This is something of a dead horse, but while we are posting our definitive opinion on things, we might as well have at it. This issue is not just important to me, it’s a necessary step towards creating good narrative, so it really must be covered. It would be an understatement to say I feel passionately about this. Women and storytelling is pretty much all I care about, because “female characters” and “characters” are one and the same thing.
Gamzee Essay number one.
A lot of people are in a lot of disagreement about what the fuck Gamzee is actually saying and what we’re supposed to take away from it. I’m here to help shed some light on the issue. My credentials to do so? Well, I’ve been a juggalo for thirty years.
Not really, but I’ve been doing a lot of research and I’m an Amurrcan that grew up around the sort of low-income troublekids that ICP markets itself too, I had a friend show me some of their music when I was a kid! And of course nowadays I’ve done my extensive journeying through juggalo lore to learn more about everybody’s least favorite sodaclown.
So basically you’re just gonna have to take my word for this one, right? Or not!! I am not your earth human mother.
GAMZEE: MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY? IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—
Okay just look at this, just look at it, for one! It’s fucking ridiculous. It doesn’t actually sound much like anything gamzee’s ever said before? It’s hyperbolic to the extreme, I’m sure it’s meant to be “look at how funny he talks” more than anything. Narratively this is a hugely awkward place to be putting in weird jokes about how hot aranea is or whatever.
Most people are hung up on “Ninjalicious Ho-Titty” but with this sentence structure he’s not even calling her “ninjalicious ho-titty.” Let’s break this shit down.
MOTHER FUCK WHO’S ALL THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY?
Pretty basic. “MOTHER FUCK” (expletive) WHO (subject) ‘S ALL (auxiliary verb) THIS FRESH PIMP RYDA (person, this is just, another way to say person, i promise you it means nothing? Not that hussie is going to be anywhere near using urban/rap lingo as anything other than a big joke but yeah “fresh pimp ryda” is basically just a way to say person.) I GOT MY WICKED PEEP ON FOR SUDDENLY (saw)
Translation
WHO ARE YOU?
Not wow who’s this hot lady!!! no. A “pimp ryda” is not a term for a hot lady. A fresh pimp ryda is not actually a phrase anyone really recognizes at all. Hussie is just slamming a bunch of perceived lower-class words together to make gamzee look kind of stupid and incoherent and well??? Checking the fandom response, it’s working?? blugh.
IT’S A MOTHER FUCKIN NINJALICIOUS HO-TITTY MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS BITCH ASS MOTHER FU—
Here’s where the contestion is. What’s he saying??
The subject here is not Aranea. The subject is “It,” and gamzee messes up his grammatical references, sure, but he’s never referred to a person as “it” before. What’s he talking about? Literally, “It!” What’s going on, what’s happening, the situation, man, which is all up and being “A MOTHER FUCKIN (expletive) NINJALICIOUS (Very ninja, ninja being ‘homie’ or relevant to the posse but I don’t actually think. It’s intended to really be hinting at anything) HO-TITTY (same tone as “wicked bitchtits) MIRACLE JACKED UP IN THIS (here in this) BITCH ASS MOTHERFUCKER (where I am currently)”
What he’s saying is
WHAT’S HAPPENING??? THIS IS STRANGE AND I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. ALSO I AM A JUGGALO, IN CASE YOU FORGOT?
Like I’m not hugely surprised people are having a hard time pulling what he says apart or are making fun of him or are immediately interpreting everything he says as objectifying/misogynist because it’s hip hop lingo and what has anyone ever ELSE done about black music and its propagations and its vernacular am I fucking right??? haha
But the point here is that Gamzee doesn’t talk like everyone else, he’s very confused, he’s very upset, he spills a bunch of jargon, it sounds funny, Aranea talks about how disgusting he is and then mind controlls him. Gamzee always had difficulty communicating and this was undoubtedly related to his upbringing. he’s always spoke sort of wrong, his dialect being a mashup between highblood scripture and lowblood vocabulary. Linguistically, he walks a line a lot of real people do on earth when they grow up in low-income/urban places and then to have a bunch of middle-class people call them “uneducated” sooo. Come on, people, don’t miss that you’re doing that here, and don’t miss that hussie is playing off this lower-class social phenomenon and speech patterns to make a big joke out of them.
Either way? This is the wrong time to be vilifying Gamzee for how he speaks because it’s exactly the justification Aranea is using to remove his speaking privledges, which is an absolutely concerning thing for her to be doing. Do not repeat the whole Tavris debacle, fandom, I’m begging you.
And that’s Clown Essay part 1.This is a good analysis. I honestly assumed that body language alone was enough to convey that Gamzee was upset and freaking out over being mind controlled, but apparently that’s not something people pick up on? I don’t know, sometimes Homestuck fans confuse me a little.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a joke about low class language alone necessarily, even. We know that quirks get more pronounced and text gets less readable the more upset people are. The more upset Karkat is, the more lurid his metaphors become, the more upset Vriska is the more letters turn into 8s, and so on. Gamzee is just following that pattern here, and as usual the comic is setting up a funny situation with a darker undercurrent to it—that long string of incoherent text and Aranea’s reaction is funny, but also disturbing the more you think about it. The comic is extremely good at setting up those uncomfortable laughter moments, really.
Unlike a reader who can pass on a script after the first awkwardly constructed page, a competition reader must read on, deeply, in order to provide feedback to the writer. You want this reader on your side immediately.
