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buzzcutmase · 15 days

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So, I have a few thingssss so say 🙂‍↔️ I have way more but I can’t think straight

Down Bad is so catchy 💆🏼‍♀️

I understand everybody’s obsession with so long, London -hello, the lyrics??- but I would’ve loved it with a different music..? If that makes sense? 🥲 doesn’t slap like it could imho

Also thanK you aIMee - hahah 😂 “I don’t think you’ve changed much” ~ spot on! I think Cassandra also references KimK..?

And why is nobody talking about the alchemy? CUTE & CATCHY 😍

Black dog is about MH? The bridge is chefs kiss tho!

Fortnight has a kinda 80s vibe in terms of the music? 😌 Reminds me of a great 80s version of Adore You by Harry I found years ago on YT, btw!

I hate it here - “I'd say the 1830s but without all the racists. And getting married off for the highest bid. Nostalgia is a mind's trick. If I'd been there, I'd hate it.”

Love how shes romanticising “the good old days” whilst also heavily criticising doing so by pointing out the racism, sexism - ugh. Yes.

OK OK first of all i really love how you came to me with all this, i'm obsessed with it actually soooooo i'll use this as an excuse to give you all my thoughts on the whole album! (bare in mind i've not listened to the second part of the album yet because i've been busy today so i only had the chance to listen to the first part twice to understand the lyrics more!) 😌

fortnight: i completely agree with you on that one! it's such an 80s vibe and i love it, also the lyrics are soooo ugh! "i love you it's ruining my life" give her the grammy NOW!.. i do wish post malone featured more on it though bc i really like him and his music so!

the tortured poets department: LOVE! the chorus is soooo good! when the track titles got released i was actually most excited about this one bc i just couldn't think of how she would include a line like that into a song but obviously she made it work bc she's a mastermind :')

my boy only breaks his favourite toys: so catchy! so matty coded tbh so she ATE with that one!

down bad: SOOOOOOOOO CATCHY! it's such a banger tbh and so relatable like "fuck it if i can't have him i might just die it would make no difference" (makes me think of mase hehehe!)

SO LONG, LONDON: the perfect song to be the special track 5: heartbreaking and earth shattering like the lyrics make me cry ESPECIALLY the 3rd verse!!!! "you swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? i died at the altar waiting for the proof, you sacrificed us to the gods of your bluest days and i'm just getting color back to my face. i'm just mad as hell cause i loved this place for so long, london. had a good run, a moment of warm sun but i'm not the one" UGHHHH! and knowing how much this means to her is soooo insane and i can see how you might've liked it with a different music but i actually think it's super fitting because it's the sped up beat like there is going to be a climax in the song somewhere but there isn't and the slow singing of the words kind of counteract it which was what taylor and joe's relationship felt like... like there would be a climax in the relationship with a wedding and babies but it never came and she spent all this time waiting just for it to be over in the end you know? :(

but daddy i love him: I LOVE how she adressed the fact that every single time she dates someone people on the outside who don't know shit about her personal life want to include themselves in it and give their opinion and i love how she wrote the song in a sarcastic fuck you way BUT since it's about matty i feel like most of the opinions on their relationship are justified bc of who he is and the things he said so i feel like most of us were just looking out for her in the way we were against it you know? like there were reasons why people hated them together so much. ALSO SHE NAME DROPPED ME??? EXCUSE ME TAYLOR???

fresh out the slammer: BANGER! the classic "came out of a heartbreak from a long term relationship and need a rebound for some time" LOVE!

florida: not too sold on it yet but i feel like i need to listen to it a few more times before i can really have an opinion on it 😌

guilty as sin?: i love this song so much. the vibe? the lyrics? i'm in love, it's so relatable aswell LIKE

who's afraid of little old me?: FAVOURITE SONG ON THE ALBUM! BY FAR! the way she wrote about the fame ruining her and her mental health and turning her into someone she never wanted to be is so fucking beautiful honestly like it's devastating but so beautifully written. and the first "who's afraid of little old me?" the way she's screaming it. YES YES YES. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

i can fix him (no really i can) : it's so sexy??? like the way she sings it and the lyrics? like she's so sexy like yes queen if anyone could change a man IT'S YOU!

loml: sooooooo heartbreaking and such a masterpiece... how it goes from love of my life to loss of my life... i'm going to CRY. i'm conflicted whether it's about joe or matty though... maybe both? i'm not sure but it's beautiful either way. 💔

i can do it with a broken heart: it feels like bejweled... but in a suicidal "i wanna die" but on crack way! it's so fun though??? like so sad how she had to put on a smile ever single night on tour even if she felt like shit but i'm so proud of her always for making it through and being happy now and i hope we as fans had a good impact on that too!

the smallest man who ever lived: again... conflicted who it's about but it's such a great song and whoever it's about will have to fucking deal with me soon bc HOW DARE YOU HURT HER LIKE THIS.

the alchemy: as you said SO CUTE SO CATCHY! so happy she found happiness with travis and it's all good now and she's healing from all the heartbreak and the hard times she faced the past year :( no one deserves happiness more than her! ❤️‍🩹

clara bow: LOVE LOVE LOVE! it feels like it's the second part of "the lucky one" if you know what i mean... and her singing about herself but not in the way she sang about clara bow and stevie nicks with them being heart capturing icons everyone loves but in a self depricating way... heartbreaking bc she sadly still think of herself as an imposter in all this but so beautifully written again. also taylor swift name dropping taylor swift on a taylor swift album???? INSANE. 🥺

SOOOO basically, i feel like this album was made from the deepest depths of taylor's mind written specifically for the people who get her and have been loving and supporting her for a long time... like there is no proper poppy single or song for the general public on there which is why i think so many people on social media have slammed the album and said she really missed the mark with this one but if you get it and if you understand the situations she sings about bc you've been thorugh them with her it's such a meaningful abum about her heartbreaks, mental struggles, struggles with fame and not feeling like real person but also about her healing journey and seeing the funny side of people having an opinion on your every move you know? i love her. i truly do. mastermind. ❤️‍🩹

WILL CHECK BACK IN AGAIN WHEN I LISTENED TO THE SECOND PART OF THE ALBUM! HEHE!

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theweefreewomen · 6 months

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I saw eleven plays this year, most of them local, and I want to talk about them, so here are some quick-fire reviews.

in chronological watching order:

The Mousetrap

The classic murder mystery play. A very good start.

Labour of Love

Local; focusing on a Labour MP, starting on the election night of 2017 and going backwards through his career in the first half, and then forwards back to 2017 in the second. The chemistry between the two leads was fantastic, and solid acting all round. The back-and-forward timeline lent to a lot of really good set-ups and payoffs.

On Monday Next

Local; a play about putting on a play. A bit of an odd play to perform, since it didn't seem to give much room for the actors to do much. There were altogether too many characters, and only one and a half good roles. The play-in-a-play is meant to be bad, and just beginning rehearsals, so there's a lot of just standing around reciting lines. Both acts begin with a character breaking the forth wall, which is never again broken, which was really strange - why was only one character able to 'see' the audience? Pretty boring overal, and I would have hit the bricks if I wasn't there with a friend.

After All These Years

Local; four old friends and their dramas. When looking back at what theatre I've seen this year, I kept forgetting about this one. Inoffensively boring.

Romeo and Juliet

Local; an all-female retelling of the classic. The programne described this version as being set on a counsel estate, but I didn't really get that while watching. It did feel quite modern though; the Capulet party at the begining had Paris serendating Juliet with Elton's 'Your Song' karaoke. During the wedding scene between R+J, the body of Tybalt was still on the stage for that character's funeral, which I think was a great staging idea. The scene where Nurse finds Juliet's body, thinking she's dead, was heartbreaking and I was fighting back tears.

Anthropology

A woman builds an AI based on her missing, presumed dead, sister. I saw this in London for my birthday this year, and it was so good! The 'AI' sister was played using a combination of pre-recorded video and off-stage voice work. An interesting look at the tendency to romanticise dead loved ones and how difficult it is to cope with not knowing what happened. Very interesting family dynamics.

A Doll's House

Local; Ibsen. I really liked the set design in this, which used both the stage and the area in front of it. The actor playing Krogstad was perhaps overacting a little in places, but the actor playing Nora was very strong.

Past Tents

Local; two men at a campsite over the course of one night. The only play I reget seeing. It was trying to explore men's mental health, but seemed unwilling to actually be earnest about it, and kept undercutting itself with gross-out humour and over-the-top performances. Would have hit the bricks if there had been an interval.

Apologia

Local; the birthday dinner of an artist and activist with her sons and their partners. Explores the family dynamic and history between mother and sons. The acting all round was excellent, except for the one gay character who felt very flat and stereotyped. I really loved the set of this, it felt lived in. One of my favourites of the year.

It Is I, the Seagull

Local/touring; a one-woman show about opera and the first woman in space, written and performed by Lucy Mellors. A lot of fun and really poinant. Balances humour and seriousness really well. Another favourite; if you're in the south of England, look this up and see if she's touring it near you.

(sidenote: one of the credits in the programne was for 'Artist Wellbeing Practitioner', and I hope that becomes more of a thing.)

The Walkern Witch

Local; about a woman sentence to death for witchcraft. Part play, part script reading. This was a lot of fun, a nice mix of fun accents and singing. The actors were clearing enjoying themselves and that was infectious.

So, what's the takeaway from this? Partly that it's so good not to be working evenings constantly, but mainly that good theatre isn't limited to the West End or Broadway, that local and amatuer theatre is worth checking out.

es, sometimes it will be bad. Not gonna lie, sometimes it will be awful and you will wish you had just stayed in. But then sometimes it will be amazing and you'll be raving about it to your friends. And sometimes, you'll be dragged onstage to be part of a ballet line and getting emotional over 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'.

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where-i-speak-my-mind · 2 years

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nostalgia is really the worst...

I'm spending time thinking about my primary school life. I used to have this amazing amazing ICT teacher. His name was Mr Colin Brown and I loved him so much. I used to love his lessons in primary school. He taught there (as a minimum) between 2007 and 2011. I miss him a lot and really wanted to get into contact with him. He was quite old when he taught us and he probably left due to retirement. I remember that he told us his dog had cancer. He was really so amazing or maybe I'm just romanticising one of the few good things about my primary school life. Either way I want to know how he's doing. I want to know if he's even still alive considering it's been around 10 years since he retired.

I tried searching Google for my primary schools website but since it had gotten a new headteacher all of the old data had been removed. I only knew his last name at first. I used the archive finder website to find screenshots of the old version of the website (which he had made) and I found his full name from it as he had given himself credit as the creator.

It's so easy to lose someone from the past. He changed my life to be honest and I have no idea what happened to him...

We also used to have a school song which was also removed by the new headteacher

nostalgia is so bittersweet. its like an emptiness in my chest and like my insides are sinking into the hole slowly. I feel nostalgia for so many things and I want to tell people about it but I have noone to speak to to be honest. I feel nostalgia for the late 2000s since that's when I went to primary school and everything felt different. The world has changed so much. its very very weird.

I feel nostalgia or a yearning to be someone else. I feel a nostalgia to be someone else's experiences and memories. It feels like a desire to have gone to a small primary school where everyone knows each other and it feels like a spring morning. but I can never have that. and it feels like I'm empty because of the inability to do this. I'll post some more about these thought later :)

#nostalgia

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cherry-interlude · 3 years

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Lana Del Rey Unreleased Ranking (3)

This is a re-ranking of Lana's unreleased songs, after making a first a few years ago. This is all my opinion, which I don't mind anyone disagreeing with but don't come for me for it - honestly, I like every song, despite any criticism, and this ranking is very vague. It's based on objective and subjective opinion.

This is the third of five posts, with the middle songs.

Dreamgirl

Purely wholesome and dreamy, Lana adds some very fifties “shoo-wops” to play a fifties starlet whispering, her vocals soothing and soft along with the looping piano that guides the song.

Jimmy Gnecco

Breathless over the brisk guitar, Lana gushes over Jimmy – mixing her adoration of her lovers with wannabe-starlet fangirling. It’s one of her best acoustic tracks as she smirks and requests a trip to the park.

Elvis

Lana’s acoustic dedication to her icon Elvis Presley is memorable despite how stripped back it is. It could have been cleaner but Lana’s sorrowful desperation to be close to this man who she is such a fan of works well in being decent output from her.

Boarding School

It’s a difficult listen, considering Lana’s nostalgia is for a “pro-ana nation” and a school where “makig love with your teachers” is revered, but it may just be a satirical look at her time in boarding school when she was younger. I don’t enjoy listening to such worrying topics being handled in an upbeat song but the song itself has well-written lyrics and a great instrumental.

Television Heaven

This song is incredibly sweet, with lovely lyrics, dreamy verses and a distinctive pop feel, but it is definitely a strange mash of instrumentals. It’s not too jarring but it does make the song fall lower in ranking. It feels indecisive as it goes from sugary pop to a slightly darker feel in the choruses, and the lyrics aren’t the most imaginative in Lana’s library of tracks.

Be My Daddy

Lana’s full on sex-kitten in this song that opens with twangy guitars and her hushed “what’s up?” as she greets her potential “daddy”. With dirtier lyrics that she’s “open like a Christmas present” and how she’ll “fuck you”, Lana avoids keeping the sex in just the vibe of the song.

Break My Fall

Another song made for another artist, Lana this time sounds like she’s doing her own track. The pop sound is still ideal for actual music charts but Lana pulls the song off well, playing a strong woman far removed from the tragic women of many of her songs. It’s strong in quality and doesn’t stray into more experimental territory where many of Lana’s unreleased songs reside.

