#and realizing that there's no narrative where nothing has felt like it truly mattered at all outside of one relationship

[dyed-red]

one thing i love about supernatural (and about wincest but it's endemic to the canon) is that it doesn't matter how high the stakes are, the actual stakes are honestly, exceptionally low, but we are so. so. so fucking invested.

what i mean is that - the true stakes of the show are always and forever sam and dean's relationship. are they good? are they in alignment? where do they stand and where will they stand after this?

yes the world is ending, yes people are dying, yes angels are falling and yes that ups the ante superficially. but the real stakes are sam and dean's relationship. it's small scale. it means nothing in the grand scheme of everything and yet it means more than anything else in the entire universe, the entire multiverse by the end of the series. literally just. these two brothers.

it's honestly just really impressive to me because i can't honestly think of another fictional duo (platonic, romantic, or anything in between) who carry a story so entirely on the ups and downs of their relationship, and for whom the story and the consequences and the apocalyptic scale all really pale in comparison to "will these two make it out of this okay?" (and okay can be dead! dead is fine! so long as they're together!)

the epic love story and all that <3

#wincest #mostly more like #gencest #sam and dean #thinking about narrative investment this weekend #and realizing that there's no narrative where nothing has felt like it truly mattered at all outside of one relationship #the multiverse ended and every other soul on earth was gone #but sam and dean were together so it was still okay #what even #yeah

[immediatebreakfast]

I love how Renfield is the oldest (59) and Mina is very likely the living youngest, and yet they bond so well. (It reminds me how well Mina befriended the 99 year old Mr Swales that he sought her company and felt care for her.) It probably contributed that Jack may have experience with interacting with "madmen" and studying, Mina had lived with and loved a "madman".

It's truly incredible how a simple conversation between an old man in physical cell, and a young woman in a mental cell put such a dent in the Count's plans that he had to flee to Transylvania once it was clear that nothing would stop the crew.

Even if the repercutions were huge in the narrative, in between the horror and the action it was just a visit (probably the first visit that Renfield had in a long time) to talk.

Reading again the entry I noticed how hostile Renfield is towards Mina at first,

"You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you? You can't be, you know, for she's dead." - R.M. Renfield, september 30.

and even with everything one can say about sexism, and the building infantilization of Mina, let's remember that this is the first time Renfield meets someone that is specifically associated with Jack. Renfield's remarked abuser in both authority, and personhood in general. Also by probably being informed by Dracula himself that both Mina and Jonathan are the key players in this continuous attacks against his plans in England, on top of just almost correctly assuming that Mina must share the same opinion towards the mentally ill that society has.

Three strikes against Mina that she switfly defeats by treating Renfield like the person he is, and talking to him in a normal manner. After taking care of her beloved Jonathan, and being at Lucy's side most of her life Mina is aware of how the Other is viewed. Maybe as she saw Renfield, Mina thought of a worse reality where the man on the bed was her Jonathan in Budapest, maybe she saw how Seward reacted to Renfield's words, and realized what was actually layed out in the room. Or maybe Mina just saw an old man in need of an ear, and she just listened.

This is the first time that Renfield puts a face on a victim of the Count's games, he puts a voice on the young victim whose life is going to violently end in what he thought was supposed to be eternal bliss. Lucy is a distant dream for Renfield, the revenge against these people who dared to put up a fight against this old ancient evil that goes beyond all of their years combined.

Renfield never knew Lucy, but he knows Mina now.

Renfield sees the young Mina Harker, entering life with her equal young husband in hand, and trying to solve the murder of what he knows now was her best friend, and he reflects. He reflects on everything he has done, on what has passed, and what he can do tomorrow.

Mr. Renfield asked if he might see me. Poor man, he was very gentle, and when I came away he kissed my hand and bade God bless me. Some way it affected me much; I am crying when I think of him. This is a new weakness, of which I must be careful. Jonathan would be miserable if he knew I had been crying. - Mina Harker, october 2.

And the man is devastated to see how he is helping orchestrate the murder of another young lady to please the Count. He becomes desperate to leave (a request that is denied by both Seward, and Van Helsing), so the Count can't have access to the inside of the asylum. It doesn't matter if he looks like a coward by the time's literary standards because if the only way to at least save that young lady is by acting like one? Then Renfield might as well do it, he has nothing to lose sans his life.

I think that the key difference between Mina, and Jack when it comes to Renfield is empathy, and the ability to simply treat the other person with the same humanity you should be treated.

Jack may have studied, and climbed until he got to be the head of an asylum, but his own biases, mental problems, and ableism blurred the lines between patient and doctor so hard that he made Renfield's life a boring hell. From when their dynamic was introduced, to Renfield's death, the narrative dictated how Seward was putting both into a deep spiral in which, not even with Renfield's manipulations, none of them were going to come out in victory.

In contrast, Mina has cared for Jonathan without any restrain, and has lived in service of what the situation demands of her at all times. She knows, as a young victorian lady, how to balance herself without trying to compete, or win the other person in the room with her. Mina only needed to genuinely talk to Renfield to break his heart because she gave him the respect, and honestly she expects for herself when talking.

#I will always mourn the mountain of potential that was the character of R.M. Renfield #That old man was truly on the best wave lenght in the book #Why kill the only character that could serve as a counter point to Van Helsing after establishing a connection with Mina? #This was from last year by the way #dracula daily #dracula #r.m. renfield #renfield #mina harker #mina murray

[sixstepsaway]

right, so, here are my Thoughts about that whole thing now i've slept on it. probably won't be super coherent but here we go

i feel bad for stede. he got shoved, somehow, into the weird love interest role so many female characters find themselves in, where they are truly completed by a man and a romance not the things they've been striving for throughout the series so far. he's shown no sign of wanting to give up the pirate lifestyle he's just finally got back, and to accompany him giving that up with izzy's gorgeous "piracy is about family and somewhere to belong" speech from earlier just feels cruel. we joke about how episode 2 stede wouldn't care if lucius died but that changed, he got attached, his crew became his family. they were loyal to him and followed him even when they were just working at spanish jackie's for pennies. they respected him and loved him enough to let him talk them into letting ed back on board. this was, at least at this point in stede's arc, his happy ending. in fact, you can even argue he was happy without ed for a while at the start of this episode. his relationship with ed is important and it's icing on the cake, but it isn't something to complete him, or his only source of happiness -- nor should it be!!! and then for some reason ed shows back up, fishes up his leathers, kicks ass to save him, loses izzy and now they're leaving stede's ship and crew and found family to... run an inn made out of the world's shittiest fixer-upper? stede? stede twirly fancypants bonnett??? in that place? maybe at the end of a full run this might have felt like a good conclusion to his story, him realizing he wanted belonging, not necessarily to be a pirate, and maybe them bringing some of crew along to have their home somewhere safer and happier than the piracy they don't really enjoy but turn to because they have no other choice, but right now it just feels like... honestly like either he agreed to it to keep ed with him ("AITA for convincing my boyfriend to run an inn with me after leaving him two days ago because we were moving too fast? little backstory: this involved my boyfriend leaving everything in his life for me and no i did not apologize for running off to become a fisherman") or like, as i said up there, a matter of "actually all he needed was a BOYFRIEND all along" which... ngh. stede is more than his relationship.

idk why we bothered establishing that frenchie, jim and even archie were willing to put their lives on the line and lie to ed's murderous face to save izzy's life just for them to be stone-faced and have no feelings about his loss. like, okay, ed and he's stories are tied together and him dying in ed's arms makes more sense narratively than him dying in anyone else's, but also ed hadn't earned that and izzy deserved to die in the arms of someone who hadn't tried to kill him and shot him in the leg not to mention we went from fang's squishy hug and frenchie holding his hand to just... nothing? not a thing? roach, the ship's surgeon, did nothing to try and save him? it's just ed slapping his gunshot wound pathetically?

it strongly feels like they swapped izzy and ed's roles in his death scene sounds stupid but hear me out "you're my only family" would make so much more sense coming from izzy with ed dying in his arms. izzy's desperation to keep hold of ed, right down to accidentally pushing him down the kraken path at the end of season 1, being rooted in the feeling that ed is all he has in the world? ed responding that no, the crew love izzy. he's earned their love. he has a family outside of ed now, can't he see that? that makes so much more sense, considering izzy nearly died for them multiple times and spent the first few episodes trying to protect them and then being protected by them in kind he was their new unicorn!!! meanwhile ed said sorry to fang, izzy and lucius, and no one else has been shown to give any fucks about him since that whole thing, and like... rightly so? because he hadn't earned them back at all? and he fucked off on them too last episode lol dont forget he didnt JUST leave stede

we should have known better than to trust djenks when he broke jim and olu up for no reason ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk

nothing worth a damn happened this episode it was all running around and waving swords. idk how anyone got to where they were at the end. it was just poor writing.

the pacing has been off all season but they really shoved three episodes into one and hoped it'd work

i'm getting flashbacks to the timeless ~finale~ ugh

they spent so much time one ed's stupid fishing boat monologue instead of on ANYTHING ELSE

i ran out of thoughts

oh, here's another: the show walked a line between muppetry and things that were taken seriously lucius' finger, izzy's toes: serious ed getting bonked by a cannonball: emotionally serious, but not physically serious ed and stede both getting stabbed: not serious and what was treated as serious and what was treated as handwavy was dictated by what the storyline and the emotional needs were izzy getting shot to make it so they all had to run away yapping would have been hilarious, especially if he got back to the ship and went "nah eddie it's my left side, remember what i told you about the left? nothing important on the left" "your liver" <- roach, horrified but instead weird death scene because this was treated as physically serious, even though it...should not have been, really? and that is bothering me a lot too, because when lucius was thrown to his death, we looked at stede finding the crew on the island and went, "aha! lucius will be fine, because that's what the show logic is" and we were right, because the show had taught us that but that didn't extend to izzy for this and that's just weird

#ofmd #ofmd spoilers #izzy hands

[nomi--sunrider]

⭐ for the fic writer's ask!

Ah, a behind the scenes for Then, Now, and Always. Let's see....

Oh I know! I'll unpack the scene that got me the most negative feedback I've ever received on anything I've written: The Duel from Chapter 25: Battle of the Goddesses.

(I haven't talked about Then, Now, and Always in like a month, so be prepared for an essay.)

I thought up the silent Tally/enraged Alder epic duel very early on in the drafting process. Literally, it's in the first, very very rough draft in my docs, which is about 15 pages long and half-summary, half- little bites of scenes.

The reason I wanted them to have The Duel is twofold:

It's genuinely the most tragic thing I could think of for two people who love(d) each other. Y'know? Like Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar. Badass scene, but you're fully aware of the tragedy all the way through. It's supposed to hurt that these two women who once loved each other are now on opposite sides of a war and forced to do battle.

2. I thought it would be fucking awesome.

Part of the inspiration of Then, Now, and Always was this scene:

Tally Craven's hottest scene in the whole show imo. What was I gonna do, give her an enhanced witch baton and not let her use it to full effect? And who else was she going to fight who mattered? It had to be Alder.

Also, Alder's headbutt was dumb. You can quote me on that.

Look, if nothing else, Alder and Tally fight in the actual show. And that fight is important, it does have narrative and thematic relevance, and there is a damn good reason it happened. Unfortunately, that fight is also LAME. Seriously, it is the lamest thing ever! And not even because Tally gets her ass kicked in seconds! The scene is shot cleverly, with perspective shifts and quick camera cuts to veil the fact that the actors and stunt doubles aren't really doing that much. It's the only time we see an actual scourge battle that might have given some indication as to why it's the weapon of choice for witches and why witches make such deadly soldiers. And then it's five seconds long and nothing special.

So I wanted to write a cool fight scene for the fic. Not a spar, by the way. Sparring scenes are popular in fiction, but I personally think they're pointless (unless the author is trying to accomplish something unserious). Literally, a spar is a fake fight. A fascimile. It isn't real. I wanted to write something very, very real. And that led to a lot of the narrative wrapping around making Battle of the Goddesses possible.

Someone on Discord posted during a TNAA discussion "Oh Alder would never hurt Tally." The thing about that is a.) canonically, she can and she has, and b.) For Then, Now, and Always, that's actually not an unreasonable assertion to make. Alder is carrying one hell of a torch. Therefore, I had to make Alder angry enough to actually fight Tally with no holds barred and every intention of beating her.

And that ended up making Chapter 24: Judgment, what it is. In that same very early doc, I had this Petra line.

Literally, that's all. I had no idea where I'd put it or for what reason, but it felt important. I knew about the Ozarks twist from the start, so I knew that someone had to call out Alder for her judgment eventually. Then I realized that, since my plan when I started drafting TNAA was to fix everything, including mandatory freaking conscription of a persecuted minority group, I had the perfect, perfect opportunity to make Alder vicious enough to kill.

Tally's trying dissolve the Salem Accords. That was her endgame the whole time.

Now Alder's angry enough to fight to the death and make the duel truly epic, Tally's goal is much broader, the fic has the chance to move into deeply philosophical, big-picture territory, and I get a pair of dope-ass chapters out of it. Eight birds, one stone. I was so happy.

Zooming back out, I think part of the reason a lot of folks were upset by Battle of the Goddesses pertains to my theory that fanfiction is like ice cream. Easy to eat, requires no effort, delicious and instantly satisfying. The main romantic pairing isn't supposed to fight each other to the literal death, even if it's fucking awesome and deeply symbolic. Duels/battles/wars between two love interests are common fare in sci-fi/fantasy because of their intense thematic and narrative heft, but not in fanfic. That's serving roasted sweet potatoes and kale at an ice cream parlor. It's too much for a lot of readers.

Finally, I think a lot of readers were upset about Alder losing the fight. Here's the thing:

It's not interesting if she wins.

Just like it's not interesting if Goliath beats David or if Jamal doesn't win the jackpot in Slumdog Millionaire. It's a story. The underdog has to win against all odds by their cleverness and mettle. Yes, I too, am sad that Sarah Alder's trauma was never addressed. She's a traumatized, damaged victim of the narrative and her story is a tragedy, start to finish. I think a big draw of the Talder ship is that it allows us to protect and humanize Alder in a way the show never did. Few people want to see her be the victim of even more pain in fic.

This doesn't change the fact that General Sarah Alder is brutal, unyielding, and violent. She's a three hundred year old soldier and her entire existence is war. She is not a good person. To defang her without earning it would be OOC. Trauma doesn't make good people. Healing makes good people. And there's no indication in canon that Sarah Alder has healed in any way, shape, or form.

If you've read this all the way til the end, that's very kind of you. Thanks for letting me ramble!

Why her character arc in Then, Now, and Always really doesn't start until Arc III lmao. When Alder is on her knees, defeated and disgraced, but instead of Petra and Tally going for the kill like they did in the show, they both offer a hand to help her back up. Alder heals because she's given the chance to do so by the people around her. Because I chose to not, y'know, immediately kill her off after tearing her from her pedestal. Genuinely, I have lost so much sleep over all of the amazing, transformative character work the show had in its damn lap and chose to ignore.

#talder #fanfic #nomi--sunrider #then now and always #tally craven #motherland: fort salem #sarah alder #asks

[daenerysstormreborn]

After finishing reading AGoT, I have a brand new hope for a way the books may differ from the show. I want to see Sansa snap. I want Sansa to be violent. I want her to get her hands dirty!!

In the show, yes, she’s responsible for the deaths of Ramsey and Littlefinger, but they’re detached kills carried out by someone else. I’d much less likely she’ll kill Ramsey in the books since I know that her marriage to him was a show exclusive, but I wouldn’t mind a bit if she did it on behalf of Jeyne. And I can only hope she kills Littlefinger with her own two hands.