Dialogue can help. Even how it looks on the page helps.
BALANCED WHITE SPACE IS YOUR BEST FRIEND - The ratio of dialogue to action lines on your pages may seem cosmetic. You may have read the Oscar-winning screenplay of Django Unchained and feel that your voice and vision belong in that category, or you may offer the rebuttal that filmmaking is a visual medium so action lines should be as densely luxurious as a neckbeard. However.
When you submit your script to a competition, you have to get a yes from the first wall of readers, who are under tough deadlines on a next-to-volunteer basis. Crisp and balanced white space on your pages is like good foreplay, it tells the reader you are serious about making this a wonderful experience for them. You want the reader to approach your script with hope in her heart.
So your dialogue and your action lines should look accessible.
Because…
BAD DIALOGUE LOOKS BAD ON THE PAGE - The ways to make your dialogue look bad before it’s even read are legion.
Pages full of long speeches look bad. Speeches in films are often the ONLY speech in that film, which has taken the entire film to set up. They look like tedious reading.
Pages full of very short lines of dialogue unbroken by action lines look bad. They look like they can’t possibly justify the space, and are generally full of greetings and pleasantries, the enemies of getting in to your scene late and exiting early.
Pages full of dialogue in which an action line interpreting the dialogue precedes each line of dialogue look terrible. “He squints, confused.” “She averts her eyes playfully.” They double the read time, and if they are all necessary, the dialogue doesn’t speak for itself.
Talking head scenes that go on for pages look bad. Do some scenework. If you need people to talk to each other at great length, put the scene somewhere with some visual interest, preferably somewhere that tells part of the story for you, or while they are doing something important to the plot.
So now that you have your white space looking inviting, the actual words you write in the dialogue must live up to their promise of professional-level punch-packing.
It basically comes down to one thing.
EXPOSITORY DIALOGUE IS DEATH - Most of what kills your dialogue is an expository style. In short, telling me what’s going on. This reaches far beyond backstory and repetition, it is a style of dialogue that habitually states the obvious.
The greatest joy in dialogue is the unexpected. A reveal, a dropped bomb, a reversal, a threat, a lie. That kind of dialogue sizzles and excites. Expository dialogue is everything else. Explanations, indications, illustrations.
Good dialogue reveals and develops characters with what they don’t say and when they don’t say it more often than not. The last thing you want to waste dialogue on is what we already know, or what we are already looking at, or what we are about to look at. Subtext is more interesting to read.
Then there are pet peeves.
DIALECT SHOULD NOT BE VISIBLE - No extra apostrophes or words spelled to reflect a pronunciation, please. It takes time to solve dialogue like an acrostic.
DON’T INTRODUCE YOUR CHARACTER FIFTEEN TIMES - Special Agent Catherine Clay, FBI. This is Special Agent Catherine Clay, FBI. I’d like you to meet Special Agent Catherine Clay, all the way from the FBI in the big city. Catherine Clay, Special Agent, FBI, she’ll be working with us.
DIALOGUE IS NOT FOR DOGMA - The writer’s position on a given issue can be revealed in a lot of ways, but it falls flat on the page when it’s spoken aloud by a character whose sole function is to educate the reader about it.
PROOFREAD FIFTEEN TIMES - There is a well-known phenomenon that writers are blind to their own typing errors. In dialogue, it’s especially important to proof relentlessly, because that’s where the errors jump out at readers. Missing words, misspelled words, extra words, wrong character names. Readers may skim action lines to get the gist, but the dialogue gets more scrutiny.
Put that entry fee to good use! Get a yes. Move on to the next round.
The (not) in the title of this post indicates an order of operations, as in mathematics. Pretty much, it’s to call attention to the way in which Mako Mori is not your “strong feminist heroine,“ according to some, and why this is a problem with the way we think and speak about “strong feminist heroines.”
Several of the feminist critiques of Mako Mori have expressed the opinion that Mako is somehow less of a character due to the fat that she has fewer lines compared to her male co-stars. The argument appears to run that, despite being front and center for the entirety of the movie, in order for Mako to be considered a “strong feminist heroine,“ she needed to be talking as much as Stacker, Raleigh, Chuck, and Herc in addition to the way in which she is established as a character in her own right.
This strikes me as odd: Mako Mori, who ostensibly embodies a kind of warrior archetype that is less common in western media; who demonstrates martial and technical skill exceeding, or on par with, her male counterparts; who helps provide the emotional ground for the whole narrative; and who demonstrates a strength that, in my opinion, is exceeded only by Stacker Pentecost, is not a “strong feminist heroine” because she doesn’t have many lines? I am not sure that this is a critique that we can carry to it’s logical conclusion.
One of the primary problems that I see with this critique is that it assumes a certain kind of strength is necessary for the presentation of a “strong feminist heroine,“ and the expression of that strength is not only through the actions that the character takes within the narrative, but how vocal the character is within the narrative. To this end, these critiques seem to make the argument that the actions Mako takes during the narrative of Pacific Rim (piloting a Jaeger, accepting the loss of her family, accepting the loss of stacker) are somehow diminished because she didn’t contribute to the dialogue.
