#not that saying love is inherently British but in the context
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Babel is a book that came highly recommend to me from people I trust, and honestly I can see why. On it's surface, it should've been something I was really into - a book about anti-imperialism set against the backdrop of the Opium Wars while also being about etymology and the inherent imperfections of translating between two languages. Hell it even quotes Frantz Fanon at one point.
And yet.
I've been thinking about it a lot recently, and I think I've come to some conclusions of the things about it that really rubbed me the wrong way - major spoilers for the whole book follow.
Fundamentally, it comes down to one word: class. I think RF Kuang has a massive blindspot around class and classism, and it seeped through in this book in a way that I found quite aggravating.
I'll start by saying that the only working class characters that I can remember are Professor Lovell's housekeeper Mrs Piper, and the northern strikers. And kind of Griffin.
Mrs Piper is basically shown as a stereotypical loving, kindly housekeeper. She's Scottish and makes scones for Robin! That's...about all there is to her character, aside from one particular thing that sticks out to me - there's a bit early on where Robin gets beaten by Lovell for hyperfocusing and missing the start of his lesson, and Mrs Piper gets judged (not by Robin mind, by the book) for not acknowledging anything was wrong:
Some other child suited to better, kinder treatment might have realised that such nonchalance on the part of adults like Mrs Piper [...] to a badly bruised eleven-year-old was frightfully wrong
Now ignoring that this is a book set in 1830s Britain where this would have been a common occurrance anyway (yes it still would've been wrong back then but given the cultural context I don't think there were many other children "suited to a better, kinder treatment"), what grates me about this is that there's absolutely no interrogation of why she might not want to speak out about it. Her job is as a housekeeper. Presumably she is reliant on this job to survive. If she spoke out about this, chances are she'd both lose this job and potentially any future housekeeping jobs. And like, it's not a huge thing, but it's an early sign that the approach to class is at best, lacking.
So then we come to the northern strikers. First introduced as a rowdy, scary crowd - fine, it's from Robin's perspective and he's had a very bourgeois, sheltered upbringing after being picked up by Professor Lovell. They come back later, now on Robin's side, to act as. Uh. A barricade. Only one of them, Abel Goodfellow (lol) is the only one who gets any particuar characterisation, the rest are just a faceless crowd of people who the book doesn't seem to have any real interest in. The only reason they exist is to give the Oxford students and professors an extra layer of protection so none of the actual characters are in any sort of risk for a few chapters.[1]
Which brings me to one of my biggest issues. This whole book has been leading up to this "revolution" - but the revolution is a bunch of academics hiding in the big Colonialism Tower, while a bunch of proles are the ones who actually put themselves at risk. They are basically treated as cannon fodder to protect the brave academics, but then end up getting cold feet when it seems like they might be in some actual danger.
What the fuck.
What puts an even bigger point on this is knowing, throughout the entire book, that RF Kuang herself went to Oxford and pulled from her experiences. While this makes her exploration of the racism in the upper echelons of British society very real and is a legitimately good critique, it also makes the way she approaches the working class in this book feel extremely patronising - made worse by my recent discovery of just how bourgeois the rest of her background is (she went to a Greenhill School where each year costs upwards of $30k, Georgetown University which has a dispropotionately high ratio of students from wealthy families, studied at both Oxbrige unis, and finally an Ivy League uni in Yale.)
And I get it, I'm white, that is absolutely a privilege I have that she does not. I would never deny that, and I never want to talk over people who have experienced racism. But also, class-based oppression is very fucking real. So to have a literal Oxbridge scholar write a book decrying British imperialism and colonialism, criticising Oxford for being a racist driver of these things, while simultaneously glorifying the glamourous aspects of the institution [2] and just glossing over the intensity of classism in British society is, quite frankly, fucking galling.
Oh also, if you want me to be sympathetic to a character, maybe don't make them the fucking prince to another empire??? Utterly bizarre choice.
[1] As an aside, this section is another good example of her blindness towards class:
Despite all expectations, Abel's supporters grew in number over the following days. The workmen strikers were better at getting the message out than any of Robin's pamphlets. They spoke the same lanugage, after all. The British could identify with Abel in a way they could not with foreign-born translators.
The implication I get from this is that because they're foreign academics, those stupid, racist proles ignored them, but like. There is a long, storied history of solidarity across racial lines among the British working classes - admittedly my knowledge of this history doesn't go back as far as when this would have been taking place, but either way, the fact it's not mentioned that the British working class would see them primarily as Oxford toffs just seems like such a weird thing to skip over.
[2] Honestly my issue with all the anachronistic things like the oysters isn't that it's anachonistic but that it comes across as bragging about all the special things she got to experience at Oxford
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Camelot 2023 Act 1 ramblings about the music and book and also the visuals again because turns out 3,000 words wasn't enough.
I cannot possibly recommend anyone actually read this because it is so absurdly, comically long but I needed to get some feelings out. Also it's in two parts because apparently Tumblr has a maximum character count and I hit it.
Overture
• Firstly, female conductor, we love to see it
• I love overtures and entr'actes and this show's is so good
• Shoutout to the orchestra
• I have never experienced a bad Broadway orchestra but still doesn't mean they do not deserve serious praise
• Does just the instrumental of Camelot make me very emotional and think about fundamental human goodness?
• Yes, this show did its job
• The end of the If Ever I Should Leave You part is just permanantly in my brain as the part during bows where they point to the orchestra
• Whatever the music that plays as everyone starts walking onstage is epic
• The vibe is set and I'm ready
Act 1 Scene 1: A hilltop near the castle at Camelot
• I've said it once and I'll say it one thousand times, I am obsessed with the way they've used the space in this show
• I love that they can walk up the back of the stage, I love that they have the stairs in front, I love that they've got so many exit and entrance points
• Sorry to the actors who probably had to do a lot of running around but it was fun for me
• As much as I like spectacle, I don't inherently prefer it over this kind of more minimalist thing
• But I do feel like they did a good job at conveying scale and drama even though the set is extremely minimal
• "I have the exact same amount of information that you do" just immediately starts the show off on the right foot
• This is a new take and I was here for it instantly
• And such a funny way to deliver a ton of exposition, this will be the first of what will become the prevailing theme of my rambling which is I adore Sorkin's writing beyond measure
• Merlyn's delivery drenched in sarcasm for every line is perfect and we clearly see where Arthur gets it from
• Specifically "do you know what calamity means?"
• But also "things in England are changing too fast"/"words that have never before been spoken"
• Establishing Sagramore in a funny way that becomes so serious by the end
• We jump right into the Sorkin dialouge rhythm and it feels so right
• There's the perfect amount of everyone overlapping each other and finishing the other characters' thoughts
• And also the jaunty music when most of the guards leave, like I don't exactly know why it sounds like that since it doesn't fit but I love it anyway
• I know it's part of at least the movie's score but like to me it's still strange, I've been calling it clown music in my head
• The difficulty finding the king exchange and also the pheasant hunting exchange are so funny and set the tone so well
• Can you see I'm attempting not the write out every line of dialouge?
• But also I love that we get this little build to Arthur to wonder what the hell is going on with this guy
• Because if you're me, you've come into this show with basically the association with JFK and that's it
• So I had no clue and was curious
• The knights have like mostly terrible points but Sagrimore's delivery of "snear all you like but five minutes ago we were at war with that girl's county and tomorrow I'll be swearing an oath to protect her with my life"
• He's not wrong
• The knights are so good, the actors are perfect
• Every bit of casting is inspired and those three are no exception
• "Arthur get the hell out of the tree"
• Again with no context, the tree really got me
• "Hiding, I'm obviously hiding" - I am instantly in, the delivery on this line is so funny
• Okay fine I was in from the way he said hello, also a hilarious delivery
• My roommate brought up immediately how effective it is not to have him do a British accent and how it again just makes Arthur relatable - genius
• Whatever voice he's doing is a perfect choice
• Also young Arthur is so much the right choice it's staggering to me that they ever did it any other way
• They thread the needle so perfectly of Arthur being young but not in a way where he's like an incompetent child
• Which I feel like is actually how some of the other versions with older actors still managed to come off
• But this Arthur is just young and trying
• "My mouth disconnects from my brain"/"I've witnessed that"
• As like a character note, I love that exchange but I also was worried this was gonna be what it usually is, which is a male character who cannot treat a woman like a human person
• But no, Arthur has absolutely no problem with that, his mouth only disconnects from his brain when he's trying to confess feelings and that is 1000% more endearing
• "Years of tutoring in philosophy and law, why didn't you ever teach me about love and marriage?"/"You're not marrying for love and there's nothing about it that can be taught."
• To which my roommate that I dragged to see this twice and who has just been forced to talk about this show with me, maintains that perhaps you could maybe convey that relationships are about communication
• That lesson might've helped just a bit
• "You're not marrying for love" like Merlyn is trying to warn Arthur and he sure did not listen
• "They should be reading" Arthur babe they literally can't, it's the Middle Ages
• Also the establishment of no magic is so deftly handled
• Arthur complaining that people think that dragons are real and you get exactly what this world is
• I love that I Wonder What the King is Doing tonight becomes his noble king music
• Also I just absolutety love any time anything has a recurring musical theme it just lights up some part of my brain every time
• The yelling of "he's scared" and all of the subsequent lyrics in that spot is again hilarious and just very good characterization
• Also the delivery of the slaying a dragon part whatever that singing accent is I love it
• Actually the way he sings all the parts where he's imagining what other people are saying
• The other characters have a lot of songs that are gorgeous and require some incredible vocals and songs with fun lyrics and fun performances but not at lot of them get to infuse this much personality and character into the songs through just the delivery
• Don't know if that's from the original or not but it's one of my favorite characters introductions I've seen in a bit
• From what I've seen this is definitely an escalation of previous versions and I adore it
• He's so annoyed, he hates this shit so much and he's so funny
• I mean also lots of credit to the lyrics because they are obviously very funny
• I love this song a lot
• Arthur's "shhhhit" when he realizes that he's managed to run into his future wife
• The multi-layered complication line, so quintessential Arthur
• The contrast between the gorgeous Julie Andrews channeling singing and Genny's brashness in her movement and dialouge
• Like obviously that's already in the lyrics but the book and direction just stretches it
• Everyone knew Phillipa Soo was going to be perfect and she is
• A lot of my strongest impressions are about Arthur
• Because I had no idea who the actor was and because in the limited amount of adaptations I'm familiar with of this whole story, Arthur is the bad guy or a good but extremely boring guy
• But I knew going in that I was gonna love Guenevere and Phillipa Soo even if I've never seen her on stage before
• So it was unsurprising
• Like my expectations were sky-high and she's so talented in every way and the writing for Genny is so good that she exceeded them anyway
• And she's so damn funny
• Obviously the whole rescued in the wood bit is already just a good joke and I'm honestly impressed with how funny the original songs are
• I am a sucker for the thing in stories where we know what's going to happen because they've been told so many times
• When they have a character say something the audience knows is foreshadowing
• "Cause a little war" is what I'm thinking of in this moment but there are tons and every time it's a hit with me
• The delivery of the clause one bit is perfect and her backing Arthur into falling on the bench and then just turning around and back to angelic singing
• The turnaround from the aggressiveness to the extremely soft and feminine singing is brilliant
• "The more knights slaughter each other, the fewer there are to slaughter the rest of us"
• The exchange about the dowry still being in the carriage
• Their deliveries are so funny
• They immediately bounce off of each other perfectly
• And Genny not even escaping with the dowry she's supposed to be using to buy her freedom, amazing
• "What is power uuuused for? That is a very interesting question."
• Genny just immediately knocking Arthur's socks off
• Trying to write out some of the word deliveries he does is so hard but there are a few that absolutely kill me
• They've known each other for five minutes and they're already having a debate
• "I've known kings, I'm daughter of a king so marrying a king doesn't have the same allure for me that it apparently has for you"
• She just speeds through those words at the end and it's great
• "They run to here" is another bit of hilarious delivery but I also love the contrast it sets up between Arthur trying to be kingly in a way that doesn't fit versus later when he does it his own way
• I could listen to them go back and forth saying why for ten minutes
• Genny's incredulousness when he says the weather
• I can't remember but I think she's walking away and then just turns to stare at him in absolute confusion
• Like he's so ridiculous that she can't help but engage
• I did a quick bit of intermission math and we know this takes place seven months before the Lusty Month of May which is obviously happening in May
• So Arthur is literally singing to Genny about how there's no winter until December while at best - assuming the one month later and six months later are rounded up - it is snowing at the absolute beginning of November
• More likely October
• No wonder Genny thinks he's full of shit
• His improv did not pan out
• This is a joke for me, thank you Aaron Sorkin
• Do love that canonically, Arthur is in fact singing the song Camelot - that he just made up in a panic - what a dork
• Genny's little interjections of skepticism are all so funny
• Also just instantly establishing her as someone you love
• She's perfect
• But my favorite is "my escape is time sensitive, do you understand that?"/Arthur still singing/"no he does not"
• These actors are both hilarious, the amount of stuff required of musical theater actors continues to blow my mind
• Like not only to do the whole singing, dancing, and acting thing but then you have to convey it to a whole theater but also not overact to the people up close and be able to do comedy and drama how
• I was in practically the back row up top and not a good view but extremely close (like seeing the actors spit close) on the side for the under 35 tickets and then also in very good seats and the performances by literally everyone never felt too much or not enough
• "Are there any other people in these woods you could recommend?"
