#and they might have to fistfight with the number 5 on my current list

[randomfansstuff]

just made an impromptu top 5 dynamics (A FULLY SUBJECTIVE LIST BASED ON MY OPINION ONLY) for dark heir/dark rise and realised james and will aren't even in there

[naivesilver]

top six pinocchio adaptations? idek if there are 6 🤷‍♂️

Hollie, my buddy, my pal, my dearest, not only there are like twice that number that I personally watched/read/experienced, but there are many more that I still have to get to. So have no fear, I have plenty of material to draw from

Also thank you 💓💓💓 I know at this point I’ve flooded everyone’s dash with this kinda stuff but I so love talking about it and y’all keep saying I shouldn’t stop so here I am

Ask me my top 6 anything

So the thing is, I’ve already listed my top 5 adaptations here, but as it goes I have multiple different rankings when it comes to Pinocchio stuff, so there is no shortage of lists I could make. I could rank going by the amount of screentime the thrice-damned Cricket gets, or how much the Fairy irks me, but since this is a lovely day and I have no wish to ruin it by talking about characters I would personally take on in a fistfight, I will instead use another discriminator.

That is, the Lampwick factor.

Lampwick gets an astonishing amount of hate considering he is a) a child b) Pinocchio without the plot armor c) someone the story’s system failed, along all those other boys, but I love him dearly and I will defend him sword in hand. Some adaptations forgo him entirely (looking at you, German-Japanese cartoon who would have been perfect otherwise) but most of those who leave him in make him memorable, for good and for bad.

So, without further ado:

(Actual list under the cut because I got carried away with number 4 and it got LONG)

1) Luigi Comencini’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (1972)

This miniseries’ Lampwick is just *chef’s kiss *. Not only does he get the funkiest introductory scene, laying under THEE boat (a trendsetter, that boy), but the way he behaves is consistently amazing and depicts the friendship between him and Pinocchio aside from the more famous Land of Toys (?) escapade. Also, SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK STORY, but cutting off his death scene, leaving his fate ambiguous and having Pinocchio snap at his father for suggesting Lampwick might have gotten “what he deserved” was a balm for my heart. Plus, he got a sweet sweet character theme that also served as title track for the miniseries.

(Fun fact, I found out while looking up the theme that his actor and Pinocchio’s starred as brothers in another movie shortly after, which is a nice little piece of trivia to know :D )

2) Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio (2020)

YOUR HONOR, HE’S BABY! I want to protect him at all costs. The actor plays the part of Pinocchio’s shenanigan partner perfectly, and this movie takes a more realistic approach when it comes to depicting life in a poor maritime town in XIX century Italy, instead of showing Lampwick as someone who rebels against nothing. They cut out the final part of his story here as well, of which I could never be more grateful, for all that I’m a Pinocchio purist in most other cases. If you ask for my opinion, he deserves to be alive and happy somewhere else, and that’s that on that :)))))

3) Pinocchio miniseries (2009)

When I tell you that 11yo me was infatuated with him...Learning that Thomas Brodie-Sangster was already 18 when this aired was one of the biggest shocks of my life. He looked 15 at best, and only in the right light.

Still, what a good Lampwick. He’s snarky, he’s a bad influence, but he's a good friend, too, so it’s a win-win situation, isn’t it? He may be a bastard, but at least he will try to fix your sorrows in the most bothersome ways possible - remember kids, running off to a magical land is not a good way to cope with grief, but if you do it, at least stick to someone older than you who will do his best to keep you alive and distracted.

(Come to think of it, I’m still not convinced that Robbie Kay wasn’t influenced by this when he went on to portray Peter Pan.)

4) Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio (2002)

LISTEN. Listen. This movie is a problem. I can’t speak of this movie without having to wrack my mind to find the right words. Benigni single-handedly ruined my chance at credibility by making this both the weirdest AND closest-to-text adaptation currently in existence.

(Aside from a sequence of excessive Cricket presence towards the end, but I digress.)

So, Benigni made a peculiar choice when filming this movie; that is, he had all the child characters be played by adults while retaining somewhat childish behaviors. Now, if it was merely a humorous parody I’d be less concerned, but if it was that easy to reduce it to such a stereotype, I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place, because there are too many Pinocchio parodies in the world and I despise most of them.

No, once you gather enough suspension of disbelief to see through the comedy factor of this movie, you soon have to realize that it’s, in fact, very well made. So you have to come to terms with the reality that this perfectly in-character Pinocchio with a Tuscanian accent who lifts paragraphs straight from the book was played by a 50yo man, and that the Fairy was played by his wife. There are things I don’t want to deal with when I’m watching a Pinocchio adaptation and Benigni’s supposed mommy issues is definitely one of them.

