#ICONS. ( sorted hannibal lecter. )

[pesky--dust]

Since I'm delulu and I love to have everything nice and in order, and a lot has been going on lately in this fandom, I need to sort this all out in my head and I decided to share these facts that may indicate that we will get a fourth season of Hannibal:

Christmas photo of Mads Mikkelsen in Hannibal Lecter's iconic suit with the caption "a slice of Hannibal"

2. Gif used by Bryan Fuller in his New Year's wishes (Who's hungry for the new season?)

3. Mads Mikkelsen' words

4. Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy's reunion on the MAIN stage at the C2E2. Announced on the anniversary of the premiere of the first episode of the series!

5. Photos added by Bryan Fuller on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the first episode of the series? Including a previously unseen behind-the-scenes photo from the filming of the show's final scene?

[toothybat]

I had a dream about Batman and the Joker was there. And he— my brain came up with this design for him which I’d never thought of before but now I love. And idk how to describe it. Because most of the change was in the personality, and god, it was weird but amazing?

Bruce Wayne was in Bruce Wayne form, and, Joker was threatening him. And he said something like “what’re you gonna do? Beat me up, Mr. Wayne?” And Bruce punched him in the face and head a truly obscene amount of times. Grabbed that dude by his collar and fed him way too many knuckle sandwiches. Bruce was unhinged.

And the way Joker reacted was... he looked, so human? He was giggling and laughing kind of shyly, like someone trying to save face while being humiliated. Like he was uncomfortable. But at the same time it was like he was owning his discomfort and turning it into something he had control over by enjoying the pain. So it was as if I was watching not a monster who is immune to pain, but a human, a person choosing to take that pain and transmute the violation to his body into something he wanted and intended.

Like, “if I’m gonna get punched, then I’m gonna laugh because at least that way I have some agency over what’s happening to me and I can show you that you may break me with your fists but you can’t break me.” And after Bruce finally stops, which was what felt like 10 minutes but was actually more like 15-20 seconds. Joker looks at Bruce all doe-eyed and in awe, and says, “I love you.” And Bruce hates it so much, but he can’t do anything, because he already punched the heck out of Joker and it didn’t work— and that’s the whole point. Joker was taller than Batman, and gangly, and kind of awkward in his own body because his limbs were just all over the place. He seemed to lack social ability in the sense that his giggles wouldn’t flow with the mood or rhythm of what was happening. They would be jarring because they would interrupt things. It would make everything around him awkward. It was like the world just wouldn’t accommodate a person like him, but he existed anyway. Like, Joker in the comics and in everything seems to have this power and confidence to him that is utterly innate to him. But this one in my dream was like— it was like he was fighting for every scrap of it. It was awesome.

His laugh, it wasn’t loud and commanding. It wasn’t even creepy. It was just awkward and... how do I even describe it? I remember thinking in my dream, “wow, no wonder his laugh is so iconic that it came to be feared. Not because it’s a scary laugh by itself, but because there’s no way you could hear it and miss that it’s Joker.” It was sort of like he was laughing without his own permission. Like a person trying not to laugh at a funeral. But not in the Arthur Fleck way at all. Just awkward.

He was like if you put SpongeBob in Hannibal Lecter’s universe. No wonder he didn’t feel like anyone else was real when he feels so unreal in comparison to everything else.

[tuppencetrinkets]

By clicking HERE you will be taken to a mediafire download for #946 icons of Anthony Hopkins from the movie “Silence of the Lambs.” These icons were made by me and have been cropped to 200x100 and have been slightly sharpened but are otherwise unedited.  They have not been sorted for usability or clarity, only for face claim.

You can find the unsorted icons for this movie(if they exist) by clicking HERE and you can find the unsorted caps for this movie(if they exist) by by clicking HERE.  You can find all the sorted icons I have of this face claim by clicking HERE.

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[jasper-pagan-witch]

On my way, pal

(there's a mild of graphic language and gun mentioning so take that as a TW everyone)

Alright so I was talking to my boyfriend about media famous people, people who we find pretty (hello Pedro Pascal and Cara Dune 👋 ) and we get to the topic of overrated ppl that doesn't deserve all of that roar, then we narrow down to an actor that said that his wife shouldn't work but only take care of the home and I was feeling a bit of an edgelord so I told him that if it is so the actor's wife and himself should be together in the kitchen but I said that she should cut him into pieces and put everywhere like in the oven, a bunch of plates yadda yadda yadda. We laughed a lot with that and don't like this guy anyways so we called it a day despite me going full Hannibal Lecter on the guy and I screenshot it and posted it somewhere.

An acquaintance of ours said that some women liked it anyways and I argued that if so it was up to HER decide that and not someone else. If she doesn't want a career or going to uni it doesn't make her less of a human BUT the birdbrained thing kept saying that some women liked it anyways.

Ok at this point I say that I no longer want to communicate with him and he sends an audio about that which I don't even listen and he says "I'm sorry if this offended you in any way" to which I reply no I'm not even a woman (I'm agender) but I can easily identify people talking bullshit. He tells me to calm down and stuff and I end with "well I told you I don't want to talk to you anymore if I wasn't clear before" and that I hope he can never have a partner and if he does may the gods help her.

Now that's the fun part bc I have received some improptu deity visits before but now Hera appears at the right side of my bed (I wonder how long she's been there, she looked like a sniper on the roof, I didn't knew she was there?????????) and all she does is to lower down her staff and goes away and I hear a voice in my head saying “Noted.” and I go like ?????????????? Holy shit!!!!!!!!

I would be like really surprised if she didn't have that laser pointer scopes. Like. She couldn't be more sharp than that. It looked like she heard what what I was talking and came down just to tie the knot into fucking up the guy's love life

Ohhhhh snap!

Yeah, it's quite rude of your acquaintance and that actor both to say that sort of thing. Very patriarchy. I hope that the wife of the actor gets a better spouse or just stays single instead of continuing to put up with that kind of douche canoe.

And Hera popping in at the end? Iconic. I shall await updates.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Spider-Man Movie Villains

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he does whatever a spider can. And what do spiders seem really good at? Amassing huge quantities of hatred and animosity! True to the wily arachnids that inspired him, Spider-Man has quite the impressive gallery of foes, one that I might say rivals Batman as the greatest in comic book history with how colorful, crazy, and creative they are. Even villains derivative of one another, like Hobgoblin and Green Goblin or Carnage and Venom, manage to carve out unique niches that help make them fun and memorable.

And thankfully, these qualities usually translated pretty well to film! I’ve talked about how good Mysterio, Vulture, Kingpin, and Prowler are before, so now it’s time to cover the others all in one fell swoop! From the Raimi trilogy, we have Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Harry Osborn, Sandman, and Eddie Brock/Venom; from the Andrew Garfield duology, we have Lizard, Electro, Rhino, and Harry Osborn again; and leftover from Into the Spider-Verse we have Olivia Octavius, Tombstone, Scorpion, and that film’s brief take on Green Goblin! Oh, and why not throw in Riot from Venom while we’re at it, because he sucks way too much to get his own Psycho Analysis.

Motivation/Goals: A lot of villains are motivated by the classic motivation: revenge. All of the Green Goblins manage to have this as a main part of their actions, making them remarkably consistent and very easy to discuss. The Norman of the Raimi films wants to take out his anger at being frozen out of his own company, and his son wants revenge for his death, while the Harry of the Garfield films wants his vengeance because Spider-Man wouldn’t help cure him of his otherwise incurable disaease that would kill him (a fact made worse because Spider-Man is his actual best friend, Peter Parker, who is coldly condemning his pal to death). The only one who doesn’t really fit is the Spider-Verse take on Green Goblin, and that’s more because he has extremely limited screentime and spends all of it fighting Peter and being scary as hell.

Eddie Brock/Venom is a very interesting case as both halves of the character are motivated by different reasons. The symbiote half is, of course, motivated by the fact that Peter has tried to rid himself of it via using a church bell to kill it. Eddie, on the other hand, has the most absolutely hilarious motivation ever: He wants Peter Parker to die because Peter exposed him for submitting fraudulent pictures to J. Jonah Jameson. Eddie literally breached journalistic ethics but apparently Peter’s to blame for exposing his literal, actual crime! And he prays to God for Peter to die! This version of Eddie is cartoonishly hilarious.Finally, we have Max Dillon, AKA Electro, who is lashing out at a world that did nothing but belittle and demean him, giving him a far more sympathetic motive for revenge.

