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stewblog · 2 years ago

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

It’s possible we’ll never see another blockbuster movie quite like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Comic book movie sequels are a dime a dozen anymore, and there’s a lot about this movie that feels familiar. But the circumstances which inspired (necessitated?) this film, and the way those circumstances simultaneously affect the film’s characters and respective actors, results in something that is unique and heart-wrenching and even beautiful in its own way.

Chadwick Boseman wasn’t supposed to die. He deserved to be around for decades delivering scores of performances that would only surpass the already superlative work he’d built over a relatively short amount of time. And even though he’d managed to film 10 movies after his colon cancer diagnosis (including every appearance of T’Challa/Black Panther), it was not meant to be. Boseman’s light was no more. Some might consider it crass to immediately wonder what would become of T’Challa, but Boseman’s performance and presence was so indelible that it was hard not to.

Would they recast? Should they? One gets the sense that writer/director Ryan Coogler found the idea too painful, especially within such close proximity to Boseman’s passing. Instead, he chose to let his art reflect his reality. It’s normal for filmmakers and actors to allow their lived experiences to shape and inspire their work. But to have a film where the grief of the characters is a direct mirror to the grief of the actors, and to use their artistic medium as a way to process that grief almost in real time, feels unlike anything I’ve seen. Wakanda Forever is remarkable in its emotional honesty and serves as both a look at the ways we process grief while also delivering a pretty cracking good (albeit somewhat messy) comic book movie.

The film’s cold open is the death of T’Challa. His sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), is frantically working to find a cure for the unnamed disease destroying her brother’s body. She is unsuccessful. A year passes and Wakanda is still without a king or a Black Panther, all while Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) must fend off a multitude of nations demanding she share access to the wealth of Vibranium inside Wakanda’s borders.

Things are complicated even further when a heretofore unknown nation attacks a United States expedition to try and find Virbanium on the ocean floor. Led by Namor (Tenoch Huerta), the Talokans see this expedition as a threat to their sovereignty and demand Wakanda hand over the scientist responsible for inventing a Vibranium-detecting device or else. The problem? That scientist is only a 19-year-old girl. Granted, Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) has a genius-level intellect (she’s building an Iron Man-inspired suit in her spare time), but Shuri and Ramonda aren’t about to just let some water-breathing weirdo with wings on his feet take her to depths unknown. Things, obviously, only escalate from there with a small-scale war eventually breaking out on the high seas.

Wakanda Forever can be a rousing movie when it’s firing on all cylinders. Letitia Wright provides a tremendous emotional anchor to the film and this is as much about Shuri learning to channel her passion and anger and grief so that she can become the leader and hero her country and family needs. It’s substantial, complex and Wright knocks it out of the park. If the future of Black Panther now rests on her shoulders, Coogler made the right call.

Likewise, Angela Bassett is superb and low-key my favorite aspect of the whole affair. By necessity her character is pushed more to the front of things and Bassett is wonderful at every turn. Ramonda, as she so vehemently reminds us, has lost everyone she loves and yet still finds depths of strength and resolve to mine. Bassett conveys this effortlessly.

The biggest treat of the film, though, is the discovery of Tenoch Huerta at Namor. It’s not terribly often that I look at a performance of an otherwise unknown actor and think, “They’re gonna be huge.” But with Huerta it’s almost impossible not to. Namor has always been one of the more (pardon the water pun) fluid Marvel characters, rarely taking sides and mostly doing only that which benefits his own kingdom regardless of who he ends up fighting. That remains the same here, but Huerta’s performance adds a layer of humanity to Namor that is much-needed. Namor can be incredibly intimidating on-screen (no easy feat for a character who uses tiny flappy ankle wings to fly around wearing a green Speedo), but Huerta’s performance is packed to the gills with a perfect mix of charm and quiet authority. It’s as memorable and meaningful a debut as we’ve had for a new character in the MCU in a while.

It’s a shame that the film’s other new character doesn’t fare as well, especially considering her centrality to the story. I have no real experience with Riri Williams outside this film, so she was something of a blank slate for me going in. Thorne certainly does her best, but there’s just very little for the character to do other than just, sort of, be around. Sure, she puts her mechanical genius to good use when there’s an action scene afoot, but there’s basically no reason for her to be here or for the movie to go out of its way to introduce her to begin with. I get that Marvel wanted her to show up so they wouldn’t have to go through an elongated introduction for her upcoming Disney+ show, Ironheart, but swerving out of the way to bring her in only serves to bloat a movie with an already unwieldy runtime of nearly three hours. There’s no reason Shuri couldn’t have been the one to have invented the Vibranium detector, etc.

The film’s other source of bloat is Everett Ross (Martin Freeman). At least Riri has a central role to play. Ross mostly just shows up at crime scenes after the fact and says stuff. You could cut 99 percent of his appearance and it wouldn’t affect the movie one single bit. Mostly he seems to be in here to remind people that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is still around as Valentina (who likely won’t show up again until the Thunderbolts movie in 2024).

But even when the film doesn’t cohere like it should or it loses focus for a bit, what always shines through is its heart. This is a deeply human, emotionally-driven film to a degree that you rarely get in blockbuster movie-making, and for that alone I’m grateful it exists as it does.

#black panther #wakanda forever #chadwick boseman #tenoch huerta #letitia wright

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hematomes · 3 years ago

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I saw your post about ppl losing their shiz about Kaeya fanart being “whitewashed” when it’s literally darker than he is in canon. I agree btw I love like basically all Kaeya art out there I love one eyepatch man.

anyhoo, I have a story. I once saw a tiktok about a kaeya art. it was specifically labeled “IN PROGRESS” or whatever so you knew the artist wasn’t done. it was a gorgeous piece of art btw. So far, the only thing that had been colored was his hair and some of his clothes.

pretty much everyone in the comments started harrasing her about how he was whitewashed and the artist had to be a white supremacist and i think someone said “see I knew everyone who played genshin was racist just delete the game at this point.”

i was just like 😳 wow jeez it’s literally IN PROGRESS the artist legit said so.

the artist eventually posted the final version (after having to delete the first video and deal with several threats) it did turn out beautiful, but on the comments there and on every post of theirs after people are lurkign in the comments bad-mouthing them.

as much as I definitely am for characters not being whitewashed (especially Kaeya bc I love him your honor) I think some people take it way too far when the person they’re yelling at literally just wanted to get people excited about their WIP.

hi! sorry im so late this issue became quite sensitive lol i had to work up the courage to come back to it. it's gonna be a bit long, but i really need to say all this

if there's one thing i noticed about the genshin community on tiktok and twitter, it's that there is a whole, whole lot of social justice warriors and overall it's extremely toxic. it's something that surprised me because the people i interact with on tumblr are all super sweet and not one bit toxic so? idk, tumblr is just a different breed i guess

your story is extremely saddening. everytime there's a kaeya fanart, people forget about the color theory and the artists' style and claim it's whitewashed and i genuinely don't understand why. if someone could explain it to me, am i missing something? im not an artist so perhaps im mistaken, idk, but i've never seen a fanart where kaeya was whitewashed.

the thing that pisses me off the most is that most of the time it's white ppl calling something whitewashed. i'm not saying you shouldn't call out racism if you see it just bc you're white, just that these people aren't even right - and often you see poc coming into the debate and explaining it's not whitewashed/saying it doesn't bother them. moreover, i've literally seen fanart of beidou as a black girl, which isn't representation in my opinion - beidou is already a poc, and asian people need at least as much representation as black people, so it's plain racism. same thing with kaeya, i've seen edits of him with stereotypical african features, and it's really sad that no one is calling this out but yelling about whitewashing as soon as he isn't the exact same color as the official arts. hell, someone even said "so what if it's darker? it's still whitewashing" and i??? am flabbergasted. whitewashing is absolutely disgusting, but ppl keep misunderstanding what it means and just using it to gratuitously harass artists.

now, don't get me wrong. i believe that you can draw whatever you want. but the thing is - if you get mad when someone draws kaeya white (if they really do, i mean), you can't just applaud someone else's that draws another character black. racism goes both ways, and it's bordering on fetishism. i, as a poc (mixed-race, caucasian + african), am extremely uncomfortable everytime i see this double-standard.

but anyway, the fact remains that sjw have plagued the genshin fandom. and it's not just about kaeya's skin color (we don't even know if he's really a poc - we know he's tan according to paimon, and i believe she called him "exotic"? so idk) but also about the ships. everytime i see a shippy tiktok, there's plenty of ppl out here saying it's wrong, claiming their own ship is the most canon. if i'm not mistaken, kaeluc is the one that gets the most hate, and i genuinely, once again, don't understand why.

i talked about them before and explained how it's not incest bc they really aren't brothers, but i swear every now and then i see people throwing death threats and slurs anytime someone hints at them. idk if you are familiar with the eng va's fandom, but sometimes they play among us together, aether's va does some livestreams where he invites different voice actors. but diluc's va is never there, and i was wondering why - recently i learned that it's because he retweet a fanart of kaeya and diluc fighting alongside each other (not even a shippy fanart, apparently) and people harassed him and excluded him from the fandom. and now the same thing is happening to griffin burns, childe's va, bc he retweeted (or liked, idk) a fanart of lumine and childe fighting or something and people called it pedophilia bc lumine would be a minor. i'm not even gonna dive into this bc the travelers are canonically like 30 times childe's age, but what i mean is - people are so full of hate and i can't fathom living like this?

the point is, i totally respect anyone who doesn't ship something i ship. i myself don't like certain ships - like zhongli/xiao, jean/diluc - but im not gonna harass ppl who do just because i can? that's messed up, i just don't get it. i wish the fandom wasn't that bad bc i really enjoy this game

anyway, im really disappointed but still grateful, bc my followers & people i've interacted with here have been nothing but sweet and respectful. i hope none of y'all come across the toxic side of the genshin fandom. stay safe y'all!

#not a quote #answered #genshin impact #kaeya #genshin kaeya #whitewashing #racism #i'm so tired of the genshin fandom on tiktok you have no idea #and i don't even use tiktok that much #and im not even on twitter

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stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland · 4 years ago

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PR stunt relationships - ɟ

🎶🎶 Guess who’s back, back, back? Back again, gain, gain 🎶🎶

Heeello, my babies! 🥰 How are you? I hope you’re all fine and that you’re staying strong since, as we knew and expected, they’re literally attacking us every day with these PRs. And today’s topic is precisely about this. PR-stunt relationships.

What do I know about- What do I know about love? Nothing. And that’s why it’s everything. Sorry, I had to 😅🤣. Shout-out to ‘What Do I Know About Love?’ by CC. No but, seriously tho. What do I know about a PR stunt relationship? Again, I’m not an expert on the subject. I know as much as you do, plus, maybe a little bit more due to my research over the years.

🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

PR stunt relationship, also known as PRomance, showmance, fauxmance (👈🏽 cover for celebrities who are both queer), and also as 🤫😂 ‘extremely camera-ready relationship’. I can personally define a PR as a work of persuasion. Picture PR people as shapers, as narrators, as storytellers, because that’s what they do. Whether it’s for protection, or to build or rebuild an image, or simply for promotion, they analyze the situation in order to create the best publicity/narrative/farce that benefits their client. They each have their own vision. Each of them has a plan that they sometimes tend to repeat with other clients because it works. Take as an example our friend Scooby Doo Sc**ter (Br**n), who is making it increasingly normal and common for his clients to use engagement rings as narratives.

A PR stunt relationship is nothing more than a PUBLICITY STUNT, as the word itself implies, aimed to get people and media attention. Publicists and celebrity management managers set up a fake public relationship to make fans and the general public believe it’s true. To give the couple more credibility, also friends, family, and artists friends of the couple get involved many times. To give you a practical example, let’s take PRen Tyren. They were at least 80% involved in each other’s lives.

Think about their birthdays and all the friends and families involved. Think about when Tymber even went to Graciela’s birthday, L’s great grandmother. Think about Tyres and brother Jauregui (who even made a song out of it with him). Think about L and Angel Gold (his sister). Think about L and Jailynn (his daughter). Think about The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, aka Tyren and, I think they were called Galsey? (Halsey and G-Eazy). Think even about Dinah who was part of the PR. I mean, you got it, right?

This type of business, whether involves the music industry, the film industry, the sports industry, etc., works this way for EVERYONE. They get at the same goal but with different tactics for each individual person, and they give a damn if in the meantime the person, their client, is bullied, or hated, or if they receive death threats, or if they start having anxiety problems, panic attacks, mental or physical health problems, etc. They don’t give a shit about their well-being in general. It’s just business to them. They’re just money with two legs. Can you picture a rolled-up dollar with two legs, can’t you? Good, because that’s what they are. Products. Products to sell.

There’s a very strict contract that both parties have to mutually agree on, and this contract is called a relationship contract. A relationship contract is a legally binding document for the duration of at least one year. It’s very VERY own custom-made because they write down what do they want to happen, then the duration (which can be extended) and the termination, and all the other things that each of them wants to include. The duration of a contract obviously varies from person to person and can depend on many things. But the main thing is that, it depends on the type of goal they want to achieve thanks to it.

For example, if the purpose is purely publicizing, such as the promotion of an album, or a movie, or whatever else, the relationship will last only for the necessary time that it takes to increase the interest of the public and indeed, to publicize the project. Another example could be when they want to hide the sexuality of one of the two people in the couple or both. Here, the duration of the contract could reach up to years, and could even lead to fake marriages.

We have examples of people who have done this to promote movies/sagas/franchises: Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. We have examples of people who have done this to promote TV series: Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, Lili Reinhart and Cole Sprouse, Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush. We have examples of people who have done this to hide their true sexuality: Ricky Martin & Rebecca De Alba (for 17 motherfucking years), TS and.. and-and-and EVERYONE. We have examples of people who have done this to increase their notoriety, but then fell in love for real despite being super toxic for each other: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. We even have examples of real couples who have been asked to go public to boost ratings and publicize their show more than it already was per se: Lea Michele and Cory Monteith. [Yes, my friends, even real couples do PR stuff for publicity purposes]

Celebs fake relationships for profits. Profits such as more fame, more fans, more acquaintances, whether they were made together or thanks to or of the ‘partner�� themselves based also on the industry fields to which they are part, more freedom in other aspects of their life, both work and private, etc., and of course, money. The money profit received varies. It varies according to the duration (especially if they’re many years), to what they’re supposed to do, such as how many times they’re forced to kiss (yes, guys, that also counts), to the amount of time they have to spend together, aka being seen together, etc. It also and above all vary, based on how famous they are, or if one of them is not famous at all, or if one of them is more famous than the other. It’s obvious that the more famous the person is, the more money they receive. Both parties benefit from it, but the person who ACCEPTED to do the PR is obviously paid more also based on the notoriety they have as I told you. Here we start with a minimum of $5,000 received per month. The figure can also reach disproportionate numbers with five/six zeros per year.

It’s enough to think that 75/80% of all famous couples are fake. They gain more attention and ultimately, more money, and at the same time, fans and GP can witness an exciting ‘love story’ filled with drama, gossip, rumors, mysteries, and if they decide to end their story on a negative note, even with the possible and eventual shade-throwing which in turn leads to more attention, more gossip, etc., etc. Exactly how the teams on both sides wanted. You have to keep in mind that teams have the power in this case. It’s the PR teams who hold the power over the media to control the narrative, and not the other way around.

