#it was so weird it was like. virtue signaling to like a song.

[katnissgirlsmakedo]

remember despacito? that was so. 😬. the state of pop music was so dire in 2017 we had to resort to a song that featured justin bieber…

#i’m going to say something. i literally think that song was only as popular as it was because it was like the first time white americans #heard a song in spanish and we went a little too hard with it #like it would have been popular anyway cuz it was a fun song (for 2017) but it like. OVERTOOK everything. it was HUGE. #i’m so happy i wasn’t in a spanish language class anymore when that song dropped. you just know teachers everywhere we’re playing it daily #like remember how justin bieber said he didn’t even know all the words to the parts of the song he didn’t sing #(because he literally didn’t write it he’s a fucking feature) #and it became almost like. a badge of honor to be like ‘well EYE know all the words 😏’ and katy perry did that thing #and it’s like no you don’t!!! i was in high school spanish with you i know you don’t speak this language there’s no way you know all the #words to this song…. there’s no way john. we both flopped in spanish 2 i was there. you do not know all the words to despacito….. #it was so weird it was like. virtue signaling to like a song. #like it was a fun song but maybe not that fun. remember it featured justin bieber. #beth.txt #can i be extra real with y’all if a moment. i don’t even know what ‘despacito’ means. 😐 #is it ‘slowly’? i know i looked it up like ten times back in the day cuz i kept forgetting. think that MIGHT be it. but i don’t KNOW that.

[runaeveena]

Your dashboard if you were in a d&d fantasy world still involved in fictional erotica discourse part 2

⛰️ berenicesblade Follow

now that the new Mountain Angel volume has come out can we please tag spoilers, some of us are still waiting for our pigeon mail

🦚 faeynadaughter Follow

you can access the volume in full on TomePlane!

🎭 bardcampistrash Follow

until TomePlane acknowledges that its interplanar storage is made possible by binding aboleths to the plane and killing them then we are going to continue not using that platform, thanks

🦚 faeynadaughter Follow

aboleths killed my cousin who was a royal cleric. ill never understand why theres a whole movement to protect abyssal creatures when theyve caused so much damage to our kingdoms. and disliking a pocket dimension which provides thousands of people access to books? your attitude reeks of anti literaturism and mal-aligned virtue signaling and im not sure which is worse

🫒 tenthday237 Follow

Aliizya gets pregnant on page 62

⛰️ berenicesblade Follow

banished

620 Notes

🏰 finchtruther Follow

okay but the way that faelor finch writes every song that perfectly fits pennbiel liiike its giving closet fangirl

🧭 waywardwarlock

seriouslyy!! like what else is "give me your unmarked hand / in the shadowfell we won't be a secret" supposed to be about if not pennipher and corabiel

16 Notes

🌫️ cloudgiant-snailboy Follow

yall please dont fill up the unseen servant tag with your super fucking weird smut posts im just looking for tips on how to find my unseen servant

🪡 scç-writer

the search function on tomeblr does need to be updated but we dont have to kinkshame :)

🌫️ cloudgiant-snailboy Follow

the site is being overrun by virgin degenerates

🍯 treebarkhookhandwagondoor

sounds like you need Wilam the Wizard with Wandering Hands to help you summon the unseen stick in your ass

290 Notes

🗝️ crypt-princess Follow

so whose going to be the first to commission a painting of that scene with Aliizya and the beholder 👀

🍎 bloodmaledickening Follow

i already asked my local artisan he said he's gotten two other commissions for the same scene lmao

🐁 softbarbarian

girl i commissioned a tapestry

45 Notes

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

friendly reminder that devil deals are a real thing that a lot of people fall victim too and that demons are malicious and do destroy peoples lives if theyre not careful so please be careful when consuming works like Hellionfinity which romanticizes devil deals and fiendish soul contracts

🌾entangled-farmer Follow

imo any work of fiction that involves a romance between any type of fiend is not just problematic but harmful

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

i used to be indifferent to books that had devil romance interests because like thats their whole thing theyre seducing people to get their souls and the mc overcomes it, but reading through the replies i see that Hellionfinity actually ends with the devil character as the main romantic lead which is super problematic in terms of power imbalance and the fact that he has a redemption arc is so out of touch especially since our military is finally recovering from the azgurian assault

🧚🏻‍♂️arms-of-faelor

helliofinity also has a scene where the main character uses a soul coin that an imprisoned mortal gave him and he uses it to bring the devil out of avernus so he doesnt fully die and no one in the book mentions it or talks about how messed up it is to use soul coins and we never see the now bound to hell prisoner ever again

🕯️ andersfirelight Follow

hellionfinity officially cancelled on my end!

88 Notes

☘️ celest-ial Follow

moment of silence for all the customers waiting on drink orders while the tavern wench gets her back blown out by a new guy every night ✊😔

🦁 king-killa Follow

the gods work hard but Girthy Gladys gets worked harder

57,022 Notes

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

paladin and warlock romances are OUT! cleric and necromancer romances are IN!

🪭 royalcoinpurse Follow

the only thing a cleric should do to a necromancer is beat him to death so she can revive him and kill him again

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

❇️ arch-dryad Follow

i think we need to analyze why we're so quick to place women in categories of devious seductress or healer in romance novels as if that hasnt been the pervasive trope that holds magic-touched women back in our actual society

🍯 treebarkhookhandwagondoor

why do you assume these fictional tropes are mf couples only? can a gay cleric not beat his gay necromancer boyfriend to death?

🎲 beholdersbeholdingme

and off! beat him off cmon guys

5,275 Notes

🧀 weremouse Follow

yall ever be talking or whatnot and feel like no one understands you

🪨 sebrenenogdon Follow

ᛄᚠ ᛡᚢ ᚳᚪᚾ ᚱᛁᛞ ᚦᛄᛋ ᛡᚢ ᚺᚪᚠ ᛏᚢ ᚱᛁᛒᛚᚪᚷ ᚦᛄᛋ

🧀 weremouse Follow

say that shit fr (<- looking around clueless)

🪨 sebrenenogdon Follow

ᛋᛁᚱᛁᚪᛋᛚᛁ

60 Notes

🌠 crownofstars

remember when that person made a call out post for the author of ilairepeler for using a ghost writer and it turned out the author was an actual ghost. writing. like a literal ghost writer. like.

🍄gnomestool Follow

arent you the dwarf that fucked a slaad

🌠 crownofstars

how would you like to become a ghost so you can write more witty comments like this for eternity

301 Notes

#round two please laff i did this at work #fantasy dashboard #tumblr dashboard meme #dungeons and dragons #d&d #bg3 #dungeon meshi #my post

[neednottoneed]

I’ve been trying to articulate my feelings with Rebecca London and I think it’s this—it’s too many changes to the script/song order and not enough finesse on the translation.

At this point, most/all productions of Rebecca are translations of the German original. They do not add new songs, they don’t cut songs, they might swap some order occasionally or add more dialogue in some scenes but they do not fundamentally *change* the core of the show. The costuming, the set, the interpretations-those are what get changed. The script and score get translated and localized, yes, but they’re not writing new songs for it.

London has made so many changes it feels like a weird piecemeal adaptation. I understand the original demo of the show was in English, I understand it’s an English book and English writer (of the novel), but the way things have been moved around and added and removed is SO jarring as to be a different show. It makes what’s currently there that was in the original feel out of place and calls even more attention to the awkward translation work in a way other productions do not.

The only removal I’m fine with tbh (besides Zauberhaft Natürlich but we know my feelings on that) is I’m An American Woman, and that’s because I think that song serves as a shorthand purpose in other shows that it doesn’t in English. In English, where your characters are British, Mrs Van Hopper’s over-the-top Americanness is clearly signaled the moment she speaks by virtue of her accent. In other languages, not so much, so you have to have American Woman to telegraph that. It’s a fun moment, sure, and gives the actress plenty to do, but it makes sense why it was cut.

#I’m sure I have more thoughts and I’m trying not to be negative but this is my main one #rebecca das musical #daphne du maurier

[taylortruther]

sorry to vent but i honestly am just so damn tired atp of having to desperately cover everything in disclaimers and constantly perform outrage just to be allowed to exist in fandom spaces now as a black fan. like my original mindset was just that it’s disappointing but i don’t and can’t expect celebrities to perfectly mirror my values, and with all the actual problems in my life and the world - including racism that actually affects my real life AND things i have the ability to potentially do something about - i wasn’t going to spend my time and energy being furious that a pop star i’ll never meet is fucking an edgelord i’ll never meet either. like i’m sorry but i already compartmentalized all this YEARS ago and have zero expectations of celebrities so it’s just whatever to me. if taylor herself was spewing racist comments or if matty was actually some white supremacist nazi and not just an intentionally provocative edgy douchebag it would be different, but TO ME PERSONALLY the actual situation as it is is just not that serious and not worth my outrage.

but am i, one of those ‘poc fans’ everyone is constantly falling all over themselves to declare themselves supportive of and ‘safe’ for, allowed to feel that way as one of the people actually targeted by that idiot’s dumbass comments? NOPE! you best believe people were FURIOUS that i thought i could get away with not performing Angry Black Woman Rage for them every single time i want to simply engage in my hobby and discuss fun things, or analyze surprise songs, or express empathy for taylor in any circumstance, or just do anything that isn’t ranting 24/7 that she’s terrible and racist and irredeemable. so now every time i want to do any of those things i have to write 6000 disclaimers that yes taylor is awful and no i don’t like matty just so overwhelmingly white fans won’t yell at me that i’m not really black (an accusation i’ve now gotten three separate times), or that i’m hurting other poc by “condoning racism” (which i have not done), or that i’m so far up taylor’s ass i would still stan her even if she personally called me the n-word (the final straw that made me turn anon off probably for good) and idk it’s just…not fun being here anymore now that everyone is just going to treat me like a doll who’s only here for them to virtue signal with (and ‘virtue signaling’ is a terrible term but like that is truly, genuinely what a huge chunk of this fandom is doing rn), claiming to obsessively care about my feelings and fandom experience so they’ll look good but then berating and scolding me every single time i step a toe out of line and try to express my own opinion or commit the grave sin of Enjoying Taylor Swift On My Taylor Swift Blog. like sure taylor disappointed me but it’s other (again, overwhelmingly white) fans who have completely ruined being here and made it a miserable chore to be a black fan, not her. atp I just want her to drop him and everyone to forget not bc he sucks but bc i just want to be allowed to exist peacefully on my own blog again, without having to constantly walk on eggshells so the people who ~care about marginalized fans~ won’t come call me a stupid brainless bitch who lets taylor manipulate me because i’m a self-hating racist. i’m just so tired.

i am tired too and i am really grateful to you for writing all this out (i hope it felt a little cathartic) because i 100% AGREEEEEEEEEE. the way this fandom acts anytime they start talking about uplifting poc will never not be weird to me and i think you explained why perfectly.

#like maybe this will only make sense to you anon #but i'm always just thinking 'it's not that deep' fjadskl #of course racism is deep but we aren't being anti-racist if we're just being bitchy about fandom shit on here #hot taykes

[vaveyard]

I always found it weird how white Americans say "I'm Italian", "I'm Irish", "I'm Polish" and yet don't speak the language, read the literature, know the history, or the different cultures (Italians aren't a monolith) besides a few skin deep details. It's almost like a fetish. Unless your relatives or ancestors are from specific native ethnic groups, or unless you grow up with that culture (language, stories, traditions, history, etc.), Italian, Irish, Polish are just nationalities. Tell an Italian "I'm Italian American!" and they'll start speaking to you in Italian, because if you don't speak the language why would you say you're Italian at all, right?

The obsession is even weirder considering how people of color struggle to trace their ancestry and find their culture because their ancestors were mostly brought to the US against their will, or in the case of Natives, their communities and cultures were wiped out 🤦🏾‍♀️

Now that you're an "influencer", you should be more careful and less ignorant. Ignorance spreads like a disease. There's enough white Americans already using ancestry as something that makes them "special". With the boom of 23andMe I've seen so many white Americans excited to find out they are 0.8% Native, completely ignoring the implications of that.

