#I love the Wien characters and their relationships

[khalaris]

Ausblick auf meinen Beitrag zum GCZ, ein Metatext zum ✨Tatort Wien✨

(bis zum 17. September kann man das Zine über germancrimezine.bigcartel.com bestellen)

[alex31624]

Those were really good Football team headcanons 👏 I think each one you mentioned fit great with that sports team.

Could you please share more headcanons about the other characters’ fav teams 👀?

Oh, I love this.

Ok, I think not all the characters would be a football fans. So, if is not in this list, they don't support any team, or don't care about the sport.

Webby - Liverpool

It was hard for Webby, her grandma is an Aston Villa fan, her hero is a Celtic fan. Which team should she support?

What moves Webby is love, dedication, passion. And it was the passion the Liverpool fans show what make her a fan herself.

It was a secret, until she found out Donald is also a Liverpool fan. Just another thing to bond about for them.

Huey - All of them

Huey loves his family and friends, so he can't take sides. He supports all the teams, depending on the circumstances.

Dewey - Manchester United

The second Dewey found out that Della was a Manchester fan, he took her side. You know that's a Dewey thing.

Sadly, he forgot that Manchester was on downhill since 2014. He has to watch the Europa League and begs that next year will be better.

Louie - Liverpool

All the triplets were Liverpool fans thanks to Donald. When their circle grew, Huey decided that he wanted to support all the teams, Dewey took Della's side, but Louie stay by his uncle side. Donald made him a Liverpool fan, he will stay a Liverpool fan.

A bit bias for Donald and Louis relationship? Yes. Always.

May & June - Liverpool

Just like their brother, the twins wanted to follow their dad. Easy.

Violet - Internazionale

Violet was never that interested in football. She knew the basics, the big tournaments and big teams. But then, she got a sister.

An italian sister.

An AC Milan fan sister.

And Violet knew what she had to do, and became an Inter fan. Just to get under Lena's skin. That's such a sisterhood thing to do.

Gosalyn - Borussia Dortmund

One more that has her focus on passion. Gosalyn in 2017 is a latina, but her last name has a bit of german flavour. That's where she found her team, a team who's rebel and loyal.

Perfect for Gos.

The last game of the 2022-2023 season broke her heart.

B.O.Y.D. - Real Madrid

Sweet baby B.O.Y.D. has a whole world to discover. He spends most of his time with the rest of the Team Science, so he listens to Fenton's stories about a team that can make miracles happen, a team that doesn't know how to give up, and their victories can only be described as epic.

Yes, Fenton's influence turned B.O.Y.D. in a Real Madrid fan.

Real Madrid bias? Of course.

José - Flamengo

I asked an expert, @fantasticenthusiasttale, for this one.

She told me that José Carioca lives in a neighborhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro called Vila Xurupita, which has its own soccer team, Xurupita FC. He even played for them.

But, her headcanon is that José is a Flamengo fan. And who I am to disagree?

Panchito - Necaxa

To tell the truth, I know nothing about Mexico football. I stared at Panchito and said, this is the face of a Necaxa fan.

So there you have it.

Gladstone - Manchester City

The notorious freeloader Gladstone Gander of course is a Manchester City fan.

He knows nothing about the team's history, but when he found out the team has a almost bottomless wallet, he became a fan.

Matilda - Rangers

Like Violet, Matilda began supporting Rangers only to get under Scrooge's skin.

With the time, she actually became a passionate fan who enjoyed going to the games. She and Scrooge have been in many Old Firm (Rangers vs Celtic) games.

When the team was sended to the 4th division, she went to every game until Rangers returned to the Scottish Premiership.

Ludwig Von Drake - Rapid Wien

In his youth, professor Von Drake enjoyed seeing the football Rapid Wien showed. A team for the working class, who fights day by day.

Von Drake was happy to see that Rapid still was the most successful team of the country.

But professor didn't see with good eyes the grow of Red Bull Salzburg. A team born of a corporation, who denies its own history.

Von Drake awaits for the resurgence of Rapid.

Mark Beaks - Inter Miami

When Messi signed with Inter Miami, Mark Beaks flew to the city because he knew that was buzz worthy.

That's the only reason he has to go to the games.

This was so much fun. Thanks for the ask @ducktales-and-ducks, sorry I couldn't finish this one earlier.

[archduchessofnowhere]

Elisabeth's grand mistress of the court [Oberhofmeisterin], Countess Esterházy, with whom she had never felt comfortable, remained in Vienna. Archduchess Sophie had no say in the choice of Elisabeth's travel entourage. She complained to Franz Joseph's brother Karl Ludwig about the lack of trust: the advice she had given Franz Joseph had been nothing more than “fruitless attempts”. Thus Sisi was not accompanied to Madeira by her grand mistress of the court, but by her new deputy, Princess Mathilde Windisch-Grätz. The latter had only been appointed as Elisabeth's lady-in-waiting in 1860 and had endeared herself to her from the very first moment. Mathilde's husband had died in the Italian campaign of 1859; the empress had shown compassion for the grieving young widow, left with a small child, and the two became friends. Mathilde's brother was not surprised that she had agreed to go: “That Mathilde would comply with the Empress' wishes was to be expected, given the personal relationship between the two, but the responsibility for this undertaking, so infinitely serious in every respect, is great”. The appointment of Mathilde as deputy grand mistress of the empress's court aroused some astonishment. Archduchess Therese was furious: “Countess Esterházy is being sidelined in a very strange way. In her place, the young Mathilde Windisch-Grätz goes to Madeira; it is also strange that the latter leaves her small child behind”.

Mathilde was an intelligent and thoughtful woman who did not allow herself to jump to conclusions about people. She tried to look at Elisabeth without prejudice and not let herself be influenced by the opinion of the court society. During her stay in Madeira she kept a diary: reading it would be instructive, as the young deputy to the grand mistress of the court gained a deep insight into the empress's nature. But she was in doubt as to whether she would pass on her private notes on Elisabeth to posterity, who would hardly get a correct idea of her complex personality. That is why she left his brother to decide whether or not the diary should be kept. The comments on her relationship with Elisabeth and her character contained therein are, in their frankness, more interesting than what most contemporary women were able to report. “If you think,” Mathilde wrote to her brother, “that what I have written is detrimental to the existing opinion of her [Elisabeth], see to it that no one else but yourself can read it; and do not judge her too harshly; tell yourself that if, after the undeniably difficult hours she has given me, I still cling to her with such a warm and intimate love, there must be more in this woman's nature than the public can recognise. One has to know her exactly as I do, at least as long as I have lived in close contact with her world, to be able to correctly judge some of her faults, unfortunately, but also the qualities of her character. God bless her, I have few more ardent desires”. Alfred Windisch-Grätz eventually decided to destroy his sister's diary.

Winkelhofer, Martina (2022). Sissi. La vera storia. Il camino della giovane imperatrice (Translation done by DeepL. Please keep in mind that in a machine translation a lot of nuance may/will be lost)

Pictured: Princess Mathilde with her daughter Eleonore, by Ludwig Angerer, circa 1862 (left); Empress Elisabeth, by an unknown photographer, circa 1860 (right). Via the Wien Museum.

[lives-in-a-harpsichord]

Baroque opera recs that I forgot to post yesterday ✨

Gonna give five cause if I don't limit myself I'll just never stop

Jean-Baptiste Lully : Atys. One of my recent favourites. Charming, and sad, and beautiful. Lots of dancing and period-appropriate gesturing and other visual delights in the 2011 production in particular. It's on medici dot tv (check if your local library offers a free subscription) with English subtitles. Also on youtube but in a couple of parts and I don't know if it has subtitles

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Hippolyte et Aricie. Currently watching on medici dot tv as well. 2012 Opera Bastille production has an amazing cast and lovely, very baroque visual style. Also, the music is so unique and beautiful. Act II is musically endlessly surprising and wonderful

Antonio Vivaldi: Bajazet. Many wonderful productions out there, but I have so much affection for the 2023 Accademia Bizantina production. Amazing music, unhinged cast of characters, and my personal weakness, father and daughter raging endlessly.

G.F. Händel: Alcina. Just full of absolutely devastating beauty. The music is so full of emotion and subtleties. There are so many complex relationships and characters, and "Ah! Mio cor!" is the best aria ever written about heartbreak. In this essay I - no! I will control myself. Les Talens Lyriques and Staatsoper Wien prods are both very good

Henry Purcell: Dido & Aeneas. I know, it's no grand opera, but it's a short little tasty thing that I love and cherish. I love Purcell's music so much. And I adore that its first known performance was by a girls' school. Feels intimate, feels right.

Five is very few when there are so many good operas and other works out there, but I will add to this post later. Otherwise I will just start weeping about how much I love baroque music and it's gonna be so annoying

[waitmyturtles]

Alright, happy Monday! As previously promised during my review of A Tale of Thousand Stars: in preparation for the eventual release of Moonlight Chicken, I would love to share in a long manifesto my love, my passion, the GOSPEL, for what I think may be the unsung hero and character of that show, without even seeing an episode -- the actual dish of Hainanese chicken rice itself, which is known as khao man gai in Thailand.

(LONG POST! TL;DR: this post is going to contain a quick explanation of why it is SO BOMB that there’s a THAI BL that focuses ON THIS DISH, a description of the dish itself, a diasporic history of Hainanese chicken rice, links to a few recipes, and a list of places where I’ve had Hainanese chicken rice in the States.)

Borrowing a photo from Mark Wiens! Let’s get started.

Girl, why exactly are you going off on all this?

Why, oh why, you may ask -- why should Mama Turtles wax POETIC about the seemingly simple dish of chicken rice? The simple name of the dish belies a deeply cultural symbol of so much -- of the roles that particular dishes play in Southeast Asian cultures, of how such a dish can be so difficult to make AND to relate to, and at least most importantly to me, how immigration and diasporas created the complicated and diverse foodways and cultural fabrics that we see in this part of the world. 

(For the record, I’m part Malaysian, and have spent significant time of my adult life in Malaysia and Singapore. While these areas are not Thailand specifically, there’s tons of shared food preparation, culture, and appreciation from Thailand, down south to Penang and the Malay Peninsula, and down to Singapore.)

Why is khao man gai such a big deal vis à vis Moonlight Chicken?

