#beauty in still frames

[escapismthroughfilm]

⋆˚｡⋆. ˚In the Mood for Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar Wai⋆˚｡⋆.⋆

[sweetmapple]

Wont be able to be by my pc for a while, for consolation here's a wholy unrelated pre-hiatus comic wip

I think its really deliberate and interesting that Ansbach has red eyes underneath the golden clouding but Varre didn't have any clouding and just straight up darker gold eyes

I'd bet my favorite shoes that Varre was mad jealous of Ansbach's sick ass Pureblood Knight eyes. Also I feel like it kinda implies he never went through the knighting ceremony which is a can of worms in itself

[thewhizzyhead]

before I do the long feminist recontextualization ramble on lmm's warriors album, I must note that the album, despite it being lmm's grittiest work, has such a hopeful tone in it especially near the end. Perhaps the hopeful tones really shine through especially in the backdrop of among the grittiest subject matter featured in MT, but there is something so heartwarming in this being a VERY intentional choice - what with cyrus' dream and the songs that follow with cleon and the gramercy riffs. in their grief and sorrow especially they still sing of giving life meaning - breathing in and believing in the hope of unification against the bigger forces in tow (acab). And this shines especially so with this album's interpretation that the gangs are more of community protectors than deviants and ruffians - and the reason they all believed in Cyrus in the first place is because they wanted a better city for their constituents.

simply said in "somewhere in the city" and simply repeated in the album's finale, they seek a city where they all come home alive.

[1doesnotsimplyhavejust1fandam]

Need an acknowledgement after Buddie goes canon of them having had latent or explicit feelings for each other for years. This isn’t a case of “oh, we were best friends for years and then one day we woke up and were in love.” This is a case of “we’ve been best friends for years, and we’ve been falling in love with each other since the day we met. We just didn’t understand it yet.” We’ve already had Buck’s realization that he’s bisexual, but his arc was chock-full of obliviousness to his attraction to Eddie, his feelings for Eddie, whose attention he actually wants. He still doesn’t really get it, but he gets that he likes men too, at least. Eddie is a whole other ball game. From the Catholic guilt to the toxic masculinity to the childhood emotional neglect to the pressure he keeps putting on himself to perform in relationships. He’s repressed as hell, and he isn’t to “I’m gay” yet, but we see hints of him understanding that how he feels might be a little different (his pause at “follow your heart, not Christopher’s” from Carla, his two talks with Bobby, admitting to performance anxiety on dates to the whole team, his talk with Buck about Marisol being an ex-nun, his acceptance that Ana and a ready-made family was the reason for his panic attack).

We know that the two of them are bad at identifying how they really feel, or at least allowing themselves to feel it. So, it makes way more sense for the show to admit that they’ve had romantic feelings for each other for years, rather than trying to convince the audience that what we’ve been watching these past seven seasons isn’t a product of two characters’ struggles with their identity and relationships. And while I’d be satisfied with a light-hearted snark from Hen or Chim about how they’ve been seeing it for years, I’d be so much happier with a full circle moment of the boys actually fully knowing themselves, acknowledging that they were never just best friends, they just didn’t understand it yet. It would show their series-long growth, as well as being an enormous tip of the hat to the audience. Because we aren’t misinterpreting it. We’re reading the queer-coding directly from the show, yes through subtext of course, but also the literal text. There have been so many moments deserving of acknowledgement in this regard, and I would hate for Buddie to go canon without it being clarified that those moments were exactly as queer and/or romantic as we thought.

[crocomum]

This is easily one of my favorite shots from the movie. The details on D-16's helm are immaculate. The multitude of scratches and scars really say so much about the conditions the miners live in.

[notmoreflippingelves]

[whiteleviathan]

- "Girl with a pearl earring" by artist Johannes Vermeer on the left

- A frame of actress Mia Goth from the set of "X" movie on the right

[davidaltrath]

Dandelion Photo: David Altrath

[dandy-andyyy]

happy three month anniversary to Our Frames Mean Love! ❤️🏴‍☠️

frames 57 and 172

[cherryysocks]

absolutely adore final girls covered in blood 😍

[leosgreyfringe]

BENJAMIN WHITE in 100 Fans vs 1 Footballer

[Which league is the most difficult to play in physically?] "The championship [at] number one...it’s relentless, it’s every three days, it’s so tough. Tough to get out of."

[escapismthroughfilm]

⋆˚｡⋆ ⋆˚｡⋆⋆˚Godland (2022) dir. Hlynur Pálmason⋆˚｡⋆ ⋆˚｡⋆⋆˚｡

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[wetgeliscasualinterval]

Panna a Netvor (1978) by Juraj Herz

[clj-art-blog]

水云天•昊天塔 | Haotian [Vast Sky] Tower, Shuiyuntian

水云天•神水厅 | Shenshui [Water of Gods/spirits] Hall, Shuiyuntian

上古战场•玄虚之境 | The ancient battlefield, Xuanxu Realm [The realm of mystery]

忘川 | Wang Chuan [Oblivion River]

+BONUS A wonderful spectacle performed by an delightful trio on a magical and entrancing Oblivion River

[msaw]

this is one of my favorite 2012 moments btw