Considering that the vast majority of your following seems to be white and privileged (I wonder why), and how you can influence them, it'd be nice to see some effort to fight ignorance. This liberal approach of exclusively talking about issues that personally affect you and people like you, the refusal to talk about the racism in publishing, for example, (or to call out publishing at all, really), or how a few authors getting 6 figure deals means others (mostly poc and queer) get almost nothing, or how you're always ready to scold readers of color or queer who rightfully complain about the representation in your books, how you say they dehumanize you (when people of color and queer are literally dehumanized to the point they get beaten and killed in the streets), speaks volumes. Add this fetish to all of it, and of course liberal racist women are going to flock to you. You can say you're anti-racism all you want, but until you you put action behind your words, it's empty virtue signalling. Retconning a character's ethnicity because your work is otherwise all white is racist (like JKR making one character gay when the series is over, and saying there's one Jewish character at Hogwarts). Just like creating queer characters just to serve the straight ones/get them together, or to portray how evil the society is, is homophobic (unless you're writing from experience, which you're not; you're just associating queerness with suffering and abuse, which are big stereotypes).

Everywhere I turn there's people wearing their alleged ancestry like a trendy bag. "I'm Italian :) wait that's not cool anymore? I'm also 5% Irish! No? I'm 4% French! 15% Scottish Gaelic!"

I know white Americans who say "My family is Italian from Sicily" but the few Italian dialect words and songs they know are in Neapolitan (Sicily and Campania are two completely different regions, with over 700km/400 miles between them). Or white Americans who say "I gesticulate a lot because I'm Italian!" but don't know anything about the country's history and cultures.

It's like you are constantly looking for something to make you special and "not like other Americans" when the truth is that most white Americans have ancestors from other countries, and they arrived to the US by choice.

Italian-American is a very specific ethnic subgroup, with its own literature and working class culture, of immigrants who've faced poverty, starvation, racism (in the beginning, Italians in the US were considered poc) and who've had to climb their way up to a decent life.

You're a privileged white woman, who got published through connections made at an expensive college, who brags about how rich she is to her audience of kids and who airs her dirty laundry against air companies online, all the while managing to brag about how she travelled first class to another continent, so she's entitled to better treatment than other people (I mention this because that's how I discovered you, people in reading circles where shocked at how you were trying to use your audience to call out and shame a company for an inconvenient, but common and not world ending mistake. First world problems).

Your Italian ancestors are rolling in their graves.

Lots of people like to say I'm this, I'm that, and yet can't even find the country on a map, or know the names of its regions.

You said your mother (?) is Scottish and you regularly visit family in Scotland, yes? You're much closer to Scottish than Italian. Or is that not quirky and exotic enough?

ma’am this is a Wendy’s

please focus on yourself, this fixation you have with me seems really taxing on you

(p.s. when my grandmother came to the US she wasn’t allowed to go to school unless she could speak English, so she sat in silence for years before she felt it was safe to speak in her classroom, it caused her a huge amount of trauma so she never taught her children and grandchildren Italian, I don’t think policing people’s backgrounds and how they identify, especially based on language, is terribly useful)

#ask #that anon

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Guess who just wrote a really long and detailed post in my notes app that I accidentally managed to delete. meeeeeeeee <3

So yeah, for better or for worse, heres a more condensed version of a very long post where I complain about 2000!Judas again that Ive written in like, two hours probably (I know that sounds like a lot but trust me, it isnt for me)

Basically, when I watched this version for the first time I thought the reason I didnt like this portrayal of Judas and thought he was really unsympathetic was because of the actor and some of the directorial choices made for his scenes. But then I rewatched it, paid closer attention and even made pretty detailed notes as I was watching like the nerd I am, and I realized that no, the direction is consistantly really good and does a great job at putting you in the characters head, which is a good way to get an audience to sympathize with a character, even for Judas' scenes. Heaven On Their Minds is a great example of this, here are the notes I took during the scene bc it took me days to write that original post that I deleted and I dont feel like rewriting stuff:

• At the start of Heaven On Their Minds: Judas singing directly at Jesus while theyre engulfed in blue but glowing orange before the apostles show up and the lighting changes to something more orange-y golden (signaling Judas snapping out of his thoughts about Jesus and back into reality) • At the end of Heaven On Their Minds: Judas stepping out of the warm golden light with Jesus and his apostles back into a cooler, blue-ish light to signify his disconnect with the others, wavering trust in Jesus

So, if its not the direction thats the issue, what is it? The actor? Well yeah, I think the actor is definitely the bigger issue for me here. idk if thats a hot take, I certainly dont think it should be. However, there are two big directorial choices that I have issues with, one thats very obvious and mostly concentrated in one scene and one thats a bit more 'spread out' so to speak and that I initially had some trouble pinpointing

The first and more obvious one is the Superstar scene. This song already has some tonal issues by virtue of being a funky disco song sandwiched between The Scene Where They Brutally Beat Jesus and The Scene Where They Brutally Crucify Jesus and having Judas be all smiley during it like hes happy about Jesus dying a slow and painful death only to get all sad at the very end when they actually start crucifying him does not help. Like at all. Its like they didnt get that Judas was meant to be like, frustrated during this song because it acts as an extension of his character throughout the musical, who was very frustrated with Jesus because he didnt understand him or why he did the things he did. Its also meant to be an expression of the audience's presumed feelings, since we, like Judas, just spent a long time with this guy and thought we kinda understood what his deal was only to then realize that no, we did not, actually.

Thats pretty much it, there is a similar weird kind of smugness and almost schadenfreude permeating the rest of this guy's performance as well, its just the most noticeable in that song

Now, Im gonna change the topic here for just a second because I think its necessary to talk about the costuming, specifically the colors of the clothes, to properly explain myself. Unlike the 2012 version, which did its own thing when it came to assigning colors to these characters, the 2000s version takes pretty much all the notable character colors from the 1973 movie. That means Jesus wears white, Herod also wears white which could be a way to visually connect them since Herod is referred to as king and seems to have some kind of special authority over jewish people even though he apparently doesnt have a lot of actual state power, kind of how Jesus is also hailed as king of sorts even though he obviously doesnt have any kind of stately power either ? idk, Im not analysing this further bc thats not what the post is about, Caiaphas, Annas and their three guys all wear black, Pilate wears purple (albeit a cooler tone than the 70s version thats closer to the purple the roman guards wore), Judas wears red and Mary wears red... in the 2000s version. She wears orange in the 70s movie

So, why would they change that when they otherwise changed very little about the costumes' colors? Im not gonna beat around the bush here, they were trying to emphasize the idea of Judas and Mary as foils and romantic rivals with Judas being the dark 'incorrect' "option" and Mary being totally morally good as a contrast. Think about it, Judas wears mostly black in this version with the red being closer to an accent color while Mary wears mostly red with black as an accent color, theyre wearing the same color scheme but inverted and Judas ended up with the darker and more menacing version of it (although I would argue its kinda hard to style the red-black combo as anything but edgy, vaguely threatening, vaguely sexy and seductive or a combination of any of those), Judas is a lot more physically aggressive towards Mary in this film which wasnt the case in the 1973 version (I havent rewatched the 2012 one yet and I dont remember a lot of the details but Im pretty sure he wasnt as physical in that version either), theres that weird bit right after I Dont Know How To Love Him where he inecplicably shows up to, idk, intimidate Mary? which then leads directly into Damned For All Time/Blood Money and the way its framed makes it seem like his betrayal was motivated by jealousy and some weird yandere-esque "If I cant have him, no one can" line of logic which is just weird. Like, I dont dislike this concept on the face of it, but they had no idea how to pull it off well

Actually, now that I think about it I feel like they work well enough as foils without any attempts to emphasize them as romantic rivals. Like, obviously Judas sings that little reprise of I Dont Know How To Love Him before his death but also his whole thing at the start of the musical was that he was turning away from Jesus while Mary's thing was that she was very close and loyal to him from beginning to end, like thats one of the things that Peter's Denial demonstrates right

Whatever, thats kind of it. I feel like thats a pretty abrupt ending to this but I dont care that much lol. In conclusion, although I love this movie for the direction and lighting I have a lot of shit to complain about, mostly relating to Judas and also this post ended up being a lot longer than expected, hope you enjoyed

#jesus christ superstar

[nukenai]

idk how “buying a blue checkmark (or whatever) instead of donating to RANDOM STRANGERS is so terrible” is any different than “how dare you occasionally go to starbucks instead of saving all your money for a house or giving it to charity” or some shit. Genuinely, is there a difference? I don’t think it is because it’s all just weirdo (chokes and gags) virtue signalling shit

But I’ve been through this whole song and dance before because people can get SO fucking weird about the fact that I have more than 1 animal living in my house, and don’t even get me started on the horses. no one would treat me this way if I had kids instead (god fucking forbid)

I felt very fortunate that when I got Rogue, literally all my friends were like “this is so amazing I’m so proud of you, you are great for saving her hell yeah” and not a single person was, to my face at least, saying shit like “wow you bought a second horse why didn’t you donate that $250 to a horse rescue to feed a dozen horses” or some shit lmao

I’m just so tired of the moral grandstanding on the internet. What things I’ve donated to or have not donated to is literally none of anyone’s business. Maybe I’ve been donating to things this whole time, but not posting about it nonstop for internet attention! What a concept, right?

Like in the end I don’t mind people being like “The checkmarks are stupid and I wish people didn’t spend money on them bc idk tumblr evil or whatever” but also like, idk, are they spending YOUR money? no? Do you also get this mad when people buy knickknacks at Home Goods they kinda like but definitely don’t need?? I can’t imagine living my life full of that much outrage. Just... come on.

#i'm a little sensitive about people being weird about the finances of others!!!! #what i spend my money on is none of your fucking business!!! #i have a full time job and i work for all my money #i am not taking yours! leave me alone!

[mitchelldailygames]

Heroes of Song: Devlog Part 3

Heads up, I’m going to put my design goals at the beginning of every one of these posts:

The heroes are cute.

Kindness matters.

The world is weird.

Sometimes you don’t fight. Sometimes you do.

Health is hearts.

Titles

I came up with the title for this game relatively late in my thought process, but early in my writing process. I spent maybe a couple days thinking about this game before I had a chance to sit down and start typing it up. It was at that point I needed something to name the document. I called it Heroes of Song, playing off the idea of “Hero of Time” and the musical themes found throughout The Legend of Zelda series.

Which led me to naming the GM and the other players. This is a game with a GM/other players structure. The GM I decided to call a Songkeeper. I thought hard about choosing something with a snappier initialism, but ultimately I liked the way Songkeeper evoked the song in the title and suggested that songs were a place for stories.

I don’t like just calling other players “players,” as I think the GM’s experience of play often gets downplayed in games. So I call them “Hero Players” and their characters are “Heroes.” This also sends a message that this game isn’t “be whoever,” but “be the hero.” The characters you play strive to live up to their virtues and ideas. Perspective may play into who considers them heroes, but they do what they do because they believe it’s right. And when they go against their virtues, it’s a chance for growth, a chance to be better.

Mechanics

I realized when I talked about dice I didn’t talk much about what you actually did with them. The plan is to keep it super simple: roll 2d6+Stat. When I talk about the spread for the numbers, people familiar with PbtA will probably find it familiar, though with some more traditional interpretation of the results. Again, I want it to feel approachable, simple, and like it doesn’t take a whole lot of reading to get into the game. I think if the characters are cute, it’s reasonable for the audience to expect that. I generally design light anyway. I decided to actually lay out three different ways the results of the dice will interact with the world.

Vs Target Number

Players roll their dice hoping to beat a specific number. Lots of games, including the most famous one, use this. For an easy thing you need at least a 5 (some characters don’t even need to bother rolling for this), for an average thing you need at least a 7, for a hard thing you need a 10+. Songkeepers might even decide to set difficulties as high as 13-15 (I haven’t tested it out to see what the right ceiling is, yet). Attack rolls also work this way with the target being the defense of the target (again, super common and I think pretty intuitive).

Opposed Rolls

Also common. Two people are actively working against each other. Both roll. Whoever gets the highest roll wins.

Degrees of Success

I think this is something that often comes up in play, but isn’t always codified super clearly in the rules. This is for situations like searching a room where a character is bound to find something, but might do a poor job or a super good job. In this case results of 5-6 is a poor success, 7-9 is an average success, and 10+ is a great success. Characters can still fail by having an awful roll, but generally the question is “how well do they succeed,” not “if they succeed.” I think both this and target number rolls with variable difficulty have a place in a lot of games.

