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inktober-of-a-fan-girl · 1 year

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Day 8: Dustin Hoffman

This is the great Steven Spielberg's take on a sequel to Peter Pan from 1991.

The art is a reference to ongoing shipping between an older Maggie Banning and Captain Hook. Thank you @skirtzzz & @slack-water for the inspiration/curse.

More notes/links in Keep Reading.

Hook by Steven Spielberg (1991), an authorized live-action sequel. A family action/adventure film starring Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins and Maggie Smith. The film has a grown-up "Peter Banning" who has forgotten his childhood, lured back to Neverland by Captain Hook, who has kidnapped Peter's two young children in an attempt to once again find meaning in his life. Despite mixed reviews by critics, the film was popular with audiences and grossed nearly $120 million in the U.S., making it the 4th highest-grossing movie of 1991.

The red highlight will be mentioned later.

Dustin Hoffman makes an excellent version of Hook. Also, this version has a reference to Eton College (mentioned in my blog @music-meme-of-365-days) and has the proper hairstyle, a mustache as well a right-hand hook.

So I mention that it has reference to Eton College and one of its screenwriters, James V Hart is the reason for this. He appeared in another Inktober with Count Dracula (see Bram Stoker's Dracula) and will appear again. But later in 2005, he wrote this…

Capt. Hook: The Adventures of a Notorious Youth by James V. Hart (co-writer of the movie Hook), Brett Helquist (ill.) (2005), an authorized (non-canon) prequel illustrated novel, published by HarperCollins in the US. Details the history of 15-year-old James Matthew, young Oppidan Scholar and future Captain Hook. The book portrays the villainous youth in a sympathetic light.

It is worth the read but warning it is mature….like even as a kid, James Hook is a bit of a nut. I am just waiting on a promised sequel.

But here is the link on Facebook...(you will need to log in for this one) upon which he gives a couple chapters for that sequel.…it is in the notes.

And by the way, I don't mind if it is not canon cause I love the different storytelling for Hook. Me mentioning the book while the book is in the corner of his photo…lol.

Here is the Youtube link as well as the Spotify Album.

#I own the VCR version #reference to later part of inktober #capt. hook: the adventures of a notorious youth #capt hook by j v hart #Captain Hook at Eton #Hook x Maggie #Maggie x Hook #James V Hart #mature book #non canon #facebook #1991 for the film #Dustin Hoffman #right-handed hook #Spotify #Captain James Hook

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #chatbots #plausible sentence generators #robot lawyers #robolawyers #ai #ml #machine learning #artificial intelligence #stochastic parrots #bullshit #bullshit generators #the bullshit wars #llms #large language models #writing #Ben Levinstein

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isfjmel-phleg · 2 months

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TSG season is upon us, so I've been rereading a few things. Today I finished The Making of May by Gwyneth Rees. Maybe not Great Literature, but a lot more readable than its cover (which is more suitable for a younger reading level) would suggest.

It's not straightforwardly a retelling of The Secret Garden, but it is in conversation with that story and the heroine references it multiple times. I was trying to figure out why this worked for me, while Ann of Sunflower Lane's constant references to Anne of Green Gables came to grate on my nerves. And I think it's because instead of piggybacking on a classic and trying to fully parallel it, The Making of May *interacts* with The Secret Garden but isn't trying to replicate it on every level.

May hasn't even read TSG; her fascination with the story comes from a VHS she owns (this book was published in 2006, when VCRs were not as uncommon as they are now) of what is very obviously the 1975 BBC miniseries. She identifies a lot with Mary, although she acknowledges significant differences in their backgrounds. They are both orphans, but May points out that Mary has grown up unloved while she herself has been raised by her much-older half-brother and -sister, who are a bit in over their heads as parental substitutes but genuinely care about May and are trying their best. Note that May highlights Mary's emotional neglect rather than traditional grief; her understanding of the story comes from an adaptation that closely follows the original text, and she's even actively opposed to watching a "more modern" version (implied to be the 1993 film) that she doesn't feel is an authentic rendering of her comfort character.

Because that's how May sees Mary of the 1975 miniseries--a friend who understands her life circumstances in a way that others around her don't seem to. She rewatches the tape as often as she can, usually when she's in a low mood, and the story informs how she sees the world. It's a kind of escapism for her. She does this to a lesser extent with other films she finds interesting too, but TSG 1975 is her favorite.

Like Mary, she is given the opportunity to restore a walled garden, which she insists on calling a secret garden. But this isn't accurate; everyone on the estate knows about the garden and knows she's working in it. She is joined in this by the son of the estate's owner, and her first thought is that this is just like Mary's working with male friends. But that's where the overt comparisons stop. Alex is very different from Dickon or Colin, and his arc, while broadly similar to Colin's in that he must heal a broken relationship with his father and realize his extent of his own abilities, is significantly different. He and May investigate mysterious goings-on in the house--a locked room and a housekeeper disappearing there with a tray--which initially has a very TSG feel, but the mystery's solution is no gothic secret but a perfectly normal, mundane thing. May even expects the forbidding housekeeper to resemble Mrs. Danvers after having seen Rebecca; this isn't very grounded in reality either. Even the actual central secret of the novel has nothing to do with locked gardens or hidden rooms; it's the fact that May's brother fudged his resumé to get a gardening job on the estate.

Like Mary, May restores a garden, makes friends, plays an instrumental role in repairing a father-son relationship, and experiences physical and emotional growth. But unlike Mary, her arc involves having to learn to distinguish fiction from reality and grow past projecting onto a fictional character to cope. It's not that her engagement with TSG is an inherently bad thing, but the extent to which her relationship with it has gone is maladaptive. She has come to take the story so seriously that she can't see it as a story anymore; when she tries to show the miniseries to Alex and he finds it laughably low-budget and dated (harsh! but not inaccurate), she is as offended by his criticism as if he had spoken against her. Because the story is such a personal thing to her--and I really can't blame her, I feel the same way whenever someone is dismissive of something I care about--that her identity is bound up in it to an unhealthy extent. She needs the balance that comes with engaging with the real world and real people and getting out of her own head, and her adventures at the estate help her do just that. In some ways, the themes veer more into Northanger Abbey than The Secret Garden!

May by the end hasn't abandoned her love of the miniseries, but now instead of fixating on Mary as she is at the beginning of the story, she can see Mary's completed arc and understand the story as finished, not as perpetually ongoing in her own world. May is finally given a copy of The Secret Garden to read, but she isn't sure if she's ready to read it yet, or even if she needs to--she's about to embark on new adventures of her own, adventures that will be completely separate from Mary's.

So ultimately the book is less about recreating The Secret Garden in another setting and more about how the heroine relates to an adaptation of the story--not even the actual book, an adaptation, a constructed interpretation of the book. Which is a surprisingly fresh take and, honestly, more interesting in some ways than a straightforward adaptation because of its meta perspective. It's a story about someone's response to someone's response of a story. And in that regard, it has a lot in common with Noel Streatfeild's The Painted Garden, which concerns the filming of an adaptation of The Secret Garden in late 1940s Hollywood and features broad parallels to the original story while commenting on how the change of medium and the vision of the adapters alters the narrative and characters.