Hit and Run

With three versions to pick from (the poppy original, the Born To Die style slower version and the demo Criminals Run The World that’s a little more overt about Lana’s violent intentions), all three of these songs have something special about them. The pop version is bouncy and chaotic, perfect for a wild spree of gun fights and car chases. The slower version is much more seductive and measured, but a little too reflective compared to the manic power of the upbeat version. Criminals Run The World ranks much lower, not as smooth compared to Hit and Run but still with that insanity that makes Hit and Run a wild ride.

Heavy Hitter

With a jazzy introduction, Lana gives us a glamorous tale of a star having an overdose (somehow she makes it glitzy). However, following the suggestive chorus in which Lana asks her man to open his butterfly doors of his car (to drive her to get help, somehow delivered with seduction rather than horror), the lyrics get lost in Lana’s generic praising of herself and her wicked ways. However, it’s a staple of Lana’s unreleased music, even if I do skip after the (if you think about it) harrowing first verse and chorus.

Behind Closed Doors

The instrumental is a little bit all over the place, but it does work when Lana details her ill-received romance to her lover, then jumps right in the chorus to eagerly tell him how much she enjoys sleeping with him.

Gangsta Boy

Lana is inspired by Betty Boop as she croons and gasps her way through the track. The vibe is great, though the music falls a bit, but Gangsta Boy is playful, light-hearted fun.

You’re Gonna Love Me

Lana may be raw in her vocals and basic in her instrumentals (only a guitar) but Lana takes control, self-assured she will make the listener adore her. Her confessional whisper that she might just want to be loved gives this song a knowing edge despite the pondering questions and realism-on-the-edge-of-pessimism feel tone.

Living Legend

Lana’s Living Legend was intended for Ultraviolence, and whilst the song fits in it is definitely one of her more slumbering songs. Yet her sentiment is strong, her lyrics thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable. All of the versions bring something a bit different but it is underlined by great song-writing.

Hey You

Lana has fun greeting a potential lover with this track and I have as much fun listening to it. The chorus is sparse and repetitive but Hey You is all about grabbing your attention rather than going to deep.

Is It Wrong?

Claustrophobic and guided by a smart riff and technological glitches, Lana pulls off the perfect unhinged groupie as she questions whether or not she is wrong for wanting the star of her dreams so much. The glitching is great for really seeing how Lana teeters on the edge of sanity for this guy she can’t resist, going from being the starlet to the foaming-at-the-mouth fangirl.

Playground

Lana becomes a rapper apparently in Playground and hits back at anyone who doubts her and her music. With a cloying chorus that compares the music industry to a playground of bitchy comments and school yard, Lana’s verses are smooth and her references overall decent. It can be a little bit clunky in places but it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Motel 6

A cute little dance track which namedrops Jim and her sister, Chuck, Lana brings the party to her favourite motel, downplaying her glamour to throwback her ‘lore’ and her old life pre-fame. Though it’s very much just describing one night rather than anything complex, it’s harmless fun.

Dynamite

Like the explosive dynamite itself, this song is punchy, restless and powerful. Lana layers this dominating track with innocent references to ice cream and pillow fights whilst also not holding back from the sexual references.

Afraid

Neat and mournful, Lana finally breaks off from her toxic partner. Lana is either sick of being worried for the future or terrified of her partner, and its reflective sadness as she plans to go back home still leaves hope that she will be able to be happy.

Wayamaya

Rolling calmly like a beach wave, Lana takes us straight to Hawaii and paints us an image of handsome surfers and Mercurys. Wayamaya is simply a soothing, short, cute little track that keeps very much surface level.

Hawaiian Tropic

Plinky music paired with non-stressful verses and imagery of Hawaiian shirts, this is the (in my opinion) better version of Every Man Gets His Wish (which shares the same chorus). The subtlety of this track compared to Every Man Gets His Wish helps to convey the hurt feelings a lot better, with the nostalgic feel and mournful longing in the vocals.

Dum Dum

Lana plays the alcoholic star who name drops Scarlett O’Hara and Bugsy Malone as part of her identity. These lyrics are pretty witty and the song snappy but, like some of her unreleased music, is a bit too overproduced and not cohesive. The verses and choruses don’t quite gel which doesn’t make for a song that flows well but with tweaking it could be even better.

Hollywood’s Dead

Lana fits perfectly into the era of fifties with this mid-20th century driven track. It sounds perfectly in place for the decade she frequently romanticises (with a modern twist) and Lana’s crooning, tearful references to her icons drips with glamour.

Fake Diamond

For an anti-romance song, Fake Diamond is quite upbeat. Lana complains of her ‘lover’ who is one way with her, a different way with others, whilst comparing their relationship to all manner of Lana-themed aesthetics (diamonds, movie projectors, etc.). Comparing herself to a child, she practically has a tantrum in the chorus, stamping her feet lovingly as she demands he loves her. I do think this song is joyful, making fun of her inattentive lover whilst keeping one step ahead of his games.

I Must Be Stupid

Lana’s live unreleased track lets Lana enjoy her life despite the hurt that surrounds it, showing strength in the face of heartbreak and other such topics in her music. It was performed post-Lust For Life, an era in which Lana embraced the light side rather than simply the dark.

Live Or Die

The version that is a little bit more lowkey and, in some ways, mature in that it matches a lot of her early albums sound is good but it’s not my favourite. There’s the heady, ultra-pop second version that has plenty more sexy references, a little meow (iconic) and an overall vibe of just having fun on the run. The former version is a bit more serious, but the second is – though less good in terms of production – full of soul.

Velvet Crowbar

Velvet Crowbar is a song that shows the dark side of fame and bad boys, namely the way they self-destruct to the point that their adoring lovers (already addicted to these gangstas of course) are falling with them. This song is a warning to these destructive souls that they aren’t invincible, and an equal warning to the people that love them that they might just fall apart and lose them. Lana puts her emotion across so well, with her stark lyrics, anxious guitars and growling third chorus. Even her more flowery imagery doesn’t cover up the overt fear that runs through this song.

Your Band Is All The Rage

Probably one of Lana’s saddest songs (which could be a great deal many since she knows how to tug heartstrings), Lana lets go of her rock star lover despite still loving him in this acoustic track. She makes soulful promises to be there when he needs him, her love lingering until he wants her back, and utilises the country music theme to her advantage.

1949

The studio version is my favourite but the charm of the original, acoustic demo is unmatched. Despite the controversial inspiration for this track, Lana puts us straight in the world of the 1950s, with American motels and Kmart. It has a note of sadness – perhaps because of the unfortunate tale of Lolita that much of this song seems based on – but it works as one of Lana’s aesthetically pleasing and classic tracks.

Because of You

The spoken intro is a little bit cringe but the song is lovely. Lana plays an immature brat who fell in love with a good man who essentially tamed her (a little bit questionable for some in 2021). It’s got some of her most flowery imagery and it details how her relationship bought out the best of her. The casual comments she throws in throughout the song give this a real bedtime story feel, though this song is anything but sleepy.

Resistance

Frustrated but fun, Lana’s catchy and upbeat Resistance brings to mind surfers and sunny days set in the noughties. Even though she’s furious with the guy who’s causing her so much trouble it still, for a change, stays perky and pleasant. A song that needs more attention, it’s the type of song that gets people singing and dancing along to it.

Dangerous Girl

With a rock-feeling patriotic opening, Lana launches into a track about her prowess as a dangerous girl, like a deranged beauty queen with a gangsta on her arm. It’s simply fun, complete with wolf-whistles and an impression of a siren.

#lana del rey #lana del rey songs #lana del rey unreleased #cherry-interlude

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yeaahishowedupatyourparty · 3 years

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Red & the meaning of it’s songs for Lottie. I just feel like doing this is going to help me build her narrative more, there might be some open spots in here but I doubt it. Also, as I said in the chat, it just helps everyone differentiate her from Holly because they both use Taylor’s albums for their character development! Hope that makes sense :)

1. State Of Grace - Moving to New York and a dedication to all of the friend’s she’s made there. It’s the first time she’s been settled properly in one place and I think it’s about the intense excitement and love she feels for her academy already. She’s met Yasmine, Salem, and so many others and it’s track number 1, because she sees it as the opening to a really exciting new chapter. 2. Red - Elijah! This was her first boyfriend and they drifted as they grew up and moved on to different things. She has no ideas he’s into guys and that doesn’t really matter, anyway. She’s accepted that they’re over but the relationship is always romanticised in her head and moving on fully will probably never be an option. 3. Treacherous - Her first crush at Liberty was Avery and it hit hard. She was intensely pissed off when she didn’t get the reciprocation she wanted but after ‘Better than Revenge’ on Speak Now, she knows better than to put people on blast TOO hard. So, she went down the lovesick route and created this beautiful song. She knows that nothing’s going to come of it, but she can’t fully leave him alone. It’s a little less intense now that all of the academies are together though, because she doesn’t see him as much. 4. I Knew You Were Trouble - This plot is still work in progress, but it’ll be dedicated to Ethan. The two of them have got closer through attending Liberty and he’s attracted to her on a physical level; but nothing more. He’s mainly hooking up with her to prove a point to Addy and it’s working. They’re never official but even still, when she realises/the truth comes out, I think she’ll put her “Stop putting people on blast” attitude out of the window and release this because she won’t be happy. 5. All Too Well - I think All Too Well is really easy to interpret as heartbreak, but Lottie’s meant to be more calculated than that. So, even though it’s very much a heartfelt song and really emotional...she’s crafted it to be that way. It’ll be about Ethan and the purpose of it will be to get the general public and fans on side. She knows it tugs at heart-strings and while I Knew You Were Trouble is a bop, All Too Well is designed to give her the vulnerability that everybody loves to see. In reality, she’s not as hurt about it as she’s pretending. 6. 22 - Every single album has a song about or inspired by Annabel because she’s hands down the most important person in Lottie’s world. I feel Lottie would have grown up hearing Annabel’s stories about St Judes, her adventures and the friends she made. Lottie wrote this song when she got accepted into Liberty, knowing that she’d be having the same thing, and in a weird way feels more connected to her Mum than ever. The line “Everything will be alright if you keep me next to you” kind of points to how much she still relies on Annabel and knows her Mum will guide her through anything that gets hard in the next few years. She basically feels as if she’s her Mum when she was 22. 7. I Almost Do - Elijah. This would be an older song and I think it’d be written when she first started feeling the distance between them. This is probably the least complicated meaning on the album, oop. 8. We Are Never Getting Back Together - NOBODY LOL She just knew it’d get people talking and was catchy and it’ll be one she always acts as if it’s a huge secret who it’s about. 9. Stay Stay Stay - Again, it needs a little bit more development but Flynn is the second guy she’s had a major crush on. He’s really good to her and they have a lovely friendship, but she’s also keeping him at arms length because she knows her career plan is going to end up screwing over a lot of people and their reputations and she doesn’t want him to be one of them. It’s also about how he seems to genuinely like her and not care as much about how successful she is/what she can or cant offer him. 10. The Last Time - All Too Well, part 2. Just to REALLY drive home the fact that Ethan’s hurt her feelings, it’s all his fault and people should feel bad for her. Forget the fact she also knew he was one of the star basketball players and dating him would help boost the attention for ‘Red.’ That’s irrelevant...Obviously. 11. Holy Ground - She wrote this during her visit to St Judes and again, with her parents in mind. For them, Violet Springs is where it all started and I think she would’ve done something really sentimental like visited Annabel’s old dorm room or asked her Mum to take her to the place where they first met. This one tells their story more than any of theirs. 12. Sad Beautiful Tragic - Another one about Elijah. I feel like this is probably the shadiest song she’s written about him and here’s why...’Sad beautiful tragic love affair’ almost implies that something happened or somebody was wrong - and, of course, Lottie’s RARELY going to put herself in the shoes of the villain in any of her stories, so it very subtly nudges people to feel like Elijah did something. He didn’t, though, but one of Lottie’s weaknesses is making things up in her head until she believes them to be fact. There was definitely a stage where she thought he’d found somebody else, so this was the result. 13. The Lucky One - For Violet! Lottie’s been in the music industry for a little longer than most, just because Drew and Annabel let her be home-schooled for a few years while she worked on her debut. I think she sees a lot of herself in Violet and it’s somebody she genuinely cares about. It’s written almost like a fable about fame and trying to warn her that she needs to keep her feet on the ground or she’ll get hurt. 14. Everything Has Changed - I REALLY DON’T LIKE THIS SONG, I FIND IT HARD TO CARE ABOUT. She does have a vague connection with Fae’s new character, Jace, though, so I’ll fill this in when we’ve got a better idea of what it’s all about. 15. Starlight - Her second song about being in New York and starting life at Liberty. Lottie’s version of ‘Red’ is about living life at maximum intensity, which is what she feels like at the moment. She feels like this is the most alive and new she’ll ever be and her passion for everything is burning, so Starlight is another song that expresses that. 16. Begin Again - Flynn and Elijah, ahh. Again, she deep down knows Flynn’s a good guy and the real deal; the only other person she’s had that intuition about is Elijah. She’s kind of comparing them in the sense that they’ve given her that hopeful, heads-in-the-clouds feeling...unlike Ethan who is the other side of the album. I think it’s from the perspective of Lottie looking at Flynn and seeing a lot of Elijah - hence something quite nice is beginning...again.

17. The Moment I Knew - This will again be for Jace. The vague idea of their connection is that they dated after she dated Elijah, while she was home schooling. She fell hard and looked to him for support and was convinced he’d be the same as Elijah was to her but he is and has always been more focused on his career. So, when she decided to go back to VS, he stayed out in LA trying to make his dreams come true. They tried long distance but he never called as much as she did and it felt very one way. He never did anything explicitly wrong...unless you hear Lottie’s slightly overdramatic version of the story via this song. (For people struggling to keep up, it goes: Elijah, Jace, Liberty, Crush on Avery, vague fling with Ethan, Longterm crush on Flynn LOL) 18. Come Back, Be Here - Leaving LA (when she was being home schooled/working on her debut) and Jace, too. This was the beginning of their short lived long distance relationship when she thought they genuinely had a chance. I feel like she’s embarrassed to admit she fell for him now but she did lmao. 19. Girl At Home - If you didn’t get the clue in her post, Peter C LOL. It’s plotted that when they got to NYC, he flirted with her a few times even though Lottie knew he was with Bianca. Hence why she wrote this song. She could’ve just told him to fuck off and left it be, but why do that when you could have it on an album and cause rumours to spread like wildfire?