To me, Sansa seems like a character who has believed her whole life that that beauty, politeness, and grace are the keys to her safety. If she can be ladylike, she will be safe. I interpret her desires for Arya to be more of a lady as, at the heart, a desire for her sister to be safe. The songs tell of lovely, happy things, so if she can keep things the way they are in the songs, it will bring safety and happiness and the heroes will win. This is a reasonable conclusion a kid might draw. Kids often fail to recognize what they actually want and misidentify the true sources of their anxiety because they simply lack the self awareness. It wouldn’t be a stretch for a child’s internal, subconsciously narrative to take “the gentle and graceful ladies of the stories are happy and safe” and conclude that “beauty and manners will make a girl happy and safe.” Combine that with a desire for her family to be safe, and it all gets expressed as a desire for Arya to be ladylike. I could imagine that at her core, it’s not politeness that Sansa truly values. She has no reason to care if Arya likes dresses. It’s safety she wants, but she’s a child who doesn’t know how to voice that.

But it seems to me like the books are setting her up to learn that these things, these “feminine” qualities, will not save anyone. To be a lady means nothing. Lady was murdered. And I want her to be ANGRY about it. Angry that she wasted so much time and energy trying to be the perfect image of a noblewoman. And I want her to lash out. I think she definitely has it in her, based on her last chapter in AGoT. She thinks multiple times about wanting to hurt others. She is FURIOUS.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a … a thing to him. “No,” she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he’d hurt her,

Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him,

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”

And my favorite:

All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.

I can only hope that’s foreshadowing. I hope that, in an impulsive act of violence and rage, she pushes Littlefinger off the Eyrie. Nothing proper or calculated. A simple moment where that madness overtakes her and all the rage she’s had comes out in final shove.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #sansa stark

[grassbreads]

I finished Silent Reading!!

Overall I'd say that I liked and had fun with it despite my criticisns, but it has some pretty noticeable problems. This is the second priest novel I've read after Tai Sui, and I knew it wasn't going to live up to my utter adoration of TS, but I'd still say that Mo Du was pretty notably not as good. It's a fun novel! But it's good rather than amazing.

On the positive side, I really enjoyed Luo Wenzhou and Fei Du's whole dynamic. It wasn't the most romantic romance I've read, and I could nitpick how I feel about their end state, but they're always a ton of fun to watch going back and forth. I especially enjoyed their book 3 "flirty game of chicken" era, as well as their more fraught confrontations in book 4. "I’d really love nothing better than to dig out your evil heart and rotten lungs and have a look" remains one of the most brilliantly insanity-inducing lines of dialogue that I have ever read.

Lang Qiao, Tao Ran, and Xiao Haiyang all made for very charming side characters, and the mysteries themselves were interesting. I also love the choice to work literary references into the novel in such a big way. I was *thrilled* when I started book 2 and realized what priest was doing with the book titles.

There really is a lot to like about Mo Du, and priest tells a great story with Fei Du. Watching a character intent on destroying himself be pulled from a dark path and manage to exact an almost perfect revenge while remaining unsullied is, uh, really satisfying. It's fun to watch the forces of justice be victorious!

However, as is the case with any ultimately pro-police story that tries to tackle the failings of the justice system, it feels like it bit off more than it could resolve thematically. The conspiracy has been unwound and the crooked cops have been exposed, but the novel makes a legitimate point about the failings of the police to really help people, especially early on, and the ending does not fully fix that problem. Things are definitely better than they were when the story ends. Fei Du is a rich man that likes to spend his money helping victims, and Lwz and his team are all very dedicated to bringing justice no matter the cost. But I don't think it's realistic to say that Lwz's people will somehow solve every crime in Yan city, or that no victim will ever be tossed by the wayside again. It just feels like there's this terrible looming extant problem in the background that neither priest or the characters can recognize.

Fei Du gets his happy ending and catharsis, and the victims of the Zhangs and Fan Siyuan get some version of justice in the end, but the problems of the justice system as presented in the story simply cannot be fixed.

Like I said, this is ultimately a failing that the story was bound to have, given that it's both pro-police to a large degree and concerned with how the justice system fails people, but I still feel it's worth pointibg out. Not to mention the overall copaganda-ness of how LWZ and his team are portrayed.

Besides my beef with police narratives, I also think that the mysteries in this one may have gotten a bit too convoluted for their own good at times. The crimes in Silent Reading are a complex fucking web, and keeping track of everything that happens would require following a near unfathomable number of tiny details over a long (540k) novel. Once we hit a certain point, I just had to accept that I wasn't going to be able to follow the details of the mystery or figure anything out for myself, which isn't necessarily what you want from a crime novel.

Also, as much as I enjoyed Fei Du, there were some points where I felt his backstory kinda failed to land. I think I'm honestly just spoiled by VnC at this point. Vanitas is a character with a truly horrific backstory and a bonkers personality, but it never feels like too much because every horrible thing in his past is reflected so well in his present traits (and vice versa). For Fei Du, on the other hand, his past sometimes felt like a little much. He's obviously going thru it in the present, but not quite a degree of fucked up that could sell me on the sheer insanity that is the whole metal ring situation.

Also, as I've complained about previously, I don't love how this novel treats women. I don't like how things ended with Yang Xin, and though I ended up enjoying Lang Qiao, I'm bothered by how she's basically the only woman that's relevant through the whole novel (compared to just SO many dudes).

Overall, a solid 6 or 7 out of 10. A lot of fun and very interesting, and it does have some compelling thematic things to say, but there were aspects which I found very much frustrated me. I might recommend it to anyone who likes Tai Sui and wants to see an interesting Zhou Ying precursor, as well as anyone who really likes mystery and crime novels with super intricate, complicated plotlines. However, I only make that recommendation if you promise to take the novel's portrayal of good policemen with a MASSIVE grain of salt lmao. I cannot stress enough the degree to which the portrayal of LWZ and his team ends up being copaganda-ish, even if that's unintentional.

#I feel like I could write an essay about this novel's relationship to the concept of good police #I absolutely am not going to #as I am not nearly familiar enough with the details of the chinese police system to do the topic any kind of justice #but someone who knows more than me could really sink their teeth in and unpack everything #anyway. it was an interesting read and I had a lot of fun with it #but I'm happy to be moving on now #go vote in my silly little poll to decide what I'm starting next! #it's in my tag: #invasion of the frogs #andie reads silently #long post

[anamatics]

Your opinion on old fandom forums vs, fandom today?

I didn't answer this one last night as I wanted to be able to type out a proper response, and one that's partly adapted from an essay I wrote back in 2016.

As a fandom old, I’ve spent a long time in fandom spaces. I did my time with writing slash and het ships, but I always loved writing stories for me about people like me. I have witnessed first-hand the rise and fall of listservs and live journal as places where people who liked femslash gathered to discuss their favorite shows. I know a lot of fandom history. When I comment on the events in fandom, it still comes from my position as a fan, not as a creative. I want to preface all of these thoughts with this.

Fandom used to be something that you didn't talk about. It was secret, never mentioned in public, zines and stories mailed back and forth across the country. The internet changed that, people's attitudes toward things like queer and trans identity changed that, people's want to see diversity on their screens changed that. Yet, at the same time, there is a whole new generation of young queer creatives emerging onto the writing scene who have grown up witnessing the rise and fall of these great, monolithic fandoms that exist beyond the space of shows themselves. More and more, networks, writers, and producers are paying attention to what the fandom says and to what they react to.

This is why I don't really like fandom these days, because I've seen both sides. I struggled with this working on Carmilla as someone who had been, and in may ways still was, a fan. I know fans have power, I've done things because I know fans have power. And yet, I felt like I'd lost my place in a community - in old fandom - because of this realization. And I myself asking questions about my place in new fandom. Questions that, most of the time, had no answers.

Is it valid to be both grateful for the acknowledgement of fan desires within the creative side of television and web writing and a little horrified by the amount of entitlement that any capitulation by those productions seems to engender within fans? Am I valid in feeling trapped by this feeling of wanting to be the best possible arbiter of representation and knowing that I can never be perfect because the perfection demanded by the queer community isn’t achievable? Does my voice even matter in fandom circles anymore because I’ve “crossed over” to the other side? Am I allowed to continue to speak critically about representation in shows that are not my own because I haven’t “fixed mine yet”?

I struggled with this when Carmilla was airing. I still struggle with it now, too, because I see how trolls on Twitter and Tumblr have reacted to folks like me speaking out about problems we see in our communities or within fandom. People like me aren’t allowed to criticize fandom, or fandom culture, because we’re no longer seen as truly a part of it: by being creators who can’t always live up to fandom’s sometimes unreasonable standards, we’re now considered just part of the problem. We can’t critique behaviors and call things out within this fandom community that should also represent us because when we do we’re hurting the fandom community.

Every queer creative out there has shouldered some of this hurt, I know I have. I stand by what I’ve said despite the backlash. If you cannot believe in the truth you speak, what good are you to a community looking to you for change?

Those who speak to the internal problems of fandom culture are shouted down. People with years of fandom experience, who are far more knowledgeable of the history of fandom (and especially the femslash corners of it) and presence in media than the present-day narrative setters, are shouted down and told that we are part of the problem. Creatives who speak out and criticize other works are treated equally poorly. The problem is that in refusing to look at the problems within our fandom spaces, and saying that everyone outside the group is to blame for the problems of poor representation, we are sticking our fingers in our ears and refusing to look at what’s wrong with us. We eat our own.

The queer community – and by extension the queer fandom community – functions like an ouroboros as far as I can tell. That’s the snake from Norse mythology that eats its tail, representing infinity but also representing the inevitable crush of our own bullshit as it comes down around us with the hopes of becoming a better community. There should be a place within this community for everyone, and yet it’s this same space that is preoccupied with gatekeeping characterized by constant infighting, identity policing, and silencing or invalidating opinions that don’t perfectly align with this vision of what is considered acceptable in the eyes of the thinking of the day.

Queerness is messy. There’s a lot of nuance to it. And there will always be people who want their own community within that umbrella of queerness. That’s a valid want. You want to be around people who are homogenous, because it’s when variety is introduced that feelings get hurt. But the existence of a community for marginalized people should not come at the detriment and degradation of other vulnerable people, nor should it come at the expanse of dismissing intersectionality within our community.

But instead, we eat our own. We dismiss trans headcanons like people in old fandom used to dismiss queer headcanons. We're doing the same bullshit, just rinsed and repeated, directed at a new set of people whose voices are smaller than the small specks of power new fandom has granted (cis, white) queer people.

We fight ourselves amongst because we feel as though we cannot fight the forces of our own oppression. We censor ourselves to make sure that we don’t say anything to upend the proverbial apple cart. We do this not because we’re afraid of the problematic elements outside of the community that could come into our community, but rather because we’re afraid of those within our own community who have the power to kick us out from under our own umbrella and back into the rain.

So when I think about fandom these days, I imagine this moment of losing community. I imagine the hurtful message sent, the dismissive post on the forum, the hateful tweet, actions that cost nothing when they are directed at creators, fan writers, fan artists. These people exist to create content that is to be consumed. They aren't human. They aren't even real. They're just the producers of content that fandom sucks up like a vacuum cleaner without bothering to engage with the creators except to demand more or demand better. Nothing makes you feel alienated from your community like realizing you only exist to produce for it and when you don't produce to standards, you are attacked.

What's worse is that a lot of folks in fandom don't even think about this these days. There's no risk in blasting off a message or a tweet. But social media is an echo chamber. It’s a hive mind, and it’s a place where people can get hurt, very badly, and very quickly. Social media should not be used as a weapon to badger the people trying to get into positions where they can create change, which is what I feel new fandom has done. But at the same time, new fandom has also become a space where voices can be uplifted, where people can be seen and heard who maybe weren't before.

So TL;DR, I think social media ruined fandom, I have a lot of baggage/trauma from working on a show as fandom was transitioning from old fandom to new fandom, and like... we have to be better to each other.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #writing #fandom #some commentary that I'll probably delete

[ellewords]

atsumu was like the sun. he shined and glowed and warmed people just by being near them. without a single thought, he was able to brighten the mood in ways that no one else could. even on his darker days or when his being felt too harsh, he left an impact that made everyone long for more. you couldn’t always see him, couldn’t always feel his presence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there somehow, unseen but known.

by association, that sort of made you the moon. you could shine brightly and leave a warm glow and comfort others when they felt like they were in the dark. but all of that wasn’t possible without the sun. without atsumu.

people didn’t know you unless you were by atsumu’s side. they didn’t spare you a glance until atsumu brought attention to you. but you didn’t mind. all you wanted was to have him by your side, to support you when you couldn’t hold yourself up, to be brilliant beside him even if you would never outshine him. you were content in your current situation.

so why did it hurt so much seeing him continue to shine? why did his warmth suddenly feel so cold? why couldn’t you be as bright as him all on your own?

or, atsumu will always be the sun, you always the moon. maybe now it’s time to accept that you’re nothing without him so you can finally shine for yourself.

-💛

—  from elle ! 💛anon you never miss, do you? aaaa this was so good it lived in my head rent free ever since i first read it >_< i just had to write an addition to this for the way you made my heart actually ache. i hope i did your drabble justice :<< this just hit a lil too close to home ngl thank you for reading everyone, i hope you like this! reblogs are appreciated, they help a ton <3

fic notes / warnings : timeskip!miya atsumu x gn!reader, angst, fluff (-ish? kinda) ending, oneshot, wc: ~1.52k (!! my longest margins addition so far omg)

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

atsumu has a gravitational pull, that much has always been clear to you and everyone else; a pull so strong that you can’t help but orbit around him. every room he walks into, he commands the attention of everyone present. one can’t help but simply be drawn to him — with his bright smiles, boisterous laughs, and larger than life movements. it’s no wonder why everything seems to bend to his will, how the universe seems to revolve around him. 

you’ve moved around him for as long as you can remember, every now and then, he lets you borrow his light. the world has associated you with him and you don’t blame anyone one bit. 

his name has always come first. setter for the inarizaki volleyball team, miya atsumu. invited to the all-japan youth intensive training camp, miya atsumu. captain of the inarizaki volleyball team, miya atsumu. setter for division one volleyball team, the msby black jackals, miya atsumu.  

meanwhile, yours is treated as an afterthought, an attachment, a footnote in the awe-inspiring narrative of his life. you’re known as his childhood friend. his best friend, the one who cheers him on from the stands in every single one of his games. alleged significant other, according to whispers in the hallway and to the tabloids and paparazzi. his eventual confirmed significant other, ln yn. 

atsumu and who’s that with him? atsumu and his best friend. atsumu and his significant other. atsumu, oh, and yn’s here too. it’s always atsumu before yn; his name before yours. sometimes, you wonder if anyone would know your name if he hadn’t started dating you.    

you walk behind atsumu, not beside him, when you enter a room. fingertips loosely intertwined with his, you attempt to keep your head up as atsumu introduces you around. they spare you a quick “hi”, before beginning a conversation with your sun. 

though he’s not really your sun, is he? you’ve always had to share him with everyone else. everyone needs a little sunshine in their life, a little warmth; his brilliance is dazzling, like everyone else, you revelled in his glow. 

the world has always associated you with him, but it never worked the other way around. atsumu has always shined on his own; you needed him to have light for yourself. 

~

no one blames the sun for burning a little too bright; it’s simply the way it is. similarly, you’ve never blamed atsumu for being the way he is. he doesn’t know, didn’t mean to do it in the first place. atsumu has always existed for himself, lived life the way he sees fit.

you can’t blame him, no matter how much you wanted to. even if you forced yourself to. 

staring at the sun is fascinating, but do it long enough and it starts to hurt. the warmth is no longer comforting, but harsh and prickly. the light is no longer magical and dazzling, but blinding and terrifying. it took some time, but you eventually convinced yourself to look away. 

