#anyway unhinged era continues or whatever

[danrifics]

btw someone asked me on anon why i was so weird recently (the unhinged era i keep referring to) um it’s cos i decided i’m not masking anymore 🕺🏻 like i used to not completely mask online but have enough of a mask on that i felt like a normal person but i’ve decided i’m just tired of that so here we are

[bamboobrat]

succession s4 e6 recap: bite me

happy international workers day, girlies!!

let's celebrate by watching billionaires be responsible for multiple SEC violations!

the bitch is back.

shitting on his children even from beyond the grave.

the video in question: logan speaking of their new product, living+, which will play a surprisingly large role in this episode, given we've never heard of it before.

shiv has a private jet rendezvous with mattson. they both excel at flirting:

mattson: we're buddies, can we talk? shiv: no, maybe i fucking hate you.

true romance<3

mattson tells her about the CE-bros and their little freakout on the mountain, which is the opposite of what her brothers eventually tell her during the meeting with the inner circle.

ken and rome, still adamant about tanking the deal, tell them that elon musk mattson is unstable and druggy etc etc etc --

somehow, i don't think any of them are buying it.

shiv sure as shit doesn't buy their bs.

this is the comeback i've been waiting for.

roman immediately makes his sadboy face and asks for a hug, because all he wants is love, but my heart is starting to harden. he is truly in his flop era this episode.

shiv pencils in 20 minutes in her calendar to cry.

i love you, shiv roy. ilysm, but you will never be holly hunter from broadcast news.

cry-time is briefly interrupted by making out with the future ex-husband she absolutely hates.

we've all been there.

roman has to deal with hollywood.

he is not pleased.

i can sense the utter distain jesse armstrong has for hollywood through my screen.

the hollywood exec pushes one of roman's buttons (lots of them lately) and he fires her in a way that reminds me of logan, but also doesn't. i have a feeling logan would send "the help" to do the dirty work for him?

roman's firing spree begins. we all know where this is headed.

kendall is being annoying.

asking too much and telling your staff they can never say no?

just a regular day for me, working with politicians.

also, a fucking minefield in terms of sexual harassment, don't we think?

anyway, he wants to play house on stage and fudge the numbers and be the cringiest of cringe. let kendall be kendall, i guess.

tom and shiv hook up twice in this episode????

unrealistic.

also they bite each other.

i shouldn't have to elaborate on that.

ken and rome are still working on their "tank the deal" plan and so far the road ahead seems very realistic and not at all like the potential symptom of bipolar disorder.

for once, greg is of use and summarizes their strategy pretty well:

bla bla bla business talk bla bla bla i don't care.

roman contemplates his own mortality, as one does, and thinks there should be some other option.

death is, after all, very much one-size-fits-all.

and where does he want to end up post death, you ask?

inside a tortoise 👀

conveniently, gerri calls him in for a talk to chat to him about some very serious issues, such as:

roman is shocked to know he can't just do whatever the fuck he pleases. but that's what my dad would do, he says, to which gerri responds, but you are not your dad.

i think we've hit another button..........

and gerri, having zero fucks left to give, does not hold back.

uh oh.

and thus, roman's firing spree continues.

i'm broken.

and also mad.

i know there are probably some readers of this recap not entirely obsessed with romangerri (but really, do you exist?!), but i just have to say, please endulge me.

we're just over halfway through the season and gerri's been fired twice. let me wallow.

kendall, however, is thrilled about this unhinged energy:

"fucking eat greg" is perhaps the funniest thing he's ever said.

meanwhile, after sleeping together, shiv and tom share a heartfelt moment.

just kidding.

tom says he loves money.

how gauche of him.

the set is not up to par for our mate kendall over here, so he morphs into joni mitchell for a short sec:

I'VE LOOKED AT CLOUD FROM BOTH SIDES NOW!

where are the clouds from berlin?? really makes u think:(

luckily, he can fudge the numbers some more to elevate the stock price to distract himself.

the sibs, however, notice his erratic behavior, and shiv convinces rome that this whole presentation is not a good idea.

and despite the eventual outcome, i think they are right, given ken's track record.

karl has a spine conspiracy?????

it feels good having the old guard telling the kiddos how they truly feel.

in the back of his mind, all karl is thinking about is that greek island. that's queen shit.

kendall goes on stage alone, because roman really doesn't want to wear his stupid pilot jacket.

he interacts with a video version of his late dad, which of course shows a man that is so very stable.

best roman quote of the episode: if i cringe any harder i might become a fossil.

gerri agrees, but in a more resigned way:

couples who hate on kendall's speeches together, stay together<3 (this is what denial looks like).

my summary of kendall's presentation: starts out shit, then he pivots into karolina's script and it's fine, and then he plays the dead dad card and we can't really argue with that.

living+ is still a fucking shitshow imo. not sure if i would go as far as mattson, tho:

yikes.

leave it to the swedes to underestimate nazi discourse (please don't come for me swedes, you know).

greg unfortunately has the best line of the episode:

and turns out, it is very much true.

tom channeling his inner oprah was not on my 2023 bingo card.

and they all agreed ken did a great job.

and karl devolves into his usual, spineless self:(

i have a feeling this all means an end to whatever sibling solidarity we've been seeing, given shiv and roman's reactions.

roman comforts himself by listening to what is basically an AI generated clip of his dad saying he has a small penis.

shiv and tom seem to decide to keep it all business, but also not??

it feels more or less like a high school relationship to me at this point. i love it.

and we get a clip of kendall in the water, but he didn't die, so i couldn't use one of my precious screengrabs on that.

you all should probably thank the tumblr gods that they have a 30 image limit on these posts.

see you next week for the afterparty, featuring more scandis for me to make strange references about!

[the-hadley]

Do you think there could be anything at all sinister that is happening behind the scenes with C? Bc right now I can't imagine at all what her 5th album could potentially sound like. She'll change and grow from now until then anyway, but C's path is unexpected and a little unhinged atm

I don't know about sinister Anon, but there are several things happening within this era that are beyond questionable.

Just to list a few:

- I luv it not being pushed (playlist+radio) when it started being viral on TikTok and having massive exposure on Sports Media through indirect promo

-Album release date, going from the 14th to 28th for obvious reasons

-'He knows' being rushed because of the Drake/Kendrick beef, clearly it wasn't meant to be a single pre album and it was rushed, sent to radio and it died on conception because no other promo was done besides some comments and insta stories/tiktoks between Nas and C

-The ongoing narratives online fed by those braindead twitter stans, one day we need to sit down and have a convo on how the fuck Regina Georges' twitter personalities users are actively writing degrading reviews professionaly and getting away with it but honestly? Fuck them, I'm tired of the same popper heads creating a narrative of misogyny on female artists and we as audience continue to search for "Mothers" validation from that specific public

-The lack of general playlisting for the album, the Drake collab had less reach than Bam Bam on Spotify?! What the fuck is that? The beef was tamed, it's a summer banger and we're halfway through July 😒

I think I could go on, there are so many things happening that are literally hindering her success and some (or most) can be attributed to her team and her not understanding these details that are fundamental for success in music nowadays.

I do believe that we're still gonna get a deluxe and it's gonna be a slow burner, she had the physical sales but not the streams (playlisting not there)

So yeah, I'll be here waiting for her next album, I did saw her on RiR24 and I left that festival with my heart warm, tears in my eyes from twentysomethings and the certainty that I will always love whatever path she chooses to endeavour next, the most beautiful thing about Camila's mind is that its creative line is still such a baby and she still has so much to nurture and give us.