Kurt Connors is an interesting halfway point between the Doc Ocks and the villains above, because he is not really evil and his whole transformation came about for altruistic scientific reasons, as he tested his serum on himself because they were going to test it out on the public without consent. While the serum drives him mad, he initially only goes after those who were going to use his formula with people as guinea pigs.

Interestingly, the two Doc Ocks contrast each other. While both of them are doing evil deeds for scientific reasons, Otto Octavius is being forced by his tentacles and genuinely wishes to make the world a better place otherwise. Olivia, on the other hand, is a gleeful sadist who doesn’t care who she hurts as long as she can get some sort of scientific knowledge from it.

Sandman is interesting case because his motivations are entirely sympathetic and despite being the man who killed Uncle Ben, it was entirely accidental and he always regretted it. He only ever wanted to get money to save his daughter. It’s really hard not to sympathize with a guy who turned to desperate measures because the American health care system sucks even in a universe where a dude dressed in a bright red suit swings around New York.

Then there are all the rest. Aleksei Systevich, AKA Rhino, is just a criminal, and has barely any screentime to establish a motivation beyond that. This is especially hilarious because the ads really hyped this guy up, only for him to get maybe five minutes of screentime, with most of it at the very end of the movie before the credits (we don’t even get to see his final battle). Tombstone and Scorpion are basically just lackeys for Kingpin, with little established beyond that. Scorpion almost shows up entirely out of nowhere, just popping in for the fight at Aunt May’s house and then the final battle. And then there’s Riot, who just wants to start a symbiote apocalypse on Earth.

Performance: Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Thomas Haden Church as Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Sandman in the Raimi trilogy are, in a word, iconic. Dafoe brings a gleeful, cackling hamminess to the Goblin that perfectly suits him and manages to steal every single with how delightfully, cartoonishly evil he is combined with some hilariously chummy moments with Spider-Man. Molina as Ock goes in the opposite direction of hamminess, where instead of making Octavius cartoonishly evil, he gives him this air of gravitas to the point where he somehow manages to make this villain with giant metal tentacles that are controlling his mind come off as sophisticated and serious as Hannibal Lecter. Church meanwhile just looks eerily perfect as Sandman, as if he were ripped straight from the comics and put onscreen, and then of course there’s how well he manages to sell the emotional moments of the character.

The Harrys are a rather mixed bag, sad to say. James Franco and Dennis DeHaan aren’t really bad actors, but they unfortunately have the problem of living in the shadow of the actor who played their dad (Franco) or being in a really awful movie with a terrible script (DeHaan). Franco at least makes up for this by being hilariously, cartoonishly evil to the extent of his dad in the third Raimi film, but DeHaan unfortunately falls rather flat. Topher Grace as Venom is a choice that seems baffling until you realize Raimi cast an actor like this on purpose because he hates Venom so much he didn’t want to give him any dignity.

Jamie Foxx as Electro seems odd at first, but I feel it’s actually a great casting choice, and despite how unbelievably stupid the script is, he’s actually able to do a fairly good job. If his character was in a better movie, he’d probably get a lot less flak (and he’ll be getting his chance soon enough, apparently). Overall, he’s the best part of the Garfield films. Rhys Ifans and Paul Giamatti as Lizard and Rhino are serviceable, but neither film they’re in really gives them much to work with. Giamatti at least gets to steal the show with his brief scenes by being an absolute ham, but Ifans is sadly a bit forgettable in his role (though not for lack of trying on his part).

Now onto the Spider-Verse ensemble! Considering how I gushed over her delightful performance as the Wicked Witch of Westview in WandaVision as well as the fact she is solely responsible for me resurrecting this series from its long hiatus, it should come as no shock at all that Kathryn Hahn as Olivia Octavius is just perfect. Controversial opinion, I know, might get some flak for this hot take. Jorma Taccone as Green Goblin, Joaquin Cosio as Scorpion, and Marvin Jones III as Tombstone all do well for what they’re given, but it’s clear most of the love among Kingpin’s henchmen was given to her (and Prowler, but he got his own review where I talked about how great he is).

Oh, right, Riot. I forgot about him. Riz Ahmed, who plays the human villain Carlton Drake I forgot to mention because he’s incredibly boring, is a really good (and sexy) actor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get to be quite as good and sexy as an actor like him should be in his dual role. In an interesting subversion of how things usually go, he ends up being rather bland compared to the hammy, bonkers hero. This was Tom Hardy’s show, and no one was stealing it from him.

Final Fate: The Raimi films were all made during a time when, if your name wasn’t Magneto and you were a superhero movie villain, you were dying, a trend I’m certainly glad is finally starting to die off. Thankfully, Green Goblin manages to stick around and posthumously influence Harry, so in his case it’s not so bad. Harry and Doc Ock both manage to overcome the darkness in their hearts at the end and sacrifice their lives to help save the day, while Eddie dies after becoming such a simp for the symbiote he leaps into it while Peter is blowing it up. With Sandman, Peter actually has a touching reconciliation with Sandman at the end, forgiving him for the death of Uncle Ben before Sandman dissolves into dust and floats away on the breeze. And no, this is his power, not Thanos’ snap reaching across time, space, and dimensions; Sandman actually gets out of these films alive.

The other villains actually get off easier, as most of them go to jail. From the Amazing Spider-Man films, DeHaan’s Goblin and Rhys Ifan’s Lizard both end up in prison, and it’s safe to assume that the villains of Spider-Verse are going to jail alongside Kingpin. Octavius was hit by a bus, sure, but considering how popular she ended up being it would be really dumb to have that actually kill her. With Electro and Rhino though, it’s really ambiguous, the former because he’s made of electricity and the way he was defeated means it is possible he survived, and the latter because we never actually see the outcome of his battle with Spider-Man. If the film they were in was actually good and warranted sequels, we may have found out what their true fates were, but at the very least Electro is moving over to the MCU alongside Molina’s Doc Ock.

Oh, right, forgot Riot again. He dies.

Best Scene/Best Quote: I’m combining these this time just to make it easier on me, because in at least in a couple cases the two are the same.

Green Goblin has a lot to choose from, to the point where it’s easy to cop out and just say every scene he’s in is amazing. I’ve always been fond of his chummy chat with Spider-Man on the rooftop, or the scene where he terrifies Aunt May, or the scene where he attacks the parade and vaporizes the board of directors with pumpkin bombs.

Dock Ock is easy: the train battle. This might be one of the best action scenes in any superhero movie ever, and since he’s the villain in it, it almost goes without saying..There’s a reason this scene is singled out so often.

Eddie Brock and DeHaan Goblin actually have their best scenes also be their best lines. Eddie praying for God to kill Peter Parker and DeHaan!Harry screaming “YOU’RE A FRAUD, SPIDER-MAN!” after Spidey refuses to give him a life-saving blood transfusion are just so absolutely hilarious and memorable that you can’t hate them.

Aside from the powerful forgiveness moment at the film’s end, I think it’s really indisputable that the best scene from Sandman, and perhaps the Raimi trilogy as a whole, is the scene of Sandman’s creation. Words really can’t do it justice, so just watch:

Electro’s best moment isn’t even actually part of the movie, unless you want to count his rendition of “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” No, his is from a Tumblr post, proving definitively that Electro’s power can not be contained.

For Olivia, I’d say either of the reveals for her are great. You can go with the twist that she’s the Doc Ock of Miles’ universe, or the twist that she might have fucked Aunt May. Either way, you can’t really go wrong.

The rest of the villains… yeah, I’ve got nothing. At least with Rhino you can say his entire time on screen was fun, but the rest? Nope. They’re kind of just there.

Final Thoughts & Score:

Green Goblin

Where to begin with this guy? He is everything I look for in a great villain: he’s hammy and cartoonish, he can be terrifying and threatening when he wants to be, he has a ridiculous yet memorable costume, every word out of his mouth is hilarious and memorable, and he’s played by an amazing actor. It’s hard to dispute that Doc Ock is the best villain in Raimi’s trilogy, but Goblin is definitely the most fun. If you thought he’d get less than a 10/10, you thought wrong.

