ship. To quote Charles Barkley on the latter culture, “The locker room is sexist, racist, and homophobic … and it’s fun and I miss it.”

…

The “Good vs. Evil” ad boasts a “Like” to “Dislike” ratio of 20-to-1 on YouTube. On June 17th of 2021, Nike put out an ad ahead of the Euro Cup that referenced “Good vs. Evil” as briefly as it could. In this case, a little child popped his collar and used Cantona’s catchphrase. As of this writing, the new ad has earned a thousand more punches of the Dislike than of the Like button.

When you see it, it’s no surprise that the latest Euro Cup ad is disliked. I mean, you have to look at this shit. I know we’re so numb to the ever-escalating emanations of radical chic from our largest corporations, but sometimes it’s worth pausing just to take stock and gawk.

…

But today we are in the land of new football, where we take dictatorial direction from less-than-athletic minors. After her announcement, we are treated to a montage of different people who offer tolerance bromides.

“There are no borders here!”

“Here, you can be whoever you want. Be with whoever you want.”

(Two men kiss following that line, because subtlety isn’t part of this new world order.)

Then, a woman who appears to be breastfeeding under a soccer shirt, threatens, in French, “And if you disagree …”

And this is when the little boy gives us Cantona’s “au revoir” line before kicking a ball out of a soccer stadium, presumably because that’s what happens to the ignorant soccer hooligan. He gets kicked out for raging against gay men kissing or French ladies breastfeeding or somesuch. Later, a referee wearing a hijab instructs us, “Leave the hate,” before narrator girl explains, “You might as well join us because no one can stop us.”

Is that last line supposed to be … inspiring? That’s what a movie villain says, like if Bane took the form of Stan Marsh’s sister. Speaking of which, was this ad actually written by the creators of South Park as an elaborate prank? It’s certainly more convincing as an aggressive parody of liberals than as a sales pitch. Why, in anything other than a comedic setup, is a woman breastfeeding in a big-budget Euro Cup ad?

It’s tempting to fall into the pro-vanguardism template the boomers have handed down to us and sheepishly say, “I must be getting old, because this seems weird to me,” but let’s get real. You dislike this ad because it sucks. You are having a natural, human response to shitty art. This a hollow sermon from a priest whose sins were in the papers. Nobody is impressed by what Nike’s doing here. Nobody thinks Nike, a multinational famous for its sweatshops, is ushering us into an enlightened utopia. Sure, most media types are afraid to criticize the ad publicly. You might inspire suspicion that what you’re secretly against is men kissing and women breastfeeding, but nobody actually likes the stupid ad. No college kid would show it to a new friend he’s trying to impress, and it’s hard to envision a massive cohort of Gen Z women giving a shit about this ad either.

Now juxtapose that ad not just against the classics of the 1990s but also the 2000s products that preceded the Great Awokening. Compare it to another Nike Euro Cup advertisement, Guy Ritchie’s “Take It to the Next Level.”

…

Here’s the problem, insofar as problems are pretended into existence by our media class: The ad is very, very male. Really, what we are watching here is a boyhood fantasy. Our protagonist gets called up to the big show, and next thing you know he’s cavorting with multiple ladies, and autographing titties to the chagrin of his date. He can be seen buying a luxury sports car and arriving at his childhood home in it as his father beams with pride. Training sessions show him either puking from exhaustion or playing grab-ass with his fellow soccer bros. This is jock life, distilled. Art works when it’s true and it’s true that this is a vivid depiction of a common fantasy realized.

Nike’s highly successful “Write the Future” ad (16,000 Likes, 257 Dislikes) works along similar themes.

…

The recent Olympic ads were especially heavy on cringe radical chic, and might have stood out less in this respect if the athletes themselves mirrored that tone on the big stage. Not so much in these Olympics. It seems as though Nike made the commercials in preparation for an explosion of telegenic activism, only to see American athletes mostly, quietly accept their medals, chomp down on the gold, and praise God or country. Perhaps you could consider Simone Biles bowing out of events due to mental health as a form of activism, but overall, the athletes basically behaved in the manner they would have back in 1996.

But Nike forged onwards anyway. This ad in celebration of the U.S. women’s basketball team made some waves, getting ripped in conservative media as the latest offense by woke capital.

…

“Today I have a presentation on dynasties,” a pink-haired teenage girl tells us. “But I refuse to talk about the ancient history and drama. That’s just the patriarchy. Instead, I’m going to talk about a dynasty that I actually look up to. An all-women dynasty. Women of color. Gay women. Women who fight for social justice. Women with a jump shot. A dynasty that makes your favorite men’s basketball, football, and baseball teams look like amateurs.”

When she says, “That’s just the patriarchy,” the camera pans to a bust of (I think) Julius Caesar. At another point, the girl says, “A dynasty that makes Alexander the Great look like Alexander the Okay.” Fuck you, Classical Antiquity. Fuck you, fans of teams. You’re all just the patriarchy. Or something.

Nike could easily sell the successful American women’s basketball team without denigrating other teams, genders and ancient Mediterranean empires that have nothing to do with this. Could but won’t. The company now conveys an almost visceral need for women to triumph over men because … well, nobody really explains why, even if it has something to do with Undecided Whaling. In Nike’s tentpole Olympics ad titled “Best Day Ever,” the narrator fantasizes about the future, declaring, “The WNBA will surpass the NBA in popularity!” ​

…

There are theories on the emergence of woke capital, with many having observed that, following Occupy Wall Street, media institutions ramped up on census category grievance. The thinking goes that, in response to the threat of a real economic revolution, the power players in our society pushed identity politics to undermine group solidarity. Well, that was a fiendishly brilliant plan, if anyone actually hatched it.

I’m not so convinced, though, as I’m more inclined to believe that a lot of history happens by happenstance. If we’re to specifically analyze the Nike Awokening, there is a recent top-down element of a mandate for Undecided Whaling, but that mandate was preceded by a socially conscious middle class campaign within the company.

This isn’t unique to Nike, either. Given my past life covering the team that tech moguls root for, I’ve run into such people. They aren’t, by and large, ideological. Very few are messianically devoted to seeing the world through the intersectionality lens. They are, however, terrified of their employees who feel this way. The mid-tier labor force, this cohort who actually internalized their university teachings, are full of fervor and willing to risk burned bridges in favor of causes they deem righteous. The big bosses just don’t want a headline-making walkout on their hands, so they placate and mollify, eventually bending the company’s voice into language of righteousness.

…

All the guilt and atonement transference make for bad art. And so the ads suck. There’s no Machiavellian conspiracy behind the production. It’s just a combination of desperately wanting female market share and desperately wanting to move on from the publicized sins of a masculine past. So, to message its ambitions, the exhausted corporation leans on the employees with the loudest answers.

There’s a lot of interplay between Nike and Wieden+Kennedy when the former asks the latter for a type of ad, but the through line from both sides is a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Based on conversations with people who’ve worked in both environments, there’s a dearth of personnel who are deeply connected to sports. In place of a grounding in a subculture, you’re getting ideas from folks who went to nice colleges and trendy ad schools, the type of people who throw words like “patriarchy” at the screen to celebrate a gold medal victory. The older leaders, uneasy in their station and thus obsessed with looking cutting edge, lean on the younger types because the youth are confident. Unfortunately, that confidence is rooted in an ability to regurgitate liturgy, rather than generative genius. They’ve a mandate to replace a marred past, which they leap at, but they’re incapable of inventing a better future.

…

Ironically, Nike mattered a lot more in the days when its position was less dominant. Back when it had to really fight for market share, it made bold, genre-altering art. The ads were synonymous with masculine victory, plus they were cheekily irreverent. And so the dudes loved them. Today, Nike is something else. It LARPs as a grandiose feminist nonprofit as it floats aimlessly on the vessel Michael Jordan built long ago. Like Jordan himself, Nike is rich forever off what it can replicate never. Unlike Jordan, it now wishes to be known for anything but its triumphs. Nike once told a story and that story resonated with its audience. Now it’s decided that its audience is the problem. It wouldn’t shock you to learn that Carlos hated the new Nike ads I texted to him. His exact words were, “I don’t want fucking activism from a sweatshop monopoly.” He’ll still buy the gear, though, just not the narrative. Nike remains, but the story about itself has run out. Au revoir. 

9 years later and we have at last got a new Eva film and the end of the Rebuild project.

