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variousqueerthings · 10 months

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@autistic-puffin i feel like i have nothing more to say about go2, like I excised my thoughts in one go 😭 especially considering it feels like so much meta/art has already been posted

(EDIT: AND THEN I WROTE THOUGHTS)

my main thoughts are also maybe a teensy bit hot take, because I'd assumed it was going to be a bit like certain narratives that are quite popular on here, but don't really do it so such for me, because they don't ground their queerness in anything substantial or they try to, but aren't informed enough to do it well (I admire the attempt and I have nothing against these pieces, I just don't personally enjoy them) and so it's more about the shipping or the memeable moments and that's not really what I get into things for

and it being disingenuous to fold it under narratives that are willing and fun enough, but ultimately made by people who haven't done toooo much work around queer themes before and fall (in my opinion) a bit for the simple narratives of "everything ultimately has to have stakes that aren't too high and play nice and don't distress their audience too much lest fragile LGBT+ people can't handle it" <- sweet narratives, easy to follow, a tad too candyfloss and ungrounded for my taste, often unbalanced in its comedy-to-drama scales and undermining sincerity by solving things too quickly and/or with too little delving into what these things mean

neil gaiman and john finnemore have been writing queer characters and themes for some time, and david tennant/michael sheen have played queer characters before (and heck, david tennant has at least one queer kid), it's not so surprising that this narrative actually isn't as mass-appeal as was assumed it was going to be before coming out (heh, coming out)

and by mass-appeal I don't mean that it doesn't have mainstream attention, but that there's seemingly confusion about what it's doing, when if you're into stories about non-conformity vs oppression (in this case mainly through a queer lens) it's pretty obvious, and I'm assuming very rewarding on subsequent watches

it's not fluff -- fluff works better for me in fanfiction than in original works, it's not aimless -- either in direction or in theme, it's not mainstream queerness -- although nina and maggie kind of have that "LGBT-unburdened-by-reality" kind of thing that I often don't vibe with, they're a part of three narratives about connection that ultimately ground queer non-conformity in action and feeling as explicitly dangerous to oppressive systems (in this case systems grounded in Christianity, which works very well)

there's a confusion in some reviews I've seen in the mainstream about why it matters that we follow these characters through thousands of years (well, millions technically, but the main thrust happens in the thousands), and coming to the conclusion that it's just because everyone's having a bit of fun, and then they're totally blindsided by the final 15mins and unable to place it in what they've watched previously

but it makes perfect narrative sense and I can pinpoint after one watch clues and foreshadowing leading to those final minutes, and why it matters that we follow the characters the way that we do, and (while I won't go too much into this because I think I'm late to the party and plenty of others have already spoken about it) threads that have been laid out that will clearly be picked up on in s3

I quite enjoy that this is a narrative about queerness that isn't so palatable to reviewers, and isn't for that matter so palatable to viewers who are used to measuring successful queer narrative via easy-to-follow tropes, I think that's one suggestion that it's done its job right in how it was constructed

I want especially straight mainstream reviewers to have to do the translation and if they can't, then it's not for them. that's a rarity in queer narrative that's released with so much attention and that also feels like part of the magic trick of the season -- am reminded of when black sails season 2 "revealed" that flint was queer and that this was a narrative centred around queer rage as an insight into other forms of oppression (which some things were done better than others of course, but that was the purpose, and madi really is that voice at the end!)

and how some straight dudebro fans felt cheated, while many queer viewers went... well yeah, obviously flint was queer, they signposted it (here I also note that some queer viewers didn't see it until that moment because we're also used to being signposted at and then not having follow-through because queercoding language is so ubiquitous to tv and film writing nowadays that many straight people don't know what it is or that they're doing it, or they went "hey we might do something queer winkwink" and then called fans disgusting for reading characters as queer ✌)

and that feeling is somewhat similar here in a way. "we thought we were in this for a bit of silly fluff, what's all this about themes? it's confusing, we don't like it, we're going to flatten it rather than acknowledge what is actually happening in the narrative, and then we're going to interact with that flattened version that we've created instead and call it self-indulgent and harmlessly silly."

so my hot take is that... it's not silly. well it is silly and fun and even at times indulgent, but it's also quite good at being a story that is Queer in ethos, and I prefer stories to be queer in ethos and not just have some ostensibly queer characters around saying the right words without knowing why or where those words originate

it's better than it's being given credit for, in ways it's not being given credit for, because it's not made palatable for a mainstream straight crowd or softened for fear of upsetting anyone

#good omens #good omens 2 #go2 #good omens season 2 #i also hesitate to post because then s3 comes out and it's really not that deep 😂#but s2 feels so deliberate -- but then you're used to seeing set-ups that don't pay off -- but then gaiman and finnemore are seasoned #so I think there's an instinct to keep something at arms length #or focus on the fluff and the shipping and not on the thematic depth #because what if actually all of that was done by accident and the writers/directors have no idea where to take it next #but this isn't aimless it's a set up to what comes next which has already been planned #and it plays really well with the first season which isn't quite as deep/could work as a fun standalone story #because it takes the deep questions of that season that weren't really delved into and takes the plunge #this is not to say i wouldnt critique things -- hell black sails is one of the best shows of all time and i have plenty to critique there #but i feel like the wrong things are being focused on

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thessalian · 6 months

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Thess vs the Human Digestive System

VENT BREAK.

So New Girl is back today, and back to the usual tricks. She was blatant enough about it today for me to spot the pattern.

See, I was typing away, we'd got down to 260-odd, things were about as good as they get even with the really obvious cherry-picking of bits of dictation ... and then suddenly, I pop out of what was for once a fairly simple bit of dictation to find that the queue has forty more items in it than when I last looked, many of them timestamped for before the one I just finished typing. They're not even all that long, so I wonder, what the fuck is the problem?

I start in on the first one of these - a gallbladder, fairly short and straightforward, especially if you've been doing them for years. Come out of that one a couple of minutes later, and the queue is suddenly down by twenty, and I see by the timestamps that more cherry-picking has been done later in the day. So I look at this and go, "Okay, most of the ones that got thrown back were the same couple of doctors, and their accents aren't that bad, and they're not that long, so again I ask what the fuck?" But it's no good asking questions of these people, so back to the typing.

Another gallbladder.

And another.

Half a dozen of them, all told.

So I think what New Girl is doing is picking them up, listening just long enough to figure out what they are, and then just ... not doing the ones she doesn't want to do. Maybe she's not comfortable with them - but if so, the only way for her to gain comfort with them is to do them. Maybe she just doesn't want to do them. Maybe all she really wants to do is the really simple ones, like spot biopsies of various parts of the colon and oesophagus, which are honestly the easiest ones to do.

Well, tough shit, no pun intended. Why should she get the easy spot biopsies when I'm typing up all the resections (which is when you actually take out a whole segment of bowel, usually because there's a tumour or perforation in there)? I get the whole bowel resections. I get the kidneys. The testes. The hysterectomy specimens and ovaries and fallopian tubes. The placentas. The breasts (well, the mastectomies and major excisions, anyway; they're fine doing the little core biopsies). Any skin biopsy that's not a straight-up punch. The livers and gallbladders. In short, all the complicated stuff. And New Girl not only cherry-picks the short ones, but also cherry-picks the short ones that are even remotely more than "number of specimens, measurements of specimens, done".

I cannot express enough how absolutely sick to the back teeth I am of bowel resection specimens. Don't even get me started on placentas and the fucking pancreas.

So it's still going to be an overtime night and after this one anterior resection that I don't want to do but am now stuck with, I'm stuck with a fifteen minute monstrosity of multiple skin excision biopsies.

I mean, I feel really bad for the patients whose bodies used to contain these pieces of tissue, and the doctors are just doing their jobs, and I feel bad about kvetching. However ... my colleagues need to share the fucking load, and they don't, and I'm tired and in a lot of pain and just so FED THE FUCK UP.

I'd say, "Hey, at least it's the weekend", but guess who's going to have to do overtime on Saturday too, because we're only into dictations from about 1pm on Thursday (again, because I've had all the 5-10 minute ones all day and the other two are fucking dawdling, and have been since Scruffmen went on his half-day annual leave). I want this bullshit cleared out as much as possible so maybe I won't have to do this shit next week too.

Right. VENT BREAK over. I will stuff an apple into my face and keep going.

#Thess has a day job

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dcptcnx · 2 years

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Reflections

pairing: Sukuna Ryomen x f!reader

genre: hmmm...haunting? idk man LOL

wc: 1.6k

a/n: this idea has been in my head for ages, and ive had many dreams about it. I will make a part 2 and that part will contain smut (though it’ll be shit bc i suck at it) @cndyr4np0 I hope it’s good enough

There are a lot of stipulations revolving around what defines a ‘curse’. It was known around that Jujutsu Sorcerers existed and they get rid of said ‘curses’, but sometimes a curse is greater than what they anticipate. That is what they call ‘Special Grades’. Special Grades are not your average curses. They’re much stronger, and require a strong sorcerer to exorcize them. And sometimes the curse is way too strong, especially when it takes over your mind.

You were having a normal day, now commuting home from your half day of work to enjoy your weekend. The commute was pretty long, so you were lucky enough to get half days like this. To your surprise, the train car you sat in was more empty than it usually is. Lately, you have been seeing more and more jujutsu sorcerers going around and excising curses, but still to have a near empty train was surprising to say the least.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these people on here is a sorcerer and that a curse is just sitting next to me.’ you let out a sigh of tiredness, looking up at the window across from you lazily. You knew the route consisted of a tunnel which put your mind at ease. You put on your headphones and looked straight ahead at the empty window, soon being encased in a darkness from the tunnel. Only to immediately yank your headphones off and shift your gaze to the right.

‘No. That didn’t just happen.’ You swallowed the lump that formed in your throat.

“Ah, but it did.” A deep voice whispered out, causing you to continue to shift your gaze all over the train, breathing heavily.

“Hello? Did you ask me something?” You asked the tall male that was standing a few feet away. He turned his gaze at you like you were crazy, only to shake his head and turn himself around to look away. Slowly, you sit back against the seat, holding your belongings closer, hoping nothing bad would happen. Pulling out your phone to check the time, you see that same image again for a split second before the screen is illuminated with a new notification.

“You can see me, that’s good.” The same deep voice echoed again, causing you to move your gaze around more, but with caution. “Relax, relax, it's not like I can physically hurt you.” You decide to look up and at the window, only to widen your eyes to see the same image, but this time closer in distance from once before. Salmon colored hair, black markings almost like tattoos littered on his face and arms. He wore a white casual kimono, all while holding a smirk on his face. He brought up his hands towards his face, in a way that looked like he was forming a sacred symbol.

“Ryōiki Tenkai” The figure said, which made your eyes widen, knowing what those words did. Slamming your eyes shut, you tried to rid his image off the mind. Once you re-opened your eyes a moment later, you were met with the sunset beaming through the window, like nothing was happening.

“There’s no way that a curse was there.” You mumbled to yourself as you stood up to look outside the window to see if anything changed. You knew what Domain Expansions were and did not want to experience whichever one this curse had. Letting out a sigh of relief, you were glad to see everything was as it looked before entering the tunnel. Calming down, you sat back down, keeping an eye out the window watching the sunset glow. The train finally stopped and you exited and continued to walk in the direction towards your apartment.

Walking through town to get to her place, You passed by many stores with windows displaying their items. Scared as you were about the incident moments ago, you didn’t want to waste any time window shopping. Passing by a store, you stop in your tracks when you notice a figure behind you in the reflection of the window. Eyes wide, you turn your head slowly to look at the same figure from moments ago, memories flashing of his words. Quickly, you turned around, to see nobody in the flesh, only to continue to see his reflection inside the window.

“Who are you?” You whispered, trying hard not to alert people that you are not talking to anybody in particular.

“Oh you know, the king of curses. Your good pal, Sukuna.” He smirked, lowering his voice as he said his name and title. He brought up his hands once more to form that same gesture as earlier, and before you could close your eyes and run, it was too late. Suddenly the window you looked into, showed him directly behind you, a different atmosphere than the street you once stood on. Looking down, you began to notice you were standing in a body of water that almost resembled blood but wasn’t red in color. Moved your gaze up, you saw what looked like a rib cage, which ended with you turning around and to see a pile of animal skulls, with a throne sitting atop of the pile, with this person sitting on it.

Speechless, your gaze fixated on the figure who had an aura that seemed to suffocate you in strength. He made his way down the pile to walk towards you. Once standing in front of you, he reaches out, firmly grasping your jaw and yanking you towards him.