Doctor Octopus

Aside from Green Goblin, Doc Ock is Spidey’s most iconic and memorable foe, nd this adaptation of him does not disappoint. By making him a more tragic and somewhat anti-villainous figure and putting him in the hands of someone as awesome and talented as Alfred Molina, they managed to make such a cartoonish villain retain that comic book silliness while still being a legitimately imposing antagonist. I suppose it helps that a director who knows how to balance silly and serous like Raimi helps. It’s absolutely not a shock that the MCU wants to bring Molina back, because really, I can’t see anyone making the dubious doctor nearly as cool as the 10/10 performance Molina gave.

Harry Osborn

Franco’s Harry has an interesting arc, but one that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense under scrutiny. Frankly, his descent into villain is handled well but when he actually gets to be a villain in the third film, things fall apart.. But at any rate, he gets to be cartoonishly hilarious while he pettily ruins Peter’s life, so I think a 3/10 is warranted just for how goofy he is.

Eddie Brock/Venom

For the longest time, I hated Eddie Brock, but loved the Venom symbiote for its fantastic design… A design hampered by the fact Topher Grace keeps sticking his face through the symbiote and talking in his normal voice. But then one day I remembered Eddie literally prays to God for Peter Parker to die, and I realize that as crappy as this version of Venom is, he’s undoubtedly hilarious. A 3/10 mainly because of how hilariously bad he is, though the design of the symbiote is unironically great. Shame Grace kept sticking his face through and that Raimi hates the character.

Sandman

Sandman is a villain who deserved a better movie. Sure, Spider-Man 3 is fun and funny, but a character with this much depth and emotional weight deserved a film of the caliber of Spider-Man 2. At any rate, he adds a bit of class and dignity to the proceedings, and Thomas Haden Church really nails it. He’s a 9/10 for sure.

Lizard

Lizard is just a very boring villain, which is a shame because Lizard is not a boring villain in the comics and other media like the cartoons. I don’t really know if he was the best choice for Spider-Man’s first outing; I’ll at least give him that he’s a more inspired choice than doing the Green Goblin again, but that doesn’t score him higher than a 4/10. As boring as he ends up being, that library fight was pretty cool and had a great Stan Lee cameo, so I can’t say he’s the bottom of the barrel.

Electro

Electro is a villain who desperately deserved a better movie. While his backstory as a nerdy fanboy who got kicked around by the world is nothing new, or fresh, or original, Jamie Foxx manages to make the character work fairly well even though almost everything around him is unbelievably stupid. The fact he managed to make “Don’t you know? I’m Electro” sound cool and badass is a testament to his skill, and thankfully he’s coming back in the MCU in some way, so I guess Electro’s power can not be contained to a single movie. Still, this iteration only manages to get to a 6/10, because while all the elements of greatness are there, he’s hampered by the abysmal writing.

Rhino

Paul Giamatti certainly looks like he’s having a blast here. His attitude is almost infectious, but alas, his time is too brief to bring any great joy, and his jarring appearance out of nowhere at the end of the film certainly do him no favors. Still, Giamatti keeps Rhino from sinking any lower than a 5/10.

Harry Osborn

This Harry is just a joke. His arc makes no sense, his actions are unbelievable, and he ends up looking like a really poor Warwick Davis Leprechaun cosplayer. The only thing of note about him is that he’s a Harry who becomes the Green Goblin before his father, something that doesn’t happen very often, and that’s not enough to score this loser higher than a 2/10. Not even killing Gwen Stacy makes him any more impressive, and that’s a real shame.

Olivia Octavius

Olivia Octavius is widely beloved by just about everyone who sees the film.. myself included. This is just a really fun, clever twist on Doctor Octopus, and it’s the sort of character you really hope gets a Harley Quinn-level break into becoming an iconic character across multiple forms of media. Kathryn Hahn’s fun performance and the wonderful design and fight sequences really make Olivia a 9/10.

Tombstone

Tombstone is a villain you might actually forget is in the movie, which is a damn shame. He’s an albino black man, a badass bodyguard, and has a striking design, but he gets a single line of dialogue and is tasked with bodyguarding a man who not only has cyborgs under his employ, but who murdered Spider-Man with his bare hands. Tombstone ultimately feels really superfluous, which is a shame because around the same time Into the Spider-Verse came out he had a very memorable and well-liked appearance in the Spider-Man video game. It’s a real shame but I gotta give this version of Tombstone a 2/10.

Scorpion

Scorpion has a lot of problems of Tombstone above, but he makes up for a lot of his flaws by having a really cool and striking design. Does it really make him a great villain? No. He’s not particularly well-characterized and he’s really just there to look cool and give Olivia backup. He’s a 4/10 at best, saved from being lower only by his awesome look. Looking cool really can get you far in some cases.

Green Goblin

Out of all the really minor villains in Spider-Verse, this version of Norman might be the best. His role is tiny, only appearing during the scene where the Peter Parker of Miles’ universe gets killed, but his battle with Spider-Man is what sets the entire plot in motion. His cool and terrifying design definitely help make him stand out enough to earn at least a 6/10.

Riot & Carlton Drake

Look, there’s a reason I kept forgetting these guys. They’re not memorable in the slightest. Venom may be a fantastic work of art, but that’s because Tom Hardy kills it in his dual role as Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote. Drake is just a boring corporate villain, the kind I hate talking about and the kind I’d only ever even bother mentioning in a review like this. And Riot is just a generic Big Gray CGI Monster for the hero to have a final battle with. Neither of these two are particularly interesting, and neither deserves more than a 2/10.

That’s it, right? There can’t be any more villains, I must have covered them all. Well, not quite. There’s one more character who is most certainly an antagonist and who I really, really want to talk about. And you’re absolutely not going to believe who it is.

You ready?

Psycho Analysis: Emo Peter

“Now wait,” you may be asking, “Emo Peter? Really? How does he count as a villain?” Well, as Schafrillas pointed out in his video on Spider-Man 3, Emo Peter is actually the antagonist for much of the second act. Peter, influenced by the symbiote, becomes a raging jackass and hurts and alienates everyone around him by being a colossal douchebag, not to mention how violent he gets as Spider-Man. This is very much an extreme case of the hero’s greatest enemy being themselves, because literally, Peter’s enemy in the chunk of the movie with Emo Peter is his own overinflated ego

Motivation/Goals: I mean, at the end of the day, it’s still Peter. He still wants to do the typical Peter Parker stuff, he’s just a jackass while he does it.

Performance: It’s Tobey Maguire busting loose and getting to act like an absolute doofus. There is literally nothing about this that isn’t amazing and I’m sorry if you can’t see it.

Final Fate: Peter eventually comes to realize that maybe the symbiote making him act like an egomaniacal tool is not a good thing, and so rebels against it, ultimately leading him to the roof of a church where Eddie Brock is praying for him to die and, well, the rest is history.

Best Scene:

Best Dance Move:

Final Thoughts & Score: Emo Peter has gotten a bad reputation over the years, but Schafrillas’ video really made me rethink why. As he puts it, Emo Peter comes off not as someone cool, but as what a loser thinks a cool person would be (which makes him still a loser). It seems fairly likely that the audience isn’t supposed to be rooting for Emo Peter or finding him cool, but instead finding him insufferable, ridiculous, and funny. We’re supposed to be laughing at Peter’s egomania, at his absurd and hammy showboating, not cheering him on and desiring to emulate him.

And that ultimately makes it more satisfying when Peter overcomes his ego and decides to rid himself of the symbiote. It might seem like I’m giving Spider-Man 3 a lot of credit here, but even Sam Raimi half-assing a movie wouldn’t leave things completely devoid of underlying brilliance. Emo Peter isn’t a villain in the sense that he’s some superpowered antagonist, he’s a physical representation of the negative impacts of fame and ego on Peter. This is Peter letting go of what makes him a hero and just reveling in being an absolute jerkwad to everyone around him.

I love the memes as much as everyone else of course, but Emo Peter is also a pretty clever symbolic foe. But even though I’m giving him an 8/10, we all know the real reason why he’s scoring so high:

Ok, but that’s it now, right? No more Spider-Man villains? Well, maybe for now. But don’t forget:

There’s gonna be Carnage.

[confessthysiins-moving]

👑 Hannibal Lecter

WOULD I: OH BABY OH BABY YOU KNOW IT

HAVE I EVER BEFORE: NO (and its a crime)

ICON & WRITING SAMPLE : (rip to the sick hannibal psd i used to have and lost)

He can tell before she even enters the room.