#lotties project: red #ITS NOT OUT YET #BUT THESE WILL BE THE MEANINGS #i also love how sneakily shady she is with these songs and the meanings :')

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rickybowxn · 4 years

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hey!! ok so i just need someone else’s opinion bc i haven’t seen anyone talking about this and i literally can’t wrap my head around it lol ok so ricky and nini dated for a YEAR and never once said i love you? and if ricky isn’t ready to say it was he going to wait till 2 years? 3? 4? or was he never going to say it? i also don’t understand why he doesn’t understand that he broke her heart :( i love him but he essentially broke up with her after she told him she loved him on their anniversary 😭

hiya! this is such a great line of discussion and so there’s a lot to break down, bear with me this is gonna be a long one :)

let’s start with the thought that ricky doesn’t understand that he broke nini’s heart. i agree and disagree with you on this. i think that as a 16 year old boy, in the heat of the moment after he saw the instagram post and was clearly overwhelmed by it, he definitely didn’t know that he deeply hurt nini when he decided to not say it back and break up with her. he was as impulsive and sudden in action in response to a post/declaration that in his perspective, was impulsive and sudden by nini. he definitely underestimated the consequences and the weight of him not saying it back in respect to nini’s emotions, and thought that there was space to come back from not saying it back (and i’ll get to why he assumed that in a bit). now, fast forward to junior year, i think he’s definitely understood just how much he broke nini’s heart. i think kourtney’s resentment toward ricky in respect to how nini was treated and more importantly, nini’s general irritation/stand offishness and just distaste towards him throughout the first three episodes allowed ricky to understand how hurt she was by it.

now let’s get when ricky was supposed to/will say ‘i love you’. i don’t know about you but i personally believe that every relationship has a pace, and that pace is different for everybody. saying ‘i love you’ simply doesn’t have a timer on it, it could happen in weeks, or months, or years. how fast or how long it takes to say those words neither validates nor weakens the relationship, and that’s what i believe. personally, i’d argue that throwing around ‘i love you’s’ at 14/15/16 is more unusual/immature than a healthy/mature response (and i’ll elaborate on that in a bit as well) in a relationship. with respect to rini/rickini/ricky and nini, it’s more about each character’s motivation and circumstance with respect to their relationship, as well as their relationship as a whole. tackling that first bit, ricky is in a really rough spot in his perception of love atm, it’s been skewed into negativity since his parents’ marriage started falling apart, i’ve mentioned it in another post of mine when i was analysing ep4 - ‘the only concept of love that he grew up with, his parents - he witnessed them be in, and slowly fall out of love. his only understanding of love is that it is temporary and painful’. now parallel that with nini’s perception of love, beautifully explicated by the subtext of kourtney’s (kinda) monologue in ep5 “i don’t get it, what happened to the seventh grade nini who used to belt this song… ever since you discovered boys, you’ve spent way too much time trying to see yourself through their eyes”, we know that they are worlds apart in how they perceive and pace the idea of love, as well as a relationship itself. nini, from what kourtney said, can be deduced to loving the idea of love - having a boyfriend, getting attention and affection etc. she’s a 14/15 year old girl who started a relationship with the first boy she met and seriously had feelings for. it’s even safe to assume that she jumped into saying ‘i love you’ because she thought ricky was ‘the one’ and she must have watched about 3737328473 romcoms and musicals that pushed the agenda and romanticised relationships and being in love (which no doubt influenced her version and understanding, which is still completely valid and integral, of love). it’s really important for us to understand that just like ricky’s understanding of love is twisted, so is nini’s, neither of them have really gotten to knowing the depth of how good and not so good love can be, and how big of a commitment it is, and that’s because of what i talk about next!

the bombshell that has created the entire arc of the ricky and nini relationship is immaturity. immaturity! ricky and nini are teenagers who are still developing skills such as communication, their independent values and beliefs, as well as self-image. these are all fundamental aspects that encourage and foster a healthy environment for a romantic relationship to grow. getting into a relationship so young, at 14/15 and committing to a person is so difficult simply because you don’t have a developed skillset of these things yet, and ricky and nini are a poster example. remember how i said i’d get back to why ricky thought that he could come back from not saying ‘i love you back’ to nini? well we’re here now, it was immaturity. ricky didn’t have the empathy or emotional maturity to understand how it would effect nini, and nini didn’t communicate, (and actually still hasn’t communicated), why not saying ‘i love you’ back hurt her, she’s just been lashing out so far. now the mature thing to have done is to have sat down with ricky and talked through it, asked him and understood his train of thought. she didn’t do that and ricky just walked away without explaining himself. that, is called a lack of communication. and that skill, comes from learning and ageing. yes it was obvious to us as an audience what he’d done was so wrong, but seriously, as a 16 year old coming from a broken home and never having experienced/seen a healthy relationship, i doubt you any of us would be able to fully grasp it if it was happening to us. and that’s why i’d argue that taking a relationship slow, feeling it out and getting into it as older and more mature individuals is more thought-out. your feelings at any age toward another person are valid, especially in the case that they are reciprocated, but that doesn’t mean you will have a functioning relationship. that’s because relationships. are. work. and kids can’t handle the work because they don’t have the skills that match the job description. ‘i love you’ encapsulates that promise - exercising communication, empathy and support, it’s more than just an emotion i think. in this case, i actually think that ricky understands that better than nini does, because as i said in my other post, one of the motivating reasons he didn’t say it back is because his parents didn’t keep their promise - they fell out of developing their skillset and supporting each other.

now the most important side-note: none of us will ever perfect these skills that make a relationship work, its constant practice in empathy, in communication, in understanding, in esteem and confidence, and in support. i just think that nini and ricky never got to experience even developing those skills independently and that’s why their relationship fell apart in the way it did. this break has already matured them, ep5 showed nini gaining genuine confidence in herself and ep4 showed ricking communicating to nini how he felt about everything going on at home. them independently going about their lives and growing is already inevitably readying them for being in a relationship and committing to them the right way, when they’re ready for it! i’m so excited to see it

finally, as for when ricky will say/was planning to say ‘i love you’ - i think the writers are taking us on that journey right now! the break ricky and nini have been going through is perfectly setting them up for that mutual and satisfying understanding of the love they have for one and other. i personally think that ricky has loved nini from the get-go, his fear of externalising those emotions is that he’ll have the same outcome as his parents, his insecurities right now don’t allow him to believe that he can have, or even deserves, more than his parents’ fate. hopefully gets out of his rut with talking about how he genuinely feels about nini and how he’s ready for that relationship soon. nini is already getting better at being more sure of herself and what she wants, i think she’ll soon realise how ricky is different to her, and how that doesn’t take away from his legitimate and very strong feelings that are ever-present for her.

what ricky did sucked and he was undoubtably a douche. but that was the exposition to his, and ricky and nini’s story, it only gets better from here! it already has xx

(i’m so so sorry it’s this long, you just really got my analysis flowing lmao, hopefully this wasn’t just a mumble and was kind of an insight. i have so much to say but my brain feels like ramen rn)

#sorry for the length of this post oof #hsmtmts #hsmtmts spoilers #hsmtmts s1 #high school musical the musical the series #ricky bowen #user:rickybowxn #ricky x nini #nini x ricky #nini salazar roberts #rickini #vi's thoughts #vi answers asks

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hmel78 · 4 years

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In conversation with Ray Thomas ...

Ray Thomas (29.12.1941 - 04.01.2018)

RAY THOMAS – Founding member of The Moody Blues, admits that success happened quickly for “a bunch of lads from the Midlands who could play a bit”. For Ray himself that musical journey began as a boy – “I always sang, being a Welshman” laughs Thomas “ in school choirs, and the Birmingham youth choir”. Progressing to a one string bass in a skiffle group in the 1950s, Thomas eventually bumped into fellow ‘Moodies’ founding member, Mike Pinder. The two headed to Germany where Ray admits that they were “ripped off”, and returned to Birmingham aged 21, determined to carry on as musicians.

Thomas recalls that what they found on their return to Birmingham, amongst the 250 or so bands on the circuit, was “complete disillusionment! – ‘Brum beat’ wasn’t taking off as the next ‘Mersey beat’ like people had anticipated, and bands were breaking up left right and centre”. Having heard Blues bands touring the circuits in Europe, and in the midst of the scene in Birmingham falling apart, Thomas and Pinder decided that Blues was the way forward. The only other Blues artist in Birmingham at that time was Spencer Davis. Together, Thomas and Pinder approached Denny Laine, who was living with Graeme Edge and his parents; landing Graeme the drum stool on Denny’s recommendation. Disappointingly for the band, John Lodge was not in a position to turn professional musician at the time, and in his place they recruited Clint Warwick. “We Bascially formed a Birmingham supergroup!” exclaims Thomas, “I don’t really think any of us expected the speed at which things took off for us after that”. And it’s true – after only a short spell playing in Clubs around Birmingham, ‘The Moody Blues’ were picked up by a management company, and moved down to London. With the current re-release, marking the 50th Anniversary, of their first album “The Magnificent Moodies” [Cherry Red Records] - I caught up with Ray Thomas for a chat about the beginnings of a Birmingham Blues band, who went on to be considered as global pioneers of progressive and orchestral rock ...

HR : “The Magnificent Moodies” is a very fitting title for a first album, considering the success you went on to have!

RT : We felt, at the time, that it was a bit pretentious to call it that, but management thought it was a good idea!

HR : Do you have any particular memories of recording the album?

RT : It’s been 50 years, and you tend to forget certain things, you know? But I do remember finding “Go Now” ...

We were a working band at the time, just moved down to London, and we’d play anywhere. One night “Manfred Man” pulled out of a show at The Marquee Club, and we stepped in for them, which lead to us being offered our own regular night there. It was a major breakthrough for us in London. The Marquee Club was the place to be seen, and people would queue around the block to see us perform heavy blues. We had talked about putting together an album of songs that we performed live, but Studio time was like gold dust in London at the time and we just couldn’t get in anywhere to start and lay anything down. A friend of the managers from America used to send over boxes of singles and acetates, and one day we came across “Go Now” by Bessie Banks and her brother. It hadn’t been released, but she had laid it down as a demo which was very much lighter and slower than our version, but we loved the song.

At the same time, the Marquee were building a studio at the back of the club. We asked if we could go into the studio and record it. However, the studio was still pretty much a building site, apart from the control room which was almost finished. So we went in there and set up amongst ladders and bags of cement, and recorded “Go Now”. We were the first band to record in Marquee Studios - we were lucky with that. We ended up doing about half the album there – and the other half was recorded at Olympic Studios.

HR : When “The Magnificant Moodies” was released, did you ever imagine what followed?

RT : It was a bit of a shock, because from forming the band to having a number one with “Go Now”, it was a relatively short space of time.

We were all elated , but didn’t realise what a big hit it would be. We were a bit naive really ... It was a massive hit across Europe, especially France. We spent a lot of time touring France, with a lot of the big blues artists. And proof of how naive we were :- We used to stay in Paris – on the West Bank, in the ‘artists’ area. We rented a studio there and recorded a song that Denny wrote called “Boulevard de la Madeline” – he’d seen the signpost on the street and romanticised about it to the point of writing the song, but the Parisian’s ended up in arms about it. When we played it on stage we would silence the audience! What we didn’t realise is that “Boulevard de la Madeline”, was bang in the middle of the red light district! We didn’t know!

We had success in a LOT of countries, incredibly. America loved us, but oddly enough - “Go Now” wasn’t a hit in the states. They released “Tuesday Afternoon” instead, and that did OK.

HR : “The Magnificent Moodies” was the only album that you recorded as that first 1964-66 line-up wasn’t it? Would you have been happy to carry on and record more music in that genre, or were you ready for a change? Did you embrace what came after Denny and Clint left?

RT : The thing was, Clint was married with a couple of kids, and his wife wasn’t happy about the time he was spending on the road , so he went back to Birmingham to run the family business.

Denny left more or less at the same time, to go solo – he fancied trying out songs with a string quartet, which he did, and had a certain amount of success.

I felt like The Moodies were worth the perseverance, despite things having slowed down a bit for us, and had no real issues about carrying on with a change of band members. I’d worked with John Lodge in a band called “Elright and the Rebels” – I was Elright of course – a right a bloody prat! John was actually our first choice of bass player when we formed ‘The Moody Blues’, but his dad wouldn’t let him do it until he’d finished his apprenticeship. Same as my Dad, but I was a year older than John. We all came from working class backgrounds where our parents knew that music was a dodgy game, and wanted us to have a trade to fall back on. In that 12 months whilst John finished his apprenticeship, we’d had a number 1 hit with “Go Now” – so when I called him up, he was down to London like a shot!

I found Justin quite by accident really. I was sitting in a club called the “The Scotch & St James”, which was the meeting place for bands back then, having a drink with Eric Burdon [The Animals] and he was in the throes of putting a new Animals together. I mentioned that I was looking for a new guitarist / singer. Eric had put an anonymous advert in the NME, “Top recording band needs guitarist”, and found who he wanted - so he gave me all of the applications he hadn’t yet gone through, and fate handed me Justin.

And that was the new Moodies.

HR : When you enlisted John and Justin, the band took a different direction musically ... RT : Musically we were moving towards using strings and stuff anyway - If you could have listened to what Mike and Denny were writing towards the end of that time, you could hear that influence creeping in. Justin aided that because he had a much softer voice ...

