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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

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The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 3

So I picked option 2 cause I just had more ideas around it. I could probably still do 1 and 3 sometime but this is the direction we're going now. Y/n gets a call from her horrible grandmother who is expecting a visit.

Trigger warning: discussions of emotional and mental abuse, gaslighting

That night at his dining table was the start of something wonderful. You made a point to apply a bit of perfume to your neck before you left your apartment. Your three slightly judgmental but overall supportive roommates even donated a few drops of their own fragrances from time to time.

You didn’t like the sound of the sentence “Hannibal is my boyfriend”. It just didn’t hit your ear right. ‘Boyfriend’ was too childish of a title for him. By extension, he found something very diminutive about referring to you as his girlfriend. You were, of course, a grown woman. He remedied this right away, resigning to call you his ‘darling’. You, however, had to use ‘partner’ as a placeholder until a more suitable pet name presented itself. Although the titles were never stated outright, after a while, you knew it was more than just a passionate affair. Hannibal (and you were calling him Hannibal, now) saw potential in you. He nurtured you and had been since day one.

Finally, things were starting to go your way. You were in classes you loved, had wonderful, supportive friends and a fulfilling relationship. It took over twenty years, but better late than never.

But, if there was one thing you learned from your short stint as a student of physics, it was that what goes up must come down. Your long-awaited bliss was about to be tested by an equal and opposite force bearing the name “Beatrice [L/N]” on the caller ID.

Not only did she call, but she called three times in the middle of your meal. And that was followed by multiple texts, several of which containing words like “emergency” in all caps. You were just trying to enjoy another one of Hannibal’s culinary works of art, but the old bitch was persistent.

You apologetically excused yourself from the table and retreated to the office with your phone.

Grandma, you had better be on your fucking deathbed. You thought to yourself before sliding the green answer icon across the screen.

“[F/N]!” Came her shrill voice. “You finally answered. I was beginning to worry.”

“What do you want, grandma?” You groan.

“I wanted to ask you what you were wearing to Anna’s wedding next weekend.” She explained, calmly as ever. “The color scheme is seafoam and coral and she wants to make sure everyone adheres to it for pictures.”

You covered the speaker with your hand and pulled your phone away from your ear so she couldn’t hear you bite back a scream. It physically pained you to return the phone to your ear. “Yeah, I RSVPed no to Anna’s wedding.”

“[F/N],” Your grandmother said in that scolding tone you knew all too well. “Your cousin expects you to be there. I expect you to be there. I invested so much money into this wedding, I will take it as a personal affront if you don’t attend.”

You take everything as a personal affront. You thought.

“It doesn’t matter, I already said no. She’s not going to have a chair or food for me.” You explained, hoping that you found some way out of this conversation.

“No, she will.” Your grandma corrected. “I won’t have any child of mine absent from another’s wedding. I put in all the work to pull this event together.”

For a moment, you almost felt bad for Anna. Having to endure your grandmother’s micromanaging was a circle of hell even Dante refused to tread.

"Of course, heaven forbid someone in your life show an ounce of autonomy." You finally snapped.

"I don't know why you're acting so rude, but it stops now." Grandma ordered. "I raised you as my own daughter. You should be more grateful for the luxuries I can extend to you. I didn't have to take you in, you know..."

It pained you to stay quiet when all you wanted to say was "I wish you hadn't".

"Your emotional manipulation isn't going to work on me anymore." You informed her.

“So, naturally, I’ve seen to it that you are expected." She continued her own conversation without even acknowledging yours. "You and a plus one, of course.”

You hadn’t even considered the possibility of attending the wedding with Hannibal. The two points never once intersected. And they never would. You vowed that Hannibal would never meet your grandmother or cousins. At that moment, that was the hill you were willing to die on.

“If I come at all, I’m coming alone.” You snap. “You can punish me all you want but I am not letting you get him involved.”

“Him?” Your grandma repeated. “So there is someone?”

“Someone you are keeping me from.” You said, thoroughly frustrated and now panicked at the idea that your grandmother knew Hannibal existed. “Goodbye.”

You didn't want to rejoin Hannibal in such a sour mood, but you didn't want to keep him waiting either. You returned even more apologetically than you left and took your seat.

"Everything alright, love?" He asked. You could tell he was raring to psychoanalyze you.

You shook your head. "It was my grandma."

"I could tell that much." He admitted, beginning to cut into his steak. "What with all the frustration you're trying so desperately to hide. What did she want?"

"She called to tell me she expects me at my cousin's wedding next Saturday." You rolled your eyes. "I'd already declined the invitation, but she didn't like that, apparently."

"Which cousin is this?" He probed. "The one that works as an engineer for Halliburton?

"No, that's Theresa." You shook your head. "And she works for Halliburton, but she's not an engineer. She's a PR executive."

"Right." Hannibal nodded, taking a bite of steak between his teeth. "She took after your grandmother and turned gaslighting into a career."

You smiled a bit. "Right."

"So, it's Anna, then?" He concluded. "You haven't told me much about her. Perhaps she is the benign tumor of the family?"

"More or less." You shrugged. "She works at a publishing agency. Only got the job because her boyfriend's uncle's the CFO. She didn't even make it to the interview. It was pure nepotism."

"And now she's marrying the boyfriend, I presume?"

"Yeah." You felt a grin cross your face thinking about what you were going to say next. "She wasn't even dating him at the time. She was dating someone else and cheating on him with the guy she's marrying now."

Hannibal grinned. "You like knowing this? Having information that could potentially ruin her life?"

You knew there was no use in lying. The look on your face said it all. "Absolutely I do. When you're the black sheep of the family, you've gotta take power where you can get it. Mine just so happens to be potential blackmail."

"I'm quite delighted to be privy to this side of you, love." He smiled. "We're a bit vindictive, now are we?"

"Are you kidding?" You snicker. "These are the girls that psychologically tormented me growing up. Of course I'm vindictive."

"So about this wedding." He didn't look up from his plate. "Do they expect you to bring a date?"

"They do." You nod, your eyes wandering off. "But I can't let them meet you. They're just so unspeakably rude all the time."

For some reason, you felt that this didn't deter him. Perhaps it even compelled him a little. "Oh?"

"They take this really strange pride in making scenes everywhere they go." You explained. "They've already ruined so much of my life. I can't even give them the opportunity to ruin this too."

"Darling," Hannibal leaned in. "Is there a part of you that wants to attend this event?"

You held your tongue before you said anything you both know to be untrue. "...maybe a small part."

"That small part of you that wants power. That wants justice." He nodded. "Indulge it for a moment. What does this wedding look like to you?"

Trying to keep up the illusion that you hadn't thought of this before, you paused for a moment. "...we would show up--you and I--and I'd be wearing a stunning gown that doesn't fit the stupid color scheme at all. And there's just an unspoken knowledge that I could absolutely ruin Anna's entire day. Anna and Theresa and Grandma are all being nice to me because if I so much as mention the name of that boyfriend she cheated on, I'd ruin her life and possibly her career. So finally I hold all the cards."

Hannibal looked proud. He took a sip of his wine. "You want to be powerful, but with just enough restraint so they know you're the bigger person."

"Exactly." You agreed.

"Perhaps my fondness for you is clouding my professional judgment, darling." He put his wine glass down. "The thought of you in an evening gown, commanding attention and reverence... that's just something I have to see."

"...something you have to see?" You met eyes with him, realizing you were on the same page.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket again. This time, you didn't feel the need to step out.

"Hey [F/N], care to explain why my sister is crying?" Theresa snapped through the receiver.

"Is someone cutting onions nearby?" You offered. "That usually makes me tear up."

"Fucking hell, for once in your meaningless life can you care about someone other than yourself?!" Theresa yelled. "Grandma told us you're not coming to the wedding."

You looked back at Hannibal, who gave you a nod. "Actually, I am. We are."

#hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #hannibal x reader #reader insert #hannibal nbc

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darkelfshadow · 3 years

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Session Summary - 107

AKA “Phlan Besieged”

Adventures in Taggriell

Session 107 (Date: 16th April 2021)

Players Present:

- Rob (Known as “Varis”) Elf Male.

- Bob (Known as “Sir Krondor) Dwarf Male.

- Paul (Known as “Labarett”) Elf Male.

- Travis (Known as “Trenchant”) Human Male.

- Arthur (Known as “Gim”) Dwarf Male.

Absent Players

- John (Known as “Ragnar”) Dwarf Male. <Played by Bob>

NPC

- (Known as “Naillae”) Elf Female. <Controlled by Travis>

Summary

- Starday, 6th Sarenith in the year 815 (Second Era). Late Summer.

- The party begin this session, late afternoon, having just teleported back to Crescent Moon.

- As Archmage Tallous, Valthrun The Enchanter and Valder The Enchanter are not yet ready to perform the teleport ritual into Phlan, the party are forced to wait in Crescent Moon for two days.

- During this time, the party purchase some equipment and items, and allocate some of the newly gained magic artefacts to members of the party. Bucky also uses this time to slowly recover from the ordeal of being resurrected.

- Moonday, 8th Sarenith in the year 815 (Second Era). Late Summer.

- The party awake early, just after sunrise. Half an hour later, at about 6am, after preparing for the incursion into Phlan, the party stand before the three Wizards, ready to teleport in. The time difference between Crescent Moon and Phlan is four hours.

- Using the combined might of the three Wizards, along with a minuscule amount of the liquid from the Pool Of Radiance, the party are teleported into Phlan, forcing their way past the arcane barrier around the far city.

- It is mid morning in Phlan, but the city is almost in darkness. Most of the sunlight is stopped by the impenetrable 30 feet thick dome of a magic thicket of brambles and briars that has completely overgrown the city.

- The buildings show signs of damage and looting, with door and windows smashed open or boarded up with improvised defences. Dead bodies are everywhere on the streets. No signs of life greet the party, and the eary scene of the silent, dark, and still city concern the party greatly. Some of the buildings are completely destroyed, enveloped by seperate thickets of vines and branches that have twisted and pulled apart those buildings to rubble.

- The party have been teleported into the northern New District of the city, and make their way over to the nearby Manor of Sir Zern Xerstil but find that the building has been completely destroyed by the thicket. Hearing a moaning voice from a nearby street, the party find more dead bodies and destruction but one body moves slightly, with a moan. A lone survivor, a female, though nearly dead.

- The party quickly recover the female and begin treating her wounds. Nearby, the party find the decapitated body and head of Sir Zern. Nearby the also find the slain body of Rolk, the Dwarf Merchant Noble that had assisted the party on the first visit to Phlan.

- The party bring the injured woman and the body parts of Sir Zern into a nearby damaged building. The party rest for an hour, giving time for Trenchant to cast his most powerful spell, and Resurrect Sir Zern back to life. Trenchant will only be able to do this once more, but not for the remainder of this day.

- The now injured woman is spoken to, her name is Grondyn. She is distraught and in despair, as her husband and two children, and a group of civilians, were killed by the Cult as Sir Zern and Rolk were attempting to gather up the remaining populace and lead them to a place of safety. She does not know where they were going, but does know they were going to find the “Small Lady” who could hide them in safety from the Cult.

- When Sir Zern is returned to life, he is very weak and exhausted. All his injuries have been healed, but it will be a number of days before he is back to full strength. His armour has been totally destroyed and he has no weapons. Trenchant gives some of his weapons to Sir Zern, Ridir (shortsword) and the Dragongleam Spear.

- Sir Zern tells the party that Vorgansharax has consumed a large quantity of the liquid from the Pool Of Radiance, increasing his power to almost God like levels. It was because of this that Vorgansharax was able to create the magic thicket and arcane barrier around the entire city. As this happened, the Cult and its allies, began mass killings of the populace. There was no reasoning with them, or any attempt at taking prisoners, the Cult is slaughtering the entrapped population for sport and fun. Any attempt to try and attack or break through the thicket, causes the thicket to grow into creatures that attack back, as the thicket then grows slowly back into position. Half the population of Phlan, six thousand people, were killed in a day.

- Sir Zern also tells the party that Madame Freona (“the Small Lady”) and Glevith (a Crime Boss whom the party dealt with last time they were in Phlan) managed to get a lot of the locals out of the city via the sewers and they are hiding in the nearby Grimshackle Jail. But the thicket has now grown into the sewers and all travel via that means has stopped, trapping those left in the doomed city.

- Sir Zern informs the party that Olisara Lightsong of the Harpers has been killed whilst trying to save civilians (this information the party already knew), and also that Captain Greycastle has been captured alive by the Cult and taken to the dungeons under Stojanow Gate Keep. Most, if not all, of Greycastle’s forces have been killed. Further, the mysterious Black Knight has been continuing to kill individual Cult Officers one by one, but still no one knows who this figure is.

- The party learn that Madame Freona has now been using an ancient system of underground escape tunnels to house the remaining rescued populace. These tunnels were made when the city was first started by the Wizard Denlor, who’s tower has been locked up for many centuries. The escape tunnels, and the tower, are protected by strong magics, having resisted the arcane thicket and keeping the thicket at bay. The Lord Sage has been trapped inside the Libarary, as the thickets have attempted to overgrow and destroy the Library but the arcane defences of the Lord Sage have kept the thicket at bay, for now.

- Sir Zern tells the party where the ancient Escape Tunnel system goes to, and how there is an exit tunnel, that does lead out of the city from the original Keep, which is now Stojanow Gate Keep. The secret Escape Tunnel opens somewhere in the Dungeons but the exit to the outside leads into Valhingen Graveyard. This graveyard has been cursed for many centuries and no one goes into it anymore, as the Undead guard it. Sir Zern tells the party that their only way out of the city now, is to breach the Dungeons via the ancient Escape Tunnels, find the secret door that goes to the exit tunnel, and fight their way through the graveyard.

- Trenchant uses a Seeming spell to make the party, Sir Zern and the rescued Grondyn, look like Knights Of The Tears Of Virulence, allies of the Cult Forces. The party moves through the quiet back ways of the city, until they come to an abandoned street market area. Two Guard Drakes smell the strong Half-Orc scent of Sir Zern, and begin approaching the party with deep growls.