“You look so shocked to see a curse. Stop, it looks stupid.” He spat out, grip slightly tightening as he leaned closer to inspect your face. He clicked his tongue before harshly releasing your face, and standing up straight. “You can’t get rid of me. I’ll be following you and watching you everywhere.” Softly gulping, you began to relax your eyelids, hoping it would appease Sukuna so he wouldn’t call you stupid again.

He turned around to climb back up to his throne, leaving you helplessly back at the bottom. Silently, your eyes followed his every step, wondering how you ended up in this mess. “Why me?” You spoke up, voice shaky as you were terrified of the strength he had.

“Well, why not?” It was such a short answer, but his words held such power that it almost frightened you beyond repair. What did a king of curses want or need from someone like you? You didn’t understand what could be so fascinating about you that would warrant attention from him. “I’d also be careful on how you speak to me. I am still a king, and unless I give your permission, you can’t casually call me by my name.” He looks down at you, arm resting against the edge of his throne, head resting in his hand.

“Y-Yes…sir…” You mumbled, uncertain on if you should actually obey him, or play along until you had the upper hand. You slowly turned your gaze back towards the small opening of light that sat at the far end of the area. Turning your body, you began to take one step, before Sukuna spoke up.

“I can bring you here at any point. Don’t forget that.” He boomed out, before you softly jogged through the water and into the light. Since it was so bright, you squint your eyes, before opening them wide to see you standing in the same spot as when he summoned you. The TV inside the window was showing a new video as when he pulled you away, which confused you.

“Does time pass normally here, but slower there?” You whispered which caught the attention of the students standing next to you, with questioning glances. “O-Oh! I’m reading a..book! Yeah, a book…” You stammer out, sighing once the kids walk away, softly giggling mentioning how ‘crazy that lady sounded’. Removing your gaze from the kids, you glanced back at the window, seeing Sukuna standing there again, a smirk evident on his lips.

“Good girl.”

Quickly, you made your way back home, relieved to be away from the public for when and if he decided to torment you again. You made sure to lock the door, in case someone wanted to try and break in while you may have been ‘away’. Setting your belongings down on the table, you subconsciously looked at yourself in the mirror on the wall across the room, only to catch your breath when Sukuna appeared in the mirror.

“Ah, you miss me already?” He playfully remarked, his arms crossing over his chest, smirking as he watched you clench your fists. “I can always just…bring you back.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir.” You gritted her teeth at the word ‘sir’ leaving your lips, Not believing that you had to obey a curse. Anger radiated off your aura, which made Sukuna laugh at your feeble attempts to brush him off. It actually intrigued him more. Ever since first seeing you, he grew a fondness, always wanting more. After the small talk, you made every attempt to avoid anything with a reflection so you didn’t have to see him again. Oh but how tough that was.

10 o’clock rolled around, and you slipped into bed, ready to go to sleep. After a few minutes of lying in silence, sighing in relief that Sukuna hadn’t tried to speak again, you succumbed to the sleep that crept up on yourself. You had been asleep for a couple of hours, it seemed before your eyes softly fluttered open, only to realize you weren't in bed, but instead, in the same body of water you saw earlier in the day. Panicked, you jolted up, quickly trying to find the exit, until his voice echoed in.

“Oh, I never knew you’d dream about me, sweetheart~”

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #ryomen sukuna #sukuna ryomen #sukuna jjk #sukuna x reader #it’s terrible RIP

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yourheartonfire · 3 years

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A continuation of this snippet about naming your robot after your runaway partner-turned-villain. Original prompt from @the-modern-typewriter 's Patreon.

When the antagonist went to check on the protagonist the next day post kidnapping, they weren't sure what to expect but they expected something. Tears, rage, panic, begging...

Instead they found the protagonist propped up against the pillows on the bed, tossing a balled up sock into the mini-cloud of nanos the antagonist had left to guard them.

The nanos were catching it and throwing it back.

"You left my program in," the protagonist said, not looking at them. They carefully took aim and tossed the sock again. The nanos swarmed in their 'starling' pattern formation, secured the sock and fired it back straight into the protagonist's lap.

"Obviously." The antagonist put down the laptop they'd brought in with them, crossed their arms awkwardly. "Your work was - is - integral to the AI systems."

"But you left the play behaviors in." The protagonist fumbled the sock, their hand a little shaky. Clearly still feeling the aftereffects of the neuro-paralytic. "You could have excised that code. You hated that code."

"I hate you wasting your time and talent on anthropomorphification," the antagonist fired back, relieved to fall back into the old argument. "It's obscene, them making you shape machines into an illusion of life in order to be acceptable to the general public."

"Obscene, huh?" said the protagonist softly. They gave up on the sock, folding their hands in their lap. Still avoiding the antagonist's face. "Too bad we can't all be creatures of perfect logic like you."

The antagonist slid onto the foot of the bed. The protagonist immediately pulled their feet away - one bare, one still socked. The antagonist didn't chase them. Not yet. "I should have expected you to immediately start diagnostics," they murmured.

The protagonist shrugged. "You haven't left me much other enrichment," they said, with a jerk of their chin to the bare cement walls of the makeshift cell the nanos had built. "Not to complain about my own kidnapping, but I did expect a bit more style. An abandoned lighthouse, maybe a gently decaying ancestral mansion? Not locking me in your basement."

"Basement of my ancestral mansion," the antagonist quipped back. The protagonist did not smile, not even slightly. The antagonist cocked their head at their old partner, eying them closely. "Why didn't you tell them? About the fire, about me?"

The protagonist let out a wobbly laugh, clasped their knees tighter to the chest. For the first time they looked at the antagonist, face caught somewhere between love and misery. "Turns out I'm not the creature of pure logic I thought I was either."

"I appreciate your loyalty," the antagonist whispered, wrapping a hand around the protagonist's bare ankle. "For as long as it lasted."

The protagonist jerked away, so hard they almost fell off the bed. "Don't you dare thank me!" they snapped. "I was selfish, and a coward not to tell the truth." They wiped their eyes, raised their chin. "But now the truth is out. They'll find you. Stop you."

The antagonist shook their head. "Not if I destroy them first. If we destroy them first. Please," they added fast, seeing the protagonist about to object. "You know I'm right. That's why you didn't talk."

"No, I-"

The antagonist lunged for them, ignoring the protagonist's flinch in the sheer oxytocin high of touching them again, holding them again, arms wrapped tight about their waist. "We can do everything we dreamed about, change the world, make it better," the antagonist breathed into the protagonist's hair, tracing the shiny burn scars down their neck. "You can blame it all on me, say I threatened you."

"You are threatening me." The protagonist pulled themselves loose. "You've violently kidnapped me. No, [Antagonist]. I love you and I will never, never, never help you kill people, no matter how good your reasoning."

"I'll kill your family," the antagonist blurted out. The protagonist blinked. The antagonist took a breath, tried to slow their own pounding heart. "I said I won't hurt you. I won't. I can't. Even the nanos - I've disabled the defense features on this one. You could attack me, it would just watch. I should have killed you years ago, when you walked in on me faking that stupid lab fire, but..." They swallowed. "But I don't feel the same about your brother in Columbus. Your parents in Tampa. I've never met them. They're just hypotheticals."

The blood had drained from the protagonist's face. The antagonist felt the same way, like the blood was draining from the last chambers of their heart, leaving nothing but ache and ice. There was no coming back from this. They had decided to be okay with that. For the mission.

They stood (and peeling away from the protagonist felt like peeling off their own skin), opened the laptop on the bare plastic desk. "I've loaded in the problem code, the milestones and timelines I expect you to hit. It's slaved to a machine upstairs, so I will be watching you in real time. Any funny business and I'll make you choose my next target. Questions?"

"You said you would never hurt me," the protagonist whispered.

The antagonist swallowed. "Well. We already knew I lie. [Protagonist], keep an eye on them."

The nano swarm gave a pleasing longitudinal wave in acknowledgement. The antagonist shut and locked the door on the two things they loved the most.

#my fiction #hero x villain #heroes and villains #lovers to enemies #roboticists #mad scientist #technically #the modern typewriter #my fics #100

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matchstickdolly · 3 years

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Lucifer 5B: Cutting off Touch to Spite Your Fans

Spoiler warning: This post assumes you've watched all of Lucifer, season 5, part B.

CW: There's plenty I like about season 5, but this is a negative post. I know not everyone is up for negativity about the things they love. I also generally avoid it and (try to) keep my mouth shut about things I don’t like in most spaces. It’s good etiquette. But this is my space, and I have thoughts specifically about purity culture and the treatment of sexuality and trauma in fiction. You’ve been warned!

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I'm a professional writer (not in TV). I've worked with enough bad clients, editors, and other writers to recognize some hallmark behaviors in how both Fox and Netflix gave Lucifer's writers incredibly difficult, unfair, and frankly weird situations to create through.

Fox did them dirty, interfering and ordering too many eps in S3. Netflix did them dirty, ordering 10 eps for S4 when it clearly needed ~13. Then Netflix ordered 10 "final" eps for S5—then, just kidding(!), 6 more after they'd done their writing for the 10. (What the fuck?) And then Netflix ordered 10 more for a "final-final" S6 after the writers had done their best to tell their whole story in S5. (MORE what the fuck.)

Talk about whiplash for creators, and half of those who consume content don't even care to understand such creative pain.

So, there are problems on multiple fronts. There's much I'll forgive writers, accordingly. I go into most shows expecting plotting/pacing issues. I look, instead, for characters and relationships that will triumph over those issues.

Heart is what the show Lucifer has always had in spades, both in its characters and in the immensely committed, wonderful ways the actors have tried to realize the characters' humor, love, trauma, and—most importantly—struggle to find healing. Yet, when given the opportunity to show health alongside another in a relationship, the writers/directors of 5B chose to remove most sexual humor and physical intimacy from their female lead and bi/pan characters to, I feel, sanitize them and troll fans. What happened?

Well, for one, say hi to showrunner Joe Henderson bragging about how the writers decided to be colossal dicks to the fans who helped secure their jobs:

From CBR's 'Lucifer Showrunner Joe Henderson Dissects Season 5B's Chaos'

Have we not suffered sidelined/repressed female characters, "bury your gays," and, oh, Chloe fucking a serial killer enough? Must we also say hello to neutered relationships once characters find stable love (whether same or opposite sex)? The result of withdrawing more sexual humor and physical intimacy from paired characters is an uncomfortable suggestion that they're reformed by "pure" love—more chaste and aloof, more acceptable in polite society. This is only done to end-game committed relationships.*

The writers seem to think they're edging the viewers, but the reality is they're taking traumatized minority characters who rejoiced in sexual freedom, but lacked and craved an emotional connection, and showing they can't have both, or, if they find both, it will never last. They've taken hypersexual characters and said, here, even they can have the love and commitment they desire, but some physical intimacy, especially sexual intimacy, is what they must trade for it.

There's always one more case, phone call, or coincidence interrupting intimacy. Traumas or deaths deserving emotional and physical comfort go on to receive none or only one aspect. Done sometimes, it's fine. Done always, it's sick. Dan dies, and there's no hugging? Really?†

Don't craft characters who crave a full range of emotional and physical intimacy, only to rob them of related scenes every chance you get. That's not complexity. That's bad writing. To even achieve this in 5B, they must squash banter and sideline their female lead yet again.

What a gift to purity culture, which tells us to be more palatable by bottling and buttoning up. That sex should be taboo, but violence glorified. That there is no heated desire among "Good Women," that sexual minorities of all genders shouldn't experience it much at all.

5A is so good. At the very least, it's on the right path (clearly, since the plot payoff from 5x01 to 5x16 is great). It shows a couple working through difficulties and trauma, toward each other emotionally and physically. It even pokes fun at people who think an established relationship means the death of romantic and sexual appeal (a tired and hugely sexist trope). And then... And then 5B reverses that, pretending established relationships are barely physical during emotional struggle and that the honeymoon phase doesn't exist. It robs characters of joy and comfort through physical intimacy when they need it to move through or push beyond trauma.

It's telling that so many fan wishes for Deckerstar are about healing touch and existing in each other's spaces: amending Chloe's spicy PDA history with Cain, Chloe caring for Lucifer's wings, soft family scenes a la Monopoly night and shared meals, morning-afters, etc. Reasonable fans aren't asking for porn; they're asking for connection and humanity. They're asking for writers not to forget characters (and, yes, including hypersexual characters) on their way from Point A to Point B.

