#I will never doubt George miller

[sleepysloppysertraline]

Immortan Joe be like

These are my sons Rictus Dickus Scrotus and Pubus

[damienkarras73]

An essay on Furiosa, the politics of the Wasteland, Arthurian literature and realistic vs. formalistic CGI

Mad Max: Fury Road absolutely enraptured me when it came out nearly a decade ago, and I will cop to seeing it four times at the theatre. For me (and many others who saw the light of George Miller) it set new standards for action filmmaking, storytelling and worldbuilding, and I could pop in its Blu Ray at any time and never get tired of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was deeply apprehensive about the announced prequel for Fury Road's actual main character, Furiosa, even if Miller was still writing and directing. We didn't need backstory for Furiosa—hell, Fury Road is told in such a way that NOTHING in it requires explicit backstory. And since it focuses on the Yung Furiosa, it meant Charlize Theron couldn't return with another career-defining performance. Plus, look at all that CGI in the trailer, it can't be as good as Fury Road.

Turns out I was silly to doubt George Miller, M.D., A.O., writer and director of Babe: Pig in the City and Happy Feet One & Two.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is excellent, and I needn't have worried about it not being as good as Fury Road because it is not remotely trying to be Fury Road. Fury Road is a lean, mean machine with no fat on it, nothing extraneous, operating with constant forward momentum and only occasionally letting up to let you breathe a little; Furiosa is a classical epic, sprawling in scope, scale and structure, and more than happy to let the audience simmer in a quiet, almost painfully still moment. If its opening spoken word sequence by that Gandalf of the Wastes himself, the First History Man, didn't already clue you in, it unfolds like something out of myth, a tale told over and over again and whose possible embellishments are called attention to in the dialogue itself. Where Fury Road scratched the action nerd itch in my head like you wouldn't believe, Furiosa was the equivalent of Miller giving the undulating folds of my English major brain a deep tissue massage. That's great! I, for one, love when sequels/prequels endeavour to be fundamentally different movies from what they're succeeding/preceding, operating in different modes, formats and even genres, and more filmmakers should aim for it when building on an existing series.

This movie has been on my mind so much in the past week that I've ended up dedicating several cognitive processes to keeping track of all of the different ponderings it's spawned. Thankfully, Furiosa is divided into chapters (fun fact: putting chapter cards in your movie is a quick way to my heart), so it only seems fitting that I break up all of these cascading thoughts accordingly.

1. The Pole of Inaccessibility

Furiosa herself actually isn't the protagonist for the first chapter of her own movie, instead occupying the role of a (very crafty and resourceful) damsel in distress for those initial 30-40 minutes. The real hero of the opening act, which plays out like a game of cat and mouse, is Furiosa's mother Mary Jabassa, who rides out into the wasteland first on horseback and then astride a motorcycle to track down the band of raiders that has stolen away her daughter. Mary's brought to life by Miller and Nico Lathouris' economical writing and a magnetic performance by newcomer Charlee Fraser, who radiates so much screen presence in such relatively little time and with one of those instant "who is SHE??" faces. She doesn't have many lines, but who needs them when Fraser can convey volumes about Mary with just a flash of her eyes or the effortless way she swaps out one of her motorcycle's wheels for another. To be quite candid, I'm not sure of the last time I fell in love with a character so quickly.

You notice a neat aesthetic contrast between mother and daughter in retrospect: Mary Jabassa darts into the desert barefoot, clad in a simple yet elegant dress, her wolf cut immaculate, only briefly disguising herself with the ugly armour of a raider she just sniped, and when she attacks it's almost with grace, like some Greek goddess set loose in the post-apocalyptic Aussie outback with just her wits and a bolt-action rifle; we track Furiosa's growth over the years by how much of her initially conventional beauty she has shed, quite literally in one case (hair buzzed, severed arm augmented with a chunky mechanical prosthesis, smeared in grease and dirt from head to toe, growling her lines at a lower octave), and by how she loses her mother's graceful approach to movement and violence, eventually carrying herself like a blunt instrument. Yet I have zero doubt the former raised the latter, both angels of different feathers but with the same steel and resolve. Of fucking course this woman is Furiosa's mother, and in the short time we know her we quickly understand exactly why Furiosa has the drive and morals she does without needing to resort to didactic exposition.

Anyway, I was tearing up by the end of the first chapter. Great start!

2. Lessons from the Wasteland

Most movies—most stories, really—don't actually tell the entire narrative from A to Z. Perhaps the real meat of the thing is found from H to T, and A-G or U-Z are unnecessary for conveying the key narrative and themes. So many prequels fail by insisting on telling the A-G part of the story, explaining how the hero earned a certain nickname or met their memorable sidekick—but if that stuff was actually interesting, they likely would have included it in the original work. The greatest thing a prequel can actually do is recontextualize, putting iconic characters or moments in a new light, allowing you to appreciate them from a different angle. All of season 2 of Fargo serves to explain why Molly Solverson's dad is appropriately wary when Lorne Malvo enters his diner for a SINGLE SCENE in the show's first season. David's arc from the Alien prequels Prometheus and Covenant—polarizing as those entries are—adds another layer to why Ash is so protective of the creature in the first movie. Andor gives you a sense of what it's like for a normal, non-Jedi person to live under the boot of the Empire and why so many of them would join up with the Rebel Alliance—or why they would desire to wear that boot, or even just crave the chance to lick it.

Furiosa is one of those rare great prequels because it makes us take a step back and consider the established world with a little more nuance, even if it's still all so absurd. In Fury Road, Immortan Joe is an awesome, endlessly quotable villain, completely irredeemable, and basically a cartoon. He works perfectly as the antagonist of that breakneck, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote-ass movie, but if you step outside of its adrenaline-pumping narrative for even a moment you risk questioning why nobody in the Citadel or its surrounding settlements has risen up against him before. Hell, why would Furiosa even work for him to begin with? But then you see Dementus and company tear-assing around the wasteland, seizing settlements and running them into the ground, and you realize Joe and his consortium offer something that Dementus reasonably can't: stability—granted, an unwavering, unchangeable stability weighted in favour of Joe's own brutal caste system, but stability nonetheless. It really makes you wonder, how badly does a guy have to suck to make IMMORTAN JOE of all people look like a sane, competent and reasonable ruler by comparison?!?

…and then they open the door to the vault where he keeps his wives, and in a flash you're reminded just how awful Joe is and why Furiosa will risk her life to help some of these women flee from him years later. This new context enriches Joe and makes it more believable that he could maintain power for so long, but it doesn't make him any less of a monster, and it says a lot about Furiosa's hate for Dementus that she could grit her teeth and work for this sick old tyrant.

3. The Stowaway

Here's another wild bit of trivia about this movie: you don't actually see top-billed actress Anya Taylor-Joy pop up on screen until roughly halfway through, once Furiosa is in her late teens/early twenties. Up until this point she's been played by Alyla Browne, who through the use of some seamless and honestly really impressive CGI has been given Anya's distinctive bug eyes [complimentary]. It's one of those bold choices that really works because Miller commits to it so hard, though it does make me wish Browne's name was up on the poster next to Taylor-Joy's.

Speaking of CGI, I should talk about what seems to be a sticking point for quite a few people: if there's been one consistent criticism of Furiosa so far, it's that it doesn't look nearly as practical or grounded as Fury Road, with more obvious greenscreen and compositing, and what previously would've been physical stunt performers and pyrotechnics have been replaced with their digital equivalents for many shots. Simply put, it doesn't look as real! For a lot of people, that practicality was one of Fury Road's primary draws, so I won't try to quibble if they're let down by Furiosa's overt artificiality, but to be honest I'm actually quite fine with it. It helps that this visual discrepancy doesn't sneak up on you but is incredibly apparent right from the aerial zoom-down into Australia in the very first scene, so I didn't feel misled or duped.

Fury Road never asks you to suspend your disbelief because it all looks so believable; Furiosa jovially prods you to suspend that disbelief from the get-go and tune into it on a different wavelength. It's a classical epic, and like the classical epics of the 1950s and 60s it has a lot of actors standing in front of what clearly are matte paintings. It feels right! We're not watching fact, we're watching myth. I'm willing to concede there might be a little bit of post-hoc rationalization on my part because I simply love this movie so much, but I'm not holding the effects in Furiosa to the same standard as those in Fury Road because I simply don't believe Miller and his crew are attempting to replicate that approach. Without the extensive CGI, we don't get that impressive long, panning take where a stranded Furiosa scans the empty, dust-and-sun-scoured wasteland (75% Sergio Leone, 25% Andrei Tarkovsky), or the Octoboss and his parasailing goons. For the sake of intellectual exercise I did try imagining them filming the Octoboss/war rig sequence with the same immersive practical approach they used for Fury Road's stunts, however I just kept picturing dead stunt performers, so perhaps the tradeoff was worth it!

4. Homeward

Around the same time we meet the Taylor-Joy-pilled Furiosa in Chapter 3, we're introduced to Praetorian Jack, the chief driver for the convoys running between the Citadel and its allied settlements. Jack's played by Tom Burke, who pulled off a very good Orson Welles in Mank! and who I should really check out in The Souvenir one of these days. He's also a cool dude! Here are some facts about Praetorian Jack:

He's decked out in road leathers with a pauldron stitched to one shoulder

He's stoic and wary, but still more or less personable and can carry on a conversation

Professes to a certain cynicism, to quote Special Agent Albert Rosenfield, but ultimately has a capacity for kindness and will do the right thing

Shoots a gun real good

Can drive like nobody's business

So in other words, Jack is Mad Max. But also, no, he clearly isn't! He looks and dresses like Mad Max (particularly Mel Gibson's) and does a lot of the same things "Mad" Max Rockatansky does, but he's also very explicitly a distinct character. It's a choice that seems inexplicable and perhaps even lazy on its face, except this is a George Miller movie, so of course this parallel is extremely purposeful. Miller has gone on record saying he avoids any kind of strict chronology or continuity for his Mad Max movies, compared to the rigid canons for Star Trek and Star Wars, and bless him for doing so. It's more fun viewing each Mad Max entry as a new revision or elaboration on a story being told again and again generations after the fall, mutating in style, structure and focus with every iteration, becoming less grounded as its core narrative is passed from elder to youth, community to community, genre to genre, until it becomes myth. (At least, my English major brain thinks it's more fun.) In fact there's actually something Arthurian to it, where at first King Arthur was mentioned in several Welsh legends before Geoffrey of Monmouth crafted an actual narrative around him, then Chrétien de Troyes added elements like Lancelot and infused the stories with more romance, and then with Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory whipped the whole cycle together into one volume, which T.H. White would chop and screw and deconstruct with The Once and Future King centuries later.

All this to say: maybe Praetorian Jack looks and sounds and acts like Max because he sorta kinda basically is, being just one of many men driving back and forth across the wasteland, lending a hand on occasion, who'll be conflated into a single, legendary "Mad Max" at some point down the line in a different History Man's retelling of Furiosa's odyssey. Sometimes that Max rips across the desert in his V8 Interceptor, other times driving a big rig. Perhaps there's a dog tagging along and/or a scraggly and at first aggravating ally played by Bruce Spence or Nicholas Hoult. Usually he has a shotgun. But so long as you aren't trying to kill him, he'll help you out.

5. Beyond Vengeance

The Mad Max movies have incredibly iconic villains—Immortan Joe! Toecutter! the Lord Humongous!—but they are exactly that, capital V Villains devoid of humanizing qualities who you can't wait to watch bad things happen to. Furiosa appears to continue this trend by giving us a villain who in fact has a mustache long enough that he could reasonably twirl it if he so wanted, but ironically Dementus ends up being the most layered antagonist in the entire series, even moreso than the late Tina Turner's comparatively benevolent Aunty Entity from Beyond Thunderdome. And because he's played by Chris Hemsworth, whose comedic delivery rivals his stupidly handsome looks, you lock in every time he's on screen.

Something so fascinating about Dementus is that, for a main antagonist, he's NOT all-powerful, and in fact quite the opposite: he's more conman than warlord, looking for the next hustle, the next gullible crowd he can preach to and dupe—though never for long. For all his bluster, at every turn he finds himself in way over his head and writing cheques he can't cash, and this self-induced Sisyphean torment makes him riveting to watch. You're tempted to pity Dementus but it's also quite difficult to spare sympathy for someone who's so quick to channel their rage and hurt and ego into thoughtless, burn-it-all-down destruction. When you're not laughing at him, you're hating his guts, and it's indisputably the best work of Chris Hemsworth's career.

It's in this final chapter that everything naturally comes to a head: Furiosa's final evolution into the character we meet at the start of Fury Road, the predictable toppling of Dementus' precariously built house of cards, and the mythmaking that has been teased since the very first scene becoming diagetic text, the last of which allows the movie to thoroughly explore the themes of vengeance it's been building to. A brief war begins, is summarized and is over in the span of roughly a minute, and on its face it's a baffling narrative choice that most other filmmakers would have botched. But our man Miller's smart enough to recognize that the result of this war is the most foregone of conclusions if you've been paying even the slightest bit of attention, so he effectively brushes past it to get to the emotional heart of the climax and an incredible "Oh shit!" payoff that cements Miller as one of mainstream cinema's greatest sickos.

