Flutishly

Flutish, now with more words and fewer tags!

[flutishly]

Q: I thought Girl Bandits was going to be an inspirational read about female friendships in the face of incredible odds but instead it was a dense bummer. A: You should never assume that any book about the Holocaust will be an inspirational, feel-good read unless it’s written by a complete charlatan. Also, the histories are dense and complex! - @historicity-was-already-taken FAQ

I used to struggle a lot with being a literary completist. If I started a book, I pushed through to finish it, even if I was just skimming. Then I grew much more relaxed about my reading, and allowed myself to say "I'm not going to finish this book" and just set some aside. It was freeing and wonderful and helped my reading overall.

I'm not sure what to do about The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, a book I learned about through Tumblr and am about a quarter of the way through. It's good - well written, clear history, detailed without being swamped, and fascinating. It's also excruciating to read.

After one section, I found myself scrolling through Yad Vashem's names database, looking up murdered ancestors and relatives and discovering new details about their lives that I had either never known or had forgotten. Another section had me sending my father questions about the uncles he never knew. Another section had me reading up about the Polish town that was happy to see its Jews murdered. And so on and so on and so on. There is humanity galore in The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto, but there's also an ever-present reminder of the sheer inhumanity and scale of the Holocaust. It runs through the book, bleak and crisp and real. There is nothing uplifting about these facts. My brain keeps going back to the above quote: "You should never assume that any book about the Holocaust will be an inspirational, feel-good read unless it's written by a complete charlatan". And yet so many of these charlatans exist, for whom our suffering is just a backdrop to some other story.

It aches in how raw and recent it still feels, made worse by the daily barrage of antisemitism worldwide. And it means that reading The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto is something akin to torture. Maybe if it wasn't so well-written, I wouldn't feel so bad about feeling like I have to set it aside. Maybe if it wasn't so important to make sure I do know all of the details and nuances. Maybe if it was tomorrow. Or five years ago. Maybe. But the bottom line is that I may need to stop reading a book, not because I don't appreciate it, but because it is too good at reminding me of the world that was... and its echoes in the world of today.

[flutishly]

I don't typically think of a Chekhov's gun catching the viewer off guard. Somewhat by definition, a Chekhov's gun is something that you're supposed to notice and keep in mind as the story progresses (whether it's very obvious or not). But The Pitt did something really interesting in its second season. It introduced a "gun" early on, in the first episode. The gun then reappeared numerous times throughout the season and was mentioned frequently. And it ultimately "went off" in the finale, where its implications touched the show's main character, Dr. Robby.

I'm talking, of course, of Baby Jane Doe.

Season 2 does a great job of making you think that the motorcycle is the gun. In fact, at some point it stops feeling like a subtle hint and more of a blatant reminder. "Robby rides without a helmet! He's depressed! He's got a death wish!" It becomes so obvious a Chekhov's gun that I found myself grimacing a bit at the sloppiness, even as the story itself treated Robby's mental health crisis with increasing care.

It was only hours after finishing watching the episode that it occurred to me that Baby Jane Doe had been the real Chekhov's gun all along. Introduced in the first episode, she recurs at the edges of most of the season. After all, she is not a particularly difficult case medically speaking. She's a baby! She's generally healthy! But she's been abandoned and it's unclear who can care for her. And this fires in the final moments of season 2, with Robby holding her close and soothing her, in a way that seems like he's really soothing himself.

There are three babies in the season 2 finale and Robby softens with each one.

We see him tear up after saving a mother and baby under the most intense of circumstances. We see him softening with Whitaker, when Amy and Theo come to pick him up, perhaps imaging a future that could have been. And we see him tenderly hold an abandoned baby and tell her that she's going to be okay, that she'll be loved, and that there's so much yet ahead of her.

Three babies. Three opportunities to demonstrate a particular kind of love that Robby very clearly wishes for. In season 1, we see him much more positively in a father-figure role than in season 2. He gets called on it directly, in the context of how he would teach/impress himself upon his mentees (by Duke, Mohan, Langdon, and Al-Hashimi). He's less patient with the med students and his staff. And there's the explicit absence of Jake, the son-figure. So when we see him with each of the encounters with babies in S02E15, it feels extra meaningful. When speaking with Mohan, he even says how he thought he'd have two kids in college by now. She later asks if it's a real, honest story, and he evades her, smiling instead. But it's hard to imagine that it's entirely made-up, given everything we see in the episode.