HR : “Days Of Future Passed” was the first album released with the new line-up; the rhythm and heavy blues, suddenly having been replaced by the orchestral opening of ‘The Day Begins’, and a very different vocal sound ... How was that received?

RT : To tell you the truth, it went down like a cup of cold sick with the record company! [laughs] Before we recorded it – Decca, who we were signed to, had installed this new ‘Deramic’ sound system – best described as Wall to Wall stereo, instead of that old ping pong stereo sound. They wanted us to do a demonstration disc for this sound system, to send out with their reps, and asked us if we would go in and play a couple of standard Rock and Roll numbers; to compliment that, they wanted Peter Knight (composer) to record a couple of classical numbers, and these would become the demo ... but it was going to be rubbish!

So, Tony Clarke - one of Deccas top producers - and Peter Knight put their necks on the line for us at that point. Again - We couldn’t get into the studio to record ‘Days Of Future Passed’, so we approached Tony and Peter with the idea. They liked it, and helped us to record the whole thing in about 8 days - we recorded “Legend Of The Mind” in the same session.

We never actually recorded with the Orchestra ourselves. The roadie would take over what we’d worked on each night, to Peter, and he would then write the bridge for the song. At the very end Peter recorded the orchestra, and then stitched it all together.

We were absolutely bowled over by it. We had achieved exactly what we wanted.

Every Tuesday, Decca would get all of their producers together with what they’d recorded during the week, and the powers that be would sit and listen and decide what they were going to do with it.

Tony played them “Days Of Future Passed” and they said “What the bloody Hell is that?” They didn’t know how to market it because it didn’t fit into any of their pigeon holes. Fortunately for us that afternoon, a chap called Walt Maguire who was over from America - the head of London Records [American Decca] - said “Christ! If you’re not going to release that here, give it to me, I’ll release it in America. It’s fantastic!”

So they decided to give it to him and agreed he could do that, and also decided to release it here. Nobody got into trouble, on our account, and that was the beginning of the new ‘Moodies’, with “Days Of Future Passed”!

We had ‘The Beatles’ come around to our house that night and played it to them ... and they loved it. We were good friends with them, especially George and John. They used to bring stuff for us to listen to too, because they trusted our judgements on it. There was none of that back biting in those days. Everyone was just busy being creative.

We supported them on their last English tour – with Denny and Clint. That was a hoot! I don’t think I dare say too much about what we used to get up to ... But you could see they [The Beatles] weren’t going to do anymore. They were writing some beautiful songs, but you couldn’t hear them. All you could hear was “Ladies and Gentlemen, The B ..” and then there’d just be screaming. The truth is, that they got totally cheesed off with it. They wanted people to listen to what they were doing. The fans were their own worst enemies really ...

HR : Talking of your connection to The Beatles - You were managed by Brian Epstein for a while. Surely that couldn’t have gone better could it?

RT : Well that’s debatable actually. Brian Epstein, was in love with a Bull Fighter in Spain and used to go over there a lot. He had a big organisation by the time he was managing us, but when he wasn’t there, nobody was making any decisions in his absence. We were reliant on all of these people to get us the work, and look after our affairs. They were our agent as well, and things had been quiet for us for a while when a promoter in France contacted Epstein’s team wanting us to tour over there again. So we agreed to it. We touched down at the airport in Paris to crowds of press folks, and screaming fans! We didn’t know that the record company had released “Bye Bye Bird”, and it had been a massive hit there. In short - This promoter had literally paid us peanuts for this tour, and we were a bit pissed off about it all. We went down to see Brian at his house as soon as we got back. There was a bit of a heated debate and I actually said to him “You’re the head of a crap organisation” – so he had a dramatic tantrum, threw us out of his house, and told us to meet him at the office in the morning. When we arrived there, he’d got together all his heads of department and in front of us asked them all about what had happened. He just got blank responses. At which point he stood up and said “You’re right, I am the head of a crap organisation”. Then he asked us what we wanted, and we asked for the contract back. So he sent his legal guy to get the contract, ripped it up into pieces in front of us; told us we were free, wished us luck, and we left the office ...

HR : Well his luck must have rubbed off on you, given the continued success you went on to have. You’ve got a fairly impressive discography there, as proof! RT : Yes I suppose I have really! I’ve lead one hell of a life!! [laughs] I was with ‘The Moody Blues’ for over 40 years, until my health prevented me from carrying on in 2003. It wasn’t a falling out or anything like that, I just had to pack it in. On Doctors orders! I’ve no regrets though. I was approaching 61 years old, had played everywhere I’d ever wanted to - except Sydney Opera house which I would have love to play!

Do you know? We were the first band to play Madison Square Gardens, in New York, twice in the same day, and the City Council put a block on that ever happening again because it brought the traffic in Manhattan to a standstill with everyone trying to get in and out! [laughs]. I went for a walk between shows that day, with our publicist, and thankfully nobody recognised me. We used to get mobbed wherever we went as a group, and to be honest that day I just fancied bit of fresh air and some roasted chestnuts from the street vendor! As we’re standing there, some folks walked up to us asking if we had any tickets – they thought we were ticket touts! It annoyed me even back then, people asking $400 dollars per ticket! So I walked up to one of these touts and asked him how much he wanted for two tickets, and he actually only wanted $200, so I handed it over, and carried on eating my bag of nuts! Next thing, a young couple came up asking for tickets and I said, “I have got some actually” – and gave them to them for free. Our publicist looked at my like I was crazy and said “What the bloody hell did you do that for?” and I said “because I’m going to get one hell of a kick out of knowing that when I walk out on stage later, that that young couple will look up and realise that I’m the bloke who gave them their tickets!”

HR : Do you have a favourite album amongst the 14 that you recorded with the ‘Moodies’?

RT : Well I don’t know really because I always say that they’re all our children. I have different memories of different albums and they all mean something. I love them all. You know, when you start with absolutely nothing and end up with something like “To Our Children’s Children’s Children” – it’s very rewarding. We had a lot of fun playing around with sounds over the years. They were happy days.

HR : And what are you up to these days, post ‘Moody Blues’?

RT : I’m still doing a lot of recording – I’ve never stopped recording really. Solo albums, collaborations and all of that.

Just before Christmas (2014) I was working with John Lodge again. His solo album comes out soon. It was just like old times ...

I’m hoping to record a new solo album this year too – gives me something to do amongst fishing trips! I like to keep busy ...

I’ve just recorded with an Italian ‘Prog’ band, who paid me in Pasta! [laughs] I’m not kidding ... about a month later this huge box of pasta turned up on the doorstep from Naples!

And then I went out to record with a Russian band - the son of a billionaire oil baron, who thought that I was God!

HR : Well You are regarded as a pioneer of progressive and orchestral rock – that’s verging on God-like!

[laughs] At the end of the day - I’m just a guy from Birmingham, with a bit of talent, who got lucky ...

#ray thomas #the moody blues #orchestral rock #the beatles #justin hayward #john lodge #moody blues #flute

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the-desolated-quill · 5 years

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We Need To Talk About James Gunn - Quill’s Scribbles

This could prove to be the most controversial Scribble I’ve ever written on this blog, and the sad thing is it really shouldn’t be, in my opinion.

First off, a couple of disclaimers because I know some people are going to accuse me of ‘bias’. I’ve never been very fond of James Gunn as a filmmaker, it’s true. I thought the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie was okay at best and I absolutely hated the sequel, but I confess that’s less to do with any inherent flaws in the films themselves and more to do with the fact that I just don’t like Gunn’s style of humour. Oh don’t get me wrong. There are still legitimate problems, which I’ll go into later when they become relevant, but I’m big enough to admit that my dislike for his brand of comedy and storytelling is merely due to my own subjective tastes (the same is true of Taika Waititi and Thor: Ragnarok).

Okay. So. Let’s talk about James Gunn.

As I’m sure most of you know, in July 2018, an alt-right conspiracy theorist called Mike Cernovich unearthed tweets made by Gunn between 2008 and 2012 where he made offensive jokes and remarks about sensitive topics such as rape, child abuse and paedophilia. While James Gunn did apologise and vowed to ‘do better,’ Disney, fearing the public backlash, fired Gunn as director of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 and dismissed him from any role in producing and expanding Marvel’s planned ‘Cosmic Universe.’ The result was the public backlash Disney were trying to avoid in the first place. They received a lot of criticism from various entertainers and filmmakers, as well as many media outlets such as Collider and The Independent, the cast of Guardians wrote a letter urging Disney to reconsider their decision with Dave Bautista in particular being very vocal in his criticism, and there was a massive outcry from fans who petitioned for Gunn to be rehired. Guy Lodge, writing for The Guardian, asked the question ‘Was James Gunn the first undeserving victim of Hollywood’s new zero tolerance policy?’ Now I’d argue the answer to that question is a definitive no, but apparently, and surprisingly, that’s not a very popular opinion among liberals. So I’d very much like to challenge them as we explore James Gunn’s moral character and ask ourselves why he’s being defended so passionately.

Before we go any further, I think it would be a good idea for me to show you some of the tweets that we’re talking about, just to remind everyone what we’re dealing with here.

Now I hope we can all agree that this is objectively disgusting. Only an amoral, depraved and utterly moronic individual would find offensive tweets like these even remotely funny. But I should make it clear that, by James Gunn’s own admission, these tweets represent who he was rather than who he is. In his apology, he described himself as a ‘provocateur’ during the early days of his career, making shocking statements for the purposes of ‘satire.’ But it’s okay because he’s a better person who has grown and matured fully and will never do this again. Fair enough, you’d think. He admitted what he did was wrong and apologised profusely. That was a very honourable and decent thing to do.

Except we’ve seen this song and dance before.

In 2012, roundabout when Marvel announced they were making a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie with James Gunn directing, an old blog post of Gunn’s resurfaced entitled ‘The 50 Superheroes You Most Want To Have Sex With.’ The original post has since been deleted, but cached versions still exist here and there around the internet if you know where to look. Here are a few quotes from said blog:

[on natasha romanoff, the highest ~debut] “considering she’s fucked half the guys in the marvel universe, that’s quite a feat”

[on batwoman] “i’m hoping for a dc-marvel crossover so that tony stark can turn her; she could also have sex with nightwing and still be a lesbian”

”Many of the people who voted for the Flash were gay men. I have no idea why this is. But I do know if I was going to get fucked in the butt I too would want it to be by someone who would get it over with quick.”

Needless to say, this was quite offensive and causing bad PR, so James Gunn issued an apology:

“A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry and regret making them at all.

People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all – James”

Sound familiar?

Now of course it’s unfair to judge the man based on past actions that he himself apologised for. What matters is the present. Whether or not he has demonstrated to a reasonable standard that his work has grown and matured and that his offensive idiocy is a thing of the past. So let’s look at the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies.

While the first movie received critical acclaim, a few people (particularly fans of the source material) complained about how Gamora was treated. The so called ‘most powerful woman in the galaxy’ was reduced to a love interest, an occasional damsel in distress and there were a few odd occasions where she was objectified and degraded based on her sexual history. The most prominent example of which is when Drax describes her as ‘a green whore.’ The context being that he was ignorant of how offensive he was being despite trying to compliment her and call her a friend, and this was played for laughs in the movie. The second movie has more examples. Gamora’s role still paled in comparison to the role she played in the comics, and a new female character called Mantis was introduced whose power level from the comics was also significantly reduced for the movie and whose character was effectively reduced to be a punchline/punching bag. There’s also a scene involving Drax where he frequently describes her as ugly, saying that "when you're ugly and someone loves you, you know they love you for who you are. Beautiful people never know who to trust." Again this is played for laughs. Except I’d argue that an adult man constantly fixating on a woman’s appearance isn’t even remotely funny.

Another disturbing aspect of the Guardians 2 was the way it seemed to romanticise and excuse abusive relationships. Obviously there’s Drax and Mantis, but the biggest example is Star Lord and Yondu. The first movie did a reasonably good job establishing what drew Star Lord and Gamora together. They were both trying to escape from abusive father figures. The second film does a complete U-turn, calling Yondu Star Lord’s ‘David Hasselhoff’ and giving him a gratuitous and overly sentimental funeral as though he were a noble hero. While I’m sure the death of Yondu would emotionally impact Star Lord to a certain extent (he did raise the kid after all), to say that he’s like ‘David Hasselhoff’ because he’s a better dad than Ego the Living Planet was seems like a very low bar to clear. By that logic, Hitler was a good person because he didn’t kill as many people as Stalin did. It’s tone deaf, lacking in nuance and just a little bit insulting.

Bearing all this in mind, has James Gunn grown and matured since the period between 2008 and 2012? That’s for you to judge. I’d personally argue he hasn’t. Sure he’s no longer as extreme or provocative as he once was, but that’s not necessarily proof that he’s matured. Rather he’s just gotten better at hiding his immaturity. And in my own subjective opinion, based on his work, I think Disney made the right decision in sacking him. Now let me be clear, I don’t think Disney sacked him in order to take a moral stand as a lot of the problematic elements in the Guardians films have carried over into other MCU films. Gamora is still treated like shit in Avengers: Infinity War, and Thanos, who, like Yondu, was clearly established in the first Guardians movie as an abusive father figure, has been woobified and turned into a kind of sympathetic anti villain who actually cared about his daughter and only killed her because he had no other choice (as opposed to, you know, because he is a maniacal despot who’s a few Oompa Loompas short of a chocolate factory). The reason Gunn was fired was because of bad PR. Disney had dealt with this shit before in 2012 and they weren’t prepared to deal with it again, so they dropped the baggage, as it were. It’s a very common occurrence in Hollywood. Which is what makes the public backlash against this decision so puzzling to me.

