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redantsunderneath · 4 years

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DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context. We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune. We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman). This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die. The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons. But the ending holds up. The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats. The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum. One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try. The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across. This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end. They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J. A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again. In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed. This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon. Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely. DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order. DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world. It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in. This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts. DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes. DC invented crossing over between “realities.” DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities. These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back. Now you have to explain that away too. Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle. Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas). DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity. But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event. At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things. Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies. Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial. His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall. It’s a very gnostic universe, DC. They examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before. This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish. But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011. Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns. He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved. I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends. The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic). The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him. At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money. They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out. The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead. He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil. The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system. You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963. The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing. It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones. By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world. The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability. Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure. One plot is, literally, defund Batman. There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility. The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism). But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics. Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them. Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally. Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing. DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday. The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire. Comics just keep getting weirder.

#DC comics #batman #joker #punchline

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astrologista · 4 years

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jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!!

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands.

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up.

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth.

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce�� or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally?#for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Alice Bolin, The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime, Vulture (August 1, 2018)

The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism. The serial fiction of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins was influenced by the British public’s obsessive tracking of sensational true-crime cases in daily papers, and since then, we have hoarded gory details in tabloids and pulp paperbacks and nightly news shows and Wikipedia articles and Reddit threads.

I don’t deny these stories have proliferated in the past five years. Since the secret is out — “Oh you love murder? Me too!” — entire TV networks, podcast genres, and countless limited-run docuseries have arisen to satisfy this rumbling hunger. It is tempting to call this true-crime boom new because of the prestige sheen of many of its artifacts — Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. They have subtle senses of theme and character, and they often feel professional, pensive, quiet — so far from vulgar or sensational.

But well-told stories about crime are not really new, and neither is their popularity. In Cold Blood is a classic of American literature and The Executioner’s Song won the Pulitzer; Errol Morris has used crime again and again in his documentaries to probe ideas like fame, desire, corruption, and justice. The new true-crime boom is more simply a matter of volume and shamelessness: the wide array of crime stories we can now openly indulge in, with conventions of the true-crime genre more emphatically repeated and codified, more creatively expanded and trespassed against. In 2016, after two critically acclaimed series about the O.J. Simpson trial, there was talk that the 1996 murder of Colorado 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey would be the next case to get the same treatment. It was odd, hearing O.J.: Made in America, the epic and depressing account of race and celebrity that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, discussed in the same breath with the half-dozen unnecessary TV specials dredging up the Ramsey case. Despite my avowed love of Dateline, I would not have watched these JonBenét specials had a magazine not paid me to, and suffice it to say they did very little either to solve the 20-year-old crime (ha!) or examine our collective obsession with it.

Clearly, the insight, production values, or cultural capital of its shiniest products are not what drives this new wave of crime stories. O.J.: Made in America happened to be great and the JonBenét specials happened to be terrible, but producers saw them as part of the same trend because they knew they would appeal to at least part of the same audience. I’ve been thinking a lot about these gaps between high and low, since there are people who consume all murder content indiscriminately, and another subset who only allow themselves to enjoy the “smart” kind. The difference between highbrow and lowbrow in the new true crime is often purely aesthetic. It is easier than ever for producers to create stories that look good and seem serious, especially because there are templates now for a style and voice that make horrifying stories go down easy and leave the viewer wanting more. But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.

Like the sensational tone, disturbing, clinical detail, and authoritarian subtext that have long defined schlocky true crime as “trash,” the prestige true-crime subgenre has developed its own shorthand, a language to tell its audience they’re consuming something thoughtful, college-educated, public-radio influenced. In addition to slick and creative production, highbrow true crime focuses on character sketches instead of police procedure. “We’re public radio producers who are curious about why people do what they do,” Phoebe Judge, the host of the podcast Criminal, said. Judge has interviewed criminals (a bank robber, a marijuana brownie dealer), victims, and investigators, using crime as a very simple window into some of the most interesting and complicated lives on the planet.

Highbrow true crime is often explicitly about the piece’s creator, a meta-commentary about the process of researching and reporting such consequential stories. Serial’s Sarah Koenig and The Jinx’s Andrew Jarecki wrestle with their boundaries with the subjects (Adnan Syed and Robert Durst, respectively, both of whom have been tried for murder) and whether they believe them. They sift through evidence and reconstruct timelines as they try to create a coherent narrative from fragments.

I remember saying years ago that people who liked Serial should try watching Dateline, and my friend joked in reply, “Yeah, but Dateline isn’t hosted by my friend Sarah.” One reason for the first season of Serial’s insane success — it is still the most-downloaded podcast of all time — is the intimacy audiences felt with Koenig as she documented her investigation of a Baltimore teenager’s murder in real time, keeping us up to date on every vagary of evidence, every interview, every experiment. Like the figure of the detective in many mystery novels, the reporter stands in for the audience, mirroring and orchestrating our shifts in perspective, our cynicism and credulity, our theories, prejudices, frustrations, and breakthroughs.

This is what makes this style of true crime addictive, which is the adjective its makers most crave. The stance of the voyeur, the dispassionate observer, is thrilling without being emotionally taxing for the viewer, who watches from a safe remove. (This fact is subtly skewered in Gay Talese’s creepy 2017 Netflix documentary, Voyeur.) I’m not sure how much of my eye-rolling at the popularity of highbrow true crime has to do with my general distrust of prestige TV and Oscar-bait movies, which are usually designed to be enjoyed in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as any other entertainment, but also to make the viewer feel good about themselves for watching. When I wrote earlier that there are viewers who consume all true crime, and those who only consume “smart” true crime, I thought, “And there must be some people who only like dumb true crime.” Then I realized that I am sort of one of them.

There are specimens of highbrow true crime that I love, Criminal and O.J.: Made in America among them, but I truly enjoy Dateline much more than I do Serial, which in my mind is tedious to the edge of pointlessness. I find myself perversely complaining that good true crime is no fun — as self-conscious as it may be, it will never be as entertaining as the Investigation Discovery network’s output, most of which is painfully serious. (The list of ID shows is one of the most amusing artifacts on the internet, including shows called Bride Killas, Momsters: Moms Who Murder, and Sex Sent Me to the Slammer.) Susan Sontag famously defined camp as “seriousness that fails,” and camp is obviously part of the appeal of a show called Sinister Ministers or Southern Fried Homicide. Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.

It’s always talked around in discussions of why people like true crime: It is … funny? The comedy in horror movies seems like a given, but it is hardly permitted to say that you are amused by true disturbing stories, out of respect for victims. But in reducing victims and their families to stock characters, in exaggerating murderers to superhuman monsters, in valorizing police and forensic scientists as heroic Everymen, there is dark humor in how cheesy and misguided these pulpy shows are, how bad we are at talking about crime and drawing conclusions from it, how many ways we find to distance ourselves from the pain of victims and survivors, even when we think we are honoring them. (The jokey titles and tongue-in-cheek tone of some ID shows seem to indicate more awareness of the inherent humor, but in general, the channel’s programming is almost all derivative of network TV specials.) I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but in its obvious failures, I enjoy this brand of true crime more straightforwardly than its voyeuristic, documentary counterpart, which, in its dignified guise, has maybe only perfected a method of making us feel less gross about consuming real people’s pain for fun.

Crime stories also might be less risky when they are more stilted, more clinical. To be blunt, what makes a crime story less satisfying are often the ethical guidelines that help reporters avoid ruining people’s lives. With the popularity of the podcasts S-Town and Missing Richard Simmons, there were conversations about the ethics of appropriating another person’s story, particularly when they won’t (or can’t) participate in your version of it. The questions of ethics and appropriation are even heavier when stories intersect with their subjects’ criminal cases, because journalism has always had a reciprocal relationship with the justice system. Part of the exhilarating intimacy of the first season of Serial was Koenig’s speculation about people who never agreed to be part of the show, the theories and rabbit holes she went through, the risks she took to get answers. But there is a reason most reporters do all their research, then write their story. It is inappropriate, and potentially libelous, to let your readers in on every unverified theory about your subject that occurs to you, particularly when wondering about a private citizen’s innocence or guilt in a horrific crime.

Koenig’s off-the-cuff tone had other consequences, too, in the form of amateur sleuths on Reddit who tracked down people involved with the case, pored over court transcripts, and reviewed cellular tower evidence, forming a shadow army of investigators taking up what they saw as the gauntlet thrown down by the show. The journalist often takes on the stance of the professional amateur, a citizen providing information in the public interest and using the resources at hand to get answers. At times during the first season of Serial, Koenig’s methods are laughably amateurish, like when she drives from the victim’s high school to the scene of the crime, a Best Buy, to see if it was possible to do it in the stated timeline. She is able to do it, which means very little, since the crime occurred 15 years earlier. Because so many of her investigative tools were also ones available to listeners at home, some took that as an invitation to play along.

This blurred line between professional and amateur, reporter and private investigator, has plagued journalists since the dawn of modern crime reporting. In 1897, amid a frenzied rivalry between newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, true crime coverage was so popular that Hearst formed a group of reporters to investigate criminal cases called the “Murder Squad.” They wore badges and carried guns, forming essentially an extralegal police force who both assisted and muddled official investigations. Seeking to get a better story and sell more papers, it was common for reporters to trample crime scenes, plant evidence, and produce dubious witnesses whose accounts fit their preferred version of the case. And they were trying to get audiences hooked in very similar ways, by crowdsourcing information and encouraging readers to send in tips.

Of course the producers of Serial never did anything so questionable as the Murder Squad, though there are interesting parallels between the true-crime podcast and crime coverage in early daily newspapers. They were both innovations in the ways information was delivered to the public that sparked unexpectedly personal, participatory, and impassioned responses from their audiences. It’s tempting to say that we’ve come full circle, with a new true-crime boom that is victim to some of the same ethical pitfalls of the first one: Is crime journalism another industry deregulated by the anarchy of the internet? But as Michelle Dean wrote of Serial, “This is exactly the problem with doing journalism at all … You might think you are doing a simple crime podcast … and then you become a sensation, as Serial has, and the story falls to the mercy of the thousands, even millions, of bored and curious people on the internet.”

Simply by merit of their popularity, highbrow crime stories are often riskier than their lowbrow counterparts. Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker about the ways the makers of the Netflix series Making a Murderer, in their attempt to advocate for the convicted murderer Steven Avery, omit evidence that incriminates him and put forth an incoherent argument for his innocence. Advocacy and intervention are complicated actions for journalists to undertake, though they are not novel. Schulz points to a scene in Making a Murderer where a Dateline producer who is covering Avery is shown saying, “Right now murder is hot.” In this moment the creators of Making a Murderer are drawing a distinction between themselves and Dateline, as Schulz writes, implying that, “unlike traditional true-crime shows … their work is too intellectually serious to be thoughtless, too morally worthy to be cruel.” But they were not only trying to invalidate Avery’s conviction; they (like Dateline, but more effectively) were also creating an addictive product, a compelling story.

That is maybe what irks me the most about true crime with highbrow pretensions. It appeals to the same vices as traditional true crime, and often trades in the same melodrama and selective storytelling, but its consequences can be more extreme. Adnan Syed was granted a new trial after Serial brought attention to his case; Avery was denied his appeal, but people involved in his case have nevertheless been doxxed and threatened. I’ve come to believe that addictiveness and advocacy are rarely compatible. If they were, why would the creators of Making a Murderer have advocated for one white man, when the story of being victimized by a corrupt police force is common to so many people across the U.S., particularly people of color?

It does feel like a shame that so many resources are going to create slick, smart true crime that asks the wrong questions, focusing our energy on individual stories instead of the systemic problems they represent. But in truth, this is is probably a feature, not a bug. I suspect the new true-crime obsession has something to do with the massive, terrifying problems we face as a society: government corruption, mass violence, corporate greed, income inequality, police brutality, environmental degradation, human-rights violations. These are large-scale crimes whose resolutions, though not mysterious, are also not forthcoming. Focusing on one case, bearing down on its minutia and discovering who is to blame, serves as both an escape and a means of feeling in control, giving us an arena where justice is possible.

Skepticism about whether journalists appropriate their subjects’ stories, about high and low, and about why we enjoy the crime stories we do, all swirl through what I think of as the post–true-crime moment. Post–true crime is explicitly or implicity about the popularity of the new true-crime wave, questioning its place in our culture, and resisting or responding to its conventions. One interesting document of post–true crime is My Favorite Murder and other “comedy murder podcasts,” which, in retelling stories murder buffs have heard on one million Investigation Discovery shows, unpack the ham-fisted clichés of the true-crime genre. They show how these stories appeal to the most gruesome sides of our personalities and address the obvious but unspoken fact that true crime is entertainment, and often the kind that is as mindless as a sitcom. Even more cutting is the Netflix parody American Vandal, which both codifies and spoofs the conventions of the new highbrow true crime, roasting the genre’s earnest tone in its depiction of a Serial-like investigation of some lewd graffiti.

There is also the trend in the post–true-crime era of dramatizing famous crime stories, like in The Bling Ring; I, Tonya; and Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, all of which dwell not only on the stories of infamous crimes but also why they captured the public imagination. There is a camp element in these retellings, particularly when famous actors like John Travolta and Sarah Paulson are hamming it up in ridiculous wigs. But this self-consciousness often works to these projects’ advantage, allowing them to show heightened versions of the cultural moments that led to the most outsize tabloid crime stories. Many of these fictionalized versions take journalistic accounts as their source material, like Nancy Jo Sales’s reporting in Vanity Fair for The Bling Ring and ESPN’s documentary on Tonya Harding, The Price of Gold, for I, Tonya. This seems like a best-case scenario for prestige true crime to me: parsing famous cases from multiple angles and in multiple genres, trying to understand them both on the level of individual choices and cultural forces.

Perhaps the most significant contributions to post–true crime, though, are the recent wave of personal accounts about murder and crime: literary memoirs like Down City by Leah Carroll, Mean by Myriam Gurba, The Hot One by Carolyn Murnick, After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry, and We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle all tell the stories of murder seen from close-up. (It is significant that all of these books are by women. Carroll, Perry, and Carlisle all write about their mothers’ murders, placing them in the tradition of James Ellroy’s great memoir My Dark Places, but without the tortured, fetish-y tone.) This is not a voyeuristic first person, and the reader can’t detach and find joy in procedure; we are finally confronted with the truth of lives upended by violence and grief. There’s also Ear Hustle, the brilliant podcast produced by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison. The makers of Ear Hustle sometimes contemplate the bad luck and bad decisions that led them to be incarcerated, but more often they discuss the concerns of daily life in prison, like food, sex, and how to make mascara from an inky page from a magazine. This is a crime podcast that is the opposite of sensational, addressing the systemic truth of crime and the justice system, in stories that are mundane, profound, and, yes, addictive.