“ya sure ya wanna do this?” atsumu asked, immediately recognizing your hesitance. he doesn’t want to break up, he wants you to take your words back, he wants you to tell him that this was all just some sick prank. but right now, it doesn’t matter what he wants. what matters is how you feel, the emotions he didn’t realize you had been feeling. 

“no…” you mumbled. the intensity of his gaze makes your knees buckle, but you stand your ground. even in the chilling darkness of his living room, he radiates light and understanding, making everything all the more difficult. you bite the inside of your cheek, letting a few beats pass before your next words, “but i have to.”

“i believe in you,” atsumu nodded, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his jeans. he lets out a quiet exhale, eyes gazing on the suitcases in your hand, “yer gonna do so many amazin’ things.”

your grip on the bag’s handle tightened. it was the end of an era, one that you didn’t expect would be ending at all. but it had to be done. for the first time since you met atsumu, you finally began to think of yourself. a small smile plays on your lips, hoping that he picks up on the pure gratefulness of your tone, “thank you for lending me your light.”

his reply would play in a loop in your mind. even in a breakup, the darkest the night has ever been, atsumu offers you a little bit of light. as expected from the sun.  

~

the moon goes through several phases. some days are better than others. it’s a wave of several highs and lows, but you grow to understand that’s how things are. on some nights it’s as invisible as they come, the clouds blocking out what little light it already produced. though it glowed on other nights, you often feel like nothing has changed. but you learn to trust the process either way. 

gazing at the moon is calming, not dazzling and exceptional, but calming. it provides peace, serenity. you often gazed at the moon, especially on the nights where you could only toss and turn. a cold breeze would blow past you and send shivers down your spine, painting your bare skin with several goosebumps. leaning on the balcony railing and taking in the sounds of a city that barely slept makes you think of him. 

you miss the sun; you miss your sun. you miss his presence and the warmth he brings you. atsumu checks in every now and then, asking how you’re doing and wondering if you’d ever want to meet for a cup of coffee. you’ve never accepted any of his offers for fear of only getting pulled back in. 

you’ve never realized that you always had a gravitational pull of your own. atsumu spends most of his nights gazing at the moon. when his heart raced and his mind buzzed, the moon brought him tranquility — as did you, his anchor. 

[ miya atsumu ] : the night sky is nice tonight, it makes me think of you. i like that we’re always looking at the same one. 

[ miya atsumu ] : i hope you’re doing okay.

he’s right, the night sky does look nice. the moon is full and shining the brightest you’ve ever seen it shine. gleaming, enchanting, and breathtaking doesn’t seem to do its beauty any justice. perhaps the poets and artists had been right all along, the moon is the perfect muse. your thoughts almost convince you that its light isn’t artificial. but twinkling beside the moon are the stars, shimmering high above the world you know, their light completely their own.   

you’re not okay. being the moon may not be too bad, but you’ve already realized that you want to be amongst the stars as one. 

~

days turn into weeks, and eventually months. sometimes they blend together when nothing of interest or importance happens, though you strive for events that are worth remembering. you’ve found a job that you actually like, one that you truly excelled at. you’ve started to put yourself out there, to meet people that pushed you to be better than you had been the day before. slowly but surely, you began to create your own light.

some days your light faltered, some days are dimmer than others, but it was a light of your own. it’s one that didn’t need another’s glow to exist. soon enough, you find yourself accepting one of atsumu’s many offers for a cup of coffee.

he’s now brighter than ever. setter for division one volleyball team, the msby black jackals, miya atsumu, has turned into setter for japan’s olympic team, miya atsumu. his radiance is as blinding as ever, the largest grin on his face as he waves his hand out the second he caught sight of you.   

but you’re brighter now too, weaving through the cafe tables with your head up high. you’re more sure of yourself, standing taller, making each step towards him with purpose. you’ve lost the tension in your shoulders, the weight that built in your chest. and atsumu notices it too.  

“you’ve changed.” he smiles, much softer than you’re used to. his gaze is fond as you settle in the seat in front of him.  

“i know,” you reply, the corners of your lips twitching upwards, “but thank you for lending me your light.”

atsumu’s smile remains that same soft one that you’re not used to as he recognizes your words almost immediately. he leans back in his seat, gesturing a hand to you, “never gave ya anythin’, this is all you.”

he replies with the same words he said several months ago, the latter half of the sentence being the only addition. warmth fills your chest as he never lost a single ounce of sincerity. the only difference? this time you actually believe him. 

atsumu may still be the sun, but you’ve become a star in your own right; you no longer need him to shine. maybe someday you’ll shine bright enough to allow yourself to exist beside him. but for now, this is enough. 

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

send me a hc / or a scenario ! <3 |  written on the margins masterlist

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[liquidstar]

I feel as if many people, myself included, have been having problems with the way “critical thinking” is conducted in fandom circles more and more. Which I’d say is a good thing, because it means we’re thinking critically. But still the issues with the faux-critical mentality and with the way we consume media through that fandom group mentality are incredibly widespread at this point, despite being very flawed, and there are still plenty of people who follow it blindly, ironically.

I sort of felt like I had to examine my personal feelings on it and I ended up writing a whole novel, which I’ll put under the cut, and I do welcome other people’s voices in the matter, because while I’m being as nuanced as I can here I obviously am still writing from personal experience and may overlook some things from my limited perspective. But by and large I think I’ve dissected the phenomena as best I can from what I’ve been seeing going on in fandom circles from a safe but observable distance.

Right off the bat I want to say, I think it's incredibly good and necessary to be critical of media and understand when you should stop consuming it, but that line can be a bit circumstantial sometimes for different people. There are a lot of anime that I used to watch as a teenager that I can’t enjoy anymore, because I got more and more uncomfortable overtime with the sexualization of young characters, partly because as I was getting older I was really starting to realize how big of an issue it was, and I certainly think more critically now than I did when I was 14. Of course I don’t assume everyone who still watches certain series is a pedophile, and I do think there are plenty of fans that understand this. However I still stay away from those circles and that’s a personal choice.

I don’t think a person is morally superior based on where they draw the line and their own boundaries with this type of stuff, what’s more important is your understanding of the problem and response to it. There are series I watch that have a lot of the same issues around sexualization of the young characters in the cast, but they’re relatively toned down and I can still enjoy the aspects of the series I actually like without it feeling as uncomfortable and extreme. Others will not be able to, and their issues with it are legitimate and ones that I still ultimately agree with, but they’re still free to dislike the series for it, after all our stance on the issue itself is the same so why would I resent them for it?

Different people are bound to have different lines they draw for how far certain things can go in media before they’re uncomfortable watching it and it doesn’t make it a moral failing of the person who can put up with more if they’re still capable of understanding why it’s bad to begin with and able to not let it effect them. But I don’t think that sentiment necessarily contradicts the idea that some things really are too far gone for this to apply, the above examples aren’t the same thing as a series centered solely around lolicon ecchi and it doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to understand why. It’s not about a personal line anymore when it comes to things that are outright propaganda or predatory with harmful ideals woven into the message of the story itself. Critical thinking means knowing the difference between these, and no one can hold your hand through it. And simply slapping “I’m critical of my interests” on your bio isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s always evident when someone isn’t truly thinking about the impact of the media they consume through the way they consume it.

I think the issue is that when people apply “Critical thinking” they don’t actually analyze the story and its intent, messages, themes, morals, and all that. Instead they approach it completely diegetically, it’s basically the thermian argument, the issue stems from thinking about the story and characters as if they’re real people and judging their actions through that perspective, rather than something from a writer trying to deliver a narrative by using the story and characters as tools. Like how people get upset about characters behaving “problematically” without realizing that it’s an intentional aspect of the story, that the character needs to cause problems for there to be conflict. What they should be looking at instead is what their behavior represents in the real world.

You do not need to apply real-world morals to fictional characters, you need to apply them to the narrative. The story exists in the real world, the characters and events within it do not. Fictional murderers themselves do not hurt anyone, no one is actually dying at their hands, but their actions hold weight in the narrative which itself can harm real people. If the character only murders gay people then it reflects on whatever the themes and messages of the story are, and it’s a major issue if it's framed as if they’re morally justified, or as if this is a noble action. And it’s a huge red flag if people stan this character, even if the story itself actually presents their actions as reprehensible. Or cases where the murderers themselves are some kind of awful stereotype, like Buffalo Bill who presents a violent and dangerous stereotype of trans women, making the character a transmisogynistic caricature (Intentional or otherwise) that has caused a lot of harm to the perception of trans women. When people say “Fiction affects reality” this is what they mean. They do not mean “People will see a pretend bad guy and become bad” they mean “Ideals represented in fiction will be pulled from the real world and reflected back onto it.”

However, stories shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you the lesson as if you’re watching a children’s cartoon, stories often have nuances and you have to actively analyze the themes of it all to understand it’s core messages. Oftentimes it can be intentionally murky and hard to parse especially if the subject matter itself is complicated. But you can’t simply read things on the surface and think you understand everything about them, without understanding the symbolism or subtext you can leave a series like Revolutionary Girl Utena thinking the titular Utena is heterosexual and was only ever in love with her prince. Things won’t always be face-value or clear-cut and you will be forced to come to your own conclusions sometimes too.

That’s why the whole fandom-based groupthink mentality about “critical thinking” doesn’t work, because it’s not critical. It’s simply looking into the crowd, seeing people say a show is problematic, and then dropping it without truly understanding why. It’s performative, consuming the best media isn’t activism and it doesn’t make you a better person. Listening to the voices of people whom the issues directly concerns will help you form an opinion, and to understand the issues from a more knowledgeable perspective beyond your own. All that means nothing if you just sweep it under the rug because you want to look infallible in your morality. That’s not being critical, it’s just being scared to analyze yourself, as well as what you engage with. You just don’t want to think about those things and you’re afraid of being less than perfect so you pretend it never happened.

And though I’m making this post, it’s not mine or anyone else’s job to hold your hand through all this and tell you “Oh this show is okay, but this show isn't, and this book is bad etc etc etc”. Because you actually have to think for yourself, you know, critically. Examples I’ve listed aren’t rules of thumb, they’re just examples and things will vary depending on the story and circumstance. You have to look at shit on a case-by-case basis instead of relying on spotting tropes without thinking about how they’re implemented and what they mean. That’s why it’s analysis, you have to use it to understand what the narrative is communicating to its audience, explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or incidentally, and understand how this reflects the real world and what kind of impact it can have on it. 

A big problem with fandom is it has made interests synonymous with personality traits, as if every series we consume is a core part of our being, and everything we see in it reflects our viewpoints as well. So when people are told that a show they watched is problematic, they react very extremely, because they see it as basically the same thing as saying they themselves are problematic (It’s not). Everyone sees themselves as good people, they don’t want to be bad people, so this scares them and they either start hiding any evidence that they ever liked it, or they double down and start defending it despite all its flaws, often providing those aforementioned thermian arguments (“She dresses that way because of her powers!”).

That’s how you get people who call children’s cartoons “irredeemable media” and people who plaster “fiction=/= reality!” all over their blogs, both are basically trying to save face either by denying that they could ever consume anything problematic or denying that the problematic aspects exist all together. And absolutely no one is actually addressing the core issues anymore, save for those affected by them who pointed them out to begin with, only for their original point to become muffled in the discourse. No one is thinking critically because they’re more concerned with us-vs-them group mentality, both sides try to out-perform the other while the actual issue gets ignored or is used as nothing more than a gacha with no true understanding or sympathy behind it.

One of the other issues that comes from this is the fact that pretty much everyone thinks they’re the only person capable of being critical of their interests. That’s how you get those interactions where one person goes “OK [Media] fan” and another person replies “Bro you literally like [Other Media]”, because both parties think they’re the only ones capable of consuming a problematic piece of media and not becoming problematic themselves, anyone else who enjoys it is clearly incapable of being as big brained as them. It’s understandable because we know ourselves and trust ourselves more than strangers, and I’m not saying there can’t be certain fandoms who’s fans you don’t wanna interact with, but when we presume that we know better than everyone else we stop listening to other people all together. It’s good to trust your own judgement, it’s bad to assume no one else has the capacity to think for themselves either though.

The insistence that all media that you personally like is without moral failing and completely pure comes with the belief that all media that you personally dislike has to be morally bad in some way. As if you can’t just dislike a series because you find it annoying or it just doesn’t appeal to you, it has to be problematic, and you have to justify your dislike of it through that perspective. You have to believe that your view on whatever media it is is the objectively correct one, so you’ll likely pick apart all it’s flaws to prove you’re on the right side, but there’s no analysis of context or intent. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean those critiques are unfounded or invalid, but in cases like this they’re often skewed in one direction based on personal opinion. It’s just as flawed as ignoring all the faults in the stuff you like, it’s biased and subjective analysis that misses a lot of context in both cases, it’s not a good mindset to have about consuming media. It’s just another result of tying media consumption with identity and personal morals. The faux-critical mentality is an attempt to separate the two in a way that implies they’re a packaged deal to begin with, making it sort of impossible to truly do so in any meaningful way.

As far as I know this whole phenomena started with “Steven Universe Critical” in, like, 2016, and that’s where this mentality around “critical thinking” originated. It started out with just a few people correctly pointing out very legitimate issues with the series, but over time it grew into just a trend where people would make cutesy kin blogs with urls like critical-[character] or [character]crit to go with the fad as it divulged into Nostalgia Critic level critique. Of course there was backlash to this and criticism of the criticism, but no actual conversation to be had. Just people trying to out-do each other by acting as the most virtuous one in the room, and soon enough the fad became a huge echo-chamber that encouraged more and more outrageous takes for every little thing. The series itself was a children’s cartoon so it stands to reason that a lot of the fans were young teens, so this behavior isn’t too surprising and I do believe a lot of them did think they were doing the right thing, especially since it was encouraged. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there were actual real issues and concerns brought up about the series that got treated with very little sympathy and were instead drowning out people’s voices. Though those from a few years back may have grown up since and know better (Hopefully), the mentality stuck around and influenced the norm for how fandoms and fandom people conduct any sort of critique on media. 

That’s a shame to me, because the pedestal people place fandom onto has completely disrupted our perception on how to engage with media in a normal way. Not everything should be consumed with fandom in mind, not everything is a coffee-shop au with no conflict, not everything is a children’s cartoon with the morals spoon-fed to you. Fandom has grown past the years of uncritical praise of a series, it’s much more mainstream now with a lot more voices in it beyond your small community on some forum, and people are allowed to use those voices. Just because it may not be as pleasant for you now because you don’t get to just turn your brain off and ignore all the flaws doesn’t mean you can put on your rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and pretend that fandom is actually all that is good in the world, to the point where you place it above the comfort and safety of others (Oftentimes children). Being uncritical of fandom itself is just as bad as being uncritical of what you consume to begin with. 

At the end of the day it all just boils down to the ability to truly think for yourself but with sympathy and compassion for other people in mind, while also understanding that not everyone will come to the same conclusion as you and people are allowed to resent your interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hate you personally, you should be acknowledging the same issues after all. You can’t ignore aspects of it that aren’t convenient to your conclusion, you have to actually be critical and understand the issues to be able to form it. 

I think that all we need is to not rely on fandom to tell us what to do, but still listen to the voices of others, take them into account to form our opinion too, boost their voices instead of drowning them out in the minutiae of internet discourse about which character is too much of an asshole to like. Think about what the characters and story represent non-diegetically instead of treating them like real people and events, rather a story with an intent and message to share through its story and characters, and whatever those reflect from the real world. That’s how fiction affects reality, because it exists in reality and reflects reality through its own lens. The story itself is real, with a real impact on you and many others, so think about the impact and why it all matters. Just… Think. Listen to others but think for yourself, that’s all.