[implausiblyjosh]

S3 Picard & S1 CSI: Vegas

This is a repost from my cohost account! Major spoilers for Star Trek: Picard, minor spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery, and all of the following outbound links are to a character's fandom wiki page.

i, uh, like trash tv. it's a problem. i was recently doing a rewatch of the hit FOX tv show 24 because that show is way more unhinged than i remember, even from the beginning. CW's The Flash is must-watch tv for me, i drink my coffee out of a mug with The Flash on it every thrusday when i watch the new episodes.

in my quest to watch more trash tv, i remembered there was a new CSI show out, CSI: Vegas. CSI is prime Josh Trash TV, it's a show i used to watch with my mom when i was growing up that we both agreed was trash (me a bit more than her) and we watched anyways because it was a thing to watch when it was on. not so much "must-see" tv, but more "must-observe". "must-study"? whatever lol

CSI: Vegas is a continuation of CSI, taking place in the same setting (Vegas) and includes fan-favorite characters like Grissom and Sara from the original series. it also introduces a whole new cast, who get a ton of time to bounce off of old favorites while also defining themselves.

the interesting thing is that the "gimmick" of the new series also builds on the formula of the old series, and plays with the tropes of copaganda procedurals. in the old series, there would be about two cases per episode. characters would get split down the middle to take on the two cases, doing their investigating and finding evidence and so forth, while also occasionally coming together to give each other inspiration. usually the seasons are monster of the week style, every episode's cases are unrelated, but longer character development happens over each week to tie the series together.

in CSI: Vegas, the setup is similar. one case is monster of the week, a place for the new characters to stretch their legs and get their development. the second case is about the season-long mystery: did David Hodges fake all the evidence that he came up with during the events of CSI?

it's a neat premise! a less-trash tv show would probably read the room of Current Political Happenings of 2021 usa and just go for it: yeah, of course the cop faked all this shit, that's what happens. you'd still fall into copaganda stuff, because then the premise of the show would be "the Good Cops have to put the Bad Cops away", but at least it would be a little different, a little more interesting. regardless, it's a neat premise that allows for a lot of old characters to come up and for nostalgia to be farmed, while also progressing the new characters.

also, aesthetically, the show looks like old CSI. like, it's touched up, things look more "crisp" in the Streaming TV Era (this is a CBS streaming TV show, after all) but it's still like. pun or one-liner that leads into The Who song *Who Are You. when they Do Science there's some goofy, over-the-top CGI animation of chemicals and wounds and all that stuff. even "weird" shots are still there? something about original flavor CSI is that they'd make it look nice. if someone was rebuilding a crime scene in their lab, or doing a lot of large-scale monotonous work, there would be some interesting way to show it off. in the first or second episode they do the same type of stuff, they're marking a burned-down pawn shop into quadrants and cataloging everything, and it's one of those sweeping time-lapse shots that you'd see on Tested when adam savage is building something.

that's a lot about CSI and CSI: Vegas, but what does this have to do with Star Trek: Picard?

see, S3 of Picard is kinda attempting to do something similar, except they're failing spectacularly. the general thrust of S3 is that starfleet is under attack and must be stopped by the Next Generation cast and friends. that, i think, could be a neat premise. sure, they announced S3 was going to be a Next Generation reunion season in the middle of S2 while the characters were doing time travel shenanigans to save the universe (it doesn't matter) so we knew that this adventure didn't matter in several ways, but okay. neat premise, brings everyone back for one more paycheck to play these characters again and hopefully provide a good season of something like Star Trek: The Next Generation.

right? like, you wouldn't say "here's the cast of Next Generation going on one last, big adventure" and not play to the strengths of the tv show Star Trek: The Next Generation, right? you'd want this show to feel like Next Generation but with a modern budget and effects, right? right?

reader. i have some bad news.

see, Star Trek: Picard is setup like Star Trek: Discovery. i don't have a problem with the structure of Discovery, but it leads to some storytelling choices. the strength of Discovery is that each weekly adventure can be mildly self-contained, but also can be moving a larger plot forward. this week we're learning about a new species in this part of the galaxy, and this adventure with them will help us get closer to figuring out who that red figure is. where Discovery falls apart is when it spreads itself too thin, and each episode of the season feels like Part 5 of an arc that could have been two episodes at most. "what's beyond the milky way galaxy" is a two-episode arc in other Star Trek shows, not a season-long question that we're slowly coming closer to an answer for in Discovery. ya know?

anyways, the first four episodes of S3 Picard are answering "what's goin' on with Beverly Crusher and her new son", which is a weird question to ask in Picard because they haven't acted like the character existed up until now. some episodes of S1 & S2 dealt a lot with "can Picard love anyone?" and seemingly left out a very relevant character from that discussion. you do see her freak son once in S2 and he looks like he's hosting the aftershow talk show (it doesn't matter).

but that driving force for those episodes is a two-parter at best. 4 episodes? that seems a bit poorly paced. that's cause it is! there's another thing going on, where Raffi is on an undercover mission to find out who stole some portal tech and used it on a starfleet recruitment building. Worf is also there. Oh, also Ro Laren is there for an episode. oh, and now the changelings from DS9 are a threat again, and are behind a huge, slow coup of starfleet. i dunno, it's all... blurring together.

also, nothing means anything in this show. at the end of S1 of Picard Picard dies and he gets put into a Data-style android and he's still old and will die of natural causes anyways, just when the actor himself passes. it doesn't matter, it's come up as a joke a handful of times since. at the end of S2 Picard Picard befriends the new borg queen, one of the main characters they left in 202X during the season's events, which allows for a new benevolent borg who wish to join the empire. it doesn't matter, hasn't come up since and seemingly is not significant this far into the season... despite the fact the reason new main character Liam Shaw hates Picard and people from his Enterprise-D is because Picard got captured and turned into Locutus of Borg.

it's the combination of nothing mattering and not using the strengths of the show you're obviously trying to reference and call back to that makes Picard a worse "nostalgia" show then something like CSI: Vegas, which is a wild thought to put online. now the thrust of the season is "what are the changelings up to" and i don't care, really. i want to know how it ends out of fascination, but i know it won't matter. nothing else has, events in one season of Picard don't seem to matter to the next season, so who can say if this will even matter to other Star Trek shows made after this. Discovery is now set, what, 1000 years in the future of what's happening in Picard that it will likely never come up. Strange New Worlds takes place after Enterprise but before Star Trek: The Original Series that it will also never come up there. this is the last season of Picard, so it's likely any relevance these 3 seasons of television have to the greater Star Trek universe dies at the end of this 10 episode season. by April 20, 2023 it's likely this show will not be relevant to the Star Trek stories being told, a meaningless addition that the shows itself will no longer reference. Star Trek: The Animated Series will be more important to the fictional setting and stories.

it's frustrating! i love this weird universe and their weird shows with my whole heart, and it's weird that CSI: Vegas, a copaganda nonsense show made for streaming platforms to get the coveted "olds who love Gil Grissom so much" audience, is doing this nostalgia bait in a way more competent way and (crucially!) a way more entertaining way. all they had to do was "more Next Generation but with more modern tv show sensibilities" and they fucked it up so bad!

[sophsun1]

Oh no, I totally agree both of those things are horrible and it’s gross that “fans” acted that way. The way i worded it, it did come off a little weird, my bad. I just meant it that way because years ago when i joined, for example, the supernatural fandom, i remember some “fans” being the reason Jensen and his wife had to move and that some “fans” gifted his wife fishing hooks and she had to get tetanus shots. And at the same time some fans were just weird and crossing lines with actors. So i think in my brain because of witnessing that, those two got stored in different compartments (like wtf and wtf 2.0). But I totally agree just the date story alone made me sick to my stomach because I can’t imagine how that has to feel. I had no clue though that the fan’s behavior kind of affected Gale and Randy’s friendship, that they basically couldn’t hang out. I’m glad that fans now calmed down if they see them in public. I’m happy that the show wasn’t around during the social media because this would be crazier now but damn, i do wish it was around social media but only for bts content and better quality videos. Anyway, thank you answering and my bad if it came off like those two things were just eh whatever type of behavior.

Hey anon!

Oh, yes the supernatural fandom is another level of unhinged I've witnessed it on the outskirts, I mean if you're on tumblr it's literally impossible to miss. It's disgraceful the way people behave, it leaves me shocked by the human condition to willingly participate in that type of behaviour and it still continues to this day.

I hate celebrity culture full stop, I have never and will never have any form of parasocial relationship with an actor or feel entitlement, I may fangirl and enjoy their work but that's it.

I've seen it happen in many fandoms and it won't stop it just seems to be getting worse, people's sexuality is still dissected, actors are made highly uncomfortable and even outed. We'll never really know the entire deal with what happened to Gale and Randy and to be honest I don't want to, what I've seen is enough. I unfortunately don't think it has calmed down in regards to them, if they posted a picture together tomorrow I'm 100% sure there would be inappropriate comments. I'd take the low quality grainy bts content over them being on social media in this era any day. I don't think they would survive it to be honest I mean it was bad enough then.

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. people also need to get frustration with LO isn't because people don't like RS (though she isn't exactly free from critique)  it's because she's just another privileged white woman who is handed everything on a golden platter while she does increasingly more subpar work, meanwhile other webtoon creators have to work twice as hard while they get ignored and neglected by WT. She's just another example of privileged mediocrity getting all the rewards while rest get scraps at very best.

2. Not an LO critique per-say but I hate how webtoons will always make sure to promote it and pretend theyre still easygoing team as if they're not the same company who neglected the B&R so much they want to quit art all together, cancelled BOTH comics by the roommate assassin's creator w/ no warning, and are ghosting the creator of #blessed for over 2 years now so they can't continue. But hey, make sure to think they're such a nice company that totally don't care about the cash cow creators only!