- Before the party can respond, the Drakes rush forward and leap at Sir Zern, their jaws snapping at him. The party is forced to attack and kill both Drakes. Unknown to the party, the nearby buildings have a large group of Cult forces in hiding, watching. A Red Wizard Of Thay, Cult Fanatics and Cult Assassins.

- When the hidden Cult forces see that the group of apparent “Knights”, do not use the correct verbal commands to get the Drakes under control, they look more closely at the party’s group. The Red Wizard of Thay concentrates, and looking hard, he sees through the illusion as he realises the group is not behaving the way Knights should. The Wizard leans out of a doorway and hurls a fireball at the party, exploding over most of them.

- With their disguise now useless for this encounter, the battle is on. When the rest of the Cult Forces see that the Red Wizard has attack the apparent Knights, without hesitation, they join the fight too.

- The party are rushing forward, as Sir Zern shouts out that they need to take a certain street to keep on track for the only bridge towards the Old City District. The party is hit hard, taking severe injuries, as the Assassins are deadly. Varis is nearly killed and is eventually forced back. The Cult Fanatics stay within the building, hurling streaks of arcane fire at the party.

- Trenchant cleverly rushes towards the Red Wizard Of Thay and using his Rapier’s Wit, locks the Wizard into a Battle Of Wits. This magically compels the Wizard to duel with Trenchant, rather than cast spells, effectively taking the Wizard out of the combat. As such, the Wizard does not survive against Trenchant and Naillae for long.

- Sir Zern leads Grondyn out of the battle and towards the exit street, and safety.

- The party are moving forward, the three Dwarves working together to kill any Cult Forces in their way. As they all near the exit street, with only one Cult Fanatic left, the party all rush madly into the exit street and away.

- They continue running through streets for a few minutes, before slowing down and making their way onwards, slowly and with caution. Upon ahead they can hear the sound of the river that cuts Phlan in half. Around the next block, is the main bridge to the other side of town.

XP Allocation

Group - Combined (This is equally divided by the number of players who were involved)

Quests (Only quests that are completed or rendered undoable, during this session, are shown here)

- “Return To The Light” - Resurrect Sir Zern = 1000 XP

- “The Shepherds” - Commoner Survives Encounter (x 1) = 200 XP

Creatures Overcome

- Guard Drakes = 900 XP

- Red Wizard Of Thay = 2300 XP

- Cult Fanatics = 1350 XP

- Cult Assassins = 11700 XP

- Dragonsoul = 2900 XP

Individual (This is only given to that person and is not divided amongst all players)

Special Bonus (Outstanding Role Playing)

Nil

XP Levels and Player Allocations

Player : Start + Received = Total (Notes)

Rob : 147397 + 2907 = 150304

Arthur : 117960 + 2907 = 120867 (Level up to 13)

John : 112927 + 2180 = 115107

Travis : 134803 + 2907 = 137710

Paul : 124286 + 2907 = 127193

Bob : 137095 + 3633 = 140728 (Level up to 14)

NPC (Naillae) : + (1454) (Level up)

#D&D #DnD #5th #5e #ROT

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womenbehavingbadlyinfilm · 3 years

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JD is no better than the “date rape and AIDS jokes” guys he bashes

Sophia Kennan - 883 words

Jason Dean from the cult classic Heathers, referred to as JD, is touted throughout the movie to be the cleanser for Westerburg High School. He becomes a love interest for the main character, Veronica, and makes a name for himself by being completely different from his peers. He confronts the bullies people are too scared to, provides commentary on the hilarity and ridiculousness of the culture of Westerburg, and, more notably, sets off a chain of suicides and suicide attemps and attempts to bomb the school with everyone inside to make a “statement.”

Veronica takes to JD like a fly to honey after seeing him shoot blanks at the school’s two biggest bullies when they use homophobic slurs. After she finds a kindred spirit in “seeing through the bullshit,” JD becomes her confidant as well as her boyfriend. However, Veronica sees the good that can come from changing Westerburg, and JD sees the impact that can come from making Westerburg an example for others. Their relationship is incredibly messed up; JD tricks and coerces Veronica into committing multiple murders and forces her to fake her death when she fears her safety around him.

JD is characterized in the beginning to be a good guy who’s just jaded and had a hard life, what with moving around because of his dad’s work and his mother’s tragic death. Very quickly, he’s revealed to be quite literally insane when he allows Veronica to give her best friend a mug full of Drano by mistake.

There’s no mistake that JD is a psychopathic criminal and a horrible person. He kills a staggering number of people for his ripe age of 17 and seriously conspires to kill a few thousand more. He is by no means a good person. However, the film still allows the viewer to put JD on this pedestal above the other characters, specifically the other boys, in the movie. Because he sees through the bullshit of high school and is able to look past the society and culture of Westerburg, he’s portrayed as more sophisticated. He comes from money, he disagrees with the culture of the school, he’s just portrayed with this general air of Other-ness. Veronica, whose character is also portrayed as Other and above the student body, is drawn to him.

Later in the movie, right after they’ve killed the two main bullies and framed it as suicide over their secret gay relationship, JD comments that they “had nothing left to offer the school except for date rape and AIDS jokes.” However, JD himself, not even taking into account the multiple atrocities he committed, simply taking into account his personality as a man, is no better than those boys.

Kurt and Ram, the two football player bullies killed by JD and Veronica, portray a very specific brand of high school bigot. They harass and assault girls, use numerous slurs to insult people, and are just generally nasty bullies. These boys can be found in any high school in America in a heartbeat. It’s easy to find a villain in Kurt and Ram because they are so prevalent, so relatable to the average teenager’s life, and so easily identified as, frankly, pieces of shit.

JD presents a more sinister picture of men. He is the guy that outwardly seems fine. He’s nice, he stands up to bullies, he’s relatively attractive, and he does not appear to be like the boys Kurt and Ram represent. In reality, however, he uses the good in Veronica and her desire to change the Westerburg culture to his advantage. His character, I think, is perfectly summed up with the scene where he is convincing Veronica to play a “prank” on Kurt and Ram. He presents “Ich Lüge” bullets, claiming that they’re harmless tranquilizers. In reality, they are actual bullets that they use to kill Kurt and Ram, Veronica unknowingly. Ich Lüge just turns out to be “I lie” in German. Even apart from the act of murder, JD manipulates and patronizes Veronica with these bullets; he lies to her face and lies to her to get her to consent to a prank. She consents on the grounds that the prank is harmless and will merely put the fear of God into Kurt and Ram. JD violates her trust.

Again, all of this is taken out of the context of JD murdering people. Obviously JD sucks. He did attempt to blow up a school with all the students inside. But JD and his personality symbolize a far more common kind of shitty guy—a guy who seems great on the outside and then ends up being horrible and manipulative. Guys like JD are the reason why so many women are “irrationally” scared of men. JD cracks jokes about Kurt and Ram’s date rapes across the female population at school, but in the struggle between him and Veronica in the boiler room, he forces himself on her violently, despite his outward disdain for the guys that did that stuff.

JD is the man you know as a friend. He’s nice enough, he seems fine, but when it comes down to it, he’s manipulative and dangerous and his buddies would never believe one of his girlfriends when she says he was horrible to her. He’s not better—just bad in a different way.

#sophia #heathers

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krinsbez · 3 years

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Infinite Four, Refurbished: A Marvel Fanfic Concept

Here is the complete-as-of-now, refurbished version of Infinite Four, my attempt at envisioning an FF version of the eXiles or Web Warriors. Comments and suggestions welcome.

On Earth-9499729, Victor Von Doom has finally defeated the accursed RICHARDS! and assumed his rightful place as ruler of the Earth. Unwilling to rest on his laurels, Emperor Doom has begun studying the Multiverse. And when he finds out that in most realities, a version of himself is repeatedly defeated by a version of RICHARDS! he reacts….poorly.

Meanwhile, on Earth-75845525, Victor Von Doom, smarting from his latest defeat at the hands of the accursed RICHARDS!, decides to distract himself by studying the Multiverse. And when he finds out that in most realities, a version of himself is repeatedly defeated by a version of RICHARDS! he reacts….poorly.

Meanwhile, on Earth-34373402, Victor Von Doom takes a break from planning his latest attempt to defeat the accursed RICHARDS! by studying the Multiverse. And when he finds out that in most realities, a version of himself is repeatedly defeated by a version of RICHARDS! he reacts….poorly. Yeah, so in an infinite multiverse, there’s an infinite number of Dooms throwing an infinite number of shitfits over the fact that in most realities, the Richards family wins and he loses. And because Doom is often kinda bad at recognizing and/or caring that his actions can have negative consequences for everyone else, this gets very, very bad, and needs to be dealt with.

Someone has to clean up the mess, and that responsibility has been taken on by the Baxter Brain, an artificial hyper-intelligence housed inside a massive arcology that began as the combined uploaded consciousnesses of a version of the FF. But, even it’s astounding intellect and power can’t cope with ALL of the various Dooms (and Wizards, and Mad Thinkers, and Diablos, and occasionally an evil Reed) screwing things up for everyone with their egomaniacal disregard for everyone else. So, it has to recruit agents, and what better agents could their be than alternate versions of it’s previous selves? There are four teams: Alpha Team and Beta Team are each made up of an alternate Ben, Johnny, Reed and Sue; in the former case, they have additional power-sets from the "baseline", in the latter, they have additional skills or alternate powersets. In both cases, the individual team-members come from realities where they lost their version of the family. Gamma and Delta Teams are made up of versions of allies of the core four, and serve as support for Alpha and Beta. I only have two members of either ATM, help please? Alpha Team: -Reed Richards, Dr. Fantastic; from an Earth where, instead of Ben being the only member of the Four who was mode-locked, Reed was the only one who wasn’t; obviously, the celebrity adventurers thing didn’t wasn’t going to work. Desperate to find some way of curing his friends, Reed turned to magic, and eventually ended up becoming Sorcerer Supreme…which unfortunately led to the Dread Dormammu killing his family. -Johnny Storm, Ghost Torch; from a world where Reed’s guilt over turning his friends into freaks caused him to commit suicide. Unsurprisingly, this made things even worse for Sue, Ben, and Johnny, the latter of whom ended up being so lost that he joined a Satanic cult and found himself bound to a demonic Spirit of Vengeance… -Ben Grimm, Wolf-Thing; from an Earth where Reed’s moonshot wasn’t canceled, meaning that when it went to space it had adequate cosmic-ray shielding, and Ben managed to make it to the Moon without any problems whatsoever. Whilst on the Moon, however, he found a certain red gemstone…Fortunately, Reed figured out the wolf-monster stalking NYC was his best friend and built a gizmo to restore him to sanity, albeit by blasting him with cosmic rays that turned him into a rock monster. Unfortunately, he ended up dead in the process of using it (I can’t decided if Ben mauled him, or if some triggerhappy cop or something shot him by mistake) -Susan Storm, the Invincible Woman; a version of Sue who was forced to become a Herald of Galactus. Beta Team: -Dr. Maggie Wingfoot, the Human Torch; a female version of Johnny (named after her Aunt Marygay), who left the team to marry Wyatt Wingfoot and go to college, eventually earning a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Unfortunately, at some point, something went wrong and the Baxter Building was destroyed, killing the rest of the family. Convinced that, if she’d been there she could’ve prevented it, Maggie’s marriage subsequently fell apart. -Susan McKenzie, Sub-Mariness; from a world where Reed died, leading Sue to take up with Namor; she was subsequently given an infusion of Atlantean DNA to enable to her to live underwater, and ended up with same mutations as him and Namora, but lost her cosmic-ray induced powers. -Ben Grimm, Juggernaut; during his service in the Korean War, got shot down and ended up falling in with a bunch of of Army grunts, including a pair of bickering step-brothers named Charles Xavier and Cain Marko. When they stumble onto a hidden temple, it is Ben who finds the crimson Crystal of Cytorrak and is transformed by it’s power into the Juggernaut… -Reed Richards, Director of SHIELD; from a world where the FF got caught trying to steal the shuttle. Fortunately for everyone, Nick Fury stepped in and offered his old OSS buddy a deal he couldn’t refuse; if Reed came to work for him at SHIELD, he’d make the charges against the other three go away. Not wishing to ruin his friend’s lives, Reed agreed, and became one of SHIELD’s top operatives, ultimately taking over the organization when Fury eventually went down. Gamma Team: -Victoria Von Doom-Grimm, Dr. Grim; female version of Doom, fell in love with Ben when they were in college, and subsequently married him. Unfortunately, having her genitalia on the inside didn’t make her less of a narcissistic megalomaniac, and their marriage was…rocky, with them constantly separating and getting back together. During one such separation, the fateful trip to space happened. Victoria was…displeased that her handsome husband had been turned into a monster, and was so determined to fix it, that she did not adequately test the cure she concocted. On the plus side, inadvertently making herself a widow forced her to take a good hard look at herself and try to change her ways. -Namor McKenzie-Richards-Storm, Sub-Mariner. From a world where Reed and Namor were both bisexual, resulting in Reed, Namor, and Sue all getting together. Unfortunately, this led to Reed and Sue being assassinated by one of Namor's political rivals. Also, presenting two teams of recurring sometimes enemies/sometimes allies: The Brides of Doom (women who had been married to their local version of Doom, who have dedicated themselves to cleaning up his mess): -Susan Von Doom (duh) -Ororo Von Doom (again, duh) -Victoria Von Doom (female clone of Victor. Honestly, given how egomaniacal Victor is, it’s astounding this isn’t a thing in canon) -Natasha von Doom, it’s happened in a couple weird alternates, so might as well. (thanks to Xero Key for this suggestion) A Natasha who made some different choices after the USSR fell apart, and ended up working for Doom instead of the new Russian government. -Jennifer von Doom, because a Hulk is required here. (ditto) Haven’t quite worked out how this one happened. Suggestions? -Shuri Von Doom, owing to a political marriage in order to obtain Doom’s aid in fixing the mess that resulted when one of the many attempts to oust T’Challa that failed in 616 worked. Was not happy about it, but accepted it for the greater good of Wakanda. -Anelle von Doom, likewise owing to a political marriage, albeit rather different. Anelle was even less happy about this, but her father was on an enemy-of-my-enemy kick and thought he could handle Doom after the FF were eliminated. Suffice to say, this didn’t work out so well for him. On the plus side, Emperor Victor I is actually doing a good job running the Skrull Empire, which as a bonus is a lot more work than running Latveria, reducing the amount of free time Doom has to scheme. -Emma Von Doom, from a world where the Hellfire Club thought they could get away with manipulating Doom. Unsurprisingly, they were wrong. Emma still ended up making a Heel-Face Turn eventually, though. -Loki Von Doom, from a world where the whole Cabal thing went very, VERY differently. The Token Evil teammate. The Stormborn, a collection of sons and daughters of Johnny Storm, from timelines where everyone’s favorite matchstick was killed by Doom. Said folks have therefore dedicated themselves to avenging their parent by hunting down and killing every single Doom in the Multiverse. -Namor Storm, the Human Geyser; leader of the team, son of Johnny and Namorita, named for his uncle. Has the standard human/Atlantean hybrid powerset, plus steam powers. -Agatha Evans-Storm, the Fantastic Witch; Johnny’s daughter with his OG girlfriend Dorrie Evans. Despite having a kid together, the issues that caused them to break up in 616 remained, and they separated, retaining joint custody of their daughter (who was named after her cousin Franklin’s nanny, who had recently died). Unlike her cousins she appeared to be totally normal. When she turned 13, however, she was kidnapped by Dr. Doom, who was on a magic kick and had discovered that being named after the old witch created a slight but distinct mystic connection that he could exploit as part of a plan to become the God of Witchcraft by ritually sacrificing her. She was saved, but at the cost of her father’s life. Also, she became a witch, and was subsequently apprenticed to Wanda. -Luna Storm, She-Serpent; from a world where Johnny left the FF to be with Crystal. Like her cousin Franklin, Luna is a mutant, with the power to control the weather, though it took people a bit to figure this out what with living on the Moon and all. Obviously, the subsequent history of the Inhumans was rather different, but a Terrigen Bomb was eventually released, and to everyone’s relief Luna managed to survive. She did turn into a winged snakewoman who breathes poisonous gas though, which kinda sucks. -Wyatt Storm, Speed-Hulk; Johnny and She-Hulk’s kid, named after Johnny’s BFF and Jen’s ex, Wyatt Wingfoot. As the name suggests, is a Hulk, and also a speedster. -JJ and Jeannie Storm, the Mutant Torch and Firebird; Johnny’s twin son and daughter with Rachel Summers (or Rachel Grey, whichever you prefer). They’re both Omega-class mutants like their mom; JJ is a teep, Jeannie is a teek, and they’re both pyrokinetic. Also, they can do that thing Aurora and Northstar or Fenris do, where they can become even more powerful by holding hands. -Jimmy Storm, the Human Robot; from a world where Roberta the Robot Receptionist was upgraded to sentience, and she and Johnny fell in love and got married. The one flaw in their marriage was the obvious inability to have children, and so for their second anniversary, Reed presented them with a child-form robot (named after the OG Human Torch) with an AI that was initially simple but designed to learn and grow in the way child would, albeit somewhat faster. The plan was to periodically upgrade him to simulate physical aging, but when he was two years old (though emotionally, intellectually, and in physical appearance being more like ten), Doom decided to launch a frontal assault on the Baxter Building, which involved destroying Roberta. Driven berserk by rage and grief, Johnny subsequently killed Doom, but was himself killed when Victor’s armor self-destructed, leaving Jimmy orphaned. That was ten years ago, and he has refused to change his appearance since. Like his mother, despite his harmless appearance, Jimmy is super-strong and tough, and possess a small arsenal of built-in weapons. -Ramonda Storm, the White Wolf; Johnny’s daughter with Shuri. Has no inherent powers (unless you count being able to consume the heart-shaped herb safely), but is a tactical/strategic genius on par with her Uncle T'Challa. When said uncle was injured and her Aunt Ororo killed by a Sentinel attack, she donned the long-abandoned ceremonial garb/vibranium-laced hi-tech suit of the White Wolf to assist her cousin Azari in tracking down and bringing to justice those responsible. You can imagine how she reacted when her own father was killed by Doom.

