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dankusner · 2 months ago

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Chloe’s Scene

October 31, 1994

It’s weird, this happens all the time.

Chloe Sevigny is sitting at one of the outdoor tables at Stingy Lulu’s, on St. Mark’s Place just off Avenue A, absorbing a mixed green salad and devouring the just-out September Vogue.

A black girl and an Asian girl huddle anxiously on the corner a few yards away, checking her out.

The two are about Chloe’s age, which is nineteen, and they seem to be debating whether or not to approach.

Do they recognize her from the Sonic Youth video—the one filmed in Marc Jacobs’ showroom, which was kind of a spoof of the whole grunge thing—or did they catch her modelling the X-Girl line last spring?

Maybe they saw her photos in Details, the ones taken by Larry Clark, who has just cast Chloe in his new movie, “Kids.”

The girls pass by once and walk halfway up the block before they turn back, clinging to each other, and stop just behind Chloe’s right shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

Chloe looks up, wrapping her arms tight around herself in an instinctive gesture of protection, as if to reduce the exposed surface area of her body even as she manages a smile that is shy and skeptical and indulgent all at the same time.

It’s not like this hasn’t happened before, but it’s still a little, you know, weird.

“Can you, um, tell us where you got your, uh, shoes?” the black girl asks.

Chloe giggles with relief.

She looks down at her jellies—transparent plastic sandals.

Now that practically everybody’s wearing big, chunky, cleated boots and platform sneakers—even people who shlump every day to offices uptown—Chloe has moved on.

She’s already gone.

And the two girls standing on the sidewalk in their big black Doc Martens want to follow her.

Chloe tries to remember where she got the sandals.

“I think it’s right around the comer, on Avenue A. I can’t think of the name. Something Something.”

“Like, that way? Over there?”

“Yeah.”

The girls thank her and practically run up the street.

Chloe fires up a Camel Light and resumes her study of Vogue.

Watching Chloe read a fashion magazine makes you think of Alexander Woollcott devouring a ten-pound lobster à l’américaine or Casanova undressing a servant girl.

“This Marc Jacobs dress is beautiful. . . . Helmut Lang is my absolute favorite. . . . God, Armani is so old-ladyish. . . . Lagerfeld ruined the house of Chanel; Coco would never have done miniskirts. I watched this documentary about her. She was so great. . . . I’m like a fashion-magazine junkie. I love them, but they’re usually pretty lame. By the time they print it, it’s already happened. The British magazines are much further ahead in terms of what’s happening in the street.”

Chloe can speak with some confidence about what’s happening in the street.

Some say Chloe is what’s happening in the street.

In addition to her jellies Chloe is wearing a very short white dress made of a shiny, flame-friendly space-age synthetic.

It looks sort of familiar (Gaultier? X-Girl?), although you won’t see anyone else on the street wearing one, at least not yet, with eight weeks to go till Halloween.

Maybe you saw it a few years back on the little girl from the next building who came around with her father and held her pillowcase open for the mini Snickers bars.

It says “Cinderella” in floral-pink letters across the chest, above an image of a magic slipper and a cheerful pink-and-blue rendering of the fairy-tale princess inside her pumpkin carriage.

All that’s missing is the plastic mask.

The funny thing is, it looks really good on Chloe.

Several people have already asked about it today, and she’s told them she scavenged this number in a Brooklyn thrift shop.

Two dollars.

She accessorizes it with a fake Chanel bracelet from Canal Street, which she wears around her biceps.

At this moment, she is five feet eight, weighs a hundred and ten pounds, and looks, in her current short coif, quite a bit like a skinny Jean Seberg.

Her nose is perhaps a bit blunt, and she points out the crookedness in her posture, which is the result of childhood scoliosis, but this doesn’t prevent downtown style-chieftains and scenesters from comparing her to Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn and Edie Sedgwick.

After lunch, Chloe cruises over to Daryl K, a boutique on East Sixth Street.

She checks the racks methodically and holds up a pair of white vinyl pants.

“I used to want these really bad, but I don’t now.”

She still feels guilty about the fact that she once spent a hundred and twenty dollars on another pair of pants here.

It’s the most she’s ever spent on anything, clotheswise.

Generally she shops at thrift stores; not at vintage shops, which are thrift stores with an attitude, and not even at Manhattan thrift stores—forget about Cheap Jack’s and Andy’s Chee-Pees, which she considers self-conscious and hopelessly picked over.

Chloe favors places in Brooklyn and her native Connecticut.

It’s a rare day that she’s wearing more than ten dollars’ worth of clothes.

Perhaps because she’s nervous that her current shoes are about to be fruitful and multiply, she decides to walk down to Chinatown and get a pair of Chinese fishnet sandals for two dollars.

The first time it happened, Chloe was seventeen.

She was standing at a newsstand on Sixth Avenue, in the Village, when she was approached by Andrea Lee Linett, the fashion editor at Sassy.

Linett was styling a commercial for the short-lived “Jane” show.

“I saw Chloe,” she says, “and I thought, Oh, we have to put her in the shot, but the producers said, ‘No, she’s really weird-looking.’ ”

Linett stuck her in the commercial anyway and then asked her to do a shoot for the magazine.

Chloe was photographed eating a carrot, wearing the big tan corduroy overalls that had caught Linett’s eye.

At the time, Chloe had hair down to her butt, and she used to tuck it up inside a big Nefertitian hat of her own creation.

After the shoot, Linett went out and bought baggy tan corduroy overalls for herself.

Chloe was still a student at Darien High School then, sneaking off to the city whenever she could.

She’d tell her parents that she hated them for raising her in Darien, that ur-suburb, though actually her parents were pretty cool: when Chloe shaved her head, her mother told her that she looked really cute, kind of French.

And her father understood her attraction to the city; he’d lived on St. Mark’s Place and hung out at Max’s Kansas City before he moved to Darien for the sake of the very kids—Chloe and her older brother, Paul—who would later yell at him for it.

Chloe’s was not quite the conventional Darien upbringing, any more than she is the conventional rebellious suburban kid.

She grew up in a gray shingled ranch house near Long Island Sound that looks pretty raffish amid the austere white Colonials and the tall, picket-fenced Victorians.

“My father was in insurance until his company was sold, and then he started painting trompe-l’oeil. He started with our kitchen, and then he did it for other people. He’s really good. We never had as much money as everyone else. I didn’t really like the kids in Darien.”

So Chloe started coming to the city, where she found kindred spirits in the tribe of skateboarders based in Washington Square Park.

“I used to tell my parents I was going to Greenwich or New Rochelle. Then I’d drive into the city. The summer of ’92 was when I first met everyone. I came to the city with two girls from Connecticut who were my homegirls. We’d go to Washington Square Park and I’d meet people. Every skater in the city was there. I’d go every weekend and hang, and then stay at different skaters’ homes.”

It happened again a few months after the Sassy shoot, when Chloe was hanging out in the city, kicking it with her friend Harold and the other skateboarders.

While she was sitting in a friend’s car just off Washington Square, she noticed a woman walking past for maybe the third time, and then the woman stuck her head in the window and told Chloe she was a photographer and asked if she would like to be in i-D, a British fashion-and-music magazine that just happened to be one of Chloe’s all-time favorite publications.

Meanwhile, the folks at Sassy asked Chloe to be an intern that summer.

And then Sonic Youth—the godparents of alternative rock, and possibly the coolest band in the world—cast her in their new video.

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The idea for the video was to do a little parable about the way Seventh Avenue plagiarizes the guerrilla fashion of the street: the Trickle-Up Theory of Fashion, where the Up Haute cops the Down Low.

The whole grunge thing was just peaking: runway models were slouching around in expensive hommages to the scruffy rockers of Seattle and their thrift-shop flannel shirts.

And who better than Chloe to represent the supercool street girl whose style gets ripped off in the designer showroom?

“I heard about Chloe through Sassy,” says Daisy von Furth, twenty-five, who styled the video and, together with grungy heartthrob Kim Gordon, the bass player of Sonic Youth, designs X-Girl, a line of casual rock-and-roll-girl clothing.

“When I met Chloe, I instantly knew that she was so super-cool, and it’s been so cool to see where she’s gone from there fashionwise. She was dressing in arch preppy stuff and wide-wale corduroys, and she always had the best look. It was never off-the-rack skate stuff. We were all into old Fila stuff from the mid-eighties, but it was like her Fila sweater would blow yours away. She looked like a village guy who steals from Polo.”

The Polo element of Chloe’s wardrobe was in part a function of a job she’d taken at the mall in Stamford senior year.

Chloe tried all the stores in the mall:

“I had just shaved my head and I thought it was really funny that Polo was the only one that called me back.”

The safe, sporty uniform of prepsters and Westchester Saab drivers was at that moment being hijacked by rappers and skaters in a sort of inversion of the Trickle-Up Theory.

“All the hip-hop kids were sporting Polo then,” Chloe explains.

“They called it ’Lo. But now it’s not hip. Everyone wears it now.” Everyone but Chloe.

“She’s ahead of the other girls,” von Furth says, “because she’s read all the history of fashion and she can go into a thrift shop and find the old Yves Saint Laurent dress, when all the other girls are going, ‘Hey, wow, look at this wacky T-shirt.’ If you can get it on Prince Street or Broadway, it’s already over for Chloe.”

Chloe was one of the models for the New York launch of the X-Girl line, which took place on Wooster Street last April—a major gathering of the interconnected tribes of hip-hop, rave, indie rock, and skateboarding.

Chloe was also one of the muses.

“We took one shirt she had,” von Furth says, “and we knocked it off. It was this blue broadcloth shirt and it just fit her so well. When we were doing our fall stuff I had her try on stuff. Sometimes I think, This is really Chloe-ish.”

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Around that time, Chloe posed for a fashion spread in Paper, the Vogue of the down-low universe, and she did the Lemonheads video for “Big Gay Heart.”

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The Lemonheads are considered either very cool or really bogus—lead singer Evan Dando has managed to inspire an anti-fanzine called Die Evan Dando, Die, presumably because he is too cute and his songs are too catchy.

But Chloe simply likes the Lemonheads.

“One of the great things about Chloe is that she’s incredibly enthusiastic,” von Furth says.

“A lot of other girls in her position as super-cool girl would be really mean and jaded, but she’s not jaded at all.”

Andrea Lee Linett agrees.

“She’s not too cool for school, and she doesn’t have an attitude. She’s like a pure Edie Sedgwick, minus the drugs and craziness. She still likes her parents.”

Chloe’s girlish enthusiasm can break out at almost any time, as when she hears from a friend that a film based on her favorite book, Jim Carroll’s “Basketball Diaries,” is being shot in the East Village.

She just has to wander by the set, and, my God, there he is, the slouchy poet laureate of the downtown lowlife himself, Jim Carroll, and she can’t help approaching him and telling him,

“You can’t let them do this.”

Chloe is concerned that the film will violate the spirit of the book, not just because she has heard a rumor that they might be changing the heroin to crack and because Marky Mark (Chloe rolls her eyes) is in it, but finally because it’s, well, Hollywood.

Yet, for all her purist concern, what comes through when she recounts this story is her delight at meeting an idol:

“I was so excited. It was one of the highlights of my life.”

Certainly anyone who has heard Chloe’s laugh—which alternately suggests a mallard surprised into flight and a drowning victim gasping for air—would be hard-pressed to call her jaded.

But it’s probably her spacey air of mystery and reserve as well as the street chic that keep causing people to ask, “Who is that girl?”

“She’s definitely the girl of the moment,” says Walter Cessna, a writer for Paper.

“All the kids think she’s the shit, all the store owners think she’s the shit. What’s interesting about Chloe is she spans both scenes, the whole grunge thing and the whole rave thing. Chloe really is the symbol for all those kids. But she does keep to herself.”

Cessna wrote a screenplay, “Children of the Rave,” loosely based on Chloe and other kids from the scene.

He also tried to represent her for modelling assignments, but found her curiously indifferent to being marketed.

“I came up with serious stuff, like Steven Meisel for Italian Vogue, and she never showed up. It was kind of a fuck-you thing. At the time I was pissed, but now I kind of admire it. But finally I couldn’t deal with the fifteen phone numbers and everything.”

Chloe cheerfully admits to blowing off Meisel, one of the most important fashion photographers alive.

(This seeming indifference to marketing herself may be her most attractive quality. It may also be canny.)

To call Chloe elusive is an understatement: contacting her is a matter of triangulation—calling friends, calling her parents, calling Liquid Sky, the boutique on Lafayette Street where she has been working for the past year.

When an appointment is made, it’s not always kept, particularly if it’s before afternoon. And when you find Chloe—when she’s right there, sitting across the table from you at Jerry’s or Odessa, in a tight black sweater she bought in Darien for three dollars embroidered with French expressions like “Affaire de Coeur” and “Cherchez la Femme”—you may find yourself still looking for her, looking for something more.

It’s a neat trick to be able to suggest hidden reserves—to be a tabula rasa and seem to be the Dead Sea Scrolls—and Chloe’s friends all eventually allude to this sense that she is holding back.

“She just sits there,” says her friend Rita Ackermann, a Budapest-born artist, “but she controls the whole scene. That’s her charisma.”

Here in the blue-tiled bathroom of Tunnel, a night club that has survived the eighties to enjoy a second round of popularity, it looks like a rave is going on: dozens of street kids in their mid- to late teens dancing to house music, smoking whatever, and kicking it.

They’re waiting for Chloe.

The girls are slim and boyish; the boys are all trying for goatees, but most of them aren’t quite up to it yet.

In their baggy pants and T-shirts, they hardly appear costume-designed.

The dirty fingernails are real, and more than a few of the kids are brilliantly reproducing that fucked-up party look (dilated pupils and silly grins), although it’s only two in the afternoon and this is actually the set of “Kids,” a modest-budget feature directed by the photographer Larry Clark, who is best known for his book “Tulsa.”

Clark spent time in Washington Square Park photographing the skateboarders and later persuaded one of them, Harmony Korine, to write a screenplay about the scene.

Clark then secured the invaluable backing of Gus Van Sant.

Harmony is one of the kids standing around the giant bathroom of Tunnel, and he’s wearing two-inch-thick prismatic glasses that make it impossible, presumably, to see much.

He looks like a fifteen-year-old mad scientist; his expression is the perennial smirk of the kid who’s just waiting for the stink bomb to go off.

He admits that he may have had Chloe in mind when he wrote the lead female role.

“She’s kind of passive, like Chloe,” he concedes.

Harmony couldn’t stand the first actress cast, an actual professional, who apparently looked like an actress amid all the street kids.

“I hated her!” Harmony shouts. “I wanted to punch her. So Larry said, ‘Do you have anybody else in mind?’ and I said, ‘Why not Chloe?’ ”

The actress was fired, Chloe was hired, and now everybody’s waiting to shoot one of the final scenes, where Chloe’s character comes to the rave to look for the guy who stole her virginity.

Jim Nugent, the Teamster captain on the production, who has just finished working on the new Walter Matthau movie, thinks things on this set are getting a little too real.

“These kids, the extras—they’re, like, right off the streets. One of them tried to pick a fight with me the other day. I said to him, ‘Are you fucking crazy? I’m a Teamster.’ He didn’t care.”

Nugent likes Chloe; he worries about her and about the company she’s keeping.

“So the first day of shooting I’m supposed to pick up Chloe, she’s like the star of the movie and she gets a driver. So I say, ‘Chloe, where do you want to be picked up tomorrow?’ and she says, ‘I don’t know,’ and I say, ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ and she says, ‘I don’t really live anywhere,’ and I say, ‘What? You’re homeless? What am I, s’posed to pick you up at cardboard box No. 7?’”

Finally, they decided to give Chloe a beeper, so they could find her each morning wherever she had crashed.

The next night—well, technically, Saturday morning—Chloe is back in the coed bathroom of Tunnel, this time as a civilian.

She’s wearing a very short surgical-cloth shift with a laser-printed design by her friend Rita Ackermann on the front: two sloe-eyed “opium-den girls” with violently smeared lipstick.

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Forget about the so-called V.I.P. lounge; the bathroom is the best scene in the club.

It looks almost like the eighties in here, only more extreme—drag queens, drug deals, pierced lips, world-class posing.

The crowd is homogeneous in its inchoate youthfulness (no aging pop artists, socialites, or countesses in sight) and heterogeneous in its drug use: a few grinning love bugs on ecstasy; glassy-eyed junksters; furtive, Speedy Gonzales cokeheads zipping in and out of the stalls.

Yes, it’s back; it never went away.

Here’s a pre-voting-age enthusiast wearing a T-shirt that says “Snort Coke, Snort More Coke.”

Quaaludes are back, too. And

Ritalin, the drug often prescribed for hyperactive children, is a relatively new buzz on the scene.

Then there are the truly fucked-up—the candy flippers, the most catholic of druggies, who mix their pharmaceuticals like the ingredients of a tropical cocktail.

They come out of the stalls pie-eyed after a couple of lines of Special K, a snortable combination of horse tranquillizers, heroin, and coke.

Chloe is greeted and hugged by William, one of the club kids, a hulking, tatterdemalion figure wearing layers of shirts and ragged sweaters, with pink hair shaved close to his skull, and rings and plugs in his lips.

And there’s Sophia, looking very 1967 in a white leather mini, with her long, straight dyed hair.

Someone—not Chloe—comments that Sophia looks good considering that she is, like, really old, like forty or thirty-four or something.

Here also is the famous and much loved Junkie Jonathan, his eyes ringed with kohl, tottering on high platforms.

He’s wearing some kind of crocheted shirt, which is accessorized with a slave collar and a black lunchbox.

Chloe says, “Actually, he’s not looking so hot tonight. Usually he has a kind of deconstructionist punk look.”

The club kids are professional party creatures, who dress and coif themselves to fabulous extremes and are paid by the management of the clubs to hang out—thereby, presumably, attracting the less fashion-forward wannabes and weekend scenesters.

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The kids form one of the downtown tribes among which Chloe moves, like a roving ambassador without portfolio.

“Some of the club kids have great fashion sense and they influence high fashion,” Chloe says.

“Last spring, Anna Sui and Donna Karan were definitely influenced by the rave scene. All that athletic wear and techno wear, all the stripes. Anna Sui rips everything off.”

Chloe scans the room.

“It’s kind of tacky tonight,” she says, observing dozens of young men who are wrapped in sheets.

The word has apparently gone out on some deep-buried wire that tonight is toga night.

Here, at what should be the cutting edge of street fashion, the late arrivals look like a bunch of beer-bashing Phi Delts.

And over there is Methuselan mogul Steven Greenberg, the Benjamin Franklin look-alike who has haunted the hot spots since at least the Pleistocene, wearing four young women with his well-cut navy business suit.

“Oh God, him,” Chloe

says. “That’s the guy who gives my friend Carissa money all the time. He’s like her sugar daddy, but she says she doesn’t have to do anything.”

Chloe’s idea of an attractive older man is Evan Dando, who is twenty-seven.

Her current boyfriend is an eighteen-year-old named Robby Cronholm, who plays in a band called Crumb.

She takes out his picture and displays it.

“Isn’t he cute?”

He looks like a very attractive twelve-year-old with long hair and a big goofy grin.

Unfortunately, Robby lives in San Francisco.

The thought turns Chloe melancholy.

At 3 A.M., Chloe is checking out the merchandise spread along the sidewalk on Second Avenue between St. Mark’s Place and Seventh Street.

Last week, she bought a great silver-plated picture frame for fifty cents, but she doesn’t find any treasures tonight.

She steps over a pile of women’s shoes into the narrow doorway of the apartment building where she’s been staying for the past month—in a second-floor walkup she and her friend Lila Lee are subletting from the “Kids” costume designer.

It’s a small studio with uneven brick walls.