#true crime #adnan syed #media #ethics #The Way We Live Now #culture #andrew jarecki #james ellroy #criminal justice #detective fiction

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seriouslyhooked · 5 years

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Lost Souls and Reveries (Part 19)

22 part AU written for @cssns. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13,Part 14, Part 15,Part 16, Part 17, Part 18. Story available on AO3 Here and FF Here. Banner created by the amazingly talented @shipsxahoy!!

Killian Jones is a wolf shifter without roots, without plans, and without a pack. He’s a rogue, someone humans should avoid and shifters should be wary of given his lineage. But one night years back set him on a path he didn’t realize he was taking, a path leading to a future he is destined for. That future is tied up in one woman – a human named Emma Nolan. Together Emma and Killian will find not only answers, but a love that’s truly fated. But will love be enough to set them free, or will past demons win out in the end? (Answer: love always wins – I am writing this so despite some tiny pockets of angst it’s basically a fluff-filled insta-love fest). Rated M.

A/N: Hey everyone! After a good while away I am back with another chapter of Lost Souls and Reveries. As has happened in the past, I went to write the chapter I had briefly outlined only to realize I couldn’t accomplish everything in one installment. There’s still quite a bit of story left I have to incorporate, and some loose ends I have to tie up, and hopefully everyone can follow along. For clarity’s sake, just know that the bulk of this chapter is told from Killian’s POV, and at the end there’s another POV. No spoilers, but more will become clear by the end of this this chapter and the next. Also it’s kind of an intense scene that we end on, so for my more light-hearted readers feel free to skip and ask me what happens. Anyway, thanks so much for reading and hope you all enjoy!

“Do we really have to go? It’s not too late to bail. We could go to the beach, or a run in the woods. Ooh, maybe we could get a root canal! That would be great compared to this.”

Killian chuckled at Emma’s commentary as they walked along the lane that lead to her parents’ home. They were en route to a ‘wedding brainstorm session’ with Emma’s mother, and though Killian had known Mary Margaret Nolan for some time now, he wondered if either her or Emma could really be ready for what was to come. For the next few hours, Mary Margaret was undoubtedly going to present them with roughly one million tiny questions about their impending wedding, very few of which would seem to really matter. For Killian, there were only three things he cared about. The first was that he wanted to marry Emma. The second was that he wanted to marry her soon. And the third was that he wanted her to be happy with the wedding. He didn’t give a damn about anything else. If Emma wanted it, she would have it, and that was the end of that. Unfortunately though, Killian knew one thing Emma did not want, and it was all of this over the top planning. His mate was hardly high maintenance, and though she’d talked to him casually about some things she might like for their special day, they were simple requests that mostly aligned with classic traditions.

“Sorry, love. I’m afraid we’ve no dental disasters in our future for the time being.”

“So the beach then?” Emma asked hopefully and Killian smiled as he shook his head. He hated to deny her anything, but at the same time he knew Emma was only teasing. She’d given her word that they would come today, and his love was a woman of character. She never broke a promise, and she always abided by her commitments.

“I promise you, Emma, that as soon as this is done, I will make it up to you.”

He pulled her into his arms as they stopped walking, and instinctively he moved her hair back to get a better look at her admiring her effortless beauty. He could see that her jokes right now were coming from a place of stress, and he meant what he said. Tonight, when all of this was done, he had a plan in place. He’d make them dinner, run her a bath, and then spend the next handful of hours ravishing her so thoroughly that all memory of wedding annoyances would flee her mind. His body hardened at the thought of what he would do with his gorgeous mate, and a low growl emanated from his chest before he could even think to stop it.

“Oh really?” she asked, her initial surprise at his claim soon giving way to lust and want and need that burned hot in her green eyes.

“Aye. We’ll have no wasted days, love. And since this first part might be fatiguing, we’ll have to see to it that the rest of the day is exactly what we want.”

Though they were out in the open and just a few steps from her parents’ home, Killian couldn’t resist running his hands along Emma’s body, and he reveled in the moment where she shivered, as a thrill of anticipation rolled through her. Her eyes dilated, and she wet her lips absentmindedly, and with such an invitation he couldn’t help but steal a taste of his own. When their lips met, he nearly groaned out in relief. Yet though it was painful to break apart so soon, he eventually had to pull back so that they could face the morning’s responsibilities.

“Okay, you win. But the second we can get away with leaving, we’re out of here, got it?” He nodded, prompting a light laugh from Emma before her eyes took on a thoughtful quality. “If we’re lucky maybe we can round up everyone else and have a cookout or a bonfire, then we can get to whatever it is you’ve got planned, which I’m sure will be perfect.”

Killian readily agreed, knowing that as much as Emma loved him, she also loved her friends who were more like family than anything else. He could never resent that, in fact, he embraced it, and he was just as eager to see them and Liam and Ruby. A night with their friends would be well deserved after all of this, he was sure, and he was glad for their new plan as Emma slipped her hand in his again and they made their way to her parent’s house. But as they walked up the front pathway, they heard a booming noise come from the backyard. It sounded like a huge fuse system had just been detonated, followed swiftly by Mary Margaret’s excited voice:

“Oh, David! Isn’t it wonderful? It looks just like how I pictured it!”

“Oh Jeez, better see what she’s got going,” Emma said, pulling him around the house, and though Killian smiled at his soon to be wife’s sarcasm, his smile dropped as soon as they stepped in the backyard.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he whispered and Emma barked out a laugh. But it wasn’t a laugh based in humor. Rather, it was the sound of someone so startled and confounded that they were becoming a little bit manic. Killian could hardly blame her for the reaction.

Because there, staring them in the face, was a light display that was… well, fucking gigantic to put it mildly. It was taller than he and Emma, and it had their names on it along with about a hundred hearts. It was gaudy and loud, and Killian couldn’t imagine there was a building within twenty miles that was suited for such a massive sign. For the moment though it was perched up against the Nolan’s barn, and Killian just couldn’t wrap his mind around why or how it had even gotten there.

“Please tell me you didn’t buy that, Mom,” Emma said, loud enough for her parents to realize they were back here. David, for his part, looked almost amused, and most certainly relieved at Emma’s comment, but Mary Margaret seemed downright perplexed.

“Well no, it’s just a sample. Your grandmother thought it would be best to hold off on any actual purchases. The letters are interchangeable, and the company brought it over for us to take a look with just a small deposit. But it’s so beautiful. I mean, who doesn’t want their name in lights on such a special day?”

“Mom this is supposed to be a small, classic wedding, not a blockbuster movie premiere,” Emma stressed, and Killian was glad they were on the same page, but he knew they’d hit a wall when Emma’s mother’s face fell. She looked genuinely hurt, and Killian knew that would only bring pain to Emma.

“You’re onto something with the lights, though,” Killian said, squeezing Emma’s hand in a sign of reassurance when her head whipped around to look at him. “But maybe something smaller? Twinkle lights would be perfect, don’t you think?”

“Oh my God, you’re so right!” Mary Margaret exclaimed, shaking her head at the sign now as if she’d only just realized how horrendous it was. “Fairy lights would be amazing! Like stars, or fireflies. Oh, there’s so much we could do with those! I’ll call the company right now and let them know.”

“Mary Margaret, maybe that could wait?” David offered calmly. “Emma and Killian are here now. It’s probably best to ask them all your questions first.”

“Right. Good thinking. Anyway, I have some more things to show you guys…”

And boy did she ever. It might have been normal for Emma’s mother to produce a binder with ideas for her only daughter’s special day. But one apparently didn’t do the visions Mary Margaret had justice. She pulled up a large box in a surprising show of strength for someone her size, and from the view alone Killian could see at least six. Given the space inside the box, he would be there were at least a dozen binders in total, and when he looked at David to silently inquire if this was all, Emma’s father gave a slight shake of his head. Bloody hell, they would be here all week at this rate!

Over the next few hours the constant stream of questions and decisions remained ever-flowing. There was no slowing down and no breaks in sight, and Killian for one felt his energy waning. Emma was clearly having the same problem, and with each new query, she leaned against him a little more, her face showing signs that she was more and more fatigued. Indeed, the only person with the stamina for this kind of festive frenzy was his soon to be mother in law. No one else even came close, but none of them had the chance to get off the ride. It just kept going on and on and on.

“So I spoke with the florists and after a little cajoling I finally got them to guarantee any and all arrangements we deem fit. At first they tried to tell me that certain flowers weren’t ‘in season,’” Emma’s mother explained while making skeptical air quotes. “Which is, of course, ridiculous. But eventually they came around. I just need to know what you guys think. I’ve got ten design options for you both to consider -,”

“Wait, ten?!” Emma asked, interrupting her mother who had pulled out her forth binder of the day, aptly labeled ‘Flower Ideas.’ “Mom, you can’t be serious. This is so much work, just for flowers for one day?”

“They’re not just for one day, Emma,” her mother said, sounding almost wounded at the insinuation. “This is going to be one of the most magical days of our life!”

Emma’s father chose that moment to return with water for all of them, after excusing himself from a very lengthy conversation about table settings, and though Killian could see that he wanted to laugh at his wife’s unending enthusiasm, he held it in, and instead cleared his throat and gave Mary Margaret a knowing look.

“I think you meant Emma and Killian’s life, right honey?”

“Well I actually meant…” Mary Margaret looked liable to contradict that statement, but then she read her husband’s face and understanding seemed to dawn on her. “Uh, right, absolutely. It’s your day, one hundred percent. But what you’re forgetting Emma is that while we might only get a few days with the flowers, the pictures are forever.”

“And the memories,” David agreed, coming to sit by his wife and smiling as he took her hand. “No matter how much time passes, it will always be with you. The day you say ‘I do’ to the person who means the most is one of the best you’ll ever know.”

It was heartwarming to see Emma’s parents be so much in love all these years after they had found each other and promised each other forever. Undoubtedly, their love was strong, so much so that Killian believed it rivaled what it felt like to have a fated mate. Who knew? Maybe they actually were mates, but they just didn’t have that precise bond because David’s shifter self had always remained separate from his human soul. Either way, Killian looked to Emma’s parents as an excellent example of what true love and commitment looked like. They were a partnership that was patient but still passionate. Sometimes they acted like kids still, and there had been more than one moment where Emma was embarrassed at how in love her parents still seemed to be, but they had the beautiful benefit of age and a life spent happily together. They were tied together in the best of ways, both standing tall alone, but shining brighter as a couple.

“Okay that is admittedly very sweet, Dad, but you’re not distracting me from this. She just said she has ten choices. As in double digits! And I’m willing to bet anything that’s just for one part of the wedding. There are definitely multiple arrangements, and these ten don’t even cover those, do they?”

Killian bit back a groan when Emma’s mother nodded, but it helped that she at least had the sense to look guilty for the first time all day. For Emma though, this seemed to be a breaking point. Killian felt her tension rise to a new high, and she stood in her chair suddenly. They’d been holding hands throughout this, and she seemed like she might let go, but Killian didn’t want that. Instead he rose with her, and when she looked at him he silently conveyed that whatever she wanted to do, he would back her up. She looked relieved and then directed her frustration back at her mother.

“Look, Mom, I know you mean well, and I love you, I really really do, but this is just getting ridiculous. We’ve been here for hours, answered a hundred questions, and I don’t think we’ve even made a dent in your planning. At this rate I’d honestly rather go to city hall today, with no muss and no fuss.” Despite the fact that her mother audibly gasped and raised a hand to her chest dramatically, Emma continued on. “Because it’s not really about the flowers or the lighting or the silverware, Mom. This wedding is about Killian and I spending the rest of our lives together.”

Emma’s words filled Killian with pride. Yes, he knew Emma’s mother would be hurt in some ways by the sentiment, but it made him happy to know Emma felt as he did. The wedding itself wasn’t the focal part of all of this. It was the marriage and the union between them that mattered most. In his heart, they were more than married already. Mates were forever, in this life, and any lives hereafter. But he did want the traditional human component too. He wanted everyone to know he belonged to Emma, and she belonged to him, but he agreed that the rest of the details, as nice as they may be in the end, didn’t hold nearly as much weight in his eyes at all. Still, as stern as Emma was being right now, he also knew that city hall wedding would never happen. This would all get figured out. It was just a matter of when and how.

“Perhaps we could just take a moment. I think a walk would do us some good,” Killian offered, looking to David for back up. Clearly a little space could be of some use, and David immediately understood.

“I think that’s a great idea. And we’ll be here, whenever you two are ready.”

Emma nodded in agreement, and the two of them set out farther behind the house where Emma had grown up. Despite the agitation that had just been facing them, there was no denying the beauty of this home. As he gazed upon the garden and the lush green land all around, Killian thought of what it must have been like to grow up here. Emma had such good things to say about so much of her childhood, and knowing her as he did, Killian could just picture how it all was. She’d have been here, happy, and peaceful and carefree, reading her favorite stories under the willow tree, running around with her little brother in the open field, and imagining whole new worlds with Anna and Elsa. Though he’d seen pictures, Killian didn’t need them to recall some of those memories. Their being mates meant their souls were intertwined, and so Killian could look upon this place and practically feel the happiness that his love experienced here. It calmed him to be in such close proximity to good feelings, even as the aggravation Emma carried from before still lingered.

“I hate to be angry with her,” Emma admitted, when they’d come to stop under the giant willow that defined this back-yard space. Underneath the hanging greenery, they were sheltered away. A natural curtain separated them from the world, and that barrier seemed to help Emma speak the thoughts that troubled her mind. “I love my Mom, and I love the life she and my Dad game me here. I never wanted for anything. Not for a long, long time.”

Emma’s eyes softened as she looked around this spacious, canopied hide away and Killian followed suit. The tree was old and majestic. It sang a soothing song when the wind cut through the leaves, and it was cool here, shaded by an entity that signaled strength and peace. It was immediately apparent that Emma was familiar with this spot, and Killian imagined she must have come here countless times before. Picturing a young Emma automatically made Killian think of their future children, and more specifically the child on the way. Not that he’d ever really forgotten, but still the rush of remembrance coursed through him in the best of ways. Instinctively, his hand come over where their child was now growing, and Emma hummed out a sound of contentment as her own hand came to cover his.