Inspired & Discouraged

I like this system a lot. Think of it like advantage and disadvantage, but by calling them inspired and discouraged I think it signals that there’s a morale reason for why a character is having an easier or harder time. I also paired it with the Spirit system, so if Spirit is high, characters are inspired, but if Spirit is depleted, the character is discouraged. I just thought it was a nice touch.

Callings

I know this is getting long, but I didn’t want this aspect to be spaced too far from the post about stats and folk.

Callings are comparable to classes, playbooks, and archetypes in other games. I chose to start with six callings so tables of up to six could each be something different, so I could make six, unique example characters also representing all the folk, and so I could have two options for prioritizing each stat.

Each calling gives a little boost to one stat, comes with a starting item that tells you something about how the calling works, includes two moves, one with a clear mechanical use and one that more describes something the calling is good at, a specific condition for advancement, and personalized options for advancement (called “growth” in this game). I’m just going to summarize them.

Tough Callings

Steward: Comes with the woodsman’s axe. Specializes in encouragement, cultivation, and inspiration.

Guardian: Comes with a wooden shield. Specializes in protecting others and gaining trust.

Quick Callings

Scamp: Starts with a stone dagger. Specializes in trickery, mirth, and liberation.

Scout: Starts with a simple bow. Specializes in vigilance, action, and survival.

Harmonic Callings

Bard: Starts with a portable instrument. Specializes in song magic and communication.

Sage: Starts with a staff. Specializes in rune and ritual magic and knowledge.

Obviously, there’s a lot to dig into including the growth and magic systems, but I think that’s best left to another post. One thing I wanted to point out was that no one starts with a sword and the most warrior-like class starts with just a shield. Every other item has a clear, non-battle utility (even the bow can be used to hit hard-to-reach switches and hunt for sustenance). This was definitely intentional because of design goal 4. It tells players that fighting isn’t the only thing this game is about, but they certainly will be able to do some of that.

I think I’m going to talk about magic and setting next time (and I am really excited to do so). I really like how this game is coming together and am looking forward to being able to share it with everyone. Until next time remember: the world is weird; kindness matters.

--Daily

#Heroes of Song #legend of zelda #ttrpg dev #ttrpg design #ttrpg #indie ttrpg

[kahran042]

Encyclopedia Brown thoughts: book 14

Encyclopedia Brown Sets the Pace

The Case of the Supermarket Shopper:

How come I have a feeling that “playing checkers” is Mr. Quinn’s code for non-S&P approved activities? ;)

Murray Finkelstein? It's nice to know that not just kids have goofy names in Idaville.

Who needs four tubes of toothpaste at once? That alone should put suspicion on Houser.

What kind of supermarket sells brown whisk brooms?

Considering how many downer endings there are in this book, I would have had the painting turn out to be a fake. Or are adults somehow immune to downer endings?

The Case of the Dinosaur Hunter:

Kind of a weird title, seeing as the case is more about towels than dinosaur hunting.

Dinosaur hunting licenses are actually real. Who knew?

Bugs does have a legitimate grievance here, seeing as Garth did knock his towel into the pond.

Machine-washed towels are, indeed, soft and fluffy, which is exactly why I prefer them.

The Case of the Used Firecrackers:

Not much to say about this one. It's yet another "Bugs tries to frame Encyclopedia" case.

The Case of the Ugliest Dog:

Does anyone else have a problem with the top prize in a childrens' dog show being "worst in show"?

IMHO, orange and purple don't clash, but that really all depends on the specific shades in question.

What color is Kate's original skirt that goes with an orange blouse, anyway? I want to say olive or blue.

It's rare for someone who Sally judges to not be guilty. In fact, I think this is the only time.

The Case of Hilbert's Song:

There's a state junior hollering championship? Only in Florida, I guess.

What's the difference between hollering, screeching, screaming, and yelling, or is it just a semantic thing?

Yet another bullshit solution. How many people would know the untrue "fact" that if someone cries a single tear, it will be on the inside corner of the eye?

Was there really a point to Hilbert's song being rejected by the record company? It's not like he'll ever be mentioned again.

The Case of the Crowing Rooster:

Bill Canfield looks much older than eighteen in the illustration for this chapter. Actually, he looks sort of like Richmond from Suikoden II.

Roosters do not crow only at sunrise. I know this because I've found out that people keep chickens just from walking by when their roosters crowed in the middle of the day.

Are hens really smarter than roosters? After all, they're just the male and female of the same species.

The Case of the Bubble Gum Shootout:

When I see the name Cephas, it makes me think of the creepy immortal gravekeeper from Alundra.

What's a "ball of hammered lace"?

The Case of the Boy Juggler:

In which Fangs Liveright's surname changes to Liverright.

Gee, I wonder if Fangs wants to go to Oberlin because that's the school his creator went to?

Was there really any point to having Fangs lose the contest in the end?

The Case of the Practical Jokers:

I find cases involving Lucy Fibbs and her pigs to be pretty dull in general, so I might just pull a @brownencyclopedia here and skim this one.

This is the only mention of Lucy's poodle.

"I don't like practical jokes," Sally said disgustedly virtue-signalled. There, fixed it for you.

#encyclopedia brown #donald j sobol #encyclopedia brown sets the pace

[bondsmagii]

the way that dnis and like cancel brigades have become this weird virtue signaling act is so bizarre. like i’ll see people make big long gripe posts about celebrities like Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence & it’s like, there’s no mask off moment here bruh? they have a song called f@gg0t. what are you hoping to achieve here other than trying to get a Good Grade in The Internet™️ by being the Wokest of them All

man I do not KNOW and it's hilarious because it's so often not even about Actual Issues. like obviously everyone states the "standard DNI criteria" which for other people is literally just "don't be a fucking asshole", but then it gets so, so specific. and it's often fandom/community specific, too, so it's literally all about virtue signalling. it'll be stuff like "dni if you like this ship" or "dni if you have this headcanon about this character" or "dni if you like this person on tumblr" or "dni if you believe [absolutely incomprehensible sentence because this group of people is now lightyears removed from any actual understandable theory]". it's absolutely wild and I know for a fact that it's just to signal right off the bat that they have the Correct Opinions.

sometimes I'm tempted to honestly write a DNI that consists of the things I would actually include in a real one if I had no balls and couldn't just block people or be exposed to literally any idea outside of my echo chamber, but it would be hilarious because all the shit that would be on my personal DNI would be shit that would immediately get me declared problematic. these people do not assume for even a moment that their idea of "progressive" and "safe" is absolute deranged hell to most people with braincells.

#as a sidenote i wouldn't really call a song title a mask off moment because like #a lot of bands will do shit like that either to be edgy or make a point #and i think the fact this dude apparently hooked up with minors couldn't be predicted from using an uncomfortable word in a song title #but anyway i get what you're saying lmao #anon #asks

[grigori77]

Summer 2020′s Movies - My Top Ten Favourite Films (Part 2)

10.  BODY CAM – in the face of the current pandemic, viral outbreak cinema has become worryingly prescient lately, but as COVID led to civil unrest there were a couple of films in this summer that REALLY seemed to me to put their finger on the pulse of another particularly shitty zeitgeist.  Admittedly this one highlights a problem that’s been around for a good while, but it came along at just the right time to gain particularly strong resonance, filtering its message into the most reliable form of allegorical social commentary – horror.  The vengeful ghost trope has become pretty familiar over the past decade or so, but by marrying it with the corrupt cop thriller veteran horror screenwriter Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) has given it a nice fresh spin, and the end result was, for me, a real winner.  Mary J. Blige plays troubled LAPD cop Renee Lomito-Smith, back on the beat after an extended hiatus following a particularly harrowing incident, just as fellow officers from her own precinct begin to die violent deaths under mysterious circumstances, and the only clues are weird, haunting camera footage that only Renee and her new partner, rookie Danny Holledge (Paper Towns and Death Note’s Natt Wolff), manage to see before it inexplicable wipes itself.  Something supernatural is stalking the City of Angels at night, and it’s got a serious grudge against local cops as the increasingly disturbing investigation slowly brings an act of horrific police brutality to light, until Renee no longer knows who in her department she can trust.  This is one of the most insidious scare-fests I’ve enjoyed so far this year, sophomore director Malik Vitthal (Imperial Dreams) weaving an effective atmosphere of pregnant dread and wire-taut suspense while delivering some impressively hair-raising shocks (the stunning minimart sequence is the film’s undeniable highlight), while the ghostly threat is cleverly thought-out and skilfully brought to “life”.  Blige delivers another top-drawer performance, giving Renee a winning combination of wounded fragility and steely resolve that makes for a particularly compelling hero, while Wolff invests Danny with skittish uncertainty and vulnerability in one of his strongest performances to date, and Dexter star David Zayas brings interesting moral complexity to the role of their put-upon superior, Sergeant Kesper.  In these times of heightened social awareness, when the police’s star has become particularly tarnished as unnecessary force, racial profiling and cover-ups have become major hot-button topics, the power and relevance of this particular slice of horror cinema cannot be denied.

9.  BLOOD QUANTUM – it certainly has been a great year for horror, and for most of the summer this was the genre leader, a compellingly fresh take on the zombie outbreak genre with a killer hook.  Canadian writer-director Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) has always clung close to his Native American roots, and he brings strong social relevance to the intriguing early 80s Canadian setting as a really nasty zombie virus wreaks havoc in the Red Crow Indian Reservation and its neighbouring town.  It soon becomes clear, however, that members of the local tribe are immune to the infection, a revelation with far-reaching consequences as the outbreak rages unchecked and society begins to crumble.  Barnaby pulls off some impressive world-building and creates a compellingly grungy post-apocalyptic vibe as the story progresses, while the zombies themselves are a visceral, scuzzy bunch, and there’s plenty of cracking set-pieces and suitably full-blooded kills to keep the gore-hounds happy, while the horror has real intelligence behind it, the script posing interesting questions and delivering some uncomfortable answers.  The characters, meanwhile, are a well-drawn, complex bunch, no black-and-white saviours among them, any one of them capable of some pretty inhuman horrors when the chips are down, and the cast, an interesting mix of seasoned talent and unknowns, all excel in their roles – Michale Greyeyes (Fear the Walking Dead) and Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant) are the closest things the film has to real heroes, the former a fallible everyman as Traylor, the small-town sheriff who’s just trying to do right by his family, the latter unsure of himself as his son, put-upon teenage father-to-be Joseph; meanwhile, Olivia Scriven is tough but vulnerable as his pregnant white girlfriend Charlie, Stonehorse Lone Goeman is a grizzled badass as tough-as-nails tribal elder Gisigu, and Kiowa Gordon (probably best known for playing a werewolf in the Twilight movies) really goes to the dark side as Joseph’s delinquent half-brother Lysol, while there’s a memorably subtle turn from Dead Man’s Gary Farmer as unpredictable loner Moon.  This is definitely one of the year’s darkest films – by and large playing the horror straight, it tightens the screws as the situation grows steadily worse, and almost makes a virtue of wallowing in its hopeless tone – but there’s a fatalistic charm to all the bleakness, even in the downbeat yet tentatively hopeful climax, while it’s hard to deny the ruthless efficiency of the violence on display. This certainly isn’t a horror movie for everyone, but those with a strong stomach and relatively hard heart will find much to enjoy here.  Jeff Barnaby is definitely gonna be one to watch in the future …  

