(no subject)
Finished off both Stranger Things S01 and Peaky Blinders S03 today.
re Stranger Things: the particular cliches I liked the least were
(a) Ok, here's a bunch of things X for which, if you have sensible priors, Pr(schizophrenia|X) >> Pr(ghosts and/or monsters|X). Let's have this character say "yeah I know but I just knoooooow it's ghosts and/or monsters" and everybody disbelieves them and then boom later they are vindicated. It may be hard to have a show that has ghosts and/or monsters without a certain amount of this trope, but... I don't feel like it has to play out epistemologically quite this way.
I think what bothers me is the Believer in the trope still underneath it all expecting the other party to take them at their word. Like, ok, I get that you really experienced it, it seems 100% real to you, but for god's sake, have a little theory-of-mind, and realize that other people aren't going to feel the same way.
(b) nosebleeds as signifiers of expended psychic effort, or otherwise mysterious unwellness.
(c) "No No No I will go in the vehicle to the place to fight the ghosts and/or monsters, it's too dangerous for you, you stay here". It was particularly hilarious when Hop did this to Joyce and Joyce immediately did it to Jonathan.
Most of the rest of the cliches were enjoyably popcorny.
re Peaky Blinders: wow, season 3 sure was dark. It's hard to understand how they can raise the stakes much further than how high they've already been raised.
Tatiana Petrovna and Alfie Solomons were my favorite characters this season; both very interesting representations of madness-qua-renunciation-of-predictability. Except --- Alfie does play by some kind of rules, some kind of system, and clearly so, from the way he berates Tommy at the end for pretending otherwise. Whereas Tatiana's nobility, or Russian-ness, or personal idiosyncrasies, or whatever, yield some kind of terrible, vertiginous, absolute, unreckonable freedom.
I might dislike Linda less if they ever explained how she and Arthur got married. What the heck. For comparison, Esme also creates friction in the extended family, but at least we got a storyline (and a transactionally believable one at that) for how she ended up there.
re Stranger Things: the particular cliches I liked the least were
(a) Ok, here's a bunch of things X for which, if you have sensible priors, Pr(schizophrenia|X) >> Pr(ghosts and/or monsters|X). Let's have this character say "yeah I know but I just knoooooow it's ghosts and/or monsters" and everybody disbelieves them and then boom later they are vindicated. It may be hard to have a show that has ghosts and/or monsters without a certain amount of this trope, but... I don't feel like it has to play out epistemologically quite this way.
I think what bothers me is the Believer in the trope still underneath it all expecting the other party to take them at their word. Like, ok, I get that you really experienced it, it seems 100% real to you, but for god's sake, have a little theory-of-mind, and realize that other people aren't going to feel the same way.
(b) nosebleeds as signifiers of expended psychic effort, or otherwise mysterious unwellness.
(c) "No No No I will go in the vehicle to the place to fight the ghosts and/or monsters, it's too dangerous for you, you stay here". It was particularly hilarious when Hop did this to Joyce and Joyce immediately did it to Jonathan.
Most of the rest of the cliches were enjoyably popcorny.
re Peaky Blinders: wow, season 3 sure was dark. It's hard to understand how they can raise the stakes much further than how high they've already been raised.
Tatiana Petrovna and Alfie Solomons were my favorite characters this season; both very interesting representations of madness-qua-renunciation-of-predictability. Except --- Alfie does play by some kind of rules, some kind of system, and clearly so, from the way he berates Tommy at the end for pretending otherwise. Whereas Tatiana's nobility, or Russian-ness, or personal idiosyncrasies, or whatever, yield some kind of terrible, vertiginous, absolute, unreckonable freedom.
I might dislike Linda less if they ever explained how she and Arthur got married. What the heck. For comparison, Esme also creates friction in the extended family, but at least we got a storyline (and a transactionally believable one at that) for how she ended up there.