“There’s no denying that your parents have given you all that they could, Emma, and I hazard to guess that that is what your mother wants now too.”

“I know that. I do, Killian. But the problem is that when we use up all this time on these tiny, seemingly unimportant things, I feel like it’s a waste. Spending time with my mother is a blessing, I know, and there are parts of a wedding we should share, and will share that will bring us both joy, but this roaming around in the weeds thinking about party favors and which specific brand of tea lights to use isn’t that. Time is precious, life isn’t guaranteed, and I want all of us to make the most of every moment we have. Even if I do believe we’ll all have years of them to come, I just…”

Emma trailed off, her eyes casting away from his as she struggled to find the words. Again Killian felt the intensity of their mental link together, and he knew, without having to ask, that she was thinking of his mother. Time was the one thing his mother never had enough of, and knowing that life could be cut short like that made Killian of the same mindset. There was no need to be wasteful. If they could all be happy, then they should chase that, and since his happiness was irrevocably tied up in Emma’s, Killian was determined to see his mate made brighter.

“You just don’t want to live with regret. You don’t want to wake up one day and think that you should have done something different. You want to realize what’s most important while we’re living it instead of after the fact.”

“Exactly,” Emma said, closing her eyes and sighing into him, taking comfort in his instinctual reaction to wrap her up in his arms. “God why can’t you just do the talking? You’re better at it than I am.”

Killian chuckled at that, and when Emma opened her eyes again, they were filled with humor of their own, because they both knew that would never work. He might sometimes have some insights into how to turn a phrase, but between the two of them it was Emma who often saw the way forward. She was as brilliant as she was beautiful, and she had many opinions, all of which he cherished. Still, he understood her meaning now, and he tried his best to offer some solution.

“I think the best way forward is to make your boundaries clear, love. If you only have so much you want to engage with, then that’s what we tell her, and maybe she’ll be even more pleased to plan the rest of it herself.” Emma considered his suggestion, but still looked skeptical. “Of course we would be clear that there are limits.”

“Uh yeah, that’s a must,” Emma replied and Killian smiled, pressing a kiss to her temple as she leaned back against him.

“But your mother, at the end of the day, is a reasonable woman. She knows you have a lot going on. You have work, your friends, the baby…”

“And you,” Emma whispered, looking back to him with a smile.

“Aye, and me. Always.”

The promise was one he had made countless times and meant with all his heart, but this time it moved Emma to a degree that she shifted in his arms, straddling him where he sat before she pulled him in for a feverish kiss. In seconds they were riled to the same place, thoroughly forgetting the world around them. Killian pulled her closer, relishing the way her body writhed against him as her hands clung to him. Close was never close enough for the two of them, and when they were together like this, all outside noise fell away. All that mattered was that they were together, and that in each other they’d found a spectacular new life and love. It was so transcendent to have these moments wrapped up together like this, but then Killian heard the sound of footsteps coming up the gravel path and he pulled back. Emma still appeared dazed from their kiss, her eyes foggy with feeling, and her lips full from having been thoroughly devoured. But in a few moments she caught up with his reasoning, and instinctively she jumped up, straightening out her summer dress before pulling him to his feet just in time for the willow leaves to rustle.

“There you kids are,” Emma’s grandmother stated as she walked under the canopy. “I was wondering where you’d wandered off to.”

It was still very strange to Killian to even think of this woman that way, given how young she was. She looked closer to Emma’s age than she even did her son’s, but appearances had done nothing to lessen her love for David or for Emma. It was clear that time had little impact on Ruth’s devotion to her family. Over the last few weeks she’d been playing catch up on all the years she missed, but already she blended with this tribe of people. And she was dedicated in her role as caregiver. Killian had noticed how loyal she was and how she was determined to smooth things over whenever she could. She appeared to have a magic touch with these things, and Killian began to hope that maybe she could intervene somehow in all this wedding planning.

“How did you know we’d wandered off?” Emma asked curiously and Ruth smiled and shrugged.

“It was only a matter of time, honey. Anyone who knows you and your mother had to see this coming a mile away. She’s a lovely woman – the best partner I could have picked for my son, and the best mother to my grandbabies – but she’s also on a whole different frequency. She’s got so much energy and so much enthusiasm. Well, it just washes everything else away, doesn’t it?”

“It’s exhausting,” Emma admitted and Ruth took Emma’s hand, patting it affectionately.

“I know it is. You’ve done brilliantly trying to keep up, Emma. But I think this is where we put our foot down. I’ll speak with your mother, and we’ll get this all settled.”

“Oh, Grandma, you don’t have to. It’s okay, I can -,”

“Nonsense. It’s my job to protect you, Emma, and right now you’ve got more than enough on your plate. Besides, we both know this might get a little awkward, and I don’t want you or Killian getting in the crossfire. Your mother will come around, but it might take her some time, and better that she be annoyed with me than with you.”

Emma and Killian tried to argue, insisting that they could handle it, but Ruth would hear none of it. Seemed stubbornness was a bit of a family trait, but as she led them back to the yard where Emma’s mother and father were waiting, Killian couldn’t help but feel relief. It was a weight off his shoulders to know that Emma would have an advocate, and though he would have risen to the challenge without any hesitation, he was grateful that it wasn’t him or his bride to be that had to face Mary Margaret’s impending displeasure.

“Mom, I didn’t realize you were here. I thought you went into town for the day,” David said as he saw Ruth leading Killian and Emma back. He stood from his chair, giving her a kiss on the cheek, and she beamed up at him, her hands patting his shoulder affectionately.

“And I did, for a little while. I thought it best to give everyone their space while you did your planning, but I think it’s time I stepped in now. Don’t you?”

The look of shock on Emma’s father’s face was actually rather funny, so much so that Emma giggled softly beside him. Killian looked to her and the light in her eyes said that her grandmother’s approach was helping. She might still be worried about her mother’s reactions, but she wasn’t as anxious or apprehensive as she might have been otherwise. This was a blessing, since stress wasn’t healthy for Emma or their little one.

“Now, I know there is no one more capable of putting together a wedding to remember than you, Mary Margaret,” Ruth said, with real appreciation, “but I think that the best thing we could do for Emma is to make things very easy. If I’m understanding correctly, there aren’t many things Emma really feels strongly about, right?”

Emma nodded, and let out a sigh of relief at how quickly her grandmother had understood her. Killian felt just as calmed by Ruth’s insightfulness, and he watched in amazement as she continued to press forward, working to convince Emma’s mother of some necessary change.

“So why don’t we do this: let’s get the details that matter to the kids and let’s get a list of absolute no-nos as well. That way we have a general idea of what they want and what they don’t want, and we can build them their magical day as part of our gift to them.”

“Us?” Mary Margaret asked surprised. “Like you and me?”

“Yes, I mean if you’ll have me,” Ruth said, offering her hand to Mary Margaret who took it eagerly. “I know it’s not the same, but I’ll always regret the fact that I couldn’t be part of your and David’s special day. This will give us a chance to make some of those decisions, and it’ll help Emma have some peace of mind while she gets ready for her marriage and her baby. She’ll still be involved, but not so hands on, and together we can make something absolutely beautiful that still falls within reason.”

Emma’s mother looked really happy at the thought, until those last few words popped up. Then she tossed a look at David, before replying to his mother. “I don’t tend to do very well at the ‘within reason’ part.”

“That’s okay, we’ll figure it out together, and we’ll keep Emma and Killian updated as much as they want.”

It was amazing to have witnessed this delivery of an idea. Ruth had only been in their lives for a few weeks, but she had a means of talking to all of them in a way that convinced them to see reason and to be empathetic to others. For the first time, Killian felt like Mary Margaret really understood that this was more of what Emma wanted. It dawned on her that Ruth was right. Emma had lots of other things to be thinking of, and fighting with her mother would only add to an already full plate. At the end of the day, Mary Margaret clearly didn’t want that for her daughter, and she was the kind of mother who would do anything for her children.

“Is this okay with you, Emma? I don’t want you to feel like I’m planning your whole wedding. It’s your day, and I know I can be controlling and opinionated -,”

“Let me stop you there, Mom,” Emma said, coming around the table to sit beside her mother. “I appreciate that you want this to be what I want, but I think grandma Ruth is onto something. Killian and I only really care about a handful of things. I want to pick my own dress, Killian and I want to choose our first song, we want to get married here in Storybrooke, and we want to get married soon.”

“How soon?”

“Before the summer is over,” Emma said, looking to Killian who grinned and nodded.

“All right, and the rest you want to leave to me?” her mother asked and Emma smiled.

“I do. I know our tastes can be different sometimes, but you know me, Mom. I trust you to create not just a beautiful wedding, but one that represents Killian and I. Grandma’s right. There is no one better to plan that then you, and it’ll be a lot less painful of a process if you just follow your own thinking and can go at your own pace.”

Everyone waited with bated breath to see if Mary Margaret would actually respond well to this new idea. There was a chance she might still feel slighted or upset, but when her face lit up with a genuinely happy smile, Killian and Emma breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed they’d actually managed to handle this, and they owed so much of that new found peace to Emma’s grandmother. With a few more quick, overarching questions, about colors and basic thematic elements, the five of them were done and Killian and Emma were left wondering what to do with the rest of their day. Before they had a chance to decide, however, an unexpected party made up of their friends and the rest of their family walked through the back gates of the Nolans’ home.

“Surprise!” Ruby said with a mirthful grin as she wielded a large red pot in her arms. Graham was beside her, carrying at least four of his own containers in an attempt to ease Granny’s load, and behind them were Anna, Elsa, and Liam who all held their own unanticipated offerings too. “It’s a beautiful day, and we were thinking it might be perfect for a barbecue.”

“What a great idea!” Emma’s mother agreed. “And your timing is brilliant. We’re just finishing up.”

“Oh I know,” Ruby said, reminding them all that her visionary gifts often came in hand in cases like this. “It was touch and go for a bit there, but thank god for Grandma Ruth, huh?”

“You have no idea,” Emma agreed, as she grabbed some of the supplies Ruby and the others brought with them before she turned, with a twinkle of mischief in her eye. “Oh wait, actually you do.”

Killian watched as Emma laughed with her friends, a group which now thoroughly included Ruby. It was like they’d been close for years instead of only a few months, and the four of them were predisposed to sharing only good moments together. Ultimately, they went into the house, all of them clearly well pleased with the way the day was turning out, and that was all Killian could ask for. Before she was fully inside Emma tossed one last smile his way, and he grinned, glad that despite how rocky things had been before, his love was now in a much better place.

“You look happy, brother,” Liam acknowledged as he approached and Killian nodded, knowing that Liam’s comment was by no means inaccurate.

“No happier than the Sherriff here,” Killian said motioning to Graham, who walked beside Liam. “Surprised to see you here, Graham.”

“Why would you be? Tink can handle the town well enough on her own. And Ruby is here, so I am too.”

“Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant I was surprised to see both of you. Ruby hasn’t been uh… let’s call it sociable of late.”

“Aye,” Liam agreed, immediately joining in on Killian’s ribbing of their cousin’s new mate. “It was made clear as day after Ruby helped Elsa cast her spell that you’d both be taking a long, long time away.”

“And we will be,” Graham said confidently, his eyes sparkling in a way that so equally matched Ruby’s it was no surprise they were mates. “But things need to settle first.”

“Settle?” Killian asked. “How much more settled can they get?”

“Beats me,” Graham replied with a sigh. “But my girl knows what she knows. She says soon, but not yet, and I have to trust she knows best.”

Killian respected that response and figured that he and Liam had given Graham enough grief. He was family now, after all, and there was nothing more worth protecting and preserving than family. “As to your original question, brother, you’re right. I am happy. I’m happier than I ever believed possible, and I have a feeling you share my sentiments.”

Liam nodded, his own smile still more reserved after years of the emotional drain that had been caused by his sickness. Since Elsa completed the magical bond between them a a couple of weeks ago, Liam had been rapidly on the mend, but Ruby assured them all that it would take time for Liam to be truly acclimated to something like normalcy again. Not that being magically bounded to a witch who was also your mate was normal, per se, but Killian still understood the meaning.

“I only wish Elsa would rebound faster. What she’s been through to save me…” Liam trailed off, the burden of Elsa’s sacrifice clearly weighing heavily on him.

“Has the bonding not taken like it should?”

“No, it was seamless. Elsa saw to that,” Liam said with pride, and Killian bit back another smile as he waited for Liam to elaborate. “It’s just her sleep.”

“Ah,” Graham said, like it was suddenly so clear. “Well that’s easy, humans need more sleep than shifters. That means as much as you might want to keep her up -,”

“I’m not keeping her up,” Liam growled defensively, though Killian was past the point of being afraid of his elder brother’s actions. Despite being frustrated with the implication that he was the cause of his mate’s suffering, Liam was fine and not truly angry with Graham. “It’s her nightmares. They’ve been bad for the past week. She’s been restless, and even on the nights when I think she’s found sound reprieve, she wakes just as tired as when she went to bed.”

“Nightmares? Like the ones she was having before?” Killian asked and Liam nodded. “But I thought those were about you trying to find me or being her mate.”

“They were. These are different, but Elsa says the same darkness sticks with her when she wakes. Just now instead of waking up from blackness, she says she’s been seeing red.”

“Red?” Killian echoed, a sense of uneasiness creeping in at his brother’s confirmation.

“Brighter than blood, was how she put it.”

“Kind of a weird way of phrasing that,” Graham muttered, but Liam disregarded him.

“She says the color is unnatural, and that this particular hue seeps all through the dreams. Monsters with red eyes and a lust for blood. Some of them are trapped, and some roam the forest, searching for something, but all of them terrify her,” Liam said, and Killian felt a chill snap down his spine, a very real trickle of fear coloring his recently more stable world.

“Well damn, no wonder she’s tired. That shit sounds awful.”

“It does,” Killian agreed, almost without meaning to, his mind wandering back to his own remembrances of eyes that repulsive and frightening.

“Meanwhile I can do nothing to stop this. I’d protect her from anything the world over, but how could I possibly ward this off? I have no control of dreams, and it’s starting to drive me mad, which is probably only making her worse.”

“Does she think they’re visions?” Killian asked.