There's probably an essay to be had on the concept of how these two books interact not only with each other but with The Secret Garden and film/TV adaptations of it, both real and fictional, but for now this is long enough and I'm not writing it.

#The Secret Garden #The Making of May #(which wasn't published in the US as far as I know but is on Internet Archive if you're curious)

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listening-to-thunder · 1 day

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City Hunter 2024

Don't mind me I just watched a live action adaptation of the show I absolutely imprinted on as a little fan sprout in the late 80s/early 90s and I have feelings?! (Tl;dr - the adaptation is so faithful I am so happy.)

So yeah. I watched the (censored) French version of the City Hunter anime during summer vacations and then languished as Sweden did not have City Hunter (or anyone who had heard of City Hunter, other than my little brother). So I did stuff like...record it on VCR, pause the VCR, and trace character portraits off the prickly cathode-ray tube TV. (Screenshot technology has come a long way!)

Later on I read the entire un-censored manga (with the original names restored!) in French, and downloaded the Japanese songs from some pages I found on AltaVista (which took forever on modem), and brough the full set back in Japanese after I lived there for a while. And then I found out there is an official "megafan gets transmigrated into the story"-manga about City Hunter, and I read that, too.

Basically: I have had this story in my life forever, and watching the live action movie now gives me echoes of all those feelings I had as a lonely fannish kid. Which is a weird feeling, but not in a bad way, because the live action adaption (not the first, but the first Japanese one!) is...good? It's fun! And it's as faithful to the original story as it could possibly be while also being updated for the 21st century in the best ways?

Okay, I'm just gonna dive in!

I love how prominent Shinjuku is in the live action. It's gorgeously shot, and you can really feel a sense of place. The characters always talk about "this city", and Shinjuku is that city.

And right off the bat Suzuki Ryohei gets to shine in a fun, fast fight scene with a manga flair to it!

Everyone in Shinjuku knows Ryo-chan! And here's where I will admit to my own ignorance, because reading in translation at a young age I honestly don't know if the manga touched on how Shinjuku as a place where the queer community meets? But here the owner of the bar Ryo rushes through is a glorious okama!

Saeba Ryo and Makimura Hidekyuki and HI MY FEELS. (I will probably get back to how much I adore that Ryo is played by an actor who's hit 40 - but Andou Masanobu is nearly 50?! HOW.)

YES GOOD the iconic coat from the manga (that I like a lot more than the silly little anime jacket) running down the streets of Shinjuku as the equally iconic red car (an old Mini Cooper?) races past the neon lights.

Oh man I have cried about this scene so many times. And here I just love how they got the dramatic rain in, despite the circumstances and setting of Makimura's death being different. That's what a good adaptation does: keeps things recognizable to the existing fans, while transforming it to something new and exciting. (I almost didn't see it coming because I kept thinking "It's not raining"...!)

Not to be shallow or anything but...HOT DAMN. Suzuki Ryohei!!!!

This was so delightful! Everyone was having such fun with the Mokkori Dance, and I am thrilled that they found a way of showing this side of Saeba Ryo without making him a sex pest. The mood whiplash from drama to the most frivolous silliness is extremely City Hunter, and the movie wouldn't have felt right if they hadn't nailed this. (With Ryo nudity. I am. Not complaining at all.)

Kaori's stare. Ryo's confidence. Perfect. No notes.

And then we get some T&A... and it's QUEER AS FUCK?! Instead of a strip club, in 2024 the Shinjuku nightlife scene is beautiful people voguing with a fabulous drag queen MC!

Showing off Ryo's impossibly good aim by following the bullet through a crowded nightclub was fun but again: look at this Shinjuku!! It's queer and diverse and I love it.

I could not believe how Suzuki Ryohei somehow manages to move like a manga character? He is so fast and so believable as a supernaturally good shot! I also liked how Ryo hid his gun as soon as he'd fired it - the enemy had already spotted him, so it wasn't that he was afraid of giving himself away? But he doesn't want to have a gun out at a queer nightclub, where it could start a very understandable panic.

Again with the Shinjukuness of it all...! Ryo's car is parked outside the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (it was my favorite place to go hang out if I had time to kill in Shinjuku) - I think they're up in the observation deck, too?? The layers of nostalgia for me... it hits hard...

SPEAKING OF HITTING HARD I love that they gave Kaori her mallet!!! YES. (And they made up a cosplay event for it, where there was a tiny bit of T&A - but where the cosplayers themselves were making sure they looked as good as possible, showing off their assets!)

This is art to me.

Saeba Ryo. Stallion of Shinjuku. Blocking creepy otaku and audience alike from getting panty shots while not peeking under her skirt and also the horse head is his penis and...

This will take some processing. (While I giggle.)

THE most City Hunter shot of the entire movie. The crosshairs! Ryo shoving someone (Kaori) out of the way of a bullet! The bullet grazing his arm!! SHOOTING BACK AT THE SNIPER. Everything. Everything is perfect.

I am looking...respectfully...?

Their poses, the city... this whole scene felt like watching the manga come to life. Kaori needs a hug and Ryo hasn't gotten to the point where he can do "emotional support" in any other way than "revenge". Ahhhh the angst.

The movie's fights are so much fun to watch, because they have Ryo being a superhero with a gun (or: several guns), and then Kaori running around terrified but also so determined to actually fight. She shoves things on people! She hits that one guy with a pipe!! I love her so much.

IT'S THEM

FEELS ARE HAPPENING

(Ryo still doesn't do "hugging", but at least he's letting Kaori sob on him this time?)

Yes shooting a guy with an upside down revolver pointing behind you is exactly what I want from City Hunter, thank you! (Also the intensity Suzuki Ryohei brings out for Ryo's protective streak... It's so good...)

I just know that I am missing a ton of Easter eggs...! (I would be surprised if the framed drawing of a revolver isn't Hojo Tsukasa's art, though.)

And here we go! Now they're roommates! Kaori has her mallet! And her 80s manga outfit...! Aaah!!!!

Though they both wear shoes indoors which... I suppose even though they live there, the building isn't..."home"-coded? (I mean having that much real estate in the center of Shinjuku actually requires more suspension of disbelief than the gun magic...).

Anyway: it's THEM!

Sequel when? I really, really want one. They did such a fabulous job with this story, I want to see them do more!!

#city hunter netflix #city hunter #idk i need some kind of tag for when i just go off about something extremely niche??#notes

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bizarre-blorbo-bracket · 8 months

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Round 1 poll 13: Rev. Green from Cluedo vs the Nachtraven from Nachtraven

Propaganda under the cut:

Rev. Green:

1) Literally just a random board game character 😪 2) Ok so basically here’s the deal. One day, about a year and a half or two years ago, I saw some random thing related to Clue online. I (dual U.S. American and Russian citizen, because I was born in America to an immigrant parent, I PROMISE this is important) was confused because among the cast of characters was “Mr. Green”. Now, I hadn’t played Clue in a very long time. It wasn’t my favorite game as a kid, my only memories of it were wanting to play as Ms. Peacock and then my brother taking her and making me pick someone else, but I was pretty confident the character was Reverend Green. What happened? Was he excommunicated?? I kind of figured the name was just changed to reflect a more secular culture and that I had unknowingly played an old copy of the game as a kid.

