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horrorlesbion · 2 years

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top 5 or 10 movies you think riverdale should reference next plus optionally like what the storyline incorporating them should be like

i’m sorry this is so much more than 5 to 10 movies i got carried away

child’s play franchise - literally any movie

ideally seed/bride or the tv show. i think it was @girlbossreggie who proposed a chicles bride of chucky au which would be perfect. alternatively i want jennifer tilly to guest star. it is not elaborated if she is playing herself or jennifer tilly as possessed by tiffany. a bound reference is obligatory and it has to be made clear that she hooked up with jugheads mum (this can be combined).

devil’s carnival

dream musical episode. works perfectly if they want to pick up the “war between heaven and hell” plot from rivervale again. even if hiram would have slayed as the devil part i know they can make it work now. i’ll even tolerate some fanservice and give choni the june/cora storyline (toni is june of course).

alternatively i’ll settle for a veronica & hermosa single musical performance of a song from repo! hermione can cover the third sibling part if needed because i remember marisol said she wanted to do a musical performance i know we can get her back for this.

saw/escape room/hostel

saw is of course the classic and my favourite. i want a bunch of the characters trapped in an insane torture maze. i love single location horror. i’m sure we can dig up a villain weird enough to do it if glee managed it. if they’re cowardly they can also reference the escape room movies instead since those are more mainstream and less gory. hostel would be hilarious if only for the insane worldbuilding implications but we could make it work. if they suddenly revealed the blossoms went on a summer trip to hunt people for sport every year i’d believe it.

rope (alternatively: swoon/compulsion/thrill me)

honestly any leopold & loeb adaptation would bang. i know they already riffed on funny games for the chicles wedding but rope is such a fun set-up it’s easy to replicate (AND classic cinema at that). could do it with a bunch of characters though of course a gay couple hosting is always funniest. but i wouldn’t even be mad if it’s barchie or veggie who killed a man and have to hide a body in a trunk while everyone else is at the house for a nice little party. not a movie but thrill me is my favourite reference option you all know my opinion on this. even if it would have fit better during earlier seasons i know we can make it work. if it’s a musical episode they’re obligated to give chicles at least one of the songs (superior? life plus 99 years? thrill me?)

gone girl

veronica realised hiram actually seduced/paid off the russian assassin and pulled off the exact plot of gone girl to fuck with her because he was mad she exiled him. ideally this is how hiram comes back on the show. funnier if hermosa was in on it.

malignant

jason is reborn as a tumor on cheryls brain that possesses her body and kills people. we have magic now might as well go balls to the wall insane i KNOW ras loved malignant i just know it. for another insane cheryl plot to run in the background: velvet buzzsaw. her paintings come to life and start killing people. her fursona painting needs to be prominently featured in this episode.

everyone is confronted with their rivervale counterparts (who are even more deranged now) who all realised they were stuck in a timeloop and broke out of the pocket universe to take their places in the main narrative. doppelganger fight to the death everyone gets to try and flex their acting muscles.

the purge

you KNOW this would slap. would have fit ideal for early season 5. archie comes back to riverdale ruled by hiram not knowing it’s purge day in 3 days. however given the vibes of percival pickens i’m confident he’d be down to institute a purge day we can still fit this in. can mash it up with some references to assassination nation since that’s basically teenage highly aestheticised camp purge movies with three times the plot so a natural fit for riverdale.

psycho goreman

an episode entirely dedicated to what jb has been up to during the timejump years. and the answer is she found a space rock that lets her control a giant violent alien monster. since its set during the timejump we don’t have to explain why the actress still looks so young.

the descent

alternate bottle episode: all the riverladies take a girls trip going caving in a secret passage cheryl discovered in the blossom mines. they get attacked by fucked up cave creatures and barely survive. maybe one of them dies and cheryl has to resurrect her with necromancy. none of this is ever referenced again.

hard

now that gay kevin is becoming a cop what better time to pull off “gay cop gets over his internalised homophobia while hunting a gay serial killer and hooking up with him” everyone watch this movie btw it’s criminally underrated. 90s messed up gay cinema for the win. on THAT note i don’t know how they would pull it off since i don’t think the network would let them so much as breathe the name of this movie but referencing frisk would be so fun. i would bet ras has read some dennis cooper and probably seen this film. and speaking of really messed up gay content it’s a huge shame we don’t have blue velvet video anymore and already did snuff films in season 4 because an underhanded playdurizm reference would be fun. that was such a movie. if anyone takes this as a rec list do NOT even look up summaries for frisk and playdurizm without a strong stomach.

also: not gay but talking of extreme horror if we’re folding rivervale back into this season’s narrative i want an explicit martyrs reference for archie. he doesn’t have to get like skinned or anything but the vibes were already there in 06x01

any david decoteau movie

riverdale already spends a large amount of time with hot men wandering out shirtless. it’s a natural fit and they’re gay culture. funniest option would be 1313: giant killer bees and it ends with cheryl showing up to save the day bringing back the fact that she can control bees with her mind apparently.

raw / excision

i want betty to eat people or take them apart surgically. just let her do some fucked up violence. really get into it. alternatively a Came Back Wrong plot about archie and bettys new superpowers turning into something more malevolent and giving us a jennifers body/all cheerleaders die type plot. archie already gets a bunch of female abuse victim coded plots he can fit into this. however girl homoeroticism is still obligatory. let’s say beronica to make up for their lack of interaction since the timejump. (honorary mention for beronica thoroughbreds scheme. don’t know how to pull this off with hiram gone but you will always be famous)

orphan

one of the couples (through gritted teeth i guess barchie) decides to adopt and the exact plot of the movie plays out except the audience is not surprised the child turns out to be a 30 year old serial killer in the end because she’s also played by one of the hot young adult cw actors in pigtails but through the whole episode no one acknowledges that.

nine lives

hiram comes back as a cat. i’m somewhat convinced they cast mark consuelos as hiram off of his role in this movie.

#ask #anon #riverdale #thank you SO MUCH for this chance to procrastinate all my uni work this is delightful #happy to talk about any of these some more btw #both the movies and the riverdale plot suggestions

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tokisguitarpick · 3 years

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interruption part.1

characters: Skwisgaar Skwigelf x Reader

doods, I really tried to make this one giant piece but I said that on friday, it’s fuckin wednesday, work has been kicking my ass, here’s what I got so far

The first time you met Skwisgaar Skwigelf was unfortunately also the first time you pissed off Skwisgaar Skwigelf.

In your defense, you thought it would be prudent to bond with the support staff- your boss Charles, the music producer Abigail and her assistant Dick, the Klokateers, the people around the band- as soon as you could to cement your place at work first. After that, then you would really worry about Dethklok liking you. It's not that you were rude to them, hell your whole job was making sure their needs were met and they were secure and happy on a day to day basis. But if Charles asked you for a report at the same time Murderface told you to go get his dethphone from his bedroom, Charles took first priority. Which was why when you were sent to deliver a fax from Crystal Mountain Records to Abigail, you went diligently down the 4 floors it took to reach the studio and entered quietly, recognizing the red recording light on over the door. A brightly melodious guitar solo rang through the gothic studio rooms, sounding as exquisite as a Beethoven composition when unaccompanied by the rest of the death metal band, and you hovered by the door for a moment. You were nervous to disturb now that you heard exactly what they were recording. But your rationale won out and you decided to simply slip the fax to Abigail and leave.

Approaching her desk, you got a clear look at the source of the music and it caused your step to falter. Skwisgaar, tall and imposing, shredded his guitar with deft hands inside the recording booth, his fingers moving faster on the Gibson neck than your eyes could follow.

Instead, they moved to his face, taking in his closed eyes, his full lips parted, and a light sheen of sweat covering his skin as he worked. His long, cornsilk hair was uncharacteristically swept up in a messy bun at the nape of his neck, short tendrils made loose from exertion clinging to the edges of his face or else flowing around him. A bead of sweat caught your eye as it rolled down his Adams apple and your gaze trailed to his thin, defined arms and the muscles working under his skin, his long fingers showing off every ounce of skill he had. He looked nothing like the guitarist that took the stage with Dethklok, giving a heavy and thrashing performance. He looked at peace, a man entirely in his element. He looked heavenly.

Suddenly, every headline calling him a rock and roll god over a photo of him covered in ghoulish makeup felt entirely false. If only they could see what was in front of you now.

Sadly, all good things come to an end. Your faltered step caused you to squeak as you caught your balance. Abigail jumped and turned in her chair. The music ended with an abrupt squeal and Skwisgaar's icy blue eyes snapped open.

"Oh, who the fucks is this?!" he spat into the mic and you blushed, embarrassment finding a home in the pit of your stomach. Abigail sighed, looking you over with a crooked eyebrow.

"So sorry, I was just bringing this to you." You handed Abigail the fax and she unfolded the paper to read it over. Skwisgaar, who seemed to find your interruption bothersome enough, bristled as your eyes flickered between him and the music producer. He yanked the guitar strap off his shoulder and snarled, "Not evens anythings important! Get the fucks out of heres!" He held the guitar by the neck and gestured aggressively with it.

You jumped, turning tail and hurrying away as fast as you could without running. The only reasoning for his behavior came at the end of an email from Abigail, a throwaway line about it being crunch time with the production of the newest album. But sadly, that was the start of your professional relationship with the Dethklok member and it was a shame, that one instance coloring the way he treated your presence in Mordhaus. He didn't reply when you asked the band questions, he turned his nose up when you had to contain some of the band's more brutal ideas, he only ever referred to you as a servant, the list went on.

It was taxing and honestly, a little upsetting. You had managed to piss off Nathan your first week here as well but by the next morning, he greeted you with a joke about it and asked you to make a pot of coffee. You spent many afternoons wondering if there was any way to make it up to the haughty guitarist. And wondering what exactly you needed to make up in the first place.

The next climactic moment in your relationship came around the four month mark of your employment.

The acrid smell of burning plastic reached you as you walked past the hallway leading to the kitchen, making you sigh. You put a jump in your step, something at odds with the very exasperated expression you could feel on your face, and hurried to the source of the smell, the armful of dirty laundry you'd picked up in the living room discarded as you jogged. Entering the kitchen, it took no time to zero in on the small fire slowly growing on the stovetop.

Toki and Skwisgaar stood over it, the former blowing frantically at the quickly blackening frying pan while the former flapped at the fire with a hand towel. The mere sight of Toki's long hair billowing around the open flame made your chest seize. "Guys, guys," you will be the first to admit, your voice came out in a shriek, "stop! Move!"

Toki jumped away from the stove with a welp, his eyes wild when he saw you. You snatched the fire extinguisher off the wall by the door and ran up to the stove. Skwisgaar still hadn't moved. If anything, he seemed to step in your way, blocking you from the fire. "I has it under controls, leave." His voice was hard and cold, almost jarring in contrast to the scene playing out.

And in your bewilderment, you snapped. Months of irritation compounding itself into a rage that bubbled past your lips, you growled, "Skwisgaar Skwigelf. If you think-", you grabbed a fistful of his shirt and wrenched him back, "-for a goddamn SECOND-" Skwisgaar stumbled and you caught his slim waist in the crook of your arm, "-I'm going to explain to Charles-", you threw him behind you and lined up the extinguisher, "-his most arrogant guitarist got third degree burns because he was too fucking STUBBORN-" aim, "-to MOVE!" fire. You pulled the trigger on the fire extinguisher and doused the stove in a thick, chemical scented foam, holding it there until the fire was smothered. Breathing heavily, you spun around and shoved the extinguisher into the blonde's arms. "Then you're stupid, too," you murmured with venom.

Skwisgaar was a tall man so even face to face as you were, he still towered over you, his eyes icy and his hands overlapping yours on the safety equipment. His eyes traced your face and you could the heat coming off your cheeks but using all your strength, you softened your expression. "Stop freezing me out. I'm just here to help." Your voice was still low but much gentler, which seemed to throw him off. Skwisgaar's haughty face mellowed and his eyes dropped to your mouth, his bottom lip finding a place between his teeth unconsciously.

"Ja," Skwisgaar finally replied, a terse acceptance as he took the fire extinguisher from you. His eyes hadn't left your face for a moment and he just rocked back on his heels, keeping the equipment awkwardly held in front of him. "I suppose Charles woulds finds dat upsettings."

Breathing a sigh of relief, you finally looked back at the stove and frowned at the charred frying pan. "Can I ask what you guys were doing?"

Toki finally piped up, seeming relieved that you weren’t yelling at them. "We's were tryings to makes a grilleds cheese."

Eyebrows furrowed, you studied the charcoal in the pan until you recognized it as a whole block of cheese. The mental image of a new, freshly purchased block of cheese, still wrapped in the plastic, being placed by these adult idiots into the frying pan made your blood pressure rise and you immediately put it to the side, deciding against any other questions.

"Okay. Well. I'll order us some pizza."

That cheered Toki up immediately but Skwisgaar simply nodded once, his cheeks turning a very light pink.

From that point on, Skwisgaar seemed to slowly accept your place as a member of the support staff. Between riffing on your jokes and agreeing with you on occasion, you would've said that your relationship with Skwisgaar was the best it had ever been.

Unfortunately, this came with an unforeseen consequence.

Now, you had a massive crush on Skwisgaar.

Okay, sure. Technically, you'd had a crush on him for a few years. Everyone in the world knew Dethklok and regardless if they liked the music or not, everyone had a favorite. Yours had always been the Swed. And sure, he looked hot as fuck in the recording booth all those momths ago. But all the following cold shoulder encounters had turned you off of the rock star, the withering look he shot you whenever you had tried to reign in the band members kicking any thoughts of fancy to the curb.

But that was before. This was after. The shock you felt later that day when he addressed you by name for the first time was electrifying. Instead of jestful barbs at your expense on the off chance he acknowledged you, Skwisgaar joked that you took no shit so Murderface better stop riling you up. No longer barking "Moves!" if you were in his way, he simply slipped past you, his hand warm against your upper- though once or twice, lower- back. Now you preened yourself when you knew you would see him, not wishing you could hide. It was driving you crazy.

You felt like a groupie or a schoolgirl, constantly fixated on your crush. Wishing and scheming to get closer when he was around you, his presence obscuring your thoughts when he was away. You had read all the print interviews available in the Mordhaus archives, watched the video interviews online, and had even followed a Dethklok fan Instagram to get a smattering of band photos on your timeline every day. You justified it all as being diligent at your job. But that only went so far, even with yourself. You stayed there, living in limbo for months as you wrestled with your feelings and professionalism. Skwisgaar, however, seemed oblivious to the effect he was having on you. You caught him staring at you sometimes but it was so few and far between that you simply chalked it up to him zoning out.

Or that's how you lived until Christmas.

You celebrated your winter holiday early so you could be on call for the band during actual Christmastime, which turned out to be a good idea. The mothers of Dethklok decided to visit the week leading up to the 25th, having skipped the year before on Charles' recommendation and they seemed exceedingly cranky due to that. The week itself was brutal - Nathan was broody and even quicker to anger than normal, Pickles hadn't been seen sober since they learned about the impending arrival, Murderface was essentially a walking scab from the anxious picking he'd subjected his arms to, and Toki was catatonic.

Of course, your focus was caught most by Skwisgaar. Sulky with a sour stomach, he kept his head down all week. He had his guitar glued to his hands and was second only to Toki in using avoidance as a defense mechanism.

It was incredibly stressful juggling between the bristled band members and their neurotic mothers. Charles himself said it would be at least a month before they could schedule any public appearances so the boys could decompress, and ideally avoid a PR nightmare. So to say you were glad to see their mothers finally leave, only Nathan's thanking you for attending to her, was an understatement.

After a long day of taking everyone to eat then to the airport, you had retired to your small Mordhaus apartment as soon as you could - which was pretty soon as the band seemed just as exhausted and had disappeared once you had gotten home.

You didn't reemerge until after midnight, sneaking out and down the hall to find something to eat at a quarter past twelve. The house was quiet on your walk to the kitchen but after grabbing your snack - a cold cut sandwich you had wrapped in a paper towel to avoid leaving a trail of crumbs - you heard soft, twinkling music coming from the living room as you passed it on your way to the elevators. Pausing to listen, you recognized it as guitar and wondered which of the guitarists were playing, given that Nathan was the only band member who couldn't. You wondered if Murderface had seen you head down and was trying to get your attention, a ploy he had used before, ending with your curiosity getting the best of you. You crept to the living room entrance to peek.

Skwisgaar sat on the sofa facing you, pale and glowing in the dim light coming from the arcade games. His eyes were closed as his fingers glided over the neck of his Gibson, his silky hair draping down his neck and naked shoulders. Seemingly dressed for bed, he was shirtless - though his guitar hid his midriff, to your disappointment - with a pair of black sweatpants on. He seemed lost in his music, strumming out a low melody with mastery.

Your breath caught as you took in the sight and you stood there silently, trying to photograph the moment in your mind, until you registered his expression.

Devastation.

His eyes were closed but tears were streaming down his gaunt cheeks, his quivering eyebrows were furrowed, and he was mouthing a song to himself, his full lips pale. He looked like a man at war with himself, lost and broken. The music was no longer soft and twinkling, it hung in the air like a funeral dirge.

As the past few days ran through your mind, every mention of Skwisgaar's childhood came back to you and all the pieces suddenly clicked into place. This wasn't a man lost, this was a man, once again, in his element. The grief and sickness he had been feeling all week was flowing out of his guitar like the tears from his eyes.

Feeling your own eyes prickling, you felt like this was too much, too personal, for you to see. But despite that, your heart ached and you were stepping forward before you registered the motion. "Skwisgaar?"

#metalocalypse #metalocalypse fanfic #skwisgaar skwigelf #skwisgaar skwielf x reader #dethklok #i wanted it to be 5 times you interrupt skwisgaar and the last one was gonna end in a kiss but i'm slow #i got stubby slow fingers donts fuckin looks at me #if you have ever seen hozier live i tried to capture that in the recording booth #timeline is weird because i wrote this before debating if my fics take place between s3 and s4 still dont know!!!! enjoy!!!

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melrosing · 3 years

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did they actually read the chapter? Jaime is exhibiting sexual attraction to Brienne within the first few pages, there is never going to be this choice between a sex life and an inspiring woman or whatever. it's so demeaning to Cersei as well to reduce her to Jaime's sex life, and deny Brienne sexuality on the other hand because she's not beautiful.

okay, I think what was actually said on this podcast is going to get lost in translation over here if I just kind of vaguely refer to arguments I disagreed with. so to start with, I think anyone who's interested in what the NotACast guys and Dr Shiloh had to say on Jaime & Brienne would be best off listening to it themselves, I really don't want to misrepresent them here.

but I'll share the quote I was referring to, and preface that by saying that PoorQuentyn/Emmett does flat out state earlier in the episode that yeah, Jaime is sexually attracted to Brienne. he refers to the usual quotes, i.e. Jaime eyeing up her calves, picturing her in a dress, admiring her eyes, etc, etc. so far so good lol, obviously we've very much been over all that over in this sphere of fandom, but NotACast is most popular amongst fans from different spheres, including many fans who have not engaged at all with the discourse around JB. so, makes sense to include these foundational readings in the podcast.

anyway, the quote I was referring to (don't look at me transcribing is a weird hobby of mine):

PQ [1:19:56]: It’s interesting to me that you have this… kind of trying to decouple the courtly elements from the sexual elements? Because Jaime and Brienne do have that - more kind of - the chaste elements of the romance, with the actual sexuality kind of displaced onto Cersei. And it does feel like… it does feel like to me on some level that Jaime kind of wishes he could combine these two women. Like that would be the ideal for him*laughs*. As if he could force Brienne and Cersei into like, a machine from The Fly or something, and just make himself… that for him would be kind of the ideal, and I wonder if what George is trying to do is make that romantic ideal impossible for Jaime, by splitting it into two people. And saying, you can either have… your traditionally beautiful woman, you know, who you’ve been obsessed with, and your partner, or you can be with a person who makes you feel like a true knight. But these are antithetical. And I think that’s interesting.

(I'm putting the rest under the cut because this is long.)

this take is actually kind of bizarre when you consider the fact that, as I said, PQ has already acknowledged that there is a sexual element to JB. perhaps he's just riffing off of the convo BBF and and Dr Shiloh have just had where they wonder where to place Cersei in the conversation between JB and Arthuriana. personally I'd say that Cersei doesn't really belong in that conversation, and that's kind of the point: Jaime's wanted her to, but she never has. however, Dr Shiloh argues that Cersei and Brienne parallel the two women in Lancelot's life, where Lancelot is Jaime, Cersei = Guinevere, Brienne = Elaine of Corbenic (I... do not agree lmao but that's a separate matter)

so PQ's following on from this strain, comparing and contrasting the roles of Brienne and Cersei in Jaime's narrative, just feeling around for what sounds right by the looks of it. however! this does not sound right to me. let's unpack!!!!

It’s interesting to me that you have this… kind of trying to decouple the courtly elements from the sexual elements? Because Jaime and Brienne do have that - more kind of - the chaste elements of the romance

so as we've just established, there are sexual elements to JB in Jaime I alone, but they do not stop there: they get more pronounced. in fact by Jaime III they're already pretty explicit: JB have that entire sword fight in the river that is literally screaming look at their physical chemistry (I wrote more on that here) - the whole fight is half written as a sex scene, it's not remotely subtle.

and of course the undertones continue, to the point that they're not even undertones anymore, it's just Jaime getting an erection in the bath as he stares at Brienne's naked body.

but there are courtly elements too, and I won't list all of them off but these are best encapsulated in Jaime IX, where JB are almost meeting again for the first time, as they might in a traditional courtly setting where Jaime is dressed as a dashing knight and Brienne is dressed as a highborn lady, and they kind of awkwardly compliment each other, and instead of the lady bestowing a sword and a quest upon her knight it's the other way round, etc etc you know I love this shit lmao ANYWAY

so it's pretty clear Jaime and Brienne have both bases covered: the courtly and the sexual, and that they do, as the hosts observe in the episode, switch between the roles of the knight and the damsel. the whole point is that they gel perfectly: in falling in love they do not force the other into a contained role, but rather liberate the other from what was a contained role.