Fury Road remains the greatest Mad Max film, but Furiosa might be the best thing George Miller has ever made. If not his magnum opus, it does at least feel like his dissertation, and it makes me wish Warner Bros. puts enough trust in him despite Furiosa's poor box office performance that he's able to make The Wasteland. Absolutely ridiculous that a man just short of his 80th birthday was able to pull this off, and with it I feel confident calling him one of my favourite directors.

[damaskino-26320]

Furiosa PSA 1/?

Been seeing a lot of misinterpretation and misinformation with regards to Furiosa, so I wanted to address just a few things I've seen going around in one place that people on here can easily refer to.

Is Furiosa replacing Max as the focus of the franchise going forward?

No. Furiosa is a prequel that's been in the works since it was originally conceived of as an anime in the 2000s until that eventually fell through. There will be no shift towards her character being the singular focus of the franchise.

Why didn't we just get a sequel with Max?

There is at least one Max story, The Wasteland, that is planned to be turned into a future project after Furiosa. It will take place between Furiosa and Fury Road. Miller just wanted to tell Furiosa's story first.

Why aren't we seeing any sign of Tom Hardy?

Despite the fact that Max may be showing up in Furiosa in some capacity, not to mention the fact that the character will obviously be the focus of the The Wasteland, Tom Hardy is likely not returning to play Max. This is in part due to his behavior on the set of Fury Road which has left Miller and co. unlikely to work with him again. He did sign on for two other projects, but at this point his reappearance is incredibly doubtful.

Who will play Max going forward?

At this point we don't know who will be carrying on the mantle of Max Rockatansky, but once we get to production on The Wasteland we'll undoubtedly get some answers. Miller is an unconventional storyteller, and so a James Bond approach to Max himself seems probable, with different actors portraying the same individual across various media.

Given that Furiosa takes place 45 years after The Fall, is Max the Feral Kid?

No. Max is the same person from the original trilogy.

Is George Miller riding the modern wave of doing prequels, reboots, etc. in order to cash in on a character that people loved in Fury Road?

Fury Road was the result of two decades of development from George Miller's initial idea of the story while standing on a sidewalk in 1996. After the initial version of the film which was supposed to star Mel Gibson as an older version of Max (to tie more directly into the period of time after Beyond Thunderdome) fell through due to the Iraq War and financial struggles, the surrounding lore of Fury Road was expanded significantly. This resulted in the creation of two other scripts which became the basis for Furiosa and The Wasteland, respectively. Taken together, Furiosa, The Wasteland, and Fury Road represent one singular trilogy tying Miller's modern iteration of Mad Max together. As a result, Furiosa is hardly some unrelated prequel banking on modern perceptions of how much people liked Furiosa-it was simply a story that was always meant to be told. The same goes for The Wasteland, which is the second chapter in what can be considered the "Fury Road Trilogy." The Wasteland itself was meant to be a video game developed as a collaboration between George Miller and Cory Barlog (the man behind the modern God Of War games), but this was something that never happened. Instead, Avalanche Studios released a game in 2015 which liberally borrowed from Miller's mythos in ways that he expressly did not want them to. As a result he distanced himself from the project and has disavowed his connection to it. It appears that there is now talk of turning The Wasteland into a TV show, but we'll have to wait and see for more confirmation on this.

Why aren't we getting Charlize Theron in Furiosa?

George Miller didn't want to use de-aging tech on this film because he thought it wasn't convincing enough.

Immortan Joe and co.?

We will be getting a good bit of a younger Immortan Joe, although to my knowledge it's still uncertain as to who's playing him. His conflict with Dementus is going to play a key role in the story of the film. Nathan Jones will be returning as Rictus Erectus, along with Angus Sampson as the Organic Mechanic. Quentin Kenihan obviously couldn't reprise his role as Corpus Colossus due to the fact that he unfortunately passed away in 2018.

Is the pacing/storytelling going to be similar to Fury Road?

Furiosa is a movie that takes place over the course of 15 years and involving multiple road wars and various other events which is going to make its storytelling significantly different to Fury Road. Whereas that narrative had one large chase stringing together all of its components, Furiosa will be vastly larger in scale and scope.

[rafaellaberso21]

Black Knight series review: watch it or skip it?

What if, in the future, you purchase air for your daily requirements as well as for medicinal and recreational purposes? I just finished the new Korean series Black Knight on Netflix, and here is my spoiler-free review. I have not read the original webtoon on which this series is based, so my evaluation will be based only on what I have seen of the show. This series shows a possible future in which climate change has worsened air pollution to the point that people must purchase oxygen to stay alive.

When the action and personal stakes in Black Knight go up, the film excels. There are exciting gunfights as well as a thrilling and dangerous race that plays out like George Miller is playing Blur. A fantastic group of characters populates the program as well. The friendship between Sa-Wol and his desert friends is sweet and adorable, despite Sa-Wol's silly yet sincere and dogged nature. A good guy defeating impossible odds while also delivering oxygen to the elderly is a lot of fun to watch, while Ryu Seok is a dick, the kind of classic evil suit that you love to root against. 5-8 has a stoic, big brother vibe, and he is basically indestructible for reasons that are never really explained beyond him just being that strong and skilled.

When it tries to fit too many concepts into its limited running time, it always goes off topic. A powerful forward momentum is maintained by the conspiracy idea underlying the massive relocation scheme; nonetheless, the tale loses steam due to undeveloped or unnecessary plot developments, including mutants, kidnappings, and vaccinations. Black Knight, with just six episodes, thankfully doesn't have time to go too far off course. Tense, on-the-edge action and memorable character moments return in the film's final act.

I wish it were more focused and made a greater issue of the details of climate change rather than pinning the blame on a comet, but I doubt this program will be as warmly remembered as its inspirations. But Black Knight isn't just another post-apocalyptic narrative; it also manages to feel remarkably original.

SO, GUYS, IT'S A MUST-WATCH SERIES!

[anamericangirl]

You’re so spineless. Talking about how “stupid” I am when I called out the flaws in your argument when you can’t even explain why I’m wrong. How is saying that claiming Native Americans “don’t look Indian to me “ and having no further evidence for the claim even if you were trying to defend actual ancestry not wrong? Especially knowing how Native American ancestry is determined in this country.

What is your argument to that then? If I’m so wrong? Do you think we should question and determine Native American ancestry with our own standards when we doubt fraudulent ancestry? Or more importantly, should we question what made Trump think the Native Americans weren’t actual Native Americans with no actual proof other than his own two eyes claiming they didn’t look Indian enough to him.

Ah yes spineless because you called out "flaws" in my argument lol.

I know you think you were calling out flaws, but you were incorrect and I responded directly to you about it three different times but all you are doing is disregarding everything I say and repeating yourself as if you're making a new point or argument each time you say exactly the same thing.

I've already explained to you why I don't think it was racist. Saying someone "doesn't look Indian" to you isn't racist for fucks sake. On the surface level it could be argued that it's stupid or naive, but calling it racist is pretty far fetched. People like you have completely misused the word racist so much that it's essentially a completely meaningless term nowadays.

He wasn't generally questioning Native American ancestry just because some people happened not to "look Indian" to him. He was talking specifically about people George Miller had approved reservations for. And you can keep saying "he had no proof but his own two eyes therefore it's racist" but you just sound like a moron. Just because you don't believe anything else he says doesn't mean that's all he's basing the accusation on and there is more conversation about it in the transcript that you are ignoring.

But even if Trump was wrong here and everyone Miller had approved was actually Native American, that doesn't make what Trump said racist. What if they weren't actually Native Americans and George Miller was giving exemptions meant for Native Americans to non Natives? Is it still racist to say if he was right? Is it always racist to question, even if your suspicions are correct? Or are people just never supposed to say anything because on the chance they're wrong suddenly they're a racist now?

If the government is approving reservations for Native Americans, then yeah there should be some process to prove ancestry other than simply stating you're a Native American no questions asked because it's too easy for non-Natives to take advantage of.

And the reason I stopped responding to you isn't because you "pointed out flaws" in my argument. It's because your responses were circular in nature and you were just repeating yet again what I'd already responded to three times and you disregard things that don't fit your narrative, which is a dishonest way to debate. You also couldn't drop the part about the lawsuit even though it has nothing to do with the quote. The lawsuit is not where the quote is found but you kept bringing it up as if something that had nothing to do with with the quote could prove it was racist and yeah, that's stupid. I'm not going to waste anymore time talking to someone who can't tell the difference between Trump's lawsuit and the hearing where the quote came from and who thinks something can be racist regardless of the context because that shows your mind is just stuck on "orange man bad" and you can't have a rational discussion. You're just going to scream racism no matter what.

[typewriter83]

i saw this on another blog and though someone should ask mama this question and someone is me!

what’s ur writing process look like? do you write in your phone or computer? omg you don’t use a typewriter? where and when do you write? anything you wanna tell the cubs

Haha y’all are adorable - Mama hasn’t had a typewriter since I was a child, and even then it was my mom’s and it was an antique at that point. Man, I wish I had kept it though.

My writing usually starts one of two ways: a song imbeds itself in my brain and takes control, or I see a prompt/tweet/random post that gets the gears turning.

After I have the idea, I open the notes app on my phone and start a new note. I have a note for each of my WIPs. It can include chapter title ideas, plot points, characterizations, one of Ellie’s bad puns, lines of dialogue, etc. When I get to the end of a story, I’ll usually delete all the ideas I used and throw the ones I didn’t use into a “throw away” note - I don’t delete anything I don’t use, it might be useful later!

I don’t get a lot of actual writing time during the day. I know there are a lot of writers out there that do their writing right on their phone and more props to them - my thumbs cannot handle that. If I get a big idea, I will outline as much of it as I can so I don’t forget it, but I do my actually writing on my laptop. I write in Microsoft Word - Mama is old school - and I have a writing file and each of my stories is stored in its own subfile there - writing>TLOU>donuts_coffee>football (this is literally the path to one of my stories).

When I was writing “Why Can’t I Just Tell You,” it was one big document with page breaks for each chapter. That became chaotic when trying to copy>paste to ao3. When I started writing LtW, I started a new document for each chapter which makes it easier for me to copy>paste and send to my beta reader or post on ao3.

While writing my Boston AU last year (the disastrous month that was NaNoWriMo), the story went through a lot of changes, but I didn’t delete anything. I have a “throw away” document where I keep unused plot points, dialogue, etc. for future use. I have entire stories that I scrapped but pick apart to use - before I started writing “Why Can’t I Just Tell You,” I had written over 50k words to a Joel/OFC that I scrapped but eventually started picking apart to use in other stories. Nothing written is ever worth deleting, you never know where you’re gonna want to use it later.

Let’s not forget that when I’m writing a particularly spicy scene (🌶️.5 for life), that process takes a lot longer because it requires time for brainstorming, giggling like a child, self-doubt, laptop tossing, pacing, avoidance - it’s a process.

My stories/chapters tend to go through about 3-4 drafts. Once I find an endpoint for a chapter/story, I go back and fill in any missing scenes, then start the first edit (which usually involves eliminating dialogue - I’m looking at you, Joel Miller), then a clean up and polish before sending it to my lovely beta reader. Once I get it back, I do another edit and polish before posting to ao3.

While I do have playlists that I listen to for inspiration, I can’t listen to them when I’m writing. I’m easily distracted. I tend to listen to instrumental music - I lean into George Winston a lot of the time; his piano solos are so soothing and beautiful.

I don’t think there’s a wrong way to write - I have plot points and outlines for most of my work, but they derail pretty quickly - fun fact: Ellie wasn’t supposed to shoot Joel at the beginning of LtW, that came at the last minute when they were approaching one another in the storm. He was just supposed to yell at her to get her ass back inside while he did a perimeter check, then he was going to end up with pneumonia, but that feral teenager had other ideas.

So, that’s how I do this. Right now, Donuts & Coffee Part 9 is going through edits, hoping to post next week!

🫶🏻

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #627

Top Ten Oscar Runners-Up of My Lifetime

Hooray for Hollywood! It’s the Oscars this weekend, so I thought I’d write about them. I’ve done it before and by crikey I’ll do it again.

So one of the things I like about the Oscars is the way they sort of exist as something we can push back against. Because the films that usually win – at least for the last, I dunno, twenty or thirty years – are sort of “Oscar films”. Generally speaking, Jurassic Park is never going to win an Oscar, y’know? Star Wars lost to Annie Hall in 1978, and even setting aside the Woody Allen of it, I’ve seen both films and Star Wars is not only better but is more important in terms of the history of cinema and its importance to popular culture. So it should have won, but of course it didn’t, because an out-and-out sci-fi film has never won, unless you count Everything Everywhere All at Once last year, which of course is a sci-fi film but is a very different sort of film to Star Wars (although, in fairness, we should acknowledge how bloody weird it is, and therefore give the Academy some credit).