8.  PALM SPRINGS – the summer’s comedy highlight kind of snuck in under the radar, becoming something of an on-demand secret weapon with all the cinemas closed, and it definitely deserves its swiftly growing cult status.  You certainly can’t possibly believe it’s the feature debut of director Max Barbakow, who shows the kind of sharp-witted, steady-handed control of his craft that’s usually the province of far more experienced talents … then again, much of the credit must surely go to seasoned TV comedy writer Andy Siara (Lodge 49), for whom this has been a real labour of love he’s been tending since his film student days.  Certainly all that care, nurture and attention to detail is up there on the screen, the exceptional script singing its irresistible siren song from the start and providing fertile ground for its promising new director to spread his own creative wings.  The premise may be instantly familiar – playing like a latter-day Saturday Night Live take on Groundhog Day (Siara admits it was a major influence), it follows the misadventures of Sarah (How I Met Your Mother’s Cristin Miliota), the black sheep maid of honour at her sweet little sister Tala’s (Riverdale’s Camila Mendes) wedding to seemingly perfect hunk Abe (Supergirl’s Superman, Tyler Hoechlin), as she finds herself repeating the same high-stress day over and over again after being trapped in a mysterious cosmic time-loop along with slacker misanthrope Nyles (Brooklyn Nine Nine megastar Andy Samberg), who’s been stuck in this same situation for MUCH longer – but in Barbakow and Siara’s hands it feels fresh and intriguing, and goes in some surprising new directions before the well-worn central premise can outstay its welcome.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that the cast are uniformly excellent – Miliota is certainly the pounding emotional heart of the film, effortlessly lovable as she flounders against her lot, then learns to accept the unique possibilities it presents, before finally resolving to find a way out, while Samberg has rarely been THIS GOOD, truly endearing in his sardonic apathy as it becomes clear he’s been stuck like this for CENTURIES, and they make an enjoyably fiery couple with snipey chemistry to burn; meanwhile there’s top-notch support from Mendes and Hoechlin, The OC’s Peter Gallagher as Sarah and Tala’s straight-laced father, the ever-reliable Dale Dickey, a thoroughly adorable turn from Jena Freidman and, most notably, a full-blooded scene-stealing performance from the mighty J.K. Simmonds as Roy, Nyles’ nemesis, who he inadvertently trapped in the loop before Sarah and is, understandably, none too happy about it.  This really is an absolute laugh-riot, today’s more post-modern sense of humour allowing the central pair (and their occasional enemy) to indulge in even more extreme consequence-free craziness than Bill Murray ever got away with back in the day, but like all the best comedies there’s also a strong emotional foundation under the humour, leading us to really care about these people and what happens to them, while the story throws moments of true heartfelt power at us, particularly in the deeply cathartic climax.  Ultimately this was one of the summer’s biggest surprises, a solid gold gem that I can’t recommend enough.

7.  THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME – the summer’s other heavyweight Zeitgeist fondler is a deeply satirical chunk of speculative dystopian sci-fi clearly intended as a cinematic indictment of Trump’s broken America, but it became far more potent and prescient in these … ahem … troubled times.  Adapted by screenwriter Karl Gadjusek (Oblivion, Stranger Things, The King’s Man) from the graphic novel by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini for underrated schlock-action cinema director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana, the last two Taken films), this Netflix original feature seemed like a fun way to kill a cinema-deprived Saturday night in the middle of the Lockdown, but ultimately proved to have a lot more substance than expected.  It’s powered by an intriguing premise – in a nearly lawless 2024, the US government is one week away from implementing a nationwide synaptic blocker signal called the API (American Peace Initiative) which will prevent the public from being able to commit any kind of crime – and focuses on a strikingly colourful bunch of outlaw antiheroes with an audacious agenda – prodigious Detroit bank robber Bricke (Édgar Ramiréz) is enlisted by Kevin Cash (Funny Games and Hannibal’s Michael Carmen Pitt), a wayward scion of local crime family the Dumois, and his hacker fiancée Shelby Dupree (Material Girl’s Anna Brewster) to pull off what’s destined to be the last great crime in American history, a daring raid on the night of the signal to steal over a billion dollars from the Motor City’s “money factory” and then escape across the border into Canada.  From this deceptively simple premise a sprawling action epic was born, carried along by a razor sharp, twisty script and Megaton’s typically hyperbolic, showy auteur directing style and significant skill at crafting thrillingly explosive set-pieces, while the cast consistently deliver quality performances.  Ramiréz has long been one of those actors I really love to watch, a gruff, quietly intense alpha male whose subtle understatement hides deep reserves of emotional intensity, while Dupree takes a character who could have been a thinly-drawn femme fetale and invests her with strong personal drive and steely resolve, and there’s strong support from Neil Blomkampf regulars Sharlto Copley and Brandon Auret as, respectively, emasculated beat cop Sawyer and brutal Mob enforcer Lonnie French, as well as a nearly unrecognisable Patrick Bergin as local kingpin (and Kevin’s father) Rossi Dumois; the film is roundly stolen, however, by Pitt, a phenomenal actor I’ve always thought we just don’t see enough of, here portraying a spectacularly sleazy, unpredictable force of nature who clearly has his own dark agenda, but whom we ultimately can’t help rooting for even as he stabs us in the back.  This is a cracking film, a dark and dangerous thriller of rare style and compulsive verve that I happily consider to be Megaton’s best film to date BY FAR – needless to say it was a major hit for Netflix when it dropped, clearly resonating with its audience given what’s STILL going on in the real world, and while it may have been roundly panned in reviews I think, like some of the platform’s other more glossy Original hits (Bright springs to mind), it’s destined for a major critical reappraisal and inevitable cult status before too long …

6.  HAMILTON – arriving just as Black Lives Matter reached fever-pitch levels, this feature presentation of the runaway Broadway musical smash-hit could not have been better timed.  Shot over three nights during the show’s 2016 run with the original cast and cut together with specially created “setup shots”, it’s an immersive experience that at once puts you right in amongst the audience (at times almost a character themselves, never seen but DEFINITELY heard) but also lets you experience the action up close.  And what action – it’s an incredible show, a thoroughly fascinating piece of work that reads like something very staid and proper on paper (an all-encompassing biographical account of the life and times of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton) but, in execution, becomes something very different and EXTREMELY vital.  The execution certainly couldn’t be further from the usual period biopic fare this kind of historical subject matter usually gets (although in the face of recent top-notch revisionist takes like Marie Antoinette, The Great and Tesla it’s not SO surprising), while the cast is not at all what you’d expect – with very few notable exceptions the cast is almost entirely people of colour, despite the fact that the real life individuals they’re playing were all very white indeed.  That said, every single one of them is an absolute revelation – the show’s writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (already riding high on the success of In the Heights) carries the central role of Hamilton with effortless charm and raw star power, Leslie Odom Jr. (Smash, Murder On the Orient Express) is duplicitously complex as his constant nemesis Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson (In the Heights, Moana, Bull) oozes integrity and nobility as his mentor and friend George Washington, Phillipa Soo is sweet and classy as his wife Eliza while Renée Elise Goldsberry (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Jacks, Altered Carbon) is fiery and statuesque as her sister Angelica Schuyler (the one who got away), and Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter) consistently steals every scene he’s in as fiendish yet childish fan favourite King George III; ultimately, however, the show (and the film) belongs to veritable powerhouse Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting, TV’s Snowpiercer) in a spectacular duel role, starting subtly but gaining scene-stealing momentum as French Revolutionary Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, before EXPLODING onto the stage in the second half as indomitable eventual American President Thomas Jefferson.  Not having seen the stage show, I was taken completely by surprise by this, revelling in its revisionist genius and offbeat, quirky hip-hop charm, spellbound by the skilful ease with which is takes the sometimes quite dull historical fact and skews it into something consistently entertaining and absorbing, transported by the catchy earworm musical numbers and thoroughly tickled by the delightfully cheeky sense of humour strung throughout (at least when I wasn’t having my heart broken by moments of raw dramatic power). Altogether it’s a pretty unique cinematic experience I wish I could have actually gotten to see on the big screen, and one I’ve consistently recommended to all my friends, even the ones who don’t usually like musicals.  As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need a proper Les Misérables style screen adaptation – this is about as perfect a presentation as the show could possibly hope for.

5.  SPUTNIK – the summer’s horror highlight (despite SERIOUSLY tough competition) is a guaranteed sleeper hit that I almost totally missed, stumbling across the trailer one day on YouTube and being completely bowled over by its potential, prompting me to hunt it down by any means necessary.  The feature debut of Russian director Egor Abramenko, this first contact sci-fi chiller is about as far from E.T. as it’s possible to get, sharing some of the same DNA as Carpenter’s The Thing but proudly carving its own path with consummate skill and definitely signalling great things to come from its brand new helmer and relative unknown screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev.  Oksana Akinshina (probably best known in the West for her powerful climactic cameo in The Bourne Supremacy) is the beating heart of the film as neurophysiologist Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova, brought in to aid in the investigation in the Russian wilderness circa 1983 after an orbital research mission goes horribly wrong.  One of the cosmonauts dies horribly, while the other, Konstantin (The Duelist’s Pyotr Fyodorov) seems unharmed, but it quickly becomes clear that he’s now playing host to something decidedly extraterrestrial and potentially terrifying, and as Tatyana becomes more deeply embroiled in her assignment she comes to realise that her superiors, particularly mysterious Red Army project leader Colonel Semiradov (The PyraMMMid’s Fyodor Bondarchuk), have far darker plans for Konstantin and his new “friend” than she could ever imagine.  This is about as dark, intense and nightmarish as this particular sub-genre gets, a magnificently icky body horror that slowly builds its tension as we’re gradually exposed to the various truths and the awful gravity of the situation slowly reveals itself, punctuated by skilfully executed shocks and some particularly horrifying moments when the evils inflicted by the humans in charge prove to be far worse than anything the alien can do, while the ridiculously talented writers have a field day pulling the rug out from under us again and again, never going for the obvious twist and keeping us guessing right to the devastating ending, while the beautifully crafted digital creature effects are nothing short of astonishing and thoroughly creepy.  Akinshina dominates the film with her unbridled grace, vulnerability and integrity, the relationship that develops between Tatyana and Konstantin (Fyodorov delivering a beautifully understated turn belying deep inner turmoil) feeling realistically earned as it goes from tentatively wary to ultimately, tragically bittersweet, while Bondarchuk invests the Colonel with a subtly nuanced air of tarnished authority and restrained brutality that makes him one of my top screen villains for the year.  Guaranteed to go down as one of 2020’s great sleeper hits, I can’t speak of this film highly enough – it’s a genuine revelation, an instant classic for whom I’ll sing its praises for the remainder of the year and beyond, and I wish utmost success to all the creative talents involved in the future.  The Invisible Man still rules the roost in the year’s horror stakes, but this runs a VERY close second …

4.  GREYHOUND – when the cinemas closed back in March, the fate of many of the major summer blockbusters we’d been looking forward to was thrown into terrible doubt. Some were pushed back to more amenable dates in the autumn or winter, others knocked back a whole year to fill summer slots for 2021, but more than a few simply dropped off the radar entirely with the terrible words “postponed until further notice” stamped on them, and I lamented them all, this one in particular.  It hung in there longer than some, stubbornly holding onto its June release slot for as long as possible, but eventually it gave up the ghost too … but thanks to Apple TV+, not for long, ultimately releasing less than a month later than intended.  Thankfully the final film was worth the fuss, a taut World War II suspense thriller that’s all killer, no filler – set during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic, it portrays the constant life-or-death struggle faced by the Allied warships assigned to escort the transport convoys as they crossed the ocean, defending their charges from German U-boats.  Adapted from C.S. Forester’s famous 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider (Get Low), the narrative focuses on the crew of the escort leader, American destroyer USS Fletcher, codenamed Greyhound, and in particular its captain, Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks), a career sailor serving his first command.  As they cross “the Pit”, the most dangerous mid stretch of the journey where they spend days without air-cover, they find themselves shadowed by “the Wolf Pack”, a particularly cunning group of German subs that begin to pick away at the convoy’s stragglers.  Faced with daunting odds, a dwindling supply of vital depth-charges and a ruthless, persistent enemy, Krause must make hard choices to bring his ships home safe … jumping into the thick of the action within the first ten minutes and maintaining that tension for the remainder of its trim 90-minute run, this is screen suspense par excellence, a sleek textbook example of how to craft a compelling big screen knuckle-whitener with zero fat and maximum reward, delivering a series of desperate naval scraps packed with hide-and-seek intensity, heart-in-mouth near-misses and fist-in-air cathartic payoffs by the bucket-load.  Hanks is subtly magnificent, the calm centre of the narrative storm as a supposed newcomer to this battle arena who could have been BORN for it, bringing to mind the similarly unflappable turn he delivered in Captain Phillips and certainly not suffering by comparison; by and large he’s the focus point, but other crew members do make strong (if sometimes quite brief) impressions, particularly Stephen Graham as Krause’s reliably seasoned XO, Lt. Commander Charlie Cole, The Magnificent Seven’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Just Mercy’s Rob Morgan, while Elisabeth Shue does a lot with a very small part in brief flashbacks as Krause’s fiancée Evelyn.  Relentless, powerful, exhilarating and thoroughly unforgettable, this was one of the true action highlights of the summer, and one hell of a war flick.  I’m so glad it made the cut for the season …