The tub is in the middle of the floor; toilet’s down the hall.

Chloe surprised a junkie there last week.

The refrigerator harbors a pitcher of cold tap water and not much else.

Lila returns at about three-fifteen.

She’s just had her butt-length dreads waxed, and she keeps feeling them.

Lila is one of several people who are said to be Chloe’s best friend.

She is from a first-generation Korean family who live near Nyack.

Like Chloe, she hates the suburbs.

“I started coming down to the city when I was thirteen,” she says.

“I got into some really weird situations, staying with squatters. I can’t believe I didn’t get in more trouble than I did. My first kiss was in this squat; I kissed two different guys on the same night.”

Chloe puts on Pavement’s “Slanted and Enchanted” album.

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Pavement is currently one of her favorite bands, along with Sebadoh and Courtney Love’s Hole.

“My first place in the city, I lived on Fourth and Avenue C with this friend and her boyfriend,” Chloe says.

“She was a junkie. It was a spot, and the dealers would watch out for us and take care of us, but eventually one of the dealers ripped my friend off. When we went out, we’d go to Limelight and USA and raves. After Avenue C, I lived in Brooklyn Heights with another junkie friend, who was also a dominatrix. She was eighteen. It was a real hell house. Everybody was doing a lot of drugs. When River Phoenix died, we had this tribute party. We rented four movies and did dope. It was pretty sick.”

Dope is heroin.

Chloe says she doesn’t do dope��she’s too paranoid—and it finally became awkward for her to hang around with junkies.

“It got too weird. The police would come to the door about credit-card frauds. I had to get out of there. Then I went from house to house, living with different friends. Then I moved into another house in Brooklyn Heights, with four friends, until June.”

When Chloe left the Brooklyn Heights flop, she and Lila drifted from place to place together.

“We stayed with friends,” Lila says, “and if we couldn’t find a place to stay we’d just go to a rave. Every Friday night, there was a NASA rave at the Shelter.”

(NASA refers not to the space agency but to Nocturnal Audio Sensory Awakening, an unofficial organization devoted to another kind of space travel.)

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“It was open till 8 A.M. It was the after party. People would be at Limelight, and then they’d go to the Shelter.”

During the day, Chloe and Lila would hang out outside, with the skateboarders.

Skateboarding is not quite equal-opportunity employment.

The girls mostly watch.

“You’d just sit there for hours waiting for people and watching people skate,” Lila says.

“Skating is a little life style. They stick together. Skaters aren’t really into drugs. Just weed and booze. They shun hard drugs.”

“In the summer of ’93, the ravers came in and took over Washington Square Park,” Chloe recalls.

“If you were a geek in high school, you could be a raver. Anyone could go to a rave. At a hip-hop club, everyone’s putting on a front. Everyone’s tough. At a rave, everyone is high and mellow. But then heroin came along and made it much darker and more depressing. There was this big ecstasy dealer everybody knew on the scene. He died of a heroin overdose, and it really fucked everyone up. But they still do it.”

From the stereo, Pavement sings, “Can you treat it like an oil well, when it’s underground, out of sight?”

Lila says, “The scene in the park got too commercial. Kids from New Jersey would come in, and the skaters had to find more down-low spots.”

“Down low” is a cherished concept: secret, alternative, not commercial—everything one wants to be.

Except one also sort of wants to be famous, and here is the contradiction at the heart of Chloe’s world, the dilemma of subcultures that ostensibly define themselves in opposition to the prevailing commercial order,

the dilemma of all the boys and girls who want to be in Paper and Details: What do you do if Harper’s Bazaar, or Calvin Klein, comes calling? In Chloe’s case, so far, you sort of blow them off.

Chloe lights a cigarette and pours a glass of water.

Lila gets up to change the CD to A Tribe Called Quest.

She tells Chloe she’s rented “River’s Edge.”

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“I hate Keanu,” Chloe says.

But, since it’s there, they play it, watching until dawn.

When “Kids” wraps a few days later, Chloe isn’t sure what she’ll do next.

First she’s got to move her stuff back up to her parents’ house, in Darien, simply because there isn’t anyplace else to put it.

She might go to London for a few weeks—she’s never been.

And then she’s going to get her portfolio of drawings together and apply to college.

She’s thinking about some kind of fashion or design degree.

Someday, somebody should erect a statue to Chloe in Tompkins Square Park, with the amazing legend, “She didn’t want to be an actress or a model”—although she is going to do the Martin Margiella show at Charivari, since she likes Margiella clothes.

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What she thinks she’d really like to be is a costume designer for period films.

For the time being, she has decided to go back and work at Liquid Sky, which is more of a home to Chloe than any of the apartments she’ll be crashing in.

Liquid Sky is the creation of Mary Frey, a waifish bleached blonde from New Orleans, who actually looks more like Edie Sedgwick than Chloe or anyone else does;

Carlos Slinger, a.k.a. DJ Soul-Slinger, a Brazilian disk jockey and rave evangelist, whose air of mystery is enhanced by his wraparound dark goggles; and Claudia Rey, a London based artist and designer.

The store presents a narrow, liquid face to Lafayette Street: a sheet of real water shimmers down the front of the window.

Inside, a clubby, trippy ambience prevails.

Over the cash register is a giant papier-mâché head of Astrogirl, who is the house mascot.

A cooler in the corner is stocked with smart drinks, including Gusto Love Bomb:

“It’s the surreal thing.”

A staircase at the back leads down to Temple Records, billed as “100% underground.

Import dance techno.

We have the top acid, trance, breakbeat, ambient, house and jungle.

The American music industry (radio) does not want you to hear this music.”

Mary Frey ricochets from one end of the store to the other, wearing a blue Astrogirl T-shirt, bluejeans, and a nose ring.

“Liquid Sky is a posse, a concept,” Frey says.

“It’s a whole vibration. It’s music, it’s d.j.s, it’s fashion. It supports the whole future of adolescence. This is New York Rave Central. We’re the connection to all the raves on the East Coast.”

Frey sees the rave scene as a reaction to the élitist night-club scene of the eighties.

“Everybody was sick of the corporate clubs. They were doing that picking-and-choosing thing, that exclusionary thing. The raves are more democratic.”

Frey first noticed Chloe at one of the boutique’s parties and was taken with her unearthly poise.

She said to Gabriel Hunter, an Aspen transplant who was hanging out with Chloe, “Who’s that girl? She seems so together.”

When Frey, Slinger, and Rey opened the store on Lafayette Street, they asked Gabriel and Chloe to join them.

Gabe and Chloe became in-house muses, models, and gofers.

Chloe also became a seamstress.

“I needed somebody to sew,” Frey says, “and Chloe said, No problem. She would gladly do anything that needed doing around the shop.”

At twenty-six, Frey considers herself somewhat ancient, and feels lucky to have the inspiration of youth.

Speaking of Chloe and Gabe’s generation, she says, “They don’t want to hang out with older people and go to the Hamptons. It’s a completely underground scene. A lot of fashion people come down and they rip it off. But that’s O.K.”

Today, Frey has to run down to Chinatown to grab an outfit for a wedding in London.

This guy who’s in Depeche Mode is getting married, and she’s flying tonight, and all her clothes are dirty.

She keeps talking on the way out the door:

“Chloe’s her own category. She’s not a raver. She’s not a rocker. She’s like the old muses of Chanel or Christian Dior. Now you have this commercialized beauty, you have these cheesy-assed models like the ones who live in that building.”

Frey pauses and points into the ornate lobby of the Police Building, the super-expensive downtown coöp. “It’s not about what designer you’re wearing anymore,” she says to the building.

Chloe’s old room in Darien is waiting for her.

Its bookshelves are filled with back issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Face.

There’s a lava lamp on the bookshelf and a framed poster for a Sonic Youth and Breeders concert hanging over the desk.

Chloe shows Lila a spread in the November, 1992, Sassy, with the head: “Our intern Chloe has more style in her little finger . . .”

Chloe is going to drive Lila back to her parents’ house tonight.

First, though, they head for a thrift shop in downtown Darien.

Chloe works the racks the same way she works the pages of a fashion magazine—thoroughly, meticulously.

She goes up and down the rows, missing nothing.

Eventually, she comes up with a cream-colored Christian Dior shirt with a long collar, probably from the seventies, and a thin aqua belt.

She almost buys a man’s brown felt fedora but decides it’s a bit too big.

The total for the shirt and the belt is five dollars.

Then Chloe is spotted by two girls she knew in high school.

It is hard to imagine these chubby-cheeked girls, with their white baseball caps and Top-Siders, in the same school lunchroom as Chloe.

Her claim that she was an outsider at her high school begins to seem like an understatement.

Whatever these girls may have thought about Chloe Sevigny in junior year, they are clearly thrilled to see her now.

“Oh, hi, Chloe, how are you? I heard you were in a movie.”

“Yeah. Wow. That is just so great.”

Chloe tries to shrink away behind the clothes rack.

“Well, it’s only an independent movie,” she demurs. “It probably won’t even get shown here.”

“Wow, that is so cool.”

“That’s awesome,” the other girl agrees.

Later, back in the car, Chloe says to Lila, “God! That one girl was the sister of this friend of mine. Once she threw this book from the top of the stairs, and it gashed my forehead.”

Lila shudders in empathy.

In just a few days, she starts her junior year.

In front of Charivari on West Fifty-seventh Street a few days later, a dense crowd blocks the sidewalk, forcing rush-hour pedestrians out into the street.

It’s a downtown congregation gathered uptown, including Lila, who’s visiting from Rockland County, and Harmony, who is shivering in a white T-shirt, along with a slightly skeptical posse of black-clad assistants and editors from Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

The veteran celebrity photographer Bill Cunningham scans the crowd and doesn’t recognize many of the faces.

Everyone is waiting for the preview of Martin Margiella’s new fall line to begin.

Margiella, of course, is the Belgian designer who practically invented deconstruction—or, at least, the fashion world’s version of it—a couple of years ago: all those unfinished seams and inside-out designs that reveal the construction of the garment.

The door to Charivari is blocked by a guard; the windows are covered over with brown paper.

“I like to watch Chloe model,” Harmony says. “Usually, she stumbles.”

But there’s nothing so conventional as a runway here.

Chloe doesn’t have to walk.

The sound of bongos signals the start of the presentation.

The paper over the windows is ripped away to reveal ten models slouching on the other side of the glass.

All are wearing Mylar strips, which obscure their eyes.

Chloe’s the third from the left.

Only the spectators in front see much more than the heads.

Eventually, everyone funnels into the store.

Inside, Chloe talks to Gabriel Feliciano, who is a fledgling stylist and part-time hostess at Lucky Cheng’s, the Chinese drag restaurant in the East Village.

Gabriel’s wearing a shiny lime-green shirt that looks very seventies.

Chloe is in Margiella’s tailored two-piece brown suit, which is based on a design from the forties.

Suddenly, silver-haired Polly Mellen, the legendary longtime fashion editor of Vogue, who is now at Allure, comes over to examine the outfit through her owlish glasses, casually adjusting the jacket and skirt on Chloe as Chloe stands, slightly awkward, unused to the intimate anonymity of being a professional mannequin.

Chloe’s normally enigmatic expression clearly says, Let me outta here.

The meeting of one of the priestesses of high fashion and the downtown girl of the moment passes uneventfully.

In a couple of hours, Chloe will be back downtown, in her world.

Clutching a wineglass and watching his friend, Feliciano says, “People want to project their desire on one girl. She’s smart enough to hold back, and that allows us all to project whatever we want to. I could go on and on about Chloe, but actually I know very little about her.”

#Youtube

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almostperfectshark · 3 years ago

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Well Guys,

Where do i even begin to start... My life has been hectic, wild, and absolutely crazy these last few years. I dropped everything I had in Michigan at 18 years old and moved to Montana for a guy who i actually happened to meet on this website. Tumblr... Who knew right? I’m sure there’s probably a lot of you that have found love out their on this website and if your happy I’m happy glad it worked out for ya but sadly it didn’t for me. You know that feeling when you meet someone online who you instantly vibe with and have conversations with and it feels like you’ve known each other for years?? That’s the kind of feeling I had when I met this person. I won’t drop his name because to this day he continues to “stalk” me. He manages to find all my social media platforms no matter how many different emails I used he finds all of them.. I of course skyped him and made sure he was who he said he was or so I thought.. He was real physically but emotionally he was completely different if that makes sense. We talked for hours upon hours day and night every spare second we had so I ended up moving to Montana and I’m a Michigan gal so that is quite a distance. I left everything I had behind my family, my friends my college I was enrolled in and about to start, my drivers license ,EVERYTHING. Prior to me flying out to Montana he talked about a poly relationship and I have been in a poly relationship in the past so I was thinking about giving the okay but didn’t give the okay to him yet. Not only does he show up with two random strangers I’ve never seen before or knew their names wouldn’t you want to pick up your partner alone and not with two people she doesn’t know? Well we get in the truck after I grab my bags and of course I’m wanting my first kiss with him but it’s kind of awkward to share that moment in front of some strangers ya know? So we get to the house and I can’t stand it anymore so I finally lean in and kiss him and look behind me to hear them say “Don’t stop because of us” that was a little weird. We go inside and his mom is still awake poor thing ( I honestly miss her so fucking much) she introduces herself and hugs me and welcomes me. We go into his room in the basement and do our thing the next day goes by and I start to become good friends with we’ll call her Sara so we get on the topic of the best sex we’ve ever had and she tells me the best sex she ever had was with my bf and he tries to deny it and I threaten to go back home since I haven’t even been there for two fucking days he begs me not to so I decide to invite Sara over to confront him in front of me and she does and she ends up making him tell the truth he then proceeds to cry hysterically and starts telling me he doesn’t want to lose me and ends up punching a wall in rage and probably self disappointment they leave and I decide to forgive him even though this happened the day before i got on the plane. I was already half way across the map and wasn’t willing to give up and make a fool of myself for some guy I met online. He changed for a little bit before I moved out there he was a manager at Sonic but when I showed up he wasn’t working anymore so I took on the reigns at that point of bringing in an income. At first I started at a sporting goods store and I loved it I miss that place so much it was such a cool and rad place sadly it closed down because we were a sister store and we weren’t bringing in enough income to their liking. From there I moved on to a organic grocery store and that place was boujie as all hell, at first I thought they were all nice people but lord does that change It’s kind of funny and sad at the same time how much people can change within a matter of seconds. Most of the items in that store didn’t have barcodes to scan you had to remember individual numbers for every damn thing every piece of candy,nuts,fruits,veggies. There was a girl who came in every single day who helped get me the job she worked in the medication department super sweet girl actually named Sara lol but not the same sara as above. She would come in every single day crying this woman would bust her ass at this place and she was a manager and never got a higher recognition for any of the shit she did ever they literally treated her like garbage. She was the only one who would help me with any questions I had unlike my other manager who thought she was all that and a bag of chips. She was from the U.K. her name was Fran this woman was a fucking bitch one of the most two faced people I have ever met in my life. This woman would literally have her cashiers me or the other closers ring up a bunch of groceries for her and put them in bags and then she would carry them to her car and told us she would pay for them the next day well guess what she never paid for them and she continued to do this for days so I started asking the other cashiers who she had do it as well and they said that she checks herself out... that seems a little fishy why don’t you trust us doing it? Do you go back and delete items? I think she started to catch on because this woman threw me under the bus every single chance she got about me not wiping my belt down which I did and how I didn’t wipe down all the bins down good enough. She found every excuse to write my ass up and I got tired of it I was tired of coming home and crying everyday. So I called in and quit. My partner at the time had a couple disability’s but nothing that prevented him from working he claimed he filed for disability but alas never did even after 5 years. At that point guys I was fucking numb my heart sank to my chest every fucking feeling I ever had for this man was starting to deteriorate and fast. I didn’t find this out until after we got married. Yes married.. trust me I know I should’ve known better I should’ve thought twice but he was my first love and trust me I have learned my lesson. He also loved pills anything that could get him high he would take pills, shrooms, acid, he’s tried a couple questionable things. This guy was so addicted.. I just wanted to feel numb I wanted to get out I caught him talking to other women multiple times I wasn’t perfect either and two wrongs don’t make a right but I never physically was intimate with anybody. He got me hooked on pain killers bad we would do them everyday together and that’s the only thing that kept me going from the emotional abuse and the fucking trauma it’s inflicted on my mental health. Thankfully I’m a little over a year sober. The most shocking thing that has ever happened to me in that marriage and the point to where I felt like I was shit on the bottom of his shoe was when we needed help bringing in an income so we made an ad looking for a roommate. Big mistake, We found someone almost immediately my partner and I are attracted to both sexes this guy wanted to grab dinner with him and meet him in person. I was never invited and I told him I wasn’t comfortable with it because the messages this guy was sending him were very very flirtatious. He ends up taking his friend Jesse with him he goes to the bar and comes back quite fucked up along with the guy to check out the room who happens to keep rubbing on my fiancee at the time. I was not liking this shit at all so I started screaming at him to get the fuck out of my house since I’m the one who pays all of the bills and mind you we also have other roommates upstairs who are absolutely amazing. What does my fiancee do at this point? He locks me in our fucking bedroom my roommate comes downstairs and asks where I am and finally gets this guy to leave. We eventually got our own place because I thought that would help again nope it was only a couple streets down from his moms house too. My family finally after years decided to visit me and it was a flight or fight instinct and I was done. Packed what I could in a backpack told him I was going back to visit with my family and kissed my dogs one last time and when we were almost to Michigan I told him I was done. Please don’t give me any shit about the way I left I honestly didn’t have any other choice I was out of chances I was out of efforts I was drained. He continued with the “I’m going to kill myself if you don’t come back” how it’s going to be on my hands he even went as far to send me photos of blood all over a back seat of a car that looked like a murder scene he found on google. I deactivated his phone and he still tried to contact me through email etc. We are currently going through a divorce and I pray to god he signs those papers and lets me move on. If you read this I appreciate you so much and thank you for taking the time to read this I have many more stories to go if you’re interested about anything else. My current partner, my family, my life now anything and I will write about it. Thank you again.

#personal #please don't reblog #mental abuse #past #trauma #trigger warning

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vixxenfox · 5 years ago

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Things I’ve noticed after watching the pilot over and over again

And things I just find amusing

- is it just a coincidence that when Charlie says “I wonder if it could be me” the center angel’s face lights up?

- not important but the “F*ck you heaven!!!” Sign is hilarious

- I hate Valentino with a burning passion, look at him texting Angel

- people drop from the sky to get to hell, more importantly without clothes which means each flippin person has to get specially made clothes for their weird demon bodies like sir pentious needs clothes to fit his snake body and stuff... idk just interesting

- the place beside the “we couldn’t come up with a catchy slogan but we sell hardcore drugs” building is called “begg slut”

- imagine dying, going to hell, and realize that you’re an egg

- egg #23 is the best

-one of the eggs like does a weird walk thing with their hand on sir pentious’ tail

-Cherri Bomb’s clothing is so asymmetrical and I love it like she is literally wearing a high-heel boot on one leg and like a tiny shoe on the other

- really just poor Tom he’s great

- Vaggie says “it’s all highlighted” but none of what we are shown is highlighted

- Also read the parts of the list we can see, it’s adorable

- “I don’t touch the gays” I find Katie great

- Jeffrey Dahmer obviously (Also the sticky note saying “who approved this show?)

