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a-d-nox · 11 months ago

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tarot cards and their key phrases: pentacles

this is just a beginners guide to the pentacles suit - i won't go into imagery, color use, etc. these are key phrases that come to mind when i think of the cards - NOT how they should be directly applied. they needs to be thought about situationally and the cards / when they are in combos they can change or alter their meanings of any reading.

ace of pentacles (1)

astrological equivalent: taurus venus

upright: opportunity, gifts, new job, unexpected money gains, beginnings, increased prosperity, abundance, unlimited potential, new love, moving in together, and stability

reversed: not seeing the opportunities you have around you, trying too hard to make something work, working too hard, going in the wrong direction, controlling energy, and something is different than what you imagined

two of pentacles (2)

astrological equivalent: virgo mars

upright: work-life balance, flow with emotions, a level up, momentary disruption, only take on what you can handle, and feeling overwhelmed

reversed: tension in life, destabilization, irresponsibility with your finances, spending unnecessarily, needing moderation, and off track

three of pentacles (3)

astrological equivalent: capricorn mercury

upright: share your ideas, work you are passionate about, passion project, new opportunities, being well received by others, prosperity, and paving the way to your future

reversed: lack of confidence, overwhelming fears, needing to take your work to the next level, needing to step out of your comfort zone, feeling burnt out, needing to taking a break, and needing to be more generous with yourself

four of pentacles (4)

astrological equivalent: virgo moon

upright: financial stability, a new level of comfort, losing sight of potential growth, safe and stable, having what you need, clinging to what you have, being closed off to new things, in the process of establishing stability, and needing to give yourself some credit

reversed: focusing too much on materialism, seeing intangible results, work on insecurities, focus inwardly rather than outwardly, being too controlling, needing to relax, and needing to listen to intuition

five of pentacles (5)

astrological equivalent: capricorn moon

upright: lack or loss, scarcity, job loss, lack of resources, focused on what you lack, not seeing helping hands, and feeling unworthy

reversed: moving away from financial struggle, lingering fears, spiritual practices, needing faith, and needing to release feelings of lack/loss

six of pentacles (6)

astrological equivalent: taurus mercury

upright: giving and receiving, being generous, feeling unworthy/undeserving, and needing to realize that you have to give without expecting to receive something in return

reversed: generosity with strings attached, warning about intentions behind actions, and being disappointed by what you receive

seven of pentacles (7)

astrological equivalent: capricorn mars

upright: close to your goal, needing to take a closer look at all the progress you've made, gratitude, and adventure towards achievement

reversed: not working towards goals with enough conviction, frustrated, impatience, procrastination, not seeing results, and internal resistance

eight of pentacles (8)

astrological equivalent: taurus mars

upright: do what love / love what you do, financial success, financial security, hard work, dedication, success, learning something new, advancing in you field, and rewarded for your efforts

reversed: feeling burnt out, leaving your job, feeling uncertain about your chosen field, and worrying that you aren't achieving anything

nine of pentacles (9)

astrological equivalent: capricorn venus

upright: enjoyment, feeling safe, working hard, wise investment, charity, shared abundance, enjoying life, having everything you need, vacationing, and buying something meaningful

reversed: overspending, materialism, unsustainable financial behavior, being overworked, not enjoying life, and not taking time for oneself

ten of pentacles (10)

astrological equivalent: taurus moon

upright: love within the family, support, spending time with the people you love, giving to those in need, prosperity, giving generously, what you inherit, setting aside funds, and planning for the future

reversed: challenging time for the family, feeling controlled by the expectations of others, home related conflict, and fear of moving on

page of pentacles

astrological equivalent: earth

upright: novice, establishing yourself in a new place/profession, working in beginning stages of a project, lasting abundance, steady focus, and learning more

reversed: procrastinating on goals, refocus/readjust your approach, frustration around results or lack of results, and it might be time to move on

knight of pentacles

astrological equivalent: earth and air

upright: starting from ground zero, wanting lasting results, showing up fully, enthusiasm for life, s.m.a.r.t. goal setting, and transforming your routine

reversed: hesitation, complacency, feeling stagnant, positive change, and needing to change your energy

queen of pentacles

astrological equivalent: earth and water

upright: nurturing, dependable, connection with nature, supportiveness, relationship with your body, and connecting with abundance

reversed: materialism, needing to reconnect with spirituality, unreliability, needing to have a conversation about expectations, someone influencing your decisions, people pleasing, and picking other people's happiness over your own

king of pentacles

astrological equivalent: earth and fire

upright: financial stability, generosity, leadership role, financial decisions, take action when striving to meet goals, financially supporting others, and using resources to benefit others

reversed: greediness, focusing solely on material wealth, father figure, being hard on yourself, butting heads with others, superficial people, selfish people, and struggling with generosity

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 1 year ago

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tuesday again 11/28/2023

tuesday again no problem will be taking a break for the 12/12 edition (not next week but the one after)

listening

previously featured Os Mutantes, a countercultural brazilian rock group, is back bc i heard A Minha Menha on an instagram reel by @/ vintagepulps on a showcase of brazilian pulp magazine covers.

youtube

the SECOND that driving riff hit i experienced a brief moment of fuckor bc this is exactly and precisely the kind of song i like. this translation tells me it translates to My Girl. it's got moon/sun imagery. it's exactly the kind of song to drive around to in the summer while having an absolutely crippling crush on the person in the passenger seat. spotify

reading

you wouldn't download a woman...

TWICE

watching

I'm No Angel (1933, dir. Ruggles) a 1936 black comedy written by Mae West and starring the babiest Cary Grant you've ever seen. i added it to my letterboxed bc i saw screenshots of this one specific dress. that’s so much sideboob. good for her.

we don't use the term "adventuress" anymore to describe a woman who does various physical or social stunts to land a husband and i think that's a shame. Tira (yes) is a burlesque dancer and (separately) a lion tamer at a down on its luck circus, becomes famous through putting her head in a lion's mouth, and leverages that fame to fall in and out and back into love.

your enjoyment of this movie will hinge on your tolerance for astrologers, circuses with animals in them, and depictions of black housemaids that have not aged super well, even if they're mostly there to stroke her ego. i'm sort of torn on what rating this would get today-- i'm assuming R bc there's a woman expressing desire but nothing actually happens beyond kissing and some sitting in laps. some peril for the lions i guess?

i do not think this particularly nailed its landing, and i'm not totally sure why they got back together, but mae west in straight up burlesque and the shimmiest dresses you've ever seen is so much fun to watch it doesn't really matter. this is sort of sidelining the her very funny, extremely quotable script. apparently any movie she wasn't allowed to write or heavily doctor her own lines just completely flopped, which i also think is very funny.

just straight up on the internet archive

playing

triple header for Things That Came Out This Decade: Genshin Impact (September 2020), Deliver Us Mars (2023) and Gamedec (2021).

brief Genshin update: your main companion in the game, Paimon, the little fairy bitch, has been the recipient of some worrying foreshadowing lately. hey Paimon you wanna tell us anything???

Deliver Us Mars, free on Epic this week. i want to like this game. i think there should be more weird little eurojank original scifi B-franchises like this and you should be able to feed your family by making them. i do not want to continue playing this particular little franchise.

it's the second game by KeokeN (The Netherlands) and published by Wired Productions (UK, although they are partnered with Koch, which means they’ll be bought up soon), a studio of under 20 counting support staff (some of who are certainly part time or on hourly contracts) and an intern. after doing that basic background research i ratcheted my expectations back a couple notches and deleted a somewhat catty paragraph about video game hair.

this is a sequel to Deliver Us The Moon, which was a successful Kickstarter and Steam greenlight (TM (C) R) and it seems they spent the four interval years mostly polishing up the predecessor Deliver Us The Moon, which i do not own and do not plan on playing.

Deliver Us Mars bills itself as an action-adventure, but during my time with it, it was more of a cinematic movie/walking sim with extremely light puzzle/platform mechanics. there are extensive childhood flashbacks following a dad around as he trains his daughter to be an astronaut. the timing and insertion of these never quite clicked for me-- they take forever and they were never as interesting as what they interrupted.

youtube

this game is not good at signposting or tutorializing. i had to restart a chapter twice bc the unique controls popped up for a brief fleeting moment on screen and weren’t in the keybinding settings. i could never quite get the mouse and keyboard camera sensitivity right, and platforming/vertical elements seem to only be partially implemented: you can only really successfully approach certain segments from extremely specific dead-on angles. there are like three big boxes in your path that you have to clamber over at one point and i do not think it should take a solid minute and a half for me to get over them. some reviewers praised the lack of signposting during the launch sequence (causing you to frantically look around at a million unlabeled buttons and levers to see if any of them were highlighted as a thing you can click) as a fun way to ramp up stress but i fucking hated it.

after two and a half hours, and only just making it to a ship OUTSIDE mars, i decided there are other games in the world. this hits some sort of minimal viable story benchmark for me, i can see why some people love it, but i don’t want to find out what happens bad enough to play through a slow game that handles terribly and isn’t much fun to exist in.

does get points for big fuckoff dishes.

Gamedec is an isometric RPG, where you are a near-future private investigator who handles delicate personal matters inside wildly popular MMORPG VR games. unfortunately all the trailers suck shit.

youtube

this is catnip to me. i love a no-combat game where i have to walk around and talk to everyone and click on everything and write things down in a little notebook. i loooooooove being nosy. i've played through the first two and a half chapters (kinky second life, racketeering farmville, and real life uh oh) and i'm having a fucking marvelous time. the writing team clearly had a lot of fun, the VR game worlds feel very alive and vibrant-- there's a ton of possible weird little flavor interactions that go a very long way toward making me forget this is a limited-perspective isometric. this is like praising an RPG for doing what it says on the tin and being an RPG, but the most recent RPGs ive played have been fucking terrible. it's not shoehorning me into one-true or main-path choices. extremely forgiving of failure, which is good bc i straight up accidentally killed my first client. i know he was a kid but he kinda had it coming imo. sometimes kids just suck shit

im so delighted by this shitty little apartment-- it's got to be fucking bizarre to exist in, bc of the ultra-loft ceilings you need to make it be isometric, but it somehow manages to feel like a studio apartment and a seedy back office all at the same time. a game that is in general very fun to Look at. will have more thoughts as i continue playing but this is really scratching some sort of itch for me. commits to the bit. funny but sincere. a pastiche in ways i personally do not find annoying. has not hit me with like konami code style references yet. due to the fact this is also in my epic games store library i believe this was also free at some point

making

fallow week for me. phil has been regrowing skin at a good clip and i can no longer feel each individual vertebra, AND we have another vet appt on friday to get more/different antibiotic goop and all of her vaccinations and microchipping done. mack made a hairball and is getting put back on an actual wire slicker brush grooming schedule. my beautiful girl seems to have a particularly dense coat among the domestic shorthairs of my acquaintance, although that may be bc she is a new england girlie and we constantly exist in air conditioning?? mixed feelings about scheduled brushies from her, even with short and light sessions. we’ll get there.

helping.

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem #phil

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alchemical-astrology · 8 days ago

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🌺 🌑 🌺 🦋 Weekly Astro Dream Roundup (Friday 22 Nov) - 🦋 🌺 🌑 🌺

🌺 Dream analysis by looking at positions of the planets universal time can help you tap into the collective subconscious and unconscious as well as your own personal subconscious and unconscious.

🌺 This dream roundup remains applicable through the weekend and reflects the w/c Monday 18th.