There are also many factors involved to keep in mind. People involved. We have friends, parents, paparazzi, and all those other people the celeb team involves to make the story look as believable as possible. For example, you know when the media say it was a source who gave them the news? Well, that’s the truth. Think about it. Those sources and those insiders are really insiders because they’re part of the team. They are those people who work for them and who release information, whether true or fake, to follow the narrative decided for the plan. Speaking instead of another topic that I’ve noticed in many asks. Paparazzi.

I don’t know if you know how paparazzi usually work, but especially the old-fashioned stalker type ones, are not known to hold back, in fact, on the contrary, they go way too far beyond the limits. Some of them know where the celebrities might be based on how popular the location is (clubs, restaurants, etc., where celebs often go), or other times, they’re called by waiters, valets, drivers, etc., etc. It’s a pretty aggressive and competitive industry, and paparazzi do everything they can to get images of famous people to sell to a newspaper or a magazine or on Instagram. There are differences between those in the US, those in Europe, etc. Many are also easy to control since eight times out of ten, it’s an organized thing.

As we well know, most of the time, the paparazzi are told where to be and when, probably by the celebrity’s PR agency itself. It’s ALL for publicity. Publicity of any kind. To promote a movie if it’s an actor, to promote an album if it’s a singer, to be noticed if that person’s project was a flop, for fake relationships or to ‘cover’ the real ones if one of the two is in a relationship that is not seen in a good light and therefore doesn’t suit the public eye, or if one of the two or both of them are queer. Seriously, for everything. And so they have paparazzi following them around so it looks like they’re more popular than they actually are, and the celebrities who make me laugh the most are those who, after calling them, act like the paparazzi were following them everywhere, some even getting angry and taking it out on them.

But it must also be said that celebrities who really don’t want the paparazzi’s attention, make sure that this doesn’t happen. Unlike the ones who want them and even have them called. There are many celebrities who want their pictures taken because, as we also know, any publicity is good publicity. These celebrities know how it works and not only accept that the paparazzi are part of the business, but use them as a tool for their publicity. It’s just business for them and a new opportunity to look good in magazines. They want to be in control of their image and in this way, they have it.

Also, some brands pay celebs to wear their clothing or accessories while out and about, and those staged shots that look like candid of a celebrity leaving a restaurant or a store, actually have multiple purposes, namely: celebrity endorsement of the product, big check for the celebrity for wearing the item, collaboration between the celebrity and paparazzi to get nice shots that look natural and random from which the celebrity then selects the ones they prefers, and image sales for the paparazzi agency. Everyone gets paid and everyone is happy.

Another thing to take into consideration? Depending on the celebrity’s profession, even their own contracts. In the sense that most of their contracts involve fake relationships. It also depends on the image that the celeb has and whether they’re trying to hide their sexuality. From this, their contracts can include a minimum of two PRs, or five, or eight, or even one that lasts for many years. They can also state that the same person with whom the celebrity has already had a PR in the past, may be again in the future. I’ll give you a practical example.

Imagine yourselves and a friend as a celebrity, okay? You guys are singers and your friend is an actor. You’ve just signed a 3-album deal lasting 5 years (meaning you have 5 years to complete and release 3 albums), and your friend an 8-year movie saga contract (let’s imagine 3 movies). Now let’s imagine that there are clauses in both your contracts that also include fake relationships. Your contract has two, and your friend’s contract has five, including one with one of their co-stars. Both of you must, ABSOLUTELY, have the number of PRs chosen for you over the course of those years, otherwise, you’re gonna be forced not only to fight a lawsuit that you will lose because you haven’t respected the contract, but also to pay a penalty that can reach up to six figures.

Doesn’t this ring a bell? Now do you also understand why Ca*ren, and most of the other celebrities, are forced to have PR stunt relationships? Because they have to! Because it’s part of their contracts if they want to keep doing what they do. Many of them have a say. They can decide whether or not to accept the person chosen for them, they can choose a person themselves, they can negotiate something in return if they accept a person they didn’t want, etc., etc. But many have no say in it.

And speaking of our Camr*n, more specifically, our L, and Kris. Guys… All the comments I’ve read around… *help* 🤦🏻🤦🏻🤦🏻

L didn’t invite Kris there because he’s her boyfriend. And it certainly wasn’t her the one who asked her dad to delete the post because she didn’t want her fans to start attacking her new boyfriend or because she wanted to protect her relationship. IT WAS ALL DONE ON PURPOSE. Mi*e posted the picture and then deleted it ON PURPOSE! Why? Because (L and Kris’ teams) wanted the fans to see the picture to speculate! They wanted the fans to start attacking him! They want people to talk about it!! Is that really that hard to understand or to believe? Welcome to Tyren 2.0, my friends. That’s how it started with Taco Delivery Symbol, or did you forget that too? Go read the timelines if you really don’t remember.

I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve put off releasing L’s album over the years. They’d finally decided, and then it was postponed AGAIN, but because of COVID. EVERYONE had to postpone their programs actually, but L’s album was supposed to be released 100% this year (in September, in my opinion). Her PR should have started earlier. This is the only reason we have only had hints of Crispy McBacon (I’ve already found so many nicknames for his transphobic ass, sorry but I just can’t help myself) over time. Because they have postponed several times! *And also because, in my opinion, they were still looking for an alternative. The choice had to be between a guy (him) and a girl.*

But hey, at least they have an excuse to make this PR more real, you know? I’m already picturing what she’ll say because we all know the script by now: “Kris and I’ve been dating for a while now. I’m a private person. My personal life is my personal life and I want to protect my shit, you know? I don’t like it when people judge my life choices and that’s why I’ve never talked about it before. And I’d like it to stay that way”. Picture me shouting a “SURE, JAN!” when that happens, also because we will then slowly have more and more of their content. Aww, I’m already picturing them playing fake lovebirds and talking to each other in Spanish IN FRONT of a camera, in a live or an Insta-story maybe? 🤮🤮🤮

And speaking of postponed programs…

This is my version of how things could’ve turned out for our oh so beloved IwanttobeknownMila. Keep these dates in mind. Shon Mentos: The Tour, started on March 7, 2019, and ended on December 21, 2019. The Romance Tour, was supposed to start on May 26, 2020, and end on September 26, 2020.

They could’ve released Shirt’s documentary around the beginning of the Romance Tour. They could’ve made them break up almost at the end of the Romance Tour. He would’ve completed the album now, to then releasing it in January or February almost simultaneously with Cinderella’s release.

Why all this? Simple, cross-publicity or cross-promotion or whatever you want to call it. Choke recently said that they’d initially finished filming at the end of his tour and that they had to cut out a lot of parts. And what does all this mean? That the original documentary was another one.

In my opinion, the original was supposed to about his life on tour and only a small part, sneak peeks about the creation of Wonder. Instead, thanks to COVID, they changed direction and made it all about his album. The reason why they had to cut a lot of parts, was to make room for the last few months and therefore to the completion of the album. Which is why I think they finished filming in September/October (if anyone of u knows more, please feel free to let me know).

Without COVID they could’ve released his original documentary more or less around the beginning of the Romance Tour. News, tabloids, and people would’ve talked about them, both for the documentary and for the tour of our Mila= cross-promotion. They could’ve made them break up almost at the end of the Romance Tour. The distance, the misunderstandings, and why not, even the pathetic excuse that Toilet Brush used now when ‘they were in crisis/on a break’, that is, that he hadn’t been opened and vulnerable with her. People would’ve talked about them, Shitmila fans would’ve rebelled and cry their eyes out, news and tabloids would’ve gone crazy for who would tell the story better= cross-promotion. He would’ve completed the album now, with half of the songs he already had (from 3 years) and that he’s using on this album, and a half with songs that would’ve been about his broken heart, to then releasing it in January or February almost simultaneously with Cinderella’s release. Do I need to say this? You can imagine what would’ve happened, right? And what would that have led to? Oh yeah. Cross-promotion!

But anyway, guys, it didn’t happen. Just as we didn’t get L’s album as we hoped. But try to remember one thing, okay? Tyren’s contract started because L needed a new male PR and then they flipped the cards around and continued for him AS AGREED initially. Shakerstoremila’s one, on the other hand, is only and exclusively for HIM. It’s centered on him and will continue to be on him until the end. There’s no point in asking yourselves why Paruparo does this and why Paruparo does that, okay? She HAS TO do it. It’s in her contract and she cannot legally break it if she doesn’t want to face the consequences HER HERSELF has accepted. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can wait for the end more calmly. It sucks, I know. But that’s the way it is.

I’ve never liked Shon that much in the past. I discovered his existence only and exclusively thanks to Paruparo (IKWYDLS). I’ve always seen him as too fake and with a huge ego. I first became aware of his giant ego during the interview they did in 2015 at The Late Late Show with James Corden. Indeed, I’ve always wondered how someone like Mila could be friends with such an egocentric person. But you know how it is, I just brushed it off because I simply didn’t care about him, and also because at the time (2016 when I officially entered the fandom) the IKWYDLS era was already over for a while. BUT, my first impression of him became very true years later when they started this ridiculous charade.

Not only is he self-centered and with a huge ego, he’s also one of the most fake people I’ve ever seen. Why am I saying this? Because although I don’t know him and consequently, I don’t know if he was already like that before he became famous, Shon is the typical empty celebrity without a personality that has become the role he was set to be in the beginning. The perfect product. They wanted to sell the good guy. The sensitive and different from the others (and that’s where the bullshit of being a ‘singer-songwriter’ came from). And since this idea in itself only partially worked, they made him work on his body so they could sell that too. To sell the unreachable good guy. Superman, as he defines himself 😂. The problem of Shawn and his team, is with people who have not stopped to just look at the fake goody to shoes image that they wanted and want to continue selling.

The way I see him, Shoe’s just a selfish kid. Everything always revolves around him. Everything is and must be about him. He lives to be loved. He lives for the attention. He lives for the approval of others. Everyone must necessarily like him. There’s no one else besides him. Do you know what he reminds me of? He reminds me of a child who asks his mom for attention. ‘Mommy, how did I do? You liked it, didn’t you? Was I good? I can do better if you want, I know I can do better’. I don’t even think he realizes he’s like that because he’s so full of himself and so clouded by himself. Oh and, you know what I’ve been realizing lately? Many of his fans really believe he grew his hair out because Paruparo asked him to (I’d never have believed this bullshit even under torture), but now more than ever I’m convinced that he did it to copy one of his obsessions for years, that is, Matthew McConaughey. My personal problem with this look of his is the fact that he’s now starting to look more and more like Jon Snow (any Game of Thrones fans like me here?), aka one of the characters I can’t stand the most of that amazing TV series. And this, is making me dislike him even more.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I hate him and that I consider him the devil. In fact, I think there’s a lot but A LOT worse than him out there. I really, REALLY, dislike him, but I don’t hate him. Do I follow him on social media? Yes, but only on IG. Did I listen to his music? Yes, but illegally, and I liked some of his songs because as usual, I distinguish the art from the artist. I’ve never bought his music, I’ve never streamed it, I’ve never gone to one of his concerts, and the only views I’ve ever given him are only for music videos (not even all of them) on YouTube and only because other channels can’t violate copyrights by taking and posting them on their own. Indeed, you know how I’m gonna listen to his album? Thanks to the YouTube channels of his fans who will post his songs.

But anyway. I’ve dwelt too much on #pleasenoticeme #pleaseloveme, I’d say that’s enough. I’m gonna conclude with my final thoughts on the main topic of my post, that is, the fake PR relationships. I wanna explain to u guys why a fake relationship like Shazam’s and our Mila’s is so obvious as PR.

A PR relationship MUST create doubt in people’s heads and MUST NOT look perfect at all. Why? Because otherwise people WOULD NOT TALK ABOUT IT. If it looked like a basic relationship, a common relationship, people wouldn’t talk about it because they wouldn’t find anything strange about it. They wouldn’t speculate, they wouldn’t look for clues, they wouldn’t watch every move. They wouldn’t be thirsty. They’d just get bored. Yes, there would be the initial boom of the ‘new couple’, but then everything would end and people would move on to look for something else to entertain them. The main point of a PR relationship is to make people speculate, and if people don’t constantly talk about it, then it would be all pointless because it would make no sense to create a fake relationship in the first place.

Way to stop this act or any other act? Stop giving them fucking attention! You want to talk about it, speculate, look for evidence, and make theories amongst you friends? Do it! That’s great actually. I do it myself. But fucking tagging them?? ��😒🙄

If all the fans who know the real TRUTH stop talking about it by tagging them, tweeting them, etc. their ‘story’ would end. Sure, their teams would try to create something to attract attention again, like a kiss or a scoop, but if ignored even then, everything would end immediately. Why? Precisely because they were unable to complete their task. And in that case, the two celebs would ‘break up’ with a big scandal that would still bring attention back to them, although in this case, the attention would FINALLY be on both celebrities in a singular way and no longer as a couple. The next goal would be for fans and media to find out ‘what happened’ and ‘why’, while for managers it would be to create a scoop on those questions that keep them talking about them, and if all goes well, maybe even get them ‘back together’, and so on, until they have a better idea. But, if they fail even then, even though they’ve not reached the date scheduled in the contract, they would ‘break up’ without any more surprises.

And that’s all for now, my fellows CS. Remember to hold on and to not lose hope. Be patient. And above all, try not to freak out and get very angry as soon as you listen to the album. We already know it’s all bullshit.

I’m sending you a virtual hug 🤗🤗 Always with love, F ❤️

#FA #submission #f anon

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rebelcourtesan · 4 years ago

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Supporting Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss

I’ve seen a lot of people demanding when the next episodes of Hazbin Hotel is going to start. Sad to say it’s going to be a while. Hazbin Hotel has been picked up by A24 over the summer which is a HUGE accomplishment! This is the first big step towards more episodes, but animation, especially with the skill we’ve see in the pilot is going to take time.

Which leads me to my first point.

1. Do not harass creators or VAs.

Please, don’t litter their DMs or Twitter accounts with demands of when the next episode is coming. Especially, the VAs who have no part in production other than providing voices to characters. VAs are important actors, but the heavy lifting is done by the animators themselves.

Also, since Hazbin has been picked up, Vivziepop has to keep mum with details about the show. We won’t be getting anymore crumbs about Hazbin Hotel itself for a while so please, don’t think her silence is her lack of interest. Hazbin is her baby! In order to protect the show, she may have signed contracts with A24 of not sharing information until the show is released. Which is a GOOD SIGN!!!!

Also, follow Viziepop, Hazbin Hotel, and Helluva Boss on Twitter for the latest of any announcements or releases! Why ask when an episode is going to be released when they’re going to announce it on Twitter in the first place? Trust me, as soon as Vivziepop is certain of a release date, she’ll tell everyone via Twitter.

2. Rewatch anything and everything from SpindleHorse.

Another method of support is to give views and likes to Vivziepop’s shorts, Hazbin Pilot, and Helluva Boss episodes. Even if its playing in the background while you do chores or work on a project, the number of views help show people are still watching and enjoying the animation. The views are in the millions which is a great sign to potential networks that HH/HB already have a large fanbase waiting to subscribe and buy merchandise.

3. Purchase the Merchandise

All profits from the merch sales goes into paying animators and everyone involved with Helluva Boss eps, comics, and etc. More animators and artists, means Vivziepop has more people working on episodes which will speed things up. If we want more stuff, then we have to buy more stuff to support the show. I’ve bought two sketchbooks and a pair of socks to help support Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Thankfully, this doesn’t seem to be a problem as they often have items announced as sold out shortly after sales.