3.  PROJECT POWER – with Marvel and DC pushing their tent-pole titles back into late autumn in the face of COVID, the usual superhero antics we’ve come to expect over the main blockbuster season were pretty thin on the ground, leading us to find our geeky fan thrills elsewhere.  Unfortunately, pickings were frustratingly slim – Korean comic book actioner Gundala was entertaining but workmanlike, while Thor AU-take Mortal was underwhelming despite strong direction from Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal, and I’ve already made my feelings clear on the frustration of The New Mutants – thank the Gods, then, for Netflix, once again riding to the rescue with this enjoyably offbeat super-thriller, which takes an intriguing central premise and really runs with it.  New designer drug Power has hit the streets of New Orleans, able to give anyone who takes it a superpower for five minutes … the only problem is, until you try it, you won’t know what your own unique talent is – for some, it could mean five minutes of invisibility, or insane levels of super-strength, but other powers can be potentially lethal, the really unlucky buggers just blowing up on the spot.  Robin (The Hate U Give’s Dominique Fishback) is a teenage Power-pusher with dreams of becoming a rap star, dealing the pills so she can help her diabetic mum; Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of her customers, an NOPD detective who uses his power of near invulnerability to even the playing field when powered crims cause a disturbance.  Their lives are turned upside down when Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives in town – he’s a seriously badass ex-soldier determined to hunt down the source of Power by any means necessary, and he’s not above tearing the Big Easy apart to do it.  This is a fun, gleefully infectious  rollercoaster that doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the anarchic potential of its premise and crafting some suitably OTT effects-driven chaos brought to pleasingly visceral fruition by its skilfully inventive director, Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve, Viral), while Mattson Tomlin (the screenwriter of next year’s incendiary DCEU headline act The Batman) takes his script in some very interesting directions and poses some fascinating questions about what Power’s TRULY capable of.  Gordon-Levitt and Fishback are both brilliant, the latter particularly impressing in what’s sure to be a major breakthrough role for her, and the friendship their characters share is pretty adorable, while Foxx really is a force to be reckoned with, pretty chill even when he’s in deep shit but fully capable of turning into a bona fide killing machine at the flip of a switch, and there’s strong support from Westworld’s Rodrigo Santoro as Biggie, Power’s delightfully oily kingpin, Courtney B. Vance as Frank’s by-the-book superior, Captain Crane, Amy Landecker as Gardner, the morally bankrupt CIA spook responsible for the drug’s production, and Machine Gun Kelly as Newt, a Power dealer whose explosive pyrotechnic “gift” really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Exciting, inventive, frequently amusing and infectiously likeable, this was some of the most uncomplicated “cinematic” fun I had this summer.  Not bad for something which I’m sure was originally destined to become one of the season’s B-list features …

2.  THE OLD GUARD – Netflix’s undisputable TOP OFFERING of the summer came damn close to bagging the whole season, and I can’t help thinking that even if some of the stiffer competition had still been present it may well have still finished this high. Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love & Basketball, the Secret Life of Bees) directs comics legend Greg Rucka’s adaptation of his own popular title with uncanny skill and laser-focused visual flair considering there’s nothing on her previous CV to suggest she’d be THIS good at mounting a stomping good ultraviolent action thriller, ushering in this thoroughly engrossing tale of four ancient, invulnerable immortal warriors – Andy AKA Andromache of Scythia (Charlize Theron), Booker AKA Sebastian de Livre (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe AKA Yusuf Al-Kaysani (Wolf’s Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky AKA Niccolo di Ginova (Trust’s Luca Marinelli) – who’ve been around forever, hiring out their services as mercenaries for righteous causes while jealously guarding their identities for fear of horrific experimentation and exploitation should their true natures ever be discovered.  Their anonymity is threatened, however, when they’re uncovered by former CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), working for the decidedly dodgy pharmaceutical conglomerate run by sociopathic billionaire Steven Merrick (Harry Melling, formerly Dudley in the Harry Potter movies), who want to capture these immortals so they can patent whatever it is that makes them keep on ticking … just as a fifth immortal, US Marine Nile Freeman (If Beale Street Could Talk’s KiKi Layne), awakens after being “killed” on deployment in Afghanistan.  The supporting players are excellent, particularly Ejiofor, smart and driven but ultimately principled and deeply conflicted about what he’s doing, even if he does have the best of intentions, and Melling, the kind of loathsome, reptilian scumbag you just love to hate, but the film REALLY DOES belong to the Old Guard themselves – Schoenaerts is a master brooder, spot-on casting as the group’s relative newcomer, only immortal since the Napoleonic Wars but clearly one seriously old soul who’s already VERY tired of the lifestyle, while Joe and Nicky (who met on opposing sides of the Crusades) are simply ADORABLE, an unapologetically matter-of-fact gay couple who are sweet, sassy and incredibly kind, the absolute emotional heart of the film; it’s the ladies, however, that are most memorable here.  Layne is exceptional, investing Nile with a steely intensity that puts her in good stead as her new existence threatens to overwhelm her and MORE THAN qualified to bust heads alongside her elders … but it’s ancient Greek warrior Andy who steals the film, Theron building on the astounding work she did in Atomic Blonde to prove, once and for all, that there’s no woman on Earth who looks better kicking arse than her (as Booker puts it, “that woman has forgotten more ways to kill than entire armies will ever learn”); in her hands, Andy truly is a goddess of death, tough as tungsten alloy and unflappable even in the face of hell itself, but underneath it all she hides a heart as big as any of her friends’. They’re an impossibly lovable bunch and you feel you could follow them on another TEN adventures like this one, which is just as well, because Prince-Blythewood and Rucka certainly put them through their paces here – the drama is high (but frequently laced with a gentle, knowing sense of humour, particularly whenever Joe and Nicky are onscreen), as are the stakes, and the frequent action sequences are top-notch, executed with rare skill and bone-crunching zest, but also ALWAYS in service to the story. Altogether this is an astounding film, a genuine victory for its makers and, it seems, for Netflix themselves – it’s become one of the platform’s biggest hits to date, earning well-deserved critical acclaim and great respect and genuine geek love from the fanbase at large. After this, a sequel is not only inevitable, it’s ESSENTIAL …

1.  TENET – granted, the streaming platforms (particularly Netflix and Amazon) certainly did save our cinematic summer, but I’m still IMMEASURABLY glad that the season’s ultimate top-spot winner was one I got to experience on THE BIG SCREEN.  You gotta hand it to Christopher Nolan, he sure hung in there, stubbornly determined that his latest cinematic masterpiece WOULD be released in cinemas in the summer (albeit ultimately landing JUST inside the line in the final week of August), and it was worth all the fuss because, for me, this was THE PERFECT MOVIE for me to get return to cinemas with.  I mean, okay, in the end it WASN’T the FIRST new movie I saw after the reopening, that honour went to Unhinged, but THIS was my first real Saturday night out big screen EXPERIENCE since March.  Needless to say, Nolan didn’t disappoint this time any more than he has on any of his consistently spectacular previous releases, delivering another twisted, mind-boggling headfuck of a full-blooded experiential sensory overload that comes perilously close to toppling his long-standing auteur-peak, Inception (itself second only by fractions to The Dark Knight as far as I’m concerned). To say much at all about the plot would give away major spoilers – personally I’d recommend just going in as cold as possible, indeed you really should just stop reading this right now and just GO SEE IT.  Still with us?  Okay … the VERY abridged version is that it’s about a secret war being waged between the present and the future by people capable of “inverting” time in substances, objects, people, whatever, into which the Protagonist (BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington), an unnamed CIA agent, has been dispatched in order to prevent a potential coming apocalypse. Washington is once again on top form, crafting a robust and compelling morally complex heroic lead who’s just as comfortable negotiating the minefields of black market intrigue as he is breaking into places or dispatching heavies, Kenneth Branagh delivers one of his most interesting and memorable performances in years as brutal Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, a genuinely nasty piece of work who may be the year’s very best screen villain, Elizabeth Debicki (The Night Manager, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Widows) brings strength, poise and wounded integrity to the role of Sator’s estranged wife, Kat, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets to use his own accent for once as tough-as-nails British Intelligence officer Ives, while there are brief but consistently notable supporting turns and cameos from Martin Donovan, Yesterday’s HImesh Patel, Dirk Gently’s Fiona Dourif and, of course, Nolan’s good luck charm, Michael Caine.  The cast’s biggest surprise, however, is Robert Pattinson, truly a revelation in what has to be, HANDS DOWN, his best role to date, Neil, the Protagonist’s mysterious handler – he’s by turns cheeky, slick, duplicitous and thoroughly badass, delivering an enjoyably multi-layered, chameleonic performance which proves what I’ve long maintained, that the former Twilight star is actually a fucking amazing actor, and on the basis of this, even without that amazing new teaser trailer making the rounds, I think the debate about whether or not he’s the right choice for the new Batman is now academic.  As we’ve come to expect from Nolan, this is a TRUE tour-de-force experience, a visual masterpiece and an endlessly engrossing head-scratcher, Nolan’s screenplay bringing in some seriously big ideas and throwing us some major narrative knots and loopholes, constantly wrong-footing the viewer while also setting up truly revelatory payoffs from seemingly low-key, unimportant beginnings – this is a film you need to be awake and attentive for or you could miss something pretty vital.  The action sequences are, as ever, second to none, some of the year’s very best set-pieces coming thick and fast and executed with some of the most accomplished skill in the business, while Nolan-regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar and Dunkirk, as well as the heady likes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, SPECTRE and Ad Astra) once again shows he’s one of the best camera-wizards in the business today by delivering some truly mesmerising visuals.  Notably, Nolan’s other regular collaborator, composer Hans Zimmer, is absent here (although he has good reason, currently working on his dream project, the fast-approaching screen adaptation of Dune), but Ludwig Göransson (best known for his regular collaborations with Ryan Coogler on the likes of Fruitvale Station, Creed and Black Panther, as well as truly awesome work on The Mandalorian) makes for a fine replacement, crafting an intriguingly internalised, post-modern musical landscape that thrums and pulses in time with the story and emotions of the characters rather than the action itself. Interestingly it’s on the subject of sound that some of the film’s rare detractions have been levelled, and I can see some of the points – the soundtrack mix is an all-encompassing thing, and there are times when the dialogue can be overwhelmed, but in Nolan’s defence as a film this is a heady, immersive experience, something you really need to concentrate on, so these potential flaws are easily forgiven.  As a piece of filmmaking art, this is another flawless wonder from one of the true masters of the craft working in cinema today, but it’s art with palpable substance, a rewarding whole that really HAS TO BE experienced on the big screen.  So put your snobbery at post-lockdown restrictions aside for the moment and get yourself down to your nearest cinema so you can experience it for yourself.  You won’t be disappointed.  Right now, this is my movie of the year, and with only one possible exception, I really don’t see that changing …

#movies 2020 #body cam #body cam (2020) #blood quantum #blood quantum movie #palm springs #palm springs movie #the last days of american crime #hamilton #hamilton movie #sputnik #sputnik movie #greyhound #greyhound movie #project power #the old guard #tenet #tenet movie #awesome sauce

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[incarnateirony]

The way I see it is this: the threshold for het couple canon and queer couple canon should be the same. Wanting more than a handhold or whatever is *fine*, but whatever standard het romance is held to (the bare minimum to "count") should be the same for queer couples. We say all the time, "if one of them was a girl it would already be canon." Not bc of *potential* kissing, but bc it would be seen that way bc of what's already there. But you've said most of this already, so basically I agree lol!

Yup! That’s just it. If Detty or any other non-kissing couples can be taken as canon, so can queer ones, if the text is thoroughly framing it in every method equally. That’s how it works, actually! Applying a different standard *is* homophobic. And a few years ago, Destiel fandom actually knew this and pointed it out but somehow in this weird version of political extremization that we have around here, the pendulum has flipped around and knocked the octavarium on the ass from the other side.