#Infinite Four #Fantastic Four #Marvel Comics #Fanfic #Marvel Fanfic

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jeremystrele · 3 years

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Connecting With The Past + Grappling With History, With Painter Mia Boe

Studio Visit

by Sasha Gattermayr

Mia’s new Brunswick studio is filled with light, and is the perfect space to continue on her growing portfolio of work. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

A painting from her recent catalogue sits on the mantle. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Butchalla-Burmese artist Mia Boe in her light-filled studio. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Mia paints full time and volunteers for The Torch in her spare time. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

One of Mia’s works in progress.

Mia’s paintings are vibrant and narrative-driven, which means she does a lot of her own historical research. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Left: Mia is inspired by figures in art history like Albert Namatjira, Sidney Nolan and Russell Drysdale; and figures from history such as Eliza Fraser, Ned Kelly and the Queensland Native Police. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files. Right: ‘Stripes 3’ by Mia Boe.

A selection of work Mia recently sold in her latest catalogue and has prepared for prize entries. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Her elongated, distended figures are always in the landscape and often accompanied by food, animals or spirits. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

You can see the Sidney Nolan influence in this composition! Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

The historical and contemporaneous imprisonment of First Nations people is a continuous theme in Mia’s work. Patterns and vibrant colour create tension between the political context and the composition.

Watching Mia Boe’s rise to cult status is almost giving me whiplash. The Brisbane-raised, Melbourne-based artist has grown a dedicated following in the 18 months since she’s really begun concentrating on her painting – and it’s only going up. To give you an indication of just how devoted her audience are, her recent catalogue of nine paintings sold out in under two minutes.

Mia studied art history before last year, when Melbourne’s sweeping lockdowns gave her the time (and a good excuse!) to focus on her art. But it’s not just Instagram fans who are hot on her tail. With a residency at the Museum of Brisbane, commissions for Craft Victoria and Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art, two group shows and a solo exhibition (titled Black Devil) at Open Space Collective under her belt since the beginning of 2020, it’s evident that Mia has well and truly caught the attention of the nation’s arts community.

But the institutions aren’t everything. When she’s not painting, Mia volunteers at The Torch – an organisation that aids First Nations prisoners and ex-prisoners with their art practices.

Art is the past, present and future for Mia – storytelling is her mode of being. Hear it in her own words.

How did you arrive at your current painting style? Has it evolved slowly over time or always been somewhat similar?

One clear continuity in my style has been that I tend to populate my landscapes with strangely elongated figures, whose bodies are also sometimes bloated and distended. I guess also that female figures in my work are representations, approximately, of myself, so a lot of my works could also function as self-portraits. But when I start a painting, I’m not always conscious of who the figure is, though if I’m painting black figures, they’re probably members of my family.

Also, I sometimes add larger figures with little detail, or floating in the landscape — these figures are representations of spirits. They represent family members that have died, and are a marker of the family that I will never get to know because of the repercussions of colonisation. I also try and experiment with colour: inspired by the ubiquitous blues of Robert Owen’s recent exhibition at Heide, I’ve recently been trying to control and limit my palette.

Do you use your art to connect with history or grapple with it?

Probably a bit of both. I’m especially interested in the histories of my family’s cultural heritages. My mum is a descendent of the Butchulla people, but she was only told by my grandmother that she was Aboriginal when she was in her teens (my grandmother was worried she’d have her children taken away from her if she was open about it). My Dad moved to Australia as a refugee from Burma when he was a young child.

My art practice has allowed me to research these twin histories, and to track the consequences of British colonisation in both Australia and Burma. (Burmese historian Thant Myint-U’s recent The Hidden History of Burma is an amazing book for people interested in learning more about Burma.) I hope soon to be able to spend some time looking at concrete connections between the colonial occupations of Australia and Burma. Empire, after all, makes the world smaller — it’s big project, I think, is to remake the margins in the image of the centre — so I’m sure there are some connections to be found (white officers, for instance, might have trained in Burma before coming to Australia, or vice versa).

Anyway, I definitely use my art to think through history: sometimes head-on, sometimes obliquely.

How do you involve historical references in your pieces?

I make sure that I’ve done proper research into a subject before making work about historical events. At the start of the year I showed my first exhibition in Brisbane. It was called Black Devil, and the works responded, from multiple angles, to the history of the Queensland Native Police: an exterminationist outfit which consisted of Aboriginal troopers led by white officers, and which aimed to wipe out resistance to colonisation.

The Native Police was active from 1848 to c. 1905 and were estimated to have killed over 44,000 Murris in those 50+ years. The fact that many of the massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by Aboriginal troopers, who were themselves often kidnapped as boys, and barracked hundreds of kilometres from their kin and ancestral lands, pointed up for me the ongoing violence and infernal strategies of division which colonialism employs.

During research for this exhibition I found out that my ancestor, my great-great-grand uncle Wonamutta, a Butchulla man from K’gari (Fraser Island), was a trooper in the police force. Apart from his postings around the state, he was also seconded to the Victorian Police, where he helped to track down Ned Kelly (that’s where the exhibition’s title comes from — Kelly called the black trackers on his trail ‘black devils’).

Out of this discovery I got interested in Sidney Nolan. Two of Nolan’s most famous preoccupations were [Fraser Island’s namesake] Eliza Fraser and Ned Kelly. Nolan didn’t see these figures as related, and yet in an eerie way I think they were: Wonamutta, whose country was re-named by Europeans after Eliza Fraser, was also the man who caught Ned Kelly. So through thinking about this personal history, and the random but weird connections it disclosed, I came to envision my exhibition as also responding to Nolan’s own practice. It was a art show about history, but also about the history of art.

Do you have any key references or inspirations?

Some abiding influences for me have been Albert Namatjira and Russell Drysdale. Namatjira looms especially large: because of his tragic life story, his amazing colours. The William Dargie portrait of him which hangs in the Queensland Art Gallery, and the Noel Counihan linocut, which shows Namatjira crucified, are some really important images for me.

Drysdale matters for me because of the colours of his burnt-out backgrounds and those extraordinary gaunt figures idling about in them. His representations of Aboriginal people are very respectful and moving.

Other artists who are key points of departure for me are the contemporary South African artist Marlene Dumas, and Bill Traylor who was a self-taught artist born into slavery.

What does art-making mean to you?

On an individual level, my art allows me to recover and remake the cultural heritages which were stolen from me. And I hope in this process that I remind people (even as I learn myself) about the forgotten pasts which shape everyday life in the present.

Mia is represented by Sunday Salon. Learn more about her practice here. Mia’s next exhibition will be at Milani Gallery from 4th – 25th September.

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gav-san · 4 years

Text

White as the Driven Snow

-Wash-

1/7

------

You wondered how long it had been since you had seen the sky. Or breathed fresh air (and not the sharp ventilated afterbite of it). It was too long since you held felt the prickly blades grass between your toes or the wind fluttering your hair. Too long since you had seen the sun.

Your skin had once held a rosy glow but now was reduced to a sickly shade. This seemed supremely ironic as being locked away underground was supposed to prevent the grime and grit that the world above offered. But like a child picking up a dirty lollipop of the street, some things couldn't be prevented by you alone. Not that you would scream. No one would hear you, and at this point, you wondered if anyone good was even looking.

Your mother never exactly revealed why you weren’t allowed to meet her side of the family (totally understandable in retrospect), and your dad had been remarried after your mother’s death. Now all of that growing apart and not calling much was going to get you killed.

But even if your life had been truly unfair in many respects, there were a lot of good things going on. You were in your second year of college, part of your college’s cheer squad, famous for performing at the UA sports festival, and had lots of friends.

This was not the slightest bit fair.

The slightest uncareful sound from your lips could cause these monsters to descend again, but not for any rational sort of torture. These masked creatures with false beaks were a special sort of savage. Clean wasn’t good enough for the plague doctors.

You needed to be spotless. Pure.

Ever since they had invaded the safety of your home, kidnapping you, all they murmured about was making you pure enough.

You hated that word.

You weren’t sure what the correct definition of Pure meant, but you soon got a dark idea of what it entailed.

Stolen, you had imagined many horrors. Human trafficking was not common in Japan, but it did happen. Girl shackled to beds, placed on drugs so they could neither escape mentally or physically. The plush doctor’s office didn't entirely fulfill that morbid fantasy. And upon waking, it took hours to connect the dots. Not until the female doctor with a large wart on her cheek gave you the worst surprise appointment of your life, did you fully realize how twisted the situation was. You didn't speak, trying to pick up on any fragment of conversation.

But all you heard were mutters of Overhaul, requests, Hassaikai, and those meant nothing to you.

Strapped up by one of the ‘expendables’ as they called themselves, you were subjected to several cosmetic procedures, some dangerous, teetering between being vaguely awake and unconscious. You finally break, begging for an explanation, and receive none, just a gag accompanied by a breathing mask. The woman examined you from head to toe, removing moles, and just so much touching. Lasik, teeth whitening, minor surgery, freckle removal, chemical peels, and microdermabrasion. She probably had some sort of medical quirk, because you should not have been able to do so much so quickly. Any hair specifically not on your head was lasered off, and your skin scrubbed and polished with creams that removed any hint of spots or blemishes.

The last memory in that awful office was of a large needle, and finally, through the cloth in your mouth, did you screech.

You awoke out of the drugged stupor with breathing mask strapped on you. No longer strapped down you quickly sat up, but didn't tear it off. You could feel the heaviness in your chest, and waited a long while, trying to take in your surroundings before doing anything rash. Your mother, long paranoid of some monster sweeping you away, had taught you to remain calm in an emergency. The long white dress you are in is light, and cool air pierces it easily from the air conditioning in the ceiling. The bed is screwed to the ground, and so you can't even adjust it away from the airflow.

The whitewashed room was small, featureless save for a large TV embedded behind glass in the far wall. The bare outline of a door was next to it, and it looked so much like a mental ward that panic did fill you. What had happened? Surely you had never done anything to warrant this! You tried to think of what had happened... Your last memory wasn't so clear, just you sitting at the dorm room kitchen counter, eating cereal. There was a knock on the door, strange as most people are on spring break. Perhaps a roommate got locked out? You opened the door, and then it was nothing... just black.

Clarity and an explanation don't come quickly.