3. whats so annoying me is you know if rachel was a greek person that you just know no one would care about LO because no one cares about the opinions of actual greeks less than xenoi. rachel on virtue of being a kiwi gets held up as the ACTUAL expert on greece and its myths meanwhile the actual greeks are silenced and told they should be thankful to HER "keeping the myths alive". its just gross she gets to butcher an ongoing culture's stories all for her profit while she aides in silencing them.

4. i actually got an LO ad while on youtube today and its just?? weird theyre still only using art from 2018?? like idk i get thats when it actually had effort put into it, but it would be really weird to discover it now and see the style just got so much worse/different and the story doesnt align at all with what the ads say it is.

5. ngl i want to see what stupid reasoning rachel makes up to deal with semele and dionysus because it will truly be unhinged if she tries to hashtag girlboss hera as she murders a pregnant women and tortures a baby through his adulthood (personally i think she'll have hxp adopt the baby for whatever reason but then now dionysus has to deal with a mom who would be a better sister and a dad who resents him for not being from his broken balls 💀) guess we'll have to wait and see.

6. IDK to me I don't think people have to justify why they don't like this comic, because I have seen way too many of the fans force people to out their sexual abuse histories and trauma to explain why they're so uncomfortable with it, only to be told by these same fans that doesn't matter and saying they're wrong and basically need to "get over it" because the comic matters more they do. It's so gross to force them to explain their pain only to be told their pain and opinions don't matter anyway.

7. I don't even get why Webtoons keeps trying to acquire new comics from NAVER or Canvas when they only focus on LO, LP, TB, and at best UnO and leave the rest to fend for themselves. No wonder the last few months of "Greenlit" announcements have included either one/two or no picked up Canvas series, and for good reason. Why would they agree to all that work with little pay and no company support? They'll spend at most one instagram post on them meanwhile they just HAVE to make another 30 for LO.

8. To add to the "LO should be taught in schools" thing: literature you read in school (esp high school and college) HAS to be challenging and make you think, so YA of any type often just isn't included bc they're not deep They can still read LO all they want, but it serves zero academic merit and that's fine! They don't need academic approval to enjoy a lowbrow comic! If anything trying to hype it up as something it's not only opens it up to being even more critiqued that it already is!

9. I honestly wish RS had stuck with her Victorian era comic because not only would we not have to deal with LO but I would 100% prefer to read a gothic style comic about sci fi horror and dry sarcasm over this neon colored fanfic of the 2014 tumblr version of greek mythology mixed with her ripping off fifty shades.

10. it's embarrassing how the stans just claim "misogyny!!" when one critiques LO or says its not exactly high art because like? It's pop lit, it's not groundbreaking in any way and frankly pretty devoid in any sort of themes or messages, and that's fine! it has a place for that and a lot of people like it, but it's not misogyny to admit it's not Shakespeare. Yeah, a lot of YA and female stories are pushed aside as "fluff" but LO is NOT being discriminated against for being YA or by a woman.

[forthegothicheroine]

The King in Yellow, 1949

Much of this story is true.  Warnings in the tags.

When I had pneumonia in my early teens, my mother brought home an armful of VHS tapes from the library to alleviate my misery.  Knowing my snobbish preferences, she had grabbed copies of whatever she found in black and white.  I remember something musical that I suspect was Busby Berkeley, I remember Mildred Pierce (a bad choice, as it turned out- the plot includes a young girl dying of pneumonia), and I remember a period piece called The King.  I faded in and out of consciousness while I watched it, but it soothed me while I was awake and filled my fever dreams with sparkling images.  I could never find it at the library again, nor at Hollywood Video or even early Netflix (once my father got the subscription service where you could order practically every DVD.)  It was a bit odd that it seemed to be so obscure, given that it starred old Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman (and, although I initially forgot it, Marlene Dietrich.)  But even big stars make films that fall by the wayside in public memory, and it seemed that this was one of them.  Google was no help, and at the time that was that.

I didn’t see the film again until I was watching Turner Classic Movies at my grandparents’ house.  I loved watching that channel with them while filling out the crossword puzzle that came in their little TCM catalogue (all of it based on movie trivia, the only kind of crossword puzzle I’ve ever been any good at.)  I recognized a certain scene where Bergman stood on a balcony, looking sadly at the moon.  Her face had an expression of unutterable melancholy, and the crescent moon reflected in each of her eyes, giving the impression of two moons in one sky.  I had very little time to catch up on what I’d missed before we had to go meet my cousins at the local Italian restaurant.  I knew logically that the movie would be long over by the time we returned, but I turned on the channel anyway.  Of course it had moved on to the lesser known Alfred Hitchcock film Stage Fright, but then I heard Marlene Dietrich sing before I could reach the remote to turn the tv off in disappointment.  I knew that I had heard her sing before, and I knew it had been in The King.

Dietrich’s singing often comes across as somewhat campy today, with its Rs pronounced as Ws and it’s up-and-down tone.  Madeline Kahn parodied it brilliantly in Blazing Saddles, such that it was a bit of a disappointment when I finally saw Dietrich’s western Destry Rides Again and found it to be lifeless and inconsistent next to the parody.  Still, we remember her voice for a reason, and when I remembered it that night, I knew that its sardonic loneliness had rung through The King and made me shiver in my dreams.

The TCM schedule didn’t list The King in its time slot, but something else.  If I had taken down the name, maybe it would have helped me find it.  Sometimes the same movie runs under multiple names.

I didn’t see the film all the way through for many years, after I graduated college.  I had found a web page that listed public domain film noir, including one called The Masked Guest.  The website described it as a costume noir, and I curiously clicked on the link.  Once I took in the credits running on the youtube window, my eyes grew wide and I did not move from my place on the bed until the movie had run its course.

The credits did indeed list it as The Masked Guest, but I recognized the strange repeating design on the title cards.  They told me that in addition to starring Dietrich and Bergman, it was directed by Fritz Lang, and a character called The King was credited to “???”  (I hadn’t seen that kind of credit since the first Karloff Frankenstein.)  When the King finally appears on screen, though, it is unmistakably Orson Welles’s voice that booms out from behind his elaborate costume.

Here are the things I understand about The King, or The Masked Guest, or The Man in Yellow, or any other title I’ve found for it on public domain archive searches.  Dietrich and Bergman play princesses named Cassilda and Camilla, respectively.  Though Dietrich’s accent is German and Bergman’s is Swedish, they blend together to give the film the impression of being set somewhere on the map that I can’t quite find.  The scenery and camera angles are very Freudian, with a great deal of archways and pillars.

The first act of The King involves frankly dull romantic plotlines, and the only thing that really saved it was the feeling that the suitors were supposed to be insipid, a suspicion lended credence by the fact that the love interests were listed so low on the credits.  Dietrich is the scandalous sister and Bergman is the responsible one, though each takes on aspects of the other as the film goes on.  Dietrich sings her song at a party, dressed in a fake 17th century gown and leaning against a piano.  Although just a moment ago she had been laughing and joking with her gentleman friends, her song takes an abruptly serious tone (not seductive, not sentimental) as she tells the story of a city lost to time and memory.  Bergman slips away from the party and onto the balcony, where we see that wonderful shot of the moon in her eyes.  Is she mourning?  Is she longing?

Dietrich cuts off the song by abruptly screaming “Not on us, King!  Not on us!”  She flees the party weeping and shaking, and from there on the film goes mad.

Though uncommon, it is not unknown for movies to switch between black and white and color, done most famously in The Wizard of Oz.  The film The King recalls here is the silent Phantom of the Opera, which had a masqued ball scene tinted in shades of red and green that tried to provide a whole spectrum of color.  The effect is even odder in the masqued ball scene in The King- the only color that appears is yellow, highlighting things like candlelight, Dietrich’s hair, a passing gown, a vase of tulips.  It also highlights one particular masked figure, whose expressionless mask was decorated with a black pattern against a sickening yellow canvas- the same pattern I had seen in the opening credits.  The color of his costume causes him to stand out from the crown even when he is far off in the background, just one head among many others.  It must have taken long and painstaking hours of work to color in every frame.

Dietrich still seems broken up days after her song, though Bergman tries to coax her into joining the dance.  Finally, at midnight, Dietrich goes out to face the party, but only to demand that every guest remove their mask.  The yellow man with a voice that once warned America about a Martian invasion tells her that he wears no mask.  Bergman reacts with disbelief, but Dietrich starts laughing like a woman unhinged.  As she laughs, the yellow hue seeps out of the King’s clothing and face- if that really is his face- and begins to color the entire ballroom crowd.  I think that what follows is bloodshed, but if there is any carnage (doubtful under the Production Code censorship), the blood must be tainted yellow and splashed across the camera like daubs of paint.  Dietrich’s laughing face is doubled and tripled on screen until it dissipates, but even when it has faded offscreen, it feels as if her ghost continues to watch the proceedings.  