“So what does Lampwick have to do with any of this?”, you may ask. Well, my friend, Lampwick is by far the oddest casting choice in this case.

Picture this: you’re watching this movie where there are no kids, only adults playing kids. It’s weird, but it’s kinda funny, because the way they’re dressed and the way they act makes it clear that you’re supposed to laugh at them. Then a new character, well-known jackass Lampwick, is herded in, and you expect another 40something comedian to pair well with Benigni.

Instead, what you see is Kim Rossi Stuart.

Kim Rossi Stuart was a heartthrob of late 90/early 2000s Italy. He’s still quite good-looking - in fact, he might have even gotten better with age and with a beard, but that’s my personal taste chiming in - but back then he was at the height of his career. He was in Fantaghirò, for God’s sake. And here he comes sauntering by, as though it was nothing at all, eating lollipops and playing at darts with a floreal-pattern-clad Roberto Benigni.

It drives me nuts. I’ve honestly never been more appalled by an actor choice in my life. But that’s precisely the reason why it ranks so high - I’ll be 80 and grey and STILL I’ll be wondering what the fuck Benigni was thinking when he picked him. It leaves a mark, that kind of thing.

5) Enzo D’Alò’s Pinocchio (2012)

(By this point you should have realized the reason I put director names and dates in is because they all have the same fucking title. Also, enjoy this unflattering screenshot I had to make myself)

This movie is sweet. Not memorable, but sweet. It’s more whimsical and cartoonish than most, and the target age group is clearly younger than the one for say, Garrone’s movie, but Lucio Dalla wrote great songs for it so I appreciate it.

I’m more of the school of thought of  “Lampwick as a kid Pinocchio’s age” than “Lampwick as an older mentor of sorts”, and this Lampwick was voiced by Paolo Ruffini, who has the right accent but which I find annoying, but still, I like him. I love older brother figures, and Lampwick in this movie takes the time to comfort a sad kid he doesn’t know and humor him all throughout their journey. They’re good together, and that’s enough for me. #justicefor2012lampwick

6) Disney’s Pinocchio (1940)

Cue great stupor from everyone involved. Yes, I hate this movie with every fiber of my being, but this is the stereotypical Lampwick. Not putting him in would have been nearly blasphemous. Also, so many adaptations ignored his existence completely that I have to make concessions sometimes.

In addition to that, his character is tied to a little traumatic memory of my own. I watched this movie when I was like, 5 or 6, and as opposed to my classmates and sister who got frightened by most of it I was pretty unfazed, since I already knew the real story had WAY worse scenes.

But I also have a pretty vivid auditory memory, so what stuck with me was not the kids being turned into donkeys as much as Lampwick screaming like “Help! Call your cricket! Call who you want!” with the most horrifying voice ever. Was part of my nightmares for a long while, nearly as much as other movie scenes I watched in the same time period and of which I’m still scared, like ET’s freezer sequence or Dumbo’s Pink Elephants.

[buddhasfanficdictatorship]

Fanfic Progress Update: What I’ve Been Dealing With edition (Part 1 of 2)

Been awhile since I did this, but I had no news to report until recently. Buckle up, because there’s a bunch I need to say. I’m going to break the update in two, the first half detailing what I’ve been dealing with up to this point and the second part with my plans going forward, the actual status of my fics and where I go from here.

A side note first; I purged everything NSFW from here just to be safe, and won’t be posting links to NSFW fics here anymore. I don’t trust Tumblr one bit and I’m not taking chances. I’d leave, but there aren’t any good alternatives. I’ll still post SFW chapters and updates and other stuff though.

Also, sometime soon I’ll be posting a link here and on AO3 to a Google Doc with my current fic statuses and a list of my future plans and ideas. One handy masterlist of all my fics, current and planned, for readers to keep up to date with what I’m currently working on, what’s on hiatus, and ideas in store for the future.

NOW on to more important matters. I have some good news for once. The two worst units in my apartment complex got evicted at last after a YEAR of me begging, demanding, and pressuring the landlord to kick them out. Since my last update things initially had actually gotten worse before this surprise. The violent drunk who lived next door threatened my mother and I on a few occasions and, among other things, repeatedly ripped our outside lightbulb from the socket and shattered it on the ground to intimidate us. His drunken rages and lashing out became even worse and more dangerous than it had, he started threatening anyone around, screaming and raving outside in the dead of night that he would shoot anyone who called the police. Even when the cops were called they never did anything, not one arrest. Landlord didn’t care either, wasn’t listening to our complaints. It was legitimately dangerous.