Against this, I offer that Mako’s very silence is what defines her strength. Too often we assume that strength is assertive, it is something that pushes out into the world. In the case of the “strong feminist heroine” articulated by critiques of Mako, she lacked the strength (some might even say agency) to project her voice out into a narrative dominated by men. However, this ignores the possibility of an internal, non-assertive strength, the kind possessed by Mako and made manifest in several scenes throughout Pacific Rim.
As I, and others, have pointed out, her statement to Raleigh, “It’s not obedience, it’s respect,“ indicates a kind of inner strength to set aside ones desires for the sake of the group. Students of Japanese culture will note, generally, that this is the kind of internal fortitude that makes up some of the best Japanese characters, and I would count Mako Mori among them. As an example from Japanese literature, I would point to Tomoe Goezen (one of the more notable onna-bugeisha) in the Heikei Monogatari. At the defeat of her commander’s army, she was willing to lay down her life so that she could die honorably with her commander. In turn, her commander orders her to depart the field against her wishes. Granted, in the context of the Heike Monogatari, the order was given because the commander did not wish to be responsible for her death, however, the implication was that her life (as a warrior) was too valuable to waste in seppuku at that battle.
Out of respect, and against her wishes, Goezen flees the battle. This is the kind of strength that Mako Mori possesses, and it is a characteristic of all good Samurai and all good deshi to their Sensei. We can see this kind of strength emerge again when Stacker is preparing for his final ride, just before declaring that they are “cancelling the apocalypse.” When Stacker asserts that he will be piloting the mission, despite it leading to his death, Mako accepts his decision without question, and further assents to defend him (to the death is implied) while he completes the mission. To knowingly allow your commander, your Sensei, and your father to walk to his own death and simply accept his decision requires a kind of strength that cannot be articulated in mere dialogue, it must be demonstrated through action.
This strength through respect is further demonstrated by the way in which she accepts, rather than protests, Stacker’s decision to ground her following the near disaster in the synchronization test with Gipsy Danger. We, as American viewers, are used to our “hero" characters fighting for their chance to prove their value, to prove that they are right. Raleigh embodies this kind of mentality when he argues for Mako (actually, we might read Raleigh’s staunch defense of Mako as recognizing that she possesses the kind of strength needed to do what is necessary) to be his co-pilot, throwing everything he has against Stacker. We’re used to seeing this assertive strength as “true strength" as opposed to Mako’s more internal, composed strength.
To belabor the point, Mako further possesses enough mental strength to suck Raleigh into her own memory. There are some who might deride an “in universe" plot exposition point as a example of a female character’s strength, with something like, “oh, we needed that scene to explain Stacker’s relationship with Mako.“ However, the dialogue in the sequence clearly indicates that Mako’s connection to Gipsy was too strong for them to disconnect. Let me put it another way, Raleigh is the more experienced pilot, and has “flown” Gipsy before so it would be logical to assume that his connection would be stronger than Mako’s. In fact, it appears the reverse is the case: Mako, on her first connection with Gipsy, manages to overpower Raleigh’s own connection and draw him into the memory.
Now, again, since Raleigh fell out of synch with Gipsy and Mako first, it would be logical to assume that Mako (as the inexperienced pilot) would be pulled into Raleigh’s memories. Instead, Mako’s falling out of synch pulls Raleigh into her own memories, despite the fact that he had regained his connection with Gipsy Danger and was aware of what was going on. I may be overly charitable to the film, but all in universe evidence points to Mako being a stronger and more capable pilot than Raleigh himself: “51 drops, 51 kills" in the simulator. I’m willing to hazard that Mako’s lack of dialogue as a factor which denies her the status of “strong feminist heorine,“ is on shaky legs.
The deathblow to this critique of Mako Mori does not come from within the narrative, but is aimed at our presuppositions about strength. Again, in our Western framework, we assume strength must always equate to assertion, a kind of aggressive devil may care attitude that is embodied by characters like Raleigh and Chuck Hanson. In contrast, Mako Mori provides us with a kind of inner cultivated strength that stands out in stark relief to our cowboy hero archetype. For me, this points to the insufficiency of the characterization of strength always pushing outwards against the world, seeking to enforce its will upon the world. Strength, of character, of will, can be internal: a control over oneself and one’s emotions despite the turmoil that one finds themselves embroiled in.
This is the kind of strength that we see in Mako. Even at her most “emotional” during the compatibility dialogue, a point that Stacker notes, she is still in control over her body, her feelings, and the fight itself. We might further see this internal strength resulting in the focusing of her desire for revenge, her emotional trauma, into the deathblow that takes down otachi: when Raleigh seems all but willing to give up as Gipsy is dragged into the air, it is Mako who finds the way, and Mako who delivers the deathblow as the articulation of her emotions into a single focused strike: “watashi no kazoku no tame ni,“ indeed.
I make a point of the single strike for a good reason: typically, when one exacts revenge for the death of one’s family, we see it as “the beatdown.” The character in question vents their trauma in a rain of blows that often continues after the object of their vengeance is dead. We see this in movies all the time: the hero empties an entire magazine into a fallen foe or continues to pummel the enemy long after they are unconscious. For Mako, it is a single, focused strike that ends the battle: she has the strength of character not to waste energy venting her rage on Otachi, she gets the job done, and has her satisfaction.
For all of the above reasons Mako Mori is (not) your “strong feminist heroine,“ and it is not out of any deficiency in her characterization, but an inability of the concept of “strength” to recognize the kind of strength that Mako embodies. In short, Mako Mori demonstrates the degree to which our notion of a “strong feminist heroine" is insufficient and needs to be adjusted.