Anyway, regardless of whether a film “deserves” to win or not (because what is art if not eternally subjective?), part of the whole sport of the Oscars – and, indeed, any major awards ceremony, from the BAFTAs to the Brits to that time I won a Promax Gold – is disagreeing with the eventual victor and wishing that something else had won instead (I’m sure there were other really good promos made in 2013). And that’s what I’m celebrating today – the films that didn’t win.

I want to make clear though: this isn’t an “alternate universe” thing, where the runners-up are the victors. Nor is it to say that these films are, really, any better than the winning films. What I’m doing is ranking my favourite films that lost out to a Best Picture Oscar. And, of course, to lose Best Picture you must first be nominated for Best Picture. So these are all films that were in contention, but didn’t get to take home the naked bald man. Again, I’m not saying they were the best – although in most cases I do actually think they’re better than the eventual winner – they’re just my favourite of the non-winning nominees.

Partly by accident and partly by design, I’m only picking one film per year. And to make my life easier, I’ve just gone for ceremonies that I was actually alive for; although I doubt I was paying too much attention to the 1982 Oscars, to be fair, as I was probably about ten weeks old. And that’s that! There are some very famous – infamous, even – runners-up here; again, I think that’s both part of the fun and part of Oscar legend.

And the nominees are…

L.A. Confidential (1997) – lost to Titanic (1997): Confidential means a lot to me because not only is it bloody good but it’s the first film my now-wife and I ever saw together (even if, er, we weren’t going out at the time). Regardless, it’s just fantastic, a dark sunlit noir full of interesting flawed characters, a dense conspiracy-addled plot, some shocking twists, and a nuanced dissection of power and the media.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) – lost to Gandhi (1982): where to start with E.T., the heartwarming, heartbreaking fantasy sci-fi fable that’s also autobiographical and also so utterly about being a kid in the eighties? Every single aspect of it, from the cinematography to the junior performances to the special effects to the music to, well, everything, just hums with quality and empathy.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – lost to Spotlight (2015): it’s so unlikely to consider that Fury Road might have won that I can’t be too sad it didn’t. I do think, though, that George Miller’s achievements marshalling the chaos into a film so propulsive, so beautiful, and so batshit should have been rewarded with Best Director. Anyway; the best Mad Max by a mile, which is really saying something.

Toy Story 3 (2010) – lost to The King’s Speech (2010): an animated film has never won Best Picture, and almost certainly never will since the Best Animated Film category was created. But the second-best Toy Story deserved to romp home; a melancholy tale of ageing and obsolescence, of our children carrying on without us, about the need for all generations to let go of the past, to chart a new future, and also about collectivism and social order and authoritarianism and togetherness and the families we build. And cinema’s second-best Ken.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – lost to Forrest Gump (1994): when I was a Baby Film Nerd, the big dialogue was Gump versus Pulp Fiction. Everyone knew that Tarantino was robbed, and that this soppy, small-c conservative pean to being a Boomer did not deserve Pulp’s gongs. But then you get older and you realise that the tragically uplifting masterpiece that is Shawshank is a better film than either of them.  

A Few Good Men (1992) – lost to Unforgiven (1992): I don’t think Rob Reiner has won an Oscar, despite making (deep breath) Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, The American President, and lots more besides. This courtroom drama is a precision-tooled piece of moviemaking, harnessing star power and screen charisma, turning Aaron Sorkin’s script into cinematic perfection. Unforgiven’s still pretty good, mind.

Goodfellas (1990) – lost to Dances With Wolves (1990): if there was one guy who was always the bridesmaid, it was Scorsese; the list of films he directed that were “best runner-up” is pretty long. Here, though, we have his sumptuous crime epic, a dissection of mob life and excess that is just a minute-by-minute marvel to behold. More like Greatfellas, amirite?

There Will Be Blood (2007) – lost to No Country for Old Men (2007): we were properly spoilt for choice when it came to deeply dark neo-Westerns at the 2008 ceremony. The Coen brothers took home the laurels, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s brutal, widescreen expose of the American dream is both sumptuous and stunning, with a complex and compelling central performance by Daniel Day Lewis (who did win an Oscar).

Beauty and the Beast (1991) – lost to The Silence of the Lambs (1991): the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, and the only one before the Academy upped the number of nominees from five to a maximum of ten. Arguably Disney’s best film of the renaissance era, it marked the fully-fledged Broadway-isation of the franchise, with huge musical numbers that felt like they tripped off the stage – plus, of course, requisite fantastical Disney magic that could only be animated. Anyway, it’s amazing.

Apollo 13 (1995) – lost to Braveheart (1995): Ron Howard’s best film is an unsentimental procedural about very smart people doing very smart things in a moment of high drama. Manages to be tense and compelling even though we know what happens at the end. Just exquisitely made from beginning to end, with tremendous performances.

Okay, so one more thing, maybe you noticed; but I decided to omit from consideration the first two Lord of the Rings films, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. This is because Return of the King cleaned up in 2004 (Christ, twenty years ago), and I think we can all agree that it was accepting on behalf of the entire trilogy. So it feels a bit churlish to complain that the other two films didn’t win, even if they were actually my favourite films from their respective years (and even though my overall favourite of the trilogy is still Fellowship). So I’m letting them slide today, because really, spiritually, they were winners in 2004. Even though in actuality they were big fat losers.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Waterworld (1995)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Waterworld has a ludicrous premise. That didn’t mean it was doomed from the start. If properly executed, it could’ve been great. Unfortunately, instead of spending time developing the world and characters, this movie just kept throwing money at the screen.

In the distant future, the polar ice caps have melted and sea levels have risen to cover every continent on Earth. A lone drifter (Kevin Costner, whose character is never named but is referred to as “The Mariner”) arrives at a floating community to trade dirt - a rare commodity - for supplies. When “The Smokers” - a group of pirates with access to fuel - attack, he reluctantly takes on a woman, (Helen, played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) and her daughter, Enola (Tina Majorino), whose back tattoo is rumored to lead to the mythical “Dryland”.

I gave this post-apocalyptic sci-fi film the benefit of the doubt. Yes, there’s no way the ice caps melting would cover the whole world but the film needed to happen. Try as you might, your suspension of disbelief can only do so much. We’re told it’s been hundreds of years since the water’s covered everything yet The Smokers (so-called because they are always smoking) have access to fuel, bullets and modern-day vehicles. The blacksails fire shots like they’re never going to run out of them, they drive around on their jet skis non-stop and you have to assume they’ve been doing this for hundreds of years… but how? They’re hardly conserving their resources. In fact, there’s nigh a spear or a crossbow to be found ANYWHERE. I know fans will say the way the Deacon (Dennis Hopper) and his minions keep their vehicles running is explained but the explanation is really just there to give this picture a big, dumb explosive conclusion. It might sound like nitpicking, but these examples show an utter lack of effort. No one sat down and really thought about what a Waterworld would be like.

You can’t say this is a bad-looking movie. If anything, it looks TOO GOOD. The Mariner’s ship has all of these levers and opening doors and mechanisms which look impressive but make you wonder how he managed to put it together. Same for the human settlements we see throughout. Everything is too slick and too solid. They feel like sets. Similarly, the action scenes go on for too long, are too big and too well coordinated to feel real. Everything’s got this overly grandiose, self-important feel to it. And yet, you don’t understand where the $172,000,000 (give or take a couple of millions) budget went. It’s just that expensive to shoot on water, I guess.

Built upon a flimsy world whose rules are not well explored, we have four major characters, none of which are the least bit interesting. The little girl’s given little to do. She might as well be a wad of paper with some scribbles on it. The Smoker’s captain is a goofball who feels completely out of place. The Mariner’s a grump who takes so long to warm up to his passengers you just don’t like him, which leaves you looking at Jeanne Tripplehorn for salvation but her role is thin. Not aiding is the lazy, repetitive plot which is so reminiscent of George Miller’s post-apocalyptic films, it feels pointless. Waterworld may have a shiny coat on but it’s little more than a watered-down imitation - literally.

The film’s moments of comedy all feel misplaced and even the adventurous moments clash with the grim tone found throughout. Every few minutes you get a flash of what this picture could’ve been only to see the potential wasted. Waterworld never becomes the movie you want it to be. (Full-screen version on VHS, January 18, 2019)

[spinstrackingsystem]

Alex Miller Delivers Gritty, Guitar-Driven Rocker, “When God Made The South”

American Idol alum Alex Miller’s fans have been eagerly awaiting new music, and he delivers with “When God Made The South.” An anthemic, guitar-driven ode to the glories of Southern living, the track is a great send off to summer. “WGMTS” is as gritty as a gravel road, as raw as moonshine and as slick as goose … well, you know. It’s a bit outside of what most might consider Miller’s “traditional Country” lane, but the move was intentional and offers a glimpse at another side of this talented Kentucky-born vocalist. The track is available for pre-save now. “Lyrically it’s just Country as dirt, but we rocked it pretty hard. I wanted it to sound like something between George Strait and KISS.” – Alex Miller “I really took the Idol judges’ advice to heart,” Alex admits. “I get that I have to challenge myself and keep growing to keep going in this business. This song was perfect for me. It screams ‘hit’ and the minute I heard it I knew we had to cut it. The lyrics are straight on Country. If you just read them, you’d never know this single was so edgy, but Jerry’s production takes things in a whole different direction – and I think it is just awesome.” There’s no doubt He had a real good day There were Blackberry’s blooming in the red dirt clay And the smell of Jasmine floating through the Pines I bet He knew right then we’d love our chicken fried And sweet tea to wash it down  When God Made The South (Jerry Salley/C. Read the full article

[newmusicweekly]

Alex Miller Delivers Gritty, Guitar-Driven Rocker, “When God Made The South"

American Idol alum Alex Miller’s fans have been eagerly awaiting new music, and he delivers with “When God Made The South.” An anthemic, guitar-driven ode to the glories of Southern living, the track is a great send off to summer. “WGMTS” is as gritty as a gravel road, as raw as moonshine and as slick as goose … well, you know. It’s a bit outside of what most might consider Miller’s “traditional Country” lane, but the move was intentional and offers a glimpse at another side of this talented Kentucky-born vocalist. The track is available for pre-save now.   “Lyrically it’s just Country as dirt, but we rocked it pretty hard. I wanted it to sound like something between George Strait and KISS.” - Alex Miller   “I really took the Idol judges’ advice to heart,” Alex admits. “I get that I have to challenge myself and keep growing to keep going in this business. This song was perfect for me. It screams ‘hit’ and the minute I heard it I knew we had to cut it. The lyrics are straight on Country. If you just read them, you’d never know this single was so edgy, but Jerry’s production takes things in a whole different direction - and I think it is just awesome.”   There's no doubt He had a real good day There were Blackberry's blooming in the red dirt clay And the smell of Jasmine floating through the Pines I bet He knew right then we'd love our chicken fried And sweet tea to wash it down  When God Made The South (Jerry Salley/C. Read the full article

[pinercuba]

Mad max cast

#MAD MAX CAST MOVIE#

#MAD MAX CAST DRIVERS#

You can take a look at cast photos and even find out more info about the upcoming film by checking out this incredible infographic by .uk. Furiosa is undoubtedly one of the greatest gifts to modern cinema and Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the best movies ever made, and thats the hill were going to die on. He also stated that the film is guaranteed to get the adrenaline pumping with tension-packed action, emotional turmoil, and epic story twists & turns throughout. Son of Immortan Joe, Rictus Erectus is brought to life by Nathan Jones, who was said to be extremely excited and very proud & grateful to have been part of the new Mad Max: Fury Road. Another British actor to join the crew, his previous works include leading roles in the BAFTA nominated film A Single Man and the teen drama show watched by everyone in the UK above the age of 13 Skins. Nux is a main member of Joe’s gang, but later, we see a switch in sides as he allies himself with Max. You can check out this interview with him here to listen to what it’s like playing such an iconic antagonist. The main villain of the Mad Max films is back, and thanks to the return of the originator in the role – Keays-Bryne – he’s as evil as ever. You can check out more information on that here. She’s set to be so important to the plot and the films as a whole, that she will even be centre stage of one of the upcoming sequels mentioned above – Mad Max: Furiosa. Whilst Hardy has taken over a well-loved character, Charlize Theron is playing a whole new one – a badass commander named Imperator Furiosa. Whilst some die-hard fans of the franchise have expressed some doubt on his abilities to live up to his predecessor, it’s fair to say that the production team behind him have every faith he’ll please the fans, and have signed him up to three Mad Max sequels. So the lead role has gone to British actor Tom Hardy, who made the announcement of his role in June 2010 on Friday Night with Jonathon Ross. So, with a whole new cast to look forward too, we thought we’d take a look at just who some of them are, as it’s fair to say, it’s a pretty exciting line up! Max – Tom Hardy In 2009, the film’s director George Miller ended speculation with his announcement that was looking for a ‘different route’, a ‘renaissance’ of the franchise, and therefore Gibson would not be in the cast. Perhaps the question burning hardest on everyone’s lips was whether Mel Gibson would return to the role that was his – the title character and hero of Max.

