Assorted Media, Etc.
Mar. 29th, 2023 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptContains a certain amount of spoilers, I suppose, if you're sensitive to content in the ninth season of RWBY and you're following the CTV series Shelved and don't want to know going in what kind of show it is.
Because I have friends in places who think nicely of me, I've been watching episodes of the Shelved, from Canadian CTV. It's a broad-strokes comedy about a municipal library location and its staff. There are enough things in it that tell me at least some of the writers' room for the series have been employed in a city library situation, and at a location like the Jameson branch portrayed in the series.
However, four episodes in, and I feel a bit like they're not really leaning into the things that would make the series really funny, both for the library audience and those ouside of it. Episode 1 introduced us to the reality that this location is the ass-end of the system, with broken technology, failing facilities, and a staff who have long since abandoned the idea of professionalism (mostly to their benefit, honestly). To get the desired new computers after the old ones failed and the replacements were going to be even older, there's more than a little bit of blackmail because the new transfer happened to be someone who was romantically involved with their branch manager and the transfer itself could very easily have been portrayed as for personal reasons rather than professional ones. Episode 1 also showed how the person who was transferrred is very fish-out-of-water at this location because they expect things to work and they don't understand how to work with the specific clientele the location has. Episode 2 was essentially a trauma conga line for the new transfer, because he kept trying to do things that would fix the small problems and make things better for the location, only to have it repeatedly thrown in his face that those problems were left alone for a reason that all of the other staff know about and didn't tell him. There's no water from the fountain because it leaks, the scuffed up carpet is out a low-vision person orients themselves in the library, only one computer can print because otherwise the printer jams and freezes, and so forth.
Also, this new transfer is trying to flirt with someone who is at least part-time an employee, but this is the kind of place where people who were romantically involved with each other were apparently in the same direct chain of command and nobody went "this is a very bad idea, HR will skewer us," and fixed it at the point they became involved. Because this is a comedy, of course, the new person is awkward and inept and puts his foot in his mouth most of the time (bringing flowers that the other person is allergic to, not taking a hint that perhaps she's not looking for something right now, because she's going through a messy divorce, trying to prove his bona fides in shallow ways and then having a crisis of doubt when he doesn't know the origin of a made-up quote said back to him to tell him he's being shallow.)
For comedic value, characters get away with things that should have long since gotten them fired. One of them is the steretypical MAGA man (rendered as PATriots after the name of the social media guy who is the leader of those Proud Boy types) who complains about, tries to dissuade others from, and then escalates to trying to boycott a drag queen doing story time (but, of couse, our of drag, he turns out to be a prepper that the man staffer can relate to immediately). He contributes far-right self-published materials to the staff picks shelf, and in episode 4, which is about International Women's Day (and everyone essentially snarking the well-meaning branch head about choices of works and how the display is not as representative of all voices as it could be), the man decides to put up a display of Internationl Men's Month, because he believes things should be equal and no gender should get special treatment. So, yes, he should have long since been fired from his position, because of how much he's suborned the branch head and because he's probably done plenty of things in direct contradiction to the policy of the organization. In Episode 3, in addition to the prepper friendship, we're supposed to see him as a bit more humanized because he was hired as someone who had been released from prison and needed someone to take a chance on him. By this point, my headcanon is that he's still employed (as the assistant branch head, no less) because everyone at the location knows they couldn't get anyone else to transfer in or hire anyone in to be assistant branch head at that location. Or that if they fired him, his position would disappear, shifting his work onto all of the rest of the people there. (Even though, in real organizations, they'd just send someone else over to cover until someone was hired in permanently.) He's still there because they can't get rid of him, even though they desperately want to, and he's given them more than enough reason to do so.
He has a counterpart in a wise and wisecracking librarian named Jack, who is far better up on feminism and understanding the community than anyone else in the staff, and is also young enough to run the social media platform for the location. She immediately understands when the branch manager is making unintentionally sexual or otherwise inappropriate statements, but rather than point them out and correct them, she instead decides to laugh at them or make them into social media memes. And again, for comedy purposes, Jack's still employed, rather than having a disciplinary record a mile long that also puts her in the category of "would have fired you a long time ago, but you have actually important skills to us, and we couldn't replace you, even if we tried."
