#I think this also goes for the journalists that attempted to track down the real Martha too

[biggest-bara-tiddies]

I'm very confused by the people who watched Baby Reindeer and felt the need to find the real people that abused Richard Gadd in real life. Like if he wanted to get accountability from or consequences for these people then he would just do that?? Like he wouldn't have changed the names if his intentions were anything besides sharing his own life story and articulating the complex emotions surrounding him getting stalked for years. When the show ends, the story and our involvement in it should end too. It's such a gross violation of Gadd's vulnerability to make him have to come out and denounce fans of the show who are hunting for the man who abused him because they got the wrong guy. Complete strangers have no right to invite themselves into Gadd's life and get him justice that he didn't ask for

[rabdoidal]

i know you listen to a lot of podcasts and ive found some of my favourites from hearing you talk about them! do you have any favourites?

under the cut! my top 10 podcasts at the moment:

Alice Isn’t Dead Genre: horror, thriller, drama, Lovecraftian, Americana Episode count: 30 (completed) Description: A truck driver searches across America for the wife she had long assumed was dead. In the course of her search, she will encounter not-quite-human serial murderers, towns literally lost in time, and a conspiracy that goes way beyond one missing woman. Thoughts: This podcast is, to me at least, completely flawless in every way. I would consider myself a person that listens to a lot of horror podcasts, but Alice Isn’t Dead takes the cake for its depictions of liminal middle America, the horror that is capitalism, and the most tender, realistic depiction of lesbians in any podcast. Anything else I could say would spoil it and for this, I don’t want to spoil it because I want every person alive that can stomach horror to listen to this.

Archive 81 Genre: horror, comedy, sci-fi, Lovecraftian Episode count: 35 (ongoing) Description: Archive 81 is a found footage horror podcast about ritual, stories, and sound. Thoughts: The latest podcast I’ve tried, and it’s definitely one that grows on you. The audio mixing is some of the best I’ve heard in any podcast, and every bump and scratch and hum of frequency weaves to form moments that are truly and viscerally gory. Season 3 and Left of The Dial are my favorites because again, I love Americana horror, and anything that involves family!

Artificial Ghost Radio Genre: non-fiction, discussion, comedy Episode count: 75 (ongoing) Description: Our Sisyphean music recommendation challenge with hosts Miles (he/him) and Jupiter (she/they) challenge each other to find songs based on arbitrary themes and to spin the WHEEL OF DISCORD to talk about a random song from their library! They can be found on twitter @artghostpod. Thoughts: Gotta plug my own podcast! We’re still small, but the people I’ve met from doing AGR has made my life richer and fuller, even through the ups and downs. I recommend starting with #58: Songs about Aliens ft. our friend Liz (@thescaryjokes)!

EOS 10 Genre: medical drama, comedy, sci-fi Episode count: 34 (ongoing) Description: Doctors in space, a deposed alien prince, a super gay space pirate and a fiery nurse who'll help you win your bar fight. Thoughts: It’s been a hot minute since I listened, but as someone that inherently loves things like Star Trek and procedural comedies, EOS 10 is a quick and hilarious listen! Fair warning some of the earlier stuff is a little bit ignorant when it comes to their LGBT characters, but it gets a lot better over time.

King Falls AM Genre: horror, comedy, Lovecraftian Episode count: 100 (ongoing) Description: King Falls AM centers on a lonely little mountain town's late-night AM talk radio show and its paranormal, peculiar happenings and inhabitants Thoughts: I’m a bit behind, but again, gotta love some Alpine American horror! King Falls AM perfectly captures the feeling and sound of listening to a small late night radio show with two bros, but it really goes from typical dude dialogue to heart wrenching found family alien conspiracy real quick. Same as EOS 10, fair warning for some ignorant language and LGBT stereotypes, but they address it and it gets better as it progresses.

Not Another D&D Podcast Genre: actual play Dungeons and Dragons, TTRPG, comedy Episode count: 128 (ongoing) Description: Welcome to the campaign after the campaign! Three unlikely adventurers attempt to right the wrongs caused by a party of legendary heroes who screwed up the world while trying to save it. Thoughts: I’m only like 40 episodes in because they’re thick, meaty ‘sodes, but god is NADDPOD fucking hilarious. I’ve tried a fair few TTRPG shows, but the chemistry and care that the cast has together is unmatched by others in the genre. I’m a complete sucker for shows that are so funny and so tragic in equal measures, and the entire concept of a D&D game set after the world has been so drastically changed by a different D&D game is so unique!

The Faculty of Horror Genre: non-fiction, horror, philosophy, sociology, feminism Episode count: 86 (ongoing) Description: Tackling all things horror with a slash of analysis and research, horror journalists and occasional academics Andrea Subissati and Alexandra West are your hosts for brain-plumping discussions on all things that go bump in the night. Thoughts: A little non-fiction in this list of fiction podcasts! The Faculty of Horror is a concise and educated intersectional feminist podcast, and it’s a breath of fresh air to listen to anyone that isn’t a cishet white guy talk about horror. I highly recommend the episode on Cabin in The Woods or Jennifer’s Body!

The Magnus Archives Genre: horror, office comedy Episode count: 180 (ongoing) Description: The Magnus Archives is a weekly horror fiction anthology podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organization dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join new head archivist Jonathan Sims as he attempts to bring a seemingly neglected collection of supernatural statements up to date, converting them to audio and supplementing them with follow-up work from his small but dedicated team. Thoughts: TMA is, similarly to A81, a bit of a slow burn to get into, but I think once you listen to a few episodes you’ll know if you want to continue. It’s a pretty standard prompt for a narrative, but the sheer amount of individual short horror stories they’ve managed to write is insane! And I love the slow break down between recording statements and the stuff happening within the archives. Also one of the best redemption stories in a character that starts off as such a grumpy fuck!

The Penumbra Podcast Genre: sci-fi, neo-noir, romance, comedy, found family, magic, medieval fantasy, adventure, mystery Episode count: 75 (ongoing) Description: At the Penumbra, you might follow Juno Steel, a brooding, sharp-witted private eye on Mars, as he tangles with an elusive homme fatale, tracks dangerous artifacts of an ancient alien civilization, and faces his three greatest fears: heights, blood, and relationships. Or you might enter the world of the Second Citadel, where the merciless Sir Caroline must corral a team of emotionally distraught all-male knights to defend their city against mind-manipulating monsters...even the ones they’ve fallen in love with. Thoughts: On god TPP was a life changing podcast for me. Having creators that are genuinely concerned with accurately representing minorities with care and dedication makes me feel spoiled when I try listen to anything else. The two main universes are so different with their own set of histories and cultures, but I love them both so completely. If you want LGBT+ representation, this is the seminal podcast for everything non-binary, trans, queer, and people that aren’t afraid to change and have that change be known! I haven’t listened to another podcast that actually depicts transitioning like they do, absolute king shit.

Wolf 359 Genre: space drama, comedy, action Episode count: 61 (completed) Description: WOLF 359 is a radio drama in the tradition of Golden Age of Radio shows. Set on board the U.S.S. Hephaestus space station, the dysfunctional crew deals with daily life-or-death emergencies, while searching for signs of alien life and discovering there might be more to their mission than they thought Thoughts: Wolf 359 is like if you fell down the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs was a bear trap, and then after you step in the bear trap someone helps you take off that beartrap, but then they kick you in the nuts. Just replace physical pain with emotional pain. It can be so funny but also so fucking stressful and sad – w359 isn’t afraid to kill its darlings, and it will break your heart but you will still say thank you.

[ratingtheframe]

Lights, camera, lockdown! All the films I watched at home this November.

Last month, the UK went on a one month down lockdown, causing cinemas to shut and new releases to be put on hold.

In fact, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was the only multi million dollar film to be released this year. It’s painful to think that Dune was supposed to be released almost two weeks from now and that we have to wait several months to see the sci fi film hit screens. Despite the post poned releases and closing of cinema chains, there are still some great films I hadn’t seen and used last month as an opportunity to look into them. Even though I didn’t see as much as I did in October, the quality of the films I managed to see this month is high.

His House (2020) as seen on Netflix

Starting off reasonably well with this horror brought to you by Netflix that centers the life around two immigrants and a spirit haunting the new lives they’re trying to build in the UK. It’s certainly a new perspective that I haven’t seen in horror and definitely isn’t a film for the fainted hearted for some of the scenes in this are genuinely terrifying. The overall message was thought provoking and poignant as it sort of spoke for those who’ve lost their lives attempting to seek asylum and those whoa are still struggling to find a new home.

His House is available to watch on Netflix. Score: 9/10  

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) as seen on Netflix 

Definitely one of the most surprisingly good films I watched this month, Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight is a classic Netflix horror from Poland. The film follows a group of Polish teenagers addicted to social media who are sent to a camp to curb their addiction. However, when on a hike through the woods, one of the teens goes missing and without a phone to call for help, the kids are forced to face two grotesque monsters feeding upon humans. From start to finish, this film was highly entertaining and had a good structure to it. There were no gimmicks or cliches and it’s definitely a film I’d recommend to just about anyone. 

Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight is available to watch on Netflix. 

Score: 10/10

The Ring (2002) as seen on BBC iPlayer

Gore Verbinski’s (A Cure for Wellness, Pirates of the Caribbean) infamous horror is a cult classic and must watch for scary movie fans. Usually horror films can be too gimmicky and borderline cringey without an ounce of substance to them. However, The Ring is surprisingly good in that it possesses a deep narrative with three dimensional characters, good acting and wonderful direction. When a journalist’s (Naomi Watts) niece dies in unknown circumstances, she embarks on a journey to discover a horrifying tape that if watched, kills you in a week’s time. The box office sales for this film speaks for itself seeing as the film made nearly $130 million when it was released back in 2002. The Ring is certainly not for the faint hearted, so if horror isn’t your thing, I’d advise you stay well away from it. 

Score: 9/10 

Misery (1990) as seen on Netflix

Stephen King’s Misery is turned into an unsettling thriller starring Kathy Bates and James Caan. Author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) ends up getting caught in a snow storm, that seems his car veer off the road, leaving him in a critical state. However, a seemingly caring and selfless woman, Annie (Kathy Bates) takes him in, using her work as a nurse to care for him. It turns out that Annie is a super fan of Paul’s work and the care she has for him soon turns nasty and sadistic, leaving Paul in a panicked state for he is in the middle of nowhere with a practical psychopath. I wouldn’t say Misery is one of best adaptations of King’s novels. There are better pieces of work by Stephen King that have been made into movies such as IT, The Green Mile and 1922. The pace was quite slow and the fact that it took place in only one settling detracted from the progression of the film. However, it’s entertaining, well cast and had a decent story to it. 

Score: 7/10

Drive (2011) as seen on Amazon Prime 

Drive is 1000% one of the best films I’ve seen this year, in my entire life in fact. It’s incredibly bold, ambitious, vivid, subtle and heart wrenching at moments. A stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) is torn between the world of crime he partakes in and the love he has for a young woman (Carey Mulligan) that lives in the apartment next door to his. The subtlety and sensitivity that both Gosling and Mulligan brought to this film was so pure and authentic to their characters, whilst bringing an underlying sadness to the entirety of the film. By the end of the film you want to cry but aren’t sure why and these sorts of films are rare to find. The sound track and SFX in this are unreal, again adding to the confirmation that this film is one of a kind.

Score: 12/10 

Time (2020) as seen on Amazon Prime

I was delighted to see Amazon Prime had put this straight onto their service seeing as I’d missed out on Time during the London Film Festival two months ago. This is one of the most moving and deep pieces of work I’ve seen this year. Time is a documentary filmed over 20 years that details the life of a woman trying to seek justice for her husband who was put in prison for life for armed robbery. Not only is she fighting for her husband, but also her four sons, two of which weren’t even born when their father was put away in jail. Fox Rich lives in Louisiana, one of America’s toughest states when it comes to the criminal justice system. Sentences are of some of the highest in the entire country and are especially harsher to people of colour. Fox and her husband took the fatal and desperate decision to rob a bank in a bid to support their business and family. This drastic choice took Fox’s husband away from his family and for 2 decades, Fox spent time trying to get her husband out of jail. The thing that moved me the most about this documentary was her sons; four beautiful, smart and driven men who grew up without a father. It made me wonder how proud Fox must be of her kids and to see her fight for her husband and remain loyal to him is enough love to last two lifetimes. 

Time is available to watch on Amazon Prime now.

Score: 10/10

The Departed (2006) as seen on DVD

Throughout this two and a half hour film I was wondering how they had managed to get Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg to do a film together. And the answer is that this epic and high profile movie was directed by the infamous Martin Scorsese. It’s a mystery why I hadn’t seen this film sooner, seeing as it was a huge hit during its release making a staggering $291 million worldwide during its release. This is definitely DiCaprio’s best film (next to Revolutionary Road and The Revenant) and his performance was incredibly punchy and strong throughout. Everyone in this film was top class and the dialogue fitted well with each character with a natural story progression throughout. A top notch, Hollywood, must watch film.

Score: 10/10 

Murder by Numbers (2002) as seen on Amazon Prime

One of Ryan Gosling’s earliest films follows two high school students committing a sadistic murder simply to see just how it feels. Detective Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) is put on the case to solve the murder and quickly pieces the case together, leading her to Richard Haywood (Ryan Gosling) and Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt) two students at the same high school. I wouldn’t say this film was bad, however the ending played a big part in the overall quality of the film. It had a good pace and characters, however the ending definitely let down the film for it was rushed and unaligned to the rest of the film. Ryan Gosling’s performance at the tender age of 22 was pretty decent and definitely stated to everyone else his ability as an actor for years to come. 

Score: 7/10

All Good Things (2010) as seen on Amazon Prime

As you can tell by now, I went on a Ryan Gosling whip this month. All Good Things is the true story of David Marks (Ryan Gosling), whose wife Katie (Kirsten Dunst) disappears and still to this day, has never been found. Marks was the prime suspect in the disappearance case but was never found guilty and lives a free man. Even though the story was interesting and the performances good, the fact this is a Weinstein Company Film made it hard to watch, especially with the totally unnecessary nudity and sex scenes that put Kirsten Dunst at its forefront. The film lacked a clear resolution and was left completely open ended like the case of Katie Marks, which is understandable, however not when it comes to making a good film.

Score: 6/10

Borat (2006) as seen on Amazon Prime

After finding the second Borat film to be highly entertaining, I decided to watch the first one and was certainly not left disappointed. The first Borat film introduces us to Kazakstan reporter Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his first visit to America, whilst taking in all the americanisms to report back to his own country. Soon his pursuit turns to Pamela Anderson whose doing a book signing across in California. The comedy has many jaw dropping moments and sees Cohen above and beyond the boundaries of comedy to bring the character of Borat to life.

Score: 10/10

Boy Erased (2018) as seen on Sky Cinema 

If there’s one film worth watching on this list, it’d be Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased. This film is the product of a real understanding of film language and the ability to make a beautiful and heart felt story. Edgerton is a well known actor, but has taken time to go behind the camera as well as in front of it in this Golden Globe nominated picture starring the likes of Lucas Hedges, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Troye Sivan, Xavier Dolan and Joe Alwyn. Like HELLO if that cast isn’t making you immediately turn off this site right now to find Boy Erased, then I don’t know what will. The film based on a true story follows Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) and his time spent at a gay conversion centre with fellow homosexuals Gary (Troye Sivan) and Jon (Xavier Dolan). Jared’s father (Russell Crowe) is a pastor he and his wife (Nicole Kidman) take their religion rather seriously, which is why Jared has been forced to seek help for his sexuality. It’s a hard concept to swallow, especially in this day and age when most parents, religious or not, are starting to become more acceptable of their children’s sexuality. This film exposes the reality beyond that and how some parents feel their child is damaged by something completely normal and feel the need to seek help for it. Boy Erased is made with sensitivity and beautiful acting from an a class cast. All round, it’s a perfect film.

Score: 11/10

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) as seen on Amazon Prime

I was a little confused starting this film to see it in Swedish, as I thought I was watching the David Fincher film of the same title. However, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was original a book and the first adapation of it for film was directed by Niels Arden Oplev, two years before Fincher made his version, starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. However, the fact that this version was in Swedish didn’t detract from the thrilling story spun onto screen. The three hour movie follows a journalist whose been hired to solve the mystery of a missing girl who is part of a high profile family. A young female hacker who once hacked the journalist and practically ruined his career, joins him along the way and the pair of them uncover a long string of untold secrets that see blood being split amongst numerous women. It’s one of the best thrillers I’ve ever seen and a must watch if you enjoyed Fincher’s version.

Score: 10/10

Still Alice (2014) as seen on DVD

A highly anticipated film on my part, Still Alice is an arresting and moving film about a mother struggling with on set Alzheimers. Julianne Moore scooped up a Best Actress Award at the Academy Awards in 2015, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance as Dr Alice Howland and her battle with Alzheimers at the age of 50. Kristen Stewart plays her daughter and Alec Baldwin her husband and their performances are equal to Julianne Moore’s. Overall, this was a touching piece that had soooo much depth to it and yet carried a satisfying simplicity throughout it. 

Score: 10/10

Enemy (2013) as seen on DVD

I heard about Enemy’s synopsis via a YouTube video and was throughly excited to watch it on hearing it was directed by Denis Villeneuve, a master director when it comes to thrillers and sci fi films. Even though Enemy was difficult to fully interpret, I still enjoyed the story and performance Jake Gyllenhaal brought to the table as a man who meets another man that looks exactly like him. There’s some pure mind fuckery that plays throughout the film as you’re left questioning who is this other man or if there are even two men at all. If anything, it’s an exploration of a man having a double life, wrapped up in some sinister secrets and tied between two women. All of Denis Villeneuve’s work is exceptional and Enemy is no different. A must watch for thriller lovers. 

Score: 10/10

A Star is Born (2018) as seen on DVD

Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born certainly wins the award for making me cry the most this month. The last version I saw of this film starred Judy Garland and James Mason and was centred around a musical actress and the rocky relationship she had with her actor husband. That 1954 version possessed a lot of brilliance and it was easy to compare it to the more modern version starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. Who would’ve thought these two could be such an authentic on screen couple? The songs, the lyrics and the acting that these two brought to this picture was on another level, it was incredible from start to finish. Obviously the fact that this film had been done 4 times before honed the quality of the film, however Bradley Cooper’s direction and ability to bring out the best in Lady Gaga definitely makes this version of A Star is Born the best one yet. This directorial debut was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Lady Gaga was handed the award for Best Music for a motion picture. Warning: you will cry whilst watching this or at least afterwards. 