#MAD MAX CAST DRIVERS#

He rode alongside Gibson in one of the film’s climactic action scenes, secretly strapped into the broken car as the film’s title character helped the stunt drivers switch the gears in the middle of the high speed chase.One of the most highly anticipated films of the year is finally coming to our screens – the 4th instalment of the Mad Max franchise and it’s fair to say there’s been a lot of buzz and speculation about a number of its components. The Feral Kid did more than just survive he became a crucial combatant in the war against a bunch of oil-hungry bandits. “My mother left to go find my father and she also never returned, which left me to fend for myself.” “My story was that my mum, dad and I were flying, we ran out of fuel and landed my father went to go find fuel, and did not return,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Movies. He looks back fondly on his wild child days, even recalling how he won the job: After a competitive audition process, he beat out the other kids by coming up with his own backstory for the mysterious character. The role was played by a precocious 8-year-old actor named Emil Minty, who is now 43-year-old married father of two, working in Sydney as the manager of a jewelry store. He looked like Bam Bam Rubble brought to life, and had an even smaller vocabulary than the club-swinging Flintstones tot.

#MAD MAX CAST MOVIE#

The original Mad Max movie catapulted Mel Gibson from the Australian desert to international fame, but in the film’s first sequel, 1981′s The Road Warrior, the actor was upstaged by a grunting little kid with a mullet and deadly aim with a razor-sharp boomerang. The Feral Kid is all grown up - and now has two kids of his own. Emil Minty as The Feral Kid in ‘The Road Warrior’ and Minty now (Everett Collection/Facebook)

[karenjacksons]

An attempt at reviewing EVERY horror movie I watched in october

[[MORE]]

Truth or Dare (2017): not to be confused with the one with Lucy Hale and Landon Liboiron, although ironically they both star degrassi actors (and wow,does Ricardo Hoyos’ character suffer in this one!). I thought this was really thrilling,and tbh I was shocked to find out it’s a tv movie because it’s so gory. The ending seemed unpopular online, but tbh I loved the bordering on thelma and louise ending.

Polaroid: all in all it’s not very memorable,but tbh the plot twist about the truth about the cop and the girl who died was so heartbreaking and made me cry :(

School Spirit: apparently this is an episode of a tv show called Into The Dark,but Hulu has it as a movie. SPOILER ALERT: Farkle is the killer. i kind of laughed just because,you know,it’s Farkle,but I thought he was decent. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: I somehow have never seen this. Now I finally know the origin of Brenda in Scary Movie…she’s clearly Brandy in this! (I loved Brandy in the movie. Happy they didn’t kill her off). Hated the ending.

Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism: literally don’t even remember this one.

Deadly Friend: LOVED this one! Kristy Swanson was so good! However, it has what has got to be one of the worst endings in cinematic history…

The Babysitter Killer Queen: the first one was way better,but it was fun. Obviously Samara Weaving’s borderlin cameo was the best part. Side note,but Jenna Ortega will always be Little Jane to me,i don’t think I can handle seeing her get killed in Scream 5 lol

Friday the 13th: Final Chapter: this one is weird because it has an iconic/amazing ending,Tommy and Trish are legends,but the parts without them…what even is the plot? They don’t even know any of the kids who get slaughtered. But again,amazing ending.

Endless Love: this is a You style horror movie and you can’t convince me otherwise. In fact,I think Penn Badgley might have taken inspiration from Martin Hewitt. Amazing movie. Friday the 13th: of course I love it and it’s a classic but SyFy’s airing butchered it! They cut out some death scenes….

Halloween Kills: YES. LOVED IT. Loved all the actors too.

The Stepfather: more of a thriller than horror. I loved it,but I think if I wrote it,I would have made it so Penn Badgley and Amber Heard’s characters were siblings rather than boyfriend and girlfriend. Partially because I hated the unneeded sexy stuff,but also because it would have fit the family theme better. (Fun fact: Skyler Samuels plays his actual sister,but she’s basically an extra. I loved seeing her so young though!)

Secret Window: again,more thriller than horror. Loved Johnny Depp’s acting but the ending was….a little off.

The Exorcist 3: love George C Scott and Brad Dourif in the movie. I wish they hadnt forced the director to make it an exorcist sequel though. (random fact: my dad worked at a bar Jason Miller would always go to in Scranton and says he was mean.)

Stage Fright: LOVE IT. Hilarious. The killer is extremely easy to figure out though. Also,Ephraim Ellis (Rick Murray) is in it. (so is Dan Levy, but it’s only one line).

Untitled Horror Movie: same director as Truth or Dare,starring and written by Luke Baines who played one of the main characters in that. My only real complaint is I wish they let Claire Holt keep her accent! Also,at first I thought they were all filming in the same house, but then I realized it’s just that their houses all look very similar.

The Collingswood Story: the og unfriended from 2002. Unfortunately it’s boring as fuck.

Dracula AD 1972: sadly he’s only onscreen for 10 minutes,but I love the campy 70s vibes!

The Rage Carrie 2; I actually loved it. Things I didn’t like: killing Sue (especially since it was an accident and I highly doubt Rachel would have killed her on purpose) and the plot twist where Rachel was Carrie’s sister was way too over the top.

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave: fun but I liked Dracula 1972 way better.

Last Night In Soho: THIS MOVIE WAS EVERYTHING! i don’t want to say anything else because spoilers but SEE IT IN A THEATER!

Strait Jacket: the ending literally made me cry….Joan Crawford really was a good actress…

[jasm1ne-1vy]

This is what i listened to for the first two months of 2021. I will start putting them here instead😋



03/01- Goosebumps by Boyscott. So good! it’s chill and sounds nice but still makes me bop my head like crazy. My fav song from this album is Nova Scotia 500.

03/02- Sorry, Mom by Destroy Boys. It’s fun and cool ig. 7/10 girl band

03/03- The Jins by The Jins. 8/10

03/04- Circles by Mac Miller. 8/10

03/05- 4 Your Eyez Only by J. Cole. 10/10 fav song: Ville Mentality.

03/06- Future Teenage Cave Artist by Deerhoof. definitely experimental and groovy.. 7/10

03/07- Blue Suicide by Coma Cinema. nice and chill... 7/10

03/08- Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. lots of noise... it’s definitely something. listen when u want to feel like the only person alive and powerful... 7/10

03/09- By the Way by Red Hot Chili Peppers. awesome 9/10.

03/10- Tungsten by Healy. 10/10 chill and a good vibe. love it.

03/11- Beat by Bowery Electric. ehh. very chill not much lyrics nice beat ig. 5/10

03/12- Brick Body Kids Still Daydream by Open Mike Eagle. Very nice i liked it 8/10

03/13- EP! by JPEGMAFIA. it was okay. 6/10. hip hop eccentric?

03/14- The Bedroom Loop Collection by Sweatcult. 9/10. incredible.

03/15- Aestheticadelica by Bloodbath64 / TV Girl. i love to girl so 8/10

03/16- Blue by Joni Mitchell. 7/10. chill and relaxing. her voice is pleasing.

03/17- Twenty Twenty by Djo. underrated def 9/10. never heard of the artist until today but i’m glad i know now...

03/18- Below the Heavens by Blu and Exile. Nice rap album but it’s good rap. 7/10

03/19- Dummy by Portishead. chill good songs love it. 7/10

03/20- Chemtrails Over The Country Club by Lana Del Ray. nice chill slow songs. fav song is Tulsa Jesus Freak. 7/10

03/21- Pod by The Breeders. nice alt rock. 7/10

03/22- Is This It by The Strokes. 8/10. i like it

03/23- I’m Sure by Harmless. 8/10. nice chill vibes

03/24- Wonderer by Sunbeam Sound Machine. IM OBSESSED. it’s so good omg. 10/10

03/25- High Society by Enon. funky i like it. it’s good and fun to listen to. 8/10

03/26-Bloodsport by Sneaker Pimps. 7/10 fav song is Kiro TV, Small Town Witch. it’s a fun album

03/27- Lazy Ways/Beach Party by Marine Girls. cute songs love them. 9/10 nice and chill too

03/28- Puberty 2 by Mitski. it was calm like most of her music. I liked it. 7/10

03/29- Live through this by Hole. 7/10 niceeeee. love the vibes ofc

03/30- Deep Divine by Pretty Sick. never heard of it but i’m glad i did bc i love it. 8/10

03/31- Hell Can Wait by Vince Staples. 6/10. it was alr not my type kinda repetitive

04/01- Underwater Pipe Dreams by Inner Wave. i love it! 9/10 bangers after bangers. chill vibes.

04/02- Coloring Book by Chance the Rapper. 7/10 it started off good but some of the songs aren’t really my taste. but the first couple songs really had me hype, i enjoyed it.

04/03- Fuck Your Expectations PT. 1 by AG Club. 6/10 it was alr. rap

04/04- My Head is a Moshpit by Verzache. 7/10 i like it it’s different

04/05- Street Desires by Gap Girls. never heard of em but glad i found them. i love this album all songs are good. genre is like Dream pop classic. 8/10

04/06- Invitation to Her’s by Her’s. I love them. this was good nice slow chill songs for the most part. 8/10

04/07- Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones by The Neighborhood. i kinda cheated today since i’ve listened to most of the songs on this album but i still love it so i decided to listen to each song. 9/10 ofc. the nbhd is so good. my fav song is cherry flavoured.

04/08- Deathconsciousness by Have A Nice Life. 7/10. it was good love the vibes.

04/09- Fearless (Taylor’s version) by Taylor Swift. TAYLORBSWIFT. that’s all i have to say. 9/10. even though i’m kinda heartless and could care less abt boys, this album (Taylor in general) makes me feel like a hopeless, lovesick teen girl.

04/10- Blonde Tongues by Blonde Tongues. it was chill low key vibes. nice. 7/10

04/11- Super Trouper by ABBA. 7/10. good, classic ofc.

04/12- noOffense.mp3 by poptropicaslutz! 8/10. it was only 3 songs but i enjoyed them all. it’s hyper pop and i like the genre. reminds me of mgk, lil peep ish, etc

04/13- our little angel by ROLE MODEL. i liked it, upbeat cute songs. a song u can dance around in ur room. 8/10

04/14- Small Car Big Wheels by Enjoy. i love it. funky upbeat songs that make me happy. 8/10. bedroom pop?

04/15- Next Thing by Frankie Cosmos. 6/10. nice songs soft voice, i like the vibes.

04/16- The Family Jewels by MARINA. i love marina she’s a queen. 9/10 so iconic. too much fav songs but i’d have to go w Oh No! because that it the first song i was obsessed with once i heard it on Just dance 2014 or sumn

04/17- BO Y by Deaton Chris Anthony. 4/10. i thought it would’ve been good bc the first couple songs were nice but then i was like wtf... but hey maybe it’s just not my type of music.

04/18- I Can’t Handle Change by Roar. 6/10. it’s ok i guess some of the songs aren’t my type.. it’s still good. nice and short album. fav song Christmas Kids

04/19- Shawcross by Good Morning. average, short album so i didn’t really notice it or find a good ear opening song. 6/10

04/20- Manila Ice by Eyedress. i love it. chill vibes. variety. 8/10.

04/21- You Are Going to Hate This by The Frights. chill 7/10

04/22- 9mm by P.H.F. it’s nice . 7/10. sounds like a lot of other music so not that shocked but it wasn’t bad

04/23- Chase Atlantic by Chase Atlantic. 8/10. hot vibes.

04/24- The Symposium by The Symposium. 9/10. I LOVE THÉ SONGS SO CUTE AND CALM

04/25- Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. ok Dula peep🤩. fav song is levitating w dababy duh that’s the only reason i listened to the whole album. 8/10.

04/26- Be the Cowboy by Mitski. it was nice 7/10

04/27- Blank Blank by Dababy. 7/10. some bops

04/28- Party Favors by Sir Chloe. i wasnt really feeling it 5/10 but maybe it was bc i wanted to listen to hype songs

04/29- Light & Magic by Ladytron. 6/10z futuristic vibes. fav song seventeen. i like the vibe.

04/30- Starboy by the Weeknd. 7/10. oldie but goodie

05/01- Let’s Skip to the Wedding by Eyedress. 9/10. i love it. good chill songs.

05/02- 2014 Forest Hills Drive by J. Cole. 8/10. Good vibes. deep

05/03- Honeyweed by Summer Salt. 8/10. cute songs i enjoyed them

05/04- 40oz. To Freedom by Sublime. 8/10. love the groovy vibes

05/05- Virtue by The Voidz. 7/10. good i like it

05/06- In Rainbows by Radiohead. wow. that was incredible 10/10

05/07- Pablo Honey by Radiohead. jesus christ.. 9/10 i’m obsessed.