That 5B lacks these things isn't a "tee-hee frustrating" slow burn or a cockblock. It is, in so many scenes, excising from characters a core part of what nearly every human and fictional monster craves. And it's a slap in the face to the "found family" trope. When you remove or tamp down a casual physical intimacy that was previously there, characters and their relationships fall flat, even if only partially. They become blunt weapons creators wield against watchers or readers begging for scraps of warmth.

Minorities shouldn't be killed off with ease, and they shouldn't be stifled with ease, either.‡ And maybe there shouldn't be deep trauma driving a wedge in a romantic relationship if you're not going to explore it through that relationship, too—physical intimacy included.

I'm still reserving some judgment. I loved the family drama and the end. (Although, again, where was the physical intimacy? No intimacy when Chloe or Lucifer return from the dead? Really?) I see where they could do awesome things, and could have done more if not for network BS.

But I no longer trust Lucifer's writers and directors. They thought S5 was the end. And what they gave us of Deckerstar, of the relationship that symbolizes health and healing in their fictional world, is this: cold distance. And they got a kick out of doing it, apparently.

If this is a "love letter" to me as a fan, I'm burning it. I can only hope S6 course corrects. If not, the writers who made these choices shouldn't write sexual minority and/or traumatized characters again. If you don't understand most of us, you should stop fucking using us.

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* If you don't believe me about the differences between casual/short-term relationships and end-game relationships in Lucifer, go back and look at how Lucifer and Maze are with strangers in all the other seasons. Look at Chloe's sex dream, her propositioning of Lucifer in a library, her sex with Pierce in the evidence closet. Look at how much physical intimacy there is between Lucifer and Eve, and then between Eve and Maze (if only as a ploy). Across seasons, there are sex/kink jokes and scenes galore.

Compare this to how these same characters are portrayed when with their end-game loves. Notice the gentle pecks on the lips and the huge general drop in sexual humor between 5A and 5B. How boring. Where's the spice these characters had? Also, give me a damn break. Buttoning up in a relationship is contrary to four and a half seasons of emotional character work that's been communicating security in our relationships is personally freeing.

† I'm not just talking about sexual intimacy in this post, though that is a big part of it because of the characters. 5B lacked crucial found family scenes, too.

Chloe should have been at God's family dinner, but being so would have prevented more ham-fisted angst. Chloe never even has a one-on-one with God, probably because that would demand a straight answer about her miracle status, which I would guess will be used to drive yet another wedge between her and Lucifer next season, but we'll see.

In multiple before- and after-work scenes, there was no reason for Lucifer and Chloe to be apart more, even, than they were in S1 and S2. Monopoly night was in S3, for crying out loud. Most horrifying of all? No one touches Chloe after Dan's death, but Trixie. Meanwhile, Linda, Amenadiel, Ella, Maze, and Lucifer all receive physical comfort. No wonder Chloe's tired of being strong.

‡ If you don't think it's offensive that they stuffed all their wlw content for two hypersexual characters into a few clunky, irrational, and chaste scenes that rushed I love yous, a marriage-like proposal, and the mention of soulmates, I don't know what to tell you other than get off my lawn.

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ouyangzizhensdad · 4 years

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On the importance of MianMian: musings on the differences between the novel and CQL (PART 2/2)

If you haven’t already, please read through part one first, otherwise this will probably not be very cohesive or comprehensible. There is also some bonus meta because I keep having thoughts about MianMian.

In part one, I contrasted MianMian’s first appearance in the novel and the web series in order to show how MianMian’s characterisation and position within her society were established quite differently in both works. In this post, I will explore the domino effect of those adaptation choices, as well as consider how the two subsequent appearances of MianMian in the novel got translated into a visual format in CQL. Through this exercise, my goal is not only to illuminate the depth and significance of this minor character in the novel, but also to argue that the way her scenes were adapted in CQL ultimately reduced the impact of the character and excised many of the nuances put into her portrayal despite increasing her presence in the work.

(although kudos to CQL for casting Ann Wang because I do not get tired of looking at her face: look at that smile 😳)

The Servant’s Daughter Valued Jin Cultivator Standing up to a Room of Powerful Cultivators

In the novel, we meet MianMian for a second time after the Sunshot campaign has ended. Cultivators from the main sects and allied sects (including some who used to be loyal to the Wens!) are discussing at Jinlintai Wei Wuxian’s actions after he protected the Wens and set up residence on Mass Grave Hill. By that time, it appears her position in her sect, and even her sect’s position, has grown. We can speculate as to why (my personal take is that MianMian proved herself during the war and that her sect is one of the sect who pledged loyalty to the Jin and gained influence as a result). What is important is that she goes from someone who is so inconsequential she might have not even have been a disciple yet when we met her to someone who stands next to a sect leader (who we can safely assume in this context to be her sect leader). A lot is hinted about her character and what she experienced since we last saw her through that small and innocuous detail.

Suddenly, a careful voice interjected, “It’s not killing indiscriminately, is it?”

Lan Wangji seemed to have entered a realm of zen that blocked all of his senses. Hearing this, however, he moved, looking over. The one who spoke was a young woman with a fair face, standing beside one of the sect leaders.

I will not repeat here the entirety of her speech, which highlights the hypocrisy and the bad faith of the sects, and particularly the Jin sect’s unwillingness to shoulder any blame for their deplorable treatment of the Wens. Instead, I find important to highlight how the other cultivators present react to MianMian based on her positionality.

First, MianMian’s opinions are undercut by the people present due to the fact that she is a woman. Her motivations for speaking out are reduced to the irrational ramblings of a maiden in love.

“You can stop arguing,” someone sneered suddenly. “We don’t want to hear the comments of someone who has other motives.”

The woman’s face flushed.

“Explain things,” she said, raising her voice. “What do you mean, that I have other motives?”

“There’s no need for me to say anything. You know deep down and we know too. You fell for him back in the cave of the Xuanwu just because he flirted with you? You’re still arguing for him, calling white black no matter how irrational it is. Ha, women will always be women.”

The incident of Wei Wuxian saving a damsel in distress in the cave of the Xuanwu was indeed once a topic of conversation. Thus, many people realized immediately that this young woman was ‘MianMian’.

At once, somebody murmured, “So that’s why. Explains how she’s so desperate as to speak up for Wei Wuxian…”

“Irrational?” she fumed. “Calling white black? I’m just being considerate as it stands. What does it have to do with the fact that I’m a woman? You can’t be rational with me so you’re attacking me with other things?”

Then, when members of her own sect disparage her for speaking up, they suggest that her place in the discussion, in this palace of gilded power and privilege, is ultimately illegitimate or at the very least incredibly easy to render illegitimate.

“Stop wasting your time on her. That this kind of person actually belongs to our sect, that she was even able to find her way into the Golden Pavilion; I feel ashamed standing alongside her.

Many of those who spoke against her were from the same sect.

In this situation, not even her fellow sect members are willing to come to her defense or to give her the benefit of the doubt; she is to be shamed and separated from them, lest her actions reflect badly on their own standing.

MianMian’s choice to leave her sect behind is meaningful because she is not privileged. She does not have anyone powerful in her corner to back her up. She does not have many options; people act like she should be glad to even have made it this far, and we can infer that she only achieved her current position due to her skills and hard work. It is also meaningful because she is making that choice while knowing that she’s giving up on the privileges of the social position that she has worked to achieve. The fact that she is giving up on something big is highlighted by the reactions of many cultivators after her departure, who think she will come crawling back to find once more the security and privilege of the position she left behind.

Saying nothing, MianMian turned around and left. A while later, someone laughed. “If you’re taking it off, then don’t put it on again, if you’re so capable!”

“Who does she think she is… leaving as she pleases? Who cares? What is she trying to prove?”

Soon, some began to agree, “Women will always be women. They quit just after you say a few harsh words. She’ll definitely come back on her own, a couple of days later.”

“There’s no doubt. After all, she finally managed to turn from the daughter of a servant to a disciple, haha…”

Beyond what it means for her characterisation and the themes explored in the novel, this moment is significant because there are clear parallels between how she is treated in that moment and how WWX is talked about for protecting the Wen remnants and, later, for ‘deserting’ the Jiang sect. In fact, just before MianMian speaks out, sect leaders call WWX a “servant” and the “son of a servant” when underlying the ‘nerve’ of his ‘arrogance’ toward the sects with his actions.

One of the sect leaders added, “To be honest, I’ve wanted to say this since a long time ago. Although Wei Wuxian did a few things during the Sunshot Campaign, there are many guest cultivators who did more than him. I’ve never seen anyone as full of themselves as him. Excuse my bluntness, but he’s the son of a servant. How could the son of a servant be so arrogant?”

These passages are also reminiscent of the way WWX is discussed by cultivators celebrating his death in the prologue:

“That’s right, good riddance! If the YunmengJiang sect had not adopted him, educated him—this Wei Ying would have been a mediocre scoundrel all his life, nothing but riffraff…… what else could he be! The former head of the Jiang clan treated him as his own son, but what a son! [...]”

“I can’t believe Jiang Cheng really let this arrogant manservant live for so long. If it were me, when this Wei first defected, I wouldn’t have just stabbed him; I’d have cleaned house straight away. Then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to commit all those deranged acts later. When it comes to these sorts of people, how can you even take sentiments like ‘same clan’, ‘same sect’, or ‘childhood loyalty’ into consideration?”

Due to the circumstances of their birth, even people who manage to achieve a higher position in society hold a tenuous grasp on the power and respect they have gained: their legitimacy is fraught. And even if they play the game right, the lines of legitimate belonging are always ready to be renegotiated by those in power. Despite the “few things” he did during the Sunshot Campaign that aligned with the interest of the sects, and despite being raised among the gentry in the Jiang sect and being perceived as a gongzi, WWX remains in the imaginary of the cultivators who see themselves as the legitimate holders of power as someone who needs to “remember his place”, someone who should be grateful and loyal as he has been “allowed” to raise in influence and be treated well in society despite being the son of a servant. And so when he stands against the interests of the sects, he’s not just betraying them: he betraying the social order which gives them legitimacy. This is directly tied to MianMian’s treatment in this scene. In the novel, MianMian is not only shamed and dismissed because she speaks out against the sects: it is also, if not primarily, because she did not, in the process, “remember her place”.

The scene as it is presented in the novel thus goes out of its way to set up a clear parallel between WWX and MianMian, not only in regards to their righteousness, but also in regards to how they are perceived and treated for being the children of servants. It also takes pain to underline the unfair treatment of women in that society. Moreover, if we’re only considering MianMian’s characterisation, it says a lot to see her have reached this level of importance in her sect despite her circumstances and then for her to let it all go.

In CQL? You’ve probably guessed it; all of these nuances are evacuated from the text. On top of the fact that MianMian continues to be established as a valued member of the Jin sect, the scene is cut short and a lot of the censure sent her way is excised. There are no mentions of her ‘having made her way’ into the room of powerful people who are allowed have an opinion on the state of the world. No mentions of her low social background and no mocking that she will crawl back to her sect after realising she can’t make it into the world without their influence and support. No dismissal of her based on the fact that she is a woman, or suggestions that she is standing up for the YLLZ only because she is enamoured with him. The scene is turned into a pale shadow of its original.

Instead of these elements, we do get a gasp from JZX (which becomes a dangling plot thread because he does not stand up for her nor does he reach out for her even though she’s supposed to be his good friend, nor do we see him being conflicted about being unable to beyond his gasp) and MianMian telling JGS that she is leaving his sect, which I’ll admit is pretty baller. But it does not even come close to having the significance and thematic implications of the scene as presented in the novel. CQL!MianMian stands up against the organized smear campaign against WWX and the sects’ unwillingness to accept their faults, and is only disregarded for having spoken against them: not because of who she was while she was raising doubts about their evaluation of the right and wrong. And that is significant, because it undercuts the discussions the novel explores through so many other characters about the impacts of being considered inferior by others.

The Travelling Rogue Cultivator who Stayed Home

Finally, in the novel, we meet MianMian once more when her daughter, Xiao MianMian, stumbles upon something she should not have seen while accompanying her parents on a night-hunt. The reason their paths cross is that, just like Wangxian, MianMian feels compelled to pursue night-hunts other cultivators disregard for their lack of glory in order to help the common people. This is her life mission as a travelling rogue cultivator: differently put, she goes where the chaos is. This set-up serves to highlight that MianMian and Wangxian are like-minded and share the same definition of what it means to be ‘Righteous’.

He asked, “Did you come here to night-hunt as well?”

Luo Qingyang nodded, “Yes. I heard spirits are haunting a nameless graveyard on this mountain, disturbing the lives of the people here, so I came to see if there’s any way I could help. Have you two cleaned it up already?”