Your only link to the outside world is the instructions that occasionally flash on the TV.

EAT. Meals appear on cue, painfully scanty and light.

SLEEP. The bare light on the ceiling goes out.

EXERCISE. You are not a lazy person. You had been on the Mustafar University Cheer team, taking tumbles, dancing and flirting riotously at events. But they don't care about your muscles and refusals. They want you thin, not fit. With a diet that rivaled celebrities and daily exercise routines, your body became slender and lean.

The day SHOWER appeared on the screen, you were perplexed. They had left you to sit in your filth and sweat for days, so the change in routine was sharp.

You didn’t have a shower in the room, and so the moment the door opened you got a real look at the monsters who moonlighted your nightmares.

It's another woman, with ugly, bulbous eyes and arms that twisted into tentacles as the elbow. Someone who would be bullied. Some quirks were worse than none. An ugly retort was on your tongue but as she lumbered forward, something black and viscous dripping from her body, you zipped your lips shut. A large, bird mask lay on her features, the beak twisted and unfriendly, like a toucan with a disease.

Down flat empty halls with no windows, she led you to a bathroom contained the most high-powered torture device spray possible. Brutal water pressure and you discovered one of the guards was female, as she was the one who forced you in, sprayed you down, and stuck soap all over you, all while telling you how fortunate you were. Apparently, your mother happened to be the second child of a prominent mobster, and the current head was looking for someone in the family to marry and continue the bloodline. You earned a slap when you suggested that your dog was still single. She told you since you were quirkless, you might as well be a dog.

You didn’t know how much more you could take. Any more showers and ritualistic cleanings by people with gruesome quirks who refused to look at you for long, only scrubbing when you have been insufficiently rubbed raw.

The smell of disinfectant and whatever was in the awful shampoo was all you smelled anymore, and they used something similar for laundry, done daily, if not more often. Was there a thing as too clean? You had never been dirty but this was an obsession. They were a cult of cleaning fanatics, and your body was their fixation. The mere white dress was your only article of clothing.

Even if you still had the strength to fight, the red reminder on your skin still stung from the decontamination chamber (what as you had named it). The tips of your fingers were still shriveled and pruned from grabbing the bottom of the shower. There was no more fight on you tonight, just the little desire to sleep.

Which is why you almost broke into sobs when the door opened again. She was back.

“The boss is coming tonight for final evaluation. We need to finish making you presentable.”

“How thoughtful.”

“Watch your mouth. Overhaul has little patience, and even if you share blood with the old boss, he will finish you himself.” She didn’t slap you. Instead, she just gazed at you with dark, hateful eyes.

“Is that his name then? Overhaul?” This earned a smack.

“You will treat Master Overhaul as a god. For all intents and purposes, he is one.” She carefully wrapped you in one of her clean tentacles. You didn’t get the heavy bath treatment, and you realized that she was being unusually considerate as she ushered your down endless long hallways. At the end of one, she opened a door and your eyes widened.

Did it look like... a beauty parlor? In a mafia hideout?

Not totally new, but spotless, and utterly white like everything else. There was a nervous-looking woman there to transform you was in all white as well. You looked at her, and she turned away, unable to look you in the eye. You turned to a mirror and didn't question why.

“Make her pretty. Try not to use much makeup. The boss has no patience for unclean things, so nothing with a heavy scent either.”

The technician went to work. There was the first hint of color as she opened her bag, glorious colors of tan, orange, brown and off white. The fierce smell of a beauty salon escaped and for a moment you were outside again. It made the next bit bearable, the part where she painted you, fixed your hair, and made your look alive. Unwilling to drag the terrified looking technician further into the delusion, you didn’t fight her.

As she finished curling your hair, you glanced at the mirror, to see how she had done. What you had seen in the mirror for twenty years was gone, replaced by an almost photoshopped version of you. Real people didn’t look so strange. It wasn’t you.

A huge wave of nostalgia and misery hit you, bringing tears to your eyes. You desperately wanted your couch, sitting and watching some reruns of CSI or something normal. You just wanted to be normal again, eat ramen and wear your hair in a ponytail and enjoy the sun. Now pretty, clean and polished, you were given another white dress, this one much more fitted than the smock you had been in. Forced into the snug creation you were dragged to the last room.

You weren’t this woman in the mirror. You didn’t diet to be this thin or have hair this color or have eyelashes this long. This was a lie. And after the tears subsided, your only slim comfort was that it would be over soon. It was coming, the moment you couldn't do it anymore.

Mob blood withstanding, you were a bit mouthy, and that never boded well for you around people who had large egos. You had already lost several jobs and were barely funding your college tenure with your latest one at a bookstore. Well... had. It was just so unfair.

A bitter thought kept coming to you, over and over.

Where were the heroes?

The tentacle around you tightened.

“Don’t cry. I’ll get angry if you mess it up.” You sniffed, anger coursing through you. Who did these people think they were? If you were going down, you decided that they were all coming with you.

The end of the line was one last room, generously sized, but filled. Rushed in by the tentacle woman, you still had time to see the final set-up. There were several other women here, all dressed the same as you. Each with their own handlers, each looking upset and panicked as the situation rightfully called for, each sitting tied to a chair, hands tied behind them. They looked to you, eyes wide and fearful, and you gazed back, understanding and upset.

You were led to the end, the last seat available, and forced into the same position. And then the entire group waited, and not a single soul uttered a word. Their handlers had beaten obedience into them. Well, for the moment.

The slowly growing dread that was starting to eat away at your nerves, and it was only a matter of time. Someone finally broke down, the girl with pink hair at the other end, a sob erupting. It was followed by a hard slap, and the sounds of a rag being stuffed in her mouth. She choked on the vile cloth, but finally managed to calm down, her 'handler' swearing viciously at the mess.

Ten minutes passed.

Twenty minutes. Two more girls broke. They both received a rag in their mouths.

Thirty minutes.

Fourt-

The door opened.

In a world rife with quirks that deform and mutate it isn’t unusual to see people who are suffering from the backlash of horrendous deformation and downright disability. It was almost as common as not for someone to be born with pink or green hair, then just brown or blonde. You hadn't given much thought to who are the monsters behind this desecration of women is, but you are sure he is no catch. How could someone who is so merciless to a potential wife be anything but ugly?

The other girls are curious as well, and you see eyes struggling to stay down. But caution is hardly going to help at this point, so you glance up. And before your head is shoved down, into your knees, you catch a glimpse of a pale face, delicate shaped, and exquisite amber eyes pointed away in disgust. Your chest feels an uncomfortable weight as you realize that not only ugly men are monsters. Even handsome men with glossy, golden eyes can be them, and the color sticks in your eyes, burning them. It’s not even an uncommon color, yet paired with black lashes and a narrowed expression, they appeared to be glowing. All of this is topped off with a bird mask.

No, you tell yourself, this must be the son of the man.

After a moment your thoughts return, enough to hear the sound of the man's measured steps, hurried and impatient. They come near, examining each downturned head, and you wonder if he can even see your faces. You can only see the faint image of your plucked face in his shiny leather shoes that appear in your downturned vision. You faintly register a second pair of shoes that follow, light as a child, but don’t see anyone.

“Repulsive. They’re all filthy.” He says, and you realized that this is the boss. There's no mistaking it. This was the guy with the phobia. It shocks you, as mob bosses were never this young, handsome or disgusting... right?

You don’t know his age, but his voice can’t be over thirty. It's something from a well to do accountant, not firm and deep like an evil All Might, but almost cracking and boyish. But such a mild voice wasn’t running off numbers. Just contemplating just how unworthy you all were. Obviously, the group hasn’t made a good showing. You can’t bring yourself to care anymore. All rational emotion has left you discontent, and needing a drink of water.

A high voice answers the boss, some lacky, probably with a crap quirk.

“These are the best we could find. Each is from an aligned mafia family, and most are quirkless. If not, well, that’s always fixable.”

One of the girls sobs through the napkin in her mouth, and you can imagine the anger in his glowing topaz eyes.

“You think any of these creatures are worthy of being next to me. Look at them. They are shaking. A disobedient woman is just as bad as a being unclean.” The boss says flatly. "Where's Chronostasis-"

A monster with a cleaning disorder, and a bigot. He's talking like it's your fault, that you were here by choice, and your chest fills with a disdainful, mocking swearword. Unable to contain your utter vitriol as the absurd conversation, you wheeze out a laugh. Well, at least it wasn’t the swearword, you think fatefully.

The room goes deathly quiet.

The other women are quiet, knowing you have just signed your death warrant, the first of the day. The leather shoes had retreated out of sight, but the sound of them returning is ominous. Not only that but the hand on the back of your head has twisted you forward painfully. She's very upset, you guess. The position is bad, and your lungs struggle to function properly. Tears pool in your eyes, and the makeup in coming off. Your hands strain, trying to escape the bounds. Your accompanying cough does nothing to improve your case. If there was ever a sign of uncleanliness, you’ve displayed it. Perhaps all those freezing cold showers had, ironically, gotten you sick.

One moment you are coughing to death, the next you are on the ground, the chair under you cracking into a million pieces. The surprise takes the air out of your lungs, and you manage to stop coughing. Your hands are freed, though still tied together, and wood in poking your back. Your dress rides up dangerously to your thighs.

None of this matters as much as the hands that are firmly around your throat. Small ones. For on top of you is what looks like a stuffed puppet come to life, a bird mask attached to his front. The top of the beak is dangerously positioned over your throat, weirdly strong for being a puppet. You laugh again, hysterical, and he drags your throat up.

“How dare you insult Overhaul!” He says, and you slowly blink the mascara away, senseless.

The puppet turns up, glowering. The tentacle woman is in trouble.

“Who is this creature who you have brought?!?!” The masked woman is pressed against the wall, sweat pooling around her face. Her tentacle hands are gripping the wall. “We instructed you to only bring the best!” His hand is getting tighter, and your already strained breathing is getting even harder.

“She’s the old bosses granddaughter, from his estranged second daughter.” The woman whispers, frightened to death.

There's an audible pause.

“Mimic. Don’t kill her just yet.” The voice of the boss says, breaking the silence. The hand around your throat loosens, just a touch.

“She’s..." The words seem to fail the creature named Mimic. "Her? His granddaughter? The one?”

The handler nodded, and Mimic's hand is suddenly gone from your throat. You breathe in that overly sterile air, unsure of what had just happened. Had you been saved from death? You slowly sit up, coughing violently in your sleeve, and once the attack is over, you look around you.

The other girls and their handlers are gone.

Before you is a pair of black slacks, and you can see the expensive fabric he's wearing, though his ankles are bare between his white shoes and the pants. Your eyes trail up, slowly taking in the man before you, hitting the thick brown belt, hands in white gloves, a green parka with a purple color, until you see a mask that belongs 1656 and resolutely look down. You don't want to see his eyes again.

You have the undivided attention of Overhaul, who is giving you a similar appraisal, taking in the softness of your mouth, a slender tilt of your shoulders, the curve of your waist under the dress.

You wondered if he would lift his foot and crush your skull in himself, or if he saved that sort of thing for his cronies.

A hand reaches out and not aware enough, you don't flinch. The plastic glove encasing his hand brushes your cheek, coming away with black and tan makeup. He brings it up to examine it himself, putting two fingers together to rub the colors together.

"My apologies. I didn't realize that you had come." You aren't sure what to say to such unhinged civility he provided. "It looks as though your stay here has been less than what is demanded."

You aren't looking up, so you don't see that his gaze has turned away from you, twisting to the woman on the wall behind you. You don't even realize it's happened until it's over. One moment the mob boss is standing before you, the next he has moved beside you, hand clutching the handler who had done little to gain your favor. But you don't realize that your silence is enough to sentence her.

You look over just in time to see him holding her.

As his hand squeezes the trainer’s face the woman just... explodes.

Blood, organs, and sick flesh litter the room behind him, and your eyes widen in disbelief and disgust. Red drops hit your white dress and your feet move before you can think. Fear floods you, the ache in your back fades to a thrum as you scramble up, standing next to the door, trying to open it. It is shut like it never was meant to be opened in the first place. You glance back to him as he is straitening his stance, looking furiously animalistic at the mess he has made.

But upon hearing your cry of fear, the sound of your nails against the door he seems to regain sense.

He straightens, walking forward to the door, his one, plastic-covered hand placed on it. He's boxed you in, and you are forced to stare at his mask, refusing to look in his eyes. Never look into the eyes of a wild animal.

"It seems as though you will need some adjustments. Your mother has done you a disfavor." He doesn't explain himself, just raising a bloody hand to raise your chin. You don’t break into tears, just close your jaw so your teeth stop chattering, refusing to look him in his eyes. You can see that perhaps it's not just a mental disorder, as his skin has broken out into hives where the blood has touched, red angry boils that marr his pretty face.

He puts a plastic-encased finger to your lips. Nothing happens.

“Acceptable. If just barely .” It’s a threat and a promise rolled into a proposal you couldn’t refuse.

Read more at https://archiveofourown.org/works/21353212/chapters/50860795

#bnha #bnha fanfiction #fanfiction #overhaul #overhaul x reader #kai #Chisaki #kai chisaki

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questionthebox · 4 years

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It’s almost 1am. I’m super duper high but I’m coming down. In the midst of this high I had a complete nervous breakdown, pacing around my house and this summer heat naked, finally going outside & laying on my patio, thinking about numerous things and not thinking of anything, just feeling trapped in my naked body, amidst the heat.

So these are some of the things I’ve realized or been observing.

1. The insanity of the forced reactionary culture of the United States and how it makes people go insane, or apologize for something like having Breasts, as a feminist I’ve been watching watch mojo lists about celebrities making mistakes and every female is generally judged on behalf of the foolish outrage of the reactionary cultures reaction to her breasts as ridiculous as that sounds, or the females body, or who she sleeps with. Yet the insanity is also due to the access of forced interactions with a reality that’s quite hollow and shallow, it makes sense that a show like the View which I used to watch with my mother back in the 90’s has just morphed into daily shouting matches and over the top behavior.