Because people think that means you’re telling them to settle– of course it isn’t! Or making them “feel bad” for wanting more– nope! Now, will we make you feel bad if you make up a goal post where nothing counts until [your explicit marker]? Yeah, probably, cuz yeah, that’s problematic. Does it make them feel small? Tough shit tbh. For the last year or so I’ve dealt with people taking warped and extremized viewpoints to try to bulldoze over me and when I finally said “ENOUGH” and slapped back with a brick wall of history and perspective, they all cried it’s mEaN. No, you guys just don’t know what to do when your placebo activism turns out to not have substance versus the actual issues at hand, and yeah, you feel small and yeah, you feel bad. 

Especially when you realize misdirected and empty gay rage got you nowhere except a hand full of very old very directed old gay rage in counter, and you really can’t cry victim after stomping on the work of activists ahead of you. If you spent years stomping on people and they finally stomp back, and you try to cry to someone as the victim, that’s literally playschool bully behavior. Grow up. When the nerd you’ve been trying to pick on for getting you to reconsider your ways turns out to have been schooled in 6 forms of martial arts and launches your ass to the nurse’s office when you come for round 14 of trying to give him a black eye, all your complaining is about being embarrassed that the nerd kicked your ass after trying to patiently deal with you this whole time. Again, playschool bullshit. Again, grow up.

This isn’t you (not Nonnie-you, just the Royal You, that know who You are) arguing with homophobes or antis anymore. Antis have even cracked in waves. Shipping-fandom-cosplaying-as-activism has completely lost the plot on what their activism lines mean but, a trained routine in thinking it was unvanquishable, have turned it against the wrong things, in the wrong way, and their own people and content. There’s now a few YEARS of “activists” flaying people for, while not 100% happy with the level of content, supporting the queer authors and content and lifting it up – warping it into lines of “settling” to attack them, to diminish them, to make THEM feel small and their own podium – now warped beyond recognition from its original position like a goddamn tea party – big and righteous; and when finally someone clobbers them with a big fat dose of reality of how far they’ve mutilated the dialogue in the name of ship warring, they complain about feeling small. And I’m sorry, fucking no. Not a soul is here to make you feel bad for wanting more. They’re here to make you feel bad for queerphobic deletion and goalpost jockeying. 

As I’ve had to say like a repeating song chorus: You can do both: want and hope and push for more, while *not* deleting the queer text and efforts at hand. Complex thought processes are less appealing to many people than linear pile driving, but it’s generally how the universe functions. And when it comes down to realizing they’re setting unlevel goalposts for the levels they *want* to push it to, suddenly yeah, there’s a rug pull, and they have a choice to pull left or right. If they double down, that’s their choice. But I don’t have to humor that choice or give it platform.

But one thing I hold 0% patience for is people saying they’re here for the rep fight while simultaneously pretending there isn’t a rep fight and trying to villainize core elements like incrementalization or struggling queer authors, many of which beg for public understanding.

We could be having nuanced conversation about the values of different forms of representation; we could be having nuanced conversation about how to effectively organize to help these queer authors into better situations. We could be talking about the show’s evolutionary path, or even culture’s social evolution path and how this show will age with public perception over the years. We could be comparing it to stages of LGBT history.

But we’re not. We’re having conversations where people, abandoning their former angle of discussion, are now screaming “pics or it didn’t happen”, are now tossing up goalposts they themselves used to call homophobic only a few years ago, are now rewiring the dictionary or entire AV medium study (sometimes while claiming themselves an authority while literal cinema literacy sources and decades of studies or even just flat-ass LGBT history say they’re wrong) because they want to feel righteous for demanding more without any actual organized effort or support. They want so desperately for the remaining upset to pass as activism. So badly to flatten even other LGBT community members for trying to hold up the queer canon, because it wasn’t the canon they wanted. And once they realize someone cast Reflectga and their own bullshit methods mow them down, this time with amplified substance of the actual world beyond, they cry foul, that *they*, not the people they’ve been trying to mow over, are being cruelly bullied, just because someone said – no, enough, you’re acting like clowns, I’m fucking over biting the bullet to listen to you on it, you are well past the pale folks.

Miss me with it, fandom. If I have to explain any further than this why one of these is activism and one of these is not, then you’re already beyond hope in the field anyway. I’m not here for your petty ship war nonsense. The representation clearly isn’t for you little fucking tumblr goblins so willing to shred it for not performing to and for you how and when you want regardless of circumstance, much less if you’re even in the damn demographic being represented to goddamn begin with. No, a cis lesbian doesn’t get to tell a trans person how their rep should look. A trans man actually can’t tell a cis gay man how his should look either because their paths are fucking different. 

No, a bunch of women should not be bulldozing over and deleting shit and say it’s For The Gay Men while the vast majority of LGBT men in this fandom hide away in recesses because they’re tired of being bulldozed over if they don’t comply with the shitty fandom dialogue. Or the few that do that warp into it and abandon their original points just from sheer peer pressure – often younger ones, often outside of the demographic. They certainly shouldn’t be trying to flame a middle aged male queer & all other liberal and socially conscious rights rights media representation-commenting activist for writing within his limits about middle aged queer male content. That isn’t how this. Mother. Fucking. Works. I shouldn’t HAVE to have little cluster hoards of LGBT men I adopt that hide in DM or outside of fandom space entirely and poke their nose out with peeps of cautious gratitude and fish around to see how supportive I *really* am – it *shouldn’t* have surprised one of my newly made best friends that I understood the problematic nature of penetration culture and heteronormative ideas of MLM in this fandom. Or to cautiously click my recs because they’re worried about getting fucking ass stomped for daring to speak up on their own representation. It shouldn’t BE like that.

You wanna support queer creators? Y’all missed that boat because you were too busy being headass to organize and actually petition the network. No, screaming at execs until they delete social media and put a black mark on the idea, @’ing accounts with spam until you’re put on a mute list and negatively impact marketing algorithms, that’s not petitioning. Building portfolios and presentations delivered sensibly are. A few did. Good for those people. Fuck everyone else. Virtue signaling nonsense. No wonder they’re so enamored with shitty mass marketing as a goal.

“WELL IT SHOULDN’T BE THAT WAY!”

Yeah well welcome to being a grown up. It is, whether you like it or not. It’s hard out here. America shouldn’t have a giant orange cheeto racist for its president either and yet here we fucking are. Life isn’t fair. So figure out how to actually put feet on the ground and change it instead of yodeling online like a bunch of idiots at the people trying to help you. Bobo sure as fuck did a long fucking time ago and never stopped. Maybe you should catch up. Cuz even at “slow and steady wins the race” he’s gone miles ahead of you while you’ve been distracted anally grooming like a cat or some shit.

Imagine how (not) far queer rights would get if every incremental step we took, even if it wasn’t far enough – TV or real life – we just let everyone scream and take away entirely because it wasn’t the kind you wanted. It’s regressive garbage. It doesn’t actually do you any benefit. It doesn’t do the community any benefit. It doesn’t do queer creators any benefit. It doesn’t do queer cinema history any benefit. Nobody but homophobes and other agenda’ed asshats benefit. Which is why they trained you to think like this to begin with. Stop.

#supernatural #spn #representation #bi!dean #whatever #tired #tired gay #that's what I'll tag this #destiel #lgbtqia

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/23/2019: FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION - BEAST STABLE

I’m not sure that I made the right choice by including this film in my blogtober program. A fugitive thriller with women’s prison and yakuza elements, BEAST STABLE doesn’t seem very horrific on its face. However, this third installation in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series (and the last by visionary director Shunya Ito) is also the most visceral and intimate. Its relative lack of action movie bravado shifts the focus from matters of the spirit to those of the body, the appalling details of which made me ask myself whether I didn’t consider this a horror movie after all. My conclusions are not very firm, but the debate is worth having.

During notorious convict Sasori (”Scorpion”)/Nami Matsushida’s latest escape, she runs afoul of the relentless Detective Kondo (Mikio Narita) on the subway, who no sooner cuffs her than loses his arm to her blade. This produces some of my favorite images from the whole hallucinatory series, with Matsu racing through the streets with the severed limb flailing behind her to the unforgettable sounds of star Meiko Kaji’s theme song “Urami Bushi”. In her flight to a shanty town on the outskirts of the city, she meets a young prostitute named Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe) in a most outrageous fashion. Yuki lies on her back in a cemetery, clutching bills from the john who left her there, and gazing vacantly at the stars. When a strange sound draws her attention, she finds herself locking eyes with the feral Matsu, who crouches behind a tombstone with the severed arm in her mouth, scraping away at the handcuff chain. The strange gothic horror of this scene only scratches the surface of how weird BEAST STABLE will become.

Yuki is an especially desperate character whose pitiful lot justifies the trouble that she makes for Matsu. A poor prostitute who is virtually enslaved to her brain damaged brother, she must keep his base instincts in check only by submitting to his every sexual whim. When Yuki chases after Matsu, begging to be freed from this nightmare, she unwittingly attracts the attention of the local mob, including a female pimp with a penchant for back alley abortions. The crow-obsessed crook Katsu, who might as well be a Batman villain (played by Reisen Ri, who has powerful Karen Black vibes) hatches a plot to take out Matsu, but this falls apart when Matsu starts slashing her way through the gang’s ranks. Rather than confront her, Katsu foolishly opts for the safety of prison--Matsu’s home turf, where she is able to exact a diabolical revenge that belongs more in a giallo than a standard issue women’s prison movie. 

BEAST STABLE is often as beautiful as either of its two predecessors, which are generally considered to be superior; the dreamy rain of fire produced when Yuki searches for Matsu by dropping matches into the sewer is not to be missed. Admittedly the other films have a more ethereal, allegorical quality, but BEAST STABLE holds its own in terms of being potently disturbing. Where we previously found female criminality presented in a sort of heroic light, aimed at the dissolution of the corrupt prison system and the punishment of hypocrites, here women are metaphorically imprisoned in maddeningly hopeless situations. Yuki is unable to emotionally separate herself from her rapist brother, as she is carrying his baby to term--even after being raped with a golf club by Katsu for intruding on the pimp’s territory. When one of Katsu’s colleagues sets his sights on Matsu, the thug’s distraught girlfriend kills him by virtually boiling him alive. Trapped in Katsu’s bird cage, Matsu escapes by retrieving a scalpel from the cold grip of a prostitute who died as a result of a horrifying abortion. Nowhere are the courageous, castrating antiheroes of FEMALE PRISONER 701: SCORPION or JAILHOUSE 4. In BEAST STABLE, we have only Matsu grimly following a trail of victims to the film’s hard won conclusion.

I am left trying to figure out if I can create a reasonable distinction between horror and pure exploitation, at least in this case. My first clue lies in the film’s profound sadness, which first appears in the image of the recently befouled Yuki, lying fully clothed in a cemetery like a discarded corpse. Apparently, I think that despair is an important element in horror. It would be pretty difficult for anyone other than the most serious degenerates to get it up for this movie, with its relentless agonies and heavy focus on abortion. There is no token lesbianism or nude calisthenics to brighten the mood now and again, and at that, the violence is rarely political. In the former films, Matsu and her defacto acolytes rage against authorities who would break their spirits, but in BEAST STABLE the violence is personal and intimate rather than institutional, and few characters are afforded a majestic martyrdom as a way out. SCORPION and JAILHOUSE 41 pit the anonymizing degradation of jail against the glories of anarchy and vengeance, but BEAST STABLE reaffirms that not much good awaits women beyond prison bars.

This line of thinking leads me to indulge in a personal note. I was introduced to this series while still in college, by a person who I would later categorize as a total abuser. Though he was highly intelligent and charismatic in an offbeat way, he dated exclusively much younger women--a sure sign of someone avoiding the sound judgment of his peers--and there was some evidence of his having that iffy white guy preference for asian girls. He lured in women who were too young or inexperienced to know better by flaunting his inner sensitivity and trauma, and then once he had someone (or more than one person) on the hook, he rewarded her by being relentlessly dishonest and unfaithful, as if to teach her a lesson for sympathizing with him. To my knowledge, he had not been a women’s studies major in his school days, but he might as well have been, as most of his film discussion came through a feminist filter. He analyzed sleazy genre fare to within an inch of its life, and seemed to delight in making remarks like that the infamous borderline pornographic slasher movie THE TOOLBOX MURDERS “is dangerous and should not be seen.” This all might sound like the typical calculation of a basic predator, but having been his unfortunate friend for several years, I truly believe that he believed his own bullshit. His manic depressive behavior belied little self-reflection, and he would sometimes make tearful statements that bordered on magical thinking, about how “something” unnameable about him drove women insane. He seemed genuinely affronted by his long suffering girlfriend’s suggestion that he might be a misogynist, even though he admitted to hitting her during at least one argument. (A fact that he naturally presented as something that should make me feel sorry for him, in his epic turmoil) He showed no awareness of how suspicious it might be to some people, that he voraciously took in any movie starring teenage girls or childlike women; even though I held his opinion in the highest regard for years, I had to learn to start ignoring him when he recommended these movies, because whether he was right about their actual quality was a complete crap shoot. 