I can understand being upset that the director of your favourite franchise has been fired, but can we try to get some perspective here? What happened to Gunn is nothing unique. This kind of thing happens all the time. A filmmaker does something controversial or has been revealed to have done something controversial in the past, the studio sacks them in an attempt to save face and everyone gets on with their lives. The situation with James Gunn is no different. The only reason I can see why people are so passionately against this is because of how these tweets were unearthed in the first place. Because the discoverer of the tweets, Mike Cernovich, is a member of the alt-right, the liberal community seem predisposed to dismiss this out of hand, which I think is incredibly dangerous. Okay, yes, Cernovich is a Nazi and almost certainly didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It doesn’t change the fact that the tweets still exist and that they’re still incredibly offensive. And all the things I’ve heard people say in defence of James Gunn sound very similar to things the right would say about the likes of Brett Cavanaugh and Donald Trump. ‘It was x number of years ago.’ ‘It’s not relevant to who he is now.’ ‘He’s changed.’ ‘You can’t judge someone based on their past mistakes.’ I mean... come on guys! Either everyone should be held to the same standard or nobody should be held to standards at all. You can’t just change tact just because the person in question has the same political ideals as you. What are we saying? It’s okay for liberals to hold conservatives accountable for past actions and behaviour, but the right can’t do it to the left because apparently it’s not as funny when they do it? It’s classic ‘them and us’ mentality and it’s got to stop.

So, why am I bringing all this up, you may be asking? This happened over six months ago Quill. Aren’t you a little late to the party? Well a couple of days ago, it was announced that Warner Bros and DC Films had hired James Gunn to write and direct a sequel to Suicide Squad.

Well... sequel isn’t quite the right word. Apparently it’s more along the lines of a reimagining. Titled ‘The Suicide Squad’, the film is going to follow a whole new cast of characters and effectively start from scratch. No doubt this is part of WB and DC’s attempts to salvage the DC Extended Universe after the critical and financial disaster that was Justice League, as well as a response to people’s criticisms of the previous Suicide Squad film.

Writer/director David Ayer’s version of Suicide Squad was... let’s be charitable and call it problematic. Many people criticised the film for being misogynistic, borderline racist due to the one dimensional characterisation, and particular outrage was directed toward Ayer’s attempts to romanticise the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. So it’s quite ironic that WB and DC are relying on James Gunn - James Gunn?!?! - to fix Suicide Squad when similar criticisms have been made toward the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. That’s like hiring Harvey Weinstein to investigate sexual harassment claims.

And do you know what the funny thing is? We’ve been in this exact same situation before. In February 2017, news media started to report that WB and DC were eyeing Mel Gibson, the Oscar nominated director of Hawksaw Ridge and professional arsehole, to direct Suicide Squad 2. I even wrote a Scribble on it then. I heavily criticised WB and DC for caring more about snagging an Oscar nominated director to bolster their failing franchise than about holding certain ethical standards of decency within the industry. Oh, sure, Gibson has said many sexist, homophobic and antisemitic comments for years and has never at any point showed any hint of remorse for the amount of offence he’s caused, but he just made a good movie about Spider-Man fighting in World War II, so it all balances out, doesn’t it? We’re good, right? We’re cool. Gibson’s cool now. Yeah?

And now here we are seeing this play out again. James Gunn, a man who has said some incredibly offensive things over the years, is being hired by WB and DC to helm a new Suicide Squad movie and conveniently ignoring all the problematic shit surrounding him because he’s the guy that made those sci-fi films about the talking raccoon. People love those films. Let’s get him on board.

I’m getting so sick to death of actors and filmmakers getting away with shit and avoiding the consequences of their actions. James Gunn and his offensive tweets, Mel Gibson and his shitty behaviour, Kevin Hart and his temper tantrum when he was expected to apologise for being a homophobic prick. And the few times there are consequences for said actions, people of influence within the industry end up undermining it. WB and DC hiring James Gunn so soon after he was sacked by Disney, and Ellen fucking Degeneres ringing the Academy and persuading them to let Kevin Hart host the Oscars. Thankfully, and to his genuine credit, Hart turned it down, but seriously, what the actual fuck Ellen?! You’re LGBT, aren’t you? Why are you giving him a free pass? Do you have short term memory loss like the fish you voice in Finding fucking Nemo? Jesus Christ!

Finally, to people saying that Disney treated James Gunn too harshly for the tweets, may I remind you that when ‘The 50 Superheroes You Most Want To Have Sex With’ resurfaced in 2012, Disney still kept him on! He still got to write and direct two Marvel movies before finally getting the sack. And he was in talks to lead production in all future ‘Cosmic’ Marvel movies going forward before the resurfaced tweets made that impossible. Too harshly? I think he got off extremely lightly, frankly. I think he’s grotesquely lucky he’s still got a job at all. Let alone a job where he continues to direct tentpole blockbusters. For someone who was treated ‘too harshly’, he’s sure done alright for himself, hasn’t he? He’s not Oliver Twist begging movie studios to give him a film, cap in hand, ‘please sir, may I have some more?’ His position hasn’t changed one iota. That’s what we should be pissed off at. Not that he’s being unfairly punished. That he’s not being punished enough roughly seven years after the fact.

So what should we take away from all this? That we need to hold everyone accountable for their past actions and behaviour, regardless of whether they share our political beliefs or whether they were involved in films we actually like, and that the industry needs to do a better job of upholding the consequences of said actions. And regardless of whether you thought Disney were right to sack James Gunn, it cannot be denied that WB and DC handing the keys of another profitable franchise over to him so soon after this controversy is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do.

#anti james gunn #suicide squad #the suicide squad #guardians of the galaxy #dc extended universe #marvel cinematic universe #disney #quill's scribbles

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eddtober · 6 years

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Eddtober Masterpost: About, Rules, Boundries and Prompt Lists.

I hadn’t done anything about it until now due to no response - however the wonderful @ldhenzel suggested that I do it this way for mobile users.

About Eddtober

Eddtober is a list of prompts made in an effort to encourage the Eddsworld Fandom to spread their wings of creativity beyond the norms that they are used to, during the month of October.

It is all without harming others or causing drama, a neutral ground for all fans of Eddsworld to come and have fun, no matter what side of a discourse they’re in.

It hopes to promote inspiration beyond the usual angsty and over-dramatised content, to revive a spirit in Eddsworld that hasn’t been seen in many years, and to stretch the invitation to all who can create.

Eddtober calls not only the artists who have a talent for drawing, painting and so forth, but also: the authors (fanfics, journalists, essayists, diarists, poets, ramblers), the cosplayers, the video-makers (animators, video essays, memers, youtubers) and all those who want to be inspired with unconventional creativity.

Eddtober’s motto for the fandom it came from is this: To come forth, be inspired and break from the old and the mold!

With that out the way, buckle up. This post is gonna be a long one under the cut.

RULES

Base Rules need to be set so everyone can participate in Eddtober safely and in a fun way. Please read them carefully!

Always tag it with #eddtober. Gore and related NSFW is allowed in the challenge, but please tag it as #Eddtober gore, etc. Also, no shortenings or reimaginings of those tags, so the minors on this site don’t find it on accident. Though many of us may be over 18, please keep these things in mind.

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others. I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.

Credit Where Due. This should be blatantly obvious right now, but please, please don’t steal other’s creative fanwork or post it without credit. Always have permission from the creator to post something of their’s, and always have their username when you post it, not just ‘credit to the artist’. If you do not follow this, actions will be taken for your consequences.

Keep yourself chill. You can do one prompt for Eddtober, some of the prompts or all of them - up to you! It’s understandable if life gets in the way. The goal of Eddtober is not to do every prompt, but to be inspired to create fan-content in a way you usually wouldn’t have.

Spread the word. This is less of a rule and more of a personal request from Admin Panda, but since she doesn’t have many social media accounts you’d expect, spreading word of Eddtober would mean a LOT, so they can join in the fun too!

Sharing is caring. Reblogging and sharing from your fellow creators doing Eddtober would be great to give them a motivation and confidence boost!

Go Beyond the Boundries of Your Imagination. The whole purpose of Eddtober is to promote new, fresh things to come up in the Eddsworld fandom and break a cycle of the same old that’s been there for a while. Take a leap, spread your wings, do your best, and go have fun.

BOUNDRIES

Most of this list will be related to Rule Two of Eddtober:

Be Sensitive and Respectful to Others.

Quote:

‘I know many of us here in this fandom can take easy offence to certain types of art, so please consider and think on your creative piece before you post.‘

Whilst Eddtober is a fun, neutral place to spread our creative wings, there are boundries that need to be taken in order to keep everyone safe. Which means certain parts that are usually seen as ‘common’ within the Eddsworld Fandom will not be acceptable in the challenge.

Edd Gould’s death. Admin Panda wishes to make it clear that creative pieces that draws clear lines to Edd’s passing IS NOT okay. This includes Edd in hospital for cancer, Angel Edd or any AU that depicts him as a divine being of any sort (including Blessworld) unless Tom, Matt and/or Tord are also similar divine beings in the AU. Here at Eddtober, Edd's life is something to be celebrated, not his death. While Admin Panda isn’t 100% offended by this, many others are and it should be more recognised as such.

Sinsworld. Believe it or not, the sinsworld tag was specifically made back in the day to keep the porn out of the main. But due to a certain in-fandom event, this intended action has been long-lost. Because of all of these events, any sinsworld (porn, lewds and related NSFW) that’s Sinspired by the Eddtober prompts WILL NOT be accepted into the event by any means. This is because many in this fandom are minors/underage and more who are 18+ are repulsed to porn and such (Admin Panda is part of the latter group). So please, it is fine to be sexually inspired by the prompts, PLEASE keep your Sinsworld content away from the Eddtober tag - don’t put both tags into that post, essentially.

Abusive/Self-Harm Creative Content. No. Just. No. Death or pain like this isn’t allowed to be depicted in the challenge and should never be romanticised or supported. Eddtober aims to be a safe and uplifting space for all creative people, no matter what their space is at the moment.

More sensitivities and boundries will be added onto this list as Admin Panda recieves questions and requests for this area through the askbox here.

PROMPT LIST

Quick reminder: when this list says ‘create something for’, it’s not just referring to fanart - it refers to any medium, digital, traditional or unconventional, that can be used. The challenge here is to be creative as possible, not to stay conventional.

The List features Admin Panda’s Commentary. Some useless, some useful.

Create something for Edd. (Not his real-life counterpart, but the character. That needed some clearing up based on 2017’s results.)

Create something for Tom.

Create something for Matt

Create something for any pre-legacy season episode, except WTFuture. (You can do WTFuture if you want, but seeing that much of this fandom is currently made of people who came in after The End… It’d be worth having a crack at pre-legacy episodes.)

Create something for the crew’s symbols.

Create something for Superhero Alter Egos! (It doesn’t have to stop at PowerEdd’s canon either! Go nuts! Give Edd and his friends new superhero alibis and outfits!)

Create something for Supervillain Alter Egos! (Reminder that it doesn’t have to stop at the ‘Green/Blue/Purple/Red Leader scenario! Again, go nuts! Get wacky if you must!)

Create something for Minor characters of the show. (Except the Neighbours - they already have their own prompt.)

Create something for descendants of the main four guys. (Sure, you can make it about the love children of your favourite ships, but the point of this prompt specifically is to not be ship-related. See if you can come up with descendant characters from the bloodlines of the main four.)

Create something for Tord. (He’s late in this list for a reason. Trust me.)

Create something for the neighbours of 29 Dirdum Lane. Are Kim and Katya still there, or are there newbies in the street?

Create something for the neighbours of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for unlucky things happening to the guys, or one of them. Feel free to go as dark or as humourous as you like!

Create something for genderbends of the guys, maybe as if the Ellsworld we know never existed. Or you can stick to canon, up to you.

This prompt is a wild card. Do with it as you wish. (In 2017 everyone was told to quote: ‘go whole hog on this’. The next thing we all knew, everybody literally drew pigs with the guys. That wasn’t supposed to be literally taken, but by god it was hilarious.)

Create something for your crew. Whether you’re the main character with your friends or have OCs taking that place or a mix of both is up to you.

Create something for an AU of Eddsworld. You can make one up on the spot, or even fan content for an AU that already exists is cool too. (As of rule number two of Eddtober, the Blessworld AU will not be accepted for this prompt. I know it is a popular AU, but if you have any issues with this, please contact me in the blog asks myself.)

Create something for Eddsworld as a video game. Whether it’s concepts and covers for your own ideas or fanart for games in the making such as Eddsworld Armageddon, up to you.

Create something for Todd, or whoever the ‘Tord’ figure is of 25 Dirdum Lane.

Create something for a Saloonatics-WTFuture Crossover. (What? Shenanigans could be made here, guys. Just take it!)

Create something for the future selves of the guys. Or if you want to take it up a notch, make your own versions of them! Have them all be hobos (#HoBrosforlife), or have cola not be banned in the future… up to you!

The End who? Create and elaborate on how you would finish off the Eddsworld Legacy season. (For the purposes of this prompt, I can accept an angsty end for this, but I personally do not recommend it. The Eddsworld fandom has had enough unnecessary angst already.)

Create something for Zanta. (I guess you could call him a Nightmare Before Christmas, then.)

Create something for an Eddsworld movie. Whether it’s stuff for the Eddsworld Fan Movie or your own ideas, up to you!

Create something for the deal with Tom’s eyes. If you want to call them that.

Pick a song, any song, and put that on repeat. Use it as inspiration to create something in relation to Eddsworld.

Create something for Edd Gould himself. Not his character in Eddsworld, the real-life person.

An obligatory prompt without Eddtober in the beginning: create something for Edd’s birthday. (This was made into a prompt and will permanently remain as one as Edd’s birthday shouldn’t be taken away from today.)

Create something for someone/multiple someones in the fandom who inspire you - even the small artists and writers and such who are just starting out!