An expensive but out-of-fashion perfume, slathered too heavily; covering another smell. New shoes. A small town girl, out of place in Baltimore - too frugal. The anxious sound of acrylic nails picking at her leather handbag. Hannibal glances at the small clock on his desk. It ticks softly. She will not ask if she can sit - she will wait politely to be offered. Likely seat herself too far forward on the chair, as if eager to leave. He leans back, swirling every hint in his mind like wine in a glass. Struggles to form meaningful connections. A closeted queer, perhaps? Rachel... a Hebrew name. A dark-eyed ewe.

***

She has grey eyes, it turns out. Striking against her red hair, fading with stress. The painted edges of her nails dig into the armchair.

"It's not that I hated him, you know? I understood why he did it, all of it. Gambling is, um, it's a real, psychological problem, you know?"

Regurgitated words from half-hearted TV ads, and so-called motivational posters.

"You were angry with him."

Hannibal has some professional interest in this one, though she is far from the first of her kind to sit before him. Just another insecure girl terrified of the violence in her fantasies. She has imagined her hands stained red many times - an influence, if unconscious, to her choice of nail polish. Blood that doesn't wash off. Lady Macbeth and the king at once.

"Angry? Oh, I was furious!" the lady laughs, interlocking her fingers. Prominent knuckles bump together like muddled thoughts. "I... I shouted at Eric a lot. He never said anything. I couldn't stand it... That's why I left."

He imagines her looming atop a bed in the night-choirs of a country home. Outside, perhaps in a shift, blood glimmering like ink on her arms. A house in shambles, plates shattered and chairs upturned. Would she have turned herself in?

"What did your family think of Eric?"

She is pulled from her thoughts for a moment. A pale hand touches something under her sweater. Probably a pendant, some sort of childhood gift. "My... Oh, um. My mother... she always wanted me to marry. I-I'm an only child, and well... you know how old women are. They want to be grandmas so bad."

"But you didn't marry Eric."

Ah, marriage, the greatest war that women wage. It picks at their hearts, cracks their dulcet facades like shellfish. Often, the flesh doesn't spill out. Sometimes it does.

"Oh, God, no. My cousin Winona, bless her soul, she warned me about that kind of man. She's fresh out of her second marriage with some really bad types. I don't think I would've had the courage to leave without her." Nervous chuckling. A secret between them that weighs like stones. A droplet of resentment.

It's too late. This one leaped out before the water could be brought to boil, between the roaring of thunder and the strike of lightning. It's a shame, he thinks. Horror would have looked beautiful on her.

[killingeveperspectives]

Perspective: Can redeeming Villanelle make her character less iconic?

Have you ever heard of the Codex Gigas? Also known as ‘The Devil’s bible’, it is the largest illuminated manuscript in the world according to Wikipedia. It is told that a monk made a pact with the Devil himself and feverishly wrote the entire book in one night! As an acknowledgment to his partner he drew his monstrous figure in one of the pages. Said page looks different from the others, as if touched by some malignant magic. Today we know the reason for it: the page suffered the most deterioration for being the most exposed. For centuries people could not get enough of this character: The Devil. Indeed, we have codified ways to save ourselves from the metaphorical Devil – ourselves. We invented sins and crimes to tame something deeply primal within us. Freud called it id, the origin of all that which makes us tick: impulses, instinct, drives, libido. It reckons only two things: pleasure and satisfaction. If we could strip ourselves from all inhibition there would be impulse and sensation. It would be brutal ecstasy. But what would be of the world if all 7 billion of us would uncompromisingly seek to satisfy our impulses? Hell, so we don’t.

But through art we can glimpse at what this liberation would feel like. Some sort of existential voyeurism. Aristotle would call it catharsis, but what does he know? This is how some of the most remarkable characters were born, they mesmerize us by being their id – unapologetically, terrifyingly, charmingly – like the Devil himself. Characters like Hannibal Lecter, The Joker, Alex DeLarge; they are larger than life, unbind, amoral and extremely bright (and all male). Like Hannibal brilliantly put it in Silence of the Lambs: “Nothing happened to me, officer Starling, I happened” or like the perverted childlike Alex explain in A Clockwork Orange: “What I do I do because I like to do”. As simple as that. Pure satisfaction of impulse because they feel like it. When we, uneased by what they represent, want explanations or justifications, The Joker toys with us, always giving us a different version of his tragic background, as if he knew we want to give him an excuse and, in good joker fashion, he makes a huge joke out of it. They take it very seriously to explain to us what went wrong with them, because it doesn’t really matter.

While the id makes us organic, whole creatures, many attributes of it have been culturally dissociated from womanhood. The violent, self-preserving and egoistic impulses were replaced with nurturing, self-sacrifice and compassion – not surprisingly the only impulse afforded to women is motherhood (or sexual desire for the satisfaction of another). Therefore, women cannot fully materialize their humanity. These raging impulses feel alien to womanhood, something imposed on to them by circumstance so severe that it warps the nature of the female itself. Aggressive women are sad and broken, or vengeful, or mad, or sexualized – these are the portrayals we have been conditioned to expect from fiction. When compared to their male counterparts, even mild violence in a female character almost immediately requires an explanation: how someone betrayed them, or abused them, or they were conditioned into it. Rage and aggression are never theirs to own, it is always extrinsically sourced.

On a superficial level, the character of Villanelle doesn’t seem so unique. Immediately one could think of Nikita in La femme Nikita, who was a drug junkie teen, rescued and transformed into a cold-blooded femme-fatale assassin by the shadowy government group “The Centre” after they faked her death to break her from prison (Uncannily similar?). Or the movie Anna by the same writer, where a Russian girl accepts a KGB offer to be trained into an assassin in order to escape her abusive homelife. Or Marvel’s black widow who is also a Russian spy, apparently brainwashed by USSR to become an assassin. Other female assassins include The bride in Kill Bill who set off into a revenge killing spree after being brutally assaulted and left for dead, and other movies I vaguely remember about abused women becoming assassins to seek revenge, or shallow sexy female assassins with no purpose for existing other than being the sexy female assassin. However, all these characters were made into assassins by external factors. Villanelle is set apart from the typical femme-fatale assassin trope by owning her own joy of killing, by the rejection of the broken female narrative and the rejection of the objectifying male gaze. In order to unmistakably ground these traits alienated from women – violence, disregard, cruelty, indifference, sadism, risk-taking – in her nature, the character was written as a primary psychopath. Being an assassin fits her natural talents, not the other way around    

Villanelle could occupy a very special place among a roster of remarkable fictional characters like the ones mentioned earlier. She is the female embodiment of absolute, remorseless indulgence and rage, representing the unashamed satisfaction of women’s impulses, for her own enjoyment alone, with style and wit – A truly magnetic character and fresh perspective. In psychopathic Villanelle, women are allowed to reclaim these violent impulses, which is oddly empowering and humanizing. Give us that. Brilliantly, the cathartic element is mirrored by Eve herself. Eve too sees her unfulfilled and alienated impulses incarnated in Villanelle, which in turn sparks Eve’s exploration of her own identity. Ultimately Villanelle’s seduction to embrace impulse despite its danger is at the core of their electric attraction and conflict.

Thus, by retconning Villanelle in Season 3, the character no longer represents the provoking embodiment of female drive, managing to become an elevated female assassin trope, at best. The challenging take on womanhood, instead plays into all of the expectations. Villanelle is no longer a female true to her nature that gets a kick from being an assassin; but a troubled girl, tortured into becoming a killing machine by a past of abuse. A broken woman who rejects the violence instilled into her once she finds healing. Interestingly, it is not that she merely chooses not to kill but she is unable to carry on the act, signifying the deeper alienation of the violent impulse from her own self – the same impulse that once made her so iconic. This lack of impetus to kill is but a symptom of the decreased character’s libido in general: fewer shopping sprees, less savory eating, less unpretentious playfulness, less color, less eroticism, less aggression, less danger. Unfortunately, it also means the weakening of her dynamic with Eve. Villanelle is being tamed, and its well… not her best take.