MEANWHILE.

...with the actual sexuality kind of displaced onto Cersei.

is the 'actual sexuality' displaced onto Cersei? or is it just that Cersei is the only person Jaime has had sex with so far? as we've established, Jaime and Brienne have a distinct physical chemistry, and we even get a subtle little comparison between this and that which Jaime has with Cersei here:

Her arm was all gooseflesh, clammy and chilled, but she was strong, and gentler than he would have thought. Gentler than Cersei, he thought [JAIME V, ASOS]

Cersei has been his only partner for all of his life, but that does not make her his perfect match in that respect.

moving on.

I wonder if what George is trying to do is make that romantic ideal impossible for Jaime, by splitting it into two people. And saying, you can either have… your traditionally beautiful woman, you know, who you’ve been obsessed with, and your partner, or you can be with a person who makes you feel like a true knight. But these are antithetical.

so PQ says on the one hand Jaime has Cersei, who is his passionate, beautiful, lifelong partner, and on the other there's Brienne, a chaste figure who makes him feel good about himself. and that these two things are antithetical, making the romantic ideal impossible for Jaime.

so. to start with, nowhere does ASOIAF state that Brienne can't be a passionate partner. she hasn't had the chance to be one yet, no, but this is, er, a story, things change and evolve, and we literally have evidence of passion between Jaime and Brienne on the page already.

second, Brienne is not beautiful, that's right! but that doesn't mean she falls short of a romantic ideal for Jaime??? I know I always bring up JB x Beauty and the Beast, but come on, they are literally based on a fairytale that says that love isn't about beauty, it's about the heart. and in any case, Jaime has been shown experiencing sexual attraction to women like Hildy and Pia (post-injury), who are not what society calls beautiful. he admires Cersei's beauty, sure, but we don't see anywhere that it is of the utmost importance to Jaime that his partner is beautiful. it's important to Cersei - but not Jaime.

third, PQ points out that Cersei's this lifelong obsession for Jaime, and surely that counts for something in balancing her against Brienne. well... no?? Jaime's obsession with Cersei has been based on the lies he tells himself about her, and the lies she's told him. Jaime has desperately wanted Cersei to be this benevolent figure that completes him, that he can love and protect as a true knight. she isn't, and he realises that now, and has unambiguously left her. of course he still thinks about her, it was a lifelong relationship, it was that thing he always thought of when he wanted comfort and to feel less alone, but that doesn't mean that he can't appreciate the lie in that, and the futility of his obsession.

so Brienne is not antithetical to what Cersei never was in the first place. in fact, Brienne is very much the kind of woman Jaime has wanted in Cersei (honest, loyal, loving), but simultaneously, yes, a person who inspires him, and who is just as capable of playing the role Jaime once assigned to himself. Jaime always believed his duty was to protect and comfort Cersei. with Brienne, he finds he can also be protected himself, and comforted himself. that's that whole damsel/knight switcheroo that NotACast were so taken with. that's the romantic ideal being, actually, perfectly possible for Jaime and Brienne both, it just... doesn't look as they thought it did.

ANYWAY. that's my thoughts on that. and for the record I do not think the podcast is bad or that the hosts are stupid and the last thing I want to do here is encourage any negativity towards them. I just thought that take was daft and wanted to take it apart with my bare hands lmao

#ask #jaime x brienne #asoiaf

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lokiondisneyplus · 3 years

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Every Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series to date has had its own distinct look and feel, from the sitcom-derived pastiche episodes of WandaVision all the way back to the grim-and-gritty, dimly lit street narratives of Jessica Jones and Daredevil. Marvel’s Loki has been one of the MCU’s more distinctive-looking series, though, from the dimly lit, industrial-brown corridors of Time Variance Authority HQ to the vivid neon city of Sharoo on the doomed moon Lamentis-1.

Series director Kate Herron confirms that some of these designs were directly inspired by classic science fiction, while others were more personal experimentation. We sat down with Loki’s cinematographer, Autumn Durald Arkapaw, to break down what went into designing some of the most striking and memorable sequences from the series’ first three episodes.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.

EPISODE 1: TIME THEATER INTERROGATIONS

Autumn Durald Arkapaw: Kate [Herron]’s sensibilities led me to get the job in the first place. We shared those sensibilities, around noir films and more moody thrillers, so we were already on the same page as far as lighting and tone. So when it came to the Time Theater, Kasra [Farahani], the production designer, did a fantastic job of creating a space that had a lot of opportunity to feel textural and moody, and create symmetry. I’m big on symmetry. I like to frame center-punched, keeping in mind the architecture of the room, and framing for the architecture and the people at the same time. Stanley Kubrick does that very well. A Clockwork Orange obviously came up in our discussions. Some of our main references were David Fincher’s Zodiac and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and the original Blade Runner, in terms of creating spaces that feel strong and weighted, with the people in them placed in a way where the conversation feels very heavy, so you’re paying a lot of attention to the lines, and where your eyes are drawn.

We did some lighting changes above, in the Brutalist ceiling. The lights move, so when we’re cutting back and forth, you see the lights change on the actors. We’re trying to time those movements to the dialogue. The editing was fantastic with that scene. We shot a good amount of coverage, and [series stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Owen Wilson as Mobius] play in that space a lot. So we’re trying to always keep it interesting, every time they go back there, changing up the lighting and the projections. That’s probably one of my favorite spaces in the show.

And then the acting, obviously — they’re riffing off each other, and you’re in the room with them and feeling the energy. It was very exciting. That scene was up front in our schedule, so Owen and Tom were getting to know each other in general. We got to watch that happen before our eyes, and it was very comical.

One of the most noticable things about that space is the harsh, rectangular overhead spotlights — Tom Hiddleston starts his interrogation under a spotlight, and when he gets angry, he moves himself back under it. How did you discuss that kind of blocking and framing?

The thing with Tom is, he’s a genius. He’s just a fantastic actor, The amount of things I could say about how amazing he is on set, and character-wise, the list goes on and on. You can introduce marks and let actors know where you’d like them to be for a shot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where they’ll go. Some actors like to be more freeform. But with Tom, I wouldn’t have to say “Stand under that light.” He just knows, and he’ll play off that because of the space. He walks in, sees how it’s lit, knows our agenda, and uses that in the character.

So there were certain moments where he asked, “Is this what you’re thinking?” or we would have a discussion. But mostly, he uses the environment around him to tell the story as well, and he took in that lighting as part of the character. Actors know how they look in certain types of light. He’s very good at that. So he played with that in that space, for sure.

When we pull back and take in the whole room, the lighting feels punitive — the striped shadows are noir-movie standards, like light coming through blinds, but they also feel like prison bars. Is that something you discussed?

We never talked about prison bars, but in designing that space, Kasra was thinking about what that space was — being arrested, and being judged. It’s a claustrophobic space. Loki is slightly free to communicate and move around, but the walls and ceiling are concrete, there’s this fake light coming in, because obviously, in the TVA, there’s no day or night. You can see the light moving above, but there’s no sun there. It’s just moving at certain moments.

I had an idea, after seeing the latest Blade Runner, where Roger Deakins moves the lights around: Why don’t we have the lights move? It’s not easy to have big tungsten light sources above a ceiling set move like that, because it takes heavy motors. But my gaffer and key grip are amazing, and they figured out a way we could move the lights without causing shadows between each of the sections of lighting. It looks all like it’s moving at the same time. That took a lot of thought, getting those lights to move, and not just creating shafts of light that fade in and out. I think it helped a lot, because it’s very subtle. You’re only going to see it as they’re sitting. You’ll see sometimes the light moves from Owen’s shoulders into his eyes at the right moment, when you get lucky in the edit, and catch it at the right moment. It was great to have the resources to actually do stuff like that.

EPISODE 2: THE ROXXCART VARIANT PURSUIT

I’m a fan of green. If we’re designing a clinical environment, or a shopping mall, and we’ve got overhead fluorescents, I like to use cool white fluorescents that have kind of a green kick. I’m a big David Fincher fan, and there’s an undertone of green in his setups that I appreciate. So Roxxcart is a bigger shop that is now closed down, and Kasra outfitted it like a big-box Costco-type place? That wasn’t a full set — we went to this big warehouse, and he made it feel like that kind of store.

Above the space where we shot in, there were a bunch of fixtures. We completely removed those and put in our own tubes. They were RGB, and we could fade them and turn them off and on to our liking, flicker them, make them red when we wanted. When they’re cool white, I appreciate that green kick. I did a lookup-table color correction as well, to give it that tone. It’s meant to be clinical, but make you feel like you don’t know what’s at every turn. And we’re keeping lights on or off depending on which way we’re looking. Kate was a big fan of that space being very dark, with pockets of light. Our antagonist is supposed to come out of the darkness as people change identities.

We’re also trying to make that space look bigger than it actually was. We’re creating depth with light. That was a bitch to shoot — we had so much rigging. My team was amazing. If you go into a space like that, a Target or something, you’d think “The lighting here is not that big of a deal. It’s just overheads.” But being able to control all those overheads and make them different colors and flicker them takes a lot of rigging, with a dimmer board and the programming. In the editing afterward, it really does feel like a space that’s a lot bigger than it actually was. The red sequence is one of my favorites, for sure.

The camera is below waist level a lot in that sequence. What are you communicating there?

I always like to shoot low! It’s just how I see things. Some of my favorite films are detective thrillers from the past, Zodiac being one of those. I’ve always just loved shooting below the eyeline. Obviously there are moments in features I’ve shot where I want to be higher, because it’s more emotional or romantic or something. But in this kind of story, where you have these amazing spaces, and you have multiple characters you’re trying to frame, all facing off and being strong, I’m just a bigger fan of seeing a ceiling than a floor. It’s an appreciation I have, as far as it feeling more mysterious. When a character is looking more mysterious, and you’re not trusting them, you’re trying to figure them out, I love that kind of framing. It’s amazing.

EPISODE 3: FIGHTING TO REACH THE LAMENTIS-1 ARK

That sequence has a great backstory. I did a lot of prep with Kate. We started prep in Los Angeles before we ended up in Atlanta. We knew that sequence was coming up. but in the script, it just says “Okay, so they end up at Sharoo, and then go on.” The description of that sequence went through an evolution, with the filmmakers discussing things, building the set, and collaborating, so early on, we spitballed about what we thought that could be. Having the support of Marvel and being able to build, and being able to do great stunts, we went bigger.

With the sequence as it evolved, Children of Men was a big reference for us. Kate was really interested in that feeling. She wanted to be with the characters the whole way. We tried to figure out, should the camera be handheld? Should it be Steadicam? We ended up with Steadicam. We looked at some previous oners, because we wanted this sequence to feel like a oner to the audience. Obviously, there are cuts in there, but we seamed certain shots together so the audience wouldn’t feel as though we cut. The intention was to feel like you’re on the run with Loki and Sylvie, racing to the ark, building up tension. You’re there with them as they’re fighting.

My husband’s a DP, and he shot True Detective season 1. That oner in True Detective was something we looked at as well, because it’s just one of those great oners that feels real and has those kinds of textural elements. We did pre-viz, we did rehearsals in the space, prior to shooting there. We went there a couple times and did camera rehearsals. We had an amazing Steadicam operator who I’ve worked with on my last four projects and features. He’s very in tune with my eye, and he’s great with those kind of moves. Kasra understood that we needed certain paths to go down, to help us get from point A to point B, so it feels like a run, it doesn’t feel like people keep entering the same space. Obviously, it’s hard to build really big sets where you can go very far. So he did a great job of knowing what we needed, and then adding stunts, and figuring out how we could feel like we were turning corners whenever we’re moving into different spaces.

How big was the physical space? How much of what we’re seeing there is digital?

Shiroo was very different from Roxxcart. At Roxxcart, we had blue at the end of the aisles, so they look like they’re going on a lot longer than they are. But we traveled to that space. It wasn’t built. Shiroo was built on a backlot. That was a set we had full control over, to build to our liking. Above a certain point, as you’re looking up at the buildings, that’s VFX. But we built the actual buildings up to a certain height, and then beyond that is a digital extension. As far as the depth as well, beyond a certain part of the street, it’s a digital extension. Obviously, the ark is an extension, and we’re using the explosions as cues to do a lot of lighting cues. But it was a very big set, a gorgeous set. It has a lot of texture.

Kasra had the idea of painting a lot of the set in black-light paint, which I’d never seen before, and putting black lights everywhere. Also, we had a bunch of units on top that lit the set for the moon color and those sources, and we had VFX helping us stitch it all together. We had to shoot the sequences and look at the overlays on set to make sure we were creating matchups that would work in the final edit.

For me, that’s a very successful collaboration of in-camera elements — that whole set was real — and having explosions on set along with lighting cues, and then the effects to seam it together and do the extension above and the depth. So everyone really had to play like a good chunk of that. But they’d be effects overall, I think taking what we shot and making it feel like something that big, you know, the buildings are falling. Obviously, we didn’t drop buildings on people. There’s some foam stuff. That was really fun. We shot all that stuff at night.

The camera work in that sequence is some of the most dynamic movement in the series. What was the most difficult part about coordinating that sequence for you?

Rehashing it now, it was the prep. When we were actually there in the space with Tom and Sylvie, running through all of this stuff, it really made sense by that time. We’d been pre-vizing it and reworking it and massaging it for so long that ultimately, once we got on the set and had to follow them with the camera, and the energy was going, and we had the extras there, it all fell together. I think one day, we even wrapped a little early, because we’d just nailed it. When you’re prepping those types of shots, in your mind, you’re always like, “This is gonna be hard, it’s going to be difficult to seam these together, I like perfect headroom.” And you also want it to feel real, and people have to jump and fly and tumble into the frame. But on the day, our execution ended up being pretty good. So that was the most surprising thing to me, because it was kind of a pain in the ass prepping, because there are so many elements. And we’re doing six episodes, so we’re always working, trying to chase the next prep. But it really fell into place nicely.

#Loki #Autumn Durald Arkapaw #DoP

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raydaug · 3 years

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I found Sayaka’s speech to Yumeko just b4 their gamble rlly funny bc she’s talking about how Yumeko is so terrible for driving ppl to desperation and having no other goal than her own entertainment when she’s obsessed with a woman who does the exact same for seemingly the no different reasons

I like this question a lot. There’s a lot to chew on here, so thank you.

You are right, Yumeko and Kirari are very much two sides of the same coin.But just as the metaphor implies, even though they share a common starting point (gambling), they face out in opposite directions.

Visually, Kirari and Yumeko seem to be playing on the Red and Blue Oni myth, with Yumeko’s primary color being red and her personality being very...passionate, and Kirari’s primary visual signifier being blue while also having and much cooler personality.

However, at this point, I think it’s just a visual reference or a simple coincidence. For those unaware, the myth of the Red and Blue Oni is, extremely loosely, that a Red Oni (Japanese Demon) wanted to befriend some humans, but he couldn’t because they saw him as a monster. His friend, the Blue Oni, decides to help him by pretending to attack the village so the Red Oni can fight him off. It works and the humans accept the Red Oni, but he can no longer see his old friend the Blue Oni now because the humans are scared of him.

While if you squint hard enough, you could potentially see some similarities in this tale between Kirari and Yumeko, and it’s not impossible that the story going forward shapes into something like the above, as things stand right now I don’t see too many similarities beyond the visual motifs of the characters. There is another famous dichotomy that Kirari and Yumeko mirror, and this one has much more textual support;

God and Satan.

Yumeko as Satan fits neatly into the most modern depictions of the Christian Devil. Yumeko is a seducer. She’s disarmingly attractive, sweet and polite, and uses these aspects of herself to tempt people into giving in to their base desires for her amusement. Hell, Kirari outright calls Yumeko a “snake in the garden.” (CORRECTION: only in the anime) This is a reference both to Yumeko’s name (Jabami means “snake eater”) as well as the Book of Genesis, when Eve is tempted Satan in the form of a snake into disobeying God’s edict and eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (keep in mind that this is a specifically Chrstian reading of Genesis, as the Devil as a singular embodiment of evil is not an idea that’s really present in the Torah).

Kirari as God is much less obvious, but it’s still there if you are willing to dig a little.For starters, Japan, generally speaking, tends to view Christianity at best with curiosity and at worst with skepticism. There’s a tradition of portraying Chrstianity, or religions modeled after Christianity as the case may be, as evil or corrupt, primarily based on the rigid hierarchical structure of Christian Denominations (Catholicism in particular), which Shinto and Buddhism (the predominant religions of Japan, don’t really share. Kirari is at the head of Hyakkaou, her aquarium ,her Eden, with the student council as the enforcers of her will.

More specifically to Kirari though, Kirari seems to be riffing on the old theological and philosophical conundrum of the Problem of Evil. The Problem (or Question sometimes) of Evil is “if God is all good, all powerful, and all knowing, then why do bad things happen in the world?” The most common answer to this qandry is free will. God gave his creations free will and allows them to use it.

This is the biggest and most important separation between Yumeko and Kirari. Yumeko pushes people to do things against their will for her own amusement. You can see this in her gamble with Mary where she boxes Mary into a corner but upping the stakes to a ridiculous level, or when she forced Manyuda to gamble with or, or with her second gamble with Yumemi when Yumemi was simply content to share the stage with Sumika but that wasn’t good enough for Yumeko. Yumeko is happy to be a nice, charming girl when you play along with her, but when you deny her her fun, she’ll drag you kicking and screaming back to the card table.

In contrast, Kirari never makes people do things against their will and is a major advocate for people living according to their own desires. She sets up the games, explains the terms, but ultimately it’s the player’s choice if they choose to participate. We see this most clearly in the Tower of Doors arc. Kirari explains the terms of the gamble clearly and explicitly to Sayaka. She doesn’t ever withhold information, and she asks for Sayaka and Yumeko’s consent twice before starting the game, giving them both opportunities to back out if they didn’t want to continue. We see also in her conversation with Terano in Chapter 82 that she’s trying to push Terano to exercise her own free will instead of always prioritizing the needs of others over her own.

Kirari gives people tools and watches what they do with them, while Yumeko pics up those tools and starts hitting everything she can with them.

It is that distinction that I think Sayaka is calling out and how she can justify her attraction to and association with Kirari while viewing Yumeko with disdain. Kirari created something, a logical (if perverse) system that operates on cause and effect, input and output. Kirari doesn’t make people house pets. If you can pay your dues to the Student Council you never have to touch card or dice. And if you must gamble, Kirari isn’t forcing the student body to gamble more that they can afford and fall into debt.

Yumeko in contrast is a force of destruction in the school. She upended the logical and orderly function of Hyakkaou and made one person a house pet and consigned another to a life plan for no other reason than her amusement. And that is arguably more monstrous than anything Kirari has done.

Akso, let me be abundantly clear: I AM NOT SAYING KIRARI AND YUMEKO ARE LITERALLY GOD AND THE DEVIL. Just that there is metaphor and allegory at play here.

#anonymous ask #kakegurui #kakegurui xx #kirari momobami #momobami kirari #Yumeko Jabami #Jabami Yumeko #Igarashi Sayaka #sayaka igarashi

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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Whether you’re a Superman, a judge, a mom, or a dad, we can all appreciate the avant-garde genius of Laurie Anderson, the topic of this week’s installment of Great Albums! Find out what made Anderson’s breakout hit the most unlikely chart smash of the 80s, and what the rest of this amazing LP has in store, by watching my video or reading the full transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be discussing one of the most unique and unforgettable albums around: Big Science, by Laurie Anderson. It’s very possible that you may not necessarily recognize her by name, but this album’s big hit has been riffed on and re-used many times throughout Western popular culture, so when I play it for you, it just might seem hauntingly familiar.

Music: “O Superman”

Put simply, “O Superman” is not your conventional pop hit, by any stretch of the imagination. It features little more than a sparse, barren electronic instrumental, and Anderson’s eerily vocoder-treated voice, not so much singing as acting out a one-woman stage play. It has much more in common with the avant-garde, minimalist works of 20th Century “modern classical” composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich than it does anything you would hear on pop radio in the 1980s.

While you might assume that it entered mainstream consciousness through being used in some art film, it actually was a bona fide pop hit--particularly in Great Britain, which has always had a pronounced affinity for surprisingly weird chart entries. While the single was initially given only a small release, like most of Anderson’s earlier work, the prominent British radio DJ John Peel discovered it...and fell in love with it. And thanks to his frequent playing of it on the air, a lot of other people fell in love with it too, propelling it to #2 in the UK charts. I think it’s a testament to just how different the media landscape used to be, once upon a time in the 20th Century. Nowadays, the radio doesn’t really have room for idiosyncratic tastemakers like Peel, and the independent DJs who remain certainly don’t have the reach that Peel did. I suppose it’s the 20th Century version of sea shanties and other oddities becoming trends on social media.