2. Jim Carey, is a fucking National treasure, he’s essentially an Observer, and he’s gone so deep, he’s most likely completely insane, and perhaps secretly very very dark, Liar Liar is one of my favorite movies because it captures the height of our culture which was the 90’s I think that’s why that recent Chicago Bulls documentary did so well, the 90’s were our golden age, a time of post racism, celebrated multiculturalism and under the Neo Liberals like Clinton & Blair, the world was ran better, with less noise, there was a sense of prosperity and opportunities,

3. If I ever became famous as an artist, when I go on European talk shows, and I’ll say this if you ever travelled, you’d understand how utterly fucking weird and innocent foreign television is, but if I ever went on European talk shows I’m going to deliberately either appear very enigmatic like the vampire estat, or I’m going to be very down to earth yet highly intellectual but insist on talking about my love for bread, and garlic butter,

4. I’ve suffered and been humiliated by my struggles for identity, I’m the evolution of my prior experiences as the clown, and Mime, as a child I would descend into kaufmanesque behavior, completely hijacking the class, once in my 8th grade math class, my behavior as clown completely separated me from the class as my teacher had me move to a individual desk by hers, of which I still continued to entertain and joke,

5. More to the insanity of contemporary culture, does anyone realize how generic culture is, how the figures are generic and based around their looks or dress, or enduring fame, even though they’re Thoroughly mediocre, it’s quite despressing in the sense that people have completely given over their attention and lives to people like Kylie Jenner who’s just a piece of ASS,

6. I remember as a little boy waking up real early on Saturday mornings to watch Johnny Quest & Garfield,

7. I want to do a series of films I’ll call my Sex series, the first idea is to do a gay film, about middle aged men, I want Viggo Moternson and Wilem Dafoe, to play two middle aged lovers, and I want it to be improvised and take place over a session of Sex, focusing my camera on their naked middle aged male bodies as they talk, I want the film to be about what Men essentially feel they always lack. The other ideas deal with a middle aged woman and a younger man, they’ll be more Frank and sexually blunt, in that essentially it’ll be about the pleasure of body parts, I want to do a movie about a young man who seeks to titty fuck an older French woman, who appears to everyone in the neighborhood as some sort of gypsy witch pariah, I want Beatrice Dalle to be the woman, as she has the kind of breasts and enigmatic nature for the part, I’d also like to do a sort of love letter to female beauty with Monica Bellucci, where I’ll star in it personally, and the movie will use her beauty, the making love to her as a tribute to her for being “The Beautiful Woman” and I want Rocco Sifridi to direct me, and consult on the psychology of Sex,

8. My god is it HOT the weather is frankly unbearable, I have to buy an AC, but who wants to spend 300 dollars on a god damn Air Conditioner.

9. The weird thing about our cult is, has anyone ever met a Celebrity? I personally find it odd that despite how saturated we are with them and the storylines of their lives, no one I’ve ever met, has ever met or interacted with them, I don’t personally believe Celebrities exist.

10. I’d love to go on American late night television and just be a complete nihilistic maniac, eventually pulling out a looney tunes like Mallot or anvil and clobbering the host with it.

11. Joaquin phoenix is a national treasure also, I highly recommend that film he made with his wife Rooney Mara, where he plays Jesus, and Rooney plays Mary Magdalene, she plays Mary with such Sensitivity & courage to articulate herself in an abusive male world, it makes me emotional, there’s this scene where Jesus resurrects a man, and it’ll literally scare the shit out of you, it made me cry, Jesus was a great Human, in many ways he was Prometheus, and a proto Communist, but Mary was a great person also in that she had to really carry the material burden of the world something Jesus did not, as he was “divine” therefore crazy and abstract.

12. Depression has become very difficult at this present juncture to the point it frequently has me totally ripped apart, I balance it out with marijuana, the more I write and become a writer, the more the depression grows and i frankly want to kill myself, I don’t kill my self because I’m also a King, and a visual artist.

13. I love being near the Ocean.

#poets on tumblr #writiers on tumblr #poetry #prose writing #my thoughts #thoughts #metaphysics #existential questions

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larkfox · 4 years

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( SAOIRSE RONAN, FEMALE, SHE/HER ) ⌇ have you seen LARKSPUR FOX around icaria? they are the TWENTY-SEVEN year old child of ZELUS. they remind me of HOMEMADE PROTEST SIGNS, SING-SCREAMING ALONG TO THE RADIO, and A HEAVY STACK OF HISTORY BOOKS. They’ve been on the island for 4 years.

Lark comes in two volumes: Loud and VERY LOUD. An intellectually brilliant radical anarchist, she is prone to protesting against Icaria’s government and for a different cause every week. Although she’s certainly spread awareness for some significant issue, not every cause Lark champions is noteworthy… or even logical. Whoever is within her radar will inevitably hear an earful. She’s also a gigantic nerd- particularly history- so she knows a lot of stuff but lacks in common sense.

She has a very weird, codependent friendship with Steffi, whom is probably her best friend at this point because fate keeps shoving them in the same place. They are both very annoying for different reasons, and the two together can get chaotic. Important: Lark likes Steffi more than Steffi likes Lark, but Lark is more fond of people as a whole than Steffi.

You may be thinking: Lisa! Why do you have two bumbling, good-intentioned loud characters that can be irritating to others? Is Lark going to just be Chloe 2: Electric Boogaloo? Fair question. Lark and Chloe are self-aware in completely opposite ways. Chloe would never indulge in this kind of reckless behavior or be anything close to this argumentative. Anyway, I’ve basically written an essay about Lark below, so you can see for yourself.

Further information/bio:

Basics

A PhD candidate in History at Icaria’s University, she is keen on finishing her dissertation soon and trying to get a job at The Icaria Museum. If that doesn’t work, she supposes she will just have to see about becoming a professor or something. She’s so close to finishing, though, it’s palpable.

On the side, she does some copyediting and tutoring because living isn’t cheap. Sometimes she also does some music production, but that’s not a big thing.

Lark is a bit immature, and an absolute disaster at interpersonal relationships. She is heavily opinionated, and rarely keeps anything close to her chest. A gay mess, she didn’t have her first relationship until her early twenties. She has very mixed feelings about her demigod status (and her dad, whom she didn’t meet until he swung by to tell her about the disappearances and urge her to move).

Early Life

Her conception kicked off in a dramatic fashion. Diana Fox was a sixteen year old teenager in Canada when she attended her first protests (various feminist ones, mostly). After one of them, she met up with a strange guy who just seemed to get it (also he seemed to like debating for fun). He (the god Zelus) was definitely too old for her, but she lied about her age, and ended up pregnant after a few trysts. Diana decided to keep the kid, but she most definitely wasn’t ready to be a mother. She named the child Larkspur because she thought it sounded cool, the flowers were pretty, and also she was kind of a punk who got a kick out of her kid being named after something poisonous. And that was about as much contribution as little Larkspur’s parents offered up in terms of upbringing for those early years. Gods weren’t about that sort of child-raising life, and Diana wanted to enjoy what remained of her adolescence.

Cecilia and Dale Fox stepped up, and raised their granddaughter. Larkspur adored her grandparents, even if they did not quite expect to have to raise a baby at their age. They were only in their late forties, but a grandchild to take care of had not exactly been in their plans while they were both still working. Cecilia’s job didn’t pay as well, so she took a few years off to be the primary caretaker for the little girl. When Lark was four, she was able to go to preschool, which helped everyone.

Larkspur frankly thought her name was embarrassing. What kind of mother named her kid after a poisonous plant? She was much happier to go by Lark in school, or even just Fox.

Even though her mother could have cared less about books and learning, Lark took to school rather well. She rarely had to study, and knocked out essays and reports without thinking too hard about it. Marks didn’t mean much to her, but she still skipped grade two. Even after that, she continued to excel in school.

A Turn for the Worse

When Lark was nine, Dale started to get sick, which inspired Diana to head back home. She moved back in, and tried to be more than a parent when it was convenient. Lark didn’t like that very much, so she clung to her grandmother, or shut herself up in her room for a while. The only time that Lark felt really close to her mom was when she took her along to protests.

Lark has absolutely been arrested for protesting before, but it’s never resulted in any real convictions. Her mom is the one who’s actually seen prison time. Lark actually thinks that’s very cool. Diana and Dale did not agree with the coolness level of any criminal activity, but did their best to point the kids (i.e. Diana and Lark) in the right direction.

Zelus

Lark thinks her dad sucks even if he’s supposedly one of the good guys. It doesn’t even matter that Zelus seemed to be the god of nothing good. She didn’t find out who her dad really was until Diana came back home and sat the family down. I will now present you with an excerpt of the conversation:

Diana: So I’m sure that you’re all wondering a few things.

Dale: Yes, I’m always wondering things, Annie.

Diana: About Larkspur’s dad!

Dale: Ohh. Yes, we’ve all been wondering about that.

Lark: I haven’t!

Diana: You haven’t?

Lark: Not really!

Cecilia: Grandpa and I have been wondering. Diana, where were you going with this?

Diana: Oh. Right. So it turns out he’s a god… Here, let me show you…

Lark: Is this a print-out from a Google search?

Cecilia: Her father is Zeus? Like the greek god Zeus?

Diana: No!! Zelus! There’s an entire extra letter in there. He’s like Zeus’ pal. Or at least that’s what I’ve read about on Google.

Lark: So he’s still a greek god. But like a discount greek god. Eh. Zeus is probably just as good of a dad as this one is.

Cecilia: Zelus. Like zealots. Oh. Oh no. Let’s just… Make sure nothing happens with that.

Dale passed away when Lark was twelve, which especially devastated his wife. Cecilia had gone back to work a while back, and she took the opportunity when it came up to transfer into a slightly better paying opportunity in the UK. It helped that she was born there, and still had aunts and cousins around. It was about time to move back. Diana wanted to stay in Calgary, but Lark wanted to go with her grandmother. Making her first mature decision in a long time, Diana conceded, and applied for jobs overseas.

Steffi

Lark had been poor at making friends in Canada, and this did not improve thousands of miles away. The person that she got on best with was Steffi, a recent transplant from Germany that did not seem to be fitting in well either. Since Steffi did not seem to have any friends either, Lark latched on immediately. The mean comments didn’t exactly phase her (especially because the older girl didn’t seem to outright hate the idea of being friends).

Her friendship with Steffi is… weird. Here are some helpful references: the entire main character group from Friends as two people. All of the characters from Derry Girls (including side characters) as two people. Rosie and Tanya from the MMCU (Mamma Mia Cinematic Universe). The Odd Couple. You get the picture.

Anyway, while they were very good friends, it still did not come up in conversation where they both settled on schools until acceptance time came. Heidelberg University’s History program was amazing, and Lark couldn’t turn down how reasonably priced German schools were. She casually-but-not-casually suggested that she and Steffi room together, and was pleasantly surprised to start the next year with a roommate that wanted to be friends.

After graduation, Lark and Steffi went to separate universities for graduate school, and conversation was not quite as frequent as Lark would have liked. She did start to make more like-minded friends in her Musicology masters program. The professors seemed not to hate her either; she was “a pleasure to have in class” but not the student with the highest grades. Oddly enough, she and Steffi just kept running into each other without planning on trips and the like.

Poorly thought through things that Lark has suggested to Steffi (list is not exhaustive):

Protesting for squirrel rights on their university campus at 2 AM (nobody else agreed to join her)

That they should have split custody of a shiny beetle that Lark found on the ground. She stopped trying to persuade her friend after the beetle started flying around the room

Marriage pact if they are both still single by age 42

Reenacting various historical scenes while sober

Road trip across Europe on a beercycle (with only two people)

It had never seemed like a good idea to mention her demigod status until Lark and Steffi bumped into each other… on Icaria. Overjoyed to have her friend back, Lark suggested rooming together again, but this was unfortunately shot down. She still spends quite a lot of time at Steffi’s apartment and vice-versa.

Powers

Power-wise, she has some control over the human voice, which she finds easiest to use for controlling the volume of her own voice. Lark can’t change the concepts of the sound, but she can alter the volume or “throw” the sound so it comes like it originates somewhere else. If Lark were actually interested in starting a cult or being a politician or something, she could use her superior control over the voice to make herself heard without distortion, and deafen the voices of those that opposed her. A loud enough voice could even cause real damage. Fortunately(?), Lark has little interest in all of that, and isn’t especially charismatic to begin with. She only really uses it to force people to listen to her when she’s trying to tell people something deemed important. Or to secretly help shy friends that don’t know how to project. Or to make annoying mansplainers stop talking over her. Or to make Steffi go shhh when she shows up in her apartment in the morning

#icaria: intro #//this is grotesquely long i'm sorry #lemme know if you want highlights

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arecomicsevengood · 4 years

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Movies Watched During Self-Isolation, Part One: Mostly Just Paul Schrader Stuff

I’ve been watching movies during this period of not leaving the house, which goes back a bit further than just when we are all told to stop leaving the house. The streaming services I have access to at the moment are just Kanopy and The Criterion Channel, so I have been watching different things than people who have Netflix or Hulu have been, most likely. These things are generally older, and possess a different set of aesthetic values than things seem to in our era of codified genres and niche marketing. Even the things I end up not being particularly into feel refreshing, in aggregate. There is a real sense of “they don’t make movies like this anymore!” which means, in a lot of ways, movies that seem keyed into being movies, that seem to understand the role of actors as charismatic, mysterious, or sexy, that then dictates the stories that get told. Let me break it down into some specifics, which will then function as recommendations.

The Comfort Of Strangers, 1990, dir. Paul Schrader. One thing I’ve been watching is a lot of Paul Schrader movies. This one comes from the era of the “erotic thriller” and was maybe marketed as such, but it feels like a post-Peter-Greenaway thing, maybe because of the presence of Helen Mirren. Mirren plays one half of weird and creepy older couple with Christopher Walken. Walken’s voice opens the movie with a disembodied narration that sets a tone of creepiness right from the jump, but the disembodied nature of it, heard as the camera roams through a residence, also recalls Last Year At Marienbad. The movie is largely about a younger couple, played by Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson, who are vacationing in Venice, and end up being stalked and sort of seduced by Walken and Mirren. The lens of sexuality is a huge part of this movie, but it’s this sort of mysterious force, like the gaze of the camera is itself a malevolent thing, because whoever’s behind it can be an uncaring pervert. Movies’ particular relationship to sex, and sex’s example of a compulsive behavior with capability of destruction, feels like it plays a large role in a bunch of the Paul Schrader movies I watched. I often chose to watch them because of this, their understanding of compulsion made them compulsively watchable, which I appreciated when I felt distracted or inattentive.