4. Vivziepop has a Patreon

If the merch is too expensive or not selling anything you’re interested in, subscribe to Viziepop’s Patreon. The money goes directly into production of shorts, animation, and other cool stuff. For 5 bucks a month you get sneak peeks at upcoming projects. We were even allowed to see the first half of the Alastor comic before it went live a few days later! If five bucks is too much, there’s a 1 dollar tier. Everything counts towards supporting the series.

5. Support Fan Creators

Between episodes of Helluva Boss and until Hazbin Hotel is released, fan creators are what keeps the fandom afloat. There are AMAZING artists creating art and comics across Twitter and Instagram. And there are quite a few popular fanfiction on AO3. Follow them, complement their art, and best of all, pay for commissions! With money! Exposure doesn’t pay bills or rent. With things as they are with Covid-19, there are lots of artists in need of money to help make ends meet or provide for their families. If you can’t afford their art, support them on patreon or Ko-Fi. Also, do NOT STEAL ART OR REPOST WITHOUT PERMISSION!!! And even if it’s commissioned art, ALWAYS, ALWAYS give credit!

6. NO TOXICITY OR SHIPPING WARS

This is a big one for me. Being toxic, shipping wars, or ship shaming has chased people off from fandoms. I’ve seen it happen in Voltron Legendary Defender, She-Ra, and now I’m seeing it in Hazbin Hotel. I’ve seen VAs for Voltron being harassed and receive death threats from supposed fans and towards the end of She-ra there was some backlash towards the creator over Entrapdak pairing.

As much as I love Hazbin Hotel, bottom line is these are FICTIONAL characters. It is not worth making someone feel bad, threaten, or insulted over which character kissing another character. And using a petition to push a ship onto a creator is very poor taste.

Let me be clear, Viviziepop already has a story planned for these characters. She likely already has the first season of Hazbin Hotel written up and only she (and possibly a handful of people), already know who is going to end up with whom based on how she wants the story to go. Just trust her and let her tell her story. Even if Angel Dust doesn’t end up with Husk or Alastor, or Charlie stays with Vaggie instead of hooking up with Alastor, or they all fall for characters we haven’t met yet, you can STILL SHIP WHO YOU WANT!!!!

People are still shipping Katara and Zuko from Avatar and that show ended a long time ago. Even in Voltron, people still ship Lance/Keith and Shiro/Allura. It doesn’t matter if your ship isn’t canon! You can still ship it!!!!

We all love the show! Agree to disagree and just be fans together for Hazbin Hotel and support the creators!

#fan toxicity #supporting shows #Hazbin Hotel #Helluva Boss

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becuzitisbitter · 4 years ago

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All Cops Are Bad

The last of the essays i will be posting that I wrote for school, this one is an attempt at an approachable ACAB argument (my professor said that she was persuaded, at least)

There is an old slogan with roots at least as far back as the 1920’s and is yet becoming more and more popular across the globe today: “All coppers are bastards.” Of course, most people just say “cops” these days. The extensive history of the slogan might even make one stop to wonder why the police have been the object of such long-standing antagonism, if one isn’t the sort to grasp the slogan’s truth intuitively. The reality is that all cops really are bastards, not in a literal sense, of course, but in the derogatory usage which communicates despicability. The goal of this essay is to convince the reader that the police are bad and that policing should be done away with entirely. After all, the police present themselves as the vanguard of the state’s repressive urges and as the guarantors of an order defined by deprivation and violence.

Olivia B. Waxman, writing for Time Magazine, points to economic forces as dictating the development of the means and aims utilized by policing institutions in the U.S. She writes that businesses had already been hiring private security to protect the transport and storage of their property, and that, “These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” (Waxman) In other words, America’s first publicly funded police force was simply picking up after the work of private businesses to protect their own property, but with the cost foisted upon those who were being kept out. She continues this economic argument as she traces the lineage of the modern police force back to its forerunners in the Southern runaway slave patrols. She writes, “the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system”. Thus, the primary policing institutions in the South were the slave patrols, the first of which was formally established in 1704. (Waxman)

The police developed historically to enforce property rights rather than to ensure the wellbeing of the populace. If it is understood that white supremacy encodes human skin with either privilege or dispossession, it should be understood that, as Mariame Kaba writes in an opinion piece published by the New York Times, “when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.” (Kaba) Kaba is an organizer against criminalization and a self-described police abolitionist because she believes that “a ‘safe’ world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.” The police, then, are not focused on creating a safe world. They are interested in preserving the world as it is, which demands a tacit defense of misogynistic and white supremacist institutions.

Regardless of personal attitudes or goals, the undeniable outcome of two hundred years of policing in America has been an uninterrupted avalanche of mostly arbitrary violence aimed at preserving the rule of law, that is, the sanctity of private property. In just the last year, the discourse about the role and place of police in our society has exploded with new questions and new ideas. What makes this conversation so powerful is that the police are considered so essential to the functioning of the modern world that the abolitionist movement must necessarily carry indictments on many other institutions and ways of relating that are bound-up with policing.

Of course, many readers will be quick to react defensively. Most disagreements with the argument presented here will take one of two forms: the claim that the argument over-generalizes police, and the claim that the police fill such an essential role that society couldn’t hope to provide an acceptable standard of life in their absence. Both will be addressed below.

The former argument comes in many varieties. One might even say, “It is unfair to judge such a large group by the actions of a few bad apples,” without being aware that they were reversing the meaning of the idiom they are attempting to make use of, which actually originated as “A rotten apple quickly infects its neighbor,” according to Ben Zimmer, who is a linguist and language columnist for The Wall Street Journal. (Cunningham) Regardless of the backwardness of this idiom, many would maintain that it is wrong to generalize police or stereotype their actions based on our perceptions of a few bad actors. Some police may abuse their power, or harbor prejudice, many readers would contend, but most police officers are decent people doing their best under difficult conditions. The truth, however, is that literally all cops bring about harm simply by doing the jobs that they signed up for. To go a step further, even if every police officer were to act in good faith, the task of maintaining a status quo defined by inequality would still force officers into the position of beating the cold, poor, and hungry back from the resources they need to live comfortably. This world of deprivation is not worth defending, and yet every cop has signed up to defend it. Some readers might still say that to pain the police with such a broad brush, is to commit an act of prejudice on par with the attitudes the police are criticized for, but they are grasping at straws. No one becomes a police officer by accident. By switching careers, they could avoid such judgement entirely. One wonders if they would feel the same about criticizing other groups which are entirely opt-in, such as MS-13 or the Taliban.

Could there ever be such a thing as a good cop? No. Here is one example that I think demonstrates a larger principle: even if a given police officer is a dedicated and educated anti-racist, the logistical deployment of police departments across the US places more officers in poor neighborhoods and communities of color than in wealthy or majority-white areas. This means that even the most kind-hearted police would be more likely to detain or arrest poor people and people of color than affluent whites. This is only one facet of a fundamentally unjust system. The development of police departments as racist and anti-working-class institutions across History means that they are structurally and institutionally racist and anti-working-class in the here and now. Police departments continue to defy reform because the problem is intentionally encoded into their purpose. They must be done away with entirely.

When a protestor or graffiti artist echoes the old slogan that, “All cops are bastards,” it is an expression of a tautology. Like the phrase “All triangles have three sides,” the slogan contains its own truth. All triangles have three sides because it is part of the definition of triangles to have three sides. We can’t even conceive of a triangle with four sides because by having four sides, it would cease to be a triangle. Despicability is written into the definition of policing because the aims of policing are themselves despicable. Any cop that ceased to work toward the aims of policing would cease to be deplorable, maybe, but he would also cease to be a cop as surely as a triangle with four sides would cease to be a triangle.

The second primary counter argument to criticism of the police is that the police are a necessary evil, essential to protecting us from a rousseauian war of all against all. This assumption that humanity could not get by without police seems silly, after all, the police are only a modern institution, hardly a blip in humanity’s story. It has already been shown that the police were not created to protect the average person from harm, but to protect private property rights. In any case, a counter argument from consequences is not the same as a refutation. One need not know the correct answer to a problem to recognize a wrong one. When asked, “What would you do with the psycho serial killers?” one should be unabashedly honest about not knowing the answer because there is no one answer. The answer to each problem can only be located in the context in which the problem occurs. This reflex to reach for a one-size-fits-all answer for all of life’s problems, along with its concomitant desire to preserve the tedious “peace” of the status quo, do a lot to explain the psychology of pro-police arguments.

Neither the means nor ends of policing are acceptable. The forces that shape and control our world, be they corporate or political, tower over us such that we only ever meet with their basest appendages. The police are their piggy-toes, pun-intended. Admittedly, the arguments presented here will be significantly weaker in the mind of anyone who really feels good about the state of the world which police maintain, however little is likely to be gained in dialogue with someone who could maintain a positive view of concentration camps, needless and ceaseless killings, the continuation of slave labor in the prison system, mass food-insecurity, etc.

It is incumbent upon each of us to improve the world around us. The police are an impediment to a better, safer, freer world. They are antithetical to equity, autonomy, and community; that is why all who fight too hard for a better life eventually find themselves faced with the police, one way or another. Nevertheless, while so much hangs in the balance, we can’t let the bastards get us down.

Works Cited

Olivia B. Waxman. “How the U.S. Got Its Police Force” Time Magazine, https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ Published: 5/18/2017, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

Mariame Kaba. “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html Published: 6/12/2020, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

Malorie Cunningham. “'A few bad apples': Phrase describing rotten police officers used to have different meaning”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/bad-apples-phrase-describing-rotten-police-officers-meaning/story?id=71201096 Published: 6/14/2020, Date of Access: 12/2/2020

#school #homework #essay

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junker-town · 3 years ago

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YouTubers vs. TikTokers boxing is the hottest sport for a new generation

Nothing has made me feel older than YouTubers vs. TikTok Stars boxing.

Remember to insert witty opening that shows I’m super cool with the kids, and not a 36-year-old man who has no idea what the hell is happening in a modern world that confronts me.

This past weekend was the most confusing sports phenomenon I’ve witnessed, and it made me feel old as hell. While us olds were paying attention to the NBA Playoffs, Euro 2020, College Baseball or UFC, millions were glued to a boxing PPV that pitted famous YouTubers against TikTok stars.

I’ve been staring at this image for 20 minutes. Sifting through the recesses of my brain to determine if I can recognize a single name on this poster. I cannot. That does not mean these people aren’t famous, because they are — it’s just a crushing reality that I am old.

Take that main event, for instance, you have a big headline fight between Austin McBroom and Bryce Hall. McBroom chronicles his family’s life events on YouTube like ... allowing strangers to decide their McDonald’s order, and cutting his toddler’s hair exactly like his. I know this because I just searched “who is Austin McBroom?” Then you have Hall, whose Wikipedia page I need a Rosetta Stone to decode what any of the hell this means.

“He is also a member of the Sway House located in Los Angeles. Hall accused Petrou of stealing money from members of the Hype House and spending money irresponsibly.”

Hall also seems like a really great human (excuse my sarcasm), who was arrested for violating Los Angeles’ restrictions on Covid and having a house party, mocking the LGBTQ community, then deleting his tweets, and being accused of assaulting a restaurant employee. The lawsuit alleges he participated in “engaging in acts of violence motivated by race, national origin, citizenship, immigration status and primary language.”

So yeah. I guess being old and not knowing these people has it’s perks sometimes.

While you or I don’t care about any of this, damn a lot of youngs really, really do

There’s an entire generation that doesn’t care or identify with actors, musicians or artists, and instead puts all their stock in social media personalities. Why? I don’t really know. Like, I watch YouTube, there are tons of people I follow. I don’t have an explicit need to watch them fight each other, but the hustle is real.

This kind of influencer media is the next step in reality TV, just further divorced from reality. Everyone is trying to find content to publish, and if you’re a purveyor of the high-energy stylized “reality” of these stars, then you’ll buy into whatever they’re selling. I mean, that video of a toddler getting his haircut has 2.6 million views. People eat this stuff up — so pretending there’s beef between two influencers and fighting creates a ton of interest, and content to go along with it.

We might never know the number of buys an event like this created, but if you logged on Twitter Saturday night you probably saw how nuts it was. For the majority of the night these fights out-trended every other sporting event they were in competition with.

Here are the results, if you care.

Austin McBroom def. Bryce Hall

AnEsonGib vs. Tayler Holder ended in majority draw

Vinnie Hacker def. Deji

DDG def. Nate Wyatt

Faze Jarvis def. Michael Le

Landon McBroom def. Ben Azelart

Ryan Johnston def. Cale Saurage

Celebrity boxing isn’t going anywhere

Logan Paul and KSI proved the concept, now everyone is jumping on board. Taking internet beef and porting it over to a real-world fight pushes tribalism to a whole new level. Instead of being fans of teams, people are being fans of influencers — and will eat up everything they participate in.

While the YouTubers and TikTokers were duking it out, former NBA star Lamar Odom was stepping in the ring with singer Aaron Carter, and beating him half to death. It was a very weird night.

The biggest question isn’t whether this works, it’s whether these kind of fights represent an existential threat to traditional combat sports. It’s not like those sports will vanish overnight, it’s about whether this new generation will ever care about fighters who aren’t social media celebrities. Perhaps many of them would never tune into other combat sports anyway, but it certainly cuts off any potential interest. Why bother following boxing or MMA intently, learning about their stars, when you can just wait for the latest YouTuber to throw on some gloves and beat up someone you already know, and watch on a regular basis.

There’s a lot of money to be made in the short term, but will that still be around when influencers move onto the next thing? That remains to be seen.

Should I start following all this?

No. Unless you already have an affinity for a YouTuber or TikToker so strong you’re invested in them enough to watch a sloppy, terrible boxing match solely because they’re in it. This really feels like a sporting phenomenon made for Gen Z, and they should be allowed to enjoy their things without olds ruining it.

People like me tuning in is the equivalent of buying a red Mazda Miata and driving it with the top down while wearing a linen shirt at the first sight of a grey hair. It’s just kinda sad.

I’m also not going to pretend this is a real, compelling, actual sport when it definitively isn’t. It’s a sloppy facsimile of actual sport, with untrained individuals playing dress up for a night. We also don’t need people my age pretending it’s just to try and get those sweet, sweet Gen Z clicks. We can accept time has passed us by, as we begin the long march towards our oblivion.

If you’re into YouTubers fighting TikTokers, enjoy it. I hope events like this bring you joy. I don’t get it, and I’m okay not getting it.

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cookiedoughmeagain · 4 years ago

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Haven DVD Commentaries: 5.18 - Wild Card

Commentary with Brian Millikin and Nick Parker, co-writers for the episode

I love these guys, they have so much to say ...

BM: So this was a tricky one. When we wound up getting assigned it, we were like; Oh boy. There was so much exposition to get in. And this was always going to be a bit of a turning point in the season. We knew that 5.14 would set up the shroud, and 15 and 16 would be living in Haven with the shroud and seeing how tough life was. And then 17 was always going to be a stand-alone episode, it was shot by itself. Lucas Bryant directed it and it was great. And that was more about Audrey and Nathan - a bit of a pause to deal with them. But then we’ve got 18 and 19 that were shot together, and we knew that these would be the two episodes to really launch us into the Croatoan story for the rest of the season.

