I saw an interesting post about Shane saying "if he didn't want to do anything, he didn't have to."
I think it was commentary about his level of wealth and privilege, but it occurs to me that a big part of Shane's issue is that while he doesn't necessarily HAVE to do anything he doesn't want to do, he doesn't seem to KNOW that.
We can see it in the brand deals. Obviously, he likes the money, and who wouldn't. But for all that Yuna talks about Shane as a role model, Shane himself seems pretty uncomfortable by the idea of being race representation (or the comparison to other athletes of color.) The episode four montage shows us that even if the end result commercial seems fine, he spends most of the filming looking pretty uncomfortable.
He's willing to do it, but he doesn't look like he's enjoying it.
Episode 4, as I've mentioned before, actually has a lot of instances of Shane doing things he doesn't really want to do: taking the picture with the girls at the aquarium - he was clearly trying to politely beg off, but they just ask Hayden to "hold his baby for him" instead. Agreeing to contact the Mommy-Yoga instructor at Hayden's insistence. Giving in on Wimbledon, even though he very much indicates he doesn't want to go. Even dancing with Rose.
These are all things that he expressly does not want to do, and really, no one is physically forcing him to do it, but he feels pressured into doing it anyway.
And, then, of course, there's sex with Rose. And presumably any other times he's had sex with women. Hudson Williams has that great, awful quote about Ilya being the first time that Shane's ever had sex where he actually wanted to be there. And I think we see that very visibly at the end of the fourth episode.
So yeah, it's interesting. Because Shane is a grown adult with a shit ton of money who is at the top of his sport. He SHOULD be able to say no to anything that makes him uncomfortable or that he doesn't want to do. But he ends up doing it anyway.
I admit, one very pleasant fantasy for me is the idea that now that he and Ilya have progressed in their relationship, maybe Ilya can take a look at some of these situations and say no for him when he can't seem to say it for himself.
Tungsten, X-rays, and Coolidge form a trinity that has left an indelible impression upon our life and times. The key word in this triad is Coolidge, for his work brought the element tungsten from laboratory obscurity to the central role of the industrial stage and gave the X-ray a central role in the progress of medicine throughout the world. (C. Guy Suits).
Tungsten is an element, with the atomic number 74, part of Group 6, along with Chromium, Molybdenum & Seaborgium, although it has never been mentioned in the series, nor have I come across it in fanfic (yet).
It's brittle in its raw state, but malleable once purified; a robust and dense steel-grey metal mainly used in alloys. It has the highest boiling & melting points of any element. It was discovered in 1781 and is also known as Wolfram. It's used in light-bulb filaments, x-ray tubes, radiation shielding, rings, ceramic glazes, weights, magnets, cutting tools and can be used as a substitute for gold or platinum. Often found with tin.
hxh dude bros be like “you just don’t understand what having a close friendship means/is like” while actively ignoring and denying any and all of the romantic subtext and undertones in and throughout killua & gon’s entire relationship. 😭
I have been an Izzy Girlie day one. I saw the old man and I knew just I knew I was going to be weird about him.
But I've been expecting his death since season 1. I had believed, along with the tweets about the Revenge burning, that Izzy was going to die, he would offer himself as a sacrifice, wearing Ed's leathers and the ship would burn. The Crown would think he was Blackbeard, mirroring Ed's plan in s1. The legendary Blackbeard dies and Blackbeard was Izzy and Ed.
Notably there were only 8 episodes, instead of ten. The crew of OFMD have talked about how they had a smaller budget so I think this may have been the original plan but when it was realized they didn't have the budget for it, Izzy's death was moved from episode 10 to episode 8 as a hasty fix.
At the end of the day, I am okay with Izzy's death. He was one of my favourites and I'm weirdly glad to see so many people mourning him like I am.
“The fact that this is a world of comics. Depending on what the writer intends, this romance comic can suddenly turn into a dreadful one. Even main characters can become extras in the blink of an eye.” - Lee Do Hwa
EoY or July Found By Chance, is a show where Eun Dan Oh finds out that she’s living in the world of comics, as an extra with a terminal illness. She, with the help of Haru, a nameless extra, decides to change her fate, and ultimately the story they live in, for the better.
While the show’s set-up itself is amazing, it doesn’t stop there. The comic book world extends as a metaphor for our real world. It portrays the Writer of the comic as an all-knowing all-seeing entity like God, and asks-- if our world was, as monotheistic religions believe, controlled by a God, can we really change our predestined fates?