So because of all this I had to start walking my mom to the bus stop when she left for work in the morning, and I always carried a switch blade with me just when checking the mail or taking out the trash. That’s how bad things had become. I had given up all hope, NO ONE was doing anything.

I was going to post a video i took of this ridiculous nonsense but it was too large and didn’t know where else to link it. Oh well. Anyways, the woman he lived with would routinely lock him out when he left to buy booze in the night because he’s an abuser with a temper, trying to escape him but causing problems for everyone else around. And of course, being a dumbass, simply making off another key never came to mind for them. He would retaliate by standing outside all night screaming and threatening and trying to kick the door in. My walls would shake and pictures literally fell off the walls while he was pounding. You coudln’t just ignore it, he’s shouting death threats outside at 2AM. Forget about writing, I couldn’t even sleep or relax. Just constant tirades.

Imagine this crap, literally every. Single. Night. For nearly two years. I have almost a dozen videos (including screaming matches and fist fights too) I made towards the end over just one month, since the manager and police weren’t believing they were problems even when 5 different apartments said they needed to go. And for every vid I have there's a half dozen of these occasions I didn’t or couldn’t film over just that one month.

And if it wasn’t this asshole, it was the other group who partied outside all night long. Blaring music from 9 PM to 5 AM nearly every night outside in the complex courtyard. Getting into fistfights and shouting matches like a damn episode of Jerry Springer. Not the least bit of concern for their neighbors or common decency, complete and unredeemable pieces of shit.

So if you ever wonder why I couldn’t write, why I routinely broke promises for update timeframes, why my chapters became shorter and less polished, well THIS crap played a big part over the last year. And I lived RIGHT NEXT DOOR to this guy, our apartments share a deck entryway. A few times he was out there screaming that he had a gun and was going to shoot people. Police STILL didn’t arrest him. I was trapped for months and months suffering this, trying to deal with this.

This is part of the reason I went on hiatus. I struggled to sleep or get even a few quite minutes a day, let alone the focus and quiet I need to write. It was a constant party, a never ending nightmare day and night. This is why so many of my chapters were half finished and not to my standards in quality. I rushed and fumbled to produce things I was unhappy with to try and sate readers wants for more, but that always left me feeling worse, knowing I wasn’t producing content to my capabilities. That under-performing made me feel even more depressed. Not only did these people steal my sleep and patience and sanity and calm, they also robbed me of my creativity. My desire to write was torn away because some ignorant fucks had no concept that they weren’t the only people in the world. That MAYBE 2AM isn’t the time for a drunken party outside. Radical idea, I know.

Well both are gone now. I literally almost cried with joy. They FINALLY got evicted after I wrote tons of letters to the landlord and pushed other residents to do so as well, even though they were afraid of these people (the man next to me as I said was violent and the loud bastards throwing parties were gang members).

Now unfortunately while the worst ones are gone, there’s still a number of people here that also need to be removed. Just yesterday the police where here TWICE for two different things, a domestic dispute that ended in a stabbing (this is the second time that couple has stabbed each other), and Narcotics looking for a drug dealer (we have at least two living here). So while it has improved DRAMATICALLY around here, I can actually go a night without a fistfight outside or a drunken rampage, there’s still plenty of noise and disturbances that keep me up and interrupt my attempts at writing. It’s just less frequently and less loud and violent. But every bit of calm helps I suppose. It’s still a frustrating situation, not great but at least better than it was.

As you might imagine, I am tired and drained. Going through all this day in and day out was exhausting to say the least. At the very least though, things are starting to pick back up. I’m trying to recover my passion and collect myself to write with interest and focus again. But it’s slow going after so long, I feel rusty. And I need a break from it all, because although I was gone on hiatus it wasn’t like I was relaxing any. All I can say is I’m trying.

I’m sorry to all the readers who put up with my excuses, the delays and missed updates and broken promises, but maybe now I can get back on track. I can’t promise it will be a quick return, I feel like I need a vacation and I’m so worn out I don’t know where to begin, but now there’s a good, bright opportunity there to start again.

To sum up, I am still alive and still writing and still making plans despite all this bullshit. Slowly but surely I’m trying to get back into the habit, the form I used to write with.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll look ahead at what my intentions are moving forward considering all my fics that are on hiatus with the next part of this update, as I said at the beginning. But I need a few days to craft it (like always I’m verbose) and gather my thoughts.