But anyway, setting aside the strange legacy “O Superman” has as the world’s least likely hit single, we can appreciate it perfectly well as a moving work of art. “O Superman” is not really a pop song, but what it is is, perhaps, a desperate plea for comfort and protection. The figure, or concept, of “mother” seems to be the focus of the text, and serves as the apparent “final resort” of its insecure, searching rhetoric. We get this idea in a microcosm in the famous opening line, inspired by an aria by Jules Massenet: “O Superman, o judge, o Mom and Dad.” It’s an appeal to any and all higher powers, but culminates with perhaps the most primal, intuitive authority we can understand: our parents. Towards the end of the piece, the narrator begs to be held in the arms of “Mom,” but they’re described not as soft and warm, but “automatic,” “electronic,” and “petrochemical,” creating an uncanny conflation of innate human connections and the harshly artificial, technological conditions of modernity. Have we made the promises of technology and science into some sort of idol, looking to them for reassurance, and projecting onto them a goodwill or benevolence like a mother has for her children? Themes of high technology, as well as the search for safety and security, are found throughout the rest of the album, as is the stark, minimalist instrumentation.

Music: “From the Air”

Expanding somewhat on the references to aeroplanes found on “O Superman,” opening track “From the Air” is narrated by the captain of a doomed flight, instructing the passengers how to handle the imminent “crash landing.” It’s many people’s very worst nightmare, and plunges us straight into the sense of fearing for our lives, in a situation that’s completely beyond our control. A bold move for the very first track we hear! “From the Air” leads with somewhat plausible suggestions, like a very dated request that passengers “extinguish all cigarettes,” but gradually becomes increasingly surreal, adding to that nightmarish feeling. Anderson delivers her lines with a palpable sense of authority, that stirs you to want to obey her character even as they prove their unreliability. A taut, unresolved saxophone-driven ostinato throughout the track provides a constant sense of tension and anxiety, which certainly suits the mood. Until the end of the song, at which point it abruptly cuts off--presumably to represent the crash occurring, and the sudden deaths of those on board.

I like to think of “From the Air” as a sort of dark counterpart to “O Superman,” the latter of which is the opening track of the second side. While “O Superman” deifies technology as a source of maternalistic comfort, “From the Air” presents us with the ultimate failure of technology: slick and polished until the end, but unable to provide any real hope of meaningful security. That human desire for security is interrogated more directly on the final track of side one: “Born, Never Asked.”

Music: “Born, Never Asked”

While “Born, Never Asked” is much more laconic than tracks like “From the Air” and “O Superman,” it’s no less probing and thought-provoking, presenting us with a world of people who are, fundamentally, “free”--and yet deeply unsatisfied. “You were born,” quips Anderson, “and so you are free.” But we’re all too busy asking for a bigger answer, and some explicit, deeper meaning to our existences, that we can’t appreciate the simple freedom to live our lives however we want to, in the absence of any overt goals. The track begins by establishing a stately, handclap-driven backing, which serves to underscore the plainness or simplicity of its message, and is ultimately overtaken by a mournful violin outro--perhaps the embodiment of our emotional turmoil, as we seek the comfort of clear answers despite the fact that they never arrive. If only the world were as simple and well-defined as it seemed to be when we were children, filled with unthinking and unconditional love for our mothers!

“Born, Never Asked” asks us to question what it really means to be “free,” and whether or not it’s even satisfying or helpful to possess “freedom.” It’s worth noting that all of the pieces that comprise Big Science were chiefly intended as part of Anderson’s much longer magnum opus, entitled United States, which she completed in 1984. In that context, criticism of the value of “freedom” is perhaps also criticism of certain traditional American moral values. While “O Superman” prominently mentions “American planes,” I think the track that has the most to say about being American is the title track of the album.

Music: “Big Science”

The title track of Big Science takes us to a desolate and mostly empty landscape, defined more by its potential to be moulded into something habitable than anything it already, innately is. It’s a frigid perspective on America as terra nullius, a wasteland filled with nothing but ultra-recent and ultra-artificial capitalist “developments” as opposed to any real history or meaning. With its chilling coyote-like howls, and nods to Western movies and dependence upon cars, it can easily be contextualized as particularly American, but ultimately, the human drive to “improve” our environment through questionable (and perhaps even destructive) means is fairly universal. Much like the emotionally unsatisfying sense of freedom bestowed upon those who are born, in “Born, Never Asked,” the title track of Big Science shows us a world full of endless possibilities, but devoid of any true happiness born of those possibilities.

The term “big science” dates back to the Mid-20th Century, and has been used to describe the increasingly large scale of many significant scientific efforts, particularly those supported by world governments...and particularly, their militaries. During and after the Second World War, it became increasingly necessary for nations that wanted a place on the world stage to rope science into the military-industrial complex, especially in light of the development of atomic weaponry. Given the album’s thematic emphasis on the way we look to science and technology to provide some aegis of protection, and often in harmful or destructive ways, it’s a very fitting choice for the title.

I think that connection to the nuclear bomb is also an important key to interpreting the album’s cover art. On the cover of Big Science, we see Anderson lit very harshly from the right--so much so that her sunglasses are rendered completely white by the powerful light. While her pose is very deliberate, and perhaps even stilted, she appears to be raising her arms as though to shield herself from whatever is casting this bright light. Is Anderson perhaps portraying an atomic scientist, observing a nuclear blast with its signature burst of radiant light?

Overall, however we interpret this gesture, the black and white imagery and completely empty backdrop seem to pair well with that sparse and minimalistic instrumentation. Anderson appears on the cover with her signature costume, a solid white suit which, when paired with her short hairstyle, gives her a somewhat androgynous appearance. It also looks a bit like a labcoat, often worn by scientists and doctors--figures who culturally embody the principle of benevolent authorities backed by the power of technology and science.

Whenever artists who only briefly felt the spotlight of mainstream success are discussed, it can be tempting to ask whether or not such figures “deserved” more or better. In the case of Anderson, though, she never expected “O Superman” to become the breakout hit that it did, and never followed it up with anything actively pursuing the pop charts. In the wake of her most famous work, Anderson went right back to doing what she had been doing: making great, but totally avant-garde, art. She’s a figure of “art music,” and the “art world,” through and through, performing her elaborate multimedia works at museums, appearing in a number of festival-circuit art films, and accepting honourary degrees. Anderson has had a perfectly successful career, dwelling precisely in the realm of her choosing, and I don’t think there’s any better outcome than that. If you like Big Science, you’ll find plenty more striking and evocative works throughout the rest of her long and ongoing career.

Music: “Sharkey’s Day”

My favourite track on Big Science is “Sweaters.” With a Celtic-sounding melody, a grating fiddle, and perhaps the most vocally hated musical instrument of all time, the bagpipes, “Sweaters” is a dirge about an ancient subject: falling out of love. But despite its backward-looking folk setting, the jump from “I no longer love your eyes” to “I no longer love your sweaters” anchors it into the realm of the totally mundane...if not banal. Overall, though, what I think really makes it stand out on the album is its sense of levity. As I’ve discussed earlier, Big Science is loaded with really heavy themes about technology, Americana, and the meaning of life...so a song that’s not only about a romantic relationship, but also about sweaters, pens, and pencils, jammed into the middle of the first side, really feels like a sort of palate cleanser while you’re listening to this. That’s all for today--thanks for watching!

Music: “Sweaters”

#music #laurie anderson #great albums #album review #album reviews #experimental music

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back-and-totheleft · 3 years

Text

‘There’s still a presence out there reminding people not to speak about JFK’s killing’

Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.

It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.

He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.

Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.

“I was more of a younger man. It was painful to me,” the director sighs as he remembers being attacked by such admired figures as newscaster Walter Cronkite and Hollywood power broker Jack Valenti for listening to the “hallucinatory bleatings” of former New Orleans DA Jim Garrison when JFK came out. “It was quite shocking actually because I thought the murder was behind us. I did think there was a feeling that 30 years later, we can look at this thing again without getting excited. But I was way wrong.”

Garrison, of course, was the real-life figure portrayed by Kevin Costner in the film; he was the original proponent of the theory that the CIA were involved in the killing of the US president, after his 1966 investigation. Garrison wrote the book On the Trail of the Assassins, on which the movie was partly based.

Even the director’s fiercest detractors will find it hard to dismiss the evidence he has assembled about the JFK assassination in the new documentary. Once I’d seen it and heard him hold forth, I came away thinking that only flat-earthers can possibly still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy all on his own. It’s that convincing.

Stone blitzes you with facts and figures about the Kennedy killing and its aftermath. At times, he himself seems to be suffering from information overload. “I am sorry. There are so many people,” he apologises for not immediately remembering the name of Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who was present both at Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was first taken, and then at Bethesda, where the autopsy took place. Burkley was strangely reticent when giving evidence to the Warren Commission.

“I think there’s still a presence out there which reminds people not to speak. I’ve heard that in, of all places, Russia,” Stone says. He was startled to discover that the Russians knew all about his new documentary long before it was discussed in the mainstream press. “They said, ‘We heard about it.’ I said, ‘How?’ They said, ‘We have our contacts in the American intelligence business. They are not very happy about it.’”

Stone believes that no US president since Kennedy died has been “able to go up against this militarised sector of our economy”. Even Trump “backed down at the last second” and declined to release all the relevant documents relating to the assassination. “He announced, ‘I’m going to free it up, blah blah blah, big talk, and then a few hours before, he caved to CIA National Security again.”

The veteran filmmaker expresses his frustrations at historians like Robert Caro, author of a huge (and hugely respected) multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, for ignoring the evidence that has been turned up about the assassination.

“I can’t say [LBJ] was involved in the assassination,” explains Stone, “but it certainly suited him that Kennedy was not there anymore and he covered up by appointing the Warren Commission and doing all the things he did.”

Stone tried to cast Marlon Brando in JFK in the role as the deep throat source Mr X, eventually played by Donald Sutherland.

“I realise now I am grateful that he turned it down because he knew better than I that he would make 20 minutes out of that 14-minute monologue and it wouldn’t have worked.”

Nevertheless, he filled the film with famous faces. He thought that having familiar actors would make it easier for audiences to engage with what was an immensely complicated story.

Getting Stone to stop talking about JFK is like trying to pull a bone from a mastiff’s jaws. To change the subject slightly, I ask if he is still in touch with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He is and is utterly horrified at how Assange is being treated, especially given that Siggi the Hacker, a key witness in the extradition case against Assange, admitted recently that he lied. Stone praises Assange’s partner Stella Morris as “the best wife you could ever have. She really is smart, she’s a lawyer … he has two children. He can’t even touch them or see them. It’s barbaric. It indicates America is declining faster than we know. It is just cutting off dissent.”

The mood lightens when I invite Stone to discuss some of his favourite films. He recently tweeted a list of these, which included Darling starring Julie Christie, Joseph Losey’s Eva starring Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau, and Houseboat, a frothy comedy starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. “I love films, always have. People don’t know that side of me. I could go on forever.”

Between his darker and more contentious efforts, Stone has made a few genre films himself, for example the underrated thriller U-Turn starring Sean Penn and Jennifer Lopez. He notes, though, that even when he tried a sports movie, he ended up right back in the firing line. The NFL was furious about his 1999 American Football film, Any Given Sunday. “They (the NFL) are arrogant, very rich people who close down any dissent, so I had to change uniforms and names… but they got the point.”

Last year, Stone published the first volume of his autobiography, Chasing the Light, which took him from childhood up to his Oscar triumph with Platoon. It was well received but it didn’t make nearly a big enough splash for his liking. “There was a curtain of silence about that. Maybe it is Covid… it was not reviewed by many people,” he says. “I wish the timing had been better. The publisher was terrible. They didn’t really promote anything. So now I have to start over again if I am going to do a second book, which I would love to do. But I have to find the right publisher.”

The book contains a barbed account of Stone’s experiences as a young screenwriter working in London for British director Alan Parker and producer David Puttnam on Midnight Express. “I wrote about it in the book, so you got my point of view. They were not very friendly people. I gave my criticism of Parker that he had a chip on his shoulder. He was from a poor side of the English. There is this phenomenon you see in England of hating the upper classes until they approve of you.”

No, they didn’t stay in touch. “And Puttnam is a Lord, right? He reminds me of Tony Blair. He is such a weasel.” For once, Stone feels he has overstepped the mark. He doesn’t want to call Puttnam a weasel after all. “Put it this way, Tony Blair is a weasel. I wouldn’t trust Tony Blair. Puttnam is a supporter of Blair. Let’s leave it at that.”

On matters English, he isn’t that keen on soccer either. He watched the semi-final between England and Denmark but had no intention of tuning into the final.

“Soccer is a different kind of game. It’s a different aesthetic. It is constant movement. The United States game allows you to re-group after every play and go into a huddle and so it becomes about strategy. I still enjoy it although people think I am brutal.”

Ask him why he so relishes American Football and he replies that he “grew up with violence in America … we were banging – cowboys and Indians, a lot of killing and that stuff. How do you get away from that? We weren’t playing with dolls.”

Stone’s feelings about the US are deeply ambivalent. He is old enough to remember a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s when “everything in America was golden” and part of him still seems to love the country but his mother was French and he talks about the US as a nation now in near terminal decline.

Perhaps surprisingly, his real political hero isn’t JFK. It’s the former President of France, Charles de Gaulle. “He said no to NATO and he said no to America. He understood the dangers of being a satellite country to America. You have no power in Europe. Don’t kid yourself. The EU is just an artificial body that was amazingly stupid in cutting off Russia and cutting off China too now.”

He doesn’t much like Boris Johnson either. “Boris, listen. He’d simply throw you in jail in a second.” He rails against the English for holding Assange in Belmarsh prison.

When he is not on a crusade or unravelling a conspiracy, Stone relaxes through Buddhist meditation. “Moderation in all things,” the man who came up with the phrase “greed is right, greed works” says with no evident sense of irony. He enjoys hanging out with his friends. “I have a nice life. I’m lucky,” he says before quickly adding, “I wish I had been more honoured and respected in my lifetime, but it seems that I took a course that is in conflict with the American Empire.”

Stone’s films have had relatively few strong female characters. Ask if he welcomes the #MeToo movement and the challenging of old gender norms and he gives a typically contrary answer. “It cuts both ways, though. There are reasons for patriarchy through the centuries,” he says. “Tribes tend to have a strong leader. You need strong leaders, but I do see the feminine impulse as being important, especially when situations become too militant. The feminine impulse, I’m talking about the maternal impulse not the Hillary Clinton/Margaret Thatcher version of feminism. They’re men. They’re not women,” he says. “I don’t want women in politics who want to be men. If a woman is a woman, she should be a woman and bring her maternalism. It’s a leavening influence.”

The director deplores the rush to judge historical figures about past misdeeds from a contemporary point of view. “I am conservative in that way… don’t expect to rejudge the entire society based on your new values.”

He met with Harvey Weinstein in Cannes a few years ago to discuss a potential Guantanamo Bay TV series. “At that point, maybe he knew he was on the ropes; he was delightfully charming and humble.” The project was scuppered by the scandal that that engulfed the former Miramax boss, who is now behind bars as a convicted sex offender. Stone’s gripes with Weinstein are less to do with his sexual offences than with the way that he attacked films like Born on the Fourth of July and Saving Private Ryan to boost his own movies.

“The press loved him [Weinstein]. Don’t forget, they loved him in the 1990s,” he says, remembering the disingenuous way in which Weinstein portrayed himself as the underdog taking on the big, bad Hollywood system.

“I think he robbed Cruise of the Oscar, frankly,” Stone huffs at the intensive Weinstein lobbying which saw Daniel Day-Lewis win the Academy Award for Best for My Left Foot, denying Tom Cruise for Born on the Fourth of July in the process.

Stone acknowledges his status in Hollywood has diminished. “All that’s gone. The people have changed,” he says of the days when the studios doted on him and his films were regularly awards contenders. Now, he’ll often finance his work out of Europe. He is developing a new feature film (he won’t say what it is). “Never say die, never say it’s over,” he says of his career.

Stone is based in Los Angeles and also has “a place in New York”. During the pandemic, he still managed to travel to Russia to make his nuclear power/clean energy documentary. “I got my shots over there because the EU is so f***ing stupid,” he says of the of the Europeans’ refusal to recognise the Sputnik vaccine. “It’s ridiculous, part of the political madness of this time.”

Now, he is putting all his energy into his new documentary about nuclear power. He waves away the idea that the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters show what can go wrong – they were accidents.

“Accidents you learn from. If there were not a few crashes, how would you fly?” he says. It’s a line that somehow seems to express his entire philosophy of life.

-Geoffrey Macnab interviews Oliver Stone, The Independent, Jul 15 2021 [x]

#oliver stone #jfk #jfk: through the looking glass #the independent #julian assange #boris johnson #david puttnam #harvey weinstein #born on the fourth of july #covid19 #vaccine #chasing the light #cannes film festival

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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

Text

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-08-06

♪ HS2 HS2 is baaaaack ♪

♪ HS2bloggin here we gooooo ♪

♪ Structural changes on their team but I don’t caaaaare ♪

♪ Already resooolved myself that its NOOOT gonna beee as good ♪ with inattentiveness to details characters like Terezi forgetting-what-they-used-to-know and an obsession with dwelling on traaageeeDEEE without relief-or-considering how weee’d feeeeeeel~ ♪♪♪ --so just gonna enjoy-what-i-caaaaaan about iiit~ ♪♪♪

Okay time for bankruptcy

> CHAPTER 11. History's Most Notorious Haters

Let’s see how effectively my perky new lowered-expectations attitude lets me enjoy this comic *click*

wut

Oh. so is this Dave drawing comics about current events or Regular Calliope doing so for our very first lanky look at her presumably-grown-up-more cherub form

> Knight: Keep it real.

HOLY SHIT IT’S DAVEBOT AND ARADIA

so we just get to SEE them?! just like that??? no buildup or anything? :D

Okay I’m marking out a little that’s a good sign. Also what a nerdy cop-out to turn the roboteyes into glasses that’s barely passable which is perfect, the rest of his outfit looks pretty cool tho

DAVEBOT: and thats reason four hundred nineteen why despite my mans many accomplishments i will never acknowledge big skateboardings contrived message that tony hawk is the quintessential skater of our generation ARADIA: o_o DAVEBOT: not in these trying times

Good to see Ultimate Dave is being true to form with regards to the core of his personality

DAVEBOT: beep boop ARADIA: i have told you several times that i was a robot before and i know for a fact you dont have to say beep boop DAVEBOT: hm that sounds fake does not compute ARADIA: david DAVEBOT: mom

I was with this conversation until the last two lines what the fuck

(I’m reading into it aren’t I, Aradia was trying to be atypically proper -- even though she wouldn’t have the frame of reference to know without being specifically told that “Dave” was considered nickname shorthand for the human name David, and thus if she DID know there’s no reason she’d use it except to troll him -- and Dave’s just mocking her response. Without any shame about his continued weirdness of calling people Mom, and by without any shame I mean he made the choice EXPLICITLY to intentionally evoke the awkwardness. Wow I got a lot out of two lines.)

(Oh, also alt!Callie’s true Jade-body incarnation here probably prompted her to start using “David” by example. There, various mysteries solved via a pile of assumptions probably to be disproven in the next couple lines I read.)

The Knight and the Maid stare at each other briefly, having exchanged enough meaningful glances over their time together to know when to drop it.

Would Time players have an easier time gelling this way, like this particular smoothness? Dropping it just before it gets weird or excessively irritating?

(Overclasspecting)

ARADIA: i think we have exchanged enough meaningful glances over our time together to know when to drop this DAVEBOT: what i enjoy about our conversations is that you just say things like that

OKAY I SNRK’D AT THAT. That was funny.

Initially. And now I’m concerned whether Aradia is being controlled by the narrative-speak, or whether they’re both just humorously referencing the meta-text they can both see, or--

ARADIA: oh is that what you enjoy ARADIA: well we are both an infinite number of years old living countless lifetimes at once but thats no reason to waste any of our...

WHAT??!? She’s an Ultimate Self too?!?

Um, okay! Yeah! So they’re BOTH just riffing on the narrative then. But... why would Dave need a robot body to accommodate his Ultimate Psyche without getting sick but Rose not need it? I can understand Dirk not needing it because the merging of the full breadth of his multiversal individuality gels well with him being a God of the aspect governing the power of his multiversal individuality, but Aradia?

Were the robot bodies not necessary after all, and the sickness Rose suffered and Obama thought Dave would have suffered some sort of ruse? Are there shenanigans afoot? (Or are we going with the “troll biology is better” cop-out?)

She knows how this will play out, having undoubtedly tried this joke on her friend in some timeline or another. Their rapport reflects a unique combination of their matching aspects but greatly differing classes. One a passive but powerful servant to time, the other wielding the aspect like a honed blade.

WHAT????

PASSIVE SERVANT OF THE ASPECT?!? WHAT THE FUCK

Okay if that means anything like it sounds like I guess my class chart is finally blown up, sure, they only waited (*checks last edit date*) SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS TO BLOW THAT GUESS UP, SURE

Wow. Okay, I feel some obligation to jump to conclusions and say the whole class chart is wrong, but let me stay strapped in to see if “passive” is as literal as one would expect alt!Callie to mean, or it just means “an active class passive compared to other classes”. And, serving the aspect? Oh dammit, now people are gonna come at me advocating a Maid / Page dichotomy about actively serving the aspect versus allowing the aspect to be served... or Page / Maid even, jesus

I wish I had enough energy to have those chats anymore. I’d rather hold on and see the whole ridiculous chart scheme they have in mind... which is definitely (and hopefully) the one Andrew really drew up at the time and not made up by the staff, even if it throws away plenty of my old work... I’ll just stop thinking about it and keep reading.

...

--no, I don’t think I can just stop thinking about it yet. Dammit, brain.