We, the audience, perceive this lack of vitality oozing into the entire show, but once you shift what Villanelle represents this is inevitable. Villanelle becomes mundane, and it brings the nostalgia of the force of nature she once was. It leaves a similar taste as the brutal transformation of Alex from despicable nihilistic hedonist into a model citizen in A clockwork orange: a conflicted perverted sadness at the loss of Alex’s authenticity despite him turning into a “better” human being – ingeniously, his redemption was to gain his despicable impulses back. 

The initial character design of Villanelle was something unique and authentic. However, In the process of redeeming her, she might become a new iteration of a trope explored several times that simply reflect the current space of female characters and lack conceptual originality. Yet, there is still room for the recuperation of Villanelle’s transgressive power: a subversive redemption. By incorporating the impulsive indulgence and violence back into the character, Villanelle’s arc can be taken somewhere new, complex and truly special. A remarkable character we can’t get enough of – like the Devil herself.

[aion-rsa]

Cruella: Does Every Villain Need a Sympathetic Origin Story?

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Clearly this isn’t your parents’ Cruella De Vil. This isn’t even your Cruella De Vil. However, there is something fiendishly charming about seeing Emma Stone charge into a ballroom and light her black and white dress on fire, revealing a chic red number beneath that would do Scarlett O’Hara proud. If fashion is a statement, Cruella is here to say the villain has just arrived!

Yet one can’t help but shake the certainty that by the time we actually learn the plot of Disney’s Cruella reimagining, Cruella will be in anything but black and white, or fiery red. Rather Cruella is obviously posturing to take a sideways approach to an old classic. But then again, that increasingly feels like the only direction these Hollywood redos know: the sympathetic origin story for an iconic villain.

To be clear, we’ve only gotten a glimpse of Stone as the new Cruella, and she looks absolutely fabulous in a black leather coat and cane, purring, “I’m only getting started, darling.” There’s a wildness about this interpretation befitting our current era where Harley Quinn is the hero of her own story, and Wade Wilson now leads a Disney franchise. Nevertheless, when I watch Cruella on the edge of tears in the trailer, barking defiantly that she is CRUELLA—and seemingly embracing an unfair reputation that other characters may be placing on her—a nagging question persists in the back of my head: Do we really need a sympathetic Cruella De Vil?

The trend of supervillains getting intellectual property-expanding sob stories is nothing new, be it at Disney or anywhere else in Hollywood. Maybe 25 years ago when folks liked their villains big and outlandish—think Glenn Close in Disney’s previous live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians—it was novel to see the antagonist become a tragic protagonist. But like everything else with modern blockbusters, that all changed a long, long time ago with something called Star Wars.

Back in 1977 when the original Star Wars movie was released, many audience members left the theater giddy about the world George Lucas created. In a galaxy far, far away, every pop fantasy of the mid-20th century—Wizards! Knights! Princesses! Samurai! World War II ace pilots!—was thrown into a massive cauldron that seamlessly blended these elements.

Luke Skywalker’s galaxy felt like a real place of exotic, lived-in locales, all of which captured that dirt-under-the-fingertips, tactile quality so rarely seen in fantasy stories. Sure the characters might be archetypes, but they came with histories which gave their fantasy space battles human density. Old Ben Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars with Luke’s father Anakin, who was “a gifted pilot.” But what exactly was a clone war? And why was there more than one of them? Also, what did a Jedi’s “more civilized age” look like for Luke’s papa?

For more than 20 years, no one knew the answer to those questions, which made them all the more intriguing, and the “lore” of this fantasy evermore mythic. Then came Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first modern blockbuster prequel devoted to filling in the gaps left by a beloved classic’s mysteries. That movie’s problems are numerous, but at its core the most persistent, lingering issue may still be the reveal that Darth Vader was once a blonde haired little boy with the emotional range of Beaver Cleaver. Of course everyone knew in the abstract sense Vader was once a child… but did they ever really want to see it?

Additionally, did anyone really want to learn Anakin Skywalker’s reason for turning to the Dark Side is because of a bratty streak that followed him into adulthood? Probably not.

Nonetheless, all three Star Wars prequels made massive amounts of money and rather than becoming cautionary tales of what happens when you attempt to explain away all the mysteries of a beloved character, they were the first steps toward a modern staple of media regurgitation where seemingly every mug, pug, and thug would get their own sympathetic redo.

Since then, we’ve learned on screen that Spider-Man’s arch-nemesis Venom, is really a well-intentioned bloke caught in a bad romance (with his alien space buddy), Batman’s arch-nemesis the Joker is really just a Travis Bickle clone with mommy issues, and Maleficent, the reigning empress of badassery in the Disney Villain canon, was really just a woman scorned by Sleeping Beauty’s toxic father. Even Hannibal Lecter became a victim in Hannibal Rising, and the Wicked Witch of the West starred in the most popular Broadway musical of all time… where it turns out she was the hero in a conspiracy with the Scarecrow to pull one over on Dorothy.

To be clear, some of these spinoffs and reimaginings work quite well. Even if I personally am a bit chagrined at Todd Phillips’ Joker being nominated for Best Picture, Joaquin Phoenix’s sad sack killer clown created the space for a riveting performance that reminded mainstream audiences that movies can still be for adults. In another comic book movie, Magneto’s heartbreaking backstory in the Holocaust was expanded in 2011’s X-Men: First Class, which made an already relatively complex supervillain just that much more compelling in Michael Fassbender’s hands.

Overall, however, this approach has left something to be desired. And to get back to Cruella, her remix as a misunderstood tragic heroine appears to owe most of all to Maleficent. In 2014, Disney made a killing when they cast movie star Angelina Jolie as their very best big bad, a character so evil in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty that she was willing to knockoff a princess simply because no one sent her a party invite. That’s cold. And it’s wickedly entertaining. Hence why Maleficent scared and captivated generations of children.

Some characters are just too good at being bad.

The marketing of Maleficent leaned into this with a melancholic cover of Sleeping Beauty’s Tchaikovsky-inspired theme song, “Once Upon a Dream.” Now in a minor key, the new version sung by Lana Del Rey promised a scarier, more menacing version of the story, which was then confirmed by Jolie’s wonderfully devilish laugh. The big bad was finally going to have her day at the ball.

But when the movie actually came out, we learned that Maleficent was an enchanted fairy who’d been wronged. In the end, she didn’t hate Elle Fanning’s Princess Aurora. In fact, she loved the little royal and tried to save her from the curse she herself cast in a fit of justified anger. Ultimately, the sorceress adopts Aurora as the daughter she never had after disposing of her now abusive father. That’s certainly an interpretation. I guess.

It also proved massively successful in the short term, opening at a staggering $175.5 million in its opening weekend worldwide, and grossing $758 million total. Those numbers also exclude merchandising and home video revenues. If you want to know why we’re getting the punk rock Cruella, look no further.

However, did a lot of folks really like Maleficent? It made all the money in the world based on that devious marketing campaign that promised a shocking tell-all about Disney’s closest approximation to Lucifer, but by the time a sequel limped into theater five years later, relatively few seemed to still care about the misunderstood, freedom fighting warrior fairy Jolie played. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ostensibly continued the good fight but flopped at the box office with a cume of $491.7 million, barely more than half of what its predecessor made. (Don’t cry for Disney though, as Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and remakes of Aladdin and The Lion King in the same year made Maleficent 2 look like a clerical error.)

What this whole sputtering franchise reminds us though is that some characters are better left bad, and the mystique of the unknown is an end unto itself. While I enjoyed Phoenix’s take on the Joker, there is little argument the character was even scarier with a PG-13 rating when he manifested out of thin air, like Beelzebub, in The Dark Knight. Or to take a step away from just villains, was Han Solo really any cooler when you learned how he got his name in Solo: A Star Wars Story? Or could you have gone your whole life without knowing thanks to The Hobbit movies that Gandalf and Galadriel were kind of, sort of, just maybe friends with benefits?

The allure of Cruella De Vil is right there in her name: She’s a cruel devil. How could she not be when her entire ambition in Disney’s classic 101 Dalmatians is to skin puppies for their fur coats? Finding out she used to fight the power before hoarding it may make a lot of money, but it doesn’t make her necessarily more compelling.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3dpItie

[garbage-empress]

i haven’t seen SotL could you elaborate?

It took me some googling to figure out what SotL stood for. Silence of the Lambs. It's been a while since I've seen it but I'll try to give a synopsis based on what I remember.