The night-hunt also serves to reintroduce the theme of deception and rumours, and the ways in which MianMian is a character who is not swayed by public opinions but knows how easily others may be.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji exchanged a glance. “This was a lie too. No lives were lost. We looked it up. Only a few villagers who robbed the graves were bedridden for a while after being scared by the ghosts, and another broke his own leg when running away. Apart from these, there were no casualties. All those lives were made up for dramatic purposes.”

“So this was what happened?” interjected Luo Qingyang’s husband. “That’s absolutely shameless!”

“Oh, these people…” sighed Luo Qingyang. She seemed as if she remembered something, shaking her head, “They’re the same everywhere.”

This is because in the novel MianMian is tied to many themes, and always in a positive manner. Like WWX, she represents the good that is stifled by an unjust social order. She also represents the people who choose to defy and deviate from this social order to pursue a righteous life rather than trying to find vindication and power within that very social order (ie JGY or XY). Like the juniors, MianMian is a character that represents hope for the cultivation world, the potential for small but significant change. Like WWX and LWJ, she represents integrity in the face of the corrupting influences of power and politics, as well as the desire to protect the common people. Like Cangse Sanren, she represents the courage to make her own path in the world, and to marry for love with no considerations for social status or conventions, and the decision to becoming a travelling rogue cultivator.

On top of all these great things this scene accomplish, it is also just incredibly cute. After their talk, their parting is described like such: “Soon, the group had gone down the mountain, and Wei Wuxian could only say goodbye to them with some regret, continuing on another path alongside Lan Wangji.” Honestly, my ‘WWX and LWJ become Xiao MianMian’s shushus’ agenda is alive and well and I will not accept anything else.

In CQL, however, the reunion happens by pure coincidence. The scene is in actuality a mash-up between the reunion we have in the novel and another scene that takes place earlier, in which fugitives WWX and LWJ enter the home of strangers as they are looking for some water (and end up frolicking in hay).

Simply by changing the circumstances and the setting of the reunion, something is lost of the thematic connection between WWX/Wangxian and MianMian, even though viewers still get told that MianMian is someone who night-hunts. Without entering into the specific debate of whether show don’t tell is the only acceptable storytelling strategy, I think it’s fair to say that it is more effective to run into MianMian as she is night hunting based on the same rumours of hauntings as Wangxian instead of seeing her get home, pull a sword willy-nilly after hearing something suspicious in her backyard and finally getting told that she was out night hunting.

Moreover, having to recreate most of the beats of MianMian’s last appearance into this new context seems to have been quite confusing to the CQL production team, and seems to have breed, as a result, a lack of internal coherence to the scene (cut between the end of ep 43 and the beginning of ep 44), regardless of any of its other pitfalls as an adaptation.

In the CQL version, when we meet the family on their way back to their home, Xiao MianMian had been running around and her father chastises her by telling her something along the lines of “Don’t run around, what if you had gotten caught by the YLLZ?”, thereby suggesting that MianMian’s husband believes what is said about WWX. To this, Xiao MianMian replies But Mom Says he’s a Good Guy Though. Obviously, the intent of the writers was to show that MianMian had never bought into the rumours about WWX. However, this exchange makes seemingly no sense if one thinks about it for longer than a second. It suggests that MianMian had never talked about this topic with her husband or that he had never heard her talk about the YLLZ with their daughter. Considering how dangerous the YLLZ is said to be, and that they were night-hunting while he was a fugitive, I don’t see how that would have not come up even if for some unlikely reason she had until then only talked about the YLLZ with her daughter. Of course, one could suggest that MianMian’s husband says this to tease their daughter, fully aware that the YLLZ’s reputation of swallowing children is a tall tale, but the tone is not quite right? And it does not jive with the fact that MianMian is not on board with defaming people: I don’t think she’d be okay with her husband knowingly using the myth of the YLLZ to scare their kid into obedience because it’s convenient to do so? A miss.

To make matters worse, when WWX later asks MianMian is she’s back from night-hunting, Xiao MianMian says that they are back from searching for the YLLZ. First, there is a clear lack of coherence with the previous exchange between Xiao MianMian and her father. And again, it’s hard to get to the meaning of that exchange: is it implying that MianMian was looking for WWX to offer him her help? She certainly doesn’t once she does meet him, so that appears unlikely or at least it’s a plothole/dangling plot thread. But why be looking for him, if she knows he’s not the monster the rumours make him out to be? Clearly, the writers wanted to tell the viewers that MianMian is a rogue cultivator, and figured that having her back from a night-hunt would be enough: but why this line by Xiao MianMian about searching for the YLLZ? Is it just the fancy of a kid, who makes up her own stories while her parents pursue other cases (especially since MianMian says she was looking for puppets)? But then Xiao MianMian does say that ‘we’ were searching for him...

I can’t figure it out. I find it even weirder that, when WWX asks Xiao MianMian whether she is scared of the scary YLLZ (although she’s literally just said moments before that she was not scared of him in her exchange with her father that WWX certainly heard), Xiao MianMian starts replying that she is not scared and MianMian cuts her, apologizing to WWX that he daughter is too young and naive. What is she apologizing for? How is her daughter naive for not being scared of the YLLZ? Or is she apologizing for her daughter suggesting they were searching for the YLLZ? If so, why cut her now and not when she suggested that they were searching for him?

What’s happening in this scene?!

Also, even an attempt to keep lines as close to what they were in the novel ends up backfiring with the new context. In the novel, out night-hunting, MianMian asks “ 什么人” when she sees WWX come out from the direction of a graveyard (she has not seen LWJ yet). Knowing that she might suspect him of being a corpse or a spirit considering that it is night and that he is leaving a graveyard said to be haunted, WWX responds “不管是什么人，总归是人，不是别的东西 “ (No matter who I am, I’m a person after all, and not something else). In CQL, when MianMian hears a sound in her backyard, she asks “ 什么人” and, after LWJ comes out and is recognized by MianMian, WWX still responds (??) with a similar yet slightly different sentence: “ 不管是谁，反正是个人，不是东西 “ (No matter who I am, anyway I am a person, not a thing). This exchange in the context of the scene in CQL baffles me because: why would there be then an expectation that they would not be a person in this situation? Why would he say that after MianMian has seen and recognized LWJ, thus knowing full well that it is a person and not a spirit or a corpse? As well, why change “ 别的东西 “ (something else/different thing) for “ 东西 “ (thing) since MianMian’s question does not imply by itself that she thinks they are not people since she asks "什么人” (literally: what person?), making WWX’s statement that he is “not a thing” completely come out of nowhere? And it’s so much more perplexing than his original statement that he is not “something else” from a human.

I’m spending time on these two lines because I find them to be a sort of microcosm of some of the questionable adaptation choices made in CQL: at times the web series chooses to keep things from the novel even after changing the context in which these elements unfold without understanding how these no longer work within their new context. Yet, at the same time, it feels comfortable making what appear on the surface to be minute changes without thinking through the implications of them, and thus changing the point of these elements through these minute modifications.

Aside from these elements which prevent this moment in CQL to give us a scene that is internally coherent, let’s further interrogate some of the adaptational changes made between the novel and the web series, and their impact on the themes and characterisation.

One change that conflicts with the characterisation and the thematic discussion regards WWX inquiring about MianMian’s husband. Unlike in the novel, where WWX engages him in a little bit of chitchat and then feels forced by conventions to ask to which sect he belongs, CQL makes it seem as if it is an information WWX wants to ask because it’s literally the first thing he says to him, not even after a salutation or a “well met” (I will be magnanimous and believe that that choice to do so was for the sake of brevity and not because the preceding dialogue had not been written in the novel and the CQL writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with something). This, however, makes it look like WWX puts a lot of importance in knowing someone’s allegiance to a sect, which is the exact opposite of how he feels about it.

She pulled the man up, “This is my husband.”

Noticing that they held no malicious intent, the man softened visibly. After some chatter, Wei Wuxian asked out of convenience, “Which sect do you belong to and which kind of cultivation do you practice?”

The man answered frankly, “None of them.”

Luo Qingyang gazed at her husband, smiling, “My husband isn’t of the cultivating world. He used to be a merchant. But, he’s willing to go night-hunting with me…”

It was both rare and admirable that an ordinary person, and a man at that, would be willing to give up his originally stable life and dare travel the world with his wife, unafraid of danger and wander. Wei Wuxian could not help feeling respect for him.

Of course, without WWX’s thought process provided to us in the narration, the implications of MianMian’s husband being originally a merchant are a little bit lost in CQL, even if CQL!MianMian provides that piece of information. Of course, CQL could have chosen to include WWX’s musings, since it does include in this very scene some voice-over thoughts earlier. It is a shame though, that it does not, since MianMian and her husband are clear parallels for WWX’s parents in that regard: his father also left a stable life to travel the world with his wife.

Although, to be fair, CQL!MianMian is no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world, so it is not like her husband made the decision to travel the world with her. Indeed, by frankensteining the two scenes from the novel, MianMian is by default no longer a rogue cultivator who travels the world: she is a rogue cultivator, sure, in that she does not belong to a sect, but she is a rogue cultivator with a home she clearly needs to inhabit during the day, what with the fact that they raise animals (we see little chicks in the background and there are piles of hay), and who night-hunts close enough to her home to be able to come back home in the morning. Moreover, without the context of meeting MianMian at the same glory-less night-hunt as Wangxian, it is harder to express the idea that MianMian is someone who chooses, like them, to do so for the common good and not for any prestige or rewards. MianMian is no longer another cultivator who goes ‘where the chaos is’ and, in terms of positive female representation, it is truly a shame. After all, the novel frames this as a positive and admirable trait which we see in our two main (male) protagonists: to have a woman follow, independently, the same path as them is meaningful.

Finally, instead of the scene closing with a regretful parting that hints at the sense of kinship between MianMian’s family and Wangxian, we get a truly (imo) patronizing ending. In CQL, their conversation is disrupted by threatening sounds. LWJ then instructs MianMian to stay in her home and protect Xiao MianMian while LWJ and WWX take care of things. So feminism..... such empowerment... To be honest, if CQL meant to change things and put MianMian in scenes where she wasn’t originally, why not have her go with Wangxian? Why not have her be there for the Mass Grave Hill Siege? Why not have her leave her daughter with her husband and let her be a badass? Instead, they conveniently check her out of the action after putting her directly in the middle of it. Instead of having MianMian be away from the sects and doing her own rogue cultivator thing as the events of the novels unfolded in WWX’s second life, explaining her absence, CQL reintroduces her just before an important moment but chooses to send her away once more, to stay home and protect her daughter, probably because they did not want to take the time and energy to figure out how and where she would fit into these scenes in which she had not be written in the novel. This is the kind of adaptational choice that makes me question why people consider CQL a more progressive work of fiction with regards to its treatment of female characters.

Final Musings: sometimes, less is more

Does an increase to the number of appearances of a character shape their impact on the audience? Or, conversely, does it dilute their meaning within and their impact on the text? There is not a simple answer to that question. Certainly, repetition is in itself a literary device, and many readers need salient and blunt reminders to get a message across, the likes of: the important characters are the ones you see the most often. Likewise, having a character feature more often in a work can provide the necessary breathing space to explore more and in more depth their psychology, motivations, past, actions, etc. However, the simple act of increasing the presence of a character does not inherently increase their impact on a work of fiction nor does it increase the nuances and depths of that character.

It is possible to adhere to a cynical or optimistic perspective regarding CQL’s decision to feature MDZS’ female characters more prominently. It is not hard to divine why the decision could have been made solely for the financial incentive of “pandering” to a female audience who dares to want to see themselves on screen. Conversely, one can imagine a production team animated by good intentions, who simply want to give more limelight to these female characters. Whether purely motivated by a profit-based logic or solely well-intentioned, or at a vector of both motives, it is clear that the CQL production did not increase the screen presence of MDZS’s female characters out of a desire to tell a stronger, more effective version of the original story they were working with. And that is why the urge to quantify good representation will always end up failing us in my opinion.

While it can be productive to consider trends, it does not give us a better media landscape or better individual works of fiction; it does not necessarily give us more impactful or better written female characters. This type of analysis urges us to see female characters as female first, without truly attempting to understand their purpose and treatment within the story. While MDZS has fewer female characters, these characters showcase different personalities and occupy different positions within the social world of the novel; they have arcs and thematic resonance and they cannot be simply replaced by a “sexy lamp” without disrupting the plot completely. They are also often given a surprising amount of depth, if readers are willing to pay attention to all that is found in the text and in the subtext.

