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smoochkooks · 3 years

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—chapter two: of peonies and broken promises

this is a part of my an ode to a broken heart drabble series.

pairing: jeon jungkook/reader

genre: unrequited love, best friends to (?), heavy angst, future smut

word count: 1.4k words

summary: you are twenty-four, hopelessly in love with your best friend and the smell of peonies still makes you nauseous, just like it did eleven years ago.

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Jungkook's apartment is an epitome of him.

Wherever you look, you spot a piece of him. A single, wooden shelf in the living room where he placed all his analog cameras, because he loves photography. The replica of Van Gogh's Starry night hanging just above the navy blue couch, because he loves art. White walls of his bedroom decorated with movie posters; among them the newest addition to the collection: French Parasite poster you remember him buying recently. He traded stupid amount of money for it and you'd scold him for doing so if you didn’t know how much he enjoys cinematography.

Staring at this back as he makes coffee, you almost forget why you came her in first place. It's trivial: the latest software update on your laptop made it work more sluggish for some unknown to you reason. Jungkook has always been good with technology (hence his degree in digital art), helping you fix things on your laptop whenever the issue isn’t too complicated for him to deal with it on his own.

You feel a little embarrassed, asking him for help again (as if he wasn’t installing a new antivirus software for you a few weeks ago) but Jungkook beat you to it, assuring you it was absolutely fine before you could recite a round of apologies upon entering his apartment.

It’s just the way he is – the kindest, most selfless person you have ever met. Helping others seems to be etched into his brain for good.

“Here you go,” he says, placing a cup coffee in front of you. “I still haven’t quite figured out how the coffee machine works so I hope it doesn’t taste like shit.”

You smile, wrapping your fingers around the cup. Jungkook is a tea person, something he most definitely took after his mother, who has a separate cabinet in the kitchen filled with various kinds of tea. That’s why it’s so funny to you that somehow he insisted on buying a ridiculously expensive coffee machine a few months ago when he moved into his new apartment.

You wish you could focus on the delicate scent of his blueberry tea. You wish you could let yourself be overwhelmed by the aroma of your freshly made coffee. Anything.

Instead, all you can process is the intense, nauseous smell of the peonies standing right before you.

They’re definitely new, wrapped up prettily and ready to be gifted to someone special. Jungkook notices your lingering gaze, and clears his throat.

“Soojin's coming later today. They’re her favourite.”

He didn’t need to give any explanation to you. It’s his life, his girlfriend, his plans, her favourite flowers, her perfect boyfriend. You’re just you. Yet for some unknown to you reason, he felt and urge to mention it anyway.

“I didn’t peg you for the gentleman type.” you say to break the awkward silence. It’s anything but true, so Jungkook snorts in response.

“Aish, I always give you a single red rose for your birthday, Valentine’s Day and Women's day as well! And we know each other for eighteen years!” he reasons, somewhat defensive.

You force yourself to grin. “I know, I know. I was just fucking with you,” He huffs and takes a sip of his tea. As soon as he does that, he regrets it, muttering “Shit, it’s hot.” under his breath. “Soojin's lucky to have you.” you add.

Despite coming off as a confident person on daily basis, Jungkook gets insecure too.

You remember vividly the look in his eyes when he told you he didn’t deserve her. It was right at the beginning of their relationship, they were still getting to know each other and Jungkook couldn’t possibly understand why out of all the boys Soojin could date, she had chosen him. A digital art major who liked talking about cinematography and ate ramen at 2am in the morning when he couldn’t sleep.

Back then, you wished he could see himself with your eyes. For you, he was far more attractive than any guy you saw on campus. For you, he was talented, hardworking, passionate. No doubt Soojin fell for him.

But Jungkook was twenty-one back then. He lacked self-assurance he has now. It irritated you that he viewed Soojin as some sort of goddess who took pity on him. Although a lot has changed since, he still could quite literally kiss the ground she walks on.

You watch as a small tingle of blush covers the apples of his cheeks. Pink, just like the peonies standing before you. Pink, just like the flowers you hate so much.

11 years ago

June was beautiful that year. You spent most of your time after school in Jungkook's garden, seated by the wooden table and doing your homework.

His mother besides tea, loved planting flowers. And June was the month of peonies. There was so many of them, invading your senses with their sweet yet nauseous smell.

Jungkook was scribbling something in his notebook. You doubted it was anything Math-related, judging by the quick and harsh strokes of his pen. ‘’Do you know Sana?” he asked out of the blue, startling you.

“That new girl from Japan? What about her?”

“Jimin says she has a crush on me.” he answered, his eyes still glued to the paper. You noticed he was sketching some anime character's angry face.

Your eyes involuntarily widened. “How does Jimin know that?”

“Dunno. He told me he heard some girls talking about it in cafeteria the other day.” Finally, he dropped his pen and looked up. His brows were furrowed and he had a sour look on his face. “I don’t want her to have a crush on me.”

At that, your heart started beating faster. You were just fourteen and yet already so stupidly in love with your best friend. “Why?” you asked before you could stop yourself.

You knew girls were checking out Jungkook here and there. He was a top athlete, had good grades and had grown at least ten centimeters taller over the year. He also had let his mother (and you) convince him to cut his hair shorter lately, getting rid of the emo fringe he was sporting for the past six months. Of course some pretty girl like Sana would have a crush on him.

Somehow, Jungkook had always been oblivious to that, or at least you thought so. This was the first time he decided to talk to you about it.

He sighed, looking away from you as if he was embarrassed all of a sudden. You could swear you saw his cheeks flush. “Because I don’t even like her. You’re the only girl I can stand being with.”

Now it was your turn to blush. As best as you could, you tried to ignore the funny, giddy feeling in your chest. “You know you'll have to marry some girl one day, right?”

“Then I’ll ask you to marry me,” Jungkook said and for the first time since he had started this conversation, he actually looked you in the eye. When he saw your shocked expression, he mumbled, “Maybe in like… ten years or something. Once we are out of college.”

You snorted, nudging his side. Despite the butterflies fluttering in your stomach, you regained your composure. “Do you think I will put up with your for that long?”

“We know each other since we were six and you haven’t run away yet. Besides, I’m the only boy you aren’t scared to talk to.”

“Hey! That’s–Maybe it’ll change in the future! Maybe–”

Jungkook ignored you and instead thrusted his pinky finger in your direction. You stopped speaking right away. Pinky promises held little significance yet for some reason, you felt like it was a serious situation. And if the determined look on your best friend's face was anything to go by, he thought the same.

“If we don’t find anyone worth giving our heart to by the time we are twenty-five, let’s get married. Promise?”

You were astonished, to say the least, staring at this hand with wide eyes. You were only fourteen back then and to hear something like that from the boy you loved was like a teenage dream come true. You replied with blind devotion. Because there was only one, good answer to such question.

“Promise.”

You are twenty-four now, hopelessly in love with your best friend and the smell of peonies still makes you nauseous.

#jungkook smut #btswritingcafe #bangtanarmynet #bangtanhq #ksmutclub #jungkook angst #jungkook x reader #my writing #an ode to a broken heart

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sam-t-a · 3 years

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Okay.

*Deep breath*

I think I’m finally calm enough to put into words exactly why I hated the finale and why I wasn’t completely surprised that I hated it.

(Heads-up: this is really long and pretty negative. If you disagree, I would of course appreciate your point of view and love to hear it, but just thought I’d let you know in case this is the kind of post you would like to avoid.)

To me, it felt like every character on the show got betrayed in some way or another, but the main ones are Han Seo (devastatingly), Chayoung (obviously) and Han Seok (bear with me).

Cha Young:

She started out as a solid FL who annoyed some people for sure, but who had so much promise as someone unconventional and bold. The way her mother’s death affected her and caused a clear shift in her personality was a super interesting plot point that really never got explored. We have no idea how she came to sacrifice her morality in joining Wusang, just that she wanted to spite her father, which is a very superficial exploration. She gets cute idiosyncrasies in lieu of an actual character and an actual character arc.

We also, halfway through the show, seem to forget that her father's death was the initial trigger. Cha young does not suggest bold ideas or intricate plans, she doesn’t fill the gaps Vincenzo is incapable of filling (because that would require that Vincenzo have flaws, and that’s not something the writers can abide), and she’s literally victimized in episode 19 and bedridden in episode 20, and that is IT.

Someone who started out supposedly as Vincenzo’s equal just became another piece in his chess set, no matter how important a piece she may be.

So her role as a badass avenger is trashed. That leaves her role as a love interest. Now, as Vincenzo’s love interest, she was supposed to get kidnapped in like episode 5 or 6 at the most if the villain has any brains whatsoever (Han Seok may or may not, more on that later). We need a reason for that not to happen too early. Cue villain is somehow in love with her for all of 15 minutes or so throughout a 20-episode series because a love triangle is inconceivable with the show’s current structure and for its purposes.

So, she spends 15 or so episodes making the first move on Vincenzo, every time, putting herself out there, creating cute moments, getting nothing in return, and then he leaves. No confession, nothing much, he wasn’t even going to say goodbye or give her the choice of coming with him.

I’m sure more chayenzo-oriented fans have already expressed all the necessary outrage over this, so I’ll move on to the part that I’ve personally been way more emotionally invested in from the get go: the Jang brothers.

Han Seo:

I was among the minority that hated the “Vinny hyung” angle from the get-go and I’ve ranted about it in another post, so I won’t get into it here in-depth, but basically it was because I felt like Vincenzo hadn’t earned it, so to have the last words Han Seo hears be “You deserve to be my brother” or whatever the fuck he was on about PISSED ME OFF. It’s VINCENZO who doesn’t deserve to be Han Seo’s brother and hasn’t done a single thing to earn it. He was a good ally. The situation he allowed Han Seo to be a part of was beneficial to him, but Han Seo’s attachment to him was neither healthy nor heartwarming, and it certainly wasn’t returned on the level he offered it.

Vincenzo’s disregard of his death didn’t strike me as odd because I never saw enough indications that this was a two-way street and Han Seo’s safety and well-being came second so often that I didn’t get the impression Vincenzo was doing much to keep him alive. This is what I meant when I said the show was glorifying a torture survivor’s trauma responses. Han Seo himself, as a torture survivor, meant nothing to them. He was just there to create one more contrived comparison between Vincenzo and Han Seok. Instead of recovering from the trauma, it’s simply employed to someone else’s favor. He doesn’t go to prison for Han Seok, he takes a bullet for Vincenzo, and we’re supposed to see that as so much better.

All of that might (JUST MIGHT) not have ruined the show for me if he’d died better. 1) It was narratively pointless and totally avoidable, 2) they could’ve framed it as heroic, but instead Han Seok’s hand patting his head is pushing it down, so he can’t even get shot with his chin up and his back straight, Taec’s already taller, so the angle’s fucked and the whole cinematography screamed “kicking an injured puppy” and most certainly NOT “survivor finally stands up to his abuser”. The final nail in the proverbial and literal coffin is that he is mourned by no one. They’re FLIRTING not 3 MINUTES LATER, it felt so tone deaf and left such a bad taste. As I said, I didn’t expect significant mourning from Vincenzo (gotta say, I didn’t expect no mourning, that was a shocker), and Cha young and the tenants had no real interactions with him and no reason to mourn him, which left only one person who could.

Which brings me to Han Seok.

Han Seok started out as a solid villain, clear goals, clear skills that help him achieve his goals and basically make him a villain worth defeating, and a very complex relationship with both his own psychopathy and his brother.

Let me get it out of the way: I do not believe Han Seok is capable of killing Han Seo because he had every reason and every opportunity to do so in previous episodes and couldn’t do it (I say couldn’t because a certain degree of reluctance is in itself inability). Han Seo’s danger far outweighed his material value the minute he shot Han Seok and then completely lost any value once he came out to the world as the chairman and it became clear that the prosecution would be going after him if anything happened, and not his brother. But time and again, he’s proven he’s all bark and no bite when it comes to Han Seo (killing-wise, specifically).

The scene where he asks him to beat Vincenzo to death could be interpreted as him wanting to give Vincenzo the “painful death” he would have given him, but honestly, I think he was way past that point. He just wanted him dead in the “You crazy? we have to kill him before he kills us” sense. To that end, killing off a key ally of Vincenzo’s, who betrayed you and almost got you killed a bunch of times, should take priority, but Han Seok’s priority is reclaiming Han Seo by forcing him back onto his side. Now, much like his “love for Cha young”, Han Seok’s keenness on not killing his brother was essential to the writers so that Han Seo can justifiably make it this far and still be useful to Vincenzo (he can’t help if Han Seok completely excludes him from all events, plans and management processes, so Han Seok needs to want to keep him on his side enough not to do that even when it’s more prudent).

All of this isn’t to say it’s unbelievable that he would kill Han Seo, but it’s DEFINITELY unbelievable that he would stay the same man after killing him. Someone here (I’m sorry, I don’t rememebr who) once said that Han Seo had become, over time, far more of a foil to his brother than Vincenzo was. To me, this means that Post-Han Seo Han Seok would be out of balance (tilted screen), unhinged in a way he never was before. The Han Seok we see shrugs and “oh, well”-s and moves on in a flash, not really any different from the villain he was four minutes and a whole brother earlier.

This is very consistent with the way the show has been de-humanizing him from the start. I’m not saying this to defend Han Seok in any way, he’s a serial killer, an abuser and a total maniac. But you can be all those things and still a human being. In fact, you can ONLY be those things if you’re a human being. The show used its villain vs villain idea to justify a lot, but in the end, Vincenzo had to be a protagonist. He had to follow up every “I’m a villain” with a contrived “but at least I’m not (insert something worse)”.

On the level of humans:

1) Vincenzo is supposedly different because he doesn’t hurt children or women (unless the women deserve it, and shooting a parent in front of their kid doesn’t count as hurting.)

But we never see Han Seok hurting women or children either. In fact, if we proceed with the “chayoung is the myung hee of the good guys” comparison, he hasn’t hurt any women nearly as badly as Vincenzo did.

2) Babel vs Mafia

Babel’s corruption is compared a lot to the mafia, with Vincenzo commenting repeatedly that the people are WORSE than the mafia...which is bullshit. Babel is a set of companies that provide goods and services, but use illegal means to maximize their profit, so they hurt/kill people in the process because they want more money and care about money more than ethics. The Mafia is an inherently criminal organization that functions PURELY on the basis of its criminality. Every single dime Vincenzo spends is blood money. None of it is clean. And while we’re on the topic, I find the whole “taking Miri under his wing” thing pretty unreasonable too because he tried to have her killed you guys, I cannot believe we’re just glossing over that. He had everyone who worked on that vault killed, just random fucking construction workers. And he’s not sorry. And the show tells you he shouldn’t be.

3) Repentance

Han Seok says outright he won’t atone, and while Vincenzo says no such thing out loud he just...doesn’t repent, I guess. He keeps the blood money, he goes back to being a full-time mafia dude doing mafia things. He leaves the same man he arrived.

So, if on the level of harm inflicted upon humanity, Vincenzo and Han Seok are pretty much equal (and Vincenzo might actually be worse), then why should we root for Vincenzo?

Well, my friend, that’s where the dehumanization comes in!

I was initially very excited to see their portrayal of a psychopath because of the very interesting ways in which the informal moral code and official justice system surrounding a psychopath/sociopath/narcissist affect their behavior and their chances of not turning out rotten, and the show looked like it was looking at corruption in general.

But as the show went on, the villain vs villain thing proved not to be enough, Vincenzo has to be better in some way (or if you’re as obsessed with him as the writers are, then ALL ways), so it became a villain vs monster narrative. Vincenzo isn’t ethical or fair or in any way interested in having a remotely positive impact on society, but at least he’s A HUMAN BEING unlike SOMEBODY. So, the characterization goes to shit, Han Seok becomes a cartoon card-board cut out of a villain and emphasis is put on how pointless his violence is, as opposed to how purposeful Vincenzo’s is.

This is dangerous on multiple levels (and I promise this is the last point I’m making).

1) For people in general, dehumanizing abusers/murderers/etc. makes us very liable to forget that you don’t have to be “a monster” to cause harm, and it makes people complacent in their belief that they are “not bad people” since they aren’t total monsters. The Banality of Evil is a thing, and in this series, it goes completely ignored. No one is inherently incapable of good or inherently undeserving of humanity.

2) For victims of abuse in specific, it’s dangerous to portray abusers (including serial killer and non-serial killer ones) as entirely bad and unlovable, because it poses the dual risk of making victims less likely to acknowledge their abuse if it comes from someone who cares about or loves them on some level because the idea that someone cannot both love and hurt you is so stereotypical. Your abuser can genuinely want you in their lives and need you and, on some level, love you, and IT DOESN’T MATTER if that love doesn’t stop them from hurting you.

On the other hand, portraying the victims of abuse as capable of flipping an off switch and hating the abuser with no hesitation or second thoughts to the point of unapologetically and cheerfully helping someone kill them and having no mixed feelings about it sends the message that if you CAN’T do that, then are you really abused? Are sure you’re not complicit in your own abuse? Do you even want to get rid of them?

So this is basically why the way the show ended was so painfully disappointing for me. And the main reason it hit so hard was that it was initially so good and had so much promise. I really expected more.

#Vincenzo #vincenzo meta #vincenzo spoilers #not that mad anymore but still so disappointed #hong chayoung #jang han seo #jang han seok #so much it to fix #my brother says hi #he is disappointed too

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ouyangzizhensdad · 3 years

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Hey, feel free to ignore this, but I'd love to hear your grievances against Bridgerton? I saw some of the fashion posts you rbed, but I'm especially intrigued by the "fails on all aspects" parts? Thanks!

Hi there,

There is honestly so much that could be said and analysed in finer points but the short version of it is just that it is a bad story wrapped in the glitz of high production value but surprisingly little good technical execution despite all the money shoveled at it. Bridgerton is the type of show where the petty, mean side of me would delight in a detailed and cutthroat list of all of its flaws but for which I do not care enough to be actually invested in hating it. It’s just a thing to be puzzled and petty about: people think Bridgerton is good. Wild.