• Also this moment which is the cutest thing you've ever heard
• Do I remember exactly what happened? No. But do I know it was adorable? Yes.
• "And we have poets in France"/"Oh yes of course... But do you?"/Genny angrily naming French poets/"Understood" and he's already singing again
• The entire performance of this song and especially getting her to sing along, so charming in the most annoying way
• But also she's sort of into it which is cute
• I do see on YouTube that there was a bit more to this French poets discussion which was probably right to cut but I am delighted to find literally anything new
• Sidebar
• I have been known to have issues with staying present when I watch things and not letting my mind start wandering. And one of the reasons I knew Camelot was good the first time was that I was totally engaged the whole show. But the last time, I did have the one moment where a thought popped into my brain during this song that completely threw me out of it
• And that thought was "this Barbie has taken a carriage ride to hell" after Genny says that line and like why brain?
• (For the record Genny and Arthur are both Barbies. They are everything. Lance is just Ken. Perfecting his body and soul is his beach. He is Kenough. Arthur and Genny have a terrible day every day. Lance only has a terrible day if Arthur and/or Genny look at him.)
• (I believe I have come up with a combination of words that have never been spoken before and perhaps a genuinely new opinion on a thousand year old legend)
• (In a bad way)
• Anyway
• The pure chaotic comedy of the knights finding Arthur and Genny freaking out is not something I can articulate but I adored so much
• Phillipa Soo is stealing the whole show in this one
• Does Genny come out of her hiding spot with her mouth wide open before she gets on the ground or am I misremembering?
• "We call that a sin of omission your majesty"
• With no remose "oh we call it that too"
• "Were you never going to tell me?"/"No I was going to get to it"/"When?"/"After I told you about the weather"
• Not a single bit of remose again
• I don't have anything to say, I just think the exchange is very funny
• I love not making Arthur any kind of royalty, he is truly just some guy
• Like I'm reading The Once and Future King and Arthur's lineage is so weirdly complicated and I just don't care, I like him as some guy
• "He discovered he didn't have his sword because I left it at... a house, that doesn't matter, that's my fault"
• Now that's a line that is funny on time one and fills you with dread afterwards
• The most exasperated "I was just going to borrow it for the day"
• Something about the delivery of "when I opened my eyes the square was filled with people shouting god save the king"
• Like Arthur never actually says out loud that he didn't want to be king but Genny gets it right away
• "I see you now, you're just a boy wearing a crown you never wanted sitting atop a throne two sizes too big"
• Just an absolute cutting response but Arthur doesn't take it that way at all, he's so earnest
• She reads him to filth but it doesn't even rattle him, he just takes it because it's true
• Gorgeous writing in what she says and his response
• "But provenance has put us both here, both of us highness and want it or not we are commanded to wear that crown and to grow into that throne"
• Chills, the delivery is outstanding
• We finally get King Arthur
• And Genny being convinced, all it took was one genuine moment and she's ready to engage
• Then Arthur again just taking so passionately about what he wants Camelot to be
• No wink, no sarcasm, no shame
• This show is unabashedly sincere and optimistic and I love it
• Genny falls in love with Arthur, I fall in love with Arthur, Genny falls in love with Camelot the idea, I fall in love with Camelot the show
• Everyone including the audience and Arthur were already in love with Genny for Phillipa Soo reasons so there's no moment for that one
• I feel like the trope-y thing would be to have Genny be a cynic here but no, she's just as much of an idealist as him
• She put up a little front of cynicism at the beginning but as soon as she gets the option of hope, she's choosing it instantly
• "Or you can stay. And together we may discover if power might be harnessed as a force of good"
• Like he's instantly treating her as a partner in this endeavor
• And I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight playing under it so beautifully and then the seamless musical transition back to Camelot is so perfect
• I am music stupid so I wish I had something to say about it but your songs have got to be tight to flow that way
• "I don't know if I'm worthy" also just a heartbreaker
• We don't really get to hear anything about Genny's life in France but she's clearly very opinionated and competent and I wonder if besides the whole wanting romance and adventure thing
• She also had an idea of what the life of a queen is like
• After all she's the daughter of one
• And she didn't imagine having this kind of role in actual ruling and doesn't know whether she can live up to this ideal that Arthur has set
• Like maybe she thought the only way she'd get to impact the world was knights killing each other over her or being the cause of a war, at least that's something
• But now she has a chance at more and she's grabbing it
• Genny singing the reprise is so beautiful thematically - it makes me a little teary just watching her instantly be like I see your dream and understand it and I want to be part of it but via some of the best singing maybe ever
• Such an amazing recontextualization from the original
• I've seen little clips of this reprise from 1961 and this one just feels warmer and more meaningful because it's about the ideals and not them confessing love at first sight
• And somehow more romantic
• They're instantly established as a team who share intellectual and philosophical similarities
• To so quickly convey that and make it believable
• It not only cements their relationship but makes them characters you root for
• And then the sounds of people coming in as soon as or maybe even before they get to finish singing together, like it's their world and they're falling for each other but there's no time, they're king and queen now and that will always supercede their relationship
• Also something about the moment when Arthur introduces her to the court just also really gets me
• "She's nice... some of the time"
• It's cute how smitten he is with her, all of her, immediately
• "Something about her makes me want to be a better king" (so Arthur is actually capable of expressing a romantic thought, don't get used it it)/"She's very attractive"/"Oh she is but it's not that"/"Arthur"/"Well it's not just that"
• I love the way they flip the speech Arthur gives Genny from the original about not feeling like a king until now meeting her
• But now that they've actually gotten to know each other a bit and it's after she's agreed to stay it actually makes sense here
• I do also love that even though he can't manage it to Genny's face, he does feel completely comfortable expressing his feelings about her to Merlyn
• The "oh she is" is so cute, he's so excited
• The music under his conversation with Merlyn before he starts just monologuing, very ominous
• I'm obsessed with it
• "We finally have peace" is another line delivery that I just need to sit and think about
• The joy of it, the relief
• Again the idea that Arthur has been a king at war this whole time
• Merlyn mentions, as part of a joke but still, almost as soon as we meet Arthur that he's fought armies
• He's not optimistic about the world because he hasn't seen conflict
• He's more determined because he sees what it does
• Channeling best man in all fiction Waymond Wang this is how I fight energy and that's very my shit
• Very much my shit might be a slight understatement
• It might not be surprising to learn that Arthur is my favorite thing about this show, they revamped this character so well
• So much of my life was spent in the media age of male anti-heroes and I love that we've returned to a point of male heroes
• Arthur idealistically talking about how they can finally start making Camelot for everyone and Merlyn walking off stage while the ensemble sings I think the part from the cut song and I assume some new stuff that's very Medieval church music
• So so good
• "What do I do next?" so eager and then just the emotional drop-off to his scared little boy when it becomes clear what's happening "Merlyn?"
• Stunning performance
• I think Arthur falls to his knees at some point but I'm already doubting
• The "what the hell do I do now?"
• Perfect scene ender
Act 1, Scene 2: The King's study - one month later
• The transition music between scenes is always good
• It's gonna be a struggle not to just quote this whole scene
• "Arthur, please call me Arthur" is so desperate like he has no one now, no actual human connections to him as a person instead of a king now that Merlyn is gone
• And then asking what she was called back home, he wants connection so badly
• And probably he still feels guilty for taking her from her home to be his wife
• "I was a royal princess, I didn't have friends"
• Well there is a reason they're both terrible at relationships
• I also love the way Phillipa Soo says Arthur in such a stilted way at the beginning of this scene and it becoming more natural every time she does it
• Genny telling him he's not attending to his duties with enthusiasm like she is not the least bit afraid to challenge the king a month in
• Love to see it
• Arthur's "I beg your pardon" when she asks about cortesans and the look he gives her
• "My father kept his women, his extra women, in their own wing of the palace. Where are yours? Might they cheer you up?"
• Genny the proactive problem solver
• Also something about the way she says extra women makes me laugh
• "I don't have extra women, I'm a married man. You were at my wedding" perhaps one of my favorite deliveries and lines in the whole show
• Genny's point of view in this scene is very interesting
• Like she does bring up that it's his legal right instead of dropping the whole thing and that's a choice
• Does she think he's lying about not having cortesans and reminding him that she is legally obligated to be cool with it so to be honest?
• Or is she just baffled by Arthur and his choices because this is a normal thing for a king to her?
• Or maybe since she already has feelings, she's trying to balance her own expectations to not get hurt?
• Possibilities
• "I'm aware of my legal right in that regard and I assure you I have no intention - oh my god - no intention of exercising it"
• Specifically the delivery of oh my god but the whole thing, he is so offended
• "And making the world into Camelot, are you abstaining from that too or will men at honor continue to plunder villages and take, rape, and kill whatever they please?"
• Genny
• Genny you are a hero
• She's so smart and fierce and unafraid to stand up to Arthur
• "I didn't make the world"/"You make a part of it"
• Arthur being so defensive and Genny calmly holding her ground
• She's taken to her new role so well
• And then Arthur admitting he doesn't know how to proceed without Merlyn, I love the way he builds trust in her in this scene
• "What would he say?"/"He'd say my god you're the slowest student anyone's ever tried to teach"/"Well I can convincingly say that"/"It's good that you mock me, kings should be mocked from time to time, it brings people pleasure. But for the record it's no fun for the king"
• Genny sounding so pleased with herself, Arthur getting out another sarcastic response
• Also what a lie, it is fun for him
• Mocking each other and public policy are their love languages
• "He once explained why but I got distracted because a white tailed eagle flew right by" with the most excitement and boyishness
• And then starting to go off on a tangent about eagles
• Never change Arthur
• I just think it's sweet the way she redirects him because she's fully committed herself to the idea of Camelot and her role in it
• "Pace freely at your own pace"
• Another brilliant line and delivery
• Channeling some Mary Poppins here
• Genny getting Arthur to think is so good
• "You had to pace and comcentrate to arrive at that?"/"It's hard to imagine why your country was willing to part with you"
• The proposition/resolved structure of this scene is very good
• And also that he starts with this pessimistic tantrum about human nature and Genny guides him back on track
• It's a great relationship moment but it also lets Arthur have some struggle and lets Genny be for Arthur what he was for her in the first scene
• Arthur collapsing on the floor and muttering "extra women" like wow he cannot handle being thought of as not a good person
• "That's it?"/"Wait"/"I wasn't going anywhere"
• Her being on the floor with him, gently pushing him
• He can't even maintain cynicism for more than a few minutes
• Them building the idea of the round table together, this is peak romance
• I can't just quote this scene in its entirety but every moment of it is a delight of them passing ideas back and forth
• "Isn't it also about the law?"/"It is"
• A standout delivery
• I love when they're working out the wordings like they make each other better
• "The law will be the stone upon which this rock - the rock upon - wait the church?"/"Have mercy"/"The law will be the rock upon which this church is built"/"Nothing can be more important"/"Nothing can be as important"
• This is what I love about Sorkin's writing
• The way that he has characters discuss ideas
• Like everything is an exciting discovery
• There's no singing in this scene but it has so much rhythm and is so compelling when in another writer's hands it would be boring and forgettable
• I broke out a chunk but it's so dense there are so many words and I love each one
• Genny counting down to his return, she already knows him so well
• Again I am trying not to type out every line
• I think they both yell for the page but I'm actually not sure, either way they are so excited and yelling something
• The new book has done so much to deepen their relationship, I adore these idealistic little nerds
• Arthur cannot contain himself
• His attempt to cool things down for himself by taking his hands off her face and then "you were very helpful, thank you"
• Smooth
• Convincing
• Definitely professional and platonic
• Truly do not know how Genny does not realize he's in love with her at this point but she sure is not gonna get better at that
• "And I suppose France too"/"I know that hurt"/"A little bit" and then he laughs it's adorable
• They're both so giddy here
• "Arthur I did already know that about you, that you were a decent fellow"/"I'm glad"
• They're in love. They are so in love.