Anyway, everyone remembers Hannibal Lecter as a breakout character, but the actual antagonist of the movie is a serial killer who's been given the nickname Buffalo Bill by the media. Bill is kidnapping women and skinning them to make a skin suit to become a woman or something. I can't remember the exact reason. Most of Buffalo Bill's screentime is spent doing shit like putting on makeup, screaming at captive women to put lotion on their skin (This is where the iconic "It puts the lotion on its skin" line comes from), and tucking while dancing in front of a mirror.

At some point they find Buffalo Bill's former psychiatrist who rejected Bill for gender reaffirming surgery because they say he wasn't trans, he just hated himself and wanted to be a different person, or something. This has a lot of problems on its own, including a lot of transmedicalist bullshit, but I think at the time it was probably an attempt to make the narrative less offensive and mitigate the harm it could cause to public perception of trans women.

But the problem with that, like I said in that post, is that little exchange is not ever going to be memorable to a cis audience the same way an AMAB serial killer putting on lipstick and saying "Would you fuck me? I'd fuck me." to a mirror is going to be memorable. Silence of the Lambs entered pop culture so deeply that Buffalo Bill parodies appeared in comedies released over a decade after SotL, so even people who've never seen it got exposed to this character. "AMAB femme psycho" became sort of a stock character for a while, especially in comedies.

Part of my hate for that movie is personal. I was actually compared to Buffalo Bill by an extended family member when I was in an awkward not-fully-out period of transition and it really hurt my confidence (because at that point I had so little, I have a ton more now) and made me scared of interacting with her kids. I'm guessing other trans people, especially around my age or older, have similar experiences surrounding that movie.

[kryptoniteheadcanons]

Also on my DeviantArt https://www.deviantart.com/akirmijaanit/art/Slasher-Astrology-803431817?ga_submit_new=10%3A1561662768

(Fight Me) 

Reasons-   Billy Loomis (Scream) - Aries:  I don't have a concrete reason for this other than him being the alpha male out of him and Stu, and also just some strong ass fire sign vibes. Brahms Heelshire (The Boy) - Taurus: In the pictures of Brahms' birthday it looks fairly warm and since it's england I decided it probably has to be between April to September, and making him Taurus which is a sign ruled by venus just felt right. He's got a very rigid scheadule he likes, and likes the finer things. Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th) - Gemini: Jason is actually canonically a Gemini, so I don't have a reason for this one. Norman Bates (Psycho)- Cancer -  *insert joke about cancers being obsessed with their mom* Pennywise (IT) - Leo - Pennywise likes to make use of his shapeshifting powers in very creative ways, especially in the remake. He also eats every scene he's in, which sounds like Leo egocentricness to me. Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elmstreet) - Virgo - I took a complete shot in he dark with this one, deciding to cut my loses and say that he's a virgo A) because Virgo's are one of the most common signs and b) because Micheal, Jason, and Leatherface's signs held a bit of irony (them being basically the invert of their signs) and decided to keep the trend going with Freddy's. Micheal Myers- (Halloween)- Libra - Again, this ones canon so no real reason for it. Chucky/Charles Lee Ray (Childs Play) - Scorpio - This one was mostly following a hunch, with how just intense and committed Chucky is with everything plus him literally transforming into a doll (Scorpios are all about transformation) it felt like a good fit. Stu Macher (Scream) - Sagittarius - Stu seems very positive even if it seems like he doesn't really care about the feelings of others, despite him being the more empathetic of the two. Stu doesn't get enough developement Hannibal Lecter (Silence of The Lambs) - Capricorn - I remember reading somewhere that Hannibal does have a canon birthday that makes him a Capricorn, but even with out finding solid proof I think it fits him well enough. He enjoys finer things and strives to be well known in his field, as well as being VERY classy. Thomas Brown Hewitt/Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) - Aquarius- Following suit with the other big iconic slashers, his sign seems sort of inverted whenever it comes to his actual personality. He is definitely strange but he finds himself in a family of equally strange people. John Kramer/Jigsaw (Saw) - Pisces -  Like Hannibal, I saw something that said John had a canon birthday that would make him a Pisces but couldn't find anyting to support the claim. Still, I feel like it's pretty fitting. His citings of several incidents being the catalyst for his change in mindset (and ultimate torturing of people) reminds me a lot of myself and other Pisces having several reasons we can think of for something as well as taking a lot of failures to actually learn from our mistakes. Also, he has a strange sense of mercy about him, often criticizing his underlings for  making things inescapable, which when we're talking about movie slashers seems like a hint of a pisces bleeding heart coming through.

[vantablade]

❚ ⋮ ☆ 006: O’ wingless bird

@the27percent asks: Death ー describe a time she felt she lost a major part of herself?

There is a scene in my mindーa trauma of the grand, theatrical and severe sortーthat played as soon as I read this prompt, but alas because it is very spoilery I can’t quite say what happens. This may change if I consider making a ‘verse dependent on it, but we’ll see. For now, just know that there are few things that make her feel loss like betrayal, for though she knows that while death is inevitable, a death brought earlier than what seems to be naturalーespecially if carried on the betrayer’s bladeーis something that devastates her. Again, it ties into her rejection of power and control, but it also strikes her as profoundly cruel, and while she is no stranger to ruthlessness, witnessing cruelty in such extremes does upset the still-present innocence within her. Cruelty hurts, and it never stops hurting herーshe never becomes desensitized to the presence of evil, rather than it seems to happen in reverse; she, at first, is convinced of only evil, and when introduced to the presence of real and genuine good, the idea of evil becomes far more abstract to her. Witnessing this betrayal, it threatens to send her back into that dark and unreachable place of worldly distrust. 

But, in an event that has already happened at this blog’s current timeline, and one I don’t mind talking about, is the dewinging, inflicted upon her by Ryuko Ametsuchi, Kazumi’s righthand woman. This occurred when Nocturne was eighteen years old, which is the age in which she fully challenged and confronted her mother. Her mother is entirely deluded by a God Complex, as I mentioned before, and her fatal flaw is hubrisーso, when her daughter (upon whom her entire plan is orchestrated around and dependent on) challenges her, rather than nipping it in the bud and utilizing protective precautions for her grand scheme, she indulges her. Why? Because it’d be more funーnothing would amuse her more than the breaking of Nocturne’s spirit, and her worship would be inevitable due to the fact she would have no hope left. In a way, Kazumi is influenced by iconic villains such as Hannibal Lecterーparticularly Mads Mikkelsens’ portrayal, in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibalーdue to the fact her actions are often influenced by whimsy. 

So, Nocturne challenges her: she can escape, and if her mother cannot find her within the month, she has no claim over her body, her soul, her lifeー she forfeits her duty as Prophet, and in turn has freedom to do as she wishes. This, of course, negates her role as Heir, and makes her functionally a political nobody, but Nocturne has no interest in games of politics nor is she particularly interested in being a monarch, especially a monarch who is so obviously controlled. It would be a Gilded Cage situation. Kazumi laughs in the face of Nocturne’s challengeー it is so cute, how generous she is. A month, when the High King is convinced that Nocturne won’t even last an hour. Of course, there is a limitation: Kazumi cannot use her sound manipulationーher control over which is immenseーto bring Nocturne back, since the likes of which would be close to “cheating” due to the fact all Umushi under the rule of a High King are particularly susceptible to their Monarch’s song. 

This does give Nocturne a fighting chance, which is also what Kazumi wants (again, she doesn’t want an easy victoryーshe’d rather Nocturne believe she has a chance and have it ripped from her), and so she escapes. A customary hour of a head start is given, but Kazumi has a secret weapon: a [redacted] that Nocturne is entirely unaware of, who goes by the name of RYUKO AMETSUCHI, and is a relentless, brutal woman. Unbeknownst to Nocturne, this Ryuko is a pyrokinetic Umushiーa thing of which had never existed beforeーand she is unstoppable, torturous and sadistic. She intends to bring Nocturne back to Kazumi, but broken, sufficiently. 