So um. Maids serving their aspect. There was a whole “Maids serve” thing going on throughout the whole plot of Homestuck, but despite how prevalent it was, I wrote it off as the story riffing on the classical definition of Maid when the actual stuff Maids accomplished was something different and more specific, just like Knights constantly got riffed on for chivalry and the like. Furthermore, service seemed like a really shitty class definition, when class definitions are the verbs one uses to interact with reality through Aspects to change the way reality unfolds, and “serving” isn’t really an action that results in change, implying a distinct deficit of agency that I wouldn’t have viewed as fair. (Especially since you originally think “meant to serve others” and not “meant to serve the aspect”, implying even LESS agency.) Furthermore, MOST passive classes from their descriptions seem to have a propensity to act “as if by the will of the aspect”, so even with the nuance of “serving the aspect”, devoting an entire class verb to service would just step on the territory of other active/passive class pairs’ passive sides, right?

But... IF we were to take this for granted as what it SEEMS... then concentrating on that angle of “serving the aspect” implies a whole lot more agency than a service class might sound on its surface. The definition fits with the story better once you contextualize all the Maid-y references to service around Jane, for instance, with the additional idea of “serving Life” by baking prolifically and creating more of its symbols in food and--

--fuck. “Serving”, like serving to others. Serving the aspect as its attendant AND serving it out to others that need it. Maybe this still IS part of the Additive class pair! Whoa. :O

Okay okay so, what I/we thought before was:

Create/Add - Maid / Sylph

Destroy/Reduce - Prince / Bard

But “additive” really isn’t an elegant verb compared to the “Destroyer” classes, so... could it be the “Servants” and the “Destroyers”? Like Maids cleaning up and healing the broken wreckage strewn through the halls by a bratty Prince’s tantrum???

It’d certainly be weird... and it’d CERTAINLY be a wild twist where I was partially wrong in some fascinating ways but not entirely off base?

One a passive but powerful servant to time, the other wielding the aspect like a honed blade.

And yet, I can’t bet on this being the situation yet; not at all. First, it relies on the idea that alt!Callie’s explicit narrative here is slightly misleading, which would be a pretty extreme thing to commit to, even for a technical truth like “she was saying it was passive relative to other classes even though it’s technically “active””. Second... it would mean that Muses are even more wildly defined than the previous insinuation of hers, that the Sylph -- what we thought was the passive additive class -- was not enough like a Muse compared to a Witch. Muses not being that Additive? I could grudgingly understand that, but Muses not being anything like passive Servants?! That would be EXTREMELY weird!

So... there’s not a whole lot of chance that I’m not dramatically wrong somewhere about these classes! In a way that throws the entire chart into disarray!

I’m... oddly excited? Huh.

That’s a pretty nice surprise that I actually feel that way.

(Don’t hit me up all at once to discuss this Classpect development over Discord, I’ll still need a few days without talking about Homestuck to recharge as usual. Like... maybe wait and come at me as a group chat? So I’m not talking about the latest developments separately with everyone? No that wouldn’t work, how about... guh I dunno, look my outlook’s a little more positive right now but dealing with Homestuck still takes emotional energy okay?)

Okay the rest of this page...

ARADIA: ... DAVEBOT: time then make a weird face ARADIA: ........ DAVEBOT: waste time DAVEBOT: time ARADIA:............. DAVEBOT: i experience all points of time simultaneously please just say time and make a weird face

This is true.

ARADIA: .................. DAVEBOT: cmon megido youre killing me clocks ticking ARADIA: ... ARADIA: time o_o

The Maid casts a furtive glance around the empty crew quarters, as though to search for someone more sympathetic to her bit.

ARADIA: tough crowd

Dorks.

> ==>

(Lazy fruit-throwing sword-training I won’t bother to screenshot but looks fun)

(I mean, really lazy looking, these people really don’t have Andrew’s knack for action composition that would make the same amount of gif-creation effort feel like a microcosm of the event they’re depicting, unfortunately. Again, I don’t blame them; Andrew was just too good at it.)

DAVEBOT: ok heres one DAVEBOT: how old do you think you are ARADIA: emotionally? ARADIA: that is a pretty heavy topic DAVEBOT: you know damn well thats not what i meant ARADIA: you know I have been through a lot dave DAVEBOT: ok ARADIA: its just so kind of someone DAVEBOT: ok i get it ARADIA: to finally ask how i feel ARADIA: i am beside myself with emotions ARADIA: i want to open up DAVEBOT: jesus christ ARADIA: shall i open up about my past traumas to you ARADIA: would you enjoy that ARADIA: to think even a frog like me can work through their pain with a dear friend ARADIA: you have truly blessed me on this day dave strider

Is Aradia JUST trolling here or is her Ultimate Self grappling with a ton of real unresolved trauma too that she’s bullshitting around Dave-style?

DAVEBOT: times fun when youre having flies

Okay that’s a damned good frog pun.

Alright now Davebot’s rapping

DAVEBOT: lacking tact i stay stacked while i breach contract DAVEBOT: sacred vows disavowed got divorce fever DAVEBOT: i leave her DAVEBOT: dont look back dont perceive her ARADIA: do you want to talk about it :( DAVEBOT: about what ARADIA: would you say you are hung up on leaving your wife and friends behind

Goddamnit is DAVE’S ton of real unresolved trauma leaking into his raps unintentionally Dave-style?? I knew we had to address it when we cut to Davebot but how about LESS TRAGEDY IN THIS COMIC MAYBE

DAVEBOT: arent you even a little guilty about ditching your boyfriend ARADIA: what ARADIA: oh fuck

But she knew what she was doing when she did it she explicitly did it didn’t she? Epilogues quote:

DAVEBOT: what about your boy DAVEBOT: eyepatches ARADIA: oh sollux is in one of his moods ARADIA: this was all getting to be a bit much for him ARADIA: if i go ill probably just cut him loose DAVEBOT: good move

And then they stepped through the sky hole more or less. Did like, distracted Ultimate Aradia not realize exactly how long she was leaving Sollux for, ie forever? Or did she “ascend” to Ultimate status later and hadn’t thought back to the full consequences of her actions within this timeline? Or both? From the looks of the link we’ll probably find out on the next pa--

--Wait. Something else I just thought of, unrelated.

If Aradia is an Ultimate Self, that’s another coincidentally Ultimate version of someone hanging around that happens to be on the prospective list of Soul-Powered Jujus that might have their creation loops closed in the coming story. Could those two things play into each other somehow? Like instead of their souls getting stuffed into the items, their “Ultimateness” is? Or as if that’s a necessary component, or... no, I’m probably overthinking things.

> (Months in the past, but not many...)

Uh huh. Is that flashing because he’s “watching” Aradia leave? But I thought Aradia SAID she was leaving--

> (==>)

--and that black hole portal doesn’t look as cool as it sounded in the Epilogues. But why was Aradia acting surprised, she said “I’ll probably just cut him loose” mere MOMENTS before entering the portal, did she mean “cut him loose” as in “I’m going to talk to him before leaving” and then just IMMEDIATELY forget that she didn’t say anything to him because she cared so little???

Wait. Waaaait wait wait. I think. I think maybe I missed some subtext. Lemme do some fuller quotes here:

ARADIA: oh sollux is in one of his moods ARADIA: this was all getting to be a bit much for him ARADIA: if i go ill probably just cut him loose DAVEBOT: good move

His gaze remains fixed on her. She blinks and looks away, unsure what to say next. He’s standing perfectly still, presumably waiting for her to say something. She met him... what was it? Once, twice before? She can’t remember. But she knows this is a very different Dave. Aside from the metal skin, he seems implacably confident. But then, people go through changes. She’s been through more than her share. She cocks an eyebrow, recalling her own stint with a metal body.

DAVEBOT: hey earth to whats your face ARADIA: oh ARADIA: its aradia

[...]

DAVEBOT: youre coming DAVEBOT: better decide quick i doubt that dank fuckin hell funnel is staying open for much longer ARADIA: yes i suppose so ARADIA: thats where all the action is right? DAVEBOT: all the action that matters yeah ARADIA: off we go then :) DAVEBOT: word

He holds out his hand. She looks around, and assumes he means for her to take it, so she does. She didn’t know someone could fly this fast. He nearly yanks her arm out of its socket. She considers reminding him that maybe this isn’t necessary, since she can fly too. But she doesn’t want to risk saying more embarrassing stuff around this outrageously cool dude. Besides, they’re through the wormhole before she can even finish the thought. It vanishes the moment they’ve crossed.

...this was a SHIPPING thing wasn’t it. She’s impressed as hell with Striderbot, she SAID she’d cut things off with Sollux, and then she was so busy being swooped off her feet and into the portal that she forgot to actually say anything to him. Is that what happened????

Ultimate Self Davebot x Ultimate Self Aradia. Huh. Didn’t see that coming. (Though, again... they could make it SLIGHTLY clearer that this wasn’t just a blatant continuity error.)

Anyway, a rare-don’t-get-used-to-it [S] page...

> [S] (Gaze.)

...Okay that was kinda funny.

> (==>)

SOLLUX: h0w the fuck am i g0ing t0 get d0wn fr0m here.

HAH! Okay, he’s taking it pretty well. :) --and THAT’s what she realized she forgot, giving him a flight down from the tower before leaving.

GOOD. KEEP THINGS HUMOROUS EVEN WHEN LITERAL ABANDONMENT IS HAPPENING. THAT’S the Homestuck I was missing. :) :) :)

> Back to reality.

(Since the black hole is outside “canon” reality.)

Those are some cool poses-AHAH JESUS CHRIST ALT!JADE YOU LOOK ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING XD

COULD YOU MAYBE HAVE CLEANED UP THE DRIED BLOOD AT SOME POINT OR IS SOME OF THAT FRESH FROM EATING MORE RAW MEAT

(Lord English’s blood leaving permanent timeless bloodstains would be a cool new thing to squeeze into canon i admit, i wouldn’t blame them for taking the excuse even if you could find small canon counterexamples I’m not sure of but dimly think might exist)

((ALSO SHE’S GONNA BE TINY NEXT TO THEM I DUNNO IF THAT MAKES IT MORE TERRIFYING OR LESS, PROBABLY MORE))

DAVEBOT: so youre telling me you dont even feel a little bad that you ditched him to be a weird death acolyte ARADIA: no i think he found my wiles both charming and irresistible DAVEBOT: not even an ounce of guilt or self doubt huh DAVEBOT: just like that DAVEBOT: no conversations about the greater good DAVEBOT: no revelations about your feelings

Is Aradia a jerk or weird? Can’t decide.

ARADIA: do you often find your faith in yourself shaken like this or is it a new experience now that your mortal coil has been left behind DAVEBOT: what ARADIA: do you think now that all that is left of you is a literal ghost inside of a machine you are more or less likely to embrace finality DAVEBOT: oh dope more cult of one shit DAVEBOT: immortality changed you ARADIA: could it be that you are projecting your feelings onto my situation DAVEBOT: does not compute rose jr ARADIA: ... ARADIA: we dont have to talk about it DAVEBOT: thanks

Wow, I actually can’t follow this conversation at all. Let me stare at it for a sec...

...okay, the first part she’s talking about DAVE’s faith in HIMself being shaken, not her own. She’s not asking if he relates to HER experience, she’s contrasting it.

Then, asking if he’d be more likely to embrace death, or... Time? Death. Whether his self-worth has changed because he might view himself as “less real”, something Aradia doubtless struggled with when she was a robot who already had so many excuses to devalue herself at the time? And then Dave talks about “cult of one” shit what does that even mean-...

OH. Like she’s a death cult. Gooot it. Because Aradia’s of the position that death and ending should be celebrated, and Davebot understandably isn’t entirely bought in. This is as hard to parse down as one would EXPECT conversations between two Ultimate Selves to be hard to parse down, unlike Rose and Dirk where their insane missions and glaring flaws shine bright enough through it all that you can follow their conversation flow easily.

JADE: They sit in each other's presence, the silence between them as meaningful as any words they could exchange. DAVEBOT: its always really cool to hear how meaningful my silences are DAVEBOT: especially while DAVEBOT: CALCULATING DAVEBOT: CALCULATING DAVEBOT: especially while i am attempting to experience them

Alt!Callie pulling a narrative-text AFTER a talk-identifier like “JADE:” is really hilarious in my opinion.

JADE: i do not need your approval. the story will continue how it must. DAVEBOT: beep boop hater detected ARADIA: wow is that true JADE: i am not a hater. DAVEBOT: classic hater line DAVEBOT: i know this because i am pouring through genuine actual quadrabytes of information on historys most notorious haters JADE: no, you aren’t.

Pffffff. This is pretty fun.

DAVEBOT: you are the exact opposite of a hater ARADIA: a liker DAVEBOT: ok DAVEBOT: perfect example your tolerance for whatever is going on with DAVEBOT: all this ARADIA: i think she looks quite lovely covered in the viscera of the all-powerful enemy she consumed ARADIA: floating lifelessly in our periphery ARADIA: observing our every action and noting its relevance :) DAVEBOT: uh huh thats what i mean

I was gonna note “liker” as additive for pointless classpect purposes, but really more quoting it just because I really enjoy this conversation. I’m starting to get sold on the chemistry of these two a lot faster than I expected.

JADE: even though I understand that it must happen, i am growing frustrated with the direction of this conversation. DAVEBOT: do you want to talk about something else stinky JADE: what would you suggest?

How long has that dried fucking blood been on her

DAVEBOT: ok hear me out DAVEBOT: kanaya DAVEBOT: but like DAVEBOT: wearing huge jorts

That explains Homestuck’s twitter earlier

> Weeks in the future, relative to the original point of interest...

Wait wait which point of interest? This time we were just viewing? *click*

I love what must be this shitty imagination-ship they’re using to cross the substrate of reality

> ==>

Whoaaaa. So they DIDN’T stay in those outfits for long? It showed them in a bunk bed earlier, it showed CallieJade still going around blood-covered afterward-- dammit, I’m having a hard time gauging exactly how much time is supposed to have passed between their entry into the black portal, their earlier conversation, and this moment. And as likely as some are to call this poor scene composition, I can’t think it’s anything but intentional, given we’re dealing with a couple of Ultimate Time players bullshitting with each other.

Moments like these are not rare, and serve a valuable function to the story. They are able to show a passage of time with the bulk of the emotional labor of a lengthy bonding process happening off screen. How did we get here? What have they been through? These questions are often better left open to individual interpretation and can give the one interpreting a sense of ownership of the story.

See? We’re being trolled is why. (Even if the authors are pulling the trick Alt!Callie describes maybe a little too damn often, because a cut like this where we’re supposed to fill in the emotional gaps and intervening events ourselves as readers depends on readers’ faith that sensible events and decisions for these characters would OCCUPY the gaps, as if readers don’t have faith that what intervenes WOULD make sense to their understanding of the characters the way the authors are writing them... it just seems like an excuse to do whatever you want without adequately explaining yourself, when in reality if you’d spelled out the events that led to it we’d all cry foul at the mischaracterization.)

...okay, maybe I’m a BIT bitter. Sorry. Where were we?

JADE: As a point of curiosity- ARADIA: oh shit!!!!

The dead Cherub possessing the body of an equally deceased Goddess of Space pauses at the interruption.

She doesn’t talk much, then? Too busy doing whatever talking you’d do as your other possessed Jade body? Just how temporally related is you controlling THIS Jade compared to when you were controlling the other? When that Jade pegged you as enjoying contact with friends, are these two just not enough for you, or did you “experience” the trips entirely separately? I don’t THINK the alt!Callie possessing either Jade is a separate entity from the other, but...

Were she to voice her opinion, it would be that --actually-- it is not unusual for those whose primary concern is The Grander Scheme to have a passing curiosity about the insignificant. So when one really thinks about it, any annoyance with the attendant’s small mindedness is both understandable and warranted.

She pissed

...also, “the attendant”. Even if “serve” is really the verb here, that phrasing really irks me as if she’s talking down to her. Which, I mean, makes sense for alt!Callie’s character, but doesn’t make me feel better about this new definition being foisted on us.

ARADIA: :( JADE: as a point of order, you never answered dave’s question. ARADIA: which one he is very chatty JADE: you experience time in a way that is woefully unfamiliar to me and it has... piqued my curiosity enough to learn more. ARADIA: ?_? DAVEBOT: shes asking how old you are

Wait a minute, is Alt!Callie asking a question about a dropped topic from WEEKS ago?! And is Davebot so in touch with Time and the meta ordering of topics that he actually CAUGHT ON that fast to what she was actually wondering about?????

This is getting more disorienting by the minute.

ARADIA: in this form our bodies stop aging once we reach maturity i think ARADIA: the god tier keeps our physical form locked in a state of undying ARADIA: even in death the bodies do not decay ARADIA: only lay dormant

THAT LAST PART IS FUCKING IMPORTANT. It’s being brought up intentionally to tell us that JOHN’S DEAD BODY can still be in the wallet Terezi’s carrying around RIGHT NOW without having decayed over the past years. I remember remarking in SOME previous HS^2 liveblog post of mine that I was alarmed by the decay that would have happened there (can’t find my remark on short notice and don’t really care to), so this explicitly dismisses it so we won’t be surprised by the fact that she could keep it in just-dead condition.

DAVEBOT: like how long have you been alive JADE: yes, that one.

[...]

ARADIA: oh maybe a few hundred years or so DAVEBOT: what JADE: what? ARADIA: well if i had known you were going to be so judgy about it DAVEBOT: when did this happen ARADIA: oh i spent some time in other doomed realities and timelines and came back before anybody could tell i was gone

Hm!

We knew she spent a LONG time in the dream bubbles, enough to talk to “pretty much all of the Nepetas”, but she was actually able to access a universe or universes and hop between them? That’s not something any time traveller we’ve seen has been explicitly able to do intentionally before, quite like she’s describing.

DAVEBOT: oh just out for a bit of fun then DAVEBOT: just hopped on over to a different reality DAVEBOT: real casual like DAVEBOT: oh hello dont mind me just popping in to see if it really is as doomed as they say it is DAVEBOT: did not disappoint ARADIA: yes almost exactly like that :) DAVEBOT: who did you hang out with are they cooler than me ARADIA: it is complicated to explain DAVEBOT: oh ok nevermind then DAVEBOT: all clear

Yep, he’s kinda bewildered. Is this Pesterquest stuff she’s referring to? Did she stop by Pesterquest?

DAVEBOT: a whole alternate universe ripe with the coolest motherfuckers imaginable ARADIA: you were there too i threw your air conditioner into the sun DAVEBOT: wow thats fucked up DAVEBOT: thats not where that goes at all JADE: these events are not-canonical. ARADIA: rude

Ah! Yeah, almost certainly Pesterquest. (Still haven’t played that and have little inclination to now that I’m more sure we aren’t being gaslit with intentional continuity errors, just disappointed by actual continuity errors.) Oh! And that makes a bit more sense because I imagine that’s Black Hole territory, and that territory outside of Canon seems pretty rich and easy for time-travellers to hop between stories and timelines willy-nilly. As they’re apt to in fanfics, which is the most appropriate way for things to be in that realm!

DAVEBOT: is that the trope of being hundreds of years old but looking young forever patently sucks ass DAVEBOT: a plot device an asshole would write ARADIA: :( JADE: that is not what i am trying to say at all. DAVEBOT: hmm wow yeah thatd really be a sort of pot/kettle situation i guess DAVEBOT: i cant believe im the only woke one here DAVEBOT: its hard being such a visionary AND such a fine metallic specimen DAVEBOT: but im an altruist first and fucking foremost ARADIA: so selfless JADE: yes, the greater narrative is truly blessed by your beneficent presence. DAVEBOT: oh so you got jokes now huh JADE: i have always had the ‘jokes’ of which you speak, but i have heretofore exercised restraint in laying you low. JADE: i possess knowledge of many of your iterations, as the scope of my powers allows me to exist in several narrative structures at once. DAVEBOT: but can she see why kids love the sweet cinnamon taste of cinnamon toast crunch JADE: i do not know, or care, what that means. ARADIA: neither do i :)

I’m actually really enjoying this conversation

JADE: its cultural significance to you as an earthling is wasted on the two of us entirely, as we have not conflated the misguided notion of clinging to nostalgic cereal advertisement trivia with socially relevant conversation.

Pff she literally checked her meta notes just now to learn what the cereal ads were after admitting she didn’t know what it meant and pretending not to care

> ==>

Oh, closer look at Davebot. Are those actual SHAPED shades over his robotic eye bulges? Weird, I thought it was just a lazy line drawn between them with red sharpie at first, Sans style. That would’ve been funny.

> ==>

Ohh, I get it. I was gonna say that was an unwarranted reaction... but he just realized that the Time-wait puns will be coming from BOTH his shipmates from now on. That’s gotta be a downer. :)

> ==>

HOLY

FUCKING

SHIT

IS ALT-CALLIE LAUGHING!??!?!?!??

That’s REALLY, REALLY GOOD!!! SHE’S ALREADY LAUGHING OCCASIONALLY THAT MAKES ME SO HAPPY

“BEST NARRATOR” COFFEE CUP

SHE’S ADORABLE

> ==>

Ah, was that Jade kicking you out? Or just the multiverse punishing you for being briefly happy :(

--oh, end of the update. Guess that’s it for now!

...

Alright I know I’m A BIT BEHIND on covering the HS2 commentary,

But

I really would rather wait on that a bit longer if that’s alright. Real busy and stressful week or two. (Found out my hair is starting to thin noticeably at age 31! Quite suddenly, too. Blood test looks fine so it’s nothing serious... gonna see a doctor to check if anything can be safely done about that, it’s really hurting my self-esteem more than I thought it would. Didn’t think it would hit my emotions that hard when it eventually happened, knew it was likely but not so SOON... really messing with my anxiety every time I accidentally touch my hair, now. I’ll deal with it.)

