#I love the melding of tragedy and comedy

[novelconcepts]

God, there’s something about the framing of Shauna beating up on Lottie. To have Lottie place her hands deliberately behind her back. To have her expressly ask the only boys to leave the room—to have her ask Travis to take Javi out of the room, as this kind of scene would normally request a young woman to be removed before the violence can start. To have no slapping, no hair-pulling, but the sheer escalation of grief into brutality. To pull no punches. And to cut in all these slow motion scenes of the women they become—traumatized, grief-stricken, lonely, guilty, dying—dancing, laughing, letting the snow wash away the blood and the pain for a little while. Letting the friendship montage together with the violence. It’s poetic, and it’s awful, and it’s perfectly done in the most haunting sense.

[yanderecrazysie]

MIRROR, MIRROR

“Who is the fairest of them all?”

Pairings: Yandere! Vil Schoenheit x Female! Reader

WARNINGS: yandere themes, technically stepcest (but not focused on), suicide

Note: I randomly wanted to write this, and it’s very long compared to most of my works.

Vil Schoenheit glided down the long hallway, the heels of his shoes clicking against the marble floors as he hurried to his destination. He paid no mind to the town outside his grand windows, many stories below. It was insignificant compared to him.

He entered a dark room at the end of the hall, his cape swirling behind him as he spun around and drew the double doors closed. The room darkened even further with the absence of the hallway lighting, but Vil made no move to turn on the light. Slowly, a soft purplish glow began to brighten the room, emitted from a mirror on the wall opposite the doors.

The mirror was ornate, with curved, flowery metal sculptures curling from the mirror’s base to the edges of the wall. The glass shimmered and became cloudy, almost as if puffs of smoke had filled the room, but only on the other side of the reflection. Vil waited impatiently as a face came into focus. 

The face was a strange one, almost like a floating comedy/tragedy mask. Its initial frown curled into a smile upon seeing Vil, tilting its head in a small bow, “Your Highness, how may I assist you?”

When Vil spoke, his voice was confident and cold, as though he’d said this a million times before, “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

The mirror’s smile widened, “Why, you, of course, dear King.”

Vil smiled victoriously and turned around, leaving the strange dark room behind in an instant, bursting out of the double doors and entering the hallway once more. The mirror man’s expression faltered for a moment, as though doubt had consumed him for a moment, before he melded into the fog of the mirror. Quickly, the smoke in the reflection disbursed, returning to look like an ordinary mirror just as the doors banged shut behind the king.

This time, Vil turned his attention to the town below, a smirk curling on his lips as his lavender eyes focused on a figure in the town square.

“Still not enough to surpass me, Neige,” Vil snickered. He brushed the invisible dust off of his robes and continued down the hall.

—-----------------------------

“Have you drawn the water, Neige?” you asked, standing up from where you had been using the washboard to wash dark blue, priceless robes.

“Of course, sis!” Neige smiled with closed eyes, lifting the water bucket effortlessly. You smiled back at your brother, despite the stinging of your hands and the aching of your knees from kneeling for so long.

Neige took a seat in the dirt next to the washing tub and reached for the soaking robes, “Still cleaning Vil’s clothing?”

“It never seems to end,” you sighed, kneeling back down. 

Your brother took your hand and pulled it away from the washboard, “Sis, please, we officially turn eighteen in a few minutes.”

You shrugged, “What’s so special about birthdays anymore? Ever since Mom died…” Your voice became choked and died on your tongue. Tears threatening to fall, you turned away and pulled up the corner of your ragged sleeve to wipe furiously at your eyes.

The two of you were wearing rags sewn together and you were buried in endless chores, all while Vil lived a lavish life with a mountain of wealth that your mother, the queen, had left behind after her mysterious death. A death you had no doubt was at Vil’s hand, although sweet, sweet Neige suspected nothing of the man who had married his mother just a few short months before her demise.

“I saw the most beautiful girl when I was drawing water,” Neige sighed dreamily, “She sang the most wonderful song and her voice… it was so beautiful.”

You shook your head, but couldn’t hide your smile. If your brother, a sweet boy with his head in the clouds, found his love, you would support him. He deserved love more than anyone else you knew.

Neige began to draw in the dirt with his index finger and a rudimentary cake with a few candles took shape. He smiled innocently at you, “Blow out the candles, sis!”

You rolled your eyes, still smiling, and blew a gust of air at the dusty cake. Your breath was so strong that it blew away most of the cake’s shape and both you and your brother burst into laughter.

Laughter had become so unfamiliar to you- you weren’t sure of the last time you laughed. Neige’s laugh was like tinkling bells, as perfect as he was. Even though Vil kept him out of the spotlight and forced him to wear rags, he still caught the attention of beautiful girls and his kind nature shone through- more beautiful than Vil could ever hope to be, in your opinion.

—--------------------------------------------------

“Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Vil’s voice was as confident and cold as the day before. 

There was a silence that fell over the room as the man in the mirror lost his smile, “I must warn you, dear King, that there have been changes…”

“What kind of changes?” An edge sneaked into Vil’s voice as he demanded to know, “Who is the fairest of them all?”

“Neige LeBlanche is the fairest in all the land,” the mirror said reluctantly, as if it knew what this information would do.

Vil’s eyes were wild when he slammed a fist against the mirror, making the face inside it cower in fear, “Neige has surpassed me? Me?”

Vil dragged a hand across his face in disbelief. He had thought… keeping Neige in rags… even in rags, that boy had surpassed him?

“At least I’m the second fairest, right?” Vil practically begged the mirror, “Tell me it’s only Neige who threatens my beauty.”

The face in the mirror grimaced. 

Vil lost it then, “Who is it then? Who else is more beautiful than I am? Who the hell could it possibly be?”

“(Y/n) LeBlanche is the second fairest in all the land.”

Vil stared at the mirror blankly, rage giving way to confusion, “Who is that? Certainly not that mousy girl?”

“She has become more and more beautiful with time,” the mirror replied.

Vil lifted a painted thumbnail to his lips and worried it between his teeth. He had barely paid the daughter of the queen a second glance, always worried about Neige as his growing competition.

The king sighed. He’d have to find a way to get rid of them both. What a shame it was, to have to kill both children. What a shame it was, even more, that anyone dared to compete with his beauty.

He stepped back into the hallway, a shadow of rage crossing his face as he stormed his way to the throne room. Maids threw themselves out of the way, never having seen their handsome ruler this angry before and not wanting him to turn his wrath onto them.

Vil took a seat on the throne- the only place that truly calmed him. Yet, it had no calming effect today. He raised his pale hands and clapped them together twice. Immediately, three workers materialized, kneeling in front of him, waiting for his orders.

The king tilted his chin upwards, peering down at the worthless staff. It made him feel so much taller to sit upon the throne and a cruel smile made its way across his face.

“Bring me Rook Hunt.”

—----------------------------------------

“I don’t trust him,” you whispered to your brother. Neige sent you a disappointed look, as though you might offend the strange man leading you deeper into the woods.

He was an eccentric man, that much you could tell. He was strange- he walked strange, talked strange, looked strange. But your brother would never suspect a robber of thievery, so it was up to you.

“A baby bird!” Neige’s voice startled you, since you were so on edge. Your eyes softened at the sight of a soft-feathered tiny bird chirping helplessly on the ground. You looked up and spotted a nest of sticks and leaves in the tree branch above.

“Poor thing, let me help you,” you cooed, reaching down and gently scooping the little creature off the grass. Holding it cupped in one hand, you wrapped your other arm around the trunk and began climbing the tree.

You risked a look back at Neige and you let out a scream. 

The strange man’s knife stopped millimeters from the back of Neige’s skull. He looked as though he were struggling with himself. As Neige turned around to see what had frightened you, his face went pale and he stumbled backwards, falling over a rock and crashing into the ground, chest heaving in terror as the strange man loomed over him with a long, jagged knife.

You dumped the chick unceremoniously into its nest with its siblings and jumped down from the tree, “Don’t you dare touch him!”

The bob-cut haired man lowered his head, “I cannot, even if I wanted to.” He sheathed the knife on hip and reached a hand out to Neige, who remained frozen on the ground, eyes wide with disbelief and horror.

“Who are you?” you demanded, “What are you doing, trying to kill my brother?”

“Your father…” The stranger began.

“Vil is not our father,” you snapped immediately.

“Fine. The king wants you both dead- his jealousy is unmatched. Yet, I cannot kill someone as kind as you two,” his eyes misted over, “I cannot kill either of you.”

You were shocked- you had never liked Vil and you knew he killed your mother, but you hadn’t expected this. He really thought he’d just make do with the LeBlanche family entirely, didn’t he? Well, you wouldn’t let him!

“Run!” you yelled at Neige, surprised by how loud your own scream was, “Get up and run!”

The strange man watched as you dragged Neige to his feet and the two of you disappeared into the woods. He turned around and laid a hand over the box the king had given him, tucked into his breast pocket. 

He pulled the knife back out of its sheath and headed off to the market. He would not bring the king either LeBlanche heart, but maybe a goat’s heart would fool him…

Meanwhile, you dragged Neige deeper and deeper into the forest, panic pumping adrenaline into your veins. You didn’t know where you were going and the plants seemed to grow crueller as you lost your way. 

Branches like clawed hands reached out for you, grabbing on your rags and tearing your clothing when you violently leapt back from them. And were those logs in the lake or alligators? They did seem to be making their way closer to you both, eyeing you as their next meal…

You were panicking now, breath coming in short gasps and heart pounding against your ribcage. You were running low on energy too, struggling to continue pulling on Neige, who had gone nearly-limp with shock.

“Wait!” Neige gasped. You stopped suddenly and your legs gave out, causing the two of you to crash into the tall grass. 

“What?” you asked raggedly.

“That bird, I think it wants us to follow it,” Neige said with the utmost sincerity.

You stared at him. Had he hit his head? Then again, a bright bluebird circled just barely above the treetops, as though it were waiting for you to stand back up and follow it.

“I think it’s thanking us for returning its baby,” Neige continued. You were still considering the fact that he may have lost his mind, but it couldn’t be worse than rampaging through the woods.

The two of you stood and began following the bluebird, both of you still shaking in fear. The trees thinned out, and the grass seemed to grow lighter, the sun shining more through these treetops.

“A cottage!” Neige pointed down at the bottom of a steep incline. Sure enough, a quaint cottage stood between two willow trees. 

“Do you think whoever lives here will let us stay?” you asked quietly.

“Only one way to find out,” Neige shrugged.

—--------------------------------

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Vil asked confidently, a smirk curling at his lips.

“Although your beauty is great,” came the mirror’s response, “Neige and (Y/n)’s beauty is greater.”

“WHAT?” Vil screamed, hands balling into fists, “They are no more! Rook brought me their hearts!”

The mirror responded by swirling into a scene of Rook leading you and Neige deep into the woods. Vil could see the doubt on Rook’s face from a mile away, and he let out a growl. “I don’t trust him,” came a pretty voice. For the first time, Vil allowed himself to look at you- really look at you.

