#I feel like this would be both a comedy and like. an investigative mystery type show vibes lmao

[phantomdecibel]

Okay so the latest Modern AU idea cause you were intrested:

Odysseus, Eurylochus, and Polites getting home from a war overseas and living together while they try to figure out what the heck to do now and Odysseus tries to find his wife and kid because apparently they're missing??? but on their second day back they end up getting a baby (Astyanax, of course) dumped on them, so now they're trying to figure out civilian life, find out where the heck Penelope and Telemachus went, and taking care of a baby all at once.

@hahahaghosty @cloud-anon figured you guys would like this too-

ASGHDFFJHSSGDHKFKGFJFJDHHSFJKGKGDHSGSGJFGKFJDHGSGSKFGLFJDHSFFADHJFHLFJHDAGSGGASHJFFJDHHDDJJFJFJFFJ–

I love it they’re ROOMMATES–

odys: where is my WIFE were is my SON–!

poli and euryl, handing him lil bb asty: not a clue but hey! free new baby!

[pillow-anime-talk]

gender swap.

request: how do you think a female wammy’s boys, lawliet and light would be?

# tags: headcanons; gender swap; slice of life; mostly fluff; maybe angst or drama; also comedy (a bit); sfw

includes: light yagami, l lawliet, beyond birthday, nate river, mail jeevas & mihael keehl {death note}

— LIGHT

↘ Oh, she is definitely one of the most beautiful women in the university and gets a scholarship every year for her academic achievements. She is not competitive and doesn’t try to be; she simply has an innate talent for quickly remembering informations and numbers and uses it to get the best grades, and thus awards or recognition among professors.

↘ She is not very interested in relationships; many boys chase after her, but she doesn’t care at all. Brown-haired girl much more prefers to focus on her career and private goals (both in the Kira case and her job in the investigative department).

↘ Nevertheless, if the situation requires it, she will use her charm and grace to achieve what she needs. This woman will stop at nothing when her own life is at stake.

— LAWLIET

↘ I imagine she’s wearing these cool, fluffy hoodies and huge pants tightly tightened around the waist. She is the definition of a woman who likes to play video games, drink energy drinks, watch anime and sit in her own room (alone).

↘ Just like the original L, she also likes sweets and juicy fruits. I imagine her favorites are mango or peaches. In my head I think that she is a vegetarian and cooks well to maintain a healthy, balanced diet based on the right products.

↘ She is an introvert and it’s hard to make friends with her, even though I personally find her a very attractive woman. However, she seems to be unapproachable and therefore has no success in friendship or love.

— BEYOND

↘ She is a loner who devotes herself to her own projects. She has at most one friend, but she lives alone in a small studio apartment with her beloved cat (she is definitely a cat-person).

↘ She studies criminology or forensic psychology and likes to listen to podcasts. She has very good grades, but very rarely appears in class (he comes to universities only when there are exams). The professors have no problem with her, but they know that she is a rather mysterious girl who struggles with personal problems. Nevertheless, she does very well, although she is an outcast.

↘ That girl enjoys night time and loves spending time with her cat while watching crime shows on Netflix. She definitely has trouble sleeping.

— NATE

↘ Another nerd. The best student in the year, the best student in the field and the best student in the entire university. In addition, she is artistically and musically talented (playing the violin and piano, #canon). Although she doesn’t have many friends, she is quite popular and her white hair catches the eye of most students. She is very liked by the professors, even if she looks at the window during classes and does not write anything in her notebook.

↘ I think she is fluent in French, German, English, Japanese and Swedish. She likes to learn new things – she remembers everything so easily. And also has a natural talent for this type of thing.

↘ She doesn’t have a driving license and is afraid to drive. She’s definitely using other people for a free ride.

— MAIL

↘ Not studying. I think she found work as a graphic designer, game tester or digital game designer. It’s something she likes and she’s really good at it. In the future, she would like to set up her own studio where she would create games.

↘ I have a vision in my head that she is sharing a room in an apartment with several people and she is that girl who likes to party and come home late. Plus, she smokes cigarettes and likes to sleep in late – a real example of a bad girl you don’t have to worry about if your boyfriend hangs out with her after school on a project.

↘ Nevertheless, she is a girl who sleeps with her favorite stuffed animal at night and I have no excuse for that, I just feel in my heart that she has a little brown teddy bear without one eye that she got from her favorite grandma and always sits on her bed waiting for her to come home.

— MIHAEL 

↘ She has many friends, but only one true bestie, with whom she is perfectly matched in characters. She swears, she smokes, she’s always late, she’s sophisticated, she’ll take your boyfriend away if you get in her way... She does not like nosy people and gossip about herself, which is why she always deals with such matters personally, preferably behind the walls of the building or between the garages.

↘ She is brutal and emotionless. She has definitely not yet met a person who could heal this little, wishing for happiness heart. Currently, she lives alone and spent nights in the arms of random men. She doesn’t mind.

↘ Somewhere in the back of my mind I have a vision that she has been to the police station more than once for theft or battery. But she has a rich dad, so she gets away with everything. 

[metalandmagi]

Winter 2021 Anime Worth Watching!

Since 2020 basically sacrificed itself to give us the most stacked anime season of all time, I’m currently buried under the weight of almost 20 shows airing per week. So for anyone who’s looking for some anime to watch this winter, here’s some first impressions! I’m speed running my list this time by only talking about the new shows...because otherwise this would be my great American novel. 

If anyone’s interested, I have master lists for both 2020 anime and 2019 anime, because there’s no shortage of fun things to find. 

New Shows!

And before anyone asks, So I’m A Spider, So What? isn’t on here, because CG spiders freak me out.

Cells At Work Code Black: This...less comedic spin off of Cells At Work (made by a different studio) takes the wholesome concept of Osmosis Jones meets cute anime girls and turns it on its head. In this much more depressing version, we follow a rookie red blood cell who works in the body of an overly stressed, alcoholic smoker who puts every strain on the body imaginable. I love Red Blood Cell AA2153 and his co-workers, but man am I glad we get the regular Cells At Work airing this season too, because I need something fun and uplifting after seeing my sweet son go through hell every episode. 

*Heaven’s Design Team: Have you ever wondered how God came up with some of the weird ass animals that live on this planet? Like, what’s the deal with giraffes? And why can’t we have dragons and flying horses? Well this is a comedy about the engineers and designers in heaven creating the new animals that are going to inhabit the Earth. That’s it, that’s the show. It’s kind of in the same vein as Cells At Work, having comedy blend with a surprising amount of educational information. If you want something light and funny, this is the show for you (though I don’t think it needs to have full length episodes). I’m just hoping there’s an episode about how the hell the platypus was created. Also it’s the only new one available on Crunchyroll.

Horimiya: A romantic comedy about a girl named Hori who fits the image of a perfect queen bee and a quiet bespectacled boy named Miyamura who never makes an impression at school. When the two meet by chance outside of the classroom, we see that Hori is practically raising a younger brother by herself, and Miyamura is actually a sweet guy who happens to be covered in tattoos and piercings. This show is an exercise in breaking down the images people have of others in their minds, and it’s a concept that really hits home in a fun and meaningful way. Honestly, this has become one of my immediate favorites. The characters have great chemistry, and I can’t wait to see more of them!

Monster Incidents (Kemono Jihen): When big shot Tokyo detective Inugami is called to a rural town to investigate a series of strange animal deaths, he finds a mysterious boy with the nickname Dorotabo who has been shunned by the other children in town. As the detective gets closer to Dorotabo, he discovers that there may be more...inhuman secrets to the boy than he realizes...and Dorotabo discovers that Inugami has some secrets of his own. This is a hard show to sell without spoiling the first episode, but it had twists and turns that kept me engaged from start to finish. I’m really interested to see where the plot goes, because I thought this was going to be something totally different just from the PV and series summary. If it plays its cards right, this could be a great paranormal detective show!

Wonder Egg Priority: A psychological drama about a girl named Ai who starts having dreams about a mysterious egg that promises to give her what she wants most in the world...a true friend. Before long, she begins to see how the dream world and reality are tied together, and trippy antics ensue. It’s hard to say more without spoiling anything, but I had to go back and add this one in because I made the mistake of thinking it was an OVA when it’s actually a full series. And what a series it’s starting out to be. This anime has all the psychological discomfort of a Satoshi Kon product with the beauty and style of something from Kyoani (even though it’s made by Clover Works). It’s really one of those anime you just have to see to understand.

Sk8-∞ (Skate the infinity): An original skateboarding anime from Bones, featuring a typical sports anime protagonist who takes a new transfer student who has never skateboarded in his life under his wing. Together they compete in dangerous races and take the skating community by storm. The character designs rival Appare Ranman’s in outlandish creativity, and I can smell the main characters’ ship dynamic a mile away (considering they’re exactly the same as the protagonists from Robihachi). If you’re looking for some wild and crazy fun with top notch skateboarding animation, don’t skip this!

2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu (Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Club): Yes, it’s another volleyball anime. And no, it’s not just a clone of Haikyu. This story follows Yuni Kuroba, a physically built but emotionally weak teenager who finds out his childhood friend Hajime is moving back to their hometown for high school. Yuni discovers Hajime has become an exceptional volleyball player and they join their school’s volleyball club hoping to turn the unknown team into a rising star. If anything, this anime is much more like Stars Align or Free, where the sport is a backdrop for letting the characters explore their personal problems. Or at least it seems that way after the first episode. I went into this show ready to throw it in the trash because how could anything compete against my beloved Haikyu, but I found myself really enjoying the dynamics of the main duo and I’m curious to see what the rest of the team is like.

And speaking of sports anime rip-offs…..I can’t believe I’m including this but…

Skate Leading Stars: The show where the animators clearly wanted to design another throw away idol anime but saw how popular Yuri On Ice was so they decided to make whatever the hell this show is instead. It revolves around a fictional team sport called skate leading, and we follow the world’s most insufferable main character, a former figure skater named Kensei who wants to return to the ice and join his school’s skate leading team after he finds out his childhood rival is going to compete in the sport. Look, this show is just trashy enough to get a certain type of audience hooked, and it mainly has to do with the best boy of the winter season, Hayato Sasugai, the aspiring team “coach” who pulled most of us into watching this show with his punk appearance, snide comments and smug personality. He’s basically the lovechild of Izaya Orihara and Shizuo Heiwajima in a high school sports anime setting. The show treats itself with the perfect amount of sincerity to get away with being absolutely ridiculous most of the time without making you feel like you’re watching it from a dumpster...like Try Knights. You will know after one episode whether this show is for you. All I can say is, Hayato is worth the watch, and I haven’t seen any 3D animation used for the skating scenes (yet) so that’s a win for me. 

Honorable mention:

Jobless Reincarnation ( Mushoku Tensei): Yet another isekai where the main character is hit by a car (big surprise) and gets reincarnated into a fantasy world...but he happens to remember his previous life and narrates himself growing up as a jaded adult. I’m only including this because it looked amazing animation wise, and I love the opening where getting hit by a car and dying is actually traumatic. And I love the protagonist’s parents (who are retired adventurers who just want to bang all the time). But honestly...the main character is the fucking worst, and I don’t know if I want to keep watching it because of how creepy and weird he is. Like...he’s the hit on your fantasy mom as a baby kind of creepy and weird. But for anyone who wants a cool looking isekai that had an amazing PV, it’s worth checking out. 

Continuing Series!

Because the real gold of the season is in all the established anime getting their next seasons, I’m just going to list some of the things that are also amazing and definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already (because I’ve already talked about most of them at some point and don’t know what else to say).

Attack On Titan season 4

The Promised Neverland season 2

Beastars season 2

Log Horizon season 3

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime season 2

Re: Zero season 2 (second cour)

Dr. Stone season 2

Cells at Work season 2

Osomatsu-san season 3 (second cour)

Higurashi New (second cour)

Jujutsu Kaisen (second cour) 

Not to mention all the shows I don’t watch that everyone else loves...like World Trigger (which I have seen quite a bit of, but long shounen shows are too much for me now) Quintessential Quintuplets, and Non Non Biyori. 

So there’s just some of all the anime airing this season. Hopefully, someone can find something they like. Here’s to a great year...well, of anime at least...

[iohourtime]

Yamada Ryosuke: “Daikaiju no Atoshimatsu*”

English Title: What to do with the Dead Kaiju

Cinema Square 131

(Rough translation only. Please let me know if there are any errors. I don’t want to get in trouble, so I’ll just put a couple of photos up for now. I’ll share the rest after the magazine is out for a while.)

 “[The film] is a large-scaled project driven by CG and tokusatsu**!”, said the director and writer, Miki Satoshi. It doesn’t follow the script of the normal tokusatsu films, but rather focuses on “how do you deal with the corpse of the dead kaiju”. The lead actor riding this curveball is Yamada Ryosuke, who was brilliant in “Moeyo Ken” etc. Will his role be that of a hero or an antihero***?

* Daikaiju no Atoshimatsu is literally translated as the clean up of the big monster, but the official English title appears to be “What to do with the Dead Kaiju”. I am using both the Japanese or English title interchangeably below.

** Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese films/dramas that involve a lot of special effects, so kaiju films like Godzilla or hero films like Ultraman will fall under this genre.

*** I’m not 100% sure Datsu-Hero means an anti-hero.😅 If I go by the literal words, it means a departure from the “hero” character.

Interview

- This project is the first ever tag team of Shochiku & Toei. The director and writer is Miki Satoshi of the “Jiko Keisatsu” (Time Limit Investigator) fame. Now that you have firsthand experience in the “Miki World*”, how do you like it?

Yamada: Director Miki is someone who does not compromise. He has a strong commitment towards what he’s directing, so when it comes to lines in the script, he said “I don’t want you to change a single word or phrase” and it’s the first time I work on such a set. For me, it is quite tough since I’m the type that is used to arranging [my lines], and I think it is a fresh challenge.

* Director Miki is famous for the “Datsuryoku Kei” comedy, which basically have all the characters play the situation seriously, but what they do or say is really ridiculous, and the viewers get the comedy from the absurdity of the situation.

- The [subject of the] finished film is very fresh. As the title said, it is a story after the large kaiju is dead!

Yamada: It’s an idea that’s pretty out there. But when you see the words, “What to do with the Dead Kaiju”, you can’t help thinking, “Eh? Indeed what would you do with it afterwards?” (laughs) The “Miki world” shines a light on the parts that nobody had described before and I feel that we’ve made a new sort of film this time.

- In this movie, Yamada-san’s name is Obinata Arata*. You belong to the special forces.

Yamada: I thought it was a really cool name. Doesn’t it sound a bit like a tokusatsu hero’s name? I worked hard to create a character that will not lose to this name no matter which scene..

* The kanji for Obinata is literally “Bring Sword”, although he could be talking about the sounds? I haven’t watched enough hero movies to know the difference.

- [In the story], Arata disappeared suddenly 3 years ago.

Yamada: He’s a protagonist who has a mystery, so I think it is very important [to portray] the mysterious side of him who is keeping a secret from the start.

- Did Yamada-san make any suggestions to Director Miki?

Yamada: I proposed the hairstyle [for the character]. When I read the script, my image of Arata is a protagonist who has strong core values; “a man who will definitely not waver”. So to show this firmness in the character, I shaved the side a little and selected an all-back hairstyle. Director Miki asked for black hair. “Not your natural black hair, but jet black hair”, he said.