• Arthur has taken on Genny's tone for the word inspiration when he talks to the knights
• "You've invited the French" every time Sagramore says it, it's just as funny
• "We may not be born equal"/"We are not sire" (with so much contempt)/"So our laws will make us equal" (with no room for disagreement)
• The immediate conflict
• And we see Arthur being a king and taking a hard line which we don't get to see much in this show and I love it
• "What about God's laws?"/"Not. Our. Jurisdiction" like are we sure this is not actually from the west wing
• I'm internally cheering when I hear it, I love this line far too much
• It's funny but also authoritative and kingly
• I get that some people do not vibe with Sorkin's style and that's fine but I very much do
• This show is so for me it's kind of incredible it was not made with that purpose
• A Sorkin character who would love Sorkin's work, I just adore it
• And according to the funniest line from any review I read, also has Sorkin's haircut
• That just lives in my brain because it's funnier than any piece of media criticism I will ever hear
• The knights already dissenting is very good but also that they don't fully agree yet with each other
• They build it in immediately and that's such a good choice, it makes every escalation feel totally plausible instead of the knights just easily falling for Mordred's bullshit
• Dinadan quoting Plato's ideas and saying how they're the well-educated people who should be in charge is great
• I love that the knights get to be characters and have thoughts
• Their constant vacillating between loyalty to the king and loyalty to the power structure they benefit from
• One of my favorite running tensions
Act 1, Scene 3: The countryside outside of Camelot - six months later
• The performance of C'est Moi is so funny
• Going 100% immediately
• Jordan Donica was just as perfectly cast as everyone else
• The lyrics are so funny and then he is just so loud
• His little whispered "C'est Moi" after the second verse while posing is so much funnier than it is on the cast recording
• "Had I been made the partner of Eve/we'd be in Eden still" is my favorite lyric
• The scream on clean destroys me
• Lance is always at a 10 and he's so delusional, I'm obsessed with him
• There's so much loud breathing in this performance which I love
• And whirling his sword around the stage
• "Beware enemies of Arthur do you hear me beware, from this moment you answer to me" while Arthur is literally unconscious behind him, this is comedy
• "You raised your sword to me"/"Oh I was saying hello"/"I did not know that"
• Lance is not sorry at all and it's hilarious
• He's just on another planet compared to everyone else and I love it
• Also Arthur so pure, just seeing a random person and trying to say hi
• Like you're the king of the country, you do know many people are not exactly going to be friendly, right?
• "I honestly thought I was more recognizable to the French"
• "Have you changed your Francs to English shillings?"/"Why?"/"This man's face is on money"
• Arthur subtly trying to tell Lance what's happening but the word subtle is not in Lance's vocabulary
• "I'm underwhelming in person"
• Says the man that keeps making French people instantly fall in love with him in the woods
• "My security detail... right in the nick of time"
• "I beg your majesty to forgive for me for by forgiving me I'll suffer even more"
• Lance is screaming the whole time
• I don't know how he does it
• "But my strength comes from purity of spirit"/"What was that?"/"Purity of spirit, my personal relationship with the almighty, he favors me"/"I'd keep that to yourself"
• I can't write it out but this
• And this is about to have to switch out for the rest of the show so like even more screaming somehow
• He's so funny, it isn't reasonable
• Also love that his language is the least modern of them
• It fits
• Seems like some of his lines come directly from the original book and it works amazingly
• "Be a faultless example to children" is another iconic delivery
• Also Lance asking for a mission, incredible
• He just plays everything so straight and it's perfect
• Like not a single acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of this character
• Arthur will literally get a concussion to avoid a social function, relatable
• "Until you came along and whacked me in my head"/"AND FOR THAT I BEG YOUR HARSHEST PUNISHMENT"/"Nope, nope, we're not going back to that"
• Yes the all caps is necessary, Lance is always speaking in caps, if he lived in a time a cell phones all of his texts would look like that
• And Arthur's tone when he responds
• When Lance starts singing again and then Arthur just says nope so many times
• This is their whole relationship
Act 1, Scene 4: A park near the castle
• This scene is just a magnificent Phillipa Soo showcase that we have been blessed with
• Like she is just so talented and I am blown away
• There's a reason Lusty Month of May is the song they have the most out there
• "The birds and the bees with all of their vast/amorous past/gaze at the human race aghast" is my favorite and she does it so perfectly
• Also the intro music just exactly captures that buzzy spring feeling
• My roommate and I both had the experience where the first time we saw the show, none of the music stuck with us
• And then the second time, all of the sudden it burrows into your brain
• This burrowed first because of course, it's so vibrant and lovely
• The original music is so good and somehow the transition from the more modern dialouge into the songs is seemless
• Genny has two missions: justice for all and bringing sex to England
• Look there's none in her own marriage and she needs an outlet, make those people kiss, it's all you have
• Genny's so fun and adorable in this song and it's perfect and I have no notes
• I'm just gonna go watch the today show performance and bask in it, this is the most classic Broadway musical sequence in the whole thing
• I love the idea that she's inviting all these normal people in and the beginning of the knights absolutely hating it
• "Be right quieter"
• And when they refer to Genny as a guest in the country
• The original is very and everyone loves her and I love that there's this tension where the people with power don't like her but everyone else does
• They say all the quiet parts out loud in this scene
• The show needs the knights so badly to show the discontent growing over time
• But they still respect tradition enough to enforce respect for the queen on Pellinore
• "I've only lived here a short time"/"Oh and you're already the queen, well done"/"I really had nothing to do with it"
• "Full of youth he was but brooding over problems that would confound Solomon. Ever met him your majesty?"/ "Constantly, he's my husband."
• With such affection ahhhh
• "You must be Morgan Le Fay... oh how he'd go on about the loveliness of Morgan Le Fey, her unsurpassing beautiful"
• Genny getting emotionally slapped in the face, it hurts so much
• The first crack in their relationship because they couldn't talk to each other...
• "I'm glad that nice young man found a nice young lady"
• Why does this make me feel things?
• I love the royal music every time
• "As you were everyone, pick grapes, eat flowers, or uh the other way around"
• Arthur and Genny's little catch up about Pelli is very cute, we don't get to see them be cute for a while after this so I just want to appreciate it
• Lance having no social awareness and continuing to make proclamations while Genny could not care less and is actively trying to speak to someone else, brilliant
• Genny and Arthur just waiting for Lance to stop talking after she keeps being interrupted and then Genny rushing out her lunch invitation and Arthur rushing out his response
• Arthur immediately wanting to run ideas by Genny, she is crucial to the development of Camelot and it's very much not a secret
• Arthur's "uh oh" when Lance is doing some casual misogyny
• "That sounded like a friendly exchange of pleasantries"/"It was not"
• No fucks for Genny today
• I wish I could one day know the translation of Genny and Lance's friendly exchange of pleasantries
• "Who would serve as the standard?"/"Oh certainly not me your majesty"/"See no hubris"/"My standards are much too high"/"Dammit Lance"
• "Have you achieved perfection milord?"/"Please say no"/"Of course I haven't your majesty"/"Good"/"Refining the soul is an endless struggle... but physical perfection"/"No"/"Yes"/"Go back to speaking French"
• "And in your quest for spiritual perfection have you considered the value of humility?"/"Ah something we should all consider. In fact let's take two minutes of silence to consider the value of humility."
• The dialouge between the three of them is so funny in this scene
• The ship is sinking and Arthur is just there with a tiny bucket while Lance and Genny keep creating giant new holes
• Genny calling Lance a jackass is both hilarious and also so valid
• "She already has an affectionate nickname for you"
• We have officially reached the beginning of the end, well we had some nice moments
• Like imagine if Pelli didn't start going on about how in love Arthur was with Morgan and then Arthur didn't show up with his new best friend who immediately implied women were too stupid to engage in government
• Genny was having a no fucks day and was probably ready to do a stupid thing and maybe that stupid thing was her husband
• A true tragedy
• "And with humility I"
• Dinadan's line deliveries are so dry and good
• And Genny's laugh
• "And whom will the three of you want to impress?"/"We want to impress the king too."/"Ah yes English men"
• I love the knights, they've all got their own little comedic touches in this song
• Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss Genny
• Take Me to the Fair is a masterpiece
• I don't know what constitutes a hot take about this show because there are 5 people talking about it
• But my hot take is that as much as Lusty Month of May is a brilliant and amazing song
• This is actually the Phillipa Soo tour de force
• Her fake crying is so good
• There are so many good flourishes in the singing
• Same thing I feel about I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight, Phillipa Soo is just enhancing every line with her hilarious delivery
• Also this sound
• Sagramore is always operating at 50% more intensity than the rest of the knights and it's perfect
• Him having to be held back by the other two when Genny sings to him
• It's involuntary at this point that I turn my head back at French during this verse
• His very loud delivery of "I swear to you the challenge will be met"
• "Sirrrr Liiiiionel"/"Ma'am"/"Ugh"
• And when she gives his chest a little slap after "and young du Lac"
• Perfect
• And her laugh-cry at the end of Lionel's part
• Their faces when she touches them are also just very confused and funny, she is not good at this
• I love when the knights are singing together, bringing up Lance really has wrapped them around her finger
Act 1, Scene 5: The King's study - the night before the tournament
• "You know that it's your move right?"/"I did not know that. I'll need to alter my strategy now"
• Honestly so relatable I suck at chess, Pelli is the best
• "If we're to care about justice, we need to care even more about injustice"
• Just a good little Sorkin nugget
• Pelli refusing to understand any of Arthur's ideas, excellent
• "Do I understand that you intend to be history's first king to yield power?"/"Oh now you're catching on"
• I do just love Arthur so much
• And the delivery of "she wrote what you just read"
• He's so pleased to inform Lance that Genny's writing treatises about justice
• Pelli's smug little "it's your move" like that's correct, no one is allowed to not respect women in Arthur's study
• "He's had you in checkmate for an hour and a half"
• Arthur's patience is astounding, Lance should be taking notes while he's perfecting his spirit
• "Would you like to play me or do you ever do anything but perfect your soul?"/"No I also perfect my body"
• Again just perfect deliveries and honestly so much respect to the new book for making Lance even more irritating but eventually more human too
• I am not dragging Lance, this is a compliment
• Just the way Jordan Donica plays it completely straight without being able to detect sarcasm is hilarious
• "The arrangement I'm in is called a marriage, having some fun would be called treason. And finally I hate his breathing guts."
• Setting up the consequences we know are coming with a little joke, I like it
• "Well be sure and give us clear skies tomorrow when you're arranging things with god tonight"
• Savage, I don't like most of the original dialouge but we had a winner with this one
• Her delivery just elevates it
• "No one could refuse your wish"
• The gall of Lance to say that like that in front of Arthur like he is shameless
• "Why do you have to bait the man?"/"I dislike him, I thought I was making that clear"
• Genny is so relatable
• Their first fight and Arthur's already insulting the French, I'm not sure why he thought this was going to go well
• Arthur trying to delicately ask Genny to withdraw her permission from Dinadan
• He's trying to have this conversation as her husband and not her king but Genny is not even having it a little
• Genny explaining that she already gave permission for all the knights is so funny
• I know they're basically the original lines but ya know, sometimes Lerner nailed it
• "It will seem to the entire court as if you are rooting for his downfall and championing his defeat."/"The only reason it will seem that way is because I'm rooting for his downfall and championing his defeat."
• "He's going to embarass those three. These are not men who take well to embarrassment."