The mirror hadn’t lied- you really had become beautiful. You were no longer the little girl crying at your mother’s bedside. You were a gorgeous young woman with a steely look of determination in your eyes. Vil watched, transfixed as you turned your back on Rook, even though you were suspicious of him, in order to help a helpless baby bird. He shook his head, banishing the thoughts from his head. “Skip past the part where that gutless idiot fails to kill them. Show me where they are now.”

The mirror shimmered and the image of a cottage swam in its reflection, before it showed a happy scene of you and Neige dancing around with a few small men. He couldn’t tear his eyes from your form, your smile, and your graceful movements.

He swallowed, “Ah, the dwarves’ cottage in the woods. They’ll be easy to find.” Somehow, he found it hard to be excited when he thought of what he was about to do.

—---------------------------------------------------

The longer Vil watched you in the mirror, the harder he began to fall for you. He told himself he was just waiting for the dwarves to leave for the mines, that he was just waiting for the chance to destroy you… but in reality, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from you.

So when he stood across from you, in full magical disguise as an old man, he was trembling a little with desire. He could just reach out and touch you… But what would you say? You would just think he was a creepy old man, and that’s not how he wanted to come across right now.

“Can we help you?” you asked, one eyebrow raised.

“I was wondering who lived in this quaint little cottage,” Vil made his voice quaver, looking at you as innocently as possible.

“You seem familiar, somehow,” your eyes narrowed, “Who are you again?”

Neige appeared behind you and Vil held back a smirk, “Here, why don’t I talk with the man of the house.”

You looked offended but threw your hands in the air, “Whatever! Neige, he wants to speak with you.”

You disappeared into the house and Vil forced back the smirk even harder. This was perfect. He reached into his basket and pulled out an apple, shining red and delicious-looking. “If you show me the way back to town, I’ll give you one of my apples.”

Neige shook his head, “I’ll show you back to town, but you don’t need to give me anything in return.”

“I insist,” Vil’s eyes shone.

—--------------------------------------------------

“NEIGE!” your scream was like music to Vil’s ears. You ran over to your collapsed brother, pulling him off the ground to look at him. You looked up at Vil, who had transformed back to his normal self, “What did you do to him?”

Vil smiled down at you, having decided long ago what to do with you.

“I can bring him back from the dead,” Vil said calmly, “I know the one thing that can bring him back.”

“How?” you demanded, tears starting to spill over your round cheeks, “How do I bring him back.”

“First, you must do one thing,” Vil said, kneeling down to where you clutched your brother, “Marry me.”

“I’d rather die!” you screamed. You spotted the apple still clutched in Neige’s lifeless hand and snatched it, “This is what you used, didn’t you?”

“Don’t touch that,” Vil snapped.

It was too late, you had shoved the apple in your mouth and taken a huge bite. To his horror, you slumped, lifeless, over your twin brother’s body. 

“N-no, you wouldn’t really do that, would you?” Vil laughed shakily, “You’re pretending to make me give up the secret.”

You didn’t respond. Move. Breathe.

“Okay, you got me,” Vil’s voice went up an octave, “It’s true love’s kiss. He has a girl he loves, so we just have to find her and…”

Tears ran down his cheeks as he frantically shook your body, “Please wake up, please, I’m sorry!”

He turned you over and a thought occurred to him. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours. But still, they remained cold and blue, there was no gasp of life and fluttering of the eyelids like there should have been.

Of course there wasn’t.

You’d never love him.

—--------------------------------------

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

“You, Vil Schoenheit, are the fairest in all the land.”

Vil sank to the ground, grief consuming him entirely.

[yakool-foolio]

okay hit me with your impeccable kaede ships opinion

You've got it, boss! Ranking Kaede's ships with all of the V3 students!

Kaede x Shuichi: 10/10; the protags should kiss I think. Their interactions in canon, however brief, are incredibly sweet and carry a ton of weight throughout the entire game. Ya can really tell how much they mattered to each other. I want them to have a happy ending so bad!

Kaede x Rantaro: 6/10; ah yes, the chapter 1 fellas. I never really got any romantic vibes from them personally, but I can see the potential. The bonus nail painting scene is super cute (with Tsumugi tagging along being comedy gold), and I can imagine their adventurous spirits melding well together!

Kaede x Ryoma: 4/10; Ryoma needs a light in his life, and I do think that Kaede would fit that bill. They feel like a different flavor of Saimatsu to me, but I do think her relationship with Shuichi would pan out a lot better in the end. Ryoma seems like the type who needs friends that have his back more than a love interest in my opinion.

Kaede x Kirumi: 8/10; the more I think about this pairing, the more I like it. Just imagine them playing the piano n cello together. May I win you over with the duet scene from Electric Dreams as their dynamic, perhaps?

Kaede x Angie: 3/10: I can see it, but it isn't really for me. I haven't seen much content of them together, but I could be swayed into liking the pairing more if I stumbled upon it more often. Ah well, that's the common tragedy of rare pairs.

Kaede x Tenko: 9/10; I'm a sworn Tenmiko shipper, but I can't deny these two are also really adorable. The duo that will slap the most sense into anyone that crosses them. Tenko soaks up all of Kaede's compliments n flirtations like a sponge, n Tenko will always be around to fiercely protect Kaede.

Kaede x Korekiyo: 1/10; not for me. I could be persuaded to be neutral on it, but for now it just isn't my cup of tea. They just don't have anything going for them that I can positively imagine. Don't get me wrong, I think Kiyo's interesting, but he would just not pair well with Kaede in my eyes.

Kaede x Miu: 6/10; I'm surprised at how much chemistry they have. In Miu's FTEs, Kaede genuinely wants to help her out with her communication issues, which is pretty sweet. If Kaede has the patience to help Miu, that's gotta count for something. Miu being a flustered mess is always a treat.

Kaede x Gonta: 6/10; definitely has potential to be a really cute pair. Given enough time, I think Kaede could come around to appreciating bugs as she spends more time with Gonta. I think she'd love orchid mantises especially.

Kaede x Kokichi: 5/10; never really gave this ship much thought, but it makes sense why people like it. It's standard protag x rival protocol, but with extra silliness. I imagine Kokochi would ask Kaede to compose a 'villain theme' for DICE, but he'd appreciate whatever she comes up with.

Kaede x Kaito: 7/10; the morale boosters! Their combined optimism and enthusiasm is highly contagious. You wouldn't wanna miss their exciting training sessions! Meshing music n astronomy together also just sounds awesome. And Kaede wearing Kaito's jacket is a very cute image I just conjured up.

Kaede x Maki: 10/10; Kaimaki but for lesbians! If Kaede survived longer, I really do think they would've eventually gotten along. I'll be at my happiest with Kaemaki n Saimota happening at the same time methinks.

Kaede x Himiko: 5/10; another ship with some good potential. They'd host the best performances together. They just wanna see everyone happy and I think that's cute.

Kaede x Keebo: 7/10; let Kaede teach Keebo music theory and help him improve his singing! I know she's not a singer herself, but I think her piano skills could assist him practicing matching notes with his voice. I think I'm just really hooked on the idea of Keebo singing Daisy Bell (the first song sung by a computer) with Kaede playing along, the idea makes me melt.

Kaede x Tsumugi: 9/10; may I interest you in some toxic yuri? In a world where Kaede survives to the end, their dynamic would pop tf off I think. Imagine this girl you've been crushing on is actually the mastermind trying to frame you for murder. Ouch. But you bet Tsumugi was also dealing with some feelings for Kaede by basically writing her to be so complimentary towards her. I can see through your lies Tsumugi you can't fool me.

[smiley-day-to-ya]

Music has been around longer, so the descriptors have had time to evolve. Movies and video-games are like baby art forms by the standards of how long music has been around. I bet our most primitive ancestors had music we could never imagine. Maybe dinosaurs had music like the way birds sing.

In any case, we just gotta start describing other things with more specificity. Like Hades and The Binding of Isaac are both considered rogue-likes but they play very differently. So let’s start describing games that share more similarities with Hades as Hades-likes and ones that share more similarities with The Binding of Isaac as Isaac-likes. It’s sort of like how certain kinds of games became “Metroidvania” games because they shared similarities with Castlevania and Metroid. Next I have to ask, what would a Hadesvania game be? An Isaacvania?

Rogue Legacy could be considered a roguelike metroidvania but I think it shares more in common with Hades than The Binding of Isaac, therefore I propose that Rogue Legacy is a Hadesvania.

What about combing other game genres? Monster Hunter and Pokemon are two very different games about seeking out monsters but what would a pokevania game look like? What about a Monster Hunter-esque roguelike?

As for movies, perhaps we can adopt a similar naming convention and name some movies after their predecessors. Zombieland is just American Shaun of The Dead. And Shaun of the Dead has elements of several genres. There’s horror, comedy, drama, tragedy, a love story. Should it be considered its own genre because of that precise melding of ingredients? What movies before it have similar levels of those other genres? Or is Shaun of The Dead the groundbreaker for this specific thing? Would something like Don’t Look Up be considered a Shaunlike thing even though it lacks Zombies?

why is the music community the only one brave enough to have an infinite amount of genres to catagorize things by meanwhile the rest of u are like “this horror movie isn’t REALLY horror” “this is Barely a platformer” shut up i don’t know what the Fuck witch house sounds like but i want to play the game equivalent of it so bad. i want to watch a Lowercase movie. there’s a genre just called Danger Music and according to a five second google search it’s music that is made specifically to Literally Deal Psychic Damage. i NEED every other art form to step it up PLEASE

[livesincerely]

Hey there! I was just re-reading take a shot for the umpteenth time, and was wondering if there was anything you’d like to share with us about how you’re finding it! I’m getting a different sort of vibe from reading it, do you find it difficult writing something that’s maybe a sidestep of what you’d normally do? Do you still like the idea of it? I just enjoy reading your rambles about something you like, I hope you’re well!

Well if you want rambles, you’ve come to the right place! 😊 *This might end up being a little vague—I have a lot of things planned and I don’t want to give too much away ;)

00000

I still love, love, LOVE the premise of take a shot! I’m a big fan of mutually pining, oblivious idiots, and while this is definitely a different take on the situation than my usual stuff, it still is similar enough that I’m feeling pretty comfortable.

Honestly, the thing that I had to fight against when I was first outlining the idea was controlling my want to have everything fix itself immediately. Like, I think across my fics Davey and Jack have argued, like, maybe twice?? And even then neither fight lasts past the end of the chapter, so I have to make myself let them linger in the sadness and confusion, which is a little difficult in the moment, but I just know it’s gonna pay off in the end.

But in my eyes angsty, pining fics are ultimately about characterization, and I’ve spent so much time with Jack and Davey at this point that I feel pretty comfortable with them, so I think I’ve got a good handle on the fic? Also, I’ve put a lot of thought into the plot and how it’s going to play out, different themes and ideas and feelings I’m trying to include, and little details to thread throughout to make everything meld together. This fic is especially “planned”—at least compared to my other work. (I’ve already started to seed a few things that will *hopefully* pan out later, so I’d be interested to see if anyone has started to notice)

I really love that the fic is told from Jack’s perspective. Sure, the inciting circumstance I set up is tailored to Jack, but there’s something so wonderful about writing this type of fic through Jack’s eyes because Jack sees so much. He notices changes in tone of voice and body language and other tiny, yet important details, and he uses very particular language to describe these things, but the frustration/comedy/tragedy of the situation is that while he has all the pieces, he doesn’t put them together—or at least not correctly. Which is great from a writing perspective because then the readers can put the pieces together and start figuring things out long before the characters do, and then when what we all knew was going to happen finally happens, it’s that much better for having seen it coming.