Before his final ride in Striker Eureka, Chuck Hanson asks Stacker Pentecost how the two of them, who do not share an emotional bond will be able to drift. Stacker replies, “I bring nothing to the drift, no rank, no ego,“ as though this will explain how Stacker is able to initiate a neural handshake with someone that he has not gone through compatibility training with. From the perspective of Zen Buddhist philosophy of mind, this makes perfect sense: a person who can literally leave behind their self, their ego, their rank, and and all of the nonsense that leads to harmful attachment will be more able to drift with anyone, regardless of their prior compatibility.
Normally, when we speak of no-mind, we talk about the concept of non-attachment: the stilling of the mind in such a way that thoughts arise without the mind clinging to them. For the Japanese Buddhists, clinging to attachments (thoughts included) is the source of delusion: when we hold onto our thoughts, we attempt to make them permanent. This is contrary to the nature of a world predicated upon impermanence, and ultimately leads to suffering. The state of “abiding without mind,” or “mushin" is taken to be one of the necessary conditions for perceiving the conditioned nature of the phenomenal world and thus releasing one’s attachment to it.
One way of achieving this “no-mind" state is through shikantaza, the “just sitting" meditation conceived by Dogen Kigen. In shikantaza, the goal is to meditate without attaching a particular goal to that mediation: to impart a goal would be to become attached to the goal and sort-circuit the attempt to release one’s attachments. Further, one of the goalless goals of shikantaza is to become aware of the way in which our attachment to things that condition our “selves" provides the source of delusion. Once this realization is made manifest, then shinjindatsuraku (body/mind dropping away) occurs where the individual realizes their conditioned nature, their “non-self.“
Dogen Kigen, in his Shobogenzo, presented a conception of shikantaza that included all activities if these activities are performed to bring an awareness of the interdependent nature of the world. Earlier I made the observation that the physical compatibility testing was intended to generate an awareness of the bodies of two pilots and prefigure the degree to which their minds could interface by demonstrating how quickly they could adapt to one another. In this mode, the martial arts can serve the purpose of shikantaza by cultivating an awareness of an entire individual as a collection of interdependent relations within an overall network of relations: getting stuck on a single arising moment leads to death in the martial arts.
Takuan Soho fully explains this concept in his text on Zen Buddhism and martial arts, The Unfettered Mind. In it, he paints a picture of the nest martial artist as one whose mind does not abide in his opponent, or his sword, or his technique, or his understanding of himself as “the best.” Rather, the mind does not abide anywhere: it moves through the fight allowing the martial artist (a swordsman, in this case) to respond appropriately. No-mind, or non-attachment, becomes fundamental to the cultivation of the supremely skilled warrior, particularly in his ability to read and respond to an opponent without becoming “stuck.“
To this end, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in serves a double purpose: it allows them to read their partners, AND it cultivates in them a mind that does not attach itself. That is, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in introduces them to the state of no-mind, of non-abiding, that is necessary for the initiation of the neural handshake. Put another way, in order to engage in the neural handshake, one must be willing and able to release one’s attachment to an egoistic self.
Now, why is releasing our attachments to things, like rank and ego, which constitute the illusion of the “self,” important for the Drift? Well, if we think about this in terms of the neural handshake, clinging onto one’s ego and one’s rank while attempting to initiate a mental connection prefigures an unwillingness to enter into a cooperative, interdependent relationship with another mind. In short, the mind that clings to ego would be “stuck" on their own ego and would resist the union necessary to pilot the Jaeger. To this end, the extremely egotistical person would be unable to initiate the drift because they would be too attached to their subjective self.
Further, it is not merely rank and ego that would deny one the ability to enter into the neural handshake: extreme emotion would also damage the ability to join minds. Here, we can look at Stacker’s statement to Mako Mori, “You cannot carry that level of emotion into the drift.“ An easy assumption would be to presume that Mako’s emotion introduces an instability that prevents two minds from blending as it keeps one pilot from being calm. I, however, disagree: I believe that what Stacker is pointing to is the fact that Mako’s mind still abides at the moment when the Kaiju killed her parents.
To this end, Mako’s emotion is a result of her attachment to the loss of her parents: she has accepted their loss and Stacker as her father/sensei/commander, however, she is still attached to the fact that the Kaiju took her parents, and the life she could have had, from her. This attachment conditions the arising of the extreme emotion that Stacker cautions her against and, further, intensifies the RABIT (the memory) that caused her to destabilize her link with Raleigh and Gipsy Danger. In contrast, shikantaza and, more specifically shinjindatsuraku are places where we are aware of the conditions that cause the arising of ego and emotion, the attachments that cause suffering, and we allow them to pass.
Even Raleigh has an understanding of the concept of releasing one’s attachment so that emotions cannot arise and color the drift. When he gives advice to Mako during their neural compatibility test, he says “the drift is Silence.” Silence is a good metaphor for the mental state of no-mind, but stillness is actually the terminology used by Dogen Kigen and other schools of Japanese Buddhism that forefront meditation. Silence/Stillness does not imply that there are no thoughts within the mind, merely that the mind does not attach to them: the arising thoughts are tuned into background noise by not attaching to them, thus allowing the mind to become still or silent.