For such a long novel, MDZS is able to remonstrate a certain amount of restraint wrt its storytelling. The timespan it wants to cover is expansive, its cast of characters not insignificant, and the story it aims to tell is ambitious. It is easy to imagine a meandering version of MDZS where many more characters are present, including many more female characters, or where the existing female characters get an extended presence within the narrative. But would those female characters have been more impactful? Would the story told have been a better one? The way the CQL production team chose to adapt MianMian hints that this is not a done conclusion.

(+ bonus MianMian meta)

#mdzs meta #mdzs #mianmian #luo qingyang #cql vs mdzs #mo dao zu shi #modaozushi #IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!#this is my manifesto

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

How many fucking times must I talk about this movie?

I feel like this movie doesn’t need an introduction. Everyone knows this film. Its reputation precedes it. It didn’t bomb and it’s not generally considered one of the worst films ever made (at least on the level of films like Robot Monster or The Cat in the Hat), but this movie is easily one of the most divisive films ever made. This film has generated enough arguments that, if we harnessed the energy of all the flame wars it has caused, we could probably power the entire world until the heat death of the universe.

With the impending release of Zach Snyder’s bloated redo of Justice League, I’ve decided to go back and ask myself of this film here… is it really that bad?

THE GOOD

Here comes the most uncontroversial opinion: the action scenes in this movie rock (or at least two of them do). The standouts are the titular showdown, which almost makes sitting through the rest of the movie worth it, and the epic warehouse fight Batman gets into, which is like something straight out of the Arkham games. It’s so good. And aside from that, a lot of the cinematography in the film is good. The film knows how to look good, though unfortunately it does end up being a lot of style with little substance.

youtube

On the subject of Batman, I think Ben Affleck is a great and inspired choice. I certainly think he’s worthy of standing alongside Batmans like Clooney and Keaton, easily embodying both the Dark Knight and Billionaire Playboy aspects fairly well, though the writing does not always handle him quite as well as it should (we’ll get to that soon enough). Henry Cavill, while still a rather dour Superman, is as good as ever as Superman, and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was a great choice here, especially since she didn’t have control so that she could insert anti-Arab racism, like some DCEU movies.

Perhaps one of the movies most impressive feats is how, in an uncharacteristic moment of brevity, it manages to condense the backstory of Batman into the prologue, getting it out of the way and not making us sit through yet another Batman origin film. This is literally the only thing the movie has over the MCU; where that franchise just has the character Spider-Man inexplicably in existence without even a hint of his origins, they just get Batman’s tragic backstory out of the way so we can see him beating the crap out of people. If more superhero movies want to take this route and just condense the backstory into an opening montage like this, I’d be down for it.

THE BAD

I really could just say “most of the movie” but that’s such a cop out. Let’s actually look at the problems. Let’s work our way up through the things from least problematic to most, shall we?

The best place to start is what Zach Snyder did to Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen is made into a CIA spook who is brutally killed early on, and yes, that was Jimmy Olsen. Snyder put him in to shock audiences with his senseless murder, and also because he felt the character had no place in his series. Does making Watchmen just turn people into joyless husks who like to horribly bastardize iconic characters? Jimmy Olsen is ultimately a small microcosm of the film, but he is the sum total of everything wring with the early DCEU. He is bleak, soulless, and shows a critical lack of understanding about the comics and why people enjoy them.

Now let’s move on to the more exciting problem to discuss: the villains. I don’t even think it’s worth wasting much time discussing what’s wrong with KGBeast. While it is kind of interesting they’d think to use the guy at all, the fact he never dons the costume and dies by the end of the film is unfathomably lame for a character named KGBeast.

Now, onto the main antagonist, and the most infamous part of the movie: Lex Luthor.

Lex Luthor is horribly, horribly miscast. Jesse Eisenberg is a great actor for sure, and he’s effective in movies like Now You See Me, The Social Network, and the Zombieland films. But here he is being asked to play one of the most diabolical cunning geniuses in comic book history, and rather than play him as such, he plays him like a cartoonish twit. This Lex is utterly unrecognizable as Superman’s greatest foe. Does anyone think Lex Luthor would send a jar of piss to someone as a joke before he blows them up? That’s more something the Joker would do on an off day. Lex is not cunning, not intimidating, and not diabolical in the slightest, and yet there are moments where Eisenberg’s acting chops shine through and Lex, for a moment, is almost engaging. Luthor really suffers the way Doctor Doom tends to in film adaptations: the filmmaker clearly doesn’t get why people like the villain, and decide to do some weird, unique take that will only cause to alienate fans.

But perhaps the worst of them all is Doomsday. Doomsday has exactly one claim to fame, and that’s killing Superman, so as soon as he shows up if you have even a passing awareness of the character you know how the movie is going to end, which robs the film of tension for its last battle. The fact he also appears with little buildup and doesn’t have any characterization doesn’t help; Doomsday is just the Big Gray CGI Blob that superhero movies try and pass off as a final boss for the heroes to fight. This has worked precisely once, in Iron Man. The Incredible Hulk and Venom did not make it work, and this film is nowhere close to being in the same ballpark as Venom.

By and far the biggest problem, though, is the movie’s incredible length and its very existence in the franchise at this point in time. This is an epic superhero crossover in which two of the biggest comic book characters of all time fight and then team up… And it is the second movie in a franchise. While they do a good job of establishing Batman rather quickly, Wonder Woman comes out of nowhere. And then at the end, Superman ‘dies.’ We have had one single movie prior to this to make a connection to the guy, and yet here he is getting a temporary comic book death with no buildup whatsoever that we know is going to be reversed sooner than later because the movie telegraphs this to us.

Imagine if, instead of building up the character over the course of a decade and putting him in all sorts of different stories, the MCU went right from Iron Man to Endgame. You go from a simpler, character-driven piece to a massive crossover where a hero dies right away, and it doesn’t give anyone time to care. Tony Stark had multiple films worth of characterization under his belt before they threw him in a crossover, let alone killed him, but Snyder expects you to give a damn about a Superman who just started his career in the previous movie of a franchise.

And the ass-numbing length of the movie is no justification. Even before the director’s cut came out this film was a slog, and the director’s cut really does nothing to earn its existence. All it does is add more runtime to an already tedious and bloated film, leading to the same exact ending and fixing none of the overarching narrative problems of the thing. The problem with any director’s cut is that ultimately the movie is still going to be Dawn of Justice, it’s still going to lead to extremely rushed character decisions, and it’s still going to be a mess. You’d have to redo half of the film to make this into a worthwhile and coherent narrative that’s actually worthy of being an entry in a superhero franchise.

And to top it all off, the movie spends far too much time foreshadowing for its own good. People criticized The Mummy for shoehorning in way too many shared universe elements right off the bat, and if that movie was bad for it, so is this one. The cameos from all the members of the Justice League, while striking, could be excised from the plot with little to no impact, and the Knightmare sequence is just excessive and weird.

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Is It Really THAT Bad?

The answer to this question has never been harder.

On the one hand, this film does have some merit. There is some good casting choices, good cinematography, good action… But then, on the other hand, the film is overly long, pretentious, has poor writing and dialogue, mishandles everyone aside from Superman, and is just incredibly unpleasant.

This film is in many ways the exact problem Christopher Nolan created with his Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan, by grounding the fanciful characters of comic books into a realistic setting, created a climate in which someone could suck any sort of joy or meaning out of comics. The success of his films meant that people would see dark, gritty realism as preferable to joyous, colorful escapism, and the negative effects of his films, however good you find them, are still felt today even as filmmakers are finally shaking off the grit. Dawn of Justice is the zenith of Nolan’s style of superhero film. There is nothing fun, joyful, or engaging to be found here; it is simply the characters you know and love forced into dark, miserable scenarios that ends in death and misery. Where’s the fun? Where’s the color? Where’s the wonder, the excitement, where is any of it? This film paints a bleak and miserable and hopeless picture of a world of superheroes. It really makes me think of this rather famous comic panel:

I absolutely hate this movie, but not because I think it’s bad. I hate it because it has enough good ideas where it should be the best thing ever, but it really isn’t. It’s a miserable slog of a film that does nothing to justify or earn its massive runtime whatsoever. It really does belong somewhere between 5 and 6 on IMDB, because I can almost see why people like it, but it just isn’t even remotely close to being how good its fan say it is. This is not a good superhero movie, and this is not how we should want superhero movies to be. There is a market for serious superhero fare of course, and there’s no reason that these films can’t engage with mature themes or anything, don’t get me wrong. But this is absolutely not the way to do it.

#Is it really that bad #IIRTB #Review #movie review #Batman v Superman #Dawn of Justice #Zach Snyder #Batman #Superman #DCEU

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scobbe · 3 years

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I had this breakthrough about the not-straight woman a couple days ago thanks to my old friend Carl Jung. Like I know I am a bit backwards at times but I did a lot of reading about his more spiritual stuff and never really paid much attention to the psychology (archtypes, sure, whatever), but a couple days ago I came across two bits about his “shadow self” theory, the unconscious part of ourselves that we aren’t fully aware of but we notice in other people.

And it suddenly made sense that the not-straight woman annoys me because she actually carries a huge load of my shadow self. One example, when she was talking about gender/sexuality, I was like whoa, this is like 2013 me, right down to not wanting to choose a label. But I fought SO hard to come to love and accept being a lesbian and claim that word for myself that it pisses me off to see someone dilly-dallying around their own identity. There is a “Why can’t you just!!!” infuriation that isn’t actually directed at her (because she has to take her own journey and I wouldn’t want to interfere with that) but rather the past-me I can still be infuriated by. Because, really, I was ashamed when I was her and there is still a sense of shame that I ever was that way.

And likewise with her neediness, her loudness, her desire for attention, her trying so hard to perform friendship instead of just relaxing into it. All super-deep fears and insecurities in myself and behaviors I know I’ve manifested at different times in my life. And like I know I have grown beyond them I know she will grow beyond them, too, but when I am with her they are raw and apparent and right in my face, and I have been feeling like I could get dragged right back down to that primordial scobbe, dismissive and defensive and constantly self-referential out of fear of being passed over. It’s like she embodies all the parts of myself I’ve ever wanted to transcend, and all the fears I have had of being “mistaken for being like her” come from that proximity.

And honestly, because we are friendly there is the temptation to mirror her in order to get along, to drop back into the commiseration, the skeptical, anxious world-view, the seeking escape from the weight of unhealed trauma by chatting all day (much of my life from 2009-2015.) And that is what has been feeling like it’s drowning me, like I’m being forced into being a person I no longer want to be. Like I worked so hard to grow beyond it and now it’s all for nothing, here we are back at the starting line again, like I can’t escape it.

But if I see her as my shadow-self, removed from me, as if excised and now outside of myself, if I acknowledge my growth and stand firm in where I am now, then when I’m around her she cannot drag me down. Rather she reminds me, by opposition, of the kind of person I want to be now. Reminds me not to fall into negativity, not to lose my sense of humor and forgiveness, not to see things in black & white. And it’s like, accompanying me like that, I would be grateful for her, in order to feel that push of polar opposite driving me further from where I was and closer to where I want to be.

And I think -- I hope -- that in that dynamic she could then see her own possibilities, that there can be healing from trauma and a new focus on the present instead of the past. Either that or we will eventually push each other away entirely, which might happen as well, but in the meantime at least there is a way to make something positive out of a difficult situation.

#difficult for me at least #Jung #shadow-self

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blithe--spirit · 3 years

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ANTI-CYCLING “CELEBRITY” ARSEHOLES

Every now and again I’ll be reporting on those in the public eye who have expressed an opposition to cycling, or the provision of facilities for cyclists.

No 1: Nigel Farage (a familiar irritant for those of us in the UK, probably not that well known to you folks elsewhere. A fox-hunting racist, homophobe, “man of the people” elitist and general arsehole. Not a big fan of hardcore Jamaican dub).

Article by Peter Walker, November 2020, taken from The Guardian.

Bike-friendly measures introduced during lockdown have led rightwing populists to revive much-disproved myths

If you’re a fan of the historical notion that progress doesn’t move as a straight, upward line but tends to be a bit more wiggly, then there was an article about cycling in this week’s Mail on Sunday that very much proved the point.

Anti-cyclist pieces in the Mail are not exactly uncommon, but this one was notable because its key argument was that cyclists should “pay road tax”.

If this blogpost were a film, this would be the moment to insert a sudden, soundtrack-halting needle scratch, with a narrator filling the sudden silence to say: “Yes, road tax.”