- It’s true that Arata was an “unflinching man” from beginning to end.

Yamada: When the commander of the special forces, the prime minister, and the ministers were in the midst of chaos and things were getting out of hand, only Arata would say, “You can’t do that”. His beliefs did not bend. Although the situation is completely different, in group activities, I usually think that “I’m not going to bend on this”, so I could understand the character and got into the role.

- The ministers are saying or doing weird things, which feels very much in line with the “Miki World”.

Yamada: It’s pretty strange, but everyone was super serious and wasn’t acting in a way to make you laugh. Aren’t there people who just talk normally but make you think they’re weird? Like, “What did you just say?” (laughs). The ministers are full of that type of people. Only their choice of words are strange.

- Tsuchiya Tao-san plays your ex-lover, who was your colleague when she was in the special forces and is now the secretary to the Minister of Environment. Is this the first time you acted together?

Yamada: Yes. Although we have been on the same variety program before. She’s a very gentle, pure, and natural person, so it is really easy to work with her.

- And then there is the pro-explosion expert who was an ex-member of the special forces played by Joe Odagiri-san.

Yamada: When I first met Odagiri-san, I simply thought “That’s Joe Odagiri. So cool!!”, just like a regular home viewer (laughs). As expected, he feels different from normal. In the past, when I was still living with my parents, there was a pet shop nearby. I went there with my mom and met his family. I told him about that and Odagiri-san said he heard about it too. I was so happy.

- Just now, we were talking about how “you’ve made a new sort of film”. Can you please tell us your thoughts about the finished film?

Yamada: I was shocked at how much bigger the monster was. We’ve been told that “it was 380m long”, right? But visually, it felt much larger. The scale of the film itself also felt large, I guess the genre is “fantasy tokusatsu entertainment”. [The monster] was of a size where “when such a giant monster dies in the city, what will happen when it decomposes?” would be a real concern. And then, the gas from the corpse will affect the lives around it; that situation is [similar] to what’s happening in [our] world. You can also think of [the film] as a simulation of what could happen in our world in the near future and it explores facets of human nature. On that front, the difference in Arata and the ministers’ reaction is really interesting. When I was filming, I had no scenes with the ministers, so when I watched the finished film, there were many times I [laughed out loud]. When you compare the two, there is a sharp contrast between their fervor [in the matter]. [The film consists of] a stacked cast who were seriously doing idiotic things; it is this type of film.

- As the lead in this film, what are some things you are especially concerned about?

Yamada: It is to play a man who takes completing his mission seriously in a straightforward way. Arata is super serious in order to show the gap between him and his surroundings. He is a mature character in spirit, and in a sense, I want to show “a different Yamada Ryosuke from what you’ve seen before”, objectively speaking.

- Of course there were also especially difficult scenes to shoot. Explosive scenes, etc.

Yamada: That was fun. I was very excited. Although relatively speaking, my body can tolerate quite a bit [of weight], there was a scene where I had to carry missiles by myself and walked on the surface of the monster and it was really heavy. I had to carry 3 of those. Perhaps it was determined to be impossible to show the unique form [of carrying 3 missiles] without using [props] that were close to the real weight. I tried holding it [the first time] and found it really hard to grab them with my hands, so I stooped over and carried them even during break time. It was like I was doing a bit of weight training.

- The scenes where you were riding a heavily armored motorbike which left a strong impression.

Yamada: I didn’t have any experience riding motorbikes. Moreover, the bike was customized for a fantasy tokusatsu entertainment [project], so riding it was hard. Arata was not an undisputed hero, but he had the “hero position”, so this was an item that showed off his coolness with amazing effectiveness. As for the “hero position”, when I put on the special forces uniform, I felt like I’ve turned on the switch to [hero] mode and became stronger. However, there are no battles in this film; it is single-mindedly about me struggling with the “clean up of the dead kaiju”. (laughs) In the end, when you think “Finally!”, it goes down an unexpected path*. Please look forward to that when you’re watching the movie.

Personal Q&A

* I read the novelization and if the ending is exactly the same, it is pretty WTF. 😅

Q: How often do you clean?

A: Every morning, I’ll vacuum. Although I don’t have to do it, I am just free in the morning.

Q: What’s your favourite scent? Hated scent?

A: My favourite is the scent of osmanthus. While I dislike a lot of scents, among them, the most memorable one is honey bee feces. I smelt it a while ago on a variety program (Itadaki High Jump) and it was really stinky! When I opened the tiny bottle and held it near my nose for a brief second, the strong stench was the most unpleasant and smelly thing I’ve experienced in my life. In “Daikaiju no Atoshimatsu”, the corpse started to decompose and gave off this odious smell, affecting the people. I was remembering the small of honey bee feces when I was trying to picture that smell. (laughs)

Q: What’s your favourite hero drama or movies?

A: Probably all boys will be into tokusatsu stuff when they are kids. It was for me and I watched “Denji Sentai Megaranger” passionately. These days, I like dark heroes stories, like the movie about Spiderman’s nemesis, “Venom”. These slightly twisted characters attract me. They have bad excuses for their bad behaviours, which is quite interesting. Compared to stories about pure justice, these hero stories with a slightly [twisted] point of view are more worth seeing.

Story

Runtime: 115 minutes

The giant monster that had been bringing unprecedented terror to human kind suddenly died one day. As the citizens celebrated, the corpse started to rapidly decompose and expand. If it explodes, the country will be destroyed! The countdown towards utter destruction started. Amidst the time of despair, the fate of the citizens and the responsibility of dealing with the corpse was not entrusted to the police or army, but Obinata Arata, a man who disappeared mysteriously 3 years ago. 

[Some thoughts: So I skimmed the novelization of the movie. Based on the director’s style and the description of events, it is probably a satire, using the dead monster to allude to real events such as the earthquake from 2011 or even the handling of covid. It definitely feels like a commentary on the handling (or rather mishandling) of the situation by the government. However, the book itself is written from the characters’ POV complete with inner thoughts, etc, so it didn’t feel very comedic but more like a human story. However, I don’t think the movie itself is going to explore everyone’s inner thoughts. There are some possibly funny scenes but it’s hard to gauge how funny the film will be without seeing it. That’s the danger of satire! 

To fill in a little detail about the romantic subplot, Arata and Yukino used to date. Arata disappeared mysteriously 3 years ago and came back 1 year before the start of the story. Yukino is married to Amane now and Amane is incredibly jealous of Arata… for reasons.]

[moons-and-stars-and-shit]

hi may i get a matchup pls!

Appearance: i'm mixed race (asian & black),tan skin, 5'7, slim yet toned body, long curly hair (dark brown with auburn highlights), nose and belly piercing, dark brown eyes

Personality: I'm either really chill of really wild depends on my mood and setting, i speak my mind and i'm kinda headstrong, i've been told that i'm pretty funny in like a sassy sorta way, i do whatever i want so i guess that makes me rebellious, but i'm also try my hardest to be sweet and helpful

What i want in a S/O

i want someone who is fun and can keep up with me and even challenge me sometimes but i also want someone who's smart and kinda different from me so we can learn from each other

MBTI and Zodiac sign

i'm a taurus estp

Aesthetic

I guess you can call it cute n sporty, i wear crop tops and sweat pants a lot, most of my clothes and all my shoes are sports brands, and most of my clothes are in pastel colors

Hobbies

I have experience in a variety of sports normal ones like soccer to extreme ones like snowboarding, u name it i probably done it, i play bass guitar, and dance hip hop, i'm also into like yoga and other spiritual practices, i like to cook

Likes

I collect horror and teen comedy movies, i like anime, "chilin", animals are cool, video games, traveling, having fun, snacks, cosmetology (like hair and skincare type shit)

Das it! Thank u in advance i really appreciate it! (≧◡≦) ♡

@starbriteuwu

𝚁𝚘𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌 𝙼𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑𝚞𝚙 ♡

𝐊𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐨 𝐓𝐞𝐭𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐮

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐘𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐭

Alright 👏

So you we’re the captain of Nekomas girls volleyball team

And one day Kuroo was like “hey we’ve never actually played the girls team before 🤔”

So he (with the help of the coaches) organized a little practice match between the two teams

And sis when you walked in

His jaw hit the floor

Like how tf we’re you so gorgeous????

And his jaw dropped EVEN MORE when you started making casual conversation with Kenma

Like huh????

Kenma talking to other people????

Unheard of.

So being the little snoop he is decided to investigate

By investigate I mean he just went up to Kenma and asked “who his new friend was”

Kenma then explained that you and him often played video games together

You stretched your arm out to shake Kuroos hand promising him a good game before walking off to go warm up

Poor Kenma got BOMBARDED with questions about you

Kuroo was just really drawn to you ok

After a while it was time to start the game

Now this game was INTENSE

Both of the teams were really good

And both of them honestly had a pretty similar playing style

But there could only be one victor

It was super close but the girls ended up winning

Kuroo approached you after the game congratulating you for the win before asking you if your team would like to grab a “after game meal” on behalf of his team

You decided that your girls deserved some food after working so hard, so you agreed

You ended up sitting next to Kuroo at the diner you all went to

And oh boy he was PANICKING

Internally of course

You felt the atmosphere was a little tense

But you just laughed it off telling Kuroo that you don’t bite and to loosen up

He chuckled at your straightforwardness before starting a conversation with you

You both talked the WHOLE time

Casually including Kenma into the conversation for a little bit

But overall it was mostly you and Kuroo talking

After everyone was done eating you began your walk home

But you we’re stopped by...

You guessed it Kuroo

He just told you that he really liked talking to you and would really love if you let him take you on a actual date

You laughed at his flustered face

But you ended up accepting his offer 😳

And the rest is history

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐋𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮

He loves how your mood matches the vibe

Does that make sense????

Like if the room is serious then your serious

If the rooms goofy then your goofy

He loves this because he can always count on fun times with you

BUT

you know when you need to get serious

Ok so he LOVES that you speak your mind

But you do it in that kind of sassy way so it never comes off as mean

He loves it because you honestly just tell him how it is

You tell him he’s being an asshole

Then he’s being an asshole

You tell him that he needs to study or else he’s gonna fail

Then shit he better bust out the books

You really keep him on track if you know what I mean

And finally

He just ADORES your style 😩

It’s like cozy

But athleticy

And also soft girl vibes

Just...yes

𝐅𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐓𝐨 𝐃𝐨 𝐓𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫

He loves to play sports with you

It doesn’t even need to be volleyball

He’ll try whatever you wanna practice for that day

Honestly there’s some sports he hasn’t even heard of before you showed them to him 😀

But

He’s also down for just chilling at home and watching movies on the couch

Or get this

He’s actually really into yoga

Says it makes his feel “zen”

Whatever the hell that means....

So he really likes to try new yoga poses with you

𝐑𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐇𝐜

He absolutely lets you test new skin and hair products on him

There has 100% been spa dates in this relationship

Sometimes he buts into you and Kenmas gaming sessions

But quickly gets kicked out by the both of you 🥲

Ever since you two started dating there have been a lot more requests for practice matches with the girls volleyball team

You made Kuroo try hip hop before

And he’s actually not half bad 👀

Ok but Kuroo in a tight shirt and baggy pants 🥵

𝐀𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲

They are opposite Signs in the Zodiac, giving them a special, complex connection.

They can combine to make a whole, each partner’s strengths balancing the other’s weaknesses.

Taurus and Scorpio have tons in common, but because their personalities are so powerful, they often swing between passionate love and passionate disagreement!

Taurus and Scorpio both have deep desires, Taurus for possessions and Scorpio for power.

They’re both concerned with wealth and resources, and they’re both intensely passionate about all sorts of things.

Taurus is a bit more self-focused than Scorpio, who is more concerned with their lover and immediate family.

Both of these Signs have a great, deep-rooted need for security in a relationship, but with slightly different focuses.

While Taurus prizes honesty and forthrightness and abhors infidelity, Scorpio loves to be mysterious.

A Scorpio’s need for security is more about the need to be constantly reassured that their emotional connection with their loved one is strong.

The good thing is, Taurus needs this reassurance too — and is also willing to provide it for their Scorpio lover.

Their powerful connection that can shine when obstacles to intimacy are cleared away.

When Scorpio realizes that Taurus is there for the long term and won’t create the misery that some Scorpios attract to their lives, this relationship can blossom.

𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐀𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜

𝙰𝚃𝙷𝙻𝙴𝚃𝙴𝚂 ⚽️ 🏀 🏈 🏐

[thepropertylovers]

4 HBO Max Shows We've Loved Recently

With the Emmy nominations being released last week, and HBO leading all the networks with 130 nominations, I thought it would be fun to share some of the shows we’ve been watching lately on HBO Max, which has quickly become one of our favorite streaming services. Here are our favorites based on what type of mood you’re in, and feel free to click on the show to watch the trailer for it:

If you’re in the mood for: A comedy that will make you laugh the entire episode but tug at your heartstrings the whole time:

Hacks

We just finished this show the other night and already miss it. It’s been decided (decades ago): Jean Smart is an icon and can do no wrong. She is absolutely heartbreaking in Hacks, a comedy about legendary stand-up comedian Deborah Vance, who has had a Las Vegas residency for years but whose career is not exactly what it used to be. To try to revive it, her team hires a 20-something down-on-her-luck comedy writer Ava to help make make her hip and cool again. It’s the perfect blend of comedy with heartfelt life lessons, and the dynamic/relationship between Deborah and Ava make them the best onscreen duo we’ve seen in years. We can’t wait for season two!

Wikipedia summary: “Deborah Vance is a legendary Las Vegas stand-up comedy diva, trying to maintain relevance as the venue manager tries to pare down on her performance dates. Ava is a Gen Z comedy writer who is unable to find work due to being "canceled" over an insensitive tweet. The two reluctantly team up to freshen up Vance's material and learn to respect each other's differences.”

If you’re in the mood for: A riveting mystery with a deep character study and a career-best performance from Kate Winslet:

Mare of Easttown

Everyone needs to know who Mare is. I want to be friends with Mare. I miss her. This show’s portrayal of a woman who has had a rough life but who cares so deeply about her work, her family, and doing the right thing (even if she always feels like she isn't) is so real and raw that I sometimes forgot it was a cop show. But that’s probably because its so much more than just a cop show. It’s a family drama, a character study, and a mystery all expertly wrapped into one show. And don’t even get me started on her Delco accent. Pure genius. Expect this one to win all the Emmy’s.

Wikipedia summary: “In a suburb of Philadelphia, a detective named Mare Sheehan investigates the recent murder of a teenage mother while trying to keep her own life from falling apart. Mare is a local hero, having been the star of a high-school basketball championship game 25 years ago. She has also been unable to solve the case of another missing young girl for a year, leading many in the community to doubt her detective skills. Her personal troubles include a divorce, a son lost to suicide, and a custody battle with her ex-heroin addict former daughter-in-law over Mare's grandson”

If you’re in the mood for: A Euphoria-like show to tide you over until the second season comes out but then you realize it stands alone and is just as good:

Genera+ion

At first glance, I assumed this would be a Euphoria knock-off, but after watching the first episode I quickly realized that couldn’t be further from the truth. Generation stands on its own and carves its path as a unique teen drama filled with dialogue that sounds like it was actually written by a teenager. Set in Orange County, California, the characters behave like high schoolers behave and nothing feels force or contrived. The performances are out of this world good, and like Mare, I often forgot we were watching a television series at all; it felt more like a documentary of modern day teens going through all the drama teens go through. Yes, there is partying, drugs, nudity and some heartbreaking scenes, but isn’t that what being a teenager trying to figure out who they are and going through all the emotions is all about?