Returning to Stacker, because he brings nothing to the drift, i.e. he has released his attachment to his rank and his ego (probably due to an implicit understanding of the impermanence of these things and his impending end), he can engage in a neural handshake with anyone. For Stacker, there is nothing in the drift, no place for his mind to abide in: his drift is literally silence. More specifically, I would hazard that Stacker’s mind fully abides in the interdependent relation of the drift: more than any other of the Jaeger pilots, Stacker likely allows his “self" to completely fall away when he engages in the neural handshake.
External imageA surprising number of commentators seem to think Pacific Rim is a dumb movie. Tonight, I explain why it’s not dumb at all. It just uses a different type of intelligence than we’re used to analyzing: a visual intelligence.
I want to talk about Pacific Rim, and why it is not, as I’ve seen a frustrating number of commentators claim, a “dumb” movie, or a movie that “knows that it’s dumb,” or anything like that, but first I want to talk about my girlfriend, and you’re going to let me because you’ve already clicked through and given me the pageview, so you may as well stick around. Besides, I think it will help provide a reference point for some of the ideas I’m talking about.
Alright?
Let’s talk about my girlfriend.
My girlfriend Sara (who has given me the okay to talk about her case, in the name of supporting this movie that she’s fallen head over heels in love with) has a learning disability. I’m honestly not sure what the clinical name for it is (if it has one), but one of the things she has trouble with is processing language on a non-literal level. In other words, metaphors, figures of speech, and some humor that depends on incongruities, sort of doesn’t interface quite right with her brain.
However, there’s no “metaphor” sector of the brain. There’s nothing that interprets figurative information across media. There’s brainmatter that deals with language… and brainmatter that deals with visuals.
So, while my girlfriend struggles with linguistic metaphor, she takes to visual metaphor like a fish takes to water. I have to admit, sometimes she gets comics or movies, for example, in ways that I don’t, despite my training in media. She can look at a weird background motif in a Manga panel and immediately list off for me its significance, or pick out recurring color schemes used to signify something about a particular character, or decipher wordless sequences that I find confusing or disorienting and (embarrassingly) explain them back to me like it’s no big thing and I’m kinda silly for not getting it.
This is obviously fascinating to me as a student of media and how it interfaces with the human mind. We have very different ways of reacting to media, sometimes, because I tend to struggle when it comes to remembering faces, whereas she struggles with following complex, fast-paced dialogue (or, to put it another way, I excel at analyzing spoken/written language and she excels at analyzing visual language). To some extent, then, it’s tempting to look at this as a cool quirk and study it in the abstract as two equally viable ways of exploring media.
a couple days ago i saw someone raise the question of why Pacific Rim only seems to be resonating with millennials, and i didn’t know the answer, but i’ve been thinking about it a lot and suddenly i understand
it’s because it’s a movie about young people who are smart and capable but nonetheless handed a broken and nightmarish dying world, which is hurting everybody but especially them because they’re the ones who have to live their whole lives in it
and maybe it’s somebody’s fault but maybe it’s nobody’s fault, it doesn’t matter, but
there is a solution—which is literally to allow those young people to connect with and lean on each other and to give them the resources to take care of it themselves—but those in power refuse to take that solution seriously, so all the money and resources and power that should be going to fixing the problem are going into useless holes that aren’t going to save anybody
and everyone knows there’s no chance that things will get better. they know that everything is going to be terrible for the rest of time
and these young people take that world and the pathetic bottom of the barrel that’s been left for them and they spit and rebel in the faces of all of that, screaming that they won’t let it take them down after all
it’s a story about young people, together, exercising hope and power when they are afforded none and the stakes are so high
and it’s your story, too, if you make it be
H O L Y S H I T. Why does this not have a million notes?? I can’t comment on the part about Pacific Rim only resonating with Millennials, but as for the rest … I have seen a lot of AMAZING meta on Pacific Rim already, but—and I’m about to get stupidly fucking sappy over a goddamn movie about giant fucking robots fighting giant fucking sea monsters, because this is probably the realest fucking metaon this movie that I have seen—
We are Mako Mori.
We are Raleigh, Aleksis, Sasha, Cheung, Hu, Jin, Chuck, Newt, Hermann, and Tendo.
We are the PPDC and we have to figure out how to solve this shit and we have no money and no resources, but we have each other.
And that’s why stories matter and that’s why proper representation matters, because we’re all in this together, and that’s amazing.
In the almost-a-decade I’ve been in the English-speaking Loveless fandom, I’ve noticed a wide range of reactions to the characters and relationships in the series. I’ve had amazing conversations about characterization and motives with some really wonderful people… and on the flip side, I’ve seen a large segment of the fandom who would rather coo over how cute Soubi/Ritsuka is as a pairing than examine the ways it isn’t cute.
I’ll admit that all those years ago, it was the cuteness aspect that got me into Loveless. But I stayed interested because of Kouga Yun’s talent for writing incredibly screwed-up characters realistically, while acknowledging that they’re unhealthy and that their actions have consequences. As an abuse survivor myself, it means a great deal to me to be able to see realistically portrayed survivors in a series I love - and it bothers me that people are so quick to overlook what I feel is one of Loveless’ main draws.
Under the cut, I look at the main abusers in the Loveless universe, and how their actions affect the other characters and the plot.
