Merlin is Flawed, and I Love It

Apologies in advance for the impenetrable wall of text. I apparently had a lot to say. 

So I've had like three draft posts about the show Merlin, and and none of them have really been working out. It's not because I don't have anything to say - quite the opposite. The problem simply seemed to be that I couldn't pull anything together cohesively, and I think it was because all the draft posts turned a blind eye to something that's rather unavoidable in talking about this show.

And that fact is that it's not the greatest show ever made. It has a lot of flaws, a lot of plot holes the size of the moon. The CGI is laughable, the plots are rehashed over and over, the show has a reset button that they repeatedly push for the first few seasons. And a lot of the third options that characters don't take for plot reasons makes 'em come off as pretty incompetent sometimes.

And yet in spite of all this, I really really love this show.

And I think the thing is in past posts I had a habit of glossing over these fundamental flaws as if they either didn't exist or didn't matter, but that's just not... truthful. Because the flaws do exist, they do matter, and a show can exist with flaws and still be, like, enjoyable.

What's Merlin, you ask? Well, lemme tell ya.

So, Merlin is a retelling of the old Arthurian legends, but set more as an origin story - so before the characters became the people who the world knows them as. They've also taken a bit of artistic license with their adaptation, which I'm totally a hundred percent okay with. So, in this version, Arthur isn't king yet, but rather a spoiled, arrogant, and elitist prince. Merlin is younger than him, and is a commoner who happens to get the job of Arthur's manservant. Uther (Arthur's father) is the king currently ruling Camelot, and - here's the catch - he has banned use of magic and/or sorcery on pain of death.

Didn't see that coming, did you? Neither did I, but what a great and clever way to raise the stakes for our protagonist right off the bat, right?

Merlin and Arthur begin really strongly disliking each other, due to the fact that Merlin began by calling Arthur out, and Arthur began by beating Merlin up. So when Merlin is told that it is his destiny to protect Arthur, for he is the Once and Future King and together they shall unite the lands and restore magic, blah blah blah, Merlin doesn't reallllly believe it. But destiny said so, and due to his Chronic Hero Syndrome, he doesn't really have a choice in whether or not he saves Arthur from the various perils the writers think up for him or not.

That's it. That's the basis of the show.

And, the thing is... they're not bad ideas. I love the idea of Merlin being, like, persecuted for his magic and having to hide it, rather than revered as this all-powerful magician. Call me sadistic, the more emotional turmoil characters can go through, the more on board I am with it.

And the other clever thing they did with it is that they've set up the characters as far away from what we know them as possible, so that we can properly watch them become the people we have in our heads. For instance, Merlin, known for being an extremely old, wise mentor of Arthur's, is an extremely young, extremely idealistic (and, by extension, fairly naive) young warlock who can barely control his own powers at the beginning of the show. (He's also really an adorable human being.) In a similar vein, Arthur, who is known for his egalitarian stance represented by the Round Table, is in this adaptation, a spoiled elitist brat.

Because of the way they've set it up, they've given the characters room to grow, and that's what makes it such a good approach. Arthur isn't born the most noble, brave, [insert heroic adjective here], he has to develop that, with no small help from Merlin. Meanwhile, Merlin, ever the idealist, has to face all this hardship, all the stuff he saves Arthur from all the time, and as a result, by season 5, he's much more cynical and, shall we say, pragmatic, than he was at the start.

It's just a cool way to do it.

Now, that's not to say that the execution of this plan doesn't have a few flaws. For instance, Merlin's main storyline of whether/when he tells Arthur he's a sorcerer has been dragged out long past its due date - it only comes out at the very end of the series, which is about three seasons longer than it should really have taken. Not to mention that, at times, the abuse that Arthur inflicts on Merlin and is played for laughs is sometimes... not all that funny. I mean, you can only watch him hurl something at Merlin's head so many times before it starts to get kind of old. It's only fun if Merlin gets to reciprocate, which isn't always the case (given that it's, officially, a master/servant relationship), and that's what turns it from a playful friendly hassling to, like, bullying.

So, yeah, there are some flaws in how the relationship is written, which is a shame, because this relationship is the main driving force of the entire show. But the thing is... it still works.

The reason it works is because Arthur isn't a mean-spirited human, and even when he does bully Merlin like he does, that sort of comes across. He's not mean-spirited, he's honestly just oblivious. He's never hung out with anyone who isn't a knight, where they haven't straight up fought as part of their friendship, and he's never really hung out with someone who wasn't a nobleman. It's this awkward mixture of him trying to maintain a friendship while still trying to maintain class superiority over him. Merlin's his friend, but not his equal.

Does... does that make sense?

Actually, I think that gets addressed in a season 2 episode. Arthur says something (paraphrased but) along the lines of: "I know we can't be friends because you're my servant, but if I wasn't a prince... I think we'd get on."

But Arthur, as he grows as a character, begins consistently defying all these class restrictions - by the fourth season, most of the knights weren't noblemen beforehand, but rather, were extremely loyal and competent commoners who Arthur found to be worthy. By the fifth season he's married to Guinevere, who was a serving girl for the first four seasons. And it's pretty clear that, while he and Merlin do have a banter going, they consider each other friends - he especially starts to trust Merlin in the fifth season, I've noticed, and it's really making it wonderful to watch. But the reason it's awesome is because it took them time to get there, so for that reason, I think we can cut them some slack on how the Arthur/Merlin relationship was written. (This doesn't, however, excuse the fact that the growth of their relationship we experienced through season 1 gets reset at the beginning of season 2. As in, they appear to have regressed. Uncool.)

One of the other major flaws with this show is that they have a habit of assigning antagonists before the they've really done anything antagonistic. It works a little bit, at first, with young Mordred (who, if you've read the Arthurian legends, eventually kills Arthur in battle. Also, in some legends, he's Arthur's bastard son, but they seem to be steering away from that, which is probably for the best) near the beginning of the series. It works because it gives Merlin some emotional turmoil - how can destiny possibly be right about condemning a young boy who Merlin sees himself in? That was a decent storyline.

But they continue with this habit for a long time. When Morgause shows up, she seems like a perfectly reasonable person, for a sorceress, and a kick-ass fighter to boot. She's also the only one who told Arthur the truth about the circumstances of his birth (long story). I thought she was going to be important.

And she is, but her remarkable intelligence and fighting skills get drastically reduced. And the reason they do that is because they pit her against Merlin all the time, and Merlin can't be allowed to lose. The other thing is, while she is a villain.... you kind of see her point? I mean, she's trying to kill Uther, who hunted everyone in the magical community, brought about the near extinction of multiple species, and executed many an innocent bystander for "consorting with sorcerers". He's a paranoid lunatic with a lot of power, and... killing him seems kind of like an understandable course of action at this point.

And I realize that perhaps we're supposed to be looking at it from the perspective of "killing is never the answer, killing in itself is evil, don't become the monster," etcetera, which would be valid, if not for the fact that Merlin has a huge body count himself. I mean, people get angry at Merlin for poisoning Morgana that one time (which was a time where he was actually, legitimately left with no other choice, and the narrative makes it very very clear - it was a breaking point for Morgana and Merlin both), but as the actor points out in the DVD commentaries, "I kill loads of people! I kill at least one person per episode." And the reason the audience/writers lets him get away with that is because the people he kills are evillllll, but, like.... define evil? If Uther isn't evil, then who is?

(Not to say that Uther isn't, at times, a sympathetic character - Anthony Head plays the complexity of his extremism very well - only that, well, we're meant to believe that Morgause is evil for attempting to kill Uther by putting everyone around him to sleep in an extremely non-violent fashion, after episodes that have had Uther execute children for being druids or sorcerers. Like...?)

The point being, we're supposed to think Morgause (and then by extension Morgana) are evil because that's the role that they've been assigned in the story. The problem is it's really hard to buy that if you're someone who wouldn't shed any tears over Uther's death, since that's pretty much their main goal. And no one would shed tears over Uther's death (except maybe Arthur, but eh, he'll get over it).

In fact, the villains in general. Like I said, Morgause started off great. She was smart, resourceful, graceful and kick-ass. Then they started directly pitting her against Merlin, and she gradually degenerated until she became the equivalent of, like, a Batman villain, sitting in their lair and wringing their hands while they fail yet again to kill Batman when really they should've just shot the guy instead of tying him to a conveyor belt that moves ever-so-slowly into a chopping machine. (Is this the end of the dynamic duo??? Tune in next week! Same bat-time! Same bat-channel!)