Wikipedia summary: “Featuring an ensemble cast, the story centers on a group of high school students in Orange County, California who explore their sexuality in a modern world. This tests their deeply entrenched beliefs about life, love and the nature of family in their conservative community.”

If you’re in the mood for: A female-led supernatural thrill ride filled with magic, whimsy, action, and steampunk vibes that will leave you guessing at every turn:

The Nevers

This show!!! It’s so good. The perfect show for fall, if you can hold off watching it until then. Laura Donnelly as Amalia True is one of the greatest female characters ever written for the screen. She’s complex, daring, brave, vulnerable, intimidating, and will stop at nothing to uncover the truth, all while running and trying to hide from her own dark and twisted past. The series is set in 1800’s London, so the feel of it is spooky, mysterious, and haunting. If you’re a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you’ll love this show (both were created by Joss Whedon). It’s action-packed and filled with the most amazing set design. There’s a big mystery to uncover at the end, which is always the best kind of TV, isn’t it?

Wikipedia summary: “An epic science fiction drama about a gang of Victorians who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies, and a mission that might change the world."

Plus, two shows we want to start watching: Starstruck and I May Destroy You.

What about you? What have you been into lately? Any recommendations for what we should watch next?

[fanfic-corner]

Slow Burn

You ever want to read a fic that is probably as long (or longer) than a book series, but not have the main love interests kiss until chapter 300? Then you probably have some issues, but I'm not a therapist, so here we go.

Stand By Me by whelvenwings on AO3. (31,252 words).

Tags: Zombie Apocalypse AU, Post-Apocalypse, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, Slow Dancing, Smut, First Kiss, Canon-Typical Violence, Touch-Starved Dean, Love Confessions.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Dean Winchester has been alone for a long, long time. When he and Castiel happen to find each other - a couple of survivors in a world that’s been all but wiped clean - Dean’s looking for his brother; Castiel is looking for something to look for. They stick together, because neither of them much wants to be alone. They hate each other at first, of course. Dean hates Castiel for being weird and quiet and ironic and antagonistic and proud. Castiel hates Dean for being blunt and reckless and coarse, for drinking, for refusing to talk about how he feels and just pretending everything is fine. Most of all, they hate themselves and each other just for being alive. What right do they have to be alive? No one else seems to be. But against his own will, Dean starts to notice things about Castiel that he likes. Starts to hope that Castiel might like him, too. And together, they start to fight for a world where they're both alive - and that's a good thing.

Notes: One of the first fics I ever read, and one of my faves! The ending was slightly unsatisfying, but not so much that I would drop a star.

Angel's Wild by LimonadeGaby and riseofthefallenone on AO3. (389,271 words).

Tags: Alternate Universe, Wingfic, Hurt/Comfort, Wing Kink, Slow Build, Slow Burn.

My Rating: 5 stars. (If I could give it more, I would).

Description: But that’s the whole reason he’s here, isn’t it? He’s not out here hunting Humans. He’s not even hunting deer, or bears, or anything else that featured in Bambi. He’s out here, freezing his nuts off every night, because he’s hunting Angels. Sometimes Dean wishes that Angels were like how they’re described in the Bible. How people from time too old for him to care much about thought Angels were messengers and warriors of God, protectors of Humans. He knows that how they’re really described in the Bible is actually pretty terrifying, but at least they were told by God that they’re supposed to love Humans, right? That’s a thousand times better than what Angels really turned out to be.

Notes: I would be lying if I said I didn’t read all these slow burn fics just so I could rec this. I would also be lying if I said this wasn’t my favourite fic of all time. The pining is so intense it is practically unbearable to read. Honestly, I don’t care if you think it is too long or it isn’t really your thing; I would rec this to anyone with ears. I will still be reccing this in Hell. It is absolutely phenomenal.

a turn of the earth by mishcollin on AO3. (95,274 words).

Tags: Time Travel, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence, POV Dean Winchester, Alteration of s10 lore, Homophobic Language, Smut, Pining Dean, Preseries Dean, Mutual Pining.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Dean’s your typical half-orphaned, monster-killing 22-year-old until a trenchcoated stranger crashes into his back windshield one September night, claiming he’s an angel that knows him from the future and that he’s on the run. Frigging fantastic.

Notes: An absolutely excellent plot, which is excellently written, and is somehow simultaneously angsty and adorable.

Forget-Me-Not Blues by noangelsinthegarrison on AO3. (68,689 words).

Tags: Romantic Comedy, Firefighter Dean, Professor Castiel, Weddings, Misunderstandings, High School AU, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Angst, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Sam and Jess are getting married and Dean couldn’t be any happier for them. Honestly, they’re kind of disgustingly perfect for each other and Dean’s pretty damn excited about staying with them the week before the wedding. He’s Sam’s best man, of course, and he doesn’t even mind that Jess has her own best man to share in all the organisational duties. The more the merrier, right?Except Dean must have done something to epically piss off the universe because Jess’s best man just happens to be Castiel friggin’ Novak. He’s got even hotter since High School, but apparently no friendlier and if Cas wants to spend the week pretending like they’ve never met before? Fine. Two can play at that game.

Notes: Jesus Christ, I have not read a single fic which sums up exactly how stupid Dean and Cas can be sometimes. I loved it.

the cost of a thing by quiettewandering on AO3. (74,198 words).

Tags: Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fake Marriage, Human Castiel, Protective Dean Winchester, Touch-Starved Castiel, Mutual Pining, Jealous Dean Winchester, Slow Burn, Depressed Castiel, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Sharing a Bed.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: 16 months ago, Cas became human.12 months ago, Cas left the bunker and a broken-hearted Dean behind. Now they must work a case together, where married couples are dying mysterious deaths and the only way to earn the neighbors' trust is by pretending to be married. Slowly, Dean finds that he loves being in a relationship with Cas, fake or not, and Cas finds his loneliness retreating, despite the harsh reality looming right around the corner. As Dean and Cas navigate this fake, but all too real, relationship, can they find the monster that is on a mysteriously motivated killing spree before it’s too late?

Notes: So cute! All the angst! My favourite trope! (So many exclamation marks!)

In All Your Borrowed Finery by vanishingact on AO3. (67,950 words).

Tags: Winged Dean Winchester, Winged Sam Winchester, Winged Castiel, Winged Gabriel, Spells & Enchantments, Hunters & Hunting, Case Fic, Harpies, Canon-Typical Violence, Major Character Injury, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Fluff and Humor and Smut and Angst, Wingfic, Fanart. My Rating: 5 stars. Description: Dean finds an interesting symbol in Kevin's angel tablet notes and, against Sam's counselling, uses it in the heat of battle with a pair of angelic assassins. Side effects include pain, disorientation, and uncontrollable new appendages for the Winchesters. A disgruntled Castiel and a delighted Gabriel show up to help. Hunting (and life) gets interesting when wings are involved.  Notes: Okay this was literally adorable and you can not convince me otherwise. Every time I read a fic with everyone’s favourite archangel, I miss him just a bit more. (This fic is slightly more Sabriel than Destiel, but only by a little).

In This Secluded Spot I Respond As I Wouldn't Elsewhere by RhymePhile on AO3. (33,953 words).

Tags: Modern Setting AU, Teenage AU, High Scool AU, Romance, Best Friends, First Love, First Kiss, Slow Build, Minor Violence, Bullying, Homophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Protective Dean Winchester, Texas, Slow Burn, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, No Sex, Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Raised Separately, Mary Winchester Lives, Artist Castiel, Nerd Castiel, Grieving Castiel, Jock Dean Winchester.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: It's 1995, and Castiel's high school years are destined to be difficult: home-schooled until eighth grade, he is awkward, shy, and socially inept. The weird kid with the funny name would rather isolate himself and draw in his sketchbook than deal with the constant bullying he faces every day. Things only get worse in his junior year when he excels in home economics class, leading the captain of the baseball team, Alastair, to start taunting him for being gay.Then new student Dean Winchester arrives at Flour Bluff High School, sharing many of Castiel's classes. Castiel has seen his type before -- handsome, athletic, arrogant, and sure to be the most popular kid in school. But Castiel eventually learns that he and Dean have more in common than he thought, and they form an unlikely friendship.

Notes: Pretty cute, and I did enjoy reading it. Not sure why like half the slow burn fics are set in a high school, but hey.

'Star Wars is Overrated' by leftdragonpainter on AO3. (38,186 words).

Tags: Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Pining, Drinking, Writer Castiel, Mechanic Dean, Neighbours, Swearing, Winchester Logic, Big Brother Gabriel, Clueless Dean, College Student Sam, Awkward Dates, Slow Burn, Injured Sam, Emotional Constipation, Angst, Confessions, Smut, Drunk Texting, Love Confessions, Temporary Amnesia, Angst and Humor.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: When Dean Winchester turned sixteen he was disappointed by the words that appeared on his chest. He never expected that it would take so much to find his soulmate. He never expected to not remember meeting them...

Notes: Every time I thought I knew what was gonna happen in this fic, something completely different happened. I think I have whiplash (but I love it!).

The Elysium High by EllenOfOz on AO3. (44,768 words).

Tags: Post-Apocalypse AU, Los Angeles, Dystopia AU, Angels are Dicks, Addict Sam Winchester, Recreational Drug Use, Witch Sam Winchester, Detective AU, Confused Castiel, Drugged Sex, Slow Burn, Cyborg Castiel.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: In the not-too-distant future, climate change has wreaked havoc on the city of Los Angeles. When sea levels rose, and the Los Angeles Basin began to flood regularly like many coastal areas around the world, the population of the city moved up, off the ground and into the scrapers. Many years later, the city is divided into three rough zones: the Topzone, where the very wealthy live in the sunlight; the Midzone, where those of the less-well-off population live amid the flying traffic, the smog and their coffee addictions; and the Groundzone, what's left at close to ground level—dim, grimy and occasionally very wet. Sam and Dean Winchester are drug investigators in the LAPD. During a bust, Dean is saved by Castiel, one of the mysterious Angels, the elite fighting unit of the LA City Council. When Castiel insists on taking Dean to Paradise because he says they have work for him, Dean has little choice but to go along. But when a new drug, “Elysium”, hits the scene, people all over the city start dying. The brothers and Castiel must work out where the drug is coming from and stop its spread before it's too late.

Notes: There was nothing wrong about this fic, it just wasn’t really my cup of tea. I found the fic that it reminded me of though; I Know A Place by whelvenwings. It is fairly similar, but in my opinion a tad better.

So there we go: slow burns! And if you’re thinking, ‘Lina, where are all the ridiculously long ones? I want them to have their first kiss 300 chapters in?’ just know that I do not have the patience or the time for that. Mostly the patience. Okay, maybe I avoided them because they make me want to smash my phone. Whatever. Another day, maybe.

[papermoonloveslucy]

VACATION TIME

April 29, 1949

“Vacation Time” (aka “Trailer Vacation to Goosegrease Lake”) is episode #41 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on April 29, 1949 on the CBS radio network.

Synopsis ~ It's vacation time, and Liz and George have decidedly different plans. He wants to go camping with a trailer he borrowed from a friend, while she's set on a glamorous vacation at Moosehead Lodge.

This episode later partly inspired the premise of “Liz Learns To Swim” aired on June 11, 1950. 

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benaderet was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

MAIN CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his  roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Bea Benadaret (Iris Atterbury) and Gale Gordon (Rudolph Atterbury) do not appear in this episode. 

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz (above right), a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

GUEST CAST

Frank Nelson (Policeman) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. This is one of his 11 performances on “My Favorite Husband.”  On “I Love Lucy” he holds the distinction of being the only actor to play two recurring roles: Freddie Fillmore and Ralph Ramsey, as well as six one-off characters, including the frazzled train conductor in “The Great Train Robbery” (ILL S5;E5), a character he repeated on “The Lucy Show.”  Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs.  

Wally Maher (Joe Risley) was born on August 4, 1908 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was known for Mystery Street (1950), The Reformer and the Redhead (1950) and Hollywood Hotel (1937). He was heard with Lucille Ball in the Lux Radio Theatre version of “The Dark Corner” (1947), taking the role originated on film by William Bendix. He died on December 27, 1951.

Milton Stark (Filling Station Attendant) was a theatre actor and director, who also appeared on radio and television, although usually in supporting roles.  He also worked as a dialogue coach and acting teacher. At UCLA a scholarship was established in his name. He lived to the age of 103. 

EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “As we look in on the Coopers, it is a cold rainy afternoon, but Liz is in her bedroom standing in front of the mirror wearing a back-less, strapless sun dress.” 

Liz calls Katie in to show off her sun dress, but Katie is disapproving that is so revealing.  Liz has shopped for summer vacation clothes.  Liz’s bathing suit cost’s forty dollars. 

KATIE: “That’s a lot of money for two doilies and a diaper.” 

Liz says that husbands only approve of scanty swimsuits when they are on any woman but their wives. 

LIZ: “I want to look good for George. He’s going to see a lot of me this summer.” KATIE: “He’s not the only one!”  

The topic of revealing bathing suits was later also mined for comedy on “I Love Lucy.”  In “Off To Florida” (ILL S6;E6) Ricky thinks Lucy’s new skimpy new swimsuit is for Little Ricky!  Lucy also buys a swimsuit that Ricky feels is too skimpy when shopping for their California trip in “Getting Ready” (ILL S4;E11)

Liz says they are going to Moosehead Lodge on Lake Okeechobee. Liz calls it a real swanky place.  Katie reminds Liz that George prefers more rugged vacations.  Liz says she will suggest it to George at dinner. 

Lake Okeechobee is a real place, located in central Florida, although it is far more conducive to George’s type of vacation than Liz’s, highlighting nature through fishing and nature.  

Although there are places called Moosehead Lodge in America, it unlikely that a moose would be associated with central Florida and that it would be an upscale resort of the type Liz is describing. 

At the bank, George talks to his co-worker Joe about scheduling vacations.  Joe says that his ideal vacation is in a trailer.  If George likes the idea, he will lend the Coopers his trailer.  George will suggest it to Liz at dinner. 

After dinner, both Liz and George get cozy with the idea of easing the other into going on their dream destination.  Liz ‘just happened’ to hear about a place that she vaguely remembers. 

LIZ: “I did hear of some place called Moosehead Lodge. It’s probably situated in groves of stately pines, on the shores of an emerald green lake, its rustic beauty enhanced by lawns and flower beds. Each luxurious room is furnished with clean, comfortable box spring beds, modern bathroom and shower. Ten dollars a day, American plan. Oh, George, let’s go there. We can relax and enjoy a continual round of  glorious entertainment, sports, good food, and true fellowship, see your travel agent for details.”

George realizes that Liz has been plotting a vacation.  George says he has a better idea - two weeks in a trailer.  Liz is less than keen. George says that they can borrow Joe Risley’s trailer!

LIZ: “Keen with mud on it.”