As the story progresses, the show plays more with the concepts, asking us-- can we really win against an omniscient entity? If our actions and motivations were created by the entity, are our feelings real? Are our motivations real? Can we escape the curse of History? Can we break free from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth? And, most importantly, is our fate important enough to risk our very existence?
While I’ve seen metas that explored the show partly, I haven’t seen a full analysis anywhere, so, despite the fact that it ended a while ago, I’ll be doing a full series on this show.
This is the Masterlist Post for all of them, which I’ll keep on updating as I write more. (you can reblog if you want to be tagged in further posts!)
Worldbuilding and Themes in EOY
Free Will and how “Trumpet Creeper” reinforces it.
Eun Dan Oh: Changing Her Fate
Haru: Love Is A Revolution
Baek Kyung: The Writer’s Stand-In
Yeo JuDa- The Wildcard
Shoes Over Flowers: The Subtext of these two
Three Romances and Three Fates
The Brilliance of the Ending and the Show’s Message
Road to hell paved with "Good Intentions"... (thoughts on SPN and episode 13.14)
I've had some time to chew on my response to this past episode, and I still haven't watched it again. Don't think I will, either. It's not that it was gaudy awful; it just, hmmm … okay, I'm just not invested in this ensemble cast that the show is pushing at us.
cassiopeia7 and caranfindel have both written wonderful, entertaining recaps/reviews of “Good Intentions”, so hit their journals if that's what you're looking for.
I'm going to be contemplative about the current direction of the show, with a big dose of Sam!girl salt. Just so's you know. I'm still in it for the long haul, but I have complaints. (No, YOU?) This essay is also over on my LJ, so if anyone would rather reply there, for ease of reading and/or privacy, please do so!
As I said above, Supernatural has become an ensemble cast. Jared and Jensen may still be in every episode, to varying degrees, but their characters are no longer actually the central nexus of the mytharc. This is different from the first half of the series' run in that Sam and Dean's relationship and watching them untangle the mystery that was their family (as well as themselves), kept us glued to the TV. Not anymore.
Nowadays, a fan is as likely to be watching for Destiel or Wayward Sisters or Jack or anything else BUT Sam and Dean. And given the popularity of this Destiel business, anything else but Sam.
And it shows.
Sam and Dean are often little more than guest stars in their own series these days. Not only that, they've gone from 'epic' heroes to 'iconic' heroes. (I mentioned this elsewhere, but I'll recap here, because it has merit, IMHO.)
We all pretty much know what an epic hero is: a man whose fortune is brought about by his own admired characteristics. They're proactive, rise above their flaws, and take on Herculean (see what I did there?) tasks. The iconic hero, however, is more like a Conan the Barbarian or a Mad Max. The tale isn't really about them, but they are the thread that connects the plot points together. They're almost like tour guides through a story. This is pretty typical for procedural television, actually. (How much did Jessica Fletcher from 'Murder She Wrote' actually evolve?) Problem is, that's not really how SPN gained the rabid, loyal fanbase that it did. It started as a horror procedural, but bottled lightning when Kripke and Singer realized the magic they had in the relationship between Sam and Dean. It wasn't just the chemistry between the actors; the audience tuned in to watch the brothers unpack their emotional baggage and struggle with each other and a difficult paternal relationship. All the while, monsters, demons and angels nipped at their heels, and ultimately, they had to confront the fact that both of them were inextricably entwined, by blood, with a fate bigger than mankind. They started, and thwarted, The Apocalypse.
Nowadays? The Winchesters have become iconic heroes in the MotW episodes, MacGuffins in the mytharc ones. Per TVTropes: “A MacGuffin (a.k.a. McGuffin or maguffin) is a term for a motivating element in a story that is used to drive the plot. It serves no further purpose.”
Jack wants to be on the 'good' side for the Winchesters. Mary is being told that her sons made a positive difference, so she feels worthy herself. Claire returns to the roost to save Sam and Dean, thereby kicking off Wayward Sisters. Cas, uh, well Dean's there for him so that Destiel shippers have something to do. And Sam is there for Rowena to sucker him into giving her powerful magical whatevers, so she can return to bite them on the ass later. If we're SUPER lucky, we'll get a scattered handful of lines that reveal something about what's going on in Sam or Dean's noggin. Nothing about Sam-and-Dean's relationship. (Wee, it's so healthy now!) Nothing about them being supposedly too “important” to reap yet, per Billie-as-Death. (My guess is Dabb has nothing concrete planned for this.)