But it fascinated me. So I spent months on and off researching the topic. (poorly, might I add, it wasn’t a complicated issue. But still.) I found out about many changes from version to version. Clue Junior, Clue VCR Mystery, Clue Master Detectives, all of it. And the whole time, Green was there to greet me in each new version. It was the first thing I always checked. Was he Mister or Reverend? I found out in one version he was a defrocked priest turned businessman, and in another a scam artist who pretended to be a member of the clergy to pull of a scheme. Closer. I ran polls, I went to irl Clue events, and eventually I found what I was looking for the whole time. Green was a Reverend in the 1944 patent of the game, and the subsequent 1949 U.K. release of Cluedo. But, because of fear that U.S. Citizens would take issue with a member of the church being suspected of murder, Parker Brothers changed the name to Mister Green for the U.S. release.

That all could have taken me five minutes of googling, but honestly the chase made the result so much more worth it. And yet, there was something more there in the back of my mind. This all was well and good, but why was I so sure of the U.K. version of the name? My father’s family is Irish so we have a pretty healthy hatred of all things British, there’s no way my dad would’ve had us play that version of the game. Right? But thanks to a response from a poll I ran, I found out that the German version also went with Reverend. Because Green is an Anglican, I kind of assumed that the U.S. change might have been carried over into other international releases. But no! That made me realize that Mister Green is an outlier and that almost all languages of the game use Reverend. So then last night the pieces finally clicked together. I asked my mom to confirm a hunch I had, not expecting her to at all remember something this trivial. Like I said, I didn’t play it much as a kid. Maybe we didn’t even own a copy, and I had just played it at a library or a hurricane shelter or a relative’s house or something. But she remembered. We did, in fact, own the game. Not just any version, but a RUSSIAN COPY. I unknowingly grew up with Cluedo! So I had every reason to believe it was Reverend Green and be confused when I heard otherwise.

Tl;dr, minor version difference between Russian and American copies of a board game gave me a hyperfixation and a blorbo.

Nachtraven:

SO! The Nachtraven is the titular character of a Dutch children’s gameshow.

They’re a cyberpunk-synthwave-medieval fantasy knight (which is honestly an awesome aesthetic) who breaks into children’s bedrooms at night, lures from their sleepovers and makes them compete against each other in challenges… and the winners get to have a lovely sleepover at whatever place they were lured to.

Seriously, they’re so ominous, so sinister, so villain-coded, but all they want to do is to make children’s sleepovers even better. They’re just a nice guy/entity.

They don’t speak, and instead communicate using electronic beeps, gestures, tape recordings of a woman’s voice and the visor of their knight’s helmet as an LED display they put words on.

Seriously, if this was an American show, all the cryptidcore kids would be citing them as one of their biggest childhood influences. I hope that one day they will be recognised as the true cryptid they are.

#nachtraven #rev. green #mr green #cluedo #clue

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kil9 · 1 year

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reasons to watch each of the taemin concerts:

hi its me, the self-appointed taemin concert expert :) i think we're all missing him a lot rn so its the perfect time to watch all his concerts >:) here's what i think are the strengths of what i consider his 4 quintessential concerts !!!! come join my world >:)

off-sick:

[DL link]

- his first korean concert ! he debuted most of the tracklist for the "move" album there (which is a phenomenal album)

- also performed "move" itself for the first time here !!! the energy of it is insane

- live band [!!!!] as the backing instruments for at least half of, if not most of the concert, gives a different feel to songs youve already heard :)

- because of that theres a lot of rearrangements, & his romeo + juliette solo version which is so beautiful

- (biggest selling point is the live band tbh but its so so good ^^^^)

- also the best door performance is the offsick one (yeah, the bondage one)

- the mystery lover vcr !!! (his indie horror movie) and a very cool dance vcr

- overall very fun & extremely energetic feel with a classic taemin edge !!

- this concert was such a big hit irl that he had to do it again in a bigger venue lol (his one and only public apology, not enough people got to see this concert)

Sirius:

[DL//watch link (eng subs)]

- a concert with a story !!! theres a LOT of overarching themes and storytelling in this, even the vcrs are mostly continuous :) !

- some very very beautiful expressive performances

- THE DOOR PERFORMANCE [!!!!!] its completely different from the usual tied-up door, but in a way that lends itself to the story very very well (i will never shut up about it)

- overall feels very musical-esque ? theatrical ? besides the vcrs, even the performances themselves seem to continue from each other in a sort of plot arch :) (if you care to read that much into it which, you should)

- very cool use of the background screens, feels more integral to the performances, rather than just something as a backdrop. the set design is super cool in general !!

- overall elegant and theatrical feel !! a lot of emotion in this. i go insane over sirius lore once per month

- space wolfs [!!!!]

t1001101:

(also known as "TMI concert") [DL link]//[watch link (eng subs)]

- a "little prince" themed concert with some of my favorite costumes and visuals out of any of them (i own the photo book :] )

- THE INCLINE !!!! a large portion of the stage is inclined and incorporated into the dance in very very cool ways

- ^^^ the incline !!!!! (emphasis) its very cool and steep, a lot of time he's on it he has to be held with a bungee, but since hes taemin, uses it to make the dance even cooler :)

- he debuted "identity" and "heaven" here (before they were full versions u know today) !!!!! the identity opening is one of the coolest things ive seen, he has so much power

- the very concert that gave us "taemins media bible" & songs transitioning into each other a lot (plus a taemin+shinee mashup)

- stone heart and back to you VCRs !!!!!! basically bonus music videos :) stone heart got the mv it deserves considering its the best song of all time :)

- overall cool cool cool feeling, prettyboy taemin strikes again, the feeling of a taemin music video, but 2 hours long

- the first taemin concert i watched :) my recommendation for newer or more casual fans

X™:

[DL link]//[watch link]

- his most recent in person concert, extremely good and epic !!

- i've seen this so so many times, also amazing costumes and visuals, so much power, he's truly living up to being called "king"

- there isnt really a gimmick but it has some of the most solid taemin performances ive seen (eclipse lives forever in my heart <3 most underrated performance) & a generally amazing setlist

- the famous album came out during this tour so a few songs from famous were debuted here :) !!!

