Tag: writing

I have a racist sexist creep for an older brother (FML) and he said at breakfast today, “I change my mind, the last jedi isn’t actually a feminazi movie. It’s got a secret message. What happens when you let women be in charge and let blacks and mexicans do what they want? They lose and they lose and they lose. And the white girl goes to beg the white men to come back and save them. And the white man whom they call the bad guy isn’t even bad, he’s the true victim of today’s society. Smart.” FML.

diversehighfantasy:

lj-writes:

Oh, he seems to have Johnson’s authorial intent down pat. “Racist, sexist creep” is an exact description of RJ anyway.

IDK the intent, but he made it WAY too easy to interpret it this way. And honestly, with all the glowing reviews that act like Driver’s performance is the pinnacle of performance art (It’s not a bad performance, but it’s hardly different from the awful guy on Girls), I can’t help but think a lot of people were relieved that they could easily focus on the importance of the white villain/victim.

The sad thing is the actual narrative says the angry white man who tries to fashion himself as the real victim is actually a bad guy and we shouldn’t be taken in by him. That’s a message we can actually use, and one that Rian either can’t or won’t articulate. When he does use words like sick, evil and manipulative to describe Kylo, fans don’t take it seriously because he’s always acted like Kylo is the character we’re meant to relate to first and foremost.

It’s like he’s playing both sides. Alienating the angry white male contingent (including people turned on by angry white men) too much right now could lead to financial loss, so they go along with the idea that this is their movie, while in reality the narrative is painting the “misunderstood” white bad guy as the bad guy, period, in the end. It wasn’t even ambiguous, yet it totally WAS because it’s so hard for western audiences to comprehend that a white man who feels sad could possibly be an evil man. When Rian actually does call Kylo evil, it’s beyond comprehension because Rian said he was relatable.

In 10, 20 years, this will be fascinating. Right now, it’s just disturbing that it was so easy to make people believe Kylo is “The Real Victim” and so hard to get them to see him as anything else once they were allowed to believe it.

Framing is everything. You can say X is bad until you’re blue in the face, but if you focus endlessly on X and frame it in a sympathetic, desirable way then your true message is that X is cool and exciting. It’s why Fight Club failed as a narrative, for instance, because it framed its villain Tyler Durden as the most eyecatching part of the narrative. It’s why Mad Max: Fury Road succeeds, because it doesn’t give all its screen time to Immortan Joe or portray the abuse of the wives in a titillating way (and even then we have people calling Joe the real hero. It was inevitable, I guess).

This is why TLJ fails in its stated aim, because no matter what RJ may say about Kylo being awful, his movie as it exists is a wink and a nod in the opposite direction. Given all his gushing about the character in his many interviews I’m inclined to think this was intentional.

awesomeswimmer21:

chewvbacca:

So we’re told in TLJ that we should fight to save what we love, not fight what we hate, right?? That this attitude is more moral and the Right Way to Rebel?? And yet when Finn tries to leave to protect someone he loves (Rey) from arriving back to a very dangerous situation, both Rose and the narrative frame this as cowardly. So then he somehow regresses and we’re told he’s become a character who fights what he hates (even though all TFA he never really showed a sign of wanting payback against the FO, except for that relatively benign scene with Phasma and the garbage chute). And then at the end he needs Rose to show him the Right Way, which is about protecting what we love. You know, that thing she tased him for trying to do at the start of the movie.

Like even if you want to say Rose’s character arc was about realising this too (which, let’s not lie, is executed pretty poorly, with her going from wanting to destroy the whole town of Canto Bight to only wanting to do so the save the animals in like 10 minutes, whatever epiphany she has not being clearly shown on screen at all), it’s pretty poor taste never mind bad writing to tell the audience Finn trying to leave is cowardly and him getting tased for it is funny, only to turn around at the end of the movie and have Finn act a completely different way and STILL find a way to frame him as being in the wrong by saying no, he should operate under the same perspective of protecting what we love even though he was admonished for it by Rose and the narrative like an hour ago

Right, that’s what I was confused with.

He didn’t go on the FO and fight Kylo at the end of TFA because he hated them, he canonically did it to protect and save Rey.

And he was also doing that at the beginning of the movie, but all of sudden it’s a bad thing now. But then it’s not bad when Rose does it? It’s just inconsistent and contradictory. There’s so much they could’ve done with Finn that would’ve made much more external and internal sense.

Past prologue

I’ve never been very big on writing prologues, but I ended up writing one this time around because I just couldn’t make the central conflict work without dealing with the death of the protagonist’s brother in some way. Call it a prologue or an opening scene set in the past before a time skip, it’s what I’m going with for now. But I’ve changed the opening so many times, who knows if I’ll stick with this one.

Part of the reason I was hesitant to write this scene is because it would include a suicide which would be a grim way to start, but it is a grim scene in general. I’ll have to check and see if ritual/grief suicide could have been a thing in my time period, but I think I can get away with one guy killing himself as opposed to hundreds of men committing group suicide for a dead king around 3 centuries later.