Now let me first say that I have no inherent problems with anachronistic creative choices, or the idea of a contemporary take on period dramas. After all, all period dramas are inevitably told through a contemporary lens, to different degrees. It’s also not like they were the first big production to do it either: has everyone just forgot about The Great Gatsby? or tumblr’s favourite Hamilton? I honestly think this kind of mixing already has so many cool outcomes when it comes to music (like this, this or this and this), I do believe we could get something really interesting out of creative anachronism in mainstream visual media. I’m also more forgiving with newer forms of experimentation, because sometimes new ideas need to be worked out before they reach their full potential. But the way Bridgerton does it.... so clearly lacks a clear creative vision and dedication to the concept imo that it makes it harder to excuse the ways it fails since the failures seem to originate from that lack of vision and dedication to storytelling. For instance, there is seemingly no logic as to when the diegetic music will be an instrumental cover of a contemporary song or not--which does not even broach the topic of how bad those ‘classical music’ arrangements for modern songs were? Honestly embarrassing how lazy those arrangements were: hire a good composer (or any at all), you cowards. And then the costumes... once again, a lack of internal logic seems to permeate the choices presented in addition to a lack of care in its execution: so many of the dresses are ill-fitted, the characterisation through the outfits were all over the place (like the mom who wore a silhouette that no one else wore and had no basis in any fashion of the era) and so many of the fabrics/jewellery looked the opposite of expensive (kind of looked like a lot of it was polyester and plastic tbh), which is sort of a problem when you are trying to sell the fantasy of "The lives of the rich and famous but make it regency” imo although I suppose a portion of the audience just doesn’t notice lmao. Honestly I find that a lot of ‘costume historians’ who made video essays on Bridgerton were too nice with the show, perhaps in order not to come off as seeming to hate the costumes on the basis of them not being historically accurate, and as a result were way too forgiving imo. And this lack of real creative vision is also something we see in the cinematography and direction which.... seems often confused about the way it wants to make things feel fantastical and ends up dropping the ball on the execution of these meant-to-be extravagant or over-the-top shots.

But, again, the cinematography is just... middling at best, made only worse by the editing which is just plain bad. I guess you’ll have to just take me on my word on this because I am not willing to do an autopsy of all I find off about it, but lord jesus mary and joseph it was painful to watch at certain moments.

Bridgerton is not the first show to do colourblind casting, although I’d say it deserves recognition for fucking it up for no reason at all. Like, sure there are criticisms to be had about how it remains still a very white story that falls into certain tropes wrt darker skin characters or the glaring lack of south asian representation considering what the contemporary UK looks like, etc. but what I’m gesturing at is the totally unnecessary but mind-boggling “royal love solved racism” twist we get in the, what, fourth episode? (Broey Deschannel covered the topic quite well imo) The audience would have accepted that there were no in-world explanation for the colourblind version of the already-made fantastical regency that had them dancing to Ariana Grande songs. The colourblindness, racism-free society would have just been another aspirational aspect. They literally did not need to do this.

Honestly I don’t feel like I need to get into why the story itself is not very good or well-executed since it feels very obvious. I won’t begrudge on principle the show for using well-worn tropes and common-to-the-point-of-farce character archetypes, but I have to object to the way it uses them and in the service of what story. And not to make myself in a plot-hole-ding kind of person-who-has-thoughts-about-media, but this is not a story that holds up well to scrutiny or logic, let’s say. And any type of social or political commentary it tried to include was dumb to the point of farce: the Feminist Character Who Wants to Read not Go Dance was just.... a masterclass in bad, embarrassing writing. I am surprised at how unlikeable and boring the vast majority of the characters were, but perhaps less surprised at how a series that planned on having multiple seasons already sold the twist of Lady Whistleblow’s identity at the end of the first season, for what seemed to be no narrative reason at all. That being said, I have to give credit where it’s due and acknowledge that there is a skill in being able to produce stories that get extremely popular and well-loved.

(Do I need to mention the performances? So many underwhelming or embarrassing performances. It’s hard to tell sometimes whether it’s the actors themselves or the directing that’s the issue, or a mixture of both, but.... oof).

I guess in the end Bridgerton’s biggest transgression is it sits for me in the uncomfortable middle where it is neither trashy or campy fun nor is it an interesting work of fiction. Differently put, it is simply neither good nor fun.

#cherryblossomshadow #long post #brine corner #i suppose #not mdzs

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iris-somnia · 4 years

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Catch Up Tag 🌸

Tagged by beautiful angels @yeoldontknow to do this catch up tag. Thank you, dear!

1. What do you prefer to be called name-wise?

I use Iris here, but I have other pseudonyms on other profiles in order to protect myself. I never use my real name online.

2. When is your birthday?

Late February.

3. Where do you live?

I’m currently living in a hotel I can’t afford long term. I hope to find permanent shelter soon but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard as hell.

4. Three things you are doing right now?

I’m AFK fishing on Black Desert Online because they’re doing the fishing event that gives free money and if I can’t be rich irl, I can at least be the big cheese with an avatar that looks like an eight-year old forest nymph. I’m also listening to WayV because they’ve consistently held up as a good choice no matter what mood I’m in this year. In about 15 minutes, I’ll resume watching the Crown and doing my sticker book (my guilty pleasure during homelessness).

5. Four fandoms that have peaked your interest?

Honestly, I’ve avoided fandoms this year because people really don’t know how to take a breath and enjoy shit. Most kpop fandoms have a subset of older fans who I enjoy interacting with because they only talk about the music and performances, but there are other wings of fans who are so obsessed with winning and being all-powerful that I don’t even want to listen to the music anymore because it’ll feed the monster.

The accounts/mutuals who I’ve enjoyed the most this year have been Starlights, Insomnia, Sirens (Chloe x Halle), and Warriors & Weirdos (Aurora). I’m seeing some promising reasons to get back into video game fandoms but lord, there’s so much drama in most of the companies that I am holding back.

6. How has the pandemic been treating you?

No one in my immediate family has gotten sick, but I did have to bury my grandmother this spring and many family couldn’t come to her service because of the restrictions. Some of my colleagues have COVID. Many more lost their jobs because of it and most of them who were laid off were done so under false pretenses and I’m still mad.

I’m working remotely, but a budget scare earlier in the year motivated my employer to announce a furlough for many of us, only to rescind it a couple of days before it went live. By then, I had already lost my apartment and had packed all my shit in storage. I’ve been couch surfing and living in hotels since August and it’s cost me thousands of dollars. I’ve learned that when you don’t have a permanent address, people assume you’re a junkie even when you wash your ass. I’ve had a lot of disappointments this year in terms of human behavior, but vices like alcohol and beautiful women keep me level enough to stay out of the deep end. That, and I meditate a lot.

I have lost all my patience with assholes though, especially ones who puff up at me in public like I’ll be intimidated and fold. Confrontation and avoidance are two sides of the same coin and I keep flipping it like a gambler. I’m either pretending they’re dead or I’m ripping a new asshole in a way that makes those eyes pop like “oh shitttttt.” When I’m no longer in survival mode with my housing, I hope to go back to understanding the nuances of lived experience. Until then, it’s eat or be eaten and I absolutely hate living black & white like that.

7. A song you can’t stop listening to?

Megan Thee Stallion - Realer.

8. Recommend a movie?

1917 (2019) - It’s a British war film that has some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in many years. I was on the edge of my seat with chest pains but wow.

9. How old are you?

10. School, university, occupation, other?

Employed at a non-profit that profits off human suffering. I work there as a form of prostitution because of my student loans but I’m considering going into a different training program so I can leave and work for myself. It’ll take a couple years to save up.

11. Do you prefer heat or cold?

I refer 70 degrees F because my winter coat’s in storage.

12. Name one fact others may not know about you?

I have two history degrees and used to teach civics, U.S. history, and world history for a living. That’s why I’ve taken this year’s politics harder than your average citizen and it’s why my Twitter account is raging against elected officials half the time. Historians don’t shut off.

13. Are you shy?

Eh, not really anymore. I trained out of it because shyness kept me from earning money. Now I’m selectively withdrawn because I understand that the more people I interact with, the more likely I’ll need a nap.

14. Preferred pronouns?

She/her

15. Biggest pet peeves?

1 - People not wearing masks when my region has run out of hospital beds. 2 - Ghosting with no explanation. I would rather be told, “I lied, I hate you,” because it gives closure. Ghosting always means billable therapy hours as I revisit why I’m preparing for a life alone. 3 - Not tipping food service staff. If you don’t tip food service workers, fuck you.

16. What is your favorite ‘dere’ type?

In anime/manga, I enjoy goudere characters for comic relief. 17. How would you rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be?

A solid 5 which will jump to a 7 when I have permanent shelter.

18. What is your main blog?

It’s a reblog of my non-kpop interests: @my-astral-wanderlust

19. Is there something people need to know about you before they become friends?

Honestly, I probably should consider myself anti-friend or at least perpetually unlucky with my track record.

I go through periods of time where I can’t communicate well for medical reasons and it’s not a reflection on that friend as a person, but rather a challenge I’ve lived with since childhood. It could be walls of text or radio silence depending on how much I trust someone and that’s always to my own peril. Withdrawal from socializing is common during time periods when I know I’m likely to hurt someone’s feelings, especially if I love them and care about their emotional safety. I struggle a lot sharing vulnerabilities and true feelings to friends because I have many memories and experiences of people telling me they loved me and then using those vulnerabilities as ammunition to hurt me later. I’ve had many ex-friends lie about the kind of person I am when talking to friends/family, on everything from sexuality to appearance to interests to how we know each other. That, and many who claim to be my friend ditch me the moment I call out shitty behavior like lying to me or not keeping promises.

With that kind of track record, I’ll take a nice dog. Trusting people is almost unattainable and while it’s a sad state of affairs, I’d rather not get actively hurt constantly.

tagging: ...I think a lot of my mutuals have already been tagged here but my memory isn’t good right now. Sooo if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged!

#iris talks

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skamamoroma · 5 years

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What do you think of season 5 so far? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Sending lots of love to you meg for always being a light in the Skam fandom

Ah thank you, love! ❤️ that’s so kind of you

Oh I love it. So far! (Always cautious hahaha)

I am so damn impressed, honestly. So far, I really don’t have anything negative to say, not that I focus on that anyway. I don’t have any concerns. I am just 100% with Arthur, really really enjoying every moment and if they continue how they’re going, this season has the potential to be one of my favourites from the Skam universe

I mean, everything is great so far. They’ve really thought about the topic and the story. You can tell they’ve researched well and are taking the topic seriously. I’ve read multiple lovely posts by HoH or D/deaf folks who are impressed and happy with how the topic is being handled and that’s so very important. I learned BSL for a long time to help me communicate for a specific role I had and I have experience with the Deaf community and it was a total joy in my life so I love that there is so much respect here

Arthur is an interesting dude. He’s a bit of an enigma! He’s sweet and funny and silly and yet also sassy and bold and a little rebellious. He’s snappy and can lean towards anger sometimes. He’s a truly great friend and loves people hard, plus he’s nerdy as hell. He’s sarcastic too and I am always soft for sarcastic souls. I wasn’t initially sure about Arthur as a choice for s5 despite thinking it was genius to choose an original character but I am absolutely thrilled they chose him because he’s a great mix and he’s interesting!!

There’s intrigue. Skam needs mystery and a little drama. It needs the audience to be curious and involved and wanting to know more about the main. There’s plenty of that: with Arthur’s dad, with his hearing loss, with the new folks he saw at the swimming pool, with how his friends will react to stuff, with Alexia, with his future dreams...

The acting is stellar. So far, Robin is impressing the heck out of me. He’s moving and made me tear up but he also unsettles me and then two seconds later I’m wanting to squish him he’s so cute...! Perfect as a main Skam character!!

The cinematography and the quality is clearly incredible. It looks like they have more money and a lot of the camera work seems so considered in a way it hasn’t before (to the same degree anyway). There are some folks who aren’t keen on Skam France’s more cinematic style but I’m a fan (I like how all the remakes bring their own style) and this season seems so polished so far. Those shots with Arthur in the snow, for example, were just so so beautifully done, and the swimming pool scene. Plus, clips are coming regularly!!! It feels kinda like wtfock... I don’t feel starved for content because stuff is so regular!

The music is improved too! We had an actual SONG 😂 in Skam France! Hahaha. They clearly have a little more money.

The new characters of Arthur’s mamma and dad are great and they fit well. There are more new characters to experience but if they are introduced as seamlessly then they’ll be fab. I love that they created such dynamic socials for them and that they clearly come as a pair. It’s going to be cool getting to know them!

The social media for Skam France, I always enjoyed. Yeah some of it wasn’t ideal like the 5000 shots of Eliott and Lucas from one day where they didn’t change their clothes 😂 but I found the Eliott stuff to be so fun and immersive from s3 and it’s clear they appreciate the social stuff and have fun with it and it seems they’ve stepped up their game! It’s even added to the show aka the insta story the other day which Skam France never used to do

There are some truly GORGEOUS details. They’ve taken the time and passion they have about these characters and added those Skam-esque details which are, for me, so important. Like Arthur’s calendar where he’s clearly crossing off the days he can’t hear (it hasn’t even been mentioned in the show but they keep making a point of showing it), the stuff in Eliott/Lucas’ apartment which is even furthering their story despite them being background characters, Alexia’s room with the little pride flags and her lovely creative personality...

And lastly, the relationships and group dynamics. With any season, there’s always that frustration the audience have when the show runner has to try to develop or introduce stuff for other characters while telling the story of the main. Some remakes/seasons have done it very well (I felt Wtfock s3 really did that quite well) and some hardly do it at all (skam it tend not to do it much as their POV is so strong) and some make a point of doing it (Druck) etc. Skam Fr always had a few issues in the past especially during Lucas’ season where it didn’t flow as nicely as it could have (some moments did aka Manon and Lucas on the sofa when they cried together) but some were so shoehorned sadly. This season, those group moments and the time given to other characters hasn’t felt forced. They’ve used screen time to add in hints and moments rather than dedicating huge clips to stuff (which may change but I’m talking so far). Audiences are intelligent. We’ve picked up on Daphne’s behaviour, we got info about Eliott in a really organic way which involved Arthur, we see Lucas in his newfound confidence and relationship through socials and as were spending time in his new home, we’ve got background of Imane and Sofiane showing they’re good but also adding in Imane’s future intentions etc! All of that was done withou really taking any significant time of focus away from Arthur.

Not to mention the group dynamic feels tighter and more meaningful. Early on, I had such an issue with the Skam France boys as a group. I mean, after Skam It and my love for those boys, I felt they had so much to work with and during Lucas’ season I struggled with them all... but over time I think they’ve got to grips with who they are and how they connect and I genuinely believe their friendship now. I see their different dynamics within the group, I understand why they’re close, we’ve seen them learn and develop... they feel cohesive and warm. Eliott is now included which is a so lovely and he adds something different too... and then we have Alexia more prominent who, as a remake of Chris, had the potential to be the comic relief but I’m so so happy she isn’t and she is being treated with love and care and given depth.

I’ve made posts about this but because of the history and shared experiences between the characters, they really do feel much stronger and I have a real sense that I know them... so you come to this season already feeling you know how they’d react and what they’d think and you know they’ve got new perspectives due to their own experiences... and Skam Fr appears to be running with that and not taking them backwards which I am SO PLEASED about.

Plus, that glorious POV shift always changes a few things and because of it we see a few really interesting things. We see Alexia in a new light, we see how important Lucas is to Arthur, we feel fond of Basile because of his love for Arthur, we see why Arthur always had that sunshine response to his friends and their successes - because they’re his safe space and his source of peace and happiness and brightness. We saw that all over his face in the warehouse when he was being cuddled by them.

All in all. I’m a little stunned at how great it is so far. I’m remaining cautious because who knows but I am giddy that this is a new and original season and so far looks like it’s working so damn well. I love it a lot and I think the over-riding feeling is the love that the show has for the format, the characters, the actors and the stories... I have a feeling this is David’s influence. He gives a shit. He cares. It really shows ❤️

#skam france #sorry this is so long #read mores done work on phones!#thoughts etc #arthur broussard #sf s5

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charliejrogers · 4 years

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Gone With the Wind (Or, Why are we still talking about this?)

Beyond the second Godfather, Titanic, Avengers: Endgame, The Irishman, and Tarantino at his most indulgent (The Hateful 8) my experience with films over the 180-min mark is rather paltry. I haven’t seen many of those epic “classics” of days past, not because of disinterest, just lack of time. I’ll get to you yet, Doctor Zhivago! But that’s not the case for Gone With the Wind: I just never had any interest. Though I love Titanic, I never had interest in watching a four-hour love story from the 1930s. And for all it’s praise, I never knew anyone who had seen it, nor did I hear a lot of praise about it on online forums/websites. Perhaps because the internet tends to dominated by male voices who would rather tout gangster films than the passionate drama I was led to believe this film was. In sum, I just sort of took it for granted that Gone With the Wind was some all-time classic, but one which I would just never get around to seeing, and I was ok with that.

That changed in 2018, when Spike Lee used a scene from the film to start his own movie BlacKkKlansmen. Before this, I had never known there was ever any controversy surrounding a move that was supposedly as good if not better than Casablanca. Lee used the scene from Gone With the Wind (in addition to a scene from The Birth of a Nation) to criticize the way Hollywood has long served as a bastion for white supremacy, giving voice and platform to hateful speech and thoughts. In the case of Gone With the Wind, that means a work which embodies those hateful thoughts, and yet has been celebrated and praised despite doing so ad nauseum for 80+ years. At that point, I lost even more interest in the film, now not wanting to watch a racist movie.

Fast-forward to 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder (among many other Black people killed by police recently and throughout American history) when HBO is under severe controversy for first putting Gone With the Wind on its streaming service, and then subsequently under more controversy for taking it down. A debate took place about censorship, free speech, and the other bullshit conservatives use to sustain their own beliefs while hypocritically arguing against when things don’t go their way. Regardless, for myself, in order to enter into the debate informed I felt like I wanted to know what the hubbub was all about. Frankly, I was curious to see why a movie that was so obviously racist was so adored.

Three hours and forty-five minutes later, I’m not really that sure. On the one hand, putting myself in the shoes of an audience member in 1939, the first half would have blown me away, with the drama taking place in Georgia at the very start of the Civil War up through its grand destruction under General Sherman. The colors and cinematography capturing the landscape of Georgia are just downright beautiful , unlike anything that had been in films prior. Yes, it’s not the first movie to be shot in color (nor was the Wizard of Oz which came out just 4 months prior), but I can’t imagine films before this were as devastatingly beautiful. Everything from the colors of the women’s dresses to the multiple picture-perfect sunsets pops out and catches your eye, and not in the fairytale, bubblegum way of Wizard of Oz. Gone With the Wind captures the natural beauty and colors of our world, and put it on display in a grand way. The cinematography really deserves every praise it gets.