By the end of the scene (filled with German Expressionist camera angles and mad violin screeching), only Bergman remains alive, cowering behind a grandfather clock.  It does not hide her for long.  The King steps towards her and extends his hand.  Reluctantly, but with a fatalistic expression, Bergman takes his hand.  They walk away together hand in hand.  The screen shifts back into black and white, and then the credits roll before we can get a good look at all the bodies in the scene.  The credits say it was based on a play called The King in Yellow, although Raymond Chandler of all people apparently had a hand in the screenplay.

As I said, that’s what I think I understand.  It’s an oddly experimental art film for the era, and it may be awaiting rediscovery by the film festival crowd.  I feel as if I alone know about it, though that obviously isn’t true.  It is my little secret; I tell myself that my husband doesn’t need me to show it to him, it would be too odd for his taste.  I’ve rewatched it many times, even if it seems like each time I search for it I have to find a different video platform or torrent.  Naturally, no subscription site has it available.  Maybe I am the last person who will ever watch it.  Maybe no one will ever think to look for it again after me, and it will be completely forgotten.

When I was hospitalized, they let me use my laptop at night before I went to sleep (no power cord, though, in case I tried to hang myself.)  I found a youtube link for The Man in Yellow, and I watched it every night.  It wasn’t a soothing sort of movie, but having it in my mind all day and then watching it in the evening allowed me to think as opposed to crying endlessly while the other patients shot me awkward looks.  I clutched the childhood stuffed animals my mother brought me when she visited, and I always held them extra tight when the masquerade scene started.

I watched the movie when I had to move away from my beloved San Francisco.  I watched the movie when I lost the last of my grandparents.  I watched the movie when a doctor unwisely took me off my medication and I couldn’t manage to eat for a month.  I watched the movie when the whole world got sick and we all locked ourselves away from each other.  I don’t mind that I don’t entirely know what it means.  I don’t mind the nightmares.  In the hospital they kept telling us about mindfulness exercises, and maybe the fact that I can focus on every aspect of the film so closely that all else falls away is the reason I keep coming back to it.  I’m being mindful.  I’m not letting any stray thoughts invade my head.  I’m just watching and waiting for the next beat of every scene, leading inexorably to that yellow-stained bloodbath.

Streaming media doesn’t last forever, and each time I find The King, I worry that it will be the last time I ever can find it.  My efforts to download it have so far been unsuccessful, odd considering that it is in the public domain.

When I watch The King, I am once again a child in my bedroom being cared for in the throes of agonizing sickness.  I am once again sitting on the couch with my grandparents in front of the tv, both of them alive and lucid again.  I am once again in the hospital, all alone except for my stuffed animals and the staff trying to keep me alive.  The film reflects in my eyes like the crescent moon in Ingrid Bergman’s gaze.  It sings to me.

I am determined to find a way to obtain The King under any name so that I never have to worry about losing it.  During some of the worst times in my life, it is the only thing that has kept me sane.

[radramblog]

Radiohead Retrospective Part 4: We’ve got heads on sticks

Your name is Thom Yorke. You’ve just released what is considered one of the best albums of the 90s, if not of all time, and you’ve achieved a level of fame that at least one band member considers akin to the Beatles. Through the release of OK Computer, you’ve proven that even if people are pretty much over Oasis at this point, British rock bands still rule the airwaves. You’re also stressed the fuck out over just about all of this, and having a very hard time accustoming to the life of a celebrity- let alone the usual mental health issues.

What will you do?

Apparently, the answer was to write the fourth album to be as far away from the previous few as possible, seeking influence from IDM groups like Aphex Twin, jazz stuff, and just some bizarro instruments and experimentation and leaving a lot of the “rock” stuff behind. The primary genre listed for Kid A is usually Electronica or Ambient, with various off-kilter rock subgenres lagging behind, crying “you’re still gonna do guitars and stuff, right?”

Well…not as much anymore. But this era of Radiohead, this career-suicidal swerve, still proved monumentally successful, and showed that the band still had it, and that sometimes artistic risks do pay dividends.

A side note: I usually link music videos for the tracks I discuss as part of each post, as you’ll have seen in previous parts of this series. Kid A, however, doesn’t have any singles, and it sure doesn’t have any music videos. So…maybe just listen yourself. I’m probably in over my head here anyway.

I think the first 5 notes of Everything In Its Right Place are some of the most iconic in all of music.

Some personal background- Kid A was the first Radiohead I ever listened to. A particular cool and good mate of mine was a fan in high school, but I’d never listened to them at all, and I trusted his opinion musically, so I went to buy one of their CDs the next time I was at the shop. And for whatever reason, the cheapest one was Kid A at 10 bucks, and I didn’t want to gamble more than that, so that’s the one I got.

So the opening notes of Everything In Its Right Place were the first Radiohead I ever heard. And considering how much I obsessed over this band, in high school and beyond, it’s no surprise that this song is one of my favourites.

Not only did this song introduce me to Radiohead, it was effectively a gateway track for electronic music in general. This was the early 10s, and the majority of what I knew as electronic stuff was the EDM that was drowning the airwaves at the time. I hated that stuff out of principle, because being a hipster like that was definitely a personality. I don’t think I would ever have gotten into Vaporwave, into IDM, or into any electronic music the way I eventually would were it not for Everything In Its Right Place.

Now that I’ve spent 250 words talking about myself and not the actual song, we should probably stop that. Everything In Its Right Place is defined by this steady build of layering vocals and effects onto the relatively calm synth line, distorted vocals and word salad lyrics and manipulated noises growing and getting more chaotic before it just stops- the vocals fade out, the effects drop, and you’re left with the synth line- except it’s been slowly changing itself the whole time, and you don’t realise because you’ve been distracted by everything else at the same time.

It’s worth noting (and I don’t know if this was the case with OK Computer, because I don’t have an original copy of that one) that this was an album without liner notes, without the lyrics in the cover booklet. But at least in this case, the lyrics don’t matter as much as the v i b e. At least, that’s what I think.

On the topic of unintelligible lyrics, Kid A has a title track! I believe literally two Radiohead albums do this, the other being The Bends (though Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows do appear as lyrics). The song itself is an ambient, quiet piece that feels something like a twisted nursery tune- incredibly affected vocals, a syncopated (?) percussion, and a synth (I think???) that…I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels nursery-rhyme-y. If you’ve heard this song a few times, or you know what to listen for, you can piece together the lyrics somewhat- and they are, frankly, kind of unsettling. What is standing in the shadows at the end of your bed, can it please leave? And imagery of the Pied Piper is always either extremely silly or extremely unnerving, with this clearly leaning towards the latter. There’s a lot going on here- especially for a track most probably wouldn’t listen to outside the context of the full album. I know I generally don’t- not the kind of thing I generally am in the mood for.

 We’re at 850+ words, and we’re only up to The National Anthem? Fuuuuck. Well, anyone who wasn’t on board the IDM train can at least appreciate this one more, it’s got an actual bassline. A killer one, at that, that drives the whole track. Well, you know, that and the B R A S S. Seriously, it sounds like they invited a marching band to this bad boy. The combination ends up sounding mostly like controlled chaos, a jazz band traffic jam wound together by that B A S S. But the bass can’t hold it forever, and eventually that shit breaks free and just, it just honks all over the place.

I’m frustratingly running out of things to say about this song I really like, as opposed to the other songs I really liked. Unfortunately, ya boi forgot to take his neurotypicalification pills today, and so I’m getting very distracted. Hopefully, that slightly unhinged nature suits the album somewhat.

The next song, How To Disappear Completely, is a Big Mood with a fun story attached. The main lyrics- I’m not here, this isn’t happening- were allegedly something none other than Michael Stipe from R.E.M. told Thom to help him deal with that massive stage fright that came with Getting Big. Fun trivia aside, this song is gorgeous, luscious with massive strings, an acoustic bend, aethereal vocals, and a background drone running through the thing that makes sure your hair is always a little on end through the thing. It’s a song whose lyrics are an attempt to escape anxiety, whose instrumentation serves more to reinforce it- a calm, melodic piece that builds into nervous swells and threatening strings. A song about fighting your fear, and losing.

Fuck me it’s a bit depressing isn’t it. It’s potentially the most emotionally revealing song the album has- a lot of the lyricism on other tracks is more metaphorical, or subtle, but the meaning in How To Disappear Completely is evident even just from the title. You get lost in the strings and they go from calming, to imposing, to downright menacing (and then back again) in the song’s final minute.