In The Cut, 2003, dir. Jane Campion. This has a similar thing going for it. In many of the film’s earliest shots, the camera follows the lead (Meg Ryan) from a distance, with bodies we don’t see the entirety of in the foreground, giving the impression she’s being stalked or in imminent danger, although mostly she isn’t. She plays a writing teacher who lives in an apartment where the head of a murder victim is found in the garden. Mark Ruffalo plays a detective investigating, they end up fucking, even as she becomes paranoid about all the men around her, especially after her sister (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) is also killed. The interest in this lies in the fact that it’s directed by a woman and has both an oppositional relationship to the male gaze and an interest in depicting female desire. It feels pretty sordid and a little rushed at the end. However, the ending seems rushed because the person that ends up being the killer is a person Meg Ryan’s character had no romantic or sexual interest in, and so largely ignored or didn’t think about. It’s not a bad movie but to whatever extent a movie stands on the strength of how interesting its actors are, this one doesn’t deliver. There’s a cameo by Patrice O’Neal though, as like the gay doorman at a stripclub Jennifer Jason Leigh lives above? If I understood correctly.

Patty Hearst, 1988, dir. Paul Schrader. This one’s really interesting, and I’ve kept thinking about it for a number of reasons. One is the interest of the Patty Hearst story itself, which I guess I hadn’t heard the entirety of or thought much about. For one thing, I don’t think I really understood the concept that she was brainwashed or had stockholm syndrome? Which is one of the things that makes the movie good, or what makes Natasha Richardson, playing Patty Hearst, so amazing to watch: She’s really compelling playing someone who has no idea why they’re doing what they’re doing at any given moment, because when you’re brainwashed, you don’t know you’re brainwashed, which is both perfectly obvious to me thinking about now, but that I also need to remind myself of when I think about MSNBC viewers positive feelings towards Joe Biden, for instance. The movie begins with her sudden kidnapping. There are shots that show her, in flashbacks to her life before that point, in a blindfold, that I wasn’t too into when I thought they were going to be sort of the entirety of the movie, but is I guess just intended as a visual metaphor for this sort of trauma as a deconditioning thing that removes whatever sense of a historical self she would’ve previously had. I also didn’t realize the Symbionese Liberation Army was basically just a sex cult with very few members, that robbed banks essentially just to fund themselves. Ving Rhames plays the leader of a group otherwise made up of a bunch of neurotic and ineffective white people. A lot of stuff happens, it’s all pretty interesting, and it doesn’t feel anything like a biopic, it always feels like a story is being told, but it’s always destabilized, and always heading towards doom. After arrest, Patty Hearst’s lawyer makes the argument that, even though she’s clearly brainwashed and undergone great trauma, and that is why she joined in bank robberies and the spouting of revolutionary rhetoric, it will be impossible for her to get a fair trial making that argument as so many parents felt their children went away to college in the 1960s and came back brainwashed as different people, though they did it of their own free will.

Hardcore, 1979, dir. Paul Schrader. This one’s about George C. Scott as midwesterner whose daughter gets kidnapped on a Church trip to California and ends up in porno. I guess has some parallels with Patty Hearst in terms of preying on parental fears, but also has this sort of sordid exploitation-y vibe in its basic summary. Peter Boyle plays a private detective whose debauched nature really bothers George C. Scott, whose beliefs the film takes pretty seriously. The end of the movie revelation that the daughter basically did run away and hates her dad sort of comes from nowhere, but the daughter is largely absent from the entire movie, and the disconnect between her and her father plays out so much from the father’s perspective it’s not really unearned. It also makes sense considered in the context of Patty Hearst, which is both a deepr work, but also a historical one, sort of about the creation of the moment and cultural context in which Hardcore would’ve been made and received. I wish Schrader’s first movie, Blue Collar, was available on a service I had access to.

Auto Focus, 2002, dir. Paul Schrader. This was the first Paul Schrader movie I was aware of, it was sort of critically-acclaimed. I avoided it because it seemed somewhat exploitative and grossly voyeuristic, being about Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane, here played by Greg Kinnear, and his interest in filming himself having sex with random women lured in by his celebrity. The film is characterized by a certain glib irony, but it’s also defined by the presence of Willem Dafoe, who’s great in it, as a completely loathsome person, taking advantage of Bob Crane’s celebrity to participate in the sex he otherwise would not have access to, and hastening his downfall by transforming him into a totally debauched sex addict, before finally killing him. The contrast between Bob Crane’s wholesome exterior and his descent into depravity is mirrored by a contrast between the the sort of jokey mockery of that contrast and a lived-in sense of squalor in the depiction of two men in a basement jerking off as they watch porn together.

Light Sleeper, 1992, Paul Schrader. Dafoe stars in this one, alongside Susan Sarandon, much hated by some for her adamant refusal to support Hillary Cilnton. This makes Sarandon admirable to me, but I don’t know how much I’ve seen her in. She’s in Louis Malle’s Atlantic City, also on the Criterion Channel, a movie I thought was great when I saw it but have forgotten almost everything about in the years since. Dafoe plays a mid-level drug dealer, who’s been off drugs for a few years, and Sarandon is his higher-level contact, who’s looking to get out of selling entirely and enter the cosmetics business. Dana Delaney plays Dafoe’s ex-wife, from his addict days, back in town because her mother is dying in the hospital. The compulsion towards sex that’s present in a bunch of other Schrader movies is replaced here with drug addiction as this force to fight against, or exist in tension with, and also love, which is very present in this movie and very tender. The movie also boasts early-career cameos by Sam Rockwell and David Spade, and the great Jane Adams plays Dana Delaney’s sister. Delaney’s character ends up relapsing and dying, probably due to the shock of her mother’s death, probably not helped by the unplanned reminder of DaFoe’s character. It seems very rare for a movie to have roles as strong for women as this movie does. Even the psychic who Dafoe sees in two scenes, played by Mary Beth Hurt, who I don’t know from anything else, is great.

La Truite, 1982, dir. Joseph Losey. A friend of mine highly recommended Joseph Losey’s film Mr. Klein, but that one’s hard to track down. This stars a young Isabelle Huppert as a young woman who gets flown out to Japan by a rich businessman. He doesn’t have sex with her, just sort of enjoys the money being lavished on her, but her husband, who she also does not seem to have sex with, gets pretty pissed about it.

Eva, 1962, dir. Joseph Losey. This is a really similar movie from Joseph Losey in a lot of ways. It stars Jeanne Moreau, who also has a smaller part in La Truite, and it’s also about a woman whose whole deal is getting money from rich dudes and not having sex with them. In La Truite, Huppert’s life gets kind of ruined, in this movie, Moreau does the ruining, of an author/hack who is married to an actress from one of his work’s movie adaptations who doesn’t know what the he confesses to Moreau, which is that he stole the book from his dead brother and didn’t write a word of it. I wasn’t that into either of these movies but I feel like the sort of archetype, of like a young beautiful woman who doesn’t want sex and sort of just busts men’s balls “works” in a film, how film’s objective or ambivalent view makes their motivations opaque in a way that allows them to be compelling to male and female audiences alike, if for different reasons. Vera Chytilova’s Daisies plays on this sort of youthful feminine brattiness too, to a more anarchic effect. None of these characters have as much depth as Patty Hearst or any of the women in Light Sleeper but they nonetheless suggest the possession of such, kept far away from the camera’s eye.

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thesffcorner · 5 years

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Lock Every Door

Lock Every Door is an adult thriller written by Riley Sager. It follows Jules a young woman, down on life and strapped for cash, who replies to a house sitting ad. The ad is for an apartment at the Bartholemew, an old, legendary building in Central Park West, and the pay is exorbitant, almost too good to be true. The job does come with a catch; a list of rules like no visitors, no spending the night out of the apartment, and no speaking to the tenants, which Jules dismisses as just unusual. But when another house sitter she befriends disappears she realizes things really might not be as first advertised. I haven’t read the first two books by Sager, because their plot didn’t interest me, though now having read this one I think I might give Last Time I Lied a Shot. This was an excellent, modern gothic thriller, and if the premise sounds at all interesting I suggest you just read it, instead of reading this review. It’s a page turner that I read in a day, and it’s well worth experiencing with as little knowledge as possible. That said, I want to mention some of the highlights. The first thing that most people have noted about the book is its atmosphere. This is a creepy, unsettling book, and if you live alone, or in an apartment building where you don’t know the tennants well, you might find yourself double checking the doors and windows. Sager does an excellent job at crafting this tone on uncertainty; we don’t know if the sounds Jules hears are real or just anxiety over a new place, we don’t know if there is a supernatural force haunting the Bartholomew or a series of unexplained coincidences. The Bartholemew is an old building, and it comes with an ugly past, as well as all the trappings of an old house; creaking floors, gaudy wallpapers, an ancient elevator and dark corridors. When I say gothic I truly mean it; the Bartholemew is a character on its own, and the oppressive, never outright hostile, but just creepy enough atmosphere that permeates it is reminiscent of the best moments in Fall of the House of Usher or Turn of the Screw. Like does examples, the supernatural is a constant, lingering threat. As stated, the building has a dark past, that involves murder, suicide, a cult and the Spanish flu. For a lot of its proceedings neither we nor Jules know if what is happening is real or she’s just imagining it. I myself was guessing constantly what might have been happening, and Sager throws in a lot of subtle twists that might throw you off or lead you in the wrong direction. The other gothic element was the class struggle, and this was what drew me in the most. I have noticed a trend in recent thrillers which is this focus on the upper classes, and exploring the horrible things that occur behind closed doors, beneath this veneer of prestige and wealth. This book does this in a way, but it firmly places its sympathies with the people who get to be trampled by the system that the wealth benefit from. Jules is poor; not only is she in a difficult financial situation after having several bad strokes of luck hit her one after another, but she has had a lower class upbringing and bad luck and the cusp of poverty follow her. I read a twitter thread from someone who commented that there is no cap on the amount of awful things that can happen in your lifetime and Jules is a well written example of that. I loved all the commentary on poverty, and living paycheck to paycheck. Sager really understands the struggle and why it’s so difficult and sometimes impossible to get out of that cycle. He understands and presents both the shame and guilt of being in that situation, the impotent anger of never being able to escape it and the judgement from others who have no idea what your situation or circumstances are but feel compelled to comment on it anyway. I loved so much on the commentary of class both on the micro level of Jules’ own feelings as well as the systematic way society keeps people in a constant struggle for survival. Speaking of Jules, she was by far my favorite protagonist I’ve read in a thriller. There was a lot of humanity to her and I rooted for her the whole time. I’m kind of sick of unlikable characters in thrillers; I want to want the character to survive and make it through and I wanted Jules to make it through. She was driven, resourceful, and flawed; she deffinitely made some dumb decisions out of panic or ignorance. But she was determined to find the truth and find her friend, and when she learned she was in danger she didn’t hesitate to leave. She also does the smart thing and calls the police right away; it doesn’t work, but man was it refreshing to see a character actually try it. I did have some issues in this book, and they were twofold; the first one is more of a minor gripe and the second one involves some spoilers. Let’s get the gripe out of the way first. Call me petty or too pedantic when it comes to men writing female characters, but I genuinely can’t stand when they have to bring in a woman’s sexuality or sexual history for no reason. While Jules is not a virgin, she is very virginal and Sager feels the need to call it out multiple times for no goddamn reason. She’s only slept with 3 guys and she feels GUILTY because her parents apparently have never even so much as looked at someone else. Why did we need to know this? Then after she has a sexual encounter with another character, we have to spend multiple pages on her excusing how it was the adrenaline, how she never does anything like this, how she was possessed by someone else to sleep with a hot guy she likes, how she’s just so plain that this would never happen, how she’s never done a walk of shame (??) It’s unnecessary and completely irrelevant to her character or the plot. Why couldn’t she just want to sleep with this man instead of having this weird focus on assuring us she’s in fact a ‘good, God honoring lady’, as if we couldn’t possibly find a woman who wants to have an active sex life as likable. The second thing is the reason this book is a 4, not 5 stars and it involves SPOILERS. Skip to the last paragraph if you don’t want to know. There are 2 twists in this book that have to do with what is actually happening at the Bartholemew. The first one involves a cult and it’s a red herring; the cult isn’t actually what’s happening, which is kind of a relief because I feel like that would have been a dumb call. The actual reason why the Bartholomew exists is because it’s a front for an organ harvesting operation that has been active since the 40’s. This on it’s own was a good reveal; what wasn’t was Nick having not 1 but 2 villain monologues in which he at length explains to Jules the entire history of the building, his family and why he does what he does. I am not kidding when I say his monologue would make a Bond villain cringe. Maybe Sager has never met a millionaire, but they don’t go around telling you they hate the lower classes and want to use their organs; there’s a lot more subtlety and coded language there. It reminded me of the villain in S.T.A.G.S. who also had this really dumb and badly written villain speech at the end, but at least his excuse was that he was 18. This man is in his 30’s. Overall, I think this was a very enjoyable and fast paced book. I did have some problems with the reveals, but overall I had fun, I was hooked and I had a real hard time sleeping after I finished it, which is how you know it had an impact.

goodreads

#lock every door #book review #moni talks

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art-saga-blog · 5 years

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Hung Tung-Lu; Y2K Cult Icon

Hung Tung-Lu

Hung Tung-Lu is a Taiwanese artist with a great vision and great use of his talent to create art that meshed well with the era of which he was apart of. What I want to write most about in terms of Hung is that he focuses on pop culture icons, digital avatars, and themes of religion mixed with science. This seems to be a lot, but ultimately it’s about explaining how progressive his thought process was, and how despite his invisibility, this is how he became a cult icon of the Y2K era of art and design.

The very roots of Hung’s ethos is rooted in his desire to manifest “new”. He is working in an era where everything is rapidly changing, specifically young Taiwanese people are being able to interact with the world at large via the consumerism facilitated by Taiwan’s industrialization and globalization. Therefore, Japanese media experiences an influx, the internet takes off and changes the face of human interaction and sense of identity, and also the new kids are shopping with the desire of reaching some sort of emotional nirvana within themselves. This is all immediately evident in his work.