If I sound really aimless in this post, I think it’s cause I am? My mental and emotional energy’s REALLY drained. I’m glad that June/July break in HS^2 happened when it did, and I’m definitely glad there’s apparently plenty in HS^2 I can really enjoy, if this update is anything to go by. Maybe this comic can help lift me up instead of knocking me down. :)

See y’all later! More Patreon commentary blogging catchup after some other upd8.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #Homestuck Theories #Homestuck Theory #spoiler #spoilers #Classes and Aspects #Space and Time #Aradia

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autumnblogs · 3 years

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Day 11: Melodrama

WIth Act 4 over, we’ve finished setting up the pins on the Earth Side of this story. We are now roughly one quarter of the way through the full story - and Homestuck is set up more or less in four acts, rather than in six acts as its “official” structure would suggest.

Time to start setting up the pins on the other disc.

https://homestuck.com/story/1942

But first, some more of Andrew’s prose to detail the fallout of the Sovereign Slayer’s activity. He’s been a busy man.

Also, Rose goes off the rails, but we knew that already.

This is the part of the story where Rose becomes an antagonist, in my opinion. More on that later. More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/1955

A letter from another version of Earth.

One of the very first things that we learn about Jake is that one of his all time favorite movies is Weekend at Bernie’s, an association that is part of a long list of red-herrings that link Jake up with Lord English, but of which nothing ultimately comes. It’s an association mostly because Bernie is a corpse who is also a puppet (like Doc Scratch, for example).

All that has already been pointed out by a lot of people before me, so moving on.

https://homestuck.com/story/1957

Just missed her.

https://homestuck.com/story/1993

Act 5 off to a great start, and while Karkat is in many ways a parallel to John (via their shared interests), right away, this action compares Karkat to Dave. Their reaction to being misnamed by the command prompt is pretty much identical.

https://homestuck.com/story/1994

Like I said, Karkat is pretty much immediately compared to John in terms of their shared interests, what with his Terrible Taste in Movies and his Amateur Coding.

One thing that stands out as endearing to me that I’ve probably not thought so much about before is Karkat’s practicing with his Sickle in his room. It reminds me of lightsaber wielding kids on early youtube.

https://homestuck.com/story/1995

So let’s break this and the next few pages down. Viewing the narration through the same James-Joycesque lens of “Narration is more or less identical with the characters’ thought processes,” that we have been so far, Karkat seems pretty ambivalent about existing as a troll, going as far as to describe his bad dreams as *terrible.*

Do all Trolls have dreams as bad as Karkat does? Is it a chucklevoodoos thing? Maybe it’s specifically a Karkat thing.

https://homestuck.com/story/1996

Karkat gets distracted instantly by intrusive thoughts and does something else that’s very Johnlike.

https://homestuck.com/story/1998

Aw c’mon. Early Sandler isn’t even that bad. Then again, it’s been a while since I’ve watched this one, maybe it’s worse than I remember it.

https://homestuck.com/story/1999

This section of the story is even more time-agnostic than the rest of the story, and a lot of it is told in past tense prospective action, which says to me that what we’re experiencing here is the various trolls on the meteor at the End of Act 4 collectively remembering what has taken place in the past, while the parts of this segment that are narrated in the present tense are being relayed to us via the characters in the narrative present (which is to say, the events which are being relayed to us in the panel.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2008

I wonder if Troll Will Smith is a Troll Scientologist?

https://homestuck.com/story/2010

I didn’t like the Trolls very much originally. They’re so ornery and pissy with each other all the time, with the exception of Gamzee and Tavros, but on a reread, especially keeping the things in mind that I’m keeping in mind, all of these characters are a lot more tolerable.

Using the cipher that we’ve established from reading the characters as basically attempting to perform what is culturally expected of them in the first four acts, we can immediately decode what is going on between Karkat and his friends - they are trying to be the best trolls they can be, or at least, live up to certain ideals/stereotypes the way that Dave tries to live up to the stereotype of the coolguy, or John emulates the mangrit and fatherliness and so on of his father figures.

But something is way *way* more wrong with Alternia’s role models than Earth’s.

That’s all from a Watsonian perspective. From a Doylist perspective, there are very explicit stereotypes each of these characters is designed around - commonplace annoying internet people from the ‘00s (pronounce that as Naughts).

https://homestuck.com/story/2012

There’s a lot of early installment weirdness in the first bits of Troll Stuff we get where it’s clear that Andrew was riffing and trying to find clear definitions for their relationships - it’s somewhat poorly known these days, I think, but Andrew has said in the past that he hates worldbuilding, and it kind of shows. (Did I mention that Kanaya Sollux friendship back when those two were interacting not long ago? That’s another one of those bits of early installment weirdness).

Anyway, the actual bit of early installment weirdness that I’m drawing attention to is the fact that the Subjugglators are described as being an Obscure Cult here, but later Homestuck Media (and even stuff within Homestuck, honestly) will make them out to be basically the only major aspect of being a Purple Blood.

https://homestuck.com/story/2013

Gamzee’s ignorance and his bliss are pretty much immediately linked to one another.

That said, I’m not going to dive too deep into Gamzee’s inner life. Like a lot of the trolls, in spite of his great relevance, he’s a bit of a joke character, and the joke is on us - whatever is going on inside this lad’s head is a puzzle for most of the comic.

Gamzee has a Freudian excuse in the form of his absent Lusus, which incidentally, is a parallel to Jade - the Nurture is the same, but the Nature is very differently. Unfortunately, when God was handing out Natures, he gave Gamzee one of the really bad ones, so he’s a worthless goddamn piece of shit.

https://homestuck.com/story/2024

Already into the first few troll conversations, and we’re setting up some stuff for later. Gamzee and Terezi’s very first conversation demonstrates the terrible chemistry that the two have together - Gamzee legitimately unsettles Terezi, and there’s just nothing at all she can do to bother him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2025

Sollux is probably so handy with this coding language because of his ability to hear the voices of the imminently deceased - so he can write programs that will execute along a pretty reasonable time frame.

https://homestuck.com/story/2027

Leader is a phrase that ends up being used in conjunction with Karkat a lot, and the concept of leadership is another one of those things that Homestuck Talks About but not a thing that Homestuck Is About, at least in the sense that leadership as a role is part of the comic’s broader commentary on cultural reproduction, the same way that Homestuck’s conversation about gender is, or Homestuck’s conversation about Roles in general.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Karkat wants to be a leader.

As long as Sollux is making his first appearance as a character, I want to take a second to say that as a character, he’s always been pretty tough and enigmatic for me to write, especially in the sense that he‘s frequently referred to melodramatic and sensitive or similar terms by people around him, but he actually doesn’t really seem that way in most cases - he just seems like a guy who wants to his own devices, and is generally pretty non-reactive to other peoples’ bullshit. Maybe he’s melodramatic in the way that Dave is, hyping himself up as a coolguy who is the best there is, but then again, Sollux kind of lives up to his own hype, considering that up until the last possible moment, he wins pretty much every fight he’s in handily, adapts Sburb personally, and has more romantic success than just about everyone else in the comic.

Maybe Karkat’s just projecting.

https://homestuck.com/story/2031

Roleplaying - a concept that I’ve used frequently to refer to the way that John and his chums perform rituals in order to relate to their culture and parents - is made explicit through the language of Flarping, which for the Trolls, serves as a way for them to literally act out the adventures of their long-dead ancestors, although it strikes me that it’s probably a lot more gainful for highbloods like Terezi and Vriska than it is in general for lowbloods like Aradia and Tavros.

I’ll get this out of the way up front instead of commenting it on a drip feed throughout Terezi’s upcoming courtblock roleplay - Terezi is the kind of kid who aspires to be a Cop. Or a lawyer, anyway, which in Alternian Law, is the same thing as a cop. In the wake of 2020′s scads of police brutality, and in general, having grown up into a nasty commie, it’s kind of hard to look at Terezi the same way.

While it’s clear that Terezi is remorseful later on toward her earlier attitudes and behaviors, Terezi is at least ambivalent, and at worst a purely antagonistic force throughout a lot of early Homestuck because of her authoritarian tendencies and her honestly pretty psychopathic behavior. She plays games with her friends’ lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/2047

Terezi adores having power over other people and making them helpless. For Terezi, alienation takes the form of emotional distance from the people that she’s tormenting. It makes it so much easier for her to conceive of them as wicked people who need to die.

https://homestuck.com/story/2055

Nepeta is an adorable girl who deserves all the good things. All of them.

That said, as long as we’re commentating and not glurging, Nepeta’s internet troll stereotype is probably less familiar these days, and I say probably less, but I can’t say for sure - it’s like this really specific thing that existed during the late ‘00s, where you had this highly specific stereotype, which I’ll call the Furry Artist Roleplayer, and I really hope that I’m not talking out of my ass by generalizing anecodtal evidence, but I know people who were pretty much exactly the Nepeta stereotype around the time that Act 5 was being written! Roleplaying in IRCs or on specialty forums with other people, all drawing art of their anthro OCs and writing stories about each other’s characters. That sort of thing still probably exists these days, but if it does, I’m not really part of any communities anymore where it leaks into the mainstream.

https://homestuck.com/story/2058

Okay, yup, Karkat is 100% projecting “Melodrama” on all the people around him. In a literal sense, Melodrama refers to theatrics that are exaggerated and sensationalized in such a way as to appeal to the emotions, often prioritizing spectacle and physical action over deep characterization.

Actually, if we’re taking it in the literal sense of the word, just about every character in Homestuck is pretty melodramatic - I keep talking about the way that they roleplay rituals and associate with symbols even when they fail to structures of power and culture that those rituals and symbols point to - performative participation without any actual substance. That’s practically the definition of Melodrama.

But Karkat is, perhaps, the most Melodramatic of all.

https://homestuck.com/story/2065

Aradia is one of my favorite characters in Homestuck, and possibly my favorite, something I can be up front about.

Our introduction to her is brief, and right out of the gate one thing about her is apparent - her relationship with destruction is central to her characterization.

https://homestuck.com/story/2069

While I was going to wait for the Hemospectrum to come up explicitly, now’s as good a time as any to talk about the fact that Andrew uses Troll society to comment on hierarchy a lot - hierarchy of just all kinds. Ageism is one of those, and Gerontocracy in particular in Alternia. In Alternia, just one of the ways that the oppression of the Hemospectrum manifests is the way that the Empire systematically takes advantage of its children by basically leaving them completely to their own devices. Trolls don’t have family units normally, but the fact that Troll adults are all offworld is not a “natural” part of Troll Society, it’s a decision. And while it’s a decision made by the Empress, it’s still one that, to some extent, benefits adult trolls at the expense of the children, since they’re not around spending energy on raising kids who are expected to raise themselves from the word go.

It’s honestly pretty late, and I’m tuckered out because of the steroids that I’m on, and the cough medicine, so in spite of the comparatively pretty short amount of reading I’ve done tonight, I’m going to call it here.

Cam signing off, Alive and a little High.

#liveblogging #commentary #nurture #nature #trolls

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recentanimenews · 3 years

Text

OPINION: My Favorite Anime of 2020 Are All Music Videos

Image via ZUTOMAYO

Despite the enormous pressures of COVID-19, 2020 has had its share of anime classics. Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a stone-cold classic to the degree it now feels as if it’s always existed. Decadence channeled the creative spirit of 2000s-era Madhouse into an off-kilter riff on dystopian science fiction and Pixar movies. Akudama Drive, now in its second half, continues to translate the bonkers, heartfelt pulp style of Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka to TV anime. There have been big successes in film, as well — Demon Slayer Mugen Train scored the highest opening weekend box office in Japanese history, while folks I follow on Twitter are excited for the new Bones film Josee, the Tiger and the Fish.

One of my favorite anime projects this year was something completely different. It’s "Gotcha!," a short Pokemon-themed music video directed by Rie Matsumoto and her friends at Bones. A sequence that takes all of Matsumoto’s strengths — her attention to detail, the way she depicts exciting and supernatural things bursting out of the walls of our ordinary world, and her obsession with cramming every layer of the screen with stuff — and turns them with the precision of a laser toward celebrating the series’s near 25-year history. As encyclopedic as a Pokedex despite being only three minutes long, it’s a glorious celebration of a series loved and made by passionate fans.

Image via Pokemon Official YouTube Channel

But "Gotcha!" wasn’t even the only fantastic music video made by former employees from the historic studio Toei. Earlier this year, animator Koudai Watanabe collaborated with the talented Naoki Yoshibe — director of the opening sequences for Gatchaman Crowds — to create a music video for ZUTOMAYO titled “STUDY ME.” It’s a rich purple-and-green media landscape of TV screens, glitches, Undertale references, and desperately reaching hands, packed with enough wild ideas and visual iconography to fuel an entire season of anime. But it wraps up in just under five minutes. You’re left watching the video over and over again in a daze, trying in vain to catch every little detail.

The animated music videos being made right now represent the most slept-on creative success in modern anime production among English language fans. (That’s music videos that are animated, not AMVs! You could write an entirely separate article on those.) I need to qualify “slept on,” since hardcore animation nerds like Yuyucow and Catsuka have been stumping for these works over the past several years. There are viral successes like "Gotcha!" and the inevitable crossover that happens when an artist doing the theme song for an anime leads others to check out their back catalog of past videos. But on websites and in magazines, I see stories about Netflix’s aggressive production of new TV series, the renaissance of Japanese anime films after Your Name, and bemused reactions to the shocking popularity of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. Talk about the newest music videos online is a lot rarer. Not to mention older videos. "Gotcha!" may have broken out as a celebration of a popular game series, but its predecessor — a Lotte chocolate commercial produced by much of the same staff — is just as good!

Image via ZUTOMAYO

"Gotcha!" isn’t 2020’s only spiritual successor to excellent early work, either. In 2013, Yoko Kuno produced the video "Airy Me" as part of a graduate assignment. Set to a song by Cuushe, it’s a hallucinatory epic that’s both starkly horrifying and bittersweet. In the years since, Yoko Kuno’s made a name for herself across several mediums — winning the New Face Award for her manga work at Japan Media Arts Festival, serving as a pinch hitter on Orange’s production of Land of the Lustrous and contributing a memorable sequence to Beastars. She returned this year with filmmaker Tao Tajima to produce another sequence scored to Cuushe’s music, Magic. Riffing on Airy Me's themes of bodily transformation and human ennui, it sets the action against real photographic landscapes. It's another haunting masterwork by one of anime’s most multitalented young artists and has been on repeat for me since it came up on my Twitter feed.

Image via FLAU

Meanwhile, the Japanese vocalist Eve continues to commission new and excellent animated work based on his songs. This May saw the release of "How to Eat Life," a video by indie animator Mariyasu which repurposes Eve’s unique symbology of surly adolescents and freaky puppet monsters into a stylish and spooky carnival of carnivorism. It’s an excellent piece that stands tall among the work collected under Eve’s banner, many of which are stone-cold classics themselves. But "Promise," released at the end of this October, threatens to outdo them all. Directed by Ken Yamamoto and produced at Cloverworks, it plays as another greatest hits compilation of Eve’s works — broken promises, collapsing cityscapes, creatures powered by feeling that shake the earth with their footsteps. There’s a real visceral punch to it that beats out even its excellent predecessors. When the protagonist folds over himself in anguish, you feel it in your gut. When he steps deep into the water and the entire world around him is shredded into pieces, anyone who’s ever been a teenager knows exactly how that feels. When his friend reaches in and pulls him out of that water, that’s real joy rising like bubbles through your veins.

Image via Eve

Ken Yamamoto’s a bit more mainstream than Mariyasu — just last year he contributed some face-melting action sequences to Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia. But it says something to me that "Promise" — maybe his best work yet — was released as a music video rather than a new TV series. He’s not alone, either. This August, the animator China (storyboarder for Encouragement of Climb’s third season) together with character designer Mooang (storyboarder for Sarazanmai) produced the music video "Sore wo Ai to Yobu dake." Like the reverse of Yamamoto’s "Promise," it’s the story not of a pair of teenage boys and their separation that devastates a cityscape — but of a pair of teenage girls who reach across time to recover the bond they shared in their high school days. A potent combination of FLCL-style faded nostalgia, careful attention to body language, and pure patented kids-falling-through-the-sky-while-frantically-reaching-for-each-other anime magic, it’s one of the best-animated sequences of this year. I’ve linked it to friends just to plead “Watch this thing!” And it ends in less than four minutes long.

Image via Mafumafu

I can’t help but think: Where is China and Moaang’s movie project? Where is Ken Yamamoto’s TV series? Why is it that Rie Matsumoto has produced two excellent music videos over the past two years that commemorate big franchises, but her rumored film project has yet to lift off? Perhaps the truth is that there isn’t room anymore in the TV anime industry for work like this. Many original projects seem to be tied to cellphone games or stage productions. Projects like Decadence are few and far between, and even those that exist play within a space already laid out by past successes. It’s not all bad, of course — Eizouken this year was a great example of an adaptation working in harmony with its source material. And we’ve seen studios like Orange employ weirder anime creators like Yoko Kuno or the stop-motion team dwarf to great effect in their projects. But perhaps animated music videos represent the future for artists like Matsumoto — a medium that pays well, rewards experimentation, and lets strong artists play around without having to dilute their style. A bite-sized format just outside of the soul-draining churn that defines the industry.

Maybe this is fine, though. Short-form work is just as worthy of admiration as long-form work. I’d love feature-length projects from Ken Yamamoto or China, and I’d love for the world to see another Rie Matsumoto story told on a grand scale. But I can’t deny that Matsumoto rocks at putting together fantastic music videos and that I might even prefer the concise flow of "Gotcha!" to her TV series output. Either way, in this historically difficult year, I’m grateful to these folks for turning in career-best work and giving me hope for the future.

Do you have a favorite animated music video? At the risk of getting off track, do you have a favorite anime music video? Do you still watch different fan edits of Hatsune Miku and wowaka's "Rolling Girl" on rotation, like I do? Let me know in the comments!

Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he isn't rewatching his favorite anime OPs over and over, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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rae-gar-targaryen · 5 years

Text

only as alone as i wanna be | [bh]

A/N: Well instead of working on my Peter Parker writing challenge fic, Billy Hargrove won’t leave my brain alone. So here we go.

I’ve retconned the Billy & Max relationship a bit for this, so it’s a lil au. Sorry!

Please let me know if you think I should continue!

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x fem!Reader (I’m still trying to get the hang of writing for the “reader.” Hopefully this is vague enough that you can imagine yourself. If not, send me feedback so I can get better!)

Warnings: Language. Passing, vague mentions of sex. Some Billy Hargrove chain-smoking. Bad writing with a jumpy plot. Seriously, I think I’m way too abrupt. Please send feedback. This one is probably doomed for a re-write.

Word Count: 2.4k of nonsensical, self-important musical references and haphazard, fleeting feelings.

Summary: The snarky record store girl does not like Billy Hargrove. Not at all.

**NOT MY GIF!**

—

Winter, 1984

The bell dinged above the door, a jarring interval between the wistful tones of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Take Me Back. Prompting you to look up from your stack of records in mild annoyance. It had been such a productive day until now, and the vinyl wasn’t going to restock itself.

Well.

Had you known Mr. Born-In-The-USA-Bruce-Springsteen himself was going to walk in, you would’ve played something far less his taste than Siouxsie. Just to annoy him. Serves him right, right?

He paused in the doorway of the shop, wrinkling his nose almost imperceptibly as the sound hit his ears, before striding on toward the “Pop/Rock” section of the store, thumbing his way through Motley Crue’s latest.

Figures, you thought. A man who douses himself with as much commercial-ass hairspray and cologne would like some commercial-ass garbage “metal.” Besides, you’d walked past the blue Camaro enough times in the school parking lot to hear the dulcet tones of whatever bland-ass hair metal he was currently into trying its best to blast the doors off of his beloved metal steed.

You felt a twinge of guilt. You shouldn’t judge the customers for their musical taste so quickly– but between the old church ladies who came in for Handel’s Messiah or whatever they had heard over public radio that week, and the girls from your class riffing on Madonna, you had had just about enough.

Hadn’t anyone experienced the true depth of Queen? Keep Yourself Alive, man!

You had been working at Hawkins’ local record store during the summers since childhood – Old Mr. Cohen who owned the place used to let you sort tapes into piles for cents on the hour until you were old enough for a real job. Immersed in the music since a young age, you appreciated the breadth and depth the shop had to offer– your favorites developing into pieces heavy on synth. Bonus points if the lyrics made you feel especially existential. You loved that moody shit.

Now, at 17, you practically ran the place, Mr. Cohen comfortable with leaving you to your devices at the store, so long as the till was counted and inventory was properly stocked. You were grateful for the freedom– squeezing homework into slow nights and chatting about deeper portions of discography with regulars.

Billy Hargrove was not a regular. Neither did he promise a slow night, if the rumors amongst your female classmates were to be believed. Not that you partook in the Hawkins High rumor mill.

He was a recent, but obtrusive, arrival in your high school’s social scene. Mere months into his appearance in your town and the age-in-kind female population had seemingly lost their brain cells faster than inhaling their usual clouds of hairspray could do it for them.

Still, you had to admit, he was good-looking. The Springsteen comparison was apt. Billy Hargrove wore jeans like he was doing the denim a favor. His shirts usually two-thirds of the way unbuttoned, even in winter, which was not an unkind sight. His sun-kissed, California boy skin stood a stark contrast to the pallor of the Indiana natives you grew up with. His eyes were crystalline and swam like oceans of trouble and broken promises.

My god. You were a moody-ass bitch. Waxing poetic about this jock-strap of a human being who you’d heard pummelled Steve Harrington and nearly drowned himself in beer and barely-legal pussy. Come on, babe. Get it together.

He strode up to you at the counter, his boots clunking against the store’s tiled floor. Shout at the Devil was clutched in his fist.