🌺 The themes indicated here are possible to expand upon through your own methods whether that is tarot reading, further chart analysis, etc

🌺 I've been doing this kind of astrological dream analysis on my own dreams but only now thought I had enough insight to share it so hope it is useful/enjoyable to others who may get really weird or inexplicable dreams

🐋 Important cancer transits -> moon is in cancer first half of this week. Dreams on Monday, Tuesday or (maybe) Wednesday can be signs you are unpacking and processing emotions. Dreams on these days will tend to have been more surreal than your usual dreams but this may also have been imagery that you felt uneasy with. Moon in cancer square neptune transiting any natal planets is what is behind this. It is a time of creative growth, but one that was potentially tense or blocked.

natal mars in cancer -> strong fantasy influence to dreams e.g. battles, quests, and so on. Indicates you are struggling with something during the day time.

natal venus in cancer -> themes of desire and longing. dreams reveal desires you may not have known about. dreams may also represent a material craving whether for good or luxuries or for a person, lifestyle, or relationship

natal moon in cancer -> dreams are most likely to represent old emotions that you had yet to unpack. dreams are highly likely to reveal new personal insights if analysed e.g. through tarot or shadow work

natal saturn in cancer -> dreams can reveal specifically repressed desires, emotions, or creativity. themes of the dionysian vs apollonian i.e. hedonism vs self restraint. strong themes of repression and authority figures here. figures in your life may be resulting in the content of the dreams being unable to be expressed in your daily life, hence you dream as an outlet

natal jupiter in cancer -> emotions can feel overwhelming, but positively. dreams reveal things that if acted on in daytime can be fruitful and unlock new resources or feelings. if dreams were positive but unusual this can indicate a fruitful and fertile time to act on what they may represent

The next big thing in the UT chart that can impact your dreams is a grand trine between the moon, MC, and sun, as the moon moves into leo. in the latter half of this week your dreams may become more positive and less difficult to interpret but may also have a stronger theme of choices, action, and decision making. Themes of congruence and dissonence between public and private identities, emotions and ego may also be apparent in dreams and show up through symbolism.

animals in dreams: moving smoothly or you feel things are going your way when awake. life and dynamism. indicates you may be looking for something while awake. indicate there may be tension and or desire while awake

🦉 birds. owls and birds of prey indicate whatever you are doing in your waking life is fueled by intuition and unconscious power. small birds can represent fortune, guides, and helpers, look at your 11th house. injured, dead, or caged birds can represent feeling blocked in your wakening life and at this time especially blocked by the prospect of having to make a choice

🐺 predatory animals. if they are benevolent or at a distance can indicate the approach of a goal. predatory animals may indicate parts of your subconscious that you are not in tune with hence they are 'wild' to you as opposed to the tame and known parts. eye contact with these animals can mean you are tuning into unreached parts of yourself. animals behaving threateningly can indicate a part of yourself you are unwilling to allow conscious in your waking life. panthers and large cats can indicate this especially. wolves can conversely indicate the promise of a team or even unconscious spirit or psychic guides, or the role of people in your waking life who can aid and abet you.

🦝 forest animals. wild animals in a forest can indicate unexplored areas of your life. this indicates more exploration is needed before making decisions in waking life. alternatively if the forest is well lit it can indicate playfulness and vivacity. this can show a congruence between your ego and emotions. if the forest is dark it can indicate you are lacking information. if there is an abundance of animals it can show you feel there are resources while awake, while lone animals can indicate specific feelings you are focussing on.

🐕 pets. dreaming about your pets can indicate love and bonding but can also indicate issues of identity. pets are happy and accompanying you? you may feel confident in your identity at this time. pets are unhappy or something happens to them? you may have parts of yourself that worry you and you have not yet expressed. conversely to wild animals pets can indicate your 'home turf' or where you are right now in life while awake.

🐎 horses. horses running free can mean you are soon going to solve something in your waking life. horses known to you can indicate you are in tune with your feelings and honoring them. horses belonging to friends and family can show this person has a role in your relatio nship to your emotions and all other things affiliated with the moon and cancer. a good time to look at your second, third, and eleventh houses. wild horses may indicate great creative potential that can be tapped into during your waking life.

🐉 mythical creatures - indicates a quest like nature to your wakening life or in fact that you may be reaching the heart of something. can indicate importance of world and relationships arouns you including concepts of guides and helpers or alternatively saboteurs and enemies. check what's transiting your 11th house for more insight.

Dreaming about people or relationships?

🐞people known to you. in your waking life you may be considering the impact of your choices on others.

🐞people unknown to you. you may desire new perspectives or need external input in your waking life. you may soon meet new people who introduce you to new things particularly to do with your identity. can mean - changes in love life and attraction. introduction to new music and hobbies. initiation into a new circle of friends or role in your life

🐞living people. your feelings in your waking life are highly immediate and may be of urgent importance to you. if something is bugging you and you cannot put your finger on it, a time dependent choice or feeling under pressure may be the answer.

☠️ dead people. may not literally be important but instead represent ghosts from your past, unchallenged emotions or sources of inspiration or strength.

🐞celebrities: musicians -> check your neptune transits. also check your lunar transits. role in the dream may indicate what's going on with the cancer moon at the moment. actors -> can indicate a masquerade, being a social chameleon, or represent personas you need and desire to adopt in waking life. politicians -> can indicate desire for status, moral conflict. uneasiness with decisions in your waking life. you may be in a position of power and responsibility and not know it or not know what to do with it.

🐞 fictional characters. heroic -> can relate to the sun at the moment and a sense of duty vs emotion. you may be avoiding something in your waking life. antiheroes -> can indicate moral complexity or a clash between expectations and emotions in your waking life. villains -> can represent a real opposition or antagonist in your waking life. or this can indicate your desire to give into your subconscious nature which often plays the villain in our lives, but doesn't have to.

🐞 romantic interest. TRANSITS AND UT PLANETS AT THE MOMENT ARE ALL ABOUT CONTRASTS BETWEEN YOUR EMOTIONS AND YOUR IMAGE, EGO, OR SENSE OF IDENTITY. At the moment, check wtf is going on with/for your ascendant, regardless of the UT chart if you dream about a romantic interest. Check your natal scorpio, your natal leo, and your natal pisces placements. these will ALL be influenced by the sun moon tensions at the moment. If a ROMANTIC INTEREST SHOWS UP IN YOUR DREAM consider the following

unexpressed desire

playing hard to get

difficulties in relationship compatibility

someone is not as they seem

someone is hiding their feelings

shyness, oh so much shyness

romance happening within a shared career or meeting your love interest at work (trine MC)

someone is more emotional than they seem, possibly a scorpio (continued below)

look out for water signs

ego or pride getting in the way of a relationship

career or sense of identity comes into play within this romance or relationship

not a good time to ask someone out imho. but if you feel you need to go for it, this may not apply to you

coyness will factor into the relationship from one or more partners

relationship at this time may be more likely to be a slow burner. may follow older patterns of traditional courtship, dating, and wooing. more likely long term than a fling.

ALL IN ALL if a romantic interest shows up in your dreams at this time, this is not a drill. There is some sort of genuine connection with this person, whether smooth or rocky, and it's not necessarily just one sided desire on your part. Current transits and placements indicate a lot of moody, watery, hidden stuff, and you'll find this may influence your dreams overall, with symbolism being thicker and more complex, difficult to decipher, and with buried feelings coming up in dreams too.

This is 100% a 'needs further soul searching' situation, so pay attention if anyone does or has shown up this week - all UT transits indicate that it's not just random of behalf of your subconscious ;)

The moon is waning and heading towards the last quarter. Dreams and any other unconscious information will become more difficult to analyse until that point. This week is the last week that shadow work may come ratively easily unless you are fortunate enough to be very in tune, which some people are 🌚🌛🌜

After this point it will then become increasingly easier to tap into and analyse your shadow, past lives, unconscious mind, astral travel, visualisations, channeling, mediumship, etc up until the new moon where boundaries will be thinnest and it is advisable to tread with caution. Or not.

♠︎ Music for your subconscious this week ♠︎

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clovemerablog · 3 months ago

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Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars single review: “Die With A Smile”

An enjoyable power ballad with just enough Gaga to endure Mars

Review by Clove Mera, 20 August 2024 Single released 16 August 2024 Track written by: Bruno Mars, Stefani Germanotta, Dernst Emile II, Andrew Watt, James Fauntleroy Interscope Records

I came to “Die With A Smile” as a Lady Gaga fan, not a Bruno Mars fan. For this reason, it came as a surprise when Gaga only had two lines in verse two completely to herself before Mars began duetting with her. Even though the music video was published to Lady Gaga’s YouTube account, the song was conceived by Bruno Mars who then invited Gaga as a featured artist (Chelosky, 2024).

Although the song is more a Bruno Mars song than a Lady Gaga song, Gaga’s voice is still gorgeous to listen to. During her latest album, 2020’s “Chromatica”, the “Hold My Hand” singer’s voice took on a miraculous new quality which it had never done before. Her voice throughout the album, and “Die With A Smile” as well, felt like it was a tight, warm hug that was holding me safe. The bulk of this song is enjoyable but Gaga’s moments are its high points for me, especially the way she sings_ “Right next to you”_during the segue from chorus to bridge, in a register reminiscent of earlier records “Speechless” and “Yoü and I”.

Gaga is no stranger to power ballads about love, with “Hold My Hand” being a recent example. Just like a good power ballad, “Die With A Smile” does a great job signalling emotion with levels and escalation, across vocals and music. Gaga and Mars sing softly pained threnodies about their love being “…the only war worth fighting for”_against reverberated strumming acoustic guitar, and effortlessly scaling up with quick melodic guitar complemented by a bass guitar and powerful kick snare cymbal rhythm, belting “_If the party was over/ And our time on Earth was through/ I'd wanna hold you just for a while/ And die with a smile”.

The chorus is clearly engineered for you to singalong and dance with it. It’s no coincidence that they switch from finely controlled vocals to louder, almost-shouting, in the chorus. That’s an invitation for you to join in. Similarly, I think the bass and drums act as cues to dance with.

Bruno and Gaga’s lyrics are beautiful in their imagery, singing about the world ending and the party being over. Those are lonely situations, if they aren’t something you’ve experienced then you’ve probably seen them in a movie. It’s a bittersweet love in which intrusive thoughts of splitting apart are combatted with powerful vows to love each other “…Like it’s the last night.”

Those are practically the two modes this song has, reflecting on the relationship’s troubles and the pair’s resoluteness to fight for one another. A really powerful emotional moment comes in the bridge, which strips everything but the distant strumming guitar, which generates forward momentum, and glides into the chorus’s powerful instrumental, where the tension and release makes the chaos and the passion hits especially hard.

It’s a good song, that is indisputable. I suppose if I want to be able to enjoy it, though, I need to reframe how I perceive it. It’s not a Lady Gaga song, it’s a Bruno Mars song featuring Lady Gaga. What I miss in this song is the Gaga-ness of say, an album single. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t play this song many times, and probably wouldn’t have listened to it once, if not for Gaga’s presence.

“Die With A Smile” is available to stream and its music video is linked below.

youtube

Reference list

Chelosky, D. (2024). Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars Share New Song ‘Die With A Smile’: Listen. [online] Stereogum. Available at: https://www.stereogum.com/2276399/lady-gaga-bruno-mars-die-with-a-smile/music/ [Accessed 20 Aug. 2024].

#Lady Gaga #Bruno Mars #LG7 #Little Monster #Die With A Smile #Joker 2 #Chromatica #Silk Sonic #Youtube

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atanimation · 1 year ago

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The Milky Way (1940)

"The Milky Way" is a beautiful little animated short from back in 1940. It was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). MGM's animation department created a series called "Happy Harmonies," and "The Milky Way" is one of the cartoons from that series. The film was produced by Rudolf Ising and Hugh Harman - two animators who bounced around from studio to studio throughout the Golden Age of Animation. It has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Subject in 1940, which is a testament to its artistic and technical achievements.