“How could they be? Red eyes? What shifter species has those? None I know of, and none we read word of in her family’s archives. No, I think this is a symptom. My lingering darkness is somehow spreading to her, but when we talked to Ruby she said that the future she can see still looked the same, and in that future we’re both healthy and well.”

“But clearly Ruby’s sight isn’t as infallible as we once thought,” Killian responded, and now Liam and Graham looked at him quizzically.

“Maybe not, but if she says we’re fine and she knows that for sure then certainly that means something.”

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Killian asked, his voice edgier than he intended. Liam’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“Come to you with the nightmares of my mate? I didn’t think it necessary. You and Emma have enough going on. Between showing her how to shift, preparing for your wedding, and the pup on the way, I figured you didn’t need the hassle. Besides, I know my Elsa. She would never wish to add more burden to Emma’s life, not after everything they’ve gone through.”

“They were scarlet,” Killian whispered, and Liam now looked thoroughly confused. “I’ve seen scarlet colored eyes on a shifter before.”

“You have?” Liam asked, immediately on alert. “Where, brother?”

“Boston. Emma saw them too.”

Killian recalled what he could of that night, though it felt like he had gone through the story a thousand times in many ways. It dawned on him as he was telling it though that Liam had never heard the full account, as least not from Killian or Emma, the two who had actually experienced that unusual night. Elsa must have heard it all, but now he wondered if Emma had included those little details. If she had it clearly hadn’t stuck with Elsa, but then again the idea of these eyes wasn’t horrible and gruesome until one saw them in the face of a snarling, ruthless animal.

Just as he’d finished explaining the still mysterious nature of the attack years ago, the back door burst open, and Killian turned to find Emma leading the women out of the house. Gone was her easy demeanor from before, and now it was replaced with worry, a worry that he immediately wanted to fix, but wasn’t sure how.

It’s not just dreams, Emma’s mind pushed towards him through their mated link, her face portraying the pain of accepting that terrifying though. Then she decided to speak aloud so everyone could hear. “They’re visions. Definitely visions.”

“Aye, so it would seem.”

“So much for normal, huh?” Emma asked in a whisper as she came to hold him, trying to find comfort in his arms when a new wave of fear had descended. Though he wished he could tell her that it would all be okay, and that there was no more pain or uncertainty ahead, Killian knew that likely wasn’t true. Whatever these visions meant, and wherever things were going, it seemed they had more darkness standing in their way. But he’d be damned if he didn’t fight it all off and overcome it for their future. They’d handle this, just as they’d weathered every storm up to now, and no matter what it took, Killian swore to himself and to Emma that he’d keep her and their family safe at all costs…

………….

Don’t shift. Don’t shift. Whatever you do, don’t shift.

The familiar voice in his head that belonged to his bear had been growing weaker day by day, increasingly drowned out by the menacing, discombobulated thoughts of something darker. Something ruthless. But tonight there was a desperation and a last display of strength behind his animal’s spirit that Kristoff hadn’t heard before. It was like a final cry of hope, but it felt useless to be hopeful here. Trapped as he was in this cage underground, ripped away from his home and the life he knew before, Kristoff had been losing more and more of himself during this stint in captivity. Whatever the man in the mask was pumping into his veins was slowly driving him crazy, but he had to fight. Even if it was inevitable, he’d fight with every fiber of his being before he’d ever sink willingly into this dark abyss.

“Ah, still trying to deny what must now come,” a voice said, sounding through the bars in an even, unelevated way.

He recognized it as the voice of the man who was in charge of this place. He was the one responsible for all this terror, and the tone of his words reflected that. He was cold, calculating, and yet self-satisfied in a way that made Kristoff’s skin crawl. A twinge in his voice spoke to malicious intent, and if evil was ever to incarnate into human form, this guy was definitely in the running for what it would look like.

“It’s all for nothing, of course. You will, ultimately, give in as all the others have. But I can’t help but wonder at your power when you do. You’re a grizzly, after all, one of nature’s largest abominations, and your resistance to this point… well I have to believe it’ll make your eventual surrender so much more complete. Yes, you’ll work fine. A weapon befitting the task at hand.”

“What’s so damn important?” Kristoff asked. “You keep talking about a weapon, and I can smell there’ve been others here, others you’ve tortured like me. What the hell is your endgame?

The man laughed, and the sound was toxic and scratchy, almost causing Kristoff to wince. Then he walked to the edge of the cage, his body mere inches from the bars as he sneered out a response. “If I had my way you’d all be dead. There’s no worth to shifter life. You are all nothing. Worse than nothing. You’re a plague, a plague brought upon the world to be remedied, and at last I’ve found my way to do just that. What I’ve given you is so much more than you can fathom, it would leave your feeble mind gasping for air to even conceive of it.”

“Try me,” Kristoff said, staring down his captor while doing his best to use his other senses to figure out a way out of here. He just had to get to the gate fast enough to kill this man. He must have a key somewhere, and once this ass hole was dead then maybe Kristoff could be free.

“We don’t have time. You’re ready for your final dose, your last descent, so to speak. You won’t withstand another injection. The sickness will take you then, and this will keep you in line.”

The man pulled a giant, bear sized collar out from behind his back, and even from this distance Kristoff could smell the dark magic attached to the thing. It smelled of death and decay, and it explained why Kristoff had sensed magic nearby. It was strange though - so far things here had seemed almost clinical, but maybe this monster of a man was more than human. A warlock perhaps, or -

“Either way, you should be grateful,” his captor snapped, drawing his full attention back to the fateful moment at hand. “For now you will help cleanse the world of its surest darkness. There’s just one thing left to handle.”

“And that is…?”

The question hung between them in the air, and his captor only smiled the line of his lips forming a menacing, malicious sneer. Then he pressed something on the other side of the wall that Kristoff couldn’t see, and the familiar sound of the floor giving out from under him prompted his body to spring into action. He sought to avoid the trap this time, but there was nowhere to go. He was caught, and before he could even begin to formulate a way out of this, he felt the sharp prick of the needle. He’d failed to stop this mad man, and now it was too late. His pulse was rushing, his mind became frenzied and unglued, and as reality faded into oblivion, all he was left with was a blinding, seeping, sickening sense of red.

Post-Note: So there we have it. Obviously, this is opening another can of worms, but I know a few of you mentioned in the beginning of the story that you were curious what the red eyes meant on the shifter that attacked Emma and Killian. I didn’t just forget about that, and it definitely wasn’t a throw away detail, even if it happened a long time ago. It’s been part of my larger story vision since the beginning. You’ve probably started to piece together some of the parts of the puzzle, but rest assured, next chapter will give a lot more clues as to what exactly is going on and what it all means for CS and the others. Anyway, as always, I am so appreciative of you all reading. It means the world to me to have you all continuing on this story journey with me, and I really hope you’ve enjoyed the chapter!

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smartbutuncertified · 5 years

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Movie Review: NoBody’s Perfect (2008)

I watched the movie noBody’s Perfect, filmed in 2008, by Niko Von Glasow. The main stars are Fred Dove, Kim Morton, and Bianca Vogel. It’s about a man who has a major birth defect due to Thalidomide trying to find others who have a Thalomide birth defect to make a nude calendar. The film largely concerns body image issues, but also touches on the idea of disabled people being whole and how abled people often disregard disabled people’s privacy and dignity for their comfort and curiosity. The act of participating in the calendar seems to be a large step forward for many of them, to seeing their bodies more kindly. It also has a large section devoted to discussing how little responsibility was taken in Germany by the company who distributed the drug, and continued to do so even after they knew what it did to fetuses.

It talks a lot about acceptance of your body and your differences, a subject that is very topical in our airbrushed world. Having a major birth defect is about as far from classical beauty as can be, and yet they find beauty and joy in themselves. So as a member of the general population living in the same cultural climate of our bodies never being good enough, it connects on that level. “My (short) arms are a part of me, they’re a part of my life, and that’s all right. But I am not ‘short arms’.” Sofia declares.

It hits home in a closer way as well. I also had a birth defect. Like a terrible country song, I was born with a broken heart. It was entirely internal, but saving my life left me with a distinctive scar on my chest nearly a foot long, distinctive enough that people who work in cardiology sometimes ask what I had fixed. I don’t think about it too much, but sometimes people mention it when I wear a top that shows where it starts. Perhaps I should be prouder of it. I survived.

Then there’s the abled people feeling like disabled people have some sort of duty to disclose their disability, another personal sore spot. Fred Dove, while being interviewed on a radio show, had his disability disclosed to all the listeners by the interviewer as a bit of - color commentary. I cannot politely express how livid that made me, but I wholly understand why Fred only spoke about it for a few seconds before changing the topic.

Sofia, an actress, recounted a disturbing event from her childhood where she was often forced to strip naked in front of a number of doctors, usually male, for inspection. “It was awful. I was surrounded by about 20 white coats” This reinforced my belief that it’s incredibly important to preserve the privacy and dignity of disabled people, children, and disabled children. There is no reason why a child not having an immediate medical emergency needs to be stripped naked in front of so many adults at once.

It’s stunning that Kim’s mother up and left her religion entirely when the minister refused to have Kim in church due to her visible disabled status. That shows remarkable integrity. It also illustrates a much larger dynamic present throughout the film, the importance of the individual over the system. Systems are useful, but if they no longer serve their intended purpose, for example, a holy place turning away an innocent child for looking odd, they need to be abandoned for the sake of those they should have helped, and didn’t. This aligns wholly with my view of how our relationships with institutions should work.

It’s notable and painful how differently the Vogel siblings were treated by their families, with the one not affected getting much more attention and praise from their grandparents. However, this doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship, they seem quite close. This defied the general narrative of the spoiled child becoming cruel to the maltreated one, and makes me wonder how much truth there is to that idea.

About forty percent of the way through, they reveal a horrifying fact. The company that made the drug knew what it did in 1961, and still kept selling it. Even worse, the pioneer of the drug knew that one of the ingredients was of a group often referred to as “monster makers”. The company compounded the error by having no female trials before releasing it to the public. The company has also never even apologized to the victims, let alone settled with them. One interviewee puts it best when he says “[…] let’s call them criminals, who committed their crimes in the greedy pursuit of profit.” I absolutely agree with that, the film is not the only thing making me want justice for the models.

I’m not sure how I feel about the constant presence of smoking in the film. Since it’s reality, it’s important to represent honestly, but I wonder what this says about addiction among the disabled. Either that, or smoking rates are much higher in Europe. That would have to be a whole other paper, honestly. I don’t agree with smoking, but vulnerable people pick their pleasures where they can get them.

I take exception to one interview where they talk about how when they talk about their issues in a public forum, the issues become detached from them. The interviewee seems to feel that in order to express oneself clearly, detaching yourself is the only way to do it. I would argue that this in fact muddies the issue, making it less about what is important: the people.

I was surprised by the interview with the gardener, which talked about another of the disabled models sexually assaulting women, and about him beating up kids his own age and older in school. It’s generally not considered that the physically disabled are also capable of assault, but they are whole people in every way, not just the positive ones.

I have very mixed feelings about the astrophysicist who reportedly grabbed women’s chests being presented sympathetically. I’m aware that this was a single report from another person, and that that isn’t the whole of who he is, but it still discomforts me that the film seems to brush over what it’s reported that he did. The film mentions that Thalidomide disabled about 7,000 children, surely there weren’t exactly twelve that were willing to pose nude?

It must be mentioned that nobody from the drug company was present in the film for any significant part, but that was not for want of trying on the director’s part. He did his best to loop them into the film for their side of things, and they refused to participate.

It addressed the whole topic of body issues incredibly, letting people speak for themselves about what made them uncomfortable and what didn’t. As one interviewee put it, “[My insecurity] is in my mind, it’s not in your perception, is it? It’s like, you look fine to me, but you’re probably unhappy about something that I don’t care about.”

The presence of ableism is felt throughout the film in many of the conversations and in how several of the models think and behave in regards to themselves. All of the models have varying levels of comfort with themselves and their disability. The director, Niko, is one of the least comfortable. It was interesting to hear that for Doris and Niko, they stayed away from other Thalidomide children for quite a while because they didn’t want to see themselves in them. They didn’t want to relate to others who were clearly different and know that they were just as different. It’s also mentioned that several of the models have had difficulty with romantic relationships because of their disability. But there are only two shown incidents. A child making fun of a wheelchair using model and a man and the end who is being interviewed on the street about the art installation saying that it’s “tasteless” for a disabled person’s naked body to be shown in public. Thankfully, both of these are framed with an immediate counterpoint by people who weren’t hired by the producers, showing that times are changing. These scenes were handled with care.

There was an interesting conversation where an interviewee that uses a powered wheelchair admits casually that he’s considered killing himself. It’s moved past quickly, but there’s something about the framing that makes it feel less like they did it to dismiss it, and more like they don’t want to dwell over it and overshadow the other complex facets that this person has. As someone who has struggled with suicidal impulses, I loved that.

The inclusion of the lesbian art teacher served as a pointed reminder of the intersectionality of disabled issues. Past the obvious, she also mentions founding a group working to protect disabled women and girls from sexual violence, something that’s not often thought of as an issue concerning the disabled specifically. But they are a uniquely vulnerable population to predation.

It passed the “who cares?” test with flying colors, framing the issue as one of pain and justice that crossed communities. I would say that it said that “who cares?” ought to be everyone who wants the world to be a safe place, for companies to be held accountable for their mistakes and “mistakes”, for people to be able to not fear what others think of them for things that are out of their control. Of course, the film may not hit like that for everyone who watches it, but it was good enough to win the German Film Award of 2009, so it’s clearly not just me.

The film opens on a scene of a man talking candidly to his daughter about being afraid to be naked in front of anyone because of his malformed arms. It was a good tone setter for the film, encapsulating the main issue, the joking, yet honest air, and how these people are not curiosities or strange creatures, but humans with lives and families. It was a beautiful way to ease into the film, and it flows well from there.

The theme of showing these people as complex and whole is possibly the strongest one in the film, arguably the film’s thesis. It was hard to hear that some of these people, as babies, were taken away from their mothers by the doctors with no explanation for days. One for two, one for six, and we don’t know about the others. I would understand wanting to monitor babies with a severe birth defect for further issues, but it isn’t that hard to keep the parents in the loop. They chose not to.