Or at least that’s my hope.

Jack is also incredibly unaware of his own feelings and the extent of them, even as they present themselves in stupidly obvious ways. Like, so obvious. (There’s a moment in the upcoming chapter that’s just like.... Jack, please) I know I’ve talked a bit in other asks/character ramblings that I think of Jack as a man of action vs. Davey who’s more thoughtful and introspective, and I’m hoping to show that aspect of Jack’s character in his unconscious behaviors and the things he notices in his inner monologue. Jack himself might not be able to identify his feelings, but his actions are what indicates the truth of the matter, and are what gives him away to everyone around him and to all of us following along.

Some other things: the Davey & Racetrack friendship is gonna be so amazing. And Crutchie is going to be a driving force in kindly, yet forcefully getting Jack to pull his head out of his ass. Also, I love Maggie, even though she’s the cause of the conflict—she will be treated kindly by me, as I find ways to use her realistically in the context of the fic without having her be the villain.

Here’s a line from the upcoming chapter, just as a little taste of what’s to come. 😊

“You’re one of a kind, Dave,” Jack says, and he lets all the warmth in his heart color his voice—Davey might not be able to share what’s bothering him but Jack can at least make sure he knows he’s appreciated. “I’d be lost without you.”

00000

@saysflora

[popwasabi]

“The Farewell” Review: Asian Family Dramedy Finds Bittersweet Humor in Grief

Directed by Lulu Wang

Starring: Awkwafina, Zhao Shuzhen, Tzi Ma, Diana Lin

It’s been a while since I’ve gone out of my way to see a film that didn’t feature super heroes, dog-loving hit-men, or giant atomic-breathing fire lizards but a chance to see Awkwafina flex her comedic and dramatic chops while supporting Asian American creative voices was too good to pass up in “The Farewell.”

Director Lulu Wang’s film, based on “an actual lie” that her family went through, is a mesmerizing bittersweet and often hilarious take on the cross section of immigrant family values and the love that holds it all together. It’s the kind of story that will make you want to hug your parents and relatives extra tight, while laughing your ass off and shows a new angle to the family dramedy through Asian American voices that Hollywood rarely touches on.

(Since I’m sure most of you NERDS don’t watch Indie films, here’s the trailer to get you up to speed.)

“The Farewell” tells the story of an Asian American woman named Billi struggling to find purpose in her life out in New York. When she learns that her Nai Nai (grandmother) is dying from cancer she is told she is forbidden from telling her about her condition as per Chinese tradition. Under the guise of a wedding for her cousin the family uses it as an excuse to get together to be with Nai Nai one last time but the secrecy does not sit well with Billi and now she finds herself struggling with keeping the truth as it slowly eat her inside.

The best thing about “The Farewell” is that it doesn’t choose a side in its East vs West dynamic that may feel apparent in the film’s trailer. In fact, it’s more closely East AND West when it comes to the message of the story. The film doesn’t aim to vilify Billi’s family for hiding the truth from their matriarch but rather simply state this is how it is in China. It doesn’t try to state that this is the right way of thinking either, of course, as plenty of the film’s dramatic frictions comes from this lie but the film balances this East and West ideology very well by ultimately choosing not to take a side and simply show how this family loves one another which is ultimately more important to its narrative.

Though the film has an ultimately tragic premise it is here that much of the movie’s great comedy comes from and often at hilarious levels. It doesn’t simply make comedic scenes take place between the family drama it actually melds the two perfectly as humor comes directly from the tragedy. Often while viewing this film in fact you might find yourself wondering if you should laugh or cry and sometimes, you’ll end up doing both and the film is better for it in this way.

(That look we all gave when we tried to avoid spoiling “Endgame” to friends a couple months ago before they got a chance to see it.)

The film does such a wonderful job of making good, bittersweet humor out of this familiy’s struggle with tip-toeing around the truth that you’ll simultaneously want to sympathize with them and laugh at/with them at the same time. The humor can be both outrageous, dry and sometimes even dark in this way and makes for a very complex viewing experience. It’s a great balancing act that projects both emotions in perfect harmony from start to finish that’ll have you crying from laughter and sadness.

It’s the cast though that makes all this work perfectly as they form a believable loving but slightly dysfunctional family from various parts of the world. Tzi Ma is great as Billi’s father who struggles in his own way with his Chinese principles and his newer American beliefs. Diana Lin reminds me almost too much of my own mother, who is both loving and haranguing toward Billi throughout the film. And Zhao Shuzhen will make you wish she were your grandmother as her undeniable charm keeps the story humming along at a delightful and loving pace.

But it’s Awkwafina (real name Nora Lum) of course who shows off her impressive range here as both a dramatic and comedic talent that brings this all together here. Her catchy one-liners and star-making performance in last year’s “Crazy Rich Asians” was one of the film’s big highlights and she’s no less charming in “The Farewell” as well. 

Awkwafina carries this film as the audience’s primary western point of view but again it never turns to condescending of cultural traditions as our main character struggles internally throughout the film but never vilifies what is going on either. It’s a highly nuanced performance that shows Awkwafina’s star is indeed rising and deserving of recognition when awards season eventually rolls around.

(Side note: If I ever get famous I want to party with Awkwafina haha)

So, now it’s time for me to get on my soapbox again for a minute. If there was any doubt that diversity and showcasing minority artistic talents is important just look at all that’s changed in the wake of last year’s “Crazy Rich Asians.” I mean, just look at this picture of the theater I went to see this film at this past weekend.

It was a full house and it wasn’t even the showtime I originally wanted to see it at because the previous one had sold out too! And this wasn’t a crowd of predominantly Asian folk seeing this film; viewers of seemingly all backgrounds came out to see this wonderful family dramedy. It’s further proof that these films about the Asian American condition are relevant and more importantly have mass audience appeal.

On the surface a film like “Crazy Rich Asians” (especially compared to the complexities of this film) feels like a pretty standard rom-com but by getting it in theaters past all the countless bull shit, nay-saying it effectively broke down the door for new films that featured Asian Americans. In just a year’s time Henry Golding has already starred in “A Simple Favor” and is set to star in two more before the year’s end. John Cho was able to make his directorial debut with “Searching” and is set to play Spike Spiegel in Netflix’s “Cowboy Bebop.” Ali Wong’s “Always Be My Maybe” was a huge streaming hit as well on Netflix last month. And Marvel Studios is finally ready to have an Asian American super hero make his debut in Shang Chi later in the MCU’s phase 4.

(Ali Wong is just delightful if you didn’t already know btw.)

This is what I mean whenever I say Hollywood needs to give these films a chance because look how much has changed with just one movie. Who knows if a movie like “The Farewell” would’ve had a chance at even minor independent film stardom if a movie like “Crazy Rich Asians” hadn’t been given a chance to shine first on the big stage.

These movies and these people deserve a chance to tell their stories because they are relevant, they are poignant and more than anything they are good fucking stories! “The Farewell” is easily my favorite film of the year and I am grateful to “Crazy Rich Asians” for making it a possibility to be here. And if you think diversity still doesn’t matter then kindly just go fuck yourself because Asian Americans, these films and these beautiful, heart-wrenching and often funny stories are here to stay whether you like it or not.

(Seriously though can we like hang out, Ms. Awkwafina?)

“The Farewell” is well worth searching for a theater that’s playing it on the limited release circuit and will have you laughing and crying at the same time before and after the credits roll. It’s a film that will undoubtedly leave a mark no matter what cultural background you come from because the love in this story is relevant to everyone.

So, go see this movie and don’t forget to bring your Nai Nai too.

 VERDICT:

5 out of 5

*Me after the credits rolled.*

[the-electric-navigator-as]

OOC ROLEPLAY PREFERENCE SHEET.

please repost, do not reblog!  feel free to add to any of your answers!  the purpose is to tell your partners about the way you write! for the multiple choice ones, bold all that apply and, if you want, italicize if it’s a conditional answer!

BASICS. NAME: I am an enigma ALIAS(ES)/HANDLE(S): Stocking/Rena ARE YOU 18 OR OLDER? yes / no IS YOUR MUSE?  yes / no WHEN WAS YOUR BLOG ESTABLISHED? 2018, around october. 

WRITING.

ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU WRITE WITH ON THIS BLOG? no (anyone) / semi (most people) / yes (some people) / highly (few people) / private (mutuals only). (I havn’t decided if I’d rp with non-mutuals tbh) ARE YOU SELECTIVE ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW ON THIS BLOG? no (anyone) / semi (most people)  / yes (some people) / highly (few people) / private (mutuals only). IF YOUR MUSE IS CANON, HOW MUCH TO YOU ADHERE TO CANON? not at all / a little  / some / mostly / strictly [it kinda depends? and is also a little complicated at times. depends on what you consider canon; i tend to take bits and pieces and mash it all up with other stuff too] WHAT POST LENGTHS DO YOU WRITE? ‘one liners’ / single-para / multi-para / novella [id love to try novella] DO YOU USE ICONS AND/OR GIFS? no / yes DO YOU WRITE ON OTHER PLATFORMS? no / yes WHAT LEVEL OF PLOTS DO YOU WRITE? unplotted  / open-ended plots (set up a meeting and see what happens) / semi-plotted (one or two steps ahead) / fully plotted epics (plotted beginning, middle, and end).  HOW QUICKLY DO YOU USUALLY RESPOND TO THREADS? very slow (more than a month) / slow (3-4 weeks) / average (1-2 weeks) / fast (less than one week) / very fast (less than three days) / it depends. WHAT TYPES OF THEMES DO YOU LIKE? fluff / angst / smut / violence / tragedy / domestic / family / conversational / anything tbh. conversational is a nice go-to for a quick thread though and it can be really fun for me WHAT GENRES DO YOU LIKE?

high fantasy / supernatural / science fiction / historical / horror / comedy / romantic / drama (I love romantic tbh, especially slowburns) / action / adventure / espionage / apocalyptic. [I’m willing to try pretty much anything]

ARE THERE ANY THEMES YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE WRITING ON YOUR BLOG? no / yes [I will never write smut, and abusive relationships is.. mmm...] DO YOU HAVE ANY TRIGGERS?  HOW DO YOU REQUEST IT TAGGED? no / yes / not really?

SHIPPING.