Now, don’t get me wrongーat age eighteen, Nocturne is powerful. Her whole life has been devoted to becoming powerful, at becoming an incredible swordswoman with a fantastic grasp of aquakinesis and combat strategy, as well as her hidden ability to create a pocket dimension, but Ryuko is surprising. There’s an element about Ryuko that I can’t describe here, but know that it deeply unsettled Nocturne and threw her entirely off her game. She is still so naive, and it really was her Achilles’ heel in this battleーwhich effectively was a curbstomp battle, because had it not been intervened by the Coven of the Underbelly of the World (or just Unders), Nocturne would have been brutalised beyond belief and taken back to her mother to recuperate.

[tw for the following paragraph: mentions of graphic violence!] 

However, they did not intervene early enough to prevent Ryuko from tearing open Nocturne’s back with a blade, deep enough into the muscle and sinew to puncture through her Glamour and reach into the very essence of herself. Note that Umushi have thin, almost indetectable lines in their backs to allow wings to slide in and out of, and that these slots where what Ryuko puncturedーexceptionally vulnerable places, and it was an utter and total betrayal of their likenesses. No Umushi before had ever been violated in such a way, and the idea of it being because of each other, their family, was madnessーsacrilege! And yet, it occurred. Ryuko not only sawed off the immensity of her wings, but cauterised the wound so that no depth of healing could allow her Glamour to recover or grow againーshe only has, in her essential form, burnt, rotted stumps, from which only poor copies can grow from, rotted and mutilated and useless. 

This loss was awfulー she literally lost a part of herself, but she also went through a brutal torturous event. She fully almost died, and had she not been saved by the Unders, she would have only survived due to her mother, which would have fostered codependency (Kazumi’s modus operandi) and eliminated all of her autonomy. It was a difficult thing to process, because often it is easy to believe you still love your abuser (and they love you, even despite the cruelty), but that action was so intense that it decimated it. Nocturne believed she lived in a loveless world, and is currently still afflicted by chronic pain. Thankfully, she no longer believes in a loveless world, but she still has an intimate understanding of violence and evil. An innocence was lost, one that had survived even the loss of her eye, and it is doubtful she will ever return to that place of innocence again. 

[tuppencetrinkets]

By clicking HERE you will be taken to a mediafire download for  #798 icons of Anthony Hopkins from the movie “Red Dragon.” These icons were made by me and have been cropped to 200x100 and have been slightly sharpened but are otherwise unedited.  They have not been sorted for usability or clarity, only for face claim.

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[citialiin]

Tagged by: @pcrticlvcid ( a big kiss. ) Tagging: @cardinalrot @seekscryptids @gothsic @betelguide please just take it from me im too lazy and i dont want to forget people :’(

the rest is under the cut so i dont ruin your scrolling experience B)

NAME :  xiaopeng :( NICKNAME : BASIL :)

FACECLAIM :  INVADER ZIM BABEY PRONOUNS : they/them or she/her HEIGHT :  5′6″ :\ BIRTHDAY :  October 16 AESTHETIC :   ex forever 21 employee + asian bbg with lululemon leggings and a fully beat face even tho im just going to trader joes + sad 90s goth from a jhonen vasquez comic LAST  SONG  YOU  LISTENED  TO :  retrey yung joup knea by ros sereysothea FAVORITE  MUSE (S)  YOU’VE  WRITTEN : honestly....im havin a blast writing for zigbert. but i also had fun writing hannibal lecter and invader zim and bill cipher !!

* GETTING  TO  KNOW  THE  ACCOUNT :

WHAT  INSPIRED  YOU  TO  TAKE  ON  THIS  MUSE :  i got really into d*vid b*wie stuff earlier this year and ofc i already loved aliens and scifi so ziggy stardust was right up mi alley.  initially he wasnt even my favorite musical era/b*wie persona (i liked the berlin era stuff more) but he has grown on me a lot and now im even doing my thesis film on a character based on ziggy LOL

also !!! @itscnlyfcrever found some of my b*wie art through my art blog....i was so fascinated with their rp and stuff that i kept thinking i should get back into rp too (i took a three year hiatus after rping zim because school got really hard) so they convinced me to set up my account and stuff!!! and here we are today.......... WHAT  ARE  YOUR  FAVORITE  ASPECTS  OF  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE :  i luv doing alien worldbuilding stuff!!  not like zig had any actual lore to begin with so i get to make up a lot of it and i have a lot of freedom to invent his personality and backstory and alien origins. sometimes i feel like i bore people because all i want to write about is how weird and NOT HUMAN and bizarre ziggy really is....but imo the scifi aspect is more interesting than the celebrity/musician aspect!! (THAT STUFF IS REALLY INTRESTING TOO THO).  i think its fun to write about how obliviously vain and egotistical he is but also about how weird human life is through the eyes of someone who hasnt been on earth for very long WHAT’S  YOUR  BIGGEST  INSPIRATION  WHEN  IT  COMES  TO  WRITING :  oh.......i keep a word document of my favorite HP lovecraft lines that i read through so i can always remember how to be pretentious and wordy :) FAVORITE  TYPES  OF  THREADS :  threads that are exciting and sort of crazy and actiony! i dont like fluffy stuff usually ... i think i really like threads where people find out he’s an alien but i also really like threads that force him to think a lot because i have fun writing out his thought processes. i like plots that really have a definite goal to work towards so i can always know the end goal of what im writing for. ok ngl i like writing with about ziggy and cardinal copia a lot please dont look at me BIGGEST  STRUGGLE  IN  REGARDS  TO  YOUR  CURRENT  MUSE : i am SO deeply self conscious about the way i write zigbert :( ziggy stardust is like a cultural icon but even so he has no backstory or personality (fuck u b*wie you lied ziggy stardust was NOT conceived as a concept album it was just a bunch of songs he had already done put together that he later strung together a VERY VAGUE narrative for) so i feel like every direction i choose to move in....IS THE WRONG DIRECTION LOL like if i make him too shallow, does that contradict the fact that he’s sometimes portrayed as very thoughtful or deep? i make him enjoy his celebrity status and crave attention but does that contradict the way hes sometimes portrayed as a rebel messiah ? sometimes having so little to go off of....makes u feel lost and confused :[ 

i also feel like hes boring. hes supposed to be CRAZAAAAAAY hes a hedonistic promiscuous outer space cocaine snorting alien freak like ... i make him really boring sometimes. its because im a very boring person irl

[tiberiusmadhouse]

while i get my theme fully sorted

RULES

First and foremost: THIS BLOG IS MUTUALS ONLY.

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED, there will be dark topics on this blog. My dark muses are Hydra!Steve Rogers, Hannibal Lecter, and Lucifer Morningstar. Each of these are a mix of media and my own hc, if something makes you uncomfortable either ask to tag or unfollow.

odm stands for On Deck Muse, which will be the ones I’m feeling it for when I reblog the meme. You are, of course, welcome to send in for anyone on the blog, but if they’re not in the tags it may have to wait depending. 

Anon hate will be deleted on sight and go unaddressed. 

Do not ask for tags on anon, I will not judge you for asking to tag. We are both here to let our creative force loose on the world. I will not publish the ask, or respond to that, but I will DM to let you know that I got it as I keep the ask in my inbox as a reminder. 

All icons used are my own, I capped, I cropped, I coloured. I can make a zip file of my caps if you want to make your own. Do not take the icons themselves. 

Smut on this blog is not under a readmore. again, reader’s discretion advised, unless my rp partner’s blog does so then I comply with their format.

TOPIC: THREADS/DASH

Replies are spastic as fuck, I apologize for that but this is not my only blog. A lot of things get queued, but if I’m not here then I’m not here. 

Each post has my old url on it, so if you don’t like the muse you can block the tag and not see it. Having a multi muse blog is easier for me because I don’t have to bounce from blog to blog to blog to (echoes into infinity) to reply to my friends. 

I am trying to gather up all my old verses from ages back, but that’s going to take time as well as finding a good page for each characters dossier. But each thread has a tag for your muse and mine. example: anthony threads ; steve so if you’re looking for a reply start there. 

Whatever your preference on icons it’s your preference and I have mine. You do not need to feel the need to use icons because I am. 

TOPIC: MUN

I work an extremely stressful job, replies are going to sometimes be slow, and sometimes your dash is going to be filled with the most random crack threads. 

My writing preferences run dark, and I will try to make sure I tag things as cw [insert reason here]. Example: cw gore, cw gaslighting, cw abo. Again, either block the tag or unfollow. You have every right to be comfortable perusing your dash. 

[mysticandskepticmuses]

icons left to sort.