Before I talk about the details of the dish itself, I want to set the context of why is it SO MOTHERBLEEPING LOVELY that there’s a Thai BL (with our DARLING Earth and Mix starring in it, with the DARLING First and Khao in supporting roles) that is ostensibly centered on a man making khao man gai. This is deeply heart-warming, soul-settling, feel-good shiz to me, and I think that a lot of Thai BL fujoshis who are obsessed with food, like me, would feel the same way. 

Hainanese chicken rice/khao man gai is made of the most humble of ingredients -- chicken, rice, water, salt. 

The fact that there would be a queer series centered around a queer man making khao man gai and selling it to others -- it means that a dish that is totally, utterly accessible to EVERY SINGLE PERSON in a country is being centered in a show focused on queer relationships....the kinds of relationships that should also be accessible to EVERY SINGLE PERSON who wants this kind of a relationship in an Asian country. 

This will make even more sense as I continue writing about the dish, but suffice to say, while it’s complicated to make, Hainanese chicken rice is about the most egalitarian food there is -- and the freedom to love whoever you want should also be as egalitarian as that. 

What is Hainanese chicken rice/khao man gai, and what is the big bleeping deal about it?

Before I jump to Wikipedia, maybe I should have Earth himself explain the dish.

That last screenshot is truth.

Obviously, the easiest place to find a background on this dish is Wikipedia, and what I actually didn’t know before starting to type this up is that khao man gai literally means “chicken oily rice,” which totally sums up this dish. While it seems simple, it’s a very rich and filling dish, but also healthy-ish, because you’re still eating chicken, which is not the richest or fattiest of meats.

The dish consists of rice that’s first been sautéed with aromatics like ginger and garlic, and (in many, but not all cases) also sautéed with rendered chicken fat. (If you’re from the East Coast of the States or are part of a Jewish community, you’ll know this ingredient as schmaltz.)

That fatty sautéed rice is then steamed in chicken broth, ideally in chicken broth that you yourself made while you were boiling the chicken that you’ll use in your khao man gai. As far as that chicken goes, you’ve cleaned it, prepped it, maybe you rubbed salt on it to get rid of any impurities on the skin, and boiled it until it’s cooked, but not overcooked. If you’re in Thailand, you might just let it cool; if you’re in Malaysia or Singapore, or elsewhere in Asia, you might give that baby a dip in ice water after it’s done cooking, to tighten up the skin and give the skin a jellied texture that is beloved by many. You also might rub some sesame oil on your chicken after the boiling process, which is done in some, but not all, places.

You also might go wild and serve your rice not just with the boiled chicken, but also with roasted chicken, or fried chicken, or a combo of boiled/roasted/fried chicken. You ALSO might WILD OUT MORE and ALSO serve your chicken rice with, say, crispy siu yuk, which I’ve had, and like.... ooooommmmfffffgggg. It sends shivers down my spine, it’s so good.

You’ve also made the broth perfectly with aromatics, and possibly simmered either daikon or winter melon in the broth to serve alongside the composed dish of chicken and rice.

AND, you definitely best have made some side sauces. Garlic-ginger-vinegar sauce, maybe, or ginger-scallion oil, or red chili sauce, or all of them. In Thailand, a sauce that features taucu, or fermented yellow soybeans, seems to be an absolute must -- and it is goddamn pure heaven to put on your khao man gai. If you’re in Malaysia, a small dish of vinegared chili, known as chili padi, is a must must. Depending on where you’re eating this in Asia, you’ll put a bottle of dark soy sauce on the table for drizzling over all your rice, but -- you might not always see that at every place where you’re eating chicken rice.

In OTHER WORDS: this dish is a bit of a beast to make. The simple LOOK of the dish -- white chicken on top of white rice, with some sliced cucumbers to the side, and a bowl of broth next to it -- is totally disingenuous to the work you need to put in to make it taste great. Your broth, for instance, might be made by boiling chicken after chicken after chicken in it. That broth gets more concentrated and powerful over time as you’re putting in more and more aromatics in it. Your store is defined by your broth; by how perfectly each grain of rice is individually coated in a sheen of chicken fat, salt, and other seasonings; by your one-of-a-kind sauces that hit and accompany the chicken and the rice perfectly, and most importantly, by how all these components come together. If your soup, chicken, rice, and sauces are ALL PERFECTLY MADE, then you’ve hit paydirt, my friends. 

It’s VERY RARE to find a shop that does all these components perfectly, or at least at the same level of tastiness. 

Alright, so I get that this dish can be a motherfucker to make. But why is it such a big deal, culturally? Why would a Thai BL be focused on a guy making this dish?

So for this part, I first want to say that I think it’s very important for a Western audience to understand that this dish is deeply loved in MANY countries in Asia and Southeast Asia. I’ve eaten this dish with groups of Westerners in SE Asia -- actually exclusively white folks, now that I think about it -- and to a tee, I’ve heard complaints by them that this dish is boring and they can’t see what the big deal is about it.

I mean, American pork chops can be fine, or they can be boring, too. 

The fact that chicken rice spans multiple countries and foodways should tell a Western audience that there are qualities about it, as I listed above, that are far beyond the sum of its parts. For instance -- the way to get each GRAIN of rice coated in fat and flavor takes years of experience. Y’all, I still can’t get perfect rice in my rice cooker, and I’ve been making rice for my family for more than 10 years. These things take time to perfect, and not everything one eats in Asia is going to be bombastic, like, say, Taiwanese stinky tofu or a gorgeous omakase at a high-end sushi bar.

Part of the reason why this dish is so beloved is because it IS very ubiquitous from the China-to-Southeast-Asia diaspora. I can mostly speak for Malaysia (I apologize for not knowing more about immigration patterns in Thailand), but MUCH of the fabric of Malaysian cuisine comes from specifically regional immigrant diasporas, namely from the area of China that is now known as Fujian, but that’s not a hard and fast historical rule. Well-known populations from this area in China that settled in Malaysia include the Hakka and Hokkien populations (you may have seen Hakka mee or Hokkien mee on Malaysian restaurant menus), and they also include the Hainanese population, which brought a style of boiling chicken in broth to the areas where the population settled -- which include Thailand and Malaysia, and eventually Singapore, as Hainanese descendants moved farther south down the Malay peninsula. 

(By the way, if you’re ever curious, you need to read up on populations that were literally created after the first waves of Chinese immigration to Southeast Asia. The well-known Peranakan population in Malaysia, for instance, was literally created through interracial marriage of Chinese immigrants to native Malay populations, and a deeply important culture, including foodways, were born out of those marriages and population growth. It’s fascinating history in a world that often seems so hyperfocused on far right movements wanting “racial purity.” What cultural beauty comes out of populations and diasporas meeting each other and creating new cultures together.)

Back to the discussion: as Malaysian cultures and populations developed over time due in part to the influence of Chinese immigration through Southeast Asia, so, we assume, the same was happening in Thailand. (We can see deeply the effect of the influence of Chinese culture in a show like Big Dragon, which was centered around the telling of Chinese Buddhist myths through a Thai lens.) And as these immigrant populations from China traversed the Thai-Malay peninsula, their food habits stuck and were adopted by the native Southeast Asian populations. It’s no wonder that chicken rice became as beloved and ubiquitous as it did -- in part because rice is a staple food across the whole region, in part because it’s such a comforting dish (like congee, like juk, like okayu porridge), and in part because the individual ingredients themselves are humble and easy to find for your everyday home cook.

I want to just quickly touch upon the point of rice as a staple food. It seems so super obvious to us Asians, but especially for fans of QL that may not be Asian and/or may not have rice as a central and everyday food -- to make a dish like chicken rice perfectly, to have it center on the particular way in which you PREP and COOK the rice, for the rice to be all oily and salty and chicken-y -- the dichotomy of how humble rice is with how GLORIOUSLY TASTY and filling the final result of chicken rice is, can really move you. There are thousands of other rice preparations out there that are just as beloved as chicken rice -- from the Malaysian nasi lemak (literally “fat rice,” or rice cooked in coconut milk and served with delicious accompaniments) to Indian biriyani, to Japanese takikomi gohan or tamago kake gohan, to Korean bibimbap or gyeran bap -- you get the point. Dishes that center on rice are just beloved. They just are, because rice is so fundamentally egalitarian and important to our everyday way of being and eating. 

AND, the way in which you EAT chicken rice -- by mixing up the accompaniments throughout the eating process, dolling up each bite of rice with a different sauce, having a sip of soup, taking a bit of meat -- that whole process of making each bite taste different allows you to have a whirlwind experience of eating with, again, very humble ingredients that end up being far more than the sum of their rice-meat-and-veg parts.

And so. When Chinese populations were immigrating throughout Southeast Asia, they brought with them, and adapted over time, a style of making rice with chicken and fat that, again, seemed so simple, but was so full of a kind of quiet and comforting flavor, that it HAD to be adapted by every country and population in which the Chinese immigrants had settled. The love for rice in the whole region was going to lead to a guaranteed adaptation of this dish for generations to cook and enjoy. 

Finally, regarding Moonlight Chicken once more -- without having seen an episode yet, I want to offer some conjecture that I think (or hope) that the plot reflects the simple-but-complicated nature of the dish of khao man gai with whatever happens in the love triangles of Earth, Mix, First, and Khao. There might very well be love parallels that what seems to be simple is actually a beast to make, both in food and in relationships.

And regarding a cultural love for rice dishes, and the fact that this dish and a khao man gai establishment is at the heart of this show: it fills me up with so much comforting happiness that a khao man gai joint is what’s being used to center a theme of where people go to kick off the show. If you know of a great khao man gai joint -- you go to it, people flock to it. The trailer shows drunk people stumbling around. If you’re drunk and hungry, you want to go to a place that gives you comfort, right? That might be a McDonald’s, a taco truck, a diner, a 24-hour Korean restaurant (ugh, anju at 2 am while you’re nursing your eventual hangover...memories). 

Khao man gai IS COMFORT, and IS comfort food. Earth’s character providing that comfort...I’m just saying, there HAS to be parallels between khao man gai and the storyline of Moonlight Chicken. THERE MUST BE. Let a girl dream!

Damn, girl. You went OFF. Take some Altoids. Give us some recipes!

Yes, this is definitely a manifesto of manifestos of an amazing dish.

These recipes mark the cultural landscape of this dish. I’ll note where the recipe comes from. I encourage you to review these recipes and check out the small-and-large differences in how this dish is made, depending on where in Asia the recipe is centered. (For instance, many of these recipes call for that ice bath that I mentioned earlier; that’s not ubiquitous in Thailand.)