Liz is worried that nobody will see her new vacation wardrobe if they are cooped up in a trailer.  They are at an impasse.  Liz suggests they go on separate vacations.  When George reluctantly agrees, she breaks down in tears.  

Liz moans to Katie that she already misses George, and the vacation doesn’t begin for two months.  George phones from work to talk to Liz.  George offers a compromise.  They will take a trial weekend trip in the trailer, and if she doesn’t like it, he will go to Moosehead Lodge!

Vacationing in a trailer was explored by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in their 1953 comedy MGM’s The Long Long Trailer.  The film mines a lot of physical comedy from the trailer’s unwieldy movement and how Lucy’s character Tacy Bolton copes with it. 

ANNOUNCER: “George is just driving up with the trailer hooked up to the back of the car.”

Liz remarks how small the trailer is.  

GEORGE: “Keep an open mind.” LIZ: “I’ll have to close it or it won’t fit in that trailer.” 

They tour the inside, which is smaller than Liz thought.  Just then, a knock at the trailer door and there’s a policeman (Frank Nelson) issuing them a parking ticket! Forty bucks for parking illegally!

The next morning George and Liz get an early start on their trial trailer trip.  Liz has brought along a little light reading for the trip: “Inside Moosehead Lodge” by Liz Gunther. 

Motoring along the highway, George is enjoying the drive. 

LIZ: “Travel is great. I wouldn’t go anywhere without it.”

George says it is so smooth, you wouldn’t even know the trailer is back there.  Liz notices that it isn’t!  George forgot to hook it on!   Finally, they are off (again) to Goosegrease Lake. Liz reads one of those sequential signs along the roadside: “If Your Whiskers...  Won’t Behave... Take a Tip Use....”  Liz goes silent. 

GEORGE: “Use what?”  LIZ: “The last sign’s torn down. Now we’ll never know.” 

Almost everyone in the audience knew it was Burma-Shave.  From 1926 until 1963 the ‘brushless’ shaving cream company dotted the American highways with small red signs, each containing a line of a short rhyme that the driver could read without slowing down as they drove by.  At one time, there were over 600 different rhymes on signs!  

The idea was given a nod on a 1955 “I Love Lucy” episode “First Stop” (ILL S4;E14) with the roadside signs for Aunt Polly’s Pecan Pralines. 

LUCY: Fifty miles to Aunt Sally’s Pecan Pralines. later... LUCY: 300 yards to Aunt Sally’s! ETHEL: 200 yards! FRED: 100 yards! RICKY: Just around the bend! LUCY: You have just passed Aunt Sally’s. 

Liz is quite sure that George’s shortcut has gotten them lost. They stop to ask directions from a laid back filling station attendant (Milton Stark) who tells them they don’t want to go to Goosegrease Lake.  He suggests they go to the hot springs, instead. 

Oops! Milton Stark has trouble pronouncing ‘Goosegrease’ and  the audience is aware of his flub. When he asks Lucille Ball “What ya gonna do there?” She deliberately says “We’re gonna goose a grease”, instead of “grease a goose”, which causes more giggles from the cast and gales of laughter from the audience. 

FILLING STATION ATTENDANT: “You can’t get there from here!”

Next morning Liz wakes up and looks around.  She sees beautiful green grass and a little flag with the number 18 on it!  A golf ball comes crashing through the window. The policeman from who ticketed them earlier knocks on the trailer door. They have illegally camped out on the 18th green of the municipal golf course - only two miles from home!  Liz said they didn’t know where they were going. 

POLICEMAN: “Do you know where you’re going now?” LIZ: “Yes!  To Moosehead Lodge!” POLICEMAN: “No, to the city jail! Come on!”

End of Episode

[hecohansen31]

SoulmateAU! Duncan doesnt care about his mark. He loves Michael. He loves Jim. And when he meets Reader, his soulmate, he loves her too, but he wants to keep everyone. Except that Michael and Jim are afraid that he will love Reader more and so they are a little mean with her when Duncan isnt here (even if they dont hate her). The poor girl is sad, because she likes them and think she should leave for them to be happy. Duncan must quickly find a way to reassure everyone ! (sorry its a bit long)

(A/N): Hello there, mon amour!

How was your day?

I hope better!

Also sorry for taking A LOT OF TIME! I am an idiot, but I got quite through a bit of ask, and since tonight I cancelled my plans, I am hoping to work on even more requests or such!

Hope you’ll like it!

WARNINGS: Jealous, Abandonement Issues, People Being Idiots.

It had happened almost as a fairytale: she had been the poor and starving journalist meeting Duncan Shepherd, the rich heir to the Shepherd Foundation at a gala, when he had accidentally drenched her with expensive champagne.

She had been dabbing her shirt, with him helping her dabbing the liquid, excusing himself in a way that she hadn’t expected him to.

He had been gentle and modest, almost as if he was just a fellow colleague.

It was in that moment that he had noticed on her wrist a little sign, the same one he owned on his matching wrist, the obvious sign that they were soulmates.

At first he had simply asked her on a coffee date, more as friends than lovers, but he had kept asking her out and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from accepting, although slowly she had discovered more and more out of the busy man’s life, such as his two other fellow “friends”, which were actually his partners in life and work: Michael Langdon and Jim Mason.

When she had first met them, they had been pretty nice with you, but as soon as Duncan had left the room, a glacial silence had appeared for the entire time they had spent together and no matter how nice she was with them, they didn’t seem to share the same predicament, teasing each of her insecurities.

At first, she had thought it was simply some initial jealousy, but as she had settled in Duncan’s house, they hadn’t been very welcoming alongside acting as brats with her and as saints with Duncan.

She had tried with anything: gentleness, bribing them with their favorite food and gifts, trying to spend some time together in their favorite activities and even going as far as to push Duncan away so, the three of them could spend more time together.

But it never worked, and then in the end she had ended up feeling left out as if she was the problem.

Then she was the one who needed to leave.

She had been packing her suitcase, after she had gotten a friend to host her for a bit, till she found a nice apartment to rent for the rest of the year, meanwhile she worked onto forgetting Duncan Shepherd.

She honestly had fallen in love with him, and hadn’t Michael and Jim been a tad nicer towards her she thought that she would actually like them.

But she just couldn’t think about this anymore, or she would cry and lose all her resolution.

She was packing her suitcase, when Michael walked in without knocking, a donut in his left hand and his face smeared with vanilla sugar on it, which was a truly adorable sight, but she was too focused on closing her suitcase before he could notice it.

She hadn’t wanted them to know just yet.

That night she would call Duncan and break it off on the phone, since she thought that challenging him face to face would make her break all her resolutions and go back,

But she just couldn’t.

She was the one who was out of place with them: definitely not as divinely gorgeous as them and charmingly delightful.

“What are you doing?” asked Michael, eyeing her strangely, and she was expecting some insult to came, but he was just looking at her curious, and she would have sworn that she saw him being almost worried.

“Oh, a friend of mine needs a luggage and I am giving her mine, since hers broke” she lied, quickly, although she knew that it was extremely bad, but Michael didn’t seem to mind it too much and she thought that he had gone back to his usual behavior, so she turned to get back to her things.

But he surprised her again.

“… do you want to come with us downstairs?” he asked, eating up a bit of his donut “… we are sharing a box of donuts, do you want to join us?”.

She was extremely surprised by the proposal since they hardly ever shared Duncan with her, so she was surprised that they would be willing to actually share their precious donuts, but she rejected the offer, because it might all be a very unfunny joke of theirs: like they would have given her a donut, just to smash it in her face.

They would have thought it was funny, but she wouldn’t.

“I can’t, I have to bring this to my friend as soon as I can” she replied, pursuing her lips to seriously fake being worried about the time, shooting a quick look at the clock.

Michael nodded slowly and turned around without talking, but in his movements, she couldn’t help but see some kind of sadness, as if he had seriously wanted her to join them.

But she just couldn’t let got to her mind: she was a woman on the mission.

She went down with the luggage to take her car keys, meanwhile the boys were in the kitchen, where she could hear them giggle, and she shout a quick “see you soon”, welcomed by two “have a nice day”, which was strange since the boys never ever seemed to notice whether she was out or in the house.

She proceeded with her plan: driving off to her friend house, who was already waiting for her with a mug of tea and chocolate, to comfort her tormented heart, meanwhile they gossiped about anything but her relationship, till Margret, her friend, mumbled:

“Are you sure about having done the right choice?” she had been the one who had insisted on her talking like a civil woman to Duncan about the situation and get the two “idiots” kicked out “… maybe they’ll miss you…”.

“I don’t think, Meg” she replied, rather quickly and without thinking, although her mind went a bit back to that morning, when Michael offered her to eat donuts with them “… I felt so unwelcome, but at the same time, I was the problem, they weren’t”.

“That’s (Y/N)’s mentality” tried to make her reason her friend “… Meg’s mentality is… you should have talked with Duncan”.

“I am!” she exclaimed, before she blushed, hiding her face in her mug and hoping it had been something stronger “… tonight, maybe…”.

Her friend just smirked sadly, before the intercom ringed and she moved to hear who was bothering them, meanwhile she searched a more comfortable position on the sofa.

Just as she had found it, her friend came back to her, with a face that made it seem like she had just seen a ghost, before ending up in a laughing fit, which she didn’t understand, looking at her confused.

“Apparently I have the police under my house, searching for you”.

Which was extremely strange: yeah, she had been staying at Meg’s house for a few hours, definitely not enough for anyone to be worried.

“Why are they searching for me?”.

“I have just let them up, before they accuse me of kidnapping you, so you can ask them yourself”.

The little policeman who had come to search for her, was actually the type of investigator that she would have found in a comedy and both she and Meg had had to stop each other from laughing at his face.

“Mrs (L/N)?” he asked and she nodded, thinking whether she needed or not to show him her ID, but the man just huffed relieved “… Mr Langdon and Mr Mason are extremely worried for you, they said that this morning you left with a luggage and they were worried you were trying to run away”.

Which had been her plan, but she didn’t think that they would have cared, or noticed.

“Ahem… I just went to Meg’s house, to leave a luggage and we ended up chatting for a bit more than we had thought, I am an independent lady, I am allowed to go anywhere alone”.

The policeman seemed to completely agree, but what he said further, surprised even more.

“I know, Mrs (Y/N) and personally… I think that both the misters might have overreacted a bit: we usually don’t warrant a missing person warning till twenty-four hours are passed., but Mr Langdon wasn’t able to calm himself till I told him that we would rush the procedure and I would personally search you for the city”.

This was rather surprised and Meg almost looked like she was going to choke on biting too hard her tongue not to laugh.

She hadn’t expected the boys to even notice her absence, she almost thought they would party on her finally leaving them.

She hadn’t definitely thought they would be worried for her.

“… so, if you don’t mind it, Mrs (L/N), can you come with me to the police station, so that Mr Langdon and Mr Mason might stop pestering my agents?”.

Although she was almost tempted to stay here at Meg’s house just to make them panic even more, she went after the policeman, since he honestly seemed too done with this entire situation.

Meg smirked, meanwhile she hugged her goodbye, whispering about the fact that she needed to confront them now.

When she came at the station, the total chaos was happening there, meanwhile Michael basically screamed at every police officer in the station on how they should rush what they were doing, as Jim looked like he was a step from crying, surrounded by many secretaries who tried to get him to be slightly happier.

But he only brightened when he saw her coming alongside the detective, immediately pushing them all away to run into her, to hug her, meanwhile Michael stopped his screams to turn around, also catching the sight of her, but standing behind with a mysterious expression she didn’t understand if it was cooled rage or true surprise, as if he hadn’t expected her to be back.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mrs (Y/N) is back” mumbled the detective, meanwhile she thanked and everyone erupted in an applause from which she hid, hiding her face in Jim’s shirt, who was more than happy to bring her under his wing, gently hugging her, meanwhile Michael escorted them out.

The drive back home was silent: she hadn’t been able to disentangle herself from Jim’s hug, so she was still stuck on his chest on the backseats of the car, meanwhile Michael drove, with an eye on the road and another looking at her from the rear window, as if he was expecting her to disappear in thin air.

When they came back home, she almost rushed to her room, but she was stopped by Michael who looked at her with a heavy expression.

“I think we need to talk”.

“I’d prefer to go to my room, to settle some things” she replied, knowing that “talking” might entail them making fun of them as they always did.

They might have been extremely worried about her but, did they seriously care?

“Sweetie, I do think that we need to talk” commented Jim, backing Michael off, but she was convinced by his tone and followed them to the sofa, and she took a seat on the chair in front of it, where they settled, putting some distance.

“Why did you run away” Michael Langdon was never one who liked to play around with things, mostly when they personally mattered to him.

“What are you talking about?” she tried to play dumb, meanwhile an exaggerated laugh left her mouth to hide her embarrassment “I just went to Meg’s house to give her the luggage and I stayed to talk with her, I didn’t even think that you would notice me missing”.

She knew that she was being unfair and definitely a bitch, but they had been terrible to her, so she didn’t owe them any gentleness.

They both grimaced at the screeching words.

“We did notice it, and Michael saw that your luggage was full” shittity shit, she thought, meanwhile Jim withheld her sight, as if he was an abandoned child “… and you wouldn’t come back or pick up your phone”.

“We were worried” summarized Michael, looking at her deeply with those shards of lethal glass, but she refused to give in.

“Yeah… I am sure that you were worried on how to explain to Duncan how you hadn’t killed me and buried me in the graveyard” she mumbled, meanwhile she crossed her arms over her chest to push them away from her mind “… you were just worried it might get you in trouble”.

“Yeah we were worried of what Duncan might do, if he didn’t find you tonight” mumbled Jim, his voice just a shade apart from totally becoming a crying “… he wouldn’t have been ok, without you, his soulmate”.

“We didn’t do this only for that” mumbled Michael, this time lowering his face as if he was ashamed to say that “… we were seriously worried about you… I know we might not show it much, but we seriously care about you”.

“Yeah I honestly and truly believe that you were” she spit sarcastically, meanwhile she just made to raise from her chair, but then Jim started crying and gently hugged Michael, who immediately welcomed.

“We are sorry for the behavior we have displayed with you, it’s just...” but before he could finish his discourse.

“… we were worried that you might take advantage of Duncan” shouted out loud Jim, before he hid his face in Michael’s chest so what he said next was a bit mumbled “… he is generous with the people he thinks that love him, and you appeared so suddenly in our lives… I just didn’t want him to suffer”.

She had never seen this side of the story, but she could see Jim’s worriedness, he had been there before both her and Michael and he clearly was extremely attentive at whoever came in their lives, mostly after what had happened with his mother, something that Duncan had whispered to her, when she had asked what to avoid with the boys.

“I was jealous” confessed instead Michael, although she would have obviously guessed it since he wasn’t as subtle as Jim, so she had caught him many times looking at her with green eyes, when Duncan would lean into her or circle her waist with his arm “… I honestly thought that you had some favoritism which you didn’t deserve just because you were his soulmate”.

She wanted to tell him that she had never wanted anything like that just because she was Duncan’s soulmate, just as him and Jim, who were each other’s soulmates, didn’t distance or made any favoritism towards each other in spite of Duncan.

“It was stupid, I have to admit it, but it felt easier to hate you than admit the fact that maybe you deserved Duncan’s love” he mumbled, biting his lips, meanwhile he focus his attention onto Jim “… but the fact is that he truly loves you and we have been assholes not to notice him”.