Much was made at the start of Rebuild of the desire to introduce Eva to a new audience. 1.0 more or less leant into its original goal and restaged episodes 1 to 6 of the TV series with a bigger budget, CGI, some more blunt and early reveals and a few weird alterations for the existing fan base. The Angel numbering was off; everyone knows Lilith is stuck in the basement, Seele just default to their monoliths. Kaworu is actively introduced at the tail-end rather than alluded to in the opening titles. As an intro, its fine (though most would agree the equivalent stage of the TV series isn’t really a struggle to cope with either), though a few stylistic and environmental changes lead many to conclude this was a direct sequel to End of Evangelion. 2.0 seemed content to build off of the intro but steer away from the relevant section of episodes – roughly 8 to 17. Recognisable moments like the falling Angel, the corrupted Unit 03 and the ribbon angel and Unit 01’s impossible reactivation share the screen with altered relationship dynamics. Now we get Mari one of the few wholly new characters who gets to open the second film in a wildly dramatic fashion. The key of Nebuchadnezzar (which does at least re-enter proceedings in the final film, but I am even shakier on what it is or used for – even fandom seem to have struggle to explain this as anything other than a blunt drop-in replacement for the Adam embryo in the TV series). And come the end its time for Third Impact already, Shinji altering the world around him to rescue Rei from the depths of an Angel. Kaworu uses an unfamiliar spear to incapacitate Shinji and the preview hints at a story further from the rails than ever. 3.0 is as promised more or less completely divorced from anything Eva had done before. Just not the off-the rails version 2.0 advertised. Some will be quick to note that none of the Rebuild previews have entirely accurately advertised their subsequent instalment; 1.0’s features at least one key scene that never happened (Mistao slapping Ristuko in a seeming allusion to the Sea of Dirac Angel) while even the sequences of animation that did make it look nothing alike. Which is fair, but even then 2.0’s bears absolutely no resemblance to 3.0 and even 3.0’s very strange preview doesn’t really jibe with 3.0+1.0 ultimately. 3.0 is post-post-apocalypse and with a whole 14 years just evaporated between films. There’s a distinct last third of Nadia feel to it. About the only part similar to a former incarnation is Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship which while not even roughly mapping to episode 24 serves the same function; to make Shinji distraught before the climax of this story. But 3.0 is also the point where that initial premise of the series slams headlong into the drift from familiar territory. Where the film is a quantum leap away from the mystery terms and slow reveals. The oddities and confusions pile up given the glimpsed state of the world, the strange gridded moon, the sea of Eva corpses, the strange state of Lilith in the depths of Nerv. An awful lot happened while Shinji was (for reasons no one has explained or seems to care about except me) IN SPACE and the film only ever alludes to the sequence of events occurring between these two films in the broadest of strokes. Which if done a certain way can be compelling though I did not find it to be the case here in the slightest. It’s a huge struggle to build up even a vague idea of what went down and that’s with heavy deferral back to the TV series again. If you’re new, none of this means much of anything. Even mixed media doesn’t help. The reveal there was a limited run manga of events prior to 3.0 had a potential for answers, but upon reading a synopsis... Nope. Helps not even a tiny amount. Also this mixed media attitude is never to be encouraged. So, I didn’t like film 3 much at all. Film 4 does little to not be based on where it left off. Which is a small mercy that it doesn’t effectively toss everything out again and skip further ahead in time. And 3.0+1.0 does at least make use of some of what 2.0 revealed and setup in the spirit of trying to get this into something cohesive. It fails, but it tried. Maybe the points it touches on were the intended direction of the films. Maybe Anno changed his mind on this one. It’s not like Rebuild’s failure to cohere should be a surprise – the title of the film is simply confusing in sequence. Titled neither 4.0 nor 4.44, instead we have the pretty inexplicable 3.0+1.0 which is just annoying to type. Even thematically this doesn’t feel right given its more like 2.0 mushed into 3.0 but I suppose that’s technically film 5 so... Unless, 1.0 here is supposed to mean the original TV series or EoE, which... End of Evangelion figures unexpectedly largely in the film. Could be that its meant to infer some collection of the Eva cast (the original pilots + Mari? The Ikari family + Mari? The pilots from 1.0 (Shinji and Rei) plus the pilots from 3.0 (Asuka and Mari)?). The other part of course, is that the three prior films had titles in the form of [Thing](Not)]Thing]. 3.0+1.0 decides to dispense with this entirely and instead is titled “Thrice Upon a Time”. Nothing like confusing matters (and instead media library ordering) by not only giving the film a title that puts it before the 3rd film (since prior to this cinema releases are .0 and the home media (excepting the first release of 1.0) are triple digits of their instalment number) but also has another reference to three within it. It might be some kind of holy trinity allusion, some play on Third Impact, or an acknowledgement that this is theoretically the third version of events surrounding the end of the world (if you take TV series as 1, EoE as 2, and Rebuild as 3). Also potentially a literary reference about cyclical time and messages from the future which is all well and good and fits into a whole other essay about how Rebuild and FFVII Remake are operating on the same basis and making many of the same mistakes by both trying to be fan-service for the new fans and draw in new ones and do the big fan-moments similarly but diverge wildly off in others. Good start! The final film starts with bombast as per 2 and 3 (and thus focused on Mari) though the setup and point of the action is possibly more confused and less explicable (which is saying something given 3.0 opened with retrieving Unit 01 from space. No, I will continue to complain about not getting this. Yes it was very exciting but why was Unit 01 in space? In a strange crucifix coffin. Anyone at all?) – and only vaguely connected to anything resembling the plot. At least 2.0 and 3.0 had some immediate and long term stakes with a cover for Kaji stealing something and bringing Shinji into the plot. This film opens with a scrounge for spare parts in a red Paris that the tertiary cast make no longer red while Mari fights off a massed horde of Evas while battleships are puppeteered from orbit. It’s all terrible cool and everything, but given at no point do we even begin to understand what is going on or what the stakes even are. Which is a problem with the latter half of the sequence. 2.0 might have started with an Eva vs Angel fight but while there was ambiguity over the situation it at least seemed to lead into the eventual plot. Here we’re getting Eva spare parts for later and a whole dose of new terminology the film has no interest in explaining. Which is par for the course for prior Eva incarnations but again, I feel there was more explanation setting the weirdness up. Here we are reduced to keywords that sound important. The film proper opens with our familiar trio of Eva pilots winding up at a village with their old classmates (which of course, to follow the proliferations of 3 all the way down and also match to Tokyo-3, is in fact, Village 3. The far future sequel to Resident Evil 8 presumably). Who are necessarily now 14 years older than them. Asuka is naked (in a sequence to contrast to 1.0 and 2.0) or in her underwear for far too much of this sequence (and just as creepy as 2.0 got with this) as Shinji struggles in the aftermath of Kaworu’s death, Ayanami (critically not the Rei of 2.0) learns about life (and visits a library with – I’m not kidding – a poster for Sugar Sugar Rune on display. I like to think not many in the audience caught this slightly odd reference). 30 minutes of the film are taken up with Rei being happy and contented with her life while Shinji slowly recovers and re-enters polite society (sulks, throws up at the sight of the DSS collar, is insulted and force-fed). There’s a good case for this section just being an unnecessary time filler, though you don’t need to fill time in a film that is 2 ½ hours. But if it was cut down, perhaps it would have the same strange feeling as 1.0 had where the aftermath of Shinji’s second Angel fight lead was mostly skipped and left that part of 1.0 feeling strangely hasty and actively (and badly) abridged. Maybe that’s just my familiarity with the source material again. There’s still an edge of weirdness in the air on the film hits the 45 minute mark; even prior to this gigantic sections of the land are missing, and some things just float around now (apparently because). Past this mark is where weirdness creeps in; the barriers keeping the village from suffering the fate of Paris – the structures a curious match to the Cocytus facility at the start of 2.0. There are headless Eva copies who roam the landscape. An indicator on Ayanami’s suit runs down. Shinji is advised to talk to his father before he loses the opportunity forever. This one made me laugh, and even Asuka comments that given who Shinji’s father is and what he’s done don’t really make this plausible (or sensible). Ayanami concludes her pastoral life and this stage of the film by transforming back to her original white plug-suit; her AT Field then dissipates and she bursts in a familiar spill of LCL. For such a previously central character, Rei or Ayanami or Lilith will have exceptionally little bearing on the remainder of the film. The plot now kicks in properly as Gendo decides enough is enough and he’s going to be doing some world ending. Our Eva pilots are ready but not the same; we have Asuka, Mari and Shinji. And standing orders for Shinji to be shot if he tries to pilot anything (but given we’re at the end of the world and basically the original plan fails to stop Nerv bringing about the end of the world, that people still try to shoot him is... a little weird and an almost pointless resolution of factors the quaternary cast brought up in 3.0). The entire rest of the film is even more impenetrable and confusing than Kaworu’s sweeping explanations of what happened between films 2 and 3. If 3.0 fumbled the ball on being newcomer friendly 3.0+1.0 actively doesn’t care. Not that familiarity with series helps since so much new terminology is thrown at the audience. The entire cast – literally the entire cast – are not only caught up on but also understand the varying levels of psychological, biological and religious nonsense that Eva has formerly wielded as something almost coherent. You, as audience member, are not privy to a fraction of this understanding and thus left to flail for the remainder of the film making what you can of the maddening breadcrumb trail of exclamations and partial explanations. Shinji is no help here and infuriatingly asks barely a single question about what is going on (thankfully he does prompt Gendo to explain a few things – presumably where even the staff had gotten lost on what was supposedly going on). For existing fans, you might get a sense of it by application of known quantities from the previous incarnations (I pity newcomers struggling to make sense of this). What the Lance of Cassius is a thing introduced abruptly into the series – and contrasted with the Lance of Longinus you can muddle through to get some idea of what was going on. 3.0+1.0 however, decides that even that grip on its story is too much and adds a bunch more unnamed spears. Some of them formed from Lilith. This is a thing of some import apparently, though ultimately is effectively buzzword name-checking. We know who Lilith is in context from both 1.0 and the TV series but how that relates to spear formation is beyond me. And then there’s the part where one of the flying ships (there were four made according to Seele’s plan. Seele, the former sinister puppet-masters, who died in film 3, and if the flying ships were their idea or this stated at all, I had totally forgotten it in the last 9 years (checking wikia seems to indicate no one else knew this either so I feel vindicated). Seele feel an artefact of the old Eva Anno has no time for – EoE had what equated to three groups vying for control of the process of human instrumentality. Seele are adhering to a prophecy of sorts, Gendo is trying to subvert that process for his own ends, and Misato is trying to stop it. In terms of economical story-telling, the distinction between Seele and Gendo’s goals in causing Third Impact are so slim as to be basically zero (few critical differences though), I suspect Seele were deemed unnecessary and shuffled out of proceedings hastily despite their continued name-checking at this late stage) is turned into another spear because if all the spears are used up, the end of the world can’t be averted. You will have to forgive me for failing to notice how and where most of these spears (save three) wound up or what most of that means or why or how or anything. But we have a budget to squander and why not channel the Gurren Lagann energy for action one last time? And there is some action, this presumably part of what a good section of the audience have waited for with baited breath, that thing the TV series so rapidly lost interest in; that EoE staged for narrative cruelty. Smashy giant robot action time! So we get billions of Eva enemies for Asuka and Mari to cut through without problem. They explode and fall away despite exhaustively overwhelming numbers. There is a palpable lack of threat here. A few hitches but nothing the pilots can’t cope with. It’s just empty fan-service, a boast about how much can be rendered into a single frame. We get Asuka, unable to stab critically important Unit 13 (looking distinctly Unit 01-like just with four arms), and then hooking into an odd leftover thread from 2.0. Her accident in the activation test of Unit 03 has left her with a part of herself now more correctly classified as an Angel. And like 2.0 for surprise value, her Eva has special Angel blood injectors to again overcharge her Eva (which seems to be a thing in the latter three films – turn the Eva safety off and go beserk. As if Unit 01 didn’t do that all on its own in the first and second film). And this too fails. But this too is just another moment of important and pretention. Where the audience is meant to gasp at Eva/Angel hybridisation (not that the dividing line between Angles and Evas is ever completely clear (not least Unit 03)), at Asuka revealing herself to be part Angel (as if Kaworu and Rei weren’t established examples). So her Eva bloated and animalistic is... just another moment. We saw this in 2.0 with Mari releasing her limiters. We saw it in 3.0 in almost the same way. The distinction isn’t meaningfully different to the last few times the Evas were let off the leash and became more brutal. And just like the prior times this escalation of Eva body horror, ferocity, blood and over-indulged violence doesn’t actually help the situation. Asuka fails in her task as the Unit 13 counter-attacks. She’s saved by getting pulled out of reality moments before her end. Of course this being narrative, this being Eva; Gendo, the architect of this situation, is three steps ahead. Misato’s flying ship is badly and perhaps critically damaged so Gendo can retrieve the limbless body of Unit 01 formerly powering the flying ship. Shooting Gendo doesn’t work thanks to the key of Nebuchadnezzar (which did... Uh. Something? Kaji noted it as the lost number kept as a spare in 2.0 which implied Angel or Eva or... No I don’t know nor can I make sense of what it’s done to Gendo. Wikia informs me that while it’s never seen on-screen past the one time, its case is in some shots of 3.0. How amazing) and he leaves. And thus, of course, Shinji must get in the f-ing robot once more. But we’re back to the confident, more certain Shinji who 2.0 birthed as we enter the last (but still very long) final stage of the film – and restage End of Evangelion. Curious of course; EoE by turns can feel like a legitimate replacement for the final two TV series episodes or a bleakly, darkly, disturbing and flippant retort to the low-budget metaphysic version of the TV apocalypse. EoE to some has been not so much the intended ending (though buying a complete set of the old Eva in Japan will always net you the 26 original TV episodes, the four amended episodes and EoE), but more a poisoned chalice for the people who wanted a less introspective version of the end of the world and the process of human instrumentality. Anno was free to do what he wanted and veer off the tracks here – he can’t get away from the end of the world – this is integral to Eva’s base concept. 2.0’s glimpse of Second and the starts of Third Impact depict a process completely unfamiliar from the TV series’s version (reading Wikia explains some of 2.0’s imagery but is still bewildering with reference to 3.0+1.0’s reveals). In Rebuild, the end of the world is staged in the space below the strange aftermath of Second Impact, in an anti-universe where humans cannot venture. And yet, we are still clearly revisiting End of Evangelion. Not exactly the same, but a lot of imagery (the symbols in the sky, the gigantic form of Lilith at multiple points, the crucifix explosions across Earth’s surface) – to say nothing of some actual sections of animation – are taken straight from the 1997 film. Those moments and images were haunting and disturbing (the more overtly sexualised imagery has been completely removed). Clearly no matter what was said at the time or in the interim, EoE is in fact how the ending must play out; this is, or has become, what happens externally and internally when these characters attempt to force a next stage of evolution. The End of Evangelion will always be the end. ...just not quite the same. Not least it is missing most of the infamous moments (Shinji in Asuka’s hospital room is notably completely absent). There’s no moment where Shinji strangles Asuka, Komm Susser Tod is missing entire (in favour of something similar sounding but in Japanese), the live-action sequences of the empty cinema or the world without Evas aren’t utilised (though some live action footage is included), Rei betraying Gendo and beginning Third Impact outside his control etc. It's actively absurd to type this, but Lilith – Lilith! – has less character here. Which is so astonishingly absurd given the only depiction of Lilith we get is effectively Rei/Rei was Lilith the entire time, but those introspective sequences hinting at something more involved with Rei or the points Lilith does talk directly to Shinji are gone too. This shouldn’t be a surprise – we are after all missing a Rei character at the climax. Mostly. 3.0+1.0 almost expects you to remember the last time you saw Eva end the world and contrast it to this new version. The EoE imagery, the footage of Lilith descending from the crucifix, the looming figure of Lilith rising as humanity ends. Even something like the sequence of the backsides of cels running backward is reused – this footage also cribbed from EoE and played out on a wall between two characters. The animation breaks down into scratchy storyboards and later degenerates from finished footage down to outlines, animatics, and storyboard. The end of the world is this time around is more heavily meta. Both EoE and the TV episodes “staged” the process of Instrumentality (or parts of it) for Shinji. It occurs in filming spaces and on sets, there’s lighting equipment and dolls as stand-ins. The strange artificiality of pulling back the curtain on the TV or film production, or else the effect of  setting the camera back further than you should for filming a theatrical experience. But even that’s a false layer given a true pull-back would be to people in front of computers or previously drawing key-frames. Here the staging is more blunt still. It begins with an Eva vs Eva fight between Gendo and Shinji in the anti-universe where their brains make sense of the impossible space with artificially staged areas of familiar locations. A fight in a city has a huge sheet as a backdrop and carboard buildings the Evas kick around. They fight in front of Nerv headquarters and in Misato’s kitchen. A blow knocks over a section of scenery and sprawls Shinji in the studio space surrounding the set. A crossroads of sort where Shinji will move on from Gendo to meet with Rei, Kaworu and Asuka. The major difference to EoE is that the end here is much more concerned with Gendo; we dive into his psyche and his past. His isolation and desire for it. This feels extremely confessional for Anno all things considered given Gendo was always previously kept at arm’s length. This feels revealing about the man behind it all, a reflection of the director. He has admitted during production that at his stage of life he is far closer to Gendo than Shinji – I think this is barely obfuscated here. The flashback is more about understanding Gendo and how Yui changed him than anything about Evas or the end of the world. Gendo’s motivation is revealed to be the same as always; this is how he gets to be with Yui again. Odd details catch as this past plays out. And is that Mari in his memories? Mari, who Fuyustuki calls Mary Iscariot upon meeting her and has prepared something for her. Which feels much more like religious buzz words; there’s an obvious implication coached in that selection of a name, but how it actually relates to the story or the circumstances is really unclear. Nor am I clear on what Fuyutsuki prepared. He explodes into LCL like last time too. The process is so close to EoE but the mood is lighter and the reasoning behind the cast a little different. Asuka is part of a clone series – same as Rei. Just without the physical signifiers that Kaworu and Rei exhibit and the prior short-hand for clones in this universe (as noted, their design is intended to invoke lab rats). Nice consistency there. The beach ending from EoE is re-done under a blue sky; Asuka is saved thanks to Shinji and Mari working in concert. Kaworu’s beach meeting with Shinji is restaged, the newer, confident Shinji discussing the circular system that delivers Kaworu into his place at the end of the world. So Eva has happened before, meta-wise or time-wise or dimensionally. Take it as you will, no interpretation is more valid than another. Only that Kaworu remembers them all. It’s happened before and it’s expected to happen again. But Shinji’s different now, so the end of the world is different. Now it’s time to move on; Kaworu is left with Kaji to tend the earth assured the cycle of Eva productions is at an end – both have been dead all this time. Anno’s attitude to his seeming forever association with this one franchise his and his desire to set it down and move on? EoE finished in space; 3.0+1.0 finishes beneath the Antarctic. The idea of Unit 01 living forever as a testament to humanity is no factor at all Shinji intending (and his parents possibly driving) the final riddance of the Evas from reality – none can be allowed to remain. But now, the film takes an odd turn, and as with EoE, there’s the coda. In EoE this was the beach scene. For Rebuild: The sun shines, the sky is blue. An adult Shinji sits in a train station and meets with Mari. She’s older too now; the pair share a kiss and run from the station hand in hand. So. Uh. Yeah. That happened. There’s Kaworu and Rei seemingly alive and well as adults. And Asuka of course. But Shinji winds up with Mari. Mari who knew everything the whole time and might somehow have been part of Gendo’s group at university and known Yui and no, we are not getting any insight into those peculiarities! (or more plausibly it could be Mari’s mother who looks near identical to Mari but... What are we meant to take from this, really?). Mari who met Shinji in a handful of brief moments and has never spent any actual time with him. Mari won the love-triangle! But this is not some simple alternate reality, a different better take world where the cast existed in something resembling our reality; Shinji still wears the exploding DSS collar given to him before rejoining the giant robot fray. Mari effortlessly removes it from his neck. The film ends with a live-action sequence – this is reportedly Anno’s hometown. The world without Evas; we passed the relevant date while 3.0+1.0 was stalled. Shinji made it to 2014, or more plausibly past it in a world without Second Impact. And he’s happy, well-adjusted, and... Not really recognisable as Shinji. Shinji now exists in the present, not the future as he had for so long in pop-culture. But he’s in a different 2021; a world without the pandemic. And that was Rebuild; a project intended as a new introduction to Evangelion that blatantly had its entire core conceit revised at least twice (the 4th film delayed because of Shin Godzilla and then a struggle to write at all) that increasingly and confusingly leant more and more on its famed initial incarnation even as it veered increasingly and erratically away from the familiar sequences. I liked 3.0+1.0 more than 3.0, but can’t help but still bemoan whatever 3.0 was going to be when 2.0 happened. The alternate other sequence. And despite it all, despite the allusions to a repetition of Eva and of this being the break in the chain, even those working on and involved with the film see even this as a definitive end. Even Anno’s not convinced that’s the last word. Eva will come back all over again; naturally – there’s money to be made here, and what’s yet another alternate take to add to the TV series, the manga, the games, the other manga, EoE, Rebuild and so on. Kaworu apparently is indeed doomed to revisit this forever alongside everyone else and also remember that for once he was gifted a true end. An impossible conclusion for modern pop-culture it feels.