BM: And we knew that this would be the last epsiode for Charlotte. NP: And that’s something that was tough about this episode but also fun to tackle, because we knew she was going to die at the end of this episode, and when we were first conceiving the episode we did not know that we should be coming back for 19, so we had to have a lot of emotional moments. This scene right here showing that her and Dwight are back together. We had to have a lot of emotional moments for her character so that when she bites it at the end, it’s powerful. BM: Yeah we always knew that at the end of 18 Charlotte would be killed by Croatoan. And Charlotte and Dwight were on the rocks in between 5A and 5B, but we wanted to get them back together and see them happy together again, and this is the payoff. I mean it’s sad it’s the same episode she’s going to die - it’s a bit like a horror movie where the people who have sex are the ones who get killed. And we knew we were going to open with the two of them in bed having this tender moment, because we knew that we were going to end with her dead. Which was sad because we really liked Laura Mennell, everyone did, but it was always … NP: That was how many episodes we had her for. BM: Yeah it was just the ten episodes that we had, and that’s just the nature of actor deals but it happened like that because we knew we didn’t want the character around that much longer. It’s a little bit of the Obi-Wan syndrome, that you get your answers from these people who know a lot and then at a certain point you need to dispatch with them (kind of like Garland Wuornos in the first season) so that your other characters can step up. If she was around, then she takes a bit away from what Audrey and Nathan and Dwight are left to do. So from the day we created here in 5.08, we always knew that she was going to be dying. But she was a great addition to the show. But we also knew that we needed a Trouble in the episode. NP: That was another tough thing, that this had to be, in some ways, more of a traditional Trouble of the Week episode. BM: Yes, well the dictum that we had was to have a normal Trouble for the first half of the episode, but then to reveal that this Trouble had been instigated by Croatoan. Because at this point we’ve had to dispatch with the typical Trouble of the Week to an extent. The situations that we’re dealing with, they need to start coming from our bad guy so that he’s active in doing these things. Especially because he was going to kill Charlotte in this episode. So it was a bit of a tough one. I remember us all sitting down to decide which Trouble to include and the Tarot card Trouble was one that we had been talking about for years and years. And it wound up working really well in this episode. NP: Yeah it’s fun when we can go to the Trouble Bank and pull something out, that’s been an idea that’s been bouncing around for a while, and then put a particular spin on it. And we really, really dug in on the research for the Tarot, because it’s such an established … BM: Because you’re a humongous Tarot card nerd? NP: Fair enough. But also because it’s such an established mythology … BM: Sure NP: … and there’s so much text and information out there. We wanted it to be true to the Tarot, but also dramatically interesting for a television show. BM: It was a real tough push and pull. Because we knew what we needed the Tarot cards to do to our characters. Sometimes before we knew what Tarot card to be, so we had to retrofit it a little bit - and change it up somewhat. So it was a not-ideal situation and I know it was a real struggle for you, because you’re a purist. But most TV shows will just make up Tarot cards. Or they’ll say, for instance, that the death card means death when it doesn’t really. So we endevoured to not succumb to too much of that. I think we landed somewhere in the middle. NP: Somewhere in the middle. I mean we couldn’t do the traditional seven card cross reading, we couldn’t go into the full detail. BM: No, that would be a six hour episode. NP: So it’s a simplified version but we do end up being able to work in both the major and minor arcana. It was fun. BM: Yeah and I think something that attracted us to the concept was having different cards for different characters, and Croatoan being able to draw more cards for more characters, but also the idea of, what in the room we called Russian Roulette. That we would get to a place where the only way out was to keep going forward in the game, and to draw more cards and just hope for the best. That was really appealing, particularly to Matt McGuinness, our show runner.

[As Dwight and Nathan find the second body] NP: Interesting fact here; that shoreline looks different from any other shoreline you’ve ever seen in Haven because this was no longer shot in Chester, Nova Scotia. This and episode 19 were our first episodes in our new home for season 5B; Halifax. BM: Yeah 17 was the last episode we shot before moving to Halifax. And also one of the most beautiful, so props to Lucas Bryant. But this I think was one of the first days shooting in Halifax and we really endeavoured to find locations (currently out of focus in the background!) that looked a lot like Chester. And it’s not impossible, but a little bit tough. It was a bit easier for these Duke scenes, because the Duke storyline, he’s not in Haven anyway. So that was a lot easier. NP: Ah Kris Lemche. He’s just funny. BM: Yes, Seth Byrne. Super happy that we brought him back again. He was terrific. We knew that 5B was going to be Duke off on his own for a lot of the time. And we had a lot of conversations about; Who is he going to be talking to? We wanted 15 and 16 for him to be out there on his own. And for 17, I think it was always going to be Kris Lemche. We flirted with someone else, whose name I’m probably not allowed to say right now. BM: No, I don’t think you can. But we had talked originally about having Kris Lemche come back to Haven, and so whenever he was leaving at the end of 508, it was very vague. BM: Very vague. He was like; I’m just going to , go … over there NP: I’m just going to step out of this scene, and you may or may not see me later at some indeterminate point in time. But then once we came up with the idea that the shroud doesnt only trap people in Haven, but affects the memories of people outside it, then that allowed us to have … and Kris already has that dry delivery and a good sense of humour, and he was able to handle that very well. So once we started writing those scenes it made perfect sense.

BM: So Duke’s story in this episode was always pretty straightforward. We had set up in 17 that Seth comes to him with his idea of hope, where he might be able to find a cure. And so this would be the episode where he goes to do it, and kind of believes there for a second, and then it turns out to be crap just like everything else. Another dead end. NP: Yeah we wanted to play around with the idea of the old Native healer kind of thing, turn that on it’s head a little bit and turn him into a con artist, basically. BM: Yeah and I don’t know if the con artist thing is that much of a surprise NP: No. BM: But given where it comes in the episode we had hoped that people would maybe think; Wow, I can’t believe that they’re going to actually do the faith healer thing. And then wonder; Well now what’s Duke going to do. And the idea is, that’s what Duke is wondering too.

[Nathan and Dwight and the bronco with its flat tyre] NP: What was fun about this scene was, basically getting them to talk about dating two women from another world. BM: Mother and daughter too. But yeah, for my money, I wish we’d had time to do more stuff like that. But we had so much to do in this episode. There is just a torrent of exposition coming up soon. Which our cast handled super-well. NP: Yeah it’s tough when you know that you’ve got a character who has to die at the end of the episode. And you also know that is your one character who has all the information that you need your other characters to have, it’s tought to get all of that out that quickly with it being, speechy BM: Yeah I mean there were versions of this early on where we didn’t even have a Trouble in this episode and Croatoan was the main threat - but it was too soon. So we needed everyone needed to be going through something here. But we really liked the idea of everyone being affected by the same Trouble in different ways. So it makes it pretty clear that something’s coming after them specifically. NP: And you’ll notice the tattoos on their wrists, we had long conversations about how are we going to know that everyone’s been affected by the same thing. BM: Yeah, how do they know that it’s all the same Trouble NP: And how to represent that. BM: And it was your idea I think - and luckily all of the major Tarot cards all have numbers on them. So everyone could have the same sort of Roman numeral that matches the one on the card. So it was like; That’s a great idea! But where do the numbers go? So then it was this whole debate about where the number should be. I said forehead, but that’s hours of makeup. NP: A little too much. But it was kind of funny with the major vs minor arcana. We needed Audrey to have a slightly different kind of expressed Trouble than the others, so she’s the one that’s affected by the minor arcana rather than the major BM: Well our way of thinking about it was that you have to figure that Croatoan has rigged it. He’s stacked the deck. So he would have known, because - spoiler alert - Croatoan is at the point kind of inside of Dave and possessing him from time to time, he knows everything that Dave knows. So he is aware of the aether they’ve found, and he is aware of what Charlotte and Audrey are trying to do down there. So he chose cards for Audrey and Charlotte that are preventing them from doing what they need to do. NP: Yeah and his goal is not to kill anyone, becuase that could be a simpler thing. BM: That’s true. And we knew from the get go that he wouldn’t want to kill Audrey. We knew about his relationship with Mara and what his ultimate plan is for Audrey, to kind of make lemonade out of the lemon that is Audrey and just have her be his new daughter. Which we liked because it kind of echoed what Charlotte has done; she has taken in Audrey as her daughter, and Croatoan is basically going to do the same thing. Except the problem is that Croatoan is a bad guy.

[As the guy is pretending to draw the demons out of Duke] NP: This is a cool place they ended up filming this. The production design, I appreciate it a lot. BM: Yeah this all worked really well. When we wrote it in that he would cut a vein and it would drip black goo out, I was like; Maybe they’re not going to want to do that. But everyone really responded to it. NP: It worked out. And you know it’s funny, because it feels like a bit of a different show. This feels like magic, whereas the Troubles are expressed ina bit of a different way. And what I like is that we ended up separating that, and it’s like; this is not how the world works BM: Yeah, and the actor was great here. Good casting. NP: And Kris sells it too.

BM: Ah I forgot Vince and Dave were in this episode. It was important for us to have a little Vince and Dave story in here. For the most part - huge spoiler alert for many other episodes - because we knew that Croatoan had kind of hitched a ride in Dave, and was periodically taking over his body. And that’s why Dave has been losing time, the way everyone did back in the cave. And so we needed that to be in evidence in this episode, but not super obvious that it’s Dave. Because we are going to reveal in the next episode that it’s Dave, so we needed it to be not too obvious here, but obvious enough that it makes sense in the look back. So we knew that we needed just a little Vince and Dave story where they’re poking into what’s going on and finding that they’ve lost time within this episode. And we hoped that if it happens to Vince, Dave and Gloria, maybe it’ll seem like Croatoan just fired a warning shot across their bow. As opposed to what it actually is, which is that they all lost time because Croataon came out from inside Dave and went across town to kill Charlotte. But the it’s a situation that we imagined that Vince has been losing time over and over again, more than anybody. We had versions of that story line where we would discover at the end that Vince and Dave were super addled, their minds were like swiss cheese because they’d lost time every night since… well it’s been a couple weeks now since the season started.

[As Audrey and Charlotte are talking in the cave and Charlotte mentions her father] NP: I gotta say, we kind of gave the actors a tall order here. Because it’s all exposition, but they’re having to act this whole time as though Audrey is going blind, and Charlotte is super weak. And we spent a lot of the VFX budget on the aether swirling around them, so we couldn’t do any VFX with them themselves BM: But I think that moment of them connecting and her telling her about her father is just as effective as any VFX shot NP: Thanks to them. BM: Because as much as we had a Charlotte/Dwight story to tell, it’s also a big deal that Audrey’s about to lose charlotte. And so we wanted for them to have a bit of a story here too, and for this to kind of cap off their relationship that they really came together.

NP: Ah here is Miss Fortuna [the tarot card reader], which is just a tragic name to choose. Lainey Fortuna. But the actor did a great job. BM: Yeah this worked out really well. We knew that she was going to have a big role in the episode. She has to explain the tarot card stuff, so she has to be alive throughout. But because there’s so much Dwight and Charlotte stuff and Audrey and Charlotte stuff going on here, we knew that Nathan was going to wind up dealing with the tarot card of it all, and staying here with Lainey just by the nature of the story. And yeah, galloping hooves, some of this a bit of a literal interpretation of the cards, but it’s kind of accurate. NP: And we kind of wanted to do the more traditional or metaphysical interpretations of the cards for our main characters, and then the people are in evidence, the bodies, are pretty literal interpretations; struck by lightning. BM: My only regret about this really is that we really liked the idea of Nathan’s bad luck. And in some versions of the script we had a lot of comedy really, where he had become an unlucky clutz. NP: Yeah there was door knocker that fell off in his hand, he knocked over an entire table of candles. He was kind of the slapstick comic relief. Whereas Kris Lemche was doing the dry sarcastic stuff. BM: Yeah but we just didn’t have time for it, unfortunately. This episode like so many others, came in long. And it’s kind of brutal what you end up having to cut. Even in the scripts because you have timings and we don’t have time to shoot everything, let alone stuff that’s going to end up being on the cutting room floor anyway. It’s brutal. And in this case it was almost the funniest parts of the episode that ended up getting cut. NP: Yeah probably. BM: But it happens. And this was a big deal here, what they’re about to realise. This was something we had been working towards for a season and a half, that whoever is causing people to lose time - the No Marks Killer they’re still calling him here - has now come for them.

NP: And another thing about this episode and trying to get everything done is that because this was the first episode up in Halifax, we did not have any of our standing sets. So none of this is happening in the police station or anything like that. That doesn’t happen until 19 when we see the dilapidated station. So this takes place almost entirely on location.

[When Dwight meets Charlotte and Audrey outside the cave] BM: And this was a big scene, with the Croatoan of it all. We had to make sure that Charlotte hadn’t heard that word used before in previous episodes, because we knew that it would be this episode when we would learn this from her. And we didn’t want her to be alive for too long, frankly, to tell us everything we needed to know. But her idea was not too dissimilar from the Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader distinction, that she doesn’t know that Croataon is her late husband. She thinks that Croatoan is the monster that killed her husband. And we needed for her in this episode to realise that they are actually one and the same; that her husband became Croataon. But she needed to realise that kind of without telling anyone until the very end. It was a bit of a tricky proposition, and she had a lot to explain. But Laura Mennell is as good with that stuff as the rest of our cast. NP: Yeah she sells it.

[As Duke is confronting the guy about faking the black blood] BM: This is funny, he is a lot bigger than Eric Balfour is. We always imagined that this would be a little guy, but he totally sells it with his performance. But if they got in a fight, I don’t know. NP: Yeah he’s like twice the size of Eric. But I like that they’re down in North Carolina which ties back to the classic lost colony business which is always fun. And we had known that we wanted to send him back down there to help tie up some of the lose ends from episodes 5 and 6 when Vince and Dave went down there. That was when they first learnt that there might be some connection between the lost colony myth and what’s happening in Haven, and we knew what it was even back then, that the Big Bad was named Croatoan. But we needed to learn just a little bit more. Both here from Charlotte and also in the next episode with Duke and the mysterious stranger.

[As Charlotte and Audrey talk with Dwight again, outside the cave and he says he’ll stand watch outside] BM: So this is where the episode kind of turned. We had 20 minutes of a normal Haven episode to an extent, and this is where it starts to turn into the end game for the entire season. NP: Yeah and what’s interesting about this episode is that it’s not traditional in the sense that we get to the Troubled person at the end and have to figure out how to solve it - this is like, we found the Troulbed person pretty early on, and it’s about solving it before everyone dies rather than about finding out who it is. BM: Yeah, it’s funny Nathan telling Dwight here that he doesn’t know how to solve Lainey’s Trouble. There had been a scene before this where he was working with Lainey and trying Trouble-whisper her, but it wasn’t working. Her husband was gone, but she was like; totally fine with it. And in the end we just covered it in the conversation there and I think it works. So this had been something that we sold from the get go and the network and our bosses and everybody were all on board. The appeal of the Tarot card ultimately I think was that we would get to this place where we have no choice but to flip new cards. NP: Yeah and what was the added bad stakes of that was Nathan has terrible bad luck right now.