Score: 12/10

Sorry to Bother You (2018) as seen on Netflix

Netflix certainly came through this month when it put Boots Riley’s fanatical dark comedy Sorry to Bother You on its streaming service. It’s honestly like nothing I’ve ever seen before and the innuendo and hidden messages within this film make it something that you can watch several times and never get bored of. Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) gets a job as a telemarketer who gets promoted to a “power caller” and through pride and greed, ends up abandoning his ideologies and friends completely. The film speaks for the gentrification of Oakland, California and capitalistic society we live in today. There are many hidden messages amongst the film that at first are hard to decipher, but soon you realise these messages are as clear as day within our own society. Lakeith Stanfield stars alongside Tessa Thompson, Steve Yeun and Armie Hammer, not a cast you’d usually put together but one that certainly worked. Sorry to Bother You is highly entertaining and will definitely make you laugh out loud at points and have you questioning your laughter right after.

Score: 10/10

The Florida Project (2017) as seen on DVD

I’m starting to think that films made between 2017 and 2018 are some of the best ever made and the Florida Project falls into that. I heard about this film through one of my favourite actors and was glad for the recommendation as this film is one of the best I’ve seen all year. The colours and character dynamics are strong and vivid throughout, as we follow the lives of people living on an apartment complex whilst speaking for the child poverty that plagues American society today. Willem Dafoe, who plays the complex’s handy man and security guard, even earned himself a Best Supporting Actor Award at the 2018 Academy Awards. 

Score: 10/10

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2014) as seen on DVD 

Usually I’d pass on a Charlie Kaufman film, seeing as they make no sense, however I felt that it was time I delved into this cult classic starring Kate Winslet, Jim Carrey, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood. It’s a really well made film with a clear and distinct message to it that’s represented in some phenomenal filmmaking techniques. The plot line of this film follows a man trying to erase a past lover and his memories of her get wiped away physically before your eyes on screen. This film is certainly a conversation starter and one I’d recommend to just about anyone. 

Score: 9/10

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) as seen on DVD

Wes Anderson’s wonderful mind is depicted in this endearing narrative about two children running away from home. This has to one of Wes Anderson’s most iconic films and next to The Grand Budapest Hotel, it’s definitely one of the films you think of when you think of Anderson’s work. His work is known for having well rounded stories, beautiful shots and A List casts, with Moonrise Kingdom being no expection as Anderson manages to squeeze Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Kietel and a young Lucas Hedges into this film. If you’ve seen any of Wes Anderson’s work and not Moonrise Kingdom, get on it now. No, seriously, now. 

Score: 10/10 

Jarhead (2005) as seen on DVD

Sam Mendes’ war film starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx translates the lives of US soldiers in Iraq onto screen and the brain washing their government has done to boost the importance of the US military and the service soldiers are doing to their country. Jake Gyllenhaal’s execution in this film is a reflection of his ability as a great actor. He always has this patient and gritty approach to his work that makes him addicting to watch on screen. There’s an entire video on YouTube about Jake Gyllenhaal’s eyes and the way they communicate his emotions on screen. This is certainly present in Jarhead, as the anger, frustration, disappointment and despair is held within Jake Gyllenhaal’s eyes throughout. Jarhead was originally a memoir written by a US solider named Anthony Swofford. The only thing I wasn’t a fan of was the open ended resolution to the film and the stagnant progression of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character. He literally didn’t achieve anything, which I suppose is the point of the film and how the honour that soldiers who went to Iraq were supposed to feel, is more of a fantasy than a reality. 

Score: 9/10 

Silence (2016) as seen on BBC iPlayer 

This film was truly summit else and a refreshing turn on genre from highly acclaimed filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. Silence certainly proved that he has the ability to be more sensitive with his films and can tells stories outside his usual New York mobster type movies. The film tracks the journey of two Portuguese missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) in the 17th Century who go to Japan looking for one of their mentors (Liam Neeson). However in this era, Christians faced persecution in Japan and were practically slaughtered for not following the country’s religion of Buddhism. The priests’ journey is perilous and heart rendering as they are forced to abandon their own religion in order to save their own lives and the lives of others. Despite the film being just over 160 minutes, it’s an inspiring story and one that is told in a tactful way. To believe this is a film is quite hard, as the accuracy of it makes it closer to reality than just a film itself.

Score: 8/10

Lynn + Lucy (2019) as seen on BBC iPlayer 

This film recently came out in UK cinemas and was put onto BBC iPlayer due to lockdown. I found it to be interesting and enjoyed the new perspective it gave to quite a simple story. Lynn and Lucy have been friends for almost their entire lives, and when Lucy’s baby boy dies in unexplained circumstances, it drives a wedge between her relationship with Lynn, as people in their neighbourhood accuse her of being a child murderer. Eventually, Lynn stats to believe the rumours herself, leaving her best friend behind and favouring the opinions of those who hardly know her. A great debut and British film, Lynn + Lucy is profound story of friendship. 

Score: 8/10

Revolutionary Road (2008) as seen on Netflix 

Revolutionary Road has a metric score of 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, which I find quite offensive as the film nearly falls into the “thanks but no thanks” category of films. Directed by Sam Mendes and starring Kate Winslet alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, I don’t see what’s not to like. I only clocked halfway through the film why DiCaprio had been cast with Kate Winslet (Titanic, duh) and it made their on screen chemistry more prominent for me. I always say this about EVERY SINGLE Leonardo DiCaprio film I watch, but his performance in this was unreeeaaal. His character went somewhere intense and never returned, making the hardship on screen 10 times more powerful. There’s a scene where him and Winslet’s character are in a full blown argument and DiCaprio’s rage was on another level. Incredibly authentic and honest, Revolutionary Road showcases a wonderful example of when two masterful actors come together to make something great. 

Score: 10/10

Hillbilly Elegy (2020) as seen on Netflix 

Hillbilly Elegy recently got torn to shreds by critics as it was released on Netflix the other week, and I half agree with what most are saying about it, but also feel there’s unnecessary criticisms about this film. The film is based on a memoir of a Yale Law student, J.D Vance (Gabriel Basso) who comes from rough beginnings and ends up building the life he so desired from a young age. His mother (Amy Adams) is a destructive drug addict who’s moods change frequently so that she’s constantly at war with her own mother (Glenn Close) and two children (Haley Bennett and Gabriel Basso). The story follows J.D’s return to his home town to claim his mother from a hospital after she over dosed on heroin. The only problem is, he has an interview with a law firm from Washington the following morning and has to choose between taking care of his mother and landing his dream job. Sounds pretty intriguing, right? And it truly is. The film is laced with conflict and great performances from everyone, however critics have blasted this film with hate, saying that it doesn’t ring true to the entire American experience of living in poverty, without healthcare and enough money to bring food to the table. The fact that J.D made it to Harvard and now works for a successful enterprise somehow detracts from his struggle as a child, which I think is complete BS. I think this film should be taken for more face value than as a political story. It’s a straight talking, rags to riches tale that proves with hard work and dedication, you can transform your struggles into success. One critic had the audacity to say that “Selling out your origins is a kind of white trash cosplay because you were lucky enough to get out”. The irony of this is that the critic herself is white and it suggests had JD been a person of colour, it’d made a better film, which isn’t the kind of world where I want to live in when stories of people of colour are used as poverty porn rather than something to enjoy or learn from. My only criticism of this film would be the pace of conflict within the film and how things went from 0-100 waaay too quickly. This can happen in real life, but on screen it tends to look sloppy and rushed.

Score: 9/10 

And that’s it! A rather short list for this month, but as the year draws to a close, I’m just really excited for the new films hopefully hitting screens next year. Seen you soon!

[sciencespies]

China's Mars orbiter is about to attempt a risky landing on the red planet

https://sciencespies.com/space/chinas-mars-orbiter-is-about-to-attempt-a-risky-landing-on-the-red-planet/

China's Mars orbiter is about to attempt a risky landing on the red planet

China is about to attempt its first Mars landing – a feat accomplished successfully by only half the spacecraft that have ever tried.

Tianwen-1, as the mission is called, means “questions to heaven”. It aims to be the first Mars mission to send a spacecraft into the planet’s orbit, drop a landing platform onto the Martian surface, and deploy a rover all in one expedition.

The first steps are complete. The mission launched in July 2020 and the spacecraft slipped into orbit around Mars in February. Now the orbiter is preparing to release a capsule carrying the lander and rover.

It must plummet through the Martian atmosphere and deploy a parachute, then release the lander, which should fire downward-facing thrusters to lower itself to the Martian surface.

If that all goes well, the Tianwen-1 lander will later deploy a two-track ramp for the six-wheeled rover to roll down onto Martian soil.

The landing attempt is scheduled for Friday at 7:11 pm ET, according to Twitter accounts that monitor China’s space programs. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has not confirmed this timing, but it previously said that it would attempt the landing – “the most challenging part of the mission” – in May.

If the Tianwen-1 lander safely touches down on Martian soil, it would be the first non-NASA Mars landing since the Soviet Union’s rover touched down in 1971. Success would make China the third nation to land on Mars.

The intended landing spot is in Utopia Planitia, a vast field of ancient volcanic rock that may have extensive reserves of water ice beneath its surface. If space agencies like NASA someday send humans to Mars, water would be a crucial resource because it can both sustain astronauts and get broken down into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.

It’s unlikely that Mars-bound spaceships could carry enough water, oxygen, and hydrogen for the entire journey there and back.

China’s 240 kg (530 pounds), solar-powered rover is set to explore the region and study its water ice. The mission is also intended to help China prepare for a future attempt to return Martian rocks or dirt to Earth in the late 2020s.

Tianwen-1 is operating alongside two other recent arrivals on Mars: United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe, which is currently circling the red planet, and NASA’s Perseverance rover, which just began exploring Mars’ Jezero Crater.

7 minutes of terror to land on Mars

When the time comes, China’s gumdrop-shaped landing capsule will separate from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and fall towards Mars.

The capsule must protect the robots inside as it plummets through the Martian atmosphere at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1000 degrees Celsius). A supersonic parachute must deploy to slow the fall.

As the lander nears its destination, thrusters have to fire downwards to help it decelerate. Then it should lower itself to the surface on a set of legs to absorb the impact.

As with any Mars landing, the spacecraft must conduct this entire process autonomously. Because it takes at least eight minutes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth, and vice versa, mission controllers can’t communicate with the spacecraft in real time.

When they receive the signal that the capsule is falling towards Mars, it will already be on the surface, dead or alive.

That’s why aerospace engineers refer to this part of a Mars mission as “seven minutes of terror.”

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that entry, descent, and landing is the most critical and most dangerous part of a mission,” Allen Chen, who leads that process for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a press briefing before its landing.

“Success is never assured.”

Meet Zhurong: the 90-day Mars rover

The rover is called Zhurong, named for ancient Chinese mythology’s god of fire, according to the CNSA. The process of deploying the ramp for the rover and getting it onto Mars’ surface could take more than a week, journalist Andrew Jones reported for IEEE Spectrum.

Zhurong’s name “echoes with the Chinese name of the red planet, Huoxing (meaning the planet of fire),” according to a CNSA statement. “Fire brought warmth and brightness to the ancestors of humankind, and fire lit up human civilization. Naming China’s first Mars rover after the god of fire signifies igniting the flame of China’s planetary exploration.”

Zhurong is set to explore Utopia Planitia for 90 Martian days, according to a journal article by scientists on the Tianwen-1 team.

Meanwhile, the orbiter will continue circling the red planet for one Martian year (two Earth years), relaying data to Earth and taking photos. Its main goal, according to the scientists, is to “perform a global and extensive survey of the entire planet.”

This will involve charting Mars’ geology, surveying its climate, and measuring its electromagnetic and gravitational fields.

This article was originally published by Business Insider.

More from Business Insider:

#Space

[ftkd-arts]

HC: Mystery Gang

The gang's all here! (Except Scoob, but this is mostly a shipping piece.)

Inspired by all the content coming across my dash, I decided to whip up a late 50th birthday for these characters; Velma Dinkley, Fred Jones, Daphne Blake and Shaggy Rogers. The OG meddling kids.

I've always loved this crew. When I was younger, my favorite aunt and I would spend the entire day in our pajamas and binge Scooby Doo movies. My favorites as a kid were Ghoul School and Cyberchase. Those are some of my fave memories with that aunt, who I recently found out isn't as good of a person as I had thought. Scooby Doo might seem childish, but these guys were my childhood, y'know? They were important to me, and they still are.

(I've actually been thinking about making an Ao3 fic about em. Can you believe it)

Down to the headcanons

- They're a polyam quad! Bi Daphne, lesbian Velma (is somewhat into guys a tad bit, she just prefers lesbian), bi (and trans) Fred, and pan Shaggy.

- Velma's Hispanic! Specifically Latina. Shaggy's half-Mexican, half-Irish. While we're at it; Daph is Asian and Fred is an all American boyo.

- Daphne's Catholic and Shaggy and Velma are Jewish

- Fred has a distant relationship with his adoptive father, ever since his adopted mom left them when Fred was a little girl. Their bond was pretty decayed already when Fred came out in his young teen years, but it only got worse from then. Fred's dad doesn't abuse him physically, or verbally; he's present, sometimes, but not in an emotional sense.

- Fred has a lot of learning disabilities, including dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADHD. This made it hard for him in class, which is how he met Daphne and Velma in early middle school. Daph and Vel were competing for the smartest of the grade; as an attempt to get the girls to be friendly to each other, they were both assigned to tutor Fred. Fred was, and still is, a well-meaning dumbass that drinks respect women juice, so both girls warmed up to him and his attempts to get them to be friends.

They were soon assigned to Shaggy, too, who was failing his classes because he was taking too many "sick" days, when in fact he was too anxiety-filled to get out of bed and face anyone.

The group quickly became besties and shared their full selves. Velma was there when Shaggy admitted to his parents about his anxiety, and they all went to choose a support dogo for him. (Scooby's legally Shaggy's emotional support dog, but Shaggy doesn't mind sharing.)

- As young teens, the group originally went by the Scooby Doo Detective Agency, before changing it to Mystery Inc/the Mystery Gang.

- Fred wears two shirts to better hide his breasts and help his dysphoria. His white shirt is actually a sweater, and under it is a button-up fancy blue long-sleeved shirt.

- Daphne is his hairdresser and fashion advisor, as she is for all of them. Daph always makes sure that whatever she suggests is within their comfort range.

- Shaggy has a panic disorder. Scooby Doo is his emotional support animal. Shaggy uses prescription marijuana to help with it.

- Daphne is always trying to prove herself (example; always running into danger and getting kidnapped) because her parents always compared her, the youngest, to her big sisters. Her sisters were successful, wealthy and independent women, while typical Daph had to keep getting saved by her partners. She loves feeling important, like she's the focus of everyone's attention. She tries to excel at everything, but is slowly starting to get better at not sprinting blindly into danger. (You can thank the Gang for that.)

- Daphne's mother is a celebrity supermodel by most days, acholic by night/some days. Her dad is a famous author. Neither of them approve of most of the things in Daphne's life; bisexuality, polyamory, mystery solving, Velma, Fred, Shaggy, Scooby... The list goes on.

- Daphne is an honorary member of the Hex Girls. She shows up sometimes when the triad needs another voice on stage. (Also, the Hex Girls are lesbians.)

- Velma's the mom friend.

- Velma Dinkley has always had a fixation for mysteries and figuring things out. She enjoys puzzles, crosswords, riddles, detective novels, serial killer documentaries, and horror movies. (She can always guess who the killer is.)

- She is fluent in Latin, Spanish, Mandarin and Morse Code.

- Velma's incredibly flexible, having taken martial arts and gymnastics as a child.

- This isn't headcanon, but I feel the need to mention it, as I don't think a lot of people know this is actually canon in multiple movies. Velma has a little sister named Madelyn, also known as "Doe Eyes Dinkley". Madelyn is a stage magician and is in clown college. She is an extroverted woman with a giant crush on Shaggy, who she continues to pine over. Both sisters are very overprotective of each other and mostly have a friendly relationship.

- The Gang eventually drop out of their shared community college to pursue mysteries, and to get away from their disapproving parents and overwhelming responsibilities. Velma does decide to take up online courses to get her degree.

(The Mystery Gang, including football jock Fred and track captain Shaggy, could have went to more prestigious schools, the girls because of their smarts and the boys on sport scholarships, but they were pressured to stay where their parents could see them.)

And that's my headcanons for them. I didn't mention some stuff because it's canon, but I'll recap real quick; Velma has coulrophobia (clown phobia) and aquaphobia (fear of water/sea), Scooby has an excitable, somewhat annoying nephew (Scrappy Doo), they're junior detectives/amateur sleuths, Fred's allergic to cats, they live in the Mystery Van, road trip for life, Shaggy's real name is Norville, Shag was briefly a vegetarian, Shaggy can do voice impressions, he was once a junior pilot, Daphne's a black belt in karate, Daph has a motorcycle, is an amateur musician, was a journalist a couple times, the Gang occasionally break up and go their seperate ways until a long-yearned for mystery pops up and serves as an excuse to get back together, those deals.

Peace! ✌️

Reference by @croxovergoddess;

Literally only 2 progress pics;

[icariagazette]

“Hi...Hey hello I am not Atti or Jasmine... I’m the editor for the show and being on the radio is uh... not my normal. But something very weird happened and I hate .... to be the one to tell you but.... both Wolfgang Jamison and Jasmine Kos have gone missing.  They had taken over the station last night and used our recording booth to record a new segment meant to air today... But uh... Well, I’ll let the recording speak for itself. This was the last known audio of the duo.”