The point that I’m coming to is that he was absolutely obsessed with the character of Sasori. He believed that the JAILHOUSE 41 was one of, if not The greatest movie of all time, and both his email address and user image related to her. The FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION series represented the pinnacle of his absolute favorite thing, which was raped virgins returning for revenge. Back when I knew him, I took this to be plain old good taste; today, I associate it obliquely with an attitude I sense a lot on the political right. Without giving this remotely the space that it would take more me to fully prove my point, I’ll just say that part of what motivates conservatives and bigots is the profound, primal, unconscious fear that those they have repressed will come back to avenge themselves. There’s a subaural signal in right wing rhetoric that I always hear beyond their empty circuitous logic, that simply says “We’ve done a lot of bad things to you, and by virtue of that, now we have reason to fear that you will do those same things to us, given the slightest chance.” Since that time, I have become acquainted with more men like this than I would have preferred to. Not the scheming women’s studies serial rapists, but  the sulking intellectuals whose unshakable belief in their own nobility--their certainty that they are too smart to be bigots--prevents them from fully acknowledging their abusive, misogynist, and frankly sometimes pedophilic attitudes toward women. These guys vocally obsess over the likes of Lydia Lunch and Kim Gordon and Sasha Grey and Asia Argento et al, and boast about their literacy in matters of gender and sexuality, only to routinely accumulate the most submissive and virginal partners they can find, and blame these girls for all of their personal problems for as long as they stick around. The FEMALE CONVICT SCORPION movies are great, both in terms of formal artistry and metaphor for the female experience. I would love to believe in the specialness of men who relate so openly to characters like Matsu, but because of my majority experience, I’m afraid I tend to find them all guilty until proven innocent.

#sasori #female convict scorpion #female prisoner scorpion #shunya ito #meiko kaji #reisen ri #beast stable #women in prison #wip #exploitation #sexploitation #rape revenge #feminism #misogyny #horror #blogtober #yayoi watanabe #mikio narita

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Hidden Gems of the Silver Screen (And, to a Lesser Extent, the Telly)

It can’t have escaped your notice that the majority of my more recent posts (and fuck knows I’m not posting regularly at the moment) are about movies and TV. The reason for that is pretty simple: 2019 has, surprisingly, yielded some great movies and TV... and also some really torrid shite. On the one hand, films like Ma, Brightburn and The Perfection continue to breathe new life into the horror genre. On the other hand, sci-fi as a cinematic and televised thing continues to ignore its actual audience in favour of sniffing its own farts in a sound-proof chamber designed specifically for next-level virtue-signalling. One thing I will say about the dreck of 2019 is that it’s interesting dreck, at least so far. Another Life, for example, isn’t just bad: it’s mind-bogglingly, fascinatingly bad, as though someone set out to make the worst TV series imaginable and accidentally created a portal to another dimension made entirely of crap.

With all the amazingly wonderful and transifxingly terrible visual media on offer lately, it’s easy to forget that there’s a rich repository of films and TV series from just a few years ago that you’ve probably never watched. You see if you, like me, are a snooty, card-carrying member of the elitist intelligentsia, you probably missed films and TV series that looked dumb as soup on the surface on the grounds that they weren’t worth your time. Luckily for you, I’ve dived nose-first into the detritus of our dying culture, so you don’t have to, and I’ve ferreted out the diamonds from the pig-swill. Without further ado, I’d therefore like to present my list Easily Overlooked Gems.

1. Mandy The phrase “Nicholas Cage stars in a sword-and-sorcery rape/revenge thriller” does not inspire confidence. It’s therefore easy to ignore Mandy and the promptly forget it ever existed. Which is a shame, because it’s kind of a work of genius. The plot is exactly what you’d expect: a cult kidnaps, rapes and kills Cage’s girlfriend, Mandy, and Cage sets out on a mission of revenge culminating in a blood-bath. The nature of the revenge quest is what puts a sting in the film’s tail- or tale, if you’re feeling puntastic. You see, a lot of the bad guys exist in a constant hallucinatory haze after taking a drug that sent them mad after one dose. In order to fight on their level, Cage has to take a dose too. As a result, the world around him slowly but surely transforms into a nightmare landscape that looks like a cross between a D&D illustration and the cover of a heavy metal album and his grubby, personal mission of fury takes on the unmistakable resonance of a Conan-esque hero’s quest. By the end of the film, you have to wonder if Cage has actually slipped into some sort of alternate dimension or if he’s just lost his game-pieces completely. In places, it’s nearly as painful to watch as Landmine Goes Click (crikey, there’s one for the history buffs) but it looks and feels like Beyond the Black Rainbow. Worth your attention just because of how weird it is. I give it a solid four-out-five decapitated rapists.

2. Baby Driver Nothing about Baby Driver suggested it would be a good film: the way it was advertised as a car-chase movie trying to be cute; the stupid title; the fact that it came and went through cinemas like a fart in the night. Which is a shame, because it’s secretly brilliant. It’s a highly stylised crime film populated with the archest archetypes money can buy (to the point where some of the dialogue has a weirdly beat-poetic feel to it). It’s saturated colour palette and off-beat affect actually have something of a full-colour Jim Jarmusch flick about them. The hook, of course, is that the lead character (only ever referred to as Baby, because he’s got a punchably youthful face) has tinnitus and therefore has to listen to music constantly to drown at the buzzing in his head. The practical upshot of this is that a) every single scene is overlayed with surprisingly great and situationally appropriate music and b) he goes through life like he’s always dancing, so his way of moving lends to the film’s easy-going sense of flow. It also explains where his preternatural driving skills come from (I mean, not really, but within the context of the plot): he’s used to sliding effortlessly into patterns and rhythms because of the music thing. All of this could make a terrible film, of course, but execution is everything and, to everyone’s surprise, especially mine, this flick was executed with an astonishing level of panache. I rate it ten out of ten grizzly motor way pile ups.

3. Nightflyers It’s not just films that get overlooked as the tide of culture washes back and forth, like a great big sea of effluent. TV series also vanish unduly into the dustbin of history. Case in point, the criminally underappreciated Nighrflyers: Netflix pre-Another Life sci-fi offering that was actually good. It’s a pretty classic set-up: a group of mismatched wing-nuts on a spaceship, all of whom have secrets that that will threaten to tear them apart while they try to make contact with an alien life-form. What elevates Nightflyers is just how fuck-uped the cast are. There’s an angry British psychic whose spent his whole life in captivity in case he goes full Scanners on somebody’s head, a guy who only ever appears as a hologram for reasons too twisted to explain here, his evil mother whose uploaded her mind to the ship’s computer and gone batshit crazy, a genetic superbeing and a hacker who can send her mind into computers via a dodgy implant and who may or may not be drifting out of touch with the human condition. It’s great. 6 and half billion out of 7 billion monkeys, boiling in the void.

4. Hardcore Henry No, I don’t know who thought that title was a good idea either, but the point is that Hardcore Henry has no motherfucking right to kick as much arse as it does. It was clearly made on a budget that would embarrass a Youtube shampoo commercial, but it just flat-out rocks. Shot entirely in first-person, it follows the adventures of a mute cyborg as he seeks revenge against the bastard psychic entrepreneur who first built him then tried to kill him. Along the way, his main ally is a dude who keeps dying and coming back to life in a series of identical bodies but with radically different personalities and haircuts (this is eventually explained, but I’m not going to spoil it for you). It’s premise is demented, it’s surprisingly well-choreographed and its soundtrack is an aphrodisiac for your ears. Also, Tim Roth is in it, so that’s just yer seal of quality right there. It came out to a lot of fanfare and many, many cinema trailers back in the day and was then promptly forgotten about as soon as it launched. So I’m dragging it kicking and screaming back into the limelight. It’s on Netflix right now, so go watch it. I rate it a solid 11 out of 15 creepy duplicates of Tim Roth.

5. Upgrade Another lesser-known film about a cyborg. Unlike Henry, however, this cyborg’s life doesn’t so much ‘rock’ as ‘suck balls’. He gets crippled and then ends up with a sentient computer chip in his head that allows him to remote-control his own body despite not having a working spine anymore. Naturally, his experimental tech attracts the attention of some unsavoury characters and he and his brain-chip have to work together to figure out what’s going on, often through a series of ultra-violent, gory fight-scenes that horrify the protagonist himself. Of course, all might be well, except that the head-chip is a homicidal little shit that clearly has its own agenda. I give it at least 0000 0111 out of 0000 1001 painstakingly restored vintage kill-bots.

6. The Tick The Tick isn’t as overlooked as everything else on this list, especially since there have been a couple of previous televised incarnations of the franchise to lay the groundwork. However, I still feel like the modern iteration doesn’t quite get the love it deserves, so I’m throwing it out here. Following the adventures a mad, amnesiac and possibly stupid superhero and his neurotic sidekick, The Tick explores a world where superheroes aren’t the paragons of good from classic comics, the corrupt psychotics of The Boys or Watchmen, or the eternally struggling, walking moral life-lessons of modern cinema. Instead, they’re just ordinary people operating at various levels of competence/incompetence and mental illness and working within a bureaucratic, wildly inefficient framework. That might not sound like a recipe for a successful TV series, but it really is. Drawing out the mundane, human side of heroes and villains against the backdrop of cataclysmic, civilisation-threatening events makes for infinitely compelling and very, very funny viewing. It’s kind of doing for the superhero genre what Futurama did for sci-fi a few years back. It’s also where the phrase and/or popular song ‘seven billion monkeys boiling in the void’ comes from. My rating is four out of five sapient, homosexual boats (which will make sense when you watch it).

7. The Void Amid the high-budget horror extravaganzas of recent years, it’s easy to forget about the void, which feels like the best story H.P. Lovecraft never wrote and looks like David Chronenberg tried to adapt a Heironimous Bosch painting... in the ‘80s. The actual plot concerns a group of people getting trapped in a hospital by murderous cultists and discovering dark secrets and, arguably, a whole other dimension in its basement. You’re not exactly there for the plot though: The Void is a mood-piece and an exercise in visual FX craftsmanship. You’re there to drink in the atmosphere and see what each new cosmic horror looks like. I am delighted to award it ten out of ten unspeakable whisperers in the darkness. That’s enough for two barbershop quartets, an emcee and a supporting act.

8. Happy Death Day It’s Groundhog Day but as a horror film starring a really annoying lass in her late teens has to keep dying horribly until she learns to stop being such a terrible person... and also kill her murderer with a little help from her newly-minted, non-cunty friend. There’s a sequel that I haven’t seen yet, but the original is a low-key, oft-overlooked delight. I give it 9 out of 11 suspiciously similar corpses.

#Secret Diary of a Fat Admirer #films #tv shows #movies #Mandy #Baby Driver #Nightflyers #The Tick #The Void #Tick #happy death day #Upgrade

[maatikikhushboo]

Kasautii Flashbacks Aur Promises Kay

Disclaimer: A lengthy frustrated post (2500+ words) on your way. Has lots of grammatical errors and is not proof read. So please read on your own discretion.