WHAT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? romantic / platonic / familial (canon) / familial (ocs) WHAT TYPES OF PRE-ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIPS ARE YOU OPEN TO? romantic / platonic / familial (canon) / familial (ocs) (Romantic relationships depend on how well they exactly meld on the ooc level at least) DO YOU HAVE OTPS? no / yes [I’d be lying if I didn’t have a few oc x canon relationship otps for her, and some out of universe ships with her in other universes] DO YOU HAVE NOTPS? no / yes. [Electra x most villians are.. ehh..] WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION? heterosexual / heteroflexible / bisexual / pansexual / homoflexible / homosexual / demisexual  / asexual (Electra/Toshio) WHAT IS YOUR MUSE’S ROMANTIC ORIENTATION? heteroromantic / heteroflexible / biromantic / homoflexible / homoromantic / panromantic (Electra) / demiromantic / aromantic. (Toshio) (Sisters, idk)  ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WRITING SMUT? no / selectively / yes. [Smut being forced on me is the main reason I made this blog in the first place. I will not smut with any of my muses. The MOST i’d be willing to do with Electra is some suggestive stuff at very sparse intervals.] HOW EARLY IN A RELATIONSHIP DO YOU SHIP ROMANTICALLY? autoship / during plotting / after a couple ic interactions / several ic interactions in / slow burn / never (not open to romantic ships) / it depends ARE YOU OPEN TO TOXIC SHIPS? no / selectively / yes. [Goes into the Smut question. Sorry, but it just make me exceedingly uncomfy.] ARE YOU OPEN TO PROBLEMATIC SHIPS? (incest, canon history, age difference, complicated, etc.) no / yes /

ARE YOU OPEN TO POLYSHIPPING? no / selectively / yes DOES CRACK SHIPPING EVER HAPPEN? no / yes / [it did like. once]

Tagged by:I stole this from @chezbots Tagging: whoever

[dictionarywrites]

      Know Your Jeffs: A Guide To Goldblum’s Characters

This isn’t an exhaustive list, and I will be updating it as I watch more Goldblum movies, adding in the characters as I pick them up! Everything is below the cut so that I can just update as I take more stuff in. 

The descriptions of movies and characters are very much not impartial, but they should give you an idea of what you’re in for if you want to look the film up. I’m only including stuff I’ve already seen, plus Raines, which I feel like I’m never gonna be able to get hold of, and am heartbroken about.

Movies are listed in CHRONOLOGICAL order, but if you CTRL+F, you can search for a particular character name, date, or movie/TV title. This is very much under construction. There are currently 40 Jeffs on the list. 

1978 - Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, dir. Philip Kaufman - IMDb

Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers is a film about a kind of alien who comes to Earth and steals people’s bodies - effectively, they make up their own pod-versions of them, and then turn the original to dust.

Jack Bellicec is a poet in New York City, who owns a bathhouse with his wife, Nancy. This film is a sci-fi horror, and Jack is earnest but antsy throughout - he’s a real cutie, and every much a good guy. He’s just the sweetest, and is generally in a state of complete and utter terror, whilst still trying to keep grounded and keep thinking forward.

1980 - The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, dir. Henning Schellerup, IMDb

Okay, so, for a stupid TV movie from the 80s, this is actually really cute It loosely follows the plot of the short story, but generally with a happier ending and a lot more fun antics from Ichabod Crane, and it’s just great fun. A schoolteacher comes to the valley of Sleepy Hollow, and finds himself facing down the silly ghost stories continuously thrown forward by the locals.

Ichabod Crane is the cutest - he’s soft and sweet with the children, like he is in the short story, on top of being lanky and clumsy and a little stupid; he lacks a lot of his arrogance that he has in the short story, and instead he’s much less of a dick when he criticizes the ghost stories and stuff. He’s lovely, I adore him. 

1980 - Tenspeed and Brownshoe, TV Series - IMDb

Tenspeed and Brownshoe is a delight - it’s a detective TV series with a very light-hearted tone, and it’s very comfortable to just settle back and watch casually. 

Lionel Whitney is... a trip. A chartered accountant turned gumshoe, Lionel starts his own detective agency in L.A. after breaking up with his fiancée and meeting the charming (and duplicitous) E.L. Turner, a conman and scam artist. E.L. is his partner in the business, and the two combine strengths - Lionel with his idolisation of and knowledge of the 40s pulp fictional detective, Mark Savage, as well as his black belt in karate; E.L. with his thousands of accumulated skills, including being a master of disguise, a smooth-talker, and a winner at sleight of hand. 

Lionel is a dote: he’s just the sweetest, and he really gives off Bertie Wooster vibes, but with an air of genuine competence Mr Wooster never had. He’s truly incredible, and all the episodes of Tenspeed and Brownshoe are up on YouTube, so it’s really worth watching!

1981 - Threshold, dir. Richard Pearce - IMDb

Okay, so Threshold... Big old snooze fest. Not a very engaging movie, not an especially good movie - I forgot a good deal of the movie after I finished watching it. It was uninspiring and a bit bland. The concept is basically that a pioneer in mechanical science re: bio-engineering comes up with a heart valve to replace a little girl’s heart - the pioneer being Jeff Goldblum’s character - and a doctor puts it in the little girl, but it’s a very unpopular decision, because it’s not organic. Obviously, in the 80s, that was a much bigger deal than it is now. 

Aldo Gehring is just... Adorable. Too earnest, a little bit arrogant, and he’s just far too baby-faced for the age he’s textually said to be to be believable, but like... You know! It’s a dull movie either way, and Aldo isn’t a huge part of it. 

1983 - The Big Chill, dir. Lawrence Kasdan - IMDb

The Big Chill is a film about a group of college friends that meet up for the first time in like, a decade after one of their closest friends commits suicide. They all come for the funeral, and spend a few days together in the aftermath.

A lot of people seem to dislike Michael Gold, but like, he’s kind of one of the most tragic of the figures in the movie - a lot of their friends don’t remember him initially, and he really isn’t good at doing anything other than compartmentalising and shoving down his emotions. He’s brittle and a little sharp, and maybe a bit too honest for his own good, but I really love him, and I totally rec him if you can handle the subject matter, which is obviously very grim and very sad.

1984 - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, dir. W.D. Richter - IMDb

Buckaroo Banzai is a guy who’s basically, like, any eight-year-old’s Mary Sue - he’s a cowboy, a neurosurgeon, an expert test pilot, a rockstar, etc... And they play it completely straight. Leading his band of hypercompetent pretty boys, The Hong-Kong Cavaliers, he saves the world, if not the universe, on the regular. 

Doctor Sidney Zweibel, a.k.a. New Jersey, is a new addition to the team in The Adventures, and he’s a neurosurgeon who went to med school with Buckaroo. He’s a would-be cowboy, complete with boots, hat and chaps, and he’s just the cutest thing in the world, a sweet and pure boy. 10/10 Goldblums for Sid Zweibel.

1985 - Silverado, dir. Lawrence Kasdan - IMDb

Mmm, Silverado is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and it has little to no plot. Even for a Western, I found it incredibly dry and disjointed, and I can’t in good fatih recommend it to anybody, even though John Cleese is inexplicably a sheriff midway through.

However. Slick (whose actual name is Calvin Stanhope) is really fucking hot, and so you should watch his scenes on YouTube, even if you don’t watch the movie (which you shouldn’t). Slick’s screentime tocks up to around 15-20 minutes, out of a movie that’s genuinely like, two and a half hours long.

Slick is like, a casino man with a knife in his boot; he wears furs; he’s terrible. He’s so great, I adore him. 

1985 - Into The Night, dir. John Landis - IMDb

Into The Night is... a little hard to describe. It’s like, a crime thriller movie with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer, and with a cameo from David Bowie, as well as about 700 other Hollywood lads who Landis knew. I think the plot is... loose, and the film itself isn’t the greatest, but the main characters are pretty great.

Ed Okin is an astrophysicist dissatisfied with his job and his life in general, who abruptly becomes plagued by this inescapable insomnia, and subsequently becomes embroiled in this whole crime plot across from Pfeiffer. I really love Ed - because of the insomnia, he tends to underreact to most of the situations around him, and he’s very likable.

1985 - Transylvania 6-5000, dir. Ruby de Luca - IMDb

Is TR 6-5000 a good movie? No, absolutely not. But should you watch it? Oh, yes. 

This is like, a comedy/absurdist horror/pastiche, lots... It’s lots of stuff. Basically, these two reporters who do a Weekly World News style thing go to Transylvania to report on Frankenstein, and also meet some Igors, a werewolf, a vampire, etc.

Jack Harrison is such a great character - he’s pretty much eternally looking after his hapless partner, Gil, but both of them are as ridiculous as the other, each of them stumbling into bizarre situations. Definitely don’t take the movie too seriously, but it really is a fun thing, and it’s certainly worth watching for the goofy trip it is. Jack is a real sweetheart, and he’s so lovable - Gil certainly thinks so. ;)

1986 - The Fly, dir. David Cronenburg - IMDb

So, fair warning, I nearly vomited like, several times watching The Fly, and was on the verge of just turning it off a few times. It’s nearly forty years old, but the body horror of the effects really stands up, and it’s very gory toward the end.  Despite its well-earned rep as such a gory film, though, The Fly is actually a heartbreaking tragedy, so definitely don’t expect it to be lacking in the feels department if you can stomach it.

Seth Brundle (yeah, poor guy, what a name) is a really impressive engineer and scientist, and he invents a machine that should enable him to teleport objects from one electronic pod to another. Unfortunately, when teleporting himself, he becomes melded with an intruder to the pod - a fly - and begins a horrifying transition into something other than human.

Seth at the start is... He’s a genius, but he’s naive, arrogant, and a little too trusting in how earnest he is. As time goes on, and he begins the change into Brundlefly, he becomes much more erratic, and his personality changes a lot. I totally rec Seth, honestly. 

1988 - Vibes, dir. Ken Kwapis - IMDB

Vibes is a fucking trip. It’s a movie about two psychics - Jeff Goldblum’s character, Nick Deezy, who can tell the history of an object by touching it, and Cyndi Lauper’s character, Sylvia Pickel, who is a medium. Yes, you read that right. Cyndi Lauper. It’s incredible.

Vibes is actually a much better movie than I expected - it’s a genuinely funny comedy, it’s ridiculous and cartoonish and stupid, but it’s fun. Cyndi Lauper and Goldblum have a tango scene at one point, and the height differential is so extreme that she’s literally wrapped around his waist and he’s just carrying her around.

Nick Deezy himself is a really interesting character - he’s kinda used to being used and pushed around because of his psychic powers, but he’s a guy with such a lot of courage and genuine empathy for others, and I just think he’s so sweet. 

1988 - Earth Girls Are Easy,  dir. Julien Temple - IMDb

So... Earth Girls Are Easy is in the same vein as Vibes for me - it’s a fun romp, and so long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s a really enjoyable movie. It’s about these three furry aliens that drop down to Earth, and are trying to pick up the language and have a good time. It’s good banter, and it’s also a musical, because-- It was 1988, okay? 

Mac is like, probably one of the most genuinely sweet characters out of the ones on this list - he’s very caring, and he’s doing his best to do good whilst not really being able to navigate the world around him very easily. He’s wonderful, and I can’t rec Earth Girls enough.

He’s also a big, furry, blue guy in his underwear for the first part of the movie, if that helps.