Technique

One of the most distinctive features of the production technique was the use of a multiplane camera. This camera allowed different layers of animation cels to be filmed at varying distances from the camera, creating a sense of depth and dimension in the animation. This technique made the animation appear more three-dimensional and added depth to the scenes, giving it a unique and visually appealing quality. This was a groundbreaking technique at the time and contributed to the film's acclaim. The use of depth and dimension in the animation was achieved through the skillful manipulation of multiplane cameras, which allowed for more complex and visually impressive scenes. The film was notable for its imaginative use of animation to bring celestial imagery to life. Fireflies in the night sky form constellations that tell stories, showcasing a creative approach to storytelling and animation. The film emphasized artistic craftsmanship, using hand-drawn animation and meticulous painting techniques to create visually stunning scenes. The attention to detail and artistic creativity made "The Milky Way" stand out as a visually captivating work of art. The final result was a fully animated short film that combined hand-drawn characters and backgrounds with innovative multiplane camera techniques to create the illusion of depth and dimension. This was a labor-intensive and artistic process that was the standard for animated films of that era.

Representation

Three tiny kittens, who were deprived of milk as a consequence of misplacing their mittens, embark on an adventure to the Milky Way in a hot air balloon. During their cosmic journey, they encounter various celestial wonders, such as a lunar surface resembling cheese, a high-speed comet train, a Mars that shoots stars, and the prominent constellations of the Big and Little Dipper. The narrative is rich in fantastical elements as the kittens journey to the Milky Way in a hot air balloon and encounter a series of playful and comical events in outer space. The story highlights themes of curiosity, escapism, and the world of dreams and imagination, where the boundaries of reality are blurred. It showcases the joy of exploration, the unexpected twists that can occur in a dreamlike setting, and the humorous consequences of their actions. Overall, the story is a creative and lighthearted tale that appeals to the imagination and sense of wonder.

Reception

"The Milky Way" was shown in theaters as a theatrical animated short, typically as part of a larger program that included feature films. During the era in which it was released (the Golden Age of Animation), animated shorts were a common feature before the main movie, and they were highly anticipated and well-received by audiences. At the time of its original release, "The Milky Way" was likely received positively by audiences. It was a part of MGM's animated short film series, and these shorts often featured imaginative storytelling, humor, and memorable characters. "The Milky Way," in particular, was a playful adaptation of the nursery rhyme "The Three Little Kittens," which was familiar to many, making it relatable and enjoyable for viewers.

Today, "The Milky Way" is recognized as a classic animated short from the Golden Age of Animation. While it may not have the same level of fame as some other animated characters like Tom and Jerry (which were also produced by MGM), it is appreciated by animation enthusiasts, historians, and those with an interest in vintage animation. The response to such classic animated shorts like "The Milky Way" today is generally positive, as they hold historical and artistic significance in the world of animation. They are valued for their nostalgia and as examples of the creativity and artistry of the time.

References

youtube

#animation #movies #Youtube

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normalhorsez · 1 year ago

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🌙🌿🛋️

HI omg its so good to hear from yall !!!

🌙 - do any parts have typing quirks ? if so, what are they ?:

sorta ! not really anything very complicated. spitz sometimes will replace 's' with 'z' at the end of sentences. ryker has a habit of doubling her letters at the ends of words sometimes. cure used to almost exclusively use capslock, but stopped bcs of eyestrain concerns n now only does it when sies rly hyped. both lucky and kody spam emotes like nobodys business but i dont rly count it bcs its emotes. in luckys case its Closer tho..?

🌿 - any cliques among parts ?:

YEAH. YES. holy shit. gretel and her girls ™️ are almost constantly around one another internally. mars, sienna, king, and knockback have formed The Cool Knife Enjoyers Squad. (gestures at the entire anomalous encounter subsys) These Fuckers. and well. me + gretel + tee makin the Hosts Club

🛋️ - what does your inner world look like ?:

OH BOY OK. so. thisll be long so this ones going under a cut

when i envision it, i see. circles overlapping or such. i rly always am drawn to this specific locked room diagram from umi bcs it resonates in this sense.

i can only see a few areas actually clearly:

my own "room" which is like.. an oldweb cartoon doghouse, with petz like graphics and textures

the fronting area, which is a big sprawling patio perpetually in night time, with cozy chairs n plants n stuff.. and a big inground pool tht glows in the center u descend into to reach the offshootin front room (its Weird and hard to explain; but u can breathe underwater there). if u think about cliche "vaporwve" type pool aesthetics, u pretty much got it down.

axis' watchzone, which is straight next to that front area, a big room with a huge glass window where it can watch carefully. yank anyone back who shouldnt b frontin or push someone else Out into the pool when needed. its kinda funny imagery lmao.

BUT. i do know how it Operates even if i cant see it much; everyone has their own "room", which is really more like a door to their own.. pocket.. dimension type shit. so, for example, nitro has just a normal, cozy apartment.. but magpie has a huge decaying forest and massive ruins of a castle. the rooms are all symbolic in some form. its liek a big weird apartment.. sort of..

additionally, part named symphonium is constantly coiled around the building. like a huge watchdog. but its a huge goddamn dragon tht embodies time as a concept.

gretels subsys has a big sprawling garden just offshooting the main area, and she says theres a little guesthouse tht is comfortable she stays in.

as for the anomalous encounter uhhh. i have no clue. aint caught a glimpse of their sitch yet. knowing them its likely to be wildly edgy (good) save for two of them lmfao

#🐎📬#we gotta catch up some time btw !!!

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sirmattchap · 4 years ago

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The Dawning

“You h-have no idea how-w-w lucky you are, to not feel cold…” Tank bitterly spoke between chattering teeth. His blood was frozen, and his bone gripped by the icy tendrils of the encroaching blizzard. His decrepit armour provided no protection against the elements. The fireplace he crouched in front of weakly flickered with life, the ramshackle cottage he sat in was home to a constant battle between the fragile heat, and the oppressive cold from outside. An electronic snicker came from across the room from a dusty table. Atlas sat with crossed legs, scrolling through documents on his datapad, paying no mind to the chilly air blowing through the broken window next to him.

“And you have no idea how lucky you are, not having to defragment every month.” He brushed some snow that drifted in off of his robes. “Do you ever miss it while we’re on operations?” Atlas asked, not even looking up from his work.

“It?” Tank looked at him and moved his hands closer to the flame. “You mean The Dawning?” Tank shrugged and looked back, the small blaze reflecting off his sapphire eyes. “I guess… Not much is different, maybe some new snacks at the stores. I guess this year, there’s just more to think about you know?”

“Agreed. Too many changes for my liking. I prefer things to be boring and simple.” he reponded

Tank reached into a pouch on his side and pulled out a small ring and rubbed it gently in his palm. “I think I miss the people the most… it’s so isolated out here.”

Atlas looked up from his datapad and tilted his head. “What, are we not good enough company?” He snarked.

Tank laughed and admired the ring. “No offence but being around you guys kinda got stale after the first hundred years” He shot back with a sly grin.

“HURTFUL!” Hayes shouted, kicking in the door to the cottage, with him came a burst of snow and blisteringly cold winds, instantly snuffing out the fire. Tank’s head snapped to Hayes. A new inferno roared inside his eyes as he stared into Hayes’ very soul. Atlas almost burst out laughing seeing the fire go out. Hayes ignored it, willfully or accidentally, neither was sure; he just rested his rifle next to the door and walked to the fireplace

Tank clenched his jaw and hissed. “I will make sure your Ghost never finds your remains…” Hayes smiled and stopped next to him, tousling Tank’s short grey hair, which only heightened his rage. Tank fists clenched, surges of arc energy sparked off them.

“Calm down old man, no need to break your hip.” Hayes pulled out a flaming hand cannon from behind his back and held it beside Tank’s head, shooting into the fireplace. A blast of heat filled the cottage, burning a patch of hair off of Tank’s head. “There, happy?”

“Ahhh! Bastard!” Tank patted a small patch of cindering hair. “Why am I not even surprised at this point!?” Hayes shrugged and sat down across from Atlas, leaning back on the chair and propping his legs up on the table. Tank’s Ghost took shape next to his Guardian, healing the man before disappearing again. Tank immediately stood up, gliding his hand across the fresh area of hair, all while glaring at the blasé Hunter, idly smiling widely with his eyes closed.

“No need t’ thank me!”

Atlas looked away from his document, resting his head on his hand, watching the two intently. “Frankly, I’m amazed it only took a hundred years for this to get old.”

Hayes let out a small laugh, “C’mon, y’know you both love me, without me, it’d just be you two and no offence, but that’d be soooo boring.” He cracked open his eyes and stared down Atlas. “Well, more boring than usual.”

Tank sighed, “How’s it look?”

“Well Jim, it looks like it’s gonna be another sunny scorcher out here, make sure to pack your sunscreen.” Hayes sassed, relishing the stern unimpressed look on Tank’s face. Atlas never gave him disapproving looks, that’s the worst part about trying to annoy Exos as he’d say. “Well, if you must know, it’s the same as yesterday and the day before and so on. The remnant of these Devil’s are still keeping their head down and battling out the Winter. I can’t possibly imagine what that’s like.” He rolled his eyes.

Tank rubbed the bridge of his nose and took a seat between the two. “And the Tower?” Tank looked to Atlas, expecting a much better result.

“No new orders, but a bunch of new news. Rumours say The Guardian has found a way to use the Darkness? That can’t be right… can it?”

“Mercury and Mars are just... gone. At this point anything is possible,” Hayes noted.

“Anything else?”

“Hmm… Dawning wishes from Eva, Tess gives us gift cards for one free Bright Engram when we arrive at the Tower. Lynnette wishes you a happy Dawning too.” Atlas gestures to Tank, before continuing “a bunch of messages from the usual suspects asking for Hayes to come back and open the bar-”

“Ughhh I’m missing out on so much business…” He groans while dragging his hands down his face. “Especially with the Darkness being here? People need to drink away their fears.”

Tank shook his head, keeping quiet to let Atlas pick up where he left off. “Weird structures have been appearing on the Moon, in the Dreaming City and the Tangled Shore, and Osiris… Oh no…”

“What?” Tank and Hayes leaned forward, both of them trying to hide a string of fear that rang in their hearts.

“...Osiris lost his Ghost… He is safe in the Tower, but he is reclusive and quiet since he lost Sagira...” Tank and Hayes moved back shocked. A quiet note hung in the air, as the wind outside picked up and snow fell like hail. Atlas turned off his datapad and spoke hushedly. “How long did he spend in the Infinite Forest? Several decades? Spending so much time alone with the same Ghost, never saying a word to anyone else, isolated like that. Can you imagine that?”

Tank looked to Hayes, who gave him a knowing smile. “Yeah, I think I could.” Hayes chirped.

Atlas glared at Hayes, “Yeah, but you have not lost Chaplin, Tank has not lost Omar, and I have not lost Cassini. To lose them would be losing a part of your soul.”

A ghostly silence fell among them, stopping the conversation in its tracks. They all hated the silence, but no one could muster the ability to speak first. Their thoughts all consumed by the idea that the apocalypse is coming, and they could be next. Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes dragged on for hours. Or at least it felt like they did. Then, Omar appeared next to Tank, speaking softly. “I think now would be a good time buddy, save the mood and all that.”

Tank nodded “I think that’s a good idea.” Omar turned to the Warlock and Hunter, and spun his shell, materializing two engram shaped gifts, wrapped crudely with paper depicting cartoon Ghosts, engrams, and glimmer. “I know we agreed on no gifts seeing as we were going into the field, but I thought these could break up the monotony if we were out here too long. Go ahead, open them!” Tank looked uncharacteristically happy, looking almost unnatural for having, as Hayes would say, ‘resting bitch face’.