Are you afraid of the dark? Are you getting goosebumps? Create scary/monstrous/terrifying things happening to the guys. Interpretation and how far you go with it is up to you.

Happy Halloween! Create something about the guys on this special spooky day. Interpretation is up to you.

If you have any questions, concerns or queries as to all of this, don’t be hesitant to come shoot an ask through this blog. Have fun and a safe Eddtober!

#Eddsworld #Eddtober #Eddtober 2018 #founder chris talks #Eddtober Fixings

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cupidsbower · 6 years

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Let me tell you people that I found a new way

Supernatural 13x06, “Tombstone,” 13x07, “War of the Worlds,” and 13x08, “The Scorpion and the Frog.”

Something very interesting is happening this season, relating to Dean’s position in the narrative. Over the course of 13 seasons, it’s been proven over and over that Dean’s hunches tend to be right. He thinks someone’s a rotter, and they are a rotter. He thinks something’s hinky and it is hinky. He does sometimes make mistakes, but generally speaking, when Dean makes a moral pronouncement, he is right about the morality, even if events don’t play out the way he anticipates.

At the start of season 13, Dean made the moral pronouncement that he thought Jack was evil. He may still prove right about this of course, as the season is still young (for me, I know you are all far ahead), but so far it’s looking like he was wrong, and that Jack is more like a blank slate trying to figure out who he can be rather than intrinsically good or evil.

Does this matter? Does Dean’s hunch about Jack count in the same way it counted when Dean knew Ruby was rotten, but tried to give her the benefit of the doubt because Sam asked? When it comes to Jack, is this just Dean being a jackass due to grief and it’s not really what he thinks?

The tension arising from Dean’s distrust of Jack has so far been used to complicate Jack’s arc, but a larger thematic question arises. What does it mean for the story if Dean’s moral compass is wonky? And what does it mean if it’s not?

Okay, cards on the table. I think Dean is wrong about Jack. I’m sure Jack will do a bunch of stupid shit, because that’s how growing up works, but so far he doesn’t seem to be intrinsically evil. So why was Dean so insistent about it? Was it because Cas’s death had him so turned around his instincts were awry? But if that’s the case, you’d expect his instincts to be back to normal with Cas back... but the text is hinting that they’re not.

I enjoyed Tombstone. Cas is back, Dean plays cowboy, and Jack gets a hug, screws up, and runs away from home. All the drama!

Tombstone is a title with a lot of meanings. The primary meaning is the headstone on a grave, but in a text where cremation is the Hunter’s way, whose tombstone is it referring to? Is it literally just talking about the location of the ghoul’s lair? Or is it talking about Jack’s use of his powers that goes horribly wrong? Then there’s the movie reference. The film is the fictionalised (and often romanticised) story of the West... when “cowboys were the law”! And as we know, Dean is all about cowboys, especially the ones in the rogues gallery up on their hotel room wall. Later he prompts Cas to act like he’s in the movie, and Cas quotes Val Kilmer to assure Dean he’s his Huckleberry, which just about makes Dean tear up. All a boy wants is a partner who fondly goes along with his cosplaying fantasies... looking good in a cowboy hat a definite bonus. And Dean gets it good here -- he wears the boots, fixes Cas’s hat, and does a slo-mo power walk to the song Space Cowboy:

youtube

Steve Miller Band - Space Cowboy

I told you 'bout living in the U.S. of A Don't you know that I'm a gangster of love Let me tell you people that I found a new way And I'm tired of all this talk about love And the same old story with a new set of words About the good and the bad and the poor And the times keep on changin' So I'm keepin' on top Of every fat cat who walks through my door

I'm a space cowboy Bet you weren't ready for that I'm a space cowboy I'm sure you know where it's at Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah (x)

I mean this is hilariously silly, and Dean is having so much fun, but he’s also completely embarrassing with his whole cowboy nerdgasm and forcing Cas to play along, amirite? This is Jensen Ackles showing off his physical comedy chops like the pro he is. But here’s the thing. The song scratches out the minute they find the law, because the old romantic version of the West does not hold true. In this version of Dodge, the law is not a cowboy, it’s a Native American. What’s more, Dean is not really the Space Cowboy either. Surely, surely, Cas is the space cowboy (but is Cas the gangster of love??? And if so, who’s heart did he steal???).

The frisson of not-quite-right continues throughout the rest of the episode. While the ghoul realises there are Hunters after him and tries to “get out of Dodge” -- the line the lawman Marshall Dillon of the TV show Gunsmoke used to say to interlopers of Dodge City -- it’s Jack who is proved to be the interloper in the end, and it’s the Winchester posse who leaves town. Except for Dean, of course, who ends up Hunting someone wearing the face of one of his cowboy faves.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Thematically, this episode is all about undermining Dean’s moral authority. It does it in several ways, many of them funny, but the intent is quite clear. He even straight up says that he was wrong at the end:

JACK: Good? How is that good? I killed someone. What was his name? The guard? Did he have a family? CASTIEL: Jack, don't do this to yourself. JACK: No, did he? DEAN: Yes, he did. SAM: Jack, look, this life, what we do, it's… it's not easy. And we've all done things we regret. JACK: Just don't. You're afraid of me. CASTIEL: Jack, no. JACK: No, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm just another monster. DEAN: No, you're not. I thought you were. I did. But… Like Sam said, we've all done bad. We all have blood on our hands. So if you're a monster, we're all monsters. JACK: No, you don't… Every time I try and do something good, people get hurt. I thought I was getting better. I'm not… I don't know what I am, but I know I can't make the world a better place, not like this. I can't even do one good thing. And I know that if I stay, I'm gonna hurt you. All of you. And… I can't. You're all I have. SAM: Jack, listen… JACK: I have to go. CASTIEL: No, Jack. JACK: I'm sorry. (x)

Winchester through and through, that boy. Unintended lesson well and truly learned! Oh, the irony.

(My pet theory is that Jack isn’t actually gone, he’s just invisible and lurking around the Bunker. Don’t tell me if I’m wrong, please. I’m going to enjoy thinking about it until canon bursts my bubble.)

Before watching this ep, when I was talking over 13x05 with my viewing buddy, I said, “I wish monsters recognised Hunters more, and especially the Winchesters. It seems dumb after so many years that so few of them do.” And lo, in all three of these eps, people do recognise Hunters and/or the Winchesters. I’m very pleased by this, although as always it isn’t playing out quite the way I hoped. In the case of our ghoul, even though he quickly recognises that Hunters are after him, and makes plans to escape, he fails because he doesn’t take the threat seriously enough. More importantly, it’s not a Hunter(/cowboy) who kills him, it’s the Law(/Native American).

There were a lot of other things to like about this episode, but the other thing I find most notable in terms of meta is something on the meta-textual level. This episode starts upbeat, after five episodes of unrelieved grieving, with Cas back, and Jack finally seeming to be finding his place. That doesn’t even last one episode before the emotional apple-cart is knocked over again. If I were writing this season, this emotional beat in this place in the story arc would mean I’d be aiming for either a happy or ironic climax, rather than a tragic one. I’m leaning towards ironic, and I think Dean’s moral wonkiness will have a part to play in the ironic twist.

Anyway, that was Tombstone. The next two eps put away the myth-arc for a bit, and move on to monster-of-the-week stories full of mirrors for our protagonists. This season they are very much focused on fathers and sons.

War of the Worlds is an interesting title to choose for this episode. It’s obviously referring to H.G. Wells’ book, one of the first stories about aliens invading the Earth and trying to take it from Humanity -- a colonisation narrative in other words. It’s pretty easy to see that Michael in this case is the alien/coloniser.

By the way, I’m now calling alternaEarth “Mordor” because of that fiery eye in the opening credits, and also it’s much easier to type. Interesting, isn’t it, how the Mordor angels managed to screw up the Apocalypse, the implication being that it’s because God, Lucifer, the Winchesters and Castiel were all absent, and so The End wasn’t just a figment of Zachariah’s imagination, but what really happened. And with Lucifer dead in that world, not around to be the antagonist and keep things in check, Michael has basically gone crazy.

Chuck really did a spectacularly bad job as Father to the angels. They only need a bit of spite to energise them and they flower into the most noxious of weeds, smothering everything else around them during their self-absorbed tantrums. What does Michael even want with ParadiseEarth? Does he know, or does he just want it the way a baby wants a toy, and so he thinks it’s his to take? He’s not wearing a Winchester either (not one we know, anyway), so that also brings us right back around to the question of Dean being the Michael Sword. Methinks it’s a really bad time for Dean’s moral compass to be going wonky.

I found Lucifer interesting for the first time in ages in this ep. If I remember correctly, he was always ambivalent about the idea of the Apocalypse, because he liked Earth and having all those Humans to corrupt. But now he also has a son in the world; in other words, a stake in the continued existence of the world. I’m finding that super interesting. How will it change the choices he makes? I’m not expecting a redemption arc or anything like that, but I do think we’re going to see a different set of choices now Lucifer has someone he’s invested in as family. Can even Lucifer learn some humility once he’s the Father rather than the rebelling son?

To go back to the title of the ep, though, my favourite version of War of the Worlds is actually the musical. I see quite a few thematic similarities between some of the tracks and this season of Supernatural. Forever Autumn for instance, reminds me very strongly of Dean at the start of the season. The Spirit of Man I can easily see as a riff on what could happen if Michael actually gets out of Mordor. It does beg the question though, of what the equivalent of the deadly microbes would be. I have this horrible feeling it might be something like “love”, which has a pretty good track record of corrupting angels, but I can’t see many good ways of getting a shot of it inside of Michael. Maybe Rowena sticks some kind of magical bio-weapon in a vessel (Dean) and then they (Dean) says yes to Michael... because TFW does like to re-use strategies, and they never did get to play that one out with Amara in the end.

Why else bring back Ketch and potentially Rowena, reminding us of the whole secret-power-inside-a-body possibility at the same time? I mean, I know resurrection is a theme this season, and I’m always happy to see Rowena back, but UGH. I’d rather NOT end the season with Michael wearing Dean, and Dean wearing a crown of blackberry thorns, if you get my drift.

In other news, Dean’s moral compass seems to be working again this ep, as he spotted that Ketch was sketchy right from the start, and he picked up on Cas being weird on the phone too. Could it be a fake-out that pays off later? If his moral compass is still on the fritz after all, it means Ketch was probably saying some truth in this bit of dialogue:

KETCH: I believe you're familiar with the witch Rowena MacLeod? She was captured by the British Men of Letters some years back. I discovered she'd sewn a powerful charm into her body that could bring her back should she be killed. I struck a deal wherein she did the same for me in return for allowing her to escape. SAM: So after we dumped your body, you- KETCH: Good as new. Only problem is, one the device is used, it needs to be recharged. DEAN: Which is why you're hunting for Rowena. Well, sorry. Lucifer burned her up. She's dead. KETCH: Is she? DEAN: Why'd you come here? You could've run. KETCH: Did it ever occur to you, Dean, that I might actually be one of the good guys? DEAN: No. Not even once. KETCH: You and I were soldiers in opposing armies who were at war. DEAN: Well, the thing about war is, one side wins. KETCH: I suppose you're right. (x)

So which bit is the potential truthiness? Is Ketch a good guy? *quietly gags, please nooooooo* Or is Rowena alive *yis pls*. Or... can you have a war in which one side doesn’t win?!?! Morder, I’m looking at you.

My foreshadowing senses are tingling. Let me just float this idea now and get it out there where I can poke it with a stick... maybe all three of these things will be true. For a certain value of true. And that would definitely mean Dean’s radar is still wonky.

This ep we have another character who recognises the Winchesters/Hunters. The witch who got away from Ketch fears them, but rightly considers them the lesser of two evils as long as she’s the victim. I’m liking this theme a lot, and I wonder where they’re going with it? I kind of hope that maybe we’ll get some more references to Carver Edlund’s books if this plot thread unspools for more than a few episodes. I’ve never felt that the villains really used that resource enough, you know? I kind of want Michael to get his hands on them, or maybe Kevin.

Which brings me to the final thing about this episode’s title -- the Orson Welles radio play of Wr of the Worlds. It’s famous for causing a panic when it aired, as people thought it was real. Or did they??? Wikipedia tells me:

The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a news bulletin and is often described as having led to outrage and panic by some listeners who had believed the events described in the program were real. However, later critics point out that the supposed panic seems to have been exaggerated by newspapers of the time seeking to discredit radio as a source of information. (x)

Ahhhhh. I did not know that. I’m starting to understand why my story brain is so hung up on the reputation of the Winchesters this season, and why it’s important that other characters have heard of them or of Hunters more generally. Propaganda and misinformation are an important part of any war, and they can play out in unexpected ways. We got a bit of this last season with how woefully wrong the BMoL’s intel was on the Winchesters, and I wanted that to pay off more than it did in the end. But I’m more than happy for it to pay off this season instead, with Michael and his posse. Supernatural’s story-within-the-story could use a good shake-up at this point, and giving us some new insight into the stories people tell about the Winchesters would be a clever way to revisit the Metatron arc without resurrecting him too.

For an ep that focused so much on characters I’m not that fond of (Lucifer, Ketch), I enjoyed it quite a lot for the way it’s opened up the narrative in new directions. It’s actual plot wasn’t that strong, but I was happy to be carried along by the revelations.

The final thing I want to say about this ep is that Dean and I are brain-twins on the Evil Colonel Sanders front -- it’s a perfect name for him.

I like heists if they do something fun, so I found the plot of The Scorpion and the Frog episode enjoyable enough. The way Sam and Dean disarmed the booby-trap made me laugh out loud! Zoooooooom, zwot, thwop-thwop-thwop. Classic.

As this isn’t a myth-arc ep, the most interesting meta stuff arises from the title and theme. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the parable of The Scorpion and the Frog, so I won’t repeat it here, except for the axiom it ends with: “When the frog asks the scorpion why [it stung him], the scorpion replies that it was in its nature to do so” (x).