- specific shoutout to the slave performance.... yknow

- the lighting and camerawork is so amazing !!!!!!! seriously, i can not sing the crew's praises enough they deserve a raise

- they surprised him with an end of tour video it was really sweet :(

- "FLOW" & "CRYONICS" vcrs !!!! are so crazy... i still dont understand the lore but they fuck

- overall very solid and powerful feeling, taemin simply showing off what he does best !!!!

in summary: i can not stress enough how experiencing a taemin concert in full is very different from seeing the same performances isolated. him and the crew clearly give so much thought into them, the sequencing, the continuity, the set and costume design, lighting.... the secret lore thats going on maybe sometimes ??? i really think they deserve more appreciation (even if they get a lot lol, never enough !!!) so... yeah :) bye

#99.txt #taemin #shinee #literally just screaming abt these because i love taemin concerts so so much augsdgsdihgs #i hope ppl read this :') its one of my favorite subjects (clearly)#please love taem concerts as much as i do !!!!#you want to watch them you want to watch them sooooo bad #my special interest within a special interest lol #long post

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spirits-n-such-n-such · 12 years

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Whoa do you have the actual tapes? That’s so cool I didn’t know anyone still used VCRs these days!!!

Yeah well some of them are pirated versions from random old people’s garage sales. Like this one I had to make my own label for. My papa got me a player for them as soon as I asked, I don’t know if he ordered it or found it in the attic storage or something :/

(// original image from @fixhbones, thank you fish!)

#some of them are really grainy and have whole parts that have been screwed up

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thecrownnet · 2 years

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Elizabeth and Philip

A stone slab engraved with the names of Queen Elizabeth II, her late husband Prince Philip, and her parents King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, has been installed at St George's Chapel in Windsor / Handout via Evening Standard.

The stone, which is new, has replaced the black stone slab set into the floor which had featured the names George VI and Elizabeth in gold lettering.The fresh stone now contains, in list form, “George VI 1895-1952” and “Elizabeth 1900-2002” followed by a metal Garter Star, and then “Elizabeth II 1926-2022” and “Philip 1921-2021”.

All four royals were members of the Order of the Garter, which has St George’s Chapel as its spiritual home.

- Evening Standard

According to Royal Central Sept 21, 2022

The simplest of gravestones has been chosen for the longest reigning Monarch in British history.Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest in the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor on the evening of September 19th 2022 and now her tomb bears its final inscription.Her Late Majesty lies beneath a slab engraved with ‘Elizabeth II” and her dates, ‘1926 – 2022’. The stone also includes the permanent memorials for her husband, father and mother who she is buried alongside.The stone shows ‘George VI, 1895 – 1952’, ‘Elizabeth, 1900 – 2002’, ‘Elizabeth II, 1926 – 2022’ and ‘Philip, 1921 – 2021’.

The tombstone of George VI and Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother which has now been replaced with a new version after their daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip were buried alongside them (By VCR Giulio19 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wiki Commons)

“Visitors will be able to pay their respects to Her Late Majesty from September 29th 2022 when Windsor Castle reopens to the public.”

The tombstone is new, replacing the one that had been put into the Chapel in 2002 following the burial of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.

Also buried in the tiny chapel are the ashes of Princess Margaret, the only sister of Queen Elizabeth II. There is a separate gravestone for Her Late Royal Highness.

The chapel also contains an engraving of lines from the poem, The Gate of the Year, which King George VI quoted in his Christmas message in 1939 as Britain was at war. The most famous words of the poem are featured on the wrought iron gates that separate the chapel from the main part of St. George’s Chapel. They read ‘I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year ‘Give me light that I may tread safely into the unknown”.

Prince Philip was laid to rest alongside Queen Elizabeth II in the same family service on September 19th 2022. His coffin had rested in the Royal Vault at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor since his funeral in April 2021. The couple, who were married for 73 years, had always intended to be buried together and had agreed that whoever passed away first would ”wait” for the other so that their final resting place would be side by side.

Visitors will be able to pay their respects to Her Late Majesty from September 29th 2022 when Windsor Castle reopens to the public. Admission to St. George’s Chapel is included in the ticket although on Sunday, the chapel is only open for worship.

Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8th 2022 at Balmoral. She was 96 and had reigned for 70 years.

- The simple stone that marks the tomb of Queen Elizabeth II, Royal Central Sept 21, 2022

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abuddyforeveryseason · 15 days

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Don't look, Marion! It's the Buddy for April 12th! It's a gif! It's beautiful...

Today's Buddy was based on that famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, the bane of VCR rewind buttons everywhere, where the bad guy's face melts off.

That must've been a fun special effect to pull off. And I know I say a lot of movies are the best movie of all times, but, seriously, Raiders is the best movie of all times, right?

Spielberg and Lucas wanted to make a James Bond movie, but they were chased off into the sunset, so they decided to make their own version - a much cooler adventurer, not tied to those british spy novels and silly penguin suits.

A lot of people say a movie like the Indiana Jones series couldn't be made today. I mean, not another Indiana Jones movie, there's probably another sequel on the way. But giving a guy the equivalent of 1981's 20 million bucks to make an original movie, not based on IP, just an idea the dude had.

I don't know about that - after all, Rebel Moon just came out, and that movie shares a similar background to Raiders - famous director wanting to make a movie that's part of a famous franchise, gets rejected, makes his own edgier and pulpier version.

Sure, it sucked, but, still, it got done.

I don't really agree with a lot of the public discourse about modern movies. Probably because I'm very optimistic about popular movies. People complain about franchises and IP, but, I don't think it's a bad thing. Or at least, not necessarily a bad thing.

A good example is the best movie of all times, Eternals. It's a Marvel movie, yeah. But it's about obscure characters, and it allowed a auteur director to make an actual big-budget movie for a chance, something she'd never have a chance to do without Marvel's help. And it's an interesting story - the original comics were an interesting story too, despite their clumsy flaws.

Yet, everybody hated it. Especially people who never heard about those nobodies before - they were the ones complaining about the lack of new ideas in Hollywood. So that was the beginning of the end for Marvel.

I still think a lot of the criticism wasn't about the movie itself, but about Zhao choosing to "sell out" and make a sci fi movie, and a Marvel one at that.

Thankfully, it'll never happen again.

But, I don't know if we'll get a movie as good as Raiders again. It's a different world. And, I don't know, in a way, we don't need it. Kids can just watch Raiders instead of some director having to reinvent the wheel for a new generation. I don't get why every era needs to have its Star Wars, anyway. I mean, I do get it, it's because there's money in making new movies, even if they're just rehashes.

I read something online about the dangers of nostalgia, of people being obsessed with their youth. It ends up making their bitter towards the present day, it turns toxic. And it's easy to exploit - just keep shoveling out remakes, reboots, adaptations of the crap they loved when they were kids, and they'll keep buying. Suckers.

There are people like that (and a lot of them), yeah, but there are different issues to consider, too. One idea that a lot of people agree with is, a person's never too old to enjoy kids' stuff. We keep getting angry about adults enjoying cartoons, but, what's the harm, really? And yet, that can turn toxic too - a lot of douchebag complaining about "wokeness" in cartoons is the dark reflection of a refusal to grow up. As is the creepy obsession with sexualizing kids' cartoons.

Sometimes, it's better to accept that you're too old to enjoy something that wasn't made for you. It's better than to force it into that slot. Let the kids have their thing.