And don't even get me started on Morgana. Her arc was great up until season three. Before that, they had her struggling with the fact that she had magic and had to hide it in the center of the lion's den, so to speak. They had her meeting Morgause, and struggling with the decision to finally overthrow the tyrant who raised her, but would kill her if he ever discovered her abilities. Then they had Merlin poison her, which was a nice catalyst - a nice confirmation for her of the fact that she can't trust anyone in her own home.

And then in season three she comes back. You'd expect them to play with her a little more, right? Play with the idea that she's trying to be the hero, but by more questionable means, and gradually becomes the villain without hardly realizing it. What an interesting conflict that would have been.

 Nope. She comes back and she's just straight-up Batman-villain evil. I'm talking, evil smirks literally every six seconds. It's cartoony. It's often enough that it makes you wonder how no one (besides Merlin) notices that the king's ward smiles to herself like a nutjob every time something bad happens to anyone.

And she doesn't talk about her reasons for becoming evil, and only vaguely and briefly what her ultimate goals are - and even those end up getting distracted. "Assassinate Uther to free the magic community" somehow gets turned into "kill Arthur for some reason" somehow gets turned into "kill Gwen... I don't know, she just sucks". (Oddly enough Merlin never gets a plot directly against him, at least, not until season five - odd because he was the one that poisoned Morgana to begin with). (Also, to be fair, killing Arthur is sorrrrrrrrt of logical, because he's next in line for the throne, but if he's gone then she is. So alright, I'm down with that. But Gwen. Like. Why are you killing Gwen. You know what would be a good way to stop Gwen from becoming queen? KILLING ARTHUR YOU KNUCKLEHEAD. Not to mention Morgana apparently does not know the difference between a queen regnant and a queen consort, but whatever).

There were a couple good villains, though. Agravaine, for instance, was watchable. He was working for Morgana, but he was infinitely more crafty and competent than her (understandable, given that by this point Morgana is steadily descending into madness driven by obsessive hatred) and, significantly, didn't smirk every five seconds. The thing about him though was that, while Morgana's plans were hazy but her motives were clear enough, Agravaine was exactly the opposite. His plans were executed well, but I'm kind of hard pressed to tell you why he was working against Camelot to begin with.

But you see, in spite of these various flaws, I still really enjoyed this show.

I enjoyed it because the thing about Merlin is that, while the over-arcing plots are generally pretty flawed (and only impact things on an erratic basis), the episodes themselves are usually really enjoyable. This is not a show where you should be looking at the big picture all the time, and I'm okay with that. There are so many shows these days that you can only enjoy by looking at the big picture, and that's just annoying, because it usually results in the plotlines per episode being disjointed and not really lining up thematically. One thing you have to give to Merlin - whether or not they do a good big picture, the plots per episode do line up well, and the scenes within those plots are usually extremely well done.

Seriously. While granted, a lot of the character development has been inconsistent (and off-screen to boot), the individual scenes are beautifully acted. (Except, as I've mentioned, Morgana's tendency for Vaudeville villainy, which is a bit jarring in comparison to the rest of the cast's more subtle acting, but hey, nobody's perfect). So many thinly written moments have been made quite profound because of smart acting choices made by very capable actors.

I have to give special mention to the dude who plays Merlin here, because while all of them are pretty great actors who bring a lot to the characters, Colin Morgan's Merlin is just... he stands out. I love that his Merlin actually cries instead of that stupid One Manly Tear trope. I love how incredibly expressive he can be in scenes when he doesn't even have lines. I love the subtle stuff he does in some of his line deliveries - slight voice crack here, a defensive whine there. It's really convincing acting. And on top of all that, he changes his accent for the show to boot (he has a really obscure Northern Irish accent. His Merlin is definitely not Irish). Not to mention that he has kind of this... magnetic, captivating quality, that's hard to define but easy to notice. He's the kind of actor where I could watch a video of him watching paint dry and I probably wouldn't change the channel.

And it has nothing to do with looks (though his cheekbones... damn, son). He just kind of has this quiet charisma thing going on. But, like I say, he's an amazing actor - it's pretty much what sold me on the show to begin with - and so that charisma is kind of just an extension of his talent as far as I'm concerned. I really admire him as an actor.

So the acting's really good, but also, the cinematography. Is really good. And of course, I've identified myself as one of those people who will continue watching something regardless of story if it happens to be shot particularly artfully, and Merlin definitely fits in that category. And there was probably good stuff happening from the beginning, but it becomes especially noticeable in the later seasons. Sometimes I just sit there with my jaw hanging because the shots are so pretty.

I love how the shape of the staircase forms this shot, and how it spirals down to Merlin. I love how small Merlin is. Beautiful.

I love this. I love that Excalibur is this huge thing that Arthur is, like, looking up to, and that they've represented it visually as well.

I'm not usually a fan of lens flare but I just think it works here. The sun, pulling Excalibur from the stone... it's all just so pretty. 

LOOK AT THAT SCENERY. LOOK AT THE LITTLE VILLAGE IN THE BACKGROUND. LOOK HOW FAR GWEN AND ELYAN ARE FROM EVERYTHING. LOOK HOW BIG THEIR FATHER'S GRAVESTONE PILE IS IN COMPARISON TO THEM. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SHOT IS PERFECT.

I love this so much. The shadows from the barred windows, making it look like the prison that it effectively is. The mandrake roots hanging in the shot but not quite reaching Gwen. Amazing.

To be honest I'm just a sucker for this lighting. Damn. But I'm also appreciating the shape of the shot - the road they're walking actually looks treacherous, which is unusual to be seen in a silhouette shot, and it looks almost as if the camera is tilted a little. Also the whole silhouettes thing is just... my eyes like that.

I LOVE THIS SHOT SO MUCH. I LOVE HOW MERLIN IS LITERALLY SURROUNDED BY MAGIC. I LOVE THAT THEY'VE CAMOUFLAGED HIM INTO HIS SURROUNDINGS BECAUSE HE IS MAGIC, BUT HE'S ALSO SHARP AND CLEAR AND NOT FADING INTO THE BACKGROUND. (And you can't tell with this particular screencap, but they've set it up so that they have just enough space for you to follow exactly where his eyes are following, and it's a blue butterfly that flies up in the opposite direction. It's a beautiful shot). 

I noticed near the end of the series they were really experimenting with centering people in shots - you see it a whole lot with shots of Mordred, which I haven't included here - and that's unusual, because closeups generally are framed so that the person is either on the left or on the right, like the previous one. It's generally more appealing to the eye, which is why centering someone is such an interesting choice. I can only imagine that it's meant to convey that the character is in a position of unusual power (or to represent that we're viewing them from a separate character's P.O.V, but that doesn't apply in this case), but because people's eyes aren't drawn to the center, they'd have to work the shot so that the person in the center commands the frame. They seem to have done that here by the stark contrast between Merlin's cloudy grey background and himself - interestingly, Arthur almost manages to fade into the grey with his armour on, but he is visible enough to provide something to give Merlin pause. It's a cool framing, and an interesting one.

I love this shot so much. It's just beautiful. The green in with the grey and island and the lake and the man's profile and I just really love this shot a lot it's so pretty. 

I love how they've done this iconic image (because let me tell you it's an image that wasn't invented with wide screen in mind). The dark waters, the dark background, and the golden sword and the pale hand... the contrast just works perfectly. Even though there's a lot of space there, there's no doubt where you should be looking. It's awesome.

(I, uh... I took a film class one time. I don't suppose you can tell.)

There's more, of course - I was trying to find a shot from Season 2 where Merlin's shot from through a chain link, it's quite poignant - but these are just a few of the shots that stand out in my mind. Hopefully it gets the point across that this show's cinematography is really beautiful, and, especially when it's in the context of the show, can be kind of breathtaking.

There are also some interesting themes discussed on the show, of course. I've touched on the class distinctions thing, which is always present, and (at least after Season 1) the show makes a very big point of representing that aspect of things in multiple ways - and makes an even bigger point of it when the class distinctions are being defied. For instance, things are often shot with Arthur being literally higher than Merlin - he's standing and Merlin's sitting, for instance, or when Arthur's sitting, Merlin is always doing labour and chores and servant-like things for him. But after the Round Table was first introduced, at the very end of the show, Merlin and Arthur are both sitting, on the same level, and filmed from the same height, implying that, at least for this moment, they are equal.

And, of course, possibly the most importantly: it's genuinely entertaining. Leaving aside the unfunny Arthur's-a-bad-boss gag that they like, the show can actually be very funny. When the show gets dramatic, I feel it and care about it. The protagonists, even at their worst, are all interesting, if not downright lovable. And it can actually be surprisingly thoughtful with the plots it explores.