- When Charlie scans the crowd another tv head just says ‘words’

-The person Vaggie punches isn’t in the crowd

- I love Razzle and Dazzle TvT

- Those two owl demons in Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow are most definitely references to Timber

- CHARLIE YOU JUST KILLED A PUPPY

- I love that there is a boo section

- Tom watches Angel Dust’s stuff confirmed

- I love the sonic spring noise when Angel launches an egg into the air

- Sir Pentious probably has a son that might be in hell so look out for another snake

- Do you see how happy Cherri Bomb is near Angel Dust, best friends! :D

- Aawww Angel pushes Cherri out of the way

- Angel didn’t just sprout a third set of arms, he also pulled an entire gun out of his body sooo... what’s with that

- I think you would just stop existing if you died in hell Angel

- That creepy fan has a body pillow of Angel

- Charlie takes off her pink... jacket(?) in one scene and the next she has it on again (you see her wearing pink in the closeup)

- Lilith is an absent mother

- There goes everyone’s fanon about how Lucifer acts (why couldn’t we get a nice stupid one T~T)

- I think they changed Alastor’s knock but I’m too lazy to check

- They fixed Alastor’s disappearing monocle

- I like that the mic has an eye sometimes it’s cool (how many “sentient-ish” things does Alastor’s have, first the shadow and now this)

- Alastor can teleport at least short distances and he appears as the shadow for a second

- They really make Alastor a very animated character and I love it

- (we knew this already but) Alastor clearly puts himself on a different level than the other sinners, he thinks of himself as justified and better (he doesn’t say “us sinners” he says “loathsome sinners” w/o him in the picture)

- Valentino, Rosie, Lilith (obviously), the girl from the porn studio, and the tv head dude (Vox, thanks @lavipsi) are all some of hell’s “strongest demons”

- TV head (Vox) is in the middle and top so he must be very powerful and behind him there’s also a green and red demon that reminds me of the wolf/fox demon from the bar scene

- Husk is very blocked out by Vaggie’s face but he’s clearly in the picture with Alastor (it looks like a fight but I don’t want to assume) like we know they know each other and stuff but it’s just weird that Husk is in the art when Vaggie says he’s “a dangerous Blahblah” and has entire speech of how dangerous he is

- I love the symbols that float up when Charlie isn’t looking and then the squeak as he turns to a more “innocent-like” Alastor when Charlie looks back

- Alastor rolls his eyes at Charlie when she says “No trickster, voodoo strings attached.”

- Talked about this before but the way his smile gets wider when Charlie says “for as long as you like”

- Why does Charlie have at least 2 posters about alcohol up if she didn’t want it in her hotel?

- I love how Niffty comes in and her bug-like noise when she appears

- You can see their reflection in Niffty’s eye during the closeup and Charlie is too adorable in it, Angel and Vaggie look ready to kick her out XD

- Everybody’s reactions to Niffty rambling on is beautiful, just watch them go from defensive to confused

- Alastor just following Niffty’s every movement as she zooms around

- Please tell me I’m not the only one who didn’t immediately see Husk as a cat? I honestly thought he was a dog for a while because he looks sort of like a Husky and his name is Husk, which got me thinking about the contradictions with Alastor not liking dogs... then I realized Husk was a cat.

- “are you sh!tt!ng me” “no I don’t think so” and “you think I’m just some clown” “..maybe” are some of my favorite lines

- Was I just supposed to know that on the bottom of Alastor’s boots (shoes? Hooves?) there were deer prints?

- So did Alastor really just teleport two sinners and basically copy part of the bar Husk was at and it’s just going to be there forever? Like you can see where the bar’s like territory ends because it’s walls are green while the hotel’s is red

- No like seriously Alastor you can copy a part of a bar but you can’t make the walls match the rest of the hotel’s walls?

- Husk seems slightly taller than Alastor

- Also Husk also has yellow teeth and if we go by Alastor’s teeth are yellow because he’s a cannibal, Husk might have been a cannibal when he was alive

- Husk clearly knows Alastor, he’s not afraid of him (to an extent, he was still a little shaken by the... Sir Pentious thing). Husk obviously voices his complaints without restraint and isn’t afraid of Alastor hurting him (I guess), and even when he was shaken up he was still the second person to follow Alastor back to the hotel.

- The entire relationship between Husk and Alastor is very intriguing to me! Husk doesn’t fear Alastor, Alastor called him a friend (obviously another jab at Husk but still), and they were in the same picture when Vaggie talked about Alastor being dangerous. I’m guessing they were probably friends once, maybe the picture is them both fighting another demon or fighting each other in like a fall-out.

- Vaggie is very exaggerated when she’s complaining about the bar and it’s beautiful

- Husk in the background as a still image just chugging booze is beautiful

-Angel’s angry face as Vaggie complains about the bar just before he leaves to lunge at her is beautiful and my favorite face

- 27:46 Alastor flipping FLUTTERS HIS EYES AT VAGGIE and you can hear a small sound effect of it and I just thought that was beautiful

- At the same moment Charlie is just rubbing her cheeks and it’s cute

- Right before Alastor starts singing, he throws some red... fire in the air and Charlie follows it with her eyes and she just so awed by it

- The fireplace in the background has an eye and a top hat above it and it just reminds me of Sir Pentious

- Alastor’s song has so many Friends on the Other Side vibes and I love it

- There are so many Christian symbols (and Satanic symbols) in the background of this song and I just don’t want to spend that time looking at each one :l

- Alastor’s shadow is also here further nailing the Friend on the Other Side vibe (not to mention the other shadows and voodoo doll things)

- Poor Niffty, she should never get hurt

- When Sir Pentious is talking and it shows the chibi characters, Charlie, Angel, and Niffty are looking at Alastor and when it zooms in for a split second Angel’s face is the most innocent bab ever

- There’s a building in the background with (again) one eye and a top hat, there’s also a cat building right next to it

- You can see heaven as a planet with a halo...

- There’s also a sun(?) or moon(?) or planet(?) with a pentagram on it

- I know that Egg Boi #OUCH is just a joke, but what if after 666, Sir Pentious just started giving them stupid names like that?

- Again, religious symbols float around Alastor that I’m not going to look into because I’ve taken so much time T_T

- Niffty is actually unfazed by Alastor summoning tentacles and destroying Sir Pentious’ ship. Really she has a normal smile and face and she immediately follows Alastor when he walks back to the hotel

- Angel is still flirting with Husk

- Charlie reassuring Vaggie is adorable

- Are we not going to talk about the carousel and gigantic steam boat that’s just protruding from the hotel

- I also love how the windows at the top of skull designs <3

- There’s an eye on the top of the building and the sign of Happy/Hazbin Hotel could also look like a top hate (why are there so many one-eyed top hats like Sir Pentious’...?)

- Stay tuned TM

- Not from me but, Alastor changes the name to Hazbin Hotel and Hazbin means something that was great before but is terrible now or something that is meaningless

- So Alastor liking terrible jokes is now canon? The dad joke thing wasn’t just a stream thing, it’s actually canon?

- Alastor actually has a red ‘X’ on his forehead, you can see it right after he destroys Sir Pentious’ ship

- The art in the credits shows Cherri Bomb having a tattoo

- I would like to talk a little about the design that’s in the background during the credits. So in the middle is an apple that’s being held by two sharp hands, there are three snakes coming out of it with only one snake fully out but still seems to have originated from the apple. The snake that’s completely out is on the top and has some designs around it that emphasize it, making it look more like a king (the devil, duh). The other two snakes are going down (probably referencing Adam and Eve maybe? Even though they also seem evil I just think of Adam and Eve.) Under them is another snake head. There are two sets of eyes around the top snake, one set has a line going down the middle of each eye like a scar while the bottom set has eyelashes. Even though the bottom set looks more “girly”, it reminds me of Lucifer because of the dots under them. If you want to grasp at straws the complete bottom snake’s tongue sort of looks like the bottom part of the symbol of Lucifer. The three snakes that clearly originate from the apple in the middle can also look like “Three snakes and one charm” if you squint. The symbol above the top snake looks like the infinity symbol combined with the cross, but it’s not the leviathan cross, so maybe just eternal... crucifixion?

- The smoke coming from the pit that Alastor made has souls in it

- I think #23 is depressed because he really wants to be shot... and he was just sitting there next to a bunch of dead hims

- Vivziepop said on a stream something about Lucifer being “generally goofy, but it depends on his voice” or something like that, please correct me if I’m completely wrong. This makes me things that Lucifer is going to have multiple voice actors.

-The Loading Crew “Everything We Know About Hazbin Hotel” brings up a point that it seems like the only things that can kill demons and sinners are the Exterminators’ weapons which are sometimes left behind that demons scavenge, Vaggie also appears to have one. I recommend watching his video, it’s very quick but also brings up points I haven’t addressed.

And yeah, that’s all for now! ^_^ comment if you have something else to add or think I should change something

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sonicringbond · 4 years ago

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Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey: Scene 35

Welcome to the second half of the series’ first 2-parter. A shame I don’t really have anything very witty to open with for this one. Perhaps it’s because I find it a pretty light scene🤔 Regardless, I’ll let you decide for yourself after you read...

Draw was a talented child all things considered. Though a child far from adulthood, he lived his life as a golem hunter and was generally successful. With the speed granted to him by Mote, it was likely he could best any number of golems and easily live a life dedicated to his occupation. However, his reliance on bow and arrow meant he was limited in how much damage he could do to a large number of golems in a short amount of time. If he were by himself this would be far from a problem as he was quite adept at making his own arrows, and they were frequently reusable. The only problem was retrieving them. A simple task with Sonic like speed, but it meant in this case leaving Rosy’s side.

“Get away from her you stone dummies!”

Trying his best to shoo away any golems that floated up over the ravine with his bow, Draw was pushed to his limits trying to collect his arrows. Challenging his efforts was an army of golems that covered the ruins and mountainside. The most troublesome however were the ones that drifted through the air, stone eyes that could fire beams of light at Draw more easily than he could return fire.

“Why did you have to get sick now of all times, you weirdo girl!” Draw cried out in anguish as he gave up trying to do too much at once. Picking Rosy up as best as he could, he ran for all he was worth. “You’re way to heavy!”

Had Rosy heard the complaint, she might have had a choice comment or two for the struggling koala, but her mind was far from her surroundings. The fevered sleep that held her fast from consciousness assured she would remain oblivious. Though it perhaps heightened other senses as her fever dreams provided her a unique opportunity, she was not quite sure how to handle.

~I’ve dabbled in so many different types of fortune telling because of how fun it is, but reading dreams is always kind of tricky. When people tell me about their dreams there’s always something missing to complete the picture. It’s not their fault of course, it’s hard to remember your dreams. It’s why reading my own are so hard too. Bu~t, hee-hee! Well, I’ve never had a dream like the one on these mountains.~

“Hello?” Rosy asked the rolling fog before her in hopes that someone might have hid within. It did not answer her naturally, but a soft blue glow within caught her attention and she walked towards it.

The fog swirled around Rosy as she walked, the blue glow seeming to stay just beyond her reach. “Maybe it’s moving away from me?”

Lifting her head from where she had tilted it so that her finger pressed into her cheek, Rosy upped her pace. As she still failed to catch up, she puffed her cheeks up in frustration and pushed herself even harder. Still the glow eluded her, and she closed her eyes for a moment to touch on that golden glow within her. That semi-tangible representation of her Ring Bond with Sonic.

Her intentions were to touch the source of her speed and bolt forward as fast as she possibly could, but as she opened her eyes, she instead had to dodge an attack.

“Wah~!”

The entity that attacked her was no larger than Sonic, but it had massive arch forming arms and a trail of light for a body. Had the blue glowing entity possessed a green gem where its arms met Rosy would have presumed it a golem. It had the same shape as one, bar a lack of legs making it resemble an anchor more than a biped.

“What’s your problem!” Rosy asked it as she jumped back from another attack. A crackling of electricity behind her warned her of another attack from behind and she dove out of the way.

“I didn’t do anything! No reason to be so mean!”

Her frustrations served to redouble her efforts, and after rising to a three-point runner’s stance, Rosy shot forward for all she was worth. Her rapid acceleration created a vacuum in her wake and the fog was pulled into the space behind her.

“Woah! It’s beautiful!”

There was little time to marvel as more of the glowing anchor golems moved to intercept her, but with the fog behind her Rosy could plan a path forward. The shadowy mountain landscape seemed unreachable though, save the aroura-like road of light marked by columns of unending lightning. Covered in golems it was far from an idea choice, but Rosy could at least see herself making progress as she sped along the road.

Higher and higher she climbed, and Rosy soon realized the mountains were beneath her. “This is weird. Am I dreaming?”

A bolt of lightning tore through the heavens in the moment of her question and Rosy froze in place as she felt her life was clearly in danger.

“Maybe this isn’t a dream… But I was with Sonic, Draw, and Mote. They’re not here, so this has to be–”

“Come on big guy! Is that all you’ve got!”

Sonic’s voice cut Rosy off and she turned to call out to him from wherever it was he was running.

“Sonic!”

Her voice was cheerful, but Rosy’s smile soon fell as she could not see Sonic anywhere.

“Sonic?” Rosy questioned her surroundings and studied the darkness for any signs of Sonic. “Where are you!”

Starting to run again, Rosy tried to wipe away the shadows and reach out to Sonic. As she feared though, the darkness was impenetrable, by herself at least.

“Yeek!”

A bolt of lightning descended from the shimmering blue aurora above her and for a moment she saw Sonic and the ruins he traversed. The motes of golden light that marked where Rings had been, and Sonic’s own transparency marked his signature Light Speed Dash, and she knew she missed actually seeing him. Before she could determine where he went however, the darkness flooded back in.

“Hey! Don’t come back now! Sonic!”

Turning to and fro, Rosy sought out any signs of him in the darkness but none could be found. “Come on! I just want to see Sonic!”

Turning pleading eyes to the aurora above, Rosy’s silent prayer allowed her to see the shimmering figure of blue light that towered over the mountains. Instinctually she raised her hands to protect herself. She was not the skeletal giant’s target however and the next bolt of lightning it cast down from the aurora again illuminated Sonic.

As it turned out, Sonic was not faster than light and he was tossed through the air by the impact of the lightning bolt. He was left unharmed for the most part however as the Rings he carried scattered about having absorbed the damage meant for Sonic.

“Sonic!” Rosy yelled out and covered her mouth. But the darkness took him from view again and he was nowhere to be seen. Upon the aurora road it was only her, the golems that still floated up in pursuit of her, and the towering skeletal figure of light. As that was who summoned the lightning…

“Hey! Leave Sonic alone!”

With courage she always had to protect her friends, Rosy wasted no more time and sprinted full speed towards the towering entity. “You better not hurt him! I won’t forgive you if you do!”

“The medium?” the entity asked and surprised Rosy as it turned to look down at her with eyes so much bluer and brighter than its body of light. Intense as they were, they did not obscure the wonder of the crystal rose held within the gyroscopic, clockwork device in its chest. “So weak a medium, yet you would manage to see me from your slumber, and with no catalyst.”

“I don’t care about any of that!” Rosy yelled at the entity. “Just leave Sonic alone! You better to! I really won’t forgive you if you hurt him!”

Rosy’s shouting and arm flailing seemed to not reach the attention of the entity. Instead, it held a hand to the device in its chest and turned its gaze towards the heavens higher than it.

“Or perhaps this is your doing, Yoluku.”

“Yo-loo-coo?” Rosy tried to pronounce the odd name and came to a stop, her eyes tracing up the entity and towards the highest heavens. There, as though hung like a jewel from the perpetual red bolt of lightning that arced from horizon to horizon, the little planet that always watched her hung in the sky fixated on her.

~Even in my dreams I can’t escape that dreadful little planet. It’s why I haven’t been sleeping. I just can’t with it always watching me. It’s so creepy! I wouldn’t even want Sonic looking at me like that. Tee-hee~♥ Though I wouldn’t mind if Sonic looked at me all the time! Though I probably couldn’t sleep then either.

~But this dream was maybe more special than I realized at first. It wasn’t just weird, it actually had a name for that little planet. It’s kind of hard to say though, so I’ll just call it Yolk for now! Maybe I’ll practice saying it properly, but… Hee-hee! It still creeps me out. But with a name, I’m sure once Sonic and I catch up with Tails or Zooey that we’ll be able to look it up and learn all about it! Even then, just knowing it has a name means I can tell it to let me sleep!~

Scene 35 · CLEARED Sonic & Rosy, to be continued

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And there we go, Rosy has learned the name of the planet in the sky and has decided to just call it Yolk XD. She’s so mature XD. Perhaps this scene was a little more than light, but I guess action scenes are kind of like that. I just hope it was enjoyable and that everyone will look forward to next time! Thank you!

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Special Thanks to Cutegirlmayra Story by @JoshTarwater/SonicFanJ Inspiring Song – One Last Kiss – Hikaru Utada – From Neon Genesis Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time

Fair Use Disclaimer

Sonic the Hedgehog and all affiliated characters and logos are the express property and Copyright© of SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS used without permission under Title 17 U.S.C Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 in which allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. “Fair use” is use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be considered copyright infringement. The Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey alternate universe (AU) consumer written work of fiction is a non-profit transformative work primarily for personal use and can and will be taken down without warning or prior notice at the request of the copyright holder(s) should it not be recognized under “fair use”.

*Sonic Ring Bond logo created by DEE Art – twitter.com/daryliscute.

Sonic Ring Bond AU and Sonic Ring Bond: The Journey are the creation of Joshua David Tarwater/ynymbus/sonicfanj/@Joshtarwater and is to be, including all contents herein considered for all legal purposes the property of the Sonic the Hedgehog intellectual property (IP) and copyright owners, SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS. All story contributors via prompt, suggestion, written scene, art, and all and every other contribution acknowledge that all contributed material is forfeit for legal purposes to SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS upon official request from SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic fan fiction #sonic au #sonic au series #sonic ring bond #the journey #classic amy #amy rose #rosy the rascal #au amy #amy redesign #sonic oc #patch #draw the koala

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ebachan · 5 years ago

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Sonic Movie Review

So, nobody is going to be surprised I’m writing a review of this movie :-D I’ve seen it the last Saturday. Since then, I’ve calmed down a bit, so I’m not going to be “clouded” by emotions (too much XD)

So without further ado, here we dash by...

I’ll divide this into three segments - The Good, “The Neutral”, “The Bad”. This is a purely personal opinion, so you are free to disagree ;-) I’m open to discussion, but have patience with me ;-) This will be spoilerific, so watch out :-)

TL: DR

The movie is worth the money for sure. There is a lot of fun, good action, top-notch CGI, the voice acting is spot on, Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik works really well, and Tom with Maddie make a great couple. All of this and more makes one heck-of-a-ride you will enjoy for the second time as well.

I hope you won’t mind the tag, but I love to read from you ;-)

@movie-robotnik-positivity @movie-sonic-positivity @movie-sonic-adopted-au @aawesomepenguin @welcome-to-green-hills @dxrkblaze @deldiztmblr

THE GOOD

The design...

We all can agree this Design is extremely good and flows well. I’ll remind you, I’m one of the rare people who liked Sonic 1.0. Yes, the one who was hated by almost the whole world. I still like this design, and I would be happy to see it again in action with small adjustments.

However, this one fits better. It has cartoony vibes, vibrant colors, the details are insanely beautiful, and the eyes are pure cuteness.

Jokes...

I liked almost every joke, and if I didn’t get it, I enjoyed the reaction. I can’t speak for English since I’ve heard only Czech dub, but they did well in translating or changing the jokes to fit the scene :-)

Voice Acting...

As stated before, can’t judge it, but great job on it! Czech one just sometimes for me loses some of the emotions Ben Schwartz expressed, but it’s not so bad.

Actions Scenes...

Fast-paced and well-timed. No DBZ-like fights and all of them lead to Sonic’s evolution and show his personality in the best light.

Tom and Maddie...

