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popculturebuffet · 8 months ago

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Supermay! What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way? (Patreon Review for Brotoman.EXE)

Hello all you happy kryptonains and welcome back to supermay, a month long tribute to all things man of steel. This week is a two parter as we look at one of the best superman comics of all time, one of the best one shot issues of all time and one of the best deconstructions of "Why don't heroes do whatever they want and kill whoever they want" of all time. I'm not softballing it: this issue is fantastic. We'll also be looking at it's adaptation later this week, the DTV film Superman Vs the Elite.

For now though we're focusing on the original story. What's So Funny... was originally published in 2001 in Action Comics 775, written by Joe Kelly and drawn by Doug Mankhe and Lee Bermejo.

For those not familiar with him Kelly is a comics legend, having helped define deadpool with his first solo book and coming back to the character quite a bit without the dimnishing returns creators sometimes have. He also founded animation studio Man of Action and is one of the co-creators of both Ben 10 and Generator Rex.

Kelly wrote superman for a 5 year run, a nice stretch all things considered and one I wish, like most of 90's and 2000's superman would get recollected. Or at the very least hopefully is on dc universe infinite. It's not AS good as having collections out there, but it's something. But if his stories are anywhere near this good, i'd love to see more of them.

Kelly wrote What's So Funny as a direct response to another book DC was publishing at the time: The Authority. The Authority were created by emotinally abusive grooming coersive dickhead Warren Ellis and entirely good dude Bryan Hitch. I bring up the latter because Hitch seems genuinely kind and deserves his flowers... and the former because it shouldn't be forgotten. Ellis hasn't genuinely atoned, deserved to loose everything he did, and while his talent shouldn't be forgotten, it's only because his talent is WHY he was able to do this. If we suddenly go "Oh he always sucked", it undercuts HOW he was able to do this. Most people he abused were fans of his and it's worth remembering he was talented.. and must ALWAYS be remembered what he choose to use said talent to do to people. I won't go into details as to avoid triggering those of you who have been simiarly abused, but if your curious go to somanyofus.com. What testimonals I have read are heartbreaking.

As for the Authority itself, it was a followup to Ellis' run on storm watch, a book created by Jim Lee about a UN Sanctioned super team that Ellis helped transform, adding in some new creations of his own to revitalize the team. The book was a critical hit and loved at the offices of Wildstorm, the company that published stormwatch and would soon be bought by DC. The problem was it wasn't selling, and Ellis, both feeling bad they were keeping the book around just because of him and wanting to take things up a notch, reconfigured the team into the authority.

The Authority was a massively powerful team, assembled to face massive threats like an army of supermen dispatched by a mad dictator, a colonliast alien-italian empire that wanted to take earth, and God itself who turned out to be an elder god wanting to restore earth to factory settings. Hitch's art made things feel BIG and cinematic, his specality, and helped show just how big comics could be alongside other works before it (JLA) and after it (New X-Men).

The team had swagger, cool powers.. and most important to this story.. no problem with killing. The team carved their way through armies of enemies, killing whoever they had to and in the first two arcs comitted mass murder: Midnighter, the team's batman and biggest asshole, drove their ship through a country just to get at the first arc's big bad, while the Doctor, their magic man and only able to get away with the name because Doctor Who hadn't been revivied just yet, killed all of alternate italy to destroy an alien empire. These steps weren't taken lightly and were only taken because otherwise more death would follow, but it was clear the team weren't meant to be good guys: simply the only ones who COULD do the job.

This changed with the following run, and I read both Ellis' run and the first two arcs of it's followup for proper context. I ddin't necessarily half to and Brotoman didn't ask and was honestly shocked I put in this much extra effort... but I realized if your going to disect a work calling out the other work, you need to have a fresh understanding of what it's fighting against.

So Ellis' run was followed up by comics legend Mark Millar. Millar seems to be a nice guy nowadays, fun to be around, lvoes the buisness, keeps going simply because he can and with one of the largest creator owned rosters of characters around.

In the 2000's though and for most of his career.. Millar was the king of the edgelords. he was the threw it on the ground guy as an actual tangible person. Millar's idea of adult storytelling was some genuine political comentary idaes.. mixed with a lot of sex and violence for the sake of sex and violence, using senstive topics like sexual assault simply to seem "edgy". So naturally the Authority went from "assholes to a point but with limits" to every last one of them saying edgelord shit, mowing down everyone in their path and LOVING it, and fucking everyone they could because Mark Millar likes ot scream

In your ear while doing nothing to prove he's not a 13 year old boy in a grown up's body. And please note I would gladly review Millar's shit as much as it frustrates me, but will never cover anything by Ellis as long as he lives, as I do not want to give that fucker any more attention than I have to, despite my reactoin to reading the first arc of the authority under him being a resounding

To give you an idea of what I had to put up with dialouge wise, here's a samping from the first four issues of Millar's run.

There's more and the bad guys are even worse, but i'd rather not throw that in here on the grounds that I LIKE you guys and I don't want to throw unecessary edgelord bollocks in here that might trigger some of you who've geninely gone through things Millar brings up just to seem more "adult".

So that's where the authority were at, and it's impressive that things escalated so much in four issues less than a YEAR before What's So Funny was published> It's why I read what I did: It's what would've been out there and while Ellis' run had likely bothered kelly, given how the Elitie are depicted and how their leader acts, it's clear a LOT of it came from Millar's work. I mean you have to be a specail brand of douchebag to get a response to your characters being the worst less than a YEAR in.

The bigger reason for this response was how fans reacted: Fans.. LOVED the authority and as tends to happen when you get a shiny new "edgy" team, some asked: "Why doe we need those other guys? If we have heroes willing to kill, topple governments and swagger all the while, why do we need some guy in tights telling us not to?" Superman was seen by some as outdated and as a result was the target of one of the oldest arguments in all of comics: should superheroes keep doing what they do, or should they take the world and force it to be better or else? It's an argument that NEVER seems to go away.

Proving this, DC had just done a story like this 5 years ago with Kingdom Come, which explored both heroes who are worse than the villians and what happens when the heroes take over. And before THAT marvel did Squadron Supreme in 1985, showing what would genuinely happen if a justice league equilvent took over the world. It'll always be a questoin to be had because readers will cycle out and the next batch will ask the same questions. So join me as we look at the answers, see WHY Superman needs to stand against this and why his methods, despite being questioned every couple of years, stand the test of time and the test of someone who had a dream he didn't like.

We open with Superman flying to Libya as superman flies to stop a superterror attack.. in this case a giant gorilla wielding a giant gun and I will pay adam wingard 5 dollary doos if the next Godzilla X Kong Film involves Kong pistol wipping a giant monster with a shot gun. Just saying.

At any rate clark arrives.. to find something truly horrific.

I give artist Doug Manhke a LOT of credit... despite having only a spread to work with he shows just how horrific this is.. and that's WITHOUT giving anything away about who did it. All we know is suddenly a group with a lot of power saved the day.. but also dropped a giant monster corpse on a city, left said city in ruins, and massacred what was , in all likelyhood an animal who had no say in being made into a giant cybernetic monstrosity. I mean this IS the dc universe with an entire ape city. I could buy Grodd or someone like him growing giant and giving themselves some cable armor to go do some murders, it just comes off more like someone super sized an ape afte rloading it up with hardware and relseaed it on a city and instead of rocgnizing the beast was simply a wild animal, those responsible brutalyl murdered it.

We soon find out who as Clark hears back from the rest of the Daily Planet crew as competing paper the Star, based on the paper Clark worked at in the earlier stories and that grant morrison would bring back for their action comics run, published a gushing story about the four monsters responsible: The Elitie, a super powerful superteam whose leader, Manchester Black even gave a statement "Trust me the old ways are dead in a year you'll love me for this".. then he cut the general he gave the statment too's legs off. It's a great intro: without meeting the guy we instantly know the deep level of prick we're dealing with, and how he'll do a casual violence simply becaues he wants to. Two thousand soldiers died in this attack along with the actual target. Also Jimmy gives a VERY poorly aged joke about watning to shoot the staff of the daily star, which is in character but still feels entirley messed up especially since Columbine had happened at this point. Jesus Jim.

As for who wrote this puff piece that would be Jack Ryder.

For those not familiar with him, Jack Ryder is a "Journalist" and I say so in the loosest terms as in most apperances he's just trying to get attention, being eerly similar to the wave of reactionary assholes we'd see in that decade. He's also the superhero the creeper, a split personality of his who wears a giant boa, cackles and is both awesome and criminally underused by dc. Seriously why they don't use this guy more I don't know. Jack gets more apperances and they can find another strawman or make one.

At any rate Jack's not here to be creepy but to praise terroists while his other self facepalms on the inside. He and clark have debate that is less than civil... and it's telling that clark , who does try to be calma nd kind even when he's pissed off, is absolutely FURIOUS at jack propping these assholes up

Now what I really like about this scene is Jack is an asshole. He make sa mocking joke before maknig an actual pointa nd dowplays all the innocent people who died. And the ape. Seriously someone feel bad an ape died. Why is it just me.

But he raises one valid point while talking directly out of his ass: "And three months later it would happen all over again"> Jack is wrong about..e verything else. Entirely. Seriously creeper needs to get a body seperator machine asap.. but he's right this shit is cyclical and people want a fix. Even 23 years later.. the world still feels broken. Kelly doesn't like the authority.. but he gets WHY people like them: Their a power fantasy, a group of people killing all the big bad dictators, putting corrupt presidents in check and trying to fix a broken world. Their methods are horrible.. but in a time that' scomplciated, unfair and frightening.. it's so easy to cling to someone who seemingly has the answers. It's why so many people flock to the right: turning to hate is sometimes the easiest solution.

We get a brief interlude with president luthor where we find out just HOW powerful these guys are. one of them, coldcast blinked and it shorted out satilites. As Amanda waller put it superman would need a jetpack and a space shuttle to even come close to their power

Naturally Lex's position.. is to let it lie. He plans to turn them into cat food, his exact words, if they so much as touch the US.. but for now their fighting other metas for respect.. and given their clearly gunning for superman and badly outclass him.. well Luthor can't resisit seeing how it plays out, letting the leitie have their fun for now.. and seeing if he can get a dead superman out of the deal. He dosen't say that directly.. but he's sure as hell thinking it as hard as he can.

The Elitie aren't resting on their laurels either, releasing a manefsto that amounts to "do bad shit and we'll fucking kill you". Superman talks this over with Steel.. but it's clear their getting to clark.. and the one thing he says makes it clear why "Do you think the world's moved on?". IT's a powerful statment: Clark himself is wondering if this is what people WANT now, if he's outmoded and if he' sreally making a diffrence.