The recurrent motif of characters’ shadows being casted onto the wall behind them during key emotional scenes was one I never tired of. Not only are the shadows beautifully captured by the camera, but, especially in a movie where every character seems to have a secret passion they refuse to express, the shadows strip away all our external beauties (make-up, facial features, dresses, and all the stuff this film has in spades), leaving us with figures that are still obviously human and whose feelings are immediately understood. All that is needed to convey grief is to see two shadows with the heads hung low.

The other positives of this film? Clark Gable is a handsome fucking man. He walks the fine line of confidence and smug so well that few others than, say, Brad Pitt could have ever performed the role of Rhett Butler so well. I particularly loved how he portrayed his relationship with his daughter, and the genuine love he showers upon her. Yes, he obviously spoils the child, but he’s so charming and so sincere that rarely have I seen such devoting love from father to daughter on screen, even 80 years later. As one character says, “there must be a great deal of good in a man who would love a child so much.”

But Rhett’s also kind of a despicable human being. He’s a brutish MAN, who loves his daughter because she is someone he can finally “completely own,” (an interesting choice of words said by a Southerner just after the Civil War) which is indicative of his philosophy towards love. Yes, love should be reciprocal, but his idea that his wife should exist in strict subservient, obedient love to him is ridiculous, yet he pursues it like it’s his right. He is otherwise prone to petty jealousy and drunkenness, and he is emotionally abuse toward his wife, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh). It’s uncomfortable today to watch these scenes of abuse, like where he threatens to crush her skull to get the thoughts of another man out of her head, or where, after O’Hara makes abundantly clear that she never wants sex with Butler again, he in a drunken fit picks her up in order to carry her to bed, saying essentially “I know you said you didn’t want to but I’m going to fuck you.” After such deplorable behavior in a movie today, there would at least be ambiguity about Butler’s character or morality. Nope, not here. We see O’Hara the next morning essentially elated by the burst of passion that just a few hours earlier she was dreading and resisting. Throughout everything, Butler is held up as one of the film’s main heroes, growing from the film’s start as a noble rapscallion who values money too much and gradually evolves into a war hero who earns his people’s respect by protecting his people (and we’ll for argument’s sake just ignore that “protecting his people” means protecting men accused of doling out vigilante, lynch-mob justice which we can only assume implies the KKK). In sum, he’s a complex and charismatic character played wonderfully by Gable, but a character nevertheless that is problematic and would have been better served by a film as willing to highlight these problems as they are willing to highlight them in the film’s protagonist Scarlett O’Hara.

Yes, I’m a thousand words in, and I haven’t even started talking about the actual main character. The movie, for as much as it is discussed as being a love story between O’Hara and Butler or an ode to the Old South, is more a coming-of-age tale (in its first half) and a character study (in its second) focused on O’Hara. She starts the film out a vain, self-indulgent belle of the ball, but faced with the horrors of war and subsequent poverty, she becomes an embodiment of the rotten side of the American Dream: greedy, self-indulgent, and out-of-touch with the world she came from. I suppose that at the end of the film, abandoned by her husband, having lost both of her children, as well as her best friend, O’Hara’s revelation that she should return home to her family’s plantation is supposed to be suggest that she will seek redemption and give up her excesses. That’s fine with me, but I’m not sure the film deserves to just end it there and not allow us to see if she actually earns that redemption. I’m not saying I want MORE Gone With the Wind, just that the story feels incomplete in telling O’Hara’s full story arc.

Still, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy watching O’Hara’s tale unfold. It is always somewhat refreshing to watch film from decades’ past that refuse to present stories that are morally simple (not that I think people in the 30’s were incapable of complex morality, just that movies at the time tend to reflect more simple black-and-white values). To that extent, O’Hara is not a simple character, and is actually quite fascinating. She’s a ruthless capitalist and opportunist, much in the vain of her male counterpart, Butler. I’m curious to know how, for a country just starting to crawl its way out of the Depression and which in just a few short years would see the rise of Rosie the Riveter women, how O’Hara’s devotion to never be in poverty ever again (even if she has to “lie, steal, cheat, or kill”!) was perceived by audiences. Specifically, released at a time when gender norms were all but fixed, I wonder how men thought of her taking advantage of, and almost weaponizing, her femininity for her advantage, marrying three times not out of love but to better herself and survive. Yet, hypocritically she clings to the ideals of femininity of the past. Her use of her femininity to survive she accepts, yet she abhors the film’s stereotypical heart-of-gold prostitute for her moral licentiousness despite her good nature.

Throughout the film, especially in the later half, it was unclear to me how much we as the audience were supposed to like or dislike O’Hara. Yes, she’s hard-working, resilient, and acts heroically multiple times in the film. But she’s also kind of a child til the very end, obscenely jealous, while also cold and calculating, counting down the days til her best friend dies so that she can sleep with her husband. I liked that ambiguity. It made her feel like a real person. To some degree Leigh’s performance as O’Hara is undercut by histrionics and bouts of “hysteria” that were more common in film performances from that time, but which seem a little annoying and grating today. But damn if it isn’t a great performance, display the full emotional range in this film, from buoyantly bright and cheery, to desperate and despaired.

So yeah, I guess I do get why it’s considered a classic, or at least why it made such a splash in 1939. There was nothing like it! The cinematography is great, its characters are fascinating, complex, and engrossing, and the performances (by Gable in particular) are wonderful. But the elephant in the room, then but especially now, is that… damn… this movie is racist, like in its DNA. They double down on this at the VERY START! The fourth shot of the movie (FOURTH!), after first showing a sign announcing the studio who produced the film, then a look at the plantation-like building bearing the studio’s name, and finally some clouds at daybreak, is of slaves tending to crops. The image is set to a triumphant score while the overlaying text tells us that the movie will be based on Margaret Mitchell’s “Story of the Old South.” This is not done ironically. With the beautiful landscape and music, we as audience are to think, “Wow, what a great time this was.” At the end of the opening credits, the prologue text tells us that the antebellum South was the last in a long line of great lands. It’s the last time “gallantry” would exist, and “the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, or Master and of Slave.” Holy Shit. As if “Master and Slave” is something to celebrate?! “Those damn Yankees would destroy such a beautiful world!” the film argues. Again… not presented ironically. It’s pretty jarring.

That said, I do want to say that to a minimal degree that film is right when it just presents War (with a capital W) in general as a destructive force that either destroys lives outright, or destroys enough property to send lives to ruin. That’s a truth propagated by media as far back as the Iliad, and is sometimes shown effectively here, such as the oft-discussed slow-pan show of the countless Confederate bodies lying dead on the ground mid-way through the film. It’s a depressing sight on an apolitical human level. But, at the same time, the movie’s inability and refusal to address the reason those bodies are there in the first place (racist need to continue slavery), and instead obliquely suggest that the Antebellum South was without any suffering until those damn Yankees brought them ruin is, frankly, insulting and disgusting. It outright ignores the suffering of Black people in favor of highlighting the suffering of whites. A tale unfortunately told ab aeterno in America.

I know others can, have, and will say more about the treatment of Black characters within the film and how they serve only to reinforce negative stereotypes. Mammy, despite being wonderfully acted by Hattie McDaniel, and other house slaves are presented as being eternally grateful to have been enslaved to their white masters, so much so that even after the war they continue to serve them --- because why would they ever want to do differently?! (the film seemingly asks and answers). After the war, Scarlett is more than willing to accept that her lumber mill should be worked by convicts who will be paid less than other workers and suffer harsh treatment, arguing that it is no different than slavery and that has always been ok. WHAT?! And Prissy, the slave who reassures Scarlett that she knows everything about birthing babies, up until the point where her knowledge is needed and she turns out to be nothing more than an airheaded twit, has to be one of the ugliest depictions of a slave I have seen. Particularly, she serves little more than really bad comic relief… with the joke seemingly just being “wow look at how stupid and annoying slaves were.”

This is more than I intended to write, so I won’t go on, but I think everything I had to say has been said. It’s a beautifully shot film, with rich, deep, and complex characters that would be even better served in a movie more willing to dive into the moral ambiguity of their characters, and for Butler in particular not bend over backwards to make him look like a good guy. And I get why it made such an impact 80 years ago, especially in that first half where there’s all the excitement of war and some notable action set-pieces. But even taking out the significant problems the movie has with race, it’s hard for me to understand anyone considers this essential viewing for anyone today besides those with an interest in cinematography, film history, or interested in how race is presented on screen. Its proto-feminist Scarlett O’Hara and her role within an evolving economy and evolving societal ideas of what “love” is are interesting, but they certainly not things that are worth the average viewer’s nearly four hours’ worth of time. It’s a museum piece, one that captured the spirit of a time (and the decades beyond it) where Hollywood felt it was completely OK to romanticize life under slavery, and bemoan its destruction by Yankees. If you want to see this museum piece, go ahead, but don’t let anyone convince you it’s one of the all-time greats.

***/ (Three and a half out of four stars)

Capsule Review: Long movie with great performances and beautiful cinematography... also racist to its core.

#gone with the wind #clark gable #vivien leigh #this movie is racist

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lysergicdialectic · 4 years

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Matt Christman on his satori moment and prestige TV

Excerpted from “Better Call Saul? More Like Worse Write, Paul,” April 26, 2020, and lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Hello friends. So yesterday—I don’t know if anyone watched the stream I did yesterday—I was kind of tripping balls. And at the end of it, after I finished recording, I sat in my little back area, my little fenced-in area, and I looked up at the sky for a while. And wouldn’t you know it, I ended up having one of those legitimate, full-blown satori moments. Actual enlightenment, actual transcendence, like bloop. One second, one with the universe. Whatever you want to call it—ego death, blah-blah-blah—I was there.

I had a moment of complete identification and oneness with the universe, and then of course, the second it was over, I came back into my body and became reincarnated, reembodied as me. And of course, I started falling away from that moment as the rock started rolling back down the hill. I was Sisyphus, and I got to walk down it. And the thing about Sisyphus is, Camus says you must imagine Sisyphus happy. That’s one of those things that just sounds like a zen koan

I understand it now, because happy Sisyphus is the one who gets to the top of the hill as often as possible because being on the top of the hill is fun, and walking down the hill—it's not as fun as being on the top of the hill but it's a lot more fun than pushing the goddamn rock up the hill. So you just gotta increase the circuits. You can't keep pushing the boulder up one long gradient, which is what most people do and what we're cursed to do because of our material realities that constrain us and chain us . . . . As I was coming back to my body and I was going down the hill and falling away, the first word that came into my mind after—because obviously in that time and space there's no words because language is obliterated. It's not needed because you are one; there's no need to translate. As soon as I came back to my body, the first word, it was an image in the sky of a crashing wave and the word Yes. And I realized that a lot of the stuff I've been trying to get my head around, in terms of spirituality ad theology and questions of body and mind and all these things that I've been working on in my head, and I feel I've been making progress but I've been struggling with—the word Yes cut through a lot of it and it created a symbolic order that allowed me to make sense of everything I've been trying to get my head around. And since my specific orientation as age, race, gender, class background, language, culture, all that stuff—when I heard Yes, the first thing I thought was the end of Ulysses. And all of a sudden, I had one moment of thinking "Oh, that's what it's like to have read Ulysses," and then I was like, "Oh wait a minute," and then I thought, "Oh great, now I don't have to read Ulysses." But then I realized: I have to read Ulysses now, even if it's bad, even if it's a slog, even if it's whatever, because it will remind me of that moment, and doing it every day will remind me of that moment and keep me living in a way that gets me there, or gets me closer to it. It will inform my actions and it will inform my behavior toward the people around me, and it will make them turn toward that sound. So I'm going to start reading Ulysses.

Like I said, it doesn't matter if it's good or not. It doesn't matter if it's worth it. What matters is reading it. The reason that I'm thinking within these terms is, I did a tweet that got a lot of people mad about Better Call Saul, because I said that Better Call Saul, in my opinion, suffers from trying to be a prestige TV show, given the ingredients it has. You've got Saul Goodman here, played by Bob Odenkirk, a great character we all love, and we've got these great people behind the casts, great cinematography. And it ended up being the show it is, with its basically copying the rhythms of Breaking Bad and becoming a Breaking Bad explicit prequel filling in all these gaps of Where'd Hector get his bell? and things like that. That's inevitable as soon as it had to fit the format of a prestige show. As a prestige show, it probably is great. I've watched enough of it. Yes, it fits all the terms that we discuss when we talk about prestige television. Yes. I would say it's as good as Mad Men, it's as good as Breaking Bad or even better, it's as good as The Sopranos, whatever you want to say. Fine. It's good. But it's good in the context of a television show. I've written about prestige TV and I've talked a lot about it, and I was trying to articulate something that I've never actually been able to explicitly say in a way that I felt like I was saying what I meant, let alone if other people understood it. What I realized with this mental Ginsu now to chop everything up that I encounter is, my problem with Better Call Saul is that it is a product of the demiurge. Better Call Saul, like all prestige TV, is a product of the demiurge. Art is an attempt to reach the etheric plane. Art is always an attempt to strike at the heart of the universe, to strike God and become God. Everything attempt at art is that, in some small way, the way that the person making it can do or try to do. It's the urge to do it. But then, there's the reality, the embodied reality of being a person, being a body that has needs. Those material needs that shape the world and limit us, that's what the Gnostics talked about. That's what the demiurge, the evil god who creates the material world that is illusion below the spiritual realm. In this case, if we're talking about art, in an objective sense, television is a more degraded form of art than literature by the very simple fact that it is more commercial. And you might say, "Well, Stephen King makes a lot of money." No. What I mean by that is, the writing of a book and the publication of a book are relatively capital unintensive. Making a television show is much more, by exponential numbers, more capitally intensive than a book, which means that whatever art is in it has been constrained by being a product of a commercial enterprise. That means that television can be good. Every show could be fun. You should enjoy every program you watch. Either stop watching it if you can't find yourself enjoying it, or find something about it that speaks to you. Everything should be enjoyable, artistically. And if it isn't, find something that will, something that you can work it. Some things aren't going to work because the talent of the people involved, the amount of resources put to it, the amount of commercialism leavened within it, it's going to hit you and make it hard. That is why I see Better Call Saul, and I go egh because it just reminds me that we're all praying to this degraded version of art. And the reason we are is because we have been immiserated culturally. Capitalism has done that to us. That's not something you can argue. Our tastes are more broad, and poptimists like to say, "You're being a snob." But I'm recognizing a goddamn reality here, which is that there's a structural difference between art depending on how much they are required to make money, the degree to which a piece of art needs to make money to be worth the endeavor leavens its individual artistic expression because it has to be translatable to the largest possible group. The art, in translation, gets lost. And that's fine. You can find the sparks. You can find the things you like in anything, including Breaking Bad. But because we have lost free time, we've lost energy, we've lost the ability to take a small moment and treasure something and really dig into it, that we need our entertainments to go down easier. They have to be absorbable because we don't have the energy, the mental or spiritual energy to sit with anything because of where we are, because of how degraded our conditions are, because of our bodies essentially. All these institutions—capitalism, feudalism before it, slave labor—every class order created was created to manage the issue of keeping bodies alive, basically. That creates our structures. It creates our economic structures, it creates our art, it creates our culture, it creates our personalities, it creates our religions, it creates our ideologies, it creates everything. It creates this computer, it creates this phone. It creates this shirt, and it creates the systems that create the hyperexploitation that goes into making this shirt, the gunpoint slave coltan mining that makes this phone. Those things are all necessary to the degree to which they allow for the human bodies to be restored.

Then there is the temptation to seek pleasure, and pleasure always comes at the expense of someone else. Pleasure always comes at the expense of us—always. All pleasure is at the expense of others and at the expense of ourselves—karma. And so these institutions get warped. "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." What that means is, the crookedness is the fact that we have bodies. That's not a sin, it's not bad—the Christian thing is another mistranslation from the initial true divining of reality. The material world gets in the way, and it gets baffled, and so Christianity gets muddled up with all this stuff. When you say, "The body creates this world," it's not bad—it's inevitable. It's inherent. We have to deal with it. We have to create a society that minimizes suffering by spreading pleasure out as broadly as possible, not concentrating on any individual because doing so creates a situation where you cause misery to all the people whose exploitation goes into the pleasure of that one person, and that one person's pleasure is fleeting. It's going away. They're going to face the flames of judgment, which is the coming of death, with the terror of hell in their heart. There's no stopping it. And so no one has gotten any sort of benefit out of that arrangement.

We have to have some suffering and pleasure just to keep the bodies going, but it should be spread out. That's where the dialectic comes in. Somebody said, "Go back to Marxism." I'm sorry, but this moment made me realize that these are nesting series of thoughts, ideologies, and structures, and guess what? Nesting in here is dialectical materialism. Maybe Gnosticism or Buddhism or something or The Dark Tower or I was talking about Infinite Jest the other day and maybe Ulysses, those things help structure your thoughts and make it easier for you to behave in a way that reduces suffering. But then you need structures within other people, amongst people in the social realm of economic production and political economy, that need to serve those ends as well. Dialectical materialism is the drive toward that. It is the drive toward a world where everyone is free of the bodily temptations and distractions to reach full enlightenment. When people talk about "fully automated luxury space communism," there's a lot wrong with that notion. But the truth thing that's reckoning with is that the only way for universal human enlightenment—which, if enlightenment is the individual goal, as it well should be, then presumably it is the universal goal for all humans—then you need some sort of taming and instrumentalizing of technology toward the goal of human enlightenment as opposed to the dark singularity we're moving toward, where the machine takes over and totally annihilates human spirituality and turns us into machines. We don't want that. It requires a lack until you get to the top, and you don't get there and stay there. It's a process. You go back, and you come back. And you go back and you come back. It's pushing the fucking boulder up the hill. That's why it's compatible. If we want that version, universal enlightenment, then it requires, in my view (and I am wrong, at some point in time in the future I am wrong. I think I'm right now. I have enough history around me and I think I'm smart enough and compassionate enough together to figure out broadly what's right. More specifically, as it gets drilled down, I don't have the information or the intelligence to specifically answer technological questions, social questions, whatever. Broadly, I think I'm right, but I'm not right forever. At some point in the future, at some point in space time, everything I think is going to be wrong. Every single thing, and that's true of you too. Every human being. Every single thing you have ever thought, every decision you've ever made, has been wrong. We are all, in fact, the sum total of our wrong choices. This is all a way of saying you can enjoy Better Caul Saul. To enjoy Better Call Saul, of course, it doesn't make sense to watch it if you're not going to enjoy it. Watching it to get made at it, you're getting pleasure somewhere else. And at the end of the day, the pleasure's at others' expense because what are you going to do? You're going to go online like I have a million times and kick people in the dick and say, "Ha! Fuck you. This show is stupid, and you're dumb for liking it." That's the pleasure I get out of it, and that's at someone else's expense as all pleasure is.