[Nathan calling to Dwight after they’ve drawn a new card for him, silence for a scary-long time, and then Dwight’s ‘How’s it going?’] *both laugh* BM: I’m glad that worked as well as it did. He totally got it. We were not on set for these episodes. So the script goes up there, you deal with production a couple times, you talk to the director and have the table read, and then you kind of cross your fingers. But we’ve got a great team up there, and Lee Rose is a great director. But you sort of have to wait until you get the dailies a couple days later to see what worked. And most stuff does.

[Duke and Seth find the grave with the Guard symbol] BM: And the idea with this scene here was it was the end of Duke’s sort of wild goose chase, we kind of thought that he would just have to laugh about it. Walter Faraday there [the name on the grave] is a somewhat obscure Dark Tower reference. NP: Yeah it’s basically a mash up of two different characters; Walter and Faraday BM: But there is also a big Tarot card component to the first two Dark Tower books, which we both love, and so Tarot cards had always been on our to-do list for Haven. Not only that but there’s another Dark Tower reference coming towards the end of the episode. NP: And tarot felt very much in the Stephen King universe. So it was fun to finally do that episode that we had talked about doing for years. And production did a great job of making a beautiful set of Tarot cards. BM: Yeah, for legal clearance reasons you have to use your own cards. The art work and everything has to be your own. NP: Or wasn’t there something about the images on the cards are cleared, but the backs of the cards are not. So that was a whole thing. BM: And Lainey had a lot to do in explaining all these cards. But she did a great job. NP: And the Russian Roulette works well. BM: And here in the cave, with Laura Mennell and Emily Rose, we didn’t do them any favours either. We knew going into this that we had set up the idea of this cloud of aether swirling above them. And we’d known for a while that they were going to have to take all of this and turn it into the aether core... NP: They basically have to Use The Force BM: … as part one of building the new Barn. But no one ever talked about how they were actually going to do it. So we got to this point and everyone realised, what do you do? She can’t just click her fingers. So it really became similar to what we’ve seen William do in the past. But it’s a little bit tought. And we are watching this right now without the final VFX, so they are just staring up into space, so I can only hope that it looks good in the end. But I felt so sorry for them as actors because they have to just trust that it’s going to look OK. It’s not unique to our show but I feel sorry for the actors because they have to do some pretty silly stuff sometimes. But they’re selling it, they’re doing a great job. NP: And I think once they have that moment where they hold hands, that brings it all together and that earns it. BM: I’m generally like things to be as least saccarine as possible, but writing this scene I felt that was a moment where that was called for. And it ended up sticking from the first iteration of this story. And becuase we knew that she was going to die, we needed the two of them to accomplish this task together. And that them reaching out to each other would be the last step in them doing that. And remember we went through so many different designs for what the aether core would look like? NP: Oh so many. BM: And right up to the last minute as well. But I think it ended up working really well.

[As Audrey tells Charlotte her new card was The Lovers] BM: Ah the Lovers bomb. This was one of my favourite things in the episode. Once we came up with the Tarot card idea and were working out what card would be pulled for Charlotte, then it was like; What if it was the Lovers? Because that can be what tells Charlotte the truth about who Croatoan might really be, that’s the moment she puts it all together. And it would land on her face but she wouldn’t say anything - love it. And this scene [as they try to free Dwight from the fence], one of my favourites too, I love that she winds up saying goodbye to Dwight and is going off on a mission. Here she lies to Audrey to get Audrey to get away. I just love it. And I think that all three of them were really good here, especially Adam and Laura. But just in general, maybe it’s me, I’m a sucker for goodbyes. Any time a character has to say goodbye and the other person *doesn’t know that*, I’m in. NP: And she sells it super well. And this is why the devil card was so important in this moment, because Dwight is completely bound, unable to move. Helpless really. BM: Yeah this was why we ended up choosing that card - solely for that moment.

[Audrey walking along with the aether core] NP: This is a bit of a reference to your all time favourite movie. BM: My number one - Back to the Future. I’m a sucker for Marty McFly and the guitar up on the stage. But this was also something that worked with the Tarot cards we had at our disposal. And was achievable for her to be out here by herself. As a scheduling issue, you know, we might have liked for there to be a rock slide, but we didn’t have time to film that

NP: I love Gloria calling Dave Bert and Ernie. BM: And I love the revelation that we get to, that they’ve all been losing time. It’s a big deal. And we’re still trying to keep it [Croatoan’s connection to Dave] a secret from the audience as much as we can. I don’t know if it worked, maybe people see right through it. But it seemed like we could, if the characters believed that they had incurred the wrath of Croatoan because they had got too close. NP: It worked enough to delay it for now, so. I think. I hope.

[As Audrey is disappearing] BM: This was a big moment for us, we had kind of written ourselves into a corner and had realised; Well what if we just have Nathan learn the rules of Tarot card readings and start a new reading entirely? And so many of the things that we end up doing (maybe it’s just you and me?) with Nathan come down to, in a weird way, Nathan’s super power is his faith, and his hope. And so, this is just kind of what he does. And he really saves the day. NP: We try to give Nathan as many of those ‘save the day’ moments as possible. BM: Absolutely. Love Nathan. NP: He’s great. BM: Huge Nathan fans. We ship Nathan here. NP: Or ship Lucas Bryant. I love that guy to death. BM: That’s true. It’s a Nathan-Lucas thing. But it’s true - it seem deceptively simple, but sometimes you just have to ask the right question. NP: And luckily we had Nathan in this scene, because he’s the only one who can really ask that question. BM: Yeah, I mean we’d had much more complicated, involved and strange ways out of this, but this was the simplest and I think wound up being the best version of it. [Lainey on screen: If you cause is just, you can overcome any obstacle] NP: And that’s good platforming for the rest of the season I think BM: We had danced around that a lot here. We needed that prediction to be true for the rest of the season. And there was a season coming up that got cut, we filmed it but cut it - it was a brief moment where we come back to Nathan and Lainey and see that there is another card out there. And they don’t know who it was played for. It was the, um … NP: The Hermit. Which is about going on a journey of discovery. BM: And the idea was that in the lookback it would be something that would help explain who Duke winds up talking to out there in the middle of nowhere, that Croatoan had played a card for himself so that he was able to send a emissary, or a spectre to talk to Duke. And it wound up being confusing, and not really necessary, so it got cut out. NP: And we were long anyway on this one

[As Charlotte is frantically packing some things in the final scene] BM: So this scene was such a challenge. We knew that Charlotte had to be confronted by Croatoan. We knew that she knew who he was at this point. And we knew that she was going to be killed. But we also knew that the audience couldn’t see that what’s really happening here is that there is a possessed Dave off screen. So we couldn’t see him. So she had to be talking to an unseen person and be killed by someone we couldn’t see. So it was tough. I felt terrible for her, but Lee Rose [director] and Laura really put it together, because she was just all by herself talking to … I think Joanne our script supervisor was shouting lines off camera. NP: But Lee shot this wonderfully. It’s nice and dark and moody. BM: Yeah we needed it to be scary, again it was a little bit like a horror movie here. And we needed them to refer a little bit to the history they have with each other, with just blatantly expo-dumping like crazy about what’s going on. And we knew that her last words would be sticking up for Audrey, and that that might be what would cause her to charge at Croatoan. NP: That voice was interesting, because it’s both Dave’s voice but also the voice of Croatoan from the void and it needs to be masked in order for the dramatic tension.

[Duke and the mysterious stranger] BM: This was another Dark Tower-ish sort of moment. We wished that we could have shot this at night time, and there was originally a camp fire, but it just wasn’t practical production-wise to do that. But there’s a bit of a man in black and gunslinger feel to this, at the end of the first Dark Tower book. But this is where Duke is going to get some of his answers. And I love this guy. NP: This guy does a great, great job.

[Audrey about to find Charlotte] BM: And then this here’s just a sad moment. The two of them were great, but it’s tough. NP: This scene ended up working really well. BM: It was a hard one to write, and it’s hard for them to act, but I think that they really nailed it. NP: With scenes like this, you can’t be precious or careful, you just have to write the hell out of them and just go for it. BM: Yeah, we just tried to go for some emotional reality. Like, what would you say to someone in this kind of moment? I just expected everyone to blow it up and for it to get re-conceived entirely. But Laura and Emily were totally on board and everyone else was too, and I think it’s just because, it’s just sad. NP: It feels honest BM: We actually cut the last 10 seconds or so, where originally Nathan and Dwight rush into the room and the last moment would be seeing Dwight’s face NP: I think we ended up cutting that because in 19 she comes back and he gets a goodbye then BM: He does, and it kind of detracted from what is a serious Audrey and Charlotte scene here. And the challenge is that it’s a touching moment, but Charlotte needs to reveal that Croataon is Mara’s father, and he’s coming for her. NP And especially after they spent the whole episode together. They bonded. BM: Yeah, but it’s just a gutting ending here and I hope that the audience was surprised. I hope that it really lands for people NP: So yeah, there it is; the death of Charlotte Cross. Thank you so much Laura Mennell

#haven syfy #haven 5 #haven dvd commentaries #5.18 - wild card #haven spoilers

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fatehbaz · 5 years ago

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Another compilation of thoughts on apocalypse; dystopia; better futures; post-crisis resurgence, contemplated during first week(s) of pandemic quarantine. [Part 1.]

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Pedro Neves Marques. “Parallel Futures: One or Many Dystopias?” e-flux. April 2019.

[I]t is important to remember that some futures never went anywhere – they were not allowed to – and yet they survive. These are futures that have been suppressed and canceled by colonial power. [...] I’m talking about parallel futures. By this I mean futures that have always been present, but that, together with the worlds they belong to, have been forced into one future only. […] There is only one planet, but there are many worlds inside it.

Writing from an Afrofuturist standpoint, artist and writer Kodwo Eshun suggests that the colonial present is managed by both a preemptive and a predictive power. “Preemptive” means that colonial power must control the past so as to deny the emergence of any future other than the one desired by the colonialist. “Predictive,” in contrast, implies that power must manage the present in such a way that the future is predetermined in advance. It is the active production of future horizons, compliant with power, that comes to shape the present. […] Borrowing a term from anthropologist Michael Fortun, one could call this preemptive prediction a “future anterior”: the forceful imagination of a technoscientific future that by its very utterance determines the shape of things to come. The future anterior orients the present toward a predetermined goal, while also rereading the past in its image. This is perhaps why Eshun writes that it is not the future that emerges from the present, as one would normally think, but rather the present (and the past) that arrives from the future. Colonial power creates a future in advance, so that no other will take its place. I want to ask how we can think through colonization and decolonization as a matter of futures. Colonization – of bodies and minds but also of nature itself – has always been as much about the negation and control of possible futures as about the erasure of the past […].

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Indigenous Action Network. “Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto.” 2020.

Apocalyptic idealization is a self fulfilling prophecy. It is the linear world ending from within. Apocalyptic logic exists within a spiritual, mental, and emotional dead zone that also cannibalizes itself. It is the dead risen to consume all life. [...] Its an apocalyptic that colonizes our imaginations and destroys our past and future simultaneously. It is a struggle to dominate human meaning and all existence. [...] There is a song older than worlds here, it heals deeper then the colonizer’s blade could ever cut. [...] Why can we imagine the ending of the world, yet not the ending of colonialism? We live the future of a past that is not our own. It is a history of utopian fantasies and apocalyptic idealization. It is a pathogenic global social order of imagined futures, built upon genocide, enslavement, ecocide, and total ruination.

What conclusions are to be realized in a world constructed of bones and empty metaphors? A world of fetishized endings calculated amidst the collective fiction of virulent specters. From religious tomes to fictionalized scientific entertainment, each imagined timeline constructed so predictably; beginning, middle, and ultimately, The End. [...] This way of unbeing, which has infected all aspects of our lives, which is responsible for the annihilation of entire species, the toxification of oceans, air and earth, the clear-cutting and burning of whole forests, mass incarceration, the technological possibility of world ending warfare, and raising the temperatures on a global scale, this is the deadly politics of capitalism, it’s pandemic. [...] We are the antibodies.

The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual invasion of our lands, bodies, and minds to settle and to exploit, is colonialism. Ships sailed on poisoned winds and bloodied tides across oceans pushed with a shallow breath and impulse to bondage, millions upon millions of lives were quietly extinguished before they could name their enemy. 1492. 1918. 2020 …

Biowarfare blankets, the slaughter of our relative the buffalo, the damming of lifegiving rivers, the scorching of untarnished earth, the forced marches, the treatied imprisonment, coercive education through abuse and violence. [...] The day to day post-war, post-genocide, trading post-colonial humiliation of our slow mass suicide on the altar of capitalism; work, income, pay rent, drink, fuck, breed, retire, die. [...]

The anti-colonial imagination isn’t a subjective reaction to colonial futurisms, it is anti-settler future. Our life cycles are not linear, our future exists without time. It is a dream, uncolonized. [...] We will not allow the specter of the colonizer, the ghosts of the past to haunt the ruins of this world. [...]

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Phil A. Neel. Hinterland: America’s New Landscape of Class and Conflict. 2018.

St. Louis is where storms collide. [...] And as the air currents grapple over the middle-American sky, the storm-swollen Mississippi grinds forward below. Once-uncommon “freak floods” are now standard, the levees overcome every few years and large chunks of St Louis and its surrounding suburbs washed away by the intractable inertia of a river bound to outlive any city. [...] In recent years, growing climate chaos has only intensified this ambient war, each “extreme weather event” more volatile and less predictable. [...] The result is another slow apocalypse.

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Hugo Reinert. “The skulls and the dancing pig: Notes on apocalyptic violence.” Terrain. 2019

In a newspaper interview a decade or so back, during an earlier peak of reindeer-crisis discourse, a [Sami] herder named Johan Mathis Oskal put this issue very succinctly: “If the authorities do cut the number of animals by half, and we then get a bad year [udr], we might be left with no reindeer at all. That would be an eternal catastrophe.” […]

“Apocalypse” […]. The word has something of the titillating about it: a streak of prurience, redolent of spectacle and sentimental violence, the interminable grind of […] death-fulfillment fantasies […]. It feels indulgent; more specifically, perhaps, it echoes the affects and fantasies that are invested in the anthropological project of salvage – as a collective enterprise of acquisition and reification rooted, all too often, in the postulate of an apocalypse of the Other. […] The image of a reindeer excess has haunted the edges of the State in Norway for almost two centuries now: a fevered, imaginal swarm always threatening to overspill the borders, invade the cities, eating the land bare. [...] The underlying impulse has persisted: a will to contain the herd, to control them, reduce – and through this, to control and reduce a segment of the Indigenous Sami population that in conspicuous ways has resisted normalization […].

The escalation of this […] narrative has coincided neatly with the escalating interest of national and international actors in “developing” the tundra […]. “Death has occupied the tundra,” one headline proclaimed. […]. The miasma of this moment is simultaneously an effect and an instrument of governance: a kind of ambient manufactured context [...]. Acting on the vision of a vast catastrophe – a charnel dream of bodies that rot in the snow, devastation, collapsing systems, the stench of blood – the providential State deploys the killing-violence apotropaically, in a preemptive move: “To prevent them from dying, they must be killed.” […] In this sense, the reindeer crisis is also legible as a performance, a spectacle of justification orchestrated by the State in its own periphery: “disaster as a form of governance” […].

