#IT’S REALLY BEEN 10 WHOLE DIMENSIONAL YEARS I CANNOT BELIEVE

[chromsai]

2024 AND ONCE AGAIN WE ARE CELEBRATING YUYA SAKAKI MY PRECIOUS ANGEL MY ABSOLUTE TREASURE I LOVE YOUR SMILE MY BABY BOY HAPPY YEAR OF THE DRAGON TOO BTW HITOTSU NI

it’s 2018 & this is still my biggest mood

[lioncunt]

any way the wind blows review!!!

gonna put it under a cut but tl;dr i really really loved it and even the things that i was on the fence about i’ve decided i love as well lmfao

so i kind of knew going into both this and wayward son that the plot wouldn’t really EVER be as narratively satisfying as carry on’s. it would definitely be interesting and have a lot of cool thematic elements, but in terms of being a grand deconstruction of the “chosen one” genre, it couldn’t ever get better than carry on. and i’m so happy rainbow didn’t try to MAKE it that. she didn’t pull a supernatural and up the stakes to impossible, outlandish degrees. both wayward son and awtwb had realistic, fascinating plots that served as a metaphor for the internal struggles of the characters.

the reason i’m beginning this review by talking about the plot is because it’s what i’ve seen the most criticism directed towards. and like i DO get it, i also was taken aback at first at how the actual plot is kind of background noise for the first couple hundred pages. but like...i think it WORKS. again, this whole trilogy is a deconstruction. that’s its PURPOSE. obviously it’s doing other things as well, but it started by taking this well-worn and well-loved trope and completely turning it on its head, giving us permission to acknowledge all the damage it causes and how our love of this type of story is honestly kind of harmful. we turn off that part of our brains when we read harry potter or something else with traumatized child protagonists, in order for us to actually enjoy it, but the simon snow trilogy has always said, “hey, this is kind of fucked up, huh? you’re allowed to think that.”

anyway, the way that translates to the plot here is that there’s not always some huge mystical big bad, or obviously evil antagonist. the horror can be going on in the world around you, in the background of your day-to-day life dealing with your own shit, creeping up on you until suddenly your loved ones are spouting off nonsense that is an absolutely CHILLING allegory for eugenics, by the way, which i’ve seen NOBODY talk about. the clear political parallels were so well done, but not heavy-handed, and they worked wonderfully as an ending to this story. simon at the end being a target for an angry mob, who are victims of intense ableism themselves (the metaphor of being a weak mage = having a disability), how these religious extremists will point at what they deem abnormal and use them as a scapegoat, the disgusting “survival of the fittest” mentality leading to “i can make this society great again” - it was all just incredibly well written, in my opinion. and the fact that it happened so slowly, in the background, made it all the better. you don’t really notice how bad it’s getting until it’s BAD.

it also, again, works so well as a manifestation of the characters’ inner strife. others have put it better than me already, so i won’t talk about it too much, but the fact that the book is saying you don’t need to be like everyone else in order to accomplish great things and have a good life, you don't need to have magic, you don’t need to be human, you don’t need to be neurotypical or able-bodied or straight or white or ANYTHING these people will have you believe in order to make you obedient to them and hateful to others -- it’s fantastic. 

this kind of segues into the other big criticism i’m seeing, which is simon and baz’s one-day breakup. again, this has already been analyzed well, so i won't ramble about it, but wayward son was their breakup. metaphorically speaking. and i’m glad that it didn’t take some big, grand moment for them to get back together, even though it would have been narratively cathartic. that’s not how life works - it was so much better and realistic to have simon face the harsh difficulties of TRYING than dragging out a separation plot line that would have added NOTHING to his character. or baz’s. the only thing about their entire relationship that i would have done a bit differently is shorten the timeline, because a year and a half is a very long and honestly unrealistic time to go in a relationship without talking about sexual history or going on dates, even if there’s a lot of baggage. but that’s not that big a deal and i’m easily able to look past it.

(as a side note I'm getting annoyed at seeing all these takes that there’s too much sexual content. like i get it because the first two books are solidly YA and this is being marketed as YA even though it’s definitely NA, but like....sex is important. sex scenes and sexual content are an extremely important part of depicting the human experience. and lack of sex as well!! every single intimate scene between them was NOT super graphic and had such incredibly important significance narratively and character-wise - and yeah that includes any kinks that were brought up, like jesus they’re in their 20s and have been in a non-sexual relationship for a year and a half i think it’s pretty fucking relevant that there are intimate scenes!!! anyway moving on.)

i really loved penny and shepard’s plot - their relationship was so wonderful and charming and excellent for their characters, and i only wish we could have gotten their demon plot threaded into the larger picture, because after shepard was cured it felt like they were just standing there. that’s one of my very few complaints about the book. but they’re such good characters and i love them SO MUCH.

AND THANK GOD FOR AGATHA AND NIAMH. like i cannot put into words how fucking happy i was when i realized where that was headed. the cinematic nature of agatha and niamh helping the goat give birth while simon’s flying in the chapel and being targeted by a mob was just. so cool like i can’t even describe it it was so coooooool and then agatha and niamh KISSING and agatha found her PLACE and I'm so happy for her.

just in general the characters and relationships were fucking exquisite. i can’t help but love the way RR writes, especially her dialogue. it’s so real and three dimensional and her characters truly come alive and i care about them and love them so much. i’m so happy they’re happy, i wouldn’t have been able to stand it if they weren’t.

and everything got wrapped up so well in my opinion!! i don’t know what the hell people are talking about when they say they still have questions, like girl what about??? simon found his family, simon got a sword that isn’t tied to trauma, baz found out that he’ll get to grow old with simon, all their families are okay, penny and shepard are in love, agatha’s herding goats and a lesbian, there will probably be new threats and antagonists but they'll be able to handle them, life will continue to be difficult but they’ll get through it like WHAT do you not understand what’s not clicking i genuinely want to know. 

ok actually i have ONE single question and that’s. did baz pick up the sword at the end. because the way it’s written it sounds like he did and i like do not understand that at all. someone answer please.

anyway that’s my review 10/10 would recommend

[militantinremission]

Is Roe vs Wade Just The Beginning?

I wanted to watch the effect of SCOTUS' reversal of Roe vs Wade before adding My 2 Cents to the Pool of Thought. For The Record, I FULLY SUPPORT a Woman's Right of Expression. The 14th Amendment guarantees the Right to Life, Liberty, & Due Process- protecting the Right to Privacy for ALL American Citizens. Last time I checked, that includes Women. I personally believe that overturning Roe vs Wade is a 4th Dimensional Chess Move, more than a watershed moment in Conservative Politics. The reverberation is too multifaceted.

Mainstream Media is running w/ the narrative of SCOTUS infringing on the Right of Women to choose what is best for them individually. 14 States have already moved forward w/ a Ban on All Abortions. People are pointing to a 10Yr Rape Victim in Ohio, that was forced to travel to Indiana for an Abortion. 10 is NOT a childbearing age, so why would States like Ohio force young girls to carry potentially dangerous pregnancies to Term? Meanwhile, Women have taken to The Streets Nationwide in protest of SCOTUS' decision.

As bad as the overturn of Roe vs Wade is, the LGBTQ... Community is concerned about Justice Clarence Thomas' comments; they're waiting for The Other Shoe to drop... Joe Biden's Executive Order should counter Justice Thomas' thoughts about 'Abortion Pills' & the legality of sending them across State Lines, but the subject of Gay Marriage may be revisited. I find myself pondering what else will be jeopardized by the overturn of Roe vs Wade? Right now, it feels like this was just the 1st domino.

As an Indigenous Black American, I have issues w/ Abortion. While I understand & support a Woman's Right to Choose what's best for her, I also understand that Abortion is a Weapon of Genocide in My Community. 'Planned Parenthood's' connection to Margaret Sanger CANNOT be ignored. This Woman was a staunch Anti- Black Racist & Eugenicist, that inspired Nazi Germany. For some reason, Planned Parenthood locations are more plentiful in Black Communities than White Communities; despite the Black Population being roughly 25% of the White Population Nationwide.

For the sake of convenience, I use the term 'Planned Parenthood' generically to represent Abortion Clinics in general. The Truth is, any OB-GYN can perform an abortion, & many of these 'doctors' have done cruel & irreparable harm to Black Women over the decades. I have heard my share of Horror Stories over the Years, about Black Women going in for an Abortion, & coming out Sterile, or worse. This is not to say that Women of other ethnicities don't have similar experiences; i'm just pointing out that No Other Group has been targeted to the degree that Black Women have.

When looking @ the History of Western Society, Abortion has been a tool of empowerment for Western Women. Before Roe vs Wade, Pregnancy for Women in America was a life changing experience. Many were required to give up their professional dreams, in exchange for Motherhood. More than a few of Us have Mothers that went back to School later in life; some joined their children in College. Legalized Abortion gave Women choices. Men that weren't responsible enough to use contraceptives don't really have a say in what a Woman feels, or thinks is best for her when she gets pregnant.

The whole issue of Abortion is something of a 'Grey Area' for me. I can understand & support a Woman's decision to abort. Some may not be in a position to bring a Child into The World. Some may be victims of Rape, Incest, or Molestation. The (Pro Life) notion of Adoption or Foster Care doesn't resonate as much as it did in The Past. We live in Dangerous Times, & a pregnant Woman still has The Right to decide if She wants to blindly give her Child away to a Stranger. On the flip side of this argument, Abortion IS NOT Birth Control. If Young Men & Women want to be sexually active, or even promiscuous, they should also be responsible.

Abortion should be a Health Care issue between a Woman, the potential Father, & her Doctor. The Politics of Abortion can be somewhat confusing; Pro Lifers made their choice, why can't these Women have a Right to Choose?. What is gained from harassing Women outside Clinics on possibly the Worse Day of their lives? Isn't this a form of Bullyism? During their Confirmation Hearings, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, & Amy Coney Barrett ALL said that They respect Roe vs Wade as Legal Precedent or The Law of The Land. These same 3 Justices were the deciding votes in the overturn of Roe vs Wade- were all 3 Justices lying in front of The Committee?

The overturn of Roe vs Wade feels like the beginning of a bigger narrative. America is moving more & more towards Authoritarianism. Voter Restriction/ Gerrymandering, Bail Reform, Gun Control, & now Abortion, are all Hot Button Issues. The Masses are Angry, & taking to The Streets. Is this by design? It all feels like a convenient excuse for Authorities to double down on (current) Policing Protocols, as They prepare for those 'Angry Mobs'... It's pretty surreal to think that Government (Federal, State, & Local) believe that They can scare The Masses into choosing Security over Freedom of Expression. I assume that They're looking for support outside of 'The Hood'.

Even more absurd, is the Talking Point being pushed by Democratic Operatives. The notion that the only way to fight for Abortion, is to Vote Democrat in the next Election. Really? The Democratic Party is sitting in the 'Catbird Seat', & has only achieved moderate success. There are issues like Voter Repression, that can be easily handled by pointing out the language of the Voting Rights Law, but Dems have been silent. Why should we expect anything different if more Democrats were put into Office? Black America is collectively losing faith in the Democratic Party. Abortion Rights aren't enough to secure The Black Vote. We have more interest in Reparations, than Abortion.

From a Black Perspective, Abortion is not as big a deal in Our Community, as it is in White Communities. I do find it curious how (Indigenous) Black Women are depicted as 'Welfare Recipients' that make babies for a larger check; but @ the same time, Black Babies represent the largest proportion of aborted pregnancies. In fact, of the roughly 44 Million Legal Abortions performed between 1973- 2022, over 19 Million were Black Babies... This looks like genocide to me.

When We turn back The Clock to the 1970s & 1980s, We see the effect of Benign Neglect on Our Community. In the past, pregnant Black Women had Family support. By the 1980s, Black Communities were transformed into Ghettos & Slums, where Families struggled to provide for their Own Children. Abortion became an option. Planned Parenthood locations literally popped up in Black Communities, just in time for The Crack Experiment. Our Community hasn't been the same since.

Along w/ Benign Neglect & Crack Cocaine came the images of Black Women as 'Playthings'- to be used, abused, & discarded. Record Executives like Jerry Heller, Lyor Cohen, & Jimmy Iovine produced & promoted music & videos that were disrespectful of Black Womanhood & Femininity. White Television & Movie Producers depicted Black Women as unsophisticated, materialistic, & promiscuous. It started w/ referring to Black Women as 'Bitches', but overall, the language used towards Black Women warped into the THOT Culture that We see today. It didn't happen overnight. It may also explain how a traditionally conservative group, like (Indigenous) Black American Women can be associated w/ a 43% Abortion Rate.