The finale also offers another Chekhov's gun of sorts. We see Dana running around and asking who can foster Baby Jane Doe, with the doctors all shifting away. In the end, it's not hard to imagine that Robby could volunteer for this task, instead of going on the motorcycle sabbatical from which everyone is trying so hard to dissuade him. I don't know that he would, but he could. And there's a ray of light in that too (literally seen behind Robby's head, painted on the wall). There's hope for Baby Jane Doe and there's hope for him.

[starlightomatic]

just saw a tiktok from an actual book editor telling people not to use big fancy words when they write and to dumb adult books down to a 7th grade reading level so that people won't have to look up words when the read bc it makes them feel stupid and i hhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[flutishly]

There is value in having adult books that are accessible for people who struggle to read, in as much as it gets them to read. There is no value in all books sticking to an established realm and never challenging their readers. It's great that there will be some books out there with simpler language, for sure, especially for language-learners who don't want "boring" kids books (not that I agree that kids books are inherently boring, but learner books specifically are often very dull), but that's a far cry from literature as a whole manufacturing this sort of simplicity.

You learn new words through context. You learn new concepts through exposure. Feeling stupid isn't an integral part of reading, but for me, at least, it can be part of the joy and I think that it's something from which we could all benefit. The idea that it's a writer's job to placate readers (whether through story, characters, or language) is disappointing in so many ways.

[flutishly]

The lull before the storm - revisiting the days before Hero's birthday, a decade later

Note: This post contains spoilers for Nothing Much to Do.

I'll admit, I haven't been keeping up with the NMTDaily in recent weeks. I'll watch the videos a couple weeks late, in chunks. It feels entirely unlike how I watched NMTD when it was originally released (obsessively, as the episodes came out; I never used subscriptions, so I'd check the channels directly pretty much every day), but entirely reflective of where my life is today, a decade later.

I'll be away this weekend, leading into the 10-year anniversary of Hero's 16th birthday and the radio silence that followed. I'll probably write more about the actual videos when the time comes (hey, remember when I spent hours micro-analyzing a tiny video only for the full-length scene to emerge within that same day? I should be embarrassed by that than I am), but for now I find myself thinking about how the tension ramps up and how the story of Much Ado About Nothing and NMTD's interpretation feels different in 2024 than it did in 2014.

There's a lot that at the time I feel I was less forgiving of, interestingly. Maybe it's because I'm older, but I find myself feeling sorrier for the boys this time around. Claudio's anxiety and self-consciousness feels more... forward. Pedro's need to people-please and "lead". Ben's intense need to be liked and appreciated. Ironically, even as their behavior seems even more "inappropriate" today, I can't help but feel that there's something about it that I better understand today.

Hero herself somehow feels more mature. There's something about watching with the retrospect of a decade that makes the coming punch hurt all the more. It's been long enough since my last rewatch that I'd forgotten so many smaller details, like the way the girls have their sleepover or the fact that Hero has her own charming relationship with the camera independently of Beatrice. (I'm not sure why I'd forgotten these moments specifically, but it's interesting! I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I always clicked with Bea more as a character, but in this rewatch I feel like I'm finally seeing the version of Hero that many of my friends from the NMTD era always saw.)

Hero seems more mature and Bea seems more childish. Ten years ago, Bea was just a few years younger than me; she was immature, but not so different from where I was in life. Now, both Bea and Hero feel like teenagers and I'm very much not a young adult anymore. I look at both of them and think how fragile they are, how much they're taking on themselves at such a young age (independence is wonderful, but do they have the love and support of a good adult mentor?). I think of Bea's discomfort talking about Ben and her fear of being hurt. I think of Hero's open love and trust. I think of how both will soon be heartbroken by the same event, in very different ways.

Hero's birthday is one of those plot points in the world of literary webseries. It's iconic for a reason. And I know that as things "unfold" this weekend (and are only revealed next week), I'm watching it from a very different place than a decade ago and with a completely different mindset. But I suspect that the sadness and anger I felt then will not be completely obliterated. I suspect that I'll still have a moment of anguish for Hero, for Bea, for shattered dreams and the end of innocence.