Lucifer doesn't give two shits about Sam as his original vessel, nor will Michael give any shits about Dean being his. Sam and Dean are just annoying flies in the ointment, eminently disposable.
Honestly, think about it: if Sam and Dean actually died died right now, it would impact absolutely nothing, plot-wise. Cas would continue to track Lucifer, Jody would continue to shepherd her girls, Mary and Jack would keep each other safe, trying to escape Apocaworld … I'm seriously not invested in the plot anymore. I watch the show out of fidelity, for the horror and the handsome.
This past episode, Sam stayed behind in the bunker while Dean and Cas went off and had a rough-n-tumble little adventure together. Sam, on the other hand, was easily taken out by Donatello, apparently overpowered Donatello later (off-camera) and then spent the last scene of the episode out of focus. Literally wallpaper. (Dean tends to be the Little Black Dress of the show; he looks good with everyone, so he gets screentime no matter what, with lots of those loving shots that linger on his face. I do enjoy those, make no mistake! But y'all know me... )
It's like they're dividing the show into two parts: the MotW episodes, with our iconic heroes (Sam and Dean) going through their typical paces, and the mytharc episodes, wherein our iconic heroes fade into set design, as the other characters become the epic heroes. Or epic villains, as the case may be. And I have to be completely honest: I don't much care about these epic characters. I'm just not invested in them.
I became invested in Supernatural like no other show. It struck me like a heart attack. I have never once wanted to find tie-in novels or search out additional products before, which is how I stumbled on fandom in general, the SPN one, in specific. But I'll tell you, if the current genesis of the show had been the one I'd seen, 13 years ago? I never would've gotten hooked. No way in hell. And this makes me reeeeeally frustrated, as the characters that got me addicted to begin with are still on the show, yet written with such disinterest.
Yeah, I know, it's not easy to explore characters who have long histories. It's far easier to take on characters who are still pretty much blank slates. I get it. Doesn't change the facts for me. SPN is a show that was conceived as one thing, turned into something else, and now is suffering for it. This season has been more “ensemble” than most. Thanks, Dabb. Ya fucker.
The next episode seems to be a MotW, so at the very least, I'm sure to get something more than Sam knocked out or blurred into obscurity. Right?
What did you think about how they adapted Daeny's plot this season?
That’s a particularly difficult question to answer, especially if you’re looking for a “it was great” or “it sucked!” answer. The fact of the matter is that the show, and how it has adapted the books, has surpassed the point that we readers are sitting at.
I have come to terms with that, as has a most of the fandom I would say, but that is not to say that the plot this season for Daenerys was a bit forced and flat lined. The removal of Young Griff and JonCon (which I do not condemn whatsoever, they are, unfortunately, the first thing to cut when looking at what can take out the biggest chunk of time) was apparent in characters such as Varys, and Dany’s relationships to other characters in her plot (forced Jon romance cooould had a little more build to make me stomach it).
The raised “evil queens” tension this season was also just a bit…. Yikes? I don’t know, the dramatization of the show in general has become a bit unappetizing. I feel as if they’re trying to put Dany and Cersei against each other in the end for an Evil Yas Kween Showdown and I really am dreading that to be the cause of the inconsistent personalities and drawn out plots.
I love the costumes, I love the actors - they really put their hearts in the characters and all bring something to the table - but at this point in the story, while we barrel to the end in such a short amount of time, it is hard to really maintain concrete love or hate positions. I love the show for the big fan service moments and the already mentioned, try not to give a crap about the plot, and just drink wine and bullshit with friends through it. Hating it won’t make the writing better at this point, so laughing at it but still appreciating some of the cinematic high points is all I do.
Daenerys’ plot suffers in show from the lack of a lot of conflict we’re waiting to unfold in TWOW- Victarion and Moqorro, Benerro, Marwyn and Co., a fulfilling way of leading the Dothraki and the Battle of Fire…. In collapsing all of these plots, they minimized the product we’re handed, which they have to do. We can’t have hundreds of hours for this series - although I’m … not against it *personally* - so things get cut. There are several things I would change about what got cut, but I am unfortunately nothing but a humble fan, alas.