Abortion, from a White Supremacist perspective, is a deadly serious matter. The European Population is shrinking. White Genetic Survival, is the Prime Motivation of any White Supremacist. From that angle, overturning Roe vs Wade makes sense. White Supremacists thrive on oppressing Soft Targets, & White Women have been the nearest, easiest, & softest Target for them to oppress. Overturning Abortion Rights offers these sadistic Men the opportunity to force their Women to carry pregnancies to birth; whether they want to, or not... They get to live like their Grandfathers.

-But today's Women aren't their Grandmothers.

[snicketstrange]

The asoue efect and The why

.One of the coolest scenes I saw in 2020 was the question that Roxy222 asked Daniel Handler. She asked "why?" Roxy222 (11) wanted to know why Daniel Handler couldn't count on disclosing whether Esmé had survived or not. As usual, he didn't respond. But before "not responding" Daniel Handler made several facial expressions. I am not a master of facial expressions, and my skills as a detective have been extremely flawed even though I love to show them off. But recently I found myself mentally reviewing that scene and the scene in which he ignored my question about Betrice.

You did not see exactly what exactly happened to me, and I did not have the courage to divulge in detail my impressions of what I saw. It is true that he smiled. But that smile had a touch of a word that I tried to escape for a long time, and that haunts me today, but that I finally have the courage to pronounce it: "disappointment". He wasn't angry with me for being an adult asking that. He was disappointed in me for asking about it.

The facial expressions he showed with Roxy222 seemed totally different. As I described it once, he went through a moment of anguish, having to deny the answer to Roxy222. But he knew he needed to deny the answer. Other fans went through similar situations, and his reaction was always to deny answers.

I first believed that this was like a marketing strategy. I thought that as long as he didn't provide definitive answers to ASOUE's mysteries, he would always keep his work relevant among theorists. But Daniel Handler's attitude towards snicketiologists is one of indifference, which borders on contempt. So he doesn't seem to support asoue's search for answers ... At least not from the heart. Maybe at first he felt something like that ... But that just doesn't answer the question that Roxy222 asked: "why?"

I later started thinking, "Daniel Handler got tired of ASOUE. He no longer wants to be recognized as the writer of ASOUE, but he wants to be recognized for having written under his own name." But that also doesn't make sense. He wrote other books using the name Lemony Snicket.

Now, thinking again about those facial expressions, about PFB's arrival, about how excited he was about this new book ... I think I understand DH's current feelings about asoue. And I understand even more about the work.

I believe that Daniel Handler considers ASOUE to be something really good. I believe Daniel Handler is one of the biggest fans of ASOUE, and the only one who can connect with ASOUE in a way that no other can connect. Me, Dante, Roxy222, Sherryann and many others here connect with ASOUE in a similar but less intense way. We feel what I just called "ASOUE effect." And to understand that, I have to say that the ASOUE effect is something that was created by itself, but it is very real.

Let me use an example from nature: proteins. Proteins are formed by a strip of amino acids. The instructions in our genetic material tell you how to make the amino acid strip. But it is not exactly the strip of amino acids that gives the final function of the protein. The strand of amino acids, while being synthesized in our ribosomes, starts to surprisingly wrap around itself and form a three-dimensional piece. And this three-dimensional shape, which was not written anywhere, gives the main function of the protein. Each of those amino acids, being in the ideal place, is what guarantees the final shape of the protein.

Daniel Handler was the author of the words and phrases that are in ASOUE. But what ASOUE ended up becoming was something that exceeded the author's own expectations. I am not referring to sales success. I'm talking about the work itself. ASOUE was not the result of a great advance planning of all the details. In fact, even the initiative to create content like this, aimed at 10 year olds, didn't even come from Daniel Handler. The final number of books had not been planned from the beginning, and I am sure to imagine that Lemony Snicket became fascinated with the number 13 by simple coincidence ... I think it had to do with the number of chapters of the first book. It turned out to be very stylish. The photographs in LSTUA already existed before ASOUE existed ... And they helped to form a universe in the readers' imagination. A universe capable of being imagined. If we add Mr. Helquist's drawings to the equation ... And then the jokes that Daniel Handler made for ASOUE that ended up becoming background events. And the underdeveloped characters and events that ended up becoming very cool mysteries. The black comedy for children that ended up becoming a question about human morals. 

These things don't seem to have been intentional. But the effect of it all together, the way it happened, gives a unique effect. The ASOUE effect has become something that no one can replicate perfectly because the imperfections, coincidences, inconsistencies, lack of discernment, drawings, photographs, poetry, and Daniel Handler's somewhat aimless creativity have come together in an incredible way to form a set of actually much more impressive work than Daniel Handler himself could have done by his own willpower.

Thus, I believe that Daniel Handler cannot say some details about ASOUE simply because he realized this: if he, as an author, touches on one of ASOUE's sensitive components, the entire ASOUE Effect can fall apart in his own hands. It is as if asoue were that quarterly protein structure, and it was the ribosome that produced the amino acid strand. If he exchanged one amino acid for another, that whole protein could fall apart and form a mutant monstrosity. Daniel Handler put ASOUE on the pedestal he deserves to be surrounded by a strong security system. The ASOUE effect is as valuable as it is sensitive to his observations. And he will never reveal any additional details, for fear that it will ruin one of the coolest lierary works of the past 20 years.

And when I think of the face of disappointment he threw at me, I understand the reason for that disappointment. He was saying to me something like, "Can't you appreciate the beauty of it? And can't you feel how fragile it is? Are you, a fan, trying to destroy a magnificent piece like this by asking me a question like that? If you you can't even see it, you are not a real fan. You are just an idiot. "

Well, Daniel Handler ... I'm here to tell you that I can see now. Congratulations on having had the opportunity to write this. And congratulations on the courage to make asoue have a life of its own. 

I will not do anything else that could end up killing the very creation I admire. I'm still going to make theories, probably. But they are harmless, as long as you don't confirm or deny them. They are just side effects of the ASOUE effect. But I think you already know that.

[michaeloneillwords-music]

Oasis: Knobworth. Cocaine, Caricature and ‘The Culture Industry’s’ wet dream.

This week sees the release of the documentary film ‘Oasis Knobworth 1996’ which marks 25 years since the Manchester rock band played to over a quarter of a million disciples in a field in Hertfordshire across two nights. Obviously brand Oasis couldn’t miss the opportunity to celebrate its own greatness, in what is now being understood and accepted as some sort of era defining moment in pop cultural history. As a native of Manchester, who whether he likes it or not is psychically entrenched in the cities musical and cultural legacy and who was 15 years old when this event took place, I equally cannot miss the opportunity to challenge this retro fetish overstatement and present my own subjective understanding and experience of watching these caricatures of sex, drugs and rock roll as they rose to prominence. Let's face it ‘the culture industry’ has always needed fodder to sell to a teenage audience who in coming of age are flirting with the mask of social identity which is heavily informed by pop culture, and from late 1995 onwards Oasis, led by the brothers Gallagher were that fodder. The juggernaut of utter nonsense that they were peddling really began with the release of their sophomore effort (What’s the story) Morning Glory on the 2nd of October 1995, which to this day has gone on to sell in excess of 22 million copies worldwide, figures that depressingly highlight the state we are in as a species. Upon hearing the album as a 14 year engrossed in pop music culture I immediately disliked it. Gone were the walls of thick guitars, punkish irreverence and embellishments of baggy Northern Psychedelia that marked the best moments of their debut album, instead the listener was subjected to an overly clean, acoustic, commercial sounding record that was lyrically lazy, pedestrian and trite, to me it was and always will be an artistic car crash. It sounded immediately like a band uninterested in challenging itself or its audience, who instead were solely concerned with mass appeal, shifting units and making money. Whilst it should always be noted that the Gallagher brothers made no attempt to hide their aspirations for commercial success, material wealth and brand ubiquity, I simply find such sole motivations a turn off, that, more often than not result in utter dross, the kind that defines Oasis’ discography. Indeed, any ascent to the summit of pop culture will rarely be the sole result of an absolute desire for honest and uncompromising artistic expression, to just ‘make something’ regardless of economic reward or consideration for the consequences of what that expression communicates, represents or signifies. Indeed, such an approach will often come into direct conflict with the bottom line of the music industry, which is solely concerned with profit, monopolistic market control, the dissemination of ideology and projection of archetypes. And so it is that far from the ‘deviant bad boys of pop’ peddled by the culture industry press from 1995 onward, Oasis were actually a very obedient market vehicle for profit, who promoted nihilistic hedonism, idolatry, narcissism, misplaced masculinity, benign sexism, cocaine, lager and a depressing caricature of working class identity, and last but not least a brand of Beatles infused substance devoid pub rock. The ‘culture industry’ had been peddling this sort of shit from the mid 60’s in pop music and long before in general pop culture and as a result dear reader it was obviously very marketable once again to the mid-nineties teenage generation and to many subsequent generations for that matter. The game doesn't change. Oasis were and remain a wet dream of ‘the culture industry’, all too happy to short change a generation of youth culture with their destructive notions of cool, short sighted egocentric one dimensional outlook, and celebration of pack animal conformity under a banner of ‘rock and roll’ which signals ‘defiance’ ‘deviance’ and ‘hope’ but when unpacked and interrogated actually reveals a concession and obedience to the drudgery, depression and anomie of a top down controlled market culture by both the band and its disciples. They were without doubt a grey cloud of hard materialist understanding and sense pleasure that would leave Saint Francis of Assisi empty inside and reaching for a razor blade. I think it was the idolatry, narcissism and the reductionist mask of masculinity (that were all no doubt in the air at Knobworth, I couldn’t actually say as I wasn’t there, I had seen them on 26/11/1995 at the Manchester Nynex, and although I certainly do have deep seated masochistic tendencies everybody has a limit, and once was enough) that the band and its followers displayed that really didn’t sit well with me when the cultural juggernaut of Oasis and Britpop took off. These traits were for the most part distilled, embodied, displayed and performed by the band's frontman Liam Gallagher, a man whose answer to all of life’s existential conundrums is a pint of Carling. To me, Liam always carried a look of someone who had been asked a question they didn’t understand and was just trying to front it out with a gormless stare in an attempt to display some presence of depth and mystique to his onlooking disciples and celebrity obsessed media. When he did speak his articulations rarely got beyond how he was ‘mad for it’, how he was the ‘best frontman’ in the ‘best band’ and when his adopted mask of self-confidence was ever threatened would often bark ‘fook off’ in deflection and defence. Gallagher became the ‘Archetype’ that the modern-day British working class (and wannabe working class) alpha male identity is built on. Replete with feather cut, stone island jacket, adidas originals and cheap cocaine, ready to perform the identity prison they have adopted until the cows come home. I occasionally ponder as to whether the clinging too and performance of such a symbolically material identity merely masks an innate fear, and serves to deny the unpacking and unmasking of the ‘authentic self’, and how that process would more than likely contradict the projected ‘tower of strength’ that is indefinitely projected and protected by this deflective mask. I mean I thought we were an expression of consciousness with the innate capacity for creativity, who are looking to integrate the inner self into the ‘persona’ so as to not be imprisoned and tormented by the demands of the social mask, the gulf between the two and its insistence for the inauthentic? Who knows, and ultimately who really cares in this day and age. In terms of the idolatry, the fans deification of Liam and his brother Noel, alongside their deification of John Lennon, the two Paul McCartney's, Bozo and Poor Weller also really pissed me off when I was 15 and still doesn’t sit right with me today. It's the rock n roll hierarchy-musical establishment-gotta pay your dues-know the classics-they’re a fucking genius claptrap that really gets me goat. I mean fuck off, they've just made a record aided and abetted by an industry who want to flog them to death for moolah, and i’m expected to sit here and believe they're some sort of god like genius that captured the feelings of a mass populace, nah mate, it was capital backed exceptional marketing and mass gullibility. Limmy would capture working class culture in a 20 second video clip shot on his phone for nothing entitled “She’s turned the weans against us” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5VaPQflLq0&ab_channel=Limmy) in a far more profound and meaningful way 15 years after Knobworth. Furthermore, music solely informed and inspired by music and music history makes me want piss on my own face. That whole disciple of rock n roll dogmatic cultish crap, we want to be like our hero's motivation is so very depressing. I mean you’re having a unique subjective sensory experience, migrating through your own orbit of experience, and then when you engage with your creative faculties as a singular human being you adopt wholesale the principles and goals of those who’ve gone before you, or equally when simply embodying your identity it’s one built on the fetishization of a vapid celebrity archetype? Really? Really though? You’re not gonna take the opportunity to figure yourself out and project the uniqueness of your experience, reject or accept the external organising principles or merely just ‘mix the fucker up’? Hey who am I to pose such questions I guess, and in the immortal words of Oasis “You have to be yourself, you can’t be no one else”. Ha. I do think that line should now be updated to “you have to be a caricature of yourself because you cannot be anything else” though. Ooooh. Anyway, I shouldn’t really be blaming the current mask of one dimensional male social identity or celebrity deification on Oasis, they’re merely a cog in a machine that reproduces this reproduction over and over. However, that doesn’t detract from the fact that they are Manchester's greatest cultural own goal (shame really cause after the opening 5 or 10 minutes I was thinking we've got a team here), who made and continue to make to this day nonsensical grey groove-less drudgery a viable commodity with posthumous releases and as solo artists. Now that may be easy for me to say, as I was without doubt somewhat spoiled by exposure to the cities compelling history of DIY music from a young age, from the shadowy existential concrete corridors of Joy Division to the sharp witted marriage of high/low brow culture and realism/surrealism presented by The Fall, all the way through to the theological and philosophical street politics of The Stone Roses. Come 1995/96 I maybe expected more, but therein was a lesson for me, never expect, and indeed, always take the art and never the artist, and never ever deify. Musically Oasis were breathtakingly boring, real stodgy laboured stuff, and lyrically, to be brutally honest they were cringeworthy and embarrassing. However, to give them their due they did have conviction, but I’m sure that fellow Northerner Harold Shipman also had conviction in his creative output, but ultimately that doesn’t mean it was any good now does it? To me Oasis sounded like they were sent from the back of a battered cement mixer, or the lounge of the Robin Hood, or from the bottom of an overflowing ashtray on a coffee table in a council flat where shit cocaine is being relentlessly sniffed and Sky Sports News plays indefinitely. Symbolically they may be best defined as a scrunched up and discarded losing betting slip on the floor of a bookmaker’s that is heavy with the air of momentary hope, desperation, and inevitable loss. No thanks. P.S Look, all subjective criticism aside, Oasis spoke to millions and for that I congratulate them, they just never really spoke to me. Initially Liam and Noel were a breath of fresh air with their straight up lads with guitars attitude, riding their obvious desire with endlessly projected self- belief. However, to me there was just nothing after that initial Jab of intent present on Definitely Maybe and in interviews circa 94/95, there was no hook, combination or knock-out punch. Couple that with a general lack of grace, rhythm and finesse in the ring and to me as a spectacle it became boring very quickly, and as the rounds wore on that predictable Jab looked tired and stale, and the self-belief turned to coke fuelled narcissism. The ‘flock identity’ that materialised in the slipstream of their ascent and especially the attitude mimicry that was present then and remains today in the ‘Oasis Fan’ to be truthful is touch tragic. Furthermore, I've always held a deep-seated scepticism of the dynamics and motivations of 'the crowd' at the point of critical mass, especially when corporate power is deeply involved and invested in the relationship between the art and the audience. D'you know what I mean?