Also, I want to note that as far as the side soup goes, I’ve only seen that Thai preparations of khao man gai GUARANTEE the soup on the side. I’ve seen some places in Singapore offer the side soup, but not all. The addition of daikon or winter melon to the soup, in Thai preparations, gives me the shivers, it is so good. So if/when you’re making this at home, keep in mind that you can choose to serve the broth/soup on the side.

Two last notes -- this coming from me, a mom and busy home cook. I sometimes do a very bastardized version of this dish for my kids, where I poach chicken in aromatics, but I don’t sauté the rice beforehand -- I just chuck the rice in my rice cooker with my poaching liquid. When I do this, I always freeze a half-quart to a quart of broth. Then, when I make the dish again, I take out that frozen broth, add it to my pot with my new chicken and water, and start poaching again. Having that base of previous broth really DOES help make my future chicken and soups taste that much richer. 

AND -- while I have daikon available in my supermarket (thank you, big cities!), I often use turnips as the veg that I serve with the broth. I LOVE turnips in soup, y’all! Turnips in chicken soup are oniony without being overwhelming, and I love how translucent and creamy they get. They totally hold the flavor of broth beautifully. Next time you’re making soup, don’t leave the turnips behind, they’re great! (Oh, and also, a tip I learned from the Kinou Nani Tabeta mangas -- I also use leeks as an aromatic in my soup, along with garlic and ginger. Leeks are AMAZING in soup! They can help take away any gaminess you might get from poaching chicken or other meat.)

Okay, recipes!

The Woks of Life (China)

Food 52 (Thailand)

Mark Wiens (Thailand)

Rasa Malaysia (Malaysia)

Adam Liaw (Singapore-ish recipe, note the use of sesame oil for rubbing on the chicken after the ice bath -- not all recipes call for this)

Kwokspots (maybe we can call this a ubiquitously Asian recipe? I actually just love this dude on IG, I’m gonna hype up his recipe)

Um, this is a lot. Where can I order this dish?

In my post about A Tale of Thousand Stars, I referenced Eim Khao Man Gai in Elmhurst, Queens, NY (see footnote below). I unfortunately only know places to eat Hainanese chicken rice/khao man gai in either NY or SoCal, but I ENCOURAGE you to please seek it out wherever you live. 

Over the years, even while I’ve lived thousands of miles away from New York, Eim Khao Man Gai is my restaurant par excellence for khao man gai. It’s all they serve, and they do it SO well. Eim Khao Man Gai also does their chicken three ways -- steamed, roasted, and/or crispy. You guys, it’s just heavenly, and their side sauces are to die for.

In SoCal, Savoy Kitchen was the first place I heard of that specialized in chicken rice, and it’s incredible here. As well, I love Side Chick at the Westfield Santa Anita mall in Arcadia. I’ve eaten a bunch at Ipoh Kopitiam in Alhambra, but I haven’t tried their Singapore-style Hainan chicken rice yet -- it looks amazing, and many reviews say that it’s currently best version in the San Gabriel Valley. 

Back to New York for a second -- if you’re looking for a place more local to you that isn’t in Queens, just look at Yelp. If I lived in NYC now, I would be in tears with how much more available this dish has gotten over the years.

Wherever you are in the States -- the Bay Area, Texas, anywhere where there are significant Asian populations -- or wherever you are in the world, please seek out Hainanese chicken rice/khao man gai.  Again, it may not LOOK exciting on the menu. But you’ll get a taste for the kind of comfort food that really hits home for so many of us Asians.

Holy shit. You must be exhausted!

WOW WOW WOW, y’all. If you’ve gotten THIS FAR -- bless you! Thanks for going on this road with me. Please make, buy, and/or eat Hainanese chicken rice/khao man gai. Appreciate the differences of the dish from each of the cultures that you’re eating it from. Please give big hugs to GMMTV for focusing a BL on this most humble, beautiful, delicious, soul-satisfying dish. I’m hoping for all the food/love parallels. I’m dying to see Mix just snarf on a big plate of khao man gai to kick the series off.

Moonlight Chicken is gonna be SO GREAT! And chicken rice is just the best dish ever. Please enjoy it!

* * *

If you have the energy to read a little further, one more urge from your devoted food mom here. @secretsfromwholecloth​ noted in a comment on my ATOTS review that ae and aer friend had actually hit up Eim Khao Man Gai, which was SO RAD to read. If you have never visited NYC before, and you’re plotting your itinerary of the usual tourist stops -- I beg you to please save at least an afternoon to hop on the 7 train and head out to Queens. Queens has some of THE BEST RESTAURANTS in NYC. From Indian and Tibetan in Jackson Heights, to Thai and Filipino food in Elmhurst and Woodside, to Greek in Astoria, to Korean in Bayside and Flushing, and the monolith that is Flushing’s Chinatown -- Queens is the happiest and fucking coolest diverse place in the world. Don’t be afraid to leave Manhattan for an afternoon or even a whole day. Eat everything during the day, hit up Flushing Meadows Corona Park for some exercise, check out the Queens Museum and the awesome Noguchi Museum, unwind at a cocktail bar in Long Island City or Sunnyside at night. Queens is totally the unsung best borough in NYC, one of the most diverse counties in the States, and I’ll stand up for Queens County every minute of my life over Manhattan.

[animebw]

So there's a big issue with this final plotline about Kanon getting an offer to study abroad in Vienna. Actually, there's a few issues compounding on top of each other, but at heart it comes back to what I said before about Superstar lacking its own identity.

As a season finale, this storyline makes sense as the climax to a story like Hibike. You know, a conflict between just performing music because it's fun and you want to share that joy versus performing music to achieve greatness no matter the difficulties or sacrifices. And there have been hints at that throughout season 2- the second episode was all about exploring that idea and it was pretty damn excellent. That was the basis of Sumire and Keke's conflict in episode 9 as well: is it worth pushing the first-years out of the competition if it means a better chance to win for Keke's sake? And, of course, Wien's whole deal has been pursuing greatness at the expense of everything else. So it's not like this idea hasn't been established.

But that's also all it's been: established.

Something I'm realizing looking back on Superstar as a whole is how shockingly episodic it's been from start to finish. Compared to Sunshine and SIP, which developed pretty continuous story threads as they went along, very little of Superstar's many component parts feel like they feed into each other. Kanon had three episodes of stage fright at the start and then it wasn't an issue again until the penultimate episode of the first season. Basically every character's introduction arc into Liella is completely self-contained with emotional issues that are no longer a factor once they're part of the group. And all those moments season 2 touches on the theme of greatness vs passion are similarly resolved in a tight twenty-four minute package. The idea's brought up, toyed with, then resolved the same way: Liella is nine, and they want to sing for each other and the joy of singing. There's no progression of that theme, no elaboration, no sense that the way the characters interact with those ideas is evolving throughout the season or changing them as people.

So to have this Vienna school thrust upon us in the last moments of the season feels... wrong. It feels like it's trying to pull on threads that have already been tied up, trying to make a grand, cumulative statement on something that just hasn't been prominent enough in the story to warrant that amount of focus. We know what Superstar thinks about the conflict between doing what you love because you love it and doing what you love to create something special with it. It's already been tidily resolved multiple times. And trying to close out the season by prying those closed loops open again just reveals how little this idea has actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. Actually, it's worse; it's revealed how little any of Superstar's ideas have mattered. This season, compared to even Sunshine's weakest stretches, has so little meat on its bones that any conclusion would ring hollow from how little foundation it has to build on.

And unfortunately, it's let me to one final big disappointing realization: Kanon is a bad protagonist.

Like, I'm kind of surprised that's where I've ended up? I've never disliked Kanon or her presence in the show, I've had no trouble watching her on screen. But now that Superstar's actively centering her in the narrative again, I'm forced to realize that she is just such an empty character. Beyond the generic motivation of wanting to share her songs with the world and her long-since-resolved stage fright issues, I can't think of anything that defines her. No real quirks, no specific motivating factors, few strong relationships with the rest of Liella, no sense of her family life... I could talk at length about the nuances of Honoka and Chika and the different aspects of the genki girl archetype they emulate, even how they change and mature throughout their respective shows (And neither of them are my favorite characters of their groups!) But with Kanon? She's a near-empty vessel propped up by the much more dynamic cast surrounding her.

And that's a huge problem when you're trying to build any sort of drama around her specifically. Especially when that drama relies on us believing that Kanon is such an exceptional singer that one of the best music schools in the world would make an offer to her. Because straight up? I do not believe that for a second. Even the the heightened, idealized world of Love Live, it does not make sense how this girl, of all people, could make such an impression all by herself. Nothing Superstar has shown us has made it seem like Kanon is any more or less talented than her classmates. Honestly, Love Live's never really been good at showcasing the individual talents and skill levels of its main cast; when the performance starts, they're all basically the same up on stage. But that's never been a problem before because the story's never been about exploring those different skill levels until now. And nothing in this show has felt like it's even been trying to present Kanon as some kind of exceptional star in the making. She's always just been one idol among many, except now we're supposed to believe she's a step above everyone else and there's just no evidence to support that.

So Kanon's not a bad protagonist in the sense that she's annoying or unrealistic. She's a bad protagonist because Superstar has utterly failed to justify why she belongs at the center of this story. And with all the other issues I've talked about compounding on top of that, it's basically impossible for this show to do anything meaningful with her character as is. She's doomed to an existence of perpetual superfluousness, a gaping hole at the center of her own narrative who can only ever fail to be more than that. And that, more than anything, is the reason that Superstar, for all its delights, has come up so painfully short.

[waffleweirdo]

Thats how Love Live Superstar ends?!?!?!?! WHAT

Anyways

Some general thoughts: I really liked it! As a whole Superstar maintained the strengths of both the original and Sunshine with its great cast, while also adjusting the archetypal plot in ways that I felt kept it fresh!

I think Superstar's greatest change was the switch to only introducing about half the cast in the first season. It allowed for greater time establishing their relationships and characters, while also creating an interesting dynamic with the new students when the school year changed. It helped the characterization a lot!

That being said I do think there is still a struggle with managing nine main cast members, in 24 episodes. I think the entire cast is great, but I definitely think Ren's focus fell a bit short. Perhaps it is simply personal opinion, but I think her introduction and motivation didn't really get the proper attention they needed. Not that I expect the whole conflict to be resolved, but that it felt somewhat under explored, which I felt was a shame. I'd say this was probably Superstar's biggest failing.