----

One final aside: I truly love the writing on NMTD. Time and again, I'm impressed by just how richly the characters are drawn, by what a beautiful job The Candlewasters did in translating a classic text and making it feel so very real. I feel so lucky to have experienced this show as it was released in 2014 and yet again lucky to watch it now.

[flutishly]

Controversial opinion, but the sexiest scene in Bridgerton is actually when Philippa and Albion figure things out.

[flutishly]

Before I begin: How had I forgotten the line "Relationships? FUCKING TERRIBLE"? As it was rolling, I suddenly realized that line was coming and managed to quote along, but ten minutes ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you that's a line in NMTD. Go figure!

(I also didn't remember the sloth part being quite so long.)

The past two weeks of videos have been about expanding NMTD's world. Yes, all of the pieces were already set in play, but now they start to move in a coordinated, plot-like manner. First we get closer introductions to characters like Claudio ("CLAUDIO"), Pedro ("A Special Announcement"), and Leo ("Introducing Leo"). Then we get a better sense of how this friend group extends, seeing Ben with Claudio and then with both Claudio and Pedro (and I do still love the casual dynamic of that group), as well as Beatrice with Pedro. The story widens further as we get the first hints of the romance ahead - Claudio's mystery crush follows Beatrice's teasing of Hero, but of course we know what's coming up, despite Ben actually not revealing anything on camera. We see Claudio as a bit abashed, uncertain, and heavily influenced by his friends. I'd forgotten how early it shows up.

On Beatrice's end, we still have slightly more structured videos. "Single Pringle" is one of those episodes that's lived in my brain for the past decade, where I can genuinely feel how she's shaped my life and voice. I can still remember almost every beat of the episode, even if I didn't remember the exact quotes. But I had the rhythm down. And it's this that continues to be NMTD's strongest side. "Single Pringle" maps (like the episodes before it) pretty neatly to Much Ado About Nothing, taking scenes from the play and reworking them to a modern context rather brilliantly. But at the same time, they feel real. Bea feels like a teenage girl complaining about something that's come up between her and her cousin. Nothing feels scripted or acted. The rant is performed, sure, but just like any vlog might be. Just like the boys fighting on camera in Ben's episodes feel like teenage boys scuffling, not like something overly scripted. (Huge credit goes to how these episodes are edited, seriously.) Do all of the translations from the play feel as seamless? No. But they integrate shockingly well, as I remembered.

The plot is ticking forward, but it still clearly feels like the beginning. But... we're starting to reach the point of no return with the plot. Hey, didn't someone mention a party...?

(Trivia note: I started watching NMTD full-time with the release of "Introducing Leo"! Nice to see just how much is still ahead.)

[flutishly]

There's something so real about a lot of these early NMTD videos that even the best of other webseries never quite captured. Maybe it's the range of styles between 4-5 different vloggers (so far we've had Beatrice, Ursula, Benedick, Hero, and Dogberry/Verges). Bea is engaging, snarky, and direct, confidently ready to film herself. Hero is cheerfully sweet and feels wonderfully tuned to the camera and her own style. Ben is a bit awkward and strange and so ready to have a relationship with viewers, without much experience to back it up. Ursula is predominantly behind the camera and seeks to film art as she sees it. Dogberry and Verges have a crappy camera and no sense for filming or vlogging, but so much passion.

The episodes leading up to PROJECT II - ONE SHOT all feel remarkably distinct and unrelated. Yes, these characters are clearly interconnected (seen in VOX POPS through Ursula's storytelling, but also with the linked scenes in "Football Antics" and the Watch's video), but their vlogs are just... different and unrelated. And best of all, they have such different filming, editing, and storytelling styles. They really feel like they're coming from different characters. And there's no clear narrative! What's the story? Is it just a bunch of vlogs from some high school kids circa 2014?

I love ONE SHOT partly because of how it's shot and all (it's great!!), but also... it's just such a COOL way to show off how so many of these threads do fit together. There's an almost-effortless naturalness to how ONE SHOT shows these teens being silly, arguing, and having fun. It's lovely. It's different. It feels so real, so unscripted, so natural.