1989 - The Tall Guy, dir. Mel Smith - IMDb

So, disclaimer. This film is written by Richard Curtis, so like... It’s snappy, it’s clever, but it’s also a little insufferable and kinda misogynistic the whole way through, with the classic Curtis obsession with infidelity, where characters cheat on one another whether it makes sense or not.

That aside, I really enjoyed the first two acts of this movie, and while the third one falls very flat, I still think it’s worth watching. Goldblum’s character, Dexter King, plays the straight man in Rowan Atkinson’s comedy sketch act, but goes on to have a romantic relationship with Emma Thompson, and those links are just... So cute.

I think Dexter is kind of a dick, but by no means does that make him unlikable, and I’d still rec The Tall Guy! I’m not sure how long Goldblum was in the UK for - there’s a nude sex scene with Goldblum and Thompson, and I was really thrown, because he’s super pale in this film, compared to similar nude scenes in like, The Fly. So there’s your fun tidbit for the day lmao.

1990 - Mister Frost, dir. Philippe Setbon - IMDb

This film is... Odd. As a thriller, it’s fine - you know, it’s average. It isn’t so terrible, but it’s not great either. But as like, a film, there are aspects where it’s just inexplicably terrible - some of the lines are dubbed over, for some reason, and the sound quality is so off in random moments; there are odd moments where the camera is just too close to the actors’ faces, even for a close-up; technically, this film just has some bizarre and glaring... errors.

The plot is interesting, though, and I did enjoy it for that aspect - Mister Frost is a serial killer institutionalized in an attempt to cure him of his murderous tendencies, and he then professes to be Lucifer himself. 

Mister Frost is a funny guy. He’s snide, clever, self-obsessed and sharp - I really liked him, and I totally think he’s worth a watch.

1992 - Fathers & Sons, dir. Paul Mones - IMDb

[icon to be added if I can ever get a decent fucking picture or screencap or something of this film]

This film was bad. I didn’t care for it. Fathers & Sons is, however, like... Very human, I guess. Max, Goldblum’s character, runs a bookstore on the coast and is having trouble communicating with his son, Ed; there’s a lot of tension between them based off the death of Ed’s mother and Max’s own character flaws, as well as Max’s temper. There’s fucking voiceover in the film, which is used clumsily and just comes across as terrible, but there aren’t any glaring technical issues throughout like there are with Mister Frost.

Max himself is not, in my opinion, a very likable character? He’s certainly relatively sympathetic, and you can see where he’s coming from, but he’s got a terrible temper and the tension with Ed is very much his own doing in a lot of respects - despite my personal dislikes, however, Goldblum is as ever a marvel, and you really do feel that Max is a whole, complete person.

1992 - Shooting Elizabeth, dr. Baz Taylor - IMDb

This film was a fucking trip and a half. The premise is that this guy, Howard, really hates his wife, and decides he hates her so much that he’s gonna kill her, but when she goes missing, he is arrested for her murder even though he never got around to it. It’s a generically confused movie which neither really meets its labelled genres of comedy or thriller, but wouldn’t do well under drama or romance either. It’s odd.

Howard Pigeon, as a character, is deeply unstable. A lot of the moments in the movie that I think are meant to be comedic just end up being tragic, because you can see how upset he is, how freaked out he is, and how disconnected from reality and rational thought he is. He’s also just... A really fucking bad person, but to be honest, so is his wife, so like... Hey. It is what it is, I guess. 

1992 - Deep Cover, dir. Bill Duke - IMDb

Deep Cover is fucking incredible. It’s easily one of my favourite movies now, and I just die over it, to be honest. Playing across from Laurence Fishburne (then billed as Larry), David Jason (Elias in the script, and I don’t know why they changed it, maybe to make his name less blatantly Jewish, but I assume none of them had ever heard of Only Fools and Horses) is a low-down cocaine mogul trying to break out on his own from the local boss. 

He’s a fascinating character, and I just adore him - the film itself is a very gritty noir that really considers lines of racial intersection and prejudice within both the police force and the drug trade, and David himself is constantly suffering from antisemitism and a lot of very targeted homophobic remarks, and it’s heavily implied he wants to fuck John, Laurence Fishburne’s character. David is erratic, sharp, and extremely brittle with a very short temper: he and John kinda balance each other out, because John’s a much cooler, calmer guy, and I just love their dynamic.

David’s my son. I love him. I will cry over him forever. 

1993 - Jurassic Park, dir. Steven Spielberg - IMDB        ↪1997 - Jurassic Park: The Lost World, dir. Steven Spielberg - IMDb        ↪2018 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dir. J.A. Bayona - IMDb

So, like, I’m sure you know the basic concept of Jurassic Park. A crazed Walt Disney parody in white linen with seemingly unlimited money decides to clone a bunch of fucking dinosaurs and put them into a theme park, and it goes horribly wrong. These films are genuinely great sci-fi, raising some wonderful philosophical questions about ownership, ethics, and our place in the universe, and the voice of that philosophy usually belongs to Doctor Ian Malcolm, a mathematician who specialises in chaos theory.

Ian Malcolm... I just adore him, I really do. You know, I’ve read the book of course, as well as the seen all the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, and Ian is just a delight - he’s bright, he’s sarcastic, but he’s genuinely full of feeling and so eager to talk to other people, to connect with them, etc. I just find him fascinating, and even if sci-fi isn’t your thing, you’ll love Jurassic Park for him alone.

He reprises his role in the latest Jurassic World movie - I can’t, in all good conscience, really recommend the Jurassic World movies, but... He is a silver fox. 

1995 - Hideaway, dir. Brett Leonard - IMDb

Hideaway is a supernatural thriller based around the concept of demonic possession, and an antiques dealer - Hatch Harrison - finds he has visions of a local serial killer after being revived from being dead for several minutes. Using those visions to thwart the killer, he and his family realise the cause is supernatural. 

Hatch is a really cool dude, and I like him a lot - he’s got the strongest dad energies, and he’s so, so caring. Even grieving and tense, like, he’s just doing his best, and he’s such a good guy, I really adore him. 

1995 - Nine Months, dir. Chris Columbus - IMDb

Nine Months is a terrible movie thick with a deeply unsettling ideology re: the whole “everybody really wants kids and must have them”, and I honestly despised it throughout. It’s just a terrible movie, and Columbus always ranges from “this guy is a vaguely bad director” to “this guy is a fucking twat”, and there is nothing vague about the badness of this movie.

That aside, however, Goldblum’s character is kind of a delight. Sean Fletcher is a painter (of paintings, not houses) and like... Layabout? He’s a little erratic, he changes his mind about stuff constantly, but he’s a really sound guy, and he cares a lot about Hugh Grant’s character, who is the protagonist. He’s really fun in a movie that’s just garbage the way through. 

1995 - Powder, dir. Victor Salva - IMDb

Powder is a very sad movie, to be honest. It’s about this lad who’s like, an albino with telekinetic powers, and when his parents die, he ends up having to go into the public school system, where he’s bullied an awful lot. It’s extremely brutal about a lot of the bullying stuff, and it does come across very accurately; just as a general warning, there’s... an uncomfortable tone to it, although nothing directly or graphically terrible, especially re: sexuality, which I noticed even before looked Salva up and realised he was that paedophile that did Jeepers Creepers. It’s just something to be aware of.

Jeff’s character is... a delight, however. Donald Ripley is a high school teacher who’s genuinely really passionate about teaching, has no small amount of sympathy for all of his students, and is just-- He’s really sweet, and I love him. Despite the uncomfortable gaze of the film, he retains a paternal air, and I love it.  

1996 - Independence Day, dir. Roland Emmerich - IMDb          ↪2016 - Independence Day: Resurgence, dir. Roland Emmerich - IMDb

Independence Day, honestly, I expected to be like, bad sci-fi dreck, and it genuinely isn’t. While I think the premise is inherently stupid (the whole evil aliens invade thing), it’s actually executed so well, and I just love it as a flick - Judaism saves the day in many aspects, and it’s so nice to have that positive thing mixed up in it.

David Levinson is such a sweet guy - he’s arrogant and a little bit of an ass, but like, he’s so caring: he constantly worries about his dad, he’s so loyal to his ex-wife without being creepy or weird about it after like, three years; he fucking recycles and uses his bike to get around the city... Like, he’s an underachiever initially, but he’s a genuinely nice guy despite his abrasive personality at times, you know?

I just love him.  

And he reprises the role in the new movie, which isn’t as good as the first one, but is still worth a watch for Julius Levinson’s antics, picking up grandchildren as he drives across America. 

1998 - Holy Man, dir. Stephen Herek - IMDb

My full review of Holy Man is here.

Holy Man is not a good film. It’s about an exec who runs a TV shopping channel, but is like, really shit at it, and he ends up getting G., a homeless guru played by Eddie Murphy, to sell stuff for him. Nonsensical and odd although the film is, it’s actually surprisingly sweet and wholesome, and I really enjoyed a lot of the humour. 

Ricky is a pretty bad guy at the beginning, but he’s slick and fun and good-humoured - he’s mostly just selfish more than outright evil, and he actually ends up becoming a lot less selfish toward the end of the film. He’s a sweetheart, in some respects. 

2001 - Cats & Dogs, dir. Lawrence Guterman - IMDb

God, this movie is so bad, and so much more racist than I remembered? There’s this whole racist sequence with some ninja cats, complete with the chopsticks-style music playing in the background, and that’s... Awful. 

But Charles Brody is actually really funny, to be honest. Goldblum somehow makes him feel really human - earnest and work-obsessed, but still desperate to be a good father despite not being naturally inclined, and that’s... Honestly, I hate it when he does this. He takes the stupidest character in the stupidest movie and makes them feel like a real person, and I hate him for it.

Brody is cute. 

2002 - Igby Goes Down, dir. Burr Steers - IMDb

Igby Goes Down is... Hm. What best to call it? Insipid teenage horseshit. The whole film is just fucking terrible, honestly - it centres around the Culkin that isn’t Kevin in Home Alone, and he’s some unbearable little New York teenager who thinks the world revolves around him and is upset at the prospect that perhaps he should go to school and/or get a job. 

Anyway, Goldblum is at his least moral and most hot, he is revolting, and he is so sexy. There’s a weird thing where he’s the family friend of a family that’s pretty anti-semitic, but they play it straight, as if Jeff Goldblum’s face isn’t one of the most Jewish faces anybody’s ever seen, but that aside, he’s really sexy. Sociopathic, abruptly violent, and infrequently undressed, but it’s not worth watching the rest of the film for, to be honest. 

2003 - Spinning Boris, dir. Roger Spottiswoode - IMDb

Spinning Boris. What a film.

Here, listen, we just watched this, me and @annethecatdetective, and it was absolutely nothing that I expected,or could expect. It’s a heavily fictionalised “based on a true story” film about three Rpublicans who went to work on the Boris Yeltsin campaign in ‘96. We, apparently, are once again meant to believe Jeff Goldblum as a goyische Republican, which--

I mean, what can I tell you? He does it so well. George Gorton’s fictionalised counterpart is charismatic, charming and funny, but so is most of the movie - the Republican trio are all morons, but that actually lends to their likability in the end, and Gorton is the most lovable of the three, taking the foreground. This movie was like, actually really good.  