• Like Arthur already knows exactly who his knights are
• He knows that they don't exactly match up to his ideals
• The delivery on "will you withdraw your permission" is also spot on like Arthur is ready to exit this conversation right now
• Also on "if I do will you forgive me"
• Like he knows that's not happening
• "Not as long as I live, no"
• Perfect riff on the original book's line
• Arthur doing some investigating on Genny hating Lance like he knows before she even does
• Ouch
• And then him starting to get frustrated when she's not answering like babies' first fight is not going well
• "Because he needs to be brought down to earth... literally not metaphorically"
• Like she has yet to be wrong
• "Merlyn never taught me how to handle a woman"/"You didn't read the book?"/"There's a book? No I can see from your face that there's not a book. Though maybe in France they would have published something, no I can still see on your face"
• We love a Genny dripping with sarcasm moment
• And Arthur being an idiot nerd
• He's so so stupid
• Another one of my truly favorite lines and deliveries, he is so excited that he completely forgets he's mad at her for a second and then pouting when he realizes
• "If the king wishes me to withdraw my permission, let him so command... nope, then I will bid you goodnight"
• The aggressiveness on her daring him to command her is so much
• Perfect
• I love her nope, a little power play
• Because she knows he won't and he knows he won't and she's happy to remind him of that they both know that and then leave
• His silence is doing so much work too
• Damn this scene is good
• "And before I go to bed as a gesture to Lancelot and to you, I'll pray it's over quickly"/It will be"
• They're so mad, I love it
• "There should be a book"
• Grumbling sullen Arthur is very funny even if How to Handle a Woman is lowkey the worst song
• And Arthur's worst impulse, which the narrative knows because it plays under him talking about vengeance and what he's entitled to later
• Like they do a good job recontextualizing it but it's still not the best
• Just hearing him sing the word threaten is kind of jarring, I cannot even slightly imagine this Arthur even thinking it once
• In my opinion they should've just cut it, I'd gladly take more Sorkin dialouge instead
• I do appreciate the way they scaled back this music in the rest of the show
• Because it's all over the second act of the movie, Arthur and Genny's theme if you will
• Like even during their last conversation
• Because they're not the love story so their theme isn't really a love song
• But then here, they play it under Arthur's worst impulses at the end of act 1 and banish it which is so smart
Act 1, Scene 6: A grandstand - the next day
• The music coming into this scene and when Arthur and Genny show up, again fantastic
• The outright hostility between the knights and Lance, they turned it so far up in this version
• Pushing him down and shit
• I love Athur and Genny showing up and getting to see them actually be king and queen and have their over-the-top outfits and crowns in this and the last act 1 scene because it's so removed from who they are the rest of time
• Arthur's speech at the beginning trying to glorify them not having the tournament and how great losing is and having to be stopped by Genny
• He's trying so hard and his speech is not good
• The fact that she basically tells him to stop and his response is fine like I think he forgets that he's actually in charge
• I love a sword fight
• The movement, the drama, the loud clanging...
• I am but a humble girl raised on the Pirates of the Carribean movies
• Dinadan being a dick before the fight with "and now for your lesson sir"
• The way Lance knocks the sword out of Dinadan's grip and makes him pick it up before defeating him, such an asshole move
• I truly can't tell if Lance has just such a superiority complex that he doesn't realize what parts of his own behavior are making people dislike him or he's just so stuck in his toxic little mindset that he doesn't care if people hate him for it
• I kind of feel like Lance is so into his specific notions of the world that even he doesn't really know why he acts the way he does
• "Dinadan seemed very inspired by your kerchief, should we continue?"
• "You know he almost had him, right up until the moment he never stood a chance"
• Their fight being played out by proxy while Arthur makes snide comments and they give each other looks is good shit
• Sagramore's scream, he's always going so hard
• The fact that Arthur fighting instead of Lionel is new for this
• Genius
• So good
• The dialouge around it is good too
• The temptation to just transcribe the whole thing is so strong
• Commanding Lance to pick back up his sword like damn
• I love seeing this new side of Arthur
• He can and will fight and he's good at it
• "I know what a damn baguette is"
• His little bit to Lance about it just being about morale is very good
• But also he can see what's going on even if Genny can't so is it?
• The fact that he may well have won the fight if it wasn't for a cool bird, what a man
• Fun fact about me, I didn't even see the bird or realize that's why he got distracted until the last time
• He and Genny are like very much not in a good place this moment but he will let it slide to point out a bird
• Arthur's fall is very good
• Can you tell I think this scene is also very good, I've only written it like twelve times
• The fact that they're letting people fight with swords and there isn't a doctor for 12 miles, amazing planning by everyone
• The bit of everyone thinking Arthur was dead and him sarcastically correcting them is amazing 100% of the time
• "He put life back into him" is just consistently hilarious
• "I'm not wanted here Arthur"
• With the most heartbreaking delivery
• Aw we finally see Lance have some shred of being an actual person
Act 1, Scene 7: The castle terrace - on the evening of the same day
• I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight intro-ing into this scene
• "Well you got me there" being screamed is perfect
• Pelli sensing that something is bothering Arthur, their relationship is very sweet
• Pelli describing the way Genny and Lance were looking at each other, what a shit stirer
• "It may be the only way to get him to stay"/"Maybe it's best if you let him go"/"Let him go?"/"Maybe it's best"/"Why is that?"/"Well...You said yourself, morale"
• Like she's trying to protect them but she won't say it
• For obvious reasons
• But it's confirming what Arthur already suspects
• And just drawing them further apart
• Another great her silence is doing so much work moment
• The entire telling Lance he's being invested discussion is so intense
• So much anger simmering in Arthur that can't help but come out in the line deliveries in the beginning
• Genny refusing to engage and turning her back to the whole thing
• "I'm sure he'd like to hear it from another child of France"/"This is my country now"
• Oh boy I love this exchange
• Like she's trying, she's trying so hard
• And I don't know what the fuck Arthur is thinking with that one, in what way could she possibly respond that's not going to be bad for him?
• Arthur leaving them alone like whyyyy
• And then Arthur giving Genny back her bloody kerchief, fuck
• All is very much not forgiven here
• "God dammit Pelli, I wasn't dead"
• Genny making it clear she does not believe Arthur was dead, I appreciate that she's also very clear on the fact that their world is not magical
• I wonder if Lance does think he willed Arthur back to life
• Probably
• "Don't ever say it out loud. Neither of us can ever say it out loud"
• This was another straight up gasping in the theater moment
• The entire conversation between Genny and Lance is so good and tense
• And the delivery on that line just feels like getting punched in the gut
• Phillipa Soo is amazing
• I love that she won't let them say it, that she's fighting it
• And the way she cuts him off, the way she makes him agree to not say it
• This is the intense love she wanted and it doesn't need to be said which is exactly what she needed to feel from Arthur but didn't get
• Also Lance just trying to confess his feelings the first second he can is just such an interesting character choice
• Like the truth is his purity of the soul bluster doesn't hold up to the slightest temptation
• He's ready to betray Arthur the second he leaves the room
• It's all a front
• Not intentionally, like he believes the things he says he believes
• But he can't keep to it
• I think he's so drawn to Arthur because Arthur actually has the qualities he's proclaiming define him
• But I don't even think Lance knows any of this about himself
• At least not until later
• He's just impulsive
• Which is I think what makes him an interesting character to me but also makes his motivations hardest to decipher
• Before I Gaze at You Again is such a stunning song
• And watching Phillipa Soo just emote for the whole time
Act 1, Scene 8: The great hall - on that evening
• All the music that starts this scene is brilliant
• "I'll never disappoint you"/"I know"
• I just...
• Like we the audience know but also the characters sort of all know and they are determined not to let it happen but that only makes it happen anyway
• Ugh those lines are a little nothing but they're everything
• I have the YouTube clips of Richard Burton's version of this and it does just indicate how well they've modernized
• Theater has changed so much so the pacing of 1961 compared to this is kind of fascinating
• This is also actually the writing I think is the best from the original and it is so fascinating to compare the two versions which I'm sure someone has done and I want to read it because there is so much to say
• It's so bold to close act 1 with a speech instead of a song
• I had no context coming in so they had me in the first half, I wasn't sure if this was Arthur's turn into the villain moment
• Once again I'm just like pointing to the whole speech and yelling how good it is
• Whoever decided this belonged on the cast recording is my personal hero
• This is just on my normal spotify playlist and as long as I'm not reading, I will not skip it
• But I love the idea that in the original book Arthur starts out by declaring his love for Genny and Lance and in this version it's like he's actively talking to the audience to defend himself
• To say he's not some stupid optimistic kid, that he sees everything we have
• Comes out swinging
• I can't explain how much "proposition: I am not a befuddled king" shook me, I was ready for shit to go down and I love it as the opener to this
• The pause before "whom they love", the sadness in it
• "And she didn't choose whom she married"
• Like Arthur can never get rid of that guilt
• The push and pull of this entire thing where he will try to make an argument with himself that everything is fine but the bitterness keeps seeping in until there's no rationality left
• Trying not the write out the whole thing but the rhythm of it, the pacing, this performance is spectacular
• The way the audience startles when he starts screaming
• Like he's having his back and forth rational debate with himself and finally we see him lose that control
• And it is the good shit
• I can't explain how much I came in with no context for this show and how much this completely threw me in the best way
• We're finally a glimpse of what's happening inside Arthur's head, to see the way he's been holding so much back from everyone else
• I love that he's still yelling at Merlyn, not exactly sure what I want to read into that, I feel like there are a few lines of thought
• "Am I not entitled to a man's vengence?"
• Perhaps my favorite line in the first half
• Every line is sort of my favorite but I guess let's settle on this one
• Because the original is "I demand a man's vengence"
• And same sentiment but entitled is so much more toxic
• Like the thing about this magic-less universe is that Arthur wasn't destined for some greatness and so he pulled the sword from the stone
• He wasn't owed something, he didn't deserve it, it just happened and he chose to rise to the challenge
• And this is the first moment he's decided he might be entitled to anything
• And then he does a 180 into deserving nothing
• "Proposition: I'm not a man, I'm a king"
• Like wow so much to unpack psychologically there
• I mean he and Lance have very much the same problem of trying to suppress their own humanity but the reasons are so different
• When Arthur switches into his idealistic mode and they start playing I Wonder What the King is Doing Tonight because he's being kingly, literally gets me every time
• The entire thing is so good, I love the second half so much
• "I wasn't trained for this"
• I love the running theme of Merlyn training Arthur in all of these important skills but never teaching him how to handle emotions and relationships and uh maybe he should have
• There were perhaps some limits to Merlyn's wisdom that set Arthur up to fail
• Because he's been king since he was barely out of childhood
• He never got the chance to have normal, equal relationships where he could figure shit out
• So instead he just pushes it all down because he's not wrong in that he doesn't get the luxury of following his emotions
• I love every second of this scene
• I love every line, every delivery, every movement
• Like it is a hard ask to make an actor just walking around the stage monologuing compelling in a musical and this is so so compelling
• Just on the whole of this show, I don't know that I've ever been so blown away by a stage performance as I was watching Andrew Burnap and this scene is just a perfect encapsulation of why
• Whatever he's in next, I will go
• Okay real talk something about this man's face just renders it unrecognizable to my brain so more than likely I'll see something and be like wow that person was amazing, who was that and then it will turn out to be him
• I say specifically because I happened to be watching Under the Banner of Heaven the whole time I've been having a Camelot obsession and how did I find out he was in it? I happened to see his name in the end credits four episodes in...
• But anyway I will at least try to know whatever he's in next so I can go on purpose because this performance is living in my brain and I don't think it's leaving
• I do make fun of previous versions of this show for casting people who are clearly not musical theater actors in this role but actually I do think casting actors who do straight plays does add so much as long as they aren't terrible at singing
• All of which to say again that I do think this was some of the most perfect casting I have ever seen
• Basically the statements you can tell Andrew Burnap is not a musicals person and you can absolutely tell Phillipa Soo and Jordan Donica are absolutely musicals people
• Are both extreme compliments to the people that decided on this casting
#i was going to say time to be unhinged again#but Camelot has had me unhinged for a while#so time for me to somehow be more unhinged#unhinged 2: electric boogaloo#It's so funny because the week after I saw Camelot for the first time I saw something else atrocious with my friend#and as I was walking out of the theater complaining to my friend#I said it was funny how I had like 30 minutes worth of things to say about this show I hated#but nothing to say besides that I loved it about Camelot#well apparently accidentally seeing it three times closing week demolished the floodgates#there may to be some more audio clips added in to truly make this my 'remember what it felt like to see this show'#thing to look back on#I just needed to get the thoughts out my head and put them somewhere#or at least most of them#because I have so many#I think I actually have even more thoughts about the changes but a part of my brain is like well you'll never see the true original#so you can't have a true opinion#Camelot Musical#I don't know if this will end up in the tag#but like there's only five of us there so let's just call it keeping the tag alive#this is just part 2 of my extremely earnest love letter to this version of this show#thank you aaron sorkin#it's like 50% direct quotes and 25% filler words so maybe I can pretend it isn't actually that long#we're choosing to ignore this is only half#This Barbie can't shut up about Camelot
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I sort of feel as if I was misled about the ITV interview a little. Within the context of it, Bradby is clearly grilling Harry on the topic of racism, and how it looks for members of the royal family to have all these allegations of racism tied to them. During this discussion Harry says about unconscious bias and the comments about Archie's skin colour:
But once it’s been acknowledged, or pointed out to you as an individual, or as an institution, that you have unconscious bias, you therefore have an opportunity to learn and grow from that in order so that you are part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Otherwise unconscious bias then moves into the category of racism [ . . . ] the environment within the institution, and why after our Oprah interview, they said that they were gonna bring in a diversity tsar. That hasn’t happened. Everything they said was gonna happen hasn’t happened [ . . .] if you are called out for unconscious bias you need to make that right. And you have the opportunity and the choice to. But if you choose not to, then that rapidly becomes something much more serious.