As you can see, it's an office comedy, just where the office has been set in a community libary branch. If they wanted it to be a library comedy, they'd need to do more things that are specifically more library funny, Yes, there's a fair amount of making fun of the website and the social media attempts, but it's because trying to do new things often falls into one of two categories: "How do you do, fellow kids?" or someone chasing buzzword bingo and throwing large amounts of money at it without actually thinking about whether it's a good idea or will work in their system. And the funny things that have come in through the bookdrop (although there are plenty of much less funny things there, too). Making fun of the PATriots (although never when they're around) while simultaneously waiting for your Board to decide they're the true voice of the community and that anything a shade to the left of fascism is no longer allowed in the collection or programming. (Yes, a lot of library humor is ha ha only serious.) The incident reports for the person who spontaneously stripped to their shorts and then tried to lead the rest of the library in a sing-along of what they thought was the Moldovan national anthem, but instead was Baby Shark with a bad Dracula imitation. A branch manager actually getting to reply "Here's your nickel." All of the ways that a library can throw shade without ever stepping over the line of plausible deniability. And all the puns.
So I'm kind of hoping they decide to get properly weird, so that I can laugh a lot harder at what's going on there, rather than occasinoally having my libarian brain intrude with "and that's a firing offense, and that's a firing offense, and that would never be allowed in any library policy…"
So, because I have good friends who want to make sure that after the break of Season 8, I wasn't left out in the cold with Season 9 becoming a Crunchyroll Premium exclusive, then possibly a Rooster Teeth FIRST exclusive, and then the rest of the plebes getting to watch Season 9, likely a year or two after the release, I've been able to keep up a bit with Season 9 of RWBY. It's very much a season that's assuming you've watched or read the ancilliary material related to the setting to catch the subtleties. Or, at least, it seems that way, given the setting of S9 is the Remnant equivalent of Wonderland, a setting described in a very popular children's tale of Remnant, collected in one of the Fairy Tales of Remnant collection.
Much of the fandom has either rejoiced or groaned, I suspect, at the pivotal point of the sixth episode of the season, where two characters who have been ship-teased for several seasons (once one of them learned to open up from her distrust of those who are different, and the other learned how to channel being a hothead into somewhat productive ways in her life) finally came together with a confession of love and a Big Damn Kiss. Which may be coincidental that this happened in the exclusive Crunchyroll season, rather than at the most clear opportunity a couple of Volumes ago when the murderous stalker ex of one of the two was properly rendered unable to continue his campaign of revenge and terror against her. Had this happened at an earlier opportunity, I think there would have been a lot more emotional attachment or feeling of elation attached to it. I still like that it happened, and I like that it's canonical, and not merely an infinite ship tease, don't get me wrong. But this is after Korrasami went forward on the last episode, after having been relegated to the website streaming rather than being broadcast on Nickelodeon. and, perhaps more importantly, this is after She-Ra spent five seasons going hard with Catradora, before finally making it canonical as a way of saving their world. And after The Owl House. And after Harley and Ivy got their own show together. It makes RWBY seem much more like a follower who might have been content to tease the entire time in an enironment that had less acceptance of textual queerness. Had they sprung it in earlier Volumes, it would have had more impact, I think, on the general space and on showing what was possible in stories meant for teen audiences. We already had a domestic lesbian couple, Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc, with a child, but they were around for only a few episodes, but now we have two characters extremely important to the narrative that have confessed to each other, so we're going to get a lot more of them being love-y around each other. And, to some degree, some amount of renewed speculation about what one of the two in this partnership might eventually confess to, in terms of orientation and identity.
Again, I'm exceedingly pleased that it happened, and I would love to see Remnant continue to be a place with all sorts of platonic, romantic, and sexual arrangements present and textual. I'm somewhat disappointed, though, that it took nine Volumes and a situation where, to make the peril pass, the two characters have to say what they've been thinking but haven't confessed to each other before we get them making the declaration of interest with each other. It is both satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. I recognize that most of you aren't watchers of the show, but you might have similar experiences in your own media experiences. It's not queerbaiting, because it's a canonical, textual relationship, but there's an element of "what took you so long?" asociated with it, a feeling that isn't helped by the characters making meta comments throughout the episode about the relationship. One character remarks "it's about time" when she sees the two's hands drifting toward each other. And then another says "I feel like I've been waiting years to see that," when the two are observed kissing. Maybe it's possible because of a changed environment, or because the creators wanted to make sure they got something explicit on the table because the current environment in the real world is getting scary as fuck for everyone who isn't straight and cisgender. Maybe they finally felt this was the right place to put this particular big moment. But I kind of feel like they had the big moment of confession of love two volumes ago, and that was when things should have been explicit, and then we could have had two volumes of them figuring out what that meant and how far they meant and all of that could have been fodder for the "things we've thought about but didn't tell each other" peril that separated them from the other group.
Of course, I also am not on Tumblr or other places with good art hosting, so I haven't seen the redraws and the fanart yet.