After watching 69 episodes of Kasautii Zindagii Kay, I decided that I will quit watching it regularly, but I continued watching it intermittently. I very well knew the implications of signing up for EK’s shows. But still, I wanted to give it a try, and honestly, for the pretty faces of the leads because they screamed chemistry. Look at these pictures launched initially - especially the down section of the picture --

Backstory :

KZK1 was one of those disastrous stuffs ever made for ITV. Pathetic aesthetics, horrible make-ups (that didn’t change for this season as well), lackadaisical writing, multiple assassinations/butchering of characters, having sudden 180 and 270 degree turns and the offscreen dynamics kinda influencing the plot and what not? I used to watch KZK1 because 2001 was when I was residing in Kolkata. My love for Bangla had signed me up for that stupid show which I stopped watching after certain point of time (Waise, there is nothing Bangali except the names in both the seasons, it was just used to make it attractive and avant garde. Bangali people in general don’t wear these Devdas-inspo clothes and jewellery. Every time I see Mohini and Nivi of KZK2, I feel sorry for them because jewellery must be really heavy and wearing them on daily basis is bit uncomfortable even when you are getting paid for it.). The only saving grace of the show were the actors and their performances (which cannot be matched by the new season), otherwise no one was going to watch the show for its stupid story. Except the much popular title song, Shwetha Tiwari’s performance, Moloy-Rajesh’s bromance, there was nothing worthy in KZK1. Anurag and Prerna got united only when they died. Some felt that they were true OTP, and I beg to differ here.  

It is 2019 and everything is so out-of-place with KZK2 since its inception. Ekta’s much ambitious project is a flop show. It was much evident and we all knew that EK is EK and she will take the same S1 way. KZK2 proved itself to be a mere aesthetic-improvised photocopy of KZK1. There are many scenes in the show which are filmed same-to-same. The editing is pathetic and the noticeable bloopers are increasing day by day. These promos and claims of going the different way were just marketing gimmicks. In KZK1, AnuPre getting to know each other, falling in love and getting physically intimate, all happened in just 20-25 episodes. This time they wanted to avoid that and hence went the Naveen way, only to get back to the quintessential track of Anu marrying Komo and Prerna becoming pregnant. Naveen babu and his creepy tactics were much dragged and the writers deliberately elevated Anurag’s character and turned him the great saviour. Even the SitaaraPlus Instagram was full of Anurag’s gun-gaan. I bet that the channels’ PR team are a bunch of fangirls. We see that the so-called smart Anurag Basu is perhaps the dumbest ML of 2018/19 whose all plans were epic fails. I mean come on, Moloy was lot better than him in finding proofs against Komolika. I miss Moloy man, he was such a comic relief (although I must agree that the character has some serious issues like him being okay whenever Nivedita or Mohini badmouths Sharma’s, at least he can knock some sense into them about etiquette if not there, then in private). I keep forgetting that it’s a Hindi TV show and that too a Balaji show. Tellyworld mein itna dimaag kahan kisi ke paas hota hai?  😂

Anurag was given heavy dialogues which were full of promises. Sentence ke aage ek promise and sentence ke peeche ek promise (if possible I would like to go into the TV and smack his head if he daresay that word again 😤) Prerna was shown as that abla majboor naari of 2019 who is so gareeb that she had to resort to marriage to ensure that unke sar par chhat rahe. She was never given the character growth she deserved (why does Hindi TV revolve around shaadi? matlab har problem ka solution either function or shaadi?). It is natural that audiences started feeling that Anurag was the only one who contributed more to this story because we never were shown Prerna’s side of story. During the track, Anurag kept giving Prerna mixed signals (dosti ke liye aaj kal, in 2019 koi bhi itna sab nahi karta like jaan jokhim mein daalna especially when Prerna herself told you initially to back off). Getting engaged to Mishka whom he clearly didn’t love while being so confused about Prerna was the first downfall. Anurag didn’t bother to tell Mishka that he doesn’t want to marry her. On top of it, he promised Prerna of marriage and got physically intimate with her and then asked Veena, her hand for marriage. He publicly insulted Prerna and married Komolika. How ugly is this!!! How do the writers expect people to connect to him, how much ever good or noble his intentions may be? There is no doubt he is selfless and has the best interests of everyone in his heart especially Prerna, but is that enough? He can’t be redeemed after what he did to Prerna, because actions speak louder than words. What makes this sequence worse is the damn FLASHBACKS! AnuPre consummation was shown to a viewer as a FB when a pregnant Prerna recollects this at the hospital. This makes it more weird and gross! Like, how on earth people get busy getting intimate when some gunde are after your lives? I know, that you have confessed your love to each other, but itni urgency kis baat ki? Writers have destroyed that innocence and purity which was there at the time of confession. The editing and song sequence was so terrible. The only thing that is bearable is the actors who are making the characters believable, otherwise the storyline is just chutiyaapa.

Writers, have degraded everything just because you wanted to highlight the much-hyped character Komolika? Hina is a pretty woman who has achieved a lot in her career and deserves the love she gets from her fans. I kinda really liked her makeup (it was inspired by Bipasha Basu) as a Bong Bride but the costume was again meh. But the character portrayed by her was an iconic one and she has been a huge let down. I don’t get any vamp feels from her. She appears more of a comic character who only knows to make faces. And a special mention to her style statement which is just like her role. Costume designers, please, rich people like KoMoNi never dress like that. Those costumes are everything but sophisticated and classy.

Also, I think it’s high time that these fangirls stop idolising Anurag Basu 2.0. A person who cannot clarify things and take a stand for his love and keeps listening to all the accusations and taunts thrown at her by the ladies of his family and later justifies it by saying that it’s all because they were concerned is plain bullshit. He may be a gentleman and loves his family, and Prerna, but he is not worth stanning!!! Is this the same Anurag Basu who warned Naveen Babu that “Agar Prerna pe mera dil aa gaya na, toh aap, aapki sagaai, aapki daleelein koi nahi rok paayega mujhe Prerna ko apna banana se.”? If he is, then why did he fall prey to Komolika’s blackmailing? Naveen was also equally creepy, dangerous and comical (Saajan ji ghar aaye dance was EPIC). See what the writers have done!

Even during Naveen’s track, they desperately wanted to introduce Komolika but couldn’t do it due to Hina’s prior commitments. To venture Komolika they again brought Mishka (who was actually that London wali shaadi-shuda ladki whose name is Sarika 🤣 ). To link Prerna and Komolika, they planned Ronit-Shivani’s angle which is long forgotten (Shivani doesn’t remember that she is pregnant 🤣 ). So many loose ends are conveniently forgotten. Also, what kind of a mother is Mohini?😳  She is so ignorant. Can’t she understand what her son wants and I am bewildered by how she accepted Komolika without any problem when technically Anu was engaged to Mishka? Terrible!

At least after Naveen track, they could have explored AnuPre. I remember that one small snippet in Prerna’s sangeet with Naveen where we get to know that Anurag stopped talking to Prerna because she cheated him in a game in their childhood. We could have been shown many such things instead of that stupid Naveen track. Although the journey of AnuPre in KZK1 was only 20-25 episodes, it was satisfying because there were no other parallel tracks going on and they concentrated on AnuPre bonding.

When the channel dropped the shaadi wala promo (only to get transformed into No-Shaadi-Only-Tika later), it became a rage and people were like happy that it is not going the S1 way only to get disheartened. The confession was subtle and beautifully shot. Yet, I couldn’t feel the depth. Dialogues were always out of place and meaningless in this show. Just fire the dialogue writers man, it’s making everything more confusing because there is no sync between dialogues, story and character progression! Also, I knew that you were gonna bring that pandit to legalise the tika marriage, I mean by-the-virtue-of-air-maang-got-filled-by-sindoor-marriage on an auspicious muhurat after 15 odd years. That was a nice move to legalise the existence of Prem.🤣

The AltBalaji’s synopsis of the show was screaming since eons – “An epic saga of Anurag and Prerna’s soul-stirring romance. The story begins with one unintentional betrayal that spoils Anurag’s relationship with his soul-mate Prerna and is followed by the wicked twists added by Komolika. Their lives go through a whirlwind of emotions, trials, sufferings, twists, and terrible confusions, which destiny plays out for them. Only time will reveal how they are destined to live for each other, but not with each other.”. Coming to this unintentional betrayal, let me clarify that there is NO UNINTENTIONAL BETRAYAL here because Anurag intentionally chose this to save his family and business. When two people are in a relationship, one person has no right to take decisions for both. Prerna asked him, begged him literally but he just slammed his decision on her. I don’t give a damn to this stupid sacrifice “Thorn Bird” kinda love. People feel sad for Anurag being the Thorn Bird here, but he is the one who had landed himself into this worthless sacrifice as Anupam notes.

People are excited to see strong Prerna. I could have been happier if they went ahead with S1 way here instead. She was always initially taunted for being stupid, having small brains and of lower class. Proving her mettle and becoming successful on her own would have been a befitting reply. It is so against your self-respect to land yourselves again amidst of those Basu’s. I am not surprised that you like Shivani have forgotten about your pregnancy and how harmful it could be for your child to survive especially when people like Komolika are living in the same house. And there is nothing new in this track. EK's saalon purana same formula hai - Mix and Match. Apne serials mein hi naye serials ke stories revolve hote rehte hai. In her show, Kya Hua Tera Vaada, the same thing happened. When Vihaan married Anika, Bulbul entered along with Anika and did all the grihpravesh rasams and started living with them. Of course, this new Prerna is a treat to watch (she has shown everyone their place with sass) and it is worth watching for all entertainment. Erica nails such scenes and through this track she is gonna get her due. (I loved her stint in KRPKAB post leap). Also, what is with this Anurag planning to get rid of Komolika by getting closer to her? Like really man!? You appear like a milksop. The lollipops of AnuPre flashbacks or eyelocks which they are inserting in the middle of the 21 minutes of bakwaas is not gonna get them TRPs. For me, they have ruined it. Everything is beyond redemption now.

We all know what happens when a thing is excessively marketed/promoted. It unnecessarily increases the hype and expectations of people, which when not met will lead to utter disappointment. EK has hired SRK to do the honours, which must have costed her a bomb. Heavy social media promotion through various videos & BTS scenes has ignited curiosity and they wanted to play with this and all fell for it. Some wanted to explore it as a new show and some were there to draw comparisions because of nostalgia with a hope that things would be different this time coz it’s 2018/2019.  😂 😂 😂 Be it 2001 or 2019 things have not changed in TV. Film Industries are gradually transforming themselves and are producing films with unconventional concepts. They are churning out good amount of content driven/art films every year. We know that TV actors don’t have many choices. Both Parth & Erica are good actors. Actors get paid irrespective of whatever they portray. Still, I sometimes do feel bad seeing all the potential being wasted. But yeah, the casting is on point. The chemistry is so good. But, what we get in the name of the great KZK 2 is just the same recycled shit. Balaji didn’t need to inaugurate, the statues of love everywhere (like really?). If it were other producers, (well, they won’t be spending mammoth, but let us hypothetically assume) and they are not able to meet the expectations, to continue their stint, they would succumb to ratings based instant-noodle-tracks-twists-turns kinda plots. But EK is EK, whose team loves to cook noodles from Day 1, toh itna fizool karcha kyun karna bhai? She could have been a little prudent and invested some money in hiring better script writers and agar kismat acchi hoti hamari aur actors ki toh, acche story mil jaati. Also, many dynamics could have been explored. Khair, chhodo, main bhi kiske baare mein bol rahi hoon 😂 😂 😂 What else can we expect from a Balaji show? It’s just villains, multiple MUs, separations and sacrifices all over the place. I just wish TRPs teach her a lesson.

P.S: Okay, some people say that Prerna should have understood that Anurag has some majboori like she had while almost marrying Naveen babu. No one in their right state of mind would think about majboori and stuff after getting humiliated publicly and getting mocked for her love. And, agar tellyworld mein itna brains leads ke pass hote toh yeh shaadi mandap tak nahi pahunchti.

P.P.S: I just don’t understand what is the problem with SitaaraPlus. Come on man, why on earth do you love showing all the wrong messages to the society under the tagline “Baat Nayi”? Everyone is aware of your partiality towards Gul and Ekta’s shows. However regressive they might be, you just keep extending them and you simply pulled the plug off for the Dopahar shows which were good content wise and concept wise. Everyone here is to do business and so you are, so stop bluffing people under your stupid tagline. Also, don’t mislead people like you did here. Thank God I didn’t subscribe to Star Value Pack of yours. Bye-Bye.

#i vent when i am on my pms so sorry bhailog #i quit this show #thanks for ruining anurag and prerna for us #Kasautii Zindagii Kay #Kasautii Zindagii Kay 2 #kzk #kzk2 #kzk 2 #woes of tellywood audience #type: opinion