#2 take films

[hinamie]

so just know, I'm healing / even though it don't feel like it

insp

[sugarweregoingdownswinging]

she would girlboss her way straight through conahger slaughterhouse 🤷‍♀️

[fyeaheddiemunson]

[gaymaramada]

sometimes he has bad days

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[icouldhyperfixatehim]

happy to have an offgun sunday show back on the docket but i can already tell this series is going to put a bee in my bonnet every week about late stage capitalism foisting its cancer upon all workplace cultures and turning things like internships from learning and exploratory opportunities to build skills and discover interests in a field, to an expectation of free/low paid but inexplicably pre-skilled labour. do you think ye olde blacksmith's apprentice showed up to the first day of the apprenticeship and the blacksmith is like "what do you mean you don't know how to shoe a horse?? that's so basic" no. the expectation of apprenticeship is that a newborn emptyheaded youngin with a vague notion that metal is cool shows up, and is taught how to blacksmith. the expectation is not that the young savant of metalwork turns up with a list of horses already shoed, including One Very Special One in the Royal Stable, and god would you please please please allow me to debase myself for you, o blacksmith? my resumé is just like the journeyman's!! this workplace culture is a modern invention!! they used to teach you things at work!!

[breathing audibly] i just think entry level should mean entry level, and that as much effort goes into gathering experience that makes people competitively hire-able, ability, opportunity, and luck also play a role. it is lucky to know your passion early enough to be able to groom yourself to competitiveness in a sharky field of work, but a person should be able to turn up for entry level positions/interning with an unabashed "i know nothing" as long as it's followed with an "and i'm ready to learn" and it is in neoliberalism's favour to allow work environments to cut their costs by eschewing the responsibility to teach. to train the trainee.

[edwinisms]

banging my head against the wall every time I see someone reblogging a post of mine with tags mentioning the ‘unrequited confession’. we have been OVER this it is NOT a case of unrequited romantic love it is completely canonically up in the air as a possibility. listen to jayden revri himself and be enlightened i am begging you

[chamerionwrites]

See I honestly do find the prequels-era Jedi an interesting (and at times painfully recognizable) portrait of institutional violence in that...they aren't cackling villains. They're mostly sympathetic well-intentioned individuals who via a combo of traditionalist inertia, ideological blinders, proximity to power, a dash of plain old arrogance and a liberal seasoning of end-justifies-the-means compromise end up being at best indifferent to and at worst deeply complicit in some pretty heinous injustice. I don't even think this is a completely against-the-grain reading on my part. At the end of the day it's a pretty mild critique, but it's hard to argue that the PT is entirely uncritical of the Jedi imo.

Unfortunately the narrative is never interested in really sinking its teeth into that. And even more unfortunately, a chunk of the fandom will clutch its pearls in horrified outrage if anybody else is interested in sinking their teeth into that

[fras-redacted-shapes]

Not to sympathize with Zane but-

Let's forget for one minute the whole mystery if he changed from poet to filmmaker via spooky shenanigans for spooky yet unknown reasons, and instead we see him as an Artist(tm):

An artist who got famous for one of his works, to the point that to everyone he is said artwork. He's been mixed up with the character.

Everyone celebrating the one work of art and the one character, completely ignoring the artist is capable of doing a wider variety of artworks, maybe even ignoring his entire back catalogue.

The moment he did the one movie after immigrating? That's it, his reputation. Forget whatever he did in his homeland, foreigners in a foreign land have now decided he is Tom the Poet. It didn't matter at all that the character was voiced by some other person.

And now, let's entertain for a minute both possibilities being real at the same time: Alan Wake is a fictional character by Thomas Zane, and Thomas Zane is a fictional character by Alan Wake.

In both cases the character has the author's face. To the point that outside parties say it out loud - the Anderson bothers referring to Alan as Tom, Saga seeing a picture of Zane and wondering why does he look like Alan.

And the gall - Alan asking Thomas why does he look like him.

A fictional character now claiming the author's visage. The artist pigeon holed into one narrow genre. The Artist fighting his own work to reclaim his identity.

Thomas Zane goes as far as making a movie and once again play a character in it, but this time it's a different character. Tom is reclaiming his own visage. He plays writer Alan Wake in Yötön Yö.

There's no subtlety, there's no subtext!