As I mentioned briefly, I like them both. They are a color-mixed couple, and I love them!!! It’s not forced like with words “Emancipation” or “Women don’t need men”. While Maddie isn’t an action type, she knows how to hold her ground. Like when she was calm when facing Sonic for the first time, or how she accompanied them later in the journey. She is level-headed as not even a dozen of egg-drones made her panic.

Tom is perhaps for some boring, but I like him. He is more collected and mature, which works for some nice dynamics. He is not just an adult, but Sherif too, so he has a strong sense of justice and can’t leave helpless people and alienhogs alike alone :-) He has some great lines, and takes Sonic as an equal.

Dr. Robotnik...

Only know I know he played in The Mask (a movie I’ve seen as a kid but didn’t like that much), but I’m soooo bad with names ^_^;. So, he wasn’t the reason I watched the movie, but I knew I love him as Dr. Robotnik. He makes him less 2D-villain-from-80s and gives him a spark. He is more interesting then SatAm’s Dr. Robotnik, and more close to Boom Dr. Eggman. Yet he is also very dangerous which makes for a great balance of goofy&over-the-top&serious threat.

Music...

I find it nice. Featuring smaller names like Hyper Potion or belowed Junkie-XL is a nice bonus, and they fit well the story. Except for Dr. Robotnik’s one. His moves were more fit for Fast Rock-like music. The Where Evil Grows feels too slow but fits his character. That was the only scene that threw me a bit off.

CGI...

I generally didn’t like 3D much less not fully CGI movies, but this CGI is gorgeous and so alive!! The first half-CGI movie I enjoyed was Detective Pikachu. In this decade, we have a technology capable of making those characters come to life! I hope to see more movies like this!

Easter Eggs...

I’ve spotted a few. And perhaps one I didn’t see anybody talking about. In the Bar Fight Scene, Sonic pulls out underwear of one man attacking Tom just like The Mask did XD Don’t tell me this isn’t an Easter Egg XD You can’t talk me out of it :-D

Emotions...

While I didn’t cry (as I feared), I still felt sadness or joy with Sonic.

The Neutral

Floss...

I don’t care! It’s a simple but challenging dance. It has fast-paced vibes that fit well with Sonic. Not to mention, Sonic mimicked children to feel like he has friends or he is “in”, so if some did Floss challenge, he would do it too.

Product placement...

I’ve noticed a few, and I didn’t mind them. They were relevant to the plot, quick easter-egg (pun intended), or a part of a joke.

Some jokes...

I didn’t mind fart jokes... as silly as they are, there wasn't one every five minutes, so no big deal :-)

Sonic’s arms...

I still don’t get this argument (and I may not want to), but whatever... It’s a minimal change, and I never had a problem with it. The same goes for shoes or any other design choice. Small changes don’t ruin the character ;-)

“The Bad”

I don’t exactly have something I don’t like. But I thought I should mention a thing or two. I found a few “plot-holes” that bugged me after a bit, but they do have an explanation when you think about it. Let’s call them Sonic’s Fun Facts!

NONE of what I mention here is meant to trash the movie!! It’s more of an observation, a fun activity ;-)

The car...

I dunno if any of the cars have an alarm telling you to put on the seat-belt but in both cases of Tom and Sonic, it never rung. But some may not have this function.

The car v2...

Tom’s car lost the roof, yet we didn’t see anybody stopping him. I’m sure everybody would call cops. That would be so weird. The question is, how far he had it to Maddie’s sister, and how close that house was to the Center. Perhas he needed only a short distance or people thought he has those funny 3D-stickers or it’s part of s promotion... Who knows XD

The car V3...

Sonic’s driving... has a lot to desire. Yet, still no police on their tail. Maddie asked the right question. The answer... This is just a joke. Don’t think too deep about it :-D

The Terrorist...

Tom is called a terrorist, but we don’t see any police forces to approach him. Why? Perhaps Dr. Robotnik called dibs on him and given how much the government trust in him, they believe nobody else is needed. Also, if terrorist sees policemen, they tend to turn aggressive. So, for the protection of people, it’s best not to approach him ;-)

The terrorist v2...

Tom uses his badge to gain an access to the door with no security going after him even after the “kidnapping joke”. It still works with my previous statement. It’s meant as a joke, something silly and a bit of adult-humor that works with kids as well. You gotta love those people’s reactions XD

The door...

Sonic checked he needs a key to access the roof. Which is strange. In the beginning, we can see him run up some tall building. So why not here too? Simple... 1) Dr. Robotnik was chasing him, so he might have turn desperate and ran faster and more haphazardly then before. 2) He really wanted to stay with Tom and Maddie for the longest time possible <= Nail it! I’ve no doubt it’s this ;-) Sonic did “guilt-trip” Tom into helping him :-D

The last battle...

We know the story is Sonic’s memory leading to the final battle. Yet, when we get to the point Sonic didn’t run up a building. One would assume we would see similar/exact shot. But no problem here, the movie might have had “time-limit”, so instead of a repeat, we got something new ;-)

The room painting...

When Tom goes and paints the wall with a freshly dipped paint roller, there is no wet mark. I’ve noticed it the moment I saw it. It’s kinda funny.

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Well, this seems to be everything I had on my mind :-) I’ve greatly enjoyed the movie that I go the second time <3

Thank you for reading <3

#sonic movie spoilers #sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie #sonic movie positivity #sonic movie 2020 #tom wachowski #jeff fowler #maddie wachowski #james mardsen #tika sumpter #jim carrey #dr. robotnik #paramount pictures #paramount animation #movie review #ebachan rants

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noahmanskar · 4 years ago

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The Best Albums of 2020 (and from the Before Times)

I read a lot of year-end music roundups, and several this year have come with a resonant caveat: It’s been harder to discover new music this year, both because of physical limitations (no shows, no record-store browsing, no chats with friends about your latest finds), and because the way we used music fundamentally changed. It certainly did for me. Rather than serving as the backdrop for a commute or a night out, it created moments of solace from cabin fever while doing dishes, or showering, or running semi-weekly errands. So I often turned to what was comfortable and familiar, songs that conjured memories and feelings to get me through the day. Even on the rare occasions of social listening, the groups I was with drifted into nostalgia — middle school dance tracks, mid-2000s emo, inherited dad rock, even songs from just a year or two ago, when everything was simpler, relatively speaking.

That’s not to say nothing new moved me. There was a handful of albums and songs that were crucial to getting through the doldrums. They soundtracked bike rides, long walks, longer drives and lots of small moments mentioned above. But I don’t think I can think about my favorite music of this year without thinking about the albums of the past that got me through it. Besides, one of the many lessons 2020 taught is that time is a bizarre illusion anyway. (This exercise also lets me write about some recent albums that I didn’t get to write about when they were actually released.

So here are the albums, past and present, that made 2020 bearable. I hope you found yours, too.

Tame Impala, “The Slow Rush”

Tame Impala’s fourth LP came out on Valentine’s Day. That afternoon, Claire and I had a lunch date to mark the occasion before we got on a plane to visit my parents. The night before, we had gone out to dinner with friends visiting from San Francisco and then to a bar, where we huddled next to strangers on a water bed. Roughly a month later, all of this would be unimaginable, and Kevin Parker’s lyrics to “One More Year” would be eerily prescient as we settled into this new normal:

But now I worry our horizon's been nothing new 'Cause I get this feeling and maybe you get it too We're on a rollercoaster stuck on its loop-de-loop 'Cause what we did one day on a whim Has slowly become all we do

The song is really about surrendering to time, and not worrying about it passing in spite of your ambivalence. The opening chants of Parker’s “Gregorian Robot Choir” make it easy to surrender. They carry you into a world where, as the cover art suggests, all that time you were worrying about has already passed, so you might as well dance. At the same time, the songs that follow, like “Borderline,” “Breathe Deeper” and “Lost In Yesterday” make it easy to remember what it was like to dance in a sweaty room with people you love, and to look forward to doing it again, after a little more time passes.

Fleet Foxes, “Shore”

There’s something comforting about the fact that Fleet Foxes released this record on the exact moment of the autumnal equinox. It’s a reminder that nature has its own rhythms that carry on regardless of what occurs in our human lives. They give us a measure of certainty in uncertain times. One of these rhythms — death — looms large in “Sunblind,” an ode to Robin Pecknold’s departed musical forebears: David Berman, Bill Withers, John Prine and others. This song exuding calm acceptance shifts into “Can I Believe You,” which wrestles frankly with doubt and fear.

These tracks contain profound contradictions, but sonically, they're both bright, hopeful and sure. That’s what made this album such a balm in the sixth month of this pandemic, a time of both growing darkness and hope for what might be on the other side. It reminds us that there’s power and beauty in feeling all these things at once.

Lil Uzi Vert, “Eternal Atake”

This one spent two years in label purgatory, but it finally arrived in March to prove Lil Uzi Vert can do it all. He’s at his most versatile here, spitting and crooning, boasting and balladeering. “You Better Move” is an early standout packed with playful nostalgia, including a beat that samples that classic PC pinball game and delightful jabs like these:

Yeah, step on competition, changin' my shoes Green shirt, bitch, I'm Steve, where is Blue? Every chain on, I pity a fool I'm an iPod, man, you more like a Zune Made her eat on my dick with a spoon, ew Versace drawers, bitch, you Fruit of the Loom

Then there are the melodic tracks like “Urgency,” which compel you to hum along even on the first listen. The excellent diversity made it worth the wait for this hourlong journey to another planet.

Sturgill Simpson, “Cuttin’ Grass Vol. 1: The Butcher Shoppe Sessions”

I haven’t spent much time with Sturgill Simpson outside of 2014′s “Metamodern Sounds in Country Music,” and I can’t say I’ve ever listened to another bluegrass album all the way through. But these new cuts of songs picked from Simpson’s catalog are wonderfully enticing. Simpson puts the talents of his backing band front and center, and their harmonies and rhythms illuminate his vivd songwriting in new ways. It was a great introduction to the genre for me.

Fiona Apple, “Fetch The Bolt Cutters”

I got here after the hype, after the perfect 10, after all the year-end number-ones. Fiona Apple lives up to all of it. Her compositions are complex and evocative, the lyrics tender and biting at once. Her artistry is unsparing. The chorus to the title track is already getting stuck in my head, and I can’t wait to spend more time with this one.

Bea Troxel, “The Way That It Feels” (2017)

Almost a decade has passed since I first saw Bea Troxel play. She was in an incredibly talented trio with two of my high school classmates: Maeve Thorne (who has an entrancing solo EP of her own), and Rita Pfeiffer (the violinist on this record). They ended up winning my school’s battle of the bands, and I got to interview them for the student newspaper. Shortly after our senior year, they recorded an album that still outshines most of today’s indie folk. So I jumped at the chance to all three of them again in Brooklyn.

Troxel’s performance in particular was a revelation. I won’t ever forget how I fell into a trance as she picked away at “Talc,” which exemplifies her gift for natural metaphor. I haven’t stopped playing her record since, and it’s been a constant comfort throughout this year. Her voice is one of a kind, her songwriting is rich, and the compositions flow together beautifully. I can’t wait for more; in the meantime, “The Way That It Feels” will be on repeat.

Travis Scott, “Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight” (2016)

There’s been much ado about the brilliance of “Astroworld,” Travis Scott’s magnum opus, but I have a soft spot for his sophomore LP, where he reached the peak of the spare and heavy sound that started to take shape on “Owl Pharaoh.” There are plenty of sonic layers here, and the ordering of the tracks is a craft in itself — a series of peaks and valleys that glides from the haze of “beibs in the trap” to the climax of “goosebumps” and then into the cool waters of “pick up the phone.” It feels like Scott is guiding you to and from these destinations. The journey is, as The Weeknd might put it, “wonderful.”

Harmonium, “Harmonium” (1974)

One of my pandemic binges was “Letterkenny,” the sharp Ontario-set sitcom with top-notch banter and a great soundtrack full of indie hits and Canadian deep cuts. The fight scenes are elegantly choreographed, but so are the handful of sequences at the end of key episodes that reveal the show’s emotional bedrock. One such scene is set to Harmonium’s “Un musicien parmi tant d'autres” — the main characters are reveling in a bar with their Québécois pals, whom they’ve just helped beat up a rival group. As the song builds to its climactic chorus, leading man Wayne, surrounded by couples, realizes his longing for companionship. Another fight breaks out, but instead of joining in, Wayne makes his way through the slow-motion fray toward the woman he’ll propose to in the next season. (Their relationship later falls apart, but that doesn’t undercut this scene’s beauty.)

This is probably the first foreign-language album I’ve listened to in full, but all of it evokes that feeling for me — the joy of walking through the chaos to reach what’s really important. Not a bad sentiment for these times.

Bon Iver, “22, A Million”

To talk about this weird, dark and brilliant album, I need to talk about “715 - CR∑∑KS.” Everyone I’ve talked to about the third track on “22, A Million” either loves it or can’t stand it. I’m devoted to it to the extent that it was my most-played song on Spotify this year. It oscillates between tenderness and fear, between silence and explosions of sound. The lyrics are an epitome of Justin Vernon’s cryptic poetry. It’s isolated and spare and enthralling and beautiful in its own bizarre way — just like the rest of the album, which is rich with themes of persevering through the darkness in spite of the uncertainty about when the light will appear. Vernon is alone on “CR∑∑KS,” but he’s accompanied by a cacophony of his own voice. As alone as we might feel right now, there’s always someone else shouting through the darkness with us, even if we can’t see them.

#music #2020 #bon iver #harmonium #bea troxel #travis scott #lil uzi vert #sturgill simpson #fiona apple #fleet foxes #tame impala

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doctorguilty · 5 years ago

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alright here’s how I’d rewrite Infinite and ergo some of the plot points of the games story.. it got long i got a little carried away lol........................

Infinite’s name probably isn’t that before he becomes a tool of destruction thing but I don’t care all that much to name him something else rn

he also doesn’t have a sword because that’s really not necessary and I don’t know how to make that relevant at all

forget the mercenary thing because it makes no sense that he was “hired” by eggman and that’s also boring. The jackal squad is a nomadic, robin hood type group that steals from bad folks to help other animal people villages in need

to make character relationships.. matter a little bit more, OC is a long time childhood friend of Infinite and they still see one another a decent amount despite the jackals moving around

I don’t really care how or why the phantom ruby exists in fact I’m just realizing there’s a huge discontinuity because according to the COMIC it just.. existed arbitrarily like a chaos emerald, but according to the GAME it seems to be something Eggman fabricated, since there’s “prototypes” in play??? hm hm okay you know what I’m feeling ambitious let’s make both make sense. There is one true phantom ruby that exists, eggman finds it, where ever I don’t care. some legend about, this ruby can bring your ultimate fantasies to life! EXCEPT you need to have, idk, a good heart, a heart of gold, to use it and eggman doesnt have that so he can see the illusion of his empire but it wont become reality

eggman thinks okay well, maybe if I fabricate copies of it I can make a version that will work, which I reckon doesn’t make them “prototypes’ anymore but just, copies, but close enough. however, they still don’t work

now cut to jackal squad raiding eggman for his cool shit. maybe they catch wind about this whole “bring your fantasies to life” power and want to use it for good and they know eggmans vibes are rancid. in any case the jackals make off with a ruby (a FAKE one uh oh!) but not without infinite losing an eye and gaining one big unsightly scar from a fight w/ eggman and he’s like Shook about that but he’s like hm well at least I stopped that terrible guy from harnessing this power (oh no bitch u thought..)

of course the jackals dont keep their spoils but WHO ever could be trusted with this legendary gem thing?!? oh none other than You, Original The Character, aka Infinite’s best friend .............. so he gives the ruby to OC and tells them like, idk allegedly this can make ur dreams come true but I don’t know how it works...oh my eye? yeah I sure used to have two of those but dont worry about it, anyway ttyl stay fresh *saunters off, jackaly*

because the fake!ruby is.. fake, it just seems to be a dud at first so OC just hangs onto it as a keepsake

eggman, pissed about his shit getting stolen and worried what could be done with it sends robots out to hunt down infinite, kidnap him, and drag him back to eggman’s base and demand the fake!ruby back. infinite naturally refuses to tell him anything especially at the cost of putting OC in danger, so he’s like, blow it out your ass

eggman is like HAHA WELL U DUMB SHIT you stole a fake anyway and I have the real one right here.. he uses the ruby to suddenly spawn a bunch of robots and infinite braces himself for the attack... except they go right through him because they’re just illusions. eggman is like FUCK !! DAMMIT! WHY WONT THIS SHIT WORK!! Infinite uses eggman’s tantrum time to rush in to snatch the ruby. when infinite touches it as its in eggman’s hand, however, all the illusion robots become “real” (probably conveying this through effects/opacity), taking them both by surprise. infinite is unable to take the ruby before getting hit with a full force attack from a robot

infinite is incapacitated and eggman grins, like, inch resting...................... you seem to be able to make the ruby work... I will now use you for malicious purposes >:) (cut to black)

NOW when Infinite is in the tube, 1) he already has his mask because the scene with him putting it on and monologueing about abandoning his old identity is unnecessary, it’s more symbolic here, 2) he’s amnesic and I know we did that with shadow already and I don’t mean to overuse it, but I think it works well enough in a different way for this story! Shadow had some fragments of memories and an identity crisis, but with Infinite, his memory is completely wiped (or perhaps suppressed?) and his only understanding of himself is that he was “created” to work for eggman. Even MORE importantly! the stakes are raised because of Infinite’s relationship to the OC--Infinite cannot remember them which makes attacking them a lot more heart wrenching ESPECIALLY when we get to a point where OC begins to recognize their brainwashed best friend using one of the (apparently) very same rubies given to OC to try to destroy them with

this also adds more tension to all the scenes where Infinite is taunting and threatening OC on a quite personal , rivalry-like level? Infinite would, over time, begin to get an inexplicable sense of familiarity with OC, which causes him to hesitate and hold back

oh and as for the fake!ruby, OC does use it to defend himself just like the first time! it ends up being successfully activated because OC shows a strong will to protect the other civilians. if you haven’t caught on to my cheese, both OC and Infinite have hearts of gold and thats why they can use the rubies. eggman is cheating though by fusing Infinite to the ruby and using him as a proxy for his bad will..... and again, coming back to the cheese, Infinite’s heart cannot be changed and he is not truly “evil” so that’s like, how this is working

I’m way too lazy to fix everything scene by scene because there’s also just SO MUCH wrong with all the other characters and plot but I’m just focusing on fixing Infinite and making him more interesting so I’m skipping to the end..