Amen to all that! (Except to some finer points of your take on Soubi’s psychology, but that’s beside the point right now.) Really, when people start going on about how cute Soubi and Ritsuka’s kisses are and how we need to see more of them in canon, I always wonder if they deliberately ignore the fact that every time that Soubi kisses Ritsuka, he physically restraints him, either by forcefully holding his face still or by trapping Ritsuka’s wrists to prevent him from getting away. Every. Single. One.
And that’s not kawaii.
Especially because Soubi is well aware that Ritsuka is emotionally fragile and ready to go to any length to be loved, as witnessed by his comments during their ride to Goura with Kio or after seeing Ritsuka standing up for his mother after she hurt him during one of her episodes. I totally admit being a big sucker for shared hugs between them because Ritsuka actually wants to be hugged and to be honest, he *really* needs to be hugged (okay, scratch that, given all that is going on in his life right now, *I* need badly someone to hug him and to tell him that everything is going to be okay), but anything else is really pushing the envelope, and was even pictured this way in the story; even the male Zero called out Soubi on his “friendly" kisses.
But then, Soubi was never pictured as a perfectly nice character to begin with. Someone who is hurting, yes, but also someone who can’t stop himself from hurting others, precisely because he’s hurting.
(Also, ten years in the fandom!? Wow, that’s some staying power!)
The abuse is even more wide spread than this post makes it sound. Nagisa is abusive to both sets of zeroes she creates. She creates human beings, and beyond biological manipulation, she believes she has the right to treat them however she wants. It is more than a mentor-ship relationship, as she plays favorites and tells her “children” to discard their pairs and in general do horrible things to others.
Ritsuka’s doctor treats that relationship inappropriately.
Even in the lighter school chapters, there is rampant abuse. Yuiko is bullied in school and neglected at home - forced to eat convenient store food and entertain herself. It might be less graphic than some of the other abuse, but neglect and bullying have clearly left her with a giant lack of self esteem.
Kio seems to come from an abusive family as well, through the effects of a tradition that sees him excluded from his family. It’s nicely mirroring the abuse in the academy structure of sending young children to fight and maim each other in the name of tradition and sacred bonds.
But what I think the series shows best about abuse is the idea of the cycle of violence. Soubi learns his abusive tendencies from his abusers, and their ruination of his own sense of agency has left him right on the path to becoming an abuser himself. A lot of the pairs we meet seem to have abusive tendencies, either to each other or others they encounter, and we know that the system of preparing them to be a bonded pair is abusive and rewards violence.
Misaki is another example of how abuse in Loveless (realistically) creates further situations for abuse. Misaki was manipulated by Seimei, and more or less neglected by her husband. In the newer chapters, it seems that her memories have been manipulated, either through spells or psychological abuse.
I think Ritsuka’s strength in the series comes from the fact that so far, he has resisted propagating that system of abuse - to the point where he sometimes overextends his compassion. Despite his facade of coldness, he goes out of his way to help people - to defend Yuiko against bullies, even before they become friends, forgive both pairs of Zeroes, and call of battles before inflicted too much harm. He is so concerned with the feelings of others that he denies them to himself. He’s willingness to engage with Soubi despite his own discomfort - to stand up for his mother, despite her abuse towards him. At first, I read this as a victim coming to blame themselves and accept their abuse as “deserved” and I think, at the beginning of the manga, that is a lot of what is going on. But I think as he matures and becomes more sure of himself, rather than let himself become overrun by the world of abuse around him, Ritsuka seeks to understand the pain and mend it where he can. He goes out of his way to avoid causing pain.
I have my own theory as to what the name Loveless means in the context of his manga. “Love” is tied in so heavily with abuse and harm in this series and even more so when it associated with fighter/sacrifice pairs. The rhetoric behind the dynamic is full of emotional and psychological abuse - talk of destiny and ownership, wrapped together in a dangerous package. The only pairs we see have a remotely healthy love for each other (as opposed to abusive love, annomosity, or more of a friendship) are either very new to the dynamic or have actively dissociated themselves from the world of Seven Moons (like the Zeroes.)
Thus, “Love” in the context of names, is linked with abuse and manipulation and power. Look no further than the name “Beloved” whose barer truly loves no one, but manipulates everyone.
His opposite is Ritsuka’s blunt honest and desire to find good in other people. Ritsuka avoids the manipulation and grasps at power that seems to encapsulate the word “love” in much of the Loveless world. By avoiding this kind of poisonous “love” he is Loveless.
Sometimes I feel like my immense love of stories is inappropriate but then I remember that I don’t care.
Stories socialise us, they shape our identity, our behaviour, our dreams and our ideas of right and wrong.
We form intimate relationships with the stories we consume and they matter to us. They are alive in us.
And that’s why I am and always will be passionate about stories and the art of storytelling and the messages stories convey.
So, you’re 10,000,000,000% done with those stupid typewritermonkeys who write SPN. You could do better in your sleep, after a severe head injury, with a wild wallaby gnawing your left thumb after sucking on chili peppers. And that ain’t just blowing smoke, either! You’re a writer! An actual, legit writer who is legit familiar with these characters…hell, you wrote THAT fic! You know - of course you know, everyone knows - the novel-length one that has all those reviews and is recced everywhere and everyone and their cousin swoons over because MY GOD, the Destiel is PERFECT and they’re SO in character and WHY CAN’T THE SHOW BE LIKE THAT THOSE HOMOPHOBIC FUCKING HACKS!!