So, what I'm getting here is that Harry is saying, while the royal family might not have been intentionally racist with their actions, it has now been brought to their attention on various occasions and they have still failed to correct those mistakes and learn from them. Now it becomes a more serious problem of racism because they are aware, but aren't doing anything to fix the problem, incidents like with what happened to Ngozi Fulani. Maybe Lady Susan didn't mean harm (that's why he was saying he and Meghan love her, as a way of saying he doesn't think she acted with malice, not to excuse her actions), but her insensitive comments were a result of the palace making no effort to train people on diversity, resulting in racial minorities getting hurt.
He is still sort of misusing the term unconscious bias, but this is definitely not him saying the royal family isn't racist. My only issue with this is that he's using too many words, I cut a lot of it out and his answer is still too long. He needed to be more direct, which is hard, but it would have given a better answer. He's trying to control the press narrative which will paint him in direct opposition to his family, I get that, but the answer could have been given more coherently.
The "Africa's my thing" comment was taken out of context, I got an anon pointing that out, Bradby was quoting something written about William in Spare. William didn't want Harry doing charity work in Africa because that was "his thing" and that reveals a colonialist mindset on William's part.
Harry said he has no issues with the monarchy as a concept and still believes in it, but that does not signal to me any loyalty to the current British firm. He still obviously has grave issues with them and he has no plans of returning ever, he just believes that these issues aren't inherent to the system and can be fixed. Honestly, that's fine for Harry to believe that. I have never viewed him as an anti-monarchist, the value of his story comes in revealing the toxic workings of the British press and the abusive/hurtful elements of his family, and making a case for why these issues are harmful and need fixing not as a manifesto as to why monarchy is a bad political system. Will his book probably demonstrate why the monarchy is bad inherently? Yes, but that's not in line with Harry's personal views and that's all they are—personal views.
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Christianity and Christians are weird and I have a negative opinion on it/them. Here is an essay of a ramble about it.
Christianity as a faith is not inherently problematic or wrong. It teaches the principles of Christ, and some of the most notable of those principles being to love each other and be unified. And that, in it of itself, is a perfectly understandable thing to believe in. Hell, I believe in that too to some degree. I think we should care for each other and "love thy neighbour." Biologically and according to the Theory of Evolution, that also makes sense. Humans are social beings, so it would make sense that Christianity (and by extension most religious practices) include being compassionate or good to others.
But then we add the, ahem, human aspect of Christianity into the mix. Humans, inherently, are messy. We make a lot of mistakes, we do a lot of really bad and really good shit. And there have been some really bad people throughout history. And a lot of these really bad people were and ultimately still are power-hungry dragons who like to hoard gold. And people like that fear losing that power.
And, I can't help but notice, there have been a LOT of Christian atrocities committed against people who were not Christian. The entire history of Colonisation is inherently linked with Christianity. Maybe not what Jesus intended for humanity, but people have been twisting the "word of God(s)" since "the word of God(s)" has been a thing. The slave trade was explicitly established and defended through religious reasoning.
So over the course of 2000 years, Christians went from being martyrs and persecuted to being those who persecute and condemn. Entire cultures have been erased or nearly erased thanks to Christian influence. And the only reason this can happen is because of something called proselytising.
For those who don't know what proselytising means, it's the process of attempting to convert someone from one set of beliefs to another, especially in a religious context. And Christians love to proselytise. Like... a lot. They also love forced conversion, so that's also a plus (sarcasm heavily implied.)
Examples would be... the persecution and Forced conversion and murder of Jewish people throughout all of the CE, persecution and forced conversion and murder of Pagans, persecution and forced conversion and murder of LGBT+ people, persecution and forced conversion and murder of Native Americans, persecution, forced conversion and murder of Africans/Indians/and honestly every single British colony (former or current), persecution, forced conversion, murder of Indigenous people... Hell, even other Christians persecuting, forcibly converting and murdering other Christians.
Mind you, the point is not to make current Christians who don't do this shit feel bad, it's to point out the very real realities of your religion's history and why so many people like me have an issue with it.
(Lighthearted:) And I'm also not saying that other religions don't have similar histories, because yeah duh no shit. Don't derail my criticism of Christianity and Christians you dingus, let me finish my essay!
But then we get to the minutia of why so many people like me have a negative relationship with Christianity. There's a more sinister aspect to Christianity that I think a lot of westerners tend to... overlook. And that's mostly because we live in a society where Christianity is the dominant religion.
Proselytising, as a concept, is incredibly insidious. One of the core and often less frequently talked about issues about Christianity is that the way Christians go about converting people to their religions is incredibly manipulative. Missionaries are an especially scummy thing because missionaries travel to places where people are struggling and don't have much, and use those moments in people's lives to convert them, promising things like "God will set you free" and "you will go to Heaven if you convert."
And the problem is that Christians don't view this as negative. They don't see it as manipulative because in a Christian's mind, it's the truth. To them, God is the ultimate daddy and whatever he says goes and he is everything that is good about life. Christians live to serve God, and according to the Bible, God wants others to convert to Christianity.
Christianity promises things like "once this life is over, you will go on to the next life and be always happy" and in a vacuum that sounds appealing, but it also sounds really cult-y. Why is it cult-y? Because it sounds like promises that are too good to be true. It sounds like something people say to a) justify their converting and b) convince people to join a group. And a lot of Christian religions have had people in power who wanna abuse and control people. And to me, this all reads like a method of controlling a population.
Christians are not encouraged to question their holy texts, Christians are not encouraged to have discussions with others outside of their faiths, Christians see themselves as right and everyone else is wrong. And when you are discouraged from questioning and discussion, you have a recipe for a docile and controlled population.
Do I think all Christians wanna control people? No, of course not! That would be silly. A lot of Christians genuinely do believe they are serving god and that they are good people. And to me, that's not really a comfort. That's horrifying because it implies that they view the forced conversion and murder of minority groups and non-Christians as a good thing. Which they do.
And some Christians are not like that. Some Christians actually do follow the tenets of their beliefs. Some Christians are pro-choice, pro-LGBT+, pro-POC rights, pro-protecting disabled and impoverished groups of people. And these are Christians who I respect.
But it still feels incredibly weird because while it may offer people comfort, it's not proven. God hasn't ever been scientifically proven to be real and even in philosophical thought there is a lot of people who don't see there even being a god. Obviously if you genuinely believe you are doing good in the world, then you won't see it like how I do.
And, obviously, not all Christians are bigots. Not all Christians hate the gays or the transes. But we as LGBT+ people who have been persecuted by Christians, are not fond of them or their faith because of the pain it's caused us. Some of us are definitely theists and still believe in God, just a healthier version of God and Jesus, and some of us, like me, completely reject Christianity as a result.
But imagine being in my shoes for a moment. You are 13 years old and you are in a classroom with a religion teacher who is a priest who tells your class that being gay is a sin and is immoral. Imagine you, as a gay child, are the only one to stand up and leave the classroom. And as you leave, you are told "you cannot deny it." Imagine sitting in the hallway, tears streaming down your face as your music teacher tries to comfort you.
Imagine telling your parents this happened and for them to take no action because kicking up a fuss would be a "waste of time." Imagine being told to "hide who you are because you could get beaten or killed." Imagine being asked if you are bisexual in a girls locker room and you lie to them because you are scared of being further bullied and harassed.
Imagine having your name be the subject of scorn and mockery because none of your teachers want to respect your chosen name and want to pretend it's because of "legal reasons" when the teachers in the USA had no problem with using my name.
Imagine being told that you are overreacting because you are scared of your friends and fellow LGBT+ people being raped, beaten or killed by those who hate them. Imagine being called a "groomer" because you just want to live your life as a trans person without some asshole harassing you for using a bathroom. Imagine thinking about killing yourself because you are terrified of the world you live in because people want you to die based off of something you cannot change about yourself.
If you can imagine any of this, then welcome to a small fraction of my life as an LGBT+ person.
But I also didn't reject Christianity because of identity, no no no, I also just... am an atheist. I don't see any rational or logical reason for there to be a god or for one or many to exist.
And the worst part about is that I know how Christians will react to this post. They will say or think "I will pray for you to realise the error of your ways" because they think I'm wrong. They don't want to question anything they are taught and as soon as someone does so, their reflex is to deny and say shit like "I will pray for you" because it's their only recourse. To them, I'm wrong and I will always be wrong and I'm a sinner who needs to be saved.
But here's the thing - I don't want your empty words or your empty love. What I want is for you to just leave people alone. Stop persecuting and targeting people based on the mistranslations of a book that was written 2000+ years ago by many different authors.
But I doubt what I say will change your mind or make you reconsider because, again, you think I am wrong and a sinner and someone who needs to be saved by God. Sweetheart, if I'm gonna believe in god(s), it sure as hell ain't gonna be the one y'all pray to.
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Do you think Janni served any purpose other than being raped and becoming a female Nemo? And that her being alive (and apparently hated by her father) flies in the face of Nemo’s lust for revenge because of the murder of his loved ones,and his canonical scene where he breaks down in front of his family’s portrait?
Okay, I got this Ask twice, and I'm only going to answer the earlier version.
First, I have not read the Nemo trilogy and honestly don't really have much interest in doing so, and therefore, I can't really comment on specifics beyond what I do know about it based on research.
Second, I mean, that feels like an odd question, re: purpose bc wanting to tell a story about a woman heir to Nemo is a valid purpose in and of itself? And for all of Moore's recurrent problems with defaulting to sexual assault against women to explore patriarchy and misogyny, I don't think he adds women just for an excuse to write a rape scene and nothing else when outside of that issue, he actually writes complex women with agency, internal life, and character development; I think his problem here was that he seemed to think being gangraped by the British was the only motivation that would be compelling enough for her to go on a murder spree and take up the Nemo mantle, but I disagree, and this shit always happens to women as if women can't have the same rape-free motivations for revenge as men.
Third, I think the main point of the Nemo trilogy was to explore the alternate history 20th century of the League universe when the main comics only take place during three key years that are apart by decades, and a Nemo legacy character armed with her own Naitilus makes the most sense if it has to be someone connected to the original League.
In terms of Nemo, I have mixed feelings about how Moore wrote him bc while I do like that he did not sanitize or soften Nemo's hatred of imperialism and the British Empire, I think he leaned too heavily on the racist tropes of brown men being especially misogynistic compared to white men; obviously, misogyny exists across cultures and MOC are not inherently more progressive by virtue of being not white, and I'm not saying Nemo should have been a feminist, but this is the man who married his wife in the novels bc he admired her for her intelligence and ambition, and, like you said, deeply mourned the loss of his (original, in League context) children - so I don't buy that if Nemo had a second chance at a family, he would hate his daughter just for not being a boy and treat her like shit; the whole angry at not having a male heir thing is also pointless bc she was his heir anyway, so like, all that weird sexist conflict was for nothing.
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I guess the best thing I can say about ofmd as someone who has Strong Feelings about historical media is that there kind of isn’t one answer to all the discourse. I’m someone who loves to nitpick every little historical detail right down to the types of gaiters a british soldier wears in one passing scene of a show and yet I love ofmd. the difference is that the inaccuracy in ofmd is something I can tolerate because the show doesn’t even try to be historical. it’s not the point, and it would be useless to try and claim that it is. to call ofmd a historical show would be inaccurate at the best: pirates didn’t wear leather cropped jackets, the british navy didn’t have uniforms in 1718, and stede bonnet and blackbeard did not have a gay relationship that we know of. the show is a comedy and a love story on an early 18th century backdrop. the characters are inspired by real people but in no way can they actually be said to accurately represent those people. the historical basis pretty much extends only as far as that—it’s a basis, and something that almost… doesn’t have an effect on the show and the characters at all outside of that, because it’s not a historical show.
that being said, I can’t argue with the fact that people inevitably (and reasonably so) have qualms with the show being based on two very real and, let’s face it, highly nuanced and problematic people from history. as much as I would say they’re not intended in any way to provide an actual representation of those figures, they are undeniably still existing representations, fictionalized as they are, and it’s not my place to tell people that they should be comfortable with that just because it’s not “real.” ultimately these figures were real, and consequently the characters will always carry a degree of that reality with them, regardless of how accurate it is. it’s easy to get caught up in a cute queer show with funny characters but like… they did participate in the slave trade and inflict tons of violence on people, and divorcing these names from that very real context is, well, inaccurate and dangerous. they had real effects on people. to pretend that they didn’t is just wrong.