“Hello and welcome to a special episode of Atti In The Morning. As most of you should know -- I'm not Atticus. Atticus was one of those taken earlier this year. My name is Jasmine Kos and I've been hosting the show in Atti's absence. We've been talking on and off since the first person went missing five years ago about these missing cases.Over the past five yers we've come up with some really interesting and insane theories of what has happened to our friends and family and today we decided its time to talk about all these ideas. So I've invited on an actual journalist to help us break down all these ideas and talk about all these theories.Hello Wolfgang, how are you this morning?" "Well, I'm here so that's already a decent start. Ready to discuss with you and hopefully debunk some of the more off the wall theories that I've heard floating around while writing the stories on those missing on the island." "What has been the most off the wall theory you've heard as of late? I'm sure you've heard some crazy ones, I know we've gotten some insane calls with theories. One of the most recent was that they were being replaced by the creatures that have come through the door." “See that’s not as crazy as it sounds. The doors did show up right before people began to turn up missing. I believe one of the most off the wall ones I’ve been told when interviewing residents on the island was that they weren’t missing at all but rather they all took off to start a cult ran by Chloe Vara. Which is probably the least likely to start a cult out of those missing.” “Well, that’s only partially true isn’t it?  Demigods have been going missing for five years now, but the uptick does coincide with those weird doors. Any idea what might be behind them? Beyond the one that opened at the family day party. But on the idea of Chloe, i think i rather like the idea of it being a cult run by her. At least you know they’re being well taken care of instead of this dread we all have of how they are and what’s happened to them. “ "Yes but there has never been any evidence to link the crimes now to those in the past other than no one found them. In any other part of the world that happens every single day. Growing up in New York you learned quickly that crime can happen at any point to anyone. The fact that the disappearances ramped up when the doors appear may be a coincidence but we might not find out unless those involved are found or come forward with any information. One of the things I always wondered is how Luke Decker completely vanished without a trace. Did they not have tabs on their officers at all times?" "I remember back when the first person seemingly vanished off the isle, Noreen, we all assumed she just ran away or went on some sort of extended vacation. I imagine that's sort of how it was for a lot of the people who went missing in the first couple years, back when it wasn't suggested we all live on this isle. People probably thought, 'they just went away for a bit' or because of where they lived people just chose to ignore it because of how common disappearances were in their area.  I think its massively overwhelming for isle residents because this is supposed to be a safe zone. " A beat and a breath, then,  "Which yeah -- that plays into how does a detective just vanish into thin air. You'd think after the first like 10 demi-gods went missing and the numbers ramped up they would have been tracking people's phones or something. Which -- do we know if they've been keeping a record of GPS movements of people since this has gotten so much worse?" "I would assume you are referring to Noreen Gomez? The demi-god who seemingly vanished after a fight with her girlfriend? Yeah, it might have been that way or not connected at all. These are just theories but you have to consider we're paying more attention because it's our kind that are disappearing. I just want to know why the police have only just now really started investigating the disappearances. The Gomez case has been closed for five years, they just assumed she took off. Which, alright, a demi-god goes missing and they don't bat an eyelash but how do they have no idea as to where Decker went? It makes me think that the police know more than they're letting on, which happens to avoid panic, but six months have passed since they began ramping up and we have no answers. You'd think they would be surveying everyone on the island at this point. No one else in and no one else out."

"One and the same; But yes, it appears we're all paying way more attention now than we used to. My guess as to why now compared to before would just be that one or two wasn't worth, as horrible as that sounds, all the time and energy the police department wanted to spend but now theres... 15 missing just from the isle, thats not counting those who were kidnapped off isle...It's dumb. All of it. They should have never closed the Gomez case they shouldn't even let up on the ones they're working on now. They need to search every inch of the isle, the shadows, the dark corners... all of it. I don't -- totally disagree, maybe locking down the isle could stop, or at least lead to some clues about what happened to our loved ones."

"No, I believe we are on the same page which is where my own conspiracy comes into play. I'm not sure I trust the police completely, which makes me sound as if I were a huge conspiracy theorist. Maybe I am now. Perhaps this entire situation has made me jaded and I want someone to blame, much like others do as well. I just don't understand how none of the crime scenes seemed to leave behind any trace of evidence. The entire apartment was ransacked when Atticus and Briar went missing and the same for Wesley Sullivan. Yet, they found nothing? I wonder if there's not more going on in that station." "I think the whole isle has become a giant conspiracy. We're all a bit obsessed with them now. It wouldn't surprise me either if there was a cover up, if someone in the police force is a bit to close to the kidnappers and is protecting them -- if not one of them. Its either that, or whoever is kidnapping the demi-gods is one themselves and knows what we'll look for. I just -- dont understand how no one sees them leaving the house with the person, how has no one, anywhere in the world seen anything to give us a hint at how our friends and family are going missing? Its like they’re shadows or ghosts. Which, after the door opening, I 100% believe theres ghosts running around now."

"That's my thought exactly. Something strange is going on and I want to get to the bottom of it. I know that the listeners might not know how often we get together and talk about conspiracies like this. Jasmine has become my partner in crime when it comes to this story and I do appreciate your help in what we're trying to discover. Right now, only those missing and the ones that are taking them know what is happening. What kind of creature lurks in the shadows and snatches people at night? Maybe it's Fae folk. They've been said to be tricky little things. All I know is I don't trust many people at this point."

“Yes! Wolf and i have become a bit of a duo looking into all this. It’s been sad and fun in its own way, and I’m more than happy to try and help save our friends. I also made a friend at the station, not PD but she seems pretty -- honest. We may, with her help, actually get to the bottom of this. But the idea of fae folk sounds pretty realistic to me; we have gods, creatures — who’s to say that the myths outside of Greek mythos isn’t real? I wouldn’t be surprised if all of mythology is actually real at this point. Maybe some other god from another religion is pissed off and taking children to make a point”

"Good, we need all the help we can get in getting to the bottom of this. I want to make things right for those of our peers that have been taken away from us for so long. I want to make sure they get the justice and truth that they deserve. That's a great point, it could very well be someone trying to make a point. If that were the case, the question remains what kind of point are they attempting to make right now? And how many more people have to suffer?" "I think we have lots of people on the isle that will happily help us in whatever way they can. We just have to ask and I'm sure they will. But yes i agree. We need to make sure our friends and loved ones get the justice they deserve because I can't -- seem to make any logical explanation for the reasons they're gone or why someone would be trying to make a point by kidnapping people. I just really hope they're ---" Rustling "What  -- How did you get in here?" Muffled voice "Go where? I --"  Silence

--------------------

As you can hear... someone else came into the recording booth, we’ve done everything we could to try to enhance the voice, hear what the other person said but .... nothing can be made out. Nothing makes sense.... We don’t know who or what or why this happened. All we know is when we came in this morning it was set up and recording as if they had just stepped out to go to the bathroom.... I --- I honestly don’t know what else to do or say or how the show will continue on after today... We’ll figure it out. And I’m sorry.”

[cheryls-blossomed]

I saw someone comment this as a criticism towards iris so I'm curious what you think. they said she/barry claim she's a good reporter but she's never actually had a successful story, and always calls barry or needs someone to help her clean up the messes she gets herself into on purpose. I'm a biiig fan of iris so regardless of criticism it doesnt change my opinion of her at all, but i'm still interested in your thoughts :)

Let’s be clear, if it wasn’t for Iris and the “messes she gets herself into,” Barry would still be unemployed.

Actually, I didn’t even know this was a criticism folks made, but I appreciate you asking me about it, nonnie, because hopefully I can dispel this as a bad faith (and utterly false) criticism of Iris. To do that, though, we need to talk about Iris’s journalism over the years.

Iris is looking for her story at the start of season 1, and she finds it when a mysterious super-powered hero begins saving people. She names him the Streak and starts her blog, where she records sightings of the Streak. Barry and Joe are literally trying to get her to stop writing, while Eddie pretends to Iris that he doesn’t even believe the Streak is real and that she’s wasting her time (Eddie writes him off as a hoax, all the while he’s trying to get Singh to allow him to create a task force to catch the speedster). She’s essentially on her own, but she continues to write about the Streak, later renaming him the Flash, and this lands her a job at Central City Picture News, where her mentor, Mason Bridge, writes her off immediately as an over-eager aspiring journalist. She has so many, well-researched stories she wants to write, but the editor of CCPN is more interested in what she can write about the Flash. It’s such an uphill battle for Iris from Day 1, when it comes to her aspirations as a journalist, and nobody is coming to help her out, exactly. When she gains Mason’s respect, he tasks her with researching Harrison Wells. Iris is intuitive and sharp, and when she meets “Sam” at the West house, she immediately goes into the archives of her blog, where she’d also recorded sightings of other meta-humans, and connects the dots that “Sam” is Ronnie Raymond. Iris’s blog also serves as a meta-human database, which we see Oliver and his team use, and furthermore, the information Iris gathers on the Burning Man which she gives to Caitlin is what Caitlin uses to locate Ronnie. From the very beginning, Iris’s meticulous research is what allows for huge positive plot developments to take place. Furthermore, it’s hers and Mason’s research on Wells that propels Barry and Joe’s investigation into the truth about who Harrison Wells is. While I am still incredibly peeved that what should have been Iris’s investigation is just unceremoniously handed over to Joe and Barry, neither Barry nor Joe would have known to even begin investigating Wells. While Cisco discovered the truth on his own, this was in an isolated timeline that was erased, a timeline that saw Cisco murdered for discovering the truth. Meanwhile, Iris compiles all the data of her research and is able to connect everything back to the Particle Accelerator, a conclusion she reaches on her own through her research. She later helps the team locate Grodd, because of reports she’s kept track of.

In season 2, Iris is still a journalist for CCPN. This is really the first instance of Iris needing Barry’s aid with a story, and it’s because she’s trying to take down an illegal eviction scam and gets caught in the crosshairs. Barry saves her, and she later writes the piece. That was all her; her own research, and her own story. Barry coming to her aid, while she’s in the thick of it, is pretty standard for journalists in superhero stories, and it really doesn’t diminish the fact that she exposed this scam on her own. (And honestly, who doesn’t love the trust fall scene?) She uncovers the truth about Wally on her own and confronts Francine about it. She later confronts the speed-racing crook, in her attempts to protect Wally, and while he threatens her, she has back-up, having recorded everything he was saying, wiring it all back to CCPN to protect herself. She refuses to write a negative piece on the Flash, when Trajectory attacks Central City, and instead proves to Scott that some people are always heroes no matter what. Iris’s determination as a journalist is what makes her successful, and we see that time and again. 

In season 3, she is investigating Frankie Kane’s home situation, and she goes to interview her abusive step-father, where she discovers his physical and verbal abuse of Frankie. She also ensures the entire hospital is evacuated, while Barry goes to talk Frankie down. A clear visual representation of truth and justice working together to save the day: Iris using her investigating prowess and realizing who Frankie is targeting and then evacuating the hospital, and Barry going to Frankie and saving her. Again, there’s no one coming to get Iris out of the “messes she creates”; instead, she’s actively using her journalistic talents to help save the day. Is Iris sometimes reckless with her own well-being when she goes after a story? Yes. Iris blatantly lacks self-preservation. But that’s also what makes her so incredibly compelling as a journalist, because she has flaws, but she’s smart and determined and intuitive and heroic. In 3x11, she writes a big story on the illegal arms dealership she’d been researching and how Wally saved the day. Yes, Iris enlists Wally’s help on this case, but she’s the one who has been following through and doing all the research. She tracked the man selling the illegal arms down and busts him out. This is her story, and while Wally did come to her aid, once again, she originally enlisted his help, so that she wouldn’t just recklessly be walking into a trap. Iris was also struggling with her own future demise, and so her recklessness is understandable. We have to also allow her growth as a journalist, as well. 

After the PTSD she suffered during season 3, Iris leaves CCPN, but she returns to journalism in the back half of season 4 after her time as the Flash imbues in her a newfound confidence and sense of fearlessness. She wants to write a piece informing the public about DeVoe, so that they can be informed, and she makes a compelling case to Barry as to why she wants to publish this article. And he agrees with her perspective. She publishes this, and the public begins reporting directly to her blog on sightings of DeVoe, which helps Barry and Team Flash track them. Her articles on the DeVoes are all from her own research that she’d been accumulating, and they have a profound affect not just in terms of the individual success of the story, but on protecting Central City and helping to save the world. AND her articles on her blog are what get Barry is job back at CCPD, and we should all listen to David Singh who says, “You can thank your wife.” Thank you, Iris West-Allen. 

In season 5, she’s quite active in reporting for her blog. We don’t know necessarily the specifics of the stories that she’s writing, but we know she actively reports on meta-humans in the city. We see her at the crime scene in 5x02, where she asks David Singh for a quote, which he gives her, because he respects her integrity as a journalist (Iris’s articles on the DeVoes brought her much acclaim in the city as a whole). We see her investigating Ragdoll in 5x05. In 5x12, she officially launches the Citizen, and in 5x13, she immediately goes to follow up on an old colleague of Dwyer’s. This leads her to Dwyer, and she holds her own against him, stabbing him with her pen. She only calls Barry in the aftermath to inform him about what happened and that she discovered Cicada’s weakness on her own. Iris saved herself and discovered vital information to defeating Cicada. 

In season 6, we see her investigating a lot more, and we see how her style of investigating has changed. She’s more meticulous now. She’s more careful now. She’s really come into her own as a journalist, and that’s the point of character growth. Folks can’t criticize her more reckless decisions in 2x03 and 3x11, without recognizing that Iris also has to come into her own as a journalist. She and Team Citizen do all the research on Black Hole and then successfully publish an explosive on Black Hole, implicating McCulloch Tech. Carver sends an assassin after Iris, but she escapes by herself, after going to meet her source. While injured, she realizes that Carver is behind Black Hole, and she successfully gets him to drop the defamation suit, by coming up with an elaborate, contingency plan. That was all Iris, by herself. She then pieces together the truth about Eva.

Iris has had much success as a journalist, from writing and researching lots of stories, particularly about meta-humans, in Central City. But her most successful pieces were (1) her original blog; (2) her exposure of the illegal eviction scam; (3) her exposure of the the illegal arms dealership; (4) arming the population of Central City with information on DeVoe; and (5) her exposure of Black Hole. For only two of these, did she need Barry or Wally to come to her rescue, but she did all the research for those pieces. The success of those stories are her own. And she didn’t get herself into a mess; she was in a dangerous situation, and she made the right choice of asking for help. For all the others, she never needed anyone’s aid at all. In fact, she was cleaning a whole lot of messes up. And those five stories are simply the ones we heard the most about; we know she’s had a lot of success as a journalist otherwise, and she’s constantly using her journalistic abilities to save the day (whether it was more direct, such as in the Frankie Kane episode, or more subtle, emphasizing how her journalistic abilities play a huge role in her ability to quickly recall information and stay calm in high-stress situations, such as in the Flashtime episode).

So yeah, I think that criticism is entirely false on all accounts. I also think there’s a lot of bad faith criticisms of Iris: the same folks that will call her a “Mary Sue” (a blatantly false character assessment, it’s not even funny) will also turn around and whine about Iris being reckless. Which is it? Is she so perfectly good at everything or does she have flaws? So, I would pay no heed to those people, because they are just looking to hate on Iris without providing any real or valid criticisms. 

[lefaystrent]

that one kid!logan ask featuring the teenage sides in their adult bodies. like that anon radiates big brain energy. i'm just imagining Logan tracking one of them down, and their shock that oh he really was as old as he said he was, he wasn't joking. And they break down crying, because nothing makes sense anymore but at least Logan is still Logan, he's still his no nonsense logical self no matter what he looks or sounds like.

Back to the Future

 Fandom: Thomas Sanders,Sanders Sides

 Pairings: platonic LAMP

 Word Count: 3444

Chapter Navigation: part 2

 Masterlist Link

________________________________________________________________

Patton wakes up in a very strangeplace indeed.

Someone shakes him awake. He becomesimmediately aware that he’s sleeping at a desk.

“You’ve got to actually go homesometimes, Patton,” someone chides him lightheartedly.

“Wha-?” Patton breaks off in a yawnand stretches.

His back pops, and the sound seemsto snap him awake. He’s in an unfamiliar office. There are stacks of paperworkand folders and letters, everything kept in an organized disarray. A womanstands next to him, smiling yet slightly worried.

“Got your morning cup of joe,” shesays, sitting a Starbucks cup in front of him.

“Who’s Joe?” Patton says dumbly,still trying to process whether or not this is a dream.

The woman laughs and doesn’t givehim an actual answer. She lets herself out of the office. Patton blinks in thewake of her absence.

That’s when he realizes that beyondthe open doorway, there are more desks with more people. All of them adults andbusy working.

Patton takes his glasses off to rubat his eyes. He’s about to put them back on when he notices something thattwists his stomach.

These aren’t his glasses.

They’re a sleek black, rectangular.Unlike his usual round pair.

He puts them back on slowly.

They’re his prescription.

Confused, Patton looks down athimself.

Why is he wearing a watch? He neverwears a watch. Has he ever owned a watch?

And his clothes. He has poloshirts, but this isn’t one of his. And the pants and shoes. Wait, why is therea cardigan tied around his shoulders?

Patton hurriedly glances around theroom. The desk faces the door. Behind him is a window.

He catches sight of his reflectionin the glass. He looks like a dad. He looks like his dad.

“Holy moly,” Patton whispers,because past his reflection he can see the hustle and bustle of the big city.

They’re like a bajillion floors up.

Unnerved, Patton jumps to his feet.No amount of looking out the window can change what he sees. He attempts tomake sense of the desk he’d been sitting at. He eyes the coffee.

“I don’t like coffee,” he says tohimself, as if that’s the biggest thing wrong with this picture.

“Patton,” someone knocks on thedoor and he jerks his head up. “Meeting. Fifteen minutes.”

Patton stares at the man for longerthan what’s polite. He’s never met this man, but he could easily picture him asone of his dad’s fishing buddies. And yet, he knows Patton’s name.

“Meeting?” he echoes.

The man sighs. “You forgot again,didn’t you? Well, this is why I’m reminding you.” He goes to duck out butremembers something. “Oh, and uh, might wanna spruce up a little bit. Gottastop pulling the all-nighters. That’s my job, ha!”

“Right,” Patton smiles, rushing tofix his mess of hair. He waits for the man to leave before letting his smiledrop.

Just what has he gotten himselfinto?

*

Patton can’t do this.

Before he can try to slip out ofthe offices, the nice lady from before catches up to him. She redirects him tothe place of the meeting the man mentioned before.

“Honestly sir,” she shakes her headin exasperation, as if she’s done this a million times and Patton is just aforgetful puppy.

“Right, just got turned around!” heclaims. She doesn’t even look at him weirdly, just leaves him there by aconference type of room. And then the people inside are already trying to talkto him and he can’t just ignore them, so he goes inside and sits andsmiles and nods and panics on the inside.

The man who told him about themeeting is there. He’s apparently in charge and dives right into things,talking about circulation and how it’s down and they need to get it up, and whatdoes medical stuff have to do with anything?

But that isn’t the case at all. Ifnothing else, Patton is an excellent listener. In this room are journalists andwriters and editors, and this is a newspaper? These people work at a newspaper?They think Patton works at a newspaper?

With sweaty palms, Pattondesperately reaches into his pocket hoping to find his phone. He finds aphone at least. It’s … got to be his if it was in his pocket, right? Justlike with the strange glasses and different clothes. He also finds a wallet hedoesn’t recognize and opens it.