Taiyuu OCT Round 2

@taiyuu-oct

Character Nicknames: Akai-chan: Naishin-Sunomu Seisho Boron: Nerva Rekka Mulan-sensei: Ryujin Mushu-chan: Firecracker Seiryu-chan: Seafoam Pixiu-chan: Lux Yama-chan: Jade

x x x

Yukino yawned as her teachers led both classes somewhere. She groaned. Whatever they were doing was probably interesting, but did they really have to do it so early? She saw a towering figure walking just ahead of her and walked over to her. "Akai-chan..." she muttered as she bumped her forehead into her cru- friend's back. Well, it might've been a little low to call her back...

Akai-chan jumped a little. "T-takeda-kun."

"Akai-chan..." Yukino rubbed her head against Akai-chan's back a little.

"You okay, Yuki-chan?" a voice asked her.

Yukino turned around, rubbing her eyes. "Hey, Boron," she muttered. One of her classmates she was closer to. Mostly because he was a fire-user, to be honest...

"Need some heat?" Boron asked, holding up a ball of his rainbowy fire.

Yukino nodded. "Yeah, thanks." She held her hand up to the fire, using her Quirk to suck the heat from it. She sighed contentedly. Boron's fire was pretty delicious, like a good curry. "That was good, thanks," she said when she was done. Her mind was starting to feel a little clearer after eating that fire.

"Could you please cool me down a little?" he asked.

"Yeah, sure." Yukino held her vapor-wreathed hands out to him again. The early June day was only pleasantly warm to her... but then again so was the hottest day of Summer, so Yukino figured he was probably a little hot considering his Quirk was heat-generating as opposed to heat-draining. A small amount of chilled, vapor-laden air swirled around Boron, cooling him down. Yukino didn't like using her Quirk directly on people if she could help it, that could get really dangerous if she wasn't really careful, but in her experience some slightly subzero air swirling around a person did well enough to cool someone down safely with only a slight drop in efficiency.

"Thanks," he said, then pointed to something. "Hey, I think that that's where we're going," Yukino turned to look at what he was pointing at.

Oh. Ugh, that looked pretty ugly... If she was generous about it, Yukino would describe it as looking vaguely like a small city. Clearly it was meant to emulate those cityscape training grounds Yukino heard about from her brother, but Yukino kinda assumed that the ones in UA weren't cobbled together from what appeared to be dirt. She knew the windows had actual glass, at least; she remembered the time Niichan told her about how he'd gotten the drop on a classmate by jumping through a window. He specifically made sure she knew that she should use her Quirk or something to blow out the glass first before doing that herself, the square...

"What, we gonna learn how to make cities out of dirt now?" Yukino scoffed.

"You might be wonderin' why you were brought here," a voice said. Yukino thought it might be Mulan-sensei, but she was currently standing behind Akai-chan, who was like twice her height, so she couldn't really see who it was. Yukino liked Mulan-sensei, plus she had a dragon Quirk. And her accent reminded her of her mother's. "Please leave all yer questions for the end."

"'Scuse me," Yukino said, scooting by Akai-chan.

"Ah, sorry, Takeda-kun," Akai-chan said.

Yukino... still couldn't see much of Mulan-sensei from behind everyone's backs (being the shortest person in class could be a little annoying sometimes...), but she could at least see her head...

"Today we're testin' how well y'all can do fightin' things that're much bigger than you," Mulan-sensei said. It looked like she pointed at something, but Yukino couldn't see it... "Some of you may have noticed the effects of my Quirk by now. Some of you may have even... befriended ‘em..."

The dragons. They were nice. A little annoying at times, but nice. Plus, y'know, dragons.

"You'll have to pick on of 'em to fight, one-on-one. They won't go easy on ya, aside from makin' sure ya don't get too hurt, so pick carefully! The red one's Firecracker, the blue one's Seafoam, the gold one's Lux, and the green one's Jade. That's all the information I'm givin' y'all right now. Some of you may know more about them, some of you don't have a clue what they can do. Yer gonna haveta deal with that. Ya won't always know exactly what a villain's powers are when ya fight 'em. Now, just two little bits before we get started. First, try to make it quick. We only have one arena and it's supposed to be one-on-one. And second, the use of support items is allowed and in fact encouraged."

Everyone cheered at that last bit.

x x x

Yukino's choice was pretty simple. Sure, she could've given herself more of a challenge if she went for, say, the water-controlling Seiryu-chan, but the exercise wasn't 'pick which dragon you think you'll do worst against and beat him anyway.' And if she wiped herself out taking down her opponent again the teachers would probably start getting annoyed with her... She'd been tempted to see how well she could do against Pixiu-chan's telekinetic control over gold and other valuables, but she could probably talk to Mulan-sensei about that later. And Yama-chan? The other dragons were already big enough, but he could apparently get huge. So again, she did not want to wipe herself out.

So here she was in a city made of dirt, waiting for a big red dragon to try to burn her to a crisp. Not that it'd work, of course. Yukino had never taken the full blast of anyone's fire breath, but between her grandfather and brother she had a lot of experience with using her Quirk to absorb fire breath. And considering what Mulan-sensei said, Mushu-chan probably wouldn't even try to hit her directly with his fire. Which... was actually not good for her. When you get a power up by eating fire it's normally preferable to get hit with fire, after all. She could deal with it if Mushu-chan wouldn't hit her, though.

Yukino scoffed at one of the dirt buildings. She was starting to get a little miffed at how low the school's budget seemed to be. It hadn't bothered her at first, but another incident (or more like series of incidents...) with a certain student who shall not be named had started to sour her feelings about the school... She was half-tempted to drop one of the buildings on Mushu-chan, that probably wouldn't be too hard with how they were made from dirt, but she felt like she might get points docked for intentionally causing collateral damage. Still, something to consider if Mushu-chan started giving her trouble.

Yukino pulled out her bow. She didn't have any arrows on her, but with her Quirk she could make as many as she needed. Hopefully. She fidgeted a little with the bracers she was given for the exercise. An idea for a support item she'd had. They didn't exactly look very pretty, but it looked like they would work like she'd imagined. Just in case, she pointed her free arm at a building and quickly tapped the small grappling hook-like attachment at the end of the bracer, chilling it with her Quirk. Then she got her hand clear and activated the mechanism in the bracer. The hook shot out, the wire it was hopefully attached to well enough for her Quirk to count it as one whole object trailing behind it. It hit the wall with a satisfying amount of force, digging into it slightly because it was made of dirt. She retracted the wire, activating a mechanism that made it reel back in.

"Good, that works." Next, Yukino thought about her boots. It felt a little uncomfortable, having bits of metal rubbing directly against her feet, but hopefully it'd be a little less uncomfortable than freezing through all of her boots if she wanted to freeze something with her feet... in theory, anyway.  Just in case, Yukino made a small patch of frost under her foot. It was uncomfortable, but it worked. Hopefully it'd be better with the final version, but she could deal with it for now. Hopefully.

Yukino kept walking. Seriously, where was Mushu-chan? She wasn't going to be able to take Mushu-chan out quickly if he didn't sho-

"RRRAAA!"

Yukino turned around. Oh boy. There was Mushu-chan, floating around a building in what Yukino hoped was his max size. He was massive, almost as wide as Yukino was tall. Yukino wasn't very tall, of course, but that was still pretty damn big. Especially because he was an Eastern-style dragon, and therefore very long compared to his width.

Yukino smirked at the dragon, raising her bow. "Big mistake. I know where you are now." She raised her free hand, Cryomancy vapor pouring from it. Five arrows made from perfect ice condensed from the air, floating by Yukino's side. They were blunted so they'd hurt but not kill. Theoretically. Yukino grabbed an arrow and ducked inside one of the buildings. It was totally empty aside from the stairs, but that didn't really change what Yukino was planning. She looked out the window. The angle was a little awkward, but Mushu-chan had floated within her range, so she knew she could make the shot.

Yukino nocked her arrow. She'd asked for a bow with a draw weight a little higher than what she was used to, as she was hoping her Quirk would offset that. She pulled the arrow back with a mixture of her physical strength and her telekinesis, taking aim at the dragon who was staring curiously at her. She let go, careful to time it with switching the direction she was pulling her arrow in. Mushu-chan floated to the side, shooting a beam of white-hot fire aimed so that it'd hit the arrow but not Yukino. He would've hit the arrow, but just before the fire reached it its trajectory curved. While the arrow did heat up a bit simply from the radiated heat, only its surface melted a little. The arrow struck Mushu-chan in the jaw, cutting off his fire breath.

"Hey!" Mushu-chan yelled at her. "That hurt!" He stuck his head through the window, growling at Yukino. An idea popped into Yukino's head.

"Yeah, that's kinda the point!" Yukino retorted, running back out the door. Mushu-chan followed. Good. Yukino quickly nocked another two arrows, letting them loose at the dragon's head. Normally, shooting two arrows from the same bow isn't a good idea. The force from the string is distributed between both arrows, meaning less force for both, and it's super hard to aim two arrows at once. But with a targeted telekinesis Quirk like Yukino's? Both arrows shot off faster than they should have, though not quite as fast as her first arrow. They shot off in two different directions. Mushu-chan dodged one, but the other cracked him on the side of the head.

He roared at Yukino again. Yukino smirked at him, then ducked under the part of his body that had yet to go through the window yet. Just like she'd hoped, Mushu-chan followed her under his body. She quickly threw her last few arrows at him (not with her bow, just pure telekinesis) and started running back at Mushu-chan's body. Before she hit him she created a small platform from ice with her new boots that she used to vault over Mushu-chan's body, chilling her bow's handle and floating it away so it wouldn't break. She rolled when she hit the ground, but it wasn't the best roll and she wasn't able to get up at the end of it.

"Ow," she said, rubbing her shoulder and getting up as quick as she could.

"Get! Over! Here!" Mushu-chan yelled at her. He was having a bit of trouble getting close enough to attack her, though, because he was a little tied up at the moment. By his own body.

Yukino snickered at the sight of her opponent tied around the dirt building like some giant, red rope. She floated her bow back over to her, latching it back onto the holster she was given for it. She noticed that Mushu-chan, without even trying to, was already damaging the bit of the building he was tied around. Before he noticed and broke the wall, Yukino quickly channeled her Quirk through her boots, frost spreading along the ground and strengthening the wall with ice.

"So that's your plan!" Mushu-chan shouted. "It won't work!" He aimed at the frozen wall, unleashing a gout of flames at the ice. Yukino grinned. She wasn't completely done freezing the ice yet. Her shoes cooled down a little more than if Mushu-chan hadn't hit the wall with fire, but Yukino was able to use her Quirk’s cooling effect keep the ice from melting. Mostly. Mushu-chan strained at the wall. Yukino could tell that that wouldn't hold forever, but the dragon seemed to be too preoccupied with trying to get free to focus on her too much.

Yukino smirked, creating a few decently-sized ice chunks. There was always the time-honored strategy of hitting the boss while it was stunned. Yukino threw her ice at Mushu-chan's head. They cracked as they bounced off Mushu-chan's red scales, though because they were still mostly intact Yukino was able to hit Mushu-chan with them again while she made more ice to hit him with.

"H-hey, stop that!" Mushu-chan shouted as he was buffeted by giant hailstones. He squirmed, redoubling his efforts to break free. The wall creaked and cracked under the pressure, until it finally exploded. Yukino grinned as the giant chunks of ice-covered dirt flew everywhere... then homed in on Mushu-chan like the rest of Yukino's ice. "I regret this immediately!" he shouted as Yukino continued her telekinetic assault.

The fight looked to be in Yukino's favor, but she was starting to get a little cold from using her Quirk so much... Yukino gathered a large amount of ice and dirt into a swirling cloud, between Yukino and Mushu-chan but off to the side a little so that if Mushu-chan shot at it, the fire would just barely miss Yukino. Just as Yukino planned, Mushu-chan opened his mouth, a red glow in his throat. He let loose a burst of fire at the ice, trying to melt it before Yukino could attack him with it. Yukino scattered the ice before the fire hit it, however, letting the fire pass through as the ice went back to hitting him.

Yukino quickly jumped into the path of the fire, vapor-wreathed hands outstretched. Her Quirk clawed through the fire, cooling it down from something dangerous even to her to something only pleasantly warm to her. It tasted like pop rocks. It was only a quick burst of fire, but it still warmed her up. Yukino grinned at Mushu-chan.

"Crud..." Mushu-chan muttered. It looked like he'd managed to melt most of her ice while she was eating his fire, but Yukino could deal with that.

"Hey, wanna see a magic trick?" Yukino asked.

"Uhhh... can I say no?" Mushu-chan started flying over to Yukino, probably to stop her from doing what she was about to do.

"No." Yukino turned her Quirk on before he could reach her, white vapor curling off her exposed skin. Unlike most times when she used her Quirk, though, this time the white vapor was intentional and not just a side effect of her Quirk. The air around Yukino's body rapidly cooled, dropping to just a little below zero degrees. As it did, Yukino forced the water in the air to condense even more than it already was, though she didn't turn any of it into ice like normal. Instead she let it grow into a massive cloud, blanketing the street with a thick fog... though it was probably already starting to thin from the open air. "Special Move: Breath of the Ice Dragon," Yukino said to herself. She was a bit cold already from making all that fog, but she definitely had some ice left in her still.

Yukino dodged to the side of Mushu-chan's claw swipe, just barely visible through the fog. "Where are you?" he bellowed, then let loose a small jet of fire. It wasn't big enough to hit her unless she was like right next to his head, but it looked like it cleared away a small amount of fog. Yukino snuck closer to the buildings. She was suddenly very glad that the dirt path prevented the metal bits on the bottoms of her boots from making any noise. She needed to find some way to get the drop on Mushu-chan fast before he managed to clear off enough fog to see her again.

Get the drop on... Yukino looked at her gauntlets, then the dirt building she was standing next to. She sighed, then took a deep breath. "This is gonna suck..." She quickly tapped the hooks on her gauntlets, then launched them at sections of the wall a few stories up with a window between them. Like with her arrows, she was able to use her telekinesis to increase the force of the launch and direct their trajectory. Her grappling hooks buried themselves into opposite sides of the window. Yukino grabbed the wires and conducted her Quirk through them, freezing the hooks to the wall to hopefully give her less of a chance of falling. Theoretically she could catch herself, but she'd prefer not to have to do that if she could avoid it...

Yukino pulled herself up using a combination of the mechanisms in the gauntlets and a careful application of her telekinesis. She ran up the wall as fast as she could, trying not to think about what would happen if she slipped. She burst out of the fog cloud, then grabbed onto the ledge she was aiming for. She dragged herself into the building, which thankfully had a dirt floor somehow and wasn't just an empty shell. Yukino quickly broke the ice around her hooks with her telekinesis, letting them retract all the way. She looked out the window.