At this stage, it's so easy to question what Nothing Much to Do is even about. If you don't know the plot of Much Ado About Nothing, I don't think there's any easy way to guess how this story is playing out. And I love that the naturalness of the different filming styles can really make it seem like, no, there's no overarching narrative, there are just a bunch of kids making silly Youtube videos (as was decently common at the time) and having fun online and sharing about their lives. Drama? What drama? (We're in a Shakespeare comedy, aren't we??)

[flutishly]

As the daily rewatch of NMTD gets going (avoiding the actual phrase/tag, per my previous post), I'm finding myself discovering parts of the show that I never actually knew/processed. Logically speaking, I knew that there were Tumblr accounts and I think I was even following them from some point. But I never followed them at the beginning of the show's run (I only discovered it a few episodes from now, and don't recall going back to fill in the transmedia blanks) and certainly never processed that Ursula's "Vox Pops" video was actually the first (chronologically) of the NMTD-verse.

The first episode of NMTD is naturally Beatrice's first vlog. I still find it immensely watchable and engaging. Bea is funny, approachable, and bursting with a liveliness. She feels realistically teenaged and Harriett Maire's acting makes Beatrice seem entirely real, particularly in the way she shifts between different performance styles as she introduces herself and her family. I've long adored "And So It Begins..." as an excellent example of how an episode manages to cram its background in without seeming like it's trying too hard. It's also just... enjoyable to watch, and this is again purely down to having such a charismatic lead.

If we then loop back to "VOX POPS" (don't ask me why I wrote it normally earlier but am now stylizing with caps), there's a sense that Beatrice belongs to a whole, rich world. In "VOX POPS", she's hardly the main character, which is of course the point. Watching these videos in their chronological - rather than logical - order makes the show feel a teeny bit wider from the start. But it also begs the question why Beatrice is vlogging at precisely the same time as Ursula begins uploading her "artsier" videos. This is answered to some degree in "And So It Begins...", by the fact that Bea's life has undergone major changes of late and she's figuring herself out. Would it have made some sense to have an in-story inspiration from Ursula's videos, in that first episode? Maybe! Then again, this is one of those things that necessitates some degree of suspension of disbelief, when asking why webseries characters begin (or stop) filming videos when they do.

Both of these videos are just introductions... and of course, there are several more introductions to come (not just in terms of characters, but distinct channels/styles, like the Watch videos and Ben's vlogs). NMTD is one of the best shows I've ever seen when it comes to having a full, ensemble cast, which I think is beautifully illustrated by "VOX POPS" being its "accidental" premiere. Yes, Beatrice is the show's main character (and she is, both in terms of plot-centrality and driving the presentation/performance of this story), but she never feels like a character who sits alone at the top of a pedestal while other characters revolve around her. She doesn't change based on who's filming her, but her centrality does. It's something that I still think NMTD did best out of so many webseries.

There's not much to write at this stage, given how little of the story has unfolded (and knowing just how much plot is still to come. So far, I'm mostly surprised by the transmedia (which I remember being fairly thin and far from NMTD's strength, an assessment I stand by so far... it's not bad, but it's clearly supplementary) and by the instant worldbuilding.

So it begins, indeed.

[flutishly]

NMTDaily rewatch rules

I've been thinking a lot about how to approach recapping or discussing the NMTDaily, given that this is rather obviously right up my alley. I won't be rewatching the videos immediately upon their release and I want to be careful about not overly obsessing, but obviously there's something so joyful about rewatching shows I love (see: The Great Webseries Rewatch) and the fact that there is a shared opportunity to do this for one of my favorite shows and in real-time is too good an opportunity to miss.

But! It occurs to me that there are two important points.

Posting "daily" is a little much for a rewatch project, conceptually.

There may be viewers who are watching Nothing Much to Do for the first time thanks to the NMTDaily. At least, I certainly hope there are! In which case... posting nonstop spoilers might be a bit of a bummer.

I'm reminded of the little tricks fans came up with to draw a line between fictional Tumblr accounts and realities, the need to separate between "reality" and reality, one accepting a sort of truth to the fictional world that was coming right up against our own, and the other speaking entirely external to the story. In NMTD, there are a few small hints of that in-story as well, particularly through music.