Atlas began by delicately unwrapping the present, taking care not to damage the paper, revealing a cardboard engram underneath to hold the shape. Atlas tried carefully to open it but ended up tearing the thing in half. Onto the table fell a pristine new set of robes. He admired the craftsmanship that went into the stitching, making it seamless to all but the most attentive onlookers. Fine gold lines of threads snaked around the outfit creating beautiful patterns. The few metal parts that there are, were painted with Dawning imagery. Atlas looked to Tank confused. “This is from this year’s Guardian clothing line for the Dawning, is it not? But- how did you get it? We’ve been out here for three months.”

Tank smirked, proud of himself. “I just so happen to have been chosen last year as the model that the male Dawning Titan armour is based on; can’t exactly make a set of armour without measurements. So I called in a small favour with Tess to get an advanced copy of this year's set. I think it’ll look good on you.”

Hayes snarked “Ooo more options for dress-up time? I’m sure you’re happy about that ey’ Toaster?” he mocked. Atlas looked to him, but Hayes’ couldn’t get the angry look he was hoping for. “I ever mention how creepy it is that you tin-cans don’t really have facial expressions?”

“Dozens of times…” Atlas agonized.

“Good, it’s true.”

“Thank you Tank, I love it.” Atlas gratefully accepted the gift, clutching it close to his chest.

“Alright, sentimental time over, my turn!” Hayes eagerly tore apart the wrapping paper with little regard, shredding the cardboard in the process. He stopped dead in his tracks though when he saw what his gift was. He pulled out a square crystal bottle with a large crystal stopper at the neck of the bottle. Amber liquid swirled inside as he moved it around, examining it. His hands shook a little when setting it down on the table. He carefully removed the stopper and took a sniff before capping it. “You…”

“Found a bottle of centuries-old aged whiskey. I remember you talking about how older drinks always taste the best, so I kept my eyes open anytime we left the Tower. Remember that old Bunker we found on Mars? There was a bottle tucked away in a safe, who knows how old that stuff is, but I think it’s gotta taste pretty good.” Tank's pride was oppressive, smiling wide in the enjoyment on their faces. Well. Hayes’ face.

“Wow, that’s… Thank you.” Hayes’ words oozed with sincerity. He looked around, causing his Ghost to appear. Hayes held up three fingers, then knocked on the table. His Ghost nodded and produced three small glasses on the table in front of him. “What’s a gift if you can’t share it right?” Atlas nodded, turned on his datapad, and set up a small festive song to play in their merriment. Hayes poured a small amount into each glass, making sure not to give too much, then slid them across the table to each one of them. He raised his glass and looked at both of them. “To our survival!” Hayes cheered.

Atlas tilted his head and grabbed his glass. “To our friendship!” he continued.

Tank smirked and raised his own. “To another year!” He cheered.

Their glasses clinked as they toasted, and drank the liquor. Tank and Atlas immediately spat it out in disgust, as Hayes pleasantly finished his without a care in the world. Once he finished, the three of them burst out laughing, both sides complaining and defending the drink. A blizzard raged outside, but inside burned with unbridled jubilation.

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #destiny the dawning #the dawning #destiny #destiny fanfiction #destiny trio #atlas-7 #Hayes #Tank #fanfic #destiny fanfic #short story #destiny guardians #guardians

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millennialdemon · 3 years ago

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Coming off of true trainwrecks the likes of Mars of Destruction and Skelter Heaven, I actually came out of Dark Cat with a sense of respect and gratitude for its competence.

For the uninitiated, Dark Cat is a notoriously bad OVA from 1991 that you will see listed in many Worst Anime Ever countdowns. It follows 2 brothers, “dark cats” Hyoi and Rui, who investigate supernatural happenings and purify evil with their somewhat undefined powers of shapeshifting and increased strength/agility. The majority of the story in the OVA is about a school girl named Aimi, who is pining after her childhood friend Koizumi, who since the rejection and sudden death of his crush, has been suffering a depressive episode and ignoring her. Hyoi and Rui sense dark forces are manifesting at the school, and they keep an eye on Aimi while fighting off the increasingly brazen appearances of demonic enemies.

A monstrous ex-dark cat named Jukokubo is revealed to be manipulating Aimi with his dark powers, and Hyoi and Rui fight him, but not before Aimi succumbs to the evil magic -- as well as her own violent jealousy and overprotectiveness of Koizumi -- and transforms into a horrific tentacle monster that kills seemingly everyone in the school.

In the end, Koizumi realizes that Aimi was in love with him the entire time, and doesn’t fight her when she engulfs him completely. Apparently this act of selfless love was enough to purify them both, and although they do indeed die, their souls are “light” and able to ascend. This throws a wrench in Jukokubo’s plan to prove that humans are The Worst, so he turns tail and leaves his boss fight against Hyoi, threatening to return again. In the epilogue, Hyoi and Rui reflect on the mission and wax poetic about the nature of humanity while crossing a busy street.

… Ehm… happy ending, yes?

Now then: there are actually quite a few things I enjoyed about Dark Cat, and they are all very simple things that I had come to miss after days of watching other entries from the Bottom of the Barrel.

It had a narrative, and was -- mostly -- comprehensible in its storytelling, as rushed as it may have been. There was an undeniable presence of an art director, something I’m not convinced was present in a few of the other similarly rated titles I have seen. Some of the shots were noticeably well composed and even clever, and required an artistic vision and some decent effort to create. The animation wasn’t awful, the designs ranged from serviceable to genuinely charming (I like the subtlety of Hyoi and Rui’s cat-like features!), and I liked that the characters actually emoted. It wasn’t as generic as I expected and took some risks, even if they didn’t pay off and left it with a reputation of being “too grotesque to be enjoyable”.

I can understand the common criticisms of the gore and body horror being poorly animated, but I won’t decry it for existing and “being ugly”... of course it’s ugly, it’s body horror reminiscent of The Thing from The Thing. (Now would be a good time to warn people not to look this OVA up, unless they are sure they are okay with body horror and gore of this calibre. Tentacles with teeth and spines rip out of people’s skin from the inside and deform their hosts, it is quite awful! I would also include a warning for trypophobia -- there are shots where the mutations form clusters of holes on the skin.) The body horror in Dark Cat being disgusting and making my skin crawl isn’t a fault -- I think it’s the intended purpose. Though I will concede that:

The phallic imagery of the horrific flesh mutations, particularly that of the teacher who attacked Rui, was… bizarre, considering that otherwise the OVA isn’t particularly dark in tone or otherwise sexually graphic.

Perhaps having grotesque body horror is completely unexpected in a story about two bishounen teens (?) who can turn into cats and fight ghosts.

Yes, Dark Cat, the OVA put on Worst Anime Ever lists for being a grotesque spectacle, is just as commonly placed on those lists for being a dumb anime about guys that can transform into house cats and who fight supernatural entities with not so amazing powers. This is a gripe I’ve seen in a few popular reviews, but there was no point during my watching experience that I thought, “Man, these teens are pansies, they don’t even turn into big scary lions or anything! What’s the point, it’s practically a power-down! cinemasins ding” because I don’t go into anime expecting every single male character I see to be Big & Strong & Cool, because I uh… don’t have brain worms I guess? I don’t know what to say about this criticism really, other than people who watch a lot of shounen have very strange hang ups about super powers.

Otherwise, it seems the biggest reason Dark Cat is lauded as One of the Worst -- perhaps even ahead of the silly concept and nauseating gore -- is actually because of the abysmal english dub. It’s my honour to say that I didn’t watch the dub, so it doesn’t factor in at all into my impressions!

So in the end, perhaps my only true gripes with Dark Cat are:

Despite having no particular issue with body horror and gore existing, the extent of destruction and graphic death gave the OVA a bit of a snuff film vibe.

The conclusion to the story was quite bad.

It could be surmised by the brief plot outline I wrote earlier that Dark Cat isn’t a very complicated story. Demons and ghosts exist and wreak havoc on emotionally vulnerable humans, and supernatural soldiers try to mediate between the realms by purifying tortured ghosts and saving those dragged into darkness by evil entities. These beats are common in the supernatural genre of anime, but Dark Cat’s handling of its tragic morality tale left me more confused than anything.

Koizumi didn’t do anything wrong -- he shouldn’t have had to die for the sin of not reciprocating Aimi’s feelings, nor for developing depression after the rejection and death of his classmate and crush. Aimi… did things wrong, but was nevertheless the most compelling character in the OVA. Throughout Aimi was kind, patient, and forgiving when it came to being treated badly by Koizumi. In the finale however, it is revealed that Aimi was the one responsible for Koizumi’s crush’s death, assumedly having murdered her out of jealousy or out of revenge on Koizumi’s behalf for hurting his feelings. Prior to this, the first students to be killed by the tentacle monsters just happened to be the ones that had bullied Koizumi in class earlier that day -- implying that Aimi was getting revenge on them, as well.

It was with these revelations that I started to wonder: Why not just let the flesh monster manifest as a direct result of Aimi’s negative feelings? Aimi confessed to murdering Koizumi’s crush before the events of the OVA -- would she have done so if she wasn’t being influenced by the malignant force set on her by Jukokubo? I feel that her arc would have been much more interesting without the introduction of a non-compelling and badly designed villain like Jukokubo, because then we would know it was all her. Even if she was influenced by forces exacerbating her pre-existing jealousy and rage, that is a more satisfying option than having a big dumb green cat of a villain to trace everything back to so neatly.

And really, what did Jukokubo do in the story beyond take the spotlight, and the blame, from Aimi? He had some previous relation to Hyoi and Rui, but it’s not developed at all, and his ideological rivalry with Hyoi was trivial. Hyoi could have come to the same conclusions about holding out hope for humanity without Jukokubo there to insist he be a guest to debate on his political podcast.

The lack of accountability regarding Aimi is a part of why the resolution to her conflict with Koizumi feels so wrong -- he succumbs to her feelings because he realizes the evil was born from her suffering, and he feels that he has to sacrifice himself to make up for unknowingly hurting her so much that she turned into a monster from hell. In the end she is absolved via being purified and getting to die with her spirit entwined with Koizumi’s, and he apologizes for having not recognized how he was hurting her.

Aimi kills his crush, kills his bullies, and ends up -- inadvertently, at least -- killing almost all of their classmates, because she was tilted about her childhood friend not realizing she had romantic feelings for him. And when Koizumi learns all of this, he apologizes and dies with her, and this is proof of humanity’s goodness? The dark clouds part and the rain stops and Aimi and Koizumi ascend in a heavenly ray of light, because he decided, while she was devouring him, that he was wrong to ignore his murderous best friend’s love for him?

I guess it’s fine -- it was probably mostly Jukokubo’s fault anyway, and everyone was just an unfortunate victim of his meddling… 😒

Other than the bad writing, the string of deaths that happen in the finale when the monster lets loose in the school are quite uncomfortable to behold. Deformed student bodies are splayed and strewn around classrooms, and the bullies are rendered into unrecognizable mounds of pulsating flesh in their homes. The violence of a fight against a monster like this, I can handle, but the graphic images of helpless death were difficult to stomach. And in this OVA, there is no miraculous reversal of the demon’s damage once it is purified -- there is no implication whatsoever that everyone who died isn’t still just as dead as Aimi and Koizumi in the end.

The main thing I was actually worried about when I watched Dark Cat was that there would be sexual assault, thanks to reviewers griping it for “generic hentai tentacles”. I am relieved to say that there is none, at least not insofar as deserving a comparison to actual porn. There is sexual content scattered throughout the horror scenes: The occasionally phallic appearance of the tentacles, shots of the tentacles coming down from under skirts, and there is one shot of nudity when Aimi’s shirt is ripped open as she transforms, though I would say it’s too horrific and ugly to be sexualized or otherwise considered “fanservice”.