In conclusion: Is it the best show ever made? Of course not. Is it still pretty good? Yeah, it is, and I love it a lot. I concede its obvious problems, but the fact is, it has a lot of redeeming qualities too. It's one of those shows that turn out better than the version that was put on paper.

Here's the thing. The good things it offers? They don't erase the problems. But getting caught up in the problems kind of narrows the things you get to enjoy, doesn't it?

Long story short: I love BBC Merlin in spite of myself.

The Real Reason Shakespeare is Difficult

Spoiler alert: it isn't the language.

Now, that may be just my personal bias - English is kinda my thing. But as far as I can tell, the language is not the real challenge about Shakespeare.

Don't get me wrong, the language can, at times, be challenging. Sure, all the "forsooth"s and "thou"s and "wherefore"s and so on could take some getting used to. And I've seen a lot of people have trouble with "e'er" translating to "ever". But the thing is, the language is something you just get used to after a while. Some quicker than others, like anything else, but the more practice you have with it, the more you understand. I've practiced with Shakespeare quite a bit (I used to read it to myself in my spare time - aloud, as that's how Shakespeare is meant to be read), so I think it's fair to say that when it comes to comprehension, I'm pretty alright.

But that does not, by any standard, mean that I could ever be a Shakespearean actor. And that's because the real challenge begins after the words make sense.

Because the thing about Shakespeare is that, while the words have a pretty clear meaning at face value, the whole intent of a scene can change the moment it's read aloud. By tone of voice, by what the actor does (and what he doesn't do - but I'll get to that later). And it's come to my attention that while Shakespeare can be difficult by virtue of the language, it's actually much freer than most things made today, because in nothing else I've seen can characters be so drastically reshaped according to different interpretations by actors and directors.

But freedom like that is scary, because it's a lot of pressure. You have to choose a direction where so many other people have probably read it in so many other ways.

And that's where the challenge is.

I can think of several examples where interpretation really counted and made a difference, but I'll only give a few here so you get the idea. One was brought up by an actor who I admire, James Marsters, at a panel. He was talking about Macbeth, and how people tend to (by his reading) misinterpret the two main characters - Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth. I'm not going to get into what he said about Lady Macbeth because it's irrelevant here, and because I think the ambiguities of Lady Macbeth is worth an analysis all on its own. But about Macbeth, he was very certain of some things, and that's what matters here, in terms of interpretation.

If you're familiar with the story of Macbeth, you probably know the scene where, after killing his friend Banquo, the Macbeths host a dinner party. At this party, the ghost of Banquo appears to Macbeth. Macbeth panics and Lady Macbeth quickly ushers everyone out of there before they can begin questioning his sanity.

The difference in interpretation lies in what the panicking entails. I've seen a few versions where Macbeth cowers and hides, and a few where he's petrified. What Marsters points out at his panel, is that Macbeth is a warrior. And because he's a warrior, if it comes to fight, flight or freeze, Macbeth would always pick fight.

So imagine this passage with those three very different interpretations in mind.

MACBETH
Avaunt! and quite my sight! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with!

Each version lends a very different tone to the scene, doesn't it? Imagine Macbeth cowering away from the ghost, party guests wondering what on earth he's so afraid of; imagine Macbeth unable to move for fear, hissing these words, the guests baffled; imagine Macbeth roaring these words, challenging the ghost, and now the guests are the ones scared. It changes things, doesn't it?

One of the best examples of such difference in interpretation is something I found in The Taming of the Shrew.

Now, I love The Taming of the Shrew, it's one of my favourites, but there are parts of it that just don't translate all that well through the centuries. What comes to mind is Kate's monologue at the end regarding the importance of a woman's obedience to her husband, and also Petruchio's behaviour directly following their marriage can be a bit appalling if it's played completely straight. One of the most potentially appalling monologues from Petruchio goes like this:

PETRUCHIO
They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command.
Obey the bride, you that attend on her;
Go to the feast, revel and domineer, 
Carouse full measure to her maidenhead,
Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves;
But for my bonny Kate, she must go with me.
Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;
I will be master of what is mine own:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, 
My household stuff, my field, my barn, 
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare;
I'll bring mine action on the proudest he
That stops my way in Padua. Grumio, 
Draw forth thy weapon, we are beset with thieves;
Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man.
Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate;
I'll buckler thee against a million.

Now, the line "I will be master of what is mine own", as well as the comparing of Kate to various possessions can be read pretty darkly and make a lot of people uncomfortable if it's played like that - and I have seen Petruchio played in that way, with that darkness. 

But I've also seen it played very differently. Flirty. Playful. And it changes everything about that scene. 

See, what's simultaneously the most obvious and most challenging thing about Shakespearean acting is it's about what you do, less about what you say. You can say the same thing with totally different intents behind the words. But how you present it, what you do as you say it, that's what the challenge is. That's what the acting is. The tone you say it in, the actions you put with it - that's where things change, where things get interesting, and where the audience will really understand you. 

Now, most recently, I watched a version of The Tempest. And I was especially struck by their portrayals of Ariel and Prospero. (In all fairness, this could have been because Ariel happened to be played by an actor who I admire very much, and naturally catches my attention, but my point remains). Mostly, I was struck by the contrast and parallels they manage to draw between Prospero and Ariel. These things aren't immediately obvious when reading the text, but this version of the play puts quite a bit of emphasis on it, and it was absolutely fascinating. 

And it was fascinating because, while it had been obvious to me previously that Shakespearean acting has a lot to do with the things you do, what this version made me realize was that it could sometimes be just as much about what you don't do. 

In this version, Prospero was... well, he was all over the place. He'd strut all around the stage, shouting some things, muttering others, gesturing to the sky. And it wasn't bad, because in Shakespeare things mostly are that big (especially since this was a stage version), and this Prospero was still played with amazing depth. 

And while Prospero did this, Ariel would stand still, following Prospero with his eyes. When he had a monologue, he would almost never use his hands to express what he was saying, only his face and tone. His voice was always level. And at first I mistook this for a too-subtle take on stage acting, until I realized that it could only be meant to contrast the explosive energy of Prospero. 

It also served as a welcome reminder that Ariel is not like the other fairies of Shakespeare. Ariel is nothing like Puck, of A Midsummer's Night's Dream. Puck is a child, a trickster. Ariel is a servant. "Mischievous" is probably what most people would call Puck (though I can't think of any specific quote) - the word Ariel gets time and time again is "delicate". More than once Prospero calls him "my delicate Ariel". And what's more delicate and graceful than stillness and calm in the midst of the tempestuous chaos of Prospero's schemes? (Please excuse the pun it was unintentional but perfect). 

My favourite example of this contrast comes from how they play this sample. The script looks like this:

ARIEL

[...]
Him that you term'd, sir, 'The good old lord Gonzalo;'
His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

PROSPERO
Dost thou think so, spirit?

ARIEL
Mine would, sir, were I human.

PROSPERO
And mine shall. 

But if one were to transcribe it with tone from how they played it, it would read more like this:

Ariel: Him that you term'd, sir. 'The good old lord Gonzalo.' His tears run down his beard like winter's drops, from eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em that if you now beheld them, your affections would become... tender. 

Prospero: DOST THOU THINK SO, SPIRIT?

Ariel: Mine would, sir. Were I human. 

Prospero: (after a long pause). And.... mine.... shall. 

You can see how they contrast each other very well. And you can also see that, alongside such huge performances as Prospero's, the biggest choice Ariel could make for his own characterization would be to not be big at all. 

I just thought that was interesting. I'd never thought of negative space as an acting concept, but that's essentially what Ariel was creating in this portrayal. Which is, in its own counter-intuitive way, a pretty radical choice.

So, let's face it. Shakespeare is challenging all the way around. Meanings get buried underneath piles of outdated words, and sometimes you get stage directions like "Exit, pursued by a bear" when there wasn't even a bear in the scene to begin with (see: A Winter's Tale). But the most challenging thing about Shakespeare has to be that the way it's written leaves everything entirely open to interpretation. The most challenging thing about Shakespeare is that actors and directors have to make their own choices about who the characters really are, and why they're really doing what they do, and these choices can vary drastically depending on what you watch.

Having that much freedom can be kind of daunting, and it's one of the most difficult things about Shakespeare, for sure. But I firmly believe that it's also part of what makes it so enjoyable. Because it pretty much guarantees that no matter how many times you see the same play, chances are, you won't really be seeing the same play at all. 