He dosen't have time to answer as a crisis in Tokyo happens .. and Clark gets to be front and center to meet the Elite this time. Sadly.. Clark can't do anything. His body start's slowing down and we later find out it was coldcast of the elite, having done so to stop an army of geneticly engeneered samurai from massacring toykyo... so the elite massacre them instead. And after a good 15 or so pages of setup.. we finally get a look at the future.

They clockwise from the center; Manchester Black, the groups leader and mouthpiece and powerful Telekenetic, Coldcast, electric man whose deisgn was really not thorught through whatsoever and looks racist as hell, Menagre, a woman combind witha colony of deady creature and the hate, a japanese man merged with a demon that give hims a bunch of magical powers

What's intresting is rather than go 1:1, the elite compress the members of the auhority down from seven people to four so before we move on here's who they represent on the Authority

Manchester Black: Manchester is a combination of the authorities leaders: Founder Jenny Sparks and her successor Jonathan Hawksmore. Sparks is the spirit of the 20th century, had no real fliter and was never all tha tpolite, while Hawksmor was modified by aliens to become one with cities, able to travel between them effortlessly, and was also a jackass in a leather jacket who was dismissive to everyone> both gave grandose speeches and had no respect for anyone else who wasn't on their team. His powers are all him, likely because the electric poewrs were already livewires thing (and thus ported over to another member) and jack's powers were creatively specitic and somethign that might not work on superman, able to have cities eath people alive.. and given Superman's a good dude they likely woudln't.

Coldcast: Electric dynamo. Again that design what the fuck .Seems to be a combo of Jack and Jenny power wise, able to manipuate the ground in addition to electricity... I say seems as I had to look pu their power sets as the story isn't very speciic about them and Manchesters is only known to me because being a telepath and telekenetic are key to later stories starring the guy.

Menagere: Seems to be a comination of the team's two other female members; the Engineeer, a scientest with nanites in her blood that can shape into anything and swift, a woman who can grow claws and has wings, simply combingin the living hive nature of the engineer and making it more biological like swift.

The Hat: The only one that's honestly.. pretty much the same person from the authority just with a diffrent name. The Hat is based on the doctor, an ex drug addict and voice of the earth itself, latest in a long line of doctors who can do whatever he feels like really. That's not hyperbole: the doctor can bend reality and the rest of the authority all had weaknesses: Swift is fast but not super strong, the Engineer can only make things up to the the point her body has enough blood to still function, Hawksmoor's powers only work in a city, Apollo has to have a solar charge built up, something their dimension traveling spaceship dosen't provide, etc. The Doctor's only issue is if someone can cut him off and when that was done in Millar's first arc it still made no sense. It's also why I gather while the rest of the authority keeps coming back now their a full part of the dc universe, Jenny, who was dead, is even getting a mini series in august, the Doctor is just too powerful to bring back without finding some new check and ballance for him that isn't just "he's an ex addict", as we're more senstive to addiction these days, as we should be.

There's two notable omissions: Apollo and Midnighter. Apollo and Midnighter are the book's breakout stars by a wide margin, having been the first to be succesfully integrated into the dcu and being fan faviorites from the word go. The two are stand in's for superman and batman, but still distinct enough to work: Both are a bit darker given their background being raised by manipulative bastard among all manipulative bastards Henrey Bendix and both have unique power diffrences that set them apart: Apollo , as established, charges up his powers with the sun and what he can do is dependant on how much charge he has... but to compesnate for having a bigger reliance on the sun, he can shoot energy and thus wipe out an entire crowd of enemies with one shot and keep going. Midnighter meanwhile has a combat computer in his brain, is a few steps ahead like batman and has regenerating nanite blood, being essentially what happens if batman and wolverine became the same person.. again, and had less restraint.

The two are also married. Yeah, in the 90's, edgelord as they could be... we had two openly queer characters. Not only that the rest of the team accepted them: they'd crack jokes about the two's relationship, but no one genuinely cared the two were gay and given this was the late 90's, that's a HUGE statement. And i'll give credit where it's due: I may not like MIllar's run and only read what I absolutely had to... but he DID end said run with the two getting married and thankfully even with ellis being the worst. if your curious about the two I highly recommend Steve Orlando's run on Midnighter and it's followup Apollo and Midnighter, integrating the two into the dc universe.

So why would they leave out the two biggest characters on the roster? Simple.. their based on Superman and Batman. Having a golden god around kinda undermines the Elite's whole "Take a seat grandpa the new kids are here", gimmick, and if you throw in a batman type guy... it begs the question why Clark dosen't bring in Batman. And while pitting the elitie versus the justice league WOULD'VE been intresting, it wasn't something they had time for: Kelly wasn't writing JLA yet, and while having them appear in superman's book isn't out of bounds.. they had one issue. And my guess is they were squeezing said issue in before they had to start the build up to the big "Our Worlds at War" crossover that year, which started in august. The fact this story happened before that with Kelly presumibly already having stories planned, in less than a year, is a miracle in itself, so I get Kelly didn't really have time to loop in the rest of everyone and thus he trimmed the authority down to four elities for time's sake

And even with a small group... none of them are really fleshed out here aside from Manchester. I had to look up their powers because they got filled in in later stories. Here their just vauge and powerful. It's one of the stories few weakpoints: the rest of the elitie are just jackasses on a power high and that's all their personality is. It dosen't hurt the story a lot as that's all the story really needs and Manchester Black is such an engaging and despicable shithead that you only really need the one ring master for this circus, but it is something I look forward to in the movie, which has the time to flesh this out Kelly simply didn't have here.

Like I said though.. Black is engagin. He's thorughly vile here... but in a way where you get WHY people are trusting this asshole: he gives cleverly worded speeches, takes out bigger bad guys, and generally has a swagger to him. He still has the charm that Sparks and Hawksmoor genuinely had.. but he also has the asshole turned up a notch, again whY I feel that this story is a response to millar: Jenny and Jack were dicks under Ellis.. but Millar just has this very specific brand of dickishness in his characters , especially his mouth pieces, that Kelly captures REALLY well with Manchester. He's a swaggering asshole who answers to no one else and would stop a man from saving lives simply to try and prove he's outdated.

He also gives supes a tour: like the authority, the elite have a ship that's sentient. Unlike the Authority's ship, which is at best a lost child the team basically adopts when they realize it's alive and spend time gently coaxing when they need it to leave earth orbit and face it's abandonment issues, Bunny, the Elitie's hq.. is enslaved by them. They found out it was sapient, found out she didn't like what they were doing.. and cut out her heart to make her more compliant.

Superman understandably isn't here for a tour, he's here to stop them.

Manchester isn't wrong: some villians don't play fair, the world itself dosen't, and so he raises the question of "why shoudlnt' we". The brilliant thing is while he has a point that the world is in rough shape... it's HOW he phrases it that points out the flaws in his philosphy: "Any normal person could do this if they had the chance".. but SHOULD they. Is it really okay to be a bad person simply because your going after worse people? And superman's answer is a very clear "No". More on that as we go but for now Superman gets sent to a superman themed car dealership for his trouble.

We cut to the Kent Farm, where we get pa revealing he decked a guy insulting clark for the incident. I like that it dosen't shy away from the fact that no, Small Town America is not immune to this kind of thought, giving into hate because it seems like the easy solution. But once again Kelly, rather than be super condescinding, gets into why people might buy into what the elitie are selling: the world is a scary place, and it's easy to buy into someone offering a quick solution, a band aid to the world's problems. To become the evil to stop the evil.

This story, while deconstructing him slightly, does get ot hte heart of WHY Superman is needed, in his worlds and in ours: He's an inspiration. As Pa points out.. clark shows them theirs a better way. That we can be better. Clark himself madea speech like this in JLA a few years before this, a speech I feel gets to the heart of the character and superheroes in general

That's what a superhero is. not a babysitter in spandex, not the cure to a wounded world... simply someone there to help humanity at it's lowest, when it needs them.. and to inspire the average person to be better. To try and make a bette rowrld even if it seems impossible. And note this dosen't mean ignoring rough shit in the world, both Supermana nd Wonder Woman have gone into dictatorships and saved civliians. It's not letting that consume you. It's hard, so very hard, to not let the world swallow you up hole.. but fighting that every day is heroic. To simply be and to be good to others. It's what makes these guys heoric: they may stumble from time to time.. but they get back up, and do good despite the world shitting on them, or people like Black telling them "your irrelvant". You fight because it's the right thing to do, because it's what you can do to help the world.

Pa is also sure clark can just.. kick the elitie's asses if it goes south.. but Clark isn't. It's not helped by the tide turning against him: while several citizens do doubt the leitie... many support them. An easy fix to hard issues. But the most chilling.. is the children

That idea that being able to kill somehow makes you better.

Supes still tries to take the high road, stopping the men in black, who in the dc universe apparently traffic aliens. He stops the aliens witht hem with water. no loss of life, no muss no fuss. The Elitie have been watching, and Manchester is utterly bored with this lecture, not taking it seriously and calling supes an idiot when he plans to have the league and the DEO haul these guys in. Black lets supes know these are super black ops people and will just be given cushy job training other guys to do the same. And superman.. just says he'll keep putting them away till they get the point.

Yeah while i'm on clark's side, and do think the elitei's solution of just.. killing them solves nothing, after all if these guys can be replaced, how does killing a few to send a message do anything? They'll just find more guys willing to do it despite the risk. But at the same time... Superman is smarter than this. We'll see that shortly. He knows better than to just "lock them up again". He'd have Batman look into it, then use the league to make sure these guys got the justice they deserved. He has on his team a telepath with global connections, a recognized ambassador, a king and a billionare and that's just people on the team currently. He can make sure these guys ar eheld acoutnable and find out and bust up who they worked for. Just.. phrase it tha tway instead.

Black isn't impressed.. but his repsonse shows he's somehow worse at this than just "keep beating them and hopefully they'll stop which has worked never times but i'll do it anyway": Have the hat Kill them all.. and their families. Superman naturally punches the hat before he can do this.. and Black decides this is more than enough justifacation to formally go after superman.

Honestly the more I think about this scene, the more I see it as a ploy: Dont get me wrong, given his actions I do think Black would slaughter someone's family as a message... but he does so right after superman genuinely tried to show them a better way, making it clear he hates the lecture and ONLY listned to try and prove some kind of point. He KNEW these gyuys existed, they created menagre.. but didn't do anything about them or give Superman actual advice. He just wanted to strut in and then try and undo everything clark did, all the live she didn't take, just so he'd have the thinest justifcation to pick a fight with superman one on four. As for why not just do this from the outset that's simple: Manchester Black CLEARLY wannted the smug satisfaction of breaking superman, of getting him to see his way, wether it was by sitting out or by being humbled. He wanted this fight from the second he swaggered up, and simply dragged it out this long to humilate superman. He knows this isn't just a battle of two blokes punching each other, it's a battle for the world's soul, a battle of ideals: Black's "kill ema ll and let god sort it out" pessimist versus superman "We have to let them be better on thier own and they can be" optimist.