12 Monkeys

james cole

jennifer goines

2036: Origin Unknown

machenzie wilson

6 Underground

“one”

Agents of Shield

jemma simmons

grant ward

Altered Carbon

reileen kawahara

takeshi kovacs (both sleeves)

elias ryker

poe

quellcrist falconer

kristin ortega

American Gods

laura moon

Annhiliation

lena

Being Human

annie sawyer

Carnival Row

vignette stonemoss

rhycroft philostrate

Crossing Lines

carl hickman

Daredevil

karen page

wilson fisk

ben poindexter

Deadpool

vanessa carlysle

Defiance

irisa nyira

stahma tarr

Dirk Gently

amanda brotzman

bart curlish

Doctor Sleep

rose the hat

Dollhouse

claire saunders

echo

Expanse

james holden

naomi nagata

amos burton

chrisjen avasarala

Fifth Element

leeloo

korben dallas

Firefly / Serenity

malcolm reynolds

inara serra

hoban washburne

zoe washburne

river tam

simon tam

kaylee frye

Game of Thrones

cersei lannister

daenerys targaryen

jaime lannister

osha

sansa stark

Ginger Snaps

brigitte fitzgerald

Hanna

hanna heller

marissa wiegler

Hannibal

wil graham

clarice starling

hannibal lecter

abigal hobbs

Hellboy

liz sherman

Hunger Games

finnick odair

katniss everdeen

Interview with the Vampire

claudia de lioncourt

louise de pointe du lac

Jessica Jones

jessica jones

kilgrave

Jekyll

hyde

Joker

arthur / joker

Killing Eve

villanelle

Leverage

elliot

parker

Librarians

jacob stone

Lost in Space

john robinson

penny robinson

Matrix

trinity

Mr. Right

martha mckay

Mummy

evelyn o’connell

Penny Dreadful

vanessa ives

Phantom of the Opera

christine daae

Prophecy

gabriel

Punisher

frank castle

Resident Evil

alice abernathy

claire redfield

carlos olivier

Saw

amanda young

john kramer

Star Trek: Discovery

sylvia tilly

Star Trek: the Original Series

spock

Star Trek: the Animated Series

spock

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

jadzia dax

Star Wars (4?)

palpatine

padme

anakin

vader

sabe

Stranger Things

jim hopper

jonathan byers

joyce byers

eleven

max

robin buckley

nancy wheeler

The Haunting of Hill House

olivia crain

theodora crain

The Vampire Diaries

jenna sommers

Titans

rachel roth

rose wilson

dick grayson

bruce wayne

Tomb Raider

lara croft

Twilight

esme cullen

Westworld

dolores abernathy

teddy flood

clementine pennyfeather

White Collar

neal caffrey

Wynonna Earp

waverly earp

wynonna earp

X-Men

wolveirne

jean grey

You

joe goldberg

love quinn

[mimeparadox]

Sark, Subordinate Baddies, and Flexible Loyalties

(With apologies to @derevkosark​.)

If there’s one line that can be considered to be the iconic Sark line, the one that exemplifies who he is, it’s “my loyalties are flexible.” It’s a good line, and David Anders delivers it well.

It’s also the line that ruined the character.

I don’t think it’s a terribly daring to suggest that Sark worked most consistently during Alias’ first two seasons (and even more specifically during the first), and that season three and four’s attempts to do something more substantial with him were largely unsuccessful. Bringing him into the Covenant made so little sense as a character move the series had to lampshade it and pretend they’d answered the question of why he’d done it.  Introducing his father became a dramatic dead end, and one that brought about the wrong kind of thematic resonance—another character with parent issues? His relationship with Lauren was better, but had no center or consistency, its nature shifting depending on the episode.  Even his season four story—which was entirely optional, given that he was no longer a series regular and didn’t need to appear—felt entirely unearned, and seemed to miss the point of his character entirely. Somehow, the more focus the character got, the less he seemed to work, and it wasn’t until season five’s “Bob” that he was at a place where he was actually fun again.  

(It’s worth noting that Sark’s declaration of flexibility comes in “The Telling”—the last episode of season two. This does not at all feel like coincidence.)

The ironic thing is that Sark wasn’t a character that needed much focus.  Characters of his ilk rarely do. Roan, from Nikita, was used perfectly effectively while also being a man of very few words; even though he’s a consistent presence throughout the first two seasons, we never learn much about him, and that’s fine. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for Martine Rousseau, who is absolutely fantastic throughout the first half of Person of Interest’s fourth season (and less fantastic upon her return later in the season, although she’s hardly alone in that), and Anthony, Elias’ leiutenant. This isn’t to say that any of these characters would have necessarily been harmed by additional development, but its absence didn’t hurt them. So why did additional focus, in fact, appear to harm Sark? 

Part of it is simple villain decay. Sark’s first few appearances were all about emphasizing just how badass he was, as he almost single-handedly destroyed FTL and K-Directorate. We didn’t know a lot about him, but we knew he’d succeeded where McKennas Cole had failed—and McKennas Cole had almost killed everyone. And that air of danger remained through most of season one.  By the time season two ended, though, Sark had ceased to feel like a threat. His impressive feats had slowed to a trickle, and he’d been defeated and/or captured too many times, to the point where him getting trussed up Hannibal Lecter style in his season four appearance feels like an extreme overreaction. But that’s secondary to the real reason why the character no longer works, and that’s the fact that his flexible loyalties completely undermine him as a character.

What do we know about Sark, that first season?  We know that a) he’s quite young, and b) his position within the Man’s organization allows him to serve as the Man’s proxy, suggesting that he is not only skilled but also reliable.  This suggests some sort of relationship with Irina, one that goes beyond boss/subordinate. The popular fan theory is that she played a pseudo-maternal role, making him a sibling of Sydney’s, emotionally if not biologically.  

This element—the deeply important pre-existing relationship we don’t know much about, is a key reason why flunkies can get away with not having much focus. How do Roan and Percy know each other? How do Irina and Sark?  Martine and Greer? We have no idea, but what we see of their relationship suggests a lot of interesting things, even if we never actually get them.  

So Irina and Sark have a relationship. Why, then, are Sark’s loyalties quote-unquote flexible?  Why would Irina trust him at all if that is the case?  And it’s not as if the statement is inaccurate. Even if one believes that Sark is acting according to Irina’s instructions in “The Telling” when he sells her out, that doesn’t explain why he chooses to remain with the Covenant, or why he eventually chooses to go freelance.  Imagine separating Roan from Percy / Division without explanation and trying to tell stories with him. What exactly would those stories involve?  

Granted, Sark is made to join the Covenant partly because Irina is out of pocket for all of the third season, but that’s a less-than-satisfying explanation. For one, the writers didn’t know that would be the case when they had him suggest that he’ll work for whomever is most convenient.  Second, Irina’s absence didn’t mean they had to divorce Sark’s character from hers; it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just use him as her proxy, the way Katya was later used. Or, heck, suggest he was infiltrating the group on her behalf. Or suggest that he actually felt betrayed by Irina, so he’s now adrift. “Sark is loyal to Irina” gives you a starting point; even if circumstances mean you can’t tell the story you’d like, it at least gives you a direction to follow. Once you remove Sark’s loyalties, you’re left with nothing, and you’re forced to come up with stuff about him being the heir to a half-a-billion-dollar fortune just to give him something to do.

There’s also the problem that for someone whose loyalties are flexible, they oftentimes weren’t flexible enough. I’ve already mentioned his inexplicable attachment to the Covenant, but there’s also his reluctant partnership with Irina and Sloane at the tail-end of the series, which degrades to the point where he admits he has no idea what he’s doing there, but still not enough for him to just sell them out. A truly wild card would have helped the good guys as much as he helps the bad guys, and yet the only episode where a willingness to do so is in evidence is “Bob.” Flexible loyalties (or seemingly flexible loyalties) can be very fun—Nikita uses them to fantastic effect, both in the character of Cyrus, and with most of the show’s core cast—but on Sark they’re largely a bore, because there’s rarely an actual question of where he’ll land.    

In the end, is about consistency. You can have a character with variable loyalties, but there has to be something underpinning that variability.  Given that characters like Sark’s core is their relationships and loyalty, they can’t just be undermined nilly-willy.  Unfortunately, this is precisely what Alias did.