And, as I'm sure Shakespeare would say: That's pretty cool. 

That Underdog Band Who is Low-Key Really Fantastic

Muse is that.

So before this week, I'd heard like maybe four songs by Muse through the span of my life. Uprising was on the radio quite a bit (and my dad really liked it), Starlight was also on the radio a bit (one of my ultimate favourites - it has a cool piano part and the lyrics are poetry), Madness (took me a bit to like it, but the climax is pretty good) and recently, Dead Inside (which is really awesome and dark and creepy and the climax of this song is honestly spine-tingling).

So I'd heard a very small portion of Muse's music. I'd liked all that I'd heard, but I hadn't really sought out anything more.

Then, as I was on one of my Internet strolls, I started, out of curiosity, to look up Project MK Ultra. This is related to the topic, I promise.

So Project MKUltra is a typically messed-up piece of history related to the Cold War, in which throughout the sixties and seventies, the CIA did a lot of top-secret experiments on unwitting participants to see if they could actually control people's minds. This is one of the creepiest things ever, and if you're not getting that yet, allow me to make this clear to you: THIS IS ONE OF THE CREEPIEST THINGS EVER. One infamous experiment involved the death of a bright scientist (they drugged him without his knowledge, and he jumped or possibly fell out a window. This is historical fact). There were a lot of other experiments like that, and they often ended similarly, which didn't stop the CIA from carrying on the Project for a pretty long time. Which is pretty messed up.

Anyways, as I was taking in all this strange-and-creepy-yet-true stuff, I stumbled across a comment that said, more or less, "Well, at least Muse made a cool song out of it."

Excuse me? Someone made a song out of this?

So, because I generally like Muse, and because I desperately needed to hear what kind of song could come out of something that's so wrong on a fundamental level that it would be hard to discuss normally, I looked up the song.

The song is freaking AWESOME.

The guitar part is addictive to listen to, and the lyrics are oddly poetic ("A universe is trapped inside a tear" always gets me. Always), and it has these violins playing for suspense as "They are breaking through...... now we're falling/we are losing control" happens and it's just such a cool song.

So later this week, I was having a problem. The problem was that I was sick and tired of all my playlists, didn't feel like making a new one, and needed something to play while I was doing my homework without me having to choose a song every three minutes, but also wasn't the same thing on repeat. My solution was to try something different and find an album on YouTube by a band I maybe liked (but not an album I knew by heart, like Bastille. I was looking for something different).

So I looked up a Muse album on Youtube, since I now liked five of their songs, and hey, that's pretty serious stuff. The first album that came up was an album of theirs called Resistance, which I clicked on and began to do my homework.

First of all: every song on that album is profoundly different in sound. This is a wonderful thing. It makes it very exciting to listen to.

Second of all: every song on that album is extremely similar in theme. This album had songs with titles such as Uprising, Resistance, Unnatural Selection (not to mention MK Ultra), and it became increasingly clear that most (if not all) of the songs had something to do with fighting against an oppressive society. Which is cool.

Thirdly: as I listened to the lyrics, I heard the words "You'll wake the Thought Police" in the song Resistance. Then as I listened to a song called "The United States of Eurasia", it suddenly became glaringly obvious that the whole album, in fact, was based on the novel 1984 by George Orwell.

And that's freaking awesome.

As you may know, I have a bit of weakness for artists who write songs about, well, anything besides romance. Romance, while probably meaningful to those who write about it, is horridly overdone for someone like me, who has no romantic life whatsoever and isn't particularly interested in seeking one out. I was happy enough to hear Muse writing about things non-romantic, like fighting an oppressive regime. I was both overjoyed and intrigued when I finally (and it took me way too long) understood that the oppressive regime they were talking about was, in fact, Big Brother and the Party. As you may have realized, I have an even bigger weakness for artists who write songs that are stimulating not only musically, but intellectually as well (remember when I realized that Bastille wrote songs about Icarus? And Pompeii? And Laura Palmer? And WRITING?).

And it's not only that they write songs about cool things; the songs are actually good. United States of Eurasia has a really cool interlude that sounds almost oriental before it returns back to the rest of the song, which sounds more than a little like Queen. So that's an odd mixture, and odder still, it works.

Unnatural Selection has an awesome, intense guitar part, as well as some of my favourite lyrics ever, including, "I'm hungry for some unrest/I wanna push it beyond a peaceful protest/I wanna speak in a language they will understand" and, "Counterbalance this commotion/We're not droplets in the ocean". God, it's so awesome.

Resistance has one of the most powerful choruses, and it's cool because the singer actually interrupts the background singers to go into the chorus, like he really is resisting something, and he goes into the chorus with so much more power than in any other part of the song - you just imagine him, like, breaking down a door at that part, and it's with such powerful lyrics as well: "Love is our resistance!"

And of course Uprising is just really good, but I'm not mentioning that as much because I've known that song by heart for a solid three years if not longer.

I love discovering awesome new music. It's like finding a bunch of diamonds in a pile full of worthless rocks.

All in all it's super cool and I'm so happy to uncover a band that's actually worth buying the whole album.

Also they've inspired me to actually read 1984. Yes, listening to a rock band made me want to read. And a rather intellectual novel, at that.

Take that, rock-music-is-for-mindless-punks people.

Book-to-Movie Adaptations I'd Like to Make: The Vindico

So lately I've become extremely interested in adapting books into movies.

Not in a Books Rights Activist way, of course, but rather in a genuinely interested and curious way. Because it occurs to me that adapting books into movies takes a certain understanding of the story. A movie cannot, by definition, be exactly like the book, but one doing such an adaptation should have a decent enough understanding of the story the book told so as not to bastardize the entire thing.

For instance, the problem with the Percy Jackson movies is that the screenwriters didn't know where to stop with their changes. They completely lost the point the author was trying to get across and the movie turned a fairly witty and smart book completely mindless.

Now, on the other hand, the 1960s version of the Lord of the Flies must have been written by literally copying dialogue out of the book. I mean, word for word. But that didn't do any better, because books don't make movies, and the movie was horridly boring and slow (some would argue that the book was as well, but those people would be wrong).

And so the trick must lie in striking a balance of telling the story the book told, but feeling free enough to tell it in your own way.

Fascinating.

So I've been trying stretch these muscles by thinking of books that could, potentially, be good movies, and thinking of how I would do it, and what, if anything, I would change.

I'm going to start with The Vindico.

And I'm starting with The Vindico because there are so many ways that story could be told better. As in, better than the book did.

So The Vindico is a book I picked up in Chapters. It's set in a world that very closely resembles this one, except that the world is guarded by a league of heroes, aptly named... the League of Heroes. These are all people who have been born with superpowers and decided that that made then the chosen ones to protect the world.

Of course, there's also a league of supervillains, not-as-obviously named The Vindico. Only the name of their organization and their very intimidating villain names are not so much common knowledge - the general public would only really be able to say, "Wait, wasn't that that guy from that other incident?" instead of "Oh my god it's The Torturer!" (Seriously. One of the villains is called The Torturer. Why he's called that when the public doesn't know who he is is a question that has haunted me for a while now).

Anyways, there's been this ongoing war between the Vindico and the League, but eventually the Vindico decide that they're getting kinda old for this but they can't just give up, so they recruit (read: kidnap) a few kids with the idea of mentoring them into becoming supervillains and being the next generation.

These five kids are the main characters of the book. James, who is given superstrength by The Torturer; Lana, who is given super strength/agility by a villainess called Avaria; Hayden, who is helped by a villain called Leni to reach his full telekinetic potential (apparently telekinesis and telepathy can't be artificially given, so you have to already have an aptitude for it); Emily, who is mentored by a villain called Rono to be the techie - you know, he invents evil machines and whatnot, but otherwise, she doesn't really get any superpowers; and Sam, who is helped by a (canadian) villain called Sliver to help reach his full telepathic potential.

This book had so much potential.

But it was over-edited.

We have five main characters, but only focus on the three that happened to be involved in a half-assed love triangle. What about Emily and Sam, who were doubtlessly the quirkiest characters of the five (between Emily's blunt and matter-of-fact approach to the fact she's getting kidnapped, and Sam's young and adorable naivete about being an everyday hero), they definitely needed to be explored more. Instead we get a half-assed tragic backstory from Emily in which her parents don't hate her but don't really love her either, and Sam's biggest piece of growth is apparently that he... develops a crush on a girl who reciprocates. Like. There were so many other, more interesting directions you could go with that (especially considering he fancies himself an everyday chivalrous hero and then is kidnapped to be trained into villainy? AND THAT'S NEVER PLAYED WITH?!)