*ahem*
Anyway. Fanfic IS “real writing,“ so I’m seriously giving you the benefit of the doubt here. I’m assuming you ARE a good writer, that you ARE really good at characterization, that you have their voices down flawlessly, that you write with depth and facility and that your novels could easily be published if you filed serial numbers off…and not in the 50 Shades of Reference sense. You’re frustrated with the show’s shallow characters, lack of continuity, disjointed feeling, rushed pacing, tendency towards stereotypes, and brushing aside of issues that could be handled with so much more depth, not to mention wanting to explore a lot more of the potential (not even just sexually!) of Dean and Cas and their parallels and differences…or whoever your favorite characters are (and speaking of, why cant’ we get more Charlie/Garth/Kevin/Benny/etc?). You regularly fix all of these problems in your own work. You know it can be done.
So let’s do it.
We start with that gorgeous prose of yours. The stuff that’s practically free verse poetry. Rich, evocative, subtly enhancing character voice, you carry the reader along into fully realized sensory spaces. You’re famous for your detail, while careful never to get purple, and readers still sob about the way you turned one scratch on a banister into such a potent character reveal.
Sorry, that’s got to go. In fact, all that stuff you describe? Clothes, facial expressions, locations, props, fights? It’s not your job any more. There are wholly separate professionals making the creative decisions for all those things. You can sketch out the broadest strokes, but forget the drip drip drip of the very slightly leaky coffee urn that has made a bulls-eye stain on the linoleum of sallow industrial coffee that’s only drinkable by those clinging to awake and sane and not screamingsobbingfetalballing yet by the styrofoam edge of a —
Nope.
You get this
INT. HOSP. WAITING ROOM - LATER
DEAN watches the coffee urn drip as he waits.
Because not only is the rest of it - including all those internal monologues and thoughts that are ALSO getting cut now - Jensen’s job, the set dresser’s job, the location manager’s job, the director’s job, the prop departments’ job, etc…you don’t have room for it any more. You get 42-49 pages. Seem like plenty? It’s not.
And that formatting is IRONCLAD. It’s an industry standard. There is no artistic license there. It doesn’t matter how it reads, because you’re not writing a story; you’re writing a blueprint for the first step of a group project that is going to become a story when it is incorporated with everyone else’s work to create a piece of audio-visual media.
Even then, you might be thinking that screenplay format’s not so bad. You’ve read some amazing, powerful screenplays with downright poetic descriptors by Oscar winning…ah, but this isn’t a film script, either. Nor a student project. Nor an indie groundbreaker. Nor an experimental anything. You’re writing a one-hour network sci-fi/fantasy genre action drama, and that means that no matter how brilliant it might be, it won’t be told backwards, that beautiful ten minute silent opening sequence has to go, and it’s chopped up a very, very specific way.
- Your first 2-4 pages are your teaser. In this, you’re going to have to introduce a character - not one of the main protagonists - in a cold open, put them in peril, and have something awful happen to them that introduces the Monster of the Week and establishes the C plot. Go back and look at that page format again. You’ve got 350-500 words to tell this entire mini-story with a beginning, middle, and end, and that includes things like “INT” or “Cont.“ It should end on a “gotcha” or shocker of some kind that leaves the audience with a feeling of “well, shit.“
- Act 1, 9 pages. Introduce Sam and Dean. Catch us up on what they’re doing. Tie it back to the previous episode. Establish the current level of peril for the A plot. Reveal the existence of the C plot from the teaser to them. Engage the leads with the C plot, and bring in the first complication or plot twist that makes things go wrong for Our Heroes. Establish stakes that make it personal and explain why This Time It Matters and we need to help this person rather than another one. Show how bad it will be if we don’t. The feeling for the audience should be like starting to climb the hill of a roller coaster.
- Act 2, 9 pages. It’s way more of a mess than they thought it was. Things must go wrong, and they must make a first attempt at fixing them. It must fail. It must appear that the bad thing has the upper hand. By the end of this act, we should have at least one major reveal about the villain that will lead to their overall weakness. (if it’s a recurring villain, like Crowley, that only applies to this episode’s tete-a-tete, but must not throw off the big picture plans for him). This act ends with our heroes whupped and regrouping.
- Act 3, 9 pages. Our heroes strike back, and this time they’re on the right track. But there are further complications, at least one HUGE OMG THEY DIDN’T reveal or plot twist is set up (though not paid off yet), and things get really, really worse, though our heroes are fighting back hard and this time, they’ve got a REAL plan that should totally work now that they know ____. This act ends with shit all over the fan.
- Act 4, 9 pages. If Vader is Luke’s father but Luke’s shrink has been dead all along, this is where you do the reveal. This is, actually, where you have to solve the mystery, win the fight, save the cat, resolve the love interest, and defeat the bad guy at least for this week. While opening a new problem that keeps the A arc moving forward
- Act 5, 4-6 pages. Wrap it up, but don’t put a bow on it. This is a serial. They have to feel satisfid that the story had a beginning, middle, and end, and you have to have resolved your mystery and big conflict from the C arc, but you also have to explain how this only furthers the A arc problem and open some new doors or establish some new problems that are going to keep them turning in. But the story still has to end on at least a vaguely uplifting note, and preferably with affirmation of the brothers as heroes.
- This whole time, you have to maintain the forward momentum of the A plot that drives the entire season, including the relevant items that have been group-established by the writers’ room as the master A arc.
- Ditto to all B plots relevant to characters in this episode.