As far as characters go its really difficult for me to pick out favorites as I really did love the whole cast. Honestly any of Kanon, Chisato, Sumire, or Keke could be, but I'm not sure. Of course maybe Wien? I don't know, I did end up liking her a lot, but I feel like I still need to learn more about her. Out of the first years I'd say maybe Shiki? She definitely had me laughing the most.

Oh yeah this show was so funny! I think Love Live always had pretty good humor, but without a doubt Superstar was far and away the most I've had to pause and laugh in a while. The jokes themselves are great, but I think it's also an endorsement for how great the cast chemistry is that their hijinks are always so fitting and so charming.

Superstar certainly had the least definitive ending of any of the series. For both the original and Sunshine there was a slight disconnect between the series finale and the movie that followed, but Superstar seemed to end right on a cliffhanger! I wonder what will happen next! (come to think of it I know its still new is there a movie or sequel announced? I probably should have checked before writing this, oops!)

Its sort of hard to sum up my thoughts on Superstar. I know I enjoyed it, and not only did I enjoy the characters, but the emotional beats hit me in the feels as well. I can't remember exactly how many times it was, but the show made me cry at least twice (s2e9 the greatest offender). In a sense my thoughts are kind of fitting, because they are all a bit disjointed and all the members of Liella kind of are too! They didn't all unite under some purpose, or at the same time, but they still connected and I think that's neat. Yes this is a super corny ending to this post, but it's my rambly thoughts so I can say what I want!

[silent-era-of-cinema]

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (22 January 1893 – 3 April 1943) was a German actor best remembered for his roles in the films Different from the Others (1919), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and The Man Who Laughs (1928). After a successful career in German silent films, where he was one of the best-paid stars of UFA, he and his new Jewish wife Ilona Prager were forced to leave Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. The couple settled in Britain, where he took British citizenship in 1939. He appeared in many British films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the United States around 1941, which led to his being cast as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942).

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in his parents' home at Tieckstraße 39 in Berlin to Amalie Marie (née Gohtz) and Philipp Heinrich Veidt, a former military man turned civil servant. Veidt would later recall, “Like many fathers, he was affectionately autocratic in his home life, strict, idealistic. He was almost fanatically conservative.” By contrast, Amalie was sensitive and nurturing. Veidt was nicknamed 'Connie' by his family and friends. His family was Lutheran, and Veidt was confirmed in a ceremony at the Protestant Evangelical Church in Alt-Schöneberg, Berlin on 5 March 1908. Veidt's only sibling, an older brother named Karl, died in 1900 of scarlet fever at the age of 9. The family spent their summers in Potsdam.

Two years after Karl's death, Veidt's father fell ill and required heart surgery. Knowing that the family could not afford to pay the lofty fee that accompanied the surgery, the doctor charged only what the family could comfortably pay. Impressed by the surgeon's skill and kindness, Veidt vowed to "model my life on the man that saved my father's life" and he wished to become a surgeon. His hopes for a medical career were thwarted, though, when in 1912 he graduated without a diploma and ranked 13th out of 13 pupils and became discouraged over the amount of study necessary for him to qualify for medical school.

A new career path for Veidt opened up in 1911 during a school Christmas play in which he delivered a long prologue before the curtain rose. The play was badly received, and the audience was heard to mutter, "Too bad the others didn't do as well as Veidt." Veidt began to study all of the actors he could and wanted to pursue a career in acting, much to the disappointment of his father, who called actors 'gypsys' and 'outcasts'.

With the money he raised from odd jobs and the allowance his mother gave him, Veidt began attending Berlin's many theaters. He loitered outside of the Deutsches Theater after every performance, waiting for the actors and hoping to be mistaken for one. In the late summer of 1912 he met a theater porter who introduced him to actor Albert Blumenreich, who agreed to give Veidt acting lessons for six marks. He took ten lessons from him before auditioning for Max Reinhardt, reciting Goethe's Faust. During Veidt's audition, Reinhardt looked out of the window the entire time. He offered Veidt a contract as an extra for one season's work, from September 1913 to August 1914 with a pay of 50 marks a month. During this time, he played bit parts as spear carriers and soldiers. His mother attended almost every performance. His contract with the Deutsches Theater was renewed for a second season, but by this time World War I had begun, and on 28 December 1914, Veidt enlisted in the army.

In 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front as a non-commissioned officer and took part in the Battle of Warsaw. He contracted jaundice and pneumonia, and had to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. While recuperating, he received a letter from his girlfriend Lucie Mannheim, telling him that she had found work at the Front Theatre in Libau. Intrigued, Veidt applied for the theatre as well. As his condition had not improved, the army allowed him to join the theatre so that he could entertain the troops. While performing at the theatre, his relationship with Mannheim ended. In late 1916, he was re-examined by the Army and deemed unfit for service; he was given a full discharge on 10 January 1917. Veidt returned to Berlin where he was readmitted to the Deutsches Theater. There, he played a small part as a priest that got him his first rave review, the reviewer hoping that "God would keep Veidt from the films." or "God save him from the cinema!"

From 1917 until his death, Veidt appeared in more than 100 films. One of his earliest performances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a classic of German Expressionist cinema, with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured circus performer whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (visual) inspiration for the Batman villain the Joker. Veidt starred in other silent horror films such as The Hands of Orlac (1924), also directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924), in which he played Ivan the Terrible. Veidt also appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919), one of the earliest films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily. He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929).

He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s and made a few films there, but the advent of talking pictures and his difficulty with speaking English led him to return to Germany. During this period, he lent his expertise to tutoring aspiring performers, one of whom was the later American character actress Lisa Golm.

Veidt fervently opposed the Nazi regime and later donated a major portion of his personal fortune to Britain to assist in the war effort. Soon after the Nazi Party took power in Germany, by March 1933, Joseph Goebbels was purging the film industry of anti-Nazi sympathizers and Jews, and so in April 1933, a week after Veidt's marriage to Ilona Prager, a Jewish woman, the couple emigrated to Britain before any action could be taken against either of them.

Goebbels had imposed a "racial questionnaire" in which everyone employed in the German film industry had to declare their "race" to continue to work. When Veidt was filling in the questionnaire, he answered the question about what his Rasse (race) was by writing that he was a Jude (Jew). Veidt was not Jewish, but his wife was Jewish, and Veidt would not renounce the woman he loved. Additionally, Veidt, who was opposed to antisemitism, wanted to show solidarity with the German Jewish community, who were in the process of being stripped of their rights as German citizens in the spring of 1933. As one of Germany's most prominent actors, Veidt had been informed that if he were prepared to divorce his wife and declare his support for the new regime, he could continue to act in Germany. Several other leading actors who had been opposed to the Nazis before 1933 switched allegiances. In answering the questionnaire by stating he was a Jew, Veidt rendered himself unemployable in Germany, but stated this sacrifice was worth it as there was nothing in the world that would compel him to break with his wife. Upon hearing about what Veidt had done, Goebbels remarked that he would never act in Germany again.

After arriving in Britain, Veidt perfected his English and starred in the title roles of the original anti-Nazi versions of The Wandering Jew (1933) and Jew Süss (1934), the latter film was directed by the exiled German-born director Lothar Mendes and produced by Michael Balcon for Gaumont-British. He naturalised as a British subject on 25 February 1939. By this point multi-lingual, Veidt made films both in French with expatriate French directors and in English, including three of his best-known roles for British director Michael Powell in The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

By 1941, he and Ilona had settled in Hollywood to assist in the British effort in making American films that might persuade the then-neutral and still isolationist US to join the war against the Nazis, who at that time controlled all of continental Europe and were bombing the United Kingdom. Before leaving the United Kingdom, Veidt gave his life savings to the British government to help finance the war effort. Realizing that Hollywood would most likely typecast him in Nazi roles, he had his contract mandate that they must always be villains.

He starred in a few films, such as George Cukor's A Woman's Face (1941) where he received billing under Joan Crawford's and Nazi Agent (1942), in which he had a dual role as both an aristocratic German Nazi spy and the man's twin brother, an anti-Nazi American. His best-known Hollywood role was as the sinister Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942), a film which began pre-production before the United States entered World War II. Commenting about this well-received role, Veidt noted that it was an ironical twist of that that he was praised "for portraying the kind of character who had forced him to leave his homeland".

Veidt enjoyed sports, gardening, swimming, golfing, classical music, and reading fiction and nonfiction (including occultism; Veidt once considered himself a powerful medium). He was afraid of heights and flying, and disliked interviews and wearing ties.

In a September 1941 interview with Silver Screen, Veidt said,

I see a man who was once for years studying occult things. The science of occult things. I had the feeling there must be – something else. There are things in our world we cannot trace. I wanted to trace them. The power we have to think, to move, to speak, to feel – is it electricity, I wanted to know? Is it magnetism? Is it the heart? Is it the blood? When the body dies, where is all that? Where is the power that made the body live? No one can tell me it is not somewhere. If you believe in waves, which you must believe after you have the radio, why couldn't human beings contact the wave lengths of someone who is dead? ... this is the kind of thing with which I was, for many years, preoccupied. This is what I tried to find, the answer. I did not find it. But in looking for it there was etched, perhaps, on my face, some hint of the strange cabals I kept with unseen and unknown powers. I did not find it, I say. But I found something else. Something better. I found –faith. I found the ability, very peaceful, to accept that which I could neither see, nor hear nor touch. I am a religious man. My belief is that if we could help to make all people a little more religious, we would do a great lot. If we would pray more ... we forget to pray except when we are in a mess. That is too bad. I believe in prayer. Because when we pray, we always pray for something good.

He went on:

I must tell you something that will disappoint you ... far from being one engaged in strangle rituals of thought or action, what I like best to do is sit in this small garden, on this terrace, and – just sit. Sometimes, I confess, I think a lot; about my past. About my parents who are dead. I like to dream, to go away ... At other times, I sit and read. I read, often, a whole day through. I play golf. I used to be a golf fiend. Now I am not a fiend even on the links. Now I play because it is relaxation. I like the beach very much, the sea. I go to the films often, to the neighborhood theater, my wife and I. Sometimes we go to the Palladium, where there is dancing. It is an amazing sight to me to see young people, how they are like they were thirty years ago, how they hold hands, how they enjoy their lives. To me, the most beautiful thing in California is the Hollywood Bowl, the Concerts Under the Stars. For me, it is a terrific experience. I have never seen an audience in my life like that. 30,000 people, simple people, most of them, listening to music under the stars. I have never seen 30,000 people, simple people, so quiet. I like to think of them as a symbol that one day there may be that oneness for all mankind....