#see i told you guys id find that essay and post it for real. i wasnt kidding. #good luck inbox of mine :praying:

[ackerpreach]

This ending .... I can name 500 reasons and I will name them right now, because I don’t think I’m the only one who is upset with how things turned out. (Also, A positive message for all of you at the end)

MAJOR LEAKS SPOILERS/ READ WITH CAUTION

Update: after reading more theories from fellow RM bloggers, and sleeping over it one day, this entire chapter might be an april fools... Don't fully lose hope yet beautiful people. It's me just giving a review on a possible fake April fools chapter

After following this franchise since 2013, so nearly a DECADE. this ending is a pure disserve to the entire fandom. I feel like Yams has rushed it just for the sake of being done with the entire manga. So many things are left open, characters and their developemt are reverted back all the way to chapter 1 or are left even worse than that...

Mikasa’s worthless character development/ Aaronmika’s horrible toxic codependent relationship 

Oh honey... Let’s start with how horrible Isayama has treated her. We were all rooting for her, because we all felt like she was so misunderstood. She had a horrible childhood and imprinted on a guy who treated her like trash 99 percent of the story. And then, slowly but surely, she starts to realize she has to stop obsessing over him in the uprising arc with the help of a real man who treats her like a queen, more importantly, he treats her like a real human being. This man sees her for her abilities and that she has the power to be self dependent. She learned parts of herself, that she was able to work together with him like no one else could.  She learned parts of herself she was unable to do so if she kept obsessing about Aaron. All this love, care, mutual understanding and RESPECT these two shared. 

but...NAH FUCK THAT, right Yams?? Throw all this development away, all this bonding. Let’s make the main female lead even more yandere than she already was in the first season. Let her make out with his decapacitated head (like dude, this is also pure disrespect to Aaron’s dead body btw) and let her obsess even more about the guy who has treated her no better than a piece of toilet cloth 99 percent of the time. The guy who was never really appreciative in front of her for saving his ass billions of times, who always pushed her away, who yells at her and snaps at her whenever he can instead of reasoning and talking calmly with her in mature way. (EVEN PARODY YOUTUBE CHANNELS WHO DONT SHIP ANYTHING MAKE IT A TROPE WHERE AARON TELLS MIKASA HE HATES HER GUTS WHENEVER HE CAN) 

Then after all that, suddenly Yams tries to last minute persuade us Aaron’s always been head over heels for her???  He should have build their relationship better which he hasn’t even tried to do so... He must be thinking his fans are stupid for eating this from his hands.    

Like seriously??? What is this??? 

Isayama is just fully contradicting himself. It’s like someone tipped him off with a buttload of money for him to write Aaron like this to satisfy shipping needs and to cash in those extra money’s from it. Even if he tried to cater to Erem*ika, this is not how you write a loving and caring couple which people will root for. 

This next two panels just freaking infuriates me to the core of my soul. I can’t even describe how dissapointed I am with Mikasa. 

Why is she clutching that head so obsessively like that?  Why is she walking and turning her back away from her comrades? After everything they have done for her, after all they’ve been through?! After everything Armin has done? Standing up for Mikasa, beating up Aaron for hurting her. I feel like even Jean, Connie and Sasha have cared more for her in a healthy way.  Sure, Aaron cares for her romantically too apparently (What a twist Yams :)), but has he aided her to becoming a mentally healthier individual? Has he aided in her mental stability? The answer is a big fat NO!  All I see between these two after today’s raw Chapter’s are too Yandere obsessed individuals who have no clue on how to maintain a healthy relationship. 

Love should only go as far as the heart can endure and it seems like her character is not willing to be aware of that. Even Armin was able to let go of Aaron in those latest panels. Why does her entire character resolve around this guy??? I really do not understand. Her Ackerbond and her age is not an excuse for her to throw her life away like this. 

Shonen’s disgusting portrayal of women 

I’ve seen this countless of times in the many years I’ve watched anime. SasuS*ku from Naruto, Ichih*me from Bleach, Shinji and that oranged hair girl from Neon Evangelion.. Why do these women get decreased to simpletons with one single goal? And that is to obsess over a bland male lead who either treats them like trash or doesn’t notice them up until the last last chapter (LITERALLY WHAT YAMS HAS DONE). Some go even as far as the male leading wanting the kill the female love interest and yet the female lead is still in love with them???. It’s disgusting for him to write the MAIN female character this way. 

It’s dissapointing we believed in Isayama doing Mikasa’s character right. That she’s finally being able to let go of her codependency and to live for herself maybe live in Hizuru and find more about her roots???, but every single time she shows some improvement, it’s burried deep in the ground again by the Author. It almost seems like a lowkey kink of some of the male Mangaka’s to write about a girl obsessing over them no matter what. I see this so many times to the point that I truly stand behind it that some of them might have this fantasy. 

I wished he didn’t portray her last panels like this. Everyone else is living their lives while Mikasa is still grieving about him. I’m not saying she’s not allowed to grieve and everyone takes it at their own pace, but cmon... Show her living her life too. This is too much. Her being next to his grave and grieving him as her last panels just shoves it in our faces that YET AGAIN, BEING OBSESSED WITH AARON IS ALL HER CHARACTER STANDS FOR. 

I truly despise how Isayama handles her grieving, kissing his decapacitated head, carrying it around like some handbag, and her last panels being thissss.

The world leaving Paradis alone miraciously after all that??? 

It’s so weird and out of place with so many political feuds and disagreements between the world and Paradis, the entire Rumbling happening and we can see Mikasa just chilling outside in Paradis with no one bothering them. You can see the rings of the walls in the picture below.  I don’t know the exact reason behind as the manga is still in Korean, but from what I see, the story went the route of: throwing a happy ending without enough proper reason and  it was all fixed just like that in a snap! It doesn’t fit the entire narrative of attack on titan for things to be so peacful out of nowhere. When it comes to the narrative, how things work in that world, how hard it is to achieve peace, everything made somewhat sense up until chapter 138. 139 seems so so out of place...  It’s like I’m reading a chapter from a totally different manga. 

Aaron Yoghurt got defeated so easily/ Aaron’s character assassination

The build up on the first part of the rumbling was great, those kids carrying coins. You could feel humanity’s fear and Aaron’s hatred in those pages. As if he truly had a goal and he has turned away completely from his comrades and his closest friends with no return. The world seemed truly doomed, but he  got defeated just like that. He was in the nape all this time (because screw the warhammer power of hiding yourself elsewhere in his ginormous titan body). There is no master plan as we all expected, and in the end he just acts all yandere in the paths with Armin and that’s it... They massacared his entire character as well. Many fan theories created a better ending with his character. Him being reincarnated as Historia’s baby would be so much better. For him to still keep on seeking and to strive for power. It has always been his motive. It’s his personality from the start until chapter 138. Even if things are okay, to keep on going and to seek that adventure, but then.. He’s so weak and directionless suddenly.. It’s so weird... This is not Aaron at all???

Using Aaron for him this entire post, because I don’t want others to invade our tags... :)))

Historia’s baby 

The only panel we got from Historia’s child was this. Just a normal kid, normal life... Why did Isayama put so much effort in highlighting Historia’s pregnancy if it was nothing too spectacular anyway? It seemed he had major plans for this kid and for their development too??? It’s again, big plans, big developments, big relationship dynamic, but all  got thrown out of the window... 

Don’t read the next sentence if you are a minor :’) 

It’s like almost ejaculating, but stopping right before it and repeating that every single Arc.

My energy when writing about this chapter is the same as Nostalgia Critic and his hatred for atla the live action

In Conclusion...

I know us fans should not be deciding on how this story should end, because this is Isayama’s story after all, but I truly wished for him to wrap up things much more rounded. There are so many unanswered questions... Again, I think for the sake of being done with this manga, he rushed all of it. He’s become a millionaire from this story and now his pockets are jammed full, I guess he doesn’t need to put in any effort anymore, right? Perhaps a controversial opinion, but I really wished he cared for his fans a little bit more with this last chapter by giving some answers that make sense at least. It’s his fans who gave him this platform and the opportunity to tell his story and for him to at least give in a bit of effort especially in the last chapter is the least he can do. Rivamika being canon or not, he truly rushed it without thinking much about the entire story line. He expanded it so much, he didn’t know how to bind it all together.

Even after all this, I’ll still ship them in the headcanon type of way. I do give credit to Isayama for giving us a template for such a beautiful dynamic between Levi and Mikasa. He decides to waste it, but that doesn’t mean we have to.  I want to thank all the people with amazing writing skills, the ones who give us beautiful art like @carmenlee @phit chan @vialesana​ and many more. I want to remind all of you that we can create something beautiful of our own and we don’t neccesarily need canon lore for that. The art I’ve seen, the fanfictions I’ve read have touched me deeper than Isayama ever could at times.The Mikasa in our mind is appreciate of Levi, is mature, classy and has a strong will for herself. They spend their remaining days together peacefully. Keep writing, keep drawing, stay creative. 

I love you all so so much, I’ve only been publicly active since March, but thank you Rivamika fandom for giving me so much joy as a lurker these past 7 years <3

#rivamika #snk leaks #snk 139 leaks #levimika #mikalevi

[dangermousie]

CFC Chapter 54

“A crashing car?” Ahahahaha I see you, Meatbun. But it was indeed an utter pileup!

I know I commented on this passage in its various iterations eight billion times already but I still have more to say. And it’s that XQC taking so long to realize that even though HY is young, his emotions and feelings are as genuine and strong as those of anyone older is so realistic - people do tend to think that especially with regard to children - think of a reaction of an adult to a three year old crying over ice cream they dropped. It’s all amused even if not meanly so. Because to an adult with vastly more experience, this is not a big deal. But what that forgets is that whether it’s ridiculous to someone else or not, to the person at issue that is a real feeling, AND that of course a person can only feel through the lens of their experience - what else is there? Emotions aren’t any less valid because they are informed by lesser or different experience.

Honestly, to me so far this is one of the driving messages of the novel - everyone is in their own world of issues and pain and none of these characters can truly look through the lens of another person and it would be so much better if they did. To XQC, for so long, He Yu’s strong feelings (and we know so many of these feelings are awful - despair, and self-loathing, and loneliness) never quite felt real and therefore never quite felt fully valid. And by the time it wasn’t the case, it was too late.

But the same is true for He Yu - he is so concentrated on his own grievances and his own pain, he cannot perceive others’ different issues. In He Yu’s mind, he’s the winner and always champion of Misery Olympics and while he’s had a horrible time of it, that doesn’t mean other people didn’t either just in different ways. Whether because of his condition, his issues or just his age, HY is not empathetic in the least.

And think about it - XQC does not have a horrible illness. He does not have unfeeling parents. But he had to watch his beloved parents brutally murdered in front of his eyes at 13 (!!!!) and then had to raise a 5 year old by himself. Is it worse or better than HY’s trauma? That’s a matter of opinion but what there is no question about is that is a different type of trauma and a different type of scar. Or think about the patient in the asylum whose name I am too lazy to look up - her life is such a theater of horrors that to me, it makes the combined issues of HY and XQC seem small, though once again that’s subjective. Nobody wins when people start this sort of competition.

My heart breaks for XQC but also - I am sorry - if/when HY x XQC hook up again (how? I have no idea! But that is one of the joys of Meatbun - I both have no idea how/where it’s going and utterly trust her), please have He Yu read up and learn things because Good God. You should not be in major pain the morning after unless you are into pain and XQC clearly is not!

The other thing is the bit about XQC forcing himself to walk in his usual ramrod-straight manner is the moment I went utterly gone for him. I mean, I liked him and found him interesting before. But this is the thing that flipped that invisible switch for me and I went rabid and irrational and now I am Team XQC and I don’t care what he wants and does from now on, he should have it. It’s so small but so real. My mother and her mother were both big on straight posture. And one of the reasons they gave was when you walk with good posture - you look confident but also it makes you feel confident and stronger. And I’ve actually found it to be true - when you throw your shoulders back and straighten your neck and hold your head up, it does not just give others a signal, it gives a signal to your own brain. So to see XQC insist on doing it, despite being emotionally and physically shattered - because of his pride refusing to give up, because he’s so unbending, but also this being some sort of instinctive armor, just hits straight through the heart.

OK, I laughed at HY as a fucking machine. But also, this is another point in the whole “everyone has issues” narrative and HY’s life could be worse. HY, with all his other issues, can pay an insane amount, an amount that XQC could not pay in a million years, so easily. It’s not even a blip to him. Hell, the fact that he forgot to pay speaks to that - I can see forgetting to pay a friend a couple of bucks back right away because it’s not much money. HY forgets because it does not loom in his mind. And this rich lifestyle is instinctive, is ingrained in him. I think he’d find it hard to be poor.

THAT is what he’s thinking about? Priorities are...

The sole good thing that came out of this insanity is that XQC is getting in touch with his emotions, even if those emotions are (rightly) rage. He’s too closed off from them normally.

The fact that you slept with a man should be secondary to the fact that you drugged and raped him, but here we are...

To me, this sums up He Yu as a moral wasteland. To still, when sober and past his fit and not under influence of wine, to still feel excitement over his revenge and to somehow twist it that it’s XQC’s fault for being raped by He Yu is !!!!!!!!!

(I suppose if I were charitable, I’d assume that the disquiet is small stirrings of almost dead conscience and his “he deserved it” is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable to himself, but I honestly don’t want to think so because I am so angry at him. Not until I see some more evidence. I don’t feel like being indulgent with He Yu since he’s indulgent with himself enough for two.)

1. The fact that you can tell from the picture XQC got taken by a man (I am gonna defer to Meatbun’s expertise here) definitely points to the fact that the pictures are going to be used for something bad later - because if it’s just oh XQC had sex, so what, he’s single what’s the big deal. But like this it becomes a different matter. No idea if it will be used for HY or XQC or both, and by whom (money is on Duan and co, but after the way HY went off, I would never say HY himself won’t use it badly somehow) but knowing Meatbun, it will go for maximum damage.

2. Ruthless? Perhaps. Unfeeling? Hmmmm. I am not He Yu’s biggest fan atm but that’s a wonderfully misleading adjective here. He does still seem to be in shock. And fixating.

3. The whole “hahahaha XQC is a hypocrite when he was all ‘I am not interested in sex’“ is - I am not sure if HY is just short-circuiting (fine) or using a rapist justification/rolling in a sea of toxic toxicity (not fine) because I am sorry, that’s totally like “he/she had a reaction, can’t be rape” writ large. Yeah, sure he had a reaction - you poured drugs down his throat. That has nothing to do with his default preferences or his actual state. THE FUCK?!

Anyway, we end on the whole “u mad bro?” bit and you know what strikes me? HY was all “I am done, we are done, my revenge is complete I don’t care” but here he is, still desperately seeking and craving reaction and interaction from XQC.

I remain utterly puzzled as to how these two will ever be a couple except for a couple being defined as “two mutually homicidal people.” Leaving aside everything else, I am willing to accept HY is in the closet - clearly whatever his orientation is, it includes men. But I do not get that sense from XQC at all. When he’s not drugged, he’s barely interested in sex with anyone and I do not get the sense he’s in the closet either. Chances of anyone, let alone He Yu, who is both a man and someone who raped him to humiliate him, being able to entice him into sexual encounters voluntarily is about the chance of me going to visit Mars. Meatbun loves doing insane things so I can’t wait.