What makes a decision right or wrong? It's not defined until afterwards. It's only retrospectively known because all time has already happened. Everything has already happened. Everything has already happened. And when I say everything, I mean not just in your life, I mean the lives of all beings to exist or ever will exist. So you can enjoy Better Call Saul, but you see the way people are defensive about the show and see the way they get mad about it—and even if they're not mad, the way they insist on its greatness. It's because they have decided that instead of acknowledging the lack at the heart of prestige as a concept, instead of saying, "Aw, this is sad that now we have to get our real artistic nourishment from something this banalized"—It's banalized! It has to be, because it's commercial. It has to be banalized—"I have to try so hard to squeeze meaning out of it not for my enjoyment of the show but to convince other people and myself that watching this is actually good." It's not necessarily bad. It's not going to doom you to like it in that way. But it implies attachment to something that is degraded without acknowledging and recognizing the degradation. And without the ability to recognize the degradation, you cannot act in a way in your life to move away from degradation in your interpersonal relationships, in your preferences, what you do with your time, and what you think politics should be and how you should act on political beliefs. If prestige TV is good enough, then why do you need to change anything?

So commercial art is bad?

No. No art is bad. Every individual's relationship to a piece of art is completely individualized, and it's a result of translations. All art is translation. All existence is translation—your brain literally translating to you through language what is happening to it, first in senses, then in symbols, then in words: words to yourself and then words to others. At every level, the translation breaks down. There is loss between every level of translation. By the time you're trying to express an idea through art, you're way down here. You're so degraded. But if you're talented enough and enough people see it and you're collaborating with others and you make something together, because collaboration, depending on the art form and the project, helps signal boost and bring together individual insights and individual talents, and it creates something.

There's something to it. There's a spark to all art. It's just either the talent was not there to express it fully, or it was a piece of cynical dogshit. But even the cynical dogshit will have things in it that might be enjoyable. You can watch a piece of cynical dogshit with the right frame of mind and enjoy it. The danger is when you mistake the shadows for the figures, and that is what prestige television does. If we just accepted, "Yeah, TV, it's the idiot box," the shows could be the same, have the same stuff, and it would be fine. But a culture that requires television to be good is one that has not acknowledged its barriers . . . .

Plato's stuff, I never really got until now. Now I get it. Gnosticism, I never really got. I feel like I get it. And of course I get it less now than I did yesterday, and I will get it less tomorrow than I do today. My task is to get back, to remember that moment, remember what I knew then, and try to find it again. The way to do that is by daily acts by the Eightfold Path, by the Path of the Beam. What that really means is not just I'm going to say, "Epic path of the beam," when I see a fucking Stephen King reference. It means my every action informed by the knowledge of what is there—the imminence behind reality, the real universe beyond the demiurgical one—and then trying to get there. That means these reading projects are not about learning something. It's about re-learning something, because you don't know anything. You only have echoing, clanging notions in your head. A lot of them contradict each other. The only way to thread them together in a way to make them useful is to sit with them. And that is not something that anything we do encourages. Not something anything in our culture encourages, is sitting with these questions. Existential materialism, whatever you want to call it. Gnosticism, whatever you guys want to say . . . .

Gnosticism says this is a degraded shadow realm. It is. It's a degraded shadow realm of material reality, but we have to work with it. How do we work with it? How do we thread it? How do we push it in a direction that leads toward the chance for as many people as possible to achieve transcendence and direct it back to themselves in the future and to everyone else who can hear them in their lives and people around them? It's by resolving contradiction, because contradiction is at the heart of existence. No and yes. The universe is yes, and it's always there. It is outside of space and time. The world is no, and we are all—every person, every being in the universe, every photon, every chain of chemicals, anything—those things are all no's. Those are different levels of rejecting. And the thing is, there aren't that many of them. But there doesn't need to be, because yes exists outside of space and time. It is the accumulation of no's over this endless expanse, they are accumulated in actual reality, this world. And you've gotta get back to yes.

I say that and you hear it, and it's like, "What does that mean?" And for me, these words, "getting back to yes," they're freighted with my memory of this experience. You are only hearing my words retell it, which is fraudulence, as Nietzsche points out. All language is a lie. All I can do is use my talents—to such extent that they exist—and my will, my morality, my intellect, to try to push in the direction of the good.

So that's Better Call Saul.

#matt christman #better call saul #diamat #dialectical materialism #prestige TV #capitalism #marxism #LSD #chapo #chapo trap house

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you-get-to-exhale-now-cyrus · 6 years

Text

Cyrus’ Dictionary

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Summary: Cyrus has always been good with words; there’s a reason English is his favorite subject. But with TJ, he seems to be at a loss for words. When they get paired up for a summer assignment, Cyrus slowly starts to build a new dictionary. One that involves TJ and everything they do together. Along the way, maybe he’ll find the words to tell him how he feels.

Chapter 20 (Epilogue): Love

Word Count: 5280

Read on AO3

Candles were on the table, glowing brightly in the late afternoon. Utensils were set out at all the places at the table, and a banner hung from two poles that were in the ground.

Celebrating Ten Years!

TJ followed Cyrus into his backyard; it truly hadn’t changed over the years. It was hard to believe it had really been ten years since he’d graduated high school, but here he was, celebrating all the time that had passed. The big celebration was held at the school during homecoming week, but the Goodmans, ever involved in the school’s activities, decided to host a smaller party at their house. It was mostly for Cyrus and his close friends, but friends from each of their respective colleges decided to tag along for the ride.

“Wow, I haven’t been here in, like, forever,” TJ commented, letting Cyrus lead the way through the crowd.

“Hasn’t changed much has it?” he asked, offering a soft smile. That hadn’t changed either. Cyrus still had the same cute smile that he had all through high school and into college.

TJ smiled, giving his hand a squeeze. “Nope,”

“And she’s so cute, except ever since we got her, Piper’s been exceptionally unfriendly,” Andi chuckled, sitting down with Amber and Jonah.

“So how many cats do you have again?” Jonah asked.

“Three,” the girls answered in unison.

“Wow, you really are lesbians,” he noted, the group bursting out into laughter.

Amber and Andi had bought an apartment not too long ago. They didn’t plan on getting any pets, but when they found a box of kittens outside the complex, Andi begged Amber to let her keep them. Amber always says that she ‘hates the rotten little weasels’ but Andi knows that she would actually do anything to protect them.

Both girls ended up going to the same college, unbeknownst to themselves until they revealed their decisions in April.

“Okay, no matter what happens, things are going to be okay,” Andi had assured her, giving her hand a squeeze.

Amber had nodded, letting out a slow breath. “You first,”

“Okay,” she started, staring down at her feet. All of a sudden this seemed a lot harder than previously thought. “I’ve decided that I’m going to be going to Savannah College of Art and Design,”

Amber’s jaw dropped. “Shut up,” she squeaked, “shut up! Are you serious?”

Andi opened her mouth to say more but she was immediately cut off by Amber.

“That’s where I’m going!” she was nearly screaming at this point, other people in the park started to stare at her. And the next thing Andi knew, her feet were off the ground and Amber’s arms were around her.

Andi couldn’t say anything, she was in complete shock. At one point, she did try to say something along the lines of ‘this is so exciting!’ but ended up just bursting into tears.

They roomed together for the first few years, but then decided to get an apartment together in their junior year. And even after they both graduated, Andi with her degree in graphic design and Amber with her degree in architecture, they stayed in the same apartment. Cats and everything.

“I’m just saying that I don’t want to have to give in to your pouting if you see another stray cat,” Amber warned, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to say no to Andi if she tried.

“Oh please,” Andi gave her a nudge, “so, how are you and Walker?”

Jonah shrugged, taking a sip of his drink. “We’re alright. Long distance, you know,”

Jonah and Walker were still together, but since Walker was offered the job to design some stage sets over in New York City, Jonah hasn’t seen him for a few months. Money wasn’t exactly something he could burn to see his boyfriend, but he did whatever he could. They video chatted almost every day, and Walker always sent Jonah some drawings of him every now and then.

“You miss him,” Andi noted, placing her hand on top of his, “but he misses you too. And he loves you a lot,”

Jonah nodded, downing the rest of his drink quickly. “Yeah, I know,”

Before any of them could start crying, Buffy and Marty entered, hand in hand, before she started running towards her friends.

“You guys,” she drawled, tapping her fingers on the table, “how are you?”

Andi pulled her into a hug; how she’d missed her. “It’s been too long!” she exclaimed, pulling back, “how are you, what’s new?”

Buffy smirked, a few laughs escaping her mouth. She glanced at Marty, who gave her a wink before continuing his conversation with TJ.

“Well,” she sighed dramatically, putting her hand over her chest, “since you asked. . .”

Andi’s jaw dropped, shaking Buffy by her shoulders. “Oh my god, you got engaged?”

Buffy nodded excitedly, which resulted in a lot more hugging and a few tears from Andi. “Oh my gosh, tell me everything! Did he take you to your favorite restaurant? Did he have a speech prepared for you? Did the whole restaurant clap for you guys?”

“Actually,” she hesitated a little, offering a small smile, “I was the one who proposed,”

If Andi was surprised before, she was nearly paralyzed with shock now. “You proposed?” she squeaked, “that’s. . .actually very like you. Forward. I’m really happy for you guys. Have you started thinking about the wedding?”

Buffy shrugged, glancing over at Marty. “I think we both want something in the fall, but other than that, we haven’t really talked about it,”

“Regardless,” Andi beamed, “I’m so incredibly happy for you both,”

“Hey, Buffy!” Marty called, waving her over to the basketball court that was set up in the driveway.

“Love calls,” she laughed, giving Andi a final hug before heading off with Marty. That left TJ alone, so he wandered over to the bar, getting himself a drink and wandering around the backyard.

“There you are,” Cyrus nudged his shoulder, “I haven’t seen you all night,”

TJ smiled, slinging an arm around Cyrus. “I’ve been catching up with Marty. You know he and Buffy are engaged?”

Cyrus nodded, smiling to himself. “Buffy actually had me help her plan it out, so I knew before even Marty did,” he chuckled, earning a quiet gasp from TJ.

“And you kept this information from me? I feel betrayed,” he swooned, placing a hand on his forehead.

“TJ, duuuude, stop being so cute with him,” someone called out, snickering and holding up a camera.

TJ rolled his eyes, offering a small smile to the camera. “Don’t you drunks have anything better to do than bother us?” he joked, giving the guy with the camera, Aaron, a gentle shove.

“I’m going to go and catch up with Jonah,” Cyrus mumbled, pressing a quick kiss to TJ’s cheek and heading off.

“You guys are the worst,” he said, but he was smiling. His friends from college, Aaron, Wyatt, and Rowan, tagged along to the celebration because they were working on their, as they so delicately put it, ‘gay-ass project’. Basically, they were documenting every moment that they could of Cyrus and TJ.

After senior year of high school. Cyrus ended up going to Stanford to study journalism with a minor in cinematography, while TJ stayed back and went to University of Utah, where he was offered a full time scholarship for playing basketball. They tried to make the distance work, they really did, but one day over video chat, they decided that they needed a break. Just until they were out of college.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Cyrus really didn’t like Stanford. From the insane amount of work, to not having TJ by his side, it was, in short, a bad experience. After his freshman year, he decided to transfer. And while he would never tell TJ that a part of the decision was because of him, it was. He realized that he didn’t need to go to a fancy college in order to get a good education. Plus, it was going to be nice to be closer to home.

Cyrus had texted TJ that there might be a familiar face on campus and, in short, TJ harassed all his friends in the middle of the night.

“Get the hell up, assholes,” he flicked on the lights, earning groans and curses from his roommates.

“TJ, I love you man, but I swear to god if you keep me awake for more than a minute, I will rip your fucking throat out,” Wyatt mumbled, pressing a pillow to his face.

“But Cyrus is coming here!” TJ crooned, and that seemed to perk at least Rowan up.

“Isn’t he that kid that you dated in high school? The one you’re always practically drooling over?” he mocked, making kissy faces.

“Fuck off,” TJ muttered, tossing a pillow at his face, “regardless, I don’t want you assholes messing with him, got it?”

“Oh, Cyrus, I missed you so much! I look at pictures of you before I go to sleep!” Aaron wailed dramatically, pressing a hand to his chest. TJ flushed red.

“That’s. . .that’s not-”

“Oh, Cyrus! You’re the only thing I talk or think about, which is why I’m failing my econ class,” Wyatt crooned, batting his eyes towards Rowan.

“Shut up, you know that class is-”

“Oh, Cyrus, I love you so much! I have never loved another!” Rowan exclaimed, and the boys doubled over in laughter.

“I hate you all,” TJ mumbled, flicking the lights off.

The day that Cyrus stepped foot on campus, Aaron, Wyatt, and Rowan made it their mission to find him before TJ did. Considering TJ talked about him all the time, and he had a wall of pictures that was mostly of him and Cyrus, it didn’t take long for them to find the boy.

“Hey!” Wyatt called, approaching a shorter brunet boy, “are you Cyrus?”

He eyed the group suspiciously, furrowing his brows. “I. . .yeah?”

“God, you really do look just like how TJ said,” Aaron mumbled, running a hand through his hair.

Cyrus perked up at the mention of TJ. “TJ? Is he here now? Can I see him? Does he talk about me?”

“Wow, the homo is strong with this one,” Rowan commented, “I mean, the homo is strong with all of us too, don’t worry,”

Cyrus chuckled; he already felt more at home here than Stanford. “Do you know where he is?”

Wyatt nodded. “He has econ right now,” he grinned, “but we can show you around, if you like. You should see our room,” he declared, and the other boys grabbed his hands and started dragging him towards their room.

TJ sighed, running a tired hand through his hair. Not the greatest way that test could have gone, but not the worst, by far. He reviewed all the questions on the way up the stairs to his room, unlocking it only to be greeted by a room of darkness.

“What the hell? Did Rowan burn the lights again?” TJ muttered, feeling around on the wall for the switch.

“No, asshole,” Rowan snapped.

When TJ did find the lights, it took him a moment to adjust, but when he did, he had never been happier. Cyrus was standing in the middle of the room, and he looked like he was about to burst with excitement.

“Underdog!” he exclaimed, rushing towards him and engulfing him in a hug, all the while Aaron was recording from his place on the bed. He didn’t really care if TJ knew.

“I missed you,” Cyrus whispered into his hair. He was so happy to see him, he felt like he could cry.

“Reunion of the gays,” Wyatt commented from the side. TJ chose to ignore that remark.

“How long are you here for?” TJ asked, finally setting him down. Wyatt was cracking up behind the camera, and TJ shot him a look.

“Oh, did I forget to tell you?” Cyrus teased, a hint of flirtiness in his tone, “I transferred here,”

Error 404: TJ has stopped working. “Wait, what? Why?”

He shrugged. “I just. . .Stanford was great don’t get me wrong, but I just. . .I missed being here. Closer to home. Plus, I didn’t like all the stress of an ‘ivy school’. I don’t need to go to a fancy school to get my degree,”

TJ grinned so wide he felt like his face was going to split. “Do you have everything you need? A room and bed and all that?”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Wow TJ, you’re right. We don’t have an extra bed in here. Guess he’ll have to share yours,”

TJ flushed a deep shade of red, shooting him a glare. “That’s not what I meant,” he said through gritted teeth, before turning to Cyrus with a smile.

“Yeah, I’m all set. But. . .maybe we can catch up?” Cyrus asked, a hopeful tone in his words.

TJ lit up immediately. “Yes! There’s actually a really nice coffee shop downtown, if you wanna go tonight?”

Cyrus nodded, giving his hand a squeeze. “It’s a date,” he said, before bouncing out of the room in order to go get settled in.

TJ watched him leave before turning to his roommates. “I fucking swear if you make any more jokes I’ll kill you guys,”

Rowan laughed, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Note taken. But dude, you got a date with him!”

“Maybe now we won’t have to keep listening to you talk about him all the time,” Wyatt mumbled, earning a high five from Aaron, who was trying to balance the camera.

“I don’t talk about him all the time,” TJ countered, crossing his arms.

All the boys looked at him. “Bet,” they said simultaneously.

TJ huffed, kicking his shoes off. “All I’m saying is that he’s not the only thing I talk about,”

Wyatt scoffed. “You literally woke us up in the middle of the night the other day in order to tell us that he was coming to campus,”

TJ bit his lip, trying not to give in to their antics. “Whatever. I need to study for econ,”

“I’m shocked,” Wyatt mumbled, “you were probably thinking about Cyrus,”

TJ turned around. “For your information I was focusing very hard. It was really hard,”

“That’s what she said,” Wyatt hollered, earning a high five from Rowan.

“Fuck you, all of you,” TJ grunted, pulling out papers from his folder.

“You wish,”

“I hate you guys,”

A week after their first date, TJ’s roommates were at least happy that they didn’t have to listen to the same stories about Cyrus in high school.

“So, TJ,” Aaron, started, bringing up the camera, “how does it feel to be dating the one and only Cyrus Goodman?”

TJ chuckled, nudging the camera a little. “Well since you asked, I’ll tell you,” he played along, “it’s great. I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy since we dated in high school,”

Rowan joined in from his bed, looking up from his work. “Mr. Kippen, any juicy details you’d like to share with our viewers?”

TJ hesitated a little, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small, black velvet box. Aaron nearly dropped the camera, and Wyatt was just saying ‘holy fucking shit’ over and over again.

TJ opened up the box, revealing a small ring inside and he showed it to the camera. “Got it a week after we started dating,” he said with a smile, putting it back in his pocket.