Despite all that, though, I still like some kiddy stuff, although I appreciate it in different levels. And I did like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Old Indiana Jones was fun, it felt almost like a movie version of Mr. Mustachio from Osamu Tezuka stories.

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onedreamseeker · 1 year

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Agust D Tour Thoughts and Analysis

So I went to the Agust d Tour and one of the things that I really loved was the VCRs. They had so much storytelling and really added so much.

This is a Long one so please hit read more under the cut!

Specifically I want to talk I about the three names and how they’re presented in the video.

Yoongi, Exist in Memory

Suga, Lost in Memory

Agust D, The Chaser

Theres a lot these phrases could mean in relation to the names associated. Firstly, Yoongi, his real birth name, exists in memory. Yoongi (as well as a few other members of bts) has spoken extensively about who they are vs their stage personas. I really think all of these have to do with exactly that concept.

Yoongi could only exist in memory because while he is on stage he is no longer “just min yoongi” he is one of the other names he goes by:

Suga is The second name listed with the phrase “lost in memory” this could be a reference to the fact that while bts is seperated by the hiatus and military service, he can no longer fully identify with this name while on stage, because he is not physically with bts, Suga, his bts stage Name is Lost in Memory currently (this doesn’t necessarily mean he can’t be found however, once bts is fully reunited in 2025) which leaves us with:

Agust D, The Chaser, the Name he goes by on solo work. I think it’s so interesting to abandon the naming conventions of the other two names for this one, “in memory” is dropped entirely for just a moniker, “the chaser”. The moniker makes sense though, in almost every Agust D music video we see a version of suga chasing down and killing another version in a cyclical nature. The old Agust d Must be hunted down by the new Agust D in order to maintain a level of self awareness and balance. Agust D as a persona has often been shown to be yoongi at his most viciously hungry and greedy (for money, for fame, for power) he also is very closely associated with Yoongi’s traumas. I think this persona is very closely tied to the themes of cycles especially as they relate to trauma and how trauma can change you. Agust D’s Scar, as we See in the amygdala mv, is Self inflicted, which lends credence to the idea that Agust D is a representation of how the worst of yoongi’s traumas effected him negatively. How it might’ve changed his view of greed for success and fame. Which is why he has to keep killing the old Agust d to make room for the new one. It’s a struggling balance act to make sure yoongi the person is never overtaken by the things Agust D represents.

In the video shown at the concert Agust D is trying to Hunt down and kill Yoongi and Suga. I think this could be taken as the trauma and cycles of negativity that Agust D represents trying to infect and change Yoongi as a person or his persona as Suga the bts member.

At the end of the concert the last VCR shows Yoongi and Suga burning down the hotel that Agust D is in, presumably killing him. (Also hyyh reference anyone?)

I definitely think this correlates to Yoongi’s statement that the Agust D trilogy is complete and that we might not get music under the Agust D Name for a long time (if ever again).

Yoongi has talked a lot about himself as yoongi the person vs suga the bts member vs Agust d the soloist. And he’s talked about the conflict that comes from having so many different personas and the toll that takes on him.

To me the Agust D Trilogy as a whole is Yoongi rectifying with these three pieces of himself. And using his own music to identify and expose these darker parts of himself as Agust d in an attempt to bring these pieces closer as a single whole instead of completely seperate, as well as trying to become more honest and bare in his music as a way to understand how a part of him became Agust D and the trauma that made him who he is.

Not only do the albums follow this story but the entire layout of the concert does as well.

Firstly the setlist:

The setlist Starts with Haegeum, a song about freedom and retaliation against oppressive systems and each song after peels back these layers of the persona we know as Agust D, he speaks about his early struggles as an artist and in childhood, poverty, hatred experienced from others, into more self reflective songs like People and moonlight, where he investigates his life in comparison to other’s, his creative process etc.

He examines himself as BTS’s Suga in the next section, playing songs like shadow, the cyphers, ddaeng. The persona and feelings he has as a member of the biggest and most successful group in the world.

The second to last section of songs all from his new album explore some of the most deeply personal topics yet, a personal letter to the next generation of musicians in snooze, political ideology in Polar Night. Ending with amygdala and DDAY. The first being an exploration of his trauma and the second a rallying cry to move forward anyways.

The concert ends on The Last, one of his most vulnerable and emotional songs where he goes into detail about his mental health history, Including a possible reference to a suicide attempt.

Everything about the structure and story of the setlist is about peeling away layers, understanding the different pieces of himself to become more whole.

The set design Is another fantastic example of this.

In the beginning of the show, during haegeum, the stage is big and blocky and whole, it stands above the crowd.

More towards the middle of the concert, as he performs bts songs, The stage has started to peel away, and now looks more like a cross shape

This next picture is nearing the end, during amygdala only one piece of the stage remains and you can see two other pieces being lifted away.

This is during The Last, at the very end of the concert. The entirety of the stage has been lifted away revealing all the wires and props and equipment of the underbelly. Yoongi stands at level with the crowd now. Not above as an idol but face to face, as himself. It’s so remarkably powerful I was in tears at it.

In conclusion of this long long post analyzing the Agust d albums and tour,

I just wanted to say that I am in genuine awe of Yoongi’s emotional storytelling, and his art. The three albums, the detail of the setlist, and even the stage design all come together to express his deeply moving story of learning to understand yourself and your trauma and deciding to move forward towards the future as your whole self, flaws and all. It is so profoundly beautiful and impactful and I can’t thank him enough for choosing to share his journey with us through his music and art.

#agust d #bts music and lyric analysis #Bts performance analysis #suga agustd tour #bts army #bts #bts suga #music #art analysis #meta analysis #bts music and lyrics

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lady-snow-flower · 1 month

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READY TO BRUNCH: BRUNCH BABES GO SEE TWICE IN CONCERT

Because I'm simply incapable of not filtering anything I'm doing through a writing lens... last night I was enjoying my TWICE girlies in concert when on song three, i got slapped with an intrusive thought:

Brunch Babes would love TWICE.

I mean, what is more brunch babes core than a group of pretty sweet wonderful talented girlies???? and there ARE NINE OF THEM. Hence, this playlist is... just the setlist that I saw last night lmao. Imagine, Brunch Babes going to see Twice in concert and just having a dang good time.

But! As part of the concert, each TWICE girl has their own solo performance so I've assigned one to each one. Chaeyoung wrote her own song but it isn't on Spotify so that is not represented :( Otherwise, I've also done some ship assignment. Have fun!!