PS I know people use the term psychopath all the time casually but ummm, I think He Yu may actually be one? When he has his father (!!!) on speakerphone, calmly carrying a conversation with the man as he’s raping his father’s friend in the club as he talks (!!!!!) that is...in RL I’d be “team lock him up for life, there is something so basic broken in him that it can’t be fixed.” Like - the hell? The ability to put things on different shelves so much is not in the same country as sane (it makes me think of 2ha and TXJ banging CWN being the curtain while performing court business but TXJ was bona fide clinically insane and also this is worse because this is his actual freaking father omg.) Of course, only time will tell whether it’s evidence of him being irreparably incapable of normalcy in terms of living in the world/interacting with others or it was an extreme psychotic (in casual parlance not medical one) break because most people are capable of truly horrific stuff if certain levers are pushed and his default is saner. It’s the question, isn’t it? Whether He Yu’s factory default setting is the monster of the previous chapters or the kid who’d cut his wrists so as not to hurt others.

Anyway, this novel is a terrifying roller coaster ride and I love having strong emotions.

#cnovel #meatbun doesn't eat meat #case file compendium

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on: Criterion's Neo-Noir Collection

I have written up all 26 films* in the Criterion Channel's Neo-Noir Collection.

Legend: rw - rewatch; a movie I had seen before going through the collection dnrw - did not rewatch; if a movie met two criteria (a. I had seen it within the last 18 months, b. I actively dislike it) I wrote it up from memory.

* in September, Brick leaves the Criterion Channel and is replaced in the collection with Michael Mann's Thief. May add it to the list when that happens.

Note: These are very "what was on my mind after watching." No effort has been made to avoid spoilers, nor to make the plot clear for anyone who hasn't seen the movies in question. Decide for yourself if that's interesting to you.

Cotton Comes to Harlem I feel utterly unequipped to asses this movie. This and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song the following year are regularly cited as the progenitors of the blaxploitation genre. (This is arguably unfair, since both were made by Black men and dealt much more substantively with race than the white-directed films that followed them.) Its heroes are a couple of Black cops who are treated with suspicion both by their white colleagues and by the Black community they're meant to police. I'm not 100% clear on whether they're the good guys? I mean, I think they are. But the community's suspicion of them seems, I dunno... well-founded? They are working for The Man. And there's interesting discussion to the had there - is the the problem that the law is carried out by racists, or is the law itself racist? Can Black cops make anything better? But it feels like the film stacks the deck in Gravedigger and Coffin Ed's favor; the local Black church is run by a conman, the Back-to-Africa movement is, itself, a con, and the local Black Power movement is treated as an obstacle. Black cops really are the only force for justice here. Movie portrays Harlem itself as a warm, thriving, cultured community, but the people that make up that community are disloyal and easily fooled. Felt, to me, like the message was "just because they're cops doesn't mean they don't have Black soul," which, nowadays, we would call copaganda. But, then, do I know what I'm talking about? Do I know how much this played into or off of or against stereotypes from 1970? Was this a radical departure I don't have the context to appreciate? Is there substance I'm too white and too many decades removed to pick up on? Am I wildly overthinking this? I dunno. Seems like everyone involved was having a lot of fun, at least. That bit is contagious.

Across 110th Street And here's the other side of the "race film" equation. Another movie set in Harlem with a Black cop pulled between the police, the criminals, and the public, but this time the film is made by white people. I like it both more and less. Pro: this time the difficult position of Black cop who's treated with suspicion by both white cops and Black Harlemites is interrogated. Con: the Black cop has basically no personality other than "honest cop." Pro: the racism of the police force is explicit and systemic, as opposed to comically ineffectual. Con: the movie is shaped around a racist white cop who beats the shit out of Black people but slowly forms a bond with his Black partner. Pro: the Black criminal at the heart of the movie talks openly about how the white world has stacked the deck against him, and he's soulful and relateable. Con: so of course he dies in the end, because the only way privileged people know to sympathetize with minorities is to make them tragic (see also: The Boys in the Band, Philadelphia, and Brokeback Mountain for gay men). Additional con: this time Harlem is portrayed as a hellhole. Barely any of the community is even seen. At least the shot at the end, where the criminal realizes he's going to die and throws the bag of money off a roof and into a playground so the Black kids can pick it up before the cops reclaim it was powerful. But overall... yech. Cotton Comes to Harlem felt like it wasn't for me; this feels like it was 100% for me and I respect it less for that.

The Long Goodbye (rw) The shaggiest dog. Like much Altman, more compelling than good, but very compelling. Raymond Chandler's story is now set in the 1970's, but Philip Marlowe is the same Philip Marlowe of the 1930's. I get the sense there was always something inherently sad about Marlowe. Classic noir always portrayed its detectives as strong-willed men living on the border between the straightlaced world and its seedy underbelly, crossing back and forth freely but belonging to neither. But Chandler stresses the loneliness of it - or, at least, the people who've adapted Chandler do. Marlowe is a decent man in an indecent world, sorting things out, refusing to profit from misery, but unable to set anything truly right. Being a man out of step is here literalized by putting him forty years from the era where he belongs. His hardboiled internal monologue is now the incessant mutterings of the weird guy across the street who never stops smoking. Like I said: compelling! Kael's observation was spot on: everyone in the movie knows more about the mystery than he does, but he's the only one who cares. The mystery is pretty threadbare - Marlowe doesn't detect so much as end up in places and have people explain things to him. But I've seen it two or three times now, and it does linger.

Chinatown (rw) I confess I've always been impressed by Chinatown more than I've liked it. Its story structure is impeccable, its atmosphere is gorgeous, its noirish fatalism is raw and real, its deconstruction of the noir hero is well-observed, and it's full of clever detective tricks (the pocket watches, the tail light, the ruler). I've just never connected with it. Maybe it's a little too perfectly crafted. (I feel similar about Miller's Crossing.) And I've always been ambivalent about the ending. In Towne's original ending, Evelyn shoots Noah Cross dead and get arrested, and neither she nor Jake can tell the truth of why she did it, so she goes to jail for murder and her daughter is in the wind. Polansky proposed the ending that exists now, where Evelyn just dies, Cross wins, and Jake walks away devastated. It communicates the same thing: Jake's attempt to get smart and play all the sides off each other instead of just helping Evelyn escape blows up in his face at the expense of the woman he cares about and any sense of real justice. And it does this more dramatically and efficiently than Towne's original ending. But it also treats Evelyn as narratively disposable, and hands the daughter over to the man who raped Evelyn and murdered her husband. It makes the women suffer more to punch up the ending. But can I honestly say that Towne's ending is the better one? It is thematically equal, dramatically inferior, but would distract me less. Not sure what the calculus comes out to there. Maybe there should be a third option. Anyway! A perfect little contraption. Belongs under a glass dome.

Night Moves (rw) Ah yeah, the good shit. This is my quintessential 70's noir. This is three movies in a row about detectives. Thing is, the classic era wasn't as chockablock with hardboiled detectives as we think; most of those movies starred criminals, cops, and boring dudes seduced to the darkness by a pair of legs. Gumshoes just left the strongest impressions. (The genre is said to begin with Maltese Falcon and end with Touch of Evil, after all.) So when the post-Code 70's decided to pick the genre back up while picking it apart, it makes sense that they went for the 'tecs first. The Long Goodbye dragged the 30's detective into the 70's, and Chinatown went back to the 30's with a 70's sensibility. But Night Moves was about detecting in the Watergate era, and how that changed the archetype. Harry Moseby is the detective so obsessed with finding the truth that he might just ruin his life looking for it, like the straight story will somehow fix everything that's broken, like it'll bring back a murdered teenager and repair his marriage and give him a reason to forgive the woman who fucked him just to distract him from some smuggling. When he's got time to kill, he takes out a little, magnetic chess set and recreates a famous old game, where three knight moves (get it?) would have led to a beautiful checkmate had the player just seen it. He keeps going, self-destructing, because he can't stand the idea that the perfect move is there if he can just find it. And, no matter how much we see it destroy him, we, the audience, want him to keep going; we expect a satisfying resolution to the mystery. That's what we need from a detective picture; one character flat-out compares Harry to Sam Spade. But what if the truth is just... Watergate? Just some prick ruining things for selfish reasons? Nothing grand, nothing satisfying. Nothing could be more noir, or more neo-, than that.

Farewell, My Lovely Sometimes the only thing that makes a noir neo- is that it's in color and all the blood, tits, and racism from the books they're based on get put back in. This second stab at Chandler is competant but not much more than that. Mitchum works as Philip Marlowe, but Chandler's dialogue feels off here, like lines that worked on the page don't work aloud, even though they did when Bogie said them. I'll chalk it up to workmanlike but uninspired direction. (Dang this looks bland so soon after Chinatown.) Moose Malloy is a great character, and perfectly cast. (Wasn't sure at first, but it's true.) Some other interesting cats show up and vanish - the tough brothel madam based on Brenda Allen comes to mind, though she's treated with oddly more disdain than most of the other hoods and is dispatched quicker. In general, the more overt racism and misogyny doesn't seem to do anything except make the movie "edgier" than earlier attempts at the same material, and it reads kinda try-hard. But it mostly holds together. *shrug*

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (dnrw) Didn't care for this at all. Can't tell if the script was treated as a jumping-off point or if the dialogue is 100% improvised, but it just drags on forever and is never that interesting. Keeps treating us to scenes from the strip club like they're the opera scenes in Amadeus, and, whatever, I don't expect burlesque to be Mozart, but Cosmo keeps saying they're an artful, classy joint, and I keep waiting for the show to be more than cheap, lazy camp. How do you make gratuitious nudity boring? Mind you, none of this is bad as a rule - I love digressions and can enjoy good sleaze, and it's clear the filmmakers care about what they're making. They just did not sell it in a way I wanted to buy. Can't remember what edit I watched; I hope it was the 135 minute one, because I cannot imagine there being a longer edit out there.

The American Friend (dnrw) It's weird that this is Patricia Highsmith, right? That Dennis Hopper is playing Tom Ripley? In a cowboy hat? I gather that Minghella's version wasn't true to the source, but I do love that movie, and this is a long, long way from that. This Mr. Ripley isn't even particularly talented! Anyway, this has one really great sequence, where a regular guy has been coerced by crooks into murdering someone on a train platform, and, when the moment comes to shoot, he doesn't. And what follows is a prolonged sequence of an amateur trying to surreptitiously tail a guy across a train station and onto another train, and all the while you're not sure... is he going to do it? is he going to chicken out? is he going to do it so badly he gets caught? It's hard not to put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, wondering how you would handle the situation, whether you could do it, whether you could act on impulse before your conscience could catch up with you. It drags on a long while and this time it's a good thing. Didn't much like the rest of the movie, it's shapeless and often kind of corny, and the central plot hook is contrived. (It's also very weird that this is the only Wim Wenders I've seen.) But, hey, I got one excellent sequence, not gonna complain.

The Big Sleep Unlike the 1946 film, I can follow the plot of this Big Sleep. But, also unlike the 1946 version, this one isn't any damn fun. Mitchum is back as Marlowe (this is three Marlowes in five years, btw), and this time it's set in the 70's and in England, for some reason. I don't find this offensive, but neither do I see what it accomplishes? Most of the cast is still American. (Hi Jimmy!) Still holds together, but even less well than Farewell, My Lovely. But I do find it interesting that the neo-noir era keeps returning to Chandler while it's pretty much left Hammet behind (inasmuch as someone whose genes are spread wide through the whole genre can be left behind). Spade and the Continental Op, straightshooting tough guys who come out on top in the end, seem antiquated in the (post-)modern era. But Marlowe's goodness being out of sync with the world around him only seems more poignant the further you take him from his own time. Nowadays you can really only do Hammett as pastiche, but I sense that you could still play Chandler straight.

Eyes of Laura Mars The most De Palma movie I've seen not made by De Palma, complete with POV shots, paranormal hoodoo, and fixation with sex, death, and whether images of such are art or exploitation (or both). Laura Mars takes photographs of naked women in violent tableux, and has gotten quite famous doing so, but is it damaging to women? The movie has more than a superficial engagement with this topic, but only slightly more than superficial. Kept imagining a movie that is about 30% less serial killer story and 30% more art conversations. (But, then, I have an art degree and have never murdered anyone, so.) Like, museums are full of Biblical paintings full of nude women and slaughter, sometimes both at once, and they're called masterpieces. Most all of them were painted by men on commission from other men. Now Laura Mars makes similar images in modern trappings, and has models made of flesh and blood rather than paint, and it's scandalous? Why is it only controversial once women are getting paid for it? On the other hand, is this just the master's tools? Is she subverting or challenging the male gaze, or just profiting off of it? Or is a woman profiting off of it, itself, a subversion? Is it subversive enough to account for how it commodifies female bodies? These questions are pretty clearly relevant to the movie itself, and the movies in general, especially after the fall of the Hays Code when people were really unrestrained with the blood and boobies. And, heck, the lead is played by the star of Bonnie and Clyde! All this is to say: I wish the movie were as interested in these questions as I am. What's there is a mildly diverting B-picture. There's one great bit where Laura's seeing through the killer's eyes (that's the hook, she gets visions from the murderer's POV; no, this is never explained) and he's RIGHT BEHIND HER, so there's a chase where she charges across an empty room only able to see her own fleeing self from ten feet behind. That was pretty great! And her first kiss with the detective (because you could see a mile away that the detective and the woman he's supposed to protect are gonna fall in love) is immediately followed by the two freaking out about how nonsensical it is for them to fall in love with each other, because she's literally mourning multiple deaths and he's being wildly unprofessional, and then they go back to making out. That bit was great, too. The rest... enh.

The Onion Field What starts off as a seemingly not-that-noirish cops-vs-crooks procedural turns into an agonizingly protracted look at the legal system, with the ultimate argument that the very idea of the law ever resulting in justice is a lie. Hoo! I have to say, I'm impressed. There's a scene where a lawyer - whom I'm not sure is even named, he's like the seventh of thirteen we've met - literally quits the law over how long this court case about two guys shooting a cop has taken. He says the cop who was murdered has been forgotten, his partner has never gotten to move on because the case has lasted eight years, nothing has been accomplished, and they should let the two criminals walk and jail all the judges and lawyers instead. It's awesome! The script is loaded with digressions and unnecessary details, just the way I like it. Can't say I'm impressed with the execution. Nothing is wrong, exactly, but the performances all seem a tad melodramatic or a tad uninspired. Camerawork is, again, purely functional. It's no masterpiece. But that second half worked for me. (And it's Ted Danson's first movie! He did great.)

Body Heat (rw) Let's say up front that this is a handsomely-made movie. Probably the best looking thing on the list since Night Moves. Nothing I've seen better captures the swelter of an East Coast heatwave, or the lusty feeling of being too hot to bang and going at it regardless. Kathleen Turner sells the hell out of a femme fatale. There are a lot of good lines and good performances (Ted Danson is back and having the time of his life). I want to get all that out of the way, because this is a movie heavily modeled after Double Indemnity, and I wanted to discuss its merits before I get into why inviting that comparison doesn't help the movie out. In a lot of ways, it's the same rules as the Robert Mitchum Marlowe movies - do Double Indemnity but amp up the sex and violence. And, to a degree it works. (At least, the sex does, dunno that Double Indemnity was crying out for explosions.) But the plot is amped as well, and gets downright silly. Yeah, Mrs. Dietrichson seduces Walter Neff so he'll off her husband, but Neff clocks that pretty early and goes along with it anyway. Everything beyond that is two people keeping too big a secret and slowly turning on each other. But here? For the twists to work Matty has to be, from frame one, playing four-dimensional chess on the order of Senator Palpatine, and its about as plausible. (Exactly how did she know, after she rebuffed Ned, he would figure out her local bar and go looking for her at the exact hour she was there?) It's already kind of weird to be using the spider woman trope in 1981, but to make her MORE sexually conniving and mercenary than she was in the 40's is... not great. As lurid trash, it's pretty fun for a while, but some noir stuff can't just be updated, it needs to be subverted or it doesn't justify its existence.