This title pretty directly evokes the show’s current major theme -- nature vs nurture -- and this season’s variation on it -- who’s your daddy?

As you’d expect at this point in the season, the ep raises a lot of questions about the theme: Do people really have an essential nature, or can they change their spots? Who in the episode is the scorpion and who is the frog? Is the scorpion the demon who can’t help but lie and use people? Is it the father who can’t help but try and save his son, and then turns bitter when he fails? Is it the Hunters who can’t help but hunt, even when they don’t intend to? Is it the victim who takes her shot at ending her suffering when offered the means? I could ask a similar set of questions about who is the frog.

Not to mention:

What qualities make for a good father?

Can somone overcome their (or their father’s) nature?

How do stories about the Winchesters affect they way people interact with them?

Hunters gotta hunt?

Can a frog be a scorpion in disguse? And if so, is that how they’ll sting Michael?

Is Dean’s moral compass wonky or not?

The more I think about all these questions, the less sure I get. Must be getting close to the middle of the season. :)

Barthamus the Crossroads Demon is another character who has heard of the Winchesters, and thinks he knows everything he needs to about them in order to get to the other side of the river on their backs.

Much as Evil Colonel Sanders is Lucifer!lite, Bart is Crowley!lite. He saw how Crowley worked with the Winchesters, and decided to take a leaf out of his book, but doesn’t understand the larger consequences of that choice. So far Crowley is the only antagonist who has ever realised that the Winchesters are always more dangerous than their enemies think -- they have taken down Gods and monsters, and even Death cannot stop them for long. It was almost inevitable that they would hunt Bart, no matter what was at stake (does that make them the scorpion?). Add in Smash, an actual victim, who Dean uses his supernatural bonding skills on, and that outcome went to a 100% certainty. This dilemma is prefigured early in the episode:

DEAN: You know, this could be a trap. I mean he could work for Asmodeus. SAM: Yeah, but what if he's telling the truth? DEAN: You know, after Crowley, I told myself, no more demons. SAM: Dean, we don't even know what this guy's deal is. DEAN: Yeah, we do. He's a freakin' demon. SAM: Yeah, but you said it yourself, we need a miracle. And maybe this is it. DEAN: You know what "miracles" are called from demons? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it's not "miracles". SAM: How about this? Let's hear the guy out. DEAN: All right, and after that, we kill him.

They enter the Smile Diner.

Did anyone else hear the name of this diner and think of Hamlet and the whole, “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain” speech? It really made me think of Crowley too -- if you go read the speech, you’ll see what I mean: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/page_66.html.

BARTHAMUS: The famous Winchesters. DEAN: Some random demon. BARTHAMUS: Barthamus. Bart's fine. Please, sit. I ordered cherry pie. DEAN: Well, Bart, don't know what you've heard about us, but… BARTHAMUS: Everything. I've been following your careers a long time. You're a real pain in the pitchfork. And the halo. Natural disrupters. We have that in common, you and I. DEAN: Mm. Yeah, we're twinsies. (x)

Dean was a much better demon than this, and Dean was basically a shitty demon. Dean’s moral compass seems to be working perfectly here, though: some random demon, indeed.

Except... there’s the way the episode ends.

DEAN: You okay? SAM: Yeah, not really. Not exactly the best day, you know? DEAN: Well, it's not the worst. We did save somebody. That felt good. SAM: Yeah. Yeah, it did. But… [Sighs] back to square one with Jack. DEAN: We'll figure something else out. And if that doesn't work, then we'll move on to next, and then whatever's after that. We just keep working, 'cause it's what we do. SAM: It feels really good to hear you talk like that again. DEAN: I'll drink to that.

Sam and Dean clink their beer bottles and take a drink. (x)

So is Dean right here, too?

“It’s what we do,” Dean says about Hunting, as though he and Sam are only and entirely defined by Hunting, and that they do have an essential nature that can’t be changed, despite Dean’s recent bout of feelings.

If that’s really true, it’s an enormous problem, both for themselves and for Jack. Toxic masculinity is part of what they always do. Abusive fathers, the MoL’s sexism, the Angel breeding program, Mary/Dean making a deal, John/Sam sacrificing themselves...

If a person’s nature can’t ever be changed, all of these patterns are what the Winchesters are made up of and will always remain. That isn’t a very hopeful picture, so I kind of hope Dean’s wrong about he and Sam being nothing but their work.

Can people change? Can they make different choices? Will the Winchesters make the same mistakes all over again at the end of the season -- will they sting the frog and doom themselves? Or will they try out new and better mistakes, and make it safely to the other side of the river along with the frog?

I guess we’ll find out soon enough. I’m hoping for something new, but I gotta say, I’m starting to think that Castiel and Jack are the frogs.

Previously:

I never opened myself this way (13x01 and 13x02)

You say you've only got one life to live (13x03, 13x04, 13x05)

#supernatural #spn meta #meta #season 13 #spoilers #dean winchester #same winchester #theme #nature vs nurture #jack kline #castiel

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petshopfox · 6 years

Video

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Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls

Unreal City, under the brown fog of a winter dawn. Earth hath not anything to show more fair. Dirty old river, must you keep rolling, flowing on into the night. London – the lifeblood of the country and the vampire that sucks it back up.

Among other teenage favourites such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four and the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, the Eyewitness Guide to London was a library staple. Before the age of seventeen I never made the trip on the route of the Flying Scotsman down to King’s Cross; in fact, bar a school coach trip to Dover en route to France, I’d never been further south than Matlock. But there I was, lying on my bed, fitting Monopoly streets into the A to Z, memorising the names of the boroughs and their railway stations. I was doing what probably thousands if not millions of ‘provincial’ Britons had done before me, embarking on a love-hate relationship with a city I’d never seen.

I finally made the journey on a school trip in 1998. The A-level art students headed off to the National Gallery; I visited UCL with a friend, had a slice of overpriced pizza for lunch in Leicester Square, then reconvened with the English lit students to see Othello at the National. It was sticky hot, and I felt disappointed for most of the time. It was almost worse to come to London for one day, and not get to do or see any of the things on my list, than never go at all. The schedule was so overdetermined I had no time to gawp at the tube posters or read the blue plaques, no time to catch myself realising I’d jumped through the rabbit hole into Wonderland. But then, post-play, we had to cross Waterloo Bridge. The skyline shimmered into focus, St Paul’s ghostly with floodlight, the river lapping against the Embankment. I’ll be back, I said to myself, and a blood-rush flushed me all over. London isn’t a city of instant epiphanies. You don’t see it and die; it can be ugly and gawky, ill-assembled and unphotogenic. But there are always clicks; joints snapping into place; gear shifts. That moment on the bridge was one such: like a photographic print gradually darkening in the developing fluid, London was emerging.

Listen carefully to the opening of ‘West End Girls’ and this is exactly what you hear: London flickering into life, beginning to glitter through the fog. It’s morning, and someone walks into the light from the Paddington concourse. Their heels take to the wet pavement, and their heart beats faster as they scour the street for a taxi. The pulse begins to assert itself, and then the synth string chords – those chords – dark, cool and grand, clean and sleek as a black cab. And a pause, ever so slight, before the new arrival decides to walk; to take in the rush on foot, buoyed airily by the Pet Shop Boys’ smooth minimalism, slinking through the crowds. It’s all there in the video, as a rapid montage of random faces gives way to Neil and Chris, who take to their heels in a vaporous, ghostly Soho, like sombre night-watchmen coming off shift. ‘West End Girls’ is the sound of London settling into focus. Eight million people waking up to the distant rumble of tubes and screech of buses; eight million people rubbing their eyes as the greatest synth bassline in eighties pop music rings out from their clock radios.

It must have been quite an awakening, back then in 1985. It seemed to arrive fully-formed; not just a song, but an aesthetic (though the original Bobby Orlando version from the previous year proves how crucial Stephen Hague was in realising the song’s latent atmospheres). This was not the barroom and dog-track London of Ian Dury, nor was it the hazy, romanticised cityscape of The Kinks. Tennant and Lowe are, of course, northerners, and thus outsiders, though they don’t so much crash the party as float spectrally in a corner with a martini and a raised eyebrow. When the Boys first broke into the charts, much was made of Tennant’s former career at Smash Hits, the foremost evidence cited for his apparently ‘ironic’ take on pop. But I’ve often thought that the beautiful balance they strike between the knowing and the credulous is the product of northern eyes surveying southern landscapes. They are detached, perhaps even sceptical at times; but there’s also that Eyewitness Guide in the bedroom, a city learned and loved, an excitement at having gone through the portals at King’s Cross and slipped into the anonymity of the throng. Despite Tennant having said on more than one occasion that ‘West End Girls’ was inspired by The Waste Land – ‘too many shadows, whispering voices’ is a true summary of Eliot’s fractured epic indeed – the song is too stimulated by what’s going on around it to be either a lament for the lost or a prophecy of doom. It does sound dangerous – there’s something dark and doleful in that bass – but it’s the kind of danger that makes you feel alive and adrenalized. It’s determined to keep its cool, determined not to spend its money all at once; but despite this caution, it’s still the sound of two northerners who will never quite fail to wonder at their adopted home.

It’s a dichotomy embodied by the Boys themselves: arty, askance Tennant, asking questions and pondering significances, and hedonistic Lowe (you can take the lad out of Blackpool!), disappearing into the massed bodies of the rave or shopping incognito at the record exchanges (check out the 1989 B-side, ‘One of the crowd’, Chris’s very own credo). It’s why their songs at their finest have such cross-cultural appeal; the Guardianista manifesto of ‘Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat’ (‘Left to my own devices’) can coexist quite happily with the football terrace reworking of gay utopianism (their definitive cover of ‘Go West’, which was taken on in earnest by Arsenal supporters). It’s what makes them so English, yes (another epithet interviewers and critics find impossible to avoid), but more than that, it’s what makes them so London, and more specifically Northern and London. In no other city in the world do you get quite so many disparate people rubbing shoulders in the crush; underfunded social housing and potholes on one side of the street, while the opposite side gleams with stucco and swept pavements. This is the world the Boys both celebrate and lament, and often with an emphasis on the relationship between regionalism and metropolitanism. It’s mourned in ‘King’s Cross’ (the station from which Geordies spill out into the city like foaming brown ale from a broken bottle), and especially ‘The Theatre’, which again makes specific reference to expats from beyond the Watford Gap (‘Boys and girls come to roost / From Northern parts and Scottish towns / Will we catch your eye?’) But then there’s the funny B-side ‘Sexy Northerner’, about a guy who takes the capital by the scruff and recasts it in his own image. London is always up for grabs, and the Boys will be there as the daybreak traffic hits, on through lunch at the office, then dinner, pub, club, and into the demimonde of the dead hours. You always wanted a lover, I only wanted a job. You wait till later, till later tonight…

You see, London is all about almost unlikely juxtapositions, and the Pet Shop Boys pull off some of the unlikeliest. The astonishing ‘Dreaming of the Queen’ (perhaps the most moving song they have ever written) is the most surreal. It’s an elegy for the AIDS dead (‘there are no more lovers left alive’) sung by ‘Lady Di’, whose own marriage is failing; the ‘Queen’ of the title is both the monarch Neil visualizes in his dream, chastising him for being in the nude, and, perhaps, the patron saint of all ‘queens’ everywhere who are traumatized by the epidemic. It’s timely – on release in 1993, all these events were highly topical – and timeless, commenting on the ways in which our subconscious finds its own warped logic to deal with the crushing events of history. And then that heartbreaking line, ‘Yes, it’s true / Look, it’s happened to me and you’ (a rejoinder to an earlier AIDS lament, ‘It couldn’t happen here’). London is a place in which ‘big’ history is made all around us, in which we constantly rub up against grand monuments and memorials; it’s also a place that can find space for the ‘me and you’. At its best, Tennant and Lowe’s songwriting focuses through both of these lenses. Remember ‘Shopping’, seemingly a deadpanned celebration of the personal benefits of the credit boom, but actually a broadside against Thatcher’s privatisations? No eighties band was better at defining the emptiness of consumerist luxury than the Pet Shop Boys, and I’m not just talking about the immortal ‘I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money’. Stick on the original version of ‘I want a dog’, and marvel at the boredom of desire; the blank-eyed intonation of ‘oh, you can get lonely’; the killer couplet ‘Don’t want a cat / Scratching its claws all over my habitat’, expressing withering disdain for any mog that ruins Terence Conran’s finest.

In ‘West End Girls’, of course, there are cats and dogs, paws and claws. The greyhounds of Walthamstow (east end boys) and the Persian princesses of Kensington (the girls of the title). Another great juxtaposition, and one that makes London sexy in a constantly surprising way. All sorts of mythologies catch each other’s eyes on the escalators. The Kray brothers lock stares with Charlotte Rampling; there’s a frisson of sexual danger, a possibility of pugilism. But London has to brook its own contradictions in order to survive. It surfs breezily above them, just as the track itself is both shiny and seamy, dark and light. The song is all tensions: African and European (the jazzy trumpet and rich gospel backing vocalist knocking against Tennant’s high white plaint), passive and active, dispassionate and yet full of deep, deep yearning; yet it’s miraculous how these coexist with such effortless panache. These are the frictions of all great British pop, but seldom do they ever sound so exotic and lush. The Pet Shop Boys really did change the game; this is a London both real and imagined, both as good as the real thing and somehow even better. It’s not surprising that it was number one all over the world, including America, and no accident that it even featured prominently in the Olympic shebang last year.