On 18 June 1918, Veidt married Gussy Holl, a cabaret entertainer. They had first met at a party in March 1918, and Conrad described her to friends as "very lovely, tall, dignified and somewhat aloof". They separated in 1919 but attempted to reconcile multiple times. Holl and Veidt divorced in 1922.

Veidt said of Holl, "She was as perfect as any wife could be. But I had not learnt how to be a proper husband." and, "I was elated by my success in my work, but shattered over my mother's death, and miserable about the way my marriage seemed to be foundering. And one day when my wife was away, I walked out of the house, and out of her life, trying to escape from something I could put no name to."

After his separation and eventual divorce from Holl, Veidt allegedly dated his co-star Anita Berber.

Veidt's second wife Felizitas Radke was from an aristocratic Austrian family. They met at a party in December 1922 or at a Charleston dance competition in 1923. Radke divorced her husband for him, and they married in April 1923. Their daughter, Vera Viola Maria, nicknamed "Kiki", was born on 10 August 1925. He was not present at her birth due to being in Italy working on The Fiddler of Florence, but upon hearing of her birth, he took the first train to Berlin and flailed and wept as he first met mother and child at the hospital; he was so hysterical from joy they had to sedate him and keep him in the hospital overnight.

Emil Jannings was Viola's godfather and Elisabeth Bergner was her godmother. She was named after one of Bergner's signature characters, Shakespeare's Viola. The birth of his daughter helped Veidt move on from the death of his dearly loved mother, who had died of a heart condition in January 1922.

From September 1926 to 1929 Veidt lived with his wife and daughter in a Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills.

Veidt enjoyed relaxing and playing with his daughter in their home, and enjoyed the company of the immigrant community, including F. W. Murnau, Carl Laemmle, and Greta Garbo, as well as the American Gary Cooper. The family returned to Germany in 1929, and moved several times afterwards, including a temporary relocation to Vienna, Austria, while Veidt participated in a theatrical tour of the continent.

Radke and Veidt divorced in 1932, with Radke citing that the frequent relocations and the separations necessitated by Veidt's acting schedule frayed their marriage. Radke at first granted custody of their daughter to Veidt, but after further consideration he decided that their daughter needed the full-time parent that his work would not allow him to be. Conrad received generous visitation rights, and Viola called her summer vacations with her father "The Happy Times". She stayed with him three or four months of the year until the outbreak of World War II.

He last married Ilona "Lilli" Barta Prager (or Preger), a Hungarian Jew, in Berlin on 30 March 1933; they remained together until his death. The two had met at a club in Berlin. Veidt said of Lilli in an October 1934 interview with The Sunday Dispatch,

Lilli was the woman I had been seeking all my life. For her I was the man. In Lilli I found the miracle of a woman who had all to give that I sought, the perfect crystallisation in one lovely human being, of all my years of searching. Lilli had the mother complex too. But in the reverse ratio to mine. In her, the mother instinct was so powerful that she poured it out, indiscriminately almost, on everyone she knew. She mothers her own mother. Meeting Lilli was like coming home to an enchanted place one had always dreamed of, but never thought to reach. For her it was the same. Our marriage is not only flawless, it is a complete and logical union, as inevitable as daybreak after night, as harmonious and right as the words that exactly fit the music. My search is finished. The picture in my mind of my mother is of a woman great and holy. But it is a picture clear and. distinct, a deep and humble memory of a woman no one could replace; but now it is not blurred by the complex which before had harassed my mind.

Veidt and Lilli arrived from London at Los Angeles on 13 June 1940 and resided in Beverly Hills, where they lived at 617 North Camden Drive.

Even after leaving England, Veidt was concerned over the plight of children cooped up in London air raid shelters, and he decided to try to cheer up their holiday. Through his attorneys in London, Veidt donated enough money to purchase 2,000 one-pound tins of candy, 2,000 large packets of chocolate, and 1,000 wrapped envelopes containing presents of British currency. The gifts went to children of needy families in various air raid shelters in the London area during Christmas 1940. The air raid shelter marshal wrote back to Veidt thanking him for the gifts. Noting Veidt's unusual kindness, he stated in his letter to him, "It is significant to note that, as far as is known to me, you are the only member of the Theatrical Profession who had the thought to send Christmas presents to the London children."

Veidt smuggled his parents-in-law from Austria to neutral Switzerland, and in 1935 he managed to get the Nazi government to let his ex-wife Radke and their daughter move to Switzerland. He also offered to help Felizita's mother, Frau Radke, of whom he was fond, leave Germany. However, she declined. A proud, strong-willed woman who was attached to her home country, she declared that "no damned little Austrian Nazi corporal" was going to make her leave her home. She reportedly survived the war, but none of the Veidts ever saw her again.

Veidt was bisexual and a feminist. In a 1941 interview he said,

There are two different kinds of men. There are the men men, what do you call them, the man's man, who likes men around, who prefers to talk with men, who says the female can never be impersonal, who takes the female lightly, as playthings. I do not see a man like that in my mirror. Perhaps, it is because I think the female and the male attract better than two men, that I prefer to talk with females. I do. I find it quite as stimulating and distinctly more comfortable. I have a theory about this – it all goes back to the mother complex. In every woman, the man who looks may find – his mother. The primary source of all his comfort. I think also that females have become too important just to play with. When men say the female cannot discuss impersonally, that is no longer so. When it is said that females cannot be geniuses, that is no longer so, either. The female is different from the male. Because she was born to be a mother. There is no doubt about that. But that does not mean that, in some cases, she is not also born a genius. Not all males are geniuses either. And among females today there are some very fine actresses, very fine; fine doctors, lawyers, even scientists and industrialists. I see no fault in any female when she wears slacks, smokes (unless it is on the street, one thing, the only thing, which I don't like), when she drives a car ... when men say things like "I bet it is a woman driving" if something is wrong with the car ahead – no, no. These are old, worn out prejudices, they do not belong in today.

In the 1930s, Veidt discovered that he had the same heart condition that his mother had died from. The condition was further aggravated by chain smoking, and Veidt took nitroglycerin tablets.

Veidt died of a massive heart attack on 3 April 1943 while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician, Dr. Bergman, who pronounced him dead at the scene. He had suddenly gasped and fallen over after getting to the eighth hole. He was 50 years old. His ex-wife Felizitas and his daughter Viola found out about his death via a radio broadcast in Switzerland.

In 1998, his ashes, along with his wife Lilli's, were placed in a niche of the columbarium at the Golders Green Crematorium in north London.

[silenthillmutual]

horror/thriller movie recommendations based on your fave Danganronpa 1/2 character

the series in general: Saw (2004, dir. James Wan) - i can’t give much of a reasoning for this as i haven’t seen it but the “punishment fits the victim” trope appears to be a thing in Saw?

Makoto Naegi: It (2017, dir. Andres Muschietti) - as much about the power of friendship as it is about a fear beyond all others. the premise is probably relatively well known by now for the fact that there’s a big clown in it. content warnings: clowns, unsanitary, implied incest and csa.

Sayaka Maizono: Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - this suggestion is an incredibly cheap shot, please forgive me. famous film, not sure if i can talk too much about the plotline without giving away the most important part.

Mukuro Ikusaba: Us (2019, dir. Jordan Peele) - doppelgangers show up to wreak havoc on an american family. themes of identity theft. much bloodier than Get Out. 

Leon Kuwata: Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven) - admittedly haven’t seen this either yet. i know, i know, i’m a fake horror fan. but i know that it was made as a sort of tongue-in-cheek homage to the tropeyness of horror films, and i didn’t want to put any movie too blatantly humorous here. i thought this would fit Leon.

Chihiro Fujisaki: A Quiet Place (2018, dir. John Krasinski) - monsters that attack based on noise terrorize a family. most dialogue is delivered through sign language. also has a really touching family dynamic, especially between the father and his children.

Mondo Oowada: Pet Sematary (1989, dir. Mary Lambert) - haven’t seen this one either, whoops. all i know is it’s about, like, bringing people back from the dead or something, and that it’s based on a Stephen King book.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru: The Stand (1994, dir. Mick Garris) - technically a miniseries, but i wasn’t really sure what other horror story fit him. it’s the world at the end in a final battle between good and evil, and nothing says Ultimate Moral Compass more than that to me.

Hifumi Yamada: Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - the whole “i’ll do your murder if you do mine” kinda hits for chapter 3 i think. i also remember his hostage being his sister, so he’d probably like the relationship between Anne and Barbara.

Celes Ludenberg: Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro) - there’s a line the main character says that’s something to the effect of how she’d rather be like Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley because she died a widow? that’s Celescore. content warning: incest.

Sakura Oogami: Hereditary (2018, dir. Ari Aster) - both in the way that her dojo is a family business and in the themes of being afraid of hurting your loved ones. content warnings: child death, car accident, decapitation, possession, drug usage.

Toko Fukawa: Rebecca (1940, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - again haven’t watched or read the book on which it is based but the fact alone that it is based on a book? and it’s not directed by stanley kubrick’s book-ruining ass?

Byakuya Togami: Rope (1948, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - based on a play which itself was probably based loosely on the Leopold & Loeb case, it’s famous in part for its protagonists being gay. also they have superiority complexes and think that the privileged few should be allowed to murder inferior people because they’re above morality.

Yasuhiro Hagakure: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. Wes Craven) - i feel like this is closer to what his brand of horror would be, but also people not really believing that what’s happening is actually happening is kind of his m.o. too. content warning: i don’t remember if this is explicit in the original or not, but Freddy Krueger was a pedophile.

Aoi Asahina: Friday the 13th (1980, dir. Sean S. Cunningham) - again i just think this is closer to what Hina’s brand of horror would be, but also i feel like the summer camp aesthetic would be for her.

Kyouko Kirigiri: The Secret in Their Eyes (2009, dir. Juan Jose Campanella) - i don’t totally remember it but detective going off the rails trying to solve a rape & murder case. Very intense, but very good.

Junko Enoshima: Midsommar (2019, dir. Ari Aster) - gaslighting people into joining a death cult? yeah, that screams junko. content warnings: graphic suicide, drug usage, gaslighting, people on fire, nudity, sex.

Monokuma: Child’s Play (1988, dir. Tom Holland) - creepy toy carrying the soul of a murderer. still need to finish watching this one, other than “creepy doll” i don’t have anything to offer in the way of content warnings. 

Hajime Hinata: Get Out (2017, dir. Jordan Peele) - reluctant to go too much into details because i wouldn’t want to spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it, but the experiment done on Hajime vibes w this movie. content warning in that this film is about racism.