Mushu-chan swished his tail around, dissipating the last of Yukino's fog. There was still a light mist clinging to the ground, but Mushu-chan could now clearly see that Yukino was not there. "Where did you go?" he asked. Of course, he was only looking down, so no matter how hard he looked he probably wasn't gonna find him no matter how hard he tried.

"Ohh, this is high up," Yukino winced. She was really regretting this plan... Yukino took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. She was normally so good at taming her feelings, she had to be. Why did heights bother her so much? She was the granddaughter of a literal dragon. Or, well, a guy with a dragon Quirk, but it was like the dragoniest dragon Quirk.

Yukino shouted, punching the wall. She slapped her cheeks. "Come on, Yukino, get it together! You don't wanna go into Dragon Rage here!" She blinked, then grinned. "Or do you?" She took a deep breath. She thought about the holes that'd been “randomly” popping up in her memory the past two month, the shoddy construction that betrayed the fact that Taiyuu was an underbudgeted rush job, the poor heating and lack of hot water, even the fact that the place she was fighting Mushu-chan in was made entirely of dirt. Yukino purposefully ignored the techniques she'd learned over the years to help her control her inner beast. Her breathing grew heavier as she stoked her anger. Yukino scoffed, jumping onto the windowsill. She glared down at Mushu-chan. The height didn't scare her anymore. It only made her angrier. Though she was still trying to keep the worst of her rage in check. Going full rampage would probably not reflect well on her abilities as a prospective hero.

"Hey, Mushu-chan!" Yukino shouted. She jumped, pointing both her arms at the dragon and pushing her Quirk as much as she could. "YER GOIN' DOWN!" she screamed as ice condensed in front of her hands, her claws seemingly turning to ice from the power of her Quirk. Her ice grew as Mushu-chan looked up, starting out the size of a hailstone but snowballing quickly. It grew and grew, quickly becoming fridge-sized, then car-sized, even bigger. Mushu-chan's eyes, still visible through the perfectly clear ice, widened in fear. He opened his mouth, sending out a torrent of fire to melt her ice. Even as angry as she was, she still knew how to deal with that. She forced her hands apart, cracking her now very large chunk of ice into large pieces. She sent the ice out of the way of fire, using her Quirk to absorb Mushu-chan's breath again. She roared wordlessly when she burst through the fire, throwing her ice at Mushu-chan before he could retarget. The masses of ice crashed into Mushu-chan almost simultaneously, causing him to cry out in pain.

Yukino quickly conjured a platform of ice under all four of her limbs to slow herself down. She slipped off the platform with a strangled squawk and froze another platform, this time with hand- and footholds. Her anger simmered back down into fear now that she wasn't attacking Mushu-chan. "Why did I do thissss," she asked herself as her platform floated down to the ground. She took a deep breath, letting the slightly mutated adrenaline drain from her system. She got up shakily, looking at Mushu-chan. He was on the ground, partially pulverized ice covering him and powdering the ground around his body.

"Ow..." he said. He tried to rise up, then fell back down again. Yukino took out her staff, leaning on it just as much as she was using it in an attempt to appear more intimidating. She walked over to Mushu-chan, putting the butt of her staff on his snout and cooling it down a little.

"You done?" she asked. She still had a good deal of telekinetic energy left due to that last burst of fire, so she floated some of the small, but not powdered, bits of ice around his head, pushing down a little on the ice on top of him as well.

"Oww... yeah, but could you get the ice off of me?"

She nodded, brushing the chunks of ice away using as little energy as possible. Then she plopped down with a sigh, resting her head on Mushu-chan's. It kinda reminded her of of when she did that with her grandfather. "I need to get over my fear of heights..." she muttered.

"You did that with a fear of heights?" Mushu-chan asked her.

Yukino shrugged. "I was running entirely on an adrenaline rush. Though I probably shouldn't make a habit of that."

"You should probably leave, now."

Yukino pulled back from Mushu-chan, though she laid down instead of getting up. "Just give me a minute..."

Feminist Vampires: Don’t Invite Mainstream Audiences Inside! (Madi Mackey)

Bit, written and directed by Brad Michael Elmore, is the story of a young trans woman named Laurel who moves to Los Angeles and finds herself mixed up in a friend group of female vampires. She is quickly turned into a vampire herself and thrust into their world. Duke, the leader of the girl gang, implements some very strict rules for the group. The most important rule is to never turn a man into a vampire, stating that they can’t handle the power. The film follows the five young women as they navigate their lives as both vampires and members of a bustling Los Angeles night life. The drama comes to a peak when Laurel accidentally bites her brother and has to decide between saving his life and following Duke’s rules.

The film is an excellent example of modern day intersectional feminism. The core group of women is very diverse, representing African American, latina, butch, and transgender identities. They are all women-loving women in some sense, though their specific sexualities are never detailed. They are unflinchingly focused on retaining their power and their sisterhood by refusing to let a man into their groups and forbidding any usage of their mind-influencing powers on each other. However, the film is not perfect, and does not hold up to much scrutiny from a queer perspective. Duke, the previously mentioned leader, is also the only white girl in the group. Their hatred toward men could push the idea that all feminists hate men, further isolating the movement. Finally, the film does not mention class or any struggles associated with the marginalized communities the characters belong to, reducing the film to a post-gender, post-sexuality world. For these shortcomings, I argue that Bit is a great stride in the queer movie industry, but it misses the mark in many categories, and could therefore cause more damage to the trans, lesbian, and feminist communities than the positive impacts of such representation could outweigh, if it were to leave the arthouse and break into the mainstream.

One major theme in Bit is intersectional feminism. As mentioned before, the group of vampires is quite diverse, but this inclusion is only skin-deep. Their dynamic still enforces white, middle-class homonormativity. The girl with the most power is white and cisgender, and all of the girls are able-bodied and middle- to upper-class. Joyrich explains that television industries must continually portray homonormativity to maintain profits, and the same can be said for the film industry (2013, p. 5). Although this is a low-budget film that premiered at an independent film festival, the director, Elmore, stated in an interview that one of his main goals was for the movie to reach a larger audience of at-home viewers (Dunagan, 2019). His yearning for mass reception might have caused him to reproduce homonormativity for the film to be more palatable and, therefore, more profitable.

This is not the only flaw within the production practices for this film. Similar to criticisms regarding Pose and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, Elmore is a cis white man who took it upon himself to tell a queer story. By doing so, he took production resources and material benefits from its popularity away from the trans, lesbian, and POC communities who live the stories that he is telling (Tourmaline, 2017). Elmore explains that he read multiple theoretical texts and memoirs regarding gender while writing the script, and then had a close, gender non-conforming friend of his approve it before he, “felt more comfortable to show it to people in and around that conversation and community that I wasn’t close to” (Dunagan, 2019). While he did a fair bit of research into the community before creating the film, this isn’t the same as being a member of the community. Cavalcante explains this difference as a split between identifying with and identifying as a character, with identifying as a character always hitting closer to home and being more personal (2017, p. 14). Although Cavalcante makes this distinction in regards to audience reception, I believe it can be applied to production as well, and how Elmore wrote characters he could identify with, whereas a trans or POC writer could have written more personal characters that they identify as. Because Elmore is not trans or a POC, he needed to enforce homonormativity in his film in order to create characters that he identified with, as he has never lived as someone on the margins.

(Brad Michael Elmore, writer and producer of Bit)

Still, the production methods and content of the movie themselves could absolutely be described as queer. Benshoff & Griffin describe new queer cinema as films that have low-budgets, usually remain in the arthouse, and show the inadequacy of labels, instead focusing on the social discourses surrounding gender, race, and class (2004, pp. 11-12). Bit checks all of these boxes, even offering some helpful insights into social discourses. When Laurel, the transgender protagonist, is turned into a vampire, Duke tells her that their number one rule is to absolutely never turn a man. Laurel looks worried and asks, “What about me?” to which Duke responds, “Never even crossed my mind” (Elmore, 2019). Her immediate acceptance of Laurel’s identity expresses a consistent mood throughout the entire movie. Laurel’s transition and identity are never remarked in more explicit terms, and the sexuality and ethnicity of the other women are all treated with the same unspoken acceptance. The only identities that are ever mentioned are class and sex; Laurel asks one of the girls how they afford to live in L.A., and anyone who identifies as a man is immediately treated with contempt.

(watch video until 42:50)

While these approaches to intersectional identity may function well within the underground audience of new queer cinema, they could cause problems if Bit were to hit the mainstream. As Tongson explains, media representations help to produce our material realities; we rely on media to understand identities that we don’t know in the real world (2017, p. 158)). By ignoring the struggles of marginalized communities in the film, Bit raises more questions than it answers for viewers who are unfamiliar with these communities. Their confusion could cause these people on the margins to become cultural interpreters and explain their communities to those who don’t understand. Some see this as an opportunity to share their life experiences and cross cultural bridges; for others, it can become a burden of representation and they may lose a feeling of privacy (Cavalcante, 2017, p. 11). Bit could be seen as a welcome break from tragic representations for people within the trans community. Conversely,  Elmore’s silence on these issues could also lead mainstream audiences to believing that marginalized communities do not face any struggles in modern America, and therefore lose some empathy. 

This mediated understanding of reality could also be greatly detrimental to the feminist movement if it were to hit the mainstream. While I loved the explicitly feminist tone of the film, other audiences could find it off-putting and apply Bit’s ideology to all real-life feminists. The group of women in this film are quite outspoken around their distrust and distaste toward men. This could be applied to feminists, who are already called “man haters” in the real world as an attempt to invalidate their arguments. Elmore could be adding fuel to this fire by depicting feminists as exactly what the mainstream fears them to be.

Simultaneously, this bold approach to intersectional feminism is exactly why I, and many other queer viewers, love this film. My own subject positionality influences my understanding of Bit, just as those of mainstream audiences would make them feel differently about the film. I am a college-educated, middle-class, white, bisexual woman. I am also an outspoken feminist and socialist. All of my converging identities influence my view on this film and the opinions I have on its themes. As a young person who spends a lot of time in feminist spaces online, I felt such a rush while watching this film and hearing them directly saying things like, “Men can’t handle power. They have it already, and look at what they have done with it” (Elmore, 2019). A lot of people online say things about hating men, and I know from my own personal experience that the argument is so nuanced that it is simply easier to say “kill all men” than it is to explain what feminism really stands for and how it is, in fact, not simply man-hating. I love that this film expects the viewer to have this same knowledge, and can therefore say things like this without needing to defend itself and explain all of the nuance behind such a statement.

My status as middle-class and a socialist also have a great impact on my subject positionality and interpretation of Bit. Coming from a middle-class family and city, everything in the movie seemed normal to me. I was able to identify with the characters’ struggles, as they didn’t have anything to do with money or family issues. However, I could see this posing an issue for people who are struggling financially or with their family dynamic. To make up for this, the film has a lot of discourse regarding the redistribution of power and resources. Downward redistribution is a key tenant of leftism, so this movie displays clear leftist ideologies from a socio-political perspective (Duggan, 2002, p.XVI). We can see this in lines like, “How would you like to hold the keys to the kingdom for a change?” when Duke is talking to Laurel about turning, and at the very end of the movie, when Laurel’s brother asks her what they should do next and she responds, “Maybe what everyone with power should do and never does: share it” (Elmore, 2019).

(watch video until 1:30:00)

Finally, watching this film from the subject positionality of a woman greatly influenced my interpretation and reaction. At first, I was appalled by the group of girls and how nonchalantly they killed people, especially men. Laurel was written to have the same feelings of shock and disgust. So, when Duke said, “Our role is secondary. Our bodies are suspect, alien, other. We’re made to be monstrous, so let’s be monsters,” (Elmore, 2019) that was enough of an explanation for Laurel, and for myself, to become sympathetic to their cause. I have been personally affected by the feelings of otherness and being secondary that Duke lists, so this was a perfect line to change my opinion on their actions. However, if a man were to watch this film, especially if he were not to be a feminist, he might not be so sympathetic because he does not have the same experiences and understanding of what it is like to live in this world.

(watch until 41:12)

Bit is a film that crosses many boundaries, while still upholding some homonormativity for the sake of profit and consumption. It was written with the expectation of an audience that is knowledgeable of marginalized communities and social issues, making it thoroughly enjoyable to watch from a queer perspective. However, if the film were to break into the mainstream spotlight, its lack of nuance could cause harmful backlash toward trans communities, people of color, woman-loving women, and feminist movements. 

References

Benshoff, H. M. & Griffin, S. (2004). Queer cinema: The film reader. Psychology Press.

Cavalcante, A. (2017). Breaking into transgender life: Transgender audiences’ experiences with ‘first of its kind’ visibility in popular media. Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(3), 538-555. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12165

Duggan, L. (2002). Introduction. In The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy (pp. X-XXII). Beacon Press. 

Dunagan, R. (2019, August 2). Interview: A talk with Brad Michael Elmore, Director of OUTFEST’s ‘Bit’. Flipscreen. https://flipscreened.com/2019/08/02/interview-a-talk-with-brad-michael-elmore-director-of-outfests-bit/

Elmore, B. M. (Director). (2019). Bit [Film]. Vertical Entertainment.

Joyrich, L. (2013). Queer television studies: Currents, flows, and (main)streams. Cinema Journal, 53(2), 133-139. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2014.0015 

Tongson, K. (2017). Queer. In L. Ouellette & J. Gray (Eds.), Keywords for media studies (pp. 157-160). NYU Press. 

Tourmaline. (2017, October 11). Tourmaline on transgender storytelling, David France, and the Netflix Marsha P. Johnson Documentary. Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/reina-gossett-marsha-p-johnson-op-ed 

What Came First, The Interstellar Space Chicken or the Egg (The X From Outer Space, 1967)

I really don't envy the poor Criterion employee who had to write out a whole five paragraph essay on how The X From Outer Space, a kaiju movie that makes even the shittiest Gamera vehicles look inspiring, is actually good, interesting, and worth your time as a viewer. This film's 88-minute runtime drags on so agonizingly that March of 2020 could have honestly turned to it for a few pointers. The X From Outer Space is straight up unabashedly bad, and in a way that leaves me absolutely no way to be able to recommend it.

See like Battle of Dragons, The X From Outer Space is neither a Toho nor a Daiei production, but that is where any similarities between the two films end. Battle of Dragons is an absolutely ludicrous thrill ride for children that have just eaten a bag of sugar, while The X From Outer Space is the kind of exercise in misery that would have drying paint running for the exits.

So how did we get here? Well, this film was made by Shochiku, Japan's second-oldest production company, and one that hadn't previously thrown its proverbial hat into the kaiju arena. However, there was money to be had in the genre, and Shochiku, having recently fallen on hard times, wasn't about to let the opportunity pass by. And while Schochiku clearly cribbed plenty of ideas from the competition (the film begins, nonchalantly, with a manned expedition to Mars) they absolutely didn't take enough to measure up to the likes of what Toho or even Daiei were doing.