[teacup-tai]

Top Five of 2020

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (ish) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

My lovely @the-starryknight thanks for the tag!  I’ll tag a few people, but you probably already did it: @ruinsplume @kasjophe @gallifrey1sburning @quicksilvermaid @prolix- @dazedandinked 

Right. This year was insane, I got stuck first half of the year in Ireland with only 2 friends close by, all my family in Brazil or Spain while I was writing my bloody master thesis (that is what I’m proudest of this year, but it’s not published yet, so won’t go in this list). I managed a lot of hard emotions in solitude, by myself, while reading drarry fics to keep afloat (great coping mechanism, actually!). And after handing my thesis and moving to Spain, I was feeling deeply empty. So I went back to fic-writing, after 2 or 3 years of not even looking at my old fics. 

It all started when I saw the posts for prompt claiming on the @hd-hurtfest  blog. To think how that post changed everything in my life is just bizarre. So I am very thankful! It has been a huge pleasure to go back to fic-writing and to re-embrace the HP fandom, mainly the drarry squad! To get to know so many lovely people and I’m forever grateful for that. 

Here is my Top Five:

hear me (with your whole body): (Drarry, E, 9k) this is the fic I wrote for the hd-hurtfest 2020. I saw @quicksilvermaid’s prompt and I shivered. It lured me so much I had the whole plot in my head as soon as I finished sending the claim. It was so hard to write it. Because the topic is very sensitive: open relationships, sexual mismatch, bad communication skills. I brought most of my bad experiences in all these sensitive topics as if I was purging it from my body while writing ‘hear me’. It was a very raw process of looking into my own still bleeding wounds, but very cathartic. And it was hard because it was my very first drarry (I love drarry and I normally only read drarry, but I’ve never felt confident enough to write it), so I was very nervous. And in bloody English xD LOL but I’m bloody proud of it. I wanted to write something real without making a show of blaming one of the parts, at the same time I wanted to use and unreliable POV (Harry’s) and to bring forth all those very uncomfortable realities of jealousy, insecurity of one’s sexuality etc. in a way people could relate to. I’ve never imagined the response to this fic would be so nice, and many of the comments drove me to deep reflection. I’m specially happy about this fic because after writing ‘hear me’ something cracked open inside of me, in my own personal-romantic life and also in writing. Like a small miracle. And then, I couldn’t stop writing anymore.

Rebel Rebel: (Sirius/Remus. E, 5k) heh, Wolfstar is my OTP *-* So writing this tiny fic with ‘there was no war’ prompt for the sirius black fest was a bloody delight. The feeling of exploring their youth, in the early 80s and the whole atmosphere of that time was exhilarating! Bowie’s concerts, HIV+ and Aids, queer community and old school crushes. Giving them a future and professions was fun as fuck. But the best part was making Sirius Black fuck around, wild and free, you know. Because he bloody well deserved it. I love the writing style I explored there, very influenced by Caio Fernando Abreu, one of my favourite Brazilian writers and it was just great great fun!

Dragons Don’t Know Paradise: (Drarry + Wolfstar, E, 40k+ WIP) I need to post 3 more chapters along this next few days.  I’m adding Dragons here because NEVER. IN. MY. LIFE I thought this story would come out of my head into the pages, and I’m so bloody happy, so bloody proud of myself. I cannot believe how much I’ve written in a month, about a plot that had some path in my head but never a shape, and how this all blossomed inside of me and how it’s coming out just brilliantly. I know I’ll think back at some point and think this and that are not great. But I think this fic is one of my best works, it deals with the queer community, with depression and acceptance, with HIV+ folk, and deep emotions. Everything I’ve ever dreamed of writing. And here it is, and writing it made me manage the fact that I wouldn’t be able to spend this xmas with my family, so I spent this last month with this characters and feeling the opposite of lonely. And to be able to write Harry having a family, you know, being raised by Remus and Sirius is just marvellous. I’m over the moon with wolfstar being great gaydads :D

Scorching: (Pansmione, E, 1.5k) first time I translated a Portuguese fic of mine to English. It was fun to do it, as it’s purely smutty smut and well, I love pansmione and it makes me greedy to go back to writing about this ship. I like how it turned out, but it’s not beta-ed so maybe it’s not great. But damn, I really like this Pansy. ^^

The Old Ways: (Voldemort/Walburga, M, 3k). So, I have a whole word document full of snippets on the Black family. As the Black family is my huge guilty pleasure (that’s why Tainara Black has been my pen name since 2005). I don’t like to think Walburga was only a mad pureblood bigoted woman, I like to think of her as being strongly magical and very sure of herself. Someone three-dimensional with knowledge of Dark magic of the old ways and a deep insanity that comes with legacy of pureness, but also with financial influence and  management of old wizarding land. I realised Walburga is only 1 year older than Voldie, she is closest to his age than her husband or brother (if we follow the Balck Family Genealogical Tree), and this sparked a whole idea inside of me. So this fic is a character study of Walburga when Sirius is only 10 and Voldemort is organising a war, and I honestly think is one of my best fics (even though it wasn’t beta-ed). I loved writing about this powerful witch, that got stuck in keeping her bloodline alive, that gave up on great deeds of power and freedom to become a pureblood mother and wife. But it’s the fic no one reads, so I’m adding a bit of it here in hopes it may interest someone:

He climbs the last step of the noisy, rusty, winding stair, his eyes mapping the place in silent wonder. The rooftop is sombre. Rough grey cement floor and dead flower beds in a far corner, big dark clay pots with dead branches and dry bushes scattered around; the only living thing is an imposing carnivorous plant, it’s toothed lips opening and closing sharply around bugs and other insects.

She is right there, in the centre of the chaotic rooftop garden and he thinks the house is in shambles, and so is she. The moon is reflecting its cold brightness over her as if it were a stage light. He takes a second to contemplate her stance. He has never seen her like this before. It is such an incongruous sight it almost feels like he’s intruding. Is not a feeling he’s used to.

She’s perched in a high frail copper chair, her ankles crossed lightly, with pale bare feet against the dirty coarse floor, one white arm falling languidly from the armrest, her elegant fingers holding a thin long smoking pipe. Rings of smoke rising into the night sky. The back of her skull resting on the back of the chair, he can’t see her face from this angle, but he’s stunned by the imagery.

She looks almost mythical; with her long black mane messy and loose, barely touching the ground. He can’t remember when was the last time he’s seen her hair down, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t that long, nor were there silver strikes colouring it in a mix of salt and pepper.

“How long do you plan to stare?” her voice is as rusty as the whole house and he scoffs.

keep reading

[seerofmike]

i feel like a huge portion of kpop fans are gay fetishists attracted to the idea of quote unquote feminine men and thats why theres so much bullshit

YES okay. okay let me rant for a minute. let me preface this by saying i am NOT a kpop shipper at ALL. this is going to be long so i’ll put it under a’ ‘read more’ because i’ve been holding it in for TWO FUCKING YEARS BABY!

being mlm in boygroup kpop fandom is literally so exhausting. 99% of the people who ship real life human men from boygroups are fetishists and i will tell u why

obviously we all know of a ship in a fandom where the characters' personalities are twisted to fit the heteronormative view of "top" and "bottom" --one character is hypermasculine (top) and the other one is feminine (bottom). there are typical traits associated with both. the ‘top’ is scary or mean or angry or serious while the ‘bottom’ is emotional or bubbly or shy. while this is egregious, at least its fictional characters. their personalities can be simplified or exaggerated and it doesnt cause any real life harm.

im going to define what i think of as a fetishist: a non-mlm person who overly sexualizes gay men/men they think are gay/gay ships, and forces them into heteronormative roles for their own pleasure. its not even limited to cishet women. plenty of non-mlm lgbt people do this too and its like disheartening. so anyways

enter the kpop fandom

i may be incredibly biased here because one of the most affected members [of bts] is my favorite kpop boy, but oh god is the ‘personality change/simplification’ thing AWFUL here. i do not go out of my way to find fanart or see fanfic threads, but being in the bts fandom, u will inevitably see it and i REALLY wish i didnt

so anyways. my favorite boy ever is hoseok. he is sweet and hardworking and very passionate about dance and he can be serious when needed, but ultimately he tries to be very lighthearted and will consistently laugh or make jokes or do something funny when the other members feel uncomfortable or awkward (mostly during english-speaking interviews). he kisses the members on the cheek a lot/hugs them a lot/cuddles them a lot [this is important for later okay]

of course, theres a lot more to him because he is a multi-faceted real life human being, and i don’t know him personally, but that’s a general idea of what he’s like, okay?