The problem is that in an attempt to trim the fat and be a more, sort of, "efficient" form of storytelling, the author gets into this habit of telling instead of showing. Sam tells us that he saw video of his mother not caring that he'd been taken, we're told that Emily's parents didn't love her, and perhaps one of the most irritating ones considering it's a major plot point, we're told how Lana and Hayden's relationship progresses, but we don't get to actually witness any of this.

Not to mention that there are a hundred plot lines that the author left completely untouched. Sliver hints that he's going to betray the Vindico, Leni hints that he plans to take over the world single-handedly (and kill Hayden in the bargain, apparently), the book begins to notice a change of loyalties occurring in James and Emily, the book hints multiple times at hidden similarities between Hayden, the carefree jokester of the group, and Leni, doubtlessly the cruelest and most evil member of the Vindico, and finally, Leni puts a bomb on the roof of Lana's parents' house.

These are all plotlines that the author began and never, ever followed up on.

And I just don't see why you wouldn't take advantage of all that. Those are all really interesting plot lines that the author put out and then decided to ignore. It's like offering someone an ice cream sundae, and then when they say yes, you go "Great!" and take away the ice cream and chocolate sauce until you only have a banana. Like, you said you were going to give me the sundae. Where'd the sundae go?

It would have made the climax a hundred times more exciting than it was.

And all those flaws is the reason I would really like to make a movie of this book.

Now the thing about this is that the movie would not be for what I affectionately call Books Rights Activists or purists or whatever. The movie would be my vision of the books potential.

So what I would do is, first of all, rather than tell the story mostly from James's perspective, which is what the author does, I'd focus more on Lana as the audience surrogate.

I choose Lana for a few reasons. First of all, I wanted to rule out Emily and James immediately, because in the movie I would focus a lot more on their conflict of loyalty (in which their mentors are some of the first to really take them seriously as people, which strengthens their loyalty to them, and by extension, their desire to actually become villains in spite of their mostly good natures). The conflict of loyalty needs to be seen and interpreted from an outside force in order for the audience to see it more than James himself does, because it's a gradual thing that James doesn't realize is happening (Emily is more astute about it, and realizes it more consciously, but that's not the point). That leaves Hayden and Sam and Lana.

Then I had to rule out Hayden, because Hayden has a hidden-depths storyline that also needs to be viewed from an outside force in order to fully appreciate. Hayden already knows that he has hidden depths, but it needs to be a relative surprise for the audience, and no one was more surprised than Lana.

Which is one reason why I prefer Lana over Sam, but the main one is that Lana simply has more to do with the story's end-game than Sam does. Lana's the one that first escapes the Vindico and triggered the mutiny against the villains, the first one to kill one of the League, etcetera. So, as much as I love Sam, Lana's the logical choice for an audience surrogate.

Secondly, we would get a lot more time with the kids and their mentors, so we really get a feel for the relationships there (as well as a way to gouge their progress as super-people, rather than the literary version of a training montage that the book gave us). For instance, Rono and the Torturer seem relatively supportive of their proteges, whereas Avaria and Leni apparently train their proteges by yelling at them and beating them. (The book is less clear about Sliver. Pretty much in general the book is unclear about Sliver and what the hell game he's playing. Apparently Sam is so unimportant that not even his mentor matters). This is so that we can set up the conflict of loyalties within Emily and James, while keeping the others more or less wholeheartedly loyal to the League.

All backstories - of which there are many - would be told either at the beginning of the movie as we're introduced to every character, or, if the backstory is particularly important, through flashbacks. The tell-don't-show approach to backstories got really tiresome in the book, and would doubtlessly be even worse in movie form.

The climax would be morphed entirely in order to accomodate the plot lines that the book so short-sightedly discarded. It would address Sliver's questionable loyalty (he seems to be a work-for-myself character, rather than an homour-among-thieves character. This is interpretation from very little text), Leni's play for ultimate control, the question of Hayden's morality and James and Emily's loyalty. So, perhaps instead of rapidly switching teams as the teens do near the end (first they're anti-Vindico, then they're pro-Vindico anti-League, then they're anti-everybody, then they're pro-League anti-Vindico), it would be more along the lines of the teens temporarily choosing different teams from each other. Really, that's what I was looking for to begin with.

Sam's arc would have much more importance. Just, in general. Especially considering even in the book he saves their asses at the end.

Also, the love triangle would be down-played. When it comes to stuff like that, less is more.

We'd also need more world-building in order to fully understand the importance of the League and the Vindico, respectively.

Also, I feel like the movie would have to play up the Vindico's cruelty, in general, and their villainy. I say this (and this is partly related to the issue of world-building) because the Vindico is a group of six, where the League appears to have at least twenty if not even more. So why is the Vindico, like, a threat, instead of an annoying fly in the the League's face? Well, the answer would be that we'd have to see them doing something genuinely evil instead of something resembling a petty crime, which is what we get for most of the first half of the book. We need to play up the menace. That way, when the light-hearted moments hit, (which is an integral part of the tone of the book and not something I would change in spite of everything), mood whiplash can kick in and jar the viewer enough to stay.

I think Leni and Avaria's evil would be played up more. By the end of the book, they're the ones that the author clearly wants us to fear, so in the movie we'd have to give the audience reasons to fear them. The Torturer and Rono are interesting because they're fairly affable toward the kids in general, but positively gleeful at the aspect of tearing down the League, so I think we could treat that as a flash of darkness (a way to make James and Emily backtrack on their loyalties, perhaps?). The Baron appears to be more or less a blank slate in that he never really is outwardly violent toward the League, but he is an extremely active member of the Vindico and seems to be the mastermind. Yeah, I think I'd play him as a Chess Master who appears affable only because he treats his offense on the League like a game. So, while not frighteningly evil, someone to give the kids pause, for sure. As for Sliver, I think I'd play him more morally ambiguous than evil. He hints at betraying the Vindico, but for his own reasons rather than for the greater good.

Also, playing up the menace would have an added bonus of raising the stakes when the climax finally kicks in. What always bugged me in the book was that when the climax kicks in and the teens conduct their mutiny, they keep acting as if the Vindico would kill them if they had the chance, when there's really not a lot of evidence (except for a few tell-don't-show traits the author haphazardly plants) to say that they actually would. So if we treat the Vindico as if they're actually menacing, that'll raise the stakes when the teens ultimately betray them (although, as I said, that betrayal will go down a bit differently in my adaptation of this story).

And the thing is, the seeds are there. The author goes down a road for a bit where the Vindico are very strategically isolating the kids from their families and friends, and then subjecting them to such sleep deprivation that they can barely bring themselves to function, but are forced to because of the Vindico's orders (which they follow presumably because they're a menacing presence, though it's hard to tell). Those are ideas that I like, but the problem is that he plays it so low-key that it doesn't seem to factor in at all when the teens start actively making decisions. And that has to change. Even if the characters don't break, that's fine, but we need to understand that someone is, in fact, trying to break them. That way, when the characters do break - like Lana - it'll actually mean something.

See, I don't want to change things, per se, I just want to play a few things up and play a few things down.

Imagine it like this. I'm sitting at a mixing console in a recording studio. You know, that thing with all the slidey things that you slide up and down when you're adjusting the sound output? The book is giving me stuff, and I don't want to change what it is fundamentally, only slide a few aspects a few notches up and slide a few aspects a few notches down.

I think more or less I'd follow the same storyline, it's just that you'd get a lot more focus and elaboration on stuff that the book doesn't. I'd tell the story in a way that makes it seem, to me, as the one adapting, that the story's being fully told.

Make sense?

Okay then.

This is fun, I think I'll do this some more. It's interesting speculation. Maybe I'll even give it a shot with a book I really liked (rather than one I lament for wasted potential).

God, I'm a nerd.

On Heroes and Badly Made Made Collages

Title pretty much says it all.

I am obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, I finished it, and I don't watch it 24/7 anymore, but I will always, to an extent, be obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's just a fact.

But back when I was in the "I literally can not think of anything else for more than ten seconds" phase of obsession, I created these desktop backgrounds that celebrated each major character. You see, what interests me about Buffy is that it discusses a lot of different kinds of heroism. Obviously you have Buffy, who is your general all-around kick-ass superhero, but you also had characters like Xander. And Anya. And, Lord help me, even Spike qualifies as a hero by the end of it all. So I took the opportunity to explore the definition of the word "hero"... by creating desktop backgrounds for myself. So, doubly productive! Uselessly productive, but productive!