She was without words, and she was unable to breath properly meanwhile she thought about what to do, the two boys gently comforting each other, and she took a chance.

She raised, immediately feeling the boys’ eyes onto her and gently moved next to the two boys, enveloping them in a hug, extremely careful as if they were two cats ready to attack her at any given moments.

Jim was the first who leaned into her, gently grabbing her waist with an arm and pushing her onto his laps, completely smashing his face in her chest, in a soothing manner, for Michael it took him a tad more but he leaned into her touch, gently hiding his face in her hair and kissing her neck, softly.

They stayed like this enough not to be surprised from Duncan finally coming back home, who looked at three of them who he always found fighting, all entangled but didn’t say anything, instead gently he leaned in and kissed their foreheads, joining the hug.

Explanations could wait.

[bluewatsons]

Alice Bolin, The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime, Vulture (August 1, 2018)

The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism. The serial fiction of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins was influenced by the British public’s obsessive tracking of sensational true-crime cases in daily papers, and since then, we have hoarded gory details in tabloids and pulp paperbacks and nightly news shows and Wikipedia articles and Reddit threads.

I don’t deny these stories have proliferated in the past five years. Since the secret is out — “Oh you love murder? Me too!” — entire TV networks, podcast genres, and countless limited-run docuseries have arisen to satisfy this rumbling hunger. It is tempting to call this true-crime boom new because of the prestige sheen of many of its artifacts — Serial and Dirty John and The Jinx and Wild, Wild Country are all conspicuously well made, with lovely visuals and strong reporting. They have subtle senses of theme and character, and they often feel professional, pensive, quiet — so far from vulgar or sensational.

But well-told stories about crime are not really new, and neither is their popularity. In Cold Blood is a classic of American literature and The Executioner’s Song won the Pulitzer; Errol Morris has used crime again and again in his documentaries to probe ideas like fame, desire, corruption, and justice. The new true-crime boom is more simply a matter of volume and shamelessness: the wide array of crime stories we can now openly indulge in, with conventions of the true-crime genre more emphatically repeated and codified, more creatively expanded and trespassed against. In 2016, after two critically acclaimed series about the O.J. Simpson trial, there was talk that the 1996 murder of Colorado 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey would be the next case to get the same treatment. It was odd, hearing O.J.: Made in America, the epic and depressing account of race and celebrity that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, discussed in the same breath with the half-dozen unnecessary TV specials dredging up the Ramsey case. Despite my avowed love of Dateline, I would not have watched these JonBenét specials had a magazine not paid me to, and suffice it to say they did very little either to solve the 20-year-old crime (ha!) or examine our collective obsession with it.

Clearly, the insight, production values, or cultural capital of its shiniest products are not what drives this new wave of crime stories. O.J.: Made in America happened to be great and the JonBenét specials happened to be terrible, but producers saw them as part of the same trend because they knew they would appeal to at least part of the same audience. I’ve been thinking a lot about these gaps between high and low, since there are people who consume all murder content indiscriminately, and another subset who only allow themselves to enjoy the “smart” kind. The difference between highbrow and lowbrow in the new true crime is often purely aesthetic. It is easier than ever for producers to create stories that look good and seem serious, especially because there are templates now for a style and voice that make horrifying stories go down easy and leave the viewer wanting more. But for these so-called prestige true-crime offerings, the question of ethics — of the potential to interfere in real criminal cases and real people’s lives — is even more important, precisely because they are taken seriously.

Like the sensational tone, disturbing, clinical detail, and authoritarian subtext that have long defined schlocky true crime as “trash,” the prestige true-crime subgenre has developed its own shorthand, a language to tell its audience they’re consuming something thoughtful, college-educated, public-radio influenced. In addition to slick and creative production, highbrow true crime focuses on character sketches instead of police procedure. “We’re public radio producers who are curious about why people do what they do,” Phoebe Judge, the host of the podcast Criminal, said. Judge has interviewed criminals (a bank robber, a marijuana brownie dealer), victims, and investigators, using crime as a very simple window into some of the most interesting and complicated lives on the planet.

Highbrow true crime is often explicitly about the piece’s creator, a meta-commentary about the process of researching and reporting such consequential stories. Serial’s Sarah Koenig and The Jinx’s Andrew Jarecki wrestle with their boundaries with the subjects (Adnan Syed and Robert Durst, respectively, both of whom have been tried for murder) and whether they believe them. They sift through evidence and reconstruct timelines as they try to create a coherent narrative from fragments.

I remember saying years ago that people who liked Serial should try watching Dateline, and my friend joked in reply, “Yeah, but Dateline isn’t hosted by my friend Sarah.” One reason for the first season of Serial’s insane success — it is still the most-downloaded podcast of all time — is the intimacy audiences felt with Koenig as she documented her investigation of a Baltimore teenager’s murder in real time, keeping us up to date on every vagary of evidence, every interview, every experiment. Like the figure of the detective in many mystery novels, the reporter stands in for the audience, mirroring and orchestrating our shifts in perspective, our cynicism and credulity, our theories, prejudices, frustrations, and breakthroughs.

This is what makes this style of true crime addictive, which is the adjective its makers most crave. The stance of the voyeur, the dispassionate observer, is thrilling without being emotionally taxing for the viewer, who watches from a safe remove. (This fact is subtly skewered in Gay Talese’s creepy 2017 Netflix documentary, Voyeur.) I’m not sure how much of my eye-rolling at the popularity of highbrow true crime has to do with my general distrust of prestige TV and Oscar-bait movies, which are usually designed to be enjoyed in the exact same way and for the exact same reasons as any other entertainment, but also to make the viewer feel good about themselves for watching. When I wrote earlier that there are viewers who consume all true crime, and those who only consume “smart” true crime, I thought, “And there must be some people who only like dumb true crime.” Then I realized that I am sort of one of them.

There are specimens of highbrow true crime that I love, Criminal and O.J.: Made in America among them, but I truly enjoy Dateline much more than I do Serial, which in my mind is tedious to the edge of pointlessness. I find myself perversely complaining that good true crime is no fun — as self-conscious as it may be, it will never be as entertaining as the Investigation Discovery network’s output, most of which is painfully serious. (The list of ID shows is one of the most amusing artifacts on the internet, including shows called Bride Killas, Momsters: Moms Who Murder, and Sex Sent Me to the Slammer.) Susan Sontag famously defined camp as “seriousness that fails,” and camp is obviously part of the appeal of a show called Sinister Ministers or Southern Fried Homicide. Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.

It’s always talked around in discussions of why people like true crime: It is … funny? The comedy in horror movies seems like a given, but it is hardly permitted to say that you are amused by true disturbing stories, out of respect for victims. But in reducing victims and their families to stock characters, in exaggerating murderers to superhuman monsters, in valorizing police and forensic scientists as heroic Everymen, there is dark humor in how cheesy and misguided these pulpy shows are, how bad we are at talking about crime and drawing conclusions from it, how many ways we find to distance ourselves from the pain of victims and survivors, even when we think we are honoring them. (The jokey titles and tongue-in-cheek tone of some ID shows seem to indicate more awareness of the inherent humor, but in general, the channel’s programming is almost all derivative of network TV specials.) I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but in its obvious failures, I enjoy this brand of true crime more straightforwardly than its voyeuristic, documentary counterpart, which, in its dignified guise, has maybe only perfected a method of making us feel less gross about consuming real people’s pain for fun.

Crime stories also might be less risky when they are more stilted, more clinical. To be blunt, what makes a crime story less satisfying are often the ethical guidelines that help reporters avoid ruining people’s lives. With the popularity of the podcasts S-Town and Missing Richard Simmons, there were conversations about the ethics of appropriating another person’s story, particularly when they won’t (or can’t) participate in your version of it. The questions of ethics and appropriation are even heavier when stories intersect with their subjects’ criminal cases, because journalism has always had a reciprocal relationship with the justice system. Part of the exhilarating intimacy of the first season of Serial was Koenig’s speculation about people who never agreed to be part of the show, the theories and rabbit holes she went through, the risks she took to get answers. But there is a reason most reporters do all their research, then write their story. It is inappropriate, and potentially libelous, to let your readers in on every unverified theory about your subject that occurs to you, particularly when wondering about a private citizen’s innocence or guilt in a horrific crime.

Koenig’s off-the-cuff tone had other consequences, too, in the form of amateur sleuths on Reddit who tracked down people involved with the case, pored over court transcripts, and reviewed cellular tower evidence, forming a shadow army of investigators taking up what they saw as the gauntlet thrown down by the show. The journalist often takes on the stance of the professional amateur, a citizen providing information in the public interest and using the resources at hand to get answers. At times during the first season of Serial, Koenig’s methods are laughably amateurish, like when she drives from the victim’s high school to the scene of the crime, a Best Buy, to see if it was possible to do it in the stated timeline. She is able to do it, which means very little, since the crime occurred 15 years earlier. Because so many of her investigative tools were also ones available to listeners at home, some took that as an invitation to play along.

This blurred line between professional and amateur, reporter and private investigator, has plagued journalists since the dawn of modern crime reporting. In 1897, amid a frenzied rivalry between newspaper barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, true crime coverage was so popular that Hearst formed a group of reporters to investigate criminal cases called the “Murder Squad.” They wore badges and carried guns, forming essentially an extralegal police force who both assisted and muddled official investigations. Seeking to get a better story and sell more papers, it was common for reporters to trample crime scenes, plant evidence, and produce dubious witnesses whose accounts fit their preferred version of the case. And they were trying to get audiences hooked in very similar ways, by crowdsourcing information and encouraging readers to send in tips.

Of course the producers of Serial never did anything so questionable as the Murder Squad, though there are interesting parallels between the true-crime podcast and crime coverage in early daily newspapers. They were both innovations in the ways information was delivered to the public that sparked unexpectedly personal, participatory, and impassioned responses from their audiences. It’s tempting to say that we’ve come full circle, with a new true-crime boom that is victim to some of the same ethical pitfalls of the first one: Is crime journalism another industry deregulated by the anarchy of the internet? But as Michelle Dean wrote of Serial, “This is exactly the problem with doing journalism at all … You might think you are doing a simple crime podcast … and then you become a sensation, as Serial has, and the story falls to the mercy of the thousands, even millions, of bored and curious people on the internet.”

Simply by merit of their popularity, highbrow crime stories are often riskier than their lowbrow counterparts. Kathryn Schulz wrote in The New Yorker about the ways the makers of the Netflix series Making a Murderer, in their attempt to advocate for the convicted murderer Steven Avery, omit evidence that incriminates him and put forth an incoherent argument for his innocence. Advocacy and intervention are complicated actions for journalists to undertake, though they are not novel. Schulz points to a scene in Making a Murderer where a Dateline producer who is covering Avery is shown saying, “Right now murder is hot.” In this moment the creators of Making a Murderer are drawing a distinction between themselves and Dateline, as Schulz writes, implying that, “unlike traditional true-crime shows … their work is too intellectually serious to be thoughtless, too morally worthy to be cruel.” But they were not only trying to invalidate Avery’s conviction; they (like Dateline, but more effectively) were also creating an addictive product, a compelling story.

That is maybe what irks me the most about true crime with highbrow pretensions. It appeals to the same vices as traditional true crime, and often trades in the same melodrama and selective storytelling, but its consequences can be more extreme. Adnan Syed was granted a new trial after Serial brought attention to his case; Avery was denied his appeal, but people involved in his case have nevertheless been doxxed and threatened. I’ve come to believe that addictiveness and advocacy are rarely compatible. If they were, why would the creators of Making a Murderer have advocated for one white man, when the story of being victimized by a corrupt police force is common to so many people across the U.S., particularly people of color?

It does feel like a shame that so many resources are going to create slick, smart true crime that asks the wrong questions, focusing our energy on individual stories instead of the systemic problems they represent. But in truth, this is is probably a feature, not a bug. I suspect the new true-crime obsession has something to do with the massive, terrifying problems we face as a society: government corruption, mass violence, corporate greed, income inequality, police brutality, environmental degradation, human-rights violations. These are large-scale crimes whose resolutions, though not mysterious, are also not forthcoming. Focusing on one case, bearing down on its minutia and discovering who is to blame, serves as both an escape and a means of feeling in control, giving us an arena where justice is possible.

Skepticism about whether journalists appropriate their subjects’ stories, about high and low, and about why we enjoy the crime stories we do, all swirl through what I think of as the post–true-crime moment. Post–true crime is explicitly or implicity about the popularity of the new true-crime wave, questioning its place in our culture, and resisting or responding to its conventions. One interesting document of post–true crime is My Favorite Murder and other “comedy murder podcasts,” which, in retelling stories murder buffs have heard on one million Investigation Discovery shows, unpack the ham-fisted clichés of the true-crime genre. They show how these stories appeal to the most gruesome sides of our personalities and address the obvious but unspoken fact that true crime is entertainment, and often the kind that is as mindless as a sitcom. Even more cutting is the Netflix parody American Vandal, which both codifies and spoofs the conventions of the new highbrow true crime, roasting the genre’s earnest tone in its depiction of a Serial-like investigation of some lewd graffiti.

There is also the trend in the post–true-crime era of dramatizing famous crime stories, like in The Bling Ring; I, Tonya; and Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story, all of which dwell not only on the stories of infamous crimes but also why they captured the public imagination. There is a camp element in these retellings, particularly when famous actors like John Travolta and Sarah Paulson are hamming it up in ridiculous wigs. But this self-consciousness often works to these projects’ advantage, allowing them to show heightened versions of the cultural moments that led to the most outsize tabloid crime stories. Many of these fictionalized versions take journalistic accounts as their source material, like Nancy Jo Sales’s reporting in Vanity Fair for The Bling Ring and ESPN’s documentary on Tonya Harding, The Price of Gold, for I, Tonya. This seems like a best-case scenario for prestige true crime to me: parsing famous cases from multiple angles and in multiple genres, trying to understand them both on the level of individual choices and cultural forces.

Perhaps the most significant contributions to post–true crime, though, are the recent wave of personal accounts about murder and crime: literary memoirs like Down City by Leah Carroll, Mean by Myriam Gurba, The Hot One by Carolyn Murnick, After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry, and We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle all tell the stories of murder seen from close-up. (It is significant that all of these books are by women. Carroll, Perry, and Carlisle all write about their mothers’ murders, placing them in the tradition of James Ellroy’s great memoir My Dark Places, but without the tortured, fetish-y tone.) This is not a voyeuristic first person, and the reader can’t detach and find joy in procedure; we are finally confronted with the truth of lives upended by violence and grief. There’s also Ear Hustle, the brilliant podcast produced by the inmates of San Quentin State Prison. The makers of Ear Hustle sometimes contemplate the bad luck and bad decisions that led them to be incarcerated, but more often they discuss the concerns of daily life in prison, like food, sex, and how to make mascara from an inky page from a magazine. This is a crime podcast that is the opposite of sensational, addressing the systemic truth of crime and the justice system, in stories that are mundane, profound, and, yes, addictive.