Treefingers, on the other hand, has a lot less to say, and by that I mean it’s an instrumental. A very atmospheric, ambient one, and thereby one I don’t have a lot to say about. I’m not sure I’m particularly good at commenting on regular music, but this kinda thing is a whole different animal. I have no idea how to interact with discussing this. I like it? I will say, that one note right at the end, that echoes for a bit, the one piece of clarity in this muddled, reverbed sphere, feels especially poignant, for reasons I cannot describe.

We go from ambient instrumental to arguable the most rock-song-like track on this album, Optimistic, certified banger that it is. Some might argue that it doesn’t fit here, but like, did they even hear the lyrics? The bridge? It more that deserves its place on one of the best albums around. The little way the guitar scales up during the chorus is excellent, the proggy drums and riffs are glorious, it’s just a very good rock song.

Also this is the first song with the lyric “dinosaurs roaming the earth”, which, aside from being a bit of a non-sequitur, would return two albums later. And I’m really looking forward to that one.

In Limbo is a song I kind of always forget exists until I hear it again. It’s antimemetic, the way the song goes slipping from my mind until I hear those opening notes again. I’m going to be honest, it’s probably because it’s also the most mid song on the album. Far from bad, but it isn’t doing anything that How to Disappear Completely or Optimistic aren’t doing better. If I had to remove any track from this album, it might be this one?

Watch me get fucking lynched from the fandom for that one, if I ever post this to r/Radiohead or whatever. Which I might, though as much as I’d like more people to read my things I’m also extremely anxious about the potential response. Like the album I’m discussing today, I’m terrified of fame.

Incidentally, In Limbo is also the shortest track on the album (Treefingers beats it by 11 seconds), though this isn’t initially obvious online at least, because people keep messing with Motion Picture Soundtrack. But we’re not there yet, hang on.

We go from the forgettable (to me) In Limbo to the utterly mesmerizing Idioteque. Anxious but danceable, confusing but emotive, messy but tightly controlled. I love this fucking song to death. The reason I got the particular Radiohead poster that I did was because it has lyrics from this on it.

I’ve heard that lyrics for this album were largely pulled from a hat, and nowhere is that more clear than here (or maybe Everything In Its Right Place). Despite this, there’s a pretty clear theme in them, a continuation of some of the themes of this and the last albums. A condemnation of wealth and cowardice in the face of ecological disaster. In the form of an apocalypse disco.

What a lot of people don’t know about this track is that it actually samples an extremely old electronic music piece- one written in 1973, on a particularly old computer. The track, mild und leise, is a very interesting track considering its age- I’m reminded of Selected Ambient Works by Aphex Twin- not so much musically, but about how that reason was as influential as it was because it was the first time songs had sounded like that, because it was the first time songs could sound like that- I suppose it’s somewhat similar in that way, if older. These pieces and their composers inexorably linked by the allure of technology, and how that could be used to define new eras in music history- in Radiohead’s case, it certainly defined the next few albums in their lifespan.

Jesus mild und leise is long, it’s still going as I write this. I need to get back to Kid A, man!

Idioteque leads directly into Morning Bell, admittedly another less memorable song. Largely percussion lead, plenty of falsetto, and with a very unsubtle theme if you listen to the lyrics. I recall seeing someone saying that “cut the kids in half” was a really surprising and spooky line, and, yeah, sure, it sort of is, but it’s only particularly bad if you don’t pay attention for the rest of it. It’s about divorce, dude, it’s not subtle.

Or apparently not, according to one interview, but Thom said the interpretation isn’t invalid, so haha still winning baybeeeee.

I think the only part of this I really can’t do without is the outro, because the last minute and a half of this song is really cool. The mumbled lyrics go really well with the rising percussion and eerie effects that end the track.

Our final song is Motion Picture Soundtrack, or, Exit Music (for Walt Disney’s Depression Nap). This and Street Spirit I think are what really cement Radiohead’s reputation for brutal closers, both of them being tragic but hauntingly beautiful in different ways. In this case, it’s the instrumentation- glittering harps attempting the echo 50s Disney. There’s actually a version of this song from the OK Computer era with extremely different instrumentation, piano rather than organ, and no harps (and a third verse that is utterly brutal). Regardless, this is the song they chose to close the apocalypse that Kid A is on- the final lyric being “I will see you in the next life”, as the glittering echoes into the night. Poignant and tragic, but a little hopeful- the next life hopefully won’t have the struggles and pain of this one.

And then, of course, there’s the hidden track. Nicknamed Genchildren by some (that’s just the username of the dude who uploaded it to Napster back in the day), officially known as Untitled, and the true closer to the album. With Spotify slapping it right at the end of Motion Picture Soundtrack, it’s not clear the true nature of this song- it’s actually hidden on the original album, after several minutes of silence, just long enough that you’ve forgotten you left the player running (or you’re still crying from Motion Picture Soundtrack). I don’t think there’s a real word for what this sounds like other than heavenly, and incredibly brief piece I’ve heard compared to the pearly gates. After all, if we end on “I will see you in the next life”, then what can this be but that?

 Thus closes Kid A, a gorgeous and powerful album, yet an insane swerve for any rock band to pull, not just Radiohead. A bold strategy, and yet it paid off for them- Kid A would not only be massively influential, it was also massively successful both critically and commercially- but not to the standard of OK Computer before it. But they obviously weren’t trying to do OK Computer part 2, just as that album was deliberately not The Bends part 2.

Kid A would pretty much get a Part 2, though, less than a year later. And it’s that album we’ll be discussing next week, obviously. Until then.

[thran-duils]

Devils Look Like Angels (Ch.11)

Title: Devils Look Like Angels (Chapter 11) Summary:  Fem!Reader x Psychotic!Castiel. An unhinged, criminal, supernatural artifact collector extraordinaire… and the reader caught his eye. It will not take her long to realize that beneath the charm and mystique is a crazed killer who will go to great lengths to woo her. Words: 2,507 Warnings (for the fic in entirety): Stalking, angst, death/murder, violence

Chap 10 || Chap 12 || Masterpost || Fanfic masterpost

Slowly, you stretched your legs, waking from your sleep. Squeezing your eyes, your arms stretched, and you became acutely aware they were over someone.

Quickly blinking away sleep, your eyesight focused on the person laying facing the ceiling. You were on your side, arm draped over your torso.

“I was wondering when you were going to wake,” Castiel said gently.

You were away from his side instantaneously, wildly trying to take in your surroundings. You felt sluggish, fatigued. Where were you? And why were you in bed with Castiel?

The bar.

You had been at the bar. And had needed to go to the bathroom. But the line… so you had gone outside. You had met him out there. It was coming back to you, fuzzy, but still the bigger picture was there. You remembered agreeing to go with Castiel, but why?

Becoming acutely aware – again – that you were in bed with him, you eyed him accusingly before throwing the sheets back. He was merely shirtless; you were dressed but wearing different clothes than you had had on at the bar. Some boxers and a t-shirt.

Castiel sighed heavily, “Please, Y/N, again, I’m not a pervert. You were far too intoxicated to give any level of consent.”

He slipped out of bed, stretching himself. You noticed he was wearing swim trunks.

“I made breakfast. It is on the deck out here, next to the hot tub. There is a suit there—” He pointed towards a flower printed one piece on the back of the chair by the desk. “I believe it is your size. Join me?”

He walked around the bed, not waiting for an answer, to the sliding glass door and walked out, disappeared from view.

Rubbing your forehead, you threw your legs over the side of the bed. Where was your phone? Had he hidden it? Or worse, disposed of it? Trying to keep calm, you stood up, eyes roaming the room. It was not on his side of the bed, nor in the bed, or on the dresser. Upon seeing the bathroom, you searched there as well to no avail.

You walked out the door that Castiel had left through, finding him sitting in a hot tub, relaxing. He opened one eye as you approached.

“No suit?”

“I’m hungry.”

It was the truth.

Sitting at the table, you took the cover off the tray, finding eggs, bacon, and fruit.

“Where’s my phone?” you asked directly, stabbing at the eggs. You did not think Castiel meant to poison you, so you would not insult him by asking.

“You left it at the bar,” Castiel told you.

That came back to you now. The moment you had realized it had been left behind on the table. No doubt Dean and Sam had it now, at least you hoped.

“There is more aspirin downstairs if you need it,” Castiel added. “You did take some before passing out, but I am not sure how you are feeling now…?”

He trailed off, and you realized he was looking at you expectantly. You swallowed your food quickly.

“Fine.”