The plot is, in a word, dull as fucking dirt. The film begins with a strange little helicopter landing, dropping off dangerous nuclear fuel for humanity's next manned mission to Mars. We then meet what passes for our protagonists, a team of astronauts assigned to the mission, though we only really give a shit about two of them, Captain Sano (Toshiya Wazaki) and Lisa (Peggy Neal) the American looker the Captain has a bit of a thing for. The team is being sent to Mars because none of the other missions have made it all the way to the red planet, citing some kind of extraterrestrial interference, though the bouncy, painfully 60s score suggests none of this is really a big deal, and the astronauts themselves don't seem the last bit concerned.

Within minutes of the film starting, the team is off to Mars on a sleek 60s era spaceship christened the Astro Boat. And then... nothing really happens. The film slogs along, following the astronauts and mission control just kind of doing their day jobs, with very little in the way of conflict driving things forward. They run into a UFO at one point, with zero fanfare (on of the astronauts makes fun of it, saying it looks kind of like an omelette, which to be fair it does) but otherwise the plot just fucks about for a solid 40 minutes of runtime. One of the team gets sick, there's an interminable detour on a moon base where we meet Captain Sano's old flame Michiko (Itoko Harada) but any real conflict doesn't kick in until the halfway point, where the UFO sprays the Astro Boat with spores, one of which Lisa collects and brings back to earth. Only about 40 minutes in does anything resembling a threat to the main cast occur, and even then they don’t really give much of a shit about it.

The spores, of course, grow into a big giant monster, which is quickly christened "Guilala" (I yearn for the explanation of monster names in something like Gamera vs. Gyaos, which was unabashedly the product of a child for no better reason than "it sounded neat"). Guilala goes off stomping buildings and kicking tanks as is his duty, while the protagonists fuck around doing something or other until they come up with a magic bullet, an element they name "Guilalanium" which will coat the monster in snot and shrink him back down into a spore. So that happens, Sano and Michiko kiss, and then, sometime after the sun swallows up the earth, you see the end title.

Because my reviews are all about big monsters, I have to give some space to Guilala and the effects in general. Unlike a Gamera picture, where you can tell the budget was mostly theoretical, the effects are competent here, on par with a lower-end Godzilla offering, though mercifully lacking the stock footage common to those. The tanks, buildings, and spaceships at least look like what they're supposed to, if a little uninspired, and Guilala isn't a bad suit, despite looking dumb as all hell.

There’s honestly a lot to unpack with Guilala, so let’s do that right now. First off, he looks like this:

With his big google eyes, wiggly antennae, and bulky arms and legs, Guilala is hardly scary or even really threatening. He has a ridiculous, gurgling roar that he emits at every possible moment, along with a raft of bizarre abilities, such as shooting fireballs, absorbing energy to grow, and turning into a giant sun and flying around. All of this never really amounts to anything more than just a weird trick for Guilala to pull out during the ever-present military fights, and there’s no real effort given to circumventing his abilities before they start dumping bombs full of shaving cream on him.

So, how did this movie happen? How did we end up with one of the most boring kaiju movies I have ever seen, rivaling shit like Godzilla vs. Gigan and Gamera vs. Guiron? Looking into Shochiku’s history, it seems their prime ballpark in the 50s and 60s was romance and melodrama, with a lot of low-key romantic angst, something I’m guessing their production team and regular actors were familiar with. The X From Outer Space feels, painfully, like a family-friendly romance someone dropped a monster into. Captain Sano has a low-stakes love triangle with Lisa and Michiko while the rest of the cast just kind of jokes around until the final minutes, and even when things seem dire, they never really feel that way, as if the team didn’t really understand how to convey mortal peril. Meanwhile, the jazzy, new age score does absolutely nothing to ratchet up tension, rather acting as a straight up retardant for it, and you’ll grow to pick out the themes almost instantly. Based on what I’ve seen and read, Shochiku was seemingly unwilling to really step out of its wheelhouse, refusing to create a true kaiju movie and instead creating a mixture of both, to the detriment of the final product.

Unless you’re a hardcore fan, skip this one.

I'm not being a hater but why did you want to be visible at a protest? Like why test this? Everyone was wearing black so they couldn't be identified why would you WANT to stand out?

well since you said you weren’t a hater, i’ll try to give you the best answer i can without revealing too much but it’s a pretty complicated situation and the visibility test was weeks ago now

i’ve been thinking a lot about revolutionary tactics that reach a lot of people in a crowd without saying a word. recently this has taken the form of throwing bags of garbage through holes in the fence while the police shoot rock salt and pepper balls in my face, to get across my point that it’s worth a rock salt bruise to me, in order to show a hundred of my neighbors what i think about our police and trash, because since the international news coverage started, we’ve had a lot of new people showing up and learning lessons i struggled with during week one

the visibility test was similar, in that i hoped most people who saw me immediately looked up for a drone or a helicopter and wondered if i was visible from it. i hope someone i never talked to watched the news and found me. now none of them have to test the limit -- any color that stands out is theoretically sufficient, in a worst case scenario. call me a canary in the mine. i overheard someone say “i don’t trust lone wolf tactics” while i was at the justice center in the coat, and i chuckled and thought, that’s good. (i didn’t go alone, actually, and if shit had gotten bad that night i had several backup plans, although as george floyd showed us, no one is safe if four policemen want to kill you.)

this is maybe my sixth summer of protesting in portland so it was shocking to me to show up and try to read the room and fail some day week one, where people who i suspect later turned into some of the yellow shirt moms were handing out flyers about a “day of rest,” and so i tried to pass this information on and it ended in a minor confrontation and discussion with a few other people in the crowd about “peaceful protest.” (”why am i here if it’s a day of rest?” and “what are they doing in there if we’re resting out here?” are the points i specifically remember)

i think that must have been a different night than the optics test, but one thing it’s necessary to remember about week one in portland is that they tried to liberate the jail on the first night. then, so much of the “peaceful protest” energy was succesfully deflected by the aimless eastside marches during the first weeks, so the justice center was truly an organized conflict attempting to take ground at the jail. so, now that a lot of new people are showing up to learn the same things i learned, i’m finding myself saying “they’ll shoot us whether we act peaceful or not” and “there’s no such thing as a peaceful protest, all protest should be destructive towards the state” (and this is all muddying any attempts to take ground, any time someone new shows up and says “don’t antagonize the fence.” fuck the fence, destroying it is our only access to police defunding, since our political leaders didn't listen to 7hrs of unanimous public testimony at the city council budget meeting.) most of these serious attempts to take ground have probably died out since the federal presence arrived, but at this point, my thought is kind of that the justice center was a poor target because it was so fortified, and maybe we should have tried a smaller precinct first

most of my tactics are not things i would recommend others try, but because i’ve been out in portland for most of the last ~60 days, my tactics have changed. i’m operating under the assumption that i am identifiable and have been identified, they probably already know at least one of my fake names, and i’m banking on the hope they’re not smart enough to catch them all. personally i have very little left to lose so i’m operating under the assumption that it would be better if they shot me with a live round than someone else. (i was operating under most of these assumptions back in june, so if some data warehouse policing chud at the facility in draper utah is reading this, then wow, i’m surprised you made it this far. can you count all the red herrings in this post?)

everyone’s tactics have changed. the moms are in yellow, the dads are in orange, scientists and healthcare workers are in labcoats and veterans are in uniform. some people are in costumes i guess and some girl just got arrested in denim for trying to give the riot cops flowers. we’re not all in black anymore. so, even now, if i wanted to conduct a visibility test, i would need a different tactic to avoid blending in with all the dads

i used the orange trench coat once, and outside of that, even within black bloc it’s possible to make multiple significant changes to your appearance (even changing up whether you wear a mask or a bandana helps). i probably have to wear different stuff for a couple days because a woman in a pikachu suit tried to fight me at 430am for throwing a glass bottle over the fence (and maybe she was right, but bystanders i don’t know told her to let it go)

Good evening, lord Chancellor. How is your day going? (Well, apart from being tortured by sudden bad anon waves). Perhaps, a little question to distract you won't harm. Can you please tell me about educational system in the Empire?

Evening to you. May day has been going rather smoothly, I managed to get done the little work I have to do, Only recently my body has decided to give me one of the painful periods, so there is that. I take the distraction gladly.

The education system within the Empire is not completely centralized - each of the provinces handles it in the fashion the government seems the best fit. As the provinces are no longer acknowledged by themselves as provinces and are their own states, I have to assume that you mean education system in Cyrodiil specifically.

Unlike in Skyrim or Hammerfell, in Cyrodiil education is not compulsory on any level. However, elementary schools are fully funded by the government, so as a citizen of the Empire you would most likely send your children to school anyway, as you are already paying for it in taxes. Elementary schools have to teach the basic trivium: arithmetic, reading and writing, and religion (with added magic). If the principal has the capability and opportunity, additional subjects might be educated, most commonly a secondary language, geography, history, or arts. The course of elementary schools are supposed to cover the curriculum in 5 years, and through one year there are frequent holidays which are enunciated by the local town Prefects - especially in countryside areas children are needed at home during the end of summer to help with the harvest. It is not uncommon for new citizens of the Empire who have had unfortunate lives until then to visit the elementary schools as adults. In many larger cities a special off-branch of elementary schools have appeared over the years, and instead of through the day they hold classes in the evening, when the adult pupils have finished working. While officially being registered as elementary school, they are known usually as Argonian academies.

Children would finish elementary school around the age of 10. From then there are four options if there was the pursue of further education: They could enroll in grammar schools, which construct further upon the trivium, but also give further more wide-spread education into history, magic, physics, arts, languages, and over the course of 9 years they would eventually spit out a scholar - Janus-all-trades, masters of none, who have a great theoretical knowledge, but mostly no practical skills of manual works. In addition, grammar schools require tuition fees. Grammar schools are institutes falling under mother universities, and they mostly serve as a preparation for attending an university or academy. As such, their curriculum is overseen by the universities which also fund them.

Then there are military schools. Their curriculum is defined by the military Prefects assigned to the area. These schools are partly funded from the army budget, and in exchange the pupils perform minor work around the barracks or the town (if the Pefect Urbanus and Prefect Fabrum can agree on it). The education received is often more practical, but more scholarly subjects are not omitted: There is most likely going to be a secondary language, some history, possibly botany or zoology or alchemy, depending on the unit there might be magical education. In addition there are the practical skills as basic military training, taking care of animals, crafts such as woodworking, blacksmithing, leatherworking or cooking. Military schools have actually no expected time of attendance, but they rarely keep pupils older than 16 years (when you can legally enroll in the army).

You can pursue further education by joining a convent which also has their own church school. These are fully in the power of the particular order to which the convent belongs, including the curriculum, length of education terms, tuition fees and all additional conditions - most churches require you to join the order at least for the time of attendance to the school, some do not.

Finally, the choice of most people is to find an apprenticeship: Crafters and artisans in trades are often organized into Guilds to both ensure the quality of their services as well as hold against the concurrence. The rules within each Guild are slightly different, but according to the law each Master (a full member) in the Guild has to accept an apprentice for the trial time of three weeks, unless they already have three apprentices (in which case the admission of additional one is optional). The Master then educates their apprentices in accordance to signed terms, usually for exchange of labor and helping around the trade. The Guild can than grant certification of trade to the apprentices when they meet the requirements for the certificate (most commonly proving proficiency in the particular trade). In this the Fighters and Mages Guilds are included... when they are not banned from Cyrodiil on the coercion of a bastard necromancer.

Each school is required to issue their pupils with Certification of Graduation, in the case of the Guilds with the Certification of Mastery, upon them finishing their education for whatever reasons. These are legal documents, and oftentimes they are the first legal papers you get to hold in your hands.

An alternative to this is hiring a tutor. Tutors cannot provide you with Certifications of Graduation or Mastery, but like with grammar schools, those tutored at home are expected to attend an university.

Universities and academies in Cyrodiil accept students upon evaluation exams which the students have to pass. Evaluation exams are made by each university or academy on their own, as is the curriculum and the titles they can provide you with. The most common title is Magister, but to give a counter-example, from the Battlespire you leave as an Imperial Battlemage. (Or you leave in pieces. Pardon me, that is a jest so old that it is fringed at the edges, but I could not resist.)

I suppose that this does for a quick overview of the education system. Is there anything specific you are interested in?

Extracurricular verse, bc we can't forget these happy fuckers : 84 “The more, the merrier!”

I haven’t written any Extracurricular since last Christmas, which is a crying shame, but this is going to be my 100th fic on AO3, and I thought making it these three was somehow appropriate. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait for the next chapter for the smut, but there will definitely be threesome smut :)

[AO3]

x

As he drove slowly along tree-lined streets in the north of Berkeley, Professor Gold reflected that life could be incredibly strange. If anyone had suggested to him two years ago that he would be house-hunting on Christmas Eve with the love of his life he would have scoffed at the very idea. If they had then suggested that he would be house-hunting for three, with Professor Rush being one of the party, he would have thought them certifiable. And yet that was how they had chosen to spend at least part of their Christmas holidays. In fact it was how they had spent the past four weekends, with no luck finding a place they all liked.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t compromise when it suited them—two years as a threesome had made that very necessary—but they were each very certain about what they wanted from the house they were to share and to make a home in. None of the properties they had viewed thus far ticked all their boxes. Either the rooms were too dark for Belle’s liking, or there wasn’t enough quiet, contained space to put whiteboards for Rush’s liking, or the kitchen wasn’t up to Gold’s usual standards, or the garden was too overlooked… They had spent weeks searching with no luck, until Belle had spied the place they were headed to, recently reduced in price and therefore within the budget they had set themselves, although admittedly most of the money was coming from him. He didn't mind that; he was by far the wealthiest of them, and it was worth paying extra to get a place they all liked and could call home together. Perhaps this house would be the one. If Rush made it on time, of course.

“It’s here,” announced Belle.

Gold turned the wheel, steering the car into another tree-lined street, this one quieter, with large houses set back from the road and well-kept lawns outside. There were strings of coloured lights on every house, and in the trees, which made Belle smile delightedly, even though the large plastic Santa and reindeer in one of the gardens looked out of place in the California sunshine. It seemed a pleasant, quiet neighbourhood, and a little calculation in his head showed it to be reasonably close to the university. All good so far. The house they were to see was at the end, the real estate board outside proclaiming that it was being sold by De Ville’s. Gold parked up, opening the door and getting out before going around to open Belle’s. She was looking around excitedly, her cheeks flushed with the relative chill of the winter day, and he wanted to kiss her.

“It’s so green here!” she said happily.

Well, that was certainly true. Each house had a neat, well-kept garden and a large stretch of lawn. Some even had white picket fences to add to the quaintness. Trees and privet hedges bordered the gardens between neighbours, and Belle peered at the house, rising up on her toes as though that would give her a better view. She was itching to go inside, he could tell. Still, the realtor had told them to be there at twelve, and it was almost that now. Not long before her curiosity could be satisfied. So where was Rush? Gold looked at his watch, tapping his foot impatiently.