05/08- The Bends by Radiohead. 8/10. i lovebthem

05/09- Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. 7/10

05/10- Jack Johnson and Friends: Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George by Jack Johnson. 7/10. cute wholesome songs. my childhood.

05/11- Apollo XXI by Steve Lacy. 9/10 ofc. i’ve heard the album before so i’m kinda cheating but it’s too good not to rate.

05/12- Case Study 01 by Daniel Caesar. 9/10. incredible

05/13- Songs about Jane by Maroon 5. 10/10 love it! obsessed even if it’s from a while ago

05/14- The Off-Season by J. Cole. 7/10. it’s eh good.

05/15- skipped i was busy

05/16- Suburban Light by The Clientele. 9/10. pretty good glad i chose it.

05/17- Return of Saturn by No Doubt. it’s good i enjoyed it. 8/10

05/18- Jinx by Crumb. 10/10 i love this mysterious vibe wow it’s good. slow chill songs

[padawanlost]

Hey! I was wondering, how much power did Palpatine have over the Jedi before episode 2? And how much power did he get over them after the emergency powers? I always hear arguments about how the Jedi tried to fix/do things (even before Ep 2), but weren't allowed to so couldn't. Like, for example letting Palpatine have access to Anakin. It's never really sat right with me, and seems like making excuses, but I'm unsure. Sorry if this is worded weird!

Hey! Short answer is no. The fandom in the last couple of years created this twisted narrative that no one had control over anything but Palpatine. and that’s simply not the case. I don’t know how it became so widespread, considering this particular trend started with people trying to justify slavery, child abuse and corruption. Regardless, it’s revisionist history. If you pay attention to the arguments you’ll notice they are not backed by sources, it’s mostly something akin to ‘it’s not a war crime because *I* don’t believe it’s a war crime’.

Anyway, I won’t get into right now because I’m short on time so I’ll give you some *facts* and let you make your conclusions:

How much power the Palpatine had over the Jedi before episode 2?

It depends on what you mean by ‘power over’. It’s like asking how much power does your country’s president have over a police officer? They are bound by rank and authority but it’s not like the present have control over an individual’s personal choices. They had to follow the law, anything  beyond that was their own responsibility. 

According to the Republic’s law, the Jedi order operated under the Judicial Department. In turn, the Judicial Department was subordinated to the Chancellor’s office. However, the Jedi order had far more independence than the rest of the department, being able to chose which missions they would accept and how they would proceed. 

Though not formally bound by the Ruusan Reformations, the Jedi Order made fundamental changes as well. The Jedi gave up the bulk of their forces, from ground vehicles to warships and starfighters, and became part of the Judicial Department, reinforcing the fact that they answered to the Senate and were ideally counselors and advisers, not warriors. To decrease the chance that far-flung academies might stumble into dangerous explorations of the Force, Jedi training was consolidated in the Temple on Coruscant. And Jedi trainees would now be taken into the Order as infants, before they could be exposed to the temptations of the material world. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

Again, because the Order wasn’t an army at the time no one could *force* them do to anything, in terms of armed or even political action. To keep it short, being part of the Judicial Department didn’t put the Jedi Order in a position where they *HAD* to allow the Chancellor to spend some alone time with a 12 years old boy. That kind of rhetoric is, imo, pretty disgusting because it puts the blame of the all the abuse Anakin suffered on Palpatine’s shoulder and on his main victim who also happened to be a little boy at the time.

The Jedi Order had a choice.

Each time civilization threatened to topple into ruin, the Jedi faced a momentous decision: Did the Republic’s survival require the Order to intervene directly in its affairs? At various points in galactic history, the Jedi reluctantly decided such intervention was necessary. They stepped in to prevent the young Republic from annihilating the Tionese, plotted in secret to overthrow the Pius Dea chancellory, and served as chancellors while directly ruling large swaths of Republic territory in the chaotic centuries before Ruusan. Each time, the Order surrendered the powers it had assumed, returning to its guardian role. But as the Republic decayed and the Separatists gained strength, the Jedi began to once again debate whether a more activist role was required. By 22 BBY matters had reached a crisis point. This time it was the Supreme Chancellor himself who ASKED the Jedi to assume a new role: A powerful army awaited Republic command, but the Judicial Forces were ill prepared to lead them. Mindful that the Separatists were led by the Jedi apostate Count Dooku, the Jedi AGREED to lead the Grand Army to Geonosis in an attempt to short-circuit the Separatist threat. [The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry]

They had such independence from the Chancellor they felt justified in lying to his office and withholding information:

The Jedi Master rubbed a hand over his forehead and looked to Yoda, who sat with his eyes closed. Probably contemplating the same riddles as he was, Mace knew. And equally troubled, if not more so. “Blind we are, if the development of this clone army we could not see,” Yoda remarked. “I think it is time to inform the Senate that our ability to use the Force has diminished.” “Only the Dark Lords of the Sith know of our weakness,” Yoda replied. “If informed the Senate is, multiply our adversaries will.” For the two Jedi Masters, this surprising development was troubling on several different levels. [R.A. Salvatore. Attack of the Clones]

To make that even clearer, we have the Naboo crisis where Qui-Gon and Obi-wan’s involvement was the result of the Chancellor personally *requesting* the Council to investigate the situation.

“Under normal circumstances, the Council wouldn’t have subverted the authority of the Senate by honoring Valorum’s request to send Jedi to Naboo. But for Yoda, Mace Windu, and the rest, Valorum is a known quantity, whereas Senators Antilles and Teem and you have yet to disclose your true agendas. Take you, for instance. Most are aware that you are a career politician, and that you’ve managed thus far to avoid imbroglios. But what does anyone know about you beyond your voting record, or the fact that you reside in Five Hundred Republica? We all think that there’s much more to you than meets the eye, as it were; something about you that has yet to be uncovered.” Instead of speaking directly to Dooku’s point, Palpatine said, “I was as surprised as anyone to learn that Master Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi were sent to Naboo.” [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

If the Chancellor’s office, ddin’t have the power to force the Jedi Order into accepting a slave army, preventing a planetary invison or turning themselves into soldiers I highly doubt they would have the power to force them to give up a child a few hours a week. It doesn’t make any sense.

Here what the lore has to say about how the Jedi viewed Anakin’s relationship with the Chancellor. 

Sate Pestage showed Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker, into Palpatine’s temporary office in the Senate Building. Both Jedi were wearing light-colored tunics, brown robes, and tall boots. Facsimiles of each other. “Thank you both for accepting my invitation,” Palpatine said, coming out from behind a broad, burnished desk to welcome them. “Sit please, both of you,” he added, gesturing to chairs that faced the desk and the large window behind it. [James Luceno. Darth Plagueis]

Yoda stared at the floor, both hands grasping his gimer stick. There was no easy answer to that. Yes, he was concerned by Palpatine’s attachment to the boy. No matter how well-meaning, no matter how genuine and heartfelt, the Supreme Chancellor’s care for Obi-Wan’s apprentice was problematic. The root cause of all young Skywalker’s difficulties was his need for emotional connections. His friendship with Palpatine only complicated matters. But the man was Supreme Chancellor. And he meant well. Sometimes politics had to take precedence.[Karen Miller. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space]

I would think that Anakin’s friendship with Palpatine could be of use to us in this—he has the kind of access to Palpatine that other Jedi might only dream of. Their friendship is an asset, not a danger.” [Obi-wan Kenobi in Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith]

As for this comic, it’s not part of the original lore but I’ve talked about it in detail here if you’re interested. But the gist remains, the had a choice and saying the jedi shouldn’t have done anything more to protect Anakin is a pretty gross take. Anyway, I don’t know about you but this doesn’t read to me like ‘we tried everything we could to keep this child away from Palpatine’. 

Because I know people will twist this into ‘ShE haTeS thE jeDi’ allow me to clarify that this, all of this, is a good thing. It shows the Jedi had free will to make choices and the fact the made mistakes is what makes them such human, relatable characters. Also, it fits perfectly with the themes George set out to explore. 

The prequel trilogy is based on a back-story outline Lucas created in the mid-1970s for the original three “Star Wars” movies, so the themes percolated out of the Vietnam War and the Nixon-Watergate era, he said. Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate. In ancient Rome, “why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?” Lucas said. “Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler. "You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody’s squabbling, there’s corruption.”

The story being told in ‘Star Wars’ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.” George Lucas

“All of these things that are wrapped up in Ahsoka’s story, which ultimately make her realize what the audience realizes. “I love the Jedi Order. They’re very important to me, I’ve always respected them. But there’s something wrong here, and I need to walk away from it to assess it.” It all feeds into Revenge of the Sith when the chancellor says, “The Jedi have just made an attempt on my life.” When you see these four episodes, I think you have a better understanding of how he gets away with all of that, because you see how compromised the Jedi Council is.” Dave Filoni

Because on a certain level, you have to accept that the Jedi lose the Clone War. So there is something that they’re doing that’s wrong.” Dave Filoni 

Holding the jedi accountable for their actions is not about hating them, is about recognizing the story George was trying to tell with these human characters and their very, very human flaws. Saying they should’ve done more to help Anakin, the slaves or the clones is not the same as saying they are as evil as Palpatine or simply bad people. Heroes makes mistakes, and the Jedi mistakes don’t make their actions less heroic or their deaths less tragic. The same way that Anakin’s crimes as Vader doesn’t erase the good he did as Anakin. if we can admit Anakin killed a lot of innocents *AND* that he was a great master to Ahsoka, I really can’t understand why some fans have such hard time accepting the same is true for all the characters. We all make shitty choices sometimes but that doesn’t necessarily makes shitty people. that truth, that very human truth is at the core of this issue.  Same people can accept this, others can’t.

[flowerslut]

DAY SEVEN: WESTERN Rating: T for suggestive themes. Words: 5,271

WHUMPTOBER CROSSOVER—No. 5: FAILED ESCAPE

There isn’t much he can do behind his bar. Even with the shotgun he always keeps in arms reach, it never appears to make a difference to the monsters that slink through the shadows, snatching up men and women from their beds as often as they go missing from the streets,

It isn’t until a tiny girl appears, telling him that they need to run (away, together, quickly, now) that he realizes a gang of criminals or a pack of wild animals is the least of his worries.

ANOTHER NIGHT

There is no safety here.

It’s a hard fact—an unforgiving truth—that the townspeople have come to acknowledge over the past several months.

It started off with a group of missing kids. Boys that strayed too far to the edge of town. The last anyone saw of them they were chasing down a stray cat, tossing rocks at the animal as they laughed and ran towards the acres of nothing that surrounded their little municipality, miles of dry earth separating them from the next closest town.

Days later the cat returned, but the boys never did. A search party had been conducted, and all seven men had vanished, too. 

At first, leaving town had been advised against. There was something out there, the sheriff explained to Jasper, sitting across from him at his bar as he poured the tired, old man a drink. Something was out there, taking anyone who walked too far off into the plains. Their only choice, until they figured out what was happening, was to stay put.

Jasper watched him leave that night, patting that same cat on the head on his way out of the bar. Jasper had glared at the animal before picking up a broom and chasing it out the door.

Two days later the sheriff was also missing.

Now, every time he saw that cat he reached for his gun. He hadn’t grown up with an ounce of superstition in his body. His uncle had been a wise man; someone who had implored Jasper to think realistically, and with sense. He’d been a man of little faith, earning himself more than his fair share of disapproval, but he was the smartest man Jasper knew.

“There is always a reason for things,” he explained to Jasper on more than one occasion when he’d been a boy, “don’t ever let someone tell you something is unexplainable.”

And though there was no sense in ghost stories, Jasper knew from his days in the war that different things could haunt you in different ways.

For a few weeks, the people of his tiny town stayed within the confines of the area. Mothers and wives fretted fiercely, wanting to desperately send letters to their sons and husbands working and traveling, imploring them to stay away while it wasn’t safe.

But the postman hadn’t been seen since the week the sheriff vanished, leaving the town disconnected from the rest of the world. And now, no visitors had arrived in months.

But when staying in town stopped being enough, people began to panic.

Little Lisa Davis had been snatched from her bed the same night that the Miller men vanished. There’d been theories that floated around then, that perhaps they were behind the disappearances. No one would’ve dared hurt a hair on James Davis’ little girl.

But then the disappearances began to turn into deaths.

The first discovery was gruesome. Davey Clark’s body had been found in the cellar of his home, his neck twisted and opened, his blood cool beneath his mangled body.

Jasper had been one of the men who had volunteered to go help clean up the scene. After all, he’d seen sights just as gory during the war. He could at least stomach the evidence of the monstrous violence, unlike some of the younger fellows.

His only takeaway from that day was that whatever was killing these people—because Davey’s body had been confirmation enough for Jasper that these missing people would not be returning— was absolutely not human.

He had sense, he had to remind himself at night when he cleaned glass pints with a rag, his shotgun never more than arm’s length away from him. He had plenty of sense. But the evidence pointed to something that he couldn’t quite explain yet, and Jasper was no fool. Ghost or monster, it didn’t matter. What mattered now was something Jasper had always been good at: survival.