@miss-holleyshiftwell @princess-ting-ting @babettexdurand @alana-the-brilliant @haveyoumet-dolores @rowsandrows-of-roses @displacedprincess @amelia-o-gabble

OPENING

Set Me Free - ENG Version I Can't Stop Me GO HARD (the song that made me think of Brunch Babes idk why) Moonlight Sunrise Brave VCR Break followed by Solo performances

Try - Dahyun piano solo / Dolores Done For Me - Tzuyu cover / Amy New Rules - Sana cover / Isabela after Clayton MOVE - Momo dance cover / Elena, the Queen 7 Rings - Mina cover / Lana

VCR Break followed by Group performances/ship assignments

Feel Special - Girl love song <3 Cry For Me - Isa/Clayton Fancy - Tibbs/Babette The Feels - Lana/Jake

VCR Break followed by Solo performances Self-written song - Chaeyoung / Ting-Ting im so sorry ting it felt the most appropriate Killin Me Good - Jihyo solo / Snow for the necromancy pun Juice - Jeongyeon cover / Babette Pop - Nayeon solo / Holley

VCR Break followed by Group/ship assignments

I Got You - Sing-Song :) Queen of Hearts - Lana/Isa Medley of songs: Yes or Yes / Cheer Up / What is Love? / Likey / Heart Shaker / Knock Knock / Scientist (Juno is this mashup thanks)

Group Performances/ship assignments

Alcohol-Free - Wolfing ONE SPARK - Snow Quartz Talk that Talk - Flynn/Holley

Encore

When We Were Kids Crazy Stupid Love Look at me Rush

#music #brunch babes

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sxvethelastdance · 1 year

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Love as The Catalyst, a Dragon Ball Z post:

Hello!

Welcome to part one in a series of many long-winded informal posts I’m slated to make revolving around my series rewatch of Dragon Ball Z. I don’t know what made me want to sit down in 2021 and re-evaluate my relationship with the series as I’ve known it across 2 decades, but we ended up here. 291 episodes of torture and all. As a matter of purity for my re-evaluation, I decided to go with one of the dubs I spent watching as a child. I used Funimation’s 2007 digitally remastered dub of Dragon Ball Z, since it’s so difficult to get a hold of the version that was syndicated on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block from 1999-2004 without hunting down a bunch of VCR tapes and singles. Generally, the remastered dub does contain a lot of the untouched Funimation voice acting in certain seasons over others. Take Season One, for example. You can visit this wiki page for what got changed and what remained untouched between the two dubs.

If you see this and think of the dreaded orange bricks, you are correct! I used those babies. That being said, I am treating this dub as its own contained product, I will NOT be comparing it to the original because there’s nothing I can say that like. 15 Youtubers and faithful scholars of the text already haven’t. “The dub” as it is colloquially known, is a Western recontextualization of a fundamentally Eastern product and it suffers for that when we take into account its merits as an adaptation. I KNOW. So I didn’t even try. Instead I point you toward the wealth of intelligently reasoned critiques on that subject. Just hit up the youtube search.

Instead, I went about my watch observing the dub in a vacuum of its own merits- mainly the scripting and themes. Every post in this vein will be analyzing through that lens specifically. I watched with the Falcouner score to preserve maximum integrity toward tone and documented a lot of shit as I went along my experience.

Be warned: Opinions will be shared. You don’t have to take them as gospel, you don’t have to take them at all really! So don’t take it personally, this is my exercise in picking apart the experience. Bringing back YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. So… Read at your own risk.

Here’s my thesis:

Love is Funimation Dragon Ball Z’s call to action. Bear with me here, it seems like an obvious cliche, but it’s one of those threads woven through every major story arc. It’s by far one of the more consistent themes expressed in its scripting of the characters and their priorities. There are lots of different definitions of love, typically we think of romantic, familial, and platonic love as our qualifiers. Maybe you’re an 8 types of love categorizer. At different points you see how central at least one of those definitions is to moving the emotional plot line along, there’s an intensity built into the displays of unbridled emotion that get the audience into a power-up scene.

Every single one of those scenes is steeped in the things that the characters value. Their relationships and their reason for fighting. These reasons are born from the connections they have with their loved ones, or the things that they love and hold sacred in their lives. Below are some key examples from each arc.

Saiyan saga.

Starting with an example exclusively from the Filler: we have Gohan and C-6 in episode 9. Gohan makes friends with an abandoned robot buried in the ruins of a cavern and through his kindness, gives him a friend: The first in 80 years. This newfound affection and maybe even love (categorized as “philia” under the 8 Greek definitions I mentioned) for Gohan is what makes C-6 sacrifice himself to get Gohan out of the cavern when it starts to crumble around them.

Most important for his character going forward: Piccolo came to love Gohan, he admits that what started as a quest for revenge turned into something different and his love for Gohan made him sacrifice his life to keep him from dying. Gohan’s kindness and care for him introduced Piccolo to the concept of more than hatred. He developed a concept of love from their interactions and it made him a better person. This gave him the necessary context to GROW.

Gohan’s love for Goku awakened his power at the very beginning of the saga and stopped him from wreaking more havoc in his ape form than he already had.

Frieza/Namek saga:

Guru’s love for every Namekian child he bore killed him, the strain of them all dying was the direct cause of his death. He couldn’t have been brought back by Porunga otherwise- Qualified under a death of “natural causes.”

Porunga means “Dragon of Love.” in the Namekian language. Porunga, the original wish granting dragon, whose existence is the very reason that the Dragon Balls can bring back the loved ones of the characters in this series.

Goku’s love for Krillin and the anger that sprang from losing his friend gave him the power to become a Super Saiyan. Krillin, with Bulma, is one of Goku’s very best friends.

Android/Cell Saga

It was Future Gohan’s love for Trunks that made him knock the kid out to fight the Androids alone. Trunks’ love for Gohan not only triggered his transformation, but it made him determined to travel to the past with the chance of preventing his future.

Chi-Chi very clearly loves Goku, the scene they share after he wakes up from his coma is a good example of what she understands to be true about him and his nature. She encourages him to fight Cell and give it all he’s got. This is a marked difference from her begrudging acceptance and downright disapproval (for her own really good reasons). She knows what kind of person he is and steps out of the way to give him the space he needs to prepare for that trial.

Before Cell kills Android 16, 16 pleads with Gohan: “Let it go. It is not a sin to fight for the right cause. There are those who words alone will not reach, Cell is such a being. I know how you feel, Gohan. You are gentle, you do not like to hurt. I know because I too have learned this feelings. But it is because you cherish life that you must protect it. Please, drop your restraints. Protect the life I loved.”

Gohan’s love for peace- the anger that accompanied having something as sacred as life ripped from a kindred spirit broke the barrier between his fear of losing control and his power.

Android 16’s love for living in general, he is another character born to kill. And yet he, a machine, finds something to love in nature. Gentle with birds, at peace.

Contentious as Goku’s choice is at the end of the arc, its intentions are pure- he removes himself from the lives of his loved ones because he believes HE is drawing the danger toward them. It’s a decision that stems from a selfless love for his friends and family.

Buu Saga.

Gohan’s love for Videl- whether you want to categorize it as friendship and loyalty or a budding romance by this point- it’s responsible for the dangerous move that makes him go full-power, leading to Yamu’s theft of his energy to take back to Babadi. I’m calling it love specifically because of the intensity its treated with in the narrative.

Daikaioh’s love for life and Shin was a redeeming force for the pure evil Buu.