The film was art, but not art that is intended to make the viewer feel good. The art is put into making you understand, as much as you can, what happened to these people, and how they have continued on with what they have. You are allowed to have whatever feelings you like, but you must understand that they are whole human beings. They look incomplete to people who don’t know them, but they are anything but. You don’t need a certain amount of body mass to be human.

I must disclose that I personally watched the film largely in 20 minute increments, but that was largely because I kept stopping to note things down so that I could write this as well as possible, with plenty of accurate examples. If I was watching this for pleasure, I would absolutely have gone through it twice over without pause. I may very well do that at a later date.

Add to that that this film launched a successful campaign to increase German benefits for Thalidomide victims, and it’s done the thing all art sets out to do- made a notable mark on the world. I hope that all of the models benefited from this, as it’s hard to find out what happened to people whose last names you mostly don’t know. However, it was easy to find out that Niko is still thriving as a film director.

I thought that this film was stunning. I would view something by these people again in the future, because I love how things were addressed. I loved how they presented everything, how compassionate and thoughtful their framing of delicate issues was. But I would only recommend this to individuals above the age of fifteen who were okay with artistic nudity. There is explicit nudity, which may make some individuals uncomfortable, but it isn’t pornographic, just beautiful people being brave and naked. If you’re at all interested in disability issues, body issues, corporate accountability, or even all three, I would highly recommend this film.

#long post #my writing #nobody's perfect #writing #thalidomide #disabilities #disabled

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skammovistarplus · 5 years

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Culture and Translation - S01 E02 C04-C07 and SKAM+ Clip 1

Hi hi! Okay, so I’ve both gotten a bunch of followers and the tag is a lot more poppin since the last time I posted one of these. Quick explanation: when I got into og Skam, I felt I had to piece together a lot of the cultural context behind it, such as, yes, Russetiden, but also stuff like the cost of a bunad or sex without protection. I’ve also read from multiple Norwegian people that the fansubs didn’t do justice to the slang Skam characters use. So these posts provide cultural context. They also provide explanations for the translation I went with in the subs and the best approximation to the slang the Skam España characters use on the show in the cases where I felt the translation didn’t fully do justice to the actual dialogue.

Note: these posts are based on my own subs/translations, so they might not make as much sense if you hadn’t watched those.

Note 2: You can check the culture and translation tag for the rest of the posts.

CLIP 4: In which I learn that a dj system is not a mixer.

This clip was shot in the Pinar de Chamartín subway station. It’s the only station that connects another line with lines 1 and 4, and the show thanks Metro Ligero in the credits. Pinar de Chamartín is a Metro Ligero subway station. (There are several kinds, depending on which company manages the station.) They probably used this station because it’s big and doesn’t get a lot of commuters. Otherwise, it’s completely out of the way of anything these characters would go to.

Hola acosadora! (“Hi creeper!”): would be closer in meaning to, “hi, harasser!” (which doesn’t flow well in English) or “hi, stalker!” (but Eva uses the word in English right after). So creeper it is.

Dale duro (Subs: Hit it hard): I don’t really have any comment about this, other than it seems to be Lucas’ signature phrase. He’s always saying it.

La gente se cree que hacen una movida los DJs que flipas (“People think DJs are some kind of crazy wizards”) Holy shit, I had so much trouble with this sentence. I wish I knew whether this line was on the original script or if Jorge’s actor reworded it. As per the FormulaTV article, the actors get to reword lines if they think it’d sound more natural some other way. Alas, I couldn’t think of how to translate “movida” in this context (it comes up again later), so I settled for the line in the subs. Let’s just say that the implication is that DJs are almost unknowable in their mad DJ skillz, what with the “movida” and the verb “flipar” that we’ve seen so often at this point. I find my translation much inferior to Jorge’s line, which provides such a vivid visual and is hilarious.

Hablando de punchi punchi (“Speaking of sick beats”): Jorge obviously doesn’t say sick beats, but he’s trying for an onomatopoeia for the beat in dance songs. There are a lot of variants in Spanish for this specific purpose of talking about the beat in a song. Another popular one is, “chunda chunda.” I’m actually really proud of how I translated this line, lol. Too bad I can’t put it on a resume.

“¿Te renta?” is another idiom that often comes up on Skam España. I’ve been told it’s Madrileño slang, but I’ve personally never used it or heard it before the show. (Which doesn’t mean it’s not in use, lol, just that it hasn’t made its way to me yet.) A literal translation would be, “Is it worth it?” Jorge asks Lucas whether it’d be worth it to Lucas to do something this weekend, and Lucas responds going out for beers would be worth it to him. In this case, I didn’t go for the literal translation as this scene is already too long and involved to be throwing more idioms into the mix. Other times, I’ve translated it as is, because I do feel it sums Madrileños up well. Like, we can’t be bothered to do anything or go anywhere if we don’t feel it’s worth it.

Keli (“House”): This has been Madrileño slang for decades at this point. It just means house.

Sí, movidas, ya sabes (“Yeah, shit, you know”): “Movidas” comes up again, this time in the context of Lucas’ home life. Basically, there’s trouble, but the use of “movidas” implies movement, i.e. it’s an active, ongoing situation.

Tengo un programita (“I have some ‘wares”): The literal translation is, “I have a little software,” but I remembered downloading completely legal software from sketchy websites, which would call them ‘warez.’ I thought this phrasing would be more vivid for English speakers. Also, there’s really nothing about Jorge’s persona that suggests this software would’ve been obtained legally, so yeah.

It’s unclear what part of what Eva is saying Jorge reacts to when he says, “Fuck…” Personally, I think he’s impressed that Eva has scammed a rich dude out of an invite to that huge-ass house. But it could also be that he’s proud she’s making plans with the girl squad! Either way, he’s impressed!

Pico, pala, pico, pala (“Joke, flirt, joke, flirt”): OKAY. So, the literal translation of this is, “Pick, shovel, pick, shovel.” This is fairly common Spanish slang for the process of flirting with a girl until she is won over, or she is less reluctant to flirt back. Visually, it makes you think of a miner having to put in long hours of exhausting physical work in order to get results. It makes it sound like more scummy than it is, kind of? I translated it as “joke, flirt, joke, flirt,” because that’s what it usually amounts to. As we’ve seen from Jorge, he does voices, gives odd nicknames and generally aims to be cute in a cheesy way. That is the kind of techniques that are meant to win a girl over, or at least get her to joke along with you.

One more objectionable maneuver, which would still fall under the umbrella of pick and shovel, would be Cristian’s “my DMs aren’t working” move to get Eva to give him her cellphone number.

Final lines from the clip that didn’t make it to the episode:

Eva: But, okay, no. Save up or ask your parents to get it for your b-day, no?

Jorge: Nah, maybe I’ll just get one secondhand.

Lucas: And you lend it to me.

Jorge: Okay.

Lucas: But you can’t… [cuts off]

I love the way all the dj system talk ended up having no impact whatsoever on the plot. It’s not like I had to look specific terms or anything.

CLIP 5: The girl squad chooses an impractical, yet picturesque, meeting point

Eva is waiting right outside Tribunal subway station. I’ve met up with friends at this station probably since I was allowed to hang out on my own, lol.

You can barely make out a building behind the girls. It’s this one: Museum of History of Madrid. Entrance is free, and it has tons of cool stuff to check out.

The girls have a quick chat on how they’ve dressed up for Cristian’s party. Cris says it was about time they had a chance to dress up. Nora says she put on one of her daily outfits, but the girls don’t buy it and tease her over it. Honestly, she doesn’t look overdressed at all? She wore an actual dress for New Year’s Eve.

Maripili! (“Maripili!”): Maripili is a name, which Nora randomly uses to call Viri over. It doesn’t seem to be a meme, so I think Nora is just teasing Viri with a name that sounds dated and cutesy. It’s very gentle teasing though.

Al chino (“To the convenience store”): Eva instructs the girls to go to “el chino,” which is slang for a type of convenience store owned by immigrants. These are usually Chinese immigrants, hence the name, but stores owned by Maghrebi and Latinx immigrants are also fairly common. The name “chino” has stuck regardless. These convenience stores sell a small range of foodstuffs, such as canned food, microwavable food, some fruit and vegetables, ice cream, bread, and, as the scene implies, booze. They also remain open longer than most grocery store chains, often until 23:30 on a weekday and way past midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. They’re not allowed to sell alcohol to minors, but I guess they don’t mind breaking the law? I don’t know, guys, we got older students to buy us booze lol.

Que me acaba de dar un cringe (“I just cringed a lot”): “Cringe” is an English loanword, which is obviously the word cringe.

Tú la que más, tú la que más (“You’re partying the hardest, you are”): The literal translation is: “You’re the most, you’re the most.” It’s implied that whichever girl is “you” (it’s the singular form, so Cris doesn’t mean all of the girls) is doing something the most, but the sentence doesn’t have a verb. Basically, it’s a way of hyping themselves up for the party. I assumed Cris meant “partying” from context, but it’s not explicit.

In the episode, clip 5 became two different clips to account for the train ride. That’s why there’s a timestamp in the middle of the clip when you watch the episode version.

Cristián lives in Pozuelo de Alarcón, an affluent Madrid suburb with its own city hall. At the time, twitter commentary from Spanish viewers was critical of the show choosing to make the girls meet in Tribunal, because public transit from Tribunal to Pozuelo takes too many connections and it’s not like Madrid isn’t rife with convenience stores. I included both the route the girls take, and an alternate for ur edification.

I just realized that when Viri goes over to greet Lara, you can clearly hear Lara saying, “what’s up, dude?” in response.

And also, when Eva begs Nora not to leave her alone, Nora teases Eva by saying the sentence back to her. That’s why Eva laughs and says Nora is being dumb.

A saco (“going all out”): “A saco” is that kind of slang that’s hard to translate, but Eva means that Viri is assertively taking the lead in pursuing (and making it clear she wants to make out with) ALEJANDRO, rather than waiting for him to notice her.

CLIP 6: Viri lost a battle, but she didn’t lose the war!

Nora’s ringtone is so… She truly leaves me speechless sometimes.

No soy celoso (“I’m not possessive”): I translated “celoso” as possessive, because if I translated it as “jealous” it would mean that Cristian, right this moment, doesn’t feel jealous of Jorge. In fact, what Cristian is saying that this is a general personality trait of his, like being blond. He is totally chill with any and all girls he is interested in having boyfriends. That’s not at all an obstacle!

It’s also a very corny thing Spanish guys say all the time when a girl says she’s taken, hence Eva’s uncomfortable smile in response.

As Inés and Alicia greet ALEJANDRO, he seems pretty annoyed by Viri floating around him, clearly laying a claim on him. The three of them intentionally crowd Viri out.

CLIP 7: Hard work pays off

En doce siglos (“in twelve centuries”): This is Amira’s catchphrase for measuring time. She also uses it during the truth or dare game.

One of the season 1 mysteries: what did Alicia say to Inés to make her leave so quickly? In hindsight, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Jorge, but that was one of the popular theories at the time.

Another detail: Cristian is behind Inés, seemingly on her side of this girl fight. ALEJANDRO’s crew seems to be pretty friendly with Inés and Alicia. They celebrated Inés’ birthday together, and often post ig stories together.

Social media:

I already mentioned this in a post, but Cris’ instagram makes it very obvious that Cris is a stoner. Her rainbow tops are peak Spanish stoner girl fashion, the soap video she regrammed is the sort of thing a stoner would be fascinated by, she follows ifyouhigh and highpeopledoingstuff, and she’s holding a blunt for her first ever ig pic. So yeah. I also just realized the implications, seeing she’s the s2 main. I don’t think she’ll lose a bunch of weed, but she might smoke it with 🐸?

“Perezón,” i.e. the title of clip 4, would literally translate to sloth or laziness, but its actual meaning is “what a drag,” as in “that party/those people/going to that rally is such a drag.”

Viri’s house is pretty basic-looking. What we can see of it looks like a working class household, but it isn’t the borderline hoarder situation in Vilde’s clip.

Eva watches an 11-episode show, which may or may not be Skam s1. The fun thing is she promises she won’t watch episode 12. The NYE special is listed as episode12 on the Movistar site.

Jorge got ahold of a charger after midnight!

SKAM+ #1:

This clip takes place between episode 2 clips 6 and 7. Specifically, 20 minutes before the last clip.

Aitana is a Spanish singer born in 1999. She became famous thanks to talent show Operación Triunfo, where she came in second. At the time season 1 aired, she had only dropped two songs, Lo Malo with Ana Guerra, and Teléfono. Both of these songs played a prominent role on the show.

Cristian’s dad works at a record label! Explains Cristian’s huge ass house and mixing room!

ALEJANDRO asks Aitana where she’d like to hang out with him at Retiro Park. Retiro Park is one of the largest parks in Madrid. The park belonged to the Spanish Monarchy until the late 19th century, when it became a public park. It’s one of the most picturesque sights in the city and it’s overrun by people. So I don’t think it’s the place you want to take a celeb on a low-key date, but otherwise, good choice! Almost makes it seem like ALEJANDRO isn’t after sex!

Hasta yo preferiría a Aitana (“Even I’d rather Aitana”): That is… so lesbian of Viri.

Speaking of lesbians, Cris is also absolutely overcome by Aitana’s beauty.

In case you weren’t aware, Spaniards greet each other with two cheek kisses when we meet someone. Touching people’s hair without their permission, though, is still a no-no.

#culture and translation #skam españa #skam spain #skamesp #skames #skam esp

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bookandcover · 3 years

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[An important note: I wrote most of this post in July/August 2020.]

This has been a tumultuous and emotional year. But one good thing to come out of June 2020 was my whole family committing to do, together, an Anti-Racism Book Club. We take turns picking books by authors of color that we feel are important for us to read and discuss. The books can be light-hearted or serious, fiction or non-fiction, contemporary or historical—the important part is that they give my white family opportunities to regularly talk with each other about race.

I grew up in a liberally-minded white family and my parents, in the 90s, frequently said things like “I don’t see race” and “I believe in equality” (implying: so I don’t need to do anything else about it). And my parents did truly feel this way (without seeing why this mindset presented its own set of problems). They raised me to be kind and compassionate, to approach anyone as my equal (not greater, nor less), and to listen to others. But they also raised me in a lot of ignorance, and—especially after we moved to incredibly white rural Maine—race was a very limited part of our lives and discussions. My sister and I both changed and grew a lot during college and graduate school, confronting our ignorance and the racist assumptions and misunderstandings that grew out of this. Our conversations with our parents over the past decade have centered around bringing race, religion, culture, and sexuality/gender diversity back into our awareness and our lives. I appreciate so much how willing my parents are to talk and to think about these topics, even though we all have a lot of growing and learning to do.