“This is some Jim Halpert level shit, Kippen,” Wyatt scoffed, shaking his head, “but maybe now you’ll finally lock him down and stop complaining to us every time he looks at another boy,”

“I am not that jealous,” TJ insisted, pushing the camera aside.

“Right, okay,” Wyatt mumbled, turning back to his work.

He never knew when he wanted to propose; all he knew was that he wanted to do it at some point. He’d know when the right time was.

“-and I was the one that proposed!” he head Buffy say for the thousandth time that night, but he smiled anyways. He really was happy for her and Marty; they completed each other like pieces of a puzzle.

“TJ, wave to the camera,” Aaron cooed, coming up beside him.

He instead decided to flip them off, smirking. “When are you asshats gonna leave me alone,” he wondered aloud.

“That depends, when are you going to get your head out of your ass and propose?” Wyatt countered, a tiny grin poking at his lips.

“Hey TJ!” Cyrus called his name, frantically waving him over from where he was by the tree.

“Duty calls,” TJ muttered, finishing off the rest of his soda and heading off to where Cyrus was. He was hunched over looking at something that looked like it was a hundred years old.

“Norman was digging holes for the poles to hang up the sign,” Leslie explained, “and he came across this,”

Cyrus was bouncing on his toes, he was so excited. “Don’t you remember? It’s the time capsule that we buried back in high school!”

All the memories flooded back, as Leslie excused herself to go tend to some of the other guests. He remembered the day they buried it, but came up a little short on what’s inside. “Well, open it!”

Cyrus hesitated over the hinges. “Right now?”

“When else are we going to get the chance?” TJ asked, giving him a knowing look, and that was all it took for Cyrus to unlock the hinges and open it up slowly. He pulled out a piece of paper and unfolded it, nearly laughing when he showed it to TJ.

“Best muffin recipe ever,” TJ read, skimming over the ingredients, “chocolate chocolate chip muffin? Lies. The best is-”

“-blueberry macadamia,” Cyrus finished for him, folding up the paper again and setting it down. He pulled out a photo of the two of them, decked out in Christmas gear.

“Remember when Amber framed that?” TJ asked, bumping his shoulder.

Cyrus nodded. “How could I forget,” he chuckled, fishing out a bunch more pictures from the container. They looked like children, but then again, they were children. TJ’s hairstyle hadn’t changed, and neither had Cyrus’ smile. They were just a little bit older now, but things were mostly the same.

Cyrus then pulled out his journal and nearly laughed when he flipped through the entries. “Wow, my handwriting was so much worse in high school,” he chuckled, “then again, I guess I write a lot more now,”

TJ took his out of the box as well, rereading through the entries. Even in high school, he felt the same way about Cyrus as he did now. “Do you remember that list of words you wrote?”

Cyrus didn’t even nod, flipping to the back of his journal instead. And sure enough the list of words is there. He had a picture of it, but it got so cluttered in his camera roll, which was filled with pictures from vacations and assignments he’d sent to other classmates.

TJ read over a few of them, only being able to remember a handful, but that didn’t matter. He missed how close they were in high school, and after a while, they were finally back at that stage again. And he loved it.

Cyrus read over the words a few more times before he shut the journal, placing all the items back in the box. “Ah, memories,” he chuckled, pushing the box into TJ’s hand, “I’ll be back,” he said, getting up and heading into the house.

TJ smiled, shifting things around in the box in order to fit his journal in there. When he did so, a small polaroid corner poked out from underneath all the other photos. Digging it up from the bottom of the box, he thought he was going to cry when he saw it. It was the picture that they’d taken the day they’d made the time capsule. TJ remembered how surprised Cyrus had been when he kissed him, and even though the photo was a little blurry, it was by far his favorite. He flipped it over to the back, and saw both of their names on there, even with little hearts.

“Teeeeejaaay, my man,” Aaron slurred, wobbling over to the tree, “how goes it in the Cyrus department?”

TJ rolled his eyes, standing up and trying to steady the boy in front of him. “You’re drunk as hell, man,” he informed him, handing off the camera to Rowan, who at least looked less drunk.

“No I’m not,” he laughed, wiping tears from his eyes, “whatcha got there?” he asked, poking the picture in his hand.

“Oh, uh, Cyrus and I were looking through a time capsule we buried in high school,” he said lamely, giving the camera finger guns.

“Could you guys be any more romantic?” Rowan chuckled, shaking his head, “dude. . .it’s a sign,”

“For what?” TJ groaned, knowing the answer.

“For-”

“-what the hell is up, dicks,” Wyatt slurred, stumbling over to the boys with two beers in his hands.

“Okay, no, enough of that,” TJ said, swiftly taking the alcohol out of his hands and setting the bottles down, “everyone hates when you’re drunk because you’re insanely loud and rude, so ease up on that, okay?”

Wyatt pouted like a child, crossing his arms. “You’re not my mom,” he mumbled, tugging out a chair and taking a seat in it, “what are you talking about anyways?”

“We were saying that TJ needs to propose tonight,” Rowan supplied clearly, ever the sober one.

Wyatt lit up, clapping his hands together and laughing so hard he started coughing. “Yes, dude! Love is in the air, and there are. . .two Rowans,” he fumbled with his words, reaching his hands out.

“Alright, let’s get you some water,” Rowan muttered, shaking his head and shutting the camera off, “but seriously, think about it, TJ,” he said, before dragging Wyatt towards the cooler of water.

Aaron was leaning against the tree, looking almost deep in thought. “What do you think, Aaron?”

He shut his eyes, and said, very sagely, “Do you think it’s called sand between it’s in between the sea and the land?”

TJ blinks a few times, shaking his head. “No, dumbass, about the proposal,”

“Oh, uh, go for it?” he shrugs, “he obviously loves you a lot, like, full homo. So then you guys can be homo squared,”

TJ sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Gee, thanks, man, that really helped,” he mumbled, stuffing the photo in his pocket and leaning back against the tree. He saw Cyrus heading out of the house, and decided to go join up with him. Aaron was still hanging around him, trying to handle the camera without dropping it.

He took a seat down at the table, chatting with Jonah a little bit while he wanted for some of the noise to die down a little. At some point, he was ready to stand up and clink his fork against his glass, but Leslie beat him to it.

“Alright everyone!” her voice echoed through the microphone, “we’re going to be playing some music, so let’s all get up and dance!” she set the microphone down, and wandered over to the speaker, connecting her phone with it, and selecting a playlist of songs that were popular when the kids were in high school. First one up was Shut Up and Dance by Walk the Moon.

“Oh, I love this song!” Cyrus exclaimed, dragging TJ towards the open section of the yard where the rest of his friends were dancing. They screamed along to the lyrics, bumping and jostling one another in a vague attempt to dance. Wyatt, who had returned after downing a bottle of water, was finally able to not see double, but each time he moved he felt like he was going to be sick, so Aaron and Rowan put him on camera duty. He pulled up a chair and tried to balance the camera.

After a few other songs that were upbeat and lively, the song shifted to an Ed Sheeran song, earning a few groans from the crowd.

“Ed Sheeran this, Ed Sheeran that,” Jonah muttered, walking over to get a drink for himself.

Cyrus took TJ’s hand, tugging him a little closer. And in that moment, it was like TJ was back in high school at prom, placing his hands on the other boy’s waist and staying side to side. Cyrus smile was so endearing, but he couldn’t seem to focus on that warming feeling his smile always gave him. All that he could think about was the storm of butterflies in his stomach, and all the snickering of his friends who were giving him weird looks.

“TJ?” Cyrus broke him out of his daze, “you okay?”

“Hm?” he hummed, blinking a few times, “oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m just. . .thinking,” he mumbled. It wasn’t a complete lie, at least.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Cyrus offered, a shy smile tugging at his lips.

TJ didn’t say anything for a moment, glancing over at Wyatt, who gave him a thumbs up. “Ah, one sec,” he rushed out, heading towards the phone that controlled the music and selecting another song to play.

“Owl City, really TJ?” Amber groaned, shaking her head in disbelief, “you’re stuck at sixteen, I swear,”

TJ ignored her remarks, making his way back to Cyrus. “Do you remember when we went stargazing in high school? And. . .and they played this song?”

Cyrus nodded, albeit confused. “Yeah, you really liked that song,” he noted, taking TJ’s hand in his.

“I remember I could barely look up at the stars. You were lying down beside me and I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. Because none of the stars in the sky could even compare to you,” he admitted, giving his hand a squeeze.

“Aww, that’s cute!” Aaron shouted from the table, earning a glare from TJ.

Cyrus laughed shyly, ducking his head to hide his growing blush. “Aw, TJ, that’s really sweet,”

His nerves were too strong for him to smile at the moment, taking a step closer to Cyrus. A couple people had glanced over at them, some of them even halting dancing. “Ever since we started dating, you’ve been my stars, my moon, my everything, and even before then,”

A chorus of aws filled the air, as more people turned their gaze towards TJ and Cyrus.

“Oh my god, this idiot’s really going to do it,” Amber chuckled, excitement bubbling up inside of her.

Cyrus thought his cheeks were going to burst from smiling so hard. “I. . .that’s, like, really sweet,” he mumbled, glancing around the crowd.

“And I, uh,” he stammered, pausing. He could very well back out of this right now, things could stay the same. Things could stay comfortable and safe and under control, like they’d been for years. He tried to concentrate, absentmindedly placing his free hand in his pocket, and clutching the box. He could feel the smooth polaroid picture in there too, and he began to calm down, trying to refocus his thoughts.

“And I know I’m not the best with words, that’s your department,” he chuckled lightly, “but, I can try,”

Cyrus raised his brows slightly, the smile never leaving his face. “Wait what’s happening,” he chuckled, looking around for some sort of hint. TJ took a deep breath, and Wyatt started walking towards where everyone was, attempting to appear more sober than he actually was.

“I know I tell you all the time that I love you, but I truly don’t think I’ve ever felt like this about anybody, ever. I don’t even think I can put it into words, a testament to what I said earlier,” he chuckled, and a few people around him joined in with laughter, “…but, god, for lack of better words, you’re everything. Even when you think that what you’re doing isn’t enough, it is. It always is. Everything you’ve done for me and for so many other people is more than enough…it’s time for me to do something for you,”

Now Cyrus looked more confused than ever. He glanced around at his friends, who all looked like they know something he didn’t. “What are you doing?” he asked softly, a gentle smile still on his face.

There was no backing out now. Rowan came up from behind and gave him a quick pat on the back before scurrying away. TJ hesitantly pulled the box out of his pocket, fumbling with it a little as he tried to open it.

“Oh my god, what are you doing?” Cyrus squeaked, tears brimming in his eyes.

TJ chuckled weakly, kneeling down. “Doing something for you. . .for us,” he said, his voice threatening to break. The moment was filled with tension and affection, so much so that even Wyatt didn’t dare ruin it with some sort of noise. Cyrus was crying, and people around him were also wiping tears away.

“Cyrus Goodman,” TJ started, cracking open the box to reveal the ring, “will you do me the honor, and biggest favor of my life, of becoming my. . .husband?” he asked, offering a gentle smile. The kind that he reserved only for Cyrus.

Cyrus opened his mouth to say something, but nothing coherent came out; he was so speechless that for once, all the words that he could usually think of with ease, all left his mind. He nodded vigorously, taking a step towards TJ and letting him slide the ring on. It was simple, but beautiful; a simple silver band with a moon and a few stars engrained in it. People all around were cheering, Wyatt loudest of all, who was so excited that he grabbed Rowan and planted a kiss firmly on his cheek.

“You’re so drunk,” Rowan mumbled trying to shake the blush on his cheeks.

“Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re cute,” Wyatt mumbled, his words connected through slurs.

Cyrus threw his arms around TJ, never wanting to let go. TJ laughed lightly, carding his fingers through the other boy’s hair. “You okay?”

Cyrus nodded, peeking his head up to see him. “Yes, yes, oh my god, I love you,” he blurted out, the words spilling out quickly.

TJ grinned, pressing his forehead against Cyrus’. “I love you too,” he said softly, leaning forward and capturing his lips in a kiss. His first with his fiance. He couldn’t believe he got to use that word now.

And maybe later when Rowan, Aaron, and Wyatt all showed the couple their ‘documentary’ of their relationship, TJ was grateful that they had bugged him all those times about Cyrus. Because it ended up being one of the best things he’d seen. From the nights where he was so drunk all he could say was ‘Cyrus’ over and over again, to the time he’d first shown them the ring, it was beautiful. TJ made a mental note to thank his friends later, after they’d finished watching it. For now, he was perfectly content with sitting on the couch, Cyrus by his side, and a ring on his finger.

Wyatt and Rowan were howling with laughter when they got to rewatch the proposal, even though it had literally just happened.

“You guys are so drunk,” TJ noted, shaking his head. He stuck his hand in his pocket, and felt the picture in there, smiling to himself. He reached over and grabbed a pen off of the table and took the picture out of his pocket, scribbling something on the back and handing it to Cyrus.

love: being with you until the end of time

Tag List: @shortstackofpeaches || @seanna313 || @geekingbeautytx || @heavenlybyers || @ginnychrises|| @wlwandimack || @giocondasstuff || @lemonboytyrus || @adorejrizzle || @swingsetboys || @ifellintotyrushell || @idk-dude-17 || @rbf-lesbian || @marianara-sauce || @kaptainjinxz || @alex-poster-pizz || @quietmarvel || @blueberry-my-hero-macadamia || @broadwayitbitch || @tjsmuffin || @tjthekippen || @idpleasesir || @hi-hello-hey-there || @bingewatchingenthusiast|| @booklove-2 || @illbeyourreasonwhy || @birdiesandflowers || @whistlepunk || @phinallyjackie || @thedampjofangirl || @tyrus4eva || @tj-is-a-lemony-boy || @tj-goodman-bittersweet-boy || @dis-app-oin-tme-nt || @nessarinthegay || @breadisticks || @typewriter-riz || @gobletofash || @bluemuffinboy || @sofuuh || @cheesystars || @tjmuffin || @multifandom-bxitch || @allylovessadie || @hithatsmyname || @tyrusinarush || @tyrus-lookback || @gaycefulwords || @theobligatedklutz || @bambikippen ||

#andi mack #tyrus #tyrus fic #tj kippen #cyrus goodman #cyrus' dictionary #my fics #ambi #wonah #muffy

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earnestscribblr · 5 years

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Jared Harris Fest: Without a Trace, Part 1

TITLE: Without a Trace

EPISODE: 202 - “Revelations”

ROLE: Father Walker

SUMMARY: A priest from a poor area of town goes missing after a car accident in the city. He needs to be found quickly because he is in need of a liver transplant, and a donor liver has just become available but can't wait for long.

YEAR: 2003

Honestly, I haven’t heard a word he’s said to Agent Anthony LaPaglia in this opening scene. Too obsessed with the American accent + glasses + patented adorable tooth gap.

Upon further listening I think he’s trying to do a vague New York-ish accent? Though honestly it’s coming off a little bit more Boston to me (”tired” is “teyeid," for example). A for effort though, sir.

Our boy’s credit! So proud.

ANYWAY, the plot so far is that Father Walker here is Father Missing Priest’s assistant, and Father Missing Priest was acting normally until recently.

Agent Anthony LaPaglia insinuates that Father Missing Priest was up to no good with a kid:

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Well, since you were working so closely with him, you would know if he was in trouble or felt threatened.

FATHER WALKER: Threatened? By what?

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Parishioner? An angry parent?

FATHER WALKER: Ah. No.

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Father Walker, in my experience when an adult male goes missing, he’s usually done something to cause it.

Father Walker is not a fan of this idea, as you can tell by his skeptical forehead wrinkles.

He politely tells Agent Anthony LaPaglia to buzz off so he can go teach communion class.

Plot happens. We find out that Father Missing Priest was informed by his doctor that a liver transplant was his last hope and that he disappeared after being called in by an NYPD precinct to give Last Rites to the victim of a car accident. He also has a mysterious hollow book stuffed with money, so you know that can’t be good.

Now the agents are talking to some teens in the youth group/after school program/what have you when who should walk in but Father Jared Harris Walker!

(I legit got way excited. Yay, he appears MORE THAN ONCE IN THE EPISODE as a guest star!)

The agents ask the teens if they’ve ever seen Father Missing Priest argue with anyone as Father Walker looms benevolently over them.

They appear reluctant to answer, so Agent Anthony LaPaglia asks him to step out of the room.

Then they get me right in my lapsed Catholic feels:

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: I don’t think those boys were comfortable talking in front of a priest.

FATHER WALKER: I certainly wasn’t at their age. Were you?

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: What makes you assume I was a Catholic?

FATHER WALKER: You have the disillusionment of someone who used to believe.

OUCH.

More plot: Father Missing Priest argued with a lady who wants him to stay away from her son. She comes in to talk to the agents and refuses to tell them what they were arguing about but insists Father Missing Priest was not abusing the boy. The agents have a meeting and discover that Father Missing Priest was flying to Fresno, CA regularly and that the money they found in the hollowed out book had traces of meth on it (“...And central California is the meth capital of America”).

THEN!

Father Jared Harris Walker gets to celebrate mass!

Well, part of mass. He introduces Father Who Cares from a sister church to give a prayer which cues one of the teens from earlier to run out of mass followed by an agent. The teen reveals that he saw Father Missing Priest meet a shady-looking mystery man outside a run-down hotel.

Interesting side note I’ve noticed: almost every priest (except for our fave Father Walker) is shot with their face half in shadow. Here’s the cardinal and Father In-House Attorney:

And here’s Father Missing Priest aka Hector Elizondo:

This episode was filmed in the midst of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, so it makes sense as a narrative choice since shooting a character this way is usually a subtle sign in cinematic language that they’ve got something to hide (yay, my film degree comes in handy for something!).

Plot twist! Father Who Cares is sleeping with the mom who argued with Father Missing Priest. They’re busted at a cheap motel by the agents who were tailing her. OH SNAP!

Father Walker tells Agent Anthony LaPaglia that he and Father Missing Priest had discussed the situation, but he didn’t know the name of the priest involved.

LOOK AT THAT PRECIOUS ANGEL BABY SWEET INNOCENT FACE

On a related cinematography/cinematic language note to earlier, here’s Father Walker talking to Father Missing Priest in a flashback WITH A LITERAL LIGHT SHINING OVER HIS HEAD WHILE SAYING THE WORD “GOD.”