Blow Out Brian De Palma has two categories of movie: he's got his mainstream, director-for-hire fare, where his voice is either reigned in or indulged in isolated sequences that don't always jive with the rest fo the film, and then there's his Brian De Palma movies. My mistake, it seems, is having seen several for-hires from throughout his career - The Untouchables (fine enough), Carlito's Way (ditto, but less), Mission: Impossible (enh) - but had only seen De Palma-ass movies from his late period (Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia, both of which I think are garbage). All this to say: Blow Out was my first classic-era De Palma, and holy fucking shit dudes. This was (with caveats) my absolute and entire jam. I said I could enjoy good sleaze, and this is good friggin' sleaze. (Though far short of De Palma at his sleaziest, mercifully.) The splitscreens, the diopter shots, the canted angles, how does he make so many shlocky things work?! John Travolta's sound tech goes out to get fresh wind fx for the movie he's working on, and we get this wonderful sequence of visuals following sounds as he turns his attention and his microphone to various noises - a couple on a walk, a frog, an owl, a buzzing street lamp. Later, as he listens back to the footage, the same sequence plays again, but this time from his POV; we're seeing his memory as guided by the same sequence of sounds, now recreated with different shots, as he moves his pencil in the air mimicking the microphone. When he mixes and edits sounds, we hear the literal soundtrack of the movie we are watching get mixed and edited by the person on screen. And as he tries to unravel a murder mystery, he uses what's at hand: magnetic tape, flatbed editors, an animation camera to turn still photos from the crime scene into a film and sync it with the audio he recorded; it's forensics using only the tools of the editing room. As someone who's spent some time in college editing rooms, this is a hoot and a half. Loses a bit of steam as it goes on and the film nerd stuff gives way to a more traditional thriller, but rallies for a sound-tech-centered final setpiece, which steadily builds to such madcap heights you can feel the air thinning, before oddly cutting its own tension and then trying to build it back up again. It doesn't work as well the second time. But then, that shot right after the climax? Damn. Conflicted on how the movie treats the female lead. I get why feminist film theorists are so divided on De Palma. His stuff is full of things feminists (rightly) criticize, full of women getting naked when they're not getting stabbed, but he also clearly finds women fascinating and has them do empowered and unexpected things, and there are many feminist reads of his movies. Call it a mixed bag. But even when he's doing tropey shit, he explores the tropes in unexpected ways. Definitely the best movie so far that I hadn't already seen.

Cutter's Way (rw) Alex Cutter is pitched to us as an obnoxious-but-sympathetic son of a bitch, and, you know, two out of three ain't bad. Watched this during my 2020 neo-noir kick and considered skipping it this time because I really didn't enjoy it. Found it a little more compelling this go around, while being reminded of why my feelings were room temp before. Thematically, I'm onboard: it's about a guy, Cutter, getting it in his head that he's found a murderer and needs to bring him to justice, and his friend, Bone, who intermittently helps him because he feels bad that Cutter lost his arm, leg, and eye in Nam and he also feels guilty for being in love with Cutter's wife. The question of whether the guy they're trying to bring down actually did it is intentionally undefined, and arguably unimportant; they've got personal reasons to see this through. Postmodern and noirish, fixated with the inability to ever fully know the truth of anything, but starring people so broken by society that they're desperate for certainty. (Pretty obvious parallels to Vietnam.) Cutter's a drunk and kind of an asshole, but understandably so. Bone's shiftlessness is the other response to a lack of meaning in the world, to the point where making a decision, any decision, feels like character growth, even if it's maybe killing a guy whose guilt is entirely theoretical. So, yeah, I'm down with all of this! A- in outline form. It's just that Cutter is so uninterestingly unpleasant and no one else on screen is compelling enough to make up for it. His drunken windups are tedious and his sanctimonious speeches about what the war was like are, well, true and accurate but also obviously manipulative. It's two hours with two miserable people, and I think Cutter's constant chatter is supposed to be the comic relief but it's a little too accurate to drunken rambling, which isn't funny if you're not also drunk. He's just tedious, irritating, and periodically racist. Pass.

Blood Simple (rw) I'm pretty cool on the Coens - there are things I've liked, even loved, in every Coen film I've seen, but I always come away dissatisfied. For a while, I kept going to their movies because I was sure eventually I'd love one without qualification. No Country for Old Men came close, the first two acts being master classes in sustained tension. But then the third act is all about denying closure: the protagonist is murdered offscreen, the villain's motives are never explained, and it ends with an existentialist speech about the unfathomable cruelty of the world. And it just doesn't land for me. The archness of the Coen's dialogue, the fussiness of their set design, the kinda-intimate, kinda-awkward, kinda-funny closeness of the camera's singles, it cannot sell me on a devastating meditation about meaninglessness. It's only ever sold me on the Coens' own cleverness. And that archness, that distancing, has typified every one of their movies I've come close to loving. Which is a long-ass preamble to saying, holy heck, I was not prepared for their very first movie to be the one I'd been looking for! I watched it last year and it remains true on rewatch: Blood Simple works like gangbusters. It's kind of Double Indemnity (again) but played as a comedy of errors, minus the comedy: two people romantically involved feeling their trust unravel after a murder. And I think the first thing that works for me is that utter lack of comedy. It's loaded with the Coens' trademark ironies - mostly dramatic in this case - but it's all played straight. Unlike the usual lead/femme fatale relationship, where distrust brews as the movie goes on, the audience knows the two main characters can trust each other. There are no secret duplicitous motives waiting to be revealed. The audience also know why they don't trust each other. (And it's all communicated wordlessly, btw: a character enters a scene and we know, based on the information that character has, how it looks to them and what suspicions it would arouse, even as we know the truth of it). The second thing that works is, weirdly, that the characters aren't very interesting?! Ray and Abby have almost no characterization. Outside of a general likability, they are blank slates. This is a weakness in most films, but, given the agonizingly long, wordless sequences where they dispose of bodies or hide from gunfire, you're left thinking not "what will Ray/Abby do in this scenario," because Ray and Abby are relatively elemental and undefined, but "what would I do in this scenario?" Which creates an exquisite tension but also, weirdly, creates more empathy than I feel for the Coens' usual cast of personalities. It's supposed to work the other way around! Truly enjoyable throughout but absolutely wonderful in the suspenseful-as-hell climax. Good shit right here.

Body Double The thing about erotic thrillers is everything that matters is in the name. Is it thrilling? Is it erotic? Good; all else is secondary. De Palma set out to make the most lurid, voyeuristic, horny, violent, shocking, steamy movie he could come up with, and its success was not strictly dependent on the lead's acting ability or the verisimilitude of the plot. But what are we, the modern audience, to make of it once 37 years have passed and, by today's standards, the eroticism is quite tame and the twists are no longer shocking? Then we're left with a nonsensical riff on Vertigo, a specularization of women that is very hard to justify, and lead actor made of pulped wood. De Palma's obsessions don't cohere into anything more this time; the bits stolen from Hitchcock aren't repurposed to new ends, it really is just Hitch with more tits and less brains. (I mean, I still haven't seen Vertigo, but I feel 100% confident in that statement.) The diopter shots and rear-projections this time look cheap (literally so, apparently; this had 1/3 the budget of Blow Out). There are some mildly interesting setpieces, but nothing compared to Travolta's auditory reconstructions or car chase where he tries to tail a subway train from street level even if it means driving through a frickin parade like an inverted French Connection, goddamn Blow Out was a good movie! Anyway. Melanie Griffith seems to be having fun, at least. I guess I had a little as well, but it was, at best, diverting, and a real letdown.

The Hit Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Terrance Stamp flips on the mob and spends ten years living a life of ease in Spain, waiting for the day they find and kill him. Movie kicks off when they do find him, and what follows is a ramshackle road movie as John Hurt and a young Tim Roth attempt to drive him to Paris so they can shoot him in front of his old boss. Stamp is magnetic. He's spent a decade reading philosophy and seems utterly prepared for death, so he spends the trip humming, philosophizing, and being friendly with his captors when he's not winding them up. It remains unclear to the end whether the discord he sews between Roth and Hurt is part of some larger plan of escape or just for shits and giggles. There's also a decent amount of plot for a movie that's not terribly plot-driven - just about every part of the kidnapping has tiny hitches the kidnappers aren't prepared for, and each has film-long repercussions, drawing the cops closer and somehow sticking Laura del Sol in their backseat. The ongoing questions are when Stamp will die, whether del Sol will die, and whether Roth will be able to pull the trigger. In the end, it's actually a meditation on ethics and mortality, but in a quiet and often funny way. It's not going to go down as one of my new favs, but it was a nice way to spend a couple hours.

Trouble in Mind (dnrw) I fucking hated this movie. It's been many months since I watched it, do I remember what I hated most? Was it the bit where a couple of country bumpkins who've come to the city walk into a diner and Mr. Bumpkin clocks that the one Black guy in the back as obviously a criminal despite never having seen him before? Was it the part where Kris Kristofferson won't stop hounding Mrs. Bumpkin no matter how many times she demands to be left alone, and it's played as romantic because obviously he knows what she needs better than she does? Or is it the part where Mr. Bumpkin reluctantly takes a job from the Obvious Criminal (who is, in fact, a criminal, and the only named Black character in the movie if I remember correctly, draw your own conclusions) and, within a week, has become a full-blown hood, which is exemplified by a lot, like, a lot of queer-coding? The answer to all three questions is yes. It's also fucking boring. Even out-of-drag Divine's performance as the villain can't save it.

Manhunter 'sfine? I've still never seen Silence of the Lambs, nor any of the Hopkins Lecter movies, nor, indeed, any full episode of the show. So the unheimlich others get seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal didn't come into play. Cox does a good job with him, but he's barely there. Shame, cuz he's the most interesting part of the movie. Honestly, there's a lot of interesting stuff that's barely there. Will Graham being a guy who gets into the heads of serial killers is explored well enough, and Mann knows how to direct a police procedural such that it's both contemplative and propulsive. But all the other themes it points at? Will's fear that he understands murderers a little too well? Hannibal trying to nudge him towards becoming one? Whatever dance Hannibal and Tooth Fairy are doing? What Tooth Fairy's deal is, anyway? (Why does he wear fake teeth and bite things? Why is he fixated on the red dragon? Does the bit where he says "Francis is gone forever" mean he has DID?) None of it goes anywhere or amounts to anything. I mean, it's certainly more interesting with this stuff than without, but it has that feel of a book that's been pared of its interesting bits to fit the runtime (or, alternately, pulp that's been sloppily elevated). I still haven't made my mind up on Mann's cold, precise camera work, but at least it gives me something to look at. It's fine! This is fine.

Mona Lisa (rw) Gave this one another shot. Bob Hoskins is wonderful as a hood out of his depth in classy places, quick to anger but just as quick to let anger go (the opening sequence where he's screaming on his ex-wife's doorstep, hurling trash cans at her house, and one minute later thrilled to see his old car, is pretty nice). And Cathy Tyson's working girl is a subtler kind of fascinating, exuding a mixture of coldness and kindness. It's just... this is ultimately a story about how heartbreaking it is when the girl you like is gay, right? It's Weezer's Pink Triangle: The Movie. It's not homophobic, exactly - Simone isn't demonized for being a lesbian - but it's still, like, "man, this straight white guy's pain is so much more interesting than the Black queer sex worker's." And when he's yelling "you woulda done it!" at the end, I can't tell if we're supposed to agree with him. Seems pretty clear that she wouldn'ta done it, at least not without there being some reveal about her character that doesn't happen, but I don't think the ending works if we don't agree with him, so... I'm like 70% sure the movie does Simone dirty there. For the first half, their growing relationship feels genuine and natural, and, honestly, the story being about a real bond that unfortunately means different things to each party could work if it didn't end with a gun and a sock in the jaw. Shape feels jagged as well; what feels like the end of the second act or so turns out to be the climax. And some of the symbolism is... well, ok, Simone gives George money to buy more appropriate clothes for hanging out in high end hotels, and he gets a tan leather jacket and a Hawaiian shirt, and their first proper bonding moment is when she takes him out for actual clothes. For the rest of the movie he is rocking double-breasted suits (not sure I agree with the striped tie, but it was the eighties, whaddya gonna do?). Then, in the second half, she sends him off looking for her old streetwalker friend, and now he looks completely out of place in the strip clubs and bordellos. So far so good. But then they have this run-in where her old pimp pulls a knife and cuts George's arm, so, with his nice shirt torn and it not safe going home (I guess?) he starts wearing the Hawaiian shirt again. So around the time he's starting to realize he doesn't really belong in Simone's world or the lowlife world he came from anymore, he's running around with the classy double-breasted suit jacket over the garish Hawaiian shirt, and, yeah, bit on the nose guys. Anyway, it has good bits, I just feel like a movie that asks me to feel for the guy punching a gay, Black woman in the face needs to work harder to earn it. Bit of wasted talent.

The Bedroom Window Starts well. Man starts an affair with his boss' wife, their first night together she witnesses an attempted murder from his window, she worries going to the police will reveal the affair to her husband, so the man reports her testimony to the cops claiming he's the one who saw it. Young Isabelle Huppert is the perfect woman for a guy to risk his career on a crush over, and Young Steve Guttenberg is the perfect balance of affability and amorality. And it flows great - picks just the right media to res. So then he's talking to the cops, telling them what she told him, and they ask questions he forgot to ask her - was the perp's jacket a blazer or a windbreaker? - and he has to guess. Then he gets called into the police lineup, and one guy matches her description really well, but is it just because he's wearing his red hair the way she described it? He can't be sure, doesn't finger any of them. He finds out the cops were pretty certain about one of the guys, so he follows the one he thinks it was around, looking for more evidence, and another girl is attacked right outside a bar he knows the redhead was at. Now he's certain! But he shows the boss' wife the guy and she's not certain, and she reminds him they don't even know if the guy he followed is the same guy the police suspected! And as he feeds more evidence to the cops, he has to lie more, because he can't exactly say he was tailing the guy around the city. So, I'm all in now. Maybe it's because I'd so recently rewatched Night Moves and Cutter's Way, but this seems like another story about uncertainty. He's really certain about the guy because it fits narratively, and we, the audience, feel the same. But he's not actually a witness, he doesn't have actual evidence, he's fitting bits and pieces together like a conspiracy theorist. He's fixating on what he wants to be true. Sign me up! But then it turns out he's 100% correct about who the killer is but his lies are found out and now the cops think he's the killer and I realize, oh, no, this movie isn't nearly as smart as I thought it was. Egg on my face! What transpires for the remaining half of the runtime is goofy as hell, and someone with shlockier sensibilities could have made a meal of it, but Hanson, despite being a Corman protege, takes this silliness seriously in the all wrong ways. Next!