2004 - The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

I hated this film, and had to fast-forward a lot of it. I’m not a fan of Anderson at all, much as Goldblum is always singing his praises - I just don’t get it, I guess. Anderson is a master of visual spectacle, but he’s one of the worst writers out there, and pithy lines don’t make up for the complete lack of character that any of his films have.

Alistair Hennessy is no exception. He’s pithy, vaguely (comedically?) sociopathic, and is kinda DTF... And that’s about it. Even Goldblum can’t really add that much depth to this guy, because there’s no depth in other characters for him to play off. 

2006 - Man of the Year, dir. Barry Levinson - IMDb

Mmm, so, Man of the Year surprised me. 

It’s definitely quite weak, when it comes to plot and writing - the jokes aren’t at their strongest; it can’t really decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a political thriller; some of the jokes and commentary are very off-colour and have not aged well; it seeks to set out a political moral without making any particular targets. Nonetheless, I rather enjoyed it - it doesn’t pretend to be a higher art than it is, and I think it’s still enjoyable. The primary drawback is probably that the premise of a comedian being elected president of the USA is much less hilariously unbelievable in the wake of the Trump campaign, and that colours my perception a little - some of the protag’s comments about immigration or women, the way he responds to other candidates in debate, Hell, even Robin Williams’ wearing of a red baseball cap at one point... All of those elements kinda take the humour out of it a bit because of the Trump election, but hey, it was 2006 - how could they possibly know?

Goldblum’s character in this, Mr Stewart, is the lawyer and primed attack dog of a corrupt company that produces the electronic voting machines responsible for Williams’ character being elected. He isn’t at his most Goldblum-esque in this, I have to say - he’s sharp, nasty, and very business-focused, but he doesn’t get that much time on screen, and his on-screen moments don’t lean very much into his usual charm and humour. Stewart is actually a very dull, run-of-the-mill evil corporate type, and he was a pretty boring character. 

2007 - Raines, TV Series - IMDb

I will write whatever you want if you can get me a download link for this, or somewhere where I can just buy the fucking series, from Ireland. I am desperate to watch it, because it looks fucking awful. Michael Raines is a detective who hallucinates that his victims help him solve the crimes.

Doesn’t that sound so bad? I need it. 

2009-2010 - Law & Order: Criminal Intent, TV Series - IMDb

So like, you know the shtick with Law & Order. It’s a gory, stupid crime procedural that’s just really stupid. This one, Criminal Intent, is about major crimes, but honestly, I have little to no idea exactly what a major crime is, even having watched the two seasons in which Zach Nichols is a marauding force. 

Zach Nichols himself is... Fascinating. So, you know how there’s this fucking trend of just, mean detective who everyone lets be mean because he’s a ~genius~ or whatever, and everyone is always like “ugh, he fucking sucks, but we gotta let him do that”? That is not the case with Zach Nichols. Zach Nichols is nothing short of a genuine sociopath, continuously manipulative, randomly and without provocation is he cruel to victims, witnesses and criminals alike. At no point does anybody call him out for being terrible, or even admitting he’s being terrible. It’s like no one registers the cruelty of his behaviour, or cares.

Honestly, I expect it’s quite accurate as to the New York police system, and in the mean time, it’s really fucking hot. He’s my favourite of all of Goldblum’s characters, and he disgusts me on literally every level. 

2010 - Morning Glory, dir. Roger Michell - IMDb

Morning Glory is... It starts out very bland and uninspiring, but it does grow on you more as it goes on. In my opinion, it would have been better if they’d just tried to bill it genuinely, as a comedy-drama, which is what it is - instead, they tried to shoehorn in a very ugly actor I forget the name of as a love interest for Rachel McAdams, I presume in desperate hope of earning that rom-com dollar. Nonetheless, it’s a cute enough concept - TV journalist gets her dream job running a news studio, and has to get bully and asshole anchor Harrison Ford to be fun and wholesome for the morning show. It’s cute, and I do think it’s worth watching despite some of the issues with it.

Jerry is like... He’s so fucking great. Jerry is just an ass. He’s rude, he’s biting, he’s constantly telling McAdams’ character to make stuff that is impossible work, and he very much eats, breathes, and sleeps his job, while packing in time to jog and to fuck an extremely stupid girl, Lisa, he put in the newsroom, who believes in shit like past lives and angels, and is literally the best character in the movie. 

Jerry and Lisa are the fucking greatest, everyone else can go home. 

According to the IMDb credits, he has a wife who is unnamed, but like... I have no memory of her even being in the movie, honestly. It’s not the greatest of cinematic works.

2010 - The Switch, dir. Josh Gordan & Will Speck - IMDb

The Switch? Bad concept. It’s about Jason Bateman’s character stealing the sperm donation that Jennifer Aniston was going to use to get pregnant, and then replacing it with his own. So like, off the bat, the whole reproductive rape, grievious sexual assault thing, that the movie... Kinda expects you to view as romantic? Somehow? I don’t.... get it. Apparently it’s okay because their characters are “friends”.

Anyway, moving onto the important part, Leonard, Jeff’s character, is great. He’s go the BDE going on; at one point he’s walking on the treadmill while eating a candy bar, and mocks Jason Bateman for not doing the same; he’s sarcastic, eccentric, and a massive THOT that lets women handfeed him; and, inexplicably, despite being Jason Bateman’s boss, him and Bateman are best friends. 10 out of 10 Goldblums for Leonard, who they didn’t bother to give a last name to. 

2012 - Zambezia, dir. Wayne Thornley - IMDb

Egh. Like, even for a kid’s movie this one was pretty bland? The actual design and animation is pretty beautiful - I love the designs of all the wildlife, which is the main focus of it, and that’s really well-done throughout; there’s also a star-studded cast of voice actors. The story is pretty dull, and the script ain’t great, but hey. It’s a kid’s movie, and I think it does what it means to do. 

Ajax, Goldblum’s character, is pretty cute - he’s like, a busybody, like the fucking... Toucan or whatever he is in the Lion King. He’s the advisor to the bird king or whatever. That’s... I mean, that’s pretty much it. There’s very little to say here. 

2013 - Le Week-end, dir. Roger Michell - IMDb

Le Week-end is fucking adorable. It’s about this struggling middle-aged couple who go to Paris for a weekend to try to rekindle their marriage, and they run around committing shenanigans, arguing, and generally being a little bit adorable. 

They meet Morgan, who is an old schoolfriend of Jim Broadbent’s character, and is now like, a best-selling writer in economics, and he invites them for a really stupid dinner party full of really impressive people, which makes both of them feel very inadequate. Jim Broadbent spends a lot of the party with Morgan’s weird teenage son, chatting about how Morgan is kind of a dick, but honestly, Morgan is just... Not self-aware. He’s pretty much in love with Jim Broadbent the entire time, and sings everybody’s praises, then comes to rescue them both at the end.

He’s very cute, kinda selfish, kind of disconnected from reality, and I have a lot of affection for him. 

2014 - The Grand Budapest Hotel, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

The Grand Budapest Hotel is like... It’s a Wes Anderson film. Egh. 

Deputy Kovacs is probably the least Goldblum-y character in any Goldblum role. He doesn’t have many of the verbal tics, and to be honest, he doesn’t even move his hands in the typical Goldblum fashion - if you look at the dinner scene, you can see his fingers twitching as he tries to keep his hand still. 

Kovacs has some good lines, but like any Anderson character, doesn’t really have a character. 

2015 - Mortdecai, dir. David Koepp - IMDb

Mortdecai is a terrible fucking film, and I despised it. It was just awful, it really was, and Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow’s characters were each fucking insufferable. It’s about this posh cunt who sells art, and then lots of people try to kill him because he’s posh, and a cunt.

Jeff’s character, Milton Krampf, is the father of Olivia Munn’s character, and Olivia Munn is a nymphomaniac who wants to fuck Johnny Depp. Milton gets like, 5 minutes of screentime, and is weirdly on board with his daughter banging Johnny Depp, but that’s it. If you ask my opinion, they should have had Milton try to bang Depp, and let Olivia Munn be in charge, but like... It was a bad movie. There was no thinking outside the box. 

2017 - Thor: Ragnarok, dir. Taika Waititi - IMDb

I mean, what do I even say? 

Thor: Ragnarok is like, my least favourite Thor film, but not because it’s not great. Thor: Ragnarok is so much better than most of the other Marvel films put together - it’s fun, it’s snappy, it’s beautifully shot, it has a vision, etc. etc. Taika Waititi’s humour mostly isn’t my thing, but his comedy is so well-ranging and so well-done that like, even if it isn’t your thing, you still get laughs out of his movies. Ragnarok is a great movie - it’s not my favourite for like, Loki’s characterisation, but... Honestly, when you’re watching it, that stuff just falls away. It’s so entertaining and so well done, even if I don’t agree with some of the characterization and story choices. 

And the GM, God, he’s... Just terrible. I adore him. You know I adore him, this whole blog is just GM fanfiction. He’s an Eldritch being with unlimited power who forces people to fight in an intergalactic alien arena while shtupping Loki Laufeyson and being too lazy to properly rule a planet. What’s not to love?

2018 - Seth Rogen’s Hilarity for Charity, dir. Ryan Polito - IMDb

Hilarity for Charity was not funny, and was generally very painful to watch. I would recommend you skip through all of the “comedy” except for Tiffany Kaddish and John Mulaney. 

At the end of the special, Jeff Goldblum plays the human face of the Netflix Algorithm, and playfully talks about destroying all human life. It’s pretty cute. 

2018 - Isle of Dogs, dir. Wes Anderson - IMDb

I fell asleep during this. Like, within a half hour, I fell asleep. 

Goldblum is underutilised, but to be honest, so are a lot of the characters - Isle of Dogs is a very weird movie, and I’m a little unclear as to some of the choices Anderson made with it, but visually, it’s a very strong movie, and it’s more enjoyable than most. 

I still fell asleep. 

Goldblum’s character, Duke, is like, a husky with a cheerful attitude, and he’s constantly gossiping and making shit up. His lines are good fun.  

2018 - Hotel Artemis, dir. Drew Pearce - IMDb

Now, Hotel Artemis, not a great movie. The plot is very lacking, the characters mostly cardboard archetypes instead of developed individuals... I think the film has a lot of issues with telling the audience the stuff that could be shown much more artfully, but like, egh.

Despite those issues, Orian Franklin - Niagara - is a very interesting character. He’s in the movie for a very short amount of time (barely twenty-five minutes of screentime, if that) but he’s a really interesting enigma, and I really loved what little they bothered to do with him.

He’s one of those characters that’s much more interesting in fanfic than in the canon. 

[traceyelizabethwebbassociates]

Finding the Music in the Chaos

Organizational life can feel like an exercise in managing chaos, with competing priorities, opinions, differing approaches, and the constant cacophony of expert advice.  So how do we sort through this and thrive as we work with others?  We find the music in the chaos.