I’m not entirely sure how I’d order the bosses and what I’d wanna do with the eggman robot phases the whole things was a big mess............I kinda wanna go with what I THOUGHT was going to happen after beating up giant robot thing and then that squid robot breaks out??? and I thought it was going to be Infinite cause that would be much more dramatic? So lets go with that---When Eggman says like, well fuck infinite who needs him? i harnessed the power of the ruby into my robot, he means he literally trapped Infinite in it like, wired up and shit to use him like a power generator. fucked up. Infinite breaks out after that phase of the battle, and he’s like, in so much pain and glitched out on overclocked energy he cant even control what he’s doing.... commence TRUE final boss battle (it can still be a tagteam with sonic), and it’s sad and dramatic! OC pleads (or I reckon sonic, maybe the other heroes too since they talk during fights! like since OC doesnt talk) infinite to remember his true self because they dont want to destroy him

once you’ve depleted his health bar, I’m going to go ahead and use the game’s weird addition of quicktime events to fuel more cheesiness (B/C THIS IS SONIC...WHY DID THEIR “POWER OF FRIENDSHIP” MORAL END ON SUCH A BLAND, UNEMOTIONAL NOTE IN FORCES??? shadow didnt fall to his (alleged) death in sa2 for this..............) and you quicktime OC HUGGING Infinite, like jumping towards him and grabbing him in an embrace type of thing! and when OC makes contact with the ruby, it activates, making all the probably hostile glitchy battle terrain or whatever dissipate, infinite stops being like.. idk lookin like he’s being electrocuted, and his mask fades away .. exposing Infinite as his true self once again

the in between the lines intent here, again since OC doesn’t talk, is that OC’s fantasy was to bring Infinite back so they could be together again. you’re welcome to interpret that as romantic, or platonic, it doesn’t matter! it’s open ended! it’s just supposed to be cute!

idk and then emotional stuff, I’m not entirely sure what it doesn’t really matter the idea is that Infinite is like, remorseful of what happened but everyone ofc forgives him because it’s not his fault , and then he joins up with with everyone to help fix the world! hmm I’m torn between Infinite keeping the true phantom ruby or giving it to the OC, like giving it to the OC makes sense, but for the sake of like, hypothetically bringing Infinite back in a future game and having special powers, it would be perfect if he kept it and that was his thing, he uses the power of virtual reality to help people and fight evil and whatever

I dont know I guess there’s not a lot of sense in thinking too hard since I just remembered none of this is canon whatsoever and we’re probably not seeing Infinite again unless as a stock evil thing to beat up like metal sonic 8′)

I have no idea who i wrote this for I guess myself! Idk if anyone else played forces or cares or w/e but! if you DO happen to be someone who read this and cares about it omg well like feel free to! comment and tell me what you think!!! this was all very stream of thought

#seth speaks #save tag #so i dont lose this in case i wanna come back to it

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titanswriter · 5 years ago

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Enough

This is if Jason were killed. I mean, I almost went with the crow bar, but that would’ve been obvious.

TW: death; blood

——————————————————————————

His idea was to drive off until he ran out of gas. Start his life in that city; new name, new purpose. He didn’t need Bruce Wayne or Dick, or the Titans. He was going to be his own person. “Fuck them!” He yelled at the sky.

Then he calmed down.

Jason was sitting on a hill, overlooking a carnival being set up. The sun was settled and it was about to open. A carnival sounded like a good idea. He doesn’t remember if he’s ever been to one; his dead beat of a father was too busy getting drunk and beating the new woman in his life. He rested his chin on his helmet, sighing.

How could he be so dumb? Of course the first girl he had any interest in wound up being a spy. He groaned to himself, throwing his helmet onto the ground. And now the only people he ever really considered a family is broken up. All because of the mole.

Because of her

So why did he still feel this way?

He shook his head of the thoughts. Maybe he should go back to Titans Tower. And what? Look like a dog with it’s tail between his legs? The amount of ‘told you so’s’ made his head ache. He knew no one would say anything; no one had an idea. But he was the one who went after her

Idiot

He watched as the men were setting up, his eye catching a sliver truck pulling up. Curious, he kept his gaze on it, chin in palm. The wide doors opened and Connor stepped out

“The fuck?” He mumbled, his eyes narrowing. Why wasn’t he at the tower? A second sliver truck drove up, a green tiger jumping out.

“What the fuck?” He was confused, pulling his bike to the side to lean further to see what was going on. A woman stepped out of one of the van’s, fixing Connor’s shirt. Camdus

This didn’t look good

He pulled his phone out, quickly calling Dick. He swore as the line appeared disconnected, pulling his contacts to look for someone else to call. He dropped his phone as he heard screaming, looking over to see Connor starting to trash the carinval. He went back on his bike, forgetting his helmet as he drove closer to the carnival.

As he came down, he could see the others already down there. And some guy in a black and blue suit. He peeked over as they started to fight, watching.

Hawk caught sight of Jason, knocking a guard out. He ran over to where Jason was hidden. “What are you doing here, you little shit?” He asked, keeping his head down

“I was around. Saw some weird shit going on. It looks like some weirdos did something with Gar and Connor.”

“Well, you would be right. Trust me, I know as much as you probably do. I just arrived. Found out about your little girlfriend.”

“Don’t fucking remind me. Already had my moment.”

“It happens.” He shrugged. “If you don’t have your suit, I suggest you get out of here. Deathstroke is around too.”

“Shit.” He sighed, looking behind him. “At least I should get the people away. Who’s the douche in the black and blue?”

“That’s Dick.”

“No shit.” His voice rose a bit, laughing.

The sound of a short sonic boom was heard, Connor using his lasers to pull down tents and destroy displays. Jason turned in the other direction, running towards the people trying to get out.

Deathstroke stormed out from the opposite tent, his sword in hand. Jason caught a glance of him, stopping in his tracks. He recognized the other right away, stepping closer. “Out of your costume, I see.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t really send invitations that you were coming or I would’ve came prepared.” Jason stepped back, trying to get as much distance between him and Deathstroke.

“You should’ve stayed away from the Titans. You could’ve avoided a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe I like trouble.” He said, trying to find a way out. He saw Deathstroke step closer, turning to run in the other direction. “Smooth, Todd, smooth.” He mumbled to himself, pissed that he forgot his suit. He heard the others fighting, the sound of lion roaring in the air. He turned the corner, seeing Dick.

“Nice suit, asshole!”

Dick turned slightly, surprised to see the other. “Jason?” He motioned for him to hide. “Where’s your suit? Go, you can get hurt.”

“Everything is fine, Deathstroke is—“ he started to say, before he choked out blood. Deathstroke came behind him, stabbing into his stomach.

“No!” Dick yelled, running forward. Hank and Dawn heard they commotion, running towards the sound of Dick’s yelling. He grabbed Jason before he could fall over, Hank coming behind Deathstroke and pushing him onto the ground. Donna came over soon after, helping to wrap his arms with her lasso.

Jason was coughing, gasping. “Fucking— asshole.” He looked up at Dick. “You look like a douche..”

Donna and Hank pulled Deathstroke away from the scene.

“Jason... we need to get you to a hospital.” He looked around for Kory.

“Hey, I don’t think it matters.” Jason pulled his shirt up to see he got him in his spleen. “I don’t think you can live without that.” He felt his breathing become heavier, leaning his head back.

Hank came running up, pulling his mask off. “The fuck, he wasn’t even fighting! Fucking bastard.” He kneeled before Jason, shaking his head.

“When is it Deathstroke is fair.” Dick applied pressure to the sight, trying to control the bleeding. “It’s not stopping. Hank, call an ambulance

Jason could feel himself becoming cold, trying to tuck his hands in his shirt. “Your identities will be found out....”

“Who cares! You’re bleeding to death.” Hank stood up, dialing.

“I really.... think....” he was losing his trail of thought, looking up at the sky. “I wonder if I am going to Heaven...”

“Don’t talk like that, man!” Hank said, getting off the phone. “Don’t say that! You’re too young.”

“Like how many sins are you allowed before you really really go to Hell.” He felt his mind wander, not able to focus on one thing. “Is it what they say in the movies.”

Hank kneeled down again, taking Jason’s face. “Look kid, you aren’t going anywhere. Focus on me.” He patted his cheeks, leaning close to his face. “We are going to take you to the hospital and we will call Bruce who will distract the press and you will get better.” He was trying to hold it together.

Jason’s vision was blurring, narrowing his eyes to try to focus on Hank. “You think.... you think it was worth it...”

“What’s worth it?”

“Being....Robin. you think I.... good enough....”

“You’re still Robin! You’re the best fucking Robin in my book.” Hank felt his own vision blur. “Don’t talk like that.”

Jason laughed, his eyes trying to roll back. “You proud..... Dick.... Bruce....”

“You know damn well they are!” Hank choked a bit, the tears trying to not roll. “You gave Bruce hell, but he wouldn’t have brought you in if he didn’t care. Hey, I may have known you for a short time.....” he swore under his breath, closing his eyes. “But I’m proud of you, kid. You are a fucking shit head and fucking get on my last nerve, but you’re good. You gave them hell. And you weren’t afraid of it.” He could feel the tears rolling down.

Jason felt his body shake, coughing up blood. He looked over at Dick who finally let his hands move from applying pressure. “I— you’re..... admire....”

Dick felt the tears run down, nodding. “I know... I wish I was more to you.”

Jason shook his head. “Th—thank you—- making me feel—- enough....” he shivered, leaning his head back as he felt dizzy. He heard the sirens blaring, the red and blue lighting up the sky. Hank was yelling, the pain felt in his voice. His grip on Jason’s head tightening. ‘This kid needs help! Fucking get over here!’ Dick stood and the cool rush of him missing hit Jason at full blast

He could feel the slowing of his heart

Thump

....Hump

.......ump

......mp

#titans #jason todd #robin #dick grayson #nightwing #hank hall #dawn granger #dove #donna troy #wonder girl #rachel roth #raven #beast boy #gar logan #kory anders #starfire #tw death #tw blood

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latin-dr-robotnik · 5 years ago

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Sonic Movie thoughts (spoilers)

So, after spending some days thinking and writing, I finally finished up rounding up all of my Sonic Movie thoughts. Most of these are lifted from my Spanish-written reviews, both with spoilers and without spoilers, so this is something that I've been cooking for a while now.

First of all, I’m sooooo surprised by this movie! I mean, when I stepped into the theater I expected a 6.5/10 to 7/10 movie, but after watching it I consider it to be a solid 8/10. It was a 9/10 in some moments, but there were some nitpicks of mine that hurt that score. Jim Carrey was a 10/10 through and through, of course.

Another thing that I really loved was how the secondary cast was easily capable of keeping the fun factor up in between Sonic-Tom-Robotnik action sequences. Agent Stone was always a personal highlight (he’s so nice and chill, I want him to wake me up each morning), but characters like Wade, Carl and specially Rachel were just too much fun for what I originally expected to be just throwaway characters. Rachel in particular I felt like she carried the movie between Tom and Sonic reaching SF and the final confrontation, her whole shtick was very simple, but effective.

MAN, THAT ENTIRE BAR SEQUENCE WAS SICK. Sonic watching Hot Rods so hyped was funny, and even though the “he’s older than he looks but don’t give him alcohol” joke was weird, the whole Bar sequence was sick as fuck. I particularly laughed a lot at the mention of a “ZZ Top cover band” playing, which may be a result of my dad actually listening to ZZ Top tributes IRL. But then the bar fight happens, and the way the whole sequence was directed, animated and presented was simply mind blowing. Favorite moment of the entire movie, 10/10 would watch again. Also, Fry reference when Sonic stops time? (Futurama gang rise up)

Kids jokes vs adult jokes were something that low-key caught my attention when watching the movie. I noticed that kids enjoyed Sonic’s silly shenanigans a lot more, while we adults were laughing at each single second Jim Carrey was on screen. Also, Rachel’s jokes had a tendency to not make children laugh that much, but man I would be lying if I didn’t say I laughed my ass off when she spelled D-I-V-O-R-C-E to Maddie. Of course there was going to be a generational breach, but I thought it was interesting to see how kids reacted versus certain jokes in comparison to adults.

Speaking of jokes, I saw lots of critics complaining about the way certain jokes would not stick and were potentially “cringe material”, but to be honest I can’t think about more than two or three instances where a joke really made me slap my face and nod in disagreement. I thought even the sillier jokes were mildly funny, maybe due to the fact I was able to completely shut down my brain since the first minute. Either that or my sense of humor is shit.

Now for a complete change of pace. I thought the final sequence was beautiful, not from a narrative perspective, but for the way the whole thing was set and done. Awesome climax, but I could not take the “emotional” moment of Sonic dying seriously, only because this franchise has that fucking morbid tendency to kill its protagonist, and when I realized what was going on I started to laugh. Not only it was predictable, but to be honest, it’s emotional message went over me big time. Though, like I say on my Spanish review, being predictable, by the numbers and cliché doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Not at all. It’s just... I couldn’t take the scene in the same way some of you took it and reflected upon here on Tumblr.

Though that last point could’ve sounded like a personal gripe, it really wasn’t. I only had three major gripes with the Sonic Movie, and those were: 1) Sonic doing the floss... TWICE; 2) Sanic in 2020, are you serious? (at least it was presented with some decent context, I buy the fact Carl drew that); 3) that whole Olive Garden thing. Those three points do really bring the movie down from that 9/10 spot from me, but think about it: those were the only THREE short moments that I did not like during an 1 hour and 40 minutes movie. That speaks volumes about the quality of the overall project.

This one may be a little more local to me, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the Latin Spanish dub of the movie was pretty nice. I’m normally a subs or original language only guy, but I didn’t have any trouble with the way the actors were dubbed. Mario Castañeda has been dubbing Jim Carrey for decades now and he’s still top notch, while Luisito Comunica’s Sonic wasn’t nowhere as annoying as I once feared he could be. I’m still going to watch the movie in English whenever it releases digitally or something.

Last point: would you believe me if I tell you I didn’t want to listen to Speed Me Up until I was there staring at the credits? Because that’s what I did. I didn’t listen to a single Sonic Movie track before going, and while I don’t usually pay too much attention to movies’ OST (I’m way more strict with game OSTs), I thought Speed Me Up was quite nice. Now, don’t expect me to spend my days listening to the OST, but I least I was left a good impression by what I could remember. That 16-bits ending sequence was glorious, too.

So, that was the Sonic Movie to me, an unexpectedly better movie than I thought, and the comeback of the century to be honest. I was one of the people that really feared for it back during the first trailer, so after everything that was done to solve that mess I felt obligated to pay up some tickets (because I invited my best friend to go with me, he’s a true trooper and a big Jim Carrey fan). And so I did, and so I was pleasantly surprised.

Can’t wait for Sonic 2 featuring Tails, which is cool and everything... but when are we getting Amy tho? Maybe a vague enough, Sonic CD-esque plot adaptation? COLLISION CHAOS ON THE BIG SCREEN LIKE GHZ? BIG FUCKING YES if so.

#sonic movie #sonic movie spoilers #to be honest i can see eggman starting to build his empire on the next movie #and maybe even build metal sonic as the true showing of the power he still has #that would be badass to be honest

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mobius-prime · 5 years ago

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77. Sonic the Hedgehog #49

Previous / Table of Contents / Next

Escape from the Floating Island

Writers: Mike Gallagher and Ken Penders Pencils: Sam Maxwell Colors: Karl Bollers

After another recap intro page, we're thrust right back into the action from last issue's literal cliffhanger. Sonic finds himself plunging down a terrifying drop with certain death at the bottom. He's too exhausted from all the chaos to try his figure eight move to hover, so instead, he decides on potentially the most ridiculous and disgusting option possible to save his skin instead.

This madlad grabs the stink lines and dirt from his own horrifically disgusting socks, throws it in an arc, and races along it like it's solid ground to reach actual solid ground. I cannot even begin to fathom how something like that works, but hey, it works, and Sonic is able to run for it away from Geoffrey and his troops, who are forced to take the long route back through the caverns to follow him, though they still have the advantage of the tracking device implanted in his shackles.

Back at Knothole, everyone learns how Robotnik was able to carry out his plan. The miraculously-revived king was no more than a robotic duplicate.

The real king, still crystallized, is currently within his base, where we see another familiar face - Dr. Quack, handing over Sally's death certificate (which actually lists Sally's full name as "Sally Elisha Acorn," though her middle name's spelling was later retconned as we'll see) to Snively and demanding that Snively "fulfill his end of the bargain." Wait, what? Snively merely opens a wall panel, to reveal Dr. Quack's wife and children, imprisoned behind bars. When Dr. Quack reacts in outrage and anger, Snively blasts him with some kind of energy beam as motivation to behave.

Wait… falsified? So Princess Sally isn't actually…?

Yeah, here's the thing. I was playing along with the narrative before, but I'm sure anyone reading this without having read the comics beforehand was saying to themselves "Of course she's not actually dead, she's one of the comics' main characters! They wouldn't just kill off a main character in such a sudden, ignoble manner!" But that's where you, my good friend, are wrong as hell! See, this scene marks a hard right turn that Kenders was basically forced to make by (from what I've heard) Sega themselves. At about this point in the comic, he'd gotten it into his weird little Penders-y head that no one really cared about Sally anyway, that she was an unpopular character who "cramped Sonic's style" as the cool guy he was always meant to be, and decided to kill her off for real. As in, her "death" in the first issue of Endgame was actually meant to be 100% serious, with Sally gone forever. Of course, this immediately resulted in a huge outcry from devastated fans who loved Sally and didn't want to see her suddenly killed off, and so Penders had to rewrite the next three issues to make sure she could be brought back. But shh! You didn't hear that from me! We're still pretending to be shocked that she's not actually dead, okay?

Meanwhile in the wilderness, Sonic is trudging his way along, exhausted and desperate for help. Suddenly, he remembers that by doing a certain whistle he can call Dulcy to him, and she arrives, eager to help. She also says something… very interesting.

So dragons can sense truth, huh? *takes deep breath* WHEN WAS THIS ESTABLISHED?! I get that in this case King Acorn was going to sentence Sonic to prison anyway given that he was just a puppet of Robotnik's, so her testimony might not have mattered anyway, but damn, dude! Where was Dulcy when Sonic was accused of treason back in StH#40? Where was she when literally anyone was saying something suspicious or seemingly impossible? Dulcy alone could have solved like half the plots of this comic series by herself! Sigh. Kenders, you really need to learn to stop including random facts like this out of the blue when you've written yourself into a corner. A real writer doesn't solve plot holes through a deus-ex-machina, they cry and eat Denny's at 3am while their plots fall apart! No I'm not speaking from experience! Why do you ask?

Well, back at Hershey's place, Drago's only being more and more of a douche. Hershey has only just heard the news about Sally's death, and is horrified when Drago gleefully reveals that she's the one who did it! But how?

Yeah, turns out she was convinced by him to wear a Sonic costume, somehow, and the eyepieces made everyone look like Snively. She thought she was helping the Freedom Fighters by killing Snively, but was the one who dropped Sally all along. She's devastated, and left to sob on the ground as Drago happily celebrates his own genius in trusting Robotnik for personal power, because that's never backfired in anyone else's face before, has it?

Now we finally get to see what happened to Antoine and Bunnie after they were captured last issue. They've been hauled all the way to a prison in Downunda, and shackled to the wall, fitted with customized collars. Bunnie's is merely tuned to sense when she uses her bionic parts' capabilities to try to escape, while Antoine's is tuned to explode violently if Bunnie's collar gives the signal. Ouch, man.

They soon find that Walt Wallabee and Barby Koala are locked in with them, looking rather the worse for wear. Before they can get further than basic introductions (remember, only Tails has met these guys before), who shows up to greet everyone but Crocbot! Apparently, he didn't actually die when his tank exploded back in the Tails miniseries. He was badly damaged, but built himself back up from combot parts and has taken control of this region once again, running this slave labor camp to mine ore for Robotnik. He was pissed at his past defeat, and so made it a point to capture the Downunda Freedom Fighters the first chance he could. Yeah, capture, not kill. 'Cause remember how this guy has a hard-on for cold-blooded torture?

Who knows how long those poor Downunda Freedom Fighters have been locked up in here, man. At least they're still alive, right?

While all this has been going down, Dulcy has been flying Sonic to his requested destination - the Floating Island, where he hopes to get help from the only neutral third party he really has left. Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten that whenever he and Knuckles appear in the same issue together, it's a hard rule that they have to start punching each other for no reason.

This time, however, they're barely able to start their shenanigans up when they're interrupted by Geoffrey and his troops parachuting in to recapture their quarry. Oh boy, more drama! Guess we’ll see where it all goes in the big landmark issue #50…

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 49 #era 2 the freedom fight #writer: michael gallagher #writer: ken penders #pencils: sam maxwell #colors: karl bollers

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amplesalty · 3 years ago

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Halloween 2021 - Day 2 - 28 Weeks Later (2007)

More like 49 weeks later!

...get it? Because it’s been 49 weeks since I saw the first one? No? Fine...