He dropped the vinyl on the counter, eyes cast down and swiping a cigarette out of the packet in his jacket pocket and lighting up, the clink-thwip of his lighter meeting your ears before you could tell him to put it out.

“You can’t do that in here,” you told him.

He hummed in not-acknowledgment-acknowledgment, choosing to ignore you as he inhaled deeply.

“Seriously, dude. Old man Cohen hates that shit. Put it out or go outside and finish it. If your tits don’t freeze off. Since they’re, you know, halfway out of your shirt like that? You do know it’s December. In Indiana. Right?” You pressed, knowing full well you were being obnoxious. If only to make a point. Game recognize game, right?

He looked up, ocean eyes meeting your own. His frown was instantaneous.

“Fine,” he huffed. Before promptly stubbing out his cigarette on your freshly wiped counter, dropping the butt to the floor and twisting it under his booted heel.

“Ugh. Come on, man. I have to clean that now.”

“You were so adamant about it before.”

“Whatever man. Just the Motley Crue for you today?” You pressed. Why is he prolonging this interaction?

He rolled his eyes, his line of sight catching on the promotional sign above the counter.

“Well, now, that says new vinyl is two for one. Which one can I get with this?”

You dropped your head and exhaled deeply– So this was how this evening was going to go. You gestured at the New Release wall to the left of the front counter.

“Anything from here, Pretty Boy. New vinyl.”

Cool as you please, if you please.

Billy glanced at you, sensing your annoyance. A smirk graced his lips. He knew if he prolonged this interaction it would surely get a rise out of you.

He held up Burning From the Inside, Bauhaus’s latest release. New, but not new.

“What about this one? Cover art is alright.” He gestured at the gothica aesthetic adorning the front jacket.

“That’s Bauhaus,” you informed him, as though that would explain everything.

“Bauhaus? What is that?”

You snorted.

“No, seriously. What is that? Is that like … a sex thing?” he asked, derisively.

“It’s not a sex thing. It’s more of a not-your-kind-of-thing thing,” you stated primly.

“And how would you know what my thing is, princess? I’m guessing by the black-on-black and torn fishnets you’d be all to familiar with whatever a Bauhaus is,” he retorted.

“Well….” You went to the used pile and grabbed Press Eject and Give Me the Tape, before putting it over the speakers. As Bela Lugosi’s Dead started to play throughout the store, Billy looked unamused.

“They broke up last year. Gone too soon,” you explained, wistfully. You put your hand over your heart as though in mourning.

He leaned one arm on the counter, Motley Crue seemingly long forgotten.

“So, what is this song?”

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead? Like, Stairway to Heaven, but for goths, I guess,” you reasoned. “I’m guessing you’re more of a Scorpions kind of guy? We have Love At First Sting,” you gestured vaguely toward the wall.

Billy quirked an eyebrow at you.

“And how would you know what kind of guy I am, princess?” His voice lowering as he leans even further over the counter.

“Um. If the female population at our school is to be believed? Well, you get it…” you trailed off. “Plus, I don’t know, have you looked in a mirror lately? Scratch that. You probably don’t stop looking in mirrors. Should I cover the reflective surfaces in the store, lest you get distracted?”

Billy at least had the decency to look shocked at your barb.

But not before recovering quickly.

“Maybe you just cover the reflective surfaces in here to hide the fact that you don’t have a reflection,” he quipped.

You were stunned. Your eyes widened.

“Was that a– vampire joke, Hargrove?”

Billy shrugged. “Well, If the post-punk bullshit shoe fits… I mean, what even is playing over the speakers right now? I’m in here enough to know Cohen lets his employees pick the music from the Used pile during their shifts. Though clearly I don’t come in often enough during your shifts.”

“Thank God for that,” you sighed.

Deciding he’d had enough of the banter, Billy snagged Black Flag’s latest off of the New Release wall.

“Two for one, right?” he snarked, slapping down enough cash for one album before grabbing his findings off of the counter and striding out into the wintery evening– the bell over the door clanging after him for good measure. Like an exclamation point on whatever the ever loving fuck that conversation was. Did you— offend him??

You decided, sweeping up the not-forgotten ash from his cigarette off the floor that you didn’t ever need to have an interaction with Billy Hargrove again. You were most decidedly not post-punk bullshit.

–

Billy Hargrove had never been so ruffled in all of his life.

Throwing the two vinyl sleeves down in the passenger seat of his beloved Camaro, he slammed the door behind him.

Clink-Thwip.

Billy lit up, the chemical rush of his deep inhale-exhale instantly soothing his frazzled nerves.

He flicked the lid of his lighter a few more times, for good measure. A nervous habit. Clink-Thunk. Clink-Thunk. Clink-Thunk.

“ ‘Never stop looking in a mirror,’ my ass,” he grumbled, meeting his eyes in the rear-view before realizing what he was doing and looking away.

He’d seen that girl before. She sat alone in the cafeteria most times, headphones on, reading a book. She seemed like the type to enjoy Slyvia Plath. Not that he knew enough about Slyvia Plath to really know what that type of girl was. He swore his mom owned a coverworn copy of some novel or another with that name on it.

He drove away, tires squealing behind him, hair metal blasting from his speakers. Okay, so maybe you’d been right about his musical taste. It’s not like he’d give you the satisfaction. Besides, he’d bought BLACK FLAG, for Christ’s sake. You didn’t know him.

But still, he couldn’t deny, there was something about your demeanor. Your witticism. Your bad type. And yeah, maybe he’d sneaked a peek at your ass when you came around from the counter to scold him for smoking. Sue him, he was only human.

He knew there was more to you. A sweet undertone– like peaches and cream. Also maybe he liked ruffling your proverbial feathers. Just maybe.

He had asked Tommy about you at school the next day.

Tommy shrugged, but not before looking over at the corner of the cafeteria where you sat.

“I don’t know man. She’s hot. But, like, in the way weird girls are hot. You can look, but touching may cost you.”

Billy didn’t know what that meant. But Tommy was literally too stupid to insult. So he bit back a comment effectuating that he didn’t care and slammed the rest of his can of Coke.

–

You had seen him before. From his tire-squealing entry into your town, you were certain you’d had him pegged from Jump Street. The chain-smoking, that infernal clink-twhip of his American Flag lighter. The keg stands. The raucous screaming in Steve Harrington’s face.

“Plant your feet, Harrington!”

Plant your feet indeed. Lest you be bowled over with unwanted, obtrusive thoughts of the potential depths of Billy Hargrove’s soul. If such a thing existed.

Seriously, though. Why would he buy a Black Flag album? If there was one thing Billy Hargrove was not, you decided, it was punk rock.

You’d seen him take his sister to the arcade, and wait for her after school. Was it brotherly affection that motivated these little Babysitter’s Club moments, or was he forced to? Still, you saw the way that girl on the skateboard looked up at her seemingly cool older brother. Like he hung the stars.

He did brush off Tina after the basketball game last week. And, he bought Black Flag. That man had never listened to Black Flag in all of his life. You were sure of it.

Could he really be all bad?

–

The semester pressed on. Billy Hargrove at the fringe of your thoughts and your eye-line. Was he trying to talk to you in school?

You had the closing shift at the store again on Saturday. You were in the midst of carrying a box of tapes up the stairs from the storage room when you heard the ding of the bell above the door. You sighed, put the box down, and made your way toward the front to greet the customer. Upon seeing the back of Billy Hargrove’s perfectly coiffed, curly head, you were ready to turn back around and act like you hadn’t seen him. Too late. He clearly knew you were working.

“Please don’t let it be you,” you groaned.

“No promises, dollface.”

You stood in front of him, hands on your hips.

“So? What can I do for you?”

Billy smirked. “I can think of a few things, sweetheart,” he drawled, quirking a perfectly arched brow just so. You hated that you now noticed these things about Billy Hargrove’s perfectly stupid and stupidly perfect face.

“I don’t have time for this, Pretty Boy.”

“When are you off?” He asked.

“After close,” you said.

“Go out with me.” Billy Hargrove said, now surely unsure of himself.

“And why in the ever-loving-fuck would I do that?” You had to hand it to yourself. You were doing a damn good job of looking like you didn’t care. Meanwhile, your insides were pudding and you were just sure he knew it, too.

“Because you want to. Because I want you to. Because– Because I want to. Because I listened to Black Flag. Because I get your whole thing, plaid skirt and all,” he stated, gesturing vaguely over your person.

You rolled your eyes, choosing not to answer him. Instead, you diverted. Diversion is good, right?

“Where’s your usual crowd of hairsprayed hangers-on? Or are you always alone after school?”

“Only as alone as I wanna be, doll,” He drawled.

You’d had to hand it to Billy Hargrove. He could definitely turn a phrase when he wanted to. His crystalline eyes could definitely see right through you. As the flush travelled through your body, taking in his artful smirk and powerful visage, you knew:

Billy Hargrove was going to be the death of you. Like the satisfyingly sweet pour of languid waves of syrup cascading over waffles, drowning you in a beautiful, thick avalanche of a saccharine dream. A powdered sugar kiss dusting over your better senses, coating them in the flush of dripping endearment.

Surely you could be alone together? The crystal ball and the odyssey.

Would you go?

tagging bc you inspire me:

@nappingtopknot @ayeayecaptaingally @hey-its-grey @tigerlilynoh @andallthatmishigas @oh-star-how-the-mighty-fall @youngmoneymilla @noturjacky (If you don’t want to be tagged, feel free to ignore, or tell me firmly -- but possibly politely?? to fuck off)

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badbookopinions · 4 years

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The City We Became - N. K. Jemisin

The Broken Earth Trilogy blew my mind. This is not the Broken Earth trilogy. On one hand, this is good - Broken Earth was brutal and sad and I don’t think I’d want to put myself through the emotional turmoil of it again. On the other hand, this is not quite as good as Broken Earth was. I think a series like that is the sort of thing that comes along rarely and isn’t something you can do twice - and that’s alright. For one thing, this is a lot more fun.

Featuring...

So we knew N. K. Jemisin could do some goddamn prose. We knew this. What we didn’t know is that she could be clever and witty, too. I decided I liked this book on the very first page where I read the sentence “In my head, there’s an orchestra playing “Ode to Joy” with a Busta Rhymes backbeat.”

Some A+ prime social commentary and some A+ prime riffing off of Lovecraftian tropes.

I’ll talk about this later, but this book is a letter to New York and every bit of it was suffused with such powerful love for the city it was a joy to read.

I’m so excited for the second book of this trilogy!

Plot: fast-paced and exciting. On one hand, I read this in a day because I was so excited I couldn’t put it down. On the other hand, I tend not to like fast-paced plots that take place over a couple of days because it isn’t enough time for characters to develop or relationships to form. It read like an adventure story, and that made it so much fun. I think that’s the biggest difference between this and Broken Earth - this isn’t as deep or impactful, but it’s much more enjoyable.

Characters: as individuals, excellent, but their relationships were an issue. When stories are fast, you don’t have time to have your characters undergo development or let relationships form without it feeling rushed and strange. This meant that we know the basics of every person but not much about who they really are, and the relationships between the different boroughs are slim to none (which I still prefer to the lazy and clumsy insta-love some other people try). That doesn’t mean that what Jemisin told us I didn’t wholeheartedly enjoy. My favourite character was probably Padmini/Queens, largely because she’s brown and a nerd and I’m brown and a nerd. I still had so much fun reading about Brooklyn, Bronca/the Bronx, and Manny/Manhattan. And Aislyn absolutely fascinated me - one minute she was being a typical protagonist and the next she thought something unbearably racist. I was so curious the entire time I was reading about her to see where her story would go, even if I didn’t like her. I will say that even though Jemisin wasn’t able to develop her characters, she made sure we saw the beauty and the poetry of them - Bronca, Brooklyn, and Manny especially (I could talk for ages about the violence lurking under Manny). The relationships between characters was my letdown, although I have full confidence that next book when everyone already knows each other this will be fixed. Bronca and Veneza’s relationship (mother-daughter, superhero-sidekick, and mismatched-best-friends rolled into one) was a lot of fun and proves it’s just a matter of time. Still, I wouldn’t have minded Brooklyn and Queens interacting more with their families if only so we had some people who knew each other alongside all the meeting new people. I’m fascinated between the relationship between New York and Manhattan and would love to seem more.

Setting: oh New York please let me come see you at some point when the world is not in a global pandemic because this book made me fall in love. There’s something so special about works of art composed out of love: it shines through in every bit of it. This is even more obvious when it’s about the places we live, because our homes inspire such a powerful feeling of this - and that feeling is shared by so many. And of all the cities in the world, there are few more adored than New York. Every single description of a New York landmark or person had me grinning - I could almost picture it, even if I hadn’t been there, but I could feel the love Jemisin had for it all and that made it even better. I thought the Lovecraftian elements were very good, although I think Jemisin could have made them a bit more scary - there’s this scene where Starbucks storefronts are turned into monsters that I mostly just found comical. And I am obsessed with the concept of cities as people - check out thecitysmith on tumblr for another take on this idea. I can’t even articulate why I think it’s so fantastic, but it’s something about love: people loving their homes so much their home creates an avatar to love them back. Or something. The one thing that disappoints me is that only really massive cities spawn people. On one hand, it fits with Jemisin’s plot that New York only spawns in the present day as opposed to during its creation. On the other hand, please spare a personality for Toronto because I love my city very much and think we deserve it but we didn’t get one and it makes me sad.

Prose: Jemisin has moved beyond ripping your heart out and making you think to making you laugh and making you think - and then ripping your heart out. First of all, I’m obsessed with the expansion of humour that comes with Jemisin’s new ability to put references in her story. The Ode to Joy with a Busta Rhymes backbeat is probably my favourite example. She’ll occasionally write a character doing something that skewers a facet of the real world or the particular city so perfectly and I love it. (Mentioning again how her love for the city shines through here because it’s her prose that makes it possible.) She’s got quotes that are less comedic, though: I liked, “[Bronca] had a gentle soul wrapped in razor wire, but the sharp edges are not her fault. The world trained her to violence, to ferocity, because it hates so much of what she is. This isn’t the first time Bronca has been surrounded on all sides by those who would invade her, shrink her borders, infect her most quintessential self and leave only sanitized, deadened debris in their wake. It’s not even the first time she’s had the power to fiht back. This is just the first time it’s happened since she became the goddamn Bronx.”

Not-great things: N. K. Jemisin, ma’am? Spare a personality for Toronto because I think we deserve it? I just want to see Jemisin’s take on other cities so badly and I’m disappointed we’ll only get a few. Also there seems to me so many more cities with their own personalities that would manifest their own creations besides just New York - was it really only the seven or eight mentioned that get their own personalities? Also, my above-mentioned problem with the lack of interpersonal relationships.

#the city we became #n k jemisin #urban fantasy #setting!#cities #badbookopinions

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joe-mazzello-archive · 4 years

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The Strangers - Chapter Two - Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’

A Joe Mazzello x OC fic

Rating: 18+

Word Count: 6.2k

Chapter Warnings: Language, alcohol consumption, sexual references, slight angst (if you squint)

A/N: It’s finally here! So while the first chapter focused on Joe, this one lets us get to know Marley a bit more. Two down, four to go! Feedback is appreciated and my taglist is open!

Marley woke up with a dull headache and an awful taste in her mouth. The sun shone through the window across from the bed, bathing the room in a soft light. She threw an arm over her face to shield her eyes from the brightness. With a groan, she sat up, her head spinning as her eyes adjusted to her surroundings. Something shifted in the corner of her eye and she quickly realized she was not the only one in the bed.

She was not in her apartment. Oh right. Memories of the night before came flooding back to her. A series of events had led her to some random club somewhere in town. The guy was easy on the eyes and was clearly there for the same reason she was. She was horny and he was willing.

Marley eased her way out of the bed while her eyes scanned the floor for her clothing. She located her shirt, jeans, and boots, but her undergarments were nowhere to be found.

Fuck it. She threw on the clothes she could find and glanced back at the poor lad still asleep in his bed before slipping out of the bedroom. What was his name again? Tom? Todd? Whatever.

She found her phone and purse unceremoniously tossed on the ground. She said a silent prayer as she clicked the home button on her phone. 17%. Thank fucking god. It was enough to figure out where the fuck she was and how the fuck she was getting home.

As she left the apartment and made her way down the stairs, she pulled up the front-facing camera on her phone. She cringed at the sight of her obvious bedhead and the black smudges under her eyes. She ran her fingers through her bleached locks and attempted to rub off the dark makeup before she made her way out onto the street. She caught sight of a dark mark under her right ear and rolled her eyes. Fuck you, Todd. Or Tom. Whatever.

After a quick Google search of the nearest bus stop, Marley locked her phone and shoved it in her pocket with a sigh. Another day, another walk of shame. But she didn’t feel shame. She felt nothing. Maybe that was the problem. She always ignored the knowing looks people gave her as she made her way home. Fuck what they thought of her. So she sleeps around. Big deal. At least she didn’t have to deal with the bullshit that came with relationships any more. She glanced around at the cast of characters who filled the rest of the bus seats. The woman playing with her wedding ring could be dealing with marriage issues. The guy glued to his phone screen could be swiping through every dating app out there to try and find a mate. But Marley chose not to deal with any of it. If she didn’t get attached, she couldn’t get hurt. But she could still get laid.

Marley dug through her bag and pulled out her headphones, plugging them into her phone. Might as well enjoy the last of my phone battery. She hit shuffle and smiled at the song that popped up first. She immediately felt herself relax.

Anthony works in the grocery store Savin' his pennies for someday Mama Leone left a note on the door She said, Sonny, move out to the country Workin' too hard can give you a heart attack You oughta know by now Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Is that what you get with your money? It seems such a waste of time If that's what it's all about Mama if that's movin' up Then I'm movin' out I'm movin' out

She couldn’t help but mime the drum part to one of her favorite songs of all time. She knew people were probably staring. Fuck it, she was enjoying herself. These days music was her only solace. She didn’t have to think about anything. She could just feel. The music could flow through her, bringing her instant relief to whatever was plaguing her mind.

Eventually, the bus pulled up to Marley’s stop. She hopped off, already in a better mood than before. She made the short walk to her building and climbed the stairs two at a time, wanting nothing more than to plant herself in front of her drum set for the next few hours. A cacophony of sounds rang out through the hall; Marley’s building was full of musicians so that no one could complain about the noise. She could make out Leon’s trumpet blaring and clearly hear Brenda rehearsing for whatever musical she’d be auditioning for that week. She finally reached her door at the end of the hall and let herself in, letting out a deep breath as she closed the door behind her.

After a quick shower, Marley scoured her messy room for some clean clothes. She was super behind on laundry, spending most of her time lately behind her home drum kit or behind the one at Sully’s. She threw on an old band tee from her closet and plucked some black jeans off the floor, giving them a sniff and determining they were clean enough.

Marley plopped down at her drum set with a sigh, instant relief flowing through her body. She always felt her most comfortable in that exact spot. She felt in control, like nothing and no one could shake her. As she began to warm up with some quick trills, her mind went clear. She closed her eyes and let the sounds flow through her body.

Then she let loose. She went to town on the drums in front of her, unleashing every feeling and emotion with each beat. She felt power flow through her fingertips and her entire body buzzed. This was home. This was heaven.

After riffing for a few minutes, Marley began to work through the band’s normal setlist, humming the melody to herself as she played. Her body went into auto-pilot, playing the songs as if it was second nature. She then shifted focus to one of the songs they would be playing for the first time that night. It was a little slower in the beginning, but towards the end of the song, she could absolutely lose control.

Marley repeated the new song a few more times before being satisfied. She checked the time and cursed under her breath. She had been practicing longer than she wanted to and now she was barely going to have enough time to grab food before heading to the bar.

Marley tucked her drumsticks into her boot, grabbed her phone and bag, and rushed out the door. After stopping at the deli for a sandwich and a coffee to go, she made her way to the bus stop. As she went to sit down on the bench, suddenly a guy on a bicycle appeared and nearly hit her.

“FUCK!” she shouted, dodging out of the way, spilling some coffee on her t-shirt in the process.

“Sorry!” the guy shouted back at her.

Marley rolled her eyes. Asshole. She dug through her food bag to try to find a napkin to clean herself off but came up empty. She searched her purse, hoping to find a tissue or something. Nothing. As a last resort, she reached into her pants pockets, her fingers closing around something. She pulled it out in confusion. It was indeed a napkin, with something scribbled on it.

Joe (random guy) 555-401-3734

The memory came flooding back to her. Joe. The guy who kept staring at her last week during her set.

Marley smiled at the memory. The guy was kind of cute. She couldn’t help but meet his gaze every once in a while during the set. She had never seen someone watch her perform with as much intensity as he watched her. She felt like he was staring into her soul.

And then when he attempted to flirt with her, she determined he was harmless. He challenged her but didn’t come off as an asshole. She thought about the moment he scribbled his number on the napkin and slid it towards her.

In case you want to banter with me again.

Marley had all but forgotten about the exchange until she rediscovered the cocktail napkin. But she was curious about the guy. It wasn’t every day that a guy casually asked her opinions on Hamlet while drinking in a dive bar. She pulled out her phone, opened a new text, and was just about to enter Joe’s number when the bus pulled up.

And just like that, the thought was gone. She hopped on, using the napkin to dab at the wet spot on her shirt before shoving the napkin into her purse and putting on her headphones.

Twenty minutes later, the bus pulled up to the stop right in front of Sullivan Street. Marley finished scarfing down her sandwich as she pulled the bar door open and headed up the stairs.

Marley spotted Gwil behind the bar with his back turned, completely focused on whatever he was doing. She snuck up to the bar and suddenly slammed both palms on the counter, her usual greeting.

“GWIL!”