I don’t know where I was going with this but I feel like what I was trying to say is that both of these perspectives can coexist. like, it’s not inherently problematic to enjoy a fun queer historical inspired pirate show, especially in an age where explicit queer representation is still lacking. but at the same time there are definitely problematic ways to engage with a piece of media like this, and one of those ways is by carelessly divorcing the historical events and context from the inherently historical characters. just…. be mindful, basically. and when people are upset and offended at the way the show and the fandom treats these fictionalized, but still ultimately historical, characters, maybe listen with the knowledge that you are not inherently an evil person for enjoying them, but that you still bear the responsibility of engaging with them respectfully.
#idk. if people have other opinions feel free to weigh in#I am not the ultimate authority on this#just a guy who tires to be very conscious of historical media and how to engage with it#reading some Discourse and like. oh boy lmao#ofmd#out flag means death#long post#this is your captain speaking
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What is your take on the recent trend of including POC actors in shows like Bridgerton, Hamilton, etc.? I feel conflicted about it...ie. Bridgerton is supposed to be escapist fantasy, but the existence of the upper classes at that time in England was predicated on a highly unequal society, the subjugation of the lower classes, and also colonialism/the UK's involvement in the slave trade. And so I feel like having POC actors kind of washes over all of that? And similarly with Hamilton, the founding fathers were literally slave owners, and having them portrayed by POC just sort of sweeps that under the rug. I'm all for diversity in TV/media but I feel like the recent trend is having POC actors play characters that are themselves oppressors, like very much the sort of hollow Obama era representation politics (despite drone strikes, record number of deportations, etc.) What do you think?
Funnily enough, I've actually been thinking about this a bit since I saw the Australian production of Hamilton earlier in the year and had, y'know, Thoughts on it.
Look, full disclaimer immediately - I'm white, and I'm Australian, and so my opinion of all of this matters very little, but I did feel Some Sort of Way about the production here casting many lead roles with First Nations actors and having them sing about being immigrants in a country they're from, and a country that's still currently in the Commonwealth. Hamilton is a Civil War and Independence narrative! And to cast First Nations actors in those roles in a country still technically under British rule lowkey broke my brain, but again, look, I don't think it's my place to comment on that.
But it does kind of lead into this whole factor of context, right?
Hamilton worked in the US, and while I'm not the biggest Lin-Manuel Miranda fan, it does seem to me that he set out with the right intentions when making that very specifically American production. Threading the modern immigrant experience and modern racism into the quote-unquote American Quilt by recasting key historical figures with non-white actors is, I think, saying something. It's not without it's baggage, of course it's not - those men were themselves slave owners and the narrative he builds is romanticised to put it lightly - and it's absolutely fair if people have an issue with that, but I also think using race bending to pull on thematic throughlines and create relevance and resonance with people today is of admirable intent, even if it doesn't always land.
If nothing else, it starts a conversation.
Things like Bridgerton, Anne Boleyn, Mr. Malcolm's List - - I think the conversation's a broad one. I think when it leans into the full fantasy of itself like the second season of Bridgerton or Mr. Malcolm's List it's just good fun, and I love seeing POC cast in roles where they get to wear beautiful things and lean into a bit of cheese, but I do think when the stories try to be inherently capital-p Political, it does become an issue. Doing that divorces the story of the fantasy, and intrducing reality means - - well. It has to be Addressed.
One of the reasons I struggle so much with s1 of Bridgerton is the heavy, graceless hand it takes to Queen Charlotte and King George's racebent wedding as Having Solvied Racism, which we all know is absurd, but that does tend to be the approach with racebent historical fiction. It's the explanation that diminishes the racism of the era, not the story itself.
As a result, in shows and movies that do operate in a realm of fantasy like Bridgerton, maybe it's okay just to let the hot people kiss a lot and not bog it down in discourse.
Which again does thread back to intent. As much as Bridgerton likes to be a hand-wavy mess about it all, I do think they're at least trying something out in terms of the genre, whereas I think something like, say, the Anne Boleyn series with Jodie Turner-Smith was setting her up to experience horrific levels of online abuse in an adaptation that was never going to be seen as remotely authentic in order for them to score a few woke points and get new views on a story that's been told a zillion times before. I think Jodie Turner-Smith probably was excited about being offered that role, and I think they probably saw her as a marketing device, both for better and for worse, and I think the show treating her race as invisible when they knew casting her would be the opposite is cruel, shallow and opportunistic.
So yes, I guess I'd say overall I think context is important, not just in the sense of the stories that are being told, but the choices creatives make along the way (including the broader social context of where you make something, perhaps), but I also love to see stories - particularly romance - getting more diverse.
But! Bringing it back to Bridgerton, Khadija Mbowe did a good segment on it, so I hope you don't mind me sharing that here too:
youtube
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Please talk more about how bad the bond book was your last post about it was so fun to read
ask and you shall receive! happy you enjoy my james bond posting because i love sinking my teeth into problematic media and shaking it like a chew toy
last post i expanded on some stuff from my first ask that i either forgot about in the first 10 chapters or saw more of in the 18 chapters in part two. the majority of my analysis there relates to misogyny and queerphobia and we're not done with the former at all but i have a new element to add into the mix that was definitely present in part one but not really as prevalent
tw misogyny xenophobia/racism sexual violence
so the majority of part two takes place in istanbul and ian's contempt for eastern europe is palpable. i'll do my due diligence and acknowledge the historical context- this novel was published in 1957, western and eastern europe largely did not have a very amicable relationship coming out of the world wars and the cold war was well underway as well. james bond was probably successful in part because ian's biases to a fairly large extent would've reflected public sentiment in england at the time. again, not an expert in european history either take my word with a grain of salt
with that out of the way, let me just
"So these dark, ugly, neat little officials were the modern Turks. He listened to their voices, full of broad vowels and quiet sibilants and modified u-sounds, and he watched the dark eyes that belied the soft, polite voices. They were bright, angry, cruel eyes that had only lately come down from the mountains."
this is the first description we get from bond's POV of any non-british characters, and it's a running theme in the book that the only characters that are described amicably are tatiana romanova and anyone working for british intelligence. you know, the book that for the most part takes place in eastern europe. the book is full of slights like this; when ian introduces darko kerim this is how he describes the dude's handshake
"It was a strong Western handful of operative fingers--not the banana skin handshake of the East that makes you want to wipe your fingers on your coat-tails."
it's all very casually racist and it really just keeps going- there's a notable shift in tone when the orient express bond and romanova travel on leaves the balkans:
"The hard-faced Yugoslav plain-clothes men came on board. Then Yugoslavia was gone and Poggioreale came and the first smell of the soft life with the happy jabbering Italian officials and the carefree upturned faces of the station crowd."
this is done mostly by a shift in how he describes the infrastructure and the people. i don't think the former bit is inherently a sin but ian paints a very unbalanced picture of europe, where the east is mean and slimy and impoverished and the west is pleasant and well maintained. not that i was expecting nuance from a bond novel- much like being queerbaited by the MCU that's kind of like losing a game of chess to a dog, but my goal in these posts is a criticism of From Russia, With Love based on what it says about society
there are two chapters where darko and james interact with a group of romani people just outside the city because they work for darko and... hm. i don't think i can provide much meaningful commentary on it because i'm not familiar with romani cultures. i suspect that his depiction isn't very accurate to reality though, especially because there is one thing in his writing of this that i am pretty comfortable pointing out:
"Two girls of the tribe are in love with one of his sons. There is a lot of death in the air. They both threaten to kill the other to get him. If he chooses one, the unsuccessful one has sworn to kill him and the girl. It is an impasse. There is much argument in the tribe. So the son has been sent up into the hills and the two girls are to fight it out here tonight--to the death."
"The door in the wall crashed back and two girls, spitting and fighting like angry cats, hurtled through and across the grass and into the ring."
"They were both gipsy-dark, with coarse black hair to their shoulders, and they were both dressed in the collection of rags you associate with shanty-town Negroes--tattered brown shifts that were mostly darns and patches."
"Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther--lithe and quick and with cunning sharp eyes that were not on the speaker but sliding sideways, measuring inches, and the hands at her sides were curled into claws. The muscles of her fine legs looked hard as a man's. The breasts were small, and, unlike the big breasts of the other girl, hardly swelled the rags of her shift. She looks a dangerous little bitch of a girl, thought Bond."
what follows is the two women wrestling each other in a way that's described like a really weird catfight and also they both claw at or bite each other's boobs and tear a bit of each others' clothes off. i mentioned that the word "breasts" appeared 13 times in my last post and probably about a fourth of it was concentrated into this chapter because of the fight scene.
first quote is there purely because i don't want to paraphrase the context. i include the second and fourth quote because i want to look at how ian describes the women in this scene- first of all, again with the breasts mr fleming. how original. most importantly, though, he compares them to animals. cats, specifically, but the entire scene is meant to give the impression that these people are feral or savage, and the comparison of the women to a lion and a panther respectively, and describing them as hurtling into a fighting ring "spitting and fighting like angry cats" strikes me as a "look how barbaric these people are, how uncivilized their women!" comment on ian's part. this is compounded by the third quote here where he describes how they're dressed- he's explicitly drawing a connection between two oppressed groups here; it's meant as an indication that these two women are poor, but this comparison being drawn while flanked in between two paragraphs that describe the characters like animals makes it more suspect. there's other ways to describe how they're dressed in a way that indicates poverty and we already have a history of portraying black people as barbaric and uncivilized.
the last bit i'm going to chew on tonight is probably another intersection between xenophobia and misogyny and that's a little facet of darko kerim's character: he's violently misogynistic and that is not a fucking exaggeration,
so kerim is from trebizond and his father essentially had a harem- fathered a lot of children from multiple mothers and it's very much implied that kerim does the same. below i've attached some of his dialogue in a scene where he's talking to bond at a restaurant after they meet
"All women want to be swept off their feet. In their dreams they long to be slung over a man's shoulder and taken into a cave and raped."
"I had a little Bessarabian hell-cat. I had won her in a fight with some gipsies, here in the hills behind Istanbul. I had to knock her unconscious first. She was still trying to kill me when we got back to Trebizond, so I got her to my place and took away all her clothes and kept her chained naked under the table. When I ate, I used to throw scraps to her under the table, like a dog. She had to learn who was master. Before that could happen, my mother did an unheard of thing. She visited my place without warning. She found the girl. My mother was really angry with me for the first time in my life. I was a cruel ne'er-do-well and she was ashamed to call me son. My mother brought her some of her own clothes from the house. The girl put them on, but when the time came, she refused to leave me"
yeah so that second quote is one of the vilest things i've read
i'm calling this an intersection between xenophobia and misogyny because if i'm not mistaken darko being from trebizond makes him turkish. for the most part he's portrayed positively by the narrative, he and bond quickly become friends or something like it, bond isn't devastated or anything when kerim dies but he does view it as a loss. the thing is that, even for the 50s, this is not an acceptable way to treat women or talk about them. the most positive portrayed eastern european character in the novel is in all likelihood a rapist and is very transparent in his misogyny. furthermore again ian is comparing a presumably romani woman to a cat (through kerim's voice), and though everything expressed in these quotes is incredibly fucked up and untrue, there's a broader trend in the novel about the ideal woman being a submissive one- what darko is doing here is claiming that to be part of their nature and nowhere in the novel are his words contradicted at all unless we count rosa klebb, and with her being a villain it seems more natural to assume that ian agrees with the character rather than thinks he's spitting bullshit.
it's 20 past midnight and i'm rather tired so, i'll end this off with my impression of the story structure and all that. some plain old literary analysis. i think ian fleming spent too long on the setup because the payoff with grant and klebb accounted for the last 3 chapters of the book, compared to the 10 he spent setting it up. he built too much hype around bond's encounters with both characters for what they ended up being in my opinion, but i will give fleming that yeah those final confrontations were all right i guess i liked how bond managed to worm his way out of the stupid fucking mess he got himself in by falling for an obvious honeypot in the first place and then some. i think a lot of the building suspense was negated for me when i read it because my brain was too busy gnawing on. *gestures at the 3 posts i've written about this novel* all of that, to get invested in any of the characters and feel the tension all that much
#but maaarrrsss!#trashfire media containment breach#i think a fair amount of my analysis here is incomplete#and i felt the same to a slightly lesser degree with the first james bond post but i did expand on it in the second ask
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ok tumblrinas are u ready. btvs live blog go
1.1
LMFAO can’t get over the 90’s ass voice over in the beginning literally making me laugh out loud
heehee intro as a whole …. with the rock like yasss slay
guys the jew representation in this show is off the charts. sarah michelle gellar and the other main character is willow rosenberg? no one ever talks about this. this is a jew show irl
alyson is so cute it’s so funny that they try to make her “nerdy” with a shitty outfit like. what???? she’s still like. so pretty.