You know the one. Abolished in 1937. Replaced by vehicle excise duty (VED), which is, as has been explained countless times, very much not a tax to pay for roads – the money goes into the central pot, as do almost all tax revenues.

VED is also based on exhaust emissions, meaning that even if cyclists were liable for it, bikes would be, as with dozens of electric and hybrid cars, charged precisely £0 a year.

The idea that cyclists are freeloaders because they don’t pay “road tax” has been so thoroughly debunked over so many years that, these days, it is mainly the preserve of anonymous Twitter accounts.

And yet it has returned. Even more notable was the author of this Mail on Sunday opinion piece – Nigel Farage. And to find Farage weighing in on the subject of cycling interests me.

In political terms, we are currently amid what could be called version 3.0 Farage. Brexit is all but over, and his plan B of being a Donald Trump camp follower/media pundit took a significant dent at the weekend.

But Farage is nothing if not adaptable, and is currently reinventing himself as something of an all-purpose, hard-right, populist culture warrior, whether warning about an “invasion” of asylum seekers in the Channel or battling lockdown.

His article on cycling is both at times openly ludicrous – he opines that the “vast majority” of road cyclists frequenting the Kent lanes where he lives are also most likely remainers – but also illustrative of the language adopted by rightwing populists, featuring dehumanising terms such as likening cyclists to “a strange swarm of insects”.

Farage has, presumably, held these golf club bore opinions about cyclists for many years. So why air them now? The clue comes later in the article, when he condemns government spending on ways to boost walking and cycling amid lockdown, such as temporary bike lanes and so-called low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs).

This is the key. Cycling is in the news, and it means that once again we must face a rash of unsavoury anti-cyclist opinion pieces, among which Farage’s is just the latest.

A fortnight ago, a columnist in the Times used proposed changes to the Highway Code to better protect vulnerable road users to complain about cyclists “stamping their feet”, saying “the fact they’re pedalling the eco-friendly option has already gone to their heads”. This is another traditional trope about those on two wheels – they’re smug, self-righteous or, as Farage put it, “pious”.

On the same day, the Telegraph got in on the act, hosting a ridiculous Twitter “debate” that started with the argument: “Country walks can be ruined by arrogant cyclists expecting walkers to know they are coming up behind at 40mph.”

A reminder: even in a brief time trial, professional cyclists competing in the Tour de France do well to manage 30mph. This is yet another complaint about cyclists – they’re always too fast, except when they’re too slow and holding up motor traffic. Schrödinger’s cyclist.

What should we make of this mini-resurgence in much-disproved myths about cyclists? My view is that it is in no small part based on a sense of threat. Not threat from cyclists themselves – it remains extraordinarily difficult to seriously harm another person while riding a bike.

The threat instead is being felt by powerful interests who fear their decades of dominance is being threatened. The government’s response to coronavirus, in terms of how to keep people moving when capacity on public transport is necessarily limited, has not actually been that revolutionary. Yes, £250m in emergency spending is welcome but, in road transport terms, that is less than a fifth of a very expensive roundabout.

My sense is that the rapid change to life brought by coronavirus is making some people who habitually drive fear that the roads could be next, and both the rhetoric and political pressure are ramping up. More than a dozen Conservative MPs have signed a letter calling, in effect, for all new work on cycle lanes and LTNs to halt.

My worry is this pressure could soon have an impact. Nigel Farage is nothing if not a politician who can sense which way the wind is blowing. So yes, let’s laugh at silly notions of road tax and 40mph weekend cyclists. But keep a watch out for the bigger picture.

#cycling #bicycle #cycle #cyclist #bicycling #biking #bike #biker #Bicyclist

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alindakb · 3 years

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Draco’s choice - by Alinda

“Stop it,” Draco says. “Just stop, will you.” He sits down on the edge of the desk at the front of the classroom and looks down at his feed. “It’s not like it will change anything,” he whispers.

Harry signs and walks towards Draco. “But it does, doesn’t it?” he says. He takes Draco’s head in his hands and lifts it so they can look each other in the eye. “You can’t be with me and against me at the same time, Draco.”

“Why not?” Draco spits out. “Just because I said I love you, doesn’t mean I agree with your worldview.”

Harry shakes his head and brushes a hair from Draco’s face. “You think I would be with you if I believed for one second that you were loyal to that mark on your arm?” he asks. He doesn’t need an answer, they both know what that answer is.

“He has my mother,” Draco says is a soft voice. Harry smiles at him and then leans in. His lips gently brush against Draco’s mouth. “I can’t let her die because of this,” Draco continues when Harry rests his forehead against Draco’s.

“I know,” Harry answers. He doesn’t say anything about the tear that slips from Draco’s eye and slowly travels down his cheek. He just follows it with his eye and wishes he could just kill Voldemort now and be done with this. With the lying and the sneaking around, pretending to be hung up about Ginny dating other boys, pretending to have a crush on her to excuse his behaviour, his need for time alone, away from his friends, just so he can meet up with Draco and snug his face off.

“We can ask Dumbledore if the order can help, get her out of there,” Harry tries again.

“I’m not asking Dumbledore. I’m going to kill the man, not ask him to risk everything to save my mother,” Draco says.

“Will you stop pretending that you are still on Voldemort’s side of this war,” Harry snaps. He steps away from Draco and paces across the room. “You’re not going to kill Dumbledore, you won’t have to.”

“And will you stop sugar coating everything? The order is not going to risks anyone's life just to get my mother out of the manor. You and I both know that. So what choice does that give me? Do you truly think this stupid crush is more important than my mother?”

“I know I’m not. It’s not necessary for you to tell me again that this is all just a fluke, that you can’t get distracted by this, no matter how much you love me. It already hurts enough that you still treat me like dirt when others are around, I don’t need you to hurt me now.” Harry stops in front of a window and looks out over the grounds of Hogwarts. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if Voldemort had never excised. What it would have been like to grow up with the love of his parents. Would he have rejected Slytherin then? Maybe he could have found out much sooner what an amazing person Draco is and that he’s worth fighting for no matter what. Not that Draco feels the same. Harry knows this. And no matter how much it hurts, it won’t stop him from coming back here and share these fleeting moments.

“It’s not a fluke,” Draco says.

Harry snaps his head around and looks at Draco. Draco looks straight at Harry and repeats his words. “This is not a fluke. I mend it when I just told you that I love you. Just because I’m not ready to switch sides in this war, doesn’t mean I didn’t mean them. Because I do. Harry, I mean them. I love you and, Salazar, I’m scared of what that means.”

New tears fall from Draco’s eyes and Harry rushes back to the desk. He rests his hands on Draco’s sides and leans in for another kiss. “I love you too,” he tells Draco.

“The Dark Lord wants to kill you,” Draco whispers. “And I don’t want you to die.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say. Every time he hints to Draco stepping fully to his side, he backs away. He wants to tell Draco again that he can’t love Harry and still fight against him. And that he will do everything in his power to keep Draco’s mother save. But all the words so far have been wrong. Ron once said that silence can be all someone needs to figure it out. And maybe he’s right. No matter how badly Harry wants to tell Draco he has to make a choice, maybe all he needs to do is show Draco how much he loves him until Draco is ready to make the choice all by himself.

“You’re quiet,” Draco says.

“I won’t push you,” Harry says.

Draco pulls Harry closer towards him and then lays his chin on Harry’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says.

They just stand there, Harry embracing Draco. It’s more intimate than anything they have done before. Harry tries not to think about the task he has to do, or the task that Draco has been ordered to do. He tries to enjoy the feeling of holding the person he loves in his arms, but it’s hard.

“I’m scared too,” Harry says. “Scared of what is expected of me, scared of losing my friends, of putting the people I care about in danger. But most of all I’m scared of losing you.”

Draco sobs and he shivers in Harry’s arms. Harry holds Draco up with his arms as Draco cries against Harry’s shoulder.

Time passes and Harry doesn’t care that he’s late for dinner. Hermione and Ron will start looking for him. And Harry doesn’t want to worry them, but right now he’s precisely where he needs to be.

“Harry,” Draco says when his tears have died down. He lifts his head and looks Harry in the eyes. “You do realise that I’m about to give up everything my parents have ever thought to me?”

Harry nods his head and Draco closes his eyes before he speaks again. “For as long as I can remember I’ve been told that I’m special, that I’m better than others. Because of my blood and my name. But I’m not. I know that. Have known that for some time now. But I still believe our way of life needs to be protected. I hate it that traditions slip away because of half-bloods and muggle-borns who don’t understand them. It’s why I believed that the Dark Lord would make things better. He would protect our way of life. But he’s not, is he? He’s destroying it. Tainting it with blood and murder. Our way of life was never about destroying. It was about protecting our ways. And I don’t know how to protect them anymore.”

“You can teach them to me,” Harry says. “Your traditions. I would love for you to explain them. And I might not understand it all, I will try. I’ll help you protect the wizarding way of life. If you promise me that you will also try to see that not everything muggle is bad or wrong.”

Draco opens his eyes again and nods his head. “I can do that. But you might let Granger explain things to me, you’re a lousy teacher.”

“Not what I was told during the DA meetings,” Harry laughs.

“DA meetings?” Draco asks.

“The group I thought Defence when Umbridge wouldn’t.”

“So that is what you guys were up to. I always wondered what that was all about,” Draco says. He looks towards the window and signs. Then he turns back to Harry. “I think we need to talk to Dumbledore.”

A massive smile breaks out on Harry’s face. He leans in and kisses Draco again. “I’ll make sure he knows how important it is that we safe her,” he promises. Draco lets him take his hand and guide him out of the room towards Dumbledore’s office.

#drarry #Draco Malfoy #Harry Potter #hogwarts sixth year #difficult choices #love confession

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watching-pictures-move · 3 years

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Movie Review | Nightmare Sisters (DeCoteau, 1988)

This review contains mild spoilers.

David DeCoteau's Nightmare Sisters opens with a pretty hideous racial caricature, where an actor playing a fortune teller does a terrible Indian accent. Now, this was made in the '80s, the same decade we got Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles and Takashi in Revenge of the Nerds, so this level of racism is nothing out of the ordinary. But in those cases, you could at least argue that the performers were putting enough effort into their performances to make there scenes at least watchable. The guy here is teeeeerrible and his scene goes on for sooooo long. Anyway, the scene features a widow asking about her probably dead husband, who when summoned has his dick bitten off by an evil spirit, who then kills the fortune teller, making it the hero of the movie, or at least this scene. Because this is a pretty low budget affair, most of this is thankfully implied.

Thankfully, the movie gets quite a bit better after this point, as we move to a group of extremely dorky sorority sisters who come into possession of the fortune teller's crystal ball. These sorority sisters are played by established scream queens Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer, who are specialists in these kinds of movies, and from whom I'd seen and enjoyed a few things. Quigley is one of the best parts of the great zombie movie Return of the Living Dead, which on top of being super entertaining and funny I've grown to find surprisingly moving with my last couple of viewings. (Great movies have a way of sneaking up on you like that.) Stevens is of course in the feminist slasher movie Slumber Party Massacre, which spells out the subtext of these movies by having the killer's weapon be an extremely phallic drill. And Bauer is in Cafe Flesh, which is not a horror movie but a porno, but likely a much more palatable one to normie viewers given its emphasis on mise-en-scene and elaborately choreographed stage performances over gynecology. I was happy to see all three present, is what I'm saying.

These girls, left with nothing to do over the weekend, decide to throw a party and invite the only guys they know, some real Robert Carradine Revenge of the Nerds motherfuckers who are about as dorky as they are and similarly at the bottom rung of their fraternity. Of course once the party starts, they foolishly mess around with the crystal ball and the girls get possessed by the same spirit. Now, the girls were extremely dorky previously and had appearances that lined up with that image, with Quigley's buckteeth, Stevens' dangerously pointy glasses and Bauer's fatsuit. They seemed like perfectly nice people and might have had lots of inner beauty for all we know, but that doesn't photograph as well nor does it appeal to the horndogs in the audience, so once they get possessed they get a lot conventionally hotter and spend the rest of the movie in varying states of undress. This movie probably has more nudity than any non-porno I've watched in quite some time. Hell, right after their transformation, the immediately smear peach pie over their breasts and then spend what seems to be ten minutes bathing together while the Anthony Edwardsish heroes watch through a peephole. Apparently there's a TV-edit that excises all the nudity. I haven't watched it and can only assume it's ten minutes long.