I am a huge fan of opera and symphonic music.  I love both art forms because of their complexity--the successful melding of many elements.  I was recently in the San Francisco Opera house waiting for the performance to begin.  I looked up at the incredibly beautiful ceiling, the beautiful draping of the stage curtains, the Tragedy and Comedy reliefs on either side of the stage, and the comings and goings of the audience, as it was not yet time for the performance to begin.  I was overwhelmed by the pull on all of my senses.

I began to think about how we can experience a sense of constant overload and over stimulation in organizational life.  There is always something that needs to be done right now.  There are colleagues to persuade.  There are direct reports to manage.  And of course, we all have to manage up---even if we are the CEO.  How do we effectly navigate the chaos? We find the music in swirling priorities and demands.

The first step is to embrace the chaos; it is a fact of organizational life.  The second step is to remember who we are and what we stand for, as the chaotic energy swirls around us.  I always advise clients that their job is to move the organization forward and through chaos, as long as they are not being asked to do anything unethical, immoral, or illegal.  Additionally, we must be in constant contact with our North Star--who we are at our most authentic core.  Once we reconnect with who we are and how we need to show up in the world, we can better navigate through organizational chaos because our North Star, our authentic self, provides guidance.

The following steps provide a summary of the process of finding the music in the chaos:

1.  Embrace the chaos--it is a fact of organizational life.

2.  Journal, work with a coach, and remind yourself of your Authentic Self--who you truly are.  Know what motivates and drives you.  Know your guideposts and values.  

3.  Engage in authentic dialogue with your colleagues in order to understand their point of view, their priorities, and their challenges.  Listen first, and then share your considered and authentic point of view.

4.  Look for common patterns in the dialogue--this is how you find the music in the chaos.  What are your common goals/objectives?  What is the need behind the need--that your colleague(s) might not be sharing directly?  How do your needs behind the need correspond with your colleagues’ wants?  Whether we are talking about bio pharma, teaching students, or writing financial deals--we all have deeply held values and objectives that guide our work--whether or not we are conscious of these factors.  

5.  Finding the Music in the Chaos is really about having authentic and sometimes difficult dialogue that helps colleagues align around critical paths forward.  The process helps identify how we can best marshall our collective drive, motivation, and perspectives to find the best answers in the chaotic cacophony of organizational life.

There is music in the chaos; we have to look for it by bringing authentic dialogue to the fore.  The musical notes are swirling about in the chaos--our goal should be to hear them and work together to create a score that delivers against the organization’s goals.

[mild-lunacy]

Reverse Harem: a reverse ode

I hate reverse harem, or books/works about multiple men in love and/or lust with one woman. I've talked about it before, of course, but I haven't been as explicit about it as I can be. Though to be fair, I once said I'd rather 'watch everyone die in gruesome ways' in a fic context. That's... probably pretty clear, to be fair. Now, reading romance authors explain their interest, the fact is that it doesn't help. Yes, okay, from the writer's perspective, I suppose it's cool to explore new ways of doing things in a genre as predictable as romance. And yes, okay, 'some people' think of it as being simply more of the good stuff without the pressure of having to 'choose'. I don't care. For me, there's very rarely a real choice. I don't like love triangles because they're generally too melodramatic and basically a waste of my time, but I hate reverse harem with a passion, and it's now common and popular enough that I can't avoid it, so here we are. The rant goes ever on.

The bottom line is that I'm very, very introverted. I suppose you can call me 'aggressively introverted'. What this means is that constant and unending attention from 3+ people sounds hellish to me, particularly when it never shuts off and they're all there when I'm relaxing, sleeping, etc. I can't help putting myself into it 'cause that's the selling point of het romance as a genre: that's the whole appeal. And it's just exhausting and awful to imagine. It's not 'family' to me, as one of the fans described it, because family goes away. They're not generally there at 1am when I just really want to relax. I mean they're there, but the expectation is that they leave you alone unless these are young children (a temporary situation). There's fundamentally no such time limit expectation with a significant other. Here, my point is that in transferring the super close, possibly codependent romance couple concept that I like in my stories onto more people, I run into a serious issue. Unlike the fervent (if eye-rolly) ideal of the codependent, swooning couple-- which allows me to ignore some inconvenient technical details about reality-- the reverse harem scenario fundamentally serves to remind me why I avoid people. People seem tiring and I'd rather be alone. Not the sentiment you'd want romance to instill, surely.

Once again, I realize these books are fiction, specifically idealized and not particularly realistic fiction, and also not about me. Or for me, for that matter. In fact, these stories quite obviously have nothing to do with me. And yet, I can't let it go.

I can't relinquish either my understanding of how I myself work or my understanding of reality. Like, my problem is (if I ignore the largely immature and perhaps just whiny ranting about personal space), I read fantasy, sure, but I generally need the characterization to feel strongly grounded. At least, if a story is rubbing me the wrong way enough to make me aware of inconsistencies. Fundamentally, I tend to think of characterization as a mimetic technique. In other words, people are people no matter what. They're not suddenly 'romantic people' in romances or 'tragic people' in tragedies, though perhaps you can argue comedies do change the flavor of human behavior in such a way that you can call these 'comedic characters' specifically. That is probably neither here nor there, however.

And the thing is, most writers of reverse harem romances *are* aiming for some degree of veracity in their characterization. They want the situation to feel real emotionally, because that's fundamentally what it takes for fiction to work, no matter what you're writing about. This is the presumed intent regardless of how much (or how little) any given reader has to suspend their disbelief. And so... I keep getting frustrated and annoyed, particularly if a writer I like and admire writes a reverse harem, because I feel like these books can't make the cut no matter what, basically.

It's funny because it's probably so annoying simply because this subgenre is making me too conscious of a situation that isn't unusual within romance. I mean popular tropes like love at first sight, soulmates or fated mates, endless mutual, simultaneous orgasms and even huge penises: the fact is, the genre is full of basic human characterization realism fails. And normally, I just... let it go. The most irritating thing of all is being conscious that there's nothing more unrealistic about reverse harem than fated mates, and yet I easily swallow soulmate stories because that's a silly myth I personally enjoy.

To be honest, I also don't like the idea of sharing my idealized heartthrob, even for the sake of more heartthrobs. And I do think the heroine must share her time and energy, even if technically *she* is the one being shared. A situation that goes counter to the alpha male cliche a lot of these stories still try to pursue, regardless. To me, it's fundamentally contrary to the whole over-the-top romance couple scenario, where possessiveness and perhaps a bit of jealous paranoia is part of business as usual. I don't like *too* much jealousy, so I dislike drawn out love triangles, but possessiveness I do like. I feel like an alpha male character is generally made of like, 30% possessiveness. It's a major motivational driver. I don't think you can write classic romance without that aspect. The only 'solution' I can see that preserves this formula is if the men all act as if they're a unit, of one mind.

Theoretically, this only applies romantically. That is, indeed, what frequently appears to be part of the reverse harem trope. But I can't tolerate that at all; even thinking of such loss of individuality gives me the shivers. There's no way it would *only* apply romantically if several men were suddenly of one mind about who they love and how (let alone when). And furthermore, I find that utterly boring. Anyway, there's a reason so many of the anime reverse harem stories this genre is inspired by apparently has many guys admire and like the heroine without feeling actual romantic love. There's also a reason many of the lower-quality books in this subgenre seem content to stick with the sexual part (making it genuinely romantic across the board would be hard).

Mind melds and soulmates aside, the whole appeal of any fictional character is their individuality. People will naturally have different needs, different kinds of relationships with each other. That's why I don't think of reverse harem as being equivalent to real life polyamory: real people have unequal or messy relationships that are often separated both in space and time, not to mention both closeness and relative importance. Polyamory supports this inherent messiness in a way reverse harem doesn't. The other foundational tropes of romance won't let it. The limitations of romance as a genre and the compounding limits of using a single book mean these relationships are almost always simultaneous and would often have to conflate or combine individual motivations and needs. The largely inevitable lack of realism in the romance genre is normally supported by my idealization of the romantic concepts involved. In this case, I just want to pick the hermit cat lady future instead, as I said. Not just 'pick' but 'violently demand', perhaps.

In my opinion, the other tropes of romance as a genre can't be genuinely compatible with the contextual needs and circumstances of a stand-alone reverse harem novel. Thus, they must inevitably somehow be twisted out of shape and forced to fit. The various cliches and genre expectations of Western romance don't naturally expand onto group dynamics. They can't. While for most reverse harem writers and readers, the new and fresh difference in the circumstances is a natural part of the attraction, the issue is that these books still don't bother to reinvent the wheel. They're blatantly promising all the same genre tropes, and just changing this one thing-- the number of love interests-- as if it's nothing major. Just a variable to plug in. Except, hello! No way. This changes everything. It is this (as much or more as the effect on my antisocial nature) that bothers me.

[houstonlocalus-blog]

Chain of Keys: The Best of The Week

PJ Harvey. Photo: Maria Mochnacz

  Well, we certainly have a ton of options to choose from this week. Alongside a ton of offerings from local acts, legends like PJ Harvey and Pixies will be here as well as the likes of Little Dragon, A Perfect Circle and Xavier Wulf. Houston, here’s where to spend your paycheck this week.

  On Wednesday you can get started with LA punk pop cult rock heroes, Redd Kross upstairs at White Oak Music Hall.  While these guys were never commercially huge, that doesn’t mean that their entertaining style and subversive act shouldn’t go unnoticed.  They’re here in support of their latest album, 2012’s Researching The Blues, and they’re a trip to see play live.  Houston’s The Satanic Overlords of Rock N Roll will bring their beer fueled punk energy on as direct support while the tongue in cheek punk of The Cops will open things up for the all ages show with doors at 7 pm and has tickets between $12 and $17.

  Little Simz. Photo: Wired PR

  In the studio at Warehouse Live, California’s Ab-Soul will bring his hip hop jams to life. This guy is kind of the king of the slow boil with tracks that seem to drip like honey.  His latest, Do What Thou Wilt from last year has critical acclaim, with hints of grime that change up his game. England’s hottest new MC, Little Simz will bring her mic skills on as direct support and opener for the all ages show with doors at 7 pm and with tickets between $23 and $28.

  River Oaks Theatre will host a screening of the feature documentary, “I Am Battle Comic” alongside a Q&A session.  The film, covers comics like Houston’s Slade Ham who perform for the troops in war torn countries, and features sets and interviews with comics George Lopez, George Wallace, Tammy Pescatelli and Slade Ham.  The event will be hosted by Outlaw Dave, and he will moderate the Q&A as well.  The one night only event will donate the proceeds to Militaryfamilies.org.  The doors are at 7 pm with tickets for $15.

  Oddisee. Photo: Shore Fire Media

  Over at Walter’s, the hip hop of Brooklyn’s Oddisee will be on full display, backed by the live band Good Company.  Oddisee has been gaining traction in the hip hop world with albums that hit deep within like they should, alongside crazed live sets.  His latest release, this year’s The Iceberg is a mix of jazz, hard beats, gospel and R&B soul that’s pretty amazing.  The rock and soul of DC born and UK transplant, Oliver St. Louis will be on as direct support and opener for the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and with tickets between $15 and $17.