On my end, I think there will be two different categories of posts and two different tags. There will be more recap-style posts, that view NMTD through a lens similar to that which I've been using for my general webseries project. These will be tagged as "NMTD", alongside respective rewatching tags.

The other set of posts will be "naive", written with only the knowledge of the episodes that have aired and the source text. These will be tagged as both "NMTD" and "NMTDaily". Anyone who wishes to avoid my spoilery thoughts can simply go through the "NMTDaily" tag. I'll try to keep it clear.

Anyways. 10 years! 10 years. Wild.

[flutishly]

GGF rewatch, part 5 - Season 2 begins!

It's been a weird few months so this is a short post about a very small group of episodes, but I still wanted to jot down my thoughts: I don't always think that the trick of having multiple characters make their own vlogs works for every character, and GGF is one example where it feels a little more awkward but also almost intentionally so. Diana and Fred's vlogs tell a tangential story! They're not part of Anne's story of the "main plot" (the way that Lydia's vlogs are part of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries' overall story) and these are characters whose relationship with the camera is wildly different from Anne's. I just watched Diana's video "Getting Settled", where you see a young woman who is clearly lonely and uncomfortable and it's not about fitting her arc to Anne's, so much as her just... talking to Fred. No, it's doesn't feel "necessary", but does it need to? Isn't part of storytelling (and GGF's particular transmedia/worldbuilding talent) having every character feel like they could go off on their own independent side-quest? I vividly remember Ruby's videos from this season, but almost nothing of Diana and Fred's. Watching these first few episodes of season 2, I find myself wondering why that is...

[flutishly]

GGF rewatch, part 4 - Interlude

I was about to start my Green Gables Fables season 2 rewatch and at the end of the first ("episode 0") video - beyond realizing that I'd fully misremembered the show's timeline! - I noticed that there was a disconnected video: "Anne and Gil React...". This video isn't included in either the seasons 1 or 2 playlists and since the show has been unlisted, it was harder to find it. (I ended up scrolling through Anne's Tumblr feed, which also helped remind me what took place when and how excellent the transmedia was on this show.)

I'll linger on the video for a moment before I continue my actual season 2 rewatch, because it occurs to me that this is the mental image I have of Green Gable Fable's versions of Anne and Gilbert. Specifically, I always remember them as that final moment, when Gilbert side-hugs Anne and she pushes his face away. They're both so clearly comfortable and friends in this video that it's easy to forget that their friendship came about at the very end of season 1 (as in Anne of Green Gables). As I've mentioned before, I have a very strange relationship with GGF, in that I feel like I forgot about the show oddly quickly, despite liking it so very much. Going into season 2, I'm especially aware of that fact, since I realize that I actually remember fairly little. There are a few plot points and major scenes that are fresh in my memory and I'm excited to re-experience, but I don't have many expectations of the season as a whole, which is kind of exciting.

And that makes me think about how I wouldn't have remembered "Anne and Gil React..." without the little thumbnail at the end of season 2's "teaser" episode, "Goodbye, Avonlea" (which, sadly, does not directly link to the video). And that makes me think about how contemporary literary webseries were, whether in the context of their use of specific social media platforms for the purposes of transmedia or in how rooted to a particular slice of time they are or, as is now emerging, how hard it is to replicate the original viewing experience almost a decade later. (Sidebar: This makes the forthcoming Nothing Much to Do rewatch project all of the more interesting, but naturally I'll be writing about that separately when the time comes.) This one little out-of-place video - which actually perfectly captures what I best remember from GGF - seems to represent something about this rewatching project on the whole, about the way these webseries blazed to life and have faded from collective memory, about art as a whole, and about what it means to rework a classic story.

Onto season 2!

[mama-germany]

Yknow what. I’m just gonna say it.

It’s about time we have a fictional princess who actually enjoys being a princess.

She enjoys the politics. She enjoys the diplomacy. And she enjoys the balls and banquets and attention and pretty dresses and that doesn’t make her a dumb shallow bimbo or some regressive anti feminist handmaid or whatever the kids say these days about women who don’t fall in line with their Strong Female Character power fantasies.

All the princesses urging for ‘something more’ that’s all fine and good but I’m ready to see a princess who appreciates that being a princess is already a lot!