It's worth noting at this point that DeCoteau is gay and this plays like a really broad attempt at pandering to the predominantly straight target male audience for these kinds of movies. As parodic as the results may be, I must shamefully admit that he has us dead to rights. Of course, given the title, something must be off, and as the homophobic meathead fraternity brothers who show up to give the male leads a hard time find out in the least pleasant way possible, it turns out that the girls have turned into succubi. Emphasis on the "suck", as the song that plays over the opening credits suggests. Or perhaps a more accurate name would be "bite-ubi". Given that they, you know, kill their victims by biting their dicks. Their "wing wangs", as one of the girls says while possessed. I think another uses the phrase "python of love", but I neglected to write down the complete line of dialogue so I could be wrong. DeCoteau is not a cruel man, so he spares us the sight of this act, but he taps into very real male anxieties in this movie.

Of course, to wrap this all up, the Curtis Armstrong, Lamar Lattrellish heroes enlist the help of an exorcist whose role is extremely self aware but not unamusing, and the situation is resolved with some pretty lo-fi special effects. (Okay, I lied, the heroes are a lot more presentable than Armstrong. Also Lamar Lattrell is actually the character's name and not the actor's, the heroes are all pasty white dudes and the only person with a musical number is Quigley. I ran out of Revenge of the Nerds references, I'm sorry.) This is an extremely unambitious affair, having been shot in four days as a challenge to use up short ends left over from the production of Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama, but I had a good time. While I won't pretend that the shamelessly pandering nudity didn't have an effect on me, what really sells this movie is the presence of Quigley, Stevens and Bauer, who are extremely winning in playing their characters both pre- and post-possession. (I think the term "adorkable" applies to the former.) My technical knowledge is lacking here, but while I understand there were inconsistencies in the film stock used, I didn't find that to manifest in the film's (not particularly accomplished but also not unattractive) visual style. And the movie has a nice, laidback sense of humour, which (aside from the opening scene) sustains the good vibes over the brief runtime.

#film #movie review #nightmare sisters #david decoteau

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aubergineanathema · 4 years

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Playing the beast

Part 1 - The ruin in the clearing: Preface See the full list of parts here

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Part 13.

The violent clouds had finally cleared from the sky overhead, and the thunder now rumbled in its retreat off to the east. Water had collected in every crevice and every depression of the thick canopy, pooling together and weighing down the many leaves that held it, as it trickled slowly down into the musty undergrowth below. The darkness persisted, as it was still a few hours from the morning light. The only light came from the waning moon.

It was through this darkness that Lucian walked.

He walked through the thicket, no beaten path to guide him. He had begun upon the road, but knew that the place he was searching for was far from any of the roads generally travelled.

He was still soaked through by the earlier rain, but he did not shiver. Not even as the heavy droplets fell upon him from the laden branches above, or the wind brushed through the trees. Lucian did not seem even to notice the wet or the cold, and he moved lithely through the forest as though the darkness were no hindrance either. Truly, he saw the darkness as his friend. It did not bring the fear to him that it so commonly brought the rabbits and deer of the forest. He could see everything he needed to with his faintly luminous eyes. He could likewise hear every furtive shift in the undergrowth and each sway of the trees; he could smell each new flavor the wind carried to him with his nose. He was not prey, but predator, and he was back on the hunt.

From his clothes still wafted the metallic smell of blood. Not his own, of course, but it was distracting all the same. He loved the smell when it was warm, and fresh. He could even on occasion savor the rancid, musty hues it took on a few hours after it cooled, as though it were some fermented delicacy. But this was not such an occasion. It was hard to smell through the pungent odor when it enveloped him so, and as he did not know the exact location of the small ruined chapel in the woods, his nose would have to guide him back. He was sure he would be able to smell that little rabbit’s fear-sweat for miles.

Swiftly, he peeled off the wet tunic away from the pale linen garment underneath, and hung it upon a nearby branch, intending on retrieving it later. As he began to walk again, however, the smell of his previous violence was not the only thing distracting him.

What do some musty carpets matter anyway?

Thoughts of the recent conversation with his father intruded steadily upon his focus, and he found he could not help but to go over the memory again, turning it over in his head like a moldering piece of flesh: equal parts compelling and revolting.

He could still feel the blow that had followed his insolence.

It was not that his cheek still stung or his jaw still ached. Not at all. He had hunted well that evening, and so just as he could not feel the chill of the breeze upon his skin, every banal blow meted out by his father was a very temporary inconvenience. So, it was not the physical blow itself that pained him still, but the intention behind it, and the words that still stung like so many ceaseless bees.

***

“Pray you, Lucian, that I do not have progeny so simple-minded as to think this is only about the rugs.” Alastair replied, his exasperation clear in his tone. “You cannot continue to act as though barbarity is your only prerogative!”

“I was acting within our rights, father!” Lucian tried to explain. “These were brigands, vagabonds! Hunting upon your lands. Our lands.”

“Even so, Lucian. You must be prudent when dealing with miscreants and subjects alike. Angelika has told me you’ve been lurking about the village like some folktale specter. For what, a thrill?” Alastair waved a dismissive hand as Lucian looked about to speak. “Can you tell me what happens if you kill too many of our serfs? Or if that tired old priest decides to start paying attention to his flock?”

Lucian’s grimace revealed his disgust. How many times had he seen Angelika, drunk on the blood of her short-lived suitors? Her silken sheets had been so drenched red and so stained they had needed to be burned. “As if Angelika has never played games with our cattle or made a mess of the castle!”

“Angelika understands that patience is a virtue, and when is the right time to strike.” Alastair sighed. “If you excise a pound of flesh for every poached rabbit in the forest and stalk every peasant up after midnight, we will have larger problems than some bloody rugs.”

“Father…” Lucian spoke but his voice wavered.

Even as he spoke, Lucian knew there was no point in trying to reason with his father. He knew that soon Angelika would no doubt return to join in his torment.

“You would do well to have the foresight of your sister. The fun need not only be in the carnage.”

“That’s ridiculous? She’s as monstrous as me!”

“I’m not the one covered in blood.”

Sure enough, Angelika had returned, this time without her servant. She slipped back into her place beside her father, a smile of delight on her face.

“Go away.” Lucian growled.

Lucian despised being her entertainment.

“You must learn the ways of diplomacy as well as war.” Alastair raised his hand to prevent further interruptions from either of them. “Speaking of diplomacy, why don’t you put that toy of yours away and do something constructive? Pay your dear uncle a visit. He hasn’t shown his face in a while. You should make sure he hasn’t expired.”

“But Father—he’s insane, deluded! Ungrateful! Why do you insist on keeping track of him?”

“Because one does not disregard orders of he who gave him everything.” Alastair responded swiftly, his expression hard and daring Lucian to attempt to continue down this path of insubordination.

Lucian slammed the door.

***

And so, here he was in the forest again, if only to evade the judging eyes of his father.

He had no intention of seeking out the fool of the forest as his father had requested. No. As he walked through the darkness of the forest, he intended only to find one person: the little rabbit he had left cowering in the sacred ruins.

He followed his nose for some time. The forest smelled of wet dirt and the fresh rain. It smelled of animals, frightened by the thunder, and ever so faintly of mold and decay. He soon caught the scent of a terrified man. It was a smell he relished—a cold sour sweat that was easy to follow through the thick of the woods.

But just as he had directed himself towards the smell, there was something else. It smelled of fragrant herbs, and acrid smoke. His eyes snapped upward, and he was surprised to see a woman, standing not more than a few yards distant from him. She had red, graying hair. Over one arm was balanced a basket, and in her hand, she held a lit lantern. Lucian was taken aback, having not heard her approach.

“Who the hell are you?”

The older woman smiled, the creases of her face accentuated by the dim flickering light of the lantern. “Why, I tend to the needs and desires of the people of this duchy. They call me Genovefa, kenning-woman of the lowlands.”

“A witch, then.”

“They call me that too, yes.” Her smile remained unchanged. “And you are the illustrious Lucian van Vorsfelde. Your reputation precedes you. The people of Kasdorf have taken to calling you a demon.”

Lucian huffed, disquieted by the conversation. This woman seemed simultaneously to know both what he was and who he seemed to be.

“And what are you doing here?” Lucian asked, collecting his bearings.

“Just on a midnight errand.” She glanced up at the clearing sky. “I’m grateful that the rain has finally let up. It’s a balance, you understand. Too much rain could ruin the crops.”

“No, I meant, what are you doing here, in the forest?”

“Oh, I live here.” She replied simply. “Although my abode is a little difficult to track down, when you’re not looking for it, or when it does not intend to be found.”

“And what claim do you think you have to this land?”

“Why, I am her guardian. A keeper of balance in the land—like all kenning-folk of my particular temperament.”

“And by what authority do you claim to squat on Vorsfelde land?”

At this question, Genovefa laughed. “So many questions, young Vorsfelde. By your father’s authority of course, and by his father’s.”

Lucian stared at her. Surely, he thought, she was insane. “You’re a liar. My father would have told me about you.”

“Rashness, young Vorsfelde, does not become any man.” Genovefa sighed, and from her basket she drew a flat stone, covered in strange markings Lucian did not recognize. She gazed upon it, seeming unbothered by his accusation. “Perhaps, he has not had the time, or has not thought it of value to tell you. Perhaps he has tried, but in your rashness, you do not hear him.”

“You know what? I wasn’t planning on killing you when we met just now.” Lucian wore a smirk to disguise his displeasure at this entire strange conversation, and by just how threatened he felt by this calm, unbothered woman. “But I’ve killed people this very night for lesser offenses than lying, insulting me, and laughing in my face. Making a fool of me is a capital offence.”

As he spoke his body seemed to change in anticipation of the hunt. The fangs of his straight white teeth grew longer, dropping down past his bottom lip. His fingers stretched longer as well, his nails becoming dark claws at the end of each pale digit. His eyes shifted, from something resembling human, to the bright, bestial eyes of a predator.

Genovefa paid him little attention with her eyes, murmuring something as she regarded the stone in her hand.

“Are you going to run?” Lucian asked her, poised to strike, and trying very hard not to think about how much her tranquility unsettled him.

“Young Vorsfelde.” She said softly. “I hope you learn before it is too late why it is that the hunter kills the wolf, tracks the pack to the den, and burns the babes upon the mother’s breast.”

“Why don’t you just tell me, witch.” He growled. “Do you really want your last words to be an unanswered riddle?

Genovefa finally turned her eyes upon him again. She was still smiling, but her eyes were full of anger. “Humans do not know how to regulate themselves. They try, but only succeed in swinging like a pendulum, back and forth between control and chaos. They do not know balance. They only know the euphoria of control, the despair of chaos, and they do everything in their power to avoid the latter. The wolf who kills a man’s flock, his livelihood, throws the man into despair and in doing so dooms his entire kind. Because humans are fearful creatures with long memories. They are smart, but lack foresight, and once they have established an enemy, they will stop at nothing until they claim complete control over them—balance be damned.

“If you’re going to play the beast, young Vorsfelde, do not be surprised when they eventually take on the role of hunter. If we do not keep things in balance for them, soon we will all be in jeopardy.”

Lucian grit his teeth and lunged at the woman. He had heard enough.

She held the stone out to him, and he saw upon it a strange symbol that gave him pause. All sharp angles and intricate symbols, converging at a single point in the center of the stone.

“ÁMIERE!” She shouted in a language Lucian was not familiar with. A sharp, guttural language of centuries’ past.

And then lightning struck.

The crash of thunder was overwhelming and immediate. A tree not three feet from Lucian exploded into pieces, and he crouched instinctively. Flashes of pain made him curl up even smaller, as hot sap scalded him and sharp pieces of blistering wood cut through his linen garments and grazed his skin, very narrowly missing the fleshier parts of him. His nostrils were filled with the smell of burning, his hands bearing down hard upon his ears as he tried to overcome the violent ringing within them.

Lucian did not understand, for the storm had long since passed. Disoriented, he looked around with bleary, burning eyes and did not see the witch anywhere in sight, nor could he smell anything aside from the smoldering tree beside him.

With a cry of frustration, and perhaps of fear, he departed quickly from the spot, running in the direction he knew he had been going before. He tried, but could not avoid looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the witch appear again to taunt him, or cause some greater calamity. Surely, he knew, she had been the cause of such an unforeseen event. He did not know the extent of her power, and at the moment, he felt he never wanted to find out. He felt he would be content, in fact, never to see her again.

He saw no one behind him, of course. He was alone again in the forest, and after a few minutes of running he felt the ringing in his ears dissipating. His eyes adjusted to the darkness once more, and he felt a little more like himself again. He tried to catch the smell of the scared little rabbit again on the breeze, but still all he could smell was the burning of the tree. He shook his head and walked on, but soon froze, staring at what hung upon a tree in front of him.