Twogami: Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - too many details would give away spoilers but the identity theft theme of the film fits for a guy whose talent is in identity theft.

Teruteru Hanamura: Halloween (1978, dir. John Carpenter) - had a hard time thinking of a horror movie for Teruteru, but Halloween (and 80′s slashers in general) have a tendency to punish the horny.

Mahiru Koizumi: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, dir. Jim Gillespie) - would it be too much of a spoiler to say there’s similarities between this film & what gets Mahiru killed in-game?

Peko Pekoyama: The Purge (2013, dir. James DeMonaco) - people using masks to enact what they feel is justified revenge on the one day of the year when all crime is legal.

Hiyoko Saionji: The VVitch (2015, dir. Robert Eggers) - based on colonial-era folk tales about witches. very atmospheric, features the same kind of abusive slut-shaming verbal assaults Hiyoko hurls at others. content warning for briefly implied incest, some nudity, and parents being shitty.

Ibuki Mioda: Green Room (2015, dir. Jeremy Saulnier) - still need to see this one; punk band tries to survive to the end of the night after witnessing neo-nazis commit a murder.

Mikan Tsumiki: Carrie (1976, dir. Brian De Palma) - another film based on a stephen king novella, and also a pretty famous story. a longtime bullying & abuse victim starts to lose her shit after she begins developing telepathy. content warning for some nudity, fire, and an abusive mother.

Nekomaru Nidai: Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960, dir. Georges Franju) - wasn’t really sure where to go with him either, at first, and settled on body horror considering what happens to him later in-game. a doctor attempts to find a new face for his daughter after she is left disfigured from an accident. 

Gundham Tanaka: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921, dir. Robert Wiene) - a mad scientist claims his hypnotized ‘somnambulist’ can see into the future, including the deaths of carnival-goers. highly influential silent film, german expressionist so peak aesthetic.

Nagito Komaeda: The Silence of the Lambs (1991, dir. Jonathan Demme) - it’s probably well enough known for Hannibal the Cannibal being in it, but it’s worth noting he’s not the primary antagonist of the film. he is the most memorable part of it, and his psychoanalysis is what made me think of Komaeda. content warnings for gore, sexual harassment, referenced cannibalism, period-typical transphobia (period is the late 80s/early 90s).

Chiaki Nanami: V/H/S (2012, various directors) - a horror anthology film of found-footage type shorts, not shown in chronological order of events. i don’t really remember the contents enough for warnings, check at your own risk.

Akane Owari: The Blair Witch Project (1999, dirs. Eduardo Sanchez & Daniel Myrick) - don’t really have a good reason for this one other than “they all go feral, which Akane is seconds from doing at any given moment.” i think she’d dig it. no real content warnings to be had, the original found footage film.

Kazuichi Souda: Jaws (1975, dir. Stephen Spielberg) - i’m not even entirely sure i know what would make him like it, maybe just the mechanical shark? i think we all know this as the movie that made people double down on their hatred of sharks. i don’t particularly care for it, but it’s popular.

Sonia Nevermind: Perfume: Story of a Murderer (2006, dir. Tom Tykwer) - follows a would-be perfumer as he murders women in an attempt to create the perfect scent. in retrospect i probably should have picked something based on a real crime, but i still think she’d like this one.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu: M (1931, dir. Fritz Lang) - when the police fail to catch a serial child murderer, the criminal underworld steps up to take action into their own hands. fitting, no?

Usami: Trick ‘r Treat (2007, dir. Michael Doughtery) - another sort of anthology film that follows what happens to townsfolk when they don’t abide by Halloween traditions. i put it for Usami because i thought it was actually kind of cute, as far as horror films go.

[ao3feed-ineffablehusbandz]

When I Want to Dance (I Fly)

by Tiny_Dragongirl

You can’t go too fast when you’re flying.

Words: 2022, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Good Omens (TV)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Elisabeth von Österreich-Ungarn | Elisabeth of Bavaria, Der Tod | Death (Elisabeth)

Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)

Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Flying, House Hunting, Miscommunication, Love Confessions, Wien 1854, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, But absolutely failing to understand each other, First Kiss, Wings, Der Tod is not the sympathetic Death we know and adore

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/25494952

[khalaris]

🧐 & 🤩 für das emoji ask pls!

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

Lots of research on Austrian/Vienna dialect and word choice, bought (and partly read) a whole stack of books about how investigations work, etc. I've done a bit of research into queerness in Vienna in the 80s, but it's kinda hard to find historical information online. There is a lot still left to do, and some things I've been putting off tbh, mostly anything to do with the aids crisis, because the whole topic is so depressing and sad. So, yes, I spend a lot of time researching, mostly for a single story 😄

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

Oooh, hard choice. Definitely my Tatort Wien blorbos. I love writing all of them, but if I have to pick one of them, I guess it'll be Ernstl. (to absolutely no-one's surprise 😄) He is so easy to write, he'll just do anything. Hard-ass boss? He'll do that. Gay and hot and flirty? Sure! Touch-starved ace? No problem at all. Complete emotional wreck? Hell yeah! Snarky? Yup. Gentle and soft? Aw, definitely! Any combination of these? Yes, yes and yes. To be fair, even after almost 20 years we still don't know much about him, but how he's written in canon is mostly pretty consistent and Hubsi Kramar's acting choices give him a nice subtlety and a lot of expressions and stuff to work with or interpret. I just think he's a really interesting character, I love exploring who he is and what makes him tick and his relationships with the other characters.

[taniecwampirow]

How I met Michael Kunze

Back at home! Sorry for the late reply but I didn’t have an access to my computer earlier.

Perhaps you saw my short post about meeting with Michael Kunze. @merinathropp asked me to tell the whole story, so here it is!

10 years ago I „infected” my friend (let’s call him Tomek) with love for Kunze’s works. Not that long ago he got a grant to write a book about Michael Kunze’s musicals. Tomek made some interviews with Vereinigten Bühnen Wien dramatists, costume designers, and so on, and finally he asked Kunze via email if he and his friend (that’s me) could talk to him. Kunze agreed and invited us to his house. We came there, both quite nervous and excited. We gave him DVDs with 2 Polish musicals to advertise our country a little. I told him that his works made me decide about my future and that I wrote my own musical because of it (and it’s actually played in a real theatre). Then we talked with him for almost 3 hours in his home-office.

On the wall was hanging a big board with drama-musical scheme. There was a lot of books about his musicals, the posters, the Broadway CD of Tanz der Vampire (I joked I thought he would burn it) and small mannequin in Mozart’s outfit.

We talked about a musical theater in general, history, nationalism, Elisabeth, Mozart!, Tanz der Vampire, Marie Antoinette, Lady Bess and other topics. I don’t know if those things appeared in other interviews, but here are some TdV informations that may interest you: 

- Magda was supposed to be a Bertold Brecht-ish character. She shouldn’t be that emotional in the “Tot zu sein ist komisch” scene. - He once again confirmed that the whole „die Unstillbare Gier” is fake. Actually, this song is a parody of Faust and its I-would-give-anything-for-one-happy-moment message. - Krolock is like Freddy Mercury - he uses a lot of pretended theatrical pathos, he is a showman. We know it, but we still think it’s amazing. - I asked him my very-fan-question: how does relationship between Herbert and Krolock looks like. He said he never thought of it and that they are just father and son (obviously). - The falling castle in the old ending is like a beehive. When someone destroys it, the bees - or vampires - spread all over the world. - He said that he likes the old TdV version better, because it is more Polanski’s than the new one. - Herbert appears in Carpe Noctem just because they needed his kind of voice in the song. - For now there is no actor who would be able to play Krolock as the author intended. The ideal actor should play a vampire who only plays his dramatic sorrow and the audience should get it. Kunze tells this to all Krolock-actors but they just can’t do this OR they can’t resist the temptation of being tragic on stage.

At the end we took some pictures with Kunze and said goodbye.

What can I say? I still can’t believe I’ve met the man whose works literally changed my life :) 

PS. Tomek’s book will be released in Polish AND English so if you are interested, I may let you know when it happens.

[dweemeister]

The Blue Angel (1930, Germany)

With the silent era at its conclusion and the rise of Nazism upcoming, German cinema’s brief early sound era shows the visual mastery of what might have been. The Blue Angel is Germany’s first feature-length synchronized sound film and is helmed by Austrian-American Josef von Sternberg in his only German-language production. Von Sternberg had directed a handful of films for Paramount prior to The Blue Angel, including The Docks of New York (1928) and The Last Command (1928). Thematically, The Blue Angel – produced by Universum Film AG (UFA) and distributed in the United States by Paramount – is a departure from von Sternberg’s previous films, while also adopting the aesthetic influences of German expressionism. In these precious few years following the heights of German silent film glory, the audience is treated to a talkie that always feels like a silent film. That incongruity never distracts, and only serves to demonstrate how remarkable The Blue Angel is in an experimental period of filmmaking – a period where few filmmakers could balance the needs of image and sound.

In Weimar Germany, disciplinarian professor Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) is the target of pranks and barbed words from his students at an all-male college prep school. One day, he is particularly annoyed by the boys passing around photographs of cabaret performer Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). Lola performs at a local nightclub called The Blue Angel, and Rath visits in hopes to catch his students there. His students are present, but Rath is overcome by lust after watching Lola perform. Returning the next night with a pair of her panties (that one of his students smuggled into his pocket), he spends the night with her. Rumors spread like the flu, Rath is dismissed from his professorship, and allows himself to be humiliated for what he thinks is love. His downfall is sealed.

The Blue Angel is a tragedy, but has more to do with Greek drama than Shakespeare – the former emphasizes the inescapability of divine fate and the role of human hubris in believing predestination can be overcome; the latter is dictated on the free will of an individual and how their character flaws result in their demise (the flaw need not be hubris, but it is often invoked by Shakespeare). According to von Sternberg, The Blue Angel is making no attempts at political allegory, so his intentions are purely personal. As Rath, Jannings plays his character as a rebuke to the besotted silent film romances seen across Western cinema. Unlike Heinrich Mann’s novel on which this film is based on, The Blue Angel never allows Rath to change himself over the course of his relationship with Lola. Maybe the audience should have sensed this earlier: his personality, his sense of order in the classroom was of strict control. Believing in his intelligence and ability to control his emotions and the situation, he stumbles upon Lola, holding her up to an image of perfection, and believing in that image steadfastly until he finally sees otherwise.