“Eternal catastrophe.” To someone like Johan Mathis, excess appears as a temporary and survivable mismatch in the calibration of herd size to grazing resources. The problem resolves itself: “nature itself reduces the [reindeer] number.” […]. Contrast this to the State narrative – in which excess appears as the continuous potential for a terrifying breakdown, a rampant and unregulated proliferation in which the dead scatter like leaves, chaotic and numberless across an incompletely known terrain. Even the possibility of that crisis disrupts the sovereign claim of the State over death. The threat of force tries to reestablish that claim, at least symbolically – aligning reality with a theory of power that takes this control (over death) as simultaneously total and already-given but also always under threat, inherently insufficient. In the crisis, the State falls chronically short of its own theoretical claims; the answer to that “failure” is expansion, growth, intensification of control, the further consolidation of power.

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Nat Marcus. “At the Hellmouth Coatcheck.” Flaunt. November 2019.

Note that city limits are often transversive; radial lanes rather than walls at the perimeter. [...] Escalating seismics aside, the Hellmouth obviously wouldn’t open under Los Angeles, but rather off-center, somewhere out-of-pocket like Sunnydale. [...] Chicago acts like a trellis or lays out like a sheet of graph paper, one edge wet and thus easily torn away by Lake Michigan.

How, or assuming what posture, do we guide ourselves through the present via the future, if short-term futurity looks rich with suffering, and in the long-term, it’s merely void?

Apocalypse is a gradient, and the inferno [...] isn’t devoid of politics: while I write this ledger, the number of residents of what could be called hell on earth (shoreline eroding, uninsured pharmaceutical deadlocks, Western wars fought elsewhere, etc.) only grows. [...] By our current trajectory, those existing outside hubs of capital -- beyond the spatial and/or ideological limits of capital and major cities, the subaltern and incalculable -- will be swallowed by ocean or fire first. One doesn’t need a prophet’s eyes to see this. [...]

A bell-hooksian love ethic is one by which love is recognized as a form of action, one undertaken to stimulate the personal and spiritual growth of oneself and others. [...] Hell is either already here or just around the corner [...], at cross-hatched odds with the orderly loop of the city filled with law, may simply allow us to step into the shrinking space between those two places, and be here willfully [...].

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moodyvalentinestories · 4 years ago

Text

Direction – Six | Hunt x HWU MC (Danielle)

Summary: Viktor is the absolute worst kind of person again. Also, we get to see Hunt and Danielle at work and, oh shit, why is my former student so sexy?

Words: 1800+

Notes: You can kinda tell this was supposed to be two chapters, but they would have been way too short, so I combined them. Also, FUCK Viktor!, is all I'm gonna say.

❥ Previous Chapter: Five ❥ Moodyvalentine’s Masterlist

Montmartre stayed far longer than Thomas had expected – he was still there once they’d gone through one reading of the revised script and Thomas had sent everyone he didn’t need on set that day home, while everyone else had been sent to make-up and wardrobe.

“Will you be staying the entire day?” Thomas asked, walking up to him. “I’m not sure that’ll be what’s best for the production.”

“Oh, I was just about to leave,” Montmartre replied with a sly grin. “Just have to speak to your little Miss Allen for a moment and I’ll be off.”

Thomas narrowed his eyes. “Whatever for? She’s not the one you need to be worried about.”

“Is that a threat?” Montmartre asked, an eyebrow raised. “Because threatening me would be unwise.”

“Not a threat,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “I just don’t think it’s necessary—”

“That’ll be for me to decide,” Montmartre said and called one of the production assistants over. “Darling, would you find out where I can find Danielle for me?”

“She was just headed to make-up,” the young woman answered.

Montmartre turned back to Thomas. “I’ll be on my way, then. And remember what I told you – I’ve got my eye on you. Any funny business, and you’re done for.”

“Noted.”

It was rare for Danielle to be angry with Chris these days – their break-up had been the best decision either of them had ever made, and they were much better off as friends – but, right now, he was truly getting on her nerves. Unfortunately for her, she couldn’t very well tell him that unless she wanted the make-up artist who was currently applying her lipstick to be immensely cross with her.

“I understand that you and Hunt have some less-than-ideal history, but I think you being an asshole isn’t going to make anything better,” Chris went on and Danielle badly wanted to roll her eyes.

She wasn’t the asshole, it was Hunt! He was the one who didn’t trust her, and he was the one who had been such an ass this morning! Then again, Chris didn’t know the half of it, so she couldn’t very well blame him for assuming she was the bad guy here.

“Can you at least try to be civil?”

Danielle huffed, then nodded – resulting in an exasperated sigh from the make-up artist.

“Could you be still for just a few more minutes? We’re almost done and—”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by Viktor popping his head in. “Could I speak to Danielle for a moment? In private, please.”

The make-up artist groaned. “I really can’t do my job around here, can I?”

“What was that?” Viktor asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Nothing, Mr Montmartre,” she said and motioned for the other people in the room to follow her out.

Once Viktor and Danielle were alone, he pulled up a chair and sat down right in front of her.

“What now?” Danielle asked. “You’ve got Hunt. Wasn’t that what you wanted?”

He nodded. “I do, and it was. But I don’t trust either of you, and I just want to make sure we’re clear on how this works.”

“Yeah, yeah. We finish this movie, we don’t cause any problems, you don’t publish the photos.”

Viktor pursed his lips. “Well, yes, but there are other things that I want.”

“Other… things?” Danielle asked, though the look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

He smirked. “You look awfully pretty in that dress, Danielle.”

A shudder ran down her spine. “T-thank you.” She cleared her throat. “I really think I should be getting my hair and make-up done, though. We wouldn’t want to get behind schedule.”

“Oh, we’re already behind schedule,” Viktor argued, stopping her from getting up by putting his hand on her shoulder to push her back down into the chair. “You’ll want to agree to anything I say, Danielle, or your precious Hunt will pay the price.” He moved his hand upwards to brush her cheek, and she had to stop herself from clenching her jaw. “I’ll see you soon.”

And with that, he left, and a few moments later, everyone else was back inside and getting to work again. She didn’t notice much of what was going on around her, however, as a plan was forming in her mind. A ludicrously stupid, dangerous plan – but a plan nonetheless. Danielle knew what she had to do to. And she was prepared to do it.

But, first things first, she had to get through this day of shooting.

Not long after Viktor’s departure her – and Chris’ – make-up was done, and they were sent back to the soundstage, where it became immediately clear to Danielle that filming with Hunt would be entirely different to filming with Phelps. He’d always had a million people around, while now the space seemed much emptier. Only she, Chris, and the other two actors that were needed for the scenes today were present, as well as minimal crew. It reminded her very much of when they’d filmed Centaurus Lost together – except, this time, they weren’t quite co-workers. This time, Hunt was essentially her boss, and she was just an actress. Still, the familiarity of it all was somewhat soothing.

“You seem less tense than earlier,” Chris remarked as they made their way to the set.

Danielle shrugged. “Just getting into the right mindset for work is all.”

“Right. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you just realised you missed working with Hunt.”

“I did not—” Chris shot her a look, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine. I do miss it, but I’m not working with him, anyway. He gets to boss me around this time.”

He raised an eyebrow. “If I recall correctly, you like being bossed around under the right circumstances.”

“Shut up!” Danielle blushed. “And it’s not like that.”

Chris chuckled. “If you say so. But, don’t forget, I’ve known you for quite a while now, and your kinks aren’t the only thing I’m privy to.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them, and Danielle’s blush deepened upon realising that it was Hunt.

“Hunt! We were just…er…”

He made a dismissive hand motion. “As interesting as your activities in the bedroom may be to the tabloids, I do not need – nor want – to hear about them.”

“Duly noted, Mr Hunt,” Chris said with a shit-eating grin that Danielle would have gladly slapped off his face. He inclined his head towards the set. “I take it you wanted to start with the scene in which Jack and Maeve finally meet face-to-face?”

Hunt nodded. “That was the idea. Now, take your marks, everyone, we don’t have all day.”

Thomas knew the moment Danielle walked on set that he would have to have a talk with the costume department. She looked stunning – of course she did – but there was much less fabric and a lot more exposed skin than he would have liked to see on her. Because, frankly, there was absolutely no reason for her to be wearing a glorified bathing suit made of some material that he assumed was meant to look like armour. He’d never had to fight armies of orcs before, but he was fairly certain that an experienced swordswoman – such as her character supposedly was – would not choose to do so in such a flimsy costume.

Unfortunately, there was no time today to change anything about it. Then again, there was only very little fighting going to be taking place in this scene, so perhaps there was a way to salvage it.

“One more moment,” Thomas told Danielle and Chris once they’d taken their places, then turned to the closest production assistant he could find. “You! I need some type of cloak for Maeve to wear, could you check with wardrobe if that’s possible?”

“Of course, Mr Hunt,” he said and walked off to radio someone.

“A cloak?” Danielle asked. “I’ve never worn a cloak in this scene before.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Are you questioning me?”

“Yes, I am! I’ll be fighting Chris, and a cloak would only get in the way. Why would my character be wearing one?” She shook her head. “She would know this, seeing as she’s one of the most skilled swordfighters in all the land!”

“But she’s not expecting to have to fight, is she? No one has visited her cave since she has disappeared, and she’s secured it as much as she could – why would she be prepared for a fight?”

She huffed. “It still doesn’t make sense.”

“Danielle, you and I both know that your costume is ridiculous. If you have any better ideas, please do tell.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest and narrowed her eyes, then eventually sighed and nodded. “Well, I suppose a cave in the mountains could be quite cold… and Maeve would probably be wearing something to keep her from freezing to death.”

“Don’t forget that I’m the director here and you’re—” He stopped when he realised that she’d actually agreed with him and cleared his throat. “Yes, exactly. I’ll be talking to the costume designers about what to do with your costume and, next time, we shouldn’t have such a problem anymore.”

A short moment later, the production assistant returned with a black cloak and, after getting Thomas’ approval, gave it to Danielle. She put it on, then looked up, inclining her head. “Better?”

“It’ll do,” Thomas said. “Now, places, everyone!”

Chris, who had been watching them from behind the cave wall, returned to his position out of frame, and Danielle sat back down by the fire.

“And… action!”

It had been a long time since Thomas had last seen Danielle at work but, lord, she was still as captivating as ever. The moment the cameras started rolling, every trace of the person he knew had disappeared, and she had fully become Maeve, the cave-dwelling swordswoman from a fantastical land. And, he had to admit, her chemistry with Chris was incredible – but nothing could have prepared him for the moment her character began suspecting his of having been sent by the orc king and grabbed her sword.

Thomas had never seen her carry out a choreographed fight before, and he was surprised to see her do it so effortlessly – even with the added challenge of the fluttering cloak. She was mesmerising to watch as she attacked and parried and spun around, the black fabric hiding her costume revealing tantalising glimpses of her skin every so often. Eventually, Danielle had the point of her sword at Chris’ throat, forcing him down to kneel in front of her, and Thomas got the sudden urge to loosen his tie.

Get a grip, Thomas, he told himself. It’s not like being held at her sword’s point is such an enticing thought.

The shiver that ran down his spine at the idea, however, appeared to disagree.

Tags: @lilyoffandoms @trappedinfandoms @flyawayboo @oneemofungirl @alleksa16 @silversparrow02 @i-bloody-love-drake-walker @alj4890

#thomas hunt #professor hunt #hwu hunt #danielle

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ihavethoughtsplural · 4 years ago

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Blood and Chocolate: An Adaptation in Name Only

Previously: Section 0 – Introduction, Section 1 – The Book, Section 2 – Adaptation Challenges

Section 3 – The Adaptation

Preface: The 2007 adaptation of Blood and Chocolate directed by Katja von Garnier and written by Ehren Kruger and Christopher Landon did not receive critical acclaim. It stands at 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review by Jeannette Catsoulis called it “uninvolving and cliché-ridden”. The box office returns were similarly underwhelming, grossing $3.5 million domestically and $6.3 million internationally against a $15 million budget – an $8.7 million loss for a production company used to receiving at least a modest return on investment for other, similar properties.

(Ahem.)

But, does it have any merit? It may have failed by the metrics of profitability and critical response, but that does not mean that the film was an entirely, or even partially, failed endeavor.

Summary: Following a surprisingly faithful Romeo and Juliet plot, the movie Blood and Chocolate centers on Vivian, the werewolf Juliet, an orphan living in Bucharest with her Aunt Astrid, who serves as a rough Nurse analogue. They are ruled by Gabriel, the Paris, a tyrannical pack leader with romantic designs on Vivian. The human Romeo, Aiden, is a wandering American artist who encounters Vivian anonymously in an empty church, whereupon he becomes determined to find and court her. Meanwhile, tensions are rising with the Tybalt character, Vivian’s cousin Rafe. He discovers Vivian and Aiden’s romance, threatens Aiden, and is eventually killed by Aiden in self-defense.

Eventually, Vivian gets poisoned and she and Aiden attempt to escape the city. She is captured and locked up in Gabriel’s headquarters, where Aiden arrives and rescues her. In the process, Vivian kills Gabriel. Afterward, they escape, steal Gabriel’s car, and drive off into the sunset.

Also, there’s a prophecy about Vivian? More on that later.

Themes: The themes of the movie deviate sharply from the themes of the book. No longer does Vivian struggle with what she wants as opposed to what she needs, because the movie removes any such opposition. In the movie, as in the book, Vivian wants to be with Aiden, but the movie rearranges the rest of the plot and the characters so that what she no longer needs to accept (and find a partner who also accepts) her dual nature as a werewolf to find happiness and fulfillment. Instead, what the film version of Vivian needs is to get away from her creepy, possessive pack leader and forge her own destiny. This “need” no longer stands in opposition to her “want”. On the contrary, the two share a resolution – run away from Bucharest with Aiden. The tension between the human and the animal sides of Vivian’s nature is also reworked. In the book, she can’t pretend to be human, but she also can’t lose control and give in to her animal side. She needs to balance both. The movie, on the other hand, has Vivian definitively choose her human side by choosing Aiden. Actually, no, it’s not just that she chooses her human side – the movie shows her actively rejecting her werewolf side throughout the movie. And, well, given the way that werewolf society is treating her, I can’t really blame her. I wouldn’t fight to stay with these people either. They were ready to pair her off with a man old enough to be her father without her consent.

Honestly, I wasn’t really wondering why she wanted to leave with Aiden, but more wondering why she hadn’t left already.

This leads into the theme that was added for the movie: destiny vs. choice. As a girl from “the line of Kings,” Vivian is destined by a nebulous prophecy to lead the Bucharest pack into the Age of Hope. Who prophesied this? If she’s from the line of Kings, why is Gabriel leading the pack? Does Vivian even fulfill this prophecy? We never really find out.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for a prophecy storyline. It just – it has to matter. And the prophecy in this movie does not matter. You could cut every mention of it, and nothing substantial would change. One of the biggest mysteries about this movie is why the screenwriters added a prophecy element if they weren’t going to bother to pay it off.

She is also destined (either by the prophecy or because Gabriel says so) to be Gabriel’s next mate, continuing the tradition of the pack leader choosing a new mate every 7 years. Vivian does not appear to have a choice in the matter.

Throughout the movie, Vivian feels chained by this destiny, leading her to keep Aiden at a distance and warning him away from her. Aiden, however, ignores her boundaries and her clear wish to be left alone. He tells her that she needs to ignore her family’s plans for her and make her own choices, mostly because he’s hoping that she’ll chose to date him. In the end, Vivian accepts Aiden’s outlook, choosing to defy Gabriel’s wishes by saving Aiden and escaping Bucharest with him.