I’ve started logging my work, and today’s output was about 600 words an hour after a little less than an hour of writing. It’s a pleasant pace for me–much slower than that and it means I’m stuck, much faster and I could burn out like I did after Camp NaNo 2014. I could reach my daily goal of 500 words a day in around an hour’s time, which seems realistic enough to aim for without exhausting myself.

I also read more of a book I checked out on ancient place name etymologies and finished the chapter on research methods. The systematic 20-step approach to recreating ancient place names pleases me–there’s a lot of junk etymology out there and it’s good to see a scientific approach that isn’t a leap off the deep end of logic or a jingoistic hard-on. I really want to read more books at the school library before my contract runs out this fall.

Looking at old outlines is so fascinating because I can see where the original idea changed, what has stayed consistent, and what gaps I’ve filled in since then. Then there are even older notes that I’ve drifted so far from that they’re hardly the same story anymore, but nevertheless have interesting elements I could use. My notes are a complete mess and there are snippets scattered across multiple apps and pieces of paper that I will probably never be able to find and use, but even the ones I can find tell a story of how my ideas and vision evolved.

closet-keys:

You ever notice how people defending completely morally reprehensible bullshit will be as vague as physically possible? Because even they realize most people would find their opinions repulsive if they were specific about them.

People will say “Wow it’s so strange people in fandom can’t differentiate between fiction and reality. It’s really dangerous to think that ‘bad thoughts’ are equivalent to actual crimes” because they know damn well how bad it’d sound to directly say “I think adults should be able to create and distribute animated child porn on a public platform”

People will say “I just believe in free speech and think that any belief should be permitted to be voiced and if it’s truly wrong it won’t stand up against debate, but we need to hear everyone out and understand their point of view” because they know damn well how bad it sounds to directly say “I just think nazis should have the right to express their views; I agree with some of them so I want to hear them out about their arguments for ethnic cleansing”

People say “I just think women’s shelters should be for females” because they know how bad it sounds to say “I don’t view trans women as women and am so disgusted by them I would rather they be killed by their abusers than be legally equated to me in any context”

It’s so fucking disingenuous and gross.

The takeaway from this, to me, is to be very explicit and specific with your goals and beliefs. And if you find yourself in a group that uses extremely vague messaging, consider that maybe their beliefs are more fucked up than you’re letting yourself realize.

This was something George Orwell discussed in “Politics and the English Language.” Also: yup.

Finn’s and Rey’s paralleled introduction in The Force Awakens

porgsitter:

I’ve thought quite a lot about how connected Rey’s and Finn’s introductions are in The Force Awakens. When we first see them, they are both completely covered, we don’t see their faces. Interestingly enough the official Star Wars website has published an article that mentions exactly that. What’s nteresting … the article is meant to be about Rey’s introduction to the franchise, yet it can’t talk about it without paralleling it to Finn’s. Which is exactly what I automatically did as well. It also points something out I haven’t realized before. 

image

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In this first shot Rey is covered up, including goggles that cover her eyes. It’s impossible to know at this point if this character is male/female, human/alien, old/young, good/bad.

image

This shot is the second part of a classic match cut The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams chose to use here. The scene right before Rey’s introduction shows a very upset Finn gasping for breath after witnessing (but not participating in) the masscare at Jakku. At the end of the scene he puts back on his blood stained First Order helmet and the closeup of this helmet cuts to the first shot of Rey in her goggles (with a very quick shot of the starry sky in between).

The juxtaposition of a close-up of a character in a helmet with large black eye-shields with another character with goggles of a similar shape covering their eyes is an interesting editorial choice. It’s visually appealing to match the composition of shots in this way, but Abrams is also linking the characters with this transition.

Previous Star Wars characters who have covered their faces have almost always been bad guys, from Darth Vader to Boba Fett to Tusken Raiders. These masks are regularly used a sign of strength and intimidation of other characters as well as, in Darth Vader’s case, a mechanism for survival. [….]

Finn and Rey both use their “masks” only as temporary means of survival in The Force Awakens. Here Finn’s helmet serves as a mask that hides Finn’s horror of what his life has become. It can also be seen even as a form of restraint Finn will need to escape from if he wants to avoid more killings. But why does Rey have her face covered?

Perhaps the filmmakers were simply looking for a visual way to link Finn and Rey and to foreshadow the duo teaming up later on in the film. Abrams also may have chosen this form of introduction to simply increase the mystery of who Rey is with audiences. If we can’t even get a good look at the character, it’s harder to make any snap judgments about her. Will Rey have an immediate conflict to overcome like Finn’s character has on his hands? Is Rey’s “mask” hiding something about her? […] (Plus, Rey’s goggles come from an old stormtrooper helmet, which is just rad.)” source: http://www.starwars.com/news/how-reys-introduction-in-the-force-awakens-tells-its-own-story?cmp=smc%7C1086907311

So we literally have a transition from a struggling Stormtrooper wearing his helmet covered by his colleague’s blood to another character whose face we do not see at first, but who happens to be wearing goggles MADE FROM an old Stormtrooper helmet? These two scenes scream about how there is a connection between these characters that we are absolutely meant to catch before they even meet, down to tiny details!