There’s his driver’s license. Thepicture is him, but … weird? Something’s really off about it. And the dates… the issue date is … in the future? And the address? That’s not hisaddress! That’s not even the right city!

“Patton?” someone says and suddenlythe room is staring at him all at once.

Patton tries to speak. He tries to keepingsmiling. He really, really tries.

“I can’t do this,” he gasps out. Hestands abruptly, almost knocking over his chair. Someone or multiple someone’scall after him, but he races out. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He justspeed walks down the halls, avoids eye contact with those he passes, and leapsinto the first elevator he spots.

He smashes the button for theground floor. He’s alone inside and there’s no pretty elevator music, andPatton’s breaths echo off the wall far too loudly.

“What’s going on?” Patton whimpersto no one, doing his best to hold it together. He’s not going to cry. He’s not.He just needs to—to try to call someone. Get back to familiar territory.

He pulls out the cellphone again,hoping that his gut feeling is right. The lock screen lights up, and withoutthinking he uses his regular passcode.

It works.

Patton doesn’t think past hisrelief. He struggles to find a contact’s list.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he whispers.

The doors ding open. There’s a lobbyarea with a couple of secretaries running a front desk. Patton can feel theireyes on him like pins pricking his skin. He smiles, trying not to cringe, andforces himself to leave the elevator and walk out the front doors. Rather thanstray too far, he wanders to the nearby parking lot.

Patton finds his parents’ numberson the list. Neither one of them pick up. He tries to call his older brother.No answer either. He even sees his little brother’s name, but since when didDee have a phone? He was only ten and their parents said he wasn’t allowed toget a cellphone until high school.

He tried anyway. No surprise, hedidn’t pick up.

“Just—somebody please,”Patton begs under his breath.

There are so many names in thecontact’s list, way more than what his usual phone has, and so many names thathe doesn’t know. He scrolls way down to the bottom, trying to find Virgil’sname. Virgil’s name isn’t there. Frustrated, Patton scrolls back to the top,searching for Logan’s name, but he double checks and that isn’t there either!

“I don’t like this, I don’t likethis,” Patton chants. He takes in a huge shaky breath, closing his eyes andcovering his mouth for a minute.

Why weren’t their names there? Whywouldn’t his parents pick up? Why did he wake up in a newspaper office?

“Roman,” Patton says, swallowingdown the lump in his throat. He brings the phone up to search again. “I haven’tchecked his name. There’s still Roman.”

Patton chokes out a relieved laughwhen he finds Roman’s name there. He quickly mashes the call button.

It rings forever and ever. His callis forwarded to voice mail.

“Can’t come to the phone right now,but if you’ll leave a message, my handsome self will get back to you,” the familiarvoice says. The phone beeps, signaling the message is being recorded.

“Ro?” Patton asks, one last sparkof hope that he’ll pick up. That he won’t be so painfully alone.

But no one’s coming to rescue himand get him out of this mess.

“Ro, kiddo … please, pleasecall me, okay? I—I think something’s happened, and it’d sure be great to hearfrom you. Alright kiddo. Love you. Bye-bye.”

He’s on his own.

*

Patton manages to calm down enoughto find his car. He has keys in his pocket, so there’s gotta be a car nearby,right?

He’s right and there it is, asunfamiliar as everything else. The headlights flare, the doors unlock, andPatton stares at the powder blue paint job.

“It’s not stealing if I have thekeys,” Patton firmly tells himself.

He opens the car door and slidesinside. There’s a half drank water bottle in the cupholder. Envelopes addressedto him sit in a small pile in the passenger’s seat. A colorful necklace hangsfrom the rearview mirror, a rainbow charm hanging off of it.

Patton glances at his driver’slicense again, but the information remains unchanged.

“Guess there’s only one way to findout,” he mutters to himself as he pulls up gps on his phone. He types theaddress in and starts the car.

It’s the most stressful drive ofhis life, and yet it passes in a blur. There’s so much traffic, more than he’sever had to drive in before, and someone honks their horn on him when heaccidentally cuts them off.

“Sorry, sorry!” Patton says overand over again. He listens with absolute focus to the directions his phonetells him.

After a frantic twenty minutes andthree wrong turns, Patton makes it to a residential district. It’s a peacefulsuburban neighborhood, not entirely unlike the one he grew up in.

Patton drives slowly and reads themailboxes off as he goes. He finds ‘his’ house.

It’s … nice.

He pulls into the driveway. Theengine quiets as he turns the key.

He could see himself living there.That’s the scariest part.

Patton exits the car. He stares upat the house, the too big, too nice house that can’t be his.

This can’t be real.

“Patton!”

He startles and looks towards theneighbor’s house. There’s a woman, maybe around thirty? She’s taking out thetrash.

“Did you finally get a day off?”she laughs in greeting.

Patton rubs the back of his neckand tries to laugh too. “Oh, you know me.”

Yes he’s aware of how ironic hisstatement is.

He glances quickly at the woman,her yard, anything that might strike a memory. He draws a blank as he stares ata little kid’s bicycle parked by the porch steps.

“Uh, how are the kids?” Patton says.

They talk for far too long. Pattondraws on everything that he’s learned from Roman about acting.

In the back of his head he’sscreaming.

*

Patton sits on his living roomcouch.

It’s got to be his couch. This hasto be his house. All the mismatched furniture has to be his too.

Patton can see himself buying the house,having his friends over to help move in. He can hear Roman and Virgil arguingover Patton’s poor choice in décor, how they would squabble over how todecorate. Logan would be there too, giving his own input and worrying more overfunctionality than aesthetics.

Gosh Patton could really use a friendright now.

Earlier, as he’d snooped around, he’dfound pictures. Lots of pictures. Many of them with him in it. Lots of oneswith his family, with Roman.

There were hardly any with Virgil,and those were pretty much the ones he’d already seen before, the ones he knewhe had. Ones taken from high school with him and Ro.

There’s none at all with Logan.

Patton doesn’t know whether or notthat’s more concerning than the other thing he noticed about the pictures.

Everyone looks kinda … different.

Kinda older. Too old.

He saw a picture of his olderbrother and nearly didn’t recognize him. He saw one where Dee looked all grownup!

Patton stares down at his hands.They’re a little bigger than he remembers. A little rougher.

It’s like he’s woken up in adifferent world.

Maybe if he went to sleep, he’dwake up in the right place again?

Patton falls to the side, sinkinginto the cushions.

He closes his eyes and tries not tothink.

*

Patton wakes up to the sound ofbanging. He wipes at his face, sitting up with a groan.

It’s still daylight, but the sunhas shifted. It’s more afternoon now. The banging is coming from the frontdoor.

Patton’s still in his house that hedoesn’t remember buying.

Hopeless despair grips his hearttight, and he’s too tired to do anything other than accept it.

He rises to his feet. There’s nothingelse he can do. He might as well see who’s at the door.

He opens the front door to find asharply dressed man. He’s wearing a black polo with a blue-striped tie andslacks. His dark hair is a mess, like he’d rushed out the door withoutbothering to comb it down. He’s wearing glasses that look a lot like the ones Pattonwears now. The glasses do nothing to hide the wide brown eyes.

“Patton,” the man says, emphasizingthe name like it should mean something, like he was waiting for Patton toreact.

Patton cocks his head to the side.This is … this is …

“Salutations,” the man says and itall clicks into place.

“Logan?” Patton breathes out.

Logan sighs heavily, leaning intothe doorframe with slumped shoulders.

“It appears that we are in a complicatedsituation,” his friend says in a timbre far deeper than the little kid he onceknew.

Patton stops hesitating. He surgesforward and throws his arms around Logan.

“I was so scared,” Pattonsays, and he’s gone straight into crying. All of those built-up emotions areoverflowing now. “Logan, I—I woke up and there was—I wasn’t home, and therewere people, and they knew me but I didn’t know them. And I panicked andran away and—my driver’s license is weird! It said my address was here so I cameto check it out because nobody was picking up—I tried to call, nobody wouldpick up. Nobody would—”

“Patton, it is okay,” Logan reassureshim.

Patton can feel Logan’s armswrapped around him, a comforting hand resting on the back of his head to groundhim. It occurs to him that Logan must be an inch or two taller now.

“It’s okay,” he says again. “I’mhere now, and we will figure this out together.”

“Logan … what’s going on?” Pattonsniffs, his eyes burning and wet.

“… it appears that we are in thefuture.”

“Oh …” Patton says because that’sall he can say. “Oh … okay.”

He hugs Logan tighter.

*

“But how would this even happen?”Patton asks. He’s back to sitting in the living room. Logan’s pacing back andforth in front of him and it’s kind of distracting in a sense that Patton ismesmerized at seeing how much Logan has grown up. He’d always acted too maturefor his age, and now he looks it too!

Logan doesn’t break stride as heanswers, “You woke up like this, correct? There weren’t any inklings of the . .. ‘process’ that must have brought us here?”

“No—I mean, yes I woke up andsuddenly everything was different, but I don’t remember anything weird thathappened before that.”

“What do you remember beforethat?”

“I—” Patton goes to answer but he findshe can’t say for sure. “I … might have went to bed?”

“Might?”

“I don’t really remember.”

“You don’t remember what happenedyesterday.”

“Not really. I’m—I’m not sure whatI remember last actually. Logan, what does that mean? Did I hit my head?”

“If that’s the case, then I musthave hit mine as well.” Logan stops pacing and shakes his head to dismiss theidea. “No, I hypothesize that this is merely a side-affect to time travel.”

“Time travel … We really timetraveled.” Patton might still be struggling to process this.

“It would seem so,” Logan answers. “Idon’t have enough evidence to deduce our situation accurately, but from what I’vegathered I am not entirely sure that time traveling in one’s own body ispossible. Instead, our consciousness is what has traveled and arrived in ourself of the time we’ve landed in.”

“What?”

“What I’m saying is that it mightbe impossible to travel to the future and meet your future self. There is onlyone you at any given time, so instead your consciousness travels to the you ofthat time, possessing them as it were. That’s why we appear older in a future settingwithout any memory of the years in between.”

“That’s … a lot to take in.”

“Indeed.”

Patton’s back to staring at his hands.He feels the couch dip beside him, Logan sitting down.

“… you’re acting reallylevel-headed about this,” Patton observes.

“I suppose I am adept at compartmentalizing.”

“… Logan? Are you really fromthe future?”

And there it is. One of the theoriesthat he and Virgil and Roman had jokingly thought about Logan. Their strange littlegenius friend, too mature unlike any kid should be.

Somehow it all makes sense now.

“I think you already know theanswer, Patton,” Logan says, not hiding behind anything.

Patton looks at him. Really looksat him. The face might have changed a lot, but those guileless blue eyes arethe same as always.

“Is this what happened to you?”Patton asks. And oh, he can imagine it. Logan waking up as a little kid, scaredand confused and trying to make the most of it.

“Yes. I woke up much like this. Inever could remember exactly what happened to me previously. Time travel seemsto affect memory.”

“But why us? What did we do?”

“That I have no answer for. But asit started with me, I can only apologize if my presence in your life caused youto get caught up in this.”

“No, no kid—I mean, Logan. This isn’tyour fault. How can it be when you don’t even remember?”

“The fact that I can’t rememberdoes not absolve me. I could possibly have instigated this and simply bear nomemory of the fact.”

“But I know you wouldn’t doanything to hurt or scare me or anyone else.”

“There are too many variables,”Logan responds, a non-answer.

Patton reaches over to place a handon his forearm. He squeezed. “Logan, I trust you. We’ll figure this puzzle out,together.”

“Together …” Logan repeats in amumble. “If you’re here like this, it’s possible that we are not the only ones.”

Patton gasps, patting urgently atLogan’s arm. “I tried to call my family but they wouldn’t pick up. And then Icalled Roman, but he wasn’t there—but Logan! I don’t have Virgil’s number forsome reason. Or yours!”

“You don’t?”

“No! And come look at this!”

Patton drags him from the couch.They go look at the pictures on the wall.

Patton doesn’t need to tell Loganwhat’s wrong with them.

“Virgil doesn’t appear much at all,if in any, after high school. I myself am entirely absent from these.”

“And that doesn’t sound like me atall.” Patton frowns. “I love taking pictures with people. I should have a bunchof all of my best friends.”

“Unless we’re not your friends.”

Patton stares at him, notcomprehending. For once Logan understands the shift of his mood. He lays a handon Patton’s shoulder.

“Much can happen over the years.People lose touch all the time, especially after the high school years.”

Patton shakes his head slowly indisbelief. “But—but I wouldn’t! Not with Virgil or you!”

“Yes, maybe with Virgil. If he’snot here in your pictures and you don’t have his number, then it is extremelylikely that you do not communicate seldomly if at all. As for me, I thinksomething different has occurred.”

Tears gather in Patton’s eyes. Hegrabs onto Logan’s wrist. “What do you mean? That we’re not friends in thefuture?”

“Not just that we aren’t friends,”Logan answers. “In this timeline, I don’t think we met at all.”

________________________________________________________________

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[randomvarious]

Scorpions - “Wind of Change” Kuschelrock 6 Song released in 1990. Compilation released in 1992. Pop-Rock / Hard Rock / Hair Metal

From an oral history of the Scorpions' early 90s hit, "Wind of Change," published in 2015 in Rolling Stone:

[Lead guitarist, Rudolf] Schenker: In the Scorpions we have this kind of saying: Love, peace, and rock & roll. The love stands for "Still Loving You." The rock & roll stands for "Rock You Like a Hurricane." And the peace? That's for "Wind of Change."

When it comes to Hannover, Germany's Scorpions, Americans basically know the band for those three songs mentioned above, plus, of course, "No One Like You." But the Scorpions are way more than just a handful of classic rock radio hits. They've actually been around in some form or fashion since nineteen sixty-fucking-five. I mean, think about that. The Scorpions actually predate Revolver, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Velvet Underground. That's really not how anyone actually thinks of them in the timeline of rock history.

But that's because they took a long while to catch on, especially in the States. While 70s-era Scorpions represents the most technically perfect time in the band's tenure, largely because of lead guitarist Uli John Roth's wizardry, it didn't end up translating to American sales. It would take Roth's departure, which ultimately caused a change in the band's overall sound, to do that.

The Scorpions would find a way to adapt throughout the decade of excess by freely indulging themselves in crassly commercial hair metal, unleashing the instant guitar-squealing classic, "Rock You Like a Hurricane," in 1984. But if you know the tried and true hair metal formula, you know that for every few hard rockin' singles that a band pumps out, there's a power ballad to go along with them. And the Scorpions didn't just become known for their brash brand of metal; they could create quite the power ballad, too.

But while most power ballads tended to be about tender romance or sad heartbreak, the Scorpions decided to turn to more important things, like politics. And they were well-equipped for it. Unlike their American contemporaries who never faced a real day of political hardship in their lives, the Scorpions directly experienced the horrifying effects of Germany’s split into East and West. Not only that, but they were also raised by the generation that either subscribed to Nazism or, at the very least, failed to do anything to halt its rise.

So when the Scorpions were afforded the opportunity to be one of the first rock bands to play behind the Iron Curtain in Leningrad in 1988, they jumped at it, with two ideas in mind. One was to acknowledge the absolute terror that their ancestors had wrought upon the Russian people during World War II, showing that they were part of a new, peace-loving generation of Germans who found the actions of their ancestors to be awful and abhorrent (By this logic, US bands should be playing in just about every single country every single day. That goes for English bands, too). The other was to bring an implied message of hope and freedom to people who had been largely cut off from western art and culture. Not that Russians didn't know the Scorpions. Popular western music had been smuggled into the Soviet Union for years, but actually having the people who made that music performing right in front of their very eyes was, symbolically, a very big deal.

The Scorpions' Leningrad shows were so successful that they were invited back to play at the Moscow Music Peace Festival alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Skid Row, and Russian bands Gorky Park and Brigada-S in 1989. It was during this trip that lead singer Klaus Meine was inspired to write both the lyrics and music for "Wind of Change." Because of their adoption of glasnost, the Soviet Union was opening itself up, which generated a feeling of positivity that the Cold War was finally coming to an end.

It just so happened that a few months after the song was written, the Berlin Wall fell, which marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. "Wind of Change" would then appear on the Scorpions' eleventh studio album, Crazy World, in November of 1990, and be released as a single a couple months later. The music video would feature images of the Berlin Wall falling and Germans rejoicing and reuniting after having been forcibly separated from each other for decades.

But contrary to popular belief, and probably thanks to the music video, "Wind of Change" was not about the Berlin Wall or Germany. It was strictly about Russia. The lines,

I follow the Moskva Down to Gorky Park Listening to the wind of change

make reference to the Moskva River, which runs through Moscow, and Gorky Park, a park in Moscow named after author Maxim Gorky. A Russian stringed instrument called the balalaika is also mentioned before the song's guitar solo.

But Klaus Meine was right about the fact that change was indeed coming. He just didn't know how much and how soon. Nevertheless, the world events that conveniently took place not long after "Wind of Change"'s completion would help propel the song to the top of the charts in multiple countries and amass something like 14 million copies sold worldwide. It was the #1 song in the world as it's now cited as the soundtrack to the fall of large-scale global authoritarian communism. And it was also the Scorpions' last real triumph.

But the "official" story about this global hit might not actually be true. A limited series podcast was released just this year called Wind of Change which alleges that the CIA may have actually written the song. A journalist received the hot tip from a trusted ex-CIA confidant and attempted to track down the story. And it's not really all that farfetched. The CIA has been surreptitiously involving itself in the production of pop culture for years with the latest credible allegations coming out of Venezuela. But when confronted with this question of who actually wrote "Wind of Change," Klaus Meine categorically denied the CIA's involvement between fits of laughter. But then again, he could just be gaslighting us all at the direction of the CIA.

Truthfully, in hindsight, this song sounds wistfully corny. And there were probably people who found it corny then, too. I mean, the whole idea of a hair metal band acting as liberators feels absurd, doesn't it? And that "sound that emanates from my electric guitar represents freedom and democracy" schtick feels almost transparently propagandistic. Plus, you can totally picture a bunch of suits in a room trying to figure out how to make a catchy song and someone going, “what if we put in a whistle?,” right? (The Rolling Stone oral history says there was a push and pull between band and label about whether or not to include it)

But what power ballad, political or not, doesn't sound corny today? We can still like this song from an ironic distance, can't we? Despite what we may think of it right now, we have to appreciate the cultural impact it had. Like it or not, it's one of the most important songs ever made. In 2005, the German TV network, ZDF, revealed that its viewers considered "Wind of Change" the song of the 20th century. And maybe its whole "We Are the World" charity single vibe is another reason to think that the CIA wrote it, but still, media, no matter how lame you might think it is, affects people's actions. If it didn't, the CIA wouldn't be in the pop culture business. And a song that aides in world-changing events, regardless of who wrote it and how it sounds nearly three decades after its release, deserves to be written about, don't you think?