None of this is negotiable. That’s not because they’re soulless beasts and the enemies of True Art, either. That’s because they are, in the end, supported by advertisers, and a huge part of the deal with those advertisers IS that formula. See, by knowing the formula, advertisers know when audiences will be feeling excited, worried, triumphant, shocked, rattled, etc. and can make their cost-as-much-as-your-house-and-then-some ad time buying decisions accordingly. Someone who is selling a sports car might have much better luck, for example, putting that sleek, vroom-vroom racing ad at the Act 3-4 break than the act 4-5 because that’s right in the middle of the OH YEAH fight the good fight pedal to the metal feels.
Oh, and don’t forget…
- No internal monologue/character thoughts!
- Dean is your protagonist and Sam your primary mythic hero!
- Minimal descriptions and don’t step on anyone’s toes!
- Strict adherence to Industry guidelines!
- Strict adherence to the A plot!
- You have to maintain continuity with ALL the aired episodes AND all the episodes in production right now, whether they’re being edited, filmed, or written. No, you can’t always see all of the latter three. Yes, they might be getting changed as you type. No, you might not get to find out until airdate. Yes, yours would have filmed by then.
- Like all good writing, the characters have to change by the end of the story…but this is serial television, so they can’t change TOO much, and you have to keep them in character while knowing that your opinions of “in character” may not be someone else’s.
- You can’t make any major decisions that would alter the show universe (like giving Mary a sister, Destiel going canon, etc) without getting approval from the Showrunner(s). Those kinds of things have to be timed at specific episodes throughout the season arc because of viewership and contract negotiations as well, not just where it would be cool for this episode…or necessarily best for the story.
- Likewise, you can’t do anything particularly controversial. Nazis are bad, slavery is bad, lesbian hackers that kiss pretty fairies are hot, God hates hypocrites. Beyond that, though, you have to be SUPER careful AND clear it with the showrunners. This isn’t because they don’t agree with you or because those issues aren’t important…it’s because the advertisers didn’t sign on for Glee or the Daily Show.
- Other people have the authority to re-write your script, whether they need to or just want to change something major or minor.
- You’ve got like two weeks to do this from scratch.
- You WILL piss a LOT of people off who will be horrible to you about it, whatever you write.
- You have no choice but to use a lot of tropes and cultural shorthand - it’s the only way to get enough storytelling information across that fast and efficiently - but you still have to feel original, and despite those tropes having come from a deeply __ist society, your show portraying a deeply ___ist society, and your target audience thinking SJ stands for that one from Sex in the City who married Marty McFly, you have to try not to be ___ist in your writing.
- SPN is known for its complex mythology and attention to monster detail. You’ll be expected to present a MotW that is new, interesting, and relatively well-researched while still tying into the show’s overal panmythology.
- Did I remind you that you have little to no say in casting, performance, directing, production, or re-writes? So that character you wrote as a strong, independent single mother just became a shitty stereotype when she was cast as a black woman and performed with a “ghetto" accent and dressed in booty shorts.
- Don’t forget the wit and pop culture references! (but be careful not to run into anything that you might have to get permission or pay for)
Did I mention budget yet? Because yeah, budget. SPN films 12 full-length sci-fi fantasy feature films per season for approximately $50,000,000. That may seem like a lot, but that’s about the budget of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. That gives only about 2,080,000 per episode (about the budget of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior) BEFORE you deduct season-long expenses like everyone’s salaries. A writer can do a lot to keep the show on budget, though!
- If you can accomplish the thing without re-using a character, do it! Give your one-shot characters as few lines as possible! Actors are paid a lot more if they have more lines/screen time. Use your recurring characters sparingly, especially if they’re “names". If they’re “back by fan demand", they’re REALLY expensive, unless they’re in a new body.
- Try to minimize anything that needs in-camera or digital special effects.
- Minimize stunts.
- For the love of Chuck, avoid kids, animals, fire, and water if at all possible.
- Minimize new sets or locations.
- Minimize specialty props or costumes.
- If you’re filming outdoors, film at night. It’s easier to hide where you are and match lighting conditions.
- Minimize the need for any people with special skills.
- Minimize filming outdoors. Weather is evil.
- It actually does have to be physically possible.
- Minimize the amount of music used, especially classic hits
- Minimize the amount of time Jared and Misha are expected to film together.
Get it? Got it? Good.
See, wasn’t that easy peasy? Just like writing fic. There’s no reason for any of those things that people complain about to be occurring except sheer ineptitude and malice! Any typewritermonkey could do it (in about two weeks, semi in-public, with a few million armchair co-writers), and it just doesn’t make sense why with all the amazing fic out there, the writers can’t just give us the same levels of intimacy, complexity, artistry, and pacing on the show! And where’s our musical episode, damn it!
Clearly, it must be this way because they suck at their jobs and hate us.
How silly of me.
I am a screenwriter and I approve this message
Like, “crying onto my keyboard because someone actually understands" approve.
So, this is a very specific, based on Supernatural, breakdown of the stuff that goes into writing a tv series. But even if you are not geared towards always loving supernatural, THIS IS STILL A GOOD READ.
It’s great at breaking down all the pressures and intricacies into making a tv show. So next time you’re angry about the stuff that happens on the show, go back and read this.
(aspiring tv writers who follow me, take note. Especially on the speed needed to get the script done. You don’t have a year per script. You don’t really even have a month.)