To sum up their convo: Father Walker feels that this is wrong wrong WRONG and Father Missing Priest is all, “Nobody’s perfect. Who am I to judge?” Father Walker is puzzled by this waffling.

Back in the present, Agent Anthony LaPaglia informs Father Walker that Father Missing Priest may have been on and/or dealing meth.

Say what!?

God, HIS SWEET BABY ANGEL FACE in this scene!

I’m DYING.

What’s that you say? Oh, PLOT! Yes.

Father Walker says there’s no way that Father Missing Priest was on meth - he was with him every day, he’d know. And...

I’m distracted by Jared Harris’s face in this scene again. JAYSUS.

THE OVER THE GLASSES LOOK I CAN’T EVEN

“Father [Missing Priest] believes in grace.”

“Drugs don’t hold a candle to that.”

Final wrap-up bit of plot: agents find an ex-con who was making meth “in a dumpy house outside of Jacksonville” with Father Missing Priest (before he was a priest, natch) twenty years earlier. They got busted; ex-con got caught, Father Missing Priest legged it with their $38,000 in meth money. Father Missing Priest was visiting ex-con in the pen in Fresno on those mysterious trips and helped ex-con settle in the run-down hotel in New York when he got out.

Turns out the car accident where he gave Last Rites to the woman reminded him of the fact that he killed a high school football star in a hit and run when fleeing from the Jacksonville meth lab those many years ago, so he ditched his priestly life and headed to Florida to apologize to the football star’s parents. Father Missing Priest turns down the offer of the new liver that will save his life in order to speak to the parents and “wash this stain from [his] heart.”

VERDICT: Was not expecting quite so much Jared Harris in this episode! And it was a refreshing change to see him play a precious cinnamon roll of a character (THAT FACE). Three out of five Croziers.

#Jared Harris Fest #Jared Harris #Without a Trace #long post

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jaredharrisfest · 5 years

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Without a Trace, Part 1

Originally posted 5/21/19

TITLE: Without a Trace

EPISODE: 202 - “Revelations”

ROLE: Father Walker

YEAR: 2003

Honestly, I haven’t heard a word he’s said to Agent Anthony LaPaglia in this opening scene. Too obsessed with the American accent + glasses + patented adorable tooth gap.

Upon further listening I think he’s trying to do a vague New York-ish accent? Though honestly it’s coming off a little bit more Boston to me (”tired” is “teyeid,“ for example). A for effort though, sir.

Our boy’s credit! So proud.

ANYWAY, the plot so far is that Father Walker here is Father Missing Priest’s assistant, and Father Missing Priest was acting normally until recently.

Agent Anthony LaPaglia insinuates that Father Missing Priest was up to no good with a kid:

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Well, since you were working so closely with him, you would know if he was in trouble or felt threatened.

FATHER WALKER: Threatened? By what?

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Parishioner? An angry parent?

FATHER WALKER: Ah. No.

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: Father Walker, in my experience when an adult male goes missing, he’s usually done something to cause it.

Father Walker is not a fan of this idea, as you can tell by his skeptical forehead wrinkles.

He politely tells Agent Anthony LaPaglia to buzz off so he can go teach communion class.

Now the agents are talking to some teens in the youth group/after school program/what have you when who should walk in but Father Jared Harris Walker!

(I legit got way excited. Yay, he appears MORE THAN ONCE IN THE EPISODE as a guest star!)

The agents ask the teens if they’ve ever seen Father Missing Priest argue with anyone as Father Walker looms benevolently over them.

They appear reluctant to answer, so Agent Anthony LaPaglia asks him to step out of the room.

Then they get me right in my lapsed Catholic feels:

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: I don’t think those boys were comfortable talking in front of a priest.

FATHER WALKER: I certainly wasn’t at their age. Were you?

AGENT ANTHONY LAPAGLIA: What makes you assume I was a Catholic?

FATHER WALKER: You have the disillusionment of someone who used to believe.

OUCH.

More plot: Father Missing Priest argued with a lady who wants him to stay away from her son. She comes in to talk to the agents and refuses to tell them what they were arguing about but insists Father Missing Priest was not abusing the boy. The agents have a meeting and discover that Father Missing Priest was flying to Fresno, CA regularly and that the money they found in the hollowed out book had traces of meth on it (“…And central California is the meth capital of America”).

THEN!

Father Jared Harris Walker gets to celebrate mass!

Interesting side note I’ve noticed: almost every priest (except for our fave Father Walker) is shot with their face half in shadow. Here’s the cardinal and Father In-House Attorney:

And here’s Father Missing Priest aka Hector Elizondo:

Plot twist! Father Who Cares is sleeping with the mom who argued with Father Missing Priest. They’re busted at a cheap motel by the agents who were tailing her. OH SNAP!

Father Walker tells Agent Anthony LaPaglia that he and Father Missing Priest had discussed the situation, but he didn’t know the name of the priest involved.

LOOK AT THAT PRECIOUS ANGEL BABY SWEET INNOCENT FACE

To sum up their convo: Father Walker feels that this is wrong wrong WRONG and Father Missing Priest is all, “Nobody’s perfect. Who am I to judge?” Father Walker is puzzled by this waffling.

Back in the present, Agent Anthony LaPaglia informs Father Walker that Father Missing Priest may have been on and/or dealing meth.

Say what!?

God, HIS SWEET BABY ANGEL FACE in this scene!

I’m DYING.

What’s that you say? Oh, PLOT! Yes.

Father Walker says there’s no way that Father Missing Priest was on meth - he was with him every day, he’d know. And…

I’m distracted by Jared Harris’s face in this scene again. JAYSUS.

THE OVER THE GLASSES LOOK I CAN’T EVEN

“Father [Missing Priest] believes in grace.”

“Drugs don’t hold a candle to that.”

VERDICT: Was not expecting quite so much Jared Harris in this episode! And it was a refreshing change to see him play a precious cinnamon roll of a character (THAT FACE). Three out of five Croziers.

#Without a Trace #2003 #three Croziers #tv series guest star

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madness-of-lost-memories · 5 years

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Tagging Game

I was tagged by @sanhatipal , thanks for the tag! ^_^

Answers under the cut, since it ended up a bit long.

How tall are you? ♠ 157 cm! So, 5'2 inches. There was a time when I thought I'd grow more, but meh, at this point I'm pretty fond of my height (I can fit in pretty much every bath tub in existence like how cool is that).

What colour and style is your hair? ♠ I'm a brunette (shade-wise, "brown chocolate" looks the closest). Since my hair is naturally wavy (lol, apparently a "waviness" level exists; looks like mine is "Wavy 2A", aka the softest one), I pretty much only get it layered and leave it like that. As for length - right now it reaches my upper waist. During the summer, I wear it in a low ponytail. Oh, and I have side-swept bangs. Overall - very low maintenance, lol.

What color are your eyes? ♠ Light green, with a bit of yellow-ish brown around the iris. That said, as most light eyes, they can look a bit blue-ish or grey-ish at times, depending on the light.

Do you wear glasses? ♠ No, though my eyes aren't in a perfect condition (I'm slightly near-sighted + I really tire my eyes these days... years... xD).

Do you wear braces? ♠ No.

What’s your fashion sense? ♠ Erm, a simple one? Primarily skinny jeans + blouses/shirts. Main colours: black, red and white.

Full name? ♠ (H) Elena (of Troy).

When were you born? ♠ June 23rd, 1996 (technically, on the 3rd astronomical summer day here).

Where are you from and where do you live now? ♠ Bulgaria and I still live there.

What school do you go to? ♠ I barely remember anything before "high" school, so I'll talk mainly about that + university.

I went to a "Professional technical school"... Erm, kinda hard to explain to non-eastern european people, but basically a school that both teaches the normal subjects regular (high) schools have + special subjects, connected to a specific course (computer technology, optics, etc.). My course was called (lit. translation) "Cinematography, audio and video systems" and it contained pretty much everything from handling old-school movie projectors, to handling movie cameras, video editing, as well as some basics on sound capturing / editing, etc., etc. When you graduate you get 2 different diplomas and I guess you can skip on going to university, but I actually use what I learned there to earn money and pay my university fees xD

As for university - I study law, which many people here consider to be a “useless” degree, as unless you have solid connections (and relatives that work as lawyers, etc.), getting a job can be rather difficult... Still, I'm going to give it a try the "normal" way (aka via legit interviews, etc.) and we'll see how things will work out.

What kind of student are you? ♠ I was actually the student with the 2nd highest grade in my class, but I wouldn't say I had an interest in high grades in general. I was just scared of failing my teachers' expectations, so I tried my best.

As for university - it really depends on the subject, 'cause civil law is not something I'm too interested in and, naturally, my grades aren't too high xDD I try to prioritize the subjects I like / will need in the future and learn just enough to pass for everything else.

Do you like school? ♠ Yup, overall. My class was kinda split into groups, so there were conflicts, but there were a lot of fun moments too.

Favorite subject? ♠ I'd say Biology and later on - Literature. As for university - Criminal Law and Criminology.

Favorite tv shows? ♠ In no specific order - Victor Ros (Murder Mystery/Thriller), Victoria (Drama/History) and Anne with an E (Drama/Based on a book). As for anime - Psych-Pass, Durarara!! and Pandora Hearts (maybe it's the nostalgia, but I still love it, regardless of it's flaws).

Favorite movie(s)? ♠ At the top of my head - The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Red Dragon (2002), Phenomena (1985), Van Helsing (2004), Dog Soldiers (2002), Labyrinth (1986), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Hound of the Baskervilles (2000), The Never Ending Story (1984), When Marnie Was There (2014; though a lot of Ghibli movies come to mind), The Lion King (1994; + many other Disney movies), The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008);

Favorite book(s)? ♠ Oh, boy... Crime and Punishment (1866), all of the novels about Sherlock Holmes (The Hound of the Baskervilles being my favorite), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), The Chrysalids (1955), The Secret Garden (1911), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), The Silence of the Lambs (1988), Red Dragon (1981), Psycho (1959), Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (1991), Dracula (1897), The Phantom of the Opera (1909), Memoirs of a Geisha (1997), the Grimm brothers' fairy tales aaaand more.

Do you have regrets? ♠ I don't really think so. Or should I say, I do, but they don't stay for long. I mean, just because I failed today doesn't mean I'll fail tomorrow as well, you know?

Dream job? ♠ As a kid I wanted to become a vet. Right now, I'm aiming for the position of a police investigator, though working as a prosecutor or private detective (at some point later on) is still a good option in my book.

Do you like shopping? ♠ Only online one, lol. I find (clothes) shopping to be slow and tedious for most of the time.

What countries have you visited? ♠ I've been to Germany for 4 days, during a music festival. At the time I was only 13, so I barely remember anything, aside that it was very cold, the natives seemed nice and I really liked the architecture of the houses + how quiet the small town was.

Scariest nightmare you have ever had? ♠ Once I dreamed my home city was hit by nuclear bomb (I literally saw the explosion out of my window), so I guess that. It's kinda funny how stressed one is after such a dream, before they realize (well, more like their brain realizes) that it was a dream and not reality.

Any enemies? ♠ I don't think so? Though I presume a handful of people online dislike me, but that is to be expected.

Do you believe in miracles? ♠ Not really, not in the classical sense. I think some things, good or bad, happen "at the roll of a dice". Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. No more, no less.

How are you? ♠ In a good mood, probably since I'll be visiting the seaside soon ~

I’m too lazy to tag, so if you see this post and feel like sharing some info about yourself, consider yourself tagged!

#to the about me trash tag #I just noticed #I confused braces with bracelets #rolf

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chiseler · 6 years

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Larry Cohen Isn’t Alive

Writer, producer and director Larry Cohen, who died on March 24th at age 77, rightfully earned his spot among the Pantheon of low-budget independent American filmmakers.

Like so many great satirists before him, Cohen had a knack for using a good story, off-beat characters, misdirection, humor, and monsters to disguise some pointed commentary about the most sacred of our sacred cows: childbirth, religion, cops, race, the military, AIDS, health care, and consumerism. And he always did it in a hugely entertaining way, squeezing the very most out of tiny budgets, small, fleet-footed crews, and simple guerilla tactics.

The artist responsible for Q: The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To, and the It’s Alive! films was a maverick, an independent’s independent, who wasn’t afraid to put a wild story on the screen and populate it with oddball characters (that Michael Moriarty would become his standard lead in four films in the ‘80s says something). If Cohen owed a lot to Sam Fuller and Roger Corman, then most indie directors who’ve come along since owe a lot to him, and the evidence is right there in their films.

Even when he was making low-budget monster pictures, Cohen’s films were always character-driven, so when it came to casting even the smallest part he was looking for people with interesting voices, faces, and personalities. He populated his films, in short, with the modern equivalent of Forties character actors. It’s no surprise that he would so often choose to work with like-minded maverick young actors like Moriarty, David Carradine, Karen Black, Sandy Dennis, Candy Clark, even Andy Kaufman. At the same time, though, Cohen also went back to those old films, hiring great character actors like Sam Levine, Broderick Crawford, and Sylvia Sidney. With casts like that together on the screen (many of them there simply because they wanted to work with Cohen) it’s sometimes easy to forget you’re watching a horror movie.

It seems Cohen was born with a little too much energy. Years before getting his degree in film from the City College of New York, he was already selling scripts to television. In the short years following his graduation in ‘63, he was creating shows that would go on to become classics, like Branded and The invaders. Hearing it now, he almost sounds like the kind of guy you’d like to punch.

After ten prolific years as a television writer, Cohen finally made the expected jump into film directing. But Cohen didn’t go to Hollywood to do this, and lord knows he didn’t aim for the mainstream. Although considered a blaxploitation picture today for some reason, Cohen’s directorial debut, 1972’s Bone, begins like a standard home invasion film a la The Desperate Hours or Five Minutes to Live, as would-be burglar Yaphet Kotto takes a wealthy white man and his wife hostage in their palatial home. When he sends the husband out to get money, though, the crime film becomes a social satire about both race relations and the generation gap. The wife begins to fall for her kidnapper, and the husband starts falling for a young hippie chick he meets on the way to the bank. In later films, Cohen would mix and match genres in a way that hadn’t been seen since the W. Lee Wilder wierdies of the Fifties.

His next two films were both fairly straightforward blaxploitation numbers, and both Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem would become genre standbys.

It was in 1974 that what is considered Cohen’s golden era would begin. Between ‘74 and the early ‘90s, Cohen was writing and directing the films he wanted to make. They were films that were completely his own, more than a little odd at times, and utterly memorable. For a career that lasted over half a century, having a Golden Era that ran nearly twenty years ain’t too shabby.

Switching from blaxploitation to horror, Cohen made It’s Alive! starring the great John P. Ryan. On the surface it’s a horror film about a killer baby. It’s also a conspiracy film about some nefarious shenanigans at a large pharmaceutical company, and a social commentary about the power of the press to destroy innocent lives. At it’s heart, though, it takes The Bad Seed a step further in exploring our deep fear of children and the screaming bloody horror of that most beautiful of miracles, childbirth.

Using the power of suggestion and some fantastic performances (many of the actors here would become members of Cohen’s stock troupe), coupled with some solid direction, clever cinematography, Rick Baker’s special effects, a Bernard Herrmann score and one of the most effective trailers of the Seventies, this low budget killer baby film caught a lot of people off guard. It was smarter and slicker than anyone would’ve expected given the budget, and was a big hit for Cohen.

After that success he came back two years later with a film that was even stranger, more complex, and much harder to categorize. Trying not to give too much away here for those who haven’t seen it yet, God Told Me To stars Tony Lo Bianco as a New York cop who’s never been sick, feels he has some strange powers, and whose early biography remains a little up in the air. As the film opens, he’s investigating a series of seemingly inexplicable and unrelated rampage killings. A soft spoken gay man climbs atop a building with a high powered rifle and begins shooting. A cop (Andy Kaufman in his big screen debut) shoots up the st. Patrick’s Day parade. A man slaughters his family for no apparent reason. The only explanation any of them can give is that, yes, god told them to. Well, his investigation leads down some strange channels, including stories of an alien abduction, a secret cabal of wealthy executives, and reports of a glowing figure who had contact with all the killers and who may or may not be god incarnate. In short it’s a film that asks the eternal question, “What if Jesus was a Venusian?” It may also be the best film Cohen ever made.

Although the film looks great (and brings together a remarkable cast), it represents a perfect example of the guerilla filmmaking Cohen would come to be known for. All the location shots, from the parade to the subway to the shooting of half a dozen people outside Bloomingdale’s were stolen. Cohen saw where he wanted to shoot, set up his crew, and shot. If he were to try doing that today there would likely be casualties, but because he did it then he captured a portrait of a city long gone.

On the downside, in his excitement to grab shots of actual events as they were happening, one sequence finds Lo Bianco racing from the st. Patrick’s day parade in March and ending up some 70 blocks to the south at the San Gennaro festival on the Lower East Side in September. It was a hell of a run.

The film was picked up by Corman’s distribution company, New World. Before releasing it, they decided that title of his was too long and too complicated, so needed to be changed. They decided to call it The Demon, and changed the font on the poster to match the font used recently on the posters for the incredibly popular The Omen. It didn’t seem to help. Whether it was the title or audiences were merely baffled by the film itself it’s hard to say, but it was a definite step down from the success of It’s Alive. Still, in subsequent years it has become one of the most popular of Cohen’s films, and in terms of influence, well, all you need to do is watch the last few seasons of the X Files to see for yourself if anyone was paying attention.

Following God Told Me To, Cohen took a radical turn in more ways than one. After making three blaxploitation films and two sci-fi horror movies, he took the next logical step down the genre trail by making, yes, a J. Edgar Hoover biopic.

A clear though uncredited influence on the 2011 Leonardo DiCaprio Hoover picture, 1977’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover makes for an intriguing double bill with another AIP film from around roughly the same time, John Milius’ Dillinger. It stars screen legend Broderick Crawford in a brilliant turn as the enigmatic and all-powerful head of the FBI, and co-stars a slew of famed character actors, from Lloyd Nolan and June Havoc to Howard DaSilva and Rip Torn.