On a nearby tree he saw his tunic, wet and bloody, swaying slightly in the breeze.

He approached the tunic, consumed by confusion. He was certain he had been running in the opposite direction. With another cry of frustration, he pulled it down from the tree, looking over his shoulder again. Forget the hunt, he told himself. He was clearly too perturbed to continue such a game tonight. Now, he just wanted to go home.

But, where was home?

He looked up towards the heavy canopy and put on the wet tunic again. He knew the quickest way home was to fly above the trees, and so he took flight, a tightly-packed murder of crows, skyward.

But the canopy did not give way to the night sky as he expected. Indeed, as he flew higher and higher, it did not seem like he was getting any closer to the treetops at all. He did not know how long he strove upward. Impossibly long, and in vain. He did not know how it came to be, but he found himself sitting on the forest floor, panting, and disoriented once more. His ears rung. His nostrils burned.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME YOU DAMNED WITCH? I’ll have my father burn you at the stake!”

He shouted into the darkness of the forest, fighting the panic rising within him as he tried to consider his options. If he could not fly out, and he could not walk out, how was he to reach the castle before daylight?

With that thought he forced himself to stand upon his shaky legs, for he knew he could not be caught in the sunlight. He looked around and began to run again, this time in a random direction. He knew he would be able to gather his bearings once he was on a road or could find some cultivated land. He could run so much faster than any man, he told himself he would no doubt find an exit before too long.

Instead, he came across the smoldering tree again. Once, twice, three times—it did not matter which direction he seemed to go in. Every direction led back to the same exact spot. He did not know how many times he ran away from the spot, but he lost track of the time, for before he knew it, he felt the hair on his neck and arms crawl as he sensed the approaching dawn. He sat, crumpled, before the blackened tree, trembling slightly as dread permeated his very core.

“Damn it all--I’m sorry. I’m sorry for offending you. Okay? I’m sorry for threatening you. I’m sorry—I won’t do it again. Pl-please just let me go home before the sun rises!” He cried and stared around, not knowing what he expected as he sat alone on the forest floor, imploring someone who was likely long gone.

The wind blew through the trees as he sat in his frightened silence. He looked up, and found he could see the lightening sky above the canopy. He felt breathless, not willing to believe that such abject humility could have possibly been the solution to his problems. He feared it was a trick, and hesitated to even attempt to break through the canopy again--but then, he could waste no more time.

He flew up, and up, and easily pushed through to the empty sky above. He could see Kasdorf, and the winding river around it, and he could see Wolvosburg. The castle, with its dark stone solidly towering over the flat landscape, looming ominously over everything around it.

Lucian had never been more relieved.

As the East grew progressively brighter, he shot towards the castle with as much speed as he could muster, across the bridge and into the courtyard. Lucian made it back into the soothing dimness of his bedroom with hardly a moment to spare, as morning came to the lowlands.

He would hide motionless under the covers of his bed late into the afternoon.

------- This has been Part 13. For more, see my Fiction Updates ------

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davidjjohnston3 · 3 years

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The trees are straight and true here, and the help comes without seeming harpoons. I considered some insane things which were ‘above my pay-grade’ and as is my wont reflected on the state and implications of my former profession and what old friends and pharons meant to me. Right now think that my core goal in life is not to blow myself up. As a former would-have-been SecState said, ‘I love so many people.’ I am only sad that trying as I did to uproot that carrot of love just now could have resulted in the demolition of an entire root-network, of at least my own excision therefrom.

‘Some people’ want revenge against life for not going their way or not being the color or fragrance or face shape they like or feel it ought to be - ‘no that is not what I meant at all.’ They will never hold a life reliable which doesn’t resemble their ideal, imago, or ‘soul-idol’ &c. The meaning of the name ‘Cordelia’ as in King Lear is something like ‘heart’s ideal.’ I was driving and considering a novel that I feel touched absolute supreme greatness without knowing it or in a way that could mislead some readers Mrs. Mary HK Choi’s Yolk a novel I looked forward for a very long time. I had all these references and fractal coreferences and forgot about actual birds, like what does the chick eat in the egg.

‘Blood is the life’ - I liked etymologies for a long time and my intellectualism caused me acute trouble in Confirmation Class at Morrow Memorial United Methodist Church in about 1998. ‘Pastor’ Gretchen taught us the word root ‘consacramentum’ which comes from dipping the hand in blood in the concave of a Roman shield - those huge rectangular shields which could be used in formation as ‘testudo’ or turtle to stop projectile weapons and allowed soldiers to make pin-point stabbing attacks from a ‘matrix(?)’ of high protection. I forget what kind of animal was killed to pool the blood in the shield but it might have been a rabbit.

I was reading ‘Revelation,’ I don’t recall what everyone else was talking about. Some kind of community service project, interview your parents, buy a wedding-magazine and make a whole plan for how you would get married and how much it would cost (and while you’re at it describe how you would 1) restore a classic Shelby Cobra using newspaper and Krazy Glue 2) drive foresaid drop-top to the Moon).

The Pastor was a pipe-smoker named ‘Painter’ who used the NY Lotto’s ‘Hey you never know’ slogan to describe sth like Pascal’s Wager; OTOH St. Paul teaches us that everyone is born knowing God exists (Romans). The problem is that people fail or omit to glorify Him or subsequently ruin or betray their own best efforts through blasphemy, turning or falling away, cowardice, denial, attachment to certain sins or being ‘yoked unequally’ with non-believers.

I reflected starting in 2008 that I was shy of my ‘first love’ (rather, the woman I fell in love with at 14); at the time I gloried or reveled in the shyness like a Wallace Stevens poem that ends, ‘And not to have written a book.’ I could’ve written a few books by now or walked away from book-writing or changed my mind / specified which kind of book I might have written and for whom.

I remember always admiring the ‘magic’ of literature and feeling sad I had no characters or world of my own to work magic with. Star Wars and my own life and later much else supplied ‘materia poetica’ and till the point that I began to think in fiction and became addicted to interpreting my own in ‘story-ideas’ although that is not to say that what happened around me didn’t happen.

America is trying to become a better country in numerous valences, loving our neighbors, holding each other accountable. ‘Justice’ with or without the marks is important. It is a divine Judgment that Covid fell on the world even if eventually we all shall learn who devised the virus or leaked it or modulated its mutations. I was eager to rejoin the world feeling I might overcome my mental illness but I mishandled specific questions and tests. I ended up turning people against me and creating monsters more than ever as well as perhaps terminally sabotaging any chance I might’ve had of fulfilling a dream or making good on the past. I have a lot of opinions on the CCP but should’ve focused on love and family and personal responsibilities as in the past or at least held to my long-standing feeling that Chinese people deserve better rather than associating myself with hard-liners and racists or those who would simplify issues in order to bring about ultimate victory without temperance or concern for the side-effects.

In Milwaukee where I lived for far too long everyone’s spirit - electric, intellectual, visory(?), informational et cetera seemed to be militating against everybody else’s. There were fake vaccines, radioactive ice cream (or thermogenic ice-cream), gun-battles as usual, lines crossed, all kinds of scores that people tried to settle. I also realized that the police were probably tracking for years my various attempts to obtain weapons from samurai-swords to handguns though the purpose was defensive and I can only trust at this point that some good lawyer will prevent the bad lawyers and cops from presenting the most damning circumstantial case they could. People in Milwaukee own AK-47′s, automatic shotguns, probably all kinds of explosives, improvised chemical weapons and (’our Black brothers’ - Schopenhauer) biological weapons - the cops don’t stand a chance that I can tell and even the National Guard perhaps could get outclassed by retired military. I had told myself for years that it was only the ghetto’s that bore witness to this paramilitary equipage and that the retired SEAL Team 4 member with the ‘Stop Socialism’ and ‘Jobs Not Mobs’ sign on his front lawn would protect me from the Maoist-Covid Night of the Long Knives but I feel I tempted God a lot in the past.

I read all these books and took to heart that people thought I was just entertaining myself with but now as then I should’ve guarded my heart or not begged the question of what others thought about me or saw in me. I literally felt of late ‘I am the anti-Christ’ - good-looking at times, preach world peace, ‘form of godliness,’ want to be friends with everyone, build bridges - and had to rack my brains to come up with an ‘anti-Christology’ and science / concept of the Whore of Babylon just to make sure it was more than me alone. I also wished to simplify my past and help kids ‘get life right the right time’ doing battle with philosophies that opposed this consciously or otherwise but stepped into numerous minefields and also tried running when I should’ve flown over.

Everyone’s trying to get rich and build back better and I profoundly admired the American President for doing, finally, apparently, what presidents had tried to decades even as I remember ‘Flowers 1881′ a poem that implies that basically teachers can do only so much before turning their kids loose in a world no one has yet fixed and which others keep breaking; from a California almanac that also instructed me that the same old debates and cross-fires and burdens plague teachers as always, not that it is an ‘impossible profession’ but honestly that God won’t let us establish Heaven on Earth or at least not me or at least not America or at least not teachers who savor the experience of being a teacher or the beauty of their students more than the outcomes or commitment or intrinsic value of the work or the confirmed identity / vocation / personhood of the instructor. There are always new and old at any rate and different cultures all describe the teacher as needing to keep both alive; as do descriptions of higher education and scholarship.

I questioned my qualifications / background and wondered about re-training but can’t afford tuition anywhere so I am trying to cling to the core of my capabilities / blessings. ABC and XYZ. The glory of the soul or souls.

I kept theorizing Russian literature as well as weapons-systems and ultimate destiny, sailing ships, noble names, divisions, the flaming sword of Archangel Gabriel, the mission of Russia today with respect to the world order. I am also simply trying to be healthy and stop for a while trying to parse out who was the love of my life or what it still left in terms of action or redemption or justice or surrender or mitigation or meeting new friends or propounding the kind of understand with carefulness I have believed in - ‘saving people from themselves.’ Driving up here I remember being distressed at a gas-station in California when I was about 5 or 6 since the pump was leaking, being very upset with my parents and family. In those days I also disliked animal-cruelty though the world today seems so depraved and deprived with respect to human interests I would make no bones about neglecting most all animals outside of military or police use. When I was about 3 I saw white kids set a frog on fire; my mother has a history of running over cats.

I dislike winging it and taking risks. There is a song I call to myself ‘Run Away’ though its title is ‘Paradise.’ I am not a utopian communist for believing in secular justice and its instrinsic value... I wonder whether when I helped people in the past there were always strings attached or maybe I was just trying to close my case and discharge my responsibilities too rapidly without allowing others to gestate or make an abode in my heart besides and beyond what I could get out of them, glorifying myself, or tell others about.

What is motherhood? What is travail? Is there a kind of problematic ‘female gaze’ as feminists talk of a ‘male gaze’ associated with sadism or fascination / fetishism? It’s psychology which is not my first love at all since it appeared pretentious and distracting and retarding (in the literal sense of slowing down).

I also remembered reading various things about Victor Hugo whose ‘93′ is an important novel today due to its techno-utopianism, feminism or ‘new model egalitarianism,’ fusion of revolution and religion, etc. But I had forgotten ‘Les Miserable’ with its themes of ransom or eventual recompense, genealogies, caution, and more none of which is to negate the various complains against me or death-warrant from China or my parents with their partial private readings of Proverbs (’Let’s stone David for embarrassing us / not doing precisely what we want’ - no mention of witnesses, tribunals, questions, mitigation-hearings, actual counsels of judges etc. but just American-German ‘coalitions of the willing’ ‘run and get my gun’ ‘team-building’ etc. which in my experience ends with tanks on the street and military dictatorships as when at the end of the CultRev PLA regulars were gunning down former justice-fanatics who’d been stripping women, kicking pregnant stomachs etc. as in The Vagrants). Naturally having grown up in a family fascinated with Lee Kwanyew and Arnold Schwarzenegger and conflicted about ‘fascism’ I had reservations about the United States’ ability to suddenly dress up and ‘stand at perpetual moral attention’ but I guess my own problems are just that I am poor with a rich kid’s mind and no one really likes me except strangers and faraway friends who were easily spooked and/or just couldn’t be there. ‘King of South shall attack and King of North shall crush them with chariots &c.’ - in the end righteous will prevail whichever side of the line I end up on in the final assessment. I also remembered today a novel called ‘The Old Capital’ about a bad artist father, a virgin daughter, straight and true pines. Some other aspects of this novel are silly as well as criminally problematic and there's a lot of that going on in new-old old news America / Babylon or at least to quote my favorite lawyer / leave lawyering movie 'First let's get out of Milwaukee.' Miss the land of June snow.

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