[feedbackest]

list of everything adventure time does right and wrong. for fun

bad (comprehensive)

The King of Ooo - he’s just lame. he’s kinda supposed to be a goofball antagonist but the show has enough other characters who are much better at that, he gets outshone hard and he probably should’ve been confined to Apple Wedding

LSP as a central character - i think LSP makes a good supporting character, but i also think she struggles hard to move beyond that. the creators try a handful of times to give her a lead role and it almost always just makes for a bad experience. thankfully they figured out how to make her work with a more important role for Elements

S5E30 Frost & Fire - it’s just... bad. aside from this one episode Finn and Flame Princess are very well written together, but this feels like a temporary butchering of Finn’s character. he’d been the main character for 5 and a half season at this point, so it’s virtually impossible to write him making obviously incorrect and unsympathetic mistakes and still have it be engaging. this is just frustrating and hard to watch. the show has its moments of teaching pretty obvious moral platitudes as a result of being a kids’ show, and it has its moments of delving into much more mature emotional processes and relationship dynamics, this episode is like a weird uncanny valley melding of the two. both Finn and FP had very good character arcs as a direct result and the dynamic they had as exes was probably their best, so maybe it’s worth it, but that doesn’t make this episode itself any better

S7E13 Stakes, Part 8: The Dark Cloud - i do not like that Marceline was turned back into a vampire. otherwise Stakes, including this episode, is a very good series, especially for PB and Marcy, but Marcy being vamp’d again at the end felt like the only real instance of the show deciding the status quo is god over a major development. i get that the point of that Everything Stays song is that the change is still there, but getting her vampirism removed was a nice capstone to the rest of her character development to that point, and undoing that feels pretty :/

sometimes filler is boring - it feels weird to call anything “filler” in what was, at its foundation, a children’s anthological adventure-comedy, but sometimes the inconsequential one-off episodes are just kinda meh. most of them are good though

that's pretty much it. note that all of these are either rectified in the show in some way or are inconsequential

good (non-comprehensive)

worldbuilding - perhaps the most obvious thing the show does right, the world and history surrounding Ooo is rich in both concept and execution. the show strikes the perfect level of balance between explanation and mystery to achieve what it’s going for in the lore. compare the handling of the Great Mushroom War to one of its more obvious counterparts, the day the bombs dropped in Fallout, and i think AT does a better job at setting up a world-defining catastrophe that is relevant to the immediate plot without being over-centralizing in the tone or atmosphere. it’s just a very interesting and rewarding world to learn about as the show goes on all round

Finn - while i would call Finn probably the best character in the show overall, i’m not sure what all i can say about him. as the main character in a show which compromises something like 4 years of his teenage and is therefore pretty much running his own coming-of-age subplot throughout the entire series, i don’t think it’s any surprise that he has the most fulfilling character arc in the entire series. it’s great to watch him grow over 10 seasons and he’s a wonderfully enjoyable protagonist (aside from the one instance mentioned above)

Bonnibel Bubblegum - before Islands, i was very prepared to just call her the best character in the show. for about the first half of the show, she’s very good, and from go i think it’s hard to not make her one of the best characters just from her initial concept: a lowkey badass princess who obviously cares for her subjects and can find  solution for pretty much anything? she’s impossible to not like. and then in season 6 the show stops taking how cool she is for granted. it hinted at some friction with her first interactions with Flame Princess in season 5, and then in The Cooler, FP, and broadly the whole show, opens up a critical question: is Princess Bubblegum actually a good guy? then the show launches a pretty deep investigation into her character and how the way she runs business affects others beyond her own perspective, for pretty much the rest of the show, and lands on the answer “she can be.” it not only gives Bubblegum an arc, but one of the best ones on the show, when, as mentioned before, she was already a really good character without one

Bubblegum and Marceline - in my opinion, the best written pair of characters in the show, although i could see arguments for some others. while Finn has the best singular character arc, the relationship arc between Peebs and Marcy is the best of its kind on the show. they were engaging as exes, great when they were starting to be friends again and then eventually rekindling, to the point where when the creators were finally able to bring everything out of subtext in the finale, it was quite possibly the best single moment of the show. the dynamic between these two is so great throughout the show that, again, i’m just not even quite sure what all i can really say about it beyond that

Simon Petrikov - the most tragic character on the show. i don’t think anyone else on the show is as liable to bring me close to crying, basically and flashback involving Simon and Marceline, or Simon and Betty, or any frustrated, one-sided interaction between either pair can and will make my eyes water. maybe i’m just a sucker for the losing-someone-to-mental-degredation type grief stories

Marceline - i’m putting her this late because i’ve kinda already talked about most of what makes her great. she’s a good enough character in her own right, but most of what makes her really come together is a direct result of her history and dynamics with other characters

exes - i’ve alluded to it twice already, but the show writes ex dynamics between its primary and secondary characters, and whenever it does it handles them in a way that is both mature and gives both characters involved very rewarding character arcs. it’s sort of emblematic of the sorts of stuff the creators would write into the show that would go almost completely over the original primary audience’s heads but lends the show a real sense of depth that pushes it over the edge

everything else - like everything else i haven’t discussed here is good to great. the stuff i remembered from when the show was first airing back when i was in middle school holds up better than i would have expected and the material beyond that goes similarly well above my expectations. it’s pretty dang good

[for-gold-and-glory]

Weekly Events for May 4th to May 10th

Here are some events G&G Members will be involved in during the week. Or just events that I think are really cool and you should definitely go to. If you’re interested in joining these events just show up or send a message to Aegir, Lirilith, or Aedwen Or join our discord: https://discord.gg/dCRSWTx Monday - G&G Adventure: Tales from the S’ewer Drain @ 8:30pm EST - Lost Hope, Central Thanalan (will need Lochs unlocked) Tuesday- Happy Gyuki Healing Clinic @ 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST - Shirogane W10, P25 Wednesday - Garlean Extra: Defiant  Reiterations Shadow Mission Part 3 @ 7:00pm EST -TBA  Wednesday- Bountiful Chest Tavern @ 9:00pm - 11:00pm EST - Goblet W6, P5 Thursday - Menphina Madness Blitzball Tournament: Gridania Sea Chocobos vs Ala Mhigo Thunder Coeurls @ 8:00pm EST - Anemnos Gardens Friday -  Salt Barons Rescue Mission Pt 2 @ 8:00pm EST - Various Locations Saturday -  The Big One: All that glitters…duh’ its gold PT2 @ 3:30pm EST - Forgotten Springs Sunday - The Missing Member Pt 5? Set Sail for the Old World! @ 3:30pm EST - The Salt Strand, Lower La Noscae Sunday -   Sultana’s Breath Shopping Arcade  @ 8:00pm EST - 11:00pm EST - Goblet W18, Sultana’s Breath Subdivision Monday - By the Treant: Night Market @ 11:00pm EST - By the Treant, Quarrymill, South Shroud

Monday - G&G Adventure: Tales from the S’ewer Drain @ 8:30pm EST - Lost Hope, Central Thanalan (will need Lochs unlocked) - Scholar and Tomb Raider, Professor Gridania Djones, has hired the Gold & Glory assist him with an exploration dive of the Sil'dih Aqueducts. Why can’t the dashing scholar/grave robber handle the exploration himself? Well, it would seem that any time he and his team attempts to penetrates the ruins, they’re driven back by mysterious individuals. Small, scuttling, and suited for aquatic travel and darkness, these fiesty fiends need to be dealt with so the Professor can continue his research! Note: Must have Lochs unlocked Status: Open RP, come join us! Type: Adventure GM: Aegir Tuesday- Happy Gyuki Healing Clinic @ 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST - Shirogane W10, P25 https://for-gold-and-glory.tumblr.com/post/617220669334306816/fustuarium-balmung-happy-gyuki-healing-clinic - The Happy Gyuki Healing Clinic is a free clinic sponsored by the Garlean embassy, held in the friendly and neutral location of Shirogane. Because the Empire cares about you.Our team of imperially trained medicus offer the latest in cutting edge medical assistance both surgical and aetherial for all of our patience needs. Your privacy and comfort is our greatest concern, though we do ask for some basic information regarding your medical  history and identity, you can be assured that your answers are absolutely confidential. Feel comforted and reassured by our 24-hour staff of armed security guard whose sole purpose is to ensure you safety and please be prepared to relinquish all weapons at the security checkpoint at the entrance. Status: Open RP, please join us! Type: Medical RP GM: Aegir Wednesday - Garlean Extra: Defiant  Reiterations Shadow Mission Part 3 @ 7:00pm EST -TBA https://fustuarium.tumblr.com/ - Inside the lair of the Reaver, the Shadows find something... unexpected. An entire fun house waiting for them. But who is the one having fun here? Status: Semi-Closed, contact Aegir for info Type: Action/Investigation GM: Aegir

Wednesday- Bountiful Chest Tavern @ 9:00pm - 11:00pm EST - Goblet W6, P5 https://bountiful-chest.wixsite.com/index -  Welcome to the Bountiful Chest, the Gold and Glory Adventuring Company’s premier restaurant and lounge! Situated in the Goblet, we are just around the bend from prosperous Ul'dah, and situated to serve not only the most humble of adventurers, but the most illustrious and prosperous of the elite!Originally a hunter’s tavern, the Monetarist brothers Anthony and Maximillian Crawford have transformed this once-humble establishment into a glittering jewel to mirror their beloved Ul'dah. Status: Open RP, please join us! Type: Tavern GM: Aegir Thursday - Menphina Madness Blitzball Tournament: Gridania Sea Chocobos vs Ala Mhigo Thunder Coeurls @ 8:00pm EST - Anemnos Gardens https://for-gold-and-glory.tumblr.com/post/616774663073366016/balmung-menphina-madness-blitzball-tournament - The Madness is reaching a fever pitch! In the second to last game of the season, two teams fight for their place in the finals! The Gridania Sea Chocobos have seen their ups and downs this season but they’re hanging on by a thread. But will be they WARK their way to the top in this Autumn War rematch? The Ala Mhigan Thunder Coeurls had been undefeated until their match in the semi-finals against the Ivalice High Seraphs. But they still have a chance to take it all. They just have to defeat the Chocobos AGAIN. Cat and Bird! Forest and Thunder! Stay tuned for another exciting game! Status: Open RP, come join us! Type: Tournament GM: Aegir

Friday -  Salt Barons Rescue Mission Pt 2 @ 8:00pm EST - Various Locations -  With one Salt Baron unaccounted for an a disturbing message broadcasting across Garlean media, a coordiated attack has been planned by several Blitzball members. Utilizing resources from the sky, the sea, and ancient history, the blitzballers launch their next move! Because you now what they say! When you got the ball, you gotta score! Status: Open RP, come join us! Type: Action GM: Aegir + Others

Saturday -  The Big One: All that glitters…duh’ its gold PT2 @ 3:30pm EST - Forgotten Springs - The mystery deepens! So it turns out the Little Mining Company, their number one suspect, is also experiencing void infestation and possible sabotague. With one lead left to question, the adventurers move forward. Is this all a family dispute? Or does this corruption run deeper! Status: Open RP, come join us! Type: Action/Investigation GM: Yisu Sunday - The Missing Member Pt 5? Set Sail for the Old World! @ 3:30pm EST - The Salt Strand, Lower La Noscae - Okay, so now they’re wanted in Limsa Lominsa. This is fine. This is fine. They just have to make it to Candlekeep Quay, where a ship is supposedly waiting for them, then it’s straight sailing to Idyllshire, right? Simple. Right? RIGHT??? Status: Open RP, come join us! Type: Adventure, Comedy GM: Aegir Sunday -   Sultana’s Breath Shopping Arcade  @ 8:00pm EST - 11:00pm EST - Goblet W18, Sultana’s Breath Subdivision - Goblet W18, Sultana’s Breath Subdivision - Join us and all of our wonderful vendors during our monthly flash sale! Check out our mall directory to see who’s open: https://tinyurl.com/sultana-shoppingBeat the heat with indoor one-stop shopping experience. Merchants have gathered from all over to offer their goods, meals, and services to you!The Sultana’s Breath Shopping Arcade is a market event held in the Sultana’s Breath Subdivisions of Goblet Ward 18. Look for apartments listed with [shop] in their name and come browse our wares! All shop owners are encouraged to be open during the monthly sales event - but be sure to ask about their other operating hours!Once you’re done shopping stop by Mall Square and visit the Saint of Nymeia for a photo! Status: Open RP, please join us! Type: Market GM: Aegir + April Ryan EST - Goblet W18, Sultana’s Breath Subdivision Monday - By the Treant: Night Market @ 11:00pm EST - By the Treant, Quarrymill, South Shroud https://for-gold-and-glory.tumblr.com/post/616853366886334464/balmung-by-the-treant-night-market-monday-may - The children of the forest gather under the silver light of midnight to trade their precious wares, gifts, music, and charm in this small market organized by a handful of Keeper Tribes who have decided to cooperate with each other for a few hours under the moonlight.This is a small, unregulated and informal market set up by the small, unregulated, and informal denizens of the Shroud. As such, anyone can show up and display their wares until the Wood Wailers inevitable show up and try to run everyone off. If you would like to participate in the market, you just need to show up! This is an Everyone event, so please keep things PG rated! Items may be traded, bartered, sold with gil, Allagan coins, or other currency. If you are a Wood Wailer or Adder character, please speak with an event organizer prior to arrival.  Status: Open RP, please join us! Type: Market GM: Aegir

[zombiesbecrazy]

Coffee Between Strangers

Summary: A cup of coffee sits between them and makes Clark question if he's ever really known the man across the desk from him at all.

BatWeek - Reverse Valentine’s - Day 1 Prompt - Philia

AO3

“Cream or sugar for your coffee, Mr. Kent?”

“Just some sugar, if it’s not too much trouble. Thank you.”

It wasn’t every day that Clark found himself in the office of the CEO of Wayne Enterprises and he was uncharacteristically nervous and was fidgeting in his chair without meaning to. It was ridiculous, because he was a professional journalist and interviewed people all the time and it was just Bruce, and not all at the same time, because even though it was just Bruce, it wasn’t.  

Not the Bruce that he knew, anyway.

This wasn’t Batman, the monosyllabic and dry colleague of Superman. Nor was it Bruce Wayne, playboy and philanthropist of Gotham.  This wasn’t even his good friend Bruce, who he considered to be like a brother; the person who he had gone camping with and had played endless games of Monopoly with his kids with.  If anything, this was Mr. Wayne, business mogul, and Perry had arranged this interview and sent Clark to discuss the new Wayne Enterprises partnership with Gordon Clean Energy and their new collaborative projects. Clark had spoken with Barbara earlier that morning and he hadn’t been anywhere as nervous as for that one even though he knew her less well. Barbara, Batgirl, Oracle… they all were at least aspects of the same person.

All of the different layers of Bruce just confused him and made him feel like he was going to trip over all of the woven layers.

The typing at the keyboard halted which lifted Clark from his thoughts as Bruce’s assistant came back with two cups of coffee and set them on the desk.  Bruce thanked her before shifting his attention to some paperwork on the desk and she the exited the room, closing the door behind her.

Clark stared at the cups in front of him for a few moments in silence while Bruce finished up whatever he was working on, an uneasy feeling building in the pit of his stomach. It was like he hadn’t even met the man before. Clark narrowed his eyes at Bruce. There were many things about him that were a mystery, but this was one of those things that Clark knew to his very core and it was off. Something was very, very wrong.

In this moment, the man on the other side of the desk, the one that Clark has known for over a decade, was a complete stranger to him.