What is the point of the hits of sex imagery in Dark Cat? I have no idea. This isn’t Alien, it isn’t about the horror of sexual assault or the violence of creation -- though the main horror of the scene where Rui is ambushed by the teacher seems to be that she uses magic to seduce him, only to reveal a very phallic tentacle from her mouth that she means to kill (or infect…?) him with, which can have multiple, potentially offensive readings… it is a one off, however -- and there doesn’t seem to be any moral posturing about it as is often seen in slashers. I couldn’t parse any sort of consistent STI allegory regarding the plague of tentacles upon the student body, despite how many summaries I have read that describe the tentacles as that, a “plague”.

… I realize I am probably the only person on earth to give any aspect of Dark Cat’s production this much thought. To sum up: It seems to just exist for the shock value. Considering the extent of disgusting imagery already present a la The Gore and Deformation of Human Bodies, I don’t think this OVA benefitted from featuring some explicit looking tendrils, beyond cementing its abhorrent reputation.

Is this all to say that I think Dark Cat is a good OVA? No, of course not. It’s tone deaf, and tasteless, and has awkward pacing and bad writing. But compared to the utterly soulless and artistically devoid works the likes of Skelter Heaven and Mars of Destruction, I would say the fact I was able to write this much about Dark Cat is testament to that fact that it at the very least, contains content -- and some of that content was like, decent! Skelter+Heaven was such a mess it was all I could do to understand the sequence of events, and Mars of Destruction was so bland I literally have no posts about it on the blog despite watching it more than once. Psychic Wars was a snoozefest I barely finished that similarly has no mention on the blog, and Hanoka’s production gimmick couldn’t save it from being a totally forgettable romance story.

Therefore, Dark Cat is the best worst title I have seen thus far, by virtue of being executed with an average amount of competency for an OVA from the early 90s, and for having a balance of good and bad elements that gave me something to hold onto and mull over after viewing.

3/10.

Oh, and I loved the bad 80s insert songs.

#:Dark Cat #dark cat #2138 words later the verdict is. It was ok

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charliejrogers · 4 years ago

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Under the Skin (2014) - Review

For a lot of science fiction movies, I find myself enjoying the ideas of the film more than I think I actually enjoyed the film. It’s what I’ll refer to as the Annihilation-syndrome, named after the 2018 movie that I found to be an absolute bore while also being an exceedingly intellectually stimulating discussion about the nature of cancer, mutation, and biology in general. The film I am reviewing now, 2014’s Under the Skin, honestly is nowhere near as unenjoyable as Annihilation, but I mention the film because I think much of this review will focus on the really interesting ideas this movie brought up which might make you think I thought this is a masterpiece. It’s not. It’s good, very good even, but not as good as its theme and ideas.

A lot of my restrained enthusiasm has to do with the fact that the film is purposefully cryptic and full of esoteric imagery. While there are spoken parts, I don’t think much would be lost if we couldn’t hear what was being said. That is to say, the dialogue doesn’t do much to make sense of what we are seeing displayed on screen.In fact, there are large sections of characters interacting without any dialogue, yet everything is understood.

To its credit, what we are seeing is largely very beautiful from a cinematography point of view. Much of the film takes place in the city of Edinbugh, Scotland and it captures well the urban grit of the city and how our protganoist fits well within that urban environment. The way the red lights of Edinburgh’s traffic lighst cast a foreboding, menacing band over the protagonist’s eyes as she drives about town on the hunt for men to ensnare in her trap shows that this dangerous character is right at home in the anonymity of the city.

The protagonist is played by Scarlett Johansson, who spends most of the film alternating between being the pinnacle of seduction in the eyes of the heterosexual male gaze and being a lifeless void. That’s because Johansson plays an alien (I think) or at the very least a humanoid being who seems to have the sole purpose of finding lonely men, taking them back to her lair, and trapping them in a sunken-place-like void where ultimately everything but their skin is extracted from them. I’ll henceforth refer to this character simply as “the humanoid” with she/her pronouns for clarity. We never learn the humanoid’s motivations, but we know that she’s not acting alone. She’s supported in her ventures by a (presumably) humanoid motorcycle gang who also double as agents who will clean up her messes.

At the beginning of the film, the humanoid appears to have no free will or consciousness. When she comes across her first dead body, she is more interested with the ant crawling along the body than the woman who used to inhabit that body. She simply steals that woman’s clothes, and begins acting out what seems like a pre-designed course for finding and trapping men. As soon as she has completed an interaction with a human, all of the emotion drains straight out of her face. Johansson’s face takes on a scary lifelessness on par with Billy Skarsgård’s Pennywise the clown from the It movies. There’s a scene where the humanoid, in the process of attracting a new victim, stumbles across an infant that has been abandoned at the beach and is screaming out. Perhaps the director is toying with audiences’ biases that the humanoid, appearing as she does as a human woman, will “naturally” want to reach out and save this baby. That she doesn’t seems to signal to the highest degree that this “woman” is no woman at all, but a cold, merciless something else.

Yet, somehow, by the end of this movie, I found all my sympathies lying entirely with this decidedly inhuman killing machine who makes her living preying on people just like me. This is because something happens that changes the humanoid about midway through the movie. Up to that point, it would be easy to classify the film as a feminist revenge fantasy, where men’s penchant for objectifying women and their aggressive desire to “conquer” women is met with a dish that is served so very coldly. It’s oddly satisfying to watch men who will blindly get into a car with a complete stranger and follow her into a creepy house just because they want to fuck her, end up being exposed as little more than skin around a bag of meat.

But then the humanoid comes across a man whose face deviates greatly from the norm due to some unnamed medical condition. It very much resembles the face of the protagonist from The Elephant Man. He is out an a walk at night to the grocery store. The humanoid doesn’t see him like the rest of the world does. She doesn’t understand how insensitive her genuine question about why he shops at night might be to him. In a darkly ironic sense, she’s the first person in his life to truly see him as a man and not a hideous monster. He has none of the arrogant sexual bravado like the humanoid’s prior victims. He’s sexually innocent, a virgin. When she offers to take him back to her place, he doesn’t take pride in any successful conquest. We see that he’s pinching himself just to prove that he’s not dreaming. It’s a heartbreaking sequence. Whereas we may have been on board, at least symbolically, with the humanoid’s cool takedown of the patriarchy, this particular abduction flips the script. Our sympathies lie more with the man than the “woman.”

Why he doesn’t succumb to the same fate as the other men is not clear. Notably, he’s the first we’ve seen that isn’t fully erect despite the humanoid ardent attempts at seduction. Secondly, he’s like the first to take some stock of the fact that he’s been lured into some black void from another dimension. He obviously finds Johansson attractive, but it’s almost like he is more amazed by what is happening, his penis “disarmed” so to speak, compared to those who came before him who were “armed” to conquer. And in lacking their sexual aggression, he was deemed to have a “lighter”, purer heart, preventing him from sinking into the deep of her trap.

This seems to change the humanoid. It’s as if she questions her whole purpose in life up to that point. Maybe all those men who had come before were as gentle as sweet as this one. Or maybe she yearns to be more than a monster.

Previously we had seen the humanoid stare at women from her car in much the same she looked at men, yet we never see her take women as a victim. It’s more like she was curious by these creatures, like she didn’t know they would be there. She shows the same curiosity towards her own body. She stares at it, hugs her curves. Just after her encounter with the man with the dysmorphic face, she looks long at her face in the mirror and then at a fly stuck to a window. It’s as if she’s looking at how she looks to others (humanoid) compared to what she really is (more like a bug, an alien). As the film goes on, it’s almost as if she’s trying to convince herself the skin is not a farce, that it’s really her, that she’s real, and that there’s nothing else under the skin. There’s an ironic beauty in the dysmorphic man wanting to be seen for what’s on the inside where she wants to be seen for her outside.

We subsequently see the humanoid undergo something of a coming-of-age as she flees into the more rural surroundings of the bogs of Scotland, presumably to avoid her motorcycle-driving allies who don’t want her to veer off course. The camera work in this part of the film highlights her as a stranger in this strange land, with her hot pink sweater standing in stark contrast to the drab Scottish milieu. And truly from the rocky/pebbly beach below the impossibly high bluffs at the ocean to the Mars-like desert shrubbery of the bogs, Scotland has never made Earth look so alien. Yet it’s in this foreign land, far from the trappings of the dirty city that the humanoid experiences the pleasure of being a human, or more specifically being a woman. For a few days she is even one man’s princess, and I think it confuses her so much that she enjoys it.

The genius of this film is the way it makes you forget that the humanoid isn’t actually human. In the latter half of the movie we celebrate her cautious steps towards humanity. There is a love scene that is among the most intimate I’ve seen filmed. Yet, we also fear for her and feel sorry for her when her fantasy comes crashing down and it is revealed to her and to us that her initial approach to men proves was much more appropriate.

This is a slow film that rewards patience, but ultimately it doesn’t do much to excite. There are abstract sequences of light and color accompanied by discordant sounds of chanting that seem straight out of the Jupiter sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. These do little more than confuse, and sometimes bore. And even if the lack of excitement is deliberate (perhaps intended to deconstruct female seduction) that doesn’t make it anymore enjoyable. Still, it is a beautifully shot picture that provides a stunning condemnation of our male dominated society. It would manage to make even the most bitter-hearted viewer feel sympathy for a humanoid who just a half-hour ago was on a cold-blooded murder streak. Still, even if it doesn’t introduce any hard-hitting questions about humanity like the best sci-fi, in the end it revels in a different dominant theme of sci-fi: no matter the monster man meets, man is always the ultimate monster.

*** (Three out of four stars)

#under the skin #scarlett johansson

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semper-legens · 4 years ago

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92. Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers

Owned?: Yes Page count: 137 My summary: Join Mary Poppins as she sweeps into the lives of young Jane and Michael Banks in 17 Cherry Tree Lane, and takes them on many adventures - from a trip into a chalk drawing to the cow that jumped over the moon to a quiet day in and a Bad Tuesday. My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

I love Mary Poppins! But (whisper it) I’m actually not all too fond of the movie version. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it a lot, but when I was growing up I didn’t watch it all that much. I much preferred the stage musical version, after a particularly formative experience seeing it in 2005, and the book. This is not the book I had as a kid, but a compilation of five of the Mary Poppins books - I’ve only ever read the first, so I’m looking forward to making my way through them at a leisurely pace. So far, I’ve just reread the first. Which is this one. So let’s get into it!

First off - the differences between Mary Poppins in the book and the movie. The book version of Mary Poppins is episodic, each chapter essentially being a short story featuring Mary and the kids linked with the loose narrative of being the time Mary was the nanny for the Banks children. So there’s no overarching story of Mary helping the family be better people (Saving Mr Banks was based on a big ol’ lie), it’s just Mary breezing in, being magic, then leaving again. The books are set in the 30s, rather than the late Edwardian setting of the film. Mr and Mrs Banks also have four children - Jane, Michael, and infant twins John and Barbara, though Jane and Michael are most in-focus, and they’re pretty much the same as their movie counterparts. Mary herself, however, is different in characterisation from the movie. She’s a lot more vain, more brusque and imperious around the kids, but more importantly the narrative never really paints her as some kind of saint or angel, like in the movies. She’s just a woman with magical powers. I actually like her better here, she feels like more of an actual character.

I’m not going to talk about all of the stories here, just the few that caught my interest, but I have to say that on a whole I found the stories to be charming and compelling, imaginative and transportive to this fictional world. Some part of my enjoyment was marred a little by being so familiar with the characters adapted into the film and musical - Bert, Uncle Albert, Mrs Corry - but on the whole I still had a good time.