I would like to further say that beyond this representation in his work, one pretty prominent element of Hung’s work or aesthetic is how it further reflects this attitude of progressivism. He graduated in 1999 with degrees in painting and the plastic arts. Thus, much of his work is in bronze, porcelain, ceramic sculpture. However, in reference to the zeitgeist of which he lived, he pushed beyond the barriers of painting and sculpture and also worked in photography, produced lenticular or chromogenic prints, and his sculptures became 3D, digital “renders” instead, with his most prominent character, his avatar Xiao Hung, occupying both a more traditional sculptural form and also a digital avatar form as well.

Na-Cha (2003)

The Birth of Xiao Hung (2002-2006)

I believe that his original characters such as Xiao Hung, his interpretation of Asura (an Indian deity in constant battle with supernatural forces), and his little girl androids, are the most compelling element of his work beyond his representation of the female anime characters he also features, such as Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion. They possess very detailed and well-fleshed out stories, especially when it comes to Xiao Hung. Xiao Hung is commonly believed to be a little girl, but as the artist explained, Xiao is “a virtual neutral character, no gender, and no age. I was not a child.” (Meng Mengzhen) This character is undoubtedly a reference to Hung’s own desire to manifest the new in a different form, which is why they share the same family name of “Hung”. Xiao is a genetically engineered clone who also has become an alien bounty hunter and a young god. To me, the character is also a more abstracted Hung Tung-Lu, as already established by the artist himself.

More specifically, it is known that Hung Tung-Lu is a true internationalist. He is someone who has moved around a lot and worked in different cities and countries, and has also been personally exposed to international tragedies, such as 9/11. Therefore, Xiao Hung and even Asura’s adventures through space and New York and their violent confrontation with invaders or aliens could be considered more fantastical retellings of Hung Tung-Lu’s own life experiences. Further, Xiao being a clone that has been destroyed but also reborn many, many of times with many iterations of herself taking on new identities and purposes, she can be a representation of the Taiwanese Youth’s regular transformation via consumerism. Further, her physically reaching nirvana with her body occupying and spawning divine elements, she can also be a metaphor for this nirvana-like state achieved via the obtainment of a consumer object. Also, of course, she is Hung Tung-Lu’s new persona, who is more reflective of the state of popular iconography of the time (Asian, anime girls).

Ayanami Rei (1999)

Cyber Murder 1 (2002-2006)

Bounty Hunter No. 1 (2002-2006)

Svara (2002)

Here... (2002)

I would say that, ultimately, there are many layers to the ethos and aesthetic of mixed media artist Hung Tung-Lu. His work is riddled with progressions in the forms of art he studied, with painting becoming photography and prints, sculpture becoming digital renders, and also his work riddled with metaphors laced with detailed narratives. I believe that he might be one of the artists that best manifested the zeitgeist in which he worked within. Consumerism, the Internet, and their effects on the contemporary human experience is quite relevant to us all in light of existing in the late-stage capitalism era. Usually hyper-consumerism is represented in purely and obviously negative light, but that is not the case with Hung’s work. He reflects the innermost state or desire of the young consumer, which is their desire to reach an emotional state of euphoria and to live within a utopia that reflects the beauty that anime, video games, and shopping can offer. But that does not mean that there is no conflict. Xiao Hung dies multiple times, and teen girl Asura must fight alien conquerors in New York City. But yet, she fights on roller skates and with a Super Soaker.

Asura - Time Square (2001-2006)

In these kind of moments, I would almost think that perhaps, Hung Tung-Lu is a true artistic genius. To represent so plainly and recognizably the naivete of the consumer who believes that they can fight to survive the obvious dystopia of this world armed with objects of joy and entertainment such as a Super Soaker (a common toy of the 90’s and 2000’s), I can see why, despite his invisibility as an artistic figure, Hung Tung-Lu is a cult icon of the Y2K era of art and design.

I say that Hung is invisible because there are but a few images of him on the Internet, his personal website is not functional (at least not on my computer), and nobody knows where he really resides. He could be in Shanghai, Taipei, or NYC, and we wouldn’t really know because he’s so quiet (with much to do with the oppression of artists in Taiwan). I did manage to find a video of him during a presentation on Absolut Vodka’s relationship with the fine arts since Andy Warhol (Hung Tung-Lu became one of the first Asian artists to collaborate with a popular spirits brand, which is why he was present). But it was a very short glimpse of him. The fact that Hung Tung-Lu is such an enigma, but yet somewhat influential with a legacy of really pushing boundaries, is likely one of the main other reasons why I consider him to be one of my favorite artists.

youtube

Absolut Art Collection (2009)

He and Sonehati, who I will discuss in my last entry, are idols to me because of the fact that they render and I am working very hard to get on their level. And so in seeing their work, such as the many adventures of Xiao Hung, I am greatly motivated by them, and why I chose them as my two last artists to spotlight on my blog. I am hoping that more people can know about them and appreciate them as much as I do in reflecting on their work with great detail.

Android (2008)

Links:

http://www.itpark.com.tw/artist/statement/27/98

https://www.linlingallery.com/eng/artists-d.php?id=18

https://entoolkit.culture.tw/artinfo_107_830.html

https://chiwengallery.com/artists/hung-tung-lu/biography/

https://ravenel.com/cata/lotsIn/1469247d-b7df-4a92-81ef-0fe7767421c8

http://knihomola.blogspot.com/2011/04/absolut-vodka-30.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnvExxRDAp0&t=149s

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undertheinfluencerd · 3 years

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https://ift.tt/3BME7dT #

Many 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way viewers were excited to meet new couple Steven Johnston and Alina, but viewers are quickly turning on Steven. The Mormon man from Utah has already alienated 90 Day Fiancé audiences on the second episode by revealing secrets from his past and his expectations for his and Alina’s future. The Other Way viewers are calling Steven out for his hypocritical behavior and expectations.

Alina was already wary to discover that Steven was Mormon, as she noted Russians consider the religion a cult. However, Steven made it clear to audiences that he expects his Russian partner to both convert to his religion and remain “pure.” This might become complicated when Alina learns of something Steven already told the audience – he isn’t actually a virgin. Alina also shocked fans by revealing Steven wanted to see other women and was talking to many female friends in Utah. Steven further shocked both Alina and viewers by telling her that he got them separate apartments in Turkey, where they are going to get married, because he doesn’t want to be tempted to be intimate before marriage.

Related: 90 Day Fiancé: Charlie & Megan Potthast’s Dating Timeline Alarms Fans

One fan took to the r/90dayfianceuncensored Reddit to call Steven out for his treatment of Alina. “This guy is a trip. He can’t do cohabitation because religion but it’s fine to have casual sex before marriage but not with Alina,” the user wrote. Many viewers were shocked to discover Steven had both been with women before Alina and was now refusing to live with her before marriage. Audiences questioned why another woman would have wanted to be with Steven, as well as why Alina would move to Turkey to marry someone so indecisive and hypocritical. Fans are cautioning the young woman to reconsider her relationship with Steven given the many red flags he is presenting.

Some viewers questioned if Steven was behaving in a way that Alina feared Mormon men would act. “I knew a Mormon guy like him. … Did drugs, drank alcohol, slept with whoever and dated outside his religion. But when asked about marriage? He would only marry a Mormon girl who was a virgin,” one user wrote. Many viewers were angry by the expectations Steven placed on Alina when he didn’t hold himself to the same standards. Steven’s expectations that Alina will convert to his religion have also upset viewers since he doesn’t live by what he preaches. “Religion only when it’s convenient,” another commenter wrote. His actions have caused viewers to immediately reconsider their perceptions of Steven.

Though viewers were excited to get to meet new couples, Steven and Alina have already been compared to other franchise pairs. Some viewers have labeled Steven the new Brandon Gibbs, as Brandon tried to force his Russian wife Julia Trubkina to adapt to a drastically different lifestyle. Unfortunately, viewers are already rooting for Alina to dump Steven. Meanwhile, fellow newcomers Ellie Rose and Victor have also presented a messy relationship that has viewers rooting for American Ellie to dump her Colombian partner. Unfortunately, the new 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way couples might be headed towards drama and break-ups.

Next: 90 Day Fiancé: Couples That Make Fans Believe In True Love

90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on TLC.

Source: u/Mallkno/Reddit

#marvel #avengers #marvelcomics #spiderman #mcu #ironman #comics #captainamerica #thor #avengersendgame #marvelstudios #xmen #dc #marveluniverse #art #cosplay #tomholland #hulk #disney #comicbooks #dccomics #peterparker #tonystark #blackwidow #marvellegends #endgame #deadpool #marvelcinematicuniverse #loki #bhfyp

The post 90 Day Fiancé: Steven Blasted For His Hypocritical Relationship Views appeared first on undertheinfluencerd.net.

#entertainment, screenrant #tumblr #aesthetic #like #love #tumblrgirl #follow #instagram #photography #instagood #likeforlikes #s #likes #art #cute #o #girl #followforfollowback #a #tumblrboy #grunge #fashion #photooftheday #tiktok #l #photo #sad #k #frases #f #bhfyp

#Undertheinfluencerd

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mothermaidenclone-blog · 6 years

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Downsizing or Blame Women For All Your Shortcomings

It's been a day and a half since I saw Downsizing and I’m still not sure what I think about it. The problem was mostly a tonal one, which was partly the fault of the trailer for advertising it as a whimsical comedy, when I’m not sure if Downsizing wants me to be moved by the good that people are capable of or gloomily contemplate the downfall of humanity, or just laugh at a few dick and butt jokes. The messages from the women in this film are just as mixed.

*Downsizing spoilers follow*

Most of the women in Downsizing fall into the reductive and derogatory category of “look at all these women who let Paul (Matt Damon) down even though he’s such a nice guy.” The first woman to be guilty of such a crime is Paul’s unnamed mother (Jayne Houdyshell) who does nothing but complain, and Paul later goes on to imply that the reason he never rose to meteoric heights as a surgeon is that he had to put his own life on hold to care for her in her illness. She promptly dies off screen and is replaced by Paul’s wife, Audrey (Kristen Wiig), who is in the same room of the same house still bemoaning her own pain, whilst Paul does what he can to care for her. Audrey also disappoints Paul by failing to downsize with him, therefore robbing him of his life of luxury, forcing him to live in a humble apartment rather than a mansion and hold down a job in a call centre. She is shown to be greedy and materialistic - she’s the one who wants the big house, Paul just wants to make her happy, and she appears to force a better deal out of the divorce settlement. Furthermore, her decision making is irrational, vain and selfish; it’s having her head shaved that triggers her decision not to downsize and she’s constantly wailing about how everything affects her, showing little consideration for how Paul feels. Therefore, both Paul’s wife and mother seem to merge into one female proxy that symbolises how women keep taking the things he deserves away from him - his career, dream house and life of leisure are all kept from him by these women.

Once he is small, women continue to let Paul down. He attempts to start dating again, and meets single Kristen (Kerri Kenney), a single mother also coping with some of the unforeseen problems of downsizing - such as her son being afraid of his enormous grandparents. Paul willingly subverts her saying that it’s too soon for him to meet her son into Kristen dumping him and storms off, leaving her calling after him in the corridor; in his mind, once again abandoned by a woman. Even when he tries to blow off some steam at a party, Paul is “deceived” by an anonymous woman who offers him drugs, which Paul appears to believe is some sort of unspoken contract for a sexual encounter, but once he has taken the pill she returns to the party, leaving Paul alone and hard done by again.

The only female character with any substance is Ngoc Lan Tran (Hong Chan), a Vietnamese activist who was downsized against her will in a prison which killed her sister before becoming the only survivor of a perilous crossing to America in a television box which cost her one of her legs. Her backstory alone immediately makes her a much more interesting character than Paul, whose only real problem is that he is divorced and not quite as rich as he would like to be. Additionally, she has a personality, which is more than can be said for Paul. Instead of a meek and mild mannered martyr, she is fiery, direct, honest and pragmatic, showing her care for others through useful actions. She is at the utter bottom of the socio-economic chain of the supposedly idyllic Leisureland community, but she never laments her situation, she just does what she can to make it better for those around her, caring for the sick and collecting food for the rest of her community.

Paul is also shown to be a good person, he constantly tends to the injuries of those around him, but these gestures almost seem superimposed onto the film, a big, flashy sign that says, “look at poor Paul, he’s such a nice guy.” If these instances were removed from Downsizing, he’s just a man constantly believing that he’s been short-changed by life, chasing the idea that he deserves better and is meant to be part of something bigger. He also seems to feel the need to bring women with him on these ventures, first (unsuccessfully) talking Audrey into downsizing with him, then attempting to bring Ngoc Lan into a doomsday cult vault with him where they would spend the rest of their lives. Their two responses to this situation sum up the differences in their characters perfectly - Paul wants to go because he believes he is intrinsically important and destined to become a part of something monumental, whereas Ngoc Lan chooses to stay because she knows for a fact that she can still do good to actually help people out in the real world.

The romance between these two characters is completely inexplicable; it comes out of nowhere, neither of them seem to have actually had feelings for each other up to that point, and appears to only serve to give Paul a reason to come out of the vault and back to reality at the end. Friendship and the value of the common sense in Ngoc Lan’s advice to stay and deliver pragmatic aid to people in need could have been enough, but apparently sex had to be the main motivator.

There are a few other named female characters, and women are very present in the background as nurses, administrators, real estate agents and sales representatives. One of the latter is Laura Lonowski (Laura Dern) who we briefly meet in a bath trying to convince people to downsize because they can have lots of diamonds, just like her. Anne-Helene Asbjørnsen (Ingjerd Egeberg) makes several short appearances as the wife of Dr. Jørgen Asbjørnsen (Rolf Lassgård), the scientist who made downsizing possible. In some respects she is a pioneer, as one of the first people ever to downsize, but she is mostly portrayed as a devoted wife, supporting Jørgen in all of his decisions and endeavours, even if they involve starting a doomsday cult. Finally, there is Solveig Edvardsen (Margareta Peterson), a fellow believer in the apocalypse, who seems to exist to emphasise the fanaticism of the Norwegian colony, with her eccentric behaviour and appearance, as well as making Paul (and presumably, the intended audience) uncomfortable with the sexuality of a comfortable older woman, as her talking about mountain Paul as a pony in her dream is one of the moments that Downsizing seems to be reminding us that it’s maybe a comedy.