[woolishlygrim]

Winter Weebwatch #3

I feel a little bad for giving out so many two and three star scores, so I should probably clarify that three stars is meant to be ‘generally pretty good’ and two stars is meant to be ‘watchable but very flawed.’ We’re not working on IGN metrics here.

Also, this week is the week I finally drop a show! What could it be, what could it -- it’s Plunderer. Of course it’s Plunderer. I couldn’t get all the way through this week’s episode and life’s too short to bother watching any more of it.

Also also, while In/Spectre hasn’t been dropped, it gets subbed so late that I’m skipping it this week and rolling this week’s episode over to next week’s post.

ID: Invaded.

★★★★☆

God, why was this show relegated to the Death Season, Where Anime Goes To Die? For three weeks running now, ID: Invaded has stood head and shoulders over all of its competitors, and while there’s always the possibility it could collapse in under its own weight, it so far seems to be going pretty strong.

So episode four (again, see remarks about how one and two aired in the same week) sees Sakaido and the team in a race against the clock to catch the Gravedigger, a serial killer who traps people into enclosed spaces with just a few oxygen canisters and livestreams their struggles, showing the world their final moments and even continuing the livestreams to show their bodies decaying. The Gravedigger has kidnapped a new victim, and for the first time left enough cognition particles behind for Sakaido to dive into his mental world.

Whereas previous episodes have focused heavily on the mystery angle, this episode largely focuses on the stress the case puts on Sakaido and the team. The Gravedigger’s world is a uniquely dangerous mess of fire, explosions, and shifting architecture, and Sakaido dies again and again as he struggles to find any evidence of the Gravedigger’s identity.

Much like the last episode, this would sit at a solid three stars, being a fairly engaging and somewhat harrowing story of Sakaido and the team putting themselves under immense stress to save a victim. What boosts it up to four stars is the moment where the writers pull the rug out from under the characters and the audience: The Gravedigger they’re hunting is only a copycat of the real Gravedigger, and his victim has been dead for days, the ‘livestream’ actually a recording.

The episode also hints at a bigger role for the Perforator in future, as the team attempts to use him as a back-up detective, Akaido, only to find out he’s ill-suited for the role.

Pet.

★★★☆☆

Pet was so close to a four star rating this week. So close. 

So, this week’s episode continues an unclear amount of time after the last week’s episode, with Hiroki and Tsubasa having bought a fish store (as in a pet store that sells live fish and naught else, not a fishmonger’s), which Hiroki believes means they can stop doing work for the shady Committee -- only for Tsubasa to inform him that the Committee paid for the store in the first place, but not to worry, he’ll do all their jobs, and Hiroki doesn’t have to do any of them.

So this episode is … moderately upsetting, actually. Intentionally so.

The bulk of the storyline, in which Tsubasa alters a bodyguard’s memory so that he’s compelled to murder one of his boss’ friends, isn’t what’s upsetting about it, although it does deal with some sensitive subjects, namely domestic abuse and the objectification of vulnerable people. No, what’s upsetting is that, like with last week’s story about Hiroki and Tsubasa altering the memories of a couple, this one also harks back to Hiroki and Tsubasa’s relationship -- specifically, that Tsubasa is emotionally abusing Hiroki.

We get hints of this early on, when Tsubasa is deliberately vague about whether he’ll psychically synchronise with Satoru, another character who, at least in Hiroki’s mind (although evidently not in Satoru’s), is something of a romantic rival. As the episode wears on, Tsubasa goes about his work, while Hiroki, left alone at the fish store, begins showing his immaturity by acting out with his powers before eventually becoming sullen and unresponsive. All of that wouldn’t be enough to indict Tsubasa as being abusive, except in the final scene, as Katsuragi snidely remarks that their new store will never be successful and Hiroki will have to return to a life of crime, Tsubasa mildly returns that he knows it won’t be successful, and he knows it will hurt Hiroki, but that’s just part of ‘taking care of a pet.’

Aaaand we get our title, with all of the unpleasant implications of how Tsubasa views the much more immature and emotionally vulnerable Hiroki.

This episode would have scraped a four star score, but the early parts of the story are a bit too fast paced and a bit incoherent. That really was the only thing holding this absolute gutpunch of an episode back.

Bonus points to the episode that the thing that prompts Hiroki to act out with his powers is seeing a woman’s domineering and callous boyfriend, implying that he is at least somewhat aware of what Tsubasa is like.

Honestly, when this show started I was not expecting a meditation on the subject of abusive relationships, but here we are, and I’m down for it.

Darwin’s Game.

★☆☆☆☆

Oh my god, I just watched it. I just watched it, guys, and I don’t remember even the tiniest bit of it. Am I crazy? Is this what crazy feels like? It’s like I’m blotting the show out of my memory.

I remember something to do with plants and that’s … that’s actually the only thing I remember about this episode.

I don’t even think Darwin’s Game is bad (although let’s be honest, how would I know), it’s just not really anything. It has somehow hit that sweet spot between good and bad where it just fails to make any kind of impact at all, and my brain just interprets it as background noise and proceeds to flush all data pertaining to it.

I might drop it just because this has got to be getting boring for anyone reading these reviews by now. Watching this show is like a sneak peek of suffering from dementia. 

And yet, I still know for a fact it’s better than Plunderer, so it gets one star.

Plunderer.

☆☆☆☆☆ (DROPPED)

Aaand I’m out.

Look, after the shitshow that was the first episode, I should have dropped it straight away. I gave it a chance, and the second episode convinced me that, hey, maybe this wouldn’t be so terrible, maybe the first episode was just an outlier.

The first episode was not an outlier. Episode three isn’t entirely sexual assault and sexual harassment, but about twelve minutes in it does segue into an extended sequence of exactly those things, getting worse with each passing minute. I got up to fourteen minutes, the point at which a supporting character was cheering on the protagonist to sexually assault someone, before I just couldn’t stomach watching anymore.

This show could be the most interesting, engaging, thought-provoking thing on television, and the constant sexual assault would still make me drop it. Luckily, even if you take out all the sex crimes, all you’d get is a show that was basically okay at best.

So zero stars for Plunderer, and I’m dropping the show. To be perfectly honest, I should have dropped it after episode one. 

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen.

★★★☆☆

Onto more pleasant news, man, I just don’t know what’s up with Sorcerous Stabber Orphen’s pacing. Having proceeded at a truly glacial pace for the first two episodes, this episode caps off the entire current story arc, bringing it to an abrupt close.

Now in the company of his old mentor Childman and a task force of sorcerers, Orphen tracks down the dragon-ified Azalie, attempting to reason with her, only for Childman to stab him and eviscerate Azalie. In the aftermath, however, Orphen realises that he’s been played: The dragon he thought was Azalie was actually Childman, and the person he’s been thinking of as Childman is actually Azalie.

So, that was a weird twist. It’s not, in fact, completely out of the left field. The episode sets up early on that Azalie was skilled not only in elemental Black Sorcery, but also in telepathic White Sorcery, and that she should have access to those spells even as a dragon, something which is cause for concern because nobody in the task force has White Sorcery, including Childman. Later on, the confrontation with Dragon-Azalie (Drazalie, if you will), has a character call attention to how she hasn’t used any White Sorcery since the battle started. So when it’s eventually revealed that Azalie did, in fact, use White Sorcery, secretly swapping her mind with Childman’s and letting him die in her place, it actually fits together in quite a neat fashion. 

The episode ends without any real hint as to where the story is going to go next: Azalie escapes in Childman’s body, and Orphen is still an exile from the Tower of Fangs, and there aren’t any other pressing story threads, so I guess we’ll see.

Infinite Dendrogram.

★★☆☆☆

This is the second week in a row that I’m giving Infinite Dendrogram two stars, and it actually physically pains me to do so, because I really like this series. I think apart from ID: Invaded, it’s my favourite anime this season, by quite a significant margin.

But nothing at all happens in this episode.

Okay, that’s only half true. The episode opens with the Player-Killers roaming around Altar having all been killed, which journalist (that’s literally her character class, which I kind of love as a concept) Marie Adler says was the work of just the four ranked players. One by one, she shows the main cast a video of each one taking out a clan of Player-Killers in their own unique way: Arena gladiator Figaro takes his targets out one by one, sadistically toying with them before striking the killing blow; cult priestess Tsukuyo uses magic to immobilise her targets, before letting her cult skewer them one by one; martial artist Lei Lei takes them out in a surprisingly friendly and sporting fashion; and the King of Destruction, whose identity is unknown and definitely not Ray’s big brother, definitely, absolutely, just levels the entire forest his targets are hiding in.

I … do see the necessity of introducing them. The Superiors are basically this show’s Gotei 13, or Gold Saints, or Hashira, or <Insert Group Of Loosely Allied Big Tough People That Are In Every Post-Saint Seiya Shounen Anime> here. There are, however, more interesting ways this could have been done than having the characters watching four videos of fights they already know the outcome to.

For example, what if, instead, you had an episode setting up the characters all getting trapped in different areas, pursued by higher level Player Killers, only for them each to be saved by a Superior. That would actually have some tension and dramatic stakes, and it’d be a much more dynamic way of introducing them. 

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I sent Tumblr user rainhadaenerys why she might like the show Dark Angel, and I thought I might as well also post it here since I never shut up about it (for anyone curious)

So, I think there's a chance you might like the show "Dark Angel" (at least the first season. The second season had some good ideas but bad execution. But while most people prefer the first season, the second season fans are more vocal online. Probably because Jensen Ackles is in it). 

The first season came out in 2000 and takes place in 2019-2020 (the second season is 2020-2021 and came out a year later, after 9/1 in real life, which is why season two toned down some of S1's themes). The show is about this created/genetically engineered girl, Max, who was designed to be the perfect soldier and who--alongside those like her in her unit, who she sees as “siblings”--was tortured by her military creators (such as her main traitor and surrogate awful father, Lydecker), until she and eleven others of them escaped when she was nine. From there on out, she's on the run, staying under the radar so she doesn't have to go back to where she was created and had been kept (Manticore). 

In the year 2009 (the year Max escaped, when she was nine) terrorists set off this electromagnetic pulse, that basically wiped out all of America's technology and turned it into a third world country over night (so this is part of how Max is able to keep her head down in this world). But because of all of this, there was anarchy and bad people overtook the good ones and stole their positions, returning things to the law of the jungle (there's a lot in this show about corrupt political figures, police brutality), etc. 

At first journalists tried to report on all of this, but then they were silenced. But one--Logan Cale--went underground as "Eyes Only", an anonymous cyber journalist who hacks into people's broadcasts and tells them the truths being kept from them, and is seen as a terrorist by those he'd try to expose. 

At the start of the show (2019), Max works in Seattle as a bike messenger (also in the city where Logan is), which is the worst job you can get and the only one the underprivileged can (many of these being people of color) and steals things from the rich to give to a private investigator trying to help her find her siblings. 

Eventually she tries to steal something from Logan (not knowing he's Eyes Only, but she finds this out here). And there's an immediate attraction, because they get into this conversation while Logan's holding her at gun point--trying to keep her there until the guards come--because they realize they have something in common (like admiration for the goddess Bast, which is the statue Max was trying to steal), and Logan is actually happy Max is just a thief because he thought she was an assassin. 

This one drug company is acting like they're selling the drug to people--that will save their lives--but is really just selling them candy, and selling the real thing for a higher price overseas. And a woman who knows this is going to testify about it, and Logan is keeping her and her daughter at his apartment until they can get to a safehouse. 

Max eventually bolts, and Logan sees her use her powers in doing so. He tracks her down, partly to see if she's going to be a danger to him, but also because the audience can begin to see that he wants to enlist her help. The two of them debate about morality, about how Logan wants to make a change and give people choices again. But Max is skeptical that he wants to get it back to the "good old days", where people still died of diseases they didn't need to and spent obscenes amounts of money redecorating their homes to match their cat. She leaves again when he questions how she jumped out of, like, an eleven story window unscathed. 

They meet up one more time, and Logan kind of seduces/tricks Max into letting her see the barcode on her neck (that all those from Manticore have, as its encrypted into their DNA. He’d gotten an anonymous tip about Manticore years ago and put two-and-two together that Max was one one of the escapees), and Max is hurt by this (as she had really liked him and feels hella betrayed here. I think Logan for sure liked her, but he's just way too focused on his mission above all else at first, and that's one of the flaws he has to work on). 

He bargains with Max that if she helps him get the woman and her daughter into witness protection, he'll help her find her siblings. Max understandably disagrees, since so far she's gotten by by keeping to herself and wants to keep it that way. 

Logan tries to do the mission by himself but it fails. He's shot and ends up in a coma for a time, and is paraplegic in the end. And the little girl is kidnapped, but the mom makes it back to Logan's apartment. Max sees all of this broadcast on TV and feels guilty, and actually goes to see the unconscious Logan at the hospital (and tells him how she's not sorry and sees it all as his fault, even though she doesn't), and saves him from another assassination attempt. She runs into the little girl’s mother (the little girl’s named Sophie) and promises to save Sophie, and does so rather impressively. 

She even gets Manticore, that had been on her tail the whole episode, to fight for her--by getting the address for the girl's location on a line that she knew was tapped and that Manticore was listening in on. And there's a chilling moment at the end where Max, wearing a mask, walks by Lydecker while carrying Sophie and he realizes at the last moment that it was her. Edit: They also bring all those who were duping people--and selling them candy, so that they ended up dying because of it:(--to justice.

A few months later, Max visits Logan at his apartment and he's back in the fight for the less fortunate. Max ends up asking if he thinks he can really make a difference, to which he says he thinks he can with her help, and Max agrees to his deal and this is where the show really starts. 

And it's just... so good. I like the political commentary, that I could see you really getting into (and I'm sad they tone it down in S2, after 9/11), but my favorite bits is the stuff with Max, Lydecker, her siblings, and all things Manticore that I barely even touched on here. 

Most of the transgenics (those created humans) are PoC, too (including Max) to show how they're oppressed. 

And Max is just SUCH a good character (who's even a chosen one in S2), with such great development, who has to be one of the best characters of all-time (especially for female heroes). 

And in S1, there's so much showing of how men can be awful, and Max is like the hero to women from them (beating up many of them and even killing a few. It reminds me a bit of Daenerys. And is why I say claims against Dany--saying that when she did things like Max, it was hints of her madness--is bullshit. They'd probably do the same to Max if her show had come out today, but it didn't and instead she got to be the awesome hero she deserved to be). 

She also eventually stops stealing altogether--even though I was okay with her not being a goody-goody hero--unless it's from the bad and for the poor. 

She also becomes a leader... 

There's also so much fun swapped gender role stuff with her and Logan (with her being the superhero and him the sidekick, her being the brawns and him the brains--though Max has equal brains, too, if not even more than Logan--and her doing comic book type things, like super speeding away and Logan getting irritated by it: usually it’s a guy hero who does this, and a normal girl annoyed with it... and Logan can even cook exceptionally, and is always cooking for Max, and she can’t even boil water, etc.). 

And speaking of which, Max and Logan are my favorite ship of all time. They're so interesting... and fun (but there's loads of angst there, too), and are SO good for each other. Logan helps Max become more selfless (which really, she always was and wanted to be) and she helps him to chill. And they're both liberal lefties. 

The first season of this show is my favorite show of all-time.

Edit: The character, Original Cindy, is also one of the first lesbians on TV (maybe even the first, and before Willow in Buffy). And the show tried to have a positive story/episode with a trans character (with, once again, this stuff was huge for the time... There were some definite misses there, but they at least tried). And disabled representation on this show! And the disabled person eventually winning the heart of the superhero girl!

[sapphyreblayze]

So a few days ago I made a post about my own Della/Donald role swap au, which you can read here. Since them I’ve ruminated on it a bit more and have basically rewrote the whole thing. Here’s my new version: The basic premise is the same. Donald and Daisy are Huey, Dewey and Louie’s parents, Donald, stressed at the prospect of on-coming fatherhood heads out on a brief vacation with Panchito and Jose and fails to return, Daisy becomes an absentee-mother, and Della takes Donald’s role in raising HDL.

Now, in my earlier post I mentioned the Caballeros ending up trapped in the Underworld. Not anymore:

In this version, while on his impromptu adventure with Jose and Panchito, the three find themselves aboard a boat - things go wrong, and Donald goes overboard, seemingly downing.

A letter is soon sent out by the Captain of the boat they were on informing Scrooge and co. that Donald was lost at sea. Jose, convinced he’s still alive, becomes obsessed with using his black magic to look for him, while Panchito, resigned to the fact that he’s dead, runs off to go become a travelling musician, refusing to adventure again.

As for Donald: he finds himself washed ashore somewhere unbelievable - the Lost City of El Dorado. The locals take him in custody where he finds they are very hostile to outsiders and plan on keeping him prisoner. However, when he accidentally saves one of their lives, they instead become convinced that he is an ancient prophesied hero, and let him stay a free man... on the condition he doesn’t try and escape and tell people of the city’s location.

They say that as a hero, he must rechristen himself with a new name. A fan of superheroes, he decides to use the name of a superhero identity he dreamt up long ago - the Duck Avenger.

Of course he doesn’t really plan to stay, and constructs a little boat to try and escape... but he soon finds the stormy weather just beyond the calm of the secluded city impenetrable, and realises that he’ll have to find another way out. One of the local royals spots his little attempted escape... but decides to keep it a secret.

Donald soon discovers there’s another outsider living in the city - a sorceress who escaped imprisonment by impressing the locals with her magical powers. He decides to go visit her: it turns out she isn’t a sorceress at all, and that her so-called ‘magic powers’ included a portable TV she showed the locals. She also tells him she has so-far found no way of escape and has essentially given up because she likes it here. The real reason she ended up in the city was that she was a journalist looking for a story - her name is Lyla Lay.

Anyway, the aforementioned royal soon becomes friends with Donald and reveals to him that she’s always dreamt of seeing the outside world. At first Donald, armed with new friends and a cool new identity begins to, like Layla, like it in El Dorado, but overtime he becomes bored, wanting to actually do the hero thing for real, and also remembers that returning to his family again should be his number one priority. Donald convinces his friend - named Reginella - that if she went against her family and used her magic she could potentially find a safe way out of El Dorado, and he also convinces Lyla to help them figure something out, reminding her that she has her own friends and family who miss her. So they get to work, while trying to keep their plans a secret. Reginella cannot figure out a spell to escape, as there seems to be some sort of magical barrier around the city too strong for her to penetrate, but Lyla discovers an ancient text that could help, detailing an all-powerful figure that lives beneath the city, known only as Uno. Reginella of course wonders why she, as future queen, has never heard of this person. She begins to suspect her father is keeping secrets.