[mama-germany]

You know this website has actually literally gotten better bc I still don’t have bullshit discourse in the notes and no one’s rifled through my blog to ‘deplatform’ me

yet

[flutishly]

When I was ten, I played a LOT of Medieval Total War. I loved the strategizing of the game itself, but I also enjoyed making up stories about the “characters” the computer would assign throughout the game. The generals got backstories. The assassins had personalities and friends.

...and the princesses wrote letters. As diplomatic pawns, I often sent them out to either scout certain provinces as open spies or to negotiate with potential allies (or enemies). Like all characters in the game, they had portraits, often with stunning headwear and distant expressions. To this preteen, I couldn’t help but envision their “lives” within the world I was shaping militarily. In one game, I imagined one of my princesses engaging in a years-long correspondence with the princess from a rival faction, who had appeared next to one of my towns many turns before and stayed there. Of course it was just a computation glitch, the game viewing princesses as the least interesting of the playable pieces, but as I sent my own princess around the nearby provinces, I pretended that the two were friends. My princess wrote of her travels, her adventures, the diplomatic roles she played, and her life as a “pretty spy”. The rival princess would write back of her loneliness for home and sadness in this unfamiliar land, playing no real role in the court, nor doing much of anything. 

Princess stories always seemed to flatten these women and girls, even when claiming to give them new strength and power. Even Medieval Total War 2 understood that, assigning the princesses with talents and vices just like any of the other “characters”. It’s time real fiction does too, and not just the pretend imaginings I had as a child.

[flutishly]

Note: This post includes no specific spoilers for Star Trek: Prodigy, though it does mention thematic aspects of two episodes in the first half of season 1.

Now that Star Trek: Prodigy is back streaming, I obviously had to rewatch my favorite episode - one of my favorite Star Trek episodes of all time, frankly - "Time Amok". And it's funny how even though I've watched it numerous times since it first aired, it still makes me cry and it still fills my heart entirely. But then I did something I've never actually done, and went on to watching the next episode ("A Moral Star, part 1"). Though I'd rewatched that episode separately, I'd not seen it immediately following "Time Amok" and I hadn't realized just how seamlessly the two fit together. "A Moral Star, part 1" is in my opinion another of the stronger episodes of season 1, with intrigue and cleverness abound, alongside heart and its persistent message and moral core.

Prodigy is a show about learning to become Starfleet, about growing into Star Trek. It's a children's show in as much as it's about children - notably, children from outside of the Federation's sphere of influence - becoming convinced of the virtues of this Federation, of Starfleet as an exploratory body and source of good in the galaxy. Not because anyone forced them to or even expected it of them, but because they want to do good and hold by those values. "Time Amok" is my favorite episode of season 1 because of its story, its exquisitely tragic happy ending, and the way it manages to do so much character work in so short a time. But "A Moral Star" (both parts) maybe best represents what both Prodigy and Star Trek as a whole should be. The fact is that the episode about characters coming into their own - as a team and as individuals - is necessary to lead into the one where they can work together to uphold Federation ideals.

Anyways, go watch Star Trek: Prodigy if you haven't already (and even if you've never watched any other Star Trek). It's great.

[flutishly]

GGF rewatch, part 3 - Season 1 wrap-up

Note: I started writing this post a few months ago. Things have happened since which affected my ability to get this post out. I haven't picked up The Great Webseries Rewatch since, but I intend to, once things... settle. In the meantime, I'll wrap up this loose thread.

I didn't even process how quickly the end was coming up. I sped through the last batch of Green Gables Fables episodes with such ease that it just... happened.

GGF has aged remarkably well.

More than so many other shows, GGF has an excellent sense of environment and world. Its side characters exist in a way that makes them feel entirely alive and not just when they're on the screen for Anne-the-blogger's sake. There is a sense that Avonlea is richly populated, even beyond what Anne specifically shows us and shares with us. Things like the writing group, Anne having her friends show up on camera (as young people are wont to do), and the creative writing class project that has everyone doing vlogs (which really is unfair when everyone knows Anne already has a vlog, it's totally favoritism!) all give space for characters to exist on their own terms.