“He’s late,” he observed.

“You sound surprised.” Belle’s voice was teasing, and she glanced across at him with a grin. “Did you remind him?”

“Yes, I reminded him, I sent him a bloody text!” said Gold impatiently. “And I might add that I’m not his bloody PA. If he can’t organise his own bloody appointments I fail to see why I should be inconvenienced.” 

“The realtor’s not even here yet,” said Belle soothingly. “He’ll be here.”

Gold grunted.

“He’ll be nose-deep in some bloody ridiculous theoretical crap,” he said, and straightened as a sleek silver car pulled up onto the long driveway. “Look, here’s the realtor. I told you he’d be late!”

“Would you relax?” Belle turned to face the realtor’s car. “Remember, if he doesn’t make it, you get to have first choice of the rooms.”

There was that, he supposed.

“Well, we can always look around the house ourselves,” he agreed. “Serve him right if he didn’t show and I put his office in the basement.”

The car door opened and a woman swung pale, slender legs out of the door, pushing to her feet with a toss of jaw-length blonde hair. She was tall and thin, wearing an elegant black dress beneath a short white coat that Gold was fairly sure was made of real fur. Red lips curved in a smile as she held out a hand.

“Mr Gold, I presume?” she drawled, in a very English accent. “Cara Deville-Waters. Delighted to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Gold shook her hand. “This is my partner, Belle French.”

He gestured to Belle, who stepped forward to shake Cara’s hand.

“Right,” said Cara breezily. “Well, here is the house. Lovely, quiet neighbourhood. Mainly professionals, some with young families. The owner has moved to Europe, as I understand it, so we’re maintaining the property in her absence.”

“It seems a lovely area,” observed Belle.

“Yes, very pleasant. The area itself is stacked with amenities, and has very good schools. Do you have children?”

“No,” said Gold.

“Not yet, anyway,” added Belle, making Cara grin.

“Well, best to plan ahead for these things, I always say. This is the sort of house that has the space for a large family, as you’ll see when we go inside. Shall we?”

“Oh, we’re just waiting for the third member of our - uh - family,” said Gold. “He should be here any minute. Or at least he would if he had any sense of punctuality and common courtesy.”

Belle gave him a level look as Cara looked intrigued, brows lifting.

“Oh, so there are three of you?”

“That’s not a problem, I trust,” said Gold, in a very even tone, and she waved a languid hand.

“The more, the merrier!” she said. “And the house is certainly large enough. Do let me know if you have any other requirements, and I can point them out as we go.”

“The listing mentioned a hot tub,” said Belle.

“It’s out the back,” said Cara. “There’s a section of raised decking leading out from the kitchen. If you like we can—”

She was cut off by her phone ringing, and after glancing at the screen she pulled a face and sent them a guilty look.

“I do apologise,” she said fervently. “It’s my wife. She doesn’t call during viewings unless it’s urgent, so—”

“Oh please, take your time,” said Belle hurriedly.

She grasped Gold’s hand and pulled him up the driveway as Cara answered the phone, and Gold ran his eyes over the large brick-built garage with its painted roller-shutter door.

“Enough room for both our cars, easily,” he remarked. “Rush’s Ford will probably drip oil all over the paving, though.”

“He says it’s your car that’s the leaker,” said Belle absently, and Gold frowned.

“The Cadillac does not leak, she just - gets a head cold every now and then.”

“Mhmm.” Belle looked amused. “What do you think of the neighbourhood?”

“Pleasant,” said Gold, looking around. “Lots of green space, which I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

“Yeah.” Belle whirled on her toes to face him, eyes sparkling. “Can we get a dog?”

“A dog?” Gold pursed his lips. “Who’s going to look after it when we’re at the university all day?”

“You could take it to class,” suggested Belle. “That’s an eccentric thing to do, isn’t it? You can get away with it because you’re Scottish.”

“I doubt that,” said Gold dryly.

“Well, it’s not too far from the university,” she persisted. “I could cycle back every lunchtime and walk the dog.”

“We’ll talk about it if and when we buy the place,” he said, and she huffed.

“Okay, that’s fair enough.”

“We can certainly get a couple of cats,” he added, and Belle squeaked in excitement, making him grin.

Cara had put her phone away and was hurrying towards them, looking harassed.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, almost wringing her hands. “My wife’s car has broken down. She’s stuck on the side of the road waiting for a tow-truck. Unfortunately, she was on her way to the airport to pick up her father, who’s coming to visit for Christmas. She’s asked if I can go instead. I’m so sorry, but I’ll have to postpone our viewing until later.”

“Oh.” Belle chewed her lip, looking disappointed, and Gold raised an eyebrow.

“Well, as we’re still waiting here anyway, why don’t we look over the house?” he suggested. “We could drop the keys back at the office in a couple of hours if you’re not back by then.”

“I really should be here to answer any questions you might have,” she said, running a hand through her hair in agitation. “Although I suppose two hours would get the job done. Are you sure you don’t mind looking around by yourselves?”

“Given that we have no idea when the third of our party will finally remember he has somewhere to be, I doubt it’ll be an issue,” said Gold, in a very dry tone, and Belle gave him a look.

“I’ll make a note of any questions we have as we’re going around,” she said, and Cara sighed heavily and dug in her bag, fishing out a set of keys and a sheaf of papers.

“Property particulars and room dimensions,” she said, handing them over. “I’ll be back by two, barring unforeseen circumstances.”

She hurried back to her car, heels clicking on the paving, and Belle and Gold shared a grin.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

The entrance hall was spacious and warm, a tiled floor leading to a sweeping staircase that led to the upper floor. The banisters were in warm, shining wood, and the tiles gleamed as though they had been mopped that morning. Gold suspected they had. He took a step forward, testing the surface with the end of his cane, but to his relief it wasn’t slippery. Getting around with a limp made some floor surfaces treacherous. Sunlight was shining in from the top of the stairs and from a window at the far end, and overall he thought it was a pleasant, welcoming space.

“Looks good so far,” he said, tucking the property particulars inside his coat. “Shall we explore?”

Belle went first, opening the first door she came to.

“Here’s the lounge,” she announced.

Gold followed her in. The lounge was large, the front windows of the house letting in plenty of light. The floors were covered in pale cream tiles, and Gold’s cane clicked as he walked. It was still furnished with a couple of large leather couches and an easy chair, grouped around a glass and chrome coffee table and a wide stone fireplace. The room had been emptied of anything else that might have hinted at the tastes of its owners, but the couches gave it a comfortable air.

“Ooh, we could have a log fire!” said Belle excitedly.

“In California?” remarked Gold, and she sent him a look.

“It can get cold here!” she insisted. “It’s cold today, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” He walked slowly around the room. Beyond the hearth, the room turned a corner into a large open plan dining area, and he turned back to Belle before heading into it. “This is a nice room. Plenty of space, and enough light to read by for most of the day, I should think.”

“There’ll be more light at the rear,” she said. “It faces south.”

“So perhaps that’s where we should install the library,” he said, and wanted to grin at her beaming smile.

“Oh, so I get my library?” She walked towards him, swaying her hips in that infuriatingly alluring way she had when she was getting exactly what she wanted. “I knew I could talk you around.”

“I hardly took much convincing, as I recall,” he remarked, and Belle pouted, sliding her hands up his chest and letting her fingers push into his hair.

“Pity,” she said. “I thought of a few more methods of persuasion I could use to ensure we get a dog.”

Gold chuckled, one hand sliding around her waist to pull her closer.

“Oh, you can still use your wiles against me, Miss French,” he said lazily. “But perhaps we ought to finish looking over the house first.”

Belle rose up on her toes to kiss him, soft lips pressing against his before she settled back on her heels.

“I wonder if there are any other university types in the neighbourhood,” she said.

“Unlikely, unless they have another source of income,” said Gold. “We could ask the realtor what she knows about the residents of this area, though.”

“I’ll add it to the list of questions,” said Belle, still stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m surprised she let us look over the place ourselves. I thought she’d tell us to come back another day.”

“I imagine the commission on this sale would be an extremely welcome Christmas present,” he remarked.

“I suppose.” She looked around. “It has a nice feel to it, doesn’t it?”

Gold thought about it for a moment. He was far from the superstitious type, preferring to go on facts and figures, and tangible evidence. On paper, at least, the property was both a good investment, and appeared to meet most, if not all, of their requirements. They would have a better idea of whether it was correctly represented when they had been over the place, but he thought he understood what Belle meant. There was a pleasant atmosphere, a warmth that didn’t just come from the underfloor heating.

“It’s - it’s certainly a good start,” he said, and kissed her again. “But I think we should look beyond the lounge before making a decision on this place.”

“Like the kitchen?” she said knowingly. “Okay, you’re on.”

Gold glanced out of the window over her shoulder as a flash of dark red caught his eye. His mouth flattened.

“Looks like someone finally got here,” he said, and Belle chuckled, wriggling from his arms and trotting into the hallway.

Gold followed more slowly, trying to keep the smile from his face as he saw her sprint down the driveway and fling herself on Rush almost before he had gotten out of the car. The force of her greeting knocked his glasses askew, and he was clearly trying to simultaneously keep his balance, close the car door and hug Belle. He made it by shoving the door shut with one hip and frantically grasping at his glasses before they could fall.

“You’re bloody late!” called Gold.

“Only five minutes.”

“More like twenty, but who’s counting?”

“You, apparently.”

“Stop bickering!” chided Belle, still hanging onto Rush. “Come on, I want us all to look over this house! I think it could be the one!”

“You said that about the last four,” said Rush, clutching her around the waist as they walked back up the driveway.

“Yes, and I have to be right at some point.”

He grunted in amusement, running a hand through hair already messy from the day. His stubble was growing through again, the winter sun glinting on his cheeks and chin. His shirt was also very wrinkled, and Gold suspected he had spent the previous night at the university, head down in some sort of research. He and Belle had spent the night at his place, curled up in each other’s arms, and had spent the early morning eating breakfast at his kitchen table before heading out. Rush’s own breakfast had probably been a pint of coffee and a few cigarettes, and if nothing else, he suspected that them all moving in together would be good for Rush’s health. At least he’d have two people around to nag him into eating and sleeping properly.

“And don’t even think about going back to the university when we’re done here,” added Belle. “It’s Christmas Eve, and I want both of my men firmly committed to the festive season. Here.” 

She pulled out of Rush’s grip as they reached the doorstep, pawing through her shoulder bag before pulling out a large handful of red plush and white faux fur and brandishing it with a beaming smile. Rush sighed heavily.

“What’s that?”

“Santa hats!” she said gleefully. “Come on, it’s Christmas!”

As if to demonstrate, she pulled one of the hats down on her dark curls, white pom-pom bouncing. Belle held up the other two hats, shaking them back and forth.

“I can already tell you that doesn’t go with my outfit,” remarked Gold, and Belle pouted at him.

“If you don’t have a Santa hat, you don’t get inside.”

“I’m already inside,” he pointed out, and Belle smirked.

“Who said I meant the house?” she said lightly.

Minx, he thought, and she grinned at him, bouncing on her toes as though she could read his mind. Rush grumbled under his breath, but reached for one of the hats.

“Tis the bloody season, I suppose,” he said, and tugged it down on his head. “Come on Gold, don’t be such a bloody Scrooge.”

Gold sent him a very level look, then sighed and held out his hand.

“Alright,” he grumbled. “But no pictures.”

“Oh, I’m not promising that,” said Belle airily, giving him the hat. “Now let’s go check out that hot tub.”

913: Quest of the Delta Knights

Or, as I’ve taken to calling it, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1.

Long ago it was a time of brave knights and fair maidens, bubonic plague, public hangings, spiral perms and really stupid hats.  The tyrant of this land is Lord Volcher, who acts a lot like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves only not so subtle.  Opposed to him are the Delta Knights, who have a prophecy about a young sage from the North, and a wizard-looking dude called Baydool thinks he’s found this chosen one in a skinny kid named Travis who might have precognitive powers, I don’t know. Supposedly Travis is destined to lead them to the place where Archimedes hid the lost knowledge of Atlantis.  Wasn’t that the plot of an episode of MacGuyver?

This all takes place when Leonardo da Vinci was in his early twenties, which would place us in the 1470’s.  Despite being so theoretically specific, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 doesn’t actually try very hard to be set in anything resembling the historical past – it’s kind of like The Undead in being a quasi-Renaissance fantasy thrown together by people whose ‘research’ consisted mostly of watching other quasi-Renaissance fantasy movies.  The only historical detail they got noticeably right was the death of Archemedes. Supposedly he really was cut down by the Romans while trying to finish some math, his last words being roughly, “don’t disturb my calculations.”  Legend credits him with inventing a heat ray and a couple of other superweapons that may or may not have been used in the siege of Syracuse, which I guess is what inspired this movie.

That’s a fun idea, I suppose, and could make for a sort of medieval Indiana Jones type adventure.  Problem is, I’m really not sure what kind of movie Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 is trying to be.  The tone shifts sharply depending on who’s in a given scene.  When the villains are onscreen one gets the impression that this is a comedy, but nothing that happens is actually funny.  Indeed, a lot of the so-called ‘jokes’ are downright mystifying.  What the fuck is with the thing about Whampool having been a bearded lady in a carnival?  What is supposed to be the punchline of that?  What’s supposed to be funny about any of Volcher’s interactions with the Mannerjay, whoever she is?  Why is he loyal to her when she treats him so badly?

When we’re watching the heroes, we have the opposite situation: it seems like this is all meant to be riveting and sometimes heartfelt, but everything that’s happening is silly.  I want to speculate that there was some kind of failure of communication here, that some of the actors thought they were making a serious adventure movie and the rest thought this was a medieval sitcom, but Baydool and Volcher are played by the same guy so I got nothing.

The result feels uneven to the point of being nearly incomprehensible. How the hell does Leonardo da Vinci exist in the same universe as the Wizard Whampool with his neckbeard and Brooklyn accent?  Why do characters keep talking about filing their paperwork in a world where very few people can read?  How do real countries like Italy and Germany exist, and yet we’re in a land ruled by a Dark Queen who never does anything and a forest full of ziplining people who live in the trees like fucking Ewoks?  How is anybody talking about the country of Turkey four hundred years before it existed?

I guess the film-makers figured nobody would care because it’s just a silly fantasy movie, right?  Maybe that’s true – maybe I’m just anal about it because I did undergrad work in medieval and renaissance history.  The way I see it, though, once you’ve decided to mention real people like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci, you’ve got to at least try to be set in the real world.  If you’re going to make up things like the Golden Newt Award from the College of Alchemists in Istanbul, you can also make up your ancient scientist and your artistic prodigy.  Otherwise your movie comes across like it was written by a twelve-year-old.

(Don’t ask me why Volcher and Baydool are both David Warner, by the way.  Maybe it’s supposed to be a two sides of the same coin thing?  Maybe there was a subplot about them being long-lost twins and it got cut from the movie?  Maybe they just couldn’t afford to pay another actor and thought nobody would notice?)