Lois.. is less pleased, mostly because she's sure her husband is going to die. And I like how the art convey's this too: Lois has more faith than clark in anybody but you can tell by her eyes she's worried about her husband picking a fight with a team on the league's level just to prove a point, to possibly die for it. It's chilling to see lois, of all people, scared. But clark has to go: even if he dies for this, it's, like I said, a battle of ideals. If he backs down more people like those kids find killing fun, the easy way the only way, and the world gets even worse. He has to show the world there's a better way.. because if he dosen't everything he's fought for, everything he stands for slowly slides away and more good people fight and die to preserve his ideals.

Clark confronts them. Naturally they choose metropolis for this final battle.. and naturally Clark says "hell no" to that as he isn't going to put innocents in danger. Black agrees, though he has their ship broadcast it worldwide: he wants the world to know this was a fair fight.

Our fighters head for the moon. Unsuprisingly Clark tries one last time to talk them down. I'd call this suicidal... but it's also Supes. He'll try talking, try reforming people if he can. And it'd be weird if he didn't. The Elitie take this as you'd expect.. Manchester tk's him then they take turns beating himn while he speechifies again.

Superman is seemingly curbstomped, with Coldcast delivering some electricity to his brain , seemingly blwoing superman up real good.. but as the Elitie brag... a voice is heard

We then get one of the most bonechilling scenes in comics.. as Superman finally decides to play by The elitie's rules..

In only two pages for us and two minutes for the elitie.. the team is down, semeingly dead. IT's a terrifying display of just what superman CAN do: take the air away, rip your powers away, or just hurl you into space. We've seen plenty of evil superman stand ins do things like this, the viltrumites from invincible are essentially one long look at that, but seeing CLARK do it.. is something else. Something far worse.

Superman finishes the fight by seemingly lobotmizing black, taking out the section of the brain that give shim his powers.. and as black cries and breaks down.. Superman.. lifts the curtain

It's a brilliant twist that also puts all the pieces in place: Clark went alone.. because he had to make it beliviable, and the others were always on standbye. He likely told Bruce and the others what he had planned simply because otherwise.. they would've come to stop him. It's what Clark would want if he really crossed that line.

He simply disabled their powers for now: he gave Chester a concussion: he'll get his powers back.. but will be under tons of psy dampeners befor ehe can.

I love this display: it both shows WHY superman could be dangerous.. and why he isn't. It's easy to be vengeful... it's harder to try and inspire people not to, to keep dreaming ot keep trying to be better. It' sthe hard road but the better one: sure he could kill or take over the world.. but humanity isn't his to take. It's his to help inspire, to make us better by showing what the best of us can do with the gifts they were born with. Chester, like any villian vows he'll be back this isn't over... and clark's response to being told he's dreaming?

A simple powerful closure: superman is living for some lofty ideals .. but their ones worth aspiring towards, to neve rstop fighting for.. ever.

What's So Funny is an excellent story. It suffers here and there from it's short run time, but still serves as an excellent response to critics of superman while not trying to be patronizing. The grungy art fits the tone of the story and the climax is a thing of beauty. check this one out if you can find it

Next Time: It's Superman Vs teh Elitie. Yes again. This time on the medium sized screen as Kelly expands his story into a full blown animated film.

#what's so funny about truth justice and the american way #superman #manchester black #the authority #lois lane #lex luthor #jimmy olseon #comics #dc comics #supermay

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writergeekrhw · 2 years ago

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Hey, hope you are well. I was wondering what you considered your finest contribution to the various shows you have worked on? The character/character moment/plot point/favourite line that, if someone invented a time machine and tried to go back and erase that specifically, you would end up fighting them on a rooftop in the rain to protect?

Oh man, that one is pretty much impossible to answer. I've written over 80 episodes of TV and worked on over 300, so it's hard for me to pick my favorite episodes let alone my favorite moments or lines, etc. I'm most proud of the body of work and how deep it is, but let's see if I can think of a few highlights:

TNG:

"A Fistful of Datas" - The title is really good! I'm happy I got Picard to play his flute. The Worf/Data kiss was me, though I wrote it on the lips.

DS9 (A lot of these are with Ira):

"Q-Less" - "You hit me. Picard never hit me." "I'm not Picard."

"The Wire" - "My dear Doctor, they're all true." "Even the lies?" "Especially the lies."

"Past Tense 1&2" - All of it really.

"To the Death" - The whole "Victory is life" bit and O'Brien's response

"In Purgatory's Shadow" - "Lying is a skill like any other. And if you want to maintain a level of excellence, you have to practice constantly." "You Cardassians are all alike. You talk too much." "How can I forget it? It was the only day."

"By Inferno's Light" - Dukat's big speech. "That space station you're so fond of was built by Cardassia." "Funny. I thought it was built by Bajoran slave labor." "I yield! I cannot defeat this Klingon. All I can do is kill him, and that no longer holds my interest." "Armageddon will have to wait for another day."

"Call to Arms" - The end with Sisko's baseball.

"Field of Fire" - Snipering the melon. Who the bad guy ends up being and what his motive is.

Also: "Hard Time" "For the Uniform" "Little Green Men"

ANDROMEDA:

Proud of creating my first show. I think the cast I had control over (everyone but Dylan) is pretty great.

"Under the Night" - "Oh, he's the guy who retired. Didn't you say he bought a farm?" "The farm. Bought the farm, Trance." "What's the difference?" "Torn pressure suit and a bad emergency seal." Tyr's entrance.

"An Affirming Flame" - "I don't care if we wake up when the suns have all burned out and the universe is winding down to die, as long as I'm there to watch."

"Angel Dark, Demon Bright" - Harper's big speech. "Those are my mathematics. I'll leave you to yours." I like the way time travel works in this one.

"Music of a Distant Drum" - Tyr correcting the kid's shooting grip

"Harper 2.0" - "My pain belongs to the Divine. It is like air. It is like water."

"It's Hour Come Round at Last" - "To hell with the odds. All that matters in life is that we try. Promise you'll try."

THE TWILIGHT ZONE:

I'm proud to have written a Twilight Zone even if it wasn't in the original run.

THE DEAD ZONE:

"Descent" - Triggering a JohnnyVision by having him brushed by a passing bat.

THE DRESDEN FILES:

Underrated show in my opinion. I'm proud of co-developing it. Production was rough so I'm proud I got the episodes done and the show on the air. I think the cast is really good. The moment when Harry has to get a wasp to sting him in the eye to use it as a spy drone is pretty memorable.

THE 4400:

Richard Tyler in the diner seeing how much the world has changed. Ali is so good in that scene. We knew we had lightning in a bottle with him.

THE GATES:

"Little Girl Lost" is pretty good.

ALPHAS:

I wrote a lot of Gary's off the wall lines. "Left!" "Are you sure? Heart left, Gary?" Gary puts his hand over his heart. "No, right!" "Respect the badge!" Also casting Tatiana Maslany before she blew up was a really good call.

STAR-CROSSED:

I came up with a lot of how the Atrians culture and biology worked and I think that was all cool stuff. I loved Teri's "hold my gold" moment in "And Left No Friendly Drop," which was something that Chelsea Gilligan came up with in blocking, but I'll take credit for it. Teri punching the drone in "What Storm is This That Blows So Contrary" was fun.

(Elementary later)

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themalhambird · 1 year ago

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I've started my first rewatch of bodies because I have a fortnight's worth of laundry to fold and I don't wanna, so here are some observations on Episode One:

Observations about Episode One.

-Oh crap, the timey-wimey shit happens in the daytime, doesn’t it, I might have to amend my fics a bit :p

-Hillinghead seems to divide opinion between the constables. PC Byrne seems to look up to him, chatting about growing up in Whitechapel. Officer Webb (who goes on to smack Henry around) has a very displeased “Inspector,” when Hillinghead shows up- given what happens about five minutes later, I suspect Hillinghead’s got a reputation amongst some of the force for being both uptight and a soft touch, seeing as how he not only won’t let Webb beat up the poncy journalist, but also sends him home and docks a day pay.

-On a similar vein, though, the male sex workers aren’t running for cover when the police are showing up. One of them is even eyeing him up. And Ashe hands over those photographs remarkably quickly, all things considered– he could easily have said he burnt them, rather than binned them, and going for a snog is a really bold move. Considering this is clearly all around Hillinghead’s beat, I suspect that: 1) Hillinghead has previously instructed the men not to waste time harassing sex workers in the rookeries, 2) The local queers probably clocked Hillinghead *ages* ago.

-Hasan’s relationship with her dad is quietly awesome. He clearly has concerns about her work, but there’s no big blow up about missing his birthday party, only joy to see her. Similarly, he slips so seamlessly into taking over cake making with Jawad when Hasan gets a work-related call. I <3 Ishmael

-Whiteman’s instinct’s are all detective. The sensible thing to do is just get the body in the boot and drive, but Whiteman takes his time- he’s trying to figure out what the hell the deal is . And (once his lighter’s retrieved) he seems pleased about being able to open the boot and show Calloway, and thereby get to investigate around a bit.

-speaking of Calloway. Consummate Dad Vibes. I love him.

-Ashe refers to the Police Commissioner's (married) son as they- “They are my alibi” and frankly I am here for non-binary Victorian person. But I also think that being the Police Commissioner's son is part of the answer to Hillinghead’s “Why risk a photo” question. When anyone who is likely to go after you for it works for your dad, on whom the whole situation would reflect badly, it becomes a little less risky to do the thing. It’s a level of protection that neither Hillinghead, nor Ashe independent of any activities with the commissioner’s son, are afforded.

-knowing who already knows what the hell is going on makes this the same level of entertaining, but in a very different way. Also, the “you’re dead already, and that’s all the warning I dare give” hits hard… I think, perhaps, until that point, the medical examiner had hoped that this was some other random body in Longharvest Lane, and that he wasn’t on the countdown to killing his co-worker/friend

-Maplewood thanking the AI in the car for asking if she’s okay. That’s adorable and I love her.

