Breaking Bad's Bittersweet Ending

By Kora Burnham

“I hope he dies,” I uttered after each episode of AMC's Breaking Bad. I hated Walter White, and that just goes to show how amazing the writing actually was—I hated the main character, but I still kept coming back for more. I needed to see how Walt's story would close. Would he lose everything? Would he be the last man standing? Or would the cancer finally take him? Though I had theories, I knew it probably wouldn't be any of those in the end. This was Breaking Bad, after all.

Breaking Bad starred Malcolm in the Middle's Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Worried that he will leave his family with nothing, he turns to a former student, Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, to learn how to cook methamphetamine to make money. Together they perfect Jesse's recipe, resulting in a high-quality drug that, for some reason, turns blue. It's an instant hit on the streets, and soon Walt is thrown into a dangerous, intense world of drug lords and gangs. As the series progresses, Walt's personality deteriorates, and he becomes a terrifying, manipulative monster, selfish and willing to destroy anyone in his way.

The final eight episodes of Breaking Bad were an emotional roller coaster as Walt struggled with his brother-in-law's suspicions, Jesse's guilt, and Walt's wife's fear for herself and her children. Walt comes close to accepting his fate when there's a fatal battle between the D.E.A and members of Walt's gang in the middle of the desert. The last two episodes are almost underwhelming in comparison, following Walt's final plans to secure his family's safety and finances. They show how far he's fallen, and how much he's lost in his struggle for power. The series ends with a neat little bow tied on top; the camera pans out on Walt's body as police agents swarm in.

It's more complicated than feeling disappointed. In fact, I got everything I wanted: Walter White died, and Jesse Pinkman lived. Those were the two things I wanted out of the series, and I got them. So why do I feel disappointed?

I realised that I didn't actually want to get what I wanted. Breaking Bad was excellent at setting up expectations, and then slashing them at the last minute. I was expecting a twist, or maybe just an ambiguous ending, and I didn't get it. Breaking Bad did what many shows can't and finished the storyline, tied up all the loose ends, and gave the main character a chance to redeem himself by choosing to save Jesse's life rather than kill him. I think a part of me expected to not get what I wanted, and when I did, I wasn't quite sure how to handle it.

But then again, that's  the beauty of Breaking Bad.

RWBY: More than Animation

By Erin Chambers

On November 7, 2012, a 3D animation video was uploaded to YouTube, featuring a girl in a red hood slaying demonic wolves with a gun-scythe crossover weapon. The video was uploaded by the Internet-famous Rooster Teeth, well-known for their comedy series Red vs. Blue, and the reception the video received was enormous.  Fan art and fan theories were plastered onto the Internet in support of what would become a new hit series.

The show is called RWBY, and the video featuring the hooded girl was the first of four trailers to come: each one featuring another of the four main characters. In order of their reveal, the characters are Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang (whose names make up the acronym RWBY, which is pronounced like ‘Ruby’.)  The show is about the four girls who attend a school together in order to become huntresses who fight monsters.

The trailers built up a lot of hype with stunning animation sequences portraying the girls’ fighting skills. The show is directed and animated by Monty Oum who is well-known for his work in Red vs. Blue as well as his fan video series, Dead Fantasy. His animation skills are clearly evident in each of the trailers, and more hype was built up over the course of the nine months until the show premiered in July of this year.

But is it really as good as the fans expected it to be?

Sure, it got a standing ovation when it was premiered at the RWBY panel at RTX 2013, but there have been 14 episodes released since then, and room for improvement is evident.

Despite the amazing choreography in the actions sequences, the show falters a bit in other aspects of the animation. Walking motions can be rather awkward, and it also has the typical objects-going-through-other-objects cases commonly seen in 3D animation.

Yet, while the animation does have its up and downs, the characters can be seen as something else. A lot of the main characters follow general personality stereotypes; Ruby is your typical hyperactive protagonist commonly seen in anime, while Weiss Schnee is your average snobby rich girl. However, writers Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna add third dimensions to each character quite well. Ruby is reckless and struggles with working as part of a team, and learns through her contrast with Weiss’ personality that she can’t leap before she looks.

While the setting of a school for fighting monsters has been done before, RWBY shows a lot of potential in establishing its own unique universe, as can be seen with “Dust” (gems with magical properties, and in-world controversies surrounding how it’s mined). There are also the Faunus—humans with animal features—who are persecuted by society.

So, while the show may have been overestimated due to the excitement caused by the trailers, I’d still recommend it for its wonderful characters, light humour and intriguing setting.

Episodes air every Thursday on the Rooster Teeth website.

Inside the Autistic Mind

By Andrew Oliveira

You’re stuck on a desert island. But you have a broken down radio. It squeaks and gurgles, every message you send is in pieces, and every other transmission received is in a different language. Communication works, sometimes, but not reliably. This is the experience of those on the autistic spectrum, very human minds trying to get the outside world to hear them.

That is one of the revelations of Naoki Higashida’s The Reason I Jump. I first heard of this little book when watching The Daily Show. David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas, was promoting the book, which he wrote the introduction for and co-translated. He explained how he had started an underground translation from Japanese to English for those who worked with his autistic son. The Reason I Jump is structured into a series of questions and short pieces of fiction.  Higasada wrote the book at 13, yet his writing has a wise and honest quality that most adults struggle to capture. As Mitchell points out, this type of writing is a rarity and part of the book’s appeal. Higashida takes the questions posed to him and responds with an astounding maturity, explaining every aspect of his disability and how it affects the way he thinks. For instance, when he is asked if he would like a cure for his disability, he responds that he often thought that way when he was younger. Yet now he would refuse, because he is happy with his life.

As I was reading the book, it almost started to feel like these answers were being addressed to me. Some of the questions were ones that I would have felt rude asking but genuinely made me curious. For example, “Why don't you make eye contact when you’re talking?”

Higashida’s response is completely understandable once read, “To me, making eye contact with someone I’m talking to feels a bit creepy, so I tend to avoid it.”

He then explains how concentrating and listening to someone requires his entire focus. He literally attempts to feel, hear, and see a person’s voice when they are talking to him, which makes the simple act of  conversation a herculean effort.

Higashida’s fiction is simple, beautiful and true to his experiences. It is in these pieces that he brings his views of isolation and mixes them with his reality. In some ways it is more effective at relaying what it is like to have autism.

The Reason I Jump is a short, delightful snack; a perfect read for quick bursts or an entire afternoon. It is a great book and a must-read, even for those who do not know anyone with autism but are curious to peek into this world. The greatest gift this book offers is the realization that our reaction to autism creates its isolation but not its symptoms.