So, he stopped sleeping at home. Instead he slept in the cellar of the bar in a room behind a room where he could adequately barricade the door, only a lantern to keep him company, as well as his guns as he struggled to sleep.

The disappearances (murders, he eventually had to correct himself) only happened at night, so Jasper stayed alert as much as he could.

When a newcomer came to town, nearly four months after the madness began, people ran from her. Mothers dragged their children into their homes, men grabbed their guns and waited by the windows, and even Jasper locked the doors of his bar, telling his patrons of the afternoon to stay back and shut up.

When a knock at the door broke the silence, Jasper gripped the gun tighter.

“Please let me in,” a woman’s voice implored. And Jasper was so thrown off by how young she sounded that he almost opened the door immediately. “I don’t want them to get me.”

“Don’t you dare, Whitlock,” George Hicks whispered roughly, his own pistol pointed toward the door they both were staring at. “You let that beast in and we’re all dead.”

“Please,” she begged, “It’ll be sundown soon. I’ve been walking all day.”

“You and Len get out through the back and get to Tippy’s,” Jasper eventually commanded of the other men. And when the woman on the other side of the door began to weep, he gestured toward the men with his gun. “Hurry up.”

“That thing’ll kill you, boy.” George shook his head, spitting on the floor as he and the other two men quickly scurried to the back of the bar where they’d find their escape.

Jasper cocked the gun and counted to ten. On eleven he swung the door open, pointing the gun at the woman who stood on the porch, crying heavy, relentless tears.

To her credit she didn’t jump or run away at the sight of a gun being pointed at her face. If anything, she looked relieved. “Thank you,” she shuddered, her dirty dress lying in tatters around her bare feet.

“What do you want?” Jasper commanded, trying to ignore the horrible guilt that kept working it’s way to the surface. She’s just a woman, his mind screamed at him as he held his shotgun steady, she’s harmless. But Jasper knew better than to trust a newcomer during this terrifying summer. “Where did you come from?”

“I travelled here from the East,” she spoke her explanation hurriedly. “It’s been about a week now—straight from Mississippi, sir.” Her accented words appeared to back up the claim, but her state of dress kept his suspicions burning like new. “A friend helped me but they got him. Or well,” she sighed, tears springing down her face like new, “he ran off to distract them so I could get through. I’ve been running all night and all day, sir.”

“And why did you come here?” He asked, peering at her with hard eyes over the gun. In his peripheral he could see the neighbors peeking through the window at the scene. Jasper Whitlock pointing his gun at the strange newcomer, surely wondering if he was the next to go.

“I can’t explain yet, sir. I apologize. And I reckon you won’t believe me.” Despite her tiny stature she stood straight, her face proud and unflinching as she stared back up at him, ignoring the gun’s presence completely. “By all means if you intend on firing that thing go on ahead, but I’m here to help you. Unless you want to be eaten, too.”

Jasper lowered the gun slightly at that. Whether she was calling his bluff or not, Jasper wasn’t sure. (There was no way he’d actually be able to pull the trigger.) Her words confused him. “Eaten?”

“Yes sir. There’s blood drinkers not far. They’re the ones hanging around these parts.”

“I—how do you know this?”

“My friend is one,” she provided without a flinch. Then, her face crumbled as her tears sprung forth like new. “Or, he was one. I fear he’s dead and gone now.”

“And you’re here to help us?”

“To help you,” she emphasized with a pointed look, and when she took a step closer he stepped back. She smiled then, looking ridiculous with her dirty, tear-stained face. “You won’t hurt me.” And then when she stepped around him, walking into the bar with peculiar confidence, he finally lowered the gun.

Gazing across the street he made eye contact with a man watching through his cracked front door and shook his head. If this girl was a threat, Jasper would soon find out. But something in his mind told him that she wasn’t the one causing the chaos that had struck their town.

He closed and locked the door behind him, turning back toward the woman. She’d made her way over to his bar and was perched up on it, already having helped herself to a glass of water. Using his old dish rag she dipped it into the glass and began to clean at her face and hands.

“I’m sorry to frighten you so,” she commented as she worked to clean herself from the desert’s grime. “There isn’t much time, I’m afraid.”

“Before what, precisely?”

“Before they’re back again.”

“The vampires?” He spoke, feeling foolish at the use of the word.

She nodded, and his chest felt tight with the confirmation. Somewhere in his mind he could hear his dead uncle protest, claiming that no such monsters existed. But whether a storybook creation or a thing of true nightmares, Jasper wasn’t about to doubt this strange newcomer.

“You don’t have anything to fear from me,” she spoke after a long pause, as if knowing his train of thought. She glanced up at him through long, dark eyelashes and sighed. “I’m as human as you.” Then, she re-wetted the rag and began to clean her dirty, bare feet.

“Why don’t you have shoes?” He demanded.

“I told you my friend took me out west,” she acted as if this was information he was supposed to have figure out already. “I wasn’t running. He was.”

“But you didn’t think to grab shoes before leaving?”

“It was a matter of urgency.” She turned her nose up and Jasper nearly laughed. As if she had any business pretending to be prim when she was cleaning her dirty feet with his good rag, her skinny legs exposed to a man she’d only known for a handful of minutes. “I can make you believe me, but I’m afraid it’ll frighten you more.”

“I’m a hard man to shake, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Alice.”

“Alice,” he stepped closer to her, his hands still firmly gripping his gun, although he relaxed slightly. “Help me to believe you then.”

“Okay, Jasper,” she looked pointedly up at him. “Tonight your friend with the beard is next and tomorrow no one will go missing. And two nights from now if we aren’t on the road by then I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”

“How do you know my name?” Did she have family here? No. If that were the case people wouldn’t have treated her like she was the monster when she appeared in town. His mouth felt dry as he replayed her words. How was this tiny girl supposed to protect him? It was as laughable as it was absurd.

“I’m afraid I’m a bit touched,” she confessed, finally directing her attention to the mess of hair that lung limply around her face. Meticulously, she began to slowly work her fingers through the strands, untangling it slowly. “I’ve seen things I can’t explain since I was a girl. It’s how I made my friend. And it’s how I led him out here. To you.”

“Why me?”

She hummed, as if amused by his insisting. “How much do you believe so far?”

“None of it.”

“Shame.”

“You want me to leave with you?” She nodded, looking back up at him. He took a few steps closer, finally resting the gun down on the bar. Close enough that he could still grab it, but far enough away that it was out of Alice’s reach. “And how will the… vampires not get us?”

“If we leave the day after tomorrow.”

“How are you so certain of things you can’t even prove to me.”

“Because I don’t need to,” she smiled again, and Jasper had to agree. She was a bit touched in the head. “It is the way it is. And if you don’t believe me we’ll both die.”

“Why you, too?”

“Because I’m not leaving without you.”

He laughed then, picking his gun back up and walking around the bar. “You’re not staying here.”

“So you’d send me back onto the streets? I’d die for sure tonight.”

He sighed loudly, putting the gun back down before uncapping the gin behind the bar. Taking a swig he closed his eyes. When he opened them, Alice had swung her feet around so that she was facing him once more, holding her arm out expectantly.

He placed the bottle in her palm and watched curiously as she took a sip and then sputtered and coughed.

He laughed again. “How old are you?”

She glared at him, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand. Not much of a lady, this one. Then, she tipped the bottle again, clenching her eyes shut tight as she took another swig. This one she held down. With a gasp, she shook her head, handing back the bottle. “I’m nineteen, thank you.”

Then, her eyes shot toward the door, and Jasper immediately acted, grabbing the gun and pointing it toward the door.

“Let’s go,” she was at his side instantly, tugging at his elbow, pulling him toward where he knew the cellar door was located. It was impossible that this girl knew where to go, but when she led him down the stairs, into the cellar, and then through the doors that hid his private, secret room, he was stunned.

He slept little that night. After locking them both in he’d watched in shock as Alice made herself entirely too comfortable, curling up in the linens that he usually slept on, and falling into her dreams easily.

It would be a strange thing to have to explain to the patrons he’d evacuated today why this girl had been allowed to stay and why she would still be there when he opened up shop in the morning.

But morning came. And George didn’t.

Miriam delivered the teary news herself, her young grandson clinging to her leg on the porch of the bar, his eyes blown wide as he jumped at anything that moved.

“It got him last night,” the woman explained as calmly as she could. “Ripped him right out of my arms before I could shout or do anything. I didn’t even see the thing but it was there. It was in my home, and now my Georgie is gone.” 

The mourning widow left, off to deliver the news to more of George’s acquaintances, and Alice’s words from the night before felt heavy in his head.

“Tonight your friend with the beard is next.”

When he closed the door back up, locking up before noontime rolled around, he turned to find Alice sitting at one of the barstools, looking toward him with sad eyes. “I don’t want to be right all the time,” she spoke quietly. “I don’t like knowing these things.”

“How do you know them?” He asked, feeling a bit lightheaded as he stumbled his way toward the bar and sat himself heavily in the stool besides hers.

“I can’t explain it. I get feelings. I see pictures. And then things happen.” When she reached over and grabbed his hand, he didn’t even fight her. He didn’t want to fight her. He was too tired to fight anything anymore. Especially these phantoms that stole and took no matter what they did. Alice lifted his hand, pressing his palm against her cheek and holding it there. “I can’t change the things that happen. But this time I’m going to try.”

“You said I die?” Her skin was soft under his hand, and as he spoke he found himself studying this little witch’s solemn expression.

“Not if I can help it.”

“You said no one dies tonight.” She nodded in confirmation. “And that you want to leave by tomorrow night.”

“If we don’t, we die.”

He brushed his thumb over her cheek, watching as she closed her eyes and sighed at the touch. He frowned then, pulling his hand out of her grip and back into his lap. The noise she made wasn’t quite helping him interact with his guest in an appropriate manner. He shifted on the stool and looked out to his empty bar.

“If no one vanishes tonight, I’ll believe you. And then I’ll come along.”

Alice, who had frowned as he pulled himself away from her, smiled then. Her relief was so palpable that he found himself relaxing.

He spent the day out on the town after that. Alice had advised him that if she went with him people would talk and it wouldn’t bode well for her, so she was forced to stay behind while he walked around town, gathering provisions and looking for a pair of shoes for the girl.

He bought some from George’s niece, Frances, who regarded him coolly but sold him the shoes anyways. Alice had tiny feet, she explained to him before he left for his errands. To try and get her point across she’d boldly grabbed his hand again before pressing it flat against the sole of her foot, showing him that her toes barely reached his middle finger.

He’d pulled his hand away from the improper girl swiftly, neck blood-red as he’d muttered under his breath before gathering his hat and leaving her behind. Her cheeky grin that he caught proved to him that the little woman knew she was being lewd.

It annoyed him to no end that the shoes he bought—that he very stealthily measured against his open palm—fit Alice perfectly. When she slipped them on she smirked up at him, a mischievous glint in her eye.

She advised him to gather some of his belongings—“I can’t see how long they’ll be in this area; it could be years”—but he shook his head. He’d only been in the small town for a couple of years now. He’d looked for somewhere quiet to live after the war but despite his residence and relative success in this small town, he knew it wasn’t a place he’d stay for too long.

His belongings, or at least the ones he cared about, were meager. As long as he had a canteen of water, a fresh set of clothes, and his guns in his knapsack, he’d be content. He packed a second bag, at Alice’s request. One that she would carry as they ran back east. This one with only threadbare blankets and food that wouldn’t spoil.

Alice appeared to have no idea how long it would take them to travel a safe enough distance, so that night he packed extra food and spent an hour digging through crates for another canteen.

If death was certain when they stayed, he wanted to be sure it wouldn’t claim them on the run, as well.

They bunkered down before sunset that night. Jasper felt almost calm, for the first time in months. He wasn’t sure if it was Alice’s presence that calmed him, or his quick trust in her ability that she was so confident in, but after he barricaded the door, he felt at peace almost.

“It will be okay,” she whispered, and when she grabbed his hand and pulled him after her, he didn’t resist. But when she laid him down and simply rested herself beside him, lacing her fingers with his, he found himself relieved. She was asleep minutes later, the glow of the lantern illuminating the angles of her face in the darkness.

Lifting his other hand he hesitated before reaching over and brushing the back of his knuckles lightly across her cheek. Her appearance in this town still made little sense to him, but it was hard to force himself to understand when she clearly operated in a different state of mind than he.

Still, when he woke early the following morning—a little disoriented and almost stunned he’d slept so soundly—to Alice pulling a blanket overtop of the both of them, he couldn’t help it when he rolled toward her, pulling her against him. And when he lazily kissed her, hardly thinking about what he was doing, she sighed against him as if she’d been waiting for it.

They rolled around the sheets, learning each other’s bodies until mid-morning when she froze, breaking a heated kiss as her eyes glassed over. Jasper called her name multiple times, but the only physical sign that she was hearing him at all came when she reached out for him blindly, her hands only stilling when they grasped his face between them.