Bad Tuesday is the first one that catches my interest, because I was reading the revised version. In it, Michael’s in a mood for no apparent reason, and is stroppy and hard to deal with all day until Mary takes them on a journey to the four corners of the Earth with a magical compass, meeting talking animals and having a fun time. In the original, however, Mary does the same, but they meet humans - specifically, racist stereotypes of Chinese, Native American, Inuit, and sub-Saharan African people. This later got revised to remove racist language, then completely changed to the four animals present in this version. I checked my childhood copy, too, an edition from the 60s that contained the revised material. I don’t really have any comment on the situation, other than pointing out that it existed, and also noting that changing it was definitely a good thing.

The Dancing Cow sticks out to me as being strange, and the imagery has stuck with me since I read it as a child. It starts with a cow wandering down Cherry Tree Lane - Mary reveals that she knows her, and tells her story. The cow is looking for her star, a star she held when she was younger and helped her to dance, wildly. She wanted to get rid of the star, as the dancing was non-stop, but when a King directed her to jump over the moon and the star was finally gone, she found herself missing it. So Mary’s mother told her, stars fall every day! You just have to go out and find one. I love this story for its simplicity, for its dreamy fairytale sort of qualities. It’s such a small tale, and not one that involves Mary or the kids at all, and for that it stands out. I also love the imagery of it - a cow wandering the street searching for her star. A dancing cow, meeting a king, jumping over the moon.

John and Barbara’s Story was one that I remembered from my first read, and I still find myself drawn to it. It’s very simple - John and Barbara, infants, speaking to Mary and a starling about how, when they are older, they will forget this language of the trees and sunlight and nature, and only be concerned with the rational world. John and Barbara laugh this off, but we cut to a few months in the future, and sure enough, they have - Mary notes that she’s one of the few who have retained this language, and there’s a moment of melancholy as the starling acts like he doesn’t really care, with the subtext that he cares deeply, and will miss them. It’s a beautiful little story about age and loss of innocence, and it stands out for how mundane it is. No fantastical adventures, not a lot of magic, just babies growing older.

Full Moon is the last one that I remember well, that I also really enjoyed as a kid (noticing a pattern?), and it’s about a zoo. Jane and Michael wonder what happens after hours at a zoo, but Mary won’t say. That night, they are lead by a mysterious voice to the zoo, where the animals are loose and looking at exhibits of humans - mostly, people Jane and Michael know. It’s revealed that this night is Mary’s birthday, and the animals are celebrating with her. It ends with them waking in the nursery, and the children initially assume that it was a dream...but Mary’s wearing a snakeskin belt she was given at the zoo. It’s in the first place a charming story working on child-logic - what if the animals ran the zoo? - but I like it for the dreamy, fairytale tone (much like the Dancing Cow) and the subtle air of menace woven throughout. It’s all-but said that, were Jane and Michael not Mary’s friends, they would be in the zoo as well as the other humans, not that they really realise. I remember being...not scared of it as a kid, more tense in that way you are when you can sense danger the characters can’t. It was certainly very memorable for me.

Final thoughts - it’s a charming little collection, I’m looking forward to experiencing the rest of the stories for the first time!

#Mary Poppins #PL Travers #bookblr #book blogging #book blogger #4

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happymeishappylife · 4 years ago

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Big Finish Audio Adventure Review: Red Dawn

The Doctor and Peri accidentally land on Mars in the latest effort to get Peri home, but that’s not immediately evident since the building they arrive in is green, cold, and a breathable. However, once they realize they are in an Ice Warrior tomb, the now typical issues of running into the Ice Warriors takes place, yet again. Like, don’t get me wrong, I like the Ice Warriors, but I feel like every story with them is the same. The Doctor has high respect for them so he tries to be a peacemaker and keep things neutral, but whether its Russian captains on a submarine, British Victorian explorers, or American astronauts, they always incite violence upon the Ice Warriors, which causes unnecessary death and problems. It would be nice to explore them as a species in more than just a misunderstood warrior clan. Especially because they teeter on that line between enemies/allies so it would be fun to explore that.

Besides that gripe, the story was enjoyable. I loved hearing Peri with the 5th Doctor because it is so much more mellow when the two travel compared to her times with the 6th Doctor. That probably has to do with the fact that the Doctor now is trying to get her home and still is mourning over the loss of his previous companions, but it is a little refreshing to hear them be so chummy (although the sass factor she has with the 6th Doctor is the best). I also like that he already trusts her to try and be the better person compared to the rest of the Americans they run into and throughout the story constantly calls to her to handle the situation instead of the trained NASA astronauts. Although since two of the astronauts didn’t know the real reasons behind their sponsored mission to Mars, they get a pass which is why they survived. I also love how the Ice Warriors keep picking up random humans to stay with them on Mars. Like I would love a follow up story where the different clans meet to show off their human companions they’ve picked up.

This story also felt like a classic show, not only because of the way its structured, but the fast action between the events. One moment everyone is just discovering the Ice Warrior tomb. The next, a woman is dead, an Ice Warrior has been kidnapped, the rocket is being shot at, etc. Because of that, it made it very easy to listen to because while I was creating the imagery of the scenes, it was easy to tell when the credits were about to roll for each episode.

Overall Rating: 7/10

#big finish audios #red dawn #fifth doctor #peri brown #peter davison #nicola bryant

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smhalltheurlsaretaken · 5 years ago

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Spoilers.

Okay I can’t hold it in anymore, I need to yell about Star Trek.

SO.

In light of the revelations we got from Picard ep8 and ep9, I have come to the conclusion that the plot is a giant fucking mess. Lemme explain. (Buckle up, it’s long and VERY spoilery). First, a recap: 300 000 years ago, synthetic lifeforms from another galaxy dragged eight suns together (or maybe created them) and put a sign on the planet in the middle, saying “hey synth pals, when the organics decide to destroy you, give us a call, we’ll destroy them.” The Romulans stumbled upon it, understood only the “synth, organics, destroy” part and decided to hunt and kill robots before they evolved. So far, the robotic higher beings have only succeeded in making the organics hate the synths, so good job. Using the Romulan rescue, Oh makes synths illegal through the attack on Mars, causing the death of most of her people (and incidentally, of the entire Vulcan race in another timeline. Thanks, Oh!). I’ll give her points for dedication, at least this isn’t a “save my people and screw the rest of the Federation” scenario. She’s actually willing to sacrifice her planet to save the whole galaxy. (Doesn’t make it moral, but still, pretty selfless, in a dark a twisted way.) Again, this is the robotic higher beings’ fault.

Moving on, The surviving synths try to make first contact with Starfleet, resulting in the death of Jana, Beautiful Flower and Vandermeer, which has overall very little consequence on the bigger plot. AGAIN, this is indirectly the robotic higher beings’ fault. (Maybe losing her sister is what makes Sutra such a bitch? Don’t think so though, we’ll get to that.) Maddox, learning nothing from the Ibn Majid, decides to learn the truth about the ban and sends two synthetic girls that look exactly like Jana to investigate (my god is he stupid), while not actually telling them what it is they’re supposed to find (oh, Bruce. Oh my god). It leads to the Romulans realizing that there’s an entire planet of synths. Outstanding work, dumbass.

Picard does his thing and decides to save the synths and advocate for their lives, Sutra realizes what the Admonition actually meant, and decides that killing all the organics sounds like a great idea. She doesn’t hesitate to let Narek kill one of her sisters to unite her people, showing that she’s exactly the same kind of psycho bitch as Oh. The problem is: SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES. The robotic higher beings are fucking IDIOTS!! They’re supposed to have seen many civilisations rise and fall, so they should know what to do and what not to do, and their rational still is “organics will kill us anyway, so let’s kill them,” leading to the organics being like “oh shit, the synths want to kill us, let’s stop making them,” leading to Sutra being like “welp they’ve already started hating us, our robot overlords were right, let’s kill organics.” OH. MY. GOD!!!

I get that the lesson is that fear is the great enemy, and in this case it’s really well demonstrated (gotta give credit where it’s due), but still! It’s so frustrating!!

My biggest problem with that convoluted plot is that we (the viewers) are supposed to see the synths as the organics’ equals. Their plight is supposed to be equal to the Federation’s. Except NO. I’m sorry, NO.

(More on in-universe morality and out-of-universe viewer experience under the cut, because I took pity on your dashboards.)

I get wanting to survive from the Romulan attack, okay. (There is la Sirena for that, just as a reminder.) But Sutra saying that the Federation banning them was essentially genocide? NO. They are made. They aren’t born naturally. A government telling its people to stop making procreating isn’t the same thing as a government killing every kid younger that ten! Parents refusing to conceive isn’t the same as murdering their children (I won’t open the can of worms that is the abortion debate, the point stands).

We as an audience are still supposed to see the Zhat Vash as the bad guys, because Oh, Narissa and Narek are villains, and because they have caused untold suffering. (By the way, linking Cris’ personal tragedy to the synth crisis is a massive plot contrivance to make us hate the Zhat Vash more, which I found frustrating watching ep8. Losing people in a horrible way happens even without grand global conspiracies, and Cris had already been established as going out of his way to help people even when there was nothing in it for him. We didn’t need the connection to empathise with his pain, and he didn’t need the added incentive. Seriously, how small is that galaxy? Are everybody’s demons linked to Picard’s heroic quest? How convenient.)

But are the Zhat Vash really the bad guys? (Even Cris questions that despite arguably being the Sirena crewmember who as per ep8 had lost the most because of them, along with Elnor.) I’m sorry, if Sutra does try to call the robotic overlords, I say burn Cappelius to the ground. Lemme continue to explain. There are what, 50 synths? 50 robots. And the show tries to make me (again, the viewer) accept that risking the survival of the entire Federation (trillions of people) to save them is actually a question worth asking? From an in-universe moral standpoint, perhaps.

From an outsider’s perspective (the audience), not even close. Robots having souls and being equal to humans isn’t even a discussion we’re having in real life. I don’t believe androids will ever be self-aware, and capable of emotion and love. Sure, in the Star Trek universe they apparently are. So what? Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The show can’t expect me to accept that many IFs. I get the very one-the-nose “fear of the Other,” “make love not war,” “different races have equal rights to life” analogy. The message is very much worthy, the show’s depiction of it really pisses me off. The show isn’t asking me to decide whether or not it would be moral to kill the last survivors of a human (or even alien) tribe to save the world, it’s asking “but what if we were basically God and we fucked up, how would we fix it? What if the stuff we made eventually had feelings? Then it’d be bad to destroy it, right?”

Aside from the sheer hubris of that premise, I don’t know that the robots have feelings. I know it looks like they do, and that they believe that they do, but again, how am I to know? From a biological viewpoint, they’re certainly not alive:

“Life” (biological def taken from the web) Definition. noun, plural: lives. noun, plural: lives. (1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce.

Do the synths grow? Nah. Do they metabolize? Yes. Respond to stimuli? Yes but debatable as it’s programmed. Adapt? Yes. Reproduce? NOPE. 2.5/5 on the living scale lol. That’s not that great. (From an in-universe moral perspective, this time. I know, TNG did an ep on that, sorry.)

Still the show tries reaaaally hard to sell their sentience, and the one time that really didn’t sit well with me was that “robotic finger touching the human finger” image. WOW, last place where I expected to find religious imagery, a show that questions what it means to be human and what creating beings in our image would entail *sarcasm*.