“There’s cream in your coffee.”

Bruce shook his head slightly, not looking up from the paperwork. “Milk.” Clark eyed the cup skeptically as it mocked him with its light brown colour.

“I thought you drank your coffee black.”

Bruce sighed, flipped the document that he was reading closed and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired, but then again, Bruce always did if you knew what to look for. “No.”

Gritting his teeth to keep himself from dropping his jaw, Clark used his x-ray vision at the man across the table from him even though he knew that Bruce hated it when he did so. Clark had to take the chance though; this was a safety matter. He needed to be absolutely sure that this was Bruce, despite what his senses already told him. He needed to confirm that this wasn’t a robot or a clone or a shapeshifter who had infiltrated Bruce Wayne’s life and resources.

Bruce could thank him for his diligence later.

But there was nothing out of the ordinary. It looked like Bruce, inside and out. It had the same scars and skeletal structure. It had the same heartbeat. It had to be Bruce.

The cup of cooling coffee between them screamed differently at Clark.

He was an investigative journalist, darn it. He needed to dig deeper. “Can we speak candidly, Mr. Wayne?” The question sounded simple enough to any prying ears, but the underlying implication was clear. Bruce raised an eyebrow slightly at Clark’s words, before reaching up and hitting a button on his watch. Clark’s hearing picked up a slight buzz filling the room and Bruce nodded for Clark to ask his question freely.

“Since when do you take milk in your coffee?”

That was not the question that Bruce had been expecting. “Since I was 16,” he replied slowly.

“I’ve known you for years, can’t even count the amount of times that I’ve drank coffee with you if I tried, and it’s always been black.”

“Oh,” said Bruce, small smile lifting the corners of his lips. He cleared his throat quickly and the beginnings of the smile disappeared. “Batman drinks his coffee black. I take milk in mine.”

Clark opened his mouth to argue and found that he couldn’t. He had spent a lot of time in the manor and had gone out for food plenty of times with Bruce, but looking back on it he couldn’t think of a time that he had ever seen him drink coffee as Bruce; he drank a lot of tea and water and the occasional alcoholic drink but Clark was drawing a blank on coffee. Yes, they had coffee in the Cave and the Watchtower and the Fortress but… how had he never noticed this? It had always been as Batman, not Bruce. Upon realization that this wasn’t something that he could debate because the evidence just didn’t hold up, he just laughed nervously while Bruce studied him from across the table. “Wow. You really take this secret identity thing to a whole other level, don’t you?”

“It takes more than a pair of glasses and a hair curl to fool the world, Clark.”

Clark shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “That isn’t my experience.” Not a day went by when Clark didn’t question how no one had linked him to Superman, but he was glad that the casual observer didn’t notice. Kids tended to recognize him, but they only ever smiled and maybe giggled if he winked at them, acknowledging the secret between them.

“Then how do you explain Clark Kent’s clumsiness? Or the sudden loss of Kansas accent when you are in the suit? You put on the same act as I do.”

“It’s not entirely an act. I’m clumsy as Superman too.”

“Rarely.”

“No, all the time. I just use my flight to cover it.”

To an outsider, it would look that Bruce didn’t react, but Clark knew better. He was the twitch near Bruce’s right eye and the way that his jaw clenched ever so slightly. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s harder to trip over your own feet if you are always slightly floating.” Clark tried to appear nonchalant, but knew that he failed miserably.

“Now I know you are joking.”

“Of course I am.” Clark chucked and tapped his fingers against his cup. “Sure, I play a bit of a role, but I apparently don’t go as far as you and change my coffee order.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Do you even like black coffee?”

“I’m not opposed to it.”

“That doesn’t mean you like it.” Bruce just stared blankly at him for a few moments before he raised his hand to his watch to deactivate the disrupter when Clark sat up straighter as his brain caught up to the words, causing Bruce to halt the motion in midair. “Wait, ‘it’s nothing’ as in you don’t really see the problem or ‘it’s nothing’ as in you’ve changed more drastic details about yourself as part of your cover? Things that you are the only one who would probably ever notice?”

“Both.”

Of course he had. “Geez, Bruce,” groaned Clark, because this man was impossible. “Like what?” Bruce remained impassive and Clark had to stop himself from reaching over the table to give him a shake. “Don’t look at me like that. These are things I should probably know so I don’t accidentally blow your cover because I don’t know how deep you’ve gone down the hole of changing your identity.”

“There is nothing that big…” Bruce trailed off and realization slowly dawned on his face. “There is one thing that could be compromising if you slipped up. Or you should know in case of emergency and you need to make a decision for me. Batman is right handed.”

“You’re left handed?” Clark looked at the desk between them and realizes that there are several pens on Bruce’s desk and they are all on the left hand side. “How have I never noticed that? It’s like you’re suddenly Inigo Montoya.”

“Or the Dread Pirate Roberts,” agreed Bruce with a nod. “I’m ambidextrous but left hand dominant. If anything ever arise that one of my hands needs to be amputated, make a note that I’d rather keep my left one if given the choice.” Bruce took another sip of that befuddling cup of coffee as if he hadn’t just dropped that casually into conversation as if he was telling Clark that he liked green grapes more than purple ones. “That is a pretty big thing to miss for an investigative journalist.”

How could you argue that with someone who did their best to be an enigma? “You are a strange and paranoid man.”

“That is not a recent development.”

“Just a statement of fact.” Clark shook his head and looked Bruce over again. He may have used the x-ray vision again, just to make sure. Still Bruce.

“You’re staring.”

“Because it’s like you are an entirely new person. I don’t know you at all. I’m a little dumbstruck.”

“You know me better than nearly everyone. Less than Alfred. Maybe more than Dick.”

“And yet I didn’t know you were left handed or how you like your coffee. After all these years.” Clark put his now empty cup back on the desk and leaned forward on it. “What else are you hiding? Just hit me with it all now. I’m jumping in the deep end.”

“I was in an improv comedy troupe.”

“Bull.”

“For six months as part of my training to learn how to be adaptable to any situation.”

“But you aren’t funny.”

“That’s subjective.” Bruce almost sounded hurt. “I was better at the dry, dark humour, not knock-knock jokes.”

“Of course you were.” In reality, Clark actually did think that Bruce had a wicked sense of humour, but the thought of him in a group of people, performing for laughs just couldn’t compute.

“All of this is off the record, by the way.”

Clark shook his head and waved his notepad and pen. “You have to say that at the beginning of the statement for it to count when it is a prearranged interview. I can see my next byline now. ‘Batman is Secretly Left Handed’. It’s going to be my big break, just you wait. I’m going put my Pulitzer in the Fortress, next to Candor.” Bruce sat back in his chair and glared at Clark, which just made him snicker. That look was at least one he recognized and saw frequently. The familiarity of Bruce’s annoyance felt good. “No one cares, Bruce.”

“Now who’s not being funny?”

“Lois thinks I’m funny.”

“She’s laughing at you, not with you.”

“Ouch. I better use my freeze breath to look after that burn.”

“Don’t get any ice on my desk.” Clark grinned and stared up at the ceiling as he rolled his eyes. That was the type of Bruce humour that made sense. “You are the most frustrating billionaire I’ve spoken to this week.”

“I’m more frustrating than Luthor?”

“I’ve haven’t spoken to him this week.”

“I saw you punch him yesterday.”

“Gee, I don’t know what you are talking about, Mr. Wayne.” Clark adjusted his glasses carefully and shifted awkwardly in his seat, slipping into his regular role. “I did see that Mr. Luthor and Superman had an altercation recently while I was watching the news this morning but I, shy and unassuming Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, haven’t spoken to him in months. Even if I did, at least I know how he takes his coffee. Lex likes mochas.”

“Seriously, Clark?”

“And you tried to say I wasn’t funny.” Clark thought back to the beginning of the conversation and remember something that Bruce had said about him. “You do the accent thing, too. That isn’t just me.”

“Voice modulation doesn’t count as an accent.”

“No, I mean…” Now it was Clark’s turn to trail off, because no. He had to know, right? Bruce’s expression was curious. Oh, he didn’t know. How could he not know? “You don’t realize you have an accent?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You speak differently depending on where you are, out of the cowl. I don’t mean the context, either. I mean your accent.” Bruce’s expression didn’t change, and Clark had to explain himself if this was going to make any sort of sense. “When you are being Bruce Wayne, like right now, you sound very posh, but generically North Eastern United States. Same when you are out of costume with the League.”

“Yes, that is how I speak, Clark. Because that is my voice.” said Bruce slowly, in exactly the accent that Clark had described.

“Nope. You speak differently at home.” Bruce’s eye twitched microscopically again. “It also comes out when you are injured or overtired but you have to be pretty out of it for it to slip through. I think only Diana and I have heard it outside your family.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You sound…” Clark paused to think of the right way to phrase it. “Well, you sound a little British if I’m going to be honest. Inflexion. Tone. Lilt. Word choice. Mostly word choice.” He grinned the more that he thought about the first example that came to his mind. “Do you know that the first time I stayed overnight at the manor I couldn’t find my guest room because you told me it was on the second floor?”

“Your guest room is on the second floor.”

“No, it’s on the third. We’re in America, Bruce. Ground floor, second floor, third floor.” The grin on Clark’s face broke into a full smile as he started to chuckle. “Dick laughed at me for a solid twenty minutes when I had to ask for help when he found me wandering around hopelessly. He still laughs about it sometimes.”

“I suppose I can see that. I was mostly raised by Alfred. It must have rubbed off on me.”

“You also use biscuits for cookies and crisps for chips. Alfred is definitely to blame.” Clark was still chuckling to himself, but as he watched Bruce, Clark could almost see him forming plans to break the habits that he just mentioned because he was now aware of them. “Don’t start acting self-conscious about it now. I can see your brain over thinking. It isn’t something that you need to change to protect your cover.”

“But…”

“No.” Clark shook his head firmly. “It’s a Bruce thing. The real you. Not one of your masks. You shouldn’t have to hide who you are at home. Not from your family and not from me. Do you understand?”

“I…” Clark glared at him and Bruce cut himself off. “Yes, Clark,” he grumbled. “I hate it when you do that. Give me a Superman pep talk. Even a short one.”

“Excuse you. That was a Clark Kent pep talk. The Kansas accent was intact.” Bruce snorted and Clark beamed back. “And speaking of Clark Kent, he really needs to get a quote from you about this new green partnership agreement with GCE so that he can continue to get a paycheck from the Planet and pay for groceries.” He pulled out his phone to record and Bruce nodded and tapped his watch again, buzz of the disrupter disappearing.

They were back on the record.

As soon as he did, Clark could practically see the shield of Bruce Wayne, businessman, come back onto the face of the man across from him, but maybe he was able to see a version of his friend, his brother, a little better through it than he could before.

Maybe they both knew each other a little better now, even if it was something small like this.

And the next time Superman brought Batman a coffee, maybe he’d pass it to his left and add a little milk and make sure that the lid was secure so that no one could make the connection.

[brendanmoviedate]

Yer fond of me lobster ain’t ye?

Another year, another broken promise that I’d write more often. I’m not going to fool myself going forward and expect I’ll be able to keep up with reviewing every movie I see. However, I’ll continue to write my year-end movie review and perhaps a couple here and there when I feel inspired. 

Looking back to last year’s post, I wouldn’t make too many changes, though I would certainly move Into the Spider-verse slightly higher up. I would also consider adding Upgrade to the list for how brazen it is.

Most of the films I called out as ones to watch for 2019 ended up being either on my list or in the composite image, which goes to show that it’s worth getting excited for new films more often than not.

Vancouver being the way that it is, sometimes we don’t get timely releases of films when other cities do. As a result, I haven’t had a chance to see 1917 and Uncut Gems yet. The latter of which I’ve been dying to see for months and would probably feature on this list. 

Here’s the 10 best films I’ve seen from 2019:

10. John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum

Whereas John Wick: Chapter 2 was the perfect escalation of its pared down predecessor, Chapter 3 is merely an excellent continuation of the newly minted franchise. However, while not bringing anything entirely new to the world of John Wick, it is still an intensely entertaining film. The first 20 minutes is some of the best fight choreography in the series to date and enough to secure a spot on this list.

9. Long Day’s Journey into Night

From director Bi Gan, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a noirish drama about a man (Huang Jue) returning to his hometown following the death of his father to track down his lost love (Tang Wei). The film is a slow burn that jumps between past and present before descending into a surreal 60 minute single take shot filmed in 3D. Regretfully, the only screening I could attend was entirely 2D, but nonetheless, the sequence was still enthralling. This is the type of film that proves that spectacle doesn’t necessarily need to be tied to tentpole movies.

8.  Booksmart

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut suggests she has an effortless understanding of comedy. Written by a quartet of female writers, Booksmart feels like Superbad for a new generation (I can’t believe that film came out 12 years ago). Interestingly, Jonah Hill’s sister, Beanie Feldstein stars, alongside Kaitlyn Dever (daughter of the guy that voiced Barney the Purple Dinosaur). While it would be easy to say it’s “the female Superbad,” Booksmart is in fact much more than that. Replacing the misfits trying to get laid story with one about a pair of overachievers realizing almost too late that there’s more to life than good grades lets the film be looser and allows the comedy to happen more naturally. 

7. Midsommar

Ari Aster’s follow-up to 2018′s Hereditary began filming almost immediately after wrapping post-production on his previous film. As a result, Midsommar has that extra layer of a director exhausting himself by putting everything on the screen. Midsommar is a much more mature work than Hereditary and one that took a while to grow on me. My initial reaction was less enthusiastic than it is now, but it’s one of the films from 2019 that has stuck with me the most. I imagine a second watch or the extended director’s cut might raise my appreciation of it even more. 

Florence Pugh gives a knockout performance that when combined with her roles in Little Women and last year’s Little Drummer Girl prove that she’ll be a star in no time.

6. Knives Out

Rian Johnson’s first post-Star Wars film sees him reinvigorated and working with a bigger name cast than he has in the past. Essentially a whodunnit along the lines of Agatha Christie, Knives Out follows Daniel Craig’s southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc as he investigates the murder of a wealthy publisher (Christopher Plummer). In addition to playing with a few plot twists, Johnson includes a couple of structure twists as well that turn the film on its head. 

In addition to Craig’s hammy performance, other standouts include Ana de Armas and Chris Evans as the publisher’s caregiver and grandson, respectively. 

Johnson has hinted at the possibility of more Benoit Blanc mysteries, and as long as Daniel Craig is onboard, I’ll gladly watch them.

5. The Lighthouse

In Robert Eggers’ followup to The Witch, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson play a pair of lighthouse keepers in isolation. As would be expected, The Lighthouse is a paranoia-fuelled chamber piece, with Dafoe’s gruff experienced lighthouse keeper getting on the nerves of the younger Pattinson. And while this setup allows the two leads a chance to really dig into the 19th century dialects, the film takes the occasional departure into the eldritch for a very unsettling film. 

As with Black Philip in The Witch, there’s a standout animal character in The Lighthouse - fittingly, a seagull.

4. Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s presumably penultimate film is perhaps his most mature work, ruminating on the idea of legacy and the film industry as a whole. Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood is almost a Tarantino hangout movie reminiscent of parts of Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. A lot of time is spent on scenes that don’t necessarily lead to the film’s climax, but allow the characters room to breathe and feel real. Other than the historical event hinted at throughout the movie, the film doesn’t seem to have a particular direction, which allows you to live in the lives of these characters more than if it was purely plot driven.