-The Composer is drawing on Murray Gold’s doctor who stuff so heavily. This is good because I like Murray Gold but also it’s just funny

#bodies netflix #rewatch #episode 1 thoughts

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sclfmastery · 3 days ago

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i agree that "joy to the world" felt odd for various reasons -- Anita and the Doctor had more time together, both on screen and off, than the Doctor did with Joy, and it felt like they were better able to connect in that sense i was also thrown off by the reference to bethlehem at the end, as the rest of the ep felt only tangential to xmas (more of a winter-y type of special)

I think those are probably my main issues, too. And I'm all for wink-wink nudge-nudge jokes at the expense of any culturally hegemonic reference (including conventional Christianity), but this felt so peripheral, like you said, that it seemed almost kinda self-indulgent on the part of the creative team? I dunno, it was more distracting than clever or funny, at least to me.

I guess I'm just bummed out. I'm gonna ramble here, so feel free to check out, lol, but agh. I am not a Fifteen Era hater by any means. There were high points in Fifteen's first season (the episode where he's standing on a landmine the entire time and it's a farce on capitalism and war and cultural myth; the one called, I think, Dot and Bubble, exploring the probability of xenophobic herd thinking and racism even in the distant future, and so on), and I genuinely enjoyed it, and an episode doesn't always have to make ambitious social commentary like these examples do...after all, lmao, it's Doctor Who, it has to be a little bit silly always....but I feel very much like the cast is doing all they can with the writing and directing they're getting, and not totally able to clear the hurdle. I feel like it's a good sci fi fantasy show, but I'm not watching Doctor Who.

And I think I know why, and it's not for the reason that one might expect: I really think it comes down to individual creative ego, and to money. I think it comes down to not knowing a balance between continuity and reinvention.

I think RTD, Moffat, and co are eager to virtue-signal that they're the first group to let in a BIPOC Doctor (I know that sounds harsh and I'm sorry, again, I don't clear or totally discredit any of the showrunners, and I don't think I'm exempt of these problematic behaviors, either). I also think that, in wanting to be shiny and new, in wanting the franchise to survive a totally new generation (and a BROADER demographic) of viewers, as Disney+'s latest unique attraction (yeah, I know, BBC claims total "creative independence" from Disney, but who's buying that? Not I, lol)....the Fifteenth Doctor Era team is trying to make the show cooler, sleeker, more "palatable." And I'm like, to whom? There's an unusual break in continuity from the lore of previous Doctors--maybe not their stories or ongoing background plots, not throwaway references to past friends and enemies, but the individual Doctors preceding Fifteen: their personalities, struggles, growth. It's like he's the new One. And that's good for many reasons, but some things aren't quite translating.

It's like we were given Fourteen, who still feels like a weird interruption to me, because they felt the need to give NuWho fans closure from the past (using arguably the most popular Doctor and Companion--Tennant and Donna Noble). They thought this would placate anyone balking at something "radically" new--like Fourteen "coming home" to the Nobles with the face of Ten, and his unfinished business, was a kind of analogy for the entire fandom wrapping up old wounds about past Doctor Who characters and plots. Cameos from Classic Who Companions (like Mel and Ace) ushered in by ongoing favorite Doctor allies (like Kate) were, I think, meant to further cushion the blow of a "reset" to "Season One."

And, team, let's make sure anything new is conventionally popular and broadly appealing: Fifteen is (literally, Ncuti was in Barbie) a Ken, he's so hot and stylish and cool; his love interest happens to also be conventionally attractive, Groff is a Broadway star from Hamilton (at least he's a gay icon, too, which is somewhat subversive and unique, although...not VERY, he's a hot cis white guy). And there's nothing wrong with these decisions, in and of themselves. I'm not saying "the Doctor has to be overt about his trauma all the time," and I am SURE that my confusion is to do with white bias about how people (Fifteen) manifest PTSD, and that's something to consider carefully.

What bothers me still is that RTD Era 2.0 feels like someone on top would rather flatter the people who dont already love Doctor Who than pay back the fans of years or even decades with something that at least acknowledges a rich body of existing content.

And while I do think that wrapping up NuWho seasons 1-13 was a nice gesture, I also think that "reset" was unnecessary. I think the creative team at BBC is underestimating the ability of Whovians to adapt. I mean we grieve basically every three series, when a Doctor regenerates. We're pretty good at change and growth, but we also like to maintain certain "traditions" that make Doctor Who what it is: --the Doctor being a weird misfit who still tries to be better than comes naturally to them; --Companions and the everyday struggle of humanity ("I think you look like giants"; "I've never met anyone who is unimportant") seen through their eyes as the yardstick of focus, not how cool and mysterious the Doctor is; --new and exciting ways to thwart enemies who are always simultaneously silly and terrifying; --and the sheer, perennially novel BEAUTY of our universe. I feel like all those things are still there, but muted for the sake of something kind of tepidly universal, because God forbid streaming numbers ever dip. God forbid "content" ever lose its appeal to be consumed, consumed, consumed.

It's symptomatic of the direction 21st-century creative endeavors are going, and it makes me really sad. But God bless Ncuti Gatwa. He's doing his damndest to make a mark with like, the same five old white guys on top.

(And like, full disclosure, the last straw for me was seeing a video of "all" the Doctor Who opening logos from the official Doctor Who TikTok spercifically in order to hype Fourteen and Fifteen, and finding that multiple Doctors, including Thirteen, were missing. Please don't say "all" when you don't mean "all." I know people are brutally hard on Thirteen's era, but gosh. Leave space for us :( )

TL;DR FREE FIFTEEN FROM THE DISNEYBRAIN >8(

#will I ever stop watching DW? Of course not. It's still amazing)#media crit cw #ooc #meta #kinda)

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thegeminisage · 11 months ago

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oh boy it IS. tng update time. tonight, just under an hour ago, we finished watching "chain of command" parts i & ii. i'm not differentiating between them even though one had. WWWWAY more nudity than the other. hey did you guys know tng can occasionally pop the FUCK off

to me this episode felt like a backdoor pilot to ds9 which we will be doing tomorrow because it had cardassians in it and basically the only thing i know about ds9 is that gay cardassian that wants to fuck the doctor. and he's like the definition of the predatory gays/predatory gaze joke from what i have seen from gifs. so i was expecting like, some minor cardassian shenanigans and mild flirtiness

holy shit.

like girl when i tell you my tits got blown clean off

normally i complain there's too much downtime and technobabble in tng. there was not an OUNCE of fat on this episode. from start to finish we went at 500mph

like, we open with the guy taking away picard's command. and you're like oh no a demotion! but then it's COVERT OPS and also a suicide mission???

and the guy who takes over is a war-mongering bastard with a dubya accent idk how they predicted that in 1992 but GREAT job. i really loved to hate him, and one of my only nitpicks with this episode is that he didn't get more of what should have been coming to him

we acted this episode. will riker grinding his teeth every time he spoke to this guy. deanna's worried looks. beverly feeling guilty for leaving picard behind. i was actually complaining about patrick stewart not emoting when she was stuck in that little hole but now i understand. he had to save it for the FUCKING payload

ROLE REVERSAL FOR THE WOMEN. deanna got to wear a real uniform and beverly got to flirt her way out of a Situation. i love deanna's uniform, even if it is too tight around the chest. i think that's preferable to it being too tight around her crotch and leading to the horrific c*melt*e situation (sorry to say it like that). her hair also looked great this ep. so did bev's weirdly??? women's rights.

data didn't have much to do in this episode except accidentally give geordi more work which made me sad but it WAS wild to see him in a red shirt. i'll miss him until it's time to watch tng again

the little infiltration was charming. worf and beverly teasing each other about heights and bats. even the cave-in. picard getting left behind because worf tried to hold the door open like that guy in narnia and got SHOT.

i loved the guy who was doing the peace talks. he had the most unsettling horrific smile i've ever seen in my life. STAN a legend.

truly though even though i enjoyed the first half of the episode and thought it was solidly watchable the second half is what elevated it into mind blowing territory.

and like first of all it must be said: picard buck ass naked. computer show me image

i want you to imagine that you are 1. profoundly sleep deprived 2. have been complaining about the lack of sex in this show for six and a half seasons 3. do not find this man remotely physically attractive 4. AND the only thing you know about cardassians is gifsets of the guy from ds9 wanting to fuck the little doctor guy 5. you are PROFOUNDLY sleep deprived. only then can you imagine a fraction of the depths of my hysteria

i actually laughed so shrilly and loudly discord MUTED me cathy was like youve been silent for like 30 seconds are you still THERE. i laughed so hard i quite literally cried. we had to pause it for ten entire minutes. not even because it was funny i was just like. SHOCKED.

THEY REALLY WENT ALL IN ON THIS. it was like something out of a fanfic. a BAD fanfic. like those whump fics where guys get captured and made into sex slaves. EXCEPT PATRICK STEWART WAS ACTING!!!!! like it got SO SERIOUS so QUICK

i just now skimmed an article that said patrick stewart himself did research on torture and also went all in ie filming nude fr. the dedication came through in the work i wish tng could be like this always

bro like. the part where he could have walked out but thought bev was still captive. the part where he was was like YOU'RE SIX YEARS OLD AND YOU CAN'T HURT ME. when he got the torturer to call him by his real name. when he ate the live worms or whatever they were i couldn't look. when they got to talking about that guy's daughter. like we literally got the best of both worlds. picard reverse uno'd him at every turn and kept his wits about him and then in the end he BROKE ANYWAY

THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS, BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!

i was like. oh my god.

listen to me when he said it i was a little disappointed. i could see in his face given another 30 seconds he would have said five. i said OUT LOUD to catherine they should have showed us a shot of five lights and then had him say four anyway. but him saying four defiantly was still so so so good

BUT THEN. AT THE END. when he was like. deanna. i said four, but i saw five

THAT'S THE THESIS STATEMENT OF THE EPISODE. THAT TORTURE DOESNT GIVE YOU INFORMATION JUST WHAT THE TORTURER WANTS YOU TO SAY

AND THEN THEY JUST ROLLED CREDITS.

AND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's so wonderful-awful that that guy KNEW picard was getting release and STILL he felt the need to finish the conditioning, which i assume was meant to get picard to fake-confess to killing 55 men women and children like that one guy said. like, he didn't have time to record that confession. he JUST wanted to break him, and that was all. i bet he thinks about it all the fucking time. the one that got away.

again, i wish dubya knockoff hadn't been responsible for his release. i REALLY wanted riker to do a mutiny. but there just wasn't time. i am still glad riker got to give him shit but like we deserved more comeuppance truly bc he SUCKED SO BAD. also like lmaoooo at ANYONE saying starfleet is a science peaceful organization now. they're warmongers! they're no different from mirrorverse not really

aside from that though it was absolutely flawless. one of the best tng episodes possibly THE best tng episode. i feel so completely satisfied and also grateful that we will be watching ds9 next because going from this to another fucking barclay episode (the next tng one) would ruin me. i need TIME!!!