So let's take a look.

Don't judge, okay, I worked for hours on these things.

(Keep in mind: I did only exclusive-to-Buffy characters. So, Angel and Cordelia aren't part of the batch because I haven't gotten around to Angel characters yet - though believe me, it will happen. And I will have a lot to say on the subject of Wesley freaking Wyndam-Pryce.)

This was the first one I made because it was the easiest. Buffy is the most conventional form of hero (or, as the case provides, heroine).

So what do we see here? Obviously, we've got the quote from Bring on the Night that always inspires me, not going to lie. Actually, this quote was said when she was bloody and bruised and utterly defeated - third screenshot from the left on the bottom - which only served to make it more powerful. Buffy's heroism isn't only in that she fights. It's in that she fights endlessly, and never, ever gives up no matter how hopeless it gets.

The main screenshot, which serves as the backdrop for the thing, is the moment where Buffy sacrifices herself so that her sister may live. It is absolutely no coincidence that her arms are spread as if she were on the cross. Her story has always been one of sacrifice, from the very beginning, and this was the moment it culminated to.

Screenshots in the bottom includes a couple from Chosen (she's fighting the First Evil, and wins not by herself, but by empowering a hundred other people to fight it as well, and I think that's important) the moment when she found her mother dead on the couch from The Body (absolutely beautiful episode. It's quite literally a work of art. I included that moment because it humanized her, and heroes are always much more heroic when they're fallible, mortal people) that one from Innocence where she defeats the invincible Judge with a bazooka because c'mon, that's flipping badass. Moments of sacrifice include the first one from the right, Prophecy Girl, where she literally sacrifices her life, and Becoming, where she killed her first love to stop him from destroying the world. So, yes, sacrifice and perseverance and badassery are pretty much Buffy's heroism in a nutshell.

This was the next one I did because Spike is important to my happiness.

Funnily enough, this was the hardest one to put together. There is no doubt in my mind that Spike is a hero, but it's hard to define it, exactly, because he spends the first six seasons acting like a complete douche. The thing is, his is a story of redemption, and redemption does not happen immediately or without hardship (as Angel has always, endlessly pointed out).

I included the quote from Chosen not because it's the most heroic or inspiring thing he's ever said, but because it basically summed up his arc. He spends so much of his time convincing himself and others that he's a soulless demon, I'm so hard and cruel - he creates such an elaborate persona for himself that even after he gets the soul you can see that he doesn't really believe it (in spite of the madness and agony that it put him through). So that moment - the moment where he's burning up and about to die - is the moment where he finally acknowledged that, yes, he does have a soul now, and yes, he has the capacity to do good, and no, that path is not easy.

The moment that is the backdrop is what happens almost directly after he says that. He sacrifices himself to save the world. He lights up, burns up, and then dies. (Until Angel season 5 that is, heeheeheeheeheeeheee....)

Moments included in the screenshots below include fighting for and earning his soul (first to the left and to the right, respectively), the aftermath of receiving his soul (he burns up on the cross - he was quite ill in many ways after he got his soul, as he suffered so much guilt thereafter. Should we sympathize with him for feeling bad about murders and atrocities he himself committed? Well, you have to remember that ensouled Spike and soulless Spike are two different people - they're similar, certainly, in many, many ways, but they are not the same. It would be like waking up and discovering that you've murdered your whole neighbourhood in your sleep). Also, the moments building up to his redemption - so, he comforts Buffy upon hearing about her mother's illness rather than murdering his arch-nemesis in her moment of weakness, he is kidnapped by a hell goddess and tortured for information about Buffy's sister and he gives nothing away even though there's nothing in it for him, and that terrible, heart-wrenching moment when he watched Buffy die. Literally, I think I'm through the scene without crying, and then I see Spike's reaction and I bawl along with him. I included that for the same reason I included the moment where Buffy saw her dead mother - it humanized him, and as I say, humanization is important to keep heroism heroic.

And here's Willow.

The quote I included is a little obscure and a little bit, um, inaccessible, but here's the gist of things: Willow turned evil for a while. She went all Dark-Willow and tried to kill a lot of people and nearly succeeded in destroying the world. This was due mostly in part to her dangerous addiction to magic and the power associated with it (she's the most powerful witch in the world). So when she says this, it's after Giles has rehabilitated her, and she's talking about the revelations she had while re-learning how to use magic for good again. I like to think she's also talking about herself here. Because for the longest time, Willow was the cute, nice, quirky kid who everyone always relied on. But there's always been darkness in her, and this moment was her voicing her realization of that fact and that she has to control it. Similar to Spike's (though not quite as worn with hardship), hers is also a story of redemption.

The moment that is the backdrop is from Chosen, when she goes again into deep, dangerous magic, and the others worry about her relapsing and going dark once more. Instead, the opposite happens. She goes light. She went a layer deeper in her magic and discovered that even underneath the darkness and evil there is good. This was such an important moment.

Screenshots from the bottom include shy nerdy Willow being badass, Willow kicking the ever-loving sugar out of Glory after she stole Tara's sanity, Willow's rehabilitation after her stint in the dark side, and Willow mourning Tara's death. Because, you know. Humanization. Willow's story is about growing into herself, which takes courage, and then choosing to be good even after witnessing the power that came with being bad. That's heroism.

Xander! Xander is my boy! Xander is my boy and I will not hear a word against him. Ever.

So the quote on this one is from Potential, when he's talking to Dawn about how she could have been a Slayer but then she wasn't and he's comforting her about being one of the... y'know, the muggles. He always struggles with being the one without powers, and a constant insecurity of his is that he isn't valuable because he has no supernatural powers, or because he has no knowledge of the supernatural besides what he learns as he goes along. Basically, he thinks he's useless for a good portion of the time. And that's just not true. As it also says, he's the one who sees. All of the other Scoobies always have an agenda, and let's not pretend Xander never does because there've been a few infamous moments, BUT, generally, Xander is the reality check. And that's an important role. (He's also the cohesion that keeps the group from hating each other, which is equally important, but not really relevant at this time).

The backdrop is from Buffy vs. Dracula. This was the moment where he set the tone for his own character development. For the past four seasons, but the one before this more so than usual, Xander was the buttmonkey (he coined this term in Buffy vs. Dracula, actually). Everything bad that could happen to anyone happened to him. He struggled with finding success in any aspect of his life and it took basically nothing for Spike to convince him that the others found him to be nothing but a dumb, useless weight. So when Buffy vs. Dracula happens, and he gets mind-controlled by Dracula (if you've ever read the original novel by Bram Stoker, he basically becomes Renfield) he finally stands up for himself. He says no. He will not be that guy anymore. He's going to get it together. For the longest time he's been the lightning rod of hate and this is him refusing that role. That's always really inspiring to me.

Moments in the bottom include: When Xander was forced to stake his childhood best friend - can you say, formative moment? The time Xander brought Buffy back to life using CPR, the time Xander rammed Glory with a freaking wrecking ball, practically destroying her - yeah, tell me again how Xander is useless. Xander talking Willow out of destroying the world using the power of friendship - I bawled my eyes out. Xander taking on a bunch of demons alone because all the other Scoobies were busy (reminder: Xander has absolutely no powers whatsoever, which makes that showdown a hundred times more awesome). Xander getting his eye gouged out. Xander facing his abusive father. Xander when Anya died. I put a lot of Xander's most human moments in there. Do I need to say it again?

But, if you'll notice, all the times Xander was a hero, it was in the most human way. He didn't bring Buffy back to life through magic. He used CPR. He didn't fight Willow to stop her from destroying the world. He talked her out of it with the most human, vulnerable thing: love. Xander is, not to sound redundant, but he's meant to be the personification of a human. He's infinitely flawed, but he tries, and fundamentally, he's good. That's his story. Trying to find a way to fight for good in spite of the fact that being a regular old human with a hundred flaws can make it very hard. Fighting even when you're overpowered a thousand to one. I think that's inspirational, and I think that in itself is a form of heroism.

Hey look, it's Anya! Look at all the colours of hair she had! It's a rainbow of blonde!