Meanwhile, back in Duckburg, Della, who had fallen out with Scrooge due to disagreements over Donald’s fate finally makes up with him, and she and the kids accompany him on all sorts of crazy adventures, including a fight with Magica (who in this au I’d rewrite to be close to her original incarnation), that Donald picks up on the television. Eventually though, they make their way to South America, following the Cartographers Quill, looking for some sort of adventure. Instead they find Jose Carioca, who on the surface still seems as charming as ever, but gives off some... weird vibes. Recluse vibes.

Della ain’t too happy to see him considering he was there when Donald went overboard and didn’t save him (”None of this would have happened if you guys hadn’t’ve called him up for ‘one last adventure’!”) but he reveals to her that he is convinced Donald’s still alive, and has spent years using his black magic to try and summon him. He has been unsuccessful, but thinks he finally knows a way to bring him back. It involves a reported ancient book with mystical powers, that can summon a goddess.

Della at first wants nothing to do with this but he eventually convinces her. He tells her that telling Scrooge is probably not a good idea, since the old man never trusted him and his black magic, and that they should take the slip. Webby and Dewey see they’re up to something and follow, and of course it doesn’t take Scrooge long to realise that they’re gone. He calls up Launchpad (who is currently in St Canard... hmm... wonder why...) and asks him to pick he, Louie and Huey up so they can track down Della and co. Eventually they all end up in the reported location of the book, which just so happens to be just outside a town where Panchito is performing.

...yea I got a bit carried away with this.

[prezaki]

A Thousand Second Chances - The life story of Eddie Brock

from Venom (2018) Issue # 2

I just spent a week speed-reading through every single comic appearance Eddie Brock has made in the 30 years since his creation and I fell in love with his character hard and fast. In order to process all that I’ve learned myself, I feel like I need to write down his life story with thoughts and important moments. Figured I might as well make this public since it might help out other new fans who don’t have the time and madness to dig through 30 years of comic history. Any older fans reading, feel free to correct me if I’m getting my Marvel lore wrong, I am VERY new to this and hopelessly overwhelmed.

This fully ignores ‘Venom: Dark Origin’ because it frankly just contradicts every other mention of backstory. It also thus ignores Mary Brock, the sister who was invented to justify the Nova crossover issues and who doesn’t appear outside of these two things, because she frankly doesn’t fit the rest of the lore either.

Content warning for suicide applies everywhere here, it’s a topic that comes up time and time again in Eddie’s life.

This got... long.

Eddie is born as the son of Carl and Jamie Brock. Unfortunately, Jamie passed away during Eddie’s birth, leaving his father emotionally cold towards him. The family is wealthy so Eddie is always well-provided for, but he never receives any affection. In order to win praise, Eddie studies hard (top grades) and gets into sports (beginning his lifelong passion towards muscle training), but nothing is successful. His dad did apparently make some worrisome statements though. (from: Lethal Protector, except for the panel which is from the Maximum Carnage arc)

At some point in his childhood Eddie gets into a car accident that cost Carl a lot of his fortune. Nothing is specified about this as of yet, but it looks like the current arc might go into detail. (from: Venom 2018)

Eddie gets into college and when the Watergate scandal happens, he is inspired to change his career to journalism. This places his birth year around 1950, I suppose? (from: Lethal Protector)

After college, Eddie gets a job at the Daily Globe, where he works as a successful investigative journalist.

At some point here, he meets Anne Weying and they begin a relationship. She describes him as ‘smart, witty and boyish’ (though he’d never show it in front of his father). He used to love taking her to fairs and amusement parks. The two get married. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

During his work for the daily globe he encounters a creature named Krooba. This is some weird bonus story and I only mention it because this panel is honestly hilarious. (from: Marvel Flashback series)

Then the Sin-Eater murders shake New York and Eddie interviews a source who claims to be the culprit - but just as Eddie reveals their identity, Spider-Man catches the real Sin-Eater. Eddie is disgraced as a journalist because he fell for a compulsive confessor. He loses his job with the Globe due to this incident. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

This also fully destroys his relationship with his father whom he now doesn’t have contact to anymore. Anne says he lost his boy-ish charm here and started seeming a little mad. Their marriage falls apart. (from: Lethal Protector)

To make a living, Eddie now has to write made-up stories for gossip magazines. He describes these as ‘venomous’ and that descriptor is the reason for his later pseudonym ‘Venom’. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

He starts body-building excessively during this time in hopes to relieve the tension. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Through all this he blames Spider-Man for his downfall - this is not logical, but hey, blaming others makes things easier. Eddie is a person with an astounding one-track-mind and a tendency for splitting.

Eddie can’t handle the misery of his current life and grows strongly suicidal. However, he is also a practicing catholic and struggles with the fact that suicide is considered a sin. Thus he goes to the Our Lady of Saints church to pray for forgiveness before ending his life. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

In front of the church he hesitates and is encouraged to go inside by Deadpool, who is totally oblivious to Eddie’s actual intentions. Yes, really. (from: Deadpool: Back in Black)

In the church, Eddie encounters the symbiote that Spider-Man brought back to earth as his suit and which he then subsequently rejected after finding out it is a living creature. Both Eddie and the symbiote hate Spider-Man, so they take this as basis to bond together.

Important here is that it is literally canon that Spider-Man inadvertendly taught the symbiote how to love (from: Web of Spider-Man) and that the symbiote wants to try and make their relationship with Eddie more mutual than the one with Spider-Man (from: First Kill). So take THAT as you want.

In the first day of being together with the symbiote, Eddie takes down some criminals who murdered his neighbour and establishes his vigilante killing style through it. (from: First Kill)

Eddie makes first attempts to kill Spider-Man (whose civilian identity he knows thanks to the symbiote’s memories) by pushing him in front of a train and trying to throw him off a roof. (from: Web of Spider-Man)

There’s some weird special story set in this timeframe about how he gets the advice of some veteran he interviewed on the job once to do this. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Then he attacks Spidey directly and they fight in the church.... and well, Eddie dons a priest costume for a while, just... because aesthetic. He does have a flair for the dramatic.

This is probably the appropriate time to mention that from here on Eddie is always naked. Every time you see Eddie Brock wearing clothes, it is the symbiote assuming the shape of clothes. Eddie wears underwear at best and even that is often not present.

Eddie loses this battle with Spidey and is sent to The Vault, a super high security prison. Escaping from there, he kills a guard who happens to be an influential person’s son and well, it bites him in the ass later. Important here is also that Eddie absolutely always laments it when he ‘has’ to kill innocents. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

In trying to get to Peter after this, Eddie visits Aunt May a few times pretending to be Peter’s friend. It is hilarious. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

The next attempt at besting Spider-Man is ended by Spidey pretending to accept the symbiote back, which the symbiote is actually excited about, much to Eddie’s dismay. However, the bond with Eddie is too strong for the symbiote to simply sever it and both symbiote and Eddie pass out from the strain of trying. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

This is a good time to mention that in the 2003 Spectacular Spider-Man run it is revealed that actually Eddie had terminal cancer All Along and knew he’d die without the symbiote, so part of him wanting to kill Spider-Man is a wish to eliminate host body competition and thus survive. I personally absolutely think this is an asspull that undermines a lot of the first 20 years of characterization,  but eh.

Eddie goes back to The Vault and has not one but two run-ins with the Avengers when attempting to break out. Neither attempt is successful and in the end he uses the symbiote’s abilities to fake his own death in order to successfully escape.

A huge battle over who gets to kill Spider-Man happens and Styx touches Venom... the symbiote takes the brunt of this attack to protect Eddie -  and thus they seemingly die for him. And this is like written in 1990. Eddie literally cries about it. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Now a normal human, Eddie is sent to the normal human prison Ryker’s Island where he is cellmates with the serial killer Cletus Kasady. Eddie works out a lot in the cell and it drives Cletus crazy - he brings that up again more than once. Big mad about the muscle gains. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Though Eddie also just plain beats Cletus up during this time because Eddie hates people who kill innocents. This might have contributed to Cletus hating his muscles. (from: Carnage 2016)

The symbiote isn’t dead and returns for Eddie! They break out! Also the symbiote literally gives birth during this process, no biggie. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Venom and Spider-Man fight again. Venom actually gets Spidey unconscious in this battle but instead of killing him then, he... kidnaps Spidey to an abandoned island to have another fight. Eddie just gotta be that extra. During this fight Spidey fakes his death and escapes. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Eddie decides to live happily ever after with the symbiote and just stay on the island. They’re very happy together. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Sometime here, Darkhawk gets stranded on the island, fights Venom, gets spared by Venom. Life’s like that. (from: Darkhawk)

Then he meets Wolverine inside of Wolverine’s nightmare because sometimes Marvel is ???? like that ??? (from: Marvel Presents)

Eddie’d probably have happily stayed on this island forever, had the child the symbiote gave birth to not bonded to Cletus Kasady, creating Carnage. Spider-Man realizes that Eddie, knowing symbiotes, is probably a big help in fighting a symbiote-bonded killer so he reveals himself to Eddie again and gets him off the island to fight Carnage. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Once Carnage is defeated, Eddie just gets sent back to The Vault.

There is some weird episode here where Matt Murdock is his attorney and he tries to get free by pleading insanity and pretending the symbiote died. That fails of course. (from: Trial of Venom)

Then an even weirder episode happens where Venom encounters a bunch of villains and then just ends back up in jail anyway.

Which he then breaks out of and hears Spider-Man’s parents are still alive. This really gets to Eddie because in his mindset (which the symbiote only enhances - they influence each other mutually for the worse at this point) Spidey is a corrupting force and thus he needs to protect... his parents from him.... so he kidnaps the Parkers..... (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Spidey had ENOUGH of Venom at this point and tries to think of new ways to get him to stop already. Thus he contacts Anne and gets Anne to talk to Eddie. Eddie still very much loves Anne. It still takes Spidey saving Anne from falling debris and Anne’s subsequent explanation that Spidey IS saving innocents to make Eddie back off. But hey, he backs off!

And moves back to his birth city, San Francisco. Here a lot of things start happening very rapidly. Eddie encounters an underground city of social outcasts. A family member of the guard he murdered put together The Jury to kill him in retaliation. Life Foundation wants his symbiote. Spider-Man is there. Lethal Protector is a ride and I truly recommend it.

Life Foundation extracts symbiotes from Eddie’s symbiote to try and weaponize them, Spidey and Venom battle them together.

In the end, Eddie also saves the underground city from Life Foundation and moves in there as their protector, much to the joy of local resident Elizabeth who wanted him down there all along.

Then Eddie temporarily goes back to New York because Carnage is back. After getting badly beat up, Eddie comes to Spidey for help and... just goes to sleep on his couch. He changes into pajamas and all.

To stop Carnage, Spidey, Venom and the Black Cat form an alliance but Spidey remains strongly opposed to Venom’s muuuch more pragmatic view on life and death. He isn’t called lethal protector for nothing. Much moral debate is had. Maximum Carnage is a fun arc.

Then Eddie goes back home to his underground city and demonstrates his one-track mind in his solo series Funeral Pyre, where he tries very hard to help an undercover journalist trapped in a gang and still fails, creating Pyre in the process....

During some Daredevil issues, Eddie tries to steal a serum to erase Venom’s weaknesses but in the end doesn’t get it.

During some Silver Sable issues he... exists and helps her gang, I guess.

Then he appears in some Darkhawk issues where they rematch.

Back to solo-series; in The Madness, Eddie gets infected with a sentient virus, making it three people in his body. The virus is pretty crazy and assaults and frightens Eddie’s almost-girlfriend Beck, who is overall already convinced that the symbiote makes Eddie more mad. She states she can’t date him due to this and the two remain simply friends. Eddie gets rid of the virus in the end and returns it to where it came from.

The Enemy Within comes next and it’s just... goblins in San Fransico. Eddie teams up with Morbius against those goblins. Many goblins.

Then Venom fights Hulk because why not. (from: Venom vs Hulk)

Soon after, Venom appears in a few Iron Man issues because he believes Tony Stark’s business practices to be corrupt and tries to kill him for it.

In The Mace, conflict arises in the underground city and causes Mace and Venom to fight one another. Namely, people from the underground city attack others, who attack in retaliation - once Eddie learns that some of his people started this mess, he kills the offending underground city residents (and keeps it secret from Beck who asked him to spare them).

Venom then teams up with Nightwatch for a short appearance in the Nightwatch series.

During Nights of Vengeance both Elizabeth and Beck get kidnapped, inviting other characters to speculate on Eddie’s love life. Eddie states he won’t date either woman as he is too dangerous to date anyone. There’s also aliens who take over minds in this comic. That’s the actual main plot of these issues.

Now it’s time for Eddie’s next return to New York! Carlton Drake and his Life Foundation are working on something called The Arachnis Project (which is also the name of this arc) to create spider humans - hearing of this, Eddie travels to New York to get revenge against Life Foundation for the events of Lethal Protector.

The Jury has started working for Life Foundation in the meantime, though the events of these comics cause that connection to sever. However, they’re still in the same facility, so they do run into Venom there. Jury and Venom try to kill each other while Spider-Man desperately tries to stop any death on either end from happening.

Also Life Foundation gets defeated, obviously. Eddie returns to San Francisco.

Only to come back to NY shortly after due to news about the prison Carnage is held in.

Here, Eddie runs into Peter’s clone, the Scarlet Spider. In battle with him, Eddie gets separated from his symbiote and both of them get taken into custody to be studied, setting up the events of the Separation Anxiety mini-series.

Separation Anxiety marks the first time the reader ever gets to hear the symbiote’s thoughts and the majority of these thoughts are “Eddie” as the symbiote is desperate to return to him.

During this period of extended separation from the symbiote and with nobody to talk to, Eddie begins to reflect on his actions as Venom and starts second-guessing all the murders they committed. For the first time, Eddie is plagued by feelings of guilt.

Eddie gets broken out of this facility by the surviving symbiote-host-combos created by Life Foundation who seek Eddie’s help on how to communicate with their symbiotes. All of them are struggling to not get overtaken, making Eddie’s mutual relationship with the symbiote seem extraordinary.

Meanwhile the symbiote also breaks out and rushes to find Eddie, bond with him again and, in their worlds, ‘become whole, become Venom’. The symbiote does find Eddie in time to save him from Scream, one of their symbiote ‘daughters’.

But after being reuinited, Eddie tells the symbiote that he needs some time to think on his own to really figure out what of their actions was his choice and what was the symbiote’s. (the cap is from Planet of the Symbiotes which picks this back up.)

Before this storyline goes to its conclusion, Carnage briefly returns and travels over the internet, an ability which the Venom symbiote learns as well in the fight against Carnage. He returns back from San Fran to New York again for this. During this arc Eddie also makes a big mistake and almost kills an innocent man named Clive because he mistook him for being a malicious junkie. (from: Carnage Unleashed)

Then in Planet of the Symbiotes we then return to the break-up story. Eddie’s doubts about his own choices continue on strongly and get reinforced by Spider-Man to a point where Eddie rejects the symbiote. The symbiote, in emotional pain after this temporary break-up begins wailing. This wailing can be heard so far in the galaxy that it actually alerts the other symbiotes to the existence of earth, causing them to begin an invasion.

During this invasion, Eddie’s symbiote returns to him and reveals that for their species, they are considered abnormal because they seek to have a relationship with a host rather than dominate them.

The solution to the invasion is to let out an even more powerful mental scream to overwhelm the symbiotes with despair - Eddie and his symbiote fully bond again to achieve this and thus save earth. This is the arc that the movie presumably took Venom betraying his species for Eddie from.

Then during Sinner Takes All, we meet Anne again! There is a new Sin Eater around and she is being targeted - obviously, Eddie can’t let that happen and sets out to protect her. To heal her injuries, he lets the symbiote bond with her but doing so unleashes violent urges in Anne. She temporarily turns into She-Venom and murders a group of men who were attacking her. Once returning to her senses, Anne is horrified and gets away from Eddie - only to be taken hostage by an assassin who came to take revenge on Eddie for Clive, the person he almost killed during Carnage Unleashed. In the end, Clive himself calls off the manhunt on him, claiming vengeance wouldn’t make him feel any better.

Here continuity gets a little confusing because the next comic, Along Came A Spider, takes place soon after Planet of the Symbiotes and makes reference to Eddie not having talked to Anne since. This is why most continuities place Sinner Takes All before Planet of the Symbiotes, but that doesn’t quite make sense either due to the progression of Eddie’s and the symbiote’s relationship. Ah well, it is a mystery.

Anne is now under police protective custody, but the police also want her help to capture Venom. When Eddie calls, the symbiote travels over the phone-line and partially merges with Anne, which ends up also merging Eddie’s and Anne’s minds. Eddie immediately sets out to find her and retrieve her from the police.

On the way out, Venom gets into a fight with Spider-Man, which gives the police time to arrive and arrest Anne. When Anne calls Eddie from custody, she begs him not to come and bust her out, which he agrees to... but sends the symbiote through the phonelines instead, turning Anne into She-Venom once more.

Once the symbiote is back to Eddie (after some more fighting), Anne announces she wants nothing to do with him anymore because she never wants to get close to the symbiote again. She tells Eddie that only if he resists the symbiote and stops his vengeance quest, she’ll talk to him again.

Then Anne gets tangled up again anyway, as Rune frames Venom for murder and Venom has to save her once more. (from: Rune vs Venom)

Next there is a serial killer on the loose in New York! The police strongly suspect Venom to be the culprit, but it turns out to be Xenophage, eating everyone who has a symbiote inside them. (from: The Hunted)

While running from the police, Eddie temporarily assumes the identity of a skater and joins a group of skater kids under the name Rad Eddie. (from: The Hunted)

Eddie defeats the Xenophage. (still from: The Hunted)

Then comes The Hunger, one of the gayest comics from the 90s for sure. It starts out with Eddie and the symbiote holding hands at the movies. But Eddie once again has reason to suspect that the symbiote is making him more violent.

When Venom winds up actually eating someone’s brain instead of just using this threat as a catchphrase, Eddie is horrified. Seeing that Eddie will refuse any further brain-eating, the symbiote leaves Eddie. Eddie gets captured by Dr. Paine and experimented on.