Highs: There are two major elements that I like about this movie, and I do honestly like them. I’ve watched this movie a lot, and, no, it’s not just hatewatching. I genuinely enjoy this movie.

o The Cast: I really like Agnes Bruckner. She was great in the slasher movie, Venom, and I think she made an admirable Vivian. Despite some of the cheesier lines, she turns in a decent performance. I believed that she felt guilty about her family’s deaths. I believed that she felt torn between her attraction to Aiden and her duty to her pack. I even believed that moment in the ending where Vivian can’t bring herself to kill Gabriel, despite the threat that he represents.

Of course, the script ruins that seconds later when she just… shoots him anyway? Also, and this is a violently American thing to say, but did they have to use the wimpiest sounding gun possible?

I think that Hugh Dancy as Aiden was the standout performance of the movie. He portrayed Aiden as playful, sweet, and resourceful, and his switch from sensitive artist to unlikely badass is nicely set up with his story about defending himself against his abusive father. I also think that he and Bruckner have some decent chemistry. Say what you will about the romantic fountain montage - they look like they’re genuinely enjoying each other’s company.

Also, he spends the last half of the movie bruised and slightly bloody, and I don’t mind that at all.

As for the rest of the cast, I think they gave fine performances despite the material that they had to work with. When movies fail, there seems to be an impulse to blame the cast and rip their performances apart – but I won’t. I don’t blame the cast for the commercial and critical failure of this movie – I blame the people who had actual creative control (the producers, director, screenwriters, etc.).

o The Concept: An ancient dynasty of werewolf leaders extending from primeval Europe into the modern day? Yes fuckin’ please! This is exactly the kind of canon expansion that I was craving from the book! And, okay, yeah. The book’s version of werewolf society is very different from the movie’s version. In the book, werewolf packs are moderately sized clusters of families and individuals ruled by an alpha pair. Other werewolf packs exist, but there doesn’t seem to be any person or group governing werewolf society as a whole. This would seem to directly contradict the movie’s take on werewolf society, but it doesn’t have to. The book’s werewolves originated in western Europe, and from there emigrated to the US in the 1600’s. The movie’s werewolves originated in eastern Europe and stayed there. There’s no reason why those two groups of werewolves couldn’t have started with or evolved two different social structures leading up to the present day. In fact, if you can ignore the shared titles and character names, the movie Blood and Chocolate can be viewed as a new story set in the fictional universe established by the book Blood and Chocolate. And that’s how I choose to view this– it lets me get past my nerd rage and enjoy the movie for what it is.

Lows: While I do honestly enjoy this movie, I would be lying if pretended that it was flawless. Blood and Chocolate didn’t get its reputation by accident. Here are my thoughts on some of the more egregious missteps. o The Script: Okay guys, we need to talk. I’ve seen people defending this movie, saying that it’s an unfairly maligned gem, and I CAN’T. Guys, the dialogue. Have you LISTENED to the dialogue?

Aiden, pleading: “I’ll take the train, I swear it. I’m gone. I’m on that train.”

Rafe: “I AM THE TRAIN!”

(Boy, WHY are you crouching on the railing like a heterochromatic gremlin?)

Like I said in the last section, I don’t blame the actors for the movie’s failure. I don’t. They had no control over this shit. I do, however, blame the screenwriters; all SIX of them. This film had SIX separate people working on the script and was still released with Hugh Dancy shouting, “If you cared a goddamn thing about me, you would have left me before we ever met!”

This is astonishing for its misunderstanding of linear time if for nothing else.

Seriously, though – Hugh Dancy, cinnamon roll and internet darling, cannot make these lines sound good. When even the best actor in your movie can’t make it work, you know that the script is baaaaad.

o The Wolves: Remember the bit about practical effects vs. CGI in the previous post? Yeah, the filmmakers went hard on the CGI. It made sense given the relatively small budget to go the CGI route as a money saving maneuver. However, the director, Katja von Garnier, decided to use the CGI in the most ridiculous way possible.

(🎶 FIGHTING EVIL BY MOONLIGHT! 🎶)

The werewolves jump into the air, turn into an ethereal glow, and emerge as wolves. While this is not an inherently bad idea (it’s different, and it could, in theory, look cool), the execution was a huge misfire. Seeing the actors leap forward into a sparkly, pastel shimmer was never anything but ridiculous, and the Sailor Moon aesthetic of it just did not fit with the grungy, realistic look of the rest of the movie.

(Hey, cinematographer: if you want these transformations to fit with the rest of the movie, maybe make the movie LESS F*ING BROWN?) Additionally, the transformed werewolves were simply real wolves. Listening to Katja von Garnier’s commentary, you come away with the impression that she is suuuuuper proud of getting the cast and crew to work with live animals. However, the wolves that they used are a bit on the smaller side.

As a result, they didn’t really inspire much fear. For example; in the scene where Rafe murders the girl he’s been stalking, you see both the girl and the wolf in the same shot, and it absolutely kills the tension. Like, girl - roll up a newspaper and boop him on the nose.

o Rafe: The screenwriters desperately wanted Rafe to be menacing, and bless Bryan Dick for trying, but it does not work at all. Rafe in the movie is petulant, sleazy, definitely an asshole, and explicitly a murderer, but I never believed him as a threat. In the confrontation at the chapel, Hugh Dancy stands half a head taller than Bryan Dick, and while neither of them are exactly musclebound, it’s pretty obvious who would win in a fight. For me to buy Rafe as a legitimate danger, he needed to be less foppish, more unhinged, and just physically bigger.

(FFS, Vivian is taller than he is! How is he supposed to be intimidating?)

o Gabriel: I don’t know who decided to turn the romantic lead of the book into the jealous villain of the movie, but they need to be slapped across the face with a trout. It’s been over a decade since the movie came out, and I have learned to shrug off most of the bizarre adaptational choices, but this one still just pisses me off. The evisceration of Gabriel’s character is the biggest betrayal of the source material.

In the book, Gabriel was a foil to Aiden, and Vivian choosing Gabriel symbolized her acceptance of her dual nature. It meant that she wouldn’t have to compromise her identity to be accepted and loved. The adaptation could have provided an opportunity to rework Gabriel’s character arc. It could have cleaned up the age-gap ickiness, removed the non-consensual kiss, nixed the prior relationship with Vivian’s mother and generally made Gabriel as a love interest more palatable for movie audiences. But, whatever. The filmmakers already threw out the core of the human vs. animal theme from the book, so why not just utterly warp Gabriel while they’re at it? Plus, the clueless human love interest vs. the lecherous supernatural stalker dynamic worked for Underworld, so it’s going to work here, right?

The Stuff I’m Choosing Not to Nitpick (in depth): I just- I don’t know, man. I used to get really worked up about this stuff, but I don’t really feel like devoting any real analysis to these points. Take these potshots and do with them what you will.

o The Parkour: Time has not been kind to parkour. The filmmakers gambled on it being cool for the long haul, and they lost that wager. I get that it takes a lot of skill, and I get what the filmmakers were trying to do with it, but it just looks silly. o The Hunt: I mean, it directly violates the most important werewolf law from the source material, but I’m willing to believe that this ancient werewolf faction in Romania came up with a sanctioned way to hunt humans, so I can forgive this. o The Eye Thing: The early-mid aughts were really impressed with the power and symbolism of colored contacts, weren’t they?

o Astrid: They mashed Astrid and Esme’s characters together and called the resulting chimera Vivian’s aunt. I don’t hate this change as much as I used to. I mostly just wonder why they bothered. The movie had already changed the book’s storyline so much that neither Astrid nor Esme were necessary for the new plot. They could have cut this character out entirely and no one would have missed her.

o The White Wolf: Of course the main character turns into the only white wolf in the movie. ‘Cuz symbolism!

o The (implied) Sex Scene: Sure, she’s dying of silver poisoning, you’re both hiding in a decrepit film warehouse and the werewolf mafia is hunting you, but GO AHEAD. This is the ideal time AND place to bone!

(This woman is clearly DTF.)

Verdict: I want to be really clear on this point – I love this movie. I mean, let me remind you of my cinematic tastes.

Here’s the thing - there is a difference between movies that are “good” and movies that are “enjoyable”. Blood and Chocolate is not a “good” movie. The plot is formulaic as hell, the dialogue is laughably inept, and any actual potential it had to do something new and innovative with the werewolf genre was squandered. Seriously – one of the remarkable things about the book was how it centered a monster story on the monsters and made them sympathetic. The movie? Turns the monsters back into one-dimensional bad guys. But, hey, at least they made the transformations maaaaaaagical! That said, Blood and Chocolate is absolutely an “enjoyable” movie. I have watched this thing dozens of times since it came out, and each time I find something new to amuse me. The dialogue is hilarious, the special effects miss the mark so badly, and every time you find a new plot hole, an angel gets its wings. What’s more, it contains enough genuinely good elements to balance out the bad. It is a delightful example of low camp, and a worthy addition to any “so bad it’s good” film collection.

I’m not alone in that assessment, either. If you look at amateur reviews of the movie, you’ll find a lot of people defending it despite its flaws. It has an audience!

So, why didn’t it make more money?

Next Week: Section 4 – The Autopsy

#blood and chocolate #annette curtis klause #werewolves #katja von garnier #agnes bruckner #hugh dancy #olivier martinez #B&C-AAINO

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mst3kproject · 5 years ago

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913: Quest of the Delta Knights

Or, as I’ve taken to calling it, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1.

Long ago it was a time of brave knights and fair maidens, bubonic plague, public hangings, spiral perms and really stupid hats. The tyrant of this land is Lord Volcher, who acts a lot like Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves only not so subtle. Opposed to him are the Delta Knights, who have a prophecy about a young sage from the North, and a wizard-looking dude called Baydool thinks he’s found this chosen one in a skinny kid named Travis who might have precognitive powers, I don’t know. Supposedly Travis is destined to lead them to the place where Archimedes hid the lost knowledge of Atlantis. Wasn’t that the plot of an episode of MacGuyver?

This all takes place when Leonardo da Vinci was in his early twenties, which would place us in the 1470’s. Despite being so theoretically specific, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 doesn’t actually try very hard to be set in anything resembling the historical past – it’s kind of like The Undead in being a quasi-Renaissance fantasy thrown together by people whose ‘research’ consisted mostly of watching other quasi-Renaissance fantasy movies. The only historical detail they got noticeably right was the death of Archemedes. Supposedly he really was cut down by the Romans while trying to finish some math, his last words being roughly, “don’t disturb my calculations.” Legend credits him with inventing a heat ray and a couple of other superweapons that may or may not have been used in the siege of Syracuse, which I guess is what inspired this movie.

That’s a fun idea, I suppose, and could make for a sort of medieval Indiana Jones type adventure. Problem is, I’m really not sure what kind of movie Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 is trying to be. The tone shifts sharply depending on who’s in a given scene. When the villains are onscreen one gets the impression that this is a comedy, but nothing that happens is actually funny. Indeed, a lot of the so-called ‘jokes’ are downright mystifying. What the fuck is with the thing about Whampool having been a bearded lady in a carnival? What is supposed to be the punchline of that? What’s supposed to be funny about any of Volcher’s interactions with the Mannerjay, whoever she is? Why is he loyal to her when she treats him so badly?

When we’re watching the heroes, we have the opposite situation: it seems like this is all meant to be riveting and sometimes heartfelt, but everything that’s happening is silly. I want to speculate that there was some kind of failure of communication here, that some of the actors thought they were making a serious adventure movie and the rest thought this was a medieval sitcom, but Baydool and Volcher are played by the same guy so I got nothing.

The result feels uneven to the point of being nearly incomprehensible. How the hell does Leonardo da Vinci exist in the same universe as the Wizard Whampool with his neckbeard and Brooklyn accent? Why do characters keep talking about filing their paperwork in a world where very few people can read? How do real countries like Italy and Germany exist, and yet we’re in a land ruled by a Dark Queen who never does anything and a forest full of ziplining people who live in the trees like fucking Ewoks? How is anybody talking about the country of Turkey four hundred years before it existed?

I guess the film-makers figured nobody would care because it’s just a silly fantasy movie, right? Maybe that’s true – maybe I’m just anal about it because I did undergrad work in medieval and renaissance history. The way I see it, though, once you’ve decided to mention real people like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci, you’ve got to at least try to be set in the real world. If you’re going to make up things like the Golden Newt Award from the College of Alchemists in Istanbul, you can also make up your ancient scientist and your artistic prodigy. Otherwise your movie comes across like it was written by a twelve-year-old.

(Don’t ask me why Volcher and Baydool are both David Warner, by the way. Maybe it’s supposed to be a two sides of the same coin thing? Maybe there was a subplot about them being long-lost twins and it got cut from the movie? Maybe they just couldn’t afford to pay another actor and thought nobody would notice?)

There are major characters who are totally useless. Volcher’s Evil Overlady is a woman referred to as ‘the Mannerjay’ – I googled this word to see if it actually meant anything but all that comes up is pages about this movie. I guess somebody thought it sounded cool. She appears to sit around all day belittling the people who are running her kingdom for her. We never find out who she is or what she wants or why she’s in charge, and she appears to be in the movie only so it can make jokes about how totally whipped Volcher is. Her pet wizard, Whampool, is important for about thirty seconds while Baydool and Travis sneak into his lab to copy the map to Archimedes’ library, but he keeps popping up again after that for short scenes that are supposed to be comedic but aren’t, and contribute nothing.

Equally wasted is Thena, the woman Travis springs from a brothel because she saved him from being beaten up once. She turns out to be the Lost Princess of the Ewok People, which comes across as a lazy way to get her out of the movie again. She shows up to shoot one guy at the very end but can never really be said to have an effect on the plot. She’s not even anyone’s love interest. She’s only in the movie because the casting director thought her tits looked good in that corset.

The plot never seems to escalate. The middle section of a movie is supposed to be ‘rising action’ or at least ‘rising tension’, but the characters in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 just seem to be wandering around. Part of this is because of characters like Whampool, or Thena and the Ewok People, who come and go without having any effect on the plot. A major part of it is because the bad guys are idiots who can’t seem to get anything done. Sometimes the good guys don’t seem able to get anything done, either, as when Travis attempts to rescue Baydool from prison but only ends up getting him killed. This is supposed to be the heartbreaking tragic scene where Travis loses his mentor, but it mostly feels like wasted time.

I’ve already mentioned a number of anachronisms in Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1, but there are always more, and the biggest of them is the one the entire plot is founded on. Baydool tells Travis that the Delta Knights are ‘a secret society dedicated to bringing mankind out of the dark ages.’ Right. So first of all, ‘the dark ages’ usually means about 400-800 AD in Europe, when we don’t know much about what was going on because everybody was too busy killing each other to write it down. They weren’t called that, however, until the seventeenth century, when scholars began contrasting what they considered an age of ignorance with the ‘light’ of Greece and Rome beforehand and the Renaissance (a period of fetishism for all things Greco-Roman) after. Notice how neither of these periods overlap with the supposed time of this movie. This brings me to my second point, which is that dark ages are dark only in retrospect. Nobody who was actually alive at the time knew they were living in the dark ages and they probably wouldn’t have cared if they had.