Couching the story of Hoover’s life within the frantic scramble across Washington to gain access to his titular secret files after his death, Cohen does something I don’t think anyone was expecting. In spite of Hoover’s reputation as a neurotic, paranoid, cross-dressing monster, Cohen treats him fairly, even sympathetically at times. There’s no real secret about his sexuality here, but it’s never made cartoonish. It’s a portrait of a deeply flawed man and a publicity whore, yes, but one who was trying to do right. Oddly enough the historical figures who get slapped around more than anyone here are the Kennedy brothers, who come off like a couple of smug rich, asshole college boys. Martin Luther King doesn’t get off too easy, either.

It’s an odd man out in Cohen’s filmography, but what the Hoover film proved without a doubt is that he was a director who knew pacing, who knew editing, and who could, even without monsters, turn material like this into a gripping story.

Good as it was, The Private Files wasn’t a big hit either, so Cohen returned to killer babies in ‘78 with It Lives Again. Not interested in simply rehashing the same material, Cohen expanded the original story, broadening the idea of a conspiracy (conspiracies would play a larger and larger role in Cohen’s films), and multiplying the number of killer babies afoot.

As more and more mutant babies are born throughout America, a renegade group of scientists and parents (including John P. Ryan and expecting father Frederic Forrest) criss-crosses the country trying to save the mutants before the government can terminate them with extreme prejudice. The hope is to be able to raise the mutants in a reasonably loving environment, rehabilitating them and making them contributing members of society. Let’s just say their success is limited.

The later ‘70s and early ‘80s were kind of rough for Cohen. His teen horror comedy Full Moon High bombed, and a made-for-TV mystery was ignored. He planned to resurrect Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer character in a film version of I, The Jury starring Armand Assante, but after a major studio picked up the project, they promptly fired Cohen.

Knowing he had to get right back on his feet, Cohen had a new independent film in production within a week. He started grabbing some location shots around New York before he had a cast, and started filming before he had any backing. Still, he was able to wrangle together another great (in B film terms) cast, and he had a fantastic story to tell, even if it owed a bit to 1948’s The Flying Serpent. He had some more wonderful characters, he had a monster, and once again all of New York was his playground. Samuel Z. Arkoff, who’d just sold AIP, fronted him a little cash and they were off.

Cohen’s mixing and matching of genres was never more evident than it was in ‘82’s Q The Winged Serpent. It’s a bungled jewel heist/cult murder/police procedural/giant monster picture with Michael Moriarty as an ex-con and failed jazz pianist who’s forced to participate in a heist that goes very, very wrong. He’s a neurotic to begin with, and this doesn’t help. David Carradine, meanwhile (who filmed his first scene before he’d had a chance to read the script or find out who his character was), is a detective investigating a series of murders in which the victims have all been skinned alive. And then there’s that pesky Aztec god who keeps flying around New York plucking people off rooftops and construction sites.

They all eventually do come together inside the cone atop the Chrysler Building (it was actually filmed up there too, even though Cohen and his crew didn’t exactly have permission). Before all these storylines and genres come together, Cohen has us so wrapped up in these individual character’s )and the countless little stories and side characters we encounter along the way) that the monster barely matters, save for providing some of the best aerial shots ever taken of NYC.

It’s a film packed with great small bits, set pieces, and locations. And Moriarty, crazy and pathetic and fucked up as he is, is a gem. In one of the best (and mostly ad libbed) scenes in the film, he attempts to negotiate a deal with city officials and the cops. He knows where the creature’s nest can be found, and wants money and amnesty in exchange for the information. It’s a real tour-de-force of sniveling bravado and desperation.

Cohen had more stories to tell about the making of Q than any of his other films (and he was a man with a lot of stories). The final joke of it all being that Q opened the same day as I, the Jury and made four times as much money.

It occurs to me that any young would-be indie filmmaker would be better served by watching the film and listening to his commentary than anything they’d learn after 3 years of NYU film school. He knew how to work fast and work cheap, yet still come away with a film whose production values matched anything being produced in Hollywood.

Cohen was back on a roll after Q, and even when he wasn’t working on a film himself he was selling scripts that had that unmistakable Larry Cohen feel to them. The William Lustig-directed Maniac Cop and Uncle Sam come to mind as prime examples, though Abel Ferrara dropped the ball, and dropped it hard, on Cohen’s reboot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s a film I keep trying to like, but just can’t. Cohen’s understanding of character is something Ferrara’s never been able to grasp. It had so much going for it, it should’ve been so good, but Christ it’s just a tedious fucking mess. Okay, I’m starting to ramble.

After making a few straightforward thrillers, Cohen returned to horror and social satire in 1985’s The Stuff. There had been elements of social satire and commentary in his previous films, but usually so well disguised it was easy to miss. Michael Moriarty’s gift for the ad lib and his ability to play crazy and manic so brilliantly allowed Cohen, in their second film together, to slap the satire right there on the surface, plain as day.

When a thick white goo coms bubbling out of the ground at a mining operation in Georgia, one of the miners unwittingly discovers it’s not only delicious—it’s downright irresistible. Before you know it, “The Stuff,” as it’s marketed, has become the most popular dessert item in the country, helped along by a celebrity-laden ad campaign (though many of the celebrities may no longer be recognizable to most audiences) and the small fact that it’s five times as addictive as crack. Yes, it’s mighty good right up to the point when it makes you explode. But no one talks about that.

Moriarty plays an ex-FBI man turned industrial spy who’s been hired by a now-struggling ice cream company to find out what’s in The Stuff. What Begins as a simple bit of industrial espionage quickly becomes much more than that when people start dying, small towns start vanishing, an ex-FDA employee (Danny Aiello in a smart and funny cameo) is killed by his stuff-addicted Doberman, and Moriarty uncovers a sinister, far-reaching conspiracy.

Along the way he’s assisted by Garrett Morris as a Famous Amos clone who’s cookie company was stolen from him, a young boy who realizes there’s something evil going on with The stuff, and Paul Sorvino as an insane and paranoid militia leader/radio show host who’s more than willing to spread the word and lead a commando raid on the stuff factory.

There are nods throughout the film to everything from Dr. Strangelove to White Heat, but the one film that kept coming to mind was Halloween III: Season of the Witch from three years earlier. Both, after all, are horror conspiracy films concerning the potentially diabolical threat posed by marketing and consumerism. The ironic thing there is that when Halloween III came out in ‘82, I assumed given the way the story was structured that it had to be a Cohen film, or at least based on a Cohen script. I was wrong, of course; the film had been written by the equally great Nigel Kneale. So it only made sense that here we got Cohen’s version of a similar storyline. While Halloween III was very sharp and dark, The Stuff reaches for some broad, heavy handed laughs and often falls short. Maybe Cohen figured if you wanted to reach an audience in the Reagan era with a dire warning about rampant consumerism, subtlety would get you nowhere. The film does have a number of moments, though, and I love the fact that the “monster” here is a smooth, white, featureless dessert. I also love the fact that a paranoid Right Wing nutjob saves the day in the end.

Two years after The Stuff, Warner Brothers offered Coen a deal to direct two straight-to-video pictures: a second sequel to It’s Alive, and a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s TV version of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Cohen, anxious to work with Moriarty again and push the story of the mutant babies a little further, signed the contract.

Working fast and cheap as ever (he said all of his films were shot in 18 days), Cohen returned to form with It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, with one difference. While the previous two films had been stark and ultimately quite grim, with Moriarty aboard Cohen was able to bring out a lot more humor. Mixed more evenly with the violence, the blood, a half-hidden AIDS parable, and Cohen’s trademark strangeness, here it works more effectively than it had in The Stuff or his straight comedies.

This time around, Moriarty is a struggling actor who finally gains fame after he and his wife (Karen Black) become the proud parents of another monster baby. That’s pretty much it for the marriage, but instead of destroying the baby, a judge orders that all the mutant babies be sent to, yes, an island where they can roam free and pose no threat to anyone.

Moriarty’s life, meanwhile, collapses under the constant questions and accusations until he finds himself working in a children’s shoe store. In a delightful set piece, he finally cracks and gives the what-for to all the rotten little brats and their obnoxious parents. There’s just something both terrifying and hilarious about Moriarty when he loses it.

Anyway, he joins a government-sponsored expedition to the island to study the mutants and run a few tests. Along the way, we learn the government has stopped trying to destroy the mutants after deciding instead they represent a new stage of human evolution, quite possibly a form of human who could survive a nuclear war. Moriarty, who loves his child and wants to protect it, tries to warn the babies to stay away from the researchers, which does not endear him to the researchers. No matter, it isn’t long before all the members of the expedition are dead save for Moriarty, who finds himself alone on a boat with four mutant babies. And that’s when things start taking any number of strange turns.

Island of the Alive is also marked by a fantastic opening sequence, in which a woman gives birth in the back of an NYC cab as the cab driver panics about the mess. Or maybe that scene’s just memorable to me because it was shot in an alley behind the building where I used to work.

After the film was wrapped, Cohen packed up his crew and several members of the cast and flew to a small town in Vermont to start shooting the Salem’s Lot sequel, a sequel in name and font alone. Compared with Island of the Alive, A Return to Salems Lot seemed almost an afterthought. Maybe people were just tired after the previous shoot, but the cinematography has all the flat earmarks of a TV film, and the music, usually so rich in a Cohen picture, has been reduced to a cheap, cliched electronic score. Even the actors, apart from Cohen’s usual suspects (like Andrew Duggan), are abrasive at best.

Story’s still good, though. In their fourth and final collaboration, Moriarty is a famed anthropologist whose ex-wife saddles him with his troubled and foul-mouthed teenage son. Not knowing what else to do with the kid, he takes him to Salem’s Lot. Moriarty had visited an aunt there once when he was young, and when she died she left him her (now decrepit) house. It doesn’t take long to figure out the town is home to a colony of vampires.

Cohen’s script plays around quite a bit with the mythology, with the anthropologist being conscripted to write the vampires’ history to set the record straight, but the film is memorable for one reason. Sam Fuller appears for the second half of the film playing, well, Sam Fuller. He’s given a different name of course, and he’s playing a Van Helsing-type vampire hunter, but it’s Sam Fuller all right, as short, gruff, and straightforward as ever, and always chomping on that ever-present cigar. Cohen’s homage to the king of independent filmmakers is the only thing here that lifts the picture above second-tier Cohen fare (which is nevertheless still more interesting than most vampire films made in the last 20 years).

Cohen went on to make another straight thriller and a comedy about witches that turned out to be Bette Davis’ last film before returning to the horror, conspiracies, and New York that always brought out the best in him. It would be the last of the classic Larry Cohen films.

In 1990’s The Ambulance, Eric Roberts plays an enthusiastic young comic book artist working for Marvel (Stan Lee has a few cameos as himself) who sees a young woman on the street and falls immediately and stupidly in love with her. When she collapses to the pavement while they’re talking and an antique ambulance appears out of nowhere to whisk her away, he sets out to find her without even knowing her name.

It sounds like fairly standard romantic comedy material and there’s no denying that’s at play here, but as usual there are a few other genres at work, too, as we learn the drivers of that creepy antique ambulance are making their own victims all over the city. It’s best to leave the story there and not mention the organ harvesting ring, but the film does include James Earl Jones, Eric Braedon, and a grainy, dirty, street level Manhattan that, even circa 1990, still seems so ancient and alive.

Moving into the later ‘90s and 2000s, as films like his were no longer really viable in a marketplace so fixated on formula and empty pointless characters, Cohen concentrated more on his screenplays, but even if the stories had that old Cohen spark and warp, the films that were made from them tended to be sadly conventional. He was behind Phone Booth, Cellular, Messages Deleted, Captivity, and rewrote his own script for the reboot of It’s Alive.

He once made the excellent point that B films tended to have a longer lifespan than A films, because it’s the genre pictures that find a new audience every generation. Kids have no idea who Robert Taylor or Greer Garson are anymore, but they will always know Karloff and Lugosi, because people will always be going back to horror films while the big dramas, so important at the time, will fade away.

Cohen made films that weren’t like anything else (except maybe Halloween III). They weren’t aimed at teenagers and they weren’t slasher pictures. They were intelligent, textured, character-based, and they dealt with adult themes. Plus they had monsters in them.

Cohen’s career, as noted above, spanned some fifty years, and fifty years from now, I can almost guarantee no one will remember Titanic or whatever the hell nonsense won a Best Picture Oscar over the past two decades, but they’ll still be watching God Told Me To.

At the time of his death, Cohen left behind dozens of unproduced screenplays. If anyone had seen fit to toss him the funding to make the films he wanted to make, who knows what else he might have left us?

by Jim Knipfel

#Jim Knipfel #Larry Cohen #The Chiseler #It's Alive #The Ambulance #Bone #god told me to #Karen Black #The Stuff #Michael Moriarty

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forisobel · 6 years

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REVISITING HARRY POTTER, PART ONE . . .

harry potter was a staple for my childhood. beit through the books or movies, i excited at the prospect of following young harry through out his adventures at hogwarts. i’ve been to the harry potter studios in london twice now and display the full collection of books and movies on my shelves, each organised delicately in order. i saw fantastic beasts in cinemas and was mildly confused before being well and truly disgusted watching the most recent crimes of grindelwald. over the past few weeks i have been troubled by one question, how did we get here?

so today we’re jumping in the way way back machine and riding it all the way to 2001, and the release of harry potter and the philosopher’s stone.

my memories of this movie going into it were about as good as my own eleventh birthday, hazy and out of reach. this had frustrated me because it wasn’t the kind of film that was sitting, collecting dust, on my shelf. i would often throw it on in the background while i was doing any number of mind numbing tasks. i could only recall the feeling of great nostalgia that came with it; i was a child again, watching from the living room floor. i could tell you nothing of the intricacies of it’s film making.

over the past twenty-two years, the harry potter franchise has grown, and in some respects metastasised, into a money making machine. the eight movies alone generated over 7 billion u.s. dollars, with harry potter and the deathly hallows, part two contributing to 1.3 billion of that. in the wake of the train wreck that was the crimes of grindelwald, i began to think about how the series managed to devolve to that point. that was when i realised i could recall nothing about the franchise as an object. i could tell you the full, expansive plot of each movie, but i couldn’t comment critically on those movies objectively.

before continuing, i would just like to make clear that there is nothing wrong with liking a movie franchise or a television series purely for nostalgia. all i am doing here is looking at each harry potter film objectively and asking the question how did we get to here?

i’m going to take a wild guess and say most people here know the plot of harry potter and the philosopher’s stone, but going to give you the run down anyway. just in case you need a lil refresher.

an orphan named harry potter learns on his eleventh birthday that he is the son of martyr witch and wizard, lily and james potter. he is invited to attend the highly esteemed english boarding school for wizards, hogwarts, where he forms close friendships with two of his classmates, ron and hermoine. with the help of his new friends, harry seeks to uncover the illusive truth behind his parents’ untimely deaths.

the film was released in 2001 and cost 130 million u.s. dolla dolla to make. it was directed by chris columbus, an american filmmaker. columbus was already well established in the film industry, having directed home alone, and would go on to direct the next two harry potter films. clearly he’s having a bit of a mid-life crisis right now, as his recent projects include the 2015 film pixels. that’s a yikes for him.

i’ve watched the philosopher's stone a few times this week and have managed to cobble together all of my thoughts and comments into one handy list.

the score was phenomenal . . .

kicking things off with an obvious one, i can’t believe i never comprehended how good the score for this movie. the opening track the most recogniseable, however, the whole viewing experience is enhanced by the score running throughout. i am full on willing to proclaim john williams as a god of film scores.

harry was one scary boi . . .

in one of the first scenes of the film, harry and the dursleys go to a zoo to celebrate dudley’s birthday. while there, harry discovers he can talk to snakes and accidentally imprisons his cousin in the snake’s enclosure. this does not faze harry at all, unaware at this time that he is a wizard, and laughs as he watches his aunt and cousin in a state of panic. okay, harry...sadist. this happens again as he watches his cousin grow a pig tail. later on, during a flying lesson, harry threatens to knock malfoy off his broom. like, calm the fuck down, harry! fucking believe you. harry was actually kind of sinister in the first act. like damn.

what was some of that acting ? ? ?

one of the reasons why i wanted to revisit this series was that i have a bit of a pet peeve when it comes to child actors in media. i sometimes forget how heavily the harry potter series actually rides on child actors, being that i was watching the movie at the same age of the actors. now, i am not maligning radcliffe, watson or grint at all, but what was some of that line delivery, lads? the acting was definitely not bad but some parts just felt awkward and forced. i don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but sometimes i felt a little weird watching little forced interactions. maybe it just adds to the charm!

hagrid can make one quick get away . . .

as hagrid and harry make their way through the train station, harry is distracted by his ticket. when he looks up to ask hagrid about the platform, hagrid is gone. where the fuck did hagrid go? either he had to apparate, which he ain’t allowed to do, not to mention harry would have heard him do that, or he had to run away. is hagrid the richard kuklinski of the wizarding world or am i missing something?

hermoine practices magic underage . . .

now, it has been a while since i’ve watched the whole series, but i am pretty sure hermoine shouldn’t be perfecting basic spells at home. like, what’s the story there, j.k. rowling?

wtf is professor flitwick ? ? ?

this was the first time i noticed all of the prosthetics on professor flitwick’s face. nightmare fuel, lads, i am telling you!

harry is a pot stirrer . . .

i think we’re going to need another feather here, professor. shut the fuck up, harry! no one wanted your imput. i think she heard you. you don’t say! nobody asked you, drama queen. quit stirring the pot. jeez.

wizards are immune to splinters . . .

so you’re telling me that hemoine can be pelted with broken pieces of wood and harry and ron can pick up said pieces of wood and throw them with force and not get any splinters? i think not.

what is harry doing during that first match ? ? ?

during the first quidditch match, harry spends most of his time sitting on his broom reacting to what everyone else is doing. do your job, bitch!

the c.g.i. is actually okay . . .

the c.g.i. and other special effects are of course dated now, considering how much computer generated pictures have improved since the 2000s. however, all in all, i think the film has aged well in terms of it’s cinematography and general design. fluffy, norbert the dragon and the fast paced quidditch matches all look pretty good, unless you go looking for flaws.

norbert was adorable . . .

i would die for norbert.

tom felton's facial expressions were so good . . .

this was something i only noticed as the film progressed. tom felton did a great job at providing me with a good chuckle with his facial expressions. he doesn’t actually feature in the film a lot, consider how pivotal his character would eventually become to the series, yet he certainly makes an impact in some of his scenes.