“Miraculous. You always seem to be able to surprise me, kitten,” Castiel said, the corner of his lip turned up in amusement. He continued, “I sent a couple of my men to get you some fresh clothes for you to change into. Until then, the suit is really all I have.”

“Are you going to take me back home?”

Castiel sighed, “Yes. Of course. But are you so eager to leave? Look around you.” He gestured over his shoulder and you followed his arm. The lake was vast, you could see that even through the tree line. Right. The lake house that he had mentioned. Another piece falling into place. “If you do feel good, shower, change into the suit. We can go down to the lake. It is going to be a warm day.”

You said nothing, chewing on the bacon.

“I am constantly trying to impress you. I just cannot figure out why it is so hard, kitten.”

“I… the lake is nice. It looks beautiful. And thank you for breakfast. It is tasty.”

Relaxing against the side of the tub again, Castiel stated, “Well, at least I have seemed to have finally done some things right.”

Uncomfortable with the situation, you continued eating, trying to go as quickly as possible without making a mess. Castiel was basking in the hot tub, watching you lazily through half open lids.

When you finished, you stood up and said, “Should I take this inside to the kitchen?”

“Don’t bother. I can do it. I should be getting out of this tub anyway. It has been twenty minutes; I do not want to overheat and leave you abandoned when I have such a lovely day planned.”

“Okay,” you said, playing with the hem of your shirt. “I suppose now is a good a time as ever to change.”

“Quite,” Castiel agreed as he got out of the tub.

He was quite fit; you wondered if like his men, he used that strength to murder and otherwise torture others. There was small doubt in your mind that was far from the truth. He caught you looking as he grabbed his towel and gave a quick smirk and you averted your eyes, disappearing inside.

At least it was a modest suit, no way to be too revealing to him. You were nervous enough as it was to even be in a suit around him.

How the hell were you going to make it through this day?

<> <> <>

Holding onto the life vest, you tried to think about anything else than the possibility Castiel might be taking you out to the middle of the lake to shoot you and weight you down to toss you in. It was the middle of the day though and there were others on the lake; it would be difficult for him to pull off such a task without anyone else noticing. Still… he was not entirely stable.

The sun glittered on the water as the boat sliced through the soft wake caused by other boats. It was quite lovely, you had to admit. The warmth of the sun on your skin was comforting and it was not too cold even with the wind. Your hair was going to be a tousled mess at the end of this, but you breathed deeply, taking in the surroundings.

You caught Castiel sneaking looks back at you adoringly as he drove, smiling at you reclining in the boat behind him. His smile was wide and dazzling, simply beside himself.

He was doing it again… making you believe this would be normal. Just like at the auditorium. The two of you, enjoying a vacation together at the lake, having a grand time. Nothing out of the ordinary. You knew that is what he wanted desperately.

There was no way to appease him on that front though. Knowing what he was capable of… what he did… you could not – would not – be able to reconcile or ever be okay with that.

All you could do was give him today and you tried to enjoy yourself.

<> <> <>

Castiel followed you up the stairs, still beaming about the time you had spent on the lake today. He had taken time in the middle of the lake to fish, you had declined. He was actually good at it, admitting that it was a hobby of his, which threw you off. It did not seem like something he would enjoy. He was a man of cleanliness and the idea of him knowing how to gut and debone a fish was strange. Yet… knowing how to maim an animal may actually be in his wheelhouse. That thought hit you quick.

Following you up the stairs, holding the fish, Castiel was chattering all about the rest of the food in the fridge that he could prepare for you for an early dinner. You agreed with him that roasted potatoes and sautéed spinach would pair lovely with the trout.

His men had brought back a change of clothes just as he said they would. A casual sun dress that you slipped into while he began prepping the food. You came back into the kitchen to find he had taken the time to slip into chino shorts and a laid back, collared white button up.

As he cooked, you asked him, “Where did you come from?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Like where did you grow up?”

He flashed you a quick smile over his shoulder and said, “Have I never told you?”

“No.”

“Hmm. Well, it is quite a private thing, is it not? Your childhood.”

You acknowledged, tapping your finger gently on your wine glass, “It is.”

Castiel responded, bringing spices out of the cupboard, “Well, I was born in the desert. This scenery around here is foreign to me, as is Kansas.

“Where?”

With a small chuckle, Castiel said, “Well, since you were so talkative last night, I guess it is only fair…”

You stiffened, staring at him. “What?”

“I think we are at a point where we can dive into details about these types of things,” Castiel said, ignoring your question. And you believed he did it deliberately. “Mesa, to be exact. Normal childhood. That is until my parents got murdered because my father happened to buy himself quite an extraordinary knife from a pawn shop that was… special. And these artifact collectors of special nature wanted it. I suppose simply asking for it was too tall of an order for them. The leader only noticed me in my doorway after the deed had been done. Took me to keep the murder quiet, but also because I believe he could not stomach killing a six-year-old.”

“They raised me. Taught me everything they know. You know, that typical story. And I was loyal to him… until I was not. They taught me too well. I slaughtered him and his men and took all the riches they had procured. I formed my own posse. We hunt supernatural artifacts as you know.”

“I have been unable to find anymore bone knives. That is what my parents were killed over. And I understand why, truly. It is very powerful, especially made from certain eras and more so from certain historical figures. The magic that is in them, bestowed from dark sorcerer’s is remarkable.”

He paused, seeming lost in thought. He had been expertly caring for the food as it cooked despite the deep story he had been telling.

A few moments passed before he turned, seeing you were looking at him with rapt attention. He chortled, amused, “Oh, kitten, you flatter me. You let me get carried away in my self indulgent story.”

Shrugging, you told him, “It was interesting.”

And it was. Learning about what had made him who he was. Monsters were created, you had always believed in that philosophy. And it seemed to be the case with him.

“I am sorry that you went through so much,” you told him honestly. “And especially at such a young age. I can’t even begin to imagine.”

Taking the lid off the skillet with the potatoes, Castiel adjusted them. “I made it alright. As you can see.”

“Of course,” you responded, not about to let him think any differently.

“This is about done,” Castiel announced, gesturing at the oven timer. “Would you care to dine in here or out on the deck?”

“The deck seems nice. The sun is setting.”

Castiel smiled widely, “That it is. How lovely you will look in it.”

You blushed at his compliment as he turned to go to the cupboards to look for plates.

He set up the deck table, serving everything to you, and refilling the wine. You refrained from asking if he was going to be okay to drive, wanting to find a good interjection to ask when exactly you were going to be going home again.

Clinking glasses, Castiel said, “I hope it is to your liking.”

“I am sure it will be more than satisfactory, Castiel.”

“Again, you flatter me. I will never tire of it, kitten.”

You gave him a small smile as you cut into your fish. “So, how did you say you got this place?”

“Rental,” Castiel told you. “Air bnb. You would think it would be far more… sketchy to stay in these types of places. But they are very reputable with a high rating and this is proving that correct. This is a lovely house.”

“It is.”

“How long do you have it?”

Castiel swallowed and gave you a mischievous smile. “Now, Y/N. What an underhanded way to ask me when I am going to be taking you home.”

You could not help the red that tinged your cheeks at him catching what you thought was a clever way to ask him. “Well, you know Sam and Dean are worrying. I do not have my phone and I just disappeared from the bar.”

A look of annoyance passed his face. “They always seem to know how to ruin a good time, do they not? I have it for two more days but if you wish to go back tomorrow, then I will be more than happy to take you. I have enjoyed today and would like more but it is ultimately up to you.”

A buzzing came from within his shorts and he sighed heavily. Placing his silverware down delicately, he reached into his pocket, pulling his cell out.

“It is as if their ears were ringing.” Licking his bottom lip, he eyed you across the table. To your immense shock, he reached his arm across the table. “Pardon my reach. But here. Keep it under twenty seconds. I know Samuel is smarting with tracking.”

You took the phone from him, recognizing the missed number on his phone as your own.

“They have called three times now. They are quite persistent,” Castiel told you, picking his silverware back up.

Going to stand to have privacy, Castiel said, “No. Here. Please.”

Sitting back down fully, you did as he requested.

“Where is she?” Sam demanded, answering on the first ring.

“Sam, I’m not going to talk long. I’m fine. I’m okay. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

“Late,” Castiel said quietly from the other side of the table.

“Late tomorrow night. I promise. I will see you then.”

You hung up, keeping it under twenty seconds, despite Sam arguing on the other end. You hated to think of them worrying so much. But at least you had let them know you were okay.

Castiel held out his hand for his phone and you handed it back over, him slipping it into his pocket.

“So… any more questions? It may be the wine or my company, but I feel like being open.”