meet cute mome with buffy and xander .. classic
also buffy’s first day outfit is soooo cute n so is she. love
xander’s sheer shirt is like boygirl chic supreme. loveee again
GERM WAREFARE????????? WHAT
free my bitch willow she aint done nothing but be sustainable
love him already (giles) why is he like this
giles is boygirl supreme actually i’ve decided or maybe he’s just british
GIRL REALLY THOUGHT HE COULD PLACE DOWN A BOOK OF VAMPYR AND NOT FREAK OUT????
sometimes joss whedon writes shit and like. u just have to sit and think
did people talk like this in the 90s
i love how buffy is like fuck this shit like yes girl fuck this shit
no bc the way that it must be so hard to hold this secret and have to watch her destroy not just her life but her mom’s and everyone around her’s…
yasss girl live in ur dark cave, chant ominously and give us nothing 😍😍
“hi! im an enormous slut!” pissing myself
if this was me and i was 16 i would not be allowed to go to a club. like? girl do u care abt ur daughter at all?
this dude in his velvet coat….. and being destroyed by buffy instantly… yeah… yeah…
if this is the place to be in sunnydale i think i’d just never leave my house if i lived there
WHEN DOES WILLOW BECOME A LESBIAN 😭😭 i know she does i just can’t wait
ok but jesse literally can’t catch a hint like leave her alone
FREE MY BITCH WILLOW make her a lesbian now so she doesn’t fall for this vampire dick
“what is your childhood trauma” the way i have fully said these words before but in an entirely different context
the vampire makeup is sooo funny tho i think we need to bring back practical effects exclusively so we can have gold like this again
i know by young and fresh they mean virgins and i just don’t know why they don’t just say it
kinda love how they chose this dark ass place to hide the shitty fight choreography and makeup
thinking about how joss whedon went on to write parts of the MCU and u can literally hear the quips starting now LMFAO
love the overarching plot explanation now… we need that structure yasss
1.2
wow literally forgot this was a 2 parter but also they put their whole pussy into this shit
the amount of christian mythology here does give it negative points for being a jew show :/
dirty cave back 😍😍 we love to see it… candle lit, large throne, perfect for all
ALSO PISSING MYSELF WITH HOW THE VAMPIRES ARE LISPING WITH THE FUCKING TEETH IN THEIR MOUTHS 😭😭😭 LITERALLY LMFAO
this show is soooo acab like yes the police cant do anything and only come with guns 😍
this show is actually so feminist because the 4 main protagonists are all women
fuck this guy (the principal)
i love her (buffy)
the cross is so ugly but i know they had to make it this big to show up on the shitty fucking quality of the tvs in the 90s
velvet coat guy’s name is angel and it’s like they want u to trip over the plot
sooo true xander i would also skip chem class
when she’s experienced and is willing to cut someone’s head off with an x-acto knife
fuck that guy (cordelia)
i love her (willow)
girlies RUN….
NOT THE LISPS AGAIN 😭😭
jesse is infinitely more interesting as a vampire and im happy they freed him from being boring
giles in rolled sleeves is strangely attractive to me. actually i think i just think giles is weirdly hot in general. maybe it is because he is british.
phantom of the opera ass score like DUNDUN DUN DUN
who wrote that essay about the inherent sexuality of vampires. yeah… yeah…
“the thtarths themthelveths will hide!” please
i do feel so bad for buffy tho like fr society if she just could be normal
crying over the heads of garlic just there in her supply box. like how would be use those to stop them 😭😭
ok but like. is them going to a club and drinking the drinks there implying that they are always drunk at the bronze at 16 year olds??? it’s so weird
cordelia needs to listen to goodbye earl by the chicks and i think that would fix her
90s censorship laws be like. no blood allowed! but yes to 16 year olds at clubs!
ok maybe i do rly like this show like a lot
buffy should be included in discussions of feminism fr like she walked so y’all could run
giles immediately getting taken down by a vampire is truly the most camp and hilarious thing he could do
the master lying and screaming on the floor no is so me core!
angel shut the fuck up have faith
u averted the apocalypse for now
i love how buffy has friends like :’) yay she’s not alone anymore
#btvs#btvs.stars#twinkling.talks#i know i said i was gonna do 5 of them in a row but im getting tired n also if they continue being 2 parters i’ll just do them all at once#remember u can block the tag! anyway i hope u all enjoyed this#long post
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CoD 2 Mid-Thoughts (Russian and British Done)
Oh hey, I’m just realizing that the CoD 2 campaigns are in the reverse order from CoD 1. Neat. Also, I think it’s funny that this game is on 360 but not PS3 simply because the PS3 did not exist when it came out. Also that it’s a launch title for the 360 is funny. I’m playing the PC version though, while I played CoD 1 on PS3 via the downloadable “remaster” version.
Going from PS3 CoD1 to PC CoD 2 is important context to have because it further exacerbates the difference between these games. I went from god knows what resolution/frame rate to a 4K/144Hz version of a game at least made for 360. Plus, I went from clunky controls made for KBM played on PS3 controller to just using KBM proper. So this game looks better, runs better, plus better, AND has a few key modern enhancements to the game design.
The big one is regenerating health. What a godsend. Look, I love me a good boomer shooter, but it just felt out of place for CoD 1 to not have it. It was a miserable slog to mishandle one altercation and then have to backtrack if you want to live, or have to decide whether that’s worth it or not.
The other big one is the inventory. CoD 1 had 2 main guns, a side warm, and grenades each as a different equippable weapon and then you use the bumpers to switch between them like Fortnite. CoD 2 brings us the standard 2 weapon system with a grenade button and a tactical grenade button. Still no sprint but I can live without it. I wanna say that breath holding is new too but I’m not sure. I do keep hitting shift to sprint only to end up meleeing, which I never do on purpose since it’s so weak. Only downside of the traditional inventory we’ve gotten into is that pistols are worthless now.
I once again find myself relying on the MP40 across each campaign as the most bountiful automatic weapon, then trying to have a semi auto rifle or scoped bolt action rifle as my secondary. I also rely on grenades as much as possible.
For the Russian campaign in particular, I generally enjoyed it pretty well. I think my favorite parts were the tense pipe section where you get weird angles on German encampments as you crawl along a pipe and they fruitlessly retaliate, and then I also really enjoyed the one “open” mission where you could do the five objectives in any order. I did also enjoy the big defense mission too, especially compared to how awkward those were in the first game. But I mean, even from the tutorial, this game has been such a relatively joy to play and look at.
I was excited for the British campaign to be set in Africa, but it just kind of means all the levels are the same tan wastelands. Well, I think the last part was somewhere grassy. The plot is pretty thin on these older CoD games, it’s just “go win WW2, I guess”. The funniest part of the British campaign is when I got into the back of a truck for an on-rails section complete with an unboxed crate holding a rocket launcher, giving me awful flashbacks to the section of CoD 1 that killed me a dozen times, only for this section to be supremely easy.
There is some pretty cool large scale fighting in the British campaign. There’s been a few moments where there’s so much going on at once on screen that I just kind of take it in and actually feel a little immersed. Stuff like where there’s ground troops, tanks, planes, explosions, shouting all at once and it actually kind of feels like a war for a second before it goes back to being a WW2 themed shooting gallery. I think I remember seeing a Polygon article criticize the weird celebration of military culture that Call of Duty has become, calling it a “circus of violence”. It’s meant as an insult but I think it also succinctly describes what I like about these games. Yeah, it actually is a circus of violence. It’s awesome. Well, it’s awesome to play at least. I’m not going to deny that there’s something inherently kind of problematic about making video games played by kids about how cool the military is. (Also I think they may have been specifically referring to the Call of Duty convention or big live event but the point stands).
Anyways the British tank mission is…fine. Feels a little contrived and a little sparse but the dialogue is more lively this time and thank god again for regenerating health here.
Oh, I did get to actually use the STG44 (called MP44 here) more than a little here which was nice. Ammo is sparse enough and enemies plentiful enough that I feel like I really have to pick my weapon based on what I can get the most ammo out of still.
Also I did start the US campaign, which opens with D-Day but was honestly a little lackluster as far as D-Day recreations go. I suspect they had to scale back their vision to fit on the 360 at launch.
I still struggle with telling friend from foe, and I die from “friendly fire is not allowed” more often than actual deaths. Of course that’s partially because I’m still playing on easy mode while I warm up to this leg of the series.
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Do you not think living culture is important in the sense that what you're looking at comes from a culture and thus is inherently linked to it. Obviously research is the most important aspect and native voices that are uneducated shouldn't be given a platform but do you not think that its a little bit of a colonialist mindset? /gen
I suppose intention might make the difference between if this stance is a Colonial mindset or not. Could the argument be made BECAUSE one has a Colonial mindset? Absolutely. But I don't think its nessicary that if one has this stance then it comes from an inherent place of Colonialism.
My argument against the inherent importance of the living culture for a reconstructionist is two fold. First, that we are at the heart of it studying a specific-ish time period (generally speaking something around the iron age), living culture (ESPECIALLY in a modern global society) is BARELY going to be reflective of what things looked like 2000ish years ago.
Second, we struggle enough with trying to pick out what is authentically Pre-Christian Irish and what is Christian and Latin/Roman influenced and the argument is trying to be made that the living culture (which is EXTREMELY influenced by Christianity and the British Empire) is somehow going to clarify things?
Now also this is not to say that living culture has NO value. There are absolutely times when we might wish to turn to living culture when we just don't have the answers, in an attempt to keep some level of authenticity to our practice, but I think there are more drawbacks to putting such an emphasis on living culture than there are benifits in the context of reconstructionism. Now if we're talking about revivalism then living culture is INFINITLY valuable. This is also not to say that we shouldn't love and enjoy living culture just for the sake of enjoying it and growing as a person. This is solely an argument of its place inside reconstructionism.
#irish#irish culture#irish reconstructionist#irish reconstructionism#reconstructionist#reconstructionism#revivalism#irish revivalism#celtic reconstructionism
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That is an incredibly interesting post holy shit (coming from someone who isn’t British)
I would love to hear how this affects tommy and tubbo’s characters
Oh boy it Defo does. I'm just gonna,,, bullet point some off
Disclaimer I'm not as familiar with these characters or fandom around them. These are pattwrns I've noticed as an outsider
Background knowledge required: understandin of North South divide, understandin of class relations in the UK, basic understandin of how casual clasism presents
In terms of the characters:
- I think especially early l'manburg can be veiwed the lense of british politics with how both Tubbo and Tommy are treated by and react to when Wilburs starts viaing for political power. But all of my opinions thorugh this lense are very l'manburg critical (because I do not like the British gov kekw) so I'll leave that there for now
- I think the way c!Tommy speaks is often seen very brash and blunt and subversive Vs c!Tubbo is often not seen as someone who goes against the status quo and is often seen as a pretty passive. Both of these things and how their perceived is shaped by like, proximity to class.
- Summit that's WILDLY under appreciated is how much c!Phil and c!Tommy's relationship and communication is mediated by proximity to bein northern. Both of them come from similar backgrounds when it comes to understandin of care n their language usage and their understandin of things like community and masculinity. Like there's a reason Tommy was receptive to Phil's advice whilst it didn't seem to hit for a more American audience.
In terms fandom reaction?
- Treatment of cc and c Tubbo Vs Tommy is very stark. The focus of describing Tommy as feral and unkempt vs (especially in the past) Tubbo woobification is directly linked to how they present themselves, which is rooted in where they come from.
- Tommy is rarely given the benefit of the doubt in the way Tubbo is. Like if Tubbo is ignorant on a topic it's like rarely regarded as harmful in the way it seems to with Tommy. But again disclaimer, less familiar with these CCs and general discourse around them so that's second hand
- Hell tho, if we bring Wilbur back in, people reactions to Wilburs hyperbolic, satirical play on middle class southern toxic masculinity (in say your new boyfriend) Vs peoples reaction to Tommy's (mostly retired) exaduration of northern school boy persona steeped in toxic masculinity is Very stark.