TOMORROW: ds9's "emissary," parts 1 & 2 !!!

we're going in release order, so now our watch schedule will look something like...

two at a time. that's gonna mess us up for "birthright" but we'll cope somehow

#personal #star trek blogging #tng lb #i'm so happy. it was so so so so so good why can't tng always be like this. sparks FUCKING flying

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themirokai · 1 year ago

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Twenty Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged in this by the incredible @pellaaearien . Thank you so much, dear! I really did start working on it when you tagged me and have picked away at it ever since. It’s quite long!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

122,560. I write short things.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

In chronological order I have written:

BBC Sherlock- Mystrade only

James Bond

Doctor Who

Star Wars

Person of Interest

Arcane

Cats the Musical

Sandman

In theory I’m open to writing in any of those again and any others as the inspiration strikes.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5 - Worship (Sandman, Dreamling), also received the comment that inspired my first tumblr post to breach containment.

4 - Who He Is (Mystrade), my first fic on ao3 besides the ones I moved to the Other Account. I’m a bit surprised by this honestly. It’s got age on its side but my writing has improved a lot since then. It reads as a bit clunky to me now.

3 - Loverboy (Sandman, Dreamling + Matthew the Emotional Support Raven), first time I brought my 2 Sandman series together and my first multi chap Sandman fic.

2 - The Century Gentleman (Sandman, Dreamling), I got this written and posted pretty soon after the show aired when there was a massive demand for Dreamling content and before there was a tidal wave of content to meet the demand. I have mixed feelings about it now.

1 - Sort It (James Bond & Sherlock crossover, 00Q + Mystrade), fills the niche of “Q is a Holmes brother” + fluffy Mystrade. I do still really love this story.

5. Do you respond to comments?

My rule is that I do. And I’ve generally been very diligent about it. But I burnt out a little while writing Grave and I currently have an embarrassing number of unread comments in my ao3 inbox that I keep telling myself that I need to respond to…

So if folks have commented on my stuff in the last month or so, I’m very sorry I haven’t responded.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Sequenced Proposals. No contest. Look, the character is terminally ill in canon and it’s a lawyer AU so it wasn’t going to end with him becoming a cyborg. I cried a lot while writing it. Apparently a lot of people cried while reading it. Technically he’s still alive when the story ends.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

With the one notable exception discussed above I pretty much exclusively write warm, fluffy, occasionally funny stuff. They pretty much all end happily. I am a quokka of fan fiction.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven’t! Someone called me a bitch in a Sequenced Proposals comment but even though we had never interacted before, they meant it positively.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Not on this account. 😏

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I’ve written 2: Sort It, as mentioned above, and Dreaming of Leverage, which is a Sandman & Leverage crossover. I’d say the latter is crazier.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nooooo. And I can’t see ever doing it. Writing is very much a solo activity for me.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I can’t pick a favorite. I adore every ship I’ve written.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I will probably not finish Law School Days. I know how the story ends and that’s good enough for me and no one was clamoring for it. I still like to think I’ll finish Lonely Two-Legged Creatures some day.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I’m good at dialogue, especially dialogue in which characters talk about their feeeeeelings. I guess I’m also good at emotional intelligence in stories. And creating the warm & fuzzies.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot and description. I almost exclusively write very short things because I am incapable of plot that would carry a longer story. Also, if I’m being honest, one of the things I like about writing fan fiction is that I don’t have to describe what anyone looks like or sounds like! Y’all know that already. But I do get the flop sweats if I have to describe someone wearing clothing that is not a t-shirt and jeans.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I wish I could! More than 15 years ago I was basically conversational in Spanish, but now I’m functionally monolingual. I do appreciate when people who do this provide translations.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

As a kid, before I knew what fan fiction was, I wrote at least 100 pages of what was essentially OCs in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar. The first fandom I intentionally wrote and posted fic for was Mystrade.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Can’t do this, sorry. There are some of my stories that no longer resonate with me the way they did when I wrote them, but they’re in the minority and of the rest it’s impossible to pick a favorite.

Phew! That was a lot. Whenever I tag people in these I always say no pressure but really and seriously this time there’s no pressure and you don’t need to tell me why you’re not doing it. Just ignore. ALSO, if you’ve already done it and I missed it, apologies! With that said @once-in-a-blue-moon-rising @lavenderandvanilla @ml-nolan @mashumaru @ibrithir-was-here @karalynlovescake @stormofsharpthings @argylepiratewd

#tag game #long post #no pressure tags #mirokai writes

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bdzonthareel · 1 year ago

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Barbie

When I first heard about a Barbie movie, I like many people rolled their eyes at the very thought of it. Barbie media has often (at times unfairly) lambasted for being a cash grab and that was my initial reaction, however we I heard that Margot Robbie was involved and her production company was fitting the bill, my interest was piqued. So without further ado, (and I never thought I would ever say these words) let’s talk about Barbie!

We’re introduced to the fictional world of Barbieland, where every concept of Barbie exists and lives in perfect harmony with a respective Ken, and Allan (there’s only one of him.) But the harmony is disrupted when Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie begins to suffer from an existential crisis and in order for her to fix what’s wrong she must go to the real world and meet the girl who is playing with her and figure out what’s wrong.

In all genres of entertainment, comedy is one of those that I am insanely harsh on, as comedian myself I feel like there should be a flow to long form story, especially in comedy. But I can say that Director and co-screenwriter Greta Gerwig created a work that was heartfelt and hilarious in this film.

The cinematography is nothing short of brilliant, lots and lots of pink paint was used to bring Barbieland to life and it felt like one massive play set. And the various Real World shots were not to be out done giving off a stark contrast to each other.

The soundtrack was a delightful mix of classic top 40s, newer hits and self-aware comedic songs. The score was equally light poppy and fun, composers (pop music legend) Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt brought an amazing upbeat energy to this film.

Co-writer Noah Baumbach, helped with some very well-timed jokes, and you know they worked because they triggered a metric ton of incels, and that alone was worth the price of admission. Together with Gerwig, I was throughly impressed with the amount of meta commentary on display, and despite what some might lead you to believe, the film doesn’t demonize men; the film’s message is far more complex than that. I also appreciate the fact that they made the movie about the titular character, with seems to be something that franchises like Transformers can’t seem to get right.

And the performances were hilariously well done, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gossling have great chemistry as they lampoon the ideas of these characters’ roles. Simu Liu, is amazing versatile and brings the same amazing timing that he brought to Kim’s Convenience and it was delightful. Although my favorite Barbies were Issa Rei as President Barbie and Sharon Rooney as Lawyer Barbie. And I would be remised to ignore Hari Nef whose Doctor Barbie was whimsical and charming, Also since I’m madly in love with Alexandra Shipp I can say that she another of my favorite parts. America Ferreira and Ariana Greenblat served as great moral support for the various inhabitants of Barbieland and then there Will Ferrell I was almost convinced was Ken at one point given his goofball behavior. I also enjoyed seeing Rhea Pearlman as one (spoilers), she just gets better with age. Kate McKinnon really went all in as Weird Barbie as did Michael Cera as Allan (easily my favorite character in the film.) And last but certainly NOT least, Dame Hellen Mirren as the narrator brought a nice touch of her

Barbie was more than what I and many others initially expected, it was packaged as a goofball fish-out-of-water comedy which is a tired cliché in its own right, I sat down on this for a good while before writing this and I feel like its one of the best comedies I have seen in a very long time. It was very funny, but it also had a lot to say about growing up, holding on to thing that we love, and letting go of them. The biggest message that we all have to find our own way, because we are all more than just an idea and life doesn’t exist in just a straight line and at the end of the day isn’t that what it means to be human?

I give Barbie a well-deserved, 5 out of 5.

#movie review #hollywood #barbie #ryan gosling #margot robbie #barbieheimer #ken doll #micheal cera #dua lipa #john cena #greta gerwig #will ferrell #comedy #matel #barbie doll #barbie girl #barbieland #barbie world

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the--highlanders · 1 year ago

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20 questions for fic writers

super late but tagged by @penny-anna, thank you!!

How many works do you have on ao3?

203 apparently! which is like, a lot but also doesn't feel like that many for how long I've been posting now

what’s your total ao3 word count?

1,060,055, and I'm still SUPER proud of hitting a million words. don't think I'm ever gonna write as much again as I did in 2022 (how did I write almost 400k in a year????) but apparently I'm over 100k for this year so. happy with that even though I haven't written nearly as much as I'd like due to like, general life stuff

What fandoms do you write for?

just second doctor era dr who! I definitely get like, story ideas for other fandoms I enjoy, and occasionally I'll idly imagine writing some of them, but never really seriously. I've kinda made an active choice for this to be my niche and I don't seem to have run out of ideas yet so

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

ok I'm gonna cut out like, 'fics' that are actually compilations of prompt fics etc bc I feel like that's cheating but. let's see

in the night i lie and look up at you (when the morning comes i watch you rise)

Sacrificial

Revelations

Vigil

tell me how you'll kiss me when i touch down

weird list tbh! big fan of the first and last one being there but like... sacrificial in particular I was NOT happy with ahgjklfdjgf. I do like vigil tho

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

yes absolutely!!! they fill me with so much joy & serotonin so I like to reply, & also I love love love discussing stuff w/ people in the comments (hi @galacticlamps ahjkgfd). I'm very very behind on it right now but I will get around to them all I promise!!!

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending

oughfkdjg this is tough. I do think if only we could have been brave on time was pretty angsty, I don't usually write fics that toy so much with major character death.

there's a few others but the first one that jumped out at me while scrolling through my fics was i'm trying to reach you (before all the ghosts do). minor character/oc death this time but like. the whole fic was very much born out of the image of its angsty ending, so.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

hm I mean I do write a lot of angstless fluff!! so like, any of those. but I'm gonna go with litany for a reunion, because so much of it is angsty that I think the ending seems happier because of it.

Do you get hate on fics?

not yet! but this fandom is pretty chill so.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I am very very sex-repulsed ace it would not be a good time for anybody <3

Do you write crossovers?

not in the sense of like, bringing characters from one fandom into another. if I had the stamina/confidence to do proper longfics I'd absolutely do more aus, some of which are inspired by other media (if you guys could see the fairytale aus that live in my head.), and I /do/ have a daemon au.

the only crossover I've really done is Lifeboat, which is like. still a concept I enjoy. ark/its lore is something so close to my heart, so it was a lot of fun to fuse it with dr who. plus I just like imagining that victoria's dad was surrounded by so so so many unhinged mad scientists. & I also find it very very very funny that the ark character in question is now voiced by david tennant

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of! again like. small and chill fandom. who's going to be doing that.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no, and I don't think I'd want to - I'm a little bit too precious/sensitive about my writing to even have like, a beta reader or anything. I don't think I'd do well trying to co-write with someone. the closest I've come is kind of co-plotting out fics with other people (the plot of the selkie au is as much @ettelwenailinon's brainchild as mine <333)

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I have been so deeply invested in two/jamie for so long that I can no longer untangle it from myself.