Settling back into your chair, you picked up your silverware again. You took a bite of your potatoes, chewing slowly as you thought of anything else.

~~~

CASTIEL FOREVER TAGS: @willowing-love @perseusandmedusa @greenappleeyes @afanofmanystuffs @earthtokace @shikaros-blog @marisayouass

[chainofclovers]

It’s been awhile since I used my tumblr for unhinged thoughts about Jane Fonda, so let’s go! (All screencaps from her July 19, 2020 blog post.)

First things first. She watches Dead to Me!

Someone asked her in the comments about the Jen + Grace and Judy + Frankie parallels, and she said

which is hilarious to me but also very adorable. No one is like Grace and Frankie! 

People on the internet are responding to this like “wow, she goes to bed at 6:30″ but going to BED is not the same thing as going to SLEEP! Also, I will never forget (although I can’t find the exact quote) reading a much older blog entry  with this sort of throwaway detail about how Richard Perry didn’t really like watching TV with her. Can you imagine having the opportunity to wind down your day at 7 p.m. with an Academy Award-winning actress who just wants to smoke pot (implied) and hang out with a dog and watch excellent TV shows...and throwing it away because you “don’t” “like” “TV”? 

Anyway, she can do whatever she wants, and this blog continues to be very relatable:

Trying to figure out what books are on people’s shelves *is* the best!

Also relatable but for sad reasons: not being able to regularly see family members and not being able to hug them because our stupid government “reopened” the country in the middle of a global pandemic, effectively rendering the middle of the pandemic the nightmarish beginning of a much longer pandemic! I miss my family too. A lot.

Finally, Jane posted a picture of her lunch and people attacked her on Instagram for eating tuna even though she’s said 8 million times that she rarely eats meat and doesn’t eat as much fish anymore either. There are many perfectly lovely vegans in this world, and I really do understand why they are vegan but there’s a really specific branch of vegans whose priorities are so off that it seems like a good idea to tell an 82-year-old responsible omnivore who struggled with an ED for decades and who is singlehandedly bringing the internet back to the personal blog golden era of 2004 that she can’t be an environmental activist because her lunch includes fish as a protein source.

In much more exciting news, she or her assistant used a label maker to label that lemon mousse. GAME CHANGER!

(OK, I feel better now. I read Jane’s blog every week or two and normally have my usual “Jane Fonda is great” thoughts but this weekend’s blog was just so notably personal-blog-from-2004 in its tone and content that I just had to share my feelings in response!!!!)

[supertrainstationh]

Glenn Beck is a joke.

Not even three months ago he was ranting and raving at Cpac saying Bernie Sanders and Black Lives Matter were dangerous radicals that were conspiring to carry out genocidal acts on US soil, or something to that very direct effect.

Beck has a repeated history of “changing sides” and swearing that what he said in the past was a mistake, because he has some complex where he always wants to be seen as some sort of underdog, where being on the side that’s presently “in power” isn’t enough for him as he need to be fighting against something to feel valid.

I’m not some random lib who saw a compilation of out of context Glenn Beck footage online long after the fact of his Fox TV show ending, I watched his Fox News show every day since before his program even really took off in popularity.

I started watching because a conservative economist who I actually LIKED and was genuinely interested in, who I’ve purchased books by, who I actually paid to be a member of his now defunct organization, someone who’s probably far more traditionally conservative than Beck himself, and probably more radically anti-socialist than most Republicans today, was scheduled to be on his show, only to be bumped at the last minute, likely for being too opposed to the interest of Fox in general.

So while the guy I actually wanted to see never appeared on Beck’s show, I found Beck himself interesting as well, and early on I found him to be kind of impressive in that some of the points he made or positions he had weren’t typical of Fox News in that he was actually making some objection to Bush era foreign policy that lots of people on Fox wouldn’t dare utter at the time.

So I watched this guy, every day, for a WHILE, and i didn’t agree with all or most of what he said, I genuinely liked him, and it was a very gradual process of me NOT liking him anymore, as I just watched as he honed in on anti-Obama frustration among conservatives and became more and more extreme and unhinged.

Its one thing to fail to use “unifying language” on his Fox News show.

What Beck did on his show went LIGHTYEARS beyond “non-unifying langauge”.

Highlights on material featured on his TV show included:

routinely vilifying black community groups, and actually ACCUSING people he was at odds with of being “community organizers”, using that term alone as an implication of wrongdoing or conspiratorial activity.

accusing black community groups of holding “fake protests” by bussing people to the site of demonstrations, though he later promoted Tea Party demonstrations such as the Tea Party Express bus tour that LITERALLY served to transport almost entirely white groups of conservatives to anti-healthcare reform rallies. 

targeted community groups that were helping black people find housing and register to vote by promoting a fake news story that one of these groups was running a child prostitution ring, leading to that group (ACORN) being defunded by the government and forced to disband, though a number of conservatives still blamed ACORN for “rigging” the 2012 election in favor of Obama in spite of the group having been completely dissolved.

Peddling a conspiracy theory that Obama was going to sell large swaths of US land to China to pay the national debt.

briefly promoting a fake news story that Obama was building concentration camps to put conservatives in, before making a rapid U-turn and debunking the “fema camp photos” as North Korean prison camp photos with a FEMA logo pasted on them to create a hoax.

Saying that Obama is a racist and that he “has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture”, though this wasn’t on his own show, but during an appearance on another Fox show.

Airing footage of children in a black private school saying that Obama inspired them to become doctors and lawyers, and insisting that this footage were proof that Obama was inspiring an anti-American conspiracy

airing edited footage of an black government employee to make them seem like they harbored anti-white racism, leading to them being fired.

showing a historical Nazi Party propaganda poster promoting the state sanctioned murder of disabled people, and pushing the idea that if Obamacare wasn’t destroyed, people like his own special needs daughter would be rounded up and murdered by Obama’s administration.

Playing footage of George Bernard Shaw ranting insanity about doing annual evaluations of every citizen and killing the ones that weren’t productive enough, and insisting that this was Obama/Democratic policy intention. (but at the same time he was complaining that the Democrats give too much assistance and services to poor/jobless people, so....?)

Doing otherwise fairly decent historical coverage of human rights violations which took place in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, but tying it in with the idea that Obama was going to repeat these acts in the US and had to be stopped.

A continued fixation on railing against working families who were on unemployment insurance after the financial meltdown.

A weird phase where he began to idealize and romanticize the day after 9-11 as the peak of American community and values.

Doing pretty good coverage of a public school in Queens NY, one from my own home neighborhood, that had deplorable building conditions and non-existent educational capability, but after all this other shit, who would take Beck seriously on ANYTHING he says?

The funny thing is I don’t even like Obama, I mean I like him more than Trump, but that’s like saying I’d rather step in dog poop than get hit by a train, so it’s not like I’m out to defend him as this great leader or anything, I’m just against racism and ignorance that is based on made up bullshit.

Anyway, the more nuts Beck got, the more sponsors he lost, until the commercial breaks during his shows were nothing but promos for other Fox shows, or supplies for doomsday preppers that were sometimes endorsed by Beck himself, the dopiest of all included “food insurance” where a company would send periodic shipments of food to your house in the case of a... I don’t know, a Stalinist famine or a civil war or something? 

So in spite of being the most popular show on Fox at one point, Beck was the only one making money off of it until he got pressured to end it from within Fox itself.

I’ve seen videos on YouTube where some leftie tries to edit footage from Beck’s old Fox show out of context and present him as a nutcase, its lazy and dishonest, as someone who actually watched his show regularly, you didn’t have to edit things or lie to make him look like a nutcase.

He’s given many “apologies” before for what he’s said, then goes back and says the same insane horrible shit all over again, you don’t go around saying Obama is a racist and hates white people and white culture, show footage of black schoolchildren saying they want to be doctors and lawyers as evidence of an anti-American conspiracy, go on saying Black Lives Matter is part of a plot to commit American genocide, and then cry crocodile tears that you “should have used unifying language”, when now, Fox is repeating those same messages that anti-racists are “coming to get you” and “want to attack and dethrone god”, while insisting that they aren’t racist but just trying to “protect America from communism” or whatever, and calling Mitt Romney a traitor for marching with anti-racist protestors.

You helped establish this shit as acceptable discourse Beck, you don’t get to apologize now.

Early on in his show’s run, he actually called out adults in that were turning away trick-or-treating children during Halloween if they suspected their parents were voting for Democratic candidates, he knew it was bullshit and called it out, but when he realized there was no MONEY in promoting POSITIVITY like that on Fox, he appealed to those same biased spiteful families as much as he could.