“FUCK!” Gwil spun around and threw a hand over his heart. “Marley. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Of course not. Who will put up will my bullshit if you keel over and die?” she replied, plopping down on one of the stools.

“Absolutely no one. I barely put up with it myself,” the tall man replied before turning back to his task.

“And that’s why you’re my favorite English bartender.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only English bartender you know.”

“You and your logic.”

Gwil turned back to Marley and sighed, shaking his head lovingly. He grabbed two glasses and filled each with beer before handing one to Marley and clinking his own with hers. After taking a sip, he cocked his head to the side, eyeing the woman in front of him.

“Nice hickey,” he commented, nodding towards her. Marley threw her head back with a laugh.

“Thanks for reminding me,” she answered before pulling some concealer and a compact mirror out of her purse.

“Who was the lucky guy this time?” Gwil asked, grabbing a towel to wipe down his station. Marley rolled her eyes. Typical. Gwil was always way too curious about her personal life.

“Some guy from the club last night. Honestly, I don’t even remember his name,” Marley replied as she dabbed concealer on the purple mark.

“Classy,” Gwil countered, taking a sip of his beer. “How did you kick him out?” Marley rolled her eyes.

“Oh please, I never bring guys back to my place.”

“Ah, so you screw them and escape while they’re still asleep. Even classier.”

“Hey, at least I’m not celibate!” Marley challenged, nodding towards the bartender.

“I’m not celibate.”

“Come on, when was the last time you got laid?”

Gwil’s eyes dropped to the floor as he pondered the question. He gave a simple shrug, causing Marley to facepalm.

“You know you could get literally any girl that comes into this bar, right? I mean, look at ya!” Marley gestured towards him. She had always considered Gwil attractive. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about him in that way. But the fact that he was essentially her coworker marked him as a huge no-no.

Gwil blushed at the comment. He paused for a moment before responding.

“Not any girl,” he finally said, looking right into Marley’s eyes. Marley swore she heard a hint of sadness in his voice.

“Eh, fine. But the amount of women who bat their eyelashes at you while you make them drinks tells me you have a rather large selection,” Marley added with a smirk before finishing off her beer and hopping off her stool, leaving Gwil to finish his prep.

As she got settled behind her kit, the other members of Parkway Diner began to trickle in. Tony arrived first, chatting away on the phone with his wife while he started to unpack his bass. Next was the ever quiet Eddie, who greeted the other two with a quick nod before taking his place behind his keyboard and warming up his fingers with some exercises. And finally, Jack, clad in a denim jacket and sunglasses, leisurely strolled in with a cigarette between his lips.

Marley and her bandmates knocked out some quick warmups before rehearsing the two new songs they were adding to the set that night. Soon enough it was time for the doors to open to the public. The members of Parkway Diner each ordered another drink from Gwil and took their normal spot at the high top table closest to the stage. They made idle chit chat as bar patrons slowly filled the upper floor. Marley scanned the room as she always did, scoping out the crowd for a potential mate for after-work mischief. She spotted a few candidates, filing them away for after the band’s first set.

Finally, the time had come for the band’s first set and Marley breathed out a sigh of relief, wanting nothing more than to retreat to her home behind the drum kit. Marley and the boys took to the stage, Jack taking his place at the front microphone.

“In case you’re new here, we’re Parkway Diner. Hope you enjoy,” he said, giving Marley the signal to begin. She started the slow drumbeat of the newest song in the band’s repertoire, the three other members of the band coming in with their own sound before Marley leaned into her mic.

You make me weak, I wanna die Just when you said we'd try Loving, touching, squeezing each other When I'm alone all by myself You're out with someone else Loving, touching, squeezing each other

You're tearing me apart Every, every day You're tearing me apart Oh, what can I say? You're tearing me apart

The lyrics struck a little too close to home to Marley. She felt each word as it left her lips. Memories flooded her vision. She gripped her drumsticks tightly and took out her feelings on the drums in front of her.

It won't be long, yes, 'til you're alone When your lover, oh, he hasn't come home 'Cause he's loving, ooh, he's touching He's squeezing another

He's tearing you apart Ooh, every, every day He's tearing you apart Oh, girl, what can you say? Cause he's loving, touching another Now it's your turn, girl, to cry

Marley began the first set of “nah’s” on her own, her bandmates joining in on the second set. She allowed herself to look out into the crowd, gauging their response to the new addition to the setlist. She smiled as her eyes passed over a mob of already drunken bar-goers, swaying and singing along. Towards the back of the room, a familiar head of auburn hair caught her attention.

No fucking way.

Joe sat at the bar, eyes trained directly on Marley, nodding along to the beat with a beer in hand. She recognized the blonde guy next to him; Gwil’s friend whose name was escaping her. She made direct eye contact with Joe, arching an eyebrow. He raised his glass towards her before taking a sip of it. Marley shifted her focus back to finishing the song. Finally, the last round of “nah’s” rang out a cappella and the song was over.

The crowd cheered and clapped, but Marley couldn’t help but look back over at the two familiar men. The blonde was conversing with Gwil, but Joe still hadn’t broken his gaze on her. She was annoyed with how much this guy was distracting her. He took up her attention last week and here he was distracting her again. She couldn’t figure out what it was. Obviously, she thought he was attractive, but something about him intrigued her even more. She tried to shake it off as the band started the next song.

Throughout the first half of the night, Marley tried as hard as she could to ignore Joe. She tried to lose herself in each song and focus on her performance. The band finished the first half of their set, and Jack announced a quick break. Marley slowly made her way over to the bar, wanting to make sure she didn’t seem too eager to see the man perched on the stool.

Luckily, when she arrived, Joe and the blonde guy had struck up a conversation facing away from her, allowing Marley’s arrival to go unnoticed.

“Gwil?”

“Already got it,” the bartender replied, handing Marley her drink. The sound of her voice made Joe spin around to face her.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Joe commented, offering his glass towards her. Marley clinked her glass with his and took a sip before replying.

“Yeah it’s almost like I work here or something,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. “Why are you here?”

“We finished up exams today and I figured we could use a night out,” Joe countered while gesturing to the blonde next to him, who gave a quick wave. Right, he’s a professor. “Plus I like seventies music and cheap beer.” Marley nodded, narrowing her eyes.

“Fair enough. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t stalking me or something,” she challenged. Joe chuckled.

“Well I never got a text, so I figured I’d try to banter with you again in person. Besides, if I were stalking you, I’d be more subtle about it.”

“Yeah you’re not subtle at all, Joe,” Marley replied, smirking. Joe’s eyes sparkled and he smiled, and Marley couldn’t help but smile back. Damn that smile.

“You remembered my name,” he pointed out. Marley chuckled before taking a sip of her drink.

“Well I may be an asshole, but I’m not that big of an asshole.”

Marley felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find Jack behind her.

“Band meeting real quick,” he said before disappearing again. Marley turned back to Joe with a sigh.

“Duty calls,” Marley said with a shrug before downing the rest of her drink. “See you around, professor.”

“Hope so.” Joe raised his beer towards her once again with a wink.

Marley pursed her lips and headed towards the rest of the band members, who were crowded around their high-top.

“Alright, what could possibly be so important that we need to have a meeting right now before we finish the set?” Marley asked incredulously, annoyed that she had to cut her conversation with Joe short.

“I don’t think we’re ready to do ‘Scenes.’ Eddie isn’t confident enough,” Jack answered curtly, his arms crossed.

“What the fuck are you talking about? He killed it during practice earlier!” Marley countered, nudging Eddie with her elbow. The quiet man flashed a small smile. “Come on, Jack. Pull the stick out of your ass for one night.”

Jack rolled his eyes at the comment and uncrossed his arms with a sigh.

“Fine, but if it goes poorly, I’m blaming it on you!”

“You always do,” Marley replied, patting him on the shoulder. The group headed towards the stage, sharing an anxious energy. They were premiering a song they had been practicing for weeks, one of the most difficult songs they’ve ever attempted.

Marley found herself excited as she took her usual place behind the drumset. She glanced over at Joe at the bar and suddenly felt a twinge of nerves. What the fuck. Marley never got nervous. But something about Joe made her want to impress him. She worried for a second if Jack was right. What if they weren’t ready to perform the song? What if they were about to make fools of themselves?

Marley was pulled from her stupor by Eddie’s piano melody, signaling the start of the song. She leaned into the mic and sang out the first verse of the iconic song.

A bottle of white, a bottle of red Perhaps a bottle of rose instead We'll get a table near the street In our old familiar place You and I, face to face A bottle of red, a bottle of white It all depends upon your appetite I'll meet you anytime you want In our Italian restaurant

Marley finally came in with a cymbal swell, with the normal sax part substituted by Jack on the guitar. Marley closed her eyes and lost herself in the musical interlude, bobbing her head to Jack’s melody. She sped up her drumming before coming in with the next verse.

Things are okay with me these days Got a good job, got a good office Got a new wife, got a new life, and the family's fine We lost touch long ago You lost weight, I did not know You could ever look so nice after so much time

Do you remember those days hanging out at the village green? Engineer boots, leather jackets, and tight blue jeans Drop a dime in the box play a song about New Orleans Cold beer, hot lights My sweet romantic teenage nights

Marley had forgotten all about Joe. She was completely wrapped up in her own musical world. She jammed with the rest of the band, each member feeling more and more confident as the song progressed. Then it was time for the moment Jack had been worried about. The drums, guitar, and bass cut out and it was just Eddie soloing on the keys. He nailed each riff with perfect precision, and Marley couldn’t help but smile. She felt a strong sense of pride, listening to the band perform her favorite song with such passion and perfection.

Marley and the rest of the band finally entered again, but they were almost completely drowned out by the roaring applause for Eddie’s solo. Marley shook her head lovingly as she began the next verse.

Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies And the king and the queen of the prom Riding around with the car top down and the radio on Nobody looked any finer Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner We never knew we could want more than that out of life Surely Brenda and Eddie would always know how to survive Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh

Marley emphasized “Parkway Diner” with a wink, earning a rousing cheer from the audience.

Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of '75 When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July Everyone said they were crazy Brenda you know you're much too lazy Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life But there we were wavin' Brenda and Eddie goodbye Oh, oh, oh

They got an apartment with deep pile carpets And a couple of paintings from Sears A big waterbed that they bought with the bread They had saved for a couple of years They started to fight when the money got tight They just didn't count on the tears Oh, oh

Marley was in absolute bliss. She sang each note and beat each drum like it was the most important thing she could ever do. The crowd cheered and shouted, with some even singing along. Eddie tore it up on the keyboard as Jack expertly strummed each note of the sax solo on his guitar.

Well they lived for a while in a very nice style But it's always the same in the end They got a divorce as a matter of course And they parted the closest of friends Then the king and the queen went back to the green But you can never go back there again Oh, oh

Brenda and Eddie had had it already by the summer of '75 From the high to the low to the end of the show For the rest of their lives They couldn't go back to the greasers The best they could do was pick up the pieces We always knew they would both find a way to get by That's all I heard about Brenda and Eddie Can't tell you more ‘cause I told you already And here we are wavin' Brenda and Eddie goodbye Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh Oh, oh, oh

The song’s tempo slowed again as it neared the final verse. Marley’s heart felt full, knowing that all the hard work they had been putting into practice was paying off. Eddie’s fingers tickled the keys with perfect accuracy, the melody ringing out over the crowded bar. Marley closed her eyes as she sang out the remaining lyrics.

A bottle of red, a bottle of white Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight I'll meet you anytime you want In our Italian Restaurant

As the band played the last musical interlude, Marley felt a stray tear roll down her face. Eddie’s last few notes rang out and the crowd went wild, shouting praise for the band’s performance. All the band members exchanged knowing looks with each other; they had absolutely nailed it.

Marley finally let her gaze drift towards the audience and her eyes centered on Joe, who was on his feet clapping and cheering. She felt a blush across her cheeks and ducked her head in embarrassment. It was not every day a guy made Marley blush.

The rest of the set went by in a blur, the band riding off the high of their successful performance of the new song. By the end of their final song, Marley was emotionally exhausted. She always tended to leave everything on the stage, but this was a new level for her. Her body hummed with pride and excitement as she hopped off the stage. She only knew one thing to be true: she needed a beer.

Marley made her way to the bar, weaving through the drunken bar-goers who showered her with praise and acknowledging them with a nod. She reached the bar to find the stools that Joe and the blonde had been occupying empty.

“Joe’s in the loo and Ben stepped out for a smoke,” Gwil said, grabbing Marley’s attention. She simply nodded and slid onto the other empty barstool. “And for the record, Joe really likes you.” Marley scrunched her face in confusion.

“He barely knows me,” she countered. Gwil set a beer down in front of Marley as if he had read her mind. “And how would you know?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s here again!”

“So?”

Gwil pinched the bridge of his nose before responding.

“You’re so fucking aggravating. He clearly likes you and you clearly like him, considering you haven’t told him to fuck off yet,” Gwil pointed out. Marley rolled her eyes. Why did Gwil always have to get involved? “At least take the time to get to know the guy more. And play nice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marley asked, crossing her arms. Gwil sighed and ran a hand through his hair as if he was taking the time to choose his words carefully.

“Love,” he began, clearly using the pet name to ease her into whatever harsh thing he was about to say. “You do have a tendency to take your anger towards men from your past out on men in your present,” he said, before turning his attention to a bachelorette party at the other end of the bar. Marley pursed her lips, attempting to come up with a witty comeback, but came up short. She shook her head and scoffed at Gwil’s words. Who the fuck was he to tell her what to do when it came to her personal life? Marley swirled the beer around her glass, annoyed at how quickly Gwil soured her good mood.

“Well don’t you seem chipper?” Joe commented as he sat back down on his barstool. Marley felt immediately calmed by his presence. “Still mad at the world as usual?”

“I am not mad at the world,” Marley responded defensively. “I just tend to be extremely cynical about everything and everyone, that’s all.” Joe chuckled, and Marley felt a sting of pride for her little joke.

“And how did someone so young become such a pessimist already?” he asked. Normally Marley would scoff at the personal question and his jab at her age. But she found herself oddly comfortable with the man beside her.

“Oh you know, the usual. Used and abused. A man done me wrong. And then another one. And then another one,” Marley replied casually, eyes focused on her glass so she could avoid Joe’s stare. “You’d think I would have learned after round one.” Marley snuck a glance at Joe, who’s playful expression had changed to one of concern. “Your pity is unwanted, professor.”

“Sorry. It’s just unfair that you’ve had to deal with all of that. You deserve better,” Joe offered. Marley was thrown by the statement.

“And how would you know what I deserve? You don’t even know me,” she countered, trying to play it off. Joe paused for a moment before smiling.

“Well, I sure would like to.”

Marley turned to meet Joe’s gaze. A warmth came to her cheeks and she finally took a moment to really look at him. His hazel eyes were soft as he searched hers for a response. He had a bit more scruff decorating his jaw than the week before. Marley looked down at her lap in embarrassment. She hated that this guy was making her feel this way; almost giddy. She felt butterflies in her stomach, and she internally chastised herself. Get a grip.

“So theatre, huh?” Marley asked, eager to change the subject to something other than herself. Joe chuckled, seeing right through her attempt, but obliging anyway.

“Yeah, it’s just something I’ve always enjoyed. Nothing quite like performing in front of a live audience. I’m sure you can understand that,” he offered. Marley simply nodded, so Joe continued. “And I just love telling stories. Plus now I get to share my passion with students and get paid for it.”

“Sounds like a pretty good gig.”

“It is.” He paused and took a sip of his beer. “What about you? How does one become the lead singer slash drummer of a seventies cover band?” There it was. Another question about herself. Marley instinctively hesitated, trying to come up with a clever retort. But nothing came.

“Music is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. And I had the privilege of being properly educated on the classics when I was a kid.” Marley stopped for a moment before sighing. “They really don’t make musicians like they used to. Or songs for that matter.” Marley took a sip of her drink, shaking her head. She glanced at Joe, who was eyeing her with an intense gaze. Marley raised her eyebrow, daring the man in front of her to reveal what he was thinking.

“You’re a pretty fascinating person, Marley,” Joe finally blurted out. Marley nearly spat out her drink laughing.

“I am?” she questioned, entertained by Joe’s statement. Marley had been called lots of things over the years, but ‘fascinating’ was not one of them. She worked, she ate, she slept, and rarely did anything else. What about that could be fascinating?

“Yeah. I mean I can see it when you’re up there. You have so much passion and love for music. You lose yourself in every performance and it’s almost addicting to watch.” Marley found herself staring dumbfounded at the man as he spoke. “And then you get off that stage and you put up this wall. Life and everyone in it become an inconvenience. It’s...beautifully tragic.”

Marley knew she should be offended by his words. In fact, she should probably slap him. Who the fuck was he to analyze her like that? But instead, she found herself smiling.

“I mean, that’s life, isn’t it? Beautifully tragic,” she replied with a shrug.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Joe argued.

“What do you mean?” Marley asked almost incredulously.

“I mean if you find something you love to do and you surround yourself with people who love you, I think life can be beautiful, period. Without the tragedy.”

Marley smiled and sighed at his words, fighting back the urge to roll her eyes. She almost admired his naivety. She wished she could see the world through his eyes. She even felt a pang of jealousy; he obviously had never been hurt as she had been.

“If only it were that easy.”

An awkward silence followed. Marley knew it was her fault. Maybe she’d done it on purpose. Easier than opening up to him even more. Marley downed the rest of her beer. After a few moments, the man finally spoke up again.

“Can I take you to dinner sometime?”

Marley instinctively cringed at the question, her heart thumping out of her chest. She hoped he hadn’t noticed the movement, but when she met his gaze again, there was a look of defeat on his face, as if he already knew the answer.

The impulsive side of her wanted to say yes, to say “fuck it” and throw caution to the wind. She wanted to pretend that the world was good and that everything would work out in the end.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Marley finally answered.

“Why not?” Joe asked, a bit of hurt in his voice. Marley turned herself to face the man, hoping to let him down easy. As cliche as it was, it wasn’t him. It was all her.

“Because I know how this song goes, Joe,” Marley said with an exasperated sigh. “In your head, I’m this manic pixie dream girl who’s ‘not like the others.’ But then you get to know me, and you find out that I’m uninteresting as fuck and emotionally unavailable, and you get bored and I come home to you and stick-thin blonde in our bed.”

Joe’s jaw dropped and his brows furrowed in concern.

“Marley, I--”

“It’s okay, Joe. Like I said, I don’t need your pity,” Marley rambled, the words flying out of her in a panic. “I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine. We can be friends. I like you too much to date you.” She was on a roll, not letting Joe get a word in. She needed to escape before Joe said something charming that would cause her to give in and change her mind. She slid off her barstool and started to walk away.

“Wait--”

“I’ll see you around, Joe,” Marley called out behind her before heading through the door next to the stage, leaving a dumbfounded Joe behind. She closed the door behind her and threw on the light in the storage-room-turned-band-lounge. She sank onto the small couch that was shoved into the corner and finally let out the breath she had been holding.

Marley tried not to picture the upset look on Joe’s face as she had walked away from him. She ran her hands through her hair, stressed at the situation she found herself in.

She wasn’t lying, she did like Joe. He was charming, funny, and definitely easy on the eyes. He wasn’t an asshole, which was a refreshing change of pace. He challenged her, and she could tell just with the few interactions they’d had that she would get along well with him. But Marley had learned that if she wanted to keep people around, she needed to keep them at a bit of a distance. Gwil was a prime example of that. Marley had wanted to jump his bones when she first met him. But as she got to know him, she realized that he was a great guy and that hooking up with him or starting a relationship was the wrong move. She just didn’t want to lose any more people.

Marley threw herself face down on the couch with a groan, replaying the night’s events in her head. A knock on the door shook her from her stupor.

“Mar? It’s just me,” Gwil timidly spoke on the other side of the door. “Can I come in?” Marley groaned again in response. “I’m taking that as a yes.”

Gwil gently opened the door and peeked in. Marley barely moved a muscle. She knew exactly why he was there. There was no doubt he had overheard the exchange between her and Joe.

“Mar.”

“What?” Marley’s voice was muffled by the couch cushion.

“Stop being a pain in the ass for like one second so I can talk to you.”

With another groan, Marley shifted to sit up, allowing Gwil to squeeze in next to her.

“I know you don’t want to hear it right now, but I think you’re being dumb about this Joe thing,” Gwil revealed. Marley rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. Classic Gwil.

“Gwil--”

“Shut up and let me finish. I can tell you like him. He obviously likes you. You’re just scared,” he continued. Marley glared at the bartender. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She always hated when Gwil got preachy with her.

“I’m just being realistic. We’d be better as friends,” Marley replied curtly. “I don’t need your meddling, Gwilym.” Marley grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll see you next week.” She squeezed her way past Gwil and pushed the door open.

“I just think you’re cutting yourself off from something good!” Gwil shouted after her, but Marley didn’t stop. She made her way through the bar, down the stairs, and out the door into the heat of the summer.

Taglist: @hellysthings, @queenspur, @briarrose26

#joe mazzello #joe mazzello x oc #joe mazzello fic #joe mazzello imagine #joemazzmatazz #ben hardy #gwilym lee

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redantsunderneath · 5 years

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Us (2019) *Spoilers*

Us is the best movie I've seen since Mandy. I shouldn't oversell it, but it's really rich and basically everything I like movies for. I’m going to at least refer to major plot spoilers (usually without direct description) so stop reading if you want to stay clean.

Horror seems more direct and out of the box able to get at the concerns I like narrative art to deal with. The genres kind of promote certain thematic preoccupations, and horror is so diencephalonic that it really is able to go psycho-chrono-geographically extreme (more unconscious, more primordial, more in the woods) with less dithering. This movie is an example of why all my favorite movies loosely categorize horror (even cheap dumb horror movies seem to work a lot better subliminally than those of other genres).