In early June, an Anti-Racism Family Book Club seemed like one (small, but important) thing we needed to do. We all know that talking to each other doesn’t offer the same experience (that we all need more of) of hearing about and discussing directly the impacts and the complexities of racial discrimination, unequal education access, regular police violence, and criminal injustice with people of color in our lives. But, at the same time, I’ve found that conversations among white people about race are vital. We need to actively educate ourselves and each other. We cannot rely on others (asked to explain themselves and their trauma over and over again) to do this for us. In conversations about race with other white people, I’ve seen white people be shockingly open, and, in saying what they really think (their cruelest misconceptions and darkest assumptions), they’ve been able to root out these things and address them, dig out the thorniest examples of racism in their hearts and start to look at the world in a new way. Lots of liberally-minded white people are cautious to bring up the most harmful things in their hearts and minds in front of people who they might hurt, but then these things fester. In front of other white people, I’ve seen some of these things (and I’ve experienced this happening to myself, as well) get addressed and changed.

Born A Crime (my sister’s pick) was our June book, and we’ve also covered Just Mercy for July (now onto Richard Wright’s Black Boy for August). This was a great place to start in June because Trevor Noah brings levity and humor to issues of racial injustice and discrimination. Many serious conversations about race were happening—at our workplaces, in our communities, in our family—so I was glad that our discussion of Born A Crime could also feature race-centric experiences that include moments of humor and levity as well. As we discussed this book, we did talk a lot about humor when it’s used in a racially-charged space. Humor is, of course, inherently a tricky subject. Where “the line” is looks different for each person and many comedians intentionally walk this line, shocking and startling us, and sometimes crossing over into areas that make their audience uncomfortable. That being said, I really value humor in the context of any serious social issue. It helps us look at our selves in new ways. But where “the line” is, when it comes to racially-charged humor, takes a lot from who is telling the joke and who is the butt of it. While Noah is incredibly tactful at most turns, my family carefully dissected the story “Go Hitler!” which, unlike most of Noah’s social commentary blended with humor, included a social group to which he does not belong. As Noah described the terrible misunderstanding that occurred between his dance troupe with a skilled dancer named Hitler and the community at a Jewish school for young children, I felt he dealt with the misunderstanding in a powerful, self-aware way. My sister, whose fiancé is Jewish, felt more sensitive to this, raising concerns that Noah’s story was making a joke out of something that must have been a truly shocking experience for the young children who witnessed a group of older kids seemingly supporting (and openly celebrating) Hitler and what he stood for. It is poignant to see the misunderstanding between these two groups occur and the young boys of Noah’s dance group do not intend harm (but they cause it and no resolution occurs (in the space of the story) with them them figuring out and processing the miscommunication). Is this story walking a line when it’s told, years later, with tones of shock at a past limited viewpoint, but also with tones of comedy? I think there is no easy answer here.

Another space in which Noah finds comedy among tough topics is within the physicality of his relationship with his mother. The moments of humor, of absurdity here, of course, read quite differently than the “Go Hitler!” story, as Noah is capturing the particulars of his mother’s lived experience, as a Black woman with a Colored child in South Africa under Apartheid. The physicality of their relationship—normally, Noah’s mother not holding back from hitting and slapping him, punishing him physically for both small and large transgressions—takes center stage in several of the stories. Noah’s conviction that his mother’s brand of tough love is exactly that, love, shines through these stories as well. At no point does Noah understand her way of raising him with a firm hand to be anything other than merited by his behavior (at least, looking back on it). Noah mixes humor and levity into his stories that include sever punishment at his mother’s hands, and humor in these moments works because we perceive them to be equals. We don’t see their fights as abuse or disrespect, from either direction. (That being said, the reaction—judgmental, alarmed—I’d likely otherwise have to physical fighting between family members is definitely a mark of my privilege). Noah’s mother is whip smart. When he starts running, she starts running too. Their physical fighting somehow uplifts her, solidifies her, empowers her—she is in control (not of Noah, exactly, but of herself, of her choices and actions. When she lashes out, it’s not out of fear, but strength. It’s not out of panic or desperation, but out of certainty—a clarity of mind and purpose that lets her actively shape Noah more firmly than the world will shape him, and the world can be very firm she knows). And Noah credits her, over and over again, for molding him. From her choice to throw Noah, only a child, from a moving car and herself out afterward to escape a dangerous driver to her choice to jump in front of her abusive ex-husband, as he starts firing a gun at her and their children—we readers repeatedly see her vividness, her conviction, and her strength in Noah’s life.

I purchased a physical copy of the book (my normal preferred reading method), but my mom and sister listened to the audiobook through their Audible accounts. While I was home, I listened to several chapters of the book with my mom and it was wonderful to hear Trevor Noah reading his own stories aloud (with his distinctive comedic tone and timing). I found it helpful to both listen to and read the book because my knowledge of South American cultures, ethnicities, and languages is very limited. It helped me to both hear Trevor Noah pronouncing words and names in Afrikaans, Zulu, and Xhosa and to see these words written on the page. A hugely significant part of this whole novel was the historical context Noah provides for racial inequality in South Africa. His description of Apartheid, as an intentional organizational structure established to oppress people through the separation of racial and ethnic groups and the classification of peoples according to (at times) arbitrary physical characteristics, was eye-opening. I thought it was poignant to see the intentionally behind Apartheid, as a structure and governing framework. I think, frequently, of racial issues in the U.S. as growing out of a complex history and amalgamation of factors—economic, social, cultural, political. It’s alarming to see and to consider clear-minded intentionality behind racist structures, but seeing the designed nature of Apartheid, I was called to think about how many racist structures in U.S. are also very intentionally designed (our criminal justice system, healthcare system, education system, economic systems and taxation processes, voting rights and procedures, to name a few that are very relevant today, which doesn’t even consider heavily-designed oppression frameworks like Jim Crow laws and segregation). I’m not quite sure why this felt like a revelation to me, but the fact that it did felt poignant and troubling. Why was I inclined (trained, shaped, influenced) to see my country’s history as an unfortunate, perfect storm of many factors and not a heavy-handed, intentionally designed framework of racism just like that of Apartheid? I know why, of course. The subversiveness of systemic racism is that we’re taught, on every level, to accept it as “no one’s fault really,” but huge, ingrained, impossible to change, embedded into the very fabric of our lives. The fault is clear, though, and the influence huge. But, given that this is a chosen, designed framework...surely we can fight toward a different design.

Although, it feels daunting.

[Another note: I write these posts primarily for myself, to keep track of some of my feelings and thoughts about books I read. But I realize I’m also putting them online, which means others can see them and react to them. If you ever read something I wrote and want to talk to me about something, point out to me something I haven’t considered, correct me on something I am wrong about—an area of extra high probability when it comes to topics around race—I would like it if you felt okay about reaching out to me with a message. Thank you for considering it.]

#born a crime #trevor noah #good reads #antiracism #antiracism book club #talking about race #apartheid

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curious-minx · 4 years

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Entering into a new dawn of Corporatist Neoliberalism, all while leaving behind a rising Fascist Empire. A solid Bob’s Burgers and a surprisingly decent Simpsons is your reward.

“Fast Time Capsules at Wagstaff School” once again finds the show operating in the territory it does best: A Poignant twee commentary with the junior Belchers and a nearly pointless sideplot with the adult Belchers that actually sports a satisfying conclusion. The ingredients of a quality kids subplot requires a touch of Tina having the conflict of wielding too much power passed down to her by Mr. Frond whose mere appearance reliably bumps an episode up a notch. This episode not only also weaves the usual Tammy and Jocelyn jealousy games with Tina but also splashes two other of Tina’s peers into the mix: Jim Gaffigan’s Kelsey Grammar indebted Henry Haber and girl friend Sasmina voiced by National Treasure Aparna Nancherla. The episode focuses primarily on Tina’s gatekeeping of the contents of the Wagstaff time capsule. A particularly timely concept for a year where history is a constant 24/7 newsfeed of dramatic historical importance.

I fold up my muted pink streaked swimming trunks and put them into my personal time capsule. No way will I ever be braving a public beach or swimming hole. The act of exposing any amount of flesh during a pandemic is unthinkable, but in another 50 years I am sure there will be a lot more living to do. The episode goes even further in poignancy with layering a coinciding Louise conflict over a pair of Boyz4Now lands a lot differently in these Quarantined Times. Never have I related to Louise and her desire to go see a cute pop group sing in an intimate live setting, singing such hits like “Your Heart Fell On The Floor, Let Me Get It For You,” a level of cuteness not even Belle and Sebastian or The Magnetic Fields could probably come up with. The main plot moves along with a clean efficiency of storytelling bringing Louise and Tina conspiring together using their combined sister brain to retrieve the tickets, but due to further conflicting interests. The episode concludes with the characters taking their personal losses and rolling with the punches, which is another central sweet spot. Earlier on the series I felt like the Belcher family were constantly losing and being put down upon by the world around them. The pendulum of justice remains in flux giving the Belchers and friends minor victories, but the last image of this episode really gets to me. The sight of group of kids in a parking lot bonding by singing the hit “Someday We’ll Spoon” as it plays off in the distance. Another song title that hits so much harder than it ever could have without the rampaging socially distanced disease.

“If you see a cop, whistle!” - Teddie, and me whenever I see a cop because I always make sure to harass and wolf whistle at cops like they were a piece of construction worker street meat.

One of my new favorite Bobspressions.

The B plot with Bob and Linda is essentially that Bob can whistle, but Linda cannot, although Linda can roll her R’s. This teasing and taunting domestic squabble is cushioned by the looming gentle omnipresence of Teddie. Teddie, Bob and Linda are a solid trio and play off each other as characters really well and the repartee between the characters feels a lot looser than it has in past episodes of this season. The subplot culminates in Teddie making one of my favorite comedic moves being dependent on his parasocial relationship with Bob and Linda’s marriage. Teddie is the friend that believes in the love of his friends’ marriage more so than his own friends do and it’s always pretty touching to see Teddie play that card. The adults largely stay completely static inside a one-shot of the restaurant with Bob in the kitchen window, but there is a discernible rise and fall conflict between Bob and Linda that culminates with simple silly sweetness. Once again the adults are left fuddling around in their comfortable boxes and squares they have created for themselves, while the children are foisted out in the world having to deal with Future.

One other particularly timely one-off joke that the writers would have no way of knowing how timely and off-putting it would be is when Eugene makes a reference to Sean Connery. Gene compares Linda to the late actor responding to Linda on her R syllable rolling flexing. I am sure the writer of the episode felt some kind of something with this episode airing a week after the man died.

This episode is a Boyz4.5(4)Now.

///

Thankfully this next episode of the Simpsons did not trot out Mr. James Bont. Episode 5 of Season 32 “The Seven Beer Itch” is a rebound episode from the last three exhausting conceptual excursions. I failed to do a write up on the Season 32 premiere episode, “Undercover Burns,” which I give a Pass (A Pass btw means that you won’t be harmed passing this show through your system, whereas Skip speaks for itself). Both the season opener and this fifth episode are just Simpsons episodes based in and around Springfield. No historical role-play or contrived literary surrogate puppet shows. This episode initially begins filling the viewer with “Simpsons on Holiday” dread opening the episode with The Groundskeeper Willie serving as the episode’s narrator. What’s completely confounding is that Willie has no bearing on the plot of this episode in any way whatsoever other than the fact that both he and UK Treasure Olivia Coleman are both from across the Pond.

The Simpsons have become one of the most musical series on television, and frankly it saps away the energy of the when songs pile on top of one another. I know I should be more wickedly delighted by having The Gosh Dang Favourite singing a pub song to Homer at Moe’s Tavern, but instead these songs make me go dead inside. Especially when Dan Castellaneta has to be a total diva belching out melodies with honey voiced Barney. Maybe if the songs were relegated to once a season or specifically to the ending credit sequence a la Bob’s Burgers that would be one thing, but a song (or three! Or five!) per episode is simply too busy. Then again “busy” describes everything about the Simpsons in 2020. The show continues to astound me visually with Springfields starry purple skies, brief glimpses of London clock towers served up alongside Marge and kids trip to Martha’s Vineyard. We even take a pit stop in California with Olivia Coleman’s Lily doing a forced, weirdly gentle riff with Leonard DiCaprio (who goes uncredited, making matters even stranger). Overall, modern Simpsons is the nicest looking adult animated sitcom around until Tuca and Bertie comes back on air. That being the said the plots of each episode feel like they are being pulled out of a magic foam wizard’s hat stuffed to the brim with Simpsons conceits. This week the writer’s pull Homer Seduction from out of the hat.

The Homer seduction plot can be traced back as early as Season 3 with the episode “Colonel Homer.” This episode more or less grafts its main plot swapping out a Pretty Country Singer with a Charming British Lady. The songs in “Colonel Homer” were actively related to the plot with country star Lurleen Lumpkins becoming infatuated with Homer Simpson, because he’s, he’s a simple and um sweet man. Homer has fidelity! 32 plus years on the air and Homer still remains the kind of man that will still choose his wife over whatever hot piece of Academy Award Winning voiced action comes his way.

I will end this review with this image of Homer giving us viewers come hither and fuck me eyes. Imagine an artist sitting down and drawing Homer Simpson giving you this coquettish glance and try not feeling sick with existential dread:

This episode deserves a Pass.

///

Addendum:

A response to Digital Spy and hand wringing queerness out of a cartoon child

The article in question is available here.

The journalist of this article insistence that Lisa be a LGTBQ+ icon is understandable, but taking umbrage with Yeardely Smith’ for saying that she views Lisa as a child is queasy and infuriating. Smith isn’t a Karen trying to rob Lisa of her Queer freedom. Lisa’s queerness is innate and subtly woven into the character and explicitly spelled out in future glimpses of the character. I really shutter to think what the Simpsons mostly white and male writers room would concoct for a “queering” of Lisa. Dissecting and analyzing a cartoon child’s sexuality is all fun and games, but the world is also dying and full of real life children, not cartoon characters, in pain far more worthy of our concern. I would much rather there be support for Queer artist making their own adult animated sitcom and let Lisa Simpson just be a little girl that loves as Yeardely Smith calls “girly things.” Interpret this literally. Lisa is a cartoon girl living in a cartoon world and she’ll probably grow up to be a nonbinary polyamorous Super Computer or Sax Master General.