As the film’s seductress, Lola is a charismatic fantasy that men desire (permit some heteronormative language in respect to what the film depicts). But what people desire and what they need are distinct – something that neither Rath nor Lola ever understand. In her introductory scene, Lola is performing onstage, essentially opening herself to the unprocessed feelings of lustful men (young and old). She purrs, “... I have a pianola / that is my joy and pride. / They call me naughty Lola; / the men all go for me. / But I don’t let any man / lay a paw on my keys.”

What does Lola see in Rath that makes her want to be with him? They marry and it is implied that they become intimate. Her side of the relationship alternates between fits of passion and vitriol; intimacy and unfaithfulness; attention and apathy. Amid a society where cabaret performers like Lola could be seen as flighty and licentious, in Rath Lola sees someone who thinks otherwise. But instead of attempting to understand Lola’s anxieties and weaknesses – the viewer senses that, beneath her erotic public performances, there is more to this character that is never depicted – Rath views her as a romantic nonpareil. His ability for critical thought disappears when it comes to this sort of relationship he might never have experienced; his ability for self-reflection tainted by an unbending, stern, studious approach to his students. For her, Rath presents an opportunity to be accepted as something magnificent, something pure that which she nor anyone ever will be.

The film’s sensitivities are with Rath, not Lola. Even in Rath’s most despicable moment, von Sternberg and fellow co-screenwriters Carl Zuckmeyer, Karl Vollmöller, Robert Liebmann ensure that The Blue Angel remains within the tradition of Greek tragedy (with a twist). Where in the original novel Rath embarks upon exacting revenge against the authoritarian society that has shaped his interactions with students, there is no such redemption here. Rath is punished for his dangerous lustfulness – as he should be. Curiously, the predatory Lola – despite becoming a victim of attempted violence in the final minutes – escapes punishment of any type. In Rath’s tragedy, she has discarded what she no longer wants and has gained something/someone she presently desires. No remorse is present, nor does there appear to be any emotional trauma from ending her relationship with Rath. Perhaps the audience should have expected this, given the lyrics to the memorable “Falling in Love Again”, sung by Dietrich twice with music by Friedrich Hollaender and lyrics by Robert Liebmann (these lyrics are from the English-language version of this song; Hollaender adjusted the songs to accommodate Dietrich’s limited, but effective, vocal range):

Love's always been my game, Play it how I may, I was made that way, Can't help it.

If The Blue Angel had been produced primarily in the United States later in the 1930s, this ending could not have been upheld by the censors. Love (or romance or whatever you wish to call it), to Lola, is a fun game to play. And playing by her rules, she has always won. Where Rath experiences a tragedy befitting a German expressionist protagonist, Lola’s inconclusive fate feels contemporary regardless of the film’s Weimar morals.

The film collapses without the performances from its two central stars. Before release, Jannings was the lead if one looked at the billing. He had just won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Actor in von Sternberg’s The Last Command and 1927′s The Way of All Flesh (actors were listed for multiple movies at the first Oscars) – this film was to be his nominal pinnacle. Jannings excelled in playing tortured, disgraced characters and could do no greater here with his physical acting. His performance would be just as spellbinding if The Blue Angel was a silent film. However, Jannings is upstaged by Dietrich the moment she appears on-screen. Dietrich, playing an intemperate woman, became an instant sensation to European and American audiences in this, her twentieth film (and first talkie). But her success in The Blue Angel also served to typecast Dietrich into roles unscrupulous and indiscreetly erotic – pursuing sexual satisfaction at the expense of others’ needs. Von Sternberg doted on Dietrich during production, sparking the ire of Jannings (who entered production hoping to become next Hollywood star, but instead saw his career plummet afterwards due to his heavy German accent and subsequent work Nazi propaganda films) and von Sternberg’s wife (who filed for divorce after the film’s release). Her sensuality defined this film, whether or not the cameras rolled.

Manning the cameras was veteran cinematographer Günther Rittau (Die Nibelungen saga, 1927′s Metropolis). Rittau captures the smoky interior of The Blue Angel nightclub and the seedy nighttime of this unnamed German town to convey a sense of enclosure. Art director Otto Hunte (Die Nibelungen saga, Metropolis) employs distorted geometries – early shots of angled rooftops and jagged roads primes the imagination for the unconventional story to come – and exaggerated shapes and lighting to assist Rittau in achieving the film’s wondrous atmosphere.

This film, like many in the early years of synchronized sound, was shot in two different languages – German and English (yes, the actors had to shoot every seen and recite their lines twice). The above has been written based on the 107-minute uncut German-language version distributed by Kino International, licensed by the Murnau Foundation, and aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Consensus says that the German-language version is superior to the English edition.

Predictable though it might be, The Blue Angel is a forceful statement of German filmmaking – it is a film honoring the expressionist past while showcasing its future (a future where many of its innovators would flee the Nazis and work in Hollywood). It would also be one of UFA’s final classics – the studio also released Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924), and Fritz Lang’s visionary Metropolis. Von Sternberg’s film, reflecting the drama behind the cameras, is a romantic tragedy that sings of love even when its characters know little about it. The Blue Angel is a triumph that quickly became written into German cinematic history. Its rapid ascent into that history can be attributed to the political changes soon to uproot all that German filmmakers had nourished. This film could not have been made any better in any other time.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[alicejohnn9087]

Amazing Halloween Movies According To Rotten Tomatoes

Halloween is a fun festival for all age groups. It is that time of year when one has the chance to dress up as their favorite character; it can be scary or any other character. And one can watch their favorite movies and hang out with friends. Many horror movies are perfect for watching in the Halloween season. This article will try to list some best horror movies and rank them according to the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Loved Ones in 2012 (rating 98%)

The Loved Ones is an Australian horror movie directed and written by Sean Byrne. It stars Xavier Samuel, Victoria Thaine, Jessica McNamee, John Brumpton, Robin McLeavy, and Richard Wilson. The plot of the story starts with a high school boy, Brent, driving with his father. And suddenly, an injured man filled with blood appears in front of the car to avoid him; their car crashes into a tree causing his father’s death. The story grows, and it revolves around a teenager (played by Samuel), who is in the center of his classmate’s (played by McLeavy) party and declines her offer to go for a school dance with her in favor of his girlfriend for prom, the situation starts to take a wrong turn.

The Loved Ones is the first feature film of director Sean Byrne. The film is shot under the Ambience Entertainment production in Melbourne, Victoria. The Australian Classification Board gave it a rating of R18+ due to the sadistic aspect and impact of violence on the audience.

The Vanishing (Spoorloos) in 1988 (rating 98%)

The Vanishing is a Dutch thriller movie directed by George Sluizer. The story is an adaptation of the novel The Golden Egg in 1984, written by author Tim Krabbe. The plot starts with a young Dutch couple, Saskia and Rex, on their vacation in France. Saskia shared a dream of drifting through space in a golden egg, and she feels the collision of two eggs, which signify the end of something. They stop at a rest area as they are running out of petrol. Saskia goes to the petrol station to buy some drinks, but she does not return. The screenplay then further follows Rex obsessively searching for his girlfriend after the disappearance at a rest area. The Vanishing received an approval rate of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 46 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The movie is known for its unique film structure, which is interesting for filmmaking in general.

Eyes Without A Face in 1960 (rating 98%)

Eyes Without A Face is a French horror movie originally titled Les Yeux sans directed and co-written by Georges Franju. It stars Alida Valli and Pierre Brasseur. The film is based on the novel of the same name written by author Jean Redon. The movie revolves around a plastic surgeon named Brasseur, who performed a face transplant on his daughter. His daughter’s face was disfigured in an accident. The film received an American debut and dubbed form in 1962 under the title of The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. Eyes Without A Face has not received positive reviews from critics. Although, according to modern critics, the film has a poetic nature that influences other filmmakers.

Let The Right One In in 2008 (rating 98%)

Let the Right One In is a Swedish romantic horror movie titled initially as Lat den Ratte directed by Tomas Alfredson. The movie is based on the novel of the same name written by author John Ajvide Lindqvist, who is also the film’s screenplay writer, published in 2004. The screenplay plot follows a 12-year-old bullied boy who developed a friendship with a vampire child in Blackberg set in the early 1980s. Filmmaker Alfredson decided to tone down many elements and focuses more on the relationship between the two characters and explores humanity’s darker side.

Let the Right One In is critically acclaimed and has won several awards, including Best European Fantastic Feature Film in European Fantastic Film Festival Federation in 2008, Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature in Tribeca Film Festival, four Guldbagge Awards from the Swedish Film Institute and the Saturn Awards for Best International Film. The film got an approval rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.29/10. Additionally, the movie scored an average of 82 out of 100 based on 30 reviewers on Metacritic.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari) in 1920 (rating 100%)

The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari is a German silent horror movie titled initially, as Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, written by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, and directed by Robert Wiene. The story is about an insane hypnotist played by Werner Krauss, who uses a somnambulist (sleepwalking) on a man played by Conrad Veidt to commit murders. The movie features a twisted and dark visual style, with oblique, curving lines and structure, landscapes that are twisted in unusual angles. It was widely received and accepted by critics and was a commercial hit. Modern film critics paused it as a revolutionary movie and tilted it as “the first true horror film.”

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is a uniquely directed movie; it uses silence as the theme’s advantage and creates a groundwork for cult films and future horror movies.

These are some of the best horror movies to spend your Halloween with family and friends. I hope you enjoyed the article.

Source : https://gotrustblog.com/amazing-halloween-movies-according-to-rotten-tomatoes/

[kristoffersonderbturg]

01. name / age / pronouns 

 Ama, 20, she/her (but i’m not picky)

002. which character(s) do you play? 

Kristoffer , Diana and Ivan 

003. nationality / ethnicity / timezone 

Finnish / GMT+3 

004. tell us a bit about your  ( home / current ) country / city / etc. your pick

It’s cold and wet all the time. I like it like that, so there’s no problems for me. I like snow and snowy Finland is the best.

005.  favourite color / fruit / season

Green and orange, I love apples, mangoes, peaches and plums. Winter.

006. favourite books + writer whose writing style you admire the most 

 The Great Gatsy. I’m pretentious like that.

007. what kinda music do you listen to + any fave bands / musicians 

I like pop, rap and rnb. My fave artists and bands are like... The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Hayley Kiyoko etc. etc.

008. what are you doing for a living / what are you studying? 

I’m studying theology right now. I’m not religious or anything. I’m just interested about it.