Eddie finds out that the symbiote needs a chemical that is in brains but can also be supplied in other ways. Before he and the symbiote can fully bond again, Dr. Paine kidnaps the symbiote to also experiment on.

Of course, Eddie saves the symbiote and also finds out that chocolate nourishes his symbiote just as well, so he buys them heartshaped chocolate. (all from: The Hunger)

Then Venom gets pulled into some other dimension along with Wolverine, Scream and the skater kids from before. (from: Tooth and Claw!)

Next, Eddie gets finally captured by the police after all and put on trial. Matt Murdock takes over his defense again. When the prosecution calls Carnage for a witness, Carnage breaks loose and Venom, Daredevil and Spidey have to subdue him. In the end, no verdict ever comes as Eddie is secretly recruited by the Overreach Committee. (from: Venom on Trial)

Eddie is pretty delighted with his new James Bond gig. In License to Kill, we get to see him on a mission in great detail. Important here is that the Committee planted a bomb in Eddie’s chest as an emergency insurance to keep him in check.

Venom’s next mission is to protect a formerly corrupt government leader at a speech in a church. For this, Eddie goes undercover as a nun but instead of using the symbiote’s full shapeshifting abilities, he just takes his normal looks, puts on a nun costume and calls himself Sister Edwina. Iconic. (from: Sign of the Boss)

The next mission is... a pretty big misunderstanding. Eddie’s superiors use convoluted language to tell Eddie to scare Jonah J Jameson a little but Eddie thinks he is meant to kill him. In the subsequent clash with Spidey, Eddie hits his head hard and forgets Spiderman’s civilian identity and also the exact reasons for hating him. (from: The Venom Agenda)

The committee now decides that Eddie is way too much of a loose cannon for their taste and they want to get rid of him. While everyone takes too long to decide who should press the killing button, Eddie escapes the committee, but in the subsequent fighting the symbiote is seemingly killed. (from: The Finale)

Eddie without the symbiote is absolutely miserable and once more pretty suicidal. This is the beginning of an era, however, which makes the symbiote out to largely abuse Eddie. So when the symbiote returns, Eddie initially tries to get away from them to avoid more pain, only to be forcibly united with them again anyway. Venom then goes to visit Carnage and... eats his symbiote. Yeah. (from: Peter Parker: Spider-Man)

Venom then joins and subsequently turns on the Sinister Six. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Eddie finds himself missing Anne and wants to start over with her again. When he visits Anne, she is a paranoid wreck. As Spidey, now in a black Venom-esque costume again, swings by her window, she falls into panic. Eddie misinterprets that Spidey is what scares Anne and goes to fight him, but while he does that, Anne commits suicide. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

As Eddie grieves at Anne’s grave, Senator Ward shows up and steals his symbiote. Eddie gets arrested and sent to prison. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Now we’re entering territory of Venom (2003), the worst Venom comic. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but the majority of it is about another symbiote anyway. At some point during this Eddie gets his symbiote back and fights the other symbiote.

Proving further that 2003 is the worst Venom year, we go on with a comic where the symbiote eats the adrenaline off people (not even what they ate before) and also with the reveal that Eddie has cancer and his cancer made his adrenaline amounts more appealing to the symbiote. To save Eddie’s life, Peter makes him rebond to the symbiote against either of their will. (from: Spectacular Spider-Man)

Then Carnage has another child which he wants to kill while Venom has other plans for it. (from: Venom/Carnage)

The symbiote gets stolen again during Spider-Man/Red Sonja, but it’s overall not that consequential.

What IS consequential is that Eddie is now back to having moral qualms with the symbiote... so he... decides to auction the symbiote off to super-villains and give the money gained to charity. Without the symbiote, his cancer will advance and he’ll die. (from: Marvel Knights: Spider-Man)

Finding out that the person he sold the suit to kills innocents indiscriminately, Eddie attempts suicide once more. He is taken to the hospital and narrowly survives cutting his wrists open. After that, he is kept in the hospital due to his cancer. (from: Marvel Knights: Spider-Man)

In the hospital, Eddie has reoccuring visions of the symbiote urging him to kill. When he finds out May Parker is in the same hospital, the symbiote tells him to kill her. Eddie does comply with killing  a nurse, but stops himself before killing May. He tries to commit suicide once more, only to be saved by Spider-Man. (from: Sensational Spider-Man)

Eddie starts working Martin Li’s homeless shelter, where May Parker also works. A touch by Martin Li, who is actually Mr Negative, heals Eddie’s cancer completely. This also turns Eddie into Anti-Venom - the literal opposite of Venom, a hero who’s touch cures and is harmful to the Venom symbiote. Though Eddie tries to kill his old symbiote, now bonded to Gargan, the symbiote refuses to kill Eddie when Gargan wants it to. Love is a word that is used again. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

Eddie now starts over as a hero as Anti-Venom, healing people and busting drug cartels. (from: Anti-Venom: New Ways to Live)

Eddie is the first one to find out Martin Li is Mr Negative and tries to fight him. He is also the one to reveal Mr Negative’s civilian identity to Spider-Man, temporarily teaming up with him and Wraith to take the crime lord down. (from: Amazing Spider-Man)

At some point here, Eddie offers miracle healings with the Our Lady of Saints church as his headquarters.

When everyone in New York starts developing Spider powers, Eddie heals people from them. In the end, his Anti-Venom powers are all used up in order to large-scale cure the crisis. (from: Spider Island)

Meanwhile the symbiote is bonded to Flash Thompson and the two work as government agents.

Having had enough of symbiotes alltogether, Eddie sets out to kill symbiotes and hosts that are still around. (from: Venom 2011)

Against his will, Eddie is forced to fuse with the Toxin symbiote. (from: Venom 2011)

The FBI recruits Eddie to help them against Carnage. This is the comic that I like to summarize as ‘Let’s Go Lesbians Let’s Go’. In it, Eddie, two latinx lesbians, two black women and some other dude stop Carnage and an elder God. It’s a really good run.

For the first time, a comic makes Eddie accept culpability for his actions as Venom!! Also during this story, he loses the Toxin symbiote. (from: Carnage 2016)

When Flash Thompson and the Venom symbiote are separated, Eddie helps contain the symbiote (which had been going around with a criminal named Lee Price) and then breaks into containment to re-unite with it. Here is where he starts calling the symbiote ‘love’ and ‘darling’ all the time. Sadly there is no real explanation for his change-of-mind on the symbiote. (from: Venom 2016)

The symbiote and Eddie now actively negotiate trust and such in their relationship, it’s very good. When Eddie finds a dinosaur in the sewers, he brings it back to Alchemax which created it. In exchange for bringing the rest of the dinosaurs back, Alchemax chairwoman Liz Allan agrees to study the symbiote to see what is wrong with it, since it appears sick.

During this dinosaur quest Eddie meets and bonds with Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur!

Meanwhile at Alchemax, medicine for the symbiote is created. It turns out that remnants of Anti-Venom in Eddie’s body are making the symbiote sick. (from: Venom 2016)

Theeeeeen Eddie gets pulled into a parallel universe to battle an alien species called Poisons which kills hosts and permanently bonds with symbiotes. (from: Venomverse)

Back on earth, Flash comes to collect the symbiote, which struggles to choose between Flash and Eddie. In the resulting struggle, Flash turns into Anti-Venom instead. Venom, Anti-Venom and Spider-Man team up against Lee Price, who broke out of jail. (from: Venom Inc.)

Then the Poisons return and Eddie has to join the X-Men on a space journey to fight them. (from: Venomized)

At some point in between here, Eddie gets a job at The Facts Channel under the name ‘Mr. Sym’. Later Jonah J Jameson calls him out on how dumb that alias is.

The symbiote is about to spawn again and the FBI wants to interfere with it. Through trickery by Alchemax, Eddie and the symbiote manage to keep their baby. (from: Venom 2016)

The symbiote’s first host returns to earth and wants the symbiote back, who refuses and wants to stay with Eddie. By threatening their child, the first host manages to take the symbiote away anyway. Eddie bonds with the child symbiote, Sleeper, to go get his symbiote back. In the end, Sleeper lobotomizes the first host and uses his body to travel the universe. (from: First Host)

Due to causing way too much trouble, Eddie is now refused entrance to Alechemax. (from: First Host)

Jonah J. Jameson calls Eddie to protect Mary-Jane while Spider-Man faces a crisis with another arch nemesis. To defeat this nemesis, Eddie even lends the symbiote to Spidey. Flash dies in this big fight and Eddie afterwards attends his funeral. (from: Amazing Spider-Man #800)

The symbiote once more acts overtly violent and the resulting struggle in life results in Eddie losing his job at the Facts Channel. (from: Venom 2018)

Eddie Brock kills a god. (from: Venom 2018)

I don’t want to sum that run up any better than that, it is heartbreaking and should simply be read and personally experienced.

If you need issue numbers, this guide is your friend.

[mwelxn]

Last week, ex-Guns N' Roses guitar slinger IZZY STRADLIN' gave PAUL ELLIOTT exclusive details of exactly what went down with his shock departure from the former Most Dangerous Band in The World. In part two this week, Izzy previews his Stones-influenced upcoming debut solo LP 'Ju Ju Hounds', and reveals that yes, he DID almostjoin forces with this week's K!cover stars The Black Crowes!... By Paul Elliott Kerrang! Magazine - Sept. 1992 "...And that goes for all you punks in the press / That want to start shit by printin' lies / Instead of the things we said / That means you, Andy Secherat Hit Parader, Circus magazine, Mick Wall at Kerrang!, Bob Guccione Jr at Spin..." - 'Get In The Ring', Guns N' Roses Although Mick Wall no longer works for Kerrang!, Axl Rose's anger at the publication has not abated. Guns N' Roses' outspoken frontman routinely bitches about Kerrang! when the band play in London, Presumably, the root of the problem was a feature of Wall's on the Rock In Rio festival in which he accused GN'R of aloofness. Kerrang!gave Guns N' Roses their first British magazine cover in 1987, but Rose chooses to remember only one comment from one journalist. And that, it seems, is the bunker mentality behind the Guns N' Roses/Kerrang!/'Get In The Fucking Ring' feud. Former GN'R guitarist Izzy Stradlin' is equally bemused by it all. "I just write songs," he shrugs, grinning. "I honestly don't know what that was about or what was said. Axl was mad at Kerrang!, right? There were so many things that pissed him off..." It's said that Bob Guccione Jr, editor of US rock periodical Spin, was baited by Rose on 'Get In The Ring' simply because Spinprinted the contract which Guns N' Roses attempted to force on all journalists interviewing the band. The contract sought to censor the press. "I didn't even know about this contract," Izzy protests, "so when I heard Axl was mad about it, I was going, 'What?'! "If I were a journalist I'd probably just tell somebody to shove it up their ass too, cos I guess that'd be like somebody telling a musician how to write a song. "I wasn't aware that Mick Wall was one of the guys in that song. The only one I knew about was Guccione. I was sitting back in Indiana watching MTV and I saw that thing about Axl challenging him to go fight, and Bob said, 'Okay'. And I didn't hear anything else about it! "Axl's real critical of himself, and his anger seems to propel him in a lotta ways. That song 'Get In The Ring', I really love a lot of the lyrics just cos they're really aggressive. Axl played guitar on that track as well, that was the first time I saw him play electric guitar, and he did pretty well. I was digging it cos it was good punk energy. But with all the names at the end I was thinking, shit! I wouldn't have slagged people off on my record." - Izzy's Record, his first since quitting Guns N' Roses, is titled 'Ju Ju Hounds' and is as cool a rock 'n' roll record as anyone has made in the last 10 years. Like The Black Crows', Izzy's music is simple, intuitive, soulful. Both he and the Crowes have covered reggae standards, but where the latter play a lot of blues, Izzy's more of a punk. Axl calls 'Ju Ju Hounds' "Izzy's Keith Richards thing", which is as good a description as any. Izzy's LP has the same lazy charm as Keef's 'Talk Is Cheap'. "I read what Axl said," nods Izzy. "I think Keith Richards is great, but I don't think he has any songs that play as fast as 'Pressure Drop' (Izzy's souped-up cover of the Toots and The Maytals classic, also recorded by The Clash). I wish he would - It'd be great to hear him do that. "I called Keith last week; he was in the studio. I'm gonna try and hook up with him in New York sometime. There's a part of me that wants to take a tape of my record along and play it for him, and there's another part that's going, 'Fuck it, I'll just say hi and listen to his record'." Izzy's such a big Stones fan, there's still disbelief in his voice when he speaks of his friendship with Keef and fellow Stone Ron Wood, who guested on 'Ju Ju Hounds'. "We got together with Woody in LA. We did an old song of his called 'Take A Look At The Guy'." - A Stones CD plays as Izzy talks. The album is 'Black And Blue', one of the Stones' most laid back and most underrated works, featuring classic heartbreakers 'Fool To Cry' and 'Memory Motel'. plus the reggae number 'Cherry Oh Baby', covered by UB40. "I got into reggae partly through the Stones," says Izzy. "I guess it just bled over from stuff like 'Black And Blue' - it's killer. The thing I love about reggae is that it's not technical music where things are perfect; it's very freeform, just a groove. You can lay on a beach or a couch and just absorb it It slows down your heartbeat too, those drum beats and the slow pulse of the bass. It's like a tranquilizer. " 'Pressure Drop' is in this great movie called 'The Harder They Come', starring Jimmy Cliff as a ghetto kid who goes big time with guns; he shoots his way to the top. It's really cool. "There's an energy about 'Pressure Drop' that I love, the rock-steady rhythm. It's very loose, but at the same time it gets the point across." - Guesting on 'Pressure Drop' and on 'Can't Hear 'Em' (a reggae number of Stradlin's which features on the 'Pressure Drop' EP released this week, a month before the LP) is reggae star Mikey Dread, who worked with The Clash on their 'Sandinista' LP. Izzy met Mikey through bassist Jimmy 'Two Fingers' Ashhurst. "Jimmy saw Mikey play in Chicago and got hold of him the next morning. It turned out he was in the hotel right across the street from the studio we were using. We were just gonna do one song dub, but we ended up recording four songs with Mikey, for him. Jimmy and I played bass and guitar on them. Mikey did his rap thing on 'Can't Hear 'Em' and I think he sang some backups on 'Pressure Drop'. His guitar player did a reggae rhythm, real quiet, just a plunky, straight-through thing." Was Mikey surprised that a former member of GN'R loves and can play reggae? "I don't know but it was a trip working with those guys. Mikey had worked with The Clash before, so he must've been familiar with our style." So he didn't think that the way you speeded up 'Pressure Drop' was sacrilegious? Izzy smiles, "His first comment was, 'Y'know, man, this was a big hit in England'. I'm supposed to look him up when I get to New York. He's gonna take us to some place to get us some suits made - they do 'em overnight." - The whole of the 'Pressure Drop' EP has a raw feel evocative of Guns N' Roses' debut EP 'Live Like A Suicide'. 'Came Unglued' is as fast and lean as the obscure GN'R tune 'Shadow Of Your Love', while 'Been A Fix' has the hangdog vocals and fuck-off riff of late '70s Stones (it's also reminiscent of Aerosmith's 'I Wanna Know Why'). "Basically, I just wanted to get back to what really gets me off, just a basic rock 'n' roll band, a couple guitars, drums and bass. Simple. "The album's better, I would think, it's more mixed. The EP's just got three slammers on it, and a reggae song. The album's got a couple of acoustic songs, a coupla slammers, some basic rock tunes and one reggae song too. "The title of the LP came by accident in the studio. I was singing a backing track to something, and when I played it back it sounded like I said, 'Ju ju hound'. It doesn't mean much really." - Before Izzy began recording his album and EP, his name was linked with The Black Crowes, who at the time had not announced a replacement for Jeff Cease. So was he offered the gig? "I don't think so," Izzy shrugs. "When I left LA after I split from GN'R, I went on a road trip to New Orleans. From there I called my brother and he told me I'd got a fax from Rich in The Black Crowes. I had no idea their guitar player had split. "I stopped by Rich's home and he said, 'Maybe we should get together and write some songs'. I said, 'Let me take my stuff back to Indiana and get my house in order'. I love The Black Crowes, but because it was immediately after GN'R, I don't think I was ready to make any quick moves. I thought I'd just go and ride trials for a while. "I just wasn't interested in playing guitar at that time. I don't think I touched a guitar for about a month. I was getting off on riding, but, it got cold, Winter came, and I was sitting in a room with a guitar in the corner and it's like, 'C'mon, play me'! Once I started playing again I thought, this is the one thing that seems to make sense. "I started putting a band together in January. I was sitting in Indiana thinking, fuck, man, how do I find musicians? I couldn't just run an ad in the local trade paper. You wanna find somebody you can relate to, and the guys I got are all seasoned, proven. "I hooked up with Jimmy in LA. I'd known him for years, when he was in The Broken Homes. Once we'd got a drummer, Charlie Quintana, we'd recorded these basic tracks, so I asked Jimmy what Rick Richards from the Georgia Satellites was doing. Jimmy told me the Satellites broke up. This is how outta touch I am! "Rick's playing is so natural. I'll just throw out a coupla chords and he'll bounce stuff of it. He knows how to make it work." - Album and EP feature a number of guest musicians, including backing singers the Waters Sisters, who lift the chorus of 'Can't Hear 'Em' in much the same way that the I-Threes sweeten classic Bob Marley tracks like 'Could You Be Loved'. Barbara and Joy Richardson do likewise on The Black Crowes' 'The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion'. "The Water Sisters did 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' for GN'R. Man, they can sing," Izzy adds with a smile, "but I can't see us going out on tour like that. I think we'll keep it real simple." Izzy's keeping everything simple these days. Guns N' Roses are no longer The Most Dangerous Band In The World, but they'll never be free of the controversy and all that bullshit. Stradlin' is, and he's happier for it. Simply, he's happy just to be back playing rock 'n' roll. It's all he ever wanted to do anyway.

[mooleche]

A Tale of Ink and Venom

A/N - It’s happening! I’m reworking the old story I was working on to hopefully build a better version in its place! Multi-chapter fic involving OC x Colossus where OCs story unfolds while trying to do a heroic act that ends badly and the chaos the unfolds in the aftermath. Might do a few chapters on here and then move over to AO3 fully eventually to keep from making super long posts but we’ll see how it goes! ( *’ω’* ) Let me know if you’d like to be tagged!

Also BIG THANKS to @leo-writer for proofreading, you are a saint ily! 

₍₍ (ง Ŏ౪Ŏ)ว ⁾⁾

Chapter One: The Video

Moments.