I love this quote from End of Days. Sadly I had to shorten it because it was a long, fabulous monologue that I suggest you look up because it's incredible, but I really really love this quote. What I adore about Buffy in general is that it acknowledges the crappiness of humanity while still adhering to the (perhaps naive) belief that fundamentally it is good with some mistakes, rather than believing we are fundamentally evil and sometimes we're accidentally nice. When Anya says this, she speaks as an outsider making observations. What you have to understand is that, for a thousand years, she wasn't human. She was a demon. And she did evil things. So when she became human, and started having to pay attention to them so she could act like them, she was initially really confused by them. And leading up to this scene, she's been really morally ambiguous. A lot of crappy things have happened to her as a result of, well, human error (and Xander has no small part to play in some of that error - naturally, being the most human) and this is her deciding that, despite the crappy things, humans are good. They fight when it's needed. And because of that, they deserve to not be wiped out by evil. And she's going to help.

The moment that is the backdrop...... is nothing particularly important to her character, to be honest, it was just the one that I found to be the most visually interesting. If you must know, she's singing about the evil of bunnies. Buffy running gags are the best running gags.

Moments in the bottom include The Gift, when she basically came up with every single way to kill Glory on the fly and everyone was doubting her, Selfless, when she sacrificed her life to bring back a bunch of frat boys (who she killed, being a demon, but she took it back in the most selfless act, and that's important), Two to Go, when she was helping with a spell to save a couple of nerds no one liked even though, at this point, she's a demon who shouldn't care, from The Body when she had that heartwrenching monologue about death (humanization!) and from Chosen, when she fights the First Evil with the rest of them (and died don'ttouchmeI'mcrying). I also included a lot of moments from her relationship with Xander - being proposed to, the ecstasy of being in love with him, and then being left at the altar (I said he made a few mistakes, okay?) partly because those very human emotions were needed to remind us that this bizarre character actually is human, but also because it shows her growth, I think. For a long time Anya defined herself by the men in her life - when she was a demon she took revenge on men for scorned women, and then she was with Xander almost immediately after that, and it's only near the end of the series that she starts to be able to define herself by who she actually is. And even when she understands herself, she fights alongside them, by her own choice and not just because Xander's in on it as well. That's the moment when it really means something. You get me?

Anya's a hero because, when all is said and done, she actively fights for good, even though she doesn't have to and it ultimately has nothing to do with her. And because she has the courage to define herself despite centuries of belonging to everyone else. She (along with Xander) is definitely one of the bravest characters. Don't even fight me on this.

Giles is actually the best.

(Weird that no one calls him Rupert, though..... except for Spike, which is extra weird.......)

The quote is from The Freshman, after temporarily abandoning a struggling Buffy, Giles comes back strong with this statement.

Here's the thing about Giles. He is, easily, the least dynamic character in the whole series. That doesn't mean he's entirely static - he's really really not - but his development/evolution is a lot more subtle, and arguably, less important. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So, back on the subject of the quote, this is where Giles does something similar to Xander - he sets the tone for his own character development. Giles is always faced with a choice - to be to Buffy the fatherly figure, or the headmaster. He can't be both. He's repeatedly gotten in trouble with fellow Watchers for being too fatherly with her. Fact, he got fired for it. So in The Freshman, Giles begins by making the choice to essentially leave Buffy to her own devices in an attempt to force her to develop independence. Good intentions, of course, but everyone knows that Buffy is the longest surviving Slayer, and that the only reason for that is because of the help of her friends, and that help is contributed in no small part by Giles. But eventually Giles realizes that this is a mistake (although he goes on to make the same one later on - see Once More With Feeling) and sets things right. This quote is him saying that it doesn't matter to him what's "right" (read: appropriate) and will focus instead on doing what's good - the Watcher's Council does a very good job of distinguishing that.

The moment that is the backdrop is, like Anya's, not actually terribly important to his character, but the one I found to be the most visually interesting. If you must know, it's from one of his dreams - he's singing to the gang about the Monster of the Week. ("♫And Xander, don't bleed on my couch, I just had it steam-cleaned...♫") Which is actually rather important, as part of Giles's arc is deciding whether to be the father (letting love rule his life), the educator (letting responsibility rule his life) or the rock star (letting fun/passion rule his life), and if he could possibly be some combination of them at once.

Moments in the bottom include a lot of Giles being fatherly/protective, as it's a really important part of his character. There's a lot of badassery in there too - for being initially read as so stuffy and proper, he's really an extremely passionate and emotionally driven character, as well as being extremely powerful. See: the time he nearly died in an attempt to beat Angelus to death with a flaming bat. I also included the time he intimidated the principal into un-expelling Buffy (damn that Ripper smile though), the time he was being tortured half to death by Angelus and was still snarky as hell, the time he literally impaled the Mayor with a sword for saying he was going to eat Buffy (long story). But there's also grittier stuff in there. The time he killed Ben/Glory because he knew Buffy wouldn't. Yes, I call this heroism.

I call it heroism because A) it was a task that had to be done, regardless - if there was a chance for Glory the hell god to come back, it would inevitably happen, so Giles had to ensure that there wasn't a chance. B) Buffy was, at this point, too... not innocent, not pure, let's go with too compassionate, to finish the job. She was trying to get through this without any death, especially considering that Ben didn't actually ask to become possessed by a hell god. C) Giles does it to protect her and her inherent compassion which makes her the purest hero. If you don't think this murder weighs on his conscience for the rest of his life then you're wrong. Death affects Giles like no one else (see: flaming bat). But he recognized that it had to be done. So he did it. And this isn't Ripper, who intimidated the principal, and this isn't mad-with-rage Giles either, because he completely empathizes with Ben. This is just what he takes upon himself as his inevitable duty.

What I'm saying is that Giles is a hero because, first of all, he lets love drive him to the good thing rather than fearing about the right thing, and also because he has a certain awareness about his duty when necessary. Because he finds a way to be passionate, and responsible, and loving, and have all three of those serve a purpose for the greater good.

Tara.

Tara has a very isolated sort of heroism which is largely related to her being much more courageous than people give her credit for.

An odd quote when talking about heroes, right? Except it isn't. Tara has spent a good deal of her life being abused by her family and being rejected by people who claimed to be her friends, until she met Willow and the Scoobies. And for a long time she was loved and it was great, but eventually Willow started abusing her. Until her major character development in season five, she would have passively taken that. So in this quote (in fact, it was a song in the musical episode, but that's not important), she deliberately makes the decision to leave Willow and no longer allow herself to be abused. And if you don't think that's hugely courageous then you're wrong. She's essentially being her own hero, and that's just as important as anything else.

The moment that is the backdrop is her having the sanity drained out of her by Glory when she refused to give away what Glory wanted to know. A huge, significant, and somehow forgotten sacrifice that Tara made for the Scoobies when she still didn't even know them very well. (Spoiler alert: she got better).

Moments in the bottom include: being a rock for Buffy, being a rock for Willow, being a rock for Dawn, standing up for Willow despite the fact that Willow had abused her previously - no, it's not quite as grandiose as the other character's acts of heroism, but I find it to be important. Tara is the team mom, okay? Xander may keep the group together, but Tara keeps the group sane, and often, safe. She doesn't have to do that. She has just as much to complain about as any of them. She's just a really loving, caring person, and that's important.

She also began as this extremely shy character who was scared to speak too loudly, and ends as this empowered character who stands up for Willow to Anya, who has arguably one of the biggest and unapologetic (which can be intimidating to someone like Tara) personalities out of all of them.

Tara's story is about growing into one's self, and being consistently kind but without neglecting herself. Heroic? Maybe not by the usual definition, but is she a role model? You better believe it.

This one was a little harder, but I stuck by the concept that every major character in this series was a hero in their own right. I had to look harder with Dawn, but I think it was there.

Okay, so the quote is from Real Me. This episode was our major introduction to Dawn. It's back when she was just an annoying, whiny teen. So why would I use a quote so early in her character development? Because, like Xander, like Giles, she decides for herself what she's going to be. Maybe you're gathering this from how much I'm using this, but I really appreciate that in characters. Making the decision to shape one's own life is scary, and hard, and I think really brave. It's easy to passively let life carry you, you know? It's harder to fight the current and decide your own role. And that's why I appreciate it.

The backdrop is when the magic led the Scoobies to believe that Dawn was a Potential (sort of a Slayer-to-be). I chose this because A) it was visually interesting, but also because B) this episode was important in determining exactly how heroic Dawn can be when she's given the chance to prove herself. Maybe not this moment exactly, but Potential shows Dawn helping one of her friends fight demons. Alone. Because she needed it. It also shows her humility and honesty and probably other virtues I can't quite name due to sleep deprivation, because when she found out she wasn't the Potential, she gave up the title without a second of hesitation. Even though this was her moment in the spotlight. This was going to be her moment of heroism. She gives it up. In the blink of an eye. And that, in itself, is also heroism.