If you haven't already I strongly recommend readers check out Smith’s appearance on the currently defunct podcast Harmontown. In the episode “I Was A Simpson” she comes across as charming and thoughtful and worth a listen. She’s not someone that strikes me as a hateful advocate of queer erasure. She strikes me as a cagey performer not wanting to nail down too many concrete details about her character. Ultimately the writers and Smith know Lisa is a queer character, but unless the show is willing to hire a LGBTQ+ writer to help create a Queer Coming of Age centric coming of age episode I am content with having her identity be nudged and winked at in glimpses of the future and left at that. Good grief.

#Tv #Tv series #TV review #bob's burgers #the simpsons #2020 #fall 2020 #fox #animation domination #Oliva Coleman #feminism #lgbt representation #lgbt discourse #lgbt #harmontown

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cameoamalthea · 7 years

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there is ABSOLUTELY a “wrong way to process trauma” and that is by retraumatizing yourself “to cope” and being a pedophile :/

Hi there Anon,

This will be a long response and part of it is under a read more. My theme is not very reader friendly (sorry - need to fix that) so I suggest reading on your dash if you have the extension for that or copy/pasting into a document. Sorry again.

I assume you’re referencing this post. I’m not sure what drama has gone in the thread from that post, because no one reblogged any commentary meant for me from me, but based on your ask I’m assuming some folks misunderstood me. Allow me to clarify.

The point of the post is to respond to @shipwhateveryouwant ‘s post about lack of empathy by pointing out that empathy is hard, especially if you’re dealing with triggers.

I was talking to her.

The “There’s no wrong way to react trauma” refers to getting upset other things that trigger you and coming to the conclusion ‘this is gross’ ‘this is triggering’ ‘this is wrong’

It’s OK to feel that way.

It’s OK to feel anyway that you feel, because your emotions are 100% valid.

However, as my post recommended, it’s important to fact check.

A bit of background, in case you just came here because of that post and aren’t stalking my blog. I’m a survivor of abuse, including CSA, and that left me with scars, both physical and mental. I’m in group therapy DBT, individual therapy which includes EMDR, couple’s therapy (sometimes when two people who have PTSD are in a relationship it can be hard, since we both have to cope with the effect of our partner’s abuse on the other), and I did a year of physical therapy (pelvic floor).

I blog about my recovery, and things I learn because A) Being open about being in therapy (while making me a bit vulnerable) says ‘therapy is nothing to be ashamed of’ and neither is being a survivor, I’m not pretending it never happened AND B) So people who might not have heard about these treatment options of think nothing can help, can see what worked for someone else and know what happened (literally, it took me years to find a treatment plan that worked, and I really thought I was permanently damaged mentally and physically, so it was a big deal when I found out there were things that could help me).

So in my post I used an example of one my big triggers, drugs and the drug trade (I really really have major issues here). However, when I got out of emotion mind and checked the facts, I realized fans of breaking bad weren’t hurting anyone and weren’t trying to hurt me.

I was trying to explain to OP why empathy is such hard work, especially when you’re caught up in you’re emotions. When you’re angry, or hurt or scared.

I’m not angry that people enjoy a TV show that I don’t like…

I’m angry (tw discussion of addiction, child abuse, csa)

that I was born with drugs in my system. I’m angry that my mother continued to use on and off while raising me. I’m angry she fell into heavy drug use and endangered my life. I’m angry I was raped as a kid. I’m angry my own mother threatened to sell me to self traffickers and tried to get me be sexually active at like 13/14 with boys my age she’d leave alone with me (whether I wanted them there or not) because she thought it would make me more willing to turn tricks for her because she needed money (she was supposed to sell drugs for the cartel, but she felt you had to sell drugs Mary Kay style using herself as the free demo, she owed them a lot of money).

I’m angry that I lost my mother, that the person I love disappeared inside the addiction and she became a really awful person when was high. She wasn’t great when she was mostly sober, she always had untreated mental illness and she was always abusive/inappropriate verging on incest, but she’s still my mother and she was all I had and I loved her. I was a child, you love your mommy, and I’m angry that I didn’t have a mother I didn’t have to be afraid of and I 100% blame the drug use because addiction is a fucked up thing.

So I got angry when I saw artists I liked posting Breaking Bad fanart AUs and candy meth picks, because it felt like they were treating something very not funny (drugs and drug addiction, along with the pain I’ve had as a result) as a joke.

However, how I felt doesn’t dictate facts.

I had to step back, check the facts, and realize people liking Breaking Bad weren’t trying to hurt me (or actually hurting me. What other people watch on TV doesn’t effect me).

They weren’t trying to make fun of my experiences or make light of a serious issue. I also knew from my academic research on the topic of whether media influences norm that it really doesn’t… (I did a pre-law minor focused on social justice, and Freshmen Year I set out to prove porn hurt women and caused rape, and quickly found that evidence didn’t support my thesis, video games don’t cause violence, porn doesn’t cause sexual violence – and no I don’t still have the paper, unless I manage to find it on an old hard drive and most of my sources are outdated by now, I’d have to re-research – but I’m actually not here to argue the point).

So I believed, based on evidence and my own research, that media is worthy of critique but doesn’t influence behavior directly. This is my own belief, and I don’t want to argue it. But despite that, despite the fact I didn’t think fiction causes crime, I HATED BREAKING BAD. I felt like it was romanticizing Drugs and making people not take something serious seriously…

Because I wasn’t thinking about it rationally.

I was thinking about it based on my emotions. How I felt.

In DBT we learn that to think of your mind like a Venn Diagram. Rational Mind is one circle, Emotional Mind is in the other circle, and in between is Wise Mind.

Wise Mind is acknowledging your emotions/how something makes you feel but also being able to bring in rational mind, to fact check, which means asking does how I feel fit the facts and remembering that feeling something doesn’t make it true.

If you’re just in rational mind, you can be cold and ignore other people’s feelings, which can make them feel invalidated and make you less effective in dealing with your own feelings (don’t ignore them) and others.

If you’re just in emotional mind, you’re not thinking clearly. You might break down and cry or lash out and hurt someone. You can’t really address the thing that’s upsetting you because you’re not in a place where you can even think clearly about it without getting upset.

If pure rational mind is behind the wheel you’re not a good driver, if pure emotion mind is behind the wheel you’re not ok to drive.

It’s not easy to find wise mind. Mindfulness is the most practiced skill in DBT (it’s a year long class and six months of it just repeating Mindfulness and the other six months are bringing in those skills to apply to other issues…Wise Mind is from the unit on Emotional Regulation…I’ve been in DBT for nearly four years, repeating the class, honing the skills – it’s not easy).

But we should try, for ourselves and others.

I hope OP takes from my post some understanding of where you’re coming from anon and that it’s really hard to be empathetic when something makes you angry, let alone when you’re triggered.

That it’s important to validate.

Rational Mind says ‘people are taking fiction way to seriously. It’s just a TV show, there’s no reason to be upset’

Wise Mind is realizing that feelings aren’t rational and they really are hurting. Even if they don’t lay out their feelings clearly like I did with ‘why Breaking Bad upsets me’ it’s enough to see that someone is upset. If someone is upset, it’s serious to them, validate that.

“I’m sorry that you were hurt. I understand that this reminds you of your trauma. I will tag anything you need. No one should pressure you to deal with triggers you aren’t ready to deal with and I want to make it possible for you avoid things. You seem really upset right now, though, so I don’t think we should fight about anything. We’re not in a place where we can. be calm and get anything out of it. You seem really caught up in a lot of negative emotions. Why don’t you take a break. Go get some ice cream or color or get your mind off things for bit? If you don’t think you’ll ever be ‘not upset’, then I’ll go ahead and block you since my content is bothering you. Have a nice day.”

I hope that you anon, if you bother to read all the way here, takes away from this post that it’s ok to be angry, but realize that feelings aren’t fact and being upset doesn’t justify hurting others.

And attacking people based on what they read or what TV shows they like is hurting others.

Calling anyone a pedophile is hurtful. (that’s a very serious accusation Anon, and not one your should use lightly. Don’t go crying wolf about child predators, it makes people less likely to take real accusations seriously - like if someone calls someone else a pedophile does that mean they’re a sexual predator and a child molester or does that mean they like a TV show I don’t like or read stories that I find upsetting). Again, your feelings are valid Anon, but someone liking a TV show you don’t like doesn’t make them a danger to anyone. Hurting real children makes them a danger to children. We shouldn’t water down terms. We need to take threats to people seriously.

Calling CSA survivors pedophiles, comparing survivors to their abusers or implying they are to blame for their abuse past or future is hurtful.

I like Game of Thrones. I think Jon and Danny are a good match, both as people and politically. I don’t see anything wrong with the relationship, she’s biologically his aunt but they have no relationship.

I like Ouran High School Host Club, and my favorite characters are the twins. Sometimes you can like a messed up story because it’s messed up. It’s just a story.

I ship Catwoman and Batman, and think they’re cute together in Gotham. I like that backstory. I also think Mike and Eleven are cute together.

I like reading and writing fanfic about teenage video game characters that I’ve liked since I was a teenager. I relate to a video game character and take something positive from his story and his relationship with his best friend even though the relationship in game is unhealthy.

This isn’t ‘re-traumatizing’ myself and it’s not ‘being a pedophile’.

I have a degree in creative writing and I look at books as works of art and craft, not moral guides. I look at characters as tools, not people.

That’s not ‘being a pedophile’ that’s being someone with an English Degree (I miss just being able to identify as an English major, saying I have a degree sounds so pretentious to me). That’s being a writer.

I admit that I like relationships between predator and prey, between people and monsters. That’s not ‘re-traumatizing myself’ either.

Abuse, in my experience, has been when someone you love, someone you’re supposed to be able to trust and feel safe with instead hurts you and makes you unsafe. It’s a betrayal of trust. It makes you question if you’re lovable or worthy of love because someone who was supposed to care for you hurt you.

I like stories about monsters. You’re not supposed to be able to trust a monster. The monster makes you feel afraid. It’s going to hurt you. It’s nature is to hurt you. I like stories where instead of killing you the monster falls in love with you and changes, becomes loving and trustworthy and keeps you safe. It’s a fantasy of being so special, or mattering so much, of being so love able that that you can tame dragons.

It’s about the inverse of abuse. A power fantasy. Exploring fear and helplessness within a safe controlled fantasy.

That’s not ‘re-traumatizing’ myself. I promise, I’m fine anon. I’m not hurting myself and I have a support network. Thank you for your concern, though, but please remember you’re not responsible for anyone else.

It’s scary, but you don’t control the world or others. If you’re afraid someone is doing something that hurts them, sometimes you have to accept you can’t change that. (And that’s hard, I know, my mother is a drug addict). Sometimes you have to distance yourself. If people are doing things that upset you, block them and that content, take a step back.

#Anonymous

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geekade · 7 years

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Geekade Top Ten: Best Treehouse of Horror segments EVER!

Here we are once again with another Geekade Top Ten, this time around highlighting what may be the most obvious column we've never done. First hitting the air way back on October 25th, 1990, the "Treehouse of Horror" Halloween specials have become a part of the very fabric of American Halloween celebrations. The Simpsons, at this point the longest running animated show AND longest running sitcom AND longest running scripted primetime show in American history, has been many things over the years. And while the quality of show has been all over the map the last few years, the "Treehouse of Horror" episode has consistently been a highlight of each season. Looking back over the segments we've gotten brought back some amazing memories and a few cringes. Ranking the top ten episodes seemed a bit silly, since it's a special based around individual segments. So, obvious choice being obvious, Geekade.com proudly brings to you the definitive top ten segments from the "Treehouse of Horror" ever.

#10: The Raven - Treehouse of Horror

With any list like this there are bound to be disagreements and no one segment may split people more than this one. A straight reading, by the excellent James Earl Jones, of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," this segment is light on gags or inventiveness. What we get, and why I love it so, is a wonderfully animated version of one of the greatest poems ever written. Bart as the titular raven is as iconic an image as the show has ever produced.

#09: Homer3 - Treehouse of Horror VI

When this episode first aired, it was a huge deal. There had simply never really been anything like this before on network television, much less on a cartoon. The visual gags are still great, even if computer animation isn't the holy-shit-big-deal they were when they first showed up. Plus, the moments of everyone trying to find Homer are great. Definitely one of my favorites and deserving of a spot in this top ten.

#08: Clown Without Pity - Treehouse of Horror III

One word: frogurt. This episode brought frogurt mainstream, for better or worse, as a result of a hysterical exchange between Homer and a horribly stereotypical Chinese man. Homer had neglected to get Bart a birthday present, see, and like any good yet regretful father, he rushes right out to the local oddities shop owned by the mysterious foreigner. The Krusty he buys turns out to be, in the words of Grandpa, evil... EEEVVVVIIIILLLLL. Damn good stuff here.

#07: Oh the Places You'll D'oh - Treehouse of Horror XXIV

One of the more recent segments that made this list, "Oh the Places You'll D'oh" is odd even for a Treehouse of Horror segment. Being a parody of Dr. Suess was never going to be easy, but the writing on this segment is so sharp, it's as if the man himself was contributing. Add in the fact that the animation is fantastic and the realization that The Cat in the Hat is actually super creepy and you have a slam dunk segment.

#06: A Clockwork Yellow - Treehouse of Horror XXV

The other more recent segment on this list, "A Clockwork Yellow" makes this list higher than a lot of other, better, segments because of the slew of Kubrick references contained within. The language hits spot on, the visual gags are great, and the depth of the references are obscure in the best of ways. This is a dense segment that requires multiple viewings. If you are a Kubrick fan though, there's more than enough to love.

#05: Bart Simpson's Dracula - Treehouse of Horror IV

Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of the more iconic horror flicks of all time and this parody does the source material justice. There are some very, very good jokes in this episode with none being more iconic than the, "He's a vampire..." line. It's still hilarious today and something my friends and I quoted to death back in school. This segment gets bonus points for being pretty creepy as well, with the image of Bart floating outside of Lisa's window being particularly scary.