For people who don’t care about spoilers and want to follow along, the movie unfolds as follows: A black upper middle class family goes to their vacation house where no-one really wants to be - the daughter is in her phone, the son is withdrawn, the mom actively does not want to be there, and the dad is overcompensating. They go to Santa Cruz beach where the mom, when she was a kid, saw a girl who looked just like her in a hall or mirrors below the carnival/boardwalk, the trauma stemming from which derives much of the movie’s impetus. On the beach, they meet their friends, a white family who are the image of superficial aspirational American values.

One night a full set of their doppelgängers show up in the driveway and a battle for survival begins. This turns out to be broader with, at least regionally, alters (”the tethered”) showing up everywhere and killing their analogous surface people. The white family falls immediately, sand our guys have to face their alters too. The family eventually triumphs, but not before the mom descends into the tunnels under the hall of mirrors and faces her alter who reveals a too literal plot and wins. The family drives away and it is revealed that the mom was (THE SPOILER) the alter all along and what happens is the result of the “real surface mom” jealously yearning for participation in that kind of stuff we do that gives life meaning, including odd self delusions and empty displays... so, like culture in general.

What the movie is really about is how we have within us a shadow of our primal selves, an ancestral image of progenitors who were concerned with drives and survival, and we suppress this so that society can function and we can be free from the knowledge of existential risk. The "absent center" (a la Derrida) of the movie is the culture war in which we are prone to let this shadow (and its instinctual out-group hatred and violence) take more control. We have a complex relationship this repression that involves guilt (we have it better than they did, civilization is theft and genocide, how can I forget this) and tightly bound attraction/fear of giving into the deeper drives - we know it is valuable but we don't want to edge in too far.

So civilization is an internal tension filled detente that is kind of a lie we tell ourselves, and that situation is slipping a little bit. Presented as the main perturbation is trauma - being forced to see the real of which this shadow is a part, whether the trauma is abuse, encountering too harsh truths as a child, day to day existence in western civilization, self inflicted trauma to confirm to norms, the loss of a way of life, epigenetic shock from slavery, or whatever else. Being a “realist”, and societal “red pilling,” is depicted as extremely destabilizing and dangerous because the truths discovered when outed may annihilate everything we have been striving for (if that’s worth saving at all).

Note, this is within the context of not absolute truth but competing ambiguities, or at least an ambivalent set of incommensurable ideas that are all true but are immanently inconsistent. Or, alternately phrased, culture has rejected confronting certain truths for so long that we should be afraid of how a bunch of people who are not nuanced and are not prepared for the knowledge will react, but we really need to understand the real to grapple with the inevitable dissonance (competing ideas of the good) when figuring out a way forward. This movie is not pedantic and is well aware this struggle should not be ignored but the pain of confronting the truth is that it threatens the good in a way that is fucking tough to resolve.

The semiotics of this movie must have taken forever to put together. There is symbolism everywhere and most symbols have multiple meanings.The main reference points are the 1111, rabbits, and the direct references to other media, but it is drenched in nods to the Americana, slavery, status markers, black cultural touchstones, etc..

The 1111 recurrence has many reflections, some harder to notice. 11:11 is in the ether as the “time that big shit goes down,” has numerological connections to the divine descending to earth, and has a direct function of representing the individuation/alienation of the family and the way things are “twinned.” One good example of the way this ties together is, as they walk across the beach, their 4 shadows make the Black Flag symbol (there is recurrence of Black Flag T-shirts to remind us) which is a stylized single (1) flag, furled as to show a staggered arrangement of the 4 band members as individuals - unity in individuality, which the movie questions (also to play into themes of suburban rebellion and “authenticity”). The 1111/11:11 works a lot of ways: to suggest an eschaton of individuality, that there is a moment of great potential and danger, as judgement/revelation foreshadowing (via Jeremiah 11:11 "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."), the twinnings at different levels (we see the Black Flag t most clearly in the chest of one of a set of twins who have their own "twins" 11:11 - the other twin just has on a halter to maximally show off her "twins").

The rabbits are a psychological critique of the id in modernity (this movie is interesting about sex in its color-around-the-picture absence). In deep psychological tunnels, they are caged and consumed subconsciously, red and bloody, as the current order/superego’s sacrifice to keep things quiet, and set free by the lysis in libidinal excess. They also abut the slavery imagery as they are caged, utilized instrumentally, and are present not just in tunnels but in something that codes as an underground railroad. But mostly I think Peele must be a David Lynch fan as Inland Empire informs this use.

The Twin Peaks references were unexpected. The first sequence is a descent from the carnival of fake activities that simulate real experience to the “deep place,” past the dweller on the threshold who gives us warning, into the woods with an owl (which isn’t what it seems), and into a veil of curtains through which are the deeper psychological truths where we interrogate inability to cope with trauma as a kind of existential problem - the whole situation as a manifestation of the sickness of the structures that give life meaning. Also, the protagonist is trapped for a similar length of time, has a doppelgänger that is in a way the real protagonist revealed, and needs to face this part of themselves.

So, we’ll try to hit most of the wide ranging pop-culture references, but things really intertwine. Example: the red smocks evoke several things: 1. Michael Jackson, with glove, specifically Thriller (as on the tee), intentionally picking up on the gaslighting, the trauma, the ties to his own hidden nature, and the fraught nature of cultural affiliation (specifically black - Peele is the one doing the questioning) that perpetrates a cycle of behavior (we’ll get to code switching); 2. Chain gangs/prison uniforms - there are shackles in the movie and "tethered" is the word for the link between people and their alters - which, in the imagination, is just an echo of slavery; and 3. Michael Myers... the white mask of one of the characters delineates this, but it reminds one of the other as an encounter with the real. The glove looking like a low res infinity gauntlet will be left as an exercise for the reader.

The Jaws T-shirt fits with the water/boats stuff, evoking the polysemous subliminal other as a threat to out prosperity and illusions about ourselves. Just as in Jaws, the other is a really wide concept and can lend to a lot of different readings focusing on whatever you want to about the modern western world and what we fear/suppress. All the MJ symbols and the mention of OJ alludes to the fraught identity of being trapped between worlds. Black Flag and NWA recalls the shakiness of authenticity from opposite sides. The consistent riffing on The Shinning evokes the sickness in the culture, the family, and the individual as inseparable and leveraged against our forgetting what has happened and who were were before. Hands Across America’s repeated direct referencing instantiates the desire for and society's readiness to provide the lie agreed upon, ambivalence about which is at the heart of the film. Lost Boys is name checked by location and timing - literally they its filming is there in the flashback part - but also the spectacle hiding our savage natures which we are drawn to but need to control. The home invasion scene is very A Clockwork Orange, with the eruption of violent life into the modern domestic space set to pointedly inappropriate music. There are tons of less specific movie references each evoking multiple films with similar shadowing - masks, scissors as weapon, the hall of mirrors, carnival as place of trial and trauma, underground as a place to resolve answers, incongruous music and violence, etc. There is a shot with shelves of VHS tapes all of which have obvious resonances (CHUD, Goonies, the Man with Two Brains, Nightmare on Elm Street) except the Right Stuff which is pointedly there, perhaps as a reminder that man can and will transcend.

Tim Heidecker plays just the kind of character who you'd expect - a clueless smarm who goofily performs the rituals of commodified masculinity while not really seeming masculine at all. His transparency is why he was cast. He is part of a whole family critique of the superficiality of the American dream and how there is rot underneath. Much of this critique is undercooked and a weak spot of the film as the family’s alters, besides Elizabeth Moss’s narcissism prompted ritual self mutilation, aren’t that worked in. Yeah, the father mimes dad stances, and the kids are interchangeable just like suburban identities (right, commuters?), but that’s it. There is a lot of deeply implicit racism and distrust of the outsider in the families’ interactions that is much more subtle than “I would have voted for Obama for a third term.” How about “I knew you’d forget the flare gun” (but not the rope or life preservers) which has a lot running through it - ironic racial assumptions, a from the right critique of a political stance valuing safety and security over defense and accepting help, the "making fire” motif involved in beating back the shadow, and the plastic “real man” attitude.

The primary family is black and affluent, and have a connection to black culture that is depicted as at once not entirely real, aspirational, and a kind of cosmic separation. But (mostly) the really deep connection to these things is "forgotten." Dad’s efforts to code switch when he has to summon something other than performative consumerism comes off as pathetic in the face of the power of the history of survival. As dad listens and performs involvement of “heritage,” the son asks what “I Got 5 On It” means - dad deflects and the daughter answers “drugs.” The correct answer is having a stake in the ($) dream whatever rules you have to break to get there. This rubs (intentionally) uncomfortably against the Michael Jackson and OJ references (and the trapped in the closet pseudo reference) as cultural aspiration is about having to either forget a history of bad things (what the actual text of the things are speaking to) or leave behind the products of that thing (at which point where is your connection to your cultural past).

The Fuck the Police joke works a bunch of different ways: 1. It’s a pun; 2. it’s an Alexa/Siri not working joke; 3. it brings the specter of technology contributing to faulty society into the space (as does the daughter’s phone); 4. it ironically contrasts with Good Vibrations; 5. it ironically contrasts with the action, the incarcerated kicking the shit out of suburbanites as class revenge; 6. the actual police literally still haven’t shown up after the 911 (is a joke) calls; 7. it expresses our ambivalence to societal strictures; 8. it is at odds with the environment, suggesting the absurdity of the middle class aping authenticity; 9. Ice Cube now makes a lot of fish out of water comedies of hood-coded man trying to fake middle class; 10. I could go on.

The weapons used by the heroes are all affluent symbols, often a costly reclaiming/supplanting/mastering of the primitive with the stuff of the modern - an expensive aluminum bat, a golf club, an outboard motor, and a geode mounted on a stand. The 3 family members win against both their shadows and that of their white counterparts by unifying his modern advances with the primitive impulses. The dad wins by understanding how machinery works and by mastering fire. The daughter wins because cars > running. The son is really something because he is all about play and tricks and can't make fire, but is really about empathy (or maybe mirror neurons). His alter plays with fire, has burned himself badly, and is scared by technological magic. So our son makes a spark, and learns to play with the other and thus control him to walk backwards into the alter's own fire. He learns this trapped in a closet (the second R Kelly sub rosa reference this weekend after Shazam saying "I believe I can fly" before a messy edit) surrounded by board games including Monster Trap and Guess Who?

The twist really opens up what the movie is saying and is perfect Twilight Zone type "both chewy plot gotcha and thematic epiphany.” The twist basically says that the jolt of becoming aware of the real is traumatic and, if it is bad enough and you are susceptible, the state of wokenness requires you to fake it in order to fit into the life you desire but are alienated from, while the part of you that loves life (giving over to a spirit, art, believing in something "true" rather than factual) stays buried ready to erupt with negative effects. This is a unique take on the subjectivity of trauma, that the bad unacceptable thing that is not supposed to happen that happened to you makes you feel like you are characterized primarily by that bad thing pretending to be the transcendent nature you repressed. And yet, the movie ends with the Shining helicopter landscape shots of the car driving away, to Hands Across America being re-enacted, our primitive selves being inspired to attempt to recreate the lie of society as a life affirming spectacle. This rhymes with the mom continuing to play mom as the performance is the reality, is who she really is.

I have left a lot on the table... the boat (that always pulls left) stuff as class critique, the voices the alters have, what each families’ possessions say (especially the wall art and architecture of the houses), the movements of the alters, the coding of the water settings, the idea of the “Carnival” of souls over abandoned tunnels and superficial (cheap and temporary) vs. deep (forgotten) culture, the scissors as a compound metaphor, the mirroring, 100 other media nods (e.g. Home Alone), the general quality of the music cues, the overdetermining alter names from the IMDB page, the Howard and thỏ shirts, the drunk dad, the excessive hinting at common types abuse (using film and real language) but not letting us have that as an organizing reality (as Nightmare on Elm Street does), and other stuff I’m not dredging up.

The movie is not prefect - 1. it commits the cardinal sin of 11th hour exposition to set the literal plot in concrete, which I didn't need and waters down the themes; 2. the white family (other than mom) deserves more specific behavior from their alters, and 3. there is only one real standout acting performance (Lupita Nyong'o, who I didn't "get" until this). But man, this is 1000 x better than Get Out - it's broader and more primal in its concerns with race falling out as just one critique among many.

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manifestoonmoralmanlove · 5 years

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Soulless Riffing: Brainless Ch.10 + 11.

I got a supernatural action/romance book series as a gift that’s just riddled with stuff that I hate….and as a steampunk Victorian London action romance story filled with werewolves and vampires…it’s yeah gonna be easy to poke fun at.

I just want to say, it’s totally cool if you like this story or ones like it! It’s certainly a better caliber than a lot of what I make fun of…however…I can’t help but want to make fun of it.

Over here for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7+8th, and 9th.

Chapter 10 is short so I threw in 11 too! SO FUCK IT HERE GOES!

Chapter 10

So this zombie bursts in to attack Alexia and Lord Akeldama. The zombie’s clever plan is to just start…pouring chloroform on the floor. I don’t think that’s how that works but lol ok whatever. Immediately the super powerful vampire is out cold. They talk about how gaudy and huge Lord Akeldama’s house is, so I totally pictured the zombie kicking the door open, pouring it, and even though he’s still like 50 feet away he’s out like a light.

So my head canon for this is the zombie is like, “Well they’re obviously going to get away! Why bother!?” So he just pours out a medicine bottle’s worth of chloroform out of annoyed futility. Lord Akeldama since he’s such a DANDY thinks the zombie poured some kind of staining liquid like wine all over his centuries old, priceless Turkish rug. He’s so mortified that his favorite rug is ruined and feints on the spot.

Now this scenario makes sense, YOU’RE WELCOME!

Alexia is able to hit the zombie in the head 3 times before she realizes that’s not working and the fumes OVERCOME HER! YES SHE LITERALLY GETS THE VAPORS!

THANK FUCK! FOR ACTUAL DRAMA!

When she wakes up she’s being dragged bound and gagged into the Hypocras Club for scientists. She overhears some shady biz about how they want to experiment on Lord Akledama. She also notices an obnoxiously prominent octopus motif in the place. It might as well read,

“Alexia turned the octopus-shaped knob, of the octopus-shaped door, to reveal an octopus-shaped hallway, with live octopuses hanging from the wall all wondering where they got such a bad rep from.”

The two of them get thrown in a cell and are able to undo their gags. The less cool version of Blackadder’s Prince George (Lord Akeldama) explains that the zombie-thing is an automaton or basically a fleshy robot/golem. He also explains that the robot can only be undone if you speak the magic word. Looks as if safe words work much better in this universe than they ever did in 50 shades!

ALSO JUST KIDDING CAUSE THERE’S ANOTHER WAY TO STOP IT BUT WON’T BE REVEALED UNTIL IT’S A SUPER TENSE MOMENT! HARDY HAR HAR!

But we actually get a genuinely good scene after this where Lord Akledama talks about the fact they both may die. He says that, if it’s possible, he wants Alexia to hold his hand so he can see the sun one last time. It’s cheesy, and probably not going to be applicable in the situation they’re in, but it’s really sweet and sad and I like it. The baddies then come back to drag Akledama out of the cell, presumably to be tortured to death.

NO! I WAS JUST STARTING TO ACTUALLY LIKE HIM!

Say something Nice Faps:

Actual plot

No or little mention of the dumbass ship

Akledama wanting to see the sun.

Chapter 11

So Alexia is not having the best time in the cell by herself but eventually she hears voices. We have super unsubtle exposition that boils down to.

“So yeah we’re torturing werewolves and vampires, so we can figure out how to genocide them REAL GOOD!”

Hoo boy listen. The only other racist thing against vampires/werewolves we have seen in action is a woman talk briefly about how untoward it is that a business is catering to THOSE kinds of people. I will not count all the vague times Alexia alludes to them being oppressed with no concrete examples.

Going from, Bad person is annoyed they may have to glance at a vampire while at a cafe, to inhuman experiments meant to further genocide is AT BEST a huge jump and at worse flat out feels entirely separate from the setting created.

Fun Fact: Racism isn’t a child predator who hides in the shadows and pops out when you need a scapegoat. Racism is fucking everywhere effecting everything.

Don’t try to add racism allusions in your story if you can’t grasp that fundamental concept.

Faps, nobody picked up steampunk werewolf fucker for commentary on race. And besides the inability to grasp the complexity of racism is going to seem quaint next to some of the dumb writing bullshit coming up next.

So during this conversation this mysterious bad man also states, “We have a random human in this cell, cause she was there lol.”

“Can I see her?”

“Lol why not!?”

So we open up the cell to meet the big baddie Siemons, whom, I’m probably just going to refer to as childish evilguy nicknames for awhile cause his characterization is as on the nose as you can get. Like no joke, whenever they mention him smiling it’s, “He smiles psychotically.”

The guy, Mr. bigbad was talking to turns out to be #1 Stud MacDougall!

GASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSP

Actually I totally called this cause she mentions 3 times during their short conversation that she recognizes the 2nd voice, it would be most DRAMATIC, and cause I have money down that he’s secretly a bad, bad man so Alexia doesn’t feel bad about not fucking a fatty. She’s not shallow; he’s just a bad person you see.

BUT, to this story’s credit MacDougall is AGHAST to find Alexia in there, goes to her side, and demands she be set free at once.

Evilbaddy Von Octo-dump is like, “Oh! She’s Alexia the Soulless who can stop supernatural powers! We inexplicably did not put 2 and 2 together despite being super smart Nazi-scientists. I mean we very obviously tried to kidnap her 3 separate times, and stole her records for more info. But we weren’t actually interested in kidnapping her. We just tried to get a vampire and took her along for the lulz!” Why even put in the effort to say they weren’t after her? This is stupid!

MacDougall, despite studying the supernatural FOR A LIVING, has never heard of the Soulless phenomenon and like…

FUCK HOW AND WHY AND ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

The author states explicitly that all the supernaturals in England not only are aware of the Soulless but are informed of the identity of every single Soulless. How would normies NOT know? Vampires and werewolves hang with humans all the time, and it makes no sense why the Soulless would be hidden information from the general public. Soulless can pose a threat to the supernatural not regular boring humans, there’s no reason to believe that the average citizen is going to be upset at this knowledge at all.

This wouldn’t even, so far, cause any plot inconsistencies if everybody knew. I think the rub here is that we have to justify her family not knowing so the reveal would make them upset, but we’ll see how important that plot point actually is. Honestly, I fear the author is just so used to supernatural media where SOMETHING is hidden from the general population she felt compelled to do the same.

MacDougall convinces Meaniemollusk NaziStink to take off her restraints and try to get her on their side. They allow her to clean up and change. Alexia takes advantage of this to go to the Octopus shaped mirror, break off an octopus-shaped shard, cover it in octo-cloth, and hide it in her octo-bosum.

Alexia tries to play dumb and meek in order to appease Squidlly MurderMan. He tells her he plans to kill all Vampires and Werewolves. She points out that they’re scientists with a political agenda and apparently that’s her breaking her bimbo character and the gig is up.

OKAY?????????????????

They then take her to another cell. On the way there she hears Lord Akeldama’s blood-curling torture screams, but she doesn’t seem all that upset. I mean she probably doesn’t want to appear outwardly upset to blow the gig even more, but we don’t really have much internal monologue about how worried she is.

So that’s cool.

They want to test her soulsucking ability and she lies saying it takes an hour. (Which is hard to believe, isn’t soulless supposed to be common knowledge in England, and also they stole all the notes anyway they probably know.) They also OUTRIGHT SAY they’re planning on killing her anyway but it would be rad if she was cool about it. They say they’re going to murder/test it by putting her in a cell with a rabid werewolf to SEE WHAT HAPPENS!? (She’d probably die but lol turns out it’s Lord Maccon aren’t we all shocked.) But like let’s break this whole mess down.

1.) You uhhh consider LYING that you won’t kill her if she cooperates. That tends to encourage people to cooperate. YOU ARE BAD PEOPLE AFTERALL AND BAD PEOPLE LIE!

2.) HOW FUCKING INCOMPREHENSIBLY DUMB ARE THESE FUCKING SCIENTISTS!? You UHH MAYBE consider you could learn a fuck-load from experiments where a person can turn off a supernaturals’ ability at will? PERHAPS it’ll be easier to genocide them if they’re not super-fast, super strong, immortal AND can heal real fast????? WHAT COLOSSAL FATHEADS ARE RUNNING THIS JOINT!? AUTHOR? YOU CAN HAVE THEM BE SUPER EVIL AND BAD WITHOUT THEM IMMEDIATELY TRYING TO KILL PROTAG? YANNO?

Also throwing her in a locked room with a PEAK werewolf, even if they never believed it took that long, is basically instant-death for her. She’s kinda arrogant when it comes to self-defense but even she’s like, “I’d be super lucky if I even reach the point of having the shit kicked out of me before I can turn him completely enough for them to not be a threat.”

So they take the antidote to the supposed poison they want to snuff out and just dump it down the drain.

BUT GOLLY I’M SURE LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE OVERGROWN CHILDREN ALMOST FUCKING IN THAT CELL! THAT’S GONNA BE SWELL!

Say something Nice Faps:

No shitty Maccon/Alexia verbal sparring

MacDougall does try to not get her killed. I mean he just shouts dramatically. Not that I’m asking him to fall right on a sword but it does seem a bit tepid. But like for a woman who gleefully and regularly puts herself in danger? Maybe that’s the response that’s appropriate.

Also the author never really says MacDougall is down to clown with Murder Bigots. So I guess what I’m trying to say is I’d still fuck MacDougall apart.

#soulless #brainless #riffing

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