009. what’s your dream occupation? 

Idk. Tattoo artist?

010. relationship status 

Single and ready to mingle.

011. coffee, tea or hot chocolate? 

Coffee even though my ADHD-ass can’t handle it.

012. dream holiday destination?  

Wien

013. the thing you’re most proud about yourself 

Good question. I think I’m pretty proud what kind of person I am nowadays compared to past me. I have grown, but I’m still this charming asshole that calls herself charming. If you have seen Shrek, I’m Prince Charming literally.

014. tell us a bit about your family! 

I have 2 younger sisters, father, mother, dog and 3 cats. 

015. how long have you known your closest friend?  

Like most of my life. 13 years?

0016. superpower you’d like to have? 

Mind control.

017. celebrity you’d like to meet? 

Just punch of voice actors. I’m nerdy boi. Like Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer AND Mark Hamill!

018. guilty pleasures 

Stupid reality tv-shows.

019. pet peeves 

-

020. do you have any hobbies? 

Video games, Dice RPG, drawing.

021. where would you like to live in the future? 

Idk & idc.

022. tell us a story about a thing that recently happened to you! it can be a funny, scary, sad story, your pick! 

So ok. I was drinking one night with my friend and I was like pretty drunk and stuff. Then next day I woke up and I see that I had threw up like everywhere. There was like puke in my friends pillow, cover and even wall. There was puke in my face and shirt too. It was fucking horrible. And I have not done anything like that before, so it was pretty weird too. 

[rajon007]

All you need is data

Interview Jan Kratochvil / Simon Denny for Rajon 5

I read in the interview of Hans Ulrich with Julian Assange about his concept of three types of history: First, knowledge, like how to refine oil for instance or how to make a plastic bottle and so on, which are maintained and sustained by production, economy around it. Second, historical records, telling us various stories from the prehistory till today, being always present, slowly disintegrating or being reinterpreted, thus manipulated, but without an existing intention to get rid of them. Last type is something people put lots of energy and economic power to willingly destroy it or keep it as a secret. The last type is obviously something Assange is interested in. In your case it’s more complicated I would say, even though you were working with Snowden files, these leaked informations are not the single core of your interest. Compiling past and present, even if past means yesterday and present possibly could be perceived as tomorrow. So what highlights topics of interest for you work? First of all thanks for the careful questions - they are complex, so my answers might also be. I hope you'll forgive that! Secondly I love that interview, its my 2nd favorite Assange and my favorite Obrist interview. I also read in the "When google met Wikileaks" book that it was an interview Assange also felt very happy with. I am very interested in the way organizations, particularly tech-related organizations, present themselves to each other and to the world. I'm interested in the language they use and the information they prioritize, as well as they way they use images, objects and systems in service of these priorities. This usually involves telling stories of some kind. If we want to relate it to your interpretation of Assange's three histories, maybe this activity relates more to the second and third kind of history you identify here. We could also say most tech companies implicitly or explicitly have claim on the first kind here too. I guess if I had to choose, I am most interested in your/his second kind of history. I feel like the kind of history-storytelling my exhibitions hover around and frame is about imaging the way we might see recent history through characters from the present. So in more concrete terms, my exhibitions often involve picking a organization, a practice or an individual, and reiterating or recontextualizing an existing story through them. With the Snowden-related material, I chose a Creative Director to recast as an artistic master in a longer lineage of state-commissioned images, using themes and aesthetic memes to unpack the value systems that might be found in the intelligence community's visual choices. In my Serpentine exhibition, Products for Organizing, I played many voices against each other, trying to visualize the relationship between a marketing-oriented view on the history of hacking and how that might be used to service commercial and governmental organizational innovation. In both cases histories of a present were told from a biased position. As you say I compile recent history and kind of posit a view on the present and past that demonstrates its interests.

Tell me more about this always present durational aspect of your work. Passage of time around us is super fast nowadays and iOS6 (was it 6?) with skeuomorphic design already looks like an antiquity when you’re using iOS9. More subtle changes in UI like the change of the typefont in case of Apple from Helvetica to San Francisco is less visible for most of costumers, still you reflect on it. What does this timeline you’re creating actually saying besides the obvious? I believe in design as a time-stamp. I think objects, graphics, fonts and GUI's capture a moment in a very rich way. Popular interfaces to communication carry something of a worldview and a representation of what's possible and what's important at a certain moment. In this way Tim Cook's decision to have a custom typeface not a modernist classic as the universal system font of one of the world’s most dominant platforms says something about the world in 2015. Maybe this could represent a look inwards for the powerful tech giant? The fact that iOS was skeuomorphic also says something about 2007-2012. Maybe we were learning to use and carry touch screen portals or learning to want them. Environments you’re forming holds the essence of some utopian repositories of knowledge. Very specifically selected knowledge. Do you relate to some ancient utopian urban plans and structures? I mean, besides the Tower of Babel. Thinking about New Atlantis, De Civitate Dei, Moore’s Utopia, Civitas Solis, Civitas Veri and so on. In other words, is there a long-term political ambition behind organising all that data into exhibition set-ups? (Funny thing is that you’re mentioning in youtube guided tour through “Babel”, that the idea of a tower came from the curator, so I’m just not sure if it’s something you would yourself find interesting or if it comes out of a process of preparing the show with another person). Yeah in this case, the babel commission really came out of a conversation with Daniel Birnbaum and Hand Ulrich Obrist, along with Luma, where me and Alessandro Bava worked on researching and reinterpreting not only the tower of Babel but also a history of radical exhibition making and design at the Moderna Museet. So that was really a very group-authored thing - which also involved performances and poetry crated by Simon Castets and Giovanna Olmos and many more people. So while it was an amazing project that I am really proud of, and I took it in directions close to my personal interests where it made sense, it was also about learning from other voices and approaches, and the Babel proposition was one of those things that originated with another voice.

Can you please elaborate more on the question about the tower. i’m interested in a way how you think about those specific set-ups of your work with changes and differences you’re making for different shows. do you consider those changes (for example different statues in exhibiting dotcom project etc.) to be a result of some specific system which develops the narration or are those mostly random? and what about reiterations of projects in different context: “venice” in kunsthalle vienna for instance?

Changes to how my material is presented in different situations aren’t random Exhibitions appearing in different venues are also not based on a system of rules that carry across every presentation. I look at each exhibition opportunity as it comes up and think what fits best, within what’s possible in terms of time and resources and also what the situation demands or proposes. A group show with a curatorial voice is not the same as solo presentation. With the Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom this was kind of written into the work – in that case, the reiteration was kind of a system. Each time the show is made, the host institution and I gather material as best one can, according to the list of confiscated Dotcom possessions. That always reflects a budget, time, ingenuity, and effort – all sorts of factors that change from place to place. The contrast with what it would be to present the “real” collection is always huge. But this discrepancy is folded into the logic of the project, where the gap between the crazy value of Dotcom’s collection is always underlined. He is a very wealthy man and his business and lifestyle have always been about performing material success to a certain extent. Art budgets from New Zealand to Austria cannot match this, at least not within the framework I have been able to create. That is part of a work that is about articulating copies and placeholders for value. With my Venice project’s sister participation in a group show at the Kunsthalle Wien it was also a lot about what the curator Nicolaus Schafhausen was interested in and what worked within the constraints of what he had in mind. It was a much more general presentation, with less of the pointed tensions of the presentation in Venice emphasised – but that’s what the show seemed to require. So its different in each an every situation. But that doesn’t mean what is presented is random. What about the idea of constructing repositories of knowledge? how could this gathering of data work much later when those informations are not current any more? just basically if you’re thinking about it as a statement of here and now or if you think about a universally usable system of data distribution and interpretation.

I think this relates to your question earlier about design for me – what about when design ages and looks out of date? For me this question about data and relevance of events and data of another time is the same. We value cultural objects of the past that contain beautiful reflections of the place/time they were created in. The logic of those objects becomes a summary of what is important to the people/forces that made them. Reflecting current events and ideas and the way things change for me is about that entering into the presentations I make. If something has a strong resonance now it will be valuable in some way in a future that cares about the past. Do you write? I mean in terms of essayistic format. (Haven’t found anything, but it could be really interesting). Unfortunately not so much. Most of my writing is inside my artwork - I very often write or contribute significantly to press releases and wall texts/didactics. There is also increasingly a lot of text annotation on sculptures and paintings, which I have been co-writing with Matt Goerzen. More long form essays are something Ive not really had the time to write up until now. And its a craft I don't really know, nor have I worked on. You were saying once that visitor can interpret your work in his own way, obviously, that one can interpret it either as a serious political/ economical critique, and also just as a parody or some kind of nostalgia-aesthetics joke. Well, Simon, tell me please, where is the boundary in between joke and critical work? That’s obviously a quite an issue in realm of “post-postinternet”. With an obvious example of Hito Steyerl and difference in between her original documentary work, her essays, lectures and…for instance Factory of the Sun. I think I would define my terms a bit here before I comment on this. I think ultimately the viewer always completes the artwork in the act of experiencing it, which is a conventional assertion in contemporary art, right? I also would say that I find the tone of other artist's work addressing similar topics is often divergent. I am a fan of Hito Steyerl, I think she does an amazing job. I don’t read humor in her work as something that obscures critique. I also see her work as something that contains critique as a central structural element. Now to the question whether my work is a joke or not I would firmly say no it is not. I think any kind of exploration of a topic can involve humor, or elements that propose unlikely assertions. That doesn't necessarily follow that the whole endeavor is therefore a joke. It’s just a language of exhibition making that has a range to it. I am always a fan of the material I use in my work though - and if any humorous elements emerge its always out of playful admiration rather than anything close to sarcastic critique.

Simon Denny (b. 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand) is an artist working with installation, sculpture and video. He studied at the the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and at the Städelschule Frankfurt. selected solo exhibitions include: Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); MoMA PS1, New York (2015); Portikus, Frankfurt (2014); MuMOK, Vienna (2013); Kunstverein Munich, Munich (2013); and Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2012). In 2012, Denny was awarded the Art Basel Statements Balouse Preis. Selected group shows include: After Babel, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015); Europe, Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2014); Art Post-Internet, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2014); Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fredericianum, Kassel (2013); Image into Sculpture, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); and Remote Control, ICA, London (2012). Denny represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and was included in the central curated exhibition in 2013. He participated in the 13th Lyon Biennale (2015), Montreal Biennale (2014), as well as the Sydney Biennale and the Brussels Biennale (both in 2008).