There are major characters who are totally useless.  Volcher’s Evil Overlady is a woman referred to as ‘the Mannerjay’ – I googled this word to see if it actually meant anything but all that comes up is pages about this movie.  I guess somebody thought it sounded cool.  She appears to sit around all day belittling the people who are running her kingdom for her.  We never find out who she is or what she wants or why she’s in charge, and she appears to be in the movie only so it can make jokes about how totally whipped Volcher is.  Her pet wizard, Whampool, is important for about thirty seconds while Baydool and Travis sneak into his lab to copy the map to Archimedes’ library, but he keeps popping up again after that for short scenes that are supposed to be comedic but aren’t, and contribute nothing.

Equally wasted is Thena, the woman Travis springs from a brothel because she saved him from being beaten up once.  She turns out to be the Lost Princess of the Ewok People, which comes across as a lazy way to get her out of the movie again.  She shows up to shoot one guy at the very end but can never really be said to have an effect on the plot.  She’s not even anyone’s love interest.  She’s only in the movie because the casting director thought her tits looked good in that corset.

The plot never seems to escalate.  The middle section of a movie is supposed to be ‘rising action’ or at least ‘rising tension’, but the characters in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 just seem to be wandering around.  Part of this is because of characters like Whampool, or Thena and the Ewok People, who come and go without having any effect on the plot. A major part of it is because the bad guys are idiots who can’t seem to get anything done.  Sometimes the good guys don’t seem able to get anything done, either, as when Travis attempts to rescue Baydool from prison but only ends up getting him killed.  This is supposed to be the heartbreaking tragic scene where Travis loses his mentor, but it mostly feels like wasted time.

I’ve already mentioned a number of anachronisms in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1, but there are always more, and the biggest of them is the one the entire plot is founded on.  Baydool tells Travis that the Delta Knights are ‘a secret society dedicated to bringing mankind out of the dark ages.’  Right.  So first of all, ‘the dark ages’ usually means about 400-800 AD in Europe, when we don’t know much about what was going on because everybody was too busy killing each other to write it down.  They weren’t called that, however, until the seventeenth century, when scholars began contrasting what they considered an age of ignorance with the ‘light’ of Greece and Rome beforehand and the Renaissance (a period of fetishism for all things Greco-Roman) after.  Notice how neither of these periods overlap with the supposed time of this movie.  This brings me to my second point, which is that dark ages are dark only in retrospect.  Nobody who was actually alive at the time knew they were living in the dark ages and they probably wouldn’t have cared if they had.

Of course at the end of the movie, they find the secrets of Atlantis but decide to bury them again so that Volcher can’t use Archimedes’ death ray to conquer the world or something.  Throughout the movie Volcher has gone around murdering random people and yelling orders, but he’s so dumb and incompetent that he never really seems like a threat to our heroes.  I got the idea that if Travis hadn’t blown him up he would have done it to himself within the next fifteen minutes.  The Mannerjay, sitting around in her hilltop castle (always introduced with a thunderbolt sound even when the sky is blue), certainly isn’t a threat to anybody.  I don’t think she knows what goes on outside her room.  Keeping this stuff out of their hands seems totally unnecessary. These clowns wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Besides, if you’re trying to fit this into actual history, shouldn’t the end be the Delta Knights using the contents of Archimedes’ Library to bring about the Renaissance?  That’s what they wanted, wasn’t it?  To re-introduce Greco-Roman ideas of science into this backward, superstitious society (not that they ever bother to establish society as backward and superstitious)?  Instead they just blow the whole thing up and all that’s left is things Leonardo was later inspired to sketch in his margins when he got bored of drawing penises with legs. Congratulations on defeating the entire purpose of your own secret society, guys.

Why would anybody make a movie like this?  Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 clearly had some kind of budget, because the costumes are pretty nice even when they’re not very historical.  Archimedes’ ray gun is realized through effects that aren’t very special but at least they work.  There are horses and props and things like that, but the script and story are so juvenile, un-funny, and pointless that it doesn’t feel like it deserves them. Nothing here was worth my time or the film-makers’ money and effort.  It doesn’t make me as viscerally angry as Kitten with a Whip, but man, it sucks.

Savin’s Answers from Twitter, Part 3!

Well, looks like it’s been nearly 2 years since the last SAfT post... sorry about that! Time really got away from me on this one. Due to the backlog, this post covers tweets from October 2017 through April 2018

As always, tweets are in order from most to least recent, and answers may not 100% true/canon since things may change during production of the sequel. Text is unedited save for formatting; in a few places I added [comments] for context.

Part 1 | Part 2

Also: If you’re going to ask Savin something, please be respectful and appropriate. He’s a person just like you and me.

@fictionjustis: Out of curiosity can a Nourasian and human have a child together? Also can humans conceive children with other humanoid species in the galaxy?

@EiffelSavin: I don't think any such birth have been recorded in the Oban universe, at least yet. But humans and Nourasians having a very similar DNA, it should be theoretically possible. There have been quite a few fanarts on that topics already 🙂

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@PudgyDragonLair: Also how big is the Arrow in comparison to Molly like actually height and length?‏

@EiffelSavin: From my original notes: Whizzing Arrow 1 - length 8m, height 7m, weight 10t Whizzing Arrow 2 - length 10m, height 7m, weight 14t to be compared with the final designs

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@PudgyDragonLair: hey Savin I'm not sure if this would be considered a spoiler or not but how Long are Nourasian life spans in comparison to humans and other alien species?

@EiffelSavin: I'm not sure anymore. I'd have to find my old notes... But if Nourasians approximately live the same number of "years" as humans, they are "Nourasian years" which are much longer  than our "Earth years" due to the longer distance between Nourasia and its sun. May be 2 or 3 times+

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@JPLangley_: Something I've been wanting to ask is how was Eva able to get away with not following the gender-specific dress code at Stern? Did faculty just give up trying to discipline her since she nor Don didn't care?

@EiffelSavin: I think my justification for that was that Stern's school rules only stated that wearing the school uniform was compulsory, without specifically mentioning that the short dress was for girls and the long pants for boys. Also they had bigger issues with Eva than just her uniform.

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@PudgyDragonLair: what was the Arrows original purpose before Don and the Goverment took it ? Me and my friend rewatched OSR and we noticed alot of things that would be atypical for a Star Racer (key among them a gun turrent ). Was the Arrow made to be some kind of stealth ship?

@PudgyDragonLair: It has capabilities to check Molly vitals and mental state while she s racing, as well as the hyperdldrives which I doubt would be allowed in racing circuits, and a remote access to the gun torrent, and hand off access shoukd the pilot be unable to man it.

@EiffelSavin: You got a point there. For better or worse army funding helps develop new technologies that are later reintroduced into civilian life/products. The "prototypes" Miguel had been working were not your typical star-racer and aimed at a different market...

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[continued from thread below]

@Helloworld1012: And the fact that Eva was a beautiful young girl certainly didn’t hurt

@EiffelSavin: Yes but more than that the fact that she's not your typical girly girl beauty. A long haired bimbo would not have awoken  Aikka's interest.

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@ILOVE659709491: Is there any chance one of the reasons Eva was so quick to trust & befriend Aikka was because the prince’s personality was similar to her father’s personality before Maya’s death? Both were reserved,well cultured & gentlemanly but kind + both had a passion for racing

@EiffelSavin: Freud would like the implications no doubt, but I think the relationship with Aikka is more simple and direct. He's good looking, a prince, well mannered. She's feels rejected  - especially by her dad - a bit of an "Ugly Duckling" and he takes an interest in her.

@ILOVE659709491: I’m curious though why was Aikka interested in Eva ?

@EiffelSavin: Just as he's the opposite of what she's known, she's a total opposite for him: tough, outspoken, pure - and touching. The noble girls he's met in Nourasia's palaces were not like that!

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@JPLangley_: Also, unrelated question, but if the second season of Oban does ever make it to the public, will it explore what happened to Thunderbolt and Jordan after the events of OSR?

@EiffelSavin: Can't guarantee both...

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@JPLangley_: Did Spirit originally have wings, and him transforming into a bird was a second thought?

@EiffelSavin: The concept was always that he would transform into his own ship but judging by Thomas's drawing I guess we tried more classic wings first.

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@Helloworld1012: Stern boarding school prided itself on disciplining their students what did they mean by discipline? Also, considering DW’s personality before Maya’s death seems to have a anime rich kid with controlling parents background vibe to it, what social class was DW born to

@EiffelSavin: In my view, Don Wei comes from a modest background. Being a self made man he can be very demanding, expecting from others to obey the rules he's imposed on himself in order to succeed. Maya and young Eva soothed him up, but that went away after Maya's death

@Helloworld1012: Yeah but everything else about him doesn’t seem like he’s a self made man. Or just a selfmade man. It got to me, he’s still young when Maya died & also it’s possible that he could have grown up rich & still be a self made man because his parents gave up on him.‏

@EiffelSavin: That could also be possible yes I put him out there, but you're totally untitled to make him yours now !  🙂

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@ardaozcan98: Did you get any inspiration from B-2 Spirit aircraft while designing Spirit in OSR or is the resemblence just a coincidence?

@EiffelSavin: Interesting. I came up with the name without being aware of the connection & I don't think the plane was ever a reference for the design, but we should ask @thomasintokyo and @Brunetstanilas too.  As you can see below (2002 rough by Thomas) Spirit went through a lot of phases

@Thomasintokyo: Never heard of this plane. That’s a coincidence!

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@emaf_CntCmnd: I wonder if you have known who works for BANDAI VISUAL and helps to release Japanese ver. of BD like Mr.Takanashi Minoru. (I wish he were still alive.)‏

@EiffelSavin: Mr. Takanashi disappearance came as a terrible shock. But we're working on establishing new connections with Bandaï.

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@ardaozcan98: Do you consider producing comic books or novels instead or alongside with the sequel. There are lots of unknowns and potential for backstories of the galaxy and species i think. And books may be cheaper or easier to create. Loved the original art-book.

@EiffelSavin: That's not a bad idea. Any talented manga-comic book artists interested around here ? 🙂

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@Valeria_Lacava: Could you do something for the italian rights? Jetix closed and it's impossible to find online the episodes in italian

@EiffelSavin: STW doesn't own those rights but we'll try to negotiate them if Disney agrees and if this can be done within the bluray budget.

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@Helloworld1012: How was Don Wei able to pay the financial cost to form a race team with Maya and make her a champion? Race teams cost a fortune, but sponsorship was unlikely since DW stated & the timeline shows Maya was the first person he was a manager to, so he had no credibility.

@EiffelSavin: Mostly true but not completely true. If things were always so then I would never have been able to produce Oban Star-Racers, having no hard cash of my own, and having never produced nor directed an entire series before 🙂

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@dragbax: Do you have any idea how big of an impact this show had on me as a kid??? Plz don't disappoint me of backing down or handle it poorly... My heart can't handle that. Especially how Samurai Jack was treated with its last season.  :(

@EiffelSavin: It may still be a long road ahead, especially since we don't intend to sell out, but I can promise we'll do our best!

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@Helloworld1012: I’m curious did Don Wei stop caring about Eva after Maya died? I mean he did abandon her just for resembling her mother & tried to forget she even existed for 10 years and would have CONTINUED to do so Had Eva not done anything about it, so did he stop caring?‏

@EiffelSavin: He tried to forget so well that he almost completely did

@Helloworld1012: Wait, doesn’t that basically mean that yes Don Wei did  stop caring about Eva once her mother died?‏

@EiffelSavin: Yes basically (what an awful dad!). Seeing Eva reminded him too much of Maya and of his guilt. He couldn't bare it and walked away, at least until he was ready to face her again.

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@n0sichan: I hope subtitles  for disabled peope will be available this time.

@EiffelSavin: If we have enough presales yes

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@MattGiusti: What is your thought process when it comes to animating characters speaking?Do you need to keep in mind how other languages will line up to the animation?Or do you do everything with one language in mind and alter the script accordingly later on?

@EiffelSavin: One concentrates on one main language. On Oban i wrote all scripts directly in English and the lip sink was based on those. But then i spent a whole month in front of an editing machine rewriting french dialogues that matched that lipsink

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@McKhendon: How do you accomplish 16:9 without losing parts of the picture?

@EiffelSavin: You're bound to loose part of the picture but if you address the process creatively you can produce new strong images by selecting shot by shot what u keep & what you discard

@SonicMrgame2017: The show was made on 16.9?

@EiffelSavin: No, in 4/3. It was still the transition period between the 2 formats at the time and our investors required 4/3. The remastered 16/9 version was done this year, reframing the original master shot by shot under my supervision.

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@ardaozcan98: All the dubs would be really nice especially for children.

@EiffelSavin: We'll see if something can be done but it sounds complicated. Sav The World doesn't own the rights of these other versions.

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@Wnika457: Is it possible that the online game wil be reopened? That would be awesome, I remember playing it when I was a kid :)

@EiffelSavin: That would be cool but we don't have the rights nor even a copy. But there'll be other games if we manage to pull through the sequel project

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@RadekFalhar: I just found out you are making Saya no Uta adaptation. I really hope you don't think the abortion that is the US manga is in any way related to the VN.

@EiffelSavin: The US comic probably had good intentions but turned Saya into smthng very different & sometimes opposite to what it is. The adaptation I work on also take liberties with the original material, but I try to remain very faithful to its spirit & to the mindset of the characters

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@lilacwondercat: Is there really a sequel in the works? I am such a huge fan, please say it's true!

@EiffelSavin: It's true but still a long to go. Creation takes time and the financing is the most pressing issue...

@lilacwondercat: Is there anything die hard fans can do to help?

@EiffelSavin: Most certainly though I can't think of anything precise right now. Helping spreading the word about the bluray is one though. The more people buy it, the stronger we can be when talking to potential financial partners.

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@Ekana_Stone: Does Blu-ray have the English dub, I would assume so

@EiffelSavin: Yes, French and English language are guaranteed. We would like to add Japanese too but there are question of rights we must try to sort out.

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@fictionjustis: Considering the fact that Oban star racers indeed had Japanese influence, I’m curious did u base Maya’s character design on a character from sailor moon, ( The 1990s version not the 2010s version) a well known anime & manga?

@EiffelSavin: Maya's character design clearly has anime influences but it was developed organically, drawing after drawing. It was not influenced by one show in particular.

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@Zeether77: Would love to see this on Blu-ray here, but not cropped to widescreen...does Shout Factory still have the rights?

@EiffelSavin: DVD & Bluray rights have reverted to us

@Zeether77: Would the BD release be a limited time thing? I just got a player but I don't think I could commit to a preorder sadly

@EiffelSavin: Can't confirm right now

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@ILOVE659709491: I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly because he [Savin] could be saying that the wei surname was meant to be Chinese or DW was Chinese but I just can’t figure out what it is, & unfortunately for some reason it has been driving me crazy yesterday so what is it in that question?‏

@EiffelSavin: Don Wei is of Chinese origin or at least his family is

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@sergeigaponov: #obanstarracers Could you write a list of countries in which you can send blu-ray Oban: Star Racers?