Beck was never mistaken or confused, he always knew exactly what he was doing and how to monetize people’s fear in an age where for the first time, someone not of their own racial background was “in charge of them”, and mobilized them to elect a racist gameshow host to “set things right” and make sure the tragedy of blacks being in power without their own personal permission was never made again.

[pelikinesis]

suddenly talking about wrasslin’ idk

some guy on Youtube commented he doesn’t think Bray Wyatt can be the next Undertaker, because his in-ring style hasn’t really changed since creating The Fiend character. Which got me thinking more about The Undertaker’s in-ring style than anything.

Because I would agree that Bray hasn’t really changed his moveset, outside of incorporating the Mandible Claw, so the main difference between pre-Fiend and post-Fiend Bray are his theatrics in and out of the ring. The reason Bray always gets Undertaker comparisons is because they’re both spooky main-eventers, as opposed to being relegated to midcard wackiness like we might expect.

But when I think about Undertaker’s character in conjunction with his in-ring style, some of his moves didn’t make a whole lot of sense. In fact his whole character, as groundbreaking and long-running and influential as it is, is sort of ridiculous to begin with, but Mark Calaway made it work through sheer dedication to the character and incorporating a surprisingly versatile moveset into quality in-ring work. So all the credit to him, but there’s a certain quality to The Undertaker that just isn’t going to happen again, and doesn’t really need to.

I wanted to post a gif of The Undertaker performing his Old School move, but posting gifs on Tumblr seems counterintuitive. I can easily find gifs of The Undertaker, but never performing the arm-drag rope-walk jumping back-chop sequence that’s called Old School for some reason.

The point is, watching a nearly 7-foot tall dude walk along the top rope is absolutely phenomenal, but has basically zero thematic fidelity with his Old West Mortician Zombie / Satanic Cult Leader / American Badass Biker / All-Previous-Incarnations-Combined Undertaker character. It’s absolutely fantastic to see a guy that size (and at the age he’s been in recently) pulling off suicide dives and massive leaping clotheslines and it’s cool how he’s got the Hell’s Gate submission finisher.

To have all those far-flung moves orbiting around his chokeslams and tombstone piledrivers and Last Ride powerbombs is fantastic, but The Undertaker is a legend, who has cemented his legacy through decades of work and growth. All the incongruities just grow onto the hull of the man and his myth like really badass barnacles.

So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to complain that Bray isn’t more like The Undertaker. Bray is a big guy, but not 6 foot 11 or whatever Mark Calaway is, so Bray can’t just be imposing and menacing simply by standing around or walking slooowwwlly. Post-Fiend Bray definitely looks to be in better physical condition than previously, but it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be incorporating much aerial offense in the near future, and without a decades-long career under his belt, it would probably just seem really weird if he were capable of performing those moves and actually used them.

Right now Bray is going for an in-ring style that matches his persona, and the moveset he has now has always worked. Bray has never had a conspicuously large moveset, but every move he does has a unique personal touch to it. His running senton has a backwards snap to it that makes it look more vicious. His 180 clothesline is basically a Clothesline From Hell but functions as a turning point in a match instead of the finisher. The added time and theatrics to his Sister Abigail (along with the name) allow him to loom over his helpless opponent for a great visual. There’s also something about how he performs his Uranage that I really like but I’m not able to find words for it. Bray isn’t abnormally large, but the way he accents his body language makes him come off as if he were 7 feet of inhuman menace.

In short, I like all of Bray’s moves. I always have. I don’t think he needs to change his style in order to make The Fiend live up to a character like The Undertaker. I would like to see him add more moves. Not high-flying moves, because there’s just a strong association between aerial offense and babyface characters. He should incorporate more moves that help establish his menacing, unhinged character. He doesn’t have to be completely different from Pre-Fiend Bray Wyatt. He should be more than that previous version of himself.

Because that’s what he’s been establishing in the Firefly Funhouse segments. He says he’s changed, but what he’s actually getting at is that he’s become a better version of his old character. He took what the management and business side of things ruined, and he reconstructed himself, having to become even more outlandish to pave over the sabotaged public perception of his character but making the cartoonish-intensity work for him.

Anyways just wanted to say that it’s not really fair or even applicable to compare basically any wrestler to The Undertaker. He really is one of a kind. And Bray isn’t trying to be the next Undertaker. He’s trying to be a better version of Bray Wyatt than the WWE allowed him to be for years. He’s not trying to become a legend by virtue of his God-given proportions or his athleticism, and he doesn’t have the free pass The Undertaker got for having a larger-than-life character from starting in the Rock ‘n Wrestling era.

I think if WWE continues to push him to the main event, then what Bray needs to do on his end is to keep doing what he’s doing. Everyone has their own ideas for what The Fiend could be, but Bray thought up The Fiend to begin with. I certainly hope Bray doesn’t become complacent in the ring once he’s cemented his theatrics, but when it comes down to it, what I’m most eager to see is if the WWE will allow Bray Wyatt to realize his vision for The Fiend. Props to Mick Foley and Seth Rollins and Kane for granted him credibility too.

[beardcore-blog]

A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

[anthonybialy]

Restrict Inflict

You may have spent your prison term for the crime of respiration noticing how we get less safe the more is taken for our safety. All these restrictions seem to be corresponding with all these deaths.

Our time's prevalent disease still spreads as humanity holds still, and you weren't supposed to spend your gap year being perceptive. We sure are lucky shutting down life for a year kept us safe, as imagine how many bodies would be piled in the morgue's parking lot without it.

We're all in this together, claim those blaming you for everything going horrifically. It certainly couldn't be those attempting to seize your autonomy who wrecked it for the rest of us: your removal of the enchanted face cloak before you left the bank set infected us all. Fault those who didn't comply for classy logic. The creepy communal vibe is merely extra unpleasant when we're supposed to be apart.

Fantasies about one cough causing a chain reaction of corpse trails show a commitment to scientific insight as strong as governmental efficacy. A collectivist response means you're the one who screwed over the rest of us. Blaming breathers is this decade's version of victory gardens so people can feel like they're helping. The modern classy difference is in the negative approach, as face concealment makes us feel like a virus spreading is our fault.

A contribution can now only be negative. The nerve to occasionally crave an unfiltered breath halts those of others. That'll be the caption on the next meme shared by insufferable liberal Facebook friends.

That little bit of liberty ruined our shot at collective utopia. Your insubordinate urge to define humanity by its capacity and desire for independent thought means scientific beliefs won't come true. Faith requires full commitment.

Getting together is smarter, anyway. An individual brain will never be as brilliant as all of them taped together. Take how communal logic will always say restrictions weren't strict enough after they fail. It couldn't be they just suck, which is the same reason spending trillions more than we have on garbage humans would never purchase only hurts the economy because the tab was too small.

The most self-righteous are the least informed, if you can believe it.  They can't.  Sanctimonious pseudo-scientists have always claimed to heed knowledge as they ignore it.  In the virus era, they merely preen more than they do about irregular weather being a sign human activity is wrecking the climate. 

All you need to know is whatever a doctor paid by the government decides is working that morning becomes canon. Doubting an infallible human employed by a government incapable of being wrong is the apex of ignorance.

Continue enjoying arguing with very calm and entirely rational people who claim others will die if their policies aren’t followed. Meanwhile, their capricious edicts are obviously fair, as there's no way those blessed with power could be steered wrong by faith in orders by pushy politicians.

Incorrectness would make their rabid claims that everyone who disagrees is a homicidal greedy thieving monster look even sillier, and we don't want to embarrass them. Please also refrain from noting how those who seek happiness through bossiness call everyone else selfish as they selfishly refuse to notice the pain their aid inflicts.

Tighten the ropes for freedom. Your governor will cut you loose when you agree being restrained is better. You'll have to muster more enthusiasm than that. It's your fault for wriggling too much. Keep lusting after less autonomy like contrarian humans who still believe in natural rights. Unhinged demands for flailing governors lock up those who dare decline to breathe through cloth are muffled through layers.

It couldn't be that the virus was going to be basically impossible to stop. The best measures were the most obvious and voluntary, namely washing hands and having the vulnerable avoid unnecessary contact to limit the chance of catching the plague. Howard Hughes had the best strategy. We owe him a posthumous apology for dismissing what became our everyday routines as weird.

We might not have gotten sick by trading with each other, or at least any sicker. Politicians well-trained in interference had to stop commerce, which as a reminder is nothing more than humans interacting. It's clear what's been lost, namely fortunes and happiness. But at least the death toll is unfathomable.

Trust government every other time it assures you the spanking it administered is for your benefit. That's not something you can request on Bumble, so try to bring it up discretely. Being told what to do is a sick fetish on its own. Politicians share the kink of imposing it on normal people. Freaks should at least be fun to be around.