  Thursday you could head to House of Blues for the popular prog fusion of New York’s Coheed and Cambria.  Here in support of last year’s celebrated The Color Before The Sun, these guys bring their game when they play live.  Massachusetts’ The Dear Hunter will be on as direct support and opener for the all ages show with doors at 7 pm and tickets between $35 and $59.

  Red House. Photo: Dinolion

  The opening night of Red House will take place from the team at Dinolion at an undisclosed location.  The ultra secretive and immersive performance, should be nothing if not intriguing and engaging, as it’s being put on by a small group of very talented people.  Principal dance from Houston Ballet, music from Black Kite and LIMB, and lots of mystery surround these shows. There’s more information here for the 17 & up show with doors at 7:45 pm or 10:45 pm and tickets for $35. The show runs through the weekend with a super limited amount of tickets available.

  LA’s Dengue Fever will bring their blend of psych and Cambodian rock to Walter’s.  Known for a crazy live show, this six piece makes groovy tunes, and their newest album The Deepest Lake from 2015 is a trip.  The gorgeous pedal steel of Will Van Horn will be on as direct support and opener on the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and tickets between $15 and $17.

  Little Dragon. Photo: IB Kamara

  Downstairs at White Oak Music Hall, Swedish electro pop four piece Little Dragon will make their return to town.  Always full of fun and life when they play live, their set was pretty refreshing last year at Day For Night.  They usually sell out wherever they play, and their latest Season High is pretty hard to resist.  The hip hop of DC’s Goldlink will be on as direct support while LA’s Kronika will open things up at the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and tickets for $35.

  If you’re a fan of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, then you might want to check out Whitney at The Secret Group.  The folk pop duo made up of Julien Ehrlich and Max Kakacek will bring their chill vibes from last year’s Light Upon The Lake to life.  The alt pop of LA’s Golden Daze will go on beforehand and Houston’s Deep Cuts will bring their indie rock sounds on as openers for the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and tickets for $15.

  Tifa Tittlywinks of Dem Damn Dames. Photo: Penland Pinups

  On Friday you could start off at Numbers with the ladies of Dem Damn Dames for their Naked Nerds VS. Dirty Dorks show.  The theme show is where this Houston burlesque troupe shines, and this Nerdlesque show is a great example of that.  The battle of the ages will feature the Dames themselves alongside performances from San Antonio’s Kristi Waters, Austin’s Layna D’Luna, Houston’s Honey Moonpie and many more.  Judged by a crew that includes Houston comic Ryan Thauburn and radio personality Kyle King, the show should be worth making it out for.  The show has doors at 7 pm, it’s 18 & up, and there are tickets between $15 and $30, and they include entry into Classic Numbers which follows the show.  

  The final show over at Insomnia before they move to the East side, will see a solo art exhibition from Honeybones called Dizzy Spells in Dreamland.  If you’ve never seen the art of Honeybones, you’ve been missing out.  One of the most exciting new artists in Houston, this show should be pretty awesome.  There’s also beer from Eureka Heights Brewing and a food truck from Muiishi Makaritos.  The all ages show gets going around 7 pm and it’s 100% FREE.

  You can get your laugh on at the Improv when Deon Cole brings his hilarious brand of humor to the club.  Cole is best known for his role on the hit TV show Black-Ish, though his time on CONAN was pretty hilarious, and he’s a seasoned comic as well.  The 18 & up shows don’t mention which two Houston comics will be feature act and host, but the tickets are between $25 and $37, with shows through the weekend with varying door times.  This show has doors at 7 pm and 9 pm.

  A Perfect Circle. Photo: Speakeasy PR

  If you were planning to catch A Perfect Circle out at Smart Financial Center, the show has since sold out.  If you’re already attending, the doors are at 8 pm.

  Over at Walter’s, the first of several Wonky Power curated shows will take place with a headlining set from Tax The Wolf.  The Houston band that melding together psych and prog with ease is back and should drop something at some point this year, while their live shows are still as mesmerizing as when they released Hold The Sun.  The indie pop of Mind Shrine will go on prior while the bluesy psych of Mantra Love will go on beforehand.  The intriguing electro rock of JERK will open the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and a $10 cover.

  Jealous Creatures. Photo: Daniel Jackson

  You can get all of the loud rock motors running at Satellite Bar when Bryan’s The Ex-Optimists swing by to perform. There’s something about this band that’s hard not to love. Complete with one of the loudest live sets you can see, their latest 7” release Bee Corpse Thousand features a killer new song and covers of the Guided By Voices classics, “Drinker’s Peace,” and “14 Cheerleader Coldfront.”  The new wave tinged indie rock of Houston’s Jealous Creatures will go on beforehand while the tight straightforward rock of Brand New Hearts will perform prior.  Slow Future will get things going for the all ages show with doors at 8 pm and a TBA cover.

  Over at Rudyard’s you can catch Houston’s The Guillotines for their album release party.  While it’s been a long time coming, the band has as rich of a history as any leather punk band could have, and their sets are always full of plenty of antics.  The glitter punk of Dallas’ Scary Cherry & the Bang Bangs will be on as direct support while the punk metal mixture of Houston’s The Unconvicted will open the 21 & up show with doors at 9 pm with a $6 cover.

  Saturday you could start off at Walter’s for Bushfest.  No, it’s not an homage to that crappy British nineties alt rock band, but rather a collection of artists under one roof.  Sets from GRRRL Parts, Dillon Trimm, Brumes, Devil Killing Moth and more will perform alongside comedy sets from Britt Vasicek, Katie McGee and more.  The all ages festival gets going with doors at 6 pm and tickets for $10.  There’s much more happening there with all of the information here.

  Twin Peaks. Photo: Red Light Management

  The Secret Group will host Chicago garage indie rockers, Twin Peaks.  These guys have made quite the name for themselves as an act worth making it out for with crazy live shows.  Their latest release, Down in Heaven from last year mixes multiple rock genres, and should sound amazing live.  The indie grunge of Nashville’s Chrome Pony will be on as direct support while things get opened by the psych pop of Chicago’s Post Animal.  The all ages show has doors at 7 pm and tickets between $15 and $17.

  Down at Scout Bar you could get all of your industrial rock fix when the industrial pop of Chicago’s Stabbing Westward performs.  You know you’ve made an impression when Wesley Willis writes a song about you, and at one time, these guys were huge with their song “Save Yourself.”  They’ll be here supporting it appears nothing, as their last album was over fifteen years ago.  Houston industrial mainstays, The Hunger will be on as direct support with Hindsight on beforehand.  The female fronted hard rock of Black Market Tragedy will open the 18 & up show with doors at 7 pm and tickets for $13.

  Revention Music Center will have a special performance from England’s PJ Harvey.  While the nineties had plenty of female performers worth seeing, few have stood the test of time like Harvey, and with a stellar live show and her new album The Hope Six Demolition Project, this is one of those sets you don’t want to miss.  There’s no word of support or openers, but that could change.  The doors are at 7:30 pm and tickets are between $35 and $79.50.

  Tee Vee. Photo: John Allen Stephens

  Civic TV will host the album release from Houston’s Tee Vee.  Armed with only demos until now, Tee Vee has played Day For Night while getting on some killer shows in between.  The dark electronica of MIEARS will be on hand as direct support while a solo set from Andrew Lee will get the night going.  The all ages event has doors at 8 pm and the all ages show is BYOB with a $5 cover.

  D&W Lounge will have the album release from Houston’s Bernie Pink.  I’m not sure if I conveyed this when I debuted their album Fiesta Elementary, but this band makes psych music that sounds like it was recorded in an insane asylum.  Seriously, they’re one of the most intriguing new Houston bands going, and their live shows are a trip.  popeNQM will be on as direct support while the experimental punk of Houston’s Black Lodge will go on prior.  The experimental sounds of Austin’s Ballerino will also be on the bill and Houston’s Lagmind will open the 100% FREE show with doors at 8 pm.

  On Sunday you could head to 8th Wonder Brewery for the Crawfish & Brews show.  Honestly, I hate crawfish and the sight and sound of others eating them, so it says a lot about this show, as it’s headlined by NOLA’s DJ Mannie Fresh.  Possibly one of the greatest to step behind the decks, Fresh is an act everyone should see at least once.  The indie rock of The Bright Light Social Hour will also be on the bill, as will Bombon and Havoc Wagon.  DAYTA will get things going as only he can for the all ages event with doors at noon and tickets between $15 and $40.

  Pixies. Photo: Travis Shinn

  Of course, I’d guess many over you will be on the lawn at White Oak Music Hall to enjoy a set from Boston indie rockers, Pixies.  It occurs to me that most Pixies “fans” really just want the band to remake Surfer Rosa, which is asking a lot.  The fact is, their last two albums Indie Cindy and last year’s Head Carrier are both pretty solid, and their live shows are always on point.  The indie pop of New York’s Public Access TV will be on as direct support and openers for the all ages show with gates at 6 pm and with tickets between $42.50 and $49.

  Revention Music Center will host the return of the massively popular rapper, Lil’ Wayne.  I shouldn’t have to sell this show, or Wayne, as you know his resume and catalog.  His latest release, “No Frauds” with Drake and Nicki Minaj is as lit as his other works, and his live shows are always intense.  There’s no word of support or openers, which should change for the all ages show with doors at 7 pm and tickets between $60 and $65.

  In the studio at Warehouse Live, Tennessee’s Xavier Wulf will bring his hype and crazed rap to life.  Wulf has been popping off over the past year, his live shows are intense, and his latest drop Project X from 2015 is pretty legit.  Houston’s TheRealFlexGod will be on as direct support while Riven, RichBrokeDudez, Blvackempiiire will all go on prior.  High Elements will open the all ages show with doors at 6 pm with tickets between $29 and $33.

  Trey Anastasio. Photo: Red Light Management

  If you’d rather marvel in some great guitar work, you could head to House of Blues to catch a solo set from Trey Anastasio.  Known as leader of the group Phish, Anastasio is a pretty strong player, and his latest release Paper Wheels from two years ago is pretty chill while still being groovy.  There’s no word of support or openers, though that could change.  The all ages show has doors at 7 pm and tickets for $42.

  Tuesday out at the Woodlands Pavilion, you could catch the return of Kings of Leon.  Boy, these guys have really blown up.  I caught them once at a now defunct club here in town, and they were pretty amazing, plus their new album Walls is sonic and lush.  The noise rock of Atlanta’s Deerhunter will be on hand as direct support and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats will open the all ages show with gates at 6 pm and tickets between $32.50 and $89.50.

  You could swing by The Secret Group for Neo Benshi 31.  Presented by Bootown, this show that’s like a miniature Mystery Science Theater 3000, is pretty hilarious.  Featuring comics and the like reading monologues over video clips, it’s a show you need to check out if you want to get your laugh on.  The all ages show has doors at 7 pm and a measly $5 cover.  

  That’s about all that’s happening this week.  No matter what you decide to do, please be mindful of everyone else and remember that a safe way home is what’s best for everyone.

Chain of Keys: The Best of The Week this is a repost