He waited what felt like an eternity before she blinked again, and suddenly she was sitting up. The abrupt motion would’ve forced her forehead to smack into his face if he hadn’t shifted out of the way in time. Then, she was panting, clutching her hands to her naked chest as she pulled her knees up.

“No,” she whispered, the word catching on a sob. “No, no, it can’t be…”

“What’s happening?” Jasper reached out for her quickly, brushing strands of hair out of her face only to reveal wide, terrified eyes. “Alice, what… what did you see?”

“I was wrong,” she whispered as the tears pooled over. Then, her eyes locked onto his. “We don’t have another night.”

“What… how… but you said—”

“They caught my scent. They know I was with my friend—he was covered in my scent, too. They know I’m out here. It’s,” a realization struck her so abruptly that she flinched, her head falling into her hands, “oh god. Oh, my god.”

“Alice,” he reached forward and gripped her shoulders, giving her a firm shake, “Alice, look at me. What happened?”

“It’s all my fault!” Then she let out a shriek that almost made Jasper smack his hands over his ears. “Oh, my god. Oh, my god.” When she started rocking back and forth Jasper didn’t know what to do. “It’s me. I’m the reason they come for you. I’m the reason we die. It all makes sense now. It’s my fault.”

“I can’t change the things that happen,” she had told him confidently. The words of a woman with nothing to lose. “But this time I’m going to try.”

And she’d tried. And, according to herself, she’d failed. And now there was nothing to be done.

Jasper had thought enough about his own fate in the past few months. Every night that passed was another night in which he may die, and every morning that greeted him had begun one more day that he didn’t expect to be gifted.

Since the end of the war, Jasper had realized he’d been living on borrowed time. He’d dodged death too often, in ways that made little sense. But he’d made it home, unlike so many of his brothers in arms.

He’d been prepared to die since he was a sixteen-year-old kid, lying to an army recruiter and getting away with it because he was tall.

Now that he stood on death’s front porch, he couldn’t even find the fear within himself. It was Alice’s fear that made him act. “Is there nothing I can do?” He asked pitifully, hands still resting helplessly on her shoulders as the girl shook and sobbed. “Tell me how I can get you out of here. Tell me how I can save at least you.” He was ready to die. This girl, not so much.

“It’s pointless,” she cried, tears and snot and spit falling from her face. “I doomed you. I’m sorry Jasper. I’m so, so sorry.”

He gathered her up in his arms then, feeling hollow as he listened to her sob noisily.

He didn’t bother opening up the bar that day. Nor did he want to walk around town and hear any new news. He already knew that what Alice had told him—about there being no disappearances last night—was true. He could feel it firmly in his bones.

They eventually dressed themselves and left the small hideout, wandering back up to the main level to lounge around the bar. Alice’s face was red, swollen with tears, her dress hastily fastened and tied without care. 

He didn’t go far that day. Just down the street to trade some liquor for a couple of hot meals. It felt strange, to know that he would be dead by the time the sun rose the following morning. Even as he bid Miss Tassie a farewell it felt strange. Like it wasn’t enough to simply say goodbye and walk back to his sanctuary.

But that’s just what he did. He didn’t walk around and bid farewell to his regulars. He didn’t stop by Mick’s place and tell him that he’d have to take over the bar again. He didn’t even take a good look at the sun—he knew the sky would stay blue and the sun would stay bright without him committing it to memory.

He and Alice ate their fill quietly. After their meal Alice curled up right there on the floor and slept. Jasper nearly joined her before he realized he wanted to tidy things up for Mick. Make it easier for them to reopen the bar once he was gone.

As he cleaned he let his mind wander. He hoped that the monsters that came for them would at least have the decency of whisking them away to kill them. He didn’t want these poor people to have to clean up another gory mess. As he packed away spirits and ales he wondered if they would maybe kill them first, then take their bodies elsewhere to feed.

He supposed he should’ve felt more uneasy at the idea, but the thoughts were something to pass the time.

Eventually Alice woke and they sat up, passing a bottle between them.

After a few hours Alice decided to tell him exactly what they would be missing out on. About the life they would’ve had ahead of them, had their future not changed course. They would’ve ran back to Mississippi, she claimed, but they wouldn’t have stayed long. Then, they would’ve travelled north. Jasper scoffed at the idea of willingly mingling with the yankees, to which Alice had smacked his shoulder firmly, shushing him.

“After a few years we’d get married, of course.”

Jasper made another offended noise. “Years? Why years?” 

“Because our cover story would include already being married. But we’d get married for real up north. We would have to anyways, I’d get pregnant once we settled into the city.”

“Hm,” he hummed as she spoke, pulling her close to him and pressing his nose into her hair. She smelled like wet dirt and liquor, but Jasper didn’t mind. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to picture the future they’d never have, wishing he could see it the same way she could. “Then what?”

“You’d get a job working at the harbor as a deckhand. We’d have a little house with a view of the water where the kids and I could look out and see where you were. You’d have lots of friends,” she looked up at him, “you’re very personable, you know. Then, I’d make you quit and get a job somewhere else, because I can see instances where you hurt yourself on a few occasions. After that…”

The spent their day like this. Alice was a never-ending supply of what-ifs as he supplied ideas and alternatives for the future they’d never have. The more intoxicated they became the more elaborate the stories grew, and eventually as he turned and looked down at Alice, tucked in the crook of his arm and laughing herself silly, he realized how easy it would have been to fall in love with the psychic girl.

Too bad they were doomed.

The had sex a few more times after that as they continued to get progressively drunker until eventually they both passed out, fully naked and wrapped up in one another on the floor of the bar.

Jasper came to hours later. When he sat up he realized he was still drunk, and it took him several minutes to realize what time it was. He rushed over toward the window, stumbling the entire way. When he noticed the moon high in the sky he felt all the blood rush out of his body.

Turning back toward Alice, who was still unconscious on the floor where he’d left her, he left his heart clench and his stomach drop. He couldn’t wake her. It would be cruel to have her wait up alongside him before their death.

Instead, he approached quietly, and as carefully as he was able to, lifted the skinny girl into his arms. Alice barely shifted as he carried her across the bar and down the stairs, but when he tried to lower her onto the rickety mattress of his hideout, her arms weakly reached out to him.

“Stay,” she mumbled in her sleep, her arms lacing behind his neck as she sighed.

Jasper leaned forward and kissed her softly before laying beside her. With one hand he brushed his fingers through her hair, and within a minute she was back asleep.

He covered her in every blanket he could find, before he took one final look at her and left the room.

They came for him eventually.

It wasn’t noiseless, the way he thought it would be. No stealth was attempted as the creatures of the night pushed his door open, breaking the lock and sending wood chips flying. Jasper didn’t even have time to fire his gun before something was gripping his throat fiercely. 

“Do not crush that one yet,” a heavily accented voice spoke, and suddenly there was a group of what looked like people standing around his bar. Their eyes all glowing red. “Find the girl first.”

“NO,” Jasper kicked his feet at the red-eyed monster who held his life in their hands.

After a long peal of laughter, the voice chimed in again. “I like him. Him, we will use.” Jasper watched as a small dark-haired woman strode up to him slow enough that she looked almost human. Then, she turned toward the man who held him and said, “if you keep him alive long enough for me to change him, you can have the girl.”

When the creature holding onto him let out a hiss, Jasper flinched, his hands tugging and pulling at the stone-cold wrist gripping him.

“Hello soldier,” the woman spoke to him directly now, eyeing his military uniform with amusement (he’d decided to die wearing what he thought he would have, years ago). “Welcome to a different kind of war.”

The next several minutes were a blur of pain and movement and screaming. His final thoughts were focused solely on his lovely little Alice, dread weighing down his every thought as he imagined all the ways they would kill her. She hadn’t been ready to die, but she’d risked her life to save him anyways.

Unfortunately, she’d played right into fate’s hand.

And when the fire started, Jasper knew it was over.

[pcwpolwrestling]

PCW-The Return

How did we get here?

Extreme Election Night 2020 Preview December 27, 2020 Preview of PCW’s Extreme Election Night 2020 -15th Anniversary Celebration -The 2020 Year in Review -Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden

PCW’s Extreme Election Night 2020-Part One December 31, 2020 –Donald Trump and Joe Biden both interview for the PCW CEO position -ARIZONA SENATE MEDALLION MATCH: Martha McSally (American Patriots) vs. Mark Kelly (Progressive Alliance) -SOUTH CAROLINA SENATE MEDALLION MATCH: Lindsey Graham (American Patriots) vs. Jaime Harrison (Progressive Alliance) -PCW TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Jill Berg Enterprises: P.M.C. Banks and Kirk Walstreit (American Patriots) vs. The Green World Order: GreenPete and ‘Vengeful Vegan’ Brock Cole Lee (Progressive Alliance) vs. The Deplorables: ‘Red Solo Cup’ Ray McAvay and ‘Prairie Populist’ William Daniels Bryan (American Heartland Coalition)

PCW’s Extreme Election Night 2020-Part Two January 4, 2021 -ALABAMA SENATE MEDALLION MATCH: Tommy Tuberville (American Patriots) vs. Doug Jones (Progressive Alliance) -HOUSE WAR GAMES MATCH: Progressive Alliance vs. American Patriots -MICHIGAN SENATE MEDALLION MATCH: Gary Peters (Progressive Alliance) vs. John James (American Patriots) -MAIN EVENT #1/PCW WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Kathryn Randall Collins (Progressive Alliance) vs. ‘Alaskan Rogue’ Sierra Whalen (American Patriots) -MAIN EVENT #2/PCW TITLE MATCH: ‘Mr. Hollywood’ Kevin Daniels w/PCW CEO candidate Joe Biden, Aide de Camp candidate Kamala Harris (Progressive Alliance) vs. ‘Starz N. Stripes’ Kevin Scott w/PCW CEO Donald Trump, Aide de Camp Mike Pence (American Patriots) -Who will be named the new CEO of PCW?  Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

Riot Breaks Out at PCW Show January 10, 2021 -‘Red Solo Cup’ Ray McAvay, ‘Prairie Populist’ William Daniels Bryan, Charlie Blackwell, and the Vice Squad’s General DeBauchery rescue Dawn McGill and race to Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon -Colleen Crowder celebrates Joe Biden’s win and the success of the Progressive Alliance at Extreme Election Night 2020 -GEORGIA SENATE MEDALLION MATCH: Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff (Progressive Alliance) vs. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (American Patriots) -PCW CEO Donald Trump promo -Kevin Scott interview -Kevin Daniels interview -PCW TITLE MATCH: ‘Mr. Hollywood’ Kevin Daniels (Progressive Alliance) © vs. ‘Starz N. Stripes’ Kevin Scott (American Patriots)

Replay of The End of PCW Extreme Political TV – January 10th, 2021 After rescuing Dawn McGill and driving back to Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon for the show, ‘Red Solo Cup’ Ray McAvay and McGill arrive at Hack’s to find it in ruins following the riot that took place.  McGill gets a sinking stomach in her stomach and mutters ‘Oh my God.’  McAvay tells the officer Dawn McGill is the owner of PCW and the officer motions to them to park the car away from the building. After Ray parks the car, he and Dawn walk towards Hack’s they begin to see the full scope of damage.  Broken windows.  Glass all over the place.  Chairs, tables broken in the parking lot.

They reach the entrance and look inside.  Ray says they ‘trashed the place.’  Tables and chair strewn all over.  The wrestling ring destroyed.  Broken light fixtures.  Glass all over the floor.  Beer and alcohol all over the floor.  The owner of the bar meets Dawn in the foyer and explains like other small businesses thanks to COVID they were in trouble already.  He works hard.  Does the right things.  Makes the right choices.  And this happens.  McGill tries to apologize to him.  He just shakes his head and hands her a torn up contract.  McGill peers down at the remnants of the document in her hands. Then it gets worse.

Coke Brothers (David and Charles), George Moros- big money political financiers, the founder of the Alan Lincolns Project Alan Lincolns, and Big Tech’s Jack Buckenberg- CEO of Facetwitogram approach Dawn.  Moros refers to Dawn’s relatively disheveled appearance and says ‘aren’t you a sight’ to her. McGill’s face turns beet red and she tells Moros he knows damn well what happened.  His goons kidnapped and held her hostage for two months.

Moros replies all everyone saw on video was McGill running out on the show at Extreme Election Night and demands proof of the ‘kidnapping’ or else this just is another wild, baseless accusation.

Dawn goes to leap at Moros but McAvay stops her.  Moros has a sick grin on his face.  He tells her it’s over and she’s through.  The Republicans and Democrats are both on board and they’re partnering with their new best friend Jack Buckenberg for a new political wrestling show that will be headed by someone you know and love.

Out of the smoke and rubble of the interior of Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon walks the ‘Sports Entertainment Genius’ Mr. McMann- McGill and PCW’s long-time nemesis.  McAvay mutters ‘son of a bitch’ to himself.   McGill?  She says not him… anyone but him.  McMann goes up to McGill.  He smiles and tells her she’s really let herself go.  Again, McGill starts to make an aggressive move forward.  Again, McAvay pulls her back.  McMann brags that it took sixteen years but he’s finally won.  Game over.