Science fiction and horror films are frequently interpreted as allegories of specific realities, their fantastic and supernatural elements seen as symptoms of social and political malaise. The paranoia generated by loved ones taken over by a co-opting entity or ideo…wait a minute, this sounds familiar.

I wasn’t in any great rush to see the sequel after watching 28 Days Later last year but after seeing the Monster Madness video and all the hubbub surrounding it, it kinda put me in the mood. Released some five years after the original, Danny Boyle handed off directing duties to Juan Carlos Fresnadillo which seems like a relatively obscure choice, he doesn’t really have many credits to his name either before or since this movie. But apparently Boyle really liked his 2001 movie Intacto so he was brought on board.

As the name might suggest, the movie takes place 28 weeks after the initial outbreak of the rage virus. In that time the infected have all starved to death and an American lead NATO operation have swept in in order to try and restore some form of order. Is it weird that I kind of want to see that movie without any of the horror themes or dramatic twists attached? You’ve got this entire country that’s had it’s population wiped out barring the odd survivor who’ve managed to board themselves up for months on end, I just think that’d be kinda cool to see a movie or a series exploring the process of getting everything up and running again. You have to re-establish all the infrastructure, install a new government, bring back some kind of population. And how would you do that? Do you entice all the ex-pats to go back? Get some of your own people to move over? Would everyone chip in and send some small fraction of their own population for like 5-10 years in order to get things going again? It’s kinda like that initial part of Endgame that was just dealing with the aftermath of the snap, you’ve kinda abruptly shifted tone and genre to go into this look at how everyone coped with having 50% of the worlds population vanished in an instance. That kinda threw me at the time as I was expecting it to jump straight into the action again but I was into that insight into how the world moved on and how people coped, it was interesting to see Steve Rogers away from being the ass kicking machine and running some form of support group.

There is a prologue before we truly kick into the 28 weeks later portion of the film where we find Robert Carlyle and a bunch of other survivors shacked up in a nice old couple’s cottage until a little boy comes along looking for shelter. Unfortunately he brought a bunch of the infected with him who promptly burst through the windows and slaughter nearly everyone inside. Carlyle manages to make his escape but absolutely ditches his wife along the way when she gets cornered. Dude, that’s cold.

Only, you don’t actually see her get attacked so it’s fairly obvious that something’s up. They did something similar in Zombieland 2 where Columbus’ girlfriend is seemingly infected and Columbus is meant to put her out of her misery but you never see it happen so I figured she’d come back again.

So she ends up being this sort of shadow hanging over the film, you’re just waiting for her to show up again so it kinda feels like things aren’t truly going to get going until she re-emerges. It’s not as if it’s just left at her ‘death’ scene and she’s going to pop up out of the blue later, the movie makes sure you aren’t forgetting about her with Carlyle telling his kids who have been flown back from Spain about her demise. Plus she pops up in little flashbacks or nightmares.

Carlyle is a little sneaky here too as, the way he tells the story, he tried to save her but couldn’t do anything. Not how I remember it, mate. Maybe it’s his own coping mechanism, some form of denial in his own head or a way to soften the blow for his kids but the lie only further serves to detract from any sympathy we might feel for him. He’s not a bad guy or anything but it’s a neat little quirk to have this level of flaw in one of your protagonists.

Not that he lasts too long in that role however, when she eventually does re-emerge and the two re-unite, we learn that she has some level of immunity from the rage virus and seems to have something of a ‘half-zombie’. When the two kiss, the rage spreads to him and he promptly freaks the fuck out and batters her half to death before gouging her eyes out. Jesus Christ! Pretty brutal stuff.

I think brutal is the word of the day here between that scene and a later one in which a bunch of survivors are shuttled into and locked in an indoor car park by the military as part of lockdown procedures. Only, infected Carlyle breaks in and promptly starts laying waste to everyone. There’s a very creepy vibe with lots of slow mo, zoomed in shots of bloodied infected, set to a soundtrack of people screaming as they trample over one another in the panic.

It’s not much better when they get outside though since the military have snipers stationed on several of the nearby buildings and, after trying to pick off the infected, are soon told to open fire on everyone and just start indiscriminately killing everyone in an effort to stop the spread of the infection. Amongst their number is Doyle, played by Jeremy Renner. Clearly a good choice for a sniper, I guess he always was a hawkeye.

Only, his conscious gets the better of him and he promptly abandons his post and helps a ragtag group of survivors to try and get out of the city. Not exactly being led by men with sober minds and sympathetic hearts when they ask you to turn your crosshairs on the innocent. Who he is being led by is Idris Elba who seems to be putting some of the Stringer Bell type American accent training to good use. Or, at least he would be if he had anything of note to say in this film. At most he just seems to spend his time looking stern and giving out orders of escalating panic stations. Bit of a shame really as his name did stand out amongst the credits. I suppose this is still relatively early in his career so he’s not quite at the level of landing those meaty roles just yet. Some might argue he’s not even peaked yet, not until next year at least when he is set to reach the pinnacle of his career in the Sonic sequel as Knuckles.

Doyle and his band of survivors include Carlyle’s kids who one of the American medical team suggest might share some form of immunity like their movie and could be the key to some sort of vaccine or cure. But, they all have to work quickly to try and escape because Doyle learns from one of his buddies that the army is due to firebomb the city in order to exterimate the virus again.

Bloody hell, do you think Boris has this as the nuclear option in his Winter plan for Covid this year?

It’s these type of scenes that really underline the direction this movie takes, shedding the more human story in favour of a more action packed affair. Which, for what it’s trying to do, I think it works.

Mainly because I do appreciate the mad lads doing a scene in which a helicopter is weaponized by tilting forward in order to use its rotor blades to mulch the hordes. That was clearly always the best way to try and kill someone in GTA Online. Nice to see someone embrace the use of rotor blade decapitation in cinema after John Landis nearly ruined it forever.

Ending is a little bit of a mixed bag though. Whilst on the surface we do get the kids making it to safety, we do have the added stinger of them seemingly causing the virus to spread to France and presumably leading to the total destruction of the nation. So, whilst it does render the preceding 90 minutes kind of pointless, we did manage to stick it to the French even after we’d already been wiped out ourselves and took them down with us so swings and roundabounts...

We’re some 14 years on from the release of this movie and there’s still no sign of the next sequel. Maybe they’re just really taking their time to make sure they’re only working with the best possible ideas. I mean, they’ve kind of written themselves into a corner with the naming scheme they have going on, there’s only so many of these you can realistically do. You’ve got 28 Months Later and then 28 Years Later. Are you going to do 28 Centures Later after that? The rage virus springs up on some Earthy colony on the planet Neptune?

#Halloween 2021 #28 Weeks Later #28 Days Later

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msclaritea · 8 years ago

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...quotes from cast/crew of Sherlock

"We had some fun times when we were filming in Belgium. I was desperately trying to put on weight, so there was a lot of [eating] rubbish food and drinking alcohol without worrying about it. With Sherlock, it’s lots of seeds, juices, swimming and running, but on this I was doing lots of beer, wine, chips and the most f*cking amazing proper steaks and goulashes. I still didn’t put on enough, though. But for Star Trek, I went up about three suit sizes."

—Benedict Cumberbatch

"Little Martin? Can you imagine that? He wouldn’t be allowed anyway, he’s got to be the grumpy Hobbit. He’d be down on the ground looking all cool and mod-like with his shades, listening to some ska going, “Yeah that looked like fun, you tw*t.” Whereas I’m there jumping around like Tigger."

—Benedict Cumberbatch , on skydiving in New Zealand

"Yeah, sometimes you want to go, “I actually do mind having a photo taken because it’s one o’clock in the morning and I’m off my face.”

—Benedict Cumberbatch

‘Someone will always hate what I say. There’s always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.

—Benedict Cumberbatch

‘There were bean bags, but it wasn’t like, “Hey guys, let’s hang out and talk about sexuality” when I was five.’

—Benedict Cumberbatch , on his home life as a child

‘I remember watching Star Trek, but I wasn’t obsessive about it. There were other programmes I’d always tell my mum I wanted to watch. Mainly Knight Rider, The A-Team, occasionally Buck Rogers and, funnily enough for a child, Baywatch. Good old Pammy!’

—Benedict Cumberbatch

‘I’m trying to look after my Sherlock jawline, otherwise I’d have loved the cake.'

—Benedict Cumberbatch, on the apology cake he was offered by a Twitter stalker

'I struggle to learn by rote. I’ve had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.’

—Benedict Cumberbatch

“I’m not very geeky. I’m quite homespun. I would say I’m more modern rustic than gadget-orientated. I like woollen things and log fires and whiskey…”

—Benedict Cumberbatch

I was on the Tube in London and this teenage girl eyed me up and said: “Alright, Mr Sex?”. It threw me. The daft thing was that she was quoting a line in the show but I’d forgotten it because it had been a while since filming,’ … ‘I just thought I was looking particularly hot that day. Well, it’s better than being called Mr F***wit…

-Andrew Scott

“Benedict has his own gravity, both as an actor and a human being. He pulls you in and you are powerless to escape. I never knew whether to cry out in fear or weep in his arms.”

-Damon Lindleof

“I know people are touched by it, because they write to me and send me pictures– often of me having sex with Benedict Cumberbatch…”

-Martin Freeman

"I can’t stop traffic on Fifth Avenue, not unless I walk in front of an oncoming cab."

-Benedict Cumberbatch

"Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don't know anyone on Earth who doesn't, but I do find it funny. It's new to me, and I'm sure I'll get used to it and find a way of dealing with it, but at the moment it is quite odd. I look in a mirror and I see all the faults I've lived with for 35 years, and yet people go kind of nuts for certain things about me. It's not me being humble. I just think it's weird. I dislike the size and shape of my head. I've been likened to Sid the sloth from Ice Age… I have a long face, retroussé nose and have been known to be quite camp… I know I don't fit into some archetype. I'm comfortable with it. People have a hindrance if they are extraordinarily beautiful. It can be a problem. You are not given the challenges and then, when you are, all eyes are on you to see if you can pull anything off other than being beautiful to look at."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

“If I were the [producer], I’d be frightened of the dynamic of male friendship that you’d lose,” he confesses to TVLine, “because that is obviously the bedrock of the books as well. [Now] there might be sexual tension between Joan [Watson] and Sherlock, which is [a different dynamic than you'd have] between the two men. So, that’s a new thing to explore.”

--Benedict Cumberbatch (on CBS' Elementary)

Mycroft’s popularity doesn’t surprise me at all. He is, after all, incredibly beautiful, clever and well-dressed. And beautiful. Did I mention that?

--Mark Gatiss

And yes, please vote for us in the YouTube thing. Cos if we lose we’ll be too upset to make any more. And I’ll axe Doctor Who as well. And shoot Santa Claus and some puppies.

--Steven Moffat

Sue: Sherlock to me feels like a Great Dane, you know, those dogs where the legs are too big.

Benedict: Yes! Yes. Except, more like a meercat, or a hybrid between a meercat and a Great Dane. A Great Dane on speed. A Great Dane that's just had a bowl of coffee.

Sue: What would John be?

Benedict: He's a big dog. He's sort of angular; there's something more predatory about him. A kind of creature of the night. Not the most sociable. Not a cat, but something very independent. Removed.

(On Appropriate Sherlock and Watson Spirit Animals)

"Is John a hedgehog? I haven't seen the hedgehog. When did that happen? Is it due to Martin's hair? Because if it is, I'll be really happy about that. "

--Benedict Cumberbatch On the Otter and Hedgehog Internet Memes

"It cuts me up and I can’t control myself from making funny sounds as I dive into my hands and eat my fist."

--Benedict Cumberbatch, on War Horse

"Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles."

-Benedict Cumberbatch

"It’s always definitely a love story. I don’t see why that means that sex has to be involved. What a weirdly sexualized world we live in where you insist they much be having sex as well. Why would they? John isn’t wired that way, whatever Sherlock is. But I think that whole scene, when Irene Adler has to say she’s mostly gay, she has had relationships with men as well, it’s not what it’s about. Sherlock Holmes is indifferent to sex. So is Irene. She uses sex to get what she wants, and John Watson happily has a string of girlfriends. Sex is not really the issue among any of these people. Love is. Infatuation is. I think John Watson is infatuated with and fascinated by Sherlock Holmes. I think Sherlock Holmes absolutley relies completely and utterly on John Watson and is devoted to him."

--Steven Moffat

"He knows how to be charming, he knows how to play all the games we play in every social interaction, and yet he withdrawals from them. Purely, it’s an athlete thing. He’s reserving what he needs for when he needs it. That’s a huge difference between him and me. I kind of spend myself too easily I’m far more [makes a “putting it all out there” motion] “bleh,” and there it all is, heart and sleeve. But he’s incredibly controlled and that’s sort of what’s remarkable about him.

--Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock

"And I think, you know, the other thing I really enjoy is he is achievable. He is somebody that we could all be — not that we necessarily want to follow the personal traits, but these abilities. He doesn’t fly through space or have a sonic screwdriver, he’s somebody who has actually … Who has sonic screwdrivers?"

--Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock

"One minute he’s not quite so handsome. Then the next minute he’s gorgeous. What is that term? Jolie laide. It’s French for ugly-handsome."

— Una Stubbs on Benedict Cumberbatch’s looks

"I've gone up two suit sizes. The character I'm playing, he's strong, I can say that much. I've changed my physique a bit, so that requires eating like a foie gras goose, well beyond your appetite. Providing I don't feel too ill, I then work out two hours a day with a phenomenal trainer. It's the LA way."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

"There is weird fan fiction out there — weird. They write stories and do manga cartoons of what they think you get up to behind closed doors. Some of it’s funny. Some of it’s full-on sex. Get Martin to show you some. "

--Benedict Cumberbatch

“Benedict is a kind of magnificent, exotic animal as an actor. He doesn’t look like a normal person. He rarely plays normal people. He plays sort of exceptional people.”

- Steven Moffat

"Believe me: during my first years on stage and in front of the camera I often felt like nothing more than a moving piece of furniture. I still always gave the best of me."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

"And some idiot locked us out of our hotel room - who turned out to be Benedict."

--Steven Moffat, The Hounds of Baskerville commentary

"Everyone’s been asking us if we’re going any further with the relationship between John and Sherlock, and I’m thinking, well, why not? I really don’t see the problem with it, and Mark (Gatiss) has already asked us if it would be an issue if we were to kiss on screen. Of course he was joking, but I wouldn’t mind at all."

— Martin Freeman

“He found the part that he could make live uniquely, that he could inhabit, that could make him a leading man. He is never going to be a conventional leading man, he’s not going to be James Bond. But he is going to be the sexiest Sherlock Holmes there has ever been.”

--Steven Moffat on Benedict Cumberbatch, London Evening Standard Interview

Of course I’d like to live a few months a year in Hollywood, then I’d at least get a bit of sunshine. (laughs) But surrendering completely to the American way of life? No fucking way!

--Benedict Cumberbatch

“I try to get them to write ‘Sir Benedict’ on it. Occasionally they oblige.”

--Benedict Cumberbatch (about his polystyrene cup of coffee)

"A militant one. Dungarees, moustache, all men are rapists, you know the drill... Seriously, though, I'd like every man who doesn't call himself a feminist to explain to the women in his life why he doesn't believe in equality for women. I think Page 3, Nuts and Zoo are bullshit. I don't wax my pubic hair off. I don't think working in a titty bar getting fivers shoved up your bum is empowering. And I'm bored of pictures of women in their smalls on buses with fuck-me mouths."

--Louise Brealey (on what kind of feminist she is)

"We just were looking for someone with the most awesome name in history. That was the casting call. We asked for someone with the most awesome name in history, ever, and Benedict Cumberbatch showed up, so we were like, “You’re cast!”"

--J.J. Abrams (on casting BC in the new Star Trek movie)

"One day we were in the make-up trailer and someone was brushing out Benedict’s stunt double’s wig - and we decided to put Martin in it. We put Sherlock’s coat on him and stood him on top of one of the make-up chairs so he looked tall and took the photo from low down. And when Benedict came in we got the make-up assistant to ask him to autograph the photograph. She handed it over - and this is how Benedict’s mind works - and he went “I don’t remember wearing my coat with that colour scarf"

--Lara Pulver

"Martin said a few things but they were harmless. They were both supportive and by the end of it I wouldn't move on to the next line until Benedict had stared at my boobs!"

--Lara Pulver, on being naked in Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia

"But it doesn't matter how many times you say that [they're not gay], an entire forest of dirty fiction has arisen as a result. And long may it continue, I don't know what it's about. . ."

--Mark Gatiss

"I'm very aware of it, God, I'm aware of it because people come and talk about it every time we do any kind of event but I suppose the history of it is going way back. I think it started with Kirk and Spock. Anything like that has a kind of slash element and it's an interesting thing because you've brought up the idea of heterosexual men get off on the notion of lesbians but the flip side is just as powerful, particularly I think for girls of a certain age. The idea of two sexy men getting it on is a really powerful aphrodisiac."

--Mark Gatiss

"I was the boy that turned a girlfriend into the most celebrated lesbian on television. I got so much stick for that. "

--Benedict Cumberbatch on his role in "Tipping the Velvet"

As an actor, you can do weight loss, weight gain, put on silly noses, crazy accents, move like a dragon, inviting people to look at the fireworks and admire how different you’re being. But with acting like that, it’s all about look-at-me, when what you should be doing is helping the audience care about the person they’re watching.

— Benedict Cumberbatch - Radio Times Interview 2011

"He is alarming, strange, possibly psychopathic, but perfectly happy. He clearly adores John, he's not got some deep emotional problems with connecting to people, he just can't be arsed. He'd rather be out solving crimes."

--Steven Moffat on Sherlock, Total Film Dec. 2011

"John is a little bit more in control. There’s an understanding and a balance there, now that they’ve been at it for about nine months. Sherlock is kept in check by him, and he funcitons better with him."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

"I guess like any friendship, marriage, or whatever it is familiarity breeds more contempt, and more love. They’re just more settled with each other now."

--Martin Freeman

“I remember very clearly someone saying, ‘Don’t shake hands with the cactus,’ and I thought, ‘Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?’ Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.” --Benedict Cumberbatch, on his schoolboy days

“This is amazing, thank you. It makes up for a blog I accidentally read last night that described me as “horse-faced, arse-named, wooden and untalented.” I can dispute the last two because you have honoured me with this [Actor of The Year Award], but the first two? Yeah: I am horse-faced and arse-named, but there you go - it’s what I was born with.”

--Benedict Cumberbatch

The story of Sherlock Holmes, on the surface, is about deduction, but in reality, it's about the best of two men who save each other--a lost, washed-up war hero and a man who could end up committing murders instead of solving them. They come together. They become this perfect unit. They become the best friendship ever, and they become heroes.

--Steven Moffat

“I’m aware of the power of looks. I’ve wanted to play roles that have gone to much better-looking people and you just think ‘Oh well, that’s the pin up guy’s… an actor like my friend James Mcavoy, who’s gorgeous on screen. I’m not that. But at least I don’t have to worry about taking precious care of my face because it’s my commodity. That’s a great freedom. I’m not afraid of being heinous for the sake of a part”

-- Benedict Cumberbatch

"I’m always keen to use my body in my work, so I’m looking forward to the motion capture for Smaug. Both Gollum and King Kong were primates, whereas I’m playing a serpent, so it’ll be interesting - I’ll have to tie my legs together, possibly, or else they’ll be kind of splayed out to the side as a reptile’s should be." --Benedict Cumberbatch, on playing Smaug in The Hobbit

'Seriously, WHAT kind of a man meets John Watson - sober, clean-living, ex-military - and instantly thinks of Sherlock Holmes - insane young genius who likes to beat corpses - and says, "Oh, I know just who you must meet.."? This guy's dinner parties must be legendary!'