Homicide (rw? I think I saw most of this on TV one time) Homicide centers around the conflicted loyalties of a Jewish cop. It opens with the Jewish cop and his white gentile partner taking over a case with a Black perp from some Black FBI agents. The media is making a big thing about the racial implications of the mostly white cops chasing down a Black man in a Black neighborhood. And inside of 15 minutes the FBI agent is calling the lead a k*ke and the gentile cop is calling the FBI agent a f****t and there's all kinds of invective for Black people. The film is announcing its intentions out the gate: this movie is about race. But the issue here is David Mamet doesn't care about race as anything other than a dramatic device. He's the Ubisoft of filmmakers, having no coherent perspective on social issues but expecting accolades for even bringing them up. Mamet is Jewish (though lead actor Joe Mantegna definitely is not) but what is his position on the Jewish diaspora? The whole deal is Mantegna gets stuck with a petty homicide case instead of the big one they just pinched from the Feds, where a Jewish candy shop owner gets shot in what looks like a stickup. Her family tries to appeal to his Jewishness to get him to take the case seriously, and, after giving them the brush-off for a long time, finally starts following through out of guilt, finding bits and pieces of what may or may not be a conspiracy, with Zionist gun runners and underground neo-Nazis. But, again: all of these are just dramatic devices. Mantegna's Jewishness (those words will never not sound ridiculous together) has always been a liability for him as a cop (we are told, not shown), and taking the case seriously is a reclamation of identity. The Jews he finds community with sold tommyguns to revolutionaries during the founding of Israel. These Jews end up blackmailing him to get a document from the evidence room. So: what is the film's position on placing stock in one's Jewish identity? What is its position on Israel? What is its opinion on Palestine? Because all three come up! And the answer is: Mamet doesn't care. You can read it a lot of different ways. Someone with more context and more patience than me could probably deduce what the de facto message is, the way Chris Franklin deduced the de facto message of Far Cry V despite the game's efforts not to have one, but I'm not going to. Mantegna's attempt to reconnect with his Jewishness gets his partner killed, gets the guy he was supposed to bring in alive shot dead, gets him possibly permanent injuries, gets him on camera blowing up a store that's a front for white nationalists, and all for nothing because the "clues" he found (pretty much exclusively by coincidence) were unconnected nothings. The problem is either his Jewishness, or his lifelong failure to connect with his Jewishness until late in life. Mamet doesn't give a shit. (Like, Mamet canonically doesn't give a shit: he is on record saying social context is meaningless, characters only exist to serve the plot, and there are no deeper meanings in fiction.) Mamet's ping-pong dialogue is fun, as always, and there are some neat ideas and characters, but it's all in service of a big nothing that needed to be a something to work.

Swoon So much I could talk about, let's keep it to the most interesting bits. Hommes Fatales: a thing about classic noir that it was fascinated by the marginal but had to keep it in the margins. Liberated women, queer-coded killers, Black jazz players, broke thieves; they were the main event, they were what audiences wanted to see, they were what made the movies fun. But the ending always had to reassert straightlaced straight, white, middle-class male society as unshakeable. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy demanded, both ideologically and via the Hays Code, that anyone outside these norms be punished, reformed, or dead by the movie's end. The only way to make them the heroes was to play their deaths for tragedy. It is unsurprising that neo-noir would take the queer-coded villains and make them the protagonists. Implicature: This is the story of Leopold and Loeb, murderers famous for being queer, and what's interesting is how the queerness in the first half exists entirely outside of language. Like, it's kind of amazing for a movie from 1992 to be this gay - we watch Nathan and Dickie kiss, undress, masturbate, fuck; hell, they wear wedding rings when they're alone together. But it's never verbalized. Sex is referred to as "your reward" or "what you wanted" or "best time." Dickie says he's going to have "the girls over," and it turns out "the girls" are a bunch of drag queens, but this is never acknowledged. Nathan at one point lists off a bunch of famous men - Oscar Wild, E.M. Forster, Frederick the Great - but, though the commonality between them is obvious (they were all gay), it's left the the audience to recognize it. When their queerness is finally verbalized in the second half, it's first in the language of pathology - a psychiatrist describing their "perversions" and "misuse" of their "organs" before the court, which has to be cleared of women because it's so inappropriate - and then with slurs from the man who murders Dickie in jail (a murder which is written off with no investigation because the victim is a gay prisoner instead of a L&L's victim, a child of a wealthy family). I don't know if I'd have noticed this if I hadn't read Chip Delany describing his experience as a gay man in the 50's existing almost entirely outside of language, the only language at the time being that of heteronormativity. Murder as Love Story: L&L exchange sex as payment for the other commiting crimes; it's foreplay. Their statements to the police where they disagree over who's to blame is a lover's quarrel. Their sentencing is a marriage. Nathan performs his own funeral rites over Dickie's body after he dies on the operating table. They are, in their way, together til death did they part. This is the relationship they can have. That it does all this without romanticizing the murder itself or valorizing L&L as humans is frankly incredible.

Suture (rw) The pitch: at the funeral for his father, wealthy Vincent Towers meets his long lost half brother Clay Arlington. It is implied Clay is a child from out of wedlock, possibly an affair; no one knows Vincent has a half-brother but him and Clay. Vincent invites Clay out to his fancy-ass home in Arizona. Thing is, Vincent is suspected (correctly) by the police of having murdered his father, and, due to a striking family resemblence, he's brought Clay to his home to fake his own death. He finagles Clay into wearing his clothes and driving his car, and then blows the car up and flees the state, leaving the cops to think him dead. Thing is, Clay survives, but with amnesia. The doctors tell him he's Vincent, and he has no reason to disagree. Any discrepancy in the way he looks is dismissed as the result of reconstructive surgery after the explosion. So Clay Arlington resumes Vincent Towers' life, without knowing Clay Arlington even exists. The twist: Clay and Vincent are both white, but Vincent is played by Michael Harris, a white actor, and Clay is played by Dennis Haysbert, a Black actor. "Ian, if there's just the two of them, how do you know it's not Harris playing a Black character?" Glad you asked! It is most explicitly obvious during a scene where Vincent/Clay's surgeon-cum-girlfriend essentially bringing up phrenology to explain how Vincent/Clay couldn't possibly have murdered his father, describing straight hair, thin lips, and a Greco-Roman nose Haysbert very clearly doesn't have. But, let's be honest: we knew well beforehand that the rich-as-fuck asshole living in a huge, modern house and living it up in Arizona high society was white. Though Clay is, canonically, white, he lives an poor and underprivileged life common to Black men in America. Though the film's title officially refers to the many stitches holding Vincent/Clay's face together after the accident, "suture" is a film theory term, referring to the way a film audience gets wrapped up - sutured - in the world of the movie, choosing to forget the outside world and pretend the story is real. The usage is ironic, because the audience cannot be sutured in; we cannot, and are not expected to, suspend our disbelief that Clay is white. We are deliberately distanced. Consequently this is a movie to be thought about, not to to be felt. It has the shape of a Hitchcockian thriller but it can't evoke the emotions of one. You can see the scaffolding - "ah, yes, this is the part of a thriller where one man hides while another stalks him with a gun, clever." I feel ill-suited to comment on what the filmmakers are saying about race. I could venture a guess about the ending, where the psychiatrist, the only one who knows the truth about Clay, says he can never truly be happy living the lie of being Vincent Towers, while we see photographs of Clay/Vincent seemingly living an extremely happy life: society says white men simply belong at the top more than Black men do, but, if the roles could be reversed, the latter would slot in seamlessly. Maybe??? Of all the movies in this collection, this is the one I'd most want to read an essay on (followed by Swoon).

The Last Seduction (dnrw) No, no, no, I am not rewataching this piece of shit movie.

Brick (rw) Here's my weird contention: Brick is in color and in widescreen, but, besides that? There's nothing neo- about this noir. There's no swearing except "hell." (I always thought Tug said "goddamn" at one point but, no, he's calling The Pin "gothed-up.") There's a lot of discussion of sex, but always through implication, and the only deleted scene is the one that removed ambiguity about what Brendan and Laura get up to after kissing. There's nothing postmodern or subversive - yes, the hook is it's set in high school, but the big twist is that it takes this very seriously. It mines it for jokes, yes, but the drama is authentic. In fact, making the gumshoe a high school student, his jadedness an obvious front, still too young to be as hard as he tries to be, just makes the drama hit harder. Sam Spade if Sam Spade were allowed to cry. I've always found it an interesting counterpoint to The Good German, a movie that fastidiously mimics the aesthetics of classic noir - down to even using period-appropriate sound recording - but is wholly neo- in construction. Brick could get approved by the Hays Code. Its vibe, its plot about a detective playing a bunch of criminals against each other, even its slang ("bulls," "yegg," "flopped") are all taken directly from Hammett. It's not even stealing from noir, it's stealing from what noir stole from! It's a perfect curtain call for the collection: the final film is both the most contemporary and the most classic. It's also - but for the strong case you could make for Night Moves - the best movie on the list. It's even more appropriate for me, personally: this was where it all started for me and noir. I saw this in theaters when it came out and loved it. It was probably my favorite movie for some time. It gave me a taste for pulpy crime movies which I only, years later, realized were neo-noir. This is why I looked into Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and In Bruges. I've seen it more times than any film on this list, by a factor of at least 3. It's why I will always adore Rian Johnson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's the best-looking half-million-dollar movie I've ever seen. (Indie filmmakers, take fucking notes.) I even did a script analysis of this, and, yes, it follows the formula, but so tightly and with so much style. Did you notice that he says several of the sequence tensions out loud? ("I just want to find her." "Show of hands.") I notice new things each time I see it - this time it was how "brushing Brendan's hair out of his face" is Em's move, making him look more like he does in the flashback, and how Laura does the same to him as she's seducing him, in the moment when he misses Em the hardest. It isn't perfect. It's recreated noir so faithfully that the Innocent Girl dies, the Femme Fatale uses intimacy as a weapon, and none of the women ever appear in a scene together. 1940's gender politics maybe don't need to be revisited. They say be critical of the media you love, and it applies here most of all: it is a real criticism of something I love immensely.

#film noir #neo-noir #criterion channel

[bigskydreaming]

What kills me in fics is when you have tags going like "Good brother Jason", which, cool, but in the same story there's " Dick TRIES to be a Good Brother" LOL way to switch the dynamics. I also tend to stay clear of the ones where the centric character seems to have a platonic relationship tag with everyone (including the ones where they're antagonists in canon like Jason & Tim) except Dick. You can feel the hate/dislike/prejudice a MILE away.

Yeeeeeeah. You are definitely not alone. Like pretty much every Dick Grayson stan I’ve ever talked to on the subject stays the hell away from any fic tagged “Dick Grayson tries to be a good brother.”

LOL like....it’s basically what I was talking about in that older post I just reblogged a few minutes ago. That thing where Dick’s actions or choices in a canon story or fic aren’t judged on their own merits but are rather inherently weighed against some hypothetical perfect choice that he DIDNT make and so he’s basically evaluated based on how much he falls short of that mark each time instead of anything he actually did.

Sorry not sorry, but I’m just not interested in stories that TRANSFORM the character most commonly referred to as the emotional glue of the family and the only one who consistently even CARES about them all being a family....into the fumbling incompetent relationship disaster man who at best gets credit for at least putting in an attempt at being there for his family.

Especially not when Bruce and Jason and Tim are praised for doing the bare minimum in canon when it comes to family interactions while everything Dick ACTUALLY did is just completely ignored and overwritten in order to make his Failure to People Good the narrative obstacle to be overcome.

Now, the “Dick Grayson Tries To Be A Good Brother” tag applied to Tim-centric fics in particular tho....hoo boy I am out of there so fast there’s a Kool-Aid Man shaped hole in the wall and not a sign of me as far as the horizon.

Like, currently my Pet Peeve Thermostat is set to Battle for the Cowl-referencing fics that don’t use this tag but very much are in that spirit. You probably know the ones, like their summaries suggest they’re open to considering Dick’s side of the situation but turns out the author at most is throwing him a “well at least you tried not to suck” bone while still reading him the riot act for very much still sucking.

Because what drives me up a flipping WALL here in particular, when I naively click on a link that seems different from the usual and ignore the voice of experience because I’m just desperate enough for Tim and Dick food that doesn’t just go on and on about how Dick ruined their brotherhood and it will never be truly repaired....

What makes the fruit bats in my belfry go absolutely B-A-N-A-N-A-S is not just the super fun realization that Psych! You thought this fic might be different but it’s actually the same!

Nah.

It’s how much people, both writers AND commenters, just absolutely LOVE to reference Tim’s shitbag parents and how emotionally abusive and neglectful they were (all true and valid, btw, let’s be totally clear about that)....but bringing them up here specifically to emphasize just how great Dick’s ‘betrayal’ was and how what he did makes him no better than them.

It’s like. Oh. I see.

So because after twenty years worth of stories about Dick dropping everything the second Tim needs him, whether it’s for help or just advice or even just reassurance or comfort or ANYTHING ....because after two decades worth of content showing Dick absolutely doting on Tim in their EVERY SINGLE interaction and buttressing his self confidence at every opportunity, never passing up a chance to call him his brother and emphasize that they’re family and he loves Tim and is so proud of him...

Because after all that there’s a story whose very premise forced Dick to choose between two kids, both still very much his brothers and their shared father’s sons even if one was new to him and didn’t have the same history the other two had....

Because by the very nature of the story Dick had no choice but to prioritize one over the other due to them both hating each other and Dick already being stretched to his absolute limits trying to live his dead father’s life and take on everything Bruce used to do at the cost of giving up everything Dick had chosen for his own life and wants and priorities, all while dealing with his own grief....

And with it being inevitable that the boy he DIDNT choose to prioritize was going to be hurt....

Because after twenty years of never failing to put Tim first the second Tim needed him, never even putting HIMSELF first OVER Tim....because for the first time Dick felt that someone else he felt obligated to, felt a responsibility towards, actually needed him MORE than Tim....

And for that reason and that reason ONLY, Dick picked that other boy, all while trying his best to tell Tim that he still needed him, still valued him, all the things that Bruce DIDNT tell him when he took Robin not even because he thought someone else needed it at the time but simply to take away, with absolutely nothing Dick said in any way negating or contradicting any of his many, MANY assurances to Tim over the years that they were brothers and always would be and with them still very much legally brothers and with concrete ties to each other that declared them family even WITHOUT the connection of Robin....

Because after and despite ALL OF THAT, Dick picked the brother that he didn’t know and frankly didn’t even LIKE, because he knew no one else was going to pick this kid and he also knew he’d already picked Tim a hundred times before and hoped that at least all that HISTORY of past focus and attention he’d given Tim to help build him up, give him foundations to build further upon, that hopefully at least that history that was still there, still relevant, still something Tim had actively benefited and grown from in ways Dick now hoped to help Damian....like surely this would be of at least SOME significance to Tim, SOME kind of proof of how much Dick loved and valued Tim....

Because one time and one time ONLY, Dick DIDNT put Tim’s needs first, not because he didn’t want to or because he was being selfish or short sighted or simply didn’t care, but rather solely because this one time Tim’s needs were in direct opposition with the needs of another young boy Dick saw as his responsibility and in even greater need and with even less of a foundation than the one Dick had helped Tim build....

This puts Dick on the same level as Tim’s shitbag parents, the ones who are infamous for (and practically synonymous with) emotional abuse and neglect. Dick’s basically interchangeable with them now. Certainly no better than them. Tim’s entire emotional well-being rested on Dick and Dick alone and nothing he’d provided Tim with in the past counts, just this one moment in time right here right now, that’s the entirety of their relationship see, it all comes down to this and nothing else, and because Dick didn’t put Tim first, no matter WHAT his reasons or how much he wanted to, he has officially failed Tim as hard as the neglectful parents who did nothing BUT neglect, ignore and just not give a shit at all, simply because they couldn’t be bothered to.

Yeah.

That’s neat.