Then Buckenberg delivers the coup de grace. He tells McGill consider PCW deplatformed.

A few minutes later…McGill, McAvay, and ‘The Voice of PCW’ Johnny Suave watch Mr. McMann- backed by The Coke Brothers, George Moros, and Alan Lincolns- give an impromptu press conference attended by The Guild of Low Level Media People Trying to Make a Name for Themselves: Colleen Crowder-New York Times, Sharon Johns-CNN, Bill Smithers-Fox News, Hallie Reed-MSNBC, and Dan Miller-Washington Post.  Suave muses that the writer of the movie ‘The Running Man’ may have called the transformation of politics, society, and culture right on the money.  A dejected McGill notes the enthusiastic applause coming from the Guild of Low Level Media people to McMann’s remarks.

Dawn McGill: So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.

Dawn McGill’s House- Wednesday January 20th, 2021 Seated in her favorite comfy chair, munching on a bowl of popcorn and drinking whiskey from a glass on an adjacent table, wearing her favorite sweatshirt and blue jeans, feet propped up on the entertainment stand complete with freshly painted red toenails shining in the light from the nearby lamp, Dawn watches the newly returned Political Wrestling Universe’s Blue Brand aka…PWU Political Shakedown show- live from Washington, D.C.

What’s happening?  The official installation of Joe Biden as the new CEO of PCW.

Dawn pops a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth and reflects on what’s happened over the past three months: -the return of PCW and Extreme Election Night 2020- a night where the Progressive Alliance swept everything and took full control of the PCW Executive Committee.   -her abduction at the hands of the big money financiers of both the Progressive Alliance (George Moros) and American Patriots (The Coke Brothers), aided and abetted by Alan Lincoln’s Project, during Extreme Election Night and subsequent detention for almost two months before The Deplorables came to her rescue. -the riot that took place at Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon that destroyed the spiritual home of PCW for over 15 years which leads to the return of ‘Sports Entertainment Genius’ Mr. McMann and the end of PCW.

Sighing, she watches the star-studded, Hollywood-style production on TV and notices the heavy security on hand.  She saw troops from the Space Force dressed in white and black with white helmets to usher in the beginning of new CEO of PCW Joe Biden’s tenure, the new CEO of PCW is delivering his acceptance speech.

Biden stands behind the podium.  His wrinkled seventy-six year old face is covered in a dark shroud and his hands occasionally shoot out bolts of force lightning when he gesticulates…okay, maybe it doesn’t but still…

Joe Biden (from the television): People, supporters of Political Championship Wrestling, today we mark a transition. For years, PCW stood as the conduit for people who were fed up with the status quo, fed up with politics as usual.  But there were those within our fan base who would set us against one another for we never suspected that the greatest threat came from within.  These “supporters” conspired to create a shadow of doubt on my appointment aided and abetted by the previous PCW CEO.

Dawn stuffs another piece of popcorn into her mouth.

Joe Biden: The riot two and a half weeks ago left PCW scarred and deformed.  But I can assure you my resolve has never been stronger. The war is over.  The Trumpists been defeated, and the rebellion…… er…… I mean…… insurrection has been foiled. We stand on the threshold of a new beginning.  With that in mind, in order to ensure the security and continuing stability and for a safe and secure society, Political Championship Wrestling will be reorganized into the Political Wrestling Universe and PCW will cease to exist.

Another sigh.  Dawn then reaches over and takes a sip of whiskey.

Joe Biden: By bringing the political universal under our enlightened guidance, the corruption that plagued PCW in the past few years under the ownership of Dawn McGill will never take root ever again.

McGill rolls her eyes and chucks a piece of popcorn at the TV.

Biden then puts on what appears to be the same Infinity Gauntlet that Donald Trump used last year to end the Red and Blue Brand shows.

What Infinity Gauntlet you may ask?

[REPLAY: 5/2/2019-Extreme Political TV-Donald Trump (R-NY)] The CEO of Political Championship Wrestling Donald Trump explains why the Red Brand and Blue Brand went dark, shows were cancelled, and why PCW ran replays of shows from ten years ago over the past two weeks. Short and to the point, Trump states the current method of doing business with three brands wasn’t working so, he felt it was time to make a change.

Trump reaches under the podium and pulls out an Infinity Gauntlet (ie…the very same Infinity Gauntlet featured in the recent Avengers movie). He places said Infinity Gauntlet on his right hand. Trump raises his hand in the air.

Then he attaches a red stone to the gauntlet. Then he snaps his fingers and says Red Brand is no more. The press- except for most of the Fox News contingent – let out a loud cheer.

Trump then attaches a blue stone to the gauntlet and snaps his fingers and proclaims the Blue Brand. No more. The press- except for most of the Fox News contingent – groan.

Then Trump attaches a white and black stone with PCW written on it to the gauntlet. But this time he doesn’t snap his fingers. Trump announces he’d made PCW owner Dawn McGill a generous offer for PCW that sets her up for life and she accepted.

Cut back to Dawn’s living room.

Joe Biden: With this Infinity Gauntlet, with one snap of my fingers I brought back the Blue Brand show and here all of you are watching PWU’s Political Shakedown show.  Also with one snap of my fingers, I brought back the Red Brand show- PWU’s Politico War – which will return next Monday night.

Biden pauses for applause.

Joe Biden: Under our New Order, our most cherished beliefs will be safeguarded. We will defend our ideals by force of arms.

Behind Biden, George Moros, The Coke Brothers, the CEO of Facetwitogram Jack Buckenberg, and the founder of the Alan Lincolns Project- Alan Lincolns, all approve and applaud.

The camera then focuses in on Berkeley, California professor- Professor McCarthy- and his Flock: -The Green World Order: GreenPete, ‘Extreme Vegan’ Brock Cole Lee, PeaceNick, and Peta from PETA -The Young Jerks: Zenk Cryger, James Idaho, and Anna -Code Pink, and Emily S. List

The Flock also applaud Biden’s speech and Professor McCarthy wipes a tear from his eyes while he holds up the ‘good book that spells out what’s correct and incorrect to think, say, and believe’

Next, the Hollywood Left and sports celebrities from all different walks signal their approval with applause.

Joe Biden: We will give no ground to our enemies and we will stand together against attacks from with or without. Let our enemies take heed.  Those who challenge our resolve will be crushed.

The Guild of Low Level Media People Trying to Make a Name for Themselves: Colleen Crowder-New York Times, Sharon Johns-CNN, Bill Smithers-Fox News, Hallie Reed-MSNBC, and Dan Miller-Washington Post all heartily applaud this line.

Joe Biden: And now, with this Infinity Gauntlet, I will wipe out of existence once and for all- PCW.

‘Sports Entertainment Genius’ Mr. McMann stands and claps. Dawn closes her eyes and braces herself as Biden snaps his finger and…

The Location of Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon 2005-2021- Sunday January 31st, 2021 It’s 30 degrees outside and snowing.  The area where Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon once stood is nothing more than a snow-covered field now.  Dawn McGill and Johnny Suave are parked off the side of the road and staring out at where the former spiritual home of PCW for over fifteen years used to stand.

Sitting on the hood of the car, Dawn pours some whiskey into a pair of shot glasses.  She hands one of the shot glasses to Suave and asks him what they should drink to.  Suave gazes out into the now empty field and mutters something about good times and good memories. They clink their shot glasses together and down the shots.

She tells Suave that PCW Champion ‘Mr. Hollywood’ Kevin Daniels signed on with The Political Wrestling Universe’s Blue Brand show- PWU’s Political Shakedown.  PCW Women’s Champion Kathryn Randall Collins has also signed with the Blue Brand.  Jill Berg Enterprises signed with PWU’s Red Brand- PWU is Politico War.  So basically, to go on means starting over.

Suave takes the whiskey bottle, tilts his head back, and downs another swig of whiskey directly from the bottle.  He puts the bottle down on the hood of the car.

Johnny Suave: Well, that’s never stopped us before.

Close in on McGill: she smiles.

Political Wrestling Universe Headquarters – Washington D.C. – February 2021 So not one year after the last time PCW Owner Dawn McGill was hauled before the Executive Committee of the Political Universe for a hearing with the express purpose of determining whether or not she would be removed as the Executive Director of Political Championship Wrestling, they did it again in the aftermath of the riot that took place on January 6th at Hack’s Rusty Nail Saloon.

The hearing takes place before the Executive Committee of the Political Universe.  You can cut through the tense atmosphere with a knife.  It permeates throughout the hall.  Dead quiet inside the hearing room save the occasional sound of a chair moving along the floor, the ruffle of paper, and most notably, the sound of several photographers snapping off shots in rapid fire fashion.

Sitting at a table cutting a solitary figure with a glass of water placed next to her elbow, Executive Director Dawn McGill one more time faced the stern glare of one Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA).  Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is also there.  This time, the hearing would include Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

McGill addresses the Executive Committee and demands to know why she is there when there are so many other pressing issues that need their immediate attention.  She can’t believe for a second that there are more important matters to deal with than wasting time on a hearing over the reset of PCW once again.  Nancy Pelosi offers a sour expression in response and cuts her off.  She tells McGill she knows why she is here- the matter of the riot that took place in January l why you are here.  The matter of the riot that took place last month at one of your…- Pelosi spits out the next word with a heaping helping of distain – …shows is an important matter and one more time brings her – Pelosi accentuates the next word with a hint of sarcasm added for extra emphasis-  …leadership into question.  Pelosi tells McGill what happened at the show was unacceptable and her continued ‘pathetic attempt at leadership’ was also unacceptable.  If Pelosi had her way, she would have been removed as the owner of PCW last year.

McGill fired back that Pelosi was entitled to her opinion and she was entitled to be wrong.  In Dawn’s opinion, the problem begins right here with the proliferation of the influence of special interest groups that fund both of big factions.  She says let’s be honest and adds that she knows it’s something she knows is very hard for many of them to grasp.  That crack causes Chuck Schumer to step in and inform McGill that she will ‘refrain from making further comments like that and show this committee the respect they deserve.’

Dawn McGill: With all due respect, Mr. Schumer, I’ll show you the same respect that you show the rest of us.

Later on, Dawn’s in the middle of answering a question and accuses the committee of influencing P-SPAN to take PCW off the air.  Adam Schiff pops in and tells her PCW was not appropriate programming for a serious political channel. McGill claps back and tells Schiff the things that go on here isn’t appropriate programming for a serious political channel.  She wants to know when does the Executive Committee get directly involved in programming matters on privately owned media networks?  Schiff responds that she’s not listening and that PCW was not appropriate programming for P-SPAN.

The tone heats up even more.  McGill snaps back that it’s not for them to decide because that’s the ‘people’s job.  She says it’s obvious what happened- weight was thrown around and in the end the committee got their way. Schiff tries to defend their action and pronounces the committee has every right to oversee and regulate the product- especially after what happened at the insurrection that took place last month.  McGill shoots back not to give her that crap and Schumer again admonishes her to refrain from that kind of talk.  McGill tells Schumer she will not refrain and will persist.  Schumer tries to interrupt her but McGill persists.  She says it’s bad enough that every single aspect of American life has become politicized.  Sports has been politicized.  Entertainment has been politicized.  Science- politicized.  Education-politicized.  In her opinion, to let this slide supports the status quo where big money equals power and leaves behind middle class America.  She will not refrain.  She will persist.

Schiff bangs his gavel down and calls for order.  He slams the gavel down a second time

Adam Schiff: ORDER!  Miss McGill, that’s enough! You are OUT OF ORDER!

Dawn shoots up from her chair and tells Schiff he’s out of order.  She points at Nancy Pelosi and tells her she’s out of order! Then Mitch McConnell. She says the committee is out of order and she was done wasting my time talking to you.  McGill grabs her stuff and motions to the Les Miserables inside the hall: ‘Red Solo Cup’ Ray McAvay, his wife- West Texas Adult Entertainment Legend Stacee Perry, Bert the Janitor, and a whole section of people who stand up en masse at her beckoning.

Dawn McGill: We don’t need you.  And you can all kiss my ass.

As all hell breaks loose, McGill defiantly marches out of the hearing room with the Les Miserables humming ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’

Political Championship Wrestling PCW Arena 19th Street and Alcove Ave. Lubbock, TX

The Return McGill and Suave sit in the ring at the brand new PCW Arena built in Lubbock, Texas.  McGill thanks everyone for sticking with them and announces that thanks to the help of some people that she will not name, PCW is back and ready to go.

Suave says for the return of PCW’s Extreme Political TV there will be a Television Title match, a Tag Team Title Match, and the PCW Title match.  Who’s going to be wrestling?  Suave says you’ll just have to tune in and see.

McGill adds one last parting shot before the preview show comes to and end.

Dawn McGill: ‘Sports Entertainment Genius’ Mr. McMann and Jack Buckenberg- you can kiss my ass!”