Except they twist the imagery. In the Bible, human lives are sacred because they are in the image of the perfect God, and He values us (=> so human worth come directly from God attributing worth to us because we’re meant to reflect His goodness). Humans being imperfect due to their fall, creating something in their own image is called an idol - it’s a false god, it’s not sentient, it’s even more imperfect, and it’s wrong. And if humans don’t value it and and it doesn’t reflect who they are anymore, well, it would make the idol even more worthless, right? (clearer explanation because my arguing skills suck => drawing on the Bible’s imagery, either humans are not gods and the images they created are worthless, or the series means for them to have God’s place, in which case refusing to attribute worth to their images makes those worthless. That invalidates the question that I previously said the show was asking.) So all in all, reminding us of the Christian take on the issue right in the middle of the Admonition claiming that synths are perfect is thus completely counterproductive, both in universe and from a viewer’s pov.

But but but, I hear you protest, what about Data? He had worth!

This may be controversial, but Data mattered to us because of the character he was, not because he was supposed to be human. He was adorable and losing him meant losing an interesting and enjoyable element in the show, which would make us sad. I love him like I love Cris’ holos, the Voyager Doctor, Wall-E and Eve, R2-D2, Jarvis and Chappie. They’re (very) likeable fictional creatures that can be used as metaphors for real life issues, nothing more. In any show/movie I’d be really sad if one of them had to be sacrificed to save the world, but I’d accept it (looking at you, Infinity War Captain America). If the question arose in real life, would I question the morality of it? No.

So, are the new synths the same? I already tackled the metaphor thing, it’s not handled that well and Detroit Become Human did it first. (Again, it’s hard to portray the otherness of other real life-cultures that we may unjustly fear by using things whose living status is so easily questionable!!) Is killing off the synths wrong from an out-of-universe perspective because the audience loves them? Let’s see... Are the new synths adorable/likeable? Heck no, give me Emil and Enoch over them any day. Would we lose something in the show if they died? Nah. We didn’t even know they existed until one episode ago. Picard would get angsty and Agnes would get upset, but it’s nothing a few fluffy fics wouldn’t fix. Do we know the synths as characters? We know that Sutra is crazy, violent and bloodthirsty, Jana was probably nice (?), Dahj had a cute boyfriend (outstanding characterization) and Soji... Welp... *sigh* I guess Soji is okay, even though she’s the least relatable and interesting character of the whole Sirena crew? We know that their creators and biggest advocates, Soong Jr and Maddox, are(/were) creepy old dudes with warped ethics, half a brain between the two of them, really toxic interactions with Agnes, and enough hubris to bring the entire greek demigod population to shame. They would race Icarus to the sun, seriously. We know that Captain Vendermeer killed himself over two robots, permanently damaging one of the nicest and most beloved characters of the series. Yeah, real incentive for me wanting to see the Federation risk destruction for the androids, guys.

But seriously, the last time a psycho AI tried to destroy the galaxy and make it in its image (*cough* Control) the protagonists spent a season trying to destroy the thing, and they were right! Future-control was self-aware and demonstrated anger and fear! Make up your mind, CBS!!

And by the way? THE SYNTHS HAVE A MEANS OF ESCAPE!! No, I’m sorry, if they don’t decide to go aboard la Sirena and choose to endanger the Federation instead, then for all plot issues I’m siding with the Zhat Vash. Go on, destroy the synths. As part of the audience, I don’t care, and the show attempts at making me care by trying to make it a moral issue feel clumsy and forced.

Also. Q exists in the Star Trek universe! He’s a deus ex-machina machine!! (Pun intended.) It’s hard to take big issues like that seriously when he could just swoop in and teleport the synths out of the galaxy/destroy the Romulan armada/put the robotic overlords in their place. JL, please, give Q a call. Yeah, yeah, it’d take away from the moral stakes because you can’t solve your irl problem with a snap of your fingers and you have to make actual decisions - but as I already said, I feel like the moral stakes are dumb and contrived. Give me the deus ex-machina, please.

This has been a Star Trek rant. I know that I tackled two separate issues here: the in-universe morality of the synths’ death (I will admit that from the crew’s perspective it’s not right, because they can’t know if the synths are alive or not for sure) and the out-of-universe viewer experience. I apologize if it came across as really confused and complicated.

I still like the show and love the actual characters (meaning, la Sirena’s colorful crew), and the show writers are not incompetent, or stupid, or wrong for writing their show how they want. They are really skilled and talented and they have created mostly compelling characters - I’m just unhappy with the direction taken by the story.

#star trek picard #star trek: picard #jean-luc picard #sutra #noonien soong #bruce maddox #cappelius #et in arcadia ego #picard episode 8 #picard 1x09 #spoilers #picard spoilers #rant #meta #synthetic life #my meta #st talk #not sw

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100albumcountdown · 6 years ago

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A List of 20 Albums from 2018 in Descending Order

We’re approaching the end of 2018 which means we’re reaching that time when everyone compiles their year end lists. I do this every year just for my own personal satisfaction anyway, but given that this year I’m still in the process of writing a blog about my 100 favourite albums, it seems appropriate to have a brief pause to do a little write-up of top 20 albums of my 2018 too.

20. Phosphorescent – C’est La Vie

I’ve been a big fan of Matthew Houck’s music for years, although his recent flirtations with a more mainstream brand of country have yielded as many tedious lows as they have dazzling highs. This album is no different, but as with its predecessor Muchacho – the highs are high enough to make it just sneak in at number 20.

19. Ólafur Arnalds – Re:member

More experimental modern classical music using Arnalds favoured palette of stately piano, minimal strings and flurries of electronic rhythms. Re:member is more focused than usual though, and at times it’s utterly beautiful.

18. The Low Anthem – The Salt Doll Went to Measure the Depth of the Sea

Previous album Eyeland was a bit of a flop; the five year wait and eventual unfocused psych-folk experiments meant the band lost a lot of the momentum they’d built up with the excellent Oh My God, Charlie Darwin and Smart Flesh. This album goes some way to correcting that, as its hypnotic, miniature folk vignettes create a wonderfully unique soundworld full of delicate acoustic instrumentation, watery imagery and squelchy electronic rhythms.

17. Ital Tek – Bodied

It seems since the release of Blade Runner 2049 last year there’s been an influx of moody, epic, noir electronica – although in reality it’s more likely that the soundtrack of that film just increased the appreciation and presence of an already well worn genre. Ital Tek does this style with aplomb, the skyscraping synths and depth-charge basslines creating a compelling dystopian soundscape for his sinuous beats to move through.

16. Wild Pink – Yolk in the Fur

Not the kind of album that I’d usually give more than a passing listen – Yolk in the Fur is all warm, rushing guitars, driving rhythms and breathy, swooning choruses – but something about this album keeps me coming back. There’s an immediacy to the songwriting, as well as an enjoyable depth and summer twilight atmosphere to the instrumentation and production that makes it hard to be cynical about. ‘Lake Eerie’ might be my road trip song of the year.

15. Boygenius – Boygenius

Yes I know it’s an EP, but in the year of the 20 minute album the distinction seems somewhat unimportant. I knew little about Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus before hearing this, and I had only a passing familiarity of Phoebe Bridgers’ solo album A Stranger in the Alps, but the combination of these three singer songwriters makes this EP stand out in a sea of generic guitar wielding indie music. Bright, expressive melodies, backed with tight, soulful harmonies and a gift of lyrical insights make each track a perfect package.

14. Shame – Songs of Praise

Gnarly. That’s the word that comes to mind when listening to Songs of Praise. Scuzzy guitar thrash, pummelling rhythms and a singer who shifts between throaty tunefulness, rowdy strutting and a baritone Vincent Price impersonation. It’s the slightly odd spoken word sections that mar an otherwise fantastic debut album full of grit and passion. Definitely intrigued to see where they’ll go next.

13. Laura Viers – The Lookout

I’m not sure she’s released a bad album to date, and The Lookout is another offering of warm, summery folk songs and cheerful indie pop. There’s something special in the way in which Viers works with her producer and husband Tucker Martine to create songs that exude a sense of space, place and feeling, and this album is devoted to that craft in its entirety.

12. Hookworms – Microshift

Psych-rock wierdos learn about brit-pop anthems. A glorious concoction of abstract sonics and direct rock melodicism that’s compelling and catchy throughout, Hookworms have streamlined and opened up their sound to keep the core of their psych-rock wigouts in tact, whilst bringing their knack for strong melodies right to the fore. Where possible I try to hold on to the idea that art shouldn’t pay for the sins of its creator and I’ve enjoyed this album a great deal over the course of this year – however, the recent allegations of sexual assault against frontman Matthew Johnson definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth.

11. Pinegrove – Skylight

Pinegrove are another band whose 2018 release has been clouded by controversy. Whilst the allegation of sexual coercion toward frontman Evan Hall certainly needs addressing seriously, it seems that Pinegrove’s withdrawal from the limelight, year long hiatus and quiet return in the form of self-releasing their third album Skylight has been done in an effort to resolve the situation as sensitively as possible for everyone involved. As a result, it’s hard to not to hear Skylight as a kind of rebirth: “I draw a line in the sand / Singing this is the way I behave now / And actually live by the shape of that sound”. The starry-eyed breathlessness of these songs is beautifully countered by the raw, earthy production – two qualities that raise their country tinged emo-pop leagues above their peers. Any radio-ready glossiness would’ve killed all the charm and genuine earnestness of these songs; instead here they make an understated but worthy claim for importance in the face of their acknowledged shortcomings. If nothing else it all feels refreshingly direct in an era seemingly defined by reflexive defensiveness.

10. Skee Mask – Compro

This is one of those albums that somehow ended up skirting my periphery for quite a while this year – I kept seeing positive reviews of it in the various publications that I look to for recommendations, but I don’t really go out of my way to listen to much modern electronica these days, as braindead EDM has somewhat numbed me to the genre recently (It also has a fairly boring album cover – I know that shouldn’t matter, but honestly, it really does). When I did finally get round to listening to Compro I discovered an album that was refreshingly nuanced and far more enjoyable than I was expecting. The slower, dubbier tracks have a subtle melodicism and textural variety, whilst Skee Mask isn’t afraid to make use of negative space to let sounds breathe. When the pace does finally pick up it’s with an onslaught of breathless, glassy drum’n’bass and vast swathes of looming, buzzing synth pads. One of the most intriguing and original electronica albums I’ve heard in a long time.

9. Ben Howard – Noonday Dream

This was a surprise. I really wasn’t expecting to like this record so much. Apart from the epic title track to his previous album I Forget Where We Were, nothing Ben Howard had done up until this point had bothered me on any meaningful level. Noonday Dream is a whole new level for him though, it’s yawning atmospherics and dynamic ebbs and flows show an artist of far more maturity and skill than I was expecting. Opener ‘Nica Libres at Dusk’ is a series of gentle swells like a breath of warm air on a cool summers evening, whilst the droning, suffocating intro to ‘Boat to an Island on the Wall’ builds perfectly into a funky, buzzy guitar freakout over the course of an epic seven minutes. Throughout it Howard sounds like a stranger in his own soundscape, his murmuring voice is nothing more than one of the many instruments that are weaving the sonic tapestry around him. I’ll definitely be looking forward to seeing where he goes next. (One thing to note – this whole album hugely benefits from being played at a high volume)

8. IDLES – Joy as an Act of Resistance

Listening to Joy as an Act of Resistance creates a great array of different emotions – on one hand its powerful and violent, on another it’s tuneful and catchy, and at the same time it’s thought provoking, savagely funny and grippingly compelling from start to finish. It’s a bit like having a screaming argument about politics whilst hugging your best friend. Or maybe like being punched in the face by a social activist. I didn’t really click with IDLES’ previous album, it seemed a bit too stodgy and macho for my tastes and I never gave it much time. When I first listened to Joy I felt much the same way; but bit by bit the clever and funny lyrics kept me coming back until eventually their thunderous punk noise had completely won me over. I think IDLES are a genuinely important band – punk was always meant to be a protest, an outsized voice for people with no voice at all, and Joy as an Act of Resistance is one of the few recent albums that addresses the current chaos of modern society and politics head on and absolutely nails it, with all the ridiculousness, ugliness and hope on full display.