SHIPPERS will have you think differently. some video got popular on youtube ""proving"" that hoseok is a sadist (which is just clips of him jokingly playfighting with the younger members), and the video depicts him as secretly mean and serious, and shippers will use that to say "hoseok is a total top!" and then most fanart or imagines or fanfic threads you see are top!hoseok, using this imagined 'hoseok is a sadistic dom' narrative to fuel their fiction, because SOMEONE has to be the top, so they twist him into this hypermasculine mean person (and probably feminize the 'bottom' of their ship but more on that later)

EXCEPT it is not just fiction. this narrative bleeds into REAL LIFE. you have new armys who dont know anything about the shipping scene, and yet somehow the narrative of hoseok being a secretly mean, sadistic person has already made its way into them. in real life, hoseok likes rainbows and wearing nail stickers and putting glitter in his hair. yet people in the fandom will say shit like "hoseok hates femininity" "hoseok would never wear [thing] because he's a dom"

sometimes on twitter you have ppl like me who say uh actually you guys are really weird and this is fetishy and in real life hoseok is very nice and not sadistic at all, you will UNDOUBTEDLY get comments like "omg hoseok isnt cute/nice when will yall learn he’s secretly like [x] and [x]". you could post a video of hoseok with a puppy titled "wow cute" and u will get like 2 clowns in ur comments going 'hoseok isnt CUTE hes a sadist’ . i wish i was joking but i am not. they will do this for EVERY action hoseok does. he cannot blink without people twisting it into a sexual thing

[also, side note: its funny that, since hoseok is one of the least popular members and therefore one of the least shipped members, he is often the odd man out among pairings, and is assigned 'the straight one' by default, and 9 times out of 10 people who assign him 'the straight one' do all this 'dom daddy hoseok' shit.

which just goes to show that this is indeed a matter of heteronormativity.]

so anyways arguably the most popular ship with hoseok is with yoongi, sope. this absolutely happens to other ships probably but im just using them as an example because i see it the most, being a hobi stan

yoongi is very calm and thoughtful and kind and sometimes appears to be cold/having a bad attitude but its just because of the way he speaks, which is very bluntly. again hes a multi faceted real human and i do not know him personally but thats generally what hes like.

god the fandom. treats him SO BAD. so horribly. he's shorter than hoseok. he's shorter than hoseok and people will exaggerate that literal 1 inch height difference so bad and people will turn his whole personality into shy and blushy and In Love With Hoseok, so in love with hoseok that ‘he gets sad’ when hoseok doesn’t kiss him/hug him/or whatever and IT BLEEDS INTO REAL LIFE.

ANY time hoseok or yoongi do ANYTHING together at ALL, people will ALWAYS push the narrative that hoseok, being the mean sadist he is, is 'hurting' yoongi for not returning his undying love or whatever. hoseok did a vlive where he made bracelets for all the members and he considered putting a cat charm on yoongi's but ultimately decided not to because he was having difficulty and oh my GOD sope stans twisted it into 'hoseok HATES yoongi, yoongi would have been so happy, he would have worn that all the time, hoseok isnt affectionate he hates being close with other people after all :(' which is LITERALLY not true because hoseok gives all his homies good night kisses but okay! whatever fits your narrative!

PEOPLE ACTUALLY HATE HOSEOK BECAUSE OF THIS. BECAUSE OF A SHIP. BECAUSE OF THE MANUFACTURED NARRATIVE PUSHED ONTO HIM BY FETISHISTS SO HE COULD FIT INTO THEIR HETERONORMATIVE ‘TOP’ ROLE. not to be all wahh wahh hoseok is one of the least popular members BUT THIS IS LITERALLY A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.

everyone """headcanons""" hoseok to be a top so they will make him a MEAN HYPERMASCULINE person. everyone """headcanons""" yoongi as a bottom so they will make him a SOFT UWU HYPERFEMININE person. shippers are literally pigeonholing the two of them into fujoshi-esque roles for jack-off material.

anyways this all boils down to: gay fetishists will do anything, ANYTHING, to twist characters or real life fucking people to fit their heteronormative view of top and bottom. top=mean and masculine, bottom=soft and feminine. hoseok is a real life human being. yoongi is a real life human being. they both have real life human personalities, and yet shippers twist their personalities into the opposite to fit their narrative, to the point where nonshippers will genuinely view the two of them as something theyre not.

you have tons of armys that theorize that hoseok's happiness is just a mask he puts on to hide a cruel nature. on twitter. on youtube. in fanart and fanfiction. you have tons of armys that truly believe that, despite literally all the evidence, believe he hates being cute, he hates being happy, he hates the members, and hes secretly a dom daddy fuckboy who wants to bend yoongi over a table. hes a real life human being and fetishists doing their fetish thing has real life consequences.

the same is true for bottom!hoseok stans: they overexaggerate his more cutesy personality traits and he does have a 'feminine' figure i.e. he has a rly small waist but they will overexaggerate that as well and give him huge hips and its disgusting but dom!hoseok is far more frequent with far more devastating consequences so i used that as an example but they’re both bad.

people who """"headcanon"""" [like actually headcanon/firmly believe and not just joking or lighthearted] that members are gay will force these types of roles onto the members. if someone genuinely believes that like, yoongi is gay/bi/whatever, and then try to force this subby soft uwu persona onto him, they have no respect for gay people. they dont. gay people are simply objects for their fantasies. their view of gay people is so one-dimensional and so driven by fetishists’ ideas that its actually disheartening.

and god bitches will deadass be homophobic yet still ship real ass human idols. not just for bts specifically but all boygroup fandoms. sometimes when you search up an idol's name, [idol] gay will be trending--whether it be because of people saying "im gay for him" or whatever, and a LOT of cishet people will try 'clearing' the searches because being gay is bad or something. people normally ‘clear’ the searches if something like [idol fat] or [idol ugly] are trending, which im telling you so you know the context that people only clear the searches when bad things are happening.

[never forget that time 'jungkook gay' was trending and bitches were like "lets clear the searches!" but their pinned tweet said some shit like "sub jungkook x dom jimin coffee shop smut au thread 🌈". bitches also be like i cant be homophobic i ship taekook]

and hoseok and yoongi arent the only ones affected ! we could get into why namjoon and jin (another popular ship) are often assigned 'dad' and 'mom' respectively, or the fact that gay fetishists not only twist members' personalities to fit their ship narrative, but will also force tropes onto them i.e. taehyung/jungkook shippers who will literally demonize jimin and call him a slut or say that he's trying to 'get in the way of' of taekook or 'steal' taehyung/jungkook but thats a whole DIFFERENT rant baby! racism/asian fetishism is also definitely a present factor in all of this but this focus was primarily on gay fetishism and heteronormativity.

oh my god i could also get into the severe transphobia/trans fetishism in this fandom too but this post is already long enough as it is

tl dr: gay fetishists will fetishize real life people and it has actual real life effects and we should ban straight women from shipping mlm

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

Of Aliens and Alpha Centauri: Space in Good Omens (1/3)

. So just yesterday, in one of the many discussions of Alpha Centauri and the practicality of our two favorite disasters running off together, @theniceandaccurategoodomensblog raised the perfectly valid question: “Why are we assuming there are no aliens?” And I said I had a lot of thoughts on the subject. This meta is the result of those thoughts and questions.

Broadly, the question of whether or not there would be aliens comes down to “what is the purpose of all that space in the Good Omens universe?” Everything we see is focused on Earth and the creation and destruction thereof, which, when you consider the scale of the whole universe, is really not that Big a story at all.

But the treatment of space is a little different depending on which version you use as your source material. If you try to combine the book and the TV show, you get some contradictions.

So I’m going to tackle each separately, starting with the book below the break, pulling together all my observations and thoughts on What does Good Omens really have to say about space?

I’m not going to do this on a strict schedule, but I have three parts planned and will post them as I find the time to write them!

(Source: I’m a huge sci-fi nut and think way too hard about everything, but I’m not any kind of expert. Other insights and comments are 10000% welcome.)

Good Omens Book

The book has, perhaps, the simplest approach to space: it’s barely mentioned.

For those unfamiliar, there is no mention of Alpha Centauri, or running away, or Crowley helping create stars/nebulae/whatever it is he made. Unless I missed one, all references to space in the book are:

The Earth is a Libra (p.17)

Crowley’s amazing drunken rant about the bird and the spaceship (p.54-57)

Adam and The Them talking about aliens and how aliens are now all about peace and harmony and being some kinda space cops “They all have this bright blue light around ‘em and go around doing good. Sort of g’lactic policemen, going round tellin’ everyone to live in universal harmony and stuff” (p. 156, part of a slightly longer discussion)

Newt meeting aliens who talk about peace and harmony while being some kinda space cops (p. 197-199)

That’s it; Crowley (then Crawly) doesn’t even ask about putting the Tree on the Moon, the line is instead “why not put it on top of a high mountain or a long way off?” (p.10).

Just because it’s simple, however, doesn’t mean we can’t learn a great deal.

Humanity has watched the stars for all of our history; they can be used to navigate, to tell time; the constellations are used to record stories; astrology attempts to make sense of the chaos of everyday life through the motions of heavenly bodies. The motions of the stars and planets has been calculated and recorded for as long as we’ve had enough knowledge of math to do that (so ancient Sumeria and Egypt, and by ancient I mean 4-5 thousand years ago), while less predictable events such as eclipses and comets have been taken as  ill omens or signs of Heavenly disfavor.*

The prevailing model in the West was geocentric (Earth in the center) and contained what we call the “Heavenly Spheres”; Earth was a globe surrounded by clear layered spheres, and across each sphere one of the seven planets moved in its predictable track. (The seven planets were: The sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn - a planet being defined as a “wandering heavenly body that does not follow the fixed course of all the other stars”). Beyond all these was the final sphere, containing all the stars like a painted ceiling, and all moving together, rotating around a point near Polaris, the North Star.

The stars were predictable, but mysterious, unexplainable - but they existed to serve the story of mankind because why else would they exist? 

This mindset carries into Good Omens - at least the book, and probably the Radio Drama as well (I haven’t heard it in ages, but I don’t think it deviated from the major points). The universe is vast and huge and filled with “loads of buggerall” (p. 56) - Aziraphale’s comments confirm that, at the very least, angels and demons are confident that the universe is a vast vacuum (matching our modern ideas of cosmology) and also that it has a physical end somewhere (due to the way space-time curves, this might not necessarily be the case).**

And yet.

All these vast loads of burgerall are slated to be destroyed along with the Earth, aren’t they?

It certainly seems they were created at the same time. We know that there had only been “rather more than seven” days as of the start of the book, and that “rain hadn’t been invented yet” (p. 9). The language suggests not only that Earth is a new thing, but that there isn’t another planet out there that already experienced days and rain. Crowley, at least, believes that God created the whole universe (p. 373) and there seems nothing in the book to contradict this.

As for Armeggedon, it’s referenced as the “final test” and as “testing everything to destruction” and so forth (p. 48). At the final showdown on the airbase, Metatron refers to the great plan of a world lasting six thousand years (p. 352), and again this could refer to Earth only, or it could be the universe as a whole. In fact, as a general rule, the book simply conflates the earth and the universe, as if they were the same thing. And they are. Much like in the more Medieval and Classical worldview outlined above, there could be lots of stars and things out there but they only serve as a backdrop to the real important things going on here on Earth. Everything was created at the same time, and the only reason it might not be destroyed all at once is if the winning side decides they like the view and want to keep it.

The only hint that there might be more to the universe than Heaven, Hell and the little stage for their cold war (Earth) is the appearance of the aliens to Newt.

And yet, what are they described as? One is “stubby and green,” the one that talks to Newt is “a yellow toad dressed in kitchen foil...wearing the kind of mirror-finished sunglasses that Newt had always thought of as Cool Hand Luke shades” and the third is “a pepper pot.”

Two aliens as designed by a child, one clearly doing some vague Space Cop look, and a Dalek. The ship itself “looked like every cartoon of a flying saucer Newt had ever seen” (p. 197). I never ever got the impression these aliens were anything other than figments summoned from Adam’s head, spouting buzzwords he’d seen in New Aquarian (acid rain, albedo, polar ice caps) while acting like cops do in movies. And their message “We give you a message of universal peace and cosmic harmony an’ suchlike” (p. 198) - the “an’” instead of “and” is one of the distinguishing marks of how Adam and The Them talk. This is another one of his stories and games, played out on a much wider scale.***

My primary conclusion here would be that aliens cannot exist in the Book!Omens universe. The universe is the backdrop, Earth is where the real drama plays out. The universe has only existed for 6,000 years, not nearly enough time for other life to have evolved separately. God could have created life on the other worlds, but there is no indication that this ever happened, that there are other playgrounds on which this fight is being acted out - Crowley and Aziraphale never even consider the possibility that they’ll be reassigned elsewhere. It’s Earth, and then eternity in Head Office, no other options.

Book Omens: Other Possibilities?

I do think there is one alternative possible for Book!Omens: if we are willing to throw away the strictly supernatural elements of the book, it could be re-envisioned as a sci-fi story, in which God, angels, and demons are actually super-dimensional aliens who, by Clark’s Third Law, are sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from actual angels and demons. I refer to this as the Stargate Interpretation.****

More accurately, God would have to be the super-dimensional being, and would have created the Earth as a place to let the story play out; the angels and demons are then direct creations who buy 100% into the narrative they are given. Everything else can still exist - Lucifer rebels because of the same reasons, takes along all the unsatisfied angels, Heaven and Hell are only concerned with Earth because that’s all they’ve been told to concern themselves with. Their afterlives exist still, but only because humans were created to fit into that system.