Buddha says that one moment can change a day, one day can change a life and one life can change the world.

I was never one for religion but I think he was onto something there. Look at heroes, for example, they’re faced with moments like these every day. Ones that will save a life and ones that will take them away the second you hesitate. Moments that will give you the upper hand if you’re lucky and others that will leave you flat on your ass if you're not.

 Or worse. 

Now, I'm no hero by any means, but I like to think that the moments I experienced today would help shape what was in store for me tomorrow. A moment that would maybe even help shape me into something more someday.

So with that, let me ask you this:

Just what moment was it that led me to witness the death of a real superhero in his time of need? And not just any run of the mill death either. I'm talking blood everywhere, in my mouth, in my hair. 

Everywhere.

How had it all gone so wrong so fast?

I suppose in order to know that we have to go to the beginning, back to the morning where my life was about to be given a serious overhaul into chaos.

Back to college.

-

It was late. Very late.

A judgemental 3:45 AM stared back at me from the corner of my laptop's screen and a sigh of defeat escaped me. The Witching hour no longer belonged to ghosts and demons, but to college students that waited until the very last minute to get their 10-page essays written before it was too late. I was no exception to this, sacrificing the last remaining brain cells I had left to crap out what I deemed a passable paper on the artists of old. 

At least that's what I had been doing. 

Now I sat with my legs drawn up to my chest as I stared with growing exhaustion at my laptop. The glowing screen was flooded with news reports of the latest superhero successes and the villains they caught around town. This wasn’t exactly an uncommon thing for a city like Brooklynn. In fact, it was because of this city being such a hot zone for criminal activity that we had things like ‘Top 10 Villain Blunders of the Week’ to begin with.

Then, strangely, my eyes spotted something that I hadn’t expected to see.

I lurched forward, immediately feeling my body protest as I inspected the article that had grabbed my attention. It was a few days old, a journalist touching base on a series of unfortunate events from almost 6 months ago. A superhero trainee under the name of Deadpool had landed himself in hot water after murdering an orderly from the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation in what was seen as a cold-blooded attack to the media. Just reading the name of the facility left a bad taste in my mouth, but the video it included to recount the moment made the sensation even worse.

It was old, I had watched it over a dozen times in the recent months and yet I still found myself glued to the screen with morbid curiosity. The cameraman who had been focusing on a tense-looking reporter at the scene now fumbled clumsily over to the main event, a stout looking teen who had earlier called himself Firefist. I’d give you three guesses why he called himself that but taking a look at his clenched fists answered it all too well. 

He stood separated from a cautious crowd of police and bystanders with hands that radiated heat strong enough to cause everyone surrounding him to keep their distance. That was if all the destroyed wreckage around him hadn’t given them more than enough reason to stay back already.

As many times as I had seen this, I still felt bad for him. He looked worn down and angry, but more than anything was the noticeable expression of fear he wore, like a trapped animal willing to do anything to escape. A feeling that I was once all too familiar with.

I sank back into my chair and sighed. No amount of times seeing that clip made that look any easier to see. It was one that hit so close to home and yet I couldn't pinpoint it no matter how many times I tried. I closed my eyes and listened to him continue to threaten the police ballsy enough to step towards him:

"Stay back, I'll burn you!"

The words didn't resonate, but the tone did. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a memory lurking that I couldn't quite touch no matter how hard I focused on it. A memory sealed away so tight that even thinking about it caused my thoughts to grow numb, but that panic in the boy's voice always caused it to stir. Sometimes I felt like I was close enough to grasp it, all I needed was to push a little farther-

A loud bang erupted nearby and my eyes shot open in a panic. Whatever unconscious soul searching I had been doing was broken as I scrambled to catch my headphones now threatening to fall off my face. I looked around, both frantic to find the source to the sudden noise and also hoping no one saw my embarrassing act only to be greeted with muffled laughter nearby.

"Buenos Dias, Princesa! Did I wake you?"

I rubbed my eyes haphazardly and looked to the side of the small room to find a redheaded amazonian grinning back at me from the window. To my utter surprise, the sun was now out and shining it’s smug rays straight into our dorm as I stood to greet the grinning assailant. My bones protested with various cracks in response before I shuffled to my bed and threw open the window to face her.

"That wasn’t funny, Ava! What are you even doing up so early?" I asked through an unavoidable yawn, but I already knew the answer. Ava Santana was a Dominican powerhouse of energy, a mysterious enigma that seemed to only love running, German beer and, for a few crazy months, me. When she wasn’t burning the candle at both ends to keep her insane track record and an intimidating 4.0 GPA up, she was usually creating some wild new building blueprints that she was proud to show off to you before stealing your girlfriend. 

I didn’t know how she did it all and at this point, I was too afraid to ask.

She lifted herself onto the windowsill before tossing her shoes inside, swinging her long tan legs onto my bed to join me all in one fell swoop. All I could do was blink in surprise, knowing I would have faceplanted halfway through if I even attempted this motion. Her gaze studied me curiously now. 

"We both know why I’m awake, or were you expecting someone else to carry our track team to victory?" She teased, her face close to mine with a devious smile planted on her lips. “What's your excuse though, Sleeping Beauty? Building more schematics? Spying on the police scanner? Or maybe staying up late to watch him again?”

“Me? What? Hah, no. Can’t a girl just finish her essay like a good normal college student?”

“You could...if you’re not Nina Knight,” another voice announced beside us and I turned quickly to see another familiar face smirking back at us. Her name was Bambi Banks and she was known as the bad influencer extraordinaire of our dorm when she wasn’t taking candid photos for the Daily Bugle. You thought you had a bad idea? She had 10 at the ready that would probably get you put on the Top 10 lists. Despite this, she was the best friend a girl could ever ask for. 

Even if she now held my laptop in her hands frozen on a very particular shot of the clip that caused my face to burn.

“I really was working on my essay!” I protested as I reached for it only to fall short as Bambi moved just out of my range and looked to Ava curiously.

“I don’t know, Ava. Does this look like an essay to you?”

“You’re the journalist in training, tell us what you see.”

“Well if I had to title this ‘essay’, I would say ‘10 Reasons I Want This Man to Sit on My Fac-’”

“Alright, enough! You caught me,” I protested as I made another attempt to grab the laptop and succeeded, cradling it in my arms with a frown plastered on my face. “I just wanted to hear the update on this story…It put a lot of people in hot water y’know.” I added before taking a seat back at my desk, ignoring their victorious snickers. As much as I did have ulterior motives for watching the clip I really did want to see the outcome of the nationwide fiasco. Despite both the trainee and the kid being taken to the Ice Box to be reprimanded the X-Men and mutantkind as a whole were put under fire for their actions and the remainder of the story fell to a hush to the media in the months after.

Bambi rolled her eyes and ran her hands through her hair, flecks of hot pink from her bangs peeking through her blonde locks as she gave an exasperated sigh over my earnest answer.

“I really shouldn’t be saying this but the guy that looked like he was a walking talking condom was in the right all along.”

“No bullshit? How?” I pressed, now fully taken by the sudden turn of events.

“I heard it from some guy at the Bugle. That Essex place was nasty for mutants, another conversion camp or something so the government was desperado to keep it under wraps.”

“Leave it to the government to try and kill the truth,” Ava muttered under her breath as she stood to leave, pausing to take one of my hands in hers to inspect it thoughtfully. The contrast was big between us; her hands were long and slender while mine were smaller and discolored to a sooty black at the tips. “At least this means you won’t have to hide anymore.”

I knew that she meant well but the words still caused me frown. Not many people knew that I myself was a mutant. Hell, when you lived in a society where people who weren’t old, white, or male were already frowned upon like the next bubonic plague it wasn’t something you wanted getting out. Throw a genetic mutation that gave you unusual powers into the mix and you were the plague. I was lucky to have people around me that knew and accepted me like I was normal, but the reminder still stung. 

Bambi seemed to sense this and absent-mindedly pressed the play button on the video once more as if to distract my thoughts and boy did it work. I felt my face grow warm once more as the clip played. There, once frozen on the screen had been the perfect back shot of a man sprawled over the trainee after his killer shot, a man that now stood a good few feet over everyone else as the police did the cleanup of the area.

A man covered head to toe in metal.

He went by Colossus, but his real name was Piotr Rasputin. At least this is what Google told me when I went super-sleuthing around after I saw him in action for the first time. When he wasn't saving the day with his ragtag team of heroes he taught at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Learning, a sanctuary for mutants who wanted to feel safe while honing their skills to help mold a better tomorrow. 

I had met Xavier himself years ago on my own tour of the school with my parents. He was very nice and very bald. The school itself had been created in his families estate and transformed into the bustling safe haven that it now was, when it wasn't getting blown up by the villain of the week at least. Despite this terrifying fact I was always envious of those who could attend because I had always wanted to enroll myself. The only downside was that my parents didn't want a burnt corpse for a daughter in the aftermath. How selfish.

I threw my hands up to my face and groaned. “That could have been me on his team! I could have been hot for teacher!”

“And? What’s stopping you? If you like him so much why don't you just go to the school?" Ava called from our bathroom and I groaned again.

“It doesn’t work like that. You can't just go back to that school.”

“And why not? You’re a mutant right? You wanna meet other mutants, right? Maybe get some chrome dome in the process if you get my drift,” Bambi winked. 

I glared at her in response.

It was true, I was a mutant, and maybe I did want that chrome dome. But I had tried the whole superhero vigilante thing before. 

It didn’t go well. 

An ancient proverb once said ‘You can't swim, you can't dance and you don't know karate. Face it, you're never gonna make it.’ and you know what? I stood by that. It’s why I took my very particular set of skills and decided to waste away in one of Brooklynn's most prestigious art colleges -they're words, not mine- instead. It wasn’t ideal, with a dorm that I was convinced was made for ants instead of four people with questionable living styles, but I had friends and I finally felt normal. I didn’t need to mess it up by visiting that school again.

As if reading my thoughts Bambi frowned and took one of my hands in hers, inspecting my inky black fingertips with thoughtful blue eyes.

“I know you’re deadset on having a normal life here but you have a gift, Neeners. And you deserve to be able to show the world what you can do with it.”

“Yeah, I’m really going to turn the world around with my ability to control ink,” I scoffed before taking my hand back gently and sighing. As much as I wanted to bury that side of me I did want to meet others like me, be a part of something bigger and save the day once in a while. 

This? This life was boring. But it was safe. And I needed safe.

I looked up to her and smiled softly. “I...will consider going back there, if only to pay Mr. Xavier a visit and...maybe see how the school’s doing.”

“Code for visiting Mr. heavy metal man, got it.” Bambi winked while imitating a heavy Russian accent as she moonwalked poorly out of the room. 

“You’re a terrible influence, Bam,” I called through stifled laughter before standing and stretching. As much as I hated her pep talks sometimes she was the reason I kept using my powers, keeping them as fresh as I could in case the chance ever arose to use them. Even now the schematics that Ava had so casually mentioned as a joke were tucked away under my desk to play with on a rainy day.

I must have stared at them too long because I felt Bams hand gently touch my shoulder and I jumped in surprise.

“Did you hear Ava? Your alarm is going off,” she asked softly before nodding towards my phone. She was right, the soft tune alerted the room once more before I had the chance to turn it off and blinked in surprise. 

“Sorry, my mind was somewhere else...”

“Between Professor Colossus’ thick thighs we knooow. Don’t let that mans glutes cost you your job,” Ava teased before motioning for Bambi to follow her out the door. She held back and gave me a reassuring squeeze.

“Hey, don’t let our conversation from earlier freak you out. Baby steps, okay? No rush,”

“Right. Baby steps…” I whispered, my gaze falling back to my hands that I had begun wringing absentmindedly with growing anxiety. I looked back up to her and smiled. “Thanks, Bam. I appreciate it.”

“Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?” she grinned before disappearing behind the door. She was right. Friends were there to steer you onto the better path when you doubted yourself. This is what I tried to convince myself as I headed to the bathroom to prepare for the day ahead.

Now that I look back on it I was grateful for that peaceful moment of clarity between friends because after what happened later on, God was I going to need it.

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Four : MODERN QUEER MUSIC featuring Mike, Troye, Janelle & Annie.

Back when my grandmother was my age (1963), no huge celebrity was officially a homosexual. Andy Warhol’s sexuality was an open secret and Rock Hudson was far inside the closet his shirts and trousers were his roommates. When my mother was my age (1992), Freddy Mercury had just died due to complications from AIDS — so did Hudson a couple years before. George Michael was hiding and Elton John would still be bisexual for another year. A couple of years ago, I complained to a friend of mine about how so many few music Artists were full-blown Queer. Where’s that fresh music that everybody (and I mean, EVERYBODY) could listen to ? Sure, Lady Gaga and Madonna said loud and clear that they weren’t against taking a dip in the lady pond but there are still constraint to basic heteronormativity in their public lives. Sure, we have Christine and the Queens but I’m talking GLOBAL.

I was so wrong I would like to time travel and smack the shit of my past me.

Perfume Genius was considered a pretty low key artist from the commercial and critical strength of his first two records (Learning in 2010, Put Your Back N 2 It in 2012). 2014’s Too Bright brought him more recognition with a more synth-pop power sound. This album’s music videos were filled with glitter, genderfucked outfits and SM fantasies. He objectively coined the best lyric of all time with “No family is safe when I sashay” (1). No Shape confirmed his incredible talent. Deepening in his idea of masculine and feminine combining into one, Perfume Genius gave us a more optimistic fourth effort about love and the search of a peaceful mind. Singles like Slip Away (2) and Wreath (3) emerge as full queer anthems with lyrics like “they’ll never break the shape we take” and “I’m high, I’m out / I see the sun go down / I see the sun come up / I’m moving just beyond the frame” Though not actually a mainstream artist, Perfume Genius helped all decade long to usher a new wave of Queer Artists and with them, Queer acceptance.

One that benefited greatly from PG’s way-paving journey was South-African-Australian child actor-turned pop sensation Troye Sivan. 

After making his intentions clear with his debut album (2015’s Blue Neighborhood) and his fantastic music video trilogy — Wild, Fools, Talk Me Down (4) — Troye created what I personally a pop masterpiece with Bloom and possibly the first major mainstream album that doesn’t shy away from queer themes and same-sex pronouns in love songs. In Seventeen (5), he explicitly talks about losing his virginity to an older man. The title track (6) was confirmed (though it’s obvious) to be about bottoming. A friend of mine seems to think it’s about fisting though I would respond that every anal pleasure is valid and the listener is free to interpret the lyrics with his/hers/theirs own liking in mind. The music video for Bloom shows him play dress up, wearing gorgeous gowns and makeup, shattering preconceived notions of how a male pop star should act publicly. “Lucky Strike” (7), the album’s sexiest cut, has “And my boy like a queen /Unlike one you’ve ever seen /He knows how to love me better” to say about desires. He closes the record lying next to his “fellow”, singing “An ode to the boy I love /Boy, I’ll die to care for you /You’re mine, mine, mine, tell me who do I owe that to?” (8). We’re not far enough in the future to know for sure, but I’m sure Bloom will be recognized as revolutionary. Nevertheless, we can all “Dance to This (9)”.

While Perfume Genius and Troye Sivan went further into their explorations of the opposite sex trait, Janelle Monae liberated herself from the chains of her previous persona adopted through her first records. With 2018’s Dirty Computer, the artist said bye to tuxedos and welcome a sexier, more feminine aesthetic. 

That doesn’t mean a woman should absolutely be feminine to be considered. No fuckin’ way. But when it comes to Monae, I sometimes felt that her visual choices, though fantastic at times, were restraining her from showing her true self. A mystery for years, it seemed like the character of Cindi Mayweather (10), a messianic android sent back in time to free the citizens of Metropolis from The Great Divide was just the surface of the real living person behind that. 

“Dirty computer, walk in line / If you look closer you’ll recognize / I’m not that special / I’m broke inside /Crashing slowly, the bugs are in me” (11) were the first words uttered in her third opus, a concept album exploring the power of women and the spectrum of sexual identities. The album’s 14 tracks can be grouped into three loose categories: Reckoning, Celebration and Reclamation. The first deals with Monae’s recognition of how she is viewed by society, the middle explores her acceptance of “the cards she has been dealt”, and the closing tracks deal with her reclamation and redefinition of American identity. Overall, the album is Monae’s attempt to “step into a more authentic self”. A coming out party of sorts.

“If you try to grab my pussy cat / this pussy grab you back” (12). Dirty Computer is a declaration of independence from a woman who has nothing else to fear and a homage to Queer life. Was it mainstream ? Well, it was nominated for the Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. So, yeah. Go listen to it. And watch the 48 min movie that goes with it (13) We’re all Dirty Computers.

Also taking a more sexually explicit approach to music is St. Vincent is her latest LP, Masseduction (14) (2017). Annie Clark never hid her sexuality to the public, with high profile girlfriends like Carla Delevingne. She responded to a journalist asking if she was gay or straight : “I don’t think about those words. I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity. I don’t really identify as anything. I think you can fall in love with anybody. I don’t have anything to hide but I’d rather the emphasis be on music.” 

Clark has stated that the album focuses on themes of power, sex, drugs, sadness, imperiled relationships and death. Contrary to her previous efforts, Masseduction is very first person narrative, a diary encompassing years of her life. Though not a explicit in her lyrics as some of her companions, St. Vincent made an incredible album that infuses in its listener the idea that it actually does not matter if she’s singing about a male or a female love interest. In the eye of the storm called life, we’re all the same.

The visuals (15), though, have clear intentions of destroying the male gaze and give more value to the female body and mind. From the mouth of a Queer icon, it has value on so many levels.

Okay, okay. Four is enough for this article. I was told not to be too talkative around here. But guys, there’s so many great Queer artists at the moment. 

Serpentwithfeet (16) released his debut album Soil a year ago and this guy will break your heart with his incredible vocals and poetic imagination. Jake Shears (17) remains a fascinating creature to admire, even more so now that he’s taking a little time off from Scissor Sisters. Courtney Barnett (18) is awesome as fuck and her second opus was just as good as the first one. Frank Ocean (19) needs to do a third album — and make it better than the second one. Eddy De Pretto (20) is not my cup of hot jizz but he’s objectively great and , apart from Chris (21), who else is Queer in France right now ?

For the first time in our history, Queer people are able to exist in the public eye as Queer people, ending tabloids’ craziness about who’s closeted or not. Those artists, and some much others that I didn’t mention, give us voices that stays inside the minds of people that are not us and don’t always understand who we are. In my opinion, they are doing God’s work… and I’m a atheist. But we all know that God is a Queer Jewish Black Woman. Halleloo.