Even when Remedy had Max Payne recast, Sam Lake was unable to get rid of the reputation, even if the character was voiced by a different actor. Recognized as Max Payne by foreigners in a foreign land(s).

And then, two decades later his face is back, but this time the IP belongs to Remedy. And it's not just the the voice and face of Max Payne with a different name - the author also plays as himself.

"Finally, voice and face are one and the same!" said Ilkka Villi/Tom Zane.

And if you take a step back, you could see Zane trying to take Casey from Alan as the deal between Remedy and Rockstar have with Max Payne. The IP was developed by one studio but belongs to the other. And now the original developers are reclaiming it by changing the name a little and inserting the character in one of their own IPs.

But you know, Casey is (in universe) a real person, same as a certain author in real life.

So, not to sympathize with Zane, but I understand why he gets annoyed when someone asks him if he was a poet. The poet could've been really just a character from his most famous work.

It is annoying when your name gets only recognized because of a narrow selection of your works. And that work may not even be the most meaningful to you or your favorite one!

These writers at Remedy are having so much fun and I'm glad they're all free to be as unhinged as they've been. I think they should go further.

Anyways, I propose Zane keeps getting confused with The Poet just to bully him lmao.

[lilianhuas]

[umblrspectrum]

the day of reckoning has come. Matrick Patrick has covered Murder Drones, and oh my god it sucks so bad I don't care about spoiling people he literally

I'm actually about to lose it half his argument boils down to "Murder Drones is a Show that follows a plot", he makes no attempt to acknowledge the fact that all of the disassembly drones have solver, makes up a character on the spot to pin all the lore onto, incorporates TWO gags that are almost 100% jokes as part of his evidence, doesn't mention that he is not the first person to theorize that n was the reason nori died, never acknowledges doll other than to give blatantly wrong information, and gave us the brilliant line of "we can't talk about Murder Drones without bringing up World War II"

[bitterseaproduction]

The Hobbit’s official movie books really push the original timeline as the film one (despite 0 aging of characters in flashbacks pfft) BUT they also present Balin as the most ‘aged’ of the Company in both appearance and description at 178, despite Thorin — visibly far younger — being 17 years older than him.

It’s a conundrum, but I got an idea when I noticed Dwalin in the books supposedly lives to 340, even though a dwarf living to just 300 is supposed to be as rare as a human making it to 100! There’s been arguments that that was just a ‘typo’ on Tolkien’s part, but what if it wasn’t? What if we roll with that? Dwalin did look shockingly younger than Balin even though he’s just 9 years younger! That’s just 3 if you take it in human years!

So, using that 340 as inspiration and a base line, what if we say the direct line of Durin the Deathless plus the occasional offshoot like Dwalin just age slower than the typical dwarf? That their max baseline is closer to 300-350 or even 350-400 versus the usual 250-300? Because, if we go with, say, 400 as Thorin’s base max, suddenly we go from ‘Thorin should look older than Balin’ to ‘he’s in the human equivalent of his late 40s,’ and that seems much closer to the slightly aged up Richard Armitage we got in movies, doesn’t it?

This would also mean Thorin IS older than Balin despite their dynamic, but hey—sometimes your younger cousin is just wiser than you. 😂

[sylwanin-was-right]

Im not sorry but people who keep treating Neytiri as "psycho" and "racist" and "evil" for how she treated Spider clearly do not understand how racism, trauma, nor colonialism works lmao

[nb-n0v4]

Waiter? Waiter! There's beetles in my juice!

[faunandfloraas]

It is kinda funny seeing people talk about Seungmin lately because he definitely has gotten more bold and confident for sure. He's also just getting opportunities to be perceived as an individual on his own as well for the first time in a while but it's still jarring to see people be like Aw he was always such a quiet goodie two shoes little nerd and it's like...... he was the one to leave and seek out his own vocal coach and blatantly talk about it, which of course lead to I.N and Lee Know also doing the same, he was the one to go on bubble and tell off sasaengs who used to camp outside their old dorm for invading members privacy but also because it effected other residents and staff at the complex, something that i'm certain upper management wouldnt have been happy about, and he wasn't curt or nice about it either. like he's never actually been a wallflower, he's always had a pretty strong backbone and seems to stick to his principals, its not really new.

[tinyclowndancer]

pspspsps porretta besties from the dark place who refused to bring this song to its end here's a little something for you. 🎙️