@EiffelSavin: Too early to confirm but my guess would be in all countries.

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@Nick_Kharin: How much can Blu-ray boxset will cost (approximately or the maximum price)? I’m very excited about the news about the project.

@EiffelSavin: Still evaluating.

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@Adultito: Will the Blu Ray have the Japanese audio and the original OP+ED

@EiffelSavin: Japanese audio we'll try. There could be pbs of rights. French and English at the minimum.

@Adultito: speaking of Japanese audio, will there be the original OP "Chance to Shine" (shown in most international broadcasts) on the English dub because the US broadcast (as well as the Shout Factory DVDs) used "Never Say Never"

@EiffelSavin: We have the rights to all the original songs and tracks but not to "Never Say Never" which was produced by the US broadcaster of Oban. So we would use "Chance to Shine" for the opening.

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@Maj0r_Crisis: Will we ever see a release of the cancelled second volume of the Original Soundtrack?

@EiffelSavin: If we have enough preorders, one of our plans is to add most of or even all of Iwazaki Taku's 80 original tracks as a bonus to the bluray edition

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@delicatedowner: I wish you good fortune on making the blu-ray release a reality (will your company self-publish the BDs like with Ankama and their Wafku sets?).

@EiffelSavin: We may self publish too but could go the kickstaryer way. Unlike us Ankama is a rich company!

@delicatedowner: Even Ankama went the Kickstarter way.  And it backfired on them.  I hope you'll do a better job.

@EiffelSavin: We'll see. But if you meant "selfpublish" as in "creating the design packaging etc" ourselves, yes that would be the plan. We have some good people we can work with.

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@nothisiswindii: Do you think you guys should make a 4:3 aspect ratio version of the Blu-ray? A lot of studios tend to simply "zoom in" their old shows to fake a 16:9 ratio, and they end up losing a lot of detail on the top and bottom as a result.

@EiffelSavin: Probably but it's something we'll discuss with all those who register with the Oban Bluray project when the times comes. In all cases, I can guarantee the 16/9 remaster is not a "zoom in". We took care of things on a shot by shot basis (see the video on http://obanstarracers.com )

@docsane: I'm curious: why was Oban not originally shot 16:9? I thought it was unusual at the time to still see an animation being released 4:3.

@EiffelSavin: Oban was signed just at the time when productions were beginning to shift from 4/3 to 16/9. But our financial partners asked for 4/3 so we produced and delivered 4/3.

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@harpnote: The new site looks slick! I am sad the forums are no longer up. It was a good time there.

@EiffelSavin: We have the copies. We may put them back online but already have our hands full right now

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@MattGiusti: Will [OSR] HD be exclusively a blue ray release? Or can one buy a digital version online?

@EiffelSavin: The first goal is the bluray release.

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@ILOVE659709491: Considering Wei is a Chinese surname & with the exception of his temper DW’s manners and taste indicate a certain upbringing is there a possibilty that Don is the son of a high class family in Asia and he moved to America or Europe because of his passion for racing?

‏@EiffelSavin: In spite of the obvious connection with Japanese anime, Wei is a Chinese name indeed and it was meant that way.

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@sergeigaponov: There are no such scenes [dramatic scenes in children’s shows], because people are interested in toilet humor. The time has already passed when people cried over such scenes. There are few people who are crying. I hope in the #second #season of the drama will be more, because #Eva has matured.

@EiffelSavin: If it 's only up to me I'll say definitely yes and in all cases that what we want to aim for. This said, I have a feeling traditional broadcasters are targeting younger and younger audiences and aim even more for comedy than before.

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@ILOVE659709491: Considering Maya was DW's first champion, DW  stated her charm was her recklessness, That Maya seemed to be more dominant in the relationship, & considering DW's and Maya's personalities in the past is it possible Maya introduced Don to the racing world?

@EiffelSavin: Interesting thought. But I'd say no. Don Wei was born to be a race manager.

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@lbigreyhound: Any idea when and where it [the HD remaster] will be available?

@EiffelSavin: The new HD master will be used in future broadcasts of OSR, at least one of whitch is planned for 2018. When we go ahead with our plans for a bluray relase, we may use it as well, or else chose to stick with the original 4/3 format.

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@ILOVE659709491: so I’m curious, what inspired the idea for OSR I’m super excited for the sequel but I am curious on what inspired the idea for OSR 2 Since it’s been over a decade since OSR?

@EiffelSavin: The 10 year anniversary of the first release brought the original artistic team together. We all thought it would be nice to look back at the world we created.

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[Not sure who he’s replying to here, but the question seems to be about Maya’s race with Spirit]

@EiffelSavin: If I remember correctly there just wasn't enough time and she gestured Spirit to stand out of arm's way.

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@RedVioletPanda: Why is the Holy of Dol, well, holy? In the artbook, there is a mention of elemental magic of the Nourasians, what is that exactly?

@EiffelSavin: Nourasian are close to nature. Magic and the use of natural ressources more than makes up for the lack of technology. As for elemental magic its source of power is nature itself.

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[Again, not sure who he’s replying to]

@EiffelSavin: We continue to work on dvlpmnt but it's a costly project & bringing the right financial partners together is the long and uncertain part...

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Co-stars AU Megamind - Roxanne

caveat that i know very little about the actual practicalities of how making movies actually works with a real budget and shit, or how acting contracts/agents/etc work. but i liked how this turned out regardless, and it actually felt long enough for a title. bless

Typecast

There wasn’t any netting or padding below Roxanne, which was kind of terrifying considering that the outfit the costume department had dressed her in allowed exactly zero room for a harness underneath the fabric. She was pressed back against the window of a fake high-rise, the ledge beneath her heels slightly wider than it appeared from the angle of the camera. Theoretically, all she had to do was stand and press herself against the glass and call for help. It wasn’t the best role, obviously, but at least some of the other scenes gave her a bit of interesting dialogue, and if she could just nail this, then maybe- maybe the next role-

Her heel wobbled and she jerked back in alarm, and the director swore and called cut. Roxanne let her shoulders sag. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just starting to get a little- slippery up here,” she said, hoping the laugh that came with the words didn’t sound too forced.

“It’s whatever,” the director said, which was discouraging. “Reset, reset all of it and we’ll go from the start again. Just- try to angle yourself more, yeah Roxie? We gotta see your face and if the wind is blowing the hair-”

“Can’t you move the fans?” Roxanne tried again. “If you want me to be looking at where-”

“I think I know what I’m doing, Roxie.”

Roxanne smiled with bright fury, an automatic response at this point. “Of course.”

Another take, the ‘wind’ buffeting her against the glass as she tried to make whining ‘oh please won’t someone help me’ sound in any way natural while also trying not to actually plummet down to the concrete ground beneath her, and when Stewart called cut she closed her eyes for a moment and hoped that her performance had been good enough to make this bullshit stop for like, twenty goddamn minutes, at least-

“Reset! Another one, go again, come on I don’t wanna waste any more time.”

“What was wrong with that one?” Roxanne called out, trying to sound enthusiastic. “What can I do better?”

“Y’gotta stop making that face, Roxie,” he called out, and Roxanne was desperately glad that she couldn’t see his goddamn face behind all the lights aimed at her. 

“Face?” She chimed lightly.

“All scrunched up and like, tense and shit.”

“…. you want me to look less worried?”

“More worried! More worried but keep your face smooth!”

“So I have to… look scared, but not frown at all?” Roxanne asked in a voice of spiderweb-thin ice. 

“Yeah! Exactly! Let’s go again-”

“What in the… that looks extraordinarily unsafe.” 

The voice was new in the room, but Roxanne recognized it even though she couldn’t see the source through all of the lights. Megamind, the troublemaking former rock-star gone actor. He had to be here to film his cameo, for that scene near the end-

“Cut,” Stewart snarled, and then Roxanne heard the exact moment he realized who had interrupted him. “Oh- hey, dude, you’re kinda early-”

“Where is the harness?" Megamind failed utterly to acknowledge what the director was actually saying, and he strode directly onto the set beneath her, his sharp green eyes narrowing up at her and oh shit, he looked genuinely furious. Handsome as hell, too, but dangerously angry. Maybe his reputation was actually true, then. Maybe the reason he was typecast exclusively as villains was actually his attitude and not his appearance- maybe he actually was a terror on set, despite his sheer talent. “Are you comfortable up there?”

Or- maybe not?

“What?” she called down on autopilot, though she had heard him well enough.

He scowled, then snapped his head to look at someone to the side of the set. “Turn that wind machine off immediately, thank you.” His tone brooked no argument and the wind cut off as immediately as desired, though Stewart yelped a protest in the background. “I said, are you actually comfortable up there, Miss Ritchi? Those heels don’t quite look compatible with that ledge.”

Roxanne laughed weakly. “I- uh, I mean-” Megamind was still staring up at her, but she was more conscious of other eyes on her right now, the crew and the director in particular, waiting to see what she said.

“You don’t look comfortable,” he prodded.

“She’s not supposed to look comfortable,” Stewart called from out of sight. “She’s supposed to be in distress!”

“Her character is,” Megamind corrected.

“I wanted the reactions to be authentic, dude, don’t you get method? C’mon-”

“So you’re saying that you don’t trust her acting ability enough to successfully emulate the role you hired her for without actively putting her in danger?”

There was a beat of silence, and Roxanne felt a pulse of yes, thank you, god, but it was superseded by the absolute certainty that she was about to lose this job.

“Stop. You’re going to get me in trouble,” Roxanne hissed down at him between her teeth. “He’ll say I’m ‘difficult to work with’ and I’ll never get a role this big again, don’t screw this up for me-”

“You’ll get even less roles if you let him break your neck for his perfect shot,” Megamind retorted, full volume as the director sputtered behind him. “Come down and I’ll put you on the phone with my lawyer, and you can discuss exactly how many ways this mediocre auteur has abused your safety on this set.”

Roxanne hesitated for a long moment, then nodded. “I- uh, don’t actually know how I was supposed to get down from here, to be honest.”

Megamind looked, if anything, even angrier as he turned and snapped at a couple of crew members to grab a ladder already, and soon Roxanne on her way back to ground level, Megamind lifting a hand to her to help her wobble the last few rungs down the ladder. Stewart was still swearing and apparently hitting his chair in the background, though he seemed too terrified to come within ten feet of Megamind. Roxanne was substantially less intimidated.

“Not that I don’t appreciate being spoken up for, but you do realize that it isn’t easy to get a role like this, right? I can’t be picky when I’m trying to establish-”

Megamind instantly raised his hands in surrender as they started walking together away from the high-rise set. “I know- I know, I’m terribly sorry, Miss Ritchi. I tend to let my mouth run away with me when idiots like that Schteward think they can bully a better performance out of someone.”

“You- I assumed you agreed to cameo on this project because you liked the director,” Roxanne said with a raised eyebrow. “I figured it couldn’t be because of Wayne. Everybody knows you two don’t get along anymore.”

“Because I liked- oh goodness no,” Megamind sneered, dramatically flicking his wrist in front of him as if shooing a fly. “That was just an unfortunate cost if I wanted to get the chance to- er, that is-”

Roxanne tilted her head, trying to make sure that she wasn’t imagining the splash of pink flooding into his cheeks.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Obviously I’ll be dropping out. He won’t want me on set anymore, no matter how much notoriety I would draw for him. I directly challenged him in the middle of filming. Someone with his ego won’t let that go lightly. And-” he sighed and shot her a guilty sideways glance, “likely he will lump you right in with me. Sorry about that. If you’d like, you can go back and loudly denounce me after we tighten up your contract and get you a better agent, if you want to finish this one up before your next role.”

Roxanne blinked. “You think I would just- go back and lie?”

He shrugged. “It’s your career, Miss Ritchi. I certainly wouldn’t blame you. I already have a reputation, and it wouldn’t hurt me any further for you to confirm it. I’m still going to get the roles I want regardless, so it makes perfect sense for you to distance yourself from me, since you don’t have that safety net yet.”

“That- that isn’t fair,” Roxanne said, brow furrowing. “Have people done that to you before? That’s horrible.”

He grinned a sharp little grin and shrugged. “Show business, Miss Ritchi. You’re just as familiar with it as I am.”

“No. That’s bullshit. I won’t throw you under the bus like that.”

The grin faded a little, surprise edging in at the corners of his expression. “That- well, that’s up to you, of course. But- you really shouldn’t risk your job for me any more than you already have.”

“It’s not for you, it’s just the right thing to do.” She stopped for a moment to kick her ridiculous heels off, opting to carry them instead. ”This was a shitty role anyway.”

“Well.” He laughed lightly. “I hope, then, that you’ll at least let me get you in touch with some other projects that will be casting, soon-”

“I appreciate the thought but I don’t need charity roles, Megamind.”

“Charity? No, I-” he flushed again, then bit his lip hard before he continued. “I’ve- I’ve seen your work before, Miss Ritchi, and I think you’ve been wildly, atrociously overlooked. You have this inherent charm and- and you always bring such nuance to roles that otherwise would have just been- and you do anger in this really fascinating way and-” he laughed, a nervous sound that he seemed to be using to make himself stop his jolting stream of words. “The only reason I even agreed to this idiotic villain cameo was because I thought- if Roxanne Ritchi is involved it might be worth- rather, if she’s attached, maybe this Schteward fellow isn’t as bad as they say he is. I was wrong about that part, but- well, you deserve to- you deserve a chance to- to work with people who will actually appreciate you. Is all.”

Roxanne stared at him as the words dried up, at the discomfort in his expression started to verge on panic, and thought, only an absolute asshole would think this guy is a problem to work with. And then, he’s actually even prettier in person than on screen, which should be both impossible and illegal. And after that, I did not imagine him blush three entire times while he talked about me. 

“Okay. We’ll call your lawyer,” she said, “and work out whatever- business we need to, and you can give me contact info for some casting directors if you really think I have a shot. And then I’d like your number, if you’d be willing to give it.”

Megamind made a wordless noise, then shook his head. “Of- of course, I mean, you would want to get in contact with me for reference, of course-”

“Not for reference.” Roxanne stopped, turning to face him properly with a smile tugging at her lips. “I’d like to take you out for coffee, sometime.” She paused while he stared. “Unless you wouldn’t like that. I imagine that you’re probably pretty busy-”

“No I would love to- I mean, of course I would like- coffee, with you, obviously I would like-” he clamped a hand over his mouth and then gave that nervous, awkward, charming laugh again. “Like- but, of course you don’t mean- like a date, Miss Ritchi?”

“Like a date.”Roxanne smiled in earnest, now. She couldn’t help it. “And- you can call me Roxanne, you know.”

“Oh,” Megamind said, his voice gone light and stunned. “Oh. I would like that very much, Roxanne.”