Majin Buu’s love for Hercule and Bee the dog was what turned him good and made him separate from the evil half. Had he not learned to love them, the rest of the arc wouldn’t have taken place.

Piccolo sympathizes with the sacrifice Vegeta makes because he knows what it’s like to walk through that door himself, “Gohan’s love changed me.”

Vegeta’s getting his own category not only because I write him, but because of how strange his relationship with love is, and how it continues to come up

The famous “Trunks, Bulma, I do this for you.” line before he blew himself up to try and take out Majin Buu. How he, in this new form after claiming that they meant nothing to him, holds his child and tells him he’s proud. Knocks him out and sends him safely back with Piccolo. This is a very clear change from the android saga, where he didn’t give a fuck about whether Bulma and Trunks died when 20 shot them out of the sky.

Goku lays Vegeta out when he refuses to entertain fusion: “Look. You’ve always talked about our Saiyan race. How we’re the last of a mighty people. Well it’s time we accept we’re starting a new race! One that’d be just as strong! Just as proud! But not if we’re caught up in so much of our old “birthrights” to see what we have right in front of us! We’ve lost our old race Vegeta! Let’s not lose THIS one too!” It’s THIS that makes him get his fucking act together, along with the revelation that Bulma has been killed.

Vegeta BEGS the people of Earth to give their energy- what’s very important to this appeal is that it’s to their pathos. He uses ‘children’ in the plea, knowing that he’s just lost his own. Genuine empathy, born of what I struggle to categorize as anything OTHER than the love he has for his family- however complicated it may be. Put himself on the chopping block, pride be fucking damned just to have a chance at keeping him safe in the Otherworld (because Buu can go there too). This man is anti-sentiment and vulnerability, but you can hear him earnestly beseeching- and that’s part of his love for his family forced to come out. The kind of desperation he has isn’t for his own sake- he’s someone who doesn’t treat his life with any sort of sacredness.

Finally, on the subject of love: Majin Buu’s love for Mr. Satan is actually what saved the entire fucking planet! Had Kid Buu not spit him out because of the burden that is his hesitation to kill Satan, there wouldn’t have been a way to stall for time while Goku gathered energy for the Spirit Bomb. Majin Buu held Kid Buu off with Vegeta, they needed that help.

Among some fan favorite scenes out of this dub are:

Goku going Super Saiyan for the first time;

Future Trunks finding Gohan’s body and transforming, and;

Gohan’s snap into Super Saiyan 2.

Many fans latch onto the anger, and for good reasons! It goes toward the dramatic weight of the scenes, but here’s the thing:

That anger does not have any meaningful purpose in a setting like this if NOT connected to a more meaningful emotion. It’s raw because it’s more than just how you feel in the moment. It’s knowing that somebody else spurns the things you value and mocks them, mocks the memory of the person who made you better and stronger than you ever could have been. You, or rather, the characters in Dragon Ball Z- They do not exist in a vacuum. The Dragon Ball franchise, for all its hang ups, can’t get from point A to B without that.

#Dragon Ball Z #DBZ #Dance Break! - OOC #Vegeta.txt #Gohan.txt #dragon ball

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reflections-in-a-critical-eye · 2 years

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Hi. I'm OP of the fanservice question again. I came back to say I wasn't the other anon (who clearly didn't read anything you've written). And because I wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your opinion. I do understand that fanservice is a huge part of K-Pop and I did dislike BTS doing what TXT is doing now back during the Gayo episodes. It was too much for me then too. Because in my opinion fanservice plays with something, with a sexuality, that is not accepted in South Korea. And that leaves a sour taste to be honest. Me as a queer person, I can only imagine how queer Koreans do feel about seeing idols on stage being all over each other while I'd knew I'd have to be very careful what I do with a potential partner on the streets. Look at what happened to Holland.

And it's not the fanservice in general that bothers me. I don't care about idols hugging, cuddling, being close, playing up their bond on stage for the fans. It's the type of fanservice that clearly implies more while clearly being fake or forced with (like the TXT clip I've sent you or idols playing the tissue or pepero game) that doesn't sit right with me. Especially because a group like TXT really doesn't need. I guess I'm so bothered by this especially, is because quite a lot of fans were loud and proud of HYBE being a better company than the rest. And if you even dared to say anything, you immediately were labelled as an anti. When I'm far from that. In my opinion HYBE is as good or as bad as any company out there, HYBE just has the privilege to be selective in what they're doing due to BTS' huge success. But this is a completely different topic and I really don't want to annoy you.

I do want to explain though why I mentioned Jikook and Taekook as a way for HYBE to make money though. First I want to say that I have nothing against ships or shippers. To each their own as long as they stay respectful. Now on to why I said that HYBE used Jikook and Taekook. I might be wrong, it's just my own observation. In 2020, around Dynamite era until the end of the year, HYBE went out of their way to make Jikook seem like a "unit". They were often placed together in units, may it be for photoshoots like the pictures for the VMAs, Season's Greetings with them being in a unit alone, Run, the Dynamite MV, being placed next to each other in interviews, the Dynamite Christmas version videos or even the Dynamite choreography. At the end of the year, at the HYBE NYE concert, they even were separated from the group in the VCR, appearing together in a scene, with the background being "their colours". And they were the only members who appeared separately in a unit from their groups. I remember this because shippers were excited about it, expecting a Jikook performance during that concert, that didn't happen.

All of this came to an abrupt stop in 2021. Suddenly it seemed like the focus switched to Taekook. They were put into units almost always, the New Year's card drawings, the Japanese fanclub videos, the preparation videos for Festa, just to name a few. The biggest hint for me was though Taekook always being in a unit when it was about selling merch. Both times HYBE sold merch for concerts, Muster and Permission to Dance, Taekook were in a unit together. It looks like that what they were doing with Jikook in 2020, they were doing with Taekook in 2021.

(Yes, I didn't mention Memories here because while Jikook did have some moments in Memories of 2020, it wasn't advertised like this. The teaser had almost no Jikook.)

Like I've said I could be completely off and maybe the reason for all of this is a difficult one from what I think it is. (I'm sure shippers came up with an explanation of their own.) This is just how it feels to me.

And now I've bothered you enough. I only came back to explain my train of thoughts and I don't know if any of this even made sense to you. I sincerely hope you have the greatest day.

Hey anon. No worries, I didn't think you were that ignorant anon, I know it was probably just a troll who stalks my blog or something. You talk about quite a few topics, so I'm taking it one by one.

Firstly, I don't think there's any way us on the internet in these fan spaces can assume what queer koreans think about fanservice, unless you're one of them, but you haven't stated as such so I will assume you're not. I could be wrong, but I haven't read about or heard any queer people in SK commenting on this practice so we don't know their views. Also, you're basically assuming that all idols who do fanservice are straight. That idol blank canvas works in multiple ways and the ambiguity towards their sexual identity can lead people to believe what they want, not just that they're automatically only straight, have secret girlfriends and they do fanservice with their bandmates. And there's another point here to be made. Fanservice and the K-Pop industry can be used as means for idols to express themselves, especially if some of them are queer because it works under the guise of entertainment and nothing more. Another point that can be made is that some idols do have queer themes in their art and patterns can emerge. We can't just dismiss that. Art can be the perfect medium to allow queer idols to show parts of themselves. And who says some idols don't enjoy some kissing and ass grabing on stage?