Moments in the bottom include: insisting to Buffy that she, Dawn, has to sacrifice herself to save the world (Buffy ended up doing it to let Dawn live, but that's not the point - Dawn wanted to make the sacrifice. An important detail a lot of people forget). That time Dawn threatened Spike if he ever hurt Buffy, and it scared the living bejeezus out of him (refresher: Spike is one of the strongest/most dangerous vampires in the world). That time Dawn single-handedly removed an evil spirit from her house. She really did have some awesome moments.

If I had to define Dawn's arc... I don't know. It's self-discovery, I think. Discovering her own strength to use in the fight. She gets less and less damsel-y as the series goes on, so yeah, I think that's it. Finding out who she is. Finding her strength. It's important.

And that's all the collages/backgrounds I made. I know I'm missing Faith, and Angel, and Cordelia (I'm debating whether or not I should include Harmony..... probably not, eh, she ended up betraying Team Angel in the end....) but their arcs have continuations in the Angel-verse, so I'm going to start doing that while including characters from that show as well. So. Yeah.

Heroism, in all its diversity and under-appreciated nuance.

It's Here... Inside My Mind

The PHAAANTOM OOOOOOF THE OOOOOOOOOOOOPERAAAAAAAAAA!

So I recently went to New York with a group from school, and we did a hell of a lot of things there, but one of the most exciting things was we saw a couple Broadway plays.

On the last night we saw Wicked (.... you know, how the Wicked Witch of the West was actually pretty okay, originally starring Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who are pretty much Broadway legends). The version we saw didn't have Idina or Kristin, as they're now on to other things, but it did star Robin DeJesus - who, by the way, played Sonny in the original Broadway run of In the Heights. I have an autograph and a selfie with him, which pretty much made my whole life.

Anyway, I'd seen Wicked before, and it's very good. Like it's really really good and I always enjoy it. And you gotta respect how game-changing it is for musical theatre as a genre. But for me, it just did not hold a candle to Phantom of the Opera.

For those who don't know what Phantom of the Opera is, it's a musical based on a novel from about late 1800s I think, and it follows the story of an opera house which is haunted by a mysterious ghost, or "phantom". This "phantom" seems to be almost omnipresent, and nearly always a threatening presence to boot - a powerful ghost indeed, who demands a salary from the owners of the theatre every week and also demands that Box 5 be left perpetually reserved, presumably so that he can take it. He's also most likely the culprit of a lot of poltergeist-y things that happen around the opera - things that happen quite a lot, judging from Carlotta's prima donna fit about it. In her prima donna fit, she refuses to sing for the show, and a chorus girl by name of Christine steps up out of nowhere and blows them all away with a soprano voice that could match Carlotta - who knew? Well, the thing is, she's been having lessons from someone...someone she can't even name, except to call him the "angel of music".

And yeah, that all goes over really well.

So this was the first time I'd seen Phantom of the Opera, that week on Broadway. It was the first time, and the seats we had were very close to the stage, so it's possible that that played a role in why I loved it so much.

But there's more to it than that. There's a lot to Phantom that really came together for me. I love the story for one thing. Now, I read (what I'm pretty sure was a summarized, simplified, made-for-children version of) the book years and years ago, and I remember really enjoying it at the time. So the story's just always been something that's intrigued me. It just kind of revels in this sort of classical, yet Gothic thing, this in-between steampunk thing going on, and I love it. I mean, the title song is a good definition of steampunk on its own, I think - there's a lot of classical playing and singing going on, but at the same time, it was definitely not written in the Victorian era. The constant beat that keeps it going is such a modern tack, but it's so effective.

Like I'm in love with how Gothic it is.

But the music is also beautiful. I mean, even when it's dissonant and harsh, it's like that so carefully, and honestly, I've been listening to this soundtrack non-stop for the past few days (it's good homework music, go figure) and it's just, entirely, gorgeous.

If I have one complaint about the music, it's that they reprise a lot. Like, all the time - Angel of Music comes back like six times. Again, I do feel like it's sort of carefully done - they use the tune of Notes as the theatre owner's theme, and I do feel like they're using the music as its own language to convey things without having to listen to the lyrics they're actually singing (although it undoubtedly helps). So I do see what they're trying to accomplish, and they change it enough or put it in a different enough context so that it doesn't get annoying, it's just if you listen to the soundtrack over and over for three days straight. Like I have been.

I actually legitimately enjoy every character. Like, even Raoul, who exists almost entirely as a love interest for Christine. I actually cared about him. That almost never happens, and I think it's because he was actually genuinely supportive and comforting to Christine and not just "Hey you're pretty, why do you talk so much, the Phantom doesn't exist??????" And I liked Christine, I totally understood what she was about.

And of course, I adore the character of the Phantom.

I was having a discussion with my friend about the character of the Phantom, and I was talking about how he was indisputably my favourite character, which probably had quite a bit to do with the fact that villains are always way more interesting than the protagonists, and she responded with, "Well, I don't really consider him a villain."

And I sort of get that, but at the same time, let's not get carried away. The Phantom is a villain. I mean, he kills people. Multiple people. Like, with complete intention. He is a villain, but that doesn't make him one-sided by definition. He's totally a sympathetic villain by the end of it, and that's what makes him so interesting. I mean, he's not a good guy, but he is also a genius. He created this whole labyrinth under the opera house, and writes operas in his spare time and invents things. He's very passionate about music, and I think that's indicative of, y'know, a soul. And of course, he's been tormented his entire life - the mask is hiding a monstrous face which he was born with, and because of this (it was mentioned in the musical I think, but it was definitely in the book I read) he was treated as a freak for his whole life. Like, he was a circus attraction, and as such, he was abused. It's weird because I spend so much time reveling in how creepy and twisted the Phantom is, and yet when this exchange happens:

Raoul: Show some compassion!

Phantom: The world showed no compassion to me!

or when he gets his own little reprise of Masquerade:

Phantom: Masquerade... Paper faces on parade... masquerade... hide your face so the world will never find you...

Or, here's the one that really gets me, his brief reprise of Music of the Night the second time he abducts Christine before the grand finale:

Phantom: This face which earned a mother's fear and loathing/A mask, my first unfeeling scrap of clothing/ Pity comes too late! Turn around and face your fate! 

I get a surprising amount of feelings.

My current favourite song from the show is Music of the Night, A.K.A the I-just-abducted-Christine-and-now-I'm-trying-to-get-her-to-embrace-my-darkness song. I mean, it's the creepiest thing ever, but musically, it's absolutely gorgeous. (Also in the original soundtrack, which starred Michael Crawford as the Phantom... Michael Crawford just has an extremely unique and wonderful voice, and it really makes it).

And that's kinda what I love about the show. It's so creepy and Gothic, but undeniably.... beautiful. I mean mostly the music, naturally, because it truly is, but I mean, the Phantom's resolution is beautiful as well, not to mention the elaborate-ass set that they have to pull off when they perform it - trapdoors and tilting bridges and crashing chandeliers and, like, beams of flame. It's incredible to see live, and none of it misses a beat.

I'm also really in love with the title song because of the suspense in the music. I don't wanna get too technical here, (but I kinda do because I'm an analytical bastard with a particular passion for music) but at the beginning of the fourth verse the suspense really gets going, and it's because the violins pick up and start this really cool pattern of ongoing eighth notes, and it doesn't stop, and it goes on incessantly without rest, and it becomes... this ticking clock in the background, but so much prettier. And it sounds repetitive, but it changes just enough to keep you off-balance. Gives me chills. And it's because of this one pattern in the music (although the rest of the song is just as fascinating, and Christine's super-human soprano powers at the end are worth listening to) that suddenly gives the suspense some renewed vigor, because suddenly you have this ticking clock, and you know one of them is running out of time, but you just don't know who.

Too long, didn't read: it's really beautiful, well-written music, and you should listen to the title song (preferably with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, because their voices are unique and wonderful) if only to listen to how all the parts fit together to create this marvelous suspenseful whole.

Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in, to the power of the music that I write...

Yeah, I've had Music of the Night stuck in my head for a solid week, but it's just so pretty.

So yeah, if you ever have the chance to see this live, do it. Do not even hesitate. It is such a beautiful show, and it is such a spectacle to watch sometimes, and I mean, even when you can't make out the words they're saying (operatic pieces are like that sometimes) you're so wrapped up in the music you don't even care and the Phantom is just such a fascinating character and I just really adore this show a lot and I think everyone should experience it.

Off now to watch the movie and read the original novel as soon as humanly possible.

10/10, would watch infinitely.