GGF also does one thing which at the time distinguished it from other amateur (and not-amateur webseries): It included an adult. The fact that GGF shows Matthew as a living, breathing, awkward character is delightful. It's lovely because it also shows that Anne's life and choices and mistakes don't exist in a vacuum. When GGF was airing, it struck me as "okay, that's nice" rather than something which actually helps make GGF an excellent adaptation.

There's not all that much effort to modernize, truthfully. GGF never strays too far from the original text (or its intention). Because Anne of Green Gables is still fairly modern itself (or at least still resonates fairly well with the modern reader, all things considered), there aren't needs for huge leaps in order to get the story to work.

Even the romance! Where a lot of the literary webseries needed to make sure that their characters were neatly packed off to relationships by the end (some of which didn't necessarily make sense and some of which were expressly changed so that they could make sense), Anne of Green Gables has no such demand. Anne and Gilbert have the ultimate realistic relationship, in terms of its ups and downs and complications. It's slow. It's powerful. It continues to enchant young readers. GGF sticks to the original script, which I think helps keep it feeling relevant and earned.

GGF also does an excellent job with... minutiae. Ruby remains one of my favorite adapted characters, in large part because she appears on screen as someone whole, who just happened to have not yet been featured and then continues to develop with the confidence and ease of a fully-drawn character. (She's also very well-acted.) Her vlogs don't amount to a subplot (in this season, at least) and they just give space to a human being. It doesn't feel like there's a message that needs to come across or a niche that needs filling (a la Maria Lu in LBD). This is evident in Anne's vlogs as well, where the ever-engaging Mandy Harmon sometimes vlogs about things that really don't fit to any expected plot points, but still give you a rich sense of the character and her world. It's good storytelling.

Ultimately, I'm left with little to say other than... yeah, this has held up. Green Gable Fables feels richer and smarter and deeper almost a decade after the fact than when it first aired, which I think is a combination of my increased appreciation for what it does so well, my better understanding of the source text (I actually hadn't read AoGG when I first started watching GGF and indeed read it because of GGF!), and the way I've seen other shows try to do what GGF is able to do so seamlessly here. I'm exceedingly pleased that I chose this as my second show for the rewatch project; it has held up so well and was just a wonderful rewatch overall. And if you've never seen it before? You're in for a great time.

[flutishly]

GGF rewatch, part 2

The thing with Green Gables Fables is that it just sort of... flows. It works. I wrote this in my previous rewatch post too and I'm left feeling like there's not much to add at this point. Anne leaps from mishap to mishap, usually with minor stakes that she dramatically enhances in a way that works perfectly for the character. The adaptation choices are often nimble and sweet. The inclusion of Matthew is wonderful, particularly given how many amateur webseries often felt like they existed in universes fully populated by teens alone (with the occasional young adult). And I love how the many side characters are gradually introduced onscreen. Anne lives at home and talks to Matthew a lot; why wouldn't he be roped into her videos? Diana and Jane are genuine friends who are aware of Anne's whimsies and vlogging quirkiness and join in on occasion. Ruby is initially a somewhat distant friend-from-school who floats into her first video with confidence and ease (in what I think is genuinely the best version of this particularly character I've ever seen) and gradually takes on a meatier role, as we'll see moving forward. And now - as I finish watching "I Hate Rain" - the elusive Gilbert makes his first appearance. He spends most of his time on camera looking at Anne, even as she steadfastly refuses to meet his gaze and continues to address the camera (even when speaking to Gilbert himself, her body remains trained toward us, her audience), Gilbert only glancing at it at the very end.

GGF doesn't feel dated. Sure, I imagine the teen references would be a bit different today (One Direction fanfic...?), but for a show that's 9 years old, it has a timelessness that is rather impressive. As I mentioned in my last post, I can't help but feel that unlike LBD where the vlogging style itself has changed so much since the show first aired, here there's something about Anne's obvious DIY style that feels entirely contemporary. Anne's filming choices also feel much more in tune with how modern casual videos are filmed, albeit hers are obviously far less edited and polished than many contemporary short videos. But would a teenager who's making videos for fun necessarily have clips that are that much more polished? Would Anne have the patience to make those sorts of videos? I'm not sure.