Of course at the end of the movie, they find the secrets of Atlantis but decide to bury them again so that Volcher can’t use Archimedes’ death ray to conquer the world or something. Throughout the movie Volcher has gone around murdering random people and yelling orders, but he’s so dumb and incompetent that he never really seems like a threat to our heroes. I got the idea that if Travis hadn’t blown him up he would have done it to himself within the next fifteen minutes. The Mannerjay, sitting around in her hilltop castle (always introduced with a thunderbolt sound even when the sky is blue), certainly isn’t a threat to anybody. I don’t think she knows what goes on outside her room. Keeping this stuff out of their hands seems totally unnecessary. These clowns wouldn’t know what to do with it.

Besides, if you’re trying to fit this into actual history, shouldn’t the end be the Delta Knights using the contents of Archimedes’ Library to bring about the Renaissance? That’s what they wanted, wasn’t it? To re-introduce Greco-Roman ideas of science into this backward, superstitious society (not that they ever bother to establish society as backward and superstitious)? Instead they just blow the whole thing up and all that’s left is things Leonardo was later inspired to sketch in his margins when he got bored of drawing penises with legs. Congratulations on defeating the entire purpose of your own secret society, guys.

Why would anybody make a movie like this? Wizards of the Lost Kingdom -1 clearly had some kind of budget, because the costumes are pretty nice even when they’re not very historical. Archimedes’ ray gun is realized through effects that aren’t very special but at least they work. There are horses and props and things like that, but the script and story are so juvenile, un-funny, and pointless that it doesn’t feel like it deserves them. Nothing here was worth my time or the film-makers’ money and effort. It doesn’t make me as viscerally angry as Kitten with a Whip, but man, it sucks.

#mst3k #reviews #quest of the delta knights #90s

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gofancyninjaworld · 5 years ago

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The World of Heroes, Part 3: The Association

With great thanks to @scumerage for giving me the necessary framing.

So, welcome to Part 3 of me geeking way too much about heroes and One Punch Man. In Part 1, I talked about the challenge of being a hero. In Part 2, I took a step backwards and looked at what heroes were in the context of OPM. This part, I’m going to build on them and write about the world of the pro-hero.

No one has ever needed especial qualifications to be a hero, neither in the real world nor in that of OPM. Heroes arise from anywhere depending on the situation. The idea of someone paid to be a hero seems rather weird the more you think about it.

A: Why a Hero Association?

We can’t understand the Hero Association unless we take the time to really appreciate why it came to exist. The Hero Association was born out of desperation. Specifically, mysterious beings had been appearing with increasing frequency in the world going back at least twenty years -- and back when Saitama was in middle school, it’d already gotten severe enough a problem that there were calls for the government to set up a specialist force to deal with the problem.

Calls that went unheeded.

For years.

Until Agoni had that epiphany that his grandson having the luck of being saved by a random stranger didn’t have to be luck. So he got the buy in of both politicians and business people and set up a Hero Association to organise heroes and save people (not necessarily the same thing). The Hero Association is 100% donation funded, no taxes.

Like a beacon of hope rising out of a sea of tragedy, the Hero Association’s main building stands.

B: Why be a Pro-Hero?

The key thing that I’m going to bold is that the Hero Association ORGANISES heroes. It does not train them, taking only ‘battle ready’ people. It does not worry about developing them. You have to already be a hero. Wannabes need not apply.

This fact has many important implications.

First, there is a right time to join the Hero Association: when the hero work you are already doing has come to take up so much of your time that it is interfering with your ability to make a living. The undying gratitude of the person you saved may be priceless, but it doesn’t pay the rent, nor the hospital bills you incurred. Come to the Hero Association at that time and it’s a fantastic deal. It will reliably pay you every month. It will pay your medical bills. It will record and recognise your activities. It will indemnify you against the damage that you do during the course of your work. If you’re not in Class C, it will help you with equipment. It may even put money aside for the pension you’ll need much sooner than you think.

Second, the Hero Association may not train, but it also does not constrain. As discussed in earlier parts, the sort of person who becomes a hero is someone who doesn’t fear standing out or going against the flow -- they’re independent minded and often more than a little eccentric. The HA’s attitude allows for the weird and wonderful heroes we see to thrive. No prescription of how to do your heroism. No uniforms. Out of Class C, no expectations of minimum activity.

However, while the Hero Association has broad standards, those standards are NOT LOW. Every profession that carries authority over others from teaching to the police has a perennial problem of how to spot and weed out those attracted to it for power tripping purposes, the narcissists, the sociopaths, the sadists, the abusers, and the plain evil. The Hero Association’s pro-heroes are remarkably good -- far better than the general population. There’s a certain amount of nonsense the HA will put up with from super-useful heroes but we’re seeing that even there, they have limits. I don’t know what combination of selection criteria and the demands of the job that create this, but it works.

And there’s a logic to it: hero work, doing good hero work consistently is far too tough for people who don’t have both a serious moral core and a desire to be pro-social to last. The manga expansion has been at great pains to examine the different avenues available to people with the power to be pro-heroes but not the moral core and/or social drive -- regular law-abiding civilians doing whatever the hell they want to. Sportspeople. Criminals. Mercenaries. Vigilantes. Conversely, we’ve also been shown at least one person with the morals, but not the strength -- that person made an exceptional police officer.

With great power comes no obligation -- your life is your own

It’s not a perfect model, and its shortcomings are becoming clearer -- which I’ll discuss in a bit -- but it does do its job of supporting exceptional and highly individual heroes to dedicate themselves fully to their self-appointed work. And they’re good at drawing from society at large: a non comprehensive list of former (and current) professions of pro-heroes includes actor, circus performer, construction worker, salaryman, manager, swordsmen, professional martial artists, hunter, trapper, perfumier, farmer, athletes, body builders, ninjas, ballerinas...the list goes on.

C. Classes and Ranks

Deploying heroes means sorting heroes so as to use them in the best way possible. There are no size limits to any of the classes -- as many as fit the requirements of a class will be in it. The HA is always recruiting.

Class C is the threshing floor, where heroes start if there’s no compelling reason to recommend that they start elsewhere -- or if they have their doubts. The combination of low pay and the expectation of weekly results means that there’s no opportunity to work half-heartedly. It quickly discourages the lazy, those who aren’t strongly self-motivated, those lacking in initiative, those expecting quick recognition, the ones who simply cannot work with others, the ones who won’t take lawful orders and the plain incompetent. Expectations are relatively low. Stopping small time criminals, being helpful to people and being willing/able to work with others to take care of monsters will see you in good standing. Getting out of Class C seems to be dependent on showing that you can be relied on to single-handedly kill monsters (any damn kind) OR by being promoted to C Class Rank 1. The majority of heroes have done at least a short stint in Class C, including many current Class S heroes.

It’s hard to survive on your own in Class C

If a hero is inclined to be lazy, Class B is where to be. No formal quota, no formal expectation of being drafted to help with an escalating situation (like Class A and S heroes), semi-decent pay, help with equipment design/maintenance, its lower reaches are quite a safe place to coast. When a Class B hero does work, the expectation on them is that they be entrusted to handle a wolf-level threat on their own and if Don Pacino is typical of the sort of criminal that gets a B Class bounty, heavily-armed gangs are fair game. The challenge of Class B is the Blizzard Group -- if you work close to or in Z-City, and are ambitious, Fubuki will come knocking sooner or later. It's a problem that the Hero Association knows about and chooses to do nothing about, seeing it as just another test ambitious heroes have to negotiate.

It’s a shame that Class B is so dominated by the Blizzard Group that it’s difficult to find pictures of just Class B heroes that’s not them. And yet we know nearly none of them...

Class A is the where the main backbone of the Hero Association lies. That this is shifting of late doesn’t negate the fact that most monsters are threat level tiger or below. For the vast majority of threats, Class A is where the buck stops. The roughly forty members of this class are the highest class of heroes you could still consider ‘normal’ human beings. Highly visible, hard-working and with high expectations placed on them, A-Class heroes are what other heroes aspire to be. There may be no formal tutelage system in the Hero Association, but Class A heroes take turns to orient new recruits as to the rules and expectations of being a pro-hero.

Class A comes across as a group whose members are just as comfortable on their own as in working with others.

Class S is... well, it is special. Unlike the other classes, a hero cannot be promoted to Class S: it is by direct invitation only. And that invitation is on battle record, battle record, and battle record alone. Only the demonstrated ability to single-handedly slay a threat-level demon monster or more will elicit that invitation. By staying at Class A Rank 1, Amai Mask closes off the possibility that a hero who doesn’t meet those requirements can nevertheless request a promotion interview and talk or network their way in. Why so persnickety? Because these heroes are the In Case of Emergency heroes: when the shit really hits the fan, that’s when they step up. With so few of them, a single S-Class hero can easily be all that stands between tens of thousands of people and a horrible death with no back up available for hours. We’ve seen a lot more of them than the average person in the story does because the story is set precisely in the midst of several extreme emergencies.

They may be the most powerful heroes, but they don’t have the best reputation amongst other heroes. Even between themselves -- they’re amazingly fractious and Flashy Flash’s summation of his colleagues is particularly scathing:

The other Class S heroes are useless. They’re either stubborn or hide their own identity, weirdos, children and old people. (from webcomic chapter 112)

Getting this many Class S heroes in the same place at the same time is like pulling teeth

What about ranks? Within classes heroes have ranks, but they don’t directly correspond to battle power, have little to do with seniority, and are absolutely not measures of hierarchy within a class. What they are are measures of a given hero’s perceived utility to the Hero Association. Ranks give heroes something to measure themselves by, act as a tangible measure of progress, are something that does correlate to how well a hero gets paid within the class and of course, they bring feel superior points. If a hero is minded to climb classes, Rank 1 of the class below is the ticket to apply for promotion.

What’s very fair about the ranking system is that it’s assessed weekly. No matter where a hero starts out, week by week, they cannot help but build an actual track record. The Hero Association isn’t slow to reward good heroes with promotions -- it’s why even the Saitama who won’t report his work and claims to cheat is rising so fast that other heroes keep attacking him. What’s troublesome about it is that it’s a points based system, whereby points can be divided between heroes... which opens the door to some underhanded shenanigans.

Wrapping up

The Hero Association has solved a very troublesome problem: how to reliably hire a hero? Precisely because anyone can be moved to acts of heroism, people have been saved by a random assemblage of other people, only a few of whom would ever think of doing it regularly. What they have done in short is to give those people basic security and protection and otherwise let them get on with doing what they do.

What’s been good about their approach is that they’ve effectively captured lightning in a bottle, bringing together some exceptional people, and deploying them in a way that balanced their needs for individuality with the benefit of collective action. Until recently, it’s a model that has worked. What’s been bad about it…. Ah, that will wait until the last part of this series.

#OPM #meta #world building #Hero Association #heroes #it's an interesting model #but this piece is long enough

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do-kyngsoo · 5 years ago

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(1/?) Hello! Fellow Chinese here! I want to bring awareness to something. I remember seeing a post w/ a list of Chinese K-pop idols to “condemn” for their support in China. I just wanted to say that any idol would be risking their entire career and family’s safety if they so much as condemn the Chinese government. It’s not even enough to not even say anything, because if they don’t, the government would condemn them for not supporting their home country enough.

Long post up ahead, if you’re interested in understanding the full story and gaining some understanding of why these Chinese idols may have openly supported China like they have then there is the keep reading link (if it actually works for once)

So backstory which most people know, the Chinese government is trying to have Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau completely under their control in the “One China policy” (these countries are already under China but have their own laws, governments, currencies etc.) so China is trying to get rid of the little independence these countries do have which has caused protests and over the last few weeks they have gotten increasingly violent with police using tear gas, rubber bullets and Chinese soldiers moving towards the border for backup.

In the heights of all these there have been several companies and brands (samsung, givenchy, calvin klein etc.) who have in some form expressed that Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau are their own independent countries. This has caused a lot of backlash from Chinese citizens and the government and many Chinese idols and actors have terminated any contracts they have with them. With Yixing specifically (and i think his case is pretty important when understanding the actions of all of the celebrities) he was I suppose ‘called out’ by a Chinese news outlet for not immediately terminating his contracts with the brands (he is brand ambassador for samsung, calvin klein and valentino who were all accused of having anti one china sentiments), yixings studio released a statement saying they will investigate the stances of the companies and he then proceeded to terminate his contract with Samsung.

The reason why all this is significant is because of all the backlash yixing and other celebrities were getting, first yixing was called a traitor to his country for not terminating his contracts and when he did terminate the Samsung one Chinese citizens were claiming he only did so because they said it and that he is money hungry. Amongst all of this there have been death threats sent to family and friends as well as claims that he is committing treason - and treason is a punishable crime in China of which the sentence is Captial Punishment (aka. execution). Needless to say it is an extremely serious accusation to make over someone not terminating a brand contract.

However even after all this all of these Chinese artists were still being condemned and were being pushed by the public and government to do more with these threats looming over them. So many of them posted pro One China policy images on their social medias which has then brought criticism from international fans.

The post with a list of idols to condemn is honestly news to me and is quite shocking that someone would make such a thing (it’s basically generating mass hate), I hope that if a person took the time to make a list then they also took the time to consider the conditions in China and the reasons that could bring these idols to take such measures.

Now anon made a great point here in saying that these celebrities don’t have the freedom we have in the west and thats’s because…they don’t. China is a country where censorship and indoctrination very much exists and is very prominent. They don’t have access to international news or social medias like twitter or facebook, they have China friendly, pre approved versions of their own. The Chinese government also has a history of banning things that they deem to be against them, in a moment they could see to it that something is never seen in media or spoken of. Just to put it in perspective here is a list of things which have been banned from China in the past:

Winnie The Pooh

Peppa Pig

Brad Pitt (his ban was lifted a couple of years ago)

Anything involving the concept of time travel

THE FREAKING LETTER “N’ (until they realised they needed it)

Saying “I disagree”

Now if they can ban TV shows and a letter of the alphabet for being against the government imagine what they could do to celebrities with millions of fans and followers, some even international (the kpop idols) and have a massive influence. They can end their entire careers, all it would take was the government to think they weren’t supporting them and you would never see them in Chinese media again which is a vast majority of their fanbases. (And you may argue that they have careers abroad...but not really - as much as some like to think kpop has western acceptance from the few awards or collabs groups and idols have the racism they face in the west is very much there, it’s just ignored by fans who want to believe that their faves “made it”), and like anon said Korea is not a very welcoming place for Chinese artists at the moment with the tensions with China mainly concerning THAAD. Also just remember the last thing on my list that is banned “I disagree” these celebrities literally CAN’T disagree with the Chinese government - it’s illegal. Chinese citizens are taught from the moment they’re born that the Chinese government is always right and that you can’t disagree with them, so these celebrities literally cannot say they support Hong Kong and the other countries wanting independence from China

So to anyone condemning these artists and saying they’re disappointed in them: hold off. You don’t (and may never) know the circumstances under which these artists have done what they did. It’s okay to disagree with what they have done, I certainly don’t like the whole posting propaganda incident, but trashing them or making lists of people to dislike fixes absolutely nothing and you could be sending hatred towards a completely innocent person. So for now let’s just support them (or at the very least don’t be negative) and hope that they do really support the independence of these countries from China.

#thank you anon for sending this #its disappointing that people reacted like that #anyway show support for yixing jackson victoria winwin etc #you never know what their situation is #ask #anon #yixing #jackson #winwin #victoria

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