Overall, the women in Downsizing are mostly used as the root cause of all the shortcomings in the life of one fairly uncharismatic and uninteresting man. Thankfully, Ngoc Lan rises above this as a human being with an actual personality and sense of purpose. She overcomes so much adversity and remains positive without becoming a sappy stereotype of a do-gooder. It’s just a shame to see such a unique female character suffer a fate as old as cinema itself, falling into an unfathomable romance with the main white man, when friendship could have been just as poignant.

And now for some asides:

I really enjoyed how many satisfying levers, dials and switches there were in this film, the fidgeter in me wanted to play with them all.

Umm, excuse me, why was there such an extended colonic irrigation scene? Can we please never do that again?

I think if I was supposed to be sickened by anything in this film it was humanity (maybe?) but really it was the proliferation of McMansions. My eyes!

#downsizing #sci-fi #scifi #science fiction #film review #movie review #feminism #matt damon #Jayne Houdyshell #Kristen Wiig #Kerri Kenney #Hong Chan #Laura Dern #Ingjerd Egeberg #Rolf Lassgård #Margareta Peterson #mothermaidenclone

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depechemodespiritera · 7 years

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Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan is having a wistful moment of gratitude, gazing out the picturesque window of his Beverly Hills hotel room at the sunshine that radiates like a golden blanket over steadily swaying palm trees and dreamy, magazine-ready homes in the hills beyond.

"L.A. has been there for us from day one, really," he says of his band's Angeleno fan base. "We were playing smaller places, but there was a cult aspect to the way people came to our shows and knew our music, before they even knew who the band was."

It's late April, and Gahan and his longtime partner in Depeche, Martin Gore, are doing interviews in their rooms at the Four Seasons as they gear up for a secret fan show at Hollywood Forever Cemetery's Masonic Lodge, a warm-up gig for an international tour in support of their latest album, Spirit. (The band's third member, Andy Fletcher, was not present.) Both speak enthusiastically about their love of L.A. and their fervent fan base here, which helped them sell out a record-breaking four nights at the Hollywood Bowl, something no other group has ever done.

Much has been made of L.A.'s Morrissey obsession, but it could be argued that Depeche Mode, who play those sold-out Bowl shows starting this week, enjoy an even more fanatical following here. There are club nights devoted to them and a popular DM convention held here every year, and the band's hits have never left rotation on L.A. radio, not just KROQ (where they got their first airplay) but mainstream pop stations as well.

Many Angelenos who came of age in the '80s and '90s feel a kinship with Depeche Mode and their songs' themes of sorrow and struggle, shameless romance and eternal outsider-dom. It's the same reason the goth scene is so popular here. Depeche Mode's music speaks to those of us who have always felt that the stereotypical image of sunny SoCal — wherein everyone is blond and beachy — is false and at odds with our true depth and dark proclivities. In an ironic way, dark music like Depeche's connects in L.A. more than anywhere else in the world. And you can dance to it.

Gore's ability to write emotive yet edgy songs with infectious hooks, and Gahan's visceral interpretations of them, have made them one of the most potent pairs in music. Personality-wise they could hardly be more different — Gahan the outgoing, dramatic frontman, Gore the quiet, sensitive songwriter. But they have much in common, too, including an obvious fondness for L.A. Gore lives with his wife and two baby daughters not far away in Santa Barbara. Gahan, who resides in New York, says his 18-year-old daughter, at the time of our interview, was considering attending USC. Still, their connection to L.A. runs even deeper than most people know.

Gore recalls the band being more of an underground phenomenon when they first came to L.A. during the "Just Can't Get Enough" era circa 1982, and how the crowds swelled when they returned around '85. "That was when it blew up," he says. "It seemed like alternative radio had taken hold of the country, but especially here in L.A. ... We went from playing small theaters to big ones, playing to 15,000 people. That was incredible for us at the time."

Gahan has a soft spot for early days, too, recalling the smaller shows when they were unknowns playing the Roxy and the now-shuttered Perkins Palace. He peers intently out his window once again, this time as if he's looking for something. "When I first came here, I was like, 'I wanna live here!'?" he says, pointing at the skyline.

In 1989, Gahan left his first wife and moved in with the band's PR director, Teresa Conroy, whom he later married. His second wife is a big link to Gahan's L.A. story, one that many fans don't know much about. (Full disclosure: I have been friends with Conroy since 2008, after I profiled her in L.A. Weekly's 2008 People issue. Gahan brought her up during our interview unprompted.) What little they do know has, for the most part, been negative, with stories painting her as the scapegoat for Gahan's well-documented drug problems. With our conversation spotlighting L.A. and its influence on the band, the frontman seems eager to set the record straight.

"I fell in love with her during tour," he says. "We just connected and at the end, I told my wife in England I was not coming back. ... I showed up on Teresa's doorstep on Sweetzer and Fountain Avenue with my little suitcase and said, 'Hey!'

"We ended up getting married. We lived near Santa Monica, in Nichols Canyon and Benedict Canyon for a while. We moved around, but what brought that all down for me was I just wanted ..."

He pauses for a long moment. "Substances?" I ask.

"Yes. That's what I liked to do most," he admits, "and it tore us apart, so that was the end of it. I moved to New York around '97 and changed my life. My behavior was not gonna change in L.A.

"Some of what people thought about her might have been my doing, just blabbing my mouth off. I realized after being clean 10 years later, it was like, wow ... at the time, as long as I had what I needed, I didn't give a fuck about anybody else. And I didn't think I was that person, but I was that person."

Gahan, now 55 and married to his third wife for 18 years, has been clean and sober for more than two decades. He looks healthy and trim in a black T-shirt and dark-rimmed glasses, with hints of gray on his chin and temples. But back then, he nearly died a few times from heroin overdoses, once at the Sunset Marquis where the band rented a villa on a frequent basis. Today, however, he seems to associate L.A. and his second marriage not so much with his addiction but with inspiration.

"I haven't talked about it enough, but that time in L.A. was wonderful. The few years I did spend here when we were just hanging out and I didn't work for a couple of years, there were all these great bands playing, like Jane's Addiction, Guns N' Roses. Going to clubs like Cathouse. There was this great music coming out of L.A. There was an energy in some of the new music coming up that I was feeling and seeing here."

Gahan's personal style at the time was influenced by the L.A. rock scene (more tattoos, longer hair, leather), and he sought to steer Depeche's music that way, too. When he went back into the studio to make Songs of Faith and Devotion after 1990's Violator, the career-changing album that included worldwide hits "Personal Jesus," "Policy of Truth" and "Enjoy the Silence," Gahan says, "I was like, 'Guys, we've gotta change it up! This is just too clean, too neat!'?" But Gore and the rest of the band "didn't like at all where I was coming from."

Gore, the band's primary songwriter, was the more provocative dresser in Depeche's early days. He fancied lots of guyliner and became a fan of bondage getups — often purchased, he says, at Trashy Lingerie, not far from the Four Seasons. It gave the band an androgynous edge that "the girls seemed to like," and complemented Gore's sensitive lyrics and rhythm-driven compositions. Depeche were huge after Violator, so it's no surprise that Gore didn't want to change the winning formula, even if music in general was having a heavier moment.

Looking tan and content during our conversation (the bondage attire is long gone, replaced by a fitted black ensemble not unlike Gahan's), Gore, 56, concedes that letting go of creative control has always been something of a challenge. He describes how the early dynamics of the band evolved, putting him "behind the wheel" in terms of writing the songs and shaping the band's sound.

"When we first started we were 18 and 19, and the main driving force behind the band was Vince Clarke. He was the main songwriter, and we were just along for the ride, really," Gore says. "And then he announced to us that he was leaving before the first album was released. So because we were young and didn't really think too much about anything, we just booked some studio time and went in and carried on laying down with a three-piece, as you would at 19 and 20. We never expected it to be a huge commercial success, especially at the time. But then we grew up a little bit."

With Clarke moving on to other projects (notably Yazoo with Alison Moyet and Erasure with Andy Bell), Gore just naturally took the reins, and his talent for songwriting grew as he did. "By the time we got to the third album, we'd traveled the world quite a lot and seen a lot more," he says. "I started to get, not exactly dark by the third album [Construction Time Again], but a little bit more worldly, maybe."

Though Gahan felt like he "wanted to take it to another level," after his time in L.A. in the '90s, he didn't officially contribute to actual Depeche songwriting until 2005's Playing the Angel. It was all Gore until then. Still, the edgier aesthetics and more visceral performance style Gahan honed did steer the band into grittier territory, which fans (particularly female fans) found dramatic and sexy.

Both Gore and Gahan admit their relationship has had its tempestuous and trying moments over the years. But Gore says that after working on their latest, highly political album, Spirit, it's "as good as it's ever been."

For this tour and the Hollywood Bowl shows, Gore promises to take lead vocals on the tender numbers fans have come to expect from him, plus lots of groove-driven guitar work on songs both old and new. Depeche's massive catalog of memorable, emotionally charged music aside, their live show is why they continue to sell out stadiums at this point in their career.

I was lucky enough to attend both a rehearsal at SIR Studios in Hollywood before our interviews and the warm-up "secret" show at Hollywood Forever, and the band are as good as they've ever been onstage. With stellar production (including visuals by famed photographer and video director Anton Corbijn) and support from a solid backing band, Depeche Mode are almost certain to deliver the transcendent experience their fans expect. The Global Spirit Tour is aptly named, and Gore and Gahan hold nothing back, complementing each other in the kind of caustic yet comfortable way that only the most iconic duos do.

"Sometimes a band needs to have a bit of friction. ... The best stuff sometimes comes out of this need to be heard," Gahan explains. "Creatively we're old enough to realize that we respect each other's differences, and we know that we need each other. That's what Depeche Mode is. It's a weirdness between the two of us."

#i love them so much #depeche mode #spirit era #los angeles #hollywood bowl

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oodlyenough · 7 years

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aight i just finished tales from the borderlands, shoutout to @beingfacetious who dealt with me DMing her on twitter every ten seconds

man i loved this game! much more than i expected to. what a blast.

first up i DIED @ rhys looking at that drawing and saying “my forehead’s not that big! ...is it?” asklfhalkwhlawth WHAT KIND OF JEFF WINGER SHOUTOUT??? my fave corporate assholes forced down a redemption arc through the power of friendship

i so desperately wanted an option for fiona to yell down “IT’S NOT SMALL”

totally thought the uncomfortable rhys worship of vaughn’s little cult was going to go somewhere but it... didn’t. oh well.

i’ve said this the whole time but especially by ep 5 like -- lol fiona and rhys’ relationship is such catnip for me, at one point I send catey a message going “THEY’RE BOTH PLAYING BAD COP DESPITE PREVIOUSLY AGREEING OTHERWISE!!! WHY IS THIS SO TAILOR-MADE FOR ME” followed shotly by “I guess because I have literally been writing their relationship half the time, but...”

seriously though: both playing bad cop akslfhlawrasfkhlawr

i spent this whole game like “man i really enjoy their friendship i hope neither did somethign catastrophic to ruin it, hence the present-day falling out” but then it turned out their falling out was over some petty bullshit which in turn only made me love them more, christ

rhys/sasha was predictably my jam as well, lmao i finally got some stats at the end of this ep and i happened to look away during rhys’ (!! lmao of course when it finally works i’m not paying attention) but i saw fiona’s and it was like “you and 91.5% of players shipped rhys and sasha”

i mean fiona being pissy about it was gr8 but like i also play rhys and want to get up in there so

i talked a lot about how much i loved rhys mainly because my love for him surprised me whereas fiona is so obviously a character i would love, but i should state for the record fiona is the bomb. female con artist smartasses w a heart of gold 4 ever.

the loaderbot reveal was interesting, i didn’t spend that much time wondering who the captor was but i did kind of wonder if they were a robot, yet never quite made the loaderbot connection. so that was funny.

the vaughn reveal, i knew it would be vaughn immediately and just found myself irritated by his dramatics lmfao you ass why would you make your friends think you’re gonna murder them before you rescue them

sasha’s death fakeout was really good because I was like “i’m SURE if she died i would’ve seen tumblr rage out over it at some point....... but she sure seems dead....... but this doesn’t seem like that type of game..... but it IS telltale.......” so it kept me in suspense long enough to work while still having me relieved it was a fakeout

the team choosing part was really cool! that’s a neat way to integrate your choices from earlier in the game. despite hating august i had to recruit him because i had no one else left LMAO.

at least the lesbians were on board.

i thought handsome jack worked pretty well as a villain -- i can’t figure out why anyone would’ve trusted him throughout the game (aside from a conscious decision to play rhys as more of an asshole, i guess) but even still he worked; the “oh so is there where you give a speech about how we’re the same” “no you’re way better at killing than me” confrontation w rhys worked better than those scenes often do, since usually the hero and villain are so far apart they make no sense (callout post 4 twdg s2 with carver and clementine) but here it worked

sidenote, why was rhys continually surprised by his robot arm being stronger than his non-robot limbs. this seems like something you would not forget, if you had a robot arm.

way more eye horror in this game than i anticipated honestly

this whole game just culminating in THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP~*~*~ was somehow precisely what my cynical ass needed at this point in time, so that was a welcome discovery

my main complaint would be that the ‘gameplay’ element was pretty light, even by telltale standards. but in ep 5 they at least tried to compensate with the robot transformer fight scene

anyway overall like 9/10, i would’ve liked more scenes where you can wander and explore, or more puzzles to solve. but the characters, story and humour were great, and for a game without any life-or-death choices (mostly) the choice mechanic worked really well.

in true telltale style, i see their answer about season two has basically been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so lmao. i have many complaints about telltale as a company but at the end of the day when they get it right they make some of my fave games sooooooooooo i guess i’ll continue to throw money at them

#tales from the borderlands #vimesbootstheory #beingfacetious #nosleepforthewatcher

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