And so the rewatch continues, with little to add on my end. Not because there's nothing worthy, but because Anne of Green Gables is a wonderfully fluid text that doesn't feel like it has the standard Major Plot Points that need to be addressed, so much as an episodic series of events. "I Hate Rain" and the next video in line "Not Happening" are dramatic events for our sake, but there's nothing so drastic in-story in terms of having Gilbert on camera for the first time. There's no tension like with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries' "Darcy Day", in which Darcy himself introduced major drama and his very presence on camera added onto it. It's another Anne mishap, after all! It's what she does! But the viewer can enjoy this first appearance and appreciate it. Truthfully, the biggest dramatic event in GGF will happen much later (...Matthew), and the show becomes a lot more plot-driven in its second season.

For now, let's keep flowing...

[flutishly]

Was thinking about the new back-to-back Lower Decks episodes and about Star Trek's definition in relation to insightful television (another post for another time) and I sidetracked to thinking about Mariner's character arc, her interaction with Ransom in "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee", the way she's processing her own self-destructive tendencies, and how for all that she probably wouldn't make a very good Captain, she's definitely a good leader.

She'd make such a good second in command.

Mariner's biggest flaw is her insubordination and tendency to push back against authority. But at the same time, these are often highly calculated acts of insubordination, brought on very intentionally and wielded like a sword. Mariner knows how to manage people and inspire them. She has a great capacity for creative thinking. And she also constantly challenges whoever's in charge. She has no interest in dealing with the bureaucracy of Starfleet and the minutiae of managing and the difficulties of playing politics with the admirals.

On the other hand, Mariner would be excellent at delegating ensigns, finding wacky solutions to strange problems. And most importantly, she'd positively crush it at giving her captain a reality check. Starfleet First Officers often need to push up against their commanding officers and have in many cases been the essential voice in making sure that the captain sees reason.

[flutishly]

At a family-adjacent event, someone from the other side of the family (who I know fairly well at this point) asked me "Have you ever read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall?" She knows that I love reading and like talking about books, so it wasn't completely out of left field, but given how much I adore Wolf Hall, it caught me off guard for a moment. Yes, I replied, it's actually genuinely one of my favorite books.

She then started talking about the reasons she mostly hated it. And it wasn't from a perspective of dismissing my love or tearing it down. She talked about how much she admired the writing and about how much she disliked the characters. "He's such a difficult main character," she mused. Yes! I cried, he is!

The whole time, we had this conversation while explicitly coming from different places in terms of engaging with this piece of art, coming from different generations (classic Boomer versus Millennial), and seeking different satisfaction from the art itself. She had just finished the book and I read it years ago, when it came out. But even though we had fundamentally different experiences reading the book, we forged a fascinating conversation. We argued over the literary merits of having such a flawed, difficult protagonist, about what it means to like that (as I do), and more.

And it's these sorts of conversations that I think are sorely missing from fandom. This debate wasn't an argument and it wasn't passive acceptance of someone else's other opinion with no pushback. There were aspects that were obviously just down to taste, but other things were interpretative or contextual. When I compared Wolf Hall as a contrast to the film "A Man For All Seasons", she brought up "Anne of the Thousand Days". Our interpretations were different. Our experiences were different. But that didn't prevent us from finding the contact points.

I love being able to engage with art (as should be pretty obvious by this entire blog). I love watching or reading something and going "ah yes, here is something I liked" and then discussing it. I also often like saying "ah yes, here is something I deeply disliked". My dislike usually doesn't negate my like (if I have it) or even someone else's like (if I don't). Today, gifmakers will often bristle at the idea of tags that don't fully embrace the characters or scenes depicted in the gifs. But for me, part of sharing something is having that discussion. If I'm sharing a gifset, it's because I like it and I want to be able to address something particular in that gifset. Sometimes, I find a relationship compelling without necessarily shipping them; does that mean I can't/shouldn't share something that comes from a place of viewing them romantically, while elaborating on that thought? Maybe, maybe not.

"Make your own post" is the common refrain, but that's exactly what I find missing. Smaller fandoms sometimes manage to have these conversations, but there's a sense that it's always the exception. Fandom revolves around the love of a thing, often leaving little room for truly nuanced discussions of what does or doesn't work for others. Ultimately, I'm surprised and gratified to have found exactly what I was looking for at a child's birthday party, discussing a book I really loved between the salad and the cake. I just wish I could have it within my other fandom communities as well.