7. Damien Jurado – The Horizon Just Laughed

Damien Jurado seems like a man who’s been on a vision quest for the last 10 years. Originally starting out in the late 90s as a gifted songwriter releasing album after album of above average country tinged folk, in 2010 Jurado released his first of several collaborations with producer Richard Swift – a collaboration that reaped great success and sent him deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, culminating in Visions of Us on the Land, an excellent but overstuffed record of psychedelic concept folk rock. At some point during this period, Swift developed medical complications relating to alcohol abuse, and tragically passed away earlier this year. This left Jurado to self-produce his latest album; and it seems he’s come out of his run of hyper-creative concept albums stronger than ever – The Horizon Just Laughed is his strongest set of songs since St Bartlett, and quite possibly the best record of his long career. It seems his long term collaboration with Swift has left him a more confident songwriter than ever, with a few twists and production tricks up his sleeve. Dialling back the large scale theatrics, this is an album of high quality, melodic folk songs, subtly and beautifully arranged into a fantastically cohesive whole. It may just be the album he’s always been working towards.

6. Vessel – Queen of Golden Dogs

I’m a big fan of the concept of electronica and classical music colliding. This may be the 90s kid in me – back then the fusion of orchestral grandeur and big beat seemed to be the holy grail of dance alchemy, with acts like Orbital, Moby, Fatboy Slim and William Orbit all giving it their best shot. Very little music has ever managed to make this particular bit of chemistry work though; it usually winds up as overblown film score twaddle or uninteresting elevator music. Queen of Golden Dogs comes at the task from a very different angle though, taking a fistful of traditional stringed instruments and using them to create alternately dramatic, melodic or abstract textures in which his clattering, industrial beats move though like a riot erupting in the middle of a chamber quartet performance. The key seems to be that everything shares the same sense of space – although this music is all undoubtedly created using sequencing software, it manages to create the illusion that it’s all being performed in one intensely claustrophobic environment; the clashing of metallic percussion, teeth gnashing synths and incendiary string blasts counteracting each other in incredibly physical ways. It’s an intense, exhausting listen, but it’s also original, compelling, thoroughly unique, and on occasion utterly beautiful – maybe this is the first ever ‘Baroque-step’ album? If no one else has invented that term yet then I’m claiming it right now.

5. Mitski – Be the Cowboy

It seems that as Hip-hop asserts itself as the dominant force in 21st century pop music, the genre we traditionally think of as ‘pop’ has slowly been undergoing a radical reinvention. Whilst there are still plenty of the huge, globe straddling stars like Katy Perry and Britney Spears still churning out the same meaningless glitzy dance-pop as ever, there have also been a host of artists changing and subverting the form this year, from the art damaged mutations of SOPHIE to the chart trojan horse that is The 1975. Mitski seems to be part of this movement, chewing up every kind of popular music and replaying it through her own idiosyncratic lens. Be the Cowboy moves through genres like pop stars go through costume changes – ‘Why Didn’t You Stop Me?’ is a blast of horn driven R&B, ‘A Pearl’ is all surging Indie-pop drama, ‘Lonesome Love’ is a country inflected lament, ‘Come into the Water’ is a space-rock drift, whilst ‘Nobody’ repurposes the same sad disco that The Cardigans perfected twenty years earlier on ‘Lovefool’. Barely any of these songs runs past two and a half minutes – it’s like Mitski has taken the core of every idea from the last 40 years of pop music and created a complete encapsulation of each one in a series of short, sweet vignettes of perfect songcraft. At the same time, it’s a thoroughly cohesive record, with a consistent tone and sound palette, and a lyrical concern that ruminates on self-deprecation, self-love, modern philosophising and good old fashioned romance. It’s an album that’s timeless yet totally contemporary, artful yet accessible, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish. More pop music like this please.

4. Abul Mogard – Above All Dreams

There’s a great story surrounding the music of Abul Mogard – that he’s an octogenarian, Serbain ex-factory worker who after retirement found himself missing the relentless whiring and humming of machinery and so bought himself some synthesizers and began making drone music. There’s also a large contingent of people who think this is most likely nonsense, and that it’s all a clever marketing hook for some otherwise anonymous bedroom producer. It is a hard tale to believe for sure, but it’s also too good a back-story to ignore. Whoever Abul Mogard really is, this is still a fantastic album full of thick, swirling textures, eerie and simplistic melodies, and slow but affecting chord progressions. Mogard’s drones hang somewhere in between peaceful and foreboding, never slipping over into complete darkness, but always drifting just on the edge of comfort. ‘Quiet Dreams’ continually crests and brushes against the edge of white noise but continually pulls back like the ebbing of the tide. ‘Where Not Even’ is like the aural equivalent of an Escher staircase, always ascending but never arriving, whilst ‘Upon the Smallish Circulation’ makes good use of a shimmering arpeggio that loops relentlessly as the waves of buzzing synths gradually consume it. The two final tracks make up over half an hour of music between them, breaking the sound down even further into a vast environment of suspended tones and queasy textures. It’s like the soundtrack to the best film David Lynch never made, always balancing on a knife edge between dream and nightmare, darkness and light. It might also provide an amazing soundtrack to Serbian factory machines, but I suppose only Mogard himself has the answer to that…

3. Kids See Ghosts – Kids See Ghosts

It’s been a hard year to be a Kanye West fan. It’s never easy at the best of times, but 2018 has seen a particular spike in his inconsistent musical output, his cringeworthy attention seeking and his deeply questionable political involvement. It’s getting harder and harder to claim that he’s just a troubled musician who’s been provided a platform to talk about issues that are way out of his depth, as he’s actively waded into the quagmire of Trump MAGA hats and outrageous political commentary. But even ignoring all of that, his musical output has been mostly underwhelming this year, as he seems to be doubling down on the Bob Ross style “no such thing as mistakes” mindset that he began with The Life of Pablo. This isn’t inherently a bad thing – over-zealous perfectionism can often lead to creative paralysis, and with that album it seemed like Kanye was actively making use of the freedom the internet can provide to blur the line between demos and albums, polished and ramshackle, finished and unfinished. Unfortunately his solo album this year just sounded unfinished, its short length and limited quality made it his most inessential release in years. Thankfully his Wyoming project led to the release of several albums, and Kids See Ghosts turned out to be the exact opposite of the underwhelming Ye. A collaboration with Kid Cudi; Kids See Ghosts is still rough and short, but yet manages to be 23 minutes of absolutely vital hip-hop. Opener ‘Feel the Love’ is a frenetic burst of moody synths, martial beats, dramatic vocals and cacophonous, aggressive scatting. It’s as weird and compelling as that sounds. There’s a great variety of style on display here for such a short album – ‘4th Dimension’ is sinister and booming, whilst the title track is an atmospheric trickle of choppy beats, swirling chords and the welcome presence of Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). Tracks like ‘Freee’ and ‘Reborn’ suggest moments of life affirming epiphany related to the mental health issues Kanye and Kid Cudi have both been open about struggling with, whilst the closing ‘Cudi Montage’ is a transcendent swell of euphoric synths, layered harmonies and finds Kanye musing on the tragic cycle of gun violence found in black neighbourhoods of inner cities such as his beloved Chicago. It’s startling and reassuring to hear him speak with such clarity and consciousness after a year of otherwise confused, rambling political murk, but even without this context it sublimely caps off an album that manages to be textured, melodic, varied, powerful and unique over the course of a mere 23 minutes. It’s a great reminder of the reason Kanye still remains relevant after all this. It’s just hard not to constantly wish he’d stop talking…

2. Jon Hopkins – Singularity

Hopkins’ last album Immunity was one of my favourite records of 2013 and has stayed in fairly heavy rotation ever since (even inching its way into my top 100 list). Hopkins is one of the very best producers of his generation in my eyes, so just like many others I was awaiting his next move with baited breath. When ‘Emerald Rush’ dropped in March, my anticipation reached fever pitch; as its warm, glistening swells of sound and bone crunching beats sounded absolutely transcendent and scratched an itch I’d been waiting 5 years to relieve. The following album did not disappoint; on first listen its symphonic song cycle and epic, complex production absolutely blew me away and I was already convinced it would be my album of the year. However, whilst it is undoubtedly an incredible album, it hasn’t quite stood up over time for me as Immunity did; its ultra glossy sheen actually holds the listener at arms length to some extent, meaning whilst it is impressive and beautiful, it doesn’t have the same sense of envelopment and depth that made that record so addictive. There’s still loads to love here though – the skyscraping melodrama of ‘Singularity’ and ‘Everything Connected’, the percolating, glitchy twinkling of ‘Neon Pattern Drum’ and ‘Luminous Beings’ and the perpetual forward motion of ‘Emerald Rush’ and ‘COSM’ are all incredible fusions of brittle electronics and lush organic matter. ‘Feel First Life’ and ‘Recovery’ both stand up amongst his most beautiful ambient pieces too, the starry eyed choral swell of the former showing a big step forward from the moody twinkling of past atmospheric experiments. I’d love to see Hopkins collaborate with someone like Nils Frahm, a composer whose own electronic experiments would make his orchestration sympathetic and whose grasp of contemporary classical music would allow Hopkins to delve even deeper into the dense, hypnotic beats underneath. That being said, as it stands Hopkins is already carving out a discography that is knowingly pushing toward symphonic electronic transcendence, and it’s only because of the release of something thoroughly remarkable that this hasn’t ended up as my album of the year.

1. Low – Double Negative

I definitely didn’t see this coming. Low have been around for well over 20 years now, yet have just released one of the best albums of their long career, and perhaps one of the defining albums of the decade. Double Negative takes the minimalist melodrama that’s always been at their core of their sound, blows it up to vast proportions and then savagely attacks it; corroding, burning and disintegrating it until the lines between pop, industrial and ambient music have been blurred into irrelevance. All the trappings of modern music have been consumed, chewed up and spat out – the vocal manipulations of artists like Bon Iver and Kanye West are reinterpreted as the cries of the ghost in the machine, whilst the electronic flourishes found in the modern rock of Imagine Dragons or Muse are turned inside out – instead of glossy widescreen production, the unnatural sidechain compression, bright, distorted synthesizers and thundering beats are designed to disorient and degrade. The effect is like stumbling through a sandstorm in the desert only to discover the ruined remains of an epic civilisation that you once knew – triumphant choruses burst out of walls of static, towering drum crashes shatter through the clouds of crumbling texture, ambient drones whistle like the wind through broken crevices, and the harmonising voices of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk weave through it all like two lost souls amongst the chaos. This culminates with incredible ‘Rome (Always in the Dark)’, the album’s pinnacle – the equivalent of finding Ozymandias’ statue half buried in the sand, with huge pulsing drums, screaming guitar solos and soaring harmonies flickering through the roar of distortion. The themes of despair and helplessness (“It’s not the end / It’s just the end of hope”) and the desolate, post-apocalyptic feeling fully match the fear and uncertainty so prevalent in our current society and politics right now – whilst it may not address issues head on in the way an album like Joy as Act of Resistance does, instead Low manage to capture the feeling of an exact moment in history – the mistrust and anger of a struggling society, the crumbling of an empire and ultimately the yearning hope for a better future.

“Before it falls into total disarray / You’ll have to learn to live a different way”

Breathtaking and absolutely essential.

Honourable mentions: Tim Hecker – Konoyo, Nils Frahm – All Melody, Ryley Walker – Deafman Glance, Colter Wall – Songs of the Plain, Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs, Autechre – NTS Sessions, Car Seat Headrest – Twin Fantasy, Amen Dunes - Freedom, Beach House - 7

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