You see, for all the expert satire, it’s easy to forget that the Pet Shop Boys are still actually in love with London, and that its allure will never pall. ‘We’ve got no future, we’ve got no past’, intones Neil in the last verse. In London, you can be someone different every day, ventriloquizing the people around you, learning to walk to their gait; only the present, and your presence matter. Just to be there at all; to be swimming in the tide. East End boys will always chase West End girls, and perhaps vice versa. Northerners and foreigners will always be both repelled and fascinated by the Unreal City. As long as London exists, so will ‘West End Girls’; so will a thousand teenagers from elsewhere dreaming in their bedrooms about ‘running down, underground, to a dive bar in a West End town’. As T.S. Eliot would have it, we shore these fragments against our ruin. Or else, we save ourselves with the power of a synth bass, a crunchy snare and the ecstasy of urban romance.

#Pet Shop Boys #West End Girls #Neil Tennant #Chris Lowe #Article #Text #Music #Video #1985 #80ies #London

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pickingstars-blog1 · 7 years

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hi! i have become a huge fan of you in the past like day or so (i'm sure your activity page at this point looks like i'm stalking you) as all of your commentary is perfectly on point - i love moffat and i think he's done so much good for this show that it just drives me insane to see baseless commentary otherwise (especially when it's clear it's coming from people who don't even watch anymore). anyway you're doing the lord's work here and i thoroughly enjoy and appreciate it :)

Hi there!

Thank you so much! For the record, your blog is incredibly amazing also; I’m sure in the not-to-distant future your activity page will look just as obsessive as mine!

I love Steven Moffat so, so much too. The hilarious thing is that this wasn’t always the case. C.2013, I was definitively part of the Moffat Hate crowd! I was the first in line to reblog every “The Day of the Doctor hates New Who canon!”, and “Clara’s life revolves around The Doctor!”, and “River Song is a terrible, regressive female character!” post I could find. (Luckily my old old blog has long since been deleted!)

I think the thing to understand about Moffat Hate, (and i use that term accordingly. Legitimate critique of Moffat’s work is something I have no problem with, and something I partake in myself), is that it’s effectively a phenomenon. And one that can only ever have occured to a show like Doctor Who:

For people like myself, who sat down with their family as an eight year old kid to watch Rose as it first aired in 2005, Moffat’s takeover of the show coincided with adolescence, and therefore with our own blossoming social awareness and critical skills. By this point, Doctor Who had well and truly carved its place as a staple of British pop culture, and therefore as a staple of childhood influence. (I mean, I don’t know about in the US, but in the UK, you’d be hard pressed to find a primary school pupil across the country who wasn’t avidly discussing the cliffhanger at the end of The Stolen Earth the Monday after the episode aired! I can’t emphasise enough how utterly huge Doctor Who was as a child. It was literally all anyone talked about!)

The RTD era of show therefore has a real place in the hearts of many, and so, as is the way with nostalgia, we link it directly to our childhoods and romanticise it. Add to that a burgeoning social media platform built on synergetic hyperbole and herd mentality, (I mean gosh look at the “your fave is problematic” discourse, and how hard everyone here collectively turned from Superwholock Stans to agressively hating all three shows in the space of a few months), an unfortunately normal dose of self-critical cringe culture, (what we engage with and enjoy as tweens is automatically horribly uncool and terrible the older we get), and Moffat’s era never really stood a chance!

It was only upon doing a complete rewatch of the show after Matt Smith’s final episode, that I finally allowed myself to view these episodes out of personal context. With retrospect. And with Russell’s era, I discovered a goofy, passionate, indulgent melodrama that’s as clumsy and nonsensical as it is engaging and moving, while with Moffat’s era, I discovered a thematically rich, witty, macabre modern fairytale that’s as sumptuous and stylish as it is full of glorious glorious soul. They were both completely different to how I’d remembered them, both a bundle of triumphs with a few falters, and yet both standing on their own feet. It was only upon rewatch that I truly discovered, and appreciated, Moffat’s high-concept, darker, more visceral, and therefore more controversial, version of the show. It had guts! it holds a punch! Without negating the beauty of triumphant storytelling to do so! And it doesn’t half carry conceptual and thematic weight! River’s diary. Amy’s glasses. Clara’s leaf. Bill’s photos. Simple objects and items that Moffat pours entire universes into. There’s something so sweeping, so rich and so compelling about the imagery filled, picture-book way Moffat writes. He’s less a screenwriter, and more a storyteller. That’s the distinction I’d make, and the distinction that, in my mind, puts him head and shoulders above Russell T. (who is a tremendously brilliant writer himself, I might add).

This totally goes without mentioning Moffat’s ever-increasing embrace of social issues. There’s no way to view River’s story as anything other than a celebration of female freedom and female agency. There’s no way to view Clara’s story as anything other than a celebration of female defiance. And there’s no way to view Amy’s story as anything other than a celebration of female courage, of female kindness. Steven Moffat champions his characters, he champions his female characters, and there’s no getting away from that. He makes them suffer, because good drama depends on that, but they have always, always stood triumphant and proud at the end of it all. That’s a track record worth cherishing, I think.

All of this stands amongst an unbowed, unbent, unbroken, pro-female doctor agenda, and a current series which has given us shameless, open, positive, political commentary on the disgraces of historical whitewashing, on racism, on slavery, on capitalism, on colonialism, on indoctrination, on militarisation, on media bias, on fake news, on heteronormativity, on sexism and on the gender binary system. Oh, and the show’s first Black Lesbian Companion to boot. When it comes down to it, Steven Moffat really is pretty great!

Gosh, this turned into something really extensive and a little bit histrionic! But I’m so beyond passionate about this wonderful era of my favourite show, and, like you, I am so beyond frustrated by the constant mischaracterisations and misreadings, (in many instances, categorically and intentionally false ones, delivered by people who haven’t even watched the show since 2013), of the work and words of the man behind it all, that I think I deserve to be a tad extravegant!

Thanks so much again! xx

#steven moffat #moffat #doctor who #bill potts #dw meta #ask #twelveclara

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theseventhhex · 7 years

Text

Trevor de Brauw Interview

Trevor de Brauw

Chicago-based guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw (Pelican, RLYR) has announced the release of his first solo album – a collection of power-ambient compositions – entitled ‘Uptown’. Trevor Shelley de Brauw’s 20 year musical career has manifested as an exploration of the vast sonic possibilities of the guitar. ‘Uptown’ marks a departure from the riff-oriented song writing of Pelican, taking a plaintive approach that unravels the meditative depth of washed-out riffs, deconstructed drones, and carefully controlled feedback. The record is a stream of consciousness sustained for too long, an aural pendulum swinging between poles of murky distress and cathartic resolve that takes shape somewhere in the hazy valleys between rock, ambient and experimental music… We talk to Trevor about improvisation parenthood and being vegan…

TSH: Like previous works, was your approach to a lot of the material on your solo record very intuitive and not thinking in terms of intent?

Trevor: Definitely. Most of the songs would start by recording either kernels of ideas or improvisations and then I would go back and listen to what I had and think about how best to flesh the ideas out. Ultimately most of the performances on the record are improvised - just laying stuff down and then adding layers until things took on their own shape. When I started this album it was intended as a continuation of my Histoire project, in which improvised performance was something of an ideological guideline because the finished pieces were intended to act as a sonic journal; a specific moment in time captured in sound. This particular album deviated from that, particularly with regards to editing and even some moments where things are a little more thought out and composed, but I would say the earlier Histoire experiences informed the creation of this album.

TSH: Knowing you spent years refining compositions for ‘Uptown’, which factors would you say were most challenging?

Trevor: The biggest obstacle was carving out the free time to work on it; I am typically in three or four bands at a time and for the last 8 years I’ve been balancing those with a full time career/desk job, so most nooks and crannies in my schedule are full. There was also a certain lack of inertia that set in after the first couple of years - there were a couple of times that I thought the record was done and then I’d listen to all the material and realise that I didn’t have a set of pieces that would flow as an album, which got a bit demoralising.

TSH: Also, given the songs were birthed at vastly different times and places, do you feel this had some sort of varied effect on the end result?

Trevor: In some ways I suppose it must have. Insofar as one goes through tremendous personal changes over a long period of time, there are pieces on the album that were recorded by very different versions of myself. But one of the things that took so long was trying to amass a body of work that would flow as a cohesive album, so while the mentality and the approaches might vary from track-to-track, my hope is that those differences are not too obvious. I went through quite a few drafts of the album where the flow felt interrupted or stilted because there were too many jarring transitions or pieces that felt like they drifted off the path. I think these six pieces work together, perhaps, because the thread that ties them together is some sort of distillation of the constants in my persona.

TSH: With this body of work you, do you feel you were able to soundtrack certain sensations?

Trevor: It’s hard to say when you view them in retrospect. Because of the nature of their composition, the recordings evoke very specific moments and feelings, but I’m not sure if my memories of those emotions and sensations is through a veil of interpretation. They each act as a manifestation of the time in which they were created, but the specific sensations of those moments may be lost in the sands of time.

TSH: How would you assess the way you decided to incorporate the guitar throughout?

Trevor: Each piece was different. Some of them started on guitar, others started on electric piano or organ. With each of the recordings it was a matter of trying to figure out what sonic space needed to be filled, like grasping for puzzle pieces without having a guide to what the finished image was supposed to look like. Guitar ended up on most of the tracks because it’s the instrument I feel most comfortable playing, but in cases where it was not the primary instrument I made a point of trying to figure out whether it was even needed before going for it.

TSH: What’s the basic foundation for a track like ‘Turn Up For What’?

Trevor: That one started with the electric piano part. I love the sound of an electric piano drenched in reverb, so really it was just a matter of setting up that sound first and then seeing what ideas jumped out of my head. Once I had that initial piano track done I listened back and could hear saturated guitars in my head, so I dialled in a sound and improvised the two guitar tracks on top. The second one was intended to simply double the first, so I had to try and remember exactly what I played on the first pass - I came pretty close but the deviations from the original worked so I kept whatever “mistakes” ended up in there.

TSH: What aims did you outline whilst fleshing out ‘Distinct Frequency’?

Trevor: That one was a little more sonically adventurous. It was recorded around 10 years ago at this point, so the details of the recording are a little fuzzy in my memory. I think first I recorded the radio noise with a mic that was set up two rooms away. Then I started layering from there with electric piano and trombone (which I remember looping and then manipulating). I think the darkness and anxiety of the piece helps balance out some of the euphoria of some of the other pieces. It was recorded during the year that my wife and I lived in a farmhouse in rural North Carolina. We were never really accepted by the locals while we lived there and our time there felt a bit fraught and anxious. I think ‘Distinct Frequency’ is a pretty accurate sonic summary of some of the feelings of that time.

TSH: Was it gratifying to operate in your own lane with this record?

Trevor: Recording solo material tends to be less gratifying than playing with other musicians. There’s hurdles of communication when it comes to playing with others that can be challenging, but the rewards are far more immediate and palpable. Crafting these solo pieces is a pretty long process of trial and error, second guessing, labouring over details. And because of the experimental nature of the compositional process it often happens that all the time spent poring over stuff is in vain because the finished work is a failure. That said, there are elements of the process that are very gratifying - times when I was able to conceive of an idea and then execute it properly, the moment I was able to hold the finished record in my hand, and definitely most every time I play live as a solo act since the act of standing alone in front of people making this stuff is pretty daunting, so when it lands properly it feels extremely cathartic.

TSH: Is your former cat walking through the room in the background of one of the songs the only feature on this record?

Trevor: Yes, dearly departed Kitty Shelley de Brauw was my only guest. Uninvited, at that, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

TSH: Have you heard any compelling movie soundtracks in recent times?

Trevor: Several. I really, really dug the Room 237 soundtrack; it was a very cool reimagining of established tropes. It seemed really fitting that the soundtrack was an homage to a certain style when the film itself is about taking a deep dive into critical analysis, like they were both different ends to a similar goal. I also love the Beyond the Black Rainbow soundtrack. It definitely stands on its own, but it also just completely made the movie what it is.

TSH: What makes you feel not very nostalgic as a person?

Trevor: I think that’s probably something I said before I was a parent. I think it would be really difficult not to be nostalgic as a parent. You live with someone you love more than anything in the world and they change so rapidly that they’re practically a different person every few weeks. It makes you feel really precious about every single moment because it becomes crystal clear how fleeting everything in this life is. And once that epiphany takes hold it puts every experience in life into perspective… Before I was a parent I was always looking forward and didn’t really pause to reflect too much. I don’t think either approach is right or wrong, but I am very happy for everything parenthood has brought me, including the sense of nostalgia and reflection.

TSH: What do you admire mostly about Jaki Liebezeit’s drumming?

Trevor: What’s so riveting about Liebezeit is how he crafts these virtuosic intricate drum patterns but then renders them hypnotic by repeating them endlessly. I love just getting lost inside his seemingly effortless loops.

TSH: Also, your verdict on the latest Mount Eerie album…

Trevor: I love Mount Eerie. It is a very difficult album to listen to; it is a raw expression of unfathomable emotional pain, without any pretence about trying to romanticise or poeticise it. There’s not really anything like it.

TSH: Talk us through what lead to the following tweet ‘Daylight savings aka a plot to drive parents of young children insane.’…

Trevor: I think it was in reference to the most recent time change and the challenge of getting a four year old to wake up on time for school on time the next day. Adults tend to be a bit more resilient when it comes to sleep deprivation.

TSH: How long have you been a vegan?

Trevor: I’ve been vegan for 23 of my 39 years. At this point I’m so different from the person I was before I became vegan that it’s hard to conceive what role my diet could have played in that.

TSH: Finally, what are your intentions with your solo career as you look ahead?

Trevor: I’m most of the way through another album. Or that’s what I think now and eight years from now I’ll feel dumb for having said that. But with any luck I’ll wrap that up sooner than later and get it out at some point in the not too distant future. I definitely want to keep playing solo shows, including shows outside of Chicago if I can find a way of doing that.

Trevor de Brauw - “They Keep Bowing”

Uptown

#Interview #Trevor de Brauw

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