Secondly, I agree with your take about Hybe and how supposedly it's a better company than others. It's not. They use(d) fanservice just as everyone else.

Thirdly, if we're going by the notion that Hybe used jikook as a main ship in 2020 and taekook in 2021, then that begs the question, what's the angle, the story? What are they trying to portray? Because looking at all the examples you gave, I see two very different angles.

So, lets see what we have then. In jikook's case, they were put together as a unit in different types of content. I would like to mention that units for photoshoots, choreo, the NYE concert VCR, sitting next to each other during interviews is not a big indication for purposefully promoting an angle, as switches are made constantly. If we're to take that into consideration, then all of BTS are a couple and they switch it up every year. But, you also mentioned Dynamite Christmas version and I would also add MMA Black Swan because there is an angle there, which has heavy tones of homoromanticism in a quite explicit way. What was the reason?The agenda? I don't know. But I must say that instead of using fanservice for homoeroticism and cheap thrills for fans, they went for a more softer, romantic portrayal and they used it in their performances, not interviews or games. They used artistic expression. And I think that's smart and because of this particular reason, I'm not judging it and I really don't care if the duo in the ship is only for the cameras or not. Hybe didn't use the same tactic when you say they focused on taekook in 2021, and it's easy to conclude that by just looking at the examples you gave. What they did was just using a unit in various content that doesn't actually say anything about the ship itself. Lmao, they were just stuck together in the same frame. And Hybe does this frequently. What did they achieve by that? Taekookers being happy to see their faves in the same room or the same photo, just as any other shipper of all 21 possible ships.

This is not me making a point about which is the superior ship or the real one, as I don't care about that, but I wanted to use your argument and built on top of that to see where it goes and my conclusion is that if we're going with your opinion, that Hybe uses ships and changes them after a year, then they do a poor job of treating them equally.

#bmt asks #bts ships #bts shipping discourse #jikook #t*ekook

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bizarre-blorbo-bracket · 5 months

Text

Round 3 Poll 4: Rev. Green from Cluedo vs Davis (Juror 8) from Twelve Angry Men

Propaganda:

Rev. Green:

Tl;dr, minor version difference between Russian and American copies of a board game gave me a hyperfixation and a blorbo.

Davis (Juror 8) (these are all from the single submitter)

a quick lil list babes, and I apologise for all of this in advance:

He's from the fucking film 12 angry men. like, aside from letterbox bootlickers and middle school hass students NO ONE has watched this film let alone care about it, it was made in 1957, is shot almost exclusively in one room and the entire film is just middle aged white men yelling at each other over whether some not white poor kid should be sent to the electric chair. what the fuck.

Henry Fonda, the actor, was 52 years old at the time of filming

Henry Fonda is the father of Jane Fonda, the woman who would revolutionise the 80's with her home workouts and her blindingly neon leg warmers.

His name wasn't revealed until the very end of the film and even then it's just "Davis."

I could honestly give him a lil smooch

He's absolutely not girlypop but he's the ally-iest ally who's ever allied

He's categorised as a "Benevolent Leader" on the Heroes Wiki

instead of the overwhelming urge for me to coddle him like most all other blorbos, i would appreciate it switched

I have a photo of him inside my saxophone case and sometimes i forget he's in there, then he creeps into my saxophone bell and when I play it he shoots out like a ballistic missile

Dude, on ao3 there's more fanfiction about the real life 80's British punk band The Clash than the entire film of 12 angry men, let alone Davis (80 fics come up under the clash, while 10 come up for 12 angry men)

I have a counter, and I've watched 12 Angry men a total of 145 times. The figure is up on my wall in tallies. whenever the number goes up, I like to watch it in 5's so then I can put another full group of tallies on my wall.

I have incredibly detailed stories about how Davis would boogie down to ringo starr's solo career, and they're written within the margins of a book called Tobruk written by Peter Fitzsimons. The only reason I reread that book is to wonder at my elaborate works of fiction

My HASS teacher was the one to introduce me to 12 Angry Men as he played it for the entire class. He gave us a set of questions to complete on the film and a few Law based questions as a little treat, and he expected it to be handed in the next day. What he didn't expect was an 11 page monster of a response that included social commentary, 4 paragraphs dissecting the character of Davis alone, deeply discussed comparisons between the landscapes of politics and law in the 50's to the present, and basically an entire point-for-point summarisation of the film, completed with obscure quotes from Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Presley (Elvis). He presented the printed masterpiece in front of the entire class to shame me.

After class he explained how his favourite Juror would either be 6 or 5, because 6 seems like a big dumb teddybear and he just liked 5. I explained how I liked Davis because he didn't want to send a kid to die, then he told me how Davis would make a good cowboy (at this point in time I was unaware of Henry Fonda's role in Once Upon A Time in The West) and I proceeded to go home and write a 3 part orchestral composition that I could pretend would play as the soundtrack to Juror 8: A Cowboy's Tale or something like that

I had started to make an animation meme starring Davis but only gave up when photoshop literally deleted itself from my laptop

I didn't even hear that Juror 8's name was Davis when I first watched it in class, somehow I only heard it on my 6th rewatch but when I did I literally got so excited I literally got winded and cried a little bit, I had to take a panadol because I got so lightheaded

I have learned the musical motif that plays throughout the film on saxophone, clarinet, recorder, guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and trumpet

I have visions of him

One of Davis' 3 children HAS to be gay and nothing can convince me otherwise

honest to god I'd be a home wrecker if it came to him

I quote not only Davis but the film a lot, and sometimes in the dead silence of all my friends I go on about how the old man couldn't have possibly made it to the door in such a short amount of time to see the kid running down the stairs (because the old man has a limp, and Davis proved it my limping around the room, which I have to say was incredibly attractive of him)

He's literally an architect

I once had a dream where Davis was in my bass guitar case when I opened it, and i literally just picked him up and started picking him like a bass guitar until I tried to play a full chord and he bit the hand that was meant to be on the fretboard. I dropped him and he fell on his ass, and when I said "what the hell dude what was that for" he said bass chords are lowkey ugly to listen to, and since then i don't like playing bass chords because now they're lowkey ugly to listen to. before this ordeal, i enjoyed them, but alas

i once got my romantic partner to write me a davis x reader fanfiction as a birthday present

my parents believe that Davis is my first celebrity crush, and while they're actually wrong it's still actually so embarrassing they believe that because OH MY GOD it's literally JUROR 8 FROM 12 ANGRY MEN

I've attempted slam poetry about him

I've eaten a paper printed full a4 size photo of his hand

I would also not mind him to be literally my father, but given the rest of the things I've just said about him that's really weird and I recognise that

#12 angry men #cluedo #clue #juror 8 #rev green #round 3 polls

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