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

the fic I want to write most is a super comprehensive multichapter spanning about two years between jamie getting dropped off at culloden after the war games and two coming to pick him up again for 6b. I have a general sweep of the arc, some summary notes, and pages and pages of historical notes for it. unfortunately I don't think I'm ever going to feel like I've done enough historical research to justify writing it, even if I do somehow magically get myself to buck up into writing proper longfic.

What are your writing strengths?

hm idk! I'm quite pleased with some of my prose/descriptions sometimes. & I've had a few comments over the years saying I'm good at characterisation, which is always nice to hear.

I never really know what's good about my writing tho. not out of any sense of inferiority or false modesty or anything, I just. don't think that deeply about writing in general. the words come out & if I like them I like them

What are your writing weaknesses?

^^^ as I am always saying I wish I could break down the mental block that's stopping me from writing longfic

kinda related but like. I'm definitely a perfectionist and that can paralyse me sometimes when I'm trying to write a first draft.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I need to do it more often!!

my absolute dream would be to be able to translate all my fics into gàidhlig tbh. but I love love love giving jamie gàidhlig dialogue, or even just dropping little turns of phrase into his english dialogue, stuff like that. I definitely feel like there's some space between how I write/characterise jamie and how he is on screen, but to some degree that's a conscious decision. I'm always trying to strike a balance between like, writing him in character and writing him in a way that feels authentic to his time and cultural background. but dropping in bits of gàidhlig is a fun way of doing that (and also of getting myself to write in the language which is definitely good practice)

First fandom you wrote for?

hm I mean technically ig it was the saddle club. I was like 3 years old and I wrote a 'book' about the horses.

in terms of like, actively writing fic with the conscious knowledge of what fic was, probably fic about warrior cats ocs when I was about 11/12.

Favorite fic you’ve written?

old ghost's waltz, always. I loved how it came together, it was my first real dip into doing super historical jamie fic & a sort of replacement for the post-war games longfic I may never write, and it was a response to the phantom piper, which drives me absolutely insane in both good and bad ways. like it gave me so many ideas but god I could fix her.

unsorted is a very solid second though. it had all the historical fic joy of old ghost's waltz (even more so in some parts - the scene with jamie and connie might be my favourite scene I've ever written), and it was just. so cathartic to write as an expression of a headcanon I'd kind of hidden for so many years bc I was worried it wouldn't be well-received. it's my favourite fic to get comments on just because it always feels like a relief to see people enjoying it.

tagging @galacticlamps, @p0stscripter, @ettelwenailinon and anyone else who wants to do this!!

#personal

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saltlickmp3 · 10 months ago

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tell me about christopher ecclestons doctor vs david tennats doctor

or explain what the hell is goin on with the daleks

or you could tell me about (insert musician)’s influence on music

just some options for you to lore dump to :)

RAHHHHHHH OKAY THANK YOUUUU this will be um. super spoilery for doccy whomst.

okayyyy so christopher eccleston plays the ninth doctor who tragically only gets one season AND HE'S SO FABULOUS he's really funny and sarcastic and he says 'fantastic! :D' a lot and is also a massive dork and yayyyy i love him - the interesting thing with nine is that we dont see his regeneration. like we don't see him come into being but its implied that the incarnation before him was horribly injured in The Time War and then became nine, who wanders around alone for a bit racked with guilt and lonely and full of regret and all that fun stuff until he meets ROSE :DDD who pretty much says you're super weird & offputting but also the most interesting thing that's ever happened to me and he's like cool uhm. maybe i do need friends after all so then he takes her on a date to the destruction of her planet to show off that he wasnt kidding about the time machine bit. he also has a really cool leather jacket. and a northern english accent and a sliiiiightly butch lesbian buzzcut. anyways he's very fabulous and also kinda tragic but yeah!! i love him.

BUT THEN universe under massive threat from daleks etc the only way to save the world will be massively catastrophic etc etc so he sends rose home to save her. and she is understandably super upset by this so she ABSORBS THE HEART OF THE TARDIS (pro tip : usually people dont survive that) so she can get back to him, resurrect this other guy who kissed them both and rewrite time so that this will definitely always happen & also destroys a whole lot of daleks. this is called BAD WOLF (<- the capital letters are important. to me.) and its killing her so nine kisses her to pull it out of her (she doesnt remember this) so it kills him instead. then *magicical girl transformation* he explodes into golden light and becomes david tennant!!!!!

david tennant is the tenth doctor and I LOBVE HIM FORVER ADN EVER my specialest little scrunkly girlboy pathetic wet cat terrifying alien guy-shaped-being <33333. rose is understandably like wtf who're you (because the doctor Never does timelord 101 and tells them about regeneration and the two hearts thing) and he is sad about it. so he takes her home. then passes out in front of her mother and sort-of-boyfriend who're also like wtf. anyways he's fine and rose pretty immediately is like wow this guy is actually beautiful & way less grumpy now and they go n do a whole bunch of stuff and they very clearly love each other A Lot (like she loves him when he's nine too of course but it changes) and in my head it's teenage lesbian undefined relationship mutual obsession b/c those be the vibes. a Thing happens and she end up trapped in an alternate universe from which she can never return and the doctor manages to hologram himself in there for a minute to say goodbye and HE ALMOST SAYS I LOVE YOU TO HER but the connection runs out. a lot of other stuff happens and ten is actually pretty scary at points in a way that nine never gets to and A Lot happens to him. my beautiful babygirl she has Every Problem.

see cos the doctor is actually massively emotionally repressed and while nine was a lot closer time-wise to destroying his own planet, ten was coping a whole lot less. ten is often described as the most emotional and most human of the doctors and thats probably true but he's also the most afraid of that vulnerability - he just cant help showing it. he's full of love but he's also full of a desperate sadness and guilt. a lot of guilt. nine has this guilt and the love he just has found a way to not be so raw with it. he is far more measured with his emotions. i reallllllllyyyyyyyy wish we could have seen what would have been done with his character had we got more time with him but alas t'was not to be.

like a good example of that is when we meet nine he's been alone for some time and appears to be more or less okay with that, maybe not super happy but more or less adjusted and functioning. when ten is alone for a while he sort of loses it a bit until he find someone..... like after he and rose get separated, and i mean IMMEDIATLY AFTER, he meets donna who I LOVE :D but he's still so racked with grief that he kills a whole race of spider things and canonically would've destroyed himself along with them if she hadn't been there to tell him to stop. (like legitimately there's an episode, Turn Left, about what would've happened if the doctor died and it's uhm. its unnerving to say the least). ten can't deal with being alone but Also can't deal with loving someone. especially when he is so very aware that he has to lose them.

ten has three seasons & then a year of specials, and he has and then loses the most companions of the doctor and the way he deals with this is Fascinating. he is separated from rose, martha leaves of her own volition b/c she realises that she cant spend her whole life living For Him and that she deserves her own life too, and then he has to wipe donna's memory to save her (she gets it back like. fifteen years for her and ~1000 years for the doctor later but thats a whole thing). like nine does the whole 'no one can get close to me because i will always end up hurting when they die/leave and that will usually be my fault' thing BUT TEN. TEN feels the same way he just can't help himself from making friends and falling in love (grayaroace) with everyone he meets and still being emotionally destroyed when they die. nine's way of coping with the guilt of the time war is to push people away in the first place and ten's is Never Stop To Think Never Stop To Examine Feelings. so yeah. lots of fun.

ALSO the daleks!! theres a ton of lore to them as well, but in short they're genetically modified creatures who have been selectively bred by this guy davros (who has major darth vader vibes. down to the voice and the mechanically supported body) to only feel hate and want to destroy everyone who is not a dalek. they're these weird little things that kinda look like rubbery octopuses inside the metal thing (they're not robots they are actually alive) and they suck. also they're really hard to get rid of like. i swear at least five times the doctor says 'this is the last of the daleks' like bestie just you wait about half a season. the daleks and the timelords (the doctor's species) fought The Time War which really really sucked and they're mortal enemies. so yeah!

#heheheeeee my favouritest very expansive fiction universe yippee ^.^#doctor who #hi anon thank you for the ask <3 #this kinda long lol #tenth doctor #ninth doctor #rose tyler #<- i love them <3

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casliveblog · 2 years ago

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Custom Toonami Block Week 133 Rundown

Spy X Family: Yor Briar is an extremely socially awkward young woman who just happens to professionally murder people in her free time. Because this is a weird 40sish police state where people can be excluded from school for not having two parents, Yor is getting looks for being Christmas Cake and having legit threats of being thrown in jail as a spy because she dares to be unmarried because that’s just how paranoid the government is even though you’d think Spies could just as easily make a family pair to fly under suspicions and in fact Loid says they very easily could do that if so many female spies weren’t being arrested for being single which is like five layers of ironic and weird. But yeah they meet up by chance and Anya’s able to read their minds to give enough of a ‘oh woe is me for being the child of a single parent with my dad so utterly attractive and available’ that any normal person would assume was him giving his daughter creepy coaching but Yor is the right level of gullible and intense to not think anything of it. Loid agrees to the The Wedding Date plot to pretend to be her bf so she doesn’t get fucking thrown in prison and also more importantly so her brother doesn’t feel bad but he has a thing on the night of the thing because drama and shows up late. Yor feels like she’s been stood up but the chad Loid just comes to the party dripping with blood like ‘Yeah I’m Yor’s hus-boyfriend’ in a scene that actually kinda laugh and clap out loud as well as standing up for her when her coworkers imply she was a sex worker and he’s just like ‘life’s rough bro so what?’ in like the chaddiest thing I’ve ever seen. Now that Yor’s got legit feelings for him as well as still having the whole prison/brother thing hanging over her head she proposes to him in the middle of a high speed car chase, as you do. Yor’s just hilariously oblivious to the whole situation like even when they’re fucking being shot at and blowing people up she’s like ‘wow doctoring is bloody’ like she’s an assassin so I guess this is just what she thinks life is like, we’re not exactly dealing with the most well-adjusted people in either case and it’s funny as fuck so it’s fine.