Meanwhile, literally anything could be going on in the rest of the universe. There could be alien races thousands of years older than the earth. There could be galactic empires. Who knows? Not people on Earth. Our world was isolated from all that by superdimensional shenanigans.

But, and this is important, in order to maintain the illusion, angels and demons must be kept as much in ignorance of all this as humans. Might lead you to question the power of the being with the Ineffable Plans if those plans only extend to the edge of the solar system and don’t even go particularly far back in time.

Now, do I think this is the best headcanon for the book? Nope. This is a supernatural story, the threat of Heaven and Hell is so looming and menacing because there’s no other force out there, nowhere to appeal except the “higher authority” that isn’t, apparently, listening, and there’s no option to escape just by relocating to a new world. I think trying to force the Stargate Interpretation on it would diminish the story, and I really don’t think it’s what the authors intended at all.

However, I also think this would make for a very interesting fanfic in the hands of the right writer. Book Aziraphale or Crowley suddenly discovering that the scope of Head Office’s powers is much more limited than they’d thought? Who knows about this - have the Archangels and Lords of Hell been covering this up to keep the lower-level angels and demons from rebelling? Would their “miraculous” powers still operate the same on these alien worlds? Are there other beings out there more powerful? Or going the other direction - are there other worlds also playing out their own little pantomime of Eden and Armageddon? Are they created by the same God, or other members of the same race, and what are the implications either way? Does each world have an Aziraphale and a Crowley, or is the main GO world the first to screw up the Apocalypse so badly they survive it - and what is the implication of that?

There’s a whole lot of scope for interesting AUs out of this, and I’d be rather surprised if no one has written any, seeing as the book came out thirty years ago. (If any are available on AO3, send us links - this sounds a bit niche, but I’d love for fans to be able to find these!) I would consider them AUs though; the default assumption of the book is no aliens and including them is a deviation, just as adding in Hogwarts or Charles Xavier’s school while keeping everything else the same is a deviation.

However, in the TV series, space is certainly more present in the narrative, and the Stargate Interpretation doesn’t work as well. Can we reach any clear conclusions? I’ll attempt to find out in my next meta!

(Too important to footnote: We know that Atlantis vanished (p.372) so most likely Adam’s aliens did as well. There is, still, the possibility that they continued to exist after the end of the world. I think their somewhat shoddy appearance and very cliched dialogue suggest the aliens would, at best, continue to cycle through similar interactions to what we saw with Newt until Adam either “deactivated” or “updated” them. What would they do then? Did he create entire races and homeworlds for them or - as I rather suspect - did he just make the one ship full and then move on to the next?)

-- Footnotes --

*Note: the math for predicting eclipses has also existed for thousands of years, but was more difficult for ancient cultures to confirm because only a fraction of eclipses are visible from a certain spot. Several ancient cultures were eventually able to work out the pattern, notably ones that either ruled over a lot of land or else had good information exchange with their neighbors. Comets took a LOT longer, and indeed as late as the 16th century many believed each comet was unique and traveled linearly through the solar system, never to return. Edmond Halley (working partly from observations by Isaac Newton) was able to demonstrate that comets did in fact orbit the sun, and predicted the return of the comet now named for him in 1758. He also was the first to observe and describe the proper motion of stars, that is, the fact that they don’t actually travel in one large fixed group. 

**Also, I find it delightful that, along with thinking dolphins are fish, Aziraphale says the bird crossing the universe would need a generation starship - which as a sci-fi trope has been somewhat out of fashion since the 1970s, in favor of faster-than-light starships. This alone says volumes about his taste in literature and science.

***The fact that the alien refers to its own message as “one of them pheonomena” (p.198) - a term Shadwell uses - does suggest that Newt’s own imagination is filling in the gaps left by Adam.

****Just gonna go ahead and out myself as a lifelong Stargate fan don’t mind me. That said, Terry Pratchett also explores a world made in this style in his pre-Discworld novel, Strata, which contains a flat world in a sci-fi setting, where everything operates according to a medieval worldview. It is a fascinating read, not least for the inclusion of several elements that would later find a permanent home in the Discworld series. If you can find it, read it.

tagging the commenters who said yesterday they would be interested:

@sarahthecoat​ @ineffableove​ @akawestruck​

[nonsensical-rants]

So, I 100%ed the Kingdom Hearts Franchise.

Alright. This might be a long take, just saying that now. But I know exactly where to start. This franchise. Is not as confusing as the entirety of the internet would like you to believe. It's mostly due to bad writing decisions here and there. I mean, yeah if you wanna have every single detail and definition ingrained into your brain. Then of course it can get complicated, but what franchise lasting as long as Kingdom Hearts isn't annoyingly convoluted? I can't think of one.

So my thoughts about  the series is that they're pretty good! Both as a story and as games, with some very big exceptions. I wanna say that you should definitely not try to 100% all of these games in chronological order in rapid succession. It will drain you. I can confirm this beyond a shadow of a doubt. After I beat KH2 it really start to hit me. Chain of Memories was fine, if not a bit tedious to get all the cards and Riku to level 100. But other than that I more than enjoyed my time with the game.

Heartless are born from the darkness in peoples hearts. Nobodies are created from the husk of a body left behind in the creation of a Heartless. While Unversed are born from supreme negative emotions that live inside us all. The stronger these feelings are/the person is, the stronger the heartless/unversed and nobody. Especially strong people can keep their identity when transformed into Nobodies. Thus explaining Organization 13. Only the keyblade can truly defeat these creatures. What's so hard about describing that to someone? It isn't that far fetched in terms of the fantasy genre.

Though personally. I have an enormous hatred from Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. Despite trying to keep an open mind about any and all forms of media I come across, I cannot ever get behind this title in the series because it is just too much and strays too far from what i consider to be "Kingdom Hearts". The gameplay was not fun for me personally, the story was iffy at best in comparison to the others and it really felt like the biggest amount of padding. If you have to do that to become a Keyblade Master, I think i'd rather stay as a rouge agent like Sora did for 99% of the series.

The dream eater system was probably the biggest factor here as for 100% completion you have to get every single dream eater, and every single skill that they can give you which means leveling a lot of them up to the point where they have points to buy said skills. Which takes forever. And then there's the Dream Eater tournaments, which I would have never gotten past without cheap strategies I found online. Usually I get everybody to max potential in these games and give the best items and accessories all around. But as soon as I got the platinum I ejected the disk and took a break. I felt like I needed it.

Alright, putting that behind us. The difference in fighting styles from game to game can get a bit jarring but in the PS4 re-releases it can usually be adjusted too in about half an hour to an hour's worth of gameplay. Chain of Memories was fun, but tedious like I mentioned. And Birth By Sleep was actually a fresh of breath air (until you get to the secret boss fights that is...) If it wasn't for my need to see that 100% bar next to the game title I would classify these games as something everybody should try out and enjoy. They are fantastic experiences. So lets go in order for a bit.

KH1 is a classic story, going through Disney worlds with a fine mix of Final Fantasy. Meeting the princesses and seeing they are "Princesses of Heart" that have strength beyond muscles. Able to use the power of Light and what not. There's a few hiccups here and there (like Cloud and Sephiroth not acting like how they are in FF7 but everyone's already mentioned that.) But aside from that and the bad platforming, its a genuinely fun game to 100% and I'd highly recommend it. Maybe even try to get cosmic arts for everyone so you can have 16-19 MP bars. It gets silly.

Chain of Memories i've already mentioned a lot so far. So I don't think I need to go that in depth. Fun to go through but wouldn't recommend 100%ing it because it takes far to long. The story is actually pretty decent and isn't that complicated. Sora and the gang lose their memories of KH1 because of the magic witch Namine, while we get our first look at Organization 13.

KH2. The golden child. Still played by many to this day and its obvious to see why. The game play is crisp and fantastic as I remember it from my youth. Traveling to Disney worlds again (and not card versions of them that have no people except for cut scenes, like CoM) and having a constant looming threat over your head while you try to have fun on your journey. Its great. I have yet to do a level 1 critical mode (as that's not required thankfully) but I did thoroughly enjoy my regular Critical play though. Story still isn't that bad yet. Organization 13 comes in full force, trying to get a new version of "Kingdom Hearts" so they can restore their humanity. I'd highly recommend 100%ing this one as well. Would also recommend maxing out your stats and putting on multiple Full Bloom+'s and Shadow Archieve+'s for the fun of it.

Birth By Sleep. Still not that bad honestly. It comes at a weird time though, and the story telling kind of requires you to have some outsider knowledge so that you're not thrown for a loop the entire time. So it feels weird to go back in the past, but also necessary for the story as a whole. Fun game to play minus the hundreds of mini games you need to do for all three main characters. If it wasn't for that I would recommend playing this game to completion. It's hard to reach higher levels though and as everyone's who played the game knows. Terra sucks at End Game compared to Aqua and Ven. I beat the Secret bosses by sheer luck and I would not go back for them. You do get to learn the origins of what makes most of the future events play out though and you even get to see younger versions of Organization 13. Back when they weren't evil!

Nothing eventful happens in Re:Coded.

Dream Drop Distance... Already talked about it. Let's move on before i'm forced to remember dream eaters and their annoyingly high pitched theme song.

Birth By Sleep 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage. Really good demo for KH3 in all honestly. I had a fun time with it and seeing Aqua's pain and journey through the realm of darkness for a whole 10 years was interesting.

And now we're at Kh3. The big game we waited so long for. And its... Alright. Nothing really spectacular. The graphics are certainly splendid and gameplay feels great! If not a bit too floaty. Thats a problem for some people, especially those who were avid fans of KH2. But I had no problem with it. I have yet to play it on critical but i've heard it makes things far more entertaining. As for story, its also alright. Not the grand ending I was expecting but it was really fun all things considered. Just another ride through more modern Disney worlds. But no Final Fantasy! I get that they feel KH can stand on its own legs now but you can't take out half the formula that people fell in love with originally. Then there's no battle arena or replayable boss fights. Doesn't have to be the Real Orginization 13. Just any replayable fights with end game gear would be enough.

As for my real problem with the games. Is the treatement of the third member of the original trio. Kairi. Oh, how this character has divided a good portion of the fan base just by existing. It feels like all the time that she is just a damsel for Sora/Riku to save and rescue. In the first game, thats fine. Whatever. She was unconcious the whole time and had her heart within Sora. Chain of Memories was a game about Sora losing his memories and Riku overcoming his darkness. Thats also fine. But in KH2. Really? She gets a keyblade and can't even handle a group of shadows? The lowest level of heartless? It's embarrassing. She's supposed to be a Princess of Heart. What's that even mean anymore? It doesn't even seem relevant.

KH2 should've been her moment to become a party member just like Riku did. I dont care that it means you could possibly not have Donald or Goofy. KH2 felt the most like the penultimate ending to the series than Kh3 did in my opinon. Having the choice between your KH1 buddies (Sora, Donald and Goofy) or the Island Trio (Sora, Riku and Kairi) would have added excellent variety and much needed development for Kairi as a person rather than leaving her as a one dimensional damsel in distress who has a Nobody with more internal conflict and character motivation. Moving past that... BBS is a prequel so nothing for the original trio except for meeting Aqua/Ven/Terra. And we come back to the dreaded DDD again.

If my vision for Kairi in KH2 couldn't have become a reality. Then why wasn't DDD Kairi's game? The set up was perfect. The heroes of light need to train to overcome almost double the amount of darkness agents. Kairi (and Axel) are practically beginners at wielding a Keyblade. It should've been their time to shine and get some love while occasionally helping Sora and Riku in their Mark of Mastery exam. Why did it have to be something you do alone? Well actually you're not alone you have the stupid Dream Eaters. Regardless it could have been the newbies learning how to get to Kh2 Sora's level while Sora goes beyond his limits.

As for KH3, it's just awful. Kairi's treatment is awful and everyone knows it. She said she was gonna help but hit one whole heartless in the finale. Better than KH2 i suppose. And as for the argument of her being "too weak" to try anything agaisnt Xemans. Really? She couldn't even like. Step on his foot? Pull agaisnt his grip or switch which hand the blade is in? Since the keyblade can teleport to your hands when you need it. I don't expect her to randomly become a Keyblade Master, but. I think we all would've prefer if she just did ANYTHING over what actually happened. It's sad. I hope KH4 will give Kairi the proper treatment and character development she deserves. But for all we know it might be another Sora/Riku dual protagonist game like CoM or DDD. What do you think?