The main cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margo Robbie is great, but it’s Pitt who puts in a career best performance. There’s a quietness and a sadness to his character that brings some added depth to an otherwise bold cast.

3. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt’s other great performance this year is in James Gray’s Ad Astra. Having seen Gray’s The Lost City of Z and purposefully avoiding trailers and reviews, my expectation for this film was a reflective voyage centred around the ideas of obsession, loss, and family. All of these ideas were present in Ad Astra, but the real surprise was how seamlessly a space opera was added into the story. I never thought I’d see a lunar shuttle chase, but I’m glad I did.

The amount of casual sci-fi world building in the film is staggering, with entire premises treated as banal. We get to see Pitt’s Clifford McBride travel from Earth to the Moon mundanely on a commercial flight. Most films would take the opportunity to spoon feed to the audience why this is odd, but Ad Astra treats it as normal as the characters do, making it all the more fascinating.

2. The Farewell

Starring Awkwafina, who has quickly shot to stardom after featuring in Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell gives the actress the chance to stretch her dramatic muscles playing Billi, who returns to China to visit with her grandmother who has cancer. Billi’s family insists on keeping the grandmother’s illness a secret from her so she can live out her life in happiness, while Billi struggles with the morals of lying to her grandmother. This premise allows for not only the comedy of misunderstanding, a staple in comedy, but also emotional tension and the devastation of preparing to send off a loved one. 

The comedy-drama balance is handled expertly by director Lulu Wang, making The Farewell the movie I both cried at and laughed at the most this year.

1. Parasite

Had you told me a couple of months ago that my picking Parasite as the best movie of the year could be considered a safe choice, I would have scoffed. Yet here we are, and Parasite has widely been hailed as the best film of the year. I suppose in hindsight it’s not hard to see why. It’s both a crowd-pleasing film and a film that’s deeply disturbing and thrilling.

After having seen Bong Joon-ho’s last five movies, one would be forgiven for expecting a linearity in Parasite. Most of his films tend to have a point A to point B element with an expected (though often subverted) outcome. Heck, Snowpiercer is about a group of people moving from the back of the train to the front, one car at a time. Yet Parasite is different. The film sets up a premise you only find out about as it happens and is quickly overturned once you’re comfortable with it.

I saw this movie the same day I saw Joker and the difference in how the subject matter of class is treated is stark. Whereas Joker wanted to go all dark and Taxi Driver with the theme, Parasite had fun with it and let the elements of drama, comedy, and horror slide along the theme of class.

Like Bong’s Memories of Murder, Parasite will be one of those films I endlessly revisit.

Honourable Mentions

Films that almost cracked the Top 10 that I wanted to shout out here are Us and Doctor Sleep for being really solid, exciting, horror-thrillers. As well as The Irishman for being a classic Scorcese film that gives De Niro and Pacino ample time to with each other. Finally, I wanted to applaud Avengers: Endgame for not only managing to pull off such an ambitious finale, but to make it so goddamned fun.

2020

This year I’m looking forward to new blockbusters from two of my favourite directors, Christoper Nolan and Denis Villeneuve - Tenet and Dune, respectively. 

Despite the stumble with Spectre, I’m extremely excited for Daniel Craig’s last outing as Bond with No Time to Die, by auteur Cary Fukunaga. I can’t wait to see how his style meshes with the Bond template. 

Also of great interest are the new films from David Fincher and Edgar Wright - Mank and Last Night in Soho.

[purplesimmer455]

50 Questions for your Sim

I was tagged by the incredible @izayoichan ☺️😄 thank you! 

And I chose Maya Feldman to do this tag cause she’s so gorgeous and sweet and on of my fave sims, plus I based some of her on me (the anxiety part, the being Pakistani part, the awkward and tending to ramble part, etc.) also those pics are of her thru the gameplay 

1: How old is your sim? Oh man, I’d say 23 cause (for my own sims game since everyone has different aging) I just assumed that once my sims turn into young adults their aging slows down, plus I have MCCC so Maya has 1000 days left of being a YA

2. When is your sim’s birthday? June 23 ♋️

3. What is your sim’s zodiac sign? Cancer 🦀

4. What is your sim’s ethnicity? Part Pakistani on her dad’s side (her dad’s bio mom and bio dad were from Rawalpindi and Islamabad respectively) and part Greek from her mom ☺️

5. Does your sim have any nicknames? Kaitlyn calls her Feldman

6. Do they have a job? If so what is it?  Maya is a freelance digital artist for now, cause tbh I love exploring any new career options that come with packs and and patches so I change up her career

7. Where does your sim live? she lives in Brindleton Bay 

8.Who does your sim live with? With her wife Kaitlyn, their daughter Luna, her sister Abby, Abby’s daughter Yaritza and the two pets, Cosmo and Coco

 9. What environment did your sims grow up in (strict, loving, cold etc.)? Very loving, and a little strict, but her mom and dad were also really affectionate with her and her siblings

10. What are your sim’s favorite food? Chocolate chip cookies 🍪 

11. What is your sim’s favorite drink? Coffee, especially cappuccinos 😄

12. If they have one what is your sim’s favorite color? Pink for sure 

13. Does your sim believe in any clichés (like love at first sight, etc)? Oh definitely, Maya felt like the first time she saw Kaitlyn, it was love at first sight

14. What is your sim’s sexuality? Lesbian 👩‍❤️‍👩

15. What is your sim’s gender identity? Female

16. Is your sim type a or type b? A for sure 

17. Is your sim introverted or extroverted? Maya’s kinda both, cause she likes socializing and being friendly, but she also likes time to herself to just read a book or play the Sims Forever

18. What is your sims favorite woohoo position? Oh my god 😳😅 um, that might be TMI also cause I’m like oh man which would it be? 😅

19. Is your sim a pet person? If so what is their favorite animal? Yup, Maya loves dogs, especially her pet pit bull Roxy and his son/her current dog Cosmo ☺️

20. Does your sim have a best friend? Kaitlyn, Miko, Abby and Salim for the most part ☺️

21. What is/was your sim’s favorite school subject? She loved English and Art 

22. Is/was your sim a high, mid or low achiever in school? Maya was a high achiever and did really well

23. Are they planning to go or have they already been to college? If so, what would be or what was their major? Yup, Maya went to Sims University (story wise in ts3) and she majored in Communications

24. What are your sims political beliefs (if they have them)?  Oh man, I’m not sure 🤔

25. What is one thing your sims wants to do before they die? Maybe see her future grandkids? One part of me wants to turn her into a vampire too cause I don’t want her to die 😅

26. Does your sim have a favorite TV show (cable) and/or movie? Strangerville Mysteries, where host Erin Vasquez and her crew investigates creepy mysteries and hauntings first in Strangerville and then the show expanded to include other places

27. Is your sim a Netflix viewer? If so what are their top 3 shows. Of course, Maya loves Rumor Gal(a TS4 version of gossip girl), Goosebumps & Young and Hungry

28. Does your sim like books? If so what’s their favorite one? Oh man, yup 😄 Maya loves the confessions of a shopaholic series, and anything with horror, mystery, scandal or comedy

29. Does your sim enjoy video games, if so what is their favorite one and do they play on PC or console? Yup, she loves The Sim Forever and plays it on her laptop

30. What is your sim’s personal style? Girly, but casual and comfy mostly as well

31. Does your sim have a lucky charm? Hmm, I don’t know, maybe the necklace Kaitlyn gave her that has ‘Kaitlyn’ engraved on it?

32. Is your sim religious? Not really

33. What kind of music does your sim listen to and who is their favorite artist? Maya mainly loves pop songs, and also she loves Disney movie soundtracks, like the ones from Moana

34. Is your sim a festive person? If so what’s their favorite holiday? Maya loves festivities (it’s just that I keep forgetting to decorate for Winterfest and New Years Eve in game 😅) also Maya loves Harvestfest, especially a relaxing one spent with her family

35. What is your sim’s favorite type of weather? Spring weather, when it’s cool and fresh but also warm and sunny 

36. Does your sim prefer to start fights or finish them? Neither option as well

37. Does your sim have a dream job? As a kid, she wanted to be a mermaid* who was also a fashion designer 🧜‍♀️ , and as she got older she wanted to be involved in fashion, but without the mermaid part (kinda, cause if the Island pack has mermaids she is so becoming a mermaid, also I love mermaids as well so yup)

38. Does your sim have any siblings? Yup. Luke is her older brother, Angie and Abby are her baby sisters and they’re twins

39. Does your sim get along with their family? Heck yeah, she loves her family, even if she and Angie used to bicker over the The most random and dumb things as teens

40 What is your sims favorite hobby? Reading or painting, it’s hard for her to choose between the two

41. What does your sim look for in a romantic partner? Someone with humor, and someone who she can goof around with and talk with and be herself with, and she found that with Kaitlyn 🥰

42. What is a secret about your sim? Okay so for some reason my mind’s blanking right now, but I might come back to this

43. What is a wish your sim has? That she’d never have to lose her family members and loved ones

44. What is a flaw your sim has? Stubborn, Maya can be pretty stubborn on things 

45. How do others generally perceive your sim? A lot of sims think that Maya’s friendly and sweet, and she’s always helping people out 

46. Does your sim have a greatest achievement? If so what is it? For Maya, it’s her baby Luna, and the fact that she and Kaitlyn raised such an amazing daughter so far. Maya’s really proud of Luna

47. If they have one, what is your sim’s greatest regret? Maya regrets that once she turned 14 she got so involved with other stuff (like her writing and art clubs and hanging out with her friends) that she spent less and less time with her dad even when he wanted to spend time with her like they used to do with their father daughter fishing trips or lunch outings, and then he passed away when she was 16

48. Does your sim have a favorite emoji? 🥰☺️

49. Does your sim use simstagram? If so what’s their @? Her simstagram is @MayaFeldman💛 And Yup, she posts cute pictures of her and Kaitlyn, Coco, Cosmo and her family and random funny stuff

50. What is the last text your sim sent (and who did they text)? She sent this  to Kaitlyn: “Hey babe, do you want me to get you anything from Target? 🤔☺️”

Okay, so I tag @pink-chevalier @indecisivesimblr @kymmaisims @fataleromeo @nternet @ohphoebelay @citrusswig @sensitive-simmer @toffeetip @thedonutsquad @kris-sims @angelisims @klauseconfessions and anyone else who wants to do this tag 😄 (also it’s totally not mandatory so I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do this tag, or do it right away or anything 🤔😊)

[sweetsmellosuccess]

Sundance: Day 4

Number of Films: 4 Best Movie of the Day: The Last Black Man in San Francisco

The Report: it might be difficult to remember after two years of the circus clown in office now, but a couple of decades ago, we were also in terrible shape in the White House: the Bush/Cheney regime (though actually that should read CHENEY/bush) had gotten us into a pointless war we didn’t need and had the country enter into the “dark side” in order to try to prevent another 9/11 from happening. Included in the litany of horrible, immoral items was the laughably euphemistic “Enhanced Interrogation Technique” deployment, an illegal and utterly reprehensible use of torture on political prisoners. Under Obama, the program, admitted by the CIA to be worthless as an intel-gathering system, was quickly dispatched, but the lingering taint of possible war crimes had lead to a supposedly thorough investigation by the senate. Lead by a young intelligence agent named Dan Jones (played here by Adam Driver), the titular report refers to the final conclusions drawn by the senate sub-committee, but not before the notoriously prickly CIA had done everything they could to suppress it. Scott Z. Burn’s film follows closely the drafting of the report and the many obstacles standing in the way of getting it out to the public, even in heavily redacted form. Burns isn’t going for artistic style points, here, it is straightforward and voluminous in detail in trying to tell an extremely complicated story in a couple of scant hours. In place of visual flair, there is the compelling theatrics of Driver, whose singular delivery, where every word takes on heightened emphasis, helps make dry material a good deal more persuasive. Unlike Spotlight, an equally procedural type of drama, it doesn’t offer the emotional payoff of knowing a thing has been exposed that will change a great many lives. While a version of the report was finally released in the waning years of Obama’s term in office, to date, none of the perpetrators have ever been charged with a crime or received a demotion as a result.

The Farewell: An early buzz-maker at the festival, Lulu Wang‘s autobiographical story, about a Chinese family’s decision to not tell the matriarch of the clan about her terminal cancer condition and instead fake a wedding as a means of getting the whole family back together in China one last time without her knowing, rides an emotionally tricky ride. Our protagonist is Billi (Awkwafina), a twentysomething writer in New York, still very much making her way. She is very close to Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhou), and devastated to have to withhold the prognosis from her lively, opinionated grandmother. As the family all congregate together, including the hapless cousin forced to have the fake wedding with his Japanese girlfriend, the irony becomes more and more palpable. The conceit is like a French farce -- one lie that spins into more and more complexity -- but with much higher emotional stakes. The film plays a lot like a comedy, but with such a backdrop powering it, it treads a remarkably difficult line between the two poles. In the Hollywood remake, Billi would have been given a love interest in China (and there is a moment with a handsome young doctor where you can see precisely where that would begin) to give the film more cushioning, and at the end Nai Nai would have confessed to Billi that she knew “the whole time” but was simply humoring her family, which also would have spared the audience. Notably, Wang does neither of those things, so the emotional crescendo near the ending hits you with full force (although the coda right at the end throws a good deal more confusion into the mix).

The Last Black Man in San Francisco: It works in ways that are difficult to describe. Through pace, tone, and image, Joe Talbot has created something that feels utterly organic and unique. The story concerns a pair of best friends, Jimmie Fails (playing himself) and Mont (Jonathan Majors), growing up together in SF. Jimmy, who skates around the city in a knit cap, dotes daily on a beautiful house in the Golden Gate neighborhood, owned now by an older white couple but used to belong to his family, built piece by piece by his grandfather in the post-war ‘40s. Mont, for his part, is an artist and playwright, taking in the people of the city and transforming them into his own art. When the elderly couple suddenly have to move out, Jimmy and Mont quickly move in, stocking the place with the old, original furniture from storage. It is Jimmy’s fondest wish, he feels a deep kinship with the place, and is genuinely a devoted and caring neighbor. When the house is eventually put on the market, it threatens to disrupt the idyll the friends have created. Through creative use of super slo-motion, and delicate lens work, Talbot‘s film moves mysteriously, but captures the essence of both the characters and the city itself. In his hands, everything becomes a character unto itself, from the house, to a field tall with flowering weeds, to a dock that leads out to a mud flat. The sense of place, and dynamic energy infuses everything we see on screen. A scene towards the end involving one of Mont’s plays, strains credibility a bit, but even there, it’s accounted for honorablyl. It’s the best film I’ve seen so far at this festival, and will almost certainly be among the best I will see this year.

Tomorrow: We start early with The Report; try like hell to jump into The Farewell; check out The Last Black Man in San Francisco; and close it out with Velvet Buzzsaw.

Into the frigid climes and rarefied thin air of the spectacular Utah Mountains, I've arrived in order to document some of the sense and senselessness of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Over the next week, armed with little more than a heavy parka and a bevy of blank reporter's notebooks, I'll endeavor to watch as many movies as I can and report my findings.