Inuyasha: It’s the epic conclusion of the Sesshomaru’s fanfic waifu filler arc. Sara gives Sesshomaru Tessaiga and he’s just like ‘bitch did I ask for your help?’ and bolts while Kagome shatters Sara’s jewel that was turning everyone into glass so that’s not a problem anymore. Sara tells her backstory again and turns out right after Sesshomaru got his arm cut off he was kinda not feeling great on account of bleeding out and getting beat up by your brother, both of those will do a number on you. Her dad was like ‘fuck if my daughter’s gonna be a furry’ and sends the whole kingdom to kill Sesshomaru but it’s basically like that ‘1 billion corgis versus the sun’ fight, no matter how many you throw it’s not gonna do shit. So yeah Sara’s dad goes crazy since his whole army was killed by a one armed bishie and burns the whole castle down. Sara for some reason is still in love with Sesshomaru because he saved them the first time even though he murdered them all the second time because I mean look at the guy what’s a few murders between fangirls. Sesshomaru and Sara meet up in the woods and she explains how she’s Naraku’d herself, Inuyasha and Co. show up a bit later and turns out the demons possessing her have hijacked her to kill Sesshomaru instead and for some reason Tokijin doesn’t work because it’s like a hate curse so a sword of demonic hatred only lets them multiply more which sounds like bullshit especially when Kagome’s Sacred Arrow doesn’t work. but it does result in Sesshomaru getting to use the Wind Scar for the sake of putting a human soul to rest so that’s pretty cool and we get a fittingly ‘whatever’ ending from Sesshomaru so it’s fine.

Yu Yu Hakusho: Yusuke’s still fighting Sniper while the rest of the gang use Seaman to get a lock on Sensui’s cave. Yusuke’s still running from knives and bullshit until Sniper throws a fucking fuel truck at him which is weird because it’s not like it’s a bullet skidding down the street after him it’s actually physically driving towards him with nobody manning the pedals put still steering and shit so idk how that works exactly. Eventually Sniper says ‘fuck it’ and grabs a straight up gun to shoot the tanker and explode it right behind Yusuke but we’ve hit the contractual amount of time since Hiei’s last appearance so he’s able to step in and save the day dramatically. Since Sniper doesn’t have targets on Hiei and the man is literally faster than a speeding bullet it’s a piece of cake for him to take Sniper out which is kind of a shame because I like Sniper’s powerset and wanted to see Yusuke overcome it but seems like he just got a bad matchup. Yusuke wants to go rush off against Sensui but Hiei’s like ‘bro an oil truck just exploded on you and you have no plan’ so he takes his shirt off off-screen and they have a good old fashioned knuckleduster DBZ fight without any named techniques just a lot of auras and punching, it’s pretty cool ngl. Hiei says that’s enough and he’s glad Yusuke hasn’t lost his edge but to remember that Sensui isn’t like Toguro and isn’t gonna be all Goku ‘lemme fight you at your best’ and let him suffer enough emotional damage to power up so he needs to be able to pull enough strength to win without it being orchestrated. Yusuke and Hiei haggle for a bit with Yusuke being like ‘come on let’s go save Kuwabara’ and Hiei’s like ‘but I don’t LIKE Kuwabara’ like yeah if it was literally anyone else you’d have a better chance of recruiting Hiei but Yusuke manages to bribe him with a potential copy of the Chapter Black tape and/or destroying all the annoying fodder demons that are gonna come bother Hiei if shit hits the fan so the gang’s all back together agin.

Jujutsu Kaisen: We pick up roughly where we left off and Gojo shows up to beat Evil Yuji up and apparently his superpowered evil side isn’t that big a deal because Yuji’s just the right level of yin for Sukuna’s yang and all of his yelling and shit amounts to what’s basically intrusive thoughts so he can let him out but doesn’t have much problem putting a leash back on him. Gojo gives him the deal that he’s gotta die for eating the cursed finger but in the meantime they plan to use him as a human garbage disposal and get rid of as many of the fingers as they can before he turns evil and dies or they execute him whatever comes first. Yuji agrees and eats a second finger and packs up to go to magical high school because it’s not a shonen without magical high school, though in this case that mostly seems to be window dressing where ‘high school’ means ‘magical military base that houses teenagers and sometimes has classes I guess’ which is good for me because honestly I kinda find school settings really boring at this point. He interviews with the principal who beats the shit out of him with some Cursed Hello Kitty dolls until he gives him a proper shonen protagonist motivation. And it’s a pretty cool philosophy because yeah if Yuji was just doing an Uncle Ben thing and only fighting because he promised someone else that’s how you end up as Batman and become a fucked up loner crucifying yourself on the duty you promised someone else and as an anti-curse school they kinda wanna put a cap on building more magical resentment across Japan. Yuji admits that it’s kind of enlightened self-interest because while he is fighting to save people he wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing bad things were happening and he was the only one that could’ve stopped it so he won’t regret giving it a shot even if he fucks up major because trying is better than wondering what could’ve been. Luckily Yuji’s class is only three people big so we’re like if Naruto’s graduating class was ONLY Team 7, speaking of which Nobara is here and I love her already.

Chainsaw Man: We’re just slowly excavating Denji’s standards from ten feet under the floor now they’re only like seven feet under the floor since he can actually eat and shit now. Makima takes him in and gives her whole kinky pet speech and Denji’s like ‘well dog’s better than trash and there’s boobs involved so sure’. This episode is honestly really briskly paced, I get this was probably like five chapters in the manga but I feel like we would’ve gotten separate episodes for all of this if this was ten years ago before seasonal anime was a thing. Denji settles in and is introduced to his Sasuke analogue which I guess every anime needs a generic-looking Sasuke guy given Jujutsu Kaisen also has one. Speaking of which this part of the episode is a lot like the second episode of that one since it involves Denji getting his ass kicked with the whole ‘if you’re not ready for this fuck off because the rest of us have tragic backstories to develop’ and whereas Yuji gave a small twist on the standard ‘I’mma help and that’s never wrong’ shonen protagonist deal, Denji’s just ‘fuck off bro’ and kicks him in the balls which I feel like Naruto would be a lot shorter if more people gave Sasuke a kick in the balls when he needed it. Then Makima sends them off on a REAL mission to beat the dumb minor antagonist that’s in the second episode of every anime after the first episode blew the budget making a cool-looking but weak villain for the protagonist to unlock their powers on. And there’s a whole big long speech about how Aki wants to murder everything because devils killed his family and Makima gives him boners and Denji doesn’t have a vengeful bone in his body but is also less altruistic than he seems since he just wants the porn and resolves to making touching boobs his shonen protagonist resolve thing, slowly excavating those standards, like we’re still six feet below the floor at this point but he’s in the mindset of wanting to have a goal at least. Anyway the last bit is getting introduced to our third girl member of Team Seven (this really is just like JJK) but unlike JJK we actually get to see her in action this time as she uses Suitengu’s Blood Sephiroth powers from Speed Grapher to smash the… Sea Cucumber Devil… because apparently people are afraid of that, idk every time I hear a random Devil I just think of the Sock Puppets scene from the Simpsons and wonder when we’re getting the Sock Puppet Devil. Anyway Power is basically all the worst parts of all the Konosuba girls put together and people are here for it.

Ranking of Kings: The lion’s share of the episode is devoted to Kage’s backstory to explain why he’s so drawn to Bojji’s soft boi routine. Kage was a victim of your standard anime family genocide and saw his mom’s corpse dragged around in front of him while being protected by a foreign noble and making a b-line for presumably the kingdom the series takes place in. Given he’s less than half a foot tall and got no money he’s kinda SoL until this big thief dude comes and gives him some food and gives him the ol’ Cinderella treatment which is still better than what he had and that even escalates to actively participating in robberies given he’s a living shadow. He desperately latches on to the like 0.0001% of kindness the dude shows him (seems to be a common theme carried over from this week’s Chainsaw Man) and even after the dude has sold him out for an amount of gold that looks like way less than what he was helping him steal so I guess he just did it to be a dick, Kage still literally shadows him until he dies in a barroom brawl and seems like the dude has the smallest amount of regret for how he treated Kage before he dies. Back with Bojji he’s still kicking his little brother’s ass but everyone’s like ‘DODGING!? WHAT THE FUCK BEAT HIS ASS BRO’ because apparently the people are more viking meatheads than in Vinland Saga and they don’t understand any form of combat that isn’t big swords smashing into people. Kage puts together that Bojji having to be observant enough to read lips because like one guy in the whole kingdom bothered to learn sign language means that he’s really good at predicting movements and reacting. His instructor’s like ‘yo you can’t be king unless you face him head on’ and Bojji tries and gets absolutely fucked up because apparently dodging is cowardly but continuing to smack someone until you’ve broken every bone in their body after they already fell down is chad work I guess. Bojji’s got the full Anakin Skywalker treatment and only has one working limb atm but wants to keep training and Kage’s like ‘bro you’re fine just how you are everyone else can fuck off you fight your own way’ which isn’t at all a metaphor for how education systems streamline divergent people into a standardized method and then shit on them for not being a fish that learned how to fly.

Vinland Saga: The English are dicks (shocker) and attack a Viking colony on Bath Day because Vikings are just like ‘let’s all drop our weapons and get naked one day a week what could possibly go wrong anyone who’d abuse that is an asshole’ and turns out they killed the King of Denmark’s sister and Vikings love an excuse to fight so they come to recruit Thors to fight for Denmark because fuck England (I think ‘Fuck England’ is probably one of the least controversial things a historical period piece can say so we’re good even though the Vikings are kinda dicks too). But yeah turns out Thors was a deserter from the Denmarkian Viking army because he was like ‘you know what I think people don’t like being murdered’ and these guys are like ‘well if we’re gonna go fuck England up we better go get that guy that faked his death and ran away because he was really good at killing people’ and they make it clear that if he refuses they’re just gonna go kill the whole village. So Thors agrees to go to war with one ship from the village and Thorfinn is being a whiny little pissbaby about not getting to go because he’s like eight and Thors is just like ‘bro war is just a made up thing countries manufacture to grow their power, you personally don’t have any reason to kill anybody and killing people is awful anyway’ which is pretty enlightened for an old timey Viking. Still the Street Fighter lookin’ dude that came to recruit Thors is rocking up to Askeladd to go kill Thors after he sets sail which idk why they didn’t just jump him in the village and kill him there where they have hostages but idk maybe they want him to kill a few Englishmen first.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Spy X Family #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Jujutsu Kaisen #Chainsaw Man #Ranking of Kings #Vinland Saga

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slavicbeastie · 17 days ago

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Happy winter solstice and Yule!!

Here are some Christmas recc for watching for those who don't like kitsch, forced sentimentality and commercialisation of the the holyday. Or are maybe just of different religion/not religious at all (moi) .