[nautiscarader]

The Dragon Prince - Season 2

It is very rare to see a show which has improved in nearly every aspect, but lo and behold, TDP season 2 delivers more. 

Just... more. 

More drama, more characters, more action, more humor, and more dark, complex, and mature storylines.

Spoilers galore beneath

First and foremost, I am very happy that the animation department has listened to our cries - the choppy animation is no more. The cell-shaded animation is odd, but it certainly no longer distracting from the action. And if you want to watch TDP season 2, then you need to pay attention to everything on the screen, because the things that happen on the screen are marvellous. 

The ongoing story, together with expanded flashbacks are excellent, and make the world believable and realistic. Wars do not happen in one day, they are the effects of years of conflicts, slowly building up, and the show has given us excellent reasons to believe and be invested in them.

Very few shows have created such interesting villains like this one. Soren, Claudia and their father, Viren aren’t just evil. They are not evil overlords and kidnappers - they are properly constructed characters with deep motivations. 

Viren is a pragmatist, who is slowly consumed by the dark magic, thus skewing his morals. His children follow his steps, though themselves start to realise he might be wrong, and yet come to the same reasoning as he did: that power can be used to overcome problems, even if it done in an immoral way.

Our protagonist grow up as well: I was mighty afraid that the show will do the “liar reveal” cliché between the brothers, or between Rayla and Callum, regarding the news of their father’s death, but fortunately, the writers have dodged the bullet on two occasions, because of proper build-up and the mountain of trust between the three (or four, since Claudia delivered it). The lessons they learned were deep, life-changing and not easy to swallow, and I think they accepting them will help kids all over the world. 

Speaking of difficult things to bear: Soren’s kinda-disability. the way it was handled was magnificent, albeit with Soren’s slightly awkward acceptance of it. But Claudia? She reacted just like you would if you were hit with such grave news. Characters in TV shows get slammed all over place without any bones breaking, but here? No, they did not joke. A dragon smashes you into a rock, you get a spine broken. End of story. On one hand, it would be interesting to see his character with the disability, but given he is a part of the cast, it would be problematic, I guess. And Claudia using Bambi’s life forces to revive his ability to walk might have even more dire consequences. Will she have to sacrifice more and more animals to keep him alive? Will the dark magic flowing through him corrupt him? Will Soren have to sacrifice his ability to walk in order to cleanse himself? Who knows, the possibilities are quite vast.  

Speaking of possessions: Callum and dark magic. That was something I wanted to see in S2, and I think it has been handled really well. Callum has potential to be a dark wizard, and while he has discovered his sky arcaneum, I have a feeling he will be tempted to dabble with dark magic in the future, breaking our hearts again.

And on top of that, you have relationships. Callum, Rayla and Ezran have very different connections to Soren and Claudia, as, say, Team Avatar to Zuko and Azula. 

Callum and Ezra were - and arguably are - friends with Claudia and Soren, they do have strong bonds (in case Callum and Clauida something even stronger), since they’ve known each other since childhood. It is not just a hero/villain cliché - they are, once again, well-defined characters, and as a result their relationships are strong, well-grounded and believable.

And the hugs between Rayla and Callum are melting all of shippers’ hearts, I cannot overlook that (but still no kiss, or almost kiss yet, but have almost had “I love you”).

The action is superb. Fight scenes are fast, well-planned, and gripping, exactly what you’d expect from a fantasy series. 

And of course, with a whole new half of continent to explore, as well as half a dozen plot lines in the human half to resolve, new seasons will have tons of opportunities to once again punch us in the gut, make us laugh, cry and be thrilled.

So, are there any negative aspects...?

Well... yeah.

One thing that is kinda unavoidable, are the parallels to Avatar The last Airbender. From occasional jokes and subtle nods, like with the haiku and syllables counting, through slightly more transparent like the animal hybrids, through bloody-freaking-obvious, like Callum being an airbender. Or sky mage, or whatever you name them here. It is pretty weird to see this happening again, since, well, it invokes the parallels to ATLA instantly, and let’s face it, ATLA is still better, so you might not necessarily want to remind us of a show we’d rather watch, Dragon Prince. 

Another one is Ezran’s character. Mind you, he got better in S2, especially with the revelation of his father becoming a spirit birb hybrid dying forever, but he is just a bit bland and too perfect for a 10-year old. I joked about it in my recaps, but he is jesus - he can do no wrong. And that is bloody boring! Look at Callum - he has flaws, he makes mistakes, that’s what makes him complex. And what does Ezran do? He goes off-track and can’t even get himself mauled by a banther properly. Get rekt.

He reminds me of Charlie from Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate factory - that kid was freaking perfect, without any flaws whatsoever, spewing moralistic phrases left, right and center, contrary to the one from the book and the classic movie. 

Plus, his abilities are never explained, and are so damn plot convenient! It is one thing to just having a skill of handling animals - that I would accept - another thing is being able to understand them - that’s a bit too much, but still cool - and something wildly different is TO HAVE A DIRECT MIND LINK WITH THEM. Ezran is OP, pls nerf. And the worst thing is, with just a bit of clever rewriting, they wouldn’t need that. Just move the splitting scene after they cross the moonpath bridge - so that Ezran is still with Zim when he has to fly to save them. Solved.

I guess you can make a counter-argument that he also learns it, just like Callum does with magic, but guess what: Callum makes mistakes, so we see he learns! I would like to see Ezran mistranslating some wild animal’s wish and getting comeuppance when he has to run up the tree. I KNOW! BRING THE TAFFY HIPPO FROM HIS DREAM! YES! HE WILL BE HIS SPIRIT TEACHER! Ekhm, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Ezran’s unexplained abilities.  

In fact, I think so far TDP kinda delivered a disappointing deus-ex-machina payoffs in both seasons: mind link in S2 and Zim’s magic-breaking teeth in S1 allowing Reyla to have her hand. I was slightly disappointed then, and I was slightly disappointed now.

But I am willing to forgive it. Because quite literally anything else in the series is top-notch. The characters, for the most part, are complex and three-dimensional. The decisions they take are not simple and black-and-white. The villains are superb and blood-freezing, being able to scare you from the screen. They have added just enough Azula and Ozai juice to Viren and Aavaros to make them menacing and entertaining to watch. I love it.

On more than a few occasions the show has caught me off-guard and surprised me with its decisions, and I cannot wait for more of them. 

[bitterauntreviews-blog]

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

My rating:  ★

I’ve had this review sitting in my notes for a couple of months now, but due to my brief hiatus I haven’t gotten around to posting it until now. Just a disclaimer, this review will not be a positive one as I genuinely couldn’t find anything enjoyable about this story. I’m well aware that people have different preferences in books and we all like different elements, but I truly cannot understand how someone could enjoy this book. It lacked any source of substance, development or excitement.

*This review contains spoilers*

The story follows Henry, who was born with a condition that allows him to travel to different points in time. With this ability, he is able to visit his wife as a child periodically as she grows up. The story flips between present and past as it shows Clare struggling to deal with Henry’s constant absences and disappearances. The plot sounds very promising; however, the execution is what really let this book down.

To begin with, Clare was the most insufferable character I have ever had to put up with. Her monologues continuously reiterated how selfish, whiny, manipulative and one dimensional she was. She’s a spoiled rich girl who has never had any real-life experiences. To demonstrate the type of person this character is, it’s important to note that upon discovering that her mother would die of ovarian cancer in the future and not suicide, she responded with “thank God”. Not sure about you, but the thought of my mother dying gets me extremely upset, no matter how it happens. Clare, on the other hand, is just relieved that she doesn’t have to feel guilt about the fact that her mother will take her own life.

Also, I found it very weird and controlling how she essentially forced Henry to let her have a baby. He made it clear that he didn’t want a child and made it evident that it was going to be near impossible for her to carry to term, yet she insisted. She essentially trapped him into having a child by having sex with pre-vasectomy Henry. Speaking of the pregnancy, does it make absolutely zero sense to anyone else how she managed to carry it to term without it time travelling once?

Every scene with middle aged Henry and young Clare is extremely uncomfortable to read and I’m not even going to discuss it because it’s gross and I can’t believe someone wrote them thinking it would be a fun thing to write.

Aside from the characters, the writing wasn’t too bad. Not good, but not bad. However, there just seemed to be too many things that were completely unnecessary.

Example A, the seemingly random passages spoken in French with no translation in sight. We get it, Clare had a private education.

Example B, the unnecessary dream and miscarriage scenes. I actually skipped a bunch of passages because they were boring and didn’t seem to contribute anything to the story (to be fair, I just have negative feelings towards dream scenes in general. I feel they’re unnecessary in every circumstance, bar situations where Freddy Krueger is involved, so these scenes may have been interesting to other people and I’m just being over critical).

There was absolutely no character development to be seen in this book. 40-year-old Henry behaved the same way as 20-year-old Henry, and he was a pretty shitty person when he was 20. It would have been nice to see some sort of development to either one of the main characters, especially considering they were both toxic characters.

There was a scene where Henry visits Alba when she’s like 10 and she mentions that time traveling is normal then (she even casually mentions it to her teacher), and this is never mentioned again. This book would have been a whole lot more interesting if this was elaborated on. Is there a cure for it in the future? Are there time travelling clubs? Do they attend time travelling classes? I feel like if Niffenegger wrote the plot with the intention to incorporate this more, the novel would actually be worth reading.

This book was disappointing, to say the least. Everyone else seemed to love it and I just couldn’t quite get there. I would not recommend this book unless you’re interested in something with a seemingly interesting sounding plot centred around a romance that isn’t particularly interesting nor do they actually show each other how they feel besides having sex 5 times a day. (Also, save yourself even more disappointment and avoid the film at all costs. If there’s anything worse than this book, it’s this book but mushed together and with all the decent bits removed.)

[stowawayproductions-blog]

The Wife vs Colette vs Lizzie: We Run the World

Written 10/15/18

Glenn Close, Keira Knightly, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Sevigny. I wouldn’t want to meet any of these women in a dark alley, at least not if I’m an arrogant man who’s trying to run their lives.

Within the last two weeks, all three of these powerhouse feminist rants made their way into the Darkside Cinema (our local indie theater in Corvallis, Oregon. You know the one, hidden on top of a bookstore, up two flights of stairs, with the slogan “We Suck Less” scrawled across the olds-mobile style drinks cooler). At a glance, none of them are in my top five of the year, probably not even my top ten, but what they say together elevates them to something worth writing about.

I saw Lizzie first. My fiancee and I went in expecting poetry and got…well, not poetry. He was harder on it than I, tearing to bits its drab writing and hazy narrative. I felt defensive, recognizing the attempt at a feminist rallying cry, and wanting to support the effort even if the product fell short. Kristin Stewart amazes of course, bringing a realistic attitude to the otherwise fantastical cast of characters. Jamie Sheridan is basic, Dennis O’Hare is unnecessarily slimy, and even Chloe Sevigny performs below her talents with a flattened version of what this mysterious character could have become. Everyone else could be replaced with cardboard cutouts and probably deliver their lines with equal fervor. Stewart, however, shines like the sun. She’s meek, defenseless, and defeated. Showing in her emotional climax the level to which women have been beaten into submission; expecting rape, expecting blame, expecting ownership. The mix of determination and apathy is complex and fascinating, giving Stewart the opportunity to use all her skills and defining her career to this point. I cannot wait to see what she brings us next.

Next I saw The Wife. I went solo to this one, and I’m glad I did. I love my fiancee, but there are some stories that we as women have to experience alone, if for no other reason than to be able to sit in a dark theater and quietly hate men without feeling the need to say to the person sitting next to us “well except you dear”; and my goodness, thank you Jonathan Pryce for being willing to be a punching bag for all our pent up aggression. Cathartic and thoughtful, Glenn Close delivers a magnum opus for all women who feel underappreciated next to men in our field who are, often…okay, for the sake of this piece, who are USUALLY not as talented as we are. I’d also like to add that while working the register at said local theater (yes I work there now, definite pay drop but huge moral promotion), The Wife received mixed reviews from patrons exiting, however everyone who didn’t like it happened to be, you guessed it, a middle aged man. One man told me why he didn’t like it, saying that the characters were unrealistic and the story unbelievable: “That would never happen in this day and age”, “A woman who’s supposed to be so intelligent and in tune with her emotions would have handled that situation better”. Guess what sir who-I’m-not-allowed-to-yell-at-because-you’re-a-customer, this would ABSOLUTELY happen in this day and age, and normal humans who are just trying to fucking survive would ABSOLUTELY handle it that way. It’s hard to get into this without spoiling the plot, but for those of us who have had the honor of witnessing this beautiful story, Joan (Close) is a disturbingly accurate vessel for our thoughts and feelings on ambition, devotion, and making it through the day as a second class citizen. The whole cast is splendid, the story moving, and the message bone-shaking, forcing me into an existential crisis, wondering if I even culturally have the potential to ever be sat next to equals, or if I will always be in a class below, paired up with men who are less than me but seen as equal because the “real” men are at the other table making Birdman and Moonlight and winning all the things. But I digress. As I did for an entire night. Moving on.