the professors were so fucking dumb . . .

hagrid is far to easy of a victim here, but mcgonagall has no excuse. shouldn’t the three of them have been on lockdown since the troll incident. i understand, to a degree, her lenience with harry, but not with ron and hermoine. shouldn’t she have found it a little more weird that the three of them knew about the philosopher’s stone? regardless of how they came to find out about it, they could so easily have told anyone about it being in hogwarts. surely that would have jeprodised their operation?

ron was full on ready to die ? ? ?

did ron actually believe he was going to die there? like, excuse me ron, but what the fuck?

quirrell had some nasty ass nails . . .

someone cut those things, please!

voldemort’s character design . . .

i wouldn’t have noticed this the first time around, obviously, but voldemort has a nose in this first rendition of his design? i can kind of understand why he devolves into his more snakelike appearance of the goblet of fire but it’s kind of weird to see him like that in hindsight.

all in all, the philosopher’s stone encapsulates the heart of what harry potter is. i found it quite hard to return to this film, knowing where the franchise would end up. this film and others following it would certainly generate a lot of cash. but films like the crimes of grindelwald frustrate me as they are nothing but cash grab. it exploits an originally wholesome, well-meaning series and destroys its integrity. trying to fit these two films into the same universe is like trying to force together two positive ends of a magnet.

the philosopher’s stone is most certainly not a perfect film, and for me sits in about seventh place in terms of ranking all the movies. but it perfectly represents the essence of the series.

alienating it from the series and taking it objectively, i would give the film a five out of ten. it was never going to be my favourite film, and it wasn’t even my favourite harry potter film during my childhood. looking at it now, there are parts of the script i don’t really like and some line delivery is hard to get on board with. however, this isn’t enough to take me out of the film completely and i can certainly enjoy myself while watching.

this film is definitely a ten out of ten for nostalgia though. i think everyone can remember what they were doing and the feelings they were experiencing the first time they watched the philosopher’s stone. there is something warming and home-y about it. the truth is that this film not made for me any more. it was made for an eleven year old. i’m not sure how much someone who didn’t watch the film in the childhood would get out of this film. the characters were so relatable to me and as i made my way through the books and the movies i felt as if i was growing old and maturing with them. i’m sure i’m not the only one to feel this way and i’m definitely not the last.

in conclusion, this was a nice film to return to, and certain an experience i would recommend to anyone considering it. no, it was not as groundbreaking and thrilling as i once thought it would be. it certainly also makes things such as cursed child and the crimes of grindelwald more frustrating. but, it is certainly a nice one to come home to if you’re stressed out or feeling some january blues.

next month, i shall return to the world of harry potter to revisit the chamber of secrets. until then, you will have to make do with two more lists and two proper reviews. i have a hold the dark demolition in progress for next week, which shall be fun! but until next friday, farewell.

originally posted on the 13th of january . . .

#films #movies #revisiting #harry potter #daniel radcliffe #emma watson #rupert grint #j k rowling #the philosopher's stone

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notnicky · 6 years

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - SPOILER FREE Movie Review

So, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written anything on here. I’d blame it on college but really I think it’s just because I’m so lazy. I’m working on that and hopefully, this summer will give me some time to get stuff done. Anyways, here I am, and I’m about to talk about the movie I have so patiently waited THREE years for - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Unfortunately, this movie isn’t out everywhere yet, so I’ll keep this review spoiler FREE, and maybe I’ll get myself to write a spoiler-filled review once this movie is out worldwide. Bear with me, this is long.

1. Cinematography

My absolute favorite thing about this film was the incredible cinematography thanks to Oscar Faura and JA Bayona. Almost all the shots in this film are ones I’d like to hang up on my wall. The scenes on the island are breathtaking, but the cinematography in the second half is on a whole different level. The brilliant use of light and shadows by Faura adds so much to the gothic/horror tone that the second half possesses. The visuals together with the score, courtesy of Michael Giacchino (which I will talk about later), create a striking effect that will be sure to scare the living shit out of you, and sometimes make you feel emotions you didn’t think you could feel in a Jurassic movie. The cinematography in this film is unlike any other Jurassic film, and I say that in the best way possible.

2. Music

Michael Giacchino’s score is absolutely gorgeous. At times, it was the reason why I couldn’t stop my heart from aching, and other times, it was the reason why I couldn’t stop my heart from beating uncontrollably. The music during emotional scenes would be the main factor in me sobbing out loud, and the music during tense scenes would be the reason why I would jump out of my seat. The power that Giacchino’s score has over this film is truly incredible, always being the reason as to why I felt specific emotions during different plot points throughout the movie.

3. Story

I can’t delve too much into this because I don’t want to enter spoiler territory, but I really enjoyed the story.

All I’ve heard over the past week was “why do people keep going back to save the dinosaurs, just let them die” and “why do we need another Jurassic film?”, and this really frustrates me. This might be because I’ve developed a specific emotional attachment to these animals, but I personally believe that every human being in this franchise is responsible for keeping these animals alive. They brought them back to life, despite none of the dinosaurs wanting to (at least I doubt it), and exploited them for their own gain, so I don’t believe that humans deserve an easy way out of the mess they created in the first place and the dinosaurs certainly don’t deserve to die when they didn’t ask for this shitshow in the first place. The core of Fallen Kingdom explores the ethics behind this choice, which is precisely why I love it so much.

I know a lot of people think the plot is useless and repetitive, but along with what I previously said, there is so much left to explore about this ethical dilemma. It is incredibly nuanced, interesting, and relevant. Fallen Kingdom shows us the reason why we can’t just leave these animals to die. It explores guilt, empathy, and redemption. But then again, I have a strong personal opinion and I love ethical dilemmas, so I am heavily biased.

in addition to the core of the movie, there is a plot twist later on that I really loved. I thought it seemed like a natural progression for the franchise, and it opened a lot of new doors for the story to continue through. Although I loved it, plenty thought it was stupid and unneeded, but to each their own.

Despite this, I understand the reasoning behind why some people think it’s a stupid idea to go back to the island in the first place, which I will discuss when I look at the pacing of the movie.

4. Characters

We know that in Jurassic World, Claire started out as cold and calculated and as the events of the movie unfold, she begins to change, as her actions started to become more in sync with her morals. In Fallen Kingdom, Claire has started her own foundation that is dedicated to protecting these dinosaurs she once exploited for money. Though I do wish that we got to see more of how this change developed during the time between Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, the way her character has changed for the better and how that change makes her the driving force of this movie is one of my favorite things about it. Seeing Claire having the passion that she lacked in Jurassic World was something that made me love her even more than I already did. Although we don’t see how this 180-degree change develops, we definitely get to see how it influences her actions and choices throughout the movie. Bryce Dallas Howard does a wonderful job at really showing us this profound change in Claire, making us feel for Claire and truly believe that she has a passion for saving these prehistoric creatures.

As for Owen, he is more or less unchanged by the events of Jurassic World, so his character development is much less, or maybe even non-existent, in comparison to Claire. The one thing I can point out is that perhaps his decision to go back to the island and save Blue is an indication of trying to face his problems, rather than simply running away from them.

For those who know me, I live for Claire and Owen’s relationship. Fallen Kingdom builds on their relationship and puts Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt’s natural chemistry to good use. I have always loved that these two characters are polar opposites but work very well as a team, and I was glad to see that dynamic again, although, I wish there could have been more time spent on further elaborating and developing this dynamic, but that’s mostly due to problems with the pacing of the movie.

Maisie, Maisie, Maisie. She is the heart of this film. All the Jurassic movies have had kids in them, but for the most part, they aren’t hugely significant. Maisie changes the game. No more can be said without entering spoiler territory, so I’ll stop there. BUT, Isabella Sermon is INCREDIBLE as Maisie, I am so surprised this was her first ever acting gig.

As for the supporting characters, I really loved Zia and Franklin, played by the wonderful Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith. The brother-sister relationship the two have off-screen translates very well on-screen and makes for some really fun interactions between these characters. Franklin serves as comic relief in a lot of scenes, and I think the skills he brings to the team are underappreciated. Zia is a badass, however, Pineda’s performance is the reason why and not and so much the story that is written for her.

The villains are a little too “I’m evil!” but for the most part enjoyable. Toby Jones seems to be the villain in every movie I watch so he’s pretty good at doing that. I don’t want to specify certain actors since I’m not sure if its common knowledge that they are villains, but I think the performances by the villans are good, apart from, as I said earlier, sometimes being a bit too cartoonishly evil.

For the cameos... Ian Malcolm is back, but not for a whole lot, which I think is a shame. Jeff Goldblum is excellent and shines in his scenes, despite not being in the film for very long. Dr. Wu appears yet again, and the one big problem that I have with this movie is how underused he is. His character understands that what he is doing is a whole other level of fucked up but he understands how these dinosaurs work as well as the consequences of what he does. I really wished that his character was more significant because his opinions reflect a big part of the ethical dilemma that the movie explores.

5. Dinosaurs

There are a lot of them and they look incredible. The animatronic Blue, Indoraptor, and T-Rex breathe a whole new life into these dinosaurs, making them feel more like characters rather than just animals for us to be in awe of. My favorite has got to be the Stygimoloch, as it plays quite a significant role in a couple parts of the movie, and also, it's so adorable. OH and I think dinosaurs are really smart, people are dumb, and so maybe people should be extinct, not the dinosaurs.

6. Pacing

Now, this is the biggest problem I have with the movie. From the very start of the movie, AFTER the beautiful opening sequence, that is, everything seemed to be moving at warp speed. There was always something going on and it was just non-stop, not giving the audience a chance to breathe and take in whatever they just watched. There are a lot of character building moments that are ruined by the lack of time the audience gets to process them, making them much less impactful than they could have been if the film had slowed down for just a few minutes. Whenever something significant would happen, it immediately became insignificant because something else would happen not long after.

The part of the film that takes place on the island moves way too fast, and I really wish they stayed on the island a bit longer, especially considering this is supposed to be the last time we will ever see Isla Nublar. The lack of time we spend there takes away from what should be an extremely significant and emotional plot point not just for Fallen Kingdom, but for the entire Jurassic franchise.

As I mentioned in the “story” portion of this post, the movie explores the reasons as to why we can’t just let the dinosaurs die. Although the movie does look at empathy, guilt, and redemption, it does so through the characters, as if we should already know these characters well enough to know why they are motivated to go and save these dinosaurs. For someone like me who is familiar with these characters and previous characters in the franchise, it is easy for me to understand their motivations. However, the film doesn’t give enough time for the casual viewer to empathize with these dinosaurs and help them understand why these characters feel a responsibility for these creatures’ fates. Again, this has to do with pacing, since with a lot of things happening from the get-go, there aren’t enough opportunities for the story to build and give viewers this understanding. I think the lack of build-up toward the decision to go back to Isla Nublar to save the dinosaurs is the main reason why many people don’t understand why this movie had to happen at all.

IN CONCLUSION, I really really did love this movie. I’ve seen it twice now and it was better the second time around because my over-excitement for the movie as a whole and for some specific aspects didn’t get in the way and I was able to focus on a lot more things, allowing me to enjoy it even more. To end things, I really need to send my biggest thanks to JA Bayona for his excellent addition to the Jurassic franchise. Whenever people talked about Jurassic Park, they’d always talk about how terrified they were when they saw the T-Rex on screen for the first time. The first time I saw Jurassic Park, I had already seen big scary monsters in the cinema, so the movie never really scared me the way it did some people. However, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made me feel so terrified at times that I could finally understand where these people were coming from when they talk about being terrified by Jurassic. So thank you JA for scaring me into a true Jurassic experience. Despite major problems with pacing, the film is beautiful when it comes to the visuals and sound, has a really interesting plot, as well as characters that I really love. I know this movie has been met with mixed reviews, and that really bothers me, but I loved it and I hope you at least give it a shot because it certainly deserves a fighting chance.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom gets 4/5 baby Blue’s

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nopingitoutme · 4 years

Text

I would like to preface this by saying that I love my brother.

He is not a good person. Not in the evil way, not in the I hurt people, or I bully people kind of way, but in the - I have never critically thought about my privilege and general existence kind of way. I’ll slow down and start from the beginning.

I am Canadian but my parents are Asian, South Asian to be precise. My dad was born and raised in India while my mother is Pakistani. From there my parents made their way to the US where they met and got married. My dad studied mechanical engineering at University of Oklahoma. He was accepted into Princeton but the tuition was too high, University of Oklahoma was the only university that afforded him with a full ride scholarship. So he made do and studied. What you have to understand here is that my dad was poor like extremely poor. He used to tell us how he would steal packets of ketchup to eat because they had a high sugar content and he couldn’t afford actual food. He didn’t have a choice when it came to studying, he had to get his degree so he could find a job. If he didn’t he was a short, Indian, Muslim brown man with no family, no support system and no credentials.

My mom actually got her degree in nursing in Pakistan but because the credits did not transfer she was not a nurse in Virginia, she worked as a lab tech. Eventually my parents met and got married then had my oldest brother.

Here’s the thing, my mom’s immigration story is murky. While her “nanny visa” isn’t exactly illegal, the fact that the only “children” she was taking care of were her cousins. The rest of her family trickled in using farming visas. I’ll be frank it was definitely fraud in some way but done just carefully enough that the government was willing to overlook it. My mom’s a Canadian citizen now so I don’t have to be worried that she could be deported.

But anyway my parents met, got married and procreated twice. I have two older brothers who were born in New Jersey and have American citizenships. At this point we were poor. My dad was barely making anything with his engineering degree and my mom had two kids under the age of five, she was basically supporting the family with her job as a lab tech. Then my mom found out she was pregnant with me. My dad being a financially responsible man asked my mom to terminate the pregnancy (she was on birth control, I was very much a whoops baby) but she declined. I am not going to turn this into an anti-abortian argument, I am very much pro-choice, I was just giving context to the situation my parents were in. A few days after I was detected(?) my dad got a job offer in Alberta and accepted it. It turned out to change our lives entirely. My dad started making more and more until he was making six figures a year. This is the type of life I grew up living, moreover this is the life my brother grew up living.

Since I have two brothers, I’ll name them, the ok one will be O and the not-okay one will be U.

U has never known, or remembered financial stress. He is two years older then me so can’t remember his life in New Jersey but he can remember his life in Canada. I won’t insult him by saying his life in Canada is easy, he is lives in an Asian household and my parents are typical Asian parents. They are strict and overbearing, they meddle too much in our lives and they do not get along with each other. Growing up was stressful, my dad definitely has an untreated mental disorder that results in a violent temper and tension in the house for days on end. None of us have healthy coping mechanisms. O is going to get married in the next year, he is terrified that his wife will rely on him to be the sole breadwinner and through that he will become abusive towards her. U, well I’ll get to that. I ignore everything and avoid conflict like a sport. My eventual plan is to get my degree and fuck off and never come back. So, not the healthiest environment to say the least. But I do have to say that it affected U the most.

He became fanatical. He became obsessed with judging people. He would continuously ask me why I was, “everyone’s lawyer” for having the audacity for saying that unless we understand someone’s circumstances we cannot judge them for it. The best example of his confusingly conservative personality is the fact that he agrees with the Vietnam War.

Today we decided to watch the Chicago 7. He didn’t want to. His first complaint was that it got bad reviews, we showed him the reviews which were overwhelmingly positive (he considers himself a film expert, you can tell by the way that he uses the words “film” instead of movie and “cinematography” and “we shouldn’t focus on diversity in Hollywood, we should just pick the best actor for the job”) the truth came out he did not like the fact that it was about people fighting against the government. He agreed with the conscription and said that he would gladly give his portion of the inheritance to the Canadian military since it was his civic duty to support them, never mind that we pay taxes to support them so they really don’t need more. More and more pieces fit together. His easy spending of money, his virulent defence of conservative policies, his anti-immigration stance. He’s a piece of shit and it took me nineteen years to figure that out. He’s just genuinely a piece of shit.

And I don’t know where it came from. No one in my family has such extreme views, we are a family of immigrants. I mean the only vaguely conservative thing we do is be rich. And before anyone comes for me I am aware of my incredible privilege. I am also aware that we embody the American Dream to the T and I am aware that the American Dream is a lie fed to us by the rich and no one becomes rich because you worked hard. You become rich because you had connections or in our case we were extremely lucky. But U is not aware of his privilege as a wealthy person. He doesn’t seem to grasp that he didn’t make good choices, he had good choices (peep the reference), choices that allowed him to get a tutor so he could write the MCAT, choices that allowed to spend months studying and not be worried about money, choices that give him connections to med students and doctors, choices that he only got because he was rich. In fact he is so unaware of it, that it’s like he believes he deserves it. It’s like he believes that it is his God-given right to not have to pay his own tuition, his cell phone plan, his fucking life is paid for and this bitch thinks he deserves it. He spends money like it’s water, he believes transgender people are just mentally ill, he’s anti-immigration (which is hypocrisy of the highest degree, where do he think he came from? He’s darker then I am!), he’s a white posh British man in a twenty-two year old brown body.

And then I realized, he wants to be that British man, he craves it. It’s why he wants to send his future child to an English boarding school so he (the child will be a boy and named Alistair, apparently. I can’t make this shit up. I wish I was making this shit up) can become a cricket star. He is creating a fantasy, one where he isn’t in this stressful tension-filled house, one where he is the hero, the saviour, the one who is right and rational. He can’t stand the fact that he was born in the family, a family where my mother still speaks with an accent and wears traditional clothing. A family that eschews normal society conventions of being white and Christian and conservative. He hates that he can’t be one of them. And because of that he ignores the immense amount of privilege he has been given. He doesn’t believe in white privilege, believes that affirmative action is reverse racism, believes that immigrants are obligated to give up their heritage to become functioning members of society. What’s that Futurama quote, “don’t insult billionaires, you’re insulting my feelings towards being able to be a billionaire someday” (I don’t know I’ve never watched Futurama, I’ve only seen that quote in a gif). My point is, is that my brother is ashamed. He is so deeply ashamed that he repressed all of his empathy and humanity to beg at the alter of capitalism and classism. He cannot reach the inherent privilege that being white affords you so he makes up for it by being the poster child of white supremacy in other ways. And all of that makes me sad.

Because after all, I love my brother.

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