--Jude Law, on Mike Stamford

"Benedict is bumbly, sweet, affable; the nicest man you've met."

--Mark Gatiss

I am very flattered. I have also become a verb as in I have cumberbatched the UK audience apparently. Who knows, by the end of the year I might become a swear word too! It’s crazy and fun and very flattering.

--Benedict Cumberbatch

At that minute Martin walked in and I just had a thunderbolt. It dawned on me: "Oh, God it’s him!" We flirted with each other all day and when I went home he texted me, saying "You left and I wasn’t done flirting with you. That’s a bit rude", which I thought was really smooth.

--Amanda Abbington on how she met Martin Freeman

He’s extraordinary. During auditions, the minute he stepped into the room I said to the producers, I don’t know if you want my opinion, but I want to work with him, because he makes my game better. I honestly felt myself get better as an actor playing scenes opposite him — he has brilliant level of humanity. We all know how funny he can be from his work of “The Office,” but he can also play so much pathos — it’s an unsung talent of his that’s often clouded by his “Office” fame.

--Benedict Cumberbatch on Martin Freeman

"Only one death threat, two demands for my immediate resignation, and two for my suicide. IT'S A HIT!!"

--Steven Moffatt on the mid series finale of Doctor Who series 6"He is a little bit old fashioned so you’ve got some of the old ideas of him coming from another era but he’s also a modern young man and, you know, to be honest he’s a brilliant actor, very good looking, dashing and he’s what Sherlock Holmes ought to be."

"It is a double act, and he’s my wingman and he’s just phenomenal, and he’s a joy to work with. In no small way, he keeps me afloat and happy during the day as well. And he’s just a brilliant presence to be around. He’s just a scream. And we adore each other. In a very *platonic*, non… you know, way."—Benedict Cumberbatch on Martin Freeman at the 2011 BAFTAs

"Obviously it’s Sherlock’s show but there’s far more parity than I think there often is in that relationship. I know [creators] Steven [Moffat] and Mark [Gatiss] primarily wanted the show to be about that relationship as much if not more than anything else. [It’s about the relationship] and how it develops and how it changes and the things that wind each other up, the things that they genuinely sort of love about each other as well. It’s the gayest story in the history of television… People certainly run with that which I’m quite happy with! But we all saw it as a love story. Not just a love story, but those two people who do love each other - a slightly dysfunctional relationship sometimes, but a relationship that works. They get results."

---Martin Freeman

“I ate healthily, but there was no snacking, no drinking, no bread, no sugar, no smoking. Afterwards I had a pork belly roast.”

--Benedict Cumberbatch, on fillming Third Star

“I made the mistake of calling in Benedict to solve a crime. He was absolutely hopeless!”

--Mark Gatiss

"Hitler. I’d tell him his paintings were great and to stay off the politics and get laid. Alive… The mother of my children and I’d ask them to take a deep breath and if they fancied a drink."

--Benedict Cumberbatch, when asked "If you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and what would you say to them?"

"Finally on my way to see my little brother in 'Fronkensteen' at the National. He was always a grower not a show-er."

--Mark Gatiss on Twitter

“Don’t you think my life is confusing enough? And listen, if John Simm could hear you, you would not live another hour. He came up to me after the press [junket] for the End of Time where he’d been saying ‘I think now that David has left as The Doctor, I would have to leave as The Master’ but then he pulled me aside and said ‘I didn’t mean that! And look at me, I’m fit! I’m OK!’ So Benedict has to wait in line probably. But how confusing would it be? All four cheekbones at once! I tell you, I stood between [Matt Smith and Benedict] in a photograph once. It’s a really good way to look extra ugly.”

--Steven Moffat

“I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. But I’m here to tell you I’m quite the opposite in real life. In fact I’m a fucking fantastic lover.”

---Benedict Cumberbatch

“My new agent said, ‘Why aren’t you using your family name? It’s a real attention-grabber.’ I worried, ‘How much is it going to cost to put my name in lights?’ But then I decided that’s not my problem.”

--Benedict Cumberbatch

"I hate this distinction of me being some f***ing academic who has just managed to escape the allure of some postgraduate course, and Miller as this mad f***ing wild child with dyed hair from Trainspotting. We have different working methods but ever so slightly – we block on the same lines. We’ve got the same sense of humour and think much the same about what’s good and bad."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

"It's tough, our bodies are all in pain. It’s fascinating, sort of crippling ourselves doing this. I’ve spent time in X-ray today; I’ve got my hips coming out of joint, my wrist are developing into ankles, 'cause of work I do at the beginning. We’ve had all sorts of injuries, back problems and neck problems. It’s a hard show to do, but it’s also been wonderful. Thank God I like Johnny Lee Miller."--Benedict Cumberbatch

"I imagine Holmes probably got pneumonia on a couple of occasions in Victorian London. I got flu and kept braving through it while green stuff was coming out of me. I was told, ‘You’ve got man flu, have a couple of paracetamol’, but when I soaked the bed sheets with sweat three nights running in the middle of winter, I knew there was something really wrong with me. It’s not nice having liquid on your lung and it takes a long time to recover - the irritating thing is that I was so disciplined and living a very healthy existence… I’d swim a lot, do yoga and eat healthily. I was really annoyed with myself for getting flu in the first place and I did myself a bit of damage by not acknowledging that I needed a rest."

--Benedict Cumberbatch

“I always think of the Doctor, bizarrely, as the more human one. Because he’s sort of like, in my mind, an angel who aspires to be human. Whereas Sherlock Holmes is a human being who aspires to be a god.”

--Steven Moffat

“Sherlock and Watson are a love story”

-Martin Freeman

”Sherlock and Watson meet at the right point in their lives, when they need each other the most. It’s a love story. Sherlock is upset because nobody can see the world the way he does. Watson misses the adrenalin and the constant life or death situations,”

--Martin Freeman

"I had a superb audition with Martin, and I immediately knew that he was my primary choice. He was definitely the person that I immediately sparked off and raised my game for. He’s an adorable man and blissfully, ridiculously funny and entertaining. He’s a great support and companion in real life as well. We have tremendous fun doing the show."

--Benedict Cumberbatch when asked how it was to work with Martin Freeman as Watson

Steven Moffat: Oddly enough, the thing [our kids] really enjoyed were the deductions. They were very, very hard to write.

Mark Gatiss: That’s why Conan Doyle stopped bothering.

SM: Or they become rubbish. ‘How did you know I was on the train?’ ‘I saw your train ticket!’

MG: ‘I was sitting next to you on the train!’

"Benedict (Cumberbatch, who is playing Sherlock) looks amazing. He's still got a Sherlockian silhouette, with a large overcoat, but in a classic cut. Watson dresses with an urban elegance, a touch of old school dashing, giving a feeling of both the military and medical profession. I suppose it's something they have in common as well. They're a bit metrosexual."

--Martin Freeman

Sherlock in Real Life (we can't blame it all on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

.@youngqueenwerewolf you are right. I would say, first off, bless Martin Freeman and his little Johnlock heart. I had never seen a lot of these quotes. So, he pretty much put it out there, that he wouldn't mind kissing Ben. Ben just casually letting people know that if they want to see naked pictures of the two of them, just ask Martin. And Gatiss...I don't know what to say or think of that man, except he certainly is incredibly condescending about females. I don't get a queer man behaving so disgusted over the thought of a queer Holmes.

#so many questions #seriously why

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johannesviii · 8 years ago

Text

Earthworld

Some highlights of the last EDA I’ve read (Earthworld).

I took these screens while reading, along with my reactions. As usual, this is full of spoilers.

This is exactly what everyone needed after the Earth arc, and especially after Escape Velocity and Anji’s lackluster characterisation. She’s reintroduced in this book, and what a wonderful addition to that TARDIS team! And the book tackles the topic of Dave’s death, where the previous one kinda refused to do so before sending Anji directly into space.

Come to think of it, the book tackles a lot of things it didn’t have to, and succeeds, too. Eight’s responsability in the destruction of Gallifrey constantly threatens to make a comeback in his mind. The issue of Fitz being a copy of the original Fitz is discussed at last - a thing all the books since Interference failed to do properly (including The Ancestor Cell). Come to think of it, Earthworld might just be the best Fitz book so far, which is a baffling thing to me considering that’s his twentieth book!

The plot itself is mostly a good runaround in an amazingly fun setting - it never really threatens to be more than that, but it’s still pretty refreshing. It’s a great standalone book, a fun romp, a very good character piece ; it works on nearly every level. What a breath of fresh air. 8,5/10

My bad, I seem to have picked the novelisation of An Unearthly Child.

We’re only on page one and I’ve already laughed out loud once. Good sign.

I just had a flashback of the scene from Memory Lane where Charley tries to use a mobile phone, and I imagined these two dorks trying to have a conversation over mobile phones and I’m giggling

Also Anji thinking Fitz and Eight are embarrassing idiots gives me life

This is a 3 out of 10 on the scale of Bad Ideas.

WE’RE ONLY THREE PAGES INTO THIS STORY AND I’VE ALREADY SAID “IDIOTS” THREE TIMES

Oh my god Eight

Thank you for your precious contribution Doctor

FITZ NO

Are you telling me that the Doctor can only use the sonic as long as he’s distracted and babbling about special interests now

Because that really speaks to me as a person

Meanwhile Anji is trying to cope with Dave’s death by writing him emails and this shouldn’t be that funny

Oh no he still has some memories of Sam and he doesn’t realise it

Okay so I need to make this t-shirt right now immediately

One thing I don’t really like about the writing is that some dialogues are entirely one-sided. It’s not the best example, but in some scenes you only get half the dialogue and it’s very strange.

We’re all very happy for you Doctor but why are you so happy about that

OH SHIT HAHAHA that’s a great idea!

Wait a f█cking second

Is this some sort of Disneyland very loosely based on Earth

I love you Anji

That girl must be a New Who fan who calls Ten “the second Doctor” probably

I probably should smile but I’m actually sad

That coat has only a few hours left to live & I have zero doubts about this

Here’s a better example of what I was saying earlier about having only one side of a dialogue. It makes scenes shorter, true, but it’s very distracting.

I’m laughing but I’m also pretty sure people from 3000 years ago would laugh their asses off if they could see some of our reconstructions of their lives

I still love you Anji

1) A++ description of McGann’s voice

2) That last bit was Not Okay

Also here’s Anji trying to determine which Jungle Book character suits the Doctor best and it looks like a long shitpost

First I laughed about Fitz being the orang-utan, and then I remembered that character really wants to be human and I abruptly stopped laughing

You were on Earth and you didn’t see Blade Runner when it came out? Aw

“he mentally kicked himself for not even being able to look at a babe without thinking of the Doctor” I’m screaming

How did you guess

Only every three months?

Considering it’s been 30 books since Seeing I, and taking into account the fact that I almost wrote “TOO SOON”, we can safely assume that I will never, ever be over Seeing I

I absolutely love this conversation, and also sky-blue pink is still a color, just an impossible one, and it’s quite pretty

Holy sHIT TALK ABOUT MOOD WHIPLASH

OH NOOOO, HELP, CUTE

THIS SHOULDN’T BE THAT F█CKING FUNNY

HE JUST SLIPPED IN THE DAMN BLOOD WHY AM I LAUGHING SO HARD

Unfortunately this is what popped first into my mind before the most logical explanation for their names

9847221° friendly reminder that I absolutely love Eight

FITZ NO

This book makes me laugh way too often this isn’t fair

Oh the indignity

Fitz no. Just. No.

I just choked on my cereals

1) They think Aristophanes plays are cookbooks and they aren’t even questioning this, like, how does that fucking work

2) Fitz once got trapped in the classical section of the TARDIS library

3) for two days

4) for two DAYS

5) and decided to read old plays just in case there was some sex scenes in them

holy shit

there’s genuine tears of laughter in my eyes

This book is quite the emotional rollercoaster isn’t it

Okay so that explains quite a few things. Fitz is with the originals, then.

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET FOR TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE YOU’RE A ROCK STAR FITZ KREINER

I shouldn’t be laughing so hard

I’m still laughing but I’m also so happy for him

Live the dream, Fitz, live the dream

Well except it wasn’t technically you, except it was, except it wasn’t

HOLY SHIT ARE WE FINALLY GOING TO ADDRESS THIS PROPERLY?!

NOT

F█CKING

ALLOWED

OUCH

Addressing a disturbing trend in SF! Good!

Well to be fair, theropods are sorta like big swans

1) Eggy-put Zone

2) Dozens of cats

Hey wait a f█cking second that’s not the same sphinx okay that’s a whole different mythology, also I’m laughing again, this book is probably adding quite a few extra months to my lifespan

Friendly reminder that I love Anji

Which would definitely work on you, Doctor, just a reminder

Meanwhile, in Not Okay Land

At the moment? Not much

I... sorry there’s a thing in my eye

I’m so happy for him

HA HAHAHA

SPOKE TOO SOON F█CK

Back to a place I haven’t been to in a long time, aka “want to hug Fitz and rock back and forth” street

Meanwhile Fitz is doing the same thing to a small crocodile

STORY OF MY F█CKING LIFE

Listen Eight I'm still not ready for The Turing Test references at this point and you’re making me really sad so please stop

Here’s a quick update on the “Johannes loves Anji” situation

Keep this poster for the TARDIS

Something is extremely wrong

Meanwhile, in “Eight finds new and interesting ways to hurt himself”

Oh so that Fitz was an android, then.

Every time I think this book can’t get more bonkers, I’m proven wrong

I would pay money to see a tv version of this damn scene

I shouldn’t laugh but I can’t help it

“HE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT HE WAS DOING WHILE HE WAS DISTRACTED”

Unexpected Dark Eyes: The Great War feels

WE HAVE A WINNER, FOLKS

I DON’T THINK FITZ IS EVER GOING TO BEAT THAT AS FAR AS “EMBARRASSING MOMENTS” GO, THAT ONE PUTS “GETTING MUGGED BY A UNICORN FOR A CHOCOLATE BAR” TO SHAME

His life is so full of horrible things that his only reaction to being locked up in a cell with a corpse is “at least it’s not rotting yet”.

Oh shit they found about the TARDIS that can’t be good

“Nothing good could possibly be called ‘the machine’”

NOT. F█CKING. OKAY.

This is stressful but also fascinating??

Good. Good.

You’re not telepathic Fitz Kreiner so I doubt she got all that

I completely forgot he had lost his trousers and now I’m laughing again

Told ya

You can’t swim? You can’t swim?? You go through time and space and you can even spacewalk but you can’t swim????

Anji is unexpectedly strong

I’m so happy he still remembers Iris on some level even if he couldn’t recognise her in Father Time

1) Hugs

2) Hugs are good

3) Anji huddled in Eight’s velvet coat

4) “he seemed to count in her head as another girl”

Filed under “need to draw at some point”

Marlin and Lancelet

I have no words

Eight plays “Marlin” because of course he is

Also I’m not screening everything but Anji was brilliant

BAD IDEA

VERY BAD IDEA

9 OUT OF 10 ON MY SCALE OF BAD IDEAS

FOR ONCE I AGREE WITH FITZ

NOOOOOOO

This is so damn weird. Funny and stressful at the same time.

Eight is reliving the memories of the dead queen and it is so f█cking weird

In a good way but still

YES BUT I DON’T WANT TO ALARM ANYONE BUT THEY WERE STILL CONNECTED TO THE THING SO I EXPECT SOME SIDE-EFFECTS

HAHAHA

Also “to Fitz’s incredulous horror”

Uh guys

Guys if he thinks he’s dead now, shouldn’t you worry about that or something

I told yoU GODDAMMIT

“quietly pleased”

Oh, that explains quite a lot, actually.

I just realised Anji’s was only coping thanks to pure adrenaline and constant distractions since Dave’s death and she’s inevitably going to crack sooner or later once everything is solved here.

AND STRAIGHT BACK TO THE BAD IDEAS

Hmmm cute?? Not acceptable? Thank you

The TARDIS did a very good job and all is well.

Every time that happened before, that person died, Fitz

Crisis averted.

I’m getting surprisingly emotional about all this

Well I’m really f█cking sad now

Don’t make me cry please Anji oh no

The butterfly room is still there but is now empty after all the butterflies were nailed to that door in The Ancestor Cell and I’m getting teary but also kinda happy, this feeling is extremely confusing

A++ ending, goddammit that last scene was wonderful

#Eighth Doctor #Fitz Kreiner #Anji Kapoor #eighth doctor adventures #Earthworld #EDAs #doctor who #long post #An EDA liveblog full of useless comments #gif #caps lock #violence tw #sex mention tw #(very mild)#(but better safe than sorry)

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duluoz2 · 6 years ago

Text

Musicis historia mea, Part II: The Punk Years

The fist time I heard punk rock, it scared me. It was the first track of the Germs’ “GI” album. My sister had borrowed it from someone, and there it was on the turntable. The cover was black with a blue circle on it; weird. I thought I’d give this punk thing a try. After all, I was an avid “New Wave” fan. I liked Devo, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello; how much different could this punk music be? To be honest, I had seen documentaries about the punks in Britain, and it had seemed pretty creepy; I mean, they had safety pins in their faces! Plus, the scary personification of punk, Sid Vicious, had recently died of a heroin overdose after knifing his girlfriend. No thanks! I’ll stick to the less scary stuff, maybe go as far as liking the Ramones, and, if I really wanted to get radical, the Dickies.

But here was this album by a group called the Germs; my sister got it from a friend of hers who was actually into punk. So I gave it a listen. The first song on the album, by now a punk classic and one that I have listened to countless times, is called “What We Do is Secret.” It starts with a four count kick drum beat, and then it hits warp drive into a sonic onslaught that is atomic. My usual volume for listening to any music when I was 13 was loud, as in LOUD. So of course I had the volume turned up to ridiculous levels. Big mistake. The drumbeat kicked, and suddenly I was pummeled by guitar, bass, and Darby Crash’s demonic screech.

Standing in the line we're aberrations Defects in a defect's mirror And we've been here all the time real fixations Hidden deep in the furor- What we do is secret-secret!

Not that I understood any of the lyrics (nor do I to this day). All I knew is that I felt like Charlie Brown when he was pitching and someone would hit the ball back at him and cause him to spin around in a cloud of dust while his shirt, socks, and shoes flew off. I quickly took the record off. Nope. Too loud, too intense. I’ll stick to listening to my Devo “Freedom of Choice” album. But deep down, I was intrigued. It all came to a head when my sister made the first purchase of a punk album by a member of my family: the soundtrack to The Decline of Civilization (I know what some of you are thinking; “you mean that movie about the metal bands?” No, the original!). Now recovered from my first encounter with SoCal hardcore, I listened. First song. “White Minority” by Black Flag (after some dialogue from the movie, that is). Again, an aural blitz to start things off. This time, however, I was not scared. And so my initiation into punk rock began.

Now, punk still had a bad reputation. The stories about the punk scene in Britain had scarcely faded into obscurity before we were inundated with shocking exposés about the violence and anti-social elements of the LA punk scene. Fights regularly broke out at shows. The local media had run stories and video about the gang-like attacks at Black Flag shows (the band was blamed for doing nothing to stop the violence). The message was clear: decent people stayed away from this type of scene. No good kids were into it. Parents, lock up your children. The LA punk scene even had its own Sid Vicious; Darby Crash, he of the frightening GI album, had OD’d in December of 1980 (he died the same day as John Lennon, which overshadowed things a bit). But again, although I was initially repelled by the whole scene, I was also intrigued. I was a fan. Punk records started finding their way into my record collection. My friends and I slam danced at the eight-grade graduation dance. I tried like hell to spike my hair. The fix was in.