Wilburs is often seen as oddly queer coded, or the inherent misogyny is under-acknowledged and the entitlement is largely missed. People are much more able to see the toxic masculinity in Tommy's
There's summit about how being southern (n therefore posh in this context) is seen as more feminine and non-threatenin. That has a huge impact on tubbo n tommy
Okay imma stop here. These are just some of my thoughts, sorry if they're Incoherent.
#fandom critical#tubbo#tommyinnit#l'manburg critical#sorry if ive not given yous the background#ive jusr discussed in the oast so like#i wanna get into the meat of it#id you're northern weigh in#am i ginna get ywlled at for this?#maybe#kekw
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it’s the katie leung john boyega kelly marie tran [insert other poc here] experience of somehow being at the center of white media and getting none of the supposed satisfaction bc at the end of the day, you’re not meant to be in those spaces. you’re just meant to be props for white escapism. and if you think transformative spaces like fanfic communities are immune to that exact method of silencing poc, you’re not paying attention.
every day i think about hp and other globally popular western media as conduits for cultural colonialism and the prevalence of whiteness in fandom and the america-centric internet and the inaccessibility of escapism when most fantasy is just another word for euro/western/anglo dreamscapes.
this is the context of what you’re responding to. most of the time being a fan is fun and harmless and i think 99% of people here have good intentions so this post isn’t even targeted at anyone specific and more just the culture itself. bc god, fandom is so very white. i love it here but when u come across posts comparing targeted cyber bullying to the witch burnings of actual indigenous people and the impacts of colonialism that killed off thousands upon thousands of us before imperialists ever reached salem. when u come across discourse that says fandom is an inherently inclusive space because women and lgbtq+ communities built it and yet, it only takes being here for a couple months to be reminded that when they mean inclusive, they mean white. when the attempt at solidarity is tainted by minimizing non-white oppression in progressive spaces. it’s exhausting.
im not a book burner, i like ao3, i read the brit lit canon. i like hp for what it is—a british children’s series about magic, war, found fam, etc. but these are colonial texts and holy fuck the compulsory whiteness of it all. and the way we never enjoy things in a vacuum bc the rest of the world outside western nations were explicitly forced to elevate white aesthetics since the dawn of imperialism. you think subcultures aren’t affected by that? ao3 is growing rapidly as fannish works move closer to mainstream. and yes, i know that this is explicitly because marginalized people have worked hard to fight for freedom of thought/speech/creativity. i am not interested in policing that space because the net positive outweighs the shit bits in my perspective.
but it’s the way the slightest hint of criticism against popular media and the fan works created for it is silenced with a swift “let people enjoy things” when the Thing that is being perpetuated and enjoyed is the very center of white media and white fantasy and white imagination and even white queerness. people will rally against a resurgence of harmful purity culture (as they should) but in the same breath, talk about that as if it’s akin to systematic genocide against non-white people groups. i don’t understand the need to conflate those experiences when the danger you face online as a white woman is still inherently protected by your whiteness. and like yes, marginalized people have made a home out of fic spaces. yes, your fear of that space being taken away is completely valid. but this is still a predominantly white community. and white grief is always, always the priority. that is a safety that you can count on because no social class can match that power of being at the center of culture creating.
so it’s just exhausting as poc in fandom, when you see how non-white creators and fans are treated, and always having to be the nicest, sweetest, most docile version of ourselves because we’re constantly being painted as toxic bullies with an inability to relax/unclench around problematic art. like you all wonder why fandom remains a predominately white space. it’s just wildly uncomfortable being here when you want to enjoy women and lgbtq+ art and transgressive works in general but knowing that support is just not reciprocated.
edit: i wrote a better/more thorough follow up post to talk about good faith discussions vs. shipping wars, colonialism, unhelpful anti/pro discourse, and the role of cultural criticism in transformative spaces if any of you are interested
#sometimes fandom is cool and other times it is just whiteness remixed so#anyway if u critically enjoy things this doesn’t apply to you i’m just exhausted#but um yeah#can non-white hp fans hop in my inbox bc i feel insane#txt
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Hey, Cuba-anon again with a slightly different question. Less about Cuba, more about foreign policy and ethics in general. I am interested to know what you think about Nationalism and it’s place in the modern world. How should one view their relationship to their country versus their relationship to the global community?
To give my point of view, I think I am a pragmatic nationalist? I am not gung-ho about America because “it is the best nation ever and the president is never wrong, uwu”, but rather because I live here, my parents and grandparents live here, and if something in the world negatively impacts America it will by extension negatively impact me. I don’t think other countries are beneath me or anything, but I also know that the feeling is not always reciprocal. So, to me, putting the well being of Americans first and everything else second is similar to putting on your air mask first before helping others in the event of a plane crash.
Either way, would love to hear your point of view and see how others tackle the question.
(sorry for the delay in response, got halfway through writing this then saved it to drafts and completely blanked on it)
But okay, interesting question, and worth breaking down.
So, you know how through the '90s and early 2000's there was this just utterly overpowering narrative where the last chapter of every history textbook ended with a chapter about how national borders were less and less important and how through the magic of The Internet young people were more connected and cosmopolitan than ever, with the strong implication that the weight of history was pulling us inevitably towards a post-national utopia of frictionless exchange and understanding. Call it the Star Trek ideal.
Hasn't exactly worked out, of course. And to a large degree was bullshit even at the time (or the optimism of academics expecting all of humanity to think like they do, being charitable). But in my heart of hearts, that's still how I think things should work.
But okay, to get a bit less abstract, a bunch of barely connected thoughts-
- Nation-states (and states generally) are, at best, convenient administrative divisions of humanity. They have no value outside the services they provide to their residents, and certainly no rights or moral worth outside that. America doesn't deserve your loyalty or life anymore than the state of Ohio or city of Baltimore do (replace with wherever you live.)
-If you accept the basic idea of humans having equal moral worth (or anywhere close to it), then the entire idea that someone's entire life should be defined by what side of an imaginary line on a map they were born on seems obviously absurd as soon as you start thinking about it?
-Nations - in terms of borders, whose included, what characteristics are 'national', etc - are also both contingent and a great extent artificial, defined by state and cultural elites via a standardized language, a mythologized national history, patriotic holidays, nationalizing and creating traditions and rituals, national education and entertainment, etc, etc. There's nothing primordial or inherent there.
-Unfortunately, people really, really like having teams to identify with, and like excluding people from those teams and/or treating them like shit for not belonging to them even more. (People talk a lot about x or y horrible thing being fundamental to human nature, but I really think this is one of the places where human nature really lets us down.)
-Nationalism is an extremely easy and powerful way of dividing the world between us and them, and across the world there has been massive success using it as a locus for identity formation and to organize populations around basically every sort of project imaginable, from funding public education and welfare to genocide.
-Nationalism is, as mentioned, inherently exclusive - and no matter what it's proponents say, in practice there's always someone within the borders of the nation who doesn't quite fit (in the European context, Romani and Jewish people are the most obvious examples). Cases where the nationalist imagination doesn't perfectly overlap with state borders, or with the identity of some subset of the 'national' population also tends to go, uh, badly.
-However, within the national population, appeals to national solidarity or theoretically shared ideals can often be (to a limited degree) useful in transcending or working to ameliorate regional, ethnic, class, etc divides.
-While it's true that large chunks of the American (Canadian, British, French, Japanese, etc) populace benefit quite a bit from their position in the current international system, it's almost universally the case that what foreign policy elites consider 'the national interest' extends far, far, far beyond anything that provides concrete benefits to the average citizen - I'll just gesture vaguely towards Afghanistan, here. Or World War 1 - and quite a lot of death and misery is inflicted for the sake of a narrow slice of the elite's material interests and entirely meaningless concerns around national glory and prestige.
-To be frank, in specifically America's case, putting the interests of co-nationals first and everyone else second is less putting your own air mask on first and more launching a life boat at half capacity to make sure you have leg room.
-But, again, the fruits of pursuing the national interest really, really aren't evenly spread. Does the US government's tireless and vicious championing of stringent IP laws, regardless of how many needless deaths result from the constraints on the drug supply they create, really do much for the average American?
-Which, to go back to the air mask analogy, brings up the awkward point that very often it's not so much putting your own mask on first as tearing the masks off people around you so you have extras, just in case. How much less is the life of someone on the wrong side of the border worth? Half as much? A tenth? A thousandth? The pursuit of America's national security and national interests has a death toll well into the millions.
-Honestly, even if you don't care at all about foreigners, in terms of domestic policy it's just a useful heuristic to instinctively distrust anyone who relies too much on nationalist rhetoric to justify themselves. I mean, the music's almost always bad and anyone who actually gets invested in the symbolism of their flag is reliably a complete killjoy, but even beyond that - they're just very reliably the worst people. This is admittedly unkind and not always true. But, well, see that quote about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, which applies wonderfully to both people and organizations. If someone's trying to sell something by wrapping it in the flag, that usually means they don't want you looking too closely.
-Viewing the world through a nationalist framework and caring about zero-sum issues of national prestige also make it incredibly hard to coordinate around issues that don't care about national borders, or are going to disproportionately hurt people without rich and powerful nation-states defending their interests. Like, I don't know, global pandemics. Or climate change.
-Anyway, in conclusion, borders bad, nationalism bad, and also any officially codified 'Patriotic' culture is instantly cringe. Hopefully some of this makes sense.
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My best friend in middle school was named Brynne. I met her when we were little, when she came to the art classes my mom taught out of the garage, and we became close in adolescence. We spent most of our time together and I thought she was the smartest, funniest, most interesting person I’d ever met. When we were 11-14, she loved Shakespeare, theater in general, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tim Curry, British humor, art (she drew very well), and Tolkien--she was the youngest person I knew who had read The Silmarillion. She devoured books at a terrifying rate. She laughed dramatically--when something was very funny to her, tears ran down her cheeks and she lost motor control. I did my best to make this happen as often as possible.
In 8th grade, she started having other friends who were not my friends. I was distressed about it. We got in a physical fight once--I don’t remember the direct precipitating event, but the way I stored it in my memory was “she was being mean.” In retrospect, it is just as likely that I was being jealous and possessive. I think that was the last fight I was ever in--the small handful of others were all in elementary school. We continued being friends after that, but grew apart when we went to different high schools. We are facebook friends now, which is how I know that she combined her drawing talent and passion for theater and is now a professional set designer.
I don’t remember having any specific, unambiguous crushes on girls or women before I came out to myself in my twenties. After I’d named it, I had them. Looking back wearing the new identity allowed for a clear rewriting of how I’d related to boys--“not real,” “seeking external validation,” etc. It has been harder to define what, if anything, it says about these intensely admiring, fraught friendships with girls. Not useful to try to imagine how your youth might have been different if you hadn’t been pressed into a mold you couldn’t fit. Can’t get a clear, unbiased memory of myself, because it’s clouded by either the errors of identity I was making then or my current revisionism. No way to disentangle, and therefore perhaps no material difference between, whatever’s inherent in you and would be there in any context, and what’s there because you absorbed it from the world.
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The corrupt mentality of living as colonizers and being proud of it. The leftist liberal isn't any better from the brexit-supporter. All are inherently racist, all are still empiralists and still loving and proudly identify as british and superior to anyone else.
The victims are always the 'foreigners'. We don't know anything about the person who wondered in but clearly just wanted a shelter, to eat something -just basic human needs. (The opulency of the table, the grand house vs the mentioned refugee facility). He's literally not heard!! He's completely dehumanized, voiceless, fetishized by the characters - sexually assaulted by 2 of the characters - later feteshized as some god (instead of reaching the sensible conclusion that he just added and arranged so the missing food won't be missed) - the damn dog gets more agency than him!! (voice, name, attributed abilities and actions) nevertheless he is perceived as a threat and he's killed for no reason at all!! And yeah the delusional patriotic grandfather stabbed him but it was the liberal leftists who made sure he was dead. This person is a threat, a sex object, a tool to project your desperation at. He's completely dehumanized. At no point he's a person in need of help, even as he bleeds.
Later after the symbolism montage of wrapping him in the uk flag to the sound of patriotic orchestra, they all reflect how it was necessary, and called for, and excuse their actions. The liberal is the one who actually says it was a self defense. All colonizers and imperalists are guilty of violence and blind faith in their righteousness.
You can also say that the child is a victim too, definitely of neglect by his supposed carers. He's forced to participate and then kinda enjoys the celebration of his country without knowing the context, the consequences and the victims of its "greatness". He is dismissed and ignored throughout the episode (repeatedly saying he wants to leave) and then literally poisoned by alcohol as he is neglected as well as poisoned by patriotism and glorification of militarism, and nationalism.
my thoughts are a mess but i just wanted to throw this out. A strong episode to end the series with!
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