#04: Nightmare Cafeteria - Treehouse of Horror V

One of the bloodiest segments ever aired, "Nightmare Cafeteria" plays on an old trope of humans being delicious which, to be fair, we probably are. Due to budget cuts, the school cafeteria needs a new source of meat and it just so happens that misbehaving students fit perfectly in the meat grinder. The adults in the school go a bit overboard and start killing kids left and right, leading to Principal Skinner delivering one of the most hilarious moments in the history of the show. Alas, poor Uter. So delicious.

#03: Time and Punishment - Treehouse of Horror V

Oh, time travel. So hard to do well because of all of the possible consequences inherent in changing one little thing in the past. A concept so beautifully realized by Homer when he's had enough of trying to find his way back the "right" way. There are some truly disturbing timelines in this segment, some truly hilarious ones, and Homer left-hooks a giant mosquito. What more do you need? Also, more James Earl Jones.

#02: Citizen Kang - Treehouse of Horror VII

The Simpsons have always done their part to criticize and critique culture. It may not have always been “in the moment,” but the message was clear. Citizen Kang however went right at the election of 96 featuring both Bob Dole and President Clinton. The episode has some truly poignant commentary on our political system as well as some of my favorite lines in the series, "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos" and "Twirling towards the future" have been part of my shtick since.

#01: The Shinning - Treehouse of Horror V

I'm not sure there was any doubt in my mind that this would be number one. As soon as I said I would write this top ten, this was my choice for number one. It's just absolutely perfect storytelling. The jokes hit big, the visuals are gorgeous, the delivery is wonderful, and it is as quotable as could be. This is movie parody done right. It's an episode that manages to be tense, dramatic, and silly all at the same time.

So there you have it; the definitive guide to the top ten Treehouse of Horror segments ever. All of "Treehouse of Horror V" made the cut and was the primary reason it made more sense to break these up by segment than episode. Only two newer segments made my top ten, but a bunch of others were damn close. What's your top ten? Follow me on twitter and instagram, @geekadedan, and let me know and make sure to drop us a line at [email protected] to let us know what you think. As always feel free to share and spread the word, please and thank you.

#treehouse of horror #simpsons #homer #bart #d'oh #TV #articles

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daleisgreat · 5 years

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X-Men Apocalypse

We are approaching the release date for the final FOX X-Men film hitting theaters when Dark Phoenix arrives next week. Thus it seemed like a perfect time to revisit FOX’s previous ensemble X-Men film, 2016’s Apocalypse (trailer). Minus a couple exceptions, I have largely enjoyed most of the X-Men movies so far, even if I have barely an idea of what is or is no longer canon anymore and the many contradictions that have surfaced with each proceeding film. The filmmakers stated in the bonus feature interviews here they are essentially making up the rules as they go along ever since they introduced time travel. Regardless, each X-film in and of itself I have mostly enjoyed on its own merits, and that continues with Apocalypse. Apocalypse has greatly benefited with a second viewing a few years later. I recall nitpicking it in the theaters for its contradictions and other little details that did not match up with previous films and trying to come to terms with the unexpected costume and character design of Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) himself as it compared to the Apocalypse costume I grew up with in the comics and early 90s animated series. Now that I got those initial puzzled impressions out of my system I took in Apocalypse on its own and those nitpicks were not as much of a distraction on second viewing.

Apocalypse transpires 10 years after the events of Days of Future Past in 1983. I liked how they set up the origin for Apocalypse in the prologue and establish how he is this god-like force to be reckoned with all these years later. Watching him grow in power as he recruited Angel (Ben Hardy), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) as his ‘four horsemen’ proved him to a formidable force. There is a lot of setup Apocalypse’s first half of its near two and a half hour runtime. It did not feel that long however because with its ensemble cast there were so many individual stories to tell to bring everyone together that Apocalypse breezed by. Nearly all the main players from the previous two core X-Men films return like Professor Xavier (James McAvoy), Mystique (Jennifer Laurence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult). Periphery players from before like Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Havok (Lucas Till) also have bigger roles in this film. Young versions of Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and yes….even Jubilee (Lana Condor) make their debut in this past era of X-films. There are a few surprises I do not want to ruin, but rest assured there are plenty of interesting interactions among the huge cast knowing how these characters will interact in movies set after this. Fassbender and McAvoy easily have the best chemistry among the whole cast and the two steal the show with their handful of one-on-one emotional scenes.

Like the rest of the X-films, Apocalypse does not disappoint when it comes to special effects. There are countless CG showcases from the Apocalypse origin story prologue, to another Quicksilver slow-motion sizzle reel, a couple of impressive destruction sequences where Apocalypse unleashes his fury and the requisite Cerebro scene gone terribly wrong. These CG sequences go hand-in-hand with most of the action scenes, and they were smartly paced in with all the setup and build to the climatic final showdown which is highlighted with Apocalypse and Xavier engaging in a telepathic duel for the ages. How those CG scenes were produced is tackled among the boatload of extra features. X-Men Unearthed is the standout extra. It is a five-part feature running a little over an hour combined and tackles how the cast and crew is handling the convoluted canon of the X-films, shows Patrick Stewart give his blessing and witness MacAvoy shave his head, breaks down the cast and goes into the nuts and bolts on how those awesome CG sequences came to be. Definitely worth a watch! There is nearly a half hour of deleted scenes with optional introductions from director Bryan Singer that includes a lot of material that seemed tragic to get cut like a feel-good 80s mall music montage set to Safety Dance that got me nostalgic for my teenage Mallrats years, and Fassbender nailing it with a emotional family scene that Singer stated was one of his all-time heartbreaking cuts to make in filmmaking. There is a killer eight minute gag reel that I would place in the top tier of superhero film gag reels, which is good company to be among.

Finally the commentary track with Singer and writer/producer Simon Kinberg is among one of my favorite commentaries I have heard in the five and a half years since I started this site. Singer is mostly nonstop with revealing facts and inspirations for the film like going into a engrossing story on the aforementioned Fassbender deleted scene, pointing out that Jubilee is in the film in one of her few lines or else I would have completely missed her, taking potshots at Marvel and FOX in the opening credits, a touching anecdote on filming the Stan Lee cameo and being grateful to Munn and Peters for knowing their Mortal Kombat references that resulted in saving a certain moment of the film. Those are just a few of the many highlights I got from the commentary so if you have time this is one of the good ones to check out. Also worth pointing out is FOX subtitled the commentary, THANK YOU! As I alluded to earlier, I came out of X-Men: Apocalypse with a far better experience on my second viewing. I only marginally enjoyed it initially, but letting some time and perspective sink in helped immensely. I am now surprisingly stoked to see Dark Phoenix when it hits next week. I highly recommend revisiting Apocalypse for a refresher on the many little plot points I would have forgotten. I no doubt agree the canon across the nearly 20 years of FOX X-films is a head-scratcher and a half to keep track of and who knows maybe their new overlords at Disney will find a way to smoothly integrate them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, I would be lying if there was not a part of me that would like to see Disney keep the X-films in their own separate canon that FOX has established, quirks and all. Time will tell.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed Deck the Halls Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hercules: Reborn Hitman Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Man of Steel Man on the Moon Marine 3-6 Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

#X-men #x-men apocalypse #oscar isaac #jennifer lawrence #james mcavoy #Michael Fassbender #nicholas hoult #lucas till #alexandra shipp #ben hardy #olivia munn #evan peters #tye sheridan #sophie turner #kurt wagner #lana condor #Bryan Singer

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wordzeck · 7 years

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have and eat

I found out, a few days ago, about this scandal that happened at my school. Essentially a girl in my school’s student government was being sent persistent sexual messages from a guy in the student government. I discovered the dilemma from reading an article published by my school newspaper and a blog post written by the affected female. Based off of the publicity of the event it is clear that its effects were not constrained to merely the boy and girl. There has been a fallout at a public level. The violation experienced by the girl is not the only present problem. This boy’s actions have now sprouted incidents of cyber bullying, shaming (to multiple parties), and depression.

Reading through the details of events was a sobering experience for me. As I read the name of the male accused of sexually badgering the girl, I couldn’t stop seeing my own name. Outside of the publicly held position, this boy and I are no different. I’ve sent far worse messages than those described in the article. I’ve sent unsolicited sexual pictures and texts to more girls than I can count. I’ve been told to stop on multiple occasions, and I’ve ignored the requests. I say all of this to preface my commentary. I’m trying to do my best at offering insight while still recognizing that I am no better than anyone I comment on. I fully understand that I still have a problem with this sexual sin stuff, and I don’t want my opinions to be viewed as just shaming my culture. To continue this train of thought… I’ve seen multiple posts since the event occurred, and it is clear that different individuals all have opinions on the matter (including myself obviously). Everyone is grasping for some kind of resolution through their finger pointing, their encouraging, and their commentaries. One thing is certain—we can all tell that something is wrong. There is something about this kind of story that doesn’t sit well with our stomachs. There is something about all of this that demands reaction and response. These kinds of situations always draw our attention, and for some reason we deem them significant enough to provide commentary. Even if another’s sexual oppression doesn’t keep us up at night, it still causes us to dust off our “moral” compasses and find our bearings.

I’d like to try and discuss the reality of sex and sexuality in my culture. I believe that we have all tricked ourselves into claiming that we can have our cake and eat it too. I’ve grown up in a culture that pushes for liberty in all aspects of life. The general consensus seems to be that liberty should also be a key feature of sex. We can sleep with who we please in whatever quantities we please. We can consume any sexual content we please (as long as it is legal). And we can publicly present our physical forms in any way see fit. On paper these freedoms not only sound liberating, but they also are completely sound and logical juxtaposed to the rest of our lives. Our sexual activities are now interwoven into the western narrative of freedom of choice and expression. And this all a wonderfully fine concept—if we could actually handle it. It is incredibly natural, and right, to blame and punish a man who commits sexual assault against a woman. Our culture has made tremendous strides in empowering women to become free from the sexual oppression of men. We still have much to accomplish, but I think it can be argued that progress is happening. But if sexual oppression was a dance, then it takes two to tango (sorry about that awfulness I just wrote). What I’m trying to say is we’ve focused on empowering women, but I haven’t heard many people ask the question, “How do we stop our men from committing these acts?”. We, of course, have laws in place that make certain actions illegal, but any rational person knows that they are simply not enough. Human trafficking, prostitution, rape, cat calling, persistent sexual texts, groping, flashing, revenge porn, and everything else under the sun still frequently occurs in our communities. So again, I ask… how do we stop our men from committing these acts? I’ve heard this pat answer from both men and women alike: men just need to control themselves, they need to be better, and they need to not be perverts. Let me just say, I completely agree with that statement, but let’s dive into the experience of the modern man and hopefully get a bit of a reality check. I’m only focusing so heavily on the male experience because I don’t want to even attempt to speak on behalf of women when it comes to sex… that is not my place nor do I have any authority on the subject.

A majority of our boys are subject to the culture I previously described. They are raised to embrace the idea of sexual liberty. Porn is normalized for our youth, and it is even made more of a joke than a serious subject. The young boy consumes countless hours of content with scantily clad women who aim to please the male audiences. Then this same boy goes to college and is further liberated to physically embrace those he deems attractive. He can sleep with who he wants in what quantities he wants, as long as consent is involved (but we all know of countless cases where it is not). We give him snapchat to receive nude photos of girls who he can’t be with physically, and we give him tinder to streamline the process of anonymous sex. And when those mediums don’t produce results, we give him porn to consistently feed his sexual drive. And after his brain has been conditioned, partially due to his fault, we ask him to control himself. I ask in return, control himself with what? These men who commit sexual atrocities haven’t been plucked out of some foreign culture—we’ve raised them up. They’re home grown. I understand that mental health can account for a portion sexual oppression incidents, but it can’t write them all off. If we watch that same boy grow to his middle ages, what do you think will happen? What happens when his youthful attraction leaves him? What happens when the girls don’t double take him or flirt with him? What happens when he inevitably transitions from holding nothing back from himself (complete sexual liberty) to the point where sex with beautiful is unavailable? I would argue that it’s not illogical to conclude that prostitution is a natural next step. Our culture is currently holding men to a standard that we have not created. The reality is that sexual atrocities still happen on an almost hourly basis. We shake our fists and scoff, but then we inevitably champion the ideologies that are partially responsible.

The inception of this thought process came when I was watching a fb video of Ashton Kutcher. He was speaking to congress on the issue of human trafficking. He went into detail of the horrors of child trafficking in our nation. He spoke on being a father of his own young daughter and displayed his absolute anger he had towards the monsters who would ever think of purchasing her body. He made completely valid, and almost righteous, arguments. He’s even started a wonderful nonprofit that combats child trafficking. But… he’s also on the show Two And a Half Men. I really don’t want to sound like a stout conservative dad, but anyone who has ever watched that show knows what it’s about. The show produces episode after episode of new attractive women who exist to please the male characters and the male audience. We can absolutely have our anger and our desire for justice (it is our right), but can we also knowingly support our current culture? Is it actually possible to have both? Can we have the man who is allowed complete sexual liberty (in his youth), and who also has complete control over that same sexuality? I encourage you to give those questions thought.

The last thing I can think of to drive home my point is this—Vegas. We all want our fun weekend in Vegas with our friends. Even those of us who aren’t planning on visiting more “adult” attractions still want a weekend of good times. But here’s the thing… Vegas can’t exist as just the fun weekend. If we want Vegas to exist we also have to exist everything that comes with the city—violence, prostitution, gambling addiction, drug addiction, human trafficking, and everything else under the sun. The “good” and the “bad” of Vegas are intertwined. It would be nice if they were independent of one another… but they are not. If you want the city to exist for your fun weekend, then you have to be accept that the city also exists as a prison for the girls who are trafficked there. You may not personally contribute to that trafficking, but our culture knows that is no longer a cop out. I’ve seen too many boycotts of companies because some horrible truth was revealed about them. If you stop buying your shoes due to child labor, would it not be logical to stop giving money to a city due to child trafficking? My point is that you can’t have Vegas without its unpleasant reality, and, just maybe, we can’t have sexual liberty without its unpleasant realty. Many people might say that my claims are outrageous, but I would ask them to really think about it? These sexual atrocities still happen to this day. We would claim that we are the most modern thinkers, and yet we still can’t stop it. Our activism, our justice systems, and our morals themselves seem to be completely powerless against sexual oppression. What actual hope do we have for stopping this? In my opinion—we have the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the only entity that pulled me out. Maybe He was just a coping mechanism for my shame, maybe I’m just messed up in the head, or maybe I’ve actually found the truth in Him.

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