Lastly I saw Colette. Ah Keira Knightly, I wanted to be you as a little girl watching Pirates of the Caribbean, and I want to be you today as a grown woman trying to figure out what being creative and independent really means. A beautifully rendered ode to classic filmmaking, Colette rises from its traditional format to challenge the heavyweight dramas of today. Its story is elegant, its writing is soft, is message is clear, and Keira Knightly reminds us all why being a woman is not something to overcome but something of which we are god damn proud. With hints of sexual freedom and trans rights that don’t overshadow the central theme, we’re privileged to observe three dimensional characters fraught with believable and relatable issues. Unlike Stewart and Sevigny in the above-mentioned lesbian period piece, Knightly crackles with chemistry with not one, not two, but THREE of her female dalliances, making the sex scenes not only enjoyable (this coming from someone who has never seen a sex scene that I consider necessary) but enlightening to the story and character.

To (finally) get back to my original point: I am honored to be living in a time when I can see these three movies back to back, and more-so when I can write about these movies and not be dismissed as just a “woman writer”, and these women, some real and some fictional, have made this reality possible. It is a bit of a shame that the directors of these films are Bjorn Runge, Craig William Macneill, and Wash Westmoreland (see an ironic pattern?), but regardless of that, these films are a one-two-three punch at a world that has changed so much in the direction of inclusion, but still has so far to go. Watch out boys, we’re coming to take our stage and we’ve got talent, determination, and years of pent up rage on our side. Next step: hand over the camera and let us tell our own stories.

“The hand that holds the pen writes history” — Colette, 2018

Ratings: Lizzie — Disappointing; in my bottom 2 of 2018. The Wife — Great; in my top 10 of 2018. Colette — Great; in my top 10 of 2018.

Great 6) Sorry to Bother You 7) The Wife 8) Colette 9) How to Talk to Girls at Parties 10) The Death of Stalin 11) Eighth Grade 12) Love, Simon 13) RBG 14) The Old Man and the Gun 15) Bad Times at the El Royale 16) Lean On Pete 17) You Were Never Really Here 18) Crazy Rich Asians

Good 19) BlackkKlansman 20) First Reformed 21) First Man 22) A Quiet Place 23) Annihilation 24) Blaze 25) Tag 26) The Miseducation of Cameron Post 27) The Hate U Give 28) Hereditary 29) Avengers: Infinity War 30) Black Panther 31) Tully 32) Searching 33) Mandy

Some Issues 34) Halloween 35) A Star Is Born 36) The Spy Who Dumped Me 37) Disobedience 38) Pick of the Litter 39) Ready Player One 40) A Simple Favor

Disappointing 41) Lizzie 42) The Party

[clodiuspulcher]

Can I ask what draws you to Agamemnon? He's often kind of a difficult figure to grapple with. Sincere question btw, not meant to sound mean I swear :)

NO NO this isn’t mean at all it’s uh. yeah I know it’s an unpopular Take / Opinion and I really do … care deeply about Agamemnon as a character, so thanks for giving me a chance to explain! it’s complicated, he’s complicated… This is gonna get long

I: APPEARANCE Let’s first put the shallow aspects on the table: he’s big, he’s powerful, he’s My Type (physically), I’m gay. This never comes through in film adaptations (although you know what? 1962 Electra Agamemnon comes close, although he’s overshadowed by the hot Aegisthus) but look at how he’s described in the Iliad: He’s compared to 3 gods, canonically Agamemnon is the most handsome man Priam’s EVER seen in his like one million years of life (a list of men which includes Aeneas , Hector, etc). (this post). When Priam says he’s “Every inch a king”, baby, you know what that means-Anyway , @kashuan‘s art is VERY good for conveying how I imagine Agamemnon based on these descriptions. and he’s drawn like exactly my type there. It’s a lot to reckon with.He’s big. He has big arms and big thighs and could kill me if he wanted and he’s powerful and his aristeia is badass and i’m gay. thanks. II: PERSONALITY Now this part is. more about Agamemnon’s character. first, Agamemnon in the Iliad is in fact deeply flawed- he’s imperious and arrogant and shortsighted and short-tempered, he’s stubborn and selfish and ALL OF THE THINGS PEOPLE HAVE SAID HE IS but there’s also a complexity to his character that tends to get flattened - I think because Agamemnon’s at his worst in book 1, people adhere to this AWFUL first impression and don’t bother to look beneath the surface / take the rest of his behavior / his character into account / use this as the baseline of their understanding, but there IS MUCH MORE to him than that behavior even in the Iliad itself, as detailed in THIS POST. He’s a powerful warrior in his own right, and his failings reflect both the internal flaws of his character and the weight of his responsibilities; we see his concern for his men, for the army, the people, in books 4 and 10 (when he can’t sleep because of his anxiety about his men, about Hector). He DOES however, learn and become better, he grows, he’s dynamic: he and Achilles finally make up (book 19! book 23! They’re good now!) and the Odyssey also ends with their ghosts talking as friends.

(Side note I wonder how this works out when Agamemnon’s son kills Achilles’s son but… that’s for another day).

There’s complexity in Agamemnon’s characterization in the tragedies as well, each tragedian has a different portrait of Agamemnon but he’s never one-dimensional.Euripides’ Hecuba has Agamemnon as concerned about his image and his reputation, anxious (and almost insecure) about his authority, but also concerned with justice and the rule of law, even towards one’s enemies. Sophocles’ Ajax portrays an imperious, proud, stubborn Agamemnon who refuses to realize he’s in the wrong but is able to be convinced by the council of Odysseus and eventually, again, comes to an understanding. Seneca’s Trojan Women shows Agamemnon as a Stoic voice of Reason, urging Pyrrhus not to be too violent/hubristic in their victory, and I love both the presentation of Agamemnon as a tired old man wanting to go home and the sort of man who gets into arguments with teenagers about war crimes. As usual, Seneca excels at this subtlety of characterization, this is like the epitome of the Dichotomy of Agamemnon, sympathetic and infuriating, a good leader and a stubborn, proud man, stoic and short-tempered, as present in the Iliad, is here too, and I love it , and him. Seneca’s Agamemnon almost reverses this (HE REALLY SAYS “What can a victor fear”) but I still love that play, and there’s something to be said for the characterization of Agamemnon as someone who learned ABSOLUTELY nothing from victory.

Overall, it’s true that we get, mainly, a portrait of a hard, ruthless, powerful, embittered man- remember how he destroys that one guy Menelaus wanted to save in the Iliad - but he has a sort of “aggressive charisma” as Kashuan once put it and I REALLY see it, and honestly that in itself has some sort of an appeal to me. But with this portrait of his personality, his softer aspects, the moments of gentleness we see, are more striking, they really stand out and indicate the extent of his feelings. In the iliad, for example, we clearly see he loves Menelaus and while he’s almost laughably over-protective (MORE ON THIS LATER), his care for his brother is evident, touching, especially juxtaposed with his shortsighted selfishness. Just look at what happens in Book 4, when Menelaus is barely wounded and Agamemnon is practically writing his eulogy. Right afterwards, also, “Noble Agamemnon showed no reluctance, no cowardice or hesitation, only eagerness for the fight where men win glory”- he rushes in to fight (but not before first taking out his anxiety on his men by demanding more from them. Cannot do anything appealing / good without mitigating it with irritating behavior. love this fool). It takes him like 9 books to finally apologize to Achilles but he defends Menelaus from Nestor’s reproach in book 10, is anxious about Menelaus being in danger if he’s picked to go on a night raid with Diomedes (HERE) and is endearingly not-subtle about it, frets over him in book 4, when he’s wounded, etc.

The love for his family is something that continually stands out and is perhaps his main “redeeming” trait. In the Odyssey, as mentioned, he ask Odysseus desperately about Orestes with heart-rending choice of words especially when one considers Orestes’s Actual Fate: “Come tell me, in truth, have you heard if my son is still alive, maybe in Orchomenus or sandy Pylos, or in Menelaus’ broad Sparta: that my noble Orestes is not yet dead?”. Agamemnon’s no longer a king- he’s a worried father, he regrets the most not being able to see Orestes before he’s killed; it is this pain, of not being able to be a father to his children, which seems to cut the most deeply, which he speaks of multiple times to Odysseus. Then they just cry for a while, with each other. (I like these tender aspects hidden in a big mean man.. but I also like his big meanness).

the Tragedies take this to another level, of course, to drive home the PATHOS required for his death to have an impact but his love of his family is very much on display there. Iphigenia in Aulis in particular provides us with some agonizing demonstrations of this love: Iphigenia reminisces about an exceptionally tender moment in their relationship, when she was young (you used to ask me, “I wonder, my darling, will I get to see you married one day, married and settled happily in your husband’s home, your life ever blossoming, making me proud of you?” And I’d touch your chin, my father, hang from your beard, father, like I’m doing now and say, “and what about you, father, will I get to see you, father, an old man, visiting me at my house, ready for me to repay you for your hard work in raising me?”) an image hard to reconcile with the merciless violence and stubborn arrogance Agamemnon displays in the Iliad (BUT AGAIN, THAT’S THE APPEAL). Clytemnestra assumes he’s crying because he’s sad to see Iphigenia leave them, Agamemnon’s messenger tells him the arrival of his family will cheer him up: even his subordinates know how important they are to him.

I’d need a whole nother post to talk about his relationship with Clytemnestra but please peruse these crumbs I picked off the ground (HERE). they Had something, tbh the tragedy ONLY WORKS if they did and I will DIE on this hill. In Aeschylus, Clytemnestra calls Orestes the “mutual pledge of their love”, he calls her a “great-hearted woman”, she shirks in Aulis at his curt, demanding tone towards her, noting it as something out of character, she takes charge anyway, knows he can’t or won’t actually force her not to be involved in the Iphigenia marriage preparations-All of this creates an image of a man whose imperious, ruthless, stubborn character is balanced with a surprising capacity for tenderness, a genuine fondness and love for the members of his family, which makes the fact that his hand, albeit forced, aids in its destruction, that much more devastating.III: PSYCHOLOGY/HISTORY

Where things get especially interesting for me, character-wise, is when one thinks about his lineage, his past, and his childhood with respect to his current character. This section is about the House of Atreus in general.

Agamemnon clearly bears the scars of his environment: he was born into the House of Atreus and IMO that informs everything he says and does, all his thoughts and feelings, the way he perceives both the world and his place in it. Seneca’s Thyestes is a horrific portrait of what Agamemnon (and Menelaus’s) childhoods must have been like, ATREUS is their father, they were old enough during this event to almost be accomplices which means they’re clearly old enough to remember it. Speaking of that, Atreus isn’t worried that participating in his god-crime schemes will turn his sons evil because, in his mind, they were born evil (Ne mali fiant times? nascuntur. God GOD). Agamemnon and Menelaus grow up in a nightmare house, adjacent to atrocity, under the almost comically cruel hand of Atreus who sincerely believed his sons inherited said cruelty as if its on the same chromosome as the “house-curse” gene. It’s genuinely a miracle Agamemnon and Menelaus grew up to be functional fucking human beings, in my opinion. It also gives a lot more weight to his relationship with Menelaus and the hard imperious cast of his character; their bond was forged in fire, Agamemnon likely protected Menelaus from the worst of Nightmare House being the older brother, and being as protective as he is. There’s this one Iliad adaptation, I can’t think of it off the top of my head though, where when Agamemnon’s freaking out about Menelaus being Barely Wounded he says “don’t die… for you are all I have” and that’s absolutely  how I think about their relationship in this context- Menelaus WAS all he had for so long, they clung to each other, they preserved their humanity in the face of horror BECAUSE OF each other.