(I also have a slight speculation about things in the Ever After that are probably already proven wrong by the side series I haven't seen yet, but if it turns out to be right, I will smile and say I interpreted the clues correctly right from the opening credits to the volume.)
Because I have friends in places who think nicely of me, I've been watching episodes of the Shelved, from Canadian CTV. It's a broad-strokes comedy about a municipal library location and its staff. There are enough things in it that tell me at least some of the writers' room for the series have been employed in a city library situation, and at a location like the Jameson branch portrayed in the series.
However, four episodes in, and I feel a bit like they're not really leaning into the things that would make the series really funny, both for the library audience and those ouside of it. Episode 1 introduced us to the reality that this location is the ass-end of the system, with broken technology, failing facilities, and a staff who have long since abandoned the idea of professionalism (mostly to their benefit, honestly). To get the desired new computers after the old ones failed and the replacements were going to be even older, there's more than a little bit of blackmail because the new transfer happened to be someone who was romantically involved with their branch manager and the transfer itself could very easily have been portrayed as for personal reasons rather than professional ones. Episode 1 also showed how the person who was transferrred is very fish-out-of-water at this location because they expect things to work and they don't understand how to work with the specific clientele the location has. Episode 2 was essentially a trauma conga line for the new transfer, because he kept trying to do things that would fix the small problems and make things better for the location, only to have it repeatedly thrown in his face that those problems were left alone for a reason that all of the other staff know about and didn't tell him. There's no water from the fountain because it leaks, the scuffed up carpet is out a low-vision person orients themselves in the library, only one computer can print because otherwise the printer jams and freezes, and so forth.
Also, this new transfer is trying to flirt with someone who is at least part-time an employee, but this is the kind of place where people who were romantically involved with each other were apparently in the same direct chain of command and nobody went "this is a very bad idea, HR will skewer us," and fixed it at the point they became involved. Because this is a comedy, of course, the new person is awkward and inept and puts his foot in his mouth most of the time (bringing flowers that the other person is allergic to, not taking a hint that perhaps she's not looking for something right now, because she's going through a messy divorce, trying to prove his bona fides in shallow ways and then having a crisis of doubt when he doesn't know the origin of a made-up quote said back to him to tell him he's being shallow.)
For comedic value, characters get away with things that should have long since gotten them fired. One of them is the steretypical MAGA man (rendered as PATriots after the name of the social media guy who is the leader of those Proud Boy types) who complains about, tries to dissuade others from, and then escalates to trying to boycott a drag queen doing story time (but, of couse, our of drag, he turns out to be a prepper that the man staffer can relate to immediately). He contributes far-right self-published materials to the staff picks shelf, and in episode 4, which is about International Women's Day (and everyone essentially snarking the well-meaning branch head about choices of works and how the display is not as representative of all voices as it could be), the man decides to put up a display of Internationl Men's Month, because he believes things should be equal and no gender should get special treatment. So, yes, he should have long since been fired from his position, because of how much he's suborned the branch head and because he's probably done plenty of things in direct contradiction to the policy of the organization. In Episode 3, in addition to the prepper friendship, we're supposed to see him as a bit more humanized because he was hired as someone who had been released from prison and needed someone to take a chance on him. By this point, my headcanon is that he's still employed (as the assistant branch head, no less) because everyone at the location knows they couldn't get anyone else to transfer in or hire anyone in to be assistant branch head at that location. Or that if they fired him, his position would disappear, shifting his work onto all of the rest of the people there. (Even though, in real organizations, they'd just send someone else over to cover until someone was hired in permanently.) He's still there because they can't get rid of him, even though they desperately want to, and he's given them more than enough reason to do so.
He has a counterpart in a wise and wisecracking librarian named Jack, who is far better up on feminism and understanding the community than anyone else in the staff, and is also young enough to run the social media platform for the location. She immediately understands when the branch manager is making unintentionally sexual or otherwise inappropriate statements, but rather than point them out and correct them, she instead decides to laugh at them or make them into social media memes. And again, for comedy purposes, Jack's still employed, rather than having a disciplinary record a mile long that also puts her in the category of "would have fired you a long time ago, but you have actually important skills to us, and we couldn't replace you, even if we tried."