#and please before certain people get all up in their righteous umbrage and declare a blood feud against me for this #take note of how nowhere did I say Tim doesn’t have the right and reason to be hurt #because of course he does #you will never see me claiming otherwise #but just because someone was hurt that doesn’t mean that someone did it to hurt them #and that is the distinction so many fans don’t seem to care to make #I’ve literally seen people call Dick emotionally abusive and neglectful for this era of canon and holy shit people #in terms of abuse specifically you absolutely can be abusive without meaning to #hell this is basically the nature of neglect. they’re not TRYING to hurt a child because the entire problem is the child #doesn’t even rate as much of a presence in their awareness as they should #but people can yell it’s just their interpretation all they want about this era of canon #but it’s flat out not true. it’s their transformation of the material not an interpretation of it #because you literally have to CHANGE what Dick ACTUALLY says to Tim to paint him as neglectful or not caring about his emotional well-being #you have to CUT OUT all mention of the times Dick tried reaching out to Tim or checking up on him in order to paint Dick as simply moving #on with his shiny newer little brother #that’s not a difference of interpretation. that’s an act of transformation. changing details of a story that isn’t reading the way you want #it to....until it DOES say what you want it to #and the problem has NEVER been some of us just being unwilling to let people have their headcanons #the problem is people’s refusal to call them headcanons or AUs or anything that acknowledges they’ve transformed the source material #in order to CREATE the interpretation they’re going with #AND OTHER FANS HAVE EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD TO SAY YEAH WE’RE NOT TRYING TO TALK ABOUT YOUR TRANSFORMATION OF CANON THO #we’re literally trying to talk about what you transformed it FROM....and the fact that despite all your complaints about canon character #choices....some of you repeatedly make the CHOICE to change canon not just to fix or address the poor character choices you don’t like for #your faves.....but also at the same time making this other character do the very stuff you claim to hate canon having your faves do #and that is your CHOICE. AND YOU GET TO MAKE IT. BUT IT IS STILL A CHOICE TO MAKE CHANGES #NOT simply a different interpretation of the foundational material #like you guys keep trying to pass it off as #and that MATTERS #it matters quite a lot in fact

[mittensmorgul]

it’s been six days since i watched 15.19 and i will never be over this

for Chuck, the ultimate punishment, the worst thing they could do to him-- far worse than instant death-- was to render him utterly powerless. he’d cosplayed as a human for a very long time, superficially exploring his creation while retaining complete control over it. a snap of his fingers could still alter reality (he gave himself the ability to play music, he experimented with human relationships and still utterly failed to grasp the concepts of human joy and love and care). he did all of this while still fundamentally seeing his own creation as a playground for him to dominate, and the beings he’d created with with the ability to love and choose for themselves were merely his personal playthings. every instance of lucifer referring to humanity as chuck’s “toys” was spot on, all along.

and now that he is human himself, it’s irrelevant if he ever grows into this realization for himself. he’s been rendered entirely superfluous to the narrative he’d sought to control and eventually obliterate on a whim. sure, we can hope that he will grow to see the beauty and wonder and potential joy and love that humans are capable of, but it doesn’t matter. if he does, then good for him. if not, we are the bodily incarnation of the shrug emoji. that’s his problem now, basically. it’s the ending he deserved.

but for cas-- the ONE element of the story that he could never fully eliminate or bend to his will, the SINGLE incarnation of this character across all his universes to simply fail to do what he was told and bugger off back to heaven with the rest of the mindless angels-- cas is the SINGLE angel who actually fell in love with humanity. he’s the one who let humanity change him, because of the love he saw in dean winchester-- a man who spent the last 15 seasons believing he was broken, poison, nothing more than a weapon or a killer, who ruined everything he touched including this angel.

love never ruined anything, hon.

cas has been dipping his toes into humanity since his first season on the show. he’s been blowing apart the doorways to doubt, feeling more and more human emotions despite repeated attempts to program that humanity out of him and restore him to proper angelic obedience. and because of the love he began to understand only after he did fully fall and become human, when he had to give up his humanity because of necessity to save the world yet again, in an act he deemed “barbaric” and only chose because he felt he had no other choice, he’s never felt that was a viable option for him to choose again, for himself.

he’s needed to be “prepared” to go to war at every turn. there’s never been a time when he felt he could lay that magical armor and sense of duty to the universe of being an angel down. it’s... horrifying, actually. knowing that he carries so much love, and the one thing he wants he feels he can never have, because instead he would have to choose to sacrifice any chance of it to be ready at all times to pick up his arms again and fling himself in front of the cosmic bullets the universe kept firing at them. he held on to it all as a shield-- both for his own fear of his feelings not being reciprocated from dean because we have been told over and over for years that angels are like “marble statues” and are incapable of true human feelings (and even in more mundane ways like how cas mourned the flavor of pb&j once his grace was restored... nothing really hit the same, like the grace itself was a shield in the same way cas described dean’s demonhood as a shield that protected him from feeling his feelings), but in a very literal way cas used his grace to shield dean from danger, ready to stand between dean and death at every turn, regardless of the consequences, and regardless of how DEAN would react to losing him. Some sacrifices just aren’t worth surviving, you know? which dean proved out to us in early s13... and which cas has no IDEA about...

but back to the point...

in a post-chuck world, where TFW’s sacrifices of raising jack to believe in the beauty of creation and the power of human love and joy and wonder and beauty and balance have restored the natural order and changed the entire stakes of the game from saving the world to saving themselves and finally having total freedom to make their own choices in life without a risk-reward calculation on whether they can save the universe from the current round of existential threat imposed on them by a malicious god, is there any other logical choice that cas would make than to finally be able to lay his shield down? there’s nothing more to fight for, except themselves and the love they’d never felt was possible.

for chuck, humanity was the ultimate punishment. but for cas, the angel who broke the mold, it would be the ultimate reward.

and for all of us humans down here in the muck who chuck would’ve just as soon seen stomped back into the mud for the rest of eternity? i don’t think there could be any greater affirmation of OUR humanity and the validity and power of our own lives, our own love, and our own choices than demonstrating that humanity itself isn’t and should never be a punishment to anyone who truly loves.

this is my story, and i’m sticking with it.

#spn s15 spoilers #spn 15.19 #spn 15.20 #spn s15 speculation #castiel winchester #any ending that doesn't frame cas as choosing humanity is effectively dead to me #i just can't accept that one of the final messages of a show that's been about human love and free will and the value of those things #would be NAH BEING HUMAN IS SHIT AND A PUNISHMENT AND 'DEMEANING' because that's just gross #i hope they don't legit make me pull this out after tomorrow night to burn the whole ending down with... but i'm prepared anyway

[panharmonium]

there’s a flashback to this sequence during an S9 episode focused on sasuke’s impending crisis, and after i watched it, i had to go back and gif the original, because the way the flashback differs from the actual scene above is really interesting.

the above is how the scene plays out in reality.  sasuke and sakura watch as naruto begs kakashi to teach him the chidori, and kakashi, after initially declining, humors naruto, even though he’s perfectly aware naruto won’t be able to do it.  it’s very clear to us as the audience that a) naruto can’t master this technique, b) kakashi knows naruto won’t be able to master this technique, and c) kakashi is only letting naruto try it in order to make him realize that he can’t do it, because naruto is the kind of kid who won’t listen to words and only learns through experience.

however.  in the flashback to this same conversation, what sasuke is shown to be watching looks like this:

which is, first of all, completely disconnected from reality.  and second of all, it’s fascinating, because it shows how wildly sasuke’s perception of the world has been distorted by his internal turmoil.  

when i watched the episode containing this memory in S9, i remember thinking to myself, ‘that...felt weird.  i don’t remember that happening,’ which is why i went back to check the original.  and the truth is that it didn’t happen like that.  the original scene is so...benign.  kakashi and naruto aren’t goofing off at all.  kakashi is just standing there, doing his normal tired teacher routine.  he’s not laughing.  he’s not even smiling.  he certainly isn’t prancing off into the sunset arm-in-arm with naruto, having the time of his life.  and yet when we see this again in the episode that’s focused on sasuke’s growing struggle, it looks completely different.  it looks like kakashi and naruto are happily skipping away without a care in the world, having a grand old time, oblivious to anyone and everything else.  

this is relevant to sasuke’s later confrontation with kakashi, because sasuke, in that moment, says, “all the laughter.  every one of you is laughing.  itachi sacrificed his life, but you’re still laughing, cackling together like fools - you’re just ignorant of everything!”  this distorted flashback of naruto and kakashi is such a clear illustration of how warped sasuke’s perception has become.  there are ways in which what he says is true, of course - everybody in the village IS ignorant of what really happened to itachi; there is literally no way anyone could possibly know the truth (and, importantly, no way they can be blamed for NOT knowing) - but there are also ways in which sasuke’s perception of the world has been severely distorted by his anger and his pain.  he’s not seeing things the way they actually are.  this whole barrel-of-laughs, partners-in-idiocy, best-friends-forever moment between naruto and kakashi never happened.  kakashi never treated naruto like this.  in reality, kakashi spends virtually zero one-on-one time with naruto in shonen jump (FAR less one-on-one time than he spends with sasuke, in fact) and when they are onscreen together, they're not gleeful or goofy or attached at the hip.  but sasuke’s mind right now can only focus on how much he’s hurting, and so it creates a false narrative for him where everybody was hurting him, all the time, which isn’t remotely the case, but is very much how he feels.

the crux of the matter here is that sasuke needs everybody to be culpable.  if he acknowledges that they aren’t culpable, it means he’s not justified in taking the actions he feels desperately compelled to take.  and he has been so unwell for so long that his own mind has become an unreliable narrator by now, interpreting events in ways that don’t accurately reflect reality, even if his skewed perceptions do accurately reflect how much pain he’s in (and, particularly, how wronged he truly has been, even if he’s projecting the blame for that onto people who had nothing to do with it).

#i think it's also telling that the moment where we see this happen is when kakashi is 'teaching' naruto the chidori #this scene happens after naruto saves sakura from gaara (during a fight that sasuke himself couldn't finish) #and sasuke is having a private meltdown about naruto becoming stronger than him #(because it means that sasuke himself isn't strong enough to face itachi) #and even though it's obvious to US that kakashi has no actual intention of teaching naruto the chidori #and that he has no expectation that naruto can learn it #sasuke isn't necessarily perceiving it that way #his insecurity means that he's reacting in the same kind of way naruto does when kakashi demonstrates that he can do the rasengan #'it's not fair sensei! the rasengan was supposed to be my own secret technique!' #seeing naruto 'learn' the chidori - esp. since naruto has been getting more and more powerful - #makes sasuke feel threatened #because of what it says about his probable inability to defeat itachi #which is exactly how kakashi explains it to jiraiya later #'sasuke can't acknowledge naruto's abilities. he feels like if he does acknowledge them he's diminishing his own' #[[[disclaimer: i am watching for the first time! we just finished season 10 of shippuden so please avoid spoilers beyond that point! :) ]]] #pan watches naruto #naruto #meta #he's like me

[demivampirew]

Merry F*cking Christmas

 A Christmas’ lover Henry x a holiday hater Reader

Trigger: angst; couple fighting; a few tears - but also fluff.

A/N: I came up with this story after thinking about why I hate Christmas and the experiences of reader are some things that actually happened to me. This story is like my own Xmass coping mechanism 🤣 

Kal cocked his head, letting his tongue out; it looked as if he was smiling while watching his daddy decorate the tree.

 You loved your boyfriend more than words could express but, Gosh, it annoyed so much how much he loved Christmas. There were still a few days until the holiday and, he was already planning the celebration: choosing the food, the music, the movies you two would watch after midnight and on Christmas’ day. Henry went as far as choosing the outfit he wanted to wear that night.

 The big puppy walked across the room to where you were sitting, while drinking beer and watching tv while rolling your eyes, annoyed at your boyfriend’s jolly Christmas’ mood. The Akita stared at you for a few moments, as if he was trying to decipher something.

“Leave her Kal, mommy hates Christmas,” Henry said with a playful tone. “But, hopefully, once this baby is done, the Christmas spirit will possess her.” he finished, smirking. Once more, you rolled your eyes as you got up and went into the kitchen to grab another beer and to prepare dinner while Mr Christmas was busy decorating the tree.

“Voilà!” your man exclaimed excited once you were back on the room. The tree was fully decorated and it looked like one of those that you see on movies - or a small version of the ones that are on malls/shopping centres.

He was expecting a different reaction than the one you got: shrugging and sitting on the couch. Any other person would have given up by that point but not Henry; he was determined to get you to enjoy the holidays.

After a moment, he sat next to you and hold mistletoe over you and with a playful smile he asked for a kiss. In any other circumstances, you would not hesitate and would agree immediately but now it was different: this was not an “I love you kiss” this was a form for you to agree that you were ok with all that Christmas’ sh*t. You looked at him, irritated and fix your eyes on the tv again.

No matter how annoyed you looked, Henry would not simply give up. He insisted to get you on a holiday mood. He would put songs and dance around with Kal, among other things. Finally, as you turned off the stove because dinner was ready, he approached you and put a Santa hat that he got for you as a surprise.

“STOP! SERIOUSLY; STOP IT!” you shouted angrily while grabbing the hat and throwing it on the floor and walking away,

 It must have been around 8 pm. All daylights were gone and now the only light was the one provided by the moon. You were sitting on the garden, wishing you would have brought a blazer because it was freezing outside. Around half an hour after being there in the cold of the night, you felt a cosy and warm blanket on your back. You didn’t need to look to know who provided you with it.

“Thank you,” you said without looking at him.

“You’re welcome” he replied after sitting by your side. He also stared at the moon. “I didn’t want to bother you but, I didn’t want you to freeze either,” he explained.

Minutes went by as you sat in silence looking at anything but each other. This was the first year together and you never have fought - maybe you had one or two small arguments, but nothing like that.

“I’m sorry I tried to force you to like Christmas when I now you don’t. It was selfish of me. I’m truly sorry” he apologized as he fixed his eyes on you, waiting for a response.

“I’m sorry I shouted at you. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m so sorry for that” you replied as you looked at him, feeling bad for your earlier outburst.

“You don’t need to apologize for that, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” you replied as you sighed. “I should never scream at you, especially not for something as silly as that. It’s just that... I don’t...” you were having a hard time finding the words to explain things up “ The reason I hate Christmas is that they bring up memories and feelings that I don’t want.” you confessed “I used to love Christmas. When I was a child, I loved the holidays as much as you do but, when I was around 13 or 14, my parents decided to stop going to my uncle’s house to celebrate it with the rest of the family. For then on, we would just stay at our house and “celebrated it” on our own. But, to be honest, I was the only one on the mood to do so; the rest would not even dress up for it. Then, we would fight constantly and after a few years, we ended up eating at different times and the celebrations ceased. I tried a few times to celebrate it with friends but something bad would always happen. One time a friend broke up with her boyfriend and we all had to witness the fight and it was awful.” You looked at the grass, as you took a moment before continuing. “Has ever happened to you to speak happily about something you love and nobody listened to you so you pretend that you didn’t say a word to avoid looking stupid and the humiliation of being completely ignored? Well, that’s exactly what I do. The “I hate Christmas” narrative is my coping mechanism. If I hate the holidays, I cannot be hurt when other people don’t give a f about it.” As you finished your explanation, you realized something that you haven’t thought about before you put your feelings into words “Which is exactly what I’m doing to you...sh*t! I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel ignored and silly for loving the holidays” you apologized profusely.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied as he grabbed your hand and kissed it. “But now that I know that you do enjoy Christmas, why don’t we celebrate it properly? Making gingerbread cookies, music and all stereotypical things that seemed lame but are cute?” he proposed with a big smile.

“Because I don’t want to get enjoy Christmas if there’s a possibility of losing that.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked confused.

“What if someday we broke up? The last thing I need is another reason for this time of the year to be painful” you admitted.

“What makes you think we would break up? I don’t know about you but, I don’t see this relationship ending. I just don’t.” he told you as he smiled “I don’t want to live my life in the “what if”, scared; I rather live my life to the fullest and if that happens, I’ll deal with it afterwards. To prevent me from enjoying things out of the possibility of someday those things becoming painful memories is insane because they cannot be painful if you didn’t enjoy them. A hurtful memory becomes that because at one point it made you happy.”

His resonated with you. You have never thought about it. He was right, it was silly not to enjoy something out of fear of losing it.

 After a sweet, reconciliation kiss, you stood up and walked towards the warm house to eat dinner and to take pictures with the amazing tree that he decorated.

You can find more of my writings in the Masterlist

#henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill one shot #henry cavill x reader #demivampirew