But functional like.. .for a given value of “function”. Agamemnon is clearly deeply affected by these events, the weight of the Curse of the House of Atreus clearly impacts him. Take Iphigenia in Aulis, where he says “each one is born with his bitterness waiting for him”, the fact that a Son of Atreus would say that, I think, speaks to the innate, unspeakable fear of the certain destruction of his world, of the tragedy that awaits him, at his own hands, of the House-Curse waiting perched on his shoulder to strike just when he thought he’d created something impenetrable. The tragedy of Iphigenia in Aulis is Agamemnon’s realization that he has locked himself into this, that he has no other choice (see: this post about the Odysseus impact, there is in fact a point when it’s inevitable, although he still made the first move which makes it even WORSE he created this, etc) and all he can do at this point is watch as the life he so carefully built for himself and his family collapses around him, just like he must have always dreaded it would. (Also in the Iliad It’s Agamemnon who says “We must toil, in accord with the weight of sorrow Zeus loaded us with at birth” and that reminds me of this aspect of him too: Good Things Never Last, Bad Things Never Die, etc.)

It’s made clear that the story of Atreus and Thyestes is widespread, familiar; Teucer in Sophocles’ Ajax and Neoptolemus in Seneca’s Trojan Women both call out Agamemnon for trying to reference his lineage as a source of authority because it is a HORRIFIC lineage. “I know about the famous family of Atreus and Thyestes”, Neoptolemus says. And THEREIN LIES A CONFLICT: Agamemnon’s sense of self comes from his authority, his kingship, his position of power and his social status as a member of the nobility, of the class of royalty BUT. It’s all undercut by the fact that this power, authority, indeed his very identity is based in cruelty, violence, and crime; Agamemnon is descended from the most ignoble nobility, which he knows all too well.

It’s Interesting that Agamemnon’s relationship with his identity, status, family, power is brought up in Ajax, of all plays, primarily concerned with the destruction of Ajax’s identity- reminding Agamemnon of the crimes of his house genuinely cuts him down. I see Agamemnon as a man who genuinely fears his past, who dreads the legacy of his father and in his desperation creates a crisis for himself (as happens in tragedy).

We (I) laugh at Agamemnon “forgetting” about the god-crime shit before he pulls rank by referencing his Authority and Status but there’s something in Agamemnon continually being owned by forgetting about the House….  Agamemnon wants to distance himself from the “legacy” he inherited from Atreus, but he can’t without disavowing his power, his authority, his identity. Whether he likes it or not (he does Not), this is fundamental to who he is. I feel like that knowledge too lurks in his mind, rises to the forefront occasionally at his lowest points-

Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon pretty clearly sees him / his actions as the next link in the god-crime family chain, a continuation of the house -curse, heir to his father’s throne and his crimes, hence her belief that killing him is the only way to end it/ stop the cycle of violence (spoiler she is wrong but there’s another post coming eventually about how they are Very Similar Characters short version the Etruscans Understand).

IN short, I think there’s a lot of complexity in Agamemnon people overlook, or don’t get to see since they don’t read the peripheral plays. Agamemnon seems to me a man in conflict with himself, a Man of Contradictions, who defines himself by his authority and status while fearing the source of it, whose devotion to his family contrasts with the horror of his childhood, and with his own agonizing role in its destruction, a man who willfully ignores or cannot bring himself to fully interact with the legacy of Atreus, who tries to distance himself from the crimes of his house and the cruelty of his father while being reminded of both every time he’s called by the epithet Atreides.

[wonderlandofrogues]

DDLC V Wreck It Ralph

TIME FOR ANOTHER DUMB POST FROM BETH

This time theorizing that maybe Doki Doki Literature Clug and Wreck-It Ralph may exist within similar worlds, if not the same one.  Keep in mind: I love both. This comes from a place of love, not a place of trying to say that one is better than the other, or that anyone ripped anyone else off.

Big spoilers ahead for those who haven’t played DDLC yet

1: The window to the outside

In both, it is shown that the characters within the stories have a way to view the outside world (”our” world) from within their games. For the old arcade games this is the screen of the console but for newer games they had to get creative. Like the First-Person-Shooter in Hero’s duty. But in some games it’s harder to see/find. Like in Sugar Rush where you really have to look at the movie hard to figure it out.

This window allows the characters in their games to see the player, know their game is being played/viewed  and act accordingly. But with this comes with the condition that they don’t go “off script”. Because to do so would alert the gamer, and possibly make them think there is something wrong with the game. But, with this window, if a character chose, they could directly interact with the gamer.

In DDLC this window to the outside world is CLEARLY the Player Character and Monika, for what ever reason, is the only one who can see you through them. My theory is that because of the kind of game DDLC is, they are bound more strictly to their programmed roles and the other girls have no idea they are in a game because they have been programmed to believe it’s all real. Monika, for whatever reason, broke free of that and became aware.

2. The ability to make changes to the game directly through the CODE

Even though they are all made of code, not every character in the games can made edits to their world on a permanent level. They could make aesthetic changes, like maybe hanging something on their wall but they can’t change what the game IS... Unless they have access to the code. Which is information that is hard to come by and not everyone in their worlds is aware of. But people with this information can change the entire world they live in. How things look, how people feel, what they can and cannot remember (As you may recall if you’ve gone through both stories: Monika and King Candy both made sure that characters within the game lost memory of specific, important events that would have led to their downfall)

Monika’s dialogue implies she was “writing” the changes, using her pen to change the code from inside the playable parts of the game. Doing this gave... Mixed results.

And the bugs and problems caused along the way could be a direct result of her not going DEEP enough into the game to make those changes properly. She didn’t replant the roses and instead just painted them red and tried to convince you that this is the way they had always been.

But King Candy, on the other hand, did it much more expertly. And, do to be fair, he was on the lamb for 10 years before he took over Sugar Rush. Turbo had a lot of time to figure this out. He went to a place you couldn’t access from within the playable game and changed the game at its roots.

Which is why the changes stuck. And there wasn’t a constant jittering and glitching happening to every person like what happens after Sayori’s death in DDLC. 

Which leads me to my next point and I think the one that backs me up the most:

3: Failed/incomplete Deletion results in Glitches

If you’ve seen the movie, or played the game, you know what I mean. When Monika  “deleted” the other characters it broke the game down. Everything started to go wrong from the moment Sayori disappeared from the game and what was left in her place was a glitch, before the game reset and was rewritten to tell the story as if she were never a part of it. And it only got worse from there.

Then, in the Just Monika ending, when you are finally forced to Delete Monika in order to free yourself and reset the game... This happens to her

And similar things happen throughout the game to the other girls as Monika makes her changes to them.

Look familiar?

Now I know what you’re thinking: But all game glitching could look like that! It doesn’t prove anything! Besides it doesn’t even look that similar!

Well, if you’re taking this that seriously, I really wonder what you’re doing on this post. It’s a horror dating game and a disney movie... Just.. Relax and let me get where I’m going here.

In DDLC the glitching looks different because we’re seeing it on a two dimensional plane. The characters are FLAT, and so, the glitching is less defined. Squares instead of boxes. And more to the point, everyone’s glitching in WiR looks slightly different. So it would stand to reason that characters in other games, when they glitch, would behave slightly differently.

But my bigger point is this leads me into the theory of why Vanellope glitches- Using Monika’s own behaviors as evidence.

When Monika breaks apart, she panics, she tries to restore herself but she can’t because her base code has been removed from the heart of the game. She can’t put herself back on her own and instead of just disappearing she is holding on with nothing but willpower. My theory is that the glitching is a survival tactic for game characters when they can feel something is wrong with the game. If their code is broken, their glitching is them trying to put themselves back together. Desperately trying to stay alive after they have been deleted.

King Candy failed to properly delete Vanellope, so she remained in the game... But with her memories locked away, and her position stolen from her, her code as a whole was thrown out of sync. She wasn’t fully aware that there was something wrong, but her code knew it was broken. It was disconnected but there was still life in it. And just like the human body knows when something is wrong- even when we sometimes don’t know it ourselves- it was trying to correct itself. But it couldn’t.

Vanellope’s glitching is what saved her from being deleted. It was her code shouting “SOMETHING IS WRONG. PUT ME BACK” and holding onto the game for dear life. Trying to reset but not being able to since she was removed from the rest of the code. And no one knew what was wrong so it was passed off as her being “broken”. And when her glitch effects the world around her it’s because it’s her code trying to re-insert itself back into the game. 

But, just like monika trying to change her world from the surface level, it couldn’t do so without going to the code itself.

Of course this leaves the issue of “Well, then, why can Vanellope still use her power if she’s not a glitch anymore and has no reason to glitch?” and to that I answer: Well, the movie didn’t explain that either. 

So, there. 

[burnslaura]

Reiki Energy Shower Wonderful Useful Tips

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Should I Learn Reiki

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Jade Reiki Crystal

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[nicksthoughtsonthings]

Escape from New York (1981) ☆☆

Director: John Carpenter

Writers: John Carpenter, Nick Castle

Today, it’s popular to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas. The people who say that might remember a time where films had a plot like this: Manhattan is now a locked-off island housing every criminal in the US. AirForce 1 is hijacked and flown into the criminal-infested Manhattan, leaving the President to the mercy of its inmates. Luckily for us, Kurt Russell is an ex-soldier, Snake Plissken, and Snake has recently been arrested and condemned to the island for “robbing the federal reserve”. The warden hatches a fiendish plan: give Snake 24 hours to save the President and he’ll win his freedom back; fail, and 2 cyanide pills will be released into his bloodstream. Now that is an ambitious plot.

I didn’t really enjoy this film. I knew the plot, and the film’s graphic poster, and I was willing it to be better than it turned out to be. My expectations were high because this film was released a year before The Thing, an infinitely better Carpenter-Russell outing (The Thing is comfortably in my top 10 of all time). The problem with this film can be explained in comparison to that film. Both have spades of ambition, but The Thing has a sharper script, believable wardrobe, better set design, better editing and better direction. The failing of this film is not in its premise, but in its execution.

The characters needed to be more. Consider Russell’s main character in The Thing, MacReady. Gruff? Sure. Overly masculine? absolutely. But despite these similarities with Snake, MacReady is a 3-dimensional character. He’s enigmatic, cautious, vulnerable, scared. The first hour gives him the humanity that you need for him to become an action hero in the end, because he isn’t in the beginning. Without this humanity you cannot expect an audience to rally behind him when the film enters its final 3rd.

Snake Plissken is a paper-thin character in comparison. Russell delivers every line with a pained, gravelly tone, but it comes off more parody than sultry, and I couldn’t take him seriously for the whole runtime. And that’s just the main character. The rest of the cast is littered with greats: Donald Pleasance, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef  – all have rather forgettable turns. Not through lack of effort, but because the script never allowed them to display anything other than basic emotions and motivations.

A lack of emotional engagement with the core characters of a film is not necessarily problematic. It can still be enjoyable, or at least amusing. It just means that, as an audience, you skate around on the surface of the film, enjoying it for its parts rather than the sum of its parts. You can enjoy watching Kurt Russell fighting in a ring in Central Station. Who wouldn’t? You might even really want him to win. But you don’t really care about the context, whether he wins so that he can go on to save the president, or not. The narrative is lost, and you’re simply enjoying the parts of the film. Because this is enjoyment of a sort (you could coin this aesthetic enjoyment) you could be mistaken in thinking the film working for the right reasons, that is to say, narratively.

Where this is more problematic – or at least more noticeable – is when you get to the emotional finales of the film. For example, a melancholic moment of tragedy between two inmates, Brain (not Brian) and Maggie. This is usually the moment where you know if a film has worked. In Escape from New York, I caught myself wondering, “Oh, this is the moment where I’m supposed to care”. I say it is more noticeable with this scene because there is no surface level of enjoyment in this scene, in comparison to the ring fight in Central Station in the previous paragraph. It’s just a character lamenting the loss of another character. There is no aesthetic enjoyment for the film to hide behind, and the film is narratively nude. So when it doesn’t work, you’re simply bored, and you know it. You’re waiting for the film to just move on. Or at least I was.

Many action films don’t bother with a romantic storyline these days for that reason. Those that do must decide either to build in an emotional thread of a more manageable emotional size (think of Furiosa’s personal reasons for the drive in Mad Max:Fury Road), or go all out, and base the whole film upon such an emotional relationship (think of the reason why the father and daughter have to travel in the Last Train to Busan). Those films that shoehorn in an unwieldy relationship for the side characters may have the short-term gratification of a steamy sex scene, but when the time comes for that relationship to pull its narrative weight, and we’re watching two stick figures trying to draw blood from an emotional stone, we’re likely to ask ourselves: was it worth it? Be wise, if you’re going to make an action film, make an action film.

So the character’s are thin and the plot is ambitious, both in the physicality of the sets required, the emotional punch planned and the societal subtext intended. So be it. Good on them for giving it a go and not quite getting there. Without this we may not have seen The Thing, and the world would be a poorer place for it.

16th March 2020