As you can see, it's an office comedy, just where the office has been set in a community libary branch. If they wanted it to be a library comedy, they'd need to do more things that are specifically more library funny, Yes, there's a fair amount of making fun of the website and the social media attempts, but it's because trying to do new things often falls into one of two categories: "How do you do, fellow kids?" or someone chasing buzzword bingo and throwing large amounts of money at it without actually thinking about whether it's a good idea or will work in their system. And the funny things that have come in through the bookdrop (although there are plenty of much less funny things there, too). Making fun of the PATriots (although never when they're around) while simultaneously waiting for your Board to decide they're the true voice of the community and that anything a shade to the left of fascism is no longer allowed in the collection or programming. (Yes, a lot of library humor is ha ha only serious.) The incident reports for the person who spontaneously stripped to their shorts and then tried to lead the rest of the library in a sing-along of what they thought was the Moldovan national anthem, but instead was Baby Shark with a bad Dracula imitation. A branch manager actually getting to reply "Here's your nickel." All of the ways that a library can throw shade without ever stepping over the line of plausible deniability. And all the puns.
So I'm kind of hoping they decide to get properly weird, so that I can laugh a lot harder at what's going on there, rather than occasinoally having my libarian brain intrude with "and that's a firing offense, and that's a firing offense, and that would never be allowed in any library policy…"
So, because I have good friends who want to make sure that after the break of Season 8, I wasn't left out in the cold with Season 9 becoming a Crunchyroll Premium exclusive, then possibly a Rooster Teeth FIRST exclusive, and then the rest of the plebes getting to watch Season 9, likely a year or two after the release, I've been able to keep up a bit with Season 9 of RWBY. It's very much a season that's assuming you've watched or read the ancilliary material related to the setting to catch the subtleties. Or, at least, it seems that way, given the setting of S9 is the Remnant equivalent of Wonderland, a setting described in a very popular children's tale of Remnant, collected in one of the Fairy Tales of Remnant collection.
Much of the fandom has either rejoiced or groaned, I suspect, at the pivotal point of the sixth episode of the season, where two characters who have been ship-teased for several seasons (once one of them learned to open up from her distrust of those who are different, and the other learned how to channel being a hothead into somewhat productive ways in her life) finally came together with a confession of love and a Big Damn Kiss. Which may be coincidental that this happened in the exclusive Crunchyroll season, rather than at the most clear opportunity a couple of Volumes ago when the murderous stalker ex of one of the two was properly rendered unable to continue his campaign of revenge and terror against her. Had this happened at an earlier opportunity, I think there would have been a lot more emotional attachment or feeling of elation attached to it. I still like that it happened, and I like that it's canonical, and not merely an infinite ship tease, don't get me wrong. But this is after Korrasami went forward on the last episode, after having been relegated to the website streaming rather than being broadcast on Nickelodeon. and, perhaps more importantly, this is after She-Ra spent five seasons going hard with Catradora, before finally making it canonical as a way of saving their world. And after The Owl House. And after Harley and Ivy got their own show together. It makes RWBY seem much more like a follower who might have been content to tease the entire time in an enironment that had less acceptance of textual queerness. Had they sprung it in earlier Volumes, it would have had more impact, I think, on the general space and on showing what was possible in stories meant for teen audiences. We already had a domestic lesbian couple, Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc, with a child, but they were around for only a few episodes, but now we have two characters extremely important to the narrative that have confessed to each other, so we're going to get a lot more of them being love-y around each other. And, to some degree, some amount of renewed speculation about what one of the two in this partnership might eventually confess to, in terms of orientation and identity.
Again, I'm exceedingly pleased that it happened, and I would love to see Remnant continue to be a place with all sorts of platonic, romantic, and sexual arrangements present and textual. I'm somewhat disappointed, though, that it took nine Volumes and a situation where, to make the peril pass, the two characters have to say what they've been thinking but haven't confessed to each other before we get them making the declaration of interest with each other. It is both satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time. I recognize that most of you aren't watchers of the show, but you might have similar experiences in your own media experiences. It's not queerbaiting, because it's a canonical, textual relationship, but there's an element of "what took you so long?" asociated with it, a feeling that isn't helped by the characters making meta comments throughout the episode about the relationship. One character remarks "it's about time" when she sees the two's hands drifting toward each other. And then another says "I feel like I've been waiting years to see that," when the two are observed kissing. Maybe it's possible because of a changed environment, or because the creators wanted to make sure they got something explicit on the table because the current environment in the real world is getting scary as fuck for everyone who isn't straight and cisgender. Maybe they finally felt this was the right place to put this particular big moment. But I kind of feel like they had the big moment of confession of love two volumes ago, and that was when things should have been explicit, and then we could have had two volumes of them figuring out what that meant and how far they meant and all of that could have been fodder for the "things we've thought about but didn't tell each other" peril that separated them from the other group.
Of course, I also am not on Tumblr or other places with good art hosting, so I haven't seen the redraws and the fanart yet.
(I also have a slight speculation about things in the Ever After that are probably already proven wrong by the side series I haven't seen yet, but if it turns out to be right, I will smile and say I interpreted the clues correctly right from the opening credits to the volume.)