This was circa 1981. The LA punk scene was in its hardcore golden age. Bands like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Fear, the Adolescents, and Bad Religion were kings of the scene. What I didn’t know then was that the punk scene in LA had a longer and more varied history. The nascent LA punk scene had started in the late 70’s and was much more arty and eclectic. There was also a heavy gay element, since many of the artists were used to being on the fringes of society. The music was slower and more experimental. The bands of that era were X, the Weirdos, Catholic Discipline, and the Bags. Bands associated with hardcore music, like Black Flag and the Germs, were also a part of this earlier scene, but their music was different at that time. The punk scene I got involved with was far less diverse; bands were hardcore, and there was a macho element to everything with the slam dancing and fighting. The kids in the scene were younger and from the suburbs. They were “bored kids with nothing do do,” to put it in the words of the Adolescents. We liked the music loud, hard, and fast. If it was slow, or if, god forbid, a band had long hair, we weren’t interested in it. Thus, bands that would survive the initial influx and go on to some degree of fame in later years by going beyond the SoCal punk scene like the Minutemen, were held in lesser regard than a band like TSOL.

Then a weird thing happened; punk bands started cropping up in the weirdest places. There were scenes in major cities like San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, but bands started coming from places like Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Minneapolis, the heart of the Midwest for God’s sake. They had weird names like Necros, the Meatmen, the Stretchmarks, and, weirdest of them all, Husker Du. They didn’t look like punks. At least, they didn’t look like punks according to my definition. I simply wasn’t’ impressed although I was happy so to see at least a bastardized version of punk going national. Still, Southern California was the place for true punk rock.

And it seemed as if the scene was growing exponentially. More and more bands were formed. Record labels like Posh Boy, Frontier, SST, and Epitaph put out a steady stream of singles, EP’s, and full albums. Live shows were a bit of a problem. By the time I had figured out a way to sneak off to shows, I was either thwarted by the age limit, the club had gone under, or punk bands were banished. Thus, I missed famous venues like the Starwood, the Masque, and Al’s Bar. My first gig was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and featured an all-star lineup of Black Flag, the Minutemen, the Adolescents, and DOA. I went with my older brother, my sister, and her friend. At the time, the violence at punk shows was all over the news, particularly the violence at Black Flag shows. Needless to say, I was scared shitless. I dressed for the occasion in what I thought were punk clothes: Levi’s 501s, flannel shirt, and Chuck Taylors. When I saw what many of the other attendants were wearing – leather jackets, combat boots, and bondage pants – I was even more gobsmacked. I had what I thought was short hair, over my ears, but most of the guys at the place had shaved heads. Skinheads! The guys who would randomly pick someone out of the crowd and beat the shit out of him. The atmosphere was strange, threatening. I thought at any moment I would get grabbed by the collar and set upon by five or six guys. I sat in the back with the girls and watched the bands. My brother and his friends, veterans of the scene by this time, quickly made their way towards the stage and into the slam pit (we didn’t call it “moshing” then; I still have no idea what the fuck “moshing” is). I stood well back and just watched. I really don’t remember much about the bands that played that night.

The things I remember distinctly are a guy coming out dressed as Adam Ant and dancing to “Ant Music.” Seems that, for some reason, Black Flag fans decided that they hated the Ants, and in particular Adam, and that the best way to express such hate was by beating the shit out him. The ersatz Adam, actually Overkill lead singer Merrill dressed in a full Kings of the Wild Frontier outfit, danced and pranced while various member of the audience tried to climb the stage and smash his face in. None of them succeeded. Then, Black Flag, headliners for the evening, came out and launched into “Six Pack,” the new single the band had just released. After that, it’s all pretty much a blur. I remember loud. I remember fast. And I remember mustering up the courage to move closer to the stage and on the fringes of the slam pit. And it was there, while I watched with fascination the barely controlled chaos of the pit (which did not go in a circle, but went in all directions at once), that my brother reached out mid slam dance, grabbed me by the shirt, and dragged me into the pit. I was a pretty substantial 13-year old, about six feet tall and probably 170 pounds, but I got tossed around pretty well. I remember trying to mimic the “dance style” of the others, which was a kind of stopped over, side to side swinging of the arms motion; the tough part was trying to keep on your feet as you slammed into others and they did the same. I fell, was picked up quickly, started again, fell, was picked up, and finally decided I’d had enough and got out. I don’t know if it was because I was young or looked pathetic, but I distinctly remember falling down and getting picked up right away. Kindness? Maybe. Or maybe they just wanted to toss me back into the fray to take another beating. Whatever it was, I was glad I wasn’t left on the floor to be stomped and kicked. I was also glad when I got the hell away from there.

I got back to where my sister and her friend were siting with a look on my face that must have explained what I had just gone through better than any words could. My sister looked back at me with a look that said, “Don’t even think about going back in there!” Okay, Sis. There was no beating at the hand of HB skinheads, no mayhem or riot. The biggest event was a fight between two legends. A guy named “Xhead” got into a fight with John Macias, the lead singer of Circle One. Xhead had been interviewed in The Decline. He got his name from the fact that he had an X shaved into the top of his head. John Macias was a rather large individual with a Mohawk who looked like he could play the entire defensive line for a football team. I don’t know what started the fight, and I didn’t even see it happen, but I distinctly remember Macias leaving the venue with his friends while holding his bloody ear. Pretty heavy stuff. My brother had seen the whole thing and gave me the details. The two squared off for whatever reason (they were both insane would be my guess), and the crowd had formed a circle to let them fight it out. Macias would later be killed by the LAPD in Santa Monica after going nuts and running around PCH and threatening people; Xhead, who was described by X bassist and vocalist John Doe as a sociopath, faded into obscurity. But such was the electric atmosphere that was ever present at punk gigs in the early 80’s. And into such a scene I now found myself entering.

It wasn’t easy to go to gigs back then. I had to hope that my brother or someone else who had access to a car could take me, and I had to hope that the gig was on a Saturday and that it was all ages. This wasn’t an easy task. Many clubs didn’t want the problems that were attendant with any punk show like vandalism, violence, and general mayhem. While there were those of us who were really interested in seeing a band and maybe getting in some slam-dancing and stage-diving, there was a segment of the audience who were bent on causing trouble. The clubs that would book punk bands became less and less, and oftentimes they were sleazy bars on the outskirts of LA or obscure places that hadn’t been burned by booking punk bands. There were some good venues that had punk shows like the Whiskey, the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Perkins Palace, but there were also odd places like Oscar’s Cornhusker in Azusa, Mindiola’s Ballroom in Huntington Park, and The Timbers in Glendora. They were clearly not suited for such gigs, but they were also some of the only places that would book bands. The Cuckoo’s Nest was legendary. A small club in Costa Mesa, it was located next to a cowboy bar called “Zubie’s.” The punks and cowboys would regularly get into fights (as made famous by the Vandals song “Urban Struggle). It was also the place where a guy named Pat Brown dragged a cop with his car after the cop tried to reach in and grab his keys (again, made famous in a Vandals song; I’ll leave the title to your imagination). Unfortunately, I never set foot in the Nest. My brother attended a few shows there, and my two friends even made it out there to see Black Flag’s first show with Henry Rollins (their parents found out and they got in trouble, so I had that going for me), but I didn’t get a chance (somehow, my mom found out about the Black Flag show and wouldn’t let me go, if I recall). I also never went to Godzilla’s in the Valley, which was a club designed for punk bands. But I did see my share of bands, as I like to explain to the Millenials who think they discovered punk. I saw Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Fear, Social Distortion, DOA, the Minutemen, Adolescents, MDC, Bad Brains, GBH, the Vandals, the Cockney Rejects, Dead Kennedys, the Mau Maus, Youth Brigade, and many more lesser known bands.

At a Bad Brains gig at the Santa Monica Civic, the scene of my first gig, I actually got backstage. I still don’t know how I managed it. The Bad Brains played an intense, incredible set, and were finishing up one of their 10 minute dub jams (which they interspersed with their atomic punk songs) and, in defiance of the security that was roughly tossing every punk who attempted a stage dive, invited the whole audience to join them. I distinctly remember lead singer H.R. saying something along the lines of “don’t let these yellow shirts stop you!” The floodgates opened, and it seemed like half the venue rushed up onto the stage. The now a part of the show punks slam danced and jumped around, and after the band finished their song, those who remained on stage started diving headlong into the audience. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I decided I didn’t want to leave the stage just then. I slowly creeped towards the backstage, trying not to be noticed. At one point, a security guard stopped me, but somehow I found another way towards the back. I picked up a guitar case to make it look like I was crew, and, before I even knew what had happened, I was backstage. I got into the Bad Brains’ dressing room and talked to HR and lead guitarist Dr. Know. I also met D. Boon from the Minutemen and a guy named Zachary who was the co-host of New Wave Theater, an odd little show hosted by the odd little Peter Ivers that aired on the local UHF station and featured many indie and punk bands. All in all, it was a spectacular night for a young and impressionable teen. I made my way back to the stage and watched the Circle Jerks from the wings for a while before I decided to rejoin my friends, which I accomplished by racing across the stage and doing an epic front flip into the audience.

And that was just one of the many good times I had as a wayward punk rocker. There were some not so good times too, like the time I shaved my head and was yelled at by every adult member of my family, or the time I was slam dancing to Fear at the Timbers in Glendora and some jackass hit me on the head with something hard that caused a nice split in my scalp, or the time I got kicked in the face by a stage diver at a GBH show. But overall, the experience was very cool. I met interesting people, had a couple of articles published in Flipside magazine, started a band called The Insurgents, talked to Henry Rollins and Greg Ginn at the Whisky one night, talked to Chuck Dukowski from Black Flag and Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks on the phone (you’d call the record labels they were on and they would answer; try that with Justin Timberlake), and saw a lot of bands, some talented, and some not so much. It’s a part of my musical history, and in a way, it informs who I am today with my general eschewing of commercial and popular entertainment (I didn’t always walk the walk; there are a few Duran Duran albums in my past). I don’t know if it’s possible for kids to go through the same type of cool experience.

I remember interviewing a guy from a band for a music magazine in the 90’s and we were both reminiscing about the old punk days. He was from somewhere in the Midwest, and I remember him saying that the really cool thing about liking punk in the 80s was that you really had to look hard to track down the music. Bands rarely came to where he lived, and the local record stores didn’t carry much of the music, so it made finding it that much more special. It was an experience just to get access to the music. We both agreed, as older guys always seem to do, that things were better in our day because you had to make an effort; now, everything is easy to find and nothing is unknown. I see a lot of people who have a nostalgia for punk who I don’t remember being around when it was actually a thing. Everybody wants to claim a connection to it, but very few people were really there. Whenever I see a young kid with a Dead Kennedys or Black Flag T-shirt or patch, I laugh to myself. My inclination is to say, “Hey, name five Dead Kennedys songs, and without ‘Holiday in Cambodia.’” But, I realize, I was doing the same thing when I was into the Doors and Jimi Hendrix when I was a teen. I’m more likely to say, “You know, I saw those guys.” It strikes them as weird that any adult would make that claim. I guess they’re just finding what they are into although if you can buy a band’s shirt at the local mall, it kind of takes away the whole rebellion thing. So I write this as a retired punk, a veteran of the scene, as we used to call it, who remembers the glory days and now, annoyingly, won’t shut up about how great it was. But really, it was.

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dancewithmeplano · 7 years ago

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Groove Terminator talks 30 Decades of Australian dance music

This season sees Simon Lewicki celebrating three decades of mischief since Groove Terminator.

Starting out as a hip-hop DJ in his hometown of Adelaide from 1987, Lewicki made his way to the climbing club scene of Sydney in the mid-’90s. From there he swerved into building a couple of artist records with Virgin/EMI — 2000’s Road Kill along with 2002’s Electrifying Mojo— who cemented the GT title and made him a local festival circuit.

The two Groove Terminator LPs came in a formative time. Even though Road Twist nodded to Fatboy Slim with a sample-driven big beat sound, its own follow up featured digital maestro Andy Page as an studio collaborator. The mid-2000s watched up Lewicki team with Sam Littlemore for the project Tonite however there was room for standalone GT about the bar circuit.

30 years on from Lewicki, that awakening and his alter ego are specialists of the arena. In his life, the DJ-producer repetitions house music on the weekends and performs his 9-5 as A&R Manager for Publishing and Recordings for TMRW Music Group (previously Ministry of Sound Australia.)

Lewicki can also be on board as the Director of Orchestrated after seeing the MOS Reunion Tour’s sold-out success. The displays in Melbourne and Sydney will reimagine dancing classics with a live symphony orchestra, together with GT also joined by Daniel Merriweather and Owl Eyes. The toughest part is determining which particular anthems make the trimoff.

“We’ve got a working set-list that’s true to what Australian classics have been,” Lewicki informs inthemix. “You whittle it down out there to what is likely to sound great with an orchestra behind it. I could’ve easily done a four-hour show with this much stuff.”

Sinking into the spirit of celebrating the past of Orchestrated, inthemix requested us to walk .

What’s life like as a DJ before you made your very first album, Road Kill?

It’ll seem weird to people however I did that the very first. It was completely illegal but I sold thousands and thousands of duplicates. I get people hitting me up on it. It was a time in a community of a couple thousand people. Everyone was really in it and super-critical of their standard of mixing.

I transferred to Sydney so I grabbed the tail-end of the expat celebrations. Subsequently with guys like Phil [Smart] and [Sugar] Ray doing Tweekin’ to a Friday night , there was an extraordinary party vibe. I really don’t know when the medication had something to do with this, however, the music in Adelaide was a ton quicker than Sydney, so it took me some time to slow down it! That’s when I started getting more into that very first wave of filter house, which occurred together with the arrival of Daft Punk.

I signed about two years. I was the first DJ and they had no clue what to do with me personally.

Can it be a surprise for you as well that you were suddenly an artist with a record deal?

Josh Abrahams Paul Mac and I got picked up around exactly the exact same moment. And a wave of executives came in and everybody got dropped together with me. Obviously Josh then proceeded to make ‘Addicted To Bass’ and Paul had the biggest listing of his career [3000 Feet High] two decades after that.

Kathy McCabe, who’s currently in the Tele, was A&Ring afterward, and I believed it was eyesight on their own behalf. I can not even begin to imagine the type of discussions she had been having with EMI in the moment, who had activated their having anything that is not done for most of the ’90s. They proceeded to get an wonderful run.

Was there a specific release out there in the time that turned EMI onto you?

I had a record out on Dance Pool [‘It’s On’] and I had done a remix for [UK dance-pop group] Dead or Alive that had gone gold. I had been given an advance, so I did everything you’d usually do if you’re granted a whack of money get onto a plane and go to Europe. I ended up with most of an album thank god, but it still took me a year and a half.

“I really don’t know if the medication had something to do with this, however, the audio in Adelaide was much quicker than Sydney”

It was to make a record back then — I delivered it fairly cheaply but to get a sampler was 8000 back. I started off as a hip-hop DJ and that I approached things with this particular magpie sensibility. I was fortunate they coughed up.

Were the advances then unlike anything that an artist would see now?

Well, here’s a good example. I had been signed to Virgin to make a listing. Most folks would have gone off and purchased a house and still exercised a way. I chose to utilize it all to make the record. You get to a point where you’re running out of money.

“I really don’t think people have an opportunity on documents as much nowadays.”

Fortunately my buddy Tim [McGee] worked in Central [Station Records]. Also he went and I told him I had so I flicked that off to him and sold it in the united kingdom to Ministry. We got roughly a $50,000 advance for this. This was the kind of money that floated about back then. I thought, ‘Oh, this is fairly easy, I could definitely keep doing so!’

And those sorts of numbers dried up. I really don’t think nowadays people have an opportunity on documents as much. If you’ve got every label on the planet is going to be knocking down your door to throw money at you. However, no one’s going to take a chance.

Can Road Kill take its cues from what was occurring internationally with digital music at the moment?

You can certainly hear the effect of ol’ Norman Cook on that record. I was a fan. To me it was really important to take everything I had been into — punk, hip-hop, breakbeats, house audio, and also the pop up I climbed up on — and then mash it all together.

‘Here Comes Another One’ was based on an MC5 riff. Subsequently [The Fifth Dimension’s] ‘Let The Sunshine In’ [sampled on GT’s ‘One More Time (The Sunshine Song)’] is such a ’60s anthem of the moment. I had been hanging out with Fatboy Slim a little, and I truly wished to make a record that he would play in his collection. This was my intention for that one. After it was heard by the label, they were like, ‘No, ‘ that’s your only.’

I had been looking back at some older Big Day Out line-ups, and I first saw your title in 1996.

I did in a row like ten Big Day Outs, and now I feel the previous four or five I had been in the touring party. It had been me and Paul and Bexta Mac — it was a community with the people about the line-ups everywhere. I’m still friends with all those people now.

I recall playing [the ‘ Chemical Brothers’] ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ at the Boiler Room when that record was huge, and the reaction was just over the top. In 1997, The Prodigy was the very first digital action to perform the main stage, and I remember thinking ‘Oh yeah, we have arrived, we are taking over today.’ It was a great moment.

“The 2006 era needed The Presets, Cut Copy, Sneaky Sound System; I believe time stood up any place on the planet and always will.”

The line-ups was crazy, since you’d have then and Aphex Twin OMC [of ‘How Bizarre’ celebrity]. It would not be merely techno all day. I believe that the diversity was super-important and informative. There was a lot of tribalism happening with genres ‘I like techno’ or ‘I just like happy hardcore’. You’d see it with all the tribes dressed in their way in Central Station Records. But everybody comes together in the Boiler Room.

From the early 2000s, when Road Kill came out, there is a groundswell of other Australian digital groups: you’d Pnau, Sonic Animation, Resin Dogs, The Avalanches…

Yeah, you noticed it when it was time to collect a tour to get a record. I toured with Sonic Animation and I toured with Grinspoon, you understand? It was like, ‘They both play Big Day Out, they could go!’

I know that the songs the Pnau boys had been making before they found nightclubs was full-on psytrance. And they had this moment, found Derrick Carter and DJ Sneak, and went stateside. Then the Avalanches album is just one of the best to ever come from this country stop. I recall that being the soundtrack of summer hanging out with…oh, I’m not even going to name-drop, however a few touring DJs! That album was being played with nonstop.

In that 2005-2008 period once you started Tonite Just, the audio coming from Australia felt very connected to an worldwide phenomenon.

From the early 2000s everybody was in their own lane setting out their records. Then I think that the advent of having the ability to record in-the-box and not go into studios attracted the cost of production right down.

This 2006 era had Cut Copy, The Presets, Sneaky [Sound System]; I think will and always that moment stood up any place in the world. Those documents had a large influence. I recall seeing DJ AM do an open format hip-hop/rock/party set and going to LA, playing [the Just remix of Sneaky Sound System’s] ‘Pictures’ in its middle. That wave of electro — with a clean sawtooth wave, a snare and a kick — only sounds great loud. You can not beat it.

As a young DJ, you’re Australian runner-up from the DMC DJ competition. The tools of the trade have changed quite a great deal since then…

When I started DJing, I did not even see [Technics] 1200s for two decades. It was this idea that there! It had been like, what? These were the types of discussions.

You are able to learn to DJ in about 90 minutes so the bar has lowered. The thing that’s not likely to change is that the art of DJing is understanding what tune to play next. That is any time period, any genre, ever. That’s how you rock a celebration: understand what tune to play following the one that’s playing.

Orchestrated together with the Ministry Of Sound Orchestra strikes Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on Friday August 11 and Sydney’s State Theatre on Friday August 18. Tickets are now on sale.

Jack Tregoning is an independent writer based in New York. He’s about Twitter.

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