Most of these have irreverent/dark humour and are free from cloying sentimentality while retaining humane warmth of winter solstice season. I listed them in order from darkest to lightest story/atmosphere as I see that as good idea for going towards longer days. Not the newest stuff but my reliable choices, so if you have some more recent suggestions or any feel free to add in reblogs. Enjoy :)

The Ice Harvest (2005), film

Honesty only film noir I like. Usually I find them so pretentious and forced cool, and all characters get on my nerves. I think I like this one cos it doesn't take itself too seriously, it's satire of noar really, and placing it at chrismas time gives it additional dark humorous flair. But with it being noir, with genre typical violence and cynicism, and ambiguous ending, it's definitely darkest on the list.

Doctor Who 4x00 The Voyage of the Damned

RTD's revival of Doctor Who had truly my favourite christmas specials cos they are so irreverent, satirical and dark - very much in contrast to cloying atmosphere one would expect (not the new soft reboot - it's disniyfied nonsense from what I've seen)

This episode is on the top cos of very high body count and tragic/bittersweet ending.

Doctor Who 3x00 The Runaway Bride

While also quite dark and sad, this episode also has plenty of humour cos of interaction with temporary companion (at the time). Also high body count, but mostly off screen.

The Addams Familiy (1998.), film

This can barely be on this list, since it has got only one scene at time of christmas but it fits general theme. It's a satire of basically everything conventional, especially shown in USA media and in their WASP culture. But while the Addamses are shown and strongly suggested to do and enjoy many horrible things, and they are obviously not fully human, they are absolutely a role model for how family should be, perhaps the best one shown on screen. Unconditionally supportive, accepting and loving in their unconventional ways, they will warm your heart this cold season in unexpected ways.

Doctor Who 2x1 The Christmas Invasion

Positive new beginning for new Doctor's regeneration but with fair amount of darkness. This has everything: angst , humour, killer christmas trees and Santa Clauses, sword fight, deposing UK prime minister, happy ending with creepy snow. Good times.

Doctors who 1x3 Unquiet Dead

Poor neglected Ninth Doctor didn't get christmas special, but this episode is really the most positive one placed at that time. The Doctor and Rose Tyler meet Charles Dickens, and get to experience some ghostly chrismasy mystery. Heartwarming, tense, funny and sad at turns.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 2x13 Murder Under Miseltoe

Murder mystery during early christmas celebration in Australia cos otherwise it's weirdly placed in middle of the summer. That is what you get when you force transplant culture where it makes no sense... Episode has everything: murders in snowed in house, deadly chrismas decorations, ghosts, unlikely gathering despite bad weather, singing chrismas songs and celebrating after solving the case while nearbly bodies chill in the snow. Literally.

Serendipity (2001), film

This is only one that I can't claim it's really free from sentimentality. Mostly it's in music/song choices and camera work and it is romantic comedy after all. However main characters are really flawed people, and they treat others quite badly sometimes which makes them more interesting/real than typical romcoms protagonists. And I think whole idea/concept for film is quite fresh and even thought provoking at times.

#christmas watch reccs #winter solstice #dark humour #watch reccs #my posts

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tenok · 1 year ago

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

I was tagged by @skyborneveggie, but since I use ao3 mostly as reader and it holds like 10% of my fics I’ll use statistics from ficbook

How many works do you have on AO3?

Currently 282, also some of them are collection of drabbles and smaller fics, sometimes in 40+ parts, so if we count them separately… it’ll be A Lot

What’s your total AO3 word count?

Uhhh ficbook don’t have statistic like this, but my estimate will be like, 500k words, maybe a little more

What fandoms do you write for?

Any that gets my attention. I wrote a lot for Doctor Who and B:tVS when I was younger, then I had a great run in russian fandoms, most notable are Gogol: the Beginning and Major Grom: Plague Doctor. I’m dabbling into GO now, but, like, there’s already so much fics so I’m content with reading and not writing

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Тепло (Warmth) — 2600 kudos, marvel, Steve/Bucky. It’s stupid drabble that gets so popular literally because it’s big fandom and popular pairing, no real value there Уроки рисования (Painting lessons) — 1629 kudos. Again, Steve/Bucky and no great value Мгчд: драбблы (collection of drabbles, Major Grom: Plague Doctor) — 1617 kudos. Ohh this one is good! There’s 74 drabbles and counting, all written at last two years, mostly polyamory and/or family gen. Most popular one there is one where orphan (now 30 y.o. man) discuss with his boyfriend’s quasi-mother things like fighting for his inheritance in court with some distant relatives. People are yearning for mundane stuff I swear Catch a cold — 1398 kudos, Flash (TV), gen about sick Flash being comforted by his archenemy, honestly again not really great stuff that get big because of fandom’s popularity да, со мной непросто (I’m not easy*) — 1390 kudos, Major Grom: Plague Doctor. Ohhh I love thos one! It’s about my ot3, where A and B are estabilished pair and C is their new lover and he’s insecure and they use sex as a means to show him that he’s ~their~. Slightly D/s if you squint. Also with ADORABLE illustrations by nice people!!

*it's a song lyrics, of course

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I love love love answering but also it can get overwhelming .__. Currently I have biiig backlog of comments I should answer, some of them are like year and half old

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Uhhhh. I rarely write angst honestly, and I prefer open or bittersweet endings, I’m not even sure I have something that counts as angsty ending

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Almost every one of mine are happy ones. Uhhh can it be «общественное мнение» (public opinion). It’s absolutely self indulgent fluff about character A rescuing B from some trouble and being all doting in public etc, and in the end everyone at B’s work knows that he’s in relationship and supports him, and even OC kidnapped by maniac for plot points escapes and found alive

Do you get hate on fics?

No not really. Some funny comments there or there, but not real hate

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Oh, A LOT. Mostly it’s kinky shit, bdsm etc. Mostly ot3 and mostly slash althrough I have some het and a liiiittle of fem. I almost never write extrime stuff, I have like one? non-con and couple dubcon things, but I really want to write more

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Rarely and mostly it’s crossovers of the kind that fandom already counts as semi-canon (like, you know, when two characters played by same actor are headcanoned as brothers). But uhhh I have a Hot fuzz/Harry Potter crossover where Nicolas is a Dursley’s completely normal relative

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No. But once person asked yo use my drabble as inspiration for their fic and then literally put whole drabble into said fic. But I’m not even really mad because people commented literally only those lines as so good and clerer lol

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No :(

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have tried and it was awful. I’m not cut for this

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Are you kidding how I suppose to choose???

What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I STILL HOPE I’LL FINISH MOST OF MY FAVORITE WIPS. But uhhh… I have this really old wip in the green lethern fandom, around 11k words and needs at least enough 10k. It’s Hal/Carol (canon het) slowburn, gen for the most part, with assorted cameos of canon characters that’s interesting only for few fand. And it’s mermaid au. I don’t even like mermaid au’s, but I was hooked on metaphor of Hal’s desire to become a pilot and flew at sky and mermaid!Hal desire to become human at touch ground. But I started it in like. 2017? Or even earlier? And I doubt that I ever will be deep enough in this fandom in next years, and if I will, I changed so much as author.

What are your writing strengths?

I was told that I write great dialogues, I think? Also people who like my porn tend to praise my bdsm scenes. I don’t think they are really hot (I wouldn’t get horny for them lol), but I think I do something good with emotional part of it? Oh and more than once people thanked me for the way I wrap things in the end. As I say, I mostly write good or bittersweet endings, and as one reader told me (it’s not word for word quote, I’m oo lazy to search now), it’s like «in the complete dark and misery there’s one open door and there’s warm coming from it». Or something like that.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m shit in longer fics, both in plottish sense and as in author stamina. My longest fics for now barely scrape 30k words line, and in my dreams I write 100+k words plot-heavy slowburns. I’m trying but I guess I just not there at the moment and it’s foolish to push myself too hard. Also I’m always unhappy with my research. Like, I want to be The Author who research everything and write details-heavy realistic things, but I’m stupid :( Oh and also my characters rarely… feel? I mean me and my emotions are not big friends and it shows. My readers swears that I write it good enough but urgh, I compare my fics to the one I enjoy reading and I see the difference!!! At this point I guess it’s just part of the style and not a flaw, but, still.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

No thoughts honestly?

First fandom you wrote for?

First ever wrote? Batman, when I was like 8 yo. I haven’t have internet, mind you, just played with characters in my doc file (for the record, it was about how bad guys torture Batman to the death while Catwoman watch helplessly. Ya I had a great taste even back then). First published was for the russian book searies Mefody Buslaev (which is a young adult series about antichrist working for hell and also falling in love with his guardian angel, and also it’s a spin-off to the Tanya Grotter, which is russian parody of Harry Potter but it’s GREAT, guys, like, it rips off idea of «orphan that killed big bad, abusive adopted family, magic school, but it’s funny as hell and also so invested in early 2000’s russian culture, you just need to be tehre to get it). Anyway it was about het otp with Ares (as god of war and, in this verse, hell’s servant) and beforementioned guardian angel, who is 13 yo looking 1000 yo aged loly with blonde ponytails. I started with exploring of angsty backstory of Ares, get my first comment, get scared and upset because of really innocent remark they made and deleted whole thing. I was like 12 yo so it’s understandaple xD

Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

UHHHH. Hard choice, I like a lot of them, but also the ones that could be my all-time favorites are still in draft.

I guess I'll say «целовать нельзя» (I should not kiss, it's a song lyrics again). It a short (4k words at most) fic for the Легенда номер 17 (russian film about hockey) fandom, with pov of Tarasov, greatest USSR couch etc etc, about his deep repressed ust to the Valera, titular legend of hockey and his golden boy. It's ambigious if Tarasov's feeling returned or not, and even if they are, he would never let Valera risk his career and freedom for some stupid feelings, but for one night Tarasov drunk enough to admit his feelings at least for himself. I'll say it's kinda slaps with angsty feelings, more than any of my other fics.

I’ll also mention «омлет» (omelet, as in «you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs»). It’s one of this 30k words fics, and it was written for bubble comics kinkfest. See we have a childhood friends A and B, and A becomes a big buisenessman while B is his kind of bodyguard, and prompt from fest was like «while building his empire A whored B to his investors». I was like WHERE THE FUCK he found ENOUGH GAY BUISENESSMANS in Russia at early 2000’s??? And this thought prompted me to plot long story of sexual and emotional abuse lol. It tragic it’s sexy it has a silver of hope in the end and it’s in no way perfect, but it’s somewhat good. Also it has not so many kudos, around 250, BUT it also has like, 80+ comments? which is mindblowing ratio! and som,e of this comments 1k words long because people had SO MUCH thoughts and emotions from this text and aren’t it great?

I honestly don't know who to tag? @queerfables if you haven't already, and also everyone who's interested feel free to tag me so I can snoop 👀

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